Hafsa Azeina had missed her meeting with the parens at the Grinning Mymyc in Bayyid Eidtein. She had sent youngsters with messages to Matteira and Mattu, but only one of those messages reached its destination. The second child had dawdled in a kitchen doorway, ensnared by the scent of cinnamon, and waiting for a reply had caused the dreamshifter to be late. But for the rumbling belly of a small child, events might have unfolded in a very different manner.
“I pulled some of the bodies out myself,” Imperator General Davidian said as they looked at the row of corpses laid out before them. “Many of the dead appear to be parens, though what business they had here in Bayyid Eidtein is not clear. The rest of the victims were women. Children. Sweet little children.” His voice broke, and he shifted the dragon’s-head helm under one arm as he dashed tears from his begrimed face.
“Some of them were Mer, some may have been merchants, or travelers. Do I dump them into an unmarked grave far from their homes, and leave their families to wonder at their fate?” The soot had settled into the deep creases on either side of his mouth, painting his face into a mask of grief. The Imperator General had aged well—certainly he had kept more of his hair than Wyvernus had—but this day, he looked as if he was feeling his age.
The dawn sky was a pale, pearly gray, streaked with delicate pink and the last hazy trails of night; too gentle a canvas for such a stark scene as was laid out before them. A dozen bodies, men, women, and yes, little children, laid out in a row upon blankets, as if such things could be any comfort to them now. Their deaths had been hard, one could see it in the contorted limbs like charred wood, in the silent shrieks begging for a release from pain. One more image of horror forever burned into her dreams, layer upon layer of pain and grief.
Sometimes, not even death comes easy.
It had been a hard lesson for Saskia. The girl’s face was as pale as an outlander’s, and she had been noisily sick.
“Eleni was a sweet girl,” Davidian went on, still staring at the bodies. “She loved horses. The men would laugh that if you wanted Eleni to dance with you, you had better show up with hay in your hair. I have a daughter the same age, and a grandson. Tell me, how am I to explain this to her mother?”
“We had best find a way.” An imperator unfamiliar to Hafsa Azeina shook his head and frowned at the blackened bodies. “The Grinning Mymyc is a Mer family stronghold. Was a Mer family stronghold. When Ninianne finds out about this… The woman is fierce when it comes to her family, and her private army outnumbers the king’s troops two to one.”
“More like four to one.”
They all turned to find a heavily tattooed man standing there. Despite his apparent youth, a hairless face and gangly body hinting that he had not yet grown into himself, something in his eyes and the stillness that gathered about him like a cape told Hafsa Azeina that this was no mere boy.
“Il Mer.” The Imperator General bowed, and his dragon’s helm caught fire in the sunlight. “We are very sorry for your family’s loss.”
“Are you really?” The boy’s eyes were dark and terrible. “I think you do not comprehend my family’s loss. You leave our dead out here on indecent display, as if they were nothing.” He gave an odd little shudder, and the hairs on Hafsa Azeina’s arms stood on end. Something about this son of salt was not quite right.
You two-leggeds are so slow, Khurra’an chuckled in the back of her mind. And you smell like roast pork.
Her stomach rumbled. You stay out of this.
As you wish. He laughed again and was gone.
“Baram, Naamak, shield our folk from the eyes of these… people.” The young man shut his own eyes, and visibly took hold of his emotions before opening them again and looking straight at her. “Dreamshifter. I find it passing strange that you arrive just as the flames are dying. Tell me, what business might the Queen Consort of Atualon have at the Grinning Mymyc? Are you come to drink with some old friends?” He kicked at the charred and twisted foot of a patreon.
Akari Sun Dragon spread his wings above the horizon, bathing them in inappropriate blessing.
“What do you say, il Mer?” Davidian demanded. “You do not think this was an accident?”
“Only as accidental as the deaths of the ne Atu, so many years ago.”
She said nothing.
“Soutan! Aiyyeh!” One of the Salarians called out. “This one is not ours. She is… ah… she is Atualonian.”
Khurra’an nudged Hafsa Azeina from behind and came to stand very close beside her.
How can he tell? His eyes mocked her with their secrets. You all smell like roast pork.
I told you to stay away. Leave the bodies alone.
