It takes almost an hour before we can extract everyone from the party. Zarun and Jack stay with the crab soup, but Meroe joins us, along with me, Isoka, Giniva, Hasaka, and Jakibsa.
Hasaka does not look well. I still remember him as the burly ex-soldier who guarded Grandma Tadeka’s door, but my enforced absence makes me realize how much he’s changed. He looks like an old man, skin hanging loose on a shrunken frame, eyes deep-sunk in their sockets. Jakibsa walks beside him, but now he seems like the solid one in spite of his wounds, with Hasaka holding on to him for support. They both perk up a little at the sight of me, and I try to conceal my worry.
The conference room, I can’t help but notice, still bears the scars of the Immortals’ attack. Someone has mopped up the bloodstains, but there’s a burned notch in the table left by Isoka’s blades, and soot on the plaster from a stray Myrkai bolt.
Let’s hope this goes better than last time. There are four Blues in the room, and more all over the building and out in the city. We should have some warning, at least. And it had cost Naga a half-dozen of his precious Immortals to capture me once. I can’t imagine him paying the price a second time.
Isoka and Meroe sit down, and there’s a moment of awkward silence. Hasaka looks between Isoka and me, not sure where to begin. I clear my throat.
“So I’m back,” I tell them. “Yes, I’m okay. Naga was trying to start off playing nice, and I got away before he changed his mind. With Isoka’s help, obviously.” I turn to Jakibsa. “Giniva filled me in on what’s been happening. How bad is it?”
“Pretty bad,” Jakibsa admits. “The storehouse in the Fourth Ward had a lot of rice and flour we were counting on for staples. Kosura’s sharing what she can, but the temples didn’t have as much as we assumed.”
“Unless she’s lying to us,” Giniva puts in. “But I don’t think she is.”
I nod. Kosura might refuse to feed people, if she thought it served some higher purpose, but I doubt she’d actually lie. I need to ask Isoka how in the Blessed’s Name she talked her into helping. It rankled, a little. Or maybe Kosura just knew I wouldn’t turn the mob loose on her.
Jakibsa continues. “The food we brought up from … ah, Soliton”—there’s a hitch of disbelief at the name of the legendary ghost ship—“also helps. But since we haven’t been able to ration it—”
“Didn’t have a choice,” Isoka says gruffly. “Not unless you wanted me to start slaughtering civilians.”
“I understand,” Jakibsa says apologetically. “And it’s done wonders for morale. But it hasn’t increased our overall stocks much. It’ll take a little while to organize the supplies, but if we stay on short rations, we have maybe a week or so. Longer if we go to half, or cut the civilians out altogether, but…” He glances at Hasaka for a moment. “I think we learned that’s not sustainable.”
“And the walls?” I address Hasaka directly. “Are we having any problems holding them?”
He blinks, slowly, and shakes his head. “Not at the moment. My people are…” He mumbles something, and frowns. “They’re holding.”
He’s broken. Whatever happened while I was gone, the toxic combination of hunger and stress has eaten away at him, and now he’s a shell of his former self. He might recover, with enough rest, but I don’t know if we have the time. I’ll have to talk to Jakibsa. Get someone else to take over.
“There haven’t been many attacks,” Giniva says, cutting through the embarrassing moment of silence. “I think the Imperials shifted most of their reserves down to the waterfront once Soliton docked. Everywhere else they’ve been content to just sit and wait.”
“I told Naga that I would have Soliton destroy the city if he stopped us from leaving the palace,” Isoka says.
“Can you actually do that?” Jakibsa says.
Isoka shakes her head. “He’ll figure it out eventually. But for now it may be holding him back, and that buys us time.”
“Time for what?” Hasaka says. His voice is shaky. “To wait until the Legions get here and squash us?”
The words hang in the air for a moment, ugly and awkward, like a fart at a funeral. Giniva, again, hesitantly breaks the silence.
“That may be why the Imperials haven’t attacked,” she says. “If the Legions are coming, and now we have the unknown power of Soliton, then why risk a bloodbath?”
“That’s one way to think about at it.” I take a deep breath. “But I think there’s another possibility.”
Everyone looks at me, my sister included. Her eyes are hooded, though Meroe gives me an encouraging smile.
“What if the Legions aren’t coming?” I ask them. “What if Naga is holding back because this is all he has, and now he doesn’t know if it’s enough?”
Another silence.
