Pale Queen's Courtyard

by Marcin Wrona

  Chapter 7: Child of the Rivers

  There was something charming about the girl, Leonine decided, even when she was splashing him with river water.

  Shimurg had been at his highest in the sky when they emerged cautiously from the sewers, eyes adjusting to the brilliant light of day. Leonine had forced a hard pace through Lumshazzar. He knew soldiers would be dispatched to watch the riverbanks, and so they ran until they were short of breath, then walked, then ran again. Leonine’s legs had shrieked in protest, and Ilasin… Ilasin had done well, better than he would have expected from a child, but even so he had been forced to carry her when she began to complain.

  Thankfully, when they finally did reach the Shalumes, the sewer tunnels were unguarded. Leonine had been pleasantly surprised to learn that Ilasin could swim, and well at that. She dove into the river, squealing with glee, and he followed after. The smells of earth, reeds and clean air were intoxicating after so many hours spent underground.

  They had spent what remained of that first day, a balmy afternoon followed by a cool evening, putting as much distance between themselves and Inatum as possible and talking only infrequently. Leonine set up camp as Shimurg began to dip behind the Serpent’s Bones, his light painting the sky with orange and pink. Leonine would have preferred to press on, but the girl was weary, and weak.

  He built a tiny fire instead, on the muddy bank of the Shalumes, and struggled for some time to catch one of the river’s many fish for their evening meal. Ilasin had fallen asleep in a thicket by the time he succeeded, so he ate his fill and wrapped the remainder in the feathery leaves of a fern.

  Leonine tried to stay awake for a time, to stand guard in case pursuit was swifter than he anticipated. It was only a matter of time until the soldiers they’d faced in the sewers regrouped. They were hamstrung without their Hound in some ways, but they would not need to follow the scent of sorcery when simply following the river would do. There were only so many directions in which a man leaving Inatum could go, and south, into the desert, was not one of them.

  His vigilance did not last. Within minutes of settling in beside Ilasin, he too was asleep, bone-weary from the day’s ordeals. Yet, exhausted though he was, Leonine did not sleep soundly. He dreamt, for the second time in as many nights, of a lost wife and her swollen belly, of a child whose cries he would never hear. Each time he saw her face he woke, and each time he returned to sleep, he saw her face.

  Farshideh, he asked her memory, waking for the third time from fitful slumber. Why do you haunt me now, after all these years? There was nothing I could have done.

  It was a lie, he supposed. He could have died alongside her, to be spared the misery of the lonely life he had lived afterward, but some men grasped at life all the more fiercely when nothing else remained to them. There was nothing I could have done.

  When he woke again, dawn had broken, to the accompaniment of a wispy fog. Ilasin was no longer lying beside him. Instead, he heard splashing from the river.

  He rose, groaning at the realization that his interrupted sleep had left his head aching, and walked to the riverbank.

  “Good morning, Ilas–” he began, then sputtered at the cold water she splashed into his face.

  “Hey! No peeking,” she said. Ilasin stood waist-deep in the water, covering herself with her hands, her face amusingly wroth. Leonine laughed, and she blushed furiously.

  “I’ll try to control myself,” he said. “Now come out of there before a crocodile eats you up.”

  She threw a dirty glare his way. “It’s not as though I just jumped into the river without looking. I can see, you know. Don’t try to scare me.”

  He held up his hands, palms outward, conceding the point. “I wouldn’t dream of it. Now, I’ll turn my back, and you get dressed. We have roast fish for breakfast, and then we have to go.”

  “My feet hurt,” she said as he turned. He heard the lapping of water, then splashing as she walked through the shallows to the riverbank.

  “So do mine,” Leonine replied honestly. “But we have to keep moving – you know that. Maybe we’ll be able to hire a boatman soon. I think there’s supposed to be a village a little way’s travel from here.” The prospect of a good meal and an easy journey was too welcome to pass up, even if it left a trail. The Sister Cities were large, and he knew them well enough to avoid pursuit. As long as they reached the city before anybody hunting them – and that was all the more likely if they could travel by river – they could afford to leave a few signs of their passing.

  “There is,” Ilasin said. “I passed by it when I was coming to Inatum. They had chickens there, and pigs. You can turn around now.”

  Leonine turned around, and pointed at a leaf-wrapped bundle lying next to the ashes that remained of the previous night’s fire. “Fish,” he said simply. “Eat as much as you can. You must be starved.”

