Markless, p.22
Markless, page 22
Kalere scoffs. “Well, I hope you won’t be stick fighting with the work we’ve put into your hair.” She tugs a few locks of it, wrinkling her nose disapprovingly. “Rurana has no need for a warrior queen. Their army is plenty without you.”
“You look beautiful,” Mikuyi offers, her eyes shining.
Dekala’s lip curls in disgust. “I look weak and artificial,” she says, and in that distaste, Ruti finds a thread of comfort.
The ceremony today is a grand feast in honor of the Maned One and Rurana’s fighters, with enough food to feed a small city piled in one of the palace’s banquet halls. The army is loud and raucous and enthusiastic at the start of the party, and Ruti slips into the banquet hall, lurking near two of the men with the most elaborate headdresses in hopes of hearing something useful. They are generals, a dozen soldiers with spears and scowls surrounding them, and they say nothing of the Markless living in Byale or of one Markless girl in particular.
There is a pool of pure chocolate at a table near the altar to the Maned One, rich and thick and warm, and strawberries line its sides. Ruti takes one, savors the decadence of the chocolate, and misses Kimya even more. She is going to find her. She’s going to find her, and they’re going to persuade the kitchens at home to create a chocolate pool of their own.
She stands, fists clenched in that vow, and shifts to a corner of the room as Prince Torhvin emerges onto the dais above the hall. “Welcome!” he calls, and the room falls into respectful silence. The soldiers are strong and rowdy but they respect their prince, are utterly devoted to him. “In the name of the Maned One, patron spirit of Rurana, and in the name of my brother the king, we thank you all for joining us for this momentous occasion,” he says, beaming down at them.
He looks happy, a boy-turned-man who has gotten everything he’s ever wanted, and Ruti feels pure hatred rising in her throat. “I have long searched the land for a woman who might be my perfect match—my soulbond, who would stop me from accidentally overturning your ships in the sea.” He lifts his palm, displaying the majimm on it, and a titter runs through the crowd. “And I couldn’t be happier to introduce her now. She is the Zideshi queen-to-be, a formidable woman with the beauty and wit that will make her a Ruranan jewel as well. Princess Dekala,” he calls, and the crowd erupts in cheers.
Ruti watches the dais, then the door that slides open near the stairs that lead up to it. Dekala is brought through with Winda and Kalere at her sides, and she is resplendent in white and gold. She smiles at the soldiers, her eyes glowing as though this is truly the place she wants to be, and Ruti knows this time that it is a lie.
The anger surges in her again, and she feels her fists tightening, eyes narrowing as she watches Torhvin take Dekala’s hands in his own. They both wear gleaming golden gloves now, careful as the soulbinding draws near, and Dekala gazes at Torhvin as though she might love him.
The crowd roars, hoots, cheers for their future queen, and Torhvin smiles broadly at them all. His eyes move across the throng of soldiers, and Ruti sees the instant his smile sharpens and grows like a Fanged One’s mouth. He has caught sight of Ruti, and he knows that he has taken everything from her.
Kimya, Ruti thinks, and she moves without a second thought, fury thrumming in her veins as she watches Torhvin begin to speak again. “With this soulbinding, I will usher a new era of peace and prosperity upon—”
She is accustomed to quiet, to shrinking back and avoiding querying stares. She has spent a lifetime hiding in shadows, and only since the palace has she begun to emerge. But today requires her voice, if all is to be as planned. And consumed with disgust for Torhvin and what he’s done to Kimya and so many other Markless, she finds the strength to speak.
“Liar!” Ruti snarls, and there is no time to reveal secrets subtly. There is an enormous crowd in front of her, every last one of them armed, but they’re so startled by her that no one thinks to stop her ascent to the dais. Kalere looks alarmed, Winda wary and unsurprised, but neither stop her. “You haven’t ushered any peace or prosperity!” she bites out, loud enough for everyone around her to hear it. “You’ve been selling Markless children to fund your extravagances!”
Torhvin looks taken aback. “Who are you? What nonsense are you spreading?” he says, sounding bewildered, but his eyes glint with something cruel and ugly.
