Queen Taifa stood at the bow of Targon, her beached warship, and looked
out at the massacre on the sands. Her other ships were empty. The fighting
men and women of the Chosen were already onshore, were already killing
and dying. Their screams, not so different from the cries of those they
fought, washed over her in waves.
She looked to the sun. It burned high overhead and the killing would not
stop until well past nightfall, which meant too many more would die. She
heard footsteps on the deck behind her and tried to take comfort in the
sounds of Tsiory's gait.
"My queen," he said.
Taifa nodded, permitting him to speak, but did not turn away from the
slaughter on the shore. If this was to be the end of her people, she would
bear witness. She could do that much.
"We cannot hold the beach," he told her. "We have to retreat to the ships.
We have to relaunch them."
"No, I won't go back on the water. The rest of the fleet will be here
soon."
"Families, children, the old and infirm. Not fighters. Not Gifted."
Taifa hadn't turned. She couldn't face him, not yet. "It's beautiful here,"
she told him. "Hotter than Osonte, but beautiful. Look." She pointed to the
mountains in the distance. "We landed on a peninsula bordered and bisected
by mountains. It's defensible, arable. We could make a home here. Couldn't
we? A home for my people."
She faced him. His presence comforted her. Champion Tsiory, so strong
and loyal. He made her feel safe, loved. She wished she could do the same
for him.
His brows were knitted and sweat beaded on his shaved head. He had
been near the front lines, fighting. She hated that, but he was her champion
and she could not ask him to stay with her on a beached ship while her
people, his soldiers, died.
He shifted and made to speak. She didn't want to hear it. No more
reports, no more talk of the strange gifts these savages wielded against her
kind.
"The Malawa arrived a few sun spans ago," she told him. "My old
nursemaid was on board. She went to the Goddess before it made ground."
"Sanura's gone? My queen… I'm so—"
"Do you remember how she'd tell the story of the dog that bit me when I
was a child?"
"I remember hearing you bit it back and wouldn't let go. Sanura had to
call the Queen's Guard to pull you off the poor thing."
Taifa turned back to the beach, filled with the dead and dying in their
thousands. "Sanura went to the Goddess on that ship, never knowing we
found land, never knowing we escaped the Cull. They couldn't even burn
her properly." The battle seemed louder. "I won't go back on the water."
"Then we die on this beach."
The moment had arrived. She wished she had the courage to face him
for it. "The Gifted, the ones with the forward scouts, sent word. They found
the rage." Taifa pointed to the horizon, past the slaughter, steeling herself.
"They're nested in the Central Mountains, the ones dividing the peninsula,
and one of the dragons has just given birth. There is a youngling and I will
form a coterie."
"No," he said. "Not this. Taifa…"
She could hear his desperation. She would not let it sway her.
"The savages, how can we make peace if we do this to them?" Tsiory
said, but the argument wasn't enough to change her mind, and he must have
sensed that. "We were only to follow them," he said. "If we use the dragons,
we'll destroy this land. If we use the dragons, the Cull will find us."
That sent a chill through her. Taifa was desperate to forget what they'd
run from and aware that, could she live a thousand cycles, she never would.
"Can you hold this land for me, my champion?" she asked, hating herself
for making this seem his fault, his shortcoming.
"I cannot."
"Then," she said, turning to him, "the dragons will."
Tsiory wouldn't meet her eyes. That was how much she'd hurt him, how
much she'd disappointed him. "Only for a little while," she said, trying to
bring him back to her. "Too little for the Cull to notice and just long enough
to survive."
"Taifa—"
"A short while." She reached up and touched his face. "I swear it on my
love for you." She needed him and felt fragile enough to break, but she was
determined to see her people safe first. "Can you give us enough time for
the coterie to do their work?"
Tsiory took her hand and raised it to his lips. "You know I will."