In the land of the free, I never expected to end up in chains.
The room in which I was locked was dark and old, the air stifling. A few hours must have passed since Eli had left me here, and I would have wagered the leaders of Langria were making me wait on purpose. My anticipation had been built, and my fear had successfully clouded the room. The metal restraints on my wrists, ankles and neck were cool to the touch, but burned with the heat of my indignation.
The Flock was at the mercy of my absence. Shilah would keep things stable, but I feared the Khat could still ignite the Second Fall at any moment. I needed to get out of this room and plead my situation to whoever was in charge. I needed to fly home as soon as possible.
The Jadans of Langria were our long-lost family. They were living proof that the Crier hadn’t abandoned our people, and that the Khatdom was in fact a lie. Accidentally flying as North as North goes and finding this place could be the monumental discovery that would change Jadan minds across the world. Knowledge of the free lands might have even been the happy accident I was supposed to find.
Yet I’d been thrown in chains and promised death.
My skin already held angry rashes from all my squirming, but the chains were well forged. I wasn’t going anywhere.
A day earlier I’d commanded a city.
Hours ago I’d held dominion over the skies.
Now I was a slave again.
Parading me through the scowls and two-knuckle gestures of the fighters, Shaman Eli had led me into the canyonside, blindfolded me once more and taken me straight to this cell. He’d locked me inside, taking away my bronze fingers just in case I had any ‘spy weapons’ hidden inside. His touch had been kind and gentle, making sure the shackles weren’t cutting off my circulation and that I could breathe, yet his mastery was absolute. He gave me a friendly pat on the shoulder and told me all about how I would be tortured.
There was no cruelty or malice in his words, just assurance. He was sharing the horrific details out of kindness. Fear was its own kind of torture, and his matter-of-fact explanation did in fact take away some of the looming sting.
Not enough, but some.
‘They will work on your fingers first, since they’re the most sensitive,’ was his warning. ‘Tell them everything you know after the first cuts. Sett’s interrogators are trained from birth for the job. They can spot lies in the way your body moves almost as well as they can hear them. If you empty yourself of all your truth up front, there’s no more need to go cutting. They will give you sweet death and only a little suffering.’
I’d tried to plea with Eli, to tell him who I was, but he only ever held up a gentle hand at my interjections. Zizi hissed whenever Eli’s shoulder moved, waving its stinger in my direction. Quickly enough I’d realized that the scorpion had been de-barbed.
‘Please don’t speak,’ he’d said. ‘I’m on your side and the side of mercy for now. But anything you let slip might make me change my mind.’
After a few attempts at explanation I’d resigned to silence. Eli gave me another pat on the shoulder, a sad nod, and eventually left me alone with my thoughts.
My friends would never know where I’d died.
I pulled at the shackles once again, splitting the skin on my wrists.
I had nothing better to do. The pain at least kept the dread and panic at bay.
I coughed out another lungful of hot, dusty air. The room was lit up by the streaming Sunlight from the single window. The beam was thin, terrible and directed straight at my forehead. The heat was uncomfortable, but a part of me was glad I couldn’t move my head too much, otherwise I’d be able to study all the nasty stains on the stone floor and wall. I caught glimpses of some red, some brown. Careening along the wall near my head were chalky white scrapes from desperate fingernails.
I closed my eyes and prayed.
Not to the World Crier.
I prayed to Shilah.
She had once told me that I needed to have faith in something, even if it wasn’t in the divine. She told me that otherwise life was too messy to ever make clean decisions. I still had my fair share of doubts about the Crier, especially in His ability to help in any way, and so now most of my faith ended up in my partner. It was a decision I was okay with.
Even if my life was to end here, I prayed that Shilah would build another Matty and find the Frosts herself. So she could be the true Meshua our people needed.
I prayed that she would find strength in Cam.
I prayed for her happiness and courage.
I prayed that she wouldn’t miss me too much.
I closed my eyes and lost myself to her posture.
The doors to the cell opened.
Two burly Jadans walked in and took position at either side of the doorway. Their forearms were carved up with chaotic battle scars rather than straight-line whip scars, and from the smoothness of their cheeks I would have guessed they had never learned to smile. They stared at me as if I had yellow hair and the Khat’s face.
