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“Safe,” he whispered. “Don’t worry, I got him out of the hall while the Tatar was distracted. He thinks Imriel is refilling his jug.” His arms were strong around me, and I could have wept with relief, but it couldn’t last. There was no time, and the crowd was growing. Joscelin turned me loose. Already, we were exposed and vulnerable.

“Lady.” Uru-Azag addressed me, clad in an ill-fitting corselet, his dagger in his hand. He’d given the guard’s sword to Erich. “We should make for the palace gates, and the harbor.”

“Could we make it?” I asked Joscelin.

“No,” he said grimly. “Not with this many of us. There are barracks within the walls, outside the palace proper. The secondary garrison would cut us up piecemeal. Our only hope is to take Daršanga and bar the doors.”

“
Joscelin
!” It was Imriel’s voice, high and piercing, echoing off the walls. He approached at a dead run from the corner of the corridor.

“You had him posted as a
sentry
?” I hissed to Joscelin. “You call that
safe
?”

“It was his idea,” he said to me, and to Imriel, “What is it?”

“It’s starting.” He drew up, panting and white-faced, delivering his words in a breathless mix of D’Angeline and zenyan. “Jolanta … Phèdre! … Jolanta killed a man, in the hall, and they’re … they’re … and one followed …” He turned and pointed. “Behind me.”

Someone screamed as the
Skotophagotis
following Imriel appeared at the end of the corridor, near-invisible in the darkness save for his skull-helm and girdle, and his outraged face. He leveled his ebony staff at the assembled crowd, who scattered for the walls.

Joscelin whirled. I never even saw him draw a dagger, only the flash of it as it flew end-over-end, burying itself in the priest’s throat. The
Skotophagotis
crumpled.

And that was when all hell broke loose.

I don’t know who began it, only that once begun, it was unstoppable as a tide. Angra Mainyu’s thwarted rage, deprived of its avatar, found an outlet in madness that night-and madness it was. I had seen truly. The walls of Daršanga would run red with blood. There are people who say women are the gentler sex. They would not say it if they had been there the night Daršanga fell.

It began with a long, ululating cry, and if it was a single throat that uttered it first, it was a dozen in the next instant, and thrice as many after. I could not see who led the mad dash, for it seemed they all went at once, unarmed Furies in ragged attire, running wild for the festal hall, and most of the eunuchs with them.

Joscelin cursed and caught Uru-Azag by the arm. “You,” he said in Persian. “Bar the doors. Can you manage it alone?”

“Yes.” The Akkadian raised the blade of his curved dagger to his lips and kissed it. “My blade,” he said reverently, “is sworn to Shamash. I have consecrated it in blood tonight.”

“Good.” He turned to me. “Phèdre, take the boy and hide-”

“
Imriel
!” I saw it too late, the fierce glitter of the boy’s eyes, his bared teeth. The same feral madness that had taken the others was on him, born of long months of hatred and abuse. Like a flash, he was off, coursing the hallway. “Go,” I said to Joscelin, panic-stricken. “
Go
!”

He was already on his way.

Cold with fear, I followed.

Fifty-Six

A NIGHTMARE was taking place in the festal hall.

It was a bloodbath. There is no other way to describe it. And a good deal of the killing had been done by the women of the
zenana
.

By the time I arrived, the first wave of bloodshed had already occurred. I heard about it, later, from those who survived. The effects of the opium had become evident by the time I had left with the Mahrkagir, and more pronounced with every moment that passed, men growing heavy-lidded with dreams, smiling, talking nonsense. One or two had passed into unconsciousness.

And the Âka-Magi who remained, new initiates for the most part, grew nervous.

It had begun when a Uighur Tatar with a dreamy look on his face put his hand between Jolanta’s thighs. It was as Imriel had said. Jolanta had plucked his dagger from his belt and planted it to the hilt beneath the Tatar’s ear.

For long moments, no one had reacted. The men gazed stupidly, slow to comprehend. The women stared at one another, unsure what to do. Imriel, lurking outside the door, turned to flee-it was then that one of the Âka-Magi, a
Skotophagotis
, had caught sight of him and followed, beginning to suspect.

What happened to him, I already knew.

After that, the
zenana
descended in fury.

