The Forbidden City (The Dragon's Legacy Book 2) Read online

  It was Sareta who held her. Hannei looked up into that ageless face, the face she had loved more fiercely than a mother’s, and spat.

  “You,” she croaked, her voice as dry and dead as old bones. “Murderer.”

  Unconcerned, Sareta wiped the spittle from her cheek with the hem of her tunic. “Gag her,” she told Lirya. “That tongue speaks only lies.”

  “Kha’Akari,” Lirya growled. She tore a filthy strip from Hannei’s own robe and used it to bind her mouth. “I hope they kill you.”

  Infuriated tears pricked at Hannei’s eyes as she stared at her former sister.

  I do, too, she thought.

  Then they arrived.

  A small tree, bent and wizened as a crone, stood atop a low and rocky hill, immune to the ravages of time and wind and the tears of innocent girls. Before the tree lay a low stone table, and around the table stood those who would judge her—those who had already judged her, she knew—elders of the prides, craftmasters and mothers, warriors and wardens…

  …and Ismai, last of the line of Zula Din.

  Hannei was led as a kid to slaughter through rows of people silent and grim as the Bones of Eth, and made to stand upon the stone. Tears upon her cheeks, a filthy gag in her mouth, stewing in the stench of her own sour sweat, nevertheless she raised her face to the sun, and met the fierce gaze of Akari Sun Dragon with her own fire.

  I am Hannei Ja’Akari, she told him, mute though she was. Warrior of the Zeeranim. See what they do to your daughter.

  When she looked once more upon the people, her eyes were as dry as her heart. Umm Jeila, First Mother of all the prides, stepped from beneath the tree’s thin shade to stand at the foot of the stone table. She was flanked by Sareta and by Mastersmith Hadid, who acted as first warden in the absence of Askander Ja’Sajani.

  Pain lanced through Hannei, but she firmed her trembling mouth. When a warrior has already fallen, she asked herself, what is one more arrow to the heart?

  “People of the Zeera,” Umm Jeila began, “warriors and wardens, craftmistresses and ’masters, Mothers and children. My children, all. We are brought together here in grief and in rage, and on this day we beg Akari for justice.”

  Justice, the crowd hissed. Justice.

  “One among us stands accused of the most hideous of crimes. On the night of Sharib, even as we celebrated new life, we were attacked by the Kha’Akari, shadow-warriors whose tongues speak only lies. Murder was committed that night. Murder, and worse than murder. An attempt was made that night to erase the line of Zula Din by slaughtering the children of our beloved Umm Nurati…”

  A sour taste filled Hannei’s mouth, the taste of blood. She felt light, as if she had stepped outside the shell of her own body and might float away. She swayed, but the rough hands that held her would not allow her to fall.

  “…Rudya, four years of age. Umm Neptara, nineteen years of age, who was with child. The unnamed infant of Umm Nurati, butchered as she slept. Tammas Ja’Sajani…”

  Hannei screamed around the gag, as every drop of blood in her veins cried out for absolution. The eyes of her people were upon her like hot coals, burning her with their condemnation. She would have screamed again, but something hit her hard in the back of her head. She fell to her knees, ears ringing.

  “As I have said, these murders were carried out by Kha’Akari. All of these murders… save one. Tammas Ja’Sajani was murdered by one of our own, by a sister of the sword, who wooed him with words of love and a poisoned loving cup, and then thrust her sword… through his back.”

  The crowd moaned, a long sound like sand beneath a killing wind. The sound of Tammas’s last breath. Hannei closed her eyes as Sareta stepped forth with her proofs—a cup, a sword. A flensing knife, wicked thing, with a golden spider crouched atop the hilt. Hannei closed her eyes. She had seen these things before. Would that she could close her ears, become deaf to the voices that called for her death. Would that she could close her heart, pierced again and again.

  Make it stop, she begged Akari. Under your eyes, I am innocent. Make it stop. But Akari Sun Dragon held his silence and let his people condemn her.

  They formed two long lines, a gauntlet of fury, as the scales of justice were fastened about her neck. As the clasp snicked shut it pinched the skin of her throat, and Hannei grimaced as a trickle of blood welled free to snake between her breasts.

