Pale Queen's Courtyard

by Marcin Wrona

  Chapter 3: Crescents and Manacles

  “Messenger?” asked the gate guard, eyeing Leonine’s horses.

  “No, master,” he replied, bowing his head and assuming a conciliatory smile. Guards liked that sort of thing. It made them feel powerful. “I’m a performer. My lyre is in that saddle pack.”

  The gate scribe pressed a stylus into the enormous tablet he had propped against the wall. It was not yet noon, but the clay had already been imprinted with hundreds of names.

  The guard groaned. “Oh, how grand. I hope you’ve some coin for lodgings. Sleep out on the streets and we’ll give you a nice cot under the Tower.” Leonine’s eyes followed his pointing hand. The Tower was a hunchback, leaning out over a wall plastered in bas-reliefs of war slaves carrying tribute to Artalum conquerors. It had stood straight once, but part of its foundation had sunk into the earth years ago during an unexpected flooding of the Shalumes – if indeed such a thing could be called unexpected and not inevitable.

  Clearly not a patron of the arts. “I assure you, master, I’m well acquainted with the laws of Inatum. I have a place to stay.”

  “How wonderful for you. Class?”

  “Mushkenum.”

  The scribe pressed another word into his clay.

  No matter how many times he explained that the Merezadesh did not divide themselves up into castes, the word did not seem to spread. It was not worth the effort. Easier to tell them he was a free man; there was no brand on his forehead to gainsay it, and no need to prove that he owned land.

  “The toll for mushkenum is a shekel.”

  It wasn’t, of course, but that was part of the game. Gate guards were a notoriously rapacious lot, and they loved best those travelers unfamiliar with Ekkadi law. A shekel was exorbitant, and Leonine said so. He argued the guard down to a quarter-measure; too much still, but such was life. In a few hours, Leonine would be too busy counting minas to care that he’d just bought this oaf a full jar of wine.

  The guard waved Leonine through the gatehouse. He mounted Shema and rode into the city, leading Pash by the reins.

  The day was at its hottest. Shimurg’s flames were bright, and the white- and yellow-plastered buildings of Inatum threw the light into Leonine’s eyes. Sarvagadis was hot – all of Ekka was hot by day – but there, a breeze came in from the sea to cool the city and chase from it the fetid stink of the salt marsh. Such breezes did not carry this far into Ekka’s interior.

  Still, the locals appeared to have little difficulty. Veiled wives carried jugs of water and beer home for the midday meal, while their husbands sat at their stalls, shaded from merciless Shimurg by colourful awnings, singing the praises of this gewgaw or that to whichever passers-by would listen.

  Leonine caught the familiar scents of cumin, fennel and coriander over the sweat of the crowd, and realized he was ravenously hungry. He stopped for a skewer of charred goat with onions and red peppers before turning onto the broad avenue that would lead him to the top of Lumshazzar Mound, and from there to the household of Shudagan, Ibashtu’s master.

  If indeed he can be so called.

  He devoured the meat as he rode. Overcooked as it was, it made a welcome change from the bread he’d been forced to subsist on for the last few days, without even beer to wash it down after he’d left his wagon behind. He regretted that still, but it was better to be unsatisfied and alive than well fed and staked down in the desert to the south. Even if the odds were good that he’d not been followed, prudence was in order. Thieves that took the law too lightly lost hands in Sarvagadis, and heads where Ekkadi customs still held sway.

  Leonine reached the foot of the ill-reputed Mound within no more than an hour, thanks to crowds that parted obligingly before Shema and Pash. It was an open secret, at least to citizens of a less savoury bent, that the roads of Lumshazzar had been partially excavated when the Artalum conquerors of Inatum had decided the city was large enough to require sewers. The result was a rabbit’s warren of intertwined passages, where men could – and did – hide from the city guard for months.

  Inatum the Lawless, men called it, home to thieves and murderers, sorcerers and revolutionaries. It was not an entirely unearned reputation, Leonine thought, as he crested the hill that stood like a grave marker atop an ancient city’s bones.

  Inatum spread almost as far as the eye could see. Behind him was the Shalumes, and ahead he could see the green banks of the smaller Shummi. The view from the Mound made the two rivers look much closer than they actually were. It took a man on foot an entire day to cross the city, from the Conqueror’s Gate that he had entered to the Chariot’s Passage gate to the east.

