by C. T. Rwizi
She shivers when a shriek comes in through the door behind him. He takes another step closer, and his spearpoint glistens in the chamber’s dim light like it’s coated in a layer of wetness.
Blood. Spattered all over his blue tunic as well.
Isa shifts farther back on the bed. “Obe.”
Her lover is so preoccupied with looking for something to stanch the blood from his nose he hasn’t noticed Manchiri’s menacing advance.
“Obe!”
“What?” He looks up just as Manchiri decides to lunge for the bed, and what happens next is a blur.
It involves a shirtless Obe leaping several feet and tackling the guardsman so that they crash to the floor. It involves a battle for the guardsman’s spear, both men growling like wild animals as they roll and tumble on the Dulama rug by the foot of Isa’s bed. It involves Isa getting a grip and unsticking herself from her paralysis. She climbs out of the bed and rushes to the dresser across the chamber, where she unearths a sheathed dagger from the top drawer. She wills her hands to stop shaking as she grabs the diamond-studded hilt and pulls, freeing the smooth aerosteel blade from its gilded scabbard.
When she turns around, she sees to her horror how the battle between royal guardsman and Sentinel will be decided if she does nothing: The spear has been forgotten, cast to the side with its blunt end now sticking out from underneath her bed, but Manchiri has overpowered the younger warrior and has his big hands curled around Obe’s neck. Trapped beneath his considerable bulk, Obe kicks and thrashes wildly.
“Manchiri, stop!” Isa screams.
But the guardsman keeps strangling the Sentinel.
What happens next involves Isa doing something that will destroy her. It involves Isa crossing to the warriors and crying out in anguish before she thrusts into the guardsman’s left side with all her strength, feeling the sickening give of flesh and bone at the blade’s sharp point.
Manchiri arches his back as he howls in pain, an almost beastly roar, and the brutality of what she’s done shocks Isa so much she immediately steps back, covering her mouth with her trembling hands and leaving the dagger where it is.
Obe reaches for the dagger’s hilt and pulls, only to plunge the blade back into the guardsman’s side, not once but over and over again, until the bleeding guardsman falls silent and becomes a limp weight on top of him.
Isa’s eyes cloud with tears so thickly she barely sees Obe freeing himself of Manchiri’s corpse—corpse. Manchiri. The guardsman she has known for the last five comets. A corpse, made by her dagger. “I don’t know what’s going on.” Her voice is a shattered thing, a quavering whimper. She claws at her braids because she doesn’t understand. Dear Mother above, a corpse. “Why did he try to kill me?”
Obe is already pulling his tunic over his head. Despite his broken nose and blood-spattered face, his voice is steady, solid as rock. “We have to get out of here. This might be a plot. There could be more coming. We need to hide you.” He steps over Manchiri’s body to pick up the bloodied dagger from the floor where he left it, then goes on to do the same to Isa’s emerald slip, which they discarded in their passion not minutes ago. “Get dressed.” He presents the slip to her. “I’ll take you to the Sentinels’ quarters. You’ll be safe there.”
Isa blinks at him, her mind looping around a single word he spoke. “A plot? What plot? Manchiri was a Saire, for the Mother’s sake! What plot could drive him to this?”
“I don’t know,” Obe says, “but I hear screams out there. This is clearly part of a larger attack. Now get dressed.”
“My family—”
“Will be fine, I’m sure.” Obe comes close enough to pull her into an embrace so tight it squeezes the breath right out of her lungs. Still not tight enough. “Isa, I’m with you. All the way to hell and back. I promise. Now please, get dressed.”
What happens next involves Obe taking Isa’s hand and dragging her out of the chamber. It involves skulking down tapestried hallways with high ceilings and brightly patterned pillars. It involves coming upon a body at the entrance to the domed hall connecting the palace’s private and state wings. They freeze.
A framework of bamboo rises from the floors all around the hall, meeting at the dome’s apex, where an oversize coconut-shaped crystal lamp droops from a cord so thin it’s almost invisible. In front of them a young man, a Sentinel, is lying facedown in a lake of blood with his right hand inches away from a spear.
