I shrink back. “H-He’s my father, Unach. They thought I was a traitor.”
She hums low in her throat. Steps to one wall of the corridor, then the other. “It’s a funny thing, Lark. My brother was so beside himself when we heard you’d been arrested. I thought it peculiar. You weren’t his servant, after all.”
We’re friends, I want to say, but the words stick to my throat like flour.
“And then he insists on speaking to the council himself.” Her voice takes on a low timbre. “And then you leave. And he is miserable. Uncharacteristically so. Azmar is a level-headed trollis. It takes a lot to rattle him.”
Fear, slick and oily, coats my belly.
She turns to me, her gaze a fire, and slams her fist into the wall. Were it not made of stone, it would have broken. “You lied to me, you little wretch.”
She lifts her other hand. Half-embedded into her palm is Azmar’s bloodstone, delicately wrapped in copper wire.
My heels fuse to the floor. “Wh-Where did you—”
“I took a tour of your room.” Every word is a well-aimed dart. “You think I don’t know what my brother’s bloodstone looks like?”
She whips the precious stone away. I want to grab it from her, but my arms refuse.
“You disgusting little maggot.” Her voice is little more than a whisper. It cuts me down to a stump. “I don’t know what you did, but you are nothing to us. Nothing to me, and nothing to him. The only reason I don’t denounce you to the city and feed you to a spreener is for him.” She juts her finger in the direction of the infirmary. “How dare you? After everything we’ve done—”
“Please, Unach.” I clasp my hands over my chest. “I love—”
She shoves me, and I stumble back, my shoulder colliding with the rough wall. The flames in her eyes have grown to a bonfire. Her mouth snarls like a feral dog’s.
“If I ever see you again, I will break every damn bone in your body,” she seethes. “I hope Grodd has his way with you. I hope you rot in the bottom of the canyon.” She reels back and shakes her head. “You disgust me.”
She turns her back and charges away, merging with the shadows, vanishing into Cagmar’s maze. My fingers dig into the rocky wall beside me, desperate to keep me upright. I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. I can’t get enough air. My blood flows too thick in my limbs.
I’ve lost everything, haven’t I? A jagged pain cuts from my crown to my ankles. I’ve lost everything. Crumbling on the spot, I hug my knees and weep into my shirt.
Cagmar’s chill penetrates to my heart, and absolutely nothing can warm it.
I haven’t been called to the south dock. My right to visit Azmar has been revoked, refusing me entrance into the infirmary. I haven’t seen Perg since I first returned; he’s with the army or scouts somewhere. Or perhaps he’s found reason to despise me, too.
The next two days become the most miserable of my existence. I wish I were a child again, pinned under my father’s thumb, na?ve to the world around me, unaware of the trollis except for the occasional story. I could better bear disdain in that awful house than revilement here.
I fear most that Azmar will join the trollis in their hate. He has reason to. I’ve stripped him of his accolades. I’ve ruined his relationship with his sister. I’ve caused him grave injury. I . . . I used my fear on him.
Andru left me when he saw me use it on an enemy. How much worse must it be to be the recipient of my horror?
The horn blows. Not the low bellow for monsters, but the higher note for war.
Four days after the open battle, the human army has returned.
Cagmar is an efficient machine, trollis marching even through the winding hallways of the city, but they don’t leave the strength of its walls. They wait, ready to rebuff the humans’ strike.
I must defer to every single one, so it takes me a long time to reach Deccor housing and slip out the window, retracing the path that earlier led me to so much despair. But I want to see. I have to see.
My sore arms shake by the time I lift myself over the canyon lip. I’m sure trollis guards spot me, but I’m well known, and none confronts me. To the west, the human army is marching in. How does it not look any smaller than before? Surely my father didn’t find reinforcements so quickly. There aren’t enough humans in all of Mavaea to supplement his battalion.
I crawl back down the canyon, pausing at a bump in the rock to catch my breath. An all-out siege, then. Are my kind so desperate? What tactics will they use? Will they fight their way into the city, or try to chop it down?
Letting out a shaky breath, I lean my head back against the stone. They won’t succeed. Cagmar is too strong. Even uprooting the Empyrean Bridge wouldn’t see it crumble—it’s too strongly embedded into the canyon walls. Yet how many people in the armies do I know? How many are just like me, or Ritha, or Wiln? Why must we kill one another?
If only I could scare them away, back to their townships. Back to the way life was. But there are too many, too many reasonable minds, too much scattered awareness. If I tried, they might respond by attacking each other, and I have no desire to dwindle the already floundering population of my own kind.
Opening my eyes, I peer down into the canyon, the endless depths below, and an idea creeps into my mind, so slowly I barely recognize it. It plants itself, a ready seed, and digs in roots. They spread through my entire body, down the sides of Cagmar, and into the pit of the canyon.
I cannot scare an entire army.
But I know the things that can.
I’ve only been in the waterworks once, when I was running from Grodd. The place is just as dark and empty now as it was then. It takes me a beat to find the pulley system the trollis use to lower themselves down to the bottom of the canyon. I find a closet, identical to the one on the south dock, loaded with swords, harnesses, and ropes. I strap on all three, choosing the lightest blade and strapping it to my back.
I have to do this before the trollis leave the city, or before the humans enter it. I will not harm the citizens of Cagmar. And I hope this will do less harm to my own people than the wrath of the trollis would.