Ruti doesn’t budge. “Rurana’s Markless have been rounded up and sold into slavery,” she calls desperately to Dekala. Dekala’s gaze is expressionless. “I’ve been trying to tell you for days, but you never—” She clears her throat, speaks so a horde of soldiers can hear her voice. “Torhvin has been sending them off with the Diri. That’s why the Diri stopped attacking Ruranan ships. Torhvin has been giving them the secrets of kuduwaí for their silence. He’s selling Markless right under your noses!”
Torhvin laughs. “She is mad,” he says, shrugging her off.
“I’m telling the truth!” Ruti cries out, turning away from Dekala to the crowd of bewildered soldiers beneath them. Her heart stops at the sheer mass of them, at the hostile, sneering crowd, and she struggles to find the words to get through to them. “This is your prince. He would sell you all into slavery if it meant he could pretend that Rurana is prosperous. Doesn’t that horrify you?”
“You know nothing of us,” Torhvin snarls. “None of these fine soldiers are Markless, nor do they give a damn about them. We take what resources we have and use them. Wheat, sheep, Markless. What difference is there between each?” The soldiers bellow laughter as Ruti’s eyes flicker around the room, searching for faces that show some hesitation. She sees none, her moment all but wasted.
All but. Near the front, several of the generals are murmuring to each other with grave scowls on their faces, and Ruti’s heart leaps with hope. Maybe—
But it’s too late for her. “Seize the girl,” Torhvin orders. “I’ve had enough.”
Soldiers are upon her in an instant, leaping onto the dais and yanking her back from Torhvin before she can attack him. She spits out curses, struggling against them, and turns her desperate gaze to Dekala. “You can’t be okay with this. You love Kimya. I know you care about—how can you stand by and let Torhvin do this to my people?” she says loudly enough for Torhvin to hear, and she feels furious tears at the corners of her eyes, brought forth by her anguish and threatening to fall.
Dekala watches her, and her eyes flicker with uncertainty and dread. A myriad of emotions passes over her face as her gaze locks with Ruti’s and she shakes her head, nearly imperceptibly. Ruti waits, her hands lax against the soldiers as they tighten their grips on her and look to Dekala for her reaction.
“I have tired of your mishaps.” Dekala’s voice is cold and distant. “You were a fine companion for a long time, but this is my own fault for trusting a Markless.” She turns away from Ruti, who sobs tears that appear rage-wild, lurching at her as her fury and grief for Kimya and fear for Dekala meld together into a cacophony of emotion. “Take her to wherever the Markless of Byale go,” Dekala says, resting her head against Torhvin’s shoulder. “I have no use for this one anymore.”
Ruti gapes at her, eyes widening in what any observer would categorize as betrayal and disbelief. “Dekala!” she shouts, scrabbling against the soldiers as they carry her away. “Dekala, please!” Dekala turns away from her, and Ruti catches only one glimpse of apprehension in her eyes as she looks up at Torhvin instead.
One of the soldiers yanks off Ruti’s glove to sneer at her palm. “Filthy Markless,” he grunts. “I’ll show you where you belong.”
She is yanked from the banquet hall and outside the palace gates, a chain fitted to her hands and used to drag her along, and she stumbles after them to a pit far behind the palace that stinks of garbage. “There,” the soldier says with satisfaction. “The place where all Markless go.”
He lets go of the chain, and before Ruti can run or sing, he gives her a hard shove into the pit.
She lands in garbage, stinking manure, and slop that has her choking at the odor. The slums had smelled, but never quite like this. This is worse than anything she’s experienced before, and she gags and tries to move only to discover two dreadful facts. The first, that she’s coated in it, and the smell follows her wherever she moves. The second, that the pit is larger and deeper than she’d thought, and there is no escape from the manure.
Still, it’s the reason why she hadn’t broken her neck. Her extravagant gown is destroyed, her sandals sinking into the manure, and the sky is so far away that she fears she might never see it again. But she is alive, and so she straightens and picks around the disgusting heap of garbage to search for a way out.
It is dark outside. The ceremony had begun at dusk and been lit by lamps, and the stars and moon are too far for her to see anything around her. Wherever she steps there seems to be even more manure, so Ruti holds her breath and picks her way in one direction. If she moves far enough forward, she might be able to find the wall where she’d been thrown into the pit.
