“Wherever you can. Just tell me what happened.” She kept her voice gentle. She did not scream, although she wanted to.
Rider pulled at the joints of their fingers and wrists repeatedly. “I had time to think. I regretted what happened between us. So I came back to Bataanar. I did not expect the attack. It took me by surprise.” They bit their lip, looked away.
“You saw the attack. What then?”
“I saw the attack. I saw you fall into the water. We saved you, but you would not wake. I brought you back here.”
“How long has it been?”
“One sun-cycle.”
“That’s too long.” The city was in ruins, the princess in the wilds with that beast. Alarm pushed Mokoya to her feet against the protests of her body. A wave of dizziness overtook her. She staggered, and Rider’s arms were there, holding her up. Mokoya sagged. She felt like she had been running up cliff faces for hours.
They were almost cheek and cheek. Rider’s face brimmed with emotion, and all Mokoya could see was that same face, ashen and blood-glazed. She looked at the ring of characters circling their neck and remembered them flaring to life, branding themselves upon ribs and vertebrae as Rider slipped irretrievably away from her.
She’d had a prophecy for the first time in four years. She didn’t understand why the visions had chosen to come back to her now. But one thing was certain.
Sometime in the near future, Rider was going to die.
She let Rider guide her back down onto the bed. She cupped a hand against their cheek as they tried to draw away. Rider blinked. “Mokoya?”
She inscribed circles on their cheekbone with her thumb, haunted by the butcher-fresh memory of their viscera heavy in her arms, their chest cold and still. Words choked her throat like weeds.
Rider pressed their forehead against hers. All the fear Mokoya had seen earlier was gone, replaced by guilt. Their skin was damp, radiating heat.
“It was the princess behind it all,” Mokoya said.
“Yes.”
“And you knew.”
“Yes.” A shiver ran through their body. “I hid it from you, Mokoya. That was my decision.”
“Why?”
They sat back on their heels, drawing themselves out of her grasp. “Mokoya,” they said, the syllables a heavy sigh. “I did not trust you. We had only just met. I could not be certain what you would do if I told you the truth. And I still believed that the princess could be reasoned with. I believed I could overcome her stubbornness.”
“But you were wrong,” she said quietly.
“I was, on both accounts. When I saw the ruins of the city, when I saw you plunge into the oasis, I thought, I’ve killed her. If I had just told her, I would not have—” Their voice grew small. “I would not have lost her.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Mokoya said. “We’ve all been fools here.” There had been no greater conspiracy at work, no nefarious plot to destroy cities or bring down empires. Just a heartbroken young woman who missed her mother.
She reached forward and grasped Rider’s hand in hers. Rider looked down at the jade tones of her pebbled skin. “Green is for sadness,” they said softly.
“You remembered.”
“It is my fault.”
“No.” Mokoya withdrew her hand. “Not exactly.”
Rider studied her intently. “You had a vision before you woke.”
“Yes. A prophecy.” Mokoya hesitated, then reached for her belt and withdrew the still-warm pearl from her capture box. She could feel the vision trapped in it, the thick sourness of death solid in her palm.
Caution had entered Rider’s voice. “What did you see?”
Mokoya weighed the blood-soaked future in her hand, pressing her lips together. Unable to put words to any of that horror, she held the pearl out to Rider.
They took it. Brightness and color blossomed in the Slack as they read what was stored within. Their eyes went wide as they watched the vision replay. Then their brows creased. “I see,” they said softly.
Rider got up, turning away from Mokoya, still holding the pearl. They paced wordlessly with the sluggish movements of one walking through a storm.
Mokoya got to her feet, much more slowly this time. The dizziness came again, but she let the star-tainted wave of it wash over her and remained standing. “Rider? Are you all right?”
Rider gazed at the break in the roof of the cavern, where the sky revealed itself in brilliant tones and the cascade of the oasis sang and caught the sun, unperturbed by the troubles of humankind. Finally they turned to Mokoya, haloed by daylight, face made invisible by the glare. “So be it,” they said. “If that is to be my fate, then I embrace it.”
Rider sounded glad, which frightened her. Mokoya crossed the space between them. “Rider, I don’t—”
“No.” Rider put a hand to her lips. “It is a good thing. It means we kill the creature. The city can be saved.”
“A good thing?” Mokoya managed.
“A good thing,” Rider repeated, softly. Mokoya leaned forward, collapsing the weight of her head on Rider’s, her breaths coming in sharp and painful spurts. They placed their hands, palms flat, against Mokoya’s damp cheeks. “You survive. You carry on. Someone who will remember me the way I want to be remembered. It’s a good thing.”
“Rider—” Mokoya’s shoulders shook. She wanted to tear Rider out of the Slack, rip them from the threads of fate they had been woven into. She felt entombed by the cruelty of the fortunes, trapped in an endless, formless darkness.
“We must return to the city,” Rider said. Their voice was calm, the melancholy in it stripped away. “There is much left to do.”
Chapter Sixteen
THENNJAY AND AKEHA MET them in front of the city. Bataanar, remarkably, still appeared whole, and the tent city had the same chaotic energy as fabric being woven. Busy figures, cloth-wrapped to the point of anonymity, cleared away debris. Chatter filled the background, indistinct and constant like the sea upon the shore.
“We thought you were dead,” Thennjay said, after she slid from Bramble’s back onto the sand. His skin had a pale, ashen aspect to it, like a layer of dust had settled permanently on him. She knew she was just imagining it.
Akeha said nothing. He simply enveloped Mokoya in a rib-grinding hug and held her there until the tremble in his breathing dissipated. Mokoya wasn’t sure how she could comfort him. She couldn’t bring herself to say the words “I’m all right, I’m alive.” Both parts of that sentence felt like a lie. She was a ghost, her feet not really touching the ground.
When he let her go, she said, “We must speak with the raja.”
Akeha started to laugh, a sound dry as bones rattling in an urn, a small hint of mania bubbling underneath. She hoped he wasn’t breaking as she had broken. “The raja’s busy. He has an interrogation to conduct. But come. Let’s provide him some company.”