Chapter Twenty

[cityofthehand]

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Chapter Twenty



The Outer Round bustled with afternoon crowds as Maira, Kei-zi, and Naran strolled back towards the safehouse. Maira could not see where Lord Shadow’s agents had hidden, but did not doubt their presence. The quiet remained comfortable as they left the Outer Round, going into a mostly residential neighborhood that stood far emptier than the Round.

Suddenly, Kei-zi stopped and put his back to a temple’s wall and gestured for them to do the same.

“Want to know something funny?” he asked, and did not sound remotely amused as he squinted up at the roofs of the buildings along the street. “We’re not being followed anymore.”

Maira followed his eyeline, and saw the same lack he did. Lord Shadow’s people could not have hidden on the sparsely populated street. Only a few neighborhood people - mostly Tienic - walked around: two people stalked in front of a store, two others walked with small children carrying baskets.

“Maybe Lord Shadow called them off,” she said, and knew it to be false as soon as she spoke.

“I really doubt that,” Kei-zi replied, giving a last check of the street. “They wouldn’t have left us.”

“Unless they weren’t there to begin with,” Naran said.

“You told them where we were, right?” asked Kei-zi. Naran nodded. “This is wrong. They wouldn’t leave her.”

A cold, sweaty feeling came over Maira’s body. “So why aren’t they here?”

“What say we stand around guessing when we get to the safehouse?” Kei-zi replied, sidling to get a little closer to Maira. She didn’t wait a moment longer. She stepped away from the wall, into the street and started jogging, taking a slight lead in front of the two men. Further down this avenue, they could cut through side streets to avoid the traffic of the Cherry Grove markets.

“I really hope you know where you’re going!” Kei-zi called to her. His heels made loud, hard clacks on the stone pavement. Maira admired him keeping up with her in shoes like that.

“I know every inch of the Palm, trust me!” she shouted over her shoulder, looking just long enough to see both of them there. She veered left between two squat houses, ducking under bed clothes on a laundry line. She planned the route as she jogged, contemplating the safest way to put them on the road to the safehouse and bypass busy places where an ambush would be harder to see coming.

When they emerged from the residential area Maira held up her hand and stopped. She put her shoulder to a building’s corner and looked around to see if anyone, Asna’isi or not, followed. Until the Arched Bridge roads they’d be on open ground with few alleys or niches to duck into. A party of three could easily lose one who fell behind or got grabbed and she did not think she would be able to leave either of them to their fate and keep running. Better to avoid making the choice in the first place.

All the activity on the street appeared normal. Unfortunately, none of the people looked like agents. She checked belts, boots, and coats for signs of weapons. “Everything looks normal,” Maira said, turning behind her. Naran and Kei-zi waited against the wall and failed at looking casual. Kei-zi had a hand under his coat on the hilt of a stiletto blade.

“That is sort of the problem, isn’t it, lovey?” Kei-zi said. “Why the fuck don’t we have an escort? This is starting to worry me. All right, children - stay close and stay sharpish.”

Kei-zi came off the wall and made to round the corner, concentrating on the distance. Just as he stepped past the building, a shadow slid over the ground in front of him. “Kei-zi, look out!” Maira called. She grabbed the back of his coat to stop him. “Up!” she shouted and pointed.

Kei-zi drew blades without hesitation and took a ready stance. Naran reached into his coat as he craned his neck back to see what she saw. Between them and the sun a winged form circled. Maira put her hand above her brow and squinted. The feathered wings meant Asna’isi, but that was all she could discern.

“Other Asna’isi wouldn’t, you know, defy Lord Shadow, would they? He’s not swooping down to attack us, right?” Maira asked quietly and wished she had a weapon, even if it was just a heavy stick to swing.

“They try anything, they’re not gonna have to worry about defying Lord Shadow,” Naran said, coming closer to her with a talisman in hand at the ready, hidden behind his back.

“All of you, stay where you are!” the Asna’isi called.

Maira rolled her eyes and breathed out in both irritation and relief at the familiar, smooth-as-silk High Asna accented voice. Graymere. Hands on hips, she stepped forward and waited for him to touch down. His feet met the ground so lightly he made no sound. She prepared to let him know how she felt about him scaring them with the big dramatic circling, but then noted his face. His lips were parted and his eyes wide, almost fearful. Not his usual cold indifference, not at all.

“You must come with me now,” he said, pulling back his coat to uncover the leather harness.

“Why? Where did all your people go?” she asked.

“They were attacked. Someone dispatched mercenaries with orders to kill you on sight. They’ve tracked you since you left the Red Hand. They’re close. We must go now,” he insisted.

