Ash stopped at a flower vendor and tried to purchase two garlands of white. The stunned shopkeeper refused to take the yakles from him and thrust the garlands into Ash’s hands. The man kept bowing, saying, Arama, your highness, Arama, over and over. Ash gave up, returned the gesture, then handed Aniri a garland.
For a moment, he stood before her, saying nothing. Right when she remembered that she—the bride—was supposed to go first, he reached forward to place his garland over her head. She grabbed hold of the collar of his open-necked shirt to keep him close so she could do the same. He grinned, stole a kiss while bent, then pulled her by the hand farther along the street.
They were gathering stares now. Maybe it was the wedding garlands. Perhaps it was the mile-wide grins on their faces. After a while, Aniri started waving to the gawkers as they strolled past. Ash joined her, and soon the shopkeepers and tinkers and artisans waved back. Which only made her grin all the wider.
A shadow passed over the street, and her heart seized as she searched the sky. But it was only the Prosperity passing over on her mother’s tour of the city, now heading back to the palace. Aniri waved vigorously to the ship. Ash did as well, giving her a mischievous smile. She doubted her mother would recognize them at that height, even if she chanced to look down, but it brought the grin back to Aniri’s face anyway.
The streets grew quieter and even less populated as they wound their way through. Just as Aniri wondered if they would ever reach their destination, they came upon the city’s gate, a behemoth of wood strapped with metal. It was so massive, thick chains on wheels were necessary to open it. Next to the gate stood a red stone building that Aniri recognized all too well.
“Does Sage Padma reside at the Samirian embassy now?” Aniri asked, frowning. The embassy was where she went looking for Devesh and stumbled into being captured and drugged by Garesh. Then she remembered Ash transferred his prisoners—Garesh’s men as well as the Samirians he conspired with—out of his dungeons and into the embassy building. Several of Ash’s guards stood around the entrance.
“No,” Ash said with a chuckle. “Our destination is next door.”
He pointed to a blue-domed temple that sat on the opposite side of the gate. The ornately carved granite walls were inlaid with glistening blue stones. Perfectly pointed arches framed a pair of towering entrance doors that were made from the richest of dark woods. A half-dozen steps led up to the entranceway, which was framed on either side with lush, flowering bushes. Their perfume reached the street, and the temple’s beauty rivaled anything found in Samir or Dharia. Hand-in-hand, Aniri and Ash climbed the steps and stood before the imposing doors. Ash pulled on a thick, gnarled rope that dangled to the side. A solemn gong sounded within the temple.
Aniri couldn’t help smiling. “I hope I don’t have to ring that as part of some deeply significant Jungali wedding ritual. I’m not sure I could keep from laughing.”
“I think you’re safe.” Merriment shone in Ash’s eyes. He tugged her close again with their clasped hands and bent down to kiss her. Aniri slipped her hand around the back of his neck and showed him with her kiss how she never wanted to stop. Never wanted to quarrel. Never wanted anything to come between them again.
The door creaked open with a low groan.
Aniri and Ash broke apart quickly, caught in a moment a bit too passionate for the doorstep of a holy place. Sage Padma stood in the threshold, dressed in her plain robes, with a young acolyte lurking behind her.
The priestess raised a single eyebrow as she took in the two of them, standing at her door with wedding garlands around their necks. “Impatient, are we?”
“I know it’s irregular, Sage Padma—” Ash started, but she held up a single hand to stop him.
“It’s highly irregular.” Her dark eyes held his gaze. “You should pledge yourselves before your people, your families, and your gods. However…” She let a small smile tug at the corner of her mouth. “If you’re going to choose one, at least you chose wisely.”
Ash smiled wide.
Sage Padma stepped back into the darkened interior of the temple, and Ash gestured for Aniri to go first.
Before she could step inside, an earthshaking explosion ripped sound out of the world. Something as powerful as a god picked Aniri up and threw her into the air. She landed on a thousand daggered fingers that scraped across her face. Her head rammed something solid, a wall of rock buried in the prickled arms that held her.
