They watched the doorway, its frame underlined by the fire channel hissing between them. Isla cocked her crossbow as the door creaked to a slow open. She loaded her first bolt, heart thumping in her chest, and took aim.

But nobody entered.

Odd.

Isla was about to sweep through the walls in search of a presence when her eyes caught the low shadow slinking in. It rubbed itself against the door as it entered, tail erect. At first Isla thought it was the mooncat, but it stalked closer to the firelight and revealed its patterns.

Isla frowned. Prijsti's abandoned tabby. For a perplexing second she wondered what it was doing there – and then it was as though a mist had been lifted from her eyes.

A seething hatred took her. Without further thought, Isla raised her crossbow and shot. Her aim was too high, missing the cat by several heads. Her bolt landed before the door, just moments before a host of armed men came fanning in.

Last came the rajini, resplendent in the silver and royal blue of her house. She stood, framed by the darkness of the chamber behind her, confirming every suspicion Isla had gathered within the past hour.

Isla watched them all wordlessly and weighed her options. Her plan had not been originally intended for this, but it may still work.

She had anticipated facing Rajini Chei and that impassable void of hers. But while she no longer had to worry about voids, and though she matched Rajini Amarin in theurgic rank, the consort was still sure to best her in experience and practice.

And numbers. There were at least a dozen guards. Isla could not coerce them all to submission, especially not with her head already threatening to collapse as it was. She needed to save her strength for once Pepper had returned.

Rajini Amarin took to the front of her guards, so close to the fire Isla hoped the hems of her syarong would catch.

'I am impressed you have come this far,' the rajini started, a false smile playing on her lips. 'You must tell me. How ever did you entice these traitors?'

Isla's torch-bearer twitched, otherwise making no other visible sign of protest. But his cognizance was beating against Isla's cage, adding to the pulsing ache in her head. She let him vent until all the fight left him.

'No matter,' the rajini continued. 'They shall be dealt with in time. Lay your weapons down, and a swift end I promise all you.'

Isla loaded her crossbow in response and fired, aiming straight down the fire channel. Several of the rajini's men jumped in front of their mistress. One minute their shields were on their backs, but in a blink they had the rajini wrapped in a wooden cocoon.

Isla's bolt sank into one of the shields, but she had met her purpose.

Whatever theurgy the rajini or either of her men possessed, none of them could thwart a strike mid-air.

The shields were lowered, but the men remained alert. When Rajini Amarin spoke, her voice was harder. 'I will not give you another chance. You've nowhere left to go, and more of my men will soon be here.'

She's stalling. The rajini must be aware of the floor traps, but not familiar enough to know its path. Isla did not mind. Stalling suited her fine. 'Why are you doing all this?'

'Why don't you come here, and I will tell you everything you wish to know.'

'You must take me for a special kind of fool.'

'Quite the contrary. You've proven an elusive, slippery little fish.' Isla could hear the revulsion in every hiss of her words.

Isla's gaze roved for a safe place while the rajini spoke. The closest prison cell was unlocked, its door partly open. It would not keep the guards from cutting Tam Mai down once they got close enough, but at least it would shelter her from projectiles.

'I shall strike with you a bargain,' said the rajini. 'Surrender yourself, and your sister will be spared.'

'Spared? Like she was before?'

'I'll let her reside in the infirmary. They there provide ample care for their wards.'

'Why should I take your word for anything?' With a simple push, she had her mind-reader move Tam Mai into the cell. She covered him with her crossbow as he returned to his position beside her.

The rajini watched them, unamused. 'I've no need to dispose of an addled child. Indeed, I care not whether she lives or dies. You, however, would do anything for your sister. It must have been many a year since last you met, yet still you came, knowing full well what awaited. All for a girl who may as well be but a stranger to you.'

The stray cat gave a self-satisfied purr and took a few steps forwards, testing each stone surface. Isla hoped it would set off one of the traps. She had never wanted to hurt an animal so badly in her life.