“What about Naran and Kei-zi?”

“I am sorry, I can only take you. I will send people for them, I promise, but we must go.”
“No. Getting either of them is as good as getting me. Just tell me where these people are coming from,” she demanded even as she mentally redrew her route before she heard the answer. Her mind ran to a southeast route between the workhouses in the Stacks. The place made her stomach turn but other less disgusting venues offered no chance of a clean escape.

“They’ve covered all the roads and they’re closing in. We cannot wait. Come with me now.”

“How’d they even know we were here? They couldn’t have tracked us from headquarters or scryed us out, it’s warded,” Kei-zi said.

“I believe they have a source inside the Red Hand,” Graymere answered.

“Hey! You just wait a fucking minute, your Primeness.”

“No, I will not!” he shouted, so sharply Maira expected another bolt of lightning to strike. He breathed once and spoke more evenly. “I have wasted all the time I intend to. I will send others for you, but she and I must go now.”

“I told you I’m not leaving them.”

“I could take you whether you wish me to or not,” he warned, leveling his gaze at her.

Maira leveled her gaze right back. “Lord Shadow made a deal. You can’t go back on it now.”

“I will honor no agreement that endangers you.”

“Then tell me where your people are so we can get the fuck out of here.” He stayed silent, glaring. “I’m with a powerful sorcerer and a Red Hand officer. I’m as safe as I can be. Where are they?”

His lips parted but she didn’t hear the sigh of resignation he gave. “The closest are in Riverlane, on the Embargo Road.”

“Good. We can get there fast if you don’t mind cutting through dumping grounds,” Maira said, turning to Kei-zi and Naran. They said nothing, which she took as agreement and cue to run. She took off across the road and towards their path. Above her, Graymere’s wings beat a steady, fast rhythm. He kept pace with her so well she never left his shadow, no matter how fast she ran. She checked once to see that Naran and Kei-zi followed and then sped up.

She smelled the dumping grounds before they came in sight. The stench of rotting wood, rusting meal, decaying waste and dead flesh in the towering piles of garbage assaulted her nose. The wind came straight at them and blew the stench into their faces. She crinkled her nose but she’d been around this enough that it didn’t give her pause as she turned towards the paths between the building sized piles of trash carved out by pickers who scavenged there for a living. She’d learned them from a family of pickers when she was a new courier and got sent here because no one else wanted the duty. Maira hoped that family was off in some other dumping ground right about then.

“You really know how to pick a damn shortcut!” Naran called up to her, words broken by panting. She gave a breathless grin and jumped over the remains of a broken wagon that had fallen into the narrow path.

“Almost there!” she yelled over her shoulder. Watching Kei-zi clear the wreckage was impressive. How he hadn’t broken an ankle yet was something of mystery. A mystery for later.

The piles stopped at a decrepit old fence that was more a suggestion of a border than a real obstacle to passage. Maira made a running jump and grabbed the bars. The rough-rust iron hurt her hands but she held fast, pushing with the traction in her boots until she flipped her body over the top. She landed on hands and knees and immediately twisted around to see Naran make a much cleaner more graceful jump and land in a neat crouch. Show off. Kei-zi came last and let himself down much more
carefully, holding the bars and sliding by degrees until his toes touched ground. They both stared at him.
“What?” he asked panting. “This dress is flowy! I didn’t want to give half of the east central a free show.”

Graymere’s wings fluttered to keep him aloft and in place. “Do not stop!” he shouted. Maira rolled her eyes and accepted the hand that Kei-zi offered to help her up. She pulled herself to standing against his weight and resumed running with the Prime just above her. They raced across an open, abandoned lot that lead to the road, his shadow sliding over the scrubby grasses, melting into hers until it looked as if she had wings. The sight of it instantly dizzied her mentally, blurring her ability to understand reality, as if suddenly some other existence intruded upon her own. She shook her head and reminded herself that she was Maira and she didn’t have time for a breakdown.

The fear gave her an extra push of energy and she used it to move faster down the road. She rounded the corner of a temple at top speed. There, the sound of an unmistakably pained scream greeted her. She stopped her short and skidded hard on the tiny pebbles in the unpaved dirt street. Kei-zi ran right into her back, unable to stop. She fell forward and he caught her, hauling her up again.

In the street in front of them, a massive brawl spread out between Asna’isi and at least two dozen mercenaries of all races and genders - some of them winged and in the air. The fight had emptied the street of all people save the combatants. Someone even left a bread cart tipped over on the street. Precious loves and coins spilled over the dirt, unnoticed and untouched.

