Chapter 13
A Dutiful Daughter
Amka of the Osahali clan walked along the corridor of her husband’s apartments. When she first arrived in the place it had seemed like a maze of twisting stone passages, but over the past few weeks she had learned to recognise familiar patterns in the pathways. She still found the enclosing warren of walls oppressive, but now she could find her way through without getting lost. She guided her husband by the arm, stumbling over his own feet in his drunken stupor. His two companions whose names she couldn’t recall were trailing behind them. So many new faces over the past few weeks, and she was struggling to put names against all of them.
In Yashai, when you married you became part of your husband's clan. You said farewell to your family and you joined your new family. You had a new father and a new mother, two things Amka had not had in a very long time. Did that mean Amka was no longer Osahali Clan? Had she sacrificed her name? Was she now Amka of the Torren Clan?
Ahead along the hallway, her new father was accompanied by two other armed men. They called them ‘bodyguards’ and these were warrior slaves who had to escort their master everywhere he went. He entered a room at the end of the hallway and she and the others followed.
Her new husband slumped to a padded chair and he sluggishly attempted to pull her onto his lap. She resisted gently and remained standing close to the door, watching the others. Unconsciousness was already taking Haiden as his eyes began to droop. She wouldn’t have much time before it became obvious he was more than just drunk. Sandreel venom wasn’t as fast acting as a red scorpion’s, but that suited her needs tonight.
Haiden’s friends were busy pouring themselves a strange brown basq into even stranger cups made of glass. Basq in her home was only ever clear and only ever drunk by the crones too old to work or fight, but here they had basq of all colours and the men seemed to think that the more you could stomach was a demonstration of your strength. She eyed her new father Farho as he began rifling through crystal bottles in the cabinet behind his desk. The aselendi of her people hanging around his neck like some kind of trinket. Her true father’s aselendi.
“That De La Cruz is an interesting man. However I cannot trust him in this place, not an outsider.”
“I am an outsider, Lord Torren, am I not?” the darker youth said lightly.
“Bah” Farho spat, “our families have long had ties to another.” His eyes fell on Amka.
“You are lucky, Amka,” He said, “I would rarely allow a woman other than my wife into my study. And even then it is only on rare occasions that I suffer such.”
He was drunk also but not nearly so much as the other men, he waved away one of the warrior slaves who stepped outside the room, leaving only one standing by the door. “I am your family now, father,” she replied slowly. She worried that she didn’t form sentences correctly in this northlander language. In her own tongue, the words for father and family were the same.
Haiden was beginning to drool.
This would be her best chance. She stepped closer to the guard, he clearly didn’t think her a threat as his hand didn’t move towards the hilt of his sword at his waist. He didn’t even eye her as she stepped closer to him.
Slaves make poor warriors. In a single fluid motion, she tore the sabocat fang from the neck of her dress and drove the razor sharp tooth into the neck of the warrior.
Amka didn’t pause, she pulled the tooth from his neck and drew the slave’s sword as he slumped to the ground, his hands desperately trying to stop the fountain of blood spurting from his neck.
The youth’s mouths were agape, they might have had some military training, but these were boys unaccustomed to real violence. She closed the distance before their minds had time to react and drove the slave’s sword into the pale one’s chest, it was heavy and clunky compared to the carved scimitars of her people.
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She tried to whip it out from the man’s body, but it resisted, catching on bone. She abandoned it and grasped one of the glass cups on the table and smashed it over the head over the darker man, and then followed up with driving her sabocat fang into his back as he doubled over. She knew it was a risk dispatching these two first as it gave Farho a chance to flee but—as she hoped—he was standing still at his desk, an ornate dagger in his grip.
“You Yashai cunt,” Farho spat, “I knew we shouldn’t have trusted this offering.” His face bulged with red anger.
“Guards!” He roared.
As quick as a sandreel she leapt up on his desk in a crouch and slashed at him with her sabocat fang. Despite his greying hair, Farho Torren proved to be very nimble as he evaded her quick succession of attacks with frustrating agility.
“Guards! To me!” he roared again and took his first offensive move against her, taking one slow slash of his dagger. She easily avoided it and jumped back off the desk. “Tell me, child, what is the plan here?—murder me and my son, for what goal would this even achieve?” He’s stalling me, she realised, waiting for his slaves to arrive.
She didn’t answer him, but instead moved to Haiden and held the sabocat fang to his neck, “The aselendi” she hissed.
“I don’t speak your savage language, girl”
“That,” she looked pointedly at the totem hanging around his neck, “aselendi!”
“Stupid girlish fantasy,” he said, “you risk your life for a bauble like this.”
“It was stolen from my father’s corpse, killed by your hand.”
“I didn’t kill anyone, a General does not risk his own life in battle. Something your chiefs have yet to realise. A good general is worth a thousand soldiers.”
“Give it to me and I won’t kill him,” she said, pressing the fang into Haiden’s neck and drawing a small amount of blood.
Haiden’s eyes lolled in his head but he didn’t wake, the crushed hagweek and sandreel venom she had slipped into his drink earlier pushing him into the depths of unconsciousness from which he shouldn’t ever wake. She had given him enough so that in a few hours his internal organs would start shutting down.
“You haven’t given me much reason to trust that you won’t kill him and me,” Farho said. Amka growled, low in her throat with frustration. He’s just going to keep talking until his slaves get here. She hoped that her people had already started fighting in the main feast hall and that all the warrior slaves would be occupied there in fighting her people, but she couldn’t rely on that alone.
“Your warriors are coming,” she said, “I will kill him if you don’t give me the aselendi now” Farho considered for a moment, and snarled as he ripped the aselendi from around his neck and tossed it toward her.
“There, take it. Now release my son,” he said. She released Haiden and snatched the aselendi from where it landed in front of her, her eyes never leaving Farho. He was sweating and she guessed that he was worrying where his warriors were. And why they weren’t coming to his call.
She backed to the door, stepping carefully over the body of the dead warrior slave, his blood still seeping out across the room.
“You won’t get far,” Farho spat, his face flush. “You might be quick but you won’t get out of this fortress alive.”
“We will see,” she replied.
“I did kill him, you know,” he said coolly, “they brought the man who carried that to me. A savage chief is useful for information. We tortured him for days, and he cried like a child, he whimpered and begged for death by the end.”
Amka knew that Farho was trying to keep her talking, keep her from disappearing into the night. But his words sparked a deep fury in her, something brutal and violent. The duty of her vengeance surging towards her and pushing away her primary objective. Her breathing came in shallow breaths as she leapt forward to him again. This time he was more prepared, side-stepping and striking out with his dagger. His blade made a shallow gash across her shoulder.
Her body felt the burning sensation of the cut, but in her frenzy, Amka didn’t acknowledge the pain of it. She lashed out with her sabocat fang, staying close to Farho. She whipped the fang at him in a flurry, forcing him to backstep and evade until his back hit against the wall. He tried to parry her attacks with his dagger but he wasn’t nearly as quick as her, and she slashed at his forearm holding the dagger.
He dropped the dagger and it was over.
In three precise jabs, she inflicted a trio of fatal wounds that would leave him bleeding out slowly for the next few hours. A painful and drawn out death. As he slumped in pain, she stabbed again into his spine, causing his legs to crumple uselessly.
“The skeleton god’s wrath will wash over your people,” she whispered to him through gritted teeth. She turned to flee, gripping her reclaimed aselendi so tightly that the metal edges dug into her palm.