Page 10 of Queen Demon
It struck Kai so hard that he stopped in his tracks and stared down at her. She looked up at him, her face solemn. He squeezed her hand, and they walked on.
Once they passed under the arch into the cool gloom of the passage, the spirits’ invisible hands fell away. Guttering candles made of bayberry and palm oil were stuffed into various niches to light the way, dancing shadows over the tile of the barrel-vaulted ceiling high overhead. Kai threaded their way through the passage, past a set of arched doorways that led deeper inside. It was quiet, but it was the hush of listening, not the silence of an uninhabited place. His return hadn’t gone unremarked.
They came to a chamber where wide steps led up past pillars where the carvings had been methodically bashed away, then to a long, high-ceilinged space. It had been a private audience room, mostly used for rewarding or punishing the Hierarch servants who had been given control of Benais-arik. Half columns lined the walls and on the north side were floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the earthwork and the canal. Even though the louvers were open, there were only a few dead leaves and some windblown dust in the corners, which meant someone had been taking care of these rooms. Probably the Cloister Witches who lived here year round. The cool air carried nothing except the scent of wet earth and sun-warmed grass and trees.
The gray stone paving the floor had held up well and was only a little cracked, and the blue glass inlay in the wall tile was stillbright. All the gold and inlaid jewels and the murals on the coffered ceiling had been scraped out when the Hierarchs had been driven away, leaving hollowed-out sockets and raw stone. At the far end, there was a dais with three broad steps, where the Hierarch or their servant-nobles would have stood to pass judgement. Kai walked up the steps and through the archway beyond, into the smaller anterooms that led into the rest of the suite. The wooden panels were still closed over the windows back here and it was darker and dustier.
Sanja trailed after him, asking dubiously, “You used to live here?”
Kai stopped in the large retiring room and started to wrestle the creaky shutters open, dislodging spider webs, lizards, and some angry beetles. There was a dais here too at the back, supporting a wide curved bench carved out of stone, all the inlay and carvings bashed off it. He told Sanja, “For a while. And we’ve been back off and on.” As he got the windows uncovered, light and a fresh breeze flooded the room, illuminating the faded mural on the far wall. It had once shown the Hierarchs bringing the gifts of civilization to the primitive north, which was a fairly standard subject for the places the Hierarchs had built for their servant-nobles to rule from. By the time Kai and the others had first seen this one, someone had scratched off the Hierarchs’ heads and daubed red paint around their necks. Dahin had called it “bringing the historical record up to date.” Kai added, “It was meant as a summer residence and it’s not especially comfortable in the rainy seasons.”
“Is that why you live somewhere else now?” Sanja pushed a broken floor tile back into place with her sandaled foot. The wooden chests they had left behind were still sealed, stacked back against the mural wall so any rain that got through the shutters wouldn’t reach them. Two large squat metal braisers stood on either side of the room, the preferred Arike method for heating during the cooler months, both empty and swept clean.
Kai started to say yes, then he thought of what Sanja had saidearlier, and about confidences. He said, “Bashasa died, and I didn’t want to live in this city anymore.”
Sanja glanced up at him, then nodded matter-of-factly. They wandered through the rest of the suite, and Kai opened more shutters. Leaving Sanja pulling on the pump lever in the bathing room to chase the ants out of the basins and drains, Kai went back to the carved chests in the retiring room. They were actually Immortal Blessed preservation chests, abstract sun symbols carved around the rims inset with flaked gold. When Kai broke the seals and opened them, the decades-old orchid petals scattered on the top layer released a breath of clean fragrance.
Inside were rolled blankets and rugs, cushions, copper pans and two kettles, a drinking set, some heavily embroidered silk coats and other clothing, a lot of stray jewelry, some bags of old coins, Benais-arik tokens, bundles of old maps and bound books, carefully wrapped bath powders, and a small carved box of tiny jars and vials for makeup and oils. Ziede would be pleased to see that; she might not have any idea it had been left here. He reached for her pearl lightly, just to check on her, and got a sense of a shaded spot somewhere out in the plaza to one side of the Rising World Assembly, near a vendor selling fruit water flavored with sugarcane and spices.
Ziede was distracted, probably listening to the council meeting through Tahren’s pearl. Hopefully she and Tenes wouldn’t have to wait long. Knowing Tahren’s current mood, perhaps she would say what she had to say, then just walk out, leaving Saadrin to answer any questions.
