“Not sure if you want him to be awake for this,” I heard Khine say behind me. “Let the man have his sweet dreams.” He kicked an effigy away.
“Is it not enough, my lovely queen?” Yuebek cried. “Do you want more?”
“Not particularly,” I said. I didn’t think he could hear me.
His laughter sounded like the creaking of a horse-cart. I saw a blue flicker in the effigies’ eyes. They turned towards us, and I had the sudden, sinking feeling that they could see us.
“He’s drawing completely from the villagers now,” Namra gasped out.
The words had barely left her mouth when the effigies began to attack. They had no weapons, no clothes, even. But they started towards us with outstretched hands, teeth snapping. One grabbed Khine by the arm and bit down, hard enough that I could see blood spurt from the wound. As Khine tried to dislodge it with his sword, another came to grab his leg. I reached out to help him, but I found myself preoccupied with two of my own.
I was able to hack off one’s arm with my sword. The limb flew back and didn’t reattach itself; the effigy lay on the ground, leaking curdled blood and fluids as it groaned helplessly into the wind. I turned my focus on the other one and saw hands grabbing Rai’s body, pulling him into the horde. I dropped my attacker as quickly as I could and rushed over to cut him loose. My sword was starting to feel dull—I was hacking at the flailing limbs like a woodcutter with an axe.
In that tangle of old blood and fake flesh, mixed with the scent of mud and rotting meat and my own, desperate anger, I thought of my son, of his sweet laughter, of love that still existed in this world. And then I saw the effigies fall.
I didn’t understand it at first. I kicked the last of the limp hands off my husband’s legs before I saw them all collapsed on the ground, like sacks of rice gathered at the end of harvest season. None were moving.
My first instinct was to turn to Yuebek. His expression had turned from delighted to furious.
“Khine, help me,” I said, grabbing Rai’s body from the ground. Khine sheathed his sword and rushed in without hesitation.
I saw Yuebek’s mages trying to step over the fallen effigies in a rush to shut the gate. I got there just as they did. Their confusion gave me the advantage—I had two on the ground before my companions reached me. Agos grappled with another before he could cast a spell—Nor disposed of him with a quick strike to the neck.
“You know this is nothing to me,” Yuebek called from across the courtyard. “I always get what I want, my queen. Your husband is dying. Shall I kill your son, too? If I have to go to Jin-Sayeng myself to show you how futile your efforts are, then so be it!” I gazed back at him as I let everyone else run ahead of the path. He stood like a beacon behind the flames and crumbling temple, a demon that ought to slink back from where it came from. I should have gone back there to finish him, or die trying. But all the strength had left my body; even if I did reach him, I wouldn’t know where to start.
Agos stopped beside me. “What are we going to do about the freak?” he asked.
“We’re pawns in his game,” I murmured. “We have to get to Jin-Sayeng before he does.”
“How the hell are we supposed to do that?”
“I don’t know,” I murmured. “One worry at a time.” With a last look at Yuebek’s crooked form, I pulled the gate shut behind me.
Chapter Thirteen
The Forgotten
One worry at a time; ominous words, considering I ceased to think about anything else as soon as I caught up with the rest of my companions on the trail. My husband’s blood dripped on the ground with every step Khine took, and I had known him long enough by that point to understand his silence and the crease of worry on his forehead. I didn’t want to think about my husband’s life ending here now, not after all we had been through.
We hadn’t gone very far when Khine dragged Rai to the side, leaning him on the ground with his legs on a tree root. “Watch for Yuebek’s men,” he told Nor. The exhaustion was plain on his voice. He turned to Namra. “My apologies, priestess, but I will need your help once more.”
“Last time, you said you didn’t like a mage touching your patient,” Namra said.
“I’m taking it back now,” Khine snapped. “He’s dying. He’s your lord, isn’t he? So help me.”
The words made me light-headed. I drew my sword and walked up to join Nor and Agos.
“I don’t think they followed us,” Nor said. “You can go back and sit beside Prince Rayyel, my queen.”
“I can’t,” I murmured.
