Gifting Fire, Alina Boyden [books to read for self improvement .txt] 📗

They skidded to a stop, their eyes wide with horror as they took in the death and devastation in front of them, and then their eyes landed on Hina and the cannon, and all hope left them.

She let out a screech of malicious glee as she pulled the trigger. I pressed my fingers into my ears an instant before the bronze zahhak roared death for the second time in less than a minute.

A haze of white smoke hung thick in the air of the bedchamber. I pulled my fingers free from my ears, straining to hear the sounds of guards or muskets returning fire, but there was just an eerie silence. More distant shouts were still going up, but there was no sign that anyone had survived the cannon’s second fusillade.

When the sea breeze cleared enough of the smoke to make out shapes amid the fog of war, my eyes widened in horror. There was a Mahisagari guardsman standing amid the bodies of his fallen comrades, his toradar leveled right at us. There was no time to think. I hurled myself into Hina, driving her to the floor just as flames spurted in front of us.

An angry sound hissed across my back, and there was a crack from the impact of lead against stone behind us. But he’d missed. That was the main thing.

I scrambled to my feet, fumbling to draw my katars as the guardsman dropped his toradar, drew his firangi and his buckler, and charged at us, screaming bloody murder. I got my fingers around the grips of the katars, sliding the second one free, gripping it with my right hand just as the guardsman slashed down with a shriek of fury.

I threw my left hand into the cut, letting the momentum propel my right fist forward. The firangi’s sharp edge bit deeply into the good steel of the katar’s blade, but I’d stopped his cut cold. His eyes were wide as my fist raced for his face, an eight-inch dagger projecting from my knuckles.

I had expected some kind of jolt of impact, but there wasn’t one, and for a horrible second, I thought I’d somehow swung wide with my punch, but then my knuckles and the brass guard of my katar hit the man in the nose, and I realized that the blade had pierced through his entire skull with so little resistance that I hadn’t even felt it go in. I kicked him in the chest, jerking my bloodied weapon free, averting my eyes from the narrow, bloody diamond that now connected his eyes through the space where the bridge of his nose had once been.

Hina was on her feet beside me a second later, and then I was startled to see ajrak-clad ladies rushing into the room from the balcony, carrying toradars, bhuj axes thrust through their sashes. They looked just like they had when I’d met them, all of Hina’s celas ready for war at long last. They knelt down, pointing the muzzles of their weapons at the hallway, as men who looked like cutthroat bandits took their places behind them, their rifles projecting over the women’s heads, creating a double line of barrels stacked one atop the other.

But nobody was coming, my ears told me that. The palace was in disarray, but the biggest danger now was to Lakshmi. If the messengers took off and got away, then they’d reach Ahura before I could, and Lakshmi would die. I couldn’t let that happen, not after we’d improbably succeeded at killing Asma and taking the palace.

“With me!” I cried, and I ran past the celas, the soles of my slippers slamming into the bodies of dozens of people coating the floor of the hallway, but I was sure-footed, and I burst out into the corridor beyond an instant later, searching for the guards I was sure were still ringing the women’s quarters.

There! In the garden. Two dozen of them had formed up under the orders of a superior officer. They were trying to work out which way to go, but the minute they spotted me standing there in my black shalwar kameez, bloodied katars in my hands, they knew something was wrong.

“Kill her!” I understood enough Mahisagari to understand that. The officer thrust his firangi in my direction, and his men rushed to raise their toradars to send a volley into me that I knew I would never survive.

But the next thing I knew sixteen women were lining the railing beside me, their rifles already raised, and they got their volley off first. The sound of sixteen rifles going off at once was like the tearing of the fabric of reality itself. I was surrounded by smoke and flame, but I could still see the Mahisagari guardsmen below me. Almost two-thirds of their number toppled to the ground, stone-dead. God, Hina’s celas were brilliant markswomen with those curious long-barreled Zindhi rifles!

But it wasn’t enough. The officer was still standing, as were eight of his men. He shouted, “Shoot, damn it!”

They were stunned, staggered by seeing so many of their number killed, and they hesitated too long. The men reached us and poured another volley into the Mahisagaris, and they could hardly have missed, the range was so close and they were standing so plainly in the open. It was a slaughter. Every last man was hit at least once, most more than that. They shuddered from the impact of the musket balls, tumbled to the blood-soaked sandstone, and lay still.

“Hurry, we have to get to the zahhak stables!” I shouted as Hina’s celas finished reloading their muskets, the men still slamming ramrods down the barrels, rushing to get themselves ready.

“Razia!” Sakshi shrieked, and to my shame I had forgotten to make sure she was safe, but she was holding a Zindhi rifle, her sweet face stained with gunpowder. She was pointing over the top of the distant gatehouse, and I saw the reason for her cry an instant later. A pair of acid zahhaks