by Devin Madson
Someone crashed into a nearby tent in a stream of angry cursing, but I could not look around, could not help. Not as Baln advanced with a series of jabs at my face. I reeled back over the skittering woodpile only for Moshe to lunge into the corner of my vision. My foot caught a tent peg and almost I went over again, but someone caught my shoulder and Yafeu was there, blood oozing from a nasty cut on his face. No words of thanks. No time. He was gone again in an instant.
Needing this finished, I charged Baln, punting sticks into his shins only to turn and dart a slash at Moshe, but the man caught my blade on his own with a grating of steel. He dove in, only to meet my boot. Moshe gasped and tottered back, stunned, but when I lunged for the kill someone threw me sprawling sideways into a low tent. Damp canvas closed over me like wings, spiking my panic. I flailed with swords made useless, before dropping them and drawing my knife to slit the fabric like a thick skin.
Baln loomed through the opening, sword raised. I rolled, hissing as his blade pierced my arm. It burned as he ripped it out and slashed, catching the side of my face as I rolled back. My hand closed around the hilt of my abandoned sword, and with blood and pain leaking from my arm, I thrust it up. Its tip cut into his belly and I pushed to my knees, turning the steel within his gut and thrusting it deeper. Baln staggered, crashing back through the woodpile as the foul smell of his stomach contents seeped between his hands.
He spat at me as I got shakily to my feet. “I curse you in the sight of the gods, Dishiva e’Jaroven,” he said, all but tripping over the still forms of Yafeu and Moshe, atop one another, each of their deaths the last act of the other. “I curse you never to rest and never to rise, and to be forever forsaken by the Goddess and… the Watchful… Father. I—” His knees hit the mud. “I curse… you… Dishi… va…”
Baln slumped, but as though caught by dead hands, I could not move. On the other side of the camp Kehta had Esi around the throat. Esi scratched and tore at the arm choking air and life from her body, but Kehta only tightened her hold and dragged the Jaroven toward the fire. I made to move, but Shenyah finally drew her blade and sliced the length of Kehta’s spine, tail bone to skull. The Oht hunter turned with a hiss, dragging Esi around. Like a righteous executioner, Shenyah swung at the exposed side of Kehta’s neck and the woman howled, blood spraying from her throat. A second blow almost removed her head. Esi slid from her hold as Kehta crumpled dead at Shenyah’s feet, hunched as though in prayer.
Silence buried the broken camp, drawing Tafa’s attention from my horse master. At the sight of Baln and Kehta’s bodies her eyes widened, and with a snarl she plunged her short knife into the rump of Loklan’s horse. She wrenched it out again as the animal reared, and shoving Loklan out of the way she ran crashing off through the trees. With a furious roar he tore after her. Within moments their footsteps had faded away leaving nothing but Shenyah’s croons as she caught the injured horse’s reins and tried to calm its panic.
Esi got slowly to her feet and together we stared around at the carnage. Bodies. Blood. Broken tents and a mud-clogged fire pit. And all our horses scattered into the trees. I could not speak while we retrieved them. I could not speak while Shenyah tipped out the whole contents of Loklan’s box and tended his horse’s wound. I could not speak when, like the empty clay shell of a human, I knelt numbly in the mud to take the heads of our fallen. I started with Moshe. Blood poured free with my first incision, the escaping liquid seeming to drop with the weight of stones.
In lightening myself of the souls Whisperer Ezma had placed upon my shoulders, I had taken on a heavier burden still. These had been my Swords, their safety my responsibility, my trust in them as required of our code as was their trust in me. I had failed at the most basic of our tenets, and worse. By failing to fulfil Gideon’s orders, I had betrayed him at a time when he needed me most, when he and our fledgling empire were most vulnerable.
My chest tightened as I worked. Esi had her knees beneath Yafeu’s head, focussing on each cut rather than stare into his lifeless eyes, and I wondered if she had the same thoughts I did. The same regrets. The same fear over what would come next. If she did, we didn’t speak of it. Couldn’t. My throat was as tight as my chest, every part of me blocked with grief and rage. Better to keep it locked within, where the only person it could harm was the person who deserved it most.