  It was a pleasant walk. Leonine himself had made the trip during his first week in the city. One morning, he’d explored the Weeping Garden of Du. That afternoon, he had marveled at the great stadium, where chariot races and the Lugal’s speeches vied for space. By dusk, he had climbed the four massive steps of Chananu, the great pyramid of Labeshi-Solon, wealthy god of the western mountains.

  Wealthy indeed. Ibashtu had been quite happy with the pearl-inlaid censer she’d hired him to steal.

  As he led his horses into the communal stable across from Shudagan’s house and paid the old man there to rub them down and feed them, Leonine wondered absently if it would not be worth his while to buy his own home in Inatum. This was the third job he’d done for Ibashtu, each more profitable than the last, and travel was growing tiresome. Inatum was far enough away from Sarvagadis that his reputation was unlikely to cause problems. And if it does, where better to elude the overzealous arm of Sarvashi law?

  Thus musing, he knocked at Shudagan’s door. An old Karhani domestic with a goblet-brand opened it and beckoned him inside.

  The door closed behind him, and the old man spoke. “Welcome back, Leonine. Ibashtu is in her study. She’s been expecting you. I see you have the vase,” he said, pointing to the hard leather saddlebag Leonine had slung over his shoulder.

  “Of course. Thanks, Nazimarut. I know my way.”

  He passed through the entry hallway, and admired once more the stunning Artalum mosaic of a lion brought low by charioteers with bows. The stones that made up the beast’s mane gleamed in the soft glow of an oil lamp, reflecting patches of light onto Leonine’s tunic.

  He climbed a set of stairs, at the top of which were two doors separated by a guardian, a stone lion with a painted mane and lapis eyes. The Artalum, he decided, had been obsessed with lions.

  Ibashtu was behind the right door, seated at a table. She looked up from a tablet she’d been poring over and smiled. Ibashtu bore the stylus brand, a dark blue line that tapered to a triangular point, barely visible against the loam-black skin of her Hakshi face.

  Ibashtu had been a scribe slave once. Officially, perhaps she still was. But Leonine had seen Shudagan and Ibashtu together several times, and it was rarely clear just who the master was. The three of them – Shudagan, Ibashtu and Nazimarut – behaved like equals in private, and put on a show only for guards and tax collectors.

  “Welcome back,” said Ibashtu. There was no trace of any accent but Ekkadi in her deep voice. She had been a child when she was taken from her fiery southern homeland.

  Ibashtu indicated that Leonine should seat himself. She took a swig from a jug sitting on her desk and offered it to him.

  “Koumiss?” he asked.

  “The finest – a Sarvashi mare’s milk.”

  Leonine wrinkled his nose and waved it away. “No, thank you. I have no idea how you enjoy that swill.”

  Ibashtu took another swig, then wiped her lips with the back of a bony hand.

  “I trust you were successful?” she asked.

  Leonine nodded, presenting the pack. Ibashtu opened it and withdrew the vase, examining it intently. There was sorcery in her gaze, and in the thin swirl of power he felt in his gut, of a different sort than Leonine had ever encountered. He had noticed it during their first meeting, several months ago, while haggling over a little gol
den bull he’d liberated from a chance-met traveler.

  “This is it, most certainly. Wonderful craftsmen, the Akrosians. Look how well they capture the fear in this grouping over here.” She pointed to a black band along the neck of the vase, decorated with nude men and women being led to the slaughter by a winged figure with a bat’s ears. “Did you experience any difficulty?”

  Leonine shook his head. “No, not especially. It all went rather smoothly, actually. Your floor plans were perfectly accurate.”

  “Excellent. My horses and wagon?”

  “The horses are stabled at Tusharta’s. I thought it prudent to leave the wagon behind. It was slowing me, and I don’t like to take stupid risks.”

  Ibashtu nodded.

  “I would consent to pay for it if need –”

  Ibashtu waved a hand dismissively. “Don’t be stupid. The vase is worth a hundred wagons; it’s simply a cost of trade, as the merchants like to say.”

  She opened a drawer, and took out a small sack. It jingled.

  “Inside are shekels worth ten minas for your immediate needs, and a voucher for the remainder of the sum we agreed upon, as well as another gift, one that you may use at your leisure.”

  “Thank you.” Leonine tossed the bag into the fold of his tunic. He would count the coins later, though there was no doubt in his mind that the sum was true. “If there is anything else…?”

  “There is not. Enjoy the city.”

  Leonine stood up and bowed his head, then turned to leave.

