Queen of Fire (Raven's Shadow 3)

“Brother!” she rushed to his side, eyes scanning him for injury.

“I’m unhurt.” He moved to the corpse of the man with the broken neck, finding a key for the manacles tucked into his boot. “You were guarding my room?”

“We take turns. There’s a comfortable ledge on the roof outside.”

His gaze went to Lemera, framed on the bedsheets in a spreading blossom of dark blood. I choose to die free . . .

“I know you didn’t break your oath, brother,” Illian said, following his gaze. “She told me she found comfort sleeping at your side.”

Frentis hauled on his shirt and trews and reached for his boots. “What’s happening outside?”

“All quiet. I had no notion of any alarm until I heard the struggle.” She went to the first man she had killed, crouching to extract her bolt from his skull with a grinding squelch. “What are they?”

“They’re called Arisai. And I’ve little doubt there are more.” He retrieved his sword and rushed to the window, eyes tracking across the empty streets below to the walls where the sentries strolled on the parapet. Nothing, no indication of any threat. You did remember to check the sewers . . . His eyes went to an iron-covered drain in the cobbled street below. Waiting. Commanded to ensure they fulfilled their Empress’s mission above all else.

He shuddered at the realisation he would now be shackled and his people facing slaughter but for her warning, a warning he knew had been no mistake. She wanted them to fail. He glanced back at the silent room of corpses. And they don’t know they have.

“Fetch Draker, Lekran and Master Rensial,” he told Illian, going back inside. “And Tekrav. Be quiet but quick.”

• • •

He hung between Lekran and Rensial, head slumped, the chains on his ankles rattling on the cobbles as they bore him towards the iron drain cover in the shadow of the town’s main warehouse. Unlike Lekran and Rensial, Draker’s red-enamelled breastplate didn’t quite cover his frame, obliging him to keep to the shadows as he followed. Frentis was certain the Arisai would be watching carefully, his albeit brief experience convincing him of the dangers of underestimating their abilities whilst also giving a clue to a potential weakness. The way they smile. They take joy from battle, from killing, and joy can make us overeager.

A red-armoured shape resolved out of the shadows as they approached the drain, Frentis looking up at him with half-closed eyes, gratified by the welcoming grin. “No trouble then?” he asked in whispered Volarian, unwisely keeping his gaze on Frentis as they came closer.

“None,” Lekran agreed, he and Rensial dumping Frentis at the Arisai’s feet.

“Thought he might’ve done for one of you at least,” he said, drawing a dagger and crouching to tap the pommel three times on the drain cover.

Lekran glanced down at Frentis, his own grin now genuine. “His legend greatly exceeds his skills, it seems.”

The Arisai grunted and moved back as the drain cover was hauled up and to the side by unseen hands, beckoning impatiently at Lekran. “Get him below, we’ve work to do.”

“No,” Lekran told the Arisai, drawing his gaze as Master Rensial stepped behind him. “You’re done now.”

Rensial’s dagger flashed across the Arisai’s throat, leaving him kneeling on the cobbles, blood seeping through his fingers as he coughed a laugh of appalled surprise. An Arisai’s head emerged from the drain, hands clutching the sides to haul himself free, falling back in a cloud of blood as Lekran’s axe swept down.

“Come on you lazy buggers!” Draker called, running from the shadows and gesticulating wildly as Tekrav appeared at the far end of the street with a dozen or so of his porters, each rolling a barrel.

Lekran raised a bugle to his lips and sounded a single long pealing note, the town coming to life around them as the rebels answered the call, torches flaming and people running to preallocated stations, weapons in hand.

Frentis risked a glance at the blank opening of the drain, jerking his head back as a knife came spinning out of the blackness, missing him by the width of a hair. He could hear the multiple splashes of many feet running through water, but no voices, no sign in fact of any alarm or panic, provoking him to an uncomfortable notion: Perhaps they can’t feel fear.

“How much?” Tekrav asked, dragging his barrel to a halt at the drain’s edge.

“All of it,” Frentis said.

Tekrav turned the barrel about and Lekran brought his axe round to smash the lid, lamp oil gushing forth into the drain. They tipped the barrel up to empty the contents and followed with another, the other porters sweeping by to trundle their own barrels to every drain in the town.