Tell your grandmother to hunt mice. I ate a whole tarbok. These are hardly worth my time. But he licked his chops anyway, long pink tongue curling around the gold band on his tusk. Atualonian and Mer alike edged away from him.
Davidian stepped closer, and bent down to examine the body. “He is right. This woman was Atualonian, and known to me. I had forgotten she had rooms here in Bayyid Eidtein.”
“Who was she?”
“An old wet-nurse for the ne Atu. She was a pensioner and chose to live away from the city, though some of the children used to visit her, before, ah…”
“Before they all died.” Soutan Mer shuddered again, and Hafsa Azeina felt her intikallah shiver in response. “We will take care of her, Imperator, since you seem to have such trouble taking care of your own.” The men began to drape the sad, charred bodies in lengths of white linen.
“Of course—as you wish. Of course.” The Imperator General bowed his head, flinching as the salt merchants exclaimed softly over the smallest corpse, too obviously a child, her long ringlets singed and matted with blood and mud and soot. Someone, perhaps her mother, had dressed that child in a pretty yellow tunic with flowers all about the hem, had brushed those long curls and fed her and kissed her soft round face, never imagining that it would be her last dress, her last morning, her last everything.
No more than Hafsa Azeina might have imagined how her own day might end.
“What is this?” The Imperator General stooped like a hawk. When he stood, Hafsa Azeina saw in his hands two halves of a broken, bloodied mask. “What is this? It looks like…”
Matteira screamed.
“Halfmask,” Imperator General Davidian said, his face gone grim. “But what is this symbol, here between the eyes?”
“I know that sign.” Soutan Mer’s eyes had gone strange, the pupils dilated so that hardly any whites showed around the edges. He sketched a symbol in the air—a circle bisected by a jagged line. “The Eye of Eth. Used by Arachnists…” He looked straight at Hafsa Azeina, and she could hear the faint notes of the Hunt. “Arachnists, and sorcerers. Your people call it the dreaming eye, do they not… Dream Eater?”
Behind her, Hafsa Azeina could hear the hushh-shushhh of shamsi being drawn from their sheaths as the Ja’Akari made ready to die.
They have my back, she thought. They have always had my back. Another realization come too late.
Matteira reached out toward the shattered mask with both hands, wailing as if her soul had been sundered.
“I ask you thrice, Dream Eater—why have you come here?” Soutan Mer drew himself up. Akari Sun Dragon peered over the youth’s shoulder at her, and it seemed that the boy wore a crown of golden antlers, and that the white-robed soldiers behind him glowed like vengeful spirits.
The world stilled and settled.
Ehuani, she thought, no more lies.
No! Khurra’an roared. Stupid human!
“I have come to seek the release of Bashaba, and reinstate her as Sa Atu.”
“Treason!” The Imperator holding Mattu’s mask bared his teeth in disgust.
Khurra’an snarled in the back of her mind. Get out!
The Huntress sounded her horn as the trap snapped shut.
“Ware, Dreamshifter!” one of the Ja’Akari shouted.
“Mutaani,” she breathed, and a smile kissed her mouth. Death has found me at last. The problems of the world were no longer hers to solve. Still smiling, she drew her shamsi and wheeled her mare as the Ja’Akari formed a loose circle with their horses, haunches in, swords shining bright and eager beneath the sun. The air shivered and rang with the war-cry of the vash’ai as Khurra’an drew back onto his haunches, hackles up, growling low in his throat.
Hafsa Azeina turned to catch Saskia’s eye. “Go!” she yelled. “Ride to Atualon, tell Ka Atu! Then you guard my daughter!”
“No! Dreamshifter…”
“Go!” she shouted. “Ja’Akari! Go!”
Saskia’s face was a terror, but she sheathed her sword and gave her sleek mare the heel. The asil mare, daughter of the desert, fleetest of horses, gathered in her fine, bold heart and flew.
The streets were lined with white-robed Salarians, mounted men with catch-poles and halberds and spears, and beyond them a handful of men with heavy crossbows.
Saskia cut through them like a new sword through silk and then they were gone. Three of the men peeled away to give chase, but they stood no chance of catching the Ja’Akari on her swift red mare.
