“Sasha, no!”
She ignored Bergen. The Stamentaast watched her approach with suspicion. One held up his sword as she came near, pointed out to her chest, and barked at her in Ilduuri. His stance was awful.
Sasha grabbed his wrist on the weak side, disabling any fast swing, and drove her knife through his neck. His comrade swung at her as Sasha ducked back, but Bergen tackled him from the side, then set about with his own knife until the other stopped moving.
“Run!” Sasha hissed at the two women. “Up the side streets, find a place to hide!” They did, and she grabbed the man she'd stabbed under the armpits, and struggled to haul him into an alley mouth. He wasn't dead yet, despite the blood that spurted, but he wasn't about to start shouting for help either. Bergen dumped the other body, and they continued as before.
Sasha felt better now. Calmer. She saw further horrors, yet had no more tears. The emotion came from helplessness. If she could fight, she was calmer. She would need to be calm, to get through this. It seemed there was a lot more fighting to be done here than she'd suspected.
She followed the street to where she'd left Rhillian and Aisha, a large building facing onto a city square. The square was swarming with Stamentaast, and there were wagons loaded with prisoners. Sasha stepped against the cover of a wall and leaned there with Bergen, watching. Serrin were being forced toward a new group of wagons, hands bound behind them. Astride a horse, Sasha saw a man directing Stamentaast, with a sword strapped diagonally to his back. Nasi-Keth.
“Dear spirits,” she muttered.
Bergen saw where she was looking. “They forget everything,” he said. “They forget who made the Nasi-Keth.” Sasha did not understand how that institution could turn on the people who had inspired its creation. And then on second thought, perhaps she did.
“Loyal to blood, not to reason,” she murmured to herself in Lenay. It was something Kessligh had said to her once, about the difference between human and serrin. “They serve the primacy of Ilduur, and always have.”
Then she saw Aisha. Clearly it was her, hands bound, climbing with difficulty into a wagon, amidst the other serrin.
“Oh, no.” Sasha felt cold dread to see her. Where were the wagons bound for next? Bergen also saw, and muttered a curse. “Can you see Rhillian?”
They stood and watched as the wagons were filled, but could not see any tall, white-haired woman amidst the prisoners. Sasha did not know whether to be relieved or terrified.
“We have to find out where they're taking these wagons,” she said. “With any luck they're deporting serrin to Saalshen. If not, they'll just dig a mass grave and kill them all.”
“Why?” Bergen asked tersely. “Why do the Remischtuul do this now?”
“Fear. Something's afoot-they fear agitation from the serrin, possibly to make the Steel move against the Remischtuul. They cannot strike against the Steel, so they strike against the serrin instead. They'll purge all Ilduur of serrin if they can.”
Some Ilduuris had been waiting two centuries for the chance, she was quite sure.
Rhillian hid. She lay atop the roof tiles and peered down on the courtyard. Wagons were rattling away, driven by green-vested Stamentaast, loaded with serrin. This was a predominantly serrin neighbourhood, made so not by the insular nature of Ilduuri serrin, but by the unwillingness of many Andal residents to sell property to serrin elsewhere.
This house belonged to the Rontii family, prominent amongst Ilduuri serrin for their wealth and charity. Moneylenders, of course, with friendly ties to the priesthood, and no small influence in the Remischtuul itself. But not enough to prevent this. Across the rooftops of Andal, fires were burning, the crackle of flames rising with cries and screams into the darkening evening.
Rhillian watched the wagons leave, noted their direction, and guessed from what she'd learned of Andal's roads the way they would take out of the city. And where then, she did not know. The possibilities chilled her. Aisha had been downstairs when the Stamentaast came, talking with the servants, who knew the city from their own unique perspective. There'd been children downstairs, too. Rhillian watched the wagon holding Aisha rattle away, and thought that the presence of children may have saved Aisha's life-she'd not have fought, armed only with a knife, if there were children to be caught in the fighting.
Something hit the roof tiles alongside where she lay, and Rhillian spun. A coin, perhaps? Her eyes found the attic window of the adjoining house. It was open, and two residents within were beckoning to her, fearfully. Both were human-a man and woman, perhaps husband and wife. The rooftop was close, and she could jump it easily. They were offering her shelter, she realised, knowing she was serrin. Many Andal humans did live in this serrin quarter, some even by choice. These were neighbours, and friends.
Rhillian waved, and put a hand to her heart in thanks. But instead of moving toward that window, she moved away, keeping low as she'd learned how in many nighttime ventures in Petrodor, so that her silhouette did not show against the rooftops. The slope of roofs in Andal was alarming, so that winter snow would slide instead of piling. At the edge she turned, took a grip of the roof edge, put her legs over, and slid until her boots found the balcony railing from which she'd climbed up. From there it was a similar drop to the next balcony, and then the next. She'd abandoned her dress on the rooftop, for the comfort of pants underneath. She wondered if Aisha were now under greater suspicion for having done the same.
She dropped from the last balcony to the narrow alley between buildings, and instinctively melted into the shadow of a wall. She crept to the mouth of a little courtyard, where the buildings crowded close. Footsteps came hustling, and she pressed to one wall, but it was servants who came past, human women clasping serrin children in their arms, and whispering at them to be silent. They moved up the alley, then fumbled for keys at a doorway. The door opened anyway, and they were ushered inside. Rhillian realised it was the same house from which her own offer of shelter had come.
Then came more footsteps. These moved less quickly, as though uncertain of their surroundings. Rhillian crouched in the shadow of the low balcony as two Stamentaast came past, swords out and searching for whomever had come this way.
Rhillian stepped behind the second and calmly cut his throat. The first heard the sword fall from the dying man's hand. He spun, and Rhillian threw her knife, hard to miss at this range. It hit him in the neck, and she picked up the fallen sword and ran him through to be sure. No armour, she noted with satisfaction as he died. She pulled the blade free, recovered her knife and faded into the dark.
The alley opened onto a road, where Stamentaast gathered in the aftermath of their successful raid. A group stood here, to guard this side of the Rontiis' grand house. Soon a Nasi-Keth man came, trotting on a horse. He dismounted and joined their conversation-Rhillian caught only snatches, her Ilduuri was barely average, and these men had a regional accent.
After a short conversation, the Nasi-Keth came directly toward the mouth of her alley. Rhillian faded back, and let the darkness claim her. The man undid his pants and began to relieve himself. He had barely finished when he received the shock of his life, to look up in the gloom and find a pair of deadly emerald eyes staring back at him.
He died as the borrowed sword ran him through, and Rhillian took the serrin blade from over his shoulder as he fell. Its balance was light and pleasant. Six Stamentaast turned in astonishment as she came at them from the alley. Two died immediately. Two more managed at least a parry before the whistling angled blade cost them limbs and lives. The fifth managed an attack, the arc of which Rhillian stepped inside and cut through. The sixth simply stared, frozen in terror.
“Pial'a shom est,” she explained to him, in her most eloquent Saalsi form. You should not have. Then she killed him.