The Empress put her head on one side, considering. ‘Are you referring to the natural order of power between individuals?’
Borze stared at him, rightly looking as if he felt insulted by the charge but Tzaban had no time for such things and ignored this. ‘Yes.’
‘I am not sure they are blind, it is simply not the focus of their attention, as it is yours.’
‘It affects them, but they act as if it also affronts them,’ Tzaban said, pursuing slowly, stalking. ‘As if it is theirs to change, but make no effort to change.’ The language was hard; words bad enough but worse in the foreign tongue. He hoped that his tone and the attitude of his body correctly filled in the missing gaps and showed his patience, puzzlement, distrust and respect.
‘I am sure it does affront them very much,’ the Empress said, sitting back and drawing her legs up under the white dress until she sat inside the throne’s seat completely, arms wrapped around her knees like a little girl. ‘It is our fancy to imagine we have outgrown our primal natures and educated ourselves away from their grip upon our actions. I doubt there is a mage or a vaut in the Empire who doesn’t consider themselves superior to those we term animals and lesser. And they include most of the less magical population in those categories.’
He hadn’t expected her to be so candid.
There was a small commotion and the guards on the door opened it suddenly, causing them all to turn and look, led by Hakka. His continued calm informed Tzaban this was someone he knew who posed no kind of danger though Tzaban’s nose suddenly told him he should lie flat and try nothing. His skin crawled with the need to do that as he remained standing at the Empress’ command; he didn’t understand and froze solid, fight in his limbs so intense that they started to twitch.
The Empress craned her neck without otherwise moving and then sat up as she saw who it was and clapped her hands once in pleasure,
‘Master Night! Thank you for coming at such short notice.’
Tzaban turned and Borze made an awkward salute – one of many they seemed to drag out for various occasions and which Tzaban had learned indicated an acknowledgement of a social equality but a spiritual deference to the receiver. The second part of the gesture, indicated by the depth of the head dip and retreat, was significant. He longed to escape. Night smelled strange but the Empress overpowered that and he was now only a polite toy, able to move and talk by her will alone.
‘Honoured Guest Tzaban, this is our most valued Master of the Call, Parlumi Night,’ the Empress said, her tone glowing with affection and a tinge of mischief.
The woman – no, the man, Tzaban thought, correcting himself and then suddenly being plunged into profound doubt. He stalled into a mental and physical silence on that point of identification, awed by his own inability to decipher the gender or the identity of the person as they flowed towards him. He was forced to assess them point by point instead of as a whole.
Parlumi Night moved in soft, liquid curves, a ballooning, complicated gown emphasising and following every gesture in vast trails of ribbons ranging from white to dark charcoal grey. The curves and the sensuality spoke of women to Tzaban, but the authoritative power of the stride and the juggernaut energy of the progress, as relentless as it was graceful, said that this was a male in command of a territory. A smell of mineral elements, warm animal musk and flowers washed up his nostrils in a tide of further confusions. His nose, never faltering, informed him this was a female in oestrus. It was also male and considered itself unassailable and on home ground.
As a final desperate act, one he never normally resorted to, he looked into the face.
It was no help. Handsome, delicate, made-up and strong, it looked back at him and enjoyed his astonishment with the kind of expression that suggested this was a very great pleasure indeed. The smile was, if anything, more disarming than the rest put together. The smile would be happy to eat him alive.
There was only one word really to describe such a biological mixup with that kind of mind in residence and that power of spirit animating it. Parlumi Night may have looked human but her resemblance to most of them ended right there. Tzaban knew Karoo when he smelt it.
‘I thought you’d like to meet up,’ the Empress said.
Tzaban looked at her directly. ‘Who else knows?’
‘Nobody outside this room, I can assure you,’ the Empress said. ‘What ARE you doing here, Tzaban? Why now?’
At her tone, Hakka relaxed and leaned on his polearm, fixing Tzaban with a heavy, interested gaze. Tzaban felt, bizarrely, that he was among friends. Borze also turned. Parlumi Night stood, politely attentive.
