In Ash: A Secret History—a truly epic and unflinchingly gritty novel—Mary Gentle created Ash, a woman warrior with intelligence, strength, and guts—along with weaknesses and flaws. In this short work, we meet Rax. Among her people, Rax must fight to be what she is: a warrior. She finds acceptance, but acceptance does not necessarily bring happiness.
“Our information was correct,” Ukurri said, pointing. The ship was just visible, its prow appearing out of the dawn haze, already in the calm water of the bay. “Let them come ashore. Attack as soon as the light’s good.”
“Prisoners?” Rax asked.
He grinned at her. “Try to keep one or two alive. They might have things to tell us. These Islanders are weak-willed.” Low chuckles came from the mounted company that formed Bazuruk’s first Order of the Axe.
“Ready yourselves,” he ordered.
Rax knotted the war-horse’s reins on the saddle. She breathed deeply, excitement cold in her gut. Her palms were damp. She wiped them on the black surcoat, feeling cold links of mail underneath, and adjusted the buckles on her leg and arm greaves. The shaft of the war-axe was familiar under her hand. The shield hung ready at her side.
The ship nosed close inshore. Sea foam went from gray to white. A cold wind blew. Here great shelves of rock jutted out into the sea, channels worn between them by the waves, so that at low tide a ship could put into what was a natural quay.
There were thirty men—no more—she estimated. Our numbers are equal, then.
“There!” She saw the flash of light from the cliffs at the far end of the bay: a signal-mirror in the hands of the Third Axe, telling them that the other half of the company was in position.
“Now!” Ukurri shouted.
Her heels dug into the horse’s flanks. For a few strides she was out in the open, ahead of them all. The rocks echoed. Sparks struck from flying hooves. Rax, cold clear through, hefted the great axe. Ukurri and Azu-anuk and Lilazu rode with her, and the rest of the Order behind, but she spurred forward and outdistanced them all.
The war-mount cleared a channel where crimson weed hung delicate and fragile in clear water. She heard cries, shouts; she saw the men half ashore from the ship and heard the thunder of the riders from the far end of the bay. She rose up in the saddle sweating, cold as death under her mail, excitement drying her lips—and caught a spear-thrust on her shield. She struck. The great blade sheared up under the man’s helmet. The jaw, ear, half the skull ripping away.
Another struck at her, jabbing with a barbed spear. Her blow, which seemed only to brush him, spilled a crimson trail.
On the backstroke she put the axe’s spike through another man’s eye socket and left him screaming. The horse reared, came down, crushing with iron hooves. Smooth rock became treacherous, slick with blood. The sun hit her eyes. Her face was wet, and her black surcoat had turned rust-colored with blood—not hers. An Islander fled. She leaned dangerously far out of the saddle to slice through his leather jerkin and left him face down on the rock. She smelled burning and heard flames crackle. A dozen of the Order were at the ship. The pitch that caulked its seams burned fiercely. A man screamed. She saw Ukurri strike, hurling the man back into the blaze. Flames were invisible in the sunlight; only the shimmering air betrayed them.
“Bazuruk!” She heard the war call behind her.
She wheeled, lifted the axe—it was heavy, and her arm was stiff—and saw Lilazu fighting on one of the narrow rock spurs. His horse shifted uneasily. It was no help now to be mounted. Two Islanders had him pinned against the water’s edge.
Her thrown hand-axe took one in the back. Rax struck with the flat of the axe, sending the other man full-length into the shallow pool. Lilazu acknowledged Rax’s aid with a raised hand, guiding his horse delicately onto solid rock, then galloping off toward the last knot of fighting.
Rax leaned down from the saddle, using the spike of the axe to hook the stunned man ashore.
The crackling of the flames was loud. Surf beat on the rocks. Gulls cried. The air smelled of dank weed, of burning, of blood. Rax’s hands were red, her arms streaked with blood that dried and cracked. She hauled the Islander over her saddle, clicking to the weary horse, and rode over to where Ukurri watched the burning ship. The early sun was already hot. A warming relaxation spread through her. If she had not been exhausted, she would have sung.
“Rax Keshanu!” Ukurri slapped her leg and pulled the Islander down from her saddle. “A live one . . . and not half-killed. Good! That’s four.”
