The Leopard (Marakand) (51 page)

The Red Masks were the twigs of her nest, woven close about her, and something ripped one away. She hissed and reached after it, but the remnants of its broken mind and soul flickered through her fingers like darting fish, minnows eluding a child’s snatching hand, and faded into nothing.

Another. She felt each loss, as if her own nerves and sinews were being plucked away, and the pain of the loss burned.
Kill it, kill my enemy, tear it from the world in turn.
Zora shouted aloud in her rage, “Kill him!” and a householder already on his knees on the threshold of his workshop, a saddler who had opened his door willingly, was run through by a patrol-first of the guard.

Her horse tried to rear and back away.

“Not him!” she snarled, and struck down the idiot soldier herself, her hand opening on a bolt of white light drawn not from the Red Masks but from within herself, while inside the man’s wife wailed.

Something touched her spells, wound will into her words, made an echo in the undying song she had so slowly and carefully built, soul by soul. Some wizard dared think . . . it was a demon who defied her, was it not? She couldn’t see. Zora shut out the howling of the woman. When she reached for vision, the Lady’s vision, the Voice’s vision, there was only darkness. Snow. Wind. Then a sun burning white and blinding. And Red Masks kept on dying. She began to sing, hands raised, eyes shut, seeing the knotted web of them, binding them more tightly, but there were gaps, missing knots, threads running loose, and . . . the woman by the workbench beyond the open door, the saddler’s wife, raised her head. She no longer quivered and blubbered. She wept, yes, but there was hatred in her eyes, and her thoughts were of her husband again, not her raw and animal self. Her hand reached for an awl.

The Lady’s blessing on the Red Masks had been destroyed. The soldiers who had cowered like the woman and her servants, helpless, useless, straightened, eyeing one another, prepared to swagger. Let them.

The saddler’s wife rose to her feet, and they did not see the awl in her hand. Blind idiots.

“Kill them all,” she said.

The guardsmen hesitated. Their patrol-first had died for such an order. “Yes, her, those there, kill them, burn the house.”

The woman got her awl into a guardswoman’s eye, before they hacked her down.

Zora knew she should be sickened with this, disgusted, horrified. She was strong now, as she had never been. But she had always been strong. She had simply never known it, till she dared refuse her brother.

Zora left the temple guard to their business and rode to the wagon. Three Red Masks had fled from the demon’s slaughter with, great triumph, two wizards, one a furtive scholar disguised as a caravan mercenary, a daughter of the ferrymen of the Kinsai-av in the west come to hunt lost secrets in the library—but she had burned those books, burned them all, they would not be found. The other was an old man who read the leaves in the Praitan way and mostly told his patrons what they wanted most to hear. Even the first-taken wizards lay still, unconscious, ill as death, they looked. No weakness this time. She needed them. To rebuild the fear . . . she could not, not as it had been. She had woven all together. Her foundations shifted now. She must patch and cobble, inelegant. She would choke the life from this defiant, destroying wizard of wizards with her own hands, when the Red Masks brought her, and make her know every moment of her lingering death, make her know what would come, make her watch as her soul was shredded away and bound into the harmony of the Red Masks. This wizard who dared, who had the strength to see and break even the Lady’s spells would be made a great captain among them, a thing of terror and dread to all Marakand, and she would know it, as she died.

They came, the wizard and the darkness and—some power of the earth. Zora rode to where she could better watch, better command, flung Red Masks across the narrowing of the road to hold, there, while she prepared a trap. What, what, she could not see . . .
what is it? I don’t know
.

It had the shape of a dog, but it burned within, ice in its marrow, fire in its eyes, and it paced, awaiting something, some sign, some gathering of strength. Or did it fear her? Did it now, at last, hesitate?

Where’s Vartu?
it asked her.

Her stomach lurched. Not
him
. Not her brother—she had no brother, not Sien-Mor’s brother, who was nothing to her, nothing.
Don’t be a silly child, you would know it, will know it when he comes you will learn to fear him as you should as we—no, we are strong and we are safe and we will stand hush hush hush he will hear be still be silent be strong be—

Vartu is dead
, she told the dog. The road said Ghatai was dead. He was not her brother, this false mountain demon, and not female, he had never been a woman, she knew it.
Jasberek
, she guessed. But he was changed, so changed. So was she. He laughed at her, showing teeth in what looked like a snarl.

