“We have gotten the attention of Farin and the other kingdoms. They will attend the council now. But do you understand Farin’s intent? He is coming to the table with blood. And he knows you will react accordingly. You will go blood for blood, but you will lose, Butcher. Because that is what Farin wants. You will only prove that you are the villain he warns us against.”
Samson swallowed. “You think I shouldn’t react.”
“You should,” Jaya said.
“You shouldn’t,” Syla answered.
They stopped and glared at each other, the old king frowning, the gamemaster narrowing her eyes shrewdly, but it was Akaros who spoke first.
“You can’t run away from this, Sam. Not this time. Even gods have to fall on their own swords.”
Samson knew that look in his eyes, that astute calculation and witheredpragmatism, and suddenly he felt like a boy again. Lost and angry. Willing to do anything if only to stop hurting.
“I think it’s time we focus on amrithi,” Akaros said.
“Akaros,” Jaya warned.
“Amrithi?” Syla asked.
“Sam,” Chandi called.
But all he could hear were the miners’ desperate pleas for help and Akino’s cry of anger. Guilt, black and shameful, furred his throat like a parasite.
Samson swallowed. “No. Not yet. We haven’t exhausted all our options.”
At this, Akaros smiled, slow and cold. “You have, Haku. And one of them was Yassen. Why do you think I sent him to you?”
They sat in a courtyard underneath stars that shone like uncut gems. Yassen remained silent and still as Samson asked him about the special steel, but when he spoke, his voice came out rushed.
“No,” he said. “My father never knew anything about the steel.”
He was lying, but Samson loved him enough to accept it.
Samson knew Akaros loved to play mind games, and he remembered the torture he had endured at the cost of his shrewdness. The cost Yassen had ultimately paid.
“Yassen’s father never found the amrithi. Yassen didn’t know where it was either,” Samson said, his voice tight, but the look on Akaros’s face made him stop.
He thought then of Elena escaping through the tunnels, of the presence she had felt. His Agni always grew more aware whenever he traveled into the heart of the Sona Range.A metal so fine it could cut through steel.
He had spent suns trying to find it. Building paths underneath Chand Mahal, sending free Sesharians to work his tunnels and reassuring himself that it was better than the mines. That when they returned, they were still free men. And once it was done, he would journey through the dark, because if they found it, when they found his godhood… well.
Then the world would fear Seshar.
“Farin is getting closer every day,” Akaros said. “Better we find it first than him.”
“How close are they?” Samson said.
Akaros smiled at his eagerness.
His anger came, lightning fast, and when it struck, its sheer power frightened even him. Samson tucked his trembling hands behind his back and forced himself to remain calm before his old master.
“How close are they?” he repeated.
“What is amrithi?” Syla demanded.
“A legend,” Chandi said, a warning in her eyes. “There’s nothing there, right, Sam?”
“Oh, give up the hoax, Commander,” Akaros said.
