by Unknown
Jahennes and Faraden, the stable master, arrived as she was finishing her meal. The slave boy was with them: slight, black-haired, dark skinned, with large pale eyes, obviously foreign. But his features weren't Dhoth, and he stared at Treseda's feet without defiance.
"Let me see his tag," she said.
Jahennes gently tipped the boy's chin up and took the bronze slave tag hanging from a cord around his neck. "I am the property of Lord Shashensa," he read aloud. "Nothing else."
No directions for return, and Shashensa was a foreign name if Treseda had ever heard one. Not Dhoth, though.
"What's your name?" she asked the boy.
"Caiyo, Your Grace."
She exchanged a glance with Jahennes. Whoever this Shashensa was, possibly he might offer a reward for the return of a slave. And with the fields and orchards burned, and war-taxes coming, such would not be unwelcome. But something about the boy, a dull distance in his words that she had never heard before in even the most listless slaves, troubled her. It was as if he wasn't truly speaking, any more than a speaking-trumpet did when it echoed words called into it. What could have made him that way?
"And why did you run from your master?" she asked.
Caiyo shrugged.
Heria's hands shook as she poured Treseda's tea. Her daughter had been captured by the Dhoth, Treseda remembered, in their raid that summer. Who knew where the girl was now?
But if she had somehow escaped, and made her way to a stranger's estate, Heria could only hope that the thought of a Dhoth lord's reward was not worth the girl's freedom. And if Shashensa had wanted his slave back so badly, he should have made tags with directions for his return.
"Let him stay here," she said. When Jahennes looked at her oddly, she added, "Well, we have no idea how to return him, do we? And we don't have any idea what nation Shashensa could be from. The tag tells us nothing—every one of the Three Hundred Kingdoms uses the same alphabet, and I'm not ready to shift through two hundred languages looking for Shashensas."
"We could let a magistrate sort through it," Jahennes pointed out.
"We have Dhoth to deal with before then."
Heria set down the teapot with a gentle sigh.
"If he wants to go, let him leave," Treseda said. Caiyo shook his head. "Very well. Go and find something useful for him to do. Treat him gently. I'll have him considered a free man now." She rose, and on her way out, thought to add, "and take off that tag."
* * * *
"There's a messenger here to see you, Your Grace."
"Is he from Lord Shashensa?" She had said the words playfully, but Jahennes didn't smile.
"No. He's from Anderum. He's waiting in the salon."
The messenger from the capital, a short, dark-haired man caked with sweat-cemented dust, didn't waste any time on pleasantries after she entered. "Your Grace, several days ago, the King's Protectors intercepted and translated a Dhoth message. Their army is on the move. Your estate is directly in their path."
She cursed, but her anger was only bravado. She felt her heart plummet as she said the foul word. What more did they want? What more damage could they cause?
The messenger tactfully chose not to hear her. "The fortress of General Galadsten is five days' journey to the north. On behalf of the Protectors, I advise you to go there, and to start your journey soon."
Galadsten. Wasn't he supposed to have sent bread, after their fields had been burned? She hadn't received news from him since the beginning of the war. What good was he?
Begging the gods, why did the Dhoth have to come across her lands again? Hadn't she suffered enough?
"Thank you," she said. "I will gather my people tomorrow. We shall do as you say. I..." With nothing more to add, she sighed and said, "Thank you."
He bowed and left the room.
When she was alone, Treseda knew she could safely cry, but did not.
* * * *
Treseda tried very hard not to look out her window that night.
Some time after she gave up tossing and turning, the dream began. It started with the pounding of surf on the shore, a sound she had heard often as a child, visiting paternal relatives in the seaside kingdom of Adbara. And then she knew she was standing in Adbara, on a wide stretch of white sand cupping a sapphire bay, fading inland into a lush green forest.
Adbara had fallen to the Dhoth, Treseda remembered through her dream. As she remembered it, she saw a black line far in the distance, moving down the beach towards her. A Dhoth army, she knew, but was untroubled. She took a bronze sword from the scabbard at her waist, a sword that rested in her hand as if familiar to her, and went out with the surf lapping at her ankles to meet them.
