CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: Zaethan
It had been ages since Zaethan studied anything. He hated parchment. The smell of it. The feel of it. Yet here he sat, in an office he never used, scrutinizing every map of the proper he owned for the third consecutive hour.
He chewed on a stalk of camilla root, what was left of it, as he examined the intersecting web of streets. There was no pattern to the cross-caste murders, apart from the youth and lineage of each victim, each having been robbed of their Ascension. Zaethan grimaced, charting a path between the various marks he’d scribbled onto the parchment.
From one bloodred dot to another, he surveyed the crimson lines between. With most alleyways unrepresented on palace maps, it was impossible to determine how the killer moved about unobserved.
A triplet of beats knocked at the door. Zaethan considered ordering the sentry away, as he hadn’t made much progress, but neither was he about to anytime soon.
“Uni!”
The door cracked open and a head of sable ringlets popped through. Long fingers brushed the shelf of hair away from a boyish face to reveal a bright, crooked grin.
“Owàamo, Alpha Zà,” the warrior tested. “You call, I come report, yeah?”
“Uni, Jabari. I called for your report,” Zaethan reiterated, pinching the bridge of his nose.
He’d admitted Jabari Ulumb into his personal pryde six months ago, but still found it difficult to communicate with their new addition. Bred in the mountains and raised in Yowekao, Jabari’s Andwele was fragmented, his Unitarian worse. Any attempt to combine the two resulted in kakk soup.
A crash and roar of masculine laughter came from behind Jabari, where the offices connected to a common area in the guard house. The screech of moving furniture and more voices joined the ruckus.
“Jabari, what the Depths is that noise?”
“Eh….” The trim Darakaian turned to investigate. “That be the jwona rapiki, Alpha Zà.”
Zaethan bit down on the camilla root until it snapped. “Are we all calling him that now?” he growled. At Jabari’s look of confusion, Zaethan rolled up the maps and motioned briskly. “Just get in here.”
The youngest member of his pryde bobbed on his heels in the doorway before slipping inside. “Uni, Alpha Zà.”
If the freshly ascended warrior wasn’t such a natural talent, Zaethan didn’t know how his patience with Jabari would have fared. His thumb tapped a stout glass of water, wishing it were full of something brash and bitter instead.
“You may begin, Jabari, and do make it brief for once.” Zaethan pointed to the space in front of his desk.
“Eh, uni. No trouble come two-night pass for prince, ano. Easy like breeze, but for dark and light al’haidren come a call. Dark al’haidren prince send away, say ‘not feel well, tell her go.’” Jabari’s cheerful grin returned, having also developed a dislike for Sayuri Naborū-Zuo during his stint in Bastiion. “Then, prince send small gangle boy to fetch y’siti al’haidren. She come like moth after midnight, in sleep dress. He spend all night with y’siti in the garden, yeah?”
“Wait. Doru, stop.” Zaethan’s hand cut off Jabari’s jumbled explanation. “What do you mean, in sleep dress?”
Jabari danced in place as his hands mimed around his chest and middle. “Erm…tie-dress. For night-night walkabout.”
“Jabari, are you telling me the al’haidren to Boreal—the y’siti—was brought to the prince in the middle of the night wearing nothing but her dressing gown?”
The warrior clapped his hands together enthusiastically. “Uni, yeah!”
Zaethan spit the pulverized root out the side of his mouth and shot out of the chair. “And how did our prince seem when she left?”
“Eh.” Jabari wiggled a brow, chuckling to himself. “Little happy, not big happy, ano.”
Another bang emitted through a wall shared with the common area. Zaethan’s hand clutched the back of his neck and clenched when a second followed. “Jabari, how often does the prince send for the y’siti?”
Before he could answer, the office door creaked open again to allow a boulder of muscle through.
“Ahoté,” Kumo interrupted. “You want to step out here.” The beta locked eyes with Zaethan and latched the door in retreat.
“We aren’t done,” Zaethan told the younger warrior. “You will tell me how many times this occurred and how often it happens in the future. Do you understand me, Jabari? Yeye qondai?”
“Uni zà, Alpha Zà, meme qondai.” He bumped a fist against his chest and stepped back, allowing Zaethan to lead the way into the main room of the guard house.
