by Matt Larkin
Chandi backed down the tube, not turning even when the weretiger had disappeared into the shadows.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Servants bustled about the palace, preparing for the lingsir kulon meal, but Malin saw few people of consequence. The important Lunars and Solars would be embroiled in the day’s pointless arguments. The few palace guards he saw paid him little attention, their minds also likely on food.
Now that Naresh knew he was here, Malin had given over discretion, and the Solars had given him servant’s quarters on the fourth floor. But he didn’t head there now. Chandi would return soon, and he needed to finish this before she did. Even she would not see his people’s need. If he was to change their fate, he would do it himself.
Few guards watched the east wing on the third floor where common guests stayed. Malin easily slipped by without their notice, sticking to the shadows, taking side passageways intended for servants. He peered through the reeds of three doors before he spotted the sun-haired foreigner.
The man sat meditating on a straw mat, legs folded beneath him. The Stranger turned to look in his direction even before Malin had swung the door open. Perhaps he had ears as good as a Macan Gadungan—no human should have heard him.
“Stranger,” Malin said, “it is time. For too long I’ve served the Moon Scions. Served without thanks, without recognition, without respect. Today I change the future of these Isles. If I can trust you.”
The foreigner rose. “You can trust I have as much reason to want Rahu dead as you do.”
Malin folded his arms. “Many have reason. I can get us into his chambers and back out of the palace. But as for the man himself, his Moon Blessings make him stronger, faster, and more resilient than any other Moon Scion or werebeast.”
“Traits we share.”
Malin waited, but the man did not elaborate. If he could fight Rahu, then so be it. If they failed, Malin would lose everything. But if he didn’t risk everything, he’d never change anything. He knew that now. Not even Chandi would help him. She had been part of the lie. Malin nodded, and motioned for the man to follow him from the room.
Though the foreigner carried himself with the grace of one trained in martial arts, he was no expert in stealth. It would make things more complicated. The guards didn’t stop them from leaving the third floor, but an Arun Guardsman watched the fourth floor wing that housed the Lunar delegation.
“I’m going to distract the Guardsman,” he told the Stranger. “I want you to approach from the servant’s hallway, there, and pass by as quietly as you can manage.”
The Stranger glanced down the narrow servant’s hall, then his eyes glazed for a moment. When they came back into focus, he trod down the hall without a word. Malin cursed under his breath. If the man were some kind of addict this could go very wrong.
Forcing the grimace from his face, he stopped to chat with the Arun Guardsman. He recognized the man—it was the third time this week he’d had this duty—though Malin didn’t know the Solar’s name.
“Has the War King returned from the meeting?” he asked, watching the foreigner slip by. The Guardsman told Malin the meeting had just recessed, and Rahu was in his room. He seemed bored—Malin didn’t blame him. The man had probably been assigned this duty as punishment.
As soon as the Stranger passed around the corner, Malin left the Guardsman and followed. “Wait outside,” he told the Stranger. “I’ll speak to him first to get him off his guard, then you come in and we’ll take him together.”
“Don’t get in the way.”
Malin snorted and continued down the hall, then pushed open Rahu’s door. The War King spun on him, still seeming lunatic. How did he maintain the façade of sanity before Kakudmi? Perhaps Malin only saw it because he knew to look for it. Or perhaps Kakudmi pretended not to see it in the hopes of peace.
“Why have you come, tiger? Do you have what I sent you after?”
“No,” Malin said, stalking closer. “But I know who does.” Perhaps it was his imagination, but Rahu had even started to smell insane.
“Tell me, then. I’ll enjoy showing them the error of their ways.” Rahu’s fingers grasped Malin’s shoulders in an iron grip. “Tell me,” he repeated.
Malin wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of crying out. “Speaking of the error of one’s ways,” he said, “there’s someone who wants to show you something, too.”
