Cordimancy (41 page)

“…come to you, then!” Toril heard him yell. Gorumim’s face had flooded with confusion and fury. He still held a knife in one hand; with the other, he reached out and grabbed the wrist of the nearest living child, then strode toward the now-empty steps. Four other children jerked after in response.

They were chained together.

Malena, intent on pulling other children away, didn’t immediately understand.

Toril had already rolled to his feet, and begun to sprint, ignoring fresh pain in his ankle. But he was too far away.

Gorumim reached the first step. He appeared oblivious to the screams or the weak resistance of the children in tow; adrenaline and sata-like strength combined to increase his pace as he climbed.

Nor had he given up on his conjuring; he continued to pull down power from roiling clouds, and to try to cast it ahead of him at the cowering raja. Over and over, it bulged out from his hand, then rushed back, streaming up his shoulder and cascading down his back. His legs were glowing with it; each new attempt to cast added more, almost like water filling a cup.

A thrumming buzz began to emanate from Gorumim.

Toril realized as he ran that he had left the staff behind; he had no weapon to attack his enemy.

Too late now.

The buzz crescendoed. The steps were heartbreakingly far away, still.

As Gorumim reached the level of the terrace, the whirlwind of aiki gold broke apart. Something careened across the plaza and crashed through glass at the front of the palace; another something reached the steps and shot up.

The buzz still grew, but now ground began to shake as well. More glass shattered in the palace; Toril heard a crash as part of the fountain collapsed.

Above, ahu that had captured the raja rushed forward to meet Gorumim and the children, and collided with the gold flash at the top of the stairs.

The light swallowing the general became so intense that Toril lifted an arm.

A deafening boom rent the air. As Toril vaulted up the first three steps, he felt masonry crumble beneath him. He stumbled and careened back to lawn.

Before he could roll to his feet, the ground began to sag. The terrace cracked in half a dozen places, then crumbled and sank. Other parts of the palace followed. A cloud of ash and debris shot up, lit by fluorescing static, into which lightning poured for long moments.

Then all grew still.

56

peace ~ Malena

Malena
counted the children.

Seventeen.

Tupa was not among them, and Malena sniffled as she felt hands and chains and faces in the dark. The girl Gorumim had killed had been the right height for her sister, but Malena had never gotten a clear look at her face, and now it was too late.

She had a mental image of Toril, staff raised, meeting the fire conjured with blood magic. And an image of him falling off the steps, and struggling to rise, as the ground around him slid away and debris swallowed him up.

What about Shivi
? She had seen the old woman, slumping and stunned, as she struggled to pull children together. But Shivi was gone by the time the general reached the steps with his victims dragging behind. Had she run after him, and sunk along with the fire and quake that destroyed the palace?

“Follow me now,” she said. She tried to sound reassuring, but the weeping buried just beneath her calm veneer, combined with the choking dust, turned her voice into a croak. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Those of you who aren’t chained, hold on tight. And remember the numbers I gave you. Every so often, I’m going to ask for your number, and you have to tell me you’re still with us.”

Oji had been there as well, at the epicenter
, she thought.
He’d gone down with the building.

She lifted the smallest child to her hip—he was barely a toddler—then grabbed the hand of the next in line and led them out of the wreckage, toward the back of the gardens. At first it was slow going, but after tripping over a stone bench and detouring around a hedge, the air cleared. Other survivors were making their way outward as well; above the coughs and whimpers from her charges, she heard adult partygoers hacking and swearing.

She said soothing words. She asked if everyone held the hand they’d been assigned. Twice she called out numbers, and waited while weak little voices responded.

Moonlight improved. Shadowy figures streamed away to the right, perhaps to open gates and homes beyond.

Ahead, a cluster of lanterns had blown away from the destruction and snagged in treetops on a knoll. Several lanterns were torn, and their bamboo frames smoked as rice paper flamed to ash. Others continued to glow brightly—orbs of lavender and blue, crimson and green.

It looked like a good place to rest and think.

In front of the knoll, they found a table that had been set out for guests. It was overturned, but the breads and fruits it once held were scattered on the lawn. Children dropped to their knees and filled hands and cheeks, too tired and too famished to waste energy on speech.

She counted again while they chewed and swallowed.

