The skybarque rushed over the desert toward Dul Karagi, Mana’s fire growing hotter and stronger with every mile they traveled. Tenrinti’s steering had improved as well; Shennai hardly had a thing to do, only stand and watch. Spirits were high, considering the circumstances. Ram himself was nearly giddy; his haranu sang within him.
He only wished Shimrun could have caught the general mood. The heir to Karagi was currently huddled in a ball under the prow railing. “I still don’t know if I like this,” he fretted.
“I know,” Ram told him. He never would. It still wasn’t too late to turn back, and his Ensi would consider—but not commit to—doing so until it was too late, then worry endlessly about whether he’d done the right thing. It was just how Shimrun was. The others weren’t much more steady; they’d left six dead men behind them, and most of them weren’t used to a life where things could go so drastically wrong. Their story wasn’t supposed to go this way.
That only made it more important to get this done now, so they’d have a solid victory to rest their hopes on. Darun said the important thing was to act quickly. Ram hoped three days after the attack was soon enough for their retaliation to be meaningful.
One day—the very next, white day—had been lost to funerals and recriminations. Gelibara’s body had burned bright on the mountaintop, together with both of the Ensi’s brothers and three of the four liberated bondsmen. Ram waited patiently through the rites, the weeping, and the rage; he’d lost nobody he really cared for. Busu was burnt, but lived. Darun, predictably enough, had hidden in the farthest corner from every indwelt person or object, and come away slightly singed.
There was no question after that, even for Shimrun, of living in peace with Jatu. Too many people had died. The idea of “Dul Shimrun,” at least at its present site, seemed to have died, for which Ram was thankful.
He’d still had an uphill battle persuading the Ensi to do anything, anything at all. Ram was the one who had told them to attack the barques, so he was the one Shimrun blamed for all the deaths. All his efforts to remind him of the sinister barbed darts were in vain, and he didn’t care about Manka’s ultimatum. Even the suggestion that they should move on from the site before Jatu launched another attack met with no enthusiasm. He was comfortably immersed in his grief, and didn’t want to be moved.
In the end, it had taken a masterful and utterly shameless performance from Darun to rouse the Ensi. She’d started by asking Shimrun about his dead brothers, nodding sympathetically and giving him a hug when he sobbed. From there, she’d turned the conversation to their lives in the Temple, gently coaxing him to dwell on all the indignities. At last she brought up the darts. What were they?
“Bullspikes,” he’d wheezed. “for killing an animal that’s … gone bad. They used to … make a game of it. Long ago. Loose a bull for practice, compete to bring him down. Every flamekeeper played. Maybe they still do, at other pyres. I don’t know. At Karagi, the game’s out of style. We’ve been tame pets for kindlings.
“Jushur put down the last of us to fight. The last en to openly defy them. The man was out of his head, but they didn’t care. Jushur was young and strong, and threw a spike … right into his stomach. Then cut his head off while he screamed. That’s how he got … to be lugal.”
Darun motioned at Ram behind her back, where Shimrun couldn’t see. Ram dutifully spoke up: “And you remember all of this?”
“Like I felt it myself,” Shimrun whispered.
Darun made a concerned noise, then patted him on the back and left him to think it over. “Never attack head-on,” she said in Ram’s ear on her way out of the cave.
By the time the white sun set that day, Shimrun was in a decidedly vengeful mood. Ram was grateful to Darun, but also mildly nauseated. “I feel like I need to take a bath, after doing that,” he’d told her. “Hasn’t he been manipulated enough?”
“You were trying to do the same thing, love. Don’t get all huffy just because you suck at it.”
“I wasn’t doing … that!”
“He doesn’t know how to think for himself. He doesn’t even want to know how. With the eunuch gone, he’ll just sit there like a rock unless and until somebody budges him. Do you want to be the one in charge, or Pimna?”
That first part had been the hardest. They lifted off from the mountain the very next morning, working out the details of a plan as the heavily-loaded barque ran south and east. Ram was no strategist, but he’d learned a few things about how the Karagenes thought. They would not respect weakness. They had just incited someone to kill their Ensi. That, Ram thought, made Shimrun’s next move fairly obvious, at least in the broad outline.
