The Black Wolves

by Kate Elliott

  “Sit here, Sarai.” Abrisho pointed to a cushion resting behind a painted folding screen.

  Obediently she sat although the folding screen cut off her view outside and left her only the walls to observe: They were painted with scenes of women luxuriating in baths while men peeped through lattices to spy on their naked forms.

  The hells! as Gil would have said. How had she not noticed these last time? Was this a chamber meant for an assignation?

  A door slid open and she heard someone enter as Abrisho hurried to greet them.

  “Exalted Prince, it is an honor, an honor indeed that you receive us with such honor.” Her uncle’s robes sighed and fluttered as he bowed perhaps a hundred times.

  “All honor goes to my mother the queen,” said a voice Sarai did not recognize, but it was young and proud and male and it spoke the Hundred-speech with an awkward lurch, like trotting out memorized phrases. Since Farihosh was in the south, this must be Tavahosh. “It is with her permission, it is on her urging and command, that this meeting takes place. Tayum!” The prince switched to Sirni, giving a command for tea.

  “Your Highness, may I make known to you my son Beniel?”

  “All respect and honor to you, Your Highness. Your notice honors me, Your Highness.”

  Sarai stared at the ceiling’s painted vines and flowers, wondering if she could more fruitfully pass the time by counting how often the men used the word honor.

  Her uncle was still extolling the beauty of the garden when servants returned with the tea. A tray was placed on her side of the screen so she could pour without any part of her visible except her hands. The custom of Sirniakan women tattooing their hands suddenly made sense to her as the men settled on the other side of the screen and silently watched her fill three cups, one for each of them and none for herself.

  The scent of the tea curled up her nose and her stomach growled softly.

  “A lovely morning!” exclaimed Beniel.

  “As the Shining One wills,” said the prince.

  “The light shines brightly upon the sunbright in the garden!” Beniel added.

  “In flowers we see the beauty of the Shining One’s mercy and kindness,” said the prince.

  They went on in this way for far too long, Sarai’s part to listen and to pour. Elit would have spouted mellifluous poetry that shamed their paltry verses. Gil would have made outrageous jokes until she convulsed in laughter. Had the king left the pavilion yet?

  At length, the prince took his leave, by no word or gesture indicating he knew she was in the chamber although he had accepted tea from her very hands.

  As soon as the door slid closed Abrisho clapped his hands in glee and folded back the screen. “A triumph, Sarai! With what courtesy he spoke to us!”

  “Yes, one tendentious phrase after the next, all memorized, I should imagine. I’ve never been so bored! Enough of the prince! Is there a letter from Tsania? I have some pages of news for her if I may entrust you with them.”

  “I have no letter from Tsania.”

  “If you care for me at all, Uncle, if you have any concern for Tsania, you will do as you promised and make sure she and I remain in contact!”

  He hesitated, then said, “I will see your letter is delivered.”

  She had a trimming knife for cutting reed pens, and she used this now to slice off two pages from the back of the book on which she had been writing a letter to Tsania with a message embedded in code: I am trapped here. She folded the paper up in an elaborate pattern that, if they unfolded it to read, they could not duplicate; so Tsania would know their own relatives were spying on them. But she smiled prettily as she handed it over. “What gossip from home, Uncle? Is there news about Lord Gilaras?”

  “Forget about Lord Gilaras! We are having a new contract drawn up to sever the old one.”

  “But I don’t want to sever the old one!” She pressed a hand to her belly.

  “Are you pregnant?”

  “I believe I am, having missed my regular courses and feeling mild nausea in the mornings. A child born of his seed and mine means we retain an obligation both to him and to his clan.”

  Hooking fingers over his sash, Abrisho paced into the main room, muttering to himself, then trod as heavily back as if weighted by necessity. Beniel looked alarmed.

  “There are ways to rid yourself of such a burden, Sarai.” He grasped her fingers too tightly. “I know your Aunt Rua is wise in these matters…”

  She pulled her hands out of his grip. “What do you mean?”

  “Did you not understand what just transpired? Queen Chorannah has given Prince Tavahosh permission to marry you.”

