He didn’t bother deflecting the attacks. It was as if he didn’t even feel the slash of their blades. He seized each guard by the throat and hurled them against the wall beside their queen. They slumped to the ground, and Mayu knew they would not rise again. Reyem grabbed the queen around the neck.
“Who will save you now?” he bit out.
“Locust!” shouted the doctor.
But he wasn’t Locust anymore.
“Set her down,” Tamar said, coughing, her face damp with sweat. “We can’t kill her, much as I might like to in this moment.”
“Reyem?” Mayu asked, not certain if he would hear or obey her.
He dropped the queen in an unceremonious heap, then smashed the controls that would have allowed her to close the other sleeping chambers.
Makhi lay on the floor, gasping for breath.
Reyem turned. “Mayu.” His face was haunted. He was her brother and yet he wasn’t. There was a stillness in him, a coldness that hadn’t existed before. “I knew you would come.”
A sob shook Mayu and she ran to him. Her broken hand throbbed as she threw her arms around her brother. His body felt strange, the hard lines of his wings folded against his back. Her mind couldn’t quite make sense of it. Her twin. Kebben.
“Bergin,” Reyem said to the Fjerdan Grisha. “Are you all right?”
“No.” Bergin was shaking badly. “I need … please.”
“He needs another dose of parem,” said Reyem.
Tamar rose, limping slightly. “Try this instead.” She handed him a pellet of antidote.
“What is it?”
“Freedom.”
Bergin placed the pellet in his mouth and chewed slowly. His body started to spasm.
Reyem went to him, bracing Bergin’s emaciated body against his massive frame. “What’s happening to him? What did you give him?” His voice was hard as iron.
“Antidote,” said Tamar. “Whatever is in the parem he was dosed with is strong. I felt it too, but I didn’t get a full dose, and his body is weakened. He’ll be okay.”
Shouts sounded from below, the sound of the Tavgharad returning, no doubt with Ehri in tow.
Tamar grabbed Makhi by the front of her gown and propped her against the wall. “Call back your falcons. Tell them to bring Ehri.” Despite everything it troubled Mayu to see a Taban queen treated so roughly.
“I’ll tell them to choke her where she stands.”
“No doubt you would have already if you thought you could get away with it. But Ehri dying would be tough to explain to your ministers, wouldn’t it?”
Mayu could see the queen weighing her options, calculating her next move.
“Bring her up!” Makhi shouted at last.
The Tavgharad emerged through the grate, covered in blood and muck. They dragged Ehri up behind them, keeping her arms restrained. She couldn’t have gotten far in the tunnels.
In the distance, Mayu heard the thrum of what might have been an airship engine.
Princess Ehri looked around, taking in Tamar, the queen, the unconscious doctor. “Did we … did we win?”
Queen Makhi began to laugh. “‘Did we win?’” she singsonged. “This is the fool who seeks to decide the fate of a nation? What do you think you’ve accomplished here tonight? There are no ministers here to witness my supposed crimes. By the time you rally them, I’ll have the khergud transported and this facility burned to the ground.”
“We’re not going to give you that chance,” said Mayu.
“I am a queen. Is that so hard to grasp? Do you think you can just march me back to the palace with your Ravkan bodyguard? They’ll hang you for a traitor. I have troops surrounding this building, and any messenger you send will be intercepted. So to answer your question, little sister: No, you haven’t won.”
“Look around you, Makhi,” Ehri said. “Is this what you want your legacy to be? Torture?”
“What you call torture, I call science. If I were building tanks like the Fjerdans or missiles like the Ravkans, would you find that more palatable? People die. That is what war is.”
Reyem slammed his fist into the wall, leaving a deep dent. “To be khergud is to die a thousand times.”
“You had no right,” said Mayu, rage coursing through her. “You are a queen, not a god.”
Makhi drew in a breath, looking down her nose at all of them. There could be no doubt she had been born to rule. “It was not my right. It was my duty. To make my country strong.”