“Peace, little one.” Kembe rumbled. The Tau-se patriarch lay deceptively still upon his couch, tail swishing on the floor. Passing clouds dimmed the sheen from the fortune coins braided into his white-gold mane. “It seems to me there have been many hands on the shovel that dug this well, hoping to find water when all we have found is dust and the bones of those who have dug here before.”
“Reckon Shar has a point,” Hayden said from where he leaned against the wall by the window. He hugged his long-barrelled storm-rifle to his chest. “I ain’t one for the schemes of lordly folk and such, but I figure Indris is a brother in blood, and he ain’t been done right by.”
“There is nothing but sorrow and waste in all this death and feckless haste,” Omen fluted. “To set a crown on a hard man’s brow, when peace is needed here and now.”
“Well there’s more sorrow and waste to come before any brow is crowned,” Ziaire said. “Belamandris and his Anlūki have been scouring the streets looking for Vahineh.”
“And Indris,” Bensaharēn added. “There is a story there of which I’m unaware. Belamandris rides on the back of a reckless hatred that will not end well for him, or anybody involved.”
And how much of that is because of me? Mari thought.
“After this morning’s little escapade,” Ajo said, “Corajidin has invoked ayo-kherife. He’s going to make a royal-caste arrest of Roshana, another barb to tarnish the Federationists in front anybody with eyes to see, or ears to hear.”
“There were too many witnesses to this event for her to come away unscathed from this.” Neva leaned against the wall, arms folded under her breasts. She had not changed out of her flying leathers and seemed ready to go into action at a moment’s notice. She looked at Mari. “I’ll do whatever you need.”
“If Rahn-Roshana is convicted of attempted regicide and treason,” Ajo added grimly, “she’ll be stripped of her rank and her place in the Teshri. More than likely she’ll be given the choice of Exile for the duration of Corajidin’s life, or sent to Maladûr gaol.”
Roshana sat quietly on the edge of her chair. With the personal consequences of her actions heard out loud, they seemed to finally hit her. Her lips were a hard line across her angular face.
“Corajidin escaped a dire fate,” Omen said, “his plots and schemes founded in hate. Is there no way this rahn can escape, the web that may yet seal her fate?”
“What’s done is done and I was right to do it,” Roshana said. “The alleged assassins are dead. It’s pure supposition I ordered them to do anything. Corajidin has gotten away with much worse.”
“Hollow words, if we lose you.” Siamak rose from his chair, his lean and deadly marshlanders behind him. “If the Arbiter’s Tribunal brings you before Kaylish Face Readers, the truth will be known. Thank the hallowed dead Corajidin doesn’t use the Sēq. Their Inquisitors would strip every secret from you, whether it was relevant or not. We need to plan what comes next carefully.”
“Then lay it at the feet of Mariam and be done with it.” Roshana shrugged indifferently. “You need to ask yourself whether I add more value as the Rahn-Näsarat and a member of the Teshri, or as a renegade. Mariam is the darling of the Avān! People would see it as little more than a wilful daughter acting out against her father—which she has done before—and then forget about it. Corajidin survived, after all.”
Both Siamak and Bensaharēn looked appalled at Roshana’s rationalisation. Nazarafine’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. Mari schooled her features to stillness, refusing to look at Roshana lest she launch herself across the room and beat the life from her. My father survived, just as I survived your assassins, Roshana. Mari felt anger infuse her at the memory. Don’t think it’s something I’ve forgotten, you cold, hard bitch.
There was a pregnant silence, before the birth of commotion when voices were raised all at once.
Mari stepped back from the conversation, taking solace in the tangible presences of Shar and Neva. Hayden and Ekko, too—and to a lesser degree Omen, whom she did not understand. The leaders of the Federationists fenced with words. Roshana sat with her typical military bearing; square jawed, square shouldered and aloof, her eyes watchful. Her guard, a man neither named nor introduced, was tall yet stooped to hide it. Dark-haired and dark-bearded, he was sword slender with sharp eyes on either side of a blade for a nose. Bensaharēn sat neatly, like a well-groomed cat, his sword across his knees. Beside Roshana, Nazarafine slouched as if both her physical and emotional weight bore her down. Navid, her prickly proud nephew, hovered over her. The way his hand hovered near the hilt of his sword, it was as if he waited for an excuse to draw it and prove himself the fool Mari suspected he was. Ziaire stood amongst it, watching, listening, offering sage advice when necessary. Yet mostly she took it all in, inhaling the events around her.
