"Because he's ugly, and ill-mannered, and thinks he can touch me, yes." Her smile was sharper than his knife. "He's also the senior spellcaster here, with somewhat greater authority in the eyes of House Thrune. I have had to reject him thrice since we left Egorian. Once might have been flattering. Twice I might have forgiven. Three times and he needs to die.
"Besides," she added, apparently as an afterthought, "I want his rings. Kill him too, and you'll have your treaty."
∗ ∗ ∗
She suggested poisoning the man's toads. Uskonos dai Virrtolgo—or Uskonos Greentongue, as the sorcerer was more commonly known—kept a clutch of dwarf thistletoads in the murky aquariums that Isiem had spotted earlier. Velenne said the man had been introduced to the narcotic effect of the toads' secretions while traveling through Varisia, and had brought a breeding pair back with him when he returned to Egorian. Years of addiction to their toxins had stained his tongue green and left him dependent on a daily scraping of the toads' secretions. Deprived of his amphibian drugs, Velenne claimed, Uskonos would go through a painful, crippling withdrawal. It would not kill him, but it would weaken his control of the arcane.
Isiem had no proper poison, but he did have a jug of aquavit—clear, high-proof alcohol—that Velenne had carried all the way from Egorian. The woman had a gift for grudges.
Trivial as her stated reasons for wanting Uskonos dead were, however, Isiem was glad to do her the favor. If there were to be a pitched battle, crippling the sorcerer would give the strix a considerable advantage—one they badly needed. For all his bravado in the diabolist's tent, Isiem knew the strix were badly outmatched. Flint-tipped spears and the rokoa's spells were a poor counter to Hellknight signifers and Chelish steel.
But if one of the enemy's best battlemages was a traitor to their cause, and the other was delirious from withdrawal ...
It was a chance he had to take. Isiem had prepared several invisibility spells before venturing into the Chelish camp. He used another now, cloaking himself from view as he left Velenne's tent and crept toward Uskonos's. Soldiers and signifers strode past him, alert for threats at the perimeter, but never watching for foes already among them.
Outside Uskonos's tent, the two mute slaves were tending a bubbling cauldron of duck meat and chopped onions. One of them held a wire tray of fat dumplings, which he lowered carefully into the broth. The other stretched handfuls of sticky dough into flatbread while keeping an eye on the soup pot. It looked like enough food to feed a dozen men, but the slaves never tasted a single bite. Everything they cooked was reserved for Uskonos Greentongue.
A minute later, the man himself waddled out to supervise the cooking. He was enormously fat. Glittering sigils in green and gold covered every inch of his body, face, and clean-shaven scalp. Brightly polished brass rings clanked in his swollen earlobes; another sagged from his septum, resting on his thick upper lip. A straggly fringe of reddish beard framed his chin. Despite the briskness of the desert winter, creases of sweat darkened his yellow silk robes under his arms and flabby breasts.
Yet for all his bulk, Uskonos Greentongue moved with a ponderous grace. He floated around the pot, sniffing the steam and sprinkling in pinches of fragrant spices while talking to himself in an oddly high-pitched lilt. His pupils were constricted to tiny pinpoints and his speech was noticeably slurred, causing Isiem to wonder whether the sorcerer had already dosed himself with toad venom for the day. Whether or not that was so, Uskonos seemed completely absorbed in his work, and so Isiem crept past invisibly, walking wide around the mutes as he approached the supply wagon.
The toads sat dark and patient in their murky brine. Screens of woven bamboo shielded their jars from the sun, and fronds of soft black waterweeds made it difficult to see inside, but Isiem could just make out the motionless lumps of the amphibians clinging like fleshy bubbles to the glass sides of their habitats.
Their soft, passive bodies turned his stomach. Isiem hurried forward, trying not to slosh the jug. He set it on the wagonbed and climbed up after it, contorting his body to stay in contact with the container so that it would remain invisible. Once on the wagon, Isiem pried the bamboo screens from the aquariums and, working as quickly as he dared, poured half the aquavit into each one.
