18: DEMON FALLS
Jorat Dominion, Quuros Empire. Three days since Jarith Milligreest was killed by Xaltorath
Brother Qown shut his book and gestured to Janel. “Your turn.”
The trip to our dominion’s capital was a dark one for many reasons, not least because of what we’d seen in Tiga Pass.
Ninavis leaned forward. “Wait, what happened next?”
Janel stared at her hands. “Nothing surprising. I thawed the village, dealt with the possessed, then we sheltered in that same azhock while I handled the demons in the Afterlife.” Heartbreak lurked in the matter-of-fact tone she used to describe the day’s events.
“I’m sorry,” Kihrin said. He’d had his own problems at the same age, of course—that business about being gaeshed and sold as a slave came to mind. Yet he couldn’t help but notice Janel had a familiarity with the battlefield many soldiers in the Quuros army couldn’t hope to match. Jarith Milligreest had once offered him a military commission, just because he’d been willing to fight one demon. What would he say to a woman who’d fought hundreds?
What would Jarith have said, Kihrin corrected. Past tense.
“You’re sorry? You had nothing to do with it,” Janel replied.
He hoped that was true.
Janel’s Turn. The road to Atrine, Barsine Banner, Jorat, Quur.
Why slaughter a whole town and then freeze it? Demons could’ve hunted those slain souls in the Afterlife. But demons never passed up an opportunity to travel to the Living World, even if only by proxy. Except those demons had then been trapped by the ice. What did that accomplish?
That upsetting question lurked over a deeper chaos within me.
The flames I’d summoned.
I kept hearing Tamin’s words. We were both witches.
Preoccupied with my thoughts, I almost didn’t notice when we arrived at the falls.
“What’s that noise?” asked Brother Qown as we rode our horses down the main road.
Oh yes. We’d found horses again.
When Tiga Township had been attacked, the town’s workhorses had run. Not all of them. I’d been forced to put down demon-possessed horses as well as people, but we Joratese have never locked away our horses unless we’re sheltering from storms. Once the town lost its icy layer, we’d picked up tack and harness before coaxing some of those horses to return.
Sir Baramon looked surprised at Brother Qown’s question and clapped the Vishai priest on the shoulder. “Haven’t you ever seen Demon Falls before?”
“Demon—” The priest blinked. “I thought we were still a day away.”
“A few hours at most,” I corrected.
“But should we be able to hear it even now?” He seemed flummoxed by the implications.
I clicked my tongue and coaxed my horse forward. I’d decided to call her Ash Flower. While she was never meant to be more than a farm horse, I found her sweet, if a bit anxious. She deserved someone who would feed her carrots, call her beautiful, and take her out for gentle rides. Not me, but I promised myself I’d find her a worthy companion in Atrine.1
We crested the rise. I halted Ash Flower while I waited for Brother Qown to catch up.
He did, questions still sharp on his face. I pointed.
He followed my arm with his eyes, and then his jaw dropped.
“Demon Falls,” I said.
I’d been to Atrine many times, but since I’d always arrived by Gatestone, I’d never seen it from this vantage. I’d never seen the Great Steppe curve into the distance as Lake Jorat spilled over its side to form a giant waterfall, miles across.
Atrine, the flower of Jorat, sat on that waterfall’s summit, in the center of the dam holding back Lake Jorat’s waters. The city soared upward, a mountain of white quartz and blue granite, its palace and temples a series of high spires scratching a storm cloud sky. The city spread out in an enormous circle, protected by thick white stone walls looking delicate and dainty as porcelain from this distance.
Two bridges connected Atrine to the outside world, graceful lanes of stone lacework stretching from city to shore. In reality, the bridges spanned hundreds of feet wide and miles long, large enough to ride an army of horses across. From this distance, the scale distorted. Everything looked tiny and fragile: eggshell thin.
I frowned as I studied the scene. Something about the bridge looked wrong.
“What’s that smudge on the bridge?”
Sir Baramon blinked. “Smudge, Count?”
Dorna scrunched up her nose. “Ah, my sight ain’t what it used to be.” She shielded her eyes with a hand and squinted hard. “Are those…” She paused. “Are those buildings out on the causeway?”
“Who would build on the bridge?” I asked. “That’s bizarre.”
To my surprise, Brother Qown responded with indignation. “Cities are like rivers, Count. They overflow their banks, spread outside their borders. It happens everywhere.”
“Other cities,” I said with a dismissive snort. “The Capital, I’ve heard, overflows on a regular basis with human detritus, but there’s nowhere for anyone to go beyond the walls of Atrine. The city is an island.”
