by K. Johansen
Ailan was probably right, at that. If a caravan gang took on a hand new to the work, it was likely someone’s son or daughter, niece, nephew, cousin…Someone who could at least handle beasts. Someone fit to work. Ailan was all bones and nerves. The honest wouldn’t take him; those who made themselves godless by how they used others—few enough, but folly to pretend they didn’t exist—wouldn’t have any good use for him.
“You could go down to Two Hills.” How, if the youth had never been out of his city since he was a baby? Two hundred miles through the tributary lands, villages not over-fond of vulnerable city stragglers, where they feared the power and often tyranny of their city clan-father lords—well, that was how it had been in his day, who knew, now—but regardless, a long way afoot with no money. Send him off to beg his way alone? He would likely come to worse faster than he would whoring at the city gates. He wasn’t fit enough for a decent day’s journey afoot anyway.
Not Ailan’s fault. He’d never had to undertake such a thing.
Ghu had fled worse. Faced worse. Far younger. Survived.
Chance kindness. Good folk along the way, as well as the users, the self-interested, the abusers.
Yes. And so.
No, no, no. Not Ahjvar’s problem. Not his responsibility. The damned man had been working to get him killed.
He looked back again. Ailan was rubbing fingers over the heel of his hand, coppery head bowed. That brand was as much a bar to any honest apprenticeship or servant’s position in Two Hills as in Star River Crossing.
Ailan looked up, caught him watching. “What’s Marakand like?” he asked.
“No.” Not a very convincing refusal.
“I don’t mind working.” That better accent was back. City. But clan. Some lost daughter…“I’m not lazy. It’s just—who’ll hire a whore’s bastard? I’m not lazy. I could—I can cook. I mean, everybody can cook, can’t they?”
“Ghu claims I can’t.”
“Who’s Ghu?”
“My god. My…everything. I leave the cooking to him.”
Ailan frowned, apparently considering someone who left the cooking to his god. Shrugged.
“So you need someone to cook, then. And I can, I can…feed the camels. What do they eat? Grass?”
“Your fingers, if you’re not careful.”
“I don’t mind if you—if you did want company…I mean, I thought you were some kind of dead thing made to look like a man, that’s why I was so scared, there in the Heron, why I didn’t—”
“No.”
Ailan let out a relieved breath.
“Idiot,” Ahjvar muttered.
“Want to go somewheres else,” Ailan said, more to the camel than to him. “Be someone else.”
Whoring till no one wanted him, and then begging, if he wasn’t driven to theft again, and hanged.
“Are you a thief?”
“No.” Resignation, not indignation. “I took a purse off a woman once, while she was sleeping. I thought—I don’t know, I thought I could just—run. Not sure where I was going, even. Three years ago. I was stupid. Young. The runners had me before I was out the gates. Whipped and branded the same day. Don’t suppose I’d do any better now. Not with this hair. It’s the ones you don’t notice till too late get away cutting a purse in the street, isn’t it?”
“Wouldn’t know. Never tried it.” Never had to. He’d taken to murder for and of the clan-fathers and -mothers instead, when he’d lost his place in the world. “I’ll take you to Marakand. Better than leaving you behind for anything that’s after me to find. If they connect us with the fire, they’ll send the magistrates’ runners out, and the guard of the city clan-fathers, probably—”
Ailan cringed at that. Some things hadn’t changed in the Five Cities, that was clear. The private soldiers of the ruling families were the ones to fear.
“—but I’d like to see the city-bred man or woman could catch me in these hills.”
Or the clan soldier who could stand up to the Leopard. None had yet. With or without a wizard to back them.
And best to have some things clear between them.
“That ‘no’ was for always, not just tonight. However pretty you might be. I don’t like…anyone. I’m Ghu’s, his alone.”
“That’s a new kind of priest.” A lightening, a gurgle of laughter in the voice. Life hadn’t broken him yet.
Ahjvar shook his head. “Just don’t—don’t touch me, all right? Even in the ordinary way of things. I don’t like it. And I have nightmares. Not often. But when I do, they’re bad. I might not know where I am or when, or who you are and you might get hurt if you’re within grabbing distance. All right?”
