Harshini Read online

  “Why not?”

  “As I said, Mathen’s not a nobleman. Terbolt placed him in charge, but I can’t see Lord Roache and his ilk tolerating a commoner calling the shots for very long, and unless he’s advocating mass conversion, the priesthood won’t like him much either. They have no care for Medalonian sensibilities.”

  The last of the wagons rumbled by. They waited until the Kariens were some way up the road before they urged their horses back onto the road and followed them at a walk.

  “Speaking of the priests,” Brak added. “You remember what I told you?”

  “About them being able to detect us if we call on our power? Yes, Brak, I remember.”

  “I mean it, R’shiel,” he warned. “Don’t underestimate them.”

  “I dealt with those priests in the Defenders’ camp.”

  “You faced three of them and caught them by surprise,” he reminded her. “Once we get to the Citadel, there will be scores of them, and they know the demon child is abroad. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have a Watching Coven posted, just waiting for you to slip up.”

  “What’s a Watching Coven?”

  “A group of priests who link through their staves, sometimes up to twenty or thirty of them. A Coven’s power could give either of us a run for our money.”

  “How can they be so strong? They don’t have access to Harshini power.”

  “No, they have access to a god who doesn’t mind bending the rules.”

  “The gods!” she muttered in annoyance. “It always comes back to them, doesn’t it?”

  “In the end, yes.”

  She smiled grimly. “Don’t worry, Brak. I’ll watch myself. Squire Mathen isn’t the only one who can get what he wants by subtle means.”

  “Oh? You have a plan then?” There was an edge of scepticism in his voice that she didn’t much care for.

  “I’m going to take a leaf out of your book, actually. I’m going to go straight to the best source of intelligence in Medalon.”

  “Garet Warner?” he asked with amusement. “I thought the first thing you’d want to do when you saw him again would be to run a blade through him.”

  “No. Garet helped me as much as he could, I think. I’m not going to kill him. Unless he doesn’t want to help us.”

  Brak didn’t answer her and she could not tell if he approved or condemned her intentions.

  They reached the Citadel just on sundown, halting on the slight rise in the road to stare at the scene before them in horrified awe. A blanket of humanity covered the plains surrounding the Citadel: the Karien army camped about the fortress of their newest subject nation. R’shiel could not begin to guess their number, but as far as she could see, the grasslands were thick with tents and men and the panoply of war. Both sides of the shallow Saran River were crowded with them. The bridges curved gracefully out of the plain, the only part of it not swarming with the enemy. A pall of smoke from the countless cooking fires lay over the whole scene, touched with ruddy light by the dying sun, making it look like a painting of some nightmarish vision of a pagan hell.

  “Founders!” she swore softly. “I didn’t think there’d be so many of them.”

  “Having second thoughts?”

  She glanced at him, then smiled. “No. I figure between you and me, we have them outnumbered, Brak.”

  He returned her smile briefly. “I think I preferred it when you were scared.”

  They urged their horses on and rode down through the Karien host that was camped right up to the edge of the road. For the most part, the soldiers ignored them, too engrossed in their own business to care about two unarmed travellers on the main thoroughfare into the Citadel. She avoided meeting their eyes while despair threatened to overwhelm her.

  As they crossed the bridge over the Saran River she looked up at the high white walls. Bile rose in her throat. There was a head, or the remains of one, mounted on a pike over the gateway. It had been there for some time. The eyes were empty sockets picked clean by the ravens and the skin of its face hung in strips of desiccated flesh. The hair, or what was left of it, was grey and straggling, but long enough to identify the hapless skull as once having been a woman. With sickening dread, R’shiel wondered who it had been, afraid that she knew. Unless the Kariens had murdered Joyhinia, there was only one woman in Medalon likely to incur such wrath and she had never deserved such a fate.

  “Brak,” she said softly.

  He followed the direction of her gaze then shook his head sadly. “Gods!”

