Holiest of Cities, Chapter 16

Kareva makes a lot of noise in his sleep. Miruz makes a big target. Alakuz makes a discovery. Nobody is having a good time.

PREVIOUSLY… we’ve had bodies in the desert, peace on Valtaa, a parade in Ikune, a new enemy among the warlord’s followers, a suspicious piece of jewelry, and another episode of Kareva getting uncontrollably stabby at an inopportune moment.

(If you still haven’t read The Shieldbreaker, Book One: The Last of the Etela, it is available here in paperback and here as an e-book.)

---

Oreik lurched into blurry, hung over wakefulness.

Where the hell was he? He squinted against the sunlight streaming through the curtained window. He saw silk and smelled perfume and his hands reached out and found skin that was too smooth to be his. Someone giggled.

Alright. So that mystery was solved, at least. The boys had left him to sleep this one off in the brothel. It might be time to cut back on his drinking a bit. He needed to get his head right if he ever wanted to get back into his father’s good graces; it might be time to let a few other things go, too, a few grudges—

His eyes snapped open.

“Kasad!” he croaked, too quietly for anyone outside the room to hear.

The someone who’d giggled turned over. “Morning!”

“Where are my—”

“They’re in the other rooms, love. I promise you, my friends took good, good care of them.”

“Oh. Okay.” Something about how friendly this girl was acting towards him made him deeply uneasy about the amount he must have spent. “Good. I need to—”

“Oh, no! So soon? Amani and I were looking forward to having more fun with you before you left.”

From behind him, another girl moaned her sleepy agreement.

“I need to talk to Kasad.”

The friendly girl pouted. “Oh, all right. I’ll have someone go get him.”

“Good.” Hopefully it wasn’t too late. “When’s the next market day?”

“It’s today, love.”

He looked at her steadily for a second, and then everything started swirling in front of him as last night’s wine started to rise.

“Bucket.”

“Huh?”

“Bucket. Bucket!”

—

In the five days since he unceremoniously dumped the body of an Ohta of the Hodrir into the river that split this miserable city in two, condemning that man never to reach the gods or see his family again in the process, Alakuz had yet to speak a word.

He’d grunted acknowledgments to the Ohtar when they came to him with daily reports and nodded curtly at a few salutes from the men during the few brief intervals when he was not in his quarters, and that was it.

He had not seen Kareva.

That was for the best.

He was willing to bet no one else had, either, except probably the local girl who brought his meals, and given the nature of the sounds coming from behind the chieftain’s door the past few nights, that was also for the best. It would not do for the men to see him the way he was that night: a snivelling child riddled with guilt and shame, shivering from the river water Alakuz had doused him with to get the blood of that good, loyal, doomed man off of his face…

Gods. His head hurt; he was clenching his teeth hard enough to crack them. He slapped himself in the face twice, lightly, just to relax his jaw and help him focus.

From the moment he had stumbled on the scene, there was never any question of what he would do about it. He’d sworn an oath, after all. Whether he liked it or not, he was going to protect Kareva.

And that was why he was avoiding Kareva right now: he didn’t trust himself not to kill the boy, and not just out of anger.

Alakuz had tried very fucking hard for a very long time not to think about the demon within his protégé. He had wilfully ignored his suspicions about the Oproz for years—mostly, when it came right down to it, out of affection. Kareva was a good boy: he was a quick and willing student, and he never showed anyone any disrespect or acted entitled to rule simply because he was his father’s son. Oaths and loyalties aside, Alakuz liked him. He was proud of him. He was a warrior, a man of honor, in no small measure because Alakuz had turned him into one.

But it was long past time for Alakuz to come to terms with the fact that ever since his brother’s death, Kareva had been more than just ‘a little strange.’ Something terrifying lurked behind those pale grey eyes—something even Alakuz was more than just wary of. It was why he’d taken it upon himself to teach the boy how to rein himself in when he was angry. Developing that bit of discipline had worked wonders for Alakuz without making him any less formidable.

It had seemed to be working for Kareva, too.

But when he slaughtered that northerner outside the gates, the thing must have escaped his control. Why else would Kareva have kept stabbing the fat man for so long after he was already dead?

And that was how it must have gone for Attala as well, with the several gashes in his throat and the gruesome, gaping chasm that had once been his torso…

Alakuz swallowed hard, forcing down his disgust and fury, forcing himself to make his mind still and think.

It still didn’t make sense.

The envoy made sense. He had given more than enough provocation. And that man from Dazvar-Muz that Kareva gutted in the desert? Sure. Fine. Alakuz would have had him beaten or whipped instead, but he definitely had something coming to him. It wasn’t completely out of nowhere.

But Attala? He’d been steadfastly in the Oproz’s camp—the fact that they were able to make peace after Valtaa was almost entirely due to the fact that Attala sided with Kareva and helped back Mikal down.

What would have made Kareva kill him?

