Chapter 10 – Shanivaar
	Amon.  I’m here.

	The first glimpse I get of the Shanivaar is through a thin beam of blazing light cutting a path across the dusty warehouse we’re left in.  I push my way out of my barrel, almost half an hour after the men who brought us here left and the place sounds deserted.
	I find Raja is already out and has his back pressed against the big sliding barn-style door, peering out the slim opening onto the street beyond.
	I help Ahsan out of his, and Lavanya joins us some time later, needing no assistance shimmying out of hers.  We all gather near the doorway, silently.  I can see the apprehension on everyone’s faces.
	The breeze sifting in from outside smells strange and exotic, but not like the oasis or the mountains we travelled through in Mataa.  It’s damp, smothering in humidity and salt spray from the ocean, and thick with pollen and decay.  The light coming in from outside is almost entirely green, despite presumably leading to a street.
	Anala had said this place would be a dense forest island of some kind, adapted to the ever-changing whims of monsoon weather.  Despite that, apparently this community has survived the climate and the difficulties of this place long enough that Anala’s heard of it through Clan gossip, and that they’ve been shipping contracted workers here for years.
	There’s a heavy creak of wood suddenly, and all of us jump back from the slim opening as the door is shoved aside.  Raja and I both go for our weapons.
	Thankfully, it’s Anala.  Her silhouette is lit around the edges by a halo of blazing light from outside, and it takes my eyes a few moments to adjust, but once I do, I’m able to see the grim expression on her face.
	“What’s wrong?”  I whisper.  “Have we been found out somehow already?”
	The woman looks to either side of her for a moment, then steps inside and tugs the door closed.
	“No,” she says at length, keeping her voice low, “but this place is. . . dangerous.  I’ve taken the last hour to get my bearings.”
	I swallow around a lump in my throat.  Anala does not often use words like ‘dangerous’.  If she seems worried, there has to be a damn good reason.
	“There isn’t much here save the market district, and that’s basically just the docks,” she explains, quietly, “and a few manors and Clan holdings throughout the forest.  They’re still working on the roads and there are a lot of structures still under construction, but what little exists. . . .”
	She looks back outside, her boxy ears tipping towards something.  I hear it, too.  A few sets of footsteps, which she gives a good amount of time to let pass before continuing.
	“. . . what city there is,” she continues, “belongs entirely to the Clans.  This place is practically their own small nation.  It’s a fortress.  There aren’t civilians here.  Everyone I’ve seen who isn’t a hyena is collared, or a foreigner.”
	“That should make finding a few jackals easy, at least,” Raja reasons.  	
	“The Clan that bought Kadar’s wife was called the ‘Immar’,” Ahsan offers.
	“There are only two I’ve seen,” Anala says.  “They pretty much have the island split down the middle.  Any spotted hyena you see is likely an Immar.  The Harkalla are striped.  Their guards are absolutely everywhere near the docks.  I spoke to the vixen again and she said it’s always like this here.  Getting back on the ship again is going to be a challenge, we might have to fight our way out if we have to do it in a hurry and the barrels aren’t an option.”
	“Alright, let’s just try to come up with a plan,” Lavanya says intently.  “It sounds like getting around out there won’t be easy, without arising suspicion.”
	“Most of the Clan houses here probably know their servants,” I say.  “So we can’t just bullshit our way down the streets.  You said the city was still being built into the forest?”  I look to Anala.  She nods.
	“Right,” I say.  “So we use the forest.”
	That turns out to be easier said than done.  From the moment Anala opens the door and we step out into the muggy tropical air, I get a good idea what we’re up against.  The ‘road’ that leads to this particular warehouse is little more than a dirt path well-worn by wagon wheels and many paws, and it butts right up against the edge of the undergrowth.  Which.  Is.  Everywhere.
	I’ve never seen so much green in my life.  It puts even the oasis to shame.  The island looks to be a gradually-sloped mountain rising up into the misty distance, and throughout the forest beyond I can occasionally see the hints of structures poking out through the tree tops.  None of the foliage here grows very high, the frequent storms likely see to that.  But there are plants, vines and grasses growing out of every available surface where the hyenas haven’t chopped and beaten them back.  Even the warehouse we were in, which looks to be somewhat recent construction, is victim to some of the vines and stubborn weeds clinging to its every crevice and crawling up its wooden exterior.
	I can tell the others are as nervous about approaching this dense, foreign jungle as I am.  We don’t know where we’re going and we don’t yet have a plan, and it seems like an easy place to get lost.
	The sound of more people approaching, this time a larger contingent which by the scent of them most definitely include hyenas, breaks us all from our reverie.  Anala turns to us, snapping out in a low whisper, “Just move.  Head towards the largest manor up there, the one with the red-shingled roof.  I know it’s an Immar building, they use red to identify themselves.  I’m going to head into town and see what I can learn.  Do not be seen!”
