Two shadows turned into the arbor.

Shar shot forward. She struck one shape a vicious blow across the temple with the flat of her sword. She spun. Dipped. Surged upward. Hammered the other shape with the heel of one hand. Its head snapped back. Her elbow followed to the exposed throat. It went down, gasping.

Indris was a blink behind. He dashed out, light-footed. Stood within the curve of a hastily drawn sword. He reached out. Placed his palm against the man's face. Whispered the First Ban of Slumber. The warrior's knees gave out as sleep took him, felled by a word.

Indris leaped. Formulae flickered across his mind. He saw the Disentropic Stain halo his hands. A dark corona. His hands an eclipse. The Low Shout formed in his mouth- "Wait!" a familiar voice shouted in panic. Too late to stop, Indris loosed his Low Shout.

His voice boomed. Shorter, sharper than thunder. He turned it downward. The sand at his feet exploded outward. He felt the wave of force roll across his shins. His target whimpered in abject terror. The ammonia smell of urine grew strong. Indris stepped back fastidiously from the spreading pool.

Nehrun stood there, pale-faced. His hand rested on the hilt of his sheathed sword. Rosha was beside him, sword drawn. Indris's cousins looked with horror at the state of their personal guards. Three of them were unconscious; the fourth stood on unsteady legs.

"What are you doing?" Fear made Nehrun bold, shame made him angry. "I should have you executed!"

"Leave it be, Nehrun," Rosha muttered.

Indris snorted. He turned his back on his cousins and returned to his seat in Ekko's arbor. Shar leaned against the arbor wall, arms folded across her chest.

"Indris!" Nehrun choked out. "Don't turn your back on me-"

"Quiet yourself," Indris murmured. He placed his book and journal in his satchel, then slung it across his back. "There are people trying to sleep, you know."

"How dare-" Indris silenced Nehrun with a glance. Nehrun shook with impotent rage.

Indris's mind still spun, formulae clattering in the cage of his brain, desperate to fly free if he would let them. Thankfully he had done nothing too taxing. Used none of the Great Words or the major canto. He remembered with little fondness the mindstorms that could follow the use of such power: nausea, headaches, vertigo, tremors, and an aversion to light and sound. Catatonia, sometimes. Even death, in the most extreme cases.

"Stop your posturing. I'm happy to give Ekko into Rosha's custody. I know she'll keep him safe." Indris looked to Shar. "Ready to go?" Her response was to pack her sonesette in its polished wooden case.

"What do you mean, give custody to Rosha?" Nehrun said, too quickly. He licked his lips as he looked around. "I mean, as rahn-elect, Ekko is my responsibility."

"Are these your men?" Indris asked Rosha, gesturing to the guards. "If not, we'll come with you until you can get guards you know and trust."

"What are you doing?" Nehrun grabbed Indris by the arm as he tried to leave. Indris rested his gaze on Nehrun's hand. His cousin promptly let him go, rubbing his palms together nervously.

"You can't go anywhere, Indris." Rosha gave her brother a long look before she turned to Indris. "There's an emergency session of the Teshri at high moon at the Tyr-Jahavn. Father and Asrahn-Vashne need Ekko to tell the others what he saw in the Rmarq. They've asked whether you'd escort him there."

Indris scanned the arbor to make sure there was nothing left behind. Ekko watched silently while Indris and Shar prepared to leave, his expression inscrutable.

"There's no reason to delay Indris or his friend any longer," Nehrun said. He looked to where his guards were getting to their feet. "And no need for Rosha to get more-"

"What have you done, Nehrun?" Indris whispered as he leaned in close to scrutinize his cousin. He did not want Rosha to overhear. "It's obvious you've dealings with Corajidin. I've known for a long time of your ambition and impatience with Ariskander's Federationist beliefs. Are you so hungry for power you'd see your own father die?"

Nehrun held Indris's gaze, though his skin paled. Rosha frowned at them both. Nehrun swallowed, wiping the sweat from his lip.

"If Rosha wasn't here, there's no way I'd leave Ekko in your hands, Nehrun."

