“Show yourselves, dogs,” a voice shouted from the square. “You strike from the shadows—now strike in the open, if you dare.”
Jyeong stood by the mouth of the alley, wearing a hard expression. Lin and Master Indra had stepped back, both looking to him.
“That’s it?” Tigai said. “Reach a man in white and bring him to your temple?”
“That’s it,” Master Indra said. “Do it, and you’re free. Fail, and your family will not wake tomorrow.”
“Cowards,” the voice in the square shouted. “Assassins.”
“What are you not telling me?” Tigai said. “That man is a magi, is he not? Why is he raving in the middle of a market? And how is he making those—”
Another boom sounded, swallowing Tigai’s words, a violent tremor shifting the ground enough to set them all off-balance, forcing them to lean against the building to steady themselves.
“You know all you need to know,” Master Indra said. “Go, perform your task, and earn your freedom.”
Tigai hesitated, tasting the dust scattered by whatever the magi was doing in the square. Was the man’s talent to convert blood to earthquakes? He tried to make sense of what had happened in Ghingwai, and came up short. Remarin would have chided him for his lack of vision. Always see the shape of the battle, Remarin would have said. Know what your enemy wants; find a way to give it to him that still results in victory. Fine advice for facing a sparring partner in a practice ring. Less practical here.
He stepped forward to the mouth of the alley, keeping his body pressed flat against one of the buildings. Jyeong stood beside him, evidently intent on coming along, while Master Indra and Lin Qishan stayed behind.
The square was strewn with dead bodies, no few of which he’d put there with his knife, an hour before. General An’s statue still stood, a bronze and cast-iron horse-and-rider seeming to point the way forward to the heart of the city. The rest of the market stalls had been collapsed and scattered, with figs and nuts and slaver’s chains sent rolling in the dirt. Three figures stood at the center. A man in white, surely the man Indra had marked for him to abduct, wearing a strange tight-fitting garment that covered him from head to toe, even wrapping his face so only his eyes were visible. Another man stood beside him, a swordsman from the look of him, with lamellar plate armor and a long curved two-handed blade strapped to his back. And the third was Mei.
He stared, to be sure. But it was her. She wore a blue silk dress, cut loose to let her move freely, with her hair pinned back and the same defiant look he’d come to know through all the years of watching her be married to Dao. She surveyed the square as though she were thinking of buying it, and she had both her hands, each one ungloved, showing naked, unbroken skin.
“Go, you coward,” Jyeong said behind him. “And know if you don’t reach him, I will. It will be sweet to watch you suffer for your failure, after I succeed.”
Mei’s face flashed in his memory, and he compared it to the woman in front of him, across the square. It was her. But if she was here, it had to be as a captive, or a pawn. She’d never have chosen to aid or ally herself with magi willingly.
He ran forward.
The buildings and dirt around him blurred together as he covered the ground. He had the sense of Jyeong following behind, running the other way but both converging on the center of the square.
The man in white raised a hand, his forearm suddenly enveloped in a purple glow, and Tigai felt his lungs constrict.
It was as though someone had shoved a branch of stinging nettle down his throat and torn it out. His chest burned, a searing pain burning in his neck and mouth.
He snapped back to an anchor and ran forward again. Jyeong was coughing, hunched over on all fours. Tigai set two more anchors as he crossed the square, running zigzagged toward the center. The man in lamellar armor drew his blade, hefting it over his shoulder and lowering into a guard alongside his waist. Mei had gone wide-eyed, staring at him as though she couldn’t believe what she saw. And the man in white pivoted, his hand once more enveloped by a soft purple glow.
This time the ground exploded, and pain lanced through him as his feet were ripped apart.
He blinked to an anchor and ran forward.
Wordless shouts came from the center. A flash of light illuminated the square, and a sucking wind, and he snapped to another anchor before the rush of fire could consume him. Instead he saw the fireball from the other side of the square, sailing past to detonate against one of the market buildings and send torrents of sparks and ash into the air.
