Empress of Dorsa (The Chronicles of Dorsa)

73

~ AKELLA ~

“Gods,” the girl muttered at Akella’s back, but Akella pretended not to hear.

Akella appreciated that Linna was willing to put herself at risk to help, but it wasn’t her responsibility. Besides, Linna would’ve probably taken ten or fifteen minutes to plan out the perfect assault, and in that time, Akella could already be inside the building and liberating her men.

Her men. Stranded here for two years – no, six years if Linna was right about the passage of time – all because of their rizalt’s cowardice, turned into shadow-possessed and used as slaves to help the witches reproduce themselves. Men who were sailors and warriors turned into nothing but seed and nursemaids for the Order’s toddlers. It turned Akella’s stomach. And enraged her.

Akella made it onto the roof easily, dropping from the wall above and landing on the slanted surface as lightly and surely as a cat. She also made it easily to the ground, hanging from the roof’s edge and before dropping the last five or six feet. She slunk along the building’s side until she came to the window glowing from within with warm lamplight, straightening just enough to peer inside.

The sight beyond the window gave her pause. Neat rows of bunk beds lined the walls of the room, and each bed contained a sleeping child. The light came from a lamp affixed to the far wall, its wick was set high enough that children who woke in the middle of the night needing comfort or the privy could make their way to the door, but low enough to sleep through. A night-light.

She counted the beds. There were close to three dozen altogether, almost all of them occupied. And unlike the Order members Akella had encountered so far, most of whom were Imperial-pale with silky auburn-brown hair, these children slept on fluffy halos of sometimes curly, sometimes kinky hair, skin tones ranging from a tan that could be mistaken for Terintan, to Akella’s own medium brown, to the rich midnight of the people of Fesul and the other southernmost islands of the Adessian archipelago.

The sleeping children, in a word, were undeniably half-Adessian. Which meant that these future witch-assassins who currently slumbered with the perfect innocence of babes all around the world were the children of her crew.

Akella’s stomach churned, and a sour taste filled her mouth like she might be sick.

Each isle within the archipelago was unique, with their own dialects, customs, manner of dress, holy days. Sometimes different islands lived peacefully with their neighbors, sometimes they warred, but the one cultural quirk every island shared in common was the value they placed on their children. For Adessians, the only thing more holy than a child was Preyla herself. Or as one Adessian proverb went, The true ruling elders of each clan are its youngest members.

Akella’s rescue mission had just become far more complicated. She should have realized it earlier, when the witch in the alleyway told her how her men had been used these past several years.

It didn’t matter that these children had been conceived through force and manipulation. It didn’t matter that Akella’s sailors had been hollow-eyed shadow drones when it happened. All that mattered was that the moment her crew laid eyes upon these Adessian children and saw their own faces reflected back to them, they would refuse to leave Persopos without them. And against her better judgment, Akella already knew she agreed with them.

She was the rizalt of their fathers. That made each one her personal responsibility if anything happened to their sires.

Preyla’s tit.Instead of a rescue of two dozen men, Akella now needed to rescue two dozen men and their two dozen children.

Glancing left and right first, Akella grasped the bottom of the window and pushed up. The wooden frame was stiff within its grooves, protesting against being opened as if it typically remained closed. The window’s stiffness also worked in her favor, though; once Akella forced it open about a foot and a half, it stayed in place instead of sliding back down on its own. She hauled herself up and through the half-open window, dropping hands-first onto the floor on the other side, the rest of her body sliding in like some jungle snake.

The room was quiet, the only sound coming from the gentle, rhythmic breathing of sleeping children. She counted their little faces. Twenty-seven, or about one per sailor. She was surprised by two things – first, that there were not more children, and second, that every one of them was female.

Perhaps the male children were in a different dormitory? But Akella shuddered as she answered her own question – there were no male children. There were no male children because these sleeping daughters were to be trained for the Order of Targhan, and the Order was all female. It explained why there were not as many children as she would have expected.

Did the sorceresses somehow ensure that only girls were conceived? Or did something else happen to the baby boys? Bile rose with each new question.

She didn’t see the little girl approaching until the child was right beside her.

