But it was no use. Another Shaklahiran practitioner crumpled before her, and when Dilaya sought out the culprit, she saw Lishabeth standing several paces away. A fresh heart dripped blood from her hands, steam rising from it into the cold.
The battle around Dilaya blurred. Here was more Hin blood—moreclanblood—spilling under her command. Somany practitioners had died fighting the initial Elantian invasion. How many more of their precious lives was she willing to wager?
Would there be a people left for them to rebuild after—if—they took back this land?
That was when she noticed Lishabeth turning, those emotionless gray eyes focusing on Dilaya. Saw the magician’s hand begin to curl, felt the singe of metal energies in the air at the beginning of a spell.
I’m next.
She knew nearly nothing of Elantian magic, of how exactly the magicians wielded metal in such precise, scientific ways. She knew no Seals with which to defend herself against a spell that plucked live, beating hearts from humans.
Dilaya hurled a fú, which began to smoke at its edges. Lishabeth flung out a hand, and a metallic net closed around the fú, extinguishing it before it could even explode. All the while, the Royal Magician’s other hand formed a metalwork spell, and Dilaya felt a tugging sensation in her chest as the spell latched onto the metal in her blood.
É’niáng, protect me.
Lishabeth raised her fist—and that was when the night itself seemed to sweep through the entrance and swallow her. The magician shrieked as the formless shadow barreled her over, pinning her beneath great claws.
Dilaya could only gape as the rest of the creature materialized: a flicker of orange, like fire, coalescing into a snout, ears, claws, and nine tails.
“Nine-tailed fox,” she whispered, and in her mind, thought:Demon.
A woman had stepped out from the demon’s swirl of shadows, too: a woman who seemed to glide rather than walk, whose eyes glittered like obsidian. Her long black hair swirledbeneath a beaded helmet; the patterns of red flames against her black páo were all too familiar.
Mansorian. The woman was clad in Mansorian clan garb.
The nine-tailed fox demon bared its teeth in a growl that rumbled through the hall. Lishabeth was pinned beneath it, her face a mask of terror. She opened her mouth in a scream—
The Mansorian woman blinked, and the nine-tailed fox bore down upon Lishabeth in a blur of white fangs and orange smoke. When it lifted its head and stepped forward, all that was left on the floor was a dried-out husk of a corpse.
Dilaya heard screaming behind her, but her mind was frozen on one thought: This was a Mansorian demonic practitioner. This was thepowerof a true Mansorian demonic practitioner.
The woman turned unseeing black eyes on Dilaya, and Dilaya suppressed a shiver. She’d fought demons before, of course—too many lingered in remote corners of the Last Kingdom where cesspools of yin energies gathered—but though she had learned to hate them and fear them, never in her life had she fought against a fully trained Mansorian demonic practitioner, historically the sworn enemy of her clan.
Dilaya drew her sword and gathered qì, ready to weave into Seals.
But the woman merely walked past her as though she weren’t there.
As though sensing a greater enemy, the Royal Magicians were turning to face the woman and her demon. One lifted his hand and flung a dagger at her.
Blade met flesh; the hilt protruded from the Mansorian’s chest, but she continued her slow, steady march forward. With each step, the dagger in her chest began to disintegrate. The metal burned like parchment, its ashes fluttering away and dissolving until there was nothing, not even a scar, left.
The woman gave another slow blink, and her nine-tailed fox demon set upon the Royal Magician who had thrown the knife. His shriek cut off abruptly.
Behind her, more shapes were emerging from the night: a golden hawk with razor-sharp wing feathers, a skeletal gray wolf with hooves, a horse with canine features and fangs. They came in with gusts of demonic qì, the demonic practitioners with unmoving faces like the dead, and began to fight the Elantian Royal Magicians.
Not a single one of them touched Dilaya’s army.
Dilaya’s suspicion turned to certainty, followed by a strange feeling of dissonance. Indeed, ithadn’tbeen mere coincidence that she and her group had gotten through the city unscathed.
The demonic practitioners had been ordered not to harm them.
She lifted her gaze in the direction of the mountains. “Xan Temurezen,” she muttered, her grip tightening on Falcon’s Claw. The bastard. If he thought doing this was the right thing, if he thought this might buy Dilaya’s forgiveness, he was wrong.
She would never forgive him.
But…perhaps she could understand him. Just a little better.
Dilaya turned to her own army. “Well, what are you waiting for?” she roared. “Scour this palace and round up the remaining guards! Root out the high governor and court officials, and either they surrender or theyburn.”
