“Fool!” cursed Tau. “Chasing after this fight.”
“My uncle,” Kellan answered, gutting the Indlovu who had tried to kill him.
Tau glanced back to the rest of the scale. The fighting around the fountain had intensified, and they wouldn’t be coming to help anytime soon.
“Down, Jabari!” yelled Kellan, bringing his shield around to stop a blow that would have brained the Petty Noble.
Jabari was blowing air like a caught fish. “There’s too many.”
“Stay close,” said Tau, putting his sword through a man’s eye and dropping a level to spear another in the groin. Both men fell away, creating enough space for three more to take their place.
“Uncle!” called Kellan.
“To your left. Break their line,” Abshir shouted to Kellan. “To the right,” he ordered his own men.
Kellan moved left. There were only a few men between the Queen’s Guard and him on that side, and at Abshir’s order, more Queen’s Guard had moved to help. Tau followed, fighting off three Indlovu and trying to keep Jabari alive, though it seemed his onetime friend was determined to skewer himself on every blade that came close.
“Stay near!” Tau told him again.
“I… am… near!”
“Quick, now!” Abshir said. “Let them through.”
And, like that, they had joined up with the Queen’s Guard. Tau looked past the press of bodies, shields, and blades. Beyond Tau’s position, Hadith and the scale had been pushed back from the fountain. More of Odili’s men were in the anteroom. They were coming in from the other hallways. The odds for Scale Jayyed and the men loyal to the queen had grown longer.
“Where’s the queen?” Kellan asked his uncle.
“Behind us, but there are other ways in. Kellan, hold here. I must go to her.”
Kellan nodded, his uncle stepped back, Odili’s full-bloods flooded into the space he’d made, and several blades thrust for Abshir’s face and body. He knocked a couple aside and Kellan stepped up, holding the line. An Indlovu dove in, his eyes bright as he swung for Abshir. Kellan split the man’s skull, and Abshir shouted and fell.
Seeing the champion drop encouraged Odili’s Indlovu. They pressed their full weight against the Queen’s Guard, bowing the defensive line back and into the hallway. The guard were too few and had held because the mouth of the hallway meant they could stand united. The press of Indlovu threatened to snap the guard’s advantage. Tau jabbed his blades everywhere he thought could do damage, but this wasn’t his type of fight. It was like battling a wall of shields.
“Get him back,” Kellan shouted to Tau.
Tau disengaged, calling for Jabari’s help. They grabbed the champion and pulled him away from the defensive line. Abshir had been cut just below the armpit and the wound was deep.
“You’ll be fine,” Tau told him. He stood, meaning to go back to the fight, when Abshir clamped onto his wrist and pulled him down.
“Ihashe, the queen must be protected!” he told Tau. “The far end of this hall opens into the room known as the Goddess’s Choice. Tell Kellan to take the gold door. He must find her before Odili. Tell Kellan!”
“Odili?”
“Go!”
Tau stood.
“I’m coming,” Jabari said.
Tau wasn’t listening. “Kellan,” he said to the fighting man’s back. “Your uncle is injured, but I know where the queen is.”
“You go!” Kellan shouted over his shoulder. “I’ll hold them back.”
“The champion asked for you.”
“Because he thinks I’m the best fighter,” Kellan grunted between thrusts, shield blocks, and counterstrikes, “because he thinks I can be her champion in his place. But he’s wrong. You’re better. Save the queen!”
Tau shouldn’t go. He knew he shouldn’t. He wasn’t thinking about the queen. He was thinking about Abasi Odili. He wasn’t the right person for this.
“Let’s go!” said Jabari, putting a hand on Tau’s shoulder. “We can’t let Odili get away with this.”
Tau turned from Kellan and the fighting, looking down the long hallway. “He won’t get away,” he said.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ENRAGED
Tau and Jabari sprinted down the hallway. They ran past paintings of the Omehi queens who had ruled in Osonte and then in Xidda. They ran past the portrait of Queen Taifa, the Dragon Queen. They ran past the one of her daughter, Queen Tsiora I, and then past the portraits of queens Tau could not name. They ran into the room called the Goddess’s Choice.
“Where now?” Jabari asked, turning in a circle.
They were in an octagonal room; each corner held a door, and each door was painted a different color.
“The gold,” said Tau.
The gold door led to another hallway that opened onto a small courtyard with reclining chairs, tables, plants, and flowers. It was an oasis, a refuge from the city, the heat, the world.
Tau heard the sound of wood being chopped. He heard voices, but the thing that held his attention was the ground in front of him. It had been molded to mimic the peninsula. An artist had re-created their valley. The map showed everything from the Roar to the Wrist and all that was between. The peninsula’s largest cities were there, each differentiated by depictions of their most iconic buildings. Tau saw Kigambe, Jirza, Palm, and Citadel City.
“Tau,” Jabari hissed.
Tau knew why he was looking at the map. He knew he was stretching out the moment when he laid his eyes on them.
“Tau, what are you doing?”
Tau lifted his eyes and saw Odili, Dejen, the KaEid, and two full-blooded Indlovu.
“They’re cutting through that door,” Jabari said. “The queen must be inside.”
“Yes,” said Tau, walking forward.
“There’s four of them and the KaEid. Tau…”
Tau was no longer listening. He was closing in on his prey like an inyoka slithering through tall grasses. He would go unseen until it was time to strike, time to kill. They wouldn’t even know he was there until it was too late.
“Abasi Odili!” Tau yelled from twenty strides away. They turned to face him. “You murdered my father and destroyed my life. I am here to balance the scales.”
Abasi Odili looked nonplussed. Then, regaining some sense of himself, he spoke. “Common, I have killed many fathers and destroyed many lives. You’ll have to be more specific.”
With a wave of his hand Odili sent one of the full-bloods at Tau. Dejen looked away, unconcerned, as he and the other full-blood continued to cut through the door.
The Indlovu came, and Jabari moved to stand beside Tau. The Indlovu had his sword up. “I am Abiodan Onyakachi of—”
Tau lunged, Abiodan jerked his sword to block, and Tau dropped, cutting through the man’s calf with his blade. The Indlovu began to fall, and as he did, Tau drove his strong-side sword through his skull. The dead man collapsed onto the tiled floor. Tau jiggled his blade free and kept going. Jabari was no longer beside him. Jabari was staring at the dead Noble.
“Abasi Odili!” Tau called.
“Enough of this!” said the KaEid. “Abasi, have them killed and let’s be done with Tsiora.”