They’d come near the outskirts of Dul Karagi by evening. Most of the next day was spent on prep—snitching a few odds and ends from a couple of hearths—and waiting for evening. Ram thought it would be more dramatic at night. The sun had set two hours back. Pimna, Darun, Busu, and the five surviving freedmen were safely hidden in the middle of nowhere. The great and glorious light of Dul Karagi peeked out at them over the horizon.
And Shimrun was still hiding behind the railing at the prow, not even looking at his fire after most of a month away. “Come on,” Ram wheedled. “Aren’t you ready to write Gelibara’s name in letters a mile high?”
“I can’t write,” Shimrun replied forlornly.
Ram looked to Shennai, who shrugged. This, it seemed, was the best they could hope for from the master of Dul Karagi. Mana kept looking at her fire. Tenrinti looked at Mana. They were two children, an old woman, a stunted weakling and a sixteen-bloom-old boy.
The girls didn’t need Shimrun’s help to steer now. They’d gone over it enough already: they steered the barque straight towards the fire, then veered north, soaring high into the air. Dul Karagi’s most prestigious district lay below them, serene and silent in the moonlight. Most of its residents would already be in bed by now. Jushur couldn’t possibly have heard about the events at Dul Jatu any sooner than yesterday, if he’d heard at all. Ram didn’t expect the Jatui had bothered to send a barque to express their displeasure; they’d just lost three of theirs, after all, with most of their crew. They wouldn’t be expecting a visit so soon.
“It’s time,” he told Shennai. “Begin.”
It had to be Shennai. Mana had more of a knack for pyrotechnics, but little in the way of aim, and Ram was determined not to cause one more casualty than necessary. They were here to send a message—a vivid, humiliating message—not to escalate as such. He wanted a demonstration of terrifying restraint. Shennai was precise; she picked a single house at random and started bursting flares a few feet outside its windows.
They were hundreds of feet up, staying out of bowshot; Ram saw little flashes and heard faint pops. Up close, they wouldn’t be nearly so innocuous. A few more blasted over the roof, knocking holes in it. It took them an annoyingly long time to get the message: get out! But eventually, after several minutes of near-miss bombardment, Ram felt dulspheres scuttling down stairs and out into streets. Some might have chosen to shelter in place; Ram couldn’t help that. This was war.
“Shimrun. Your turn.” The Ensi remained seated. “Hey! Move, dammit, or this whole trip is wasted, and we look like children pulling a stupid prank.”
“Don’t talk to the Ensi like that, Ram!” Mana chided. Rinti nodded agreement.
“You’re nine, I’m your big brother, I outrank you, and he’s being an ass,” he retorted. “You want to convince him, go ahead.” They had a backup plan using Shennai, but it would take forever and be much less impressive.
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“I’m almost ten!”
Shimrun sighed, and stood up. “Okay, I’ll do it. I hope you’re right.”
Handmaidens could channel the fire, reproducing a minuscule portion of it at a distance, which was useful enough under most circumstances. It took the Ensi himself to command a fire to act directly, and he couldn’t do it with any precision. Urapu being one example, though he hadn't been physically present to aim there.
Really, it was a useless ability—unless you wanted a tremendous amount of destruction to happen very close to your own fire. Which meant that, whatever god or nameless man set up this whole wretched system, countless generations ago, they probably meant this particular power to be used under circumstances much like theirs.
Shimrun’s first strike was as pitiful and diffident as the man himself; from their current position, it looked like a tiny flicker, a tentative tendril that snuck out and slapped the top of the doomed building before retreating. From the streets below, it would be a giant whip a thousand feet long. The roof erupted, spitting bricks and dust a hundred feet in the air as it crumbled. The hole spread to engulf the entire roof in seconds; flying shrapnel crashed into walls across the street.
But when it was all done, there were outbuildings still standing on the property. “A little harder. Please.” Shimrun didn’t answer.
