That thought was shattered by the high, rotating sound of a lightcraft. Too late. Akeha’s senses sharpened in the Slack. A fully trained pugilist would have the advantage over him. Speed was his only chance. A knife to the throat before they could act—
The lightcraft crested over the brush, bearing a familiar figure. Master Yeo, the old disciplinarian from the monastery, clad in the sharp lines of Protectorate knit.
“Akeha.” Her smile was a razor.
Half a second’s delay. That’s all it took. His knife sailed, but it was too late. Master Yeo didn’t blink. Her cudgel moved: one end struck the knife into vegetation. The other end swung around, and an electrical bolt pierced Akeha.
He folded like a fan, veins on fire. But soon as he touched ground, he was struggling back up, fighting for clarity, sending a clumsy shockwave in her direction—
She whipped water-nature around his neck. Akeha gasped as it cut off blood and air. She would crush his vertebrae if she could. He pushed back in water-nature, tried to knock her down with another shockwave, but she resisted easily.
Spasming black bloomed in his vision. He fell to his knees, fighting for consciousness. She was too fast, too strong, too experienced. As his limbs collapsed under him, he sent a last, desperate tendril to Tempeh, trying to spur the raptor into action. Trying to override its fear and confusion.
Nothing. The black closed over him. Instinct drove his fingers to clutch uselessly at his throat. As he sank, all he saw was bright colors, flashes from childhood.
A loud, sharp crack filled the air.
The pressure released in an instant. Air flooded his lungs. A heartbeat’s delay juddered by before he returned to his body, forcing it upright. His head sang with blood reasserting itself.
He felt Yongcheow before he saw the man. Warm hands grasped his arms as his eyes fought to focus. “Akeha? Are you all right? Please, say something.”
He smelled the sulfur on him and understood.
Yongcheow’s fingers pressed into his face. “Akeha.”
He found words: “Where is she?”
Yongcheow glanced over his shoulder. Akeha struggled to numb feet, leaning on the other man, who winced. Akeha brushed a reassuring hand over the man’s still-healing wound before staggering forward.
Master Yeo lay where she had fallen, but she was still alive. Blood patterned her face, fresh runnels crawling from her nose and mouth. The gunshot had punctured her chest, where an ocean of red was spreading. Her eyes turned toward Akeha as he crouched.
“Who sent you?” he asked. “Who did you come for?”
Her lips moved. Thick bubbles emerged, crimson mixed with frothy pink.
Tell me, he sent through the Slack. The twins’ old trick sometimes worked with other people. But he felt nothing except her rage and confusion. And pain.
Akeha sighed and shut his eyes. He reached for water-nature, broad and shining, and snapped her spine cleanly across the base of her neck.
He stood up. “Protectorate uniform and rank. She defected from the monastery.”
Yongcheow was trembling beside him.
“Are you all right?”
Yongcheow said nothing, head moving, jaw working, staring at the body on the ground.
Akeha gripped his arm. “Yongcheow.”
“It happened so fast,” he whispered. “I had no time to think.” He had the bright, trembling eyes of someone witnessing death for the first time.
“You did what was necessary,” Akeha said.
Yongcheow didn’t respond. Akeha looked back down. A dead body at their feet. One in a long trail that had no beginning and probably no end. “Mother wouldn’t have just sent regular troops to cut down Tensors in the purge. She’d send pugilists, like her. This woman had blood on her hands. I guarantee it.”
Finally, slowly, Yongcheow nodded.
The raptor slunk in. Its narrow snout quested over the body, curious nostrils flaring, lips peeling back at the smell of fresh meat. Akeha hissed sharply and it backed away, rustling its feathers in submission. It still remembered the monastery. Still remembered him.
“There are no righteous deaths,” Yongcheow whispered. “Only ones that cannot be avoided.”
Akeha recognized the edict he was quoting from. He had learned it, too, early in his career. It brought less and less comfort as the years went by.
“We need to bury her,” Akeha said. “We can do that, at least.”
Chapter Seventeen
“HOW DO I KNOW I can trust you?”
Lady Han’s remaining eye, the one not curtained behind an embroidered patch, speared Akeha like an insect. The leader of the Machinists wore an eastern suit of jacket and pants, its sun-red fabric the brightest splash in a cavern cut out of raw granite. Between them, Yongcheow’s scrolls lay isolated on a silver tray.
“I came of my own will,” Akeha said.
“But for what purpose? The Protector’s son, showing up at this precise point in time . . . it’s a bit convenient, isn’t it?”
She’d had her subordinates seize him when they arrived at the hideout, almost spent from the long, steep journey from Waiyi to the caves. Yongcheow, sweat-glazed, had to stammer that he was a comrade, not a prisoner.
The other man was a reassuring weight in the periphery. “Perhaps it is the will of the Almighty,” Akeha said.
“I have less tolerance for jokes than you think.” She leaned on the table separating them.
Akeha had some memories of Lady Han, a cloud of impressions blurred by the stretch of intervening years. She had been close to Mother once, a beloved concubine, perhaps more. Akeha had been a child then; by the time he returned to the Great High Palace years later, she was gone. The missing eye was new.
He lifted his hands, blank palms out. “It was not a joke. I have no other explanation for you.”
Her eye narrowed suspiciously.
“I have fled the consequences of my mother’s rule for ten years. I was happy to live that way, in ignorance, as long as it didn’t affect me. But this week, something changed.” He shot a quick look at Yongcheow. “What else would you call it? Coincidence? It feels like more than that.”
“The accidental rebel? The heaven-sent rebel? Neither sounds plausible to me.”
He shrugged. What else could he offer?
Her guards shifted around them. Surrounded. He knew that he would walk away from this meeting a member of the movement, or not at all.
“All right,” said Lady Han. “Prove it.” She swept from the table, paced a small circle, and turned back to Akeha. “I have a task for you.”
“Name it.”
“Return to the Protectorate and kill the prophet.”
It took two heartbeats to confirm he hadn’t misheard. His skin cooled. “What?”
“She’s your sister, isn’t she? You can get close enough. Surprise her. She won’t expect it.”
Akeha’s tongue stumbled over syllables. “She has nothing to do with—”
“She’s a prophet,” Lady Han said. “She sees things no one should know.” A damning finger pointed to the scroll. “One prophecy, and over two hundred people dead or vanished. It has to stop.”
“She has no control over what she sees,” Akeha hissed.
“Exactly. The only way to stop her is to kill her. It sounds harsh, but it’s true. Kill her, and your mother gets no more insights into our plans.”