The Black Wolves

by Kate Elliott

  She glanced at the paper half crumpled in her hand, and let it drop. It dipped winglike before clapping onto the desk. Then she rose to confront him.

  “Tell me the truth, Captain. Was Atani a demon?”

  He bowed his head, ticking over the words, the deeds, the years. Finally he looked up, knowing he would rue the words he was about to say. “The things your brother did not choose to tell you, I cannot reveal. That is the oath I made to him.”

  A cold anger shut down her face, the look of a person who has just decided you cannot be trusted. Once he had seen the same expression cloud King Anjihosh’s face: the day Anjihosh finally discovered that Kellas had defied him by becoming the secret lover of the woman forbidden to all men if Anji could not have her.

  Kellas really had expected to die that day. That instant. Anjihosh’s sword had already scraped out of its scabbard.

  Atani had saved him by intervening in the only way possible: by making his father forget the damning piece of evidence that had betrayed Kellas. Half a year later Anjihosh was dead at sixty, felled by disease and entirely oblivious to the fact he had once briefly known Kellas was no longer his loyal soldier.

  Yet secrets have a way of bending around to stab a person in the back when least expected. Kellas had flattered himself with the idea that Dannarah was still a little infatuated with him in exactly the way she had been when she was seventeen. But she had lived a long and fruitful life far beyond that one anomalous year. He had been a rung on her ladder, as she had surmounted one by one the strictures laid on her by the strict palace protocol that was a legacy of Sirniakan customs brought into the Hundred by her conquering father. He saw the truth of how very far past her youthful self she had grown. She studied him with a flat stare, exactly as her brilliant and ruthless father had done on that long-ago day.

  “Very well, Captain. It suits my purpose to have your message delivered to Salya. So it will be done. You are dismissed.”

  “Lady Dannarah…”

  “You are dismissed.”

  45

  Sarai woke at dawn, tired but wide awake. She had used up her entire week’s ration of lamp oil by staying up half the night to write down in code her every impression of the demon’s coil and then making a separate copy for Tsania. Just as she made ready to leave for the garden, eager to share all her thoughts with Princess Kasarah and the king, the door slid open and Tayum beckoned. He escorted her to the chamber where she had last seen her uncle, and placed himself on guard.

  The door opened. She peered around the screen, hoping she could convince her uncle to attach this page to the letter for Tsania she had already given him.

  Prince Tavahosh entered the room, alone.

  The hells! She jerked back out of sight. By Ri Amarah custom a man was never alone with any adult woman except his wife. A woman alone with a man was assumed to have had sexual relations with him. She clutched the mirror beneath her skirts, wondering if it was solid enough to bash the prince over the head without breaking.

  Tavahosh sat on the other side of the screen, speaking in labored Hundred-speech sprinkled with Sirni words and phrases she was coming to understand. “A fine morning, Lady Sarai.”

  “It is a fine morning, Your Highness.”

  “The correct address is Your Exalted Highness, Lady Sarai. I am a prince and I am also a priest on the exalted ladder of service to the Shining One.”

  “Yes, Your Exalted Highness. It must be tiring to have to change from prince’s clothing to priest’s clothing every day.”

  “No work is tiring in the service of the Shining One. All that we do reflects the glory of the Shining One Who Rules Alone.”

  “Ah. Of course for a person with a holy calling such holy work would seem most pleasing.”

  “Yes, you understand me, Lady Sarai. I was informed that your understanding is superior. It is a shame you are so old to be wed for the first time. Please do not feel you need worry, for I do not find your condition shameful.”

  She opened her mouth and closed it. Fortunately the tea tray arrived. The prince waited politely while she poured a cup for him and one for herself. Cautiously she pushed his cup forward, and watched his hands embrace it. They were neatly manicured and ordinary, smudged on the right little finger and forefinger with faint ink marks; not the hands of a laborer but not those of a man who did nothing.

  Their isolation was so complete that she heard him sip. She raised the cup to her lips but its powerfully sweet smell made her throat close and she set down the cup without drinking.

