The Past The Spark #2
“Kai!” Bashasa shouted. He pointed up. A three-story tower loomed above, figures with bows on the balcony. “Stop them!”
Kai grimaced; he wanted to stay and make sure Bashasa got through this alive. But his Saredi scout training took over and he sheathed his spear and turned his horse toward the tower even as every nerve in his body protested.
This would be easier if Ziede was here but she had entered the city by stealth last night with Tahren.
They meant to make their way to the tower where the Immortal Blessed well-source, the connection to the Well of Thosaren, was kept.
Their goal was to take control of the well-source so no messages for help could be sent to the Hierarchs through it.
They had thought first to destroy it, but Dahin had pointed out that answering any messages that came in would buy them more time.
Kai wouldn’t know if they had succeeded or not until he saw them again.
Or if Blessed ascension rafts arrived to destroy them from the air.
He reached the wall and reined in, and stood up in the stirrups.
His horse snorted and danced but he grabbed on to the carved lintel of a window.
He pulled himself up and rammed his shoulder into the wood lattice and rolled right through it, and landed on the floor in a pile of splinters.
Mortals screamed and fled. He ignored them, scrambling upright and throwing himself through the nearest door into a stairwell.
He raced up past walls painted with dancing figures.
At the next landing he heard light steps behind him and looked back, but it was Telare, Cerala, and Nirana.
They should have stayed with Bashasa and his cadre, but it was a little late to give that order now.
Kai rounded the corner and almost ran into the sword of a richly dressed mortal.
He ducked back from the blade and caught the man’s wrist.
Kai didn’t have enough time to draw out all his life, just enough to make him fall down. Every breath of delay might mean another dead ally, might mean Bashasa’s life. He shoved the collapsing body aside and plunged up the last short flight into the top floor of the tower.
Several mortals huddled against the back wall, their fear telling Kai they were non-combatants.
Some were children, some adults already bruised and battered.
The wide landing was in disarray, cushions flung around, a table broken into splintered pieces.
Two legionaries stood near the trapped mortals, guarding a half-open door into a sunlit room.
Through that room would be the balcony, and the legionaries armed with bows.
Not a problem necessarily for Kai, but he didn’t want his cadre hurt.
He had to make this quick and quiet. The gesture shielded by his body, he motioned for his cadre to wait; their footsteps halted on the stairs behind him.
The two legionaries turned and stared, confused by Kai’s appearance; he had moved almost silently and he was dressed like a servant-noble.
In that heartbeat of hesitation, Kai strode across the landing.
He reached the first legionary and grabbed the lower half of the man’s face; before he could react, Kai took his breath, then his life.
The second legionary should have cried out for help, or in warning, but he stabbed Kai in the side with a short spear instead.
The blow rocked Kai, but he wrapped an arm around the spear and held it in place as Cerala and Telare rushed up onto the landing.
Telare drove her sword into a gap in the armor over the legionary’s gut and Cerala cut his throat before he could do more than gurgle.
Kai let his desiccated legionary drop and wrenched the spear out of his side.
Nirana had gone ahead to the half-open doorway.
She used a pocket mirror to take a quick look inside, then signaled to Kai that it was clear.
He slipped silently past her. It was another room with tumbled couches and bedding, with open doors leading out to the broad balcony.
Half a dozen legionaries stood out there with two servant-nobles.
All the legionaries had bows, aiming down at the fighting below.
There was no help for it, they all had to go at once.
Kai was close enough, barely two paces away, and he had the pain from the already closing spear wound to power the intention. He crouched, and sketched the design on the wooden floor of the balcony.
Someone swore in Imperial. As Kai set the intention free, he looked up to see an arrow pointed directly at his head.
He had never been shot in the head before, and he didn’t want to find out what would happen if he was.
He shoved himself back through the doorway just as flames leapt up from the intention.
The arrow thudded into the spot where Kai had been and immediately burst into ash.
