The Habit of the Kingmaker

by J J Moriarty

  He’d just made the last and the worst mistake in his life.

  He tried his best to find his Qi again amidst the pain and anticipate the blows that came his way. He ducked beneath a curved blade aimed for his throat and swung wildly upwards with his own sword. It somehow contacted the ear of one of his adversaries, and an explosion of blood covered everyone.

  To Hyzou’s left an attacker made as if he was trying to stab Hyzou in the stomach. Hyzou leaned his weight and his hand towards the swinging blow and realised too late that it was a feint. The same attacker switched the point of attack and Hyzou could only watch as the curved blade arched up towards his face.

  Death. I’ll be dead before I feel the pain from it. Hyzou thought.

  An iron sword darted out before Hyzou’s face and blocked the onrushing bronze blade. The attacker, taken entirely by surprise, was impaled by Hyzou’s unlikely rescuer.

  Hyzou couldn’t see who his rescuer was, it was too dark. Whoever he was, he burned with a Qi nearly as bright as Hyzou’s. It was a Qi Hyzou had never sensed before in his life.

  With nary a sound, he used Hyzou’s body as a launching pad for attacks on the other five Nukhba Guardsmen. He cut down two of them and forced three of them to retreat. It did them no good, and all three were cut down by a flurry of well-placed attacks.

  Who are you? Hyzou thought.

  This sorcerer truly was powerful. Thin, slender and strong, he was trained in the sword and confident in his step.

  Hyzou remembered what Aliya had told him once, that he wasn’t the last surviving member of his family, that he still had an uncle roaming Sira Su. Hyzou wondered if this was Luan returned, saving him at the last, just when it mattered most.

  The Bodyguard let out a roar. He unsheathed two gigantic curved blades and leaped from the altar down into the compressed centre. He was a giant of a man, just under seven feet tall. What was more, the way he moved was unnatural for a human.

  Has he been in touch with his Qi? Hyzou wondered.

  The Bodyguard attacked the sorcerer with a ferocity that seemed supernatural. The Bodyguard was skilled with his dual wield and swung brutal attacks at Hyzou’s rescuer, each one sufficient to decapitate a grown man.

  But the sorcerer didn’t seem to be flustered. Instead he began to move. It was a strange way of moving; he would wait until The Bodyguard was inches from him, then roll away dramatically, landing a counter swing when he did. It looked familiar to Hyzou.

  He realised that he had seen it before; they were the same manoeuvres Aliya had taught Hyzou to use when he fought the Colossus.

  Hyzou understood then, saw what the sorcerer was about to do before he did it. Just when The Bodyguard imagined he had his enemy pinned in a corner, he brought his blades down in a killer blow. The sorcerer kicked off the ground and into the wall, where he kicked off again and leaped straight up into the air. The temple’s high roof gave him a lot of room to avoid the curved blades comfortably. While up there though, in a perfect imitation of the time Hyzou had poked the Colossus in the eye, the sorcerer dropped his sword over The Bodyguard’s head.

  With a brutal splat, the blade’s sharp end landed on The Bodyguard’s eye. The weight of its drop saw it fall and fall until was more than a foot deep in The Bodyguard’s head and protruding from the other side. As the sorcerer landed in a perfect roll, The Bodyguard’s heavy frame collapsed to the ground.

  The sorcerer walked up to the altar, where Kinzonzi was cowering in fear. Despite the waves of agony that coursed through Hyzou, he still stared, rapt, hoping for a glance at the face of his saviour.

  Then the light of a torch fell onto Safia’s face.

  “Safia”, Hyzou said.

  She looked back at him. Hyzou hesitated, but only for a second.

  He threw his sword to her. She caught it and turned.

  Four quick blows and she had gutted Kinzonzi, left him bleeding out on the altar.

  “Safia. Help”, Hyzou said.

  She rushed over to him and fell to her knees. She began to pull at the trap’s contraption.

  It loosened and Hyzou felt another wave of pain as his leg was freed from the grip. He tried balance himself, but the force of freeing his leg had been a gentle tip that now sent him keeling. He felt himself falling and waited for the crash of the stone floor.

