Unholy War (22 page)

She looked away as that nagging temptation to lie beside him returned. He liked her, she knew that, maybe more than just
liked
, and she was beginning to feel pretty again. The dark circles beneath her eyes were fading and she no longer looked so tired and wan. Her breasts were still full – he was sneaking looks at them when he thought she wasn’t looking. Her waist was narrowing and her backside was taut again, as it had been in Aruna Nagar Market when she’d worked so hard and never had quite enough to eat. The Zain way of life, the food, the exercise, even the meditating, was making her stand taller. She was stronger and more flexible and her vitality had returned, even her feminine energy, the womanly desire that moistened her yoni on sleepless nights.

He wouldn’t say no to me.

But she held back, haunted by all that was at stake.

It appeared that Master Puravai noticed such things too, for he pulled her aside one afternoon after gnostic lessons, not long after she’d shared some of the truth with him: including exactly who she was, and her husband’s final instruction, that she should seek out Vizier Hanook. She left out only the most dangerous details: the Scytale, and her relationship with Kazim and Huriya. Puravai had accepted her story as he accepted everything else: with wry equanimity.

Now, as Alaron left to wash, he said quietly, ‘Ramita, soon you will be moving on, as we have discussed.’

‘We are happy here,’ she replied, ‘but we know we can’t stay for ever.’

‘You must go to Teshwallabad, as you planned,’ Puravai said. ‘I should tell you now that the vizier and I are known to each other. He was a Zain monk – he trained here, alongside me, when we were both much younger.’

Ramita raised her eyebrows at that. ‘What’s he like?’

‘He is a serious man, as he should be, but witty and droll as well. He is a complex, goodhearted person. But I will tell you this: he will ask that you wed someone of power in the mughal’s court. That is inevitable: the Lakh royal family have long coveted the gnosis, so long as they can obtain it secretly. How would you feel about such a marriage?’

She had known it would come to that, at some point. ‘I am well used to being bartered for, and I know my value. The marketplace of Aruna Nagar teaches such lessons early.’

His face was sympathetic. ‘When I see you like today, happy and excited, I see the bonds between you and Brother Longlegs growing tighter and it gladdens my heart. If these other things did not matter, I would rejoice for you both.’

She dropped her eyes. ‘Al’Rhon is a good friend. No more than that.’

‘But he wishes he were more to you, and so do you. Ramita, I must warn you that the time you spend learning the gnosis together will deepen your affections. As you progress, you will begin to work mind-to-mind, and that will involve sharing secrets and desires. This will drive you closer so that, unless you guard your heart, it will end in either love or hate. You must be careful.’

She looked away, suddenly scared.
Do I want to fall in love again, ever? To a foreign mage?
She wasn’t sure. But such questions led to others:
Could I now marry someone who
isn’t
a mage? Could I now marry someone ordinary? I’m not the simple girl who fell in love with Kazim any more. I am Lady Meiros, mage and mother.

And I
like
my goat …

She blinked back tears. ‘It won’t be hate.’
For all his irritating, pedantic precision, his annoying superiority and scepticism and his silly competiveness, for all his ridiculous puppy-dog eagerness and his complete inability to do his hair and dress properly
… ‘He is too good a person to hate.’

‘Then if it were love, it would be a dangerous love, and it might ruin the marriage Hanook will arrange for you. The mughal’s court is dangerous, and even the gnosis can’t protect someone in such a hostile place for ever. No one there will tolerate a Rondian mage as a rival.’

‘What should I do?’

‘That is up to you. You are a woman now, and your choices are your own. Just be aware of the consequences. In my experience, in matters of the heart what is lost is more damaging than what is gained.’

She wondered whether a matter of the heart might have driven him to this life of celibacy and privation.

‘Thank you, Master. I will consider what you say.’

The Rimoni Empire: The Fall

O
RDO
C
OSTRUO
C
OLLEGIATE
, P
ONTUS

The village was on the road to Hytel, just a cluster of buildings where relay horses were stationed to support the Gorgio and Dorobon supply wagons moving produce south to the capital. It was a way-station of little import, just a few dozen Jhafi servants and stablehands under the dominion of a patrol of Dorobon legionaries. But tonight the best room in the rough tavern housed a Dorobon battle-mage.

Elena crept forward as the light drained from the sky, her mind linked to Kazim’s on the other side of the village. There was a guard at the stable doors and another in front of the inn. The villagers had dispersed to their own huts, except for the whoremaster, whose string of Jhafi girls he kept to service the Rondian soldiery were being kept fully occupied.

They’d been watching the village for four days. It was a full night’s flight from their base and they’d hidden the skiff nearby, ready to depart as soon as this job was done.
This ‘job’.
Even thinking that way conjured up the old Elena, who did such ‘jobs’ for a living. The coldly calculating and ruthless Elena.

She was wrapped in an illusion of shadows; she passed the corral without the beasts reacting, stealing up on the stable guard, her knife ready in her hand. He never saw her coming.

You join the army knowing you could die.