There was only one reason he could think of. In truth, he was just looking for any way to rule it out. He’d been desperate to think of any other possible explanation since the moment he saw Attala’s body.

But there wasn’t one, was there?

And at that moment, the ring Rivi was wearing on their first night together popped back into his mind.

—

“Ohta, a word?”

“What?” Turan hadn’t slept well.

“A few of us…”

“Out with it.”

“Well, Ohta, I mean, we’re actually all out here, if you’d...”

Turan groped blindly for the cloak he’d thrown over the chair nearest the door. There was a chill in the air now that he hadn’t been ready for when the tribe went north. Maybe that was what was bothering everyone so much these past few days.

He walked out into the courtyard, straight into a throng of his men from Nev—and several dozen men from a few assorted other companies. Were they even separate companies anymore? Half of them didn’t have a commander. They ought to try to clarify that. Maybe when Attala got back…

“What is it, gentlemen?”

Lukaz ul-Zalan, who wasn’t of Nev but seemed to have assumed some sort of informal leadership role, spoke up. “Ohta, we’re all wondering…um…what’s going on with the Oproz?”

Antaz ul-Inaz piped up next. “We’ve been hearing the screaming from out here.”

“We’re a little worried, is all,” interjected Uskol ul-Aravan.

Lukaz raised his eyebrows and tilted his head towards Uskol. “That’s how bad it is, Ohta. The chief’s got this one out of his stupor. Next thing, who knows? He might actually wake the fucking dead!”

“Enough,” came a growl from behind Turan. Georz ul-Zimion had emerged from the officers’ hall.

Lukaz shut up in a hurry and snapped into a hasty salute. The rest of the assembled men followed his lead.

“I will say this one time: there is to be absolutely no discussion of the Oproz’s mood. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Ohta!”

“Good. Dismissed.”

The men dispersed, slowly, half-heartedly. Turan turned back to where the older captain was standing. Georz’s disciplinarian snarl slowly receded. “Morning, Ohta.”

“Morning, Ohta,” replied Turan. “Georz…It’s not good, is it?”

Georz took a step forward and put a paternal arm around Turan. He lowered his voice. “I’m not surprised he’s having bad dreams. Valtaa was a bad one. We’re all struggling with it. But it’s not to be talked about—least of all with the men.” He lowered his voice even further. “Eventually, we’re going to have to fight another battle. We all know it. And talking about it often makes a man question whether he can go through it again.” He patted Turan hard on the shoulder. “Training needs to be a bastard today. Tire them out, stop them thinking too hard. You up to it, or would you like me to—”

Turan chuckled darkly. “No, no. I’ve got it. And thanks.” He looked down. “I didn’t know how I should handle that. Lucky you were there.”

“Don’t mention it.”

There was an ear-splitting crash in the building behind them, followed by a howl that barely sounded human.

Georz turned slowly to Turan.

“Get Alakuz.”

Turan nodded. “Yeah.”

The front door of the officers’ building opened and Alakuz emerged with murder in his eyes. He made no eye contact with either of them as he made a beeline for the front gate.

Georz’s eyes widened as he tilted his head towards the departing Ra’an Ohtar. Well? Get him!

Turan jogged after Alakuz as he made his way out of the barracks. He caught up feet from the exit and stepped in front of him.

“Ohta.”

“Not now.”

“Where are you going?”

“Private business.”

“What kind of pri—”

“Private business. Let me pass.”

“The Oproz seems to be in a bad way, Ohta. Is now really the time to—”

“To what, Ohta?” Alakuz’s eyes glinted dangerously.

Turan backed down. “Nothing. None of my business, of course.”

“Good. You and Georz have command until I get back.”

“Yes, Ohta.”

Alakuz leaned back through the villa’s heavy door. “Unless he comes out and gives an order, of course.”

“Of course, Ohta.”

Turan shook his head as the heavy wooden door slammed behind Alakuz. What the fuck was with everybody today?

—

“So, you’re out.”

“Yes.” Regez was sitting in Berez’s house again. He would have been there sooner, but he’d spent the last few days drunk and surly in his apartments—not his initial plan of action, but one that became inevitable once the warlord’s servants came to collect his intelligence papers, at the warlord’s request, to help ‘the next First Sword’ get acclimated. He’d known instantly the men came from Miruz, who was playing a dangerous game using the warlord’s name already.

He should have left the greedy upstart piece of shit to rot in Toskalne. And he should have had a son of his own, passed on his wisdom to someone fucking worthy of it.

“How do we fix it?” his nephew asked, snapping him somewhat back into focus.

“We don’t,” said Regez. “Bastard questioned my loyalty.”

“You have to fix it, Uncle. Apologize. Tell him you’re sure Oreik was doing his best.”

“Grovel to him.”

“Yes.”

Regez let out a belch, grimacing as some of last night’s wine followed the air out of his stomach and lapped lazily at the bottom of his throat. He swallowed hard and then let the scowl return to his face. “I’d rather let him fucking kill me.”

