In the privacy of her own chambers she hadn’t pulled the korfi into place over her face, and so she could see her own features in the mirror. She could see herself scowling thoughtfully at the alterations to her body that twenty years of inaction and motherhood had wrought. And she could see Yselde behind her looking up at her in a mixture of worry and fascination.
What Adalonians she didn’t shock senseless with her own altered clothing would doubtless succumb at the sight of her daughter at her side when she was about to go to war. Let them be shocked. Her scowl shifted to a fierce, proud smile at the thought, and then gentled as she turned and knelt before the child.
“I am, little bloom. It’s only proper, for the people who wish to live as Nirrivans will expect me to help them fight.”
“But you said you would keep me and Artir safe. You said you weren’t going away.”
Yselde’s tone was so anxious that Khamsin couldn’t help but place a kiss upon her brow. “You will never be far from my side. You will travel where I do, but sometimes I will need to have some of the men and women who work for me look after you when I must go and make war. I am their commander, and I must lead them. The Tantiu word is sirdara.”
“Sirdara,” the child repeated, brightening a little, for she liked learning new words.
“Good,” Khamsin said, and she said it again in Tantiu to emphasize that word too. “Yaksi. And I have an important task for you to do while I’m gone. Can you do this thing for me?”
Disappointment warred with hope on her daughter’s face as Yselde straightened where she stood, striving to look as tall and as fearsome as she could—which was not much, for a girl of four. She nodded vigorously nevertheless. “Yes, Mama! Sirdara!”
“Good. Your task is this—protect your brother Artir, for he’s too small to protect himself. Obey your nurse. And if you are very, very good, I will come to you every night and teach you more words and tell you stories in Tantiu. Perhaps I will even show you how to hold a knife.”
Yselde’s eyes went round with awe, and as she bobbed her head, she threw her arms around her mother’s neck. “I’ll be good, I promise! And I’ll take care of Artir.”
Khamsin smiled and hugged the child close. For a moment she let herself enjoy the simple peace of the contact and her daughter’s joy. But a knock sounded at the door of her chamber, and with it, the anxious voice of one of the upstairs maids. “Your Grace? Akresha? A messenger’s come for you from the town. He says Sister Sother sent him and he needs to see you immediately.”
Her daughter went still, and with care, Khamsin set her down again, conscious of Yselde’s curious eyes upon her as she stood and wound her crimson korfi into place. “Let the messenger enter,” she called back.
The door opened to a young man from the militia who’d gathered under Sother’s direction in Camden, as young a boy as the one she’d seen on sentry duty at the gates. But this one, at least, had a sturdy enough frame that she thought he might perhaps last more than five minutes in combat. He also had enough manners to bow deeply to her as soon as he entered the room, in a rough approximation of how a Tantiu boy might have done it, with his hands pressed palm to palm at his chest. “Please forgive my intrusion, akresha, but Sister Sother sent me to tell you we’re sending out a regiment. Word’s come of all the Hawks heading north. The Sister thinks we need to put a stop to whatever they’re up to and asks if you want to ride with us.”
It begins. Lady of Time, guide me. Let me remember the surety of my sword.
With that prayer, exultation kindled in Khamsin’s heart and she smiled behind her korfi, for all that the messenger who’d come couldn’t see it. She already felt kindly toward this young man for respecting her customs, and that he brought her such news made him all the more welcome.
“Indeed I do. Take word to the stables, and tell them to prepare my horse.”
Near Dolmerrath, Kilmerry Province, Jeuchar 10, AC 1876
The Bhandreid had hundreds of Hawks at her disposal all over the realm. Every member of the Order in Kilmerry had been called into active duty to find the escaped slave girl and the fugitives Kestar Vaarsen and Celoren Valleford. Many from the provinces to the east and southeast had deployed as well, answering the rise of insurrectionists all over the province. But some, Pol Amarsaed discovered as he took his own forces out of Shalridan, were no longer available to answer a call from him. Some had already fallen to elven arrows. Others, according to scattered reports, had been driven eastward by what was calling itself the army of Nirrivy—increasingly larger forces that would indeed soon be an army in truth, if they weren’t already.
