Rebel Elements (Seals of the Duelists) (41 page)

“What are you doing here?” Kipri whispered.

The injured man propped himself up on his elbows with a grimace of pain. “I could ask you the same, little brother. Has Qivinga recruited you as well? Let me advise you, don’t get injured. Uunaq has a butcher’s hands.”

“Uncle Kuvi,” Kipri said. “You’re in it deep again, aren’t you?”

“Kipri? Tuq have mercy, it is you!” Kuvi’s face relaxed into a smile. “Where have you been?”

Bayan’s gaze darted between the two. He could detect a faint family resemblance in the men’s noses and in the narrow set of their eyes.

“In the Kheerzaal and Balanganam, serving my emperor,” Kipri hissed. “You filthy rebels! I see what you’re doing, I see it all! You, her… are the others in on this one, too?”

“Kipri, what in Bhattara’s name are you—” Bayan stopped speaking as a cold metal blade slithered against his throat from behind.

“Hold still, if you please,” a male voice said in his ear.

“You’re one of them now, aren’t you, Kipri?” Kuvi rose and limped toward the doorway. “I’m sorry we couldn’t save you.”

“Liar. You never tried! You let my father take the blame last time. You might as well have killed him yourselves! I’m a eunuch because of
you
!”

Kuvi backhanded Kipri, and the eunuch staggered across the hallway, slamming into the far wall and sliding to the floor.

Bayan reached for his friend, but the man behind him pressed the blade harder against his skin. “Can you guess, young duelist, what this blade is made of?”

Bayan froze, heart thumping. The universe shrank to a cold line of death pressing against his pulse.
Steel
.

“Your father was weak,” Kuvi said to Kipri as the eunuch slowly got to his feet. “We didn’t do it because we hated him. He had to be sacrificed to keep the rebellion strong. And we are strong. We will succeed this time, where last time we failed. Nothing can prevent our victory now. Not only are you too stupid in your cowlike Waarden ways, Little Plum. You’re also too slow. Hahliq’s team left for the Kheerzaal this morning.”

Qivinga finally spoke from somewhere behind Bayan. “I’m afraid that’s all the time I have for you this afternoon, boys,” she said in a silky voice. “It’s time for Sanniq to escort you downstairs.”

With a wordless scream of rage, Kipri flung himself at the wounded warrior.

Bayan shouted for him to stop. Kuvi lunged with his good leg and punched Kipri in the face, dropping him to the floor at Bayan’s feet, where he lay groaning, with blood oozing from his nose.

Bayan felt the bite of the steel blade on his neck, could sense it cutting through his magical focus. His breathing sped up.
If I use my magic, I’ll lose, and we’ll both die.

Kuvi, Qivinga, and her servants Sanniq and Uunaq herded Bayan and Kipri downstairs and into a large sitting room. Sanniq’s blade remained against Bayan’s neck.

“Sanniq,” said Qivinga, “you get the duelist. Kuvi, take your niece downstairs and kill the rest of her.”

Kipri struggled, so furious he was crying, but he was no match for his warrior uncle. Sanniq gave Bayan a nudge toward the next room. Bayan felt a broad swath of pure terror shoot down his spine like lightning.

But its return stroke was nothing but rage. No! I am not helpless! I will not let you kill us!

He raised his hands and waved them around. Sanniq tightened the blade, drawing blood. Bayan arched suddenly, crying out, and collapsed limply against the Aklaa’s chest.

“Fool,” Qivinga said. “Too stuck in his training.”

Sanniq pressed Bayan toward the ground. Bayan tensed and grasped his sleeve then jerked the slender man against his back and bucked forward, tossing the servant across the nearest divan. Kuvi, near the doorway to the wine cellar, paused in surprise.

Uunaq had no such hesitation. She leapt on Bayan’s back, clawing at his face and screaming in a tongue Bayan didn’t understand. He spun, dragged her off his back, and slammed her onto an end table.

Sanniq leaped back across the divan and thrust his gleaming blade at Bayan’s chest. Bayan grasped the man’s wrist, keeping the blade away from him, and dropped to the side while putting a foot in Sanniq’s gut. His momentum whirled Sanniq overhead again, and the Aklaa crashed through a lamp and tumbled into Kuvi’s legs as the man dragged Kipri toward the cellar stairs. The three of them sprawled to the floor.

