Page 86 of Queen Demon
Kai reached a lower level where the stairway split into two, straddling the large passage that led through the bottom of the tower, from the outer gate into the fort proper. The lamps had already been extinguished by dust and sand, and several dustwitches waited there, amid the bodies of dead legionaries. “Something’s strange,” one whispered as Kai stepped past her. “There’s death on the wind.” He went to the edge of the outer archway, where Tangeld stood.
The tower’s passage opened into a large plaza, lit by tall stone lanterns, with steps leading down to the first broad terrace. Two- and three-story buildings extended out from the fort’s walls, with latticed windows and open balconies. Some still glowed with lamplight, but there was an odd hush, not much sense of movement, as if everyone had closed themselves in for the night. “What is it?” he asked Tangeld.
In the faint light her face was etched with fear. “Listen,” she hissed.
Kai concentrated, trying to hear past the waves and the wind. He heard screams, cries.
And he remembered what the vanguarder Ilanu had said. The legions had brought people from the camps outside Descar-arik, to build the dock for the Hierarch.
Kai had meant to go alone from this point on, he had meant to leave the dustwitches here to secure the bottom level of the tower while his cadre waited to open the gates for Bashasa. But to have any chance of stopping what sounded like a slaughter, he would need help. He turned. “Get your sisters. All those who aren’t needed to guard the tower.”
Kai and the dustwitches moved through what had been a small port village tucked into the walls of the old fort, past stone carved houses open to the sea breezes and colonnades that had once sheltered shops and food stalls. It was now housing for servant-nobles and officers, but all the doors and shutters were closed, fear and a waiting silence hanging in the air. As they got closer to the sound, light glowed from torches lining the walkways in the lower two terraces of the fort. A stark contrast to the silence and near darkness of the upper.
Kai came to the top of a broad set of stairs that looked down on the lowest part of the fort. From the map this had been a maze of houses for merchants and sailors and all the soldiers and workers who had maintained the fort and the docks, as well as storage buildings for cargos and workshops for ship repair.
Much of it seemed converted into barracks, the original buildings cleared away and rebuilt as long rough structures with few lit windows, meant to temporarily house several legions. A whole swath down the center of the neighborhood had been destroyed, or dismantled. The stone and brick and wood was still here, just in neat piles, lined up to be taken away for whatever building project the invaders called for next.
Past this, brightly lit by torches, was the port, with two Hierarch troopships anchored not far off the wharf, dwarfing the other ships docked nearby. They were long squat barges, with low superstructures, meant to move along the coast in weather calmed by expositors. Both were reached by the new bridge Ilanu had described, that had been built for the Hierarchs’ barge.
It looked more like a wooden palace than a bridge, with wide scaffolds extending out to frame a large platform. The troopships loomed above it, connected to the top of the platform by dozens of boarding ramps. Past the platform was another new structure, a large building standing in the water on heavy pilings, a square structure with a high, pitched roof and colonnade around the three visible sides, all hung with lamps. Its location matchedthe rough map the enslaved Arike woman in the tower kitchen had sketched. This was the new Hierarch’s house, built from the remains of the leveled port town.
One troopship was brightly lit, lamplight showing through the open ports along the side and on the cabins above the deck. Dockworkers moved up and down the ramps, carrying aboard bags, clay jars, bales, chests. All the supplies of war for the legions going to attack the Enalin at Nibet.
The other troopship was dark, though the sound coming from it was loud and muddled. Groans, cries. Legionaries were leaving it, dragging limp figures—bodies—down the ramps, along the bridge back to the fort, to be dumped into neat piles on the wharf. Like the neat piles of wood, stone, and brick where the houses had been. So many bodies, a hundred or more, and still more being dragged from the ship.
Kai’s heart said the bodies were demons, empty shells now, their inhabitants driven out by deprivation and torture. But why would the Hierarch bring the demons here to kill them, the demons meant to protect the fort while the legions were sent to Nibet? He said, “I have to get closer. Call the sandstorm. Just enough to conceal, not kill.”
Tangeld said, “We’ll come with you.” There was a murmur of agreement from the others.
“No, the rest of you get back to the tower,” Kai said. He didn’t want this to be true, he didn’t want it. He didn’t want anyone else to see it. Not anyone he intended to leave alive.
“Careful, Fourth Prince,” Tangeld whispered as Kai started down the steps.
By the time he reached the barracks, sand whispered across the stone, smothering the lamps. He pulled the hood of his coat up and kept his head down. The haze grew in a rapid wave, descended in a cloud over the port. It was half-blinding, made the air hot and difficult to breathe, seemed to come from the sea and the land at the same time. It threw the orderly preparations intodismay. Coughing officers called out halts, legionaries retreated to the shelter of overhangs or behind cargo containers. Dockworkers huddled wherever there was shelter.
Kai moved past them all, another dim shape in the haze. He reached the bridge and walked down it as the figures struggled to get their burdens up the ramps and into the shelter of the lamplit troopship. A last few legionaries fled the dark troopship, running across the platform to the other ship or down the bridge to the wharf.
Kai reached the platform and stopped next to a body dropped and left behind like trash. It was a young mortal, an Arike by their hair and skin color, as dried and desiccated as the legionaries Kai had killed in the tower.
Kai’s knees went weak and he folded up and sank down onto the dock, pressed his face to the gritty wood. No amount of will would make this anything other than what it looked like. They were feeding the workers from the Descar-arik camps to the demons in the ship, so the demons would have the strength to fight, so they wouldn’t be tempted to take the legionaries.
He pushed himself upright and went up the first ramp into the dark ship.
The hatch opened onto a lamplit bridge above an open hold lined with wide stalls. Below the pool of light, the hold was shadowy and stank of unwashed bodies and urine and death. There was restless movement everywhere, as the demons in the stalls shifted impatiently. There were no intentions keeping them in, no sigils gleaming in the dark. No diamond chains. What Kai could see of their clothing was worn and tattered, and he didn’t want to look more closely, for fear of recognizing one of them. They brimmed with energy, Kai could feel it from here, tingling uneasily along his nerves. There were still desiccated mortal bodies sprawled in the pathways between stalls, a few legionaries dragging them into piles to remove once the storm eased.
Two officers stood on the platform, close enough to see Kai’seyes in the lamplight. Staring at him incredulously, one said, “Do you belong to Vartasias? What are you doing here?”
“Is he with the Hierarch?” Kai asked.
“Yes,” the officer said, puzzled. “What did he send you here for?”
“Bashasa, the Prince-heir of Benais-arik, sent me,” Kai said, “to kill you all.” And he put his hand on the side of the wooden hatch and released the fire intention.
He stepped out as the fire washed over the side of the ship in a wave, and the screams started. This was not the heatless fire he had meant to use as the signal to the army’s vanguarders watching for it from the dunes, but the one that burned wood and people and cloth like straw.
He leapt down the ramp before it went up too. The sandstorm was dying away a little, but not fast enough to help anyone caught out on the platform. Kai started up the broad carved steps to the Hierarch’s house.
Ten
