Silk fire, p.42
Silk Fire, page 42
“I could use a little help here!” Ria shouted as Akizeké’s sword swept inches from her neck. I screamed and charged forward. Akizeké pivoted to face me, and I hammered her until my arms burned with aftershocks. My steel clanged off her shield. Its metal rim ruptured.
“It pays to be gentle!” she shouted. “What have you learned in that brothel?”
“This!” My tail whipped behind her. The silver barb punched through the armor-joint at her elbow, piercing tender flesh below. Ria called my name. I let my tail dissolve and scrambled back as lightning lanced through the wound.
Akizeké howled, dropped her sword, and jumped backwards. Blood spattered onto metal—crimson as cheering as fine silk to my eyes. She lifted the staff. The holdshadow rose glimmered at its heart. Darkness uncoiled and serpent-struck at my chest.
“Ria!” I twisted, tried to run to her. Thick loops of smoke and shadow billowed alive around me. Like manacles, like omens, they locked around my wrists and ankles. Distant flashes of Ria’s fire clawed against dark bastille. But the only soul I saw was Akizeké, grinning, as Tamadza’s whispers sank inside me.
You are stronger and more cunning than Akizeké and your father combined. The shadow-Shaper’s lips brushed my earlobe in a cold kiss. Yours is the hand that shall sunder the foundations of Jadzia.
“No,” I growled. “I don’t want your power.”
Not power. Prophecy.
Akizeké’s laughter drowned out the ghost. “I knew I’d win!” Her smile widened, white and blinding as thin-atmosphere snow. “I’ve trained with swords since girlhood. No filthy whore could beat me in a fair fight.”
“This is war,” Faziz said. I thought his voice a phantom until he strode up the deck, passing through shadows like mist. Of course. Back to Akizeké’s side. “Only victory matters.”
He cupped Akizeké’s chin, pulling her lips toward his. She inhaled—readying for a kiss—and his sword flashed. A bloody line sliced down her hamstring.
The darkness encaging me vanished on the wind.
Redemption. The shadow’s promise to him, fulfilled. You magnificent trickster. You gambled your freedom for this chance. He’d let her possess him. For the shadow to grant him one moment like this.
I could trust him. We could win.
“Bind him, Ria!” I shouted. She leveled her bracer. Chains of ice shot free and manacled Faziz. A wave of fire separated him from Akizeké’s grabbing arm.
My eyes tracked the bob of Akizeké’s staff. I grabbed my chance and dashed back in.
She swung. A rap to my blade’s tang stung my hands. I pivoted, wheeling the sword into the overhead strike Faziz had taught me. Akizeké grinned, pain distorting her smile, and blocked. Her angle went steep. I twisted the sword as we collided, and the blade drove a split through the wood.
The holdshadow rose wavered. Phantom dragons swarmed from my blade into the staff.
Fight destruction, they whispered. Fight the dead.
“For my father!” Ria screamed. Spurs of ice lanced into the wood, driving deep, splitting every crevasse. The staff cracked and dissolved into the mass of Tamadza’s shadow. The hovership trembled beneath me.
Akizeké tried to step backwards. Her wounded leg bucked. She fell to one knee. “Join me, Koré!” Her eyes were just starting to widen with fear. “Call off your Fire Weaver. I’ll kill Vashathke, take the throne, and marry you. Your children will be the heirs to War.”
“My children will live in a peaceful world,” I said. “So will I.”
She didn’t seem to notice the blade until it was halfway through her neck.
We pressed body-to-body. I cradled her as blood flowed over us both. The arms that had held me so many times stilled. Light left her eyes, but not the confusion.
“Why?” she whispered, and died beneath the rising shadow storm.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The skies above Victory Street
1st Zdz, Year 1 Vashathke
“Let me remind every dreaming little boy in War. If you work hard, follow the rules, and expect nothing but perfection from yourself, you too can rise high.”—inaugural speech of Judge Vashathke Faraakshgé Dzaxashigé
“Below is a list of Vashathke’s officials one must never accept as a client.”—High Kiss employee handbook
I dropped Akizeké’s body, my eyes empty of tears for her, and ran to Faziz’s side.
“Kiss me,” he growled. “Set me free.”
