by Marc Turner
Mazana’s bodyguards were standing as far from the emira’s soldiers as the gatehouse would allow. A bristling silence hung in the air, and more than one hand hovered over the hilt of a sword. Not an encouraging start to the expedition, though Senar had a feeling it would represent the high-water mark in relations between the two sides.
“What is he doing here?” he asked Mazana, gesturing to Greave.
The Storm Lady ignored him. “My, my,” she said to a bearded officer at the head of the emira’s troops. “What a lot of soldiers! And from Imerle’s personal guard, no less. Our cause must be dear to her heart indeed.”
“With your safety,” the man replied, “the emira is not about to take any chances.”
And said without even a hint of irony, either. Senar was impressed.
Mazana crossed to speak to Kiapa, and the bearded officer—Septia Cilin Rai, he introduced himself—said for Senar’s ears only, “We’ll wait for your signal.”
Senar hesitated, then nodded. He’d wondered if Imerle would expect him merely to stand aside when the attack on Mazana’s forces came, but it appeared she wanted him to lead it. This would be a test of his loyalty, he knew, and if he failed it the septia and his troops would be on hand to cut him down along with the Storm Lady and her followers. Assuming Cilin’s talk of awaiting Senar’s signal wasn’t just a ruse. For all the Guardian knew, the septia’s orders might be to plunge a knife into Senar’s back at the first opportunity.
Still, at least that would deprive Greave of the pleasure of doing so.
From the direction of the citadel Mistress Darbonna came shuffling toward the company. She drew up a few paces away.
“So many of you!” she said, aghast.
“Is there a problem?” Mazana asked.
“No,” the old woman replied, recovering quickly. “No, of course not. We are just not set to receive such a large number of guests.” Her eyes brightened. “You will be wanting a tour of the main reading room, I presume? Abologog’s Treatises on Reverence are the prize exhibit, but there are countless other treasures…”
Her voice trailed off as she scanned the faces of the assembled men and women, her gaze coming to rest finally on Greave’s scowling countenance.
“Ah, yes,” she said. “Perhaps some other time.”
* * *
As the last of the stays were lowered into the chest, Karmel watched the soldiers manning the capstan slump against their spokes. The echoes of clanking chains died away, and with them the tremors that had rocked the chamber as if the priestess were trapped in the belly of some monstrous creature of metal and stone. Outside, a dragon must have discovered its path to the Sabian Sea lay open, for a triumphant trumpeting sounded. Not long now, Karmel thought. As soon as the beast passed through the strait, the gate would be lowered again.
The priestess’s insides were clenched so tight she wanted to vomit. She placed her helmet on the floor, knowing the limited visibility afforded by its eye slits would be the death of her if she tried to fight in it. Veran followed her lead, then raised an eyebrow to inquire if she was ready. Karmel screwed up her face. Would it make any difference if she said no? She’d considered repaying Caval’s lack of faith in her by refusing to attack, but what would that achieve? Veran would doubtless go through with the assault anyway, and even if she remained still and silent in the corner, she was sure to be discovered once the Dianese knew there were Chameleons on the loose.
Better death than capture, she reckoned. Better she was cut down by a sword than cast into the sea for the dragons to fight over.
Drawing four throwing knives from her baldric, she arranged them in a fan shape in her left hand. Her stinging eyes and the lump in her throat reminded her of the night’s sleep she’d missed, but there was nothing to be done for that now. If she was to going to survive, she needed to clear her head. A nod to Veran. He held her gaze, his expression unreadable. Then he drew two of his own throwing knives.
Without ceremony, he stepped out from cover and hurled one at the red-sashed officer. It took the soldier in the back. He pitched forward onto his face.
For a moment the other Dianese guards stared at the body in stunned silence.
Karmel threw her first knife. Beardy was her target, just visible to the left of the soldiers at the capstan. The tightness of Perfume’s shirt caused the priestess to drag down her throw, but her blade still thudded into her victim’s stomach.
The room exploded into motion.
