by J J Moriarty
“And by your demeanour, can I imagine that these feelings aren’t returned?” Shumur said.
Hyzou shook his head. Shumur sighed.
“The CaSuan woman is a strange creature. They are the prized heifer”, Shumur said.
“What?” Hyzou asked.
“They wish to be kept in the best of comfort. Worry if you expect her to do any work on the farm - the prized heifer does no such thing”, Shumur said.
“Oh. Right”, Hyzou said, unsure of what to make of it.
“But more than anything, Hyzou of Nuyin, only a bull may mount a prized heifer”, Shumur said.
“What?” Hyzou said.
“A CaSuan woman wants a noble Mujaden man. And a noble Mujaden is a bull. Show her you’re a man, make her suffer in your shadow, and she’ll come to heel soon enough”, Shumur said.
Hyzou looked at Shumur, not entirely certain if the CaSuan was serious.
“You know, I’ve to memorise these plans for tonight. I don’t have much time left”, Hyzou said, politely.
“Of course. Of course. Continue. Those men you told me to hire, they’re ready too”, Shumur said.
“Safia will know what to do with them”, Hyzou said.
“She’s quite the woman, isn’t she?” Shumur said.
“She’s talented, yes”, Hyzou said.
“She didn’t always look like that. When she was young she looked like Marrea, and everyone thought she’d grow up to be beautiful”, Shumur said. “Such a shame she looks like she does now.”
Hyzou stared at Shumur and set his jaw.
“She grew up to become a Servant of Qi”, Hyzou said.
Shumur stood.
“I can see you’re busy”, Shumur said. “I’ll leave you to your work.”
Hyzou didn’t reply. Shumur left.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Vendors who closed after lunchtime were opening again for the evening. Rich men and women were carried to their night-time entertainments of dances, prayers, theatre and orgies. Beggars who had managed to slip into the city passed among the crowds hoping for patrons, while sharp-eyed pickpockets, some as young as three, moved with fingers quicker than arsenic among the oblivious rich. There were others too. Drinkers and prostitutes, outdoor feasts and cloth covered sermons. Blades were everywhere, and noble Mujaden bulls eyed each other up among the throng of people. They had the burning anger of men ready to spill some blood.
On every street there were buildings owned by some rich CaSuan or other. Each was unique, designed by an artist to symbolise the power of the occupant; marble, bronze and even gold glittered in the evening sun. The magnificent cathedrals to opulence and wealth were beside cramped apartment buildings where the slaves that served the aristocrats lived twenty people to a room. But even those mansions looked poor when compared to the estates the dotted the streets. These were the giant tracts of land owned by one of the twenty-six families, such as the one Hyzou was staying in that belonged to the Daborah family. The massive and busy city just seemed to take break and pass several acres over to a cluster of buildings and gardens with their own ornate walls. Where in Lamybla, any building of importance was built like a fortress and made to be as defendable as possible, in here the twenty-six’s estates were ridiculously exposed. That was because the purpose of the estates was to let everyone else in the city know just how rich the family was. They didn’t need thick walls because they could hire enough guards to protect their homes.
Though Hyzou would have said that it was impossible to do so, CaSu made Lamybla seem small and compact. It would have been overwhelming, if he didn’t know exactly where he was headed. He dressed in a filthy warrior’s garb, and his face had been specially coated in dust to give him the appearance of a weary traveller. He already had enough scars and lumps to look like a long-term mercenary, and so long as he did a convincing enough broken CaSuan no one would doubt him. He hoped.
The Sfaza estate was the largest of them all. The whole thing, from the outside, seemed to be nearly the size of Piquea. It was built on a hill of sorts, and grew every further upwards in a spiral of brownstone paths right up to the very top that stood tall over the city. It was built at the edge of CaSu. At the very peak of the estate Hyzou could just make out a huge sculpture of a bull’s skull and long horns. The bull’s horns were shaped so that they looked like bolts of lightning.
“What do you want? No one’s hiring”, a guard said.
Hyzou looked back down from the skull in the sky at the guard standing beside him. Guard was perhaps too kind a word. This was a common mercenary who had been hired to look intimidating.
