“Crone’s nails!” Varlesh’s pipe snapped suddenly in his grip, while Equo leapt up as if scalded. Si alone remained calm; the only sign he had even heard her was a slight tilt of his head.
Equo pushed aside the tent flap and glanced frantically left and right, but luckily no one was nearby. Turning back, he grabbed Nyree’s arm, fingers digging into her flesh. “To even say that name, to even think it . . .” He stopped, shook his head, and then glared at her. “You must be insane!”
Nyree looked up at him as if he was a complete stranger, and under his palm a sudden heat bloomed. Equo felt it as if it were his own flesh burning—which in a way it was. He did not let go, though, stubborn in his absolute fear of the Ahouri being discovered. His jaw clenched tight, but after a minute Nyree smiled and laid her hand over his. She had made her point.
“It is time, Equo.” Her voice was low and soft, but there was no mistaking the steel at its very core. “Your people have lain hidden for far too long, and now they must come out of the shadows. All of the races of Conhaero must stand together when the Conflagration comes. The White Void will not be ignored.”
“The shadows are all we have, woman,” Varlesh barked, flicking the remains of his pipe into the corner of the tent. “If we come out, if we show ourselves, then what your own people suffered will look like a picnic by comparison. Do you think we did this terrible thing to ourselves without consideration? Do you think that we went to ground lightly?”
Equo couldn’t stand to see his other third and his love argue like this—even if voices had not yet become raised. He stepped between them and took Nyree’s hand. “The Ahouri were peaceful people, so we would bring nothing to this war of Baraca’s. It is not in our nature.”
She squeezed his hand, and locked her star-filled eyes with his. “It is not for the war that they are needed, dear heart. It is for something far grander and more important. Unity. The people of Conhaero must be united. Surely you know how wrong it is to be separate?”
They stared at each other for a long time before Varlesh, pulling out a fresh new pipe from his pocket, grunted. “You two can bloody hold hands all you like, but by the maid’s fair touch, you will not get the Ahouri involved merely by batting your eyelashes at him.”
“You can find them, though,” Nyree’s pitch black eyes gleamed with little pinpricks of light that appeared to be moving. “You know where they are.” It was not a question, it was a statement of fact.
“They still sing to us—in our dreams we can hear them.” Si’s voice low, musical, and infrequent, broke through to his brethren.
Equo felt his breath freeze in his chest. Such a sensation of peace stole over him that for a moment he couldn’t even feel if Nyree’s hand remained in his own. The rest of the world dimmed in the face of this hint of a remembered feeling: utter calm. It was the sensation that he could only recall in dreams; knowledge that he was whole.
Just one glance across the other parts of him—Si and Varlesh—and he knew that they had felt it too. This whisper of the past surely could not be ignored.
Varlesh cleared his throat and tugged at his beard while his eyes remained riveted upon Si. Their quietest but most potent member was the one who had the keeping of the ember of their remaining power. To any stranger, Si had the appearance of a madman—one that they took care of and managed. The complete opposite was in fact the truth. They relied on him more than any outsider could possibly guess.
Equo felt like he hadn’t drawn in breath for hours. “Is it really time, Si?”
Varlesh pressed his hand down among the maps and the debris of the seer’s craft, leaning forward. “We have to be sure. Once done, it cannot be undone.”
Si rose and straightened, for the first time in many years looking directly at the world with a clear gaze. “I am sure it is time. We must go to them. We, the broken, must now put forth the effort to heal.”
Equo sighed, feeling the fear and excitement rattle through his system. They were words they’d longed to hear from Si, yet had never imagined would actually come. Equo spoke with more calmness than he actually felt. “Then I believe we know where we must go.”
Varlesh carefully laid the well-chewed pipe down on the table and cleared his throat. “Better put in a bit of practice, then—otherwise they’ll laugh us out of there.”
Nyree couldn’t understand the grim humor in it, but despite himself Equo let out a snort of laughter. “The competition, indeed . . . with us, it is always the competition.”
If living with a madman was a delicate balancing act, loving one was a full, breathing nightmare. As Kelanim sat to the left of the Caisah under the purple awning, she knew deep down that she had chosen this path; a path that had brought her here to the arena. That one fact kept her sane.
Ever since she’d been a little girl, determination had been her strongest suit. That and her beauty combined together had gotten her farther than her older and more intelligent sisters—all of them were now married and spitting out babies for simple merchants.
Her emerald eyes and flaming hair might have caught the overlord’s eye, but she had worked hard to keep it long after his passion might otherwise have waned. The impoverished but beautiful daughter of a lowly bureaucrat, she had expected to at best tolerate the touch of the Caisah, the man she had been sent to as a gift. It had come as a great shock to her that she loved him.
She flicked her turquoise and gold fan and turned her head slightly to where the rest of the Court were sitting, each according to their standing with the Caisah. Some were within the shade of the awning, while those less favored had to endure the touch of the heat beyond.
Below, where it was even hotter, they were clearing the arena of bodies and emptying fresh bags of sand to cover up the blood. Today it would take a lot of them.