The fire rolled across the wooden balcony like red glowing liquid. The men were caught almost too fast to scream, their bows snapping from the heat before their clothes caught.
Making the fire limited in its scope, creating it quickly, without having to pore over the design for hours, and stopping it at will had been hard to achieve, but it made the intention more usable.
Kai had practiced it with Ziede’s help; she had some success putting out uncontrolled blazes with a sharp gust of air, though it didn’t always work as it should, with nerve-racking results.
Being close to the target, and having enough pain to control the result, was a necessity; the water intention that he had accidentally destroyed the Summer Halls with was a warning he wasn’t likely to forget.
Though he had no idea yet how to create an intention that powerful; it was easier to steal already completed designs from dead expositors.
The railing dissolved in flames and Kai closed his fist to shatter the intention. The fire winked out like a candle, leaving a wash of heat and a few charred beams that were all that was left of the balcony. Kai stood and caught hold of the singed doorframe, and leaned out far enough to see below.
With their archers dead and the frightening burst of fire above them, the legionary line had broken. Bashasa and the others pushed forward out of the trap. Kai breathed in relief and turned away.
He passed back through to the stair landing, where Cerala spoke rapidly and reassuringly to the unarmed mortals. They watched Kai sweep past with wide eyes.
From the crashing and outcries from the lower floors, Nirana and Telare had rejoined Salatel, Arsha, and Hartel to finish killing the rest of the legionaries in the house.
Kai reached the lower floor and saw bedraggled civilians helping the soldiers, pointing out hiding places and going after the legionaries with broken pieces of furniture and cooking knives.
Kai stopped in the central room near the entrance hall, where cushioned couches lined the walls and spilled food and broken dishes had ruined brightly colored carpets.
He admitted to himself that there had been more legionaries in here than he had expected and that it could have gone badly for both him and his cadre.
But so many of the dead were without weapons or armor, with their clothing open or missing entirely.
Kai didn’t think Salatel and the others had the time or inclination to strip the bodies, so the legionaries must have been like that when the cadre arrived.
And the place smelled like distilled liquor and rancid wine.
He stepped over a half-naked legionary corpse and demanded, “What the shit was going on here?”
Nirana prodded a body with her spear to make sure it was dead and told Hartel, “It’s your turn.”
Hartel explained, “It’s an entertainment house.
You pay money to attend, mostly it’s just parties and conversations, music, stories, sometimes sex too.
It’s meant to be fun.” She waved at the dead littering the central hall.
“The legionaries take the houses over and won’t let the hosts leave, and make them do whatever the legionaries want. ”
Kai snarled, wishing he hadn’t asked. The civilians checking the dead bodies and picking through the remains of their home looked more battered than any of the cadre soldiers. “If I’d known that I wouldn’t have made the fire so quick.” He started for the door. “We need to go.”
They found the horses a little way down the street nosing at a dead legionary.
As they mounted and started away, other stragglers who had gotten separated in the fighting fell in behind them.
Further up the street, civilians had come out on the covered walkways and balconies, all shouting, but none tried to throw things or block their way.
Kai was still learning the Arike language and he could only pick out a few words, the emotion and the echo off the stone walls not helping.
Two legionaries burst out of a house but they were fleeing, chased by a scatter of civilians with sticks and other makeshift weapons.
Telare reined in long enough to block the legionaries’ escape, then hurried to catch up.
The clash of weapons sounded ahead. The walls on either side of the road abruptly fell away and they were in an open plaza, riding up on legionaries on foot who had surrounded the Arike troop.
Bashasa wasn’t visible but Kai could see the banner of the dead city of Suneai-arik, waving wildly from a pole held high over someone’s head.
They’re going to have to stop doing that, Kai thought, signaling to Salatel and driving his horse forward.
It marked Bashasa’s position and that was not a good idea.
This time it was necessary, for the Arike in the city to know who was here, that this was a rescue, not another conqueror.