“I suggest, Lord Martin,” said Nasser, “that some scouts be sent to the north, to check upon the progress of the Grand Wazir’s advance.”
“I shall go,” said Kylon.
“Alone?” said Lady Claudia. She rode easily, wearing an Istarish headscarf to keep the sun off her head and neck, her son riding with her. Kylon had never given any thought to how an infant might travel on horseback, but Claudia Aberon Dorius had clearly given it a great deal of consideration, because she had obtained a small, well-padded bassinet from somewhere. Corvalis rested in it, wrapped in a light blanket, a veil stretched over him to ward off the harsh sun. He seemed comfortable enough. From time to time he cried a little, but Kylon supposed it was the nature of infants to cry, and his mother soon soothed him back asleep. “It would not be safe to go alone, Lord Kylon.”
“I would be,” said Kylon. “If I am unhorsed, I have the best chance of outrunning any enemies.”
“This is so,” said Martin. “Tylas! Find Lord Kylon a horse.” He turned towards Nasser and Sulaman. “Meanwhile, I would be most interested to learn how I wound up traveling with the Padishah’s son and heir.”
“Ah,” said Nasser, his white smile flashing over his face. “It is fortunate that I am here to tell it, because I am an excellent storyteller, and it is indeed a long story.”
Tylas found Kylon one of the lighter, faster horses, and he rode north.
The lands around Istarinmul proper were flat and arid, filled with tough brown grasses and low, rolling hills. None of the lands near the city were suitable for farmland, and all of Istarinmul’s food came from Istarish Cyrica, the Vale of Fallen Stars, and from trade with Anshan and the Empire. With trade disrupted in the aftermath of Cassander’s attack, Kylon supposed Tanzir would find it easier to starve out the city and force a surrender, assuming Erghulan’s army did not smash him first.
He wondered why the ancient Istarish had built their city in such an inhospitable place. For command of the Starfall Straits, perhaps? Caina would know. She enjoyed history, or at least found it fascinating in a way that Kylon did not. She had told him about the old tales of the Istarish, how Istarr had traveled north and founded the city after defeating the Demon Princes, seven nagataaru-possessed sorcerers who had ruled what was now Istarinmul. Caina had always had an interest in such old legends, though given how the ancient hand of the Moroaica had affected her life, he could understand her fascination.
A wave of deep, rending melancholy rolled through Kylon, and he closed his eyes for a moment, breathing hard. He felt Caina’s absence as keenly as a physical pain, a pain made all the worse because he didn’t know if she was safe and healthy or even alive.
For a moment he considered abandoning Nasser and Sulaman and the others and riding to find Caina, but he forced the thought aside, using the discipline he had used to wield the sorcery of water. What was done was done. If he had not been at the embassy, it was possible that the Immortals would have stormed the mansion before Nasser and Sulaman had arrived, that the Alchemist would have killed Claudia with one of the vials of Hellfire.
And Caina could take care of herself. If Kylon would have trusted anyone with Caina’s life, it would have been Caina herself.
The thought cheered him somewhat, or at least eased his mind, and he rode on, seeking the army.
It wasn’t hard to find.
Kylon reined up at the top of a shallow hill, the domes and towers of Istarinmul just visible in the haze at the horizon. To the north he saw a dark mass spreading south across the arid plains, like a poison poured from an amphora.
It was the army of Grand Wazir Erghulan Amirasku. Erghulan had been gathering men to defend the city, calling his soldiers and hiring mercenaries to defend against Tanzir’s anticipated siege. Those men had been useless against Cassander, but Callatas had ordered Erghulan to attack, and the Grand Wazir had obeyed. Kylon thought at least fifteen thousand men, maybe even as many as twenty thousand, had marched south. He saw horsemen and footmen both, clad in chain mail and spiked Istarish helmets. Wagons held disassembled siege engines and rows of amphorae, likely jars of Hellfire to rain upon the enemy. A group of black-armored soldiers marched in the heart of the army – thousands upon thousands of Immortals. Agabyzus had thought no more than six or seven thousand Immortals remained in Istarinmul after the destruction of the Inferno, scattered amongst the personal bodyguards of the emirs and the Alchemists. Callatas had likely recalled them all to serve in Erghulan’s army.