“Doesn’t make sense,” Hasaka mutters. “Of course the Legions are coming. That’s the point of them, to defend the Empire.”
“It does seem like a bit of wishful thinking,” Jakibsa says.
“It was the draft that set off all of this,” I tell them. “And they were drafting rowers for the fleet because Naga wants to go to war with Jyashtan, in the south. Maybe all the soldiers he can rely on are down there, and militia and Ward Guard are all he has to throw at us.”
“What if they are?” Jakibsa says. “What difference does it make?”
“It makes all the difference.” I put my hands on the table, pushing myself out of my seat. “We’ve all been so sure the Legions were coming for us, we spent our time worrying about how long we could hold out, just like Naga wanted. But if they’re not coming, then it’s Naga who should be worried, not us. And I think he is.” I remember his casual threats, the brief break in his façade. He’s getting desperate. “We need to attack.”
“We can’t attack,” Hasaka says immediately, rubbing his hands against his forehead. “We don’t have the strength…”
“If the Imperials aren’t pushing on the walls, we can strip men from the quiet sections. Go back into the Fourth Ward and push all the way to the outer wall again, take back the storehouse. That solves two problems in one step.”
“For a while—” Jakibsa says.
“Then the waterfront,” I go on, face flushed with excitement. “We pulled back because the Navy could land troops anywhere along the shore, and we couldn’t stop them. But Soliton is keeping the Navy back, now. All we have to do is retake the walls to the shoreline, and every soldier in the Sixteenth will be cut off. We can starve them out. And once they retreat or surrender, we’ll have access to the bay again, and we can fish.”
“Most of the fishing fleet burned,” Giniva muses, “but I’m sure people can improvise. Plenty of material with all the ruined buildings.”
“It’s not possible,” Hasaka moans. “We’ll be crushed.”
“The alternative is that we sit here until we starve,” I snap. “And Kuon Naga is laughing at us for being scared of our own shadows.”
Isoka coughs, and everyone turns to her. She hesitates a moment, then shakes her head.
“I agree with Hasaka,” she says. “It’s too much of a risk.”
You agree with Hasaka? I blink. For a moment, it feels like someone’s elbowed me in the stomach, taking my breath away. That doesn’t make sense. Hasaka and Isoka have been at odds since she got here, and Giniva said that continued after I left—that Isoka was always the one pushing for more action, while Hasaka carped and hesitated.
Calm. I take a deep breath. I’m sure she has her reasons.
“Those angels,” I ask her. “You said you can’t use them to destroy the city. But you got that humped one to carry meat. Could you use it in a fight?”
Reluctantly, Isoka nods. “Commanding just one of them takes all my attention, though.”
“One would be enough. With that thing leading the way, we could take the Fourth Ward back easily.”
“And Naga would know I was bluffing,” Isoka says. “Once he sees we’re using the angels, but only one, he’ll understand. If he orders an attack on the walls, he could take the city.”
“If he has the strength. If he figures it out in time.”
“It’s too big a risk.”
We stare at each other. Part of my mind, a distant part, marvels at my behavior. Talking back to Isoka! I never would have dared, before. Not even dared, it wasn’t out of fear; I never would have wanted to, couldn’t have imagined the circumstances that would make it necessary. Isoka knew what was best, always.
But she doesn’t, now. She hasn’t been here since the beginning, however much she’s been giving orders while I was kidnapped. And if we’re too afraid of taking action, we’ll end up like Avyn, stuck in his library and afraid of his own shadow.
I look away from her and take a breath. “I need to talk to my sister,” I tell them. “Jakibsa, work on better numbers for the food we have left. Giniva, give me an estimate of how many soldiers we’d have to work with if we reduced all the defenses to the bare minimum.”
Everyone mutters agreement. They leave with unseemly haste, sensing the tension between me and Isoka. Meroe stays behind for a moment, exchanging a glance with Isoka, then follows the others out. Only the Blues remain, as silent as furniture.
“We have to attack,” I tell her. “If we don’t take the Fourth Ward and the waterfront, we’re going to starve.”
“It doesn’t do us much good to take them if Naga storms the city,” she says. The anger in her voice makes me flinch, but I try not to show it. “If we stay quiet it might buy another week before he figures out I was bluffing.”
“And in that week, he’ll get that much stronger, and we’ll get that much weaker,” I shoot back. “Right now, everyone’s bellies are full of crab soup, and they believe we have a chance. Let that leak away and we’ll never get it back again.”
