by Devin Hanson
“Well, it’s not magic. With training, you could do it yourself you know.”
Balai Captain Adnan Hakhim, decorated veteran and hardened killer, blanched a little at the suggestion. “If it is the same to you, Speaker, I will stick with what I know best.” He patted the hilt of the scimitar at his side.
Andrew grinned and closed his eyes. His relief at not having to kill any of the men and women below the balcony stabbed through him and brought a tear to his eye. It must be done, but he couldn’t do it. Thank the tiny gods the balai had agreed to support Iria.
For a moment, Andrew thought back to that random decision of Jules’s to go wandering through the abandoned warehouse where they had met Iria for the first time. Without the balai, they would probably still be in Nok Norrah trying to find a caravan to take them through the real lands ignorant of the dragons, of the Incantors, of the collapse of the Empire.
He put the thought away and began the process of emptying his mind once more. It was easier now. He knew death was coming, but he didn’t have to use his alchemy to do it himself. It wasn’t comfortable, but he could force his mind to focus on what needed to be done.
As his mind cleared of the fear and hate, of the worry and doubt, of the heartache and dread, he grew calm, his stomach stopped churning, and peace settled within him. He began preparing for the task of keeping everyone within the confines of the Court of the Rising Sun. He could prepare a huge shield bubble that would trap everyone within, but the vitae expenditure for that was extreme. He had but a single large scale, and that much effort would drain the vitae left in the scale in less than a minute. The smaller scale he kept about his neck wouldn’t maintain a shield that size for more than the time it took to breathe deeply once. If they had months of prep time, he and Jules could go around and carve the shielding runes into the rock itself to create a permanent shield effect, but wishing wouldn’t give them time they didn’t have.
As effective as a shield of air is a collapse of stone. Arches were incredibly strong structures when built correctly, but they were strong in compression only. He thought back to the lecture the friendly engineer had given him back in Chia about how stonework held together through pressure. Arches could be disrupted by a relatively small force applied in the right area in the right direction. Crush the keystone and the whole thing would come crashing down. Or to use even less force, knock the keystone up and out of the pressure bonds that held it in place.
He already had the stanzas worked out for causing explosive expansion in rock, and it was a simple enough task to modify them to cause enough collapse in a tunnel to make it impassable. In addition to his blocking Sayings, he brought back those he had used in the desert against the riders. He wouldn’t, he couldn’t, use his alchemy to attack innocents, but he had no such compunction against striking out at Incantors or the black balai.
Gradually, Andrew became aware that the music had stopped and the majority of the crowd had gone into the Hall of Morning. Only a few stragglers and caterers remained outside cleaning up.
The auction was beginning.
Iria Mian eyed the crowd through her sand mask. A platform had been constructed in front of the wagon with its canvas-covered cargo and the Lady Vierra stood on it behind a podium looking radiant in a rich silk dress. Within the podium, her revolver and runed blade hung in their sheathes along with a dragon tooth, a leather thong knotted about its gnarled roots.
The Hall of Morning was packed. Two columns of chairs provided seating for the ones who had reserved a place, and the rest of the hall was standing room only. The second floor balcony was filled as well, the tables pushed up against the railing offered seating but hundreds more stood in ranks behind, all straining to see down to the podium. The entire back wall of the hall was open to the courtyard, providing a clear and unhindered path of egress as well as a cool breeze that eased the humid heat coming off so many bodies packed together.
Cinnamon rolled out of the wagon in waves. Every time the breeze faltered, the spicy funk came back, making her eyes water and her throat itch. The stench seemed to incite the crowd, raising them to higher levels of excitement every time the breeze wavered or changed direction.
She was eying the crowd, but really she had attention only for the Speakers who sad directly in front of her and the black-robed balai that surrounded them. There were other faces in the crowd that caught her eye as well. The alchemist in maroon robes sat near the back, beside Colonel Mohandi. The balai Colonel still wore the dun robes of a balai, and if he hadn’t been seated next to the alchemist, she probably wouldn’t have been able to pick him out. He still had travel dust caked on his boots. Iria guessed Mohandi had arrived at the city just in time to come to the auction. Any later and he would have been caught outside the city by the dragons.