Although he took pains to avoid telltale splashes or gurgles, it was impossible to keep the liquid from swirling violently as the clear spirit mingled with the cloudy water. The toads dropped off the walls, disappearing behind the waterweeds. A few tried to jump out, but their squat legs were clumsy, and Isiem pushed them back with the bamboo screens. A glance in his direction would catch the tampering, but Uskonos was enraptured by his cooking, and the mutes were attentive to their drug-addled master, and no one looked his way.
In moments the jug was drained, the lethal aquavit dissolved into the toads' bath. The amphibians' kicks and struggles stopped. Isiem climbed down and tucked the empty jug under the wagon, trusting to the shadows to hide it long enough for him to escape.
He was past the camp lines when the first scream sounded. Uskonos had discovered his pets' fate, and from the sound of it, his fury was fearsome. Velenne had spent the hour dining with the paralictor and Chelish officers in the commander's tent, ensuring her alibi against the sabotage. The sorcerer's wrath would not fix upon her—but, from the sound of it, whomever he did blame was not long for this world.
Isiem turned toward the setting sun. It blinded him, but he walked forward, shielding his eyes against its glorious glare as Uskonos's rage receded in his wake. The itaraak would retrieve him once he was far enough from the Chelish camp, but there was a long way to go before nightfall.
A long way to go, and a battle to plan.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Honor to the Dead
The itaraak do not like your plan," Kirii said.
It was late afternoon. Isiem had returned to Windspire that morning, blindfolded on the back of that unseen creature of feather and bone. Honey had been overjoyed to see him, leaping and prancing so giddily that he was afraid she might fall off the ledge, but the dog was the only one who seemed glad he was safe. Even Kirii had greeted his arrival grimly.
Isiem could hardly blame her—humans had never brought the strix any happiness, himself least of all—but he wished they would swallow their disdain and move. Since his return, the strix had been locked in argument about whether to accept the diabolist's proposal or pursue their own plans. Until now they had told Isiem nothing, and so he had paced around his nest-tent and stewed as he watched the hours slip by.
Velenne had wanted the strix to strike soon after Isiem killed the toads. Otherwise, she feared, Uskonos would be able to procure new ones. His supply of drugs was so critical to the sorcerer's functioning that he would almost certainly teleport back to Egorian to retrieve more, if he did not leave altogether—and while that would give the strix an even greater advantage by allowing them to attack the Chelaxians with Uskonos away, it would also prevent them from assassinating the caster.
And while that might not vitiate their secret bargain with Velenne, Isiem wasn't inclined to test her. If the diabolist hated Uskonos badly enough—or had enough to gain politically from his death—to have plotted against him since leaving Egorian, she would hardly be satisfied with driving him out of their camp. She wanted him dead.
Therefore, they needed to attack tonight, before the sorcerer got desperate and cast the spell that removed him from their reach. Tomorrow morning, at the latest. But it did not seem that the strix cared.
"They don't want to fight?" Isiem asked.
"They do not wish to flee," she said. "The itaraak are eager to fight these iron devils. They believe it will be a quick victory, as their other battles were. They see no reason to stop with the fat one or the captain of the kotarra. Why not kill them all?"
"Because they'll lose," Isiem said, struggling not to grind his teeth, "and if by some miracle they won, the reprisal would crush them. Not just Windspire. All the strix."
Kirii blinked sideways and ma
de a long, gurgling warble that trilled up and down an octave. Impatience, Isiem thought, but he wasn't sure. "I know this," she said. "The rokoa knows. I have told them. Some agree. Some do not."
"But they all want to fight?"
"Yes."
"Then let them. Whether they agree with us or not." Isiem was fairly certain that the paralictor would charge into the thick of the battle, and he could kill Uskonos himself if it came to that. Velenne could keep herself safe; she always did. "We need to attack tonight."
"We do not attack tonight." Red Chest swept onto Isiem's ledge, raising his immense black wings at the last moment to raise a cloud of gritty dust that made Honey yelp and momentarily blinded the Nidalese wizard. Not an accident. The leader of the itaraak had always made his dislike clear. "We raid tonight. We kill tomorrow."
"Why?"
