by Dante King
“Essentially, it’s a high-powered ball bearing, or ball bearings if I need to conjure more than one, that can be materialized and fired from the palm of my hand,” Renji said.
I raised my eyebrows. “Neat and serviceable. How did you get such good accuracy on it, though? I could barely see the guy with my senses straining, and you managed to hit the dude square in the peanut.”
Renji grinned her metallic smile. “DGM,” she said. “Dragon Guided Missile. Corvar, with his reactions, takes care of the more intricate targeting.”
I had to admit that it was a nice little spell, perfect for the sort of work that we might have to do.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s get moving.”
We scaled the wall outside our suite and made our way onto the roof. It was as hotter than the Devil’s armpits up there, with the sun beating down. One good thing about that though, was there were no guards posted on the roof itself—they would have been fried in minutes.
“This way,” I said, pointing toward a set of thin brass chimneys emitting thin wisps of fragrant steam out into the still early afternoon air. “Those look like the same sort of pipes that we saw below. If we can drop down, follow them, and find out where they are coming from…”
“You think that we’ll find the source of that noise at the source of the pipes?” Renji said quietly, shading her eyes against the sun beating down on us.
“I do,” I said.
We hurried across the roof toward the little brass chimneys. When we got there, I saw that the brass pipes snaked up from the edge of another balcony. Peering carefully over, I saw that there was a Mediterranean courtyard below us, complete with two guards standing sentinel against the walls. Using the surrounding environment to your advantage was part and parcel of a dragonmancer’s trade, so making use of a window opposite, I was able to see the reflection of the pipes disappearing across the ceiling of a hallway leading off from the courtyard.
I turned to Renji, pointed down, and held up two fingers, then made a chopping motion to tell her that they were guards. I pointed at myself, held up one finger, and then held my hands slightly apart, before pointing at her and holding up one finger again and holding my hands quite far apart. Then I pressed a finger to my lips.
I’ll take the closest one. You take the other further one. Silently.
Renji nodded.
The two of us approached the edge of the roof.
I held up three fingers.
Renji nodded again.
I dropped the third finger.
Dropped the second.
Dropped the last.
Holding onto the lip of the roof, I cartwheeled into a neat handstand and then allowed my weight to pivot me over. I descended in a rush and connected perfectly with my target, both of my feet driving into the robed man’s chest with all the force I could muster. He was thrown back like a ragdoll, arms and legs flailing limp as overdone spaghetti. He crunched into the stone wall behind and slumped to the floor as I landed in a cat-like crouch.
I twisted my head and saw that Renji had already sniped the man on the opposite side of the courtyard with her ball bearing spell. He was lying, down and out, with the metaphorical tweety birds flying around his head.
As I rose to my full height and pricked my ears for any sound of alarm, Renji flipped down from the roof to join me.
“Onward?” she whispered, indicating the piping above our heads.
“Onward,” I confirmed.
We followed the Akrit engineering version of ducting through a number of rooms, treading as softly as mice wearing velvet slippers. The rooms of the Shaykh’s pad were unsurprisingly opulent, opulent to a degree that almost boggled the mind. If I hadn’t been so caught up with following those brass pipes and finding out what was happening at the other end of them, I might have stopped off to do some goggling.
There were hallways carpeted with fine and intricately woven rugs and walled in tiny flashing gems. Weapons of historical note rotated in mid-air on plinths, while the robes of state of previous shaykhs actually waved and moved behind large crystal cases.
One room, which I thought must be a ballroom of some kind, was filled with globes of gold and silver light that floated around like medicine ball-sized soap bubbles.
Another smaller chamber, furnished with silk and velvet upholstered couches and chairs, had a ceiling comprised all of diamonds. The precious gems winked down at Renji and me as we prowled carefully through it, having followed the pipes inside. The brass pipes disappeared under the crust of diamonds but reappeared once we had walked out of the far door.
There were, as well as all this flashy grandeur and ritzy ornamentations, guards posted regularly. Thankfully, with them being on their home turf, and us being dragonmancers, we were able to circumnavigate a few of them and take out non-lethally those we couldn’t.
I used Garth’s Forcewave spell on a couple of occasions to slam guards into walls, while Renji’s ball bearing spell proved a constant help at nailing guards from afar. In under ten minutes, we had left a string of unconscious guardsmen and women in our wake, hidden away as well as time and location allowed.
The pipes led on, snaking through the plush interior of the Shaykh’s residence. Soon, we could make out the cries again, as well as the sounds of falling fists or clubs.
I was in the lead, the senses of my half dozen dragons questing out around me like an extrasensory network; making sure that there was no one and nothing that could take us by surprise. Renji came behind, watching our backs, her feet making barely a sound on the stone floors and plentiful rugs that covered them.
It was mercifully cool inside the building, though the dappled shadows cast by the bright sun coming through the exterior windows might have caused trouble for non-dragonmancer troops. The shafts of golden light made for thick shadows in the corners of the halls and more dimly lit rooms, but they did not give us too much trouble.
