Chapter
Nine

There’s no way to know how late it is when I lead Tessen away from the main cavern or how long we slept, but it feels like morning when we head back toward the others. I expect either questions or snark from especially Rai and Etaro but other than a few knowing smirks and a couple of leering winks, our reappearance passes without comment. I’m not sure if I should be worried by or grateful for their silence. From the way Tessen’s eyebrows rise, I think he’s asking himself the same question.

“If this isn’t proof of the Kaisubeh, I don’t know what is,” Tessen murmurs to me.

I laugh, and I’m still laughing as we approach the fire burning closest to our wagon. I stop when I get a whiff of something strange.

Initially, it reminds me of herbs and spices, and I think someone might be making food. Only when I get close to the central fire do I realize why it seemed off. Under the stronger smells is a floral aroma, and something else, a scent that reminds me of the air at the highest points of a mountain, crisp, sharp, and pure.

This might be what magic smells like.

Set bestride the fire is a tall metal tripod, and an iron pot hangs from the center. Tsua is standing next to the fire, hands held out on either side of the pot, well away from the heat. Next to her, Sanii is standing at attention, fully focused on Tsua’s work.

“What is most important at this point is funneling the desosa in slowly but consistently,” Tsua is explaining as I approach. “Like the heat of the fire, this is what will turn what would otherwise be an incredibly unappetizing meal into something that might save a life. Or take one, depending on the potion.”

“I can’t control the desosa like that.” Sanii huffs a frustrated breath. “I’m still getting used to being able to do any magic at all.”

“You can’t control it yet,” Tsua says. “But you will once we find the best way for you to handle desosa. I wouldn’t be surprised if you become just as powerful as Khya.”

“Hopefully stronger.” I cross my arms and try to keep the smirk off my face. “Ey’ll need it to keep up with my brother.”

Sanii snorts. “I need it to keep up with you.”

“How long until this is done?” The storm seems to be easing to a survivable level, but we’ll have to stay. The andofume need time and quiet to work, so only Sanii is with them, watching and learning and trying to mimic what they’re doing.

“Another day. At least.” Tsua takes a long breath, exhaling slowly. There’s a shift in the desosa surrounding her. It follows the line of her arm, pooling around her hands before the subtle motions of her fingers send the energy straight toward the brewing susuji. With the influx of power, the pot boils and thick steam rises. Purple-tinted steam.

“Do you have to keep feeding power into it the whole time?” I ask.

Tsua nods. “It’s one reason so few people bother with anything beyond the most basic of potions. The complex ones take more time and power than most have.” She rolls her shoulders and adjusts her stance. “And that was before Ryogo developed this ridiculous fear.”

“They don’t avoid using magic entirely,” I remember. “They’ve got garakyus.”

“They’ve been taught to view magic as a tool. Like a sword,” Tsua explains. “It’s a powerful tool in the hand of someone who knows how to use it, but it’s limited. It’s not easy to cut your dinner with a sword, is it?”

“Probably not. I’ve never been unwise enough to try,” I say.

Tsua nods. “Something like this susuji is beyond anyone who views magic the same way you think about your sword. I think it’s part of the reason Ryogan leaders worked so hard to push their mages away from the manipulation of desosa. From everything Osshi and Lo’a have told us, it seems like the mages who study here now only learn how to create things like garakyus and healing spells.”

“They didn’t want anyone even attempting what my brother accomplished.” Chio comes to a stop on the opposite side of the fire from Tsua. “Their fear of him is still impossibly strong, even after all this time. More than I expected.”

Then Tsua takes another long breath. “Are you ready, vanafitia?”

At his assent, she slowly twitches the fingers of her right hand. Then, inch by inch, Chio’s hand replaces hers. They repeat the process on the left until Chio is the one feeding desosa into the susuji and Tsua can step back. I didn’t feel the desosa flare or fade at all. It’s impressive, both in their mastery of the desosa and how well they work with each other.

