Schisms. James Wolanyk
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stinging memories, too painful to be surveyed in long stretches. Every so often she opened her eyes to Ramyi’s reflection and felt that same spark of anger, however old and conditioned it was. The girl had fallen into an immediate slumber on the sofa, long before Yatrin was able to fetch blankets to cover her, but it made no difference: Her shame was Anna’s and there was no simple way to release that. Nor was there any way to repair the rifts she’d surfaced, if not created, within the unit.
Yatrin’s touch chilled her; she sensed it before her eyes shot open, before she saw his silhouette looming behind her in the glass. He gently squeezed the sides of her arms, forceful enough to lure her out of focus without alarming her.
“This will pass,” he whispered. “You ought to get some sleep.”
“That’s the trouble, isn’t it?” Anna asked. “Everything will pass.”
“And what?”
“They’ll walk right over me in Golyna.” She shrugged her arms to loosen his grip, staring at her reflection and the passing black shapes that framed it.
Yatrin settled himself beside her. “Mesar’s a cunning man, but a good one. He has my trust.” In fairness, that meant a great deal. “Do you know what you’ve managed to assemble under your banner? All of those creeds, those strains of blood? They—we—left our homes and families for it. For you. So nobody is walking over you. We won’t allow it.”
Anna tried not to dissect the easterner’s words. He meant well, after all. She flashed a smile and put her hand atop his. “I wish trust came easily.”
“Anna.” His smile was monumental amid the scars and blemishes. “History remembers grand figures, but none of the advisers and stepping stones that made their vision possible. You ought to remember that.”
“I’ll try.” She glanced back at Ramyi, watching her blankets softly rise and fall. “And in the meantime, what do I do with her?”
Yatrin shifted closer and kissed the back of her neck. “Breathe.”
Chapter 6
From a distance, it was natural enough to regard cities as beings. Growing, shrinking, weeping, rejoicing: One could glimpse a city’s inner life if they were patient and perched atop the right vantage point. And after the Nahorans’ strange babble about states and pieces and living bone, it didn’t take much for Anna to treat Golyna as Nahora’s heart, some pulsing shard of its spirit.
The kator’s silent descent from the mountain passes to the central station seemed to mute the issue of loyalty and factions, if only for a short while. Yatrin had led Anna to the officers’ dining pod just before its panoramic windows revealed a world beyond blackness and carved stone, exploding into sunlight dancing on distant waves and mist rolling in the green thickets and Azibahli railways arcing away in argent strands, their kators resembling beads of water on string as they passed. Enormous reservoirs and patchwork plots of tilled farmland, some dotted with growers and their harvest baskets, covered the outlying western sprawl—the Crescent, by its eastern name. Boats crowded the four rivers winding north from Golyna’s canal gates. To the south, set black and bold against the morning sun, was a string of keeps and bunkers that extended from the mountains to the city’s outlying districts. The central city was nestled between cloud-shrouded, punishing mountain passes and a gleaming eastern sea, its surroundings more verdant than any of the stormy valleys that had broken the monotony of endless peaks and hillsides.
Anna was captivated by its ivory spires, its towers and terraces jutting out on impossibly thin, gossamer struts, its lush forests springing up from fortress rooftops and manor courtyards. She sensed something alien in its architecture; the needle-thin handiwork and fractal walls of the Azibahli were everywhere, forming sparkling bridges and railways and balconies in arrangements that defied logic. Malijad dwarfed it, of course, but that only meant that Golyna was less likely to consume her.
There was ritual importance to witnessing the transition from blackness to refuge, Anna gleaned: The walkways and dining terraces lining the windows had been swarmed with reverent easterners, both from Anna’s unit and the Nahoran military detachment onboard, long before Anna arrived. Little by little, the rest of Anna’s unit had trickled into the dining pod and stood along the glass, brushing shoulders with fighters they’d sworn to butcher just hours before.
“See?” Yatrin said, nudging Anna’s foot as they peered down from their dining platform at the line of wordless observers. He’d nearly finished their first course, a salad with slices of red and yellow fruit, though Anna couldn’t stomach it so early. “Sometimes knots undo themselves.”
But she knew how well grudges could sleep. Her attention revolved between Khara, Ramyi, who was miserably slumped over the window’s railing, and Konrad, whose laughter at a nearby Ga’mir’s table was too indulgent to be genuine.
“Many things do,” she said.
* * * *
Anna and Mesar assembled the unit in the rear of the kator, where a canvas-walled tunnel tethered a dimly-lit staging capsule to a secondary railway station. Konrad paced up and down his purple-cloaked ranks with as much austerity as his fellow officers, scrutinizing crooked buttons and scuffed boots. Meanwhile, Yatrin did his best to keep Ramyi upright, occasionally hurrying her to a grate where she could retch and compose herself away from the others. The other fighters seemed to hold pity, not rage, for the girl—exempting Khara.
One of the officers, a terse woman with short black hair, brought a crate with freshly pressed cloaks. She offered no explanation, but Anna and many of the easterners slid them on anyway. They were a typical eastern blend of weavesilk and wool; soft, yet dense, probably worth a small fortune in a cartel’s market. Certainly superior to the threadbare, ragged combat uniforms Anna’s fighters had patched for years at a time.
But Anna could read the hesitation on the southern and northern faces, the way they balked at the Nahorans and their patronizing gifts. “Come off it,” she said to them in river-tongue, seemingly to Mesar’s liking. “We’re guests.”
We’re at their mercy.
Guided by Konrad, Anna led their unit to a transfer station on the hills just east of the city. A sprawling canopy of weavesilk and thin leather covered the platform terminals, casting amber light over countless Nahoran fighters and auxiliary forces. Only there, above ground and basking in the winds that rolled down the mountains and howled off the tide, did Anna appreciate Nahora’s gentle breath. It wasn’t scorched like Hazan’s, nor frigid like Rzolka’s.
Opaque, tightly woven tubes rose from the misty slopes below, joined at their apex to the transfer station before curving back down toward the city proper. White cylinders bolted up the tubes, rattling the weaving and scarring it with smoking black streaks that teams of scurrying Azibahli engineers were quick to dissolve and patch. “The speed might rattle your bones,” Konrad said as he led Anna through the crowd, grinning at the unease of the Nahorans that stepped aside, “but you’ll get used to it by the third jump. Hopefully.”
They piled into the cramped cylinders and used weavesilk webbing to secure themselves along cushioned walls. Between kicks and glides along the tubes’ magnetic coils, Anna disembarked and allowed Konrad to guide her unit to the next transfer point. Anna had to admit that the Nahorans had skillfully used the terrain in their designs, carving their complexes into cliff faces and underground caverns. It was an alliance with nature rather than a brash challenge to it. Every new destination was undoubtedly closer to Golyna, but it didn’t feel that way to Anna: Many of the stations were manned by skeleton crews, grim-faced and worrying behind lever terminals, and the atmosphere grew more industrial with every jump. Anna did her best to analyze the plaques and convoluted capsule schematics they passed during their brief walks, but even the most basic Orsas script was lost on her. As long as Yatrin and his fellow easterners were calm, she supposed, things were under control. But there was nothing comforting about the ensuing stations, where copper pipes snaked along the walls and steam burst up through grates set into the rock.