by Kate Elliott
She broke off, realizing she must not reveal Ri Amarah secrets. Stumbling in the dark, she pitched into the king hard enough that he staggered back and tripped on the steps. He went down with her on top. Her hand slipped down the silk of his kingly garb as she tried to steady herself against his body. He started laughing; she began laughing from the nervous energy rushing through her flesh and the hot urgent thoughts racing through her mind.
He leaned forward and kissed her on the mouth.
She scrambled off him, trying to catch her breath as she squeezed out words as if she had been running. “Your Highness, I beg your pardon and I am sure I do not mean to offend, but I hope I have not given you any reason to think I mean to bargain with such tools.”
“The tools of seduction?” His dry tone calmed her a little. He made no further move, only studied her. “You might be a lilu sent to bewitch me, for I assure you I am utterly entranced not just by your attractive form but especially by the way you boldly and recklessly approached the demon’s coil. What is the object you carry with you? It looks like a mirror, and thus it draws my gaze and reflects your beauty. Yet you hide it under your clothes.”
The words teased her; he meant them to. He waited, gaze fixed on her.
All at once she remembered Kasarah’s warning: We might even be abused, if we met the wrong men.
Something in her expression made him tip his head back as at a glimpse of rot beneath a shiny surface. He got to his feet.
“You are safe with me, Lady Sarai,” he said curtly. “And frankly I prefer not to linger here knowing the coil could come back to life at any moment. Have the Ri Amarah woven demon magic into mirrors? Demons threaten the Hundred because they want to rule here again. They poisoned my father with their false promises and seductive words. Should I fear your people now, too?”
“No! We only want to be left in peace.”
He cast her a disbelieving look and, after picking up the lamp, began to ascend. She grabbed her book and hurried after.
“Your people are infamous for their secretive nature and inscrutable machinations. Can I trust any of you? I don’t think so.”
She had to convince him. “You are king because of the provisions and coin my people gave to King Anjihosh years and years ago. If there is anyone you should not trust, it would be Queen Chorannah. That’s why I was crying. I came to tell you…”
They reached the dusty, dim assizes court. He held the burning lamp between them as if he wasn’t sure whether he would need to use it to fend her off. “To tell me what?”
After what he had seen, she had to make this proclamation scare him more than the woken coil did. “Queen Chorannah wants me to marry Prince Tavahosh. To fatten her treasury.”
The words fell as into a pool of toxic silence. Kasarah appeared briefly at the edge of the light, over by the stairs rather than the corridor, and retreated into the darkness as if she didn’t want her father to wonder how much she had seen and heard.
“Marry Tavahosh? Have you bewitched Chorannah? Is this the measure of Ri Amarah magic, that you can compel people to do your bidding and raise you to the heights of power?”
“I don’t want to marry him. I want to retain my contract with Lord Gilaras.”
“Curse that woman to all the hells. She’s kept me looking in the wrong direction by feuding with Dia.” He strode toward the corridor. “Come along. I’ve played about for too long.”
“I don’t want to marry Tavahosh,” she repeated because she did not like the look on his face.
“Of course you will marry him.” His tone frightened her more than had the inexplicable whisper of a mist-formed face. “Chorannah is using this upheaval as a decoy to conceal her real purpose. The coin. The work gangs. The building projects. All this talk of shrines is a disguise to hide their true plan to overthrow me. Men speak intimately with the women they are in bed with. How better than you in bed with Tavahosh to discover her plans? This will work very well.”
43
“Captain?”
Kellas woke instantly and grabbed the knife tucked under his mattress. “Who are you?”
“Nevora, Captain.”
“Ah, yes, the banner maker’s daughter.” He identified her form as an opaque block on the other side of the rice-paper-screened door. “What is the alarm?”
“A Silver has come begging for help, Captain. He claims you made him a promise. Should I turn him away?”
“No!” He sat up, shedding his quilt. “I’ll come out.”
