Witch king, p.34
Witch King, page 34
The Lesser Blessed gazed at Kai in disgust and the mortal guards were wary and horrified, though that was probably about the discarded eye. Would it be the Lesser Blessed or the expositor in charge now, the expositor who had gotten Kai with that powerful intention … No.
Kai took in the way the veiled familiar stood, the set of their shoulders. The way the expositor’s dark eyes were empty, trained not on Kai but past him, into the distance. The intention had been so strong, so effective, reaching down into the parts of Kai that were still of the underearth, even after all this time. No expositor had ever been able to do that before, not like this.
He didn’t know how, he didn’t know who, but he had a terrible feeling … Kai, Ziede whispered in his head. Tangled in his emotions, she knew what he was thinking. It could be a Witch.
It’s not a Witch, he told her. It should be impossible, I don’t understand.
His gaze on the veiled figure, Kai said, “So who do you think gets eaten first, when all this goes wrong?”
One Lesser Blessed grimaced, and a shiver of tension went through the guards.
It’s not a Witch, Ziede agreed.
The veiled person stepped forward and knelt to be at eye level with Kai. Hands lifted to draw the dark gauze back. Their eyes were like his, whiteless, matte black.
It was still a shock, no matter how he had prepared himself, how certain his impossible hunch was correct.
Kai didn’t recognize the face, but then, they wouldn’t recognize his face, either. Their features were regular, lips thin, skin a light archipelago brown, dark hair braided tightly back under the cap of the veil. The body under the dark coat, tunic, and skirts seemed far too thin. In a light, even voice, they said, “I know you came here on the canal. I saw you arrive.”
Kai didn’t let the spike of dread show on his face. They knew about Tenes and Sanja. They would have sent guards and expositors after them. “Because you followed us, or you just know me so well?” he said, then told Ziede silently, You can’t help us, you need to take the others and go.
I’m not leaving you, she replied. He sensed she was in motion, in the air and already far down the slope toward the harbor.
“I think I never knew you at all,” they said, calm on the surface, a quiver of fire underneath. “I thought you were a child, an innocent, easily falling into mortal corruption. But you knew exactly what you were doing.”
Kai was aware that Dahin had gone still, eyes wide. Ramad said softly, “Kai, who is this?”
Kai’s throat was dry. “This is a demon in a mortal body, who came here before the Hierarchs closed the passage to the underearth.” Unexpected anger made his voice thick. “But surely not one I’ve ever met, since leaving your gifted mortal body and taking another is such a terrible crime. Even when it’s an accident that let a mortal prince kill a Hierarch.”
They tilted their head, smiling faintly, eyes narrowing in old disdain. “I will never believe that was an accident, Kai-Enna.”
It was the way she said the name that wasn’t his any longer that sparked recognition. “Arn-Nefa. You were going off to die because fighting the Hierarchs was pointless.” Kai leaned forward. He wanted to bite her throat out. “You left us there. You left me there.”
A Lesser Blessed shifted, impatient or uneasy, and said, “Aren’t you going to restrain him? We have Blessed chains.” There was something about her that suggested youth, the way the yellow and white silk tabard fit her lanky body.
Arn-Nefa didn’t turn to look at her. “Chain him yourself.”
Kai told the Lesser Blessed, “Go ahead.” He held out his wrists. “Just come over here.” Arn-Nefa wasn’t yielding to sentiment; she had tried to drain him once before and it hadn’t worked. He knew he couldn’t drain her, either. Demons weren’t meant to fight each other in the mortal world, using the power they only gained when they left the underearth.
The Lesser Blessed’s lip curled. There was obviously no confusion about who Kai was, and both Blessed knew the Well weapon was the best way to keep him under control.
“Make him give you the finding stone, Expositor Arnsterath,” the other Lesser Blessed spoke up. He was older, hair long but tied back to show his lower status. “The Immortal Patriarch wants it, to keep it out of the hands of these abominations. And he’ll want it even more, now that you’ve let the honored Faharin be killed.”