Karmel transferred another throwing knife from her left hand to her right. The key to this grisly business was not to throw aimlessly into the melee, but rather to pick her victims before releasing. Blades two and three flew to their targets: a long-haired man who’d been first to look in her direction, then a barrel-chested soldier quick to draw his sword. Her next target—an olive-skinned man wearing his hair in a topknot—surprised her with the speed of his charge, and her throw went high and wild. Fortune was on her side, though, for the guard tripped over one of his fallen comrades.
Karmel unsheathed the Chameleon’s blade.
Two soldiers rushed at her with swords drawn.
She froze and employed her power.
Her assailants halted, shouting in bewilderment.
Karmel, now invisible, allowed herself a smile. It seemed the guards had never crossed blades with a Chameleon before, for if they had they would have known she’d merely stilled her movements. Instead they looked round as if they expected her to rematerialize in some other part of the chamber.
Their confusion gave Karmel time to draw a fifth throwing knife and let fly. She’d done so with her left hand rather than her preferred right, but still her weapon found its mark in a soldier’s chest. He stumbled back into the arms of his friend with the topknot. Lunging forward, Karmel sliced open that man’s throat.
The priestess had now accounted for five of the Dianese, but even if Veran had killed a like number that still left nine to deal with. Glancing at the priest she saw he’d locked the door to the citadel but was now being driven back toward the table with the oil lamp. A blond-haired soldier dashed for the door. As he made to throw back the bolts, Veran grabbed the lamp and flung it against the wall above the door. The lamp shattered to leave a black smudge on the stone. Glass and burning oil rained down onto Blondie’s head. He went up in flames with a whoosh and staggered, shrieking, back among his fellows, setting light to the jacket of another guard. The flailing of the stricken men sent shadows cavorting around the room.
In throwing her fifth knife Karmel had made herself visible to the enemy once more. Three men now edged toward her: a Maru, a stocky man with a maniacal smile, and a bucktoothed man who fought left-handed. Behind them Baldy had found a helper, and the duo were lifting one of the stays from the chestlike construction. Karmel considered her next move. Apparently it needed two to raise the stays, so if she could bring down Baldy, one of the three soldiers facing her might be forced to make up the numbers. How to reach Baldy, though? She had two daggers left in her baldric, but she would need to buy herself time to draw and throw.
Above Blondie’s screams the priestess heard a horn blare outside. The signal to lower the gate. A dragon must have swum through the strait into the Sabian Sea.
A crack of metal on stone sounded as the first of the stays was dropped onto the floor.
Karmel retreated toward the corner with the brazier. Grabbing its stand, she toppled it toward her opponents. They backpedaled as hot coals rolled across the floor. The priestess used the heartbeat she’d bought to draw a knife in her left hand and hurl it at Baldy. It took him in the small of his back. He stiffened, then sank to his knees.
This was beginning to feel too easy.
The priestess’s assailants hesitated. She could guess what they were thinking: one of them should take the place of their fallen comrade, but who?
Not the man with the mad smile, it seemed, for he launched himself at Karmel. She parried a cut before turning her body to evade a slash fro
m the Maru on her right. A lunge at Smiler forced him back. His heel came down on one of the red-hot coals, and he went over on his ankle, swearing. Karmel blocked a strike from Bucktooth, letting his weapon slide off hers to bring him stumbling forward. Knocking aside his parrying sword, she ran him through.
Movement beyond the priestess’s adversaries caught her eye. She looked past them to see that a soldier—one of those who’d been battling Veran, presumably—had joined the surviving guard at the chest. Together they lifted the second stay. A groan of metal sounded. The weight of the gate would be exerting enormous pressure on the remaining stays. Would it prevent the soldiers from raising them from the chest? If the third was pulled clear, might the fourth be sheared away?