Shennai was already moving on to her next target, some distance away. Its occupants were mostly gone; the first few bursts sent them scurrying at double-time. Ten seconds after they were clear, a ball of fire ten feet across tore into it, driving through the masonry and gouging deep into the earth. The house above simply exploded, driving shockwaves of burning-hot dust in every direction. “Better.”
The night air rang with screams of panic; even modest houses some distance away, places like Master Tu’s which they’d never dreamed of striking, were emptying out, their occupants taking their dulspheres to guide them down towards the river. They would come back in the morning to find their homes somewhat damaged, but standing.
As for their actual targets, Ram refused them his pity. The few who hadn’t known about the boys in the Temple had at least known about Lashantu. Even if they hadn’t known Lashantu, they’d have vile secrets of their own. He was sure of it. Ram had come to bury those secrets. Nobody needed to see or hear them; each was uglier than the last. After tonight, the men who lived in those houses would be too busy surviving to do any more harm.
There was no need for further warnings. The next three shots hit one after another, slapping over estates that had stood for ten kindlings or more. It was sobering, but satisfying, to think of the sheer amount of wealth they were destroying. They had to have done for hundreds of gold tanbirs’ worth already, in the space of five minutes. By the time they left, it would be well over a thousand, far too much for even Dul Karagi to rebuild or replace in a hurry.
Darun had wanted to come and watch, and he’d almost agreed, but in the end he’d allowed nobody who wasn’t indwelt on the barque. Ram didn’t want the slightest chance of a casualty, and he simply didn’t trust her not to do something crazy. He would have to enjoy it enough for both of them.
But he hadn’t come along just to watch, or to browbeat his master. “I’d say things are hectic enough now. My turn.”
There was nowhere to land on the Temple; Mana and Rinti swung the barque around as close as they could, and Ram let himself down with a rope over the side. It didn’t go quite as planned; a sudden lurch threw him against the south wall, and he fell ten feet straight down to land on all fours, breaking multiple bones.
No matter. The fire repaired him almost before he felt it, and he was off racing along the terrace toward the main gate. He could tell that every handmaiden in the pyre was gathered on the far side to watch her family’s home burn; his way was clear. “Evening, Nusun,” he called. “Any problems inside?”
“The Master’s orders stand,” the murrush rumbled back. “None but handmaidens and acolytes have entered or left for seventy-four days.”
“Good work,” he said, slapping the murrush on his iron-plated back before darting inside. He still didn’t know his way around, but he didn’t need to. He made for the nearest haranu, and after some fumbling found himself in an office much like Gelibara’s. It was a moment’s work to liberate the dulsphere, then stuff tanbirs and stray valuables into his satchel before moving on to the next spirit. Ten minutes later, his bag was stuffed with two more dulspheres, sundry pricey knickknacks, a few fine cloth articles, and a good-sized sheaf of blank paper. He hadn’t met a soul the whole time. Shimrun? I’m on my way out.
The Ensi hadn’t been idle in the meantime; the wealthy enclaves of the north end were utterly flattened, a wasteland of broken bricks and burning timbers that gave off enough heat to float the barque on. The masters of Dul Karagi would have to beg their inferiors for shelter tonight, and the whole pyre had seen the God’s fire destroy their wealth. Ram wished he could stick around, to hear them try and explain that.
Only one more task remained. Most of the people in the Palace had already fled; Ram detected only a few haranuu of swords and spheres. Thirty seconds of Shennai’s flares sent the rest running. Ram asked Shimrun to target the front end only, so as to spare the militia barracks on the south side. The Ensi had had plenty of practice; three bursts of holy fire struck the base of the enormous edifice, and it collapsed. Then they floated away, untouched and barely noticed against the general devastation. No human had even seen any of the people who laid them low. Fighting back was out of the question.
It wasn’t justice. It might not even do very much; all those displaced aristocratic parasites would have plenty of money in the bank, and relatives in the Temple ready to defend their station. But there would be consequences for this. It couldn’t be hushed over, covered up, or explained away. Life would not, could not, continue on as normal for men like Lashantu.
All in all, it was a good night’s work.