Tau looked. The night was dark, but the path behind them was long and level, and he’d been born with sharp eyes. He could see them.
The Xiddeen had reorganized themselves. They were marching. At the front of their column was a group of lizard riders.
Hadith pressed his forehead to Mshindi’s, speaking to the bereaved brother. That done, he turned to the group. “We have to stay ahead of them.”
Kellan was standing nearby. “Yes, if anyone is still in the Crags, we need to warn them, and if not, we need to warn Citadel City. They have to know that our defense of the Fist failed.”
Hadith raised his voice, speaking to the remnants of two wings. “Help the wounded, no one gets left behind, but know that we cannot slow our pace. Citadel City may stand or fall on our speed.”
Kellan eyed Hadith, unsure how to deal with the Lesser’s presumption.
“Leave it,” said Zuri. Kellan grunted but left it, and the fighters, Ihashe and Indlovu, moved as fast as they could down the mountain.
“Tau,” Zuri said, “there will be no peace?”
“Peace?” Kellan and Hadith said together.
Tau addressed Kellan. “You’re the champion’s nephew.”
“And?” said Kellan.
Tau hesitated. It felt strange to give up the secret, but it was more strange to imagine it meant anything but ashes. “Before the melee, I followed Jayyed and Odili. They joined up with the queen’s champion, the KaEid, a few Gifted, and a couple Ingonyama. They climbed the Crags and met a party of Xiddeen in the Fist.”
“They did what?” said Kellan.
“You really want us to believe that you didn’t know your uncle was holding peace talks?” asked Tau.
Hadith almost choked on the words. “Peace talks?”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Kellan. “Abshir is more queen’s champion than uncle. The man refused to come to my father’s funeral. He said he could not, in good conscience, attend a coward’s burning.”
Tau could hear the bitterness in Kellan’s voice.
“I wouldn’t know anything that I was not, as an Indlovu initiate, supposed to know,” Kellan said.
“What happened in the Crags?” Zuri asked.
“I only know what I overheard,” Tau said.
“Then, tell us that.”
“The hedeni came to the meeting with a captured Gifted, an Enrager. She’d been their prisoner for almost a full cycle. She was tortured. They made her teach them how to enrage.”
“Impossible,” Kellan said. “The races of man cannot learn each other’s gifts. Besides, the Goddess burned out the Xiddeen’s gifts when She cursed them.”
Tau’s voice was tight. “The hedena enraged, who killed Chinedu and Jayyed, would have a word with you on that.” Kellan had no reply, and Tau told them the rest. “At the meeting, the hedeni returned our Gifted. Their warlord’s son came too. The son is meant to manage our military’s surrender, as a beginning to peace. In turn, we gave them an Enervator. She will teach her gift. Then, to complete the terms for peace, the dragons must leave Xidda and Queen Tsiora must marry the warlord’s son.”
“No, she can’t!” Kellan spluttered. “Why would we accept this?”
“Jayyed doesn’t think… he didn’t think the war winnable and tried to prove it to the Guardian Council. For doing so, he was removed from their ranks and stripped of his role among them.”
“If they found his evidence so lacking, how did we come to peace talks?” Kellan asked.
“Your uncle sits on the council. He heard Jayyed speak. He must have told the queen.”
Kellan spoke slowly, placing emphasis on each word. “Your position is that secondhand words convinced our queen to sue for peace?”
“Jayyed spoke with her directly and it seemed to him that the queen already knew we were losing. But maybe his testimony to the council, along with whatever else she knows, pushed her toward peace.”
“As you say,” said Kellan, watching Tau from the side of his eyes.
“The talks I overheard were not the first ones. Queen Tsiora has had her champion, council chairman, and KaEid working to see if peace is possible. She found out it was, and, earlier tonight, Zuri told me that the queen planned to meet with the Guardian Council after the melee.” Tau looked at the faces of those around him. “I think that meeting’s goal is to inform the council that terms for peace have been accepted. If the queen knows that war with the Xiddeen ends in our destruction, she has to stop it.”
Themba interjected. “Stop the war? Surrender it, you mean.”
Themba’s words, so near the ones Tau had spoken to Jayyed, seemed naive when voiced as the tatters of their fighting force raced down a mountain in the heartland of their queendom, fleeing an army of invaders they could not stop.
“You think it was easy for Jayyed to argue for peace?” Tau asked. “He spent his whole life fighting the hedeni. He sacrificed so much, and in the end, the Nobles took more from him than the Xiddeen ever did. Odili and the KaEid used Jamilah to hurt him. They placed his only child in the hands of our enemy!” Tau’s voice had gotten louder. He didn’t hear Zuri when first she spoke.
“No,” she said. “Goddess, no.” Zuri had stopped moving.
“Lady Gifted, we cannot dally,” Kellan told her.
“We gave them Jamilah? Jamilah is Jayyed’s daughter?”
Something in the way she said it made the rest of them stop.
“She’s not just an Enervator,” Zuri said. “Jamilah is one of our most powerful. She’s an Entreater.”
“We really should keep moving,” Yaw said, looking back. The hedeni were lost to sight on the Crag’s twisting paths, but they would not be far behind.
“Jayyed told me that she knew how to call to the Guardians,” Tau said, “but she won’t be able to do it. They blindfolded her, then covered her head before taking her into Xiddeen territory, to a gathering they call the Conclave. She can’t direct the dragons there. She’ll have no idea where she is and she’s alone, no Hex.”
Zuri was breathing too fast, like she’d been sprinting. “That’s not how it works,” she said. “Remember, Tau, Entreaters send out a youngling distress call. The Entreater doesn’t need to know where she is. The dragons come to her.”
“The Guardians can sense where this Gifted is?” Hadith asked.
“Yes,” Zuri said to them both. “Yes.”
“Must go,” said Uduak, placing a large hand in the middle of Zuri’s and Tau’s backs, encouraging them forward.
“She was taken alone,” Tau said, marching again. “She needs a Hex to call a Guardian.”
“Only if she means to survive,” Zuri said.
“Wait, the plan was to have Jamilah call down a Guardian attack on the Conclave?” asked Kellan.
“Why won’t she survive?” asked Hadith.
Zuri turned to him. “If Jamilah calls a Guardian to the Conclave, it will come, it will attack, and when it realizes its youngling is not the source of the distress call, it will hold Jamilah’s soul in Isihogo until her ability to hide from the demons fails. When that happens, the demons will find and kill her.”