  She was, it seemed, from the way she tore into the fish. By the time she finished, with a murmured “Thank you”, little remained of their meal. He ate the rest, wishing for some bread or a cup of cool beer.

  Ilasin’s story weighed on Leonine’s mind. He had not asked her anything during their journey through the sewers, or along the riverbank. He had been too weary, and too preoccupied with the need to move quickly, and she… well, she had no reason to trust him yet, and it was probably best to approach her delicately. Little sorcerer girls did not travel alone for fun. He had little doubt that her story was painful.

  “Ilasin,” he said, scattering the ashes of their campfire into the river. “I want to teach you a little, about what we are and what we can do. You don’t have to tell me anything about yourself if you don’t want to, and I won’t ask… but…” he trailed off. The memory of the sewer meeting shook some of yesterday’s events into place.

  “But what?” she asked hesitantly.

  “In the sewers, one of those soldiers said they had come to take you away, and they seemed… really satisfied about it. They came hunting me, I’m sure of it…” Why else would Akosh have been there? And they obviously had me watched. “… but you said, afterwards, that you’d used your sorcery before –”

  Ilasin looked uncomfortable with the question that hung as yet unspoken about them. She did not meet his eyes, stared at the ground instead. Still, he had to ask.

  “Ilasin, do you think… could those soldiers also be looking for you?”

  To his surprise, she started to cry, and turned away sharply.

  “I… it w-wasn’t m-my fault!” she said, sobbing.

  “What wasn’t your fault?” he asked, his voice as gentle as he could make it. He put a hand on her shoulder, gingerly, surprised to see that she did not flinch away.

  “I k-killed them. I couldn’t help it, I was afraid!” she cried, turning and burrowing her face into Leonine’s side. He could feel her tears, hot against his skin even through the cotton of his tunic.

  Inwardly, Leonine winced. It was a familiar story. More than familiar, it was ubiquitous. A young sorcerer, raw and untrained, lashing out with powers beyond control. Half of the time, they burned themselves to husks in the process. Failing that, there were always Hounds and the Shimurg.

  He held her close while she sobbed, and saw himself as a young man, performing for a crowd in Sarvagadis. The crowd had asked for a martial song, a call to war, and he had obliged, singing to them of Lugal Lamash, and his battle against the Artalum invaders. It was an ancient song, almost a legend, of hard warriors succeeding against tremendous odds.

  He had lost himself in that song, in a strange ecstasy that at the time he could not describe. When his voice swelled in crescendo, he had opened his eyes on bedlam and anarchy. His listeners beat each other with fists and stones, rent flesh with their nails. Eight died that day, three women and five men. In doing so, they sealed his fate.

  And Farshideh’s.

  “It’s…” he wanted to say it was alright, but he knew that it was not. “These things happen, sometimes. It happened to me too.”r />
  She drew back and looked into his eyes, her own wet and red, yet strangely hopeful. He told her of the riot in Sarvagadis, so many years ago. He did not tell her of Farshideh, of the fate that so often befell a sorcerer’s loved ones. Some truths were best left unspoken.

  “Do you ever wish it didn’t happen? That you couldn’t… do what you can do?” she asked when he finished his story.

  “Sometimes, some aspects,” he replied. “Not everything. Ilasin, we are more than other people. We have a gift, a power, something that makes us greater than a simple wheelwright, or farmer. Even a Lugal. But people fear the strong, like the antelope fears the lion. I lost some people very dear to me, and I wish they could still be with me. But we are what we are, and we are great.”

  Ilasin did not respond immediately. She looked up at the sky, as though asking the gods for answers. In a voice weak enough that he almost did not hear it, she said, “I don’t want to kill.”

  “I know,” he replied. She would have to, eventually, or be killed herself. Such was the life of a Daiva, that hated word. “I can teach you to control it.”

  Leonine explained as they walked, even showed her. A Hound was dead behind them, leaving his Huntsmen blind to their passing. Or so he hoped. Who could know how many other Hounds might be nearby? Regardless, it was worth the risk. Some things could be explained in words, but some – and sorcery was one of them – could be learned only in the attempt.

  “Think of yourself as a dam, and sorcery a river that rages outside you,” he explained as they followed the broad ribbon of the Shalumes, cut through now and again by canals that carried river water to fields near and far. The Ekkadi had mastered the river, had used it to turn barren sands from gold to green. It was a metaphor she would have little trouble understanding.