Rosha came forward to check on Ekko. She raised her eyes to Indris, her expression closed. "You're going to leave just when Ariskander, the man who loved you as the heir he wished he had, needs you. What happened? You used to care about every cause you heard about. You were a different man back then. Before your wife-"

"There's always a then, Rosha," Indris replied in a chill voice. "We're defined by moments of then. I'm not that man anymore. Don't look for him."

"Why not?"

"Because one day there's nothing left. A time comes when you realize you've done enough and that no matter what you do you can't..." His voice trailed off to nothing. How to explain to his cousins something he barely understood himself?

Shar came forward on silent feet. She leaned close, her hand gentle on Indris's arm. "We can at least walk with them to the Tyr-Jahavn, neh? It's not far out of our way. What harm could come of it?" Her voice was little more than the hum of the wind through pine needles.

Indris turned to look at Ekko. The Tau-se warrior rose to his feet. It was like watching a furry mountain rise from the earth. There was something...permanent...about Ekko. Something solid and terrifyingly powerful. Shar helped Ekko gather his armor and weapons from where they were stacked at the back of the arbor. With a care born of pain, Ekko pulled on his bloodstained hauberk. The gold-washed plates shone warmly. He tied his iron-shod hobnail sandals. Shar helped him with the complex ties of his banded metal cuira.s.s. Greaves. Vambraces. His over-robe. Ekko fixed his long, sickle-bladed khopesh to a ring on his belt. His helm had been lost somewhere in the marshlands.

"You have heard what I had to say and know its value, Amonindris," Ekko rumbled. He sat straighter on his cot. "Though we do not know each other well at all, I would be further in your debt should you see me safely to the Teshri. There is much they, too, need to hear from me."

Indris was not deaf to the murmurs of the Feya.s.sin when they caught sight of him and Shar. Two senior officers stood apart from the others, their eyes intent on him from behind their war-masks.

Shar caught the visual exchange and gave a quiet chuckle as the two female warrior-poets prowled toward them on cat-light feet. "You can't help getting under people's skin, can you?"

"What?" he said innocently.

"Be nice."

The two officers stood tall and athletic in their white armor, carrying white hexagonal shields etched with the knot-work six-petaled lotus of the Asrahn's office. Given their elite status they carried amenesqa, the antique yet deadly recurved swords of the Awakened Empire.

"I'm Knight-Colonel Chelapa of the Feya.s.sin," one of the women, the shorter of the two, announced. She removed her war-mask. Indris imagined her working a potter's wheel, or as a carpenter rather than a warrior. She had earnest features, with hazel eyes. Her skin was sunburned, freckled, and seamed at the corners of her eyes from laughter. A pale scar marked her right cheek. She searched Indris's face, pausing at his left eye. He sighed quietly. "You're Dragon...er, Pah-Nasarat fa Amonindris?" she asked abruptly. Shar raised an eyebrow in his direction.

"You knew the answer to that question before you walked over. I prefer daimahjin-Indris. Or just Indris."

"It's been my experience," the other lady said, the throaty timbre of her voice somehow familiar, "that he's reluctant to share his name with strangers. I'm Knight-Major Erebus fe Mariamejeh." The Feya.s.sin removed her own war-mask.

Indris smiled. She was as striking as his impa.s.sioned recollections, if not more so. There was such life in her, power in her movements. An elegance, a strength, a grace, born of her certainty. So, she was an Erebus. A strange thrill ran through him, as it always did in the presence of danger.

"Why are you here, Indris?" Chelapa queried. "We're perfectly capable of escorting Asrahn-Vashne, Rahn-Ariskander, and Knight-Colonel Ekko to the Tyr-Jahavn."

"Ekko is sworn to the Great House of Nasarat. I've been asked to make sure he's delivered safe and sound." He held up his hand to forestall her protest. "It would please Ekko if I traveled with him, and the family has asked this of me. I won't interfere."

"See you don't," Chelapa warned before she spun on her heel and walked away. Mariam turned to follow her, though she paused for a moment.

"Can we help you?" Shar asked.

The Feya.s.sin gave Shar a surprised look before she addressed Indris. Her cheeks colored, something Indris guessed was unusual for her. "I wanted to say...I enjoyed...I'm glad we've had a chance to meet again."

