Текст книги "Vessel"

Автор книги: Sarah Beth Durst

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

She noticed a strip of gold silk that had fluttered to the floor. She retrieved it and tied it in the desert style, like a sash around her waist. She wondered if it had been the emperor who had ordered a sash to be provided or if the magician had shown her this kindness. She found herself hoping it was the emperor.

Sitting on her thin cot, she held the sky serpent knife in her hand. Last night, between sharing stories and eating the meats and breads and rich, pungent soups, the emperor had given her back her brother’s knife.

It would have been far easier to hate him if he hadn’t done that.

She thought of his black eyes, so intense and so sincere. She couldn’t hate him. But she couldn’t help him either. He was chasing the moon, and he would never succeed. He’d only end up causing the deaths of his people and hers.

Tucking the knife into her sash, Liyana rose. She didn’t know for certain that the guards would let her leave the tent. She was a “visiting dignitary,” but that could be a polite way to say “foreign prisoner.” It was time to test this freedom that Mulaf claimed she had and find Korbyn and the others. She opened the tent flap.

“All the talk is of the desert princess who dines with the emperor,” a voice said behind her. “I knew it was you.”

She spun around, and the flap fell shut behind her. Lounging in the shadows was the trickster god. He wore a soldier’s uniform, and he was smiling at her. “Korbyn?”

In three strides he crossed to her. He wrapped his arms around her waist, scooped her into the air, and swung her in a half circle. “You are as infuriating, stubborn, and single-minded as a goat,” he whispered in her ear. “You were supposed to stay safe!” He set her down. As she opened her mouth to protest that comparison, he kissed her.

Her eyes flew wide as his lips pressed against hers. His hands cradled her back, and hers wrapped around his neck. She felt as if the outside world had faded away, and the universe had shrunk to just her and Korbyn.

And then it was over.

He pulled away. “I . . . Liyana . . .”

“Please, don’t,” she whispered, aware of the guards on the other side of the tent flap. She didn’t want to hear an apology or an explanation or any words at all. She turned away, unable to look at him. She still felt a tingling on her lips and the taste of his sweet breath. Abruptly, to shatter the choking silence, she said, “Pia and Raan were captured.”

“Then we must free them,” he said. “I know where the prisoner tents are. Fennik was a prisoner for about a day . . . which probably accounts for Pia and Raan’s capture. Fennik is not skilled at deceit.” As if her change in subject had energized him, Korbyn strode past her toward the back of the tent and lifted up the base of the tarp—it had been slit with a knife, presumably his. “If anyone stops us, I’m under orders to take you to the doctor,” he said. “You feel ill and need immediate attention. If you can arrange to vomit on their shoes, so much the better. I found an abandoned medical tent, complete with uniforms. You’ll be safe there. And later we can use the uniforms to seek out the false vessels.”

He held out his hand for her to take. His eyes were beseeching.

She thought of how his hand had felt on her back. She had fit into his arms so perfectly. “I can’t.” She shouldn’t touch him again. She shouldn’t be near him. He belonged to Bayla, and Liyana . . . She had a different fate. “My absence will be noticed. Rescue the others first, and then come back for me.”

“You can’t ask me to leave you here.” All trace of light cheer had been swept from his face and voice. She felt his eyes on her, and she knew he was seeing her, not the future Bayla. She wondered when that had begun, when he had started to see her for herself. She should have tried harder to stop it.

“The emperor won’t hurt me,” Liyana said. “He needs me.” She summarized her conversations with the emperor, as well as her encounter with the magician Mulaf. “I’ll be safe, at least until I say no. And I have a chance to learn more about our deities. I am certain the magician knows where they are.”

“Liyana . . .” He paused and then appeared to change what he had planned to say. She risked looking at him and was caught in his eyes. She felt as if her ribs squeezed her lungs. It hurt to breathe. “These people are dangerous.” He looked at her as if she was all that mattered in the world.

“Just go, Korbyn. It would be better if you went.”

“I will return for you,” Korbyn promised.

He disappeared through the slit in the tarp, and she sank to her knees and put her face in her hands. She shouldn’t have danced with him. She shouldn’t have told him stories. Or laughed with him. She should never have noticed the way a smile would sneak over his face when he was delighted or the way a laugh would consume his whole body. She sucked in air and tried to calm herself. Once Bayla was here, he would forget her vessel, and everything would be as it should be.

Forcing herself to sit still, Liyana focused on her breathing. She tried to erase all other thoughts from her mind. She had a purpose: rescue Bayla. Once she achieved that purpose, every problem she had would be solved.