  “To take that power, and to shape it, you have first to open the dam. If you open it too little, the power will only trickle through, and you will not have enough. If you open it too far, power will rush through, shatter the dam, and overwhelm you.”

  She considered that a moment, and nodded. “That’s what happened in the sewer, isn’t it? When I blacked out.”

  Leonine nodded. It was always a threat, and he told her so, told her that she could just as easily have died. “I felt it, you know,” he said. “When you opened yourself. I felt it. All sorcerers can. That’s part of the danger. Some of the people who hunt us have their own power. That’s how they found me, and that’s how they found you. When the crocodile attacked you, the Hound felt your magic. I did too.”

  “The Hound,” she said slowly, as though turning the word over in her mind. “That was the other man like us. The one with the sword.”

  Leonine nodded.

  “Who are they?”

  “Priests. Fire-priests of the Sarvashi. Sorcery was not always forbidden in Ekka. That happened after the fire-priests took Nin-nishi, and called it Sarvagadis.”

  “Why? Are they afraid of us, like you said earlier?”

  How did one explain a thing with a hundred causes: envy, zeal, politics… and yes, fear. “It’s complicated,” Leonine said.

  Well done. Brilliant start.

  The Sarvashi had a legend, he explained, of events so long ago that history had turned into myth, a fanciful child’s tale of proud Kingpriests who lived for millennia, and of bat-winged creatures in the mountains. Daiva, men called them: demons. They made war for centuries. Every time the Sarvashi tried to defend themselves, they were overcome by sorcerous gales and cruel lightning storms.

  He told her of Ahamash, king among gods, who finally took pity on the men and women of Sarvash, teaching the fire-priests to defend themselves, and their charges, against sorcery. They had driven the Daiva back, according to legend, until there was no place for them to roost within the lands of honest men.

  “Is all that true?” she asked when he had finished.

  “I doubt it. But unfortunately, whether it’s true or not, men believe it. And because of that tale of bat-winged demons who call down lightning, we are hunted.”

  “That’s stupid,” she said, and Leonine laughed bitterly.

  “Yes, Ilasin. Yes, it is. Now watch closely.”

  He drew power slowly, relishing the current that flowed through him. His veins grew hot, began to throb, that familiar, delicious agony. Leonine sang then, the poetic opening to the Shivasti, and channeled his power into it. As he sang of Aza dancing before Rusut, Ilasin began to dance, her eyes widening in surprise and confusion.

  “Wh-what are you doing to me?” she asked, hands clapping as she shook her hips like a courtesan. Leonine chuckled, and fell silent. Ilasin stopped dancing and backed away, her expression difficult to interpret.

  “I’m sorry to use you as an example, but I had no other way to make my point safely,” he said. “Did you feel when I drew power into myself? It’s a difficult feeling to describe. It’s like a bright light, and a scent of fire and loam, of… life.”

  She nodded. “I felt it when the Hound started chanting, too. After I screamed.”

  “Yes, exactly. When we use sorcery, we leave a mark; a mark that others like us can recognize and follow, even from a long way away. The Hounds follow that scent, so it is not always a safe thing to do. I risk it now only because the Hound that was following us is dead… and because it is important for you to understand.”

  He asked Ilasin to open herself and draw power in, then to shape it to do her bidding. It was not a thing that could be explained, but she had used her powers before. Leonine believed she would understand what he meant.

  He was wrong.

  She scrunched up her features in concentration until he asked her to relax, then relaxed until he asked her to concentrate. There was not the subtlest trace of power.

  “I can’t do it,” she said finally. “Not just like that.”

  He looked at her curiously. “That is strange. You drew power into yourself so quickly in Inatum that I thought you would burn. And yet, you can do nothing now?”

  “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I can’t do it.”

  Leonine found himself lacking for words. It seemed unusual. He’d never had a teacher, that much was true, but after the first time his sorcery manifested he never again had trouble drawing upon it. Shaping it could be a different matter; it was frequently more difficult than opening oneself to the world.

  “You said you were afraid, that first time,” he said finally. “You must also have been afraid when the crocodile attacked you, and when the soldiers tried to take you.”

  Ilasin nodded.

  “Have you ever used your powers at a time when you were not afraid?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  Interesting.