  She staggered back and bumped into the wall. Confusion muddied her thoughts. “Prince Tavahosh? Why would I want to marry him?”

  “You foolish girl! Have you not heard of the attack on a Ri Amarah clan house in High Haldia? Our fellow Ri Amarah forced to walk about in groups, bearing clubs? Households having to hire local men to guard our gates? A bounty on Ri Amarah corpses? Lord Gilaras was arrested for the murder of a Ri Amarah coachman whose body he tried to sell—”

  “He didn’t do it!”

  “You have the means to secure the safety of your people by acquiescing to this brilliant marriage.”

  The words knifed her in the heart. When she glanced outside, the commander’s pavilion was empty. The king had left, and her chance with him. The queen’s bell rang to signal the end of the prayer service.

  “I must go at once,” she said, to be rid of them, and they saw her off with smiles and bright, happy words.

  Once back among the women, she begged illness so as not to face the rigors of the day. It was easier to hide in her cubicle, caged up like a chicken at market, than to sit at the queen’s side knowing the queen expected her gratitude. Servants brought food but she was so queasy from waves of hopeless frustration that she refused everything except plain rice and water. All her yearning for Elit, all her fear for Gil, rushed to fill every crease and joint of her body. Her lips crackled with it; her eyes went dry. She tried to sleep but every creak woke her out of troubled dreams in which she lost everyone she loved.

  They meant to steal from her every scrap of who she was until she was reduced to a mute, acquiescent shadow.

  Was this how her mother had felt all those years ago? Little better than a cornered rat?

  The walls surrounding her were so high and for the first time in her life she was alone.

  The dawn whistle jolted Gil awake from the kind of dream he’d have preferred not to wake from. He opened his eyes with a sigh, still feeling the bruises from the fight Ty had gotten him and Adiki into a few days ago. Cautiously he looked around in the sleepy dawn light.

  An older man named Natas stirred to his right. The man had taken to following the three of them around without asking for anything in return. Since he didn’t cause any trouble and could talk easily and knowledgeably about his life as a pipefitter in Toskala before he was arrested for the crime of walking home drunk from a tavern, Gil warily let him stay. Safety in numbers, after all.

  Tyras lay to Gil’s left, on his side, face buried in a bent elbow. Fading contusions ornamented his bare back. On the other side of Ty, Adiki sat up, combing bits and pieces of grass out of his month’s growth of beard and hair. The only reason Gil and Ty hadn’t gotten badly beaten up by their opponents was because Adiki was a brutal and experienced brawler, the kind of man who runs toward a fight rather than prudently away.

  The big man glanced at the contours of Gil’s kilt where it was rucked up a bit. “Dreaming of me again, lover?”

  Gil grinned. “Of my wife. You’re not enticing enough to get a rise out of me.”

  He got to his feet and brushed grass and dirt off the kilt as his erection subsided. The linen crackled with grime because they marched, drilled, and slept in the same piece of clothing.

  Natas gave him a weary smile. “Maybe they’ll let us bathe tonight.”

  “Yes, to go along with a banquet
of chicken dumplings, chili beef, and fried coconut pastries adorned with slices of pearl-kiss and starfruit.”

  Natas groaned, and Adiki said, “You forget rice boiled in moro milk and sweetened with cane.”

  “Poor man’s banquet,” retorted Gil.

  “Thus my favorite because it can be enjoyed by any poor village son at festival time.”

  A second whistle shrilled across the stretch of ground where the work gang had bedded down for the night. Already the men who were actually soldiers had formed up ranks and were getting fed rice gruel heaped onto rounds of flat bread while the real prisoners were still pissing and moaning.

  He knelt to shake Ty’s shoulder. “Heya! Fuckwit. Wake up!”

  “Fuck you,” said Ty into his arm.

  “Every man in line before the third whistle gets a morning ration.”

  Tyras didn’t shift. All around them the other prisoners were rubbing sleep out of their eyes and staring around at a landscape that looked very different from the river plain, with its plentiful fields and lush orchards, that surrounded the city of Toskala.