“So, when we finish and we have a susuji…” I lean in enough to better smell the potion, wincing at the sting. “How will we know if it works?”

Sanii lifts eir hand. “We test it.”

“On who?” I gesture toward the andofume. “It’s not like they can become more immortal.”

“We test it on me.”

My breath catches, fear rising like a thick plume of smoke in my chest. “And if it kills you? What am I supposed to do then? What do you think Yorri will do to me if you’re not there when I free him?”

“And what do you think he’ll do when I get old and he’s still sixteen?” Sanii only looks more determined, eir square jaw tensing and eir nostrils flaring. “Or when I die and leave—”

Ey closes eir eyes, but I can finish the rest. They’re sumai, bonded so deeply their souls have entwined. The death of one sukhai severs the connection, and it’s rare for the surviving bondmate to…well, survive. The pain becomes unbearable, a constant agony that no amount of time can ease. If the pain itself doesn’t kill the sukhai, they take their own lives.

Broken hearts can heal; broken souls can’t.

It would be different with Yorri. If Sanii dies, he’ll have to live with the pain and the loss and the memory of exactly how little time they had together. Even if we find a way to end immortal lives, I don’t think I have it in me to hand my brother the means to destroy himself. Or watch him endlessly suffer the loss of his sukhai. Sanii becoming immortal emself is the only endurable option. For any of us.

But Tsua and Chio told us about Varan’s followers who willingly drank whatever susuji Varan had created. “It didn’t work on everyone who took it,” she’d said. “Two weren’t affected. Three died screaming.”

“Say the susuji is actually capable of giving em immortality,” I begin cautiously. “What are the chances of this killing em instead?”

Tsua and Chio share a look before she says, “Low, but not ignorable.”

“I’ll take low.” Sanii forces a smile. “It’s better odds than we’ve had in moons.”

That I can’t deny. “Fine. But you don’t do it before letting us know it’s ready.”

“I don’t think any of us are going anywhere for at least another day or two, Khya.” Tsua’s gaze flits toward the cavern’s entrance. “It’d be hard to hide anything here.”

Especially from Tessen. The reminder makes me feel a little better.

“Let me know if you need any help with this.” I gesture toward the fire, but I’m already stepping back. When they don’t ask me to stay, I pick up the smaller of my two bags and move beyond the perimeter of the wagons.

The firelight isn’t as strong here, making reading harder than it already is. I strain my eyes, going over the lines I’ve studied more than once and looking for anything new. A question to ask. An experiment to try. I still can’t make the cord around my wrist hold magic, but I know that’s my failing, not a fault in the cord. This is from the same stock we found on Imaku, the same they used on their prisoners. It must be capable of binding something or someone.

Letting Lo’a use my wards to amplify the spell her people use to hide was hard, but possible. I was warding the caravan. It was a different kind of ward than I’d ever tried to create before, but it was still a ward. This binding spell is nothing like that. It’s Ryogan magic through and through.

I keep working on it, pushing to see how far I can stretch what my training masters once told me were the limits of my ability. We can’t go anywhere, so I let myself get lost in the books and my trials, attempting to wind power through the red cord so many times I lose count. Time passes, but I only know how much because Tessen appears with food every so often.

“You need to take a break, Khya,” he says the third time.

I nod, absently running the cord through my fingers. “I will. When this wears me out.”

“Too late. You’re blinking like you can’t focus.” Tessen stifles a sigh and places the plate near my side. “Just because you can grind yourself to dust doesn’t mean you should.”

He leaves before I can reply, which is good; I think he might be right, but I’m not ready to admit defeat yet. Especially since I don’t know when I’ll next have this much uninterrupted time to work. Once the andofume finish the susuji and we test it, we’ll have to move on. I don’t know where yet, but it won’t matter. I’ll need to save my energy on those days for my wards.