It was a strong force. Kylon didn’t know how many men Tanzir and the rebel emirs had gathered, but he hoped it was enough.
For a moment he hesitated, staring at the towers and gleaming domes of Istarinmul. Had Caina made it out of Istarinmul? Kylon didn’t know.
He might never know.
Again the melancholy threatened to swallow him, and Kylon pushed it aside.
There were battles to fight. More to the point, the army’s patrols might see him, and getting killed while wallowing in sadness would be a ridiculous way to die.
Kylon turned his horse and rode to rejoin the others.
Chapter 7: Negotiations
Morgant followed Caina and Annarah as they ran from the wreckage of the Desert Maiden and towards the docks of the Alqaarin Harbor.
He was surprised, both at Caina and at himself.
Morgant thought he would have gone with Sulaman and Mazyan to the rebel army. He had promised the old Padishah that he would keep Sulaman safe. Of course, Sulaman was surrounded by Nasser Glasshand, Mazyan, and Kylon of House Kardamnos, three of the most formidable fighters that Morgant had ever seen. Frankly, Sulaman was safer than he had been at any point in the last seven years or so, and Morgant could consider his promise to Nahas Tarshahzon fulfilled. A pity the old man was likely dead. Since the Inferno was destroyed, Morgant could think of any number of useful things he could have requested as his reward in lieu of access to the Inferno.
Nevertheless, he had promised to help Annarah, and Annarah was going with Caina. So Morgant found himself following Annarah and Caina as the broad blue expanse of the Alqaarin Harbor yawned before them, stretching to the sea beyond. Morgant kept his promises, so he supposed in hindsight that it wasn’t at all surprising that he was here.
Though Caina did still surprise him.
He had not expected she would be willing to part from Kylon for any reason. Her logic was sound. Callatas usually sent the Huntress to do his dirty work, and even under the influence of Kharnaces’s compulsion, he would dispatch the Huntress to kill off Tanzir and the rest of the rebel leadership. Not that Morgant cared what happened to them, but if he saw the danger, then Caina would as well. Sending the Kyracian and the valikon to protect them was the rational choice, the cold and logical choice.
Yet Morgant had not expected that from Caina. For all her cleverness, she was still a young woman in love, and young women in love thought with their hearts, not their heads. But she had made the hard choice nevertheless. Morgant found himself impressed, just as he had found himself impressed that night in the burning wreckage of the Craven’s Tower, when Caina had threatened to kill him unless he helped Kylon. She might have been a young woman in love, but she was a hard young woman, which was why he had chosen her to help him rescue Annarah from the Inferno…and Caina was the reason that Annarah was free and the Inferno was a pile of slag.
Caina came to a stop, looking around.
“What is it?” said Annarah, lifting her left hand. Her pyrikon had returned to its bracelet form, but he knew she could return it to the form of a staff in an instant. “Foes?”
“Not presently,” said Caina. She had led them down an alley off the main street, at the very boundary between the harbor district and the Alqaarin Quarter proper. A mixture of warehouses and taverns lined the streets, with many of the taverns doubling as brothels. Caina walked a short way up the alley, staring at one of the taverns. It had begun its life as a squat warehouse, but then someone had added two more floors of rented ro
oms on the rooftop.
“Are we stopping for a drink?” said Morgant. “Seems strange to do when the fate of kingdoms and empires are in flux.”
“We’re not buying a drink,” said Caina, still contemplating the tavern. “We’re negotiating.”
“With whom?” said Morgant.
“Captain Murat and his crew,” said Caina. “You’ve met them. Murat is stubborn, and he won’t want to set sail until tomorrow.”
“Perhaps the sound of the drums and the Great Horn will persuade him otherwise,” said Annarah.
“Perhaps,” agreed Caina. “But Murat’s selfish, not stupid…”
“Those aren’t mutually exclusive,” said Morgant.
Caina kept talking. “He knows about the rebellion, and he’ll assume that the Grand Wazir is marching south to assail the rebels. He knows that has nothing to do with him, and that he’ll get a great deal of money from Nasser if he sails tomorrow. So he’ll stay put. We just have to persuade him to leave early.”
