The Black Wolves

by Kate Elliott

  The disapproving silence that met this innocent statement made poor Garna blush.

  “I have met my brother, even though I don’t recall it,” said Sarai, emboldened by her new status. “He was a young boy when I was a newborn. He and I have corresponded for years; didn’t you know that?”

  “But he’s never been allowed to visit you here,” said Garna. “I always thought that was odd.”

  “Sarai is leaving us,” said Aunt Rua with a stern glance at Sarai to remind her of her place in this new scheme of things. “Her life at court will keep her busy, away from the clans.”

  Aunt Rua dug up an unbound virgin Book of Accounts to present to Sarai. After the book was hastily inscribed with Sarai’s name and lineage and an ancestral poem for good fortune, the pages were sewn up. But since she would be living outside a Ri Amarah household they would not give her one of the enchanted bronze mirrors.

  She was done with living inside their walls.

  She left the jubilee as soon as she could and pretended to go to bed. Instead she lay awake under the covers as the other girls filtered into the dormitory with songs and giggles. At length everyone settled down and the lamps were extinguished. She breathed into the darkness until the last whisper died away. A moon-spark cooed outside. The soul bell rang to chase away night-walking evil spirits, a relic of the life the Ri Amarah had escaped from in a distant land far away across a vast ocean that she would never see.

  At last she judged it safe to creep barefoot out of the dormitory room and through the atrium to the side porch that let onto the kitchen courtyard. A single lantern burned by the gate. Slipping outside, she felt her way along a stone-paved path to the tomb east of the house. A lamp in the shape of a globe pierced with many holes burned at the entrance. She lifted it off its hook and, with its splintered light to guide her, went inside.

  The building was a miniature copy of the main compound. The Ri Amarah believed that each burial vessel must be installed in its fitting place: the men in the men’s hall, the women in the women’s wing, unmarried girls in the girls’ dormitory, and boys who had died before manhood in the anterooms of their fathers’ suites. Small jars containing the bones of infants and stillborn babies were placed in the tiny forecourt, a sad reminder of souls who had not fully entered the household. Fresh flowers wreathed every jar so their fragrance would sweeten the long silence.

  The remains of Sarai’s mother had been placed within a stone ledge on the back portico, away from everyone else, under the roof as required by her birth but alone as befit her shame. The large jar had a sealed mouth and no decoration, unlike all the others with their painted filigree and splashes of colorfully painted vines and ripe fruit to remind the grieving of the joys of life. Sarai brought a necklace of fresh flowers every week, but no one else did. Her mother’s mirror was hung around the jar’s waist in the proper way. The family could not take that courtesy away from her.

  She rested her forehead against the ceramic. Inside lay jumbled her mother’s bones, dust in the dark of the grave. Her soul had flown to the Hidden One’s heart. The scent of flowers faded in the sleepy air like the last trace of her passage.

  The hard surface told Sarai nothing of her mother, just as the past was an opaque shell that sealed her mother away from her. We were well rid of her, Rua had once said when she hadn’t known Sarai was close enough to overhear. They littered scraps of memory at her feet: Nadai had been vain, selfish, unkind, the girl who ruthlessly demands loyal obedience from the other girls her age and scorns and mocks the ones who refuse to follow her lead. Nadai’s betrothal to the prestigious Aram Elder of First Branch had been a triumph that she had flaunted in the faces of her less pretty and less fortunate cousins. She had warned them she would be too busy in her prosperous new life as the wife of the richest Ri Amarah man in the Hundred to communicate with those she left behind, and she had kept that promise.

  But Nadai had not left Sarai behind. She had fled her home with her daughter in her arms.

  “Mother, I am leaving to make my own way, just as you wished for me,” Sarai whispered, although she did not believe souls could hear the voices of the living. They drowned in the light of the Hidden One, awash in the brilliance of eternity. “I wish I could see your face just once. It seems cruel I don’t remember it at all.”