A soldier entered the tent. She was a copper-skinned woman with gold markings on the shoulders of her uniform and with intricate tattoos on her neck. “The emperor requests your presence.” She offered no other explanation.

Without hesitation, Liyana rose to her feet and followed.

* * *

Liyana studied the emperor. He had asked her to wait while he completed a task. Bent over a stack of parchments, he scribbled notes on a scroll. His lips were pursed in concentration, and his forehead was furrowed as if he wore the worries of his people—which he did. We are not so different, she thought. She was startled by the thought, and she turned it over in her mind, poking at it. He’d become emperor so young. He may not have chosen his fate any more than she had chosen hers.

“I have a little brother,” Liyana said into the silence.

The emperor raised his head.

“His name is Jidali, and he believes that I placed the moon in the sky just for him so that he won’t have to fear the dark. He has a laugh that shakes his entire body so that even his toes laugh with him. He thinks that bugs are the world’s best toy, and he can transform anything into a toy sword. What about you? There must be someone, a reason you are doing all of this. Who do you want to save?”

Looking down, the emperor resumed reviewing his papers. “Every man, woman, and child in the empire are my reasons.”

She knelt in front of his desk so that her face was even with his papers. He had to look at her. “Who do you think of when you have doubts? You must have doubts. The lake may not exist. And even if it does and you are able to reach it . . . you might not be able to end the drought. After all, our deities have access to the lake’s magic, and none of them has ended the drought. How can you have faith in your ability to succeed where gods have failed?”

“I think of my parents,” the emperor said, his face blank. “I think of my mother and my father, who gave their lives to the empire. I can do no less than they did.”

“How did they die?” she asked.

He was silent, and she wished she hadn’t asked. She thought of her mother and father, of their faces as they had said they’d remain with her. . . . His hands clenched and unclenched, betraying his expressionless face. Noticing them, he stretched them flat on the parchments. When he spoke, his voice was as hard and lifeless as stone. “Once, in the kingdom of Gracin, there was a famine. The fields would not yield crops, and the skies would not yield rain. Children starved, and the elderly died. It was as if the land had forsaken them. And so the king, who was beloved by his people, took up a plow as if he were an ox and pulled it across field after field. He poured his blood in the furrows and commanded his people to spread his flesh across the land. From his body and blood grew plants so high they pierced the clouds. Red rain fell, then turned to clear water—and the people of Gracin were saved.”

She watched him flex his hands. He had clenched them into fists again.

“Gracin is in the northeast corner of our empire. One year into the Great Drought, my mother and father paid it a visit.” His voice was empty. She felt an ache inside her, hearing it, and she wanted to cover her ears, as if that could change whatever horror made his voice flatten. “There was a ritual that harks back to this myth of the King of the Fields. Wine for blood. Cakes for flesh. My father agreed to participate. But several traditionalists believed this was not enough. They killed my mother to reach my father.”

She rose to her feet. She wanted to reach toward him, to fill that horrible emptiness, to find a way to heal . . . But she didn’t. And he wasn’t finished.

“He could have defended himself. He chose not to. He was outnumbered, death was inevitable, and the myth required a willing sacrifice. And so, he lowered his sword.” He swept his hand out as if it were a sword, and a jar tipped over. Ink spilled onto the parchment. It stained his fingers, but he did not stop it. “But the myth failed, and the people of Gracin continued to starve with the rest of us.”

“If it failed, why do you . . .” She trailed off. She shouldn’t ask. His parents, murdered by his people. Liyana could not imagine how it must have felt to hear that news.

His mouth quirked, but the smile did not light up his eyes. He straightened the ink jar and wiped his fingers on a silken handkerchief. His movements were precise but jerky. “Why do I chase a myth when a myth killed my father to no purpose? Fair question.” He rose from his desk and turned his back. Hands clasped behind him, he faced the sculptures that lined his shelves. Liyana watched him, the tightness of his hands and the stiffness of his shoulders betraying him. This was a man who felt deeply and had learned to hide it. “Because he lowered his sword. When all hope was lost, he tried the impossible. And now that all hope is lost for my people, I can do no less than he.”

She was silent. Raan would have argued with him. Pia might have agreed. But Liyana couldn’t think of any words that felt right. Standing beside him, she faced the sculptures too. She noticed that all of them were desert totems: falcon, tortoise, raven. . . . He must have chosen them to inspire him as he invaded her home. She spotted her clan’s totem on the lowest shelf, and she knelt to see it better. Every detail was perfect, from the tuft under the goat’s chin to the curve of its hooves.

