Ruti sings. The other Markless are emboldened by Kewal and his father, stepping out from their cracks and lingering at the edges of the caves. They don’t join the attack, but Kewal keeps fighting, his teeth gritted as more Diri approach him.
A rocky club rolls to a halt in front of Kewal. Ruti blinks, distracted, and sees one of the elders trembling from where she’d thrown it to him, eyes wide in shock. Kewal lifts it, smashing it into the chains that hold his father with little success, and the Diri bear down on him.
And finally, Ruti’s song begins to take hold. The chains that the pirates brought for the Markless fly through the air, moving like whips to smack at their heads, and the Diri duck and fall back as Ruti sings off the chains around their wrists and ankles. They cry out in fury, batting them away, but they are no match for Ruti’s song. Within a few moments, the Markless are moving forward again, eyes wide as Diri are restrained before their eyes.
More Diri pour into the room, another dozen who see the bedlam they’ve stepped into and roar in fury, and Kewal cries, “Let her sing! Take the Diri!” The Markless hesitate. Ruti sings, and it’s as though she’s the one pushing the Markless forward, as though her melody builds their confidence. A Horned One calls from deep within the caverns, a noise that echoes through the darkness. The Diri come forward but the wind sweeps through the cavern again, pinning them all against the wall, and Markless move to bind them in the last chains that had been meant for them.
Soon all of the Diri are incapacitated, and Markless flood into the cavern. Kewal picks up Ruti’s chanting as she stops, the Markless transforming her song from witchcraft into jubilant victory. They move between the Diri, staring down at their faces as though they can’t quite believe that these are their terrorizers, and Kewal calls out, “Disarm them! Take their weapons!”
Before long, almost every Markless adult is armed. They look at the weapons with trepidation, and an elder says, “We must put them where we can use them for defense.”
“Wait,” Ruti says, and crouches down beside Zahara. The woman’s eyes are flickering open, and they narrow as she realizes she’s been chained. “Witch,” she snarls. “We were sent to kill you.”
“Prince Torhvin wants me gone, then,” Ruti says. She isn’t surprised, though she hadn’t expected this. Trepidation fills her for Kimya and Dekala.
Zahara spits at her. It lands on Ruti’s cheek. “I should have done it before you left my ship.”
The Markless around Ruti lean in, and an elder repeats, in a trembling voice, “Prince Torhvin?”
“Like I said,” Ruti says, her eyes still fixed on Zahara, “I have information for you.”
The Diri are chained up in a cavern in the catacombs while the Markless debate what to do with them. Ruti comes and goes, watching the Diri with sharp eyes as they pick at the food the Markless bring them.
“Might as well let them starve,” she mutters to Kewal. His father is one of a group of men and women who interrogate the Diri on trading paths and routes through the sea, desperately trying to find their missing children. “They aren’t going to give you anything.”
The Diri treat the Markless with disdain even now, cursing them and spitting in their faces instead of giving them answers. Still, the Markless bring them food and ask them the same questions over and over again, pressing for a response. “We must try,” Kewal says simply. “We must do what we can for the children.”
Ruti nods grimly. This she understands, even if she can’t so much as look at the Diri without imagining a more violent approach. “There was a woman I spoke to from the Markless enslaved to the prince,” she says, remembering that dark, oppressive chamber where Torhvin had kept the Markless in Somanchi. “She challenged me to give them a reason to hope.”
“We will be that reason,” Kewal’s father says, and there is determination in his voice, a vow that doesn’t waver. “We will not yield to the Diri again.”
“Will you be ready when the time comes?” Ruti asks, looking at the faces of the dozens of Markless around her. She has spent time with them, has held each one’s hand in her own and sung familiar words as she touched their palms, and she feels a growing obligation to all of them.
Kewal speaks for them all. “We would do anything for you, Ruti of Zidesh,” he says gravely. “But this, we do for our people.”
“As you should,” Ruti agrees as she gathers up her meager possessions. They are all gifts from the elders of Lower Byale: a knife for her side, a gown that is one of their best, a pair of gloves for her hands. There is even a little jar of the remaining inky ash, just in case. None of the clothing is of the quality that comes from Dekala’s palace, but she will look passable amongst the throng.
Two days have passed underground, and the soulbinding ceremony is today.
One of the few bits of information they’ve gotten from the Diri is their entrance route, a path beneath the rocks on the side of the underground river that runs through Lower Byale. Ruti walks carefully inside before she changes into the gown and slides the gloves on.