Chief Oyard met him on the porch, where a Ri Amarah man paced with frantic energy, bracelets jangling. One end of the cloth that tightly wrapped his hair had come half untucked. Seeing Kellas, the distraught man knelt, grasped the captain’s ankles, and touched his forehead to Kellas’s sandaled feet. Kellas recognized him as the coachman he had spoken to weeks ago.
“Stand up, please, ver,” Kellas said.
He remained kneeling. “I beg you, Captain. A mob has surrounded our compound in Wolf Quarter. They are beating at our gates and casting torches over the wall. The lane of row houses next to our wall has already caught fire. They mean to burn us out and kill us. There are soldiers there, but they are only watching, letting it happen!”
Kellas cocked his head. “I don’t hear the fire drums.”
“No one is coming!” The man broke into anguished sobs.
Kellas whistled the sharp high-low alarm. In answer a bell rang thrice, and thrice again, from the barracks. At his nod, Nevora ran across the square to alert the militia on loan from Lord Vanas. “Chief, I want you to go yourself to the fire watch in Wolf Quarter and see what is keeping them. Ver, you will show me the way to your compound.”
“What can you and I do alone, Captain? I thought you might have the power to beg the king to aid us, just as it says in the old contract sealed between King Anjihosh and our forebears.”
“There are four Ri Amarah compounds in Toskala, are there not? Are they all under attack?”
“I don’t know. We are the only ones in Wolf Quarter. The others are richer and live in Flag Quarter.”
“Thus more tempting targets, one might imagine.”
“They have higher walls and the coin to hire guards,” said the coachman. “We are just working people, like anyone. It was one of our men who was murdered some months ago. The mob is shouting that we made up the accusation of murder in order to get a young lord condemned to the work gang.”
“So I have heard. It seems to me the Ri Amarah are taking the blame for the discontent and frustration people feel toward the palace. I’ll do what I can.”
At last the man clambered to his feet. He grasped one of Kellas’s hands between his own, trembling. “My thanks, Captain. My thanks.”
The first trainees were racing out to line up, still buckling boiled-leather coats and fumbling with staffs and knives. Chief Oyard peeled off the first ten and headed out at a jog. Vanas’s soldiers began to emerge from the warehouse in rambling confusion. Kellas went back inside and kitted himself out with the speed of long practice. Back on the porch he whistled the command to form into marching ranks. His company shifted with good discipline. All his people were ready while Vanas’s soldiers were still milling around.
He beckoned to Nevora. “You’re Toskalan born and bred. You know where the other Ri Amarah clans live?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Take Vanas’s militiamen and split them into four groups. You take three groups, with a runner each, and set a guard at the other compounds. Send me word if there is any trouble.”
“Yes, Captain!” Her face was shining with excitement. She was so cursed young.
He turned to young Sefi, now awake and standing at quivering attention. “Sefi, you will stay behind with the gate guards, using the fourth group of militia as reinforcement, and with a runner in case this is a diversion meant to pull us away from the lower palace.”
“Yes, Captain!” In the weeks since Kellas’s arrival the diffident, cringing young man ha
d gained a brisk confidence that came from being trusted with responsibility.
Kellas led his recruits out at a trot. The coachman had the stamina of the desperate and at first kept up, although increasingly he stumbled and had to be supported. It was very late, only night lamps burning above the closed gates of dark compounds. As they entered Wolf Quarter, Kellas felt tension spark the air. He smelled smoke. Ash filtered through the glow of streetlamps.
Still he heard no fire drums, no alarm.
Fire could devastate Toskala. It was the greatest danger of all.
The ugly growling of the beast called a mob grumbled through the air. They found a hundred or more in full prowl before the gates of a modest compound notable for the four-story tower at its center, which every Ri Amarah compound had. The agitated men shouted curses and taunted those inside to “show your faces” and “unbind your heads!” Unbelievably some reckless idiots had thrown torches and lit lanterns over the wall, and now smoke boiled up from inside. He heard horses snorting and stamping in fear, the coachmen’s harness animals. A group of militiamen stood away from the mob, somewhat down the street. Kellas jogged over to them.
