Page 21 of Queen Demon
Fury came over Kai in a wave, driven by fear. All he could see was the camp of the Saredi and borderlander alliance, slaughtered by the Voice of the Hierarchs. The burned heap the legionaries had made of Kentdessa Saredi. He couldn’t face another overrun camp, another field of familiar dead faces.
He stood and strode forward, away from the paddock wall into the open field beyond. Wind rose out of nowhere, laden with sand. It struck him in a haze of pinprick pain, flattened his clothes to his body, tore through his hair. Not hard enough to throw him off stride, more like a threat, a promise. Kai ground his teeth, wishing he had someone’s neck to bite, and went to the tall pillar that marked the caravanserai’s long collapsed outer gate. He put his hand on the pitted stone and used his pain and fury and the last dead expositor’s life to call heatless fire.
The pillar burst into flame and lit the grassy field like daylight. Kai stepped away from it, letting his eyes adjust. Thirty or so paces away a dozen figures froze, arrested in mid-motion by the sudden unexpected wash of light.
At first Kai couldn’t tell what they were. Wreathed in dust, they looked like spirits, like something strange that had risen out of the ground, drawn by all the death the Hierarchs had brought to the world. He walked forward, the tall grass and sticky seed pods catching at his skirt.
One started toward him, moving further into the circle of light. Kai realized this was a person, or at least something that had taken mortal shape. The dust that floated around their body coated veilsworn over the kind of long wrap tunic and wide pants common to the east, the colors obscured. Arike used their clothing to show their gender, but Witches didn’t, at least the Witches Kai had known from the borderlands.
And this had to be a Witch.
The edge of her influence felt like a breath of metallic dust, an itch in the back of Kai’s throat. He had never had a Witch try to exert power over him and it wasn’t one last stick on an already abraded back, but it was close. He smiled a little, not kindly, and said in Imperial, “Are you trying to put a cantrip on me, Sister? I can barely feel it.”
As they drew closer together, the sand and dust rose like curtains around the two of them. It would obscure them from Ziede’s sight and the view of anyone rushing here from the camp, though Kai didn’t bother to turn around and look. The firelight glowed through the walls of shifting dust, throwing gold reflections. He couldn’t see what the other veiled figures were doing, but it hardly mattered.
Kai and the Witch stopped barely two paces from each other and her power swelled like a wave. It tasted of ashes on Kai’s tongue. He said, “That’s better.” He wanted her to take that last step into arm’s reach herself.
“Confident expositor,” she said in the same language. Anger seethed under the amusement in her soft voice, her unfamiliar accent. “So young and pretty to be out here alone.” She took the last step and reached for him. “How lucky for me.”
The firelight was to Kai’s back and must be throwing his eyes into shadow. Even through the dust it was bright enough on her veil that he could see her features through it. He had never heard a Witch of the borderlands comment on someone’s appearance, or equate it with their power. It was an incredibly foolish, deadly foolish, assumption to make. Kai took her hand as she reached for him, the callous on her palm catching on Talamines’ still soft skin. He said, “How unlucky for you that I’m not an expositor.”He caught the life in her and lifted it free of her being. Just enough that it froze her in place. A strangled noise left her throat, of shock, disbelief, fear.
The swirling curtains of dust slowed, particles drifting, as the almost imperceptible wind that carried them died away.
His voice deceptively even, Kai said, “You killed my people. Are you Hierarchs’ slaves, that you attack mortals for them? Your ancestors in the underearth would tear you apart.” He was a heartbeat away from turning her into a desiccated corpse. He kept hold of her hand but allowed her just enough life for her knees to give out; she thumped to the ground, half upright.
Shouting rang out, someone screamed a name. Movement in Kai’s peripheral vision. With his free hand, Kai swiped the first intention off his shoulder and held it out. It was a small one, meant to hurt more than kill, but between containing the fire to the pillar and holding off the Witch’s attempt to pack his lungs with dust, he didn’t have the concentration or the power for more. Not unless he ate this one’s life, but the last shred of his self-control held him back.
A figure burst through the dissipating dust wall and leapt for him, arm raised. Kai let the intention go with a flick of his fingers. It struck her in the chest and knocked her backward. She hit the ground and rolled, gasping and clawing at her front. Another figure grabbed her arm and staggered, collapsing as the intention spread to her. Others rushing forward stumbled to a halt, then scrambled back in fear.
The taste of ashes intensified, the sensation of something soft and smothering clumping around Kai’s teeth. It didn’t come from his captive, but one or more of the others around him. He drew out a little more of the Witch’s life and used it to push back at that unfamiliar power. The sensation eased and someone shouted, “Stop, it’s a demon!” It wasn’t in Imperial, it sounded more like a dialect of Arike, close but not quite the same as the way the Benais-arik spoke it. But the word for demon was the same.
Kai raised his voice and said in the Arike he knew, “I serve the Free Arik, under Prince-heir Bashasa bar Calis of Benais-arik. Why did you attack us without provocation?”
Someone eased forward out of the shadows ahead, another figure wrapped in dust gray fabric. She threw a glance toward the two under the intention. They writhed and panted on the ground, the others afraid to go near enough to help. She said, “The expositors take Witches and strip them of their will, bend them to their own uses, make them slaves, what they call familiars.” She was deliberately speaking in a way more understandable to Kai, a version of the language closer to that spoken by the Benais-arik. “They do this to demons, too.”
He had never heard of this before, he wanted to say it was a lie. But the demons who had been kept in the Cageling Courts of the Summer Halls now fought for the Hierarchs in the southwest. He had been afraid the demons had joined the Hierarchs of their own will, or because they had been tortured to numb obedience. But if they had been somehow mentally enslaved by expositors… “Not this demon,” Kai said. “Answer my question.”
He expected her to say they had thought they were attacking legionaries, or at best Hierarch partisans. It was a worthless excuse at best, but it was the obvious one to choose.
She said only, “Let them go and we’ll leave.”
Kai laughed. It was as good as admitting they had known what they were doing, there had been no mistake. “If you hold any of my people who still live, give them to me now. I want blood for blood.”
“The Witchlands,” another voice said. “He’s from the Witchlands.”
These people spoke an Arike dialect and used the eastern name for the borderlands. In a way it was a relief, that these weren’t borderlander Witches who had betrayed everything their lineages had taught and lived for generations. Kai said, “Where are you from? Where did they teach you to murder helpless mortals?”
Another voice from further out in the dark, deeper and rougher, laughed. “You think you can stand against us alone?”
The one who had tried to bargain with Kai twitched. The others drifted closer.
Kai felt his jaw tighten. It was time to drain his captive and just start killing all of them.
Then icy claws caught in Kai’s tangled hair, but this breath of power was familiar and welcome. It was the weightless cold of a wind-devil wrapping around him, a warning of what was about to happen. He said, “What makes you think I’m alone?”
A whoosh-thump like igniting firepowder shook the ground. All the Witches advancing on Kai slammed down to the flattened grass under the force of it. The drifting dust disintegrated in the blast of wind, but Ziede’s wind-devil had created a column of air around Kai, and it remained undisturbed.
The intention on the other two Witches ran its course and dissipated. Without that draw on his concentration, Kai was able to turn and drag his captive back toward the fire pillar.