  “I am not sure what to tell you. I have read that sorcery works differently for different people. Well, and seen it. I can control sound and song. I knew another man…” His eyes clouded over, fixed on horrible memories. “…who could break minds and force people to do his bidding. It may be that you can only draw on your powers when you are angry, or afraid. We will keep trying. Yes? It’s important that you learn.”

  “I suppose so,” she said.

  “But Ilasin,” he said, an afterthought. He chided himself, for this was too important to remain unspoken. “Not in the city. Cities are a dangerous place to be a sorcerer.”

  She nodded. “I know,” she said, and there was sadness in her voice.

  Well before midday, they came upon a cluster of huts on the bank of the Shalumes, screened from prying eyes by a wall of date palms, their fruits hanging in clusters still yellow and hard. Animals – pigs, sheep, chickens – clucked and squealed, running and waddling through the streets, in some places chased after by children or weathered villagers.

  A woman tending to the date palms looked up at them in disinterest, until Leonine smiled winsomely and asked her about a boat to Numush for his daughter and himself.

  “Might be that my husband could take you,” she replied. “But we hav
e need of him here. The fields have not all been sown, and the season is growing old.”

  “I can pay,” Leonine said. “Enough for you to hire a labourer from Inatum to help.”

  The woman considered that, her eyes suspicious, and finally nodded. “Come, let us find Warut,” she said, laying her shears down where she stood.

  She led them to a clearing where Warut was busy helping other men to raise a reed hut along the banks. One of the builders wore finer clothes than the occasion seemed to warrant. A home for the newly wedded, Leonine guessed. He had heard of such customs among the peasantry.

  The woman walked to her husband and whispered in his ear, glancing back towards Leonine now and again. Warut eventually nodded. He approached, a smile on his face.

  “So… you are in need of a boat?” Warut asked, wiping sweaty hands on his kilt. He was broadly muscled, even if age had softened him. They ate well in this village.

  Leonine explained that he was a traveling musician on his way to Numush. Warut peered at him suspiciously, his head craning like a heron’s as he examined the two of them from all angles.

  “Where are your instruments, if you are a musician?”

  Leonine gave a helpless shrug, and tried to look embarrassed. “One of my songs did not meet with approval. Some blasted Awilum had my lyre broken. It will ruin me to buy a new one.” It was a lie, of course, but not entirely so. He had, in fact, left his lyre behind at Tusharta’s inn. He did not want to think about it. He and that lyre had traveled together for years, had made many beautiful songs.

  Warut cackled, and clapped Leonine on the shoulder. The thief did well to hide his distaste. “It’s true what they say. Money ruins a man. So the Awilum must be the most ruined men of all, but for Lugals… and maybe Sarvashi.” The mountains of Sarvash were said by the Ekkadi – if not the imperial treasury – to be shot through with veins of gold and silver that danced together, intertwined, amid streams of gems. The Sarvashi told similar stories of Ekka’s cities.

  “If money ruins a man, surely you will help us without asking for payment?”

  Warut’s wife’s gaze was flinty, but the man chuckled. “Who said I will help you at all? I am needed here.”

  Tiresome. I’ve no time to spar like this.

  “Which is why I offered your lovely wife some coins for the service. I cannot offer much, you understand, but it should allow you to rent some help and have a little left over,” Leonine said, taking a pouch from inside his tunic. “Of course, if it will corrupt you…”

  Warut turned a helpless gaze to his wife, and then bowed his head. Leonine knew that he would accept payment. Coins were not easy to come by, here in the outskirts, and there were things a man could not buy with a sheep or a brace of hens.

  “Very well, very well. We can talk about this. But only because your daughter is such a pretty little girl do I consider this! All men know Warut is kind to children.”

  Warut, it turned out, was true to his self-professed reputation. He’d loaded his boat with jugs of murky beer, and jars full of fragrant rice, candied dates and dried, spicy meats. These delicacies were ostensibly intended for sale in Numush, but no sooner had they pushed away from the dock than Warut cracked the wax seal on a date jar, and invited Ilasin to partake. The coracle, woven large enough to seat five or six, sat deep in the river, weighed down by its bounty.

