by Holly Lisle
He licked his lips. He could taste their deaths in his future; he could taste their blood on his tongue. He alone carried no weapon, for he would be his own weapon. First Ulwe to safety . . . and then he would embrace the Karnee monster; he would let his blood boil and his skin Shift. He would give himself over to the ecstasy and the madness of destruction. For Ulwe and for himself, he would extract full measure from the deaths of those who had wronged him.
The pilot said, “Get the men on their ropes. They’ll have one chance to do this, and if they don’t do it right, they’ll be smashed against the wall or dropped over the cliff.”
Crispin nodded. The soldiers, picked by the pilot for their night skills and specially trained for dangerous missions such as this, slipped out of their seats, through the modified hatchway, and out into the night, to the anchor ropes that coiled on the gondola catwalk. Each wore heavy leather gloves, leather pants, sturdy leather jacket, and heavy boots. At Aouel’s signal, they each hooked an arm around the rope and jumped off the catwalk, the rope uncoiling as it dropped.
Aouel dared a quick, hard grin at Crispin’s retreating back. He’d worked for months toward this night and toward this possibility. He had feigned loyalty, had kept his head down, and worked like a donkey for Crispin . . . and had made sure that the wrong men had suffered unfortunate accidents during drills, and that the right men had come through intact. A good pilot could do that.
Now the future hinged on numbers, and on surprise. Crispin had the numbers. But perhaps . . . perhaps . . . Aouel still had the surprise.
• • •
Kait, Dùghall, and Ian watched from the main ground-floor doorway. Kait had heard the airible coming even before it rose from the sea of smoke like a diver reaching for air, but when she actually saw it, her mouth went dry and her heart began to pound. The three of them were ready—as ready as any three people could be against an army of unknown size with unknown capabilities.
Crispin had shielded his soldiers against magic, so even had Dùghall been inclined to attempt their defense with spells, he could not. He said he felt certain the dead of Galweigh House would still defend the living—but their strength came from the sacrifice of flesh, and the only flesh that had fed them in a long time had been Alarista’s. The dead would be weak. Dùghall didn’t think they could do more than slow down the approach of Crispin’s army. They might not even successfully do that.
The airible had been moving steadily toward them, its engines thrumming steadily. When it came over the landing field, the pilot abruptly cut out the engines on one side, slewing around so that the airible was still moving toward them, but backward; he started the engines again, then stopped them all as it reached a point of equilibrium and hung in the air. In that brief moment, the air below the airible erupted with men dangling from strings, like dozens of baby spiders bursting from their mother’s belly.
Kait almost couldn’t breathe. “I’ve only seen one pilot stop an airible that way,” she said. “He tried to teach me to do it, but it’s very, very difficult. And he was one of few who would dare fly at night.”
Ian and Dùghall looked at her expectantly.
“Aouel,” she said. “My friend.”
“That sturdy young Rophetian fellow who flew us out of Halles . . . and who burst me and the rest of the Sabir captives out of our prison the morning after we were all taken prisoner . . . yes. Yes. I remember him well,” Dùghall said. “I took him to task for teaching you to fly an airible, I believe. I don’t imagine he remembers me too fondly.” He looked sidelong at her. “The question is, how fondly does he remember you?”
“I would trust him with my life.”
“Even now? Even when he’s bringing the people who intend to kill you right into your hideaway?”
“With my life,” she repeated.
“Well,” he said thoughtfully, “that’s good, I suppose. If we can get to him, perhaps he’ll lift us out of here. Because I fear that’s the only way we’ll survive this encounter. I count forty men on those ropes, and that airible will hold more than twice that many. I think Crispin Sabir intends to see us dead tonight, no matter what the cost.”
From behind the barred doorway, they watched the men gracefully drop down their ropes to the ground and run for the winches. In a matter of merest instants, they’d threaded ropes through winches and reeled them in, bringing the airible to the ground and anchoring it tightly.