Me.
23. RAH
A sea of people poured from the city gates carrying armfuls of possessions. Some pushed handcarts or had children riding on their shoulders, the noise a symphony of footsteps, shouts, and squeaking wheels. The current ran strongest around the outer edges where individuals carrying less skirted the central, deep flow, which even included a few of those curtained carriers for the old and the sick. Or the rich. I knew which it would have been back home, but if I had learned anything in my exile it was that Kisia wasn’t home.
That fact was reinforced over and again by people bunching up to get out of my way, one look at my face enough to frighten most of them into putting as much space between us as possible, my every attempt to ask why they were leaving the city met with fear.
I walked on against the current, Shishi at my heels. Despite people trying to avoid me, the closer we got to the gates the harder it became to push through.
A woman with a child on her hip brushed past, hitting me with a sack as she tried to turn out of my path. Another man ran over my foot with the front wheel of his handcart. As people pressed in, one shouted at me, pointing the way they were walking as though I were a fool. Others shook their heads. A young man with dye-stained hands stepped into my path and raised his fists, shouting, only to be yanked back into the moving current by an older woman. Another raised his hands in thanks.
Shishi yelped as someone trod on her paw. I bent to pick her up, buffeted on all sides. Despite the crush, she scrabbled to get down, eventually settling for putting her front paws on my shoulder and looking back the way we had come, panting so fast that her chest sucked in and out against mine. She drew more eyes than I had on my own, but at least they stopped slamming me with their shoulders—their respect for the dog greater than their respect for a Levanti.
I shuffled toward the open gate, my stride becoming shorter and shorter as we approached the bottleneck. Where the crowd was thickest some people were pushing and shoving, while others just hurried on, silent, intent, afraid. I felt their fear, but it was the crumbling wall I hunted, for the enemies who had wanted me dead. Enemies I had once called my kin.
Feeling safer in the centre of the crowd, I pushed through the middle of the gateway, shuffling around curtained carriers and carts and people in robes of all cloths and colours. No Levanti called to me. No one fought through the crowd to reach me. After all, what was one man to a whole army of Kisians?
The crowd was even thicker inside the gates. The square was packed edge to edge, people and vehicles squeezed out into the surrounding streets as far as I could see. Trails of seething life wound between buildings with caved-in roofs and broken shutters, and walls blackened by fire—all remnants of the Chiltaen conquest. A conquest these people had not fled until now.
A bite of fear tightened my arms around Shishi, but I could not turn back now.
I pushed on toward the palace. No doubt there were faster routes than along the main road crammed with people, but I knew only the way Leo had brought me in and Jinso had brought me out, so I wound my way through the press of people creeping, at the pace of snails, toward freedom.
By the time I could walk freely the sun had sunk halfway toward the horizon, and with a sigh of relief I set Shishi back upon her paws. Cramps pinched arms held too long in one position, so while she relieved herself upon the road I winced and stretched tired muscles. “You’re a lot heavier than you look,” I said as she returned, panting, to my feet. “Or perhaps I’ve gotten weaker.”
She couldn’t answer but trotted loyally at my heels like I was Empress Miko.
The imperial palace stood in the centre of the city,
tall, old, and silent like the Hissing Tomb upon the plains. Its stones were not as worn nor its gardens as dead and tangled, yet it owned something of the same haunted look. The horse whisperers of old had been laid to rest there, but it had long since been abandoned, just as people were abandoning the palace now.
Two Levanti stood outside the palace gates. Both were dressed in the traditional style, neither wearing a silk coat nor an oiled cloak, and for the first time I felt ashamed of the sandals upon my feet. Their scalps were freshly shaved too, unlike my overgrown hair twisting into loose curls, and while I dragged exhausted limbs they stood strong, the spread-foot, loose-kneed Levanti stance designed to withstand even the fiercest gusts of the Eastbore. For a mad moment I wanted to run, but whatever my fears these were my people, my Swords, and I had to believe they would do me no harm.
I recognised the twins before they recognised me, but by the time I halted before them both Himi and Istet were staring at me like a ghost.