  Safia caught him. She lifted him up into her arms and brought him with her as she left the Temple.

  “Safia. How did you do it? How did you find your Qi?” Hyzou asked.

  “I owned my envy”, Safia said. “Obviously.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “Are you ready?” Safia asked.

  Hyzou breathed deeply.

  “Go”, Hyzou said.

  She flung him from wall head first. Hyzou braced himself and owned his envy. He landed on the roof below him, onto the palms of his hands. The shock of the blow ran along his arms and chest, setting his teeth on end. He rolled onto his neck and shoulders, then onto his back and waist, trying and succeeding in preventing his right leg from hitting the ground.

  Safia jumped and landed beside him. She swept him up into her arms.

  “I won’t need to throw you this time, the drop is short enough”, Safia said.

  “That’s good, because this fucking hurts”, Hyzou said.

  Hyzou clung tightly to Safia’s shoulders. She leaped from the rooftop down to the street below.

  Down here, everything was chaos. Hyzou wasn’t the only wounded person being carried to safety. It was even worse than the violence and riots of last night.

  “Everyone must know about the Dome”, Hyzou whispered.

  Safia ignored him. She threw Hyzou onto the back of the horse, and then jumped up herself. Hyzou held on tightly and tried to minimise the vibrations that ran through his leg. Still, he found himself screaming upon occasion, when the road would incline or decline.

  “Almost there”, Safia said.

  And they were. Though the streets were flooding with mercenaries, Safia was skilled enough with the horse to avoid any kind of conflict, and soon they’d reached the Daborah estate. There were a few choice characters outside the estate, but enough there were regularly employed by Shumur and so recognised Safia and Hyzou. They stepped aside, and Safia rode quickly into the heart of the estate.

  Hyzou didn’t know where they were to go next. He was lucky then that Safia was thinking, and brought him to the surgery.

  Alum rushed out from the cluster of buildings.

  “My Lady, what are you doing here? And what happened to Duck?” Alum asked.

  Safia jumped from the horse to the ground, then turned and pulled Hyzou off the back of the horse. She ignored Alum and carried Hyzou right past him.

  “Is someone in the surgery?” Safia shouted back over her shoulder.

  “No. It’s empty”, Alum said.

  Safia barged past one door, then another, and another, until they were finally inside the surgeon’s room.

  The second time within a day. Hyzou thought.

  Safia deposited Hyzou on the bed. The surgeon had leaped to attention.

  “What happened to you?” The surgeon shouted.

  “Leave him and help me. I’ll be treating him”, Safia said.

  She began to root through the surgeon’s things.

  “Treating a patient? Nonsense, surgery is not for a lady”, the surgeon said.

  Hyzou reached over and grabbed the front of the surgeon’s gown. He pulled the surgeon in close, to give him a good view of Hyzou’s bloodshot, injured eyes.

  “Assist her”, Hyzou growled.

  The surgeon raised his hands.

  “On your head be it”, the surgeon said.

  “I need twine, I need a bronze wire, I need a needle”, Safia said.

  “You need a saw, he is sure to lose the leg. Better to make the cut now”, the surgeon said.

  Hyzou came alive at those words.

  “Woah. I need to lose my leg?” Hyzou said.

  “A clean bone b
reak like that, yes. I would amputate at the knee”, the surgeon said.

  “Nonsense”, Safia said. “Where are your bronze wires?”

  She was holding a needle and thread.

  The surgeon sighed and pointed to a wooden box. Safia went over to it and took out a long bronze wire.

  “Hyzou”, she said.

  She came over and stood right by him, speaking into his ear.

  “This will hurt. You should drop the Qi, because it may just hurt so bad you’ll be forced to drop it anyway”, Safia said.

  Hyzou moaned as he realised that she was correct. He dropped the entirety of his Qi he had been able to regain since being caught in the trap.

  Safia took a bronze blade and cut away the clothes around his right leg, leaving the open wound visible to the air. Hyzou almost wretched. His broken bone had clean cut through the skin.

  Safia took the bronze wire and slipped a knot around the bottom splinter of bone that once was his shin. Even touching it sent pain along Hyzou’s figure.