  “Oh, Leonine!” Ibashtu called after him. “There is something. Come back and see us this evening. Shudagan wants to see you, and there may be another job on offer.”

  “I will,” Leonine replied, and waved a goodbye.

  He had thought, at first, that Ibashtu’s secret gift was a voucher, a clay tablet allowing him to take advantage of the scribe’s – or, more likely, her putative master’s – good name at a lending house, but it turned out to be something else entirely.

  It was a small tablet of oven-fired clay, wrapped in a softer clay envelope, inscribed with what looked like a spider web. Leonine, perched atop a pile of cushions in his rented room, turned the tablet over in his hands. It was difficult to decide which side was up.

  It was not until he was about to shrug and give up that Leonine realized what he was holding. The tablet represented Inatum – or, more precisely, Lumshazzar. He made out the outline of the Mound, and found atop it a square etched with what was, now quite obviously, the sign for ‘horse’. There, across from it, were the bakery and the potter’s workhouse. A smaller unmarked block nearby would be Ibashtu’s home. It sat atop a long furrow, bisected by two smaller diagonals. An entrance of some kind? An entrance to what?

  Leonine’s thoughts drifted back to a rare rainstorm, when he had first come to Inatum. His hunger, sharpened to a knife-edge by a long journey and an empty purse, had made him clumsy and stupid. His first theft, an attempt to cut a nobleman’s purse, was awkward and doomed to failure. There were shouts, and he ran, pursued by militia.

  He remembered the welcome stink of the sewers; in every city, they were the thief’s swiftest road away from pursuit. He’d woven an erratic path, a fly buzzing from one corridor to another, until he could no longer hear any footfalls but his own. The walls had changed, from slick and cramped sewer corridors with ankle-deep filth to hallways of brick, their plaster worn away – houses, forgotten by time, their doors no longer able to swing open for the earth that had buried them entire.

  He’d wandered in those corridors for a time, and when the torch he’d taken from a sconce in the street above had almost burnt down, he had felt fresh air against his skin.

  That exit was… there! Behind the fruit market, where the Road of the Mound met the market called Spendthrift’s Lament. Sure enough, the tablet showed a tunnel, this one also scored with diagonals.

  A map. The tablet was a map of the tunnels under Lumshazzar. It would be worth hundreds of minas to the Lugal, and still more to an enterprising thief. Not for the first time, Leonine found himself surprised at Ibashtu. What possible reason could she have to place such trust in a thief she’d hired only three times?

  He slipped the tablet into a hidden pocket inside his tunic, in a place of honour beside his garrote. That little mystery will just have to wait. He counted the coins. Twenty minas to the measure, counting the two shekels he’d paid to cover his lodgings for the week. A true count, as he’d expected.

  Leonine leaned back into his pillows and sighed contentedly. A nap first, he decided. Then beer.

  “The city is… changing,” Shudagan said later that evening, frowning into his lacquered cup. “When I was a boy, my father believed that the Prophet’s invasion would help overcome certain of our more dated Ekkadi customs…” he said, pointing to the brand on Ibashtu’s forehead, “…but your people’s soft hand surprised us.”

  “Soft hand?” Leonine asked.

  “Before Inashu’s armies swept down from Hatshut, we had no slaves here, but within a year of the wall’s breach, we were neatly parcelled into Mushkenum, Awilum and Wardum. Before Nanusa’s Artalum hanged the Ekkadi nobility from our walls, we were a peaceful people. Shortly after, we sent our strongest men into Karhan with spears and siege towers. Conquerors change cities, Leonine, and yet the Inatum of today is no different than the Inatum of my childhood.”

  Ibashtu chimed in next. “You should read Darunni’s March from the Mountains, if you should chance upon a copy. ‘The Ekkadi took our freedom, but gave us industry. The Artalum took our sons, but gave us power. The Sarvashi took our goddess, and gave us nothing.’”

  “Pretty words,” said Leonine. “If one ignores the roads, the Imperial Post and its way stations, and the freedom to run this city as you wish. Would you prefer subjugation?”

  “Don’t be obtuse,” Shudagan replied. “My father saw freedom in the Sarvashi ways, hoped for new laws that apply equally to all people, from the meanest farm-hand to the richest merchant… and the only price the elimination of a cult that had been steadily dying for decades? I would have paid that a thousand times over.”

  Ibashtu bristled at that, visibly. Nin was, among other things, the queen of mysteries, patroness of the sorcerer.

