The Leopard (Marakand)

by K V Johansen

  “Don’t,” he said, as the man tensed. Lightning showed the blade. His attacker held no knife. Think why. He didn’t want Ghu dead; he wanted him captive, and he was neither thief nor street guard. Someone he’d seen, briefly, this day; there was that familiarity in the feel of him, the air about him. He was the man from the kitchen of the coffeehouse; not the thin worried one, the other, who had thought something stirred and looked around for it, when Ivah led Ghu to the stairs unseen.

  Ghu felt movement, the man’s arms moving stealthily, or hands, whispering under his breath. He felt the magic gathering, dropped his own knife and grabbed for hands and mouth, put the knee of his bad leg over the man’s throat instead, pressing a threat, fingers clapped to his lips over wiry beard.

  “Wizard,” he whispered. “Hush. You’re from the Doves. I thought you were the guard.”

  A stillness. He lifted his hand slightly. The wizard should have been trying to bite; he would have been.

  The man rolled. Ghu sprang back and let him go, leaned with the wall behind him, balancing on one foot and a toe, his knife in hand again. They were washed in lightning, and he saw the man standing, wary, arms spread, a short knife now in hand. Desert-braided hair and a cameleer’s coat, not the caftan of earlier.

  He waited for the thunder to die. “What do you want?” he asked. “I stole nothing from your house. I’m only looking for my friend.”

  “Why call me a wizard?” Was it fear that underlay the voice?

  “Because you are,” he said.

  Now he knew the man’s fear, yes, in the catch of breath, the utter stillness.

  “Red Mask,” the wizard said then, not even an accusation, just a whisper. Resignation, as of one who knew his own death.

  “No! I’m not from the temple. Anyway, I thought they didn’t speak, or is that a lie you tell to foreigners?”

  “Who knows what you do, when you lay your veil aside and creep out spying in the city?”

  “I’m not from the temple,” Ghu repeated. “I only came to Marakand today. To the suburb yesterday. Truly.”

  “Why come sneaking around the Doves, spying on us? Don’t deny you were there with her, and both of you hidden. I smelt her perfume cross the kitchen. I felt the air move. I should have hunted for you there and then, but I thought it was nothing, imagination, till my nephew at bedtime said a man jumped off the balcony. It took me far too long to pick up your trail, and that’s not natural, either. You or Ivah, one of you’s still hiding you.”

  Ghu admitted, “I’m hard to see. I know. It doesn’t make me a Red Mask. It doesn’t make me anything. I’m not even a wizard.”

  “So what are you to the lying scribe, then?”

  “Nothing. No spy. The scribe hid me from the street guard.”

  He saw it, felt it, rather, in the man’s gathering tension, like a bow being drawn. Ghu might be a temple spy or he might not, but now he had to die, because he, a stranger, knew there was a living wizard in Marakand.

  “No,” he said. “You don’t have to do that. I’m no enemy to you or yours.”

  But the man came at him, not to capture this time, and he was a caravan guard, a fighter. But the forage-knife was a wicked tool and used for butchering as much as cutting brush and green fodder. The man knew it, left him wary room till the last. He could have laid the man’s arm open as he guarded his face, but he only knocked aside the sudden slash from the darkness and punched for the arch between the wizard’s ribs with the knife reversed, the hilt a weight to knock the wind and maybe the sense out him, but the man was already rocking back and out of reach, slipping aside in the dark. The rain poured down, no thunder, just the dark curtain of the water and the night, the drumming of it loud on the stones. Ghu didn’t dare move from where he stood braced against the wall, because to fall now was to lay himself open to the wizard’s knife.

  This wizard who only wanted to keep his family safe, or Ahj—did it come to that choice?

  No, it was this wizard or himself. Ahj’s fate lay beyond Ghu’s grasp.

  “I’m not your enemy,” he tried again. “Wizard, can’t you tell truth from lie?”

