Vessel

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Liyana woke before dawn. She burst out of her tent and scanned the horizon. Black shadows, the tents of the emperor’s army, still filled the eastern view. Gray blue, the predecessor of the dawn, tinted the east. She saw a flash of distorted stars overhead—a sky serpent twisting in the sky. Ever since the clans and the army had pitched their tents at the foot of the forbidden mountains, the sky serpents had circled overhead. Liyana hoped that they would convince the emperor to retreat. But still he sent his messengers and made his demands.

Her heart raced, and she didn’t know why. Bayla. There’s something wrong. Something woke us. I don’t know what it is.

Bayla was silent for a moment, and then she said, I do not see the emperor’s guards.

Guards typically paced the perimeter of the emperor’s camp. Liyana had gotten used to seeing them, a distant audience, as the clans went about the business of establishing their base. She had also become used to the sounds of the large camps as they drifted across the desert—their horses, their cooks, their hunting dogs, their endless practice drills. It was never quiet. Until now.

Liyana accepted the magic from Bayla as easily as catching a ball, and she flowed across the desert to the emperor’s encampment. She expected to touch the souls of the sleeping soldiers. . . . But she felt no one. Bayla, they’re gone!

An army that size cannot vanish. Check further out.

Keeping herself tethered to her body, Liyana sped beyond the camp. She swept the distant horizon, and she circled the clans’ tents. And then she found them: fanned out on either side of the clans’ tents. The army had split into two forces. Each soldier was shoulder to shoulder with another. Row after row of them marched toward the clans’ tents as if to squeeze the desert people between them.

Pulling back, Liyana sucked in air to shout, “Attack! Coming from the north and south!” She ran through the camp, sounding the alarm.

Around her, the men, women, and children from her clan poured out of the tents. As per the plan, young children were shuttled by older children to the center tent. Also in the center was the clan’s precious water supply. Circling the children were those too elderly or infirm to be nimble. They armed themselves with spears and stakes, long-reach weapons that would slow anyone who broke through the outer defenses. All the able-bodied men and women rushed to the edge of camp. Liyana knew this was repeated in other clans with minor variations. For example, in Korbyn’s clan, the children laid traps around their tents, and the elders of Maara’s clan dipped every weapon in scorpion poison.

Half the clans clustered to the north of camp, and half to the south. Readying their weapons, they waited for the armies to appear. Liyana pushed through the warriors, looking for Korbyn. His clan had dispersed and was distributing a variety of “surprises,” including throwing knives dipped in snake venom and ropes made of tough-as-wire silk that could trip horses. Everyone had a knife, sword, or bow—though as prepared as they all looked, Liyana knew that most had never used a weapon on a person.

She found Korbyn on the north side. Moving forward, the army stirred a cloud of sand. Each soldier was clad in armor, and each held a weapon with practiced ease. Softly she said to him, “If the soldiers reach us . . .”

Korbyn nodded. “We won’t let them.”

He reached out and took her hand, and together they retreated to Korbyn’s tent. The others deities were already waiting for them—eleven total, including Sendar and Maara. As Liyana and Korbyn entered, they all positioned themselves in a circle on blankets.

“Since Liyana does not need to be in a trance to work magic, she will coordinate our efforts,” Korbyn informed the others.

A few deities whispered to one another.

Sendar scowled. “I will not obey a—”

Do not prove yourself to be a horse’s ass, Sendar, Bayla said. Out of respect for me, you will cooperate. Liyana repeated her words, and Sendar fell quiet. Other objections were similarly quashed, primarily by Bayla.

Korbyn squeezed Liyana’s hand. “Be clever, and be quick.”

Around her, the deities closed their eyes and fell into trances. Liyana felt Bayla disappear for a moment and then return with the familiar flood of magic. Using it, Liyana expanded throughout the tent. Beside her were the souls of the deities. Each flickered like a ball of lightning. She spread further, blanketing the camps of the clans, and then she crossed the desert to touch the frontlines of the two halves of the emperor’s army.

Circling around the deities, Liyana whispered in the ears of four of them, “Water. Summon water to the surface twenty feet in front of the armies. Create sinkholes and quicksand. Oyri, draw your worms to the water.” The chosen deities pulled the water up from the bedrock. It weakened the sand. Patches of quicksand blossomed in the path of the emperor’s soldiers. Liyana flitted from patch to patch, widening them.

She ordered four of the deities to stir the winds, and she directed them toward the frontlines. Sandstorms whipped toward the soldiers. Wolves howled within the storms. Guided by Liyana, the deities blocked the storms from touching the desert people and channeled them through the ranks of the emperor’s army.

Maara called the scorpions from the surrounding desert, and the Snake Clan deity summoned the snakes. Numbering in the thousands, they scurried over the desert floor and swarmed the feet and ankles of the soldiers.

From deep below the ground, massive worms moved through the rocks, churning up the earth beneath the feet of the army. The sand shook and tossed rocks as the worms attacked the water. Some burst through the surface. Liyana heard the desert people cheer, and she heard the soldiers scream.

