by Watson Davis
A bolt of lightning lit up the sky, illuminating the dark alleyway for a fraction of a heartbeat. The small figure of a child stood beneath a dark window, beside a barrel. A second flash of lightning lit the street once more, and the child had come closer.
Sifa pushed herself to her feet. She asked, “Who’s out there?”
“Ah, madam,” a pleasant voice said. “I just wondered if you two were lost, if you needed directions. For a small pittance, I could—”
A third bolt of lightning lit the sky, showing the boy clearly, now only a step away from them, with a knife in his hand.
Sifa’s eyes grew wide, and she yelled, “Ba-fanks?”
The little boy’s eyes flew open in surprise. He whirled and sprinted away.
Sifa chased after him.
Valor And Duty
CHE-SU WATCHED WITH wide eyes, holding her breath, biting her lip, sending silent prayers to Maegrith, sometimes called The Thunderer—the worst possible god to pray to for matters of stealth but the one most likely to answer her prayers. Yama’anks crept into the bishop’s workroom quivering, placing each step with care, her breathing fast and shallow.
Sifa’s necklace hung in mid-air over Bishop Diyune’s workbench, a shimmering orb of magical symbols rotating around it. A single magelight floated in a golden cage suspended over a pile of handwritten notes, illuminating a quill and an inkpot.
Yama’anks reached the desk and with shaking hands spread the pages out. She picked up the inkpot and poured ink over the notes, ruining them.
“Yes,” Che-su whispered. She glanced around, checking the darkened hallways, making sure no one approached. “Now. The necklace.”
Yama’anks raised her left hand before the orb encasing the necklace and she tightened her hand into a fist. One deep breath and she punched her hand forward. Her hand met no resistance. Yama’anks peeked back at Che-su, surprise on her face.
Che-su nodded to her. “Pull it out.”
Yama’anks opened her fist and wrapped her fingers around the necklace’s gemstone. She tugged on the necklace and shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Pull it out,” Che-su commanded. “Quiet!”
Yama’anks yanked at her hand, pulling at it, her muscles taut and shaking with the strain, her back arched, her head thrown back, her mouth open as tears streamed down her cheeks. Her hand inched back through the orb, the magical runes on the orb’s surface slicing through her skin like daggers, removing the skin and muscle from her bones, until the remains of her hand popped out clutching the stone.
She fell to her knees, struggling to breathe. The necklace tumbled from her now useless fingers. The stone blazed.
“Bring it to me,” Che-su said, her voice hushed.
Yama’anks peered up at Che-su, her eyes pleading for mercy. She cradled her left hand against her stomach.
“Hurry,” Che-su said.
Yama’anks picked up the necklace in her right hand and staggered to her feet. Che-su motioned for her to come to her. Yama’anks teetered toward Che-su, step by halting step, until she leaned into the door jamb, sweat plastering her hair to her face.
Che-su snatched the necklace from the younger woman’s hand and glared into her dark eyes. “Now go back to your workroom and kill yourself in a massive explosion.”
Yama-anks marched down the hallway toward the stairs leading up to her workroom, and Che-su strode toward the other end of the hallway, toward the stairs leading down to the basilica of air.
The shadow of a man, a tall man, stepped out from the stairwell to the basilica of earth, his hands clasped behind his back.
Che-su hunched over, averting her face, and inserted her hands into her sleeves, hiding the necklace.
A rich, booming baritone voice said, “Che-su?”
Che-su gasped, looking up, stepping back.
“So good to see you here,” Bishop Diyune said, his face passive, magic roiling around him. He raised his left hand and looked at his fingernails. “Saves me the trouble of tracking you down like a rabid she-wolf.”
Che-su whirled and ran, chanting and summoning more power.
A wall of flames appeared before her, stretching across the hall, incinerating the carpet running down the center of the floor. She charged into the fire, gritting her teeth, closing her eyes, flinging her hand toward the flame. The conflagration parted before her, and closed behind her when she emerged on the other side.
Behind her, Diyune snarled with rage. “Come back here, you old witch!”
