The Daughters of Vei, Chapter 5

The conspiracy uncovers itself and shatters the unity of the tribe.

Previously on Daughters of Vei… Kivli saw Vei’s Messengers on a battlefield, and then proceeded to see several other, more disheartening things. Varyta ul-Kogon had a fight with his father, had a really bad trip in Kivli’s room, and the two of them decided to do what they believed must be done to save the tribe…and the Prince almost pulled it off, too, except Alakuz couldn’t sleep, and now bodies have dropped and the Kogon is gravely wounded but still alive, for now…

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(The Daughters of Vei is a prequel to The Shieldbreaker Saga. You can buy the first novel of the series here.)

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Metan woke with a start at the first thump on his door and rolled off of his bed, landing on one knee with his hand already reaching towards the dagger laid out on his end table.

One night a long time ago, when he was twenty-two and out on campaign, the Hodrir camp had come under a surprise attack, a raid by a rogue Sutrir company that had been bought off by…whichever empire they were supposed to be fighting against that summer. Metan didn’t remember that detail anymore. What he did remember was the feeling of panic when he realized he was in danger and couldn’t immediately find a weapon. He had never let that happen to him again.

His late wife had never gotten entirely used to it. She tolerated it, obviously, for his sake. Good woman. Looking back, he could see how it might have made her uncomfortable. Couldn’t be helped, though. The enemy didn’t often wait for a man to find his weapon.

The pounding on the door continued. “Ohta!” he heard Alakuz shout from outside.

He threw on a robe to cover his nakedness and went to the door, nearly crashing headlong into his son doing the same thing—but slowly and less alertly.

Metan ul-Metan grinned sheepishly. “Father.”

“Damn it, boy, where’s your blade?” he growled back. “You never know who’s out there.”

His son shrugged. “It’s just Alakuz.”

Metan rolled his eyes. The boy was a decent enough fighter—and a dead eye with a bow—but he was sorely lacking in the suspicious nature required to be a good strategist. He would never lead a company. Metan had made his peace with that sad truth already.

“Alright. Let’s see what he wants.”

He opened the door.

His protégé was breathing hard and covered in blood—and had a body slung over his shoulder.

It looked like the Kogon.

“He needs help. Now.” Alakuz stepped past Metan and took the last few steps into the house, grunting with exertion. Metan snapped out of his initial shock and was next to him in an instant.

“What the fuck happened? No. Tell me after. Metan!”

“Yes, Father.” The boy looked shaken.

“Go get Rakili. She is to send me every healer she has, and you can’t tell her why. Repeat that.”

“Go to the Priestess, have her bring all the healers to our house, don’t say why.”

“Tell her I said so. Tell her it’s urgent.”

“Yes, Father.” And with that, his son was out the door. Through the window, Metan saw him turn right, stop himself, and then run to the left, noting with satisfaction that the boy decided against the central path through the fortress. Perhaps there was a little sense in him after all.

Metan looked back at Alakuz, who had laid the Kogon down on the floor and pulled his robes away from his chest. “Is he going to make it?”

“I don’t know. He’s lost a lot of blood.”

“Are we going to need fire?”

“Maybe? Probably. Do you need me to—”

“No. Stay here. Rani!” he shouted. A few seconds later, a short, skinny girl of about sixteen appeared in the hallway.

“Yes, Ohta.”

“Grab one of the irons from the kitchen hearth and put it in the fire ‘til it glows. Quickly, girl!”

“Yes, Ohta.” The girl went back the way she came.

Metan looked down at his friend. His breathing sounded ragged, but he was clenching his teeth—that, at least, was a good sign. He was conscious. Somewhat.

He patted him on the cheek. “Varyta.”

A quiet groan escaped the Kogon.

He patted him again, slightly harder. “Varyta, wake up.”

He got no further reaction. He looked up at Alakuz, who shook his head in frustration. “I got here as fast as I could. I couldn’t take the main path.”

“What the fuck happened to him? Who did this?”

The look on Alakuz’s face when he turned made Metan’s blood run cold. “It was the Prince.”

Metan opened his mouth to speak and found no words.

Alakuz shook his head like he still couldn’t believe it himself. “I couldn’t sleep, went to check on my two guards, stumbled upon a couple of men I didn’t recognize standing in their place.” He scowled. “Four more inside, too.”

“How did you—” Metan stopped himself. He didn’t need to ask how Alakuz had gotten through them all. “Did the Prince—?”

“I caught him standing over his father with his sword raised. I knocked him out of the way and got between them.”

“But the Prince is alive.”

“Yes. He ran away. And I don’t know who else is with him, so I didn’t want to raise an alarm. I snuck the Kogon out the back window, through the Sisters’ courtyard.”

