Red Tigress

by Amélie Wen Zhao

  Once or twice, Ana passed the flare of a distant torch and the corresponding tug of blood on her Affinity.

  The Broken Arrow was several streets from the outskirts of town, near the Dams, a district once known for criminal activity. The area now lay silent and still, the small river flowing through it frozen thick with ice.

  Ana turned the corner and paused before a building with broken-in windows. It took her several moments to make out the name on a wooden sign creaking slowly in the early-morning draft, the shaft of an arrow protruding from one end and the tip protruding at another, at odd angles.

  The Broken Arrow.

  She wrinkled her nose in disgust. She’d expected Ramson to make slightly different—better—accommodations in Novo Mynsk, the city he’d boasted to hold in the palm of his hands. Of course she shouldn’t have trusted his word.

  She settled her valkryf in the empty stables and entered the inn. The parlor was empty, ransacked and looted so that all that remained were a few upturned chairs and tables. Overhead, a broken chandelier dangled from its chain, its shadows reaching like crooked fingers across the parlor.

  “Ramson,” she called softly. When there came no response, she called on her Affinity. It came slowly, reluctantly, faint as a memory and half-alive, like the ghost of a dream. She’d expended too much of it earlier in the night, there was little left to use. Gritting her teeth, she swept it around the place, once.

  Blood lit up in her senses, up the stairs, beyond a wall. It was cold and still, and she could make out two distinct pools.

  Her heart began to beat fast. If anything had happened to Ramson—

  Ana hurtled up the stairs, two at a time. The door to the first chamber was open. Moonlight spilled through a cracked window, illuminating the two bodies on the floor.

  She scrambled to them, checking their faces, and then sighed in relief. She had no idea who they were, but the important thing was that Ramson was nowhere to be found. And that meant he was alive.

  If anything had happened to him, she would never forgive herself.

  In the maelstrom of her thoughts, she didn’t catch the pulse of blood flickering to life in her Affinity until it was close.

  Ana had half turned when pain exploded in her back. Her mouth filled with blood, warm and metallic.

  The intruder yanked the dagger from her. Her body screamed, her Affinity exploding in a way that drowned all her other senses. She fought to stay conscious. Her fingers had become sticky, wet. Her head rang with a strange, high-pitched whine. Ana grasped at the blood, anything to stop it, to slow it, but her head was light, her power weaving in and out of focus. The pain was electric.

  She was aware that she’d slumped against the wall, feeling only a numbing fatigue spread through her body. Her vision was beginning to blur, dark spots filling the world.

  Out of that darkness stepped a figure.

  “I’m sorry it had to come to this, Anastacya,” a familiar voice said. The Second-in-Command of the Redcloaks stood over her, wiping his dagger on a pale handkerchief. “It’s really nothing personal.”

  Ana tried to speak, but blood was all that bubbled from her lips. The world was fading fast.

  Seyin sheathed his dagger. There wasn’t a spot of blood on his white shirt. “As I said, the monarchy must die. Now that I’m done with you, I have only Morganya to take care of.” The shadows began to thicken around him until he was swallowed by darkness. The last Ana heard was his voice, fading into the night.

  “Good-bye, ‘Red Tigress.’ ”

  Gods be damned, where was she?

  Ramson leaned against the cold stone wall of a darkened alleyway in Novo Mynsk, clutching at the cramp in his side. He could still hear the panicked crowds, taste the smoke and ash on his tongue.

  He’d tried the Playpen, and when that had yielded nothing, he’d followed the steady thrust of people that had been trickling toward the town square, fearing the worst. Yet when he’d arrived to a scene of dachas burning and people screaming and blood—so much blood—spilling from the bodies of Imperial Patrols, he’d known all too well whose handiwork he was staring at.

  “A little subtlety, Ana?” he gritted out at the cold night air. But, of course, subtlety was likely not a concept she had absorbed into that stubborn head of hers.

