“Are you all right?” he asked.
She tried to nod and coughed again. Zi was still coiled around her forearm, but her skin stung where his claws dug into her. Red droplets trickled from where he clung to her arm.
“Zi,” she managed. “Zi, are you okay?”
Zi clung tighter in reply, squeezing blood from her skin. She ignored the pain.
“You slipped under the water,” Ka’Inari said. “I was afraid you’d passed out from the heat.”
“No,” she said. “Something … I’m not sure what happened.”
The Regnant, Zi thought to her. I’ve tried to hold him back, but he grows stronger as we travel west.
“Zi!” Surprise touched her voice—it was more than he’d said at once in days.
I’m sorry. It wasn’t supposed to happen so soon. We needed time. Time for you to grow.
Ka’Inari sat back, surveying her as if to be sure she was all right.
“Zi, it’s fine. Don’t exert yourself. I’m fine. I didn’t—”
You must change. If you inherit too many of her memories, you will be lost. I tried to hold it all back, but I’ve failed. You will have to be strong now, Sarine.
“What do you mean? What’s happening?” Tears came to her eyes. Zi’s claws still stung where they dug into her skin. He wasn’t suddenly healed. He was using the last of his strength.
It’s time. I’m sorry. I tried to do better than this.
“Stop it,” she said. “Stop this, please.”
Don’t repeat her mistakes. You are not her.
Tears flowed, and she whispered something indiscernible. Begging. Pleading. But Zi had gone cold as suddenly as he’d seemed to find his strength, and his claws released their hold on her arm. His body uncoiled, leaving dead, scaled loops lying across her lap, the light in his gemstone eyes faded to a dull gray.
27
THE VEIL
A Sacred Pool
Tsassani Land
She heard screaming, wailing from a girl’s throat.
She was the Goddess.
She remembered dying. Accepting the Regnant’s poison through the crack in her prison. Axerian, Paendurion, Ad-Shi; doomed to be defeated, as the first price of her ancient enemy’s assistance.
“No,” the girl was saying. “No, Zi, wake up. Wake up!”
A kaas lay dead in her lap, the shell of a four-legged serpent in its molting stage, devoid of a spirit to forge its bonds. Grief washed through her. Was this her emotion? She had no especial cause for grief.
A man sat beside her, cross-legged and leaning in closer than he should.
“Ah’ske ni Sarine,” the man said. “Hana tur qu’ela.”
Zi was dead. The thought struck her senses with terrible force. She’d failed him. She could have pushed harder, run faster, killed her horse and found a dozen more to die to track Axerian down. Zi would have done it for her. She sobbed, and repeated the thought. He would have done it for her.
“Zi, no,” she said, her voice already breaking. “Please don’t be dead. You can’t leave me alone. I can’t do this without you.”
The weight of his body suddenly felt heavier than a stone, lifeless and draped across her legs. His now-gray eyes had lolled back as his head sagged, his limbs hanging loose, claws open. All color had drained from him like flows of blood, making puddles of green and red and gold on her skin and on the rocks around them.
Kaas were easy to bond, once you knew the way of it. So much grief over a single incarnation seemed unwarranted, but she couldn’t stop the flow of emotions raging through her body. Stronger than they had ever been; too strong to control.
She picked up Zi’s body and held it to her heart. He’d always relished making her blood pump double with Red. He’d saved her more times than she could know. Sobs shook her hands, but she kept hold of him. He was dead.
Ka’Inari reached a hand to comfort her, laying it atop her knee, and she recoiled. It was wrong for him to see Zi. Zi had never wanted to be seen, had almost never appeared to anyone but her. It was only when he was sick, only at the end of his life that he couldn’t stay hidden. And even then he’d preferred to stay beneath her saddlecloths, wrapped close to her skin. She twisted away from Ka’Inari’s gesture, turning her torso to hide Zi’s body from view.
“Ah’ske,” Ka’Inari said. “Ki in uluru dan.” It took a moment to register that she was hearing the Sinari tongue, and didn’t have Zi to translate it for her.