“That’s true, foal,” said Dorna, “but you’re forgetting how wide those bridges are. And anyway, the city’s empty most of the year. Plenty of room.”
Brother Qown said, “I don’t understand. Why would a city this size be empty?”
“Because it’s a trap,” I said.
At Qown’s astonished look, I shrugged and gave him what I hoped would pass for a sincere smile. “It’s not a trap now, mind you, but Atrine wasn’t built to be a city. It was built to be … a taunt. You see, Emperor Kandor had infantry and he fought the god-king of horses. Khorsal’s vast cavalry included thousands of centaurs, not even counting firebloods and all the other horse beasts in his service. Quur couldn’t win the war by engaging Khorsal on his own terms, so Kandor dammed all the plateau rivers, flooded the Endless Canyon, and built this city as a lure. Emperor Kandor designed Atrine to be a place Khorsal’s ego would demand he attack. He built Atrine to kill a god—occupying it afterward was incidental.” I pressed my lips into a thin, disapproving line. “There shouldn’t be so many people here their numbers would overflow onto the bridge.”
Sir Baramon gave a half-hearted, apologetic shrug. “Have you visited lately, Count?”
My jaw tightened. “We came here right before…” I paused. Before Lonezh Canton. Before Xaltorath. “It’s been a few years,” I admitted.
“Well, Count.” He scratched at the growing beard on his chin. “Things do change.”
I sighed. “Some things.” I edged Ash Flower back toward the main road. “Come on, then. The sooner we reach the city, the sooner I can warn Duke Xun about the danger to Jorat. This threatens his entire dominion. He’ll have to do something.”
“I ain’t in no hurry,” Dorna said. “You know Oreth’s waiting for you.”
“It changes nothing,” I said. “I have a duty, Dorna. The duke must be warned.”
“Fine,” she said in a sullen voice that made it clear she thought little about the situation fine at all.
We continued riding.
Atrine’s scale became apparent as one crossed the Merat Bridge connecting land to island. The city looked small in comparison to Lake Jorat, a vast inland sea terminating in an endless line of demon-mouthed spillways, spraying plumes of water. Scale made Atrine seem like a quaint pastoral castle, a god-king tale come to life. Then you saw people and realized the city’s true size.
It was as I’d remembered it from childhood.
Well, almost as I remembered it.
I didn’t remember the ramshackle shantytown squatting on the bridge leading to the city proper. Someone had built the shacks from wood and cob mud pulled from the lakeshore. I saw a dozen different styles of architecture, from western Quuros plaster to some sort of coiled mud structure resembling a beehive. Not one resembled a Joratese azhock.
“Marakori,” I said. I noted the sullen stares from the windows, the curtains pulled aside and then quickly shut. Glimpses of even skin, light brown to dark chestnut, dark hair, red or black. “What are Marakori doing here?”
A narrow, twisting passage ran through the shantytown, large enough to take the horses single file. We decided it safer to walk them than ride. With every step, I felt the squatters’ reproachful stares.
“Refugees and runaways. Admittedly it has … uh … grown a bit worse in the last few years,” Sir Baramon said.
“You mean it’s been like this for years?” I blinked at him. “Who holds their thudajé?”
“No one,” he said, surprised. “I mean, they are Marakori.”
A shout ahead drew our attention. Soldiers dragged a woman out onto the bridge and cuffed her to the ground, while a second band ransacked the cob house where they’d found her. After a few seconds, they exited, shouting and dragging a Marakori man out with them. The woman screamed and reached for him, but the soldiers struck her down.
Brother Qown tensed next to me. “Aren’t we going to do something?”
I hesitated. “It’s not our business,” I said. “Besides, those men wear the duke’s colors.”
My heart hammered in my chest. I wanted to do something. I should have taken the whole incident in stride, trusting the duke’s men to enforce the laws, but Barsine’s corruption still tasted sharp and bitter on my tongue. I could no longer—
Even as I debated my options, a guard pulled a dagger across the Marakori man’s throat.
The woman’s scream filled the air.
I grabbed Brother Qown by his robe before he could run over and try to save the Marakori man’s life.
“No, I can help!”
“You’re wrong.”
The soldiers left. They tossed the man’s body to the side, ignored the woman, and marched toward the gates. Whatever their objective, they had either accomplished it or didn’t think it worth the effort.
I let Brother Qown go. He ran over to the woman, who sobbed over the slain man. He might have been anything to her: brother, father, friend, husband. She ignored Brother Qown until he tried to comfort her, and then she lashed out at him, screaming.
“Come on, then,” Sir Baramon said as he pulled Brother Qown back. “I promise there’s not a thing you can do here.”
I felt Qown’s stare. Although he didn’t say the words, I knew what he was thinking.
