Zaethan’s fist collided with Wekesa’s mouth. Blood foamed around the other alpha’s teeth as he smiled wildly. Standing over his rival, Zaethan stepped away, though every fiber of his being wished to beat Wekesa to within an inch of his life.
“Do it…I attacked my alpha.” Wekesa sneered, dripping pink saliva. “We both know who he’ll punish.”
Panting, Zaethan dipped down and picked up the motumbha sticks strewn in the grass. “You’ve taken back plenty,” he huffed, electing to walk away. “Enough.”
Zaethan unraveled the blue cord and chucked it to the ground. As he exited the hedge maze, that swallow song echoed through the exterior garden once again, partnered by a faraway promise.
“Do you hear the birdie, Zaeth? I’m going to take everything.”
“Ano, ano. That’s not how he’s doing it.”
The four Darakaians huddled in Zaethan’s snug office, Kumo barely squeezed between the desk and Jabari. He fidgeted awkwardly to avoid the corner of the wood. Its orientation was a little too intimate for the beta’s liking.
“Ah, see.” Zahra punched his bicep and gestured to the topmost map on the desk. “I told you, uni, those tunnels are shut up. Packed full of rock and shtàka.”
Zaethan leaned back on the hind legs of his chair, letting his third harass Kumo while he considered an alternative.
“He has to have help,” he said finally, throwing up his hands and bringing the front legs to the floorboards. “Wekesa can’t be everywhere, yeah? He was in Fahime when you found the first body.”
“And what about Arune, and that yancy’s estate maid?” Zahra added, hand on her hip. The muscles in her arm flexed when she reached for a map underneath the stack.
“Arune could be an outlier.” Zaethan bounced his heel. “Ira said it resembled an animal attack. Maybe a coincidence.”
“Coincidence hillman trap, Alpha Zà.” Jabari’s coils swung back and forth. “Never trap a trick, ano. Trick trap the hillman or kakk keep a calling.”
Kumo glared at Jabari. “I hear kakk calling now.”
The mountaineer cautiously pointed to the map. “Because you hillman, being trapped by the trick.”
“Jabari’s right,” Zaethan interjected before someone received a black eye. “Even if he enlisted help, the killings multiplied once he arrived. Depths, he all but admitted it!”
“Alpha Zà.” Zahra leaned against the desktop and leveled with him. “He tell you plain? We know your shared past. What if it’s a distraction, yeah? Let you believe it’s him, distract you while he rallies support for a challenge.”
Kumo rubbed his neck, then dropped his arm. “Makes sense, Ahoté.”
“Wekesa said that more children will die,” Zaethan articulated each syllable, “because we let his thief escape. He looked me right in the eyes, and said they’d die for it.”
Zahra shared a glance with Kumo. Her brow lifted, sending creases across the sheen of her smooth scalp, disrupting some of the inked Andwele markings. “All right, then. Uni zà.”
Pinned against the door jamb, Jabari watched the older three warriors deliberate. Zaethan sighed and ripped a different map off the floor, unrolled it, and massaged his temples.
“You’ve watched him for weeks, Zahra. Even if he walked straight out the gate into Marketown, he couldn’t come back the same way.” Zaethan waved to the web of streets in his lap. “Not after that. Not after what he does to them.”
“Wekesa goes where we all go,” she replied. “The guard house, his suite, the hall, kitchens, the war room—” She trailed off as the parchment crunched in his hands.
“The sentries on our payroll don’t know anything, either.” Kumo scowled. “Even threw in a couple extra dromas. Nothing.”
Hammering at the door caused Jabari to jump. Zaethan nodded for him to permit the newcomer. Tripping into the already crowded room, Takoda nudged Jabari into the hall to fit in front of the desk.
“We have it, Alpha Zà!” He beat the surface of the desk and announced, “I found how he’s sneaking past us! Eh.” Takoda poked his thumb at Zahra and stood taller. “Past you, at least.”
Zaethan’s third whacked Takoda upside the head. “Owàamo to you, too, cocky cub-rub.”
Takoda recovered and flipped through the papers, rotating a blueprint of the palace main. His index finger glided over the lower level and tapped the kitchens fervently.