  Movement he didn’t see. The knife bit, slashing a sleeve and his arm beneath. He seized the hand that held the blade and smashed it into the wall, almost easier to feel, to know where the blow came with his eyes shut rather than straining in the dark. He heard the grunt, the thin noise of the knife falling, and let go before he was jerked off balance. Wet arm, but his sleeve was wet anyway, and he hardly felt the cut. Did the man have a second knife? He didn’t follow with any second blow. Maybe he thought he’d missed. Ghu slid his own knife away to its sheath once more.

  “No weapon,” he said, a bit breathless, a bit desperate, voice raised reckless over the rain. “Look, take my hands, see? Trust. For the sake of the Old Great Gods, trust me, work your spells and see that I speak the truth.”

  No answer, just a rushing body. The night became desperate scuffle, Ghu grabbing the wizard as he flung himself in close, both of them on the ground, locked together. The other had the advantage there, a greater weight and resolved on killing, but Ghu was fast, at least, and had a better sense of his enemy’s body in the dark. He jerked away from the hands that closed around his throat and for a moment the uppermost body, got a thumb against the other’s eye, a grip on the edge of bone, enough to be real threat. He pinned one hand down where it could do no harm.

  The other came up against Ghu’s throat, not to seize but a nail scratching, a word gasped, and there was a ringing in his ears, a muffled rushing, as if he were drowning, fainting. He let the other go, rolling to draw the knife one last time, to use it, at last, because he could not die here. The wizard’s spell might be only to hold him senseless a moment, it was not so easy as all that to kill with a simple working, but he judged the man was desperate enough to cast honour aside and kill an unconscious enemy.

  The tramp of nailed sandals and of boots was abruptly louder than the rain, and he shook off whatever half-formed spell it was that slowed his movements, slid off the wizard and dragged himself to darkest shadow, tumbling down the sunken doorstep of a house, a pit of black with jumbled uneven stone. The door of the ruin. Lantern-light made hazy gold of the rain down the street to the east and the wizard came after him, a hot, blood-reeking body pressed against him, hardly even knowing he was there. The man was shaking.

  Ghu felt his way up the door, which was still closed, found the latch and pressed it down, pushed with his shoulder until it opened. He laid a hand on the wizard’s shoulder, tugged him. The man had the wit left to follow silent, despite the terror near unmanning him. The door closed as softly, as silently behind them, in good shape for a ruin. Ghu put his back to it, holding it shut against any investigation. The air stank of rats and dirty humans.

  Light spilt in through a window-hole, jogging to clattering footsteps. The wizard had his head up, wide-eyed, teeth unconsciously bared, and still he shook. Ghu pointed at the window, urgently. He didn’t dare move, clumsy on his one leg, and if they tried the door with him sitting against it they might think it locked. The wizard, with no small effort, moved to where he could see out, crawling over rubble, rotting beams and plaster and bricks. The remains of the floor above roofed only the far side of the room. Here, rain misted down, gentle now, soft and warm. Ghu rubbed at his throat, not certain what life might still linger in whatever mark the wizard had put there. Enough to draw a Red Mask? Or was it only more street guard, passing on patrol? He doubted the caravan wizard would be so unmanned by fear of a mere street-patrol’s passing.

  The last lantern bobbed on by, the last light faded. There had been other faces raised as well, three girls, two men, and a baby, all in a nest of rags in the far corner. Beggars who had claimed this place, but they were silent, not protesting the invasion, not yet.

  “What were they?” Ghu asked softly, when the sound even of their feet was gone and there was nothing but the rain.

  “Two patrols of temple guard, and
Red Masks with them,” the wizard said, as if they hadn’t been trying to kill one another a moment before. Ghu warily shifted so he could open the door.

  Still nothing from the beggars. Well, there had been light enough to show them two bloodied and battered caravaneers, and he knew what came to beggars who drew the attention of armed men.

  “Sorry,” he told them and, “Thank you. Gods bless you.”

  He edged the door open, stood half in, half out, listening, but there was no sound other than the rain, and the light had gone away west, into Greenmarket Ward. The wizard was at his shoulder, pushing past, reaching back to take his arm, half dragging him up to the street level again. The man was cut after all, hand, sleeve, wet with blood, worse than Ghu’s own. He didn’t seem to notice.