She was grinning amiably at nothing in particular: she recognized the after-battle euphoria. “Shall I bring him with me?” she asked.
Ukurri hesitated. Rax’s light mood faded.
“Do you think I’m stupid enough to let him escape?”
“Women have soft hearts,” Ukurri said and then laughed as Rax held up her bloody hands. “But not in the Order of the Axe, no—though we’ve only you to judge by. Bring him with us to the Tower, then.”
The others were rifling the dead, leaving the bodies unburied on the rocks. If the stink offended any of the nearby settlements, they’d send a burial party. If not, enemy bones would bleach in the cove, and the storm tides would carry them home to Shabelit and the Hundred Isles.
At their first camp, she tended the unconscious Islander’s head wound. He was young, no more than twenty, she judged: Ukurri’s age, ten summers younger than Rax. He had pale skin, red-brown hair, and green eyes in a face marred by plague-scars.
She felt an indefinable pang: not of desire or pity, but somehow familiar. If I’d seen him, I couldn’t have killed him, she realized. Anukazi! What’s the matter with me?
She had fought before, taken prisoners for ransom; none had ever disturbed her the way this Islander boy did.
The Order headed north, resting in the heat of noon, crossing the humid, insect-ridden flats of the Shantar marshes. Rax guarded the Islander closely. After the first day his rage and grief—displayed beyond what a Bazuruki considered proper subsided into quiet. She thought that meant loss of spirit until she caught him cutting himself and the other survivors free with a stolen knife. After that she watched him constantly.
“I didn’t think he had the wits to try it,” she admitted to Ukurri, as they rode on north.
“You served on the barbarian frontier, the Crystal Mountains. They’re cunning in the cold south,” he said. “The Islanders are the worst of all. That one’s a Vanathri—you can tell by the cropped hair. The others are mercenaries, from the Cold Lands, I’d guess.”
Rax shrugged. “It’s not our concern. They’ll discover the truth in the Tower.”
That night she took a water flask for the Islander. He regarded her with disgust.
“Bazuruki killer,” he said.
She pulled off her helmet, letting the coarse black hair fall free. She grinned, feral, content.
“Yes,” she said, “I am a woman and a warrior.”
She realized that he wasn’t shocked or even surprised. That sent her back to Ukurri with oblique questions, and he told her that in the Hundred Isles a woman was barred from no profession, not even that of warrior.
On the third day they rode through rice fields to the river estuary and came to the city.
“That’s Anukazi?” The Islander rode beside her on a remount, bound securely. “A great city, Rax . . . ”
“Wherever you heard my name, keep it out of your mouth.” She almost regretted her harshness. Her curiosity was stirred. “Why did you come here—one ship’s company against all Bazuruk?”
“You have my freemate there.” His voice was rough. “I would have fought my way to the city—but I used mercenaries. It is no surprise that I was betrayed.”
The Order rode down the brick-paved way that led to the South Gate. Ox-carts drew aside. Insects whirred in the dustclouds. The heat made Rax thirsty. As the shadow of Anukazi’s squat square buildings fell across her, she became aware that her joy at returning was less than usual.
“You have women-warriors in your islands, then, Vanathri?”
“If you can recognize a Vanathri, you know we don’t bind ourselves with useless laws.” His body tensed as they rode down the wide streets. “Though it seems your laws aren’t as strict as I’d heard.”
“You don’t think so?” Her bitterness was never far below the surface. Her long fight to be accepted in an Order had been successful, but the struggle robbed her of half her satisfaction. At last she said, “I’ve spent most of my life in the northern mountains. All I know of the Archipelago is rumors.”
“That can be remedied.”
He was talking to keep his fears at bay, she guessed. He didn’t look at her. She studied his familiar features. What does he see when he looks at me? Rax wondered.
She listened while he spoke of the Shabelit Archipelago, which began in the sandbars off Bazuruk’s coast and ended as far south as the Cold Lands. He talked about the Hundred Isles, where life was trade and where half a hundred petty lordlings engaged their private quarrels, with no Tower to bind them into one nation . . .
“Rax,” Ukurri called, as they entered the Tower walls, “take that one down to the cells with the mercenaries before you go off duty.”
She acknowledged his order curtly. While the rest of the Order dismounted at the stables, she made her way with the prisoners to the dungeons. The underground shadow was cool.