He knelt beside her and lifted the goat statue from its shelf. He placed it in her hands. She held it up, and it flickered in the rays of sunlight that crept into the tent.

“Some in the empire believe that your deities do not exist,” the emperor said. “Yet you were willing to die for your goddess. You and I, we are not so different.”

She looked at him, surprised to hear him echo her earlier thought. He was close beside her. She could see the rise and fall of his breath in his chest. Only a few inches closer, and she thought she’d hear his heartbeat. “We are not so different,” she repeated.

He held her gaze. “Help me save my people, Liyana.”

“At the cost of my people’s freedom?”

“Do you and your people value freedom more than your lives?” he asked. His eyes were as endless as the night sky. Intense, they nearly blazed. “You cannot survive without the empire.”

He said it with such surety that her breath caught in her throat. He knows, she thought. Her hands began to shake, and she held tight to the glass statue, her clan’s totem animal, Bayla’s totem. . . . Oh, sweet goddess.

There was one sculpture for every clan.

One for every deity.

Vessels of glass.

“The desert people would have the full rights of every citizen of the empire—access to all of our resources,” the emperor said. “In exchange, we ask only a fair contribution to our economy, obedience to our laws, participation in mutually beneficial trade, and assistance in matters of concern to our combined people.”

She peered into the depths of the statue. It looked to be hollow. Inside, colors caught the light and swirled. Turning the statue in her hand, she thought the colors spun more than they should have, as if they spun on their own. She saw markings on the base that matched her tattoos. She bet each statue had similar markings, transforming each of them into false vessels.

“Of course, we would not interfere with your culture or traditions.”

Liyana clutched the statue to her chest. “Except to imprison our gods.”

“Except to free you!” He placed his hands on her shoulders so that she could not turn away. “Don’t you want to save yourself, as well as your people, Liyana? If you had another option, a way to have both, wouldn’t you at least consider it? You could return to your clan. You could see your brother again, see him grow up!”

She closed her eyes, trying to grasp an inner calmness that was slipping away with the emperor’s proximity. Opening her eyes and looking directly into his, she said, “I am my people’s King of the Fields.”

“You aren’t anymore,” he said quietly. “You are free.” Releasing her shoulders, he folded his hands around hers—around Bayla’s statue, the false vessel—and they held Liyana’s goddess together.

She heard the flap open, and a man’s voice cut across the tent. “Your Imperial Majesty.” She tried to pull back, but the emperor continued to hold her hands. “An urgent matter has arisen in the east camp,” the soldier said.

“I must attend to this,” the emperor said to Liyana, “but I will return and ask you one more time. Join me. Be my ambassador. Save your people and mine.”

Liyana blinked. “You’re leaving me with her?” she blurted out before she had thought. She bit her lip and wished she could recall the words. She didn’t want to be forced to relinquish Bayla.

“You cannot break the statue,” he said. “Besides, I know my stories. Even if your goddess were free, you could not summon her without a magician. The chant must be infused with magic.” He rose. “Hold your goddess in your hands, Liyana. Think about your life. Think about your future.”

He swept out of the tent, and Liyana was alone with the trapped deities.

Her hands shook. “My goddess,” she whispered. Could Bayla hear her? She looked at the statue of a raven, Korbyn’s intended prison. She shouldn’t have kissed him. She’d stolen that kiss from her goddess. It was not right.

And no matter what the emperor said or what pretty promises he made, it was not right for her to sacrifice her clan’s freedom to save her own life.

She wasn’t supposed to have a life anymore. She had said good-bye to her family, to everything she knew and loved. She was not supposed to see them again or sleep in their tent or see the stars with them or share a meal with them or . . . All the moments she had had since the ceremony were stolen, just like Bayla had been stolen from the Dreaming. She had to fix it and restore everything to the way it was supposed to be.

This was her chance.

Steeling herself, she brought the statue down hard on the corner of the desk. She expected it to shatter into a thousand pieces. Instead, it only dented the wood. She bashed it again and again. It didn’t chip.

It’s not glass, she realized.

She held it up, turning it so that it caught the light. “Diamond,” she said out loud. This was why the deities hadn’t broken out themselves. There was no natural process to speed or slow. Magic could not break diamond.

Liyana drew the sky serpent knife out of her sash. Knives couldn’t slice a sky serpent scale. Arrows couldn’t pierce it. She laid the blade against the statue. Taking a deep breath, she pressed down.

In her hands, the statue cracked.