He was middle-aged, and sweating in the alien heat. She gripped him from behind and flashed the razor-sharp blade across his neck, slicing effortlessly through his jugular vein. Blood spurted; he choked, quivered then sagged. She propped him upright against the feed-trough and moved into the shadows.
,> she sent, and felt Kazim acknowledge.

From there, she slid along the outside wall of the stables, around a bend and into another alley on the far side, a narrow space running alongside the rear wall of a barracks. There were no open windows; they’d been closed against the reek of the rotting refuse in the alley. Rats scattered as she crept past. She heard desultory singing from the tavern as she cautiously extended her senses to the rooms above. There was crude laughter emanating from one room and rhythmic grunting from another. It was the third room that interested her. A pale blue light shimmered against the glass and she could sense the discharge of power like breeze on her skin.
.>

,> Kazim responded. A minute later he ghosted out of the darkness and whispered, ‘That one?’ He pointed at the third window. His sense of the gnosis was growing ever more precise.

‘Yes. We need to get upstairs with as little fuss as possible.’

‘Straight in the window?’

‘No. Look carefully – there are wards. See the glow around the frame?’

‘I could blast through that.’

‘Yes, but it would rouse the whole place. Let’s delay that moment as long as we can.’ She inclined her head to the next corner of the building. ‘We’ll go in the back way.’ She slipped along the wall to the kitchen door again.

He followed, reaching out to stroke her hip as she paused by the corner.
,> she reproved, unable to completely suppress a smile.

The back door led directly to the kitchen. The door was open, revealing young Jhafi men sweating over pots and pans of food. The air was thick with steam and heat. It was too small to pass unseen, and that wasn’t the plan anyway. She motioned for Kazim to move ahead of her and he stepped into the kitchen and brandished a metal disc with a jackal’s head embossed into it.
Hadishah
. The kitchen hands backed away, and as they passed, Elena jerked her head towards the back door. They took her meaning and left swiftly and silently. No one looked back.

I hope they have the sense to just grab their things and leave.

A staircase behind the taproom led to the upper storey. Elena lowered her hood and took the stairs silently, reaching the upstairs hall unimpeded and spotted a well-muscled, shaven-headed Jhafi man, a handler for the whores, there to ensure the girls weren’t beaten and that the soldiers paid. His head turned to her as she came into view and his eyebrows raised as he realised he was seeing a white woman.

She smiled at him as if her presence were the most natural thing and showed him her hands, palms outspread. There was a coin in her right hand. The Jhafi man blinked and rose to his feet. ‘Lady, I—’

She used telekinesis to send the coin flashing into his right eye socket and it struck with a nauseatingly liquid
splat
. Blood sprayed and the man slumped back into his chair, the coin lodged in his brain. She darted forward and propped him up as Kazim appeared behind her.

She nodded to the far door. The gaps were leaking blue light.

She knew little about this battle-mage, only that he was from the Dorobon III legion. She’d glimpsed him from a distance during the day and watched him sending a bird south. He was young, brown-haired – reminiscent of her nephew Alaron. The fact that he was handling birds meant he was probably an animagus, and therefore most likely an Earth mage. His blood-strength was unknown and so were his affinities. She didn’t like that.

She went to his door and pressed her hand to the wooden surface, feeling energy pulsing through, binding the barrier closed. The wards were competently set, and stronger than she could manage – a pure-blood then: a daunting prospect. She could hear the faint scratching of a pen.

Enough delaying. Let’s get this done.

She knocked, while calling aloud in Rondian with a thick Jhafi accent, ‘Good sir, good sir. I come.’

The writing noises ceased, and a male voice called, ‘Go away.’

‘Sir. Manager send me. Free for you.’ She knocked again, harder. ‘I have tight and juicy yoni, sir. Anything you want, I do.’

‘For Kore’s sake,’ the man inside sighed. Behind her she felt Kazim settle beside the middle door, in case someone came out. She heard a chair shift inside, then footsteps. The door pulsed faintly with energy as the wards were disabled, then it was pulled open a crack.

She rammed her shoulder into the door, slamming it into the man’s shoulder and half-turning him while she pushed a dagger through the tiny gap into his chest. It struck personal shields, but tore through his robes and left pectoral muscle. He yelped and staggered backwards.

‘Wha—!’ He gestured, slamming telekinetic energy at her, but she was already on him and hammering another dagger blow into the middle of his chest. Light crackled like splintering glass across his torso and the blade snapped. He shouted again, and she heard someone call from the next room. His eyes filled with crystalline light and mesmeric swirls wove across his irises as he locked eyes with hers.

they commanded, tentacles of light reaching for her, trying to freeze her in place.

She reversed the broken dagger and slammed it into his belly with a bolt of energy wrapped about it, and his body convulsed from the force. As his shield shorted and flickered, she pivoted and booted him under the jaw: the timing was perfect and his neck snapped. He crashed backwards and sprawled limply across the floor.