“Hmm. Not raising the alarm could make this tricky.”

Alakuz nodded. “Yeah. And now there’s six bodies on the floor of the hall. If the Prince has any sense, he’ll make a lot of noise now, accuse me of the attack. His word against mine...”

Metan chuckled darkly. “Don’t worry. If he had any sense at all, he wouldn’t have tried something this fucking stupid in the first place. What did he think was going to happen if he succeeded? He walks into the Avla Ohtar, announces that he just—” Metan shut up quickly when little Rani came back into the hallway, holding a glowing iron rod and a torch. “Thank you. Wake up Rala and tell him to get all the runners together.” The girl nodded and disappeared again. He handed Alakuz the glowing metal and held the torch above the wound. “There’s more blood on my floor than I’m comfortable with. You know what to do, right?”

“Yes, Ohta.” Alakuz took a quick measure of the wound, then positioned the iron over the Kogon’s shoulder and slowly pressed down. The Kogon’s eyes snapped open.

The flesh began to sizzle and crackle beneath the cleansing heat, Varyta took a deep, gasping breath, eyes bulging with pain, and opened his mouth as if to scream. No sound came out. He gasped again, kicking his legs out beneath him frantically in a desperate attempt to escape the fire. After a moment, his eyes rolled back and he slumped back to the floor, unconscious again. Alakuz pulled the iron away a moment later. No more blood followed. The wound was closed, at least. Metan nodded, satisfied.

“The Sisters will clean it and bind it, and we’ll hope for the best.”

“Ohta? Rani said you needed me to wake everyone up?” A skinny teenage boy with unkempt hair materialized out of the darkness, took one look at the unconscious man on his master’s floor, and took two steps backward. “Shit.”

“Yeah. I need the Ohtar assembled in their hall right away. Use everyone to get the message out.”

“Yes, Ohta.” Rala turned and ran back the way he came.

Metan turned back towards Alakuz. “Alright. Which of the bodyguards do you trust—”

“None of them, right now.”

“Yeah. Me neither.”

“Your son.”

“That’s one man against—”

“No, I mean, your son at the bedside, and all the bodyguards stationed at the front door, and nobody sets foot in your house who isn’t you or me. That'll buy us enough time to tell the Ohtar what’s happened. He won’t be able to sneak past anybody, and open combat would be too messy. He won’t risk it.” Alakuz looked down. “They won’t risk it. I’m pretty sure the three of them were in on it with him.”

Metan had been afraid Alakuz was going to say that. Giving the Prince’s retainers command of their own companies had always looked like a better decision ten years down the road than it ever could in the present. It was hard enough to plan for the future without a concrete timeline. “They weren’t there, were they?”

“No. And I didn’t recognize any of the men I killed. But they were too green to belong to anyone else.”

“Fucking idiots. Four children plan to sway the whole table? They’re all dead the moment they say the words.” He shook his head. “Bad night. Very bad. We’ll just have to get through it.”

—

The Avla Ohtar was eerily quiet.

Nobody had said anything since Georz ul-Zimion walked in. Even Mikal ul-Zalan had only nodded to him, gestured towards the open next to him, and then slumped back into half-brooding, half-sleepy silence. Mikal was never quiet. Something felt off.

He looked towards the head of the table where, instead of Varyta-Kogon, Metan ul-Aravan sat stonefaced, his bastard apprentice standing behind him with one hand on his chair, the other fiddling with the empty belt loop at his hip where his sword and scabbard usually sat. No one carried their weapons in this hall, under penalty of a one-way trip through the Sand Gate, and Alakuz ul-Nev was clearly as unused to being unarmed as he was to being among this company, even though he was rumored to be joining them soon.

But it was highly unlikely that that was what tonight was about. Metan would want the Kogon here for that, to provide political cover while he forced his talented but unpopular favorite into a seat at their table. A bastard with foreign blood and a history as bloody as his would not fit in well here, among the best men the tribe had to offer. They would have no choice but to accept his placement, but it would not be welcome.

But, again, that wasn’t happening tonight. What the hell was happening tonight?

He looked around the room: Uskol ul-Sakara of the Dazvar Muz sat between Edren ul-Edren of the Kamar and Ganruz ul-Tanaz of the T’kar Kveh. The three of them had come up less than a decade after Metan. They’d seen dozens of battles between them, just like him and Mikal, and were mostly past surprise. None of them looked worried so much as slightly bored.