“Where’s your captain?”
A man he did not recognize stepped forward. He was wearing an expensive brigandine coat of lacquered leather plate and had a sour face and one twitching eye. “Who are you?”
“I’m Captain Kellas, chief of security for the lower palace. Why haven’t you driven away these troublemakers?”
“We have no orders.”
“You can take initiative! Do you want the city to burn down?”
“We have no orders.”
A roaring cheer rose from the mob as flames licked down the long tile roof of the compound’s carriage house and stables.
“Let their sorcery put out the fire of justice!”
“Those Silvers murdered one of their own just to claw their way closer to the queen.”
“Our blood feeds their treasury!”
With a shout, a group of men carrying a log slammed it into the gates as a battering ram. The gates shuddered, and the mob howled approvingly. Kellas gave up on the militia and ran back to his own people who had formed up as tight as a turtle in its shell.
A second hit on the gate by the log caused an audible crack and buckling.
The coachman grabbed Kellas’s arm as soon as he stopped beside him. “We shall burn to death rather than allow our women and children be beaten and abused by the mob.”
He nodded. “Get inside the wedge, ver, or you’ll be picked off. Wolves! Attention! Use your shields as we trained. Punch through those who strike at you. Keep together. Ver, you must convince your people to let in mine so we can help you with an orderly evacuation.”
Kellas whistled the command to advance, and his trainees pushed forward. Their determined shout of “Ya! Ya! Ya!” rang out over the belligerent cries of the crowd. People turned, trying to sort out what was happening. Men shoved and yelled, trying to block their path; his recruits were fewer in number but had the discipline of training. They shoved back with unity and thus better effectiveness, plowing toward the closed gates, shields locked to protect each other. Rocks slammed into their shields, their bodies, their headgear. Several stumbled, but they righted themselves as the press carried them along.
Horribly, fire leaped the wall and took hold on the shingled roofs of ordinary row houses along a lane that abutted the compound. Panicked people began running from the back lane into the crowd clutching children, dogs, and birdcages in their arms.
The chaos spread more quickly than the fire.
He himself cut sideways through the outermost layer of the throng. With his helmet tucked under an arm, his old face startled no one and in the confusion no one took a second look to realize he was armed. The turbulent churning of the crowd allowed him to get a better look at the loitering militiamen without them spotting him.
Smoke and hazy torchlight drenched the scene until shadow and shape were hard to tell apart, but he was cursed sure he saw Lord Vanas half hidden at the back, head turned to one side as he chatted to a soldier. The hells! Was that Jehosh?
What game was the king playing?
The fire drum finally began to beat, its rumble rolling through the air. Oyard had done his job. The shoving match between his people and the crowd slackened as the crowd gave way to superior discipline and his Wolves took up position to block the broken gate.
An unknown voice shouted, “It wasn’t these Silvers who played the young lords false. It was them over in Flag Quarter!”
As the quarter’s fire wagons laden with water and sand rumbled into view, the crowd melted away. When he turned to look again, Vanas and Jehosh and the militiamen were gone as if they had never been there.
It took most of the rest of the night to put out the fire; meanwhile he had his people stand guard over the scorched row houses and the battered compound. The Ri Amarah refused to leave their compound even when half its buildings were scorched and unsafe, nor was he allowed to enter to see what he could do to help. In the end all he could do was leave his weary, soot-stained Wolves on guard. Yet by their steady gazes he saw they were proud to be trusted with this duty.
He commandeered a horse. Wolf Quarter’s streets lay quiet not with calm but with tension. Folk peeked out through shuttered windows. Men muttered in alleyways but did not confront him or the cohort that attended him. They rode to Flag Quarter to find the three Ri Amarah compounds untouched by the night’s outburst. A few Ri Amarah men came out to hear his grim news.
