Sorry for the late update! Thanks everyone for being patient. Also, Heir of Beasts is competing in FANTASCI 's chosen one competition. If you like the book, please head over to the competition book and vote! It would mean so much to me!

- Swpoet

O'otani

The Yukkaiti cur comes to me three days after I tried to kill Sholu Verlaina with a butter knife. She's dressed in black leather breeches and a coarse red tunic, her wild black hair tied back by a leather thong. If danger didn't hang off of her like an unseen cloak she might have been beautiful.

"What do you want?" I ask tiredly, interrupted from my long days of sitting alone in my room. The book in my lap has been read three times already: twice in the last month and once in these last few days. I'll be able to quote it soon.

"I wanted to see a ghost," she responds, coming to sit down opposite me.

"Then go to the catacombs, backwater girl," I laugh darkly. "Because somehow I'm still alive."

"It's a shame, isn't it?" she says, her lips curling into a smile. "If it was my revolution, I would've let you hang."

"This is not a revolution," I mutter. "This is chaos, pure human chaos."

"Synonyms, little queen," the madwoman says, twirling a stray hair with her finger. "Sometimes peace is just another name for oppression."

"And sometimes it is perfect," I snarl. "Sometimes it is just peace."

"It was never perfect," she tells me blithely. "If it was your mother wouldn't have turned on her sister so savagely."

"Do not speak of my mother," I growl in warning.
"Oh, I mean no insult," she continues. "I respect that woman more than you know. She saw the way, and more than that, she was willing to sacrifice her own blood for her cause. That is the kind of dedication the Shao Asha values. If one of the Yus'mahar had had such courage, I might have even let them live."

"No, you wouldn't," I tell her. "You're made for killing; you know no mercy."

"Maybe not," she says. "Mercy weakens you. Look at how it's weakened my cousin. He lets you live despite all my advice, even threatens me when I offer to kill you myself. I even told him I'd make it painless; that is mercy, isn't it, little queen? That I offered to use a sharp blade on your neck?"

"Mercy would be telling me why you've come and sparing me the empty threats."

She laughs, and her white teeth seem to lengthen as they catch and scatter the rays of sunlight, glistening like saliva-drenched fangs. "None of my threats are idle, little queen. And I told you, I've come to see a ghost."

Her dark eyes seem to see behind my rage to the hollow chasms that lie beneath. Ghost, the word echoes inside of me, you are a ghost.

"I still cannot fathom why you're alive," Matachai continues, like she can tell she's getting under my skin, as sharp and insidious as a razor blade. "My cousin surprises me... perhaps he believes in your mercy," she says. "Or perhaps he's just self-indulgent. I tell him to kill you, to leave no loose ends, and you know what he says to me? 'Relax, Matachai. I'm only keeping a pet.'"

"I am no pet!" I spit, turning on her with violence in my eyes.

"What are you, then?" She asks, cocking her head mockingly. "A prisoner kept alive at the whim of her jailer, who feeds her, and clothes her, and decides when to let her in and out of her kennel. What else would you call that?"

"I am no pet!" I shout at her.

"You're only angry because you know I speak the truth," she says. "You belong to him as surely as a dog belongs to its master. But you are not loyal like a dog would be. That is what I do not like.

"There was a rich merchant in my town growing up who loved to keep pets," she tells me, her voice lowering in pitch. "Exotic animals caught deep in the Isomarashi jungle, all locked away in rows upon rows of indestructible metal cages. He had golden monkeys and cherlews and viviboo birds, but his pride was a purple oxgrove cat.

"He would let the cat out of its cage on a diamond studded collar and leash, and walk it through the town, just to make himself feel big because he could control something so wild. All the villagers marveled at him, at the sleek purple monstrosity he claimed was as docile as a kitten.

"That cat gored him to death; they found him in his home with his face eaten off. It does not pay to keep dangerous pets."

"Dangerous?" I ask. "I thought you said I was nothing, that you had expected more."

She sighs. "You are no oxgrove cat, but even strays are dangerous when cornered."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"I don't know," she says. "Perhaps so you will understand why I cannot let you live for long."

There's a chill in the air with her words I try to dispel by keeping my voice caustic. "Again with the idle threats. You bore me, Yukkaiti."

She laughs amusedly. "I bore you, do I? Well then, I better go. I have better things to do anyway."

She walks to the door, graceful and dangerous. I wonder how many knives she carries, or if it's only the rifle that she never lets leave her side.

"Goodbye, little queen," she smiles before closing the door, her sharp teeth gleaming menacingly. "I will see you when the time comes."

Sholu comes three days after that. I start when he enters, expecting Halima's smiling face and seeing his cold grey eyes instead.