Quickly she concentrated and pictured her lake. Pulling on the magic, she chanted the words that Talu had spoken so long ago. “Bayla, Bayla, Bayla. Ebuci o nanda wadi, Bayla, Bayla, Bayla. Ebuci o yenda, Bayla, Bayla, Bayla. Vessa oenda nasa we.” She sent the summoning words wrapped in magic into the fractured statue as she carried it to the center of the tent. She laid the shards down on the silk cloths. She thought of magic and of emperors and of kisses.

And she danced.

Chapter Twenty-Two
The Emperor

The emperor surveyed the expanse between the encampment and the border hills. Brittle grasses filled the slope. On the other side of that rise was the desert. “Tell me about the prisoners who escaped,” he said.

“Two women,” one of his lieutenants said. Several other lieutenants stood silently at attention. “One of them was blind. The other needed to be subdued. They claimed to be from the Silk Clan and Scorpion Clan—”

Hairs on the back of the emperor’s neck prickled. Mulaf had stolen the deities from both of those clans. They slept in their diamond statues inside the emperor’s tent. “Did either of them have tattoos on their arms?”

“I do not know. Your Imperial Majesty, please accept my apologies. Interrogation of a blind woman and her companion was not a priority.” Fist over his heart, he bowed low.

“I should have been informed of their capture immediately,” the emperor said. The prisoners had been taken only a few hours before Liyana walked into his camp. He didn’t believe in coincidences. “Why was this not brought to my attention?”

The lieutenant fell to his knees. “Forgive—”

“Stand,” the emperor said crisply. “Answer my question.”

“We often apprehend desert men who stray too close to the border,” he said, rising. His head hung low like a dog who had been struck. “We did not think it warranted Your Imperial Majesty’s attention—”

“You were mistaken.”

The lieutenant cringed and began to babble. “Until their escape, there did not seem to be anything unusual . . .”

The emperor breathed deeply and pictured the lake as the soldier continued to rattle through excuses. As always, the lake calmed him. “Demote this man. Devote resources to recapturing these women. Alive. Bring them directly to me when you have found them.”

Another lieutenant saluted. “Yes, Your Imperial Majesty.”

The emperor strode back toward his tent. Everything inside him shouted to run, but his people could not see their emperor afraid. Compromising, he lengthened his stride. It had been a strategic move to leave Liyana alone. She valued her independence, and he wanted to demonstrate that he would not seek to control or force her, or her clans. He pushed open the tent flap and halted.

She lay alone in the center of the tent. Beautiful and peaceful, she could have been asleep. “Summon a doctor,” he ordered his guards. He felt his heart beat painfully in his chest. In two strides he was beside her. He knelt and pressed his fingers to the pulse in her neck.

She moaned. Alive.

“Stay back, Your Imperial Majesty,” one of his guards said. “We don’t know the cause.”

The goat statue lay beside her. Its neck was severed. She must have used the sky serpent blade. This was his fault. He’d returned it to her. “Summon the magician as well.”

One of the guards bowed and exited.

He stroked her forehead. Breaking the false vessel should not have hurt her. If she had conducted the ceremony . . . But how could she have without a magician? And why would she have? He had offered her freedom! Life on the desert was bleak and cruel. He’d offered all her people an escape. She could have led them to a better life.

He felt her pulse again. Faint but there.

A doctor burst into the tent. He wore an ill-fitting uniform. A protective surgical cloth obscured his face. All that the emperor could see was his eyes, but those eyes quickly assessed the situation. Without a word the doctor knelt next to Liyana and began examining her. She was breathing shallowly. Every few seconds she twitched and moaned.

The emperor paced around them. He picked up the broken statue and turned it over and over in his hands. Spasming, Liyana screamed, and the emperor hurled the statue against the wall of the tent. It smacked against the tarp and tumbled down. In a calm voice he said, “This was an unnecessary waste of a life.”

“She still lives,” the doctor said. “But I must take her to my tent. I have supplies and equipment there that may be of use.” He waved a hand. Three doctor’s assistants, also dressed in blue uniforms with the traditional face coverings, scurried forward with a stretcher. They loaded Liyana onto it.

“Accompany them,” he ordered the nearest soldier. “Ask her name when she wakes. If she answers ‘Liyana,’ return her to me. If she answers ‘Bayla,’ kill her immediately.”

She was carried out of the tent, and he turned away to face his shelves of statues. He touched his cheek. It was damp. Absently he rubbed his tears between his fingers and thumb. Funny that he should mourn the loss of one desert woman while he prepared his army to invade. In the end, though, eliminating the deities would free the desert people. They would see that their best course was to join the empire. In the end they would be grateful.

“Alert my generals,” the emperor said. His eyes were clear. “We move out at dawn.”