Heedless of sentinels, helpless for the first time that Rafen had known him, the Sianian general shouted, “Rafen, come back!”
He was already gone.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The
New Pirate King
He had been incredibly fortunate, having avoided all barriers during his six-hour journey. Rafen had unconsciously learned from Etana the basics of sensing where a barrier was, and could now detect a shimmer in the air that usually meant one was nearby. Even so, he had purposely slowed down at these points and trotted through the bushes as the Wolf noisily, occasionally attracting the attention of a silent philosopher leaning against a tree. That done, he would speed up and evade him as best he could, hoping these sightings would alert the network around the Woods, and the message would spread, so that the Lashki’s interest in the missing noblemen would be conflicted. His wolf’s senses had picked up the smell of a large body of Naztwai early on, and Rafen had been forced at certain points to take secret paths to avoid them. He wondered feverishly where the Lashki was sending them now. If he were directing them to Fritz’s Hideout with several philosophers in possession of the password, things could turn very bad. The quicker he reached the Lashki, the better. It appeared the ghoul controlled the Naztwai with his mental efforts, which Rafen intended to interrupt violently.
It was now well into afternoon, and the air was balmy with a slight breeze.
Rafen prayed the Lashki himself would not already be at the Hideout; he prayed the Lashki was still waiting for him. Nazt had an appetite for Rafen, and if the Lashki was getting better at telling its changes of moods, he should know vaguely that Rafen was now at the fringe of the Cursed Woods, transforming and staring through the line of red cedars and laurel oaks at the New Isles palace on its green slope.
Painted bruntings picking at it, the road of packed dirt wended toward the skeleton of the city. Some of the stone framework was left, but most of the walls were entirely gone, leaving a few charred pillars and platforms. Blackened wood lay scattered on the crater-like surface that had once been the city’s foundation. Mounds of ash and rubble stood around the giant clock tower, still telling the time perfectly though there was no one to read it. A pall of smoke hung over the debris, and philosophers swarmed in and out of the rubble, inspecting the scene.
Is this the end of Siana? Rafen thought.
An explosion of forked green behind rent the air, and Rafen threw himself down. The kesmal struck the oak Rafen had been standing before, and cracks ran down the length of its trunk. A loud creaking ensued. Rafen whipped his sword from its sheath and directed it at the figure among the holly bushes behind the fringe of trees. A fiery beam of orange shot toward Sirius’ bald head, but Sirius ducked and vanished in the greenery. He exploded into view again to the left of a laurel oak, pointing his black-handled dagger at Rafen’s forehead.
Rafen screamed and threw himself behind a red cedar, flinging his sword arm out to send another line of kesmal Sirius’ way. It struck some bushes with a crackle.
Something hit Rafen’s sword with the weight of thunder, almost knocking it from his hand. Tearing his fighting arm back, Rafen leapt away when Sirius rounded his tree, a thick falchion in hand.
“Where’s Wilkins?” Rafen taunted.
Sirius met his gaze and laughed softly. “I should have known you had heard some conversations you shouldn’t have,” he said, his sword arm vibrating with anticipation. “I have decided I don’t need luck anymore, birdie. Why would the Pirate King need luck? Why does someone with my kesmal need luck? Gor, it just doesn’t make sense.”
“So Wilkins wasn’t a sign,” Rafen said, leaning hard against a red cedar for strength.
“Wilkins was only one sign,” Sirius said with feigned patience. He had put away his dagger for the time being. “I have others, the most important of which I wear at my belt. Now birdie, I want you intact for when we go there—” his hand pointed vaguely in the direction of the palace, “—so don’t fight me too hard.”
He guffawed now, and for the first time, Rafen noticed a length of rope hanging from his belt within the folds of his robe. Doubtless, it was for binding Rafen once the fencing match was over and he was unconscious.
“And this time, no running away with your friends, understood? I won a few more cities without you, but now you’re mine.”
“Leave me alone,” Rafen said hoarsely. “You don’t understand! I’ve got to—”
“To what?” Sirius said, smiling broadly.
“I have to save Siana. You’re wasting my time.”
The Naztwai were on the march again, and only Zion knew where the Lashki was sending them.
