Daughter of the Flames (17 page)

I didn’t have to worry about Sorin, I realized sickly. It’s me he’s really after, and he’s not giving up until I’m as dead as Alrik.

I gulped down a mouthful of bile, straightened my body, inched forward – and let myself fall.

I landed on the curtain wall with a bruising impact on my hip and shoulder and rolled back from the edge, shredding the skin of my palms as I clutched for a hold. The wind screamed through my hair and in my ears, deafening me for a moment before dying down again. I groaned with pain, terrified that if I tried to stand the dizziness would fell me as easily as the murderer’s knife.

I heard the murderer land more gracefully behind me and managed to get onto my back in time to see him straighten up. No choice now. I bent forward and, carefully, carefully, got to my feet, feeling myself wobble as I spread my arms for balance. How would the killer react if I vomited at his feet?

“Who are you?” I screamed. “Why are you doing this?” I didn’t dare move.

The shadowy figure stepped cautiously forward, spreading his arms too. He didn’t have illness as an excuse – he was less confident at heights than I was. His hands were empty. Had he lost the knife scrambling out of the window?

“Come on then!” I taunted breathlessly. “Are you too frightened, without your knife? Coward! Murderer!”

I didn’t expect an answer – but neither did I expect him to drop his arms and rush at me.

We collided with mutual grunts of pain, teetering on the edge above the mezzanine as I grappled, feet sliding, hands scrabbling for purchase, punching, tearing, kicking at each other, snarling and yelping like animals. I jabbed at his shoulder with a disturbingly weak elbow, taking a punch to the face that made my teeth ache. I wavered back and then latched on to his wrist, sinking my teeth into the forearm to taste blood. He seized a handful of my hair, yanking it out by the roots as he tried to pull me off, his other hand smashing down on my neck, making my left side go numb. I kicked out and felt the crunch as my heel connected with his ankle.

Then we were plummeting from the wall together, our screams echoing into one voice.

In mid fall I realized: I know that voice.

We hit the steep roof in an explosion of shattering terracotta. The roof buckled under our weight and I rolled sideways, flailing fingers grasping hold of a section of coping at the top. I heaved myself across to lie on an unbroken section of the roof as my attacker slid down with the tiles below me. The dark figure grappled with the cascading debris and then wrapped arms around a wooden beam, partially exposed by the lost tiles. For a moment we both hung on, panting, bleeding and exhausted, only feet apart.

I stared down at the murderer. “Kapila?”

Her head snapped up. The concealing cloth had been ripped free and the sight of her familiar face – scratched, bruised, grey with weariness as it had been on our trek through the mountains here – made my heart contract as if God had reached in and crushed it.

“Yes.” She laughed bitterly. “Are you pretending to be surprised? My father is rotting by the wayside because of you!”

“Kapila, I…” I shook my head miserably, closing my eyes against her accusing face. “I did what I thought was best. The only thing I could do. I didn’t – I never meant…”

I heard her grunts of effort as she began pulling herself up along the beam towards me.

“We’ve lost everything! Our home, our lives. Everything that was good. Esha’s baby – I can still hear Esha screaming. And poor little Padma.”

Shaken and sick, unable to move, I heard her scrabble across the section of tiles next to me, and her grunt of relief as she grabbed the coping above it. We would be lying nose to nose – if I had the courage to face her. I squeezed my eyes shut more tightly.

“Why did you bring us here? Why? We could have stayed where we were safe, where we belonged. We could have rebuilt and carried on. But no, you had to prove you were the great leader. You sacrificed our own people to do it! Do you think of that when you get into bed with that filthy Sedorne husband of yours? Do you?”

“You were my friend once,” I said weakly. My fingers, numb with hanging on to the stone, spasmed and twitched. She’s going to kill me, I realized weakly. I don’t know how to stop her…

“I was Zira’s friend,” she spat. “Zira died in the House of God. Who asked you to be our reia? Who are you?”

A fleck of Kapila’s spittle hit my cheek. I flinched.

I felt dizzy again – a different kind of dizziness this time. Something was changing inside me. Distantly I heard Kapila ranting bitterly about her plan. How she had drugged the food Sorin and I ate tonight so that we would sleep soundly through our own murders – which would have worked if my body hadn’t reacted so strongly to the drug. How she had sneaked up on the unprepared guard on the mezzanine to kill him. But my attention was no longer with her.

