The matarh screeched her objection, the man started to run the other way, then evidently decided he wouldn’t make it. The Garde Kralji closed around them and moved off into the night in the direction of the fires, taking boy and old man with them as the matarh screamed in futile protest.
She continued south until she saw the columns of the Pontica Kralji looming through the smoke. She paused there, looking out over the A’Sele. What she saw horrified her and made the voices inside her laugh.
On the river, several of the warships were afire, already burned nearly down to the waterline, the wreckage clogging the river so that those ships that were still untouched could barely maneuver. Over the northern branch of the river, the Isle A’Kralji burned. The Kraljica’s Palais was a yellow-orange inferno with a volcano of sparks whirling away from it. The grand new dome of the Old Temple looked to be shattered, fire licking at the supports that had been erected around it. There were scattered small fires here and there. The bridges, especially the two leading to the South Bank, were crowded with people fleeing, pushing carts loaded with belongings or burdened with packs. She heard a crash behind her; glancing back over her shoulder toward the buildings crowding the Avi on this bank, she saw a crowd of people smashing down the door of a bakery, and also that of a jeweler. The street behind her was getting crowded and noisy. Somewhere inside one of the shops, she heard a woman scream.
Blood. She could smell the blood. She touched the leather pouch under the cloth of her tashta and felt the smooth, polished stone there.
“The rioting’s begun…”
“It will only get worse…”
The voices shouted alarm in her head. “Have you gone stupid, woman? Move!”
She did. She strode unhurriedly toward the nearest alley, a trash-littered space between the backs of buildings. She would go back to Nico’s house. She would watch and if things became dangerous there, she would be there to help him, to get him out. If his real parents could not protect him, she would be his true parent and do so. She touched her stomach as she walked. “And I will do the same for you,” she whispered to the stirring life inside her. “I will. I promise.”
The voices laughed and cackled.
She saw motion at the edge of her vision in the fog and smoke, felt the prickling of danger. She whirled around. “Hey!” A man stood there-dark hair speckled with gray, but young enough that she wondered how he’d managed to avoid the press gangs prowling Oldtown. His hands were up as if in surprise, and he was smiling, showing the gaps where teeth were missing. “No need to be frightened, Vajica, is there?” he said. She could see his tongue moving behind the sparse teeth. “I just wanted to make sure you were safe, I did.” He took a step toward her. “Dangerous days right now.”
“For you, yes,” she answered. “I can take care of myself.”
“Ah, you can, eh?” He sidled to one side, blocking her from moving into the alley. She turned with him, always facing him. “Not many can say that today.” He took a step toward her, and she scowled.
“Don’t,” she told him, even though she knew already that he wouldn’t listen. “You’ll regret it. You don’t want to meet the White Stone.”
He laughed. “The White Stone, is it? Are you telling me that the White Stone is interested in the likes of you?”
She didn’t reply. He took another step, close enough that she could smell him, and he reached out to grab her arm. In that same moment, she crouched and slid a dagger from its sheath in her boot, stabbing hard upward under the man’s rib cage, pushing him backward into the alleyway. He gasped, his mouth gaping like a fish; she felt hot blood pouring over her hand. His fingers clawed at her arm, but fell away softly. She heard him take a gurgling breath as blood trickled from his mouth. She let the body fall as she reached under the collar of her tashta for the pouch. Hurrying, she pulled it from around her neck and let the snow-pale, polished stone spill from the pouch into her hand. She pressed the stone down on his right eye. Her own eyes were closed.
Ah, the death wail… She could hear him screaming, could feel his presence entering the stone as the others moved aside to make room for his dying spirit. The silent howling of the man filled her mind, so loud that she was surprised it didn’t echo around them. When the stone had taken him fully in, she removed the stone from his eye and placed it back in the pouch, placing the leather string around her neck again and letting the pouch fall down between her breasts under the tashta.
“The White Stone protects what is hers,” she said to the open-eyed corpse.
Then, the voices rising to fill her head again and a new one joining the mad chorus, she made her way back toward Nico’s home.
The Battle Begun: Niente
The sky lightened in the east and the spell-fog vanished with the light, though the city was still wrapped in smoke. Niente stood with Tecuhtli Zolin, with Citlali and Mazatl. The warriors were arrayed in their armor, their tattooed faces painted now, so they looked like the fierce, terrible dream-creatures who raped Axat before Darkness placed her wounded body in the sky. They were near the river; the large island around which it flowed seemed to be afire, and smoke coiled up from several dozen places in the city.
“Well done, Nahual,” Zolin said. “They will be exhausted and frightened from the fires in the night. Are the nahualli rested? Are their spell-staffs full?”
“They’re as rested as they can be, Tecuhtli,” Niente told him. “We readied our staffs last night, after we sent the black sand.”
“Good,” Zolin boomed. “Then stop looking so mournful. This is a great day, Nahual Niente. Today we show these Easterners that they are not immune to the wrath of the Tehuantin.”
Citlali and Mazatl laughed with Zolin. Niente tried to smile but could not. He hefted his own spell-staff, and Zolin nodded. “Go to the nahualli,” he said to Niente. “Citlali, Mazatl-rouse your warriors. When we see Sakal’s eye open on the horizon, it is time.”
Niente bowed his head to the Techutli and left them. He moved north, into the trampled field where the bulk of the army was massed near the roadway. The nahualli were there, and he gave them his orders, spreading them behind the initial line of mounted warriors and the first wave of infantry. He took his own place behind Tecuhtli Zolin and his handpicked warriors. Across the field, he could see, blurred by the poor vision in his left eye, the banners and shields of the Nessanticans, waiting. There were so many of them; Niente looked at their own forces, significantly smaller now after all the battles.
He had no doubt that the Tehuantin warriors were braver, that the nahualli were more powerful than the war-teni of the Nessanticans. Yet…
There was a burning in the pit of his stomach that would not go away. He clutched his spell-staff tightly, feeling the energy of the X’in Ka bound within it, and the power he held gave him no comfort.
The eastern sky lightened further. The first rays of the morning sent long shadows racing over the land.
Zolin raised his sword, shouting. “Now! Now!” Horns sounded in response, and the Tehuantin warriors screamed their challenge. Niente raised his spell-staff, clapping it into his open hand. Fire sizzled and sparked, flying away from him toward the enemy’s ranks; a moment later, the staves of the other nahualli did the same all along the long line. The war-teni of the Nessanticans responded: some of the spells vanished as if swallowed by the air; other rebounded as if they’d hit a wall, arcing back into their own ranks. Where they fell, warriors fell with them, screaming as they were consumed in the sticky tongues of fire. Many of the spells, though, passed untouched, and they heard answering screams from the Nessanticans. The archers, their arrows tipped with the last of the black sand, sent a fiery rain streaking over the field, and it was answered by a hail of Nessantican arrows. Around Niente, warriors grunted as they were impaled, but their shields had snapped up to snare most of the arrows. Zolin gestured with his sword and the warriors began to move, slowly at first, then gathering speed to run over the field toward the waiting enemy and the city beyond them.