Leaving the deities, Liyana bolted out of the tent. She looked across the camp to see her people side by side, watching. They had not moved. Across the desert, the army was lost in a writhing mass of sand.

“Retreat,” Liyana whispered at the army, knowing that even if she had shouted, the emperor couldn’t have heard her over the sounds of dying. “Please.”

She sent her consciousness out again.

At last she sensed the bulk of the army pulling away. She ducked back into the tent. “Hold the line. Do not let the water seep farther. Keep the scorpions and the snakes here.” She guided each deity, drawing a ring around the clans’ camp.

Breaking his concentration, Sendar began to object. “We could defeat—”

“Do not chase them,” Liyana ordered. “Keep the sandstorms high. But hold them.” Controlled destruction would be more impressive and terrifying than chaotic annihilation, but there wasn’t time to explain that to Sendar.

As the deities continued to pour more magic into the battle, the empire’s soldiers ran from their ring of death.

Sendar opened his mouth again, and Liyana clapped her hand over it. “Silence, or I will silence you.” As magic swirled inside her, Liyana meant every word. She felt Bayla’s surprise, and she ignored it, keeping her eyes boring into Sendar’s until he backed down.

As Sendar sank back into his trance, she threw her magic toward the armies to corral the winds. “So long as the emperor does not attempt to pass,” she said to all the deities, “we will not harm them.” It was the same bargain that the sky serpents had made long ago with the people of the turtle. Liyana bet that the emperor would understand her message.

All the clans celebrated.

Not a single warrior had been harmed, and not a single soldier from the empire had crossed the deities’ defenses. As the celebrations stretched into the night, Liyana walked through the camps. She heard men and women swapping stories, and children chased each other in games as if they were at a fair. Everyone was outside under the stars. In several places, people were dancing. She heard music from various sections of the camps: flutes and drums and voices. People flowed from clan to clan, blurring the invisible boundaries between the camps until they felt like a single clan.

She wished she felt like joining them. But as the deities recovered, she’d used the quicksand pits to bury the empire’s dead, and then she’d let the water disperse back into the bedrock. Without the moisture, the earth hardened above the bodies, and the wind swept the sand clean. Spread across the desert, she had felt it all happen. So many lives, ended.

She walked to the edge of the camp beyond the singing and the laughter, and she looked across the expanse to the emperor’s camp. She didn’t see the guards, but she saw movement between the tents. She imagined that they were dealing with their wounded— and with their fear.

“It isn’t over,” Korbyn said behind her.

Liyana jumped and then nodded. He was right. Though many had died, the empire’s army still vastly outnumbered them. “They won’t underestimate us again.”

Maara was with him. “Did you see the size of that army? That was stamp-on-us-like-we-were-bugs size. Hardly underestimating us.”

“The magician was not in the battle,” Korbyn said.

Liyana nodded.

“One magician?” Maara snorted. “Most likely he stayed out of it because he knew we were here. Come, you two, celebrate with us.” Swaying, she spread her arms wide.

Liyana studied her. She’d seen that look in Raan’s eyes once, the first time they’d met. She noted that Maara held a waterskin. “The emperor won’t leave easily,” Liyana said. “He believes that the mountains hold the key to his people’s salvation.”

Maara shook her head. “Trust me. No one is sticking around to face us after that display! Whoo, did you see those worms? One of them swallowed a soldier whole.” As if to emphasize her point, she took a deep swig from the waterskin.

That soldier could have been one of the ones who Liyana had seen in the emperor’s encampment. She pictured the pinched cheeks and gaunt bodies. She wondered who the soldier had been there for—had he had a wife at home? Mother? Sister? Brother?

“I think you have had enough to drink,” Korbyn said to Maara. “Sober yourself up or sleep it off.”

Maara leveled a finger at him. “You used to be fun.”

You have changed him, Bayla said to Liyana.

Because he cares about more than himself? He— She broke off her own thought. I don’t want to fight right now. She rubbed her eyes. She felt sore inside and out. There’s been enough fighting. And then she knew what she had to do.

Without speaking to any of the deities, including Bayla, Liyana walked away from the camp. She stopped when the voices and music and celebration faded into a blur. She was a quarter of the way to the emperor’s camp. Bending over, she ripped off the white bottom ruffle of her mother’s dress. She broke off a stalk from one of the dead desert plants, and she wrapped the ruffle around the top.

Following her, Korbyn caught her arm. “Liyana, they’ll kill you.”

“The emperor wanted to parlay.”

“With all the clan chiefs,” he said. “And that was before. Now—”

Liyana faced him. With his hand on her arm, he was close. His eyes bored into hers. She was aware of his lips and how they frowned at her, and she remembered how they felt on hers. She felt Bayla stir inside, swirling. I have had enough fighting, Liyana told her again before she could say a word. Out loud she said to Korbyn, “He’ll speak to me.”