“Sorry…” Hyzou said.
He made out like he wanted to say more but couldn’t think of the word.
“You come here looking for work and you can’t even speak CaSuan?” The man asked.
Hyzou made a big show of looking like he was trying to come up with an answer. Then he reached into his pocket.
The guard, thinking that Hyzou was reaching for a weapon, began to pull his own blade out of his sheathe. The curved blade was bright and expensive, but Hyzou revealed the small wooden cube and the mercenary relaxed.
“Why didn’t you say you had a mark?” The guard asked.
Hyzou stood with mouth agape, gormless expression on his face.
“Ok, you don’t speak CaSuan. What do you speak?” The guard asked.
Hyzou shook his head, then began to speak in Piquean.
“Please, let me inside, I’m hungry”, Hyzou said.
The guard frowned.
“Wait here”, the guard said.
Hyzou stood and maintained his gormless expression. The guard ran up a set of narrow steps and entered a narrowed curtain.
It didn’t take long, a small squat gelding rushed out and down the stairs to greet Hyzou. The gelding looked Hyzou up and down.
“Dear sir, please forgive us”, the gelding said.
He spoke in Qypanese. Hyzou was impressed. Though she had given him darker skin than an ordinary Kheme, few people recognised that Hyzou’s mother was a Xuan.
“I’m hungry”, Hyzou said, in Piquean.
The gelding’s eyes lit up. He replied in Piquean.
“Ah ha! A Piquean, are you?” The gelding said.
Hyzou gave an exaggerated sigh of relief.
“Yes sir, I am. Thank you. I haven’t met anyone in this city who can speak my language yet”, Hyzou said.
The gelding smiled and bowed.
“I’m told you have a Sfaza family seal?” The gelding said.
Hyzou handed over the small dice.
“Oh, how wonderful. The Sfaza family welcomes you”, the gelding said.
“Can I have some food?” Hyzou asked.
“Of course, of course. No friend of the Sfaza family shall go hungry. Please, come with me”, he said.
Hyzou bowed now.
“Thank you”, Hyzou said.
“One thing though, you must not bring weapons up with you”, the gelding said.
Hyzou raised both his arms, and the gelding nodded to the guard. The guard searched Hyzou and found him to be without weapons.
“Follow me, sir”, the gelding said.
Hyzou did so. The gelding led him up the set of stairs and through the same weathered curtain. He led Hyzou through a set of halls, then out onto a long path that wound round and round, ever and always upwards with a heavy slope tiring Hyzou’s legs. Off the circular path there were always small little roadways to tiny buildings and houses.
Hyzou had been in the court of King Imhotep and the house of Kyrios Nuya. He had seen the inside of the estate of Shumur Min Daborah and the Sun Tower of Pharaoh Ganymedes. As he paced along the well-paved path, Hyzou realised that by far and away, Kinzonzi Min Sfaza was the richest man Hyzou knew.
The estate would make even the gods blush. Firstly there were the views. When the path curved around one side of the estate, Hyzou could see the entirety of CaSu before him, and when it carved around the other Hyzou
could see the river and the valley laid out before him. The Sfaza estate was right at the Nehas-Sassam’s edge, the water just below them.
The gelding was giving Hyzou a tour, naming the objects and places that Hyzou passed. There was a menagerie, a garden of trees with golden blossoms, and a pond filled gigantic pink fish that would leap from the water to catch the cloud of mosquitos that flew over them. Hyzou was introduced to all the different sets of palaces on his way up to the top of the estate. There was the guest house, a gigantic palace with two hundred rooms, each larger than the average house. There was the entertainment brothel, a simple, dark one-story construction. There was the family harem, where the wives of all the Sfaza men were kept. Then there was Kinzonzi’s personal harem, which the gelding was proud to tell him had sixty women inside, all of which were Kinzonzi’s wives. There was the house of maidens, the huge construction where all the Sfaza daughters were kept and not allowed to leave, ever. This was the largest building of them all. It looked a lot like the huge building on the Daborah estate where Safia had grown up.
