A Wasteland of My God's Own Making Read online

  He was soon gone. The heavy tread of his steps on the pier slowly faded, but the stink of his musk lingered. Djaga found herself breathing hard, her hands shaking. Worst of all, though, was the fact that the hunger in her had exploded like a dawning sun inside her. It took all her effort to sit, to pick up her spoon, to spoon the now-tasteless soup into her mouth.

  Nadín said nothing, but she knew everything Djaga was feeling. Djaga could tell by her cold silence.

  ❖ ❖ ❖

  Late that night, Nadín lay by Djaga’s side in the ship’s lone bunk. Nadín’s skin was warm against hers. They way she and Nadín had made love after, in such a mechanical way, had made her feel worse than when Hathahn had left. Afua and her machinations had ruined that as well.

  Nadín raked her fingers over Djaga’s short hair. It was normally a thing that felt so good. Tonight it grated. She let Nadín do it anyway. She knew it was Hathahn’s doing. She’d already felt out of sorts before he’d come to the ship, but it had only been magnified by the strange way he’d spoken to her, as if he could browbeat her into fighting him.

  Say what you will, she could hear Afua saying. He was only telling you the truth.

  Somewhere out in the desert, the grunts of a black laugher were followed by the yip of a jackal. Nadín stilled her movements, then pulled Djaga’s jaw toward her until they were eye-to-eye in the moonlight spilling through the nearby porthole. “Why did you never tell me all of this?”

  Djaga shrugged. “How could I?”

  Nadín smiled a knowing smile. “One word at a time.”

  “Each describing my shame more fully.”

  Nadín shook her head. “There’s no shame in the truth. You were only trying to please your goddess. And there’s no shame in asking for help, either.”

  A tear slipped from the corner of Djaga’s eye, a tear which Nadín wiped away. “I don’t know what to do, my love. I keep asking myself how I can please her. She’s insatiable. I feel her, always, gnawing at me from the inside. It’s already growing worse. She wants more and more.” She went on before Nadín could reply. “I know you think it will pass in time. And there’s a part of me that hopes it’s true, but I worry she will never let me go for what I’ve done. I worry my debt will never be paid. Not until I pass beyond these shores.”

  Nadín was quiet for a long while. She licked her lips before speaking. “Could there be truth to it?”

  Djaga knew exactly what she meant. “Of course there could.”

  “But there’s no way to know.”

  “No.”

  Nadín used her fingers to rub away the tear in Djaga’s other eye. “Will Osman find a better fighter than Hathahn?”

  Djaga weighed her words carefully before speaking. She thought she knew where Nadín was headed, but she didn’t want to influence her. “One never knows. But Hathahn is as vicious a fighter as Sharakhai has seen in decades. Those that have been watching the pit fights for generations all say it is so.”

  “Then fight him,” Nadín said. “If you don’t, and Sjado continues to haunt you, you’ll always wonder if he might have freed you. And in him you can be freed of your guilt. He wants to die, Djaga. It’s like the goddess herself set this task before you. I don’t wish you to fight, but you’ve one last fight ahead, so do this. Fight him. Send him to meet his god. Deliver his pride to his family.” She leaned in and kissed Djaga, her lips warm and supple. “Free yourself.”

  Freedom. The very word felt foreign. She’d been running from her own past, her own goddess, for years, but it had gotten her nowhere. No, she thought, it brought me to Nadín. And yet it felt like a mirage. She’d been telling herself for years that when she found someone, she could leave the pits behind. Surely the goddess wouldn’t keep hold of her forever. But now it seemed she would. Her love for Nadín would not last if the goddess continued to gnaw at her day and night. Or at the very least, Nadín’s love for her would not last. It would whither away like a rose cut and left beneath the desert sun.

  Afua wouldn’t have come all this way to betray Djaga again. She had a debt to pay, and she was paying it. High time she started to take responsibility for what had happened.

  This time, she was the one to lean in and offer a kiss. When she pulled away, she stared into Nadín’s beautiful brown eyes. “I’ll do it.”

