Ashes of the Tyrant

by Erin M. Evans

  “Kallan!” Ilstan cried. “Kallan, help me! Help me!”

  Kallan kneeled on the blood-slicked, bone-scattered ground, never taking his eyes off the guards. He set his sword on the ground before him, and placed both hands behind his head. “Will you contact Yrjixtilex?” he asked. “I think I have need of my clan.”

  8

  19 Nightal, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR)

  Djerad Thymar, Tymanther

  THERE WERE THIRTEEN HUNDRED FORTY-TWO STEPS BETWEEN THE Verthisathurgiesh enclave and the Vanquisher’s enclave where the Adjudicators resided, and the Lance Defenders’ barracks and the bat stables were—the number flitted through Mehen’s thoughts as he raced toward his daughters, the memories of more recent losses, more recent heartaches fresher and realer than anything Djerad Thymar had given him. He threw wide the doors to the Adjudicators’ enclave, to find Anala waiting there, hands folded with infuriating patience against her garnet robes.

  “What happened?” Mehen demanded, as Brin came panting up behind him. “Where are they? Where’s that karshoji wizard?”

  Anala held up a hand. “Your daughters are being treated for their injuries. The culprits are safely imprisoned. And I’m sure the human told you more than I know about what happened. Calm yourself.”

  “This is as karshoji calm as you’re going to see!” Mehen shouted … And then he noticed the trio of Adjudicators standing beyond Anala, watching in frozen horror. Replaying thirty-year-old tales, he thought. Or maybe watching for all of Pandjed’s blood to show. His tongue rattled against the roof of his mouth.

  “Take me to them, right now. Please.”

  Anala smiled, as if nothing untoward had happened. “Why do you think I’m waiting here?” she said. Then, in Common, “Come along.”

  Mehen winced. He’d slipped into Draconic again. “Sorry,” he said, shaking his head at Brin. “There’s too much going on.”

  “It’s all right,” Brin said, still a little short of breath as they followed the Verthisathurgiesh matriarch through the hallways. “I caught a little of it. Just don’t leave me in the dark when you find out more about that serpent Ilstan.”

  In a small side room, Farideh sat on a heavy cot, her shoulder bandaged and packed with herbs, her expression grim and distant. Havilar lay beside her, looking faintly green, with a damp cloth across her eyes. Dumuzi sat beside her, carefully wrapping a small burn on Havilar’s wrist.

  “We’re all right,” Farideh said as soon as Mehen entered. “Minor burns. And they caught Ilstan.”

  “And if he’s summoning demons? He hit you with a spell. He says he wants to kill you. You say he’s completely mad,” Mehen said, his fear racing away from him. “Am I missing anything?” He looked over at Havilar. “Is she in his sights now too?”

  Havilar mumbled something beneath the cloth. Dumuzi looked up at Mehen, abashed. “They gave her a dose of chmertehoschta. For shock.”

  “What in all the broken planes is she shocked for?” Mehen demanded.

  “Mehen,” Brin said, “calm down. It’s nothing worse than we’ve already been through.”

  Everything felt as if it were coming apart in his hands, and now Brin had to tell him he was overreacting. Mehen clacked his teeth together, swallowing the spark of lightning building in his throat. Worse or not, it shouldn’t have happened.

  “The war wizard’s your murderer?” Mehen asked.

  “They found him standing over the body of Shestandeliath Ravar,” Anala said. “He was covered in the man’s blood. We should be sure, but I suspect you’ve caught the culprit.”

  “Nooo,” Havilar said, half a moan from beneath the cloth. She lifted a corner of it. “ ’S a demon.”

  Mehen scowled at Dumuzi. “How much did they give her?”

  “I don’t know,” Dumuzi said, his shoulders creeping toward his ears. “I didn’t ask.”

  “Clearly. She’s not a karshoji Vayemniri. You can’t dose her as if she is!”

  “She was vomiting a good deal,” Anala said. “And you know perfectly well it will wear off.”

  “I just threw up,” Havilar mumbled. “It’s so embarrassing. But at least … he didn’t … I didn’t get my arm torn off, so there’s that.”

  Mehen frowned. “What?”