Dahin snorted bitter laughter. “An Immortal Patriarch is behind this conspiracy? That should have been obvious.” He asked Arn-Nefa, “Regret picking the Blessed for allies yet? In case anyone needs to know”—he gestured to the two Lesser Blessed—“these are Narrein and Shiren, long known for clinging to Faharin’s tabard like the little shitballs they are. Their duty is undoubtedly to keep an eye on him for the rest of the conspiracy since he’s so full of himself his brain doesn’t work. Oh, pardon, was full of himself, because he’s dead now.”
Narrein’s expression turned colder and Shiren hissed, “Shut your blaspheming mouth, you Witch-lover.”
Dahin laughed again. “What? Witch-lover? Is that all you could come up with? With everything I’ve done?”
“They think you’re an expositor?” Kai asked Arn-Nefa, mostly to distract everyone from Dahin. He was afraid the grimly offended Narrein would tell him to calm down, which would be like throwing distilled palm liquor onto a bonfire. “They don’t know what you are?”
“They know,” she assured him. She tilted her head to the expositor standing behind her and to one side, watching her flank. Arn-Nefa had turned an expositor into a familiar, which was unexpectedly horrifying. He was a young Arike, tightly curling hair confined by a gold fillet, his expression still blank, uninterested. Around his neck was a leather cord, whatever pendant hung from it tucked under the fine material of his dark blue tunic. And Kai had to stop thinking of her as Arn-Nefa; Nefa and any trace of the Kanavesi Saredi were long gone.
Ramad had obviously been trying to calculate a less fatal way out of this. He said, “As I told the Immortal Blessed Faharin, the Rising World knows about the Nient-arik conspiracy. Harming us will not help you. The finding stone will go to the Rising World to be handed to the Immortal Marshalls.” He added, “You should leave now, while you can. Find a place of safety.”
“They can’t go,” Dahin said, with a good deal of satisfaction. “For one thing, they’re too stupid. For the other, they’ve lost their protector Faharin. The Patriarch they’re working for will throw them to the Marshalls to save himself at the first opportunity.”
Ramad’s expression tightened. Kai knew what he was thinking and also wished there was a way to make Dahin shut up. But unfortunately Dahin was right, Ramad’s attempts to be reasonable wouldn’t work.
Arnsterath flicked some drifting ash from her sleeve, as if none of this mattered to her.
Narrein said, “All we want is the finding stone. We can come to an arrangement.”
He’s lying, Kai thought to Ziede. They came here because they don’t want any witnesses. This conspiracy of Blessed had gone against the Patriarchs who supported Bashat and Benais-arik and they knew the penalty they would face. Take the stone, get Tahren, and come back for us together.
No, Kai. By the time we come back, there’s no telling what that self-righteous shit will have done to you. He got a hint of the harbor cave around her, dank and quiet, Tenes’ anxious presence.
Angry and frustrated, Shiren said, “Make him give you the finding stone, or we’ll kill the vanguarder.”
Arnsterath didn’t react, still with that faint smile that hid so much hate. “He doesn’t have it. Ziede Daiyahah has it.”
Kai’s eyes widened, he couldn’t help it. He had a terrible feeling …
Shiren was suspicious. “You said your other creature had found her and she didn’t have it.”
“She has it now.” Arnsterath pushed to her feet. “He must have found it and left it with her.”
Kai set his jaw. Arnsterath could hear the pearl. “How?” the word came out in a near snarl. Ramad and Dahin both watched him in confusion.
Arnsterath slipped a folded square of silk out of her sleeve, and held it up. It was stained with the faintest drop of rust-brown, vanishing under the shifting darkness of an intention even as he watched. She said, “A Witch should be more careful with their blood.”
Shit, Ziede whispered, shit, shitting—Her voice cut off as she withdrew from Kai’s thoughts and sealed her mind away. On the ship’s deck at Orintukk, she had done the finding cantrip with spit and blood. A drop must have fallen unnoticed to the deck, but only a demon could have sniffed it out; a mortal expositor would never have found it. That was how Arnsterath had known they were coming here, feeling the pull of that blood like a lodestone. And at close range, with the power well formed by the Summer Halls, it had let her hear Ziede’s pearl.
Narrein said, “Where?”
The person who had been Arn-Nefa a lifetime ago smiled. “She’s down in the harbor.”