  “You are about the same age I am, Your Exalted Highness. Are you already wed?”

  “Of course. To Princess Ernisah, a cousin twice removed. She is born into the imperial family of Sirniaka.”

  “I have not met her in the queen’s chambers. I would have thought such a woman would sit next to the queen.”

  “She dwells in the country according to my honored mother’s wish, with our two young sons.”

  “You have two sons already!”

  “Yes, they are healthy boys,” he said with a young father’s modest pride, “a three-year-old and an infant.”

  “You must have been very young when you married Princess Ernisah. Your older brother, His Highness Prince Farihosh—is he married, too?”

  His hesitation imperfectly concealed an exhalation, but she could not interpret his feelings from the brief sound. “No, he is not.”

  “Then I hope and pray you are as generous in your brother’s case as in mine and do not find his unmarried situation to be shameful, either. He is two years older than I am!”

  “You jest with me, Lady Sarai. He will marry soon.”

  “Is he already betrothed? When he marries, will his new wife live here in the palace or out at a quiet country estate like yours?”

  He cleared his throat and made a business of setting down his cup as if by these small gestures he was trying to make something known to her. “Too many questions in a woman make her bitter like rotten fruit. Now, as I was saying, it is to your credit that you display a natural reluctance to be seen leaping from one man to the next. Nor would I wish to bind myself to a woman stained by greedful lust.”

  She choked down a hysterical chuckle. What would he think if he could have seen her and Elit embracing their greedful lust back in Elsharat? Or her and Gil in the prison, for that matter. Or his father kissing her on the tower stairs!

  “Furthermore I am obliged to remind you of your obligation to your people.”

  “What do you mean?” she broke in despite his rejoinder about questions.

  “You must exert yourself to please the other ladies, Lady Sarai. The mood in the city is troubling. Many whisper against the Silvers, saying they have amassed wealth by stealing it.”

  “My people have stolen nothing, Your Exalted Highness.”

  “Why your people are continually accused of theft rather than frugal business practices remains a puzzle. I have chewed through this matter—that is a poetic way of phrasing it, you comprehend—at some length. Stubbornness causes people to become suspicious of you because you refuse to embrace the proper way of life and instead cling to foreign customs. By your own actions you Silvers make people wonder if you are trustworthy.”

  “We call ourselves Ri Amarah,” she said wearily.

  “Yes, so I am aware, but most people call you Silvers because of the bracelets your men wear.”

  “Oh! Do they? I never knew that, Your Exalted Highness!”

  “Then I am pleased to have been the one to enlighten you.”

  She could either cast the tea at where she supposed his face to be or drink to stop herself from the gesture, so she drank. At once she coughed, for this was not the usual brew.

  “Lady Sarai?”

  Her tongue stung from the tea. “If you are suggesting that by marrying you I will protect my clan, I would remind you that the king of the Hundred already protects the Ri Amarah according to a covenant sealed between King Anjihosh the Glorious Unifier and
my people.”

  “That was a long time ago, Lady Sarai. People forget. Now, let me inform you as to my schedule.”

  How quickly she had forgotten: the taste of the tea dissolving on her tongue was muzz. Flowering muzz decorated the gardens of lovers not because it instilled passion but because it brought on a woman’s bleeding when she did not wish to be pregnant.

  “… at my convocation at Horn Hall I will be ceremoniously invested with the bronze baton, gold sash, iron diadem, silver cape, copper chain, and horn whistle of the chief marshal’s office…”

  They wanted her to miscarry so no legal impediment stood in the way of a hasty marriage and access to her family’s coin.

  “… when I return from the convocation our marriage feast will be celebrated. Afterward you and I will consummate the contract and thus seal our flesh as one, never to be unbound…”

  How much had she swallowed? She clasped her arms over her belly.

