Page 12 of Queen Demon
With this knowledge, Bashasa enlisted everyone they encountered who would listen as fighters, vanguarders, messengers, or spies. Those who couldn’t fight were sent off to find hiding places to retreat to, to create hidden caches of supplies, to warn others and to recruit them in turn or lead them to whatever safety they could find.
He had also split his original force into smaller bands, to move more quickly and come together at prearranged meeting points only known to the sub-Captains. The Arike had always usedcavalry to fight each other, but their ancestral battles over land had been much more formalized confrontations, with rules agreed to by all parties concerned. Kai had explained the way the Saredi had organized their attacks on the Hierarchs in Erathi and their alliance with the borderlanders, and Bashasa had listened intently, the way he listened to everyone, and used it to build his strategy. “The Hierarchs have studied us, and their legionaries know how we fight, the way our ancestors fought,” Bashasa had explained to the Arike soldiers and the other Prince-heirs. “They won’t expect this from us.”
As Kai passed the supply train, he was aware how many people watched him, some startled or wary and some matter-of-fact, depending on when they had joined the troop. He caught motion out of the corner of his eye, and glanced up to see Dahin waving wildly from the palanquin atop the lead wallwalker’s back. Kai smiled and waved back.
He found Bashasa and Ziede past the wallwalkers at the front. Grouped behind them were Tahren, Bashasa’s cadre, and the band of soldiers the Arike called the outguard, who led the attacks. Mixed in among them were some Ilveri and Grale and a dozen others whose appearance and dress Kai couldn’t recognize yet. And a group of three Enalin, their robes dusty with travel, riding to one side of Bashasa’s cadre. Bashasa had been sending messengers back and forth to the Tescai-lin for the last few months, but Kai thought this trio looked recently arrived.
The outguard parted for Kai’s horse, and he rode up alongside Ziede. She was saying to Bashasa, “We can’t continue to use Kai only as a vanguarder. We can’t continue to use me only as a vanguarder—”
“I know this,” Bashasa agreed, more in commiseration than argument. He had left his white finery behind and wore sturdier clothes in brown and faded red, a long shirt and skirt under a coat embroidered in shades of browns and yellows. The blue-and-gold brocaded coat he had worn in the Summer Halls wasapparently Kai’s now, and packed into the small bag that constituted his belongings. Bashasa gestured eloquently. “And you know I know this, Sister Ziede. It’s only that the solution eludes us.” He glanced over and smiled. “Ah, Fourth Prince is back. Were you successful?”
Kai said, “Mostly. We found the expositor, but he didn’t have anything useful on him.”
Tahren nudged her horse up closer to listen.
“Good! And did he tell you anything of worth, since I assume you questioned him, as I reminded you to do?” Bashasa prompted.
“He thought I was a Hierarch’s demon who had been sent to find him or kill him or something by another expositor called Vartasias. I tried to go along with it to see if he’d say more, but he figured it out pretty quickly,” Kai explained.
Bashasa took this in with a thoughtful expression. “Interesting.”
“Did he say where Vartasias was?” Tahren asked.
“He asked if Vartasias was at Dashar now. Then he realized I was lying and called me a dross’s demon and then I killed him,” Kai admitted.
If Bashasa was disappointed he didn’t show it, but Ziede began in exasperation, “Kai…”
“He wasn’t going to say anything else,” Kai said pointedly. “I got a new intention off him.”
Ziede was skeptical but Bashasa said, “No, you’ve done well, Fourth Prince.” He stared into the distance, brow furrowed. “This could be useful. I have plans for Dashar. We must speak of it more later.”
Kai was glad to put off that discussion. They had heard the Hierarchs used enslaved demons to fight in Belith, but that was a long way from here. He wondered how many of the demons they had tried to free from the Cageling Court had actually escaped; that failure still hurt. He said, “What’s the problem with the vanguarders?”
“Some of our more important messages are not getting through.Amabel is the best at it, but they can’t take on every task,” Tahren told him.
Ziede added, “We need more Witches.”
“That would be the easiest solution,” Tahren said. Ziede turned to side-eye her and Tahren sighed a little. “That wasn’t sarcasm, I was agreeing with you.”
Amabel was one of the party of Witches who had joined Bashasa’s wallwalkers at the river crossing on the way to the Kagala. Kai and Ziede had sought those Witches out after Karanis’ death, hoping that they could help fight. But though the family could trace their line back to the borderlands, most of the group could only do small cantrips, to ease pain or find lost objects, and they were mostly too young or too old or their health was too bad to do any other kind of fighting. Bashasa had explained to Kai that he could make them part of his cadre, until they found somewhere else to go, so he had done that. They helped with camp chores and with translating or copying maps and other things that needed doing. The personal cadres and soldiers who formed the core of Bashasa’s troop had gotten used to Kai and Ziede, and had even less trouble getting used to Witches who could find water by sniffing for it and could sometimes make the wind calm a little if they tried very hard.
Amabel was the only one who could swift-travel, something that Ziede said was rare this far east. It used air and earth spirits in a way even the teachers of the Khalin Islands hadn’t understood. It made Amabel the best messenger and vanguarder Bashasa had.
“More Witches?” Lahshar Calis, Bashasa’s cousin, guided her horse up beside Bashasa. She was Bashasa’s age though she looked older than she had in the Hostage Courts, her curly dark hair pulled into a bun on top of her head. She wore much the same clothing as the soldiers, of finer material but just as covered with dust. She must have recently returned from patrol with her cadre. She waved a hand toward Kai and Ziede. “Are these not adequate? I thought one was supposed to be a demon?”
“Should I prove it to you?” Kai said. The problem with Lahshar was that she was probably the quickest thinker among Bashasa’s extended family who hadn’t been murdered or was still trapped in a Hierarch prison camp somewhere. She understood the tactics and strategies Bashasa and Prince-heir Hiranan came up with well enough to argue about them and make good suggestions. But she hated expositors even more than the rest of the Arike did and by extension hated Kai, stuck in this expositor’s body. He knew by now that letting her insult him didn’t help and about the only way to deflect her was a direct attack. “Do you volunteer as a demonstration?”
“Please say yes.” Ziede gave her a long look.
Bashasa interposed, “Lahshar, you must be kinder to our allies. It was isolationism that led us to this pass in the first place. If we had come to the Arkai’s aid, if we had listened to the tales from the archipelagoes and southern Belith, we might have had a chance to resist before we were brought to this point.”
“And you are the expert on strategy now? Because before this you didn’t pay attention to anything except your clothes and your liquor,” Lahshar snapped.
It was brutal enough that even Tahren blinked and Ziede’s nose wrinkled, but Bashasa didn’t flinch. He smiled and said, “Don’t wave a torch in a grass house, cousin.” He turned back to Ziede. “Now, the vanguarder situation…”
By afternoon they came into sight of the meeting point, an old deserted traveler’s refuge far to the east of Seidel-arik. It was a round tower of brick and stone, only a few levels high, sat astride the remnants of the road, the lower part forming an arch over it like a gatehouse. The upper two levels were ringed by terraces and balconies to catch the cool breeze. Open paddocks for riding animals surrounded it, their stone walls crumbling, with a fewscattered stone sheds and small wooden guesthouses that had begun to collapse with age.
The vanguarders who had first reached it several days ago had reported that the place had been deserted for years, but its troughs and basins were still filled by the nearby wellspring. It was a perfect rendezvous point. To Kai’s eye it was also indefensible so it was a good thing Bashasa didn’t intend to stay long enough to need to defend it.