“How did the pisspot get himself stabbed?” Agos asked.
Nor jabbed him with her elbow.
“I’m just saying…”
“Respect,” Nor grumbled.
Agos took a deep breath. After a moment of silence, he said, “Can I look at your sword?”
I handed it to him without a word. He wiped the blood off with his shirt and held it up to the light. “Chipped,” Agos continued with a grimace. “Piss poor quality. I knew that merchant was lying through his teeth. Best Jinsein steel my ass. You can have the one I stole off those bastards.” He all but shoved the new sword into my hands. I tried to look at it, but I couldn’t really see anything beyond a sword—an object, a tool for killing. I could hear Khine yelling something at Namra, the impatience trickling from his voice.
“It’s a Zarojo double-edged,” Agos crowed. “A lot better than the ones I’ve seen the guards carry. See the nice engraving on the hilt? Consider it your name day present.”
“But that’s not until…” I blinked. I had lost track of time.
“Yesterday,” Agos said, cocking his head to the side. “I had wanted to get back to the village in time with good news for you. Wasn’t counting on your deranged suitor waiting for us back there. Not that you could blame me for that. We thought he was dead.”
“I didn’t even realize,” Nor broke in. “My apologies, my queen.”
“Not like we could’ve had a celebration like we do in the palace,” I said. Banners and drums and parades, in addition to the feast. My birth marked the end of the War of the Wolves, which meant a time of celebration. Twenty-seven years of peace. And here I’m about to end it soon. If Rai dies here…gods. My son. What would happen to Thanh?
“Always thought it was a waste of money,” Agos started. “That roast pig, though, always shuts me up. Crackling skin…”
I almost laughed at the irony of discussing food at that moment. But my expression must’ve lightened a bit, because I saw him lift his hand and very slowly place it on my shoulder. “I wouldn’t worry if I were you,” he said. “The Ikessars are hard to kill.”
“A well-known fact,” Nor added.
“They’re like insects. It’s why they lasted so long. There’s a joke in the army, you know. How do you fight an Ikessar? Well, if they don’t bore you to death first…”
“No, you’re saying it wrong,” Nor said. “I think it starts with an Ikessar and a Jeinza walk into a bar…”
Agos rolled his eyes and handed me the scabbard. I sheathed the sword before sliding it through my belt. It was built for a much bigger person and I had to tighten the belt to the last hole. I uttered a quiet thanks, and he grunted in response.
I heard Khine call my name. I held my breath before I walked back to them, expecting the worst. Rai’s colour was still alarming, but I caught sight of the rise and fall of his chest.
“He’s bleeding from the inside,” Khine said. “We did what we could, but I need to get him back to the village. I…I don’t know how.”
“Does the lord need a litter?” Agos broke in, sarcasm lacing his voice.
“I can walk,” Rai mumbled.
I dropped to my husband’s side and watched as his eyes flickered. He took several deep breaths before he finally opened them. “I can walk,” he repeated, forcing the words out, as if not quite sure if we’d heard him.
“Should he?” I asked Khine.
“It’s not lik
e anyone can carry him all the way down the mountain.”
Agos gave a smug grin and reached out to help Rai to his feet. Rai ignored him and pushed himself, his face contorted in pain. “I can walk,” he said a third time. “I’m not an invalid.”
“Good that you know,” Agos spat. “Stop holding us back. She may let you get away with everything, but if I’m going to have to wipe up after your perfumed royal ass—”
“This can wait when we don’t have people at death’s-door,” Khine snapped.
Namra drew close, carrying a long stick. She whittled off the last branch with her knife and handed it to Rai. “I know it must be hard, my lord, but we should get started or else we might never get there at all. We shouldn’t spend a moment longer than we have to on this mountain.”
Rai took a step. Blood seeped through his bandages, but he pushed himself forward without a word of complaint.
No, I found myself thinking. I don’t think I ever knew him at all.