  “I think it’s Mahina.”

  He studied it more closely then shrugged. “There’s no way to tell, R’shiel.”

  “Loclon is going to die very, very slowly,” she said with frightening intensity.

  R’shiel had feared the Defenders on the gate might recognise her, but she need not have worried. There were no Defenders guarding the Citadel. There was, however, a large contingent of Kariens and they were interrogating anybody seeking entrance to the city.

  “Let me handle this,” Brak said.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Cause a fuss,” he told her as he kicked his horse forward. “Hey you! Do you speak Medalonian?”

  R’shiel cringed as he called out to the guards, wondering what in the name of the Founders he was up to. This was hardly her idea of sneaking into the Citadel.

  “Halt!” a Karien trooper called out in Medalonian—probably the only word he knew.

  “Halt yourself!” Brak retorted. “I demand to see whoever is in charge!”

  The guard looked at him blankly.

  “Where is your superior, young man? I demand to see him at once!”

  “Halt!” the guard repeated.

  “What’s the problem?” The man who spoke was a Defender. He emerged from the gatehouse with another Karien, this one wearing knight’s armour. He was very young, just out of the Cadets, R’shiel guessed. She didn’t recognise him and that hopefully meant he wouldn’t recognise her.

  “Ah! Someone who understands me!” Brak declared. “Young man, I demand to be taken to whoever is in charge of this…invasion, or whatever you call it, at once!”

  The Defender translated Brak’s words for the benefit of the Kariens, which explained his posting on the gate. His Karien was quite fluent but he wore a sullen expression. She could imagine how this duty must irk him. The Karien knight said something to the Defender, who then turned back to Brak.

  “Why do you want to see Lord Roache?”

  “Lord Roache? Is that who’s in charge?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened to the First Sister?”

  “The First Sister is assisting Lord Roache and Squire Mathen,” the young Defender informed him in a voice loaded with scorn.

  “Well then, I wish to see this Lord Roache, young man, to lodge a formal complaint against the behaviour of these…these…hooligans who have invaded our country. Do you know what they’ve done? Do you?”

  “I can guess,” the Defender muttered. “What have they done?”

  “What have they done? My shop is in ruins! My wife and I are homeless! My servants have all fled in fear and I am on the verge of destitution! I intend to see this Karien fellow and demand compensation.”

  The Defender appeared genuinely amused at the idea. “Good luck, my friend, but I don’t like your chances.”

  “Well!” Brak declared indignantly. “We shall have to see about that! Come, Gerterina! Let us go find this Lord Roache person and set him straight on a few things!”

  Brak urged his horse through the gate, with R’shiel following close behind. The Defender and the Kariens stood back to let them pass. As the young man explained what they were doing in the Citadel the Kariens roared with laughter, which followed them down the street.

  “Gerterina?”

  He shrugged apologetically. “It was all I could think of.”

  “And that was your plan? Make such a fuss at the gate that they’ll never forge
t us?”

  “Sometimes it’s easier to hide out in the open, R’shiel. People trying to sneak into the Citadel don’t start by demanding to see whoever is in charge. We were barely questioned and they didn’t even look at you twice.”

  She had to admit he was right. “Brak, why is it that when you do things like that, you’re being clever, but when I do them, I’m being reckless?”

  “Because I’m older than you. A lot older.”

  “Well, Old One, what are we going to do now?”

  They rode at a walk down the cobbled main road that led past the Great Hall to the amphitheatre. The tension in the air was almost solid enough to touch. R’shiel realised that the awful spectre nailed over the main gate was more than just a gloating gesture of barbaric triumph. It was a warning, and one the citizens of the Citadel appeared to have taken to heart. The streets appeared almost as deserted as Greenharbour had been, when she arrived with Damin.

  “We need to find an inn and a meal and perhaps some company for the evening.”

  “Company?”

  “We need to find out what’s happening here. The next best source of information in any city, after the assassins and the thieves, are the prostitutes.”