"And I, you," Indris replied.

"Oh, please." Shar rolled her eyes.

"We were supposed to fight," Mariam said abruptly.

"Excuse me?" he said, surprised by the strangeness of the comment. "It usually takes more than one tryst with me to make somebody angry enough to hit me."

The Feya.s.sin chuckled. "I was supposed to fight you on Amber Lake. Didn't you know? We were to be matched in the Hamesaad."

Indris glanced sidelong at Shar, who looked at them both with raised eyebrows before she walked off. He turned his attention back to Mariam. "I'd heard something about that. It would've been a shame. Let's talk later, you and I?"

"A shame?" Mariam echoed, but Indris only bowed his head with a smile as he moved away. Ahead of him, Ariskander, Vashne, and the Asrahn's sons, Daniush and Hamejin, clambered into the eight-wheeled battlewagon. Ekko was waiting at the rear of the wagon for Indris and Shar to join him. As Indris and Shar walked away, Mari called out, "What do you mean, a shame?"

When they were out of earshot, Shar elbowed Indris in the ribs. "When I said be nice, that wasn't the nice I meant."

"There's no pleasing you, do you know that?"

They joined the entourage as the wagon rolled away. The wagon was escorted by the squad of ten white-armored Feya.s.sin, faces obscured by war-masks polished to mirror brightness, their ornate shields bright with reflected light. Indris, Shar, and Ekko walked behind the wagon in silence.

As they left the expensive Upper Precinct of the Old Town, the buildings closed in. The high walls of terrace houses, with their latticed balconies and tall, dimly lit windows, became silhouettes against the brightness of the moon. The streets narrowed. Ilhen lamps were replaced by flickering oil lanterns. There were fewer pedestrians. No kherife. From the corner of his eye, Indris noted furtive shapes in the darkness of laneways and alleys. The battlewagon rattled loudly in the narrow s.p.a.ce.

Indris felt a palpable relief when they left those close confines. The narrow road cut through the gentle hills of parkland. The scent of native violets, jasmine, and flax lily filled Indris's nose. Fig trees formed a long double row of irregular columns on either side of the street. Fruit bats screeched, raucous as they tussled in the branches of apricot and plum trees. Possums stared as the wagon and its guard trundled past, their saucer eyes reflecting the light like beacons.

He looked to the north, where the lantern mist of the Mercantile Precinct hung like a haze over shallow-domed roofs and spires. Set on a jagged outcropping of rock, the large rotunda of Tyr-Jahavn swelled above its surrounding buildings.

They had reached a crossroads, flooded with lantern light, when Indris noticed the silence.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

"We can survive ambition, provided it is exercised in the open. It is the hidden knife, the heart of stone set on secret, on treasonous intent, which makes victims of us. The sly whispers of betrayal echo in the streets and the alleyways. In the wine and coffeehouse. In the chambers of the powerful. These whispers come as a friend: they speak in tones we know and trust. In tones we admire, for they often wear the face of something eminently reasonable. Such whispers foul the soul of a people. They are the rot which undoes us all."-from Honor and Loyalty, by Erebus fa Mahador, Knight-Lieutenant of the Petal Guard Day 314 of the 495th Year of the Shranese Federation Mari had been troubled when Indris, Ekko, and the Seethe woman had been added to the Asrahn's entourage. She knew Ekko by reputation. The colonel of the Nasarat Lion Guard was a renowned warrior and a cunning commander. His service to Ariskander had been peerless.

The Feya.s.sin's voices were soft as they escorted the Asrahn's carriage, though their eyes were intent on their surroundings. It gave Mari a chance to a.s.sess the unexpected additions.

The sonesette on her back declared the Seethe woman a war-chanter, yet she carried herself like any other hard-bitten trouper. It was hard to tell with the Seethe what one was dealing with. The Seethe had a philosophy that artistic expression was at once the source, journey, and destination of all life's paths. Mari had seen simple potters become the deadliest of a.s.sa.s.sins. Even Seethe children portrayed characters in the war-plays. Legend had it all players in Seethe troupes heard the voice of their trickster spirit carried on the wind, no matter what their age.