“I don’t know what else you expect me to tell you to do.”

Regez looked hard into Berez’s face. He looked a lot like Oruz did, when they were young. “So you would like me to simply take this insulting demotion in stride, keep my head down, and hope for the best?”

“Yes. Absolutely. And not just because I’d rather you not get yourself killed. We’ve got our hold on the tribe to consider. The Led came down here on your say-so, and after all the men we lost in the desert, I don’t know how I’ll be able to stay in charge if we fall further out of favor.”

“You’re right.”

“I know I’m right, Uncle. You and my father taught me well.” The boy reached out and patted Regez on the shoulder. “He’s your oldest friend. He’ll be ready to talk to you if you don’t keep poking at this.”

“I suppose.”

Berez leaned in, intently. “And do you really expect Oreik to live long enough to succeed him? A man that stupid?”

Regez chuckled ruefully. If he was really honest with himself, maybe having some distance between himself and the horde’s decision-makers wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to him right now. Let someone else try to deal with planning for the succession.

“Alright.”

“That being said…what are you going to do about Miruz?”

Regez scratched his chin with his left hand and smiled thinly. “I haven’t really thought about it.”

—

The thing that never ceased to surprise Miruz was how excruciatingly boring it was to be a great man’s advisor.

His life at Regez’s right hand had been, outside of campaign season, pretty dull. It hadn’t occurred to him that Regez’s job might involve even more tedium than his.

He’d spent the last five days in long, slow-moving meetings with the warlord’s seemingly endless list of new political clients, rich men and religious leaders from the East and the West (not to mention their own, the most prominent Brothers of the G’Va, who, without fail, would show up unannounced mere minutes after any meeting with a foreign priest, exhorting the warlord to give their ideological enemies no comfort but the final one), representatives from every local trade group, and all of the warlord’s other key collaborators among the conquered population.

The gist of every meeting was that the supplicant, under the pretext of helping the warlord raise money to fund the horde’s winter in Ikune, would attempt to pass off as much of his tax bill onto someone else who, from his vantage, could more easily afford to part with it.

There was, for instance, Onekos Gavaral the wool merchant, who had come to visit the palace three times today: the first to suggest a different potential donor of woolcloth for winter cloaks (some easterner who had, it turned out, fled the city some time ago), then to suggest another alternative (a rival and neighbor who’d actually put Gavaral’s name back into contention less than an hour earlier), and then finally to announce that he had done some calculations and, happily for everyone involved, the horde would actually only need about two-thirds of the cloth the warlord was demanding.

Miruz had, at that point, his best moment of the day—perhaps his only good moment—reminding poor Gavaral that the cloaks for the warriors guarding the fully-exposed wall gaps would need to be significantly thicker. Gavaral had blushed and stammered an apology for his oversight and promised the full delivery by the full moon, and Ersev had smirked and nodded his approval at Miruz.

It seemed he did indeed have it in him to do this job.

Then Gavaral had asked the two of them to pass along his fondest wishes to Regez. The warlord’s smirk had curdled, and a few awkward seconds passed, and eventually Miruz forced himself to smile and promise Gavaral he would do just that. Ersev kept his eyes trained on him the whole time. Miruz had no fucking idea what he was thinking.

Right after Gavaral left the room, the warlord called a halt for the day and Miruz all but leapt for the door.

Only Ersev’s voice had stopped him: “Bright and early tomorrow.”

“Absolutely, Mightiness.”

He turned onto his usual path around the market square on his way back to the Guards’ barracks where he was still living until his new post became official.

The side streets were deserted, he noticed; not even one merchant or customer passed him on their way out of the square. Everything must have closed up a little early today. Maybe they had a slower crowd than usual—though he hoped not. That wouldn’t be a particularly cheerful omen for the winter.

Or maybe those meetings really had taken all fucking day and it was just later in the afternoon than he imagined. It was close enough to dusk that that was a possibility. He put it out of his mind. There were more immediate worries on the horizon.

He was still trying to think of what could have been going through the warlord’s mind at that moment, in the room with that pathetic excuse for a schemer, when he was interrupted by an arrow whistling past his head.

He froze as it came to a shuddering halt in the wooden doorframe of the building just in front of him.

The fletching pointed upwards from its final resting place, rustling lightly in the cool evening air. Mocking him.

Pointing upwards.

He whipped his head around towards the buildings across the road just in time to see a man on one of the rooftops pulling his bowstring back for another try.

He fell flat. The arrow hit the pavement near him and bounced off harmlessly to the side, and he pushed himself up quickly as he could and took off at a run towards a side street he knew would keep him out of sight for long enough to escape this cowardly bastard.

He chuckled crazily as he abruptly turned the corner out of the shooter’s sightline, stumbled slightly on a barrel someone had left out against the wall, and was back at full speed in no time at all and racing down the side street towards safety when a third arrow hit him in the meat of his upper arm.