	I nod, and we all duck into the underbrush, pressing our way into the indomitable forest spread before us.  From the first footstep, it’s a tangle of foliage and layered undergrowth, and I know we’re making a lot of noise, but it doesn’t seem possible to move through this place any other way.
	Thankfully, the forest makes more than enough of its own noise.  Birds cackle and chortle up in the treetops, creating noises both lyrical and harsh on the ears, joining together into one mixed cacophony of sound.  Insects trill and chitter around us, and soon we’re wading through swarms of flies that choke the air.
	The ground is wet and gives way in places, roots tangled beneath layers of old decay and leaf matter.  We all struggle through it, claws digging for purchase on every surface, but even still all of us slip or stumble several times over.  
	The sounds of the port fade before long, but then we face another problem.
	“I can’t tell which direction that manor was any more,” Ahsan admits breathlessly as we all come to a stop.
	I cut my hand through the insects buzzing around my eyes, wincing as I pull a sharp splinter from between my toes.  “It was further up the mountain,” I say.  “We need to be heading up.”
	“I can’t tell which way that is any more,” Ahsan says, quiet but sounding a little panicked.
	“Calm down,” I say in as steady a tone as I can.  “We haven’t been walking that long.  I can still hear men in the distance that way,” I point, “so that’s probably where one of the roads is.  We just need to get our bearings.”
	Raja suddenly coils himself down to his knees, and I worry for a moment that something’s wrong, but then he leaps for one of the nearby trees, extending his claws and catching a low branch.  He pulls his lean, muscular figure up easily enough, and from there on out all we can do is watch as he inexpertly makes his way up the tree.
	“Be careful,” Ahsan cautions worriedly.  None of us are exactly tree-climbers, but Raja’s probably got the best chance out of all of us.
	He’s gone for a little while, the branches rustling and dropping leaves in his wake.  Then, at long last, he calls down to us.
	“I can see it!”  He says.  “And the road.  It’s a ways off still, but I can get us there.”  He sounds confident, which seems to lighten everyone’s spirits.  
	It ends up taking us quite some time, it feels like nearly an hour although it’s hard to tell in this place, and Raja has to climb two more trees.  But at length, we’re all able to see the distinctive red-shingled roof in the distance, even from the ground.  We’ve caught sight of the road several times too, it comes out this way and connects with a few other residences.
	And at one point, we passed something we all knew far too well.  They’ve levelled out the forest in many places, somehow clearing and tilling the soil into usable farm-land.  And while some of the smaller patches were clearly vegetable gardens and rows of fruit trees, overwhelmingly, what we’re seeing are fields of distinctive red flowers.
	“They’re turning this place into a Divine Plantation,” Ahsan says softly, as we all crouch in a growth of palmettos, watching a force of a good dozen men tilling and clearing roots from what’s like to be a new field.  It looks like they burned the forest first, judging by all the singed trees and ash along the edges of the new field.
	All of the workers are collared, and run the range from an old bear who’s pulling a large tiller that would probably be better suited for a horse or a mule, to a few small mice sifting through the dirt removing roots.  They’re all dirty, soot-covered and in most cases, skinny.  Many of them have sores or mange.
	“These are some of the worst-looking servants I’ve ever seen,” Raja says, sounding both horrified and angry.
	“You heard Anala,” Lavanya says.  “This is these Clans’ own little nation.  They can do whatever they want here. . . there’s no one to keep them in check and nowhere for these people to go.”
	One of the mice perks their head up, looking in our direction, and I grab Raja by the shoulder, yanking him back away from the light.  “We need to keep moving,” I say through grit teeth, forcing myself to look away from the field.
	We move our way through thinning jungle, towards a rockier, more managed area.  Either the land here naturally supports less growth, or they went in a hewed through the undergrowth a lot to make navigating the forest easier.  Soon we start running across small trails and deliberately planted trees, and it becomes clear that this area was in fact landscaped.
	It’s a garden, I realize at length.  This is almost like the garden in the Sura Plantation’s Manor, except wilder and less out-of-place in this climate.  We pass a few fig trees, and more of those trees with round, orange fruit on them.  Everything here is young and new, though.  Barely saplings.  It’s easy to tell the natural growth from what was planted.
	It’s honestly pretty beautiful, now that we’ve escaped the vicious undergrowth and pitfalls of the natural jungle.  It’s like a sanctuary of green, leading towards the manor.  I can see a fence in the distance, and the pristine, white-washed walls of the two-story building.  Made from bricks, of course.  All of which must have been imported.
	The group falls behind me a bit, after Raja realized the figs were edible and they all started picking them, talking quietly amongst themselves.  I’m still within listening distance of them, but I want to get closer to the fence, to get a better look at the manor.
	“Who are you?”  A female voice emanates from a grove directly to my right, and I’m so shocked, I literally jump backwards, my sword out before I can stop myself.
	I catch sight of the woman standing in the grove, a spotted hyena in a long saree, and she looks equally shocked.  But she levels out quickly, putting on a brave face.  It’s the sort of resolve I’ve seen before, in the face of another woman long ago, staring down a man who was about to attack her.