I grabbed his long dark hair and forced back his head. He strained and thrashed against the manacles. Enemy blood washed our faces, slicked our hands. I tasted it as my lips swallowed his, power falling from my kiss like meteors from the sky.
I would take nothing less than all of him forever.
He changed under my touch, shadows dimming, strength draining away. A switch flipped in his soul, darkness changing to a normal, human, dull essence store. I tried to pull back then, but he bit my lip and held me close. Drinking my fire until my lungs ran out.
“Sakriu su riu,” Ria cursed, limping up beside us. “The shadow.”
The roiling dark mass of Tamadza’s soul stained the sky. Cloaking the Surrender, the Palace, the Slatepile. It seeped through tall windows and cracks in ancient stone. Wherever it touched, people convulsed and gasped beneath the shadow’s thrall. The high street winds pulled at its seams. Dragging it up and out, fast and strong.
“We have to destroy it before it spreads.” Ria hooked her arms around my neck. “Let’s do this. All three of us, together. Faziz, hold on.”
“I don’t deserve—” he started.
“Either all of us do or none of us do. Come on.”
He wrapped an arm around my shoulders. Her lips brushed my ear. “Come on, baby. Show them your fire.”
I gave Akizeké’s body one last look. What we had was false. Corrupted. Broken. What lived inside me was real.
I drew on that love and surrendered to my power.
Instinct, all my own, amplified my light. Their weights went from my anchors to a pinprick at my back. The hovership dug into my side; I nudged it off with a talon. My wings covered Victory Street as I furled them free.
I was as large and gleaming as Skygarden.
The shadow rose, a thousand faces screaming. I raised my neck and exhaled the tide.
Essence rolled through the hungry world. Women cheered as they drank, shadows falling from their eyes, wounds sealing as they brightened. My talons braced against the Surrender’s shoulders. I opened a second blast, my fire white-hot and streaked blue, washing Tamadza’s thousand laughing faces.
The shadow recoiled.
“There!” Ria screamed, tugging one giant neck tendril. My head turned. The Surrender trembled beneath me.
My dragon’s sight found Dzaro. She winked and nodded.
I breathed pure power into the gap.
The dead fell as I descended, skeletons and mangled corpses tumbling to final rest. Weapons fell. Living hands lifted in confused surrender. Back behind Dzaro’s lines, Źeposháru Rena slumped dull in her restraints. Dzaro grinned, bright as Dzkegé herself, cheering my name as my talons touched down.
My giant’s form dissolved around me.
We three crashed together in a close embrace. Faziz held me so tight I thought his new, brighter strength would crack ribs. His lips pressed my collarbone, kissing the blood-streaked scales. Ria locked an arm around both our waists, holding us up.
“I love you,” I told them both. My chest felt so light, I would have floated into space without them holding me down. “Those are the truest words I’ve ever spoken. I love you.” Steel conviction rooted in my breast. Vashathke wouldn’t have me. Forget our bargain and the power of a judge’s throne.
I’d stay with them and lead the life I deserved.
Dzaro, ringed by exhausted dogs, tossed a guard uniform at my feet. A tall guard stood behind her, nude and disgruntled. “There. I won’t have one of Victory Street’s heroes naked before his fans.”
“I’m a courtesan. It’s what they’d expect.”
“You’re not a courtesan anymore.”
Her words warned sharp of my truth’s price. I’m their dragon. Their hopes and dreams in my flesh.
I reached for the uniform and found the dragons’ sword still clutched in my hand. At last, it purred as I dressed, an honest Dzaxashigé. As long as you need us, we’re yours.
“Koreshiza!” The cheer began in the front ranks of Dzaro’s guard. “The young dragon!” Ten thousand battered faces, their eyes wide and smiling, turned to me. I’m worthy of all their pride? My heart stuttered. My chest tightened. I made myself suck down a shaking breath. How can I evade my father’s cage and get you all what you need?
Dzaro bowed. A ripple swept through the crowd. The gathered Engineers, busy tithing their fresh essence to their fellows, whispered uncertainly as every guard of Victory Street fell to their knees.
“A schism in the making,” Źeposháru Rena murmured. “You’ll fall to riot.”
They should only bow so deeply to a judge. “Dzaro, get up. I have to speak with you.” I had to tell her the truth.