Kai opened the bag of tokens and sifted through it. Each one was a memory, and some were almost smooth, worn down by their years, just like he was. A light patter of footsteps sounded from the audience room and Kai dropped the bag back into the chest and pushed silently to his feet. By the time he reached the archway, several Cloister Witches, veiled and wearing an eclectic mix of colorful clothing, gathered in the room. On the dais they hadleft two clay pots with lids, a ceramic jug, and a basket of palm fruit and water apples. As Kai leaned down to examine these offerings, the package that Dahin had jammed into his hem pocket thumped his knee, reminding him it was there. One pot held lentils with what smelled like turmeric, garlic, and onion and the other was a bean porridge with fried peppers scattered on top. The jug held saffron-spiced goatmilk. He called, “Sanja, come and eat.”
The Past: the Fire
It was not realized at the time that the Arike cavalry was much feared by the southern legions. They made a strange whooping cry before attacking, not always from the direction in which they were advancing from, and the Hierarchs’ people learned to fear it. The Arike had always prided themselves on the fact that their ancestors had ceased warring with each other because they were in danger of wiping out their own cities. It is not known how many outside the Arik believed this until they saw them sweep down on a legion and leave it a field of corpses for their horses to eat.
—Account by an Ilveri scholar, traveling with Prince-heir Hiranan
Kai lifted a hand to make the Saredi signal forhidden enemy ahead. Somewhere behind the rise of the next hill and its scarred rocky slope, a booted foot had slipped on gravel.
Behind him, he heard Salatel slide almost soundlessly out of her saddle. The knee-high grass muffled the footsteps of Arsha and Telare and the clawed, padded feet of their horses. It was barely after dawn in the grassy hills of the Northern Arik and they were hunting an expositor.
Kai slipped off his own horse and dropped the reins. The animal made a quiet huff but didn’t try to bite him. Arike horses were omnivores, though they could subsist on grasses and grains; it was relatively easy to teach them to be quiet and stand still on command, since that was how they stalked mice and lizards.
Kai moved forward, placing each foot carefully. He was barefoot so he could feel the rocks through the grass, and he had tucked one side of his long skirt up through his belt. Nirana and Hartel were further back, watching the stretch of road the expositor had been foolish enough to try to make for. Cerala currently limped down that road, leading her horse, pretending to be injured prey for an expositor desperate to leave this area quickly.
He doesn’t know how stupid he would have to be to want that horse,Nirana had said earlier, leaning away as the beast in question tried to bite her head.We should let it eat him.
Kai edged around the steep side of the hill without starting any small avalanches of dirt and pebbles. This was one wall of a small defile, and the grass was full of sediment carried by a little seasonal stream that ran down from a spring further upslope somewhere. Ahead, where the defile opened up, the dusty stone of the road stretched across the more even ground heading toward the next clump of low hills. Cerala limped slowly into Kai’s view, making her apparently painful way along with her disgruntled horse.
Between Kai and the road was the expositor.
He was a tall, muscled figure, dark hair bound up in an elaborate bun and dressed in the southern style of clothing, very like what Arike men wore, but the long shirt went down nearly to his knees and the skirt barely reached past it. Bright threads in the weaving caught the sun, even under the dust and bloodstains. The expositor had stopped where the trickle of the stream hit a half-buried boulder, entirely focused on Cerala. Then his right hand moved, fingers bending in a way that looked painful, unnatural. He was building a design for an intention.
Kai couldn’t approach quietly down the streambed—not and reach him before he set the intention loose. But it wasn’t like Kai’s fighting technique relied on subtlety. He crouched and leapt.
He landed halfway down the slope at the water’s gravelly edge.As the startled expositor swung around and in reflex threw the intention, Kai dropped and slid down the muddy stream bed. The intention went over his head in a cloud of concentrated malice. Kai catapulted upright and threw himself forward.
He hit the expositor’s midsection and they both flew downslope. They struck the rocks to the side of the stream, Kai on top. The expositor shoved and punched at Kai’s head, almost knocking him sideways. Kai was lean where this man was bulky, but fighting fair had never been part of the plan. Kai ducked, wrenched the expositor’s collar down until his knuckles brushed bare skin, and drew out his life.
The man made a strangled cry and sagged. Kai pressed his forearm to the expositor’s throat and pinned the flailing hand that wasn’t twisted under his knee. The expositor gaped up at him, shocked and offended even through terror. He gagged, throat working as he tried to speak.
Bashasa was always trying to pound into everyone’s brains that if it was possible to get information before killing a high-ranking Hierarchs’ dog, then get it. Kai eased up enough on the man’s windpipe for him to be able to speak.
“Demon,” the expositor gasped out. “How dare you— Let me up, I command you— Who allowed you—”
Kai sneered, trying to look like one of the captive, subjugated demons who fought for the Hierarchs. He had never managed to see any yet; if there were any in this region, they weren’t sent out with the legionary patrols. He said, “Clumsy on someone’s part, to let me loose. Guess who it was?”
