On a dune overlooking the southern perimeter of Khel Marjon was Balyard, the oldest of seven sons and a sheyef, or captain, who was strolling the outer sands with two men. They wore black steel conical helmets, beautifully fluted, wrapped in cream turbans. Black aventails sloped down to their shoulders where broad clasps fastened cream cloaks to their black scale mail. The warm night winds had picked up in the last hour, billowing their cloaks and swinging the dozens of black tassels that dangled from their saddles, blankets, and reins. The perimeter pennants flapped as they passed them. They wore black sleeves of layered leather plates and cream gloves. At their waists, they wore several belts over matching cream sashes. Below they wore black trousers and boots under cream battle skirts. Those colors, black and cream, belonged to the Bayari, a regional tribe who currently counted the Prophet’s Bath among their treasures. Though not Bayari, the Blackjaw was a good friend to them. So far from the Sablers, no one expected action against Kuinkazner this night.
Inshu, the lead guard, was the farthest out, standing on the shoulder of a high dune. The sheyef yelled to him, asking what he could see. As the young man signaled silently, the captain heard the short shrill punch of a needle bodkin through metal—pang!
Reining his horse around, he saw Dargo, the rear guard some thirty paces behind, fall dead from his saddle, the glint of an arrow sticking out of the top of his helmet. “Inshu, the horn! The horn!” the captain commanded over his shoulder. “Call the watch!”
Pang!
Drawing his scimitar, the captain jerked his horse around to see the lead guard gasp, slouch, and fall off his horse. Inshu rolled down the windward side of the dune, but his horse, a blond sorrel, slipped when the brink shifted beneath it and tumbled down the slip face.
Reining his horse to the right, then back to the left, the captain could spy no archers.
Then a shadow, a rush of wind—
The captain looked up just as Mr. Midnight crashed down on him and his steed. He attempted to leap from his saddle, but the collision completed his action for him, hurling him some ten feet away. His horse snorted violently on its side, kicking wildly, trying to stand, until eight piercing talons, each twice as large as a sickle, wrenched a terrible sound from it. As the captain scrambled away, Mr. Midnight bit down on the horse’s neck at its crest, right in the middle of its mane. There was a loud crack like a thick oak branch snapping under a blanket, and the stallion spasmed and then fell limp in a spray of blood.
Sliding off the slim saddle strapped at the vypern’s neck, Tristanué landed, horse bow in hand. As her quarry ran, she drew, notched, and released her third arrow as quickly and calmly as one would pluck a harp. The needle bodkin pierced Balyard’s left thigh back to front. He stumbled and fell but stood back up on his right leg, jumping forward. “Kenyut! Kenyut!” (“Alarm! Alarm!”) he yelled, seemingly to no one. Her fourth arrow hit him just below the right shoulder, piercing between the scales of his armor. Thrown forward, he landed near Inshu’s spear. Stabbing it into the sand, he climbed up to his feet, but when he drew back to throw it, another arrow broke through his armor into his heart. He sank to his knees, his mail jangling, as the spear slipped out of his hand.
Looking around, Tristanué calmly walked to him, notching a sixth arrow. With the last of his strength, the captain pulled out his dagger, cursing in his tribe’s tongue, that is, until he saw his young and exotic killer. As he faded from rage, Tristanué pushed him over with her foot. He fell back into the sand, snapping off the shaft in his shoulder with a wince.
“The snarl of Kuinkazner,” she said, standing over the captain, aiming at his eye, “has become an echo… and you with it!”
No sooner had she executed the captain than the forward guard, having rebounded from death, moaned and struggled to his feet. Notching the seventh needle bodkin, Tristanué whistled back to Mr. Midnight, who was dining on warm horse flesh. Tristanué nonchalantly drew the arrow back and killed the groaning guard with a trick shot without so much as a glance. She was careful to use those arrows belonging to Kuinkazner’s bowmen, creating the impression these watchmen died at the hands of deserters or brigands and not a clever Khytherian archer.
Despite her age, these were not the first men she had killed on behalf of the Sablers, her dear friends, or herself. Is there a city, a nation, a world where cruelty passes over the young? The innocent? Even babes at the breast? Tristanué understood evil was real and that good must withstand it not only where one finds it but also when one finds it, and “lo, the years of an avenger count not against justice.” The Loring King ensured all his children and their children knew this. The Prince of Wands had no desire to turn his heirs (or anyone else’s) into killers, but his unwillingness to have them be victims was absolute. Thus, he trained all the souls of the House of Yale from youth to defend themselves and others. Once combined with their natural athleticism, creativity, and ambition, their martial skills were formidable.