  “… so we will be part of the greater unification. It is the will of the Shining One that the land of a hundred gods and quarrels be brought firmly under the sheltering sword of Beltak so every person’s spirit may be granted the peace of His blessing bowl…”

  The words jarred her out of her shock. She got her mouth to open. “Is that why so many shrines are being built? Will you require every person to visit the Beltak shrines? Or only those who wish to, as is the current practice?”

  She could hear him frown as he gave a little huff of exasperation.

  “I had not yet finished explaining the matter to you, Lady Sarai. In the future it would behoove you to wait until I am done.”

  What an ass! as Gil would say. Elit used words less; she would have acted it out with a cocky strut and a mimicry of rooster calling. Sarai choked down an inopportune giggle, which came out as a choked gurgle.

  Fortunately he was still speaking. “That is why Queen Dia and her children are a pernicious presence within the court, worshipping as they do a bloodthirsty two-faced god. As it is said in the Poem of the Wanderer, fifth chapter, fourth stanza, second verse, Two faces make a liar of a man. How much more true of a god! My gracious and honored mother wishes to keep you close by her to protect you from their malign influence. Also she has become fond of you.”

  Fond of my coin!

  “I know you will follow her wishes in all things. As it is written, Dutiful obedience is a woman’s glory…”

  As he droned on she trickled the tea all along the edge where the mats met the wall, hoping the darker stitching of the seam would hide the stain. Eventually he wore down and ceased.

  “More tea, Your Exalted Highness?”

  “When we are married we will share a second cup, Lady Sarai, as it says in the poem, Share a second cup with your wife. Now I have business, and must leave you.”

  She had broken out in a sweat. “May I humbly inquire as to when the convocation at Horn Hall will take place and how soon afterward you will return here?”

  “The convocation will take place in ten or fourteen days at Horn Hall, according to which auspicious day the priests choose. I must then remain some days at Horn Hall to conduct reeve business, purging the halls of unsuitable reeves and beginning a new regimen of training. It should not take me more than five or ten days to cut out the worst of the rot. Do not fear. You will not have to wait long, not more than a month. Be at peace under the light of the Shining One, Lady Sarai. When I return all shall have been settled in the best possible way.”

  He left.

  Padding obediently after Tayum she paged in her mind through Tsania’s meticulous herbarium. How long before symptoms would start? What signs need she look for? Every twinge in her abdomen sent her into a frenzy of fear.

  She begged leave to visit the latrine closet. Even knowing Tayum was standing outside and could hear, she stuck two fingers down her throat until she vomited up a thin spew of liquid.

  She could not let them suspect she knew. Be bold when you need to be bold, and soft when you need to be soft, Elit always said.

  She went to the morning audience and greeted everyone in awkward Sirni, which made them all exclaim and clap their hands. Horribly, at the midday meal Queen Chorannah insisted Sarai share a platter for food. The stew was so heavily spiced she feared she would not be able to taste an abortifacient. When the queen offered her tea, bile burned up her throat and she rushed out of the room to a latrine closet to vomit again.

  Late that night, when people’s moods were oiled by wine, she cunningly asked if Princess Kasarah ever paid her respects to Chorannah.

  “I saw her in the garden the other day,” she added, attempting an innocent smile.

  “She is not welcome here because she is of evil mind and will falsely accuse Queen Chorannah of cruel acts,” said the translator.

  Like poison? Sarai wanted to say it but kept silent.

  “You will not see her again. The queen has discovered about the gate, and how the princess walked in where she is not welcome or invited. The queen has sent a message to the king that the garden gate must now be blocked up, and he has agreed.”

  For half the night her belly cramped. Pale spots of blood stained her thighs. Very late the pain ceased. She slept, and woke before dawn ravenously hungry. The spotting had stopped. Most likely she hadn’t miscarried, but she couldn’t yet be sure. She might void the pregnancy tomorrow or the next day. Anyway they would not stop trying until they were certain.