The room filled with the stench of burned meat. Blondie lay motionless a few paces away, flames flickering over his body. As those flames began to dwindle, the light in the room faded. Beyond, Veran was a whirlwind of motion as he ducked and twisted amid the shadows. He used an armguard to deflect a blow from a soldier’s blade before retaliating with a kick that hurled his opponent from his feet. Veran was already leaning out of the path of a sword swing from another guard. As his enemy’s weapon clanged against the wall behind, Veran jabbed an elbow into the man’s throat. The soldier went down clutching his neck.
A pounding started up on the door to the citadel, while from outside another horn blast sounded, shrill and insistent. The two soldiers at the chest tugged at the third stay. With a squeal of metal, it jerked up a handspan.
Smiler clambered upright to stand alongside the Maru. The reddish light from the cooling coals gave their faces a devilish cast.
Karmel edged forward. Thus far the men had shown nothing to suggest they could beat her. The soldiers must have known they were outmatched too, for they retreated toward the capstan. A mistake. By standing off, they gave Karmel a chance to draw her final throwing knife. She flung it at one of the men at the stays.
Smiler batted the weapon out of the air with his blade.
Cursing, Karmel thrust her sword at the soldier’s midriff. The Maru blocked the strike, then hacked at her with his blade, and she was forced to leap back out of range. A feint had the Maru retreating, only for Smiler to reenter the fray. He shouted to distract Karmel, stabbing his sword at her chest.
She sidestepped.
Time was running out, she knew. Sooner or later her opponents would fall to her blade, but the way things were looking that “later” might be too late. Maybe Veran would come to her aid before the remaining stays were pulled free, but Karmel was damned if she was going to let him sweep in and play the white knight. She started leaving gaps in her defenses in the hope one of her foes might launch an ill-judged attack. Those gaps were ignored, though, for the soldiers knew they had only to keep her at arm’s length until their comrades at the chest lifted the final stay.
“Come on, you cowards!” Karmel screamed. “Fight me!”
Smiler’s grin grew wider.
From the other side of the door to the citadel, the pounding of fists became more frantic. Karmel glanced at Veran and saw he’d been backed into a corner. A kick to the ankles of one of his assailants sent the soldier toppling. As Veran tensed to hurdle him, though, another guard reached the door.
He raised a hand to throw back the bolts.
* * *
The blare of a distant century horn sounded.
“That’s the signal to raise the gate!” Farrell said, his voice tight with excitement.
Agenta shaded her eyes and peered east. There was nothing for her to see yet because the Dragon Gate was hidden by the Dianese cliffs. Earlier the Icewing had arrived at the buoys marking the starting berths for the Hunt only to find, as expected, that the best places had already been taken. Karan del Orco had called on Orsan to sail along the line of ships in the hope one of their captains, looking to win Imerle’s favor and unaware she was not on board, might give up his space. Instead Orsan had brought the Icewing directly to its current position, farthest west of all the vessels in the Hunt and perhaps an eighth of a league from shore.
Atop the cliffs to the south was a scattering of people—latecomers to the festivities in Dian, Agenta supposed, or townsfolk who had fled the city to watch the Hunt away from the noise and bustle. To the west of them rose the fortified wall that bounded Dian, and beyond that was an expanse of pointed roofs, each taller than the last as if the buildings were straining upward to compete for light. Towering over them was the citadel with its sparkling dragon-scaled towers. Below, the galleries overlooking the Sabian Sea were a blur of color, and from across the water came a babble of sound that fell away momentarily as the screech of grinding metal filled the air. Chains, Agenta realized, her stomach knotting. The gate is rising.
The noise of the crowds swelled to a roar.
A Storm Guard officer bellowed at his troops to take up their positions, and the boards trembled to the pounding of feet. Soldiers lined up along the rails of the main deck and the quarterdeck. Every fourth man carried a pike; the remainder were armed with bows and spears. A septia moved among the archers, handing out white- and black-shafted arrows, and the soldiers began stringing their bows. To Agenta’s left two Storm Guards used hatchets to breach barrels. They then emptied the contents of the barrels into the sea, and the kalischa wrinkled her nose at the stench of offal. Farrell had told her the captain would use it to try to entice the dragon here, though why the beast should be drawn by such paltry fare when there were tasty morsels such as Agenta to be sampled, she couldn’t imagine.
