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Desperation

“Lady Nissilât, Lady Nissilât!”

She awoke with a spasm, jerking out of the grasp of the soldier’s rough hands. “What are you doing here?” She hissed, glaring at her sergeant with a mixture of irritation and fear - fear because she knew that the sergeant would never dare enter her tent without good cause. What happened?

“The assault failed.”

“What?” She bolted upright, clutching her sheets to her chest as she remembered she hadn’t bothered to wear a nightgown. A wild beat of hope throbbed in her heart, though, as she stared up at Tabîlu. “The bloody fool lost? Now’s our chance to oust him! Quick, leave so I can get dressed.”

But the sergeant didn’t match her optimism. “No, my lady, you don’t understand. They didn’t just lose, they were annihilated.”

“Annihilated? How?” she gasped. “Even if we took more casualties than expected, we should still have the numbers to take the city.”

“I don’t know, my lady - I’ve been unable to get a clear account of what happened thus far.”

“Surely the commanders can tell you,” she countered with a frown. “Have you tracked down Markînu yet?” Nissilât’s voice broke slightly as she spoke his name, bringing a rush of complicated emotions to the surface. Their long friendship. Their hidden trysts. His betrayal the night before.

She hadn’t had time yet to process his actions, though the rational side of her could understand them. She knew as well as any that blatantly refusing to accept her uncle’s orders, despite their breach of protocol, would have been complete political suicide. She knew he had done what he had to, not just for himself but for his family’s sake, but that wasn’t enough to neutralize the sting of betrayal. Not yet, anyway. Still, Nissilât felt certain that Markînu would tell her the truth about the night’s attack; if anything, he would relish in that fool’s failure just as much as she would.

Lost in her own thoughts, she didn’t immediately notice the troubled expression that passed across Tabîlu’s face, only cottoning on when he remained silent. Her heart began to race as her mind conjured up all manner of reasons that her paramour hadn’t sought them. “You haven’t heard from Markînu?” she stuttered out.

The sergeant shifted uncomfortably and refused to meet her eyes as he responded. “I haven’t heard from him, nor from any of the commanders. There are rumors…”

“Rumors? Of what?” she prodded.

“The men claim that all the commanders are dead,” he replied dully. “But the stories they tell are fantasy; they have to be.”

“Just tell them to me,” Nissilât snapped, annoyed at his reluctance to speak.

“They say that a group of flying mages descended on the tower in the middle of the night and slew all the officers within a matter of seconds. It’s obviously impossible; the city had no mages capable of such power, but…”

No one’s seen the commanders’ since, she finished his sentence silently. Even her uncle’s lackey would have had sense enough to rally the troops when the assault on the city had failed. If the commanders were truly missing from the camp, then the soldiers’ speculations, however fantastic they may be, had at least a kernel of truth to them. The commanders must be dead. Markînu was dead.

She suffocated the pang that pulsed through her heart as the realization hit her and willed her face into an iron mask. Yet, the slight break in her voice betrayed her as she spoke. “Do they have their bodies?”

Tabîlu shook his head. “Half the army has fled already, my lady, and those who remain are in disorder. I do not believe anyone has gone searching for them.”

Nissilât bowed her head, blinking away the tears that threatened to spill over as she analyzed her options. With the commanders dead, she was free to seize the reins of control again, but she was no longer certain the situation was salvageable. If Tabîlu’s news was accurate, half the army had been killed or captured in the assault, and another sizable portion had already deserted, which meant the numbers were no longer in her favor - and that was before taking into account the mysterious mages who had interfered in their campaign. We’ll need to take a census, see how many remain, she decided - but then another realization hit her.

A sense of doom loomed over her as she lurched to her feet. “Come Tabîlu,” she snapped. “We need to find the bodies.”

“My lady?”

Fear drove her to abandon all sense of propriety as she let the sheets drop and, heedless of the show she was giving the sergeant, raced over to her armoire. She dug through the trunk in a flash, pulling on a loose pair of rider’s breeches and a tunic dyed in the yellow colors of her house before donning her armor. She fumbled with the clasps on her armor, her hand trembling, and finally gave up. “Can you help me?”

“Do you really think they survived, my lady,” Tabîlu asked as he fastened the clasps.

“No.”

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“Then why-”

“Because no one knows what happened last night,” she responded, cutting him off. “The only people aware of my uncle’s meddling were the other commanders, and if they’re all dead-” She broke off as a shudder rippled down her spine. If they were all dead, and she couldn’t find the letter her uncle had sent, there would be no proof that she wasn’t responsible for the catastrophic assault. Her reputation would be in tatters and her uncle would finally have the excuse he needed to remove her. I have to find that letter.

She tried unsuccessfully to squelch the rising tide of panic as she raced toward the tower, with Tabîlu trailing behind her. The soldiers that remained turned to watch as she rushed past them, but she no longer cared about propriety. Her heart thudded in her ears as she spiraled up the tower’s twisting stairs, unheeding of her legs’ screams for mercy.