	It’s ferocity, blistering resolve.  It’s the face of a mother protecting her child.  And that, I realize, is exactly what she’s doing.
	I hadn’t noticed it at first, but held partially beneath her saree and the wrap she’s wearing over it, is a small, squirming bundle.  
	I drop the arm holding my sword almost immediately, horrified by what I almost did.  The woman’s gaze follows the path of my weapon as I lower it, but she only narrows her eyes after that, suspiciously.  There’s an air of fearlessness about her, despite the infant in her grasp, and the fact that she is apparently unarmed.
	I hear my friends’ frantic footsteps approaching from behind, and Raja is the first at my side, his shotel out.  The woman’s eyes widen marginally when she realizes there are more of us, but she continues to stand her ground.
	“Raja, no,” I put a hand out to grip his arm, and the cheetah goes rigid beneath my grip, but doesn’t go any farther.  Lavanya and Ahsan also stop short of the clearing, staring at the hyena woman.
	Something glints in the sun, catching my eye.  I’d seen a bit of it earlier and dismissed it as jewelry, but now I’m certain I know what it is.
	“Kadar. . .” Ahsan says softly.  “She’s like me.”
	The woman is wearing a collar.  She’s indentured.
	“You’re a servant,” I say aloud.  “Indentured here?”
	The hyena lifts her muzzle, defiantly.  “I am one of Lord Immar’s Harem consorts.  Kill me, and you’ll suffer the consequences.”
	“We don’t want to kill you,” I assure her quietly, my ears flicking in the direction of the manor, worried someone might hear us.  This place has got to have guards.  
	“You don’t belong to this manor,” she says, looking us over.  “I’ve never even seen you on the streets.  Who are you?  What are you doing here?”
	“This one’s gonna be a problem if we don’t take care of her,” Raja says in a decidedly dangerous tone.
	“She has a baby, Raja,” Ahsan snaps, disbelievingly.
	“Are you here to hurt Lord Immar?”  The woman asks, looking between us, more specifically at our weapons.  
	“We’re going to at least need to take her prisoner until we’re done here,” Lavanya whispers.  “We weren’t supposed to be seen, Kadar.  Damnit.”
	“If I’m not back inside in a few minutes, the Eunuch will come looking for me,” the hyena cautions, apparently having heard us.  Hyena ears are a pain like that.  “So either run. . . or tell me why you’re here.”
	“Running’s sounding good,” Ahsan says, beginning to turn.
	“Wait,” I hold a hand out, then look back to the woman.  Something about her tone. . . .
	“This Lord Immar,” I say, “you belong to him?”
	“I am an Immar,” she says with an air of pride, but her tone sounds conflicted, too.  “But. . . from a lesser branch.”
“How-“ I stammer, “but. . . you’re indentured, aren’t you?”  
“I was sold for the price of my dowry and for. . . gambling debts my father had accrued,” she replies quietly after a few moments.
	“Sold within your own clan?”  Ahsan gives her a sympathetic look.  “I didn’t know that even happened.”
	“Lord Immar prefers all of his harem be from within the Clan,” she explains, her voice souring the more she speaks.  “His wife is aging and he has no daughters left to inherit.  He wanted purebred children.”
	“That’s disgusting,” Raja mutters with a snarl.
	“Shut your trap,” I growl at him, and step forward towards the woman.  She continues staring at me warily, but still refuses to give ground.  Nerve, if ever I’ve seen it.
	“You hate him,” I say, not entirely certain, but the suspicion’s been burning in the back of my mind since she began speaking about him.  “Don’t you?”
	I see her muzzle tremble, just enough that I know I’m right.  “What do you want with him?”  She repeats, quietly.
	“Nothing,” I say honestly.  “But I’m looking for a servant his clan holds the contract to.  My family.  My child.”  I look to the bundle in her arms.
	She hugs the baby a little tighter to her chest.  “Your child is contracted?”  She asks, the first real sign of empathy in her tone.
	“I don’t know,” I admit, my heart hurting with the thought that by now, he might be.  “My wife was. . . and she had him with her when she was brought here.  I’m here to find her, and find my son.  But I don’t know where to look.  Do you know any jackals on the island?”
	Her ears perk at that.  “No,” she says, crushing my hopes almost as soon as they were raised.  “But I know how you could find out.  How many of you are there?”
	“Just. . . what you see,” I say, looking to my comrades.  “And one other.”  I hesitate to tell her any more details just yet, lest she run and tell her guards.
	She seems to consider that.  “Are you any good with those weapons?”  She asks.
“Killed plenty of hyenas with them,” Raja says before I can stop him.  I glare at him, but all he does is shrug back at me.
	“. . . you might be enough,” she says, her red-eyed gaze sweeping over us.  “Perhaps at night, when they are all asleep.”
	“What are you suggesting?”  I press.
	“Lord Immar, and Matron Immar keep an accounting of the indentured serving their clan in the basement of this manor,” she explains.  “Help me, and I will help you.”
