I had to suppress a smile when their eyes drifted to La Mastik, who had arrived a few minutes earlier and was standing behind me and to my right. The bearded Nentian’s mouth dropped open for a moment before he remembered he was supposed to behave as if ten-foot-tall women dressed in spined lava dragon hide and with their heads on fire were commonplace.
“Welcome to my hearth,” I said. “May you be warmed and nourished by it. What is your name, sir?”
“Please call me Dhingra, Hearthfire. Thank you for seeing me. I am the chamberlain of Viceroy Melishev Lohmet in Hashan Khek.”
He wasted little time after that, asking questions about the walls we built with their Raelech stonecutters. “Such defenses are not usually the priority of refugees who seek temporary relief,” he remarked.
“I’m merely protecting my surviving citizens from the infamous savage creatures of the Nentian plains. My understanding is that you build walls for the same reason.”
There was more back-and-forth like that, his questions revealing what the viceroy most dearly wished to know: how many of us were here and how long we planned to stay. And eventually he gave us an ultimatum. We were to be guests for two months, and after that we would be trespassing.
I laughed in his face, and he scowled, taking offense.
“Two months is more than I need. Who is your god? Kalaad, is it?”
His eyes narrowed. “Yes … why do you ask?”
“Make your peace with him.” And then with a word and a small expenditure of effort I set him and his companions on fire, head to toe. They screamed, and Dhingra at least had the sense to drop to the ground in an attempt to smother the flames. I lunged forward and stomped down hard on his head, enjoying the crunch beneath my boot. Halsten and Lanner killed the others with axe and fist except for one we let burn and scream until he dropped.
La Mastik cleared her throat as their fluids watered the earth. “Hearthfire, please help me understand why you just did that.”
“Certainly. We are still not ready for an assault. Nor are we in a position to negotiate from strength. Until we are, we have to prevent the Nentians from learning our numbers and defenses.”
“So it’s true. You’re not merely staying the season but claiming this land as your own.”
“I am.”
“And all your talk of living in peace with the Nentians was a slick of sand badger shit. The other nations won’t allow it to stand.”
“They won’t be able to put together a force strong enough to defeat us now. The Kaurians and the Brynts are too far away to care, and we can handle the Fornish and Nentians and, yes, even the Raelechs.”
“Perhaps. This method, though, is distasteful. It’s murder.”
“All great cities are born in fire and blood,” I said, quoting the words of Thurik to her. “What did you think it was going to look like?”
“You are adept at quoting Thurik for someone who doesn’t tend his flame.”
“My father taught me that words shape people as the hammer shapes iron. Leaders bend religions to their purposes, and religions in turn bend the people who believe in them. I’m sure you already knew that last part, but if you were unaware of the former point, then you haven’t examined your histories.”
“Do you even believe in Thurik, Hearthfire? Tell me true.”
Stepping close to her and keeping my voice low so that only she could hear, I said, “I believe in fire and in the craft of my mind and in the strength of my people. I’m told that Thurik believes the same. And in case you were unaware, I sent all six of my children to the boil at Olenik and your patroness is marrying the only one who survived. Remember that before you question my beliefs.”
She pursed her thin lips, disliking my answer, but broke eye contact and passed a hand over her skull, snuffing out the flames, before excusing herself. She would move against me soon if she hadn’t begun to do so already in secret. I would have to consult Sefir on the matter and prepare countermeasures.
Halsten said, “Lots of fresh meat on the ground. May I feed it to the hounds, Hearthfire?”
“Absolutely, Houndmaster. I was just going to suggest it. And Lanner, please let the Hearth know it’s time to scuttle that ship. This Nentian delegation was tragically lost at sea, and we never saw them, understood?”
“Understood, Hearthfire,” he said, grim satisfaction evident on his face.
“Before you go, Lanner—any chance of getting Korda out of Hashan Khek?”
He shook his head. “They have him in the viceroy’s compound surrounded by a whole lot of crossbowmen.”
