Blood of the Gods

by David Mealing

  YOU KILLED HER.

  Panic flared.

  No. I never meant for it to hit Acherre. I can’t have—

  The sensation of laughter enveloped her, though she had no body to hear it.

  FOOL GIRL. THE ORDER MAGE IS NO CONCERN OF OURS. YOU KILLED MY CHILD. VALAK’AR.

  Acherre lives? she thought to the entity.

  IT IS OF NO CONCERN. YOU ARE A WHELP AND A WEAKLING. YOU SHOULD NEVER HAVE MANAGED TO KILL ONE OF MINE. I SHOULD END YOUR LIFE, AS RECOMPENSE.

  Anger rose in her. Last time she’d conversed with these spirits they’d been curious—distant, perhaps, but never threatening. And whenever she’d come to this strange place it had been hours before she returned to her body. She couldn’t lie here talking to a spirit while Acherre might be dying, struck by thunder loosed by her own hand. Acherre needed a chirurgeon’s attention at once.

  VALAK’AR IS NOBLE, DEADLIEST OF ALL BEASTS. FEW HAVE SLAIN ONE OF MY CHILDREN, AND YOU ARE A WOMAN. THIS IS AN OLD THING. STRANGE TO US. YOU USED THE STORM SPIRIT’S GIFT. A COWARD’S ATTACK. YOU ARE NO GUARDIAN.

  Shut up, she demanded.

  YOU ARE NOT WORTHY OF OUR GIFT.

  Enough!

  As she sent it she found the power nestled in her gut, the strange blue sparks she’d used to set wardings, at Axerian’s instruction. Somehow the power wrapped itself around her words, and what had been a forceful thought turned into a cacophonous roar, tearing through the emptiness like the peal of a bell.

  MOTHER, the spirit sent, suddenly humble where before it had been full of pride.

  Release me at once, she thought to the spirit, amplified by the blue sparks. I have to see to Acherre.

  IS IT YOU? WE THOUGHT … ANOTHER’S VOICE. WE BELIEVED. IT TOLD US TO COME HERE, TOLD US A WEAKLING OF A MAN WOULD HELP US THROUGH THE BARRIER. WE FOLLOWED, AND—

  Let me go!

  YES, MOTHER.

  The void faded.

  Acherre coughed as Sarine’s senses returned, a sputtering sound that could as well have been sweet music.

  Sarine scrambled to her side. The captain’s uniform was torn, smoke rising from her chest and limbs where seams had been blackened and frayed.

  “Don’t move,” she said, cradling a hand under Acherre’s neck.

  “I’m fine,” Acherre said, coughing again. “The damned snake. It singed me. But I’m fine.”

  “That was my doing,” Sarine said. “And you’re not fine.”

  “Bah,” Acherre said. “I’ll be the judge of that. And whatever you did, at least you killed the fucking thing. Never seen anything like it. Whichever priests let the barrier fail long enough to let that little bastard into the city are going to get a hard whipping, and that’s the least of their worries.”

  Memory sparked. The barrier. The spirits had said a man had let them through.

  “I know where he is,” she said. “Axerian. Or, at least where he’s been.”

  10

  TIGAI

  Yanjin Outer Courtyard

  Jun Province, the Jun Empire

  No sign of her, my lord,” his brother’s guardsman said, offering a snap to attention that did little more than waste a precious second of his time.

  “How is that possible?” he demanded. “She was bloody naked; Remarin confirmed it, the clothes still piled …” He trailed off, shaking his head. Pointless to spare breath for men inclined to duty, instead of results. “Redouble your search. Every man-at-arms. Secure the perimeter of the courtyards on close watch. Wherever she is, we can’t let her escape the grounds.”

  “Yes, my lord,” the guardsman said, wasting another second with a salute before he went to deliver the order.

  The woman Lin Qishan—if she was a woman at all; who could be sure, with the Great and Noble Houses and their magi trickery—had revealed herself for a thorn in his sandals, accusing him of magi politics when he only intended to game for gold and wealth. He’d been a bloody fool to take her. And the heavens help them all if she turned out to have the same gift he did for the starfield and the strands.