Che-su darted through the door into Diyune’s workroom, getting out of the hall as a blast of flames filled it. She ran past the desk, the orb still spinning over the ink-stained pages. She stopped, and lightning sparked around her right hand, magic building up. She flung her hand out toward the window, shouting a command.
The necklace flew from her hand, driven by her magic. It shattered the glass and flew into the sky. Che-su cried out, “Maegrith! I pray you see this to its rightful owner.”
“You just threw away your only hope,” Diyune said from behind her.
She whirled, preparing another spell, her hands shaking, her head aching from the exertion, from casting too much magic without practice or preparation. Thunder rumbled like an earthquake and the floor shook beneath her feet.
Diyune whirled his hands in the air, weaving strands of power, smirking at her as he chanted, but Che-su completed her spell first, throwing her hands out toward him and then spreading them apart.
A bubble appeared around Diyune, a vacuum displacing the air from around him. His eyes grew wide and his mouth flew open. He clutched at his throat, trying to breathe.
Che-su’s hands shook from the effort. She groaned, sweat beading up on her brow.
Diyune made three sharp moves with his hand, triggering a spell he had prepared, a spell that required no chanting, no words. His hands changed, elongating into monstrous claws, his fingernails growing into talons, his skin shifting into scales. The change moved up his arms, his body expanding, his mouth growing fangs, and wings sprouting from his back.
Diyune grew too large for the doorway, and the rock and wood splintered and fractured against his mighty torso. He wrapped his claws around Che-su and hurled himself out the window, barreling through the stone wall with his size and strength.
Che-su screamed in agony as the giant paws crushed her. She released her spell, unable to breathe, unable to concentrate.
Diyune transformed into a dragon of flame. The beating of his giant wings lofted him into the dark sky, holding Che-su before his mighty jaws, her skin blistering. He said, “I should kill you now. I should have killed you years ago.”
“You are still that little child at the monastery afraid everyone else knows something you don’t.” She sneered at him as tears welled up in her eyes and then evaporated from her cheeks. “You never learn. Kill me. Don’t kill me. You will never have her power.”
Bolts of lightning pierced his wings and legs. He reared back and exhaled, releasing a jet of fire up into the clouds, in defiance of the gods. He snarled at Che-su, “Tell me how to find her and I will end your suffering.”
She closed her eyes and whispered, “Maegrith, my love. Help me.”
Above Diyune, the sky lit up. A lightning bolt streaked from one cloud to another, followed by a second bolt, and a third, and more—hundreds. Then a colossal lightning bolt flashed down from the clouds, striking Diyune in the back between his wings.
Diyune roared, his roar shrinking to a scream and then to silence as he transformed back to his human form.
Che-su and Diyune plummeted to the earth. She looked into the clouds and, thinking she saw a familiar face, she smiled. “Thank you.”
She closed her eyes and braced herself to hit the ground, her strength exhausted, her magic spent. But she slowed and landed gently on her back on the wet stone pavement with Diyune, his body charred and smoking, coming to rest at her side.
Che-su propped herself up on her shaking elbows.
“I think the Empress asked you the wrong questions the last time you chatted.” He smiled, displaying his pointy teeth.
“COME BACK HERE, YOU little water-thief!” Sifa cried out, chasing Ba-fanks’s shadow, sprinting through the alley. She leapt over a crate, her eyes straining against the darkness, against the sudden brilliant flashes of lightning.
“Sifa!” Shiyk’yath yelled, his walking stick pounding through the puddles on the pavement behind her. “Come back! You’re just going to get lost!”
Sifa didn’t have time to stop and argue, or the traitor would have been gone like a footstep in a desert sandstorm.
Ba-fanks feinted one way, and darted the other. Sifa’s boots slid on the wet stone at her sudden change of direction, but she followed him around a sharp corner, past a street cafe with empty tables on the street. The restaurant next door had the lights on inside, and customers crowded around tables, their voices a cacophony. Someone inside shouted, “Go get him!” and everyone laughed.