“Here.” He flopped his braids over, bending down. “It’s an unlocked access to the sewer. Kitchen hardly touches it, yeah? Nasty, kakka-shtàka sludge canal, but the lock is rusted. Never fixed.”
Zaethan chewed the inside of his cheek and peered at Takoda. “How’d you learn this?”
“Eh…” A rosy blush swept his forehead, and he grinned sheepishly. “So, there’s this yaya in the pantry, and she was giving me a, uh…” Takoda cleared his throat. “…a tour.”
He winced as Zahra smacked him even harder.
“And after the completion of your…tour?” Zaethan asked.
“She starts raving about dark spirits, moving buckets, puddling. Kakk talking, yeah?” Takoda flapped his hands around. “Somebody’s been using it.”
Zaethan rolled up the map and hit Takoda in the chest with it. “Zullee, my friend. Zahra,” he ordered, pushing off the desk, “I want you with Dmitri tonight. The rest of us are needed out there. We need to arrest Wekesa in the act.”
“We bringing Maji’maia with us?” Kumo swirled a finger around his eye. “Tàkom lai na huwàa?”
“Ano zà. Our brother has become a monster. It’s Darakai’s responsibility to put him down.” Zaethan belted his kopar. The witch’s accusation rang in his ears as if he still laid on the mat of that training room. “Damn the day we step aside and invite Boreal to do it in our place.”
THIRTY-ONE
The figure ignored a pair of drunkards wrestling ineptly in the street as he scanned the rooftops. Near the edge of Marketown, the stench of the slums overpowered a more pleasing spice in the breeze, floating from the closed stalls of the Drifting Bazaar.
He used his thumb to itch a fingertip on his left hand, hanging onto a drainpipe with the other. He’d shed another fingernail, the raw bed of flaky flesh raking against the interior of his stiff glove. It creased as he stretched out his hand. He knew from experience that the nail would not grow back.
Below, one of the intoxicated men smashed a bottle over the other’s head. Preparing to move along, eager for an alternative bouquet of smell and sound, the figure spun when Amaranth’s cry shot through the night. Gliding across the slats of the rickety building, avoiding a break in the tiles, he ran in the direction of her call. Further down the boardwalk, where the edge of the slum turned into a river of colorful booths, the Pilarese hawk circled overhead.
He leapt over a steep drop and landed on a collection of homes wedged into the tight street, heading for her wings. The figure did not hesitate, vaulting to a crooked terrace and hoisting himself through the window of an abandoned structure. His cloak caught on a splintered sill. Ripping it with his momentum, he sprinted to another window overlooking the alleyway. Amaranth surveyed on the opposite side.
The figure lingered behind a weathered curtain, searching the shadows for her sighting. Huddled, shaded in the back corner of a buoyant stall, a hooded man dumped his burden onto a pile of sack grain. His own cloak concealed his identity, even as he turned to hop off the merchant boat. Moonlight spilled over the addition to the stack of burlap: a pale, lifeless boy.
Preparing to vault, the figure flung himself back into the vacant hovel. At the farthest mouth of the alley, another person appeared, starting to run toward the hooded killer.
“Doru!” a southern voice screamed in pursuit. “Kumo, Alpha Zà! Tricker getting away!”
The figure stooped lower, hidden, as the Darakaian sprinted after, a sharp kopar in hand. From the other end
of the alley, a second southerner flew around the crumbling corner of a shop and barreled straight into the killer, slinging them against a crude lamppost. The figure heard a crack as the Darakaian screamed in anguish, rattling the only torchlight in sight.
Attempting to thrust his sickle-sword into the hooded man, his body suddenly spasmed and the kopar rattled on the cobblestones. Gargling blood, the Darakaian tried to mouth something to his assailant. The figure leaned forward to read his lips, but the cape covered the warrior’s face when it whirled. The hooded man bolted into the shadows, leaving the Darakaian slumped against the post in a growing puddle of crimson.
His kinsman arrived at his side, in not nearly enough time as the struggle had happened so quickly—even the figure shook himself to recall his original quest. Without concern for the panicked Darakaians, howling for help, the figure gripped the top of the window frame and swung onto the gable. Under Amaranth’s lead, he dodged a broken chimney and trailed her deeper into Marketown’s busy district.
