Page 68 of Queen Demon
“No, it’s fine.” Ziede’s mouth was set in an ironic line. “We’ll just stand here and watch.”
“You do that,” Kai said, knowing that if he needed her she would be there in a heartbeat.
Kai swung over the gate and walked out into the tall grass. Hawkmoth’s erratic presence had driven off the birds that fed on the flower seeds and insects; the only other thing that moved in the field were the gray-green grasshoppers, flitting away from Kai’s feet.
At his approach, Hawkmoth looked up. Her face flushed with emotion and she started forward.
Kai reached for the first intention on the shoulder of his coat. Working fast, he had put together two designs, one fairly mild if Hawkmoth attacked him alone, and one considerably more violent if she had help. But she stopped abruptly, recognizing the gesture. Then she dropped to her knees in the grass.
Kai set his jaw. Saredi, and Witches, didn’t do that, and it just annoyed him all the more. He strode the last of the distance to reach her and snapped, “Get up!”
Hawkmoth shot to her feet, wide-eyed. “Demon—”
“Call me Fourth Prince.” Kai had realized at some point this morning that if he really was going to lead Witches, as bizarre as that seemed to Saredi sensibilities, he had to commit to it.
“Fourth Prince.” Hawkmoth corrected herself without hesitation, but then she was partly under the mental and emotional sway of a charismatic leader already, so she wasn’t exactly a good test of Kai’s leadership skill, what there was of it. “We… we need help. I was sent to ask you. To beg you. Help us.”
That was not what Kai had expected to hear. Not that it didn’t smell of a trap. “Who sent you, the Doyen?”
“The Doyen is dead.” Hawkmoth shook her head, light hair flying. “Nightjar sent me.” There were tear tracks on her cheeks, he noticed now. “Almost everyone is… distraught, and wild with it. Worse than your cantrip that made everyone confused about which way was up or down.”
Kai huffed in disbelief. “That was an intention, not a cantrip,what are they teaching you that you don’t know the difference.” If this was a lie, it was a better one than he would expect from the dustwitches. It was exactly the stroke of luck that he and the others had hoped for and not expected to get. He had told Nightjar the dustwitches could join them, and it must have been obvious that the possibility would make tempting bait in a trap. He kept his voice dry and disbelieving and said, “Nightjar is so confused she thought I would care?”
Miserably, Hawkmoth said, “Nightjar killed the Doyen.”
Ziede flew toward the dustwitch camp, Kai’s arm tight in her grip. Tahren, Amabel, and Kai’s cadre followed on horseback, but Ziede’s wind-devils easily outpaced them. Kai couldn’t stop turning over all the possibilities. If it was true, the insurmountable odds against attacking the fort would become a lot less insurmountable. But that felt like too much optimism to be real. “If Hawkmoth is lying,” he began, and Ziede cut him off with, “Unless you have a different way to finish that sentence than the last three times, please stop. We’ll know when we get there.”
Kai forced himself to keep quiet. She was right, they would know soon enough.
They reached the curving ridge that sheltered the camp and Ziede slowed cautiously. The day was still cloudy but there was really nothing to hide them up here. Kai had suggested a chimera but Ziede thought it would be a waste of time when the dustwitches were already expecting them.
As Ziede skirted the ridge to allow them a glimpse down into the camp, Kai saw it was in disarray. No woodsmoke, a couple of tents knocked down, and he could hear… “Wailing,” he whispered to Ziede. Pain-filled, heartbroken wailing and sobbing.
“Mourning?” Ziede wondered, and took them around and down to the lower entrance by the spring. “The connection the Doyenhad with them, broken abruptly… Even if they didn’t care for her in their true hearts, it would hurt.”
There was no sentry this time under the twisted shade trees, just some of the riding beasts, grazing peacefully on the other side of the spring. Not quite as many as there had been before. Either the dustwitches hadn’t been able to recapture all of them after Kai and Cimeri had driven off the herd during the raid, or some members of the group had taken some and left.
Ziede’s wind-devils set them down gently and swept once around her, restless. For Kai it was like being brushed by clouds of wind-driven ice, and strangely reassuring. He started up the trail, Ziede following, the dirt churned by so many running footsteps it was like climbing a sand hill.
The furrows in the earth that Cimeri had made were still there, but they weren’t what had caused all this chaos. Two tents had been knocked down, apparently in a frenzy, random belongings scattered, spilled food drawing clouds of flies. Several dustwitches sat outside the intact tents, while others huddled in the shade. Some were wailing or weakly sobbing and some just sat in silence, reacting to nothing.
“There are tents missing,” Ziede said quietly. Kai had noticed that too. There were at least three places where the disturbed ground indicated tents had once stood, but there was no sign of discarded belongings or torn canvas. Narrowly observing the camp, she continued, “There are fewer people here, unless they’re dead or hiding.”
The Doyen must have done even more to keep the dustwitches with her than they had speculated. This was disturbing, far more disturbing in some ways than Bashasa’s example of the young Hierarch servant-nobles, trained from birth to believe utterly in everything they were told. Kai said, “Some of them broke and are just stuck here, some were able to pack their things and leave.”
“That’s a pity because the ones who left were probably the smart ones,” Ziede muttered.
Kai agreed. No one looked inclined to attack them, so he raised his voice and called out, “Nightjar!”
The wailing cut off abruptly, as if the group had really been unaware until now that two enemies had walked into their camp. Dustwitches flinched and looked up, wary. Others didn’t react at all, just watched with vacant eyes. One pointed woodenly to the tent that Kai had thought was the Doyen’s. It sat back under the shade of a tree, removed from the tumult.
Kai realized he had made an error, because standing here waiting for Nightjar to come out would make him look weak, especially if she didn’t. He took a sharp breath and asked Ziede, “Stay out here? In case you need to rescue me.”
“Just make sure the Doyen is actually dead,” Ziede whispered. “If she doesn’t have a visible wound, just stab her quietly somewhere—”
“I know, I know,” Kai assured her. He went to the tent and pulled the flap open.
It was dark inside, too warm, buzzing with flies, and smelled of rotting flesh. He called fire to the palm of his hand.
