by David Hair
Kazim saw the man had heard her, but his attention was on him and a steely grip fastened onto his mind.
Suddenly someone below shouted ‘Charge!’ and men pelted up the stairs, renewing the assault and sweeping Kazim along with them. While he was trying to keep his feet, the mage flowed alongside, pouring bolts of energy towards him that struck the oncoming soldiers instead, dropping them to be pounded by the feet of those behind. For a nightmarish few seconds Kazim dodged and ducked and watched others die in his stead – then the female mage below screamed, and the man was gone, bellowing in rage.
Kazim shoved through the crowd of men and looked down the stairwell to see the pale-haired girl twisting in desperation on the shaft of a spear that entered her belly and emerged from her back. Even as he watched she went limp, and plummeted. The other mage wailed and swatted spears and Jamil’s energy bolts aside as he tried to reach her. He wasn’t looking up.
Kazim didn’t think it through; he just leapt.
Luckily, the mage’s shield was too depleted to repulse Kazim’s full weight; he was leading with his blade, and thrust through the man’s back, his blade piercing the ornate evening coat and emerging through the middle of his chest. His full body impacted a split-second later. The mage grunted and dropped like a stone, and Kazim shouted in triumph. They struck, and his blade snapped as he rolled clear – straight into a pillar. His head cracked the stone in a single blaze of white light, then blackness enveloped him.
*
He woke to the sound of rejoicing. The very earth shook as men jumped and shouted, and pummelled the ground with sword-hilts and spear-butts.
‘RASHID! RASHID! RASHID!’
He tried to rise, and then abruptly rolled over and vomited instead. He was lying beside the stairwell, amidst a pile of wounded Keshi. We must have won, he thought, though his head felt like nails of bone were jabbing his brain. He tried twice before he could stand, then clambered painfully up the stairs looking for Jamil. Men he didn’t know thumped him on the back excitedly as they passed him, and cheers rained down from the next floor in torrents. ‘RASHID! RASHID! RASHID!’ he heard as he climbed over still-warm bodies, past dying men. The steps were too slippery to walk on, and he found himself climbing. Every wall was blackened, every window shattered. Torn bodies lay everywhere, and blood smeared every inch of the floor. Most of the dead were Keshi, but some still lived, moaning, crying, screaming for help, though no one heeded.
‘RASHID! RASHID! RASHID!’
Inside the great hall, men danced, and wept and hugged each other.
Kazim staggered inside, and all of a sudden heard, ‘Kazim! Kazim!’ Jamil staggered to his side, grimed in ash and blood, but very much alive. Kazim felt an intense surge of relief. Jamil held a half-full decanter of amber fluid. ‘Brandy!’ he yelled, as if it were some nectar of the gods. Perhaps it was. They embraced like brothers.
Jamil looked him over concernedly, and then tipped brandy straight onto the cut where he’d struck the pillar, making him squeal in sudden pain. Jamil gave a gleeful laugh as Kazim seized the decanter and swigged. He had never tasted anything so potent, so delicious.
‘I’ll take you to a healer, brother.’ Jamil patted his shoulder.
Kazim looked about him, at the dying Keshi warriors with wounds far more severe. ‘It’s nothing,’ he grunted. ‘These men need help more.’
Jamil blinked. ‘They are not magi. You are more important.’
‘Since when do Amteh revere magi?’
Jamil snorted. ‘Relax, brother: we have won! The power of Shaitan is broken and Antonin Meiros’ Ordo Costruo is no more!’
‘How did it happen, in the real fight?’
Jamil rolled his eyes. ‘You’re determined to be miserable about this, aren’t you, boy? How? Through the hidden blow! Over the years Rashid won over nearly half of them, and they were ready. Cardien’s pure-bloods still believed that peace would prevail, so they were unprepared. A sudden strike turned the balance our way, though we still faced many of the mightiest. Alone, Rashid and his faction would have perished, but then we good soldiers of Ahm joined the fray.’ Jamil’s face became sober. ‘We threw men at them by the hundred: martyrs to Ahm, drawing their fire, soaking up their strength. I myself slew the fire-witch in the stairs, and then you, may Ahm bless and keep you, leapt upon that maniac air-mage. Many more such deeds were needed, but we broke them. The remnant were captured.’ He pointed to a cluster of Rondians, mostly women, surrounded by Keshi brandishing naked blades. There were perhaps two dozen of them.
