by Kate Elliott
Then he looked up.
An adolescent girl dressed in humble clothes similar to his own sat cross-legged in the most casual manner on the roof’s rounded ridgeline.
How in the hells had she gotten there without him seeing or hearing anything?
Her sigh held all the weight of the world. She had a soft voice that seemed to crawl right into his bones. “Once they get to the gazebo and think no one can see, they’ll hold hands. They’ve even started kissing.”
Unable to help himself, he looked toward the gazebo just in time to see Atani and his companion sit on a bench under a flickering candle and, indeed, share a tentative kiss with all the adorable sweetness of first love.
“It’s nauseating, don’t you think?” said the girl on the roof. “Mama says I mustn’t be jealous of Eiko. That’s her name, my cousin Eiko. She’s not really my cousin because her mother and my mother aren’t really sisters, they just say they are, so everyone says Eiko and I are cousins. But don’t you think it’s unfair that she and I have grown up together side by side and then he walks in and suddenly she has eyes for nothing but him?”
Strangely, it seemed like a reasonable question.
“It never feels good to be left out.”
“Oh, they don’t leave me out. They are both far too kind and thoughtful for that, which is the worst part of it. Oh my dear Arasit, come sit with us. Shall we walk in the garden together? Do you want to play a game of khot? I would rather stab my eyes out with a knife than watch them melt at each other. No one else understands.”
“I understand.”
“Do you? You must be pretty old.”
“That could be, as I have it on my mother’s authority that I am thirty.”
“You’re almost as old as my mother! She’s a Blue Ox. That makes her four years older than you. She says I should be patient with them because calf love only happens once.”
“It must have happened awfully fast,” he agreed. “Atani can’t have gotten here more than three or four days ago.”
“Three or four days? He arrived here twenty days ago, and I have counted every single one! Look at me.” Even though it was night without stars or moon he could see a flickering blue gleam deep in the black pools of her eyes.
Before he realized what was about to happen, she struck. The attack felt like a tickling behind his eyes, like the stroke of a feather brushing through the tangled foliage of his thoughts.
Memories and emotions cascaded, a rain of images soaking him to the bone.
His mother berating him for climbing up onto the roof when he was six.
The carved horse in his hand, tossed to him by King Anjihosh.
The king’s crisp order: “Kill Lady Irlin’s agent, find Atani.”
Him walking up this very lane eight years ago with the stolen Bronze Hall dispatch pouch slung over his back, after he had been unexpectedly ordered to deliver it to the woman who lived here instead of taking it back to the palace. Finding her awake on the veranda. The brief conversation he and the beautiful woman had engaged in while her two children slept. Their words and interaction had the flavor of foreplay that would never be consummated. The way she had precisely studied his body, and the way he had noticed how the fabric of her taloos emphasized the curve of her breasts…
“Sheh!” the girl hissed. “Aui! That’s my mother. I don’t want to see that.”
He blinked and found himself atop the roof, clinging to the ridgeline in a darkness that swallowed his sight so all he knew was what he touched, smelled, tasted, and heard.
“So you are Captain Kellas! Atani must have mentioned you a hundred times since he got here. He thinks you can do anything.”
An ache began to throb behind his eyes as she kept talking. Had she blinded him?
“Don’t worry about that man who came to kill Hari. Mama got rid of him the day he got to town. You’d better come down and talk to her.”
“You are a demon,” he whispered hoarsely. “But you wear no cloak.”
“I’m not a Guardian, if that’s what you mean. And because I have no cloak you can’t kill me so don’t bother to try.” She sniffed audibly several times, testing the air’s scent. “Storm’s moving off. The clouds will blow away and the red caps will see your shadow up here once the stars and moon come out. Climb to the end of this roof and drop down into the inner courtyard. I’ll go get Mama.”
She stood up and took a step right out onto the air as if on an invisible bridge. It wasn’t that she glowed; rather he could sense her presence as if it were the warmth of a fire.