And then someone even worse walked in.
I could tell by the way this Jadan walked that she was the one in charge. Slowly, but with purpose, as if she had all the time in the World Cried to get answers out of me. Her dark face was crowned with a head of short grey hair, and even though her eyes were dull in colour, they sparkled with intelligence and cunning. Usually Jadan women this old had been all but eaten up and spat out by the Nobles, but she carried herself like she’d done the chewing.
She held an ominous wooden box in one hand and a circular disc in her other. I tried to figure out how sharp the edges of the disc might be, and how they would be used on my soft flesh to extract answers.
The woman turned to the guards and said something in a language that sounded a bit like Ancient Jadan. It was less throaty and had shorter words, but still had an eerie similarity. I was stunned to hear such language used so casually.
The guards filed out of the cell and shut the door behind them.
The new woman strutted up to me and held out the metal disc of torture. There was a click of switch and the pop of a spring. I winced, expecting pain.
Instead, the back of the circle shot outwards, a latticework stand expanding. Thin metal that had been tucked behind the circle folded out intricately and eventually locked into a small tower of sorts.
It looked like a chair.
The woman confirmed my suspicions by placing the legs on the ground and sitting on the top. Her gray hair blocked the beam of Sunlight, offering me a bit of mercy.
Her chair was an interesting bit of tinkering. I tried to cock my head to study the spring-work, but the chains on my neck kept me from doing so.
‘Congratulation,’ the woman said, her voice rounded at the edges, her tongue unhurried. ‘You made yourself further than any other spy in eight hundred years. It was only a time matter before Khats finally sent cunning one.’
She was clunky in the common tongue, and from the disgust in her eyes I could tell that she wasn’t thrilled to use the language.
‘I’m not a spy,’ I said, speaking slowly and trying to look harmless.
The woman nodded, giving me a go-ahead look. ‘You hear whispers of Coldmarch and decide you make it North on your own. You stealed Cold and hide in caravans. You braved sands merciless. Look at numbers on your neck. You’re revolutionary. Down with the Khat. You put yourself at mercy, and swear to the undying Crier that you pledge life entirely to free people of Langria.’
I paused, my tongue feeling heavy. ‘Huh?’
‘Is next part of your speech,’ she said. ‘Is like Khats have had same scribe for eight hundred years. Every speech is changed bit, but all have the same inner guts. Did I get right?’
I tried to sit as upright as I could, which didn’t amount to much.
‘My name is Micah,’ I said. ‘And I—’
‘Meshua!’ the woman said with honey tones, clapping a hand against her knee. ‘The saviour is finally arrived! And right age, too.’ Her face lit with something close to humour. ‘Bold new words for scribes. My compliments to Khat. Now how did you get to far side of Langria undetected. How did you get past warriors in Dagon?’
‘What’s Dagon?’
She gave me an impatient look.
I tried not to sigh. I had to sound like a leader in my own right. I tried to speak like she walked, unhurried and clear. ‘Like I said. My name is Micah, and I am in charge of the free Jadans at the City of David’s Fall. Right now my people are besieged – surrounded there by the Khat and thousands of soldiers, and I have been looking for ways to fight back. I have invented …’
I trailed off, trying to think of the best way to explain my predicament to someone who thought I was a liar and didn’t quite speak my language.
‘I can make Cold,’ I said. ‘And I have discovered the secret to flight.’
‘Of course have!’ she said, biting her bottom lip to keep from bursting out laughing. ‘You are Meshua! You come with miracles to fix world.’
I sighed. I wasn’t helping my case. ‘I didn’t intend to come here, but now that I have, I think it might have been for a reason. My people need your help. Our people need your help.’
She leaned in, the chair creaking. Her eyes were like Wraiths, ready to erupt with the slightest touch. ‘Is right?’
‘That’s right,’ I said, dredging up every bit of confidence left inside me.
Her palm was poised on the eerie wooden box on her lap, almost as if her fingers were decided whether or not I should be tortured. ‘I can be seeing why Shaman Eli took liking for you. He’s sucker for mystery.’
