I surely will … my queen … I know exactly where my blade will go in.
They made their way carefully through the sleeping city, past walled buildings with guards who peered at them curiously, and the sleeping homeless, thick as flies around the steps of the temples. The tiny alley-shops were all shuttered and locked. The stray dogs who normally ruled the night streets of Teshwallabad yelped and fled the Dokken pack, and night-watchmen who might have been inclined to investigate found unwitting reasons to turn aside.
At last they came to the edge of a great open plaza, and for the first time saw their destination. Vizier Hanook’s home was an impressive construction of stone and latticed windows. A few gleams of light shone from behind shutters on all three floors. Armed men guarded the rooftop battlements and the main doors. It was an inner city fortress, built with an artist’s eye.
The pack crept to the edges of the shadows, then fanned out to surround the building. Huriya led Malevorn to a point opposite a side door. Her face was serenely confident.
‘What is my role?’ he asked.
‘Protect me,’ she answered simply, and as she spoke he could feel the gnostic threads close about him, ready to enforce her will over him if required. He carefully blanked his mind of all his resentment of her.
They waited, still as statues, until Huriya looked up as if in answer to a silent call. Cut off from his gnosis, Malevorn could not feel the signal that pulsed out, but he could guess at it, for on all sides the Souldrinker pack took to the air or padded softly forward. The first casualty was a guardsman on the rooftop, shot by Wornu’s mate Hessaz. Instantly birds became people who dragged him from sight before spreading across the roof.
Huriya turned to him and offered her hand. ‘Come.’
He clasped her tiny hand, and with effortless Air-gnosis she bore them both up into the air. The wind rushed past his face for a moment, then they were landing on the shadowy rooftop, which turned out to be a beautifully tended and ornate garden, with cupolas sheltering fountains and pools with golden fish. More bodies were being dragged aside, and he could hear the wet ripping sound of teeth in flesh. They found two doors leading downwards, one beneath a graceful cupola covering a staircase to a closed double-door, the other less grand, so perhaps meant for the servants.
Wornu flowed from bird to human form and descended to the double doors. The packleader paused at the closed portal and looked back in confusion. ‘Seeress, it is warded.’
Malevorn saw uncertainty cloud Huriya’s face. ‘You are certain? How strongly?’
‘Strong enough,’ Wornu growled, displeased. ‘I thought there were no magi here.’
‘The Rondian boy – Mercer?’ Huriya asked, looking at Malevorn.
‘Perhaps,’ Malevorn answered, adding, ‘but he’s only a quarter-blood.’
Perhaps he’s here, and the Scytale too …
The Dokken hadn’t expected any gnostic resistance, and this small reminder of their centuries of persecution at magi hands was enough to cow some and enrage others. ‘What do we do?’ Wornu asked, his brutish face contorting with suppressed rage.
Huriya nibbled her lip, then announced, ‘We will strike swiftly as planned. Break down both doors at once, and kill any who resist, except our targets.’
Malevorn eyed the group disdainfully.
Stupid bitch, sending her fighters into the unknown.
But he didn’t care enough to warn them. He could see that Wornu at least understood the risks.
What if Quintius and his Fist are here?
he thought suddenly, and wondered how he felt about that possibility.
They’d treat me like any other Dokken, no doubt. Or maybe worse …
The pack did as Huriya commanded, bunching around the two staircases. With the gnosis, barring clever use of the strengths and weaknesses of different Studies, defence beat an equal attack in the short term, but long term, a weaker attack could undermine permanent wards. Huriya was the equivalent of an Ascendant and Wornu a pure-blood, and thanks to the deaths of Dranid and Raine, there were at least two more in the pack with pure-blood strength, Kraderz and Medelos. So they had enough power to destroy most wards swiftly – but the gnostic reverberations would instantly warn those within.
We’ll have to be swift once we’ve broken through. And somehow I’ve got to get free of this Chain-rune and get my hands on the Scytale
. He eyed Huriya’s back as she gave the signal and the Dokken leaders hit the doors with all their force.
