Assassins
Math didn’t lower the weapon.
“You’re seriously asking me what a grim lord is?” he said, scowling.
She smiled, but it was thin and cold. “Be honest: Did they give me a knight who’s exquisitely beautiful but not very bright? You can tell me. I won’t even be offended.” She stomped a foot, splattering mud. “If I already knew the answer, I wouldn’t have asked!”
His jaw dropped. Give her a knight? Did she honestly think he was a gift?
He might’ve brushed it off as a figure of speech—but with her, that didn’t feel like a safe bet.
“You should know the answer,” he said. “You’re a grim lord. One of the necromancers who enslaved humanity.” He gestured to the corpses. “And don’t pretend you’re not. After this and what you did last night? Textbook evil necromancer.”
“Evil necromancer,” Kaiataris mouthed. “You mean it. Dear stars, how long have we been asleep?”
“Asleep?”
“Yes,” she snapped, her irritation unmistakable. “From our enchanted slumber—the spell we graved to save humanity from the solstice. How long—”
“Since when is a solstice a threat to humanity? We have them twice a year!”
She blinked, outrage flaring. “Not the seasonal kind. The magical solstice.” Her expression turned to horror. “Except you have no idea of what I speak, do you?”
“No, and I probably wouldn’t believe you if I did, because you’re Kaiataris.” His nostrils flared as he shoved down panic and rapidly spiraling dread. “You are Kaiataris, aren’t you?”
“Yes!” Kaiataris took a deep breath and said in a more normal tone of voice, “Although it’s pronounced KAI-at-aris.
The first a is part of a diphthong, and the second two a’s are monophthongs.
So ‘Kai’ rhymes with ‘lie’ and ‘at’ rhymes with ‘bet.’” She shrugged.
“At least the way I pronounce those sounds. You have an accent.”
Math stared.
“Don’t look at me like that.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ve overslept for a few centuries and wake to find that people have dubbed my order ‘grim lords’ and I’m being described as an ‘evil necromancer.’ The least you can do is pronounce my name correctly.”
“You did raise the dead. Twice. I watched.”
“It’s hardly my fault that corpses are so convenient to animate.
They come pre-articulated.” She glared. “And again, both times, it saved your life. A little gratitude wouldn’t be amiss.
Didn’t your parents ever—” She stopped. He felt her sudden embarrassment.
“Apologies. I wasn’t aware that was a sensitive subject. ”
He stepped back, appalled. It wasn’t his imagination, was it? He’d felt her embarrassment—felt it as though it were his own.
What had she done to him? She must have done something.
Kaiataris’s expression turned worried, troubled. He watched her take a deep breath to steady herself.
Now he felt her chagrin, her concern. This was starting to scare him, and he wasn’t sure what was worse: the fact that he could feel her emotions or that apparently she could feel his, too.
She wasn’t gloating, though. He would’ve expected more gloating from an evil, beautiful necromancer who’d just enthralled a new slave. Come to think of it, he would’ve expected more blind obedience from said enthralled slave, and that didn’t seem to be happening, either.
Case in point:
“Just go.” Math shifted his grip on the black-powder long arm. “Thank you for saving my life. I’ll return the favor by pretending I never saw you.”
She looked visibly taken aback. “But what will you do?”
Math didn’t answer right away. He squatted beside Captain Qin’s body, setting the black-powder weapon against his shoulder. From a pouch at the man’s belt, he pulled a small carved disk.
“I’m waiting here. Isofal will check in on our progress using this. The next time they do, they’ll see the bodies and send reinforcements. Someone needs to explain what happened. The Order needs to know the Kaliri are using these new weapons.”
She tilted her head. “This is new?”
“The Innalova Accords ban category-one weapons, except Kaliri never signed the accords. And this”—he nodded at the weapon—“I’ve never even heard of anything like this.” Math scoffed. “As if we didn’t have enough problems.”
“So you wish to warn your peers. Commendable. But you can’t stay.”
“I have to. If I run, I look guilty.”
Kaiataris sighed and offered Math the bundle of folded paper she’d taken from a Kaliri corpse. “That will not change if you stay.”
Math grudgingly took the papers and unfolded them. The first few pages were completely unintelligible, since Math couldn’t read Kaliri.
The last page was a sketch of Math’s face.
