Page 18 of Queen Demon
Kai found his way through the clumps of tents in the dark. The occasional glow of a shielded lamp lit the stamped-down grass, and it was quiet except for rustling and soft half-heard conversations. As he neared Bashasa’s camp, he heard familiar voices.
“My friend Cerala, how many Hierarchs’ heads did the good Prince-heir of Descar-arik take, do you recall?”
“My memory is excellent, friend Nirana, I believe it was exactly none.”
Kai sighed, and followed the sound to a narrow corridor between sheets of canvas that led into a circle of tents where a little candlelight glowed. He stepped around one of Bashasa’s cadre, who nodded to him as he passed. She was expertly coiling extra tent rope around her right forearm, which ended in a stump.
Only two shielded lamps were lit, but it was enough to see Nirana and Cerala outside Kai and Ziede’s tent, and Bashasa’s cadre busy straightening up the area, packing away unneeded gear, and stowing bedrolls.
Nirana continued, “Yes, I believe you are correct, friend Cerala.” Her audience seemed to be several soldiers and civilians lurking on the far side of the circle. “I recall it because exactly none is the same number of expositors that the good Prince-heir of Descar-arik has killed—”
“It isn’t a fair comparison!” a younger voice objected, and Kai snorted a laugh. “The Prince-heir of Benais-arik had help from a demon prince—”
Cerala and Nirana both leapt on that like horses on a snake. “Unfairness! Descar-arik concedes our point and pleads unfairness because they don’t have a demon prince too—”
Someone from Bashasa’s cadre contributed, “I weep for them! Such sadness—”
Another one said, “Excuses aplenty!”
“How do we know that’s true?” a voice said out of the dark. “Isn’t it a lie, so your drunken Prince-heir can stay in command?”
Stillness crashed over the camp like an upended cart. Almost in unison, Bashasa’s cadre turned toward the speaker.
Cerala, her voice suddenly even and deadly cold, said, “Shut your teeth, or I’ll ram them down your throat.”
“I was there, I saw it with my own eyes, you puddle of piss!” Nirana grabbed up a bucket and swung it back to throw.
“We need that bucket.” Kai walked into the dim light.
Nirana stumbled but managed to arrest the bucket’s motion just before letting it fly. The shadowy group of presumably Descar-arik soldiers and hangers-on hastily vanished into the night, and everyone else in the little camp immediately found tasks that needed their attention.
Kai walked past them all and ducked inside his tent. There was a glass lamp already lit in the overhead holder and his and Ziede’s bedrolls were stacked on the ground cloth with their few bags. Kai started arranging things the way they always did, his mind more on that last insult from the Descar-arik, or from whoever it was who had come into the camp with the Descar-arik. He had known for a while that it was a problem, but he had no idea what to do about it.
He had their bedrolls laid out and had sat down on his blanket when the flap rattled. Bashasa’s voice said, “All is well?”
Bashasa made his own rounds to check that all his people were present and accounted for, though he usually confined himself with speaking briefly to the commanders of the different troops and upper cadres. Kai said, “Yes, come in.”
Bashasa ducked inside and threw himself down to sit. His shoulders slumped a little in weariness, and he looked far more tired than he had after the meeting. “Ahh, it has been a long day.”
Kai absently rustled though his bag, old muscle memory from being Kai-enna insisting that when someone visited your tent you had to offer them food. He realized what he was doing and gave up; he didn’t have anything with him, anyway. “There was news from Enalin?”
“There was, and it is somewhat troubling.” He correctly interpreted Kai’s expression and said, “It’s not as bad as what we heard of Renitl-arik. The message came from the commander who is gathering their forces in the northeast. They say the Tescai-lin still wants to join us, but some of their people are reluctant.” Bashasa’s mouth twisted, and the confidence he always wore in public dropped away like a veil. “There are many Enalin who wish to try to retake Nibet first, even though it is of no strategic value at this time.”
Kai winced. It was like the Arike in Benais-arik who had at first wanted Bashasa to free the city-states, with the Hierarchs still waiting to come right back in and conquer them again, or more likely destroy them utterly. There was no point in sayingif the Enalin don’t come we’re deadbecause Bashasa clearly knew that better than he did. Literally dead, as the Hierarchs would continue their plan to wipe out the population of the west, east, and north to take the land and everything on it for themselves. “They have to understand that won’t work.”
“Their commanders certainly understand, as does the Tescai-lin. Perhaps the others understand in their minds but not their guts. The place is sacred to them.” Bashasa rubbed his eyes tiredly.
“Lots of places are sacred. Were sacred,” Kai said.
Bashasa made a gesture. It looked like indifference to Kai, but he knew it was the way the Arike expressed something that seemed to meanyes, but what can anyone do?“The road through this caravansarai used to lead there, did you know? Long ago when Nibet was the home of the first people to call themselves Enalin, before they spread further northwest. It eventually became the center for their worship. Nibet’s ports became closed to trade, only open for pilgrims coming from up and down the coast to visit the place, so the trade all shifted to the roads further west, into the central part of Enalin.”
Kai tried to picture it. “So the whole land was like a temple?”
“Something like that? But people still lived there, as guardiansof it. It had become a replica of the sacred country where the Enalin go when they die. So each bit of it had a special meaning, this mountain is such and such, this lake is so and so, down to every pond and stream and rock, I think. And all those who lived there cared for it, and kept the sacred fires alight. It is, or was, a great honor to be born there, but no one was allowed to die there, from what I understand.”
Those rules wouldn’t have stopped the Hierarchs. Kai thought a great many people must have died there. “Did you ever see it? Before?”
“I meant to, for I’ve heard it is—was—a place of great beauty. I am not entirely sure what the Hierarchs did there, if they spared anyone or simply took what they wanted, as usual.” From Bashasa’s expression, he wasn’t thinking of a place he had never been. Kai had seen the state that Benais-arik was in, and he knew how it would feel to someone who had grown up there. The Hierarchs apparently made a great many promises about how the inhabitants of the captured Arike cities would be treated, and very few if any of those promises had been kept.