Akella jerked her head towards the girl, nearly losing her balance. The child, probably five or six years old, said something in a foreign tongue.

The two of them stared at one another for a long few seconds. “I do not speak your language, child,” Akella said at last, hoping that a gentle tone would stop the girl from crying out in fright.

But the girl gave no indication that she was scared.

“You’re not one of the mothers. So you’re not supposed to be here,” the girl replied, this time in common tongue. She had a squeaky little girl’s voice, but eerily, it carried the same rough accent as the witch-assassins.

“I think where I’m supposed to be is all a matter of perspective,” Akella whispered back.

The girl cocked her head. She had an almost scholarly appearance, and she studied Akella detachedly, the way an Imperial Wise Man might study a particularly fascinating insect he was preparing to pin. The thought sent a chill down Akella’s spine, so she directed her focus back towards her objective.

“Where’s your father, child?” Akella asked.

For the first time, the child’s forehead crinkled in confusion. “The fathers?”

Fathers. Plural. All right.

“Yes. Where are the fathers?”

“It’s night,” the girl answered, as if Akella had asked a question with a remarkably obvious answer. “They wait in their cells.”

“Their cells …?”

“Unless one of the babies cry out for them.”

Before Akella could ask what babies, the girl lifted a finger, pointing. Akella’s eyes followed. A row of cribs stretched along either side of the door, each one with a sleeping infant inside. She hadn’t seen those earlier.

Akella pondered her next move. She could leave the dormitory and explore whatever lay beyond, searching for the cells of the “fathers.” Or she could wake an infant and bring the fathers to her.

She glanced up at the round, cherubic face still staring at her curiously. Was the girl already a witch? Would she raise an alarm? She’d said the “mothers” wouldn’t want Akella here, but she’d given no indication that she planned to call out for them. Nevertheless, drawing Akella’s shadow-possessed, blank-faced crew into the dormitory was one thing; drawing in one or more of the Order was another thing altogether.

Well. She wasn’t going to make any progress whatsoever just crouching next to the window and pondering her options.

Akella crossed the room, avoiding the puddles of light created by the moon coming in through the window on one side and the lantern on the other.

The little girl trailed a few steps behind her. “What are you doing?”

Akella didn’t respond. She stared down at an infant inside one of the cribs. Wispy curls of black hair stuck out comically in all directions from the child’s head; long black lashes fluttered over closed eyes. But it was the face that gave Akella pause, because the baby girl had an undeniable resemblance to Dezmond, her sailing master. There’d probably never been a better navigator in all of the Adessian Islands than Dezmond ock Ellsith. That was saying something, too, given that all Adessians were at least competent navigators, and Adessian sailing masters in particular were generally considered the best navigators in the known world. But Dez was the best of the best. He had an uncanny ability to find safe passage through Preyla’s rage in the dead of night, with no moon, without a star in the sky visible, with waves so high that no one could see past the next one. It had been Dez, in fact, who’d found the east-flowing current that led Akella’s ship safely to the shores of the Kingdom of Persopos two years earlier.

Or six years earlier, if Linna was right about how much time had passed.

Had it really been six years?

Akella glanced over her shoulder at the girl. Yes, the child was about six. Whose daughter was she? Unlike the sleeping babe in the crib, Akella couldn’t tell. Not that it mattered. She belonged to one of Akella’s men, and by extension, to Akella herself. She would get the girl out of here.

Akella reached into the crib and gently shook the baby who looked like Dezmond. The infant woke with a whimper; after the whimper, she let out a frustrated cry. Akella smiled. Dez always was a cranky type. She moved to the next crib and reached in.

“Why are you waking the babies?” the girl asked behind her in an urgent whisper. She no longer sounded detached and scholarly; she sounded frightened. “The fathers will come!”

“That’s what I’m hoping,” Akella said.

Once the second infant began crying, a third woke and cried out on its own, then a fourth. Somewhere beyond the dormitory’s single door, floorboards creaked.

With two long strides, Akella left the cribs behind and flattened her back on the other side of the door. She eased her sorcerer’s blade from its sheath and held it like a knife fighter of Fesul’s gladiator pits. On the other side of the door, heavy footsteps sounded against wood. Dez was a big man; he was big even after nearly starving to death on their unintended voyage to this eerie white city protruding from the mountainside.

