Page 13 of Queen Demon
The troop moved into the overgrown paddocks and began to set up camp, something they were all very familiar with by now. A vanguarder arrived and reported that Prince-heir Vrim’s troop was not far behind her. Bashasa left his horse with the outguard’s wranglers and headed in to the caravanserai with his cadre to meet with the advance vanguarders who were already here. Kai and Ziede split off with Kai’s cadre to help set up an outer perimeter while Tahren went with the outguard to plan sentry posts.
They started the long loop around the caravanserai’s outer paddocks, Ziede using her wind-devils to see for longer distances over the fields and Kai watching for any threats lingering near the ruined buildings or half-tumbled walls. There was so much death in these lands now, it attracted unwanted attention. From things that had long been dormant in the silent isolated places of the world, from things cut off from the underearth when the Hierarchs closed the passage to it. Creatures that might have been harmless but had been transformed by hunger, or from being cut off from the forms left behind there.
Kai was a creature cut off from the form he had left behind there, but he had been in a mortal body too long to feel any kind of urge to eat mortal flesh. He missed his mortal family, all dead, and his grandmother, who was trapped in the underearth now. Trapped there forever, since the legionaries had burned her mortal body.
And he missed the sense of being able to shift shape, to travel effortlessly. He shook off the useless thoughts as Cerala called him over to look at something strange, which turned out to be a cache of dead lizards.
Kai rode back to Ziede, who wore a preoccupied expression as she listened to the wind-devils. “Not a lizard-killing horror then,” she said absently.
“Not today.” They were about three-quarters of the way done, and the sky was beginning to cloud over. Kai was getting hungry enough that the unseasoned millet porridge the supply train would make for dinner seemed appetizing. They needed to kill an expositor who happened to be carrying some bags of peppercorns. “They’re doing well, though, looking for signs of things they haven’t seen before.”
“Ibel has been helpful, teaching the outguard what to watch for.” Ibel was one of Amabel’s relatives. She spoke Imperial well enough to teach, though her lungs were bad and it kept her from being able to work as a vanguarder. Ziede added, “I find it somewhat encouraging that there are any Witches left east of the mountains. I thought they were all dead.”
Ziede had taught in the cloisters of the Khalin Islands, which had been completely wiped out. From what Kai had been told, the Hierarchs had attacked the archipelagoes and barrier islands first. He wondered if there was anybody still alive on any of the islands on the Erathi trade routes. He said, “Most of the Witches west of the mountains are dead too.”
Those Witches had lived with the borderlanders who came to fight the Hierarchs with the Saredi. That alliance had moved swiftly, driving the occupying legionaries out of the Erathi coastal towns and then chasing them into the hills. But they had no warning of the power of the Well of the Hierarchs, and had been destroyed almost in one stroke. If the Saredi captains had had any concept of the Hierarchs’ great weapon, they would never have allowed the borderlanders and the clans to gather in force. Theywould have stayed in their hundreds of small groups and harried the legions until the Witches and their allies in the underearth came up with some way to destroy the Well or defend against it. But the grasslands had never traded much with the east past the mountains; they hadn’t even known of the invaders until the Hierarchs had come ashore in Erathi.
Bashasa is right,Kai thought. Like the Arike, isolation had killed the Saredi too.
“There have to be other Witches in this region,” Ziede said, turning her horse to continue on their route.
“The smart ones are hiding somewhere far away from here.” Kai knew more about scouting than he did about being an expositor or a Witch, and his attempts to use intentions didn’t always work. When an Immortal Blessed ascension raft had appeared in the sky as they were leaving the Kagala, he had tried to set it on fire and failed. Ziede had used wind-devils to force it to crash, and then Tahren had killed the two Immortal Blessed who had survived, but she only reached them after they killed seven Arike and wounded a dozen others. Ziede meant to teach Kai more about Witchcraft, but they had been fighting or moving continuously since the Kagala, and there hadn’t been much time.
Ziede’s glance was dry. “Are you saying we aren’t smart, Kai?”