  He wasn’t prepared for what came next. She tugged on the wire to force the bottom half of his shinbone back into its right place.

  ‘AGHHHHHHHHHHH’, Hyzou shouted.

  Yet she kept going, fine tuning, with deft movements, the position of the bone. The pain was enough to nearly send Hyzou to insanity, and it was little consolation that he had perhaps suffered worse sometime in the past. Finally, Safia seemed happy, and she gently eased the knot off of his shin. She did this only to then slip the same knot over the top half of his broken shin bone and move it similarly.

  “AGHHHHHHHHH”, Hyzou screamed again.

  “I’m sorry”, Safia said, when she could find a break between Hyzou’s screams.

  Hyzou didn’t even merit it with a reply.

  “Finished”, she said.

  Hyzou looked down at his right leg. The skin was still a horrifying open wound, but beneath the cut the bones were in line with one another.

  “It hurts”, Hyzou said.

  Safia leaned over his leg and with her fingers alone she forced the two sides of the cut together. She then used a quick stitch to hold them together, before she used the proper needle, stitching either side of the wound with deft precision to close it up.

  “You won’t be able to bend your leg for… Well, a few months in any case”, Safia said.

  The surgeon was rooting through some of his boxes. He came out with a thin piece of wood, and a long walking cane.

  “Perfect”, Safia said.

  “I never knew you were a physician”, Hyzou gasped.

  “Don’t all Servants know how to perform Surgery? You do anyway, don’t you?” Safia said.

  Hyzou nodded.

  The surgeon and Safia worked together to place the thin stick beside Hyzou’s right leg, then to place bandages of heavy cloth around leg and stick together. The cloth was of that heavy material wagons got covered with in the monsoon to prevent even a drop of water from entering. It was thick and strong and inflexible, and it meant that Hyzou would not be able to bend his leg, as it became one with the stick.

  Hyzou swung his leg off the bed and then followed with the rest of himself, standing up just on his left foot.

  “You need rest. Two surgeries in a day, you’ve suffered injuries that would have killed most men”, the surgeon said. “You can’t get up.”

  “You really should rest”, Safia said.

  Hyzou shook his head and grabbed the walking cane from Safia.

  “It’s not over yet”, Hyzou said.

  He began to limp from the room. Safia was following him.

  Alum was waiting outside the room.

  “Do you have any of that beer you were offering yesterday Alum?” Hyzou asked.

  Alum nodded his head and scurried off.

  “What do we have to stay for?” Safia said.

  Hyzou turned to her.

  “Just a short while later Safia”, Hyzou said. “We only have to stay for a short while later. Go back to your guesthouse and get some rest. You’ll need it. I’ll be back and we can come up with our final plans.”

  “Final plans for what? Kinzonzi is dead”, Safia said.

  Hyzou shook his head.

  Alum re-entered the room. He was carrying a cup of beer.

  Hyzou took the cup and gulped it down quickly. He realised that it was the first thing he’d eaten or drunk in a while.

  Safia followed him outside of the surgery, out into the open air.

  “Hyzou”, she began. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to own my envy like that again, see…”

  Hyzou shook his head.

  “Stop”, Hyzou said. “I’m just glad you did at all, otherwise I’d be dead.”

  She hugged him.

  “See you soon”, Safia said.

  “Make sure you’re rested for when I’m back”, Hyzou said. “Oh, and one other thing.”

  “What?” Safia asked.

  “I’d like my sword back”, Hyzou said.

  Safia smiled. She unsheathed it and handed it to him pommel first.

  Then they split. She headed into the estate, to her guesthouse for some sleep. Hyzou left the estate and limped onto the streets of CaSu. His cane was a crutch, the only way he could walk properly.

  You idiot, you can’t even lean on your right leg, and you’re off to combat. What would Aliya think? Hyzou thought.

  Yet he pressed forwards into the city’s streets. Just one more broken man among the panicking citizens of a freak of nature. No one disturbed him his whole journey long, and he moved quickly despite his injury.

  The boarding house was nondescript. It was sat among a row of similar places, and the only thing that distinguished it from its fellow hovels was the faint painting of a snake over the door frame.

