“These are transgressions spanning centuries. My ancestors built this thing you see, this fake Os-Woorin, to use the Darfri religion against its own followers, to give them unearned authenticity. They pretended they honored and respected the land and its spirits but really they were just greedy for the future they wanted and willing to go to incredible lengths to get it. The most elaborate lie in our history. Look at it! All of that engineering, all of that skill, that artwork, put to use for such a purpose. The Chancellors and the Council have been betraying their own people—our own people—from the beginning, in a thousand small ways and some huge ones. I am ashamed. Ashamed for me and for my ancestors.”
Tain faced the west shore. “I’m here before you, unarmed,” he said. “You can shoot me down. But you need to know I will listen and learn if you’re willing to help me.” He paused, and though it was too far to see his face clearly from this distance, I fancied I saw him lift his chin, shut his eyes, as though waiting for the arrows that must surely come. Silence stretched out around me, and though I looked desperately for the person who would start the onslaught, no one moved. Yet. “Sjona—all it was meant to be, all it can be—is for all of us. I don’t deserve your help, but your children do, and their children. I think together we have to try.” The words sounded familiar and I realized suddenly that he had drawn from my sister’s suggestions after all. I fought down the hope and optimism at the thought of Kalina.
Then I saw the boat, just a small rowboat, moving from the east bank out to the statue. I counted two—or was it three—figures in it, but couldn’t see who they were. Meanwhile, Tain stood there, exposed and vulnerable to our side of the lake and all the enemies that might lurk among us.
I sensed sudden movement from the crowd near me, and ran toward it without conscious thought. He was close, so close I could see the sweat beading on his forehead as he drew the bow back, but there were people in my way, I wouldn’t get there in time.…
I lunged out, diving through a gap between two people, and slashed wildly with my sword at his bow.
The sword barely clipped the bow, but it was enough; the point caught in the limb tip and drove the bow down just as the mercenary released the arrow meant for Tain; it thudded harmlessly into the dirt and I was upon him, closing my elbow around the back of his neck and squeezing until he folded to the ground. I looked up to see three or four rebels staring at me. My breath caught in my throat. But then a voice rang out over the lake—not Tain’s, a woman’s—and all turned away from me, back to the lake. I craned along with them, fear redoubling inside me, a stone in my stomach.
I knew the voice before I even saw the figure.
“My name is An-Salvea EsLosi,” she said, her rich, gentle tone reverberating through the speaking trumpet. “And I stand here with Tain, with my daughter and my son, because I trust him. I believe you can, too.” My eyes fastened on the other figures: Hadrea, by the fortunes, Hadrea, and Salvea, and Davior, all standing there, with Tain, the last people in the world I could bear to lose. They crowded around the base of the great Os-Woorin statue, looking so small, water lapping around their legs. I could do nothing but stare, and hope.
“No one else needs to die,” Salvea said. “No one else needs to be hurt. I am here for surety, with all the things that are valuable to me in my life. I make myself vulnerable to you just as the Chancellor has.” She picked Davior up, clutching him to her hip. “Will not representatives for each region meet with us? Will Speakers not come forward and offer their wisdom?”
I looked around the crowd. Silence. But only for a moment; small, fierce discussions bubbled up between the rebel fighters in every direction, some erupting into larger arguments between the pragmatic and the passionate, the desperate farmers seeing a chance of going home and the true rebels, who would prefer to be slaughtered by Aven’s force than discuss peace with the Council.
And then, “I will,” someone called out. A round-bellied man with hair in a long tail down his back pushed out of the crowd, shoving to the front to stand on the docks by the lake. His voice rang out, unashamed. “We have no reason to trust the Chancellor or the Council, but I know you, An-Salvea, and I will take your surety.” He looked back at the crowd behind him. “I have family back home. I would like to see them again.”
Another person stepped forward, this time a woman, old enough that it surprised me to see her here, fighting. “And I,” she said. “I will take this chance. We will see how well this Council listens.”
The Es-Losis stepped back into their rowboat. At least a dozen rebels, clearly men and women of some influence, had come to meet them at the docks. Even several Speakers had emerged warily to join them. I could see no more mercenaries in the crowd, and no signs that the more zealous rebels would turn on their fellows rather than support negotiations. On the lake, where Tain lowered Davi down into his mother’s arms. I dared to feel the tiniest glimmer of hope, and its reflection all around me, from Silastians and rebels alike. We just might have our truce at last.
And then, as though my foolish optimism had conjured disaster like Darfri magic, it all fell apart.
A deep rumble sounded first, like underground thunder, and then a tremendous crack from the lake. It took a moment to identify the cause of the sound, but then people began pointing and screaming: it was the statue, the fake Os-Woorin, rent with a massive crack from base to tip. As we stared in horror more cracks shot off from the initial fissure and the great face slumped suddenly as half the head compacted and began to slide downward. I found my voice as I pushed through to the shore, against the sudden flow of the crowd. “Get out of the way!”
Of course Tain couldn’t hear me; he stood transfixed, staring up at the cracking, splintering statue, even as rubble rained down around him. Hadrea reached toward him from the wildly rocking boat, the screams of the crowd drowning out her yell, as if I watched a stylized silent play with actors in slow motion. I stumbled to the shoreline. Another huge crack made me jump. One of the Os-Woorin’s arms split from its torso and thundered down toward the water like a great swinging hammer and Tain finally—finally—jolted to attention. He spun and grabbed hold of the stern of the rowboat but instead of leaping inside it he shoved it away from the path of the falling arm with all the force of his body, so hard it sent him sprawling face first into the water. My shout echoed Salvea’s and Hadrea’s, lost in the enormous splash of rock into lake. The little boat was flung away with the ensuing wave and Tain disappeared from my sight.
“Tain!” I bellowed. Frantically I scanned the shoreline but of course there were no boats on the west side. The force of the wave sent water spraying up as it hit the docks and rose the tideline dramatically; people shrieked and ran from the encroaching water. Back on the lake, the EsLosis’ boat was still intact, Hadrea and Salvea soaking but upright, with Davi howling and clinging to his mother’s shoulders, but it had been carried twenty treads from the Os-Woorin. The great statue continued to falter and fall in slumps and crumbling chunks, and still I couldn’t see Tain.
“There!” Hadrea shouted, pointing with her oar.
Tain’s dark head emerged from the churning water. Whether he heard my relieved cry to swim for the boat or not, he began stroking away from the collapsing statue to where Hadrea and Salvea frantically tried to fight the artificial tide being created by the heavy plunging stone pieces. But each collapse sent them farther and farther toward the docks. Salvea looked at the docks, then Tain, then up at her son on her shoulders, and the agony on her face cut me to the core.