The Executioness (10 page)

The steel doors shut once we were through, startling the horses with a loud rattle of chain as a giant weight fell down along the wall, the chains holding it yanking at pulleys and more chains that slammed the inch thick steel doors shut. The Paikans led us through the cobbled streets, past fearful farmers camped with their livestock in what had once been markets, but were now shelters as they waited for the battles to begin.

We followed the Paikans up the steep, cramped streets, where we could hardly see the sky due to the two and three story buildings leaning in over us.

It reminded me slightly of Lesser Khaim, and I shivered as the horse’s shoes echoed loudly around us.

At the top of Paika a final set of walls ringed an interior castle. Again, chains and weights rattled to shut the doors behind us.

The Hierarch of Paika waited for us by the battlements, the wind whipping at his robes.

“The Keeper of the Way, the enforcer of the Culling, and the ruler of Paika, the hierarch Ixilon, will speak with you,” the negotiator told us, and waved his hand in a bow toward the hierarch.

From up here I could look out over the city, out into the fields where our armies gathered in loose clumps around the patchwork quilts of farmland and irrigation.

“I called you here to ask what it would take for you to surrender,” Ixilon said.

I folded my arms. “You could have sent a message.”

“I wanted you to see I was serious.” Ixilon held his hands out. “And I wanted to see this legendary Executioness with my own eyes. I wanted to know what it would take to get you to stop this suicidal attack.”

“You can give me back my children,” I said simply. “Their names are Set and Duram. I have traveled from Khaim past Mimastiva, and all along the spice road on the coast to your lands. I survived the unprovoked attack on the great caravan by your people, and now I have finally arrived.”

Ixilon looked down at the ground. “I did not know the names of your children. But I know that all the children from Khaim, where I was told you hailed from, have all left. They are on their way to the Southern Isles. They have chosen the Way. Their pilgrimage has begun. There is no calling them back until they are done. They have chosen the paths their lives will take them on.”

“When did they leave?” I demanded.

“You will not catch them…”

“When?” I shouted at him.

The hierarch smiled. “If you were to leave now, on horseback, you might catch the last of the ships that are leaving.”

I ran to the edge of the wall, looking at the roads down to the gates and out of the city. Anezka touched my arm. I turned and looked into her wide eyes.

“Will you go?” she asked me.

Would I go?

All I’d ever wanted was my family back. Could I have it by running for the harbor, far at the end of the valley? Or was it a trick?

Was it just a way for Ixilon to get me out of the way before the battle?

“You should surrender,” I told Ixilon. “If you want to offer things, offer guarantees that families will no longer be pulled apart. That the cullings will stop. That you will reign peacefully over the coast. Then maybe we can discuss your future.”

“I can only offer those things if you promise me that the bramble will cease appearing, or deliver me a way the bramble can be defeated,” Ixilon said. “The Southern Isles my people hail from are small and carefully maintained. The sickness your people create from these lands floats to ours.”

“You know I can’t promise you the end of bramble. It cannot be destroyed, it can only be burned and hacked back,” I snapped. “It is a curse we must all suffer.”

“Then the culling must continue, and magic use must be checked,” Ixilon said. “And we are at an impasse. Your people have to realize that there are consequences for your actions.”

“Consequences? You speak of consequences,” I spat at the raider. “Come stand at your walls here and look out at the consequences of your actions.

“Out there is an army that
you
have created.”

Ixilon did look out. Then he looked back at me. “It is hardly an army. You want me to surrender by giving me a great show of numbers. But there are barely four hundred men out there. The rest of your army is made of women. Old maids. They call it the Widow’s Army, and you’ve only had months to train them. I will plow through them, and my elephants will scatter your old women before us like dogs.”

“Indeed,” I said. “I’ve seen the remains of wars. And the men never seem to remember the women running from
the sword who guided the army’s packhorses to the frontline, and they always forget who bandaged the wounded through every skirmish. When the songs are sung about great battles, the women who helped sustain, feed, and build the army, who donated their husbands to the cause: they are always somehow forgotten. You forget that they are just as good at war as men. They fade in your memory only because they didn’t share the glory of the front line, even though they often shared the losses and deaths.

“Now, these women at your walls: you’ve ripped their lives from them. They have nothing to live for but revenge. Their daughters, their sons, and their husbands are gone. Their farms are burned, their means of living are nothing but rubble. They are the walking dead, and are animated for one thing only, and that is revenge.”

I walked over to Ixilon and stared into the calm eyes. “These women fear death little. Far less than the men you’ve paid to man these walls, or the ones who fight for some distant philosophy imported from your distant islands. Will your arrows stop the walking dead? Will your walls? Remember, this army welcomes death, because at least then it means they will find some sort of peace that has been taken from them! Can you fight an army created out of the pain of all who’ve lost their families Ixilon?”

I saw Ixilon’s eyes flicker toward the battlements, a seed of doubt in there.

He walked over and grabbed the walls. His face looked pale, his eyes tired, and he suddenly seemed as if he’d shrunken in on himself.

“It is a challenge to my faith that we have achieved so little here on this coast,” he said. “When we first came to Paika to spread the Way, we were attacked. After we took Paika, we built it up even greater so that we could protect our aftans and temples. And to defend ourselves, we trained larger and larger forces.

“You all were so resistant to the Way, and it was so much easier to teach to the orphans from your wars and collapsed cities, that soon it became easier to bring the collapse ourselves. It is often only in destruction that many can rebuild themselves. That is how it was with us.”

Ixilon turned back, and I realized the man was shaken. “These cycles will never stop. We will always destroy ourselves.”