He gathered his words carefully, turning them over in his mind before he spoke, to be sure. ‘You are fighting a war you cannot win. All of you will die. I have come to persuade you to stop.’
The Empress frowned and the sense of her presence increased dramatically. He felt the other seven focus their entire attention on him and knew then they were truly different people, not some odd eight-spirited person. They saw through her. He knew of shamans like this in the high north, but this felt different and he didn’t have the ability to see how.
Tzaban waited.
‘What makes you so sure?’ the Empress asked.
‘You’re fighting the Karoo now,’ he said. ‘All Karoo. Not just in the south. Karoo are one, like you and the others in your mind. Step back into the plains, mountains, deserts – all the places the humans live – and it will be over. Continue to the forest and it will also be over. Karoo need the forest. We already let you roam everywhere else you are able. But you will not have the forest. Retreat or push on. Live, or die.’ The speech exhausted him.
Borze was scowling, thinking hard but he wasn’t going to speak. Parlumi Night’s eyes glittered with feeling but even she would not interrupt the Empress’ gentle silence.
‘If this was your purpose, Tzaban, why didn’t you talk to me first? Instead you come to the gate, ask for the general and seek employment like any hired mercenary.’
‘I was studying you close by. Karoo ignore humans, mostly. Only where we are forced into the same region, then we look, listen. We see your activity in the land and water, in the air. But don’t know you. I came to learn.’
‘Alone? Into the middle of the enemy? Just like that? They send just one man?’
‘Not all Karoo could come here. Maybe only I would come.’ He glanced at Parlumi Night, shimmering in her dark robes, unsettled. ‘But some others must have been before.’
The Empress was on the edge of her throne. ‘Who were you to report to?’
Tzaban stared at her, blinking through the question. ‘No one.’
‘Who is your commander? Who is in charge?’
Tzaban met her soft, grey gaze. He wanted to please her very much but he had only the truth to offer. ‘No one.’
‘If you know so little about us how is it that you know I am joined to the other seven Empresses?’ Her manner remained girlish but the pressure she was exerting now, chemically, was so seductive and compelling he felt entranced almost to make up answers in order to satisfy her. He recognised this but had no defence.
‘They are here,’ he sketched his hand in front of his face, to show her that he saw them in hers.
She sat back. ‘Are all Karoo like you?’
He glanced at Parlumi Night, not understanding why she would say something like that, as part Karoo herself, when the answer must be obvious. ‘No.’
‘How many are like you?’ the Empress asked. ‘Like… cat people.’
Tzaban looked at her, the soft scent pressing at him. ‘I don’t know. Some. Maybe.’
She scowled, impatience arrowing at him. ‘What do you mean? Where are you from? Borze says the north. Your kind live in the north?’
‘Some Karoo live in the north. But only I am like me. Among those in that camp most are shamans, but not like others. They want to be alone.’ A massive gulf opened before him. He must explain things and bridge it, but he stalled, unable eve
n to start. ‘I had to leave them. Was not like them.’
Parlumi Night stepped forwards, breaking the rigid framework that held him in place. ‘Don’t worry so. Our ignorance of Karoo is legendary stuff. Come, why don’t we eat and drink and you can explain a little more?’
Tzaban stared at her, unable to believe she had broken the Empress’ rapture at all, and was not being rebuked. Instead, the Empress clapped her hand to her mouth before removing it to say, ‘You’re right! Borze, go summon the girls. Food and drinks. We’ll go into the Lounge. Too too focused in here. What was I thinking?’ She hesitated then and turned back to him. ‘Tzaban, are you for men or women? Or… no… well… are… Do you, would you… Parlumi, help me!’
Parlumi Night smiled and the room darkened to Tzaban, as if a new, particular night was falling; the soft and seductive dusk of spring evenings. He realised belatedly that this was the reason for her name.
‘I do not require a mate,’ he said, feeling defensive hackles rise.