"How would you like to leave the palace?" He asks, taking a seat at my small desk opposite my reading chair. I set down my book and try to prevent my teeth from gnashing together at the sight of him.

"Depends," I answer coolly. "Would I be going to the gallows again?"

"Of course not," he says. "I told you I do not believe in waste. You'd be going with me to Rizsava."

"I'd rather walk barefoot over glass than go anywhere with you."

"Come now," Sholu coaxes, leaning towards me. "Surely you'd like to get out of this room, to feel the sun on your skin."

"The sun?" I mutter. "Can't you see that the light is wrong? The light is sickly. The light is a dying thing. Why would I want that to touch me, Vasayaste?"

"You're too pale, little tiger," he answers. "And your feet are much too soft to survive walking over glass. I know you hate me, believe me, you've made that clear, but you're coming to Rizsava. Some fresh air will do you good." He looks at me searchingly, risking a smile. "Don't you want to breathe in fresh, warm air?"
"No," I answer, leaning away from him, from the eyes that seem to see right through my clothes to the ill-fitting skin underneath. The beast in me chafes under his gaze, snarls and snaps. "I do not want the sun. I do not want the fresh air. I don't want grey gowns or dresses of Mirrenovese pearls. You know what I want? The only thing you could give me that I would want?"

"And what is that?" He asks, looking curious.

"Your death," I answer, looking deep into those damnable grey eyes. "I want to feel your blood on my hands. I want to breathe in the scent of it, the iron. That is what I want."

He leans back and sighs. "You've put a lot of thought into that, haven't you?"

I smile at him, showing my teeth. "You have no idea."

"How would you kill me, then?" He asks, a strange curiosity lighting his face. "Tell me."

"Not fast," I start. "It has to be painful. I want you to feel all one hundred and ten deaths you wrought revisited upon you. I want you going to the grave with the weight of those souls crushing you."

He looks riveted, like I'm not describing my plans for his painful execution.

"I'd start with the fingernails," I say, toying with the jagged edge of one of my own. "Pull them off one by one. I heart that's how the Yi'il torture their prisoners. Then the fingers broken, then removed, so those grasping hands of yours are left as bloody stumps. After that, the tongue. You talk too damn much."

He laughs. I start, pulled from my bloody reverie by the smooth sound. "I'd recommend going for the eyes first," he says. "They're soft and easy to ruin, and nothing is more frightening than the expectation of pain in the dark."

"No," I say, my voice high and clear with my sacred truth. "I want you to watch. I want you to see everything. I want you to take my face to the grave as the last thing you see."

"You're brutal, Kionike," he says with a toothy smile. "No different from a girl raised in the Noraya, in the gangs."

"Do not compare me to those daughters of whores," I spit. "I am brutal because you made me so, Sholu Verlaina. I am animated by justice, not by greed or pure baseness."

"Another story you tell yourself," he murmurs. "It's pretty to believe I made you violent, but we both know the truth. Violence is your nature, little tiger girl. You were born to the knife, just like me."

"I am nothing like you," I hiss. "You are a murderer!"
"So are you," he says. "You had to be pulled off the second guard, they told me. Not only did you disembowel him, you smashed his head against the stone so hard his skull fractured. You killed and you enjoyed killing."

"I killed those who would have killed me."

"It was revenge."

"It was justice!" I shout, overcome. "He killed my mother. He deserved every blow. I

I will lose no sleep over it!"

"Exactly," he says. "Because your nature is iron. Do you think one of your pretty cousins could have killed a man with their bare hands? Even if they could, they would've been haunted, disgusted by the blood staining their pretty little white hands.

"You dream of blood where they dreamed of pretty silks and lace," he murmurs, leaning back in his chair. "You were born in the wrong family. No matter how many lessons on reserve and politeness and self control they gave you, no matter how many fancy dresses they laced you into, they couldn't cut the violence from you.

"I'm sure they tried," he continues. "How often you must have been scolded for following your nature, a nature the Noraya would have celebrated, cultivated. But they couldn't do it. They couldn't make you meek and empty-headed, no matter how hard they tried."

Your girl is a coyote in a woman's body, Kyoro, my Aunt Jinn repeats in my head. Wild and mangy and restless. You have to do something about her before she becomes a problem.

"You dare to speak of my family?" I whisper, murder on my lips. "You dare to talk like you know me, like you know my heart? You know nothing, Mesviraste. Nothing!"

He smirks. "Lord of the Gutter. How appropriate, O'otani, to call me that. Because Arzsa is a gutter, you know. Your shining city is filled with blackness and corruption and disease."

"You made it that way!"
"I am the one trying to cleanse it!" He says, his voice rising above its usual calm neutrality. "I know you think I'm a villain, but as I told you, I'm just a necessary man. Your family was running Shikkah into the ground. They used the Vasayaste and discarded them in turn. Sitting up here in the palace, what did they know of the streets? Of the true price of the droughts?"

