Chapter 40
Chukwuemeka was halfway across the inner courtyard when the first cough hit him.
He stumbled, caught himself against a wall, and spat into the dust. His eyes widened as he looked at it—at the blood.
"No."
The next fit of coughs doubled him over, his hands clawing at his chest as if he could physically tear out whatever was killing him. Blood splattered the ground between his feet.
He fell to his knees.
Around him, the courtyard was filling with sounds he had been too focused on his own mortality to notice.
Coughing. Retching. The wet, awful sounds of men drowning in their own blood.
Naiman soldiers. Borjigin servants. A few of Somadina's remaining guards, their weapons forgotten as they clutched their throats and fell.
Chidinma appeared at the far end of the courtyard.
She walked slowly, picking her way through the dying; her deep blue robes were immaculate and her hair was perfect.
"Chidinma," he rasped. "Help—help me—"
She stopped a few feet away and watched him.
"You're dying," she observed.
"Antidote—there must be—you—"
"There is." She tilted her head. "I took it. Three days ago. Before the fires were lit."
He stared at her. Blood streamed from his nose, his mouth, his eyes. He could feel it pooling in his lungs, drowning him by inches.
"You—" Another cough, spraying crimson. "You're my daughter—"
"I am." Her voice was soft. "I am probably the only one who still calls you father."
He tried to speak, but only blood came out.
"I know what you did."
He fell to the floor, looking up at her.
"I finally found Kamsi's body."
She watched as he collapsed fully, his body curling in on itself as the Mal-kai finished its work. She watched as his eyes went glassy and still. She watched until the last tremor passed through him and he lay motionless in the dust.
Kamsi had been dead a long time, he merely used her name to lead Somadina along. Truly, her father was a vile man, and she could not remain his daughter.
Chidinma stepped over his body and kept walking.
The palace gates loomed ahead, open to the street beyond. Through them, she could see riders—Valthorne riders, their banners snapping in the morning breeze. At their head, a man on a massive horse, his dark hair pulled back into a ponytail.
General Thane.
Chidinma's horse waited where she had left it. She mounted smoothly, gathered the reins, and rode through the gates to meet him.
He saw her coming and raised a hand. His riders halted behind him.
Chidinma reined in before him, close enough to speak without raising her voice.
"General Thane." His name in her mouth was an offering. "You're welcome in this city. We've been expecting you."
His eyes moved past her, to the bodies in the courtyard, to the smoke still rising from distant fires, to the civilians emerging from doorways with expressions he could not quite read.
"What happened here?" His voice was rough. Wary.
"The city defended itself." She folded her hands. "In the manner available to it. You took the antidote, I trust? Before entering the walls?"
His frown deepened. "What antidote?"
Chidinma paused. She had assumed—but assumptions were dangerous. Best to be certain.
"The preparation Madame Varkesh administered to your forces before the march. She would have told you it was a fortifying tonic. For the campaign." She watched his face carefully. "You did drink it. Right?"
Understanding dawned in his eyes.
"Yes," he said slowly. "I drank it."
"Lovely."
"What was in it?"
Chidinma looked up at him. A tired smile on her face.
"The Mal-kai blooms in the deep forest. You wouldn't recognise it—it's specific to this region, and it leaves no taste.
When burnt, it releases into the air and settles in the lungs.
It takes approximately three days to become symptomatic.
" She glanced at the bodies, then back at him.
"A little longer if the subject is otherwise healthy.
Shorter in cases of existing weakness. The antidote must be administered before exposure or within a narrow window after. Without it, the outcome is… this."
Thane stared at her.
"It took some time to ensure adequate distribution among the civilian population before we lit the fires. One couldn't rush that particular step. But by the time the Mal-kai was burning, everyone behind these walls who mattered had been dosed. Everyone on the other side of the walls had not."
Three days. The fires had been lit three days ago. The Naiman soldiers outside the walls had watched the smoke and thought nothing of it.
They had been breathing it ever since.
"They've been dying since—"
"Since before your forces arrived, yes. The battle in the forest was a courtesy, really. Insurance against those who had not yet entered the city walls." She paused. "We couldn't account for everyone."
Thane sat on his horse in a street full of the dead, and Chidinma watched him understand that the war he had ridden to fight was already over.
"Who?" His voice was rough. Shaken.
"My sister sends her regards," she said.
"General, your men are welcome to water and rest. The palace gates are open.
Plunder and loot as you see fit, if that is your custom.
Anyone remaining behind the palace walls will not be in a position to object.
Tonight or any night thereafter. Anyone in the Borjigin palace was to be slaughtered, man or woman, young or old.
Very few would be exempt based on previous merits. "
She paused, letting the weight of it settle.
"By orders of the Khatun of the Valthorne tribe."
Somadina had been stripped of his finery—the silks, the gold, the symbols of a power that had never truly been his.
He wore nothing now but his own skin, soft and trembling in the morning light.
His wrists were bound behind him. His ankles were tied to a stake driven deep into the earth.
Before him, at exactly the height a man's face would be when forced to bend, sat the bucket.
He had looked inside once, when they first put him here. He had not looked again. But he could smell it. Could taste it on the air with every breath.
A crowd had gathered at dawn.
They lined the walls, the rooftops, the spaces between buildings. Mothers held children on their hips. Old men leaned on walking sticks.
Two guards—men who had once bowed when he passed and now looked at him like meat. One carried a cloth. The other carried nothing, which meant his hands would do the work.
"The Okpalaeze has been found guilty," the first guard announced. His voice carried, meant for the crowd as much as the prisoner. "Of treason against the Borjigin people. Of cowardice before the enemy. Of selling a member of the Imperial family to save his own skin. The sentence is death."
The crowd murmured. Approval, mostly. A few voices raised in protest—those who had loved his father, who remembered when Somadina's name meant something other than shame—but they were drowned quickly.
"The method," the guard continued, "was chosen by the Khatun of the Valthorne. May her reign be long."
He stepped forward.
Somadina's eyes went wide. "Wait—wait, I demand to see her—I demand—"
The cloth cut him off.
It was rough, untreated, designed to absorb rather than repel. They pressed it over his face—his nose, his mouth, the desperate gasping holes through which he tried to draw air. And then the second guard picked up the bucket.
The first splash was warm.
Somadina's body went rigid. His scream was muffled by the cloth. He thrashed against his bonds, but they held.
The crowd watched.
Some laughed. Some turned away.
The bucket emptied. The cloth came away. Somadina gasped, choked, spat, vomited—adding his own filth to the filth already coating him. His chest heaved. His eyes streamed tears that could not wash away what he had breathed.
"Again," said the guard.
They did it four times.
By the end, Somadina was not screaming anymore.
He was not even crying. He simply hung in his bonds, limp and broken, his chest rising and falling in shuddering gasps that brought more filth into his lungs with every breath.
The bucket sat empty beside him, its contents now coating his face, his hair, and the ground beneath him.
The guards looked at each other. Nodded.
The prince was hanged at the city gates, his death ultimately by hanging.
She never came.
Somadina's eyes, bulging and bloodshot, sought her in the crowd until the very end.
He scanned faces as he rose, searched the windows as he swung, and looked for her even as the darkness closed in.
She would come. She had to come. She was the only one who mattered, the only one whose eyes he wanted on him, the only one whose contempt had always felt like attention, and attention from her was the only thing that had ever made him feel real.
She did not come.
He had wanted, so desperately, to make her look at him.
He died still wanting.