The Black Wolves

by Kate Elliott

  Waking in the morning with a sour mouth, he blinked at the way light filtered in a strange pattern across the mats until he realized he was seeing the angles of an early-morning sun.

  During the night his mind had come unmoored. It took all his concentration to rise, dress in his threadbare jacket and faded trousers, and wander the compound staring at the convulsions of activity. The guest kitchen—closed for years due to lack of funds—was being cleaned and furnished for the expected banquets and entertaining that would follow on his marriage. The Ivory Audience Hall and the Jasmine Morning Parlor were being re-roofed and new mats and screens brought in. A wagon trundled into the courtyard, piled high with embroidered silk cushions.

  In the family eating hall his older sister Sinara made him sit beside her over a tray of rice soaked in tea, pickled cucumber and radish, bream stewed with walnut and pepper, and roasted eggs.

  “How soon can you get me a line of credit on Silk Street?” she demanded. “I am ashamed that I must appear today at the banquet and the marriage sealing in such faded silks.”

  “Whatever you wish, my darling Sinara. I will be as generous to you as you have ever been ungenerous to me. But if you are unkind to the woman I am marrying or if I ever hear any least whisper of gossip or sneering about her and can trace it to your nasty jealous tongue, I will have your name struck out at every shop where you might ever wish to buy silks and baubles.”

  Sinara was a pretty woman and she knew it, but the flicker of ugliness that flashed when she forced a frown into a smile revealed the truth of her. “Why do you hate me so, Gil? What have I ever done to you?”

  “What have you ever not done? Got me arrested the first time.”

  “Don’t fault me! Fault your stupid prank and your more stupid friends. I was just protecting my prospects. It wasn’t easy for me to get the Black Petals Clan to agree to allow Lati to court me.”

  “You offered me up on a platter so his clan could get the reward.”

  “I’m not the one who stole the planks out of Guardian Bridge! Why do you insist on blaming me, Gil? Why do you never blame yourself? Our brothers lost everything.”

  “It’s not my fault our mother was still pregnant with me when the command came down to castrate all the household sons of this traitorous branch. That’s one thing you can’t lay at my feet!”

  She had eaten most of the food off the tray but he snagged the last egg before she put her grasping fingers on it. He hadn’t had an egg for months. The family could not afford them.

  “You’re such an ass, Gil.”

  “Everyone says so,” he agreed before he remembered how Sarai-ya had laughed. The memory of her throwing the wine into his face made him smile. There was one person in his rotten life who might judge him not for his reputation but for what he actually said. He was glad of the marriage now, and he wasn’t just thinking that because the thin shift had done nothing to conceal her full breasts and belly and her round thighs and the dark mat of hair nestled between them. Even so it was the easy way they had conversed that stayed with him.

  He popped the egg in his mouth and savored the smear of the yolk. After this he could have an egg every day and not waste a moment’s thought over the luxury.

  “You have such a smirk, thinking you’ve done so well for yourself.” She dug her fingernails into his forearm. “She’s probably ugly. Don’t you ever wonder why the Silvers would give up one of their women when you know they never marry outside their own people? There’s something wrong with her, I’m sure of it. Some reason none of their own men will have her.”

  He bent an affectionately false smile on her, catching one of her arms behind her back so she could not pull away as she instinctively tried to do. “My darling Sinara, do me one favor. Do not visit me or my wife in our new rooms in the lower palace for any reason except the required family wedding visit. Marry your unctuous toad-licker and I wish you well of him and his nasty ass-nuzzling clan. But remember through whose offices the money has come to this family. If you want your children to receive a single vey of spending coin you will stay away from me and my wife.”

  He released her.

  She straightened her sleeves. “You are so contemptible.”

  “As for your line of credit on Silk Street, you may apply to Shevad. Don’t ask me again.”

  Her upper lip trembled. She dabbed at an eye.

  “Your tears don’t work on me.”

  Gil threaded his way out of the eating hall. He was stopped at least ten times by cousins and hangers-on congratulating him but escaped at last only to have his brother Usi cut him off on the porch.

