The Black Wolves

by Kate Elliott

  She gasped, and realized she had slapped an open hand to her chest like Elit playing a part in a scene of The Dreaded News, Just Heard.

  The king said nothing. Kasarah pushed her uneaten cake around her platter, face composed and thus unreadable.

  A terrible and reckless urge seized her. She had nothing left to lose, and no further appeals she could make. “I’ll do it on one condition.”

  His satisfaction curled in the air like smoke. “I like a woman who bargains. What is that condition, Lady Sarai?”

  “Two conditions. You protect my people.”

  “That’s one. What is the second?”

  “I want to see the inside of the Assizes Tower.”

  His body canted back, absorbing the unexpected words. “Impossible. Why?”

  “As a matter of intellectual curiosity I want to see a demon’s coil up close. I am given to understand there is one carved into the rock at the base of the tower.”

  “No one can walk on a demon’s coil. They are inimical to humans. Are you in a demon’s employ, Lady Sarai?”

  “Would it matter to you if I was?” She glanced at Kasarah as she said it, but the princess was staring at her clasped hands, biting her lower lip.

  “I admit I am intrigued,” murmured the king, drawing her attention back to him. “Demons were involved in my father’s death but I’ve never understood how or why. Maybe…”

  The catch in his voice, the way he studied her too closely, made her recoil not from any physical aversion but rather from realizing she was allowing herself to get caught up in the thrill of a chase. But this was not a game.

  Yet the thought of that demon’s coil lying so close, the tingling of her mirror, propelled her forward. “Only by study can we learn what a thing truly is.”

  “The tales say that demons feed in the coils. That they can speak to each other inside them. Most demons ride winged horses, but it’s said some walk across vast distances by means of stepping from one coil onto another. Don’t such things frighten you?”

  Unthinkingly, Sarai rested fingers atop his fist. “Frighten me? It just makes me want to know more!”

  He looked down at her hand but did not dislodge it. “To what purpose?”

  Releasing him, she sat back, unable to disguise her frustration. “Have you never in your life wished to discover something just because it was a puzzle to you?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  She knew better than to pour out her heart to this man as she had felt safe doing with Gil. Yet he was king, and she needed him to want to help her.

  “A mind lives no matter where it resides. It is a gift we have with us always. For example, my great-aunt’s life may seem trivial to many people but she never ceases thinking and wondering. She raised me to investigate, just as she does. You could cage me in the upper palace for the rest of my life and yet my mind would still fly, and it would still ask questions, and it would still desire answers. A demon’s coil is there to be seen and wondered at. Which means it can also be explained.”

  “Demons are dangerous.” He picked up a spoon and rolled it along his fingers as if he were playing her words along his skin all the better to absorb them.

  “But you want to know if demons were involved in your father’s death, don’t you?”

  A bell rang in the queen’s wing to mark the end of morning prayer.

  Was that a look of relief that flashed across his face? Or was he annoyed that their conversation had been interrupted? The truth was, she did not know him at all, and it was foolish for her to pretend that she could.

  “You must attend the queen now, Lady Sarai.”

  She rose, shaking down her long jacket impatiently, angry at having made the impulsive demand and knowing she had lost anyway. Just as she grasped the end of her scarf to pull it up, Kasarah looked up.

  “I can get Lady Sarai into the Assizes Tower, Father. Back when we were young and still friendly, Farihosh showed me and Kasad a secret way in.”

  “Farihosh! I can’t tell whether to embrace him for having the intelligence and ambition to be a proper heir, or to await his knife in my back. I know the secret way, too, but I never showed him.”

  What thoughts chased behind the king’s dark eyes Sarai could not guess, because she was no demon to reach into a person’s mind and fish out their innermost heart. All she knew was that a door had opened to reveal a question that gnawed at him.

  “Very well, Lady Sarai. You spy for me. I get you into the Assizes Tower.”