  “Ravar’s arm had been torn off,” Farideh said quietly. “At the elbow. No one could find it. And Ilstan … He probably weighs as much as Brin and he’s a foot taller. Maybe with a spell—”

  “He’s a wizard, of course he used a spell.”

  “And he had an accomplice,” Anala said.

  Havilar shot up to a seated position and caught herself dizzily against Brin. “Kallan, Mehen. Kallan. He can’t tear an arm off, and you would know.”

  The very name shocked all the fear and rage out of Mehen for a moment, and he grew warm at the memory of the easygoing sellsword, slim and nicely muscled, sitting at the foot of the bed, with that cheeky smile and juggling three dirty teacups. Fingers tracking over the spidery network of scars marking the scales of Mehen’s chest. Chaubask, what did you do to get those?

  How his sly expression had shattered when Mehen had told him they were done, he was heading to Djerad Thymar.

  Havilar pointed an unsteady finger at her father. “He asked about you.”

  “Thrik, or I tell them to dose you again,” Mehen said.

  A knock came at the door. An Adjudicator stuck his head in and conversed quietly with Anala, his eyes darting to Mehen as he did. “I see,” she said. She beckoned to Dumuzi. “Come with me, Kepeshkmolik.” Dumuzi fastened the bandage around Havilar’s hand and slipped out after Anala.

  Mehen turned to Farideh. “Did Kallan tell you anything? Did you get any clues or …”

  “No. Ilstan’s covered in Ravar’s blood, but I really don’t think he killed him. Maybe he summoned the demon, but I don’t think so. He seemed to want to hunt it down.”

  Mehen sat at her feet. “What else?”

  Farideh winced and shifted her shoulder. “It’s hard to say. He might have been in his right mind and he might not have been. But I think he might be after Havilar now too. And I think he might know more than we thought.” By her look, she didn’t mean the murders.

  Have Anala put them someplace safe, he thought. Lock them up tight until it’s all settled, until the war wizard is condemned and the murderer caught. He could already hear the girls’ protests—they weren’t children, they weren’t helpless. They had weathered worse. You will understand when you’re older, Mehen would say.

  But no sooner did the words form, he shoved them aside. He couldn’t think about those far-off days, not when all his heart wanted to leap backward through the hours—or even years—and protect them. Mehen’s tongue hammered against the roof of his mouth again. The air tasted like fear and fury.

  “How did it go with Shestandeliath?” Farideh asked.

  Mehen sighed. “Poorly. They protect their own. And everyone in this karshoji city remembers me as a rebellious hatchling or the son of a miserable old henish. We’ll need to reconsider how to do this.”

  Farideh glanced at the door. “We found out some things. The ones in the crypt were part of a group that was trying to find a way back to Abeir. Dumuzi thinks the portal was meant to go there, and that Ravar was the only one who could have likely gotten them the scroll to do it. But we didn’t get to Ravar fast enough.”

  It was far better than Mehen had managed, though. “Well done.”

  “Thank you.” She chewed her lip. “I have a thought, and I don’t think you’re going to like it: Maybe you ought to go after the clan leaders Anala’s way. It seems like having her with you would help. Maybe we ought to be the ones looking at the murder scenes and talking things out of people.”

  “They won’t talk to you.”

  “The clan leaders won’t, but their children? Grandchildren? Especially,” she added, a little delicately, “if everyone wants to know more about you and what you did.”

  Mehe
n covered his face with both hands. Broken planes, he did not want the youth of Djerad Thymar peppering his daughters with questions about how he’d been exiled. Even as he wondered how much of what happened in the elder’s audience chamber was common knowledge …

  “How much do you know?”

  “Dumuzi told us you were supposed to marry. That you refused because … Well because of Arjhani. And that Arjhani married the woman you were supposed to in the end. It doesn’t seem that dire,” Farideh added. “Maybe it’s a Vayemniri thing? Or a Thymari thing?”

  “Some of it. And some of it is just missing. My father …” Mehen clacked his teeth. “If this life grants me nothing else, let it be that I never give you a reason to think of me as your enemy.”

  Farideh shifted to the end of the cot and hugged him tight. “Never.”

  The door opened again, Anala returning. “Mehen? Did you want to question the wizard for Verthisathurgiesh?”