  “Shevad desires the pleasure of your company.” Usi was the youngest of the boys who had survived the cutting. He had been five. While Shevad and Yofar had gone into the military to prove their loyalty, Usi had taken to writing plays and poems for Bell Quarter entertainers. He had become so well known that palace courtiers who had pretensions to be lauded as singers and actors commissioned him to write flattering love songs and poetic sketches for them to perform.

  “What does he want to see me for?” Gil studied Usi’s face looking for some twitch that might reveal Shevad’s intentions.

  Usi shook his head wearily. “I don’t know, Gil. Maybe he wants to make sure you intend to go through with it and not leave us hanging from the rafters with our mouths gaping open and our cocks stuffed in them so we are made to look fools in front of the entire court just at our moment of triumph.”

  Gil raised both hands palms up, placed them on his chest, and bowed as younger to older. “I am yours to command, older brother.”

  “Let the sarcasm sink to the muddy bottom of the well, my brother. Confine yourself to sulking fury and unmuzzled biting.”

  “I have to go to the market. I’ll come see Shev afterward.”

  “To the market? Why?”

  “I thought I should buy a trifling wedding gift for my betrothed.”

  Usi’s brows wrinkled. “What an odd notion for you to get. You can send one of the hirelings out to do that, can you not?”

  “No.”

  “Come see Shev first and then I’ll go with you. I know all the best places.”

  “I want to do this alone.”

  “Usually you hate being alone. You’re always flying around with that restless flock that hovers under the shade of Prince Kasad’s tender wings.”

  “I like to think I am the one who shades them, since it’s me they fly after.”

  Usi chuckled. “I would mock your conceit but it is true you’re the instigator of most of their idiotic pranks, if we can believe everything we hear.”

  “Since you hear it all from Supreme Captain Ulyar, we must surely believe it is all true. Why would that fine, honest man lie?”

  “Hush, you leaking puppy. Come along.”

  Gil went along rather than fight. As head of household Shevad had a separate chamber all to himself where he kept the clan records, met with creditors he was trying to appease, and entertained military comrades when he could afford rice wine and bean cakes. Gil settled on a pillow so cleverly mended that the stitches looked like part of the decoration.

  “I had arranged for trusted hirelings to serve at your palace apartments, Gilaras.” Shevad’s use of Gil’s full name was inauspicious. “Yet now I hear you have replaced them with an insufficient staff whose experience is not at all up to the rigors of court etiquette.”

  “So I have. In three days after all the banqueting and visiting have ceased, my wife will make some determination about what she wishes for our establishment. I would think you would be more respectful to me, Shev, now that I have repaired the family fortunes.”

  “Do not take that tone with me, Gilaras. I sent the hirelings I chose over there this morning to take over but the Silver woman turned them away! I expect my people to be put in place.”

  Gil’s hands tightened on his bent knees, but for once he kept his tongue in his mouth even though he wanted nothing more than to laugh in Shevad’
s face. “Very well. I’ll make no objection. Can I go now? I have an errand to run before noon.”

  “Strange it is to see your bright face in morning’s light,” said Usi. “I think it has been a year or more since you’ve been awake before midday.”

  “A man does not get married every day, does he?”

  He took his leave without waiting for Usi. The shops of Silk Street and Ribbon Lane produced nothing that struck him, but in a peddlers’ market on Canal Street he stumbled upon a woman selling inexpensive medallions. Among the trifles lay a brass brooch patterned in a cunning maze-work of interlace with a single turquoise bead inlaid at the center. He knew at once it was the right thing. He did not bargain; the woman looked insulted by his acquiescence to her outrageous opening price.