Obe lets go of Isa’s hand and crouches next to him, his expression unreadable. He makes a gesture with his left hand, running a finger across his heart. “Find peace on the Infinite Path, my brother.”
More bodies await farther in. Another Sentinel in green. A guardsman in blue. A figure in nightclothes slumped awkwardly at the foot of a large bamboo strut, like she was struck from behind while trying to escape. Whatever happened here happened quickly, and then whoever did it probably left to go find something else to kill.
A piercing cry from somewhere out of sight makes Isa shiver, and she hugs herself, battling the urge to vomit. Or curl into a ball and weep. Or pinch herself until she wakes up.
“Come on.” Obe takes her hand again. “We’ve got to keep moving.”
They see more corpses. A cousin of hers was cut down by the entrance to the principal reception room. His green dashiki is blood soaked. His kufi cap must have fallen off during a struggle, because it’s on the tiled floor a few feet away from him. They weren’t particularly close, but Isa’s eyes blur, and she feels a rasping howl rising up her throat.
Obe mutters a curse, the first sign he’s shown that this might be getting to him too. “Dear Mother, it’s a bloodbath.”
He keeps leading her toward the Sentinels’ quarters in the Summit’s south wing, where the Sentinels on palace duty are barracked. The Saire Royal Guard might be the king’s most trusted guards, being Saires themselves, but the Sentinels are bound by ancient sorcery to serve the crown on pain of death; whatever is happening here, they will die before they see the king and his kin harmed.
Isa tries to tell herself that her mother is fine. Her father and brothers too. Zenia. Suye. She says a silent prayer to the moon, willing them all to be safe, because she can’t bear the thought of anything else.
As they approach a foyer with a grand staircase, Obe stops dead so abruptly Isa almost runs into his back. Just as abruptly he turns around and tries to push her back the way they came. “Move!”
Isa remains stuck on her feet long enough to see a guardsman in blue and aerosteel skewering another guardsman with a spear in the thigh, both of their faces twisted with wild rage, but his victim doesn’t fold over as he should. Instead, he somehow finds the strength to raise his sword and slash his foe in the face, cleaving off a lump of flesh from his cheek. They are still at it by the time Obe manages to pull Isa away.
By the Mother, it’s like . . . like they’re possessed.
“Change of plan,” Obe half whispers. “We won’t make it to the south wing. We need to find a place to hole up until whatever the devil this is blows over.”
An idea strikes Isa, and with it comes an unexpected fount of courage. She grips Obe’s hand a little harder and quickens her pace, leading him for a change. “This way.” He doesn’t fight her.
They slink down the halls of the Summit for a full minute without event, silently threading their way through a trail of bodies—palace officials, liveried servants, Faraswa workers. Isa recognizes many of them but keeps going. One step after the next. Survival first, if only to know that her family is safe.
Just as her eyes settle on a body partially hidden behind a thick pillar, a growl and a flash of blue to her right make Obe shout her name. From out of the darkness comes a guardsman with a missing ear and frightful cuts oozing all over his body. He lunges for her, but Obe pushes her out of the way and springs forward with her jeweled dagger, knifing the guardsman in the chest. The guardsman wielded a spear; now the weapon rattles to the ground, and Obe lets him slump onto h
im like they are embracing, the dagger still lodged where it struck.
Looking over Obe’s shoulders, Isa thinks she sees a glimmer of lucidity enter the guardsman’s eyes, but then it is gone, along with everything he ever was. Obe lays him gently on the ground and pulls out the dagger.
“Obe?”
He releases a shaky breath. “I’m all right. Keep moving.”
Isa numbly obeys, and soon they make it to an inconspicuous door not far from the kitchens.
“A broom closet?” Obe says rather dubiously as she pulls the door open. They have both been here before, during a happier time.
“No one ever comes here,” Isa says. “Come on.”
It is gloomy inside, and an unpleasantly sour stench hangs thickly in the air. The darkness becomes total when Obe shuts the door behind them, making Isa almost regret her decision. But Obe takes her hand again, and that’s a small comfort. She looks where she thinks his face is. “Now what?”