	“Yes,” I say, the words tumbling out of me, my spirits rising.  “Yes, we’ll help you.  We would help you regardless, but. . . yes.  Do you want to escape?”
	“I want more than just escape,” she says, her eyes growing all the more fiersome as she speaks.  “I want you to kill them.  The Lord.  His wife.  Every Immar in this manor.”
	“I don’t-“ I begin.
	“How many?” Lavanya, of all people, asks.  “How many guards, and how many Clan members live here?”
	“Five Immar,” the woman says.  “The Lord, his wife, her sister and her two daughters.  All monsters. . . all not worth the air they breathe.  My life is a blessed one compared to the torture they inflict on most of the indentured here.  They have six guards, all skilled, all well-equipped, but if you come at night the Lords will be sleeping.”
	We all go silent, and I can feel even Ahsan’s uncertainty.  This is murder we’re contemplating, pure and simple.  But we’ve killed for less, and I’m willing to accept that this woman isn’t lying about these peoples’ cruelty.  
	“I am willing to do whatever is necessary to protect my daughter from growing up in this hell,” the woman says, between grit teeth.  “I will help you deliver the killing blows myself if I can.  If your child truly is held in contract on this island, you should be willing to do the same.”
	“The Gods meant for us to find you,” Raja says, then looks down at me.  “Kadar.  You must see it.  We were lead to her.”
	I feel like a great yawing chasm is opening beneath me.  It’s the same feeling I had when I turned the corner in the Sura compound and saw the kind guard who’d tried to reach out to us ahead of me.  In that moment, I’d known this one terrible task was directly in the way of the path to my son.  And in the end, I’d done what was necessary.  Here again, an opportunity. . . a gateway to the family I’d lost.  But the cost was cold-blooded murder, and there’d be no question of it this time.  It wasn’t a robbery that went terribly wrong, or a melee against an armed opponent who arguably may have tried to kill me regardless of my willingness to fight her. . . this was absolutely that last step into darkness.  
	But it’s for my son.  This woman is willing to risk everything to save her child from this life.  How can I do any less?
	“Your name?”  I ask, my voice coming out breathless for some reason.  “If we’re going to be allies, I’d like to know it.”
	The hyena smiles slowly.  “Rajne Immar.”

	“I’m not certain how long I can move about this place freely,” Anala admits as we gather deeper in the grove, later that evening.  Dusk is falling, casting every plant in a waning blue glow.  “Every hyena here knows me as an outsider, it was enough explaining my way through a few of their establishments to get these,” she tosses a heavy bag to the ground, and leans down to untie it and open it for us.  Inside are the water skins we’d been carrying since the oasis, presumably now full.  They’re the first thing we all go for, but it looks like she picked up some dried meat and fruits, as well.
	She looks to me as the others settle in to eat.  “Kadar, I understand your feelings in this,” she says, at first not explaining herself.
	“What do you mean?”  I ask, after draining half the water skin.
	“I take no pleasure in the idea of killing someone outside of combat,” she explains.  “In fact, it’s strictly forbidden in my Order.  But I can handle the guards while you lot all do what’s necessary.”
	“It’s hard to see this as necessary,” I say quietly.
	“This place is too small to hide in for long,” she says.  “Everyone knows one another.  I just can’t go asking about for your family, I’m sorry.  I was hoping I might simply stumble across them, but. . . .”
	“This’ll be quick and dirty,” Raja says, in between tearing off a piece of dried meat.  “We go in, give these bastards something to remember us by, find out where your son is, and get him.  And we help this woman in the process.  Maybe we can even take her with us.”
	“We’ll have to if she takes part in all this,” I say.  “We can’t just leave her here at the mercy of the Immar.”
	“She’s willing to take that risk,” the cheetah says pointedly.  “Hell, she brought up the idea.  If you ask me, she’s been thinking on this awhile herself.  If we don’t help her she’ll try it on her own at some point in the future, anyway.  You heard her.”
	“That’s desperation,” Ahsan says knowingly.  “And anger.  My own. . . situation. . . was hard enough.  I can’t imagine the betrayal, knowing your suffering is thanks to your own family.”
	“We don’t have the time to fuck around here,” Raja says vehemently.  “Hell, I still think it was a mistake to let her go back inside.  She could have a change of heart.”
	“You just said you thought she’d do this regardless of our help,” I point out.  “Do you trust her, or not?”
	“Hell no,” the cheetah says.  “But I don’t trust anyone.  The point is, we aren’t going to have another opportunity like this.  Is it worth the risk to you or not?  It’s your family.”  
	I find four sets of eyes on me, and I sigh, looking down.  “It’s worth it.”
	“Kadar, come,” Anala says, standing.  “Help me scout the perimeter of this estate.”
	The cheetah or the lioness would, of course, be a better choice for any kind of surveillance, but I suspect that’s not the true reason for our exodus as Anala leads me off.