The strix's primary feathers bristled. "Because we are not clean," he answered, his contempt thick enough for a human to detect, "and we are not blessed. Death must wait until the morning." With that he launched himself back into the abysses of Windspire, leaving as abruptly as he had arrived. Another wash of dust billowed over them and fell.
"Well, that's one way of telling us they've reached a decision," Isiem murmured when Red Chest was gone. "Do you think I should accompany them on the raid?"
"No. You will be only in their way. The itaraak know how to take horses." Instead of relaxing at the news that the impasse was broken, Kirii seemed even more tense. The feathers on her wings were stiff as the hackles of a wary dog, and she kept her gaze slightly averted from Isiem, causing her eyes to glow with sideways-reflected light.
"What's troubling you?" Isiem asked. "This is what we wanted, isn't it?"
"Not what was wanted." Kirii turned away from him fully, staring at the crooked peaks, wind-carved arches, and gaping pits that her people called home. Darkness filled her eyes. "But what must be if we are to survive. Windspire fights for its life tomorrow—and I will not, cannot, be there." She scratched at the stone, digging her small toe claws into the ledge. "The daughter of the rokoa must be kept safe, so that if the itaraak are defeated and our tribe falls to ruin, someone will remember the names of our bones."
"That is not your mother's role?"
"It should be. If she did not have me, it would be. But she believes I know enough of Windspire's lore to serve as our memory ...and that she herself is needed in the fight. It is taboo for a rokoa to take lives, but she has spells that may aid the itaraak, and that she is permitted to do."
"Would you rather it were you?" Isiem asked quietly.
The young strix's feathers stirred in the wind. A shrug? He couldn't tell. "I have no duty against killing."
"Neither do I."
"This is so." She turned back to him, briefly. The shadows danced across her face, and for a brief, dizzying instant Isiem imagined that it was not Kirii who spoke to him, but Helis. The rocks of Windspire, black and skeletal under the moonlight, seemed an echo of shadow-sworn Nidal. "Can you kill your own clan?"
He blinked to clear his vision. This was a different woman asking for death, and for different reasons. Very different. "They aren't my clan."
"They were."
"They aren't anymore."
Kirii ducked her head in acknowledgment—the closest thing a stiff-necked strix could manage to the human gesture of a nod. "Then I hope you will do what I cannot." She dropped into the night with a violent sweep of her wings.
Left to himself, Isiem sat on the ledge with his legs dangling into darkness, just as he had perched above the gardens of the Dusk Hall so many years ago. Honey came to sit beside him, and he stroked the dog's ears contemplatively, thinking of nothing in particular. The ghosts of the past were with him, close as his own shadow, and yet they did not trouble him tonight. The strix might be conflicted, but his own path was clear. Not easy, but clear.
And so he sat and gazed at the icy desert stars and listened to the patient breathing of the dog beside him. After a while Honey lay down and slept, her head nestled against his leg.
∗ ∗ ∗
Hours later, the itaraak returned. One by one they drifted into Windspire, materializing like phantoms from the black sky. If any were wounded or missing, Isiem could not tell.
The strix did not disperse to their own nest-tents, but instead gathered on the largest of the flats, only twenty yards from Isiem's own perch. A dungpatty fire burned there. It was little more than coals raked out in a pit, glowing dull and almost smokeless, but the itaraak ringed wide around it as though circling a bonfire.
When all were in their places, they began to sing: eerie, echoing songs that celebrated their own lives and mourned those that would be lost with the coming dawn. No instruments accompanied them; their music was the warriors' voices and the wind.
Fierce Spear stepped forward in the circle. As the others sang behind him, he plucked a small feather from his right wing and cast it into the coals. "I am itarii Fierce Spear, itaraak of Windspire. Valor is mine through my mother Fox Claw. Wisdom is mine through my father Owl Dream. I honor my blood and my ancestors tonight with my song. I honor them tomorrow with my spear."
He grasped a flint-bladed knife and cut a shallow line across his left bicep, then cut a similar line across a deer's bone, leaving a bloody gouge. Fierce Spear drew four such lines, dipping the knife into his cut each time so that each was stained with blood. "These are the lives I have taken. These are the sorrows I have made." He threw the bone into the fire. "I burn my sins. I challenge my ghosts. I go into the great storm without fear."