“What in all the halls are you talking about?” I asked.

“He’s talking about the Way,” Anezka said. “Tell him to shut up, and let’s leave.”

But Ixilon ignored her. “The Five survivors found the Way. They were discovered on the Southmost Isle, forgotten, unable to build boats. The Five were all that remained of a whole island that had fought and killed itself, leaving the survivors to starve.

“My ancestors brought the Five back to the civilized isles. At first the Five grew fat and happy, and enjoyed the sweet breezes and palm shade. Until they observed war between the islands. They grew troubled, and were beset with visions of destruction and woe. They preached their visions on the streets together and starved themselves so that their ribs were like the hulls of half-finished ships.

“They were hung for inciting riots, but their martyrdom spread their message. Their visions of the future. And the Way spread: the understanding that the island of our world was all that there was. To reach out, to fight for things that could not be shared, would only bring us cannibalism, death, and the laughter of the gods.”

Ixilon looked at me now. “So I have brought destruction and chaos, but only to prevent even worse. I want to save this world.”

“By destroying it first,” I said.

“We are a practical people,” Ixilon said. “We are taught not to love things, to live austere lives and focus on productivity and wholeness. Some things that must be done are not inherently good. Even your people recognize this. It is like a parent spanking a child. Or like one of your leaders, who must use an executioner to kill magic users. We must pass the Way on, by any means, to your lands. It must be done.”

“Then you are locked into your path, and I mine,” I told him. “We are tools, forged by the ripples of what has been done, quenched in the blood of our actions.”

“Come,” Ixilon said, walking toward a turret door. “I have something to show you.”

We followed him as he opened the door into a dim room. Two guards stood inside, and at a table, a large form sat in manacles by a bowl of fruits.

“Jal, is that you?” I moved closer, and he looked up.

He raised manacle-stained wrists to shield his eyes from the light. “Ah, the Executioness. I hear you are at the walls with an army, now. You’ve come far.”

Ixilon stepped between us. “I could hand him back over to you. I could allow the caravan to run again.”

“It’s too late for that,” I said. I wasn’t going to suddenly change everything just because Ixilon had found Jal. He was no lover, or family member. Just an employer. An acquaintance. Ixilon had maybe thought I had been a caravaner, and that he was offering me a deal.

“I see that. Then I offer a mutual agreement. I will keep him here, safe for you,” Ixilon said. “If you promise me something. Because I believe you’re a person of your
word.”

I could hear the threat implicit. If I didn’t agree, Jal would be killed. Ixilon seemed to think that would weigh heavy on me. Let him think it. I didn’t care.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Do not kill the priests. Make them leave, but do not kill them. They teach the Way. They are not responsible for the culling. That lies on me, and the others who serve with me. The moral weight of the culling lies only with me and my soldiers. Would you agree?”

I looked back at Jal in the shadows of the room, then at Ixilon. “I will say yes. But only because I do not want to draw the judgment of Borzai for killing holy men, no matter what gods they serve. As we must all walk the halls of the gods someday.”

Ixilon nodded. “I’m sorry we could not come to a peace.”

“You forsook it the moment you rode with soldiers against children,” I told him.

We left him still standing, looking out over his city.

Back in the fold of the army I rode to Jiva. “He has nothing for us,” I told the warlord.

He looked up at the city and winced. He’d been hoping for a surrender. Somehow. But now he nodded and rode off to make preparations.

I raised up on the stirrups of the horse, and looked down the slope of the plains, off to the soft valley and the distant, sun glittered ocean.

Ixilon could have been lying that my children were there. It was definitely a distraction to get me away from the battle.

Yet, I would hate myself if I didn’t try to see for myself.

I turned my horse’s head to ride for the harbor.

But Anezka saw the move and grabbed my horse’s reins. “You can’t go,” she said, firmly.

“My children might be getting on boats to leave,” I said to her. “What would you have me do? It is the reason I came. Not to be in some great army. I came for them.”

Anezka yanked on the reins to pull me alongside her. The horses huffed and sidled flank to flank. “If you leave, everyone will watch you flee for the valley. Many are here because they follow the Executioness. Your name, your reputation, has spread far and wide. If you leave, it will confuse their spirit.”

“Their spirit? They are fighters. They are ready to avenge their families’ deaths.”

“Many of them will hear you’re leaving to find your children, and run with you, hoping to find theirs,” Anezka said.

I looked back at her. “As they should.”

“No!” She grabbed my arm. “No. They shouldn’t. Here we all stand, ready to end the Culling. Ready to stop the stealing of children, the destruction of our towns. You would throw away the chance to end all that for just your needs? You
are the mother to all these fighters, you created them. You are the mother to a new generation of people who will not live under the thumb of the Paikans.”

I slumped in the saddle. “I did not ask for all that. I am just Tana.”

“You are not just Tana, you haven’t been for months. And no one asks for the things that happen to them. You didn’t ask for Lesser Khaim to be burned, any more than I asked for the caravan to be destroyed. But it has happened. And now you can stop it from all happening again.”

I thought about Ixilon and his cycles of destruction, then straightened. I looked out beyond the mountain toward the slope of the land, where it carried on toward the coast, where Paikan ships would be leaving.

“I think you broke the last piece of me,” I told Anezka.

“You and I were already broken,” she said, and then she led me deeper into the camp, her arm still holding mine.

The sun was orange and fat over the plains in its midmorning bloat when the Paikans burst from their clanking gates. War elephants roared, the sound racing out across the fields to us as we formed up.