by Devin Madson
“Who in all the hells are they?” someone near me grumbled.
“Who let them in?”
“Have they got a death wish?”
Despite the muttering, no blades were drawn, so little interest did the newcomers show in our existence. Yet I could not drag my gaze from them. Though they owned different faces, these were the very men who had hurt us, and it was all I could do not to leap at them and tear their throats out with my hands. Were others struggling as much as I was? What would it take to make us snap?
Once again, Keka strode down the steps, Oshar close behind, and it was petty of me to wonder whether he was regretting taking my job, but I wondered it anyway.
Oshar demanded their purpose. The young man wasn’t threatening, but they had only to look at the number of armed and angry Levanti to know their answer would make the difference between getting out of here alive and not.
The man with the satchel stepped forward to speak.
“He says he brings a message for Emperor Gideon,” Oshar said.
“Then tell them to give us the message and get the fuck out of here,” Captain Dhamara e’Sheth said, joining the group gathering threateningly close.
Oshar translated, but the Chiltaens didn’t seem put out by the reply, calmly holding their ground.
“The message has to be given only to Emperor Gideon. He requests an audience.”
“Bes, run and let His Majesty know,” Captain Dhamara said. “And Oshar, you tell them that if he wants to see Gideon, his soldiers have to wait outside. I’m sure they’ll understand our dislike of the people who enslaved us.”
The four soldiers shifted their weight at this demand, but with perfect calm the messenger replied, “As you must understand our wariness of the people who slaughtered our army.”
There were mutters. Someone laughed. Eyes turned to Captain Dhamara, and I felt all the more invisible. “Tell him we can ensure his safety only if the soldiers remain outside. It’s not negotiable.”
This led to discussion between the messenger and his soldiers, but by the time Bes returned to say Gideon would see them, they’d accepted our terms. I wished to send them all away, or even better to run them through and let their blood spill onto the stones, but I was just capable of admitting it was worth finding out what they wanted first.
How brave the messenger had looked striding in with his countrymen, and how small and fearful walking to the throne room flanked by Levanti. I followed, cramming with many others into the long gallery. Not so long ago, I would have stood at Gideon’s side, but Keka was there now. And in the place so often possessed by Grace Bahain stood Dom Villius.
Gideon sat upon his throne, his place upon the low dais seeming to tower him above everyone. To the messenger’s credit he didn’t cower, but he did slow his pace as he walked in and faced the grand picture Gideon made—a warrior upon a throne, bedecked in crimson.
“I come bearing a message from His Eminence, Secretary Aurus, eleventh oligarch of The Nine,” the messenger said. “He has travelled into Kisia as a peace envoy and wishes to meet with you, Your Majesty, in person, to discuss terms that would be of benefit to both yourselves and Chiltae. A temporary camp has been erected outside the town of Kima, and he would be honoured if Your Majesty would join him there at the end of the week.”
A murmuring tide followed and I glanced at Leo, wondering if these Chiltaens were his allies or his enemies. Ought they be our allies or our enemies?
Gideon sat upon his throne and stared at the man, seeming to consider the request, then without answering, he rose. “I will meet with my council before I answer.”
No longer a captain or the head of his Imperial Guard, I could not attend. Only Captain Dhamara e’Sheth and Captain Bahn e’Bedjuti were present, and while Gideon strode away, both lingered to hear the opinions of vocal Swords. Anger formed the backbone of them all, though the desired action manifested as anywhere between “kill them all now” and “take everything they offer and then kill them.”
“I don’t think the Kisians like this any more than most of the Levanti.”
Nuru had edged to my side and stood looking at the loose knot of Kisian lords gathered in one corner. Lord Edo was with them, but there was no sign of Grace Bahain, and without him they looked lost.
“Shouldn’t they want peace with the Chiltaens?” I said. “At least while they deal with their renegade empress?”
