Remarin raised a hand to halt their progress as they came to an intersection between two halls. A jade statue of a half man, half tiger on a plinth marked the only difference between one way and another, though Tigai had to trust that Remarin knew the way.
“Blasphemy is unbecoming of a nobleman,” Xia said in a low voice.
“What makes you think I’m a nobleman?” Tigai said in reply, huddling alongside their consort at the back of the line.
“What makes you think you can hide it?”
The exchange drew Remarin’s notice, a frown and a look that made clear what the Ujibari chief thought of Xia’s inclusion in their company.
“My man should have returned by now,” Remarin said. “We need to know which way is—”
A clang and shout rose from deeper in the palace, and Tigai froze along with the rest of Remarin’s men, craning to listen for an awful moment, as though they might have misheard.
Xia spun and ran back the way they’d come.
Tigai made a belated grab for her and missed, two steps too late, uttering a curse as the shouts from within the palace sounded again.
“She’s running—” he began, and Remarin cut him short.
“Move!” the Ujibari barked. “Fuck the whore, we move now.”
Tigai took another moment, caught between wanting to chase after the woman and follow Remarin’s lead. She’d made him as a nobleman, and if she had any skill with inks she could draw a likeness of his face, or give instruction to someone who could. And she knew their intent—to breach the vaults—if not the method of their escape or entry.
“Now!” Remarin said as the last trace of color from Xia’s red silk disappeared around the corner from which they’d come.
Tigai shook his mind free of her, and joined the company as they moved.
Remarin took the opposite fork from where the shouts were sounding, an infectious cry spreading through the palace walls. No mistaking it now. Soon the first forty guards would be weaving through the palace chambers, with four hundred, or more, close behind. At best they had a handful of minutes while the sentry-captains prioritized the Emperor’s person over his wealth, but the gold would come to mind soon enough. Sooner, with Xia to help them see.
They took another left down a winding hallway before bursting through a door to a chamber where three guardsmen stood on alert, keeping watch over a stone stair leading down beneath the palace foundation.
Remarin produced a pistol from beneath his magistrate’s robes, leveled, and shot the first guardsman in the head.
Powder and smoke flooded the room, and a ringing whine filled his ears, muting all other sound to a dull thrum. Two more puffs of smoke erupted forward, though he heard nothing in the calm that followed the first shot. The rest of the company rushed forward through the smoke, some with blades drawn, others with single-shot pistols held ready. He cut through it in their wake, finding the three guardsmen’s bodies fallen beside the mouth of the stair, and followed as they descended in a rush.
The Kanjiao basements were a pale mirror of the grounds above, rough-cut stonework and dusty floors in place of smooth-polished wood and ornate gilding. He’d meant to bring them here at the start, or as close as the three dead prisoners’ connections to this place would allow. Impossible to think three midlevel servants and apprentices might have had access to the harem and its palaces instead, but not beyond reason that they’d separately daydreamed of it enough to anchor the place in their memories. He might have been able to suss out the distinction between lived experience and imagination had he been given proper time to work the strands.
Once more Remarin’s preparation took hold, only this time no scouts went forward to clear the way. They moved as one, a company of seven where they’d begun as over a dozen, the rest sent out to do their work aboveground and now caught in the rising tide of the guardsmen’s alarm.
A wide chamber gave way to a passage spiraling in left turns around ever-tighter arcs. He recognized the way now, the last steps before the stairway leading down into the vaults themselves. A long hallway decorated with lanterns, made to trap any would-be thieves with a long trek in or out, though its designers had no more knowledge of the starfield and the strands than his tutors had done. A rare gift, and rarer still if he could get them out of the palace alive. Driving footsteps from the ceiling gave accompaniment to the thought, though his ears still rang from Remarin’s shots in the antechamber of the first stairwell.
“Stop there,” a man in gold-dyed leathers said when they rounded the hallway’s final curve. “His Majesty’s soldiers are—”
This time Tigai had enough warning to brace himself before the shot went off, and he clamped hands over his ears as smoke and powder discharged from one of the Ujibari’s guns.
