“Besides,” Uadjit said, “you’ve never come with me before. People will talk.”
“It’s not about me, it’s about you,” Arjhani said. “You have skills that are a benefit to all of us—why waste them on entertaining overtures from Verthisathurgiesh?”
“Why waste them on Mehen, you mean.”
“Oh karshoj to Mehen!” Arjhani shouted. “I don’t need to hear about Mehen from you of all people.”
“Lower your voice,” Uadjit snapped. Dumuzi leaned his head back against the stone. “And face what trails you, Jhani. None of this is about you.”
“It’s about you, so it’s about me.”
“Why would I leave? Why would I leave now?”
“Because you know as well as I do that Anala did not call Mehen back out of the goodness of her heart or for the sake of the rolls. She means to ruin you.”
“If you believe that so strongly, Jhani, then why did you send our son out into the wilds to find him? Unless, that is, you meant to ruin me too?”
A dense, chilly silence. “I’m trying to help.”
“From where I stand I see few options,” Uadjit went on. “Either Anala wants to break me and you sided with her, you want this to happen. Or you don’t side with her, and you sent Dumuzi—our son, the only choice for my scion someday—out into the world, believing he would fail and possibly never come home to us. Or you are a karshoji liar and you have no idea what Anala intends or what Mehen wants. So which is it?”
Dumuzi waited, dreading the answer.
“How can you think I’m not on your side? Noachi, I might not be the one you wished for, but I’m your ally—you can’t doubt that. Irthiski,” Arjhani crooned the endearments like a charm. “Vorellim. I just want you to be happy.”
Uadjit sighed. “The happiest you can make me involves not having this conversation and getting me gravid like you came here to do.”
That’s what you get for eavesdropping, Dumuzi thought, once he’d left the enclave doors behind him. An earful of his parents’ troubles, a glimpse into their private lives, and now he had nothing at all to do. He couldn’t go back and interrupt—and truth be told, he didn’t want to either.
He meandered over the walkways, as if looking for a path to catch his feet. Ush-em-gal-lù-en-ur-sag. With every step the alien syllables popped in his thoughts. Ush-em-gal-lù-en-ur-sag. He found himself heading toward the Verthisathurgiesh enclave without meaning to.
To his surprise, Farideh was already awake—or mostly so. She sat curled on one of the divans in the sitting area, her eyes hollowed by fatigue, reading a little scroll to herself. She startled visibly when Dumuzi came in, and closed the note between her hands.
“You slept badly too?” he said.
“Worse and worse,” she said with a half smile. She spoke in a mishmash of Draconic and Munthrarechi, leaping from one word to the next. Dumuzi found it strangely easy to follow. “No one’s brought morningfeast yet. I think Mehen scared them the other day. Do you know where the kitchens are?”
“Yes,” Dumuzi said. But his stomach knotted at the thought of wandering the halls of Verthisathurgiesh enclave, every step feeling as though it would plunge him back into his frightened youth or into imaginary Unthalass. “I owe you a visit to the Horn of Shasphur. We could just go there. Let the others sleep.”
Farideh looked past him, at her sister’s door. “All right. But let me leave a note.”
“What did you dream about?” she asked as they reached the market floor.
Dumuzi pretended not to hear her, turning before a shop selling bolts of colorful linen and wool to head toward the teahouse. Farideh sprinted up beside him.
“What did you dream about?” she asked again.
“That’s … personal,” Dumuzi said. Then, “Vayemniri don’t talk about that. They’re just dreams.”
He didn’t say anything else until they were seated, alone, in the Horn of Shasphur, after many exchanges of greetings with his cousin, Yehenna, to be passed on to his parents and siblings and to hers.
“I’m sorry,” Farideh said finally. “I didn’t know.” She tilted her head, as if she were considering him with her silver eye alone. “Do you get a lot of nightmares?”
“Sometimes,” Dumuzi said. “It depends.”
She was quiet a moment, as Yehenna returned with an iron pot of tea and a basket of farothai, hot off the griddle. “Is it because of what happened to your friends?”
