Nights could be deceptive, of course.
Men stood guard outside Mansur’s tent, which was larger and grander than the rest. Without, the banner of his dynasty drooped toward the ground, gold on red. Nameir said, “I have orders. Let me pass.” The men fell back.
Torches blazed in here, too, so the sight that greeted Nameir would forever be etched in her mind, incongruously, with a tint of gold. Mansur slumped at the table, chin in chest, eyes shut. As if asleep. But it was not a peaceful scene, if only for one reason: red, red, red everywhere.
She was shaking him, slapping his face. “My prince.” She slapped him again. “My prince!”
He stirred. She had meanwhile had a chance to take in some things. Blood beaded his face, sprayed from cheekbone to forehead. Yet although the front of his tunic was soaked all the way down to the belt, there was no sign of a wound. “My prince.” Her voice a whisper.
He looked as if she had aroused him from sleep. His drowsy brown eyes puzzled. “Hazan, what is it? Your battle … is not with me.”
“Why are you covered in blood?”
His eyes widened. In those moments reminding her of a boy. “I don’t know, Nameir.” He stared down at his clothes. “I don’t know what’s happened.”
She gripped his shoulder. “Mansur,” she said. “You know you can tell me anything. Anything at all.”
He nodded. Was looking down with a childlike fixation. “I know. I know.” She waited, but he did not say more. He raised his hands to eye level, and stared. They were caked with red.
She kept her voice even. “Where is the prisoner?”
* * *
SHE was running. There was blood on her shirt now, as well as on her hands; men were staring. She sprinted to the tent where the prisoner was kept under guard. Except there were no guards at the entrance to the tent. A foul odor met her like a gut-punch instead. When Nameir raced past the threshold, there was none in the dark but her. Her and the corpse.
The man in white was sprawled facedown on the floor in a fast-spreading pool of blood. Kneeling, she gripped him by the scruff of the neck and lifted his head. The wound was to the throat, a slash so deep his head was barely still attached. His face already rotting from the skull, black and loose.
Gone to hell. She let fall the body and sat back on her heels. The stench of decay like an assault.
She recalled the last words she’d heard the man speak in this life. The center of the tale that would give them knowledge they sought desperately—a means to thwarting the Fire Dancers’ magic.
The queen.
CHAPTER
11
VOICES raised in anger were not what Lin expected to hear outside her door in the morning. If it was, in fact, the morning. She hardly knew when it was that Zahir had escorted her back from the imperial gardens. But the light angling through the window beside her bed was wan, not the concentrated glare of a Kahishian noon. The raps at her door were frantic, and she clasped the knife from her bedside table as she rose and wrapped herself in a gown. She had enough time to think that this was unusual—a servant should have come to announce whoever this was. Whereupon she opened the door and saw her men standing before her, their breaths coming fast, and with reddened faces. Ned Alterra, looking furious. And Garon Senn, more composed but alert.
“You two.” Lin drew back. “What is this?”
“We would have a word with you,” said Ned.
Once the door had shut, Ned looked to Garon Senn as if he might spit him on iron. “Tell her.”
Her master-of-arms grimaced. The gaze he turned towards Lin was one almost seductive, as if to solicit her confidence. What they’d shared had been intimacy of a sort—the dance of blades. She wondered if he thought it made her vulnerable. “You’d better tell me what this is about,” said Lin, in a tone to end whatever such thoughts he might have. “I have rarely—no, never—seen Lord Alterra this furious.”
“He is a boy.”
“No,” Lin said coldly. “He is my right hand. You’d do well to remember that, if you plan on continuing to serve me. Do you?”
“It is Ned who would have other plans for me,” he said, spreading his hands.
“Tell her,” said Ned.
Garon Senn shook his head. “It is no great thing. My lady, surely you knew that a man like myself—a fighting man—is no stranger to Kahishi. It is how I gained the skill and experience to serve you.”