He slipped and went down in a heap, breaking most of the arrow off on the street as he fell. He looked at his arm: this arrow (what was left of it, anyway) was sticking out pretty straight.

There was another assassin on the street.

His instincts told him to get up and run again, but he willed himself to lie still. The man would be on his way over to finish the job. Miruz needed him to be complacent.

He moaned. He was in a bit of pain, he supposed; he could at least feel the arrow now, through the adrenaline. But he really needed to sell this. He smiled to himself as he heard cautious footsteps, then moaned again.

The footsteps got closer. Miruz rolled halfway over in mock agony. “Oh, God!”

He heard a chuckle and a knife being drawn, and when the assassin had gotten close enough for Miruz to hear him muttering something about “not so fucking tough,” he rolled all the way over into a crouch in one fluid motion and launched himself at the overconfident fool’s midsection.

It was over before it began.

The knife clattered to the ground, and Miruz was on top of his enemy, holding him by the throat with one hand and by the balls with the other. He relaxed both hands ever so slightly so the other man could breathe. “Obviously, we don’t have much time, so we will have to do this quickly. Who sent you?”

The assailant squirmed but said nothing.

Miruz grinned wolfishly, then gritted his teeth and squeezed his intact left hand into a fist.

The assassin’s eyes registered surprise, then agony—and then there was a soft, wet popping sound, and a soundless shriek followed.

Miruz relaxed his now-irrelevant grip and lifted his left hand to cover his victim’s mouth in case he found his voice. He leaned in slightly closer.

“I will ask you exactly one more time. Who sent you?”

He pulled his hand away.

The assassin made as if to say something and then fell into a dead faint.

Miruz growled in frustration, snapped the man’s neck in one swift motion, and stood up. He looked around to see if anyone else was following him, and hurried back towards the center of town and the safety of the Guards’ barracks, leaving the dead man where he lay.

—

Rivi was on all fours on her bed, smirking back over her shoulder and wiggling her ass in the direction of one of her regulars, a cloth merchant named Sivran who was notoriously straitlaced and immaculate in his daily life—and whom she delighted in reducing to a quivering mess of frustration and desire before she let him touch her—when the door burst open.

Alakuz strode in with a look on his face that Rivi had seen a few times in her life, and her first instinct, rather than to cover herself, was to reach for the bejewelled knife on the table at the foot of her bed.

“What is the meaning of this?” Sivran sputtered.

“Get out,” Alakuz said quietly, not even looking at him.

Rivi was sure she was dead.

“Come any closer and I swear, I’ll—” and she stopped talking as she realized she didn’t know how she could stop him if he wanted to kill her. She pointed the little dagger at him, holding it away from her with both arms out straight, trying to create distance between them. It was the only thing she could think to do.

Alakuz, for his part, stood stock still as, behind him, the terrified and humiliated Sivran gathered his robes and hurried out of the room. Even when the door closed, he didn’t move, eyes focused on her face. She wasn’t entirely sure he’d noticed she even had a weapon.

“I need to talk to you.”

Rivi’s mouth dropped open. “You need to talk to me? You burst in here—”

He cut her off. “The ring I saw you wearing the first night we met.”

“What about it?”

“Where did you get it?”

“A friend.”

“I need a name.” He took a step closer, and she scooted backwards on her mattress to the wall and raised the dagger slightly higher. He snorted. “You’re joking, right? If I was here for that you’d be dead already. I need a name.”

“I don’t have one.”

He snarled and then looked down for a second and took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. “That garnet belonged to my people.”

“How do you know?”

“I know. I need a name.”

“I don’t have one.”

He took another step towards the bed and his hand was on her arm before she could raise the dagger back up. “Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you? That ring was with my tribe’s women and children. It was part of the toll they were supposed to pay for safe passage in—” he shook his head. “If it’s here, and not down south, then the man who gave it to you...I want to talk to him.”

He smiled, ever so slightly.

Rivi shivered. “I don’t remember his name. Please.”

He looked into her face, probing for any sign of dishonesty, and thankfully didn’t invent one that wasn’t there. “Alright.” He let her arm go and stepped away. “Do you remember when you got it? Do you remember who was here that night?”

“It was a long night. The parade was that day, when the army came back to the city. The warlord’s son and his friends were here, celebrating their victory, I guess? I didn’t get a lot of details, but—”

“The warlord’s son.”

“Yes.”

“And his retainers.”

“There must have been a hundred of them here. They bought the entire house out for the night. Vemma was terrified they would run him out of business.”

“The warlord’s son and his retainers, and one of them had that ring and gave it to you as payment.”

“Yes. That’s what I just told you!”

“Alright.”

He turned to go. Rivi stood, grabbed the nearest heavy thing she could find and, before she could stop herself, hurled it in his direction.

It bounced off his shoulder and shattered against the wall. He spun back around, the terrifying, murderous little smile back on his face, and she burst into tears.

