As Tiyana struggled to her feet, she refused to look down at the spot where Keshu lay. She did not want to see him as a corpse. And she had no time to mourn him ... the awareness in which she had earlier taken such great pride, the awareness that had failed her and all the other Adepts when they needed it most, was now warning her that another tsotsi was approaching her from behind. Without turning around, she sent a whip of magical energy looping around the assailant’s neck. The loop squeezed the sides of his throat together until he could no longer breathe.
Other flashes of blue amid the chaos signalled that Tiyana was not the only Adept to have survived the tsotsis’ attack. With the moment of surprise gone, the tide was turning against the assassins. Instead of fleeing in panic, some of the people in the crowd were now turning on the attackers, in some cases tearing them to pieces as effectively as Tiyana’s sorcery had done.
A deadly calm settled over Tiyana as she sought out the glint of a tirss and sent a blaze of vengeance that tore through the weapon’s bearer. Loathing spilled from her soul as she searched for more tsotsis to slay. The gharri in which she and Keshu had been riding was still upright, but its quagga lay inert in a welter of blood. Using the gharri as cover, Tiyana picked off as many tsotsis as she could see.
With the momentum now against them, the surviving tsotsis fled. Some of the people in the crowd pursued them. Others stood in blank-eyed shock. Still others tended their wounds, and those of their fallen companions.
Tiyana sank to her knees beside the body of Keshu. He stared sightlessly, his face set in a grimace that bespoke courage and determination. The front of his robe was shredded and his spilled blood turned its blue color into a muddy red.
Tiyana took one of his hands in hers, and wished that the power of Almovaar could enable her to will him back to life. She knew that was not possible, and that knowledge brought tears to her eyes ... tears that flowed in twin streams down her cheeks.
“Keshu,” she whispered as the echoes of the crowd’s pursuit of the tsotsis faded. “You saved my life, but part of me has died with you.”
“Tiyana.”
She looked up to see who it was that interrupted the beginning of her grieving. It was a soldier. Blood spattered his armor. His dark face bore a grim expression.
“Please come with me, Tiyana,” the soldier said. “The Emperor ...”
His voice trailed off.
Wordlessly, Tiyana released Keshu’s hand, rose, and followed the soldier through the thin crowd of people who remained behind. They skirted overturned gharris, as well as bodies surrounded by knots of mourners, some of whom acknowledged her as she went by.
Although her tears had stopped falling, the wetness in her eyes blurred her vision. She had a premonition of what the soldier was taking her to see, and she did not want to see it; not now, not ever.
But she knew she must.
The tsotsis had concentrated their attack on the gharris that carried the most powerful people in the Empire. The Emperor and Leba had been the principal targets. So was Tiyana. And many others among the Degen Jassi and the Adepts had fallen victim to the assailants’ killing frenzy.
The gharris of both Gebrem and Kyroun had been overturned. Tiyana saw Kyroun standing, head bowed, blood drying on his blue robe. Others stood in the same posture, and they stepped aside as the soldier led Tiyana through them.
And when she reached the Emperor’s gharri, she saw her father lying on the street. His legs and arms had been straightened, and someone had respectfully closed his eyes. But no one could close the wound a tsotsi’s weapon had torn across his throat, a ragged, gaping gash that had taken his life and left him covered in blood.
“I am sorry, Tiyana,” Kyroun said. “I tried my best to save him. Would that I had died in his place.”
Tiyana paid him no heed as, for the second time that day, she sank to her knees beside the body of a man she loved. Her grief was even greater now; her devastation overwhelming. A deep sadness replaced the rage that had fuelled the ferocity of her retaliation against the tsotsis. And even as a weeping Tiyana wrapped her arms around her father’s bloodstained corpse, all the others around her – even Kyroun – knelt in the presence of their new Empress.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CONSEQUENCES
1
The light from a single torch guided Sehaye and Jass Mofo through the stifling darkness of the Underground. Their feet splashed through noisome mire, and the fetid air inside Khambawe’s sewers seemed to lodge in the two men’s lungs. Sehaye was carrying the torch, which was beginning to burn low. Jass Mofo walked behind him. The tines of the Mofo’s tirss pressed lightly against Sehaye’s back as they made their way through the muck. Sehaye did not like the touch of the weapon. But he did not complain. He was still alive. And above him, the tsotsis were carrying out their end of the bargain he had struck with Jass Mofo.
The voice that had guided him for so long had fallen silent after he and Mofo had sealed their pact. Sehaye longed for it to return. Without its constant advice and encouragement, he was becoming uncertain about the chances for success of the scheme it had suggested when it first began to speak inside him. He was no longer even sure that the voice belonged to Legaba.
But who else could it be? he wondered. Who else would talk so to I?
The tirss jabbed a bit deeper into Sehaye’s back.
“How much farther we got to go?” Jass Mofo demanded.
“Soon come,” Sehaye replied, unconsciously reverting to the Uloan way of speaking.
“Better
