only recently cut into the bowels of the hill beneath the greenland duke’s palace.
The smooth rock walls glittered with wardlight, the symbols running along them proof against demon and mortal intrusion both. Here, the Damajah worked her deepest magics and secured her most precious treasures.
‘Nie’s black heart!’ The words echoed in the hall. ‘Is there half a mind among you? Apple juice, I said!’
One of her moods? Ashia’s fingers asked the eunuch guarding the door.
She only has one, the eunuch’s fingers replied.
Ashia sighed, finding her centre before she pushed open the door. Kajivah’s chambers were large and lavish, with servants to attend her every need. At the moment all of them were on their knees, auras ripe with fear.
‘Holy Mother,’ one of the servants said. ‘The greenland fruit is not in season. There are none to be had in all Everam’s Bounty.’
Kajivah drew breath to shout what would no doubt have been a terrible reply, but she caught sight of Ashia in the doorway and the rage dissipated with her exhale. She strode over, arms extended. ‘Give him to me.’
Ashia’s jaw tightened beneath her veil, but she undid the fastenings, catching the sleeping Kaji in the crook of her arm long enough for Kajivah to take him.
The woman’s whole demeanour changed the moment she held him, and Ashia knew that whatever came to pass, Kajivah would never harm her great-grandson – would stand between him and all the demons of the abyss.
‘Will you take him for the night?’ she asked. It would be Ashia’s first night apart from her son since the Night of Hora when they walked the edge of the abyss together.
‘Of course, of course.’ Kajivah did not take her eyes off the child.
‘Thank you, Tikka,’ Ashia said.
Now the woman looked up. ‘Do not call me that. Not ever again.’
Ashia swallowed. Once, she had been the favourite of Kajivah’s many granddaughters. It was Kajivah’s own insistence that sent Ashia and her spear sisters to the Dama’ting Palace, putting them on the path to Sharum’ting. Now they were nothing to her.
She dropped her eyes, bowing. ‘As you wish, Holy Mother.’
She turned on her heel, striding quickly from Kaji lest she lose her resolve and rush back to him.
Even at night, infiltrating Asome’s wing of the palace was difficult. The new Shar’Dama Ka had found and sealed the secret passages the Sharum’ting used to move unseen about the palace. Guards and armed dama patrolled the halls, eyes warded to see in Everam’s light. Tapestries, rugs, and tiles were warded against alagai, but Ashia could see, too, wardings much like those the dama’ting used. Symbols to raise alarm if even a human were to cross them, and to seal this part of the palace from prying eyes. The hora stones the Damajah hoped to use to eavesdrop would be of little use, their magic blocked.
But Ashia, Micha, and Jarvah were clad in their kai’Sharum’ting robes, embroidered in electrum thread with wards of unsight. Whether in human sight or Everam’s light, they blended with their surroundings as easily as a sand demon in the dunes. It was only when they moved swiftly that they could be seen.
Their jewellery was similarly magicked, rings and bracelets on their hands and feet allowing them to cling to walls and ceilings like spiders. Slowly they slithered deeper and deeper into her husband’s sanctum.
Check the lower levels, Ashia told Jarvah when they were past the barriers. Asome will have an underpalace of his own. Find and penetrate it if you can.
Yes, Sharum’ting Ka.
Jarvah disappeared as Ashia and Micha made their way up to the residential floors. The Palace had seven levels, one for each pillar in heaven, but the outer stair only went to six, landing doors guarded by an alert kai’Sharum, bright in Everam’s light.
The sixth floor was reserved for the royal family, a place Ashia knew well. She and Kajivah both had chambers there. Technically they had been Asome’s chambers, but her husband had only seen the pillows there once.
The Damajah believed her blessed mother would be housed on the sixth as well.
The topmost floor, Asome’s private level, could only be reached by an inner stair, no doubt guarded as well.
The young women paused, clinging to the ceiling as the door guard came into clear view. Even with his white night veil in place, Ashia recognized her cousin Iraven, the Deliverer’s firstborn Majah son. Stripped of rank by Damaji Aleveran, he was now relegated to guard duty for his elder brother.
Micha took one hand from her hold on the ceiling, making the sign for the sleeping potion they carried. Applied to a cloth and forced over the mouth and nose, it could render even a large man unconscious for some time, waking with only fuzzy memories of his last moments. Her littlest finger curled, indicating a question.
Ashia shook her head. Too slow, her fingers said. Precise Strike.
The Precise Strike, their master Enkido’s school of sharusahk, targeted the natural convergences in the body. Places where muscle, vein, and nerve met. The targets were small and always in motion, each unique as their owner, but a sharp, precise blow could temporarily cripple an opponent, or knock them out instantly.
They edged slowly into position, clinging to the ceiling directly over their cousin. Micha would hold him, and Ashia would strike. But before Ashia signalled the drop, a pair of nie’dama carrying food trays ascended the steps. She could tell from body language that Iraven recognized them and would let them pass unhindered.
Micha needed no orders as they opened the doors, following instantly as Ashia sprang through. They landed in identical rolls on opposite sides of the hall, warded bracelets absorbing the sound. Their robes blurred for a moment, but they were effectively invisible again by the time the boys passed through the door.
The floor was warded, a puzzle of steps that would sound an alarm if crossed improperly. Ashia memorized the path the boys took, but she and Micha followed along the walls, blending perfectly with the paint. They reached an inner stair guarded by a pair of clerics with warded staves, and the nie’dama split up, one continuing down the hall as the other ascended to the seventh floor.
Follow. Ashia used a finger to indicate the first boy. Her mission was to find the Damajah’s parents, but this close, Ashia could not resist looking in on her treacherous husband. She followed the second boy up the stairs, slithering along the ceiling faster than he could climb. She was his shadow as he passed guards and doors, coming at last to an anteroom where the boy laid the tray on a table, knocked at the far door, and then quickly scurried out, closing the hall door behind him.
Ashia was ready to leap when the door opened, but when she saw Asome, her breath caught and she nearly missed her opportunity. In their entire marriage, had she ever seen her husband answer a door? That was a task for women and servants.
Then Asome did the unthinkable. The Shar’Dama Ka, supreme leader of all Krasia, bent and picked up the tray himself. Ashia slipped in while his back was turned, thoughts reeling. Had Asome become a recluse since Asukaji died? A haunted shell of a man? Part of her hoped it was so. A taste of the judgement he would find in Heaven.
‘Dinner, my sun,’ Asome called, and Ashia blinked. His wife and lover murdered, and he had already found another? Anger threatened her centre, but she brushed it aside, skittering along the ceiling to follow her husband to the pillow chamber. Who would she find? Dama Jamere? Cashiv? One of Asome’s half brothers?
The last person she expected was her brother, Asukaji, whose neck she had broken.
‘I