The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (27 page)

From where I could hear screaming.

I might never have gotten there if someone hadn’t glanced back, recognized me, and murmured to someone else nearby. The murmur rippled through the crowd, and abruptly I found myself the focus of dozens of silent, pent stares. I stumbled to a halt, unnerved, but the way ahead abruptly cleared as they moved aside for me. I hurried forward, then stopped in shock.

On the floor knelt a thin old man, naked, chained in a pool of blood. His white hair, long and lank, hung ’round his face, obscuring it, though I could hear him panting raggedly for breath. His skin was a webwork of lacerations. If it had just been his back, I would have thought him flogged, but it was not just his back. It was his legs, his arms, his cheeks and chin. He was kneeling; I saw cuts on the soles of his feet. He pushed himself upright awkwardly, using the sides of his wrists, and I saw that a round red hole in the back of each showed bone and tendon clearly.

Another heretic? I wondered, confused.

“I wondered how much blood I would have to draw before someone went running for you,” said a savage voice beside me, and as I turned something came at my face. I raised my hands instinctively and felt a thin line of heat cross my palms; something had cut me.

I did not pause long enough to assess the damage, springing back and drawing my knife. My hands still worked, though blood made the hilt slippery. I shifted it to a defensive grip and crouched, ready to fight.

Across from me stood Scimina, gowned in shining green satin. The flecks of blood that had sprayed across her dress looked like tiny ruby jewels. (There were flecks on her face as well, but those just looked like blood.) In her hands was something that I did not at first realize was a weapon—a long, silver wand, ornately decorated, perhaps three feet in length. But at the tip was a short double-edged blade, thin as a surgeon’s scalpel, made of glass. Too short and strangely weighted to be a spear, more like an elaborate fountain pen. Some Amn weapon?

Scimina smirked at my drawn blade, but instead of raising her own weapon, she turned away and resumed pacing around the circle that the crowd had formed, with the old man at its center. “How like a barbarian. You can’t use a knife against me, Cousin; it would shatter. Our blood sigils prevent all life-threatening attacks. Honestly, you’re so ignorant. What are we going to do with you?”

I stayed in my crouch and kept hold of my knife anyway, pivoting to keep her in sight as she walked. As I did so, I saw faces among the crowd that I recognized. Some of the servants who’d been at the Fire Day party. A couple of Dekarta’s courtiers. T’vril, white-lipped and stiff; his eyes fixed on me in something that might have been warning. Viraine, standing forward from the rest of the crowd; he had folded his arms and stood gazing into the middle distance, looking bored.

Zhakkarn and Kurue. Why were they there? They were watching me, too. Zhakkarn’s expression was hard and cold; I had never seen her show anger so clearly before. Kurue was furious, too, her nostrils flared and hands tight at her sides. The look in her eyes would have flayed me if it could. But Scimina was already flaying someone, so I focused on the greater threat for the moment.

“Sit up!” Scimina barked, and the old man jerked upright as if on strings. I could see now that there were fewer cuts on his torso, though as I watched Scimina walked past him and flicked the wand, and another long, deep slice opened on the old man’s abdomen. He cried out again, his voice hoarse, and opened eyes he’d shut in reaction to the pain. That was when I caught my breath, because the old man’s eyes were green and sharpfold and then I realized how the shape of his face would be familiar if he were sixty years younger and dearest gods, dearest Skyfather, it was Sieh.

“Ah,” Scimina said, interpreting my gasp. “That does save time. You were right, T’vril; she is sweet on him. Did you send one of your people to fetch her? Tell the fool to be quicker next time.”

I glared at T’vril, who clearly had not sent for me. His face was paler than usual, but that strange warning was still in his eyes. I almost frowned in confusion, but I could feel Scimina’s gaze like a vulture, hovering over my facial expressions and ready to savage the emotions they revealed.

So I schooled myself to calmness, as my mother had taught me. I rose from my fighting crouch, though I only lowered my knife to my side and did not sheathe it. Scimina probably would not know, but among Darre, this was disrespect—a sign that I did not trust her to behave like a woman.

“I’m here now,” I said to her. “State your purpose.”

