Page 20 of Queen Demon
“Oh.” Ziede looked thoughtful, pulling her bag over and starting to sort through the contents. “Kai, that kind of thing can take up every moment of your time, a whole mortal lifetime.”
Kai picked dirt out of the fringe on his blanket. He knew shewas right. “I’ve got a lot of mortal lifetimes to go, I need something to do. Oh, do you know what this is?” He dug in his coat pocket for the little metal figure the person from the supply train had given him. “If it’s a curse, it’s not a very good one.”
“Oh, those are luck tokens, Trenal told me that.” Ziede opened her bag and pulled out a handful. Kai leaned forward to look. Most were the same figure he had, though in slightly different metals and sizes, as if they had been made by different artisans. Some were dissimilar figures entirely, like pieces for a game. Ziede continued, “I try to tell them I don’t have anything to give in return, but they just run away like they’re afraid I’ll give it back. Tahren has been getting them too, since we left Benais-arik.”
Kai rubbed his thumb over the little figure. He still couldn’t feel anything from it. “Are they giving us luck or are they getting the luck from us, in exchange for this?”
Ziede’s laugh was more than half groan. “I have no idea. Are you tired or do you want to work on intentions?”
“Work on intentions, if you want to. They’re starting to pile up and I haven’t had time to figure out what most of them do.” Kai put the figure away and smoothed down his blanket. He carefully set out each intention he had collected that day.
They lay on the brown striped cotton, each one no larger than his palm, wavering bits of thick air marked by those writhing unreadable characters. With a lot of trial and error, he was learning how to pick them apart and read the designs that the expositors had woven to create them. Talamines’ memories had helped, at the beginning, but there was a lot Kai had to figure out for himself.
“How many are new?” Ziede dug a roll of writing paper out of her bag, unwrapping the protective leather cover.
“Four, just from today.” Kai cautiously poked at one, trying to sink into it to see the underlying structure of the design. Even with practice, it was still an uneasy task. These designs had comefrom the minds of expositors and they were cold and sticky, like falling into pond slime.
“That’s a good amount for one patrol.” Ziede set out her ink and took up her pen. “When you’re ready.”
Kai woke up with Amabel’s sister Kreat leaning over him. He had grabbed her wrist in reflex but his grandmother had trained him too carefully when he was Kai-Enna; he hadn’t taken any of her life just because he was startled, giving him time to recognize her voice and the sense of her presence. She hissed, “Help.” It was one of the few words in Arike or Imperial that she admitted to knowing, usually employed while pointing to something she wanted the soldiers to move for her. He realized she had been repeating it over and over again.
“Help who? What happened?” Kai let her go and sat up, shoving his blanket aside. They had put the light out before going to sleep and it was too dark inside the tent to see Witchspeak. The most recent dead expositor’s life was still hot in Kai’s veins and he held out his hand and called a flame.
A sharp gust of air nearly blew it out as Ziede’s blanket flew aside and she was on her feet.
“Help Amabel,” Kreat said, backing away as light washed over the tent. She looked frightened, brown eyes wide and the color in her skin washed out by the bright flame. She wore what were probably sleep clothes, a too-thin tunic and pants that barely went to her knobby knees. Her hair was wrapped in the gauze scarf she usually used as a veil. Her hands moved rapidly, signing,I went out to keep them company as they walked in patrol. Shapes came out of the east, silent, I don’t know who, why.
“Where is this happening?” Ziede grabbed her coat and shrugged into it, fumbled for her shoes.
Kai shoved to his feet, not bothering with his. He had slept in his shirt and skirt and that was enough to fight in. He flippedopen his pack to get to the piece of leather where he had been storing the intentions taken from the dead expositors. He and Ziede had only had time to unravel and interpret one of them, but at least it was a helpful one. He scooped it off the leather and set it on his chest.
Outside the paddock gate to the east,Kreat signed, and darted out the tent flap.
Kai bolted after her, Ziede on his heels, into a night that was ominously quiet, air heavy with the storm still a suppressed, violent energy above them. A flustered Hartel watched Kreat run through the circle of tents in the wan light of the single lamp. She said, “How did she get in? I didn’t see her!”
Kreat might not have much ability to communicate with spirits but she was still Witch-born and had demon in her bloodline, if very distantly. Kai wasn’t surprised she could make herself extremely difficult to notice, even in close quarters. He said, “There’s an attack outside the paddock gate to the east, tell Salatel and Trenal.”
Hartel lunged toward Salatel’s tent and Kai continued after Kreat. Ziede caught his arm and the ground underfoot dropped away as they rose upward.
The wind-devils whirled around them in a rush of air, not even visible as patches of deeper shadow as they flew through the night toward the east end of camp. Hartel’s warning set off a silent wave of darting movement below, as sentries signaled each other with whistles across the dark camp. Shadows moved as soldiers scrambled out of tents. The bulk of the caravanserai seemed quiet, undisturbed. Straining his neck to look all around, Kai couldn’t see any lights on the plain or in the hills, no sign of an approaching army. Legionaries weren’t usually this subtle. “The vanguarders, the sentries,” he remembered. It was taking his brain some time to catch up with his wide-awake body. There should have been more warning than Kreat. “They must have sent in an expositor. More than one.”
“There’s something strange in the air,” Ziede muttered, distracted. “Something’s pulling at the wind.”
Kai was still surveying the camp for signs of panic or attack. The purposeful movement had spread to the supply train’s tents showing how fast the warning was moving through the troops. There was no sound of disturbance from the horse lines or the wallwalkers. “Do you think it’s—”
A crosswind buffeted them, snatching the air out of his lungs. Kai lost his grip on Ziede and tumbled wildly.
He hit the roof of an outbuilding barely visible in the darkness. It cracked under his feet and he let himself collapse into a crouch, keeping his balance. Old wood creaked ominously. Ziede landed far more lightly, like a drifting silkweed blossom. At least Kai had his bearings; they were at the far end of the caravanserai’s old east paddock, probably atop a dilapidated fodder shed. He could hear air rushing in an otherwise still night, the pad of bare feet running on dirt and grass, a gasp, a shout. He whispered to Ziede, “An expositor stole your wind-devils?”
Her voice tight with fury, Ziede said, “No expositor could do that, that was a Witch. More than one.”
“What?” Kai hissed. Then from the ground below, he heard a choking gurgle. He stretched to grab a splintered beam at the roof’s edge, even before he realized it was someone fighting for air.
He swung down and landed in a crunch of dry brush, not caring if anyone heard. He hoped their attackers heard, he hoped they came for him. The clouds overhead still obscured the moon and starlight but there was just enough diffuse glow that he could make out three shapes sprawled on the grassy dirt.
He ran to the one that still clawed feebly at their throat. He felt for a garotte or a neck wound, found nothing, then flipped her over and pounded her on the back. She shuddered in his arms, still straining to breathe. He shifted her so she sat upright and wrapped his arms around her to give her one sharp squeeze.She spit something out and wheezed in enough air to gag. He released her, steadied her when she almost collapsed. She retched and coughed horribly, but she was breathing again. From her battered leather armor, she was an Arike soldier, probably a sentry on patrol, but she was covered with fine dirt or sand, as if she had been buried and dug her way out.
Ziede stood up from checking the two unmoving bodies. “They’re our vanguarders,” she whispered grimly, “both dead.”