How many did the women kill, in that initial shock? Scores, at least. It was the sheer unexpectedness of the attack. Seizing blades-daggers, carving knives, swords, even an axe-from bewildered warriors’ hands, the women wreaked a terrible vengeance, and the shouts of the Âka-Magi went lost amid their shrieks, empty and harmless as the squawking of crows.

Then the men of Drujan, drugged and dazed, began to fight back.

That was when I arrived.

It was dreadful to behold. Drugged or no, these were trained warriors, many of them clad in partial armor or leather. Such was the etiquette of the Mahrkagir’s festal hall. And under their onslaught, the women of the
zenana
died in droves … Ephesians, Hellenes, Jebeans-all nations, blood spattered alike over fair skin and dark, clotted in tresses of blond and brown, the black silk of Ch’in, the woolen curls of Jebe-Barkal.

Here and there, some resisted. I saw Kaneka swinging an axe like a hammer, her teeth gleaming in a warrior’s grin, blood splashed to her elbows. A knot of Chowati fought grimly. The Akkadian eunuchs stripped armor from dead men and struggled with the living. Across the hall, Erich the Skaldi held the doorway to the kitchens, Rushad and a handful of servants behind him, fighting with all the ferocity of his nation.

And in the center of the hall…

Joscelin.

This much I will swear: ’twas not the madness of Angra Mainyu that drove him. I know. I was with him in the corridor, when it came upon the others. This was different, untainted, a rage born in the back alleys of Amílcar where we found the slavers’ children, nurtured by fate, repressed and channeled and honed to an immaculate edge in the Mahrkagir’s service.

It was the most pure and deadly thing I have ever seen.

With his sword in his two-handed grip, Joscelin moved gracefully through his Cassiline forms, his face as calm and focused as when he did his morning exercises in the garden. He was smiling, his summer-blue eyes wide with exaltation, and where his sword flowed, weaving a silver thread in the dark air, death followed. I daresay the mail shirt helped, turning a few glancing blows.

Most of them never landed.

He was nigh untouchable.

And they were drawn to him-drawn, like moths to the flame, Drujani and Tatar alike, abandoning the women and stumbling to the center of the festal hall to challenge him. Jagun, the Kereyit warlord, came at him with a cry of fury on his lips, half-stumbling and wild, only now realizing the scope of the prize that had slipped his fingers. With a single two-handed stroke, Joscelin cut him down; with a single stroke, Imriel’s torment at the Tatar’s hands was ended and avenged.

The Kereyit’s corpse measured its length on the floor of the hall. And still others came, flinging themselves against him. It was madness, truly. The dark lord of Daršanga knew, too late, what was in his midst. And Joscelin, Cassiel’s servant, my Perfect Companion, danced the blades with the minions of Angra Mainyu, amid a rising circle of corpses, the flagstones growing slick with blood.

“
Imriel
!” I cried, catching sight of him.

There he was, Melisande’s son, brandishing a carving knife and snarling, retreating from a lunging Drujani soldier, scrambling onto a bench, a table. The Drujani, sword in hand, pursued him, clambering onto the bench. He had one knee on the table and was jabbing with his sword when I grabbed the bench with both hands and overturned it in a surge of pure terror, toppling it and its occupant with it.

The Drujani fell hard, the back of his head striking the flagstones. “Lady,” he said in Persian, blinking at my face suspended above him, Elua knows how much opium coursing through his veins. “Lady.”

“The Shahryar Mahrkagir is dead,” I said gently. “My lord soldier, it is finished.”

“Then … this is yours?” He gave me his sword, bemused, still laying on his back, proffering the hilt. Since I did not know what else to do, I took it, the sword awkward and heavy in my hands. He sighed and closed his eyes.

The uproar of battle was subsiding.

It was strange, the dawning silence. Everywhere, people moaned, bleeding and dying, but the clash of arms had begun to fade. Impossible as it seemed, it was ending, combatants slumping in wounded exhaustion, drug-addled and confused. The surviving women of the
zenana
huddled in groups. I saw Drucilla hobbling around the outskirts, clutching her belly where a dark stain was spreading, tending the injured. The festal hall was a bloody shambles, tables overturned, the trappings on the dais shredded, even the rubble filling the firepit scattered and strewn. Âka-Magi and Magi alike wandered bereft and dazed, powerless. In the center of it all, Joscelin leaned on his sword, breathing hard, encircled by death.

There was no one left alive with the will to continue it.