  He’d taken advantage of the chaos in the square to look for her among the living and the dead, and then he’d followed the stream of people, slipping out and melting into the shadows of the city that he knew better than the back of his own hand.

  Ramson ran a hand through his hair. He was going to kill her. Hells, he was going to find her so he could kill her.

  Gods be damned.

  There was only one other place in this town where she might go.

  His steps were quick, sure, as he made his way down the cobblestone streets, his breaths unfurling before him in sharp, measured beats. The glow of fire from the town square reflected on the clouds overhead, casting an unnatural, hellish light around him. The streets were even emptier now, the civilians having either barricaded themselves indoors or fled town or been arrested by the Imperial Inquisition.

  The night was cold; the Cyrilian Empire had settled into a true northern winter, the temperatures plummeting to below freezing. Gradually, the streets turned to dust roads covered by snow that was relatively undisturbed. The dachas thinned out, and the shadow of the Syvern Taiga loomed against the night. Shamaïra’s dacha sat at the edge of the boreal forest.

  Only, someone else had gotten there first.

  A black wagon was out front, its shadows thrown long by the torches that flared bright around the outside of the dacha.

  A sense of foreboding crept over Ramson. He stole through the conifers of the Syvern Taiga toward Shamaïra’s dacha. When he was close enough, he knelt in the shadow of a tree and peered out.

  The wagon came into clearer view, and Ramson’s heart sank. It was another blackstone wagon, the sight of which had become synonymous with the Imperial Patrols.

  Two Whitecloaks stood guard, the shimmer of their cloaks reflecting a cruel red in the night. Two more waited at the front door.

  Ramson immediately noticed a slight difference between their outfits. One of the Whitecloaks—the one holding the torch—had on a uniform of a slightly paler shade of gray than the others.

  It was then that Ramson realized the Whitecloak wasn’t holding a torch.

  He was conjuring the fire with his bare hands.

  It took a moment for the image to click. This was one of Morganya’s new Affinite Inquisitors—ones who, until now, Ramson had only read about in ominous newspaper articles. Watching the man juggle fire in his palms, Ramson felt his own misericord would hold up about as well as a twig if it came to a fight.

  There was movement at the back of the house. Three more Whitecloaks came into view, striding from Shamaïra’s garden. Ramson’s hand tightened on the hilt of his weapon, the plans he’d been spinning now shifting as he took in this new information. There was no way that he could get to Shamaïra without being detected, but then, a new thought grasped him with urgency.

  Was Ana inside?

  In an instant, he was up and moving, his senses pricked and his misericord gripped tight in his fist as he jogged closer to the dacha. He could now make out some words from snatches of the Whitecloaks’ conversation. A few more steps, and—

  The front door banged open. Light spilled sharply over snow.

  Even from about twenty yards out, Ramson recognized the stout, strong figure standing in the doorway, haloed by the light.

  “Spirit curse you, do you have any idea what time it is?” Shamaïra snapped.

  Ramson’s grin faded when one of the Whitecloaks began to speak. “You are hereby accused of treason and sin against the Kolst—”

  Shamaïra’s sharp cackle cut across his words
. “Oh, it’s sin now, is it? Your Empress fancies herself a god now, too?”

  “—the Kolst Imperatorya,” the Whitecloak pressed on, “by harboring rebels and traitors of the Crown. We therefore place you under arrest and command the right to search your property for evidence of these accusations.”

  Shamaïra’s laugh rang out again. “You’ll arrest me before you search for evidence?” she snorted.

  “Shut up, Shamaïra,” Ramson gritted under his breath.

  “I’ll give you all the evidence you need,” Shamaïra continued, and her voice settled, turning deep. “I declare myself a traitor to the Crown, and a rebel against the Kolst Imperatorya. Don’t touch me,” she snarled, so viciously that the Whitecloak approaching her hesitated. “I’ll go myself.” She swept a glance around, and for a moment, Ramson swore she looked directly at him. “But if anybody still wishes to search my property, they are welcome to do so. You’ll certainly find overwhelming evidence in what an old lady paints before bedtime!”