“Logically, but Sichi says however it might look, Kisians are as ruled by their hurts and their anger as everyone else. It sounds like they’ve been at war with the Chiltaens off and on for a very long time.”
“Can you attend the meeting?”
Nuru shook her head. “Lord Edo might be able to. Grace Bahain seems rather too busy about his own problems to rush back for this.”
“Are we worried about Empress Miko?”
“We are… undecided if she is a problem or not. Sichi was meant to marry her brother, you know, Prince Tanaka, though he was in love with Edo.”
“Is that why she didn’t marry him?”
“No. He was executed by his father, not that Emperor Kin was really his father, and she threw her lot in with Gideon.” In spite of my mask, she must have been able to see something of my horrified expression because she shrugged. “It’s all a mess. If Sichi wasn’t the one caught up in it, I would enjoy the ridiculousness of the drama, but she is, so instead I worry.”
“Because Kisians are as ruled by their hurts and their anger as everyone else,” I said.
“Exactly.” She turned her direct stare on me. “We need this treaty, Dishiva. We cannot let our desire for revenge overrule our need for basic self-preservation. No one wants a long-term treaty, least of all the Chiltaens, but removing this danger would allow us to focus on the ones closer at hand.”
I’d always looked at Nuru and seen a young saddlegirl, unmade and untested, thrust into an important position because she could speak the right words. Now as she calmly laid the political landscape before me, I saw someone else and felt ashamed. This young woman was shrewd and determined, not conforming to the Kisian ways so much as choosing her own path, refusing to walk the one set before her by the very leaders who had failed her. Failed us.
“I know you don’t have the influence you used to have, but anything you can do to persuade Gideon to accept this treaty would be of service to all of us,” Nuru went on, unaware I was seeing her anew. “Let us know what you can. I have to go.”
Leaving me no time to reply or even gather my thoughts, she walked away, her Kisian robe swishing about her feet. I envied her sense of place, something I’d never thought to feel of an unmade Sword.
I found a small room off the passage where I could await the end of the meeting. It was a calm little room owning a single lacquered table carved in flowers. Two narrow windows looked upon the manor’s private garden. Private was a good description. I’d never seen anyone use it, not even to walk its neat paths or sit in its little garden house.
When at last voices emerged from the meeting room, I watched a handful of Kisian lords pass first, Lord Edo amongst them, before Captain Dhamara approached, her expression giving no hint of the meeting’s outcome. With no sign of Gideon or Leo, I stepped out.
“Captain,” I said, falling into step beside her.
“Defender.”
I flinched. It wasn’t a good beginning.
“Whatever title forced on me, I am still Dishiva, if you would call me so.”
She met my stare through the slits in my mask for a long time, before nodding. “As you wish, Dishiva. What do you want?”
“To know what happened in the meeting.”
She stopped abruptly and spun on me, sending my heart jolting hard against my breastbone. “And what do you think gives you the right to that information?”
“I am still Levanti. Nothing has changed except that I am forced to wear this… this thing. Leo is dangerous, and if you cannot see that then you have your head in the sand.”
Dhamara gave a grunt and started walking again. “I can see it. I dislike his presence. I think many do, but it’s dangerous to say so without risking…”
I pulled my mask down. “Without risking what?”
She looked along the passage, and although it was empty for now, she steered me toward the narrow servants’ stairs. “It is too much like it was back home. There may be no exile here, but wrong words get you sent away. That’s what happened to the others. They questioned decisions. Or questioned Dom Villius. And now they aren’t here to keep questioning. Gods only know what has happened to Captain Yitti. He didn’t even come back.”
“That bad?”
“That bad. We stayed here to build a new home, but the troubles followed us. Or should I say, the missionaries followed us. You may not believe me, but I just watched Gideon change his mind about this treaty having done nothing but look at Dom Villius. The man didn’t even speak. One moment he was listening to the Kisians—they think he should meet with them, removing the chance of war on one front especially now that Grace Bahain is marching much of his army away to—”
“Away?”