Siamak and Kembe seemed almost at ease. Siamak and his marshlanders remained standing, poised yet nonthreatening. Even at rest a Tau-se was menacing: there was no help for it when one was two metres of steely muscle sheathed in silky fur. Yet Kembe and Ibamu remained still. They avoided direct eye contact and the only indication of agitation was the occasional widening of their eyes, or a swish of their tail.
Time passed, measured in the inexorable march of a translucent beam that shone pallid through the window. It marked all of them in its passage, leaving cutouts in the spaces behind people as it passed over them. Hayden leaned on his rifle, head nodding as he drowsed, then jerking sharply as he came awake. Shar absently juggled her serill knives, the black faceted glass glittering. Ekko and Omen stood silent—the former may as well have been a statue in fur.
Tired of the foreplay in the conversation, Mari was about to suggest she and the others leave the rahns to it when she caught sight of something blue flapping by the window. Taking it to be a bird she was going to ignore it, yet it kept butting against the glass, sounding more like a moth than a bird. Distracted, she turned to look.
And let out a sharp bark of near-hysterical laughter, followed by a relieved sob. A surprised silence stole over the room.
Mari flung open the window and the small blue bird flapped into her hand, then lay still. Tears in her eyes, Mari carefully unfolded the paper phoenix to read the message Indris had sent her.
Without a care for who saw, Mari threw herself into Indris’s arms when she met him in the narrow ravine above the Qadir Selassin. She hugged him so hard he grunted. His arms encircled her and she felt as much as heard the gentle resonance of his voice.
She took a step back to look at him. He seemed none the worse for wear, though there was a tension at the corners of his eyes and mouth she did not like. Dressed in a formal cassock of fine black wool he looked severe, silver buttons in cold contrast against the soft black. His longish hair was unruly, tangles snatched by the exhalation of the wind. Changeling’s scaled dragon hilt rose over his shoulder, one sapphire eye seeming to stare at Mari where she stood. Seeing him this way, rather than the relaxed vagabond he worked so hard to pretend to be, Mari could understand how people might fear him. There was an implacable strength in his stance and a fierceness in his gaze that would have given anybody pause.
Watching the man in his sleep, lids slightly bruised and lined with long dark lashes…
Hearing him breathe…
The way he hugged his knee when he read, one long finger holding the page still…
Listening to him laugh at himself for something poorly said, or clumsy…
That was not the man who stood in front her now. What she witnessed here, for the first time, was the killer of men and destroyer of nations and it caused her breath to catch in her throat.
Shar wiped a bright tear from her cheek, before turning to bury her face in Ekko’s chest. When she turned back, she was beaming. Hayden’s grin split his weathered face, causing his long moustache to bristle like a living thing. Omen stood poised and silent, enamelled simulacrum gleaming. Indris beamed at them, the look of the killer replaced by genuine affection.
&nbs
p; “What happened to you?” Mari asked.
“We need to get Vahineh out of Avānweh before she’s retaken,” he said gently. “Corajidin’s made a deal with a faction in the Sēq: his continued tolerance in return for Vahineh.”
“Don’t avoid the question,” Shar prodded. “Where have you been?”
“Amer-Mahjin. The Sēq extended their—”
“What?” Shar yelped as if bitten. “The Sēq had you?”
“Yes, though it’s a tale for another time. There are Erebus soldiers throughout the city, as well as more than a few stray dogs they’ve picked up for whatever coppers were lying around. I’ve had to deal with a few of them, but they’ll regain consciousness soon and report they’ve seen me. Where are the others? They need to be warned.”
Indris walked further back up the ravine. She heard him speak quietly. A bloodied and bruised Vahineh walked out where the others could see her. Mari wondered at the improvement in the woman, though Vahineh seemed overwhelmed at the attention. Vahineh hid shyly behind Indris, clutching his hand like a child, her eyes wide when she looked at Ekko.