“There she is, he brought her right to us!”

Maira looked up to the source of the betraying scream. A winged Tsaqa Rok with curved blades in both hands had broken from an aerial battle, diving straight for her. Behind her, Kei-zi cursed and Naran pulled on her arm. She turned completely around to run back the way they’d come, but it was too late. Smoky teleports brought two very large, pallid mercenaries into their path. Naran brandished talismans in each hand as a threat and it gave them a moment’s pause.

“We have to get you out of here now!” Kei-zi shouted. “Forget about us. Graymere, take her!”

Graymere didn’t answer or come. They looked up. He grappled hard with the Tsaqa Rok who had first come for her, darting and dodging away from the thrust of those wicked blades. Kei-zi cursed again. Maira stepped back until she was shoulder to shoulder with him and Naran. She eyed the fight for a open in the fray to slip through. If they got past this, there would be a route to the river and they could get to the Asna’isi Tract by boat.

“What the fuck do we do?” Naran shouted before calling out sorcerer’s words to stun the two mercenaries that closed on them. They fell back but didn’t stay down for more than a few brief moments.

“I have any idea, stay with me!”

Maira pivoted around on her heel and darted forward, aiming for a public bath house. Going through the building instead of around would give them both cover and a short cut. She hoped they stayed with her because she could not look back.

Behind her, Naran cried out with the sound of a body hitting ground. Maira whipped around instantly. A mercenary threw him bodily to the ground and brought down a heavy club that missed his head by mere inches as he rolled away. She took a running leap and launched herself on the mercenary’s back, wrapping her arms around the large throat as thighly as she could. The mercenary stood and thrashed side to side, swinging the club over her back. The blow landed on Maira’s shoulder, as did the next and the one after that, the pain in her arm forced her to loosen her hold. She fell to the ground but clutched the mercenary’s pants leg in a death grip. A meaty fist bashed her on the side of the head so hard her skull impacted the ground and grayness took over her vision. She wobbled, half-blind and staggered as she tried to stand.

Wings flapped above her, bringing up dust. A blur of feathers swept around her as arms hooked under her armpits and lifted her into the air, bringing her face to face with the one holding her. She kicked at nothing but empty air below and screamed again at the horror of it.

“Please, my lady, do not fight me!” a high Asna’isi voice said, holding her even closer in a suffocating kind of hug. “I am helping you. I will take you safely home!”

“No! I have to go back for Naran and Kei-zi, they’ll get killed down there!” she squealed, meeting the pale eyes rimmed in gold. “Please!”

“They will not be left, others will find them, they will -”

The world jarred, something hard and fast knocked them broadside and they plummeted. Wings flapped and fluttered violently, feathers came lose. She kicked up and outwards, clearing the Asna’isi’s body to get at the attacker that had rammed them. The agent holding her twirled and twisted in air to escape the blade on a chain that whizzed past them, just missing her ear. Then the Asna’isi guard gave a screech of pain. Maira felt the impact of the blow through the arms holding her.

“Graymere!” Maira screamed into the air. The attacking mercenary swung again, and hit wing just as the guard twisted, and landed a hard, deadly kick, to the mercenary’s face pushing their nose bone up into their brain. Blood sprayed them both as they went down, spiraling towards peril at the same speed as the mercenary beside them. Through the fall, she saw the deadness in the slack face, the limp body, the wings that did not flap to save their owner’s life. Each descending inch took hours.

“Graymere, help me, please!” She reached into the air rushing past her hands, crying his name out with all her strength. “Graymere!”

The agent twisted their body as they fell, turning wings down to take the brunt of the fall when they landed. Their combined weight made for a sure fatality. Maira scratched the agent’s arms desperately to force a release as the ground grew closer and closer.

They hit like dropped stones. Bones snapped with sickening cracks, the world blurred and disappeared for a long time. When she came to she had no breath. She could not scream or even gasp her horror as she rolled off the agent’s body and onto dirt. Blood foamed up from the agent’s mouth as they moaned in pain, helpless to move. Red-black blood stained a wing severed in half, painting the silver feathers with gore as a gut wound poured blood like a fountain.

A nearby scream shocked her into awareness. She looked around wildly and found a plain short sword dropped on the ground. Crawling to it, she grabbed it and returned to the Asna’isi. With the sword in one hand, she rose to her feet and stooped down, taking the agent’s collar to drag them back to leeward side of a shop and the nearest cover around: a stacked wood pile and a huge wagon.

When they were against the shop wall, Maira sat and pulled the agent’s body in close to better shield them, holding the sword up. She watched and waited for an attack to come but the fight kicked up so much dust and chaos no one noticed they weren’t there. Nor could she find Naran, Kei-zi and Graymere in the tangled frenzy.