  Hyzou hobbled over to the door and knocked on it with his crutch. The sharp rap-rap led to a tiny hatch opening in the door. A pair of brown eyes looked out at Hyzou.

  “Who are you?” The man asked.

  “Why all the suspicion?” Hyzou asked.

  “In case you haven’t noticed a lot of people have been killed. Now piss off, cripple, or I’ll run you through with a spear”, the voice said.

  “Tell Shumur that Duck is outside”, Hyzou said.

  The voice grunted, and the small hatch was closed.

  While he waited, Hyzou owned his envy. The safehouse was small, and only seven were inside. Hyzou recognised Shumur, sitting comfortably on the top floor. Hyzou tapped the cane against the ground twice - it was made from a sturdy wood indeed.

  The door swung outwards towards Hyzou.

  “Come in.”

  The mercenary who spoke had only one eye.

  Hyzou hobbled inside. The house was plush, but very small. There was a small wooden stair that led to the top floor, and down here there was a small pot boiling over a light fire.

  Shumur appeared at the top of the stair, flanked by two guards. There were three people downstairs too, one man tending the pot, the one-eyed mercenary at the door, and a rather hairy man with a thick skull.

  “Hyzou, have you brought news?” Shumur asked.

  Hyzou smiled.

  “Kinzonzi is dead”, Hyzou said. “You’ve been given everything you ever wanted.”

  Shumur’s eyes lit up. He turned to a guard by his side.

  “We must move now, find me Arred, tell him he’s needed…”

  With a flick, Hyzou lifted the cane to head height, then he forced it right into the empty socket of the mercenary. The cane ripped through the cloth and went right into the tough membrane around the mercenary’s brain.

  In one hop, an imbalanced Hyzou collided into the back of the mercenary tending the soup. Hyzou grabbed his head and forced it down, dunking the mercenary’s head in the boiling liquid.

  Hyzou let the mercenary up, wailing in pain and blinded. Hyzou drew his sword and drove it into the mercenary’s heart in one movement. Only then did the others react. The hairy mercenary drew a curved blade and rus
hed Hyzou.

  Hyzou ducked beneath the blow and hit the back of the mercenary’s skull with his sword. Hyzou leaped towards the one-eyed guard and took his cane back, before cutting him down too. Shumur’s guards, the two who had stood by his side, came down the stairs while Shumur ran upstairs.

  “What are you doing Hyzou?” Shumur shouted. “Money, I’ll give you money.”

  Even balanced on a crutch with the use of one leg, Hyzou was still no match for the two simple guards. He left them both bleeding out on the floor. He stepped over them and began to hobble up the stairs. There was one guard left.

  “Why would you do this? Please, whatever you want. I’m telling you, I’m worth a lot more to you alive than dead”, Shumur shouted.

  The last guard was the weakest of the lot, as he led with an aggressive jab with his sword. Hyzou countered by bringing his cane up and striking the hand of the assailant. The sword missed, careering off past Hyzou’s face, leaving the entirety of the assailant’s body unguarded. Hyzou cut him open.

  Shumur had crawled into the corner. Hyzou hobbled over to him, stood over the Patriarch.

  “Please Hyzou, please. I’m so close. So close to the throne. Don’t end it. Please”, Shumur said.

  Hyzou brought his blade down.

  * * * * *

  More than an hour later Hyzou was in the idyllic garden of the Daborah estate. The petals dancing in the wind were a calm counterpoint to the bloodshed in the last few days.

  Hyzou sighed, then knocked on the door. He waited a few seconds, before he knocked again. It took a minute, but Safia finally appeared at the door, bleary-eyed and with creased clothes.

  “Sorry, I was asleep”, Safia said.

  “Come with me”, Hyzou said. “Let’s sit on the grass.”

  She followed him, and lay beside him once he’d picked a spot. It was right beside his belongings, packed and in a pile.

  “We’re leaving? Finally?” Safia asked.

  “Soon. But first, we’ve to talk”, Hyzou said.

  She frowned.

  “You owned your envy. Can you do that for me again? Do that here? Do it when I ask?” Hyzou asked.

  Safia shook her head.