All told, when he followed Bron Wulsten and Jekke Yerredes into the northern coastal woods, barely three score Knights of the Hawk came to join him. Not enough, he feared, to carry out the task that had been appointed to them.
But by the Father and Mother, he would not let them see him give in to that fear. Not when they’d need every ounce of their courage to face what lay before them now.
“I know what you’re all thinking,” he called when he gathered them together in the light of early morning, armed with sword and pistol, amulets out and gleaming faintly blue. “You’ve all heard the rumors by now of what’s come over the telegraphs. Dareli in flames. The Anreulag Herself raining wrath down upon the people. You’re wondering if the Voice of the Gods has turned against us. And why we’re here in these accursed elf-infested woods rather than joining our comrades in the east, to listen to the Voice and learn Her will for what we should do.
“But I say to you, brothers and sisters, that Her will is already plain. We have been called to find the heretic who thinks to challenge the gods with her power, and the traitors to our Order who’ve supported her. If the Anreulag is angry, let us appease Her by bringing Her the heads of Her enemies. Let us steel ourselves against the fear with which inhuman magic seeks to cloud our minds, and let us Cleanse the land of that magic’s taint. We are Her eyes to see, Her swords to strike. Let us strike in Her name! Are you with me?”
A roar of affirmation rose up from sixty throats. “Ani a bhota Anreulag, arach shae!”
In dour satisfaction, Captain Amarsaed raised his fist and brought it swooping down again, signaling his force to move out. Small as their numbers were, they still had enough riders to rip paths through the clustered trees, and to shake the earth with their passing. Amarsaed dismissed all concerns of stealth, for it was said that the elves possessed hearing far sharper than that of human men and women. All the better, so far as the captain was concerned.
Let them hear their doom approach.
* * *
“Damn them all to death and darkness. Vaarsen was right.”
Over the past few decades Tembriel had accustomed herself to the humans who lived in Dolmerrath, and grown grudgingly willing to allow that every so often, the round-ears knew what they were talking about. But it was one thing to acknowledge the ideas of humans who lived among and appreciated her people. It was another thing entirely to grant that concession to a Knight of the Hawk.
But with the shadows of dozens of horses rippling through the distant trees and the echo of their passing a growing whisper in her ears, she couldn’t deny that Kestar Vaarsen’s warning had been true. No matter how much it galled her to admit it.
Grimacing, she scrambled lithely down the branches of the tree where she’d been keeping watch, and took from her belt the horn of shell and silver that all the scouts of Dolmerrath wore on patrol. Only at greatest need were the horns to sound any warning, for a scout beyond the Wards upheld the rule of stealth above all else. With the largest Hawk force Tembriel had seen in decades encroaching on elven woods, though, the need was irrefutable. The risk of one scout revealing her location was far less than that of so many Hawks reaching her people’s last safe haven—the only safe haven she’d ever known.
With her other hand on the b
ranch above her, Tembriel lifted her horn to her lips and blew. Clear, rich and resounding, the note carried out into the morning, and even before she brought it to an end, other horns answered the call. Some met her horn’s pitch, and others came in higher or lower, until a vast minor chord of warning sounded throughout the forest.
By the time she stopped to draw breath into aching lungs, she heard the deepest, loudest note of all sounding from Dolmerrath itself.
