In her lap, she held a small, terrified creature.A bunny with its feet tied.
“I call upon your name; should his life end, I will call you into questioning." With that, she picked up the blade and slit the throat of her sacrifice.
Azul raised her head; she could hear footsteps, many, approaching her shrine.
She heard the occasional spear hitting the ground and realised those were guards surrounding her.
“Akwaugo!”Nkiru called from the distance, but her voice was quickly silenced.
Taking a deep breath, she stood.
She turned to guards all around the entrance to the shrine—a dozen of them, maybe more, their faces shadowed by the harsh light.At their head stood a man she did not recognise, his robes marking him as an Elder of rank.
"Akwaugo."His voice was flat."You will come with us."
"On whose authority?"she asked.
"The Dowager."
She did not fight.Asking where she was being taken would also be meaningless.As they led her away, she watched as Nkiru was gagged and dragged away; Azul couldn’t tell if she was crying or if it was just the rain.
The Grand Council chamber was chaos as usual when the Elder of Justice entered.
He was soaked through, his robes dripping water onto the polished floor, his expression so foul that men actually stepped back to let him pass.The room, which had been a frenzy of argument and accusation, fell silent at the sight of him.
"Elder."General Ekwueme stepped forward."What news?"
The Elder of Justice did not answer immediately.He walked to the center of the room, turning slowly, letting every face see what was in his eyes.
"The Igwe is dead."
Her cell was small—barely large enough to lie down in—with walls of cold stone and a floor of packed earth that smelled of damp and rot.A single barred window let in the sound of rain and the occasional flash of lightning.
Azul sat against the wall, her knees drawn up; she had been here for hours, maybe longer.Time moved strangely in places like this.
The guards who had brought her had spoken little, but they had spoken enough.The Iyom's suicide and the Igwe's death.The chaos engulfing the palace.It was all falling into place, exactly as she knew it would.
She laughed, the sound crescendoing and echoing off the stone walls.
"The devil must die," she mused, her smile widening.Since this was the game board the Dowager set, it would be rude if she didn't play along."But which devil?"
Chapter 28
Borjirodeintotheenemy camp with his spine straight.Surrounded by men that weren’t his own, facing men that could kill him.
The journey had taken two days of riding through rain and mud, of watching the horizon for signs of pursuit, of sitting on the edge of madness, waiting for someone to drive a blade through his spine.
Orda Naiman's camp sprawled across the valley.Ten thousand men, at least—tents stretching to the horizon, cookfires sending smoke spiralling into the thunderous sky, and the sounds of an army preparing for war.Borji had seen military camps before.He had never seen one this size, this organised.Warlords were notorious for their discipline; their men were beasts for a reason, he could only imagine what the Valthorne looked like in full glory.
They were met at the perimeter by a contingent of guards who searched them without dignity, took their weapons and led them through the camp without a single word.
The command tent was big enough to house twenty horses—brown felt stretched over a framework of poles, its entrance flanked by warriors with scarred faces.Inside, carpets and cushions spread out along the sides and a low table was placed in the middle with maps and papers.
But the man who awaited them was not Orda Naiman.
He was taller than Borji, with the broad shoulders and scarred knuckles of a lifelong warrior.His hair was grey and cropped close to his skull, and his eyes were the colour of the winter sky.He wore no ornament, no mark of rank, nothing to distinguish him from any other soldier in the camp.
And yet when he looked at Borji, something in his eyes made Borji's blood run cold.