“He served under Yusuf Evrayad, years ago,” said Ned. “They know him here. The guards. They recognize him. That’s why you avoided them on the journey,” he added to Garon Senn. “You were hiding.”
Lin stared. “Is this true?”
“I hide nothing,” snarled her man-at-arms. “I avoided men who might, if they recognized me, cause trouble for my lady. Yes, I served King Yusuf for a time. I helped him conquer this land for himself. Laid siege, with him, to the fortress of the Fire Dancers. Later, I served lords who offered greater bounty. There are, then, some grudges. I attribute it to jealousy.” His fierce grin a gleam of teeth. Lin found it appealing, and it also made her shudder inwardly. What have I brought into my camp? What appealed in him was what lay at the root of her, from which the likes of Rayen and their mother had sprung. She had not understood it before. She felt cold all over. Power lay, so much, with knowing whom one could trust.
Ned’s rage flared. “Jealousy.” He turned to Lin. “In the guardroom they have a name for him. Zevek. Do you know what it means?”
Her gaze was on Garon Senn as she spoke. His eyes were emotionless as ever. “Tell me, Ned.”
“The Jackal.” Ned drew a breath, attempted to speak calmly. “This man has a reputation for savagery beyond even what is usual for—a fighting man. Or let’s be honest and call him what he is: a mercenary. So monstrous were his acts in the field that even the lords who hired him were forced to distance themselves. That was when he returned to Eivar where the pay was less, but jobs still to be had. That is how, in the end, he came to you.”
“And now my name is to be associated with—with this.” She turned from both of them, aware of what lay at her back. Her knife still in hand. She stretched out on a divan. Without looking up, she studied the play of light on the blade. Tested the edge with a fingertip.
“My lady,” said Garon Senn, “these were events of years ago. I was a different man. In the heat of battle—”
“Be silent.” She was most angry at herself. All the signs had been there. She had not wanted to see them. “I can have you killed,” she said. “Though it sounds like if I don’t take measures to protect you, the guardsmen here will do it for me.”
His grin had turned feral. “You would kill me?”
What she saw in his eyes would have shocked her, had she been someone different. She saw her brother’s eyes. “If I were to say yes to that,” she said, “you would rape and kill me right here, wouldn’t you? Or you imagine you could. Two against one, though, Garon Senn. And you’d become a fugitive. Not that that is a new experience for you, but…” She sneered. “It seems to me you’ve had a good life as my creature. Up to the moment your luck ran out. A good life in the palace of Tamryllin, and here.”
Garon Senn emitted a hiss. Ned had caught hold of his sword arm. At the same time Lin had risen to stand before her man-at-arms, her knife balanced in hand. He had a grip on his sword hilt, but did not try to draw. If he did, it would be the end, and he had to know that. She knew he was pragmatic enough to wait, and hear her out a moment more.
Lin said, “You may yet be of use to me. Now is your moment to prove yourself, Garon Senn. I have need of information. If you aid me, I will let you live. More than that—I will reward you. Lands and a title are what I offer you, if you deliver what I need. Such as you’ve always desired.”
Garon Senn inclined his head rather than bow, since he was otherwise held fast by Ned. “I will continue to serve my lady with utmost loyalty. As ever.”
“Lin,” said Ned. He sounded anguished. “The stories the
y tell…”
She shook her head. “Ned, I know—”
“Of children.” His eyes were agony.
The words were a blow to her heart. She knew they thought of the same thing: a tiny girl in Tamryllin with Rianna’s eyes. But: “Ned, let him go,” she said gently. To Garon Senn she issued a curt order to leave, to await her in his chambers and speak to no one. She would request Eldakar’s help protecting him from vengeance-seekers.
When she was alone with Ned, standing before him and now aware of the inadequacy of her robe in concealing herself, in asserting her rank, she felt acutely tired. “My dear,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
If ever he had looked near tears, it was now. But his voice was flat. “I will spare you the specifics of what I heard about him,” he said. “I suppose you need never know. For the good of the kingdom, which I assume you serve.”