Liar
, he said.
You couldn’t hope to kill Vartu even in your dreams.

Death he is death he is—he is nothing he cannot kill me he is not the sword—
“Get the prisoners back to the city!” she screamed aloud, and her inmost thoughts swelled loudly so that the pacing dog must hear,
Don’t let him hear don’t show him don’t be so weak before the guardsmen silly fool.
She could feel the watching eyes, behind every door, every window, and the saddler’s workshop burned. They were afraid, all those eyes, but they were not beyond thought, not reduced to cringing animals, and they dared to hate where they should love. She moved her Red Masks to take her captives to the city now, to go, now now now before the demon took them from her.

She would kill the demon’s wizard slowly, embrace her in the well and make her know her death, yes.

Or . . . she would be a more fit mate for Tu’usha’s soul.

Yes . . .

No! I am Tu’usha I am Zora I am the Lady of Marakand I cannot die—

—I can burn you can burn as Sien-Mor burned and we will take this one and be strong, stronger than any, strong to hold the east—

She came, a wild woman riding a demon bear, the amber-eyed Nabbani wizard taken with Nour, architect of his escape, maybe, having summoned her demon to the temple her fault the Red Masks died her fault and she should die she was not beautiful she was hard and haggard she was no Lady the folk could love
we don’t want her I don’t want to be her I don’t want to die you promised I would not die—

Zora was Tu’usha was no fool. Did they think her one, that they dared come against her so openly? She had a trap laid, the Red Masks building the spell. She would raise the earth against them and crush them, gather the fires of the sky in her hand, she would break them and leave the suburb a scar by which it would remember, year upon year, its punishment, forbidden to rebuild, she would finish her search and take the Nabbani wizard back to the city and subdue her and—

Red Masks died, and the weaving faltered. The earth broke, walls fell, wind roared, and the cloud tore apart in chaos. The force of her will was broken too, staggering, and she felt her own her Red Masks’ strength slipping from her—

Fool! No! Damned fool! They will die you will die weak and powerless you are nothing in yourself the Red Masks bear us up they are our nerve and sinew we cannot unleash our own my power against the world for long you know we I know even to stop him it must not be the world cracks and breaks and dies even against him I must not I must be strength of this earth to stand on this earth I must be wizard be Red Masks hold Red Masks stop them killing stop them protect the wizards you need the wizards get them to the city go go go—

The dog ignored the Red Masks rushing against it and came for Zora. She changed her sword to a broad-bladed boar-spear, made it burn like molten steel, rode against him. At the last moment he twisted aside and brought her horse down by the throat, but she saw that moment and swung her leg free, sprang clear, and flung Red Masks between them, because even the spear would not stop him; he was a mad beast, he would gut himself to come at her throat, she could see it, feel it, she could hardly breathe with the fear that shook her.
Damned coward child he is nothing to us kill him.
But it was she who was mad. She was only Zora.
I should never have been in the temple at all Papa save me take me away Gurhan hear me I didn’t mean to I didn’t want—
She broke the road and flung it between them, felt the world tear a little, felt the deadness creep in, so she gathered the strength of the Red Masks in wind and fury and even the stones rose and flew, and she turned with Red Masks about her and ran.

This was no safe place, not her place, not her walls, her fire, her fortress. They had snatched her Red Masks and her victory from her, the wild wizard and her demon, and the wizards were waking, her wizards escaping, wrath rising in the suburb which did not love its Lady she needed Ketsim no she needed her champion her king she must recall him—no she must make him king and bring all Praitan to her the wild tribes the warriors who would teach these Marakanders what it meant to fight she would purge the suburb and make it a desert she did not need the road once she had Over-Malagru once the Five Cities were hers and their fleets and the great sea—she was of the sea.

She hid herself in light and passed into the city to unveil from her concealing spells in the forecourt of the gate fortress, where she ordered the gaping captain of the Riverbend Gate to close it and hold it against the rebels of the suburb.