His beta waited rigidly outside the door. Zaethan’s cheeks went hot as Kumo sucked his teeth and jutted a bristled jaw toward a crowd of sentries in the center of the guard house. A ragtag collection of chairs had been dragged around a table, and over the heads of the sentries, dice flew in the air, eliciting a raucous cheer at their return to the wood.
Half the men should have been at their posts. Zaethan recognized more than enough faces to confirm it.
“Owàamo.”
A cluster of sentries parted at Zaethan’s greeting, though he spoke primarily for the Darakaian audience. Across the division sat the author of the commotion. Glass of bwoloa in hand, Wekesa had a cross-caste laundress perched in his lap and a single muddied boot propped on the table, soaking a soiled ring into the wood surface. Zaethan knew the other alpha hadn’t chosen his guard house for a random game of dice.
Ano. He’d come to piss in it.
“Zaeth, won’t you join us?” the bastard shouted in mock camaraderie as he lowered the shallow glass of liquor. Wekesa rolled the pair of dice between bruised knuckles and let his free hand roam the woman’s bare shoulder. “So much sweeter, a mix, uni? But our commander’s son already knows this—don’t you, Alpha Zà?”
Wekesa twisted his neck as if to admire the woman’s teak skin, but slid his coal-black eyes toward Zaethan and smirked. The angle invited sunlight to bathe the ragged scar along the side of his skull. Zaethan anchored onto the rapidly fading reminder of his rival’s defeat.
“Get out of my guard house,” Zaethan barked at the laundress, hunkering down over the tabletop when she hesitated. “I said, get out!”
“A bit hypocritical, yeah?”
Murmurs and smothered snickers rumbled through the grouping at Wekesa’s insinuation.
“Your pryde is on duty, Wekesa,” Zaethan said coldly. “Yet they are here, in my guard house.”
“They’ve earned a break.” His tongue probed the side of his fat mouth before he turned to spit on the floor. “After all, it’s a very involved investigation, yeye qondai? My pryde could be here for months doing what yours could not.”
Kumo came up behind Zaethan, popping his knuckles—a series of bursts Zaethan knew too well. He bit back a volatile swell of curses at Wekesa’s brazen disrespect and instead straightened his spine, plastering a grin on his face.
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“You’re a fairly gifted man, Wekesa.”
“High praise from our Alpha Zà. Zullee, accepted with honor,” he sneered, translating for the Unitarian sentries.
“Which is why I just can’t understand”—Zaethan folded his arms and paced through the gathering as the sentries shifted out of his way—“how a gifted man like Wekesa keeps overlooking one fundamental principle.”
“Uni, go ahead. Share with us, Zaeth.” Wekesa freed the dice and laced his fingers in his lap, lowering his voice when Zaethan halted near his shoulder. “Speak, while they still listen.”
“The jwona rapiki is free to waste his own time in Bastiion, like a weak, sniveling yancy.” Zaethan bent until his chin hovered inches above Wekesa’s scar. “But he keeps forgetting he’s not free to waste my time. Each member of his pryde is mine. Their time is mine. So, since the fate writer is free to do as he pleases, his warriors will not rest until he assumes each of their posts and personally relieves them. And for every instance of the jwona rapiki’s disobedience, I will transfer one of his men to join our forces at the border of Hagarh.”
Undertones of humor evaporated from the lake of faces. For the mingling of Darakaians and Unitarians, both sentry and pryde, this moment was critical. Zaethan was alpha zà, and he needed to hold his ground in the only manner he had left—targeting those under his own influence to punish the one currently outside it.
“Ho’waladim.” Zaethan reached over Wekesa for the other alpha’s nearly empty glass and downed the remaining fluid. Slowly, he replaced it in front of him. “As is due you.”
Turning, Zaethan nodded to Kumo as he exited the building, aiming straight for his apartments.
“I would have punched him for that,” Kumo said, hurrying after him. “But you know, kàchà kocho. Whatever works for you, Ahoté.”
“Instruct Zahra to follow Wekesa. Unseen. And put Jabari back on Dmitri’s guard tonight, he’s on assignment for me,” Zaethan rattled off as they neared the gate. “Meet me after dark. Bring Takoda.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“I’m tired of these games. My fhàdda’s guest is wearing out his welcome.” Zaethan squinted in the growing heat and levelled with his beta. “We need to use his own tactics against him.”