  First blood, she thought, heart pounding madly. But not the last. She stood upon the table, reed baskets swinging gently at her shoulders, and the people began to file by, passing their judgment.

  “Guilty,” the first said, dropping a stone into one basket. It was a small stone, such as a child might skip upon the river, yet Hannei bowed under its weight.

  “Guilty,” the second proclaimed, a man who had looked the other way as two young girls stole into the stallion’s pasture to braid beads into the manes of Zeitan fleet-foot and Ruhho the brave-hearted black. He did not look away, now. His stone dropped into the second basket.

  “Guilty.”

  “Guilty.”

  “Guilty.”

  As the baskets filled with stones, Hannei staggered and went to one knee.

  “Guilty.”

  “Guilty.”

  They kept on, long after the weight of their judgment had pinned Hannei’s face against the hot stone, every voice and every clack of stone on stone sealing her fate. Akari Sun Dragon turned his face from them all, deaf to the lies that called for her blood.

  The last pair of feet, a boy’s feet and too big for his sandals, stood before her long enough that Hannei rolled her eyes upward. Ismai stood above her, a dark silhouette against the yellow haze, peering at her from the veils of a new blue touar.

  “Did you do it?” he asked her directly, violating all tradition. Hannei heard gasps from the people closest to them. Ismai ignored them, eyes dark and hard as flint as he stared at her. “Did you kill my family?”

  Pinned as she was against the stone table, Hannei could only twitch her head no, could only mouth the word around the vile gag.

  He closed his eyes, and his pain was one more arrow to her heart, but Ismai held his stone out to one side and let it drop. It rolled across the table and came to rest against her cheek, soft as a kiss.

  “Innocent,” he said. “Under the sun, I find Hannei Ja’Akari innocent of these charges.”

  One stone lay there, one stone weighed against all the others.

  One voice called her innocent. Hannei watched Ismai’s feet walk away. One stone would not be enough to save her.

  But it was enough to break her heart.

  Hannei’s tears washed the stone clean.

  TWELVE

  Among the Zeeranim, the worth of a man was measured in different ways. Did he wear the touar? Did he ride a fine horse? Had the vash’ai found him worthy of a bond? If the answers were “yes,” “yes,” and “yes,” he would be considered among his pride’s finest treasures, for a man of valor was worth more than his weight in salt.

  By these standards, Ismai should have felt whole in his heart. He wore the blue, and with his brothers strove to guide and protect his people. Though his Ehuani was a found horse, and her line could not be traced in the mare books, one had only to observe the depth of her chest, the arch of her neck, and the intelligence in her wide dark eyes to see that she was a daughter of the wind.

  He bore a golden shamsi, the mark of his mother’s pride, and a sleek vash’ai princess ran by his side of her own free will.

  Still, in his mind and in his heart, Ismai believed that the measure of a man should be greater than the sum of those things. That his value might be weighed in the pure truth of his actions. Did he conduct himself with the courage of his convictions? Did he dare to speak when others were silent? Was he as true to the least of his people as to the greatest?

  These thoughts growled in his mind as uneasily as the emptiness in his belly as he sat upon the rocky hill with his back pressed firmly against the bark of a knotted tree. There h
e waited for darkness to fall, with drawn shamsi laid across his knees, a meager fire at his feet, and Ruh’ayya bristling at his side.

  The hill, the tree, and the ancient stone table were far enough from Aish Kalumm that the city was little more than a faint orange glow against the indigo sky. Surely the scents of fish and flesh and spice, of bread baking and frothy warm ale, were only the heart’s yearning, just as the night which came so swiftly could not possibly be as dark and cold as it seemed.

  Hannei still lay, trussed and gagged, on the low stone table. Again and again Ismai cut her bindings, peeled the gag from her mouth, held his waterskin to her parched lips. Time and again he draped his touar over her motionless, cold form. Once, he bade her take his own beloved horse and ride away, far away, to Atualon perhaps. Surely Sulema would welcome her sword sister, would keep her safe where Ismai had failed.

  Yet he did these things only in his mind.

