“A foolish plan,” Shazir said. “And doubly foolish to trust this one. I should slit his throat, and we should be in the harbor to defend our ships.”
Katiz crossed his arms, his tattoos shifting like desert winds.
“Shazir, you go with him,” Katiz said. “Atar as well, if you are willing. And take two of our fastest runners. This is what you will do.”
* * *
The streets around the Blessed Oasis were empty and quiet, save the distant rumble of battle-sorcery. We were far enough from the fighting that I felt the magic like fingers brushing my skin. Slight, but unsettling. I led Atar, Shazir, and the runners Shazir had chosen toward the servant’s gate. They carried crates stuffed with rags and wore the simple kaftans of porters. I wore Sienese armor that Katiz had captured the last time the Empire had tried to steal the windcallers’ secrets.
In my months of coming and going from the citadel, the servant’s gate had always been left unlocked, and was rarely guarded. It was hidden at the end of a long, winding alleyway that few people had reason to venture down, and thus was protected more by secrecy than by lock and key. The battle slowly consuming An-Zabat had likely motivated extra security, and we had planned accordingly.
I took a deep breath to brace myself and focus my tired mind, gathered power, and hoped that my Sienese colleagues had fixed their attentions elsewhere. I had only ever seen my grandmother use this power to veer into the body of an eagle-hawk, but there was no reason to think it could not be used for subtler changes. The magic was slow to take effect, exhausted as I was after my flight to the desert, but at last the bones of my face stretched and bent. My flesh rippled and shifted and mirrored the appearance of the lieutenant leading the squadron I had seen through the slats of my window. The two runners watched with wide, frightened eyes.
Shazir spat in disgust and rubbed at her jaw, feeling the cramps caused by the wake of my spell. “A hideous magic,” she said.
A part of me had to agree, and not only for the visceral disgust that accompanied shifting flesh and bending bones. I shuddered at the thought of such a power falling into the Empire's hands. Windcallers and witches could see through the deception, sensing the wake that veering left through the world, but there were those who resisted the Empire without the aid of magic. Young rebels who might share some intimate secret or private outrage only to find their friend or lover shifting into a Hand of the Emperor ready to arrest them for treason--if not execute them on the spot.
Atar glowered at Shazir, then pushed past us both. “Let’s be about our work.”
The gate was locked, as I had feared. At my knock, a small inset window swung open. Jhin’s face appeared in the window, scrutinizing me.
“Lieutenant?” he said, then looked beyond me. “Did Hand Alabaster forget something? Who are these An-Zabati?”
The plan had been to lie my way past the gate guard, then incapacitate him and make for the armory. I had not expected to find Jhin.
With a bracing breath, I released the spell.
“What are you--” Atar stammered, feeling the wake of my magic fade.
“I know him,” I said in An-Zabati, and put my face close to the window and went on in Sienese. “Jhin, it’s me. It’s Alder.”
“Of course you know him!” Shazir said. She grabbed my shoulder and reached for her sword. “That was the point of the disguise! He has betrayed us, Winddancer.”
“Wait!” Atar said, placing a hand on Shazir’s arm. “This one, too, is not Sienese. Let them speak.”
“Who are these people?”Jhin stammered. He had not fled, which gave me hope.
“Jhin, I’m sorry,” I said. “I need your help. I know you wish to take no part in war.”
“You escaped,”Jhin said. “Why did you come back? I will not be party to murder, Alder.”
“We are not here to kill anyone,” I said. “But I cannot tell you what we plan. Nor do you want to know, I think. Only open the gate.”
“They will know I helped you,” he said. “They will know, and they will kill me.”
“Then come with us. The windcallers can take you back to Toa Alon, if you want, or give you a place on their ships. They are all leaving this city. You can, too, and leave the Empire far behind.”
“I should turn you in,” Jhin said mournfully.
“Jhin, listen to me,” I said, pleading. “If you could have stopped the destruction of Sor Cala, would you?”
“I…” he shook his head. “I take no side.”