‘My friends are in danger,’ I said, my face going fiery hot. I rattled my chains. ‘And they need me to go back to them. I can’t stay here. Please. We need your help.’
She took her time to respond, tapping her feet against the ground to a rhythm I couldn’t hear, matching it with her fingers on the box. Her thumb played with the latch to open the thing, and my stomach clenched up tight thinking about what sort of blades or broken glass she was about to stick in me.
‘I need you be seeing from my perspective,’ she said. ‘Is it right? Perspective?’
I nodded.
‘I like what you is having to say.’ She spoke slowly and with regret, as if dredging up the words from a place she didn’t like visiting. ‘I like clever tongue and new speech. Is interesting you say City of David’s Fall is where half of soldiers went, and I is glad to be knowing this. But best lies always come bits of truth. The Khat has victory before because of good lies. And so you can’t be having special treatments. Because I need not bits of truth, I need all truth.’ She opened the latch on the wooden box, keeping the lid raised so that the contents were hidden from me. Her hand swept through her torture materials. ‘I need know how you be getting to other side of Langria. No spy ever make it so far, and I need know what Khat knows. Never in my whole line of Melekah has happened a spy break through. Close, but never through.’
‘I didn’t break through,’ I said. ‘I flew here.’
She nodded, still picking through the box’s contents. ‘Mhmm.’
‘Flight,’ I said, feeling desperate and afraid. I still couldn’t get my head around the fact that I was in the legendary Langria about to be tortured to death. ‘Flying. Like a bird. Flying in the air.’
‘Yes,’ she snorted, still distracted. ‘Bird Meesh-Dahm. Now be patient. Your truth coming.’
She began tapping her feet again on the stone floor, humming a foreign melody.
‘I’m not a spy,’ I pleaded. ‘Please. You have to believe me. What can I do to prove it to you?’
She gave me a helpless nod, a sad look in her eyes.
‘I can tell you how the Khat destroyed the world!’ I cried, nearly a shout. ‘I know the secret to how he took away the Cold.’
‘Yes.’ She seemed completely unmoved, letting out a sigh. ‘He be using Desert. Other spies have bargain with this too. We know Desert.’
‘You do?’
‘Yes,’ she said, giving another sad nod. ‘They put in ground.’
The door behind her opened and another Jadan woman walked in. This one was younger than the one sitting in the chair, but not by much. She seemed harder around the edges. She wore glass eyewear, tinted red, but even behind it her eyes were wild and untamed. She wore a red uniform that reminded me of the one Jadanmaster Gramble used to wear on the days of the Procession.
A surge of dread boiled my heart.
The women exchanged a few words in their odd language. The newcomer tossed out the word ‘Sett’ at the woman in the chair that made me think it was a name. Their conversation was detailed and complex, spinning between them like a spider’s web. The grey-haired woman, presumably Sett, gestured to a few parts of my body. She started with my hands, probably instructing the newcomer where I should be dissected.
Then Sett kissed the red-clad woman on the cheek, letting her lips linger. There was passion behind the kiss, Sett’s hand reaching behind the other woman’s head and nesting in her wavy hair. The romantic gesture seemed out of place preceding the moments where I was about to start screaming for mercy.
Sett pulled herself from the embrace and went for the door.
The newcomer’s eyes dug into me with anger and hatred. She had a sleek face but wide-set eyes behind the glasses. She was looking through me, at all the tender bits that she was planning on eviscerating.
I wasn’t so much afraid of the pain as the fact that I would not get back to my friends. I’d been tortured before; I could handle torture. But those tortures were when I was a Street Jadan, with nothing more than my own life hanging in the balance. Now I had an entire city of innocent Jadans depending on me to figure a way back. I couldn’t let my people suffer more than I would.
‘Wait!’ I shouted.
Sett began to close the door behind her.
I took a deep breath.
I held one left truth to reveal.
‘Shemma hares lahyim criyah Meshua ris yim slochim,’ I shouted.
The woman in red buckled at the knees.
Sett paused, a tremor going through her body before she stormed back through the room. Her posture was much less sure this time. She swept past her torturer friend and knelt down in front of me, her rapid thoughts apparent.
