Markswoman (Asiana #1)(2)

Kyra relaxed in his hold, shutting out his voice. “Thank you,” she subvocalized.

Maidul stopped talking and looked at her, confused. “What?”

“You have shown me what I must do.” Kyra smiled into the hand pressed against her mouth.

His eyes widened as realization dawned on his face. He let go her hand and half-rose, wrapping his fingers around her throat. His knees gripped her hips, holding her down. Struggling to breathe, Kyra extended her arm and bent her mind to the katari. Come to me. The blade glided into her outstretched palm like a homing pigeon.

Maidul did not notice. He was too busy squeezing the life out of her body. For you, Mother, thought Kyra, gasping for breath, and she thrust the blade up between his ribs.

Maidul’s grip loosened; he stared in shock at the katari protruding from his chest before slowly toppling over backward with a gurgling sound.

Kyra dragged herself out from under him and got to her feet, cradling her aching wrist. Her throat was on fire. Maidul twitched and bled into the ground, and her stomach twisted. The bile rose in her throat and she thought she would vomit.

Breathe, she told herself. Focus. She closed her eyes and summoned her inner calm, shutting out the man dying before her.

Then Kyra bent down to retrieve her katari, taking care to avoid looking into Maidul’s sightless eyes. She trembled as she grasped the smooth leather grip and withdrew the blade from his ruined chest. It came out with a squishy, sucking sound that almost undid her a second time. She closed her eyes again and gulped. She would not be sick. This was the moment she had trained for and dreamed of for many years. The moment she had almost ruined with her foolish hesitation. What would Shirin Mam say if she knew?

She focused on the katari’s silvery green blade. It was, as expected, sparkling clean. Nothing could tarnish kalishium, the telepathic metal with which the blades of all kataris were forged. It was her bond with a kalishium blade that allowed a Markswoman to use the Inner Speech. The deeper the bond, the greater the ability, Shirin Mam was fond of saying. Kyra had bonded with her blade five years ago, at the completion of her coming-of-age trial.

She kissed the tip of her katari. “Thank you,” she whispered. “You saved my life.” The slender, tapering blade glowed in response.

Now for the next part. Kyra took a deep breath and slashed a notch into her own left arm, below the elbow, just as Shirin Mam had told her to do. We must remember who we kill and why. Our blood for theirs. Still adrenalized from the fight, she barely felt the cut.

She slid the katari back into the carved wooden scabbard that was corded to her waist. Time to be gone. She threw a last glance around the camp, memorizing details to share with Shirin Mam: the number of tents, the size of the corral, the absence of water. At least fifty people, and they would be moving soon.

The tents flapped in the wind, concealing those who had butchered her clan, as if the night itself could not bear to look upon them. Kyra could kill many of them now if she chose. They would be unprepared and half-asleep, no match for her blade and the Inner Speech.

But Shirin Mam’s instructions had been explicit; her first mark had to be one person, and who better than Kai Tau’s eldest son, Maidul? It would be both a warning and a punishment for the outlaw chief.

Take me, mistress. Then you can kill them all.

The cold voice cut through the darkness. Startled, Kyra stared at the kalashik lying at her feet.

It would be easy, the voice went on. Slaughter them as they lie sleeping, as they slaughtered your family. Fulfill the vow you made to yourself. Take me.

Kyra bent down, her hands reaching for the elongated barrel. Her fingertips brushed the surface of the hard metal, and a shiver ran through her.

Shots ring out, deafening in the hollow bowl of the valley. Screams rise, only to be abruptly cut off. The child trembles in fear, tastes blood in her mouth.

Kyra jerked back to the present, breathing hard. She straightened up and kicked the gun away. It gleamed in the starlight like a living thing, but it did not call out to her again. What had Shirin Mam said? These guns were made before the Great War. Men wanted to use kalishium to make them, but were forbidden from doing so by the Ones. So they tried to duplicate kalishium, and instead created a metal unlike anything seen in Asiana. It was telepathic, like kalishium, but in a deformed way. It was evil.

She walked away, heart thudding at the narrowness of her escape. Suppose she had picked the kalashik up. Would she have gone on a murderous rampage like the Taus? Shot and killed everyone in the camp?

Better not to know. Better not to test herself. Kyra scrambled up the thorny ditch around the Tau camp, back to her mare, Rinna. Unbidden, the voice of Shirin Mam touched her mind yet again. Let the past be what it is. Let the future bring what it will. Stay in the present. Be aware of yourself and who you are. It is all that matters.

A simple philosophy, but it formed the heart of the Mahimata’s teachings. The first thing novices learned was detachment. Shirin Mam called it the art of forgetting. Parents, siblings, teachers, friends—none of them mattered once you joined the Order. Well, that was what you were supposed to learn, anyway.

Kyra mounted her mare with one hand, wincing as the pain in her right wrist flared anew. It was easy for the others. They had only normal lives to forget. None of them had been forced to scare away vultures from the bodies of their parents. She hadn’t been able to keep the scavengers away from the others, of course. At one point she had given up and crawled inside the hut to join her sisters. Her three little sisters . . .