As she walks, she sees hints of metal between the rocks, holding them in place. This is an artificial entrance built by those who have ashto and endhi on their hands. The First King of Lower Byale’s doing, perhaps, a route that would allow him to see the family that had been pressured to forsake him.
The river branches out at the Diri’s entrance to the cave, continuing through Lower Byale and running alongside Ruti in this passageway. It moves fluidly here as it feeds into Lower Byale’s river, and Ruti is unsurprised when she emerges aboveground on the banks of the River Byale.
She blinks in the rising sunlight, the glare of it striking after days of soft darkness. She peers around, pressing a hand over her eyes. Two unmarked ships are docked in a small harbor—so the Diri can slip in unnoticed to take captives and bring them back to their ships downriver, Ruti guesses.
There is a third ship in the harbor, a grand vessel with the royal seal of Rurana on its side, and Ruti registers where she is at last. This is Torhvin’s personal harbor, the guarded inner route that stops just outside the palace. Ruti won’t have to break into the palace today—she’s already here.
The palace is bustling as Ruti slips through the crowds, unnoticed by attendants and guards alike. There are feasts being prepared, illustrious guests to welcome into their rooms, and a horde of commoners already in the courtyard, crowding in and waiting for a chance to watch the soulbinding. Torhvin’s metalworkers have erected a massive stage at the front of the courtyard, his Bonded plant-workers threading vines and flowers around it, and a legion of guards stands around its edges. There are murmurs of discontent among them, an unease that has them on edge, and Ruti listens to their conversation for a brief moment.
They are quiet, and Ruti can barely hear their grumbles. “We must wait on the generals,” one says in a low voice. “They will—” The clatter of a cart laden with plates cuts him off.
When the cart is gone, Ruti only hears Prince Torhvin’s name and a sullen, “Who are we to question our prince’s wisdom?” that makes her lips set in brief, unseen satisfaction.
She continues on, glancing up as her smile fades. The sun has begun its ascent for the day, but there are still a couple of hours before midday, when the ceremony begins.
Ruti swallows back a wave of nausea and finds an unattended food cart near the kitchens. “A morning meal for the princess,” she says as she wheels it down the hall. No one stops her, distracted by the flurry of activity around the castle. Ruti walks right past Winda, whose eyes flicker over Ruti as though she hasn’t seen her at all.
She remembers the way to Dekala’s rooms and swallows back her trepidation as she pushes the cart toward the entrance. Orrin stands guard outside the door, speaking to a grim-faced Kalere, and Ruti wheels the cart over to them, dips her head, and says, “Breakfast for the princess?”
Kalere says absently, “She already—” She stops, her eyes widening. “Ruti?” she says, and Ruti is suddenly in her embrace. “Dear girl,” she murmurs into Ruti’s ear, and from her there is no hesitation to touch a Markless. “I had hoped to see you today.”
When she releases Ruti, it’s to shake her head and say, “There is much that needs to be done.” She bustles off toward the far side of Dekala’s quarters, where the attendants have been entering and leaving in a hurry.
Ruti is left standing in front of Orrin, who watches her silently. Finally, she motions to the door and says, “So …?” expectantly.
Orrin shakes his head, scoffing, and Ruti tenses before she realizes that he’s scoffing at himself. “She’s inside,” he says. “She is ready for the soulbinding.” His voice sounds hollow. Something has emptied from him in these last few days, leaving him without his old bravado.
Ruti rolls her eyes. “All prepared to touch her palm to Torhvin’s and become his loving wife.” It makes her stomach turn to say it, even with wry sarcasm, even with the promise that it isn’t how this will end.
“No.” Orrin’s voice is not resentful, only factual. “She does not love.”
“Yes,” Ruti murmurs. She knows it now, just as Orrin does. Dekala is governed by ambition, and she sees love as something consuming, something that will make her weak. Dekala fears nothing the way she fears love. “But she cares,” she says, another truth. “It’s why she won’t love.”
“She cares for you,” Orrin corrects her, and it is matter-of-fact. “She could discard you as yesterday’s garbage and she would still care for you. She is a creature of contradictions.” He smiles, an expression that looks out of place on his big, glowering face. For a moment, Ruti almost sees a reluctant kindness in his eyes, a hint of why Dekala would have chosen him to marry in the first place. “Go to her,” he says quietly. “You will be her salvation.”
