Tides of Maritinia (22 page)

 

CHAPTER 29

“Reality comes to me in the cruelest disguises.”

–
J
AKOB
B
RYC
E

I
tried to follow her, but one venomous look from her betrayed face froze me in place. She disappeared down the steps, and I was alone on the rooftop.

She'd see I was right. She might never forgive me, but she'd see I was right about the Jebyl. I was right about her father. I just had to give her time to reach the same conclusion.

I listened as the skyscreens continued to rain bile all around this world. The bile was effective. Shouts and screams were becoming more regular now.

Much as I wanted to continue giving her space, I couldn't wait any longer. I had to convince her. Quickly, before more died.

I took a step toward the stairs but stopped when I heard the unmistakable clop of boots on the stone. First a cap came into view. Then came shadowed eyes and a sharp nose. Mmirehl climbed the last step and sneered. “The admiral isn't here to protect you this time. And neither is his daughter.”

“Where is she? What did you do with her?”

He walked toward me. “She's well, but she's just told me the most wonderful story.”

I looked to the skyscreen and saw the same foul expression blown up to hundredfold size. How could he be in two places at once? “Where did you come from?”

“Oh that,” he said with a dismissive wave at the screen. “That's a recording.”

He stepped the rest of the way up to me and put his hands on my shoulders. “Over the wall you go.”

I twisted away from his grasp and swung an elbow at his throat. Connecting, I heard a gurgle and saw his cap fly off. With one motion, I dropped my shoulder into his midsection and seized an arm. I lifted him off the ground, and as I moved closer to the wall, I felt his hair sweep across my face.

Something wasn't right.

But I wasn't going to think it through. Not now. Not when I had it in my power to wipe this scourge from existence.

With a heave, I threw him out into the open space beyond the wall.

I watched him fall. No, wait—­
her
fall. I watched her legs crumple and saw her head bounce off the stone.

Her legs. Her head.

My mind screeched with the sound of fractured thoughts scraping against each other like jagged shards of glass. My eyes were seeing something that couldn't be real.

But it was real.

Sali lay on the stone. Her neck was kinked at an impossible angle. Her eyes were open, but empty. Her mouth hung open like the mouths of so many dead I'd seen.

A voice crept up from the darkest dungeon in my head.

 

CHAPTER 30

“The enemmy is in miy head.”

–
J
AKOB
B
RYCE

B
lood sopped into the knees of my pants as I huddled alongside Sali.

Mnoba rested a hand on my back. “Why did she jump?”

She hadn't jumped. I'd done this to her. But I thought she was Mmirehl. I saw him. I heard him.

Mnoba lifted his hand, and I heard him shuffle away to give me space.

I took a lock of her hair into my hand and pinched the strands in my fingers. When I'd lifted Mmirehl, I'd felt his hair brush over my face. But it couldn't have been his hair. His was trimmed too close to the scalp.

It was Sali's hair that had swept my cheeks. My Sali's.

I shot the question down the rabbit hole.

Pol didn't respond. He'd already said all he needed to.

For Sire and Empire.

I leaned over and pressed my forehead against hers. I'm sorry, Sali. I didn't know he could make me see things that didn't exist. I didn't know he could make me hear anything he wanted.

I should've known his connections to my eyes and ears weren't just for receiving. When he'd admitted he didn't have a kill switch, I should've known he had some other power over me. The E
3
didn't let their dogs run without leashes.

I'm so sorry, Sali. Tears spilled from my eyes to fall on her cheek. I couldn't imagine what she must've thought when she'd come back up the stairs. She'd seen my shock and anger at thinking I'd seen Mmirehl. She'd heard me ask him questions that must've sounded like nonsense. She'd come across the roof because she was worried about me. She'd taken hold of my shoulders to show her concern.

My chest tightened around lungs that hurt for air before wracking sobs took hold. She must've been so confused when I'd struck her in the throat. So betrayed when I'd lifted her up and tossed her to her death.

Sobs gave way to a coughing fit as my throat choked on the most horrific thing of all.

She'd died thinking I didn't love her.