  “You’ve really never been in Marakand before today?”

  “I don’t lie.”

  “All you had to do was call to them.”

  “No.” All he had had to do was cut the wizard’s throat.

  “I still don’t trust you.”

  “Don’t then.” Ghu sighed, too tired to argue. The pounding pulse of his ankle was deafening him to all else. “Go away.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for my friend. I told you.”

  “At the Doves?” The man drew him farther up the street, not letting go, and he was glad enough to let the wizard take some of the weight off his foot. He sank down on a doorstep, no windows near for eavesdroppers, and leaned back against the doorpost.

  “The street guard were told to look for Nabbani men,” he said wearily. “Your scribe hid me. I left when I thought it was safe. That’s all.”

  “Why are they looking for Nabbani men?”

  “They think I’m a Praitannec spy.”

  “You say, ‘I.’ So it’s not Nabbani men in general they’re after; it’s you yourself.”

  Ghu shrugged, which the wizard probably didn’t see. “Yes, but they didn’t know that.”

  The wizard sat down beside him. “Nour,” he said.

  “Ghu.”

  “Are you a Praitannec spy?”

  “No. My friend,” he added, “is a Praitan. Someone followed him last night, when we came in to the suburb. He lost them, but maybe they’re still looking.”

  “Is he,” Nour said with the patience of one talking to a child, “a Praitannec spy?”

  “No.” Ghu didn’t mean to fall away into himself, into simplicity again. He was just so overwhelmingly tired all of a sudden. There was something wrong, something . . . there had been something wrong in his world for a time now, something lost to him, slipped from his grasp . . . “His goddess sent him to kill the Voice.”

  Nour’s silence was deep. “How?” he asked at last. “With the hand of the Lady over her, how?”

  Not “why,” not horror, and he was a Marakander born, Ghu judged.

  “He’ll find a way.” But after, but after . . .

  “Even if he does,” Nour said, “it won’t change anything. The Lady will appoint a new Voice. Nothing will change. Nothing ever changes, nothing ever has, in thirty years.”

  “Is there a Lady?”

  Another deep silence. “I do wonder,” Nour said. “A conspiracy of priests, maybe. But if that’s so, I don’t know how they can be killing wizards. And there’s some divine power behind the Red Masks.”

  “I think,” Ghu said, “there is a devil in your temple. One of the seven from the stories. Maybe claiming to be the Voice. Maybe claiming to be the Lady. I think . . . I think Ahjvar is . . .”

  Gone? Gone, sometime in the night.

  “The Voice certainly acts like one, the way she sends folk to their deaths,” said Nour, not believing him. “I think,” he added, “that you’d better come back to the Doves with me. I’m not certain yet that I trust anything you say. I want you where I can see you. You and Ivah both. She’s very good at meekly getting her own way, and there’s wizardry behind that. She bespelled Hadidu into giving her lodgings, I’m sure of it. He’s not so besotted with her he’d risk his only child’s life on trusting her within his household, otherwise. And I’m very surprised, now I think about it, that I haven’t done something about her before. I’ve been home for a week. I wonder if she’s been working on me, too? You, at least, I’m going to send out to my gang-boss, tomorrow night when I can get you over the city wall unseen. He can keep you safe till I figure out what to do with you.”

  Ahj was . . . lost. And the wizard thought he had Ghu a prisoner. It didn’t matter.

  Dead. But Ahj always had said he was dead. Ghu bent over, his head on his knees. The Voice of the Lady was dead, and so was Ahjvar, and he had not believed that Catairanach would keep her promise, he had not, he would not have let Ahj go without him if he had, he would not, he would not have let him be alone. He did not want to be alone.

  “Come,” Nour said, and touched his shoulder. “Give me your arm, Ghu. No wizardry to hide us, not with Red Masks prowling, Old Great Gods keep whatever poor souls they’ve been sent out for.”

  Ghu let himself be helped up, arm around the other’s neck, and shut his eyes. It was easier to keep walking that way. If Nour turned him loose he would sit and wait for the Red Masks to find him. He wanted simply to fall, down into that emptiness, that darkness, after Ahjvar. Easier than going on.