The younger ones were more likely to be skittish at something like this, anyway. Zamal ul-Zamal of T’kar Kulta was in his seat, stifling a yawn (he should have remembered to splash some water on his face, that one). Tobiaz ul-Emran of the Dazvar Valaz and Harila ul-Toruk (who as ‘first archer’ was technically an Ohta, though the archers were usually split among companies) leaned towards each other making whispered small talk. Next to them, Aravan ul-Ganruz of the Limavar was leaning back in his chair, a little smirk playing over his lips. His hair was disheveled, and he seemed to be sporting some reddish-brown lip-shaped discolorations on his face and neck. Probably elsewhere, too: the kid had been blazing trails up and down the Kuja Nesiir since before he even came of age. Mikal absolutely fucking loathed him: it had something to do with a girl and the naming of Aravan’s battle standard, but Georz could never get the full story about out of Mikal before he started working himself up to challenge Limava to a duel—which would not do, because the young man was no slouch in combat, either. Georz did what he could to keep them at arms’ length when they were required to be in the same room.

Aravan caught his eye and nodded subtly. Georz quickly checked to see if his friend was paying attention before returning the nod. The younger man gave an understanding half smile in return.

He looked back towards the head of the table. This was taking too long to get started. Some fucking emergency.

—

From his post behind Metan’s chair, Alakuz leaned down towards his mentor. “They’re clearly not coming,” he whispered. “Everyone else is here.”

“Not Kivli,” Metan muttered back. “I’ll start when she gets here.”

“Respectfully, Ohta—” Alakuz whispered, then stopped abruptly when one of the men around the table cleared their throat ostentatiously, likely an unsubtle reminder that no man without rank was authorized to speak in this room unless he was directly addressed.

“I’ll start when she—” Metan started, then stopped just as abruptly.

Alakuz looked up. Kivli was standing at the threshold with Maraz ul-Alakan, Tarav ul-Inaz, and Zimion ul-Kulava. They entered the room shoulder to shoulder in pairs, first Kivli and Maraz, then Tarav and Zimion.

Varyta ul-Kogon stepped into the room behind them.

—

“This is not an easy thing for me to tell you all, so I ask your indulgence as I try to get through it. Earlier tonight, I removed Varyta-Kogon as our chieftain. I intend to be the one to replace him.”

Edren ul-Edren looked around the room at his colleagues: every one of them looked incredulous. What in the name of all the gods could this boy possibly be talking about?

He turned his gaze left towards Metan, who looked like he was about to be sick right at the table, and then turned right towards the usurper and his three playmates—and Kivli. What the fuck was she doing with them?

The boy got tired of waiting for someone to ask him to explain himself and started talking again. “On my instructions, over the past several months, Maraz-Ohta, Tarav-Ohta, and Zimion-Ohta have had communication channels open in Ikune and around the Disputed Lands, to gather intelligence independent from the sources that the Kogon and his Ra’an Ohtar get their information from.” He took a look around the room. “This wasn’t planned, you understand—I never had any intention to—my only goal was to make sure we knew everything that was going on up north. And what we found out was deeply disturbing, mostly because it was the first our people have heard of it.”

Edren saw the other Ohtar begin to look around at each other and mutter. He turned left again: Metan seemed to be sinking deeper into his seat.

“Maybe I’m wrong. You can tell me, gentlemen: did you know that Imandris is currently tearing itself apart? Did you know how many different generals are claiming the red right now? Did you know there is no Runir military presence anywhere within a month’s ride of Ikune?” Edren saw him stare directly at Metan. “Did anyone besides the Kogon and the Ra’an Ohtar know about the thousands of horsemen gathering north of the mountains?”

“What the fuck?” exclaimed one of the younger Ohtar across the table (Edren couldn’t tell who it was with his head turned) and the room erupted. Edren kept waiting for Metan to stand up and knock this child off his perch. Every moment he left it was a little more control slipping away from him. Was the boy actually going to be Oproz? Was this really fucking happening right now?

“All of you, SHUT THE FUCK UP for a moment!”

All of them shut the fuck up.

Edren didn’t need to turn his head to know who’d roared. He would recognize Uskol ul-Sakara’s voice anywhere: where other men spoke, he rumbled like one of the mighty cavern-beasts that must have carved the Vesret Pass out of the mountains, ages before men first walked it. Uskol turned his attention to the Prince. “Varyta ul-Kogon, do you mean to tell us your father is dead?”

Varyta paused, and Metan’s voice rang out. “He is not.”

Every head whipped towards Metan’s side of the room. He finally seemed to be starting to shake himself free from whatever stupor the Prince’s arrival had put him in. “Alakuz ul-Nev, tell the room what you saw tonight,” he said quietly. “Everything.”