Obe is silent, like he’s thinking. “Now we wait,” he finally says.
“What’s going on, Obe?”
“I don’t know, but it reeks of sorcery.” His voice becomes throaty, like he’s fighting back tears. “My brothers aren’t prepared for this, Isa. We’re not as experienced as the Guard. They’ll be butchered.” He means the Sentinels. Brother is what they call each other, even though they might be from different clans. “I should be out there with them, but your safety must come first.”
He surrounds her with his warmth by pulling her into his arms.
“My family, Obe.”
“I wish I could say what you want to hear. But I can’t. All I can tell you is that I’m here, and I’ll die before I leave.”
Such an earnest expression of devotion should make her feel better, but she can’t stop thinking about all those bodies she saw and wondering if one of them was—
No. She doesn’t let herself complete that thought. She buries her face in Obe’s chest and keeps it there for so long she loses track of time.
“It smells like vomit in here,” Obe says eventually. Shouts are still coming from outside.
Succumbing to a wave of weariness, Isa finally disentangles herself from him and moves to sit down on the floor, only to freeze when her foot brushes against something.
She crouches and feels with her hand. A boot. And it’s attached to a leg wearing brocade pants. “There’s a body in here,” she says distantly, numbly. But then her fingers slide over metal, and her breath stills. Quickly, she brings both hands to trace the contours of the smooth metal contraption, and yes, it’s wrapped around the leg. A leg brace. “Jomo?”
Jomo Saire, the herald’s son and Isa’s rake of a cousin, crippled by the bite of a ninki nanka as a child and the only person she knows who needs a leg brace and a cane to walk about—this leg has to be his.
“Isa, what are you doing?” Obe says. “Is that really Prince Jomo? Is he dead?”
Fighting off the edges of blind panic, Isa pats the rest of Jomo’s body, frantically searching for the wet slickness of blood. When she doesn’t find it, she places her hand on his chest. A strong, regular thud rises to meet her palm. The relief is so heavy it almost makes her head spin. “He’s all right.” She leans closer to take a whiff of him and grimaces at the stench of palm wine and vomit. “But he’s drunk and unconscious.”
“Why the devil is he in a broom closet?”
“He probably needed a place to retch and pass out in private. He does this all the time.”
Obe grunts. “So it’s true what they say about him. But I guess it probably saved his life tonight.”
That remains to be seen. “We need to wake him up. In case we need to run.”
Isa feels around for his face, and when the bristles of his beard prick her fingers, she lightly slaps his rounded cheeks. “Jomo, wake up. Jomo?” She slaps him a few more times until he emits a groan and slurs something unintelligible.
“Get up, Jomo. It’s Isa. We’re in danger.”
It takes a while, but she feels him attempt to sit up; then he slumps back to the floor. “Isa?”
“He sounds out of it,” Obe remarks.
“Jomo, our family is under attack,” Isa says, a little desperate now. “The guardsmen . . . they’re killing everyone. Obe and I came here to hide. Our family . . .” She chokes on her words, feeling like a ghostly pair of hands is constricting her throat. Inhale, exhale. Keep going. “I need you to try to get up, Jomo. Something terrible is happening.”
Still on the floor, Jomo groans again. “The devil is Obe?”
“Obe Saai. He’s a Sentinel. He’s here too.”
“Wait, I don’t . . . what?” Jomo tries to sit up again, and his leg brace makes a squeaking sound. Isa reaches for his shoulders to steady him. She has to work because he’s somewhat hefty, but soon he’s sitting up on his own, so she lets go. “What are you talking about, Isa?”
He suddenly sounds sober, which is a relief to Isa because Jomo is someone who will understand how she feels. His immediate family lives in the palace too. “The guardsmen are killing everyone,” she tells him and goes on to relate everything that has happened, everything except the part about Obe being in her chambers when the attack began.
“That makes no sense,” Jomo says. “They are Saires. Why would they attack their own?”
“Obe thinks magic’s involved.”
