by Holly Lisle
Jerren Draclas Galweigh, commander of the troops, shifted on the hard stone riser. He sat just to the left of Norlis; he was, because he was slender and shorter than average, dressed as a Family woman. Norlis heard his breathing quicken.
Almost . . . almost . . .
And above, the extra ranks of swordsmen and archers, in their disguises as jugglers and concubines, made ready without being obvious about it.
The parnissa raised her arms over her head, her hands forming the symbols of the sun and the earth. “As the sun feeds Matrin, so the man feeds the woman. As Matrin gives life to the universe, so the woman gives life to the man. You are equal, and from this day forth you shall stand together, paired, two made one and stronger than any three.”
The battle hunger pounded in Norlis’s veins, tinged with the sharpness of fear. Inescapable, the fear—that death could be such a familiar face and still be such a stranger, that it waited for him and for the rest who sat in the sacred basin—and yet he lived for moments such as these, when he became more alive than he ever was elsewise. He waited, watching the lemon lizards skittering through the grass below him, their bright yellow bodies gleaming in the shortening rays of the tropical sun . . . gleaming as bright and metallic as the tiny glimpses of armor reflected back at him from the Dokteerak side of the amphitheater. He smiled at that. Tradition gave the bride’s family the eastern side of the basin, and tradition this time meant that the enemy would have the sun in their eyes at commencement of the battle, and that their stray movements now revealed their treachery, at the same time that the long shadows on the east side of the basin hid the Galweigh readiness to attack or defend. Norlis smelled the sweat of the men and women all around him who roasted as he did in battle armor disguised beneath wedding dress. He listened to the drone of the parnissa, and the murmurs of the audience, and he felt the sun on the back of his neck send trickling beads of sweat down his own spine, beneath the scale mail and the padding and his sodden clothes, to where he couldn’t get at it. So good to be alive and so dear, when all those sensations could be snatched away from him in an instant.
“And do you, Tippa Delista Anja na Kita Galweigh, accept with honor this man, and pledge your faith, in the sight of the gods who bless all true unions?”
“My honor on his good faith, now and always,” the impostor said.
Almost . . . almost . . .
“And do you, Calmet E’kheer na Boulouk Dokteerak, accept with honor this woman, and pledge your faith, in the sight of the gods who bless all true unions?”
If the Dokteeraks were to go through with their treachery, they had to act or be forsworn before the gods.
And Calmet Dokteerak, who was ready to break his troth to humankind, evidently didn’t extend his treachery to double-crossing the gods. He ripped off his groom veil to reveal a helmet beneath. “I do not!” he shouted, and pulled a dagger from its hiding place beneath his short cloak at the small of his back. “Die, you stupid bitch!”
Tippa’s stand-in had her blade in hand before anyone from either side could move, and Calmet’s hand and the dagger it had clutched lay on the stones, drenched in blood.
“To arms,” Jerren Galweigh shouted, and suddenly the circle around the top of the amphitheater was ringed with red and black, and a rain of arrows poured from both sides into the western risers.
All became chaos, but chaos with direction. The gold and blue Dokteeraks, well led, charged up the western risers to engage the archers there in close combat; the plan would have been good, but the archers fell back and gave way to the ranks of swordsmen who had been dressed as jugglers—elite fighters with tremendous skill with their weapons. Meanwhile, the Galweighs in the east risers swarmed down and pinned the enemy between themselves and the other flank of the attack.
The Dokteerak troops, who had expected no more resistance than could have been mustered by any wedding crowd, died in heaps and piles. Outnumbered and unprepared to meet battle-hardened warriors, shouting for reinforcements that never arrived, they fought well, but not well enough.
The two flanks of the Galweigh army forced the survivors down to the floor of the amphitheater and back toward the cowering parnissa, who screamed of heresy and abomination, and who remained untouched by both sides because to kill the sacred hand of the gods would bring down curses on the slayer’s family for uncounted generations. So the bodies piled around her, most of them garbed in blue and gold. But not all, of course. Not all.
