Танит Ли - Anackire

Biyh hustled together the seventy men who were holding the entries of Amlan’s palace. He had already made an effort to stir out the Lannic Army from the Salamander barracks. But most of these had made a run for it, or gone to aid their families in the pandemonium.

In the end, Dhaker Opal-Eye’s force cut neat swaths to the door. Not seeking to engage battle, save where it was most tempting, many of the groups of fighters had overlooked them. The palace defenses retaliated bravely, but not for very long. They were dispatched against walls, on galleries, under columns. At length, Free Zakorians had the palace. They did not attempt to retain it. They looted but did not unleash fire, searching diligently. The King and Queen were gone, persuaded by the remnant of their own guard, who successfully gathered them away into Lan’s night-smurred soul, under cover of chaos.

Dhaker’s men did, nevertheless, get into a cellar over five gutted Karmians. They found Kesarh, manacled as they would have wished.

“Here is the one,” said Opal-Eye, “who is not a king. Well,” said Opal-Eye, “you’re not a king now, Kesr Am Karmiss.”

Not only shackled, but burning with fever, he was no difficulty to deal with. They hacked a way back to the road, to the port and to their ships, killing here, looting there.

Leaving embers on the skyline, their slaves rowed them north.

Dhaker himself cauterized the infected wound in his captive’s arm. He heated the iron white-hot and kept it on the roasting flesh for as long as was needful, perhaps some seconds more. Dhaker did not want his trophy to die before they rejoined Yl’s fleets, but also, Dhaker’s father had been at Tjis.

The house, so agreeable and fruitlessly tranquil, was abruptly full of screaming.

Ulis Anet stood to face the doorway as one of the winged pairs of feet flew in.

“Madam—”

“What is it?”

She was told.

The King of Xarabiss’ daughter turned and walked away into the garden. She ignored the turmoil. White pigeons, offended by the sudden din, dashed to the sky between chasms of rose-red wall.

The Lily ships were coming back from Lan. From Istris other ships were setting forth to bring the Karmian remnants out. The length of Lan, they said, men galloped, calling in the troops, summoning them from hills and crags, from the valleys and the villages. Every man of Karmiss must return. Lan would be abandoned, rent and used and left lying, for Free Zakoris to have if Free Zakoris willed it.

The Black Leopard would move toward Karmiss herself, very shortly. No longer an ally—the devourer. The treaties were all torn up.

Kesarh, regicide and madman—Free Zakoris had Kesarh.

She had dreamed of something, she could not even properly remember. A serpent was in it, and its teeth glittered like knives. She had wept in her sleep, and woken weeping. And now she knew. And wept once more.

She did not love him. She loved him. And he would die, and Karmiss would die, and she was to blame, so her dream had shown her, save she could not remember it, or why.

“Lady, you’ll be cold. Here’s your nice cloak, with the kalinx fur, he gave you.”

“No,” Ulis Anet murmured. But they lifted her from the grass, began to bear her away.

“Hush, lady. Istris isn’t safe. Full of crazy soldiers and ships coming in. The Warden’s to enforce curfew. And the baker said, black galleys, the Leopard, seen at sunset—”

A male voice. “We’re going inland. Come on, lady. You’re delaying us.”

She was bewildered. She thought they would sell her as a slave.

“Kesarh,” she said.

“Forget him, lady. He’s sliced in segments, feeding fish.”

“Shush! Let her alone.”

The night closed her eyes. She slept in the arms of her maids.

Stars patterned the darkness.

They were in the hills of Karmiss.

She stared at the stars, and some philosophy or aberration filled her so she lifted her hands. In Elyr, star-gazers understood such fancies.

There was a small inn, and when the sun came up she was alone. Even the ankars and the ornaments they had brought for her had disappeared. The cloak of black and white furs had disbanded into live animals and slunk under the door.

The inn-keeper stood over her.

“Fine lady—fine whore . What’ll you pay me with?”

He raped her. At any other time, such a terrible thing would have sickened her, driven her mad. But she was beyond it. All the while he abused her, her conscious mind was far away.

“You’ll have to try harder than that,” he said.

He told her she could sweep out hearths and carry water, and he would whip her for negligence. Had she been sold and never known it?

She got up from the bed and faced him.

“I am the King’s mistress,” she said.

“The King —we’ll be ripped in shreds because of this king. Out! I’m sorry I soiled myself with you, you red-haired slut.”

There was a road. It went to Ioli, where she had never been. People in flight from every city and town seemed to travel the road in either direction, moving on to it and off it at various subsidiary tracks. There were carts, wagons, lowing beasts, the clatter of pans tied together, and the elderly, too weak to go on, resignedly sitting to die on the verge.

Ulis Anet walked inside the moving entity the multiple evacuation had become. She did not know where she went. Was Ioli secure? Never. Where then? West, and off the island. To Dorthar, where the Storm Lord could protect them. Rot Kesarh. May the crows tear his liver! An old woman, of good family and well-dressed, dropped in the way of a wagon, which was halted with cursing and complaints. Ulis Anet lifted the old woman up, vaguely reminded of a grandmother in Xarar, where the hot spring heated the palace even during the snow. The old woman clung to her. Ulis Anet, having rescued her, could not make her let go. Ulis Anet said, “Kesarh. He was my lover.” The woman spat on her. Catching sunlight, the spittle shone. A pebble struck her arm. Fickle—they had loved him, only three days before, when she had not.

Outside Ioli, she joined a makeshift camp, shared its fire, and back darkness came and stars.

They made about the fire ghastly buffoonery of how death loomed and they would all die. “And a Free Zakorian’s standing there, with a bloody great sword. He says to me. Where shall I put this? And I just pray my mate here’s got his bloody great mouth open.” Or they sang songs: “No morning star to bring us from the night.”

A man tried to lie over her.

“Kesarh,” she said. “He—”

The man beat her, but not much.

She was a pariah. He would not soil himself.

There were ships standing off at such and such a location, bound for Dorthar. Somehow she was with a family who had given her food and were now taking her to the ships.

She imagined entering Dorthar and throwing herself, a suppliant, at the wheels of Raldanash’s chariot as he rode by on the way to war.

“Why are you laughing?” the children asked her.

“Stop that. She’s daft, poor bitch.”

When they arrived at the shore, there were no ships. The family made off westward and deserted the lunatic, who was an ill omen.

She wandered awhile with the wandering light, then sat down on a stone.

The waves blew against the beach. But there was no peace. In the silence, she saw Kesarh and what the Free Zakorians would do to him. She had heard of the exploits of his valor, Tjis, the sea-fight off Karmiss a year ago. She was afraid she would see it in truth, the mental barrier giving way, letting his mind pour into hers, his torture and death, and she could do nothing.

She did not properly understand any of what had taken place, only its outcome. And sometimes she did not believe that either, though she knew it was so.