  The triple tap woke Kellas out of a dreamless sleep. As a younger man he would have been on his feet with a weapon in hand before the second set of triple taps. Now he had to content himself with sitting up too fast and hoping he hadn’t pulled something as he grabbed the sword he always placed on the mat beside his mattress. “Report.”

  “Captain, it’s Sefi,” said the young man through the closed screen. Lamplight turned his slender body into a bulky shadow against the rice paper. “A person is here with a private message for you.”

  “Has Chief Oyard been woken?”

  The thump of a person stumbling into a wall in the dark answered him. “The hells! Sefi, hold that light over here. I stubbed my toe, curse it.”

  Every night before he slept Kellas laid out clothing so he could dress in the dark if need be. He pulled on a light under-robe with sleeves, then a formal sleeveless ankle-length vest. When Oyard opened the door, looking disheveled in only an under-robe, Kellas was calmly tying his sash. Sefi held a lamp and a folded piece of paper.

  With a dagger Oyard skewered the paper and lifted it out of Sefi’s fingers. “Have you not attended to lessons? People mix poison into ink and kill people with letters and reports. Never accept letters, cloth, and food from strangers with your bare hands.”

  The young man licked his lips nervously. “She handed me this paper, and told me she brings a verbal message from the queen.”

  “Queen Dia?” A wave of alertness washed through Kellas. He rubbed the last bleary clots of sleep from his eyes. “Describe the woman.”

  “She is dressed in the fashion of servants from the upper palace. She’s old.”

  “As old as I am?”

  “Oh, no, Captain! Much younger than you, more like my blessed mother’s age.”

  Kellas busied himself lighting a lamp to hide his smile as the lad went on obliviously.

  “She arrived in a curtained chair carried by four eunuchs who serve Queen Chorannah.”

  “How can you be sure they are Chorannah’s palace men?”

  “They must be hers. All four are Sirniakan. The Beltak priests do not admit cut men to their ranks. These have slave collars around their necks, as her eunuchs do.”

  “Well observed.”

  The young man beamed.

  Kellas unhooked a mesh of wires he hung every night from the ceiling to discourage prowlers. In the office he sat on his usual cushion at his desk. Oyard deposited the letter on a tray of sand and Kellas prised it open with a pair of sticks. Inside, in the blocky Sirni script, was written: Why do you hate my sons?

  “This arouses my curiosity. Show in the person, Sefi.”

  “Captain, are you sure that is wise?” objected Oyard.

  “If it is another attempt to murder me then I am intrigued by its novelty.”

  The woman wore the calf-length embroidered jacket and patterned belled trousers typical of palace women, all of whom dressed in the Sirniakan style. Very hot to be covered in so much cloth, but he knew better than to say so. A brass collar of interlocking leaves hid her neck, and a polished metal net made of many tiny brass coils weighed down her hair. She had the stout vigor of a woman in good health, and almost imperceptible calluses on her fingers. Embroidery, perhaps; some kind of handwork.

  She looked around the room to make sure there was no one else present. “Is there no couch on which to sit?” she asked in Sirni.

  “There are two cushions.” He indicated them where they sat right out in pla
in sight on the other side of his desk. Her distaste showed itself by a twist of her lips but, with some difficulty, she sat.

  When she did not speak he ventured to do so. “I am Captain Kellas. You bring a message from Queen Chorannah.”

  “You think Jehosh is the injured party. You think the queen ambitious and greedy.”

  The attack took him off guard.

  “Do you ever wonder why Chorannah has only two children?” she added.

  He had his suspicions but before he could answer she went on.

  “The day he brought the northern woman home is the day he stopped coming to Chorannah’s bed. Everyone thinks Dia the victim and yet Dia is the one who holds Jehosh in contempt, leading him on a leash, telling him when he can visit her conjugally so that after twenty years he still pants after her like a youth after a teasing lover. Dia is the one who has amassed a fortune while Chorannah is left destitute, begging for funds from his grudging treasury. And yet he believes Chorannah and her sons plot against him. Given his preference for the other woman it is far more likely he seeks to kill Chorannah’s sons to make way for Dia’s boy. It’s what he does, you know. He kills those who stand in his way.”