“You’ve got another Islander in here,” she told the jailer, keeping charge of the Vanathri man. “Put them in together. They might talk.”
Brick walls were scarred with nitre. Pitch-torches flared, blackening the ceiling. The jailer searched down the entry scroll.
“Three-five-six,” he announced. “Let him sweat. They won’t get to him for a while.”
“Why not?”
“A conspiracy was discovered against the Firsts of the Orders.” He glanced fearfully at her. “The guards are interrogating everyone in the Tower and executing traitors.”
“Anukazi save the Tower from harm,” Rax said, and the man echoed her fervently. “Give me the keys, I’ll take this one down for you.”
Shadows leapt as they descended the long stairways. Rax held the torch high, searching for the right cell.
“I’ll send a physician to look at you.”
“No.” He was hostile.
“You’re young,” she said, “but you’re not stupid. If you’ve no friends, you won’t live long here, Vanathri. These cells are plague-pits.”
“I’ll do without Bazuruk’s help.”
She fitted the key in the lock, thrust the torch in a wall-socket, and pulled the heavy door open. There was only one other Islander listed—a Shabelitan—so this must be his freemate. It would be interesting to see a warrior-woman, Rax thought.
The Islander came into the torchlight, dragging his chain.
Rax was disappointed. It was a man: stocky, in his forties, with a lined face and mocking smile. This is the wrong cell, she thought, or the Islander woman’s already dead—
“Devenil,” Vanathri said, holding out his bound hands. The other man stepped forward and kissed him on the mouth with a lover’s kiss.
“So here you are to rescue me. Again.” The older man smiled tightly. Behind his mockery there was pain. “Vanathri are impetuous, I know, Kel. But this is stupidity.”
“Did you think I wouldn’t come?” Kel Vanathri asked, looking younger than ever.
“Did you come for me or for Shabelit’s heir? Vanathri’s not a rich island, and if ever I inherit Shabelit—though lord knows my mother may outlive us all—then I can see why you’d want to be Shabelit’s freemate.”
“I’d stay with you even if I thought you’d never inherit—or if you weren’t heir at all. You should know that by now.”
Cynicism marked Devenil’s face, but his voice was tired and uncertain. “Would you? Yes, I think you would.”
“I should have managed this better.” Anger darkened Kel’s eyes. “I’m a fool, and I’ve paid for it. I’ve lost a mercenary company and my freedom. But a chance will come. We’re not dead yet.”
Rax crept away from the spy-hole, leaving the torch to burn itself out.
I should report it.
Lost in thought, Rax made her way to the Axe Order’s building in the Tower complex. Devenil, that was the name: heir of Shabelit of the Hundred Isles. They can’t know, or they’d be asking a ransom for him. But they’ll know as soon as they start interrogating him, as soon as this purge is over.
Anukazi keep them from me!
She reached her own chambers, a bare brick-walled room divided by rice-paper screens. Through the window she could see across the flat roofs and ziggurats of the city. She pulled the thin linen shutters closed in order to keep flies and a degree of heat out. Then she shed her mail, bathed, and donned a silk robe.
She sat on the pallet. A brush and paper lay on the low table, unfinished calligraphy spidering across the page. She wasn’t yet calm enough to write. She called the house slave and ordered rice and herb tea.
The Islanders had reeked of dead meat. So they eat animal flesh, Rax thought with revulsion. The men couple with one another, and the women too, I suppose; and women are warriors, and men—but he’s a fighter, that Kel Vanathri.
Seated cross-legged before the carved Keshanu mask that hung on the wall, she gazed at the abstract face and tried to achieve harmony. Patterns of light and shade entered her eyes. Her breathing slowed.
She was free, then, of Rax. She could stand outside herself and see the tall strong-limbed woman whose skin was lined with exposure to wind and sun. With black hair, green eyes, red-brown skin, she was born of hot Keshanu in the Crystal Mountains . . .
But then she thought of Kel Vanathri and Devenil, Shabelit’s heir.
She tried to consider them dispassionately. The image that came to her was not Vanathri’s but Ukurri’s. Of an age with the young Islander, Ukurri was already First Axe of this Order, her commander, and sometime bedfriend. And she, a decade older, with experience gained on the barbarian frontier . . .