Behind a guard barricade, I recounted what I’d confessed to the sword. How I’d betrayed her cause and invested the brother who’d spurned her. The nature of his marriage to Rarafashi, the truth of her missing nieces. My aunt didn’t protest Vashathke’s virtue, or decry my betrayal. Her lips narrowed into thin lines. She walked away.
My heart fell. I’d hoped she’d take my truth easy.
But Ria had listened, the dark and all of it, not once insisting my senses had fooled me or a dzaxa would never. Clear-headed, I knew a High Master would trust me when I said War’s rulers wove evil. A lifetime of suspicion. Old habits, and bad ones now. The district might doubt the full truth, but any who knew both me and my father would acknowledge my tale held weight.
With Faziz on my back, I followed the hovership as Ria and Toźätupé piloted it to safety. Stars and planets swam through skies freed from Tamadza’s shadow. The ancient craft’s agonized faces flickered silver and died as it landed in the Armory Street ruins, rolling onto its side and powering down. The last mangled skeletons in its halls were easily dispatched, the dragons’ sword singing silver in my hands. Faziz helped me cut them down with uncommon grace.
“I can take back that extra essence,” I told him quietly.
“Not yet. I still have work to do.”
How much can you work at the cost of your health? But I trusted he could make that choice himself.
“This whole section of Armory can rebuild,” Ria mused as we met her and Toźätupé in the piloting chamber. “With fresh essence, we can make true Shapers and erect new buildings.”
“You’ve done well,” Toźätupé told her. “The old Fire Weavers are avenged. Their future is secure. Your father would be proud. Will you come home now? Help me and Źeposháru Rena heal our district from this crime?”
Ria shook her head. “I can’t spend my life staring at the Hive’s ruin. And I want to limit Źeposháru Rena’s hand in our rebuilding. The Fire Weavers—and I—need a new start.”
“My Muruná Davé.” Toźätupé nodded sadly, running a finger along the Sashua Vorona at her throat. “Careful not to start too many fires. You don’t want your grand ambitions to go up in smoke.”
As we left the ship, and I took wing once more, concrete-dusted children climbed from the ruins to inspect the broken stern. Thoshe’s people. The ruins folk could salvage a fortune in substance from the ship. It wouldn’t bring back their dead—but the ancient Thoshe would laugh and take what she could get.
By the time we returned to the Surrender—Dzaro’s well-guarded apartment, not the exposed High Kiss—I could barely lift my flagging wings. Ria and Faziz helped me to my bedroom. With a nod of silent agreement, they dropped down on either side of me.
Love all around me, precious and true. I wouldn’t let Vashathke take this from me, not if all his bright strength bent to make me his prize.
When I woke, no one had arrived from Skygarden to claim me. Dzaro was nowhere to be found. Quickly, I wrote papers to transfer ownership of the High Kiss to Bero. Signing tasted bittersweet, but it would keep my people safe. I couldn’t go back to who I’d been. I had to make a future as strange and uniquely myself.
We returned to the Slatepile and the wounded, where I spent half the day returning an irate Źeposháru Rena to her prior brightness. Faziz and his Slatepile folk helped guards carry bodies to the waiting transmutationists. Ria disarmed unexploded cannon shells.
Dzaro returned, exhausted, at the eighth bell. The three of us sat around her dining table. Faziz gulped bronto dumplings like he had seconds left to live. Ria was building hers into a tower with toothpicks. I hadn’t touched my plate.
“Koré,” Dzaro said, and my stomach lurched. Does she hate me?
“I’m so sorry,” I blurted. “I should have told you everything before. But these secrets—”
Her arms slid around my shoulders. Black fur tickled my nose on her fajix-strap. “Dzkegé’s tits, you think you’re the one I’m mad at? You had real reasons to fear the dzaxa, even more than anyone could guess. I know the difference between you and my brother, even if you don’t. He’s a monster. You’re a slut with a big heart.”
“I’m not the nephew you wanted me to be. I’m not—”
“I want you to be you. That’s all. We’re family, you, me, and these interesting partners you’ve found.”
I’d have to get used to family not ripping me apart. “What next?” I pulled my hem from Slayer’s jaws. “Vashathke’s still distracted with the cleanup. But I know it won’t be long before he comes for me.”
“I spoke with Toźätupé, Źeposháru Rena, Kirakaneri, and all the ladies of Victory Street. We’ve told your father we won’t let War re-institute slavery. He can’t defy us without sinking the district’s economy.”