	We walk through the empty grove for a time, keeping our distance from the manor, but always keeping our eyes and ears on it.  The lights in the second story are still lit, and Rajne said that’s where the Lord’s family lives.  
	She’s supposed to open the gate to the grove, which she assured us will not be guarded, after they sleep.  The manors here don’t bother to lock their house servants in at night, considering there’s nowhere to flee to.  Rajne told us a short story of one of the other harem girls, who was desperate enough to flee into the jungle, nearly naked and with no provisions.  They found her several days later, dead from a snake bite.  There truly is no escape from this place.
	“I know what you fear,” Anala says suddenly, piercing the silence.
	“There’s too much to fear here to count,” I say, sighing.
	“But that isn’t what worries you now,” she says, looking back over her shoulder at me.  “You fear staring at your own reflection, and seeing a villain.  You don’t want all of this to turn you into the wrong kind of man.”
	“That couldn’t have been hard to figure out,” I mutter.  “I haven’t exactly been quiet about hating what all of this has forced us to become.  And anyway, almost no man wants to think he’s in the wrong.  It doesn’t bother you?”
	“I don’t believe there is a ‘wrong’ kind of man,” she says.  “I think drawing a line between what is wrong and right is convenient for law, but little else.  It is almost always a matter of situation and perspective, and those are both always in flux.”
	“You’re losing me,” I say.  “Keep in mind, you have an education.  I don’t.”
	“Killing a man in cold blood because you want his gold is wrong, according to the law,” she says, turning to regard me.  “But the want for gold is also usually why wars are waged, and thousands die at war.  My Order believes any war is worth fighting, simply because it is. . . war.  So by that logic, every street criminal who murders someone for money is paying homage to Anala, because he is killing for the exact same reason as so many of her Priestesses have.”
	“That doesn’t make any sense,” I argue.  “You fight for the sake of. . . fighting.  Right?”
	“We fight for the sake of Anala,” she says, “and our Temples.  Both of which the Clans call upon to further their pursuit of gold, and power, and land.  Anala is the Goddess of conquerors. . . not warriors.  We are her swords. . . not the people she blesses.  Our victories benefit the Clan Lords.  Everything in Mataa does.”
	“If you’ve realized this,” I say, confused.  “Then why are you still devout?”
	“I realized it long ago,” she says, her eyes lifting to the heavens as the first of the stars begins to come out.  “And for a time it tormented me.  Much as you are uncertain now.  But eventually, I came to feel that my faith was not. . . wrong. . . just because it wasn’t what the High Priestesses had always told me it was supposed to be.  My faith is my own, and I became a part of it, and continue to believe in it in my own way.  That is a decision I’ve made because of events in my life, and my perspective on those events.  And eventually, all of those decisions lead me to you. . . and your fight.  Which means for all those years I thought I’d wasted serving a cruel Clan with no nobility, I had actually been in the right to stay the course, so that I could be here now.  Every decision we make, everything we believe, will always be wrong in someone else’s eyes.  But all they can do is judge from outside, they don’t have to live with it.  All that matters in the end is that you can.”
	“That’s an easy way to justify just about anything,” I say.
	“There is a justification for just about anything,” she replies.
	My body feels weak, and trying to wrap my mind around her circuitous logic isn’t helping.  It explains her personality, though.  Anything is justified so long as you can justify it.  
	“It must be comforting to live with that level of certainty,” I mutter.  “Does anything frighten you, Anala?”
	She stops in her tracks at that, and I’m forced to turn around.  She is looking at me, but not directly. . . her eyes are unfocused.
	“Yes,” she admits without hesitation.  “I’m terrified. . . I have always thought I would die alone.”
	“You mean, without taking someone else down with you?”  I guess.
	“No,” she says.  “alone.  Not dying with someone else, but. . . dying with no one to mourn my passing.  Knowing no one cares for me in those last final moments.”
	My brows lift, and I look sympathetically on her in her rare, vulnerable moment.  “Don’t you have family?”  I ask.
	She is silent.  
	We walk the rest of the perimeter without speaking.  One by one, the lights in the house begin to dim.  If Rajne is going to keep her word, she’ll be opening the gate for us soon.
	As ever with the enigmatic Priestess, I feel I’ve scratched the surface, but will never have enough time in the world to get in.  I do believe one thing whole-heartedly now, though.
	I’d always assumed Anala’s fervor and zealotry were born from something almost supernatural, or a personality so removed from most normal people, I could never fully grasp it.  But really, her devotion to her Goddess boils down to something much more mundane, and easy to understand.  
The fear of being alone.

Rajne delivers.  Nearly an hour after all the lights have gone dim in the house, save the exterior lanterns, the metal gate hinges creak ever-so-slightly as she carefully, and painstakingly slowly, pushes it open for us.
“No one guards the entrance to the glade,” she says in a low whisper.  “But there are two guards near the back door.  You’ll need to dispatch them to get inside, I don’t think all of you will fit through the window I used to slip out.”
