16. NEMESAN GAMBITS

Tyentso’s story

The Soaring Halls, the Upper Circle of the Capital City of Quur

Ten minutes after Kalindra left

Tyentso had two hours before the army would be ready, or so she’d been told. The army didn’t need her until then. The Quuros army hadn’t depended on orders from the emperor since Kandor, and even then, he’d been very good at creating a military apparatus capable of organizing itself.1

In theory, she had nothing to do.

That theory bore no resemblance to reality.

Just a handful of minutes after speaking with Kalindra, Tyentso appeared in Jorat, checking on the second front.

Technically speaking, it wasn’t a front yet. Ever since Havar D’Aramarin had retreated to Marakor with his armies and cut off the Gatestone network, the Royal Houses who had gone with him had been solidifying their positions. They’d been building defensive fortifications and setting up a warding system that made it difficult—if not actively impossible—for anyone to teleport into the territory they now controlled. It was disturbingly similar to the barrier the Manol vané used around their nation.² Tyentso was reasonably sure that certain individuals—the Immortals, for example—could blow through those wards, but there weren’t too many of those left anymore. And those who remained had better things to do with their time.

Everyone knew that they were heading for war. The refugee camp that had sprung up in the shadow of Atrine’s ruins was a massive sprawl of distinctive Joratese tents (Ashok? They were called something like that³) that took up two to three times the area of the original city. The air smelled of horses and hay, though not nearly as much of human waste as she would have expected. Indeed, there was an odd petrichor scent to the air, which mystified her for a few minutes with its haunting familiarity until she identified it as the smell of Demon Falls itself—millions of tons of water washing over the white granite dam works crafted by Ompher, before falling thousands of feet down into the Zaibur River below.

The tent city was organized with military precision. A sour taste filled her mouth. She had hoped the curse—whatever it was—hadn’t reached Jorat. This already boded ill for that idea.

Then a group of children ran in front of her, laughing. Tyentso was invisible; they’d have run right smack into her if she hadn’t dodged out of the way. The kids were the wide range of odd hues that one might expect of Joratese children, but it was impossible to miss the flashes of Marakori red. They played some kind of game, kicking a leather ball between them. As Tyentso watched, an old man started to shoo them away from the tents, laughing as he promised them treats later as a bribe for a few hours’ peace. There was nothing like anger in anyone’s voices.

She exhaled slowly. It had been weeks since she’d seen anyone smile like that in the Capital.

Normally, Tyentso didn’t teleport in blind to a location. She didn’t have to. Her witchgift was clairvoyance; she’d learned how to spy on others from a distance literally before she’d learned how to read.⁴ Unfortunately, it was possible to block such scrying. Whoever was in charge of setting up the magical defenses for the Joratese duchy had done so. Reassuring, given the magical nature of their enemies in Marakor, but personally inconvenient in her case. Tyentso had been able to scry where imperial command was located; she hoped that she’d find the Joratese duchess nearby. She hadn’t spoken to the woman for long when Ninavis had visited the Capital, but she did remember the woman mentioning that she operated in a tent close to the main military camp.

Tyentso didn’t remove the invisibility until she’d found said tent. She would have done the expectedly dramatic “turn visible right in front of the duchess having sauntered past every guard,” but she was relieved to discover that the tent was magically warded to the sky. So much so that even she would have a difficult time breaking through without being noticed or stopped outright.

As she contemplated the magical protections, a horse nearby snorted at her and tossed its head.

Only … it wasn’t a horse. A fireblood. One that seemed familiar—black with red stripes on its legs.⁵ The creature was standing over by the side of the ducal tent along with a dozen other similarly-sized firebloods. The grouping didn’t resemble a herd of horses being stabled together so much as a group of soldiers standing guard.

Which is exactly what they were.

Tyentso glanced around, but her invisibility charm seemed to be holding up. The soldiers didn’t see her. The firebloods did.

She walked over in their direction.

“I need to speak to Ninavis,” Tyentso said, pushing down any feelings of embarrassment engendered by the idea of speaking to someone who looked like a horse. “Tell her the Emp—” She remembered being told the Joratese didn’t gender their titles. Oh right. Ninavis was the Joratese duke, wasn’t she? “The Emperor of Quur wants to see her.”⁶

The fireblood gave her a remarkably unimpressed look, but he raised his head in a gesture that might be generously described as a nod of agreement. Then he trotted past her and over toward one of the larger tents. Halfway there, the fireblood stopped and looked back over his shoulder at her in a motion which seemed to suggest “What are you waiting for?”

Tyentso followed him.

The horsefireblood made a loud whinny-like noise at the mouth of the tent, at which point the flap of the tent pulled to the side all on its own. The fireblood tapped a hoof against the ground with impatience. The message seemed clear enough: “get in there.”

“Thank you,” Tyentso murmured and walked inside.