My heart skipped. They stood up to a judge for me? “He can’t leave me in peace. He needs a leash on me.” I could flee. Maybe Źeposháru Rena would find a place for me in Engineering, though she’d want essence in exchange for granting sanctuary. I’d still be a pawn. Once, I might have flown as far as Gardening or Husbandry, joining a brothel in a district where no one knew my name. But Ria wouldn’t abandon her order, and Faziz wouldn’t leave the Slatepile—
The air cracked and shattered. My ears popped as Vashathke blurred into sight. He stood tall, a sun that set sandstone walls to sparkling, his grin lovely, triumphant, and petty as shit.
“Very right, Koreshiza. I need that leash.”
“You eavesdropped?” Dzaro’s jaw dropped. “You’ve inherited a district reeling from a terrorist plot and you’re spying on your family instead of salvaging our relationship with the Engineers?”
“I’m spying on my dragon. He’s key to my plans.”
“He’s your son, and you’ve worse than abandoned him.” My aunt’s fists balled. “I’ve sworn I’d never punch a boy, but you—”
“I’m your sovereign!” His voice boomed, low and powerful enough to crush armies. Dumplings popped in their bowl. Faziz cringed. Dzaro stumbled back against the wall.
So small, in thoughts and heart. All fear fled me. Hate pulsed in my breast, twinned with contempt. How could I deal with such utter trash?
I’d bring him to heel.
“You want a leash on me?” I said. “Name me to your old seat. Make me magistrate of Victory Street and I’ll be duty-bound to work beside you for War’s greater good.”
He glared at me with eyes to flatten phalanxes. “I can’t let a whore rule.”
“Why not?” My heart sped. I didn’t know how to rule. Would the dzaxa who’d fucked me ever respect my lead?
But maybe I could do this. Take the crown, live safe and happy. Happiness came into the world every day. Why shouldn’t I get some?
I continued. “I can show you the High Kiss’s accounts—I built a business from nothing. I’ve treated with judges and the undercroft’s rulers, I know every lady of Victory Street, and I helped Ria save us from Akizeké’s attack. I can do this. Dzaro can teach me basics.” I’d be a thousand times better than anyone Vashathke would choose. I wouldn’t throw people flailing to the street. I could help Ria rebuild her order and Faziz repair his home.
“Take the deal, brother.” Dzaro peeled herself off the wall. “I know your secrets. Enough words in the right ears and your judgeship will crumble before it’s begun. The dzaxa will take any excuse to rip your scandalous ass from the throne.”
“Take it,” Ria said. “Or I’ll have Źeposháru Rena raise tolls on every crossway in War. You’ll start your judgeship paralyzing inter-building trade.”
My heart leapt at their support. I’d worried so long what Vashathke would do with my secret revealed. I’d never realized I wouldn’t face him alone.
“Fine,” Vashathke snapped. “All hail the Magistrate of Victory Street, Koreshiza Brightstar Dzaxashigé. Long may he rule. Long enough to pay the full price of thrones.”
He spat in my face, so quick his missile traced a bloody line on my cheek. Then he vanished in a bright blur.
I watched him go, stunned. I’d out-schemed my father. I’d talked myself into a throne. Everything would be different now. Strange, new, shifted—and open. A world-spanning rainbow of possibility, ready for me to grab, change and remake.
“I’m not calling you dzaxa,” Faziz huffed.
“Never do.” I looked to him and Ria. “Do you want me to take this?”
“Is this who you want to be?” Ria asked.
Koreshiza Brightstar Dzaxashigé. Magistrate of Victory Street. Another man’s title. Another man’s life. A pampered dzaxa, not a scheming courtesan. Someone I’d scorn behind their back. But it sounded better than enslavement. I could stay with my family. And—I chuckled deep in my throat—I could certainly look the part.
“Dzaro, I need a loan,” I said. “For the biggest coronation parade Victory Street has ever seen.”
One month later, every trumpet and bell on Victory Street played brass defiance. Notes echoed from Old Dread to the Palace of Ten Billion Swords, rising skyward in a thousand blending harmonies. The sun beamed gold and cleansing through cloudless blue. Wind carried high the scent and flutter of rose petals.
