“Battlement secure!” Hadith yelled to Kellan.
Three breaths later they were joined. The queen stood on the inner side of the battlement, the one closest to the keep. Down below, her guard had won their fight as well.
Queen Tsiora looked out at the massacre on the courtyard’s stones. She was statue still and her head was held high. It was as if she was waiting to be painted. Tau did not understand what she was doing. Then one of the Queen’s Guard saw her and cheered. The rest of fighters, the ones in the courtyard and on the battlements, looked. They all saw their queen, their reason for this fight, and the loyalists gave a shout. Tsiora raised her royal hand and waved it at her men, like she was blessing them, and the ragged cheer grew louder.
Yaw came jogging up the steps with Themba. “Brothers!”
“Yaw, Themba,” said Hadith. “Good to see you’re still alive.”
“For now,” said Themba, eyeing the Indlovu outside the walls.
Yaw, seeing the queen, started. Then he bobbed his head up and down like driftwood on the Roar before dropping to his knees, pulling Themba down with him.
“You may rise,” Tsiora said. They did and she spoke to Kellan. “Who leads our men now?”
Kellan pointed to the group of men behind the keep’s gates. “My queen, the highest-ranking officer of the Queen’s Guard is likely to be down there. When the gates fall, it will be the source of the heaviest fighting.”
“You are a third-cycle initiate?”
“I am, my queen. Inkokeli of Scale Osa. I was to be trained as an Ingonyama, pending royal approval.”
“We see. You are now an Ingonyama, Kellan Okar. You have received royal approval. You shall also lead the men upon the battlements.”
Okar glowed with pride. “I will honor your name, my queen.”
“Kellan Okar, Ingonyama, can we defend this keep?” she asked. “Can we hold, if we are clever and if we are lucky?”
Okar’s face fell. He was unwilling or unable to lie to his queen, and so said nothing.
“We understand,” Tsiora said, and for the briefest measure, Tau saw a frightened young woman with far too much responsibility. “Our challenge is significant,” she said. “Thus, we command those loyal to the queen to be particularly clever and amazingly lucky.”
Hadith chuckled, but, worried he might offend the queen, he pretended to be coughing. Queen Tsiora smiled at him, her eyes lighting up mischievously. Hadith lost the cough and smiled back.
Tau couldn’t believe it. With a few words and a smile, this child queen had charmed the same Lesser who had worn Tau’s ears thin with talk of Noble oppression.
“Betrayal?” Kana asked, speaking in halting and accented Empiric.
“It is,” Queen Tsiora told him. “We were betrayed by the highest-ranking members of our nobility.”
“Nobility…,” Kana said.
Uduak pointed off in the distance, to the city’s low walls. “Look!”
“Xiddeen?” Kana said, brows knitted. “My father comes.”
Kana was right. The invading force had reached Citadel City and Odili had not yet taken the keep or killed the queen. The guardian councillor’s plan was unraveling, and so was the Chosen’s chance for peace.
“Why… my father here?” Kana asked.
“We have been informed that the Noble’s treachery goes beyond us,” the queen told him. Kana waited for her to say more, and Tsiora gathered herself. “It is likely that the Gifted sent to you was an agent of the coup. She was a… a caller of fire-demons.”
Kana’s face darkened. “She was covered and masked.” He looked from face to face, and Tau knew he would find no comfort. “The Conclave?”
Tsiora held Kana’s eyes with hers. “We are told that your father’s presence may be an answer to what happened there.”
Kana leaned in, disbelief etched on his severe features. “Fire-demon burn Conclave?” His body was tensed, and Tau prepared himself in case the Xiddian attacked the queen.
“My father,” Kana said, “will kill you all.”
“We will tell him we were betrayed,” Tsiora said. “We will—”
“Queen,” Kana interrupted, earning himself a growl from Vizier Nyah, “No. Achak, father, he kill everyone, all Chosen everywhere.”
As Kana spoke, Tau heard the screech of wrenching bronze. It was almost human, the wail the gates gave as they ripped from their moorings and toppled.
Hadith swore, Uduak shifted his weight beside Tau, and the queen gripped the crenellations with so much force that Tau thought she might crack the adobe. The gates had fallen and Odili’s Indlovu swarmed the Guardian Keep like a plague of locusts.
HEX
The Queen’s Guard, the ones in the courtyard, died. After the bloodbath, one of the Indlovu noticed the queen, her cloud-white gown standing out in the dark, and many of them splintered off from the main group, rushing the stairs to the battlements. Kellan ordered the men with him to hold the stairs and asked Kana to stay back. Tau moved to obey, but the queen took his wrist. Her skin was soft, warm, like ash from a recently cooled fire.
“Will you stay with us, Tau Solarin?”
“My queen,” he said, after a breath’s hesitation.
She did not release his wrist. “Our thanks.”
Feeling taut as a kora’s strings, Tau stood by while Kellan and his sword brothers struggled to hold the stairs against a seething mass of full-blooded Indlovu. He flinched and tensed with every hit that his brothers took. And when Yaw was struck on his injured shoulder by a blow that sent him spinning to the battlement floor, Tau tested the queen’s hold. Her grip was firm, staying him.
He looked at her, trying to convey his need. She saw him and looked back to the battle for the stairs. Her face was placid, but her chest heaved and her fingers were clenched.
“My queen,” Nyah said, “you should leave the battlements. It won’t be much longer.”
Tau thought the same. It would not be much longer.
“Dear Nyah,” Queen Tsiora said, voice steady. “There is nowhere to go.”
Nyah moved her head like a wind vane, seeing Odili’s men outside the walls, inside the courtyard, and pushing up the stairs. The queen was right.
“Tau Solarin, if the time comes, we would ask a favor of you,” Tsiora said.
“My queen,” he said, wanting nothing more than to join his brothers.
“When hope is lost, do not allow us to fall into our enemy’s hands.”
“Tsiora!” said Nyah. “Queen Tsiora, no!”
The queen shushed her vizier with a raised finger. “Tau Solarin, will you aid us in this matter?”
Kana watched the three of them like they had lost their minds. His spear was out and aimed toward the fighting, though he’d taken heed of Kellan and stayed out of it. He was waiting to hear what Tau would say.
“I cannot do this,” Tau told her.
“Cannot?” she asked.
“I will die first.”
She paused, surprised, but would not be dissuaded. “And leave us to be used, then killed by those who wish us harm? We would be at Odili and his men’s mercy, such as it would be.”