You could have stopped this.
“Enough,” I snapped at him. “This isn’t our business. Anyone who lives here does so at the duke’s sufferance. We don’t know the circumstances.”
“You said the Joratese didn’t just kill criminals! What about saelen? Where was his trial by combat? His tournament? Who was going to win his thudajé?”
“Brother Qown—”
“How was this justice?” Tears spilled down his face, tears of furious anger.
“Ah, you sweet colt,” Dorna said, patting the priest on the shoulder. “You know that only applies to Joratese.”
I walked Ash Flower past the scene, refusing to look back behind to make sure the others would follow. I refused to look back and see the dead Marakori man.
I didn’t know the circumstances. I didn’t know the man’s crimes. Perhaps he’d deserved it. Perhaps he hadn’t. But I knew one thing for certain.
In Jorat, what you protect is what you rule.
Brother Qown didn’t understand. He didn’t understand how standing up for some random Marakori refugee might be perceived as an act of rebellion.
I pulled the hood up over my head as I approached the gate, which always struck me as an underwhelming, tiny little door—because Kandor had designed it to be difficult, bordering on impossible, for horses to use.
What had Emperor Kandor cared for horses? He hadn’t come to save horses but to slaughter them.
If the front gate was small, the archery platforms were not.
“My count,” Sir Baramon said, “let me do the talking.”
I nodded, relieved, still not trusting my own voice. Brother Qown’s words had hurt like razors against my soul.
I had hoped for a subtle, quiet entrance to the city, but it wasn’t to be. All this business with refugees and improvised buildings parked on the bridge like a besieging army ensured the guards not only checked each entrant but wrote down particulars as well. Those reports would be compiled later. Entering the city unnoticed became complicated if I ended up in a file reported to my enemies.
Damn it all, but I do have such enemies.
“Name and reason for visiting?” the guard asked when we reached the front.
Sir Baramon laughed. “Reason for visiting? Tell me, my good man, does anyone answer with aught but tournament with the thing itself two weeks away? As well to say one is interested in moistening one’s brow, while swimming in the Zaibur!”
The guard cleared his throat and gave Sir Baramon a calculating look. “Watching or participating?”
“Starring!” Sir Baramon barked out. He then leaned in toward the man and lowered his voice. “Not me, you understand. It’s been a few years”—he patted his stomach for emphasis—“since I’ve been the star of a tournament. Still, surely you’ve heard of the great Sir Kavisarion of Dalrissia?” He lowered his voice again until he was whispering. “This year, I bring my newest protégé, Ember—it’s her first show, but you’ll be seeing her at the games, I promise you that—as well as our trainer, Bitsy, and her personal servant, Featherbottom.”2
Brother Qown blinked in surprise. Dorna, on the other hand, grinned from ear to ear and puffed out her chest.
The guard looked us over, settling on my red cloak before returning his attention to Sir Baramon. He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Why didn’t you say you were with the Red Spears?” He scribbled something on his paper. “Your people are in the usual place: the Green next to the Temple of Khored. Tell Captain Desrok I said hello.”
“Desrok?” Baramon raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you mean Captain Mithros?”
I fought to keep my expression bored and still. Mithros was the name Thaena had given me, the man who would help me find a way inside Duke Kaen’s palace.
The guard smiled. “Oh, right. My mistake. Enjoy the games.” He motioned for us to bring our horses inside.
I realized just how odd we must have seemed. Tournament performers would come in through the Gatestone. We’d walked up on foot, with inferior horses too poor to ever be used in the ring.
So he’d tested us.
Fortunately, Sir Baramon passed.
I heard a yelp and looked back to see Sir Baramon hopping on one leg. “Damnable woman! What was that for?”
Dorna put her hands to her hips. “As if you don’t know. Bitsy?”
“Well, it’s not like you’re growing larger in your old age, is it?”
Mare Dorna poked a finger at Sir Baramon’s stomach. “Unlike some!”
“Count.” Brother Qown said a single word, low and warning. He stared up.
I followed his stare with my own and saw he was looking at one of the city’s many bridges, stretching from rooftop to rooftop. A crow’s cage hung on the bridge closest to the entrance, meant to be viewed by all who passed by. A fire had twisted and blackened the metal. The same fire had surely killed the person inside, now nothing more than a charred skeleton.
A wooden sign hung from the cage, proclaiming the criminal’s deeds.
Witch.
Behind me, the whole group fell silent. Dorna and Baramon ceased their bickering.
No runes marked the cage, unlike what I’d seen in Barsine. It seemed this was more of a routine burning. Given the Marakori slums close by and the Marakori reputation for demon worship and black magic, I felt I could reliably predict this witch’s ethnicity.
