“Gentlemen,” the Maidservant says to them in greeting. “Seafarer. It’s been a while.”
They all nod back, and the one known as Sand Devil gives a sly, black-toothed grin. “Indeed it has. I’m surprised you even found the time to show up. What with how busy you’ve been lately.”
Sand Devil is a balding man two heads shorter than the other male disciples in the room, though what he lacks in height he more than makes up for in his capacity to annoy. Hailing from the same region as River, he wears only a nut-brown kikoi and holds an enchanted spear of tronic bone and witchwood in one hand.
He tilts his head now and squints at the Maidservant. “But I wonder: Is it still you in there? You seem . . . less of yourself somehow.”
Noting the silent chuckles from the other two men next to him, she bites off an emotional reaction. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’m just saying. Playing with that kind of magic has a price, doesn’t it?” Sand Devil rakes her naked body with his eyes, and his grin widens. “Sooner or later the spirits will come calling.”
“Watch it,” River says, stepping forward dangerously. The Maidservant stops him with a gesture.
“I appreciate your concern, Sand Devil, but I feel just fine.”
“We know what you did in the Plains,” says Hunter, a proud man whose thick gray beard is an art form unto itself. An intricate network of scarification and red tattoos shows beneath his sleeveless crimson robe. He wears a wooden helmet crowned with the prominent sicklelike horns of an abada and holds a knotted staff with the tail of a tronic wildebok affixed to one end.
But it’s his eyes that are most striking, a reptilian medley of bright yellows, greens, and reds.
“Can you tell us what in the Blood Woman’s name you were thinking, provoking the ire of the Yerezi queen?” he says.
“Leave her alone.” Seafarer wags a moody finger. “What she gets up to is no one’s business but hers and the Dark Sun’s.”
Hunter glares at her. “Not if it will drag us all into a war we can’t afford to fight.”
“What’s the matter?” River says with an acid sneer. “Is the great Hunter afraid of war? Are you the coward I’ve always known you to be after all?”
Fury sparks in Hunter’s brilliant eyes, but before he can close the distance and attack, Northstar, the stolid, ax-wielding brute of a man next to him—wearing a grass skirt and armor pieces of tronic bone—puts a meaty hand on his shoulder and squeezes. “Behave. Our lord is near.”
Hunter shrugs off Northstar’s hand and glares at River. The Maidservant suffers a wave of hatred for having to tolerate any of them.
“I’d forgotten how much I love these meetings,” Sand Devil says with evident glee. “Like a big, happy, dysfunctional family reunion.”
“My trusted lieutenants. Welcome.” With the sound of that resonant voice comes a cold shadow that falls upon the throne hall, signifying the arrival of the man himself, the one to whom they all owe fealty.
The shadow is quite literal, as the Dark Sun uses sorcery to bend light around himself so that his face is always veiled in darkness. All anyone ever sees of his features are a square-jawed outline and the unnatural red gleam of his tronic left eye, which is said to have come from a dingonek.
A patterned robe of crimson and gold hangs on his lean frame in loose folds. He is easily the tallest person the Maidservant has ever seen, a giant even next to Northstar. As he saunters barefoot from a side door to his throne, hands clasped behind him, Hunter bows, and the others follow his example. “Great Muchinda.”
“We are honored to be in your presence, Muchinda,” Sand Devil says.
The warlord’s tronic eye seems to flicker in what the Maidservant would guess is amusement. “Yes, I’m sure you are,” he says, and then he continues to his throne.
The Maidservant shudders with rage she can’t express. Her hatred of this man burns with the fires of a thousand suns, and yet it is imprisoned in her body, locked behind a curse that warps her will and binds it to his. She would sooner slit her own throat than see him come to harm.
But soon I will be free, she tells herself, and then I will laugh over your corpse.
The Dark Sun relaxes into his throne and brings his fingers together, his tronic eye glaring in the shadows that enshroud his face. When he speaks, his sonorous voice fills the hall like something that belongs in a deep subterranean cavern.
“The world,” he says, “the natural order of things, stands on a precipice of calamity, and a guiding hand moving in the shadows keeps pushing us closer to the edge. Why? I cannot say. Its intentions continue to elude me, but its workings are impossible to miss.”
The glare of his eye winks out, and he falls into a spell of introspective silence, as though he has forgotten he has an audience. The Maidservant briefly scans the other lieutenants and sees the same worry she feels on their faces. The Dark Sun is at his most ruthless when he’s in a thoughtful mood.
Abruptly the red eye pierces the veil of shadows, and the warlord returns to his speech. “By now I’m certain you’ve all heard of the massacre that recently struck King Mweneugo Saire from the face of the earth. He and his entire family were slaughtered. By his own men, if the rumors are to be believed.” His head lists to one side, and his red eye locks onto one of his lieutenants. “I see the news pleases you, Sand Devil. Tell me why.”
Sand Devil shows his blackened teeth, not bothering to hide his glee. “I say good riddance, Muchinda. Mweneugo was a menace to our people. His legions pressed well south of the Yontai, usurping land that belongs to the Umadi. May he forever rot in the underworld.”
“Good riddance indeed,” Seafarer crows.
Next to her, Hunter rolls his reptilian eyes. “Why do you care about land that isn’t ours? He took it from our northern enemies, and it only made them weaker.”
Sand Devil frowns. “I care because less land for them means less land for us when we begin our northward expansion. With Mweneugo’s removal, we’ll be in prime position to take our tribelands back from the Yontai.”
Huffing a mirthless laugh, Hunter says, “Your shortsightedness can be astounding at times.”
The Dark Sun raises a hand to intervene. “King Mweneugo was a menace to the northern warlords, true, but he was also conservative in his ways. He saw no need to expand his lands beyond the establishment of a buffer zone, even though he certainly had the means to do so. What he lacked was the will, and that made him tolerable at the least, perhaps even preferable to an alternative.”
The Dark Sun drops his hand and settles it onto his throne’s armrest. “But the so-called high mystics are now set to replace him with a new king, one who, according to the whispers, harbors great ambitions of empire. His wish is to bring all the Redlands under his dominion within his lifetime. Do you know what that means, Northstar?”
The big warrior mystic grunts. “It means he poses a direct threat to us, Muchinda.”
“A grave threat,” the warlord agrees. “Umadiland might belong to the Umadi, but we are not one people. We are a fluid collection of fiefdoms divided against ourselves. We stand no chance faced with the organized legions of the Yontai, especially not if the high mystics and their covens stand with them. Which leaves us with two choices.” The warlord ticks off one finger. “Sit and wait for the new king to gather his legions and pick us off one by one.” He ticks off another. “Or change the way we do things so that he finds that we are ready for him.”