I lifted my face to look at the sky—­a vast blue smear to my tear-­filled eyes. How could you let the cuda stop with a kiss to my cheek? If you loved your ­people, you should've let the angry souls rip me to pieces.

I was no blessed hero. I was a wrecker of lives and dreams. My love for Sali was her death sentence. My love for this world's ­people and culture was a curse of madness and bloodlust.

I was a plague to this world. A wretch with a heart made of black tar that trapped and smothered anybody I dared let inside.

The sound of his voice raked down my spine.

he said.

Tears of sorrow became tears of rage. I tried to shout at the foul bastard, but the tempest of emotions swirling through my mind made it impossible to find the dirty little hole he lived in.

I squeezed my eyes shut and concentrated on sending my words down the rabbit hole.

I pressed the heels of my hands against my temples.

His tone took on a cruel edge. will
obey.>

My nerves iced over, and I felt heavy with the cold weight of defeat. I looked into her eyes one last time. I'm so sorry, Sali. I thought I was significant. I thought I was the blessed hero. Like Kell before me, I thought I could set this world on a better course.

But Kell and I were both too arrogant. The Empire had punished us for our insubordination. Kell's punishment had been vicious but quick. Mine would be long and tortured as I'd be forced to watch the downfall of the world he and I both loved.

 

CHAPTER 31

“I hearr voices. Does tht make me insane? I think it does.”

–
J
AKOB
B
RYCE

I
wandered Maringua, the capital city of the world I'd helped to destroy.

Broad avenues would pull me along for a while, then an alley would steal me for a bit until it spat me onto another street. The sun had almost sunk from existence, but not the mayhem. Hour after hour, Mmirehl and the admiral had taken turns broadcasting from the skyscreens in an unrelenting campaign to keep the Kwuba whipped into a bloody froth.

Machetes.

So many machetes in the hands of butchers. Butchers who hacked their helpless neighbors like they were breaking down fish carcasses.

I'd felt every blow of the blade as if I'd delivered it myself. Kell was just the first. One after another, the Jebyl fell to the roving mobs trapped in a lust for death.

Nobody touched me. My uniform made me invisible to most, and those who charged close enough to recognize their Bless-­ed Hero shambled away in shame.

I turned a corner, one of a hundred corners I'd turned, one of a hundred horrors I'd walked past. But this time I stopped.

A woman lay on her side. Dead. Her throat had been gashed, and her blood had drained into a broad spill. Her baby girl sat in the pool, face flushed and crying. I watched the baby reach for the silk cloth covering her mother's breast, but her tiny fingers failed to grasp hold. She tried again, this time succeeding in gripping the fabric but failing to find the strength to move it. Next, she slapped at the fabric as if it might retreat by force of will. When it didn't, she flapped her arms in frustration.

I picked up the hungry baby and wiped the smears of blood from her face. “Shush, little one. I've got you.”

W
hen I reached my home, Mnoba stood dutifully by the door. Five firefly lanterns lay on the stone, circling the spot Sali had died.

Her body had been removed, and although the stone had been washed, I could still see the faint discoloration of blood. The woman I'd loved had been reduced to a stain.

I
carried the baby through the curtain into my home. Dozens of Jebyl sat on the floor, their faces strained with terror. Mnoba stepped up next to me. “I'm sorry, sir. I couldn't turn them away. They came to seek refuge.”

“You are Kwuba, no? Why haven't you turned them in?”

He met my gaze directly. “We don't all think as the admiral does.”

I moved the baby to my other arm. “You didn't follow me when I went for my walk.”

“The old rules no longer apply. All that matters now are these ­people.”

A ­couple came to take the baby. “We'll clean her up,” said the man.

I released the young one. “She's hungry.”

The woman put the infant on her hip. “I'll take her to Buna. She's nursing a little one of her own.”

I stepped into the center of the room and felt the press of body heat all around. Surrounded by the stare of wide eyes, I wrung my bloodstained hands. I wanted to apologize. I wanted to drop to my knees and beg forgiveness for the part I'd played in creating the calamity that had befallen their world.