  Shudagan continued, oblivious. “And we paid that price, outlawed night-worship, even diverted the Shummi to drown Alu-nin-hura. But nothing has changed. Some of the common folk praise Merezad, more still vilify him, but nothing has changed.”

  So much had changed. So much. But how could a man understand this if he had never bent reality to his whim, had never shuddered at the feel of his veins growing hot with power? From over the rim of his cup, Leonine could see the anger in Ibashtu’s eyes. The Hakshi, at least, understood what had been lost.

  “Shudagan,” Leonine said, holding up a hand to forestall whatever the old man was preparing to rant about next. “I do get the sense that you’re trying to make a point, but damn me if I haven’t missed it entirely. Indulge me, will you? What exactly is behind this history lesson?”

  “Why is it the youth are never content to let an old man speak at his own pace? No, don’t answer that. My point is just this: we had hoped for Sarvashi law to follow the Sarvashi occupation. That did not happen. I am a patriot, Leonine, but a patriot of Lumshazzar, and not this pale imitation of that great city. But the Sarvashi are not the answer to… ah, I’m prattling on again.”

  “Allow me,” said the scribe. “We – that is, the Shattered Manacle, whom by now I am sure you’ve realized we represent –”

  Leonine had not realized that, but it was in retrospect unsurprising.

  “– have realized we will be no more free under the Merezad, and so we have decided we must act.”

  “And?” Leonine asked.

  “And we would like you to help us in this,” Shudagan finished, then looked at him expectantly.

  Leonine drained his cup and shrugged. “I will not lie. Your struggle is not my concern. But if the re
wards are right, and the work is within my capabilities… well, why not? A man needs something to occupy his time.”

  Shudagan nodded, and handed Leonine another cup of beer, which he accepted. The three sat in silence a moment.

  “So,” Leonine asked. “Is there a job attached to all this?”

  There was not. There was, instead, a cryptic hint at a job to come, and the promise of great riches. Something in this was unusual, Leonine decided. When Ibashtu’s master excused himself a half hour later to answer the call of an old man’s weak bladder, Leonine confronted the scribe.

  “Ibashtu, you and I are both practical sorts. What is happening here?” Leonine whispered.

  “In what sense?” the scribe asked.

  “Don’t play coy. First I’m given a job to steal something that reeks of sorcery, then in addition to my payment I’m given a tablet that screams of unreasonable trust placed in a man who – let’s be honest – is no more than a competent mercenary in your employ. Then I listen to Shudagan wax poetic about a city to which I’m a stranger and a cause in which I have no stake, and all the while I’m getting the sense that you think I will take up your struggle. Really, are you counting on my idealism? A man such as I has little enough of that.”

  As he spoke, a slow smile spread across Ibashtu’s features – it unnerved him slightly.

  “So you want to know what possible reason Shudagan has to place such trust in the hands of a man perfectly capable of selling him to the authorities?”

  “Essentially, yes.”

  Ibashtu’s smile widened into a toothy grin. “In point of fact, my dear Leonine, Shudagan does not like you very much at all.” She paused, as though waiting for that fact to sink in. “No, it is I who trust you.”

  Leonine laughed. People such as they did not trust each other like this.

  “When,” he asked, “have I ever given you reason to put so much faith in me?”

  Ibashtu’s face grew serious. She looked from shoulder to shoulder, as though checking to see if anybody else was in the small room, then leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially.

  “I trust you in this, because I know what you are. Leonine, the Manacle is far too small and the desire for slaves far too widespread for a gaggle of well-meaning nobles and their halfway-emancipated servants to make a difference. You know this, and I know this. Even Shudagan knows this, although he is too thick to admit to himself that Lumshazzar is just a name for dust in the wind.

  “We have… allied ourselves with someone. Out of necessity, yes, but it is a convenient marriage. The Crescent.”

  It was interesting, sometimes, the way a single word could seal a man’s fate. The Crescent. Night-worshippers and heathens. The last priests of a deposed goddess, preaching a banned creed in the dark places of the world.

  “I see,” Leonine said. He took a drink and realized he’d drained his second cup. There simply was not enough beer in Ekka for certain revelations. “This really is an interesting trap you’ve set for me. I suppose if I walk away now, knowing what I know, you will have me killed?”

  Ibashtu nodded, and refilled his cup. “I suppose. I doubt you would say anything in any case, sorcerer that you are, but I can hardly take that chance. But, naturally, it need not come to that.”