Parlumi Night looked him in the eye and her gaze seemed to lengthen as her eyes narrowed, drawing thoughts to a close. ‘You are mistaken,’ she said. Tzaban did not falter but she shrugged softly as if he had. ‘It is females for him in any case, but he’s not like these lollygagging Steppelords, all macho honour and command and fake restraint.’ Here she shot Hakka a wry glance but he pointedly ignored her. ‘He is slightly unnerved by us as too alien, as well he might be. Hence he declines. I wonder… Perhaps you wouldn’t mind my student joining us?’
‘Hey!’
Tzaban was startled by a shove and the voice. He looked to his side as he staggered and saw Hakka, who had jolted him, looking at him with knowing and amusement, also warning. The urge to fight subsided. Too late he realised his hands were flexing and stalled them. He bowed to the Empress but she was looking at Night. He inclined his head one degree in thanks for being prevented from issuing Night an open challenge, which would have been disastrous.
‘You took a student?’ the Empress was saying.
Night shrugged, ‘One does as one sees fit, no?’
‘Yes but… You never take students.’ The Empress was both amused and somehow disheartened by a surprise. ‘I distinctly recall you saying you would never take another student after Zharazin Mazhd as long as you lived, though you were always close-mouthed as to why.’
‘Well, things change, don’t they?’ Night said and the two of them shared a glance that promised there would be some form of explanation or reckoning later on.
‘In that case, by all means, we would be most interested to see said changes in action,’ the Empress agreed. She stood up and beckoned them all, looking at Hakka until he left Tzaban and came to her side. ‘To the Lounge.’
Tzaban was seated on his own rug as part of a circle that placed him opposite the Empress. She put Hakka next to him, Night on the other side between them. Borze she placed between herself and her guard. Runner girls were sent out for supplies and to fetch Night’s student. He didn’t miss Night’s gaze close on him as the girl in question was escorted into their midst. If Night wanted some special information by viewing his reaction he could hardly conceal it.
She was small, young and pale, wearing what he came to know as scholar’s robes – a huge swathing affair of greys. Its cowl was back, revealing her face, wan, tired, nervous. She had pale hair of the kind Tzaban associated with inherited weakness but her expression defied that. He saw a relentless kind of intelligence in her eyes. She was at a cycle point that made her interesting, but not compelling. When she saw Borze nothing flickered in her facial composure but her hands shook. Tzaban sniffed the air compulsively and concluded they had mated recently. The entire city reeked of sex, it was not surprising in itself. But she and he both seemed to think it was and that puzzled him. He looked at Hakka, his touchstone.
Hakka was looking at Night’s student with recognition of some kind, but his interest was other than sexual. Tzaban wondered if it was because she was so young, could not be more than sixteen, he thought, or because of some other feature that marked her out. He looked at the Empress and saw the similarities between the two as the Empress herself rose to make formal introductions. A glance passed between them that was purely two young girls acknowledging each other as simple peers, looking to see if each was friend or rival.
Tzaban knew of no other place ruled by women than the Empire. He knew this young Empress was an anomaly – most of the commanding powers were offices held by mature if not old matrons, but these two together suddenly hit him like a bolt between the eyes. He saw hope, life, fertility, power… He blinked and the moment passed. He heard the others speaking as his mind tried to grasp something alien and profoundly important. Alien, familiar, it danced just out of reach. He unfocused, sitting still, barely conscious of his surroundings so that when the student turned to him he could only blink his eyelids low and let his chin drop to mark greeting her.
Her name circled with the insight in his mind. Isabeau Huntingore. They became tangled, irretrievably. He did not know why the Empire pursued its war with the Karoo, but he did understand now that there was some hope of his mission succeeding. He felt that these humans might survive an introduction. Blinking, he found Parlumi Night observing him.
‘To return to our most interesting subject,’ she said, clearly meaning him. ‘What exactly do you mean that the northern Karoo are not like you? How?’