The cat had always followed Prijsti like a shadow.

Haana had baited Isla straight to Kathedra – and who else in the palace would Isla have sought out but the very woman the silver-servant had claimed was her mother? It had all been anticipated.

Like a fool, Isla had played right into their hands ... giving herself away the moment she mentioned her salamander to the flea-infested beast.

She tugged into her torch-bearer. He flicked his hand, and the tabby was catapulted back into the guard chamber. Isla smiled viciously at the sound of its screeching.

Rajini Amarin sighed but did not seem to care. 'You could have run,' she said. 'My hounds would have eventually sniffed you out, put you out of your misery, but you would have lived far longer that way.'

'I don't expect you to understand the value of family. You killed your own son! And what for? What have I ever done to you? What threat do you think I pose? I hope this has all been worth losing a man such as Kiet.'

'Don't you dare befoul my son speaking his name.'

'He deserved a far better mother than the likes of you.'

Something boomed in the chambers above. Debris rained upon them from the ceiling. Rajini Amarin's face contorted into an ugly sneer, and Isla knew it was coming. She prepared her guards; buried herself deeper into them. Her telepath spun the shield off his back and slipped his arm through its enarmes – and not a moment too soon.

The rajini's flank guard nocked their arrows and sent a storm straight towards them. Two scraped the stone just inches from Isla's feet, but the rest froze mid-flight. Beside her, the torch-bearer had his hand up. With a squeeze of his palm, the arrows dropped like weights.

'Kill them.' The rajini had lost all reserve. Her men charged forwards, two at a time.

A trap was sunk. Fire gushed like a fount, the first claiming two men, the second taking another. Even far across the dungeon, the heat brushed Isla and left her squinting against its brightness. It was enough to give the rest of the men pause.

'Cowards!' the rajini barked. 'Go!'

Isla loaded another bolt. She was down to her last few, and her telekinetic was too busy firing arrows off the ground to be retrieving any for her. She aimed for the foremost guard, lucky enough to strike him where his leather was weak. The man came crashing down, another stumbled over his prostrate form.

Pain jolted through the base of Isla's skull, though nothing caused by the battle before her. Her vision blurred and she felt herself swaying.

Too long. She had held her thralls for far longer than she thought was possible. A whimper drew her away from the pain – if only for a second – and Isla looked aside at Tam Mai, shivering in the shelter of her cell.

She had come too far to fall now.

Isla wiped a trickle of blood from her nose and fumbled over another bolt. Several of the rajini's men had managed to cross unharmed, paving a path for the remaining guards to follow. Isla's telepath met the first of them with his shield and sword.

She caught a glimpse of her telekinetik on her other side. He had dropped his theurgy in favour of his blades, flourishing them with such ease and grace that reminded Isla of Rinju and her paper fan dances.

Isla fired off her bolt and ducked as a spear came flying overhead. Her target dropped with a cry, his fingers twitching as he lay in his own blood.

Another man killed. How many more lives would she have to take before the night was over?

When she looked up, the rajini had crossed half the chamber. Only few of her men still fought. Most were crumpled chars of flesh scattered across the dungeon. But Isla had only two bolts remaining; not enough by even a third.

Her mind-reader fell then, with a groan that drained Isla of any remaining hope. A guard stood over his kneeling body, blade buried deep in the dead man's bowels. An immense weight was lifted off Isla's head. Without a word, she lunged upon him, dagger glowing in one hand.

She slashed at the guard, and he clumsily stepped away, pulling his sword free of the telepath and swinging into an upper strike that grazed the fabric across Isla's chest. She spun, stung by the shallow cut, and caught him from behind. Her dagger sank into his neck. She could feel it slicing through skin and sinew. The firm resistance as she pierced through muscle; the warm cloy of blood as it poured over fingers ...

Isla forced back the bile rising in her throat.

