by Zoe Marriott
The executioner nodded expressionlessly and unsheathed his sword, lifting the blade for a killing blow. I forced myself to watch, nails biting into my palms deep enough to draw blood, my heart booming in my ears; I wouldn’t look away; I wouldn’t abandon her. Rashna, I swear to God I’ll get him; I’ll get him for you … I swear I will.
At the last instant, cowardice overwhelmed me. My eyes snapped shut. I heard a hollow thacking, and gagged. One of the female guests screamed. I opened my eyes to see the executioner toppling back, an arrow protruding from the gap in his armour between neck and helmet.
In the sudden silence there came a lone voice, raised in a battle cry: “For Ruan! For Ruan!”
Other voices joined the first, echoing the words: “For Ruan!”
The captain’s grip on me tightened and he backed away, dragging me with him. A burning arrow thudded into the platform before the group of gourdin, causing them to step back hastily. The Sedorne guests drew together in fear and confusion.
Somewhere behind me there was a resounding crash, and then, from above, a sound that was horribly familiar: the hungry gasp of fire taking hold. I looked up so quickly that I banged my head against the gourdin’s armour-plated chest. A great whip of fire lashed out across the golden silk canopy above us, burning through the fine fabric with terrifying speed.
The guests saw it too. Screaming broke out, and they ran, fighting and trampling over one another to get off the pleasure craft and away from the flames. More fire arrows lanced through the air, scattering across the deck before the platform. Abheron held his ground as the gourdin hastily surrounded him in a protective formation.
“No, you idiots! Get them!” he bellowed. The gourdin hesitated, not wanting to abandon their king. He shoved through them and snatched the sword from the dead executioner’s hand. “Go. Kill the traitors!”
The gourdin drew their weapons and leaped down from the platform. A group of people rushed forward through the scrambling guests to meet the soldiers. I recognized them with a gasp of shock.
Among the servants, both Rua and Sedorne, I saw familiar faces. Faces that had run away from me at Mesgao a month ago, leaving fire and bitterness in their wake. I saw fighting namoa I had once trained with, Joachim the garden master, temple people. Wielding everything from meat hooks to pitchforks to battleaxes and still screaming the Rua battle cry, they charged the gourdin. The two groups met with a hideous, grinding shriek of metal.
I heard Sorin’s raised voice somewhere to my left, but couldn’t see him through the struggling fighters and the billows of smoke spiralling up from the deck. The captain’s grip around my torso tightened cruelly as he backed away from the fighting. I gasped for breath, thinking my ribs would crack, and struggled wildly. My boot heels banged against his armoured legs, and I scrabbled for purchase over the lacquered metal, searching for any weak points as I heaved my body forward, trying to throw him off balance. An arrow zipped past us, so close that I could feel the disturbance in the air. The captain dumped me on my feet, his grip loosening minutely as he half turned to try to catch sight of the archer.
Suddenly I remembered Abheron’s remark about a pierced shoulder, and how the captain had seemed to favour his right arm. Sucking in my breath, I wrenched my arms free with a grunt of effort and twisted, slamming doubled fists into the right shoulder joint of his armour. My fingers sang with pain as they thudded into the metal – but the captain went white with agony. He let go of me, instinctively clutching at his shoulder.
Released, I skipped back and caught my balance. As he reached for me, his face twisted with rage, I dodged sideways and kicked with all my strength. My booted foot landed hard on the side of his knee and the joint made a sound like a melon hitting the floor. He yelled with pain as he crumpled. I kicked again, clipping him squarely under the jaw with the reinforced toe of my boot. He collapsed.
Gasping for breath – no ribs were broken, but they were certainly bruised – I looked up to find that the sky was on fire. The canopy had gone up, and the blaze had spread to the railings and the deck, joining with the smaller fires from the arrows. The battle between rebels and gourdin was already over. I could see bodies from both sides lying on the smouldering deck. Anyone who was still alive had abandoned the ship while I fought with the captain. Where was Sorin?
