The Fires of Vengeance

by Evan Winter

  “Can we even get to the walls?” Tau asked, pointing to the rivers. “He’s destroyed the bridges.”

  Tau didn’t grow up near rivers or other passable bodies of water, but the mass of stone and wooden debris half damming the waters, where cobbled paths met the riverbed, had to be where the city’s bridges had once stood.

  “The man spits on our history,” Kellan said. “The Trident stood for a hundred cycles.”

  “Trident?” Tau asked.

  “See there, where the river’s two tributaries join up and flow into the main of the Amanzi? The Trident is … was an engineering marvel. It was a bridge that landed on the north side of the northern fork, the southern side of the southern fork, and it also carried traffic onto the city’s side between the two forks. It had three points, like a trident.

  “A trident?”

  “Yes, it’s an … ah … an old weapon. Osonton, I imagine. It’s like a spear with three points.”

  Tau tilted his head. “Why would you want a spear to have three points? That’s like a sword with three points,” he said. “It makes no sense.”

  “I didn’t say it made sense,” Kellan said. “It’s just the name of the thing.”

  Tau looked to Hadith. “You see? All the old stories are like this.”

  “This, Chibo, is what men call leadership,” Nyah said, walking up with her daughter. “You can tell they’re doing it when you see several of them standing around not doing any work.”

  “Vizier, Chibuye,” Tau said, his attention making the girl look down at her feet.

  “Good day, Champion,” the child said while staring at her feet.

  Tau smiled. He was pretty sure those were the first words she’d said to him.

  “The queen’s tent is up and the council tent is ready as well,” Nyah told them.

  “Any word from …” Hadith looked to Nyah’s daughter and then back to Nyah. “From inside the city?”

  “None yet, but we’re next to meet at sundown. I hope to make contact then.”

  “We need to know if they can still open the Port Gates,” Hadith said.

  “Trust me, General, I know.” The words were bold, but Nyah looked worried.

  “A rider,” Kellan said, pointing to the main gates of the city.

  They were too far away to have heard them open, but the gates had been opened, and a rider was galloping out from them, holding a long black pennant that snapped in the wind behind him.

  “I’ll get the queen,” Nyah said, taking Chibuye’s hand.

  “The black cloth, what does it mean?” Tau asked.

  “It means they want to talk,” said Kellan.

  NEED

  Tau, the queen, Hadith, Nyah, Kellan, and Wanjala met the messenger near the ruins of the Trident Bridge, and Tau saw that he’d been wrong. The rider wasn’t a man. It was a tall woman, middle-aged, pretty, with a purposeful air of self-assurance.

  She yelled over the river’s waters from her side. “I am Councillor Yamikani Owanu and I come to tell you that our queen is willing to grace you with her presence. She is willing to tell you the terms that will allow us all to avoid unnecessary bloodshed and death.”

  “Yamikani, we know your daughter,” Tsiora said. “Is she well?”

  The Royal Noble across the river had a mask of her own but did not wear it like Tau’s queen, and her confidence crumbled. “I am Councillor Yamikani Owanu and I come to tell—”

  “Are you forbidden to say anything else, Yami?”

  The councillor’s horse skittered on the stones by the riverbed, sensing its rider’s discomfort.

  “Will you speak with the queen?” the councillor asked.

  “We are the queen.”

  Yamikani blinked, her face moving like she had a tic. “Will you speak with your sister?”

  “Has Odili made her memorize lines too?”

  “I know the truth about the two of you. We all do now. Your sister was born to this duty, and she’s acting in the interest of the Omehi.”

  “The truth? Don’t make us angry, Yami.”

  The councillor swallowed so hard that Tau saw her do it from across the river. “You refuse to meet, then?” she asked.

  Tsiora flicked her fingers at the councillor. “Bring Esi to us.”

  Yamikani’s mouth and cheeks fluttered again. “I will convey your words and leave it to the queen to meet with you or not, as is her right.”

  She turned her horse.

  “Yami,” Tsiora called. “Give little Nuha a kiss for us. We miss her.”

  That set the Royal Noble’s face flickering like sunlight through tree leaves, and without waiting to get herself under control, she rode off.

