The man didn’t reply.
Bayan looked up. Doc stared at the crystal in his hand. “What is it?”
“I’ve just been privy to something I shouldn’ta, Bayan.”
“What are you talking about?”
The chanter took a few moments to check Kiwani’s pulse and breathing, as if assuring himself that she was, in fact, healed and whole.
“You recall the three blood types in the empire?”
“Yes, sir. Waarden, and Southern and Northern Common.”
“Waarden blood has proven itself to be a dominant trait, passed from parent to child. That got it the nickname ‘noble blood’, since the Waarden make up most of the nobility in the empire, and belike they always will.”
“Kiwani’s parents are high nobility. But… the Waarden crystal didn’t work.”
“Then you know what I know.”
The recent duel, the sudden fight, and Bayan’s struggle to bring Kiwani safely off the mountain all blinked into nothingness as he finally pieced together what Doc had deduced. “Azhni’s crystal is a Southern Common. Because Kiwani isn’t of noble blood. She’s not her parents’ daughter.”
Kiwani’s eyes opened and focused on the crystal that was still in Doc Theo’s hands. “You did not just say what I thought you said,” she breathed, eyes wide.
Doc Theo whipped the crystal out of her line of sight. “My dear girl, I’m so sorry to be the one to stumble onto this. I hope it was something you already knew.”
“It’s not true. It’s not. It can’t be. Where’s Azhni? She will set this all straight.”
“Just cut your hand, Kiwani,” Bayan said. “Like I did when I first got here, so Doc Theo could determine my blood type.”
“I know my blood type!” She sat up abruptly despite her recent brush with death. She thrust a hand at Doc Theo. “Give me something sharp!”
He handed her the small knife from his bag, and she slashed her palm with a furious stroke. Blood poured from her hand and dripped to the floor.
Hissing in frustration, Doc Theo brought the Southern Common crystal to bear over her hand.
“No, not that one! Use the right one!”
The chanter traded crystals. Holding the Waarden crystal so that the “W” was clearly visible, he chanted over her hand.
It continued to bleed.
She made a furious fist and pounded it on the floor, leaving a bloody print. “No! Do it again!”
“I’ll do no such thing,” Doc Theo said. “I know when my magic is working properly, same as you do. Now hold still and let me heal that fool slice.” He commandeered her hand and brought out the Southern Common crystal once more.
As his chanting began to seal up the cut in Kiwani’s skin, she screamed and tried to pull away. Bayan grasped her around the waist and arm, holding her still as Doc Theo finished the healing chant.
“What lies are these? What trickery?” she screeched. “Get me Azhni!”
“I’ll do just that.” Doc Theo rose with lips and brows drawn in a troubled mask. “Bayan, you stay with Kiwani until I get back.”
“Yes, sir.”
Doc Theo exited the front door, pulling a cloak from a hook as he stepped into the chilly air.
“He’s lying. Tell me he’s lying,” Kiwani muttered.
“I—I can’t, Kiwani. I saw the crystals the same as you did.”
Abruptly, she turned her head, as if recalling something else. “Our duel. What happened to me? I was about to cast Pepperbreath, and then… what?”
“Someone shot a bolt at you. He shot one at me when I tried to help you. I chased him down and tried to bespell him, but I was too angry; my magic wasn’t working right. I did manage to trap him up there, though.” Bayan could feel the faint link to the ice spell that held his prisoner in place.
“It can’t be true.” Kiwani was back on the subject of her blood status.
“I’m sure that Azhni will—”
“It can’t be!” she shrieked, grabbing fistfuls of her hair. “My life, it’s mine! I lived it! I was there! I have to be who I am. If I’m not me, I’m no one!”
The air began to hum around her. A few sparks flared around Kiwani’s hair. Bayan’s eyes widened in alarm. “Kiwani, you need to calm yourself. You don’t want to set the building on fire. Trust me. I did that once back home.”
Panting, Kiwani closed her eyes and took some slow breaths, focusing, he hoped, on the Void. The humming sparks subsided.
“Thank you.” She looked over at him with tears edging her eyes. “Please tell me it’s not true.”