The tent was larger than any general’s tent in the army. Given the importance that the Joratese placed on these things as part of their cultural legacy as a nomadic people, Tyentso suspected it was sturdier. The walls were decorated in a combination of banners, which included the horse banner of Jorat, a less familiar banner decorated with a jaguar head, and a third banner that might have been an exaggerated flower of some kind—perhaps a lotus.⁷ A kettle steamed on a small hearth set to one side. A number of collapsible chairs and cushions were scattered about. Light from hanging lanterns threw geometric patterns around the room.

A large group (including, dear gods, another fireblood) clustered around a map spread out on a table. Most of them looked Joratese and were unfamiliar. A few she knew: a large, plainly dressed man with a white blaze over one eye, a Quuros military general she recognized, and the person she was here to see—Duchess Ninavis Theranon.⁸ Duke Theranon, she mentally corrected.

The woman was dressed a bit differently from when they’d met in the Capital. There, she’d presented herself in modest, sober western Quuros fashion—embroidered agolé, ribbon-trimmed raisigi, a long, elegant cotton skirt. The way she’d worn her hair had made it possible to miss—or at least overlook—the splash of maroon skin painted down one side of her face.

Now, Ninavis she wore her hair braided in a stripe down the center of her head, each plait decorated with gold beadwork and jewels. Rubies at her ears, nearly the same color as her darker skin, drew attention to the difference in skin color. She wore a kef like a man, crafted from leather in a way absolutely no one from the Capital would dare unless they were using magic to keep from suffocating in the heat. No agolé at all, but a quilted velvet jacket embroidered with scenes of hunting cats and firebloods. It was as if someone had told her that all the fashionable people wore their most expensive jewelry when going to war.⁹

“We need to talk.” Tyentso ignored everyone else in the room.

One of the others—someone Tyentso didn’t recognize—scowled. “Who the hell are you—?”

The Quuros general—Lavrin?—glanced over at her, and then his eyes widened. He stood so quickly he nearly toppled the chair he’d been using, and gave her a deep bow. “Your Majesty,” he said loudly.

Tyentso valiantly fought to keep from grinning. Sometimes it was nice to be recognized.

Ninavis paused in the middle of whatever they’d been doing. “I need the room, everyone. Go grab something to eat. I’ll send messengers when we’re ready to pick up again.”

The group shuffled out, with the white-and-gold fireblood that had been evidently taking part of the conversation giving Tyentso a surprisingly elegant tilt of their head as they passed.

She waited until they were all gone.

“I was wondering when I’d see you,” Ninavis said. “You really fucked things up, didn’t you?”

Tyentso blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Oh yeah. Excuse you indeed,” the duke snapped. “I couldn’t quite believe it when I heard that you’d assassinated most of the Royal House heads, but then I realized it was only that you’d tried to kill the bastards off. You hadn’t succeeded. And now my people have to deal with the consequences.”

If there’d been any doubt in Tyentso’s mind that Jorat was not experiencing whatever it was that seemed to be holding the Capital in a tight-fisted grip of fanatical devotion, this neatly spat on the idea. Ninavis was in no way inclined to do whatever Tyentso said without question. Quite the opposite.

“It’s not my fault that Havar never showed,” Tyentso said. “I thought he had. It looked for all the world like Havar had personally attended. But either he’s so powerful he was able to shrug off temperatures that would melt steel or it was never him at all. Maybe a stand-in or some sort of illusion. I don’t know.” She dug a knuckle into the side of her head. “He had this planned. That much is quite obvious. Too much was too ready too quickly. And he’s a god-king to boot.”

“What,” Ninavis said.

“Havar D’Aramarin is a god-king,” Tyentso repeated. “Turns out the Royal Houses were just lousy with fucking god-kings, and I had no idea. Boy, is my face red. I don’t know which one he is, mind you—”

“Murad,” Ninavis said. It would have seemed like a non sequitur, except … well. That was a Quuros god. Not exactly one of Tyentso’s favorites either.

Tyentso froze. “What about Murad?”

“He’s Murad,” Ninavis said. “Havar D’Aramarin, I mean. He has to be. I have damn few spies left now because the bastard’s killing anyone who he even slightly suspects might be one, but those who’ve survived tell me that altars of Murad are going up all over the damn place in Marakor. Which seemed a bit out of character when I’m told House D’Erinwa is so decimated by just … everything … that they hardly have a presence in Marakor at all. But if you’re right and Havar’s one of these bow-down-and-worship-me bastards, then I would assume his particular flavor of religion would be the one he’s pushing the hardest. And that’s Murad.”

Tyentso pulled out one of the chairs and sat down. Murad was not a minor god. How could he be when he was the God of Justice and Slavery and the whole damn Quuros economy ran on his back? But Tyentso had thought he was the patron god of House D’Erinwa, since that had been the Royal House who controlled the slavers.

The idea that Murad was the head of a completely different house, the first ranked and most powerful house …

She was going to need to talk to Lessoral about this.¹⁰

“Well, isn’t that just fucking lovely.” She took a deep breath. “It’s a gods-damn Nemesan gambit.”

Ninavis raised an eyebrow.

