“How many men do we have here?” Zerai asked.
“Not enough.” Jengo leapt onto a horse and grabbed his bow from a young boy holding the reins. “Not nearly enough.”
With a shout, the warrior rallied the cavalry to follow him out through the broken gates and into the cold, empty streets of Tagal. When the riders were gone, the archers and foot soldiers jogged out after them, pouring slowly out of the courtyard until only a token handful remained to guard the open gates.
Zerai inhaled slowly. “Well… this is terrible.”
“Very.”
“We should get inside and find a good place to hide, someplace we can defend for a long time,” he said, turning to look back into the palace.
“No, we need to leave. And we need to find Iyasu.”
“Really? Won’t Azrael keep him safe?”
“From thieves? Certainly. But from an army? Perhaps not.” She shrugged. “I have no idea what the Angel of Death wants or needs, or what her feelings are for the clerics of other angels.”
“And you really don’t think we should stay here?”
She shook her head and took his hand. “An army is not like a pack of demons. They will not grow bored or hungry and wander off after a few hours or days. These men will do terrible things, for weeks or months on end, despite how tired or hungry or frightened they are. They will do whatever Darius wants them to do, for as long as he controls them. And if they were loyal enough to serve him before, and loyal enough to free him now, then I do not think we have any hope of swaying them, much less defeating them.”
“So… Iyasu?”
“And Faris, and anyone else we can save.”
As they went back into the palace, the found the alchemist Bashir standing by a brazier and staring into the open flames. “A pity,” he said as they approached. “We did so well. All the way to the palace, and a crown on a decent man’s head. But it still wasn’t enough, was it?”
“Apparently not.” Veneka reluctantly touched the alchemist’s arm. “Bashir, we need your help. We only have a few hours before Darius reaches the palace. We need to get everyone out. Can you search the palace and tell everyone to leave?”
The djinn man looked at her with a furrowed brow and frowning lip. “I suppose.” And he vanished in a dark flash of black and red silk.
It took several minutes for Veneka and Zerai to run through the palace, yelling at everyone they saw to get out before Darius returned, and when they finally found the room where Faris and his new valets were talking, she saw they were standing over a small sea of half-filled bags and baskets.
“Your Majesty, we need to get you out of the palace,” Veneka said.
“Yes, yes, one minute.” Faris turned back to the valets. “But there’s no telling when I’ll be able to come back, so I need them all now.”
“Need what?” Zerai asked.
“My clothes, my books, my things.” The prince waved at the baskets.
“No, no things, there is no time.” Veneka grabbed the nearest valet, a thin man of middle age, and propelled him out the door. “Everyone out, now.”
Faris pouted but allowed himself and his servants to be shooed out of their room without his bags, and they all resumed their hurried march toward the southern end of the palace, calling out to everyone they saw to get to safety. They were nearly to the doors at the end of a small dining hall when a long, spidery hand touched Veneka’s shoulder.
She spun. “You!”
The alchemist loomed over her. “There’s a problem.”
“Did you get everyone out of the palace?”
“Nearly.”
“What do you mean?”
“Petra. She’s struggling… with the pregnancy.”
Zerai rolled his eyes. “She’s been pregnant for all of an hour!”
“Three hours,” the djinn said.
Veneka frowned.
Djinn pregnancies are faster than ours. And this one is going to be complicated. This is hardly the time to be worrying about that selfish little girl’s discomfort, but… it matters to Zerai. And I suppose the child is part human. After forcing myself on Edris, I suppose…
“I will see what I can do,” she said. “Take me to them. Zerai, stay with Faris. Get everyone out of the palace. We’ll catch up.”
The falconer made a conflicted face as he clearly wanted to argue with her instructions, but knew there was no time to do so. “Okay. Be safe!”
Veneka gave Bashir a stern look as she put her arm around his shoulder and allowed him to lift her off her feet. She closed her eyes and the world ripped past her in a blast of cold air and dim lights flashing through her eyelids. And then it stopped.
She opened her eyes and put her feet on the floor to the sounds of a woman groaning loudly and a man talking softly under her. Veneka saw Petra by the window, her round belly already quite large in the flickering light of the candles. Edris stood beside her, massaging her back.
Petra shot an anxious look at the healer. “Something’s wrong.”
“Yes. You are carrying a half-human child.” Veneka strode over to them and knelt down as she placed her hands on the woman’s belly.
“You know what I mean,” Petra said. “It hurts. I don’t think it should hurt this much.”
“Well, since no one has ever done this before, there is no way to know how much it should hurt,” Veneka said. “But considering that God never intended for this to happen, some pain is to be expected.”
“Why?” Edris said. “Horses and zebras can mate. So can lions and tigers. Why not us and them?”
“Ask God,” Veneka snapped at him. She returned her attention to the distended belly in front of her. She could feel small, hard shapes moving under the taut skin.
It’s happening so fast. But this should be normal for her. Unless…
“Where is the pain the worst?”
“At the bottom.” Petra cupped her hand under her belly. “It feels like there’s a boulder inside me.”