Rahu’s mouth opened as the Stranger pushed through the door. The War King turned his wild gaze back on Malin, his eyes revealing understanding of the betrayal. With a grunt, Rahu tossed him aside, sending him crashing into the dresser. His momentum knocked it over and he lay dazed among the splinters.
By the time he pushed himself to his hands and knees, Rahu had already rushed the foreigner. The Stranger snapped his arm up to block a series of lightning fast blows. He stepped forward even as he blocked the last, his open palm catching Rahu in the chest. The War King hurtled across the room and through a sandalwood bedpost before slamming into the back wall.
Malin blinked as the Stranger walked toward Rahu. The man’s strength was uncanny, frightening. With a cough that sputtered blood across the floor, Rahu staggered to his feet. “Your vengeance against me already ruined one civilization. And still you pursue me. How many worlds will burn beneath you?”
Rahu launched another blindingly fast attack. The Stranger twisted out of the way and caught Rahu’s arm, bending it backwards as though Rahu had the strength of a mere mortal man. “To annihilate your insane tyranny, as many as it takes.”
Rahu reached his other hand out and two pieces of splintered bedpost levitated from the floor. Malin had started to rise and draw his keris, but he balked. The debris hurtled through the air at the foreigner. The man turned and batted one piece aside, but the other caught him on the shoulder. He spun through the air from the impact.
With his foe distracted, Rahu leapt onto the wall and ran up it. Malin gaped as Rahu shifted his gravity to the ceiling and keep running. He hurled the keris into the War King’s path, causing him to stumble.
While Malin debated how to attack a foe on the ceiling, the Stranger dashed over and kicked off a wall. It gave him enough height to grab Rahu by the shoulders. He swung Rahu over his head and slammed him down onto the bed with enough force to shatter its legs.
Rahu tried to kick him, but the Stranger knocked the attack aside and hurled him against another wall.
“Now you think to murder me,” Rahu said, the words hard to make out as he choked on blood and broken teeth. He still managed to launch another series of punches as the Stranger neared.
The Stranger blocked each and landed a body blow that must have shattered ribs. “I already have. Your ribs have punctured your lungs. But I think someone else deserves vindication this day.” The foreigner tossed Rahu’s broken body at Malin’s feet.
Malin bent to retrieve his keris knife. After twenty years, it seemed odd it would end like this. Twenty years of service. Once he had worshipped the man.
Malin knelt beside his former master. “You held power in the palms of your hands. And you squeezed those loyal to you so tightly they slipped through your fingers, until there was no one left.”
“I will have revenge, beast,” the War King sputtered.
“No.” He hacked deeply into the man’s throat. More. Malin carved until the lunatic’s head came free. Holding it by the hair, he stared into its vacant eyes. They accused him of betrayal, just as his mother’s eyes had.
Disgusted, he tossed the head aside.
“I have one more thing to do in the palace,” the Stranger said.
Malin rose. “Meet me in the Harbor District. I will have a loyal ship ready. If guards pursue you, we leave without you.” Malin spared Rahu one last glance, and then he turned his back on the man who had remade him.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Naresh tried to keep the hurry from his step. Chandi wasn’t in her chambers, but that wasn’t so unusual. Kakudmi had declared a rec
ess on the talks until after the lingsir kulon meal, so perhaps she had gone to see her uncle. Hard to believe Rahu could be her uncle. The War King’s lust for power seemed out of place in the same family with Chandi’s sincerity.
He could imagine her face when he told her she’d been right about everything. The way she’d beam at him. “I know,” she’d say. He smiled to himself.
Rahu’s door opened as Naresh entered the hall. The Stranger.
The foreigner stepped into the hall some distance from Naresh. Surprise flashed over his green eyes, but only for a moment before they became resigned.
“What are you doing here?” Naresh said.
“You do not wish to be here. Turn and leave now.” The man’s voice was soft, almost emotionless. Had he heard the Stranger speak before this? He spoke the tongue of the Isles with a slight accent.
Naresh advanced, hand on his keris. “Not likely. I asked you what you’re doing here.”
