Kingmaker

by Eric Zawadzki

CHAPTER 46

  The speckled snake by his ear suddenly retreated. Its scales scraped the sand as it slithered away. For a moment, he was certain the Akdren sordenu had come back to urinate on him some more, but then he recognized the man standing over him.

  “Tirud!” he gasped, his whisper barely audible even to him.

  “Hush,” Tirud said, sitting down in the sand and shoveling it aside with his hands. “The others should be here soon.”

  Others? Butu thought.

  Then he felt Phedam and Retus approaching. A moment later, they all shoveled sand away from him, seemingly oblivious to the rancid smells. They chanted softly as they dug, but it didn’t seem to speed up the process.

  Like the marching chants, Butu thought as the fist of sand around his ribs gradually loosened.

  Once they could reach under his shoulders, Tirud and Retus pulled Butu out of the hole. He took in a gasping breath and coughed violently where he lay on the sand.

  Where are Jani and Blay? he thought, too busy breathing to speak.

  “Blay and Jani went to rescue Lujo,” Tirud explained before Butu had enough breath to ask. “The Akdren tied him up and hung him upside down for the vultures. They do that to spies who can escape from holes like these.”

  Not far away, Butu could sense a speckled snake burrowing into Sorjot’s eye, but the Zatkuka kluntra was no longer screaming.

  If Tirud had found me a little while later... Butu shuddered.

  “Can you walk?” Tirud asked.

  Butu nodded. “Thank you,” he croaked.

  Tirud and the others led Butu to a larger tent near Urgaruna. He felt Lujo and Blay inside long before they reached it. It was a mobile armory — spare swords, slings, pouches of bullets, breastplates and helmets. Two Akdren sordenu lay unmoving on the ground. They stank of blood.

  Blay stood with his arms folded, stony face resentful. Butu grimaced and cast his eyes downward.

  “No accusations,” Tirud said quietly into their standoff. “We must work as a squad.”

  Butu nodded sullenly, and then Blay uncrossed his arms with some finality.

  “Arm yourself,” Blay said in a low voice. “Quickly. It will be sunrise soon, and we must get into the rock with the others.”

  “Yes, sir,” Butu murmured, looking through the equipment for a breastplate that would fit him.

  “Any trouble?”

  Tirud shook his head. “No one was watching the prisoners. Philquek can’t win in the field without the power of the old kings. The Akdren will withdraw into Urgaruna and force the Kadrak to besiege them.”

  “We’ve cut his supply lines.”

  “He has shelter from sun, sandstorm and simam. We don’t.”

  The poison wind could wipe out the entire Kadrak army — including Zhek’s company and the Kadrak kluntra. Butu shuddered at the thought of seeing thousands of soldiers standing frozen in the shanjin, crumbling to dust at a touch. He drew out a breastplate only slightly too large for him.

  “The Akdren can still win this battle,” Blay said.

  “The Kadrak had heard the Akdren had made a king,” Jani said, helping Butu strap on the armor. “Aesh and his soldiers were relieved to hear Philquek’s Pisor is false.”

  Butu nodded thanks to Jani, but said nothing. The next words spoken weren’t entirely unexpected, given who said them.

  “Because of that, we have new orders,” Blay announced quietly.

  “Retrieve Pisor and bring it to the Ahjea,” Phedam guessed.

  “Close,” Tirud said. “He wants us to bring it to Aesh. The Kadrak’s kluntra will be the new king. He’s even brought a kingmaker of his own — some third-cycler fostered by the Ahjea, which gives our clan a little bit of leverage, still.”

  “Paka,” Jani said.

  My shumi, here? Butu thought and suddenly felt guilty. It meant Paka was supposed to be kingmaker, but it also meant his friend was in danger, if the battle or the shanjin turned against them.

  “Actually, that’s secondary,” Blay said, tugging his goatee. Butu groaned inwardly. “Our first task is to make sure Philquek doesn’t gain the powers of a king. Maybe Pisor is still somewhere in Urgaruna, or maybe it takes time for a king to regain the magic of a first-cycler, but either way, we must not let the Akdren make a king.”