“I… I’m sorry…”
The door opened again, and Doc Theo returned, shivering as the warm air of his house reached his skin. “Instructor Mikellen is sending for Azhni. I told Master witten Oost about the assassin as well; he’s organizing a party to deal with the man. Under the circumstances, I thought I might best serve by stayin’ here with you, Kiwani, until Azhni comes.”
Bayan let his shoulders sag, feeling relief and exhaustion pervade his body. “I think I need a good soak and some sleep.”
“Wait!” Kiwani grabbed Bayan’s sleeve with desperate strength as he reached for the door. “You won’t tell?”
“Tell who what?”
“Anyone. About the crystals.”
Bayan read the vast depths of pain and loss in her eyes. Did I look like that when I first came here, leaving my entire life behind? No, I don’t think I did. My parents are still my parents, even if they’re far away. Kiwani’s a stranger in her own memories now.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know anything about any crystals. My hexmates need to be able to trust me with their lives. Anything less pressing than that doesn’t even require thinking about.”
To his surprise, her chin trembled and a pair of tears dropped to her cheeks. She dipped her head, giving him a bow normally used between citizens of equal rank. “You won the duel, Bayan.”
~~~
A small, skittering rock drew Kakios’ attention from the slowly melting ice gripping him at the edge of the cliff. Breathing had become difficult in the last several minutes, with his weight dragging at his chest while his feet dangled over the dark nothingness below. A figure glided out of the rocky cleft and out onto the seamed cliff top.
“You,” Kakios muttered, surprised but relieved. “How did you know I was here?”
“I know everything.”
“Yes, yes. This ice, it’s freezing. Get me out.”
The other man stepped forward. “Of course.”
Just as Kakios began to relax and anticipate seeing another day, his supposed rescuer swung a dark, gleaming double-bitted war axe at the base of the ice shard that held him, as if it weighed nothing.
“What are you doing? Where did you get that? I’m hanging in air here!”
The other man didn’t reply, swinging the axe again. Ice chips flew everywhere. The shard cracked heavily, and Kakios held very still.
“You’re a fool.” His jaw tensed with fear and frustration. “You would have earned more power than you could possibly dream of if you’d helped her.”
The man with the axe paused, resting its long ebony haft across his shoulder. “I daresay I can conceive of more power than she can possibly offer me. And I don’t much care for her methods. So gauche.” He hefted the axe again.
“Wait! Spare me, and I can tell you everything. Where they are, what they’re planning!”
The other man grinned, teeth glimmering faintly in the moonlight. “I haven’t been idle since our tea session. As I already told you, I know everything.”
Another crack of the axe, and the thick ice shard splintered under Kakios’ weight. As he plummeted to his death, his last thought was that he had been working for the wrong person all along.
Bituin’s Feast
“What do you mean, no one has seen him?” Philo demanded in an irritable tone. He set his cup of thick morning coffee in its saucer. “He insisted I be here before dawn so he could review my progress.
It’s nearly noon now.”
“I know, Philo.” Gael held his hands up in a placating gesture. “Cassander, Kipri, and I have scoured the ministry for him. We didn’t find him, and no one knows of any morning appointments he had elsewhere in the Kheerzaal. Kipri even headed over to see if he’d been waylaid at home, but—”
“You’re telling me he’s not even at his home?”
“He doesn’t seem to be. But Kipri got a pretty harsh greeting from Lady Iyanu. She nearly shoved him off her portico in the middle of an epithet storm.”
“Is the lad all right?”
“Oh, aye. He’s just sulking in the lavatory, like he usually does when someone treats him like the nasty little Aklaa rebel he tries so hard not to be.” Gael smirked.
Philo leaned back in his chair, the thick pad of his favorite red-haired wig cushioning his head. “Your humor, while accurate, is rather misplaced today, Gael. Something feels wrong about this whole situation.”
Lady Iyanu is the lock, but I don’t have the key.
A knock on his office door preceded a lanky messenger eunuch with a fat, plain envelope. As Philo accepted it, he saw the envelope bore neither ministerial sigil nor sender name. “Where did you pick this up?”