  Light burned through his eyelids, red and hot. Ahjvar turned his head away, tried to drag an arm up to shield his eyes before he forced them open. Too heavy. Even the weight of his eyelids seemed too much to force against the light and the kicking of the horse inside his head. Light blurred and swam and faded. A fire, which rose and fell with his pulse.

  Not dead.

  King. Champion. Sword. The words whispered in his head, confusingly. Something the Voice had said before he killed her? The light must be a torch. Ghu? No. The light, whoever carried it, was probably not his friend.

  Darkness returned. He tried, then, to sit up, but the horse that was kicking in his head had evidently trampled over him a few times first. Fire arced across his ribs as he twisted, hunched himself up. He managed to get sitting in the end, but a mewl of pain escaped him, and his breath came loud and gasping. If they were listening . . .

  They weren’t. Whoever they were. No rustle, no breath, no scent of a body. Where was he, anyhow? Someplace cool and damp, with his back against a wall that curved up from the floor, all rough stone, it felt. It smelt of mud.

  Cave, he thought, but could not think why he would be in a cave. He had lain up for the day under a ledge, dry rock. Not a cave.

  He tried again and this time did get his eyes open. The world was not much different. There was light, a distant dim yellow. Tunnel. A tin-mine . . . he was not in a Duina Praitanna tin-mine. He tried to pull himself upright, using the rough wall as support but ended on hands and knees. Good. You had to crawl before you could walk. He blinked, licked lips that tasted of blood. Had they thought him dead and dumped him as so much refuse? Wouldn’t be the first time. But his sword was in front of his nose, the leopard of the hilt staring at him, accusing. Dead king. Who called him that? Sword, and dagger too, cast down beside him. Refuse they couldn’t be bothered plundering? Not very likely. Saved him going back for it, though. He didn’t abandon that sword. Stuck to it, empty defiance though that was. His, himself, when everything else was gone.

  Everything else was gone, even his tunic and boots. He was barefoot, in trousers and a torn shirt. But they left him his sword? Stitches in his gashed arm, and the blood-filthy linen in tatters. Stitches on the deep slice under his breast, and the shirt sodden, edges sticky, not yet dry. Recent, very recent. Whoever had sewn him up had left with their torch only as he woke. So. Follow them.

  Dagger in belt. Sword in hand. Knees, good. Hand on wall again, up. On his feet, ears ringing, a bit light-headed, not falling. Better if he just crawled into a hole and lay quiet a few days, like a corpse or a toad buried in the mud against the cold winter rains, while his curse put him back together, restore
d its wounded and aching shell. That was all he was, a much-darned and patched sack to give the curse a home . . . and obviously a delirious one at present, as well. He didn’t need Ghu here to tell him that.

  He headed for the light, moving like an old man, feeling every year since his birth. Bare feet told him the floor was stone, coarse-grained but water-smoothed, seamed with earth. Natural, this tunnel, at least it had been, once. The walls were jagged with the work of the picks that had heightened and broadened it.

  By the time Ahjvar reached the mouth and the light, he was walking without leaning on the wall, and the sword was no longer an unwieldy bar of iron he could barely lift.

  He looked out into a rounded cavern. A mist of rain pattered down onto a muddy patch of floor from some shaft open to the sky. It was still night. A crack in the floor stirred darkly, some breath of moving air touching the water. No, there was no breeze at all, and the air was heavy with the smell of rotten wood and damp stone. Something dark humped and rolled below the water, and a man, a Red Mask priest still in his armour, spread arms on the lip of the crack, the well of the Lady, surely, and heaved himself out, dripping, a beached seal. Then he got a knee under himself and stood, shaking his head, water coursing down his chest from under the mask. For a moment, the eye-slits of the mask turned Ahjvar’s way. Then he crossed the chamber out of sight. Ahjvar leaned out, saw him climbing stairs without another glance, leaving a dark, wet trail in the light of the torch affixed to the wall at the foot of them. No chance he hadn’t been seen.