Churls shuddered in his arms. Her eyes snapped open. “Berun? What are you doing? Where...” She moved her shoulders, raised a hand to her face and groaned. “Make the world stop moving. Stop. Stop right now.”
“No,” he said, and kept running.
“Fine,” she said, and threw up all over his chest and herself. He stopped and let her down. Unable to stand on her own, she leaned against him. He helped her remove her leather halter and shook the clear fluid from it. There had been no food in her stomach. Shivering, she turned and pressed her body against his.
“You’re warm,” she said. “I never noticed that before.”
He smiled. “You’re probably the first to notice it.”
“Do you have my pack?”
“Yes.” He removed it and helped her get a heavier shirt on. The edges of her wet halter gripped between two fingers, he lifted her again and resumed running. She curled in his arms and closed her eyes, though he knew she did not sleep. Every now and then she raised her head to stare forward, and he wondered what she expected to see. The salt flats extended for miles in all directions, and the hills where Vedas rested could not yet be seen. She did not comment on the Needle’s new arrangement.
“How did you find me?” she asked when they were but a handful of miles from their destination.
“The map returned to me for a while,” he lied. “You and Vedas both appeared on it.”
She peered up at him, clearly skeptical. “Right.”
As he began ascending the ancient switchbacked path up the grassy hillside, she asked, “What about Omali? I thought you lost the map when you threw him out of your head. Does this mean he has power over you again?”
He grunted. In truth, he had tried not to think of his father. “No, I don’t think so.”
He halted atop the rise above the small valley. He knew where to look, and still it was difficult to locate the door of the monastery or its many-slitted windows. The single-room building had been built into the hillside without disturbing the lines of the slope. As a result, it was almost completely hidden from view.
Churls peered over his arms and then slumped back against his chest. Perhaps she had been expecting a fire, or some other sign of the valley’s habitation.
“Vedas did it,” he said.
She did not move. Did not breathe.
“He won the tournament and gave the speech, Churls. He told his brothers and sisters not to fight the White Suits anymore. He told them to fight Adrash. This was enough to upset people. And then the Needle rose, of course. When the crowd saw it, they blamed him. They would have killed him.”
She inhaled sharply. “He’s alive, then?”
“Yes, Churls. He’s alive. Injured, but alive. He passed out soon after the speech. I carried him from the coliseum to here. He only woke up right before I left.”
He paused. He had always known he would tell her, yet he had never found the right expression.
It was too late to worry about such things now.
“Your name was the first word out of his mouth.”
The breath came out of her in one long sigh, and he began the descent into the valley.
CHURLI CASTA JONS
THE 2nd AND 3rd OF THE MONTH OF ASECTICS, 12500 MD
THE NEUAA SALT FLATS, THE REPUBLIC OF KNOS MIN
They stood together on the hilltop. Usveet Mesa was a black wall on their right, stretching over the horizon at their backs. The cracked tile floor of the ancient lake Neuaa lay before them, glowing orange in the fading light of dusk. Directly across the twenty-mile expanse, the city of Danoor still smoldered. Without any breeze to speak of, a hundred thin pillars of black and grey smoke rose straight into the sky, connecting earth and heaven.
“We’re stuck here, then?” Berun asked.
Churls nodded. “They’re looking for Vedas, and they know you helped him escape. I didn’t get wind of it, but someone’s probably still looking for me, too. I didn’t hole up in that hotel for nothing.” She kicked a rock, sent it tumbling down the slope. Visiting the city had not put her in a good mood. “I’m sure the guard doesn’t give two shits about me, but the Ulomi White Suits? I bet even in the midst of chaos they’re angry about the murder of one of their champions.”
Berun grunted, and she wondered what he thought of her, now that he knew what had occurred after they split up the first night. Even then, he did not know everything. She had not told him about stealing the bar’s chip money, or how she found another group of White Suits the next morning and got herself in even more trouble. They broke her left femur and cracked her pelvis. They did not rape her, but that was hardly the only way to humiliate a person.
And of course, she had not mentioned being healed by Fyra while she slept—this, despite the fact that she suspected the girl had led Berun to the city to find her. She was not ready to discuss her daughter’s ghost with anyone. “Most of the Tomen have retreated into the hills,” she said. “Some say they’re waiting for Vedas to return, but I don’t think that’s very likely.”
“Why do you say that?” he asked.
She shrugged, and wiped a strand of hair from her eye. “Why would they listen to Vedas? I can’t imagine people who love fighting more than Tomen. You think they’ll quit killing their enemies and start working with everyone else toward the nearly impossible goal of killing Adrash? That’s ridiculous.”
His thousand joints whispered as he crossed his arms. “Perhaps they’ve been waiting for the right message. You didn’t hear him, Churls.”
I didn’t, she thought, and felt the familiar stab of guilt. I let him down.
She did not doubt Vedas’s message had been powerful, yet it did not change her opinion of Tomen. The rest of the world might rally around a far-fetched dream—perhaps even Nos Ulom would one day see the threat of destruction for what it was and attack Adrash—but Toma would not. She had seen what Fesuy Amendja did to the Castan gladiator. She had made herself look.
“Will Vedas be a leader, Berun? Can you see him rallying Knosi and Stoli mages alike to battle? Sending them into orbit to die? Inspiring farmers and bartenders and fishwives to take up arms against Adrash?”
He turned to regard her. “You could ask him.”
She spat. True, she could ask him. Lying within touching distance as he slept most of the previous day away in the monastery, masked and healing from injuries she could not see, she had resolved to do that very thing. She would ask him about everything once he woke.
Yet she had not done it. They had spoken less than a handful of sentences since he rose with morning’s first light. Now it was as if a great gulf lay between them. They had become strangers again.
“I don’t think he wants that,” Berun eventually said. “He doesn’t see himself as a leader.”
“The good ones rarely do,” she replied, surprising herself. She had not meant to say it. It sounded too much like an endorsement. At the same time, her dissatisfaction made little sense. Had she not been the one who challenged his faith in the first place? She had read the original speech, after all, and knew it for what it was.
By all rights, she had more reason than anyone to be happy with his transformation.
But obviously , she reminded herself, I didn’t help him when he asked. I kept my true opinion to myself—and why? Because I feared his reaction. I didn’t want to burn a bridge.
She exhaled loudly. “He would be a good leader, I think.”