  The fee they had negotiated was reasonable; more perhaps than Leonine would normally have paid, but not so generous as to raise eyebrows, and he was now a wealthy man. Although, he reflected, a too-large handful of coins would be necessary to buy a new instrument. Lyres with hidden compartments were not, as a rule, the easiest thing in the world to come by – especially not for a discerning performer who wanted them to sound tolerably musical. The last one had been made for him in Ekur, so long ago. Perhaps he would return there after he left the girl in Numush.

  “… and that, my dear, is why you should never serve your future husband emmer if there’s purple fluff growing on the sheaf.” Ilasin giggled. Warut had been telling her one story after another. The first had been some lunacy about a lion that had turned into a man after being speared by Warut’s father. “True as the night is dark!” the peasant had exclaimed. Then his eyes had grown wide and he’d covered his mouth in shock, stammering an apology that Leonine genially waved away. One did not speak lightly of night to the Sarvashi. Pious Sarvashi, anyway.

  They made camp that first night in a copse along the riverbank, after a meal of dried meat and dates. Some day, Leonine decided, spitting the pit of a date into his palm, I will leave this accursed country for Bachiya or Haksh, and I’ll never touch another date so long as I live.

  That night was clear, and slightly on the cool side of pleasant. Leonine slept comfortably regardless, until he was woken partway through the night by Warut, only to realize that Ilasin, who had fallen asleep curled up against him, was gone.

  “Master Leonine! I couldn’t sleep, and… and your daughter!” Warut stammered. “Where could she have gone?”

  The boatman’s eyes were wild as he looked left, then right. He made a sign to ward away the ancient evils that stalked the night.

  “Probably just passing water,” Leonine said. I hope. He got up and concentrated; the night smelled of leaves and river clay and nothing else. He felt no sorcery.

  “Ilasin!” he called. “Ilasin, where are you?”

  He heard nothing for a moment, then a tremulous voice responded. “H-here.”

  Leonine followed the voice, pushing through a bush that scratched at his arm. He found Ilasin sitting at the river’s bank, her legs kicking in the water. The Serpent’s Eye was wide open, the night-fires still high in the sky. Leonine sat down beside the girl, who turned her face away from him.

  “Are you feeling well?” he asked.

  She grunted something that sounded as though it was meant to be assent, though she did not turn to face him. Leonine became dimly aware of footfalls, and turned to see that Warut had followed them.

  “Warut… I’d like to talk to my daughter in private, please.”

  The farmer nodded and bowed his head. “Of course, of course. I just… I hope everything is well. I have some fennel in my boat, if her stomach has swollen.”

  Leonine smiled at that; he was almost surprised to realize it was genuine.

  “Thank you. You’ve been very kind.”

  Warut beamed, and bowed again, turning to go. When he had gone, rustling through the bushes, Leonine placed a hand on Ilasin’s slender forearm. “What’s wrong, child?”

  “Nothing,” she said, too quickly.

  He put a hand to her chin and tried to turn her face to his. The girl flinched away.

  “I’m sorry. I would…” he trailed off, awkwardly.

  They sat in silence a time, then he heard her take a deep breath. Ilasin turned towards him. In the night sky’s light, he could see – just barely – that her eyes were swollen.

  “Ilasin… you’ve been crying?”

  She sighed, and nodded.

  “I couldn’t do it,” she said. “I couldn’t. Nothing.”

  “Couldn’t do what?” Leonine asked. He realized that he already knew the answer to his question. “Oh, you tried to use your power, didn’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “And you’re crying because of that?” his question came out a little more incredulous, a little harder, than he had intended. She flashed him a look that might have been indignation, and he chuckled. She sniffed, loudly, and turned abruptly away again.

  “Oh, Ila. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have laughed, but this isn’t something you can force. It will come when it comes – and it will come,” he said, smiling. She sighed and leaned into him.

  “Can I tell you a secret?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  “My father used to call me Ila, long ago. He was – is – the High Priest of Kutuanu.”

  The what? Leonine struggled to hide his surprise. If that was true, s
he may as well have been royalty.

  Leonine wanted to ask what had happened, but he was afraid he knew the answer. There were only so many answers to questions about sorcerers.

  “He threw me out,” she said, her voice cracking, and then started to cry again. “S-said that he n-never wanted to see me again, and that he w-was supposed to kill me.”

  He held her in his arms while she cried, tried to console her.

  “But he did not,” he managed feebly. “There’s that, at least. Your father must love you at least a little, if he let you go.”