You’ll never be First Axe, a voice said in her mind. No matter how good you are, how many successes you have, they won’t give you an Order because the men wouldn’t accept you as commander. You’re good, better than Ukurri, but you’re a woman.
In Vanathri, Kel said, there are women-warriors; and in Zu and Orindol and Shamur, and all the Hundred Isles . . .
She cursed Kel for disturbing her peace of mind.
He’s young to end in the Tower. He, she thought, has courage, too; he crossed the sea, which is more than I’d do.
Outside, the gongs sounded for evening prayer. She belted her hand-axe over her robe and put on her sandals, preparing to go down to the main hall.
Keep low, Rax thought. There have been conspiracies and interrogations before. I’m loyal to the Tower. They’ll take Anukazi’s sons but I don’t think they’ll take Anukazi’s only daughter.
She followed the disciplines of the Tower, attended weapons practice and theory classes and services for the preservation of Anukazi’s priests. She knew better than to ask about missing faces or empty places. Finally the atmosphere of tension eased: the purge was—for this time at least—finished.
The dice were kind. Rax found herself on a winning streak for the first time in a long while. She was able to bribe extra rations for the Islanders without touching her own pay. When she heard that the Guard had begun interrogating the mercenaries, she went back to the Tower and paid for an undisturbed time in the cells.
The torch burned bright. Kel had fallen against Devenil while he slept, and the older man sat with his back to the wall, supporting Kel. All the mockery was gone from his worn face.
Rax was noisy with the lock, and when she had the door open, hostile stares greeted her.
“What do you want?” Kel Vanathri demanded.
Rax shook her head. The calmness that was a discipline of the Order deserted her. She couldn’t name the influence the Islanders had over her.
“They’re starting the questioning soon,” she said.
“Bring me a knife,” Kel said, “I won’t ask more, Bazuruki.” It was pointless to tell them that one day their rations would be drugged, that they would wake in the upper chambers—in the hands of the Anukazi Guard.
“Say you’re only mercenaries, pirates, whatever,” she pleaded. “As for freemates, for the love of Anukazi himself, keep that quiet!”
“There’s no love in your Orders?” Devenil asked skeptically.
“I—” The Order denied love fanatically and practiced it covertly. Every Order had its pretty boys, vying for favor and carrying rumors. Looking now at Kel and Devenil, she thought no, it’s not the same thing at all.
“What they forgive themselves, they hate in others.”
“Take advice,” Kel Vanathri said, “stay out of here.” She knew they had plans to escape, or to invite a quick death.
The thought bothered her more than it should. She slammed the door and walked away. In a little while they’d be dead.
They’d be good companions in an Order, she thought. It’s a senseless waste . . .
To kill Bazuruk’s enemies?
No!
What am I thinking? We’re caught between the northern barbarians and these damned islands, which, if they could ever unite, could crush Bazuruk. We can’t afford mercy, not even for those two. Ah, Anukazi! Why should I care?
Rax couldn’t sleep that night. She rose and dressed—in mail, with her war-axe—and went down to the main hall. But even dice-games couldn’t ease her spirit.
All the city slept. There were no lights in the squat buildings, no noise from the beast markets, no carts in the street. She went by way of the river wall and entered the Tower as the guards changed shift.
Torches burned low in the guardroom.
“Jailer—” Some instinct held her hand, when she reached to shake him awake. A thin thread of blood ran out from under his head, bowed on the table.
Movement caught her eye, where the torch guttered. The axe slid into her hands. A scuffed noise came from down the passage. She tensed. The jailer had no knife or sword. They would be armed, then.
Softly she said “Vanathri?”
“Be silent.”
“Devenil.” The strength of her relief was alarming. “Where’s Kel?”
“Put down your axe!”
She rested the spike on the floor, hands clasping the shaft. “Now I’ll tell you something. You’re not the first to kill a jailer and come this far. But can you fight your way out past every guard in Anukazi’s Tower?”
“If we have to.” It was Kel Vanathri’s voice.
“Wait.” She sensed movement. “Suppose you were taken out of here by a guard? There are riverboats. You might cross the sea to the Hundred Isles.”
“And let you sound the alarm?” Kel said. “Put down the axe. I can throw a knife as well as any Bazuruki.”