“The dogs,” he whispered because he needed an ordinary thought to allow himself to process the dangerous situation: He had just met a demon in whose home Prince Atani had become trapped.
Yet out of the darkness her voice sounded like that of any relaxed adolescent girl who has just greeted a visitor to her family’s welcoming house. “I’ll bring them to meet you so they won’t bark.”
Then she was gone.
6
By the time he crept along the roof and dropped into a small interior courtyard, his head was really hurting. Lit by a glass-walled lantern at each corner, the courtyard had two benches, two troughs of flowers, and two posts for anchoring a loom, but mostly he guessed the square courtyard was a light well to feed sunlight into the interior rooms.
“So you are Captain Kellas.” The voice had a foreign lilt that fell like music.
He turned as the woman stepped into the glow of lamplight. Up close she was more beautiful than he remembered, no longer young but rather as rich and sumptuous as finest silk.
Her gaze wandered down his body and back up to his face as her lips curved. He glanced down, wondering what would cause a woman to smile with such pleased admiration. The drenched cloth of the thin cotton vest and trousers clung to his body, revealing everything.
Aui! He had nothing to be ashamed of.
Her smile widened as if she could guess his thoughts. “Captain Kellas, I believe we have met before.”
“Yes, verea, we have although I was not a captain then. I believe your name is Mai. Is that how you pronounce it? I like to do things correctly.”
“Do you?”
That smile of hers would make any man’s headache vanish.
She added, “My daughter Arasit says you are one of Anji’s silent wolves. You call him Anjihosh, I suppose.”
“I call him King Anjihosh.”
Her nod granted him the point. “You’ve come about Atani. I need to make clear I was as surprised as anyone when he showed up here twenty days ago looking for a younger brother. I didn’t know Atani even realized we existed.”
“He didn’t know you existed until he overheard words not meant for his ears. I’m here to take him back immediately.”
A faint crease appeared in her brow. She held a fan in one hand and snapped it open like the offended echo of her thoughts. “Atani is perfectly safe in this house.”
He thought it prudent not to disagree with her. “That’s not the only reason I’ve come. The king also sent me to make sure the younger boy is safe.”
“Ah.” She tapped the fan closed against a hip. His gaze skimmed the slope of that hip, the way the wrapping of the taloos drew the eye up along her waist. “The man Lady Irlin sent to kill my son Hari will no longer trouble us.”
The statement yanked him out of his distraction. “He won’t?”
“When next he sets foot on land it will be in a very distant foreign country. It could take him years to return if he even manages to find a way to pay for such an ocean-spanning journey. I am sorry to have been so ruthless to a man who was simply obeying orders. But I do intend to protect my children.”
She delivered the warning in such a pleasant tone and with such a neutral smile that he was suddenly certain she had indeed rejected both Anjihosh and the wealth and power of the court, never the other way around.
“Arasit and Hari are the two children I saw you with that night eight years ago, aren’t they?
The girl would have been about seven then, and he would have been the baby you held in your arms. He is the king’s son out of Queen Zayrah, is he not? Not yours.”
“Of course Hari is mine. I am his mother.”
That was a tone meant to correct, although it had nothing of his mother’s blunt hammer. “Aui! I meant no offense, verea.”
“Let me be clear about this, Captain Kellas. Although I did not give birth to him, I am Hari’s mother. In this same way, Queen Zayrah is Atani’s mother. Please assure Anji that Atani thinks of Zayrah as his mother. Nor will I interfere with the bond that has grown between them. Whatever may lie between Anji and myself stays in the past.”
“Eiya!” The exclamation slid out of him with more pity than he intended. “You gave up Atani to the king.”
“Something like that. I am not an emperor’s sister, as Zayrah is. A woman of humble origin like myself brings no valuable alliance to a new king who needs allies. I rejected the offer Anji made me. I want no part of his court or his palace or his attention. Do you understand? I am satisfied with the life I have built for myself and my family here in Salya.”