‘I was outcast,’ he admitted and felt the bite of that humiliation and rage all anew. He had to rake a hand through his hair to smooth it down, stall his aggression. ‘I was, am, throwback. They were peaceful. I am not. They are joined… like you…’ He looked at the Empress. ‘But I am not. Not with them. I ruined their unity. And,’ he waved a hand down the length of himself to indicate he meant physically, ‘I do not resemble them. I am for fighting. They are for peace. They are part of the Karoo inner creation. Dreamers. I outside that. I into the world. No place with them more. No place anywhere.’
Now they were all staring at him. He sat like stone.
‘But I thought you said you had a mission. Who sent you?’
‘I did.’
The Empress looked at him. ‘You’re alone?’ she asked finally, all her thoughts dropping to that. He saw disappointment, disturbance.
‘Yes. No. No Karoo is alone. All Karoo are one. I am not with them. Not same as alone.’ But he wondered if it was.
Hakka spoke, ‘No two Karoo are physically alike. All of them seem to have a mental connection – hm, not like Imperial telepaths – there are no words involved as I understand it. They just know what’s going on when they choose to link up.’
Tzaban burned to know how the Steppe man knew this but he did not speak.
Hakka looked at him, ‘Are you locked out of that speech? Is that what you mean by not with them?’
‘Yes,’ Tzaban said, continually surprised by Hakka’s very un-Steppe behaviour and manner of talking, his very Steppe posturing, intended to demonstrate clearly that there was one Lord of the lands and everyone could fuck off if they didn’t like it. To the Empress, Hakka showed almost no deference but Tzaban had no doubt if she had ordered it he would have cut his own head off without a second thought. This un-tallying between thought and action, body and mind, bothered him like flies.
‘Why?’ Night asked. Her voice was honeyed, a coat on its intrusive curiosity.
Tzaban fumbled about in their too many words. ‘The tribe in the north, all tranquil. I am not. Told me to get out, head south, to places you are fighting. Or just go. I ruin their dream. Ruin their peace. Not welcome any more.’
He did not mention when this had happened, how many years had passed and how slow his progress south had been, that instead of passing through many foreign territories he had lingered here to watch and study creatures that seemed more like him than his own kind. Those illusions had died by now. Living on the Steppe had done that: Steppe humans led harsh lives which he would not have minded but for the frequent brutality.
He had been thrown out for aggression, but their daily petty cruelties, their culture, depressed him. He’d lived apart from them too, paying visits, and being visited by those who thought he had shaman powers to invest in them. When he didn’t they let him alone.
Living here seemed, even after a few days, impossibly hard in a completely different way. A year of spying had brought only a superficial notion of the reality and to understand it was beyond him. Only despair would have brought him here. He hadn’t recognised it until now.
Night’s student opened her mouth, glanced at the Empress, at Night, and then said, ‘Do you speak for the Karoo?’
He attempted the truth again, sliding off its precipitous faces. ‘They do not know my words or deeds, but I speak as if for them, what they would say. Your trespass is not allowed. You will be consumed if you do not retreat. Please retreat.’
‘But you’re here talking for yourself, they didn’t ask you to come,’ she said, unnecessarily he felt. So many repeats.
‘They did not ask me to come. I speak for myself. I speak for them.’
The Empress turned to the general. ‘Borze, what exactly has he done here?’
Tzaban waited, grateful to be out of central attention.
‘Trained mercenary recruits in survival, fitness.’
‘Did you ever see him fight?’
‘No.’
‘Tzaban. You were outcast for breaking the peace. Why? What exactly did you do?’
They were masterful in not staring at him.
‘I broke their dream.’ He knew that would not be enough. ‘Not did something. Am predator. Not fitting. Bad dreams.’ He felt hopeless in his stuttering and looked at Night, wondering why she did nothing to help when she must know how to say these things. In that glance he saw she didn’t. She was not enough Karoo. ‘How did you get made?’ he asked her, searching for anything.
‘No idea,’ she said in her purple voice. ‘They found me at the city gate in a sack.’ Her near-black eyes bored at him as if she’d drill out the answers she wanted but she didn’t speak. At least in that moment she was Karoo.
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