  At sunrise when the other women filed away for prayers she fled to the queen’s garden, hoping there might be a chance to beg for escape through the gate. Workmen were already laboring on the other side. The slap of mortar and bricks and their cheerful banter hit like a slap to the face. Retreating, she huddled on a bench in the cool dawn air. She had long ago given up trusting in a deity who had let her mother be killed, but her lips shaped the comforting prayers regardless.

  “Let the hidden heart which is peace lift us above our troubles.”

  Calmed, she considered her options. She could try to climb the wall, but the king would just have her thrown back. She had to play Elit’s part and choose her role in the unfolding story.

  After the worship service ended she joined the other women and set herself to please Queen Chorannah. She stumblingly coughed up words and phrases of Sirni as the women laughed at her clumsy attempts even though she could already understand more than they knew. She asked about Prince Tavahosh and discovered he had already left for Horn Hall to prepare for the upcoming convocation. They confided, with some glee, that he had chosen to hold the convocation at Horn Hall partly because of its impressive site but mostly to put Lady Dannarah in her place.

  She ate, and then went to the latrine and threw it all up. Afterward she complained of cramping and begged leave to go to the separate chamber, set beside the laundry and across from the kitchen, where menstruating women sat out their periods. The priests banned these women from prayer at the shrine and even from sharing platters of food cooked in the main kitchen, which was daily purified by prayer for the queen’s health and spiritual blessing.

  The tiny courtyard and rooms had plush and comfortable furnishings and an entire separate set of lovely clothing to be worn there, together with tools for handwork kept exclusively in those chambers. Two girls not yet of menstruating age cooked simple meals and cleaned. As they were not overseen by the ambitious eunuchs, they kept only a casual eye on Sarai. They allowed her to brew her own tea and to eat gruel and flat bread she cooked herself. She showed the others the sponges Ri Amarah women used to catch their menstrual flow and, careful to time her visits to the latrines when another woman had just gone to swap out her pungent rags, rubbed the sponges against the bloody discharge to make it seem she was bleeding, too.

  As long as she had her wits she wasn’t helpless but all too soon she would start to show. Even if she was forced to have sex with Tavahosh and could hope they would think she was pregnant by him, Chorannah would count the days and suspect the truth. A woman willing to poison
children would be perfectly happy to murder a newborn.

  46

  Lifka and Tarnit approached Salya from the north over Messalia Bay. The swirl of currents fascinated Lifka. Shapes flashed beneath the surface; a school of fish too small to make out as individuals surged and darted as if a single shimmering beast. The swarm parted around a circle of brilliantly blue water, a hole into unknown depths wreathed by a tangle of brown seaweed. After a moment she realized people drifted lazily within the kelp. They had silvery torsos and fish tails instead of legs. Eyes turned heavenward, they watched the eagles pass overhead as if a mirror of her staring down on them.

  Their tails slapped the water. In a flurry of ripples they vanished as if they had never been, dragging the kelp down with them.

  Had she just seen the fabled merfolk, or only imagined them?

  The great tide was out, exposing sand. The harbor at Salya took advantage of the outflow of the River Messali, which cut a deep channel in the bay through the tidal flats. Several ships were anchored farther out in the deep waters, waiting for the tide.

  Tarnit guided them to a landing on the hillside perch Lifka remembered from their last trip here.

  “Why are we leaving River’s harness on?” Lifka asked after Tarnit had supervised Lifka stripping the harness off Slip and checking his feathers.

  “I’m returning to Toskala as soon as my business is completed. I don’t like leaving the marshal unattended among vipers. She needs me to watch her back.”

  “What about me?”

  “If the clan agrees, you’ll stay here for now. It will take a long time before Prince Tavahosh thinks to look for you in Salya.”

  Down the hill Fohiono and Treya appeared, waved excitedly, and hurried up to embrace them like old friends. Walking with them to Plum Blossom Compound salved a bit of the fear in Lifka’s heart. Tarnit took the message to the office, leaving Lifka to wash and then soak in the bath. She regaled them with the awful story of the fight, Uncle’s death, and the escape. Fo had a way of listening that made it easy to talk.