“She’s coming back,” he said hotly.She is, I know she is.“She wouldn’t leave Ravence alone to me. She’s going to raise an army, to help us in our war against Farin—”
Akaros barked a laugh. “Listen to yourself. ‘Raise an army to help.’Help?Help who, Sam, you or her? Your men answer to you. They’re devoted to you. If she marches in with her own army, you think they’ll liedown and swear fealty to your sword? Gods above, I didn’t realize time in the desert has made you so… desperate.”
The word ripped into him deeper than Samson anticipated, and he smarted. “Desperate? You’re the one who has come tomydoor, seeking my help.”
“Oh no, Sam,” Akaros said in a chillingly soft voice. “We were invited.”
At this, Samson stilled. He thought back to when they had discovered the man of sand, of how Chandi had insisted they at least consider the offer.Don’t you see? We can use them.
A bitterness festered within him, a ripening fruit growing on a gnarled and twisted plant.
“Don’t blame your commander,” Akaros said, watching his face. “She made the right decision. Now that your greatest ally has left you, I have become your greatest friend.” He leaned forward. “Without Elena’s Agni, you can’t take Farin’s mines. But we know how to destroy them without her. All I ask in return is amrithi.”
“But I do not have it.”
“Yet we both know only you can activate it.”
Samson inhaled sharply. “What do you know of amrithi?”
“‘A metal so fine it can cut through steel.’ A metal that can only be harvested by the god’s cursed son. You.”
“I am not giving you amrithi,” he growled. “Who knows what you intend to use it for—”
Akaros spread out his arms. “I don’t see anyone else coming to your aid. It’s a fair deal, Sam. Take it, or lose the mines. Take it, or watch Elena come back the conquering hero. Take it, andwin.”
Samson felt a hundred things at once, all of it dark, all of it hateful, burning into a black ball that lodged between his lungs and his throat. He wished he could think of something clever, something that could push him out of this corner where, deprived of friends, he was forced to make do with his enemy. But only Akaros sat before him. Only his old tormentor offered him a hand.
When he spoke, Samson’s voice was dry, weak. “How?”
Akaros grew still, eyes unmoving, perfect as a statue, and Samson had the feeling that if he somehow touched him, he would have felt rigid as stone. Then, slowly, he unfolded from his chair, all angles and long limbs separating and opening like the elegant legs of a spider.
“Look,” he said simply.
So Samson stood and watched. There, beyond the wall, multiple men crawled down the canyons.No, not men, Samson thought.Things.It was as if someone had dissembled the man of sand, then put him back together—but with none of the grace or heed of the natural order. There were arms. There were heads. They were people—of a sort. But they werewrong. Made of limbs that bent unnaturally and moved too fast. A great swath of darkness multiplying and building while the eerie susurration of sand filled the air. And they kept coming. Soon, they filled the gates and the canyons beyond, watching him with eyeless sockets.
Samson stared out at the unnatural army and thought, distantly, that if they succeeded, then a new kind of warfare would begin. One of fire and sand and nothing of mercy. He stood at the precipice of this distant future, and he could not see its end.
“We can send this army to overwhelm the Jantari while we take the tunnels,” Akaros said.
“When?”
“Whenever you need.”
Samson turned to him, remembering his promise to Yassen all those suns ago.I’m going to kill him, he had rasped. Akaros watched him, his face purposefully blank.
“How do we control them?”
Akaros turned, and a shape detached from the wall. At first, Samson thought it was one of those unnatural men, but as it came closer, he realized with a start that it was a woman. No, not a woman. A Yumi, with eyes of gold and hair so long and lethal he took an involuntary step back as she neared.
“Samson, meet our chief gamemaster, Jaya.”
CHAPTER 26
JAYA
After the fracturing of the great Yumi family, a Yumi must swear fealty to either the Yamni or Yamsiya sect. To choose something outside either is to choose death and abandonment.
—from chapter 16 ofThe Great History of Sayon
