War of the Magi: Azrael's Wrath (Book 2) (19 page)

Boatmen joined them on the walkway, and they passed children sitting with their feet in the water, and old men and women fishing from the rocks. Samira spared them only the briefest looks as she searched for enemies, and she found them soon at the top of the river bank. The soldiers clustered at every corner where a house looked down at the Leyen. Most were the modest homes of the people who worked on the river itself, but farther north she could see grander houses rising above the roofs, though none quite as large as Faris’s estate outside the walls.

“Will the soldiers attack us?” she asked quietly.

“No, but they will be watching,” Jengo said. “Darius will know that Faris is here very soon.”

“And when he does?”

“Who knows? Maybe nothing. Maybe he’ll kill us all.” The towering archer shrugged. “He used to be a good man, but now…”

“Now?”

Jengo smiled. “Now he wears a crown, and has gone mad, of course.”

“Is that what happened to you?”

“No.” He grimaced. “When I claimed my crown, everyone around me went mad, instead. Men and women who used to care only for family and freedom suddenly cared only for cattle, gold, land, and titles. I couldn’t go a single day without hearing someone whine about what they wanted, or what they thought they deserved, or some new childish squabble.”

“So you left?”

“Not at first. I tried to rule them for a time, but after my third assassination attempt, I grew tired of it.”

Samira smiled. “I can see how that might be tiresome.” 

“Do your princes bicker over land and gold, too?”

“Not often. And never for very long.”

“Then I should visit your homeland. Where is it? Burzhia?”

Samira paused, and then changed the subject. “I’m a little surprised to see you serving Prince Faris.”

“I don’t serve him. But I suppose it may look that way. I do find myself helping him more and more these days.”

“Because he can’t help himself.”

“Hardly.” Jengo cast her an unpleasant look. “Faris was born with a broken back, unable to walk, unable to move his hands properly. He’s spent most of his life being cut open and stitched back together by doctors, and then trying to heal. I can’t imagine the sort of pain he’s endured. The fact that he can walk today shows just how strong he is, to live through a lifetime of that and still keep living. He’s only fat because he can barely move. That, and he loves to eat.” The warrior smiled sadly.

“I didn’t realize.”

“Most don’t.”

“Then perhaps you should tell our healer. She might be able to help him.”

“Could she really?”

Samira glanced back at the prince again, and instead of a man struggling to move under the weight of his self-indulgence she saw a man struggling to move with the shattered body that God gave him.

Humans are such fragile things.

Jengo turned west into the city and they passed within arm’s reach of a pair of soldiers, but the armed men said nothing and let the tall warrior and the huge prince proceed into Tagal. After a few minutes Jengo stopped to let the others catch up. He pointed to the angular spires and towers at the center of the city, saying, “It’s not the most beautiful palace I’ve ever seen, but it may be the largest.”

“Well guarded?”

“Very.”

“How many men will Faris need to take back his throne from Darius?”

“More than he’ll get.”

Samira looked at him sharply. “You’re certain?”

“Yes. Digna and Taharqa don’t command their full legions anymore, and everyone else is either too loyal to Darius, or too afraid of him.”

“Then why are we doing this?” she asked. “And why are you helping?”

“Because this is the end of Tagal. You saw the outskirts of the city. Soon this place will just be one huge fortress, and Darius will be forever at war, conquering and plundering to keep refilling his coffers and granaries. He might even succeed long enough to die on his throne, but by then this country will be dead.”

“That’s insane.”

“Insanity is the very heart of what it means to rule. Few people have the brains to manage their own lives happily. Who would dare to command a million lives except a lunatic?”

Samira shook her head. “You didn’t answer my questions. Why are we doing this if you’re so certain we will fail?”

He shrugged. “Because the only alternative is to run, and keep running. If I was younger, I might have done just that. But I don’t want to live like that now. And Faris would never survive it. So we might as well rally the last few men of conscience in this place and die together for our honor and for justice, rather than die slowly, robbed of both.”