The gold-clad man emerged from the smoke, and Tigai might have figured Remarin’s man had missed, if not for the shimmer of silver coating the sentry’s skin.
Tigai blinked and set an anchor, feeling the familiar sense of dread sending tingles up his spine, then drew his long knife and attacked. Metal for skin meant the sentry was House-trained, a magi the same as he was, and more than Remarin’s men could hope to handle.
“Go,” Tigai shouted. “Secure what we came for.”
If Remarin made a reply it was lost as the sentry whirled a shortsword from a scabbard at his hip, a folded steel blade as smooth and polished as the fingers that gripped it, each joint wrapped in metal as though the man were a statue come to life. Tigai shoved the man backward with his free hand, slashing at the sentry’s chest with the other as a counterattack bit into his shoulder. Stinging pain lanced through him, numbed by adrenaline, and he’d done no more than dent the coating over his enemy’s rib cage.
His vision blurred as the sentry staggered back from the force of his push. Remarin’s men had followed his commands, fanning around them and making for the stairs. All he had to do was hold the sentry off until they returned, laden with gold.
The sentry lunged toward him, sweeping his blade overhand as though he expected to make short work of the intruder, then turn his attention on those who had slipped past. Instead his cut met only air. The strands swallowed Tigai, shifting him back to his anchor, standing at the mouth of the room, his shoulder uncut, his knife in hand.
A look of shock passed over the sentry’s face, and Tigai set another anchor as he darted to the side, rushing to attack again.
This time the sentry met his cuts with a clanging parry, smoke from the pistol shots swirling around them as it rose to pool along the ceiling. Blood spattered on the stone floors from the first cut, and soon the sentry added a second, a wicked slash that bit through the tendons on his wrist before he could score a blow through the sentry’s silver skin.
Wind spirits take him for a fool. He could hold his own in a fight, all the more so with the aid of the strands, but he was no soldier, and from the way the sentry carried his blade, the man most certainly was. Tigai staggered back, once more feeling an adrenaline surge from the pain, and snapped back to his anchor, blinking halfway across the room.
“How is it a magi comes to be posted as a mere guardsman?” he said, a haze of pain putting an unintended tremor in his voice. Koryu but he hoped the man could be baited into an exchange of words rather than steel.
“I might ask you the same,” the sentry said, holding a defensive posture with his shortblade raised. “But it would be enough to note Dragon plays at politics, after all, no?”
Dragon, again. The same house to which the captain from Kregiaw had accused him of belonging.
Before he could form another reply, the clamor of footsteps rose from the spiraling hallways behind. He spun, and a squad of twenty guards came into view at the mouth of the chamber, pouring into the room.
He dropped his knife, letting it clatter to the floor, and held his hands out, open and empty.
“Too late to surrender?” he asked.
It served to stall the guardsmen’s advance, which was all he need
ed. Another minute, at most. Remarin would be quick.
“Take care,” the sentry called to his fellows. “This man is a magi. Leave him to me.”
“Stay back, then,” Tigai said, waving a hand in a threatening gesture toward the door. The guards flinched as though he’d thrown fire, or conjured a demon, or some other child’s tale of what magi could do. Not that he was certain some among the monasteries couldn’t do those things, but the illusion served him well enough for now. Thirty more seconds.
“You intend to submit yourself?” the sentry said, taking a step toward him, his blade still raised in a warding stance.
“There is no retreat,” a voice from among the guard called to him. “We have the vaults encircled.”
Tigai raised his hands, settling them atop his head. Ten more seconds, if Remarin was at his best.
“It’s more than him alone,” the sentry said. “Another squad went down into the holdings; no more than ten. Wait for another company to take them. I’ll secure this man until more arrive.”
Tigai held his pose, waiting for the sentry to approach. One cautious step, while the man fished for a knot of cord to bind his hands, then another. A final feint served to bait another step, and Tigai lowered his hands as if he meant to submit meekly to having them bound.
