Kate Elliott - His conquering sword

Soon enough they began to pass refugees from the city. At first clumps of them, cowering away from the patrol. A woman carried a baby on her back and held another child by the hand. An old woman stumbled along, weak and crying, and a little boy dragged a bundle behind him and followed in her wake. Larger groups, families, trudged along the road. Children wailed. A broken-down old horse bore an injured woman slumped over its neck, her thigh a bloody mass of tissue, open to the air. They had nothing but the clothes on their backs, and a few of the lucky ones, a handful of possessions wrapped in cloth, whatever they had grabbed before being driven from the city. A gray-haired woman walked under the weight of a silk bundle. A tall woman with a strong, dark face stopped to shift a pack of roughspun cloth to a better position on her back. A baby shrieked. A woman clad in rich damask linen sobbed with each step, holding a hand to her throat. Two girls held a limping crone between them, helping her along. Most kept their heads bowed. An adolescent girl, her face veiled, balanced a large ceramic vase on her head, walking steadily, only her eyes showing dark and angry as she watched the riders pass.

Tess wept, to see them struggling along.

As they rode on, as morning passed to midday and midday into afternoon, the trickle became a stream, the stream a flood. Hordes of them; Aleksi had not known so many people, even khaja, could live together in one place. No wonder they were weak, crammed like insects into a rotted stump or an old hollow log. They walked, heads bowed. A layer of ash covered their clothes, and at their backs smoke rose into the heavens, a dark blot against the gray clouds far above. As the riders neared the jaran camp, they could see Karkand burning.

"My God," said Tess. "Isn't there a rise, where we can lookr

It was a relief to veer away from the road and along a trampled field until they reached a low ridge which gave them a vantage of the city.

Karkand burned. A huge black funnel of smoke marked it, and spits of flame. Aleksi watched the lines of refugees, like tiny insects, leaving the city along the roads and out through the fields. He saw the riders, moving among them, and wagons trundling away toward the jaran camp. In the middle of the blazing city, the huge dome of the temple glowed red with fire. Clouds of heat shimmered out from it, and the intense glow of the flames cast a hot, violent light up into the sky. As they watched, the dome collapsed into a monstrous cloud of ash and smoke that billowed into the air and shrouded the western horizon so that they could not even see the setting sun.

"Goddess save us," murmured Maggie. "Why did he order this? The whole city is going, all of it, even the suburbs are in flames. And it was so beautiful. Now it looks like a funeral pyre."

Tears streaked Tess's face. "Don't you see?" she asked, shaking her head. "It is a funeral pyre. For our son. For everyone who died today, for everyone who will die. For Charles." She wiped her face with the back of one hand, but it only streaked grime over her cheeks, blending with her tears. "For Rhui."

"Look." Aleksi pointed at the same time that the patrol captain did. "There is Bakhtiian's banner. He must be riding out to look for you."

"We'll wait for him here," said Tess.

So they met on the ridge, Tess and Bakhtiian, he with the pall of the dying city at his back, she with her face to it.

He said nothing, only drew his horse in beside her and raised one eyebrow, questioning. He looked remarkably neat for a man who had just destroyed a city and defeated an entire kingdom, with his armor newly polished and his surcoat untorn and marked only by a fine layer of ash. He wore his victory with pride but without gloating.

Tess lifted her right hand, to show him the ring. "I am now the Prince of Jeds."

He regarded her measuringly, as he might measure any threat to his power. "Where is your brother?"

"He's dead."

He took the news with no change of expression. "We still have no treaty between your lands and mine," he said quietly.

"That's true." She looked beyond him, toward Karkand. "I have seen what you and I must do: We must unite all the lands against the coming of the khepelli, whether while we live or when our grandchildren rule. What can you offer me, Bakhtiian, in return for my alliance?"

His mouth lifted, not quite into a smile. He twisted for the first time and cast a glance back toward the conflagration. Then he turned back to gaze on her again.

He drew his saber and held it up between them. "My army, which is my sword. And my vision, which was granted to me by the gods. That is all I have, and everything I have."

Tess stared at the inferno that was Karkand. Over the night and on that day's journey, she had seemed to Aleksi to change somehow, as if the ring her brother had given her had altered her forever. She was still Tess, but she was also a prince now, invested with a greater power than anyone here but Aleksi and Maggie, and she herself, knew. It was almost as if Karkand was her own pyre, burning away what she once was and creating her anew.

"Your army and your vision," she said, meeting her husband's gaze. "That will do."

Fine ash rained down on David's head. He brushed at his hair, but it was useless. It coated everything, fine white ash and grittier black chunks. His boots crunched on it, and the beautiful woven patterns of the jaran tents lay hidden beneath it. He coughed, and coughed again, and finally gave up and held a scrap of cloth over his mouth and nose.

Although it was late afternoon, some of the encampments were breaking up, loading their goods into wagons and heading south to escape the constant shower. He arrived at their own camp just as Maggie rode in, looking soot-stained and tired.

"David!" She swung down from her horse and beckoned him over. A jaran boy ran up and took the horse from her, and Maggie wiped her nose with the back of her hand and sneezed. "Goddess, this is terrible. David. Have you heard about Charles?"

David blinked through his exhaustion. "What about Charles? I've been gone from camp since yesterday dawn, since they launched the assault."

"Charles left."

He thought he had heard her wrong. "Left?"

Heavy clouds covered the sky, but the quality of sunlight was peculiar, a warm yellow light instead of the silvery gray of the usual overcast day. The air was dry and smelled of burning. "He left Rhui."

"Is there a chair?" David asked, sure that he was simply so tired that he was hallucinating. "I think I need to sit down. Why?"

"Duke Naroshi had Hon Echido and a few other members of Keinaba House detained for breaking the interdiction. Only Charles can sort it out. But if Naroshi is watching him, then he can't risk returning to Rhui. He doesn't want there to be any chance that the Chapalii catch on to what we're doing, at least not by trailing him. So he handed his signet ring over to Tess, and he left on a shuttle last evening."

"On a shuttle?" David retreated under the awning of Charles's tent, and there, groping, he found a chair and sank down into it. "Oy vey," he muttered. "So much for the interdiction."

"Oh, the Rhuians don't know about the shuttle. He's officially dead, as far as the Rhuian natives are concerned. And Tess remains officially deceased off-planet. But on Rhui, Tess is now Prince of Jeds. We have to make our own way back to Jeds-damn him, I wish I could have gone with him. And the actors. They'll have to know as well. I'm not sure what Tess intends, but I think Charles wants her and Bakhtiian to centralize as much of the planet-or at least this continent, I suppose-as they can, so that when he begins the new rebellion he'll be able to bring Rhui wholesale into the League with little resistance."