by Evan Winter
He felt her then, in some part of his mind or soul or will. He felt her ooze her way over him and onto his arms. He felt her in his broken fingers and in his neck and face, too close, like a larger presence holding him, choking him, and breathing on him with fetid breath. She made him open his hands, digit by digit, and in a world far away from the mists that cloaked him, he heard his swords fall to the ground.
“Yes,” she said, and it seemed that she was beside him, whispering, her wet lips smeared against his ear. “This is how it ends for you, freak. This is how it always ends for those who think to stand as tall as their betters.”
She forced her way deeper inside his real body, the one in Uhmlaba. She moved his tongue between his teeth and made him bite down.
“How dare you speak to me,” she said. “You don’t have the right.”
Tau pushed against her control, but she was too strong and he could taste blood as his teeth clamped down harder and harder on his tongue.
“How dare you,” she said as blood began filling his mouth.
He tried to shout, to move. He tried to call for help, but the only thing he could manage was to hold on to the tethers of her soul as the Indlovu came to take his life. The only thing he could do was wait until it was over, but then came the pressure.
It was instant and crippling and Tau thought it was death. He thought either the Indlovu had killed him or the chairwoman had done it with her powers, but she shouted in surprise and he knew it was something else that had come for them.
“Mirembe!” called a new voice, heavy with power.
Tau battled the tethers, and in Isihogo, where they were looser, he was able to turn his head. Beside him was a darkness deeper than the blackest night, a shroud so thick Tau could see nothing of the person it hid. He knew them anyway.
“Mirembe, you have overstepped,” his queen said.
“Tsiora?” Mirembe whispered, and Tau heard her only because she held him in her shackles, her voice sounding out like a bell rung in his head. “It’s true?” she asked, and he felt Mirembe’s fear as if it were his own. “Goddess wept … it’s true?”
The bonds holding Tau slipped as Mirembe gave in to dread and Tau struggled against her. But before he could free himself, the globe of black beside him moved forward and a blinding bolt of light shot out from it, flying for the chairwoman. Mirembe tried to move, but the bolt grew in size, becoming too large to avoid, and when it struck her, the world exploded. Caught in the blast, Tau’s consciousness collapsed, bursting like an overweight bubble and sending him spinning into nothingness.
When he could piece enough of himself back together, he found he was on his hands and knees in the council chambers. He spat the wad of blood from his mouth, thankful his tongue was still attached, and even that small act took most of his will. Tau’s head felt like it held a hundred serrated dirks, and when he looked up, pain forked through him like a surgeon had pushed the knives deeper.
Across the room, Mirembe had tumbled backward over her chair and was sprawled on the ground, half senseless and moaning.
Tau growled and tried to get his feet beneath him. She’d been in his head, her oily grip sliding over and dirtying his soul. She’d held him helpless, used him, and he would kill her for it. He raised one knee, felt a presence near him, and jerked his head to see who was there.
An Indlovu was standing over Tau, sword at the ready, and Tau bunched his muscles, preparing to dive away, when he noticed the man was holding the blade defensively. The Greater Noble was in a standoff with two of the Queen’s Guard.
Four of the other Indlovu were on the ground, felled, no doubt, by Thandi, who had her hands up and pointed in their direction. The remaining five were facing Tau’s scale and the two other Queen’s Guard as well as Nyah, whose hands were up and ready.
Tau sat back on his haunches. His odds had been wrong. His scale might have been weaponless, but the three Gifted with them were not.
“Be at ease, my queen,” pled one of the councilwoman. “We are yours.”
“No!” yelled Otobong, his face screwed up as he grasped the stump of his arm. “Don’t do this. She offers nothing. She—”
Kellan slapped the general with the back of his hand. “General, you should step away now.”
One of the Indlovu hefted his sword, but the same councilwoman called out. “Indlovu, do nothing! Queen Tsiora, this must end.”
“And it will,” the queen said. “Lay down your arms and none of you will be harmed.”