The Caisah grew bored easily even on a normal day, but since the loss of his Hunter he had grown more easily distracted. The gladiatorial games he’d once relished, he now seemed to take no pleasure in. Since his Hunter’s departure he had ordered more and more of them to be played out before him, but he always appeared unimpressed. Slit throats and bruised bodies didn’t amuse him as they once had. Watching him from the corner of her eye, Kelanim tried to judge if that was also true of his attentions to her.
As the mistress observed him, she noticed his hand slide under the right edge of his robe and rub his shoulder distractedly. The Caisah’s body Kelanim knew as well as her own; there had never been any mark on its perfection. That was, until the day that the Hunter had left.
The Caisah had not spoken of what had happened, and she knew not to ask questions that might bring his wrath down on her. She had been there, though, hiding in the shadows, when he staggered out of the Puzzle Room. She had never seen him like that in all their time together. The image of the overlord leaning against the frame of the door, bright blood staining his linen shirt, and looking beaten was one she would treasure forever. It told her that she had not fallen in love with just a god—somewhere in there was a man. A man that she could help. Kelanim guessed she should at least thank Talyn for that.
Two days later she had been running her hands over the body of her lover and had found a raised scar the length of her smallest finger on his shoulder. Her heart had raced, but she brushed her touch past it quickly, just in case he had noticed her noticing. Love him she might, but she did not trust his hair trigger temper.
Exactly what this meant, Kelanim had no idea, and unfortunately she had no one to ask, either. The Court was a fickle place where gossip had wings and rumor could run like a hot fever. As the Caisah’s favored mistress she had no friends she could trust, and no maid she dared to confide in. Anyway, it was not like any of these people knew any more about her love than she did. The Caisah was a monument in Conhaero, an immortal like the Vaerli, but with none of that sad race’s imperfections. No one knew where he came from, or how he had come upon his powers.
Kelanim knew she was the expert on him, and yet she was flounde
ring to find any explanation for the change in him in the last few months.
However, there he was, touching the rough patch on his body, and there was no anger in his expression. The far-off look in his eye said that he was not with Kelanim, and the smile on his lips whispered that Talyn still had her claws in him. He had come out with not only a scar, but with something else that never left him.
The Hunter’s sword, the one she had never brought into his presence, was now always hanging from his belt. Kelanim had seen it only a few times, mostly glimpses when Talyn had returned from a bounty, but she had never entered the audience chamber with it. The mistress had often wanted to get a closer look at it, but the one time she’d dared to enter the Hunter’s empty chamber she’d only found a locked silver box under the bed. The Vaerli letter magic carved on it had deterred her immediately.
Now, she was heartily sick of the sight of the sword. He carried it everywhere, and she was as likely to get a closer look at it as when it was locked away in that box.
Whatever had happened in the Puzzle Room had been violent and exciting to him. It was a combination of emotions that his chief mistress knew she could not raise in him no matter how hard she tried. Talyn—even when she was gone—remained a competitor.
The crowd roared, snapping her out of that dreadful realization. The Caisah was roused from his own contemplation by what was being dragged into the arena. He sat on the edge of his seat and leaned forward, pressing his elbows into the arms of the throne. He and the citizens of Perilous had been presented with few opportunities like this, for rebels were rarities this far west. Everyone knew that the east was prone to rising, but even they had not attempted to break away for more than twenty years. So when the crowd saw the group of half a dozen men being herded into the arena they went silent with anticipation.
The Caisah frowned, suddenly looking at the seats rather than the sand. The whispering that passed through the citizens was nothing like the harsh roars when they had so recently seen the gladiators. Now, as the guards pulled the men to the center of the arena, it was deathly silent. The clank of the chains as they were fixed to the ring echoed across an amphitheatre that was meant to magnify blood for the glory of the Caisah.
Kelanim found she was holding her breath, and the exquisite fan dropped to her lap. As a royal mistress she was especially sensitive to the winds of opinion and change, and at this minute she could feel the shift, just as the Caisah could.
His eyes narrowed and his hands clenched around the arm of the gilded throne so that it creaked and then cracked. The crowd had no sounds of appreciation for his justice, but when a cloud of darkness scattered across the sky they roared with delight. More traitors!
Trouble came from the east, as it always did, but this time it was birds. A great curtain of a flock poured from the sky, sweeping down low over the high walls of the arena. Kelanim saw mostly black birds of the fields and songbirds shoot past the Caisah’s purple awning. The sounds of their wings was like a thousands doors snapping shut, but it was the cacophony of their singing, all the tones and melodies at once, that made her clap her hands to her head.
Worried, she glanced around and saw everyone else but the Caisah was doing the same. Unlike their leader, their faces were upturned, not in horror, but in delight. It was the Lady of Wings that had come—that was what each joyful smile said. The scion had once surrendered her Swoop to the Caisah, a sign most had taken to mean that he ruled with her blessing. The truth was he had taken it from the Lady—wrenched it away, really. So its loss had been a terrible blow to him.