Kinzonzi ruled as the King of Kings mainly in the CaSuan Dome, a circular rooved monstrosity in the centre of CaSu that acted as a neutral area from where each of the twenty-six families could practice politics and rule the city-state. Despite that, the Sfaza family still had a large reception hall where the King of Kings could practise politics with visitors. Then there were Kinzonzi’s personal quarters, and the quarters of his closest relatives. The mansions alone were beautiful works of art, and together showed Hyzou exactly where he was: at the centre of the most powerful city in the world, in the realms of the most powerful family in the world. Here, he was in the centre of the world.
Throughout, on his ascent along the Sfaza estate, Hyzou saw the same symbol repeated time and again. That sculpture of the bull’s skull, with the horns shaped like lightning bolts. Outside of every building it stood, between each of the buildings too. All around the estate were small buildings with triangular rooves, whose walls were covered in the same symbol. It was chiselled lightly in the brownstone and painted onto those rooves. After staring for a short while in wonderment at the same cow’s skull he saw everywhere, Hyzou finally realised what he was looking at.
The bull was the Mujaden representation of Thanatis. Each of those buildings and sculptures had been created in devotion to Thanatis.
Kinzonzi truly is obsessed. Hyzou thought.
The gelding brought Hyzou all the way to the very top of the estate. He brought Hyzou to a gigantic courtyard, placed just underneath that gigantic sculpture of the bovine Thanatis. High walls ringed the courtyard, which was packed full of people of all races and means. At the side of the courtyard were a series of cooks who were carving slabs of meat off giant hunks of beef. A long queue led up to the long tables the cooks were working on. The gelding told Hyzou to join it, and Hyzou did so.
He looked around the huge courtyard. There were wealthy aristocrats eating together, Hyzou supposed that most of them were Sfaza family members. There were entertainers and prostitutes roaming among the aristocrats. There was the queue of people waiting for food, and there were the guards shepherding them along.
Then there was the head of the courtyard. There, a grouping of one hundred geldings were gathered.
Hyzou was impressed. Each of the geldings was more than six feet in height, and each were obviously physically strong. They were wearing full bronze armour of a kind usually preserved for going into battle. They carried spears that were ten feet long and ended in a double-edged blade. They stood, the hundred of them, stock still in the evening air. They didn’t move even to swat the mosquitos that gathered around them and feasted. The only way Hyzou knew they weren’t statues was the slow rise and fall of their chests, and their Qis which radiated when Hyzou sensed for himself.
The Nukhba Guard. Hyzou thought.
That meant that they were guarding something.
Hyzou looked behind them, where a table had been set up. There were men sat on that table, several of them, all lounging and pecking at the meals before them. It was a formality for them to be here, Hyzou supposed, being the heads of the Sfaza family.
Kinzonzi wasn’t difficult to spot. He was sat amongst his fellow family members, a simple crown upon his head. He was a balding man, wisps of brown hair growing from the side of his head. He leaned back in his chair with laconic ease and nibbled at some fruit. He was a small man, with a dozy left eye that pulled away from his face. Still, he seemed to be keeping a watchful eye on proceedings below him.
Hyzou breathed deeply. Shumur’s thief had been right when he said that Hyzou would find it difficult to get near to Kinzonzi. Looking at the shields the geldings were carried, Hyzou imagined that they would crowd around their King if anything untoward happened. Their armoured bodies would take minutes to penetrate, something Hyzou couldn’t afford to waste. Kinzonzi had to be dead before the alarm was raised.
Surprise had to be utilised, but Hyzou would only get one chance. The largest issue was that of weaponry. Stealing from one of the guards would be impossible without raising the alarm. Hyzou knew that with enough speed he could leap over the line of guards and land beside the King before anyone would notice, but he wasn’t sure if he could kill the King of Kings with his hands alone. For surety, Hyzou needed a blade.
Hyzou breathed deeply and owned his envy. He kept himself calm and stepped from the line. All around him, people were too busy to notice him as he paced his way away from the line. A few in the line eyed him up, wondering if he was going to try and skip, but they looked away when he didn’t make any inroads.