  “If he loved me, I’d still be home,” she said, anger sharpening her voice. It was, Leonine conceded, difficult to argue with that.

  “Can I tell you a secret?” Leonine asked, his eyes following a feather that fell more swiftly than the others. Where they landed and turned to birds, it was said, the harshest of diseases were cured, the sharpest pains eased.

  “Of course,” Ilasin replied.

  “My wife used to call me Navid, long ago. So long ago. That’s the name my parents gave me.”

  “What happened to her?” Ilasin asked, tentatively, as though fearing the answer.

  “She was killed. Because of me… because of what we are. A Hound put her to death, because she was my wife.” Old wounds still ache when the rains come, the Sarvashi said.

  “I’m sorry, Navid,” Ilasin said, her small hand finding his own. “What was her name?”

  “Farshideh,” he said. Farshideh.

  They sat, fingers intertwined, watching the night-fires reflected in the gentle ripples of the Shalumes. The night was clear, but Leonine’s wounds ached regardless.

  The warbling song of some bird or another woke him. Leonine opened his eyes to a sky that had trouble deciding between blue and grey. Swollen clouds had formed to the west. He wondered absently if it rained in Inatum.

  A high-pitched yawn interrupted his reverie.

  “Good morning, Ilasin.” They had fallen asleep where they sat, on the grassy riverbank. It had not been terribly comfortable. Sleeping outside never was.

  “Good morning,” she said, too brightly, and clawed her way up Leonine’s arm until she was standing upright. “Turn your head!”

  “Huh?” he asked blearily, but obeyed. He heard cloth rustling, then a splash followed by a hiss.

  “It’s cold!” Ilasin shrieked. Judging by the sound of her flailing about in the water, this was not an insurmountable challenge.

  “Ah, you’re awake!” Warut shouted from the other side of the bushes.

  Leonine heard Ilasin gasp, and called out. “Not another step closer, Warut! If you spy my daughter bathing, she’ll never be able to face you again.”

  He heard a hearty laugh in response. “I would not dream of it!” Warut said.

  They ate after Ilasin clambered out of the river, and set off after the meal. The voyage was pleasantly uneventful. Warut told them some more dubious tales, even sang a poem that he said his mother had taught him. His voice was untutored, but Leonine found its rough edge pleasant. Ilasin seemed to like it as well. When she was not popping dates into her mouth, she favoured the farmer with wide smiles.

  Leonine sang also, choosing first the tale of Nashuna seducing Anki, and taming the wild god with her love. Ilasin listened in rapt attention, her cheeks reddening at certain of the more lush verses. She clapped in delight when Nashuna convinced Anki to drive her sick father’s chariot across the sky each day, her body the night’s prize.

  They reached sprawling Numush in the afternoon of the next day, after a quiet night unmarred by wakefulness. The docks bustled, in their place of honour in the shadow of Chagasha’s Ford, the great Bridge of the Numushes. The Bridge, impossibly large, stretched across the broad Shalumes that formed the border between the Twin Cities. To their left was Numush. To their right, Numush-ummi.

  Now that the day’s heat had grown less oppressive, bare-chested dockworkers loaded barrels and jugs onto barges with linen sails, while merchants fanned by slaves with palm fronds scratched notes into clay tablets. Ilasin pointed, laughing, at a colourfully garbed merchant followed by a parade of servants, each carrying a jug. “They look like ants!” she said.

  Armed guards were everywhere. Some sweated in lamellar painted in shades of green and red – the city’s colours – but there was no such uniformity in most of the armed men on the docks, which boded well. One particularly wealthy-looking man was flanked by black-skinned spearmen in the horsetail helms of Aramayin; another jabbered at a trio of disinterested-looking toughs, pale and red-haired, from lands Leonine could not name. Less exotic were Karhani bodyguards in their striped pants, heavy axes at their belts, and the ubiquitous Ekkadi spearmen with peaked caps and oiled beards.

  The city’s soldiers had not yet been warned of his coming, Leonine decided. There was no sign of vigilance, only underpaid guardsmen standing around bored on a day like any other. Warut had proven an able oarsman. They'd set an impressive pace.

  Why are you surprised? This is not Sarvash. His people boasted that if the Merezad asked for mangoes in the morning, by evening they would hear of it in Bachiya. That was ridiculous, of course, but messages did move exceptionally swiftly in Sarvash.