The swordsman reached him, slicing a broad arc with his blade. It cut him, and he blinked a few steps to the side. Mei screamed, calling out in words he couldn’t discern.
Fear touched the eyes of the man in white, and he was close enough to see that the man’s hand was no hand at all: It was blackened, rotten pink and blue and green. Purple surrounded it, and Tigai blinked again.
He reached Mei.
She was still shouting as he hooked her to the strands, carrying her as far as he could take them, the chaos of the square replaced by cold wind through long grass.
33
SARINE
The City of Hokhan
Erhapi Land
The path around the hillside ended abruptly, and it was all she could do not to stare. She’d expected tents, perhaps, or houses cut from logs and stone, as the tribes living close to New Sarresant used. Instead a score of buildings had been chiseled into the cliffside, as though a sculptor had cut away the mud and rocks to reveal a city waiting underneath. And it was a city in truth; hundreds of men, women, children, and animals wandered its streets, with tamed dogs pulling sleds, goats and sheep, terraced plots filled with corn stalks, beans, and tomato plants decorating the side of every building, as far up and down the canyon walls as she could see.
“You have not been to an Erhapi city before, have you, Sarine of New Sarresant?”
Her guide, who had been the lead rider from the party that accosted them, had given his name as Kurinchanakaya—a name she’d never have remembered, had Anati not translated it in her mind as Leaping Wolf. It took her aback almost as much as the city itself; neither Zi nor Anati had ever translated a Sinari name. But she tested it, opting to call their guide Leaping Wolf instead of the Erhapi name, and so far it hadn’t given offense.
“No,” she said, attempting to guide her horse out of Leaping Wolf’s way. The Erhapi warrior grinned at her, wedging his horse between hers and Ka’Inari’s. The shaman seemed as ill-at-ease in the saddle as she was, while the Erhapi riders sat atop their mounts with an easy grace. “I’ve never traveled so far from home.”
“You have more than one city such as this?” Ka’Inari asked. He seemed full of disbelief.
Leaping Wolf laughed. “We have many. We are a great and numerous people.” He gestured to the carbine slung from his mount’s saddle. “And we are fearsome warriors.”
“But how do you survive, when great beasts come?” Ka’Inari asked.
Leaping Wolf shrugged. “They rarely trouble us; an advantage of a city cut into a cliffside. And if needs be, we flee. The city is waiting when we come back.”
The cityfolk noted their arrival by clearing a path for them through the swarm, packs of horses and dogs being herded away as Leaping Wolf called out their intent. They climbed a steep path switchbacking up through the city, and she found a dozen questions coming to mind, though Ka’Inari voiced them first.
“How would you build this,” Ka’Inari asked, “with the threat of beasts? It must have taken generations.”
“We did not build it, Ka’Inari of the Sinari Tribe,” Leaping Wolf said. “As I said, we are fearsome warriors.”
Odd.
It took a moment to register that the thought had come from Anati. Leaping Wolf had taken to bellowing for a dozen horses to make way, exchanging what seemed to be good-natured words with the women who were tending to them, while she, Ka’Inari, and Acherre waited for them to pass.
“What’s odd?” she whispered quickly.
Color. Green. It’s here, among their buildings.
“You mean you can feel Green being used?”
Hmm. Yes. It would be the same, if I did that. Green.
Her heart raced faster than it had before.
“Is it Axerian’s kaas? Can you tell how he’s influencing these people?”
He’s making them content, happy about something he did. Something bad. That’s wrong. They shouldn’t be feeling that way.
“Wait, Anati, where is he? Can you find him here in the city?”
A yellow haze flared at the edge of her vision, and suddenly the buzz of the cityfolk quieted in a wave of silence rolling between the streets.
Yes. There.
The horses trotted out of their path, and Axerian emerged from a stone building fifty paces ahead.
No mistaking his black garb, the curved swords at his side, or the bemused expression he wore, scanning through the crowd. He settled on her almost at once, and the mirth on his face died.
