by Devin Madson
We reached the crowd of Levanti around the gates, all craning their necks, their hands upon their swords. Worried faces stared around and whispering hissed like shifting sands, but of an enemy there was no sign. Abandoning Menesor and Jaesha, I threaded my way through the crowd toward the sentries, pushing where I had to. Some swore after me, but the majority let me pass. Whatever tenets we’d had to let go to survive, respect for our captains remained.
Just inside the closed gates I found Lashak e’Namalaka already talking to the captains of the Sheth and Oht, along with Captain Atum e’Jaroven, my own First Sword. Captain Taga en’Occha was there too, and thinking of Jass, I found I could not meet her gaze.
“What’s going on?” I saluted to Captain Atum. “There is talk of enemies at the gates.”
He barked a laugh. “Enemies? No, not enemies. Enemy.”
I stared at him, comprehension seeming to travel a long way to be with me. “I am afraid I do not fully understand, Captain. Enemy? There is… only one person outside the gates?”
“So the lookouts say.” He pointed up as he spoke, indicating the Levanti doing duty with the Kisians atop the short watchtower. The estate’s walls were not tall, but they were thick and sturdy and could survive the attack of one enemy.
“We are worried about one man?”
Captain Taga laughed, but as with Captain Atum’s bark there was little humour in it. “It is not the number of enemies we are concerned about.”
“Then what?”
“Make way for His Majesty!”
Shouts rose behind us and the gathering parted with a scuffing of boots on stone. Gideon approached, accompanied by a pair of Swords dressed in imperial colours. The little old Kisian from earlier was with him too, his shoulders hunched as though trying to be invisible. I pitied him the cruel twists of fate that had landed him in such a position.
“Open the gates,” Gideon said as he halted, his grand silk coat swept so far back that he looked more like the Levanti captain we had followed across these strange lands.
“Are you sure, Herd Master?” Captain Taga said, stroking the fletching of an arrow. “We could just turn him into a hedgehog.”
“No. Open the gates.”
Captain Atum, never one to delegate something he could do himself, strode forward. Another man might have looked back to check his herd master had not changed his mind, but not Atum. He lifted the bar that held the gates locked and let it drop to the ground with a thud. Distant thunder rumbled in its wake, but no one spoke or moved, the host of Swords gathered before the gates having stilled, ready to fight.
Atum gripped one of the gates, Taga the other, and with twin grunts of effort they heaved. A crack of night appeared between them, growing ever wider as the gates swung open. And in the widening aperture stood a single figure. A shadow against the night.
Whispering spread. Eyes darted from Gideon to the newcomer and back, but neither moved until the gates banged open. The new arrival approached. Slow, deliberate, confident of their welcome. They stopped a few paces from Gideon. A pale hand pushed back the hood.
And there, before the brewing storm, stood Dom Leo Villius. Same hair. Same eyes. Same smile. Even the linen mask hanging around his neck looked the same as the one we had burned. Yet he owned no scars though we had sliced his throat. No disfigurement though we had cut off his lips and put out his eyes—eyes that looked from me to Taga to Atum and around the gathered throng before finally coming to rest upon Gideon with the weight of a hundred lost heads.
“Good evening, Your Majesty.”
3. CASSANDRA
The bitch wouldn’t stop staring at me. No pretty scenery drew her attention. No amount of noise from outside. Not even the jolting of the carriage. And when day turned to night, her oddly hued eyes went on cutting into my flesh.
“Stop it,” I said to no effect. I had tried swearing at her—long strings of colourful language gleaned from the melting pot of the Genavan docks—but she had just stared all the harder. Silent she might be, but she understood just fine. And didn’t now look away. I rolled my eyes with a heavy sigh. “Stop staring at me. Please.”
A small smile twitched her lips and she turned her attention to the slumped figure of Empress Hana Ts’ai beside me. It was worth asking nicely for ten minutes’ respite from those searing violet eyes.