The counter-blow was staggering: the doors exploded, not inwards, but outwards, the defensive spells set into the doors smiting Wornu’s shielding in coruscating red and blue light while fire and splinters like spears erupted in all directions. The massive Souldrinker roared in fury, unharmed but furious. Malevorn glanced at the other doorway and saw that Medelos had not been so fortunate: the half-trained fool had not thought to shield and he was so badly burned and broken that he was all but unrecognisable. Those behind him staggered way, except for one quick thinker, a bat-headed man named Elando who knelt over Medelos’ ruined face and inhaled the mist rolling out.
Without thinking Malevorn stepped in their direction and shouted, ‘Get moving, you rabble!’ One or two shot him looks of hate, but they began to pour down the staircase as the first shouts of alarm rose from below.
*
Ramita stood in yet another sari so stiff with gemstones that if she fell asleep standing up, she would probably remain upright. Her next encounter with the mughal would be a formal dinner, involving some of his courtiers: another attempt to make her compromise her position and remove the final impediments to the marriage.
Around her a crowd of tailors fussed like chickens. There was no gaiety or levity as there would have been at home, just a group of immaculately dressed middle-aged men making sober observations about the size of her bust and hips as they took precise measurements. They had been at it for hours and she was about ready to scream.
‘Just a few more minutes,’ Jindas-sahib, the royal tailor, said without a touch of sympathy, or indeed irony, considering this was the eighth time he’d used the phrase that evening. The other six tailors were variously too absorbed or too tired to react at all.
The twins were in the nursery, playing with a maidservant before their final feed for the day, and her breasts felt full and uncomfortable. She longed for these fussy old men to relent and let her go.
Hanook was sitting on a stool, watching the scene with a look of anxiety leavened with amusement. Their eyes met briefly. It was two days since the audience with Mughal Tariq and their blazing argument in the tunnel afterwards. He’d been at court most of that time, trying to find a solution to the impasse over her powers. Dareem had been busy too, working away in his own suite upstairs, writing letters to courtiers, pulling strings and setting the groundwork for the revelation of Lady Meiros to the world. She hated being at loggerheads with Hanook, for she liked him – not just because he was kin, but even more poignantly, he reminded her of her dead husband.
Alaron would be in the library at the other end of this floor, or maybe upstairs in bed by now. She wished she’d had the chance to talk to him, but he was preoccupied with the training regime he’d started at the monastery; it invariably left him exhausted and abed early. Or perhaps he was avoiding her.
Is Hanook right? Am I being unreasonable because part of me just wants to run away with my loyal Goat, and damn the world?
She was sure that wasn’t the case, but the nagging feeling remained, that she was being selfish rather than strong. It undermined her resolve and weakened her will.
Tomorrow night I’ll decide
, she promised herself.
They will give in, or Alaron and I will leave
.
‘Enough,’ said Hanook, clapping his hands. ‘We are almost there. The rest will follow tomorrow.’
The tailors stepped back, looking put out, but Ramita felt herself reel and had to catch her balance lest she fall off the stool.
Dear gods, I am tired
. She looked at Hanook gratefully.
‘This sari accentuates the best features of your form and colouring,’ he told her, waving the tailors away to the far corner of the room and lowering his voice. ‘Mid-hues to downplay your darkness, fewer pleats and more flair to minimise your hips. Tariq favours skinny girls.’
And ones with nipples like flowers.
‘He is a shallow child if that is all that matters to him.’
‘Lady, he is a gentle soul, and you will come to feel affection for each other, of this I am certain. I believe the two of you represent the start of a new era for Lakh.’
‘Have the Godspeakers been told yet?’ she asked doubtfully.
‘All in good time,’ Hanook replied. ‘There will be moderate members of the clergy present tomorrow night, noted for their flexibility and realism. Once we win them over, the majority will be swayed. The dream of Lakh supremacy will overcome their repugnance for the magi.’
The thought was a queasy one. Repugnance could turn to murder very quickly. ‘If you cannot find a way to ensure my autonomy, I will not agree to this,’ she reminded him firmly.
He went to reply, but his words were drowned by a massive
boom!