There—between a trader’s cart and the rear of a loud tavern, he spotted the hooded man weaving through a crowd of hagglers. The figure stalked his path from atop the adjacent building. Speeding up, he lost his footing over a cable. Cursing the misstep, rare as they were anymore, he watched in helpless horror as a slew of tiles scattered over the edge and plummeted into the street. The hooded figure pivoted, still disguised by the swath of rich fabric, and took off into the seedy network of trading trolleys and smoking tents.
In the scarce torchlight, as Marketown’s customers preferred the anonymity of darkness, the figure leapt to the ground. He pulled his cloak close, head low, and plunged into the swarm of bustling patrons. Passing a pipe marrow tent, he breathed shallowly, refusing to allow the substance access to his shriveled lungs. Bobbing in and out of the throng, the figure soon lost track of the man, though Amaranth still hovered above. He ducked around a hanging rug when a woman bumped into him, reaching for a bushel of milled spices, and began to barter with the owner. Through the strips of the plaited fabric, he studied each passerby patiently, trusting the hawk’s guidance.
Vigilant, the figure watched the movement in the street from the trader’s booth for half an hour. Amaranth screeched over the racket, pulling his attention to a smoking tent across the way. The hooded man exited through the slim split at the front and reentered the crowd. Easing away from the stand of goods, the figure slinked along the narrow lane between the street sellers and a row of rowdy establishments.
Maintaining pace at the rear, the figure followed him down a vacant alley. Out of sight, the figure sprung off his heels and dove onto the killer’s back, awakening the monster within.
The cowl of the figure’s cloak flew off as his blistered arms snaked around his prey’s neck and squeezed the throat mercilessly, crushing his knees into the ribcage. Animalistically, the glands behind his canines flooded with the expectation of the kill. Stickiness drooled from his mouth, down his chin.
The figure was driven into the wall and slammed against the old brick repeatedly as his prey tried to break free. His state of mind fractured, the figure thrashed his head and constricted his limbs tighter. Sputtering erratically, his prey’s veins pounded in his ears. Snarling through his nostrils, the figure sank his teeth through the velvet of the killer’s cloak. Sour warmth bathed his parched and abrasive tongue. He heard a grunt of pain, the accompanying scent of fear pleasing and sweet.
Spinning them away from the brick, his prey flailed through the alley. Savagely, the figure’s jaws stayed anchored in his prey as they both tumbled into the open.
The figure heard shrieks in the distance, and his humanity tried to reclaim dominance over his curse. Something smashed into his back, hurling him off his prey and into a casket of spirits. Rolling into a crouch, he growled at the forming circle of frightened faces.
“Look at the skin—the boils! War-taint!” A plump woman gasped and hailed to the sky. “He’s war-tainted!”
A chorus of screams jolted the figure back to himself. Barrels overturned, rolling down the street. People scattered as others sought makeshift weapons, looking to extinguish the sickness in their midst.
Nearby, a clothesline descended at an angle from the heights. The figure sprinted for it as a burly trader grabbed a butcher’s knife and swung after him, barely missing his leg. The figure shimmied up the cabling to its anchor stories higher. In the haven of the skyline, he clutched his beating heart before heading for the western docks.
As he prowled, the figure repeated his own name, again and again.
Under the unforgiving moon, he climbed aboard a vacant ship moored in the yard. Suspended on the topmast, the figure stared over the murky waters of Thoarne Bay. He spit the killer’s blood into his glove, nauseated. It tasted of waste and bile, much like his own.
He closed his eyelids, scorched from their blistering, and wished it were war-taint that ravaged his body instead of the truth. For damnation was so much worse.
THIRTY-TWO
Luscia
Luscia removed the stopper of the vial and swirled the murky fluid inside. Legs of the liquid slid down the glass, thicker than Alora’s previous concoctions. Resigning herself to its bitterness, she swallowed the tonic and trudged to the edge of her lush bed, wearing little more than her linsilk shift.
As she slid under the blankets, Aksel yipped at her heel. His impatience swelled into a throaty growl when she refused to move.
“Your manners are absolute trash these days,” she grumbled into her pillow. “Niit, you brute.”
