Faerie Knight 159

159 - Ashar

Daemons do not build up; they only ever cast down.  They mar the beautiful out of jealousy.  They corrupt to their use what others have built before them.

• The Testament of Isrāfīl

☀

16th Day of High Summer’s Moon, AC 297

Muddle-minded in the dark before dawn, Valeria groaned at the shifting of her bed, and threw out an arm to find only empty sheets.

“Go back to sleep, my love,” Nasir al-Rashid murmured.  The silken rustle of cloth told her that he was dressing.  

“It’s too early,” Valeria protested.

“I have a meeting to attend with my generals,” the caliph told her.  “I will join you for a morning meal, after.”  The fine wooden floor of her apartments above the Court of Eagles creaked under his weight, and then came sound of the door, leaving her alone - alone as an Exarch ever was.

“I told you,” Agrat said, settling into the bed next to Valeria.  “Men are easy to control once you take them to your bed.”

It really was too early, and Valeria didn’t want to admit the daemon had been right.  If there had been more time, she would have waited - until they were wed, at least.  But with the news from the pass, Nasir had been upset, and all to easily fallen into her arms.

“You took my message to Father?” Valeria asked.

“I did.”  Agrat reached out the black-clawed tip of one delicately pointed finger and traced slow circles over the bare skin of Valeria’s thigh.  The caress raised a row of goosebumps on her skin, and she trembled under the daemon’s touch.  “He has rather a lot of Exarchs arrayed against him, all of a sudden.  Sir Trist broke his prisoners out of their cages.”

“He should have just killed them all in the first place,” Valeria shot back.  “Is he sending us help, or not?”

“He has only five daemons left, besides myself,” Agrat elaborated, counting on her fingers.  “The Sun Eater, of course, but he won’t send Sammāʾēl away.  Bathin is for moving pieces, not for fighting.  That leaves only Morax, Loray, and Cail.”

“What about Forneus?” Valeria asked, frowning.  She sat up and shrugged away from Agrat’s touch, walking over to a washbasin of cool water to fetch herself a clean cloth.  She needed to clean the mess Nasir had left before she could dress.

“Killed by Trist du Camaret-à-Arden at Basilea,” the Plague Dancer responded, still lounging on the rumpled bed.

“How?” Valeria rounded on her.  “He escaped Cheverny, fine.  Broke out the other Exarchs, that makes sense.  But how could he possibly get from there across the outer ocean so quickly?”

“That is the question,” Agrat agreed.  “And the mystery raises another concern.”

“If he can get there,” Valeria reasoned, pacing across her floor, “he could get here.  The last thing I want is to face him and that bitch Ismet together.”

“Even worse if we have to fight three,” the daemon on the bed suggested.

“You’re right.  We’ve left it too long,” Valeria said, crossing to the chest of drawers where all the fine clothes Nasir had gifted to her were stored.  “I cannot afford to leave any weakness in the city.  No more surprises, no more toying with our enemies.  I will not leave captives to come back to trouble me, unlike my father.”

☀

Valeria found Ashar, Exarch of Hafaza the Guardian, in a small prayer room off the western wing of the caliph’s palace.  Her known association with the caliph got her up to the door - though not without a few scandalized looks - but the guards outside were stubborn.

“I must speak with the Exarch on behalf of the caliph,” Valeria insisted to them in Nabāṭic, the words and pronunciation coming much easier to her tongue after spending over a moon in Maʿīn.

“The Exarch is not to be disturbed,” the guard on the left told her, his beared lip curling in the slightest sneer.  “And certainly not for the Caliph’s mere bed-warmer.”

“I see.”  Valeria took a deep breath.  “I suppose it is simpler this way, in any event.  Were you aware that you had been infected already?”

“What?”  The man’s dark eyes widened.

“Not quite enough time to begin showing symptoms,” Valeria observed, considering him carefully.  “Under normal circumstances, at least.”  She reached out with her hand, took hold of the shining white thread in her core that touched every last plague victim in the city, and tugged.  With a gasp, the guard collapsed, sores already appearing on his body.  With a great, spasming cough, he hacked up thick globs of blood and phlegm onto the floor of the hallway.

“Now,” Valeria said, turning to the other guard.  “Will you let me pass?”

“You are a witch!” the man cried, drawing his scimitar from its sheath at his belt.  Before he could make a move toward Valeria, however, his throat was opened by a black claw from behind.  The man fell forward, clutching his neck, to reveal Agrat standing behind him, her red leathery wings half spread.  From each dying man, a Tithe pulsed, flowing into the daemon and her Exarch.

“I should have noticed this rot long ago,” a new voice broke out into the hallway, and Agrat turned, taking a step back to stand shoulder to shoulder with Valeria.  From the prayer room emerged a man with more gray than black in his beard, wearing an unadorned white keffiyeh over a matching white robe, or thoub, and loose fitting sirwal beneath.  His hands were empty, but he met Valeria’s eyes with a gaze that was unafraid.

“You would have,” Valeria said.  “If I did not possess a Boon to conceal myself from the sight of both Exarchs and Angelus.  But your failure is no less complete.  I have already feasted on the core of your old caliph, and on your precious Isrāfīl.  Now it is your turn.”

“A mere slip of a girl, hardly grown?”  Ashar scoffed, shaking his head.  With the toe of his boot, he flipped the scimitar that had been drawn by the dead guard up into the air and caught it in a sure-handed grasp.  “For thirty years I protected the caliph.  I have faced worse than you and come out the other side.  I may have failed to preserve his life, at the end, but now I will set things right.”

