Chapter 44—Terra

“I'm sorry,” I tell Jesse. “I will come up with something, I promise. I haven't given up, but I'll back off for now.”

He smiles. “I'm not gone yet, and I have work to do.”

“No way.” I point at his bed. “You need to rest.”

“It doesn't help.”

I know he's right; he's living on borrowed time already. I don't object when he follows me out and walks toward the gate to discuss fortifications with the guards on duty. I'm still watching him, trying to get myself together, when Kahn finds me. “Are you ready to take a tour of the perimeter?”

“Sure,” I say.

“I'm sorry.” He doesn't say anything else, and I'm glad.

I'm holding on by a thread as it is. “Thanks.”

I struggle to keep up with him as we head for the North Wall, the side that faces the city. The side that's under attack. I'm short of breath by the time we reach the top.

Smoke wafts out of many of the chimneys in the evacuated city. Devlin's army certainly didn't waste any time making themselves right at home. I fume at their presumption, at the violation of all those people's homes, the use of their private possessions, but there's nothing I can do, so I try to let it go. I'm letting go of everything lately. I clench my fists.

Kahn points to the men weaving together a ladder. “See there?”

I nod.

“Once they're done with that one, and a few dozen more, they'll go up at the same time. It's harder for us to fight off simultaneous attacks.”

“What will we do?”

Kahn gestures behind us, to the metal fire pits spaced every fifteen feet or so along the perimeter. “First, hot tar. It usually incapacitates or kills the men climbing up the ladder.” He grabs an arrow from one of the racks lining the back wall of the walkway. “A flaming arrow will destroy the ladder entirely. Anyone dumb enough to climb it after it's been doused in tar will burn to death, too. Sometimes we wait, hoping to wipe out a few more with the same effort. It only works with very green soldiers.”

What a depressing thought.

A few dozen feet down I see men climbing the wall without a ladder. “What's going on there?” I ask.

He walks toward them. He points at the man standing at the bottom of the wall. “He's Binding handholds, and painting them, one at a time, so that everyone can see them. He's a pretty powerful Lifter, judging by the size of his Bindings.”

The few times I’ve taken someone’s life, it has made me sick. Not once in seventeen years have I ever wanted to mortally harm someone. But I look at that man below and I want it—I want to end his life, so his men can't follow him up and fight my men, kill my men.

“What should we do?” I ask.

Kahn shrugs. “We can't burn Bindings, or eliminate them either. We usually station a few men to pick off anyone brave enough to climb up until they quit, and our archers try to pick off the one making them—they disappear if he dies. But they’re mostly practicing right now, making sure we’re staying at full force. Wearing us out for the real attack to come.”

Wearing us down slowly, with constant little fires, so we won’t be strong when the real attack comes.

Like the Wasting is doing to Jesse right now.

Except here, today, I can do something. I can fight back against this. I focus on the man Binding and painting, and I Lift him out. . .and drop him. The man's eyes turn toward me with horror. He can see that I'm a woman, the light spilling from my eyes giving away that I’m the one who sent him off.

He counters me, Lifting himself enough that his descent is slow.

I lean farther out over the wall and I Lift a few rocks. Just as Kahn taught me, I pretend he's a black table, and I fling the rocks at him. I assume he’ll block them, as we learned yesterday, since he’s good at Bindings and slowing his own fall.

He doesn't.

He gasps and falls to the ground, bleeding from the holes I created with my rocks. The painted Bindings collapse.

I fall back, shaking uncontrollably. “What did I do?”

“What was your plan when you flung rocks at him?” Kahn asks. “Didn't you do exactly as you intended?”

“Why didn't he block them?” I try to dispel the image of the man, collapsed, bleeding out from my actions.

Kahn takes my shoulders in his hands. “This isn't a game, Alora. Those men out there plan to kill every single one of us, and they're all here because they want to kill, or capture and torture, you. They'll fight the rest of us, but only because we want to keep you safe. Whatever your father thinks about Devlin’s plans, the rank and file with Amun want you dead. Each one of those men has some amount of strength. That man was probably great at Bindings, which is why he was here, trying to breach our wall. Since he didn't employ them when you attacked, he was probably terrible at blocks. Most people have both talents and weaknesses. You've eliminated one of their best Binders. That's good for us. You might have saved dozens of lives. That's exactly what we've been tasked to do, by the way. Our goal is to get their numbers down any way we can, with minimal risk to our soldiers.”

“It's what you'll be doing?”

Kahn nods.

“It's awful to know you've killed someone.” I think about Robert. And now this nameless man.

