The Past the Conflagration
The borderlands, the Saredi clans, the Erathi sea people have long been at peace, because Witches learned the consequences of war long ago … at odds we were a tragedy, a cataclysm. With one purpose, we were unconquerable.
—Fragment of a transcribed letter, believed to be from a Scholar in the Witchlands, at the Restored Temple of Justice and Antiquity at Ancartre
In darkness like the bottom of a well, Kai walked up the stone-paved road.
The sliver of moon was eclipsed by a gently rising haze that had grown over the last hours.
Windblown sand brushed against his skirt and coat and gritted under his bare feet.
He had left his boots behind in his saddlebags to make his steps as silent as possible, but the endless rush of the waves buried any small sounds of movement.
The only sources of light were toward the end of the road: the torches on either side of the bridge gate, the lamps at the top of the short guard tower, and, across the causeway, the fires along the fort’s outer wall.
None were enough to make more than small pools of warm brightness.
Dahin walked some distance ahead, carrying the little Immortal Blessed light, a spot of cool illumination that made all the shadows around him darker.
He had left his Arike clothes behind, and wore the gray Blessed tunic and pants that had been packed away in his bag since the Kagala.
He stumbled occasionally, giving the impression of someone who had walked a long weary way.
The legionaries at the guard tower must have seen him by now, but they let him get almost to within twenty paces of the gate before someone called out to him. Dahin flinched, a full-body motion that staggered him.
Kai stopped; the near-silent susurration behind him said the dustwitches, moving though the grass to either side of the road, halted as well. They had already killed all the legionaries in outer guard positions along the road: silently, with the fine sand off the narrow beach.
Dahin hesitated for too many heartbeats while Kai stood silently.
After being caught in the Summer Halls and dragged before a Hierarch and a roomful of expositors and servant-nobles, Dahin had thought walking up to the legionary guard station would be easy.
Of course it wasn’t easy, of course he was terrified.
Kai’s own terror sat in a cold knot in his stomach, a constant reminder of what would happen if they—if he—failed tonight.
Kai might survive it, but if the others didn’t, there was no point. He would rather lose this stolen body and drift on the wind, his consciousness slowly unraveling, than live alone again.
Then Dahin waved and called back to the guard. He ran the last of the distance to the gate, managing to look like someone who was exhausted and injured, and not having to force themselves onward against a wall of visceral fear.
Kai walked forward again, the grass whispering as the dustwitches moved with him.
He stopped a few paces outside the well of light from the gate’s torches and lamps.
The ground sloped away from the road, giving way to sand and rocks, and the sea lapped at the bridge’s stone pillars.
From here he could see the salt-rust on the iron gate, the blocky wrongness in the shape of the tower that marked it as legionary work rather than Arike.
Would the Hierarchs have buried Dashar under earthworks if it was possible?
Would they eventually fill in the sea channel to do it, when they had killed everyone in Descar-arik?
Dahin spoke rapidly to the guards, most of it lost in the rush of the water and the whispers of the grass.
He shook his battered bag occasionally to indicate the supposedly important messages inside it.
Kai thought he might be name-dropping Immortal Patriarchs who were supporters of the Hierarchs, but it wasn’t until he said the word “Vartasias” that the guards started to move with urgency.
Apparently no one asked to speak to Vartasias unless they had absolutely no other choice.
Through the gaps in the ironwork, Kai saw a figure come out of the tower and speak briefly to the scatter of legionaries gathered there. Then a guard moved to the smaller ironbound door to the right of the gate.
That was good. It was important that the fires stay lit, that the gate remained closed, so that any watch from the fort’s walls or tower would see nothing wrong. Kai tensed, closing his fists.
As the small door swung out, Dahin said, “Thank you,” and pretended to stumble against it, pinning it open against the stone jamb. And Kai lifted both hands, palms open.
The dustwitches didn’t hesitate.
A thick wave of sand whipped up off the dunes, as if driven by a strong, sudden gust of sea-wind.
Kai walked into it, sand stinging as it struck the exposed skin of his face and hands.
The dustwitches rushed past him in a near-silent flurry.
The sand cloud rolled over the gate, concealing it, the torches and lamps faintly shining through.
Kai reached Dahin where he braced against the open door, arms pressed over his face to shield him from the sandstorm. Kai tapped his arm in a signal and Dahin ducked and scrambled off the road, disappeared down into the dunes and sea-grass.
Kai stepped through the door, waited for Cimeri to slip past him—she had been down in the dunes, destabilizing them so the dustwitches would have enough sand to raise. Salatel and the rest of the cadre followed her. Kai closed the door but left it unlatched.
Scattered on the ground lay a dozen or so legionaries, and choking gasps sounded from the doorway of the little tower; all its windows had been open to the breeze.
Dustwitches dragged bodies out of sight into its lower level.
Tangeld had wrapped her arms around the lever that worked the gate latch and Cerala moved to help her, adding her weight as the others slipped away into the dark.
Kai waited for them to finish, making sure no last guard appeared.
Pushing the lever down lifted the locking bar, though the heavy gate stayed closed.
Some sharp-eyed sentry on the wall might see the raised bar, but they had to take that chance.
Once the bar was locked upright, Kai tapped Cerala on the shoulder to tell her to go, and she and Tangeld vanished into the shadows.
He swept a look around as he walked after them, making sure there was nothing to betray them as the sand settled in waves and the gate became visible from the fort again.
He kicked a last body off the road and broke into a run.
As he crossed the causeway, the fort’s wall loomed, lit by the fires along its battlement and in the caged balconies that extended off its upper levels.
The light played over the carved Arike figures with their broken and disfigured faces.
More fires lit the sunken stone plaza in front of the gate.
As the causeway met the solid earth of the mound, the dustwitches split, half heading left, others right, skirting the firelight.
Kai followed the righthand group, running lightly over broken rocks and tufts of grass.
He caught up with the dustwitches at the base of the wall.
Those who didn’t think they could make the climb held back, hidden in the dark with the cadre, but two had already started up.
Kai climbed after them, feeling for hand and footholds in the carving, appreciating how Talamines’ height and longer arms and legs made this easier.
He was a fast climber and reached the top ahead of the dustwitches.
In the bank of shadow between two torches, he eased up just far enough to look through the stone latticework in the parapet.
He couldn’t see movement, but he could hear voices, the words muffled by the flap of banners in the sea wind.
Kai pulled himself over the latticework and landed lightly on the stone walkway.
The inner side of the battlement was too high to see inside the fort without standing on a ledge to look through the lattice, but Kai kept his gaze on the curved side of the tower’s spire.
There was a door there, open with faint lamplight shining from the room inside.
With a soft scrabble, Tangeld pulled herself up the parapet, Hawkmoth behind her.
Hawkmoth had a coil of light strong rope over her shoulder, and the two hurried to wrap the end around the stone support of the lattice and brace it with their weight. Shearwater appeared first, then Salatel and Arsha. Salatel signaled Kai that all was well below, and he started for the tower.
Avoiding the pools of firelight, with the rest of his cadre and the dustwitches climbing onto the battlement behind him, Kai reached the tower’s open door.
It was a large lamplit room, open to a central curved stairwell, with two tall narrow windows looking forward out onto the causeway.
Half a dozen legionaries stood around, listening to one with an officer’s tail say, “—send down there and ask who that was at the gate. If they’re questioning someone—”
A scatter of sand swirled around their feet, the signal that the dustwitches who had climbed the wall on the other side of the tower were ready. Kai stepped through the doorway into the light.
Startled curses greeted him. The officer turned, staring. Then with a lip-curl of contempt, he said, “What is one of these things doing here—”