  “Does he?” Kellas was by now wide awake, drenched in the flood of her pent-up anger.

  “He forced his sister to marry his best friend.”

  “I heard it was a love match.”

  “Of course that’s what you heard. He rid himself of his brothers!”

  “They went into the army.”

  “At his urging and against his mother’s wishes. After they both died Queen Yevah broke with him and left the palace. Have you never asked yourself why Lord Seras killed King Atani?”

  “Given that I am said to have had a hand in it, I admit I have asked myself that question more than once.”

  “I never believed the story of how the demons used you as their weapon, Captain.”

  “My thanks.”

  “I know the truth.”

  “Do you? After all these years I am skeptical that anyone knows the truth.”

  Her ability to keep her hands folded quietly in her lap despite her impassioned words impressed him. “Jehosh promised his friend Vanas that he would get Vanas’s older brother out of the way so Vanas could take all his holdings. Seras got wind of the plot but mistakenly believed it had originated with King Atani.”

  “This is a tale I’ve not heard sung before. It has a certain pleasant neatness to it. Seras kills Atani to stop the king from elevating his younger brother over him. The problem is, no one who knew King Atani would believe that was how he went about things. Seras knew Atani.”

  She shifted as if sitting cross-legged on the floor was uncomfortable, and maybe it was but he was not inclined to do anything about it. “Lord Seras believed King Atani was not strong enough to keep the Hundred safe. Perhaps the truth, Captain, is that it was necessary to kill King Atani before he lost the inheritance his father Anjihosh gave him.”

  Almost he slammed a fist onto his writing table. Almost he leaped to his feet to scream at her. What stupid, selfish stories people told themselves! Poison leaked into their hearts as they smiled with condescension, thinking their view of the world to be the only right one.

  She smiled, observing his struggle although not one word passed between them. Cold anger washed away the heat. He reined in his fury, adjusted his sleeves, and caught his breath.

  Then he struck.

  “What actually brings you here in the middle of the night, Your Highness?”

  “I wondered how long it would take you.” She did not look at all worried. Instead she leaned toward him as toward a confidante. “Farihosh and Tavahosh are good boys, healthy, smart, and vigorous, just as Jehosh himself was at that age. I need you to convince Jehosh I am not his enemy. I am his ally.”

  “Since we are speaking bluntly, Your Highness, I will venture to humbly remind you that you tried to poison Prince Kasad eight years ago.”

  “That was not my doing.”

  How blandly she spoke the words! Either she was a convincing liar or she was telling the truth, but he was no demon to hook her thoughts out of her mind.

  “Whose doing was the poison, then?” he asked.

  “Dia poisoned him herself with just enough of a dose to make him ill but not to kill him. She did it to gain Jehosh’s sympathy, for at that time Farihosh was showing himself to be such a fine and promising heir that Dia feared Jehosh would turn away from her and back to me.”

  “Has the king ever tried to strip Prince Farihosh of his heirship?” Yet he thought of the unkind thing Jehosh had said about the young man—rancid cunning—and of how startlingly flattering Dannarah’s description of Farihosh had been.

  “Jehosh is biding his time until the right moment to strike. The palace officials and the high army officers and all of the priests support me and my sons because we are the righteous ones. Jehosh knows his elder sons are his only rightful heirs, yet his cock rules his mind.”

  Whatever idea he had ever had that Chorannah was a meek, shy creature was by now rubbed into oblivion like sand scraping ink from a page.

  She went on. “Jehosh is angling for the attention of the Silver girl now. Probably he wants her money but more likely it is just to thwart me.”

  “Thwart you, Your Highness? What has the Silver girl to do with you?”

  Her expression turned sly. “I could offer her to you, Captain. A wealthy young bride. She’s no beauty, and the frightful scar can never be unseen, but coin gilds a hopeful lover’s eyes, does it not?”