Dumuzi took one of the stuffed flatbreads. “They weren’t exactly my friends.”
“Were you in their … group?” Farideh asked. “The Liberators—”
“Don’t.” He glanced back at Yehenna greeting another customer. “Don’t talk about that. Please. I wasn’t. I was … I was friends with some of them. One of them. I was trying to convince them they were being fools. If I’d been here …” He pulled the farothai into pieces, until his fingers were slick with oil.
“Maybe you would be dead too,” Farideh pointed out as she took one of the breads. “What’s in these?”
“Um, sheep’s cheese and chilies.” He took a belated bite as she poured the tea.
“What about your friend? Zaroshni?”
“We’re not—” Dumuzi’s tongue hammered nervously at the roof of his mouth. “Shestandeliath Zaroshni. Although I don’t know if she would say we were friends.”
“Did you fight?”
“We argue. She wanted to convince me, I think, of their … hopes. That we …” He set the flatbread on the plate and clasped his hands together. He could almost hear Zaroshni’s teasing tones, laying out why he was obviously deluded by Kepeshkmolik’s iron hand. “They wanted to go back to Abeir. She thought … we fought so hard to make a safe haven, to make our own destiny, and now? Now Uadjit comes back from Imaskar and all she has in hand are half-made trade promises and requests for more military aid. We don’t matter in this world. It’s not ours.” He dropped his eyes to the table. “That’s what she says, anyway. Said. I haven’t talked to her about it since … it happened.”
“Do you agree?”
“No. A little. I don’t know anymore.”
Farideh was quiet for long moment. “Do you love her?”
Dumuzi shut his eyes. “I don’t know that either,” he said. “I’m already promised anyway. And I’ve seen how badly it goes if you fall in love before you’re married off. It’s for the best.”
Farideh’s eyebrows rose. “You’re engaged? To who?”
“No one specific. I have to marry back into Verthisathurgiesh. Matriarch Anala has to make the offers to the …” He squinted. “Shuk-qalli?”
“ ‘Maybe’ …” Farideh shook her head. “I don’t know the other part. What’s it mean?”
“The girls I might marry.”
“Brides.”
“Brides,” Dumuzi said, testing the word. “So I don’t have a bride. I have just a vow.”
“Is that usual?”
“It’s … a little old-fashioned.” Dumuzi said, wrapping his hands around the clay cup. “I was what’s called a koshqal. A … ‘bride cost,’ I suppose. In a marriage contract some eggs are set aside for the anurithominak.”
“The … under name?” Farideh said.
“It’s … One clan is by tradition the initiator of the agreement. The higher-ranked, more powerful clan usually. The eggs are mostly theirs then. But some are koshqalli. Some are considered the cost of the bride.”
“Or the groom,” Farideh said.
Dumuzi frowned. “What’s the difference?”
Farideh chuckled and explained it. “You know I would have thought I spoke Draconic completely before I came here. But there are so many words I don’t know, and so many things I feel like I’m missing.” She sipped her tea. “So you were supposed to be Verthisathurgiesh?”
Dumuzi turned his head and pulled the frill of his jaw taut, so that she could see the small holes left behind by the jade plugs. They’d never close, not completely.
“What happ
ened?” she asked.
“It didn’t work out,” he said brusquely, “and so my mother negotiated the marriage contract.” The crackle of lightning echoed in his memory. His tongue rattled against the roof of his mouth to match. “What did you dream about?”
“I thought that was personal.”
“It’s personal for me,” Dumuzi said. “You asked, so I assume it’s not personal for you.”
She looked down into her teacup, as though the leaves were full of answers. “Lately when I dream, it’s the same, or nearly the same. I dream I’m in Arush Vayem and it’s snowing. Dahl is somewhere, but I can’t find him. I can hear people laughing and shouting, but every building I find is empty and cold. Like no one’s been there for ages. Sometimes Lorcan’s there. Sometimes Havi. Sometimes Arjhani turns up. Sometimes the village catches on fire.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “I don’t know if they’re really dreams.”
“What else would they be?”
“Messages.” Farideh looked up at him, her mismatched eyes solemn. “Warnings.”