“We had no trouble here tonight, but we have hired extra guards to protect ourselves,” said a man named Abrisho. His confident manner contrasted with the coachman’s anxious fear. Kellas thought him a man who was a little too sure of himself.
“Did you have warning of possible trouble, ver?”
“No warning, no. We are a cautious people, Captain. Our ancestors escaped worse persecution than this. Thus we always remain prepared. We removed most everything of value from our city households months ago, after the attacks in High Haldia.”
“What of the marriage? It was your niece who was wed to Lord Gilaras Herelian, was it not? Why would people blame the Ri Amarah for his arrest?”
“Apologies, Captain. We do not speak of contracts and business to outsiders. This wave of violence will pass and all will be well again.”
Kellas was not so sure. He left militia on guard for the rest of the night. Six of his young Wolves had taken injuries—three deep gashes, one broken arm, and two concussions—and he accompanied them back through the deserted streets to Guardian Bridge and the foot of Law Rock. The roofs and walls of the lower palace blocked his view of the base of the Thousand Steps but he saw lanterns ascending the face of the cliff; the steps were closed at night except in emergencies, or for the king.
Had he really seen Jehosh and Vanas? How did violence against the Ri Amarah benefit them? Why was the man Abrisho so sure this storm would soon be over? Either Jehosh wasn’t telling Kellas something, or Jehosh didn’t know all the currents washing down this stream.
After he stripped out of his armor and washed the ash off his hands and face, he sat for a long time in front of the altar with its flowers and lamp. The flame as beacon calmed his mind. The painting on the altar smiled on him with effortless compassion.
“Why do you love me?” he had asked her once. “My duty as a Black Wolf must come first. We will always live apart and love in secret as long as Anjihosh is alive. This could still end in disaster.”
She had touched two fingers to his lips to silence him. “Never turn away a chance at joy, Kel. As for the other, no matter how tightly you harness those you mean to control, there is no way to know what will happen next. What matters is that we act when the moment demands action.”
Jehosh was far more vulnerable than he had realized. Dia’s goals and motives so far remained inscrutable, but if Chorannah’s faction got its claws well hooked into the Hundred then the Beltak priests
might impose any kind of stringent measures.
It had not been this way under King Anjihosh, who had allowed only the lower and thus most humble levels of the priesthood to attend on Queen Zayrah. Kellas realized now how much Chorannah and the priests needed each other: Chorannah needed their ability to act as intermediaries for her with the world outside the women’s wing of the palace, and in return she offered their high exalted priests the foothold into the Hundred that Anjihosh had denied them.
Kellas needed trained people in place to back him up, not Vanas’s slack troops and his own trainees, however much potential the recruits had showed in this brief but not at all deadly skirmish.
An arrow left in the quiver can make no impact, because it will never fly.
With a sigh he went to his desk. The letter took only a few strokes to brush although he felt each mark like it was being carved into his ribs. There is no way to protect the ones you love.
Granddaughter, you may join me.
In the morning he climbed Law Rock early and went to the reeve compound, threading his way through workmen whose hammering and sawing gave him a headache. An arrogant steward got in his way.
“No one is allowed in without authorization from the chief marshal.” The steward was wearing princely red and white to mark his allegiance to Chorannah’s sons.
He stepped right up into the man’s officious face. “I am Captain Kellas, chief of security at the lower palace. I am here to see Marshal Dannarah.”
“You can’t—”
“What did you say your name was?” No need to raise his voice. A hard stare usually took the piss out of them.
“Toughid.”
“Toughid! Eiya! An honorable name is a high mark to live up to, is it not?”
“Yes, Captain,” the man mumbled, by now sure that Kellas was mocking him.
“You will personally escort me to the marshal’s cote, Steward Toughid.”