“Not a problem,” Anala says, strapping her shield to her arm.  I don’t often see her use it, but Rajne had said there were six guards in here, all of them skilled and well-equipped.  Even for Anala, that’s a tall order.  She looks intense, and ready.
“There is another manor a few acres away,” Rajne warns us.  “You probably saw their fields on the way here.  There is a bell on the second floor.  You must be certain they don’t make it to it, or we’ll have the whole clan come down on our heads.”
“Where are the others?”  I ask her before we head in.
“Excuse me?”  She asks impatiently.
“The other women in the harem,” I explain, “or any other servants in the house.  We want to leave them the option to stay if that’s what they choose, so they can’t see what happens tonight.”
“They are locked in the servant housing with their Eunuch guard,” she says.  “You’ll want to avoid tangling with Sarin.”
Anala’s ears perk at that.  “A Eunuch?”
“He is enormous, and from what I understand from the Matron’s complaining, did not come cheap,” the woman claims.  “I think he’s quite good with that spear of his.”
Anala gives a toothy smile.  “Is he now?”
“Anala, stay focused,” I remind her, pulling my sword.  “We need to try to do this quietly, and get out as fast as we can.  Back door first. . . then across the living room and parlor to the front, right?”  I look to Rajne, who nods.  “And there are two more guarding the staircase to the second floor, they’re bound to see us then.  That’s four, Anala.  Can you handle that?  We can’t afford to wait on getting to the family upstairs, or they’ll all wake.”
“Do they have pistols?”  Ahsan asks, suddenly.
“The northerners’ weapons?”  The woman quirks her head.  “I don’t think so.  If anyone had one, it would be Lord Immar.  He likes to collect oddities.  I’ve seen some of the guards at port carrying them, but I’ve never seen any in the house.”
“This whole thing would go down a lot smoother if we just locked them in their rooms or something,” Ahsan says quietly.
“Killing them was the deal,” the woman snaps.  “Have some empathy for the other servants they’ll buy and sell in the future.  Besides, you’ll need Lord Immar’s keys to get into the basement.”
“Enough talk,” Anala says, striding down the path ahead.  “We are cutting the head off the snake.  Let’s do what must be done.”
The two guards near the back door of the manor see us at almost exactly the same time we see them, when we round a hedge of flowering trees.  From the outset, just judging by the way they respond, I know these aren’t the same grade of ‘warriors’ we encountered at the Sura depot.  They only take a second or two to assess us, and surprised though they seem, they don’t hesitate to pull their blades.
“Who-“ one of them begins, but then he must have caught the glint of Anala’s blade in the moonlight, and he does what I’d hoped he wouldn’t right off the bat.  He shouts.
“Under attack!”  He roars, raising his scimitar and shield.  “Harkalla!”
The last part confuses me a moment, until I realize we have a striped hyena amongst our group.  He thinks we’re from the rival Clan on the island.
But by that point Anala has charged forward, Raja and I following in her wake.  We’d made sure to round the building to get to this door, so they had minimal warning before they saw us.  
Anala crashes into the first man with her shield directly, bowling him off his feet.  But before she can bring down her deadly killer blow, the other guard moves in like clockwork, sealing the breech in their defenses.  I’m briefly afraid he’s going to land a hit, before Anala brings up her sword to parry, instead of relying on her still over-extended shield arm.  I catch the glint of her teeth in the lantern light, a challenged, but satisfied grin crossing her features.
Raja and I descend on the man who’s still pushing himself to his feet, and cut him off from flanking the Priestess.  He’s fast though, and swings even as he’s kicking up to his feet, not accurately enough to hit us, but enough that we both give him room.
He makes it to his feet and I’m pretty sure we’ve got him at a disadvantage, being on either side of him.  But once he starts coming after me, it’s hard enough just to stay on the defensive, let alone get a hit in.  The man is fast, accurate, and doesn’t waste his movements.  It feels like fighting a younger Lochan.
What’s more, he doesn’t just fight with his sword.  At one point he sweeps a leg out and it catches me wholly unprepared, the force of the man’s armored shin slamming into my calf making me see stars and reel in pain.  I don’t fall, thankfully, but I may as well have for how open it left me.  He presses the advantage and arcs his sword upwards, raking over where my neck had been seconds before.  I manage to duck aside just barely, but feel the searing sting that tells me he caught me up the chin and partially across my neck, anyway.  A surface wound, but too close for comfort.
Raja is trying to come at him from behind and hook his shotel into some part of where his armor is weak.  The weapon is less than ideal in general, but especially against someone wearing hardened leather with brass plates.  The man isn’t having much trouble splitting his attention between us.
Frustration seems to get the better of the cheetah, and he gives a rumbling snarl, dropping to his knees to hook the man’s shin.  The guard had been in the midst of another swing at me, and seems unprepared for it.  The shotel successfully catches him by the leg, too high along his shin to entirely avoid his armor, but Raja’s a strong man, and when he jerks the weapon towards him, it still slices a half-moon gash in leather and flesh alike.