  “Why send that one?” Tau asked Kellan.

  “The Owanu are one of the peninsula’s wealthiest families,” Kellan whispered. “Odili is showing us the depth and breadth of the alliance he’s strung together. He also honors Councillor Owanu by selecting her as his emissary.”

  “Will they really let her come to us, Nyah?” Tsiora asked. “Do you think they will?”

  “If Esi comes out here, Abasi will be with her,” Nyah said.

  “We don’t care. We’ll have the chance to see her and make sure she hasn’t been harmed.”

  “Tsiora …,” Nyah said, without using the queen’s honorific, “it may not be what you want it to be.”

  “She’s our sister. He’s using her against us.”

  “The whole of my heart wants that to be true, my queen.”

  “It is true,” Tsiora said.

  Bowing her head, Nyah changed the topic. “The next meeting with the Shadow Council is to be at sunset, and I’ll need to be in camp by then. I’m not sending Thandi. I want to attend this one myself. By now, the Shadow Council knows that our army is outside the city. They’ll know we’re running out of time and they’ll find a way to get to the meeting.

  Hadith glanced up at the sun. It was low in the sky. “Odili might make us wait,” he said.

  They needn’t have worried. A few moments after disappearing beyond the city’s gates, the messenger came out again with a Queen’s Guard of Greater Nobles running alongside four horses.

  The first two animals carried Gifted with their hoods up, and the third was ridden by a veiled woman in a dress of morning-sky blue. It was Tsiora’s fabled sister and in any other circumstance she would have held his attention, but riding beside her was Abasi Odili, and Tau was focused on the man he’d sworn to kill.

  As they approached, time broke down more completely than it did when moving between realms, and though Tau’s mind raced, the five horses and running Queen’s Guard seemed not to move. Yet in a blink, they’d arrived, bringing Tau face-to-face with the only demon that had ever mattered.

  Tau felt like he’d succumbed to a fit. He was burning up, trembling, and squeezing Fury’s reins so tightly the leather was creaking. Meanwhile, Abasi Odili, murderer, traitor, and coward, sat comfortably astride a white horse across the pebble-bottomed river not twenty-four strides away.

  The scum was wearing the armor of a champion and had a guardian sword belted on his hip, and his black-and-red bronze-plated leathers matched the black cloak draping behind him. He looked the part he was playing more surely than Tau ever could.

  “I present Queen Esi Omehia, ruler of—”

  “Shut up, Yamikani, and let the sisters talk,” Nyah said.

  “Don’t do anything stupid, Tau,” Hadith whispered from the ground beside him.

  “He’s across a river,” Tau said, still staring at Odili.

  “A river that’s too deep to ride through,” said Hadith. “A river that’s separating us from a dozen Indlovu and two Gifted.”

  “I have eyes, General.”

  Kellan was close enough to hear the conversation and took a couple of steps forward, putting himself in front of Fury.

  “Esi, we’ll help you,” Tsiora said.

  In response, the queen’s sister lifted her veil, drawing her hands up and over, so
that the gauzy material fell behind her head and shoulders. Tau, letting his eyes slide to her for a moment, was knocked down and drowned in the shock that washed over him.

  Esi’s skin, the same dark velvet as the space between the stars, glowed with an allure matched only by the curve of her lips. Her cheekbones and chin were graceful, her nose the perfect place for gentle kisses, and she had eyes the sugared brown of a honeycomb. It was like looking at Tsiora, but because it wasn’t actually his queen, Tau’s defenses were down, and the thought surfaced before he could stop it—she was beautiful.

  “Goddess wept,” Tau said.

  “Sister, you’re the one who needs help,” Queen Esi said. “End this madness before it’s too late.”

  “You don’t need to tell his lies for him,” Tsiora said to her sister. “He doesn’t dare harm you. If he did, even the Royals would turn on him.”

  Tau looked down at Kellan, who was standing at attention just past Fury’s nose, and whispered at him. “The sisters, I know they’re a birth pair, but have they always … have they always looked so much alike?”

  Kellan didn’t turn. He just nodded.

