Chapter 1
One
They had left the Kagala behind them, flying over the dry plain of the western Arik in an Immortal Blessed ascension raft.
Kai curled on the bench with his back against the metal wall of the curtained shelter, facing into the warm wind, trying to ignore the argument.
Which was impossible, considering which members of his extended family currently living in the mortal world were here.
Using her heart pearl to speak silently to him, Ziede said, Just don’t jump off the raft.
Too tired to even feel sour about it, Kai replied, I’m going to spend the next fifty years living in the Arkai marshes with Dahin.
The raft was shaped like a curled gingko leaf, and though it was large as such crafts went, there wasn’t much room to get away.
Toward the bow, Saadrin and Tahren faced off.
Both Immortal Marshalls, they resembled each other in their height and strong build, their features similar enough for a stranger to guess that they were related.
Tahren’s hair was blond and a few finger widths long, and Saadrin’s was silver and cropped so close it was just fuzz on her scalp.
Her light tawny-golden skin was darker than Tahren’s ivory.
Both were missing their armor and their only weapons were scavenged from their mostly dead captors.
Their bedraggled clothing had been washed in water drawn from the Kagala’s desert well but didn’t look much the better for it.
And of course Saadrin was a complete ass. With all the confidence of someone whose will was seldom questioned, she told Tahren, “You can’t shirk your responsibilities like a weak mortal.”
Deadpan and as immovable as a mountain, Tahren countered, “I can. And the mortals you call ‘weak’ often have more moral fortitude than the strongest Immortal Marshall.”
Dahin stood at the raft’s steering column, his gaze on the horizon as if lost in thought.
A Lesser Blessed, he was small compared to the Immortal Marshalls, light hair tied back in a queue, wearing an equally battered Arike-style tunic and skirt.
He said, “Kai wouldn’t let me stab Aunt Saadrin and now he regrets it, don’t you, Kai? ”
Kai sighed. Tahren didn’t react, but she caught Kai’s gaze across the raft and her left eyelid twitched. Kai sympathized. Dahin hated other Blessed, especially the ones he was related to. Maybe I’ll live alone in the Arkai marshes, Kai thought.
Saadrin ignored Dahin except for an exasperated grimace. Still trying to glare Tahren into submission, she said, “Even you won’t ignore your role in this farce of a treaty and let the consequences fall on the Blessed, no matter how forsworn you are.”
“I might,” Tahren said, with no detectable sarcasm whatsoever. After a beat, she added, “I find myself more inclined to it with every passing moment.”
It was always strange how the Blessed would refer to Tahren as if she were something to be scraped off their boots when the rest of the Rising World considered her a hero and savior. Kai touched Ziede’s heart pearl and said, You and Tahren should come to the marshes with me.
That’s not helpful, Ziede Daiyahah replied.
She stood beside Tahren, absently tapping her nails on her folded arms. She had wrapped her long dark braids up in a scarf, and her dark brown skin was without makeup, her long tunic and pants as bedraggled as the rest of their clothes.
It made her look oddly bare and stripped down to essentials, ready for a battle. She added, Tahren is fucking furious.
Good, Kai told her. Tahren had every right to be fucking furious.
When they had first rescued her from the Witch cell in the abandoned Kagala fortress, Tahren had assumed Ziede and Kai had been searching for her the entire time she was missing.
The power written into the walls of the cell had left her in a waking dream, and she had no idea how long she had been imprisoned.
Then Ziede explained that she and Kai had been captured at the same time, entombed, and had only recently escaped.
“You have to admit, Aunt Saadrin,” Dahin said conversationally, idly making a minute adjustment in the raft’s direction as the wind tried to shove it sideways.
“The Blessed have certainly asked for any consequences they get. It’s rather a habit of the Blessed, asking for consequences and then whining once they get them, isn’t it? ”
Saadrin’s jaw set. She didn’t look at Dahin, but her answer was clearly directed at him. Which was a mistake, Kai could have told her. She said, “It was not all the Blessed who did this. Only a few are foresworn.”
Dahin laughed. “Oh, Aunt Saadrin. Someone’s going to have to teach you about irony. Maybe it’ll be me.”
Tahren knew Dahin too well to respond to him when he was like this. Still focused on Saadrin, she said, “If only the Blessed did not have a history of blaming the many for the actions of the few.”