He froze.

“I’m sorry.” He took another step closer and said it again, quietly. “I’m sorry.”

She looked up. The monster was gone.

For now.

She sniffed, and set her jaw. “Don’t ever come back here.”

He didn’t move for a moment, then nodded. “Alright. That’s probably for the best.”

The knife fell from her nerveless fingers as he left the room, closing the door far more quietly than he’d opened it, and she cried until there weren’t any tears left in her.

—

Miruz gritted his teeth as the short, squat barber-surgeon pulled the small, red-hot blade out of the wound in his arm and wrapped it in linen.

“Change the bandage every day,” the little man said as he stood up to go.

“Wait.”

Miruz stood up too. He loomed over his guest, reaching into his pockets for a few extra gold coins. “Not a word about this visit to anyone, if you please,” he said with barely concealed menace as he dropped them into the barber-surgeon’s palm one at a time.

“That wouldn’t come from me. What you boys do in your off hours isn’t any of my business.”

“Some drunk moron was playing with his bow on the street and missed.”

“I didn’t ask,” spat the barber surgeon.

Miruz sighed. “Alright. Thank you. Travel safe.” He let the rest of the coins—a goodly sum, and well worth the silence it was buying—fall into the surgeon’s hand, and he turned back to the jug of wine on his desk.

His mind was racing, trying to put too many pieces together at once.

The shooter on the rooftop got away. That was inevitable; he was never going to be able to catch him. But that meant that whoever ordered him killed must know by now that it didn’t go as planned.

Whoever. Right. He shook his head ruefully. Who else could it be? Who else was close enough to him to know his routine and powerful enough to get an entire marketplace cleared on his say-so? And who else had a good enough reason?

And of course, having taken that step, there was no way Regez would stop now.

Miruz sighed. He would have been more than happy to leave well enough alone if Regez had simply accepted the new order of things, and someday, if the opportunity permitted, he might have even tried to mend fences.

That was a naive thought. Childish, really. Regez was a ruthless killer in his own right, after all, and proud, too.

This could only end one way.

And that being said, simply waylaying Regez and ending him would not be an option. However angry the warlord was at his old friend, whoever killed Regez would soon wish he was dead, too.

He grimaced. His arm was throbbing, and he clenched his fists against the pain, and felt the absence of his missing fingers more keenly than usual as he squeezed—and then he chuckled, and the chuckle grew into a fit of incredulous, panicked laughter at the sheer madness of the solution that had just presented itself.

—

Makan Alabar was tantalizingly close.

Kareva was walking among the crowd of refugees. He could see the walls beginning to materialize out of the desert sand, and not a moment too soon.

He hadn’t seen them yet, but he knew they were coming.

He could hear the thunder of hooves. He could hear the people around him begin to panic as they heard it too and realized what it meant.

He turned towards the city and sprinted towards the city walls, screaming “Follow me! We’re almost there!” He ran for what seemed like forever, but the walls grew no bigger in his sight, and the hooves sounded louder and louder, and behind him he heard the wailing begin.

He reached for his weapons and realized that they were nowhere to be found, just as he saw the first horsemen materialize out of the sand at the rear of the column—

Then he was back at Kalaa Ukruv’r, sitting at the foot of his father’s bed, staring at the corpse the priestesses had just finished preparing to be burned. It was wrapped from head to toe in clean white linen, just as it should be.

Except for a spot of blood near the corpse’s mouth.

That wasn’t right. Kareva stood to go get someone to have it fixed, but as he took a step away, the body’s right arm shot up and took hold of his arm and wrenched him back down to sit on the bed.

Kareva, unable to resist, felt his gaze pulled towards the corpse’s face. The blood around the mouth was spreading because the mouth was stretching.

The body was grinning at him through the cloth.

It wasn’t his father.

Kareva felt himself pulled closer, ever closer, and heard the low chuckle, and knew he would not be able to stop himself from screaming—

He was back on top of Valtaa, alone.

He looked to his left, to his right, and it was only when he turned around and felt his boot squelch into something wet that he realized where everyone else had gone.

He standing on top of a pile of bodies. He knew it even before he looked down and saw them.

He felt, more than saw, the sun beginning to go down. It was getting cold, and the sky was beginning to go dark, and there were no funeral pyres in sight. None of these warriors would ever get to see the gods if they were still here when night fell.

Not that you have to be worried about that, right? A different voice was in his ear now. A woman’s voice.

He looked directly below him and saw Sivridi, the last Daughter of Vei, eyes opened wide in death, skull partially caved in by a random combatant’s boot, teeth shattered within the gruesome smile frozen across her bloodied lips.

You were right. I got exactly what I wanted.

Kareva broke into a sprint back towards the cave at the back of the mountain where all the supplies were, looking for wood, for oil, for anything that would make a fire. Behind him the sky continued to darken and the wind began to pick up, and he begged Povod to relent for just long enough for him to get a fire going.

