Page 3 of Queen Demon
The man stopped a few steps from Bashasa’s horse and said, “Where are you going, Karanis?” He sounded confident and amused. “To the palace? You should report to the garrison commander. You know what will happen if you haven’t dealt with that escaped dross.”
Drosswas what the legionaries called the Arike and the other eastern peoples. From the low noise Salatel made in her throat, it was clearly worse than it sounded.
Her head lowered, Arava said, “Great One, you are correct, but Prince-heir Karanis has something he must attend to first. He will—”
“Answer me, Karanis!” the man snapped.
Everything went still, even the breeze dropping away, and the silence of the watching mortals sank into Kai’s bones. He felt the breath huff out of his lungs, and one of the horses nearby stamped. There had been so many times where everything could go wrong, where their world could end, where the one painful pitiful spark of hope would die, but those other moments had all gone by so fast they were hard to recall clearly. This one seemed to hang in the air, dangling all of them over the edge of a cliff for an eternity.
“Ah, well.” Bashasa lifted his head slowly and tipped his hat back. He said pleasantly, “I suppose we should start now, as we mean to go on.”
The man stared. “Who are you?”
The server dropped the sunshade. She backed away, incredulous, and said, “Prince-heir…”
“Run,” Bashasa told her, and drew his sword.
She bolted. Others on the street scattered and ran. The Hierarch servant-noble stepped back but Kai saw the flash of a blade as Bashasa’s sword sliced the air. The man fell.
Arava shouted a command and the soldiers behind them roared their reply. Kai snarled in relief and surged forward with the others. He caught a glimpse of the servant-noble on the ground as the clawed feet of his horse pounded over him.
The streets blurred past as Kai concentrated on staying close behind Bashasa. The Arike were almost as good riders as the Saredi and their aggressive horses were fast and nimble. They broke formation for an abandoned cart and dodged to avoid fleeing mortals. A legionary appeared out of nowhere and raised a spear at Salatel. Her horse swerved away and Kai’s beast lunged in and crunched the man’s shoulder in its fangs before Kai could even reach for him. They left the crumpled body behind and raced onward.
Loud pops from somewhere nearby told Kai the signals were going off. The archers among the conscripts were firing arrows with burning firepowder sticks into the air. High overhead, the sticks exploded in bursts of light and noise. Hopefully Hiranan and Lahshar and the others would see them, but now that the action had started Kai felt all worries slip away. If they fell, they would fall fighting, and that was all he could ask.
Around the next corner they plunged into more legionaries gathered to block the way and suddenly the fighting was all around. Kai speared two through their helmets, staying in the circle of riders around Bashasa. Someone shouted in alarm and barely paces away a soldier went down with an arrow in her chest.
“Kai!” Bashasa shouted. He pointed up. A three-story tower loomed above, figures with bows on the balcony. “Stop them!”
Kai grimaced; he wanted to stay and make sure Bashasa got through this alive. But his Saredi scout training took over and he sheathed his spear and turned his horse toward the tower even as every nerve in his body protested.
This would be easier if Ziede was here but she had entered the city by stealth last night with Tahren. They meant to make their way to the tower where the Immortal Blessed well-source, the connection to the Well of Thosaren, was kept. Their goal was to take control of the well-source so no messages for help could be sent to the Hierarchs through it. They had thought first to destroy it, but Dahin had pointed out that answering any messages that came in would buy them more time. Kai wouldn’t know if they had succeeded or not until he saw them again. Or if Blessed ascension rafts arrived to destroy them from the air.
He reached the wall and reined in, and stood up in the stirrups. His horse snorted and danced but he grabbed on to the carved lintel of a window. He pulled himself up and rammed his shoulder into the wood lattice and rolled right through it, and landed on the floor in a pile of splinters. Mortals screamed and fled. He ignored them, scrambling upright and throwing himself through the nearest door into a stairwell.
He raced up past walls painted with dancing figures. At the next landing he heard light steps behind him and looked back, but it was Telare, Cerala, and Nirana. They should have stayed with Bashasa and his cadre, but it was a little late to give that order now. Kai rounded the corner and almost ran into the sword of a richly dressed mortal. He ducked back from the blade and caught the man’s wrist.
Kai didn’t have enough time to draw out all his life, just enough to make him fall down. Every breath of delay might mean another dead ally, might mean Bashasa’s life. He shoved the collapsingbody aside and plunged up the last short flight into the top floor of the tower.
Several mortals huddled against the back wall, their fear telling Kai they were non-combatants. Some were children, some adults already bruised and battered. The wide landing was in disarray, cushions flung around, a table broken into splintered pieces. Two legionaries stood near the trapped mortals, guarding a half-open door into a sunlit room. Through that room would be the balcony, and the legionaries armed with bows. Not a problem necessarily for Kai, but he didn’t want his cadre hurt. He had to make this quick and quiet. The gesture shielded by his body, he motioned for his cadre to wait; their footsteps halted on the stairs behind him.
The two legionaries turned and stared, confused by Kai’s appearance; he had moved almost silently and he was dressed like a servant-noble. In that heartbeat of hesitation, Kai strode across the landing. He reached the first legionary and grabbed the lower half of the man’s face; before he could react, Kai took his breath, then his life. The second legionary should have cried out for help, or in warning, but he stabbed Kai in the side with a short spear instead. The blow rocked Kai, but he wrapped an arm around the spear and held it in place as Cerala and Telare rushed up onto the landing.
Telare drove her sword into a gap in the armor over the legionary’s gut and Cerala cut his throat before he could do more than gurgle. Kai let his desiccated legionary drop and wrenched the spear out of his side. Nirana had gone ahead to the half-open doorway. She used a pocket mirror to take a quick look inside, then signaled to Kai that it was clear.
He slipped silently past her. It was another room with tumbled couches and bedding, with open doors leading out to the broad balcony. Half a dozen legionaries stood out there with two servant-nobles. All the legionaries had bows, aiming down at the fighting below. There was no help for it, they all had to go at once.
Kai was close enough, barely two paces away, and he had the pain from the already closing spear wound to power the intention. He crouched, and sketched the design on the wooden floor of the balcony.
Someone swore in Imperial. As Kai set the intention free, he looked up to see an arrow pointed directly at his head. He had never been shot in the head before, and he didn’t want to find out what would happen if he was. He shoved himself back through the doorway just as flames leapt up from the intention. The arrow thudded into the spot where Kai had been and immediately burst into ash.
The fire rolled across the wooden balcony like red glowing liquid. The men were caught almost too fast to scream, their bows snapping from the heat before their clothes caught.
Making the fire limited in its scope, creating it quickly, without having to pore over the design for hours, and stopping it at will had been hard to achieve, but it made the intention more usable. Kai had practiced it with Ziede’s help; she had some success putting out uncontrolled blazes with a sharp gust of air, though it didn’t always work as it should, with nerve-racking results. Being close to the target, and having enough pain to control the result, was a necessity; the water intention that he had accidentally destroyed the Summer Halls with was a warning he wasn’t likely to forget. Though he had no idea yet how to create an intention that powerful; it was easier to steal already completed designs from dead expositors.
The railing dissolved in flames and Kai closed his fist to shatter the intention. The fire winked out like a candle, leaving a wash of heat and a few charred beams that were all that was left of the balcony. Kai stood and caught hold of the singed doorframe, and leaned out far enough to see below.
With their archers dead and the frightening burst of fire above them, the legionary line had broken. Bashasa and the otherspushed forward out of the trap. Kai breathed in relief and turned away.