I keep working, eating when I’m hungry, but skipping a lot more sleep than is probably a good idea. Some time on the second day I feel someone watching. When I look up Tessen is there, leaning against the side of a wagon, his face nearly lost in its shadow. Though I wait—for either approval or argument—he gives me nothing but a small shake of his head and a resigned smile before he walks away. It’s enough to nudge me into a second nap, but even as I lay down, my head pillowed on my arm, I hope I don’t sleep long.

However long I’m out, it’s only a few hours after I wake up that Tsua announces, “It’s ready.”

I’m halfway to the bonfire before anyone else has even gotten to their feet, eyes locked on the steaming pot now sitting on the stone. At first I think it’s the light from the fire, but the color is wrong. Too purple. And the light isn’t reflecting off the surface of the steaming liquid, it’s coming from the liquid itself.

“Are you sure I can’t talk you out of this?” I’m speaking to Sanii, but I don’t look away from the susuji. “I don’t like this.”

“There’s no better plan.” In my peripheral vision, Sanii seems tense. Not afraid, though. Expectant. “We know the chances of this killing me are low.”

“We don’t know anything.” I tear my eyes away to look at Sanii. “Are you sure you want to take this risk, Sanii?”

“Yes.” Ey kneels next to the fire and then dips a ladle into the pot, pouring the liquid into a small cup. “If you’re going to argue with me about this, Khya, go somewhere else.”

“I’m not going anywhere. Let’s get this over with.” I try not to imagine how angry or worried Yorri would be if he were here to watch Sanii raise this cup to eir lips and gulp down the glowing drink.

Ey grimaces and wipes eir mouth with the back of eir hand. “That is awful.”

“It wasn’t created with taste in mind.” Tsua purses her lips, her gaze darting from point to point on Sanii’s body. “How are you feeling?”

“The same.” Sanii looks down at the empty cup. “So far.”

I barely have time to build up the hope that, even if the susuji doesn’t work, it also won’t hurt em. Less than ten minutes pass before ey starts sweating. And shivering.

Tsua carries em into our wagon and gently lays em on the lower bed. Zonna and I are right behind her, but when Zonna moves to touch Sanii’s ankle, desosa already gathering around his hand, Tsua shakes her head.

“Leave em.” Tsua eases him away. “We have to let this work or fail. There’s nothing we can do but make em comfortable.”

Until ey becomes immortal. Or dies. Or something else entirely happens.

I kneel by the bed, holding eir hand and whispering, “Fight through this, Sanii. If you die, Yorri will never forgive me.”

Breathlessly, ey laughs. “You’re j-joking. He’d forg-give you anything.”

It’s the last coherent thing ey says for a long time.

Within an hour, ey is writhing and screaming, the sound so loud and eir voice filled with so much agony I try to create a ward to stop sound. It doesn’t work.

After an hour of screaming, I send Tessen and Tyrroh away, banishing them into a wagon that one of the hanaeuu we’la maninaio drives out of the cavern entirely. Neither of them can muffle their overpowered hearing enough. It’s probably painful being within a hundred yards of em, but hopefully the stone will block the worst of it. It’s the best I can do.

We watch over em, waiting for the end. Whatever the end looks like. Even when the others force me to take a break, I don’t go far, not beyond the main cavern. Every other moment I’m with Sanii. Waiting and worrying.

For two solid days.

The fever Sanii built up breaks as we enter day three, sweat beading on eir soft brown skin as eir shivering eases. When they’re open, eir eyes look clearer and more focused than I’ve seen since Tsua carried em in here.

“Did it work?” is the first thing ey asks.

“We don’t know yet.” I brush my hand over eir forehead, pushing eir short hair off eir skin. “How do you feel?”

“Miserable,” ey mutters, closing eir eyes. “But I don’t think I’m about to die anymore.”

My hand tightens on the edge of the bed. “You’d better not.”

Ey smiles, eyes fluttering open again. “Where’s your anto? We need a test.”

“There’s been more than enough testing already.” But I reach for one of the daggers stored under the bed and ask Miari to get Zonna. Just in case Sanii can’t heal this wound on eir own. Only then do I remind em, “We don’t have to do this now.”

