but their sect was ancient. Well-defended. Protected by scripts and constructs.
How much danger could they be in?
As it turned out, they had survived the Dreadgod itself. But not the scavengers that fed in its wake.
When Ziel spoke, his voice was dead. “I used to lead a sect of my own. We decided that we could survive a Dreadgod. I decided. First, we felt the aura tremble, like footsteps shaking the ground. What you’re feeling now.”
He nodded to the walls. “Next, the sky changed color. It’s a change that accompanies each of the Dreadgods, as their power overwhelms all aspects of vital aura. We hunkered down inside defenses, layers of scripts that had stood for centuries.”
Ziel trailed off for a moment as he remembered the sky, raining lightning.
No one else spoke.
“One by one, it stripped away our defenses. Tore off the roof. Toppled buildings. Our techniques were only food for it. And the Dreadgod never stopped, it never saw us, it simply flew on by. We were stripped to the bone by its footsteps, by the wind from its passage. To it, we were only ants.”
Silence still reigned in the room.
Until Ziel felt a child giggle.
He realized that there was a weight on his head, and craned his eyes upward. While he’d been speaking, Maret had climbed up his hair and come to rest on top of his skull, and was now holding onto his horns, rocking back and forth as though riding a bull.
The horrified looks on the faces of the boy’s parents now took on a whole new dimension.
The Patriarch tore his gaze down and cleared his throat. “My sympathies. If your home was destroyed by this Dreadgod as well, then you above all have reason to warn us.”
“Not this Dreadgod,” Ziel said. He reached up and peeled away the child from his head, holding him out to his mother.
She was only too glad to take him.
“There are three others,” Ziel continued. “And what we survived was merely its passing. In front of an attack, there is no survival. There is escape, or there is death.”
Slowly, with no sudden movements that might signal an attack, Ziel pulled off the halfsilver rings restricting his madra and placed them onto the table.
“It is your decision to make. But I wish I had taken this chance myself.”
He turned and urged his Thousand-Mile Cloud to slide toward the door.
“We need time,” the Patriarch called.
“You don’t have it,” Ziel responded.
“It will take at least a day for the clan to respond to our emergency beacon!” the Patriarch’s wife protested.
Ziel stopped and slowly turned around. “You’re going to call your clan to evacuate?”
The Patriarch nodded. “As soon as we leave this room. But our territory is large. One day is already the fastest we can gather, and that’s if we use all our alarms of war and our swiftest riders.”
“I thought you needed time to decide,” Ziel said.
“Everything you’ve said lines up with the reports of our scouts and scholars. And I believe you.” The Kazan Patriarch inclined his head. “We entrust ourselves to your honor.”
“Oh. Well…good.”
Ziel became acutely aware of the weight of command settling onto his shoulders. He realized he had just taken responsibility for another clan of people.
What a stupid decision.
He should have let the Golds handle it.
The wall surrounding the Li clan was a work of art, a smooth expanse of pale, polished wood decorated by a functional script in a way that evoked the image of a slithering serpent. Treetops rose from behind it, and the sky was filled with birds of every description.
Mercy was impressed. Their commitment to aesthetics was all the more commendable considering their lack of resources. She could only imagine the effort it would take to build something so expansive and delicate with a workforce of Irons.
She only wished she had seen more of the Li clan than the outside.
“The Matriarch has arrived,” one of the guards announced from the top of the wall, and Mercy let out a relieved breath. She had spent most of the afternoon negotiating with underlings, trying to get a word with the clan leader.
Her Golds were behind her. She didn’t want to overwhelm the Jades.
Now, at last, she’d finally gotten somewhere.
A gray-haired woman stepped up to the edge of the wall. She was tall, thin, and dignified, with an emerald-set silver tiara in her hair and rings on each finger. A snake rested on her shoulders, and even it was decorated with gold and jewels.