Kellas had become adept at interpreting emotion and expression. She had the steady, assured stance of a person who means what she says. After a moment, she opened a hand toward him as if inviting a reply.
“What I don’t understand is why Lady Irlin thinks any male child Queen Zayrah gives birth to has to be killed,” he said.
“Because that is the custom of the Sirniakan Empire. Lady Irlin fears Zayrah would kill Atani to pave the way for a son born of her own womb to become Anji’s heir. Thus Zayrah’s sons must die, so Atani can never be challenged.”
“But the king does not fear that the boy Hari is a danger to Prince Atani?”
“Among the Qin, where Anji came to adulthood and became a soldier, brothers are seen as allies who can support each other as co-rulers throughout the Qin territories. Anji is a complicated man. He does genuinely care for his children. That is why he saved Hari and sent him to me.”
“In exchange for the child he took away many years earlier.”
“Perhaps. He believes in the appearance of justice. But primarily because he knows I will raise Hari to never make any claim on the palace. Remember that Anji is both Qin and Sirniakan. He spent his early years in the Sirniakan imperial palace, one of the sons of the emperor and thus a potential heir. That is why his mother sent him to be raised among the Qin, to get him out of palace politics. In the empire only one prince can ascend the imperial throne, so all other male contenders must be eliminated. Those who are not killed in battle are generally poisoned at the command of the victor’s mother. Obviously Lady Irlin favors Atani and is taking no chances with Zayrah.”
“The Hundred is not Sirniaka!”
“Not yet.”
“Do you think it will ever become part of the empire? We are separated from the empire by a high mountain range. They can’t easily attack us.”
“Does it matter if we become the legal subjects of the emperor if, in the end, the customs of the empire creep in and smother the traditions of the Hundred?”
“You are an outlander. Why would you care?”
“For one thing, I am not of Sirniakan ancestry and have never followed their way of life. Regardless of where I come from, the Hundred is my home now. I love all that it is. Surely I am no different from you, Captain. Would you want your gods to be forgotten and a foreign god to take their place? Would you want your grandchildren to become Sirniakans in all but name? To forget all the customs and songs and relationships you take for granted?”
He said, “I am not married nor do I have children, verea.”
“You are not married?” She tilted her head to one side, absorbing a statement that clearly surprised her. After a moment and with a deliberately flirtatious smile, she opened the fan and fluttered it back and forth below her chin as if to cool a face heated by desire.
The gesture provoked him; she meant it to. For several breaths he found himself unable to speak. Fortunately a spatter of rain cooled his cheeks.
“Are you a demon, too, like your daughter?” he asked, knowing he ought not to laugh, but he did anyway.
She walked several steps closer. Her perfume of musk vine and heady stardrops made his head swim. The lamps burned brighter, and the whole world seemed to hold its breath.
“I can’t see into your thoughts or walk on air. I wear no cloak, can’t walk on a demon’s coil, nor does a winged horse come at my command. I was born an ordinary girl and grew up an ordinary girl in an unimportant desert oasis so far from here that no one in all of the Hundred could possibly have heard of it.”
“Never ordinary, I am sure,” he blurted out.
She chuckled. “Beauty is nothing more than the random thoughtlessness of the gods. It is not what I value most about myself.”
He took a step to close the gap between them. His chin came to the level of her forehead but as she tipped her head back to look up at him, all he could see was her pink lips, parted slightly, and the teasing confidence of her gaze. Nothing coy about her. She was enjoying this. He could easily have embraced or kissed her, but in this sort of situation he would never touch a woman without her invitation.
Instead he murmured, “What do you value most about yourself, Mai?”
She leaned so close he had to brace himself and clasp his hands behind his back, a soldier at attention facing down a perilous foe.
Her whisper coursed through his flesh like the snap of lightning. “My honor. My generosity.” Her gaze grew as acute as a well-honed knife’s edge, and her tone sharpened. “And my intelligence, Captain. Never forget that while you admire my beauty.”