Bayan leaped forward to grab Kipri and drag him from Kuvi’s desperate reach. As the eunuch scrambled to his feet, Bayan urged him toward the sea porch.

“Going somewhere?” A new voice came from behind. Bayan whirled, putting Kipri behind him. A man in fine Shawnash apparel stood wielding a slender sword.

“You!” Kipri shoved past Bayan’s protective arm. “From Lord Eshkin’s portico!”

Anuq frowned. “You were a spy after all.”

“Proudly!”

“And a fool. You never learned the true scope of our plan. Years of work, frustrating the outer provinces with unchallenged vagary attacks. Not a single province ever saw Imperial Duelist teams sent vagary hunting.”

“Surveyor Philo knew exactly what you were doing. He received a note; you have a traitor.”

Anuq laughed. “None of us would ever betray the others.”

“Well, someone knew what you were up to. Philo is emptying duel dens as we speak. Your vagaries will be dead in days.”

“Even if I believed you, your actions come far too late. We have waited long, but we have planned well. Nothing can prevent the destruction of the Waarden Empire now!”

Bayan glanced around while the man ranted, trying to focus on his options instead of his fears. More members of Qivinga’s house staff filtered into the room, all bearing steel blades. The exits were blocked. There was only one place to run, and it wouldn’t take them far.

But it gave Bayan an idea.

He grabbed Kipri’s arm and dashed past Qivinga, bolting to a loft overhead, which offered a better view of the sea through the large glass windows.

The others drew close around the stairwell. Qivinga laughed, a high, manic giggle. “Look out, my brothers and sisters! The big bad duelist is going to cower in my loft!” She gestured with her dagger. “Go get them, Anuq.”

Bayan dragged Kipri to his knees, hiding behind the low loft rail as the man with the sword began to ascend the steps. “Whatever happens, stay right next to me.” Kipri nodded, eyes wide.

Bayan stood up and backed away a step.

Qivinga squinted up at him in suspicion. “Stop him!”

But they were too late. Bayan invoked his Earth avatar amidst a rush of silvery mist. Strider clawed his way through the floorboards in the middle of Qivinga’s minions. When he straightened up on the wooden floor, which creaked beneath his weight, he stood only a hand above the tallest of his foes—possibly an effect of the steel that surrounded him—but his sudden presence unnerved the would-be warriors, and they cursed and backed away, muttering of unnatural magic.

Kuvi picked up the broken table, ripped off a leg, and slammed it against Strider’s chest, where it splintered into kindling. Bayan directed Strider, and the avatar slammed a knobby fist into the man’s chest, propelling him across the room and into a wall. Kuvi slumped to the floor.

The others scrambled into the formal dining room, but Bayan wasn’t in the mood to let them escape. As the rebels fled, followed by the potbellied basalt avatar, Bayan bolted down the stairs to keep Strider in sight. Kipri trailed right behind him.

Qivinga shouted that she wouldn’t be trapped in her prison by a boy with a big stone doll. Bayan rounded the corner to see the Aklaa princess surrounded and protected by her minions in a corner of the room.

“Take out the duelist!” she shrieked. “His accursed magic is making the stone man!”

Steel blades whirled toward Bayan and Kipri. They dived out of the way as the blades clanged and thudded into the wall behind them. Bayan, amazed that his arms had held the cross form throughout his dive to safety, ordered Strider to grab a large, heavy hutch from the wall. The spindly avatar held it before him as he charged toward the cowering princess and her cronies, but the servants rushed their beloved Starflower through the doorway to the kitchens before Strider could pin them in the corner.

Strider jammed the hutch into the doorway, blocking their return. Bayan and Kipri stood up, and Bayan ordered Strider to make a hole in the outside wall of the house.

“We’ve run out of time; they’ll circle around behind us,” he panted, as the wall parted from repeated slams from Strider’s body. Wooden support beams cracked and splintered. “We need to get out now.”