I coughed painfully as I sucked smoke and heat in, turning to see Rashna crumpled at one edge of the platform. Standing near by, motionless and still holding the sword, was Abheron.
He was watching the fire, his face shiny with sweat, pupils like tiny pinpricks in the iciness of his eyes. His expression was an uneasy combination of desire and loathing as he watched the flames creep closer and closer.
Then he saw me. Before he could move, there was another crash overhead. I looked up in time to see part of the canopy and its wooden framework cave in. The flaming debris unfolded in an eerily silent drift of sparks and ash over the back of the platform where Abheron was standing. His eyes widened in alarm.
“Get off the ship!” he bellowed at me, flinging the sword aside. The fire seemed to drape around him for a moment, like a fiery cape. Then, in a burst of supernatural speed, he dived under the flames into the dark water, and was gone. The debris collapsed backwards, enveloping the place where Abheron had stood.
By some merciful favour of God, the collapse had left both me and Rashna untouched. But fire burned between me and the platform. I looked around in panic and realized that the flames had taken nearly the whole deck. If I didn’t get us off this vessel now, we’d both be dead.
I took another deep breath, almost choking on the scents of burning and blood that I remembered so well, and backed up slowly, my muscles quivering with tension. You’ve really gone mad now, I told myself.
I ran towards the flames as fast as I could, my breath rasping harshly in my throat as I jumped. The fire roared angrily as I passed over it, just out of reach, and landed awkwardly on the other side, fetching up against the edge of the dais. For an instant I leaned on the platform, clinging to it in sheer relief. Then I hauled myself up and bent over Rashna. I pressed two fingers to her throat and found the quick thread of her pulse. She was alive.
I slid my arms under her and arranged her as gently as possible for the rescuer’s lift. She didn’t even stir, draping limply over my shoulder like an old rug. She felt horribly delicate and light. Trying not to jolt her too badly, I stepped down from the platform – and stopped, dismayed. What now?
I couldn’t get back over the moat of flames, not carrying Rashna. And though I thought I could keep myself afloat in the water, I knew I couldn’t prevent Rashna from drowning while she was unconscious. As I stood hesitating, there was a splash and a thud behind me. I turned so quickly that I almost dropped Rashna – but I didn’t care.
“Sorin!” I cried joyfully as he heaved himself painfully up out of the water, hair plastered to his head, and crawled under the smouldering rail. “You’re all right!”
“Which is more than I can say for you, idiot woman,” he shouted, slumping on his hands and knees. “What the sweet goddess do you think you’re doing? Do you want to burn alive? Get into the lake!”
“I can’t – Rashna. What about your legs?”
“My legs are fine in the water! I’ll help with Rashna; there are boats coming. For Ioana’s sake, Zahira! Come on!” He beckoned urgently.
I staggered to the edge, and between us we clumsily eased Rashna into the water on her back, her head on Sorin’s shoulder and his arm across her chest. I slid in beside them, trying to remember the sculling motion that I had been taught when I was tiny. The water had lost any warmth the sun gave it in the day, and after the heat on the boat the cold was almost unbearable. It made my whole body burn and tingle. I wheezed, fighting for air.
“Boats – ack.” I choked as a wave of black water broke over my head. I surfaced spluttering. “Boats coming?” I managed to get out.
“Fishing boats,” he panted, struggling to keep Rashna above th
e jumping water.
“Who … did all this? Fire?” I choked again, and began coughing, the combination of smoke-burned throat and water too much.
“Rua people. Shut up!”
There was a shout in the distance – a familiar voice. I tried to turn in the water and went under again. I thrashed, trying to get back up, but the weight of clothes and boots felt like lead on my limbs. I should have remembered to take them off; they’d be ruined. I didn’t know if my fingers were breaking the surface any more. Am I sinking, or just floating? I wondered. It was like being blind, the darkness… My chest is going to burst.
Something closed round my wrist, biting into the numbed flesh. The lake seemed to clamp down on me, and I screamed at the pressure, inhaled water – and broke the surface.