  After passing the city of Horn they had marched for days on the West Track alongside the River Hayi. The guards used the river’s promise to mock them every night as the false prisoners were allowed to cavort in its cool water. He surely stank, and he certainly itched. A bath had become as much of a dream as his nightly excursions into Sarai’s bed.

  To the east the ground sloped upward to become a shimmering grassland, called the Lend, that flowed ever higher like cloth unrolled from an unseen table far away. Despite the nearby river, the dry air and flecks of dead grass floating on the wind gave his tongue the feel of sandpaper. Thirst dogged him, yet his mouth was so dry that even the sight of the guards passing around a water jar to the men already at muster couldn’t raise any saliva.

  With a sigh he nodded to Adiki, who shrugged and headed off to muster with Natas trailing a step behind.

  Gil sank down beside Tyras, whose bruised face was finally healing from the second-to-last fight he’d gotten into. “I’ll just sit here with you. I don’t need to eat or drink. I don’t mind another whipping. That one I had when you refused to get up the day after what the chief did to you? It wasn’t too bad. Only one of the stripes bled.”

  “Shut up.”

  “It’s interesting how they play you and me off each other, isn’t it? Punish one for what the other did.”

  “Fuck you, Gil.”

  “That’s the problem, isn’t it? No one will. Who knew these pricks would be more interested in how well we can drill than with how well we can be fucked? We’re already pretty fucked over, don’t you think? Two men have tried to escape so far, and both have been executed. By now we’re too cursed far from home to have a hope of running back there before we starve, even if we could run. But I’ll just try an escape now—maybe out onto the Lend as it looks pretty wild and uninhabited—if that’s what it will take to get you moving. Because I would rather die than know I let you die after it’s my fault you got sucked into this business just because I had to be a reckless asshole for no better reason than to piss off my family.”

  “Fuck you,” said Ty, but he got up, then peed in a stream of strong-smelling urine so close to Gil’s feet that he skipped back with a yelp of laughter.

  A column of false prisoners was heading out to take a place in the vanguard. Several glanced over. Recognizing Ty, one called, “Heya, peaches, where’s my kiss?”

  Ty lunged for him, and Gil yanked him to a halt as the men laughed mockingly. “Get in line, Ty. Don’t be an ass. They’ll just beat you up again. Ignore them.”

  Without another word Ty trudged over to take a place in the ranks beside Adiki. Gil slipped into line behind them, forming up with the man with the cleft chin and gap-toothed grin and his two buddies just as the third whistle blew. Chief Roni strutted out from his tent as two guards pulled it swiftly down behind him.

  Guards moved down the line, giving each man a gulp of water and a fist-size hank of coarse barley bread smeared with a coating of warm rice gruel. Gods, it tasted good, and even though the water was laced with rice vinegar he could have swallowed ten times more. They were allowed a brief space in which to eat. Meanwhile more guards walked along the ranks handing out the frail sticks—nothing stout enough to serve as a weapon—they marched with every day. The sticks stood in for spears to allow them to drill as they walked.

  Adiki glanced over his shoulder. “I just heard a rumor two men went missing last night.”

  “The hells,” Gil muttered. “We’ll all get whipped, no doubt.”

  Gap Tooth said, “Think they got away? Hard to find a man out on the grass, don’t you think?”

  Gil was licking his fingers, wishing there was another drop of gruel. “If you don’t die of thirst because you can’t find water, you’ll get dismembered by the lendings for trespassing on their territory.”

  Gap Tooth and his friends exchanged mocking grins. “Lendings? You mean like in the tales? I thought they were all gone long ago.”

  Adiki signaled to warn them to lower their voices. “I know the tales but I’ve never seen any of the other children of the Hundred, not even a demon.”

  “I think they’re all just stories, even demons,” said Gap Tooth as his friends nodded wisely. “Meant to scare us and keep us in our place while our foreign rulers rake in all our coin and our land claiming it’s for our own good.”

  “My grandfather met the lendings,” said Gil.

  Gap Tooth snorted a laugh. “Did he now?”

  “He did.” The man’s ignorance irritated Gil, who vividly recalled the solemn, stately grandfather, General Sengel, who had inspired so much awe in so many people. “He negotiated with them. They agreed on boundaries around the grasslands past which no human folk would pass.”