“You’re not listening to me, Islander. Take the jailer’s uniform.”
They stepped forward into the light. Devenil nodded, watching her with a curious expression. “We’ll lock you in one of the cells, unless you prefer a glorious death—as Bazuruki do, I’ve heard.”
“And how will you get past the gates? I’ll have to speak for you. Trust me,” Rax said. “Only be quick!”
It was only then that she knew her long career with the Order of the Axe had ended in betrayal.
A fishing boat was moored with sails still raised. The man aboard answered Rax’s hail from the dock.
“Stay back,” she said to the Islanders. The man’s head came above the rail, and she drove her knife up under the soft part of his jaw. Blood spilled over her hands. She wrenched the blade loose, feeling it grate against bone, and shoved the body off the side. It sank quickly. She led the Islanders down the stone steps.
“Now, Devenil, Shabelit’s heir,” she said, “take this young fool with you and get out of Bazuruk. The alarm’s out, I expect, but the tide’s in your favor. Go!”
“They know who brought us out,” Kel Vanathri said. “You can’t stay.”
“But my Order—”
“You should have thought of that.” Devenil gave a sardonic grin. The early sun showed dirt, blood, the traces of long confinement; he looked a good ten years older than his age. His mocking face disturbed and attracted her. She felt he understood motives she herself didn’t recognize.
“We owe a debt we’ll never pay you,” said Vanathri. His young face looked vulnerable. “But if you come with us to the Hundred Isles, we’ll try.”
From the first moment I saw you, she thought. That lover’s kiss between you and Devenil . . . how could I leave you two innocents in the Tower? You remind me of—
Yes. Is it that simple? He'd have been very like you, if he’d lived: my son Tarik.
“I’ll come,” Rax said.
The sun burned, and the sea shimmered. The stars hung like a mist of diamonds, and the night wind cut to the bone.
Cotton-wool fog hugged the coast. The deep swells rolled like hills. They headed south, into ever-colder seas.
Rax lay moaning in the coffin-sized cabin, sweating, heaving with every lurch and dip of the sea. Days passed. Kel and Devenil sailed, fished, fed her fresh water. Once she woke to see them lying together, Kel’s pale arm across Devenil’s scarred body.
Solitude and loss and sickness frightened her. She slept with the war-axe tight in her grip. No Tower discipline, no skill learned in battle helped her now.
On the tenth day, when they sighted the coast of Dhared, she barely stirred, and at noon, when they passed it and came to Vanathri itself, she was too weak to do more than stare. She saw a green land, chill under a gray sky and lashing rain, where slant-roofed buildings hugged a narrow harbor. They sailed into it and were recognized.
Rax stood on the quay, swaying, seeing Kel and Devenil in each other’s arms—in broad daylight, she thought dizzily. Then they pulled her into their embrace. The gathering crowd of Vanathri Islanders cheered, and every bell in the town rang out.
When she was well, they crossed the straits to Shabelit, and there Devenil took her before the Island lords and the head of the Council.
“Lady Sephir,” he said to her, “here is our rescuer, Rax Keshanu of Bazuruk, axe-warrior of Anukazi’s Tower.” The chamber was full of brightly dressed men and women and children, she saw, appalled. The air stank of old cooking, new perfumes, and the sea. Rax pulled her stained surcoat over her mail and kept the axe close to her hand. Shabelitans jabbered and pointed while Kel Vanathri told what had happened in Bazuruk.
“We do not welcome Bazuruki,” Sephir said, when she had heard his story, “but you have brought my son back to me and restored Kel to Vanathri. You are welcome, Rax Keshanu, in all the Hundred Isles!”
The woman, white-haired, had Devenil’s face with more delicate lines. She stood as Rax bowed—the formal acknowledgment of a Bazuruki warrior—and embraced and kissed her.
Rax froze, smelling the scent of a meat-eater.
Amid the general applause, the Lady Sephir pronounced her an honorary captain of Shabelit. It was then, identifying the white scars on the old woman’s arms as ancient sword-cuts, that Rax realized she had met her first Shabelit woman-warrior.
Cold spring turned to cool summer. Rax moved into rooms in Shabelit, a city founded on trade and almost as big as Anukazi.
She lived with Islander customs as much as was possible for her but followed her version of Bazuruk’s discipline. One midsummer day Devenil found her in the practice courts using the war-axe.
