He blinked, momentarily too stunned to reach for her. “Chandi, that’s abomb. Move back.”
“What was their training mantra?”
“They, they—” He remembered his mentor’s voice, ringing through his ears as he lay on his stomach, wounded and punished. “‘Be persistent, be obedient, be wicked.’”
As he uttered the last word, his throat closing and then spitting the last syllable, the humming stopped. The sensors swiveled away, and the man dissipated in a rush of sand that gushed forward and brushed his feet. Reflexively, Samson took a step back.
There, floating where the man had been, was a metal lotus. It reminded him of the ones used to power gamefields. A blue light blinked in its center, and then flared.
“Ruru.”
And then he was drowning.
Salt water stung his throat as he swam with all his might. Blood darkened the water. He could not tell if it was his or his mother’s. His sister’s. But he could still hear their voices calling out to him. Warning him.
Run, Ruru, run!
The Jantari had rushed back to their boats, but he had ripped holes in their hulls with his urumi. A few tenacious fools jumped into the sea to chase him.Plop. Plop.Each successive dive rattled through his chest like the shock waves of a bomb, tightening his lungs as he spat out bloody water.Plop, plop, plop.The waves smashed him back. A stone pierced the wet, soft skin of his shoulder, and he opened his mouth to scream—and drowned.
Fishermen had found him, half-dead, holding on to driftwood.
A miracle, they called him.Blessed by the Great Serpent.
They had recognized him, of course. Son of the priestess, the last of his great family. They had ferried him away before the Jantari found his whereabouts, put him on a ship headed to Rysanti, only to whisper in his ear, with a deep urgency, to go to Ravence.
We refugees are welcome there.
But his arrival hadn’t felt like a welcome. They had looked down on him, called him a rat. Told him he was unwanted. And it wasn’t until he had found a boy with the eyes of a Jantari and the sweet tongue of a Ravani, a boy who had the same sharp angles and hunger in his eyes as he did, that he revealed his true name.
“Ruru.”
The thing spoke again. A low, strangled sound escaped Samson’s lips. He staggered, and through the haze of panic and pain and confusion, he was aware that the petals of the metal lotus had peeled back, revealing a small holopod.
“We come with an offer, old friend,” the pod intoned. “There are no conditions other than you consider it carefully. We await your response.”
The voice, clipped, staticky, ensnared him tight. It was faintly feminine.Chandi moved to grab the holopod when the lotus blinked once more, and another voice spoke, one horribly familiar.
“Sam, old boy,” Akaros said.
He flinched, as if struck. It had been many suns since he had heard that voice. A lifetime since he had been a broken boy bleeding out on the training floor, Akaros towering over him.You should have listened, Ruru.He moved to touch his back, his scars, before he realized what he was doing. Samson forced his hands down. He tried to steady his breath, but his heart tripped over itself.
“We know what you’ve been searching for. And we can help. Far more than your little queen.” There was a pause, a slight rustle, as if Akaros was shifting, and Samson could almost imagine him, his old tormentor, his once protector, holding the pod to his lips. “Yassen’s maps were true. Amrithi exists, but not where you thought.” He could hear Akaros smiling, that brute. “Remember, Ruru, you must be wicked.”
The light blinked off, and Chandi snatched the pod. The sensors and the lotus tumbled into the sand with a soft, muffled thud.
Samson stared. There was a wetness in his lungs, a pressure that swelled against the walls of his rib cage. If he spoke, he feared it would spill out. Bloody water so dark it could drown out the moons.
“Blue Star,” Chandi said.
“General,” Akino called from behind the boulder.
“They know.” His voice was a low rasp. He looked up from the fallen sensors, the spilled sand. He could almost taste blood, metallic and sharp, on his tongue. “They know about Agni and the amrithi.”
Chandi opened the pod, read the holos. Her mouth twisted. “They want an alliance.”
“A what?” Akino said.
“They…” Her voice trailed off as she looked up at Samson.