“All right.”
Is he pretty, do you think? Echoes in his mind. His own thought, shaping how Ghu might tease. Or maybe not. More than memory, that voice. Almost. Scent. Warmth. Mass of a body so real it would be shock to reach, to touch and find he was not there.
One man, was the answer, regardless. It always had been.
CHAPTER XXV
When the god came out of the hills, the caravan-master Zhung Zichen was laughing, sharing a cup of tea with the border-guards in the beaten-earth forecourt of the tower, all formalities done, his gang and the homeward-bound merchant he escorted— a distant cousin by marriage—duly noted, goods itemized and those which should be taxed all debated and settled. It was the border-post’s captain who first noticed the god, coming sidelong down the steep hillside above. He sprang down to the levelled ground about the fort and came towards them where they sat or squatted about the brazier. The captain rose to his feet and bowed, and in the spreading silence merchant and servants, caravaneers and soldiers, did likewise.
Zhung Zichen had never seen the god, but he did not need to have seen him before to know him. Perhaps, at will, Nabban might walk among his folk unknown and unremarked, but he did not choose to do so here. There was no doubting him. He bore the weight of great mountains and deep waters; he held the light of the sky.
Three travellers with the caravan were not of the merchant’s household. They had joined at Sea Town in the Taren Confederacy. Philosophers, they said, wishing to see the east. A scholar of Marakand, the man Opran said, and two clerks of his household, and if the caravan-master did not quite believe that, still, he did not hold himself accountable for the untruths of others. That was between them and their own gods.
Not sociable sorts, Master Opran and his clerks. They had kept themselves to themselves all along the southern desert road, through the mountains to the freecity of Bitha, where Zichen had thought—hoped, perhaps—they might remain. There were scholars in Bitha. But no, they would continue. They wished to come to the City of the Empress.
A scholar, in Master Zichen’s opinion, ought to take more interest in the world about him, and less in his prayers. But that was not his affair.
The scholars did not bow, though they got to their feet where they had been sitting, a little apart.
The god regarded them solemnly, with his dogs one to either side, shaggy, wolfish dogs, one tan and black, one white and grey. They were not dogs, of course, but dragons, spirits of the wind and the rivers. The god—did the foreign folk take him for a herdsman of the hills, barefoot and plain? Did they not understand the truth of his eyes, which were black, and drank you to the dregs of your soul?
He should have questioned the false scholars more closely as to what they wanted in Nabban. He should have spoken his concerns to the captain. Zichen thought that, now. He should have given that thin-faced, sad-eyed girl selling bunches of mountain herbs by the shrine of the Bithan lake-goddess a few coins, regardless of the fact he had not wanted any herbs.
“You have Iri’s death in your heart,” the god said to the supposed scholar. He spoke the dialect of the road, not the language of the empire, and it took Zichen a moment to understand that by Iri, he meant the empress. “Turn around and go back to the devil you worship, now, and tell him Nabban is not his and never will be. This world is not his
, and never will be.”
The soldiers and many of the caravaneers had drawn their weapons. Zichen’s sabre was in his own hand.
The god did not need their defence; he was a warrior; he had led an army to reclaim the land from the devil-deluded usurper Buri-Nai, and yet Zichen knew he would willingly lay down his own life here, now, to defend him.
Master Orpan stood with his hands clasped together before his chest, like a little child prompted to make some pretty speech to an elder, but his face was shining with sweat and he trembled. He lifted his head and began to sing.
A grating sound, high and sharp. It had edges like knives, like saws, like broken glass, and the words were not anything Zhung Zhichen had ever heard, even in the teeming Suburb of Marakand, where the caravans of east and west met and mingled.
He wanted to step in front of the god, to make of himself a shield, because these words, this music they wove, was death. One did not need to be a wizard to hear it. But he could not move. It burrowed into him. It froze his limbs, as if his blood grew thick as tar, arms, legs, pulled heavy by it, sinking to earth, and even his chest laboured to rise, to draw in a breath. He fell to his knees. They were all falling, and the merchant’s clerk who kept her accounts was choking, wheezing, losing the body’s battle to breathe…
“No,” the god said. “Stop.”