  “If we find Pisor and keep Philquek from getting it, we’ll know he’s not the king, and can’t become one,” Jani said.

  Blay shook his head. “Zhek believes that will take too long. Without a kingmaker, there can be no king. Zhek has ordered us to kill Amber.”

  Butu’s stomach clenched.

  Jani spoke in a measured voice. “But we’re not going to do that, right?”

  “She’s barely more than a child, corporal,” Tirud said.

  Blay didn’t meet their gazes. “She’s a kingmaker, or Philquek wishes her to be. We know she’s the only one in Urgaruna he trusts to make him king.” He was visibly shaking, now. “Otherwise, he wouldn’t have waited for her before seizing Pisor.”

  Is this what it means to be kingmaker — that everyone who opposes the king wishes to kill you? Do I want that to happen to Paka?

  “This is wrong, Blay,” Butu said, hoping he sounded calmer than he felt.

  “If you hadn’t let her go, it wouldn’t be necessary,” Blay snapped, rubbing his temples. “You and Nolen should have left her in the shanjin to die.”

  He wants it to be my fault? “We thought she was a sordenu. We didn’t know she was Philquek’s kingmaker.”

  “That didn’t stop you from killing her cousin.” The words were sharp and precise — as if he’d known the argument would go this way and had prepared them.

  Guilt stabbed Butu. He remembered Amber’s tears for Beker — tears for a kinsman as dear to her as Nolen had been to him. He clenched his hands into fists so tight the fingernails dug into his palms. “He attacked us. He would’ve killed us, if he could. Perhaps if we’d had some way of knowing we didn’t have to kill him, we wouldn’t have done it.”

  Sweat on his forehead, Blay whispered harshly, “And perhaps if I’d known you’d defy our orders to my face, I’d’ve left you to the snakes!”

  There was a loud crack as Jani slapped Blay hard across the face. She moved a knee, and Blay grunted and fell on the ground, writhing in pain. Lujo spat on the corporal, and Phedam snarled several curses under his breath. Retus looked on in shock.

  “Don’t we have enough enemies already without fighting ourselves?” Tirud said, stepping between Blay and the rest of the squad.

  Jani turned away, though Butu couldn’t tell whether she was angry or ashamed.

  Which am I? he wondered. I had no choice. Beker would have killed both Nolen and me!

  Tirud grasped Blay’s hand and hauled him to his feet. “Blay is still our corporal. It’s his job to see that we obey orders.”

  “If I’d intended to do that, I wouldn’t have had to sneak out and follow you,” Jani said bitterly. “Zhek would’ve given Aesh my hand on the eve of battle, if I’d stayed.”

  “You’re a ku,” Blay said in a weak voice. “He can’t.”

  Jani turned to face him. “In case you haven’t noticed, our lieutenant doesn’t care what he can’t or shouldn’t do. He sent us into the shanjin with very little training on a suicide mission to find a lost, cursed rock, which we can only do by violating the Treaty of Mnemon!”

  “Don’t forget the part where he tried to force you to beg to marry Aesh by putting you in our squad and punishing us constantly,” Butu growled.

  Jani continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “And now he’s ordered us to kill a ... a child. And you thought we’d just go along with that because that’s what you’ve been doing the whole time?”

  “It’s our duty to follow orders, not question them,” Blay said weakly.

  “I don’t disagree,” Tirud said. “On the battlefield, all you can do is obey orders. The officers don’t share the strategy with us, so we don’t know enough about their plans to discer
n their desires. But I am a spy by profession, and this is not a battlefield. I see a critical flaw in Lieutenant Zhek’s plan that prevents us from following his orders — beyond questions of right or wrong.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Can’t you see?” Tirud steepled his fingers. “Philquek thinks like Zhek. He’ll expect an attempt on his kingmaker’s life.”