It had attracted some attention, though, for cutting through the bobbing entrails and temlock heads was the fin of a briar shark. Agenta wondered if this was the same fish she’d hit on the journey from Olaire, but there was no arrow protruding from its flank.
To the east the ship closest to the Icewing was trimming its sails. It was a three-masted vessel of a size with the emira’s flagship, and it flew a flag showing a golden octopus. Agenta touched Farrell’s arm. “Whose ship is that?”
“Cauroy Blent’s, I believe—the Majestic. I’m told he has a habit of arriving late to the Hunt, hence his position out here on the fringes with us.”
“He’s afraid to fight a dragon?”
Farrell nodded. “Most people say he’s the weakest of the Storm Lords, and they’re not just referring to his skill at sorcery.”
The merchant’s voice rose at the last, because a second horn note had sounded from Dian.
A dragon had passed beneath the gate.
And the Hunt was under way.
Agenta scanned the water at the exit from the Cappel Strait for a sight of the creature, but the surface of the sea remained undisturbed. Ships surged forward on waves of water-magic in an effort to be first to engage the beast, and Gerrick Long shouted for Orsan to follow their lead. The Icewing, though, remained where it was. Agenta frowned. Was Orsan as timid as Cauroy that he was content to watch from a distance as the other hunters contested the prize? Where was the mage, anyway? Last time the kalischa had spotted him, he’d been conferring with the captain beside the binnacle. When she looked that way now, though, she couldn’t see his blue robe.
“We should move away from here,” Farrell said.
“Oh?”
“If a dragon attacks, Orsan guards the aft deck and Selis the forecastle. The people on the main deck and the quarterdeck get no such protection.”
Agenta nodded her assent, then followed him toward the aft deck where the other guests were being shepherded. Lydanto was there, one hand holding a glass of red wine, the other clasped so tightly to the rail it might have been the only thing keeping him upright. A short distance away stood Rethell, talking to Karan del Orco—or at least listening as the pasha denounced Imerle’s hospitality in a voice intended to carry.
Agenta had made it as far as the quarterdeck when a shout came from a lookout above.
“Dragon from the east!”
The kalischa’s mouth was dry. She drew up beside
the mainmast and peered between the heads of the Storm Guards along the starboard rail. For a moment all she could see was blood-sheened waves. Then a shape half as long as the Icewing appeared in the water off the bow, glittering like a shoal of silverfins. Its passage created a breaker that slapped against the hull.
“We’re lucky,” Farrell said as the dragon glided past. “The creature’s little more than a baby. Any bigger, and it wouldn’t have been able to keep to the shallow waters near the cliff.”
Agenta grunted. Oddly, she didn’t feel too lucky just now.
The dragon drew level with the Icewing’s stern. The ballista on the aft deck was mounted on a revolving stand, and it tracked the beast as it circled to the port side. An arrow flashed out and struck the water above it.
“Hold your fire!” a Storm Guard to Agenta’s left roared.
The dragon continued its circuit of the Icewing before moving from the kalischa’s sight behind the forecastle.
The noise of the crowds on the Dianese galleries had fallen to a whisper, while on the cliff top the spectators were shouting and pointing east. Agenta turned to see Cauroy’s ship, the Majestic, approaching on a wave of water-magic. “It seems the dragon is so small that even Cauroy is prepared to face it,” she said to Farrell.
The merchant bared his teeth. “He’s come for a share of our spoils…”
His voice trailed off.
Because a second dragon had appeared in the sea off the starboard side of the Majestic. Armored in steel-colored scales, it was half again the size of the silver beast circling the Icewing. Panicked shouts rang out from Cauroy’s ship, and the sorcerous wave on which it was riding began to subside.
Agenta shot a look at Farrell. “What’s going on?”
Her companion hesitated. “Sometimes two dragons make it through the Cappel Strait before the gate can be lowered. It happened many years ago when Whin Whorl was emir.”