Jael hauled off and backhanded the soldier, whose expression scarcely altered as the slap turned his head from east to west. A thread of blood appeared at his lip, and he did nothing to stanch it.
“Do I look victorious to you?” Jael seethed at him. He held up his empty hands. “Do you see all my new weapons? I can scarcely carry them all! That’s my victory!” He felt his face empurpling and was reminded of his brother, whose rages had been famous, and murderous. Jael prided himself on being a creature of cunning, not temper, and cunning meant killing not in passion but in coolness.
So he just shoved the soldier aside—fixing the smirk in his memory for a more considered punishment later—and marched into his pavilion, tearing at his ridiculous white pageant garb and giving a hiss of pain when he peeled at the place the scorched silk had hardened against the weeping flesh of his wound, reopening it.
He cursed. The pain was a throbbing reminder of his failure and vulnerability. He needed to remember his own might. He needed to get his blood moving, his breath flowing, to prove who he—
He stopped short. The bed was empty.
His eyes narrowed. Where was the woman, then? Hiding? Cowering? Well. His heat rose. That would make a fine beginning.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” he rasped, turning in a slow circle.
The pavilion was dim, the canvas walls hung with furs to keep out both wind and light. No lanterns were lit. The only illumination came from Jael’s own wings…
… and the woman’s.
There.
She was not hiding. She was not cowering. She was at his desk. Jael bristled. The wench was sitting at his war desk, languid in his chair, all his campaign charts spread before her as she rolled a paperweight back and forth beneath her palm. Her other hand, he did not fail to note, rested on the hilt of a sword.
“What are you doing?” he growled.
“Waiting for you.”
There was no fear in the voice, no coyness or humility. She was backlit by her own wings, and, besides, a shadowy stillness seemed to cloak her, so that Jael could make out only the shape of her as he strode forward, ready to yank her out of his chair by her hair. And that was better than if she were hiding, better than cowering. Maybe she would even resist—
He saw her face, and faltered to a stop.
If he was slow to process the ramifications of this visit it was only because it was unthinkable. He had deployed four thousand Dominion to crush rebels numbering less than five hundred, and they had, and they had brought back the White Wolf’s body as proof, and besides, the guards—
Behind him, the soldier he hadn’t recognized spoke from the doorway, having entered without summons or permission. “Oh, I should clarify,” he said, smirking away. “I didn’t mean a celebration of yourvictory. Sir. But of ours.”
Jael sputtered.
Drawing sword from sheath in one smooth motion, Liraz rose from her chair.
“Karou,” said Akiva, as they moved silently through the camp.
“Yes?” she whispered. The deserted camp was eerie, but she knew it wouldn’t stay this way for long. The troops would arrive soon enough, and then it would be dangerous for them to stay. If they were going to move on Jael, they should do it now.
To her shock, though, Akiva abruptly dropped his glamour.
“What are you doing?” she whispered, alarmed. They were in full view of a guard tower, and Jael’s personal escort had scarcely dispersed. They could be anywhere. Why, then, didn’t Akiva look concerned?
Why did he look… amazed?
“That soldier,” he said, indicating the emperor’s pavilion, and the guard who had just slipped inside it behind Jael. “That was Xathanael.”
Liraz.Jael had to blink because the queer cloak of darkness shifted and seemed to move with her as she came out from behind the desk. Long legs, long stride, no hurry. Liraz of the Misbegotten came forth with an escort of darkness, and her hands were ink-black with all the lives she had taken, and the darkness that cloaked her had taken as many or more. Moving like mercury, it resolved into forms by her sides.
There were two of them: winged and feline, with the heads and necks of women. Sphinxes, and they were smiling.
“Misbegotten and revenants together, if you can credit it,” said the soldier behind him.
“My brother Xathanael,” said Liraz, in such a calm way as though she were a hostess here, to make polite introductions. “And do you know Tangris and Bashees? No? Perhaps by their popular name, then. The Shadows That Live?”
This Jael could notcredit, though he saw it with his own eyes: Liraz, as deadly as she was splendid, standing between The Shadows That Live. The Shadows That Live.In a camp like this one, during the chimaera campaigns, there had been no greater terror than these mysterious assassins.
Ice cut through him. It was when he thought to call for his guards that the full realization descended on him, belatedly and like a cage: The camp was taken, and so was he, and by now his guards must be, too.
His guards, maybe, but not his army. Jael’s hope rallied. They were his salvation, headed this way, and in numbers to easily overwhelm the paltry force here. Numbers. Let even Akiva strive against such numbers. Jael couldn’t fall into the same trap as last time, and let himself be taken as leverage. He eyed the sphinxes. One of them winked at him, and he shuddered.
“A bravura strategy,” he said, stalling. “Enemies unite.”
“It’s your own gift to Eretz,” Liraz replied, “and I’ll make sure you’re remembered for it. ‘The Several Days’ Emperor,’ you’ll be called, because that was all the time you had, and yet, in it, you not only dissolved the Empire, you accomplished the extraordinary feat of uniting mortal enemies in a lasting peace.”
“Lasting,” he scoffed. “As soon as I’m dead, you’ll fall right back at each other’s throats.”
Bad choice of words.
“Dead?” Liraz regarded him with surprise. “Why, uncle. Are you unwell? Planning to die soon?” She had changed. This wasn’t the hissing, spitting cat he’d tried to take for his own in the Tower of Conquest. “There’s no ride in the world,” he’d said then, taunting, “like a storm in fury.” Here was no storm, no fury. There was some new quiet in her, but it didn’t shrink or wilt her. Rather, it seemed to enlarge her. She was no mere weapon as she was trained to be, but a woman in full command of her power, unbowed and unbroken, and that was a dangerous thing.
Jael strained, listening for some sign that his army was drawing near. She must have noticed. She shook her head ruefully, as though she were sorry for him, then looked a question at the smirker, who nodded.
“Good.” She turned back to Jael. “Come. There’s something you should see.”
Jael didn’t wish to see anything she wanted to show him. He thought to draw his sword then, but the sphinx who had winked at him came at him in a blur half-cat, half-smoke, and wreathed around him. A daze overtook him—a sweet, soft stupor—and he missed his chance. Liraz disarmed him as though he were a child or a drunk, tossed his sword aside, and shoved him toward the door and out into the camp.
Before anything else, he saw Beast’s Bane dead ahead. Instinctively, he flinched. Come to kill him as he said he would, and Jael’s guards were scattered and gone?
But Beast’s Bane wasn’t even looking at him. “Liraz!” he cried, and there was joy in his voice that should have burned Jael, but he scarcely noticed it, fixing instead on what Liraz had brought him out to see.
Like a storm cloud overhead came the shadow of an army. It was tremendous, spanning the visible sky.
And it wasn’t his.
He stared up, head craned back and all else forgotten, trying furiously to calculate the number those ranks represented. They should have had no more than three hundred Misbegotten, even if they had all survived the attack in the Adelphas. Even if…