Others might have marched with her, she thought, though she never learned for certain. But the Dhoth warriors fell before her, and she fought as if she were an entire army, all the defender Adbara would ever need. And as she sliced and struck, she knew Poncenet was safe, because no nation could ever recover from the blow she was giving the Dhoth, not ever...
* * * *
The sword hung in an ornate case above her study door, Treseda discovered. It was her grandfather's sword, and had been mirrored in the dream down to the last detail, though she didn't take it down to test its heft.
Her study was strangely clean this morning—the furniture glossy with wax, the scrolls rolled and placed in their cupboards or spread smoothly on her desk, the inkwell filled and the quills new-trimmed. The mystery went unanswered until Jahannes came around midmorning, bearing the breakfast that she had forgotten. "The new boy's been cleaning up the house."
"Caiyo?" she asked, shoving aside a scroll that listed the provisions needed for a five-day journey taken by a group the size of Poncenent's population.
"Yes." He set a bowl of eggs before her and added, "You told me to have him doing something useful."
"So I did," she said between sips of black tea. "He's kept with his decision to stay, then?"
"He must have." Jahannes peered at the scroll on her desk and frowned. She hated to see him so troubled, but could think of nothing to say to comfort him.
"When do we leave?" he asked.
"As soon as we can." She spooned egg in her mouth. A single laying hen had survived, hiding in her garden during the Dhoth attack. It was a shame her worry turned the luxury bitter.
Someone knocked on the doorframe. Looking up, Treseda saw it was Caiyo, leading a man in messenger's robes. It took her another moment to realize that he was the same messenger who had spoken to her the night before. Whatever had happened since then didn't seem to have gone well for him.
"Sir." Treseda rose and pulled out a chair for him. The messenger sank down, half-helped by Caiyo. She shot a grateful look over his head at Jahannes, who was pouring another cup of tea.
"Thank you. I had planned to travel on to General Galadsten," the man said, almost inaudibly. "I couldn't get through...there is another Dhoth army, pushing south towards Galadsten's fort."
"Where did they come from?" Treseda sputtered.
"Does it matter?" Jahennes asked. To Treseda's surprise, she felt his hand on hers, and gave it a heartening squeeze.
"We will do what we can," she whispered.
"That's little enough," the messenger said. "I hear the king himself is reduced to praying to the Valadherat."
"The what?" Treseda and Jahannes said together.
"The gods of the Valadhen people. His wife's gods. I thought you'd know, your boy here's Valadhen. The dark skin shows it. They're religious people. May I..." Caiyo caught the messenger by the arm as he sagged, nearly falling to the floor.
Treseda and Jahennes rounded the desk to him, but he waved away their concern. "I'm just a bit shaken. I had a close call, nearly riding into a Dhoth camp."
"And now you're trapped here with the rest of us." Treseda turned away restlessly, and almost regretted it when Jahennes dropped her hand. "With Dhoth on both sides..."
"Poncenet will have to prepare for a siege," the messenge
r murmured.
"I'm not sure we can withstand one," she said.
He met her gaze squarely. "I'm not sure we have a choice."
* * * *
Treseda sent out riders, bearing the message to all of her scattered fiefs to gather in the walls of Poncenet. Her servants and tenants set to work fortifying those same walls—built for privacy, not defense. Heria, helped by Caiyo—the boy followed her like a shadow—prepared rooms and spare corners to receive the new arrivals.
The plans for siege were left to her.
Assuming the walls could hold—which she did, lacking the heart to do otherwise—the next thing Poncenet needed was food and supplies to last. With the fields and orchards burned, their only source of such was Treseda's garden, mostly ornamental, and whatever the inhabitants of the fiefdoms could bring with them. The king had offered generous recompense to any whose property or estates were harmed by the Dhoth, but that would have to wait until the war was over, or at least passed this place. And assuming they won it. In the meantime, it was up to Treseda to see that what they had would stretch and make do.