Scimina uttered a short, sharp laugh, never ceasing her pacing. “State my purpose. She sounds so martial, doesn’t she?” She looked around the crowd; no one answered her. “So strong. Tiny, ill-bred, pathetic little thing that she is—what do you THINK my purpose is, you fool?” She shouted this last at me, her fists clenched at her sides, the odd wand-weapon quivering. Her hair, up in an elaborate coif that was still lovely, was coming undone. She looked exquisitely demented.

“I think you want to be Dekarta’s heir,” I said softly, “and the gods help all the world if you succeed.”

Quick as wind, Scimina went from a screaming madwoman to smiling charm. “True. And I meant to begin with your land, stomping it ever so thoroughly out of existence. In fact I should have begun doing so already, if not for the fact that the alliance I so carefully put together in that region is now falling apart.” She resumed pacing, glancing back at me over her shoulder, turning the wand delicately in her hands. “I thought at first the problem might be that old High North woman you’ve been meeting at the Salon. But I looked into that; she’s only given you information, and most of it useless. So you’ve done something else. Would you care to explain?”

My blood went cold. What had Scimina done to Ras Onchi? Then I looked at Sieh, who had recovered himself somewhat, though he still looked weak and dazed from pain. He was not healing, which made no sense. I had stabbed Nahadoth in the heart and it had been barely a nuisance. Yet it had taken time for him to heal, I recalled with a sudden chill. Perhaps, if left alone for a while, Sieh would recover as well. Unless… Itempas had trapped the Enefadeh in human form to suffer all the horrors of mortality. They were eternal, powerful—but not invulnerable. Did the horrors of mortality include death? Sweat stung the cuts on my hands. There were things I was not prepared to endure.

But then the palace shuddered. For an instant I wondered if this tremor signified some new threat, and then I remembered. Sunset.

“Oh demons,” Viraine muttered into the silence. An instant later I and every other person in the room was thrown sprawling in a blast of wind and bitter, painful cold.

It took me a moment to struggle upright, and when I did, my knife was gone. The room was chaos around me; I heard groans of pain, curses, shouts of alarm. When I glanced toward the lift, I could see several people crowding its opening, trying to cram their way in. I forgot all of this, though, when I looked toward the center of the room.

It was difficult to see Nahadoth’s face. He crouched near Sieh, his head bowed, and the blackness of his aura was as it had been my first night in Sky, so dark that it hurt the mind. I focused instead on the floor, where the chains that had held Sieh lay shattered, their tips glistening with frost. Sieh himself I could not see entirely—only one of his hands, dangling limp, before Nahadoth’s cloak swept around him, swallowing him into darkness.

“Scimina.” There was that hollow, echoing quality to Nahadoth’s voice again. Was the madness upon him? No; this was just pure, plain rage.

But Scimina, who had also been knocked to the floor, got to her high-heeled feet and composed herself. “Nahadoth,” she said, more calmly than I would have imagined. Her weapon was gone, too, but she was a true Arameri, unafraid of the gods’ wrath. “How good of you to join us at last. Put him down.”

Nahadoth stood and flicked his cloak back. Sieh, a young man now, whole and clothed, stood beside him glaring defiantly at Scimina. Somewhere deep inside me, a knot of tension relaxed.

“We had an agreement,” Nahadoth said, still in that voice echoing with murder.

“Indeed,” Scimina said, and now it was her smile that frightened me. “You’ll serve as well as Sieh for this purpose. Kneel.” She pointed at the bloody space and its empty chains.

For an instant the sense of power in the room swelled, like pressure against the eardrums. The walls creaked. I shuddered beneath it, wondering if this was it. Scimina had made some error, left some opening, and now Nahadoth would crush us all like insects.

But then, to my utter shock, Nahadoth moved away from Sieh and went to the center of the room. He knelt.

Scimina turned to me, where I still half-lay on the floor. Shamed, I got to my feet. I was surprised to see that there was still an audience around us, though it was now sparse—T’vril, Viraine, a handful of servants, perhaps twenty highbloods. I suppose the highbloods took some inspiration from Scimina’s fearlessness.

“This will be an education for you, Cousin,” she said, still in that sweet, polite tone that I was coming to hate. She resumed pacing, watching Nahadoth with an expression that was almost avid. “Had you been raised here in Sky, or taught properly by your mother, you would know this… but allow me to explain. It is difficult to damage an Enefadeh. Their human bodies repair themselves constantly and swiftly, through the benevolence of our Father Itempas. But they do have weaknesses, Cousin; one must simply understand these. Viraine.”