“Ring the warning bells for the closing of all the gates of the city. A wizard of the Great Grass leads demons against us,” she told him. “Don’t open this gate again without my word, on pain of death in the cages for you and all the street guard of your command.”

But the temple guard, the Red Masks still in the suburb . . .

There was the old water-door of the hospice, the weakness in the wall the assassin had discovered. Zora reached for her Red Masks still in the suburb and set them to gather and march to that place. She would seal it, after. She should have done so before now.

“Temple guard, those still without, don’t trust them. Do not open to them, if you value your little life.”
They failed us. They are undisciplined cowards.
Any who had the wit and the courage to follow the Red Masks, those she would admit and welcome back to her service. A test. Yes, it was a test, all a test. She learnt by it. “Send couriers to every gate with those orders. Now, man, now!”

The gates closed, hastened by sight of the dog. She drew her sword from the air so that she stood there defiant, slim and fragile and beautiful, steel and fire, in the narrowing gap, defending her city to the last, and turned away once the bars dropped home, to smile with the radiance of godhead on the white-haired gate-captain.

“He will not pass,” she said. The devil-dog was wounded, she had seen. Her spear had bitten. He was not a fool. She would destroy this gate and every life in this ward to hold the gate against him, and she made that image in her mind, held it for him to see. He stood, panting, checked at last. He knew it for truth.

Whatever he was, he had a strange mind: half beast, thoughts without words, shapes and smells and emotions. He knew the broken dead places of the world better than she, and yet he could not understand them, only feel them, know the horror of what she prepared to do, flinging human wizardry aside, standing as naked devil alone, if he defied her further.

It was enough. He turned away.

“Where’s Holla-Sayan?” Ivah asked.

Mikki lifted his head, sniffed the air. “Don’t know. I didn’t see. The Lady didn’t go past us. Did she fly?”

“Fly?”

“Feather-cloak?” he suggested.

“I don’t think so. She . . .” Ivah hesitated. “She was using the wizardry of the Red Masks. Not her own.”

“They’re all wizards, the devils,” he said, and began to walk. People gave way to them but didn’t follow now and didn’t try to touch.

They found the false Lady’s horse dead in a pool of blood, the great veins of its throat torn away. Oh, Holla-Sayan, she thought, and found her eyes stinging for this, of all things.

Mikki nosed at it, though what sniffing it could tell she didn’t know. Maybe it was just the demon’s animal nature, maybe a blessing. Maybe it had been the only way to come at the Lady. Maybe he was hungry. Mikki padded on, down a lane between warehouses. Another dead Red Mask. The Lady had retreated around them and the captured wagon blocking the main road, that was all. But Ivah should have seen when she crossed again.

There was a strange light over the city, a brightness, shadows gone wrong, along towards the temple. Some new devilry brewing? She didn’t think she could face it. But there was Holla-Sayan, walking slowly up across the graveyard of the Gore. He looked almost as terrible as she felt, grey under his tattoos, his coat and leather jerkin beneath torn and dark with blood. He crossed to them and leaned on Mikki’s shoulder in silence.

“I have defeated the mountain demon,” Zora announced, and the gate-captain, after a moment, bowed. Mountain demon, that was a good name for the creature. She would not give him his true name. She did not want the folk thinking of devils, no, and she smiled at the street-guard captain, smiled to make him hers. “Hold fast here. Admit none. Marakand will not fall while it holds true to its Lady.”

He offered to send for a horse or a chair and bearers, but she smiled gently and shook her head. “Do your duty here,” she said. “That’s all your Lady needs of you now.” She walked then, escorted by Red Masks, and the folk went silent to see her so, dirty, bloody . . . yes, that was fitting. A victor in a hard battle, with the true war yet to come. Yes.

They would love her the more for the blood she shed for them. Yes.

But she must make the temple safe, safer than the walls could ever be. Walls would not keep the devil of Lissavakail out for long. If the Blackdog had abandoned that lake in the mountains, having defeated Ghatai to keep it, it could only be because he sought some new seat of power, a great fortress for the heart of his empire, not a backwater far from the road and the pulse of the world. He would try again to defeat her, to seize her city from her. Or he might know himself overmatched. He might retreat, leave her in peace . . . to ally himself with the greatest of her enemies, who would turn all the world against her if he could?