She sobbed again, a racking cry that doubled her over on the rocks. She was on her side somehow, the world spun on its end.
She had to find Axerian; from all she’d gathered so far, he was the nearest of the Three. Ad-Shi and Paendurion had yet to snuff out their ascendants, and Axerian had already been replaced by the one called Reyne d’Agarre. He would be here, while the others were cloistered in the Master’s Sanctum until the appointed time.
She tried to stand, and her body refused to obey.
She needed to stay here, lying on the rocks. She needed to sob, until her eyes ran dry and her belly had emptied and she’d shown the world the barest measure of her grief.
She tried again, and stayed in place.
Her blood mixed with the colors leaking from Zi’s scales. Good. She deserved to bleed. Whether from the small cuts he’d traced on her skin, clinging to her in the last moments of his life, or scrapes from the rocks, or a searing poker through her belly to mirror the pain of Zi’s death.
A tinge of frustration coursed through her. She was supposed to be reborn. The knot tying off her memories should have faded when the prison collapsed. Perhaps that was the answer. Yes, she would have to block the memories of this girl who had kept her body warm during her imprisonment. If she failed to honor the bargain, the Regnant would come for her with more than his chosen Three. It would mean war, war of a kind they hadn’t seen since the Master’s passing had left them the keys to Life and Death.
She drew a deep breath, pulling Life in with it. That much still worked. Blue sparks danced in her vision, painting images in thousands of points of light. She wove fibers around her mind, slipping from the physical world into a world of pure form.
Goddess.
The thought came to her from all sides, echoed in a hundred voices, great and small, male, female, and more. The kaas served every aspect of creation, and yet stood apart from it; two worlds, existing side-by-side.
“I have need,” she said, more a projection than a vocalization, but it passed here. They stirred like a hive at her words, a skitter of claws and tails.
Zi is dead.
Confusion. That thought hadn’t come from the kaas, but it hadn’t come from her, either.
You wish him returned to you?
The collective perked their heads, looking at her with curiosity from a thousand angles, above, below, from every side.
“No,” she said, at the same time another voice shouted YES.
She was surrounded by images drawn from the blue sparks, as though a whole world had been painted with dots of light. A world of strange shapes, with more kaas than she could count draped from platforms suspended in the air, cubes and pyramids floating endlessly in every direction. Fear coursed through her. Had they truly offered to return Zi to her? Nothing else mattered. Yes, she thought again, as forcefully as she could manage.
He is not ready to return, a dozen voices echoed in her head. He is weak.
Zi, she thought. Are you there? Are you alive?
“No,” another voice said in frustration. “I need a full-strength kaas suited to managing another bond. A weakened incarnation will not serve.”
It is agreed.
Good. The Zi soul had served her well for some time, but a fresh bond would prove pliable, and she needed raw strength if she meant to face Axerian. His bond with Xeraxet was strong, an old power he had reinforced with stolen Life. A perversion, to prolong the connection so long, but that had always been his great failing: He had never bothered to understand power before he s
eized it.
No. The girl projected the thought. Zi, if you’re out there, come back to me!
Irritation flared, smothered by hope and desperation.
Sarine?
His voice. Zi’s voice. He was alive.
Zi!
A presence parted the waves of light, shapes and serpents bowing and bending as they made way. Zi trundled through the crowd, hobbled and weak. But it was him. Even washed out through a million points of blue light, she knew his form anywhere.
“No,” the other voice said. “I won’t accept this bond. I require a soul suited to my command.”
Yes. Zi’s thought. I am not strong enough to return.
It is agreed, the chorus chittered all around them.
No it isn’t, Sarine thought. I need you back. Please don’t leave me.
I submit my daughter, Zi thought to them all. She will go, and serve in my stead.
His daughter. Was it a trick? Kaas weren’t meant to take interest in the world, but the girl inside her body seemed attached to Zi beyond the limits of a natural bond. She hadn’t acquiesced, but the chorus murmured acceptance, skittering over top of their shapes and coils as they pecked each other, a transmission of doubts and assurances beneath the layer of conscious thought.