The wizard-assassin did not stop. He seemed emboldened. Took a step forward, hands spreading, reaching, as if he would take the god by the shoulders, a friend’s greeting but the song was an open mouth—
The god said nothing, but he moved to put himself within those grasping arms, hand spread, laid on the man’s chest.
A silence. Clean, cold air, mountain’s breath in the lungs, and the assassin-wizard dropped like a stone, like a dead thing, which he was, Zichen saw. Dead and crumpled on the ground, while the rest of them drew deep breaths and stood straight again, even the merchant’s clerk, though he looked an unhealthy colour and steadied himself with a hand on the wall.
Orpan’s fellows hardly hesitated. One flung himself forward, knife in his hand, shrieking something incomprehensible. The god stepped back, and Zichen and the captain forward, and the man fell cut from both sides. The other was running up the road towards Bitha, but an arrow took him between stride and stride and he ploughed into the dirt, clawing as if he would still pull himself away, and then was still.
The god stood looking down at Orpan’s corpse. “There are wizards coming from the Empress’s City,” he said. “They’re being sent to all the border posts and the ports. They’ll aid you in keeping the borders and watching for such assassins. Don’t make the mistake of thinking all Westron folk have given themselves to the cult of the red priests and their false holy one. But missionaries, those red priests who come openly— those we turn back now as before, and the wizards will be watching for any with a particular bond to their god.”
He went down on one knee, took up the man’s limp arm, pulled up the sleeve. Frowned, as if he did not find what he expected. Opened the front of the man’s coat, and then his shirt. A hairy chest like an animal’s pelt, most unappealing, Zichen thought. And the greying hair hid what the god sought, what he pointed to, drawing the captain’s attention. A small tattoo.
“That,” he said. “Captain Hani An, that’s the sign of the nameless god. They call him something that means ‘most holy’ now, but he’s the devil Jochiz. The folk who worship the nameless god usually tattoo themselves with this sign on the wrist, we hear from Marakand, but it used to be that Jochiz tattooed his chosen servants over the heart. It’s more than a symbol, or it used to be. A binding. And yet not all who bear it are willing followers of the devil. So—hear me. We do not do murder at our borders. We do not kill, merely because someone is marked with this tattoo, even on the heart. A person may be tattooed or branded against their will, or may give their agreement for many reasons, and hold themselves still to their old gods and the Old Great Gods and to do good by their fellow humankind.”
“Yes, holy one.”
“But we do not let them into the land, either. The wizards who come to keep watch with you will be diviners and truth-sayers and those who can stand against attacks such as this man would have made, we hope. And those strangers who do act against the land and the folk of the land, those, you may treat as any other who raises weapons against you or who would force the border. We don’t think there will be many such. The Westrons have few wizards of any strength and he will mostly want to keep those close.”
“Should we bury them, or will the wizards need to speak with their ghosts?” the captain asked, practical.
The god shook his head. “Bury them. There are no ghosts. I think their god is an eater of souls.”
He got to his feet again, and his smile was like a blessing, warm like the sun on your eyelids, Zichen thought, when you wake on a blessed summer morning to the light striking through the window and know that those you love are near.
And while he was thinking that, the god was gone from among them and they were looking at one another, a crowd of men and women all a little dazed, a little renewed—he felt it and was certain the others must, too—in heart and in strength and in…yes, mercy, and love. He would be better. Do better. Resolved it.
He murmured a prayer for the peace of the Old Great Gods to come to even folk such as these, would-be murderers, as he and his gang helped the soldiers to bury them by the roadside.
Up the hill, a dog barked.
He would make a gift of the whole of the payment the false scholars had made for their protection on the road to the orphanage in his home town, when they came finally to Jina Province again, he resolved, and a share of his own profits besides. For the god, and a remembrance of what he owed to those less fortunate than himself whom he met upon the road.
