An honor guard of Silver Spears was in attendance, a pair at each of the four corners of the forum—no more than would normally attend. They’d been told to act nonchalant, to chat with one another and the passing crowd, to wish them a good day, so that none would suspect anything amiss. Two dozen archers were stationed along the rooftops, the best the Spears had to offer. She caught a glimpse of one watching from behind a pair of statues atop a nearby building, but only because she knew to look for them.
The ceremony approached. Young collegia students began moving the gathered groups toward the stone benches, leaving the central aisle clear for the waiting students to stride along from the basilica. Çeda decided to stand near the back, but still ended up being cornered by a man from Malasan with a sweaty brow, a terrible smile, and worse breath. He leaned in as the high scholars took to the steps of the stone dais and arranged themselves. “And what house keeps you in Sharakhai?”
“I’m a guest of the Confessor King,” she said easily. As she waited for this to sink in, a line of drummers and sitar players took up a song, signaling the start of the ceremony. The man’s face was already blanching, but she leaned in close anyway and said in a hoarse whisper, “He rather thinks he owns me, but he doesn’t. I’d rather be out among the streets, not traipsing about some cold palace.” A gong struck, and the students began walking in ranks of three from the basilica doors. “And what house keeps you, my lord?” He cleared his throat, his mouth opening and closing several times. He looked perfectly miserable. When everyone turned toward the procession, including Çeda, he shuffled away in haste.
The graduates were arranged at the very front, and everyone was seated. Speeches were made, including one from King Azad’s grandson, a man who’d graduated from the collegia with honors and now lavished expensive gifts upon it. The graduates, young men and women filled with hope, smiled as they were led to the stone dais and laurel crowns were placed on their heads. They were kissed in turn by each of the high scholars in attendance. At one point Çeda caught Melis’s attention, who was standing along the opposite row of benches. Çeda gave a small shrug, which Melis returned before swinging her attention back toward the front of the assemblage, where the last few students were stepping up the stone stairs.
Scholars, Çeda reminded herself. They’re now scholars.
Most had gone back to their seats, but Çeda realized one had broken away and was coming to stand by her. Tulathan’s bright eyes, it was Davud. She’d been struck in the bursar’s office by how much he’d grown, and here it hit her again. His curly hair, once brown, was now sunkissed, perhaps from more work outside than Çeda would have given a young collegia student credit for. She smiled, overtaken with joy at seeing someone, anyone, from Roseridge, then took him into an embrace. She held him at arm’s length, admiring him properly.
“Well, well,” she said softly as the closing speech began, “if the gods haven’t shined on me this day.”
“The pleasure is all mine,” he replied easily.
And then she realized: around his neck hung a torc of fine gold wire, the ends shaped into ram’s heads. It was a sign of a graduate completing his course of study with high honors. She shook her head, feeling like a proud sister. “You’re seventeen, Davud. You can’t be graduating.”
He bowed his head, as a collegia debater might when conceding a point. “One of those assertions is most assuredly true.”
She ran her fingers along the golden torc, then adjusted it, making the ends even over his collarbones. “And with honors!” She pretended to cry. “My little boy’s all grown up.”
Some of the old redness in his cheeks returned. “Master Amalos thought it time, is all.”
“Well, I know Amalos well enough to say he wouldn’t do such a thing if he didn’t think you’d earned it. What will you do now? Return home?”
Davud brightened. “Master Amalos has agreed to keep me on. I’m to be given my own studies, and some day, my own students. But first I’ll be visiting each of the four kingdoms’ capitals.” Davud ran his hand down his chest as if he were stroking a white, hoary beard, and said, in a white, hoary accent, “To deepen my pitiful understanding of their customs and histories.”
She could hear Amalos saying those words. “And to learn their tongues?” she asked in Kundhunese.
“Not merely to learn them,” he replied in equally passable Kundhunese, “but to know them.” He returned to speaking Sharakhan. “I’ve chosen to study language. How it’s changed, how it’s still changing.”