  “A moment.” He rubbed the frill of his jaw against Farideh’s head. “Do me the favor of going straight to the enclave and getting your sister to bed. Maybe you could slay a thousand demons, but my heart can’t take it today. We’ll shift plans tomorrow.”

  Outside the room, Anala walked beside him. “Do you still have your piercings?” she asked in a conversational way.

  He did. No matter how many times he thought about tossing them into the sea or pawning them, he kept the plugs of deep green jade in their little box with him wherever he wandered. “I haven’t decided I ought to wear them again.”

  “It would help you with your task,” Anala said. “You are not clanless anymore, so far as Verthisathurgiesh is concerned. No need to punish yourself further. You went to Shestandeliath alone?”

  “I did,” Mehen said. “It felt the wisest course.”

  “And you see now it was not?”

  “I see there’s more in my way than I remembered.” Mehen turned to her. “If I’m going to play this part, we have to move faster. If we wait, we lose information, opportunities.”

  Anala tilted her head. “I shall make arrangements then. But you will wear the piercings.”

  “Fine.” It wouldn’t decide things, Mehen told himself. It wasn’t a surrender. Mehen looked off, down the hallway. “I need to question the wizard and … his sellsword,” Mehen said. “We can talk about the details later.”

  Much later, he thought, following one of the Adjudicators into the prison’s depths. Uadjit’s cryptic question still needled at him. Why do you think she sent for you? He’d made the mistake of assuming since Anala wasn’t Pandjed, he had no reason to fear her. But Pandjed or Anala, they were all Verthisathurgiesh, renowned for fighting too-powerful foes with cunning and trickery.

  The Adjudicator he followed was a young man, pierced only by the small golden beads beneath the eyes that mimicked the Vanquisher’s marks. Clans in Djerad Thymar policed their own, but when a crime reached beyond the clan’s powers, the Adjudicators, gathered from every clan and dedicated to the city over all else, stepped in. They should have been brought in from the start, thought Mehen. But every clan was concerned first with protecting their own, and the current Vanquisher had no interest in fighting that.

  Tarhun, he thought, shaking his head. The Vanquisher was a dragonborn only a little older than Mehen himself, a fellow he remembered from his extended service. Strong fighter, capable strategist, but disinterested in the games clans played. Probably elected easily—Tarhun had the look, the legacy of a Vanquisher, and besides, the most cunning clans would see opportunity in the gaps of his skills.

  The cells lined the inner wall of the Adjudicator’s space, each with a wall made of bars facing the hallway and opposite, fitted with a window too small to squeeze through—even if a prisoner could have, the fall was beyond lethal—and a low bench.

  “Hold on,” the Adjudicator said. “I don’t have the keys.” He turned back, leaving Mehen facing Ilstan Nyaril.

  The wizard sat on the bench, pressed against the wall and breathing as though he’d run up every single stair from the base of the pyramid to this high-up roost. More scarecrow than man, his long fingers gripped the edge of the bench, white-knuckled.

  “Have you come to kill me?” he asked.

  Mehen bared his teeth, all his fear rushing back. “You hunt my daughters. I’ll kill you gladly if you don’t cooperate.”

  A wild grin cracked the wizard’s face. “Oh, you poor fool. A snakelet will spill it’s venom into your veins even if you’re the one who warmed it at your breast. Crush them now. It’s the only way. I’m sorry.”

  The lightning breath crackled between Mehen’s teeth, built by his fury. He gripped the iron bars, reminding himself of the careful spells that prevented breath weapons from crossing their boundary. He’d only end up electrifying himself.

  “You should pray to all your gods that you never get out of this cell,” Mehen said. “Where is the demon?”

  Ilstan stood and walked toward him, waving on his feet. His eyes wide and mad. “Ask your daughter. The Lady of Black Magic. The Knight of the Devil. The whore of the king of the Hells.”

  Mehen shoved an arm through a gap in the bars and grabbed hold of the wizard’s robe front, yanking him hard against the bars. Ilstan’s face bounced off the metal, startling him into silence. “The next words from your mouth are the location of that demon or what comes through these bars is my blade,” Mehen whispered.