Oji
found them. Malena looked up at the clink of chain, and saw a line of small figures stumble from the gloom. The little warrior was at the head. He looked even more exhausted than the children behind him—in fact, he swayed and went down on one knee as they halted—but as his eyes met Malena’s, he smiled.

“Semanya!”

A girl rushed forward; Malena recognized the dark eyes, and inhaled in wonder as Kinora embraced her, pulling the other children along and just about bowling Malena over in the process.

“You came for me!” the girl choked out. “You came!” She nestled into Malena’s shoulder and began to cry. Many of the other children joined in.

Malena stroked her tangled hair and pulled her close.

Five.

Oji had brought all five of the children from the steps.

In a lull a few moments later, she saw that the little man had fainted. He lay face up on the grass, but his chest moved in a steady rhythm, and she recalled the aftermath of his last aiki trance with hope.

Suddenly Kinora tensed, gasped, and lifted her head.

“Did you find Cricket?” she asked.

Malena flooded with confusion.

“Cricket. The baby I left behind.” The relief on Kinora’s face had become panic. Her lip trembled. “I put him in the rushes. He was not going to make it, he…”

Malena put a finger on the girl’s lips and tried to smile, but her feelings were so overwhelming that her jaw wobbled, and the muscles of her mouth didn’t quite work. She tried to speak, failed, tried again.

“We found him,” she finally managed. “He’s safe. He… made it.”

She pulled Kinora to her breast and held her there, rocking gently back and forth, until the wails subsided.

Malena
was cleaning gashes in a child’s knee when little eyes lifted over her shoulder. She turned to see, and caught her breath. Three more figures were limping up the rise. A tall shape gripped a staff in one hand; his other arm encircled a girl who held a toddler in her arms.

Malena ran.

Toril looked up into her eyes, made a crooked grimace that might have been a grin on an undamaged face, then shifted his gaze sideways, to the older girl.

Malena’s feet faltered.

She stopped breathing.

She felt her whole body quiver in wonder and relief, and she shrieked. Her arms opened.

Tupa stepped into her embrace, still holding the unknown toddler. Malena swept them both up and capered, scarcely feeling the weight. They were laughing and weeping and blinded by fresh tears, all together.

After a time she eased her sister to the ground, cleared her throat, and released her.

“Mam and Father?” Malena asked.

Tupa’s smile faltered. “The bandits caught us on the road. They only needed children.”

Malena swallowed. She looked away for a moment, then squared her shoulders. “Tell me about this little one,” she said.

“Lena, meet Riva,” Tupa introduced, pushing bangs back from the child’s face. She attempted to pass the girl to Malena, but Riva clung.

“Oh, that’s fine,” Malena soothed, touching the child on her shoulder. “You’re safe now. Tupa will hold you.”

Malena turned and caught Toril’s eye.

He dropped the staff and pulled her close, wrapped her in his arms and held her.

And she hugged him back.

They
sat side by side on the knoll, as the moon set and lanterns burned themselves out. A fire smoldered fitfully in the wreckage of the palace, emitting a little light. Children slumbered all around, overcome with exhaustion and relief. Here in the lowlands, the autumn night was mild, but even so, little forms lay back to back or huddled together for warmth.

Oji’s chest continued to rise and fall.

They shared few words. Malena knew they needed to talk about difficult things. They would do that. Soon.

Now, though, her husband was semi-mute with pain, and her own heart was full. The silence between them felt warm, not strained. It was a way to process, and they were doing it together.

Malena scooted back somewhat and tugged on her husband’s neck. He leaned; when she kept tugging, he rotated a bit and leaned still farther, finally resting face-up with shoulders against her thigh.

She ran fingers across his chin and cheeks, avoiding blisters, and began to croon. It was a lullaby, and somehow it fit the moment. She realized with a sad little half-smile that Paka had hummed it days before, reviving memories from her own childhood.

Toril closed his eyes.

“What do you think happened with Gorumim and the magic, at the end?” she murmured, after three verses and a long hiatus.

Toril exhaled, paused to prepare damaged lips. “Lost control. Not sure why.”

“Because of the staff?”

Toril rocked his head in negation. “Couldn’t break the staff, but… threw me and it aside… easily enough.”

Malena pondered this. “What, then?”

Toril rocked his head again, lifted his eyebrows. “Don’t know.”