  He climbed the pathway toward the terraces, broad steps requiring a running leap to take two at a time. No, the magi captain had to be on the grounds. Whatever talent had secured her a place among the Great and Noble Houses, if she’d had his gift with anchors and the strands she’d have had no need to attack him to flee. The worst possibility—that she meant to attack him, and now had been at Yanjin long enough to recognize it among the starfield—didn’t bear consideration. An assassin armed with his talent would succeed no matter their defenses, and as the gamblers said: One played toward one’s chance of victory.

  “Lord Tigai!”

  The shrill demand stopped him when he reached the top of the steps, and he suppressed a groan.

  “Lady Mei,” he said, forcing himself to stop and make a bow. Precious seconds, wasted. “I passed instruction to your guard. You are to—”

  “Stay cooped in my rooms, practicing my calligraphy and memorizing steps to the wind spirits’ dance. Yes, I know. I chose to ignore it.”

  “Mei, it’s serious this time. We have a prisoner escaped on the grounds. You need to go somewhere safe, and stay there.”

  Mei’s eyes flashed. “I can think of no safer place than at the side of my husband’s brother and champion.”

  No time to waste talking her down. He took the dirt path outside the inner wall, careful to keep watch for skulking movement among the hedgerows. Two pistols dangled against his leg as he moved, slung on a silk strap hung from his belt, with a shortblade sheathed against his other hip. Poor fare against a magi, if whispers of their capabilities were to be believed. He’d never faced one, nor paid especial attention when his tutors had warned him not to interfere in the business of the Great and Noble Houses. Any fool knew as much. Magi politics were kept separate from the concerns of the Empire, and if it was not strictly legal for him to practice his art outside the confines of their monastic schools, he’d always taken pains to conceal his gifts from anyone who might report him to their orders. It had worked; his talents had only ever been an edge over mundane soldiers and lords. Apart from his tutor he’d never even seen a magi in person, until now.

  “So, who is this prisoner?” Mei asked as she kept pace behind him. “No one I know, I hope.”

  “Would we deploy the full retainer for a lady of the court? Wind spirits, Mei, would we even imprison a lady of the court?”

  “With the company you keep, I can scarcely imagine what you would or wouldn’t do. And don’t presume to know with whom I spend my time, when you spend most of yours abroad.”

  He gave her an exaggerated look, then swept a glance across the herb gardens. Two men-at-arms were walking the paths making a cursory examination of the shrubberies, as though this were just another patrol.

  Mei stood a pace behind, watching him rather than help scan the grounds. A tiger among lilly-flies; so his father had called her, before he arranged the match to Dao. She’d grown up here at Yanjin, his mother’s ward, before Lady Yanjin died of pox, and in her absence Mei had taken to courtly politics instead of the dances and poetry expected of her as a dowress of a noble family. Their marriage had been a snub to Dao—an improper wife for an improper son, so had been their father’s reasoning, of a surety. But Mei was pretty enough in spite of it. A pity she was doomed to unhappiness, given Dao’s predilections, though that couldn’t be his worry today.

  “This prisoner is a magi, isn’t he?” Mei asked.

  This time Tigai winced.

  “You wouldn’t have so many ants scurrying about otherwise,” Mei continued. “Unless you’d captured a jinata assassin, you wouldn’t need so many to fight him.”

  “It’s a her,” he said as they crossed the path toward the water gardens, past the shrubs and herbs. “And keep your voice lowered.”

  Mei laughed. “What bloody fool decided to bring a magi here?”

  His ears stung, but he said nothing. She was right; he should have known better. This
close to their assault, the last thing they needed was a show for the sake of impressing a captain assigned to guard a block of ice.

  A troop of men-at-arms rounded the outer wall, with Remarin in the lead. They sighted each other at the same moment, and Tigai raced toward him, as thankful for the reprieve as he was for the prospect of news.

  “We’ve found her,” Remarin called as he approached. “She’s pinned down on the opposite side of the grounds.”

  “Excellent,” he said, then, “What are you waiting for? Kill her and have done with it.”

  Mei gave him a look as though she’d taken a mouthful of fresh seaweed. Remarin only grunted.