The Stranger held up a hand as Naresh approached. The air seemed to tremble. A bout of dizziness washed over Naresh. The Stranger fell back a step and the feeling began to fade.
“Everything I am doing, your emperor understands.”
“Betraying him?” Naresh pulled himself to his feet. The air rippled again as he advanced on the Stranger. He gritted his teeth and took another step forward. If this was some Moon Blessing, it only proved the man a traitor. “The emperor won’t like his advisor taking secret meetings with his enemy.”
“Rahu the madman, Rahu the deceiver. A man to whom no agreement was sacred, to whom betrayal is a matter of course. You saw the reflection he cast, but could never perceive the depths of his depravity in it.”
Naresh clenched his fist around his sword, then paused. For the first time, he noticed blood spatters on the man’s shirt, then on his knuckles.
“Consider your people. You must let me go. Things must happen. You cannot change the course of events set in motion.”
The Stranger did not retreat as Naresh’s sword slid from its sheath. “I don’t know who you are, or why you’ve come. But if you murdered one of the emperor’s guests, someone under my protection, you won’t leave here either, assassin.”
Neither the man’s gaze nor his voice faltered. “I have done as the emperor wished. Would you fault me for that?”
“You’ve started a war. Am I to believe Pak Kakudmi wanted that?”
The foreigner began to edge around Naresh, his back to the wall. As he drew nearer, the dizziness returned. The Stranger shook his head. “You must know war would have come regardless. This tenuous situation could not have held. Now it comes without the lunatic War King.”
He should strike the man down. Kakudmi would never have hired an assassin. Never have violated all honor by murdering a guest. Or maybe he could claim that he had not ordered the Stranger to do anything. Chandi had warned him Rahu would bring them to war, that he had gone lunatic. Now he’d bring them to war through his death.
Yet the man’s claim made too much sense. Kakudmi would never order a murder. But perhaps their emperor was shrewder than Empu Baradah gave him credit for. If he knew the talks would fail, if he knew war was inevitable, why would he stop another man from solving a problem that threatened his Empire? The Stranger was right about that, if there was war, better that Rahu not lead it. The relentless, pitiless madman would have led them all to annihilation.
The foreigner slipped by him, his green eyes not leaving Naresh’s face until he passed around a corner. Naresh fell to his knees, though the dizziness had begun to fade. Only a few breaths, then he pulled himself to his feet.
Inside Rahu’s room the Lunar king lay in a crumpled heap on the floor. A pool of blood collected around him. His head lay some distance from his pulverized body.
Naresh glanced around the room. The legs of the bed had collapsed and the dresser was overturned. Surya alone knew what kind of fight this had been. Word would spread soon. The Fifth War would begin over this. And Chandi’s father would become the new War King.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Halfway between the harbor and the palace Chandi had to pause to tread water and catch her breath. The palace guards hadn’t said why they’d closed off the entrance to the palace, but she’d figured she could swim, climb up to the roof garden, and get in that way. The guards wouldn’t expect anyone to try it. Because it was too damn far. Malin had done so, but he was Macan Gadungan.
In the pouring rain she could only just make out her destination. Swimming in the sea during a thunderstorm might not have been her best idea. She’d never make it there, or back, without an edge. Perhaps that’s how Rahu became the way did, every little need adding up to a powerful addiction. No, Malin was wrong, she was fine. She was in control. She drew her Moon Blessing, relishing in the strength flooding through her limbs as she resumed her swim. She could have gone for phases like this. Why had she been worried about a little lightning, anyway?
She had to see Naresh. He’d know what to do. She had to do something with the Amrita. What had possessed her to steal it? Stealing the mad king’s weapon will make him less insane? Maybe Naresh could use it, become a Moon Scion Sun Brander. She giggled, choking down a bit of water. It was his fault for spurning her before. And for sealing the palace. She’d make him pay for that.