She’s schooling you well, Cassandra, She said, speaking in my head for the first time since climbing back into the carriage. Empress Hana hadn’t woken at the last stop, but the Witchdoctor had checked on her all the same, ignoring my presence entirely as he put a hand to her forehead and her throat and checked her fingers. Perhaps I should have tried making you ask nicely.
“It wouldn’t have worked,” I muttered.
The violet eyes snapped back to me, the young woman tilting her head as though examining an interesting specimen.
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
She did not look away.
“Her Imperial Majesty is far more interesting than me. Look, that stuff your god-man shoved down her throat stained her lips purple, and her hair is a mess.”
No reply. No movement.
I stared out the window at the rushing night, although the problem with staring at night is there’s nothing to actually look at. For a while there had been flickers of moonlit fields and villages and even the glint of light on water, but now there was nothing but darkness. We had stopped only to eat and drink and change horses, this journey all too reminiscent of travelling into Kisia with Leo. How clever I had felt knowing it was me he was trying to outrun.
Light flashed outside, but all that awaited beyond the opposite window was more darkness. The girl must have seen it too for she covered the open face of the lantern, darkening the interior of the carriage as she peered out. Empress Hana snuffled like a sleeping bear. Outside, a great, jagged streak of lightning cut the sky and disappeared into the shadowy trees, leaving a bright flash across my eyes.
It looks like we’ll get to see the rains after all, She said.
I’m not sure that’s a good thing.
Certainly not for the army if they haven’t taken Mei’lian yet.
I nodded my silent agreement as the young woman uncovered the lantern, returning a diffuse glow to the close space. Shielding her eyes, she pressed her nose to the thick glass of the window. It was the most interesting sign of life she had yet shown, but whether satisfied or not she soon sat back, fixing her gaze on nothing.
Afraid of the rains? Perhaps she worried they would hit before we reached our destination, which meant there was still some way to go. Still time to get out of here.
Out of here? She said, riding my thoughts. This is where we wanted to be. Where you wanted to be.
I never asked to be sold into slavery. Who knows what horrible things he plans to do to me.
Oh yes, She agreed. Like feeding you and checking you’re healthy and—
Like an owned animal.
When She made no answer, I leaned against the side of the carriage and tried to doze. I had been awake all day and night and still I could not sleep, could only listen for the patter of rain. Beneath me the coach wheels rumbled and the clatter of hooves made their own distant thunder, but inside there were just the gentle snuffles of a sleeping empress and, after a time, the rustle of turning pages. I shifted my head enough to peer through slitted eyes at the girl. A red leather-bound book lay open on her lap, gold glinting at the top of its spine. Many of Genava’s richest men had kept bound books, but in all my time visiting them for one purpose or another, I had never seen one painted in gold. It must have been important.
I managed to doze. I had thought it only a short rest but the carriage was light when I next opened my eyes. It wasn’t particularly bright light, rather the sort of weak, watery stuff of misty winter mornings. After so little sleep my eyes ached, but rubbing them was like rubbing sand into open wounds.
“Fuck,” I groaned, throwing my bound hands up to shield my eyes.
Cass.
“Go away.”
No! Cass, listen!
At the anxious note in her voice I held my breath to listen. Carriage wheels, horses, little rustles from the other corner and—
Rain.
I sat up, blinking. The empress was awake but did not look at me; neither did the young woman on the opposite seat. She was peering out the window at the slashes of water cutting through the air, obscuring her view like a thousand swarming insects.
It would obscure me too as I ran as far away from here as I could go.
No, don’t do it, Cass, please!
“I need to piss.”
The young woman looked around. So did Her Imperial Majesty, and I could not meet her disdainful gaze. Though the violet-eyed woman said nothing, it wasn’t hard to guess the meaning of her frown.
“Yes, I can see it’s raining,” I said. “But either you stop the carriage so I can piss out there or I’ll piss in here.”
The young woman just stared at me until I lifted my brows and said, “Well? Street life has given me pretty good aim for a woman.”
