Rebel Elements (Seals of the Duelists) (44 page)

A high, familiar voice trilled in the Bantayan tongue from across the square. Bayan looked over in surprise. Philo, wearing a bright orange wig, waved a long purple sash at him. The eunuch crouched behind a podium on a wide, elaborate platform that extended out several strides into the square from the second story of a nearby building.

The emperor saw Philo too, and called, “Over to the announcement platform! We can reach safety from there.”

Bayan turned Timbool toward it, coaxing a swift trot out of the avatar.

Several of the assassins, seeing their primary quarry escaping, tried to disengage from the duelists and chase after Timbool. Bayan felt both fear and pride as he watched the valiant duelists on the ground fight with desperate ferocity to prevent their enemies from pursuing the emperor. Even without magic. Even if it meant their lives.

Some of the Aklaa warriors drew close enough to fire their bolts into a high arc at Bayan’s avatar. The little missiles of death reached their apogee and fell back toward Timbool. The Empress cried out and sheltered the bodies of her frightened children with her own.

“Calder!” Bayan cried.

Firedust shot out a wide Firewhirl spell, catching and melting the bolts. Mistbow threw a Twister across the bricks; the spell flung the combatants in all directions and kicked up a whirlwind of dust and small pebbles. Kiwani hurled the dusty debris at the two closest Aklaa, then pinned them to the ground beneath a pair of stone coffins with a snap of her wrists.

Bayan’s eyes widened in appreciation.

Kiwani glanced at him, a predatory glint in her eyes. “Battle-spell!”

Timbool reached the platform. The emperor climbed over the decorative iron barrier first, then hauled his sons and his wife across. Philo took Sebastiaan by the hand and led the royal family across the boardwalk toward the building behind the platform.

A pair of fangs longer than Bayan was tall pierced the decorative iron scrollwork edging the boardwalk. Everyone on the platform cried out, blocked from their escape route.

“Where did that come from?” Calder demanded.

“Kill it!” Kiwani raised her arms.

“Not from this angle! Everyone’s between us and it!” Bayan cried.

The snake shot underneath the boardwalk, among its support pillars, and struck at its targets from the other side, forcing them back toward Timbool.

“Bayan!” shrilled Philo, hiding Sebastiaan behind his own bulk. “It’s bad form to let your sponsor die before your training is complete!”

Timbool whirled and sunk his stone teeth into the snake’s body. Firedust scorched the snake’s flesh with incandescent fire, and Mistbow whirled grit from beneath the balcony into its eyes, blinding it momentarily.

But the snake didn’t defend itself. It single-mindedly continued to strike at the metal latticework protecting its quarry.

It’s not a real snake, Bayan told himself. It’s a magical snake. We need to defeat it with magic.

“Tarin, Shiverlimb. Calder, Pepperbreath—”

Before his hexmates could direct their avatars to cast the spells, a steel bolt fell from the sky and pierced Firedust’s back. The avatar sputtered, gave one last boom, and fizzled into nothingness.

“Aah!” Calder reached toward the spot where Firedust had hovered a moment ago. “My beautiful Firedust!”

“The
snake
!” Bayan cried.

“Tarin! Fortune’s Winter!” Kiwani cast Heavenstream at the snake, blasting it back from the twisted and broken iron latticework. Before it could gather itself for another attack, Tarin’s Mistbow let loose an icy blast of wind that froze all the water Kiwani had just released. The snake lay still, smothered in white, crackling ice.

“Move your feet, Philo,” Bayan cried. The eunuch took Sebastiaan’s hand in one of his, held his wig on with the other, and dashed for the safety of the nearby building. Emperor Jaap carried Juriaan while Lady Femke ran beside him, her skirts bunched in her hands.

“Quick, let’s find the summoner.” Eward gestured back at the shattered Temple wagon.

Bayan whirled Timbool toward the far side of the square. Most of the duelists were down, some moving, some not. A couple were still engaged with assassins, but the imperial archers had arrived and were doing a fine job of picking the Aklaa off from a distance.