But she must be walking in the wrong direction, because no wall comes, nor any relief from the manure. She feels around blindly, gagging at the smell when it grows too strong. The moon still shines above her, barely illuminating the black pit, and Ruti squints toward it and then back ahead.
“You,” a voice whispers, and Ruti stumbles back in surprise. “Over here.”
Ruti has no other options. “Where?”
“Keep walking. Turn—no, a little less—good. Forward.” Before long, she’s standing in front of a boy about her age. In the dim moonlight, she can see only the whites of his eyes at first, but he begins to take shape. He is dressed in simple clothing, muted colors and barefoot, but he is clean. “The people like to toss their garbage in here,” the boy says. “But we don’t use this area except to retrieve our people.” Unexpectedly, something washes over Ruti’s right hand. Water, from a flask the boy holds.
He takes Ruti’s hand and examines it in the moonlight, and she tenses, preparing for a fight when he sees her unmarked palm. Instead, he nods and says, “Come with me.”
*
The boy’s name is Kewal, and he takes her to an underwater spring. “I will find you something to wear,” he says, averting his eyes as she strips in a rush and climbs in. Ruti blushes, remembering modesty too late. She has had too many baths in the palace.
The pit had led to a long passageway lit by small lamps. Some work with kuduwaí, but others have been freshly lit, the candles slowly melting as Ruti looks around. These are the catacombs that Torhvin’s Markless slaves had spoken of, the underground community of Byale. Ruti has found the Markless.
Kewal returns with clothing and an explanation. “This is where the Markless live,” he says, gesturing around with bare hands. “You are not from here, are you? Did you come with the Zideshi?” His eyes shine. “Is it true that in Zidesh, the Markless live beneath the sun?”
“It’s not as great as it sounds,” Ruti mutters, pulling herself from the spring. She is washed now, but she misses soap desperately. “Tell me, have you seen another new arrival recently? A girl who doesn’t speak, about seven years old?”
Kewal shakes his head. “Our newcomers are always babies,” he says, and Ruti exhales at that confirmation. Kimya is still where Ruti thinks she is, then, for better or worse. “They are left at the northern entrance. They find their way into the catacombs.”
Children who never develop the mark on their palms, discarded here as they are in Somanchi. “Of course.”
“My mother says that I crawled right into her house and refused to leave,” Kewal says, sounding very pleased with himself.
Ruti stares at him, struck by a different piece of that story. “Did you say mother? You have … you have parents?”
Kewal smiles at her, looking very confused. “Of course. I have a mother and two fathers. In Lower Byale, you must have a family to have a house. And if you have a house, you must raise children within it. How else can Markless children survive?”
As they walk, the landscape changes. The passageways grow wider and there are more lamps with kuduwaí, lighting the passages with their eternal flames. “The First King of the catacombs was the son of a Ruranan king,” Kewal says with pride. “The Ruranan King granted his son all he wanted below, and the First King built a city. The rest, the Markless did ourselves.” The walls are shaped, doors carved into the stone, and there are more people around as the passageways open into entire caverns. Women and men alike sit on the floors, chattering amongst themselves as they weave with straw and fishbone. Children run in circles, fighting with sticks and playing with dolls and small cave creatures. There is community here, a home like none Ruti has ever seen for Markless, and she stares in startled awe.
The people stare back, curious eyes flickering over Ruti, and Kewal waves to them and keeps walking. “Things have changed over the past year,” he says, his voice somber. “Do you see it?”
Ruti glances around, searching for what Kewal is trying to show her. Slowly, she begins to see.
The children run free, but there are reeds hanging around their necks, odd jewelry that she realizes are whistles. And there are dozens of houses in this cavern, an even larger cavern ahead, but she can count only twenty or so children playing in them. They glance over their shoulders a little too often, and the adults are all seated near the entrance and exit to the cavern, watchful even as they appear relaxed.
“The Diri found an entrance to Lower Byale,” Kewal says quietly. “No one knows where it is. We’ve boarded up every exit we know of and guarded the ones where the children enter our city. But they come, and they take children more than anyone else. My own brothers are gone. The Diri came right into our house with flaming torches and subdued my fathers. The people they take are never seen again. We are no match for Diri.”