Samira watched Faris limp toward her with Iyasu at his side. She turned back to Jengo and said quietly, “What if there was another way? A magi way?”

“Iyasu is a good friend, but a seer can’t fight an army. He tried already, and nearly died for his trouble.”

“Yes, but there are other types of magi. Other types of clerics. Ones who can heal. And ones who can fight, like me.” She didn’t look at the man’s face. Instead she gazed past him down the long, busy avenue full of people carrying food and clothing and tools from one place to another. “What if Faris could defeat Darius with a wave of his hand? What if Faris could be strong enough to sit on the throne? Would he do it? And would he be a good king? Or would he just become another Darius?”

Jengo paused, his brow wrinkling. “That’s a strange fantasy to consider.”

“But one worth considering.”

“Is it?” He narrowed his eyes. “Faris has spent his whole life struggling to be like other people. To walk, to feed himself, to write. He was given much, but he had to earn much more. And he fears power, fears what it can do to people. He would be terrified of becoming a butcher like Darius.”

“But would he?”

“No.” Jengo shook his head. “It’s not in him. The real danger would be that some simpering minister would abuse his power, and Faris would fail to stop him.”

“Hm.” She looked across the street and saw a pair of soldiers staring at her. They made no effort to hide the fact that their attention was solely on her and her companions. She ignored them.

When the others finally caught up, Jengo plunged down the streets again, angling toward the northern side of the city center. They passed many houses that stood dark and silent under the evening sky, with no sign of life about them, and the people still moving about the city trudged wearily under their baskets and bags, eyes lowered and voices low, when they spoke at all.

Jengo stopped in front of a large house where lamps burned brightly in the windows, and the tall warrior approached the doors at Faris’s side. They knocked, the doors opened, and after a brief word with whoever was on the other side, the prince went inside with Jengo and Iyasu while the rest of them remained in the street.

Edris pouted. “I’ve never been to Tagal before. Is it customary to leave half your guests out in the cold like this? Because I frankly don’t approve.”

“You’ll live,” Samira said. “The general is probably taking a great risk by having Faris in his house.”

“Isn’t he taking an equal risk in having a group of strangers loitering outside his door?” the singer asked.

“Oh shit,” Zerai muttered.

Samira turned and saw a company of armed men approaching from the southern end of the road. She quickly recognized one of the men leading them as one of the soldiers who had been staring at her. “How many?”

“About fifty,” the falconer said.

“Fifty is a large number,” the djinn cleric said. “I’ll need a little help. Bashir?”

“Wait!” Veneka waved them back. “We cannot possibly fight that many men. And even if we could, the noise would bring another thousand soldiers running from every direction.”

“They’re probably already running from every direction,” Edris said dryly. “This was obviously a trap. Darius must have told them to watch for the bloated prince, and then kill whoever he met with. Two traitors killed in a single stroke, or however many strokes it takes to lop off poor Faris’s head.”

“He’s probably right,” Zerai said, drawing his sword. The soldiers were only two hundred paces away now and jogging briskly with their spears in hand and shields raised.

“Then we fight.” Samira glanced at Bashir. “But maybe we can buy some time if we’re quick enough and quiet enough. Can you put fifty men to sleep all at once?”

“Maybe.” The alchemist drew a jar from his bag. “If we can make them inhale the fumes from this solution all at once, then yes, but I don’t see how we can do that.”

“I do.” Samira pointed at the paving stones in the street. “Pour it out on the ground. Spread it as wide as you can, quickly!”

Bashir opened the jar and began pouring it out as he walked across the width of the street. As he finished, the first of the soldiers approached the glistening line on the ground.

“Stay behind me,” Samira said. The others stepped back, and the cleric raised her hands. She stilled her thoughts, all her gnawing doubts and unspoken fears about humans and djinn and angels, about life and death and power, and she traveled back through her memories to her childhood in Imaya, sitting on the holy mount among the young Tevadim, basking in the light of the angel, learning about the nature of water, flowing and still, weak and strong, formless and yet taking all forms. And then she asked the earth to flow upward.