  “She is married, Your Highness.”

  Her gaze flicked around the chamber as if she had seen a ghost. “So she is, if Lord Gilaras still lives. But contracts that have produced no children can be easily annulled.”

  For a drawn-out while she studied the objects on his desk: a burning lamp, an unlit lamp, the tray of sand with her note and the dagger, a dry ink block, a closed brush box, and a polished river stone the size of his fist.

  “You are a tidy man, Captain.”

  “I find it beneficial to be so. I can find anything, even in the dark.”

  “All I ask is that you support my sons. King Atani loved Farihosh.”

  “He did, Your Highness. I recall it well. He thought the sun rose and set upon that little boy.”

  “Everything would be different if Atani had not died. He would have approved of the man Farihosh has become. If you are loyal to Atani, then follow his wishes. Support my son. Do not throw away your loyalty by giving it to Jehosh. He has none to give to you in return, not as a true lord ought. Look at my sons, and learn.”

  She wiped a tear from her face or pretended to. “There, Captain. I have thrown myself on your mercy. Consider your duty to the kings who came before. Were you not King Anjihosh’s most loyal soldier? Did you not serve King Atani afterward more faithfully than any other?”

  “My duty to them resides in my thoughts day and night, I assure you. But I have one question. If the palace officials, the army officers, and the priests support you, then what need do you have of me? I am nothing, a mere captain of security.”

  “I appreciate your wit, Captain. You and I both know you were King Anjihosh’s most trusted and experienced Wolf. Do not try to pretend to be something else now.” She got to her feet, went to the door, and there she paused in shadow. “People see only the king’s charm and not the monster beneath. All Jehosh cares about is himself.”

  41

  At dawn Sarai knelt by the door of her tiny cubicle, listening to the chatter of the other women rising and going about their morning ablutions in the washroom everyone shared. She held her mother’s mirror against her chest. Would Kasarah come today? Would King Jehosh show her the secret way into the Assizes Tower? As the soft footsteps of the women filed away toward the shrine, she traced the lines engraved on the back to soothe her racing heart.

  The engraving on the back was a six-sided spiral cut through with diagonal lines. As had become her habit
she counted numbers along the spiral, assigned the number 1 to the center-point, and then 2, 3, 4, and on around at even intervals. That the prime numbers fell along certain of the diagonal lines carved through the spiral she had realized quickly although she could not explain it. Often she imagined that everything was built on numbers, that the Hidden One was not the Creator of All but a vast, clean, beautiful pattern underlying everything. Maybe the pattern itself was the handprint of divinity. Hard to say but surely possible to measure.

  The last footfalls faded. She tied the mirror under her outer skirt, tucked her book, ink, and writing box into a leather satchel, arranged her shawl to conceal her face, and slid open the door, eager to get to the garden.

  Tayum blocked the corridor. “Lady Sarai. Come with me.”

  Sirni had no word for “please,” only forms of verbs that meant either “it is commanded” or “it is requested.” He commanded her to come, in his capacity as the queen’s representative. Gripped by a sense of stalking dread, she followed him through the corridors and then down a servants’ alley.

  She clutched the book more tightly as he slid open a door into the very chamber in which she and Uncle Abrisho had met weeks ago. The queen walked only on carpets; the matted floor of this chamber made her feel she was being allowed to set foot back into the familiar world of the Hundred. By the opening that led onto the small balcony waited Uncle Abrisho and Cousin Beniel, their familiar faces like sunny flowers.

  “Sarai!” They greeted her with a formal kinsman’s kiss on each cheek. It was the first time anyone had touched her in so many days that she wanted to throw her arms around them, even though her uncle had betrayed her. Tayum watched from the door.

  Abrisho rubbed his hands together in excitement as he led Sarai onto the balcony that overlooked the king’s garden like a spy’s nest. She pushed her face up against the lattice screen. A figure sat in the commander’s pavilion. The king was waiting for her, and she was stuck here.