“Breath of the desert, how I’d love to do that,” Çeda said.
She could see the look of optimism in his eyes, as if to say, you could, you know. “And you?” he asked. “Have you done what you’d hoped to do?”
To this, Çeda merely smiled, while at the front of the assemblage, the kettledrums took up a slower, more playful beat. The scholars formed a column in the central aisle, ready for their return march to the basilica. Their pride shone like the coming dawn.
“That’s your cue,” Çeda said.
He bowed his head. “Of course.” He hesitated, as if he wanted to say more, but then repeated, “Of course,” and left, waving once before jogging after the others.
Çeda felt relieved. It seemed Zeheb had been wrong. Or perhaps the Host had never been targeting this ceremony after all. Or perhaps they’d smelled the trap. Whatever the case, the last of the students filed through the basilica doors to receive their final words from the collegia masters.
Hardly had the doors closed, however, when a war cry came from Çeda’s left. She turned as shouts of surprise were followed by cries of pain.
“Here! Here!” cried one of the Silver Spears.
The audience looked fearful and skittish, like a wing of skylarks the moment before they lifted into the sky. Çeda stood tall as she reached into the slit worked into her dress and drew River’s Daughter. She crouched, neatly splitting her dress on both sides up to her thighs. Everyone nearby stared at her, waiting.
“To the basilica!” she shouted, pointing them, shoving some away.
The shouts came louder, the crash of battle rising above the growing fear. The crowd parted, most running toward the basilica doors where a group of Silver Spears stood at the ready, ushering everyone inside.
On the far side, from between two buildings, a loose unit of men and women loped toward the forum. They wore thick leather armor and iron helms with chain mail that lapped against their shoulders. They held shields at the ready, shamshirs carried low. Blood marked their eyes, their noses, their mouths, as if they’d been anointed in some way, prepared by Thaash himself for this very battle.
A dozen had charged ahead of the others, screaming, eyes maniacal, but many more trailed behind. The Silver Spears engaged, but they stood no chance against so many. Like gods of war stepping from mist, Sümeya, Melis, and Yndris emerged from the crowd, their ebon blades in hand. They joined Çeda, and together the four of them ran to meet the onslaught. Two more hands of Maidens approached while ahead, arrows streaked in from the Kings’ bowmen stationed on the rooftops. One of the attackers fell when a black arrow drove through his knee, but he got up straightaway and limped forward. The others took arrow after arrow, hardly slowing their plodding gait.
Their eyes were crazed. They bellowed nonsensical words as they met the charge of the Maidens. There were so many that some merely ran past. It was clear their target was the basilica.
And then Çeda was among the enemy, sword swinging, the cries of her enemy rising around her. At first she maintained discipline, keeping the proper distance with Melis on her left and Sümeya on her right, but all too soon everything around her was madness.
She deflected a swing from the man before her and felt for his heartbeat, for the beat of the woman next to him as well. They came to her with surprising ease. The drums of their hearts played as she parried a swing from the woman, as she
retreated half a step and leaned away from a heavy, overreaching swing from the man. Then she sliced River’s Daughter, the blade cutting halfway through his arm. It hung ineffectively yet still he fought on, his face maniacal as he swung with his right and the woman lunged for Çeda’s midsection.
After two ringing blocks of the man’s sword, blood spraying in a river from his nearly severed arm, Çeda kicked the woman away, then brought her dark shamshir around and sliced the warrior’s legs to the bone. He hardly seemed to care. He swung wildly for her, but fell, his wounds gushing red, eyes rage-filled as he screamed, “Death! Death to the Kings! Long live the Thirteenth Tribe!”
All around, the battle raged. The ring of metal on metal pierced the battle like the cries of an eagle. The heartbeats around her became a symphony of drums. Two more blood-marked warriors approached, though with more care than the others. Çeda engaged them, retreating, being saved by Sümeya more than once, moving to guard Melis’s and Yndris’s flanks when she found herself free of opponents.