“Sweetly done,” Ian said. He unsheathed his sword. “The men who brought that ship to ground are as fine as any I’ve ever seen. It will be no shame to die at their hands.”
Dùghall said, “Cold comfort. When my bones were old, they knew death as a friend who would come soon enough to gather them up and soothe their pains away. Now that they are once again young, I am as jealous of life as a man of his new mistress.”
“Then grab your mistress by the soft bits and hold on tight,” Kait said. “Because here they come.”
• • •
Crispin dropped to the ground in the midst of the soldiers’ formation. He would approach the House in human form—he wanted his daughter to see him as a man, not a beast. He wanted her to love him, to see him coming to her rescue and know all that he had done and all that he had risked for her. He would become Karnee for the slaughter . . . but Ulwe would not see that. He would shield her from the darker side of his nature. She would be his gem, protected and cherished, and eventually she would become a god with him.
His daughter, flesh of his flesh.
He strode across the ragged green of the landing field toward the dark House, his officers at his side, the men spread out around them in all directions.
The pilot, as he had been instructed, waited on the ground beside the airible—reassurance for Crispin that the man would not panic while aboard the airible and strand the Sabir forces in hostile terrain should things become risky, but close enough to leap inside and get the great airship off the ground in a hurry if the need arose. Two of his personal guard stood with the pilot, an added guarantee of his continued loyalty.
• • •
Aouel took his place by the airible’s ramp and waited. Crispin’s man Guibeall stood to his left, and to his right the Manarkan woman Ilari—both bore their loyalty to Crispin like tattoos of honor. He could no more reason with either of them than with the rising of the sun. And though he liked both of them personally, admiring their honor and their courage, they fought on the wrong side of the war. They were the enemy.
Two of the regular soldiers stayed back with them, one flanking Ilari, one flanking Guibeall.
“Thought it was just to be the two of us on him,” Ilari said to the man beside her.
The soldier who answered was named Hixcelie—she was another of the Manarkan fighting women, but attached to the Sabir family forces on general duty. She said, “Parat Sabir told us at the last instant we were to double the guard. He said he smelled something out on the perimeter—not that smelling something makes any sense to me. But he said we were to face the four quadrants and keep ready, and under no circumstances let anything get through to the pilot.”
Crispin’s personal bodyguards exchanged meaningful glances. Guibeall frowned. “Smelled something, he said?”
Tschulscoter, the other added guard, said, “That’s what he said. You have any idea what it might mean?”
“It means we face out and keep our eyes open,” Ilari said. “When he smells trouble, there’s trouble.”
The four of them turned to face outward, surrounding him. Aouel smiled.
When the troops had crossed half the field, one of the soldiers cried out and fell to the ground. In an instant, the rest were on their bellies, and one of his guards had shoved Aouel facedown into the tall grass. He grunted, but his smile grew broader. He could hear more cries in the distance; beside him he heard rustling, the two thuds, and two soft moans.
He kept his face to the ground and listened for the signal. All seemed to be going according to his plan, but he c
ould not know until the last moment whether he and his allies would succeed or fail. They had the advantage of numbers and of surprise, but that gave them no guarantee. Crispin’s men were battle-hardened veterans, well treated by him and deeply loyal.
He heard blades crossing, and the screams of men injured and perhaps dying, and he prayed, Let them be not ours. Better that none should die, but if some must die, let them be not ours.
The fighting stopped. No more metal on metal, no more grunts, no more curses and shouts. Even the cries of the wounded quieted, though they did not die out completely.
And then he heard the call. “Ebadloo tuoaneat?” The words were the first line of a Rophetian sea chant; literally translated, they meant, “Husbands-of-the-sea, have-you-embraced-in-an-act-of-conjugal-procreation?” In that instance, however, their second and relevant meaning was that the conspirators had overpowered the assault force, and Crispin was taken prisoner.
On either side of him, Aouel heard a relieved sigh. Tschulscoter called out, “Ooma, ama, ooma, oora,” which were the words of the song’s second line, and just nonsense syllables to keep the beat. They meant, as previously agreed upon by the conspirators, that Crispin’s men guarding Aouel were no longer a threat.