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Four nights, Àla’maia watched them stalk the streets of Marketown. Four nights enveloped in cloud, she refused to light their way and bled her tears for their misfortune.
On the fifth, the moon turned radiantly optimistic, casting her brilliance over the assembly of trading stalls. Unabashed, Àla’maia shone her confidence in Zaethan’s pursuit.
“Owàa’s lover is with us tonight, Alpha Zà! Finally, she blesses our quest!” Takoda hailed over a shoulder, shifting his head of braids to the side to avoid a low-hanging clothesline.
“Uni, that she is,” Zaethan concurred, surveying the rising silhouette of buildings on either side of the bustling alley. A few blocks back, a hag had insisted she saw movement up there the night prior, though she’d been peddling pipe marrow at the time—and of ill quality, by the look of her current stock. If the Pilarese trader two tents down hadn’t confirmed the sightings of a cloaked figure sweeping the rooftops throughout the ghetto, Zaethan might have given up on his hunch that the killer wasn’t traveling at street-level. Marketown and the Drifting Bazaar were the most heavily trafficked areas the killer had charted, according to Zaethan’s markers across his maps.
Wekesa’s valley pryde was the highest ranked in Bastiion, second only to Zaethan’s own, and he didn’t believe that the lack of progress in their investigation was a coincidence. The more he considered it, the more Wekesa’s delay seemed intentional. After all, once the killer was named, the valley pryde would be forced to end their investigation and, consequently, forfeit their permission to remain in the proper.
Meaning, if Zaethan wanted to remove Wekesa from his city, all he needed to do was hunt down the reason the other alpha had been sent for in the first place. It was a strategy that directly defied his father’s orders, but Zaethan decided it was best to sort out the finer details on the backend.
Besides, if he allowed the jwona rapiki to extend his stay in Bastiion, it might not be long before Zaethan could no longer claim the city at all. Or the pryde inside it.
“You don’t believe in the Fates, Ahoté. Or their imprisoned.” Kumo’s great shoulders shook as he laughed steps ahead. “Ano, we do this by might. Kwihila rapiki mu jwona!”
“Victory can write over fate, cousin, but I’ll take all the help Àla’maia wants to give,” Zaethan retorted, dodging the clothesline. “Keep your eyes high. If what the hag says is true, that’s where victory will show itself.”
“Uni,” Kumo agreed, then jogged up the tight street to relay the same to Takoda.
Watching Kumo squeeze his breadth between the stalls, packed with hagglers and even stingier merchants, reminded Zaethan of years past. When they were cubs, his cousin used to visit Bastiion on occasion. The first time they’d explored these very streets, Kumo returned to the palace with two black eyes for the price of one. By Marketown’s standards, that was a bargain.
They followed Takoda down another, narrower alley, though no less crowded. Even nearing midnight, women dragged their children from one merchant to the next, bartering with fervor. The divergence of classes here in Marketown never ceased to amaze him. As Zaethan passed a booth of baubles, an off-duty kitchen maid screamed at a noble’s wife, who had just ripped a shiny object from a night-caller’s grasp. One dressed in soiled linen, the second in silk, and the third a combination of the two. It was remarkable how quickly the classes forgot their stations in a vendor’s tent, and how much more quickly they recalled them upon leaving.
Beyond Kumo, Zaethan saw Takoda duck when a broken bottle whizzed overhead. From a cloud of smoke, a ragged-looking man stumbled out of a dirty tent, bowling into several passersby. Another hunk of glass followed his departure, shattering across his yellowed, pipe marrow-stained tunic. Cloying vapors pooled in the street when a larger man, red in the face, erupted from the tent and hurled a bucket next.
Kumo covered his mouth with his forearm as they neared the bumbling fools. “Depths, that’s rancid!”
“Eh, break it up!” Zaethan pushed past his beta and through a group of gawking bystanders. “Uni, you!” He pointed to the second man. By the severe jaundice of his eyes, Zaethan didn’t know if he’d even comprehended the order.