“I said I'll be doing it. . .I didn't say I'd sleep great afterward.”

I follow Kahn for the next few hours, helping people on the various walls and even lending a hand to Jesse at the gate. I try to remember what Kahn said, that every one of them is here to kill me, but I cringe every time one of them dies. The Followers of Amun may mistreat women, and they may want to kill me, but they're still people. People who won't ever wake up again, thanks to us.

“You hate it,” Jesse says softly.

I frown. “Hate it?” That he’s dying? Of course I do.

“Warfare.” He clasps his hands behind his back. “I can tell. It’s killing you slowly, just to watch.”

“I did a little more than watch.” I tell him. Besides, warfare isn’t killing me as fast as the Wasting is killing him.

“This is my first war too, but I’ve heard it helps to look at it like a game. Dad said that if you pretend it’s a training exercise, that it’s not real, that you can do what you need to do and it doesn’t hurt so badly.”

His advice isn’t too far from Kahn’s, about pretending I’m hurling balls at a table.

Neither trick helps much.

Yelling on the east side of the North Wall has us running up to see what's happening. There aren't dozens of ladders this time—there are over a hundred. Men climb the ladders like ants evacuating a ruined anthill, rung over rung, pouring onto the wall. Amun soldiers are mowing down the Isis men on the top of the battlement. I close my eyes and feel for each ladder. I try to forget that people are on them, living people. I inhale and exhale once, and think about my men standing at the top, dying as these attackers close in. I owe my protection to those men. I yank on the ladders, and they all pitch forward at once, men flying to their deaths from every last one.

I glance around and see the results of the last attack. Seven of our men dead. The man closest to me is part of my new squadron. I learned this afternoon that he hates carrots, and he picks them out of his stew. Now he's dead, his eyes glazed over.

This isn't a game, and I can't hide from it. These men are dying for me, and I won't stand back and participate a little here and a little there. Not anymore.

“I need a box of those metal balls,” I tell Kahn. “Can someone bring them to us?” I look out over the hundreds of Amun troops milling around below. “I think it's time we evened up the odds.”

Kahn narrows his eyes at me, but he orders several men to return with as many of the balls as they can bring—and they do it quickly.

A few moments later, I ask the archers to take their positions and cover me. Once they’re in place, I Lift several hundred balls at once. They're small, the size of a grape or maybe even smaller. I close my eyes and feel for the men below us. I feel their heartbeats, their breathing. I feel them shifting back and forth. For a moment, my resolve weakens. These are people, like me, like Kahn, like Jesse.

My brother, who’s Wasting.

Life is short, and it’s not guaranteed. All we have are our decisions.

And there’s nothing I can do to stop my brother’s death, but I can defend the men standing with me, the men who did nothing to provoke these attackers other than shelter me from harm. I must do whatever I can to protect them. So I send the balls over the wall and they hover for one beat, then two. Amun soldiers walk toward the wall, checking out the latest disturbance. More men emerge from the houses. They all want to know what's happening. Once I can sense enough targets for each and every one of the small steel projectiles, I fling them straight at the hearts of the soldiers below. A few dozen manage to block.

The rest of the soldiers drop immediately, all at once, silently, except for the unharmed men around them.

Blood pours from the holes in their chest cavities. The Healers might save a few, but not many. By the time I line up for another strike, Amun soldiers are fleeing their positions as quickly as they can. My second volley only kills a few dozen men. The rest have taken cover.

“That was brilliant,” Kahn says. “Come with me.”

Before word spreads to the other sections, I'm able to get off two quick volleys in three more areas. Thanks to my ability to sense the soldiers, I know that I’ve killed over a thousand men with my efforts. Unfortunately, now that I'm done, I feel ill.

Really ill.

Not from Lifting.

But because the reality of what I’ve done sinks into my soul. I rush over to a fire pit and bend over double behind it, retching. These men are someone's Jesse and someone's Duncan. Their families will grieve, and it will be all my fault, and not only because I propelled the projectiles through their chests, but because I exist at all. Because I’m threatening their world with destruction and they want to stop it.

I stand up and wipe my mouth a little too soon. I bend over again, still heaving, but this time there’s nothing left in my stomach.

Kahn’s glance is full of empathy and understanding. “For every single man you killed, one of my friends will live.”

“I hate this.”

He nods. “We didn't pick this fight.”

He's right, but he's also wrong. There's something we could do to end it right now. Before I came, there wasn't a war. It's easy for Kahn to blame the Followers of Amun, but they only really object to one person.

Me.