Warsinger by James Baldwin (most important books of all time txt) 📕

“You need to read this.” I pulled the page out and handed it to her.

Suri took it, unrolled it, and began to scan it. As she reached the end of the entry, her face drained of color. By the time she finished it, the muscles in her jaws were quivering. She threw it on the floor of the carriage and pressed a hand to her face.

“Hey, Suri...” I leaned in.

“Don't touch me for a sec.” Her voice was tight, controlled. I watched her breathe, watched as her cheeks and eyes turned red. But she didn't cry. When she looked back up at me, her one uncovered eye blazed in her face, as bright as molten gold.

“Reading that letter just gave me a quest.” She forced her hand down, clipping every word off with cold precision. “First one I've gotten in a while, actually. I need to go to Dalim and stop these mongrels from killing the Morning Stars.”

“Who are the Morning Stars?” I asked.

Suri lifted her chin, eyes scanning something I couldn’t see. “New Quest: The Morning Stars. After reading a journal entry written by Jacob, one of the Wardens of Al-Asad, you have learned that they have fled to Dalim to destroy a faction known as the Morning Stars. Depending on who you ask, the Stars are either violent terrorists or revolutionary heroes. Their mission? To bring down the ruling Khememmu Dynasty, abolish the Caste system, and reinstate the ancient Fireblooded Ha’Shazir Dynasty to the throne. Go to Dalim with all haste, make contact with the Morning Stars, and either aid them – or hinder them – in their mission to change the course of Dakhdir’s bloody history.”

I thought back to all the quests we had to do in Myszno, and swallowed nervously. “Is there a time limit on it?”

“No.” The afternoon light cut Suri's face into hard, angular shadows. “Just a recommendation. Says the best time to contact them is within the next seven days.”

“Okay. Well, I'm all for going to hunt down these pieces of shit, but we haven't even gotten you to Myszno yet,” I said. “You don't have a spawn point. We've got like, thirty kingdom quests, and Baldr to deal with. I know this is really important to you-”

She shot me a dark, piercing look. “Do you?”

“Yeah, I do. So what I was going to say was how about we get you back to Myszno, get you set up, get a handle on shit, and then you can go-”

“I can go, can I?” She stiffened, turning back to face me.

“You want to take on two Architects and a revolution without a home base to fall back to?” I gestured toward the west. “Istvan is stuck there, probably trying to put out twenty different fires. We signed up for our responsibilities when we were here, in Taltos. If there's no time limit on the Morning Stars quest, we can go get them once we have our base consolidated.”

Suri leaned forward. “You know what he meant by living out some 'hentai'?”

“Uhh... yeah.” I blinked a couple times. “It’s a kind of anime. Anime is like... a kind of cartoon. Like a fictional story told with pictures. Hentai is a kind of anime that's, uh, pornographic. Most of it is pretty tame, but there’s some extreme torture stuff out there, too. Seems these guys were into the extreme fantasy stuff, and they were like... acting it out here.”

“That's all it was to them? Some fantasy of theirs?”

“Yeah.” I drew a deep, calming breath, and tried to sit back. “I’m sorry. I don’t even know what to say.”

Suri's long neck stiffened. “And you're telling me we have to go back to Myszno, right the fuck now?”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose and grimaced, hard. “Suri, those quests are all on timers. I already fucked over Istvan and my people - our people - by going to pick you up from Al-Asad instead of getting them food and water and sewerage. You ARE my priority, but we just heard it from Rutha’s lips. Baldr is about to invade some nearby country, and if we don’t shore up our base…”

“It’s your base. Because like everything I've been doing this last couple months, this is your quest.” Her jaw worked. “And you think your quests are more important than mine.”

I scowled at that. “What? No. I don’t think that.”

“Yeah, no. You stuck yourself into my quest here, in Taltos, and when it turned into a fucking war, I went along with it and supported you.” She gripped the cushion of the carriage, leaning in as far as her constricting dress allowed for. “You got tangled up with Baldr over what happened in Ilia because of Karalti, and I've fought with everything I've got to protect her and you and Rin through it all. I lost my life over it. But when we hear that these fucking bastards imprisoned me, tortured me because they had some disgusting cartoon fantasy they wanted to act out? Fuck, Hector. They're about to go and murder a bunch of people because of me, because of some secret I might not get a chance to find out about if we wait. But sure, we can just put a raincheck on it and go take care of your stuff first?”

“It's not like that-”

“It IS like that. Because I don't even recall asking you to go with me, let alone asking for your permission.” Suri's eyes glowed with simmering heat. “You just upped and told me I could wait around for you while we - plural - make sure everything is peachy in Myszno.”

I was starting to get pissed off now. “I'm not your enemy, Suri. And yeah, am I wrong for assuming you’d want some help with this? You’re talking about taking on two Architects. You don’t know what level they are, what resources they have. You can’t go alone.”

“Can't I?” She bared her teeth. “Says who?”

“Says me,