Alakuz nodded. “Yes, Ohta. A couple hours ago I made an unscheduled inspection of the watch at the Avla Oproz and interrupted the attempted murder of Varyta-Kogon, in his chambers, by his son. No less than six other men were aiding him in his attempt—the six I came upon are dead now. The two men assigned to guard the hall tonight were nowhere to be found. I assume they were murdered by the Kogon’s attackers.”

“They were not,” snapped Varyta ul-Kogon. “No one else was meant to die.”

“So, you admit you tried to murder the Kogon, and that you failed?” Georz ul-Zimion’s question exuded his usual combination of confusion and exasperation at the stupidity of everyone around him. The rest of the seated Ohtar began to mutter amongst themselves again, and Edren felt himself relax for a split second. The prince’s folly was a catastrophe, to be sure, but it could be mitigated…

“He was doing what our patroness required of him.”

Everyone froze as Kivli stepped forward.

—

Metan feared very few people.

This lack of fear was not born out of arrogance, but out of a feeling that he had worked and fought and lived and, frankly, thought hard enough over the course of his twenty-some-odd years in the upper reaches of tribal politics to be prepared for pretty much anything.

Kivli was an exception. He knew he could never be entirely prepared for Kivli. She was not one to be controlled so much as guided—and something else had clearly been guiding her all her life, which meant that oftentimes all he could do was watch and hope she didn’t break things.

Knowing that hadn’t stopped him from promoting her, from seeing her exceptional prowess as a warrior or her keen eye for opportunities to press strategic advantages on a battlefield. It hadn’t stopped him from finding something endearing about her ungovernable wildness, even if it meant she was the one person in the entire fucking tribe (besides the Kogon) he couldn’t stare down into obedience. It hadn’t stopped him from continuing to trust her with the Daughters, even as she’d gotten ever more erratic since taking her wounds at the Bend. Even as she claimed to have regular visions from the Goddess herself.

He had decided her valor and her girls’ obvious adoration for her was worth the inherent risk involved with keeping her around—because realistically, there would have been no way to remove her as Ohta except to kill her, and he loved her, too, just as much as he loved and revered all of his best warriors.

Plus, if he was honest with himself, he wasn’t entirely sure he would succeed if he did try to kill her.

So he had chosen to continue to watch and hope she didn’t break things, and tonight she had broken everything that mattered to him.

She’d broken the Hodrir.

She’d broken the Etela.

However it played out, they were all fucked now.

If these traitors did succeed in taking the chair, the boy had no chance of uniting the tribes under his rule: he was young and untested, and as a usurper his credibility with the other chieftains would be nonexistent. And if they failed—which seemed less and less likely as the seconds ticked by and Kivli continued her recitation of the apparently calamitous vision she’d had (Metan admittedly wasn’t paying full attention, but he could put the pieces together easily enough)—the Kogon would still be utterly humiliated and seriously wounded, not to mention without an established heir. No Oproz of any other tribe would be able to justify submitting to him any longer. Even his own Ohtar would start jockeying for position to succeed him.

So Varyta-Kogon was done, and so was almost two decades of cooperation between the tribes—just in time for whatever the fuck was about to come down upon them from the north.

Kivli thought she had foreseen the end of the world. She had, in fact, brought it on. It wouldn’t be immediate, but it was inevitable.

And as a result, it didn’t really matter what he had to say right now. She wasn’t going to back down, anyway.

So he might as well worry about something else—like what he was going to tell his friend Varyta when he woke up.

—

Georz ul-Zimion felt himself getting more and more worried as Kivli continued her volatile prophesying. She seemed to have the table mesmerized with her terrifying trademark mixture of pious gravitas and violent unpredictability. Even Metan hadn’t so much as fucking moved since she started talking: he seemed to be accepting the inevitable.

This was very bad.

“…and even in the oldest, darkest times of our people’s history, when our patroness gave us Kalaa Ukruv’r itself, she required the blood of a great man in return. I revere Varyta-Kogon. It has been a great privilege to fight for him. But who else’s blood could possibly appease the Goddess in a moment as dire as—”

“Enough. This is ridiculous,” boomed a voice from the other side of the room.

Georz whipped around to find the source, and was stunned to see that Alakuz ul-Nev had stepped around Metan’s chair and laid his hands on the table—a shocking violation of protocol from a man who could not speak in this room unless he was directly addressed.

No one spoke for a moment. It was Kivli who broke the silence.

“Elakon, Alakuz-Ohta. It appears I owe you an apology: I must have missed your promotion.”

She was smirking. Alakuz remained stone-faced. “You did not, Ohta.”

