And then I heard his voice, so calm it enraged me.
Do you want to die?
“No!” I screamed.
Are you sure? You seem to be trying hard.
The rass constricted around my chest. My rib cage groaned, ready to crack. “Stop. . it!”
As I screamed I felt the Akari’s power flood my bones and blood, scalding me. My fingers stopped shaking. I could grip the sword again, and this time sent it charging up into that grinning, reptilian face. The tip slammed into the creature’s eye and kept on going. With all the might Malator could give, I pushed and pushed the Sword of Angels deep into the rass’s brain. Its coiling body fell away, dropping me to my knees. The rass thrashed, blinded and bleeding, its tail whipping me aside. I spun as if struck by a club. Stunned, I lay in the dirt, unable to move. The dying rass made for its lair. Half its body disappeared into the ground. . then the thing fell dead.
I was bleeding, my shoulder torn open by the beast’s spiky tail. Every breath made my ribs cry out. The sword lay just feet away. I turned my head and stared at the enormous, twitching snake. Malator’s burst of strength had left me.
Pick it up, said Malator.
I could hardly hear him through the fog of pain.
Pick it up!
The blade seemed so far away. I made a claw of my hand and stretched for it with my wounded shoulder. Breathing was almost too difficult.
You said you didn’t want to die, the spirit chided. Prove it.
Some Akari were gentle, but mine was a taskmaster. “Eat shit!” I growled even as I rolled to reach the sword. My fingers touched its worn out hilt, wrapping around it. Suddenly, I could breathe again. I dragged the sword over my chest as I rolled onto my back. The fog in my mind began to lift. The pain in my shoulder subsided.
The stars in the desert are like no other place in the world, and I remember how many stars were out that night and how close they felt to me, as if my spirit could just rise up and join them in the heavens. I felt sleepy. I wanted to let go of the sword, but I had promises to keep. Or maybe I was just too afraid to let it go. I shut my eye and felt my body healing. When I opened it again he was kneeling next to me. To anyone else he would have been invisible. Even to me he seemed a ghost, his boyish face shimmering. He shook his head with a scowl and a loud, motherly sigh.
“My shoulder,” I sneered. “Fix it.”
“Rest. In the morning you’ll be fine.” He glanced over the at the dead rass. “What will you do when there are no more rass to kill, Lukien?”
I thought about his question as I lay there. It’s impossible to hide your thoughts from an Akari. That’s the hardest part about having one. They’re not like little angels on your shoulder. I wanted to tell him that the world would never run out of monsters to kill, but none of this was about the rass. I was testing myself, and Malator knew it.
“I can heal you this time,” he warned. “But if you make me go along with this much longer. .”
“What?” I asked. “What will you do? Leave me?”
“You could be so much more.”
“You keep telling me.”
I didn’t want to talk, so I looked into the sky again and pretended not to care. I-we-had been gone from Jador too long. We were irritating each other, bored with each other. I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with Malator-a life that really had no end-and the thought frightened me more than any monster. I tried to ignore him, but he kept staring at me, waiting for an answer.
“Malator, a friend would let me sleep.”
“I am your friend, Lukien. I’m the only friend you need.” He bent forward, and his eerie light around me made me stronger still. “You keep looking for something that’s right in front of you.”
“I miss her,” I said. “You don’t know what it’s like.”
“I feel everything you feel, Lukien. I know precisely what it’s like. I was a man once, remember?”
Malator had died when he was young, so his ghost looks young too. His smile is more like a smirk, charming and maddening. He wanted me to go home to Jador; he’d been pushing me to go back for days. Now I was out of excuses. The sword sat across my chest, rising and falling as I breathed. And the stars kept calling to me.
If I died, I thought, I could see her again.
Malator didn’t even pretend my thoughts were private. “But then you’d never know what lies ahead for us.”
“True,” I nodded. But did I want to know? Not really. Not then. All I wanted was to look up at the stars and imagine I was all alone.
2
A day and a half later, I was back in Jador.
Nothing had changed in my absence, which is why I took my time getting back, loping through the desert and stopping even when I wasn’t tired. I had taken what I needed from the dead rass, stuffing my prize into the leather bag I carried on my back. I spent the first night of my trip home at the hidden oasis I’d discovered on one of my earliest jaunts into the desert. By noon the next day I could see Jador on the horizon, its towers gleaming in the powerful sun.
Even the quickest caravans take days to reach Jador from the continent. By then the sun has burned your body raw and swelled your tongue with thirst. People die crossing the desert, killed by rass or lack of water, and yet they’ve come by the hundreds to Jador. There’s a great white wall around the city, and around that is a dismal shanty town, filled with throngs of uninvited, desperate foreigners. From the shacks and shrana houses it’s easy to see the palace where I live. And yet nobody seems to begrudge the Jadori their fabulous home. They’re safe in their shacks, protected by those inside the walls.
These people are light-skinned like me. I drink and dice with them when I have time, but today I headed straight for the palace gates. With the hood of my gaka drawn around my face, I tucked the sword under my robe and walked casually through the narrow avenues. Children and dogs roamed the stalls and the men and women from a dozen different countries went about their chores. Some were lame, some were blind, and some had ailments deep within their brains, but they’d all come to Jador with the same futile hope: to get an Akari of their own.
To be healed.
The noise of the crowd maddened me. After so long in the desert I’d become used to hearing only Malator’s voice. I kept my head down as I hurried toward the gate. Jadori warriors stood guard, casually shooing away the kids that came to gawk at their kreel. The enormous lizard made a show of flicking its tongue through the bars. The children laughed and pretended to be afraid, but when the kreel tasted the air again it paused and looked straight at me. The warriors followed its gaze.
“Shalafein?” asked one of the guards.
I stood taller and peeled my hood away. When they saw my eye patch, the children cheered. They surrounded me as the Jadori opened the gate, tugging at my robes, asking for a glimpse of the sword.
“No!” I said as gently as I could.
The kids-four boys and a girl-backed off. A Jadori scolded them, waving them away. I didn’t have time for their hurt feelings. They were glad to see me, that was all, but I’d been in the desert too long, and the thought of dealing with them wearied me.
Later, I told myself. After I rested awhile I could leave the palace and be with them, my own kind. I rushed inside the gate. Once it clanged behind me, the whole world changed.
Suddenly, there were gardens. Pools of cool water with spraying fountains. Birds picking at berry bushes. I looked up to the palace, a small city really, sprawling within the white wall. Dark toned men and women-and some of the Akari-gifted Inhumans from Grimhold-moved along the avenues. I hid from them all.
My room would be waiting for me, I knew. Every day the girls had come and put flowers in it for me. They’d changed the water in the basin, too, because Gilwyn and White-Eye told them to and because they knew-like everyone knew-that I’d be back eventually. The thought of my clean bed weakened me a little, but I’d been rude enough already. Before I even washed my hands, I had to see Gilwyn.