‘How many died?’
Jamil cocked his head. ‘Eh? We killed twenty-seven magi. Twenty-seven! And captured twenty-three for our breeding-pens! We slew fifty of their soldiers. Such a victory is unheard of.’
‘And our losses?’
Jamil shrugged. ‘Around three hundred dead, brother, including thirty of my kindred. Nineteen of Rashid’s Ordo Costruo adherents perished – a lot of death.’ Then he grinned fiercely. ‘But it is a victory, brother.’
Kazim stared at the prisoners, sitting terrified amidst the carnage and the savage celebrations. Their periapts had been taken, and most bore wounds. We killed twenty-seven and they slew more than three hundred of us, yet this is victory? They were magi, though – and no longer invincible.
He studied the captives, most of whom were female, seeing their hollow-eyed disbelief, the absolute dread and despair. One terrified girl, maybe fifteen years old, clung to the arm of an older woman who met his gaze with cold fearlessness. For some reason he felt a sense of loss wash over him. He was surprised to realise not all were white – several were of olive hue, including one stunning woman with dark skin and pale hair who was the subject of a bidding war between several Hadishah magi. He drew on the remnants of Meiros’ memories … Odessa d’Ark. She glared about her like a dethroned queen.
These were Meiros’ people, the Bridge-Builders. They created the palace, the aqueducts … He could name them, thanks to Meiros’ own memories that still haunted him. He turned away.
But suddenly he was the centre of attention as Emir Rashid Mubarak caught sight of him. ‘Kazim Makani! One of the heroes of the hour – come, brother!’ The emir pulled him into an embrace and his mouth curled into a smile, though his eyes were measuring. A beautiful blonde white woman with a wide mouth and sleepy eyes walked beside him. ‘The slayer of Francois Vertros, I am told, by dint of leaping on him from fifty feet up! Magnificent! Come, you must join us.’ Rashid turned to the blonde woman. ‘Alyssa, this is the youth I told you of, the slayer of Antonin Meiros – a true hero of the shihad.’
Rashid spoke loudly for the whole hall to hear, and more cheers resounded about him, his name passing from mouth to ear. The blonde woman purred something and Kazim found himself being led to a chair at the front of the queue, ahead of the dying and crippled, to have his bloody, throbbing head attended by her personally, while men came up and bowed, and touched his clothing to their lips.
It felt heady … and yet sickening, too. The heavy, metallic scent of blood was everywhere, clogging the air, cloying every inhalation. But it was also exhilarating, to be fêted, to have his courage proclaimed by the emir before all his men. The blonde woman smiled tightly at him, her fingers deft as she prodded and teased his nose back into shape, numbing the pain as she worked.
Kazim jolted, looking up at the woman. Her face was radiantly beautiful, but her
eyes were reptilian.
She masked the briefest scowl.
He shook his head.
Kazim shut his emotions down, abruptly scared of this angel-bitch. The idea that she could be a friend of Ramita’s was utterly inconceivable. He wished he could leave, but she pulled him to his feet and showed him to the watching men as if displaying a pet tiger. Their cheers enveloped him.
So this is glory, he thought uneasily.
After a minute or so he was allowed to rejoin the press, but men continued to slap his back and shout his name. He began to shove his way through the crowd, seeking solitude, but the next room was a ballroom, where several dozen people of many races milled about, naked, washing the blood and gore from their bodies. Some were in half-beast form, jackal and lion-headed men and women drenched in gore. He had begun to back away when he saw Huriya.
My Lord Ahm… He clutched his chest as she sashayed out of the press of what he now realised were his kin – Souldrinkers. Her eyes were glazed over, as if she were high on opium – or death.