  He was bound by laws older than the ancient tree, bound as surely as his friend lay tied upon the stone table, and the laws were clear. If he touched Hannei, if he made any attempt to free her before the light of judgment touched the stone table upon which she lay, both of their lives would be forfeit. She had been judged in the sight of Akari, and she would live—or die—beneath the many eyes of Illindra, the weaver of worlds.

  Ismai had looked into Hannei’s eyes, and his Zeerani soul had recognized ehuani. Truth. She had not killed his family.

  Murderer, she had spat at Sareta.

  Ismai ran his fingers along the side of his shamsi, the golden sunblade gifted to him by his mother. On a bright day, it reflected his face. On a cold night such as this, it reflected the darkest wishes of his heart.

  “Kishah,” he promised aloud, even as he named his sword. “Vengeance I name you, and vengeance is what I will have.”

  Ruh’ayya stirred against his leg. Her ears were trained hard on the darkening desert, and through their bond he could feel her tension.

  What is this kishah? she asked him. Is it something to eat? She was still growing, and constantly hungry.

  It is what eats at the heart, he explained to her. Vengeance. When someone has done you wrong, you right the wrong by finding and punishing them.

  Ruh’ayya’s ears flattened, twisted forward again, and the tip of her tail twitched in agitation.

  I do not understand.

  Someone murdered my family, he told her. My brother, my sisters… my little baby sisters. I will chase them down like tarbok, and I will kill them. Would you not do the same, if someone killed your sire?

  Her tail twitched. If I were with my sire and we were attacked, I would fight tooth and claw to the death. But after my sire’s body was cold and empty, I would not hunt his killers. Such matters are for the kahanna to attend to, not for such as I. It is forbidden.

  It is not forbidden among my kind, he responded. It is… expected. My family was murdered, and I will not rest until I see the torn bodies of their murderers, lying upon this stone table. Perhaps they killed my mother as well. I have wondered before whether she was poisoned.

  The Mother Queen of your people? Ruh’ayya asked, her thought voice colored with surprise. She was killed in Shehannam, her soul stolen by a dream eater. You did not know this?

  His heart tightened. You are sure?

  She twisted her head back to stare at him. The soul was gone before you burned the body. How did you not know this? Her bones were black and empty. There was no song left in them.

  Humans cannot see such things, he told her. His whole body trembled, and he gripped his shamsi so tightly that his hand hurt.

  I do not see how you can go through life like that, stumbling around blind and deaf. Ruh’ayya shook her head as if a fly had bitten her ear. I think I would rather be dead.

  Somewhere in the cold, dark night, a woman screamed. Even as Ismai scrambled to his feet, sword at the ready, her cry was answered by another, a child’s shriek that gained in volume and intensity. The cry was joined by another, and another—wails of fright and pain that stretched on and on, past the capacity of human lungs.

  Ruh’ayya stood, hackles raised, a low singsong growl rising in her throat. Mymyc, she said.

  Abruptly the screams stopped. Ismai walked in a half-crouch to stand by the stone table. Hannei lay still, trembling in her thin robes. Visible in the weak firelight, tears rolled down from the corners of her tightly shut eyes, leaving trails through the filth on her face.

  “I cannot free you,” he whispered, “but I can protect you.”

  The stars wavered and winked out as a figure larger than a horse, blacker than night, bled out from the darkness. Dragon-red eyes rolled back in merriment as a horse’s mouth opened, revealing the yellowed fangs of a greater predator, and it laughed a man’s laugh.

  We will protect you, Ruh’ayya agreed as she joined him. Her mouth dropped open to reveal her tusks in a cat’s grin. Or we will die.

  There were four of them.

  Ruh’ayya was on the first before the beast had fully moved into the thin firelight. In leaping she nearly knocked Ismai on his behind. Her claws were extended and she screamed in fury. Her fangs sank into the mymyc’s face even as they both fell back into darkness. There was a series of terrible, coarse screams—from the cat or the mymyc, Ismai could not tell—a deep thud-thud, and then a series of low, bubbling grunts.

  Vivid images swept over him—hot blood, bitter, bitter, burns the throat. Strong, strong. ’Ware the hind claws! ’Ware the—a jumbled mass of bloodlust and excitement, and then it broke off. Ismai felt a surge in his own heart as the second mymyc appeared, just across the low stone table. The predator froze, staring at him and blinking in the thin firelight.