She and her sister Maidens were soon surrounded. She took a cut along her hip that bit through what light armor she wore. She took another along her forearm. But strangely, this calmed her. With so many enemies near, with so much noise and the wildness of the battle, she’d lost her center, but the pain coursing through her hip and arm carried her back to the place she needed to be more effectively than mere concentration ever could. She felt those around her, the one ahead, the two behind, Sümeya on her right, Melis on her left. She narrowed in on the enemy, blending together sight and hearing, the feel of the heat from their bodies and the rhythmic pounding of their blades against hers. She brought herself in sync with the beating heart of the man in front of her and pressed. Despite his crazed expression, his wild movements, he seemed to catch himself and, in that moment, Çeda blocked his sword high and slashed at an angle across his neck.
She ducked and rolled away, feeling more than seeing the arc of a shamshir behind her. The sword slashed overhead, sinking deep into the rib cage of a hulking swordsman. The blade was momentarily caught, enough for Çeda to lift and swing River’s Daughter across the woman’s undefended midsection.
Others charged in, maniacal in their thirst for Maidens’ blood, but Çeda and the others were in control. She felt them—Sümeya, Melis, even Yndris—and knew they felt her as well. In this moment they were one, a congregation of blades, spinning, twisting, biting through bone and muscle and armor alike.
Nearby, the enemy had thinned, but from the forum’s northeast corner, near the stout garrison, more were arriving. They were met by Kameyl’s unit of Silver Spears, who were now pouring forth from the monolith of the garrison. “Go,” Sümeya said, pointing toward the basilica. “Protect the graduates.” And then she was sprinting toward Kameyl, the skirt of her blood-streaked dress flowing behind her.
Melis pointed toward the stout basilica doors, where two dozen blood-fueled warriors were in a pitched battle with half as many Silver Spears. Together, Çeda, Yndris, and Melis swept over the ground toward them, Melis leading them screaming, “Lai, lai, lai!”
Strangely, there were no archers on the nearby buildings. Some stood on more distant rooftops, launching arrows to stall the enemy’s advance, but none stood here. Çeda smelled the same curious odor as before—something acrid and foul—but all too soon she was engaged with no time to think on it. The men of the Moonless Host raged, shouting curses against the Kings. Çeda had only just crossed blades with the nearest of them when she spotted one of the Silver Spears to her left. He lay prone, arms splayed, with what looked to be a small tuft of red feathers sticking from his neck.
She blocked a blow and retreated, then saw a dot of red blossom on the back of Melis’s neck. Melis immediately ducked and stepped away, feeling for whatever it was that had struck her. She tried to pull something free from her skin—a small dart, Çeda realized.
Çeda gave a rising whistle—enemy behind, beware!—as Melis slumped to the ground. Together, Çeda and Yndris retreated. Three of enemy’s soldiers followed. As Çeda and Yndris engaged them, another red dart streaked in, narrowly missing Yndris and striking the woman she was fighting in the cheek. The woman stumbled, eyes blinking, confused, and Yndris took her down.
As Yndris engaged the last of them, a man with a long beard matted in blood, Çeda spun around. The myrrh trees, she realized. The dart had seemed to come in from a high angle, and the trees were well-tended and fully fledged in thick green leaves. Their mushroom-shaped tops could easily hide one of the enemy. Making sure to keep moving, she scanned through the leaves of the nearest. Soon she spotted the silhouette of a willowy man hiding within, saw something long and straight lift to his lips.
In that moment she took a deep breath. She raised her sword, the flat of the blade angled toward the tree, and released her breath as her heart synced with that of the man in the tree. She felt his puff of breath as a streak of red flew out from within the leaves. She adjusted the blade, heard a ping as something tapped against River’s Daughter. The puffy red end of a dart appeared in the well-trodden ground at her feet.
Knowing she had only moments, she took three long strides, dropped River’s Daughter among the roots of the tree, and leapt. Her shoes gripped the bark as she powered herself up between the lowest branches. In the shadows, partially obscured by the boughs, she saw not a man hiding in the tree, but a boy, hardly more than ten. He was loading another dart into his blowpipe with quivering hands. She never gave him the chance to finish. She snaked through the branches and then swung her body, legs first, catching him full in the chest.