“Unless,” said Morgant, “the sound of the war drums convinced him to abandon us and leave Istarinmul, lest his crew gets press-ganged into the Padishah’s army.”
Caina hesitated. “It’s possible. But I doubt it. Murat will stay put. There’s too much money at stake. We just need to convince him to leave right now.”
“And how are we going to do that?” said Morgant. “Ask nicely? Or you’ll bat your eyelashes at him? I don’t think the Kyracian would approve. Unless you’ve forgotten about him already.”
“Morgant,” said Annarah, her disapproval plain.
He wanted to see how Caina would react. Her relationship with the Kyracian drove her, but it was also a source of weakness. If she indulged that weakness at the wrong moment, it might get them all killed, and Morgant would be unable to keep his word, which troubled him more than the prospect of death itself.
Yet Caina did not react, save a brief tightening of a muscle near her left eye. She knew him well enough by now to know his methods. Annoying, that.
“We convince him to leave early,” said Caina, reaching into her pack, “like this.”
She yanked out a mask, pulling it over her head, and then donned her Ghost shadow-cloak. It seemed to darken the air around her, wrapping around her like a shadow as she drew up the cowl. By some secret the Ghost nightkeepers had learned to wrap silk with shadows, creating the shadow-cloaks. That cloak blended and merged with the shadows, enhancing Caina’s already formidable abilities at stealth. It also shielded her mind from detection spells and thought-controlling sorcery, though since she was now a valikarion, it was hardly necessary.
And since she was standing in the middle of an alley on a sunlit day, the cloak’s abilities at stealth were useless.
Morgant scoffed. “What, you’re going to ask him as the Balarigar? Murat will just laugh at you and hand you over to the Grand Wazir.”
The bounty on the Balarigar’s head, last Morgant had heard, was still two million bezants. In fact, one of the official decrees was nailed to the door of the tavern. The Grand Wazir had worn out an army of scribes publishing those decrees. Morgant had no doubt that Murat would murder his own mother for a tenth of that sum.
“Of course not,” said Caina, her voice a muffled from the mask. “Follow me into the common room. Listen to me, and when I run up the stairs to the second floor, wait a few seconds, and then shout that the Balarigar is fleeing to the Alqaarin ship in the harbor. Got that?”
Morgant groaned. “You’re going to do something clever.”
“Hopefully,” said Caina. She took a deep breath, and her voice changed, becoming deeper, raspier, a hissing snarl that matched the shadow-cloak. Morgant had to admit it was an impressive bit of theatricality. “Follow me.”
She threw open the tavern door, pausing a bit in the entrance. Morgant heard the murmur of surprise from the inside of the tavern, followed by a shocked silence. He looked at Annarah and rolled his eyes, but to his surprise she grinned. Annarah was so honest that she enjoyed Caina’s little ruses more than she should have.
He sighed and followed Annarah into the tavern.
The common room was crowded. All the porters who would have been unloading ships at the docks and stocking the warehouses had nothing to do, so they came to the taverns and drank. Porters and rowers and sailors, both slave and free, sat the benches and tables. The dockside taverns were egalitarian in their devotion to selling cheap wine to both slave and free alike. Every eye was upon Caina as she strode into the common room, the shadow-cloak flowing around her. Morgant admitted it did look more impressive in the dim light of the common room.
“I am the Balarigar!” announced Caina in her disguised voice. Her words thundered through the room. “I have slain the vile sorcerer Cassander Nilas, and I call upon the men of Istarinmul to join me as we march upon the Golden Palace and cast Grand Master Callatas from his throne of lies!”
No one moved.
“Join me,” said Caina, “and together we shall defeat the Grand Master and free Istarinmul from his tyranny.”
Still no one moved. Morgant could read their expressions easily enough, and he could tell every man was thinking the same thing. The Balarigar was here, alone…and the Grand Wazir had put a bounty of two million bezants upon his head. Whoever killed the Balarigar here and now would never have to unload a ship again.
Caina dashed up the stairs, and Morgant shared a look with Annarah.
