Victory of the Hawk

by Angela Highland

  To show her daughter what it looked like when a city burned.

  Her daughter, however, was not as open to instruction as Khamsin might have liked. The child was already badly shaken by the death of her father, and a long ride into an unfamiliar city hadn’t helped. But there was nothing to be done for it, as Khamsin had had to present the child to her husband’s solicitors as well as to the Church in order to have her confirmed as the Duke of Shalridan’s heir. And though the people were rising up in revolt just as Khamsin’s agents had orchestrated, such things were beyond a child of four. All Yselde knew was that the streets had filled with smoke and fire. In truth, Khamsin couldn’t exactly blame her for clinging to her mother all the way out of the city.

  Yselde clung to her now, even as she carried her down out of the carriage. Her small face was pinched with exhaustion, and her dark eyes were squeezed shut. With a pang, Khamsin realized the girl had almost dozed off. “Little bloom, can you wake up for your mama?” she crooned into her ear.

  A high whimper was Yselde’s first reply, and only with great reluctance did she lift her head from Khamsin’s shoulder. “I want to go home, Mama,” she mumbled.

  “We shall, I promise, but I want you to see something first. Can you look up?”

  A pale summer moon hung above them, but what light it spilled on Shalridan was the barest afterthought against the brighter, lurid glow of the flames that spread through the city’s heart. Smoke billowed skyward, the smell of it tainting the breeze and reaching them even at their distant vantage point. Yselde peeked up briefly, whimpered again, and buried her face against her mother once more. “The fire’s going to get me!”

  When her husband was killed, Khamsin had resolved to teach her children about the religion of Tantiulo, the land of her birth. Almighty Djashtet, the threefold Lady of Time, was the goddess of her people, and Djashtet’s holy ridahs were the values by which the faithful Tantiu lived. Strength and courage were the ridahs she valued most, for she’d been a soldier on the battlefields of her homeland—but for a child as small as Yselde, she had to practice wisdom and patience instead. “No, I promise, it won’t. It’s very far away from us now, and we are going home from here. If you can look up at the fire, you can see how far away it is, and how it can’t harm you from here. I won’t let it touch you.”

  “Do you promise, Mama?”

  “I promise. I will keep you safe, and so will Mr. Follingsen and the others who travel with us. You can look up and face what makes you afraid, little bloom.”

  The small body in her arms stiffened, and for a moment, Khamsin thought Yselde might succumb to her weariness and fear. But her daughter wriggled in her grasp and then hesitantly lifted her head. Khamsin canted her own, the better to see the girl’s dark eyes, huge and liquid with her fright.

  “Did the gods make the city burn?” Yselde whispered.

  Pride filled the duchess’s heart. She’s a child, but if she can learn to face her fears, she may grow to be a warrior in truth. “No, little bloom. The hands of men and women lit those flames. But Almighty Djashtet, the Lady of Time, kindled the fire of rebellion in their hearts.”

  “Why?”

  The priestess Idrekke Sother had been Khamsin’s agent to inflame the people of Kilmerry Province, and Sother followed the gods of Nirrivy, not of Tantiulo. In her own heart of hearts, though, Khamsin believed Djashtet guided them all. But she knew better than to try to convince the priestess of the strength of her conviction, much less any of the rest of the Tantiu-blooded members of her household—many of whom had turned to the Four Gods after her marriage, because of her own example. But if she was to win back the ears of the goddess, if she was to sing the ridahs once again, she could at least mold the faith of her children. And so she lifted Yselde higher in her arms, the better for the girl to see the terrible grandeur of the city burning below, though she took care to cradle her close to assure her she was safe.

  “Because there are bad people who have done great wrongs.” Khamsin had thought very hard about how to explain her purpose to her daughter. “The people who live here had their own land once, and bad people took it away from them. They want it back now. But no matter what happens, I will keep you safe. I will not leave you.”

  Her brow furrowed, Yselde considered this. “Like Papa?”