We moved downward through the palace. The more floors that we descended, the less grandiose and costly things became. I guessed that the best rooms in the palace were on the top floors, as they commanded the best views of the surrounding desert, bustling docks, and the river valley.
On coming to the end of a skinny corridor, which dinked and jinked this way and that, we could clearly hear the sound of the interrogation still taking place. Glancing around what I assumed to be the final corner, I saw a couple of bored-looking guards standing at half attention at the end of a short, simply plastered hallway.
Behind the pair, bright white sunlight glared. Apart from it being outside, I could discern nothing about what lay beyond the two men, although I suspected that it was another one of the enclosed courtyards that seemed to be so prevalent in the palace design.
“How many?” Renji hissed into my ear, so quietly that even only a few inches apart I had to lean in to hear her.
I held up two fingers and then lay my head on my hands, miming sleep, to show that they were zoned out.
Renji nodded. She opened her palm and revealed another one of her ball bearings.
I shook my head. Held my thumb and forefinger an inch or so apart. The hallway was a little narrow. I would take the two guards down myself.
I was about to hit it round the corner like a bullet from a gun, when one of the guards, a woman, said something I didn’t catch to the other. The other guard, also female, then replied with a laugh, “Ah yes, Urwa, but our masters would not like that now, would they?” She dropped her voice a little lower so that I had to make a conscious effort to catch her words. “If you feel guilt at what is happening to the one that was formally His favorite, can you comprehend the torment that we would bring down on our heads were we to knowingly let her escape? The Grand Master would surely have us hanging by our guts for the buzzards before sundown.”
I paused, my eyes narrowed.
There was more of that masters talk again. The Grand Master could only be one man: Shaykh Antizah. Yet, I still didn’t fully grasp the set-u
p here. I mean, the catmancers must have been at least as powerful as bearmancers had been before Queen Frami had started to allow them to partake in the Transfusion Ceremony. Even if regular citizens were afraid to rise up against their masters, the catmancers surely wouldn’t be scared of a bunch of entitled bureaucrats, would they?
Still, listening to the guards conversing had reminded me that these two women were just average Joes doing a job. There was no reason for them to die. Not here. Not now.
I dematerialized the repeating hand crossbow that had appeared in my hand. My Harpoon Stunner, courtesy of my Pearl Dragon, Garth, materialized in its place. I aimed the weapon and struck one of the guards in the thigh. As the stunning mana passed from me to her and set her muscles to spasming and writhing like a bunch of electrified snakes, I yanked the woman hard off her feet.
As she fell, the other guard stepped forward, the point of the spear that she had clutched tight in her hands lowering, her purple robe flapping around her. I used my Blink ability, courtesy of Noctis stationed in my Head Slot, to close the space between us in the time it might have taken a mosquito to clear its throat.
Before the still standing guard knew what had hit her, I had, well, hit her; biffing her right square in the middle of the head with a headbutt. I had to pull the blow, otherwise I would have caved in her skull, but she still went over like a tree. Renji, coming behind, tidied the two prostrate guards into the corridor.
Together, the blue-skinned djinn and I stepped out into the harsh light of the afternoon.
We found ourselves standing on the edge of a courtyard. It was flagged with just as much skill as the rest of the palace, but the stone used in this courtyard looked to be run-of-the-mill sandstone rather than marble or granite. There were no windows looking down into this particular courtyard, built, as it clearly was, as a place that serviced the needs of the palace.
The brass pipes that Renji and I had been following across all those ceilings came from here. They were birthed out of some sort of large copper boiler that presumably sent scented steams up and into the palace, to keep it and its occupants smelling fresh and energized. There were bundles of dried herbs—sage, lavender, sweetgrass, and myrrh—lying stacked next to the boiler.
All this was very interesting, if plumbing and air-conditioning was the sort of thing that blew your skirt up, but what really caught and held the attention was the whipping post in the middle of the courtyard.
Coming in a close second to the whipping post was the assortment of paddles, truncheons, and less refined weapons that might be used to satisfactorily give someone the thrashing to end all thrashings.
The third aspect of the situation that captured my attention was the catmancer that was bound to the aforementioned whipping post.
“Zala,” I muttered, recognizing the lithe form and the Cleopatra-esque haircut.
Zala was standing, tied to the whipping post by a chain that wrapped her wrists. There was also a length of chain that bound her ankles to the post, looping around the back of it.
A man, a great hairy, sweating oaf of a dude, wrapped in a cloth around his middle and not much else, was standing behind the catmancer and beating her savagely. I guessed, because of where we were, that this guy’s job was to keep the palace steamer and boiler going and also to act as a torturer when the need arose. There was a whip in one of his hands and a stick in the other, and he was alternating the blows with each weapon.
“You know that the Grand Master will not allow me to let up until you have confessed to your crimes, Zala,” the man was saying, spittle praying from his rubbery lips.
“I tell you, I know nothing, I told them nothing,” Zala said.
In my initial assessment of the scene, and how the catmancer sounded, I would have said that she was more bothered by the shame of being tied to the whipping post than the actual beating she was being subjected to.