I knew my husband, the scholar; his love for obscure topics, his perpetual cluelessness with a sword. I knew that he grew up in the shadow of the Citadel in the mountains, protected by no less than five guards at all times. It was generally accepted that my father would do to him exactly what he had done to General Shan—the torture, the public decapitation, the indecent burial (the man’s body was never recovered for a proper funeral). I knew that despite being a bastard, they had found a way for the priests to name him an Ikessar—something to do with his father dying before he was born and the Hio clan’s rejection of Princess Ryia’s claim that Shan was the father, as if somehow that made it possible for Ryia to have created him on her own.
Everything else I had supplied from the knowledge my father had passed down on the Ikessars and their strange ways. I had never stopped to consider it from his point of view. Not a true Ikessar by blood, but he was—in every way you looked at it—Rysaran the Uncrowned’s direct heir. My father may have been a mass murderer, but Rysaran was the weak ruler who allowed that murderer’s power to go unchecked in the first place.
I had my burdens; Rayyel had his. Bleeding from the inside, Khine had said, but Rai walked like it wasn’t just a piece of cloth holding him together. The silent way he struggled gave me a glimpse of what the past six years had looked like for him. I had kept myself busy nursing my injured pride; he, on the other hand…
Was all of this just an effort to find ways to assure his worth? That he was not everything my father had accused his clan of? Yuebek’s words must’ve stung, but I didn’t know where to start with that. I didn’t think to mention it at all—Rai was too busy not dying and everyone else was worrying about Yuebek’s men on our tail. Small problems overshadowing larger concerns…it didn’t matter what Yuebek had planned for us if we didn’t make it back to the village in one piece.
It was on the long, winding sloped road near the lake that Rai finally collapsed. He crumpled to the ground, one knee awkwardly bent under him, and his body slid along the mud until Khine and Agos grabbed him. The bandage had come loose, and he was beginning to bleed again. “You got this far,” Khine said, wrapping my husband’s arm around his shoulder. “Don’t die on me now, Rai.” I wonder if anyone else had noticed how he neglected his honorifics, calling my husband by his familiar name. For a man who had once lectured me on them, he seemed completely oblivious to his own quirks.
“Akaterru-damned Ikessar can’t even take a stab wound,” Agos snarled. “Maybe we should just leave you for the dogs. You know how much I’ll enjoy watching you get ripped apart after all the trouble you’ve caused the queen? Brain ground to a pulp, entrails on the dirt…”
“Enough, Agos.”
“Why? Is he going to cry? Did I hurt his feelings?”
Rai didn’t reply. His face was ashen.
I held on to hope and rushed ahead to see if I could get help from the village. But before I could get past the first bend, a man came running up to us. “Khine!” he called out.
“We’re busy at the moment,” Khine said.
“The elders—Khine, you’ve got to see…”
“Let me take this man back to my mother’s house first.”
“I don’t think…”
“I have to take care of this man first,” Khine said, walking past him. The hint of anger in his tone was enough to make the villager fall back, but he followed us all the way to the streets before disappearing by the bridge.
The village was eerily silent—not a single elder was in sight. Agos dashed off as soon as we crossed the first bridge, but I was too distracted over Rai to give it much thought. We reached Mei’s house, where Khine called for his mother, asking if she could get some hot water ready. There was no reply as we dragged Rai into the common room.
Khine began stripping Rai’s shirt off. I caught sight of the flesh around the wound, purple and black at the edges. The wound itself was small, which was the worrying part. Khine grabbed a metal case from the shelf and then, as an afterthought, turned to me. “Outside,” he said.
“But—”
“I need Namra to assist me. But you step outside. You can’t see this.” He turned to Nor. “I need to open his wound up. Captain, please, take her away…”
“My queen.” Nor grabbed my arm and led me through the door. From behind, I heard Khine asking Namra to hold Rai’s legs.
Rai started to cry out. Khine muffled it with a piece of cloth, and the sound dropped to a groan.
Nor led me to the street, where I slid to the ground, closed my eyes, and counted stars in my head. The sound of footsteps distracted me and I looked up to see Agos return from the alley. There was a strange look on his face.
“Did you see Mei?” I croaked out.
