text: Maralah yanked the souls from every living thing in the courtyard. The shrieking filled her ears. Purple blasts of Sina's breath enveloped the unprepared sanisi and infantrymen. There was no time for them to run. Morsaar had sent only parajistas for this task, and that left her the most powerful person on the field. She spared just one, a skinny tirajista who she wrapped in a field of violet flame.
  
  She pointed at Kovaas. "Let's bring him back."
  
  The tirajista shook his head. Maralah urged the purple flames closer. Burned at his heels. "You'll spend the rest of the war encased in this weapon otherwise. You understand?"
  
  He spat at her. "I am a sanisi," he said.
  
  "So you are." She yanked his soul from his body. The wispy lavender essence of him came free, and the flesh that remained crumpled. Her weapon consumed the soul's energy.
  
  With enough souls at her command, she didn't need any allies. The last known sinajista who could manipulate souls the way she could died a decade before. So long as Sina rode the sky, she was the most powerful person in Saiduan.
  
  Maralah clung tightly to her weapon. It was not a willowthorn branch, so it would not respond to her touch. It did not slide around her wrist, nor would it hold Sina's power indefinitely. These souls would bleed out in days if she didn't use them.
  
  Good thing she didn't expect to hold onto them that long.
  
  Maralah called Sina and held a wave of power beneath her skin as she marched across the courtyard. She burned the infantry in the hall, then the three sanisi who charged at her. The shock on their faces warmed her stomach. She was a filthy, stinking wreck, her hair a matted tangle. As they burned around her she found her face had taken on a grinning rictus. The small muscles of her face hurt.
  
  She made her way to the Patron's wing, burning as she went. It was two floors before she met resistance. Two sinajistas put up a wall of purple flame that singed her clothes. She flashed up her willowthorn sword in broad arc, sending a wave of fire out in turn. Their sinajista-spun defenses tangled in the narrow corridor, sparking and hissing.
  
  Maralah cut her way forward, calling wave after wave of Sina's breath and twisting it to her will. The door to the Patron's quarters was locked and warded. It was an old sinajista ward she had put on herself for Alaar. She untangled it now with a deft tug of six long threads. The door was locked. She blasted it open with a burst of purple flame. Eight sanisi stood ready, flanked by twenty members of the Patron's broodguard. Four of the sanisi were wrapped in purple mist, sinajistas ready to unleash a final defense.
  
  She pushed forward a wave of purple fire and held it just inches from their faces, because she saw something there that gave her pause. Three of the sanisi were hers, or had been, months ago.
  
  "Is Driaa behind you?" Maralah said. "I have something special for her."
  
  The sanisi and broodguard stood with weapons raised.
  
  "Is Rajavaa alive?" she asked.
  
  Sovaan, a tall man at the far end – one of hers – said, "Maralah, it is Patron Rajavaa who said we must keep you from this room."
  
  Maralah admitted she'd had months to consider that possibility. Morsaar was not a usurper. He didn't have the gall. He had done all of this at Rajavaa's order, which is why she'd been left alive this long instead of killed immediately.
  
  So typical. So Saiduan. So be it.
  
  "And who is your Patron, Sovaan, when Rajavaa is dead in a month?"
  
  This was the moment. The moment she had avoided all her life. Or perhaps the moment she had been building up to all these years. She was too old for this, and she knew it. She should have moved twenty years before, instead of holding Alaar's hand.
  
  "I'm going to burn this place down around me," Maralah said. "If you're too young to have seen me do it before, you'll see it now."
  
  Three submitted, and bowed their heads. The rest she killed. While they smoked she said, "I need a sinajista and a tirajista to raise a man from the dead in the yard," she said. "Kovaas, you know him?"
  
  Two sanisi pulled away at the end and trotted down the stairs.
  
  "Hold this position," Maralah said to the last. He bowed.
  
  She pushed open the door to Rajavaa's room.
  
  Rajavaa lay halfway off the bed, weapon clutched in his swollen hand.
  
  Morsaar swung from her right, leaping out from behind the door. Maralah skewered him through the gut. She kicked him off her weapon, and strode to Rajavaa's side.
  
  Rajavaa should not have been alive. She'd half suspected Kovaas was luring her into some bigger plot. But no.
  
  "Rajavaa, you fool," she said.
  
  "Morsaar!" he gasped.
  
  "You could have asked me to leave," she said. "It would have suited me better than prison."
  
  "You'd… never leave… never. Let them come… for me. You killed him. You…"
  
  "We're not all going to die here, Rajavaa."
  
  "Morsaar," he said. He clawed at the sheets and began to weep. The weeping became coughing. Blood spattered his beard.
  
  "You're not getting out of this so easily," she said. She yanked the bedding up and bound him in it. He was so weak he hardly struggled. She knotted him up at the chest and the feet.
  
  The door opened. She tangled a breath of Sina into a protective wall, but it was only the returning sinajista and tirajista, dragging Kovaas with them. But he was still very dead. They dropped him on the floor.
  
  "What is this?" Maralah asked.
  
  The sinajista bowed. "I don't have the skill. I've never… seen Sina rise."
  