“They’re just dreams.”
She shrugged. “These are odd times. The gods are … very present.”
Dumuzi pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth hard, as the image of the human with the curly beard flashed in his thoughts. Ushumgal-lú. The feeling of the tyrant’s heart beating inside him. “How can you tell the difference?” he asked.
“I think you just know. Are you worried about something?”
“No,” Dumuzi said. Then, “Sometimes my dreams … echo lately. The same things again and again. And I don’t always know what they are.”
Farideh bit her lip, and Dumuzi pressed his tongue more firmly against the roof of his mouth. It’s nothing, he thought. You shouldn’t have mentioned it.
“I know a spell,” she said, all caution, “that can tell if a god has … an interest in you.”
“Not here!”
“It won’t hurt.”
“I’m not afraid of it hurting.”
“No one will know what I’m doing. Promise.”
He tapped his tongue a few times. Yehenna was in the back. The other customers were engrossed in their own conversations. A storm is coming … Ushumgal-lú. “Fine. But quick?”
“Quick,” she agreed.
For a moment, Farideh only stared at Dumuzi, her flat eyes shifting colors as if they were slicked with strange oil. He fluttered his tongue within his closed mouth, hiding his discomfort. A moment later, Farideh blinked and smiled awkwardly.
“All clear,” she said. “I suppose they’re only nightmares.”
“Of course,” Dumuzi said, oddly relieved. “I’m Vayemniri.”
Farideh shrugged, and Dumuzi had the distinct impression that he’d said something wrong. But he held his tongue—he was already acting too familiar. It would only be worse to try and drag things out of her.
“These are a lot better than Mehen’s,” she said, plucking another of the farothai from the basket. “I’m going to ask you something, and if it’s improper, I apologize. Someone was asking me about the election for Vanquisher. They wanted to know if Verthisathurgiesh had a candidate yet. Is that something I’m likely to find out?”
Dumuzi eyed her a moment before he remembered there was no way she knew any of this. “If you mean is Anala going to tell you before the official announcements in a few months, no. The elders can change their minds right up to the announcement anyway.”
“But people can usually guess?”
“Right. For example, my mother came back because Imaskar is at war, but she was coming home anyway. Kepeshkmolik means to put her forward as Vanquisher.”
“How often does that happen?”
“Every ten years,” Dumuzi explained. “Tarhun is Vanquisher until next year, so all the clans put forth their candidates and a new one’s elected. So this year everything’s getting … tense. Everyone’s getting ready. Trying to make sure their candidates look best.”
“Do you think she has a chance?”
“A fair chance,” Dumuzi said. “It’s not a very powerful field. Ophinshtalajiir will put forward Sepideh—she’s a Lance Defender commander, and she’ll never, never defeat Uadjit. Fenkenkabradon will bring up Dokaan who is in charge of the Lance Defenders, but a lot of the older clans don’t like how he’s run things. They say he forgets our roots and leads us into battle looking like hatchlings. Daardendrien is a gamble. They have a scion, Medrash, who made a name for himself, in battle and in foreign courts. But he’s young and he’s a god-worshiper—that will hurt him badly, so I don’t know if they won’t put up someone less risky. Shestandeliath is anyone’s guess, but there’s no one obvious enough to point to. Uadjit would likely win over any of those.”
“That’s why they’re all being so cagey about what happened in the catacombs?” Farideh said. “Because it would reflect badly on their clans and then candidates?” Dumuzi shrugged—but it was almost certainly true. “Who’s Verthisathurgiesh’s choice?”
“Mehen, I assume.”
“What?” Yehenna and the other customers turned at the sudden burst of Common. Farideh looked as if he’d told her they were planning to throw her and Havilar off the pyramid later. Dumuzi frowned.
“Why else would Anala ask him back?” he said quietly, hoping she’d take the hint. “Verthisathurgiesh doesn’t have many candidates who could win out over Uadjit—Arjhani wouldn’t dare stand, and he’s probably their best option. I can’t say it’s wise … Is that why you didn’t think it important to stay away from the wizard? Because you didn’t know?”