“Sooner is better,” ey says, almost breathless. “If it failed, we need a new plan.”

Sanii’s right. I should have asked about that two days ago. Blood and rot. I should’ve asked what our next step would be before ey ever swallowed the susuji. Hopefully Tsua, Chio, and Osshi have been working on that, because we’ve already spent days in this cavern. Closing in on a week. If this fails, then it’s almost a full week wasted.

At least it hadn’t been a waste and a loss. Ill as Sanii’s been, ey’s still with us.

When Zonna kneels next to me and nods, I take Sanii’s offered arm, press it down to stop em from flinching, and cut a short line across eir upper forearm. Blood wells, leaving dark trails across eir skin. It’s deep enough to cause damage, not so deep Sanii’s in any real danger.

Then we watch. If the susuji worked, eir body will close the wound, healing it until only the faintest of scars is left. And even that should fade soon. But nothing happens.

We wait ten minutes before Sanii looks away from us, defeat in eir large eyes.

Zonna heals the cut ey couldn’t. Disappointment wars with relief, both emotions strong enough to feel like tangible weights on my chest. When Miari and Wehli take my place at eir bedside, I leave the wagon and keep walking. I need space, so I go farther from our wagon than I have in days. Which is how I spot the smaller fire in the rear of the cavern.

The tripod is set up over the blaze, a pot hanging from the center and purple-tinted steam rising from inside. Chio and Tsua stand on either side, hands extended. Power floods into the susuji, so much more than they used for the first.

I’ve learned how to handle more desosa than I thought was possible, but this is something else entirely. The energy crackles and sparks around them, invisble but tangible to anyone with the skill to feel it. Given that most of the hanaeuu we’la maninaio seem to be keeping to the opposite side of the cavern, I don’t think I’m the only one unsettled by the work our elder andofume are doing. I also don’t dare interrupt it.

Staying back about twenty feet, I sit and watch. They must’ve been working on this for hours. Maybe days. It’d explain why I’ve so rarely seen them since Sanii drank the first susuji. It would also explain why they’re breathing hard and why their hands are trembling and why Chio seems seconds away from losing his balance. I don’t want to think about what might happen if they’re interrupted—the backlash could decimate half the cavern—so I quietly find Natani and bring him back to their bonfire. Tessen notices, of course, and follows us.

“Can you help them?” I ask Natani.

“They’re already pulling more desosa than I’ve ever channeled.” He bites the inside of his cheek. “I don’t think touching either is a good idea, but I might be able to…”

Taking a deep breath, Natani steps closer to Chio, calm moving outward from him in waves. The andofume’s energy doesn’t lose force, but it does lose bite. Some of the lightning-like crackle in the air dissipates, and that shift seems to ease Tsua and Chio’s burden. They resettle their stances. Steady their hands. Breathe deep. Keep working.

Tessen shakes his head. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice they were doing this. I should’ve felt this kind of power even from outside.”

“Not even you can be aware of everything at once. You’ve been focused on watch shifts.” Swallowing and wrapping my arms around myself, I lift my chin toward the susuji. “Can you sense anything different from the first attempt?”

“Not while they’re working on it. I think I’ll have to wait until they’re done to know.”

“Waiting.” I rub the bridge of my nose. “Why is our life filled with so much waiting?”

Tessen’s lips thin at my hesitation. “You’ve always expected too much of yourself. It was good on Shiara—pushing yourself was how you became the best in our year—”

“Second-best,” I remind him. “I wasn’t the one who was tapped to become a student of the kaigo, remember?”

“As if that matters now.” Tessen watches me sidelong. “What I was trying to say is it’s different here. Pushing yourself to accomplish everything now is only going to burn you out. We don’t know where the end of our journey is, and we can’t even see the path we’re supposed to be walking on. Then you have the added pressure of a whole second project while we’re stumbling our way on a first.”

“What does that even mean?”