‘Brother!’ she called, holding her arms out to him. She was clad in a kameez of embroidered silk as if this were a lavish party, and was one of the few not stained by battle. But the scent of death clung to her as she pulled him into an embrace. She was tiny in his arms. ‘I hear you are a hero once more, brother.’
He pushed her away and dared to look with his gnostic sight. The whole room changed: imprinted over the bodies of the Souldrinkers were their auras, streaked with scarlet and alive with tendrils that reached out and plunged into each other. It was as if they were all one many-bodied being, feral, bloodthirsty and monstrous. Huriya’s aura was not quite a part of it, not yet, but her soul-tendrils were reaching for him.
He backed away. ‘What’s happening to you?’ he asked hoarsely.
She giggled. ‘Why, brother, I’m embracing what I am. Isn’t it time you did the same?’
He continued to retreat. ‘What happened to you, sister? You weren’t like this…’ He spread his hands helplessly. ‘I hardly know you.’
Huriya’s face changed a little. A kind of mocking nostalgia. ‘Sabele made me, brother.’ A sneer crept over her face. ‘Do you remember how proud you were, telling me about the fortune teller who’d told you that you would marry Ramita one day? How happy you were, and how you babbled it to anyone who would listen, though she expressly forbade you to speak of it?’
He nodded mutely, his face flushing.
‘Sabele came to me as well, every year – I am a child of Razir Makani also! The same blood flows in my veins! I have the same potential – and Sabele read a far greater destiny for me: to become a seeress, her apprentice, and then a queen.’ She stabbed a finger at Kazim. ‘The difference between us, brother, is that I can keep a secret.’
He gaped at her. ‘You told no one?’
‘No one! Not even poor stupid Ramita, though I shared her room all my life!’ Her face contorted with malicious glee. ‘When Meiros came for her she was terrified, but I knew that this was the moment I had been born for – you also, brother, for Sabele has seen you, sitting on a throne.’
The thought made him ill. ‘She said nothing to me.’
‘She knew you did not have the stomach for it. All you wanted to do was play kalikiti and moon after Ramita. She knew you would need to be led by the nose. But I will be her successor, and then I will exceed her!’ She posed as if at the end of an elaborate dance. ‘Isn’t it magnificent?’
He shook his head. He could see the tendrils of her aura reaching out again. For a moment his vision swam, then he instinctively slapped them away.
She recoiled as if he’d slapped her. and every Souldrinker in the room turned and stared at him with those same sated, venomous eyes.
He backed away, hurried from the room and ran straight into Jamil, waiting outside. His friend was staring into the room, his face pale and eyes afraid.
‘These are your kindred?’ he asked hoarsely.
‘They’re no kin of mine,’ Kazim snapped, storming past. His friend followed him, and though they only walked, inside they fled as if for their lives.
‘I saw Huriya,’ Jamil said, watching him carefully.
He turned and gripped Jamil’s shoulder. ‘If you value your soul, my friend, stay away from her.’
‘They fought with us – they slew many magi.’
The image of the Souldrinkers feeding on members of the Ordo Costruo filled his mind: repugnant scenes of mouths inhaling the smoky discharge of death. ‘Then they did it for themselves, not for Ahm.’ He licked his suddenly dry lips and redoubled his pace. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
But there was no escape. Rashid had ordered the surviving kitchen staff back to their ovens, and the servants started delivering brandy and wine. Even the most devout Amteh men followed Rashid’s example and began drinking as food began to arrive on silver platters. A sense of unreality filled the ballroom. The prisoners were gone and the tables had been set. Kazim and Jamil had been assigned places of honour, and stumbled disbelievingly to their seats as the first courses arrived.
For Kazim, the meal passed in a dream. So this was how the jadugara lived! The food was like nothing he’d ever tasted, so far removed from the plain dishes he’d eaten all his life that they scarcely seemed to be food at all, more like the sustenance of gods. And the drink was divine. He felt like they’d stolen their way into paradise and now they were feasting while heaven slept. But what he’d seen while with Huriya tainted the tastes.
