I was upside-down. My arms and legs were chained to each of four wooden posts, and I hung in that position while my hair drifted past my ears and fell in the mud. A trillion daggers once again reminded me that I was supposed to be healing from where that snake had cracked my ribs, and my whole body strained to breathe.
Ta'o squatted low and bent his head down to look at my face. "I thought you said she'd agree."
I pulled my arms in for enough leverage to make words. The iron shackles dug into my wrists hard, and every breath was unspeakable agony. "She will."
Renou sat cross-legged, leaning his back against one of the posts with a book open in his lap. "You do have a strange way of convincing people."
I wasn't in the sling to convince her, but rather as a logical conclusion when she told me if you ask me one more time, I'm putting you in the sling. So technically, I did ask for it.
Ta'o shifted around in apparent discomfort. "Why are you doing this?"
It hurt to breathe. "I owe you one, remember?"
He shook his head. "Come on, bro. You don't have to. I didn't mean…"
"Were you serious?"
He took a deep breath and let it out through his nose, clenching his jaw.
I pulled in with all my strength to gain enough breath for what I had to say. "You told me you wanted to fight for your home."
"Yeah, but…"
"I want you on my team."
Ta'o bit his lip and sat down, shifting his yellow eyes all around.
It was different this time. The last time Princess Rosalynd had put me in the sling—and the time before that—I didn't have an array of broken bones up and down my chest. For all my bravado, this was the most excruciating pain I could imagine. I once again pulled in for enough breath to speak. "I need you to do me a favor."
"Me?" Renou lifted his chin.
"No, him."
Ta'o nodded. "Anything."
I grunted and strained. "I need you to talk to Rosalynd… tell her… one of two things. You pick."
"OK?"
"Either… you were full of shit… in which case tell her… I'm sorry. Or… that you were serious and… she shouldn't get in… your way. Either way I'm ready… to come out. Now. Oh, God!"
Two injuries. One where that dog tried to rip my leg off, and some cracked ribs where that snake tried to swallow me whole. If I survived a year, I would have a nasty scar below my left knee, but my ribs would be fine. Today, my leg didn't hurt, but a quadrillion needles in my chest converged into a unified agony I couldn't handle any longer.
I needed Ta'o to hurry.
Renou leaned over to tilt his face below mine. "Do you want me to keep reading?"
I could barely register his presence. Yes, I wanted him to, anything to take my mind off the pain. "Please."
"... hoping to escape allegations of heresy, Bishop Emanue took the Bibyu Scrolls west through the mountains. Passing through several kingdoms, he was met with hostility until he arrived at the coastal Kingdom of Golago, then ruled by the Tyryus Dynasty. King Meshan Tyryus received the foreigner with an open ear.
"Meshan was in his second year. His deceased father, King Eryk, was a malignant force that damaged the reputation and prestige of the Goloagi both internally and throughout the region. Meshan had inherited a world full of enemies. Desperate for support, the Daenma priest presented an opportunity to build an alliance with a powerful force from the East…"
I grunted. I wanted to listen, but my body wouldn't allow it.
As if the pain wasn't enough, I could feel blisters forming on my skin from the blazing sun on my back like I was being cooked.
Thunder growled overhead, followed by a rapidly approaching wall of rain. Renou closed the book and bent over, clutching it to his chest as buckets from the sky pelted us. Water saturated my hair, my skin, my clothes. A few minutes later, the rain moved on, and the world turned to a brightness that shocked my eyes enough to distract from the agony my chest was in.
By the time Renou managed to dry off enough to get the book back open, footfalls shuffled through the grass to my left.
Her voice called out across the yard. "You're insane!"
Renou looked up to her, but I lacked the strength to lift my head.
"I understand how you survived Jungle; you're audaciously obstinate. How dare you put ideas in Ta'o's head? Do you have any idea what he goes through? He's…"
"He can't talk." Renou's calm voice cut through her tirade. "The chains… it takes too much for him to talk."
A minute passed. Then, I heard her feet shuffle through the grass once more, followed by a metal click, and my left arm collapsed. The shock of having a quarter of my body back was a grand mix of relief with fresh pain, and soon she'd released the rest of me.
I rolled onto my back; I was already muddy.
"Look," she said, "I know you mean well, but you don't know."
"I do," I wheezed out.
"No, you don't. Ta'o has… I mean…"
"He has episodes. Nightmares. Hallucinations. Seizures when it gets real bad. I had a friend just like him growing up; when she was ten she burnt her fingers trying to rescue a baby she thought she'd heard crying in the oven. You're not telling me anything new. We climbed mountains together, boated through rapids together. She wasn't a liability, and neither is Ta'o."