  Two Whitecloaks signaled at each other, then stepped forward and disappeared into Shamaïra’s dacha.

  Ramson was frozen in place, his mind playing out all scenarios, possibilities, and strategies to get ahead of the impossible scene before him. Trying to find some way out of all this.

  Help her, a voice urged. Ana’s voice. She would never have hesitated.

  But he was one man to the Whitecloaks’ seven, including an Affinite Inquisitor. If there was one thing he was good at, it was calculating the odds. Ramson Quicktongue could recognize when not to enter a losing battle.

  He watched Shamaïra walk to the wagon, head held high and shoulders thrown back as though she held command. He watched them lock the doors, mount their sleek, pale valkryfs. Watched as the unit set off at a brisk trot, their powerful steeds moving at almost twice the speed of any ordinary horse.

  He could go after her. Follow them, find a time when their security was loose and rescue Shamaïra.

  But Ramson remained where he was, his senses wound tighter than a spring, his eyes scanning the periphery. Waiting.

  As though on cue, an orange flicker appeared at one of the windows, and voices wound through the night. One of the Whitecloaks who had gone in to search Shamaïra’s dacha appeared. He seemed to be speaking to someone behind him. “Mad old fortune-teller.” His voice was faint, but just audible from where Ramson crouched. “Why does the Kolst Imperatorya want her? She doesn’t actually believe the old woman can see the future, does she?”

  A chill went down Ramson’s spine. Morganya was looking for Shamaïra?

  A deeper voice answered. “Mind your own business. We were given orders; it is our job to execute them.” From inside the dacha, the Inquisitor emerged. Flames licked up the skin of his bare hands, and for a moment, they washed over the twisted look on his face. “Stand back.”

  The night lit up in a brief flash of light. Fire shot from the Affinite’s hands, swirling over the wooden walls and the thatched roof of Shamaïra’s house. It caught ablaze easily, flames snaking up the sides in rivulets, spreading faster than ink on parchment.

  Ramson hid in the shadows of the trees, watching as the two Whitecloaks mounted their steeds and galloped after their unit, the fire throwing long, crooked shadows behind them.

  Coward, a voice whispered.

  But Ramson knew, with certainty, that had he been given the choice again, he would have chosen to save himself, over and over and over. Just as he had at another time, another place, almost a lifetime ago, with the sleek shine of the arrow in torchlight, the soft black of Jonah’s hair as he lay on the floor, eyes as still as the surface of a glass lake.

  Ramson fisted his hands against his face. Shamaïra—in the last moments, she’d been brave. He thought of her piercing blue gaze, sweeping the periphery of her dacha, almost as if…

  …she’d been looking directly at him.

  Ramson shot to his feet. Before he knew it, he was running, sprinting as fast as he could toward the burning dacha.

  But if anybody still wishes to search my property, they are welcome to do so.

  It hadn’t been an accident. Shamaïra had been talking to him.

  You’ll certainly find overwhelming evidence in what an old lady paints before bedtime!

  Heat gusted in his face as he drew closer, the light of the fire searing his eyes. The entire front wall was ablaze.

  Ramson drew his scarf over his face, sucked in a deep breath, and barreled through the open front door. Immediately, his eyes watered; smoke filled his lungs.

  It took him a few moments to reach the parlor; he could see the glow of flames working through the wood of the roof.

  Ramson made a desperate scan of the room. Books had been pulled from their shelves on the wall, precious texts from Nandji strewn carelessly across the floor. They’d slit blades through Shamaïra’s divans; the insides spilled out like guts, red in the firelight. Her table was upturned, the center of her beautiful Nandjian rug slashed through, revealing rough wooden floorboards beneath.

  Through all the wreckage, a painting easel lay knocked askance at the corner of the room. Paint had spilled from shattered pots, but when Ramson retrieved the canvas, he knew in his gut that this was what he sought.