  The question was a spear through Khamsin’s heart. Not even a fortnight had elapsed since the death of her husband, the Duke of Shalridan. His passing gave her a freedom she hadn’t had in twenty years, one she embraced with a vengeance. Yet part of her did grieve for him, the part of her that saw echoes of him in the faces of her children. She could survive and even thrive without a husband, but it seemed unjust, even cruel, that Yselde and her brother would have to go without a father. “Yes,” she answered, though she had to swallow hard before she could voice the words. “Papa had to leave you, but I will not. Almighty Djashtet will make me strong to keep you and Artir both safe.”

  At that, the child’s mouth pulled into a tight little line. “If the bad people made Papa go away, then I want to set things on fire too.”

  “Then you shall, little bloom. I promise you that.” Pride sparked a second time, and Khamsin squeezed Yselde to her in a fierce, protective embrace. She turned and strode back to the carriage before Captain Follingsen had to step forward to remind her of the need to reach shelter as soon as possible. Yselde had seen what she needed to see; there was nothing else to gain by lingering.

  Khamsin kept her next thought to herself—and for the Lady of Time, if Almighty Djashtet would see fit to hear her prayer.

  So shall we all.

  St. Telran’s Cathedral, Shalridan, Kilmerry Province, Jeuchar 5, AC 1876

  Jekke Yerredes had been born too late to fight in the war between Adalonia and Tantiulo—but she had eyes to see the rioters that filled Shalridan’s streets. She had ears to hear the shouts of “Nirrivy rises!” echoing through the night. She smelled smoke on the air, reaching even to the relative safety of St. Telran’s Cathedral. And all her senses united to bring her the same conclusion.

  Shalridan had become a battlefield.

  They didn’t have enough Hawks to keep their heretic compatriots from escaping the cathedral. Indeed, it took all the Hawks under Captain Amarsaed’s command just to drive the force of rioters back out into the streets so that they could defend the priests and priestesses—and even then, Jekke saw more than one of their Order fall to rioters’ guns.

  Where in the gods’ names had they gotten their weapons?

  She lost track of how many hours it took them that night to secure the cathedral, and knew only that when the dawn finally approached, she was tired beyond belief. By then, the Hawks still on their feet were working together to barricade St. Telran’s gates against further intrusion, for none of them could take the risk yet of seeking rest.

  “We need more Hawks and we need them now,” Captain Amarsaed barked. “The sun’s coming up. Get up to the telegraph and get me reinforcements, Lieutenant!”

  His voice was hoarse and cracked from breathing smoke-tainted air, and hers was no better. Jekke rasped out a “Yes, sir” nonetheless, and with as much speed as she could muster, she bolted for the stairs that led up to the cathedral’s telegraph room. It was at the top of the building’s tallest tower, high enough to be seen from many points throughout the city—which meant she had to climb several flights of stairs to reach it, and she caught glimpses of fire and smoke through several narrow windows as she ascended the steps.

  Whether anyone would be able to see their messages with so much smoke in the air, the gods themselves only knew.

  At the top of the last flight of stairs she pounded on the door, calling out raggedly, “Open in the name of the Anreulag! Captain Amarsaed’s orders!”

  That won her an immediate response. A very young-looking, very frightened priest of the Son hauled the door
open and beckoned her in, with hands that looked about as steady as her weary knees felt. “Oh my—ani a bhota Anreulag, arach shae—please, how may I serve?”

  “Let me at the telegraph, Brother. I need to send out a call for help.”

  “But of course. Do you know the proper codes?”

  Jekke almost shouted that of course she understood telegraph codes, but with an effort she fought down her anger. The man looked far too frail to have been accepted into the Order of the Hawk, so of course he had no way of knowing what she had and had not been taught as part of her ordaining. “I know them,” she said gruffly, pushing past him toward the telegraph itself.

