Chapter Two—Sand Snakes

Shiro ran across the rooftop, his sandals pattering furiously before he jumped over the alleyway and onto the wall of domed palace. As he got up, he glanced through the parapets at the gate further ahead.

Jessamine materialized beside him and leaned up against the parapet. “Not bad, Isekai.”

Shiro glanced at her, her full lips and big brown eyes distracting him from his quest. “They are trying to get through the gate.”

She moved away from the wall. “And so they hammer on that door,” she said, her tone bored. “But they will never get through. Not in time.”

“So negative.”

She laughed, a musical sound, playful in its intent.

“This is serious,” he said.

“Indeed.”

“You are mortal now and yet you still treat everything as a game.”

She shrugged. “Would you prefer a bit my nails and worried until my hair went grey, Shiro?”

He looked at her askance. Sauntering over to him, she touched his bare shoulder with her finger, dragging it across his skin.

What is she doing?

Perhaps we should take a moment, Shiro.

Growling inside his throat, he said, “I told you not to read my thoughts.”

She laughed. “But we are bonded.”

“Yes, and I still want my own mind to myself.”

She sighed heavily. “Very well, Shiro.”

“And we will not ‘take a moment,’ jinni! We have work to do. The satrap is about to be captured. We must rescue him at all cost.”

“Very well,” she said, her form dematerializing in a puff or blue mist as she sauntered away from him.

Shiro glanced through the parapets once more. The walls had been utterly abandoned on this side of the palace to reinforce weaker areas—that much was certain. How the invaders managed to get in here and hold the satrap hostage, Shiro didn’t know. But as it stood now, they were defending the fortress against the satrap’s army.

Perhaps they had attacked too quickly. Now the enemy was hemmed in.

Even so, Shiro didn’t have enough men. The army outside was not under his command, and if he took the time to find their commander, tell him what was happening—by then it might be too late. The attackers might surely find a way to escape.

I need a better view of the situation.

He hopped up onto the wall and sprinted to the minaret where he tried the door. It didn’t move, so he kicked it in, the wooden boards shattering into splinters. Normally to knock down a solid wooden door with iron bracers would require a battering ram.

But with Jessamine’s powers strengthening him through their bond, Shiro was stronger and more powerful than he had ever been before.

He ran into the minaret and up the twirling stairs. The steps leveled out into a landing where murder holes could be used to loose arrows down on enemy attackers.

This minaret was abandoned right now and so Shiro took the stairs up to the next level, then the next, and continued until he came to the top. He was barely winded from the climb. The domed roof was supported by intricate pillars surrounded by ancient entablature.

The vast majority of architecture in the empire was not of Abassir origin, Shiro had learned, but actually belonged to a completely different civilization that worshiped entirely different gods.

Ashahnai, it was called. A powerful—more advanced kingdom in its golden age farther to the east.

But the empire—the Abassir caliphate—had conquered some of its lands long ago, annexing this part of its culture, most visibly the architecture, as its own.

Shiro glanced over the palace, at the walls and the minarets, at the golden dome of the main structure. The satrap was inside somewhere.

To the north—or rather the true south—the invaders marched onto the city. The city of Zanjah was still putting up a fight, but the main walls had been breached. Fires raged, smoke wafted into the night skies, blacking out most of the stars.

From the looks of it, the first part of the outer wall to fall had been the one on the river. It was utterly in ruin with two enemy ships just outside of reach of any siege within the city.

“Quite a sight,” Jessamine said as if she were perusing a particularly interesting bunch of rare flowers in some shop. “I’ve seen similar such sights in my years, especially when Darius conquered the outlying lands around the empire. He more than doubled it in size, you know?”

“I did not know that,” he said absently as he walked about the rail. He continued regarding the city as the attackers invading Zanjah fought within half a dozen districts. Some sections were untouched, while others were seeing furious fighting with the Kalushani army holding the advantage in some areas and the invaders in others.

Shiro moved to the other side to get a look at the river that travelled from the north to the south—the very same river that travelled through Darshuun where the enemy ships were.

It was a worrying sight.

If the invaders had a strong navy, they could sail up Urmia River, laying siege to every city and town along the way, sacking them for what supplies and gold they had to offer—until they finally reached the capital.

Darshuun is weak now…

“The empire is in very real danger,” he said.

“I know,” Jessamine said. “Perhaps we should let it burn, Shiro. Let’s go across the sea—to this other nation. Perhaps we will find something there that can reveal the nature of who isekaied you here?”

“And let these people suffer and the hands of these conquerors?”

“Empires rise and fall.”

He glanced down at the river, where the sloops were. Ali and his men had disembarked now with his Scorpion Guard—the enemy ships unconcerned. There were almost a thousand Scorpion Guards in total. Perhaps that’s why the enemy did not attack them from the water.

“They will surround the palace,” Shiro said.

“And by then the satrap will have been moved by the enemy.”

He made a sound of frustration. He needed to get in there, find the satrap and get him out before the invaders had time to find a way to do that on their own.

“We will slip in like sand snakes. We are going.”

“I’ve been waiting for you to say so,” she said with a smile.

“You are a war monger, aren’t you?”

With a shrug, she said, “Perhaps.” Then she ran, jumped over the rail and spread her arms, her body dematerializing into a plume of smoke.

“Show off,” he said, shaking his head.

A laugh echoed through the night, a musical tinkle of pure amusement.