“Himi,” I said, saluting first one then the other. “Istet.”
“Captain?” Himi managed, finding her voice before her sister. But her words seemed to shatter Istet’s dumbfounded silence and the older of the twins scowled at me.
“Except he isn’t our captain anymore, remember?” She lifted her chin and her hand strayed to her sword. “Rah. You’re meant to be a long way from here.”
“I was but I came back. Gideon is in danger.”
Istet’s hand remained upon her sword. “Aren’t we all, all the time?”
“His ally, Grace Bahain, intends to use us and then do away with us so he can take the throne for himself. I’ve come back to warn him.”
Himi looked from her sister’s sword hand to me and said in a low voice, “Gideon isn’t here. You shouldn’t be here either, Rah. We’re burning the city at nightfall and if Sett finds out you’re here…”
“Burning the city? Why?”
“So the Kisians can’t have it back,” Istet snapped, her grip tightening around her sword hilt. “Now are you going to leave, or am I going to have to draw this damn thing?”
Her hateful scowl hurt more than the threat. I had been her captain and she my Sword. “Did I lead you so badly, Istet? That you would strike me down defenceless?”
“You’re not defenceless.” She jabbed her free hand at my single surviving blade. “Just draw it.”
“Against a Torin? Against my own Sword? Without challenge I would not.”
Istet’s face screwed up into an ugly snarl. “Damn your honour. You should have taken us home.”
“Istet,” Himi hissed. “Don’t do this.”
“Eska was right,” Istet said, ignoring her. “You were just too afraid to challenge the herd master so we all had to suffer your exile. And see what has become of our honour now? My soul will be heavy when I am judged, but yours will break the scales.”
“Eska challenged and lost, sister,” Himi said. “The gods made their choice.”
Except I knew the truth. No intervention from the gods had seen me beat Eska the night he challenged for my captaincy. Nor had I fought better. I had just been more afraid. And ever since, I had held tighter and tighter to the precepts of our code only for more and more of my Swords to slip through my fingers, leaving me with nothing but the heavy weight of my own soul.
Yours will break the scales.
So much to say, but every admission of guilt and apology that formed on my tongue clotted into a single mass and stuck my lips closed. What words could ever be enough? Words could not change the past. Could not bring back Eska and Amun, Kishava and Orun and Juta—bright, young Juta with his whole life before him.
It was all I could do to keep my wail of despair trapped behind my teeth, but when I made no answer Istet’s lip curled and she gestured at Shishi. “Did you lose Jinso too? That’s a lovely guilt-dog.”
Unable to tell the truth and yet refusing to lie, I appealed to Himi. “That man I was locked in the cells with, the one we found sitting on the throne in the empress’s armour.”
“Minister Manshin?”
“Yes, him, is he still here?”
I braced for more of Istet’s ire, but the twins shared an uneasy look. “Why do you ask about the Kisian man?” Istet said.
“Because I need him.”
Again her lip curled, but before she could snap at me, Himi stepped between us, gripping my arm. “Rah, do you…” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Do you want him alive?”
She would not meet my gaze, only stare at my feet. “Yes,” I said. “I would free him.”
Gnawing her lip, Himi shared another look with her sister, full of meaning. “The Minister has been… uncooperative.” Himi glanced around at the smattering of servants hurrying through the palace gates. “He has refused every offer Sett has made him on Gideon’s behalf, but the man is Empress Sichi’s father and is highly regarded amongst the Kisians, so he cannot just be killed. He—”
“Empress?”
I spoke loud enough that a man hurrying through the gates behind Himi looked around, only to speed up, clutching his stack of papers and scrolls as one might hold a child.
“Yes. Gideon married Lady Sichi to solidify his hold on the empire. I think it was the terms on which he had the support of… Grace Bahain.”
How tightly the man had entangled Gideon hollowed me with fear. “I was at his castle. Grace Bahain has been hunting for Empress Miko so he can marry her and claim the throne when he kills Gideon. I need to free the minister and get to Kogahaera.”
Himi shared another long glance with Istet, as though seeking permission. “Just take him inside before someone sees him, Himi,” Istet snapped. “And on his own head be the consequences. For once.”