The Princess knelt low, holding onto the front flap of her yithi so as to keep the silk from getting in the mud. "If you know, then why put him at risk? Why put your whole unit at risk?"
Ta'o stood beside, and slightly behind her with his eyes to the ground. Renou gazed at me as if he had the same question.
Tiny needles dug into my body all around, but the agony was gone. I breathed for a moment to collect my thoughts. "Every man who doesn't want to be here, who's too scared, too frightened to engage the enemy, is a risk. Too many people trying to avoid taking risks is how we lost Praying Mantis. The risk is here whether you accept it or not, whether you want it or not, whether you run from it or not. I choose my risk, and I'd rather have one man who wants to fight for his home, the people he loves, than a whole squad of men who just want to survive and go home. He could have one arm and no legs. Maybe not no legs… I don't know if I could work with that. Maybe one arm is OK…"
Renou inserted, "he wouldn't be able to shoot."
"That's true. OK, maybe both arms are important."
Renou asked, "what about one eye?"
"You know, a one-armed man can still hold a spear."
Renou nodded. "That's true."
"Enough!" Princess Rosalynd shouted. "My decision is final."
But before she could walk off, Ta'o grabbed her arm and finally spoke. "I'm joining his team."
"You can't!"
"Rosalynd, I want this. This place, this is my life. My home. What you've built here, nothing I do can ever repay you for giving me a second chance. You know that. But now, more than ever, we need every man out there to defend it. I'm joining Caleb's team. Stop getting in my way."
"Listen," she held a finger up to him. "I know you think I'm some entitled brat who only—"
Ta'o grinned wide. "But you are entitled, and you are a brat. That's why we love you!"
She pulled her face back and sneered. I wouldn't have dared speak to her that way, and Ta'o merely winked at her with a big smile. She settled her dark-green eyes on me, then Renou, before looking back at Ta'o.
A mischievous grin stretched across her face. Her tone shifted, and she swooned, "you can join his team… if you can convince Bilal to join as well."
I still hadn't moved from my position of laying on my back in the mud. The Princess smirked and looked down at me. "If you can convince Bilal to allow me to commute his sentence, you can have him and Ta'o on your team."
Renou asked, "who's Bilal?"
I probably should have hesitated and asked what this sentence was about, but I worked my way up and stood. "Let's go meet him."
Her eyes bulged and she looked me up and down. "You think maybe you should wash up first?"
Probably. "No. Where is he?"
Ta'o, Renou, and I followed her as she led us across the yard and past the mess hall. "I have him in an oubliette for the murder of his previous captain."
She glanced at me as if to ask if I was that committed. Ta'o's white eyebrows arched and he looked at me as well. When she saw I was undeterred, she continued. "His unit was on assignment. He disobeyed orders and stabbed his captain in the back."
I shrugged. It still hurt to shrug. "So he's got experience out there. That's good."
We walked between the library and one of the mud apartments where the natives lived. To our right, the library rested at the center of a raised mound bordered by carved stone amid perfectly manicured hedgerows and trees, three stories of precise engineered stone with archways all along the sides where patrons reclined with a book. Sounds of the water organ being played crept out from the towering stained-glass entry doors. To our left, mud piled atop a wood frame with grass piled layer over layer with wood framed windows. Outside were children battling one another with sticks while half-naked native women tended the wash.
We rounded the corner to the tall towers of the inner sanctum and followed her past the guards at the gate into a small, shaded courtyard covered with well-beaten grass. Through a side door, she took up a lantern and lit it with a wick beside the entrance, and we followed her down a dark corridor.
"I'm not a real princess, you know."
"I didn't know that."
"Watch your step." As with every other staircase in this place, the steps were horribly uneven. "In case it wasn't obvious, I'm not pure-blooded Herali."
"Really?" Renou shot sarcastically. Of course it was obvious. Herali had olive-green skin, long, straight, dark-green hair, and dark green eyes. Renou had enough curl in his hair he could pass for Goloagi if he wanted to, but that was true of a lot of us. Rosalynd had her father's eyes, but inherited the dark-green skin of her mother, same as Marya, same as those children the Elder of Elders introduced me to.
The staircase led us deeper underground than I'd thought possible. "My mother died in the plague, and my father's wife never forgave him for the affair. He tried. He used to bring me back to Ulum. My brothers were awesome, I miss them, but she never ran out of reasons to hate me."
"I can imagine."
