Siranos rode a glossy black gelding, a little heavier than Kadou preferred for his hunting horses—Wing was a mare of a delicately built breed from south Qeteren, bred for endurance riding through the foothills of the mountains on the edge of the desert. She was desert-colored too, a shade that Vintish horsemasters called isabelline, a honey-cream that shone like pale gold.
Siranos had said little to him when he had strode up to Zeliha’s pavilion, and he said absolutely nothing to him now. Kadou longed to turn and catch Tadek’s eye, let him fill the air as he’d volunteered to do—undoubtedly he’d have harmless gossip about the results of the recent exams, and which of the kahyalar had merited promotion from the fringe-guard to the core-guard, and who would be assigned to more direct government service, and so on. He resisted the urge, and so the frosty silence continued, broken only by the jingling of the tack and the crunching of old leaves under the horses’ hooves, the panting of the dogs loping alongside them, and the sounds of other people talking or laughing or singing in the distance.
By their very nature, hunts were often long periods of peace (or even boredom) followed by a sudden frantic burst of activity. This one was no different—after an hour or more of riding, Kadou caught a flash in the corner of his eye and hauled Wing’s head around in the next heartbeat. He shouted to her, to the others, and kicked her sides. She flung herself forward through the underbrush and Kadou caught a glimpse of the quarry—it was a grey doe, a little on the small side. Wing was already gaining on her.
One-handed, he unclipped his shortbow from the saddle, loosened an arrow from the quiver at his hip. He had a clear shot—the underbrush was thinner here, and there was a long stretch of flat ground. The dogs bayed around him, gathering one by one out of the woods to run with them. He hooked Wing’s reins over the pommel and stayed seated low in the saddle, nocking the arrow, hooking the string with his draw-ring, and pulling to his ear—
Something slammed into him from the side. The arrow slipped and went wide, and the world tipped. Kadou scrambled for the pommel, for the reins, for Wing’s mane, and fell heavily to the forest floor. It was only by the grace of the gods that his feet didn’t get tangled in the stirrups. He lay dazed and winded, shaken to his bones, his bow fallen a few feet away. The dogs, still in pursuit, swarmed around him and leapt over him.
There was a buzzing in his ears, and he heard someone bellow, as if off in the distance. Everything hurt; he couldn’t make himself move—he watched Wing slow and stop within four strides, just as she’d been trained . . .
Hooves thudded around him. He heard the twang of bowstrings, the slick shimmering sound of blades drawn from their sheaths, shouting—
“Treason! Treachery!”
He blinked his eyes hard and rolled onto his back. His right arm and side throbbed with pain.
“Stand down!” he heard Tadek shout.
Oh,Kadou thought.Shit.He pushed himself up just in time to see his kahyalar, all mounted, wheeling around and charging at Siranos and his guards, weapons drawn. In the next heartbeat, before he could call out, there was the shattering scream of injured horses and soldiers. “Treachery!” someone shouted. “Get him away!” The words were in Oissika—it was one of Siranos’s guards.
Kadou scrambled to his feet. “Hold!” he cried. “Hold!”
Two of the horses were already struggling and falling to their knees, dying on the ground, great saber slashes in their necks pouring blood onto the leaves. Three people fell before his eyes too—he couldn’t see which, just the colors of their uniforms: two Mahisti blue-and-white, one without uniform—Siranos’s personal retinue. All three bore saber slashes, and one of them had been shot by four arrows—eye, shoulder, chest, side.
Kadou felt sick. Time seemed to be going very slowly. “Hold!” he screamed again. “As you love me, drop your weapons!”
It was pure chance that Tadek turned his horse and saw Kadou. “Highness!” The expression on his face couldn’t have been faked—true relief, true shock, true fear.
Kadou dove forward and seized Tadek’s reins, dragging his horse out of the fray, and shouted again, “Hold!” and Tadek joined him then, doubling their volume.
The fighting faltered, and Siranos’s remaining guard fled back in the direction of camp—Siranos himself had already disappeared.
Kadou felt the pain again with every heaving gasp of breath he drew and clamped his hand to his aching side.
Tadek flung himself off his horse and caught Kadou up in his arms. Kadou groaned, sore but not, he thought, badly hurt. Tadek stepped back, his hands fluttering over Kadou’s face, his shoulder and side. His eyes were filling with tears, Kadou noticed distantly. “He drew an arrow, and then—something happened with his horse and he crashed into you. I thought it was intentional—I saw you fall—I thought you were—I swear he had a knife in his hand, I swear it—”
Just a glint of sun on the arrowhead, more likely. “I’m fine,” Kadou said through gritted teeth. “Attend to the others. There’s dead.”
“We have to get you away from them!” Tadek said, shaking his head. “Take your horse, ride for camp, ride for your life—”
“Tadek!” he shouted, and Tadek cringed and subsided. “No one tried to kill me!”
“I know what I saw!”
But even Kadou’s paranoia couldn’t color it—an accident, he was sure of it. Tadek had spent so much time gossiping that he was seeing ghosts where there were none.
He pushed Tadek aside without another glance and limped toward the two fallen kahyalar. His stomach turned again. He pressed his hand to his mouth and knelt slowly. He touched Gülpasa’s face, then Balaban’s.
Dead. Certainly dead—she bore a long slash across her neck. He was the one pincushioned with arrows. He looked across to Siranos’s guard: a young man, younger even than Kadou himself. He didn’t know his name.
He swallowed hard and looked up. The other kahyalar were bloodied. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice breaking. “It wasn’t—I lost my seat, that’s all. I didn’t . . .”
He couldn’t even blame Tadek for putting the kahyalar on edge.
He’d only been doing what Kadou had told him to do. Kadou had put the idea into his head that Siranos might try to hurt him, and so at the first trivial accident, Tadek had seen something much worse. Stupid Tadek, but stupiderhim.
He pushed himself to his feet, wiping the leaves and dirt off his face with the cuffs of his kaftan. His hands were shaking.