“Don’t … don’t do it,” Otobong said. The words, pushed past his bruised lips, were soft, shaky, and, kneeling in a growing pool of his own blood, he looked near to fainting.
“Do not make us rescind our clemency,” Tsiora said, sweeping her eyes across the Indlovu.
In a clatter of bronze meeting stone, the general’s men dropped their weapons and Tau’s sword brothers snatched them up.
“Noblewomen, General Otobong, you’re right, these times are trying,” Tsiora said as Hadith helped Tau to his feet. “Our fight for survival grows desperate and it has been made very clear that if we are to survive we must move past compromise and councils. We must fight and burn as queens before us have done. We must be a Dragon Queen, and Dragon Queens keep their own council.”
Otobong’s head came up at that. “You? A Dragon Queen? You think yourself akin to Queen Taifa?”
Tsiora looked down on him. “We are kin,” she said.
The general snorted. “And all this time we called your sister insane.”
Moving with zeal, the same smile from earlier still on his face, Themba lifted his boot to kick Otobong. Tsiora stopped him with a raised hand.
“No,” she said. “See that the general’s wounds are tended and then imprison him with the rest who have defied us. They are not to be harmed, for they had our word.”
Kellan saluted, pulled Themba back by his tunic, and signaled to Uduak, Yaw, and two of the Queen’s Guard to help him remove the new crop of traitors.
Hadith, still helping Tau to stay standing, leaned close and whispered. “Care, Tau, care not to be used and thrown away in their schemes. What we do must benefit all, and things will happen fast now.”
Tau shot him a look, but Hadith was focused on the queen, appearing for all the world as if he’d never spoken.
“Ihashe,” the queen said to Hadith, “will cutting the head from the inyoka save us from its bite?”
“This creature has many heads, my queen,” Hadith said, “but the one that has made clear its intention to strike is also the one we can stop.”
Tsiora inclined her head and spoke to Kellan. “Be quick in handling these traitors, Kellan Okar,” she said. “We believe that before this long day has ended, our champion will have need of his sword brothers.”
Her gaze returned to Tau and Hadith, and though shadows of Mirembe’s touch still ran riot through him, Tau stood straighter.
“Champion Solarin, you and your men have had too little time to grieve, too little time to heal, and we … we are sorry for this,” the queen said.
There it was again, the strange intimacy. She spoke to him like he was a close companion who’d been gone too long. She spoke and he could almost believe she hurt for his pain, his loss. Her eyes told him she did.
“But time and storms wait for neither women nor queens, and there is work to be done,” she said. “Champion, will you assemble your fighters and seek out the Xiddeen? Will you do what must be done to grant us the time to heal the rift in our queendom?”
“My queen, how can I leave you after what’s just happened?” he asked. “How can I protect you if I go?” It felt strange to say it, but Tau felt it was true.
“You are gracious, but we have our Queen’s Guard and we’re never truly defenseless,” she said, glancing at Mirembe cowering at the foot of two chairs. “We shall be careful until you return, Champion Solarin.”
It was kind, the way she put it, but Tau felt a little foolish thinking he was the only sword st
anding between the queen of all the Omehi and those who might wish her harm. Even so, a part of him still wanted to stay with her.
“Champion Solarin, I’m asking you to do something horrible,” she said. “Will you take Warlord Achak’s life?”
To the queen he gave an answer. To the Goddess he offered his word. “That and more,” he said.
CHAPTER TWO
HAFSA EKENE
The sun had yet to set and Hafsa Ekene was already of the opinion that the day was a flowering tragedy with more to come before its bloom was full. Her head swiveling left to right, she half walked, half ran to the keep’s courtyard, looking for anyone important enough with whom to share the horrible news. She’d heard that the queen would be in the courtyard, watching the Ihashe and Indlovu readying themselves to leave to fight a battle somewhere, but, thought Hafsa, they might need to fight one in the keep first.
The general in her care had escaped. The same man whose severed arm she’d bandaged and treated just that morning, with the best of her considerable abilities, had left her hospital without a trace. The guards assigned to watch him were dead, and so were two of her finest physicians. Hateful, unbelievable, and still not the whole of it.