A flash of disgust animated her expression, and after wrinkling her nose she knocked hard upon the carriage roof. The rap was barely audible over the pounding rain yet a shout sounded outside and the carriage slowed to a jolting stop. A man wrenched open the door and stood there with rain splatting upon the sloping hood of his storm cloak. Behind him the Witchdoctor cut a grim figure on horseback.
“What is required?” he said as rain ran down his face. His head was uncovered, but the weather seemed not to bother him.
“I need to piss,” I said, and rose from my seat without waiting for a reply. Bent double, I shuffled past the Empress of Kisia’s jutting knees and out into the storm. Fat heavy drops pelted me like stones and within seconds I was drenched through. We were not strangers to storms in Chiltae and I had often wondered why so many traders feared the Kisian rains, but no storm hitting Genava had ever left me feeling bruised.
The carriage door closed, and unflinching beneath the downpour, the Witchdoctor pointed at a hazy clump of trees. “We are too distant from any settlement. It is unfortunate your bladder cannot hold more urine as you will now be saturated for the rest of the journey.”
Too stunned by the rain trying to beat me into the ground, I just stared at him. He stared back, his beautiful features lacking all expression.
“You are not moving,” he said, shifting a loose lock of wet hair from his brow. “You may relieve yourself here if that is your preference. It makes no difference to me.”
I hadn’t been desperate to go, but the fierce patter of the rain had increased my need tenfold and I pulled myself together. “Trees are good.” I considered asking him to untie my hands but that would only make him wary to my true purpose, so I trudged past him through the sheeting rain. It was like swimming through air, every breath a gasp.
My feet sank into a puddle as I stepped off the road, leaving my boots squelching with every step. Sure the Witchdoctor was watching, I didn’t dare look back, nor even think too loudly as I tottered into the trees.
The Witchdoctor followed a little way into the copse and sat watching as I selected a good pissing tree. “Hey, why don’t you give me some privacy,” I shouted, hooking my bound hands into my breeches. “It’s hard to piss when someone’s watching.”
The god-man didn’t answer, but he turned his horse and walked out of sight. His horse’s dark-haired tail disappeared with a final limp swish, and I counted three painfully long seconds. Then I pulled my hands from my breeches and ran. My feet slipped on the sloppy loam, but not caring which way I went I sped deeper into the trees, crashing through shrubs and slapping away reaching branches.
Desperation powered my fatigued body on. The sodden trees all looked the same, but even getting lost would be better than being the Witchdoctor’s prisoner. How the fuck had I ended up running from a nutter in western Kisia?
Because we need help, Cassandra!
The hollow shell of a dead tree appeared atop a rise and I veered toward it, digging my feet into the muddy slope. Perhaps if I could fit inside I could hide, could wait for them to leave, to—
A sharp pain pierced my leg, stealing my breath. I staggered back, overbalanced, and rolled backward down the slope until the pain in my head and arse almost equalled that in my calf. Hissing through bared teeth, I gripped my leg only to find the smooth wood of an arrow shaft protruding above my ankle.
“Fuck!” I tried to get up, but my feet slid and every movement made the arrow bounce. I gritted my teeth so hard thunder roared in my ears.
Movement flickered ahead and the Witchdoctor calmly regarded me from the back of his horse, bow in hand.
“It would appear that I am out of practice,” he said, it a mere curious observation.
“You just put an arrow through my leg, you fucking piece of—” I broke off with a howl as I tried to get up and my head spun.
“If you owned no desire to be hunted then you ought not to have run like common game. Do you intend to attempt further flight, or are you content with having endeavoured to escape once? I surmise to continue would be painful as well as irksome, but many humans own a level of stubbornness that heeds not their well-being.”
I stared at him, at this man who called himself a god, who spoke like a pompous governess and sat in the rain like he could not feel it, and all hope of freedom seeped from me. I could hobble at best and the man had more arrows. He was a wall against which I could beat myself senseless, an endless sea owning no shore. Yet he had not killed me. Had not beaten me. Had not touched me at all. He wanted me alive and well, and that, more than anything else, chilled me to the bone.
