by Evan Winter
“Approved, General,” the queen said. “Now, tell me how we win.”
“Our best hope is to engage Kana in the valley north of the Central Mountains,” Hadith said. “I don’t think we come out of this successfully any other way, but I worry that we’re being baited.”
“Baited, how?” she asked.
“The edifications from General Bisi set the count for Kana’s army at far fewer than I’d expect, but the fact that he has an army at all means that his slaughter in Kerem did remake the warlord’s alliance. So, where are the rest of Kana’s fighters?”
“You think they’re coming for us from somewhere else?” the queen asked.
“I do.”
“Where, the water?”
Hadith nodded. “It would make sense. We’ve never moved so many fighters from the interior of the peninsula before and I think Kana knows or has guessed that we called up the Ihagu and Ihashe who usually protect our mountains and beaches.”
“Hmm …” Thandi said, thinking it through. “He could be hoping to occupy us with a battle in Palm City while the other Xiddeen come from the water to take the rest of the peninsula.”
“And if it’s so, how do we stop him?” Tsiora asked the room.
“Split the army again,” suggested Auset. “Send some to the beaches and the rest to fight in the valley.”
“Don’t they already outnumber us?” asked Ramia.
“They do,” Hadith said. “With Bisi’s army, we’ll have twenty thousand, but Kana has more than sixty.”
“Rather win one than lose two,” said Uduak.
“What?” asked Auset.
“Uduak would rather win one battle than lose both of them,” said Hadith. “And I think he’s right.”
“Am right,” Uduak said.
Tau couldn’t hold his tongue any longer. “Are you certain we’re not better served waiting for Bisi to join us in Palm City? We can fight from here.”
“I’m as certain as I can be,” Hadith said. “The walls here are breached and the river is traversable. If we allow Kana to come to Palm, we’ll be letting him trap our army in this city with our people, with hundreds of thousands of mouths to feed.” Hadith looked around the room. “He won’t even need to attack. He’ll just starve us out, killing us slowly as news of cities, fiefs, and hamlets being overrun all across the peninsula comes to us in desperate edifications crying for help we can’t provide.”
Hadith’s words were followed by silence.
“We’ll make our stand alongside General Bisi’s soldiers in the valley,” the queen said, her decision made. “One army, one push, one fight. No half measures.”
Tau glanced in Hadith’s direction. He didn’t like the look on their grand general’s face. Hadith was determined but also grim, and Tau had seen that look in skirmishes. It meant the plan had merit, but not much of it.
“Agreed?” the queen asked.
They were.
“Then there is one thing we must do before we continue.” The queen stood and the rest hurried to do likewise. “Gifted Thandi, if you would?” Tsiora said.
Thandi moved to stand in front of the queen.
“We regret that there isn’t time to do this in the traditional manner and hope you won’t hold that against us.”
“My queen?”
“The Gifted have need of a leader, and this queen must have a KaEid whom she can trust.”
Thandi’s eyes went wide. “My queen?”
“Thandi Tariro, will you honor us by serving in that capacity? Will you lead our Gifted in peace and war?”
“Ah … Queen Tsiora, I-I’m …” Thandi’s lips were trembling. “Queen Tsiora, it would be the honor of my life to serve as your KaEid.”
“We thank you, KaEid Tariro.”
Thandi lowered her head, looked up at the queen through her lashes, and smiled. The way she looked, Tau thought she might hug the queen, but Thandi settled for looking around the room at the others, her eyes stopping and holding on Kellan Okar, who returned her smile.
“Well, we’ve filled the positions we wanted to with the best of our people,” Tsiora said. “General Buhari, if we’re not mistaken, you need to do more of the same.” Tsiora walked back toward the room where Chibuye was sleeping, speaking over her shoulder. “We have faith, faith in the Goddess and in all of you. Do not fear, because we walk in Her light, and in it there is nothing to fear.”
But where there was light, there was shadow, and Tau had something he needed the queen to know. “Queen Tsiora, may I have a word?” he asked.
She was at the door to the other room. “Of course,” she said, “come in.”
He’d wanted to wait for the right time but realized the right time would never come. He had to tell Tsiora about the demon that held a sword like a man. He had to tell her what he knew about the horned one that had set the other demons on Nyah and defeated him.
THIEVES
Tau followed his queen into the room where Chibuye was sleeping. Tsiora put a finger to her lips, then beckoned to him, asking him to come with her into the next room over. Tau did as he was bid and they moved through that room and onto an outdoor balcony overlooking the city.
The balcony was enclosed by a bronze railing shaped like a series of interwoven climbing vines. On the balcony’s floor and hanging from its jutting ceiling were colorfully painted adobe pots with plants growing in them. Tau didn’t recognize the greenery.
“A garden?” he asked. “What food can you harvest here?”
Tsiora went to the nearest plant, letting her fingers play across its leaves. “They grow neither fruits nor vegetables. They are for beauty.”
“I see,” Tau said, thinking about the time and effort that would be needed to bring water to these pretty but pointless plants.
“Come,” the queen said, showing him to a matched set of cushioned chairs that were long enough for a Noble to lie down on comfortably.