“Mm hm.” As an experiment, she silently called upon the healing grace of Raziel and let the angel’s life-giving warmth pass through her hands, but the djinn woman went on wincing and groaning. “I believe the problem is that your womb was made to bear children of fire and now you have one of clay. Humans are heavier. This baby is heavier. And I imagine it will grow heavier still before it comes out.”
“But… that could take hours. Even days at this rate!” Petra huffed and leaned on the window sill. Sweat dripped from the tip of her nose and chin.
“Yes, it could.” Veneka stood up. “But right now, we need to get out of the palace.”
“I can’t! Not now, not like this!”
“You have to. Darius will be here soon.”
“But he doesn’t know me! I’m not with the prince!”
“Would you care to gamble your life on whether you can explain that to him before he kills you?”
Petra glared at her.
“No? Then we should leave.”
Together, Edris and Veneka helped Petra to hurry down the long, empty corridors of the palace. In the distance, they heard war horns blowing and drums beating.
“Do we know where we’re going?” Edris asked.
“Away from Darius.”
The singer nodded. “Works for me.”
Bashir led the way to the southern gate of the palace and soon they were part of the panicking tide of porters, maids, cooks, grooms, and other servants running swiftly through the city streets. Petra held her belly with both hands and Edris gripped her shoulders as they struggled to keep pace with the alchemist.
Not long after that, Veneka spotted the figure of Faris in the crowd ahead, and she urged Petra on all the faster until they caught up with the prince and Zerai, along with a dozen wide-eyed servants who all seemed very eager to be moving faster than Faris was capable of.
“How are things?” Zerai nodded at Petra.
“Not good.” Veneka nodded at the prince. “How is he?”
&
nbsp; “Not fast.” The falconer grimaced. “I asked about horses, but it sounds like the soldiers took every last one of them.”
“We may be out of time. Darius could reach the palace at any moment.” She glanced back and saw the palace still looming all too large and too close behind them.
“But Jengo?”
“He may not survive. He said Darius had fifteen thousand soldiers with him.”
“Fifteen?” Zerai blew out a long breath and then leaned closer to her. “We may have to run.”
“We are running.”
“I mean, faster than this.” He nodded at the prince ahead of them.
“Oh.”
Leave them? And Petra too, if she cannot move any faster. But if we abandon them, they will be dead by midnight. There has to be another way.
She shook her head. “No. If we cannot run, then we hide.”
“If Samira was here to build us a shelter, I might agree, but she’s isn’t, and look around.” He gestured to the sealed gates and doors lining the street. “We’re not going to get a warm welcome and an honor guard around here any time soon.”
“Then we will have to hide someplace less formidable.” She craned her neck to see over the crowd, which was rapidly thinning as the other people streamed by much faster than the prince and his entourage. “There!”
She pointed to a building coming up on their left. It stood in stark contrast to its paler neighbors with its blackened façade, particularly around its empty doors and windows.
“Really?” Zerai sighed. “A burnt out building could be dangerous. Weak floors, weak walls. Lean on the wrong post and the whole thing could fall on us. I slept in a few burnt out houses with Kaleb and the others. One of them actually did fall on us. It wasn’t fun.”
“But it is all we have.” She looked back at the palace again, which didn’t look to be any farther away. The calls of the horns and drums echoed louder against the dark clouds overhead.
The falconer nodded. “You’re right.”
“Of course I am.”
They exchanged a brief smile, and for that tiny moment it almost felt like the long, lazy days back in Naj Kuvari when their only worry was keeping an eye on the mischievous children playing in the grassy lanes of the green city.
It took several moments to convince Faris and Petra that hiding in the ruined house was their best option, but eventually the sweaty prince and the groaning djinn agreed and the entire group crossed the street and went inside. Looking up, Veneka surveyed what the house had to offer in terms of weak structures that could fall on them, and she found that half the roof and upper floors had fallen in already, and layers of wooden floorboards and ceramic tiles lay piled against the right side of the house, burying several shattered tables and chairs.
But after a moment’s search, Zerai found the entrance to the cellar intact and they all slipped down the stairs one by one. Every stair creaked, but they held, and soon everyone was squatting or sitting on the cold earthen floor, in the dark. Only a thin sliver of moonlight managed to pierce the ruins of their shelter to illuminate a narrow strip of ash on the ground.
“Now what?” Petra asked between soft gasps.
“We wait,” Veneka whispered. “Quietly.”
They sat in silence, and as the adrenaline of their dash from the palace faded, the cold air on her sweaty skin set her to shivering. Zerai moved closer and put his arm around her, which helped a little.
Edris crept closer to her and whispered, “How long will we be here?”
“I have no idea.”
“Petra’s in a lot of pain. Can you do anything for her?”
Veneka frowned, but then moved over closer to the djinn woman and laid her hands on her distended belly. There was no illness or injury to properly heal, but the strain on Petra’s body seemed to respond to Veneka’s healing touch, and the pregnant woman relaxed her back, uncurled her fists, and calmed her breathing. Veneka adjusted her hands, feeling the muted shapes of the child shifting inside her womb.