The last Hellmarch had started in Marakor, after all. Started in Marakor but ended in Jorat.
We have never forgotten.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. Sir Baramon said, “We shouldn’t linger here.”
I nodded and led us to the duke’s palace.
Atrine is the most beautiful of cities,3 and after our entrance, I saw none of it.
Every corner held dangers. Every shadow hid a knife’s edge. It took all my will to stay calm and steady, to smile and act like I had no enemies and no reason to hide.
I raised my borrowed cloak’s hood, anyway.
The city itself was laid out in a circular maze pattern, but the narrow, twisting roads and alleys of the ground level had one purpose: killing horses.
The streets had been meant to trap Khorsal’s invaders, funneling centaurs and horses both into canyons where boiling oil, heavy stones, or barbed arrows might be rained down on them from above.
The city’s livable areas started on the second floor or higher, all accessed through narrow stairs—twisting and curving in ways impossible for horses to navigate. Brother Qown had asked why we spent so little time in a usable city, but that answer should have been obvious. How could any Joratese worth her mane stand to spend so long removed from our herds?
The city’s center played host to several notable buildings: the duke’s palace, a cathedral dedicated to the Eight, and a much larger cathedral dedicated to Khored, Emperor Kandor’s patron deity. A grass ocean lapped in front of those buildings, the only land large enough to support horses, firebloods, and even elephants. Thus, it was the only spot where the Great Tournament of Challenges could be held.
The Green swarmed with activity as carpenters finished buildings and raised azhocks. Tournament participants set about last-minute practice sessions, while they still had the opportunity. Despite the Green’s size, most of it fell under someone’s watchful eye. Dorna had every reason to be concerned.
But I thought this might work to our advantage. The crowded field was also a chaotic, distracting field.
So I’d believed.
We’d traveled all the way to the palace’s shadow before Arasgon’s scream set me straight.
“It’s intolerable!” Arasgon shouted. When I realized who he shouted at, I put a warning hand before Dorna and Qown. Sir Baramon had already stopped in place, looking like he’d just come around the corner to see lions feasting.
“Janel Danorak isn’t chattel to be sold at whim! Her lineage goes back five hundred years!” Arasgon’s jaws snapped forward as he choked out the words; I felt his anger in every tensed muscle. He hadn’t yet raised up on his hind legs, but the moment was coming.
“That’s the Markreev Stavira,” Sir Baramon said. “Aroth Malkoessian.”
“Yes,” I agreed, feeling the bowels in my gut twist.
Next to me, Dorna cursed under her breath.
Although an older man, the Markreev still looked in his prime. Like his sons Ilvar and Oreth, he was golden-maned and dark-skinned. I had never in my life seen the man smile. And I hadn’t seen him in person since the day I’d marched into the Markreev’s bedroom and presented him with his youngest son’s crimes.
Of all my enemies, I considered him the worst; he was my Markreev. I owed him my thudajé.
But I didn’t give it to him. Arasgon hadn’t been wrong; the Markreev of Stavira had treated me like chattel. I would never forgive him.
“I never sold her,” the Markreev said. He crossed his arms over his chest, his back straight. No angry fireblood would intimidate him, although his men looked more nervous about the situation. “And where is your master?”
“I haven’t seen her in months,” Arasgon said—possibly true if he hadn’t noticed me yet. “I am—”
The Markreev said, “We have been through this twice already. I will speak to my son on the matter, but what is done is done. You try my patience. Begone before I decide you’re out of line.”
Arasgon snorted and tossed his head before he trotted away from the palace’s front door.
Aroth Malkoessian, the Markreev Stavira, walked inside, and his men followed behind.
Or rather, most of his men. Not everyone fell in line behind the Markreev. I watched as a guard exchanged looks and a significant nod with a gardener who pretended to be busy pruning flowers. I recognized a fireblood lurking near the Green as Sominias, a beautiful mare who had long been friend and companion to the Markreev’s wife, Shiniah.
So the Markreev watched the palace entrance. Easy enough to guess why.
In theory, I served the Markreev. If he ordered me to accompany him, then his son Oreth could organize my Censure at his leisure. It wouldn’t matter Oreth had used bribery to buy the will of Tolamer’s citizens. The protocols would have been observed. And once I’d been cast out? Those same bribes might well convince my people to make Oreth my replacement.
“Well, if that ain’t a fine pack of troubles,” Dorna muttered, next to me. “Do you think Arasgon saw us?”
“Yes,” I said. “Now let’s walk away.”
“Where are we going?” Brother Qown asked.
I sighed. “Home.”