  Ismai had only ever seen mymyc from a distance, and they had just looked like largish horses, though with odd, thick, catlike tails arched up over their backs. This close, he could see that they were most decidedly not horses. Their eyes were set wide, but facing forward like those of a person, or a vash’ai.

  The sleek black hide was not hide at all, but overlapping scales black as obsidian—so black that they drank the firelight. The creature had a stiff brush of bristles where a horse’s mane would be, wicked hooked claws on its stubby four-toed feet, and at the end of its tail was a barb like a scorpion’s sting, twitching and aroused, a thick stream of viscous liquid drooling from its tip.

  Ismai raised his shamsi and was dismayed at how it wavered in his grip. “Show me yours, foul creature!” he yelled—and just then, his voice broke.

  What is it? a voice whispered in his mind, sleek and oily as the mymyc’s nightstained hide. Is it a man? It squeaks like a mouse.

  Hardly bigger than a mouse, came a second voice, and Ismai whipped his head back and forth, seeking its source. A nice mouthful of meat, nevertheless.

  Where is the toothed one? a third voice asked, high and nervous. And where is Chaitan? I cannot feel her. I think—

  Chaitan will kill the worthless cat, the second voice said. It seemed to Ismai that this one had moved closer, and he edged nearer to the table.

  Hannei did not move. She scarcely seemed to breathe. If I fail, Ismai thought, they will kill her, and she cannot even fight back. The thought gave him courage. False courage or no, he would use it, and he firmed his grip upon the blade.

  Tucking one foot behind the other so that most of his weight was grounded in the ball of his forward foot, he twisted his hips slightly and raised both hands. He held his weapon steady and true, as if daring his foe to leap onto its blade. Moons ago, a lifetime ago, Catching the Cat had been a form beyond his ability. On this night, it came as easy as breathing.

  As easy as dying, the second voice said. At that very moment Ismai knew. He pivoted, keeping his stance true and bringing his blade up even as the mymyc reared behind him, striking out with clawed forelegs, envenomed tail lashing madly from side to side as it screamed his name.

  She came like black fire in the night, smoke and heat, fury and death. Ruh’ayya did not s
cream but sank her tusks to the hilt into the mymyc’s spine, both of her forepaws raking at the armored black shoulders and her hind claws kicking and clawing at its softer underbelly, seeking to disembowel the enemy. The mymyc fell hard, thrashing and screaming in a voice not borrowed from its prey, a deep thick shriek of outraged agony.

  Ismai pivoted again, expecting the smaller mymyc to be upon him, but the creature stood wide-eyed and frozen at the sight of its packmate being disemboweled by a vash’ai. Ismai charged forward on wings of excitement and fear, shamsi flashing in the firelight, and brought his blade down across its face.

  The mymyc reared, squealing, and the blade was torn from his grip. One thick forepaw caught his shoulder, while the other scored his throat with a thin line as the beast thrashed blindly, spraying blood across his touar, across Hannei on the low stone table, across the cooling sand. It dug at its face with one paw, dislodging his sword, and wheeled to run bellowing into the night.

  Ismai crouched and waited, but there was silence. The predators had gone, leaving only the smell of death.

  He was past caring about ancient laws, be they the laws of man or vash’ai, the laws of the Zeera, or the word of Akari himself. Though his life might be forfeit at sunrise, he retrieved his sword and cut the rough ropes that bound Hannei so cruelly. He peeled the gag from her mouth and pushed back the braids plastered to the side of her head. He fetched his waterskin for her, and made a poor blanket of his touar.

  Neither of them spoke. After a time he lay beside her. There were no words, and they would likely both die in the morning. Ismai curled his body around Hannei’s, and Ruh’ayya curled around them both. The three of them fell fast into the boneless, heedless, absolute sleep of broken youth.

  * * *

  Ismai stood and faced his elders chin up, chest out, hands tucked beneath his armpits to hide their trembling. Before him, in a half circle, stood people who loomed as large in his life as statues carved into a mountain. Sareta, First Warrior of the prides, was chief among them, and she looked as if she would like to skin him neck to ankles.