“We’d pay a steep toll in lives, then, to save his life. We can’t afford it.”
“He’s at peace with it, Hearthfire. He’s bought us time, and he knows it. He may yet escape on his own. And if not, then we have already avenged him here tonight. My only hope is that we’ll get a chance at the viceroy sometime. I’d enjoy killing him more than most.”
“We will get to him eventually,” I assured him. “He’ll send more like this first. When they realize that pretty words on paper mean nothing, we will laugh in their faces, too. We will burn and grind them all until they agree—or the survivors agree—that Baghra Khek is our city and this is Hathrim land.”
Once Fintan had dismissed the form of Gorin Mogen he chuckled as he imprinted his next stone. “The viceroy, as you may well imagine, was not ready to agree.” He threw down the sphere and took on the scowling visage of Melishev Lohmet.
Chumat and Dhingra are long overdue, and I know they’re not coming back because Gorin Mogen has made them vanish. The Fornish ambassador reports that there are closer to ten thousand Hathrim by the Godsteeth than one thousand, and that was excuse enough to float my brain in alcohol last night and enjoy the company of a professional sexitrist. After taking the most painful morning piss I can remember and staggering around my chambers with a thunderous headache, I’m ready to kill some people. Since doing so will hasten the day I can get out of Hashan Khek and see a Brynt hygienist, I take to the task with relish. Pulling on my black shitsnake boots—if ever there was a day to wear them, it’s this one—I stomp over to the barracks and rouse my senior tactician, Moshenoh Ghuyedai.
He’s a tough old piece of leather with salt in his queued hair and two missing teeth in the front, the result of a bar fight in which he killed three men with his bare hands. He’s losing some of his muscle to fat as he ages, but there’s still plenty there, and his ruthlessness is at peak.
His office is strewn with maps and empty bottles and little chapbooks of erotic poetry, half-eaten sausages, and volumes of military history written by Raelech and Nentian scholars.
“Moshenoh. That possible Hathrim invasion is confirmed. Time to round up some disposable meat.”
“You mean my regulars or some fresh blood?”
“Mostly the latter. I’m going to throw open the coffers for a onetime march. Go recruit every sponging, no-good, borchatta-smelling dock rat you can. Promise them meals, prestige, and a steady income every month. Then take them down to the Godsteeth and make damn sure the giants kill them all. We’ll clean up the city and trigger the Sovereignty Accords at the same time.”
My killer tactician actually flinches. “That’s …”
“An efficient use of funds, I believe, and a move that doesn’t cost you any of your trained regulars. Are you the man for the job?”
His eyebrows jump briefly but settle down, and then his shoulders lift. “I guess I am.”
“Good. The treasurer is expecting you. See him and follow his instructions precisely. Recruit today and tomorrow, march the day after tomorrow.”
“Very well, Viceroy.”
“Right now I need two dozen crossbowmen and some horses. I have to take a trip outside the walls.”
I leave Ghuyedai to his work and brief the crossbowmen on what needs to happen. Twelve of the men remain at the stables to get horses ready for the rest of us, and the other twelve accompany me to the quarters of Korda, my Hathrim g
uest. The giant is in the middle of inhaling a box of Fornish candied figs when I enter, and I sling a winning smile at him.
“I trust everything is to your satisfaction?”
“Mmf. Yes. I cannot complain about the accommodations, Viceroy. Though I’d like to get out more.”
“Perfect! That’s just what I was about to suggest. I’ve been told that there’s a rare skulk of khek foxes near our walls right now, attracted by an unusually large company of harrow moles, and thought you might enjoy seeing them. What say you to a walk on the famed Nentian plains? It’s a beautiful day to be outside.”
“Isn’t it dangerous to walk out there? I’ve been told everything on the plains is meat for something bigger and hungrier.”
“We’ll have plenty of protection. I go out there all the time. Besides, you’re lavaborn, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Ah! Well, no matter. As I said, we’ll be perfectly safe.”
“All right. Thank you for the invitation.”