He groped wildly for flint and tinder and felt a rush of exultant hope as they found his hands. Then he turned and sprinted back towards the exit of the cave—

And saw only one body.

The envoy’s corpse stood directly in front of the rock formation that led to the path to Kalaa Ukruv’r. His flesh and insides were gone, taken completely off the skeleton by carrion birds, yet it was unmistakeably him, and he stood upright without any support.

Slowly, his left arm began to move upward from his side, and his left hand curled into a fist, save one finger.

It stayed out, just like the arm, angled away from the rest of the skeleton but still angled downward.

It was pointing at the scorpion carving.

The envoy’s head turned to face Kareva. Was it possible for a skeleton to smile? In Kareva’s limited previous experience with skeletons, they weren’t supposed to be able to point, either—or taunt someone, for that matter.

He drew his sword, walked up to the envoy, lifted the blade up behind him and brought it down in a vicious overhead arc straight into the grinning skull.

He saw the blade shatter, and a hunk of sharp metal flying towards his eyes, and he didn’t even have time to flinch before—

He found himself standing alone on top of an enormous, unfamiliar wall, staring out into the sand.

He was in Makan Alabar.

He’d made it. Maybe they had all made it this time.

He heard a bell toll from somewhere to his right, and when he turned he saw a detachment of spear-warriors focused on a dust cloud forming out in the near distance.

He squinted into the rising sun and saw hundreds of people on foot, hurrying towards the wall he was positioned on. The dust cloud was coming from behind them.

He strained to make out any faces, any small detail that might tell him it wasn’t his people, that maybe they were safely within the walls and this was some other caravan of refugees about to be ridden down. He begged for it to be anyone else.

Then the horses appeared out of the sand, and the screaming began.

Kareva raced towards the soldiers stationed on the wall.

“You have to help them,” he gasped when he made it to where the first guard was standing.

The man cocked his head as if he hadn’t understood.

“Please, help me! Those are my people down there. We have to drive away those horsemen.”

The man smiled pleasantly, then shook his head and shrugged. Sorry, I can’t understand a word you’re saying.

A stiff breeze picked up and sprayed the watchers on the wall with a mist of blood flecked with grains of sand. Below them, the screaming got louder, filled the air completely. Kareva found himself unable to hear his own voice as he begged for his people’s lives.

“You have to help me! You have to help me stop them! WE HAVE TO STOP THEM!”

He shoved the guard in front of him out of frustration, willing to try anything to shake the man out of his apathy. The guard stumbled, and then his smile disappeared, and suddenly all the guards’ spears were pointing at him.

Instinct forced Kareva’s hand.

He drew his dagger, and felt half a dozen spear blades slam into his torso at once, and he gasped as he dropped his weapon—

And a little knife clattered onto a wooden table.

“Come on, sweet boy, you’ve got to learn to hold that the right way!” chided a muffled but reassuring voice from his right side.

He turned his head and was surprised when he had to look up as well. Looming over him was a blurry feminine figure. The only clearly visible feature was its long, dark, shining hair, but it emanated warmth and love.

He smiled, and the blurry figure laughed lightly and touched his shoulder. “Come on, pick it back up!”

He reached out gingerly and reacted with shock to his tiny, childlike hand in front of his face. He looked left and took in the sight of the Kogon in his prime, tall and severe-looking, but when his father looked back at him there was subdued joy in his eyes. Next to him sat a boy who was not quite of age yet who smirked at his halting efforts.

“How do you expect to fight if you can’t even cut your own meat, yereka?”

“Let him be, Varyta. He will learn,” admonished the muffled voice next to him.

The Kogon leaned forward. “The one thing you must always do is hold onto your knife, my son. You must not let it fall.”

“Will the gods be angry with me?” Kareva heard himself ask. His voice was a child’s voice.

“Not tonight. But you must not drop it again, for they won’t always be so forgiving.” He smiled at Kareva, his eyes twinkling with a little bit of mischief at the idea of the gods concerning themselves with the knife-skills of a little boy. “Don’t hold it so tightly. Allow your fingers and wrist to adjust themselves as they need to.”

Kareva lifted the knife back up and made a point to hold it more loosely in his grip. It felt like he’d been holding it all his life.

His father leaned back, satisfied. “Better. Now, use it.”

The door burst open. Metan strode into the dining room, with Alakuz walking quietly in his wake.

“Matavuz, we have a problem.”

The warmth emanating from next to Kareva was suddenly gone. He looked to his right to see what had happened to her. The figure was still there, but even blurrier than she was before and seemingly shrunken in stature, as if she were hiding herself from the men at the table.

Varyta-Kogon looked at his first sword. “What is it?”

“The women and children are gone. None of our men can find them anywhere.”

The High King leaned back in his seat. “I see.”

Everyone was silent. Metan and Alakuz looked at each other quickly, then both turned their gaze back to the head of the table.

