The Leopard (Marakand)

by K V Johansen

  He’d gone to investigate, heard the uproar, and found the lanes of the suburb and the road itself filling with people, wild rumour already rising; the temple was seizing horses and camels, conscripting by force fighters for its war in the east, arresting all Praitannec folk, hunting the assassin of the Lady, sending Red Masks through every inn and caravanserai to sniff out wizards, carrying off children to serve in the Lady’s ritual dances or for worse fates . . . People on the rooftops shouted down that it was true, they could see the red of the temple guard. He hadn’t pressed on any farther but had run back for Shenar’s. His own gang were safe enough, so long as he kept clear of them. Assuming, that is, that wizards, assassins, and invaders of her temple were the Lady’s prey, and not camels, but Master Rasta’s, where they lodged, was at the western end of the suburb where it thinned away to dusty stone and thorny scrub. The soldiers would have more camels than they could hope to manage long before they ever got so far, if that were their object. Thekla and Django were no fools; they’d hear the stir and find out what was afoot soon enough. But he wasn’t saving wizards, even Ivah, from the Lady’s torment only to stand by and let her take them back.

  Shenar, the stout master of the caravanserai, pushed past him up the stairs, shouting for Master Kharduin.

  “What?” Kharduin snarled, standing to block the man’s way.

  “I’ve turned my back and shut my eyes,” Shenar said, puffing a little. “But I’ve got my living to think of, not to mention my life, and last night’s goings-on—my porter says Red Masks are loose in the suburb along the Gore. You tell me they’re not coming straight here for this man of yours and the strangers you’ve brought in.”

  A Nabbani merchant, dressed in brocades for the city, came flying out of a room farther along the gallery, a small chest in her arms, two of her gang running after her with larger bags. One paused to shout down into the yard, ordering someone else to ready a camel. Someone who had something she didn’t want the temple finding. Even if the street guard at the Western Wall hadn’t been ordered to seal the pass, any alert captain was going to take it into his own head to start searching and questioning very closely, when a sudden rush of lone riders without caravans began to flow past him, especially with so many folk of the eastern road among them—what would such folk do, faced with the Stone Desert?

  Not Holla-Sayan’s problem. His fault, maybe, but if he’d stayed dutifully in bed, Mikki would nevertheless have gone killing Red Masks and would nevertheless have freed Nour and Ivah, though whether any of them would have then made it out to the suburb . . . And Mikki, having been seen leaving this place, was going to have every tongue up and down the street wagging. Holla-Sayan took Master Shenar by the arm, pulled him from the stairs.

  “Problem,” he said. “Do you have a side door?” Few caravanserais did. They were meant to be defensible. “A window looking out the back, someplace we can lower Nour from without attracting so much notice? You need him out of here as swiftly and secretly as we can manage, right?”

  “Oh, so they can decide he’s still here and tear the place apart looking for him?” Shenar gave him a scowl. “And whose gang do you belong to, so I can get the damages out of them? You’re the one brought them all here.”

  “And here I thought we were all such good friends and brothers.” A stocky Nabbani man with iron-grey hair put an arm around Shenar’s shoulders. “Dear, dear Shenar, you know what the reputation of any caravanserai owner who rats out his loyal caravan-masters to the temple for smuggling books or dodging tolls or harbouring wizards is going to be, once the dust settles?” He grinned at Holla-Sayan. “There’s a window looking north from a room on the back range. Mistress Sa-Sura has her bales of silk in it, but my son had a word with one of her girls and we, ah, have the key, for a bit. Nothing behind but a narrow alley.” He raised his eyebrows. “Very narrow. We can lower Nour down; they’re making a litter for him now. And—what’s that place beyond the lane, Shenar, a goatshed? Yours? Your sister’s, oh. It looks like a good strong roof, and not too great a leap for a large animal.”

  “What does the roof matter?” said Shenar. “What animal? You don’t need to talk like I’m about to betray you all, though any fool of a wizard who goes into the city deserves what he gets, in my opinion. I’m just saying I want the wizards and these strangers out, I didn’t agree to sheltering wizards, and if you’ve snuck them in they’re your look-out, and I don’t like the brawling rabble of the western road—”

  “Good, good, so the sooner you help us be gone, the better,” said the Nabbani. “Where’d Nasutani go, Holla-Sayan?”

  To the vaulted gateway—hells, the two women had already left. “I’ll catch them,” he said. “Grab a couple of waterskins for us, would you, and see someone has them; you can’t put Nour and Ivah through another day without water.”