“Not at all!” I point at the half-empty box in Korda’s hand. “Friendly warning: eat too many of those figs and you won’t stop shitting for a week. Though maybe Hathrim can handle more of them than Nentians can. For me, it’s one and I’m done.”
Korda looks down at the box, counts, and realizes he’s eaten ten. “I may be in trouble.”
“We’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, let’s go see the skulk before they’re gone.” We walk to the stables, chatting amiably as people like to do about other people being killed by wild animals. He tells me about a friend he lost to sand badgers back home, an uncle who lost an eye to an angry scold of knife jays, and how his sister lost her foot to the bite of a Narvikian acid roach.
At the stables, the crossbowmen all mount up and so do I, and once we get to the gates, they load up and prepare to shoot anything hungry enough to attack. They form a protective circle around the two of us, he walking and I riding. Korda has no trouble keeping pace.
We strike directly for Kalaad’s Posts, eight tall lodgepoles placed in the ground with rawhide strips dangling from them. They’re only four hundred lengths or so from the gates, spaced two lengths apart from one another.
Korda notices them early on, but we are so involved in trading stories about the wild beasts of Hathrir and Ghurana Nent that he says nothing until we draw close to them. “What are those, if I may ask?”
“They’re boundary markers. The plains become significantly more dangerous once you pass them.”
“Are we going to pass them? Is that skulk nearby?”
“I was told the skulk is visible from the boundary, so it’s not far now.”
“Ah! Good.”
When we reach the posts, I direct my horse to the left side of the circle. Korda calls after me, bewildered: “Where are you—?” But then he cuts off as he realizes something has changed about the ambient noise. The horses behind him and to the right have stopped. As he turns to look, he sees that the crossbowmen have leveled their weapons at his torso an instant before they fire. Ten bolts hit him, mostly in the chest, though one pierces his neck and one sails wide but doesn’t hit anyone else. Korda topples backward like a fallen tree and makes a couple of gurgling noises before falling silent.
“Check him,” I tell the crossbowmen next to me. “Finish him if he’s alive, then strap him to a post once he’s dead.”
If Gorin Mogen wants to make my chamberlain disappear, I can play the same game. Poor Korda must have wandered into the plains and been eaten by something. All of which will be true: scavengers will pick his bones clean in a day or two.
Once he’s strapped somewhat upright, bolts removed, we hurry back to the gates. The smell of blood will be bringing teeth in our direction. Before we reach the gates, a cry comes from behind. Something’s coming fast—and it turns out to be three Raelechs. One of them is a courier—an attractive one.
A brief tingle thrills up my spine, and I have to suppress a shudder. The Triune Council has dispatched a courier to me, not the king! She introduces herself as Numa, and she’s accompanied by an absolutely useless beak-nosed bard named Fintan, who turns out, in one of life’s inexplicable tragedies, to be her husband, but this disappointment is salved by her other companion, a fantastically welcome juggernaut named Tarrech, who might be able to wipe out the Hathrim by himself.
“I’m grateful to the Triune for sending you,” I tell them. “My tactician will be riding south to meet this Hathrim invasion the day after tomorrow. Will you join him?”
The courier replies, “We would be pleased to do so provided that you understand that we do not guarantee our military involvement, nor do we place ourselves under your command. We will go with your forces independently as an ally to make Rael’s interests plain to Hearthfire Mogen.”
“What interests are those?” I ask.
“We wish to safely extricate our stonecutters who have been duped into this situation and to remind him that the Sovereignty Accords will be enforced. The first consideration may not matter to you, but we have a duty to our citizens. But we also have a duty to our friends, and the second consideration should be your wish as well.”
“Indeed it is,” I say, nodding, and I invite them to be my guests until Ghuyedai is ready to march.
In a couple of days they all ride out of town with a trumpet or two, families bidding them farewell and a safe return. Two thousand of the regular garrison—leaving only a soggy sponge of a force behind—and two thousand more hastily conscripted desperate people who looked upon army rations as fine cuisine. We didn’t tell them they were going after ten thousand giants behind a wall. They were told they just had to kick some refugees back into the ocean.