He blinked, and the strands snapped him to his anchor, ten paces to the left.
Shouts followed him as he darted past the sentry to the mouth of the stairs, where Remarin and the rest of them were already climbing. He rushed to meet them, his eyes closed, seeking the pattern of their stars and the familiar comforts of Yanjin. More bulk than he was used to, for transporting seven men. The bulk of gold, in coins and bars, jewels and jade and ivory. A smile creased his face as the starfield enveloped them, and they blinked between places with a blast of rushing wind.
“Lord Tigai.”
The voice was wrong; it should have been Dao’s, or Mei’s. His vision cleared, and panic gripped his heart.
Lin Qishan. The captain of Kregiaw, the glass-magi who had murdered his three prisoners and fled the grounds of his brother’s palace. She stood alone in his brother’s receiving room, its familiar cushions and mats somehow warped by her presence.
Remarin’s men took a moment longer to register the shift, milling into one another behind him where seconds before they had been racing to climb a stairwell from the Emperor’s vaults. Tigai prepared to disorient them again; whatever else had happened, he could abscond from here as easily as he had from the Kanjiao Palace.
“Don’t flee,” Lin Qishan said. “I have your brother, and his wife. If you value them, you and your men will leave behind what you have stolen, and come with me.”
The strands went to ash, fading as he blinked them away. Remarin gripped one of his pistols as though he meant to raise it, but Tigai reached out, gesturing for him to submit.
16
ARAK’JUR
Wilderness
Sinari Land
The men and women of five tribes flowed around the trees, cutting new paths as they trampled grass and brush by the thousands. Most carried parcels and packs, or drove horses, with some animals lashed to carts small enough not to hinder the beasts on uneven terrain. He carried nothing, as befitted the way the guardians traveled. His tent had held nothing of consequence; it had never been his way to keep mementos, art, or other such fare worth preserving on this sort of journey. The Sinari people were his treasure, and the rest of their alliance. Where others took caches of bead necklaces, stores of food, or woven rugs, he took the blood of six tribes, bonded to him as sure as any girl child’s favorite doll.
“The hunters say we will arrive at the fair-skins’ barrier today,” Corenna said, keeping pace beside him.
Arak’Jur squinted into the sun, as though its rays might confirm the end was close. “They know the distance better than I,” he said. It sounded cold to his ears before he said it.
Corenna seemed to notice, offering him a look of sympathy. “I’m frightened, too,” she said. “Even after the assurances the fair-skins gave during the battle, it’s one thing to promise peace, and another to ask for …”
“Charity?” he asked.
“Protection. And it was your words that convinced the elders to take this course.”
The reminder stung enough for him to drop the pretense of anger. She was right. The Uktani were coming for him with their army of men and beasts, and that meant his people were in danger unless he found a way to leave, to find the source of the spirits’ corruption and cleanse it away. They needed the fair-skins’ barrier to shelter them from the beasts of the wild, but it hurt his pride to acknowledge it, even knowing it was the wisest path.
Another break in the trees gave a second glance at the sun, and this time he frowned, studying the horizon. It was already well past midday, three days from the Sinari village. The tribe traveled more slowly, encumbered by their burdens, than the hunters did alone, but even so they should be close enough to see the fair-skins’ barrier by now.
“This course was wisdom when you spoke it,” Corenna said. “And it remains so now. With the spirits’ blessing we will return within a season, and find ourselves—”
She cut herself short as a figure emerged from the trees. A man in black, garbed in fair-skin clothing, and coming toward them whereas every other man or woman in sight walked the other way. The man passed by a family, a man carrying a child on his shoulders and a woman carrying a babe in a wrap on her chest, and neither gave him a second look, though he was a fair-skin by his clothes, an oddity enough to merit more than the indifference he seemed to be receiving.
“Who is that?” Corenna said. Arak’Jur didn’t wait for her to finish the question. The man in black sighted them, and steel glinted from sunlight reflected through the trees. Swords, one in either of the man’s hands, drawn from scabbards on his belt.