It will serve, the chorus seemed to say. Will it serve?
Zi, please, the girl thought.
Accept, Zi thought back. Accept my daughter and care for her. Let her guide you. I must watch, for now.
Panic. The kaas would always overreach, if it was allowed. A firm hand was required, to keep them in place. Accepting a new one as a guide was a poor beginning.
“I will not accept,” she said. “This kaas is flawed. I demand—”
All right, the girl’s thoughts sounded. If she is your daughter, I accept.
It is done.
No. This body was hers! But a new presence formed between her and the girl, a cold light seeming to scan them both in the depths of their minds. Warmth sprang from elsewhere, beckoning the presence toward it.
The points of light seemed to blur, revealing color splashed between them. A pool, covered over with steam. A man sat nearby, torn between wanting to help and keeping away. She lay against the rocks, covered by blood and emotion.
She could feel a new presence coming toward her. Zi’s daughter. Her body had been sobbing, and now it cracked with a new emotion, born of joy. Zi wasn’t dead. He needed to rest, but he was alive.
Who are you?
The voice was new, and full of fear. It quavered, afraid to show itself. She welcomed it with love.
“I’m Sarine,” she whispered. “I loved your father, and he asked me to care for you.”
The presence drew closer, a curiosity in the way it approached her thoughts, though it hadn’t appeared yet in physical form.
Who is the other?
“I … I don’t know,” she said. Memories ached in her head. A prison of glass. An insistence that Zi be refused. Suddenly she heard a voice, speaking faintly, from a great distance. I am the Goddess, Wielder of Life, Mistress of the Soul of the World. I am the Veil, and you will obey!
The voice cut off, suddenly quiet.
I bound her, the new presence thought to her. She is full of anger.
Sarine sat up on the rocks, feeling a weight she hadn’t known was there melt away. The world seemed brighter, full of new energy. Ka’Inari looked to her with confusion and curiosity, but she could laugh and kiss him. Zi was alive. His daughter was with her. The memories were gone.
“What’s your name?” Sarine asked. “It’s all right. You can trust me.”
A crystal serpent appeared on the rocks, an arm’s length away. She’d seen Zi do it countless times, yet it almost made her gasp. This kaas was different. Smaller than Zi. A narrower point to her snout, a softer line for the curve of her neck and head. Longer limbs, relative to her body, and finer claws. The same metallic scales, shimmering silver and gold in the sun.
I am Anati. I think we are bonded. Can you see me?
“Yes,” she said, wiping the tears from her eyes. “Yes, Anati, I can.”
28
TIGAI
Market Square
Ghingwai
Three days.
Master Indra’s warning stuck in his head, as it had every sundown since he’d been given Mei’s hand amid the ruins of their destroyed temple. Three days until Mei suffered again for his failure, and two had already come and gone.
An Imperial crier pushed through the throng, calling the sunset as he used a long pole to light the lanterns draped from roof to roof. Few seemed to take notice of the hour, continuing their shouts and haggling over carpets, sugared figs, incense sticks, bed slaves, silks, and whatever else was on offer. Tigai stood at the center of it, the eye of a monsoon as it swirled around the heart of the square. He’d placed his back against the plinth of General An’s statue of horse and rider, proof against pickpockets, and a means to avoid being judged by the gold-lacquered eyes of the woman seated atop her cast-iron horse. An Ling was the daughter of an ancient general, who took up her father’s standard midway through a battle to save the Empire. He couldn’t help but see Mei in her face.
This was the third night. Anger had given way to fear and desperation hours ago. Indra’s promise of a second hand as the price of failure flashed in his thoughts as he scanned the crowd. Desperate. Three days wasn’t enough to forge the sort of connection that would let him hook himself to a man’s bedchamber. But it had to be tonight.