Norlis saw friends fall, and grimaced, and drove harder into the diminished ranks of the Dokteerak troops. His blade shone as red as his clothes, the blood runnels full of gore. For Kait, he thought, because he admired the Galweighs, but he secretly loved Kait. For Kait, because these bastards would have slaughtered her and all her Family.
For Kait.
Then there were no more enemies to kill—there were only surrendering soldiers begging for their lives. Jerren Galweigh mounted the dais and raised his still-bloody sword over his head. “We triumph!” he screamed. “To the city, where we will claim what has become ours.”
The roar of cheers. Norlis shouted with the rest, yelling his throat raw. Then movement overhead caught his eye. An airible sailed slowly over the amphitheater, and faces turned upward to watch it. Odd—he’d thought all the airibles were back in Calimekka. A second moved into view behind the first.
He frowned. Many of the troops still shouted and cheered on this unexpected air support, but the airibles didn’t look right to Norlis. The enormous white envelopes seemed both too short and too round somehow. Their lines were oddly lumpy, their engines sounded both too loud and too rough, and the shapes of the gondolas beneath—
The surviving Dokteeraks started grinning.
Faces peered out from the tops of the gondolas, and a sudden chill gripped Norlis. None of the Galweigh airibles had open gondolas anymore, did they? But the Galweighs were the only Family in Ibera who had airibles—or the engines that made them move. Those were secrets from the ancient past, and guarded as closely as the Galweighs guarded their lives.
But the airibles came on, and they were not Galweigh airibles. The watching men overhead waited until they had drifted closer; then hoses poked over the gondola rims, and in the next instant a rain of something stinking and wet and green and sticky doused him and everyone else in and around the amphitheater.
“Run!” Jerren shouted, but he hadn’t caught on quickly enough. Not quickly enough at all. While the green rain still fell, archers from the second gondola began shooting flaming arrows into the crowd, and into the stinking deluge. The green liquid caught, and suddenly the sky rained fire, and around the amphitheater hundreds of men and women blossomed with flames.
The airibles turned sideways. Norlis, not yet burning but trapped in the center of flames, by all rights should have thought of nothing but his own onrushing oblivion. He did remark the airibles, though, and he recognized, when it was far too late to do him or anyone else any good, the crests painted on their suddenly visible sides. Sabir Family. Flashes of forest green and silver, the design twin trees laden with silver fruit.
The other half of the betrayal—and a betrayal not just of the Galweighs, but of the Dokteeraks, who had considered the Sabirs allies.
All of us burn together—Galweigh and Dokteerak alike, Norlis realized. And the Sabirs, who crossed us and double-crossed them, win Halles. And what else? With all of our fighting forces here, and all of the Family in Calimekka . . . do they win Galweigh House as well?
Then flames and smoke and screaming swallowed Norlis.
* * *
The long shadows in the courtyard of Galweigh House turned the manicured grass into rough-cut velvet in the places where the morning sun reached over the wall. Humid air, the temperature already rising, intermittent breeze catching and rattling the palm fronds around the House and bringing distant wind chimes to invisible life. A pretty morning that promised to give way later to a hot and possibly stormy day. The serving girl picked her way along the
path to the guardhouse at the gate, carrying one tray on her head and one in her arms, both laden with food.
One of the guards saw her coming and ran out to relieve her of the heavier of the two trays.
“Thank you. I’m sorry I took so long.” She smiled up at him. She was attractive—wide smile, even teeth, eyes that crinkled at the corners when she grinned. A lot of cleavage—which she had gone to some trouble to show off.
He laughed. “We were beginning to think Cook wasn’t going to feed us this morning.”
The girl shook her head. “You should know I wouldn’t let you go hungry. When have I ever not gotten your food to you?”
“True.” One of the other guards opened the guardhouse door and sighed. “Truly, Lizal, you are a vision to a hungry man like me.”
“Of course I am. But not because you lust after me, you goat. You only love me for my sweet rolls.”
All the men laughed. One said, “You didn’t really bring sweet rolls, did you?”
