The Black Wolves

by Kate Elliott

  The top floor of the tower was open to the air just as at the estate. A railing and eaves ringed it. The life in the house below seemed muted, while from the tower she could see over the myriad lamps of Nessumara and its hundred islets and ships’ masts like leafless trees along a distant wharf. The many-channeled waters and the crush of people all crammed together exuded a heavy odor laced with sewage and also the overpowering musk of vegetation caught between decay and flowering, between death and life.

  “A Ri Amarah woman holds many responsibilities to her clan,” Jiara went on. “The first and most important is that she must never give away any of its secrets. That’s why women must be the most careful of all. That’s what’s shameful about what your mother did, not the sex.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You need to understand, especially now you are married and pregnant. When you married did they give you a Book of Accounts?”

  Sarai indicated the leather case. “Yes.”

  “But they won’t have given you a woman’s mirror. That would be forbidden for someone going outside the clans.” She kissed Sarai on the cheek in a spontaneous burst of sweetness. “Don’t look so frightened! You’re home now. We are really very kind, most of us. Well, a few of us are, and we’ll protect you. It will be all right, Sarai. You’ll see. Now wait here. I’m going to let my trusted friends know you’re here so we can be ready to vote. I’ll fetch you something to eat and drink.”

  “But what if someone comes up here?”

  “No one comes up here this time of night. Aram Elder runs the household with such a tight fist no one dares use any lamp oil at night without his permission. I’ll be back very soon.”

  The curve of the stairs cut off most sound from below. Although Sarai listened she could not hear Jiara’s retreating footfalls. How strange it felt to have clan walls around her. She got up to pace, hugging the oilcloth pouch in which nestled the leather case with its book, writing implements, and comb. The mirror bumped against her thigh, hidden beneath cloth.

  If she kept it hidden perhaps they would give her one of her own, and then it would never matter that she had stolen her mother’s. Maybe at long last she would be taught the knowledge passed down through the women of her people.

  As she paced she studied the sacred flame twisting and whispering under its seal within the vessel of glass. The blue fire seemed by all appearances to have a similar substance to the threads woven into demon’s coils. The mirror’s back was engraved with a maze similar in shape to that of the coils. It seemed unlikely to be mere coincidence. Were they related? She walked closer, paused to listen, but heard no footsteps on the stairs.

  Never had she thought to touch the molded leather cap that covered the top of the glass. Its texture slipped smoothly under her fingers. When she pushed on it, the cap turned easily around the rim. She took out her mirror and then tipped off the seal, just as Aram had described their mother doing on the night she fled. Threads of blue fire snaked up the inside of the glass. Hastily she held the engraved side of the mirror over the top so the fire couldn’t escape. The mirror was exactly the right size to cover the opening. Flame leaped up onto the bronze surface of the mirror, running molten through the engravings incised there.

  “Where is she?” a man’s harsh voice thundered from below, accompanied by the pound of feet on the steps.

  She jerked the mirror off the opening and jammed the seal back down.

  “Where you cannot reach her, Father. How did you know?”

  “Who do you think pays the servants? Of course they tell me everything that happens. Where is she?” A door rattled, shaken on its hinges. “Is she hidden among the ledgers?”

  “Stand down, Father. This is not your business anymore.”

  “Of course it is my business!” He stamped up the stairs, roaring as he came. “Her mother shamed me, passed me counterfeit coin. The girl is dirt. I’ll kill her as I would have twenty-two years ago if I had been here when she was born. It is my right to rid the family of contamination!”

  “You can’t go in there!”

  “Get out of my way!”

  An old man burst into the tower, his face engorged with rage. With one hand he leaned on a cane but in the other he brandished a whip. He advanced like he was no longer human but a monstrous force of hate spewing from his eyes and his foul expression. To have such loathing flung at her choked her. She swung around side-to-side, desperate for an escape route. The shawl slithered off her shoulders and in agonizing slowness rippled toward the floor.

  Fury made him quick.