The patio off the Arun Guard’s lounge looked different from the outside. With the crystal pane over the window she couldn’t get in that way, but she climbed onto the landing anyway. While she caught her breath she wrung out her kemban. Reclothed, she shifted her center of gravity to the wall and ran up it to the garden.
Her arms and legs aching, Chandi collapsed into the muddied grass. After a moment she rose and let the rain wash her clean. Then she continued through the garden to the stairs that led down to the fourth floor. Though some gawked at her for dripping water through the halls, and a few maids giggled at her stupidity for playing in the rain, no one stopped her progress.
She had to wend her way through several palace halls to reach the suite she shared with Ratna. Pieces of a shattered glass pitcher littered the hall outside that suite. When Chandi pushed open the door Ratna jerked and snatched a glass cup. Though she hefted it to throw, her arm fell when she recognized Chandi. Her cousin’s eyes were red.
“What happened?”
“She’s gone!” Ratna sobbed and ran to Chandi, almost collapsing in her arms. “He’s dead. They’re both gone.”
Naresh? No, Ratna wouldn’t care so much. “Who is?”
“Revati! He took Revati. He murdered my father!” Ratna pounded on Chandi. “Where is my daughter? Where?”
Chandi murmured something not even she understood. “Who?” She almost choked on the word.
“The Stranger.” Ratna was weeping into Chandi’s shoulder, her words hard to make out. “But it’s the damn Arun Guard. They let him. They were supposed to protect us. They let him. They took my daughter. They took everything.”
Why would Kala do any of that? Why take Revati? Didn’t this hurt both sides? So they were all in it together, then. Everyone against her and Ratna. Malin, Semar, the Stranger, all working to destroy the cousins. And Rahu, her madman uncle, murdered.
Ratna beat on Chandi’s back with balled fists, and Chandi held her cousin tighter. Where was Naresh? He was supposed to protect Revati. He said he’d protect them all. Kala couldn’t have taken that little girl. That poor, beautiful girl.
“Chandi.” Revati’s voice echoed in her mind so loudly she looked around to see where the girl stood. But would she ever see Revati again?
How had Naresh let this happen? Or had he made it happen? Perhaps he had punished her betrayal with his own. Not enough that he should scorn her and marry another. He had to destroy their family, as well. He’d do his duty no matter what. His duty against Lunars. They were all in on it. All traitors. They’d see what it meant to challenge the chosen of Chandra.
Her arms fell away from Ratna. “I have to go.”
“Punish them,”
Ratna said as she fell to her knees. “Destroy them all, Chandi.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
When Chandi returned to the lounge she found Landorundun staring through the crystal pane at the sea.
“Where is Naresh?”
The Guardswoman spun at her voice.
“It’s been a long morning for everyone. He needed to think. We all do.”
Chandi had no patience to sort through the strange emotions in the other woman’s voice. “Take me to him.”
Landorundun rubbed her temples for a moment. “All right, Chandi. I have things I have to do, but maybe it would do him good to see you.”
Do him good? Chandi followed her down the hall and around the corner. She stiffened when the Guardswoman patted her on the shoulder. Landorundun met her gaze, then left her standing there outside his door.
Chandi pushed the door open. Naresh sat on a wide four-post bed, head in his hands. Other than the plush bed and drawings scattered on the dresser, he kept his chambers plain. His keris sat on the same dresser, pinning down a sketch of his mother and a man, perhaps his father.
He looked up from a drawing in his hand as she strode over. “Chandi.”
She looked down at his broken face. The sketch was of her. She slapped him.
She had to take a step back as he rose, hand on his cheek. “That was uncalled for.”
“You bastard.”
His face grew dark. The Solars took parentage so seriously.
“You were supposed to protect them. Protect us!”
“Yes. I was. Protect the Solars. Protect the Lunars. Protect everyone, even from themselves. From the results of their own madness.”
She drew her Moon Blessing and slapped him again. The force of the blow lifted him off his feet and spun him around to land on the bed.