“
Naa
. You’re not going anywhere.” Kuvi had crawled to the open doorway from the sitting room, and now lay on the floor with a crossbow leveled at them. The steel tip of the bolt gleamed, and Bayan had a moment of terrified flashback as he recalled the metal bolts flying at him and Kiwani during their midnight skill duel.

Anuq and Sanniq appeared behind Kuvi and raised their blades. Qivinga burst between them before they could enter the dining room, leaping over Kuvi’s prone form.

“Mindless imperial slaves!” she shrieked, wielding a dagger in each of her hands. “You will die, and everything you know and love will be destroyed in the coming war of liberation!”

She leaped forward and thrust both daggers toward Bayan’s heart.

Strider launched toward the three Aklaa in the doorway, reaching for the attacking Qivinga in midair and clutching her to his small, hard chest. Qivinga’s steel blades slammed against Strider’s stone body. Bayan felt a sudden, shearing sensation as his magical awareness of Strider vanished.

Where—he just—

Strider crumbled to a pile of rocks which slammed into the Aklaa and the doorway’s support beams. The four attackers cried out as they were crushed beneath the rain of stones. The adjacent walls twisted and crumpled, tearing the pale green silk on the walls and buckling the ceiling. The heavy iron chandelier overhead pulled free of its moorings and crashed to the table, spilling its oil reserves and splintering the shiny dark wood. The oil caught fire with a
whump
.

“Bayan! Bayan, get out!” Kipri yanked on his shirt.

Other staff screamed in rage or terror as they tried to enter the crumbling parlor. Kipri dragged Bayan through the small opening Strider had made in the outer wall. Bayan’s dueling tunic caught and tore on a rough wooden splinter which scored his side, leaving a jagged but shallow wound. His last view inside the house was of the crushed walls behind which Strider had vanished.

They stumbled into a flowerbed bearing winter-hardy, silver-leafed plants and fell among them, crushing several.

“I—Strider—” Bayan stuttered.

“Later!” Kipri grasped his arm and tugged him toward the low wall at the property border.

The manor’s walls shrieked and groaned behind them. A prolonged crunching noise heralded a cloud of dust and bits of wood that spat from the hole in the side of the building. Bayan watched in frozen horror as the second and third stories of the house leaned toward him, groaning as if in mortal agony, then collapsed and crushed the first floor into oblivion. A flicker of flame licked through what remained of his and Kipri’s exit hole, catching afire the splintered sections of the shattered outer wall.

The Starflower’s prison was shattered and burning. But she would never be free of it.

~~~

“Bayan, we have to tell someone.” Kipri hurried along the street as he pressed a corner of his sleeve to his bloody nose.

Strider—he’s just gone.
Bayan struggled to keep up. Servants and freemen from other manor houses poured onto the street, gawking and pointing at the burning wreck, but none seemed to pay any mind to two young men dressed in the cream and blue of a eunuch and a duelist. “Was that man really your uncle?”

“He was. When I was five years old, our princes completed their eunuch training and returned to Aklaa to serve as mid-level government workers. But ten years of training couldn’t erase their desire for revenge; Emperor Hedrick had ordered their father, the Voice of Tilaa, ruler of the Aklaa realm, killed for his pride, and they wanted nothing more than the chance to repay the favor. My father and his brothers—including Kuvi—joined their rebellion as soon as they learned of it, but they were too hasty, too angry, and they got caught.

“In order to help the princes escape, the rebels chose my father as the scapegoat and pinned the whole plot on him. Emperor Hedrick killed him, and the princes, my uncles, and everyone else escaped.” Kipri shook his head and swiped angrily at his tears. “And now they’re trying again. My father was martyred for nothing.”

“What do you mean, trying again?”

“They’re here to assassinate the emperor, Bayan. That’s all they’ve ever wanted.”

Despite his shock, Bayan tried to organize his thoughts. Kuvi had said a team was headed for the Kheerzaal. Qivinga had mentioned a war of liberation. Anuq had bragged that the vagary raids were splintering the loyalty of the outer provinces, that the empire would fall to pieces. The Aklaa would be free to rule themselves if the Waarden Empire fell. But Bayan was positive the provinces would never pull away as long as the emperor lived.