His focus shifts to the andofume and their new susuji. “That one day, probably sooner than any of us would like, you might have to choose one over the other. We may have been forced to leave Itagami behind, but that doesn’t mean what we learned there isn’t true anymore.”

The actions of one cannot, and should not, be paid for by the suffering of many.

It’s part of Itagamin law. There’s more, though, and it’s this other half that Tessen is probably thinking of now.

The needs of one cannot, and should not, outweigh what is best for many.

“You wanted to be a leader, Khya.” Tessen’s voice is low and unusually gentle. “I’ve always believed you could become a great one, but you have to be willing to put everything you want second.”

I force myself to breathe slowly. Evenly. My heart is beating so hard my chest hurts. “You’re right, and maybe one day it’ll come to that, but we got this far because I put Yorri above everything else. I’ve always done that.”

“You say that as though I don’t know,” he says wryly. “I’m not expecting that to change, I’m just hoping you’ll at least try to remember the rest of us when you have to make that choice.”

Tilting my head, I watch him out the corner of my eye. “You say that as though I could forget you.”

“You’d better not.” He mutters the words darkly and crosses his arms over his chest, but he can’t completely hide the way his lips want to curve into a smile.

An hour later the andofume shudder and lower their hands. Tessen and I get up as soon as the flow of desosa stops. I shout for Wehli. Tessen and I aren’t fast enough to catch them before they sink straight to the stone, but Wehli’s a ryacho—all I see is a blur of color and then he’s there, catching Chio before his head connects with the stone. Tsua is farther away; not even Wehli’s speed is enough to get to her in time.

“We’re fine.” Tsua waves off Zonna’s concern despite her panting breaths and what looks like blood dripping down the side of her neck. “Tssiky’le, I haven’t been this tired in ages.”

“I don’t know how Varan could’ve pulled this off by himself.” Chio is curled over, resting his forehead on his knees. “Not before he had an andofume’s endurance.”

“Your brother was nothing if not resourceful.” Tsua’s eyes flutter closed and don’t immediately open again. “Leave us to sleep for now. The susuji needs to settle. When we wake up, it should be ready. And hopefully it’ll be right, too.”

“From your lips to the Kaisubeh’s ears,” Chio mutters.

“Hush, vanafitia.” Tsua lies down on the stone, using her arm as a pillow. “I doubt they want to hear anything we have to say.”

Chio snorts as he settles down next to her. It seems to take less than a minute for both to fall into a deep, unmoving sleep, so I go to check on Sanii. Apparently, the susuji did have an effect—Sanii’s various scars are all but gone, and so is the ache in eir shoulder from an old injury. Ey’s healed in ways even a hishingu mage couldn’t manage, but that’s it. Nothing more.

So I return to watching over the andofume, waiting to see if their second attempt is any better than the first.

Four hours later, although there are bruise-like shadows under their eyes and a certain carefulness to their movements, Tsua and Chio are immediately back to work. They’re also ravenous, eating out of bowls of food on their lap as they sit with the glowing pot between them.

The purple-tinted light coming from it seems brighter than the draft Sanii drank, but they’re frowning as they prod the liquid with magical fingers. Before they’re half finished eating, they beckon Tessen and me closer, gesturing to the susuji.

“What do you think?” Tsua asks.

Tessen will be able to read more than I can, but I still focus on the luminescent liquid, trying to remember what I felt from the first one. Far as I can tell, the sole difference is potency, and only by a little. There’s nothing in it to help me pretend this one might work where the first failed.

When Tessen shakes his head, I know what he’s found even before he says, “It feels like this one will do exactly what the other did.”

Tsua closes her eyes and nods. “That’s what I thought, too.”

“I knew this wouldn’t work. I hoped I was wrong, but when am I ever wrong about Varan’s—” Growling, Chio rubs both hands over his smooth head. “This is why I never paid attention to what he was working on. None of it made sense. None of it should’ve worked.”