Out of the tall grass the secret Galweigh loyalists arose, their Sabir captives bound and gagged at their feet, and Crispin Sabir held in iron bonds with a collar around his neck. Crispin glared and swore and struggled, his eyes full of murder. He saw Aouel walking toward him and snarled, “Yours will be the first head I hang on the pike. You accepted my coin. You broke the Rophetian oath of neutrality.”
“I did not,” Aouel said quietly. “I accepted your coin because I was told I would be killed if I did not. Rophetian code states that our oath is binding only when we are free to give it—if, held prisoner, we are forced to swear or die, Tonn permits us to save our own lives. I can make my case before the Captains’ Council as a prisoner of war—I will not be punished or even sanctioned for my actions.”
“You’ll never see Captains’ Council. You’ll die with my teeth in your throat.”
“Perhaps.” Aouel studied him with an even look and said, “But you are bound and I am free. Yours is the throat you should be worrying about.” He shrugged and turned to those who had helped him put together the coup. “Any sign from the House?”
“Not yet.”
He nodded and stripped off his dagger and belt, then his shirt and boots. When he stood in his breeches alone, he said, “In a moment, I’ll either be back or dead. If I die, kill the prisoner, then leave by the front gate.”
Then he walked toward Galweigh House’s great main door, his heart pounding in his chest. It was easy enough to say the words, “I’ll either be back or dead,” but harder to make himself walk forward knowing that they were true, and that a crossbow quarrel might sprout from his chest in the next instant.
He held his hands up, palm forward. He was stripped of his weapons, stripped of everything but a pair of broadcloth pants and a gold Tonn medallion that hung around his neck.
As a pilot in a position of trust, he had known most of the old Galweigh codes and signals. He remembered them—but they were old. If Galweigh House had new codes, and new guards, he could only hope that someone among them might remember the old ones. Or that someone might recognize him and believe what he had to say.
• • •
Kait, crouched at one of the crossbow slits beside Dùghall and Ian, listened to the fighting in the landing field die down.
“Betrayal from inside the ranks,” Dùghall said, and managed a thin chuckle. “Even if we’re unlucky and the enemy wins, we won’t have as many to fight.”
“We’ll know one way or the other soon enough.”
Ian stood and raised his crossbow, and Kait heard him carefully slowing his breathing. She looked through her narrow access across the ragged field, and saw what he was watching—a man, stripped to nothing but pants, his empty hands held high in the air, walking toward them.
Her eyes were better than Ian’s—her Karnee vision picked up details his purely human eyes could not. By the weak light of the stars, she could see his Rophetian braids, the amulet to Tonn around his neck, the puckered flesh of the old scar that ran the length of the left side of his chest.
She said, “Lower your weapon, Ian. I know him.”
“That you know a man does not mean that he is your friend,” Dùghall said. “Vincalis—”
Kait cut him off. “Vincalis didn’t know Aouel. I do. If he approaches, he does so as a friend.”
“Aouel?” Dùghall pursed his lips. “I would be inclined to trust him, at least to a parley. Do you see any behind him who have their weapons aimed at him, not at us?”
“No,” Kait said.
“I can’t see anyone out there at all,” Ian muttered. “Except the one who walks toward us—and him I can barely make out.”
Kait watched him lower his crossbow. “I don’t envy you your eyesight.” She kept her own pointed at the ground and said, “So do we let him in, or go out to meet him?”
“I think we let him stand with his belly to a crossbow and talk through the slit,” Ian said.
Dùghall said, “I agree with Ian. Let’s hear what he has to say before we make any compromises. I could get Ulwe, I suppose. She could read his intentions as he came toward us, and perhaps those of the soldiers in the field.”
Kait nodded. “Get her.”