“Kill me then, birdie, and save us both a headache.” Sirius laughed his dry laugh again.
“You deserve to die,” Rafen whispered. “You killed Wynne.”
“I enjoyed every moment of it.”
“Shut up! You killed all those people in Rusem and many others besides.”
“Come, I’m as innocent as the next man,” Sirius said, gesturing expansively with his free hand. “We’re all murderers at heart.”
He lunged, and Rafen fumbled to parry, panic building inside him. He forced himself to remember his mother and the last message she had given him as he had sat quietly by her side in Fritz’s Hideout. He forced himself to remember the people he had to save, and he threw all his energy into the fight. Sirius continually battered away at his guard, using thrusting and riposting combinations Rafen had never seen before. Even after his extensive training with Erasmus, Rafen was bewildered, and his maimed sword hand was weak and off balance. Yet, he gritted his teeth and cast all his previous training from his mind, playing Sirius’ game with him, thrusting rapidly, dancing back and forth, performing dangerous wrist twists that would surely ruin his hand altogether. And then he realized that actually he was not doing anything new: he was merely doing something old in a new way, because as he battled, kesmal quickened all his practiced movements beyond belief until they were blinding. Sirius’ mouth twitched dangerously, and his motions suddenly sped up as well.
Jumping out of the way, Rafen stumbled backward and fell into a prickly holly bush, his sword arm swinging out and leaving him exposed. Sirius’ gray eyes glinted, and Rafen cried out, rolling sideways. The flat of Sirius’ falchion crushed the branches of the bush, a hairbreadth from the side of Rafen’s skull.
Rafen’s gaze flew to Sirius again, and he thrust his sword arm out and pursued it, leaving the crushed holly bush behind him. Sirius parried elegantly and then lunged once more. Rafen stepped backward and darted behind a laurel oak. His arm was aching; it wasn’t going to hold out long, and he didn’t have much time left to distract the Lashki either. Coming to the New Isles palace bound and in Sirius’ power was not what Rafen had envisaged, and Sirius probably had a more relaxed schedule than he did. It could ruin everything.
A hissing sound caught Rafen’s attention. On the other side of the oak, Sirius was drawing his black-handled dagger. Despite his intentions of bringing Rafen to the palace unharmed, he was about to do kesmal again. Rafen had driven him to it.
A sudden image of multiple Sirius’s on the grasslands near Rusem materialized in Rafen’s mind. He hurled himself out from behind the oak as Sirius appeared directly before him, a snake of green exploding from the end of the dagger. Rafen leveled his sword. It felt like he had all the time in the world to observe the glittering trail of Sirius’ kesmal. He discharged his own with a strong muscular effort from the upper left arm, an effort that forced the fire through his sword hand and into his blade, despite the wound to his finger. Sirius’ move to absorb Rafen’s attack was too late.
The spire of flame pierced the middle of Sirius’ kesmal, and the world lurched abruptly, throwing Rafen to his knees. Sirius howled in pain, grasping his right arm, which now looked rigid. The vision before Rafen flowered, and numerous trees and patches of holly and pirate captains dispersed in his sight. Six Sirius’s staggered upright
at once, but Rafen had eyes only for the one he had been looking at before the kesmalic collision.
Sirius held the dagger in his left hand now. He was lifting it again, his face twisted with concentration. Seizing his sword, Rafen flung himself against the resisting, pulsating air. His blade flashed before him, a point of silver in which he could see his mother’s reflection, Wynne’s reflection, the reflections of the broken bodies in the streets of Rusem, the reflections of so many other people who shouldn’t have died. In that blistering moment, Sirius embodied every other interloper and murderer that had come to Siana.
Rafen plunged his sword into the mirage before him, except it wasn’t a mirage; it was real flesh that gave way to his force. The sword sank into the chest, but Sirius, who gave a surprised gasp that was disarming, had at last managed kesmal. A trickle of emerald writhed toward Rafen’s forehead. Rafen ripped his sword free, flinging a sheet of flame between him and Sirius’ attack.
He stumbled backward, panting. The extra kesmal in the air caused everything to spin about him blindingly.