Lin could have wept, too. She would be utterly alone without Ned, and felt him whirling away from her now as if in a current. “Justice would be sweet,” she said. “But it wouldn’t return anyone’s life. I can’t explain why I think this is necessary, but … the instinct is strong. I must trust it, Ned.”
He stared without speaking. Lin noted that he was disheveled, his clothes not hanging right, in a manner similar to when she’d first known him as the awkward suitor of Rianna Gelvan. His hair popped from his forehead, a lank mess that needed cutting. But from his gaze he was hardly awkward and not the boy Garon Senn had called him. He had been up late, she recalled, on assignment for her. And then early that morning, again for her sake. All this she thought before he spoke.
“An instinct, you call it,” said Ned Alterra. “But I am not sure what to believe. When I see you I am sometimes not sure it is you, Lin. As if something else has taken you over.”
“I have to be hard sometimes,” she said. “Surely I need not tell you that.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Hard, yes,” he said. “That, you have always had, even if you didn’t know it. But there is something more.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again. Hearkening back to a prior incarnation of herself, when she had been wont to apologize too frequently; but now it was to sidestep what she would not say. The truth would cause distress to him, and otherwise change nothing.
Ned shrugged, tight-lipped. Looked towards the window. He didn’t want to deal with her now, she knew, but also knew he had to.
Lin sat back on the divan, and motioned him to do the same. It was red silk, luxurious like everything else in this room. It was improper to receive visitors in here, she realized belatedly, with the bed adjacent and still tumbled from her sleep. A Court Poet was not meant to receive people thus. But he had come here in a rage, not thinking to do the proper thing. She understood, of course.
“Are you ready to make your report?” she said. “What happened last night?”
“Last night…” Ned was staring straight ahead. His lip curled wryly. “She wanted…”
“Yes?”
He shook his head. “To play chess with me.”
“To play chess with you,” she repeated. “That isn’t … some sort of euphemism.”
“No,” he said. “We played chess. I lost every game, if you must know. We played for hours. Until Eldakar came, some time near first light, to seduce her.”
“I see.” Though she didn’t at first. “Oh,” she said then, imagining the scene. “Oh dear.”
“Exactly.” He met her eyes. They both froze that way, in search of words. At last they gave up, gave in to impulse. First he, and then they both began to laugh.
* * *
THIS time during the game she spoke with him. It was day and they drank tea as if Ned Alterra were paying a social visit, though he did not in truth know what this was.
“You have a wife,” she said this time, after they were several moves into the game. She had captured two of his men. Her eyes lifted from the board to study him. “You’d have betrayed her with me. Knowing what is said of me, you went along with my little game on the boat.”
If she thought to shock him, it was effective. But by now Ned was becoming inured to shocks in this room. And in daylight he found her less disconcerting; not so much a creature of voluptuous shadow and scent as a girl who liked to test him. Though damnably clever—there was that. He had learned enough of the game by now to know the strategies she deployed against him were baroque, eluding his grasp each time. Only at the end, when she had captured his king, could he look back and understand the path she’d wrought getting there. During, he was a fish caught in her net, struggling uselessly until it was over.
He took his time with an answer. It seemed to him he existed here for her entertainment. Nonetheless he could not afford a misstep. He said, “Betrayals are measured differently between Rianna and me.”
“How interesting for the two of you,” she said with raised eyebrows. He wondered, with a quicker pulsebeat, if she now thought to call his bluff. But she lowered her eyes again and said, “Oh, look,” with delight. She raised one of his Magician pieces in the air, a victory. The diamond on its staff winked in sunlight that streamed from the windows with a breeze.
“Splendid.” He wished for something stronger than bergamot tea. It was his move now—but in more ways than one. She had opened the door to questioning. Ned brought to mind the parties he had attended in the Tamryllin palace gardens, the flirtations that took place—whether from boredom, or some other motive. He had a habit of observing more than participating … but in his duties to the Court Poet, had observed quite a bit. “So perhaps you’ll tell me why you find playing this game preferable to … the other?” said Ned, taking a tone of genteel mockery. “Careful, though—you may wound me.”