* * *
They’d paid a human ship, the Whippoorwill, to take Faanshi and the others to Shalridan and back again to recover Julian and Kestar—and so it shocked Faanshi to learn that the elven stronghold had its own boats. The boat cavern, deepest and largest of all the caves in Dolmerrath, had half a dozen longboats that were taken out for fishing under the cover of night or fog. But it also boasted three larger vessels. None were as large as the human ship, with only a single mast each to the Whippoorwill’s three, yet even to Faanshi’s eyes it seemed clear why the elves never sent their crafts to Shalridan. Each was graceful of design, almost ethereal compared to the other vessels she’d seen in Shalridan’s harbor, with elaborate carvings of branch and vine all along their hulls, and sails of green and gold. And if they were obviously of elven make even to her, surely any human captain who followed the Church would think so too. There were many more human ships than these three elven ones, and human ships had great cannons of iron.
Yet Gerren had sent out the order to prepare every boat for sailing, and for the humans and half-breeds who dwelled in Dolmerrath to make ready to flee out into the ocean while elven scouts patrolled the Wards. Faanshi was lending her aid to the effort, carrying whatever was needed to the boat cavern’s docks, when the great horn sounded its alarm.
Panic shot through her, for she’d never heard its like—not even the foghorns in the Shalridan harbor rumbled like that deep, reverberating note, thunder lifting its voice in a warning song. She froze on the oaken dock of the boat cavern, clutching the bedroll that was her latest burden, and then realized that her own dread was mirrored on every face in sight.
“Akresha, please, what is it?” she cried to a gray-haired woman who’d stopped beside her, and who now looked back the way they’d come, her eyes filling with terror. “What does it mean?”
At the sound of Faanshi’s voice, the woman shook herself and then grimly replied, “It’s the horn at the top of the caves, the one they blow when the scouts send the word. It means we’re out of time, girlie. The Hawks are coming. Pray to all our gods we have clear waters when we get the boats out. If the Bhandreid’s navy finds us, we’re done for.”
Hawks.
The bedroll dropped, forgotten, from Faanshi’s arms. She had barely enough presence of mind to blurt an apology at the older woman as she whirled and ran off the dock, back toward the inner caverns. What the woman might have answered, she never heard. The threat of the Hawks had chased Faanshi from the very first day her magic had awakened—but at first it had been only Kestar and Celoren, and now Kestar and Celoren were friends. Nor were two men enough to make everyone in Dolmerrath abandon their home, or to fill the twisting stone corridors of the complex with the great horn’s echoing call.
She didn’t want to think about how many Hawks it would take.
Before she could make it back to the central cavern, Faanshi ran headlong into Kestar’s mother, the akresha Ganniwer, who seized her in passing and demanded, “What’s happening?”
The woman was a baroness, or so Faanshi had learned. Ganniwer scarcely looked it now, clad as she was in a simple linen shirt and buckskin trousers, much like Faanshi’s own, rather than the fine gown she’d been wearing when she’d been rescued along with her son in Shalridan. At any other time Faanshi might have succumbed to shyness—above and beyond her rank, this was also Kestar’s mother—but Ganniwer’s voice snapped with authority that would not be denied.
“The Hawks are coming!”
So quickly did Faanshi gulp out the words that she barely understood herself, yet they were enough for Ganniwer. The older woman paled, but her features grew stern and set, and she didn’t release her grip on Faanshi’s arm. “Then come with me, and let’s find the rest of our group. You have a way of saving lives, young lady, and if my son’s former Order has caught up with us, I’m disinclined to let you out of my sight.”
Faanshi was disinclined to argue. There were enough hands loading the boats that they could do without her—and she could not help but worry that soon enough, her hands would be needed for far graver work. They didn’t have to look long. By the time she and Ganniwer reached Dolmerrath’s central cavern, the horn’s alert had finally gone silent, and most of the stronghold’s remaining humans had already gathered. They bore more weaponry than Faanshi had ever seen in one place in her life, and they stood listening to Gerren, who’d climbed onto a bench to see and be seen by all.
“You all know what the sounding of the horn means,” Gerren called. “But what you don’t know yet is that runners have made it in with the news—yes, there are Hawks headed this way, about sixty by the estimates of the scouts. We must face the possibility that some of them may make it past the front line of the scouts, and therefore over the Wards. If this happens, it falls to all of you to defend these caves.”