“No shit,” Kivli snorted. “You know very well that you are not permitted to speak here unless you are spoken to, and I am done speaking to you now. You will sit down and be silent while your betters decide your fate.”

“Avzaka-min, Ohta. I will do no such thing.” Alakuz kept his voice even. “Every word you have spoken to this table tonight is sheer, unadulterated fucking nonsense, and if none of my superiors will speak against you, then I have no choice but to—”

Kivli snarled. “No choice indeed. You have no fucking voice here. You will shut your mouth and—”

Alakuz raised his voice. “You’re telling us that you sent a son to murder his father in order to appease the gods?”

A few of the men muttered quietly amongst themselves. Georz was impressed with Alakuz in spite of himself and relieved that someone had said something—and slightly embarrassed that it wasn’t one of the Ohtar.

“It was a sacrifice to Vei!” shouted Varyta ul-Kogon.

Alakuz turned his head towards the usurper Prince. “Oh, is that right? Did your father consent to be sacrificed before you fell upon him in his fucking sleep?”

“All the same,” answered the ul-Kogon in a smaller voice. “It was a sacrifice.”

“And it was rejected. Your father lives.”

“He must not, for all our sakes,” shot back Kivli.

“Did you even give him a chance to grab hold of a weapon? Or were you willing to let the greatest warrior chieftain of our lifetimes spend eternity in the Land of the Unseen Dead because a fucking mad woman said she saw you in a vision?” Alakuz shook his head in disgust and turned away from the Prince—and looked right at Georz. “Georz-Ohta, I hope you can forgive me for talking out of turn tonight.”

That was well done. Georz nodded. “You are forgiven. Carry on.”

“Ohta, will you accept this foolish boy as your new Oproz? Will you take his word as law?”

Georz shook his head slowly and emphatically. “I will not. I am the Kogon’s man, as I have ever been.”

Alakuz nodded in curt satisfaction and raised his voice again, looking around the room. “Will any of you accept an Oproz who displays such terrible judgment? Especially one who has thrown away his honor so casually in the process—”

“Honor?” Kivli scoffed, then burst into incredulous laughter. It took her a few seconds to recover, and when she looked back at Alakuz her eyes were wild with outrage. “You think your fucking honor matters right now? Our way of life is about to end. Our gods are about to abandon us! You’d choose your honor over the future of our people?” She stared at Alakuz as she spoke, malice dripping from every syllable. “Oh, that’s right. Of course you would. You’re barely one of us in the first place.”

Alakuz kept his gaze trained on Kivli and slowly broke into a smile that sent a shiver up Georz’s spine. He hadn’t seen it first hand, of course, but he’d heard stories—and in every one of those stories, young Alakuz had smiled at that older boy before clubbing him to death with his own training saif in full view of all his friends. No one who saw this smile could doubt for a second what it meant.

And Kivli smiled back at him.

No one else in the room even seemed to be breathing.

Alakuz finally let his eyes drift from Kivli’s face. He turned to glower at young Varyta and his three friends. “There is no hope for any of you. Show the Kogon your neck, and maybe he’ll be merciful and let you die with a sword in your hand.” He turned back to Kivli. “I know better than to make that suggestion to you.”

Kivli turned her head to the Prince’s followers. “We’re done here.” She turned back to address the room one last time. “The Goddess has commanded us to raise Varyta ul-Varyta to the chair, and we will do so by whatever means necessary. Anyone who attempts to stop us is my enemy and an enemy of our gods.” She turned to look at Alakuz again. “Come find me.”

Alakuz nodded. “Yes, Ohta.”

—

Well, this should be interesting, thought Alakuz to himself as the five traitors left the room.

He looked down at Metan, trying to parse the look on his face. He’d never seen it before. Not on Metan, at least. The closest thing he’d ever seen to it was on the faces of just-captured soldiers after battles back up north—not Etela warriors. Easterners or westerners. Men who surrendered. Men who were willing to accept losing control of their destiny.

“What are your orders, Ohta?”

Metan didn’t say anything for a few moments more, then sighed. “They have to die, obviously. Form up your companies.” He looked up at Alakuz. “You too, Ohta. I see no reason to delay any further. Unless there are any objections?” He waited half a second. “No? Good. I didn’t think so. Alakuz-Ohta, greet your brothers.”

Ganruz ul-Tanaz stood abruptly and stalked out of the room, as was to be expected.

Alakuz looked around the room at the rest of his new colleagues. One or two of the older ones nodded to him silently.

Aravan Limava smiled and gently tapped a salute on his chest.

The rest gave him nothing: no encouragement, no acknowledgement, no respect for staring down an enemy none of them dared to, no gratitude for saving them from looking like fools.

He still had nothing to lose.

—

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