All the same, it was with real relief that Rap inspected his own familiar faunish face again, flat nose and goblin tattoos and all. It had never been much of a face, but he was glad to have it back.
He grinned at the very pink Jalon, and then at Gathmor. “Lay a course for Arakkaran, Cap’n!”
“Aye, sir!”
“Look!” Jalon pointed.
Quip’rian was waving from Allena’s deck. Beside him stood the elvish Rap—and Jalon, and Gathmor. All four waved. Rap raised his hand in farewell, and then turned his face to the sea.
Rushing seas:
One port, methought, alike they sought—
One purpose hold wher’er they fare;
O bounding breeze, O rushing seas,
At last, at last, unite them there.
Clough, As Ships Becalmed
TWELVE
Female of the species
1
Morning sun sparkled on the great harbor as Dawn Pearl crept slowly toward her berth. Inos stood on deck with Azak on one side of her and Kade on the other, studying all the bustle and the astonishing variety of shipping—very much as she had wanted to study it that other morning, months ago, when she had been lumbered with the odious baby Charak. Now she was much less interested, for the bright hopes of that memorable day were tarnished. Spoiled! Crumbled to ruin. She dared not look at Azak, for his feelings must be as dark as her own. They had gambled and lost, and they still lacked even the tiny compensation of knowing for certain who had won.
Even the medley of scents was oddly familiar to Inos—the fish stinks of a harbor and the flower scents of the city. She felt far more like a returning resident than she would have expected, or wanted. The shining palace on the hill was a derision, a marble jail waiting to take her back, a sarcophagus. She was draped again in the despicable chaddar of humiliation, a recaptured fugitive.
“Look!” Kade exclaimed. “On the dock. Isn’t that a reception party?”
It was indeed, and Inos had detected it long before Kade had. Azak had probably seen it even earlier, for he had the falcon vision of his race. Neither of them had commented.
“Led by Kar,” Azak murmured.
Inos could not see that yet, but it would be a welcome sight for Azak. If the devoted Kar still lived, then no other prince had seized the title of sultan. And that thought made Inos realize that Azak must have feared for his life since he learned Dawn Pearl’s true destination.
Who had told him, or when, he had not said, but he had been released from the brig as soon as the ship cleared Brogog, the last port before Arakkaran. Gaunt and grim, he had spoken very little since. He was dressed again as a prince, all in green: trousers, tunic, cloak, and turban. Inos did not know where he obtained those. Likely they had been slipped aboard by Elkarath’s women, as it must have been they who had smuggled the Zarkian costume for Inos and Kade into the baggage. The whole cruel buffoonery had been very well planned.
Azak had hardly spoken. She did not know how he felt about her now. Was he still in love with her? She could not read his thoughts.
But Azak was returning as sultan, and apparently his throne was still secure. His lack of jewels and scimitar would be soon rectified if the efficient Kar was in charge of the welcome.
Welcome? Public reception … they were not even to be granted the grace of an unobtrusive entry into the city. There would be bands and a parade. Rejoice!—the sultan returns!
Mockery.
Inos turned away from the sight of the band and the assemblage of princes. She glanced around her to confirm that the chests had been brought up and that all was ready for disembarkation. Dawn Pearl would leave on the same tide.
Well! Over there was the shrouded form of little Frainish, who had been so chagrined to discover that she was coming home to Arakkaran instead of venturing forth to Angot. But at her side stood Skarash, inscrutable again in the flowing robes of a Zarkian merchant. Well, well!
Master Skarash had supposedly disembarked at Torkag. No one had seen him since, so no one had been able to question him. And here he was back? Either this was more sorcery, or he had been plying the sailors with gold to keep him hidden. There was one way to solve that question.
Inos strode across the deck and accosted him. “Master Skarash?”
He raised his chin and continued to stare at the harbor, arms folded, ignoring her. He was being a djinn again, and djinns did not speak to other men’s wives, or pretended wives.