‘How you know these words?’ Sett asked. ‘Khat never know.’
She was still relatively calm, but there was fear in her tone.
‘I was on the Coldmarch,’ I said. ‘I’m not a spy. Please, I’ll tell you everything. Just let me go. I’ll show you how I got here.’
‘How. You know. These words.’
She was almost snarling at this point.
‘My father taught them to me,’ I said with defiance. ‘His name was Abb and he was the best Jadan I’ve ever known.’
Sett put her hands under my chin. She didn’t strangle me, but rather pressed her fingers up, as if feeling for a secret lever.
‘Tell me you not being a spy,’ she said.
‘I’m not a spy,’ I said.
Her concentration was intimidating. She pressed her fingers up into my throat further, her gaze boring into mine.
After a long moment she sighed, giving another sad nod. ‘I’m just no good enough with tongue of enemy. Sinniah, you use tools now.’
‘I am Micah from Paphos,’ I said, leaning forward as much as I could. ‘I swear to the Crier that—’
Sett cut me off, her face growing curious as she looked down my shirt. She reached under the fabric, pulling out my necklace.
Her face gave a heavy start as the little camel came into the light.
‘Where you get this?’ she gasped. Her hand was shaking.
‘A friend gave it to me,’ I said.
‘What friend?’
‘His name is Split the Pedlar, he was my Shepherd for the Coldmarch.’
Sett ripped the necklace off me in one pull, standing up and slamming the lid of the wooden box. She hurled herself towards Sinniah and once again they began speaking rapidly in the foreign language, both of them gesturing wildly. I couldn’t tell, but it seemed like the Sinniah was trying to convince Sett that the necklace was a trick. Sett’s tone turned harsh as they delved into deeper and more impassioned arguments.
Eventually Sinniah stormed out – there was no kiss this time – and slammed the door behind her. Sett grabbed the box, let out a long sigh and then went to follow her.
‘Wait!’ I called. ‘I can prove everything!’
Sett turned to face me, flush with pain. ‘You stay here, bird.’
I couldn’t move if I’d wanted to.
Before I had time to answer she was gone.
After an agonizing wait, Sett returned with two new people.
One of them I recognized as Shaman Eli.
The other was a girl a little older than me, her skin quite fair for a Jadan and her hair long and straight. She had a large bump in her nose and her ears were too large for her face, but the most standout feature was a certain smugness. She stood as if the ground under her feet were unworthy of her delicate frame.
Sett returned to her tinkered stool, opening the wooden box once again.
‘Please,’ I said, my throat parched and lips cracked. The relentless Sun had stripped me of most of my water, and sweat stung my eyes. ‘I’m not lying.’
Sett gestured over one shoulder and then the other. ‘Shaman Eli and Lop were some of last who came on Coldmarch. They speak best tongue of enemy. I want to be making sure I don’t misunderstand anything.’ She turned to Eli. ‘Is right? “Misunderstand”?’
Eli nodded, an excited look on his face. He had a shirt on this time, but Zizi the scorpion was still on his shoulder. I seemed to be the only one in the cell who thought the presence of such a creature was odd.
‘Also, I am Sett,’ she said. ‘Melekah of Langria.’
I tried to bow my head but couldn’t.
‘It’s an honour,’ I said. ‘I didn’t think Langria was actually real.’
Sett’s face furrowed with confusion. ‘You say you fly here. Like bird.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘And you know sacred words.’
‘Shemma hares lahyim—’
Sett waved me quiet. ‘Is not needed to repeat.’
Lop’s hands quivered at her sides, giving me a scrutinizing look.
‘And you have necklace,’ Sett said.
I cracked a helpless smile, my head cloudy with Sunlight. ‘Actually you have my necklace.’
‘Tell Lop and Shaman Eli speech you being tell me,’ Sett said, unamused.
I gathered my breath. I was ravenous and parched, but I was finally getting somewhere.
I told them everything I possibly could.
Sett waited patiently on her stool, listening to Eli relay my story in the foreign language, the ominous box in her lap. She fiddled with the latch, her thumb slowing down as my tale progressed. Thankfully she blocked the beam of Sunlight for the duration of my story and I got a reprieve from the heat.
