Page 9 of Queen Demon
She glanced down at him and admitted, “I am torn between the overwhelming desire for a hot bath and an anger so intense I could bite through my sword blade.”
That was better. “If you bite any councilors, be sure to make it count.”
Setar-en’s promised escort of four Enalin warriors hurried out of the wide doorway. They wore the knee-length version of Enalin formal caftans over wide pants and tough boots. They didn’t carry weapons, since that wasn’t encouraged within Arike city borders, and in the diplomatic center of the Rising World not even the Prince-heirs’ cadres were allowed to go armed in public. Setar-en strode out after them in a formal robe hastily thrown on over their caftan. Tahren nodded to Kai and said, “I’ll see you later.”
Adjusting the fold of their collar, Setar-en said, “You will not accompany us, Kaiisteron?”
“Not at the moment.” As entertaining as appearing suddenly before the council and creating a sensation similar to a firepowder-filled gourd tossed into a legionary’s campfire might be, Kai wasn’t tempted. It was much better to let Tahren handle this. He added, to stop any possible argument, “I’m going to the Cloisters.”
Setar-en glanced down at Sanja, who was drooping a little now that the excitement was over. Then they kindly offered the use of one of the House’s hired canal boats. Kai decided not to be an idiot and accepted it. There would be far less chance of anyone intercepting them along the way.
Setar-en sent another page to arrange the boat, then gesturedfor Tahren to take the lead. Kai found himself a little uneasy to see Tahren walk away and said, “Careful.”
She lifted a hand in acknowledgment and fell into step with Setar-en and their escort as they walked out the gate. Saadrin followed her, dragging Vrenren in her wake.
A page brought another Enalin official, a tall person who by their wrinkled caftan had probably been taking their afternoon rest. They introduced themself as Second Warden Amren-nar, and they led Kai and Sanja through the garden and around the side of the House, through a gate to the private canal dock.
The stone dock was shaded by water trees, and the boat waiting there was a light pole skiff used for quick journeys. It was piloted by two women who had the light olive-tinged skin of Palm but the dark curly hair and dress and accents of the Arik. They were clearly used to doing Nibet House’s formal commissions; they didn’t try to speak to Kai, and they didn’t react to him at all except for the polite interactions necessary to board and get settled under the boat’s little awning. They might have no idea that he wasn’t a mortal; Amren-nar solved the problem of Kai being spotted as a demon by handing him their own sun hat, made from coiled braids of scrap grass silk. It shaded Kai’s eyes enough to make recognition difficult, especially from a moving boat.
With the cool breeze and the warmth of the afternoon sun, Sanja fell asleep almost immediately, slumped against Kai’s side. The pilots poled the boat swiftly along out of the city center.
They took a branch of the canal that angled away through the tree-shaded parkland, passed a cluster of docks for the market, then under a bridge arched high enough that the pilots didn’t have to duck. Then an area of streets lined with tall trees and old stone structures that had once been cargo storage and merchant centers before being turned into post-war housing. From the many small boats tied up along the canal’s walkway, the awnings for temporary outdoor workshops, root gardens planted on the balconies and rooftops, and the number of goats wanderingaround, these areas were well occupied and usually busy, but they were quiet and drowsy in the afternoon.
They left the life of the neighborhoods behind for more docks packed with canal boats, equally sleepy during this lull in the day, in-use cargo houses, and grain silos. Then vine-wrapped trees closed in on the banks and three tall arches loomed up. They were the crumbling remains of an old bridge, its reddish stone pitted and broken. Water still fell from the third broken arch, the end of the aqueduct it had once carried.
The bridge led to a high wall along the bank, battered and cracked, with a collapsed earthwork below it, flowering plants and thorn brush growing amid the tumbled blocks at its feet. The wide stone landing platform for barges was strewn with rubble and overgrown with water weeds. Near it, a jagged opening had been knocked through the fortification to form a makeshift gate. To one side of it stood a stone bench shaded by a scrub tree, where offerings had been left—beads, braided grass bracelets, lizard skulls, tiny cloth dolls, figures made of clay or carved wood, wilting flowers, small bowls of grain, and a lot of fruit, most of it relatively fresh. Kai gently nudged Sanja awake and said, “Here is fine.”
The pilot in front glanced back, brows lifted, but didn’t comment. They poled the boat over toward the bank. The silence was broken only by the rising hum of the cicadas in the trees.
The current wasn’t strong, and the two pilots held the boat steady as Kai swung Sanja over to the platform and then stepped up after her.
Sanja looked around, already alert. A life on the streets had given her the ability to wake immediately. “This is where we’re going to stay? What is it?”
“The Hierarchs had it made as a place to worship them when their usurper took over the city,” Kai explained.
As they made their way off the cracked platform to the shore, one of the pilots called out, “Are you him?”
So much for his disguise. Kai stepped to the offering slab and picked up a couple of figs. He tossed one to Sanja before he turned to regard the pilots, head tilted in inquiry.
One made a quick respectful salute, looking away. The other said, “My grandmothers were at Saisun Breach.” She nodded, and pushed the boat away from the platform.
Kai watched the pilots guide their boat back into the current. She hadn’t said what side her grandmothers had been on, but it didn’t matter much now. Kai took Sanja’s hand to lead her through the makeshift gate in the wall.
Past the earthwork, there was a field of more rubble, broken down until it was no more than knee-high at best. Kai took the path through, its twists and turns invoking various local spirits to discourage anyone susceptible to their mild influence. Anyone who wasn’t a Witch.
At the end of the path was a set of broad steps leading up to the foundation of a large building. Atop it now stood nothing but a few weathered pillars, the remains of a once grand colonnade, all in ruins now. But the archways built into the foundation, bracketing the stairway, were open into dark passages that led inside.
Kai felt the little spirits in the rubble plucking at his coat and skirt. Sanja twitched a little and brushed a hand over her hair, as if something had tugged on it. To distract her, he said, “To make this place, the Hierarchs tore down a very old hospital that was here, the first one in the city, and a school that Bashasa’s father had built. Anyone could go there to learn how to draw and paint and do carving.”
And it was where artworks were exhibited for all the world to see, anyone in the Arik or outside it, no matter their station,Bashasa had said, one late night huddled beside a banked fire, waiting for the right moment to start an attack.All that work, done by so many hands, over so many years, all broken to dust and kindling, or stolen for their servant-nobles’ pleasure.
Kai finished, “So when we killed the Hierarchs, the people ofBenais-arik destroyed this place, and gave it to the Witches for their own.”I want them to dance in it,Bashasa had said,to grind the Hierarchs’ finery under their heels.
“Bashasa is the one who was your friend, right?” Sanja said as they climbed the steps toward the leftward passage. “The one Ramad kept asking all the questions about?”
“That’s right.” Ramad hadn’t seemed to realize just how much Sanja had eavesdropped.
She said, “Anything you say about him, I won’t tell anyone.”