“After him!” said Morgant. “He’s fleeing to an Alqaarin ship in the harbor! After him, fools! If we take him, we can split the bounty! After him! Stop him from getting on that ship!”
He ran up the stairs, Annarah following. Morgant saw Caina vanish onto the third floor, and he ran faster. At the third floor, he saw Caina stop in a doorway, beckoning to him, and he and Annarah ran after her, crowding into a cramped bedroom that stank of sweat and worse things. Caina slammed the door and barred it behind them, but before she did, Morgant heard the sound of the mob rousing itself to action.
“We’re trapped,” said Annarah. “Now what?”
Caina nodded, pulling off her mask and shadow-cloak and shoving them back into her pack. “Morgant. Cut us a door.”
Morgant drew his black dagger, its edge glinting in the dim light coming through the room’s sole window. The rickety walls of the room were built of cheap brick and mortar, and presented no challenge to his enspelled weapon.
“So why did we enrage the mob?” said Annarah.
“It’s simple,” said Morgant, stabbing the dagger into the brickwork. He dragged the weapon down, carving a glowing line into the bricks. It felt like cutting thick cheese. “We riled up the drunkards and sent them running to the harbor. Along the way, other idlers will see them. No one in the harbor has anything useful to do at the moment. So this mob will head for the Sandstorm…”
Annarah laughed. “And Murat will panic and flee the city, since he’ll think they’re coming for the bounty on his head.”
“That’s the plan,” said Caina.
Morgant made a quick horizontal cut, and then ripped the dagger upward. “Or you could just burn the building down.”
Caina gave him a puzzled frown. “Why would I do that?”
The sound of people running up the stairs came through the door.
“You enjoy it,” said Morgant, making another cut. “How many buildings have you burned down? The Inferno…”
“That was the Hellfire,” said Caina.
“The Craven’s Tower…”
“Also Hellfire.”
Morgant yanked his dagger free and considered the cuts. “You deliberately set the Shahenshah’s Seat on fire.”
“I do not burn down buildings that often,” said Caina.
Annarah started to say something and stopped herself.
“I always have a good reason!” said Caina. “It…for the gods’ sake. We can argue about it on the ship. Go!”
Morgant grinned and kicked at the wall. The slab of brick fell outward,
disintegrating as it did, leaving them with a short jump to the rooftop of the warehouse below. Morgant went first, helping Annarah down, and then Caina followed, her mask and shadow-cloak secured in her pack once more. Caina led the way, and they ran from rooftop to rooftop towards the harbor, jumping over the narrow alleys between the warehouses. Morgant glanced back towards the tavern, and saw the mob spilling out into the street.
Damned if it wasn’t working!
They reached the last warehouse before the docks proper, and scrambled down the wall and to the broad street before the piers. It was easy to find the Sandstorm, since Captain Murat’s ship was the only one in the harbor. Morgant spotted Murat’s crew going about their tasks on the ship, a motley mixture of Anshani and Istarish sailors, with a few Kyracians and Saddaics here and there. About half of Murat’s crew was Alqaarin, their skin far darker than the bronze shade common among the Istarish and the Anshani.
Sanjar Murat himself stood at the rail, fanning himself with his elaborate plumed hat. He was a giant of a man, nearly seven feet tall, clad in black boots, black trousers, and an open red coat that displayed an expanse of muscled chest and flat stomach. His dark face was leathery, and his head had been shaved, likely to keep lice at bay, though a close-cropped black beard came to a point below his chin, framing his gleaming white teeth. A leather baldric crossed his chest, holding a row of throwing knives and a sheathed cuirass that hung from his hip. He frowned as they approached, and then a white, sardonic smile crossed his face as they ran to the end of the Sandstorm’s pier.
“Well, well, well,” said Murat in Istarish, his voice heavy with the rolling accents of the Alqaarin sultanates. “Master Ciaran, Master Markaine, and your lovely silver-haired maiden.” He vaulted over the railing and landed upon the pier with easy grace, sweeping out his hat to Annarah in an ostentatious bow. “Have you come to sell her to me?”
Annarah only smiled. “I am a married woman, sir. Such questions are inappropriate.”
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