  The whip slapped down on her back. She staggered sideways, barely catching herself on the wall.

  “Sarai!” screamed Jiara. “Aram, get the other women. Call them up here. Hurry! Hurry!”

  The whip snapped down a second time, the blow landing on her head. Pain burst along her temple. The world turned a complete revolution around her. She heaved, coughing up bile.

  Aram Elder raised his arm again. She thrust up to her feet and grabbed for whatever came closest to hand. Fabric caught in her fingers and she tugged. His head wrap tore free to expose his head.

  Somehow she had kept hold of the mirror in her other hand.

  Jiara stood in the door, eyes wide, mouth open, shouting words Sarai could not hear.

  Threads of blue fire leaped from the mirror onto Aram Elder’s arms and twisted around his silver bracelets. Silver absorbed the threads, hissing as the light whirled dizzily. His gaze fell to his arms and then up to the shining mirror as alarm suffused his face.

  “Cover the mirror!” he cried.

  A wire of blue flame caught a hook into the horns on his head where they peeped out from his thinning white hair. He blossomed in a net of fire that the silver bracelets could not neutralize. The mirror held the magic, and the horns amplified it until all Sarai could see was a man limned with violently glowing threads. The filaments wove together like a harness buckling itself around his body. A glittering ribbon of light traced a hexagonal spiral first in a wide circle around where he and she stood and thence tighter and tighter as it coiled around them both.

  All this and she had yet to draw breath.

  The magic had substance more like sound, like the humming of bees about flowers, like the whistle of oil as it burns, like the song of the wind in eaves. A gale like claws blasted down the threads of magic and raked them into the maw of the demon’s heart.

  Mirror and horns made a gate. It opened with a clash of bells.

  Aram Elder faded through it. She lunged, trying to get to Jiara at the door, but the tower and Jiara and everything she knew vanished into mist and smoke.

  When the bright-blue light faded and her sight cleared, she stood clutching book and mirror at the center of a vast glassy lake. Its ice-white surface was scored with a huge hexagonal spiral as black as obsidian. Jagged mountains rose on all sides. Twin sentries hulked in the distance, standing so still that after she blinked several times she realized they were monumental statues. Beyond lay the rubble of more abandoned buildings than she could count. As the light dimmed not a single lantern or fire sparked. Wind keened across the dead city and frozen lake.

  They stood in the center of a colossal demon’s coil.

  “What have you done, you stupid girl?” said Aram Elder. “Now the sleeping Imperators will wake, and find us. And it is all your fault.”

  55

  With only Reyad in attendance Dannarah flew south along the West Track and past the city of Olossi and the salty inland Olo’o Sea, seeking signs of the monumental shrine everyone knew had been building here for five years. How hard could it be to talk a prince into rebelling against his father when he was likely already preparing for such an endeavor?

  Flying in over the dusty town of Old Fort, she puzzled over a half-finished and unimpressive mud-brick shrine until she discovered, south of town, a brand-new reeve hall with lofts and barracks and landing ground. She ignored flags from the reeve hall demanding she and Reyad lan
d and identify themselves, but circled for long enough to spot four eagles confined in big net cages as they waited for a new Talon Ceremony. A cold voice had taken charge in her head. If reeves had died to free those eagles then she would see them avenged. If Tarnit and the other women reeves in Toskala had been murdered … but her father had taught her never to allow the heat of anger to overmaster the calculations of intelligence.

  There was a reasonable chance they had gotten word in time. She could not know.

  There was so much she did not know.

  Her own father hadn’t told her the whole truth. His mind had run deep, but narrow. Mai’s words hung in her memory: Had he made you king, things would have turned out very differently. You would have kept the Hundred the way he wanted it to be.

  Beyond the reeve hall sprawled a huge walled army camp whose newly built grounds were strangely empty. If Farihosh was assembling an army to strike against his father, then where was it? She had seen no sign of its passage headed north on West Track. Had Jehosh actually been right? Was Queen Chorannah determined against all wisdom to support her sister’s incompetent son in his bid to remain emperor?