For a moment he thought he glimpsed—was it surprise?—before her eyelashes fluttered, a move in that other game. “I enjoy this,” she said. “Does that surprise you?”
“I admit it does.” He watched her closely. “Not that you enjoy it,” he said. “But to stay awake into the night, doing this, long after everyone else is abed, and awake to do the same … you must admit it’s not usual. Your husband doesn’t seem to think so, certainly.”
“That’s not all, you know,” she said. No trace now of flirtation or a smile. “The library has a surprising number of books on the game. Some very old. I can spend hours with them, Ned. Sometimes days.”
“An obsession,” he offered. He made his move, knowing it was feeble. His knight was now in easy trouncing reach of her queen.
She was staring at the board. When he moved, she made a sound of annoyance, and he wasn’t sure if it was at the stupidity of what he’d done, or the comment that had preceded it. Then: “There you go, giving me your knight—but Ned, if you gave thought to a plan, it could have been for your gain. There is a strategem just like that—the Knight’s Sacrifice. Often, in this game, one intent nests another.” As he watched, her expression changed. When she spoke again it was in response to his earlier remark. It wasn’t the first time she’d done that, casting back to an earlier comment or question when she was ready, as if everything he said was stored in her mind for later. He would have been flattered, if he did not suspect she employed it with everyone.
“You might call it an obsession,” she said. And Ned thought he had been wrong, or at least a little bit wrong, about the effects of daylight on her; there were still enough shadows to beguile him, around the eyes and in the hollow of her throat. “Or … perhaps I seek a way to reshape this game. A way out of these fixed patterns. The calculations, the costs.” With sudden violence, she seized his knight and flung it down on the table. “It doesn’t work. Despite all I’ve read, all the strategies I implement.” When she looked at him he thought for the first time she revealed herself fully, open and pained. “There’s no way out of it, Ned. The game never changes.”
* * *
MORNING mist drifted in the valley as Lin made her way down the mountain. Sunlight filled it, transformed it to smoke infused with gold. Majdara w
as a checkering of red slate roofs and white domes that now and then peered from that smoke. The river wrapped around it was a silver diadem that morning. Lin had taken a side gate out into the gardens and from there to the stairway that connected the terraces. There were three levels to the palace and gardens, that increased in grandeur as they progressed upward. Hundreds of stone stairs separated each of these, leading down, and down some more, to the main road. They cut a path through manicured hedges and trees. Lin passed between fragrant walls of roses, a heartbreak of red; beneath an arch that dripped lilacs; through legions of cypress trees standing at attention and trimmed, in the course of her descent. It took most of the morning.
Zahir Alcavar had remembered her mention, in passing, of a desire to go into the city alone. He had not asked why. But that morning Lin had found a message from the First Magician outside her door on a jeweled tray. It was a map that showed the way to a concealed door, along with the key that opened it, iron and gilding woven in a pattern of leaves. She could tell—based on what she’d seen of the prophecies in the Tower of Glass—that he had drawn the map himself, as it was with the same firm, ornate strokes. The door turned out to be hidden behind a velvet drapery in an unlit, abandoned hall, and led out to the kitchen gardens. She had walked through rows of cabbages and carrots to reach the main path.
Lin expected the effects of the night in the garden with Zahir and Eldakar to be transient, as such exchanges often were; waking up to that carefully drawn map made her smile. And she appreciated that he had asked nothing, understanding her need for privacy.
As she descended the mountain through the gardens of the Zahra, Lin thought about the talk she’d had with Garon Senn. She’d come to him already dressed for her excursion to the city, in a man’s shirt and trousers. Her hair was braided close to her head and concealed with a cap. Anyone who looked closely would know her sex, but most would not look closely. In contrast, a woman alone, unescorted on the streets of Majdara, would attract the wrong sort of attention.
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