The dim light of the torches fell away as she finally reached the top, replaced by the gloom of the cloudy day, but it was more than light enough to see the horror show that awaited her.

The men’s tales suddenly seemed less improbable as she stared at the carnage on the roof. Her mind went numb as she processed the scene, taking in the tangled heaps of bodies. Many bore scorch marks, scarred by both fire and what she guessed might be lightning, while others had been cloven clean in two by either sword or wind, and just as many were riddled with arrows. A small group then, she deduced, at least two mages - maybe more. But far worse was the realization that every body on the roof was one of her own; the commanders had failed to take even a single one of their attackers with them.

Nissilât stumbled forward, her hands trembling uncontrollably as she searched for the fool. What she found instead was Markînu.

He was sprawled against the tower’s walls, his open eyes unseeing and glossy. His shield lay on top of him, riddled with arrows that had been shot with such force that they had punched through the thick metal, and the unknown archer had eventually hit their mark, as the arrow lodged in his throat attested.

With a cry of agony, Nissilât dropped to her knees beside him, running her hands through his long, silky locks as the tears she’d been holding back finally spilled over. “Why?! Why didn’t you come with me?” She sobbed, beating against his chest with impotent fury. “Why?” she screamed hoarsely.

Burying her face in his chest, she lost herself for a time, until a gentle hand nudged her shoulder.

“My lady?”

Her sense of duty returned to her as the sergeant gently lifted her up, along with a healthy dose of self-preservation. The letter, she remembered with a jolt, pulling herself away from Markînu. There would be time to mourn him later, but for now she needed that letter if she had any hope of saving herself.

“Did you find him?” She asked as she wiped the tears away, smudging her face with the tower’s grime.

“He’s there,” he said, pointing to one of the nearest mounds of bodies, “but…”

Her heart was in her throat as she stormed over to them, shoving the bodies aside until she found the fool. Unlike Markînu, the archer wasn’t the one who had killed him, something she was almost grateful for as she stared at the massive damage done to the body. One side of his chest had caved in completely, the flesh scorched so badly that it was nearly charcoal, and a portion of his skull had been sheared by something so sharp she could only assume it was magic, yet there was enough of his face left that she felt certain that it was her uncle’s lackey.

With no regard for the dead, Nissilât flipped the body over quickly searching for the man’s satchel, but her heart sank when she found it. The satchel was slung over the same side that had been caved in by the unknown spell, and like the flesh around it, was thoroughly scorched. The satchel disintegrated as she tried to open it, spilling its contents out to reveal charred, blackened papers. “No - no, no, no,” she groaned as the letter crumbled beneath her touch.

Kruvas̆. Her hands fell limply to her side as her last hope guttered out. It’s over. Even my own allies will doubt me now, and who can blame them? It will look like I ordered a suicide charge and tried to pin it on my uncle. She smiled bitterly as the truth sank in. Her uncle had tried to screw her over, and despite every facet of his plan failing, had succeeded anyway. Her eyes drifted to the dagger dangling at her belt, and her hands twitched toward it.

It is pointless - isn't it? Lurching to her feet, she staggered toward Markînu’s body, her hand fumbling with the strap, but Tabîlu intercepted her.

“Leave me alone,” she screeched as she struggled against his grip, but the sergeant didn’t relent.

“Stop it, Nissilât,” he snapped, and she froze. Not once in the decades she’d known him had he ever used her name. “This isn’t the way,” he continued. “I won’t let you kill yourself for him.”

“Then what,” she hissed back, her throat throbbing with the effort. “What hope is left?”

“I don't know, my lady,” he responded, slipping back into formality. “You’re the thinker, not me, but I know if you calm down, you can find another way.”

Though she snarled in frustration, his words broke through. With a shaky breath, she gathered her composure and released the hilt of her dagger. “You’re right. I was being hasty.” She looked away from Markînu’s body, unable to bear the sight, and tried to collect her thoughts.

Her assessment of the situation wasn’t wrong - of that, she was certain. Going back to Stryn would be little better than a death sentence, at least without some sort of leverage. And as she had no proof of her uncle’s machinations and no chance of conquering Birnah, she failed to see anything she could use as leverage. Unless…

Her thoughts turned to the mysterious mages who had spoiled all her plans. They were an outside force, an unknown factor of considerable strength but, although they had been her enemies in this conflict, she felt confident that they were not tied to Birnah - there was no way her uncle's spies had been incompetent enough to miss that many powerful mages. But if they were not citizens of Birnah, they likely bore no particular antipathy to her.

Did the emperor send them? The idea, once it occurred to her, struck her as likely. Unlike his predecessors, Eligon was not opposed to using underhanded schemes to advance his agenda. It wasn’t a stretch to believe that the emperor had caught wind of her uncle’s plans and dispatched a group of elite mages to quietly thwart them. And if that was the case, then the emperor would likely be delighted to take her under his wing, to use her as leverage against her uncle.

While it wasn’t a perfect plan, every stick looked like a rope to a drowning man. Wiping the tears from her eyes, she turned to face her sergeant. “We need to track down those mages.”