“Ow! Shtàka!” Takoda flinched when something hit him. “He said break it up, you stoned scum bucket! This yancy’s puffed higher than dandi pollen. Depths!”
Blood trickled from Takoda’s temple. Zaethan grabbed the lowlife and twisted his arm, inspiring him to spew the contents of his stomach onto the cobblestones. Kumo doubled over once he saw the man’s vomit. Were she to ever challenge him again, Zahra should just eat a spoiled breakfast, and his beta would fold at the sight of it.
“A night in the guardhouse should sober him up,” Zaethen said grimly. “Come on.”
Zaethan reared back when the man’s head suddenly bobbed to the side with a crack, knocking him out. Releasing the unconscious bum, Zaethan knelt and picked up the clay tile that had landed near his boot.
“Kumo, Takoda!” he barked. “The roof—we’ve got movement!”
Without hesitation, Zaethan sprinted down the alley in the direction of tumbling tiles. He spotted a launder’s ladder and scaled the rungs to a second-story balcony, nearly tripping over a lady’s underskirt in the process. Climbing onto an awning, he hauled himself atop the clay roofing and scanned the patchwork of Marketown’s skyline. There, to the east—a dark smudge leapt from one building to the adjacent. Squinting, he realized it was not one smudge, but two.
They were moving too fast to catch up from behind, but he wouldn’t need to. These streets wove an intimate network Zaethan learned long ago. Tracking their trajectory, he ran north, skidding along old tiles as they buckled beneath him. He briefly lost his balance on a section of unstable framing, slashing his shin on a makeshift gutter. Panting, Zaethan pushed forward with the last ounce of his endurance as the dark smudges became cloaked figures and continued their race over the rooftops.
Jumping off a higher platform, Zaethan caught his arms around the second body. In an awkward barrel hug, he gripped the figure’s torso as they rolled down a slope of loose slats and rickety tilework. When their combined weight hit a particularly weak spot, he and the masked figure fell together through the planks and onto the floor of an abandoned upper room.
Zaethan groaned, cursing as a pang shot through his elbow. Blinking, he readjusted his hold. He’d landed on the perpetrator.
“Get off me, you clumsy buffoon!” a husky feminine voice wheezed under the weight of his body.
Immediately Zaethan sat up and ripped the hood off a head of ashy hair, the moonlight overhead revealing the y’siti’s delicate features.
“You really are a cockroach!” he snarled, drawing a blade and whipping it up under her chin. “Everywhere I look, I find you scurrying about. And to think, your act the other night with Salma almost had me fooled.”
“You just let him get away! I’ve been tracking him for weeks, and tonight I nearly had him!” the witch shrieked, disregarding the knife he held to her throat. “Weeks of progress, for nothing! Are you really so delusional? I was chasing him, you fool!”
“Why should I believe—”
“Ahoté!” Kumo called in search from the roof.
“Ah, Alpha Zà!” Takoda’s head manifested through the hole in the ceiling. “You catch a—uh…Alpha Zà?”
“Uni, I’ve caught an al’haidren.” Zaethan’s confirmation echoed through the vacant space.
“Huh. Bit problematic, yeah? What’re you going to do with her?”
“Get off me!” The y’siti bucked under his hold. “Every minute you waste, we invite another slaying. Do you want that on your conscience, Kasim?”
“Right…” Panting, Kumo joined Takoda above. “Right behind you, Ahoté.”
“She insists she’s innocent. Same search as we,” Zaethan yelled back without taking an eye off the wriggling witch. Even with his knees pinning her limbs to the floorboards, her efforts boosted him inches off the ground. She wasn’t fatigued in the least.
“Na huwàa tàkom lai na huwàa. Same with y’siti, yeah?” Kumo called through the busted slats.
Zaethan glared down at the y’siti and considered his cousin’s counsel. Wekesa’s threat to both his position and his pryde in Bastiion was imminent and trusting her again could be his undoing—or perhaps his salvation.
Her lustrous eye flicked to Kumo overhead. “What did he just say to you?”
“He said, it takes a hound to hunt a hound.”
She swallowed. “What does that mean?”
His blade inched off her ghostly flesh. Rolling back on his heels, Zaethan eased to his feet. “It means you are either with us or against us.” He clutched the knife in his hand. “So, which will it be…Hound?”
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