  As they will here, soon enough. The east, near the marshes of the delta where the Shalumes and the Hapur emptied, was already thus. Way stations had been built along the roads, a day’s gallop apart as they were in Sarvash, such that a messenger always had a place to leave a winded horse and take a new one. It was only a matter of time until the Merezad’s grip on the interior was as sure as anyplace else.

  There was no place at the docks for a craft like theirs. Warut steered the coracle around one of the Bridge’s titanic columns, and brought it to rest on a patch of sandy earth in the shade beneath the bridge. Here too there was bustle, if of a different nature. The merchants here were simply garbed in homespun wool, and while a few carried cudgels at their belts, there was no sign of hired guardsmen.

  “Warut!” someone cried as the boat’s keel scratched a furrow into the sand. A man came running towards them, a smile on his face. “I did not expect you to return so soon. How did you enjoy my wine?”

  The wine, it turned out, had been to Warut’s taste. He embraced the newcomer and introduced him to his passengers. He had an archaic Ekkadi name with entirely too many syllables.

  Warut and the man who knew him launched into a brief and uninteresting conversation about this year’s dry Rain Days, and the weather’s effects on the ripening of dates. Leonine interrupted them gingerly, thanked Warut, and handed him a pouch with the second half of the agreed-upon fee, and a little more. Warut would be in for a pleasant surprise when he counted his money.

  They said their goodbyes, and Warut laughed delightedly when Ilasin threw her arms around his broad gut.

  “So where to now?” Ilasin asked as they climbed a winding set of steps that led up into the city proper.

  “First, we find lodgings,” Leonine said. “Then we find something to eat that is not wrinkled and hard from sitting out in the sun. Then we sleep, and in beds at that.” Then… then I find Ibashtu’s Luwa-Shagir, and I find out what I have to do to rid myself of the old hag. He would have to find a place for the girl as well. That was something he could talk to Ibashtu about. She would know where a sorceress might be safely stowed.

  How will I tell Ilasin? She held on to his tunic, eyes wide as her head turned this way and that.

  Sentimental fool. You will simply tell her, and go.

  It seemed somehow less clear than it had been, Leonine thought, when they reached the guard post at the top of the winding staircase. Somehow, between the sewers of Inatum and here, the waters had muddied. Shared pain and a held hand had conspired to render him stupid.

  “Mushkenum Iraj,” he elected to call himself, “and my daughter Khorsheed.” Fuck Ibashtu’s plots. I’ll find her, not the other way around.

  A scribe seated under a brightly coloured awning pressed some marks in
to his clay. The city guards waved them on, yawning. That was good. Leonine liked complacency.

  The first two inns they visited were small buildings near the docks, from which the scent of roasting meat wafted enticingly into the street. They were full up, or pretending to be. This could be a rough area, so close to the crudity of the docks below. Not every proprietor would be willing to give a Sarvashi a room. Violence had been known to erupt between locals and unwelcome travelers. It happened rarely enough that Leonine had little fear of attack, but frequently enough to dissuade the sort of man who stood to lose coins over it.

  Leonine’s stomach was rumbling by the time they found a room, in an inn ramshackle enough that he would have expected even a Bhargat to be given lodging. The Bricking Month had obviously passed it by without warning. Chipped and faded yellow paint did little to hide the state of the crumbling walls from view, although the pleasant scent of meat and savoury spices was behind these doors as well.

  Ilasin, who had been complaining audibly of her hunger, tore with abandon into the meal they were served, spicy hunks of goat served atop a bed of cracked wheat. It was not the finest meal Leonine had ever eaten, but it was certainly a welcome change from dried strips of lamb. There was not a date in sight. The beer was cloudy and flavourless, but it was, if nothing else, wet.

  The inn had no facilities for bathing, a fact communicated to them by the mute proprietor – a criminal, no doubt; in Ekka, a liar could lose his tongue, a thief his hand – with a grunt and a pointed finger.

  “There’s a bathhouse down this street and to the right, in a building painted with blue waves,” said a teenaged boy Leonine assumed was the proprietor’s son. He had brought dinner to their table earlier.

  An hour later, Leonine was neck-deep in hot water, a luxury that was expensive in a country with so little wood to burn. Still, it’s worth the two shekels, he thought, closing his eyes. He enjoyed the sensation of water lapping against his chin and cheek, and the smell of jasmine flowers and scented oils. Ilasin was enjoying similar treatment elsewhere, with the women.