Akella strained her ears. Was that one set of footsteps or two? Perhaps three?

The door swung open, blocking Akella’s view of the cribs. A broad-shouldered man stepped inside, his frame blocking the lantern light. But as he leaned in to the crib to reach the squalling babe, Akella caught a glimpse of his profile. It wasn’t Dez; it was another sailor, Fayzo, a young man who’d joined Akella’s crew for the first time just before their fateful last journey together.

One prick of the dagger. That was all Akella needed. But Fayzo had straightened again, an infant in his arms. Akella hesitated. What if he dropped the child when Akella struck?

She’d be ready if it happened.

Akella stepped out from her hiding space – only to come face-to-face with Dezmond as he stepped into the room.

Like all the shadow-possessed she’d seen in this city, Dez’s face was blank as a stone. He didn’t yell out in surprise or snarl in anger; he simply swung one of his huge, ham-handed fists at her face the moment he saw her.

Akella ducked just in time, slashing out blindly with her knife. But Dez side-stepped the blade and kicked, his booted foot catching Akella in the ribs. She let out a grunt as something cracked and tumbled over backwards. The rune marked blade clattered to the floor as she fell. Dez wasted no time, kicking her again in the small of the back the moment she was down. Akella rolled towards him, hoping to catch his foot and pull him off balance before he could kick again, but as she reached out, his boot caught her in the jaw.

Stars danced before Akella’s eyes, the shadowy dormitory spinning around her like a ship about to capsize. For one strange moment, Akella wondered if her head was actually still attached to the rest of her body, or if the room was spinning because her head was rolling away.

But her head must have still been attached, because she could see Dez was standing right over her now, gazing down with that impassive, blank face of the shadow-possessed. He lifted his foot over her face, and Akella realized it was for the killing blow – he was about to stave her head in like a ripe melon. Her fingers danced along the floor, searching for the lost dagger. There. Akella’s fingers closed around the hilt as the sole of Dez’s boot sped towards her face. She rolled away at the last moment, floor vibrating beneath her with the force of the near miss.

Akella lifted the dagger. One little cut. Just one little cut. But just as she readied herself to strike, something caught her wrist.

Fayzo. There was no longer an infant in his arms; he held Akella with one hand and some sort of object in the other – a bed knob.

The infants were all awake now, along with at least half the dormitory of previously sleeping girls. Akella’s ears rang with the sounds of crying children. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the little girl she’d first met, the one who’d told her she wasn’t supposed to be there, the preternaturally calm one, open her mouth to scream.

Don’t scream,Akella thought at her.

The girl screamed. The bed knob slammed against Akella’s face. Something crunched, and Akella felt the wetness of her own blood streak across her cheek.

Fayzo hit her again. Her right eye was going to swell shut in a matter of moments. If the room was a spinning ship about to capsize before, now it was a ship that had sunk beneath the waves. Sounds were muffled. Consciousness receded.

Preyla help me. I’m going to die here.

But maybe Preyla heard her prayer, because before the bed knob could strike Akella again, a third figure burst into the room. The figure was a blurry and swaying black silhouette to Akella’s barely conscious eyes, neither Order nor sailor nor child.

It yelled something in that language that sounded like rocks grinding against rocks, and both Dez and Fayzo instantly froze in place.

Addled as she was, Akella knew this would be her last opportunity to survive. Fayzo’s grip on her wrist loosened when the figure yelled, and Akella twisted her forearm hard, pulling her hand free. Before Dez or Fayzo could react, she flicked the blade out – once, twice. The tip of the knife caught Fayzo’s palm as he reached for Akella, then it bit through Dez’s pant leg. The last thing Akella saw before the dagger tumbled once again from her numb fingers and collapsed to hands and knees on the floor was a tiny ruby of blood against Dez’s brown skin.

Akella couldn’t say exactly what happened next. There was shouting in the rock-on-rock language, screaming coming from the children, the sounds of a scuffle. Then a man’s voice – in Adessian, then a grunt, then the sound of glass shattering.

The window broke,Akella thought dimly. Linna will be angry.

She passed out.