Something … something was coming…

There was an echo of a voice – a terrible, fiery voice that burned my ears, and made my eyes sting with joy – calling out the question that had haunted me.

Who are you, Zira? Who are you? Who are you Zahira? Answer!

Me.
Not Zira or Zahira. Just
me
.

Deep inside, I felt an almost physical shift. It was as if all my bones had been slightly dislocated, and they had suddenly snapped into place. There was a flare of glowing blue light behind my eyes, a sense of endless joy, and of love.

Then the feeling was gone, and I was alone.

I sucked in a deep breath, tightening my grip on the stone and wedging my foot into a gap in the tiles so that I couldn’t fall. The dizziness eased away and I opened my eyes to look Kapila full in the face.

“Stop it,” I said sharply, cutting her off. “Stop lying.”

She gasped in shock. “Lying?”

“Yes. You are lying, to me and yourself. Who asked me to be your reia?
You,
Kapila. All of you. You followed me. You
made
me your reia.”

“We were frightened and desperate, but that doesn’t make it right! Those graves by the roadside—”

“Are the price,” I cut her off again. “You wanted
me
to make the decisions for you – I did. You wanted
me
to keep you safe – I did. You wanted to believe in
me
– I let you. But you have to pay for what you want, Kapila, and you can’t change your mind now.”

She let go of the coping and flung herself on top of me with a scream of rage. I felt the tiles beneath us start to crack as her hands went around my neck. I choked and squirmed, my hands tightening desperately on the post stone as I pulled my free leg up and kicked hard into her chest.

Her hold on my neck broke and she fell away from me, sliding down in another avalanche of tiles. She rolled once, screamed, and caught at the very edge of the roof, dangling helplessly. I looked down into her face, into her eyes, burning like black coals with desperation and terror. She didn’t cry out for help. She hung on, waiting.

Kapila had been my friend. Before everything shattered, before grief and anger warped her into a killer, she had been a good woman. She had gone mad, and maybe that was my fault. If I let her die without even trying to save her, what would that make me?

The reia.

My people needed me to survive.

I watched as Kapila kicked and struggled madly to get back onto the roof. As she gasped and swore and fought to keep her hold. As her fingers began to slip. And, finally, as her grip failed, and she fell away into the darkness.

Then I just held on and waited for someone to find me.

Lord Tiede found the king in his private armoury. The room had a towering ceiling that seemed to amplify noise tenfold – he believed the old rei had used it as a music room or something, before the invasion – and the violent ringing of swords made him flinch as he stepped through the doorway. He recognized the king’s opponent as the captain of the palace gourdin unit, and felt a small sting of pity for the man. Still, one of the junior palace surgeons stood to attention in the opposite corner of the room, so the captain would receive excellent care.

Tiede hoped there wouldn’t be too much blood.

He averted his eyes from the almost hypnotic slide and slash of light on the long blades, and examined his king more closely. Lank reddish-gold hair had escaped from a simple braid to curl around his face, which was damp with exertion. Sweat plastered the thin lawn shirt to his well muscled body. That was good. If he was exhausted then he might be less excitable…

Tiede flinched again at a particularly loud scream of metal, but schooled himself to calmness. Perhaps this little scene was a blessing in disguise. The languid manner and elegantly tailored wardrobe made it easy to forget that the king was a great warrior. It was best not to forget things about the king. Tiede glanced at the king’s right hand holding the sword, and then at the heavy duelling gauntlet on his left hand. He shuddered, and looked away.

A few moments later, Tiede heard a shout of pain. He looked up to see the captain crumple to the ground, a crimson stain spreading across his shoulder. The surgeon rushed forward immediately and covered up the wound with a large pad of folded cloth. Tiede sighed with relief. He really hated blood.

“Good match, Captain Marin. Excellent.” King Abheron saluted the man on the floor with his sword, carefully wiped the blood from the blade, and then turned to place it in one of the racks on the wall.

“Ah, Tiede.” He raised an eyebrow as he caught sight of him. “I hope you bring me good news?”

“Ahem.” Tiede clasped his hands together. “Perhaps it might be better to discuss it in private?”