Mareh’et gave his gift, and Arak’Jur roared a warning as he charged.
The man sped up, enough to match the Great Cat’s agility, and they raced toward each other over the open grass. Fear pulsed in his veins: fear of the unknown, of what this man might represent, a manifest attack on his people when he had feared its coming for so long. Instinct dwindled those concerns to an ignorable knot in his throat. For now, he faced one man, whatever else he signified.
Steel points flicked like snake’s tongues, and he ignored them, punching through the guard of his enemy’s blades. Searing pain took his shoulder and side where the blades cut his skin, but mareh’et’s claws connected with the man’s torso in a brutal thrust. Only instead of goring through his flesh, a flare of white enveloped the man, hissing as it threw Arak’Jur back.
He skidded through a bough of leaves and brush, feeling his skin rip further as he scrambled to his feet.
“Llanara’s gift,” he shouted. “He has Llanara’s gift.”
Corenna had already sent out two of her tendrils of shadow, the gift of the swamp spirits from the far south. The man in black darted around them, moving with a viper’s speed as the smoke twisted, a hairsbreadth from enveloping his legs and snaring him to the ground.
Then Corenna’s smoke vanished, and the man leapt for her, impaling her chest with his left-hand blade.
Arak’Jur staggered as though he’d been the one to receive the blow. His throat went raw, and the clearing filled with howls that could have been his; he had no way to be sure. An image of Rhealla, his dead wife, tore through his vision, smothering the comforts he’d had at Ka’Ana’Tyat. Corenna’s legs gave out as the man in black withdrew his blade, and she folded like cloth, dropping to the grass.
Lakiri’in’s blessing gave him speed. He wanted to break the man with his hands, to rend and tear his eyes from their sockets, his nose from his skull, leaving the man’s jaw unhinged and loose as he pounded his enemy to pulp and gore. But the man fled as soon as his blade was withdrawn, at blinding speed rushing west, away from the clearing, and Arak’Jur instead ran to Corenna’s side, cradling her head as
he lifted her to rest within his arms.
Her skin was cold, though it had to be a trick of the wind, a chill on the air. Her mouth moved, caught between a breath and a gasp, until blood came to her lips, leaking into her throat.
She seemed not to register that he was there, her eyes distant as she fought for breath.
“You will heal,” he was saying; he heard the words in his own voice, as though some other man were speaking. “You will heal and heal quickly. It is part of the women’s gift, the same as it is part of mine. Our son or daughter will grow in your belly, and you will heal. You can’t die. You will heal.”
A rasp of wind escaped her lips, gurgling where blood seeped in. Finally she met his eyes, and hers were full of fear.
“Arak’Jur!” a voice called from behind. Ilek’Inari. “There is a terrible problem. The fair-skins’ barrier; we approach it now, or where it should be. But instead of their magic, there is nothing. It’s as though the barrier has vanished.”
His apprentice’s words washed through his ears without touching him. Blood leaked from Corenna’s chest where the man in black had stabbed her, staining her clothes and his hands where he held her. A finger’s width shy of her heart, though it would have shattered ribs and punctured a lung. But she couldn’t die. He repeated it in his head. She wouldn’t die. She would heal. She wouldn’t die.
A curse sounded next to him, and Ilek’Inari appeared in a flurry of motion. The apprentice knelt beside her, peeling Arak’Jur’s hands from Corenna’s head and lowering her to the ground. Herbs appeared, and quiet words, her clothing torn away from the wound, exposing her chest to the cool air. It was right. Ilek’Inari had been trained with medicine. She would heal. She couldn’t die. He wanted to reach for her, to comfort her as Ilek’Inari worked. Instead he heard his voice turn hot, felt his belly roil with anger.
“How could you miss this?” he said. “A fair-skin, come to murder us, passing through our camp as though he were no more than the wind. And you saw nothing! Between two shamans, you and Ilek’Hannat, you saw nothing of his coming!”
Blood of the Gods Page 14