More hands closed on my arms and shoulders, grabbing my sopping clothes, and yanked me up. I was choking and coughing, water streaming out of my mouth and nostrils as I was pulled aboard the boat. I forced my eyes open and saw Sorin leaning over me, his face dripping with water and ghostly pale in the reflected flicker of the fire.
“Thank the elements,” he said, sagging with relief.
“Reia? Can you hear me?”
“Deo?” I croaked. “What – how?”
“Time enough for that later,” Deo said. “Here.” He tucked a thick blanket around me. It prickled against my wet skin and smelled strongly of fish, but the warmth felt like a blessing.
“Help…” I whispered. My throat felt like the time Rashna had tried to strangle me, when I was eight. “Help me up.” I reached out a hand to Sorin. He tried to clasp it, but his fingers wouldn’t close tightly enough; eventually I grabbed his wrist, and he was able to pull me into a sitting position. I leaned against him with a sigh, and tucked the trailing edge of the blanket around him.
I looked about me. We were in a middle-sized Rua fishing craft, five other boats of varying sizes clustered around us in the water. They were too far away in the shadows for me to make out the faces of the occupants, but I recognized several as wearing the uniforms of Abheron’s servants, and was glad.
In our boat, two Rua oarsmen whom I didn’t know worked hard, taking us away from the burning pleasure vessels. Deo sat with us in the stern, a northern-style recurved bow and empty quiver of arrows beside him. He had a nasty scratch on his forehead and a spectacular black eye, but otherwise seemed to be unharmed. Between the two rowing benches Rashna had been carefully laid out and wrapped in more blankets like mine. Stefan, Sorin’s man, leaned over her, holding one of her hands, while a Sedorne woman applied salve to the cuts on her face. Judging by the look of tenderness on Stefan’s bruised face, Rashna would be well taken care of.
“We’re even now, you know,” Sorin said quietly.
I started from my half-doze. “What?”
“You saved me. Now I’ve saved you.”
“We were already even,” I said sleepily. I knew there were lots of important things to ask and tell, but at the moment my head felt as if it were full of rocks. Thinking would make them all tumble and grind together – and I wasn’t too anxious for that to happen just yet. “You kept your promise when we came to you at Mesgao.”
“That didn’t make us even. You saved my life. Do you know that in Sedra, if someone saves your life, then your life belongs to them? I’ve belonged to you since you saved me from burning to death. Now I’ve saved you from the same fate, we’re even.”
I went cold. “Does that mean you don’t belong to me any more?” I asked.
“No,” he said, wrapping the blanket more securely around me. “It means we belong to each other.”
I relaxed. “Oh. Good.” I put my head on his shoulder again.
The boat had turned in the water while we were talking. We were well away from the burning ships now and I could see the whole formation. The ropes and walkways that had anchored them together gone, they were drifting slowly away from the pier, listing in the water as their crowns of flame ate at them. Fire sent streaks of light and colour across the surface of the black lake. There were dozens of figures milling about on the pier: guests, servants who hadn’t rebelled, gourdin who had escaped the blaze.
A lone figure stood at the very end of the pier, completely still amid the chaos of the scene. The light gleamed wetly on his reddish-gold hair as he stared out at the burning armada of pleasure craft. Tiredness made my vision blur; I blinked. When I looked again, the figure was gone.
Something breathed into my mind, carrying with it images of gently flickering blue flames and a sense of warmth – and warning. The Holy Mother. I clutched at the comfort She offered like a child, but an instant later Her presence had faded.
I closed my eyes in weary resignation as the loss of Her warmth left me shivering. I knew what She had been trying to tell me.
Abheron is still alive. And he still wants you…
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
The house where Deo took us was hidden among the trees, low on the north bank of the lake, and constructed on wooden stilts that kept it out of the water when the lake rose in the rainy season. There was a crescent-shaped mooring bay beneath the house with enough room for several small fishing boats. Someone had left a lighted lamp hanging there to guide us in.
I only noticed any of this because, after the little fleet was tied up underneath the house, I had to stumble through tree roots and up stairs before I could get into it and lie down. I was conscious of light and warmth within, and people who flapped around me and my friends briskly, but that was all. I didn’t even notice that for very long.