To her eyes Indris looked more like an Avn of the old blood, though it was not possible. There had been no old bloods since the fall of the Awakened Empire, save the rare Sq Masters who had overcome their mortality. She wondered who his father might have been, though she doubted he had been Shranese Avn. The cut of Indris's cloth was fine, though worn with use. His long, hooded over-robe with its wide embroidered sleeves was the dark brown of a daimahjin. The mercenary warrior-mages tended to advertise themselves, more for the safety of others than for themselves. They were greatly sought after by those who did not want to use the more restricted services of the Sq, Nilvedic, or Zienni Scholars. Changeling was slung across his back, and he walked with the cat-footed confidence of a warrior-poet.

Indris presented a problem. Had her father planned to face a daimahjin when he ambushed the Asrahn's entourage? Was this something the cagey old Vashne had taken into account? Mari's mind had spun. How did one kill a daimahjin? She remembered something about salt-forged steel and an Entropic Scar? It was not her field of expertise, though she knew they were not invincible. The Scholar Wars had shown the world that scholars could die on the point of a sword like anybody else. True, most of the scholars and witches had killed each other. The ordinary folk had risen up against the survivors afterward, as the sheep awoke to discover their shepherds could bleed.

As a warrior-poet of the Feya.s.sin, Mariam was sworn to defend the Asrahn above all other oaths and obligations. And though her service had started as a ruse, it seemed now all her choices might lead to betrayal. Of the Asrahn who had given her a life and a future of her own; her House, which had given her a past as well as the promise of a future of their making; or the vocation that now defined her.

She was a loyal soldier. But what was she loyal to? Should she warn Chela now, perhaps give the Feya.s.sin the time to prepare for what was to come? To warn her friends would place her family in danger. Whether she spoke or not, Mari felt the end of the life she had come to love draw closer with every step.

There was a hollowness in her stomach as the battlewagon pa.s.sed the tall gates of the Iron Street Park. Moths thumped hollowly against the time-yellowed gla.s.s of the gate lanterns. The weathered sandstone arch was streaked with bird droppings and the stain of centuries of rain. As she walked beside the wagon, Mari tried to penetrate the gloom that had cuddled up, fleecy and black, to fill the cracks and hollows between tree trunks.

Ahead, the well-lit crossroads where Iron Street met the Park Lane Stair came ever closer. During the day it was a popular meeting place, under the pa.s.sive gaze of the statues of winged Seethe that stood at each of the four corners of the plaza. Under moonlight, the granite paving took on a blue-green tint. It seemed somehow haunted in the nocturnal silence. A place where the despised spirits of Nomads might roam to plague the living. The lanterns, which hung by heavy iron chains from the hands of the Seethe statues, flickered fitfully as if they, too, found what lurked beyond the light to be a cause for unease.

It was now or never. Mari felt disconnected, as if a pa.s.senger in her own body, as she approached Chelapa. Chela had been a good friend over the years. A dedicated, honest women who genuinely loved the Asrahn. Who doted on her children. Who had almost died in defense of the Asrahn's beloved wife, Afareen.

"Knight-Colonel?" Mari bowed her head. Friends in private, formal in public.

"Mariamejeh?" Chela turned her masked face in Mari's direction.

Good-bye, my friend. You deserve better. "Permission to check the rear?" Mari felt as if her tongue would freeze over the lie. "I think we're being followed."

Chela nodded. "Take Mehran with you."

"I don't-"

"Take Mehran with you, Knight-Major." Her tone brooked no argument. "We never walk alone, remember?"

Mari cursed to herself. She fell back to tap Mehran, the youngest of the Feya.s.sin, on his armored shoulder. "With me," she muttered sourly.

The younger warrior-poet shrugged. Neither Vashne nor Ariskander nor Chela expected anybody to be bold enough to a.s.sault an armored battlewagon protected by Feya.s.sin. It would be less trouble for people so inclined to take their own lives. The outcome was almost as a.s.sured.

The two slowed their pace. With each step the battlewagon, along with its escort, drew farther away. Mari and Mehran stood isolated between pools of lantern light. The night was seasonably warm. She removed her war-mask and pulled down the hood of her armored robe. Ran her fingers through her hair. Sweat beaded her scalp. Mehran removed his war-mask to reveal a thin, sunburned face beneath a shock of ginger hair. Mehran grinned with the kind of openness only the very young, or those who had never been seriously hurt, can muster.

