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.
“Of course not,” Ruti says, and lowers her head. “I’m sorry for the interruption. Is there a path that will take me back aboveground?” Dekala might have officially dismissed her, but she isn’t done yet. Her stomach churns at the thought of what awaits her in the next few days.
Kewal says, “All of the tunnels are closed off except the children’s entrances.” He considers her for a moment. “You might be small enough to make it through them. They are narrow and you will have to crawl, but you could get out that way.”
The elders murmur to each other, still staring down at Ruti in disapproval. She follows Kewal meekly from the room. “It’s not that we don’t try,” Kewal says as he leads her through the catacombs. “But our boning knives and sticks are nothing compared to the Diri’s weapons. We are tunneling deeper into the ground now, making a third level of homes beneath the caves where they might not find us, but that’s all we can do. We will thrive again,” he says, but he sounds unconvinced. “Lower Byale will be safe once more.”
He stops suddenly. “Here,” he says, and Ruti sees a crack in the wall, narrow but pronounced. The passageway has been painted by tiny hands in ochre, a bright little tunnel for children to find their way into Lower Byale. “This will take you back aboveground. Are you sure you won’t stay?” he says hopefully. “We have so few children remaining. They’re the future of Lower Byale.”
“I’m sorry,” Ruti says, and she thinks of Kimya, surrounded by other children and the life and joy that comes with it. If not for the Diri, this could be a place where Kimya would thrive.
Ruti might have thrived here once, too. Now her heart is lost in another palace days away, and she doesn’t know if she will ever be able to get it back. Even if its ruler is someone unrecognizable when the bonding is complete. “Maybe someday,” she whispers, the thought lingering in her mind as she bends down to crawl into the tunnel.
The tunnel is narrower than it had looked, and even the cheerful paints aren’t enough to rid Ruti of claustrophobia as she moves through it. The walls close in around her, and it winds enough that she can’t see what comes next, only the dimly lit walls ahead. She shuts her eyes, crawling blind, but she still feels the walls bumping in around her in the oppressively tight space.
And then, deep in the tunnel, she hears a piercing sound in the distance. It sounds again, then more and more, and Ruti freezes, something deep within her triggered by the piercing noise. She doesn’t know what it is at first, until she hears the shouts and screams that follow it, the noise growing more and more frantic.
The whistles. The Diri have returned to take more Markless, and Ruti is trapped in a tunnel.
She can’t turn around in these tight quarters. Instead she crawls backward as quickly as she can, determined not to stand by as more children are taken. The whistles are fewer now, the people fleeing or taken, and Ruti speeds up, squeezes her eyes shut, reaches the tiny crevice at last—
She sings, begins a chant first for her own safety as she emerges from the tunnel and then for the Markless around her. The spirits react at once, granting her requests, and a Diri in the passageway in front of her is blown away by a sudden wind.
Wind, a reminder of Dekala that she doesn’t need right now. She squeezes her eyes shut and then opens them, singing louder as she runs down the passageway back to the main caverns.
Inside, there is chaos, Diri with children in their arms and elders barricaded in the council room where Ruti had been questioned. Others have fled, but some of the adults are still fighting the Diri. Ruti spots Kewal in a corner, eyes wide in terror, and he shouts, “Appa!” as one of the Diri seals chains around a man’s wrists.
Ruti sings, sings, sings. No one notices her at first—she is small and off to the side, a dark face against a dark wall—but they notice the wind that whips through the cavern, hurtling into them as though they’ve been struck by fists. “Witch!” a Diri shouts, and Ruti recognizes her. Zahara, the captain of the Djevehav. “I am so tired of witches,” she spits, and Ruti sings harder and faster.
She sings the wind at Zahara with extra vigor, and it throws her off her feet and hurls her into a wall. Zahara slumps to the floor and one of the Diri shouts, “There! The witch is there!” They run at Ruti, abandoning their targets for her, and Ruti changes the pitch of her song.
She goes higher, tries to mimic the urgency of the whistles and temper it with a new song that flows through the room with power and speed. “Get her!” a Diri shouts, and Ruti flinches back but can’t run. She’s pinned against a wall, Diri descending on her, and her song isn’t working as quickly as she needs it to. Please, she begs the spirits in song, adding a beseeching note. Please—
The closest Diri closes a hand around Ruti’s throat, and she chokes, her song stopped with his attack. “This is how you silence a witch,” he grunts, and lifts his dagger with his free hand, aiming to plunge it into Ruti’s throat.
Instead he staggers in place, eyes widening as he lets out a strangled cry. A boning knife sticks out of his back. Kewal stands behind him, fingers wrapped around the knife, and he looks stunned at his own bravery.
A second Diri grabs Kewal, and a man tears himself from the captives and charges forward. Kewal’s father, the chains still wrapped around his wrists, and he can only throw himself at the Diri again and again, slamming his head against the pirate’s shoulders. The Diri stumbles, twisting around to raise a knife at Kewal’s father. Kewal lets out a cry and shoves him. “Sing,” he says desperately. “Sing!”
