CHAPTER 438: 438: TERMS IN THE DUST PART TWO

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"Yes, I know her." Mia’s reply came slower, measured. "We trained in the same yard when we were small enough to think a spear was too big for us. She is loyal to the Ant Kingdom the way stone is loyal to gravity. She will obey the order above her, but she will care for her people too. If you let her go and if Vorak asks and tells her to attack you again, she will do it, even if it breaks something inside she values. She puts loyalty before sleep, before feelings, but not before friends. She will take the right step to defeat you. She is very cunning and a good strategy maker."

"Can I offer her to join me?" Kai asked. "Vexor and others saying, I should consider letting her join me. She will be a great help."

"No," Mia said, frank. "There are only two voices that can pull her out of the chain without breaking her: my mother — or Hoorius. The crown and the law. Mine might reach... because of the past, but only if I use it right, at the right time."

"She won’t join me, then," Kai said.

He leaned his head against the cool stone. "If I let her go, she will walk back into Vorak’s questions. If I keep her, I hold a wall that could turn. If I kill her, I make an enemy out of myself in front of nine hundred who followed orders and stopped when their orders said stop."

There was silence, but not the unkind kind. Then Mia continued again: "Keep her. Keep them. Feed them. Keep their weapons stacked away from their hands. Tell her something only she and I would know. She won’t attack you in the night if she believes I told her not to. I believe she will behave like a good prisoner."

"What thing?" Kai asked.

"Tell her in the training yard," Mia said. He felt the smile in her voice now, private and remembering. "A girl bled to death because you killed her for bullying someone. A royal princess hid you from the instructor behind the west water jars and pressed her scarf on the dead body. She saved you from punishment by saying that that girl stole from a Princess and got killed for that. You promised the princess you would repay her kindness someday."

Kai barked a quiet laugh before his ribs remembered they were sore. "That princess was you. Right?"

"Don’t say it like a surprise," she said, amused. "I was very convincing. That bully deserves it."

"She’ll believe me?" Kai asked, back to the point.

"It’s our secret," Mia said. "No one else was there. Only me and Yavri know the truth. If she asks who told you that story — you say a princess whose name you will not speak right now. You say she will come. And I will. I’m making a plan."

"Really, you are coming?" Kai asked.

She replied, "Yes, I am preparing for it. I made up some excuses to go out of the ant kingdom. You know a royal can’t just go out. I need proper reasons. But Thea is a tangle —as always—. She is trying her best to mess with me. But she won’t stop me for long. I want to meet you so badly. I want to see your home."

Kai’s hand closed in the air. He wished it was closing on hers. "I will wait for your arrival. I also want to meet you.... Alright back to the topic If I tell Yavri that, she stays as an obedient prisoner?"

"She will," Mia said. "She’ll keep her women in order. She’ll sit on her hands and wait for the higher word. Like Vorak giving you something for the prisoner. And she will wait for me too. Just... don’t tell her too much about us. Let her stew in discipline, not hope. Tell her that, I told her to stay until I meet her."

"Understood." He let his breath out. "I was going to kill her to make the risk small. I want to protect my people."

"I know," Mia said, and didn’t flinch. "But don’t kill her. Not this one. Not her army. Keep them for me. I need them. Keep them for the day I need to say to someone, ’You asked for loyalty and you got it. Now you ask for mercy and I will give it to you.’" (Note: That’s a conversation for later.)

Kai smiled into the stone. "Only for you, then. I’ll take the risk."

"Only for me?" she teased.

"You’re too clever to need me to say more," he said.

"Say it anyway," she said, softer now.

"I thought of you every time I opened my eyes in the morning," he said. "It’s harder to be a monster for my enemy when I remember someone who knows me as not one."

The silence on the thread warmed like a palm pressed to a cheek. "And I thought of you too," she replied. "Every time a messenger came, I didn’t breathe until I asked them about news about your mountain. Sometimes I fear what I will do if something happens to you."

"I’m hard to kill," he said.

"You’re too stubborn to admit that you are strong," she corrected. "There’s a difference."

He let the road hold a small laugh between them. It felt good. It felt like a thing he could put in his pocket for later.

"I have to close the soul road," he said after a time that felt both long and not long enough. "I have captives waiting for a word. Soon, I will rank up too."

"Give them my words," she said. "Make it heavy enough to keep swords sheathed. And Kai—"

"Yes?"

"If you need to break someone’s hand before you sleep to make an example, don’t hesitate, just do it..."

"I’ll fix the problem instead," he replied. "No need to break something or someone."

"Good," she said, and he could hear the smile again. "Next time, don’t make me wait three weeks. I really miss you a lot."

"I must make you wait three or four days," he said. "No more. I am going to rank up soon. I need that time for myself. During that time I can’t contact you."

"Two days," she bargained.

"One and a half," he countered.

"Done," she said, and the line dimmed on her laugh.

"Enough jokes. I will contact you after my rank is done." Kai says, "See you later Mia."

"Later Kai. Miss me more during these four days."

"I will... I will miss you more than you can imagine."

He let the soul road fold away. The mountain breath came back into his ears; the forge’s faint ring down-shaft, the low sound of water in the cistern, a drone’s careful step up the hall — all the small noises that mean home.

Kai pushed off the stone and stood. He took the spear back into his hand and rolled his shoulder to feel what still ached and what had decided to keep quiet. The aches would be there in the morning. That was fine. He had a decision to carry before then.

On the way down he stopped once, hand on a notch he and Luna had carved high above Miryam’s favorite perch: a line of scratches only a child would make and only a parent would count. He let his fingers find the newest number and move past it one place. It was a promise to himself.

Then he stepped out into the ledge light again.

Silvershadow stood where he’d been told, black yellow eyes on black fur hands, a bowl line already moving between his drones and Yavri’s. The surrendered women ate in pairs, eyes down, posture strict because posture is the last thing you can own when everything else is out of your hands. Shadeclaw’s men kept an easy distance that could become a hard distance in a blink.

Yavri rose when he came to the mountain shade lintel. She didn’t look thinner without her command; she looked exactly the same, which told him what mattered about her. Her captains rose too, but only as far as knees. They were learning.

Kai stopped three steps from her and let the space work for both of them. The spear rested lightly in his fingers. Behind his ribs, the day’s heat thudded like a tired drum.

"I have words for you," he said. "Come with me. I will talk with you alone."

The sentence made all eyes on the notch where promises become rules, with three dead vice general under nets at the ledge heel, with nine hundred plus women sitting very straight in the bank of a mountain they had come to break, and with a single answer in a single man’s mouth that would decide if the desert slept or sharpened itself again before dawn.

Kai led Yavri off the main ledge and into the shallow side hall where the wall bent once and stole the wind. He didn’t take her deep—just out of the crowd’s weight.