  ❖ ❖ ❖

  The crowd in the central pit was as large as Djaga had ever seen. Thousands were packed so tightly a man could hardly raise his arms to cheer. But cheer they did. The sound of it was like a wall of sound pressing in on her and Hathahn, who paced across the dirt floor opposite her, staring at the crowd and waving his hand as if he were the savior of Sharakhai.

  Osman’s pits were not killing pits. Osman had never had a taste for it—it wastes lives needlessly, he’d told her more than once—but all knew that this match would be to the death. It had drawn the rich from far and wide. The merchant class. Those born to money. People from a dozen nearby caravanserais had traveled to Sharakhai merely to attend. The highborn of Sharakhai stood in the four boxes set aside for lords and ladies of such means. None of the Kings had been announce by Pelam, but Djaga wouldn’t be surprised if one of them had come in disguise.

  Of all the people in the pit, Djaga watched only for two: Nadín and Afua, neither of whom were in attendance. She knew Nadín hadn’t come, for Djaga had set aside a seat for her to the right of Osman’s box. And though Djaga searched for her in the avalanche of faces around her, she knew Afua was gone as well—she would have felt her presence otherwise.

  She had little time to wonder at Afua’s absence, however, for Pelam was already introducing her. Even five paces away she could barely hear him as he called, “The Lion of Kundhun!” When he waved, the ground beneath her shook from the stomping, from the unified, undignified roar of the crowd. It went on a long while, and Djaga needed every bit of it. As hungry as she’d been for battle in the days leading up to this bout, she was confused now. Worried. But she knew she would need Sjado if she was to have any chance of defeating Hathahn.

  Like a virtuoso actor who knew how to draw just the right notes of emotion from his audience, Pelam waited until the din had diminished. Only then did he wave to Hathahn and introduce him as the Butcher of Malasan, a title he’d earned time and time again in the pits. Again the crowd’s frenzy built on itself. In all her time in the pits, Djaga had never seen the like, but she was beginning to master her emotions at last.

  She paced the pit floor, swinging her arms in circles, flexing her muscles to loosen them. The voice of the crowd deadened in her ears. They became little more than a part of the pit, akin to the walls, akin to the vault of the open sky above them. Her attention was now for Hathahn and Hathahn alone. He was not merely calm. He was like a statue, standing tall, his broad face utterly serene. Only his eyes moved as Djaga paced the pit floor. He hardly seemed to be breathing.

  It was likely a way to put her off balance, but if that was so, it wouldn’t work. Djaga could feel the goddess once more. I ask not for your favor, Sjado. I ask not for your favor. I only give what you require…

  They were words she’d spoken thousands of times. The only way the two-faced god had ever acknowledged them was through the rage that built within Djaga. Sjado might consider that answer enough, and Djaga had never presumed to ask for more, but today was different. She needed more. She deserved it after this long in the service of the two-faced god.

  She stopped her pacing and faced Hathahn. “This day,” she shouted, her words lost in the terrible din like smoke in a sandstorm, “I would know the truth!”

  This was her last hope. She would either die or she would kill Hathahn. And if killing him didn’t work, she would know that her efforts in the years since that terrible day in her village had been in vain. She would know as well that the curse laid upon her since she’d slain her friends and family in Kundhun was permanent.

  The crowd hushed as the weapons were brought out by three pit boys. Hathahn chose a pair of beaten
battle axes. Djaga took two khopeshes, the sharply curved swords of the grasslands. Pelam now stood between them, his small brass gong in hand, mallet raised high. In an instant, the noise of the crowd hushed. The moment Pelam struck the gong, Djaga charged forth, releasing a battle cry as she moved to meet Hathahn in battle.

  Hathahn met her onslaught with apparent ease. He blocked her swings, the sound of her blades on the metal haft a ringing call to the heavens. Twice in that early flurry he tried to hook a khopesh with the head of an axe and rip it from her grasp, but she was ready for it and used the momentary opening to snap a kick into his stomach.