“Well, I don’t know why you’re telling me,” said Varyta-Kogon. “This is his problem.” He gestured in Kareva’s direction.

Metan and Alakuz stared at the Kogon for a moment, then burst out laughing. Varyta-Kogon smirked and turned his eyes back down to his meal.

Varyta the Younger made eye contact with Kareva across the table. He no longer looked eleven. When he smiled, there was blood on his lips—

And then the dining room was gone, replaced by sand.

Kareva felt the hot sun bearing down on him and grimaced. He looked around and saw he was back among the caravan. The young priestess who had sacrificed Rakili was kneeling with another woman in front of a little girl. The mother was sobbing, rocking back and forth. The little girl was not moving.

Kareva came over to kneel with them, across from the body, and when she noticed his presence the young priestess looked up at him and smiled sadly. “Fifth one today. The young ones aren’t used to travelling like this.”

Kareva held out a hand to the sobbing woman. “I’m so sorry.”

The woman shrank back from him, then abruptly turned herself completely around and was sick in the sand.

The priestess looked down at the little girl again, then back up at Kareva. “How many more days?”

Kareva was keenly, painfully aware that he had no idea where they were. He did his best to put on a brave face. “It can’t be long now.”

The caravan trudged on in the blistering daylight. Kareva found himself waiting for the sun to move and give them any confirmation that they were moving in the right direction, since the city was nowhere in sight.

The sun never changed position, and on they walked.

Kareva busied himself wandering from group to group, offering support wherever he could, and got used to seeing the fear and the frustration and the thirst in one pair of eyes after another as they met his.

He found himself next to the young priestess again, kneeling over another body. It was the mother this time. No words passed between them. Kareva could tell the priestess knew better now than to ask him, of all people, how close they were to safety.

Now he was at the front of the column again, with no recollection of how he’d gotten there. He felt cracks in the skin around his mouth and nothing but sand at the back of his throat.

They weren’t going to make it.

He looked behind him and saw what was left of the caravan: barely a dozen people, tottering along the path he’d just walked. No more wagons, no more water. Just sand all around them, and the sun above them.

One of the last survivors toppled over, and Kareva ran back to help.

It was the priestess. The reproach shone in her sightless gaze as she stared through him towards her death.

It can’t be long now.

Kareva sank to his knees and clasped his hands together in prayer to the gods or whatever was out there. Please, save them. Let there be some water somewhere. I will do anything, give anything, for enough water—

It was raining, and he was alone on a stone street by a river, both hands clasped around the handle of a knife.

Oh, fuck.

He looked down into the shredded chest cavity of Attala ul-Marak and saw that the point of his knife was still buried deep in his victim’s spine. He wrenched his hands back and forth, pulled up with as much strength as he could muster through his horror.

The knife stayed where it was.

Kareva hung his head and groaned. Then he heard the soft splash of footsteps in the rain behind him. He turned, knowing who it was, praying for it to be anyone else.

Alakuz stood stock still, transfixed at the sight in front of him.

Kareva said nothing.

Neither of them moved for a long moment.

Then Alakuz shook his head ever so slightly, as if a veil had been lifted and he was seeing clearly for the first time in his entire life.

“I never asked for this.”

He turned and walked back the way he had come.

Kareva stared at his receding form and whispered, “Please. Please come back. I’m sorry. I can’t d—”

His muttered pleas were interrupted, rather abruptly, by two wet, slimy hands clamping down unthinkably hard around his throat.

Attala was awake, but not alive, certainly, and probably not even himself: his eyes were black all the way through and his face stayed slack even as the muscles in his arms twitched with the effort of avenging himself. The gash in his throat that had actually killed him was still open, but no blood was coming out anymore. He clearly had none left to spill.

Kareva couldn’t think of anything to do but keep trying to pull his knife out of Attala’s spine. He tried again and again to work the blade loose as everything darkened in front of him.

What are you going to do with a knife, anyway? You can’t kill a dead man. And you can’t hide from—

Kareva gasped as he caught his breath. It was still pitch black, but the horrible dead hands were gone from his neck, and that was something, anyhow.

The darkness was suddenly broken by the light from a flaming arrow streaking overhead. Another arrow followed in quick succession.

He was on top of the mountain again, in the place where he kept watch overnight between the two main Pohyor assaults. There were no torches, though, and no one else was with him. The stars seemed to be gone as well: the arrows were the only source of light he could account for. He stood and walked to the edge of the summit to look down at the enemy camp, and saw nothing but black sand.

When he turned back around, she was there.

Another arrow appeared in the sky as if fired from nowhere; it flew over his position, casting its dim light, then disappeared into the void again. Sivridi stood before him, tall and angular and so very alive. Instead of her usual jerkin and trousers, she wore a black robe Kareva recognized as his. It was tied closed around her waist; she wore nothing beneath it. Her hair was unbound and cascaded down almost to her waist. Her eyes glowed dark blue in the arrow light as she walked slowly towards him.