  Like the other girls Sarai had a cheap bronze mirror whose cloudy surface was hard to polish and easy to scratch. She glanced around, sure that the ghosts of the dead were watching in the glimmers thrown across the floor and walls by the lamp’s hatch-work of light. The tomb lay utterly silent. Even the wind had died, and all she heard was the tick-tick-tick of water dripping from a tree.

  Because it was the same size as her mother’s mirror it was easy for her to replace the one with the other. By the time anyone noticed, if anyone did, she would be established in a new life.

  The final leave-taking from Great-Aunt Tsania took place at dawn in her aunt’s tiny alcove off the girls’ dormitory, where Tsania had slept all her life. Sarai sat on the edge of the old woman’s bed, holding her hands and not sure she could bear to let them go. Yava had stayed all night. It was she who held a lamp to illuminate their parting.

  “It is possible we will never see each other again,” said Tsania, wheezing between words, “but I need you to go without regret, Sarai-ya. You have brought me more joy than I can tell you but now you must leave. It is the right thing for you.”

  “I love you.” Sarai’s tears fell from the ache that overflowed in her heart.

  Tsania looked so frail but so had she always been, and yet there was steel within her. She coughed up a bubble of mucus, which Yava efficiently wiped away.

  “Make your way by observing and asking questions. Look and examine, then make your decisions. You will build a home for yourself and make allies and perhaps even friends. Do not be afraid to let yourself open to another when it is your own fear that troubles you. Find your generous spirit, Sarai-ya. Generosity is the ship that will carry you out of the dark heart you have struggled against.”

  “I’ve not been unhappy here, with you.” Sarai clutched her aunt’s bony fingers. It was hard to speak without crying. “I will miss you so much.”

  Tsania’s gentle smile soothed her. “I expect lengthy letters and minute descriptions of all you see and do. Through words we will speak and answer, Sarai-ya. We will always be together.”

  Sarai kissed her, released her hands, and walked away on the path she had chosen.

  13

  Dannarah sat on her bedroll eating a hasty breakfast of rice boiled in moro milk as she conferred with Chief Tuvas. “I’m going to the Weldur Forest to see if I can track down that redheart wreath.”

  He scratched at his beard, looking at the bulge in her travel pack where she had crammed in the wreath. “Do you think you can find anything? It’s a huge forest.”

  “As I remember there are only two markets where you can buy redheart, because it’s so dangerous to harvest. Only two clans living at the forest’s edge even do that work. If the wreath was bought less than ten days ago, someone might recall who purchased it. It’s just a hunch.”

  He nodded. No fuss or second-guessing with him. He was smart enough to figure things out. “I’ll make one more pass through this area, but my guess is the fugitives have scattered. It gripes me to lose them, though.”

  “They can’t have gotten far yet. I’ll take only a triad with me and leave you the rest of this wing, under the command of Iyar. You can be sure he’s good at his job.”

  “I can’t imagine you keeping him under your command if he wasn’t.” The chief had a habit of quirking his lips in ironic acknowledgment, an expression she associated with the generation of Qin soldiers who had so loyally served her father. Those men had been the landmarks of her youth. All dead now, every last one.

  “Have you anything to add before I leave, Chief?”

  He glanced toward the hills. A thread of smoke could be seen in the distance where a detachmen
t of Spears was burning the abandoned huts and tents. “I think there are more people than we know moving about the countryside, uprooted from their homes, walking the road to somewhere else as they seek work and food. It wasn’t like this five years ago, before the king started spending most of his time up in Ithik Eldim. Hard to say if these people are organized by demons, as you suspect, or simply have become discontented with the work gangs and the new taxes and harsher laws.”

  “King Jehosh is back, so I hear. Maybe he’ll see the wisdom of staying home for a while.”

  His gaze returned to her. “Maybe he’ll listen to advice if it comes from you, Marshal.”

  “I’m doubtful. Jehosh demoted me from chief marshal to marshal as soon as he realized I wouldn’t grovel at his feet as he likes his cronies to do.”

  Tuvas didn’t even flinch at this blunt statement. What a pleasure it was to speak to a competent, mature person whose feathers she didn’t have to smooth!