"What are we doing, Knight-Major?" Mehran looked around, deceptively casual.

"Waiting." She did not have to do this.

"For-"

Mari's hand was a blur. Even though her attack was blindingly fast, Mehran was a Feya.s.sin. He saw her movement. Curved back at the waist to avoid the blow. His forearm rose in defense.

Too late. Mari struck his temple with the edge of her palm. There was a sickening crunch. Mari grabbed hold as Mehran toppled. She gently lowered the young man to the long gra.s.s with its tiny pink flowers. She felt for his pulse at the neck, smiled to feel the rhythmic throb through her fingertips. It would have been easy to kill the young man, but there were lines Mari was unwilling to cross.

She stood over the unconscious Feya.s.sin, weighed down by guilt. There was no help for it now. She had already disabled Mehran. Her initial plan was to absent herself from the battle long enough for her father to do what he must. She chewed her lip, wincing at the physical pain of her own conscience. A sense of overwhelming panic rose in her, choking her. She clenched her fists to stop her hands from trembling.

Thinking about treachery was not the same as doing it. When the abstract became real, everything changed. Yet whichever way she stepped on this path, somebody would be betrayed. The choice was whether it was her family or herself and what she had come to believe in.

Mari looked to where her fellow Feya.s.sin were vanishing into the dark between pools of lamplight. They were not so very far away. Perhaps there was time to atone for the wrong she had done, and to prevent a wrong about to be.

The daughter of the House of Erebus wasted no time. On silent feet, she loped after the battlewagon and its escort. No matter what the outcome tonight, she had doomed herself. Perhaps she could save others.

Mari could see the entourage clearly when the first arrows whined from the darkness. The shafts were long, tipped with the serill heads used by the Seethe. The same drake-gla.s.s that had littered the ground at Amber Lake.

The Feya.s.sin raised shields and drew their weapons the moment they heard the telltale whine of arrows.

Indris chanted a few short words.

The arrows never found their targets. They shuddered meters from the Feya.s.sin, hung in midair for a heartbeat, then tumbled downward harmlessly. The chime of serill striking against the ground was beautiful.

A full fifty warriors, Seethe by their clothing, erupted from the darkness. They carried the slender-bladed swords and elegant spears typical of Seethe troupers, but their armor was mismatched and ill fitting, though each warrior wore the brightly colored wings sigil of Far-ad-din's Great House.

Mari watched as the two groups of warriors met. The Feya.s.sin, though outnumbered, felled their enemies as if reaping wheat. The ground was soon littered with the dead. Or those too wounded to fight. Mari's chest swelled with pride at what the Feya.s.sin achieved. Part of her wished she was with them, to fight against improbable odds. To defend the Asrahn, as was her duty unto death. To know that, should she fall, her Ancestors would be there to welcome her to the Well of Souls.

Ekko stood before the door of the battlewagon. The blade of his khopesh flashed, sparked, belled. Wove a glittering net of steel against which the blades of his enemies clattered uselessly. Beside him, the Seethe war-chanter fought with graceful abandon. She ducked, wove, struck, spun. Slew. Her sword, like drops of rain caught in a long blade of blue gla.s.s, wove intricate, mesmerizing patterns in the air.

Indris drew Changeling. She flared with brilliant mother-of-pearl radiance. Mari held her breath as he fought. There was no wasted movement. No...effort. It seemed as if he barely paid attention. His blade was everywhere it needed to be. Wherever it fell it took life. Indris seemed to take no pleasure in what he was doing. If anything, he looked sad.

Part of her should hope he was killed. Everything she had been taught told her to hate him on principle. But like Ariskander, Indris had proven to be other than she had been taught to expect. She had come to know this man. Had shared herself with him, though she had not known who he was. As he fought, Mari realized now what Indris had meant when he had said it would have been a shame had they been forced to fight in the Hamesaad. As she watched, Mari thought she might have been able to hold her own against Indris on her very best day. She doubted she could have survived on any other.