Farideh only shook her head. “I can’t imagine why she’d … Why she’d think …”
“There’s no forcing him to do it if he’s elected,” Dumuzi said. “Maybe she’ll tell him what she intends and you’ll leave straight after.” The thought gave him a pang of sadness—he covered it by pouring them both more tea. Farideh dropped several lumps of sugar into hers. “I doubt he will defeat Uadjit either, come to that.”
Farideh smiled. “Your mother sounds formidable.”
“That is an excellent word for her.”
“Is she happy to have you home again?”
Dumuzi shrugged. “I don’t think she was too happy I was sent out. She’s been asking me questions every time I see her, about everything I did or saw or thought. Looking for things that might reflect poorly on Kepeshkmolik, I think. She asked me a lot of questions about you,” he added.
Farideh set her tea down, eyes on the cup. “Oh? Did she know who I was already?”
“No,” Dumuzi said. “I mean I don’t think Arjhani told her. She seemed surprised about that. She’s …” He hunted for the right words. “She can be a little overconcerned with who my friends are. When she’s in the City-Bastion, anyway. She’s probably worried you’re going to try and turn me into a god-worshiper.”
Farideh giggled at that. “I think there’s more chance you’ll convince me to swear allegiance to the line of Khorsaya and go out hunting dragons.”
“That is not how it works.” She only giggled more, and despite himself, Dumuzi laughed too. “Not everybody kills a dragon, anyway. They’re hard to come by these days.”
“What about Zaroshni?” Farideh said. “What’s your mother think of her?”
“She doesn’t know about Zaroshni. Not really.” Dumuzi sighed. “Not that it matters. She’s been … distant lately. Two conversations about who was still alive and who wasn’t, and … well, let’s say before I was sent after Mehen, she would sometimes make … compelling arguments about defying the qallim agreement. Obviously things must have changed since I left. Not that it matters,” he said again, hastily. “Like I said, I’m promised.”
But Farideh’s expression had shifted into something blank, something Dumuzi couldn’t read beyond the look of fear that transcended the lack of scales and ridges.
“She’s acting odd,” Farideh said. “We can’t find her. And she was supposed to be there, with the others that ni
ght.”
“Yes,” Dumuzi said, dread building in him. “Why?”
Farideh shook her head. “Oh, Dumuzi. I think she was there. I think she might be possessed.”
“YOU CAN’T BE mad at Bodhar forever,” Sessaca said as Dahl built her another fire. They had stopped atop a ridge overlooking a snow-filled valley and the higher peaks beyond, and settled Sessaca against a heavy column of rock. The sunset blazed behind them, painting the Earthfasts in shades of red and gold. Thost and Bodhar had been set to work with the Zhentarim pitching tents against the growing cold. “Are you letting her hold that over you? Or is it something else?”
“That depends on who you’re talking about,” Dahl said, trying to coax a spark from the steel. “But the answer’s probably that it’s not your business.”
Sessaca snorted. “I mean our one-eyed friend,” she said quietly. “Which is all of our business, and might I add, you avoiding your brothers like a sulky boy because they wrecked your cover and hurt your feelings over some tiefling is not helping matters. There’s no girl on Toril who’s worth playing mum with your own kin over.”
The sparks from the firesteel finally caught the edge of the charcloth he’d laid in the kindling, erupting into greedy flame. “You giving Bodhar and Thost this same talk?” he asked. “Or does that only go the one way?”
Sessaca drew the blanket around her closer. “You haven’t answered my question.”
“You don’t want to know what she has over me.”
“Listen, lambkin, whatever you get up to, I’m going to come out and guarantee I got up to worse. So unless you want to get into a pissing match with me and find out, answer the question.”
Dahl said nothing, only feeding twigs and bits of bark to the fire. Since Xulfaril’s threats to tell his family about the devil woman, he’d bounced between calling her bluff, telling them everything—he hadn’t made anything like a deal with the strange woman after all—and resigning himself to becoming a Zhentarim agent completely—because how could he explain anything without revealing his agreement with Lorcan?
Ashes of the Tyrant Page 32