Ulwe, Alcie, and Alcie’s two children hid in the first siege room, behind a secret panel in the wall just behind the great entry. The room had probably been intended originally as a place where the owner could position a platoon of his soldiers when he didn’t trust his visitors, but the Galweighs, always secure in their own power, had never needed to use it in that manner. It had been, for them, the first of many secret rooms filled with food, water, armaments, and other necessary supplies—and the first of many rooms the conquering Sabirs had stripped bare.
Dùghall left, and returned a moment later, the little girl following him closely. Without saying a word, she crouched and closed her eyes, and her body went rigid with the effort of her concentration.
“He hopes you will recall the old codes,” she said softly, “because he has no way of knowing the new ones. He planned this . . . trick. He overcame my father. They have him bound in the tall grass, surrounded by soldiers. He’s very angry.” She sounded so sad, speaking of her father held prisoner by the men he’d thought would help him win her back. “Your friend will bring you no harm,” she said to Kait. “He still loves you—the things he does for your Family, he does in memory of you.”
“In memory?”
“He believes you to be dead.”
“He loves you, too?” Ian said, a hint of bitterness in his voice.
“He was never my lover,” Kait said quietly. “He was always only a friend. The Karnee curse—”
“—guarantees you an unending supply of men who will throw themselves on the blades of swords and march into the teeth of death for you, apparently.” Ian partially raised the crossbow toward Aouel, then lowered it and sighed. “I’m sorry, Kait.”
“I understand. I’m sorry, too.” Ian had not attempted to renew their romantic relationship once Ry left. He had never alluded to that time at all before that moment, and Kait had hoped that he had gotten over her. Apparently he had not.
“I want to see my father,” Ulwe said. “When you open the door for your friend, let me go out to talk to him.”
“That isn’t safe,” Dùghall said.
The little girl looked up at him. “I’m not your ward and not your responsibility. I came with you because I chose to. Now I choose to go speak to my father.”
“I would recommend doing that later, when we have things more settled,” Dùghall said, but Kait turned to face him and rested a hand on his shoulder. “Let her go talk to him. Now. Life is too uncertain for promises of later.” She turned back to the crossbow slit.
Dùghall sighe
d.
Aouel came up the steps and stopped at the top one. “I come to tell you that your enemies have fallen into our hands, and that we who have captured them offer ourselves into your service,” he said. “I offer as token of my good faith my own life, and the codes—”
Kait had moved at his first word to unbar the door. Now she finished unbarring it. She opened it and stepped into his view, and for an instant she could see hope warring in his eyes with disbelief. Then his face creased in a broad smile, and he said, “Ah, Kait. Ah, Kait. You’re alive. I’ll owe Tonn two more lifetimes at least for that.”
Kait was aware of Ulwe slipping past her and hurrying down the stairs, but she only laughed and gave Aouel a warm hug. “Old friend, I owe him at least a lifetime now, too. I’ll be reborn a Rophetian for sure, for I swore to him if he just got me out of that airible in one piece, I would dedicate a full life to him. And I thought about you often, and prayed that you were safe. If he answered that prayer, too, I am deeply in his debt.”
She pulled away, and Dùghall said, “We can use the help, Aouel. How many troops have you brought us? And how many prisoners?”
Aouel didn’t answer the question. Instead, he studied Dùghall. “I almost think I know you.” He frowned, and Kait could hear the puzzlement in his voice. “Certainly you remind me of someone, and you know me—but I swear, Parat, I remember faces, and I have never seen yours.”
“He’s Uncle Dùghall,” Kait said. She couldn’t figure out how to explain her uncle’s sudden youth in any brief manner, and finally decided on vagueness. “He’s been through a lot since you saw him last.”
Aouel arched an eyebrow and smiled at the understatement. “As have we all. And you . . .” He turned to Ian.
Kait again provided introductions. “Ian Draclas, captain of the Peregrine.” She turned to Ian, “Aouel fa Asloodke den Kalemeke Toar,” she said, giving his full Rophetian name. Aouel, son of Asloodke, born of Calimekka, Full Captain. “First captain of the Galweigh airible fleet.”