“Is she…?” Mari asked, not wanting to use the word sane. Indris shrugged with his eyebrows.
Mari led them along pedestrian walkways, across gardens and narrow bridges and down secluded flights of stairs. Though Avānweh was a cosmopolitan city—its citizens used to seeing Seethe, Tau-se, and Humans—Mari doubted they were used to seeing such a mixed group. People bobbed their heads in respect when they saw Indris. Some, mostly of the older generation who had been raised with sende as an integral part of their upbringing, went so far as to drop to both knees in the Third Obeisance. Others, younger and raised in a more casual manner, gave him the barest courtesy, or looked at him with barely contained fear. Indris said nothing, hardly recognising their presence at all, as a Sēq would do. Once they passed he muttered under his breath about this being the reason why he never wore the formal cassock of the Order.
They paused at the base of the long Kiridin Stairs, screened either side by tall bamboo and a wall of weathered stone. There was a modest butkada to the Family Masadhe there, though age had made use of it. Pigeons nested amongst the split timbers of the domed roof, while spiders made their webs amongst the legs and fangs of their graven kindred. The broken fretwork screens of the butkada and its thick wooden pillars, varnish peeled away like dead skin, gave Mari and the others a place to observe. The Caleph-Mahn was a major mercantile district, its main road lined with merchant factors, jewellers, weapon and armour smiths, tailors, scribes, general stores, dining halls, and narrow tea houses with iron pots hanging from chains by the door, clanking in the wind.
Hayden gave his storm-rifle to Indris to hold, then casually walked into the flow of the crowd. The moustached man smiled pleasantly, tipping his hat at a sour dowager and what Mari took to be her equally unattractive ward. Then he was off, walking bandy-legged in his old buckskins, sun bright on the ends of his bobbed salt-and-brass hair.
“He’s a great scout.” Indris leaned against a wooden pillar as far from the road as he could get. “He can pass for an Avān or a Human and being older, few people suspect him of being up to any trouble.”
“Will he be safe?” Mari asked.
“Safe as the rest of us.”
“So no, then.”
“Not so much. Excuse me a minute.” Indris asked Shar and Ekko for some money. He left Changeling and unbuckled his weapons belt, leaving it folded neatly on the narrow seat that ran the length of the butkada. For a moment he looked at his weapons, then thrust the dragon-tooth knife through the sash at his waist. Joining the crowd—who gave the Sēq in his fine woollen cassock a wide birth—he walked down the street a way before turning into a clothier.
“You get used to him,” Shar said from where she came to stand at Mari’s shoulder.
“Pardon?”
Shar nodded down the street to where Indris had gone. “I saw the look on your face. You get used to him. Who and what he is. The walls he sometimes puts up, and forgets to bring down until something reminds him he’s among friends again. Most of the time he’s the man you’ve come to know. Caring, passionate, gentle…” Mari frowned a little at the wistful nature of Shar’s voice. Clearly there had been more than friendship between her and Indris. Shar shrugged it off, then said, “But then there are the times he just needs to be what he was trained to be, and you see how cold, hard, and intractable a man he is. I feel sorry for his enemies. I’d never want to have Indris mean me harm, I can tell you that for free.”
Mari nodded, relieved but not overjoyed. With all that had happened, she was beginning to wonder whether he had decided to keep his distance from her. He certainly had not been as… demonstrative, or warm, on seeing her as she would have hoped. But then she did not know what he had experienced at the hands of his former teachers and comrades.
It was something else they would need to deal with, the secrets that lurked in their pasts, which might come out to bite them. Mari settled herself in the shade, stretching her legs, and resting her back against a warm wooden column. She breathed deeply, picturing her anxieties trickling down her arms and legs, then out her fingers and toes, draining away to leave her clean and thinking clearly.
