Page 73 of Queen Demon
Kaetar called softly, “Come on!” The two carrying Highsun moved, the others following, helping each other.
Tael, who was a tall woman, the fire light catching her harsh features and the marks of her tattoos, stepped up beside Kai. She said, “There’s ten of those creatures, at least.”
“The fire will slow them down,” Kai assured her, watching the construct get closer and closer. It had to get near the intention, so the design would know what to attach itself to. Otherwise all the mortals would be dead, Kai would lose his body, and someone else, as Ramad had said, would be making the decisions.
“You can’t—” Tael sounded more honestly puzzled than argumentative. After being stuck in the dark for days, menaced by constructs, with little food or water, she might not believe this escape was actually happening. “You can’t set a stone structure like this on fire?”
“It’s not the stone I’m going to burn,” Kai said. Not long now.
The construct’s foot landed barely a pace away from the design, and Kai released the intention. There was that moment of pentenergy, like the heartbeat between a too-close lightning strike and the crack of thunder. Then a terrible red wave of flame shot up the construct’s legs, flowed over its gray skin. It staggered sideways, all its arms waving.
“Oh, you’re a Witch,” Tael said blankly.
Past the first, another figure burst into flame with a whoosh, like a pile of the driest rushes catching light. Then further back another, and another. Kai counted six whooshes by the sound and burst of light; some of the constructs were still on the far side of the Well’s platform. There was no screaming. Expositors never gave their creations mouths.Probably afraid of what they might say,Kai thought.
He took Tael’s arm and pulled her away from the door. “You said there were ten?”
She followed him, looking back toward the archway. “I counted ten, I think.”
She didn’t sound certain at all. Kai knew that being terrorized and held captive didn’t do much for anyone’s memory or accurate grasp of events. There could be anywhere from none to twenty constructs still lurking somewhere. “The others will burn too, but it’ll take a while for the fire to find them.” It would spread through the corridors, searching for creatures like the first one it had touched. As long as Highsun and the mortals were not secretly expositors’ constructs, it would ignore them.
Towing Tael behind him, Kai caught up to the others in the first court. He let her go and hurried to the front of the group, hoping no one would look too hard at his face. Then he made the mistake of glancing back to make sure Tael was keeping up.
Someone gasped and stopped abruptly, another bumped into them. Kaeter looked at Kai and drew back hastily. “You’re a demon!”
Kai set his jaw and said, “I’m a demon sent by the Tescai-lin. If you want to get out of here, keep moving.” He turned and kept walking.
He didn’t make the mistake of looking back again but he could hear that they were following, though some needed to be urged along by others. Tael was telling them that they were mistaken, Kai was a Witch.
“He has the hollow eyes!” someone objected.
“There are no demons anymore, not since the war.”
Sounding uncertain, Kaeter said, “He said he was here with someone from the Rising World council—”
The rasping voice from the second cage said, “He said his name was Kai.”
“Kaiisteron?” someone else said tentatively.
Kai stopped and turned to face them. He knew Belith remembered him as the implacable creature who had led the Witches across the straits, the battering ram for the Rising World forces to drive the Hierarchs out of their cities, leaving ruin in their wake. Just because the Belithan leaders had agreed to it didn’t mean they had understood what it would look like afterward. He said, “Yes. If it distresses you, you can stay here, and I’ll send a mortal vanguarder in after you.” Ramad would do it, too, and probably die with the rest of them. But Kai had no intention of leaving them behind. He wasn’t going to walk out there empty-handed in front of Arnsterath and look like a fool. He would get them out of here if he had to frighten them half to death to do it.
Kaeter hesitated, clearly torn. Someone said, “If Ilhanrun was awake—”
“No, no,” Tael said from the middle of the group, decisive and certain. She took hold of the two younger scholars on either side of her and pulled them forward, plowing through the others. “We’re going, no one is staying. Go, go all of you, now.”
Most started forward, probably glad for a decisive voice that they trusted, so Kai led the way into the next corridor. A few still argued, though it didn’t sound as if Tael was taking any criticism of her decision. As long as they could argue and walk at the same time.
The scholars didn’t go quiet until they reached the first body. One broke into sobs and tried to drop down beside it, but others caught them and pulled them onward. The two carrying Highsun were toward the middle of the group, and Tael was in the back, helping one of the weaker ones to keep moving. “Make sure no one falls behind,” Kai said.
Kaeter added, “Isai, help Tael with Aran.” They lowered their voice and said to Kai, “Ilhanrun is waking.”
It was hard to tell in the flickering shadows, but Highsun, still supported by the two scholars, lifted his head a little. Someone patted his cheek with a corner of their stole, trying to rouse him. Kai wasn’t impressed. “Not fast enough, they’ll still have to carry his”—he thought but didn’t sayuseless carcass—“him out of here.”
Kaeter’s expression was conflicted, as if that hadn’t been their point.Oh,Kai thought,that was a little test to see if I’m afraid of the righteous Immortal Blessed. He managed to keep his sneer mostly internal.
Then Tael called out, “They’re behind us!”
Kai spun to see the far end of the corridor ablaze with fire. It wasn’t the stone walls; a construct engulfed in flame charged toward them. Other constructs, not yet caught by the fire intention, crowded behind it. He snapped, “Run,” and stepped back as the scholars plunged past.