Kai snorted quietly in appreciation. Tahren knew how to hit Saadrin where it hurt. Not that it was helping anything.
The argument was about where they would go next, and who would go there.
Kai and Ziede had assumed Saadrin would want to return to the Blessed Lands with her prisoner, the Lesser Blessed Vrenren.
He was currently sitting on the floor of the raft, tied up with rope meant to restrain the Immortal Blessed, and watching the argument with wide eyes.
As one of the few survivors of the Immortal Blessed faction of the conspiracy, he apparently had too much sense to contribute.
Kai thought Saadrin would have been eager to return to the Blessed Lands and report all the perfidy to the Patriarchs. Reporting on other people’s perfidy was one of the few things Saadrin seemed to truly enjoy, as far as Kai could tell. Instead she wanted to go directly to Benais-arik.
Benais-arik, where the real plot had been hatched.
They didn’t have to go with her. Dahin could take them to the nearest canal outpost where they could leave Saadrin to continue her journey with the raft while they made their way home to Avagantrum by boat. But Saadrin wanted Tahren to speak to the council at her side.
Saadrin’s whole face had tightened at Tahren’s last comment. Obviously trying to pretend it hadn’t hit home in the worst way, she said stiffly, “This is no joking matter.”
Tahren’s sense of humor was dry as dust but it was obvious she was deadly serious now. She said, “I am not known for joking. I am known for dispensing justice.”
“Justice except for what you owe to your own blood kin—”
“You are lucky I’ve spared you justice. If I gave you what you were owed—”
Ziede, Scourge of the Temple Halls, said aloud, “I’m unsuited for the role of peacemaker and if I’m forced into it, you will all regret it.
” She added through her heart pearl, Kai, and you know how much it pains me to say this, Saadrin is right about going to Benais-arik.
The Rising World council should see Tahren.
Kai grimaced. Tahren was a lynchpin of the relationship between the rest of the Rising World and the Immortal Blessed.
The Arike, the Enalin, the Grale, the Ilveri, and all the other members would be much reassured to see her, and to hear her speak about the end of the conspiracy.
Saadrin’s involvement in Tahren’s rescue would show that there were still Immortal Blessed who kept their word and upheld the treaty.
The Immortal Marshalls who represented the Blessed Lands to the council would be indebted to Tahren and furious about it.
Kai had to admit all that was true. He didn’t have to like it, but he had to admit it.
Saadrin twitched toward Ziede and started to speak, then took in the change of expression on Tahren’s face.
The change of expression that said, be rude to my wife and I will end you.
Saadrin clearly wasn’t afraid of Tahren but she must be all too aware what fighting her would be like.
She changed whatever she had been about to say to, “You may all be more than ready to turn your backs on the Rising World, but the Blessed and the mortal lands—” She waved a hand toward Sanja and Tenes, sitting just inside the doorway of the little domed shelter behind Kai.
Sanja watched avidly. Tenes frowned in concern. “—bear the consequences.”
Tahren’s gaze narrowed. She turned her head slightly. “Sister Tenes, young Sanja, what do you say, as representatives of the rest of the known world?”
Sanja’s expression was a mix of confusion and suspicion.
She was small, barely old enough to be called an adolescent, with the brown skin and tightly curled dark hair common to most of the east. She didn’t know Tahren at all yet and nothing in her former life as a street child in the free city at the Mouth of the Sea of Flowers had inclined her to trust. She looked at Tenes for help.
Tenes was a Witch. She looked young, with light silky hair and lighter skin, and she might have been from anywhere to the south or west or north of the whole world.
An expositor had taken her as a familiar and she had lost her memory and her voice to him.
All Kai could tell of her past life was that she was probably from a borderlander witchline.
She looked from Tahren to Saadrin and signed, I follow Kaiisteron.
“Me too,” Sanja added belligerently.
Tahren faced Saadrin again. “And me.”
Dahin waved a hand without turning around, currently guiding the raft through a particularly tricky vagary of the wind. “And me. You know, mostly. As much as I ever do anything.”
That was that. Kai uncoiled from the bench and stood. The wind pulled at his hair and his dusty tunic and skirt. He said, “Tahren, would you speak to the Rising World council if I ask it?”
“If you ask it, yes,” Tahren said without hesitation.
“I ask it. We’ll go to Benais-arik.”
“So we shall.” Tahren turned from Saadrin as if she had suddenly ceased to exist.