The Drowning City - Amanda Downum [39]
The banyan still lived, though its leaves curled and drooped in the dry heat. Its root-tendrils had spread, stretching throughout the walls, dripping through broken roofs and pulling down houses. A forest made of one tree. Yellow dust puffed under her feet as she crossed the root-tangled yard. The slap of her sandals echoed like hammers.
A charm shivered warning a heartbeat before she walked into the trap, but she couldn’t stop in time. Magic enveloped her in a rank miasma, a net of pain and suffering distilled with time and purpose. Xinai tripped on a root and fell, bruising her hands on dry earth. The gentle cacophony of the jungle vanished as long-walled-off memories broke loose to swallow her.
She shudders as the lash falls. She lost count of the strokes after the fifth, can’t even feel the individual blows anymore, only the twigs that gouge her stomach, her nails cracking as she claws the ground. Pain is a red sea and she so much flotsam.
She only realizes that it’s stopped by the absence of the whip-crack over her sobs and roaring pulse. Booted feet rush around her; she feels them through the yellow earth beneath her cheek. Muddy now with blood and tears and sweat. Others still cry and curse and scream. At least they’re alive.
Xinai pries open her good eye and blinks away a film of tears. The other is swollen shut—she feels that pain clearly, and it nearly makes her laugh.
“Is she dead?” one of the soldiers asks. A boot lands in front of her face, leather dull with dust. She wonders if he’ll kick her, but she has no strength to flinch.
“Not yet,” another answers. “Do you want her for the work-gangs?”
The boot nudges her shoulder, flips her over. The blur of leaves and sky washes black as her back strikes the ground. She means to scream, but all that comes out is a teakettle whine.
“No.” The man above her is a blur of Imperial crimson. Red as poppies, their uniforms, red as blood. “She’d be dead before we reach the mines. Let her rot with the rest.”
She tries to roll over but only manages to turn her head. Through the forest of boots and red uniforms she sees other bodies limp on the ground, the earth trampled and soaked dark. Other villagers are roped together and dragged through the broken gates—neighbors and friends, clan-kin all of them.
“Mira,” she whispers, scraping uselessly at the dirt. “Mira.”
“What’s that?” the soldier asks in Assari. He crouches beside her, hands loose between his knees. His tone is nearly genial now that she has no fight left.
Another man’s shadow falls over her and she squints against the glare of sky through banyan leaves. Not a red-coat, this one. He wears green, with red stripes on his sleeves. Sivahri—a local guard. She closes her eyes against his traitor’s face.
“She’s asking for her mother,” he says, his Assari barely accented.
“She’s the leader’s brat, isn’t she? Your mother’s right over there, girl. You want to see her?”
“Captain—”
“What? She made her choice, didn’t she? She should see the cost.” He slides a hand under her shoulder and hoists her up. Not roughly, but she shudders as his fingers brush a weal. Her braids swing across her back, snagging on blood and torn flesh. “There.” The captain points toward the heart-tree.
No, Xinai told herself, struggling for control. It’s not real. It’s over. But she couldn’t break free.
Her mother slumps against the root-trunks, chin against her breast, long black hair wild over her shoulders. Her hand curls as if to hold her kris, but the blade is gone.
“Mira—” She rocks forward, catching herself on one forearm; the other arm crumples when her weight hits it. Like a three-legged dog she creeps forward on hand and knees. Pity the Assari should see her crawl, but she has no strength left for pride.
Her mother’s flesh is still soft, not even cold, only drained to pasty yellow-gray. Blood spills down her chest like a necklace of rust and garnets. The air reeks of raw meat and bowel and she can’t tell the smell of her mother’s death from her own sour metallic stink.