It wasn’t until the next morning that I met the people who had helped to engineer our rescue, and asked them the many questions which, after a good night’s sleep, had occurred to me.
Sunlight and shadow made dancing patterns over the floor of the living area as the leaves outside the window were tossed by the rising wind. I sat crosslegged on a threadbare but comfortable cushion, with Sorin arranged less comfortably beside me – he was used to chairs, and sitting like this gave him cramp. Across the low table where our breakfast was laid out, Deo and another man sat. The other man was in his early fifties, with that hard, polished look that old soldiers get; and this was born out by the faded tattoo of a falcon across the bridge of his left cheek. What remained of his hair was white and bobbly like lambswool, and his beautiful, bright eyes were serious as he looked at us. His name was Toril and he was the leader of the Rua resistance in Jijendra. The first thing he told me was that he had been born a month after my father, and named in his honour.
While I was still struggling to think of an answer for that, Toril’s daughter came in with a tray of tea and, after placing it gravely on the table, took the final cushion to my left and sat.
“How is she?” I asked. Padmina had been helping the Sedorne herb woman look after Rashna in the other room of the house. The silence from that room had been worrying me since I woke up.
“She has a broken arm and nose, four broken fingers, several cracked ribs, and very nasty bruising all over, which I hope does not reach her internal organs. She isn’t awake yet – but in her condition this is perhaps a good thing.” Padmina folded her hands in her lap with an air of serenity that I envied. “Stefan is resting with her now. His healer friend is fetching more things from home to tend her with.”
“Do you think she will be all right?” I asked hesitantly, dreading the answer.
“I don’t think she’ll die. Neither does the Sedorne healer. She will be a long time recovering from this.”
“She’s a fighter. She’ll fight her way up again,” Toril added quietly.
I sighed. “Thank you.” Sorin touched my shoulder comfortingly, and I managed a smile for him. He was quiet this morning, suffering from terrible pains in his limbs following the exertions of the night before.
As Padmina poured tea and passed out the cups, I looked at Deo. “Well? What happened, Deo? To you and Rashna and Stefan?”
Deo rubbed one h
and over his head, taking his tea from Padmina gratefully. “If you have the patience for it, I’ll start at the beginning.”
“Yes, go on.” I took my tea and reached for a date and honey roll, less because of hunger than because my nervous fingers wanted something to play with.
Deo explained that when we arrived at the summer palace, one of the gourdin opened the carriage door for Anca and helped her down, and she smiled at him. There was something in the soldier’s attitude, and in Anca’s expression, that made Deo suddenly suspicious. He decided to go to the kitchen and make contact with Rashna and Stefan if he could – but they weren’t there, and when he asked the staff about them, they seemed terrified. Deo realized then that something was wrong. He decided he had to make an effort to find Rashna and Stefan before reporting back to us, and remembered his old friend Toril, who lived in Jijendra. Deo hid in a supply cart that was heading into the city, and made his way to his friend’s house – this house – hoping to get information and help. What he found was Stefan, battered half to death, sheltering there.
Here Toril took over the tale. He explained that Stefan had turned up at dawn the day before yesterday, bruised and bleeding, and claiming to be an agent of the alliance. Luckily for Stefan, word of what Sorin and I had tried to accomplish at Mesgao had reached Toril, and he believed Stefan, and took him in.
The news of an attempt at a Rua and Sedorne alliance against Abheron had come to Toril in an unexpected form. Rebel namoa and temple people – the same ones who had leaped into battle on my behalf last night – had raced to Jijendra ahead of us, and contacted the local resistance on arrival. These men and women were angry and disillusioned enough to set fire to Sedorne property in Mesgao, and to attack Sedorne wherever they found them, but they had not been willing to see me taken prisoner by the Sedorne king without acting.
I finally had my answer about Kapila’s attack. The once friends who had fled from Mesgao had not wanted me dead after all. In fact, despite everything, they had risked their lives to save me.