  Most of the structure was outside her immediate view, for it stretched up above the top of the tower. All that was within Jekke’s reach was the panel of levers that controlled the shutters, six in all, which she could use to set them into vertical or horizontal positions. Now that the sun was finally rising, St. Telran’s shutters would be visible to any who needed to see them. Gods willing, they’ll get the word out.

  Before she could start setting the shutters, however, the priest let out a cry of alarm. He’d climbed up the short ladder to the telegraph room’s east-facing window, which gave him a clear line of sight to the next station in the line. Wide-eyed, he scrambled down to clear the way for her, saying, “Lieutenant, I think you’d better see this.”

  Jekke scrambled up onto the ladder and squinted out into the slowly lightening morning. Far off to the east, despite the haze in the air, she saw flashes of light on the horizon.

  Another station was already signaling.

  “I need a glass,” she said, thrusting a hand down without looking. The priest immediately pressed a spyglass into her palm, and this she whipped up to eye level, the better to see the signals the station to the east was sending. Her hands began to shake as she recognized the first of the flashing symbols, badly enough that she could barely hold onto the spyglass or the ladder while she urged the priest to send back a request for a confirmation.

  She’d known from the day she was ordained as a Knight of the Hawk that her service with the Order would be dangerous. Sometimes she’d prayed for that very thing, so that she might prove her valor and devotion to the Four Gods. Such was a Hawk’s honor, to stand and face the perils to which the all-seeing Anreulag called them. But she’d always expected that these perils would be born of the elves, the inhuman heathens who defied the laws of the Church with their magic.

  Not once had she ever imagined that her own countrymen might rise up against the Crown and the Church, in a fever of rebellion that ignited when an elven slave escaped her master—and a Knight of the Hawk refused to turn her in. She still couldn’t believe, either, that the Hawk Kestar Vaarsen had elven blood. So many questions haunted her—how the man had escaped the Anreulag’s eye for so long, and how no one’s amulets had reacted to him before—but she couldn’t allow herself to ponder them when Shalridan was in flames.

  Most of all, she’d never imagined that the Voice of the Gods Herself might turn against Her people.

  When the confirmation came through, she swallowed and told her companion to start transcribing what she’d just witnessed. And when he thrust his paper up for her inspection, her trembling spread through her entire body at the sight of the words he’d written down.

  Urgent. Anreulag attacking capital. Bhandreid ill. High Priest dead. All available Hawks report to Dareli by order of the princess Margaine Araeldes, in the name of the Bhandreid.

  “Gods’ mercy,” breathed the priest, his face gone white in the light of early morning seeping in from outside. As she met his stricken gaze, he moved his hand across his chest in the four-pointed star of the Church. “And I thought our own situation dire. Lieutenant Yerredes, you’re a Hawk, do you think the Anreulag is turning against us because of what’s happening here?”

  He seemed scarcely more than a boy, for all that Jekke suspected he wasn’t much younger than she was herself, and she found to her distress that she had no idea what to say to reassure him. “I don’t know,” she muttered, jumping down off the ladder and heading for the stairs down to the lower floors. “Stay here. I need to report this right now. Tell no one!”

  “Please don’t be gone long,” he called unhappily after her.

  But she didn’t linger to answer, for it took everything she had to keep her legs steady as she bolted down the stairs to find and report to her captain.

  * * *

  “Sir, the perimeter around St. Telran’s is holding. We’ve secured the gate and the latest patrol’s come back in.”

  Pol Amarsaed was exhausted. He’d eaten nothing but field rations for three days, he hadn’t slept for more than forty minutes running since setting foot in the city, and his chest ached for want of air untainted by the stench of smoke. But rest was not an option, not when he was the ranking Hawk in a city torn apart by riots, fires and magic. Nor was showing the slightest sign of faltering before his subordinate Bron Wulsten, who’d strode up to him in the courtyard and snapped off a salute with enough force to nearly knock his helmet off. Behind Wulsten came Lieutenant Yerredes, looking white-faced enough to send disquiet winging through him—something was wrong, if the look on her face was any sign. But he didn’t let that distract him from Wulsten.