Hafsa had never seen it before, few had, but she’d read about it in her order’s journals, and the twisted bodies of the dead, their mouths open in silent screams, had been the first clues. Then, when she’d discovered the nature of the weapon that had killed the guards and her physicians, her fears had been all but confirmed.
Feeling more desperate with each breath, she abandoned her half walk for a run and sped into the Guardian Keep’s courtyard, frightened she might be throwing herself into the fray, and somehow even more afraid that she was already too late.
The damaged courtyard with its scorched walls and dirt-filled crevasse from which, apparently, a dragon had emerged, was an anthill of activity. Overhead, the sun was hidden by storm clouds and the yard was slick with pelting rain. The afternoon had a hazy, dreamlike quality as fighting men of all sizes in leathers, grays, and ugly bronze milled about in organized chaos.
A few of the soldiers watched her as she ran, but she had no time for priestly propriety. The queen was in the courtyard, she was still alive, and Hafsa wanted to keep her that way.
Queen Tsiora was with her vizier and Chibuye, the vizier’s daughter. The queen was kneeling next to the child and smiling. That was a comfort, to see the love there.
Hafsa had never wanted children, but since the first moments of the chairman’s coup, when the vizier had barreled into her hospital and thrust the child into her care, she hadn’t been able to stop worrying over the bright and ever-smiling Chibuye.
She’d taken care of the girl for days while the vizier worked without end to put back together some of what Councillor Odili had broken. Far be it from Hafsa to tell any parent their business, but given the time she’d spent with the girl, she knew a portion of what parenting was and felt more than comfortable thinking that Chibuye should not be out here among these killers.
“Hafsa!” called the girl when she saw her.
Even with the horrors and lives lost that day, Chibuye’s voice lifted Hafsa’s heart, and she gave the little one a small wave before bending her knees and dipping her head to the queen.
“This is Priestess Ekene, Your Majesty,” Nyah said, introducing her, and the question in her voice, wondering why Hafsa was there, was as clear as still water.
“My queen.” Head still bowed, Hafsa chose to wade in immediately. “You’re not safe here.”
“Explain that,” Nyah said.
“Rise,” the queen told her at the same time.
Hafsa lifted her head. Nyah was staring hard, but the queen watched her more … gently, considering her. She didn’t look afraid, but that was because she didn’t know.
“The guards and my physicians, they were murdered. The general …” Hafsa wasn’t explaining it well enough. “Queen Tsiora, I have reason to believe that—”
Hafsa stifled a yelp. He’d appeared beside the queen as if from open air, but more likely she simply hadn’t noticed him approaching. How could anyone not notice him?
He was black as coal, head shaved clean, and had a face that was unnaturally even, if one didn’t consider the awful scar that ran from nose to cheek on his right side. He was clearly a Lesser, but wearing a champion’s colors—black-and-red leathers—with two swords on his hips.
She’d heard of him, of course, and it should have been absurd, seeing a Lesser in champion’s garb, but somehow it wasn’t. It was terrifying.
His eyes, she thought. Something in them set her nerves on fire and her heart thumping. Something in them called on her to run away and never stop.
“My queen, we’re ready to—” His voice was a rasp scraping down Hafsa’s spine like a rust-pitted scalpel.
“Not now, Champion,” Nyah said.
The man’s face twitched and Hafsa stepped back.
“Priestess, speak quickly,” Nyah said to her.
“I—I—” tried Hafsa.
“We’re ready to leave, my queen,” he said.
“Solarin!” Nyah said.
The champion’s eyes slid from Hafsa’s face, and only once they’d left her did she realize how tightly she’d bunched the muscles in her back and shoulders.
“The child?” he asked, looking at Chibuye.
“My daughter,” Nyah told him.
The Lesser … no … the champion raised an eyebrow. “You’ve a daughter?”
“And you’ve eyes and ears,” Nyah said. “Priestess Ekene, you spoke of danger.”