The rest of the crowd wore colors as brilliant and varied as money could buy. The richest and best connected of Khar Bora’s citizenry was present, along with nearly all the nobles and lesser lords. Scattered throughout, and concentrated along the edges of the crowd, were the dun robes of the balai, their faces obscured by sand masks. Mixed in with the colorful crowd, even more balai hid in plain sight.
Iria had to forcibly keep her hand from straying to her belt where the comforting weight of her scimitar called to her. She hated the necessity of the deception; all she wanted to do was leap across the gap to the front row and drive her sword into the quivering belly of the corpulent Speaker in front of her then go and kill Mohandi and that cursed alchemist once and for all.
But no. Her place was next to Jules. At Sergeant al Din’s suggestion, she had not told the rest of the balai that the caged dragon was a farce. They knew there was going to be a fight against alchemists and the black balai, but not why. Al Din was right, of course. There were many balai who remained loyal to the Emperor, but all it took was one wrong ear to hear the plan and all their effort would be for nothing.
The Lady Jules raised her hands for silence and Iria felt her heart rate pick up. Soon the killing would begin. She forced herself not to stare at the Speakers in front of her as the hall slowly grew silent. The last of the hushes faded away and Jules smiled brightly.
“Lords and ladies, I thank you for coming,” she said. Through some trick of oration, her voice carried the full length of the hall. A balai standing beside her repeated her words in Maari for those in the audience who didn’t speak Salian.
“This evening, I present to you the opportunity of a lifetime.” Jules paused for the translator to finish then carried on. “In two thousand years, no whelps of the northern dragons have ever been captured. In two thousand years, no man or woman has had the opportunity that you have today.
“You have heard the rumors. That consuming the heart of a northern dragon grants everlasting life. That doing so gives you the power of alchemy. That it even gives you the ability to fly.” Jules paused, a mischievous smile playing on her face. “That last one isn’t true. But the others are!” Appreciative laughter from the audience and Jules waited for the hall to return to silence.
“My associates and I have traveled from the very northern reaches of Salia to bring you this dragon whelp, fighting off the jealous alchemists all the while. Only in the great nation of Nas Shahr, only in the wondrous city of Khar Bora, could this gift of immortality be truly appreciated. Only among such vaunted and acclaimed nobility would the worth of our cargo reach its potential.”
The nobles, Iria noted, were eating it up. Jules was playing them masterfully, drawing them in by their egos and building suspense. If Iria was running the auction, she would have just reached back, whipped the canvas off the wagon and used the moment of confusion to start killing. But it was Jules’s show and she seemed to be enjoying herself.
Perhaps a little too much. Her oratory continued, on and on, and Iria found herself getting bored and she lost the track of what Jules was saying. She was ready! She itched to draw the scimitar at her side and wreak her vengeance.
Some of the audienc
e looked startled suddenly, and Iria forced herself back to listen to what Jules was saying, cursing herself for letting her thoughts wander.
“–that is not all. The desert dragons offer a similar benefit, which certain among us here and now are quite aware of.” Jules winked at the Speakers, whose faces had taken on a pale cast. They were darting glances at each other and the black balai shifted uneasily behind them, waiting for the signal from their masters before doing anything.
“That’s not to say power can’t be its own reward, of course,” Jules continued, “but murdering your fellow men and eating their hearts to gain power? Shame on you!”
One of the speakers, the fat one, surged to his feet. “Silence yourself, Salian whore!” he screamed, shaking off the other that clung to his arm. “This is not the barbaric wastes of the north. This is Khar Bora! We will not sit idly by and be insulted by the likes of you!”
“Is it an insult if it’s true, Speaker Mofrain?” Jules returned coolly, all the levity gone from her voice. “How many have you murdered in your pursuit of so-called justice? How many human hearts have you eaten since you stole the right of judgment from the balai?”