  By Sjado’s black breath, he was solid. He was also as smooth a fighter as Djaga had ever come across. There were no wasted movements as he blocked and retreated, as he swung his axes in tight arcs before him. He was playing a long game, hoping to let Djaga wear herself out. But she was well used to such things. The power of Sjado urged her on, to draw blood, but she bottled the desire, used it instead to build her own anger.

  Slowly, as sweat glistened upon their skin, as their weapons bit and took small nicks from their armor, her rage built like the glow of forge-kissed steel. She burned from it, red then orange then yellow then white. With each blow she released a powerful shout. They became more ragged, then slid into a roar as all her frustration from her time since leaving the grasslands for the desert—the shame over what she’d done to her own people, her feelings of abandonment by Afua—came out in one long outpouring, an offering for her god that she might have mercy.

  Hathahn was methodical in his defense, axes pinwheeling to block Djaga’s swords, helm or greaves or pauldrons taking the blows when Djaga was too quick. But then he did something that showed why he’d won so many matches in the killing pits. He waited for the perfect moment, driving through her defenses like a battering ram. Djaga retreated, scoring a deep cut into the meat of Hathahn’s thigh, but he was on the move now, dropping an axe and grabbing her wrist as he came. He bulled forward, sending her crashing into the wall behind her. He drove his helm onto the crown of her head.

  Hathahn stood in sharp contrast to Djaga. His eyes were serene. His breath smelled like freshly turned clay. He was a pinnacle of stone rising above the sand dunes, calm in the face of the storm.

  “Come, you goat fucker,” Djaga said. “It’s time to fight.” She dropped the sword in her free hand and sent two quick uppercuts into his jaw. Again it felt wrong, as if he were not flesh and bone, but something else. “Are you there, Hathahn?”

  His only response was to stare with those deadened eyes and to twist her wrist. She immediately pushed away from the wall with all her might. When he tried to press his weight against her, she crouched low, grabbed one tree trunk of a thigh with her free arm, and lifted with all her might.

  She knew immediately something was wrong. She’d lifted men his size before, but Hathahn was much heavier. And his skin was hot. As she powered him backward, he swiped at her with his axe, she felt the weapon bite, felt the burn spread near the base of her spine, but there was nothing for it now.

  She drove him down to the ground, then rolled over him, twisting her arm free in one violent motion. He grabbed for her. She leaned away. He swiped for her ankles with his axe, but she was ready for it. She kicked the weapon’s haft, halting it, then grabbed his wrist and dropped, snaking her legs around his arm. She leaned back, applying as much leverage to her lock on his arm as she could, wrenching it over and over until she heard a crack like the snapping of stone.

  He’d held onto the axe the entire time, but when his arm broke, he’d released it. She took it up in one hand as she straddled his waist, then lifted it high in the air. She swung it down with all her might, sure Hathahn would try to stop her. But he didn’t, and the head of the axe came down onto his helm, sundering it and his skull beneath. Blood leaked from the wound. It smelled acrid, though. Sulfurous. And his eyes. Jonsu’s grace, they stared through her as if he were lying on a field of daisies staring at the deep blue sky.

  As a long, guttural sigh escaped him, Djaga stood.

  Chest heaving, she turned, ignoring the eruption of the crowd as they cheered for her. She looked desperately for Nadín, already knowing she wouldn’t find her. A feeling of cold invaded her. Nadín was missing. Afua was gone. And now this—she stared down at the body lying at her feet—this thing that was not Hathahn. Had the tales of Malasan not spoken of golems created to mimic those whose blood had been taken? Surely this was one of those, make to look like Hathahn.

  The door to the pit’s subterranean tunnels had been slid open. Pelam was walking toward her, ready to raise her hand to the crowd, but she sprinted past him. She ran down the cold tunnel, through the labyrinth, and out the rearmost exit. Breath ragged, she willed her burning legs to keep pumping as she pounded her way toward the western harbor.

  ❖ ❖ ❖

  When Djaga reached the quayside, old Ibrahim the storyteller was there. For some reason he was walking toward her. “Best you come with me,” he said as she came near.

  “What’s happened?”

  He took her by the arm and led her toward an alley.