A burst of lightning lit the southern sky.
“Enough jabbering,” Shazir snarled. “Atar, let me kill them both and shape the wind to tear this door from its hinges!”
“By doing nothing, Jhin, you take the side of the powerful,” I said, abandoning my appeals to his better nature. “If you do nothing--or worse, if you help them--they will win. There is no middle ground in this. You must choose. Either the Empire, or those who fight them.”
“Is this how you became Hand of the Emperor?” Jhin said. “By making the uncomplicated complicated and twisting things up with words?”
“Yes,” I said. Twisting things up with words, confusing myself into following a path that led into the Empire's service, believing that a third, neutral path was somehow possible. “But am I wrong?”
He took a deep breath. “You are not wrong, Alder.”
A click sounded, and the door swung open.
“You see, Shazir?” Atar said. She shoved Shazir’s crate back into her arms, then hefted her own. “You do Firecaller injustice.”
Jhin eyed my companions warily but ushered us inside. He handed me a ring of keys. “I will wait here. Do whatever it is you must do, and I will let you out again.”
“Thank you, Jhin,” I said.
I restored the magic disguising my face and motioned for the An-Zabati to follow. We left Jhin behind and began to cross the garden. As I had instructed, Atar, Shazir, and the two runners followed at a brisk, but unhurried walk. If we were stopped, we would claim that Hand Cinder had sent me to fetch more grenades for the battle, and that the An-Zabati were traitors to their city, promised rewards when the windcallers had been dealt with.
“Who was that?” Atar whispered as we passed the Pavilion of Soaring Verse--its stream still burbled, fed by pipes from the Blessed Oasis, though it seemed forlorn in the darkness, unlit by lamps, empty of paper boats and cups of wine.
“My steward,” I said. “From Toa Alon. I promised him a place on your ships when this is done.”
“You had no right to make such an offer,” Shazir snapped.
“Quiet,” Atar hissed, then, turning back to me, as though her words were more for my ears than Shazir’s, she said; “There will be a place on Katiz’s ship for all who help us this night.”
Warmth pulsed through me, and I began to wonder at the implications of her words.
“Atar,” I said, seeking clarification, but my question was interrupted by a shouting voice speaking Sienese.
“Ho there! An-Zabati in the garden?” a guard sauntered toward us, hand on his sword. The archery range, and the armory beside it, were at his back. “Explain yourselves!”
I saw a captain’s tetragram on his helmet and saluted. “More grenades are needed at the front, sir.”
The guard squinted at me. “Why aren’t you carrying a lant…” his voice faded mid word and his eyes filled with shock. “Lieutenant Jasper? They carried you back on a stretcher--”
Shazir stepped around me, fast as the wind. She shifted her crate to one hand and punched with the other. A frigid wake pulsed from her fist as from a boulder dropped in a pond, and behind the wake burst a cylinder of air. The guard captain’s helmet cracked. Blood sprayed from the ruin of his face.
“Voice Rill could have seen that from the other side of the city!” I grabbed her by the elbow. “We are likely dead because of you!”
Shazir’s hand was an iron vice on my wrist. “We are here because of you, Firecaller.”
Ata
r pulled us apart and glared at me. “Give me the keys, if you two would rather fight one another than the Empire.”
I released Shazir, and a moment later she let go of my wrist. I led them down to the armory and opened the door. While they rushed in, I looked at the artificial hill that separated the archery range from the Gazing Upon Lilies Pavilion. At any moment Rill might appear on the hilltop, raise a finger, and strike us all down with bolts of lightning. I released the spell that reshaped my face. No sense leaving a beacon burning.
“Firecaller,” Atar said urgently. “Where are the grenades?”
By the faint lantern-light that fell through the armory’s lone window, I led them past racks of swords and spears to a door marked with logograms that read dangerous and flammable. The squat room beyond smelled of sulfur and stale air. Crates stood in stacks. Six bandoleers already strung with grenades hung from hooks along one wall.