Hayden had not returned in the thirty minutes it took for Indris to emerge from the clothier wearing an outfit of the warrior-caste: black trousers bound with brass buckles in the style of the southern mountain clans; a dark brown coat to his knees, sleeves studded with bronze and buckled across the chest; soft-looking black boots and a hooded over-robe in the same dark brown. Now people scarcely looked at him, save for a few women who gave him admiring glances once he had passed them by. He stopped at a nearby dining hall, bringing back ekfi—soft flour flatbread wrapped around spiced rice, beans, parsley, mint, and shredded lamb. These were passed around with a flourish and the small group set to eating, looking little more than visitors taking their rest in the shade of a busy market street.
“I’m going to miss those old boots of mine,” he mused as he looked down at the square toes of his new boots. Mari could see the leather shift as he wriggled his toes. “Took me years to break the damned things in.”
“You should go ask the Sēq to have them back,” Shar said with a wicked grin.
Indris gave her an exaggerated fake smile, before turning back to the street. Hayden appeared not long after, taking his time as he meandered back. The rifleman stopped to look in the window of a sword maker, thumbs hooked in his belt.
“That’s the signal,” Indris said. He helped Vahineh raise her hood, then walked into the street accompanied by Shar and Omen. Ekko followed, Mari trailing behind. They met up with Hayden a score of shops down the road, who reported there was nobody he could see watching the Eyrie. Indris handed the old man back his storm-rifle.
Mari took the lead, somewhat more relaxed. Nearing the Eyrie they passed under one of the many zaihin gates; tall arched gates set as waypoints along the road, their supporting columns thick as polished tree trunks. This one was carved to look like the columns were two thick snakes, scales lacquered black, grey, and white. Looking up she saw a coiled black serpent carved on the lintel, amongst renderings of jagged leaves and thorned roses.
The snakes reminded Mari of Nadir, his father, and sisters. The ones whose Ancestors, as legend had it, learned their wisdom, subtlety and fighting techniques from the great wyrms of the Mar Ejir. The man she had once been infatuated with—as was her wont to fall quickly and hard for certain women and men—had changed much since their time together. He was more like the snake of his Family these days. Warmed by the sun, or by contact with others, rather than having any warmth of spirit. His blithe mention of war, of bringing carnage back to Shrīan, had been warning enough to show children often grew into the shoes of their parents. It was a reminder Mari hardly needed, yet was instructional all the same. Mari had no interest in the feel of her father’s stride.
The more time she spent with people who had tasted true
freedom, the less she wanted to walk anybody’s path save her own.
Exiting the far side of the gate, Mari was blinded a moment by the afternoon sun. She turned back to see her friends. Indris laughing at some jape of Shar’s, holding Vahineh’s hand as they walked. Omen walking with his stork-like gait, Shroud flowing around his mechanical limbs, emerald eyes gleaming. Ekko and Hayden following, the enormous Tau-se walking with slow strides so the shorter rifleman could keep pace. Hayden was gesticulating wildly with one hand, his storm-rifle in the other. Ekko’s eyes were half closed in happiness.
In this moment it became clear to her what she must do. She smiled for the joy of it, at the same time fearing what such a change in her life may mean.
The arrow took her in the back, driving the wind from her lungs and dropping her to her knees.
“Erebus’s shrivelled balls!” Mari grunted. The pain was incredible. It felt like being hit by a hammer between the shoulder blades.
As she rose the arrow fell to the ground with a thud. It rolled past her. A roundhead, tipped with a ball of resin, and used to incapacitate rather than kill.
There was a sound like a swarm of angry wasps. Arrows shredded the air. Mari dashed towards the cover of the zaihin gate. The next arrow hit her high between the shoulders. The force of the blow sent her careening face first into a stand of tall, green bamboo. She gasped for air as she tried to rise, the muscles across her back and shoulders protesting the abuse.
Indris raced forward to her side, using a sheathed Changeling to swat arrows out of the air. Behind him Omen stood in front of Vahineh, a quasiliving shield, a long antique shamshir with an ornate filigreed hilt held in his mechanical hand. Ekko had drawn his powerful short bow and Hayden his storm-rifle, both men firing at targets as they presented themselves.
All around them civilians screamed as they sprinted for cover. Wrapped parcels, baskets of food, bolts of cloth, and other goods were dropped in their haste. Wagons were abandoned, or used as cover as artisans hid themselves beneath them.
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