  “Abasi is my champion, sister,” Queen Esi said. “He does my bidding.”

  “He’s a traitor to us and our rule.”

  “Stop it. Just stop. You’re one person, not many. You don’t speak for the Nobles and Lessers or the Goddess. You speak for yourself and yourself alone. You speak without the authority of a Ruling or Guardian Council. Tsiora, look at yourself, standing on the wrong side of the Amanzi without a capital, palace, or mandate. You’re the traitor, Tsiora. It’s you. It’s always been you.”

  “What has he done to you, sweet sister, to make you say such things?”

  Esi ignored that. “Surrender your army into my care and I’ll grant you mercy.”

  “Surrender? Mercy? We surrender only to the Goddess, and mercy comes from Her, nowhere else. Sister, we will have Palm City and we beg you not to test us.”

  “I’m wasting my time with you, aren’t I?” Queen Esi said. “You’re so mired in the stories they fed you, you can’t see the truth for the tale. Tsiora, you’re not special. You’re not great. The Goddess doesn’t speak to you or through you, and if you attack Palm, your army will be crushed and you’ll die.” She pulled on her horse’s reins, turning it around. “Champion, I’ve said all I can. She won’t listen.”

  “Please, my queen,” said Odili, the sound of his slippery voice taking Tau back to the day his father was murdered. “Many lives hang in the balance. May I?”

  She seemed to sigh, though the distance separating Tau from her made it hard to know for sure.

  “Tsiora … Queen Tsiora,” Abasi Odili said, “are you willing to burn Palm City to the ground? Because you’ll only get what you want by destroying what you need. Can you see that?”

  Tsiora gave Odili the full weight of her attention, and though Tau found it difficult to disagree with Esi’s words about the Goddess, there was power in his queen’s words.

  “Councilman, you think we’ll balk over one city?” she said. “We’ll burn the whole world to ash, if it’s what the Goddess wills.”

  Odili watched her awhile, then lowered his eyes. “Yes, I can see that you would,” he said, turning his horse and waiting on his queen.

  Queen Esi rode away first, Odili followed with Yamikani and the Gifted, and then the rest of the Queen’s Guard went as well.

  “He turned her against us,” Tsiora said, dropping her mask and letting tears fill her eyes.

  Tau moved Fury next to her horse. “We’ll save her,” he said, picturing himself standing over Odili’s corpse. “Just like you said, we’ll get her back.”

  She reached for him, taking his hand. “Thank you, Champion.”

  “The sun goes to meet the ocean,” Hadith said. “Nyah, will you ride ahead to camp?”

  “I can’t make it back in time,” she said. “I’ll need to enter Isihogo here.”

  “When you meet with the Shadow Council, tell them the rafts will be finished in one more day. Our men will sail for the water gates on the morning that follows, two spans before dawn. Whoever the Shadow Council plans to send to the water gates must be ready then,” Hadith said. “Two days from now, two spans before dawn.”

  “I’ll remind them,” Nyah said.

  Wanjala cleared his throat, surprising Tau. He’d forgotten the quiet inkokeli was with them. “Excuse, but I worry we’ll draw attention if we remain here.”

  “That’s ’cause we will,” Hadith said. “Tau, can you come down from the horse and examine its foot?

  Tau knew Tsiora liked to wear riding gloves. She’d had them on that day, but when she’d taken his hand a few moments earlier, she’d removed her glove. It was her bare hand in his, and in spite of the day’s heat, her skin was cool.

  “Champion?” Hadith said.

  “Neh?”

  “Would you mind pretending that your horse has hurt its leg? It’ll give us a reason to stay here.”

  “Oh, of course,” Tau said, dismounting and feeling the day’s heat come rushing back when Tsiora’s hand slipped from his.

  He crouched beside Fury, wincing at the pain in his leg when he did. “Don’t kick me, girl,” he said to the horse as he rubbed, then lifted one of her feet.

  “It’s time,” said Hadith, checking the horizon and disappearing sun.

  Nyah dismounted, moved a few steps west of Fury, and sat. The warhorse’s bulk would keep her hidden from the view of anyone in the capital.