Blackness shut down her world.
Pain leaked into Aniri’s consciousness first. As if a thousand ants were feasting upon her flesh. But the biting was nothing compared to the forging anvil banging repeatedly on the back of her head. She struggled to open her eyes, only to find a cross-hatch of shapes blurred in front of her. She moved, but that only angered the ants, and they bit harder.
Holding still, she swallowed the dryness in her throat and tried to reason out what had happened. She had been at the temple door with Ash. Something exploded. She was now in a world of tiny pains. But alive. Something had cushioned her fall.
The bush around her came into focus. She had been thrown into the flowering plant to the side of the temple door. One that apparently hid thorns of great sharpness. She tried to gingerly work herself loose, but that only dug the thorns deeper. With a growl, and teeth gritted against the pain, she flailed her way free and fell to her knees on the cold stone floor of the temple entranceway. Her hands were bloodied with red streaks, and her clothes suffered a myriad of small tears, but she would live.
Ash.
She looked to the temple door, but it was closed. Smoke drifted up the steps from the street. Ash was nowhere to be seen. As she struggled to her feet and stumbled forward, the carnage at the base of the temple steps and beyond stalled out her search.
The street was littered with rubble. The giant gate of the city had been blown clean away. Chunks of it, both large and small, wood and metal, had been thrown everywhere, even to the temple steps. A piece of jagged wooden beam lay against the closed door where Ash had been just moments before. Or was it minutes? She had been unconscious, with no way to tell how much time had passed. But it couldn’t have been too long. Where could he have gone?
Her head pounded and the whole scene seemed a nightmare. She slowly descended the steps. A sizeable portion of the embassy across the street was gone, leaving gaping holes beyond which she could see paintings of Samirian Queens. Bodies lay in the debris—bodies wearing Jungali blue uniforms. There were more dead around the perimeter of the building, but none were dressed in the adventuring clothes Ash had worn.
Aniri slowly realized there were also live people in the street, moving through the rubble. But they weren’t Ash’s guards: they were the prisoners, liberated by the blast. Their movements were coordinated, with a tall one directing some to help the wounded prisoners, while others fled toward the gaping hole in the city wall.
Before Aniri could think of what to do about that, another explosion sent tremors through her boots. She twisted to look: the sound had come from farther inside the city. As she watched, a plume of dust and smoke arose a block or two away, closer to the heart Bhakti. Anguished cries tore through the air, and that’s when she saw it, drifting high in the sky.
The Dagger.
It had to be the ship from the schematics—it had the same general design as the Prosperity—only it sported a black-tar-coated ship below and a Samirian-red gas bag above. And it seemed larger than the Prosperity when it had passed over the city not long ago, although she couldn’t be sure with the distance. The Dagger was probably a thousand feet above the city, and the Prosperity was nowhere to be seen. Something tiny dropped from the Dagger, hurtling straight down onto the city she loved. Another explosion rocked the ground, and another plume rose up with screams into the air.
Gods, they’re bombing the city.
Her stomach hollowed out, and her limbs felt numb with it. What could she do? How could she stop them? Out of the corner of her eye, she
saw four figures in black moving through the street. They were raksaka. Raksaka. In the streets. Talking to the prisoners and gesturing to the gate. Then two of the raksaka peeled away and fanned out the width of the cobblestone street. They stole with light raksaka steps deeper into the city. Toward the bombings. They had swords crossed on their backs, pistols holstered at their sides, and one carried a small aetheroceiver strapped to the middle of his back.
They’re headed to the palace.
She moved without thinking, following the two raksaka. She heard a shout and a scuffle of feet behind her, but she ignored it. At the edge of the temple property, she stumbled into the street to see where the raksaka had gone, but they’d already disappeared around a corner. She did another sweep of the street behind her, looking for someone in dark boots and adventuring clothes, praying to whatever gods would listen that she would find Ash among those still moving and not the fallen. Where could he have gone? Why hadn’t he taken her with him? Did he not see her thrown into the bushes?
