“Remember your oaths,” Kepi chided her father’s men. Sevin’s bluffing, she thought, his men will not harm me. Kepi tightened her grip on the black knife. She was still smarting from her defeat in the ring, still eager to prove her worth with a sword. So she hurled the curving blade at Sevin’s throat, making him cower as he fumbled to block her attack. She missed his neck, but the blade tore a swath of leather from his armor. He dropped his sword, giving Kepi a moment to draw the other knife. The iron was heavy, the blade felt good in her grip.
“Clear a path,” she told the black shields. Perhaps she could escape while the kingsguard delayed Merit’s soldiers. Iron rang in the cool desert air as the swords of her father’s men met the spears of the Wadi soldiers. There were shouts from both sides. A man in black leather, one of the kingsguard, tumbled from his horse. He struggled to stand, but the Wadi men drove their spears into his black leather before he could right himself. The second kingsguard struck the nearest Wadi spearman, knocking him from his mount. He swung his sword in a wide arc, driving back his attackers, but he was outnumbered three to one and the Wadi men held spears, not swords—they could strike from a distance. They drove their points into his armor. A wet thump rang across the desert hills as the last man fell to the sand.
In the span of a few heartbeats it was done.
Kepi was alone.
She kicked her mount and tried to ride off, but the Wadi men made a ring with their horses, sealing her in.
“Move or I’ll cut you down,” she cried, but the men would not move. “Fight me,” she said, but they would not strike her.
Instead, one drove his blade into Ash’s withers. The horse issued a strangled whinny. Kepi—who had ridden Ash since she was a child, who had loved her horse as a friend—screamed as the gray-haired rouncy fell to her knees. She tumbled with her horse to the sand.
The Wadi men, with their jade-beaded hair, brushed the dust from their cloaks and dismounted. Kepi lay on her back, knife in hand. She feigned injury and clutched at her thigh while she searched for the man who had struck Ash. When he came close, when he bent to look down at her, she drove her blade into the place where the neck met the body—into the place he had struck Ash. Her knife entered at the collarbone and exited just below the neck. She held it for a heartbeat before withdrawing the blade. Much like the horse, the Wadi man fell to his knees, alive, pained, crying as her horse now cried. The two of them made a terrible sound.
“Ash was my horse, and a better servant than any of you,” Kepi said as she stood. She took notice of all the men, their armor and their weapons. She composed her stance, bending her knees and readying herself for the fight, the blade feeling light in her hand. For a moment she was back in the ring, driven by the awful crying of her horse, she was ready to fight again. She motioned to strike, but a loud pounding interrupted her attack, the clop of horses coming up the road. More of Merit’s soldiers, perhaps ten in all, crowded the Plague Road. The odds had turned against her.
With a loud crack, a carriage followed the soldiers over the hill. The coach was ironwood, gray, and gleaming like stone. The curling mark of the Feren kingdom decorated its outer panels.
So they were taking her to Gray Wood already.
There were too many of them to fight. Gritting her teeth, Kepi took her blade and sunk the point into Ash’s skull, ending her horse’s pain.
At least one of us ought not to suffer, she thought as she withdrew the blade and surrendered it to her captors.
19
Arko Hark-Wadi stood before a massive stone arch, inlaid with a circle of gold, and flanked by rows of imperial soldiers. He was here at last, in the golden city of light. The eternal city of the Soleri. The buildings, the walls, even the crowds were larger than what he had imagined. Rank upon rank of soldiers stood in lines beneath the stone archway, their bronze mail burnished and blinding. Angry commoners called out his name, tossed rocks, and spit on his cloak, but he gave no indication that he noticed. Nor did he give a moment’s thought to the stone-carved faces that stared from every building, their eyes vengeful and condemning. Only the great steles caught his eye. They covered the faces of every building, their tall carvings depicting victories both recent and remote. This city has forgotten more history than I can recall. It has witnessed the lives of more men, great and small, than I could ever hold in my head. That his own father had dared defy an empire with such great a history was almost unfathomable.
He had been ordered to leave his soldiers behind when they reached the outer circle of Solus. Dismiss your men, the Alehkar commanded, or leave them to slaughter, as foreign armies were forbidden to enter the city. Arko had clasped the forearm of his captain, Asher Hacal, and bid him go back to Harkana and to serve his eldest daughter, the new queen regent, and if fate looked kindly on his house, the soon-to-be boy king, his son, Ren.
“I’ll wait outside the walls, sir … until it’s over,” he said as the last of Arko’s men departed.
When they were gone, Arko Hark-Wadi was alone among strangers. He became nothing but a civilian, with no rank or title, not even a Bartered King, nothing but a subject of the emperor, one of many. He was surprised at how easy it had been to shed the past and the last of his responsibilities. He would meet his end not as a king but as a man—flawed, human, and ready.
As he passed beneath the stone archway he saw in the distance the Shadow Gate, the door that led through the Shroud Wall and into the Empyreal Domain. He thought of his older sisters, Eilina and Atourin, both married to Rachin lords. He had not seen either in years but he wished them well and hoped they would find a better death than him. He thought of Barden, his younger brother, who, having died at the age of four, was also spared from the Priory. He thought of his children, of Ren and his daughters. He had bid his farewell to Merit, but not to his youngest daughter, who had been out riding. He had sent two of the kingsguard to find her, but they had not returned. It bothered him deeply that he had not said his goodbye to Kepi. He hoped it would be his last regret. He touched the white stone at his neck, felt the grooves of the six letters inscribed on its back, and pictured the woman he once loved. Is there another path I could have taken in this life? Is this how it was always fated to end? He contemplated his death in much the same way as he had contemplated his life—with a potent melancholy, a pensive shrug.
Now he stood before the Shadow Gate and the passage that led through the Shroud Wall. When he passed through the gate, he would leave this world. He would never see anyone from his life again. Never see his son become king, never hold his grandchildren in his hands. This might as well be the moment of my death.