He saw Lin Qishan before he was meant to, he was sure. She made no especial attempt at subterfuge, but neither could she have expected to stand out among the crowd of merchants, buyers, and thieves. Soldiers and mercenaries flooded the streets in all three capacities; she blended in among them in her tunic and breeches, shambling through the press with a purpose, where most were content to consider some ware or another, or leer at whoever looked as though they wouldn’t put up a fight.
“Master Anji,” Lin said when she took a place beside the statue, affecting the air of a chance encounter with an old acquaintance. “A pleasure to find you here, in Ghingwai of all ports.”
His heart thumped in his chest. Three days, Indra had said. The third wasn’t finished. She couldn’t mean to deliver the news yet.
“You as well, Sergeant Hui,” he said. The need for false names was absurd, as far as he saw it. The name Yanjin Tigai meant nothing to the soldiers assembled here to buy salt pork and sex. But he’d call her the aryu of the west if it meant reprieve from the direst sort of news.
She leaned in to kiss his cheek, and her tone changed. “Tonight,” she said in a low voice, but sharp as the glass he knew she could summon at a whim. “Now. You’ve already dithered too long.”
They switched cheeks. “It isn’t like buying a ticket to a bloody circus,” he said, and she withdrew, cutting him short.
“Master Anji, I’m afraid any business would have to be discussed over tea, and time is short. Perhaps I will run into you again tomorrow, if the wind spirits are favorable.”
“I’d be inclined to take that tea tonight,” he said, but she was already pulling back, fixing him with a heavy look before she faded into the crowd.
He had half a mind to go after her. None of it made sense. Indra had anchored them to Ghingwai, only to find the city overrun with mercenaries. A reaction to his and Remarin’s attack on the Emperor’s palace, perhaps, only why would they mobilize here, and not the Imperial City? Indra had said something about a rebellion, led by someone called “Isaru Mattai” as though the name was meant to hold some significance. All it meant to him was a city on the brink of war, with enemies or with itself, and him tasked with shadowing one of its commanders.
On the opposite side of the square, where crimson-sashed soldiers formed a makeshift phalanx around a whore-seller, lay the object of Master Indra’s interest, and by extension, of his. Boisterous laughter rose from among their number. He’d been shadowing the inner circle of Priva
Ambiyyat’s company for three days now, slowly letting strands fall away where they had no connections in common. Just as he’d done with his prisoners and their connections to the Emperor’s chambers, so Lin Qishan and Master Indra expected him to be able to do with Priva Ambiyyat. But it wasn’t so simple, with men who ate and drank and fought and fucked together. They had two dozen strands in common; he was as likely to hook himself to some distant battlefield as the inner sanctum of wherever their company kept the contracts Lin Qishan had charged him to steal.
Tonight. It had to be tonight.
He pushed off from the statue, angling around to make it look as though he were coming from the west. The whore-seller’s stall was broad enough to occupy the space for two lesser merchants, with as many bare-chested guardsmen as bare-chested women on display. Even so, Ambiyyat’s men outnumbered the guards, swarming around the stall to make clear the goods were reserved for men in crimson sashes. He ignored the implied warning, edging toward the stall as he pushed through the crowd, eyeing the girls with lust he wouldn’t have had to feign if not for the doom hanging over him, and his family.
“This one is a sweet brown, half-Bhakal and bred to please,” the whore-seller was saying, an Ihjani man done up in an exaggeration of his people’s traditional style, colorful silks and patterned turban wrapped tight around his head. “Pair her with a white-skinned Natarii from the north, and both will leave you drained as a fresh-molt snakeskin, I swear it on my mother’s heart.”
One of Ambiyyat’s men took note of his approach, gesturing to his fellows as they turned to block the way.
“Move along, friend,” the mercenary said to him. “These slaves are spoken for tonight.”
Tigai affected a humble posture as the whore-seller moved on to a different stall, this one featuring a Nikkon girl bound in chains around a post. “This one is fresh, but fierce,” the Ihjani man was saying. “Still unbroken, but you may find pleasure in the breaking, so long as you agree to waive any claims against me, should she do you or your men harm.”
Blood of the Gods Page 25
