The garden walkway ended halfway up the entry courtyard, Kiet's men flanking its west and Khaisan's flooding the broken gates at its east. Twelve against two hundred; several squads already prepared to swarm out and around the grounds by the looks of it. But Kiet stepped down into the cobbled square between them, and Commander Gazhani waved them all to stand down.

'What did I tell you, commander?' Khaisan drawled from the front lines, decked from head to toe for war. His helmet was no ordinary battle cap, but an honour hat, and Kiet's theurgy pulsed upon sight of it.

It was more than the simple fact that Khaisan had earned not the privilege of wearing an honour hat—it was that he wore Judhistir's. The royal Surikh honour hat—black iron with its long, silver antlers—sat propped upon his unworthy head.

'If anything is my uncle, above all, predictable,' he continued, leering as Kiet crossed the wide square to stand at its heart. 'One of his many weaknesses.'

'You said you would let my men go.' Kiet ignored him, ignored the helmet gleaming dark amongst torchlight. 'Well here I am.'

'Have them surrender their weapons, maharaj, and the Maha Garda will treat them with respect and dignity.' This was Gazhani, a man nearing his fiftieth summer, with a thick moustache under a long, narrow nose. Kiet doubted not his word; he had trained four years with the Maha Garda, spent a hefty part of that with the commander himself. Gazhani was a man of honour. And although the man he now served was not, it would at least bind Khaisan to his word out of sheer prudence. Reneging on his offer would mean losing Gazhani's approval, whatever that was worth to Khaisan.

Kiet looked back at his men, standing in formation at the edge of the courtyard, just below the entrance walkway to his estate. They were ready to fight—shaking though some were. None of them had seen real battle before. 'You heard him,' he shouted across the courtyard. 'Drop your weapons.'

For a long time, none of them moved but to exchange uncertain glances.

'What is then to be done with them?' Kiet returned his attention to Khaisan. 'Play to your audience if you must, but you of all people know that none of my men and servants had a thing to do with the Rama's death.'

'My word is my word, uncle. A pardon for their unwitting service of a kingslayer, and, who knows—perhaps even more than a simple pardon for those not so unwitting, who are able to offer any significant information regarding your treachery.'

He'll make liars and turncoats from the weakest of them. 'Continue your act for as long as you please, but the truth of it eventually will unfold.' Kiet rose his voice for all to hear. 'You, Khaisan, are the only kingslayer here. With your mind-bending you wrenched my kalis from its sheath and plunged—'

'Silence!' Khaisan snapped along with a burst of his theurgy.

Kiet's boots scraped a few inches back from the blow. He fought his legs from bending.

'I'll not let you poison my men with your lies! We all know how well you weave your words, how easily you spin any tale to suit your needs.'

The weight was growing on him, and he could resist it no longer. Kiet's knees hit the ground hard, his leather guards taking the brunt of the force. He resisted the urge to exert his jii—he needed give Khaisan no evidence to brand him a usurper; nor would it grant greater clemency for his men.

Steel clattered on stone behind him, then another. Finally were they beginning to yield. Khaisan nodded at the commander of his Maha Garda. 'Cuff him.'

Kiet chuckled. Someone needed to physically touch the cuffs to set its runes, after all. 'Yes. Whom amongst your pawns will you send out to me? Certainly will you never meet me yourself. Do you forget I have yielded? And still you fear to face me.'

His provocations worked a little too well. Khaisan unsheathed Silverspine from his waist even as he walked, slowly, towards him.

The thought passed his mind, he brushed it aside. He had bought Akai and Sindhu a little time, but not enough. Even then, to take his nephew now; to subdue him before Gazhani and an entire company of the Maha Garda ... his death would create only a vacuum. The third in line was yet a child; an early-bloomer not even in his teens. Another one of Judhistir's great-grandchildren. What an easy puppet he would make.

What would it achieve, besides, other than to cement Kiet as traitor? Khaisan's soldiers would descend upon him and his men. They were vastly outnumbered, and even Kiet could never take half of them at once ...

Ah ... there was no escape. Kiet knew it before he walked into the courtyard. Even if he managed a miraculous escape, that would seal his remaining soldiers' fate, and Kiet knew not whether he could live with himself then.

Khaisan was close upon him now, his shadow darkened what small light reached where Kiet was crouched, forced down by his nephew's theurgy. He twirled a thick, iron cuff in his finger as he walked, as though to relish the moment.

But he stopped paces away from Kiet and threw the cuff just so it would land before his face. 'Bind yourself.'

Kiet looked up at his scowling face. Not so stupid, after all. He sniffed, the immense weight suddenly gone from his arm. Khaisan had even the prudence to release his offhand instead of his stronger right. Not that he needed the added precaution. Kiet took the cuff without hesitation. His mind had been made.

'It is over, uncle.' Khaisan hissed down at him, his voice too low for anyone else to hear. 'My father will have you hanged at dawn. But for old times' sake I'll convince him to spare you at least from a public execution.'

But a gust pushed from the skies; so strong and fast it knocked his honour hat askew and Khaisan had to bind the ropes tighter below his chin. Not even a blink and Nagha followed after, appearing from the dark like a wraith-daemon, the only sound the flapping of his wings.

'Stop!' Kiet's shout was lost in the scraping of steel and leather, the soldiers' calls to watch the skies. 'Nagha! Away!'

But his bird swooped again and again before disappearing, each time at a different section of the Garda until they broke their ranks trying to anticipate him. Arrows whistled into the air. A man pushed through the line with a large crossbow and quarrel, long coil of rope and a bundle of netting attached to its end, and passed it to the commander.

Fadjira. Even in the low light Kiet recognised the sattwapeut. 'Nagha, stop!'

The bird screeched in response, somewhere in the night sky. I really should have trained him for battle. But Nagha learnt his mistake soon enough. Gazhani turned the crossbow into the darkness and released its bolt.

Kiet held his breath. Silence rippled through the Maha Garda. It was a few seconds before a flurry of wings tore through the uneasy quiet, and then they all sprang at once. 'Pull!' First one man, then two, then three ... they caught the end of the rope before it went whipping free, and dropped their entire weight upon it.

Nagha's cries turned pitiful. Kiet struggled harder against Khaisan's bending. 'Enough! Enough! He will yield!'

'Torches!' Khaisan waved, and a pair of soldiers ran out around the courtyard to light the lanterns specking the square. The night was getting deeper, colder, but once the lanterns were lit, more of the sky was revealed. Nagha was so dark he blended in with the night, but with the men pulling him closer towards the ground, and his horns as pale white as new-polished bone, that was enough for Khaisan. 'There you are.' The bands on his arms already were gleaming silver, but it pulsed with new light as he sent a second thread out towards the horned rukh.

'If you hurt him—'

'Hurt him?' Finally Khaisan turned his attention back upon him. 'The first horned rukh to have graced our realm in centuries? I will not hurt him, uncle. I will break him.'

Kiet laughed despite it all. 'Of course you will. Always have you lusted after what first was mine. Truly, Khaisan, it is so—insufferably—tiring!'

Before his nephew could respond, a light burst between them, hot and dazzling; red and yellow like a burning sunset, so bright Khaisan stepped back and shielded his eyes.

Then a curse rippled through his soldiers. Without warning one pierced his blade through his own stomach; another ran a dagger clean across his own neck. Here and there more followed like a contagion, all seemingly at random, and everyone else dissolved into wild confusion. Gazhani called them all to order, the shock and anger clear in his own voice, but Kiet knew.

Isla.

☆ this chapter is dedicated to cursedelegy ☆

Video: Music is OST from the game Final Fantasy II
Image: Original artists unknown