He flew backward, arms flailing, blowpipe twirling away. He thumped hard against the ground, breath whooshing from his lungs. As Çeda dropped and collected River’s Daughter, he rolled over, clutching his stomach, trying to regain his breath. He managed one wheezing inhalation before Çeda snaked her arm around his neck and squeezed until he lost consciousness. She left him there, limp but still breathing, and rushed back toward the basilica doors.
Yndris was still engaged with the same man, who was bloody from head to toe. She was hammering her shamshir against the man’s own, her face as mad as the mindless scarabs around them. With a cry she disarmed the scarab with a powerful blow, then opened him up with a deep cut to the ribs. Only three of the Moonless Host’s warriors remained, but they fought like madmen, continuing to battle even with terrible wounds.
What drove them so? This went well beyond mere fervor or hatred for the Kings. Was it an alchemycal mixture of some sort? Or the blood on their faces, perhaps drawn by the hand of a red mage? Either way, dear Nalamae, please see to it that Emre isn’t among them. Çeda cut the last man down from behind, wishing none of this were happening to her city, wishing she hadn’t been forced to play a part in it. But these were hard truths. War is war. The will of the Kings must be opposed, and the price they’d set for peace was blood.
With the enemy nearby all fallen, Çeda hurried to Melis. Her pulse was weak. There was nothing to do about it now, though. She had to hope Melis would live long enough for the Matrons to attend to her. Çeda had just smelled the acrid odor again when one of the Silver Spears who’d fought with them collapsed. She thought it might be loss of blood, a wound of some sort, but as she stepped closer, the man next to him collapsed as well. Both had been standing near the basilica doors.
“Step away,” Çeda said to Yndris.
Yndris stared at her as if she were craven. “Gather your courage, girl.” When she moved toward the fallen men, Çeda grabbed the back of her dress to stop her, and Yndris spun and slapped Çeda’s hand away. “What do you think you’re doing? Accompany me into that building or my father, your Lord King, will hear of it!”
“Can you not smell it? Take one breath near that door, and you’ll fall to whatever is leaking from the basilica”—she motioned to the unconscious men—“as they have.”
“Then take a breath, you bloody m
ule, and follow.”
Three times Yndris pumped her lungs like a forge bellows, then she picked up one of the spears dropped by the city guardsmen and ran for the door. Using the butt of the spear, she knocked out the small stained-glass window set eye-level in the center of the rightmost door, then reached inside and pulled up the wooden bar. With the bar gone, she pulled the door open and rushed inside. Çeda followed and was assaulted by a noxious smell, the same one she’d smelled earlier during the ceremony but hadn’t been able to place. There was no smoke or fumes that she could see, but her eyes immediately began to water, and her nose was irritated by a prickling sensation that was so strong she lost air to a short cough before recovering.
The center of the basilica was dominated by an arcade of impressive polished granite arches that supported three upper floors and a grand ceiling of elegant, crisscrossed supports. The lower floor had dozens of wooden desks and chairs with aisles in between. The center of the space was where the scholars were to have waited with the collegia staff. But they weren’t there. The guards were, though all were unconscious, as were the masters. But the scholars? There were none.
Çeda thought perhaps they’d fled from the other exit, the one leading to the street opposite the forum, but she saw now the door was still barred. There were no signs of conflict or bloodshed. If the soldiers of the Moonless Host had somehow found their way here, the guards would have fought them. She supposed it was possible they had waited until everyone inside had been knocked unconscious by the gas, but if so, how could they have taken the students from the building without being seen?
Yndris stared angrily at Çeda, as if she were withholding the answers to the mystery. Çeda pointed to the upper floors. The graduates might have fled there if they’d feared an attack. And yet when she took one of the winding sets of stairs up to the second floor, there was no sign of them.
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