Kelanim could not hear the words that he was now shouting to the circling birds, but they could not be kindly ones with such an expression on his face. The flock dipped and whizzed over the heads of the chained men in the center of the arena. It was hard to tell if they were pecking them to death, or merely surrounding them in a cloak of wings. Kelanim struggled to her feet, hands still protecting her ears, to watch what was happening on the sand.
The men strained against the chains, and their forms flickered. It was no trick of the light. In the dancing shadows of the birds, the men were near to becoming one with the flock. She was certainly not the only one to notice; the crowd were on their feet and cheering—but it was not for the Caisah.
The almighty crash as the throne was tossed down into the arena was just loud enough to be heard over the birdsong. Seeing her love stand tall, Kelanim staggered to her feet to lend him whatever her support meant to him. He didn’t even glance her way, but the air around them flexed with his anger.
It was a sensation that she had witnessed only a few times in the presence of the Caisah. The little things he did with magic, especially in his bedchamber, seemed effortless to him, but not now. Now she was in the presence of his Avatar strength. The distortion of the air and the sudden rise in temperature signaled he was ready to use what most had never seen.
Kelanim beamed, even while her skin ached and her eardrums pounded. Digging her fingernails into her palms to distract larger pains, she looked up into the eyes of the Caisah. Immediately nothing else seemed relevant. She was looking into everything, a whirling sucking void that contained every possibility and none. The white light burning from the Caisah’s eyes threatened to suck her down into nothing. What a tiny mote in the eye of existence she was. A speck of sand in the vast desert of time. Kelanim would have howled, but a voice would have been useless there. The best she could do was hold out her hands against the space ready to devour her.
Somewhere she caught a glimpse of the one she loved, a tiny recognition of her existence. He turned his eyes away from her and with one hand thrust her away.
Falling to the slate floor, the mistress found she was sobbing and gasping for breath. Her chest was tight and threatening to burst, so she clutched the tiles for a long moment until the feeling passed. She could still feel the consuming light only feet away from her, but she did not dare another look and risk its might falling on her again.
Instead, Kelanim scrambled to the edge of the balcony to observe what was now happening down on the sand. The birds were circling, but as she watched they appeared to become more organized until she could imagine there were patterns being woven with beak and wing. It was so hypnotic that for a long while she didn’t notice anything else.
The men on the sand were no longer standing in ready bliss—instead they were in real pain, stretched and torn like pieces of leather between two quarreling dogs. It was impossible to hear their screams over the storm of birdsong, but their faces—revealed now and then among the chaos of fluttering wings—were twisted, while their hands reached toward the birds in supplication. As if they could be saved with just a little more faith.
Something had to give; reality could not tolerate such a battle. The Caisah bellowed, a sound so beyond what any mortal could make that many of those who were already turning to scatter from their seats were knocked down to the ground. Now the screams were not just from the birds and the men on the sand.
Kelanim felt blindly out with her hand for him, terrified and wary of looking up at the Caisah again. Her fingers grazed across his ankle, which was bare and burning. The mistress could not have said what compelled her to hold on, but she did, feeling the power vibrate through her bones. Though her mind was numb with fright, she had to see, she had to know what was going on—even if her eyes were burned from her head.
Kelanim managed to get to her knees and wrench her eyes open just a fraction at the very moment the Caisah roared again—and everything broke apart.
She hadn’t even time to blink or draw breath before flame, blue and white, erupted from the stained sands of the arena engulfing the struggling men. For an instant they burned skyward like consumed candles, their arms flung back almost into the shape of wings, flames erupting from their mouths and from the tips of their fingers.
The cloud of circling birds broke away in disorder, no longer a flock, merely terrified animals as the fire rolled and spat around them. The Cais
ah was still screaming with a ragged throat, a word that might have been “no.” It went on beyond reason while everything below was engulfed.
Not content with the condemned, the conflagration whirled about on itself and smothered the first ten rows of the stadium seating in blue-white flames. Normal citizens of Perilous and Fair were swallowed by it. Children, the elderly, or Rutilian guards—it made no different to the conflagration. They were surrounded and gone in a moment. Families scrambling to get away were swamped by the fire that the Caisah had unleashed. Old men and women not moving as fast were caught up and gone in ash. Others, trampled by their peers, screamed in agony and died even in the furthest reaches of the stadium. The flames cut a swath through lower half of the amphitheatre, licking and consuming their way up the steps like an angry tide before sliding back and disappearing. People had been running, so perhaps the carnage wasn’t as great as it might have been, but Kelanim saw enough to haunt her dreams.
The mistress dragged herself upright, clutching the edge of the balcony and staring out at the remains of the day with wide eyes and a soot-stained face. The sand was gone, burned to white glass, while stone walls were blackened and twisted like the creations of some maddened sculptor. Of the people there was no sign; all that they had been was consumed and wiped away.
Spinning around, Kelanim examined the Caisah. He was blank-faced, most likely in shock. In all her time with him, Kelanim had never seen the like of it; the power had been magnificent and wild. He must have been unable to control it. Surely, all those people dying had to have been a mistake.
He shook his head, his eyes once more just eyes. His voice, when he spoke, came out hoarse and strained. “They do call this place Perilous for a reason.”
Kindred and Wings Page 5