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.
If the captain laughs, she knows she’ll throw herself at him, fight until he kills her and she joins her mother in the twilight lands. But he turns away, indifferent to her grief as he is to her life, and begins overseeing the removal of the last prisoners.
The Sivahri guard watches her, weary lines carved on his face. Forest-clan, she guesses. He could be kin to any of the bodies that litter the dust. His uniform is damp with blood and sweat.
“I’m sorry,” he says softly in Sivahran.
She was wrong—she does have some pride left. Xinai spits. It strikes the dirt yards from his boots, but he flinches as if it hit him. She lowers her head to her mother’s lifeless shoulders and closes her eyes, waiting for the darkness to claim her.
And as it had twelve years ago, darkness waited for her. Not the shallow red-lined black of exhaustion, but a deep and icy pit that fell forever.
“Leave her alone!”
She flinched at the shout and opened her eyes. A mottled gray-green face hovered close to hers, white hair tangling in an invisible wind. A gangshi. She might have known—spirits that feed on suffering would love the site of a massacre. What a feast she must be. Xinai flinched again, stronger, jerking awkwardly away from the gangshi’s gaping hungry mouth and empty eyes. A charm bag pulsed and throbbed around her neck.
A woman lunged between her and the spirit, a blur of black hair and shining kris-blade.