A burly man stalked toward her. “Ay! You there. Where you running off to?” Broken chains dangled from his wrists and hands. He peered at her as he got closer. “Wait now, you’re that—”
She turned and ran.
His boots pounded behind her. She made it across the street, but he was gaining too fast. She grabbed hold of a cart full of tinker toys and heaved it over. It spilled a thousand small mechanicks that bounced and skittered into the street, creating a hazard that might buy her a couple of seconds.
She bolted away from the shop.
Curses rang out behind her, but she didn’t look back to see if the now-liberated prisoner was still pursuing her. Instead, she ran with all her strength, crossing over the street, taking one turn, and then another. A third explosion blasted the air, and Aniri ran toward it. The Dagger was bombing their way to the palace, with their raksaka following close behind. They could only have one purpose: to assassinate the royals within. And the people she loved had no warning.
She didn’t know what she could possibly do to stop them.
But she had to try.
The carnage was almost too much for Aniri to bear.
As she ran toward the palace, she had to climb over rubbled streets, avoid sobbing children and wailing mothers, and pass men and women of all ages trying to dig victims out from the ruins. Most of the streets were clear, and through those she could run like she was on fire. But where the bombs hit, it was like the goddess of war herself had taken a bite out of the city and spit back death and horror. By the third cratered-out blast, she had to stop looking. Had to ignore the misery and climb right over it, or she would be immobilized by the crushing grief that threatened to drown her.
She focused on one thing and one thing only: reaching the palace.
Through the smoke-filled haze that lay on the streets she could see the palace had been hit already. Black plumes rose from it, obscuring the tallest tower where the Prosperity should have been docked. Her scans of the sky showed neither skyship aloft. Of course, that didn’t mean anything. Either could be tucked away, out of her sight, beyond the city walls or simply hidden behind the teetering buildings and the growing haze surrounding them. The smoke and the running made her wheeze, but she pressed on. When she reached the courtyard of the palace, her lungs burned with the need for air.
A big section of the top floor was now open to the sky. Aniri stood staring at it, stunned into motionlessness. People streamed into the palace, directed by soot-faced guards who were sending them down into the bowels of the mountain where they might have some semblance of safety. The people buffeted Aniri on either side as she stood there, mouth hanging open, unable to move.
A child ran up and grabbed hold of her legs, burying her face in Aniri’s breeches. That was what finally shook her loose. She picked up the girl, who couldn’t be more than five, and looked around for her mother or father, but there was no one with her. The child buried her face in Aniri’s shoulder. She didn’t trust herself to speak, so she just carried the girl up the steps and into the relative safety of the building. She took one last look over her shoulder, scanning for the Dagger, to see if it was coming around for another pass, but there was nothing but trails of smoke tarnishing the sky.
Inside, the palace was darkened with people blocking the doors and windows. They pressed close as they worked their way down the stairs, the entrance of which was clogged like a drain hole stuffed with too many leaves. Nisha was there, directing people into the stairwell and chastising them in a soft but firm voice not to push, not to shove, to make room for the children. Aniri let out a small sound, a whimper of relief, and nearly tripped on her way to Nisha’s side.
She didn’t realize who Aniri was and tried to clear room for her to go down the stairs, but that wasn’t where Aniri needed to go.
“Nisha!” Aniri wheezed. “It’s me.”
She looked up. “Gods, Aniri, you’re alive.” She threw her arms around her and the child, hugging them both. Aniri could feel her shake.
“Please take the girl,” Aniri said, her voice growing stronger. “Have you seen…” She looked back over her shoulder. There was no way Nisha could have seen anything in this crowd and the chaos, much less raksaka intent on not being seen. “I have to go check on the others.”
Nisha took the girl from her arms, and thankfully, the child went willingly. “Where is Ash?”