  Maralah waved them both over. She knelt next to Kovaas's body. "You've done a resurrection?" she asked the tirajista.
  
  Another shake of the head. Of course not. They were both barely into their twenties.
  
  "I can get his blood flowing again. I'll pull his soul back into his body." She tapped her weapon. "It's stored here. When I do that, he'll just die again unless you heal up the worst of the wounds."
  
  "Tira is descendant. I'm not sensitive."
  
  "Then you'll work harder," Maralah said. "You don't have to heal everything. Just the killing blow. You understand? Start now."
  
  The tirajista's hands moved over the body.
  
  Maralah placed her blade on Kovaas's chest and knelt before him, calling on Sina deeply, until purple mist suffused her whole body. She expelled the breath, and sang the Song of Dead, the Song of Unmaking, the Song of Souls, lacing each spell together with deft, delicate accuracy. She had feared that to lose Sina for so many years meant losing her knowledge and skill with it, but some things were learned by the body and the mind, and what the mind forgot, the body remembered.
  
  She pulled the strength of the souls from the blade and into the meshed spell of resurrection she had created, then let go of it.
  
  Kovaas's eyes opened. He gasped. Arched his back. Screamed.
  
  The tirajista jerked away from him.
  
  "Mend the wound!" Maralah said.
  
  The tirajista concentrated hard, muttering several songs Maralah knew now by heart, after years on the battlefield bringing back the dead.
  
  Finally, the tirajista sat back, spent. "That's all I can do," he said.
  
  Kovaas lay panting on the floor. Maralah took her blade from his chest and peered at him. Sometimes the dead came back bad. Sometimes it was too late.
  
  "You know who you are?" she asked.
  
  "Maralah," he said, breathless. He gazed at her as a man would gaze at his ascendant star.
  
  "You," she repeated. "Tell me your name."
  
  "Kovaas," he said. "I… you've brought me back."
  
  "Come up now," she said. "I need you to help me." She glanced at the other two sanisi. "What of the Tai Mora army?"
  
  "We can see them from the walls," the sinajista said. "A few hours at best. Coming from the northeast."
  
  "No flanking force to hem us in?"
  
  "Runners say no. Just one force."
  
  "Take six slaves. Twelve sanisi. Twenty infantry. Rally those and meet their force?"
  
  "We've got those invaders a few hours from the gates. They'll see this as running."
  
  "It's preserving the line."
  
  "The Patron wanted to die here."
  
  "Now he doesn't. Do you?"
  
  The sinajista glanced over at the rolled-up form of Rajavaa, wriggling and grunting on the cold floor. "I'll rally them."
  
  "You too," Maralah told the tirajista. "We'll be here."
  
  She waited until they'd gone, then told Kovaas they were retreating.
  
  "Help me take the Patron," she said.
  
  "The others?"
  
  "Just us," she said.
  
  He was still too weak to help her with Rajavaa, so Maralah hoisted her brother over her shoulder. He was much lighter now, but she was not in the best shape after months in prison. She kicked open the latch that opened up the panel near the mantle. A wedge opened up, just big enough for her to huff Rajavaa into it and squeeze after him. She closed the secret door behind her and took Rajavaa by the ankles. She dragged him down the long, dark hall. She had been this way only once before, with Alaar, during an attempted coup. It was a long way to freedom from here.
  
  Maralah dragged him for a good hour, down stair after stair, until he stopped struggling and she was dripping with sweat. Kovaas was finally able to help her toward the end, and it made the going easier. She had no supplies and only the glimmering of a plan. Getting the others to rally a small group, thinking she was waiting on them, bought her time. By the time they realized she had gone off on her own, the Tai Mora would be at the gates, and they would have bigger problems than her.
  
  She collapsed at the entrance to the long tunnel at the bottom of the hold. Kovaas went to scout ahead to ensure the tunnel was clear. She had another mile to drag him. Her whole body shook, and she was breathing hard. She leaned against the wall. Listened to Rajavaa mumble. She pulled back the sheet from his face.
  
  "Thirsty," he said.
  
  "Not taking liquor with us."
  
  "Let me die."
  
  "Not a chance. I can resurrect you now, you know."
  
  "And I'll die again. I'm not… your monster."
  
  "That's precisely what you are," she said.
  
  "Usurper."
  
  "That's the best you have? All these months you imprisoned me, and that's all you came up with?"
  
  He spat at her. Misty flecks that merely wet his own face. Fresh air moved over them, coiling down through the passage.
  
  "Cheer up, brother," she said. "We're going to Anjoliaa. Taigan will meet us there. Just as I promised."
  
  "Too late."
  
  She showed her teeth, gritting them so hard her face hurt. "Feel free to die as much as you like on the way there. Over and over and over again. I'll bring you back, Rajavaa. And then Taigan will heal you."
  
  "I want to die… with Morsaar."
  
  Maralah covered his face back up. He mumbled at her. She stood. "I wanted to stay out of prison," she said. "We don't all get what we want."
  
  She took him by the heels again, and dragged him into the dark, damp corridor after Kovaas.