Save one.

There was no outcry at his appearance, but a deepening silence. It seemed even the wounded held their breath, watching. Tahmuras’ shadow darkened the hall. How not, as massive as he was? His shoulders seemed to fill the doorway. Even at a distance, I could see the marks of tears on his face. I daresay in that place, he alone grieved for the Mahrkagir, for the mortal death of a man he had loved. We had that in common, he and I-we alone shed tears. He entered the hall with slow, deliberate steps. No one moved to intercept him. Joscelin’s head came up slowly, his weary gaze fixing on the giant warrior.

“You,” Tahmuras said to him, his voice taut with pain, pointing with the rod end of his mace. It was as though a mountain had spoken. “You will die.” He swung the morningstar, encompassing us all. “You will all die for what you have done!”

Too tired to speak, Joscelin merely nodded, the point of his sword rising from the flagstones as he set himself to meet this last challenge.

It is not a battle I care to remember.

It is not one of which the poets sing.

The morningstar is a deadly weapon, and a difficult one. Few warriors wield it well. Tahmuras of Drujan had a gift. Quicker on his feet than his size would suggest, he came on fast and low, picking his path amid the corpses, the spiked ball whipping at Joscelin’s legs. In his left hand, he held a long dagger, using it to make slashing blows as Joscelin whirled in his efforts to evade the mace, disrupting all his careful Cassiline skill.

His patterns broken, Joscelin was forced on the defensive, stumbling backward, tripping over the bodies of his own dead. His parries grew wild, the unpredictable morningstar shattering his guard, the entangling chain threatening to rip the blade from his grasp. Retreating from Tahmuras’ onslaught, he gained the dais, careful steps feeling for the edges as his opponent pressed him. I clutched the hilt of my Drujani sword, forgotten in my terror, and felt Imriel’s hand close hard upon my upper arm as he knelt on the table behind me.

“Phèdre!” he whispered urgently.

“I know,” I said, tears in my eyes, watching the struggle. “I know.”

“No!” His voice rose. “Look!”

I followed his pointing finger over my shoulder to see the priest Gashtaham approaching.

“My lady,” he said in a hideous parody of courtesy, holding his ebony rod like a club. His steps staggered, but his eyes, beneath the boar’s-skull helm, were fixed and intent. “My lady Phèdre nó Delaunay of Terre d’Ange, we have unfinished business.”

“Daeva Gashtaham.” Remembering the sword, I raised it, gripping the hilt with both hands to keep it from wavering. “Put down your staff. It is over. The doorway is closed.”

The priest’s smile was a dreadful rictus. “It may be, lady. It may be. But you were promised to Angra Mainyu, and he shall have you, if I must split your skull myself. And afterward, the boy’s, and anyone left standing after him.” He drew back his staff to swing, heedless of the blade I held, leveling it at my head. “Do you know what you have done?” he shouted, flecks of foam at the corners of his mouth. “Do you know what price I paid? Do you know what you have destroyed, damn your soul?”

“Yes, my lord,” I said steadily, keeping the point of the sword trained on his heart, conscious of the weight of it, conscious of Imriel behind me, conscious of a stealthy movement in the shadows of the dark hall and not daring to look. “I do.”

“Then
die
!” Gashtaham hissed, his muscles bunching for the blow.

I braced myself for the shock. It never fell.

A strong black hand seized his face from behind, fingers covering his mouth, wrenching his head backward to bare his throat, and I saw Kaneka’s smile gleam in the shadows as her other hand rose, the blade of a dagger flashing in the gloom.

A bright spray of arterial blood jetted forth, and I flung myself sideways to avoid it, dragging Imriel with me.

“Well done, little one,” Kaneka said complacently, watching the Âka-Magus twitch and die, runnels of blood flowing across the floor and pooling in the spaces between the flagstones. “I was hoping to kill one of his kind.”

Ignoring her, I rose to my feet and sought Joscelin.

It was not going well.

Scrambling, he retreated desperately, his sword angled in front of him, driven backward step by step, no longer on the dais, but forced the width of the hall. Tahmuras advanced relentlessly, his morningstar swinging. Each strike, Joscelin deflected more slowly, turning his shoulders into the parry and retreating to resume his guard, his notched and bloodstained sword held ever lower. I could see his arms tremble with the effort of it, his feet seeking purchase on the slippery stones.