Page 39 of Humans Don't Have Horns
“Lian!” Emek’s tone is impatient now, and she smirks at my surprised look, her eyes darting between Daton and me. Great start.“We would be happy to hear your plan,” she says, and when I don’t answer, she adds, “About the demichads.” I again wonder if she told Daton of her vision. I wonder if she told him before smuggling me from the camp. It makes my skin crawl. It couldn’t have all been a lie. Could it?
I clear my throat and sit down. “The demichads will rise in full numbers two months from now. Until then, we need to prepare for the impending battle. There are several terms that need to be addressed for us to have a chance at winning this battle. First, Mongans and Puresouls must fight the demichads side by side.” I know I just dropped a bomb on them, but I don’t know how to sugarcoat it even if I wanted to.
“This is bullshit,” Niska spits, then stands up to leave the tent.
“Sit the fuck down,” Daton growls at her. She sits, looking like ascolded child. The rest of them look at me with taut faces. They loathe Puresouls and have no trust in them.
Daton rubs his face with his hand. “Lian,” he says slowly, and I can see he’s struggling with choosing the right words. In the end, he only grunts one: “Why?”
“A week ago”—and if there is some kind of reward for maturity, I think I should win it for not adding to that,after you walked out on me—“I was approached by a direwolf, who taught me how to speak to Amada herself. Amada is soaked in blood from the killing between Puresouls and Mongans. She wants the bleeding to stop, and if we can’t do that, then we will all die.”
“The way for us to win the war is peace?” Bahar scoffs, his eyebrows high.
“I guess that’s one way to phrase it. But that’s only one part of it. The demichads will need to be killed at the impending battle. And you can’t defeat them alone. There are too many of them and this is Amada’s way of making sure the killings are stopped.”
“But we are not the ones who do the killing!” Hama exclaims in protest. I don’t answer that because it’s not my place to rank guilt or any other thing for that matter. I glance at Daton. The man who mended my heart only to break it. He’s shed an amount of blood that no Puresoul has managed to. Maybe because he’s lived longer than us, or because he is more gifted at killing than any Puresoul, or because his hunger for revenge is insatiable. I suspect it’s all of those things. He has killed so many that his name was the only name Amada mentioned in that context. And yet she also ordered me to save him at the same time because as much as he is a problem, he is also a solution. Our eyes meet, and he straightens himself as if reading my mind. His gaze doesn’t leave mine as he refuses to apologize for what he has become.
“Lian,” Anavel says now, her voice soft, “we follow the Goddess. She is our only God. I don’t know how you—”
Emek interrupts her midsentence and says in an authoritative voice, “In this, we follow Lian.” They all look at her in bewilderment except Daton, whose eyes never leave me.
“But Oracle,” both of the women of the Goddess call.
Emek raises her hand, and they go silent. “What was last night all about, if not to stop clinging to the death of the past and to move to choose life over it? Lian was chosen to remove the darkness from Amada. I knew the prophecy of a savior with white hair who would defeat the darkness. I knew, but my anger wouldn’t permit me to believe the savior would be born from the blood of our tormentors.” Then she sets her eyes on me and says, “We will fight as you tell us.”
I shiver at that. I don’t want that responsibility. It’s too much. I never wanted it.
“How can we fight by the sides of those who hunt us?” Niska cries askance.
“They all know the prophecy,” Emek says, her eyes on me. I frown at that. I had never heard of it. My mother always said there was no meaning to the color of my hair and eyes. Why am I the last one to know? It’s like the Nimatek all over again, me being the last one to find out fundamental things about myself.
“And now it’s to Lian to deliver.” She grimaces. As if I needed the weight of those words. The savior. Yet how can I truly save anyone when Amada punished me? I feel like screaming and running away. I feel like the biggest impostor in Amada.
“That’s enough for today,” Emek says, making to rise.
“Wait. There’s more,” I say.
They all look at me warily.
“You need to leave the swamps and move near the canyon.”
Everyone stares at me, mouths slack.
“But what would stop the Shavirs from killing us?” Bahar asks.
I have no good answer to that except, “This was Amada’s order. We must have faith in her.”
***
After three days, the Mongan camp is relocated near the canyon. The camp consists of almost fifty thousand people, and the packing and moving is a chaotic operation that Emek commands in an admirableway. After a day of packing, it takes us two days to reach the canyon, and I am amazed at how quickly we get there with so many people and, especially, so many young children.
I managed to avoid Daton the entire time. Not as gracefully as I would have wanted, but effectively nonetheless. I don’t know why I avoid him so determinedly. It’s childish and completely inappropriate for the part I was given. He is the Mongan warlord, after all. I will have to speak to him eventually. I decide I’ll speak to him when Niska is nearby. That would be safest. He won’t try to apologize again when she is around, and I won’t need to gather my sense. Which seems to have abandoned me completely when it comes to him. Watching him speaking to Niska has been torture. She looks infatuated with him and far more suited to him.
I’d never realized how formidable he is. When we were alone, he first seemed so intimidating that it was impossible to grasp anything of him but violence. And then, then he became Daton. And he was many things, clever and funny, sometimes shy, and sometimes not shy at all. He was damaged and broken, and he made me feel less so for the first time.
But here, with his people, he’s a king with no crown. He has no need for one. They behave so reverently to him, and with such admiration in their eyes. It is so strange to me that I was alone with him for all those weeks and never once considered that he is the sort of a man that possesses so much power over so many. I’ve heard of the Butcher, but the Butcher is a raging murderer. But here, he’s not the Butcher. He’s the Emancipator. He’s more regal than all the royals I’ve met before.
***