“Middle of the Kheerzaal, sir, from another eunuch. Passing strange, if you ask me.”
Philo dismissed the messenger, waved Gael back to work on the Balanganese maps, and opened the fat packet. As he flipped through the enclosed pages, covered with painstakingly copied logbook notes, his frown deepened. On the last page, he found a short message.
I know of your mission. These Ministry of Ways logbook entries omit your submitted report of a vagary attack in Marghebellen. Yours is not the only one unreported amongst the outer provinces. Who would benefit from a seemingly low crime rate? Who is responsible for these crimes of omission, and why? Dig deeper.
Philo let the logbook copies drift to his desk top. It seemed he had an ally, provided that he could verify this information was accurate. Yet, the note was unsigned. A turncoat inside Eshkin’s operation? A conspirator with a sudden case of guilt? He might never know. But if these facts proved true, he had more to go on. Already, he could answer the question of who was allowing the crimes of omission—all vagary reports had to cross the desk of Lord Eshkin himself.
~~~
“It’s all true,” Kiwani whispered as she and Bayan walked beside each other to the Shock arena for the first class of the morning. The grass beside the worn trail had lost its jagged frosty look in the morning’s light. “Azhni confirmed it. Apparently it was the sole reason my father hired her.”
Bayan glanced at Azhni who shadowed Kiwani from a few steps behind. Her expression was faintly ashamed, but she’d spoken no more than on most mornings. He shifted his gaze to Kiwani. She had looked distant when she and Tarin had met up with the rest of the hex, and though he—and the others, by their raised eyebrows—were surprised when she fell in beside him, her expression remained set and cool.
“I’m sorry. Will you keep the secret, now that you know?”
“Of course! This would ruin me, ruin my family.” She turned her head sharply. “Will you still keep it?”
“Sorry. Still no idea what you’re referring to.”
She smiled, her first change in expression. “Thank you. I would feel completely lost if I didn’t have you to talk to. How does that irony strike you?”
“Hard enough to leave a few bruises. At least you got healed.”
“Are you hurt enough that it will show in your performance?”
“I don’t think so. But we should tell the hex anyway.”
“Kiwani!” a distant, deep voice bellowed from the edge of a nearby tunnel entrance.
Bayan and the rest of the hex, along with Azhni, paused as one, to watch a well-dressed man with graying stubble on his cheeks pelt down the boardwalk and onto the trail toward them, pressing a hand to his side as if it pained him.
“Father?” Kiwani blurted.
“Thank sints you’re all right.” Kiwani’s father threw his arms wide to embrace her.
Kiwani’s nostrils flared, and she held out her arm to stop him. “Don’t you touch me. How dare you come here, expecting everything to be the same as it always was? How dare you!”
Tarin, Calder, and Eward exchanged shocked glances. Bayan laid a calming hand on Kiwani’s shoulder.
The look of surprise and pain that flashed across Lord Eshkin’s face was mixed with guilt. “Kiwani… we had no choice. The things he threatened us with—you can’t imagine—”
“What? What are you talking about?”
Her father paused, staring at her. “What are you talking about?”
“What are they talking about?” Calder whispered to Tarin, who shrugged.
“The reason Azhni is really here!” Kiwani cried. “You can’t have expected to hide it forever, not once I became a duelist. Why didn’t you ever tell me? Couldn’t you trust your own daughter to stay loyal to the family?” she hissed.
Her father ran a hand through his hair, then left it there, looking bereft as he stared into the cloudy sky. Bayan noticed the bags under his eyes. Had he slept in the last couple of days?
“Kiwani—”
“I don’t want to hear anything you have to say. My sincere thanks for stopping by to check on me, but you can go back home now.” Kiwani reached out and grabbed Azhni’s arm, hurling her toward her father, who caught the stumbling, surprised chanter awkwardly. “And you can take your spy home with you. Her services are no longer required.”
“Lady Kiwani,” Azhni began.
“Kiwani, maybe you could—” Bayan began.