The guard limps away from the cheetah and shoves me aside with his shield, putting his back to the wall.  Then he’s facing both of us, and Raja’s lost his advantage.
“His shield arm!”  I yell to Raja, bringing my sword up to parry another swing.  “Get it out of the way!”
The cheetah gives me an affirmative nod, and goes in hard at the man.  Of course, he now knows our plan, and switches to parrying Raja as opposed to giving him his shield.  But I’d expected that.  I wait for my chance, and feint an easily-blockable strike.  He goes for it, bringing his shield up exactly where I want it.
I twist my body and loop my arm up and around his, locking us together, then holding on for dear life.  The big guard is just as strong as he looked, and he seems to be on to my game immediately, his eyes going wide.
“Now!”  I growl out between grit teeth to Raja.
The cheetah ducks one of the guard’s frantic swings, and moves into his now unprotected right side, chopping his shotel down into the man’s neck.  His leather gorget catches most of the first swing, but the cheetah puts his muscle into it, digging the point at the top of the weapon in, then ripping it forward, pulling out a spray of blood with it.
The guard falls backwards, and I let go of him, watching him slide down the wall.
“More are coming,” I hear Anala say from behind us, shaking the blood off of her own sword.  She takes off through the now open doorway, Rajne already moving in ahead of us.  We follow the thin, young hyena woman as she leads us down an immaculately-painted hallway, the walls covered in intricate mandalas.  
Heavy footsteps greet us as the hallway opens out into the first of the parlors the woman told us of.  Two more guards, a woman and a man this time, are headed towards us, weapons drawn.  And I can hear another shouting from above and further into the house, likely one of the two on the stairs.
“Go!”  Anala yells at us, rushing towards the archway that leads into the next parlor, to cut the guards off.  I hear a heavy thud as someone presumably leaps the staircase, landing in the parlor.
“Servant’s stairs!”  Rajne says quickly, ushering us towards a small door that leads to an equally small hallway behind the main hallway.  Lavanya and Ahsan move in behind her, but before I can follow, Raja’s hand grips my arm.  
“I’m helping the Priestess,” he says.  “She’s gonna need it.”
I don’t have time to think about it or argue with him, so I just nod.  “Good luck,” I say, and follow the others before I completely lose sight of them.
We move through this tiny corridor, meant for servants to move about the house without being underfoot or seen by more important people, and I can’t help but reflect on the irony, that it’s serving our purposes now.
The corridor leads to an equally narrow staircase, which sounds dreadfully loud to me as we move up it.  When we’ve made it to the top, Rajne cracks the door.
Almost as soon as she has, a blade wedges itself into the opening and the young hyena shrieks, backpedaling away from the attacker and being yanked behind Lavanya.  The man must have been waiting there for us.
“They knew about this passage,” Lavanya says, irritated, as she extends her claws.
“They must have heard us,” Rajne says.
“Lavanya, let me-“ I begin, but it’s too late.  The lioness waits a few seconds more, then seemingly timed, shoves the door open with all her might.
She must have waited until the guard up there put his muzzle against it to peer in, because when we come erupting into the hallway upstairs, the man is reeling back with a bloody nose.  I move in to his rear as Lavanya continues the frontal assault, swiping at him in a flurry of blows with both paws.  Ahsan stands back, guarding Rajne, and I ready myself for another hard fight like the one outside the door.  Except worse, because Lavanya isn’t really armed.
But she gets lucky, or else I’ve grossly underestimated her skill with her claws, and catches the man across the eyes.  Bleeding now from two places on his face, the guard stumbles backwards almost directly into me.  I brace myself, seeing an opening, and letting his body weight push him back into my sword.
I aimed beneath the brass plate on the back of his armor, and I end up digging the sword in somewhere around his kidney.  I’m not sure how far I get, this guard is big and bulky and I’m sure most of what I run through is fat, but it’s a deep puncture, and by the time I’m kicking him off my sword, he doesn’t have the strength to stand any more.  He falls to the floor and there we leave him, but not before Lavanya grabs his scimitar.
I nod at her, approvingly.  The sounds of the fight downstairs continue, and it would only take a short run from here to make it to the staircase and peer down to see how our companions are doing, but Rajne is already pulling away from Ahsan and moving towards one of the bedrooms.
The door to another, this one further down the hallway, opens before we’ve even gotten to the first.  A bleary-eyed, middle-aged hyena woman peers out, wearing little more than a long robe.  Her gaze becomes all at once terrified, and fixed on Rajne.  “You,” she breathes out.
There may have been more, but at that point the younger hyena with us rushes her, giving a cackling growl and pinning the older woman to the ground, easily.  She wraps her hands around her neck, and begins to squeeze, while the woman beneath her fights and thrashes.
“All of them,” Rajne says between grit teeth, looking back at me.  “The whole family. . . has to die.”