“Yes, to his home, I think. Something about Empress Miko, but it didn’t make all that much sense to me. He’s leaving some soldiers and his son, not wanting to lose his voice here, I suppose, but either way it cuts our numbers significantly. Which is all the more reason, the Kisians say, to come to an agreement with the Chiltaens so we only need to focus on the Kisians to the south.”
It was exactly what Nuru had said. The choice we had to accept for now.
“I don’t want to befriend them,” Dhamara went on. “I want to kill them. But Gideon was right when he said there’s a right time for vengeance and it isn’t now. We aren’t strong enough to fight on two fronts.”
“Everyone agreed?”
“You would think so,” she said, and I felt the warm glow of belonging as she once more looked around at the dim stairway before leaning in to confide, “except for Dom Villius. I don’t know what he said or did or what he holds over Gideon. I don’t know how any of it works, but Gideon had only to look at him and he stopped mid-speech. He said it would be unwise to give the Chiltaens what they want, or some such thing. Said he would send the messenger away with a warning. That we weren’t weak. That we wouldn’t make deals with people who had murdered Levanti. And that was it. He wouldn’t listen to any argument to the contrary and brought the meeting to a close.”
I stared at her, her features a collection of worried shadows in the gloom. “Leo doesn’t want him to meet with the Chiltaens. That’s all the more reason to go.”
“You don’t have to tell me.”
For a minute we stood there at the top of the steps as two Levanti captains, equal and confiding, before the moment gave way to remembrance of all the ways we had changed, and all we had to lose from trusting each other. A frown descended upon Dhamara’s face.
“I should go,” she said. “Don’t make me regret telling you any of that.”
She didn’t wait for a reply, just spun on her heel and strode out into the passage, leaving me to breathe the musty air alone. I waited, but before I could follow, footsteps passed. “Ah, Captain Dhamara, walk with me,” Leo said. “I too am heading out into the yard.”
I couldn’t catch her reply, but it must have been an assent for I heard nothing more, nothing but my own rapid breathing and thundering heart rate. Had he been waiting for us? Had he known we were talking? Expressing mistrust. Dislike. Fear. At least there were lots of people in the yard. What could he do? Convince Gideon to send her and her Swords away seemed the most likely, further cutting the number of Levanti around Gideon.
Gideon.
Leo was out. I could go now, talk to Gideon, persuade him to change his mind. Gods, it was a risk, but I had to do something. Allowing myself no time to even think, I stepped out of the stairway and hurried in the direction of Gideon’s rooms, praying he would be in and I wouldn’t have to go in search of him.
Massama and Sipet were on duty outside his rooms and shared a look as I approached, such wariness from my former Swords causing me a deep stab of sorrow.
“I need to see Gideon,” I said. “Now. Is he in?”
“He is, but he doesn’t want to be disturbed.”
“If I walk in are you going to stop me?”
The two Swords looked at one another, but it was Sipet who shook her head. “No, Captain.”
Captain. It was the belief I needed. The faith that I was still one of them. “Thank you.”
Leaving them to close the door in my wake, I stepped inside. Gideon sat alone at his table, no meal or papers, nothing but a bowl of wine. Head in his hands, he didn’t look up, just stayed like a hulking bear in the shadowy corner.
“Gideon?” I said, dispensing with his Kisian title.
He looked up, his gaze hazy as though in the short time since the meeting he’d drunk enough wine to knock out a horse. Yet his eyes focussed on me after a few moments and he blinked. “Dishiva?”
He had stood so strong and sure before the messenger. Had shamed me and proclaimed me Defender of the One True God without so much as a catch in his voice. However often I had disagreed with him, Gideon had always been a stony force against which the world battered its troubles in vain. The leader who would always stand strong for us.
This was a different man.
Shaken, I stepped closer like one approaching a wounded animal. “Yes, Herd Master,” I said, checking my mask was around my throat rather than over my face. “It’s me. Are you… all right?”
