Page 85 of Queen Demon
Kai reached Dahin where he braced against the open door, arms pressed over his face to shield him from the sandstorm. Kai tapped his arm in a signal and Dahin ducked and scrambled off the road, disappeared down into the dunes and sea-grass.
Kai stepped through the door, waited for Cimeri to slip past him—she had been down in the dunes, destabilizing them so the dustwitches would have enough sand to raise. Salatel and the rest of the cadre followed her. Kai closed the door but left it unlatched.
Scattered on the ground lay a dozen or so legionaries, andchoking gasps sounded from the doorway of the little tower; all its windows had been open to the breeze. Dustwitches dragged bodies out of sight into its lower level. Tangeld had wrapped her arms around the lever that worked the gate latch and Cerala moved to help her, adding her weight as the others slipped away into the dark. Kai waited for them to finish, making sure no last guard appeared. Pushing the lever down lifted the locking bar, though the heavy gate stayed closed. Some sharp-eyed sentry on the wall might see the raised bar, but they had to take that chance.
Once the bar was locked upright, Kai tapped Cerala on the shoulder to tell her to go, and she and Tangeld vanished into the shadows. He swept a look around as he walked after them, making sure there was nothing to betray them as the sand settled in waves and the gate became visible from the fort again. He kicked a last body off the road and broke into a run.
As he crossed the causeway, the fort’s wall loomed, lit by the fires along its battlement and in the caged balconies that extended off its upper levels. The light played over the carved Arike figures with their broken and disfigured faces. More fires lit the sunken stone plaza in front of the gate. As the causeway met the solid earth of the mound, the dustwitches split, half heading left, others right, skirting the firelight.
Kai followed the righthand group, running lightly over broken rocks and tufts of grass. He caught up with the dustwitches at the base of the wall. Those who didn’t think they could make the climb held back, hidden in the dark with the cadre, but two had already started up. Kai climbed after them, feeling for hand and footholds in the carving, appreciating how Talamines’ height and longer arms and legs made this easier.
He was a fast climber and reached the top ahead of the dustwitches. In the bank of shadow between two torches, he eased up just far enough to look through the stone latticework in the parapet. He couldn’t see movement, but he could hear voices, the wordsmuffled by the flap of banners in the sea wind. Kai pulled himself over the latticework and landed lightly on the stone walkway.
The inner side of the battlement was too high to see inside the fort without standing on a ledge to look through the lattice, but Kai kept his gaze on the curved side of the tower’s spire. There was a door there, open with faint lamplight shining from the room inside. With a soft scrabble, Tangeld pulled herself up the parapet, Hawkmoth behind her.
Hawkmoth had a coil of light strong rope over her shoulder, and the two hurried to wrap the end around the stone support of the lattice and brace it with their weight. Shearwater appeared first, then Salatel and Arsha. Salatel signaled Kai that all was well below, and he started for the tower.
Avoiding the pools of firelight, with the rest of his cadre and the dustwitches climbing onto the battlement behind him, Kai reached the tower’s open door.
It was a large lamplit room, open to a central curved stairwell, with two tall narrow windows looking forward out onto the causeway. Half a dozen legionaries stood around, listening to one with an officer’s tail say, “—send down there and ask who that was at the gate. If they’re questioning someone—”
A scatter of sand swirled around their feet, the signal that the dustwitches who had climbed the wall on the other side of the tower were ready. Kai stepped through the doorway into the light.
Startled curses greeted him. The officer turned, staring. Then with a lip-curl of contempt, he said, “What is one of these things doing here—”
Kai leapt forward, grabbed his face long enough to drain his life, and whirled around to the next legionary. Arsha, Cerala, and Telare plunged into the room after him. Between Kai and their short spears, the legionaries were down within moments. The last one managed to get a javelin out of a weapon rack against the far wall, turn, and stab with it. Kai caught it in his shoulder, wrapped an arm around it to yank it from the man’s hands, and grabbedhis wrist. As the dead legionary fell back against the wall, Kai yanked the javelin out and dropped it. He looked around to see Salatel taking charge of the tower, sending Cerala and Arsha to guard positions with sharp gestures. The dustwitches crowded into the doorway, staring like they had never seen Arike soldiers and a demon clear a room before. Keeping his voice low, Kai said, “Get down there and kill legionaries.”
Tangeld moved first and they all rushed forward to the stairwell, vanishing down it in a swirl of dust-colored coats and veils.
Kai started down with them, as Cimeri and Nirana and the others from the lefthand side of the tower caught up. “Find the winches that control the gates,” he told Cimeri, and gestured for the dustwitches and the rest of his cadre to go ahead.
The scatter of legionaries in the next two levels died choking as the dustwitches called sand down from the wind outside the tower. Kai killed the legionaries who made it into the stairwell, making sure none could come up on his people from behind.
He got down to a level with a round, domed central room, with multiple doorways and more dead bodies. One arch led to the mechanism that operated the tower’s great gates. Cimeri and a few dustwitches were already there, examining the mechanism. Kai leaned inside. “You can open it?”
Cimeri pointed to the levers and signaled an assent.
“Good, wait for the signal.” Kai turned and met Owlet coming up the steps with the other dustwitches who hadn’t been able to climb the wall. That was good, it meant the map had been right about the small door to the side of the main gates, and that Nirana, Hartel, and Telare had reached it, killed any defenders, and opened it. Hopefully the map would be right about other important things, too.
Kai started to head down but Hawkmoth darted out of a doorway. “Fourth Prince, come and look, it’s strange,” she whispered, sounding disturbed. She had pulled her veil back and her eyes were wide.
Kai’s first thought was that it was a trick, but Hawkmoth was already running back to the doorway and this was a stupid moment for a dustwitch to kill him. He followed her.
The room was set up as a kitchen, with square stone ovens and shafts to let the smoke out, basins and pots stacked on shelves, a trough of water with a pump to fill it. It smelled like grease and smoke. There were also several Arike women, all chained by one wrist to the beams that ran overhead. They stared at Kai and Hawkmoth, baffled and frightened. Almost as baffled as they were, Hawkmoth said, “I don’t understand, are the Hierarchs eating people?”
“Where are the keys?” Kai said. The Arike didn’t move, frozen. He added, “I was sent by Prince-heir Bashasa of Benais-arik.”
The youngest doubled over, sobbing silently into her hands. Another pointed to the door. “A cabinet. Mounted on a wall out there, all the keys are in it.”
Kai jerked his head at Hawkmoth, who ran out. He said, “Do you know where the Hierarch is?”
Some shook their heads, trembling. But one said, “No, but they built something—Here.” She took a jar and spilled flour onto the wooden counter and sketched a map into it. Kai stepped to her side; she flinched away from him but kept drawing. The original map of the fort had shown it had three terraces, each broad half circles, stepping down from the height of the mound to the water level where the docks stretched out, and this rough map showed the general shape was still the same. “They built something here, just above the port, where the merchant houses used to be.” That matched what the vanguarder Ilanu had been able to discover; the confirmation was good to have, there was no time to make mistakes.
Hawkmoth returned with a wooden rack of keys she had apparently just ripped out of the wall. She started to work on the locks, and one woman asked, “Will you take us with you when you go?”
Kai said, “We’re not leaving.” He told Hawkmoth, “Make sure no one hurts them.”
“With my life, Fourth Prince,” she said.