  They flew along the West Spur as it wound up into the foothills of the mighty Spires toward the Kandaran Pass. Only this one pass bridged these impassable mountains that for generations had kept the Hundred safe from the Sirniakan Empire. Of course Terror spotted eagles before she did: at least two flights in wing formation. Two reeves swung back to pace her and Reyad. Late in the day she spotted the long border wall spanning the roadway ahead. She left Reyad circling aloft while she descended to a field beyond the border hill-town of Dast Korumbos.

  An army camped in and around the town with its inns and taverns. Dast Korumbos figured in one of her father’s stories about how he had first arrived in the Hundred. He had brought Dannarah and Atani here in the course of riding a circuit of the Hundred, as he had promised Dannarah that long-ago day when sixteen-year-old Atani was still missing. After Atani’s return she and Atani always traveled with him when he journeyed through the Hundred sitting in judgment over assizes courts, inspecting reeve halls and army forts and border defenses, and meeting with town councils.

  Dast Korumbos had grown during her father’s reign as trade had increased with the empire. Now instead of ten houses it had ten inns, and a market hall, and new streets. With dusk settling hard, the last wagons of an army’s field train trundled up. There were as many campfires in the surrounding fields and pastures as Jehosh’s army had in the northern mountains twenty-two years ago on the eve of his invasion of Ithik Eldim. On the eve of Atani’s murder.

  Armies always brought death in their wake.

  She hooded Terror and walked past a young man in reeve leathers who followed after her, saying, “Who are you? We have had no word from Shining Hall to expect a visiting reeve.”

  “Shining Hall? What kind of name is Shining Hall?” She fixed him with a glare and he stepped back. Gods, he was so young, bursting with youthful indignation.

  “Are there really women who fly as reeves? The marshal says women are only allowed to fly as couriers.”

  “I am here to see Prince Farihosh on urgent business. You may escort me. What is your name?”

  “Talon Wedum.” He had enough wit to note the wings on her vest. “Marshal.”

  “Wedum. A Sirni name.” He was speaking to her in Sirni. Before Tavahosh she had never spoken Sirni in the reeve halls. “Why are you called talon? Are you not a reeve?”

  “I am to be allowed to stand as a candidate for reeve. When an eagle comes free.” His pace quickened with excitement, and she had to push herself to keep up, curse his young legs. “It’s a great honor, a true test of being a man!”

  “Ah. My thanks for the explanation.”

  He led her up a central street so crowded with soldiers that they had to weave in and out between clusters of men. All the inns and taverns stood open, their forecourts and courtyards filled. Chimes tinkled from every eave. Ahead the famous inn called the Southmost shone with lamplight. The inn’s shutters stood open under the peaked roof to air out the attic. Under an awning officers and lords attended Prince Farihosh, who sat on a humble cushion in their midst just as if he were an ordinary fellow.

  She strode in, shedding the young talon. “Farihosh!”

  He stared as if slow to recognize her, then shook himself and rose to greet her. “Aunt Dannarah! What brings you here?”

  “Has Tavahosh sent word?” she asked, because she needed to know first of all if news of his brother’s disappearance had reached him.

  “I’ve heard nothing from Tavahosh since he left for his convocation as chief marshal. Do you come from that event, Aunt?”

  “I do not. Have you any recent word from Toskala?”

  “I have not but I left Shining Fort unexpectedly so it may take a day or two for messages to catch up. Please, share a taste of this excellent cordial.” He gestured, and his companions moved away to leave her and the prince together with only a lad to attend them. The boy was perhaps fourteen, with an innocent face and an eager expression as he poured out a cup of cordial and offered it to her with more enthusiasm than precision.

  Seated opposite Farihosh, she tasted the cordial to discover it sweet and smooth. She had already prepared a line of attack. “Your brother is a fool who wants to destroy the reeve halls all for the sake of winning praise from the Beltak priests.”