“If a catmancer’s powers are anything like your own or those of the bearmancers,” Noctis said in my head, “then the beating that fat fool is giving her should be causing her only minor discomfort.”
It was as I thought.
“How pitiful it is to see you like this,” the sweating torturer continued, still unaware of the presence of Renji and me just over his right shoulder. “The Mystoceans have come here, to great and wondrous Akrit, and shown all of us up, the Shaykh Antizah not the least. Do you wonder why he chafes at you slinking off to exchange quiet words with the one they call Mike Noctis? You are the Shaykh’s property, Zala, as are we all. He commands us, and we obey. We are no better than the knife he uses to cut his bread, of no greater import than the silk his attendants wipe his backside with. We are—”
I’d heard just about enough about the Shaykh’s backside for one day, but before I could step in, intervene, or make myself known in any other way, Zala uttered a cry of fury that sounded more like the yowl of some furious tigress than the shriek of a woman.
The question I had been asking myself, which had been concerning the strength of the chains that bound her and whether or not a catmancer could break them, was swiftly answered.
With a rending, squealing screech of tormented metal, the chains broke apart as Zala flexed her sinewy body. Rusted links flew in all directions.
The rotund, perspiring torturer managed to stagger back a couple of places but had no chance to cry for help. Even if he had, the two guards that presumably would have come to his aid were now lying unconscious in the corridor that we had just exited.
Zala spun around, the broken tails of the chains trailing from her like vines off some jungle cat that has just burst from a thicket and is intent on villager for breakfast. She looked, in that moment, like a mass murderer, though with none of the genial warmth that sparkles in the eye of your average mass murderer. No, Zala looked like one of those mass murderers who is suffering from a particularly bad hangover the day they have chosen to get their mass murdering done.
I felt a rush of power, a subtle sweeping sensation in the pit of my stomach that told me that someone near me was clumsily shoving the mana of their bonded creature into one of their slots.
My money was on Zala. Renji was as strong and as calm as the ocean in all of her magical dealings, and I could never detect when she was switching Corvar’s mana around—the same went for my other dragonmancer friends.
The giant khopesh—an Egyptian-style curved sword—that had appeared in the catmancer’s hand was also a bit of a giveaway.
In a beautiful whirlwind of bloodsoaked violence, Zala pivoted and then beheaded the unfortunate torturer in her rage, snicking his fat head from his plump neck as neat as neat. As the surprised head popped into the air, she spun in the opposite direction and actually hit it with the blade of her khopesh again, carving the head in two across the bridge of its nose.
“Oh,” I said softly as the grizzly remains of the head splatted wetly down onto the courtyard flags. I looked across at the rest of the torturer’s corpse, where it was actually still standing. “Oh,” I said again, a little more impressed this time.
Blood fountained rather eye-catchingly from the neck stump as Zala lashed out with a spinning kick to floor the teetering dead body. Then, she unexpectedly crumpled. She fell to her knees, crying and looking up at Renji and myself through eyes running with black paint.
“Do we approach?” Renji asked me, her eyes flicking back and forth from the sniffling catmancer to me.
“I guess…” I said.
“Cautiously?”
“Of course cautiously,” I said. “She just cut a guy’s head off and then split it in mid-air like she was playing a friggin’ game of Fruit Ninja. It always pays to tread carefully with such people.”
Renji might not have quite got the reference to the once popular now decade old mobile game, but she understood well enough that Zala was still about as lethal and unpredictable as a cobra with a toothache.
We edged toward her.
“Zala?” I tried, having nothing better to op
en with.
The pretty catmancer looked up from the dusty flagged floor. Her liquid dark eyes were filled with a sadness that didn’t seem to marry up with the killing of a dude who quite obviously had it coming to him.
“It’s okay,” I said to the Akritite. “It’s all right. You’re probably aware, but that motherfucker who was giving you the rough treatment is very, very dead.”
Zala wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, causing her eye makeup to smudge worse than ever so that it looked like she was wearing some variety of tribal war paint.
“It… it is not the death of that butterhog that brings tears to my eyes,” she said.
“No?” Renji said, kneeling down so that she and the other woman were on a level. “Then, tell us, what is the matter?”
“Yeah,” I added. “Tell us what is going on. There’s something fishy going on in Akrit, but we can’t put our finger on it. Is it the Shaykh alone doing whatever is causing everyone to act so… edgily?”
Zala breathed out, something between a snort of frustration and a laugh.
“The most dangerous people in this realm and in all realms are not necessarily the elite minority setting the evil acts in motion, but those who do the acts for them—for a purse of gold.”
I knelt down so that all three of us were squatting together. Still somewhat warily, I held out my hand to Zala, but the catmancer did not seem to see it. It was as if my simple question had uncovered a well of doubt that she had covered up within herself for a long time, and it was only now that she was investigating it.
“To act without a moral sense, but for gold alone, makes anyone a dangerous entity. All the demons of the netherworld would be powerless if they couldn’t entice people to do their work. So, as long as crude coin continues to seduce the starving, the hopeless, the damaged, the avaricious, and the poor, there will always be this trouble in Akrit.”