* * *
Several days out, we came upon the substantial ruins of an enormous city, or what was left of one. It rolled out almost as far as I could see. The strange foundations of the ancient town rose above the grass, but none of them were more than waist high, as if one of the giants from my story had used his scythe to evenly mow it all down. I could still see hints of where streets had once run through the stubble of ruins, but now they were covered with grass, not cobble. A shallow brook trickled down the middle of one street.
Stranger than the half-mown city and streets of grass were the animals roaming through it. Herds of large deerlike creatures with finely marked coats grazed among the ruins. Their elegant ribbed horns were longer than my arm. When they saw us, they scattered, jumping and clearing the low walls with a dancer’s grace.
“Luckily they’re skittish,” Kaden said. “Their horns could be deadly.”
“What are they?” I asked.
“We call them miazadel—creatures with spears. I’ve only seen their herds here and a little farther south, but there are animals throughout the savanna that you won’t see anywhere else.”
“Deadly ones?”
“Some. They say they come from faraway worlds and the Ancients brought them here as pets. After the devastation, they were loosed, and some flourished. At least that’s what one of Venda’s songs says.”
“That’s where you get your history? I thought you said she was mad.”
“Maybe not in all things.”
I couldn’t imagine anyone having one of those exotic creatures as a pet. Perhaps the Ancients really were just a step below the gods.
I thought about the gods a lot as we traveled. It was as if the landscape demanded it. Somehow they were larger in this never-ending vastness, greater than the gods confined to the Holy Text and the rigid world of Civica. Here they seemed greater in their reach. Unknowable, even for the Royal Scholar and his army of word pickers. Faraway worlds? I felt as if I was already in one, and yet there were more? What other worlds had they created—or abandoned like this one?
I put two fingers to the air for my own sacrilege, a habit instilled in me, though I did it with none of the sincerity that surely the gods required. I smiled for the first time in days, thinking of Pauline. I hoped she wasn’t worrying about me. She had the baby to think of now, but of course I knew she did worry. She was probably going to the Sacrista every day to offer prayers for me. I hoped the gods were listening.
We camped amid this once grand but now forgotten city, and while Kaden and Finch went to find some small game for dinner, Griz, Eben, and Malich unsaddled and tended the horses. I said I would gather firewood, though precious little wood looked to be available here. Down by the brook, there was a copse of tall bushes. Maybe I’d find some dry branches there. I brushed my hair as I walked. I had vowed I wouldn’t let them turn me back into the animal I’d been when I had arrived at the vagabond camp, filthy, with matted hair and devouring food with my fingers … little more than animals.
I paused, my fingers lingering on a knot, twisting it, thinking of my mother and the last time she had brushed my hair. I was twelve. I had done my own hair for years at that point, except for special occasions when an attendant arranged it, but that morning my mother said she’d take care of it. Every detail of that day was still vivid, a rare dawn in January when the sun rose warm and bright, a day that had no right to be so cheerful. Her fingers had been gentle, methodical, her low aimless hum like the wind between the trees making me forget why she was arranging my hair, but then her hand paused on my cheek, and she whispered in my ear, Close your eyes if you need to. No one will know. But I hadn’t closed my eyes, because I was only twelve and had never attended a public execution.
When I stood between my brothers as a required witness, straight and tall, still as stone, as was expected, my hair perfectly pinned and arranged—with each step, each proclamation of guilt, the tightening of the rope, the pleading and tears of a grown man, the frantic wails, the final call, and then the quick thud
of a floor falling away, a short humble sound that drew the line between his life and death, the last sound he would ever hear—through it all, I kept my eyes open.
When I returned to my room, I threw the clothes I was wearing into the fire and pulled the pins from my hair. I brushed and brushed, until my mother came in and pulled me to her chest, and I cried, saying I wished I had helped the man escape. Taking another life, she had whispered, even a guilty one, should never be easy. If it were, we’d be little more than animals.
Was it hard for Kaden to take another life? But I knew the answer. Even through my rage and despair, I had seen his face the night I asked him how many he had killed, the heavy weight that pressed behind his eyes. It had cost him. Who might he have been if he hadn’t been born in Venda?
I continued walking, working at the knot until it was gone. When I reached the brook, I took off my boots and laid them on a low wall. I wiggled my toes, appreciating the small freedom of cool sand spreading between them. I stepped into the water, bending to cup some in my hands, and I washed the dust from my face. The things that last. I felt the irony among these crumbling ruins. It was still the simplest pleasure of a bath that had outlasted the sprawling greatness of a city. Ruin and renewal ever side by side.
“Refreshing?”
I startled and turned. It was Malich. His eyes radiated malice.
“Yes,” I said. “Finished with the horses already?”
“They can wait.”
He stepped closer, and I saw we were hidden from view. He unfastened the buckle of his pants. “Maybe I’ll join you.”
I stepped out of the water to head back to camp. “I’m leaving. You’ll have it to yourself.”
He reached out and grabbed my arm, yanking me to him. “I want company, and I don’t want your claws going anywhere they shouldn’t this time.” He jerked both my hands behind me and held them with a single crushing grip until I winced. “Sorry, Princess, am I being too rough?” He pressed his mouth down hard on mine, and his hand groped at my skirt, yanking at the fabric.
Every inch of him pressed so close I couldn’t lift either leg to kick him off me. I thought my arms would snap as he wrenched them up behind me. I twisted and finally opened my mouth wide enough against his to bite down on his lip. He howled and released me, and I fell backward to the ground. His face contorted in rage as he came at me again cursing, but he was stopped by a bellowing shout. It was Griz.
“Sende ena idaro! Chande le varoupa enar gado!”
Malich held his ground, putting his hand to his bleeding lip, but after a few heated breaths, he stomped away.