  “Can’t get near her, and not going to risk my men for it. Not unless you want to wait a month to train another team.”

  “You want me to do it.”

  Remarin nodded. He sighed. Mei laughed.

  “I’m taking an extra share for this,” he said, and unslung his pistols as he led the company back the way they came.

  A semicircle of men kneeling behind marble colonnades greeted them when they rounded the yards, sighting their arquebuses together on what appeared to be a glass statue hiding behind a rock.

  “Is that …?” Mei said.

  “Stay down, please,” he said. Remarin would make her obey if anyone could.

  Shards of glass lay strewn across the green, glinting in the sun. One of his men—Remarin’s Ujibari, not Dao’s worthless peacocks—moaned and clutched his belly, curled over ten paces from the silent form of a guardsman.

  “Wait, is that her?” he said. “She’s armored in glass, and she’s throwing it at us? Of all the bloody stupid—”

  A boom sounded where one of his men took a shot, loud enough to sting his ears even halfway across the green. The glass-armored hulk thudded to the ground where she’d been struck, chipped shards flying off the faceplate and regrowing before she could pick herself back up to hide behind her rock.

  “Too much to hope you know the workings of whatever she’s doing?” Remarin asked.

  Tigai gave a helpless shrug. His education had focused on basic principles said to be common to every talent. His tutor had been skilled with potato plants, a former scion of the Great and Noble House of the Ox. The man could graft potato vines out of dirt, the most luscious, succulent potatoes served this side of the Kanjiao Palace. His tutor couldn’t do a damned thing with glass, and neither could Tigai. But if the principles were the same, the magi would have a source, something she converted into glass. Wind spirits save them if she used dirt like his old tutor, or if she used physical exertion, like Tigai.

  “No telling what she can do with it,” he said. “But she’s got to have a source, and that means she can exhaust her supply.”

  “So we keep her pinned here until she runs dry,” Remarin said. “And hope she doesn’t skewer us in the meantime?”

  “Apologies, my friend. If you hoped I could swoop to the rescue, I don’t mean to disappoint, but—”

  “Magi!” A voice cut across the green. “Come out, and my guards will not fire. I swear it on the Emperor’s life.”

  Mei. His stomach lurched as he pivoted from his hiding place to find her standing clear as day on the grass.

  Laughter came back in reply, muted by the glass covering the magi’s face.

  “This house has less respect for the Emperor than I have for leavings from the pig trough.”

  “My life, then,” Mei shouted back. “I’m as good as offering it to you, standing here, am I not?”

  “Mei, get back here at once!” he hissed.

  No reply from the magi, and less from Mei for his sake. She kept still, facing the stone and the woman in glass, ten paces from the nearest cover.

  “My husband’s brother erred in bringing you here,” Mei said. “House Yanjin has no quarrel with the Great and Noble Houses, and I have no wish for more of my loyal servants to die for a simple mistake. Rise, and let us speak of what we can do to make amends.”

  A moment passed, and he half considered running to seize Mei and hook them both to the strands in Dao’s library. Dangerous, to try to force it. They might end up at the bottom of the Sidai Bay, if he slipped in haste. But it was better than seeing her stuck with glass shards.

  “Very well,” the magi called back.

  “Hold fire,” Remarin called as the magi rose from behind her stone. A fearsome sight, sculpted glass thick enough to plate every part of her body, colored green and blue where it caught the light. It had to be heavy as a load of pig iron, but the magi moved smoothly as she stood.

  Then she turned and ran.

  “Oh bloody fuck,” Tigai said. “Shoot her!”

  A half-dozen roars filled the green as Remarin’s men set off their guns. Chips of glass broke and shattered where their shots struck home, enough to send her sprawling face-first into the grass. But she pushed off the ground and kept on, racing toward the wild forest at the edge of the gardens.

  Tigai vaulted the waist-high colonnade he’d hidden behind, pausing to sight his first pistol and fire as he ran. He struck her in the back, sending her down again. Fifteen seconds before Remarin’s men reloaded. Maybe less. He let the pistol fall from his hand, taking up the second for another shot. This one went wide, pelting the grass in a rain of dirt.