“They believe we have a chance,” Isoka says.
“I believe it! I’m not just going to roll over and die without a fight.”
“You don’t have to—” Isoka bites the words off and looks away.
“That’s right, I could run away with you and leave everyone else to die. Betray everything I’m supposed to be fighting for.”
Isoka’s voice is a soft growl. “You can’t. Save. Everyone.”
“So I shouldn’t try?”
There’s a long pause.
“You asked for my help,” she says.
“I did. But this isn’t helping.”
“You want me to just salute and carry on?” She waves at the Blues. “Why not make me into one of your rotting zombies, then?”
The words feel like a slap. Of course she knows. I haven’t exactly kept my Kindre powers a secret, but somehow I didn’t think Isoka would figure it out. But now she knows, the voice in my head chitters, and she knows what you’ve done. Monster, monster, monster.
“You had better go,” I mutter stiffly. “The others and I have work to do.”
“Of course.” Isoka stands up abruptly, chair scraping across the floor. “Just shout when you need someone to save your life. Again.”
I slam the door to my quarters open hard enough that it shakes chips of ancient plaster from the wall. Meroe, sitting at the small table with a stack of papers, looks up and raises an eyebrow.
“It went that well, did it?” she says.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I mutter. I stalk over to the hearth, where there’s a half-full kettle of cold tea, and pour myself a cup without bothering to heat it. I stare down into the dead ashes for a moment, sipping the bitter stuff, until I hear the soft pad of Meroe’s feet behind me. She puts her arms on my shoulders, gently lacing them across my neck. I feel the swell of her breasts pressed into my back.
“You’re sure?” she says quietly.
“Very sure.”
I set the teacup down and turn to face her inside the circle of her arms. Our lips meet, and her mouth opens under mine, warm and hungry. My hands slide up from the small of her back, slipping along the folds in her dress, pressing my thumbs along her shoulder blades. She gives a soft gasp, and I kiss the line of her jaw, down along her neck, across her collarbone, tasting salt on her beautiful brown skin. Her fingers dig into my shirt.
It’s been too long. We haven’t had much time to be alone, between my work with Hasaka and hers with Jakibsa, and in any case fretting that Naga might be torturing my sister didn’t exactly set the right mood. And last night we’d both been too exhausted to do more than flop into bed together.
And if Tori gets her way, it’s not going to get any better. An attack on the Fourth Ward might succeed, but it would bring a raft of new problems, and—
Meroe stops and gently disentangles herself. I straighten up, blinking.
“What’s wrong?”
“You need to talk about it,” she says with a wry grin, and points to a chair. “Sit. I’ll make fresh tea.”
“Not all problems can be solved with tea.” I mean to say it under my breath, but Meroe has good hearing.
“You’d be surprised.” She raises her eyebrows. “Sit.”
I sit. Meroe busies herself for a while poking the embers of the fire back to life, adding fuel as it grows, and filling the kettle. By the time she hangs it above the flames, my foot is tapping.
“You really do have a hard time sitting still when you’re worried,” Meroe says, taking the cushion opposite.
“It comes from a life where being worried usually meant I was going to have to kill somebody.” I sigh, running a hand through my hair. “What am I supposed to do with her?”
“With Tori?”
“Of course with Tori.” I wince. “Sorry. I’m just … I thought that getting her back from Naga was going to be the hard part.”
“It wasn’t the easy part,” Meroe says.
“I was ready to have to rescue her,” I say. “But she wants to rescue the whole city, and she wants me to help her. And it just means more of … this.” I wave a hand. “More people dead. On both sides. These aren’t crabs or corpses or the rotting Butcher. When we were fighting to save the Red Sashes at the prison, there was this girl…”
Meroe waits. She’s good at waiting.
“She wasn’t anyone special,” I say, slowly. “She was just some … some kid. A farm girl. They’d given her a dull spear and some useless armor and told her to march, and then I came along and I was going to kill her and she probably didn’t even know why. It just … got to me, all of a sudden.”
“Did you kill her?”
“I don’t know. Probably not. I punched her in the face and she went down.” I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It probably matters to her.”
“I suppose.” I take a deep breath. “You know me. You know what my life has been like. I keep thinking … this shouldn’t bother me. Rot, I killed Hagan when the Immortals came for us, just because I was worried he would talk. I killed people just because they’d seen me use my blades, and I couldn’t let that get around. I’ve done things…” My throat has gone thick, and I grit my teeth, fighting the emotion. “I don’t get to be the one who feels this way.”
