Of Beast and Beauty (38 page)

TWENTY-FOUR

I hear the heavy footfalls and turn to see soldiers rushing around the granaries, but the men scrambling through the tall grass inspire more relief than fear. I’m already at the King’s Gate with the pack of food and supplies strapped to my back, and they’re coming from the direction of the royal garden. They must have found Isra and freed her from the roses. I know these people have no issue with killing a queen, but only after she’s married, and that day is still months away. Isra should be safe until I return.

Please let her be safe
.

With one last glance back at the tower, the peak of its highest roof barely visible over the rise, I step through the door and walk away from Yuan.

I walk. There’s no need to hurry. It’s too dark for their arrows to find me, and the soldiers won’t dare follow me into the desert.

I walk until the dome is a faintly glowing speck on the horizon, on through the darkest part of the night, and into the next morning. I walk until the sun bakes my head, and the straps of my pack rub blisters on the scale-free flesh on the undersides of my arms, on through another night and the pale blush of a second morning, before exhaustion hits like a rock slide crushing me into the ground. I collapse into a hollow between two cactus plants, but I don’t sleep for long. I don’t know which is stronger, the need to reach my people, or the need to return to Isra, but both drive me like nothing has before.

I walk until my good leg throbs and my bad leg screams for mercy. I walk until both legs go numb and my joints begin to creak like the wheel of an overloaded cart. I walk until my entire body is a collection of aches and pains and my mind exists outside it all, lulled by the endless rhythm of my footfalls, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the misery of my flesh. I drink little; I eat even less, determined to save as much food for the others as I possibly can. The pack is brimming with dried fruit and nuts and salted meat, enough to keep the hundred souls still remaining in my tribe from starvation for a month if the food is rationed carefully.

I think of how wonderful it will be to see my father’s face, my son’s smile as he gums a piece of dried fruit, the relief in my people’s eyes as they eat well for the first time in months. I think of Isra, of her lips on mine that night in her tower.

I can’t be without her. Seeing her held captive by the roses settled any question about that. I can’t accept her death as a necessary evil. I won’t have her blood spilled. Not for Yuan, not for the Desert People, or anyone else.

Gare will never understand. Father, maybe, if I explain myself well, but Gare … never. He’ll never forgive me for caring for a Smooth Skin. He’ll hate me until the day he dies, and he’ll go to his funeral pyre with a curse for me lingering in his soul.

I’m sure most of my people will feel the same way. The Smooth Skins are the enemy. Our rage against them has been building for centuries, a bonfire stoked and fanned by every loved one lost too soon, every night spent listening to a child cry out in hunger, every morning a mother rolls over to find her baby starved to death on the pallet beside her.

I know now that most of the Smooth Skins have no idea how their actions have affected my people, but I still have hate for them in my heart. I hate Bo and his father and the soldiers who damaged my legs, but I care for Isra more than I loathe them. I … I love her. And love is stronger than hate. I believe that. I believe Isra and I can change our worlds. Together. If we are brave.

I finally feel brave. I won’t ask Father to cut my warrior’s braid. I’m not a coward. I’m a different kind of warrior, one who will fight with my heart instead of my hands, and I’ll start by telling my people the truth. It would be easier to lie, but lies will never change the way they see the Smooth Skins, and we’ve all told too many lies. I’m sick of them.

Sick …

I’m nearly half a day’s walk from my tribe’s winter camp when I smell it. Smoke. Funeral smoke. In the middle of the day. My people burn our dead at night, but there’s no mistaking the smell—charred and oily, bittersweet, musky … terrible. The smell of burned hair and melting flesh and all the dreams the dead will never dream going up in flames.

I start to run. My leg buckles and bends the wrong way, and my bones knock together with a sick crunch. Pain and heat explode behind my kneecap, but I don’t stop. I run toward the smoke billowing on the horizon, with my leg burning like fire. I run until my ankle turns and my run becomes a hobble. I hobble until my good leg fails me and I fall to the ground and crawl.

I come into the midst of the fires on my hands and knees, and I’m glad. This isn’t something to see standing up. It isn’t one fire or three or even five. There are a
dozen
. No, more. Fourteen … fifteen. A city made of funeral pyres, flaming houses eating up their lonely residents with no mourners gathered below to cry their souls into the next world.

Where are they? Where are the families? The mates? The friends?

My breath comes faster. Pain and fear and dread swell so big inside me that it feels like my cracked skin will have to tear wide open to let it all out.

I look up. I force myself to look to the top of each pyre, guessing at the identity of each burning corpse. Any one of the adult-sized bodies could be my father or my brother. My friends. Meer.

And that one, that tiny one on the right …

It could be my son. It’s a baby. A tiny spot of dense and dark at the center of a fire too big for a person with so few memories to burn away and no life magic to gift to those left behind.

My son. That could be my son.