The king glanced back at the collapsed captain and the surgeon. “I think they’re somewhat busy to eavesdrop, Tiede. But by all means…”

He waved Tiede ahead of him into his sitting room and summoned a blank-faced Rua serving girl. “Send another surgeon into the armoury,” he ordered. “With a stretcher. Then bring me some wine.” The girl disappeared noiselessly.

The king sat down in one of the armchairs, rubbing his face with a soft towel. “Proceed,” he said.

Lord Tiede didn’t wait to be invited to sit – he knew that wouldn’t happen. Instead he took up a position before his king and cleared his throat.

“I have had the reports back from the gourdin who carried out your orders on the House of God, Your Highness. I am afraid it did not go as expected.”

“I’d gathered that from your less than celebratory expression,” Abheron said, flinging the soaked towel aside.

Tiede managed to restrain his panicky desire to pace. “The gourdin penetrated the outer wall of the House through trickery, killing two gatekeepers and a number of other holy people. However, there was also an inner wall, which the namoa barricaded. When, after some minutes, the gourdin managed to break through, the temple was, most unfortunately, empty.”

The king regarded Tiede in silence. “Empty?”

“They found one woman. Whom they also killed,” he added hurriedly. “They believe the holy people had some hidden exit which they used to escape.”

“Didn’t the men consider surrounding the complex before attacking it?” the king asked in tones of mild interest.

“It is apparently not possible to do this, due to the mountainous terrain. The men destroyed both the outer and inner walls and as much of the main building as they could, leaving it uninhabitable. The namoa will not be able to return there.”

The king heaved a sigh. “Then where will they go, Tiede? Where
did
they go?”

“I … don’t know, Your Highness.”

“Surely it is not possible for several hundred people to simply wander about my countryside without anyone noticing? Surely the regular patrols picked up some trace of them?”

“There was nothing, Your Highness. Gourdin in the area did report a slight increase in the number of refugees travelling along the Mayanti road – but none of them were wearing those funny robes or had tattoos with the correct symbols to be holy people.”

“Not all namoa are tattooed, Tiede. And I imagine they’d have taken some pains to disguise themselves.” Abheron sighed. Suddenly he straightened, sitting forward in his seat. “The Mayanti road? The road to Mesgao?”

“Er, yes, I believe that road does lead to Mesgao.”

“So.” Abheron sat back slowly. “It is entirely possible that rather than shatter the connection between the Order and Sorin, we have driven them into each other’s arms. The move was badly played, Lord Tiede.”

The king’s pale eyes fixed on him. It took every nerve in Tiede’s body not to back away. He watched as the king began plucking at the fingers of the leather gauntlet on his left hand.

“Something’s coming, Tiede,” Abheron said softly, unblinking. “I can feel it.”

Tiede didn’t even dare nod. He stood absolutely still, and prayed to Ovidiv that something – anything – would distract the king before … before…

There was a tiny noise at the door. It was the Rua girl, with the wine. Tiede watched her desperately as she set the silver tray down on the table at Abheron’s elbow, curtsied, and then crept from the room again. As she closed the door behind her, Abheron blinked. The intensity of his gaze dimmed, and he pulled the gauntlet back into place before raising a hand to rub his forehead.

“You have, on occasion, been a useful spymaster, Tiede. I think it may be time for you to retire, and spend more time with your grandchildren. I can find someone else to handle these delicate matters for me.”

“Yes – yes, Your Highness. I am most grateful,” he stuttered, blinking frantically as tears of relief prickled behind his eyelids.

“But first I must give you a chance to redeem yourself, mustn’t I?” The king reached out and poured himself a glass of wine. “I wouldn’t want your failures to play on your conscience, Tiede. That wouldn’t be fair.”

Tiede’s heart sank. “Your Highness is very kind,” he said, trying to keep the bitterness from his voice.

King Abheron looked up from his inspection of the fine red wine in his glass. “Be careful, Tiede,” he advised quietly. “My patience does have limits. Now – I want every spy, every contact, every informant, to converge on Mesgao immediately. Get someone inside the fort; I don’t care how. Find out what Sorin is doing and who is with him. Report back to me as soon as you have something. And that had better be soon. Understood?”