“I did. That’s what took me so long. I couldn’t steal enough for all of you until she left the kitchen for a moment.”
The man who had helped her carry their meal into the guardhouse said fervently, “I’d marry you for real if you’d have me.”
The woman they called Lizal laughed. “But I wouldn’t. So your virtue and your honor are intact.”
She stood chatting with them while they ate, as she did every morning, watching them devour the corn flatbread and pudding and fried plantains, and especially the stolen sweet rolls, with bright, intent eyes. When they’d finished, she told them if she didn’t get back to the kitchen, Cook would have her hide. She said the same thing every morning, and as they did every morning, the men laughed and patted her round rump, and told her they would marry her if she wanted and tried to tempt her into staying longer, into going to bed with one or all of them, and into various other indiscretions.
As always, she smiled, made vague promises that she would consider their offers, and left.
She didn’t go back to the kitchen, however. This morning she walked back down the path toward it, but ducked behind some tall shrubs the instant she was out of direct sight of the guardhouse. There she stripped off her Galweigh livery and put on a grubby plain brown smock and patched homespun skirt and shabby leather sandals—clothing that made her look almost like a poor peasant. She disarranged her hair and rubbed dirt into the creases of her hands and underneath her fingernails, and rubbed more dirt into her feet and lower legs. Now she looked exactly like a poor peasant. Disguise completed, she gathered up two small bags, one that clinked heavily when she moved it, and a larger, lumpier one that did not, and, with them in hand, moved behind the line of shrubbery until the guardhouse was once again in sight. From her screened vantage point, she watched and waited.
For a short while, she heard only the normal conversation between the guards. Then she heard groaning, and vomiting. More groaning. Then, after what seemed like forever, silence.
She rose, walked back to the guardhouse, and looked inside. The guards all lay on the floor, some across others where they had fallen. Their backs arched, their arms pulled straight back at their sides, rigid as boards, their necks stretched backward, their eyes bulged out and their tongues protruded.
The poison her Sabir employer had given her certainly looked effective. Two sweet rolls each, and not a one of the men was still breathing.
“No mess, no fuss, no bother,” she murmured. Not much mess, anyway. She did watch where she put her sandaled feet as she clambered over the bodies. She pulled the lever that released the weights that lifted the portcullis gate (struggling a bit, because it was surprisingly heavy), and set it into the locked position. Then she walked out to the gate and to the obsidian-paved Path of Gods, where she bowed to the first of the men in dark green and silver who waited. “The guards in the guardhouse are dead. Everyone else is alive—the Galweighs are too active this morning, and I was afraid one of them would come across the bodies in the kitchen if I poisoned the other kitchen workers.” She handed him the smaller bag. “All the copies of the House keys that I could get my hands on are in here, as well as the best copy of a map that I could steal. The majority of the Family is on the second floor right now, in their quarters. A few are still in the main salon on the first floor. None, as far as I know, are on the ground floor.”
“And below?” Ry Sabir asked.
“I don’t know who might be there. If you have to go below, you’ll have trouble. There are . . . things down there that frighten me. You can hear them moving, and sometimes you can smell them . . . but they’re always in the dark where you can’t see them.”
He nodded, but didn’t look worried. “We’ll manage. You know where to go?”
“I do. My passage has been arranged?”
“Yes. I think you’re too cautious—you could have a place in Sabir House if you wanted it. You’ve served us well.”
She shook her head. “You aren’t planning on killing all of the Galweighs, and they may come to figure out who was the spy in their midst. They can be . . . vengeful.”
“As we all can if we’re crossed.” He smiled slyly. “Have a good voyage, then, Wenne.”
As the girl turned away from the cliff and hurried from Galweigh House, Ry Sabir, with map and keys in hand, led his lieutenants and his Family’s troops into the enemy domain. The girl had been right—the servants were concentrated on the ground floor, and the showing of swords convinced most of them to surrender quietly; the efficient slaughter of the few who dared resist convinced the rest. From there, Ry broke the Sabir troops into five groups; they rushed both main sets of stairs and the several servants’ staircases to the first floor simultaneously, and caught several more servants on the way. In the salon, almost all of the Galweigh Family waited for news of the battle in Halles. The Galweighs, caught unarmed and unprepared, gave no more trouble than the servants had—they surrendered in exchange for the promise of their lives. As easily as that, the great House fell.