“Come up and talk,” he said, and she joined him on the seafort’s wall.
“I see too little of you both lately,” Rax said as she pulled on a tunic against the Archipelago’s cold wind. “I suppose Kel’s back on Vanathri or another of your damned rocks.”
“Kel offered you a place on his ship,” Devenil said. “Why don’t you take it?”
“The sea, with that sickness?” she scowled.
A brisk wind blew across the sea-fort, spattering her face with dampness. She watched the light on the straits.
“If you wanted to come, sickness wouldn’t stop you.”
“I’m a soldier,” she said at last. “You people . . . I didn’t expect anything like the Orders, but you’ve no standing army at all. You don’t understand. I’m a warrior. It’s what I do, and I do it better than most. You’re asking me to drop it and ship out as some kind of deck hand—”
“A guard. You’d work on the ship, but so do Kel and I. Even Bazuruki aren’t killed by honest work.”
“Damned Islanders,” she said.
Devenil smiled. “You’re not the first person to perform a generous act and regret the consequences.”
“I don’t regret what I did!”
In her mind's eye, Rax saw her chambers in the Tower of Anukazi. The cool light, the shade, the fine carving of the Keshanu mask. Ever since I came to the islands, she thought, my mind’s been in a fog.
“Let us pay our debt to you,” Devenil said. “Come with us on the Luck of Vanathri, if not for our sake, then for your own.”
“You love him, don’t you?” The thought still amazed her.
“I’ll do anything I can for him, including ordering you aboard the Luck if it eases his mind. I’m still Shabelit’s heir. I can do that.”
I got you out of the Tower, she thought. How much more must I give?
“You don’t order me. I’m Bazuruki.”
“Not any more! You have to see that.”
She sighed. Eventually she asked, “When do you sail? I’ll come if I can, Devenil, but don’t wait for me.”
They waited anyway, but she never came.
“You’ve got company,” Garad said. “At least I’d swear it’s you he’s looking at.”
Rax glanced up from the dice. Sun and windburned from his months at sea, brown hair grown untidy, wrapped against the cold of a Shabelit winter night—Kel Vanathri.
“Stay here,” she said, “we’ll continue our discussion later.” Garad smiled, shuttling the dice from hand to hand. “Don’t leave. I have your debt-slips—”
She gave him a look that stopped his voice in his throat, then crossed to the doorway.
“Rax!” Kel gripped her hands, then let them fall, puzzled by her lack of response. “The time it’s taken me to find you—”
“Did I ask you to come looking?”
“I came anyway. It’s a strange place to find a Bazuruk warrior. With mercenaries.”
“Mercenaries and gamblers are no worse company than traders’ sons and lords’ heirs with nothing better on their minds than piracy.”
Her message hit home. She sensed that he was on the edge of violence, and she grinned. He studied her closely.
“You’re drunk,” he said, amazed.
“Am I? It’s a custom we could do with in Bazuruk.”
He frowned. “Devenil said you’d end in a place like this. I’m sorry he was right.”
“Listen.” Rax laid one long finger on the center of his chest, leaning closer. The spirit-fumes blocked his meat-eater scent.
“I’m a soldier by profession and choice. I had no quarrel with Bazuruk, except they wouldn’t make me First Axe, which I earned. I’ll practice my skills where I please. You were glad enough of them in Anukazi.”
“You can’t live on old debts.” His anger was under tight control. “I see you have new ones. I’ll leave you to settle them, if you can.”
She waited until he’d left the smoke-filled inn before she went back to the table.
“That’s a rich trading house,” Garad said. “The Vanathri.”
“Shut your lying mouth.” She fell into the seat, draining the mug of spirits.
“Gratitude doesn’t last.”
I’m trapped, Rax thought foggily. Money doesn’t last, honorary captaincy carries no pay—and I won’t beg from Kel or Devenil! How else, in Anukazi’s name, can I live? And to sneer at me for being with mercenaries . . .
She missed the act of violence, the revulsion that, in the cold moment before battle, transmuted to recklessness; the empathy that made her imagine each blow, each wound. It was not skill nor craft, but art—an ache and an addiction.
“I can find the people you need.” Garad interrupted her thoughts. “There are lords in the Cold Lands who’ll pay well for a mercenary company, but first you need money to equip them.”