A voice called out from the desk where the man had been sitting, ‘Luman?
Luman?
’ There was a faint outline of a face in a shifting pile of sand, and eyes searching blindly. The dead mage had been engaged in some kind of communication spell. She blasted it away with raw energy, then snapped the dead mage’s periapt chain and pocketed the gem, and took his dagger to replace her broken one. He looked barely twenty, his vacant face all innocent stupidity.

Too bloody easy.

A woman screamed from another room and Elena drew her sword and ran into the hall. Kazim was standing over a naked Rondian man with a bloodied chest. The far door, the one by the stairs, opened and another Rondian emerged, clad in breeches and holding a longsword.

Stupid weapon for an enclosed space
, she thought as Kazim blocked the first blow and drove his scimitar straight-armed into the man’s stomach, all the way in and out the other side. He kicked the man off his blade and vanished into the room. Elena ran to the stairs, glancing left to see a Jhafi girl on the bed, wrapped in a sheet with her mouth wide open. She screamed again when she saw Elena and hid her face.

Gurvon will know it was me by dawn.

She went down the stairs, Kazim a heartbeat behind her. A Jhafi man was at the foot, caught in an agony of indecision: the whoremaster, she guessed, torn between trying to protect his assets and keeping his hide intact.

She’d never much liked men who sold women for money. It took just one thrust.

She kicked open the doors to the taproom and went through at a flat run. Steel flashed and she parried, then let energy burst from her, throwing the men who’d gathered about the doorway backwards. She dropped another with a mage-bolt that fried his face to the bone, then blocked two swords at once. Suddenly she was pressed, cornered—

Then Kazim burst in. His first blow to the back of one of the men attacking her went into his neck and through his spinal cord. He went down in a boneless heap, blood spraying, and without pausing she spun to face the flanking legionary, blocked his solid shortsword, ducked beneath a roundhouse swipe and skewered his heart. A thrown knife skittered off her shields and more men erupted from the far corner. She picked out the first and raised a hand, ready to blast him, when Kazim stepped across her and threw up his own hands.

Fire blazed from his fingertips: a sheet of heat that washed over the entire side of the room. She knew she’d never be able to survive such an attack herself; the rankers didn’t stand a chance. They were torched by the flames that washed over them and up the walls.

‘Shut it down!’ she shouted. ‘Keep the building intact!’

For a second she didn’t think he’d heard her. His blood was up, and his face was alive with unsated fury. But he raised his hand again and she watched, impressed, as the flames were sucked back into his palm, fizzling out as they struck it. It reminded her that he had an Ascendant’s power, and a growing competence to go with it. He turned to her, his face still impassioned. ‘You should stay behind me,’ he snapped. ‘I’m the stronger.’

‘You shouldn’t fucking step in front of me in a fight!’ she retorted. ‘I almost loosed into your back!’

‘You’re my woman.’

‘It’s not a bloody joust!’

He reached for her and she knocked his hand away. For a second she saw anger, and then he relaxed. ‘I’m sorry. It frightened me, to see you in danger.’

‘Okay. I understand. But don’t do it again.’

There was shouting outside, someone calling, ‘Petar? Langer?’

Kazim pushed her aside and went for the door, surging out through the billowing smoke like a demon erupting from the Fiery Pit, battering down the man’s guard and slashing his throat open. Elena followed, fired a mage-bolt into a crossbowman as he took aim, and lined up another. The remaining Rondians must have realised what they were facing now, because they turned and ran.

They didn’t get far: the first one to reach the stables vanished inside, only to stagger back out with a pitchfork through his chest. He waltzed sideways and fell on his side, twitching violently. Elena blasted him with a mage-bolt out of pity. The rest of the Rondians took to their heels, running for the open desert as the Jhafi emerged, armed with tools and kitchen knives, first a dozen men, then suddenly many more, women and children too.

The kitchen staff were among them, pointing and jabbering, speaking too fast even for her ears. She went to Kazim’s side as the eldest Jhafi man barraged him with questions, then interrupted, ‘Do you know who I am?’

The Jhafi shook his head, but the crowd of people behind him were pointing and murmuring, and one of the women jabbed a finger at her and shouted, ‘You are Alhana, the queen’s champion. I saw you once, in Brochena.’

Kazim looked at her questioningly.
>

,> she told him, then out loud, she said, ‘Yes, I am she.’

The Jhafi smiled cautious smiles.

‘Is there aught you need?’ the spokesman asked carefully.

‘Food, perhaps? We have some coin.’

‘No coin.’ He shook his head.

‘I insist.’ She indicated the bar, reminded that her throat was very dry. She’d not drunk beer for – what, six years? That was a Hel of a long time for a girl from Norostein. ‘Some food and drink, perhaps? And a few comforts?’

The man nodded acquiescence – it wasn’t his tavern anyway – and followed them inside, a crowd of his people trailing cautiously behind. Several of the women tried to kiss her feet but she wouldn’t let them, pressing coins into their hands instead, then going behind the bar where she pumped a glass full of Easenbeer, brought by the Rondians to give their rankers a taste of home. The strong smooth malty taste was divine on her tongue, soothing on her throat.