Page 5 of Queen Demon
“It’s an important meeting,” an Arike guard said, moving to block the door. “Cadres are to stay out—”
“These are Prince-heir Bashasa’s advisors,” Arava said while Salatel was still drawing breath to react. She pulled the guard aside and moved to hold open the big door for Kai and Ziede.
“We’ll wait here, Fourth Prince,” Salatel said, waving Kai on pointedly.
Arike politics made Kai tired but he meant to rejoin Bashasa whether anyone objected or not. As he passed Arava, she said, “Straight on through those doors, Fourth Prince.”
Inside was a tiled foyer full of mostly civilians who must have been successfully barred from the meeting, but they werequiet, listening. The inner set of broad doors was open, and the shouting inside was clearly audible. The soldiers at that door also belonged to Bashasa and quickly ushered Kai and Ziede through.
The big hall was round like the building, open all the way up to a pointed dome overhead. It was warm despite the pierced walls, any carving hidden by the large shouting crowd of Arike. Bashasa stood on a raised platform in the center.
Many in the crowd were gaunt, their clothes disheveled and dirty, others were wounded or had clearly participated in the battle. These must be some of the dissenters freed from the prisons that Hiranan and Lahshar had liberated. Others in the city had clearly fared better, wearing the bright colors and embroidery the Arike favored, or dressed plainly for heavy labor. They all looked grim or desperate or furious. Kai’s skin itched to see Bashasa there unprotected.
He started to push forward and Ziede grabbed his sleeve. He almost shook her off. Her expression now wide awake, she whispered, “No, don’t interfere. He knew this would happen.”
Kai grimaced, but Bashasa was as calm as if he was speaking with his cadre, his voice strong and clear. It was in Arike and much of it Kai couldn’t follow; it was too fast and Bashasa was using words Kai hadn’t learned yet. The audience focused intently on Bashasa as he answered their angry or frightened questions, sometimes gesturing out toward the far wall, which was lined with tall windows, the shutters open to look down on the organized chaos in the plaza.
The flicker of lamps showed the upper walls had scars and scrapes on the plaster where things had been removed, and a large mural had been hacked off, only strips of colors and the occasional face or arm of a painted figure remaining. Kai remembered that the city’s formal assembly hall was where Bashasa had meant to have his confrontation with Karanis the usurper.
Bashasa wasn’t speaking persuasively, lightly, like he hadexplained his plan to attack the Hierarchs in the Temple Halls and die fighting. He was deeply serious, measured, controlled. He had prepared for this. He had wanted to put the question of who the city would follow to the speakers for the people, the way Prince-heirs had settled their leadership disputes since the Arik had given up war. But Karanis had come to the Kagala to kill Bashasa and died there himself, when all his conscripted Arike had turned on him and a server in his entourage had settled the dispute with a knife in Karanis’ back.
Kai caught the Imperial word for demon and Karanis’ name. He couldn’t pick out the speaker. “What did they say?” he hissed to Ziede.
Her brow furrowed as she listened. “That person’s asking if it’s true, that Bashasa has a demon slave of the Hierarchs who killed Karanis for him.”
Bashasa was saying, “That is not true.” Kai understood the Arike for that. “Karanis was killed by a young person of this city who chose to join our fight. The person you speak of is our ally, Kaiisteron Fourth Prince of the underearth, who personally killed a Hierarch in the Summer Halls and defeated many expositors to secure our victory there.”
A cadre soldier standing just below the platform reached out and tapped Bashasa’s foot. Bashasa glanced around and gestured to Kai. “As you see, the Fourth Prince is here.”
The crowd turned to stare. Kai stared back, lowering his brows in a way he knew was particularly effective. The mortals in front of him immediately shuffled nervously away.
“Now,” Bashasa said, turning back to the crowd. “I must insist we suspend this discussion while I confer with my advisors and officers and the city guild leaders. We have many decisions to make. And the rest of you need food and rest. We have much yet to do.”
