Markswoman Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Map

  Part I Chapter 1: First Mark

  Chapter 2: The Chosen Ones

  Chapter 3: The Judgment of Khur

  Chapter 4: Mental Arts

  Chapter 5: The Shining City

  Chapter 6: The Mark in Kalam

  Chapter 7: The Maji-khan of Khur

  Part II Chapter 8: The Festival of Chorzu

  Chapter 9: But Another Door

  Chapter 10: The Blade of Shirin Mam

  Chapter 11: A New Assignment

  Chapter 12: Against the Darkness

  Chapter 13: The Mark of Kali

  Chapter 14: The Winged Horse

  Chapter 15: A Price to Pay

  Chapter 16: Forms of the Dance

  Chapter 17: Visitor from Valavan

  Part III Chapter 18: Night in Khur

  Chapter 19: Words of Power

  Chapter 20: The Hand of Kali

  Chapter 21: In the Grove

  Chapter 22: A Girl with Many Questions

  Chapter 23: Escaping the Self

  Chapter 24: Bend like a Reed

  Chapter 25: The Spirit of Varka

  Part IV Chapter 26: Across the Empty Place

  Chapter 27: In Kashgar

  Chapter 28: Compulsion

  Chapter 29: Live Long and Die Well

  Chapter 30: The Hall of Sikandra

  Chapter 31: Deer and Snake

  Chapter 32: Trishindaar

  Chapter 33: Last Twist

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Map

  Part I

  From The Orders of Peace—Our Place in Asiana, by Navroz Lan of the Order of Kali

  None may take a life but those who carry a kalishium blade and are sworn to the Orders of Peace. This is the law—the Kanun of Ture-asa—which binds all the clans in the valley, the mountains, and the desert beyond.

  There are five Orders in Asiana, and the Order of Kali is the oldest, commanding tithe from all the clans in the Ferghana Valley. Our symbol is an inverted katari encircled by a ring of fire.

  The Order of Valavan rules the Deccan: tall, dusky women who excel in dueling and the Mental Arts. The mere sight of the banner of Valavan with its striking cobra has been known to end battles and strike terror into the hearts of the most hardened outlaws.

  In the farthest north, at the edge of the habitable zone in Siber, lives the Order of Zorya. Fierce fighters they are, and the most skilled in the art of survival. They strap varnished animal bones to their feet, and skim across the ice faster than the wind. The Hub of Komi connects them with the rest of Asiana, but the soaring white falcon with the star on its breast—the symbol of Zorya—is seldom seen south of the town of Irkutsk on Lake Baikal.

  The Order of Mat-su dwells far to the east on the islands beyond the Yellow Sea, and rules the eastern borders of Asiana with severity and grace. The Mat-su symbol is the eight-spoked wheel of life, and the Order aspires to enlightenment through the eightfold path of right thought and right action.

  Last and youngest of all is the Order of Khur, but we do not talk or think overmuch of it.

  It is whispered that the power of the Orders is beginning to fade. This heresy, first uttered in one of the clan councils of Tushkan, is no truer now than it was then. While we hold a katari in our hands and the Kanun in our hearts, a word from us can still raise armies and crumble mountains.

  Chapter 1

  First Mark

  Kyra stood in the shadows and watched the guard as he paced the camp, shifting the weight of the kalashik on his shoulder. Her nerves thrummed in anticipation. It was Maidul; she was sure of it. She was lucky he was on guard duty tonight, his thoughts louder than the whistling wind. If he had been asleep in his tent, she might not have been able to identify him.

  She gripped her katari—the dagger she was bonded to—and swallowed hard. This was it: the ultimate test. Did she have what it took to be a Markswoman? Could she kill a man? She crept forward, footfalls soft on the sand, taking care to stay in the pools of darkness cast by the flapping tents.

  But Maidul must have sensed something. He spun around, his eyes darting from the tents to the thorny ditch that surrounded the camp. Kyra froze, katari in hand. Surely he could not see her? There was no moon tonight, though the stars cast their silvery light on the dunes.

  Oh no. She remembered, too late, the telltale glow of the blade of her katari. How could she have been such a fool as to forget it? Maidul stared right at her and whipped the gun down from his shoulder. Heart racing, Kyra summoned the Inner Speech, binding him before he could fire.

  “Drop your weapon.”

  He let go the kalashik; it landed with a soft thud that made her wince. But nothing stirred in the camp except the wind.

  “You will not move or make a sound,” said Kyra in her most compelling voice. She approached him, trying to slow her pulse. Control yourself before trying to control others, the Mahimata always said.

  Maidul’s face contorted. His forehead beaded with sweat, his jaw clenched in a snarl. She could tell that he was struggling to move, to shout. But he wouldn’t be able to, not as long as she held the mental bonds of the Inner Speech over him.

  Kyra took a deep breath and said in a normal voice, “By the power vested in me by the Mahimata of Kali and the Kanun of Ture-asa, I, Kyra Veer of the Order of Kali, have come to grant you, Maidul Tau, the mercy of my blade. May you find forgiveness for your crimes.”

  She raised her blade for an overhead strike. But as she saw the plea in Maidul’s eyes, she paused, the blade hovering.

  Kill him, you idiot. What are you waiting for?

  But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. He looked helpless, terrified, his eyes darting from her blade to her face, his breath coming in short gasps. And he was young—no older than her. It didn’t feel right or just. How did the other Markswomen do it so easily? Why hadn’t Shirin Mam warned her she might react to his unspoken entreaty for life?