“I’m saying we’re something and smart isn’t it.” He squinted up at the sky. Damp was settling into the air like a wet cotton veil. The wind had died away and gray clouds sank down low over the grassland. “Sky’s about to break.” On the Saredi plains, weather like this meant soon thunder would crash and rain would plunge down to drown the gullies and flood the riverbeds. Over by the rubble of the outer wall, late arrivals from Prince-heir Hiranan’s troop were hurrying to get the tents staked down and their gear under cover.
“Hmm,” Ziede commented. She sniffed the air. “Perhaps.”
When they finished their circuit, Nirana took Kai and Ziede’s horses so they could join Bashasa in the caravanserai.
The grass in the paddocks was already stamped down, and the scent of it left a drift of sweetness on the air, despite the horses, wallwalkers, and sweaty people. Most of the tents were up, their placement organized by the cadres and the outguard.
Kai and Ziede walked up to the main building where it arched over the old road. In the righthand arch, two heavy battered wooden doors had been wedged open. These led into a big half-circle hall where high narrow windows let in enough daylight to see elaborate piecework metal lamps mounted on the walls, now rusted and broken. A stone stairwell in the back curved upward. The tile floor was mostly covered with drifts of dirt, but there was no smell of decay, or a sense of anything foul. It was just an empty shell, now filled with a lot of people standing around talking or being sent off on various errands.
Most of the remaining furniture was broken and shoved off to the side in a pile, but some intact wooden tables had been stacked up to make a map stand. Kai would need to look at it later; right now it was surrounded by vanguarders taking notes and making annotations.
“I wonder what that’s about,” Ziede murmured.
Kai saw Bashasa stood near the stairwell, speaking with Prince-heir Hiranan. From their faces… “Nothing good,” Kai said. She leaned on her crutch, her face tense and intent. And that was not the expression Bashasa wore when he was absorbing important information; it was the one he wore when he was hearing something potentially disastrous and trying not to react to it.
Arava, Bashasa’s cadre leader, strode through the crowd. “Sister Ziede, Fourth Prince, the Prince-heir asks for you to attend the meeting about to be called.” She gestured them to another open doorway, this one leading into a smaller side room.
It was equally dusty but empty except for some baggage piled up against the far wall. Some group probably intended to sleephere, from the bedrolls and packs. There were also supplies needed by all the troops, like maps, more maps, cases of writing and mapmaking supplies and paper. It wasn’t Bashasa’s belongings; he traveled as light as Kai and Ziede did, using the same shoulder bag one of his cadre had carried for him from the Summer Halls. Though Kai knew that he had saved some things belonging to his family and had cached them somewhere outside Benais-arik before they left.
Bashasa came in almost on their heels and said, “Thank you, Arava, if you could summon the others?”
As she left, Bashasa gestured them away from the doors and said, “Quickly, before the others arrive, it’s not good news. Renitl-arik is in revolt. They have killed their usurper and are fighting in the streets.”
“What?” Ziede said, keeping her voice low. “The fools—Do they have any idea of the risk?”
“I thought Prince-heir Stamash said he wouldn’t do that,” Kai said, thinkinghe didn’t seem like an idiot. Stamash had been with them in the Hostage Courts, though Kai had never exchanged many words with him. After the Kagala, he had gone to his city with his cadre to raise support for Bashasa and organize the city guilds. There had been messages from him, but nothing about this. Allowing the usurpers to believe they were still mostly in control of the cities was the only way to keep the Hierarchs from ordering their destruction. The only other choice was to evacuate. Bashasa had made that choice for Benais-arik, since it was bound to be the Hierarchs’ prime target. “What happened?”
“I’m not sure. He must have lost control of the situation.” Bashasa was grim. “If Stamash has done this on purpose, he is making a shit job of it.” He shook his head. “We could lose all of them.”
He meant all of Renitl-arik, and any of its surrounding villages and towns that hadn’t been destroyed already. Kai wished he was better at comforting people. Bashasa always seemed to knowwhat to do and what to say. Kai said, “We’ll have to move faster,” and winced at the inadequacy of it.
Bashasa squeezed his shoulder absently. “My thought as well.”