Notching her eighth arrow, she ran up the long windward slope of the nearest dune and peeked over the crest to Khel Marjon, some five furlongs away. Well into the midnight hours, the oasis was quiet except for the mad flutter of flags and uneven singing. Far below, she saw Inshu’s horse ambling around. Removing her arrow from the drawstring, she rolled it through her fingers before slipping it into her hip quiver. Returning to Mr. Midnight, she took the Prism of Orlandra from her belt as the breezes sighed between her thighs, raising goosebumps. Activating the crystal, she looked up to the overcast sky as the Pier of Ventures descended through the clouds, lower and lower until it settled not twenty feet from her, silent as a shadow.
Atop it was her Nymirian bodyguard Jocasta Valan and her plucky page Surandot, concealed under soldierly Sanzakarth cloaks. Unfortunately, Jocasta, only ever acquainted with horses, did not enjoy being off the ground. And though she was not afraid of heights, something about being suspended by forces akin to magic on a five-sided flying marble deck did not comport with her otherwise well-grounded convictions.
To Tristanué’s surprise, Surandot, her pale vypern Nonchalor, Jocasta, and the surface of the Pier were beaded with light rain. Arid for millennia, the provinces of Anzioch, Thal Hazon, and Anzukar—indeed all Sanzakarth—were now being lashed by thunderstorms caused by the eruption of Vash-Kardan Q’zaru—the ‘Mount of Kezra,’ a volcano believed inactive. That is, until six months ago when it unequivocally proved the reverse. Altering the local weather and intermixing with the moisture from the Sea of Hooks, the southern provinces of the Western Fortunes were enjoying the legend of rain.
After a moment, when Tristanué determined the weather was not bad enough to thwart their attack, she instructed Surandot to remain on the Pier of Ventures. Enthusiastic as all good servants are, Surandot was disappointed as she had hoped to distinguish herself in battle before her mistress. However, Tristanué knew the young girl was inexperienced; she would not dare risk her Surandot for a Kuinkazner. Out of this came Tristanué's command for Surandot and Nonchalor to stay with the Pier of Ventures. As the Pier levitated into the sky, Tristanué and Jocasta set out to reconnoiter the oasis.
As they approached the southern gate, they saw the carapaces of giant sand ticks, each the size of huts, propped up by spears. Moments later, four Bayari watchmen dragged a beaten, bleeding, babbling convict outside the city arch. Estranged from empathy and ignoring their captive’s pleas, they unexcitedly slit his throat. Bantering among themselves, they sawed off the man’s right hand and nailed it to a nearby beam among a dozen other rotting penalties.
Black vultures, familiar with the brutal rhythms of the refuge, were already waiting for the night’s casualties.
Disguising themselves in local robes and cowls, Tristanué and Jocasta wandered towards the bridge, ignored by the few sentries they met. Passing clusters of men singing songs, gaming with dice, telling fortunes, and drinking toasts to their ancestors as half-clad belly dancers entertained them, Tristanué and Jocasta deduced a ground assault would be too complicated. Confirming Kuinkazner had retired to the bailiff’s tower for the night and deeming the guards too close, their gates too sturdy, and their dogs too many to overcome swiftly and decisively, Tristanué and Jocasta revised their plan. After whispering back and forth, they parted. Tristanué headed back into the dunes to find Mr. Midnight while Jocasta moved through the shadows to the far side of the oasis, where she entered a thin minaret.
Once beyond the main courses, near some palms, Tristanué unfastened her headdress, a thinly tasseled scarf or shemagh, and whipped her hair free. She did not notice, however, that she was removing her tribal garb in front of a man concealed within the shadow of a large pack tent. As for the man, Jandaqor was dressed in the black and cream of the Bayari and sat eating a fig and drinking mey, a local wine. His look was not entirely gentle, for his black eyes, hooked nose, frequent scowls, and swarthy complexion imparted a sternness to even his blankest look. He sat there, snacking quietly, waiting for the very patrol Tristanué had killed to return. At first, he mistook her for a slender page or moon squire, boys who often brought food and drink to the guards between patrols. However, as she fought with her thin black robe, which hovered in the wind, his opinion began to shift.
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“Fen, bayat (Say, boy)!” he yelled to Tristanué in the local tongue, “Het Dargoa entor (Has Dargo returned)?”
On hearing his strong voice, Tristanué froze.
Just then, her bisht glided off the three-inch prongs on her pauldron that had snagged it. When her drapes also flapped out of place, Jandaqor found his assumptions suddenly overturned, for there was the bare backside not of a boy but a girl. A dagger of blue, the rear plunge of her high-cut lambion, separated her tight and well-rounded cheeks. Her every tuck and sweep—her small waist, the curve of her hips, the swell of her bust as she turned to him—quickly revealed the true gender of one stranger to another. Atop her eye-catching form, what he had at first mistaken as a frayed blue turban, was, in fact, her wild wind-swimming hair.
Seeing no squire before him, Jandaqor stood.