“Silence her!” Speaker Mofrain screamed at his men.
A blade spun from the crowd and Iria gasped. She was too far distant, too surprised, to do anything to deflect the weapon. She need not have worried.
“Ban,” Jules spat contemptuously and the dagger smacked into air turned suddenly solid and dropped to the ground with a surprisingly musical chime.
The crowd unfroze and perfect chaos erupted. Women screamed, men of lesser stature tried to flee, and the balai took that as the signal to strike. Weapons hissed from sheathes, daggers appeared in hands. Some of the lords reacted to the sudden threat, drawing their own blades and shoving for room. The black balai closed ranks.
Iria leapt for Speaker Mofrain, her scimitar singing free of its scabbard with a joyous ring that echoed Iria’s thoughts. She hacked down, but at the last moment a black balai got his dagger in the way, deflecting the blade slightly. Rather than a killing stroke to the neck, the scimitar sank a finger’s length into the Speaker’s shoulder. Iria ripped the blade free and turned to the defense as black balai sprang to the aid of their master.
An arrow ripped down from the balcony and took one of the black-robed traitors high in the chest and Iria darted in, hamstringing another, but had to jump back before following up as two more black balai closed with her. For a moment, it was tight parry and dodge before three dun-robed balai joined her. Together they cut down the black balai, but the opportunity to kill the Speakers was lost. They had pulled back through the chaos in the hall and had vanished into the general melee.
Iria had never seen such pandemonium. The fighting spilled out of the hall and into the Court of the Rising Sun. The balai had joined ranks and their lethal prowess sliced through anyone that raised a blade against them. Iria caught a glimpse of the retreating Speakers, already pushing their way out into the open courtyard.
For a moment, Iria thought the battle would be over almost as soon as it had begun. The nobles that had drawn blades were casting them down and surrendering, unarmed civilians, seeing surrender was an option, were falling to their knees and raising their hands.
The fighting still raged on, though. For every noble that surrendered, for every highborn woman that fell to her knees, a dozen more fought or ran blindly in panic, tripping over chairs, screaming wildly and lashing out blindly at anyone that blocked their path to freedom and safety.
Warned against the presence of alchemists, the balai were taking no chances. Their flashing weapons cut down anyone that moved suddenly near them as they fought their way toward the knot of retreating Speakers.
For a moment, it seemed as though the chaos would resolve into a clean fight, the odds of which were heavily stacked against the black balai.
Then the alchemists cut loose. Twenty seven Incantors lived still, minus any few that had fallen during the initial outbreak of hostilities, and they were a force of devastating strength. Fire erupted in scything blades of raging inferno, lightning arced madly, lethal shards of ice, devastating explosions of stone and shearing blades of pure force blasted, ripped and tore their way through the crowd and the balai.
Iria felt a great impact from behind as Jules tackled her from the platform. The wind was knocked from Iria as blinding light and deafening explosions roared about them, kept at bay by the shield Jules had thrown up to cover them.
Smoke and powdered rock filled the air, cutting visibility down to mere meters. Crashing booms shook the ground, making Iria’s teeth chatter against each other and a shockwave ripped past them, knocking chairs spinning and sending a cascade of grit against Jules’s shield. Just out of reach, a balai lay dead, victim of a blast of lightning that had cooked his eyes milky white. Steam rose from his mouth and blood spread slowly from his ruptured chest.
Iria gasped for air then choked as Jules released her shield and the tide of dust and smoke rushed to fill the space. Her sand mask had been knocked free, but she didn’t have time to locate it.
Jules was shouting something at her, but her ears were ringing too much to make out the words. “I will follow you!” Iria shouted back, guessing at her meaning, and the Salian noblewoman nodded, drew her runed blade in one hand and her revolver in the other and strode off into the churning murk.