“I was hoping for a farewell kiss,” Inos said.
He twitched. Garnet eyes flickered toward her, then away again. His Adam’s apple lurched, but he did not speak.
“If I tell Azak about that episode,” Inos said, “ then he will kill you now, with his bare hands.”
Again the hard swallow.
“I shall count to three, then I tell him how you forced your kisses on me in the cellars. One!”
“Go away!”
“Not until I have some answers. Two!”
Frainish was wide-eyed above her yashmak. Skarash did not look around, but gems of sweat gleamed amid the pink stubble on his lip. “What do you want to know?” he whispered.
Inos had already gained one answer—Skarash was not a sorcerer. “Whom do you serve?”
“My grandfather, of course.”
“And whose votary is he?”
He licked his lips. The dock was very close now, Kar and the dozens of other princes clearly visible, all loyally smiling. The band lurched into the clamorous discords of the Arakkaranian national anthem.
“Warlock Olybino’s.”
Aha! "Since when?”
Skarash turned a furious, frightened gaze on Inos. “Since the night we reached Ullacarn. The centurion … You saw! That was the warlock himself!”
“Yes, I know. So your grandfather did serve Rasha when we left here?”
He snarled at her. “Yes, and now he doesn’t, and it’s all your fault!”
“Mine?”
“You escaped from Tall Cranes. He had to use so much power to find you and get you back that the warlock found him! You spoiled everything, Inosolan! Now go away!”
“I am not quite satisfied. So it is not Rasha’s will that brings us back here. Does she know we are coming?”
“Yes. I think so. She must if they do.” He waved at the quay.
“And why are we coming?”
Skarash’s ruddy face was all shiny with fright. He glanced momentarily over at Azak, and then back to Inos. “He is watching! Please go away!”
“Not until you tell.”
“The wardens do not need you! The Krasnegar problem has been solved. You are nothing, Inosolan! Nothing!”
She flinched. Yet somehow it was almost a comfort to have one’s worst suspicions confirmed, the uncertainty laid to rest. Now the fairer hopes could be discarded and put away. Now Krasnegar could be forgotten, for whoever ruled there in future, an ex-queen would not be allowed to return. Other alternatives could be examined, and Inos could start to make some plans. The hurt … The hurt could wait.
“So why bother to send us back?”
Skarash looked longingly at the dock, as if wondering if he might leap to safety and disappear into the crowd. Then he sneaked another glance across at Azak, and paled at what he saw.
“As a message to Rasha. She is nothing, also! Olybino is the stronger—he broke her loyalty spell. Grandsire was her votary and now is his. He can enslave Rasha also!”
Aha! again.
“Please, Inos!” Skarash whispered. “Have mercy! You are killing me. He is still sultan of this city and Grandsire is not here to shield me.”
Inos hesitated, then nodded. “I shall not forget the kiss,” she said sweetly. Let him worry about what that meant! She spun around in a swirl of hems and stalked back to the glaring Azak, picking her way between ropes and baggage and hurrying sailors.
Things were a little clearer now.
“Well?” Azak demanded. There might be hint of twinkle in his scowl, mak
ing Inos wonder how much he had deliberately been aiding the interrogation of Skarash.
“Rasha knows we are coming. Olybino has sent us back as a threat—his sorcery is stronger than hers. She is in danger herself now.”
“Gods of the Good!” The tall young man’s face broke into a wide smile.
But Rasha was still a sorceress, and she would be waiting in the palace.
2
Nothing!
All during the bowings, the prostrations, the speeches of welcome, that dread word kept echoing to and fro in her head.
You are nothing, Inosolan!
As the band played and the procession moved slowly up the long and hilly road to the palace, she sat with Kade in a decently screened carriage, accompanied by two anonymously shrouded women whose presence stifled conversation completely.
She thought about being nothing. If her kingdom had gone and she was nothing, then surely she had been nothing before? Inosolan had always been nothing. Krasnegar had been everything. Bitter taste.