“I see,” Ruti murmurs, and she swallows, imagining anew how the Ruranan Markless are suffering. In the slums, people disappear all the time. One harsh guard or a few days without food and that is the end of a Markless. But here in Lower Byale, there are more Markless adults than children.
These Markless have grown up without violence, without the fear that comes with living amongst the Marked. These Markless only know peace and family. And now they are being stolen away from those families by Torhvin’s orders, all to fill his treasury with coin. She clears her throat, heart thumping with sadness, and asks, “How do you all live in harmony like this without wars breaking out?”
It is an abrupt change of subject, and Kewal looks startled but answers anyway. “We follow the rules,” he says simply. “Everyone does, and we are happy, so there are no wars.”
“But who makes the rules?” Ruti prods.
Kewal shrugs. “The Markless Council of Lower Byale,” he says as though this is obvious. “Each year, nine elders are chosen. Well, eight right now. We lost Kanika to the Diri several moons ago.”
The idea of a council—a leadership made of Markless, living beneath the ground and governing in peace—is something wondrous. Something that has to be preserved, just as this city must be. “Please take me to them,” Ruti says. “I have something to tell them.”
*
Ruti has never seen this many Markless elders in her life, men and women with grey hair and bodies wrinkled with years rather than hunger. They look down at her in disapproval from their elevated seats, and Ruti notices the whistles hanging from each of their necks as well. The Diri’s arrival has overwhelmed Lower Byale, and the elders look grim.
Still, there is little time to lose. “Have you found a girl here in the past few days? Small, about seven, dark hair and brown skin. She speaks with her hands, not out loud.”
One of the elders leans forward to stare at her in disapproval. “You ask for a meeting with us about a missing girl?” she says, scowling at Ruti. “We are all missing our girls. Your child is on a Diri ship somewhere just like the rest of them, and all those we have sent to find them.” Ruti’s stomach curdles thinking about that possibility. No. Torhvin isn’t a fool. He will keep Kimya with him because he knows she is a weapon to be used against Ruti. She has been told as much.
But if Ruti is gone from the royal entourage, then what happens to Kimya?
“Kewal said you had information to help us hide from the Diri,” another elder says in a creaky voice.
At her look, Kewal shrugs sheepishly. “You said it was important. I didn’t think there was anything more important than that.”
“Than hiding,” Ruti repeats. The elders peer down at her, nodding with Kewal. “What happens when the Diri attack? You run to your houses and hide?”
“Don’t be absurd,” one elder says reprovingly. “The Diri will find us in our houses. We move into side tunnels.”
“The rivers,” another offers. “I once made it through an attack with my granddaughters inside the waterfall. We used a tube to the surface to breathe.”
“I just run toward the pit,” Kewal says. “Even the Diri won’t go near that smell.”
Ruti stares at them. “So you just … run and hide from the Diri? How many come at a time?” She thinks back to the Djevehav, which had a crew of perhaps twenty or thirty at best. “There are hundreds of you down here.”
“Thousands,” an elder corrects her, swelling with pride. “But we are not fighters. We have no weapons.”
“Against the Diri, we can only run,” Kewal says. “We are a peaceful people. We have no other options.” At her disbelief, he spreads his hands. “We are not like you, Ruti, a Markless who lives under the sun. Battle is not our way. We struggle against the Diri when they approach, of course, but they have the powers of the Bonded and weapons like none we’ve seen before.”
“Red-hot knives,” Ruti says dully. “Torches that burn eternal. Kuduwaí.”
“They can’t be kuduwaí,” an elder puts in. “Kuduwaí is the tool of the Ruranan generals. No Diri know its secrets.”
Ruti doesn’t correct that assumption. She had thought, before coming down to Lower Byale, that she might be able to mobilize them to fight back. But she’d also imagined a people like her own, angry and aggressive and scrappy enough to make a dent in the Diri, if united. These people endure because they are not like the Zideshi Markless. In Zidesh, Markless devour each other. Here, they have built a safe place that knows no need for defense.