A deep voice yelled, “Sifa? What in the Nine?”
Ba-fanks turned down an alley, then another, and dove head-first through a window. Sifa followed, leaping in feet first, landing in a room strewn with boards and broken bottles. The door leaned to one side with only the lower hinges still attached.
Sifa stopped there to listen, hearing Shiyk’yath’s crying out her name, hearing the rumble of the thunder, hearing the sound of Ba-fanks's steps. She felt him getting farther away.
She darted through a door on the other side, following the echo of his feet stomping on the wooden floor. She skipped down some stairs.
Ba-fanks crossed the open space between the buildings in the complex at full speed, out through an arched gateway covered in vines, the tiles along the top cracked and falling down in disarray.
Sifa raced down from the stairs into the courtyard, through the gate, and closed in on him, but he jumped onto a crate and bounced up, grabbing the top of a wall and bounding over. Sifa leapt onto the crate, but it gave way beneath her greater weight.
“Maegrith take you!” she said.
On the other side of the wall, Ba-fanks laughed, his breathing heavy. “You are a foreigner. You are stupid and you should go back to your stupid home, wherever that is.”
Sifa ran to the other side of the street, her eyes scanning the wall, then she ran toward it as quickly as she could, hurling her body up, grabbing the tiles at the top and pulling herself up, the toes of her boots scratching against the wall.
Ba-fanks stood in the middle of a courtyard beside a chicken coop. He stared at her with his mouth open.
“Keep talking, fart-breath,” Sifa said, yanking herself over and falling to the ground, surprising herself by twisting and landing on her feet.
Ba-fanks whirled and ran, and Sifa continued the chase through another gate, down a street—with the thunder rumbling, the rain pounding on her head harder and harder—past a palace, some shops, a brothel, past the fountain with the three dragons, down another street, an alleyway, and into the door of a tenement building that appeared abandoned.
“Help!” Ba-fanks screamed. “She’s almost got me!”
She dove at him, wrapping her arms around him, pushing him through what was once a window and falling to the ground with him, tumbling into the courtyard—the same courtyard he’d led her to earlier with the tree in its center. She felt people around her, but she didn’t care. He wriggled in her grasp, trying to pull away, but she grabbed his neck with both hands and strangled him. He grunted and gurgled, struggling to breathe.
“You betrayed me,” she said, tightening her grip around his throat.
“Let him go, bitch!” a boy’s voice called, and Ba-fanks's orcish friend charged Sifa, swinging a cudgel at her.
She twisted around, lowering her head, and hurling herself forward. She hit the cudgel head on and knocked it out of his hands. The orc backed away, grimacing, stumbling, looking at his now empty hands. He stopped and glared at her.
Ba-fanks rolled over to his stomach, rising to his hands and knees with one hand clutching his throat as he gasped for breath. Other members of his gang appeared in the windows, leaping out, crouching with menace, wielding makeshift weapons and stolen swords.
“You betrayed me and my friend!” she screamed, her heart hammering, her hands tightening and clenching. “You sold us to the priests!”
“Yeah?” the orc said, pointing at her and laughing. “So what? What are you going to do? Kill all of us?”
A bolt of lightning crashed down out of the rumbling sky, striking the dead tree in the middle of the courtyard, shattering it. Splintered branches flew out and rained down. The ancient trunk of the tree split down to the roots and caught fire. The impact of the blast knocked the gang from their feet, the very ground shaking beneath them.
“Do you think I won’t?” Sifa shouted, and another bolt of lightning struck the roof of the complex, shattering it. Bits of tile rained down on them.
The orc crawled back and staggered to his feet.
“Sifa!” Shiyk’yath stood at the door to the east in a half-crouch, stretching his right hand out toward her, his eyes earnest. “Pull yourself back, control yourself.”
“I am in perfect control,” she said, her voice a growl.
“Everyone needs to calm down and back off,” Alizadeh said, appearing behind Shiyk’yath. He pushed past the man and into the courtyard, peering around at the teenagers with their weapons, holding his hands up. “She’s with me.”