My only hope lay in finding a freshly dead body, then She—
Cass, he called you a Deathwalker when he spoke to the hieromonk. He knows.
I looked into those slowly blinking eyes—a dull grey yet sharp as glass.
He can see me, Cass.
But I couldn’t just let him haul me back. I could still try, could—
You’re the one who took the job to get to the Witchdoctor. You wanted to be free. The only difference is that now I want it too. Don’t make me fight you.
Free.
Do you really think there’s still a chance? I said.
Yes. I have to.
“I’m done,” I said, forcing a smile more mocking and confident than I felt. “But you’re right, I feel better for having tried.” I gestured to the arrow. “How else could I experience such joy as this?”
The man walked his horse toward me. His intent was clear, though if he expected me to climb onto his horse’s back with bound hands and a shaft of wood wobbling in my leg then he too would be subjected to my litany of curse words. But rather than command me to climb up, he sheathed his bow and leaned out of the saddle. He gripped the back of my tunic and lifted me off the ground like a puppy. My collar cut into my throat and my sleeves dug painfully into my underarms, but after a few seconds dangling he dumped me before him on the horse. Before I could complain about such ignominious handling, he set the animal walking, its every step making the arrow bounce.
Emerging from the trees’ protective canopy, we were once more hit with the full force of the storm. On the road the carriage waited, water dripping from the horses and the pointed tip of the driver’s hood. Behind it stood the covered cart, its load easier for the oxen without the long, heavy wooden box the hieromonk had exchanged me for.
Instead of returning me to the carriage door, the Witchdoctor urged his horse toward the back of the covered cart.
“Kocho,” he said. “A companion for you.”
No answer, just the heavy drumming of the storm. If I stayed in the rain much longer it would carve ravines in my flesh like rivers cutting stone.
“Kocho.”
The cart wobbled and the canvas flaps parted. An old face peered out, the sort of well-aged Kisian man whose skin had much in common with boot leather. “Master?”
Once more the Witchdoctor gripped a handful of my tunic and lifted me from the saddle. I wanted to kick and scream and point out I was neither child nor dog, but before I could think of anything clever to say he had half thrust me, half thrown me through the gap in the canvas. I hit the cart’s dry wooden boards with a cry as the end of the arrow snapped off, digging the head farther into my leg. Light and shadows swirled as I sucked great gasps of air.
The cart jolted forward and the rustling of paper mingled with the drumming rain. “Bloody storms,” the old man muttered. “And then here you come bringing your puddles and your blood.”
“It’s not like I wanted to bring either,” I snapped when the pain ebbed enough to speak. “You could just let me go and I’ll take my puddles and blood with me.”
“I’m not stopping you.”
I pushed up on my elbows. The man sat at the driver’s end of the cart with a small lap table and a lot of papers. A lantern hung over him, hooked upon the cart’s frame, and there was nothing—nothing at all—standing between me and freedom. As the cart rocked the canvas flaps fluttered, allowing brief glimpses of the rainswept road beyond, pale in the morning light.
“Have you got a bow stashed here too?”
“No,” the man said. “I never was very good with one of those.”
He was busy stacking his scrolls and papers as far from me and my puddles as he could and didn’t look up. “What will you do if I try to run, then?” I said. “Just shout for the god-man?”
“I could, but I wouldn’t bother. He’d hear you. Damn it, where did I put the Boesia?”
“Hear me? Over this rain?”
“Try it if you doubt me.”
I stared a long time at the sheeting rain through the crack in the canvas. Surely he wouldn’t hear me, whatever the old man said. If I lowered myself onto the road and found a ditch to hide in, I might not even have to run.
“Look, if you’re going to do it, just do it,” the man said, breaking upon my thoughts. “Thinking about it over and over is noisy and annoying.”
“Then help me escape.”