“How curious,” she said. Her Nikara was fluent but oddly syncopated in a way that made her words sound laced with poetry. “She looks like Hanelai.”
The name meant nothing to Rin, but the riders tensed.
“Where did they find you?” the Sorqan Sira asked. When Rin didn’t answer, she smacked her cheek lightly. “I am talking to you, girl. Speak.”
“I don’t know,” Rin said. Her knees throbbed. She wished desperately that they would let her stop kneeling.
The Sorqan Sira dug her fingernails into Rin’s cheek. “Where did they hide you? Who found you? Who protected you?”
“I don’t know,” Rin repeated. “Nowhere. No one.”
“You are lying.”
“She’s not,” Chaghan said. “She didn’t know what she was until a year ago.”
The Sorqan Sira gave Rin a long, suspicious look, but released her.
“Impossible. The Mugenese were supposed to have killed you off, but you Speerlies keep turning up like rats.”
“Chaghan has always drawn Speerlies like moths to a candle,” Bekter said. “You remember.”
“Shut up,” Chaghan said hoarsely.
Bekter smiled widely. “Remember what you wrote in your letters? The Speerly has suffered. The Mugenese were not kind. But he survived, and he is powerful.”
Was he talking about Altan? Rin fought the urge to vomit.
“He has his mind for now but he is hurting.” Bekter’s voice took on a high, mocking pitch. “But I can fix him. Give him time. Don’t make me kill him. Please.”
Chaghan jammed his elbow backward into Bekter’s stomach. In an instant Bekter seized Chaghan’s bound wrists and twisted them so far behind his back that Rin thought surely he’d broken them.
Chaghan’s mouth opened in a silent scream.
A sound like a thunderclap ricocheted through Rin’s mind. She saw the riders wince; they’d heard it, too.
“Enough of this,” said the Sorqan Sira.
Bekter released Chaghan, whose head lurched forward as if he’d been shot.
The Sorqan Sira bent down before him and brushed his hair back behind his ears, petting it softly like a mother grooming a misbehaved child.
“You’ve failed,” she said softly. “Your duty was to observe and cull when necessary. Not to join their petty wars.”
“We tried to stay neutral,” Chaghan said. “We didn’t intervene, we never—”
“Don’t lie to me. I know what you’ve done.” The Sorqan Sira stood up. “There will be no more of the Cike. We are putting an end to your mother’s little experiment.”
“Experiment?” Rin echoed. “What experiment?”
The Sorqan Sira turned toward her, eyebrows raised. “Precisely what I said. The twins’ mother, Kalagan, thought it would be unjust to deny the Nikara access to the gods. The Cike was Kalagan’s last chance. She has failed. I have decided there will be no more shamans in the Empire.”
“Oh, you’ve decided?” Rin struggled to stand up straight. She still didn’t fully understand what was happening, but she didn’t need to. The dynamic of this encounter had become abundantly clear. The riders thought her an animal to be put down. They thought they could determine who had access to the Pantheon.
The sheer arrogance of that made her want to spit.
The Sorqan Sira looked amused. “Did I upset you?”
“We don’t need your permission to exist,” she snapped.
“Yes, you do.” The Sorqan Sira cast her a disdainful smile. “You’re little children, grasping in a void that you don’t understand for toys that don’t belong to you.”
Rin wanted to slap the contempt off of her face. “The gods don’t belong to you, either.”
“But we know that. And that is the simple difference. You Nikara are the only people foolish enough to call the gods into this world. We Ketreyids would never dream of the folly your shamans commit.”
“Then that makes you cowards,” Rin said. “And just because you won’t call them down doesn’t mean that we can’t.”
The Sorqan Sira threw her head back and began to laugh—a harsh, cackling crow’s laugh. “My word. You sound just like them.”
“Who?”
“Has no one ever told you?” The Sorqan Sira grasped Rin’s face in her hands once more. Rin flinched away, but the Sorqan Sira’s fingers tightened around her cheeks. She pressed her face against Rin’s, so close that all Rin could see was those dark, obsidian eyes. “No? Then I’ll show you.”
Visions pierced Rin’s mind like knives forced into her temples.
She stood on a desert steppe, in the shadow of dunes stretching out as far as she could see. Sand whipped around her ankles. The wind struck a low and melancholy note.
She looked down at herself and saw white braids woven with shells and bone. She realized she was in the memory of a much younger