No man could call Irian Mian a coward, but following Jules in that moment was the hardest thing she had ever done. Explosions still shook the ground, flame still rushed about, turning the murk brilliant shades of orange and red in quick moments. Jules kept a narrow shield up in front of her, visible as an eddy in the smoke and Iria followed a pace behind Jules, her scimitar held at the ready.
A noble stumbled out of the smoke, his eyes wide in panic, the whippy dueling rapier in his hand waving wildly. Iria stepped up, locked the rapier to the side with her scimitar and kicked the man in the side of the knee. The noble howled as his leg snapped then went silent as Iria drove her dagger up under his chin and yanked it free again.
Elsewhere, beyond Iria’s vision, the fighting raged. She heard the birdcalls of the balai regrouping, faint over the ringing in her ears. Lightning flashed and thunder echoed, the snap-crack drowning out the rumbling explosions and crash of collapsing masonry.
Iria’s ears were clearing, the ringing dying away enough for her to hear the screams of the terrified and the howls of the injured. The smoke and drifting dust was blown clear for a moment, long enough for Iria to see they had made it out of the Hall of Morning. The brief glimpse of the courtyard Iria was able to see before more smoke drifted in was completely unrecognizable from the carefully manicured and gratuitously decorated space of a few minutes earlier. Tables were shattered, bodies were laid out everywhere with a disturbing variety of fatal wounds. Iria was used to seeing dead bodies, it was her stock in trade, after all, but for several minutes she couldn’t shake the image of a young woman, her upper torso charred to the bone by a blast of alchemical fire, the filmy gauze of her dress somehow undamaged and fluttering in the breeze.
“Eki’la’ani,” a voice hissed from the smoke in front of them, and a bolt of lightning leapt out of nowhere and writhed against Jules’s shield for a moment, leaving the choking scent of ozone behind.
“Ca’la!” Jules replied, and a sudden gust of wind blew the murk away revealing a noble, his mouth bloody, his jaws chewing madly, the twisted limbs of a woman at his feet with her chest split open.
Iria stared in horror, frozen for a split second. It was one thing knowing what the Incantors did, but it was another entirely to catch one in the act of eating the living heart from another human. The crack-boom of Jules’s revolver snapped Iria out of her surprise and the Incantor’s head snapped back, pulpy red gore fountaining from the back of his skull as he collapsed into the swirling smoke.
“Empty night,” Iria swore and shook her head. She renewed her grip on her sword and tried to get the lingerin
g image of the Incantor’s face out of her head.
“Stay close,” Jules cautioned her. “I have a feeling we are a long way from done here.”
Iria nodded. She did not have to be told twice. This battle was no place for a balai, but someone had to stand up to these Incantors. If not her and her fellows, there was nobody else. “I am right behind you,” she said firmly.
Chapter 20
The Palace of a Thousand Arches
Andrew had done what he could. His song still hummed in his mind, but there was little for him to do. The great entry archway had been brought down at the outbreak of hostilities within the hall, thousands of tons of rose marble crashed down creating a completely impassable barricade and blasting choking clouds of dust into the air.
Without being able to see, there was nothing for him to do. As the smoke and dust began to clear, he found a few targets, black balai and the occasional Incantor which he made short work of, but the majority of the combat was out of his sight and beyond his ability to affect it. Gradually, the concentration of the rune song faded away, leaving him light-headed and muddled.
“Avandir, we come.”
Andrew’s head jerked to the side to look to the north. We? What did Ava mean, “we?” The mental fog from losing focus on the rune song clouded his thoughts and he struggled to focus.
Captain Adnan spun at Andrew’s sudden movement, his scimitar raised in a guard position and he placed himself between the northern wall of the apartment and Andrew.
Andrew didn’t have time to tell the Captain his heroics were appreciated but unnecessary. “The battle isn’t over yet!” he said, directing his thoughts back toward Avandakossi. Adnan turned to look at him, his eyes open wide in surprise.
“It is known,” Ava replied. “Miranikossi could wait no longer. She senses the corruption and cannot hold back her males.”