Page 23 of Queen Demon
Kai agreed. “I’ll stay here with the others. Send a cadre for us.”
“Keep an eye out.” Ziede gathered Amabel against her. “They may come back.”
“I can hope.” Kai pushed to his feet. He hadn’t even been this angry at the last expositor he had killed.
Ziede didn’t answer, just lifted up into the air with Amabel.
Kai needed to tend to the other vanguarders. He was too unsteady to try to dessicate the ropes. He felt his coat pockets for a knife then remembered he wasn’t wearing a coat, he had come out here half-dressed. He fumbled around the streambed until he found a sharp enough rock and crouched to start sawing through the bonds on the first vanguarder’s wrists. Another stirred and blinked in the dim candlelight. She slurred out, “It’s the demon.”
“That’s me.” Kai freed the first one’s wrists and moved on to the ankles. The Witches had stripped her boots off. “We’ll get you back to camp soon.” He didn’t think he would be very good at being reassuring now, so he just worked at getting them out of their bonds.
“He killed that shit-beetle Karanis,” another bleary voice said.
“No, it was the server bringing food who killed Karanis,” Kai corrected. He got the first’s feet free and she rolled over, still half conscious but groaning in relief. He moved on to the next. “I killed the second Hierarch in the Summer Halls, after Bashasa killed the first one.”
From their wondering murmurs, this was news to everyonewho was coherent enough to understand it. The bleary one added, “They caught someone else, that Witch vanguarder.”
“Ziede took them back to camp already,” Kai explained. The rock had been dulled by the tough ropes and he had to get up to go find another.
When he came back and went to work on the third one’s bonds, she seemed more awake, and asked, “Demon Prince, why did they take us?”
“That’s a good question,” Kai said. “Maybe they eat mortals.”
“Ugh,” the bleary one commented weakly. “Don’t joke, Demon Prince.”
Kai hoped it was a joke. With Witches who would interfere with mortals, who would attack other Witches, they might be capable of anything.
Three
After the revelation of Dahin’s theory, Ziede had declared that she was going to sleep. She steered a half-conscious, grumpy Sanja to one of the beds in the back of the suite, then she and Tahren retired. Kai had moved again to the cushions on the stone chair and was close to finishing Dahin’s book. He wanted to get to the end before he left on his errand, just to make certain he hadn’t missed anything.
Some Cloister Witches had returned, an older group than the ones who had occupied Sanja this afternoon. They sat on the mats on the other side of the room in a cluster mostly centered on Tenes. They were talking rapidly and silently in Witchspeak. Kai had paid enough attention to know the conversation had started with Tenes’ possible origin, and ways to track down anyone who might know who her family was. Then Tenes abruptly stood up.
Kai paused on the book’s last page and gave the group his whole attention. Tenes had come to her feet like she was lifted by Ziede’s wind-devils. Her expression as she glared down at one Witch was all cold fury. The others went still.
Tenes signed,Take back your words before I take them from your mouth.
The other Witch rose to her feet slowly, deliberately. Kai said, “Tenes?”
Tenes signed rapidly,She said you were lying to me, that you had used your power to trap me and cloud my mind.
That was predictable. Kai said, “That’s because she’s a dustwitch who calls herself Albre, pretending to be a Cloister Witch. She thinks I don’t recognize her.”
The other Witches stood in a whisper of movement, the faint sound of fabric brushing tile. As one, they stepped back from the confrontation. Albre dragged her veil off. Her attention on Tenes, she said to Kai, “I thought you knew, clever snake.”
Albre had enough demon blood in her line that she hadn’t aged much. Her dark hair was cropped to a tight cap, streaked with gray, and there were only a few lines around her eyes. Her contemptuous expression was the same.
Her gaze still locked on Albre, Tenes signed,What is a dustwitch?
Kai set Dahin’s book aside on the chair’s stone arm and sat forward, propping his elbows on his knees. “They come from the dry plains of the east. They’re not like borderlander or Cloister Witches. Because all they can do is kill.” That was unfair, but Kai had no desire to save Albre’s feelings.
“I’m not here to threaten you or your new pet,” Albre said, a challenge aimed at Tenes.
That is good. For you. Tenes closed her fist on the last word and the stone tile under Albre’s left foot cracked.
To her credit, Albre didn’t flinch. She tilted her head in an acknowledgment of Tenes and stepped back, her motions slow and measured. She half turned to Kai and said, “I only came to see what plans our master has for us.”
“Witches don’t have masters.” Kai leaned back in the stone chair, lounging in the place where Hierarchs had rested after dispensing death and reward when they had owned this city and everyone in it. “Do you really want to fight that battle again? I changed my body, not my mind.”