Among the victors were around forty of the Ordo Costruo. Though most of them were half-breeds, with dark features, there were a few whiteskins, like the blonde beauty Alyssa Dulayne, and Stivor Sindon. They dominated the high table, toasting each other extravagantly, only occasionally glancing with disdain at the Hadishah part-bloods like Jamil and Gatoz; they might be half- and quarter-bloods themselves, but they’d not been bred in captivity like cattle. He could feel their suspicions whenever they looked at him, knew they saw him as a threat, for what he was. But at least the other Souldrinkers did not join the feast.
Alyssa seemed to be going out of her way to keep near him, though her relationship with Rashid clearly went deeper than politeness. The scent of her perfumed skin, the touch of her soft fingers brushing his arm, the lowered lashes and sideways glances, they were all a slow tease, but Kazim felt no attraction to her. There was something corrupt about her, and not just in the way she sashayed about the hall earlier, careless of the gore and the cries for help, as if it were some kind of exotic hashish bar, not a place where such slaughter had occurred.
‘Rashid is welcome to her,’ he told Jamil as they made their excuses and left.
Jamil sniffed. ‘They say she lies with women as eagerly as with men, and spends most of her days in a hashish dream with Justina Meiros.’ He spat disgustedly.
Justina Meiros, Antonin’s daughter: he had seen her face in the outpouring of Meiros’ soul. ‘Is she here?’ he asked.
‘I have no idea, brother,’ Jamil said, unconcerned.
Rashid intercepted them when he saw them leaving. With a firm gesture he stopped his coterie of admirers from joining them. ‘Jamil, Kazim, I need a word,’ he started as he led the way to a curtained recess. From the window they could see the vast Zhassi Valley below, washed silver by the rising moon and dotted with orange lights, the glow of the refugees’ meagre cooking fires.
We did it, Kazim thought. We’ve actually ended the Ordo Costruo. He could not muster anything but sorrow.
Rashid laid a hand on his shoulder, another on Jamil’s. ‘My brothers, I wanted to thank you both, alone and away from the others.’ He glanced towards the curtain. ‘The Ordo Costruo is broken and now my Hadishah can fight openly. For the first time the armies of Salim will hav
e mage-support. Power is shifting, brothers. Until now, the Rondians have never known fear. That is about to change.’
Jamil’s scarred face glowed with satisfaction. ‘All because of you, my lord Emir.’
Rashid acknowledged the praise as his due, and as Kazim inclined his head to show agreement, the emir turned to him, his eyes searching. ‘I know you did not use your powers, Kazim. You fought only as a common soldier would – and still you shone! Think how much greater your impact will be when you allow yourself to fight with all that you truly are.’
Kazim kept his face still, though it took effort. All his life he’d lived with his heart on his sleeve, but the games Rashid played were changing him into someone more wary and secretive.
Rashid looked him in the eye. ‘Many have given their all for our cause, brother. It harms us all that you do less.’ When Kazim didn’t respond, he added, ‘Sabele asks to see you.’
When Kazim swallowed and shook his head, the emir said with an air of satisfaction, ‘Good. I would rather you were with us than her.’
That gave Kazim something to think about, but Rashid swiftly moved on. ‘My friends, for now we will tell the world I was elected head of the Ordo Costruo. If we maintain this fiction well enough, we can hold this fortress for a time, and still aid Salim. But I have a new mission for you two, with Gatoz’s team.’
‘Anything, my lord,’ Jamil said eagerly.
‘This fortress is on the southern border of Javon. Do you know the situation in Javon? The Queen-Regent declared for the shihad; she is betrothed to Salim himself. But recently there have been signs that she is wavering. A very dangerous Rondian spy has been seen at the royal court.’ Rashid drew them closer to him, his voice dropping. ‘You will go to Brochena, the capital of Javon. I want you to find and kill a man named Gurvon Gyle.’
*
Jamil led Kazim to a room, a fine one with two soft beds, which had been reserved for them. But before they had even undressed, Gatoz walked in, and gestured curtly at Kazim to follow. He threw an anxious look at Jamil, and with some trepidation he went with Gatoz. His friend shook his head, and didn’t follow.