'Remarkable.' She turned slowly at Rajini Amarin's voice and found the consort a mere few strides away. Four guards crowned her, spears poised like the open jaws of a marid.

Only then Isla noticed that the sound of steel had faded. The pain in her head had gone, leaving a hollow calm in its place. Her mind-bender, too, had finally fallen, his body laying amongst two of his former comrades.

'You have fought well, but it is over,' continued the rajini. 'At least your friends were clever enough to keep out of this one. Tell me, what is it truly the knight seeks? All this talk of trade ... a façade Judhistir is foolish enough to fall for without question. What is it the Elings want? Another colony? Do not think we are oblivious, here in the Eastern Isles, of their mounting presence across Cor Regnis.'

'I suppose as reward for my answers, you will let me free.'

'You have a mouth on you. I can see why my son was entertained. He always likes a challenge.' The ground shook with a slight tremor and the rajini turned her gaze, as though she could see through the stone. 'Yet I am not so patient as he.'

Two guards seized Tam Mai from her cell. Isla lurched forwards, quickly obstructed by a pair of spearheads, and could only watch as the men dragged her sister to kneel before the rajini.

'The rest of my men will be here, and you have until then to speak,' said the queen consort. But Isla felt something scamper up her leg before nestling in the warmth of her bosom, and she knew Rajini Amarin was mistaken. Once more, Isla lit her core and searched beyond the walls. 'In exchange for your intelligence, I will grace upon your sister the same mercy I earlier proposed. Refuse, and still the answers I will wrench from you as I have done her. And I promise. You shall live long enough to watch as my men have their way with your beloved kin.'

'You disgust me.'

'I did not become the Maha Rama's favoured consort by indulging my conscience.'

Pepper had done its job well. Isla found the presence she was looking for – strong, stern, tinged with darkness and a hungering desire for vengeance. But her strength was waning; she did not know whether she had enough to push it over the edge. She needed something ... anything ... just enough to fuel the fire. 'No. I expect not. After all, I am speaking to the woman who murdered her own flesh and blood. Who else's sons and daughters have you murdered to curry favour?'

Rajini Amarin's laughter echoed across the dungeon. 'A pity. The drink was indeed intended for you, but I must have overestimated your intellect if you think I would place my own son at risk.'

It was not the response she was looking for, but Isla had no words to interrupt. In truth, she was not quite sure what the rajini was saying. The queen consort stepped past her spears until she stood inches away, looking down her nose at Isla.

'All I have ever done is for my children. For my children's unborn children, and theirs in turn ... do you think I would truly kill my own son? My one and only heir? Do you think I would let a halfblood runt like you – or Nor and that traitorous father of his, or all the countless other heretics and their aberrant litter – undermine the sanctity of our line? Endanger the entire future of our realm?'

'I have heard enough.' A voice interrupted from the darkness across the chamber. Still, Isla was too stunned by the admission to feel any sort of relief. Even as Rajini Dhvani strode into light, Arya at her heels, all Isla could do was replay Rajini Amarin's last words.

Kiet isn't dead.

Of course – the plant his mother kept – he had told her about it himself.

Amarin killed Maharaj Kiaan and his family.

It was a stroke of luck – or fate – whatever it was called, Isla no longer needed to manipulate Rajini Dhvani into a fight. She saw the older woman's face, lit in the fury of the firelight. Behind her, Arya lowered his outstretched palms, as though calming a rising wind, and with it the earth thrummed.

The ground between them and the approaching pair cracked, collapsing into itself in a heap of broken slab. The traps broke, hissing forth a jet of putrid air that brought Pepper peeking out of Isla's syarong.

Rajini Amarin turned, blinking the shock off her face.

She called me a halfblood.

Isla did not understand what it meant, but a suspicion was gnawing inside her; though in light of everything else too small and insignificant to be anything more than a fleeting thought.

Kiet isn't dead.                                                                   

    
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