Lavanya looks to me, and I can see there in her eyes, buried beneath the resolve we’ve all built around ourselves throughout the last few months. . . the sadness I feel.  This is what we are now.  I’ve been a murderer since I killed my father on that day near the Hyronses. . . but it’s never felt as certain as it does now.
What kind of a father can I possibly be to Amon now?  How can I ever explain to him that I did all of this. . . for him?
Justified or not.  Forced into this?  Maybe.  
Why is it that we’ve had to do so many wrong things. . . to fight for something that seems so right?
Time seems to slow.  Lavanya moves away from me, her eyes gone dead, as she opens one of the other doors in the hallway and steps inside.  Ahsan follows me as I head towards another.
This door is locked from the inside, but it feels like a latch lock when I bang into it with my shoulder.  Bracing myself, I lean back and kick at the door with all my might.  The door itself doesn’t give way, but the hinges begin to, the wood splintering.  A few more hard kicks, and it leans forward enough that I can shoulder-check it down.
Inside is a dimly-lit room with a large canopy bed and decorations reminiscent of most hookah parlors.  Incense drifts through the air, only barely covering up the scents of sex and the Divine.  The reason for both stands backed into a corner of the room, a dagger held in one hand over his paunch, barely dressed in small-clothes.
There’s a young girl. . . dressed in a similar saree to the one Rajne was wearing, another of his harem I’m guessing. . . curled up in a ball on the bed, hiding her head in her hands.  She doesn’t even look old enough to marry.
I never before would have said I was grateful to have been given such an easy mark for murder.  It makes what I have to do next much easier, and reinforces for me that we’re doing the right thing here, even if it doesn’t feel that way.
“Don’t look, sweetheart,” I tell the young girl, approaching the Lord. 

We kill the entire family, one by one.  Rajne herself kills two of the women, and her wrath and lack of empathy for them is something to be seen.  She doesn’t seem disappointed that I killed the Lord who owned her. . . I honestly think she held more anger for the women, for some reason.  I can’t know what happened in this house, what led this woman up to this moment or how long she’d had this much rage. . . but it reminds me of things I’d wish to forget back in the Sura manor.
It seems to be bringing a lot back for Ahsan, too.  He hasn’t said a word since we made it upstairs, and his gaze is lost, not in the present.  But unlike Lavanya, he doesn’t look sad, or regretful.  I think in a real way, he’s accepted all of this more than we have.  
Ahsan understands this woman’s pain more than any of us really can.  As we descend the staircase back down into the now quiet parlor, I think back on standing with him in the desert, following the trail of stars through the sky.  Is it possible that celestial road lead us here, to meet this woman?  Or are there really just this many people in the world with reason to hate the Clans, and vengeance to enact?
The key loop dangles from my fingers, feeling heavier than it has any right to.  Rajne leads us back downstairs, her yellow saree now stained with blood around its trailing edges.
“The basement is this way,” she says, gesturing.  But at that point I catch sight of our wayward companions, and my breath catches in my throat.
The parlor is a charnel house.  Four bodies are splayed out across the expensive tile floor, the blood collecting and pooling in the grout.  One of them looks unfamiliar. . . a lion wearing less armor than the others.  His massive frame and large, split-pronged spear tell me what I need to know.
“The Eunuch,” I say, eyes widening.
“We need to get her out of here,” a strained voice says from the corridor behind us.  I turn to see Raja, bleeding from several places but still on his feet, supporting a badly injured Anala.  I can’t tell exactly how grave her injuries are, but she’s bleeding from several gashes in her armor and one particularly bad-looking puncture wound near her shoulder and collarbone that had to have been done by that spear.  The whole front of her armor is coated in blood from where it’s poured out of that wound.  She only vaguely looks conscious.
“Don’t you want to get what you came for?”  Rajne asks impatiently.
I look once more to my friends, then back to her.  “Yes,” I say, then to the others, “wait for us in the glade.  Be ready to run in case anyone comes.”
“I’m not sure she can,” Raja says, readjusting the hyena’s arm over his shoulder, “but we’ll be waiting for you.”
Lavanya joins him, helping him carry her.  I hear Anala’s pained groan as they begin to move, and it cuts deep.  I’ve never heard the woman cry out in pain before.
Ahsan follows us as we head downstairs towards the basement, which is really more of a locked wine cellar.  It takes me a few tries to pick the right key, and then we head inside.  
It’s a smaller room than I would have expected, dusty and not lit in the least, so we carry in a lantern.  Rajne waits for us by the door.  “I am going to get my child,” she says, “and what little provisions I can carry.  I’ll be waiting with your friends.”
Ahsan is already sorting through the small collection of books down here, laid out on a writing desk where the Lord, or his seneschal, must work.  It feels like an eternity passes as he carefully reads through each, then sets it aside and moves to the next.  It might only have been a few minutes.  I’m not sure.
When Ahsan at last finds what we came all this way for, crossed most of Mataa and fought our way through two different powerful Clans of hyenas to find. . . it is everything I feared and more.