“I’m ready… for the bed,” Tau said.
Zuri got out of the tub and walked to the bedroom. “Come, then,” she said, and he did.
SURVIVAL
Some spans later, hot, sweaty, and more at peace than he’d been in recent memory, Tau held Zuri close in the oversized bed. “Why can’t these moments make up the whole of life?”
She laughed. “Wait another span or two. You’ll be hungry and all you’ll want will be your next meal.”
“You’re all I need to survive,” he told her.
She rolled her eyes and punched him in the arm. “Silly man.”
He pulled her close, kissed her, then kissed her again, enjoying her nearness. “I feel happy.”
“Why do you make it sound like a question?”
Tau rubbed his shaven head. “Can it last?”
“Nothing lasts. We have these breaths, though.” Her eyes roamed his face. “You take yourself to Isihogo?”
He nodded, confirming her guess.
“Tau, do you have any idea how dangerous that is? If the demons find you they’ll attack and won’t stop until your soul thinks itself dead.”
“I fight them.”
“You can’t, they’re immortal. They—”
“No, I didn’t say I could. I do. I go to Isihogo to fight them.”
Zuri shot up into a sitting position. “What?”
He sat up as well. “Time is different there—”
“Yes, thank you, I taught you—”
“I needed more time to—”
“To what, Tau? To what?”
“To train, to fight, to become more than the time in my life can make me.”
“You fight the demons? Can… can they be killed?”
“No. I don’t know if they’re immortal or immune to attack or… I can hold them back, but…” He trailed off.
“They get you in the end,” she said. “Each time you go?”
He nodded.
“And you keep going?”
He nodded.
“How many times?”
He shook his head.
“You don’t know? You’ve lost count? By the Goddess.” She reached out, touching him on the shoulder. “Tau, if you have sense left, you have to stop. It’s dangerous.”
“I can handle it.”
“No, you can’t.”
“I’m fine,” he lied.
“The shaving knife in the tub…”
“I’m fine,” he said again.
“For how much longer?”
“For as long as it takes!” he said, his tone making her draw back.
She stared at him, eyes flitting about his face. “The Omehi don’t deserve the sacrifices you’re making.”
“You think too much of me.”
“It’s for vengeance, then? You’d see your soul burn for it? If so, you’re adding to the same evil you think your vengeance will lessen.”
“It’s for justice, and for that I’ll face any suffering.”
“Tau—”
“You think the world we live in is good enough? This same world where we can never be together? They will take you to a Royal Noble. He’ll force himself on…” Tau wrestled for control. “He’ll try for a pure bloodline, for future Gifted.”
“Please—”
“What am I to do when that happens? Should I bring tributes for the children you’ll bear?”
She watched him.
“We’re worth more than that,” he said.
Zuri put her hands on either side of his face. “I’m here with you now, aren’t I?” she said.
“Are you allowed to be?”
“I’m here.”
“For how long?”
“For these breaths.”
Tau shook his head. “They aren’t enough! I want more. I want to marry the woman I love, to have children with her, to watch them grow… with my father beside me.”
“Tau…”
“If I can be better than them, then any of us can be. The Nobles? They are great because we are on our knees. No more. I choose to stand.”
She lowered her head, eyes closed. “And what if all we’re owed, Lesser and Noble, are these breaths? What if the Cull happened for a reason and Xidda isn’t a test we’re meant to pass?”
“How can you say that?”
Zuri opened her eyes. “Because I’ve been at the citadel.”
Tau waited, letting silence prompt her.
“Gifted…,” she said. “Gifted are born with differences in their ability to shroud themselves in Isihogo. The weakest among us can enervate, grabbing power and releasing it quickly. The stronger of us can enrage, taking energy from Ananthi’s prison and using it to greatly empower a man, so long as the blood of a Greater or Royal Noble runs through his veins. Others can edify, delivering messages across distances in the mists of Isihogo that would take days in Uhmlaba.
“But the most powerful of us can entreat, calling out to any living creature that can reason. It’s why the hedeni bring no beasts to war with us, and it is why, in the early days, they burned our valley to ash. They sought to kill as many of us and as many animals as possible.”
“The hedeni burned the peninsula?”
“Down to the dirt. It’s why we have little else but insects, reptiles, and the few horses and other mammals that the Royal Nobles saved and now breed.”
“Can you entreat a man?” Tau asked, focusing on the thing she’d said that worried him most. Even speaking the words felt wrong, as if he might give the citadel a new and twisted thing to try.
“It can be done,” Zuri said. “But it is not. Entreating is an opening up of souls. It connects the Entreater and the entreated. Creatures of high reasoning, like women and even men, can fight the connection or hold it.”
“Fight it? Hold it?”
“If I were to entreat you, I would be half here and half in Isihogo. I would have to draw power from the underworld for as long as I wished to hold sway over you.”
“This is why you have to be powerful? You need to hide from the demons the entire time.”
“Yes, but it’s more dangerous than that. If I entreated you, then you could hold me in Isihogo just as I hold you. You could keep me there after I’d exhausted my ability to hide.”
“Until the demons found you?”
“Yes,” Zuri said. “Yes. And… it’s why one of us dies every time a dragon is called.”
Tau started. “What?”
Zuri licked her lips, never looking away from his face. “The Gifted hold an immature dragon captive under the Guardian Keep.”
“They do what!?”
“The youngling is chained, masked, and kept enervated by a group of Gifted called a coterie. There are tunnels connecting the Guardian Keep and the Gifted Citadel. The tunnels give us constant access to the youngling. They allow us to rotate out wearied Gifted and bring in fresh ones. In this way, we keep the youngling enervated indefinitely.”
Tau could barely speak. “Why?”
“To control the Guardians. We think they may originally have come into our world through Isihogo.”