Kai and Ziede followed Bashasa to the back of the hall into a smaller meeting room. The blue and green painted wall tiles were easy on the eyes, and the pierced vents near the ceiling let in cool air. There were a few gilt and bone inlaid chairs, the kind high servant-nobles used, and no bodies, though there were some smashed glass vessels and blood on the floor. The rest of the invited civilians, Prince-heirs, and officers filed wearily in, finding places to stand, or places to sit for those who couldn’t stand.
Kai had heard in passing that the former speakers of Benais-arik’s artisan guilds had been found in the prisons. He knew Bashasa meant to enlist any surviving city leaders to take all the populace who would go toward the Arkai, by canal and overland. The Hierarchs still hadn’t bothered to occupy that region, even though they had killed most of the Arkai’s population who hadn’t managed to flee or hide. In the strategy meeting before they left the Kagala, Tahren Stargard had told them she had heard that the Hierarchs planned to settle the Arkai by sea with colonists from their settlements in Belith, but that there was a dispute over which Hierarch would rule the new colony or if they should make another.
“Make another Hierarch?” Bashasa had said in horror. “They can do that?”
Tahren had made one of her slight gestures that was the equivalent of a shrug. “It seems so.”
Bashasa had stared into the distance while the rest of the group had watched or murmured in dismay. They were soldiers, dependents, the surviving families of murdered Prince-heirs, and former hostages from other lands who had not been able to return to their own homes or who had nowhere to return to anymore. Kai had met Ziede’s gaze and worked on keeping his expression as neutral as hers. Then Bashasa had nodded and clapped his hands briskly, and said, “Then we must move faster than we planned.”
Ziede had pressed her hands over her eyes briefly, then joined the discussion as if nothing had happened. Kai had managed to keep his flood of relief internal.
It was clear, even to an outsider like Kai, that Bashasa was the only thing currently binding the budding alliance together, at least here in the Arik. If they lost confidence in him, it was over.
Now, standing here in the Assembly Hall, Bashasa was the Prince-heir who had led the hostages from the Summer Halls, freed the Kagala, and had now seized control of Benais-arik. Even if he only meant to occupy it temporarily, a stepping stone to the greater goal of breaking the will of the Hierarchs and driving them from the north and south continents forever.
Bashasa greeted all the freed guild speakers by name, and the others who had been invited in with them. Everyone was quiet as he outlined the plan to abandon the city. “We know we cannot hold any fort or city against them, no matter how strong the walls. Our only recourse is to fight on the run, as our ancestors did.”
Asara, a daughter of the Prince-heir of Bardes-arik, said, “There are people who are going to side with the Hierarchs.” She was shorter and wider than the other Arike, with a sturdy build and a determined expression. She would have looked at home on the back of a Saredi horse on a hunting ride. “People who have accepted the occupation, who believe the lie that if we surrender they will spare us. People who have married legionaries or Hierarch officials—”
“We will not kill our own people,” Bashasa said sharply, with no trace of persuasiveness or conciliation in his voice. This was the Bashasa who had saidI don’t give up hope,who had effortlessly squashed Dasara’s attempt to seize power on the bridge. “We will not kill children, we will not kill non-combatants, we will not kill soldiers who surrender. Some of the southerners are fanatics whohave dedicated their lives to the Hierarchs; others are conscripts like our own soldiers who were forced to serve Karanis. They were brought here against their will from across the straits. If we give them a path forward, to a future where they have their freedom either to return to their homes or leave and go where they will, they have no reason to fight to the death. Many will see no reason to fight us at all.”
Kai, leaning back against the wall in Bashasa’s shadow, could see objections in so many faces. After the trip here from the Summer Halls, he had a better idea of how the invasion had progressed across the east, how similar it was to what had happened to the Saredi grasslands and the borderlands and the Erathi in the west. The Hierarchs had slaughtered much of the population of the neighboring regions and killed a whole Arike city before subjugating the others. They had captured the coastal land of Nibet and taken the Enalin by the throat, forcing them to turn over the Tescai-lin as a hostage. It was the same with every city and port and town on Bashasa’s maps.
Ziede watched the others with a faint frown. Her home in the Khalin Islands had been destroyed too, but Kai thought she was willing to set aside revenge if it led to victory. Tahren… Tahren’s people, the Immortal Blessed, would be some of those receiving that mercy.