"We were the agents of the people," I answer angrily. "We did all we could for them, and they turned away from us at the first opportunity, too weak to resist. Too fearful. And those are the men and women you want governing themselves? Those sheep will lead each other to the slaughter."

"They are base and ignorant because you made them so," he retorts, crossing his legs. "If I give them a chance to be more, some will rise. They need a leader for the meantime, but one day soon they'll be ready to choose their own lives."

"They will destroy Shikkah."

"Maybe it needs to be destroyed," he counters. "I am sick of the rich sitting in their fine houses while the rest of us struggle to survive. I am sick of children growing up on the streets and being scavenged by the gangs as soon as they're old enough to steal and to kill. If it takes burning this city back to the desert to cleans it, that is what I will do!"

"You're a madman," I mutter. "Goddess help me, you're out of your mind."

"I'm the only one who sees clearly," he says, his voice once again cool and detached. "You will see too, if you want to. Maybe it is too soon, though, with so much grief still staining you. But one day you will see I was right all along."

"Don't delude yourself."

"I'm not the one daydreaming of dismemberment," he says with a smile, "while I sit powerless in a little room."

"Do not mock me!"
"Never, Kionike," he murmurs. "But you need to admit that you're so wrapped up in tragedy you can't see the sand at your feet. You have such plans, but you have to know you can't kill me."

"Give me a proper knife," I growl.

"Don't you understand?" He says with an enraging calm. "I know you do, you're not stupid. You're just too damn willful to admit it to yourself. Too damn stubborn."

"Don't talk to me like you know me!"
"But I do know you," he whispers, "I know you, little tiger. I know you're beautiful and crazy and wild, a daughter of the noraya born in a noblewoman's body. I know what you want, goddess knows you've made it clear you want me dead, and I know what you love."

"You know nothing," I repeat. "Nothing!"
"A boy soon to be dead and a palace maid. You put value in the lives of weak things that don't deserve your esteem."

"They deserve everything, you son of a whore!" I snarl. "They are all that is good and pure in this shithole of a city. They are untarnishable!"

"They are weak," he continues. "I can't spare the boy, but the girl I can protect for you, if you let me."

"I won't let you anywhere near her-"

"You still don't see!" He mutters, running his hands through his hair in annoyance. "Why won't you see? It's the past you love so much; it blinds you to the present. You want revenge so badly you're stupid with it. Tell me, in all your fantasies of killing me, did you ever stop to wonder what would happen after? The guards would find you and kill you. Maybe the Yukkaiti would find you, and then Matachai would kill you. If you made it into the city, the people who think you're a traitor would kill you. Do you see now, O'otani? You need me. I stand between you and the world."

"Maybe I value your death more than my own life," I retort, trying to push his truth far away from me. It threatens to knock me down. "Maybe I don't care for my life anymore."

"Maybe not," he responds, speaking low. "But what do you think will happen to that little girl once we're both dead?"

I freeze. "Do not threaten her."

"I'm won't. But don't delude yourself; as soon as we're gone, she's dead."

"There is no 'we'!"

"Matachai will kill her out of spite," he continues, ignoring my interjection. "Or some of the guards will take her, she's pretty enough."

"She's fourteen," I spit, disgusted.

"And they're Noraya men, men from the streets. Believe me, they'll make her wish she was dead before they're done."

My eyes flash. "If they hurt her-"

"They will not, so long as I'm alive," he says. "But you kill me, you kill her. Can you do that, O'otani? Can you throw her life away?"

I open my mouth to respond, but no words come. What can I say? Of course I can't. I can't let her die, not when she's all I have left. Not when she has no one but me to protect her. Not when I love her.

I can't kill him. That truth hits me hard. I fall forward, leaning my head on my shaking arms. Goddess, I can't kill him. Unless- unless I can get Halima away from here first. If I can get her to safety, I can do what I like. I can risk my own life if I want, I just can't risk hers.

"I will come with you to Rizsava," I mutter in a defeated voice, a plan already forming in my mind. "If she comes too."

"Of course you can bring your pet," he says with a magnanimous smile. "I'm glad you finally understand. There's no use laboring under delusions."

"No use at all," I mutter. "So why are we going to the seat of the Kyorin Dimaraste?"

"For their trial," he answers. "The Kyorin Dimaraste will be subject to the people's justice."

It's a show trial, then. He'll try them and hang them, the way he once tried to hang me. But this time there won't be anyone waiting to cut the noose from their necks.

______

So, what does everyone see happening in this chapter? I'm curious. Where are Sholu and O'otani heading?