  Tucked in a tiny silk pouch, the brooch got him through the tedious dressing ceremony at home when he had to stand in the middle of the parlor with brothers and cousins and retainers in attendance while a fussy tailor dressed him in court finery acquired from a shop that had for years refused to serve the family because of nonpayment. Hung around his neck and concealed beneath his embroidered marriage jacket, the brooch in its pouch carried him through the procession to the lower palace in which he was required to sit stone-faced in an open carriage as drums beat and horns cried attention. City folk gathered to stare and call out congratulations or lewd suggestions. It seemed every soap seller and fishmonger and giggling child knew his business.

  All the important contracts had been written days ago in the privacy of household offices, detailing how much coin was to be transferred and at what intervals and how much Clan Herelia would control and how much would be subject to Sarai Ri Amarah’s oversight. Conduct, access to court, clothing allowances for Gilaras: All this and more was packed into densely brushed lines and sealed by Abrisho Elder, the secondary head of the Fourth Branch clan of the Ri Amarah, and by certain unnamed Ri Amarah women who acted as guardians on behalf of the unmarried girl. It had been further witnessed by the male and female heads of Clan Herelia on behalf of Gilaras, by an exalted priest of Beltak, and by a contingent of clerks from the city’s Sapanasu House, which had once been a temple to the goddess of record keeping and was now a government clearinghouse for contracts, trade agreements and manifests, and court chronicles.

  The lower palace took up an entire neighborhood of Bell Quarter near Guardian Bridge. The original houses and compounds had been demolished to make room for the vast compound with its “thousand chambers” packed into two stories. Gilaras was led by his kinsfolk onto the Grand Portico whose gilded pillars and silk drapery made a dramatic backdrop.

  He had not given a thought to Sarai’s situation, and he raked himself for his thoughtlessness as he sought her out. She stood flanked by a contingent of Ri Amarah men whose hair was concealed beneath cloth. He hugged the knowledge of their hidden horns behind closed lips.

  At least her people had bothered to bring her best-quality silk to wear, although elaborate embroidery would have been more proper for court than unadorned silk no matter its quality. The style of Ri Amarah women was to cover all limbs in a loose tunic that fell to midcalf; beneath it belled trousers tied tightly at the ankle, and her feet were ornamented by beaded slippers. Compared with the women of the upper palace wearing elaborately folded jackets in vivid colors and crownlike hats decorated with gold, she looked drab. With her hair covered by a shawl and cloth drawn across her face to hide all but her eyes, she looked doubly out of place, a true outlander.

  Gil caught her eye down the length of the hall and smiled without smiling, nodded without nodding. By the tilt of her head he knew she acknowledged what he offered.

  Whatever the hells that was.

  They would spit in the face of everyone who intended to use them as stepping-stones to long-thwarted ambitions.

  The ceremony of meeting and the sealing of contract he endured, kneeling on the opposite side of a screen from her, the barrier a sop to upper palace custom where men and women never met in public. They were seated at separate tables at the banquet in the Silent Hall, a name chosen ironically since all lower palace festivals took place here with music and poetry contests. Usi had written an adaptation of the Tale of the Silk Slippers to enliven the proceedings and had hired the best singers with their talking hands to lure the audience in and draw them along as inexorably as a boat down a flooding river.

  King Jehosh did not appear, nor either of his queens. The princes Farihosh and Tavahosh were likewise absent, as Gil had expected. But Kasad sat at the royal table. This mark of royal approval meant that attendance at the banquet was ten times as large as might otherwise have been expected for an event involving the junior son of a disgraced clan.

  Ri Amarah coin paid for it all.

  Everyone drank too much. Gil pretended to.

  At last day walked through dusk into night. All the celebrants and singers and hirelings rose to make the traditional path of lamps from the entry porch of Silent Hall. The parallel line of glowing flame ran out of sight down a path toward the residential wing. Lamps hissed, heat billowing outward. In the first rank stood Kasad, and beyond him high-ranking clans, and beyond them courtiers and military men and officials and hangers-on. Even hirelings and servants were allowed to hold lamps.

  He took Sarai’s hand in his, publicly choosing the older custom of his Hundred grandmother in whose household men and women lived together rather than the formal separation between men and women observed in the palace.