“There!” Tarin shot Mistbow ahead of them to hover over a hooded, robed figure lurking behind the shattered remains of the wagon bed. His hands wove an unfamiliar pattern in the air.

Kiwani looked behind them. “The snake is gone; he must be summoning another. Hurry!”

Bayan gritted his teeth. “Everyone, brace for a rough landing!”

“What?”

“Falling asleep again!”

Bayan leaped into the air, uncrossing his arms and releasing the magic that held Timbool in existence. The enormous stone dog crumbled into jagged fragments that smashed into the broken wagon and the hooded anima caster.

Bayan hit the ground and rolled to his hands and knees, watching as Timbool’s boulders and chunks vanished into thin air. He glanced around at his friends; they were also getting to their feet and running toward the wagon.

A hot, fiery pain shot through his thigh. A steel bolt had lodged in the muscle of his leg. Bayan staggered and gasped, not wanting the thing pinioning his flesh, but afraid to remove it.

A nearby voice spoke in rough Waarden. “Pull it out, and you can bleed to death. Leave it in, and your magic is useless.”

Bayan looked up and saw a tall, bushy-haired Aklaa warrior with a sword, jogging in his direction. The man seemed to be the only able-bodied assassin left in the square.

“Our mission may have failed this time, but we did kill one royal son, and we will take as many of you with us as possible. Know me now, little one. I am Hahliq, blessed warrior of Tuq, bringer of
tilaa
, and I am your death.” The man stepped closer.

Bayan cast about for a weapon, any weapon, and spotted a fallen sword near the limp fingers of a dead Aklaa. He dived toward it, skidding on the slick gray bricks, and his hand clenched on the weapon’s handle. He rolled into a sitting position and held the sword point toward Hahliq with both hands. “I can take you out, Hahliq, even with no magic, one bad leg, and a weapon I’ve never used before.”

“It’s impossible! You have no such gifts.” Hahliq raised his sword and brought it down toward Bayan’s neck.

Bayan threw himself to the side and covered his head with his arms, grunting in pain as the bolt embedded in his leg smacked against the ground. Four Bluebolts flew over his head, raising the hair on Bayan’s arms. When he looked at where Hahliq had stood, all he saw was a charred, stinking crater in the ground.

“I do have such gifts. They’re my hexmates,” Bayan said to what little remained of the dead assassin.

Kiwani knelt beside him a moment later. “Whatever you do, Bayan, don’t try any magic with that thing in your skin.”

“All right. I’ll just lie here… and bleed for a while.”

“
Chanter!
” Tarin bellowed across the square. “Get me a chanter!”

Something Hahliq had said floated to the surface of Bayan’s fading consciousness. “Check the boys.”

“What was that, Bayan?” Kiwani leaned close.

“Check the boys,” he repeated in a fading whisper. “He said he’d killed a royal son.”

“Oh, sints, no!” Kiwani rose and pelted across the square.