* * *
With Shiren still holding the Well weapon, Lesser Blessed Narrein took the steering column and the ascension raft lifted up. As it rotated, Kai caught a last glance of the Summer Halls. Through the roiling smoke, the flicker of flames sheeted over the weed mats. His intention wouldn’t catch the stone, even the parts sticking up above the surface, but sparks skittered across a glass roof, searching for plant matter to burn. He turned back to Arnsterath. “Where did you go?”
It wasn’t a private conversation: Dahin and Ramad were on either side of him, they faced the guards and Shiren, all obviously listening, as well as the expositor turned familiar, who seemed to have been left with as much free will as a root vegetable.
But Arnsterath didn’t seem to care. She leaned against the rail, watching Kai with a dispassionate but complete attention, as if no one else mattered. At the question, her smooth brow wrinkled slightly. “Where did I go when there was nowhere left? Why didn’t I put down my mortal body and drift into nothing, you mean?”
“That too.” Kai couldn’t help adding, “You were all so sure fighting for the mortals was useless.”
“Maybe I should have stayed with you,” she said, talking about the Temple Halls, all those years ago. “But then you wouldn’t have been the only one. The heroic Arike Prince-heir’s pet demon. The Witch King.”
Kai sensed Ramad’s riveted attention. He was past caring about that. If they all died, then at least Ramad would have a few of the answers his historian’s heart craved. “You took an expositor’s body.” After what you said to me, after you left me.
She said, “I did what I had to do.”
Dahin snorted. “Enjoy it, Kai. It’s the biggest ‘I told you so’ in known history.”
Shiren cast a contemptuous glance at him. “It’s no surprise to find you here, apostate. Stories of your corruption are legendary.”
“Eat shit,” Dahin told her.
Shiren’s jaw went tight. “If I told the guards to beat you—”
“It would be a mistake,” Kai said, flat and calm. Shiren had the Well weapon, but he could tell from the tightness in her shoulders she knew it was the only thing keeping this from turning into a bloodbath that even the Lesser Blessed wouldn’t survive.
The guards avoided his gaze, looking at the deck or toward Narrein. They probably belonged to the expositors who had been sent by the Nient-arik conspirators; at least two had died in the fire intention and Kai wasn’t sure if others had been sent after Tenes and Sanja. Shiren glanced at Arnsterath, as if expecting her to intervene. Arnsterath didn’t react at all.
The raft slowed and came around above the last set of rock-cut steps down to the harbor plaza. The canal flowed sluggishly through the waterweed growing in the broken stone blocks where the bridge had once stood. Ramad tried again. “You should go. Cut your losses. The Nient-arik will certainly offer you no help.” This was clearly aimed at the Lesser Blessed.
At the steering column, Narrein said sourly, “You’re so certain of that, are you?”
“If you aren’t, you must not know the Nient-arik very well,” Ramad said, with clear irony. “This is hardly their first attempt to take over the governance of the Rising World.”
The raft circled down into the enclosed court. It landed with a jolt and a thunk near the edge of the canal basin. No movement anywhere, no sound but a breeze through the rushes, no evidence of Ziede, Sanja, or Tenes. The big doors into both the stable and the harbor caves were still closed.
Shiren’s brow furrowed as she scanned the court. She demanded, “Where is the Witch? Did they take the stone and flee?”
“She’s here,” Arnsterath said, and jerked her chin toward the stable archway.
Kai twisted to look. Three sprawled bodies, crumpled just inside the shaded corner of the arch. Two mortal guards and a figure in an Enalin-style caftan. Not unexpected, though it was hard to tell at this distance if it had been Tenes or Ziede who killed them. Dahin sat up straight to see what everyone was looking at and laughed.
Arnsterath added, “She won’t leave without Kaiisteron.” Her voice was as even as ever, but there was something dark under the tone, an edge of some emotion Kai couldn’t identify.
Shiren’s mouth hardened, and Narrein turned even more saturnine. Arnsterath made a gesture, tugging at an intention. Before Kai could tense, her familiar turned and vaulted out of the raft. He walked toward the closed stable doors.