Before he could look back and unsettle her, Hafsa drew breath and dove in. “General Otobong has escaped the hospital. The men guarding him were murdered along with my attending physicians.”
The champion’s swords were out and ready before she even registered the noise of him drawing the blades. She did yelp then.
“Uduak, Hadith, to me! To the queen!” he shouted as he scanned the courtyard for danger.
“There’s more,” said Hafsa, her voice lost to the flurry of heavy footsteps that came running toward the queen. “Beware their weapons. They’re using poison.”
“There.” The single syllable came from one of the biggest Lessers Hafsa had ever seen. She might even have confused him for a Petty Noble if not for the Ihashe grays he wore and the absence of the supplementary musculature characteristic of Noble males. Long ago, in her final year of studies, she’d wanted to write a treatise on the physical differences between Lessers and Greaters, but her adviser had warned her away from the topic, telling her that—
“Up there!”
She followed the Lesser’s pointing hand and saw the soldier on the keep’s walls. It was an Indlovu and he had his elbows on the ramparts. He was leaning on it, steadying himself as he aimed a long hollow tube at them. The weapon he had to his lips wasn’t common among the Omehi, but Hafsa recognized it and knew what was coming.
“No!” she shouted as the assassin blasted air into the tube, sending death flying through the night for one of them. Beside her, in a blur of black leather, the champion leapt in front of the queen and snatched Chibuye behind him. Hafsa heard the dart hit with a wet thud.
It hit like an oar smacking water and the sound made her tense up all over. She, however, was not hit, and the champion, teeth bared and eyes watering, grunted at the impact.
“Pull it out!” she said, feeling shame at the relief washing over her because she’d been spared.
He didn’t, though. He was using his body to cover Chibuye and the queen, and Hafsa, frightened beyond thinking that the assassin might have more projectiles to shoot, rushed to his side.
“Hadith, stay with us,” the champion ordered. “Uduak, stop that man!”
Immediately, the massive Lesser, along with one of the Indlovu in the courtyard, ran for the stairs that led to the ramparts. Carefully, very carefully, Hafsa grasped the tail of the dart that was sticking out of the champio
n’s right thigh, tore it out, and dropped it to the ground.
She could feel him looking at her. She raised her head, saw him, and shivered. “Don’t touch the dart,” she said, pulling her eyes away from his and seeing the mix of red and black blood that oozed from the small hole in the champion’s leg and leathers. Such a small thing to kill a man.
“Queen Tsiora, child, are you well?” he asked.
The queen, having been thrown to the floor by her champion, was holding Chibuye close. “We are fine,” she said, more to the crying child than to the champion. “We are fine.”
“Chibuye! Tsiora!” the vizier shouted, running up to wrap the child and queen in her arms.
Hafsa saw the vizier’s distress, but given what needed to be done, it barely registered. She was looking for something sharp, and the closest things were the champion’s swords.
“I need one of your swords,” she said.
The champion glanced at her, and the weight of his full attention made her flinch. Then, dismissing her entirely, he called for more men to guard the queen, got up, and tried to run for the ramparts to accompany the other two. He stumbled, nearly fell, and grabbed at his leg.
“You don’t understand,” Hafsa said.
He looked at her again, shook his head, and limped after the massive Lesser, the one in pursuit of the assassin.
“What is it, Priestess?” the queen asked.
The champion didn’t have long, and Hafsa couldn’t comprehend why he felt it necessary to join the fight when the assassin was already trapped.
Up on the ramparts, there were four soldiers closing in on him from the right and three others from his left. He could get to the stairs before the soldiers stopped him, but then his path would be blocked by the Indlovu and the big Lesser. The assassin’s choices were simple: remain on the ramparts and fight against seven or take the stairs and try his luck against two.
He chose the two.
It wasn’t what she would have done. The champion was going to be at the bottom of the stairs, and though Hafsa didn’t know why, exactly, she’d have taken her chances against the soldiers atop the wall.