I scanned the crowd and hundreds of eager faces stared back at me. Many were still visibly injured, bruised or bandaged, marked with stitched-up
wounds or missing eyes. The last time I stood before all of them like this, I had been mourning with them. The time before that, I had been promising them vengeance. Now, we gathered to determine what came after it.
Earlier that morning, we had received a letter signed by the few remaining Threllian Lords. Their slaves, inspired by the stories of our victory against the Zorokovs, had turned against them. Those who were not killed and had managed to hold on to their estates surrendered in a bid to keep their lives. Now their bloodstained parchment was pinned to the wall behind us, a dagger through its center.
It shouldn’t have surprised me that the conversation immediately turned to retribution.
“Fuck them and their surrender,” one of the rebel captains spat. “Our first order of business is to execute the Threllian bastards. Every last one of them.”
A chill ran up my spine as this earned a ripple of approval.
“The Lords can, and should, stand trial,” I said. “They should face their execution. But the rest of the Threllians? Many of them are middle-class or poor families who had nearly as little control over their oligarchical government as we did. What will we do, sweep through the country and execute every Threllian man, woman, and child like dogs?”
A smattering of “yes”es rang out in the audience. My magic sensed their simmering anger, still fresh from the exhausted adrenaline of battle.
“I burned Lady Zorokov alive,” I snapped. “I understand how important justice is, and make no mistake, we’ll have our justice against our conquerors. But if we do that, then in twenty years we’ll have their orphaned children at our doorstep, ready to destroy us.”
“We might not even make it twenty years,” Riasha said. “We just toppled one of the most powerful empires in the world. We need to focus on making sure this country doesn’t fall apart, not digging mass graves.”
I shot Riasha a grateful look and nodded. The two of us knew this all too well. I’d spent the last three days holed up in my room, trying to piece together the logistical records of the Zorokov estate. We knew how to farm, how to hunt, how to keep the gears of a country turning—we had carried those inner workings on our backs for decades.
But we didn’t know what a “new Threll” looked like. Threll’s economy had been built upon free labor that they viewed as disposable and unlimited. Once we dug our way out of the euphoria of victory and the cloud of grief, it became clear to me that we might not survive this. Not because the Fey would conquer us, but because we might not be able to continue producing enough food for our population, or because the trade routes might fall apart, or because our economy might just… collapse.
In some ways, these things scared me even more than the prospect of impending war. What if we lost our nation—again—not because someone came to take it from us, but simply because we couldn’t manage it?
But today, no one wanted to talk about trade routes and currency and farming. They wanted to talk about blood.
A man in the back of the room rose from his seat. “Then let the nations decide! Each county can decide how they handle the Threllians occupying their territory.”
“Yes,” another member of the committee agreed. “If Nyzerene wants to offer the Threllians mercy, they are welcome to. But Deralin will be doing no such thing, I assure you.”
Each country.
Those words stopped me short. I felt stupid for not having considered that this would happen. It stood to reason that some would want to return to the way our continent looked twenty years ago, before the rise of the Threllian Lords—seven different nations that all eventually were consumed by Threll’s conquering warpath.
I had been so busy trying to make sure that we survived the next few months that I didn’t think about what it might be like to have Nyzerene back—the home I remembered in only ghosts of sweet smells and warm embraces and a distant concept of a place that once, long ago, had been somewhere I truly belonged.
The whispers in the crowd had gotten louder, more excited, as people allowed themselves to think of the possibility of reclaiming the homes they had watched crumble.
I exchanged a glance with Serel, unease stirring in my stomach. I said, loud enough to speak over the din, “Wait.”
A hush fell over the spectators. I was a little satisfied that finally, after years of effort, I’d earned that kind of respect.
“I propose that we do not separate,” I said. “Perhaps it’s wiser to remain unified.”
Riasha looked shocked. “And continue to call ourselves Threll? Fly their banners and discard our own?”
A part of me hated the words coming out of my lips—a part of me wondered if my mother, who had so loved her country, would be ashamed of me for even saying it. At least I was a child when Nyzerene fell. But many of the people here, Riasha included, had been well into adulthood when they lost their mother lands.
“This country would never be the Threll that the Lords created ever again,” I said. “We will keep that from happening. But think of how it got that way. The Threllian Lords were able to conquer this continent because our disparate countries were so easily turned against each other. And in turn, the Threllians fell because their Lords were constantly hungry for individual power. If we stay together, we become stronger than that.”