At least her dreams were pleasant.
She wouldn't have thought of them as such only a few days ago—too violent, with her dream-self engulfed in a bloody rage that the waking Treseda could barely recognize—but it felt good, very good, to harry the Dhoth from Adbara. From Calada. From Selita. From Anderum, from Poncenet. Even if she must awake every morning to know that they weren't really gone, but approaching from every side.
She gazed out the window and immediately wished she hadn't—it looked onto her burnt fields. Most of the charred grain stalks had crumbled now, and gray ash mixed with the sandy soil. She had heard that burned fields were rich when replanted. If they could be replanted.
"Your Grace." It was Jahannes, standing at the door. With a brilliant smile—brought by memories of another dream that, even if it did not involve driving Dhoth into hell, was strangely pleasant—she waved him in.
He did not smile back. "Your Grace...there's a problem."
Sergeant Banfelh, the messenger from Anderum, stood behind him, accompanied by Caiyo. The dark former slave boy had seemed to be everywhere lately, but he was a helpful presence and Treseda didn't mind.
"Which problem are you referring to?" she asked, unsure if she sounded weary or bitterly amused.
"The area cut off by the Dhoth armies is larger than we first realized," Banfelh said, "with many more inhabitants."
"And not a soldier among them," Jahennes added. Number of possible troops was normally something the sergeant should remark on; coming from her steward the observation was all the more unsettling.
"So we have that many more mouths to feed, and not a single hand more that can protect us." Treseda sighed and sank back in her chair. It was only one more complication, and not the largest one by far. "Is there anything more?"
"We're talking about a great deal more inhabitants," Banfelh said. "And there is the matter of feeding them." His gaze flickered to the window; all others followed it.
"Can the serfs bring their own food?"
"Do you think your fields were the only ones burned?"
"Everywhere," Jahennes murmured. "Everywhere we could reach. Every field, every orchard, every garden. Some have been reduced to gathering from the forest. We have our winter stores, but this late in autumn... we had depended on the harvest to see us through."
"Do you think I didn't know that?" Treseda snapped. She was immediately sorry. Her head felt overbalanced; she rubbed her throbbing skull. "More to feed, less food, no defense." Well, what else did she expect? Unable to stop herself, she spoke her thoughts aloud. "We didn't really think we could win this, did we?"
"Your Grace?" Jahennes green eyes widened.
"We can't." She bounced her fist on the table, looking out the window with a glare that seemed fit to burn the fields again. "There's no way. We're surrounded by two legions of Dhoth. We're holed up in a farming estate, not a fortress. And—begging the gods—look at what happened the last time we faced the Dhoth!" She was shaking, almost angry, beyond fear.
Jahennes and the messenger exchanged glances but said nothing. With a sinking heart, she realized they agreed with her.
"Go," she said. They went. Caiyo gave her a strange look before following them out. He was always underfoot, she thought, knowing she wasn't being fair. He was trying to help.
"You'd have been better off with Lord Shashensa," she said to him. He turned back for a moment, but said nothing.
Treseda looked at her desk. When she thought he was gone, she spoke again, just to hear the words aloud and prove they were real. "If only they hadn't burned the fields..."
* * * *
She went to bed on an empty stomach, her abdomen growling and sore from hunger pangs, the knowledge that if she ate others would soon be starving gnawing at her far more viciously, and her appetite lost. Sleeping hungry wasn't sleeping well, but she didn't care. She was tired, and as she fell asleep she knew she never wanted to wake up.
She opened her eyes at the sound of wind. Deep wind murmuring through the leaves of the forest, low wind moaning around the stone walls and pillars, and there—high, soft wind whispering to something that bowed at its passage. Treseda rose and looked out her window.