“Isoka…” Meroe reaches across the table, puts her hand over mine. I weave my fingers into hers, and squeeze tight. We stay there for a long moment, until the shriek of the kettle interrupts.
“Tea,” I mumble.
“Tea.” Meroe gets up, and there’s a pause for measuring and pouring. She puts a steaming pot between us, then sits back down. “Okay. Tea.”
“I’m sorry.” I shake my head. “I feel like I’m falling apart when everyone needs me.”
“Please, Isoka. I have some idea what you’ve been carrying.” She smiles at me. “You don’t have to worry about showing yourself in front of me. Gods know I fell apart in front of you. We take turns being the strong one.”
I chuckle, weakly. She takes my hand again.
“Tori wants to fight,” she says.
I nod.
“Why?”
“Because she thinks we can win.”
“And you don’t?”
“Of course I don’t.” I look up at her. “You’re the one with the history tutors. When the commoners stand up to the throne, it doesn’t end well.”
“Sometimes.” Meroe shrugs. “Sometimes the throne backs down. Or they reach a compromise.”
“Maybe in Nimar. Not in the Empire.”
“At least two Emperors have stepped down in the face of popular uprisings in the last two centuries,” Meroe says. “Though maybe they don’t teach you about that here.”
“It wasn’t in any of the plays I watched, anyway.” I take a breath. “Then, what? You believe Tori that the Legions aren’t coming?”
“I don’t know.” She nods at the paperwork. “I’ve been trying to figure it out. But Tori…” She hesitates, then fixes my gaze. “Do you trust her?”
“Trust her?” I shake my head. “You think she’s working for Naga, or—”
“That’s not what I mean.” Meroe lets go of my hand and starts pouring the tea. “When we first got here, you didn’t believe that Tori was as important to the Red Sashes as they said she was. That she put all this together. Do you believe it now?”
“I mean…” I accept the steaming teacup, blowing absently across it. “I suppose I have to. Everyone really listens to her. And…” I pause. “She’s a Kindre adept.”
“She is.” Meroe’s own discomfort with the idea is visible only as a quick movement of her throat. “So she should know better than anyone what the odds are. What I mean is, do you trust her to make the right decision?” She cocks her head. “The way everyone trusted you, back at the Harbor.”
“I would have been the first to admit I had no idea what I was doing,” I say. “But Tori’s … Tori. When I left, she was this … innocent little girl. She’d talk to me about … gossip from the servants, and which dog had just had puppies. We’d eat dumplings and drink plum juice and I would think, this is what I’m doing it for. This is the point.” I take a deep breath. “It’s why I never could bring myself to stop seeing her. But now I get back and she’s—”
“Not that girl,” Meroe says. “You think she ever was?”
“I don’t know.” My hand curls around the teacup. “Why would she lie to me?”
Meroe barks a startled laugh. I stare at her, disconcerted.
“Sorry.” She sips her tea. “I just can’t believe—Isoka, she loves you. She was trying to make you happy.”
“I never asked her to,” I say. “I just wanted her to be happy—”
“You wanted her to be innocent, and safe, and protected.”
“Right. Happy.”
She shakes her head. “It’s not the same thing. But she let you think it was, because that was what you needed.”
“Rot,” I mutter, sipping my tea.
“Rot, you don’t believe me?” Meroe says. “Or—”
“Rot, I think I’ve been an idiot.”
“Probably. We’re all idiots from time to time.”
“When did you figure this out?”
“Oh, before we landed,” Meroe says, waving a hand. “I told you, didn’t I? Tori’s related to you. I didn’t think she could be as different as you made her out to be.”
“You—” I shake my head. “Really?”
“Just a guess, of course.” She sips her tea again. “But princesses need to be good at this sort of thing.”
“Nimari princesses have to be good at a rotting lot of things,” I mutter. “So what do I do?”
“Listen to her.”
“I tried that. I ended up shouting at her.”
“So stop shouting and listen. And believe what she tells you.”
“Fine.” I rub my forehead, fighting an incipient headache. “And once I’ve done that, then what? We still have to figure out how to save the rebellion without getting everybody killed.”
“Of course,” Meroe says. “But that’ll be a lot easier with the two of you on the same side.”