Riasha seemed saddened by this thought. “And remain forever defined by what Threll did to us?”
“We will always be defined by what they did to us. We can’t erase that past, no matter what we do to our borders.” I shifted, suddenly very conscious of my scars. “But we survived by taking their abuse and making it our strength. We can embrace that, now! What better way to claim our independence than to take the unity they forced upon us, and use it to build a nation stronger than they ever were?” I thrust my finger at the top of the Zorokovs’ palace, where Lady Zorokov’s charred body had hung. “Can you think of anything she would hate more?”
This earned tentative murmurs of thought.
“I agree,” Serel said. “We could still keep the seven original nations as districts. Elect… elect a senate.” His face lit up, and my chest tightened to see my friend show even that small glimmer of enthusiasm. “We could do this. It would work.”
I glanced at Max, who leaned against the doorframe, watching. He lowered his chin in a silent nod of encouragement.
The rebels were still uncertain. I understood it—we’d had so much taken away from us already. They feared losing those pieces of themselves forever. I feared that, too. But even more, I feared that we would not survive at all.
“Six months,” I said. “Let us spend six months as one nation while we decide our next steps. The Fey have claimed the northern territories of Threll. Soon they’ll be coming for us. We need to stay together if we’re going to survive this.”
The crowd whispered, discussing this amongst themselves. Just six months, they murmured. We can do that. Aside from a few grumbling detractors, most seemed to agree that now—standing in the ruins of a broken nation and facing yet another war—was not a good time to start drawing borders.
“I still refuse to call this country Threll,” Riasha said. “Even for six months.”
“We’re the Rebellion!” one enthusiastic woman called from the crowd. “Not anymore, really,” another grumbled, eyeing the ruins of the
Zorokovs’ house.
“No, we aren’t,” I agreed. “A rebellion is united against something. I like to think that now, we’re united for something.” Despite myself, I couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across my face. “I think we’re an alliance, now. The Alliance of Seven Banners.”
It was the first thing said all day that no one disagreed with.
 |
“I DO NOT KNOW why they are celebrating.” Ishqa looked out the window and crossed his arms in disapproval as he watched the festivities below— they had been going on for more than a week straight, at this point.
“Perhaps because not being in slavery after twenty years of it is, by most standards, celebration worthy?” Max offered.
“That is short sighted. They, and we, are in more danger than ever.” Ishqa turned to us, and it struck me exactly how old he looked. When I had first met him, I marveled at his eerie agelessness despite his centuries of life. Now it seemed like every time I saw him, the years weighed heavier.
As he so often did, Ishqa had disappeared for several days after the fall of the Zorokovs. We returned to the little house we had claimed as our temporary home to find him sitting on the stoop like a lost pet.
“See?” I whispered to Max, after we let him in. “I told you. Just like a cat.”
Now Ishqa paced the floors of the living room. He seemed agitated. “I flew up north,” he said. “Caduan’s armies have slaughtered entire townships on their path back to Ela’Dar. Lest you forget their ultimate purpose.”
It was impossible to forget their ultimate purpose after seeing how they had behaved at the Zorokovs’ estate. They had locked the doors of that place not with the intention of conquering, but with the intention of slaughtering. It was pure luck that they hadn’t killed more of our own.
“Of course we haven’t,” I muttered. My head hurt fiercely. It was exhausting to be flung from one disaster to another.
“Caduan would not have disposed of the Threllians unless he knew that he had other, more powerful weapons within his reach,” he went on.
“Reshaye,” Max said.
“Yes. Aefe. And…” Ishqa’s mouth opened, then closed as he trailed off. “What?” I pressed, and he was silent for a long moment before sighing
and shaking his head.
“I do not know. It’s only… a sense. There is something else. I do not know what. But I was close friends with Caduan for half a millennium. I know him well enough to see when there is something he is not showing the world. The power he holds now is bad enough, but I am even more afraid of what he keeps hidden.”
I exchanged a glance with Max, who shrugged, as if to say, Mysterious signs of impending doom. What else did we expect?
We were interrupted by a firm knock on the door. Brayan and Sammerin entered. Brayan gripped a crumpled-up letter, which he held out to Max.
“The Roseteeth secured a letter from Ara,” he said, “for you.”