The crowds were not cheering for her—they could have no idea who was inside that opaque little oven bouncing by on its unsprung axle. They knelt with their faces in the dust and they cheered their sultan on his big black horse. They were shouting Azak! Azak! Azak! but it sounded very much like Nothing! Nothing! Nothing! to Inos.
Now she need not worry about Krasnegar. Now she was free to consider the alternatives. There were not very many to consider.
She had no assets. She knew no trade. Her needlework was scandalous, her lute playing pained the ear. Who ever heard of a female hostler, or a cook who could catch the dish but not prepare it? With a royal title she had been useful timber for matchmakers like the dowager duchess of Kinvale. Without it, she might make a governess or a dancing instructor. Or she might marry a rich, fat merchant who hoped to rise in society and needed guidance in gentility.
Of course she had one asset. Doubtless she could soon acquire the skill required to use it to its best advantage; but that road led down to the pit that Rasha had known, the bog from which almost no one but Rasha had ever escaped.
Nothing!
If her father had told her a word of power as everyone believed, then she had mistaken it. So far she had displayed no signs of being an occult genius at anything.
Why had the warlock been so cruel as to send her back to Zark? Anywhere in the Impire would have been better for an unattached female with no skills, no title, no money, no friends.
She might have one friend, but one she was not certain she wanted. And she was not even sure of him any more. Since being released from the brig, Azak had not said he loved her. Was it she he had thought he loved, or only the romantic myth of a beautiful, dispossessed queen? What had he dreamed of—being her husband, or being king of Krasnegar? If he still wanted her, could she ever want him?
The Azak who had been good company in the desert had been Azak the lionslayer, a freelance swordsman with no kingdom to worry about. The Azak she had just glimpsed on the dock had been the ruthless sultan, grim and saturnine, terrifying everyone.
She might have learned to love the one; she doubted she could ever love the other.
If Rasha must now flee from Arakkaran to evade the warlock, then Azak would be free to be sultan as he wished to be. He would be free to marry, if he chose, although he could no longer marry a queen, because there was no queen available. He might prefer a woman of his own race, one who could do a better job of running the royal household. Who would not shock princely society by wanting to ride to hounds. Who would be properly respectful of her lord, not teasing and talking back.
He lusted after her, Elkarath had said. But Azak was never petty. He might withdraw his offer of marriage, from the needs of political expediency, but … but surely there would always be a bed for her in the palace?
They had gambled together.
Inos had lost.
And Rasha had lost. So Azak had won.
And if Inos accepted the job of son-breeder, what happened when she was forty, with Azak long since assassinated and someone else on the throne? To whom would the chattel be reassigned?
She thought about all these things in the hot and stuffy carriage as it climbed the hill. She was still thinking about them as it rattled to a halt in the palace yard.
“After the rigors of the desert and the confines of a ship,” Kade said brightly, “ it will be nice to enjoy some really luxurious decadence again.”
3
Their old quarters had been taken over by another prince and his household. Kade and Inos were ushered to a small suite of rooms that they had never seen before. Compared to the others they were dingy; compared to anywhere else they were still opulent. A half-dozen shrouded women waited to attend them, but they were surly and uncommunicative. There was no sign of Zana.
Inos demanded a bath, and enjoyed it. Then she defiantly scrabbled through her trunk until she found a slinky Imperial dress of cool green and white silk, and she braided up her hair herself. She smothered herself in pearls and admired her reflection in a mirror and wanted to weep.
Kade, when she appeared, had donned a Zarkian chaddar of white cotton, although her head was uncovered.
They hugged without words, and wandered out to a balcony overlooking a jeweled garden. Parrots screamed among the trees.
“Nice to be home?” Inos asked bitterly, sniffing the flower scents in the air.
“I enjoy the little comforts.” Kade waited, and when she received no answer, added, “ Don’t believe everything that Master Skarash says, my dear. He’s not a very reliable witness.”