  “Already done,” the man called, as Holla turned away and ran for the gate. The porter was just shutting the inset door again.

  “The Grasslander women?” he asked, and the man nodded, sighed, and raised the bar.

  Ivah and Nasutani walked arm-in-arm like two friends out for a stroll, nobody paying them much heed. He caught up in a few strides. “Where are you going?” he demanded. Sayan help him, it was the dog, wanting everyone safe and under his eye, and he’d given in to that instinct without being aware.

  “Kharduin said to go now, and we’ll meet up after, if we can,” said Nasutani. “There’s a place where some cedars spill down the slope, just past a windmill; he said aim for that. Attract less notice, he said, if we’re not all one crowd together leaving the caravanserai. Especially with Mikki. But maybe you’d better go with Nour.”

  “Mikki can fight the—them,” he said. “You two can’t.” Three friends out for a stroll? The Nabbani caravaneer had been right; Mikki could surely manage a leap from a window—if it was large enough—to a goatshed roof, and Kharduin had plenty of bodies to help in getting Nour out. He fell in beside Ivah.

  Gaguush was on the other side of the temple’s soldiery and undead wizards. Maybe forever. How many Red Masks could he kill before the Lady killed him?

  He was going to be a father, a real father—his son among the ferrymen of the Kinsai-av didn’t count, Kinsai claimed her own—and before he ever saw his baby, undying devil or not, he was going to be destroyed, the human soul he might no longer even have certainly rejected by the Old Great Gods, if it had not already perished. And for the sake of a woman whom yesterday he would happily, eagerly, have slain himself.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Ivah said. “Go to Gaguush.”

  He said nothing.

  “Holla-Sayan!”

  He whirled, hand going to his sabre. Zavel. The youngest of Gaguush’s gang, whose parents had both died because of Ivah’s father. The boy’s eyes were bloodshot, squinting against the day, and his face had a yellowish cast, his braids dishevelled and unravelling. He stank, too, of stale wine and rancid body oil.

  “Take your hangover, go home to Rasta’s, and pray Django doesn’t skin you to save the boss the bother,” Holla-Sayan advised, turning away again.

  “Holla!” Zavel clutched at his coat. “I was looking for you. I’ve been back to the caravanserai. Thekla said you’d gone to Shenar’s. Listen, uh, Gaguush told me to tell you to advance me some money on the next trip.”

  Gaguush had said this was Zavel’s last chance. Every town they came to, the drinking was worse, and so were the sullen tempers in between. In Serakallash he’d started a fight with a sept-chief’s guardsman and nearly gotten himself killed; Gaguush had only been able to bail him out at all because of who they were, and respect for past valour and sacrifice wasn’t a coin you wanted to overspend, especially not for a fool who’d brought his immediate troubles on himself. Zavel wasn’t the only one who’d lost close kin; everyone found their own way of carrying their grief, but his, she’d told him, seemed to be to destroy himself out of spite at the world, which childishness she didn’t have the patience for.


  “I don’t keep the strong-box. Go back and wait for her.”

  “You must have the key,” Zavel wheedled. “She’s your wife. Look, Holla, she said it was all right. It wasn’t my fault, I was robbed—”

  “Sure you were. And if you really were, what do you expect, going with those poor little fools the city ‘uncles’ send to market in the taverns? You’re lucky they left you your boots. And if I had a key to the strong box, which I don’t—”

  “Well, maybe it was her purse, then, maybe it was a purse she said you had. I forget. My head aches. You know how it is. Anyway, she said you could advance me something on—”

  “You haven’t seen Gaguush, Great Gods damn you, do you think me a fool? You’ve pickled your brains to the point you can’t even come up with a good lie! Thekla told you Gaguush was gone. What were you planning to do when she found out, if I did rob a purse for you?”

  “I was joking! Sera bless, Holla, you can’t take a joke anymore. Well, lend me something, then. I owe—”

  “I’ll think about it, if when I get back I hear from Django you’ve put in a fair day’s work, all right? Now get lost. I’m busy.”

  Zavel sneered. “Does the boss know you’ve dodged her to run after pretty girls?”

  “What do you think? I said get lost.” Damnation. He walked away, striking off the hand that clutched again at his sleeve. The few passers-by were looking at them but swinging wide around, smelling a fight. Kharduin’s girl had waited, damn her, and though Ivah had limped ahead a few paces, now she turned and glanced back, urgently beckoning Nasutani on.

  Fatal.

  Maybe it was the line of her jaw. With her hair cropped and her face so haggard, Ivah didn’t look much like the shy Nabbani coin-thrower in whose company they’d travelled so far, but the fool boy knew her.