“And pay off my debts,” Rax said, grinning. “We’ll talk. Call to mind three or four men you can trust, and a good lockpick. I’ve a plan to pay off my debts and get all the gold I need to go to war.”
The house was dark. Rax led them cautiously. Her hand clamped over the mouth of a guard, and her long knife cut his throat. She wiped her hands. Garad came forward with the lockpick. Their breath was white in the icy air. Rax took another drink from the flask to warm herself.
“It’s open.” The lockpick stood back.
Her heel skidded in blood. She cursed and regained her balance. Darkness cloaked them. She led the way to the cellars.
Above, the house slept. Rax hummed under her breath.
“It’s a fine revenge on Vanathri,” Garad said as his men searched the stacked chests. Silver glinted in the lantern’s light.
“It’s only a joke,” Rax corrected him. “Try that one there—yes, and there. Good.”
After a few skirmishes in the Cold Lands, I’ll come and pay back what I’ve taken. I wonder if he'll see the joke? she thought.
The flare of the lanterns took her totally by surprise.
The war-axe slid into her right hand, the throwing-axe into her left. One man yelled. Dazzled, she struck by instinct. Garad heaved up a chest and threw it at the advancing men. She let fly with the throwing-axe, heard a scream as it found a target.
Garad screeched—
New lights from five or six bright lanterns blinded her. Something struck a paralyzing blow to her arm. The men, out of her striking reach, held crossbows. Fear sobered her. Even mail could not stop the crossbow bolts pointing at her breast.
A familiar voice shouted, and no one fired.
Garad bubbled out his life at her feet. The lockpick breathed harshly in the sudden silence. Her other men, and several guards, lay dead. Kel Vanathri stood at the head of the steps, in night robes, carrying an unsheathed sword.
He cried out.
Devenil slumped against the wall. Blood matted his hair and soaked his shirt; his flesh was laid open, and white bone showed in the redness. The throwing axe’s blade was buried under his ribs. He was dead.
“He was always a light sleeper.” Kel sounded stunned. “He said he’d see what the disturbance was. By the time I could follow—”
“I'm sorry,” Rax said. “I liked Devenil.”
“I loved him!” Kel’s agony flared. “He was the best. The Island will never see another like him. That you could kill him . . . ”
“His rescuer in Bazuruk is his killer in Shabelit,” Rax said, rubbing her face wearily. Chains clinked. “He’d appreciate the irony.”
It was less complex in Bazuruk, she thought. That is what comes of charity. I’d never have hurt him if I’d seen it was Devenil.
“You’re nothing more than a butcher. I thought you were different because of what you did in Anukazi, but you’re just another Bazuruki killer.”
“Of course I’m Bazuruki.” She was bewildered. “I was born in Keshanu. I spent ten years defending the borders of the Crystal Mountains. What else would I be?”
It took time for the anger to leave him. Almost to himself, he said, “That’s the tragedy. I know you have compassion, but it doesn’t matter, does it? The Bazuruki training is what matters.”
“I am what I am,” Rax said, “and so are you. And so was he. We can’t change.”
“I can’t believe that.” He stood, pacing the cell. The guard looked in and went away again. They wouldn’t stop him from visiting his own justice on her, she guessed. Not on Shabelit, Sephir's island. She knew how a mother felt for a dead son.
“What will you do?”
“Nothing. You will answer to the law for theft, murder, Devenil.”
“Not a cell. Not caged. You owe me that.”
“I owe you nothing!” Leaving, he stopped. “He—loved you, Devenil did, for fighting to be what you were. He would have given you a lord’s inheritance if you’d asked. You were his friend.”
She watched him with Bazuruki eyes, Rax Keshanu, Anukazi’s daughter.
“Tarik—Kel, I mean—”
“Better we’d died in Bazuruk.”
“I’m a long way from home,” Rax said. “I’m tired, Kel.”
“I won’t cage you,” he said from the doorway. “But I won’t let them free you, not after what you’ve done. If you leave, there’s only one other way from here.”
“Yes,” she agreed.
After a time, she knew he had left.
She stood looking down through fine rain into the prison courtyard, where soon they would raise a block, and Rax Keshanu would for the last time behold the clean stroke of an axe.