At the bottom of the stairs, she led us down a narrow corridor that smelled strongly of ancient must. "When the war broke out, she told my father that if I ever set foot in Ulum again, she would make sure all the support would dry up."
Renou spoke up to that. "But you're still the daughter of the Count."
She hesitated. "A bastard has no inheritance. Right this way."
From down the hall, a deep voice of a man singing crept over the stone walls. Tucked off to the left was a small nook with an iron grate in the floor. The only light came from the paper lantern in the Princess's hand that flickered from the candle within and cast everything in muted amber.
"Bilal!" she called out to him.
A long, slow pause, and then a deep, relaxed voice answered from beneath the iron bars in the floor, speaking Goloagi. "She puts a man in an oubliette to forget about him. And yet, she insists on remembering."
She moved the lantern closer, but the darkness revealed nothing. "I'd like you to meet Caleb of Gath. He's our newest captain. Also this is Ta'o, and um…"
"Renou," he spoke for himself.
Silence followed.
After an uncomfortable minute, she added, "he says he wants you on his team."
The darkness answered. "He can eat shit."
The princess stepped back and crossed her arms. From the half of her face that caught the dim lantern light, she wore a smug grin.
That was my cue. "Uh… OK. So I don't know…"
The darkness answered me in Herali. "Piss off, boy."
Ta'o and Renou stood beside one another, barely visible. I didn't know what to say to this man to get him to open up. But, it was a fact that I owed my life to making inane decisions. I chose the route to Carthia instead of going back to the Tower. That was stupid, and also the reason I survived that massacre. I approached Miyani in the presence of a throat-ripping, liver-eating lizard I knew nothing about, and that was incredibly stupid. I also had the best girlfriend in the world. And so, I cast about my mind for the least sensical course of action. "Well… we heard you singing, and we thought… here, listen."
I gestured with my hands for Ta'o and Renou to join me, not knowing if either of them would pick up the cue let alone know the song I was about to sing. Truth be told, I didn't know either. I just sang the first song that came to mind.
There's a lady who knows,
Where the diamond-tree grows,
So she buys her way to Paradise...
Fortunately, they picked up the cue and started singing.
When she gets there she sees,
The wrong kind of trees,
And all her wealth leaves her empty...
Unfortunately, they didn't know the words. Or the melody.
So she buys her way to Paradise...
It is written on the walls,
And the tenement halls,
Yet she cannot believe the words…
Renou sang a different song I didn't know, and Ta'o, glancing back and forth between us with a hearty chuckle, started a song in Uhuida that was utterly different. Between the three of us, we'd managed to create the most chaotic mess of sound there ever was.
Poor Rosalynd sneered at first, then shouted "stop! Please stop!"
I turned to the iron bars. "So as you can see, we need a baritone."
First silence, then the wavering wheezing of laughter, followed by a healthy chuckling. "What do you want, boy?"
"Um… I want you on my team."
"Why?"
Good question. "Well, you've got experience…"
"Bullshit. What's in it for you?"
I looked at Rosalynd, who gazed smugly at my floundering efforts. For all the times she'd put me in the sling, I couldn't hold it against her. I'd lied. I didn't know how she knew, but she knew. Ahmi told me that the relationship between a scout and her vita'o was built upon trust. I was asking this man to allow me to be his captain, to lead him into situations where he could be killed, and that needed trust. Trust began with trust. "I'm recruiting Ta'o, and I was told I had to recruit you as a condition."
Grizzled fingers wrapped around the iron bars and a form drifted into view—a face with hints of amber flickering over his filthy skin. "So you want me to join that nerd and that playboy, huh?"
I glanced around at all in attendance. "Um… that's the idea. I think convict goes well with nerd and playboy…"
"I'm not going back out there, not with That Bitch still prowling around out there."
"Wait," Ta'o perked up. He stepped up and addressed Bilal. "ɣozʌ'ʌ?"
I cocked an eyebrow. "Do you mean Miyani?"
"Huh! He knows her by name!"
Renou stepped forward and lifted the severed-human-ear pendant she'd given me from where it hung around my neck. "Caleb is her boyfriend."
Another long silence. The man beneath the bars stared for a while with his mouth half open. "What?"
Ta'o assured him. "Yeah, she's on our side, now."
"Bullshit."
Ta'o continued. "All the saŋɪwesa, what's left of them. The sewu'oŋi betrayed them, and she brought them here."
Bilal turned to the princess. She nodded. "It's true."
Ta'o smirked. "There's this couple, they have a fozu place in that alley off Orca street, down by the red door. Do you remember where Hajari's used to be?"
Bilal's mouth gaped. "Hajari's is gone?"