As her drapes jounced and jingled, keeping time with rowing palms above her, Jandaqor dragged his eyes over her figure. He could see no room under her high-cut hems for those warm outer organs that so strictly differentiated the rebellious sex of boys and no room within her deep corset for anything other than herself.
Suddenly cautious, he took a step forward. “Who are you?” he asked, this time in Urdu, a popular caravan tongue. Surveying her odd half-armor, he wondered if she was a wealthy merchant’s daughter. Her dark skin was not out of place here in Khel Marjon, but all those blues perplexed him, being far from the local choice. He was familiar with all the neighboring tribes, allies and enemies alike: she resembled none of them, neither in manner nor marks. As she reached over and picked up her bow and quiver from the sand, the echo of a conversation days old flitted across Jandaqor’s mind. When the Blackjaw's men had first agreed to conceal Kuinkazner for a night, there was some secondary talk of an assassin. Yes, a woman with hair like topaz.
Jandaqor put out his gloved hand, commanding, “Come here, girl.”
Her reply was a whip shot: the flight of a fast-drawn arrow. Surprised, Jandaqor countered, hurling a dagger in return. Rescued by his reflexes, her arrow pierced the slope of his black aventail without effect. As for his dagger, it brushed her cheek like a lover’s hand, snipping her bow string before tumbling off in the dark where the sand swallowed it.
“It must be you! That mad desert witch I’ve heard talk of,” Jandaqor whispered. “...with hair like topaz.”
Still holding her bow, Tristanué scanned for other sentries, but Jandaqor snapped his fingers loudly, demanding she focus on him.
“That’s right, mulo. I am the dangerous one here. Do not worry; I never share my glory,” Jandaqor said, leering. “Or my bed. Abrazor be praised! Your black merchandise descends from the sky. But if your moods are not for the man Kuinkazner, then they are against him. I see now! Yes, you’re one of those holy Sablers.” As he spoke, he drew his slim scimitar. The blade was lacquered black and decorated with elaborate gold cursive near the curled brass crossguard. “It is the fate of the prettiest flowers to be plucked. I think I’ll humble you and keep you for myself.”
She feigned rage and lunged at him, but it was a trick. Instead, she broke and ran up the sands toward Mr. Midnight. She would have easily outpaced him if they raced on anything other than sand, but her block heels sank too deep. He kept up at first, then closed on her among ruins where he swung at her shoulder. The sparking blow knocked her forward, but she turned her stumble into a somersault. He grabbed for her hair but came away with her back drape instead. As she rolled up to her feet, her front drape, also yanked free of its press studs, fluttered away—another plaything for the wind. She looked at the first score on her pauldron, furious her new armor had been marred on its first night of service. Scowling at Jandaqor, she threw down her bow and quiver and, reaching over her shoulder, drew the Sinister Minister.
“Bells and whistles by moonlight! What a lovely impression you make,” he mocked, dangling her drape like a prize. “Hail the Horned One! You’re as young as the first yesterday!” he said, lingering on the tuck of her bright, thin lambion, now revealed. “Praise be to Abrazor! I’ve prayed my whole life for a virgin like you. Kisaya’s hoof! You’re tight as tree bark!”
Unfazed by his praise, if not bored by it, Tristanué gave him a haughty look. Swiping the air with the Sinister Minister, she swept away even the echoes of his flattery.
So rebuffed, Jandaqor’s look twisted into a sneer. “You’ll regret that—”
Tristanué kicked sand in his face, followed by a leaping wild slash. She came on quicker than he expected and would have drawn blood were it not for his longer blade. Her speed put him on the back foot, where he found himself defending against a dozen furious swings. Figuring out her footwork, he confidently caught her pauldron and flipped her over his shoulder, slinging a high arc of sand. He expected that to stun her, but when she kicked him in the face, it proved her style was far more improvisational than his. Her foot snapped his head back no sooner than she twisted and swept his feet out from under him. To his surprise, the girl mounted him, pinned his sword hand under her boot, and punched him in the face with her spiked metal gauntlet. He threw a counterpunch, but it went wide. Unchallenged, she proceeded to smash half his teeth out of his mouth. Jandaqor panicked as she slipped his dagger from his sash, but as she drew back to slit his throat another guard tackled her. Rolling away some distance, Tristanué and the second night watchman wrestled to their feet near a short stone wall. He was far stronger than she was, but her way of slipping, twisting, dodging, and ducking, combined with her expert footwork, neutralized his natural advantages. Three times he slashed, and three times he clanged against her intercepting sleeve, throwing sparks. His fourth attack was his last: Tristanué turned into him, grabbed his aventail, dropped to her knees, and drove his head down into a flagstone, crushing half his neck bones in a single fatal shock.
Throwing him off, she pushed her boot through the surrounding sand until she kicked up the Sinister Minister. “Voncubréja—four,” she tallied, checking her blade for nicks. “Everybody else—aught.”
