Idezza threw open the city gates for me.
I wrenched my weapons from the Tigress's cooling flesh and held one of her beautiful blades against the nape of the driver's neck for assurance. Despair makes people stupid.
So does the triumph.
As I rode into Idezza, hands waved at me from the windows. Flowers poured down like rain over me. Keening gave way to happy tears. The air was pregnant with the first words of a thousand songs coming together. They were delivered.
I yelled at them, "Idezza killed the Tigress!"
And they echoed, "Idezza!"
I yelled, "Glory to the martyred Vanozza!"
And they echoed, "Eternal glory!"
The dead maidens were as beautiful as they were short-lived. They were the shooting stars. Vanozza's sacrifice earned her every ounce of glory she craved so badly. But it was the old Ismar who lived to slay the Tigress in the end.
The seven Crones of Idezza, Nirav and Soffika waited for me at the Piazza Divina. They stood in a semicircle on the steps of the temple, not on its terrace. The rest of the townspeople flooded the streets, lanes, balconies and the square. I stood almost at the same place where Nirav had stood when had announced to the crones that he had hired me to defend Idezza. Unlike the Duke I towered over them from Shamshona's back. I could see the place of honor on the terrace clearly. The Duchesses' throne in its middle stood empty.
Baroness Ornatti, drawn, dark, defeated, stepped forward. Nirav was forced to do the same, on her right side, for her crooked fingers dug into his white-clad shoulder. Her left hand gripped Soffika's in a similar vice-like manner.
She looked up at me and forced every word from the void of her mouth. 'Sickness,' I guessed, 'some fatal sickness put those shadows on her face.'
"Your Grandissima, Ismar of Palmyr," the Baroness said. "Idezza humbly asks you to rule by the Rite of Mythra and under the auspices of Gala."
She pressed Nirav's shoulder down. The Duke dropped to his knees, somehow holding on to his smile. Blood-red flooded my vision at the sight of his humiliation. I would have screamed at the Baroness if the rage didn't rob me of breath.
"Idezza is weak," the Baroness continued. It surprised me that her neck was not bleeding, since every word came out razor-sharp. "Only this man is left from the once mighty line of her rulers and a girl in need of protection. Take pity on them. Take pity on us. Take pity on Idezza."
The citizens looked at me with the glazed eyes, the kind of gaze that the faithful set on the holiest of the Divines' relics. Nirav, the Baroness, the Crones and the citizens of Idezza, they all looked up to me. All, except Soffika. She scratched the Baroness's arm and wriggled free to lunge for her brother. Nirav patted her hand, though his attention remained on me.
I drew in a deep breath. I needed only to say 'yes' to add a Duke to my clan and become a lady of my own domain. I needed only to say 'yes' to give Idezza a fairy tale wedding. I needed only to say 'yes' to become what they preferred me to be. Ismar of Idezza, the Duchess.
"No," I said and looked down at them. At the brother and sister first, then taking in everyone else into my confidence. "Idezza already has a Duchess. And a Duke, her guardian. They gave this gift to you."
I heave-hoed the gigantic feline body from Shamshona's back. The Tigress landed with a heavy thud on the paving stones. Her arms splayed to the sides. Her unseeing eyes stared at the eternal dome above us, the mortals.
Nirav gently freed himself from the shocked crone's talons, rose from his knees, then lifted his sister high in the air. High enough for the whole world to see her.
Soffika laughed and clapped. The child was right. It was a funny story.
My driver twisted to glare at me. "The Empress will smash these two weaklings to avenge Princess Burandok!"
I poked her with the hilt of her former mistress' sword. "Drive on."
The Empress would only smash those who come at them with a sword, calling on Mythra. In short, she would have smashed me if I had claimed Idezza as mine. If the Empress marched on Idezza now, it would be to face a man and a dwarven girl. The weaklings, as the driver put it. She would be dishonored in the eyes of the Divines and the world if she fought them. Her prestige would grow more, if she took their gold and accepted them into her Empire.
And why not? They would be penitent when they kneel at her bejeweled feet, begging to keep their seat. It was Ismar after all who had killed the Tigress. Not Nirav. Not Soffika. Ismar.
Or maybe the Patchwork Courts would come together when they see that Idezza won her hopeless war with nothing more than one mad Commander as their asset.
Maybe...
Whatever would come, I was done with Idezza. My obligations were elsewhere, with my family. I could retire in peace. Or not.
At the gates, the Deadhead troops swarmed around something... someone.
A single rider, sweaty, dirty and exhausted was entering the Piazza. A rider not clad in the Deadhead's gray, nor in any allied company's colors. Nor in the Imperial gold either. It was a man... a man?
He was dressed in plain black, with blackened steel stripes on a leather jerkin. His thin hair laid on his back in a single plait. The road dust obscured the sallowness of his complexion, but there was no mud in the entire world to dull the violet glow of his eyes. Ashanti and something else shone out of his eyes. Taffiz. Of course, it was Taffiz!
Taffiz slipped off his horse, made a few lurching steps forward until he was in the middle of an empty circle cleared by the mercenaries.
"The Commanders had cast their votes for the new Captain-Commander of the Deadhead Company," he cried out, hoarse and triumphant.
A messenger bird should have outpaced him, but Xenophonta didn't inform me of receiving a bird. Perhaps she didn't want to distract me on the eve of battle. Perhaps she wanted to give her friend a moment of glory.
The Deadhead women crowded him, but the buzz of conversations died down. Everyone held their breath, wanting to hear the name as badly as I did. They all looked at the bedraggled man.
Taffiz tilted his head back so he would only look at me, and I—at him.
An urge to slide down Shamshona's heaving side nearly got the best of me... to slide... hop off her helpfully bent leg... grab him by the shoulders and shake him. Rattle the words out of him... but I stayed on my impromptu dais.
In the silence that fell, Taffiz no longer had to yell the words he carried all the way from Palmyr. He smiled, without the slightest attempt to hide it. It was the most hideous smile in the world and the most beautiful at the same time, because the deepest heart's desire powered it.
His heart's desire.
And mine, mine too.
Even before he said it, I realized that he had done the impossible. He had unearthed the dream once lodged in the heart of a temple acolyte while she was reading the hidden books in the temple library. While she was glancing over her shoulder, afraid of being caught. The dream that the girl had pushed away in pursuit of the more tangible, valuable things. She wanted money, she wanted to survive, she wanted husbands and lovers... but before that she had wanted more than anything else—
Yes, yes, there it was, my deepest heart's desire, dancing on the tip of Taffiz' tongue.
"The Commanders had cast their votes," Taffiz said, "Your Maxima."
And the Knowable World echoed my new title in a thousand fanfare voices.
Your Maxima!