Page 50 of Queen Demon
Kai waited for the signal, reflecting that this would be easier if he and Ziede had some silent way to communicate. Then somewhere past the slope, dry grass and leaves rustled as the wind changed. A gentle weight with ice-prickle claws settled on his back, then slipped away.
The dustwitches who could sense wind-devils would realize one was near; it was time for Kai to draw their attention.
He stood, cast aside his straw hat, pulled the pins out of his hair so Talamines’ curls fell loose. He had come out here wearing his expositor’s blood-stained coat. He didn’t want any confusion about what he was here for. He strode up the path directly into the camp.
Dustwitches who had lazed outside the tents were on their feet, alerted by the sudden change in the wind. A voice cried out an alarm and they all turned toward Kai.
He didn’t stop, he didn’t speak. There was no point; he wasn’t here to bargain or argue. Dust rose under his feet in a cloud, dust prickled in the back of his throat, and he drew the power out of it and swept it away with a gesture. Had Nightjar even told her companions that it was useless to try that trick on him? They had wasted time that could have been used for something, anything else.
He felt a tug underfoot, then stabs of sharp pain, like a thorny vine had wrapped around his leg. It was a cantrip; outside the nearest tent, two dustwitches had crouched down, scribbling a pattern on the bare dirt. Kai pulled a dormant intention off his coat, imbued it with some of the pain of his still-healing wound, and flung it toward them. He didn’t bother to watch the result,the screaming told him all he needed to know. The cantrip fell away and Kai kept walking.
Other dustwitches ran toward Kai, not realizing the cantrip had failed. He flung another intention that would scramble the wits of anyone who got within twenty paces of it for the rest of the day. They scattered in confusion, some falling to the ground. Dust rose in walls; it interfered more with the dustwitches still trying to attack than it did Kai. Someone slapped a cantrip on his shoulder and he plucked it out and turned it back on her before it could do more than singe his skin.
Angry shouts and pain-filled cries told him somewhere across the camp, Ziede and Tahren had arrived. He glanced up and saw Ziede in the air, the two child-sized mortals tucked under her arms. More dustwitches screamed; probably they had run into Tahren and her sword as she covered the other mortals’ escape.
The dustwitches running afoul of the confusion-intention started to attack each other. Kai reached the prison tent and the two still trying to guard it sensibly fled. Kai pulled the flap open and stepped inside.
He saw immediately that Ziede’s guess had been right. It was almost bare, except for a bucket and a water jug. Two people huddled on a thin pallet, their hands bound. They were dressed as Arike women, in long tunics over pants, their clothes torn and dirty. One had tightly curled dark hair wrapped in a scarf and the other’s was a lighter brown hanging in lank waves. They had the brown skin and slightly rounded features that could be from anywhere to the west, borderlands to the coast. They looked up at him, wide-eyed and shocked. One breathed a word Kai didn’t understand.
He knelt, put a hand on each set of ropes binding their hands, to leach out the little life left in the fibers so the bonds rotted and fell away. It was a good thing they hadn’t been bound with chains; iron should be just as much a part of the cycle ofdecay and rot as plant matter but somehow all metals resisted this interpretation, no matter how logical it was. In Imperial, Kai said, “I’m Kaiisteron Fourth Prince of the underearth, I was once Kai-Enna of the Kentdessa Saredi.” He saw recognition spark at the wordSaredi. “Prince-heir Bashasa of Benais-arik invites you to his camp. I’ll still take you out of here if you don’t want to accept that invitation, but it’s better for now if you come with us.”
A dustwitch burst into the tent behind him and Kai was already up and turning. He caught her arm before she could finish the cantrip, drained enough of her life to teach her a lesson, and tossed her away.
As he turned back, one prisoner staggered to her feet, clearly weakened and sick. She tried to speak and bent over in a racking cough instead. The other stood to steady her, then shook her head hard and said in halting Imperial, “Can’t… they capture, they kill—”
Kai signed in Witchspeak,My friends are freeing your companions. Ziede Daiyahah of the Khalin Islands already has the two little ones out.
The two exchanged a look of wild hope. The coughing one croaked out, “We’ll go. I’m Raihar, she’s Cimeri.”
“Call me Kai.” The quick decision was a relief, because they didn’t really have time to discuss it anymore. “Stay close, stay behind me.” He stepped to the tent doorway and looked out.
An angry storm of dust raged, the air choking and coarse, as the dustwitches tried to overwhelm Ziede and Tahren, and Ziede blasted them back with her wind-devils. Up by the trees where the mortals had been held, Kai caught the flash of Tahren’s sword. He spotted Ziede carrying another mortal away, hopefully the last one. He knew there was a chance that the dustwitches down here had had time to regroup and plan, that the one who had burst in was the brave stupid one and the others lay out here in wait.
But they had to go now. Kai stepped out. A dust cloud swirledand three dustwitches burst out at him. The pinprick pain of their cantrips crawled across his face and he reached for his last intention. The one that in his heart of hearts he didn’t want to have to use on these misguided fools, the one that would do the most damage.
Then Cimeri reached past him, extended her hand, and the ground cracked open. The rock split under the dustwitches’ feet, folding down into a fissure more than waist deep. Two fell in and the third caught her foot and fell flat on her face at Kai’s feet. “Should she close it?” Raihar yelled. “Should she crush them like bugs?”
“Stop!” someone called out in Arike.
Kai had no intention of stopping. He circled around the fissure, Cimeri matching his pace and Raihar behind him, holding on to a fold of his coat.
The dust storm fell away in waves as they walked, dustwitches scrambling out of their path. Kai had to swing out to avoid the spread of the confusion-intention; it made their route longer but at least kept anyone from coming at them from that direction.
Nightjar appeared out of a drift of dust to the left. Cimeri flexed her hand and sent a spiderweb of cracks through the ground. Nightjar leapt back and spat, “You go with that, Raihar? You can see he’s an expositor in a demon’s skin.”
“I ate an expositor.” Kai kept walking. “So it’s the other way around.”
“Go drown in shit, Nightjar,” Raihar responded.
They made it past the confusion-intention and to the top of the path that led to the spring. A dustwitch waited there, tall and straight, her veil pulled back to show a face with light-brown skin gently lined at the corners of her eyes and mouth.
Cimeri groaned under her breath. Raihar whispered, “That’s the Doyen, their leader. Careful.”
Kai told the Doyen, “Don’t make me go through you.”
“I’ll stand aside, Demon. But first make that stop.” She lifteda hand toward the scatter of dustwitches trapped in the area of confusion. Most were sprawled on the ground, flailing as they tried to stand. “And we will talk, you and I.”
Her voice was soothing and convincing, her gray eyes kind, and something deep in Kai’s chest pulled toward her. Not a cantrip, not a spirit, but however she did it, it sounded too much like an order to charm Kai’s temper. He said, “We offered you a chance to talk, to make an alliance. You sent Nightjar to trap me instead. Now get out of my way.”