  Gap Tooth’s amusement hardened into a stare so stone-like that Gil was suddenly sure he had seen it before. “You don’t remember us, do you? Street rats like us must all look alike to a rich, spoiled lordling like you.”

  “Rich?” Gil laughed.

  Tyras actually looked around as if he meant to offer a sarcastic rejoinder.

  The shwee-shwee-shwee! whistle that always started the day’s march broke over their conversation. A drummer picked up the patterns that commanded their steps, the same soldiers’ drill Gil had learned as a child.

  Attention! Eyes forward! Spears at ready!

  Gil tapped the stick on the ground once, twice, and thrice, in unison with the others. The one thing that could make him forget his hunger was the discipline of the drill, even if it was just chanting martial songs and tales as they walked along.

  March! beat the drummer.

  The false prisoners always marched in two groups, one before and one behind the work gang. Once the vanguard got going, the work gang stepped out. In brisk unison they crossed the uneven ground toward the wide road called West Track that linked the city of Horn to the city of Olossi far to the south. Chief Roni counted off the work gang as they passed in rows of six.

  The chief’s sudden bark of command brought the drummer to a stuttering halt.

  “Two men missing!” yelled Chief Roni.

  From the road, men shouted in consternation, and this swirl of confusion within the vanguard caught the chief’s attention. Everyone looked that way. Men broke from the front lines to stumble onto the grassy verge and throw up. All Gil could think was what a waste of food it was.

  The chief jogged away to the vanguard to investigate.

  Adiki muttered, “Shit, this can’t be good.”

  “Move up, move up,” said the guards, chivvying them forward.

  The vanguard parted, spilling off the road away from whatever had frightened them. Gil saw a strange jumble of rubbish scattered across the West Track’s stone surface. Seated with his back to the debris was a man trussed in rope and blindfolded.

  Chief Roni stopped dead where the remains of the vanguard quivered, each one trying to back away.
A man retched. A bird’s staccato call drifted from out on the grass: weet weet weet weet weet. Flies buzzed.

  The chief grabbed the trussed man and dragged him roughly back over the ground as the fellow twisted, trying to get his feet under him. Throwing him down in front of the work gang, the chief ripped off the blindfold to reveal one of the older men, a quiet person who had never given any trouble that Gil recalled, only slogged along each day with head bowed.

  “Tell me what happened!” growled Chief Roni.

  The man wriggled in his bonds but did not answer.

  “Tell me!”

  The prisoner rolled on his side, his fingers twitching within the tight coil of rope.

  “Oh fuck,” murmured Gap Tooth, nudging Gil as if the gesture passed on a message.

  Chief Roni had the look of a man pushed too far. He began screaming. “Tell me, you stupid fuck! How did this happen? What does it mean? Use your pissing mouth or I will…”

  The man was still squirming, trying to get his hands free, and yet he said nothing.

  With a roar more like panic than anger, the chief yelled at the nearest soldiers. “Piss in his pissing mouth until he talks! Do it! Do it!”

  “I know him from Wolf Quarter; he’s mute,” whispered Gap Tooth.

  “Mute?” Gil said.

  “Unlike you, he can’t talk or even make a noise. Probably got arrested in the first place for not answering when the cursed priests spoke to him.”

  Two men began peeing on the trussed-up man’s head as two others kicked him every time he tried to roll over to hide his face.

  “Back me up,” said Gil as he finally made sense of the debris on the road and the swarm of insects hovering over it. A shudder rolled through his body. Bile scorched his throat. But the hells if he would let some hapless person be abused. “Ty. Adiki. Stay here.”

  He strode forward and had almost reached the chief before anyone noticed.

  “Heya! Chief Roni! I can explain why he won’t talk, and what happened to our friend on the road.”

  The way the chief and the nearby soldiers flinched at the sound of his voice would have made him laugh if he wasn’t now getting an even closer look at the grotesque display strewn across the road. Gap Tooth had, in fact, followed, and Gil heard the other man grunt and choke as he realized that the debris was the dismembered remains of a person. Nausea churned through Gil’s stomach but he managed to speak without spewing.