Viraine had gotten to his feet as well, though he seemed to be favoring his left wrist. He eyed Scimina warily. “You’ll take responsibility with Dekarta?”

She swung on him so fast that if the wand had still been in her hand, Viraine might have suffered a mortal wound. “Dekarta will be dead in days, Viraine. He is not whom you should fear now.”

Viraine stood his ground. “I’m simply doing my job, Scimina, and advising you on the consequences. It may be weeks before he’s useful again—”

Scimina made a sound of savage frustration. “Does it look as though I care?”

There was a pent moment, the two of them facing each other, during which I honestly thought Viraine had a chance. They were both fullbloods. But Viraine was not in line for the succession, and Scimina was—and in the end, Scimina was right. It was no longer Dekarta’s will that mattered.

I looked at Sieh, who was staring at Nahadoth with an unreadable expression on his too-old face. Both were gods more ancient than life on earth. I could not imagine such a length of existence. A day of pain was probably nothing to them… but not to me.

“Enough,” I said softly. The word carried in the vaulted space of the arena. Viraine and Scimina both looked at me in surprise. Sieh, too, swung around to stare at me, puzzled. And Nahadoth—no. I could not look at him. He would think me weak for this.

Not weak, I reminded myself. Human. I am still that, at least.

“Enough,” I said again, lifting my head with what remained of my pride. “Stop this. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

“Yeine,” said Sieh, sounding shocked.

Scimina smirked. “Even if you weren’t the sacrifice, Cousin, you could never have been Grandfather’s heir.”

I glared at her. “I will take that as a compliment, Cousin, if you are the example I should follow.”

Scimina’s face tightened, and for a moment I thought she would spit at me. Instead she turned away and resumed circling Nahadoth, though slower now. “Which member of the alliance did you approach?”

“Minister Gemd, of Menchey.”

“Gemd?” Scimina frowned at this. “How did you persuade him? He was more eager for the chance than all the others.”

I took a deep breath. “I brought Nahadoth with me. His persuasive powers are… formidable, as I’m sure you know.”

Scimina barked a laugh—but her gaze was thoughtful as she glanced at me, then at him. Nahadoth gazed into the middle distance, as he had since kneeling. He might have been contemplating matters beyond human reckoning, or the dyes in T’vril’s pants.

“Interesting,” Scimina said. “Since I’m certain Grandfather would not have commanded the Enefadeh to do this for you, that means our Nightlord decided to help you on his own. How on earth did you manage that?”

I shrugged, though abruptly I felt anything but relaxed. Stupid, stupid. I should have realized the danger in this line of questioning. “He seemed to find it amusing. There were… several deaths.” I tried to look uneasy and found that it was not difficult. “I had not intended those, but they were effective.”

“I see.” Scimina stopped, folding her arms and tapping her fingers. I did not like the look in her eyes, even though it was directed at Nahadoth. “And what else did you do?”

I frowned. “Else?”

“We keep a tight leash on the Enefadeh, Cousin, and Nahadoth’s is tightest of all. When he leaves the palace, Viraine knows of it. And Viraine tells me he left twice, on two separate nights.”

Demons. Why in the Father’s name hadn’t the Enefadeh told me? Damned secret keeping—“I went to Darr, to see my grandmother.”

“For what purpose?”

To understand why my mother sold me to the Enefadeh—

I jerked my thoughts off that path and folded my arms. “Because I missed her. Not that you would understand something like that.”

She turned to gaze at me, a slow, lazy smile playing about her lips, and I suddenly realized I had made a mistake. But what? Had my insult bothered her that much? No, it was something else.

“You did not risk your sanity traveling with the Nightlord just to exchange pleasantries with some old hag,” Scimina said. “Tell me why you really went there.”

“To confirm the war petition and the alliance against Darr.”

“And? That’s all?”

I thought fast, but not fast enough. Or perhaps it was my unnerved expression that alerted her, because she tsked at me. “You’re keeping secrets, Cousin. And I mean to have them. Viraine!”

Viraine sighed and faced Nahadoth. An odd look, almost pensive, passed over his face. “This would not have been my choice,” he said softly.