  “Have you tracked down Vaarsen and his compatriots yet?” Amarsaed demanded.

  “No, sir. We’ve conducted a thorough sweep of this entire quarter of the city, but we couldn’t get farther due to the supply lines still bringing in seawater to douse the flames. Witness reports are scattered at best. We know the rough direction they took when they fled the cathedral, but after that, they might as well have gone up in smoke along with half the buildings around us. And with none of our amulets speaking, we’ve run out of immediate options.”

  “That isn’t acceptable,” Amarsaed said. Wulsten looked even more frayed than he felt, his eyes wild, his face smudged with traces of ash, but Amarsaed was in no mood to spare him what was left of his patience. He leaned toward him, jabbing a finger at his face for emphasis. “And I don’t think you quite grasp the enormity of our problem. We’ve lost track of an elf-blooded traitor to our Order, and not one, not two, but three powerful elf mages—not to mention the others aiding and abetting them. Do you want to report back to the Bhandreid that we’ve failed to carry out her direct orders to apprehend these fugitives?”

  Wulsten swallowed hard. “No, sir.”

  “Do you want to explain to her how we’ve lost track of these selfsame fugitives even after they contributed to the unrest threatening this entire city? No? Then how about to the Anreulag? Would you like to explain to the Voice of the Gods Herself how we’re failing as Her eyes to see and Her swords to strike?”

  “N-no, sir.” Wulsten was too well-trained a Hawk to do anything as unseemly as weep, but the captain didn’t miss the sheen of fright in his eyes—or, for that matter, the tremor in Yerredes’s hand as she starred herself. “I’ll go right back out and resume my sweep, sir.”

  “Take an hour’s rest first. You’re useless to me if you’re dead on your feet.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Wulsten fled, looking grateful for the reprieve, and only then did Amarsaed turn to his other lieutenant. “Now what is it?”

  “About the Anreulag,” she whispered, her voice fainter than he’d ever heard it, though she was clearly trying to steel herself to speak clearly. “The priest and I just got the word from Dareli up in the telegraph room, and—well, you’d better read it, sir.”

  Amarsaed scowled but accepted the scrap of paper Yerredes held out to him. When he read the scant report, all at once he understood the terror lurking behind his lieutenant’s eyes. He’d faced the trials of the past three days without hesitation. But now, for the first time, he felt fright beginning to crack through his inner defenses of duty and faith.

 
“This has to be a mistake.” He barked out his denial without thinking and then let it stand, for the words on the paper were so removed from the order and logic of the world as he knew it that they might as well have been written in Hethloni, or Vreyish, or even Tantiu. “Or some kind of joke.”

  “I really don’t think so, sir,” Yerredes said. “I watched the signals come through myself, and Brother Angvir verified each one as he transcribed. The message chain had all the proper signifiers to mark it as coming from Dareli.”

  “Has anyone else seen this?”

  “Not yet, sir. Under the circumstances, I thought I’d better bring it straight to you.”

  His scowl deepening, Amarsaed cast wary glances all around him to verify that no one had come into earshot in the past few minutes. He thrust the message into the pocket of his uniform coat and seized Yerredes’s shoulder to pull her closer. “As of right now this message is classified,” he said, dropping his voice down to its softest rumble. “All further communications from the capital are to come directly to me, my eyes only. This city is already trying to destroy itself with riot and fire. If word of this gets out, we’ll have even more blood flowing in the streets.”

  “Yes, sir—but what about the rest of the telegraph stations? Others besides us must have seen this by now. The broadsheets will probably have it circulating in the next few hours, if they haven’t already.”

  “I’ll worry about that. If we must, we can get the provost to order Shalridan’s broadsheets shut down.” He would have sent her on her way then, but the younger Hawk paused, worry brimming in her eyes along with something that looked far too much like panic for his liking. “Well, what else? Out with it, woman.”