  “Maybe I’ll try one more time,” she added. “I’ve always felt free to speak my mind to him, considering I remember when he was a squalling babe-in-arms. Our relationship has been … complicated, but I can never forget that people like you and me serve the peaceful and orderly kingdom my father built, Chief. That is our primary duty.”

  He clapped fist to chest in answer. They made their farewells. As he left, Tarnit strolled over with her bedroll tucked under an arm, pack and bowcase hitched over her back, and baton dangling from a sling at her belt. Tall and rake-thin, she had been eighteen and a newly jessed reeve when she had first been assigned to Dannarah’s flight twenty-four years ago. Her sunny smile hadn’t changed at all over the years.

  “Is it true you’ve attached Reyad to Horn Hall, Marshal?”

  “Yes. He deserves better than whatever sour wine they’re serving him at Argent Hall.”

  She whistled softly. “Chief Marshal Auri wouldn’t approve, or give permission.”

  “Certainly the thought of Auri’s disapproval is enough to make me sure I must do it.”

  Tarnit’s grin turned even sunnier, if that was possible. “I’m not complaining, mind you. I’d wager he looks as good out of his leathers as in them.”

  “Don’t complicate things for me, Tar.”

  “Too late. I propositioned him last night but he politely turned me down. He’s so polite he made it seem he was sorry to have to do it, not like I’m too old or not pretty enough. Then he mentioned five or ten times that he has a wife. Very casually. Like beating a person over the head with a stick. As if that ever stopped anyone when they were stuck on isolated duty with nothing better to do to pass the time!”

  Dannarah gave Tarnit a look of exaggerated disapproval. “I only keep you around because you amuse me. Not because you’re any good as a reeve.”

  “Yes, you’re certainly famous for tolerating incompetence!” Tarnit’s smile turned wistful as they watched Reyad hurry over. “He makes me miss my Errard. Even though Erry was a soldier I never really imagined he would die in war.”

  After so many years serving together Dannarah said nothing, for there was nothing to be said. She touched the other woman on the arm and allowed the moment of connection, her fingers warm on Tarnit’s skin, to bring what she hoped was a sliver of comfort.

  Grief trod so hard upon the heels. Life went on, and yet the dead paced alongside like shadows.

  Reyad trotted up, so excited he was beaming. “I can’t believe I’m really going to see the Weldur Forest! Wait until I tell my wife!”

  Tarnit mimed beating her head with a stick.

  Dannarah bit down a laugh, then realized what he had said and frowned at him. “Do you mean you’ve never seen the Wild? At the end of training it’s traditional for all new reeves to make a circuit of the Hundred so they know all the major landmarks and demon’s coils, and can find all the reeve halls, refuges, eyries, and assizes.”

  “At Argent Hall we only learned the territory we were assigned to patrol.”

  “Was that by Chief Marshal Auri’s order?” demanded Dannarah.

  “Marshal,” said Tarnit lightly but with a warning.

  “He claimed that way we could know our patrol territory well, not get distracted by new sights.” Reyad glanced at the ground. “It seemed strange to me.”

  “Never mind, Reyad. You’ll get proper training now.”

  Tarnit shook her head but it wasn’t clear whether she was skeptical about Reyad’s ignorance, the chief marshal’s incompetence, or Dannarah’s decision to attach Reyad to Horn Hall without clearing it through the chief marshal and Argent Hall first. Probably all three.

  Leaving the rest of the wing, Dannarah, Tarnit, and Reyad took flight. They had not gone more than two mey down the Elshar Valley when she spotted a troupe of Hasibal’s players striding along the road in their distinctive formation. Two walked a spear’s throw ahead of the main group, two just out of sight at the rear. Banners aloft, the rest paced in a shifting formation, rows that turned into columns as individuals took sideways steps to form into new ranks. They wore cloth in all colors and so many ribbons and scarves in adornment that one person’s garb seemed to flow into the next. From above the party had the look of an unfolding pattern, writing brushed from one letter into the next. They sang in time to their march, stamping their walking staves on the ground to punctuate certain phrases.