He shivered, but not with fear.

When she was two steps from him, she stopped.

“You saved us,” she whispered. She lunged across the last distance between them and kissed him.

He kissed her back.

She threw her arms around his neck, and her body melted into his, her breasts pressing up against his chest as he put one hand behind her head and one on the small of her back. He let that hand slide down towards her hip and then down further to the firm, muscular ass below it, further still to the back of her thigh. She broke the kiss for an instant and looked into his eyes, grinning as she felt him swelling up against her, and then pulled him closer to her, kissed him harder, and then they were intertwined on the ground and she was pushing him down, pinning his back to the rock, and she was untying her robe as she climbed on top of him, a look on her face of something more violent and animalistic than joy—

The horse he was riding was at full gallop, and the city was visible in the distance. Finally.

All he could hear was the thundering of hooves. They would make Makan Alabar today. Filled to bursting with exhilaration, he let out a scream.

All the riders behind him let out the same scream.

And then they were over the dunes, and he saw a dust cloud kicked up in front of him and above him and heard new screams, different screams, and he knew what was about to happen even before he saw who was screaming.

No.

He reached behind his back for his sword and freed it, swinging it in vicious, gleeful circles over his head as he continued to keen.

You can’t.

He saw the first group of stragglers break away from the rest of the column and scurry off to the side, trying to climb back up over the dunes and away from the hunters. He grinned and rode them down himself, chopping downward with his sword once, twice, a third time, feeling the blood spray across his face, hearing bones crunch as his horse trampled someone underfoot.

He screamed his victory to the sky—

He was still screaming when he heard the pounding at the door.

He looked around, wildly. The room looked like a battleground. The chairs had all been knocked over, as had everything that was on the table when he went to bed. How long had he been asleep? The fire was still going; he could have lit himself on fire. Maybe that would have woken him up sooner.

The pounding started again. “Oproz?”

Alakuz.

A new flood of shame overwhelmed him as he scrambled to pick up anything he could on his way to the door.

“One minute, damn it! I’m coming.”

—

Alakuz was just about at the point of pounding on the door again when it opened and Kareva appeared behind it, bleary-eyed and slightly hunched over. He motioned Alakuz in, avoiding eye contact the entire way back into the room.

Alakuz sat down in one of the chairs next to the table. He didn’t wait for Kareva to take the other. “We have a problem.”

“I know.”

“Why did you kill him?”

Kareva looked awful. “I didn’t kill him.”

Alakuz rolled his eyes. “Don’t try that with me. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

“No, no, that’s not what I—there wasn’t any honor in it, is what…” he looked up into Alakuz’s face. “I murdered him. I snuck up behind him as he was walking away from me and cut his throat. He wasn’t even armed, I don’t think.”

“And all the stab wounds afterwards?”

Kareva shuddered. “I honestly don’t even remember it clearly. I lost control. Next thing I knew I was carrying him towards the bridge, and that was where you found us.”

Alakuz sighed and looked down, willing himself to stay calm. “Why?”

“I had to keep him quiet.”

“Makan Alabar?”

“They weren’t there.” A tear ran down Kareva’s cheek. “They didn’t make it.”

Alakuz had thought he was prepared to hear it, but now he felt his guts sink into his feet as his worst fears were confirmed. He took two steps towards Kareva, fists clenched, then stopped, whirled to his left, grabbed at the nearest object to him—the chair he had just vacated—and made to pick it up and throw it. Then his strength seemed to all ebb away, and all he could do was sink back down into it. His head fell into his hands, and he dug into his scalp with his fingernails, shuddering with the effort it took to keep himself from screaming. Then he slumped a bit. His elbows hit his thighs, and he lifted his head so that his chin was in his hands, rather than his forehead, and he looked up at Kareva, who still hadn’t moved from where he was hunched over in the corner.

“And he was going to tell the rest of the men.”

Kareva nodded. “And that was going to be it for us.”

“Probably.”

“I didn’t know what else to do.” He looked so young. “I’m sorry.”

“We have a bigger problem.”

Kareva looked alarmed. “I know I need to find a way to tell the men the truth. And I can’t be at odds with you right now while I have this over my head. You never saw me that night. I won’t let—”

“Kareva.”

“What?”

“We have a bigger problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think I know how they died.”

Kareva stared at him, uncomprehending, and stood up unsteadily, mouth starting to open, clearly about to ask him how the hell he could know such a thing. And then Alakuz heard the door swing open behind him.

Kareva shook his head and waved an arm in dismissal. “Sorry, Miruz, right now really isn’t a good time.”

Alakuz turned to see the big man in the doorframe, his face showing none of his usual brutish good humor.

“I’m sorry, gentlemen, but this can’t wait.”

IN THE NEXT CHAPTER (available Sunday February 22): Miruz makes his big move.

Read back: The Dead and the Dying |
Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 |
Chapter 14 | Chapter 15