Free Mourning Cloak by Rabia Gale

misplaced—joy.
    “I felt that way, too, at first, if you remember.” Those half-remembered memories sit like acid in my stomach. “But you’ve never let the transformation progress all the way, have you? It’s not enough to have pretty armor, you know. It wants to
change—
”
    She snaps her fingers and blades spring out from all over her, their sharp points at my eyes, my throat, my chest. “Enough. I will not be poisoned by your self-defeating talk again. It should have been
me
that first time. I had the will, the drive, and I knew it at the time. Though”—again she caresses her armor—“it was probably better to have waited for the upgrade.”
    “So it was all about power for you, after all. All about
you
and your ambition and your greatness.”
    For a moment, I think she’s going to attack me. Her armor roils all over her and I wonder if it will be whips or hooks or a blast of heat. But she controls herself and her armor smoothes itself over her body.
    “No,” she says. “It’s about my people.
Our
people, preyed on by the golems. Every time we grew and spread, they came out and wiped out most of our fields and half our population. We never achieved the science and progress of Highwind because they destroyed every third generation. We could’ve been a great people, if not for them.”
    “We can still be a great people.” I’m straining against my bonds in my urgency. gn=my urge“Destroy the golems and the Garguants, if you wish. But the gates must stand! They lock the Dark Masters in, not protect them. If you open the gates, you’ll let the horrors of the Shivering back into the world.”
    She casts me a look of mingled dislike and contempt that twists my soul. “Still listening to that
eilendi
bitch, are you? That’s what she cried out to me while we melted her bones and ripped out her organs. She can’t face her own betrayal, nor you your failure, Kato.”
    So. Sera had done that to Flutter, and enjoyed it, too. Parts of her soul are black and dead.
    But so are mine, but I can taste hope on my lips.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
“You are angry, but then so was I. But what if she
is
right. What if Tau Marai is a prison for dark creatures we no longer have names for…”
    “Then I will crush them, and we will no longer have to worry if Tau Marai is prison or stronghold.
    “I loved you once.” Sera’s mouth crooks, her eyes soften. “I loved you when I married you and I loved you when we fled to Highwind. But you lost the will to fight. You were content to sink into obscurity and let our people live in fear and oppression. Nothing mattered to you anymore.”
    “You’re wrong,” I say past the ache in my chest. “You mattered to me.”
    Sera shakes her head. “You didn’t care for the things I cared about. The fire still burned in me, but it had been quenched in you. Our minds no longer met, and, in the end, neither did our hearts.”
    “I hunted cloaks for you. I fought with Toro over your burial rites. I wrote the hardest letters I ever have to your family. Your heart might have changed, but mine did not.” I draw a deep breath. “Is it really too late for us, Sera?” I wish I can reach out and touch her.
    “Stop it.” The disgust on her face strikes me like a blow. “You want to stop me, don’t you? Because you are afraid of victory. You’re afraid of things changing.”
    She’s close to drugging me again. I shut my mouth.
    “Watch, Kato,” she invites. “See how it’s done.” And with that she turns and strides away. Her hand brushes against my leg. She doesn’t notice, or care.
    But I do.
     
    Sera’s army is ragged and motley from a distance, certainly not the neat, disciplined squares of men that we had trained in earlier days. Yet each member of it is capable of inflicting far greater damage than a single soldier. Eerie men growl and pace off their nervous energy. Night walkers root themselves into the dry soil and stand still as trees. Cobble crunchers