Jomo seems to think about this, and after a moment he says, “The Crocodile. It must be.”
Isa almost feels a flash of heat coming from behind her.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Obe says. “My uncle is no sorcerer.”
Jomo scoffs. “Sorcerers can be hired, you nitwit. This city is crawling with independents and foreign mystics who can be bought for the right price.”
“My uncle would never.”
“Ha! Your uncle would skin every Saire alive if it meant he could sit on the throne.” Jomo’s slur returns, becoming more pronounced in his anger. “In fact, my mother was talking about it just the other day . . . oh no. Isa, my mother! My family! Isa, you have to help me find them.”
“We’re not going out there until this is over,” Obe says.
“I wasn’t talking to you, crocodile.”
Isa finds Jomo’s hand and squeezes gently. “Obe is right, cousin. I’ve seen what’s out there. It’s not safe, but you need to be ready in case we need to run.”
Jomo falls quiet and feeble, and then: “How bad is it?”
Tears instantly fill Isa’s eyes. “Bad, Jomo.”
“We should probably stay quiet,” Obe suggests, in a softer voice now, and this time Jomo doesn’t object.
In the silent blackness, Isa’s thoughts spiral into panic, and time becomes deceitful, stretching the seconds to feel like hours. And when the shouts from outside, which had waned some time ago, resume with force, she brings her knees to her chest and tries to fold into herself and disappear.
The door yawns open.
Isa winces at the unwelcome light that floods in, and she barely sees Obe getting up to put himself between the closet’s interior and whatever’s outside.
She expects another battle, more blood and bodies; she expects death, which is why the deep voice that addresses her throws her off completely.
“Your Highness, you are safe now.”
She squints into the brightness and sees beyond the door an imposing figure in grand red robes.
Around him are Sentinels armed with spears and swords, in various states of injury and dishevelment. She also counts at least three spear-wielding members of the Jasiri order of warrior mystics, recognizable in their horned aerosteel masks, which have no eye slits, as if sight is a base form of perception their wearers long ago transcended.
Isa takes another look at the central figure. Like all members of the rare magical caste of the KiYonte tribe, who do not answer to any clan, he was born with two simple vertical lines running up his neck in place of clan tattoos. He stands tall and lank,
spry for his advanced age and somewhat severe of countenance—probably because of the ordered maze of scarified lines covering the expanse of his dark face. And his eyes, though black as tar, seem to hold a flickering light of their own.
“Your Worship,” she breathes, for this man can be no one but Itani Faro, master of the Arc coven and high priest of the Red Temple.
The Shirika have come to save us.
“Please, Your Highness,” the high mystic says, “you must come with us immediately.”
The high mystic of the Arc, his trio of Jasiri warriors, and over twenty Sentinels all watch solemnly as Isa emerges from the broom closet in nothing but her emerald slip, with a bloodied Obe Saai helping her drunken cousin limp out, one of Jomo’s arms slung over his shoulders. She immediately notices what’s deeply wrong about this arrangement.
In the event of an attack on the royal family, all the Sentinels on palace duty must cluster around the king. It is why they are called the King’s Sentinels. They should not be here.
Touching a high mystic is not wise, not even for royalty, for the Shirika are divinity in mortal flesh, but Isa steps forward and reaches for the Arc’s right hand, gripping it between hers as though her life depended on it. “Your Worship, my family. The king.” My mother and brothers. Suye. Zenia.
Not a question but a prayer. She is begging this man to tell her what she needs to hear for her soul to be at peace. She is begging him not to shatter her world.
The Arc remains grim. “Some of the servants survived, Your Highness.” His eyes flick to Jomo, who is still using Obe for support. “But the two of you are all that is left of the royal family. This was a targeted assault. That you survived is nothing short of a miracle.”
The world seems to fall away from Isa’s feet, and this time it is the high mystic who grips her by the arms so that she doesn’t collapse. “I cannot accept that,” she says.
Behind her Jomo begins to sob. “No. No. Please. Isa, no. I had a fight with my parents this morning. And my brother. They can’t be dead, can they?”