The illustration was alarming for all the obvious reasons, but it wasn’t what made Math’s breath catch. No, his distress was caused by something much simpler: the paper.
Like most cenobiums, Isofal manufactured its own paper. Over time, each cenobium developed its own personal style. Most people couldn’t tell the difference, but for someone raised in the Idallik Order, each cenobium’s paper was as distinctive as a family member’s face.
This was written in Kaliri on Isofal paper.
“This doesn’t look great,” Math admitted. “But I can’t read Kaliri. It could say anything.”
“Not anything, I should think. I rather doubt it’s a wedding invitation.”
He glared. “Can you read it?”
“Of course. It’s an assassination order,” she explained helpfully. “They were supposed to kill everyone—but most especially you, Mathaiik Kaven.”
“It’s pronounced Math-EYE-ik KAV-in.”
“My apologies.” She then continued, “But as I was saying, they were then supposed to take your body when they left, so it would appear that you’d escaped.
And as these orders include a very thorough list of your escorts, their names, descriptions, and their abilities, well.
I can only assume they had an accomplice. ”
“They might be trying to frame someone.” He winced. “Yes, fine. That sounded ridiculous the moment I said it out loud.”
He pointed to the captain. “You said it lists his abilities? Then who’s he and what can he do?”
She gave the bloody ruins of the man’s face a distasteful look.
“You said that was your captain…” She scanned the second page.
“Kin? Cheen? According to this, he can summon a chain made of darkness.” She paused.
“I will assume that is some kind of euphemism, as darkness is not a quality but an absence of such. It also says that he’s smart, capable, and an excellent spellcaster, but habitually removes his helmet when not under threat, so an ambush would be the most efficacious way of dealing with him.
Shall I tell you what it says about the others? ”
“No, that’s not … that’s unnecessary.” He swallowed thickly. “None of us said his name. He never summoned a weapon.” The only way she could’ve possibly gotten those details right is if those papers really said those things.
He couldn’t go back to Isofal. Not like this. Not knowing someone had handed over names and mission details. The “accomplice” could be anyone.
What were his choices? Flee and become a hunted exile, or go to Bashan and report to the heads of the Order. They needed to know.
Reaching Bashan would be the hard part.
His gaze fell to Captain Qin’s body. The man hadn’t been wearing plate, only a hauberk for comfort. His full armor was still in the wagon, where it had been poking Math’s ribs for most of the ride.
They were about the same size.
Kaiataris cleared her throat.
Math narrowed his eyes. “Yes, my lady?”
“You may stop that at any time. I have never worn the title of ‘lady’ before in my life, and I don’t intend to start.” She gestured with the papers. “Now that we’ve established that you can’t stay, we should follow that to its logical conclusion and be on our way.”
Math kept rifling through the captain’s pouches. He found spiral-locked letters from Commander Talu, and a writ of passage.
“You’re welcome to do what you like.” He walked to the wagon, opening gear bags until he found the captain’s. “But we’re not traveling together.”
She crossed her arms. “You cannot simply leave me.”
“Watch me.” He hoisted the equipment bag off the wagon, stopping to throw the tracking stone as far into the woods as possible. He threw the bag over one shoulder and picked up the Kaliri weapon. The higher-ups in Bashan would want to see it.
“Although really, I would rather you didn’t,” he added.
“You’re making a dangerous assumption, fair knight.”
“You can stop calling me that any time you like, too. I’m not a knight.” He turned back around with a sigh. “Fine. What assumption?”
“That I followed you.”
Math frowned. “I … okay. Why would you be here if you weren’t following me?”
He could still feel her worry, only why would she be? The Kaliri were dead. The knights were dead. Reinforcements wouldn’t arrive for at least an hour.
Who was left?
Wind rustled the treetops. And Math knew.
“You weren’t following me,” he said. “You were following the trees.”
“I call them the Parnathi.” She pointed to the nearby hill. “But they are following you. They sit just over that rise. Why they haven’t attacked yet is a mystery. Perhaps the noise from the black powder made them hesitate.”
“Or,” a third voice said, “they were waiting for me to catch up. Sorry. I grew as fast as I could.”
Math knew that voice. Except it couldn’t be …
“Huraiik?”
The man who crouched up high on the branch of a sturdy oak did indeed look like the late Idallik Knight Huraiik.
It’s just that he was also a plant.