“Fine.” He cleared his throat. Blinked. Seemed to be pulling himself together, and I hated how much I wished I could believe him, wished I could let him carry this weight alone.
I knelt in front of him. “You’re not fine. It’s Leo, isn’t it? You don’t have to lie to me. You feel like you’re shouting at yourself, but you can’t make yourself hear it through a furry blanket of peace.”
The eyes Gideon lifted to mine were wide and darting. “How do you know?”
“I’ve felt it. He did it to me. He’s doing it to you, infecting you with the sickness that has been poisoning the minds of our herd masters back home. Gideon, you have to get rid of him. You have to send him away.”
“I’ve tried.” His voice cracked upon the whisper, his sunken eyes wide. “I’ve tried. When we’re alone he just laughs at me. If others are around the words don’t come out. Or I contradict them straight away like I can’t make up my mind. Maybe I don’t want him to leave because if I did surely I would say so?”
I gripped his trembling hands. This frightened Gideon was not the man I needed, whatever satisfaction there was in knowing I had been right. “No,” I said. “He’s just inside your head. Controlling you. He wants you to doubt. To send us away. To ruin everything. He needs to go. He’s a danger not only to you but to all of us, to everything you’ve been trying to build.”
“I wanted to give us a home. A place in history. A place where we could have some control over our futures.” He looked up. “You have to kill him.”
“I tried,” I said. “He came back.”
Gideon let out a deep breath that fluttered on the edge of panic and I couldn’t blame him, but by the gods we were running out of time. “Gideon, listen,” I said. “You have to agree to meet the Chiltaen envoy, now before he comes back.”
“He won’t let me.”
I had to stop myself from shaking him, from demanding to know whether he was a Levanti, a Sword, a herd master, an emperor, only the recollection of what it had been like under Leo’s spell granting me the compassion to keep my frustration between my teeth. “All right,” I said. “Then make me your ambassador. Give me the power to accept on your behalf. To organise the journey to Kima. He cannot be in two places at once.”
Gideon, tall, grand, strong Gideon who could mesmerise a room with just his words, looked at me with wide eyes and hopelessness, and I knew not whether I most wanted to hit him or mour
n the change Leo had wrought. The leader he had stolen from us.
“Please.” I tightened my grip on his hands. “If you haven’t the strength left to fight, let me fight for you.”
He looked away. “What if I give orders against you? What if you get hurt? I’m scared of him, Dishiva. Scared of myself.”
“I’ve made the choice. I know the risks.”
“But no one else gets to choose.”
The quiet words spoke deep into my soul, touching all the doubts I carried. Safest not to fight. To let Leo have his way, let him control Gideon to his own ends and hope for the best, but as I had dug in my heels and refused to let him beat me, I refused to let him beat Gideon either.
“Think of it as a battle,” I said. “When you lead your Swords into battle you know there may be casualties. The battle is against Leo. And it’s your people you’re fighting for.”
He stared at me, saying nothing, his brow creased. He must have known, as I did, that it was not only his people he would be risking, not only me, but himself. If he did something Leo did not want him to do, how much would the God’s child tighten his grip on Gideon’s mind and soul and voice? Would there be anything of Gideon left when he was done?
After a long silence, Gideon drew himself up, a man pulling himself together with a deep indrawn breath. “Massama. Sipet,” he called, his voice more like the Gideon I remembered.
The door slid and the two Swords stepped in. “Your Majesty?”
“Bear witness for us,” he said, rising to his feet like a figure unrolling from child to man before my eyes. “I am naming Dishiva e’Jaroven as my ambassador to Chiltae. A permanent appointment. Announce it. Also run at once to the Chiltaen messenger and tell him we will meet the peace envoy.”
Both Swords stared at him, open-mouthed, and might have stayed so had he not hurried them out with a request to know what they were waiting for.