After some wasted breath trying to get Mogen to leave peacefully, Ghuyedai would spend the conscripts freely and then withdraw. And then we could say to the world, Look, Gorin Mogen slew our people when we rightfully and lawfully tried to force him to leave our lands. He is a would-be usurper. And invader. Help us crush him now as you promised to do in that treaty you signed long ago.
I give the Hearthfire credit. He has maneuvered well to this point, but soon he will have nowhere else to move. He will either leave—highly unlikely—or defend himself and bring the world down upon his back, because we have always feared the unchecked fire of the Hathrim. Either way, Ghurana Nent wins.
When Fintan took on the seeming of Abhinava Khose next, he had a fresh set of clothes on, the tatters all gone.
I thought the walls of Khul Bashab would be a welcome sight—or at least welcoming. But after my initial joy at spying them from a distance, they took on a different character as I drew closer until I felt something like dread.
They weren’t what kept me safe inside anymore. Those walls now looked like they were made to keep me out. I felt like I had more in common with the freedom of the plains than with the structure of the city.
I didn’t need the protection those walls were built to provide. Neither would anyone else if the Sixth Kenning became common. With Beast Callers among us, Nentians could farm in the open. Start new cities outside the king’s protection. Though I suppose he would just hire more men to run those new towns—more men like the viceroys.
Murr and Eep agreed to stay outside the city and not harass each other. “Avoid other humans,” I said. “Don’t let them see you. They might try to harm you.”
It was near sundown after a day of travel, and the guards at the gate wanted to know why I was all alone.
“My family died in a khern stampede,” I explained, my voice dull. “I’m the only survivor.”
“Which family?”
“Khose.” The guard looked at his checklist and found my name. They kept track of all who left and entered the Hunter Gate as a way of tracking who was alive or dead.
“Says here there were eight of you. Big wagon.”
I nodded, said nothing, and stared straight ahead at the gate until they opened it.
My empty house was not truly
empty but haunted with reminders. My father’s fine knives. My mother’s leatherwork—she made our clothes from our own kills rather than paying to have them made; we’d always take our own cuts from the tanner. My sister’s carvings of blurwings and flowers. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I took fresh field bags and began filling them.
Clothes. Leather scraps and cord and needles and fabric strips. Cotton batting. Two slim notched and buckled belts of my sister’s. The cache of coins my father thought he’d hidden. Lots of beans and root vegetables. Nothing in the way of personal items. None of it mattered now, somehow. Word would trickle through the city that the Khose family was no more, and the house would be looted soon. I left the door open: I’d had to break in myself, and there was no use making anyone else work that hard for what I was giving away.
I kept to the soft shadows of the night streets on the way to the house of my father’s friend, the chaktu butcher. He would want to know. And I wanted to see his son once more before I left the city.
The butcher’s son answered the door, a quizzical look on his face. His skin, a smooth orange-brown just a shade deeper than mine, glowed warmly by the light of the candelabra he held in his left hand, and cold blue highlights shone in the sleek black hair falling to his collarbone. I liked the broad curve of his jaw and cheeks, the tighter curl of his mouth, the simple light blue tunic he wore. My breath hitched for a moment to have his attention focused solely on me, but then I coughed and spoke: “Hello. I’m not sure we’ve ever formally met, but our fathers are friends. I’m Abhinava Khose.”
Recognition lit his eyes, and he smiled pleasantly. “Ah, yes, I’ve seen you before. I’m Tamhan Khatri. Good to meet you finally. Did you need to see my father? He’s out at the moment.”
“Oh. Well, I suppose I could leave a message, then. It’s just … well.” I swallowed, and my throat grew tight. “His old friend is gone,” I said. “A boil of kherns in the south.”
Tamhan’s mouth dropped open. “You lost your father?”
“My whole family, actually.”
“What?” Shock blanketed his features. “Come in. Come in, please. You have burdens there; put them down and rest for a while. I will fix us some tea.”