  Maidul broke loose from her bonds. It was her fault; she hadn’t been paying attention, had underestimated his strength.

  He threw himself on her, knocking her to the ground and pinning her beneath his weight. He gripped her blade hand, twisting it back until something tore inside her wrist. She gasped with pain and let go her weapon. As the katari slipped from her trembling fingers, a bubble of panic rose inside her.

  Maidul clamped her mouth shut with his other hand. Did the moron think she needed to speak aloud to use the Inner Speech? She fought down her panic; his face was so close to hers, she could see his pores, smell his rancid breath. He didn’t look frightened now. He was grinning.

  “Not so sure of yourself now, are you?” he snarled. “Wait till my father sees what I’ve caught. He hates Markswomen. You know what we’re going to do to you?” He pushed her body harder into the ground. “We like to start by cutting bits off. Fingers, toes, ears. But don’t worry, we won’t let you bleed to death. You’ll be alive and awake the whole time to enjoy it.”

  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 . . .

  As Kyra rode between the dunes, the wind rose and fell from a high-pitched keen to a deepening roar—an eerie sound that made her skin crawl. The sand stung her eyes, her throat was parched, and she ached all over. She urged Rinna on; she longed to be out of the Thar Desert, back home in the Ferghana.

  She almost missed seeing the door by the side of the fossilized dune. It was half-hidden by a mound of fresh sand. Perhaps there had been a micro sandstorm in the last hour.

  Or perhaps the door had shifted.

  Kyra dismounted, brushed clear the door, and inserted the tip of her kalishium blade into a barely visible slot. The slot glowed blue and the door swung open, and she had a moment of dislocation.

  Being in a Transport Hub always did that to her. Hubs didn’t belong in this desert landscape, or anywhere else in Asiana for that matter. The elders said that the Ones had come down from the stars to help humans build the Transport system. Hubs were artifacts left over from a world that no longer existed, the remnant of an ancient civilization that had destroyed itself many hundreds of years ago.

  What a strange world it must have been when wonders like these were commonplace. Kyra could not even imagine what it would have looked like. Perhaps people had homes in the sky and all the homes had Hubs, and every time you wanted to see anyone or go anywhere, you merely stepped through a door.

  It wasn’t quite that simple now, of course. If you were an ordinary person who needed to travel, you had to take the long, slow route by horse or bullock cart or camelback. Only kalishium could open a door, and only the Orders had access to kalishium. It was just as well. No one truly understood how Transport worked, and some of the doors had begun to fail. There were stories of Markswomen who had never returned, or who returned raving mad and had to be locked up for their own safety.

  Kyra gave herself a shake. She was going to Transport, and everything was going to be fine. She peered inside the Hub. The corridor stretched into darkness, lined only by the glowing slots on each of the doors within. It looked the same as it had a few hours ago, but that didn’t mean it was still the same Transport Hub.

  She tightened her grip on the reins and led Rinna forward before she could change her mind. The door swung closed behind them and the mare whinnied and jerked her head.

  “Hush, Rinna,” said Kyra, stroking her neck. “You don’t like it, do you? Don’t worry, you’re safe.”

  Safe. If only she could believe that herself.

  Kyra coaxed her mare along the corridor until they came to the fourth door on the right, where she once again inserted the tip of her katari into a slot. This time a numbered screen slid out and she tapped in the Transport code Felda Seshur, the Order’s mathematician, had given her: 116010611.

  The door slid open and the tight knot in her stomach dissolved. The code still worked; this should still be the right door.

  She led Rinna across the threshold and pale blue lights came on, revealing a circular room with seats melded to the floor. Kyra sat down on one to wait, and it moved fractionally beneath her, adjusting to her shape. This part always m
ade her skin crawl. Chairs weren’t supposed to move, not the ones made of wood or stone or metal, at any rate. Who knew what material had been used to forge these? Kyra sat erect on her seat, trying not to think about what she was doing. She had Transported a few times before, but always in the company of the elders of Kali. Her journey here had been the first time she’d done it alone.

  The room began to spin. Rinna whinnied again and backed to the wall, where the spin was greater. She almost lost her balance, crashing against the curved surface of the chamber. Kyra frowned. She should have tethered her mare. Something to remember for the next time.

  “We’ll soon be home, Rinna,” she said in a soothing voice.

  But the room kept on spinning. What if it never stopped? If they were stuck there forever, a rotating nightmare between one world and the next?

  No, that was irrational. She was giving in to fear, a monster without a face that was born from her own dreams. Kyra closed her eyes and practiced Sheetali, the Cooling Breath, until she sensed the spinning slow down and stop.

  Chapter 2

  The Chosen Ones

  They emerged from the Hub on a hill overlooking the windswept plain that was the realm of the Order of Kali. Kyra inhaled the cool, mulberry-scented night air: the smell of home. They had reached Ferghana safely. Surrounded by mountains and watered by the great Siran-dyr River, the fertile valley was a mix of cropland, pastures, orchards, and forests—a living, breathing land, unlike the desert she had just left behind.

  The door swung closed behind her and the Hub slept, quiescent—a metallic hump that shone with an eerie light. Kyra shivered and moved away from it. By the Goddess, she was glad to be out of there.

  Rinna pranced, also relieved to be outside again. Kyra patted her flank, feeling empty somehow. All those months of anxiety and anticipation, going over various scenarios with Shirin Mam, and it was over now.