Katiz’s runners took two bandoleers each and strapped them on, then pressed hands with Atar and Shazir and set off across the garden toward the servant’s gate. I offered the remaining bandoleers to Atar.
“Find me,” she said, meeting my eyes as she took the grenades. “When the last obelisk falls, Katiz and I will make for the dunes above the Valley of Rulers. There will be a place for you, and for your steward.”
An offer I longed to accept, but for my growing conviction that the wolf god was right. That this was not my place. After the arguments I had made to Jhin, could I stand by and take no part while the Empire ground Nayen beneath its feet?
“I will find you,” I promised, and she ran to do her duty.
“While you watch her, the Sienese are burning down my city,” Shazir said. She knelt beside a crate and tried to lift it.
“Drop one of those crates and you’ll never have to worry about the Empire again,” I said. “We need more bandoleers.”
While I searched for them, Shazir began to unload one of the crates. There was a quiet clink of clay-on-stone as she placed each grenade on the floor. She hefted the crate and tilted it from side to side, then nodded in satisfaction when none of the remaining grenades shifted within their nest of straw.
“You waste time, Firecaller,” she said, and made for the doorway.
A flush of heat ran down my skin and a chill gripped my lungs. A thunderclap pounded my ears, followed by an explosion that shook the world around me and blasted the door to splinters. My nose filled with smoke and plaster. I lay sprawled amid grenades that gently rolled, each one finally clinking to a stop.
Crates had cracked, but not toppled. Dust poured from my clothes as I scrambled to my feet. Acrid smoke rolled along the ceiling. I covered my mouth and nose with a sleeve and felt my way along the wall and into the main room of the armory.
Hand Cinder stood over a blackened corpse.
“I should not be surprised that you came back,” he said, and stepped over Shazir’s body. A hissing whip of sorcery trailed from his hand. “Foolish bravery and a lust for vengeance are common traits among you Easterlings. Yet you seemed so refined. So rational. So Sienese in your thinking.”
Swords hung on a rack beside me. I managed to draw one before Cinder’s whip lashed out. The wood exploded, the blades clattered to the floor. He flourished his whip--a coiled, hissing serpent of blazing light. I circled, stepping carefully around the fallen swords and a pile of shattered wood and plaster. Stars and the orange light of the burning city showed through a gap in the wall. Cinder lashed out, and his whip cracked in the air between me and the broken wall.
“Shouldn’t you be out in the city?” I said. “This is a battle you’ve wanted for years.”
“I’ve fought enough battles. Alabaster needed an opportunity. Without at least one victory he will never be taken seriously in the capital.”
“You two never seemed friendly.”
I stepped toward him.
“A charade,” he said. “You are not alone in your capacity for deceit.”
He riffled his whip along the ground to menace my feet. If he had wanted to, he could have sent a bolt of lightning through my chest from where he stood, yet he played this game of distance.
“Did you know that all the while you thought you served as minister of trade, Alabaster intercepted your every decision? He let some of your policies slip through, just to keep up the illusion, but did the bulk of the real work--most of it by night, so that you would not notice. You have only ever been our puppet, Easterling.”
I waited until he cracked the whip again--there!--and retreated backward, away from Cinder, toward the broken wall. Flames licked at the ceiling behind him, crawling toward the ruined door and the crates beyond. I could not veer instantly. I needed to distract him.
“I tire of this pathetic chase,” Cinder said as I again retreated. “For an Easterling, you lack ferocity. Perhaps that is your Sienese--”
I dropped my sword. The world sharpened in the wake of the flame I hurled in Cinder’s face. It was met by ripples of feather-light cold. The fire swept around Cinder, curling into nothingness at the rim of his sorcerous shield.
He grinned as the last tongue of fire faded. “Shielding magic, which you might have learned if you--"
While Cinder had crouched behind his shield, I had taken two steps to his right, clearing the way between myself and the room full of grenades. I called the wind and hurled it through the shattered door. I cast my third spell in so many heartbeats, gathering power and veering without waiting to hear the clink of grenades caught and shattered by the wind.