He moved fluidly, not at all like a person with no will of his own. The connection between an expositor and a familiar was something Kai had never understood, except for the little he needed to know to break it. Arnsterath must be able to give him commands that he was compelled to follow; she didn’t seem distracted, as she might if she was controlling his movements. “Where did you get your friend?” Kai asked.
“A gift, from the Nient-arik. His name is Viar.” Arnsterath kept her gaze on the stable arch. Viar paced toward it slowly, sometimes stopping to scuff at the stained paving, searching for designs or cantrips laid as traps. “Of course, they meant to give me to him. It didn’t turn out as they planned.”
“He’ll get the doors open?” Shiren asked, her voice tight with tension.
“He’ll try.” Arnsterath eyed her. “You could help him.”
Shiren and Narrein exchanged a guarded look. Narrein told her, “You stay here. If the demon moves, use the weapon. Kill the apostate, if you have to.”
Dahin hissed out an annoyed breath. Narrein turned to leave the raft, motioning the guards to follow him. He added, “Make yourself useful, vanguarder.”
Ramad glanced at Kai, brows lifted. Everything depended on Ziede and Tenes, but it was better to have Ramad away from Arnsterath. Kai nodded once.
Ramad stood, clearly suppressing a wince, and moved like his ribs hurt. He followed the reluctant guards off the raft, trailed by Narrein.
Viar had found no traps on the paving and had reached the heavy metal doors. They filled the large space of the archway, the metal streaked with verdigris, partly eaten away along the bottom. Narrein said something to the mortal guards, who hung back to wait as Viar examined the doors carefully and checked the locking mechanism in the center.
Kai wanted very badly to warn Ziede, even with Arnsterath listening in. But she and Tenes were obviously planning something. Arnsterath was still a demon and Tenes’ blossom cantrip would only mildly inconvenience her, if Tenes could even get close enough to cast it. Arnsterath obviously knew Ziede would have a plan and was confident she could counter whatever it was. Kai was afraid that between her abilities and Shiren’s Well weapon, she was right.
The door wasn’t yielding. Narrein had taken something metallic out of his tabard, some Immortal Blessed tool, and stepped forward to use it on the lock.
The only thing Kai could do without getting Dahin killed was distract Arnsterath. He shifted, just enough to get her to look at him again. “Where were you? All this time.”
Her gaze went abstract, as if she had to work to remember. “I left with the others, I don’t know what they did. I didn’t care. I was going home.”
After all this time, it was still maddening. “To die uselessly in the grasslands.”
“Yes.” She said, “But there were legionaries, called to assemble here. I couldn’t get past them, I had to follow where the road led. I took an expositor’s body. Like you did. I used the Well of the Hierarchs to fight. Like you did.”
Dahin’s head turned, consternation in the slant of his brow, trying to meet Kai’s gaze.
Kai said, “I never used the Well. Never.” He managed not to say, Then I really would have been an abomination. She knew what she was doing to him.
Across the court, Narrein stepped back and gestured. The mortal guards and Ramad reluctantly went closer to try to haul the doors open.
Kai had to keep Arnsterath talking. “Why are you with the Nient-arik conspirators?”
“They freed me. I’d been imprisoned.” She frowned a little at the memory, her smooth brow furrowed again. “I’d tried to go south, but I was found by the Nahar. I fought for them, until … they wanted to be rid of me.”
It took Kai a baffled moment to recall the name. The Nahar had been the family who had colluded with the Hierarchs to hand Nient-arik over without resistance. With so many years of hindsight, Kai thought now that it had probably seemed the best way to survive a terrible situation. But at the time, to the other Arike and the coalition, it was the ultimate perfidy.
The Nahar had eventually gone down in a struggle with the other Nient heirs, the Reharan branch of the family. All this had been more than sixty years ago, during the war and right after. Kai didn’t know if he believed Arnsterath. If he even wanted to understand. But he said, “The Nahar have been gone since the war. How long were you imprisoned?”
Arnsterath shook her head a little, as if time was too difficult to comprehend. Or as if she was distracted by whatever communication she was receiving from Viar. The door wouldn’t budge and Narrein was using the Immortal Blessed tool to cut through or do something to the lock. Kai still had no sense of Ziede. Then Arnsterath said, “Until these Nient-arik let me out.”