“You are twice wrong,” Valeria said, with a smile.  “You will fail again.  And you have never faced anyone like me.”  From within her sleeve, she drew a concealed dagger, and flicked her fingers to shift it into a reversed grip, with the blade lying flat along her forearm.

With a lunge, Ashar swept his scimitar around in a wicked cut, aimed straight for her neck.  The Exarch was going right for the kill, and Valeria could respect that, at least.  She ducked and threw herself forward, lunging past the man’s right side before he could land his swing, and dragged the edge of her dagger along his ribs, staining his white robes with bright crimson.

“You are quick,” the Exarch admitted, as they spun to face each other again.  Agrat spread her wings, but before she could rush in with her claws, she was met by a flurry of bronze wings.  The Angelus Hafaza had appeared, and the two immortal beings spun off into a fight of their own, crashing back and forth between the walls of the hallway as they tumbled through the air.

“I’ve fed well,” Valeria told him with a grin that she could not keep from her face.  She wanted him to see it, in fact, so she took a moment to rip her veil free with her left hand.  Her red hair spilled out, and she felt more free than she had since killing the old caliph.  A yellow haze of power bled out from her core, strengthening her muscles and speeding her reflexes.

“It will not save you,” Ashar said.  He pressed the attack, battering Valeria’s knife aside before releasing the hilt of his sword with his left hand, and grabbing her by the forearm.  With the practiced ease of long training, he stepped inside her legs, placing his foot behind hers, to throw her to the ground.

Valeria did not move.  Instead, she dropped her own knife to wrap her fingers around Ashar’s right wrist, while reaching forward with her left hand to grab him by the neck.  “You’re a fool,” she said, tightening her fingers.  “Daemons do not focus on speed.  More than anything else, they grant us strength.  The moment you closed to grapple with me, you lost.”

With a grinding crunch, Ashar’s wrist bones broke, and the scimitar in his hand fell to the floor of the hall with a clatter.  He gasped for breath, but the hand with which she gripped his neck might as well have been made of stone.  Valeria had never been one to prioritize her physical Boons, but a moon of Tithing plague victims had given her so much power to work with that she had not seen any need to be selective.

“I… you…” Ashar wheezed, his face turning first red, and then purple from lack of air.  When she felt his body go limp, Valeria released his wrist and brought both hands to his neck.  Finally, she felt something beneath his skin collapse, and an outpouring of Tithes traced their way up her arms, into her chest, and then into her core.

A wail from down the hallway told her that the Angelus Hafaza had felt the death of his Exarch.  A mighty crash sounded, and the wall of the hallway broke entirely, giving way to Agrat’s body as Hafaza threw her aside.  The Angelus spread bronze wings and shot forward, directly at Valeria.

“Yes,” she crooned.  “Don’t run.  Come and kill me.”  Valeria bent down to take her dagger back into her hand, and wrapped the sparking rope of her newest Boon around the blade.  

The Angelus hit her like a siege engine, taking the two of them back through not one but two palace walls before they finally came to rest amidst broken stones and dust.  There was no way that Valeria could take a second hit like that: she hurt everywhere, and every breath sent a sharp stab of pain through her side.

“This is the end,” Hafaza intoned, with a voice like a tolling bell.

“For you,” Valeria wheezed, and lifted her hand to point a finger at where a dagger had been jammed into the Angelus’ shoulder.  Already, Hafaza’s shining form was turning black, as if consumed by an invisible flame.  “Bane of the Angelus,” she said, laughing around the taste of her own blood.

With a roar, Hafaza beat his wings once and leapt straight up, breaking through the beautiful ceiling above and sending down another rain of crumbling masonry.  His form was lost in the darkness of the night sky overhead, and Valeria rolled onto her hands and knees.

“I could pursue him,” Agrat said.

“No,” Valeria decided, staggering to her feet.  “We have all of the Boons his Exarch once wielded.  Even if he finds a new vessel to make a Pact with, they will be young and weak.  We will reap everything we can from the people of this city, and when that whore Ismet comes, we will be ready for her.”

 “Valeria?”

The voice was Nasir’s, flanked by his own palace guards to either side.  His eyes were wide, his face twisted in horror.  Agrat did not bother vanishing.  “What is the meaning of this?” the caliph demanded.

“Stop deluding yourself, Nasir,” Valeria said.  She tossed her hair back, and walked towards him, exaggerating the roll of her hips.  “You turned away from the Angelus the moment you took your throne without Isrāfīl’s support.  Even before that, when you gave the order to have an Exarch of the Angelus arrested.”

“I do not know what you mean,” Nasir protested, backing up a step.

“Yes you do,” Valeria insisted, walking right up to him and wrapping her arms around his neck.  She made certain to press her breasts into him.  “You chose the side that benefitted you the most.  I respect that.  When your father was killed, you didn’t ask questions, because it got you what you wanted.  When I invited you to my bed, you wanted that, too.  Don’t second guess yourself now just because you chose to be blind.  You threw aside every tradition of your people for your own personal power, and that is exactly the sort of ally I want.  I won’t let them kill you.”

Before the Caliph could protest, she leaned forward and caught his mouth with hers.  She didn’t care if his guards were watching - making a public display would only bind him to her more tightly.  She bit his lip between her teeth hard enough to draw blood, and then leaned back to enjoy the fear in his eyes.

“We’re going to kill her together,” Valeria promised.

“Who?” Nasir al-Rashid asked.

“The woman who threw you aside.  Ismet ibnah Salah.”