  Shamaïra had painted a blue swath of an ocean, and then swirls and swirls of white atop. And, at the very edge, the canvas had been burned through, the dull sheen of molten metal clinging to the edges.

  Ramson would recognize gold anywhere.

  Gold. Ocean. White. And in the midst of it all, a streak of red that blazed across the page like fire, like blood, like…a scarlet cloak.

  He might have grinned at Shamaïra’s brilliance. She’d depicted Goldwater Port and the Whitewaves, both in the painting and symbolically. And right in the middle, she’d painted Ana.

  It couldn’t be an accident. She must have known he would come searching for her, and this was the message she’d left him: that Ana was safe, and that he would find her in Goldwater Port.

  Ramson left the painting in the parlor, flames crawling closer and closer to the center of the room until there would be nothing left but ash.

  The back garden was surprisingly peaceful: a world of snow and ice and stars. It almost felt as though it had a spirit of its own, waiting for him quietly as he stumbled out and inhaled lungfuls of cold, clean air.

  Ramson paused by a wooden trellis. Winterbells had grown on it, delicate vines winding steadfastly to the pale wood. If he believed in the gods, he might also have believed that a small soul rested beneath.

  Still, he couldn’t help but bend down and touch a hand to the ground, to the quiet earth slumbering beneath it all. “Take care of the old woman, all right? Leave the rest to me.”

  As Ramson straightened, a small wind stirred. The winterbells nodded; drifts of snow brushed against him.

  It was good he didn’t believe in the afterlife, Ramson thought as he turned to leave, or he might have believed that there, behind the scene of so much violence and sacrilege, a small soul protected the sanctity of the garden and had just spoken to him.

  Linn was going to die.

  That was what the prison guards said, anyway—the ones who rotated shifts before her blackstone-enforced cell. The mineral, she knew, was mined from the Krazyast Triangle of the north, prized by the men who conducted trade in their caravans across the frozen tundras of this empire. The men who had traded her.

  She remembered the sensation of sitting in those caravans for weeks on end: that slight, swaying motion, the uncertainty of day and night, the knowledge that she could be beaten at any point in time, and the darkness—the type that smothered your sight more fully than a blindfold and seemed to swallow you whole until you doubted your very existence.

  That was what this prison felt like—as though she’d taken a step back and fallen right into the fabric of
her nightmares.

  But the Wind Masters had always taught her to hone her weaknesses into her strengths. The darkness had become her training ground, forcing her to sharpen her other senses. The chains had become her friends; she’d learned to fight without her hands within a confined radius, and to adjust to a different center of balance. And the beatings had taught her to numb her mind to pain and made her body more resilient.

  No, it wasn’t any of these that made her hate this place. It was the space she feared.

  The space—or lack thereof—in her tiny, cramped cell, in which she could barely stretch out her legs without touching the other end. The space that pressed against her in the silence and the darkness until it seemed to become a living thing, breathing against her face and neck and threatening to devour her.

  She’d spent the first few days curled against the wall, thinking of the high mountains of Kemeira that rose into the skies, mist weaving between them like a Moon Dancer’s sash. She’d known those mountains since her connection to wind had manifested at the age of five. There had been a time when she’d jumped off those cliffs and flown as easily as a bird, soaring with the wind in her ears and the sky at her back.

  When her brother disappeared, it had felt as though her entire life had shattered.

  She’d stopped flying after that.

  A wingless bird, her Wind Masters whispered. What warrior cannot master her affinity to her own element?

  Yes, she had been a wingless bird—and a caged one, now.

  She’d broken her wrist and twisted her ankle in that jump off the Salskoff Palace. The river—and her winds—had saved her from a swift death, and she’d crawled out half-frozen, half-conscious. She had worked her way down the Empire village to village, until she’d run into a group of Imperial Patrols, freshly dispatched by the new Empress herself. Half-feverish and still injured, she’d barely put up a fight before they’d taken her down.