, like a giant heartbeat.
Then came a sound that hit her like a blow to the chest: she felt a mighty crash in her ears and through all her gnostic senses, throbbing through the whole palace, shaking the floors.
Like nightmares given voice, beast calls echoed distantly through the corridors.
*
Alaron was walking back to his room with the rolled-up notes in his hand and his head full of thoughts. So much was happening, soaking up the hours, and he still had much to decide. He was unravelling the Scytale, but what to do with it? Ramita and the mughal was another problem – and then there was the exploration of uncharted gnostic territory. He was keeping up his kon-staff practise on his own now Yash had gone to his new monastery. Alaron missed him; the young monk was the only person here whose company didn’t come with an array of complications. Between the physical and mental stresses, he was exhausted, and more than ready for bed.
He had to admit that the gnosis-work was exhilarating, though. He was making breakthroughs with every session. All the old fears that had held him back now had no sway: he could summon spirits or use necromancy if he chose, without that mind-numbing fear that had plagued his Arcanum years. His aptitude for each Study was constantly increasing.
He felt sorry that Ramita wasn’t being allowed the time to do the same, but she was tied up in the negotiations with Hanook and the mughal. She was being pulled away from him, back into the world of courts and harems, and that was the counter-balance to his excitement over the gnosis. He was losing her, and there was nothing he could do. It left him feeling sick with longing.
At least the Scytale work was paying off: his hand-drawn chart of all the runes and the ingredients they represented was completed, the last of the herbs and chemicals having fallen into place, but it was now clear that these were just additives, to some
master ingredient
, and he could find no clue in the Scytale for the nature of that base compound. He had learned so much, only to find out that there was more to find out – but he was now convinced that knowledge must be out there, and his determination to learn the remaining secrets was undimmed.
He still couldn’t decide if he should reveal the Scytale to Hanook: the vizier’s determination to see Ramita wed to the mughal was undermining his faith in him, Antonin Meiros’ grandson or not. He appeared to have the mughal’s interests far more in mind than Ramita’s, or her sons.
He missed the time when it had just been him and Ramita. The time they had spent together was beginning to feel increasingly idyllic; now that he looked back on it from a comfortable manor in the city all the cold and hunger and fear seemed somewhat romantic. Those miserably uncomfortable nights pressed back to back beneath a blanket in the tiny windskiff, trying to sleep while petrified by every night noise: now that felt like the stuff of ballads. He badly wanted to talk to her, but he wasn’t at all sure what he wanted to say. In the meantime, all manner of possible conversations played out in his imagination:
‘Perhaps it is best if I just leave?’ She bursts into tears and begs me not to go. We never see each other again. She’s fine, I die of loneliness.
‘I pledge myself to your service as your bodyguard.’ She accepts my service, I save her life from assassins and we have a passionate affair, until we’re executed together when discovered by the vengeful mughal.
‘Come away with me, and we’ll find your family.’ She refuses, and I go off alone. I’m captured by Inquisitors and tortured to death.
‘I’m going back to the monastery to become a Zain monk.’ I die alone and miserable in a mountain retreat, the only white man for a thousand miles.
Happy endings were rare in his daydreams.
These depressing thoughts were filling in his head as he headed for his rooms. Ramita was being fitted for a dress suitable for a banquet with the mughal, but he could hear the distant squeals of the twins, and the footsteps of servants echoing along the marble corridors. He reached the landing for the top floor, where the stair carried on upwards to a roof garden. He was just wondering whether he should get some fresh air up there …
… the door exploded, and the concussion staggered him backwards, dazed and terrified. He grabbed the balustrade and gaped upward as billowing smoke poured down the stairs toward him.
For a moment there was silence, then someone on the roof bellowed in agony and someone else shouted – words he couldn’t make out through the ringing in his ears – and a cacophony of beast noises echoed down the stairs.
A year ago, he might have frozen, but by the time the first shapes poured out of the smoke he was mentally broadcasting warnings as he ran towards his room.
The auras of the attackers were like tentacled blobs: the same auras as those who had attacked the Isle of Glass:
Souldrinkers!