Tyentso gestured angrily. “The morgage are invading Khorvesh. Havar—fucking Murad—is setting up shop in Marakor and cutting off all the supply chains. I either split my forces and leave both sides weak enough to be easily crushed, or I concentrate on one enemy and let the other one run roughshod over the whole fucking empire. No matter what choice I pick, I lose.”

Ninavis poured them both a drink. “You’re just lucky that Jorat was already in the middle of an undeclared war against Marakor before all this started. We’re already prepared. This only upped the timetable. But Janel warned me that the morgage would leave the Blight—”

“Janel.” Tyentso squinted. “Where is Janel?”

“Busy,” Ninavis said. “But she’s checking in nightly. And I know the brat well enough to know exactly what she’d say in this case.”

“Please enlighten me.” Tyentso grabbed her drink, silently checked for poison because the past few months had hardly made her less paranoid, and gulped down a mouthful of fire. “What the fuck—?”

“Ara,” Ninavis explained. “Sip it next time. It grows on you. Anyway, her advice would be: there’s always a move you can make once you stop playing by their fucking rules. Only, to be fair, she probably wouldn’t use the word fucking. For someone raised by Dorna, she’s surprisingly decorous.”

Tyentso snorted. “Stop playing by their rules? You think I want to be dealing with two different invasions?”

“What’s happening here won’t be them invading us,” Ninavis said. “Marakor’s hunkering down and getting ready for a siege. Only they have all the food.”

“Same difference. It’s going to come down to a fight, and there’s something—” Tyentso clamped down on her impulse to explain what was happening to everyone in the Capital. It sounded crazy. Who’d ever heard of a spell that could affect that many people simultaneously? Even if the Capital’s normal population had gone down because people had fled the city or died for any number of horrifying reasons, it was still the largest city in the empire.

And she was missing something. Tyentso knew she was missing something. The entire situation felt … disturbingly familiar. Like she had at some point read about something very much like this happening before. But she couldn’t remember where, and it was infuriating. She wasn’t thinking clearly—and she was pretty sure she knew why.

“Murad, huh?” Tyentso shook her head as she took a sip of the well-named “fire” that Ninavis was serving her. She could see how one might get used to it.

“I could always be wrong,” Ninavis allowed, “but I just can’t see the bastard putting up shrines to Murad if he’s really Jaakar.”¹¹

“No, that wouldn’t make any sense,” Tyentso agreed absently. She’d seriously underestimated Havar D’Aramarin. True, one could argue that he’d underestimated her first, but he wouldn’t make that mistake again.

She’d damn well better not either.

“So what do you think he’ll do next?” she asked Ninavis. “You’re closer to the ground on this than I am.”

Ninavis snorted. “I think he wants to wait us out. Make it so costly in terms of all the people starving to death that you have no choice but to come to the table and offer him peace terms. And then he cuts a deal. All he has to do is be less immediately threatening than the morgage or the Yorans.”

“Wait.” Tyentso leaned forward. “What about the Yorans?”

Ninavis raised an eyebrow. “If the food stops coming into Yor, you don’t think they’re going to politely stay up there and starve to death, do you? They’ll move south. That means heading into Jorat. And once that happens, we’ll be too busy dealing with a Yoran invasion to pay attention to what Havar is doing in Marakor. He’s already set that in motion. Again, all he had to do was stop the food shipments. Turns out Quur’s biggest strength—that amazing gate system that let us move freight from once side of the empire to the other in a matter of hours instead of weeks—is also its biggest weakness.”

“Fuck,” Tyentso muttered. “Is there … is there any way we can stop that? There has to be something…”

“Sure, send food.”

Tyentso laughed once, loud and bitter. “Fantastic. I’m so glad I came in person to talk to you.” Tyentso set the glass on the table and glanced at the map. There were far too many blank spaces on it and far too many places where the enemy might easily slip through their defenses without being noticed.

Tyentso tapped the part of the map labeled “the Kulma Swamp.” It was a significant chunk of southern Marakor, just north of the Blight. She remembered once hearing that it was where all the trash of the Zaibur basin drained.

“If we could fix their food situation, do you think the Yorans might work with us?” Tyentso asked. “Or do you think there’s just too much bad blood?”

“Are you proposing giving the Kulma Swamp to Yor? I think that if you expect the Yorans are going to be terribly keen on relocating down to one of the hottest, most miserable parts of the entire continent, you maybe have never been to either Yor or the Kulma.” She gave a definite nod to the section of map where Tyentso’s fingers still lurked. “I grew up in that hellhole. Trust me when I say that no one but no one lives in the Kulma Swamp because they want to. It’s so damn humid you might as well be trying to breathe underwater.”

Tyentso sighed. Ninavis was right, of course. That was a ridiculous offer to make, and it was highly unlikely the Yorans would ever agree.

Tyentso stood up. “We’ll have to come up with something. Figure out a way to get in contact with someone who can speak for the Yorans. Do it soon, before Havar hires them in exchange for resuming food shipments. Thanks for the drink.”

“Sure, don’t mention—”

Tyentso teleported out.