  “Where are you—” Djaga stopped, for ahead there was a crowd gathered. A body was being lifted onto a cart. Blood coated the broken stones of the street. She rushed forward and saw what she already knew. She’d known from the moment she’d sprinted from the pit.

  Those gathered tight around Nadín were from the harbor. The stevedores. The shipwrights. The merchants. The people Nadín had known all her life and whom Djaga had come to know through her. They stared at her, ashen-faced. Djaga moved to the cart’s side and, by the grace of the gods, found Nadín breathing shallowly, staring up at the sky not so differently than Hathahn’s dead form had done only minutes before. The way her hands were laid tenderly over her stomach—as if she’d simply eaten too much—was so incongruous with the bloody reality laid out on the bed of the cart that Djaga nearly retched.

  She brushed the hair from Nadín’s eyes. Leaned down and kissed her forehead. “Tell me what happened, my love.”

  Nadín blinked, her eyes distant. With effort, as if she were pulling her gaze away from the farther fields, she turned to stare into Djaga’s eyes. “Hathahn.”

  The cart lurched into motion, the mule and the driver leading them toward the medicum. “What of him?” Djaga asked, moving to keep pace. Nadín swallowed. Licked her lips. Djaga took her hand and shook it. “Nadín, what of him?”

  Nadín lifted one hand and stared at the blood, a deathbed smile distorting her features as if she still couldn’t believe what had happened. “I’ve been stabbed.”

  A blade of ice slipped into Djaga’s heart. “Nadín, quickly now!” She cradled Nadín’s neck and shook her gently lest she slip back into unconsciousness. “Tell me what happened.”

  The look of confusion on Nadín’s face was profound, as if with the answer to this question she could die in peace. “I was getting ready to leave for the pits when a messenger girl came. She said there was someone I’d be interested in seeing on the Condor’s Wake. I told her I didn’t care.” She squeezed Djaga’s fingers. “I told her I needed to go see you, but she said you were being fooled, that you were in danger, so of course I went. I saw five men preparing her to sail. I watched them for a time, but saw nothing strange. I was ready to leave when I heard his voice.”

  “Hathahn’s?”

  As the cart trundled around a corner and onto a wider thoroughfare, Nadín nodded. On even ground now, they began moving faster. “I dropped to the sand and moved to the rear of the ship. I saw him inside the rear cabin, talking to a man.” She rolled her head back and forth. The pinch of her eyes wrung tears from them. “They saw me. They shouted for me to stop, but I ran. I ran across the whole of the harbor and then up to the quay. I was ready to make my way toward the pits, toward you, my love, when something flashed to my right.” She lifted one shaking hand, coated in red. “And then this.”

  “Who?” Djaga asked, some
how already sure of the answer. “Who did this to you?”

  Nadín shrugged, but winced immediately and fell still, her breath coming in short gasps filled with soft, pitiful moans. “I remember the pain. I remember falling to the cobbles. I saw the hem of a thawb, but that was all, and then they were gone.”

  “Was it Afua?”

  Nadín took a long time to respond to this. She looked as though she were debating. “I have no love for your cousin, but I cannot say.”

  They reached the front steps of the medicum, where a stretcher and two attendants were already waiting. As Nadín was being lifted down to the stretcher, Osman and three dirt dogs from the pits came running up from the direction of the harbor. They were all breathless.

  “What’s happened?” Osman said, his black brows pinched as he stared down at Nadín.

  Djaga’s fingers flexed. Her lips drew back as her lungs forced hot air through bared teeth. She’d never felt so out of control, not since Sjado had granted Djaga that first, cold kiss. She paced along the amber paving stones, staring at the buildings opposite the medicum. She wanted to tear them down. She wanted to tear the whole city down.

  Osman took one step closer, reaching a hand out but stopping short of touching her. “Djaga, what’s happened, girl?”

  She stopped, glared at Osman. “A betrayal.”

  Osman glanced back at the dirt dogs, fighters from the pits that Djaga knew were very good. “You need help?”

  Djaga hardly had to think about it. “Yes.” But she couldn’t do this alone. “Come,” she said, and then they were off, running back toward the harbor.

  ❖ ❖ ❖