Faanshi cast an anxious glance around the cavern, searching through the faces she didn’t yet know for the ones she did. She spotted Kestar and Celoren side by side, armed with swords and guns. Both wore expressions of firm resolve, but something in Kestar’s stance and the set of his jaw spoke to that part of her that had learned the shape of his innermost self through healing magic. The link she’d forged with him had been shielded into silence, in both her mind and his, but not so her understanding of him. Kestar Vaarsen was profoundly troubled.
Before Faanshi could go to him, though, Ganniwer reached him first. The sight of the baroness fiercely embracing first her son and then Celoren struck Faanshi with the shyness she’d held off before. She had no parents of her own, but through Kestar, she knew something now of what it was to have a mother. Even then, she had no idea how she might possibly interrupt them.
“Gerren’s going to need you,” came Julian’s voice then, just behind her.
Relief spun her around on her heels and launched her at Julian, while the impulse to follow Ganniwer’s example brought her arms around him. Almost immediately she pulled back, blushing, for the cavern held many eyes—and Nine-fingered Rab was at his side, visibly smirking. “Pay me no heed,” he drawled. “I’ll be happy to pretend I’m not here.”
He hadn’t drawn any of the many knives she knew he carried, but his right hand hovered restlessly near one of his more obvious sheaths, fingers twitching. Likewise, there’d been an alert tension in Julian’s frame as she’d embraced him, and she hadn’t missed the hard shapes of multiple blades in place upon his person either. That same alertness glinted in his gaze as he took her by the shoulders and frowned down at her. “Gerren’s going to need you,” he repeated, “and I’ll leave it to him to tell you where you should be when the wounded start coming in. Do what he tells you, dove. It’ll go easier with me if I know you’re as safe as possible.”
Faanshi drew in a breath and let it out again in uneasy comprehension, looking from one man to the other. Both of them were wearing black, making them stand out starkly against the greens and browns and undyed linen favored by most of Dolmerrath. “You’re both going out to fight.” It wasn’t a question. It didn’t have to be, not when her magic had taught her as much about Julian as it had of Kestar Vaarsen, and what magic hadn’t provided, days of riding with both men had. “But you’re assassins, not soldiers.”
“And there’ll be a deplorable lack of shadows from which we might strike out there. But then, if the hoyden who helped take down Tornach sees me coming, all the better.” Rab’s smirk deepened, and he paused as Julian and Faanshi alike raised eyebrows at him. “Wha
t? I loved that horse.”
“He was a fine horse,” Faanshi agreed. Tentatively, she held out a hand to the fair-haired assassin. When he blinked and grasped it, she offered him a smile as well. “I won’t worry, because I know you’ll watch over Julian, and he you. And the Lady of Time will watch over you both.”
The Rab she’d first met would have offered some sneering mockery in reply. This Rab, though, was the man she’d healed of a gunshot wound. Not so overwhelming a healing as either Julian or Kestar, not since Kirinil had taught her to improve her magical shields—but Faanshi had saved his life nonetheless. It’d been more than enough to give her glimpses into his thoughts. He had indeed loved Tornach, the only other living creature he treasured besides Julian, and he wouldn’t welcome her acknowledging either sentiment too closely.
Now he simply crooked a fair brow of his own at her. “You might make sure She watches over you while She’s at it, since you’re rather good at putting our skins back together, and we’re rather fond of them. Try not to die.”
“I’ll do my very best.” To banter with Rab as Julian would do was sweet and strange—it set off a tremor of nervousness in Faanshi’s breast, and she feared to say the wrong thing, or too much or too little of the right. She would have to simply trust in the sense she’d gained of the younger assassin as well as the older, and that in whatever words she might speak, he’d hear the ridah of truth. “Come back whole and safe, both of you. I honor the gift Almighty Djashtet has given me, but I’d rather not use it if I don’t have to.”
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