  Farihosh had a way of lowering his eyelashes as if he were flirting. “Kas plays a fool but I assume you mean Tav, who actually believes the things he says. There’s no harm to him, Aunt Dannarah.”

  “No harm? I meant what I said about him destroying the reeve halls. These changes he means to institute will not only destroy the cohesion of the halls but with one dangerously foolhardy and shortsighted stroke will wipe out an entire generation of experienced and skilled reeves. That is not wisdom; it is ignorance and arrogance.”

  “Sometimes people have spent so long living in a familiar way they can’t see it needs to be reformed.”

  “Destruction is not the same as change. If Tavahosh really wanted to institute reforms he would have called a council of reeves and set the question before them. But Tavahosh and those of the priests who are his allies are like a man who thinks he can make a dog obey by whipping it.”

  “A whipped dog will obey.”

  “Is that the sort of reeves you want when you are king, Farihosh? Whipped dogs who cringe instead of think?”

  He studied her with hooded eyes. “Go on. I’m listening.”

  “Consider your situation right now. Reeves are an invaluable tool, not as fighters but as scouts. We are the eyes and the law. Very little escapes the gaze of a seasoned reeve. Would you rather have at your disposal flights filled with fledgling reeves who can barely harness their eagles, under the command of people who aren’t jessed? Or would you rather have experienced, skilled reeves flying on your behalf, women as well as men?”

  “The marshal of Shining Hall, in obedience to the directives of the priests, says it is inappropriate for men and women to work together in such intimate daily interactions.”

  “Then you need a different marshal, do you not? One who has the experience and energy to direct multiple wings of expert reeves on your behalf.”

  “Like you?” He sipped at a smoky-colored liquid. “Why are you here, Aunt Dannarah?”

  “March your army back to Toskala, overthrow your father, and appoint me as chief marshal.”

  His crooked smile had a smug slant. “You mistake the matter. I am not at war with my father. I am perfectly happy to let him rule while he and my mother waste their energy dueling over that scrap of ground atop Law Rock they call a palace. A tenement of crammed-together rooms is not a palace!” He indicated a silk map painted with the eight-sided contours of the imperial city within a city that lay at the heart of the Sirniakan Empire. “As it says in the poem, The emperor’s palace is a city unto itself.”

  “You are a foo
l to involve yourself in the imperial succession on behalf of a man everyone knows is feeble-minded and weak. Even if he is your cousin.”

  “What makes you think I’m marching in support of the new emperor? Just because he is my mother’s sister’s only son does not mean I am required to support him.”

  She scrutinized his bland expression. “One of the other princes, then? I understand there are three other adult princes.”

  “Yes, there are three other adult princes, all of whom claim they are best suited to rule. But I will tell you something, Aunt. Emperor Faruchalihosh had a favorite child, one he took with him on his journeys all around the empire, one he taught the arcane details of the palace treasury, one who hunted at his side and who with him sailed the foam-kissed waves of the Flower Shore. As it says in the poem. The one in whose intelligence and ambition he saw himself.”

  He crossed his arms and leaned toward her. She wondered if he was a little drunk.

  “I am bored in the Hundred, Aunt Dannarah. Aren’t you? Don’t you ask yourself if there is more to life than the irritating gossip of court and the false smiles of merchants seeking favor and the tedium of sitting through prayers twice a day only so you can be seen to have been there?”

  “As a woman I need only attend prayers once a day, and as a reeve I need not attend at Beltak’s shrine at all.”

  “I always wanted to be a reeve. Will you take me up on your eagle? I know reeves can harness a second person and carry them a distance.”

  “My eagle is as ill tempered as I am.”

  “All the better! The risk gives it piquancy.” He was a little glassy-eyed.

  The lad poured more of the smoky liquid into his cup and set the glass bottle aside before offering her more cordial from a ceramic pitcher. She flashed a hand up to decline.

  “Are you fixed on this rash course of action, Farihosh?”

  “You are mistaken in thinking it rash. I have carefully conceived and planned it out in coordination with my cousin.”