“Get out of my sight!” Kiwani screeched. All the grass within five strides lengthened with sudden growth, seed heads ripening and exploding into fluff.
“Kiwani!” her father growled, dark brows drawing sharply together above startled eyes. “Behave yourself.”
“Whyever should I? Because I’m a lady of the Waarden court?” she asked, with a dangerous growl in her voice.
Eward shuffled his feet in the long grass, and Tarin’s cheeks bloomed pink. Calder shot Bayan a nervous glance. “Angry girls scare me,” he said.
“This is all your fault!” Kiwani pointed an accusing finger at her father. “Dragging an innocent child into a life where she doesn’t belong, then spending your fortune hiding the truth from everyone, including her godfather the emperor! What would he think of you now? Likely the same as I think: you’re a liar, and you cannot be trusted. Now, excuse me. I am late for class.” Kiwani turned and strode away, leaving Bayan and the rest of the hex scrambling to keep up with her.
“Are you sure you want to leave him back there?” Bayan looked over his shoulder at the nobleman. Kiwani’s father stood bereft and slump-shouldered in his rumpled jacket, amidst Kiwani’s grassy anger.
She lowered her voice to a teary whisper. “I don’t owe him anything. Kiwani t’Eshkin died a long time ago, if she ever existed at all. I am just one more nameless duelist in service to the emperor.”
~~~
“Are you both entirely off your nut?” Calder yelled as he stood with his back to the hearth circle.
“Hardly. We were doing quite well with our skill duel rules until someone tried to murder me. And since then, I have glimpsed Bayan’s true character, and I can admit that I misjudged him. He’s proven his worth and friendship to me, more clearly than I ever could to him.”
Still confused, Calder shook his head, looking to Tarin and Eward. Their blank looks told him they didn’t know how to react either. “What aren’t you telling us? I’ve heard some strange things in the barracks’ hallways. Jealous rages? Sint-inspired near-death experiences? Bayan stabbing Kiwani in revenge for past grievances? Which is it?”
Bayan and Kiwani shared a look, and Calder could tell they were trying to decide how much to say. He ground his teeth.
Bayan told the rest of the story, explaining to the hex about the mysterious attacker and
how he, Bayan, had rushed Kiwani down the mountain to Doc Theo’s. “The last I heard, the search teams never found the would-be assassin, only the bloodstain on the rock where Kiwani was shot, and some bits of melting ice. The only proof I have that he ever existed is this.”
Bayan lifted up a broken metal chain, from which dangled a small, black, featureless pendant.
“Not really an identifying item,” Tarin said.
Calder squatted down to stare directly at the plain black pendant. Frowning, he glanced to Kiwani, who also regarded it with concern. “I’m glad you dinna get killed.”
“I don’t know who that man was, or why he decided to attack me. But if it hadn’t been for Bayan, I would be dead.”
Bayan shrugged and grinned. “Hexmates.” But Calder read tension in his smile.
On the way back to the barracks, Calder nudged Bayan. “You were being nice to Kiwani tonight.”
“She’s had a rough time.”
“Aye, but there’s more to this than just saving a hexmate. You’re still worried about her. Is she still in danger?”
“Master witten Oost says no.”
“Then what changed?”
“A lot. A lot changed.”
~~~
The next day, Bayan was just exiting the dining hall after a long, quiet lunch with Kiwani when Calder jogged up with a look of concern.
“I was just feeding Bituin for Gerrolt, and, well… You should come look at her, Bayan. I don’t know what’s going on, but she doesn’t look good.”
Now what? Bayan wondered, as he hurried to the glasshouse with Calder. He stepped into the narrow glasshouse and looked around at the eight dark red pitchers Bituin had grown in the year he’d lived on the campus. Normally, they were slender and open, but now, the pitchers sagged under their own weight, their lid leaves barely able to shut properly.
Bayan stared in surprise. “She’s stuffed.”
He held up the lowest pitcher and peeled up a corner of its leaf lid. Something dark and soggy filled the pitcher. “Did you pull any of this muck out?”
Rebel Elements (Seals of the Duelists) Page 24