The remaining Ja’Akari drew their circle closed, but they were a handful against many, hemmed in on all sides. Hafsa Azeina sighed her regret into the wind, that it should end like this despite all she had done.
A poor sacrifice to your ambition, my love. My blood will buy you scant pleasure.
“Show me yours, cowards!” Fiery Talilla spat into the sand and jerked the thongs of her vest so that it hung open in a show of contempt. “Or have you nothing to show?” The Ja’Akari laughed, strong white teeth flashing in faces so smooth and untroubled that Hafsa Azeina wanted to weep.
“I will show you mine before you die, cunt!” one of the white-robed men called in reply. The others were silent. Grim-faced, they showed little eagerness for this task.
“It is a good day to die,” Talilla laughed. “Pity we have to die in such ugly company.”
Hafsa Azeina watched with a bitter taste in her mouth as the Imperators pulled back.
“Kill them,” a white-robed officer called, drawing his own short sword. “Kill their horses, too.”
“Aieee!” Lavanya Ja’Akari screamed. “Coward son of a maggot-riddled pig’s ass, show me yours!”
Salarians closed in from both sides.
There was a commotion in the back, the snarl of a cat and a man’s scream cut short and the shriek of a dying horse, and then a blur of dappled gold shot past her and into the closing ranks. Khurra’an sprang upon their enemies, a fury of claw and tusk stoking terror and chaos in their midst. His mind was a fog of musk and bloodlust, and closed to her.
One of their attacker’s horses reared, screaming, throwing its own rider to die beneath thrashing hooves as the vash’ai rent its hide bloody. It would not be enough. Even as she watched, one of the men raised an iron-banded club and brought it down with a sickening crunch upon Khurra’an’s head, and Hafsa Azeina threw her head back and shrieked in grief and in fury as he slipped from her mind.
She felt as much as heard the krak-chunk of a crossbow releasing its bolt and her head jerked back sharply as if someone had grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked. The bolt passed before her face, and the doe-eyed Talilla from Uthrak fell from her horse as gracefully as she had once danced.
Lavanya raised her shamsi and charged the soldiers with a roar that would have made Khurra’an proud. She and her rangy dun mare were cut down before they had gone four strides, the mischief and beauty of youth churned to mud and blood beneath the feet of their enemies. Hafsa Azeina trained her eyes on the man who had called for their deaths, and wished she might meet him once more in Shehannam.
Call me, a voice sang in her ear. Even now I can save you. Call me, Annubasta. I would walk again among Men, and your enemies will tremble at your feet as I drink their souls.
I think not.
Die then, Belzaleel laughed, it is all the same to me. Perhaps I will seek out your daughter, once your bones are gone to dust. I hear she is a lovely thing…
Hafsa Azeina shut the Liar’s voice from her mind. “To me!” She cried. “Ja’Akari, to me! Mutaani!” Her sword flashed bloodgold in the light of the dying sun as she charged, and the hoofbeats—so like the pounding of a living heart—were soon lost in the clash and clamor of a short, brutal battle. Hafsa Azeina clove the officer’s head from his shoulders—No more dreams for you, she thought— and brought the hilt of her sword down on a gleaming helmet that crunched and crushed beneath her blow.
A hand grabbed for her leg and she severed that as well, and was blinded by a hot spray of blood in her face. She saw a tall girl dragged from her horse, screaming and cursing the men for cowards even as their swords fell upon her and rose again, stabbing and hacking long after her screams had fallen silent.
Her little mare, her lovely Keila, silver and soft as moonlight, lurched beneath her and they came crashing down in a tangle of flesh and weapons. Hafsa Azeina rolled away, closing her ears and her heart to the sounds of her horse shrieking in agony. She hit her head on something, hard enough that the shadows pulled in close from the corners of her vision.
Keila was still screaming. Oh, sweet horse.
She had lost her sword, and her right arm hung limp and useless at her side. She tried to raise her left hand to wipe the gore from her eyes, but a sudden pain blossomed in her palm, hot and bright as if she had reached out to pluck a coal from the fire. She looked down, confused, and saw that a crossbow bolt had pierced her hand and pinned it to her breast. Blood pumped from the wound in a crimson tide and mixed with the gentle rain.
“Oh,” she said, and fell to her knees.
They were waiting for her in the shadows.