Golden in daylight, it bent silver-white in the shine of the moon. Seedheads heavy, stalks long, sprouting from earth so rich and black that it seemed she could see it even in the darkness: grain in her fields. She went to the window and peered farther out, there—down and across the road—she could see the tall trees of the orchard, red and heavy with fruit. A cloud passed the moon and her heart skipped; only when the shadow vanished and the fields remained could she breathe again. Her fields and orchards, her livelihood, the lifeblood of Poncenet, were returned.
For a moment, Treseda Nudoath could feel perfectly happy.
* * * *
Why?
Who had caused this? Why must one of her final nights be wasted on comforting delusion? Was it her own mind betraying her? Her own weakness? Or who?
Treseda's eyes burned as she walked the halls with blind steps. The dreams of killing Dhoth, of loving Jahennes, and now this...all her desires played out delightfully. Uselessly. She awoke to find nothing changed, but with her heart aching from knowing what the change might have been.
Who? There must be someone to blame. For dreams this magnificent, there must be someone responsible.
Treseda realized suddenly that her feet were leading her somewhere. And, reflecting, she found that it all made perfect sense.
He was always there, could see what she wanted, knew the things she saw in her dreams. Her grandfather's sword in her study. The way Jahennes clasped her hand. He had followed her gaze out the window... did he even hear her whisper, when she thought they had all left her?
She climbed the stairs to the loft above the stables, and raised her hand to the door to Caiyo's room.
It swung open at her touch. The inside was dimly lit; an oil lamp with chains for hanging rested beside a pallet on the floor. Caiyo sat there, legs crossed, staring into nothing. He looked up as she entered.
"You," she whispered. "You're causing the dreams."
"I am." His voice was clear, calm, a counter to her own fury. Treseda sucked in breath.
"Why?"
"I thought to thank you... for letting me in. For letting me stay."
"This is your thanks?" she spat. "Can't you see that it only hurts more—to have hope, and have it snatched away in the morning?"
"It hurts less than nightmares," he said.
"How can you know?" Her voice broke. She must relax. This fury wasn't good, it wouldn't help her, wouldn't help anyone... it was as useless as the dreams. Caiyo sat impassively. Something glinted at his neck—the slave tag. The one that marked him as the property of Lord Shashensa. It had not been taken off as she ordered.
"Get out," she said at last, thickly. "Go. Now. I don't want you to spend another night u
nder this roof."
He rose and left, silent—didn't plead, didn't weep, didn't stop to gather anything. He had nothing to take.
The gates were closed. She knew she should go and order their opening herself, spare him the shame of directing his own exile. But she was tired, suddenly, and felt about to weep. And she was stung with shame, black and sharp as a Dhoth's whip.
Will he die out there? she wondered. And realized that she cared, cared far too much for his fate, the way she cared for all of Poncenet: she cared so deeply that she was worn out from it, as if she didn't care at all. So she could prophesy its doom, and send him out to his own, with no feeling inside her at all. Except for something akin to rage.
She succumbed to her anger and began weeping.
* * * *
Treseda sent out scouts the next day. She didn't know why she bothered, knowing how a siege from the Dhoth would end, but perhaps others would want to watch their death approaching, and perhaps spying on the Dhoth let them feel useful. They reported the north advancing steadily—they were past Galadsten's fort, no knowing what had happened there—and the south rested, waiting.
She spent the night with Jahennes.
If he was surprised to find her at his door in her nightshift, he didn't show it. He stepped aside to let her in with a faint smile. They didn't speak much, but there was a sense of familiarity between them, as if they had come together before. She remembered the dreams—but pushed the memory aside.
Afterward, she paced across his room. He sat in the bed, watching her, saying nothing. She studied the furnishings, the lamps, the small clay sculptures and ink bowls and long quill pens, learning him by his possessions. Thinking of him, instead of everything else.
She stopped at his desk, covered by the sprawl of an unrolled map. There, sketched in green in the southwest corner, a cluster of domed tents: the Dhoth. A red army was marked in the north, with arrows showing the lines of advance. Closer, around the black square of Poncenent estate, fields were outlined in charcoal gray—the burned ones.