Agos shook his head. “Not a sign.” He nodded towards the hut. “Bastard going to make it?”
“I don’t know.”
He snorted. “Good riddance, if he doesn’t.”
“Agos,” I said. “You know it’s not that simple.”
“Because you still love him?”
“Agos!” Nor barked.
His words gave me a headache. “Because in case you haven’t been paying attention, Yuebek has both his hands deep into this mess and likely won’t back out any time soon. If we lose Rai right now, what do we tell his clan? There’s this Zarojo prince who claims my father wanted me to marry him instead and oh, by the way, we got your heir killed, so there’s that. No, that doesn’t look bad at all.”
“There’s that,” Agos grumbled. “It’s always been a mess, this thing you’re in.”
“Of course it has.”
“There must be a way that doesn’t involve allying yourself with the Ikessars or your father’s wishes.”
I turned to him. “Have you become a politician all of a sudden?”
Agos smirked. “Not in a million years. I’ve seen what it does to you.” He paused. “There’s something you should know.”
I sighed. “Out with it.”
“Before we left Anzhao, someone…came up to me. An agent of the Shadows.”
Nor’s eyes widened. “This is the first time I’ve heard of this. What have you been doing behind my back, Agos?”
“She was the one who helped me escape Qun’s dungeons,” I said.
“So she told me,” Agos added. “She must’ve also spoken about the ship, then.”
I frowned. “I don’t know whether to trust her or not. I’m almost sure I don’t want to.”
“About that…” Agos started.
I narrowed my eyes.
“She’s here,” he continued. “She…she tailed us from Anzhao. She was concerned that you chose to be alone with Lamang instead of taking your guards.”
“Someone’s been following us this whole time?” Nor snapped. “Agos, you’ve gone too far!” Her hand dropped to her sword.
Agos’ eyes flashed. “Don’t you want to get home at all? What other options do we have?”
“Do you even know what dealing with the Shadows mean, you thic
k-skulled excuse for a soldier?” She turned to me. “My queen…”
“We do have to get home, don’t we, Nor?” I asked. “We need to know what’s happening back there, how many of the Oren-yaro is under Yuebek’s control like he claimed. And no matter what happens with Rai—” I swallowed. “So she’s here?”
Agos nodded. “They’ve got a boat docked somewhere in the east shoreline. She said they’ll meet you there when you’re ready.”
From inside the hut, I could hear Khine swearing under his breath. I could also smell the sharp, iron-tinged scent of blood, enough that I could’ve sworn I was soaked in it. I didn’t want to spend another moment there—I didn’t want to see Khine walk out shaking his head.
I got up. “Bring me to them.”
~~~
From afar, the boat looked like a simple fishing vessel, moored near an outcrop of jagged rocks where it rose and fell with the waves. It seemed abandoned, but when Agos placed his fingers in his mouth to whistle, a woman emerged from below deck. She pulled herself onto the closest boulder and made her way to the sand, where she dropped to one knee in front of me. A Kag-style bow—I made a note to remember that.
“My queen.” It was the voice of the agent who broke me out of prison.
“It’s about time you tell me who you really are,” I said as she rose. I was stunned by how young she looked—it didn’t seem that way in the darkness. Fifteen, perhaps sixteen—you would’ve taken her for a fisherman’s daughter in a heartbeat. She was short and thin, the sort of person who could probably fit in a wine barrel with the lid closed, with a plain face rowed by shaggy black hair that would be hard to pick out from a crowd. I think I had been expecting a formidable warrior, the sort that made the Shadows a name that struck fear in the hearts of many. This mere mite of a girl wouldn’t last two heartbeats in a fight.
“Lahei alon gar Kaggawa, my queen,” she said.
“Kaggawa’s eldest?” Nor spoke up.
Lahei gave a curt nod. “My father wouldn’t just entrust this task to anyone else. He would’ve come himself, but the Sougen is…well. We have many, many problems in the Sougen, the sort we were hoping the queen could lend her assistance with.”
The Ikessar Falcon Page 18