Ry handed over control of the main troops to his father’s chosen commander, and drew his colleagues aside. “She isn’t with them; we’re going to have to search the House for her.”
“We could wait for her to come to us.” Jaim, uncharacteristically, was the first to speak.
Ry shook his head. He was both too excited to wait and too afraid that something might go wrong. His father’s men didn’t intend to honor the guarantee they’d given the Galweigh Family; as soon as the cleanup crews were sure the captives were all in one place, the Family—excepting a few individuals who could give useful information—were to be put to the sword. Lucien Sabir wanted no bold rescues mounted by the branches of the Galweigh Family in the Imumbarra Isles or Goft, or in the far colony settlements of Icta Draclas or the North Shore, and he reasoned that none would be if all the Calimekkan branch were dead.
“We have to find her now,” he said. “Now. It’s desperate.”
Yanth said, “I’ll follow where you lead . . . but where in this vast place will you lead?”
Ry closed his eyes and tried to locate the woman. In the House, her belongings and objects in which she had invested a part of herself surrounded him. He felt their faint glows in all directions, pulling at him. Too, his own fear and excitement pressured him to act quickly, now that his moment had finally come, before something could take her from him permanently—and both fear and excitement clouded his senses. Adding to that difficulty was the overwhelming force of magic gathered and aimed at the Galweighs but not yet discharged—that seemed to thicken the very air he breathed, and to make him feel as if he were running uphill through deep mud. He couldn’t get a clear fix on her. In several places in the House, however, he felt her presence most strongly, and at least all of those were in the same direction. “Upward,” he said. “She’s got to be somewhere above us.” He ran for the nearest stairs.
* * *
The Galweigh Wolves chanted in darkness, building a crushing blow agains
t the Sabir Wolves—one that would strike them just as the Galweigh forces in Halles would surely defeat the combined Dokteerak and Sabir forces. Drummers at the four corners of the enormous workroom pounded out four separate rhythms that wound over and around and through each other, talking back and forth, moving like smoky voices in and out of the joined voices of the wizards who spun the destruction and death of their hereditary enemies out of syllables and will. No fires illuminated the windowless room, yet there was light—a soft glow that flowed around the sacrifices who begged for their lives in their cage in the center of the room. And there was, uncharacteristically, the smell of honeysuckle, at first soft and seductive, and then increasingly strong, and laced with scents of death and decay.
Baird Galweigh, much-Scarred head of the Family’s Wolves, threw his head back and howled the final words of the spell of destruction . . . and as he did, he felt ancient minds brush against his, and ancient ambitions shiver against invisible bars. Fear curled in his gut, but he had faced more than fear in his lifetime, and the promises of his enemies’ destruction sang louder than the warnings his gut gave him. He brought the spell to its conclusion, supported by the will of the rest of the Wolves.
Lightning crackled in the room, running from the floor up the walls, streaming across the ceiling, heading toward the Sabir compound, seeking the magical high ground the spell had made of the Sabir Wolves. The Galweigh Wolves braced themselves and turned their attention to their captives, held in the center of the room—captives meant to handle the rewhah, the equal force of negative energy that would rebound from the spell just cast. Any part of the rewhah that they didn’t absorb, the Wolves would have to take. And any magic that the Wolves had to absorb would Scar them.
The pressure built in the room, and built, and built, and Baird crouched lower and lower, mimicking in an unconscious physical display the magical preparations his body made to ward off the coming blow.
Abruptly the lightning reversed course and poured into the captives, directed there by the Wolves. The fierce will of the wizards held the magical backwash on the screaming captives while the energy twisted and mangled their bodies. But suddenly the lightning spread, and burst free of the bounds, and poured over the Wolves, too, twisting them and melting them and reshaping them as if it were fire and they were wax.