Ba-fanks crawled to the orcish teenager’s legs. He glared at Alizadeh. “You aren’t one of us anymore. You left your gang. You’re a civilian now. We can kill you and her and no one will care.”
Sifa glowered at Alizadeh.
“Kill me.” Alizadeh grinned. “You think the Lost Eyes won’t come for a reckoning?”
“Do you think I’ll be that easy?” Sifa said, energy crackling around her.
“Fine.” Ba-fanks raised his hands. “Take these two and get off our turf.”
Alizadeh nodded and motioned for Sifa to back away.
Sifa screamed and punched her hand toward the burning tree. Lightning launched from her hand, destroying the remains of the tree.
The storm stopped and Sifa backed away.
CANDLES LIT THE ROOM—THREE candles on the table, two candles on the sideboard, a candle high up on the top of the cabinet at the far end of the room. Sifa leaned on the table, pressing her weight into her forearms, staring down at the tarnished silver plate piled high with the cooked flesh of chicken in a creamy gravy, with a helping of boiled vegetables.
Shiyk’yath sat across the table from Sifa, a large platter before him piled even higher. He shoveled spoonfuls of the meat and vegetables into his mouth.
“We have to get out of the city before daybreak,” Alizadeh said, smacking his lips, another spoonful hovering before his mouth. He nodded to her. “Eat. You’re going to need your strength.”
“I can’t leave,” Sifa said, bringing a bit of chicken to her lips and nibbling at it. “Che-su is hurt but she’s alive. I feel her.”
“Priests and guards are combing the city for us.” Alizadeh picked up his now empty plate and licked it clean, then he looked at her. “Well, for you, at any rate. They’ve closed down all the gates and the port. The Empress has Her wizard looking for you. If we don’t find a way to sneak you out now while everything is in chaos, you won’t get out. They’ll catch you and do whatever they want to do to you and there ain’t shit you can do about it. She ordered me to get you out. I swore to her I would and I won’t break that promise. Not while she’s still alive.”
Sifa’s hand went to her chest, expecting to touch her gemstone, only to be reminded it was gone. “Well, whatever. We’re all going to die sometime.”
Shiyk’yath snorted and chuckled. “You were listening.”
“That’s a shit philosophy,” Alizadeh said, leaning back in his chair, raising his arms over
his head and stretching. “If that’s the way you want to go, let us turn you in. That way we make some money off the deal. Otherwise, I suggest you let us help you escape.”
“And go where?” Sifa said. “The Empress is everywhere. If She wants me that bad, can I really ever get away from Her? She has armies, and what do I have? Shiyk’yath?”
“Hey, there!” Shiyk’yath said, dropping his fork in his plate.
“And me.” Alizadeh grinned. “I can’t stay here now, either.”
“We get on a ship, and we head to Morrin,” Shiyk’yath said, chewing his vegetables. “By the time the empire gets there, we’ll be buried and our souls moved on to their next incarnation.”
“Which could well be under the heel of the Empress,” Sifa said, rolling her eyes at Shiyk’yath. “Unless someone stops Her.”
“Oh, ho!” Shiyk’yath laughed. “So you’re a rebel now? Think The Magpie is going to come by and save you from the mean old empress?”
“Where is all your big talk about freeing people from the Empress’s lies when we were fighting the harpy?” Sifa said, slapping her hand against the wall. “Che-su is alive and she’s in pain! That is the only thing that matters.”
“What do you expect us to do?” Shiyk’yath asked, throwing his hands up. “We can’t sneak into the temple and sneak her out. You saw her. She’s old; she couldn’t make it out when we had a chance. Why do you think she’s going to be able to make it out now?”
“I saw her fly away,” Sifa said. “So she’s not as weak as you think.”
Alizadeh plopped down on a crate, the wood creaking beneath his weight. “If you don’t escape now, the priests are going to find you, and they’re going to put you right back where you were, but with a lot more care. You won’t get out again.”
“So I’m supposed to run away from my mother when she needs me?” Sifa said, her hands shaking, her lip quivering.