I told them everything from the Coldmaker to the Matty, and then sat back and waited. I kept my mouth closed. Liars rambled, and keeping my tongue still would help my case.
Sett opened the torture box. I tried not to flinch.
She reached inside and pulled out the camel necklace, holding it in front of me.
‘Who this belong to?’ she asked.
‘Split,’ I said. ‘Split the Pedlar.’
Eli said something in the language I decided was Langrian, but Sett stopped him by reaching back with an annoyed wave. She peered deeper into my eyes.
I swallowed hard, taking a different approach. ‘It belongs to Langria?’
Sett’s sharp inhale grew into a long sigh. She got up from her stool and gave Lop a dissatisfied gesture.
Panic flooded my chest. My chains felt tighter and I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know how else to get out of this. I’d told them everything I knew, all of it true.
I closed my eyes and tried to summon anything that might prove who I was; anything that would keep the blades out of the precious fingers I had left. The back of my mind must have had information that the Khat could never possibly know. I leapt into memory, desperately grasping.
And then it hit me.
‘Anyah,’ I said. ‘She was Split’s daughter. And her mother was Lizah. They were captured by Hookmen and murdered.’
Sett turned slowly to Eli, her face going pale. ‘Murdered. This is same as Luchtach, right?’
Eli swallowed hard and then nodded, his hand stroking the scorpion’s back.
Sett’s knees buckled and she walked over to the wall and rested her forehead against the stone, muttering something under her breath. Eli and Lop exchanged a horrified look.
‘You knew them?’ I asked, the realization dawning on me. I wished I could shift out of the Sunlight so I could see Sett better.
Sett nodded. She pulled herself back to her feet, leaving a wet spot behind on the stone.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Lizah is being my sister. She leave Langria when younger. I not know she being murder. I has feeling, but I not know.’
A lump formed in my throat.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
Sett turned to Eli and spoke a long string of Langrian, not pausing, everything coming out in one desperate burst. After that she made a hurried gesture towards me.
Eli came over and began unlocking my chains. Lop looked unsure, keeping towards the back of the room.
‘Sett wants you to know,’ Eli said hurriedly, digging a key into the manacle around my neck first, ‘that she is willing to trust you. That she will let you go, but that if you are a spy for the Khat and end up bringing the downfall of Langria, then her spirit will wait for you in the black and spend all of eternity making sure you never find your Frost.’
I nodded, relief sweeping me as my neck was unchained and I could slump out of the Sunlight. ‘I would expect nothing less.’
Eli gave me a wink as he undid my wrists. ‘I found your cart.’
‘Hmm?’
‘The flying cart,’ he said. ‘With the feather on the side.’
I smiled, a blister on my lips cracking. ‘Oh. I call it a Matty.’
‘Matty,’ Eli repeated with satisfaction. ‘It’s beautiful. I couldn’t figure out how it works. But I showed it to Sett and she believes you. She was very impressed. She makes things too.’ Eli helped me to my feet, clapping me on the shoulder. ‘If you really are Meshua, you came at the right time.’
Sett reached into the torture box.
I expected a blade, but she came out with a crystal cup and a Wisp. She cooled the drink and then removed a fistful of green knuckleberries.
‘Shaman Eli say you like these,’ Sett said. ‘Eat. Drink. You show us flying and prove you are who you say.’
I took the water without her having to ask twice and gulped it all down. The single Wisp dissolved inside felt like a full abb after all this, and my insides thundered with satisfaction.
I wiped my mouth, the back of my hand tingling with relief.
‘I can’t anymore,’ I said. ‘Fly.’
Lop poked Eli on the shoulder and gave him a told-you-so kind of look.
‘Why you no can fly?’ Sett asked. ‘You say you is Meshua.’
‘I said I was Micah.’ I shrugged. ‘But I need a Noble tear for the invention to work. I don’t have any left.’
‘Noble.’ Sett touched a finger under her eye, a question in her expression. ‘Tear?’
‘Yes,’ I said, heart in my throat. ‘Can you get me one?’
Sett paused and then let out a dark laugh.
‘Maybe you is belonging in Langria, bird.’