Chapter Forty-Three—Imperial Vizier

At first, Shai’na had been utterly stunned at what was going on all around here. People screaming, flailing to escape the throne chamber through the side doors as Scorpion Guards rushed in through the chamber’s main doors.

Ali’s friend had appeared from nowhere, freeing them all. The jinni had been stabbed.

Shai’na’s mouth had hung open, but now as anger took her, she howled in fury and bent to pick up a spear from one of the fallen guards.

Heedless of the deadly duel between the Mar’a Thulian and Darius, Shai’na turned, her gaze meeting that of the grand vizier, Hahkari.

His eyes widened and she lunged up the steps, her tails fluttering behind her for balance. The fool tried to run away, but he was blocked by bodies as the guests, crying and squawking like chickens trying to escape a hungry fox through the side exits and the colonnade behind the thrones, blocked his path.

Turning from the tumult, he raised both hands, his eyes wide.

“Nonono! Do not kill me!”

She snarled with bared teeth, remembering everything Kalina had told them. She thrust the spear forward. Hahkari cried out in a high-pitched bleat just before the spearhead went into his stomach.

With a grunt and a gurgle, he grasped the spear pole and squirmed wordlessly. Shai’na screamed and thrust the spear deeper. Hahkari’s eyes bulged as blood seeped and bubbled out of his mouth.

As he fell, Shai’na didn’t even bother to pull the spear out of his body. She moved past the dead vizier and curled her fingers inward. Then she started laying into the fleeing guests, the vapid, feckless cowards—traitors all—to the true heir to the sultan’s throne.

The fushi swung her arms, her claws raking against the backs of guests. She cared not which she struck—only that she scratched as many of them as possible, to leave them with the scars of her vengeance—for her dead husband, and for following a madman!

Crying out like a mad woman herself, she slashed the face of one man, a satrap, then raked her claws across the back of a naked woman. She howled with shrieks of pain and fear.

She chased the guests out in a tumult of flailing limbs and stamping feet. Some of them fell, trampled by the others. Once they were all gone from the throne chamber, Shai’na remained, her throat burning and her chest heaving.

She stalked through the pillars and out onto the landing. The guests, screaming, ran down the mountain of marble steps into the inner courtyard, tumbling like fools as they fled her wrath.

Beyond in the courtyard, several hundred Scorpion Guards were forming up to make a push for the throne chamber.

Oh no!

Something cracked above her and exploded with bright light. Glancing up she saw a figure in a dark robe, and then a bright blue light zigzagged like a glowing wire lit the darkness shimmered popped in the courtyard.

The magic bolt of lightning had moved too fast for her to see the explosion, but when she turned, Shai’na saw the dead remains of dozens of Scorpion Guards. She lunged down the steps, hiking up her skirts as she went. When she made it to the bottom, a whistling shaft struck her in arm.

Baring her teeth, she ignored the impact and sudden pain of the wound. Snarling, she picked up a dead Scorpion’s scimitar and rushed the archer. As he loosed his next shaft, Shai’na took the arrow in her thigh.

This time she screamed, fell to the tiles and snarled wordlessly, her hand still gripping the hilt of her sword.

The archer rushed up to her and drew his bow, the point of the arrow tip only a pace away from her face.

The Scoprion was about to loose, when he suddenly convulsed, the arrow clattering off the tiles as he grabbed at his neck. The Scorpion’s eyes bulged and he looked at his hands as blood gushed from his wound, then just before he died, he glanced up toward the colonnade and fell atop her.

The force of the Scorpion Guard’s weight pushed all of the air out of Shai’na’s lungs. She struggled, but the burning pain in her thigh and the lack of air made the stars above her sway.

She glanced toward the inner walls of the palace. Hundreds of figures in black ran and screamed, spreading out to evade another magical explosion, their swords glinting in the lamplight.

Shai’na groaned. She needed to get back into the throne chamber.

Everything went dark.