They only ever tell the war stories. The hard births. The long births. The dangerous births. They measure them in hours and days, in screams and blood. Why do they never talk about the easy ones? The quick ones? Babies that simply slide out on the first push? And yet we keep clambering to do this, to suffer like this, to charge into this strange little battlefield, knowing how bad it can be…
She looked back at Zerai, and just barely saw the outline of his nose in the shadows.
Of course we keep doing it.
She turned back again and saw that Petra had fallen asleep, so she took her hands away. Petra’s eyes snapped open and her body contracted into a ball as she screamed.
Edris clamped his hand over her mouth and Veneka grabbed her arm and belly again, but even as the young mother-to-be quieted down they could hear the shouts of the men outside in the street, and the pounding of their boots as they ran toward the burnt house.
“Shit,” whispered Zerai.
“Petra!” Edris shook the woman, but her head lolled back against his shoulder.
Veneka touched her neck. “She collapsed from the pain.”
“Doesn’t do us much good now,” Zerai muttered as he stood up, his eyes fixed on the ceiling where a pair of boots were slowly thumping and creaking across the damaged boards.
The soldier called out, “There’s a door here, sir!”
“Damn.” Zerai dashed up with a long blackened post and jammed it against the door to hold it closed. Several of Faris’s servants leapt to their feet to bring more and more bits of refuse to help barricade the entrance, and together they leaned their bodies against the rotten, splintered wood to help it hold.
Hands and swords pounded on the door, and the ceiling of the cellar began to groan as more and more men entered the house. Dust, ash, and splinters began to fall, in some places just trickles and in other places large chunks of the house gave way, collapsing in heaps in the darkness. Upstairs, the sounds of breaking boards echoed up through the roofless well of the house.
“There’s no way out.” Faris stared at the blocked door. “Nowhere to run, no way to fight.”
“We will be fine,” Veneka assured him.
No, we will not.
“Maybe I should try talking to them, to Darius,” Faris whispered.
“I do not think they will listen.”
“But I’m the Crown Prince of Tagal!”
Veneka shook her head. “You are also the man who put him in prison last night, and he is a tyrant who has killed most of the people you care about and trust.”
Faris clawed his hand through his short hair, and in the darkness she heard him crying softly.
From upstairs they heard a large post creak, break, and cave in, bringing down a landslide of walls, floors, and furniture in the far corner of the cellar. A blast of cold air and stinging dust struck Veneka in the face, and she coughed violently as she wiped her eyes clean.
When she looked again, she saw that they were now in a tiny cave, trapped between a jagged mound of shattered boards and a cracked stone wall, and the ceiling to her left sounded as though it too would collapse at any moment. Swords and axes were hacking away beyond the blocked door, and spears and prybars were tearing out nails and pegs.
Edris wrapped his arms around the unconscious Petra, closed his eyes, and started humming.
Veneka tried to catch Zerai’s eye across the small space between them, but in the darkness she couldn’t be sure he was even looking in her direction. And then she heard a strange clinking and clacking.
She turned and in the shadows she saw Bashir carefully removing the jars and bundles from his bag. “What are you doing?”
“Accepting the inevitable.” He continued arranging his things. “We’re going to die in here.”
“We do not know that.”
“Yes, we do.”
Faris sobbed louder, and Edris hummed louder to drown him out. The ceiling beams crackled.
“In a few moments, the ceilin
g will collapse. Some of us will die, and the rest will be injured and trapped,” the alchemist said. “Then the soldiers will come in and strike off the heads of the survivors. There is no escape, not even for me, not from this tomb.”
“I am sorry. I thought we would be safer here.”
“I don’t blame you.” He paused. “But I will ask a favor.”
She frowned. “What favor?”
He reached down and gently lifted the cloth from the bundle before him to reveal a well-preserved skeleton. With a few deft movements, he had the bones arranged properly in the shape of a woman in her final rest. He looked up at her, gazing into her eyes, his mouth hovering open for a long moment. “Let me see her one last time.”
“What?”
“Bring her back to me.” Bashir touched the pale skull. “I know it won’t be her. It will only be a soulless shell, and it will only live for a few minutes. But it’s been so long. I want to see her face one last time, the way she was before. Let me see her and hold her again before I die. Please.”
Veneka shook her head and looked away. A tear ran down her cheek.
Why am I crying? It’s disgusting, it’s disrespectful, it’s against all natural law. But…
She wiped her face dry and looked up at Zerai, and he looked back down at her. She couldn’t see his face clearly in the darkness, but she saw him nod his head at her.
It’s only for a moment. Only to say farewell.
“All right. I will try.”
She moved over to the alchemist and looked down at the skeleton, and the jars of water, and the powders, and everything else he had gathered in forty years of searching for a cure for death. She exhaled, and laid her shaking hands on the cold bones, and closed her eyes.
At first she wasn’t sure what to pray for, what to ask for, what to think about. But then she put Bashir aside, and she put death aside, and instead focused on a word, a name. Talia. A young woman in love, dying of a disease, alone, separated from her lover.
Veneka turned all her thoughts to that young woman called Talia, and then it became simple and clear. “Holy Raziel, help me to heal this woman.”
War of the Magi: Azrael's Wrath (Book 2) Page 20