Luscia hoisted herself up on an elbow when he started to scratch at the door, growling louder at the illuminated seam between it and the floor. With a groan, she rolled off the mattress, grabbed her dressing gown, and listened from the interior, radials at the ready. There were men talking just outside, their cadence clipped and argumentative.
“Heh’ta, Aksel,” she ordered her companion, wrapping the dressing gown tighter.
Easing into the common room, Luscia nearly tripped on the hem of her robe in surprise. In the threshold to her apartments, Kasim’s beta cradled another Darakaian in his arms, limp, grey, and soaked in blood. Kasim was attempting to push through Marek and Declan, who blocked the Darakaians’ entry to the foyer. From his chest up to the side of his face, both skin and leather were smothered in gore. The veins of his neck strained under the wetness, warping his expression into something unbridled and bare.
“I said, call for her! She can save him.” Kasim’s throat pressed into the edge of Declan’s blade. His overly bright eyes searched beyond their barricade, latching onto hers. “You will save him!”
Marek held his stance unwaveringly as he murmured for instruction, “Ana’Sere?”
“Ock, Aurynth’s watchman, on high!” Tallulah scurried to Luscia’s side, adjusting her own floppy nightcap. Sputtering, she heaved a blanket around her curled shoulders. “Well, I’ll not give them a free show!”
Luscia felt her heartbeat inside her ear canal. She weighed the ramifications of Boreali involvement, should he not survive the night. The hour aside, such a request was unprecedented—a Darakaian choosing to bypass court physicians to beseech the House of Boreal for healing.
“You will save him.” Kasim’s voice cracked. Worded as a demand, spoken as a plea.
Blood dripped in the entry near the beta’s feet as he readjusted the weight of their friend. Kasim’s man didn’t have much time, if any at all.
“Wem.” Luscia nodded and motioned for her men to admit the Darakaians. “Wem, to my bedroom, quickly now. Bolaeva,” she begged, directing the gruesome group to her quarters, “please be careful. Try not to move his abdomen.”
The hulking beta tenderly laid the man on her mattress and lumbered out of the way. The injury continued to bleed, quickly soaking the fabric in an unpromising stain. A mane of shoulder-length braids spread over the crest of her pillow. S
he recognized him as the third member of their night raid through the Bazaar. Luscia tore a piece of linen with her mouth and thrust it into Creyvan’s grasp as he entered the room, door swinging behind him.
“Hold this. Tallulah!” she shouted for the lady’s maid. “Hot water, needle, thread, and all the rags you can find. Marek, cut his shirt open. Niit, lift it, don’t touch the skin.”
Peeling the filthy sparring tunic away from the flesh, red flooded to the surface, no longer contained. Yelling for Declan to apply pressure, Luscia tossed the drenched tunic into a bucket Tallulah lobbed near the bed. At Luscia’s direction, Creyvan replaced Declan as she ran to the viridi box and unlocked her apothecary.
Her back to the scene, she rushed to grind gilead with kaléo, hiding the subtle twinkle of the chartreuse leaves and white stamen within the basin of the mortar. “Mila!” Luscia called, sprinkling iridescent yarrow buds into the paste. “Where is that girl? Mila, the water!”
“She’s gone.”
The brisk, off-putting tone caused Luscia to turn. Creyvan’s jaw was set as he pinned a wad of cloth against the southerner’s middle.
She moved to take his place and caught his eye. “Wem, that was thoughtless of me.” Luscia had not realized his feelings for her attendant were so serious. His resentment likely made worse, she suspected, by the fact that Mila traveled to Roüwen with his brother. “More water. Bolaeva, Brödre.”
Crevyan stomped out of the room to do as asked, without retort. Using a warm rag, Luscia carefully wiped gravel out of the wound and gasped.
“Should we send for Ana’Mere?” Declan asked, examining the wounds with concern.
“Niit, not unless we have to.” Luscia sent a look at Marek. He tilted his head suspiciously. “Kasim, these injuries…how did this happen?”
Kasim paced at the foot of the bed, rubbing his forehead anxiously. His gaze narrowed at the two Najjan in the room before returning to Luscia. “We regrouped. Went back out there. Found him at the edge of Marketown, depositing another body. Takoda…” He gripped the footboard forcefully. “Takoda got to him first.”
House of Bastiion (The Haidren Legacy, Book 1) Page 30