“Please. Stay with Mokoya. Watch her.”
He watched Thennjay leave, broad-backed and determined. A sour tide of emotion crested and spent itself within him, nervous energy trickling down to his fingers, his calves, his feet. There were many ways this could end, none of them happy. Akeha had to do something, and only a narrow band of choices were left to him.
He looked at Yongcheow, as if to say, This is what I was afraid of. This is why I could never return.
Yongcheow’s lips charted a grim line. He knew Akeha too well. He understood what was going to happen.
One of the doctors tending to Mokoya was significantly older than the other, her eyes lined with age, if not wisdom. Akeha looked at her. “You need lung tissue,” he said. “How long will it take to extract it?”
The woman sighed. “It’s a delicate procedure. First, the donor has to be sedated—”
“How long.”
“Hours, at least.”
Hours they did not have, not now. He stroked Mokoya’s forehead, neatening the line of her hair over her cold skin.
He looked at the old doctor. “Can you harvest the tissue from a dead body?”
“Akeha,” Yongcheow whispered.
She blinked, visibly swallowing. “I—we—yes, but it has to be relatively soon after death.”
“How soon?”
The doctor shook her head; she understood the thrust of Akeha’s questioning. “Sir, I cannot—”
“Just tell me,” Akeha said. He tried to be gentle.
She could not meet his eyes. “I would guess within three hours of death, if not sooner.”
Half a sun-cycle. A narrow band, but not unreasonable. “Thank you,” he said.
“You can’t,” Yongcheow said, preempting his argument entirely. “I won’t let you.”
He wanted to say, You should have stayed away if you didn’t want to see this. Instead he cupped Yongcheow’s chin. “We got this far. It’s more than I could have asked for.”
“If you die, your sister dies too. You know that. Your mother won’t allow otherwise.”
We were born together; we die together. “Mokoya would never let the movement be sacrificed for her sake. Neither will I.”
A stubborn set of the lip. “I’ll go with you.”
“Mother will have you killed. Her only interest is in me. If you come along, she’ll use you against me.”
“I can’t just let you go.”
“You have to.”
Yongcheow gripped his arms hard, as if he could prevent Akeha leaving through sheer physical force. “Yongcheow, I want you to stay here. Look after Thennjay. And Mokoya, if the Almighty permits.” If a miracle happens. “Do this for me.”
Yongcheow mouthed the syllables of his name, unable to put strength behind them. Akeha kissed him hard, their lips issuing a commandment of desire, playing a symphony of desperation.
When their bodies parted, it felt like a continent splitting. He gripped Yongcheow’s hand, then put his hand over his heart. “His peace be with you,” he said.
Then he leaned over Mokoya and pressed his lips to her forehead. He whispered words he should have said years ago, instead of leaving it until now, when there was a good chance she wasn’t hearing them at all, her eyes dark and swollen shut. He had to go. He had to go. He pretended he wasn’t shaking as he walked away.
*
Eyes trailed Akeha’s pilgrimage to the front of the monastery: acolytes and senior pugilists and everyone in between, peering from windows and behind pillars. The ranks of the pious had been swelled with Thennjay’s Machinist refugees, protected thus far by the ancient codes that granted the Grand Monastery autonomy over its affairs. If they weren’t on a list before they fled here, they were safe from Mother’s grasp.
Until now.
This was how the raids always started, soldiers banging on doors suspected to conceal known Machinists. Next it would be a line of people squatting against the wall, heads down, hands tied behind their backs, soon to be sucked into the fetid underbelly of the Protectorate. Vanished. So great was the appetite of empire that it would not even spit out the bones.
He would not let that happen here.
Akeha came to the cushion of garden between the monastery and the path to the city. Thennjay was locked in verbal hostility with a woman dressed in a general’s colors. Arrayed on the steps below them were hundreds of soldiers, guns in hand. One of them scratched an itchy calf, another shifted on restless feet. Their impatience pinged on the Slack, a constellation of microtwitches.
Akeha stepped forward. “Thennjay.”
The man turned, an oceanic wash of fear and dismay overcoming him. “Leave them alone,” Akeha said to the pinch-faced general. “I’ll come with you. I want to speak to my mother.”
Thennjay rumbled. “Akeha—”
“Don’t.” He looked over the columns of waiting Protectorate troops. “Don’t get innocents killed protecting me.”
He had been running from this for long enough. It was time to put it to an end.
Akeha pulled Thennjay close and kissed him, for old times’ sake. Thennjay whispered his name once, but he let go of Akeha’s hand, let him leave with the troops. What choice did he have?
Chapter Twenty-two
THE SKY TURNED GRAY and heavy as they climbed the eight hundred steps to the Great High Palace, as though the heavenly host had amassed to bear witness. Akeha had spent the journey to the palace coming to a decision and making peace with it. He realized now that there was a reason he’d returned to the city today, and not any time before. His heart and veins were ice, and his mind was clear. He knew what he had to do.
The Protector met him in an open-air courtyard just off the main audience chamber. Akeha, trailing in the general’s stiff-legged wake, was presented with a silent, heavily robed figure, hands folded behind her, gazing out at the white sprawl of the Great High Palace and the smoky tangle of Chengbee below.
“Protector, I have brought you the boy,” the general said.
“Leave us,” his mother said, without turning around.
“Yes, Protector.” The general bowed and left.
The Protector continued studying the vista of her dominion, letting silence uncoil between them. Akeha was not intimidated. He scanned the courtyard for threats, his mindeye bright and open. Before him, his mother was a furnace in the Slack, a smear of light that was almost painful to focus on. They were truly alone.
She had let him come with weapons intact. All the knives tucked in easy corners. All the contents of his pockets. Hubris on her part, or foolishness? It did not matter.
“The sun falls and returns five times a day, the flowers wilt and return once a year. But the return of a wayward child is something that happens once a lifetime.” The Protector turned around and took swaying, deliberate steps toward Akeha. “And here you are. Let me have a look at you.”