The cook looked up at him when he arrived, perhaps thinking that Hyzou meant to ask a question. Hyzou moved quickly. He punched the man in the throat and ripped the cleaver from his hand. He leaped over the serving tables and took three long steps of a sprint. He pushed off with his right leg and drove up into the air. He jumped higher and further than he ever had to since he fought the Colossus. The air passed around him, and Hyzou noticed all the eyes on him as he leaped. A shout went up, alarm from the cooks and alarm from the guards. But it was too late.
Hyzou landed on the grand table, right in front of the King of Kings. Kinzonzi shifted and tried to get out of his seat, fear lighting up his eyes. It was too late.
Hyzou raised the cleaver above his head then brought it down on the top of Kinzonzi’s head with all the force he could muster. With a gruesome crunch, Kinzonzi’s skull was cracked open, and blood spattered in a circle for feet around.
Screams rang out. The guards turned, but Hyzou was already gone. He leaped over them and began to sprint towards the way he had come in. But he noticed something wasn’t right, there was a lot of movement at that side of the courtyard.
A javelin pierced his chest, just beneath his right shoulder.
Hyzou bellowed. It hurt with a pain he hadn’t felt in years as the pointed end of the javelin tore through muscle, skin and bone. The blow from the projectile knocked him off balance and sent him tumbling across the floor of the courtyard.
Wincing, he forced himself up to a standing position.
“You thought you could kill the King of Kings?”
Hyzou looked up. A gigantic man was standing on the top of a turret. Around him, more than five hundred geldings had blocked off Hyzou’s escape route.
The Bodyguard. Hyzou thought.
Hyzou pulled the javelin from his chest and gasped at the pain. He owned his envy and covered his sense of touch with his Qi, preventing him from feeling any further pain.
“His Highness Kinzonzi knew that the heathens would be after him, that they would rather shed his holy blood than see Thanatis gain his rightful place as the one true god. So it was a decoy, Kinzonzi’s second cousin, that you just killed. You lowly assassin”, The Bodyguard said.
Hyzou looked around. Behind him the hundred guards hand formed a semi-circle, and before him another five hundred stood. He was trapped, even without his serious wounds Hyzou wouldn�
��t be able to fight six hundred trained fighters.
“Who are you working for? You’ll tell me eventually, you may as well tell me now and save yourself some pain”, The Bodyguard said.
Hyzou thought and thought while The Bodyguard spoke. He thought back to his basic lessons, to the effects of the Qi. It made a Servant harder to kill. They didn’t get sick as easy, and when they did they recovered faster and were a lot less likely to die. Hyzou thought about all the movement training he’d done before in life. He had jumped from some very high places and landed on some very hard ground. He had never injured himself before. Falls that before he had found his Qi would have killed him. There was no denying that the Qi had increased his strength to many multiples of that of a human.
Still, this will hurt. Hyzou thought.
The Bodyguard was staring at Hyzou, hatred on his face.
“You’ll suffer me, heathen”, The Bodyguard shouted. “Capture him.”
The geldings began to move, so Hyzou did too. Instead of leaping towards the way he came up to here, he turned towards the hundred or so geldings behind him. He leaped over them, and he was gone.
Sprinting over the brownstone Hyzou jumped to a small shelf on the courtyard’s high wall where a guard was stationed. The guard formed a fighting stance, ready to take Hyzou on with his spear. Hyzou threw the javelin straight at the guard and it pierced his throat.
Three javelins came flying towards Hyzou but this time he saw them coming. He ducked and they all harmlessly crashed into the wall. Then Hyzou leaped again, jumping onto the wall proper above the courtyard. From here he could see down to the valley, and to the dark Nehas-Sassam running below.
“No. I need him alive!” The Bodyguard shouted.
He thought Hyzou was about to commit suicide.
Maybe that’s exactly what I’m doing. Hyzou thought.
He climbed the gigantic sculpture of the bull’s skull symbolising Thanatis. He walked along the skull until he reached a lightening-shaped horn and he climbed that too. Finally, he reached the top of the horn. Using all the power from his legs he could muster, Hyzou pushed off and out, into the empty air.