Children’s laughter broke like a wave between them.
She stepped back. His heart raced crazily, and it took him several measured breaths to calm it. People emerged from the house into the courtyard: three women, a man, and twelve children ranging in age from a hulking lad with a burn-scarred face to a babe in arms. All, even the thumb-sucking baby, examined him with amused approval, as if they were pleased when strange men secretly climbed into the house. He hastily tugged at the cloth plastered against his body, peeling it up.
Snickering, Arasit paraded over with three large dogs. They sniffed around Kellas’s feet, smelled his hands, and yawned wide enough to show him their teeth before circling away.
“Captain Kellas!” Prince Atani stared, eyes wide and a hand pressed to his chest. “How are you come here?”
“I have been sent to bring you back to the palace, Your Highness.”
The lad’s answer was to glance at the pretty girl standing beside him and, right there in front of everyone, grasp her hand. Had the prince no idea the degree of trouble this inappropriate relationship would inevitably cause?
Kellas went on more sharply than he intended. “I admit I am puzzled by how you could have gotten here so quickly, Your Highness. A ship would have taken longer than the fast riding stages I managed. Yet you evidently arrived here the day I left Toskala, two days after you vanished.”
Atani glanced at the sky. The wind had started to rip holes in the cloud cover, and a star winked into view. A triumphant smile teased up the corners of Atani’s lips. That smile made him look a cursed lot like Mai.
“Tell him,” said the girl whose hand he was holding. “What you did was so clever, Atani.”
The two eight-year-olds—boy and girl—giggled, nudging each other in the way of comrades accustomed to sharing a joke. Arasit let out a gusty sigh.
Atani drew himself straight, with just a hint of cockiness so unlike his usual modest self that Kellas had to believe he was showing off for the pretty girl. “I commandeered a reeve and his eagle, and had the reeve fly me here. Of course he couldn’t refuse when I gave him the order, and I didn’t give him time to tell his superiors. I’m afraid I tricked my guards and left them behind in a place they couldn’t alert the king. I hope you will help me make sure they aren’t punished
, Captain.”
“Your Highness! I hope you understand that given the orders I received from your father the king, I cannot be easy about guards who are so easily tricked. Their job is to protect you. If that means to protect you from your own foolish, impulsive, and reckless choices, then they have failed.”
“I was just trying to act as I thought you would, Captain. It’s exactly the sort of thing you would have done. Isn’t it?”
“A fair question,” said Mai, “if all the stories Atani has told of you are true, Captain. Did you really climb Law Rock at night without a rope?”
Kellas pressed a hand against his forehead, but the headache had passed. A dream would have made more sense with its elaborate twists and erotic—no! erratic!—turns.
“I have my orders,” he repeated, clinging stubbornly to duty.
Atani released the girl’s hand. “Of course you do, Captain. You are my father’s most prized Wolf, are you not?”
Was he? The praise scalded him, made him wonder what Mai thought of a man described as the king’s best spy and assassin. No! Mai’s opinion must not sway him. The hells! Her own daughter was a demon, and she herself spoke words that held the taint of rebellion.
“Anji has another child in this household, a second child born to him and me,” Mai added. “You have seen the truth of what she is.”
Seen under lamplight Arasit did indeed have curly black hair and a rather prominent nose, although otherwise she had her mother’s round face and slight stature.
Mai went on in the relentlessly cordial voice of a fruit seller in the market dependent on her customers’ goodwill to make a living. “Will you return to the palace and tell him that the infant daughter he acknowledged many years ago is what he would call a demon? When you know he has sworn to kill all demons in the Hundred?”
Atani crossed to Arasit and grasped her elbow. “I won’t let that happen. I’ll go back to the palace with you immediately, Captain. But you must not speak of any of this to my father. Let me handle him.”
“You handle him, Your Highness?”
“I know everyone thinks only Dannarah can talk him around, but I have learned a great deal in my time here. I understand things I did not comprehend before. I know what I have to do.”
