Chidinma's horse waited where she had left it.She mounted smoothly, gathered the reins, and rode through the gates to meet him.
He saw her coming and raised a hand.His riders halted behind him.
Chidinma reined in before him, close enough to speak without raising her voice.
"General Thane."His name in her mouth was an offering."You're welcome in this city.We've been expecting you."
His eyes moved past her, to the bodies in the courtyard, to the smoke still rising from distant fires, to the civilians emerging from doorways with expressions he could not quite read.
"What happened here?"His voice was rough.Wary.
"The city defended itself."She folded her hands."In the manner available to it.You took the antidote, I trust?Before entering the walls?"
His frown deepened."What antidote?"
Chidinma paused.She had assumed—but assumptions were dangerous.Best to be certain.
"The preparation Madame Varkesh administered to your forces before the march.She would have told you it was a fortifying tonic.For the campaign."She watched his face carefully."You did drink it.Right?"
Understanding dawned in his eyes.
"Yes," he said slowly."I drank it."
"Lovely."
"What was in it?"
Chidinma looked up at him.A tired smile on her face.
"The Mal-kai blooms in the deep forest.You wouldn't recognise it—it's specific to this region, and it leaves no taste.When burnt, it releases into the air and settles in the lungs.It takes approximately three days to become symptomatic."She glanced at the bodies, then back at him."A little longer if the subject is otherwise healthy.Shorter in cases of existing weakness.The antidote must be administered before exposure or within a narrow window after.Without it, the outcome is… this."
Thane stared at her.
"It took some time to ensure adequate distribution among the civilian population before we lit the fires.One couldn't rush that particular step.But by the time the Mal-kai was burning, everyone behind these walls who mattered had been dosed.Everyone on the other side of the walls had not."
Three days.The fires had been lit three days ago.The Naiman soldiers outside the walls had watched the smoke and thought nothing of it.
They had been breathing it ever since.
"They've been dying since—"
"Since before your forces arrived, yes.The battle in the forest was a courtesy, really.Insurance against those who had not yet entered the city walls."She paused."We couldn't account for everyone."
Thane sat on his horse in a street full of the dead, and Chidinma watched him understand that the war he had ridden to fight was already over.
"Who?"His voice was rough.Shaken.
"My sister sends her regards," she said."General, your men are welcome to water and rest.The palace gates are open.Plunder and loot as you see fit, if that is your custom.Anyone remaining behind the palace walls will not be in a position to object.Tonight or any night thereafter.Anyone in the Borjigin palace was to be slaughtered, man or woman, young or old.Very few would be exempt based on previous merits."
She paused, letting the weight of it settle.
"By orders of the Khatun of the Valthorne tribe."
Somadina had been stripped of his finery—the silks, the gold, the symbols of a power that had never truly been his.He wore nothing now but his own skin, soft and trembling in the morning light.His wrists were bound behind him.His ankles were tied to a stake driven deep into the earth.Before him, at exactly the height a man's face would be when forced to bend, sat the bucket.
He had looked inside once, when they first put him here.He had not looked again.But he could smell it.Could taste it on the air with every breath.
A crowd had gathered at dawn.