  Ilstan smiled uneasily, blood trickling over his lip. “I don’t know,” he said, as if he would break into tears.

  “Mehen!”

  “I’m busy!” Mehen bellowed, turning on the intruder with lightning crackling in the gape of his jaws.

  Dumuzi, stiff as a statue, his hands balled beside him, took several quick steps back. “You … you need to let him go. The Adjudicators—”

  “Karshoji arschatjamaetrishominaki!” Mehen snarled. The Adjudicators had no hold on him.

  Dumuzi swallowed hard, his eyes locked on Mehen’s teeth. “And Farideh? Farideh won’t—”

  “What are you doing?” The Adjudicator returned, holding the lost keys. “Get your hands off him! I know Verthisathurgiesh has their ways, but you have to respect the Vanquisher’s order up here.”

  Pandjed has his ways—the true meaning nestled in that comment, the stain of his father’s anger and pride and violence tainting the whole of the clan. Tainting Mehen.

  Mehen released the war wizard, who scurried back. “I lost my temper. My apologies.” He looked to Dumuzi—the boy still watched him as if he were a fierce beast. “Go home,” Mehen said.

  Dumuzi opened his mouth to say something, then seemed to think better of it. He turned without a word and fled. Mehen cursed under his breath—the boy was blameless, even if he was irritating. “Take me to the other one,” he told the Adjudicator.

  The Adjudicator unlocked another set of doors, which led to a long hall of similar cells, half-filled with other dragonborn. Mehen marked their clans as they passed, out of habit—Kanjentellequor’s silver skewers, Shestandeliath’s silver chains, Daardendrien’s bone studs. Many of them had their piercings removed, a sign of their elders’ displeasure. They all watched him back, and Mehen resolutely kept his eyes on the Adjudicator’s back after that.

  Near the end of the hallway, Kallan sat beneath the window, on the floor. As Mehen came in behind the Adjudicator, Kallan looked up and cocked an eyebrow, and Mehen was suddenly, awkwardly aware of the fact that if he’d been a little less of a coward, things would be very, very different in that moment.

  “He likes you, Mehen,” Havilar had sung, as though she were the only one to notice such a thing. But a world of differences lay between finding time alone with a fellow you found pretty, and starting something more serious up with a pretty fellow your daughter adored. Unbidden, Arjhani rose up in his thoughts, that far-off summer and tiny Havilar holding a cobbled-together glaive of wood while Jhani caught her swings on his own weapon. His heart twisted—however pleasant he’d found
Kallan and his company, however Havilar insisted that they were grown enough to weather their father’s romances, leaving the sellsword behind had been the only decision he could make.

  “Well,” Kallan said. “I can’t say this is how I hoped to see you again.”

  “I have to ask you some questions,” Mehen blurted.

  “Makes sense.”

  He looked back at the Adjudicator. “Can you give us a moment?”

  The Adjudicator scowled at him, bunching the gold studs of his cheeks. “So you can strangle this one too?”

  “I didn’t strangle him. Don’t be dramatic.”

  “You looked pretty close to it.”

  “Last I recall you don’t arrest people for looking close to a crime. I grabbed him by the karshoji shirt. That man has been trying to kill my daughters. This one helped protect them.”

  “We have history,” Kallan said, as though no one had mentioned strangling. “You don’t need to worry about him, Balasar, though I appreciate your concern. It’s always good to see someone taking their duties seriously.”

  That mollified the guard somewhat and though he eyed Mehen darkly, the Adjudicator excused himself, and moved down the hall a ways.

  “You must have scared him badly,” Kallan said, not moving from his spot. “I assume he’s talking about the wizard?”

  “I just came from seeing my battered daughters and the first thing that bastard war wizard did was tell me I had to kill them. I lost my head. And I grabbed him by the shirt, I didn’t strangle him.”

  “Understandable.” He looked up at Mehen, exhaustion written large on his face. “I didn’t know who he was, if that’s what you’re here about. He offered coin and polite company for a guide and guard to Djerad Thymar. He never even told me his name. I thought the one hunting your girl was dead anyhow. If I’d known … They’re all right, yeah?”

  “Minor burns,” Mehen said. “Shock.”

  “Small favors.” He sighed. “What’re your questions?”