  Her fingers tightened on his. “Gil, what if I do it now? Let them all see my scar. Show I’m not ashamed. That I am my own person now.”

  “Whatever you wish, I will support you. We will build our household free of their interference.”

  She gave a strangled laugh. “Do you believe we can be free of their interference?”

  “No. They will never let us be, and they have some claim on us, it is true. But what matters is what you and I pledge to each other. Let this be our pledge, if that suits you.”

  What courage it took for her he did not know, for she had grown up in isolation and he had lived with public scrutiny since childhood. She hooked down the shawl and brushed the fabric over her shoulders. Her hair remained covered but her round face shone full into the light.

  A murmur like wind rushed down along the two columns as he paced forward with her beside him. All the faces wavered in and out of sight in the blazing light. This was better than all the pointless escapades and japes that had filled up his last few wine-soaked years. This was the best of all: that people stared, stunned and shocked, outraged and envious, approving and curious.

  By the path of lamps he and she at last reached the entry portico of their apartment where Welo, Iadit, and Welo’s stocky twin nephews—Parad and Nobi—waited. Sarai acknowledged each of the four. Gil made the traditional gesture of festive leave-taking to the procession. Then they escaped inside. Welo and Iadit helped them remove the heavy outer layers of formal clothing, leaving Gil in cotton trousers and undervest and Sarai in a silk robe.

  Upstairs they collapsed onto cushions in the parlor. Alone at last.

  “People from your house came around this morning with new hirelings but I sent them away,” she said. “I hope you do not mind. I like Welo and her people.”

  He leaned into her. She was alert, not sure of what was about to come, but she did not pull away. “I promised my brother that I will not object when he replaces Welo with his own flunkies. I did not mention that you would object and that I will not countermand your decision.”

  She chuckled. “Cleverly spoken! Parad and Nobi look like experienced fighters.”

  “They compete in the wrestling circuit. I got to know Welo and her clan when I wanted to train, not that I was good enough for the circuit. Nobi broke my nose when I was trying to throw him.” He brushed a forefinger along the curve of her scar. “You were magnificent.”

  Their faces were so close he could have kissed her, but he waited.

  “Do we
have sex now?” she asked.

  Her voice sounded calm, but he could feel the waves of heat boiling off her blushing skin.

  “Whatever you are comfortable with, Sarai-ya.”

  She chewed on her lower lip, obviously working herself up to speak. The silk slipped over the curve of her breasts; beneath the cloth her nipples were erect. A scent of jasmine perfume wafted from her person. She smelled so good.

  He insinuated his fingers between hers. “You can say whatever you need to me.”

  All her breath came out. “Don’t we have to have sex to say we are married? Among my people the act of consummation makes the marriage, the man … coming into the woman.”

  He blinked. “I thought it was the sealing of the contract that made the marriage, which is between our clans. You and I are just the vessels. Anyone can have sex. What does that have to do with marriage?”

  “You are expected to sire children on me.”

  “You might as well say you are expected to germinate children from the rain of my seed.”

  Her smile heartened him. But she said nothing.

  “Here. I brought something for you. Close your eyes.”

  That she closed her eyes trustingly cheered him. He thought of pressing a kiss on her lips while her eyes were shut but decided against it. When he pressed the brooch into her hand, she opened her eyes.

  Her lips parted. Her eyes flew wide.

  “Gil!” she said, on a gasp, and he was suddenly aroused, thinking what it would be like to hear that tone from her in the midst of lovemaking. “Do you know what this is?”

  He studied the six-sided spiral wrapped around the blue stone. “It’s a brooch to hold fabric together. It’s meant for the shoulder drape on a taloos.”

  The intensity of her dark gaze made him wonder if she was about to punch him.

  “It’s a demon’s coil!”

  “Demon’s coils are forbidden for people to walk on or even to talk about. Why would anyone make brooches of them?”

  “Maybe because people like dangerous things.” She turned it so the lamplight gleamed on its loops and angles. “I would want to know who fashioned this, if you could find the person you bought it from.”