Nearby, Jandaqor staggered to his feet. His rugged looks were gone, replaced by a swollen patchwork of garish wounds: blackened eyes, shattered teeth, ripped lips, a more crooked nose, and the repeated quadruple punch of small spikes, all crisscrossed by whips of blood. “A-Abrazor will be praised! Jionjaxupatra is not adored here,” he mumbled, weakly swiping the air in front of him with his scimitar.
Realizing the man still had some fight left in him, Tristanué turned to Jandaqor, who, to her surprise, lunged at her. Skipping and darting, blocking and parrying, she evaded Jandaqor as he tramped after her like a man walking for the very first time. Her only attack that interrupted his stilted chase was a downward strike he blocked. As their blades rang against each other, he seized her wrist with his free hand. “Hah! Now I have you, mulo!” he sputtered.
“Have you?” she panted with a smug tilt of her head. The Sinister Minister shimmered, and to the man’s complete astonishment, a second blade, identical to the one he had trapped, sprang magically from the first. Catching it in her left hand, she slashed his belly open as far back as his spine, his old armor notwithstanding. As Jandaqor screamed out the last pitch of his life, Tristanué, now double-armed, struck him repeatedly until she cleared his head from his shoulders with a great outward sweep of her blades.
“Jen-mulas (Black witch)!” A third sentry yelled. Rushing up fifteen feet from her, he stopped with sword raised, his iron stare promising she would soon be his captive.
And then, outlaw magic—
No sooner did Tristanué aim her left sword at him than she swung the right one down it. A razored effect crossed the distance instantly, shearing off the top of his scimitar and tearing open his aventail, and his soft throat under it. The man dropped to his knees as his life rushed down over his front, his eyes wide and disbelieving. The tip of his sword stabbed down in the sand before him, now soddened by his blood, next to dozens of bloody scales that fell from his unraveling neck guard.
As she walked past him, she judged him without so much as a look. “Dine with monsters, die with monsters.”
Hearing the echo of more guards—someone had reported a skirmish among the ruins—Tristanué merged the Sinister Minister back to itself and put it away. Locating her bow, she nimbly restrung it with a spare string concealed inside the detachable base of her quiver. Tugging it and finding it workably taut, she took position near the mouth of the ruins. Whistling into the air, she heard Mr. Midnight screech back: he was still there.
Despite her dexterity and swordsmanship, it was with the bow that Tristanué’s skill turned nearly magical. The best of all her cousins, she possessed not just skill but a marvelous talent for combat archery. Shots others would not dare she executed with ease. Whether seated, standing, or running, she outclassed her brothers and sisters, cousins, and acquaintances so much that none challenged her on the range.
Here, on the sandy slopes outside of Khel Marjon, with four Bayari guards approaching on foot and two on horses, the odds could not be more in her favor. Looking to the pennants to check the run of the wind, she attacked. The two horsemen died before the other four realized they had wandered into her killing range. Emerging from behind a pillar, she picked off the others calmly, for no matter what they tried, they could not outguess her. Taking one last look around and seeing no reinforcements, she collected her drapes and continued to her beautiful Mr. Midnight across the dunes.
Balyard’s horse was still there―or what remained of it. Next to it were two dead wolves, grayish beige in coat, shredded down to their bones. Mr. Midnight stood there, his brass beak slacked with blood, bile, hide, and fur. He was so calm, so satisfied, that he gave not the impression of a fierce giant falcon, but a wise old towering owl wondering if he should be somewhere else. The bodies of Dargo, Balyard, and Inshu already bore the fresh marks of scavengers. Securing her bow and quiver on her saddle and stuffing her drapes into a side pocket, she pulled out the Prism of Orlandra. Wolves bayed in the distance until Mr. Midnight’s ringing screech reminded them there were far more dangerous things out tonight than them.
Walking back to the highest crest of sand, she looked across to the far side of the oasis. Near the top of a thin fire-scarred minaret, she saw the flashes of a small lantern.
Jocasta was in position.
For a moment, she closed her eyes and reined in her breathing. The wind blew over her bare backside, her hips, her one bare shoulder, and other open windows of skin, kissing through the cool of her sweat and the fading warmth of Jandaqor’s blood.
A glyph appeared in her glass instrument: Radia.
Activating the function, she breathed deeply as the Prism took inventory of all her minor injuries. Free of sprains or fractures, the relic tallied her bruises, scratches, cuts, abrasions, and soreness. Ranking them by severity, the Prism quietly began knitting them. Mending in many places, she submitted, “Kuinkazner.” As before, seven gold slivers appeared: five pointed to the southeast at Anzioch, one to the east, and one across Khel Marjon to the bailiff’s tower. Nominating the nearest version of the man, she ran her finger in a circle around the entire Prism, activating it.