  The gods had an ugly sense of humour. A month ago, he had been happy, with no heavier thought weighing on him than whether he should sup on pork or lamb. And now? Now he dreamed of Farshideh by night, thought about her by day. About her, about their unborn child, about the life he could have led.

  And then, there was Ilasin, that strange and sudden addition to his life. She was trouble. He had told her about Farshideh, had told her his name. Why had he done that?

  Ilasin is not your child.

  Yet she had somehow wormed her way into his thoughts. Into his affections?

  Don’t be stupid. What had she done, other than slow his escape and ensure that Hounds would follow in pursuit? She was the reason they had come. He had grown increasingly certain of that. Ilasin had told him that she was the daughter of an important priest, gifted with sorcery and let loose when she should have been put to death.

  The fire-priests would see her as a Daiva, certainly, but that was not all. A regular man like himself would be hunted as a sorcerer, but he could escape pursuit and be forgotten. Leonine had done that. With Ilasin, it was less likely. A regular man with sorcerous inclinations was called a demon. The child of an Ekkadi High Priest with the same gift? Some men would call that politics.

  I have to leave her behind. She will bring me only grief.

  He should leave this very night, he knew. He should walk out of the bathhouse, find a different inn for the night, and leave Numush-ummi in the morning. Perhaps cut north, across the green plains between the rivers, to Ab-Ewarad.

  But you won’t, will you? He would not. He owed her at least a little help. He would meet Ibashtu, and tell her of the child. Ibashtu would reach Numush-ummi shortly, possibly ahead of whatever messengers the Huntsmen had doubtless sent. Even if the scribe did not, they would not be looking for her.

  It was a short walk to the barley-etched house on the Bridge. He could do it by night, perhaps take to the roofs. The guards would never know he was there. Even if they turned over the entire city searching for him, this was not Inatum. The guards here had little experience, and were directed by an effete weakling of a Lugal. He had learned firsthand, the last time he was here, that Numush’s corruption handily outpaced that of Inatum, purportedly “the Lawless”. Inatum was a better place for a man of his skills – Numush could be violent – but the night’s work was as profitable here as anyplace else.

  Oh Navid, you fool. Why are you rationalizing this? He would not leave Ilasin, not yet, and it galled him to admit it.

  “Leo…Navid? Are you awake?” Ilasin asked later that night, in the room they shared. Their bed was little more than a thin mattress of straw wrapped in linen. The itching kept him awake. Her as well, it seemed.

  “Yes.” He was not sure he liked hearing Ilasin call him Navid. She had called him by name earlier that day, at dinner, but she seemed to understand the enormity of her blunder after he told her, aghast, never to call him by his given name in public. He could allow her to do it in private, he supposed. There was something oddly comforting in the sound of the name he had left behind in the desert outside Sarvagadis.

  “Have you ever been to Haksh?” she asked.

  “Haksh? No… why do you ask?” He thought frequently of starting life over in another land. But he did not speak the language, and wasn’t he too old to bother with all that now?

  “My father used to say that everybody in Haksh has skin as black as coal, and that they’re all sorcerers and devils. I wonder if that’s true.”

  Leonine laughed. “Well, it is true that the people there have black skin. You’ve seen them in the markets before, have you not? As for sorcery …” Ibashtu had told him much of her homeland. “The Hakshi are different. They are not all sorcerers – if they were, do you think any of them would be allowed to come to Ekka? – but our kind is not persecuted there, like we are here. In Haksh, sorcerers are kings, or advisors to kings, or shepherds or wives… they are people.”

  “We should go there, then,” she said. “Is it far?”

  “Yes, Ila,” he said, ruefully. “Yes, it’s very far.”

  She was quiet for a time. Leonine thought she had fallen asleep, but he was wrong.

  “Navid?”

  “Yes?”

  “If they came here, there must be a way for us to go there. We can take a boat.”

  It was all so simple.

  “Maybe,” he said, though he did not mean it. “Maybe we can.”

  He heard a rustle, and was startled to feel a kiss on his cheek.

  “Good night, Navid,” Ilasin said cheerily. She turned over and curled up into a ball.

  Leonine’s chest tightened. For a terrible instant, he thought he felt tears forming.

  She is not your child.

  “Good night, Ilasin,” he said, trying hard to keep the weakness from his voice.

  Run!