  The magi scrambled back to her feet, this time running in a crooked pattern meant to confuse the arquebusiers as she put range between them. Another volley rang out; this time only a single burst of glass shattered from her shoulder, but she kept her footing, angling toward the tree line.

  Fuck. He ran after her, but stuttered to a halt after a hundred yards. Suicide to chase her into the woods. He was a fair hand with his shortblade, but he had no desire to try himself against a glass monstrosity. And he’d earn no more than a mouthful of glass if he tried to close on her when she had brush and foliage to hide behind.

  He watched as she disappeared into the woods, taking far too much knowledge of his plan with her into the trees.

  Dao scrawled a note as he and Remarin sat opposite the desk. Mei hovered, standing beside a bookshelf, turning a half-black globe that showed the territory of the Everlasting Empire of the Jun.

  “Fifty qian,” Dao said as he wrote. “The least I can spare. Did you know the man the magi killed was married? A wife and son, left behind in Zhouxing.”

  Tigai kept a wince in check.

  “I’ve tried to recruit young men, my lord,” Remarin said. “But even young men marry.”

  “So they do. This one did.”

  “The son will get his father’s share,” Tigai said.

  “You still mean to go through with it?” Mei said, stopping the spin of the globe with the dark side facing him. “I thought we were here to prepare for the ruin of this household, now the magi know what we’re about.”

  “The magi have never troubled themselves with house politics,” Dao said.

  “We have no choice,” Tigai snapped back. “Whether the magi come for us or no. They might be dissuaded by gold, but unless we go through with it we’ll have to pay them in promises. I expect that would work as well for the magi as it has for the banks.”

  Dao’s study fell quiet at mention of their creditors. Mei pursed her lips, making a point of trying to bore a hole in him with her eyes. Never mind that she’d gifted his prisoner an opening to break from cover, with her grand gesture of bravery on the green. Unfair to blame her; she’d likely saved a life or two, and maybe his, if fortune had frowned on him. It didn’t change that she’d acted without his approval, or Remarin’s, when either was the natural choice to lead in the context of violence. She wouldn’t appreciate him taking up her webs of politics and lies and declaring himself spymaster. Not that she would see it that way.

  Remarin coughed.

  “Yes?” Dao asked.

  “We have another problem, my lord, where our plans are concerned. The three prisoners—Shanying, Feng-To, Dhazan. All are dead.”

  “What?” Tigai said. “You
assured me there was no sign of them, in the cells.”

  “And so there wasn’t, when I reported it. The magi led them out, perhaps intending to escape with them, before she encountered my men. We found the three of them slashed with glass, throats and wrists cut, left to die in a passage beneath the inner yard.”

  “Fuck,” Tigai shouted, perhaps a touch louder than propriety dictated in a lord’s study. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  “What does that mean?” Mei asked. “Hadn’t you already had a chance to examine—where are you going?”

  Tigai had already risen and was halfway out the study before he remembered he didn’t know where to find the bodies.

  “Take me to them,” he said. “And, Dao, rouse the rest of Remarin’s men and get them into the tunnels.”

  Dao frowned. “What? What’s going on?”

  “Now!” he shouted. “We have to go now, before the strand connections fade from the corpses. It may already be too late.”

  His brother went pale. “You mean … tonight?”

  “I mean right this bloody instant. Provided we’re all still comfortable with the plan.”

  He meant it as an irony. They’d been preparing for this since his father’s death revealed the depth of their debt. But Dao considered it in solemn silence, taking entirely too long to nod, as though they needed a final blessing.

  Mei gave a bitter laugh. “And so we become thieves, from no less than the Emperor himself.”

  11

  ERRIS

  Village of Salingsford

  Devon County, Northern Gand Territory

  Jiri held her head aloft as their column made its way through the village square. The 9th Cavalry had the honor of carrying her flag today; it would be the 11th, tomorrow. Vassail’s old brigade, though Vassail had the 3rd Division now. Always upward mobility, during war. Empty places around the campfires meant majors became colonels, colonels became generals, and too many became corpses, making way for those pushing ever upward through the ranks.