“But it makes sense. It all makes sense. And nothing else does.”
Kade sighed and went to sit on a soft chair. “Well, you may have lost your kingdom. We can’t be sure of that yet. And even if you have—it wasn’t ever very much of a kingdom, you know.”
Battling a lump in her throat, Inos said nothing.
“Kinvale was always more comfortable. And Kinvale is still there. We shall always be welcome.”
“To accept charity from that sly old bitch who set Yggingi on us?”
“Inos!”
“It’s true! And she will still believe I have a word of power. She will brew up some other foul scheme to rack it out of me for her precious moronic son.”
Kade beamed, being motherly. “Well then, not Kinvale. We know hundreds of people in the Impire. We shall go and visit Hub.”
“And just how do we get there? On camels? Will our earrings buy camels?”
“They would buy a lot of things.” Kade smiled brightly. “You are young, and healthy, and wealthy, and well educated. You have beauty and grace. I am sure that Sultana Rasha will still be sympathetic, perhaps even more so now. You have been harshly treated—by men—and she disapproves of women being oppressed. She will see you on your way, back to the Impire where you belong. She may even magic you there. Now that the wardens know about her, she has no reason to conceal her existence or her powers.”
Inos was not sure she believed all that. She did not trust Rasha, and certainly did not want to be beholden to her.
Kade tried again. “Remember the God’s words? You were told to trust in love. Love is worth more than all the kingdoms of Pandemia.”
“Whose love? Azak’s?”
Her aunt hesitated and pursed her lips. “If you want my honest opinion … No, I don’t think so. You do have a great attraction for men, Inos. He will not be the last man to fall in love with you.”
“But none more truly,” said Azak, coming out of the doorway.
Inos jumped and bit back a sharp comment about eavesdroppers. He was sultan again; she must watch her tongue.
He strode over to her and stopped, very close, and his jewels glittered in the sunlight. His fringe of beard was a two-week stubble, but it was enough to distinguish him from the dashing imp he had been in Ullacarn, or the bushy lionslayer of the desert. He stared down at her with his dark red eyes.
“I have not changed,” he
said.
She tried not to show how much that meant. Then she felt guilty. She wanted to use that love against him, to win favors, not to love him in return. Could she ever? Queens did not marry for love; they married for reasons of state.
Was that so very different from what Rasha had done in her younger days?
He smiled, but it was not a very warming smile. It looked too deliberate. “No answer?”
“Azak … I don’t know what to say. Kade was just warning me that we still don’t know for certain about Krasnegar. Skarash is not the most reliable of witnesses.”
Azak snorted. “Of course not. Well, you shall remain here as—”
He twisted and went rigid. She saw beads of perspiration break out on his face.
“Azak! What’s wrong?”
He relaxed with a gasp and shivered. “I came to tell you that we are summoned. I must be taking too long. That was a nudge, that’s all.”
Rasha! The spider at the heart of the web.
“Then let us go right away!”
He was angry at having revealed weakness. “There is no hurry. Have you a shawl or something … for the walk?”
Inos nodded and ran ahead indoors to find a cloth to cover her hair and shoulders. Kade came close behind her.
4
Jeweled amber eyes rolled to inspect the visitors, and the carven demon face writhed into speech. “State your name and business!” On the other flap of the door, the matching demon merely curled its wooden lips in a sneer.
“Sultan Azak of Arakkaran and Queen Inosolan of Krasnegar!” No occult fakery could teach Azak anything about sneering.
“Who is the other one?”
“Her Royal Highness Princess Kadolan.”
There was a pause then, as if the grotesque were reporting to its mistress. The corridor was dim; it felt as cold as a Krasnegarian midwinter. Inos was trying not to shiver, absurdly glad that Azak was there beside her. She doubted she would have had the courage to come and face the sorceress alone. Then she sensed him looking down at her. She glanced up.
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