  “That’s the best excuse I’ve heard for a long time,” she said with a scowl.

  “We all have our own methods, R’shiel.”

  “Funny how all your methods involve consorting with criminals.”

  He glanced at her and then smiled. “Considering you are probably the most wanted criminal in all of Karien and Medalon, I find your attitude rather strange.”

  She ignored the jibe. “I still think Garet is the better option.”

  “And I agree, but I want to know that when we confront him he’s telling us the truth, not what he thinks we want to hear.”

  “You’re not a very trusting person, are you?”

  “I don’t happen to like the idea of having my head decorating the main gate next to poor old Mahina’s. If you plan to live long enough to fulfil your destiny, R’shiel, you would be wise to adopt the same outlook.”

  After that they rode without speaking through streets that were slowly darkening with the coming night. Squares of yellow light appeared in the windows of the houses that lined the streets, but the silence was heavy and R’shiel could not feel the welcoming touch of the Citadel as she had when she arrived the last time.

  It was as if the massive spirit of the Citadel had shrivelled and died—or perhaps he had simply retreated into hiding in the face of the Karien blight that swarmed through him like flies over a dying carcass.

  CHAPTER 36

  Garet Warner opened the door to the Lord Defender’s office and was greeted by a blast of warm air. Someone must have thought to light the fire, he thought, although he was a little surprised. With the Lord Defender in “protective confinement” as the Kariens euphemistically referred to his incarceration, Garet used the office rarely, and he had told nobody of his intention to come here this morning.

  He pushed the door shut and glanced around, but other than the blazing fire in the small hearth, the room was unchanged since his last visit. The heavy carved desk took up a great deal of space, and the comfortable chair behind it smelled faintly of the saddle soap used to keep the leather supple. The array of Fardohnyan and Hythrun weapons Jenga had collected over the years still hung over the mantle. The aura of the man permeated the room. It was as if he had just stepped out a moment ago and was due back any minute.

  But perhaps it wasn’t completely unchanged; the pile of unattended paperwork had grown considerably. Garet groaned as he looked at it. He had his own work to do. He didn’t need the added responsibility of the Lord Defender’s administrative tasks.

  Most of the papers would be fairly straightforward. Requests for transfers, for leave, for permission to marry, for a score of other mundane, everyday matters that required the Lord Defender’s approval. But there would be the odd report that needed investigation, disciplinary matters that could not be settled with a mere stroke of a pen—most of them a direct result of the conflicts that arose frequently between the Defenders and the Karien invaders.

  There would be orders from the First Sister, too.

  Garet was well aware that even though signed by Joyhinia Tenragan, the orders were no more from her than they had been when she was on the northern border, a babbling idiot who would sign anything put in front of her. These orders came from Squire Mathen, and if he couched them in a manner easily digestible to the Medalonians, they were no less the orders of his Karien masters.

  He moved towards the desk and then froze as the feeling he was no longer alone in the room suddenly overwhelmed him.

  “Garet.”

  He started and turned at the voice. R’shiel stood close behind him. She looked much better than when he’d last seen her. He was glad to see her hair had grown out a little and now framed her face in dark red curls. But there was something else different about her: a confidence that he had not seen before. He wondered how she had escaped the Kariens, and why, having managed that remarkable feat, she had so foolishly returned to the Citadel. Standing behind her, wearing an air of lethal calm, was the Harshini half-breed, Brakandaran.

  “R’shiel! Brak! How did the two of you…? Never mind, I’d rather not know.”

  He composed himself and walked around Lord Jenga’s desk before he looked at them again. They were wearing the close fitting and supple Harshini leathers, which outlined their statuesque bodies, giving a hint of the natural grace and athletic ability that was part of their alien heritage.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “We have come to put things right,” R’shiel told him.

  “And how do you plan to do that?”

  “With your help.”

  Her declaration didn’t surprise him. “I suppose you think I owe you something, for not supporting you at the Gathering?”