The overly long chairs faced each other, and between them was a short table ladened with bowls of berries and nuts. Tau walked past the long chairs and the food table, interested in the bronze railing and what was beyond it.
Laid out before him, like a detailed miniature, Tau could see most of the capital. Some parts of the city were still smoking from the battle, and the light from the funeral pyres still burned bright, but the thing that surprised him was how vast, peaceful, and normal Palm seemed after what had befallen it. In thousands upon thousands of windows he saw the flicker of candles or torches as Omehi women, men, and children made the best of the lives they had.
From the balcony, he could also tell who lived where as surely as he knew his left hand from his right. To his left, there was a section of the city that had to be filled with Lessers, perhaps Harvester or Governor caste. To his far right, where the houses rose two and sometimes even three floors above the ground, were the places where Nobles lived. Straight ahead and farthest from the palace, huddled beneath the walls, were ramshackle huts, pilfered military tents, and tiny adobe houses that could be knocked over with a hard blow from a Greater Noble’s shield.
The Omehi in all their glory, Tau thought, turning to see Tsiora slide the balcony’s door closed behind them.
“We don’t want to wake her,” she said. “You wished to speak with us, Champion Solarin.”
“Tau. It’s … if you please, you can call me Tau.”
“Tau,” she said, sitting on one of the long cushioned chairs.
He sat in the one opposite. “Queen Tsiora, I think there’s something I need to tell you.”
She tilted her head, looking at him gravely. “Shall we take a moment to pray first?” she asked.
He wasn’t quick enough to school his expression. “Pray?”
Her cheeks dimpled with a mischievous smile. “Apologies. You just looked so serious, and everyone thinks we have to be so serious too. That’s what Esi thinks. She thinks we’re dour and mirthless and that everything is about the Goddess for us, but it’s not. We were more than
just a princess and we’re more than just a queen. We’re a woman, a daughter … we’re a sister.”
Tau wasn’t sure he had anything worth saying to that, so he listened instead of speaking.
“We care about Nyah and Chibuye and we loved our mother and … and Esi…. ” Tsiora’s smile slipped as she choked up. “We loved her too. We love her so much, Tau.”
Goddess, she was crying. She’d been about to laugh two breaths ago. “My queen …”
She put her head in her hands, pressing the bottom of her palms to her lips, trying to hold in the sounds of her sobs. Tau went to her immediately, sinking to his knees in front of her so that their heads were at the same height.
“Did she always hate us so much, do you think?”
“I don’t know that she hated you at all,” he said.
“Let her go …”
“My queen?”
Tsiora lifted her head from her hands. “Those were the last words Esi heard us say. ‘Let her go.’”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Whose, then?” Tsiora asked, opening her hands to him. “The Goddess’s, because everything that happens is Her will? Is this Her will, my sister’s death and my pain in it?”
“I don’t know,” Tau said.
“How is that good enough?”
He took her hands in his. “It isn’t. It isn’t good enough and nothing will be for a while, because that’s part of what loss is, an absence of goodness and happiness that can’t be reasoned with or diminished.”
“When does it end?”
“In time.”
She shook her head. “Not good enough.”
“No,” he said, “it’s not.”
More tears came, and she leaned into him. He placed his arms around her, holding Tsiora as close as he could, and she cried into his chest, her pain cutting at him until he could take no more, and with the whole of his heart, Tau Solarin made his queen a promise.
“For as long as you’ll have me, I’ll be here for you,” he told her. “For as long as you want me to, I’ll fight for you.”
Tau woke up a short while later. His left arm was numb, he was on his back, and it felt like he was lying in deep mud, but, he realized, that was because he was on one of the long chairs. It was dark, which meant the sun had yet to rise, and he wondered where the queen was right as he heard her sigh.
The moment that followed was as much of an out-of-body experience as anything Tau had encountered in Isihogo. The queen was lying beside him, and partially on him. His left arm was numb because it was under her and she had her head on his shoulder and chest.
Craning his neck away from her, Tau spied his sword belt and blades on the other long chair, and feeling naked without them, he tried to extricate his arm without waking the queen.
Tsiora’s eyes drifted open right away. “Tau?”
“My queen.”
“Tsiora.”
“Queen Tsiora.”
“No,” she said. “Just Tsiora.”
“Tsiora?”
“Yes,” she said. “Are you too hot?”
“Neh?”
“Is that why you’re moving away? Is it too hot?”
“Ah no. I’m … I was going to get my swords. They’re on the other long chair.”
“The suffah?”
“Suffah … yes.”
“And you want to bring your swords to this suffah?”
Tau didn’t know how to answer that. “I … Perhaps I’ll leave them where they are.”
“Yes, they’re probably more comfortable on that suffah. There’s more room.”
“What?”
She laughed, and in spite of his confusion, her laughter made him smile.
“Apologies, Tau,” she said, eyes roaming his face. “We love to tease, but there’s so few we can do it with.”
Tau didn’t know if he loved being teased, but seeing her smile made him like it well enough.
“Do you … should we get up?” she asked.