  Naturally.

  “How much does Shudagan know?” he asked.

  “Enough. He knows we have contracted with priests of Nin. He believes that they are just disaff –” Ibashtu suddenly trailed off. In the silence, Leonine heard footsteps coming from below. The scribe, he noticed, had sharp ears.

  They spent the rest of the evening talking of less weighty matters: of a dry summer to come, and growing enmity between Lugal Zagezi and the High Priest of Labeshi-Solon. It was an age-old story, repeated in every last one of the ancient cities in this land between two rivers. One man exerted a claim over secular matters, the other spiritual. Neither would accept the other’s idea of where, in the sands between the two, a line should be drawn.

  Leonine could empathize with the Lugal. He had no interest in the spiritual, yet somehow his entire life had been a struggle to find a teetering balance atop the fulcrum of other men’s beliefs.

  Leonine wandered back towards his lodgings on shaky legs. Too many cups of beer had passed his lips. He’d almost missed a step in the staircase. Had it not been for his panicked scrabbling at Ibashtu’s arm, he could have pitched headlong to an early grave. Which would, at the very least, have been one way out of this noose. The expression on Ibashtu’s face had been somewhere between solicitous and mocking, but Leonine found that he was not overly concerned with pride just now.

  It was not that he disagreed with the Crescent’s purpose, or with their means. He had, after all, some investment in the former, and was pragmatic enough to overlook the latter. An Ekka freed of Sarvashi superstitions would be a blessing. Using his gift, freely, without having to worry about any consequence more significant than a terrified village simpleton? The prospect was blissful. Leonine had seen enough of the Hounds, had spent enough years crawling on his belly.

  Still, pragmatism was a harsh mistress. The Crescent was impotent. The night priestesses had long ago been scattered to the winds, or given to Shimurg. Their temples had been torn down. Alu-nin-hura – an entire city! – was gone, flooded and reclaimed by marshland. Worst of all, the Ekkadi had helped bring it all about.

  And why should they not? Would the mouse not kill the cat, given a chance? Men feared power they could not aspire to, especially if it was more difficult to understand than a length of sharpened bronze. When had they done otherwise? The Crescent could not fight Sarvagadis and the Prophet, not alone, not with the help of the Manacle. Certainly not with the assistance – coerced, at that – of a sorcerous dilettante with no more to offer than a quick knife and a modicum of control over sound and song.

  Yet, he was trapped. Ibashtu was not a woman to cross. She was too well-informed to hide from, and too dangerous to risk a more direct solution. One did not take other sorcerers lightly – there was no telling how powerful they were, not until it was too late.

  It had grown dark already; Shimurg’s feathers were just coming into view, gleaming brightly in their nightly descent from the roof of the sky. Though music and light still spilled through the cracks of a hundred doorways, the streets had nearly emptied. Another Sarvashi superstition, that. The Ekkadi had never feared the night like other men, when Nin watched over them. Now that her children had turned their backs, there was no protection from the evil things that walked in the night.

  Superstitious nonsense. Of course evil things walked in the night. They always had, with knives at their waists and hunger in their bellies. Privation made men’s hearts grow cold, and the night hid their deeds from prying eyes. The rest was idiocy, children’s tales of ghosts and shedu, and beasts that spoke like men.

  Idiocy. How had he gotten himself mired in such idiocy?

  Enough already. The drink has made you maudlin.

  It always did.

  He slept fitfully that night, and when he dreamt it was of a silver-masked goddess dancing on the surface of the Shalumes, radiant against a black sky.

  She beckoned, and he tried to swim to her, but the current was strong. As he thrashed and flailed, she removed her mask and laughed. “Navid,” she called to him. He knew her voice. It had called his name more times than he could count. “Return to me. Dance with me. Love me.”

  He wanted to, desperately, but the river was too strong. Water filled his lungs and pulled him under, but he could still see her clearly. Her face was that of love lost, her belly swollen with child.

  “Return to me,” she said, and her voice grew mocking and cold. “Join me. It won’t be long, Navid. All you need do is cross the Shinvat.”

  Her face faded from his view, but the voice still rang clear.

  “When Shinvat collapses beneath you, like it did beneath me, I will have you again and we will dance in the cold.”

  He woke so
bbing.

  Farshideh, my light!

  The nightmare was the same. It was always the same.

  I miss you so much.