Cinder whirled toward the door even as I opened my wings to catch the blast wave. It carried me through the gap in the wall and into the smoke-filled skies of An-Zabat.
Shouts of alarm rose behind me as the armory burst, hurling strips of burning wood and broken weapons.
A tidal bore of power surged out, giving me the moment’s warning that I needed. I dove beneath a blade of lightning that burned out from the wreckage and cut the sky, so bright it dimmed the moon and stars. Cinder stood in the ashes of the armory. One arm hung limp and blackened. His jaw was broken, his face was charred. He poured his fury into another attack, but I was too far away, and his sorcery spilled harmlessly into the night.
As it faded, a flash of light burst at the base of a nearby obelisk. The thunderclap of chemical grenades sounded in my ringing ears, followed by the grinding of stone scraping stone and the shriek of tearing metal. The obelisk listed to one side and shed broken pieces that shattered where they fell. The red banner with its imperial tetragram fluttered as the obelisk, finally, collapsed.
There was another burst of light, crack of thunder, rumble of falling stone. And then another, and the ancient, deep-rippling power beneath An-Zabat began to fade.
I left the city behind and rode thermals toward the Valley of Rulers. Another obelisk fell, and Cinder poured rage into the roiling sky.
* * *
I followed the wake of Katiz’s windcalling and landed on the prow of his ship. The moment I returned to my human form Atar hurled herself into my arms and covered my cheek with kisses. I held her close, buried my face in her hair, and tried to find the precise words for the scent of her so that I might always conjure it in poetry if not in fact.
“We thought you dead!” she exclaimed.
“Hand Cinder killed Shazir,” I said.
“Her death was naphnet,” Atar said, after a pause. “Hers, and many others.” She gestured toward the city. No obelisks stood silhouetted by the fires that raged through An-Zabat and filled the billows of smoke with flickering orange light.
“They will wonder why we destroyed the obelisks before we fled,” Atar said. She stepped toward the prow of the ship, with the same grace she always carried. Even in the aftermath of battle, she was beautiful, and I wanted nothing more than to carry her to the cabin, to begin to build a life with her. But my gaze drifted to Jhin, who sat against the railing, watching the city skyline fade.
“I felt the Hand's sorcery and heard the exp
losion just as I was leaving the citadel,” Atar said. She met my eye, took my hand, twined her fingers through mine like dancing fire and silk. “I brought the steward with me. As you promised, there is a place for him with us. As there is for you.”
“Atar…” How could I explain? But she smiled sadly, leaned up to kiss my forehead, and I knew there was no need.
“They have windcalling, now, and though Naphena’s urn will dry they will try to cross the waste,” Atar went on, running her thumb along the lines of my right hand, feeling the brush-wrought callouses on my thumb and the tips of my fingers, then the hair-thin scars of my witch-marks. “Their ships will be slower, for they will have to carry enough water for the journey, while we can draw on the blessing of our goddess, and we will not make their crossing easy. If you stay, you can help us fight them.”
I looked out over the desert. The dunes were orange tinged with purple shadows, an empty, undulating plane that reached from horizon to horizon. Plumes of sand rose behind the other windships as they scattered to the four corners of the waste. Okara’s words rose in my mind, as though spoken from the space where dreams are made.
There could be no third path through the world. I understood that, now. I should have understood it at Iron Town, when I was made to fight against my grandmother's people--my people. Service to the Empire would always mean opposition to those who fought against it. To believe otherwise was to delude myself, to imagine that I might enjoy the fruits of the Empire--education in magic, an empty promise in the end--without participating in conquest. I could only ever be the Emperor's tool, whether willingly or accidentally. Unless I followed in my grandmother's footsteps. Unless I fought back.
Resistance was the only path toward freedom.
And Okara had offered me a way to pursue the mastery I longed for, if I would use it against the Empire. The woman of the bones. I would find her, learn all I could of magic, and wield that power to fight for Nayen, which I had for so long betrayed.
The Hand of the Sun King Page 28