Ta'o answered. "Good riddance, bro, Hajari's was crap."
"It was cheap!"
"It was cheap," Ta'o conceded. "This place is so much better. My treat? The four of us. Take a bath first."
Bilal glanced around at each of us, pausing to look me up and down, before turning back to the princess. "And how does Blue feel about this kid banging his sekiwa?"
Rosalynd smirked. "Blue likes him."
"Well shit! Let me out of here, then!"
With that, Princess Rosalynd's whole expression towards me was somewhere between shock and amazement. That, or the shadows in that dark corridor painted her in my mind what I wanted to see. Either way, I now had three men on my team.
Ta'o said he wanted to show Renou something, and Bilal and I would meet them at the cafe later. I was covered in mud, and Bilal, having spent a year in that dank underground cell, needed an extended bath. His hair also needed work. And his fingernails. And his heels. And his teeth.
He was a mess.
Cleaned up, he was about as Goloagi as one could possibly be. On the tall side of average, his hair was a curly, tangled, mucky mass atop his head that we ended up shaving, and his body bore a good handful of scars.
I wanted to ask.
We passed by the library and down past the market with the stone rising that I'd asked Miyani to stand on the first time I kissed her. There were quite a few people out. Most of them were native women wearing the customary flap of cloth down their front leaving their breasts exposed. Bilal cast his eyes down and laughed. I supposed it had been a while since the last time he'd seen a woman in daylight.
I didn't have the courage to ask.
"You're looking at me like you have a question. Spit it out."
My heart quickened. "Is it true you killed your last captain?"
He grinned wide and chuckled. "You want to know how to avoid getting knifed in the back, eh?"
I scratched at the back of my head. "If I think of my top five favorite things to do, getting knifed in the back isn't one of them. Maybe top ten, I'd have to think about it."
He laughed.
"Actually, not in the top ten, either."
As we turned down the alleyway towards the cafe, he smiled. "Look, man. If I have to choose between my life and yours, I'm going to choose mine. It's not a matter of whether I like you, it's not about loyalty, or any of that other crap. It's just how it is. I don't expect anything else from anyone, not Ta'o, not you, and not… uh…"
"Renou."
"Right.
I took a moment to forge the words in my heart, but they were there. "As your captain, I pray for the courage to lay down my life for my men if the situation calls for it."
He stopped and passed his emerald-green eyes up and down my body. Then with a deep breath, he said, "I never heard that prayer before."
Tucked between tall, stone buildings, the open front of the cafe welcomed us in. The corners had spherical paper lanterns that might have been lit, but for the daylight it was hard to tell. Several short tables surrounded by bag chairs were busy, but Ta'o and Renou had reserved one with enough space for us; each of them had brand-new boots on.
Beside them sat a woman with a wooden prosthetic for a left leg below the knee, and her left arm was shriveled and distorted. She was native, dark-green skin with yellow eyes and long, white hair, and she had a white crescent-moon tattooed on her right shoulder. She reclined into Ta'o's chest while his arm wrapped around her lithe body, and she stroked his arm with her good hand.
I bowed my face to her. "daʃuŋi."
She smiled up at the two of us. "Caleb. And you must be Bilal?"
He bowed to her, and we sat down.
"So," she began. She sat up and turned to Ta'o, her face inches from his. "Are you finally going to tell me what this wonderful news is?"
Before he could answer, Kaye, the boy who'd asked to sleep with my girlfriend as part of some Na'uhui ascension rite, stepped up and placed several burning red coals into the iron crucible at the center of our table.
My eyes followed his every move.
He didn't talk to me. I shouldn't have been so messed up in the head about that; it was a cultural thing. When he was finished, he met my eyes and smiled, then bowed low and went back to the kitchen.
As the lady who owned the place brought out the tray of assorted goodies, Ta'o explained his excitement to Dashuni. "I'm going to fight for Carthia."
Immediately, her smile dropped and she leaned away. "What?"
"Rozzy said I could fight. I'm going to be on Caleb's team."
She looked at me for a moment, then back to him. Ta'o was all smiles as he asked Kaye's sister for a decanter of wine, but Dashuni stared at the side of his face with terror.
After a while, she wrestled herself up on her good leg, and hobbled over to just outside where she turned to give me a come-hither with her fingers.
I went over to her and had to bend over to come down to her face.
"If you let anything happen to him…"
"I won't. I'll look out for him."
"No, you listen," she said. Her face was stern. "I may not look like much, but I know people. Trust me, if I want you hurt, you'll hurt. And I swear if you let anything happen to him, you're going to hurt real bad."