  The Merciful One’s players—called pilgrims—walked the length and breadth of the Hundred to perform the old tales wherever they could get food for the night. It was a hard life but those who dedicated themselves to it seemed content. Tradition mandated a troupe consist of seven players, or multiples of seven. This troupe was so big it seemed a lot of mouths to expect isolated villages to feed. She circled Terror back, trying to count and yet continually stymied because every time she had everyone accounted for, the pattern shifted. Were there thirty-two? Thirty-nine? Either was a suspicious number.

  She flagged Tarnit and Reyad to stay aloft while she went down. Terror was feeling playful today, so she took the descent at a steep dive, pulling up on the road with a thump as if the road were a gigantic snake the eagle had just caught. An older man and a younger woman walked into view just as Dannarah unbuckled her harness and dropped. The young woman halted dead in the middle of the road, but the man ambled up with a wide grin like Dannarah was his long-lost aunt: Hasibal’s players were always acting a part. Dannarah sauntered forward to meet them, knowing how impressive Terror looked at her back.

  “Greetings of the day, Marshal!” The man cut a sweeping arc with his walking staff and followed it with an elaborate bow that might have been respectful and might have been mocking. Strands of gray in his hair made her think him older than Tarnit but not as old as she was. “I’m Pilgrim Gani. Behind me walks my shy companion Arasit.”

  The woman called Arasit did not meet her gaze. A linen scarf covered her hair and half concealed her face in its shade. She was dressed in worn laborer’s clothing, a short kilt wrapped around her hips and thighs and a sleeveless vest tightly laced over full breasts. Where the others were colorful, she was strikingly drab.

  “I’m Marshal Dannarah of Horn Hall. We’ve been on patrol with a cohort of the King’s Spears. You must have seen them.”

  “We performed one night for them and they fed us a most excellent rice porridge!” said Gani so heartily that Dannarah reflected on how quickly his enthusiasm would start to grate.

  “Did you perform at the Ri Amarah estate, Holy One?”

  He smiled in a kindly manner, as if to wonder when Dannarah would stop pretending and get to her real question. “The Ri Amarah do not welcome Hasibal’s pilgrims into their homes, for we speak of the seven gods of the Hundred and that is not pleasing to them.”

  “Then you’ve made a long trip uphill to so small a village as the one near the estate.”

  “Indeed, so it was, but such good exercise!”

  The young woman snorted, and Dannarah had to smile at his exaggerated tone of pleased surprise. The r
est of the troupe came into view, their robust voices raised in a familiar song: “The sad girl and her happy lover, What a striking pair they made.”

  The troupe’s singing ceased between one footstep and the next as they took in the size of Terror. Most had the look of casual confidence that in her experience marked people who really knew what they were doing. Yet she counted at least eighteen individuals whose skin was inked with the brand given to criminals. Several shifted nervously from foot to foot.

  “I see work gang brands,” she said, turning back to Gani as her heart raced with sudden expectation. “You wouldn’t harbor escaped prisoners, would you, Holy One?”

  “What makes you think any of us are criminals?” Gani smiled with the patience of a man who likes to tell a long story. “Heya! Elit!”

  A lanky young woman trotted forward. She was dressed in the trousers and tunic commonly worn by highland men. She wore her hair short, and had a work gang mark on her cheek.

  “Show the marshal.” He tossed a leather bottle to Elit, who caught it deftly, poured liquid on her hand, and began rubbing at her cheek. Stubbornly the mark began to stipple and fade. “It’s paint, Marshal. We’re performing a tale about a lad who gets charged with a theft he did not commit and yet is condemned to seven years in the work gangs, and dies there without seeing his sweetheart ever again.”

  His mild tone wrapped like a warning around her thoughts. “Holy One, I hope you are not spreading tales that criticize King Jehosh and his laws. I do not like to trouble people who have dedicated their lives to the Hundred’s seven gods, but if the palace hears of it, you’ll get remanded to the work gangs yourself. Let me see each person wash the paint off their faces.”

  Arasit stepped assertively past Gani, tugging off her scarf. “We don’t have time for this.”