My eyes squeeze shut.
Oh, please. By the ancestors, please, let my
son be alive
, I beg, though I know my prayer is selfish. If my son is spared, then that means it is some other baby burning on that pyre. Someone’s baby is dead. Fourteen other mothers, sisters, brothers, lovers, fathers, are dead.

Why is this? And where are the rest of my people while their loved ones burn?

I emerge from the city of fire, and my question is answered. A line of

my people stands before our healer, their heads bowed in defeat. I see the medicine man hand something to a young mother at the far end of the line, and I try to scream—

“Meer!” But my throat is raw from the smoke, tight from dread, strangled by terror. She doesn’t hear me. Her head stays down as she slips whatever the medicine man gave her between our listless child’s lips and rubs it back and forth across the baby’s tongue.

Instantly, I know what she’s holding. Poison root. Poison root. Poison root in my baby’s mouth.

“No! Stop!” The words explode from deep inside me as I scramble across the dirt on my hands and knees, the pressure inside my body threatening to make my heart explode. “Meer! Stop!”

Meer’s arm jerks, pulling the root from my son’s mouth. From somewhere farther down the line, a cry rises into the air. And then another, and another, but there is no hope in the sounds. No celebration. I’m too late. I know it; everyone knows it. Everyone knows I saw. I
saw
.

No.
Please, no
. I can’t have gotten here just in time to watch my son die for no reason. When there is food here on my back and hope so close.

“Meer.” I gasp, but she doesn’t respond. Her eyes are wide and empty in her painfully thin face, her jaw slack. Without emotion she watches me crawl toward her for a long moment, before her head snaps down and the arm cradling the baby lifts him closer to her face. She drops the root and pats his cheek. She smoothes his hair away from his face. She places one skeletal hand over his heart and holds it there for what feels like an eternity.

And then she screams. She screams like her heart is being cut out.

He’s dead. He’s dead, oh no, please,
no
.

A strangled sound bursts from my throat. I push to my feet, only to fall immediately back to the ground. No amount of will can make up for how broken my body has become. Broken. Everything broken. My tribe, my baby, my life, my heart.

Meer’s wail ends with a sob as she looks up, meeting my eyes with an expression so terrible, I instantly feel what she feels. The pressure building inside my chest and my head, crushing against the backs of my eyes, becomes unbearable. Meer. My friend. If I could spare her this pain, I would.

I’ll hold her and tell her I forgive her. I’ll tell her it’s my fault. I’ll—

Suddenly, Meer’s legs bend and her fingers reach for the dirt.

“No!” I scream, but it’s too late. The root she dropped is already in her mouth, her teeth are already biting down. She’s already falling to the ground, her eyes closing, her mouth falling open as her soul leaves her body.

I watch her fall. I watch the limp bundle that was my child roll from her dead arm, and then there is nothing but red.

Red behind my eyes as I scream and scream until my throat is raw and I taste metal on my tongue. Red as I pound my fists into the ground until my knuckles break open and weep blood onto the desert floor.

I howl until there is nothing left inside me. Until my head buzzes and my muscles lose the last of their strength and I collapse onto the ground with my too-late salvation still strapped to my back and the red world goes black.

TWENTY-FIVE

I am married. I wear a black dress and a black cap over my hair, breaking mourning tradition and wedding tradition, making it clear I consider the ceremony the blackest of rites. Bo holds my hand during our vows, but he doesn’t stay in the tower that first night, or the next, or any thereafter. I understand that he means to keep his promise not to be cruel, and am grateful for small favors.

I’m grateful for big ones, too. As the world beneath the dome begins to fade and falter, I know Bo is all that stands between me and death. He begs the advisors to give me more time to come to my senses.

I beg the desert to send Gem back to me before it’s too late.

Needle sneaks to the wall every night after returning my dinner tray.

She watches for a fire by the gathered stones, while I stand by the door, waiting for news of Gem, hoping so hard, it hurts.

I am always disappointed.

Winter ends and the days grow longer and warmer, but the crops refuse to grow. The cows cease giving milk, and—as our stores are used up and milk is replaced with water and wine—I learn what has caused the sad state of my skin. An allergy to the milk I’ve drunk every morning and been bathed in twice a day, every day, since Needle came to care for me. She blames herself for not realizing the milk and honey baths were hurting more than helping, but I assure her I’m not angry. I’m elated. Gem was right about that, too. I add it to my list of things to tell him, but weeks pass and

he doesn’t come, and things only get worse.

The chickens refuse to lay eggs, and half the livestock fall over dead in the fields. The orchard flowers rain to the ground, but no leaves or fruit grow in their place. Beneath Yuan, the underground river becomes a narrow stream. Water is rationed and the city’s worry becomes an ever-present, buzzing fear. I know what game the Dark Heart plays, but I refuse to panic. Gem will come. He will come and we will end this madness.