Frentis looked up at the warehouse roof where Illian now stood, waving a torch to confirm all the drains were now surrounded by at least one company of fighters. “No reason to wait,” he told Tekrav.

The Chief Quartermaster stepped forward, face grim but determined as he raised a flaming torch. “For Lemera,” he said. The torch disappeared into the hole, birthing an instant column of yellow flame at least ten feet high. It subsided to a modest-sized blaze after a few seconds, Frentis straining to gauge the results. Nothing. Not a single scream.

He left Draker and his company guarding the flaming drain, running with Lekran and Rensial to the next one where Ivelda and half the Garisai clustered around the opening, watching as the porters poured more lamp oil into the sewers. A strong stench of burning oil rose from the opening along with a thickening pall of smoke, but it remained eerily silent. “If they’re down there, brother,” Ivelda said, “they know how to die quietly.”

Frentis turned as a shout came from the hole, seeing one of the Garisai reeling away with a dagger embedded in his shoulder as a figure erupted from the drain, launched by his comrades to rise five feet in the air amidst a glittering cascade of water and oil. His sword began to flash as he landed, hacking down a Garisai and wounding another before a pole-axe cleaved into his chest. Two more Arisai were propelled from the drain in quick succession, oil flying from their spinning forms as they hacked and slashed, seeking to drive the Garisai back from the hole. One was quickly cut down but the other fought on, blocking thrusts and inflicting wounds with deadly precision. Frentis ran in, sweeping aside the Arisai’s blade to deliver a kick to his breastplate, sending him sprawling back towards the drain. The man clung on however, arms and legs spread, his comrades’ hands reaching up from below to propel him back to the fight, his grinning face fixed on Frentis in direct challenge.

Frentis snatched a torch from one of the Garisai and tossed it onto the Arisai’s chest, stepping forward to stamp down as the flames engulfed him, returning him to the oil-soaked sewers. The column of fire was taller this time, the blast of heat singeing the hairs on Frentis’s arms as he reeled away.

A rising tumult drew his attention to the dockside where he could see a dense knot of fighters attempting to contain a group of Arisai emerging from one of the larger drains fringing the wharf. Weight of numbers managed to keep the red men at bay but more and more were clambering free by the second, claiming lives with every sword stroke.

“Your people with me,” Frentis told Ivelda. “This will be a long night.”

• • •

By morning Viratesk lay under a cloying pall of grey-black smoke, every brick and tile as besmirched as the dazed rebels who wandered the streets or sat stooped in exhaustion. Frentis passed many huddling together, a few weeping from the strain of the night-long battle, most just leaning against each other, the eyes wide, blank holes in soot-covered faces.

“Seven hundred and eighty-two dead,” Thirty-Four reported. “Four hundred wounded.”

“How many of them?” Lekran asked, running a cloth over the blade of his axe. Although he was even more blackened than everyone present, the tribesman’s axe gleamed with a polished sheen.

“We counted just over a hundred bodies,” Thirty-Four replied. “Though, judging by the smell, many more perished in the sewers.”

“Seven to one,” Draker muttered, casting a wary glance at Frentis. “That’s bad odds, brother.”

“When were our odds ever good?” Frentis turned as Weaver approached, their only captive at his back, tightly bound by several chains. The Arisai was shaking his head, uttering a soft, wry laugh as the freed Varitai around him looked on with uniformly sorrowful expressions.

“It won’t work,” Weaver stated. “Not on him.”

“The binding is too strong?” Frentis asked.

“His binding is less constricting than the Varitai. He is . . . wrong. Twisted, in mind and body. Were we to remove his binding, we would be unleashing something terrible upon the world.”

“Then let’s wring what we can from him and have done,” Lekran said, nodding at Thirty-Four.

“He’ll tell you nothing,” Weaver replied. “Any torment you visit on him will be just another amusement.”

“Can you heal him?” Frentis asked. “Mend his twisted soul?”

Weaver glanced back at the Arisai, hands clasped together, his face betraying the first sign of fear Frentis had seen in him. “Perhaps,” he said. “But the consequences . . .”