I rubbed bloody hands together. My heart broke for them. It broke for all the living. And the dead. Especially for Sali. How could I ever make sense of the things I'd seen today?

Mnoba whispered in my ear. “Are you okay, sir?”

I pulled my mind back into the moment. These ­people had come to me for a reason. They'd come to me because they thought I could save them.

I tuned out Pol's propagandizing and spoke to the crowd. “You're safe with me.”

I
walked fast, but I couldn't escape the tide of hatred coming from the skyscreens. The beak-­faced Mmirehl had been at it all night. Circling the skies like a vulture, he attacked his carrion with words of violence. Inciting machete-­wielding mobs, he pecked Jebyl skin from muscle, and muscle from bone.

I pressed my hands over my ears but couldn't stop his voice from picking at my mind. Couldn't stop him from pulling apart my last few threads of sanity with his bloodstained beak.

I'd stopped walking. Couldn't remember where I was going.

Someplace important. That much I knew. I had to concentrate.

Forcing my ears flat to my skull, I took stock of my surroundings. The sky had started to ooze the light of dawn. And the street was littered with shadowlike forms that wouldn't rise with the morning sun.

Focus.

I hadn't done such a bad job focusing most of the night. Mnoba and I had accomplished much. A guard rotation. Provision rationing. A short expedition to the quay to steal as much food and clean water as twenty men could carry.

Our ranks had grown throughout the night. Grown until my home was jammed with so many Jebyl that I'd been squeezed out onto the street.

That was when I realized I should've saved space for Dugu and his family.

Dugu. I was on my way to Dugu's. Other than his mother, his family was Jebyl. They'd be safe in my asylum.

Keeping my hands over my ears, I started moving again, trying to remember the path young Dory had led us along the previous night.

I uncovered my ears and plugged them with my index fingers.

I drove my fingers painfully deep into my ear canals in a useless effort to silence him.

He went silent. Blissfully silent. Now where was I going again?

The bridge. Chagrined to admit he was right, I headed for the stairs and took them up several flights to the top of a building where I could spy the sun just starting to peek over the watery horizon.

I walked up to the broad expanse of crisscrossed ropes that suspended the bridge over a chasm of collapsed stone. Scattered as my mind had become, I remembered Pol's threat: The next time you step out onto a bridge, the bridge might not be there. Reaching out a toe, I tapped the bamboo. Stretching out a hand, I tapped my palm against the fibrous rope. He could make me see and hear what he wanted, but my other senses, including the sense of touch, were still mine.

Stepping onto the bamboo slats, I felt the bridge sag under my weight before it rebounded to the bouncy creak of rope. The bridge was real.

I walked, fingers sliding over rope railings that had been worn shiny and smooth. I looked to the homes on the far side, cerulean walls bleached to a drab gray by the weak light of dawn. Arriving at the span's low point, I stopped and knelt so I could reach a sluice that ran parallel to the bridge. Putting my fingers inside, I felt the bone-­dry bottom. If clean water didn't start flowing soon, many more would die.

I started to rise but stopped when my eyes landed on a rope that had been tied to the bamboo under my feet. Looking through the gap between the slats, I could see something solid below the bridge. Carefully poking my head through a space between the ropes, I leaned out into open space.

A bald man. Hanged. His midsection had been splayed open, a tumble of tangled intestines swaying alongside his lifeless feet.

Next to him was a woman. Also hanged and disemboweled. Beyond her were the three children, the youngest just a baby.

Clustered together, the entire family hung close enough to hold hands. Separated by death, they'd be forever incapable of comforting each other.

I pulled my head back through the ropes and tried to rub the images out of my eyes.

Monsters. Only monsters do such a thing to children. Who but a monster could look into the eyes of baby and cut it open?

But I remembered the sight of Kell's wild eyes when I'd embedded my machete in his jaw. I remembered the row of corpses killed when I detonated the missile system.

Was I a monster, too? Or just a man. A man who was capable of monstrous acts in the name of his Sire.

The ­people who murdered that family weren't monsters.

They were ­people. My eyes teared up with the power of the revelation.

They were ­people. My ­people.

Now where was I going again?