No. Not now. He mouthed it; she couldn’t tell if he’d spoken it aloud.
He ran.
She tried to kick her horse forward, but the beast shied back, and she cursed, pulling the reins. The horse reared up, and Leaping Wolf was there, making calming sounds as he reached for her mount’s bridle. Acherre raced past them both, horse and rider seeming to blend together as they wove through the press, streaking toward where Axerian had vanished down the opposite path.
“Easy,” Leaping Wolf was saying, as the silence from before melted into curiosity, the Erhapi cityfolk turning their heads to question what was going on. Sarine cursed and lifted a leg across her horse’s saddle, trying to free herself, and only succeeded in tangling her feet, falling sideways to the ground in a thud.
He’s using Red, Anati thought to her. The same way he did Green, but different. It’s wonderful. I could—
“Not now!” she snapped. “Give me Red, too.”
Her heart beat double as soon as she asked for it, and she blinked to find motes of Body beneath the buildings, tethering strength into her limbs as she pushed up to find her footing. Leaping Wolf was still eyeing where she’d fallen, and Ka’Inari as well, but she sprinted forward at a run, twisting to avoid the animals and people in her way.
Within a hundred paces they’d left the city behind, following a path down the cliffside that mirrored the one they’d taken to climb into the city from the opposite side of the plateau. Acherre streaked toward Axerian, thundering downhill on horseback where Axerian was on foot.
Acherre had almost caught up to him when a flare of pale energy appeared in front of her mount. White, came the thought from Anati, and Acherre turned her horse’s head to the side at the last moment to blunt the force of the impact. A sickening crunch sounded as the horse ran shoulder-first into Axerian’s shield, throwing Acherre from the saddle. Acherre’s body recoiled from the collision, sending her sailing backward as fast as she’d been riding, then skidding through the dirt before she ground to a halt.
Smoke rose from the dirt where Acherre landed, and Sarine raced toward her. A tranche thirty paces long had been cut through the earth, terminating with Acherre’s body jutting up at angles it wasn’t supposed to make. A broken leg, for sure, and maybe an arm.
She slid to kneel beside Acherre, whipping Life connections into place. Frustration and rage rose, strong enough to almost overpower her work with the tethers. Yes, Acherre’s leg was broken in two places. The Life lattice revealed a fracture in her thigh and a much more serious break below her knee, though the knee itself was—
“NO.”
Acherre snapped the word through clenched teeth. Sarine ignored her, continuing her work with Life and Body. She bound a small tether of the latter, using it to strengthen the tissues as she poured healing energy over the rest.
“No,” Acherre said again. Her face was caked with dirt and already red and swelling where bruises would be formed, later. “Sarine, don’t you dare. Don’t stop for me.”
The frustration in her belly seemed to flare along with Acherre’s words, adding a sentiment of agreement.
“I can’t leave you here like this,” Sarine said.
“No,” Acherre said. “You chase him down. Now.”
She hesitated, glancing up to see Axerian already almost descended to the floor of the cliffside, a silhouette getting smaller as he reached the valley floor.
“Go.” Acherre made it an order, of the sort she’d heard officers give during the battle for the city. Coupled with the surge of foreign emotion in her gut, it served to pull her away from Acherre. The woman could handle Body and Life on her own, and Axerian was getting away.
She called on lakiri’in, the spirit of the crocodile from the sewers, and ran.
Anati appeared coiled around her wrist, her serpent head perked into the wind, eyes half narrowed as though she were enjoying the brisk run. Red surged through her limbs, and a crimson color flashed in Anati’s scales.
Axerian had grown from a shadow back to a man, running faster than anyone could have managed, unaided, but still far from her equal. She closed the distance. He pivoted away and she followed, lakiri’in giving her speed enough to overmatch his pace. Glances over his shoulder revealed terror in his eyes, each look surging the sense of justice and rightness in her chest.