“Miss Gelmei,” one of the Blues says. “Your sister would like to speak with you.”
“If it’s about the attack on the Fourth Ward—”
“She says that it is not.” The Blue, a stout woman with graying hair, looks distant. “She says she would like to apologize.”
“Apologize? Isoka?” I sigh. “Tell her to come in.”
I’m still in the conference room, looking over the map. Notes are scattered across it. By rights, Hasaka ought to be here, too, but I told Jakibsa to make him rest. So I’m alone, adding up numbers from reports, trying to decide how many soldiers we could afford to send to their deaths to take a section of wall. Your usual fourteen-year-old-girl stuff.
A Blue opens the door, and Isoka enters. I gesture to one of the chairs without meeting her eye, and she sits. A pause stretches out, awkwardly.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “For what I said.”
“Which part?”
“All of it, I suppose.” She grimaces. “I just…”
“It’s all right.” I give a sigh. “I asked you to help, and you held things together here.”
“Barely.”
“Barely is all we’ve ever managed.”
Another silence. Isoka looks across the map table.
“Hasaka needs to go,” she says finally. “He’s not up to this.”
“He needs a rest,” I agree. “I’m trying to figure out how to break it to him.”
“Yeah.” Isoka stares at me, working her jaw. “This is who you are now, isn’t it?”
“‘This’?”
“Making plans. Giving orders.” She leans back in her chair. “When I first got here, I was convinced someone else had to be running the show from behind the scenes. Trying to do it myself showed me how wrong I was.”
“I … did what needed to be done.” I shrug, looking down at the table. “That’s all.”
“I know how that feels. You take a step, because it’s the only thing you can think of. Then you take another step, and another, and before long people are looking at you for orders and telling you about your rotting responsibility.” She eyes me for a moment, with a faint smile. “I fell in love with a princess. What’s your excuse?”
“I just wanted to help people. Grandma Tadeka—”
“Giniva told me,” Isoka says. “You were doing this before I left.”
I fight the urge to squirm, as though my tutor had caught me goofing off. “For years.”
“Why?”
It’s not the question I expected, but she seems genuinely interested. I hesitate for a moment.
“You took me off the streets,” I tell her. “Let me live in comfort. After a while I couldn’t stop thinking about people who didn’t have someone like you helping them. It wasn’t … fair.”
“Nothing is ever fair,” Isoka says mildly.
“No. But I thought I could do … something.” I pause. “And I thought the mage-blood sanctuary might come in handy someday, if we needed a place to hide.”
The ghost of a smile passes across her face. “You didn’t tell me any of this.”
“How could I?” More emotion wells up into my voice than I intend. “What was I supposed to say? ‘Thanks for keeping me safe, Isoka, but I’m going to risk it all to help some poor sick rotscum’? What would you have done?”
“Told Ofalo to post guards and make sure you stayed in the house,” Isoka says.
“Exactly. I just—”
“Not that it would have stopped you,” Isoka interrupts. “Not a Kindre adept.”
There’s a long silence.
“How long have you known?” she says.
“A long time.” I swallow. “In retrospect, since I was a girl. I always knew I could feel … something. It wasn’t until I was studying that I really understood, though.”
“You didn’t tell me about that, either.”
“I didn’t want it.” The chorus in my head chitters. Monster, monster, monster. My voice is low and thick. “I know it’s wrong. It’s sick, what I can do. But I…”
“Didn’t have a choice.” Isoka leans forward again. “I get it.”
Her expression is tight, guarded. My chest feels like a clenched fist.
“We have to move.” I force the words out. “Take the Fourth Ward, take the waterfront, take the palace. We can’t just sit back and hope for the best.”
“You mentioned,” Isoka says.
“If you want to help, fine. If not, get on your ghost ship and go.” I can barely force the words out. “Like you said. We rebels made our choice, and we’ll suffer the consequences.”
Isoka is silent a moment. I can’t read her face, and I won’t open my Kindre senses and look into her mind. Not her.
“I’ll take over for Hasaka,” she says. “You need someone to organize the military side. Between the last battle in the Fourth Ward and the food we brought in, I think the Red Sashes trust me.”
“That doesn’t help if you’re going to push against me.”
“I won’t.” She takes a deep breath. “I’m going to take Meroe’s advice.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m going to trust my little sister.” She grins. “You’re the one with some experience in this revolution business, after all.”