“And yet it did. Twelve times.” I sit down across from him, trying to stay calm. “Your memories of Varan right before he tested this on you are the only solid lead we have to follow. Clearly what we found in the mountains didn’t work, so what’s next?”

“I don’t know.” An apology shows in his eyes. “All I know for certain is what we have won’t work. Unless one of the Kaisubeh blessed the rot-ridden thing.”

“Maybe Varan found Kaisuama,” Tessen jokes weakly, his smile forced.

Kaisuama? It takes me a moment to remember the right story—it’s a mountain the Ryogans used to believe the Kaisubeh watched them from. My smile is as weak as Tessen’s joke was. “If he did, the Kaisubeh probably gave him what he wanted just to make him go away.”

Tsua and Chio smile with us, distracted but listening enough to know what the expected response is. Then Tsua blinks, her eyes narrowing. “What did you say?”

“I…” Bellows. Hoping she’s not going to be like Osshi and take offense at the careless remark about the Kaisubeh, I repeat what we said and then gesture toward the wagons. “It was in a story Lo’a told us. I know the belief is ancient, but I—”

“Do you remember?” Tsua faces Chio, her half-moon eyes full. “He disappeared. For three weeks. Almost four. And he was half dead when he finally stumbled back into Uraita.”

“He said he’d been hunting gods,” Chio responds slowly, his own eyes bulging. “And we all thought it was a joke to avoid telling us where he’d been, but what—”

“What if for once he was being honest?” Tsua breaks in and finishes. “You know he was obsessed with the Mysora range. It’s why he hid his work in these mountains.”

“And he spent years collecting every story about the Kaisubeh he could. Who’s to say he didn’t hear that exact tale and decide—” Chio rubs his hand over his mouth, lines of concentration etched around his eyes. “But we don’t even know where to start.”

“In the mountains, obviously, but…” Tsua gets up and jogs toward Lo’a’s wagon. She comes back with a handful of rolled maps and Lo’a in tow.

“There is only one place no one looks.” Lo’a says, pointing to a section of the Mysora Mountains that’s shaded gray on the map. “If Kaisuama is real and it has not been found before, where else can it be except somewhere in Nentoado?”

“Why there?” I ask, trying to get a better view of the map.

“It’s impassable,” Tsua explains. “Whole caravans have died trying to find a way through Nentoado.”

“It’s the widest part of the Mysora range.” Chio traces the border of the gray-shaded area with his fingertip. “In my day, no one had found a safe path through the Nentoado range.”

“But it has been a long time since you were last here,” Lo’a reminds them. “And my people have the need for places to hide, places no one will bother looking for us.”

“You have one within Nentoado?” Tsua asks.

Lo’a tilts her head in acknowledgement. “Kaisuama is definitely not along the path my people travel. However, we stay to the edges, never through the heart of the range.”

“And if Varan found Kaisuama in these mountains,” Chio says, “the heart of the range is exactly where it must be.”

“We can find it.” Everyone turns to me, their expressions a mix of skepticism, amusement, and resignation. “Tessen can find anything, and it’s not like we don’t know how to climb.”

“Khya, this won’t be like the mountains on Shiara,” Chio says. “You think it’s cold now, but this is warm compared to where we’d have to go. The peaks are so high it’ll get hard to breathe, and the storms—If those catch up with us while we’re in those mountains, the winds could get strong enough to knock us into thin air. And sure, no one can follow a trail better than Tessen, but we can’t count on there being a trail to follow. If there were, Kaisuama would’ve been found centuries ago.”

I can’t do anything about the trail—especially since I don’t know what we’re looking for other than a mountain the Kaisubeh, who I’m not even sure are real, might call home. “My wards can protect us from the worst of the wind, and our magic will make the climb simpler. I’m guessing the Ryogans never tried crossing these mountains the way we will.”

“Likely not,” Tsua admits with a smile. “Doesn’t mean it’ll be easy, though.”

“Of course not.” I rise to find the others. “When is anything ever easy?”