"Into the great storm we go without fear," the others chorused. Fierce Spear stepped back, stone-faced. The cut in his arm trickled blood, but he ignored it. The next itaraak came forward and began his chant.
Isiem eavesdropped for a while longer, using magic to understand their words, but after a time he dismissed the spell and listened to the song alone. Its sorrows lulled him to sleep and haunted his formless dreams.
Kirii shook him awake. The sky was gray behind her, almost as dark as her raven-feathered wings. The other strix were blurs in the chilly gloom. The aniselike fragrance of cricscaara stems drifted toward him: the itaraak were chewing the herb for bravery. It was the same plant they had used to poison Erevullo's Hellknights, although then they had used the concentrated sap. In smaller doses, if the stems were chewed and spat out rather than ingested, cricscaara dulled pain and increased courage.
"Go." Kirii pressed a vial of carved bone into his palm. Groggily Isiem shook it. A potion sloshed inside.
"You must fly," she said, pulling the vial's stopper for him and handing him two more. "The itaraak attack from the sky. To fight with them, you must do the same. Drink, and the wind will carry you."
He drank. The potion tasted like nothing. It ran down his throat, cold and quicksilver, and he felt the weight of the world lift away. Isiem gripped his tiny clay ziggurat and uttered a quick incantation, enabling himself to speak to the itaraak. A second spell wrapped an invisible field of force around him, offering some protection against Chelish arrows. Then he pressed his feet to the ground and leaped into the air ...and, to his amazement, flew. Honey ran back and forth beneath him, barking, as Kirii tried to soothe the dog.
Isiem's exhilaration did not last long. The itaraak were already well ahead of him, and he had to hurry to catch them. Most of the warriors flew grouped in a V-shaped formation like migrating geese to draw their enemies' eyes, while smaller clusters of camouflaged scouts moved in on either side. After a brief hesitation, Isiem joined the tail end of the V.
He hadn't had time to tie his hair before leaving Windspire. The long white locks whipped at his back, lashing into his eyes when the strix veered into the wind. Isiem spat them out and tried to stay focused. He had never flown before, and although the magic required no physical skill—it was entirely an effort of will to push himself in one direction or another—he still felt clumsy in the air.
But he kept up with the itaraak, drinking
a second potion to stay aloft when the magic of the first began to falter. Just when Isiem began to wonder whether he ought to drink the third, he caught sight of red-and-black pennons snapping in the wind, and smelled the smoke of cookfires rising on the air.
The Chelaxians were breaking camp. The itaraak had driven away or crippled their horses in the previous night's raid; Isiem saw vultures circling the dark lumps of their corpses outside the red walls of Tokarai Springs. The mastiffs, too, lay dead by their master's tent. Blood soaked the gravel under them and stained their short sleek coats.
But the soldiers were undeterred, and they did not seem afraid. They clad themselves in iron and steel, and they kept their eyes on the sky. Eight crimson-cloaked signifers and four Hellknights under the eye-and-vortex pennant of Citadel Enferac stood at their fore, the paralictor and maralictor prominent among them.
Squinting against the wind, Isiem scanned the soldiers below. The battlemages are not with them. Neither Velenne nor Uskonos and his bodyguards were in view, although both their tents had already been collapsed and packed away.
He spun two swift spells, one to bolster the web of force that shielded him from attack, the other for invisibility. Black Toes hissed at his sudden disappearance, but Isiem ignored the itaraak's discomfort. He had to find out where the sorcerer had gone. Dipping lower, he broke out of the strix's formation.
A scuffed stone told him. Thirty yards from the Hellknights' camp, an apple-sized rock bounced and rattled along the ground as if it had been kicked. No one was nearby—no one Isiem could see, at least—but a second jouncing rock confirmed it. Someone was walking there invisibly, and that someone was likely to be Velenne or Uskonos or both.
Swiftly Isiem ascended back to the itaraak. The strix had paused behind the last remnants of cloud cover, circling as they awaited their leader's command to attack. "They're here," the shadowcaller said hoarsely, panting for breath. Red Cloud's head jerked up in surprise at being addressed by seemingly empty air, but he soon recovered his composure.
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