  “I’ll see you soon,” Nyah said, closing her eyes.

  “Give them our blessings,” Tsiora said.

  Nyah nodded, her face went slack, and Tau knew she was in the underworld.

  Hadith was speaking with Wanjala, and Kellan kept looking at the queen, perhaps to make sure she was well. Tau, meanwhile, considered asking her about her sister but was concerned that any talk of Esi, while she remained within Odili’s reach, would do Tsiora more harm than good, and as they waited, the sun set, exchanging its presence for twilight and a growing darkness.

  “Something’s wrong!” Nyah said, her eyes snapping open.

  Hadith stepped toward her. “Vizier?”

  “Nyah, what’s happened?” asked Tsiora.

  “Lelise, they have Lelise,” Nyah said. “She was trying to shout something to me. She was with two Gifted and then they all vanished from the underworld. Tsiora, the ones who had Lelise, they weren’t Shadow Council.”

  “If they have her, Odili knows everything,” Hadith said.

  Then Wanjala was shouting. “They’re on the walls!”

  Tau and everyone with him looked as the long line of torches atop the nearest wall of Palm City was set burning. It was dusk, but the blazing peat moss provided enough light for them to see it when several poles of thick bronze were held out from the top of the wall’s parapets like fishing rods. The poles were spaced evenly and had ropes attached to their ends, and if they’d been spears, they’d have been pointed right at them.

  “What are they doing?” Wanjala asked.

  “Goddess, no!” cried Nyah.

  She’d been the one to see Lelise in Isihogo. She was the one to figure it out first.

  “Look away, my queen!” Hadith said, catching up to the events.

  Tsiora’s brows furrowed. “Why, what is—”

  The rest of her sentence was lost to the sound of her own scream as the still-moving bodies of a dozen Gifted women, with ropes wrapped round their necks and sacks over their heads, were thrown from the ramparts to fall until the nooses pulled taught, snapping spines and killing every last one of them.

  Tau was up immediately. He lifted Tsiora from her horse and held her tight, muttering empty things about how it would all be well.

  He tried to calm her. He tried to turn her away from the executions, but she was rooted to the spot, still as stone, her eyes fixed on the walls and the dead swinging from them.

  BURN

  Nothing an
d no one,” Nyah said, returning from her third trip to Isihogo. It had been several spans since the hangings, dusk had become night, and Tau, along with the queen and her council, were in the war tent back in their camp.

  “How many Shadow Council were in the city?” asked Hadith.

  “Fewer than the women he killed,” Nyah told him.

  She was sitting cross-legged on a cushion, rubbing her temples. Hadith was pacing. Kellan and Wanjala were standing, but still. The handmaidens were also in the tent, and so was Uduak. The queen, sitting on her cushion, had her head in her hands, and Tau was kneeling beside her, listening to the conversation swirl around him.

  Hadith spoke slowly, like he didn’t want to ask the question. “Could you identify any of them by—”

  “No,” said Nyah.

  He nodded. “That’s intentional. Odili hid their faces so we wouldn’t know if he’d really captured them all.”

  “Yes,” said Nyah.

  “It means we must behave as if he has.”

  “Yes,” said Nyah.

  “It means he knows about our plans for the Port Gate. It means he knows about our splinter army on the north side of the river.”

  Nyah nodded and closed her eyes.

  “So be it…. We’ll … ah … we’ll have to—”

  “Call the water and reserve prongs back to the main army,” the queen said, head still in her hands.

  “My queen?” asked Hadith.

  Tsiora looked up and Tau saw that her tears had tracked a path all the way to her chin. “Call the whole of our army to us, General,” she said. “We have had enough of Odili, his treachery and cruelty. Our army will attack before the light of the new day. We will burn down the walls with our Guardians and we will drag that insect from our palace.”

  “Queen Tsiora, I’m not sure we can win that way. Odili will call his own Guardians, and our losses, the loss of life on both sides, will be terrible.”

  “There is only one side, General,” she said, before turning to Tau. “Champion, it falls to you and the Ayim now. The difference in victory or defeat depends on how much time you can give our Entreaters. Give us enough and Palm’s walls will come down.”