Bayan’s eyes fluttered closed. Calder’s reassuring voice faded into the welcome darkness that reached up to embrace him.

~~~

Kiwani launched herself onto the tattered announcement platform, propelling herself upward with the vines of Briarflame and thudded across the boardwalk, calling for the emperor.

Philo Sallas poked his head around the corner of a distant walkway, followed by two younger assistants carrying scroll cases like they were clubs. “Is it safe now?” Philo asked.

“Yes, we have killed them all, but are the children safe?”

Philo blinked at the intensity in her voice. “Yes, they’re both well.”

Kiwani slumped against the wall in relief, then frowned in confusion.
Was the assassin just confused? Was Bayan delirious?

“What’s happening, my dear?” Philo asked.

“The last assassin said he had killed a royal son.”

“But, there are no more royal sons. The emperor is an only child.”

“Am I?” The emperor stepped out from behind Philo, wearing a faraway frown. “I always wondered who sent me that treasure map, years ago. If they didn’t kill one of my royal sons, then they had to bring one with them.”

“Beg pardon, Sire?” Philo looked puzzled.

“Caspar…” The emperor broke into a run, pounding down a staircase to the lower level with Kiwani and Philo hard on his heels.

Once in the square, he ordered everyone in hearing range to check all the bodies of the dead to separate the rebels from the Waarden. Someone called out that they’d found someone dressed as an Aklaa, but with Waarden features. Kiwani followed the emperor over to the body. From the man’s location, she knew he’d been the serpent’s first victim: the driver of the sung wine wagon.

The emperor knelt by his side and smoothed the man’s dark, curly hair back from his forehead as he studied his features.

“It
is
you,” he breathed, taking his brother’s hand in his. “Caspar.”

Gasps went around among the gathering crowd. Kiwani stared in shock. The emperor’s older brother had been thought dead for most of her life.

Caspar’s eyelids fluttered. “Jaap…”

The emperor leaned in close to hear his brother’s faint words. “I’m here, Caspar.”

“Always the fool, me. Trusted Savitu. Turned against Father. Hated you. Thought I could replace you. All lies. All lies.”

“They deceived you,” Jaap murmured.

“Deceived myself. Savitu betrayed me, ordered my death. If you are half the tyrant I believed you were, avenge me.”

Jaap raised his head and cried for a chanter. A brown-tabarded man kneeling beside Bayan rose and ran to the emperor.

“No. You have sons. My existence hurts the empire. I have not been worthy of rule. Let me go, Jaap.”

Caspar voorde Helderaard, rightful ruler of the Second Waarden Empire, lifted his hand from the side of his neck, revealing a slice from the serpent’s fang. His bright blood poured onto the brickwork.

“No!” Jaap pressed a hand over the wound, but Caspar’s eyes were already glazing over. “No… brother…”

Tears sprang to Kiwani’s eyes. Before her, she saw not the powerful emperor who commanded her allegiance, but a little brother forced to lose his older sibling… again. As Jaap bowed his head over his long-lost brother’s body and wept, she hid her face in her hands and cried bitter tears.

At least the emperor had family to lose.

~~~

The emperor’s guards had sealed off the square. Chanters had removed the wounded and the dead; the surviving duelists had rinsed the brick paving clean with Water spells. Since the announcement platform was a mass of shredded metal, the emperor stood on the ground in front of it, his blue and white robes disheveled and damp.

Bayan stood with his hexmates and the few surviving Kheerzaal duelists and faced the emperor and his family. Young Juriaan clung tightly to the Empress, while Sebastiaan stood next to his father and leaned against his leg. Behind all the duelists stood Surveyor Philo, Cassander, Gael, and various servants and advisors who had been present at the battle. The emperor had insisted that everyone who witnessed even a small portion of the assassination attempt be found and brought to the ceremony.

“Welcome, fellow survivors,” Emperor Jaap announced. “Let me be brief, for there is much yet I need to do in regard to this incident.

“We have seen an attack here in the Kheerzaal that should be, by all rights, impossible. Anima magic is not only forbidden by law, it should be impossible to use, especially in the heart of the empire, where elemental magic has been used for so many centuries. Until I can confer with the Academy Headmaster on this puzzling and disturbing matter, I require absolute silence from all of you on the matter of the anima serpent. I cannot have my citizens in a panic. We have seen plainly that the summoner of the serpent was a Tuathi, but the rest of the assassins were Aklaa. Let us not turn our backs against our distant neighbors in the western steppes. And let us most certainly not turn our hands against their descendants, the Dunfarroghan, who live peacefully among us and consider this empire their only home. I will not see my ancestors’ empire destroyed from without, and neither will I let it be weakened from within.

“On the matter of the eleven assassins, the duelist students here before me, who risked life and limb to warn me of the danger, have also provided necessary facts that will lead to the eventual capture and execution of all parties involved. Rest assured, my people, this threat has been neutralized, and I shall make all future rebellion impossible.

“The tree of the Waarden Empire cannot grow without the occasional watering with the blood of the loyal. We have lost several fine duelists this day, and they are irreplaceable as steadfast warriors and as friends. They served their empire and their emperor to their dying breaths. And it is my privilege and pleasure to award them and their descendants, in perpetuity, honorifics in remembrance of their dedication and sacrifice.”