Aniri just shook her head, unable to speak for a moment.
Nisha must have thought something even worse. “No!” She clutched the girl harder.
“No, Nisha.” Aniri clamped a hand on her shoulder. “He’s alive. I know he is. I just don’t know where he is at the moment. We will find him. But first…” Aniri dropped her voice. “There are raksaka here. Samirian. Any royal is in danger. You need to find somewhere safe below and stay there.”
She nodded shakily.
Aniri suddenly remembered she had left her handmaiden with Nisha. “Where is Priya?”
“She’s downstairs. I made her stay. To help keep the calm.”
“Good. Go be with her. And be safe.”
Nisha nodded again, a little stronger now, and started down the stairs with the girl. Aniri watched them go until they turned the corner, then tore herself away and fought the crowd to reach the center stairwell—the one that would take her to the top, bombed-out floor. And where she prayed she wouldn’t find any bodies like those in the streets. Before she went, she stopped one of Ash’s guards.
Staring up in his face, she said with as much command as she could, “I need your weapon.”
He frowned down at her with a glazed kind of look. Suddenly he recognized her. “Yes, my lady.” He fumbled to pull his pistol from his side holster. She thanked him and tucked it into the back of her breeches. It was only one shot. Against a raksaka, she probably had little hope, but at least it was something. What she really wanted was a blade, but that would be even more pointless.
She took to the steps, and each one lodged her heart further into her throat. The acrid stench of bomb residue grew thicker as she went. The number of people quickly thinned out with everyone headed down, not up. When she reached the top of the stairwell, the roof was gone, and she had to climb over rubble to summit the last of the stairs. The bomb had blasted away the roof to her right—Ash’s bedroom, the refurbished fencing hall, what had been a few empty rooms. It sent weakness to her knees with relief, and she dared to hope that no one had actually been killed.
Yet.
Aniri pulled out the guard’s pistol and held it in front of her. She couldn’t see anyone in her stretch of the gently curving hallway, but she was fairly certain she wouldn’t see a raksaka until they were upon her. She lifted her gaze above the jagged edge of the ruined ceiling to the sky. Still no sign of the Dagger, but she could just barely see the top of the blue, rippling gas bag of the Prosperity. It was docked. She wasn’t sure if she was glad to see that or not. It was good to see it still intact, but docking only made their skys
hip, their one real weapon against the Samirians, a target for the Dagger’s bombs as much as anything else. And if it was docked, that meant her mother had likely debarked and was now somewhere in the palace.
With the raksaka.
As Aniri advanced down the hall, she tried to quiet her breathing. But once she was beyond the bombed out portion of the hall, it echoed off the hard marble as if she were a legion of guards wheezing across the floor. At least some of her noise was covered by the wind whipping around the jagged debris behind her. When she reached her mother’s room, she cringed to see the door slightly open. She pushed it wide, holding her breath.
Inside, her mother was on the floor in Janak’s arms. Her eyes were closed.
No, no, no. Aniri stumbled forward. As she got closer, she saw another raksaka lying on the floor behind them. He was unmistakably dead, his head no longer quite attached to his body. Aniri reached her mother’s side and dropped to the floor next to her.
Aniri could hardly breathe with the vise gripping her chest. “Janak, is she…”
Janak didn’t respond, didn’t even acknowledge her presence. His eyes were glazed as he held his Queen cradled in his lap. He had one hand pressed against her side, but her blood had already seeped into a bloom of red under it. Where his other hand held her head, his fingers moved slightly, gently stroking her hair.
Aniri’s hand shook as she reached to press her fingers to her mother’s neck. She fully expected to find nothing but the coldness of death, but her mother’s skin was warm, and Aniri found a slight beat. She sucked in a shaky breath.
Then her mother stirred under her touch.
“Mother?” A gush of relief coursed through her.
Second Daughter (The Royals of Dharia, Book Two) Page 24