Sirius and all his mirror images lifted their heads, their hands falling to their sides. Momentarily, everyone stood there – Rafen and all the clones of himself, and Sirius with all his gray-faced copies.
Sirius collapsed to his knees, the blood draining from his face. His coffee-colored robe bore a large, dark blotch.
Shaking, Rafen turned around wildly, meaning to move out of the shimmering line of trees and onto the slope preceding New Isles. Then the collected Sirius’s shot forward on hands and knees, rasping as they went. Dropping his sword, Rafen screamed and jumped sideways, dashing back into the trees and bushes behind him. The scenery jumped and pitched, and he kept colliding with things, confused by their replicas. Tripping over a tree root, he fell headlong. Sirius had followed him with unbelievable speed for a dying man. His quaking hand grabbed Rafen’s boot with a grip of iron.
“Let go!” Rafen shrieked, trying to pull himself free.
“No,” Sirius gasped. “Rafen, Rafen – birdie.”
Rafen and all his twins looked back. Six Sirius’s lay on the ground, one arm stretched out as they held the boots of the plentiful Rafens. The sweating, pearly face of the Pirate King was slightly raised.
“I must tell you…” he said.
“You don’t have to tell me anything.” Tears choked Rafen. “I killed you. I said I would.” He had never imagined it would be like this. He hated himself.
“We were going to work together.” Sirius swallowed, the muscles in his neck tight.
“You only ever wanted to use me!” Rafen shouted, careless of any philosophers nearby. “You wanted to win Siana for your own wealth, to get back against Talmon.”
“The fool Robert,” Sirius said in a low, rapid voice. “I didn’t want him to get the country again. But you and I, Rafen – I always wanted you. We could have ruled it together.”
“Do you ever stop lying?” Rafen spat back at him. “You wouldn’t even train me in kesmal. You would have let me wound the Lashki critically and then die of my own injuries.” He rolled onto his back, but Sirius’ unnatural grip on Rafen’s leg was unshakable. Rafen sat up, transfixed as the black around Sirius’ eyes grew more accentuated.
“Shh,” Sirius said. “You would have been my heir. You are my heir.”
He dragged his other hand forward. In its whitening fingers, the black-handled dagger was still clutched.
“The sign,” he said. “It is marked beneath the hilt. All the pirates know it. With it, you have their allegiance, wherever they are…” He laughed bitterly, almost scornfully. “I did right; I’ll be at peace with your Phoenix beyond death,” he gargled. “You are Captain of Siana, birdie.”
His voice trailed off momentarily as his head dropped to the ground, a trickle of red at the lips. “Gor… why did I throw Wilkins under a cart?” he said faintly. Another laugh, deep in his throat. His body twitched and became still, his fingers still wrapped inexorably about Rafen’s ankle.
Rafen stared, his hands pressing the ground either side of him. The formidable summer heat, along with what he had done, oppressed him. His heartbeat throbbed in his ears as he stared at Sirius, uncertain if he were really dead or if he were faking it. Ignoring the other images of the corpse, Rafen bent forward and pried the unwilling fingers off his ankle. Once Rafen’s boot was free, Sirius’ hand curled into a fist of its own accord.
Rafen crawled forward to touch the black-handled dagger lightly. A faint green pulsed in the blade, as if it had a life of its own. Beneath the hilt, a skull exactly like Wilkins was engraved. Rafen touched Sirius’ shoulder. He felt like he was going to be sick. He stared down at his knee, which he had unwittingly put into a puddle of Sirius’ blood.
“Over here!” an Ashurite voice called from nearby.
Traces of orange and green kesmal still flitted through the hazy air and muddled thickets of holly.
Rafen leapt to his feet, holding the dagger. The simultaneous movement of five other Rafens briefly distracted him. He rushed toward the fringe of trees he had been among before, his heart still thundering as if it would kill him.
Six towering figures intercepted him. Oram stared down at him, his square jaw clenched and his face bloodless at the sight of so much kesmal.
Rafen cringed back, biting his tongue painfully hard. The bushes and trees behind him were stirring.
“You have kill him,” Oram said softly in his thick Zaldian accent. He bent lower. “He lead us to ruin against Lashki. He pour out our blood.”