CHAPTER XXVI
Ailan was asleep under the shelter of a bank of hollies. A little thin grass softened the earth there. The hillside, a mile north of the road, was stones and sparse soil otherwise, not growing much but campion and dry mosses. The young man slept like a puppy, dropping deep the moment he laid his head down. Exhausted. Driving himself hard. Fits of rebellion, of course, of protesting he couldn’t, he was tired, he hurt, he wasn’t someone who could learn these things—
“I’ve brought up worse brats than you,” Ahjvar would say. “And mostly they were princesses. You’re doing fine. Stop complaining and try again.”
Patience he didn’t know he had. An ability to stand back and not grow frustrated. Something gathered into himself, long years watching Ghu, who was patience itself, with children and beasts and madmen. Or maybe he had always had it and had never noticed before, till he was here on his own, with this stray soul who was only a frustrated, lonely, frightened mortal youth, and in need of what he’d never had.
Some vague shadow of fathering?
So the man could handle the camels—had a knack for it, once he got past his own fear. Had the patience and even the calm to deal with the beasts, but not with himself. Nonetheless, he learned. Could make a fire with flint and firesteel, and pluck and gut a pheasant, cook porridge and bannock once Ahjvar bought millet and oatmeal off a caravan-master they crossed paths with, one swinging down to Two Hills and Gold Harbour. He’d been tempted to pay them to take Ailan off his hands, apprentice him, after a fashion, if a silver cup would buy that. The gang-boss seemed a decent woman. But…he didn’t.
Had he ever wanted a son? Could have filled that need with the princes and princesses who passed through their lives, if he did. Didn’t think a man of Ailan’s age should be so desperate for a father, but what did he know of sons or fathers? It had all been such a long time ago. Certainly hadn’t been what he’d found with Ghu, not what either of them had been looking for. His stray cat. Ghu’s…hearth, Ghu would say.
Ghu’s world was a strange one.
Ailan could maybe make shift to defend himself, unarmed or with a knife. Maybe. Didn’t learn so swiftly as Ahj expected, didn’t seem ab
le to feel where his own body was, his own balance…but Ghu had been Ghu and the sons and daughters of the imperial house had some training in such things before ever they came to the god and his man, so maybe Ahjvar expected too much, too soon. At least Ailan could walk softly, aware of where he set his feet, and keep alert, and look, and smell, and listen. Began to read the land, a little, the tracks and the wind. Not entirely useless.
Not skills for the city, though.
He was not training up a poacher, though. Nor yet a young assassin.
Horse-thief?
Ghu’s thought, not his own. Was it?
Ghu laughed at him.
Or maybe that was a dream. He dreamed waking, sometimes. It didn’t bother him the way it once might have, but then, the dreams were better ones, these days.
Ailan could read, to Ahjvar’s surprise. That came up, talking, one day. He knew the variant of the Nabbani syllabics used in the Five Cities and Marakand. His mother had taught him. He might make some caravan-merchant a clerk, once he learnt some ciphering.
No pursuit, or none that ever caught up with them. Maybe the fire had after all dealt with any of the priests who knew anything of them. Maybe Jochiz had lost track of him again, or was letting Ahjvar run, deluded he was unseen.
Maybe the devil was as mad as Tu’usha had been and acted with as little consistency, and assassins, some Westron version of the Wind in the Reeds, might come unheralded out of the night, with poisoned blades and wizardry against what held the Rihswera of Nabban in life.
Ahjvar didn’t sleep much. He wished he could, because in his deeper dreams, when he truly slept, he found Ghu on the headland over the Gulf of Taren again.
They had passed below the lands of the Duina Catairna, though that was not the name. Just a backwater of the confederacy now, no king or queen, no hall or tower. He thought of turning aside, riding up to Dinaz Catairna…no town up in those hills, a pedlar said. Never heard the name. The king’s hall had moved elsewhere, once the goddess Catairanach was gone, of course. The seat of Marnoch and Deyandara had been established near where whatever god or goddess had in the end chosen to take on the protection of that folk. He had never heard, never asked. Never wanted to know.