The agent half-moaned and half screamed, “Run. Leave!”

“No! I can’t leave them!” she replied and looked down at the agent, weeping for pain and shaking terribly. Without hesitation, she put the sword down and stripped of her coat, pressing it to the gut wound with all her strength. It brought a shriek up from the agent’s mouth that Maira ignored. Asna’isi strength excelled human. If this agent didn’t bleed out they’d survive to get to a healer. Redness seeped through the coat, between her fingers, no matter how hard she pressed. No, not again, I’m not watching someone die again, she thought, gritting her teeth. This won’t be like the professor, I won’t let it.

“My lady, no,” the agent rasped, grabbed her arm with a trembling, bloody hand.

“My name’s not lady, it’s Maira. You got a name or am I just gonna have to call you birdbrain?” she demanded.

It took a while for the guard to gather breath to speak. “Fairmorn. My name is Fairmorn.”

“Just keep breathing, Fairmorn. It won’t be long, they’ll have these bastards down and then they’ll fix you.”

“My wing,” Fairmorn sobbed.

“Don’t worry, my friend, Naran, he’s a sorcerer. He can fix anything, he healed my side and barely left a scar. He’s one of the best sorcerers in the city. Everyone knows him, he’s got a fine reputation,” she said, a punchy laugh dying before it left her lips, thinking of Naran saying those words.

In her peripheral vision, a large shape moved. With one hand still on the wound, she reached for the sword and faced forward. A half-Dhatan Rok mercenary with a smirk on thick, soft green lips hovered over them, wielding crescent-shaped deer horn knives in slender hands.

Maira rose and jumped over Fairmorn’s prone form, swinging before her feet were properly on the ground again. The Rok blocked easily and caught the sword’s length between the deer horn knives, wresting control of the blade from Maira. The mercenary grinned and tilted the blade back to impale her with strength that won inch after inch despite Maira pressing all her strength into resisting.

Maira blew out a shaky breath as blade neared by degrees. Sweat tricked down her neck and face. She gritted her teeth and in a desperate gamble, suddenly turned her eyes away as if something behind the mercenary’s back had suddenly distracted her. The mercenary took the bait and turned to follow her eyeline. The half second of distraction was enough, Maira rammed the Rok with all her strength, knocking them both to the ground. The sword clattered to the ground and the mercenary moved no more. Maira raised her head, scrambling to find the blade and then looked. The mercenary had fallen on one of their own deer horn knives.

Taking only a single breath before she snatched the sword up, Maira scrambled back to Fairmorn’s side, and put her hand where it had been, pressing the bloodied cloth into the wound. Once more, she dropped the sword so she could use both hands.

“You should not have risked yourself for me,” they said, in a rattling, wet voice. The color in their beautiful dark brown skin washed two shades lighter because of the blood loss.

“And have Lord Shadow pissed at me because I left one of his people here to die?” she replied, raising the corners of her mouth in as much of a smile as she could manage. “I have to actually talk to that guy later.”

Fairmorn made a cough that might have been a laugh that they couldn’t quite give. She didn’t know. They clutched her arm in a weak, loose grip. “This was his command, my lady.”

“You know I’m not actually a lady. I mean, I’m a lady. Woman, female. You know what I mean. I’m not high born. Just a messenger, me,” she said, shaking. Her arms trembled and seemed suddenly weak. She looked around the battlefield, and still saw no sight of Naran, Kei-zi, or Graymere, nor the other half of Fairmorn’s wing. They went quiet. She shook the agent back to alertness. They had to keep talking. “So, Fairmorn. That means you were born on a really nice day, right? That’s how you lot get your names, the weather on the day you’re born? What do you take? I hate to misgender you when you just saved my life.”

She hoped she was right about that and she wasn’t mixing it up with the Pahali adult names they got from completing their passage rituals.

“Yes. When the rain finally stopped…after a flood. I take…first neutral.”

“It’s a nice name. I like it. So, Fairmorn, who’d you piss off to get stuck with this lousy assignment?” she asked, trying to smile.

“I am willing.” Maira put a hand to the side of Fairmorn’s face and softly smoothed down the short dark hair streaked with sky blue. Fairmorn managed a fragile, failing smile. “I am willing.”

“Naran’s going to fix you, just hang on, all right? Want him to fix anything else while he’s at it? Make you taller, or different hair, or something?” She dared to look down for a moment at just how much blood had escaped. There was a pool spreading out beneath zie and her, under her knees, soaking into her clothes and the dirt around them.