He tried White, set through a warding, the same trick he’d used to bring down Acherre. She ripped the blue sparks away before she knew what she was doing, unraveling his use of Life magic and passing through his shield as though it were no more than wisps of harmless smoke.
She blinked to search for Shelter and found none at the base of the cliff, instead opting to copy Axerian’s trick, opening herself to the blue sparks. She set a warding ahead of him and Anati flared White; Axerian countered instantly with Black, siphoning away her shield as easily as she’d pierced his.
“Do that to him,” Sarine shouted toward Anati on her wrist. “Take his Red.”
But we can’t use Black. We’ve never killed anyone.
Frustration bloomed, doubly so with half of it coming from her. Lakiri’in’s gift wouldn’t last; she remembered what it was to be the reptile, lounging in the sun to store the energy for a single burst of speed. She added mareh’et, and found enough stray motes for a quick jolt of Body. Axerian had already spent his White; it would take a few moments for it to return. All she had to do was catch him.
Four gifts combined to boost her speed, and she shot forward. Axerian pivoted, juking left, and she matched him. He turned again, and she caught hold of his torso, wrenching his body off-balance, sending them both tumbling to the ground.
Anati had spent her White, too; she fell along with him, each of them rolling and bouncing through the dirt. Red made her resilient, and Body, but still pain shot through her limbs, her breath forced from her lungs in a stinging gasp.
“Stop,” she managed, her voice rasping in her throat. “Stop running.”
Their bodies were still entangled, close enough that she could feel his heart thundering, the same as hers.
“You didn’t kill me,” Axerian said. “I’d expected you would.”
Another surge of emotion in her chest swelled with vindication, justice, rage. Not her emotions. The Veil’s. She fought them down.
“No,” she said, pulling their bodies apart to rest on the grass. She didn’t think anything of hers was broken, only bruised and covered with dirt. She took another deep breath through a searing pain in her chest. Maybe a rib was broken after all. “Though Acherre might, after what you did to her, and her horse. I only wanted answers.”
Axerian seemed to be testing his body, rising to sit, his legs extended, propping himself up on his arms.
“You wanted answers,” Axerian repeated.
“Why,” she said. “Why you attacked High Commander d’Arrent, and Arak’Jur and Corenna. Why you set off wardings to collapse the Great Barrier. I wanted to know what wa
s wrong with Zi, too, but he … well …”
Anati had uncoiled herself from Sarine’s wrist, stepping gingerly onto the trampled grass.
“You’ve bonded a new kaas.” There was caution in Axerian’s voice, his usual knowing mirth replaced by a guarded distance.
“Axerian, I …” Another wellspring of emotion flared in her chest, with images of Axerian standing over her, watching her as the world around her filled in with glass. “I don’t …”
“You’re still Sarine.” He said it with awe.
“You knew,” she said, her emotions mixing with the foreign ones churning inside her. “You knew I was the Veil.”
“Yes,” Axerian said. “But also no. You were never truly her.”
“Anati said I was. And I can feel her. Her emotions, locked inside me.”
“You are the Veil as she might have been, a thousand cycles ago. That doesn’t make you her. It doesn’t mean you have to do what she would.”
She drew a deep breath, feeling another spike of hatred she knew couldn’t be hers.
“Axerian, I need to know the truth behind all of this. You’ve done terrible things. I need to understand why.”
“Satisfy your justice, or you’ll kill me after all?” He said it with a half smile.
She said nothing, only fixed him with a serious look as she fought down the rage rising inside. Her chest felt hollowed out from too much emotion, but there was a thread of hope. She had no desire to kill him, but had no other means to stop him. He’d threatened the lives of every man, woman, and child in the New Sarresant colonies. He’d as good as killed the people in the square, when she’d faced down the valak’ar, and the priests with anahret, and who could say how many more since. But there was more to him than mindless violence. The prospect of understanding frightened her, but she had to know.
He seemed to sense her gravity, and bowed his head before he spoke.
“Very well,” he said. “Where do I begin?”
Blood of the Gods Page 30