Rafen feverishly looked over his shoulder, knowing any moment the philosophers would erupt from the greenery, and his plan would be done for.
“You leave us in peace now, Pirate King,” Oram threatened.
When Rafen moved sideways, Oram made to block him. Flicking the dagger up, Rafen said, “Only when Sirius’ forces storm the New Isles palace can you go home. And Zion curse you if you leave before.”
His eyes darkening, Oram made to melt into the trees.
“Stop. I meant what I said. You are to drive the Tarhians and Talmon and Frankston from the New Isles castle. If you don’t, there will be consequences. Wherever I am, even if I’m dead, I’ll come back and hunt you down and kill you like I killed your captain. You will do what I say.”
His voice shook. Yet Oram blanched. There was a fractional silence.
“I will give the order,” he hissed, before vanishing into the greenery.
A crowd of identical Ashurites burst from the bushes, shouting, “Seize that man!”
Making for the border of the swirling hub his kesmalic collision had created, Rafen broke into a run down the slope at the edge of the Cursed Woods, the dagger still in his bandaged left hand.
*
It took him another hour to climb the slope leading to the New Isles palace. Trains of philosophers and Tarhians were issuing from it to investigate the shimmering dome that the debris of Sirius’ and Rafen’s kesmal had left. Rafen strapped the dagger to his belt and traveled as a Wolf to cut time. He was dimly remembering the weeks of training with Erasmus, some time ago. Erasmus had told Rafen that managing his emotions impacted how controlled his kesmal would be.
He was right, Rafen thought bleakly.
Last night, he had been horrified at all the death around him, frightened so badly he hadn’t even been able to create a shield. Today, despite his wound, he had had enough concentration and coolness to overpower Sirius and his kesmal – enough determination, because he had finally accepted his crucial task in the saving of Siana. Sirius’ corpse swam to the surface of his mind again, and even as a Wolf, Rafen felt like he would vomit. Everything in him twanged hopelessly.
We’re all murderers at heart.
It was true.
At the familiar beautyberry bushes, outside the side door near the so-called “astronomy tower”, Rafen transformed again and rose on two feet, in plain view of the Tarhians on duty there.
They stared at him incredulously
as he moved forward, his body charged with animal hate.
“Take me to the Lashki,” he said in Tarhian.
The four men blanched. They stared at one another, their hands nervously fiddling at their sides.
“Why have you come here?” one in an adorned navy coat said, licking his lips.
“Do it,” Rafen said quietly.
The Tarhian bowed low as if Rafen were a nobleman instead of a fifteen-year-old with a suicidal bent. He opened the door for him, gesturing Rafen should go first. Rafen went before with measured steps, despite his mounting panic.
What if he was too late? Then he would be walking into a trap needlessly. But he put his hand to his phoenix feather, sure he had judged correctly; the Lashki would have taken the time to look at the ruined city and to walk among the desecrated corpses. And how much could someone tell from the ruin the Naztwai had created? It was likely the Lashki was temporarily satisfied. The philosophers who had doubtless been watching would have to convince him of the suspicious activity the previous night.
If Rafen succeeded in this, the Lashki would be sufficiently deterred for an hour, maybe two. Jacob would have time to remove the people, and if Alexander was still alive, maybe the general would meet him leading an army to New Isles. Rafen was marginally comforted by the fact Oram meant to give the order for the pirates to attack the New Isles palace. Here was another distraction the Lashki could not ignore.
The tunnel leading beneath the palace’s outer wall was dark; and the Tarhian did not have a torch. He continued walking behind Rafen with a drawn sword. Rafen scuttled before him nervously, wondering how close the tip of the sword was to his back. Visions of his blade entering Sirius kept assailing him.
He was glad he wouldn’t have to live with it.
Stumbling against the door at the other end of the tunnel, he waited as the guard reached past him and gave it three sharp, spaced thuds. The door clicked and opened, two Tarhian guards curiously stepping sideways to allow Rafen passage. They murmured to each other and stared at the commander behind Rafen.
Servant of the King (The Fledgling Account Book 3) Page 29