Malena sighed. “We’ll never know about Shivi, either, I guess. I saw her for a moment, I’m sure, quite close to the back. When I turned around, she was gone. Maybe she ran toward the steps, like you, and didn’t make it out again. It’s hard to think of her buried in all that rubble, next to such evil men.”

Toril blew out a breath in agreement.

Quiet moments passed. Then a young cough sounded at her side, and a hand touched Malena’s elbow.

Tupa stood, pigeon-toed and awkward, eyes downcast. “That’s not what happened,” she said, very low.

Toril stirred. He opened his eyes and looked up.

“You know something?” he said gently.

Tupa sighed. She looked at Malena. “You didn’t see Shivril. That was me.”

Malena considered this assertion. She had had a very clear look at the woman’s face. Light from torches and lanterns had been bright next to the palace… She could picture every wrinkle, could map even the lines of posture to the Shivi she knew.

Malena shook her head. “No. I’m sure it was her, not you.”

“They brought Shivril to us last night,” Tupa said. “She seemed really tired, but I don’t think she slept. She asked all our names, and she spent a long time trying to help the kids who were injured the worst. I was oldest, and I was healthy, so I didn’t get a lot of time with her. But she did give me a hug, and she fussed with my hair for a minute. She said not to be afraid—that she would do what she could, and to trust her. She said there were things in this world stronger than the men who’d taken us. It was our first hope.”

Malena’s lip wavered.

“Is that what grandmas are like, Lena? You and I never had one. She said we could call her that.”

Malena opened her mouth, then closed it, and reached out a hand to her sister instead. She heard Toril sniff and clear his throat.

“Anyway, when you thought you saw her last night, she was already dying,” Tupa eventually continued.

“When? How?” Toril croaked.

Tupa began to sniff. She whimpered, then drew a resolute breath.

“You saw the girl Gorumim killed with the knife?” Tupa said.

Malena nodded, confused.

“It was supposed to be me, but it was grandma instead,” Tupa said.

And suddenly Malena understood.

She remembered Shivi offering daisies that were really chickweed. She remembered Shivi impersonating the shimsal, and helping Malena perform the same trick, after some minor attention to hair. She remembered how petite her friend was—almost the same size as Tupa. She remembered Shivi saying that a woman defending little ones was a special kind of fierce. And she began to cry all over again.

Toril had pushed himself up on an elbow and swiveled to face them better. Now he looked away, but Malena saw his head go down, and his shoulders quiver.

After a long time—so long that Tupa, who had nestled beside her sister for warmth, began to shiver more than yawn—Toril cleared his throat again. “
That’s
what went wrong with… Gorumim’s blood magic,” he wheezed. “Tangled with a heart… had a mind and a power of its own.”

Malena had been remembering Paka gazing at his wife with adoration, and calling himself a fat old cordimancer.

She’d always thought of cordimancy as a euphemism—a way to impute fake specialness to all the non-lips and non-hands and non-eyes who were so common. “You’re a heart, like all the rest of us,” her mother had once said, as Malena lamented the lack of magic on her naming day. “Heart magic is The Five’s way of laughing a bit, and keeping us humble. Don’t let it get you down; you can still have a good life, even without a gift.”

She thought of Paka doing sleight of hand for a dog, Paka with green feet and crumbs in his beard, Paka humming as he rode to the Blood Rift, Paka on the funeral pyre with four little children in his arms.

Laughable? Ungifted?

He was magnificent.

Paka was a heart.

Oji, who had no family, no clan, and no magic except the pain of an aiki trance, who kept crouching between her and death—he was a heart, too.

She thought of Toril, stripped of talent but not determination, begging for children from the agony of the general’s table.

Her husband was a heart, not a lip. Always had been.

And what of Shivi? Just now, Toril had said Gorumim tangled with a
heart
, not a hand. The magic in her gray hair and gentle words hadn’t come from manumancy. Not really.

“Hearts,” she murmured. “Tangled with
hearts
.”

Tupa pushed away from Malena’s side and stood, lifting something off her neck. “Grandma made me
promise
to give you this,” she whispered. “She said her husband gave it to her years ago, and you’d know what to do with it now.”

Malena reached, but Tupa stepped past her, and dropped the chain—and the worn acorn at its nadir—into Toril’s cupped hands instead.

Toril stared at it for a long time. Then he looked up at Malena, the lines at the corners of his eyes crinkling.

Malena gazed back through tears, and smiled.