  “You don’t owe me anything, Garet. But as you said when you slipped me your knife, you can’t help Medalon from a prison cell.”

  “I’m not in a prison cell.”

  “I used your knife to kill the Karien Crown Prince. I imagine a prison cell will be the least of your worries if the Kariens learn that.”

  Garet was too experienced to let his apprehension show. “You killed the Karien Crown Prince? Founders, R’shiel, when you set out to cause trouble, you don’t mess about, do you?”

  A small smile flickered over her lips. “Wait until you hear the rest of it.”

  He shook his head. “Thanks, but I’d rather not…”

  “No!” she cut in. “That is not an option any longer, Garet. You must decide. You are with us or against us. There is no more sitting on the fence.”

  Garet sank down into the Lord Defender’s chair—more to give himself time to think than through any real need to take the weight off his feet. He knew about R’shiel. Knew of her Harshini parentage and her status as their long awaited demon child, but until this moment it had never truly occurred to him that she might actually be as powerful as the pagans believed.

  “And if I choose not to follow you?” he asked, wondering how determined she was.

  “Then I will remove you from the equation.”

  “You’d kill me?”

  “I killed a Karien Prince. You don’t think a mere Defender is going to cause me any grief?”

  He placed his hands palm down on the desk and looked at her closely. Her whole being radiated a kind of leashed power, straining to be set free.

  “So that’s it? Join you or die?”

  “Pretty much,” she agreed with a shrug.

  “You leave me little choice.”

  “Then your answer is yes?”

  He nodded cautiously.

  In two steps she was across the room. She slammed her hands down over his on the desk and glared at him. “Then swear it!”

  Garet opened his mouth to say what she wanted to hear, but the words wouldn’t come. She was doing somethi
ng to him, something that would not permit him to lie. With a sudden and terrifying flash of clarity, he knew that if he took this oath he would belong to her, body and soul, until he died, and perhaps even after, if one believed the pagans.

  “Swear it, Garet,” she whispered. Her face was close to his, her eyes boring through him as though she could read every dark, unsavoury secret he kept hidden in the furthermost recesses of his mind. She wasn’t using magic on him, her eyes had not turned black, but whatever it was, he found her impossible to deny.

  “I’m yours, R’shiel.”

  She studied him for a moment and then stood back. As soon as she released him, Garet slumped back in his chair, light-headed. He closed his eyes for a moment, hoping that when he opened them again, the room would have stopped spinning.

  “Sorry, Garet, but I had to be sure.”

  He looked up at her, wondering what he had done. It took a moment for him to recover enough to speak.

  “So, now what?”

  “First, we have to stop the Kariens from hanging Tarja,” Brak remarked, as if it was no more trouble than squashing a flea.

  “You know they’re blaming him for killing Cratyn, don’t you?”

  “Well, they can hardly admit the demon child did it. When is his trial?”

  “Trial? What trial? The Kariens aren’t big on the natural course of justice, Brak. Tarja’s scheduled to be hanged next Restday. In the amphitheatre so everyone can come and watch.”

  “Then we have to put a stop to it,” R’shiel declared. “Where’s Jenga? Have they killed him too?”

  “Not yet. Actually, they haven’t interfered too much with the Defenders. Most of their people don’t speak a word of Medalonian so they need us. There’d be a mutiny if they tried to kill the Lord Defender and they know it. He’s under arrest. They’re holding him in the cells behind the Headquarters Building, and it’s the Kariens who are guarding him, not our people.”

  “Then we have to release him, too.”

  “How? Your last attempt at breaking somebody out of the Citadel was spectacularly unsuccessful, as I recall.”

  R’shiel frowned at the reminder. “I intend to plan this a little better. If we’re going to do something about the Kariens, the first thing we have to do is get rid of Joyhinia, and replace her with a First Sister who is on Medalon’s side, rather than her own, then…”