The long chair was too soft, and staying on it would mean being stiff for the rest of the day, but Tau did not want to get up. “Maybe we could stay a little longer?”
“Mm-hmm,” she said, shifting and ending up closer to him, the tight curls of her hair tickling the bare skin on his neck.
It got quiet, and not wanting to do it, Tau admitted to himself that being near Tsiora gave him peace.
“Tau, do you know why we haven’t been able to win the war against the Xiddeen?”
Well, most of the time it gave him peace. “They outnumber us too greatly,” he said, trying to offer a decent answer.
“In part,” she said. “The other part is that, though we can call down Guardians, we could never hold them long enough to truly defeat the Xiddeen armies, but with enough Gifted, we could now.”
“The Ayim?” he asked.
“The Goddess meant for us to meet. We’re certain of it.”
He grunted. He didn’t feel Goddess sent, but if they could use the Ayim and the dragons to stop Kana from killing them all, he’d take it. In any case, he’d been looking for the right time to tell the queen about what he’d seen in Isihogo, and though it still wasn’t it, he had no illusions that he’d find a better one.
“There’s something I want to tell you, before it’s too late,” he said.
She bit her lip gently and looked up into his eyes. “Yes, Tau?”
“There’s something in the mists.”
Pulling her eyebrows together, she squinted at him. “Beg pardon?”
“The mists of Isihogo.”
She rose onto her elbow. “That’s what you want to tell … wait, what’s in the mists?”
“A demon, but it’s … different. It’s stronger and faster than the rest. It knows more than they do, and I think it can control the others.”
“They don’t … that’s not how they are.”
“I swear it, Tsiora. I know what I’m saying and I know what I saw. It has horns on its head, no eyes, but it sees. It has several holes in place of ears and long talons on the ends of human-like hands. It … it carries a weapon. It wields a twisted guardian sword.”
She sat up. “You’re scaring us.”
He sat up with her. “That’s not my intent.”
“Have you fought it?”
He nodded.
“And?”
“It scares me very much.”
She looked wide awake. “What do you think it is or means?”
“I don’t know. Are there any stories about something like this?”
“If there are, we don’t know them,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself.
It wasn’t cold, but Tau placed his hands on her arms and ran them up and down, to warm her.
“What are you doing?”
“Warming you.”
She tilted her head at him. “We’re not actually cold.”
He stopped. “Ah …”
“It feels nice though, and since you’ve just told us an unpleasant story in the dark, we won’t deny ourselves a little nice right now.”
He continued to run his hands up and down her arms and she closed her eyes and leaned back into him. The sun was rising, and it was growing brighter on the balcony.
“Why now?” she murmured.
“The demon?”
“No, not that. Why would we meet now? Like this?”
“How could we meet any other way?”
“Hmm?”
“I’m a Lesser and you’re a queen.”
“You’re our champion.”
“Do queens usually have champions who are Lessers?”
“What if we weren’t a queen and you weren’t a Lesser? What if we were just Tsiora and Tau?”
“If we were, we wouldn’t be the same people we are now.”
She sat with that for a while. “So, queens and champions, Nobles and Lessers, war and loss, and we’re permitted no happiness other than what we can steal from moments like these?” She sighed. “Can we lie dow
n again? Just until dawn?”
They lay down, he held her, and she slept. He stayed awake, watching the world continue to brighten as the sun rose behind them. He watched the sky change colors from black to blue-red to the golden-yellow of a soul’s glow, and he tried to understand how it was possible to feel as if everything was both beginning and ending all at the same time.
A span later, as Tau was doing up his sword belt and walking through the room where the war council had met the previous evening, Thandi opened the far door and spotted him. He froze, hands on his belt buckle.
“Champion …”
“Thand—KaEid Tariro,” he said. “I was just leaving.”
“Yes, so I see.”
“No, no,” he said raising his hands and having to scramble to catch his sword belt before it fell to the ground. “I’m not leaving like that.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I was … I slept on the long chair.”
She squinted at him. “The suffah?”
“Yes, that. They’re horrible.”
“You didn’t sleep much, then?” she asked, eyes twinkling.
Tau’s mouth was open and he seemed to have forgotten how to close it. “It’s been a difficult time for her, for everyone. I was just there to …”
She inclined her head toward him. “You’re the queen’s champion.”
“I’m not … I’m not that kind of champion.”
“Indeed?”
He was more at ease on the battlefield. “She’s sleeping, resting undisturbed, like she did the entire night.”
Thandi’s face softened. “I believe that she is and I’m glad you were there with her. I wish she could continue to rest, but we’re out of time.”
The door slid open behind Tau. It was the queen.
“We march for the valley?” Tsiora asked.
“We do,” the KaEid said.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
SIDES
The march to the valley was tense and the army moved like twin inyokas, winding their way over the northern fork of the Amanzi and tromping across the grasslands at the foot of the Central Mountains, which loomed over them on their right. Kellan marched at the head of the soldiers who had fought for Odili and Esi. Hadith, Tsiora’s grand general in charge of the entire army, led the march for the soldiers who had fought for the queen.