“All right,” Himi said, shifting foot to foot. “Sett has almost everyone out in the city with the Namalaka, so we’re unlikely to be seen. He’s inside, but…” She seemed to be trying to convince herself. “As long as he doesn’t see you.” She bit her lip before answering my unasked question. “He’s angry, Rah. Angry at us, at you, at Gideon, at everything.” She looked once more at her sister, and infinitesimal though it was, Istet nodded.
“I think I can protect the gate from attack on my own for a while,” Istet said, waving a hand at the all but empty square. “But I won’t lie for you, Rah. I won’t add to the weight of my soul for you. I won’t tell Sett you’re here, but if he asks, I’ll answer.”
“I could not ask more.” I saluted her. Istet merely nodded and turned to stare out at the square like an attentive guard, Himi and I ceasing to exist.
Himi’s fingers tightened around my arm, a brief, nervous squeeze, there and gone with a grimace. “Come,” she said, hurrying in through the palace gates. “Leave the dog here.”
“No, she has to come with me.”
“Why?”
“Because I have a message for Manshin but I cannot speak much Kisian and neither can you.”
“Neither can the dog.”
“No, but the dog doesn’t need to speak. The dog is the message.”
Himi gave me an odd look, and a pair of men carrying a flat stringed instrument through the palace doors almost dropped it when they caught sight of Shishi, her tail up and wagging like a flag.
“Why are they staring at the dog like that?” she said, hurrying up the steps. “Is it a rare breed?”
She stepped inside and we passed from the weak afternoon sunlight to the cool, damp-smelling interior of the outer palace—a place I had first entered upon a very different pair of heels. “No,” I said, pushing aside memories of Leo I still wasn’t sure what to do with. “At least I don’t think so. She belongs to Empress Miko.”
Himi stopped. “Are you mad?” she hissed, spinning to stare at the dog like it had just sprouted a hundred hands. “Empress Miko? What are you doing with the empress’s dog?”
“That’s a long story for another time. If you want no further part in this I understand. I can find my own way.”
Himi shif
ted her weight, looked at the dog, at me, and then back over her shoulder at the daylight pouring through the open doors. She let out a long, heavy breath. “Fuck it, let’s go. If I do nothing, I will regret it forever. No one should have to die like that.”
“Like what?” I said, hurrying to keep up as she pelted off along the passage.
Stopping as suddenly as she had started, Himi turned on me, her answer a half snarl. “Burned alive. In his cell. With no way of getting out.”
She spun away on the words, the furious thunder of her booted footsteps matching the deep thud of my heart. Burned alive. No Levanti would give even their greatest enemy so dishonourable a death, yet Sett must have ordered it. Or Gideon. The fact that either could even contemplate it gnawed at my thoughts.
In silence Himi led the way through the outer palace, through narrow passages, empty rooms, and abandoned courtyards, stopping to peer around every corner until we reached the prison stairs. Without pause, Himi started down them on quick, nimble feet, but Shishi sat at the top and refused to move.
I called her, but though she half rose and wagged her tail, she stayed where she was.
“Shishi!” I said, patting my thigh. “Come on.”
She didn’t come.
“Maybe she’s afraid of the dark?” Himi said. “There’s a lantern farther down—should I get it?”
“I don’t think it’s that. It’s probably the smell.” I went back up the stairs and she lifted her paws onto my legs only to leap back and gambol around, tail wagging furiously. “Come on,” I said, kneeling. “I know it smells bad down there, but I need you. Without you, he won’t understand.”
She didn’t come to heel, but she did sit long enough for me to lift her. I didn’t have to carry her far, but my arms soon burned with their earlier pain.
The darkness deepened as we descended into the bowels of the palace, and despite the many other rooms off many other passages, the stink of the cells at the bottom permeated it all. Even without the lantern Himi lit, we could have found our way by following our noses. As the stink thickened, Shishi scrambled to be free and once again ended up looking over my shoulder like an overlarge child. I couldn’t blame her. The smell was becoming solid, the sort of smell from which you can’t escape even if you hold your nose because it tastes just as bitter.