“This is all right,” zie whispered up at her. How could zie possibly be smiling? “I saw you.”

“Of course you see me,” she said and sucked back a breath full of tears. “Thought you Asna’isi were smart.”

“This is… all right, this is good. Do not…be afraid, do not…” he mumbled. Zir eyes fluttered like wings on take off, and zie laid zir cheek down against Maira’s thigh. She bent down a little more, trying to make out the words zie whispered over the shuffling and shouting and clashing sounds.

“Stay here, Fairmorn, my friend is coming to fix you, he’s -”

A shadow moved over them. Maira gasped and took the sword up, leaping to her feet once more to defend the agent who had sacrificed so much to defend her. She swung blind, eyes so blurred with tears that everything turned to blobs and colors. Feral rage ran through her blood and she thrust the point forward in the first person shaped thing she saw. “No!” she screeched, making a sloppy chop as though the sword were just a stick. “Don’t you even fucking try it, you pigsucking bastards!”

“Maira, it’s me!”

Hearing Naran’s voice instantly cooled the rage. She dropped the sword and wiped her eyes so she could see. Beside Naran, Kei-zi and Graymere and other Asna’isi stood, bruised, scuffed, bloodied and alive.

Graymere looked sickened. “How badly are you hurt?”

She ignored him. “It’s Fairmorn. Naran, you have to do what you did to me, fix him. Zie’s bleeding a lot, zie doesn’t have long,” she said and spun around. Fairmorn laid silent, zir eyes shut. Maira dropped to her knees and pressed on the ruined coat again. “Fairmorn, come on, the sorcerer’s here. Come on, stay with me, come on.”

Zie did not respond and Maira did not feel zir chest heave for breathe or any movement at all. She looked up again at Naran and the others. None of them had moved.

“What the hell are you doing? Don’t just stand there! Naran, come on!” she screamed. A cold, horrible feeling passed through her stomach and she denied it’s very existence, denied anything but trying to rouse Fairmorn.

A strong hand grabbed her arm by the elbow, pulling her up and away. She let herself be taken so Naran and the Asna’isi would have room to work. She waited for them to step forward, but they didn’t.

“Fairmorn is dead now,” Graymere said, solemnly and tonelessly.

She ripped her arm out of his grip, sick and angry at the words. Angry that he’d said them and furious to make him take them back. “No, let me go! Zie was just talking to me, zie was talking. Zie was -” She stared at Fairmorn and her ability to deny it snapped. She choked back a sob, and horrible, gut wrenching dread crashed down like a tidal wave over her. She put her hands atop her head, clutching at her hair as she stared, hardly believing that the worst had happened. She’d lost zir. She’d watched another person die. “No, no, no,” she whispered as the truth sank deeper in.

Graymere put a hand on her shoulder this time, heavy but gentle. “We must go now.”

Maira blinked and sucked in cold air, staring blankly in the distance. The world looked suddenly distant and tiny, as if seen through a very small hole. “We have to find zir wing. Zie lost it in the fight.”

“Fairmorn will be taken care of,” Graymere assured her. She nodded, her gaze drifted to Naran and Kei-zi. They frowned, and Naran blinked away the wetness in his own eyes. “I am taking you to Lord Shadow now.” Before she could protest, he added, “Mr. Al-Shahd and the Lieutenant are also coming with us. You will all be safe there, under his protection.”

“All right,” she mumbled. She looked up at the second story window of the shop Fairmorn had died by. A small head poked above the bottom pane and a small, brown hand - a child’s hand - pressed to the worn wooden shutter. Graymere spoke to her, but the words drifted away like petals on the wind.

Only when his beautiful owlish wings closed in around her did she stop staring at the shop window. Her unfocused attention settled on the brown speckles on the creamy white of his feathers. She counted them them though they were as numerous as stars in the sky.

“Tell me where you are injured,” he said, softly, but the softness did not strip his voice of it’s desperation.

“I’m not.”

“Your leg. Look.”

She tipped her head down. The right leg of her pants dangled, ripped from thigh to calf. Blood pasted the fabric to her skin. The first throb of pain shot up to the tip of her spine though it was not a fresh wound. She must have been hurt by the same swinging blade that severed Fairmorn’s wing.

“I am grateful you are alive,” Graymere whispered in her ear. His hand moved to fasten the last strap around her left shoulder and she caught his wrist, the way Fairmorn caught hers. The dull relief of shock faded away.

“Whatever Lord Shadow wants from me, it’s not worth this. Tell him to stop before more of you die.”

Graymere made no answer at all and opened his wings to lift them into the air.