Saxony seemed to think this over, and Karam wondered whether she would have to referee another fight between them, as Saxony refused to trust an underboss.
To her surprise, Saxony nodded.
“Do it,” she said. “Send the bat back. You were right to contact him.”
“I was right?” Tavia repeated the words slowly, like they were the last ones she had expected.
“You were,” Saxony said. “And it’s time I did something to help our armies too. I’m done trying to convince my amja to help me summon the other Lieges. I’ve got a new idea.”
“We are not killing your amja, are we?” Karam asked. “I think perhaps that is an overreaction.”
“That’s Plan C,” Saxony said. “Plan B is going to someone else for help, like Tavia did.”
“You are going to the next Liege you know with the power of summoning,” Karam said as the understanding dawned on her. “Asees.”
Saxony nodded. “And your friendship with Arjun won’t hurt to convince her.” She smiled tightly. “If you don’t mind me wagering your connections, that is.”
“Of course,” Karam said. “But once Asees helps you to summon the other Lieges, what will we do next?”
“We kill Ashwood.”
Karam liked that plan.
“But I want to find a way of killing him without hurting anyone in his army,” Saxony said. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot. We know that not everyone follows him willingly. Some people are just civilians infected with the Loj.”
Tavia crossed her arms over her chest with a sigh. “They’re innocent,” she said.
But Karam shook her head.”There are no innocents in war.”
Though truly she thought the opposite.
Everyone was innocent in war, doing whatever they thought was best, even if it was convoluted and evil to everyone else. No soldier set out to be the bad guy. Every villain was the hero of their own story. War was built on innocence corrupted and lost. That was the thing battle stole from people, before it took their souls.
“I’m going to figure out a way,” Saxony said. “But we need a real army before we talk about how to storm the gates of Creije.”
“You mean save Creije,” Tavia said. “You have to make sure that the other Lieges you contact know that’s the plan. They can’t just be out for blood and revenge.We need to save the city.”
Karam knew that by city, Tavia also meant Wesley, since the two had always been very much one and the same. Karam couldn’t help but agree with her, because it was Wesley who had seen the promise in a young Wrenyi runaway and offered her the means to become the warrior she needed to be. She owed him so much—too much—and abandoning him now, after he’d saved them all in one way or another, was not the way forward.
“We must find out if Wesley is still himself,” Karam said. “If the Kingpin is inside his mind, then—”
“Zekia’s mind is the one we should be worried about,” Tavia said. “Since she’s clearly lost it.”
Karam agreed, but she could also never forget that Zekia was Saxony’s little sister, and in Karam’s mind that afforded her a certain unfair immunity for her crimes.
“She is just a child,” Karam said.
Tavia’s eyes turned severe. “That stops being an excuse when you become a mass murderer.”
Karam supposed she had a point, but she had to wonder where they drew this invisible line of morality. They had all killed someone at some point, or played a part in the deaths of strangers and foes alike.
None of them were free from sin, with clean hands unstained by blood. They were soldiers and warriors, and Karam couldn’t quite work out how they had made the distinction between fighter and killer.
She wasn’t sure what side of the line she fell on. For Zekia and the Crafters who believed in the Kingpin’s new world, weren’t Karam and the others just villains who were trying to steal it from them?
“Wesley has killed people too,” Saxony said. “He handed Zekia over to Ashwood once before. Maybe my sister is too far gone, but you need to think about the possibility that Wesley might also be beyond saving.”
“I have,” Tavia said, but there was no change in her eyes.
She had been threatening to give up on Wesley for years, but her inaction spoke volumes that her vows could not. Threats were nothing if they didn’t carry weight, and Tavia’s words were as light as air, flying from her lips and across the wind into nothing.
She couldn’t give up on Wesley, even if she tried. Karam could see that. Just like Karam would never give up on Saxony, or choose a side that didn’t have her on it.
If the years of Wesley being a crook and a total bastard hadn’t changed Tavia’s heart, then Ashwood’s influence wouldn’t. This war wouldn’t. She’d try to save him until the end, even if that put her on the opposite side from her friends.
Karam clutched her pehta’s pendant, threaded around her neck and falling perfectly beside her thumping heart. She wondered what side he would be on, or if he would counsel the absence of such a choice, trying to bring their armies together instead of preparing for them to fall apart. Or perhaps he would still have preached peace and given them a solution that offered no bloodshed or trampled loyalties.
Karam wished he were still alive to ask, but it was useless to hope for such things, because her father was gone, as so many others soon would be.
Life and loyalty were constantly in flux and Karam knew that sooner or later every bond on this side of the Onnela Sea would be tested.
She and Saxony and Tavia would fight this war on whatever side it took to save the people closest to them. Karam could only hope that those sides stayed the same for as long as possible.
ASEES LOOKED between Karam and Saxony, as though she were trying to decide who was more senseless. She finally settled on Saxony.
“You want me to go against the leader of your Kin? The woman who is allowing us safe stay in this place?” Asees asked her.
Though Asees and Karam had grown to respect one another, their mutual love for Arjun like a bond between them, she often looked at Saxony in a way that was far from endeared. Nobody could blame her, given everything that had happened between the two of them.
Asees resented Saxony for the delg bat that Ashwood had intercepted, leading so many of her Kin to be killed and for Asees herself to be inflicted with the Loj elixir. While Saxony resented Asees for trying to kill her while infected.
It didn’t make for a sturdy partnership.
“Saxony was the one who brought you here, to that safety,” Karam said. “And she also helped to save you when Ashwood had you under his thrall. She could have easily killed you to protect herself.”
From beside Asees, Arjun folded his arms across his chest to indicate how stubborn he planned on being, as though the way he stood as a shield beside Asees wasn’t enough of a clue.
“Both Asees and I helped to save Saxony’s people from that island and grant her underboss the magic he needed to help,” he said.
Karam cared for him as a brother, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t smack some sense into him when he needed it. “I believe we are all even with saving each other’s lives,” she said. “But does the Indescribable God not teach us to also think of the rest of the realms?”