The surface of the street erupted into a forest of pale stone arms, all sprouting in a long narrow row across the width of the street, and smeared across the palm of each stone hand was the dark stain of Bashir’s concoction. With an image in her mind of four dozen tiny waves gracefully curling and crashing into a shore, Samira sent her stone hands arching through the air to grab the faces of the soldiers and press their poisoned palms to the men’s mouths and noses.

The street rang out with muffled screams and wails as spears and shields fell to the ground in a clatter as the men scrambled to pull their faces free before they suffocated. But the stone hands were far too strong for their bare fingers and one by the one the men quickly closed their eyes and slumped unconscious, still dangling from the stone hands grasping their faces.

But a handful of men near the back of the column managed to smash the stone hands aside with their shields and to shatter the stone arms with their swords, so even as the company fell to the ground, these few men charged forward with their weapons raised as they trampled their sleeping brothers-in-arms.

Zerai dashed to meet the first soldier and deftly smashed the sword from the man’s hand before striking him unconscious across his helmeted head. Petra and Bashir also stepped forward and battered a handful of the soldiers in a blur of fists and feet. As the armored men crashed to the ground in a pile, Samira spotted one last man attempting to creep stealthily through the forest of sleeping men and stone arms, and she sent one last stone hand flying up from behind him to grab his foot and send him falling face-first into the pavement, where he struck his head and lay still.

Zerai wiped a trace of sweat from his brow as he sheathed his sword. “Well, that could have been worse.”

“Much.” Edris glanced around the street. “But it will only get worse if anyone sees this mess.”

Samira rubbed her eyes. The focus required to create and precisely control four dozen separate moving objects in heavy stone had been more taxing than she expected, and as she released her focus she felt her head swimming and aching. She wanted to sit down, but instead she commanded the stone arms to melt silently back into the street, leaving no trace of their existence and depositing the soldiers gently on the ground. She pointed to the dark lane next to General Taharqa’s house and said, “We should move them into the alley there.”

“Can’t you just, you know, move them?” Zerai gestured at the ground.

Samira shook her head and bent down to grab the ankles of the nearest soldier. Between the armor and his clay-flesh, he felt like a mountain in her slender hands, but she waited for Zerai to grab the man’s arms and together they carried him out of the street. Working in pairs, everyone else began moving the sleeping men one by one into the dark lane.

The front door of the house creaked and slammed, and Samira looked up to see Jengo peering down at them from the wide marble steps. Zerai and Bashir paused, still holding the last unconscious soldier between them.

“What are you doing?” Jengo strode toward them. “Did this man attack you?”

“Well, yeah.” Zerai shifted his grip to keep from dropping the armored man.

Jengo frowned. “Hurry up and get him out of sight.”

“We are.” Zerai started shuffling back toward the alley. “Don’t worry. We’ll just dump him with the others.”

“Others?” Jengo took a few more steps so he could look down the alley, where he saw the fifty soldiers piled three and four deep against the dark stone walls, all the way down the length of the house. Their discarded swords, shields, and spears lay in crooked piles everywhere, threatening to tumble and fall at the slightest breeze. “I…! You…! All right then. They’re all dead?”

“No, just sleeping,” Samira said.

“Then it’s good that we’re leaving.” Jengo headed back to the door. “They’re almost finished inside.”

“Already? So the general refused him.”

“Far from it. Taharqa’s not a young man. He’s eager to do his duty one last time.” Jengo glanced at her. “A little too eager. I think he overestimates his power. That, or he honestly thinks that the hand of God will favor the just and we’ll simply conquer the city through divine providence.”

“There’s no such thing.”

Jengo narrowed his eyes at her. “Really?”

“The world is a machine, filled with many parts.” Samira massaged her hands together and looked up at the great rivers of stars that had emerged from the gloom sometime during the brief skirmish. “Angels, animals, people, rocks. We were all put here to play our parts, to be exactly what we were created to be. Whatever is going to happen was set in motion at the beginning of the world.”

“And God never adjusts the machine?”

“No.” She looked him in the eye. “Never.”