  “Holla . . .” Zavel’s grip tightened on his arm. “Ivah! You murdering, bastard whore of the Lake-Lord, you—”

  He dove past Holla-Sayan, knife in hand. Holla jerked him back by the hood of his coat and, as Zavel’s knife-hand came around at him, laid him senseless on the mucky street with a fist to the jaw.

  He took Ivah by one arm, Nasutani by the other, and dragged them on, not looking behind.

  They didn’t wait for Kharduin and Mikki where the suburb faded away into a fringe of shacks and sheds but carried on over the rising, stony ground. The sides of the pass reared up in broken, fissured cliffs and slopes of scree, here and there patches of trees clinging with roots like claws. A dry streambed took them to where Kharduin’s cedars spilled down, and in the sweet-scented shade beneath they waited. Farther to the east, a man ran from between the sheds, turning to make expansive gestures at nothing. The air between him and the buildings shimmered smoky a moment. The red-armoured figures who pursued ran through the shimmer unslowed, and the man dropped to his knees, arms wrapped over his head. They beat him so he sprawled on his belly, then dragged him away by his arms. There was Kharduin, spear on his shoulder, and two men with a litter made of spears and a blanket swaying between them. Mikki paced behind. Nasutani nocked an arrow. Ivah had her eyes shut.

  “All right?” the Grasslander girl asked her.

  “They can be killed, I’ve seen it. But I still don’t see how. We’re not strong enough. Nasutani, if they come, if Holla-Sayan can’t stop them all—”

  “Thank you,” he growled.

  “Don’t let them take Nour again, or me. They say wizards are drowned in the deep well, but it’s not true. The Lady kills them and enslaves them as Red Masks after they’re dead. She’s not a goddess; she’s a devil—”

  “What? No—”

  “—and a necromancer. Kill us first and then—then at least she can’t take our souls. Please.”

  “She’s out here because she wants us, but she’s hunting wizards as she comes,” Holla-Sayan said. “How many in the suburb, do you think? I know of a couple, just soothsayers, no one with any real education or power, but there’s always a few scholars travelling to Nabban, or other wayfarers.”

  “Nour and Hadidu take wizard-talented children out of Marakand, if they can find them,” said Nasutani. Her voice shook. “There’s kids now that showed up after the fire; Nour was supposed to bring them, but Master Hadidu sent them on their own. They’d been living in his house as servants. We passed them on to Lu’s gang that runs down to the Five Cities. They usually put up quite close to the Eastern Wall; Lu’s a horse-dealer.”

  Ivah had shut her eyes again. Hadidu’s servants. She could see their faces. “We can’t just sit here and let them—”

  “The Lady’s a devil,” Holla-Sayan said. “Mikki’s not invulnerable, you’ve seen that. Neither am I.”

  “Where’s Ulfhild? She could stop this. Couldn’t she?”

  “Maybe dead,” Holla-Sayan said. “She went into the temple looking for the Lady.”

  “And Ghu’s dead too.”

  Whoever that was. The thought seemed to give Ivah some resolve. She gave a long sigh and opened her eyes, began peeling long strips of stringy bark off the nearest trunk.

  “Wizardry will attract the Red Masks.”

  “I know.” She began braiding the strips, making thin ropes a yard long. “I’m just . . . thinking. Do you have a knife?”

  He handed one over from the pocket of his coat. She nodded, checked the blade, single-edged and sharp, sheathed it again and slipped it into her own pocket. Nasutani watched uneasily.

  “I held off a Red Mask for a little while, back in the Doves,” Ivah said. “I don’t know how. Mikki’s father was human.”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s a demon.”

  “Yes.”

  “Am I human?’

  “You’re certainly no demon.”

  “What are you? What’s the Blackdog? What’s that mean, when people call it a mountain spirit?”

  Nasutani’s lips moved, repeating Blackdog, wide-eyed, but she said nothing.

  “That was never true. I’m—” None of her business. He glanced at Nasutani. “Like the rest of them. You’ve guessed? A lost one. From an earlier war. Weaker. Wounded, she says.” No need to say who. “Crippled.”

  Ivah watched her braiding fingers and asked, low-voiced, “So if you had a child, would it be human, did she say that?”

  That felt like a punch in the stomach. “What?”

  “Am I human?”

  “Of course you are.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “You don’t smell like a devil.” She didn’t. That was that. She was human. So was his child.

  Nasutani put a hand over her mouth, eyes showing white.

  “Oh,” Ivah said, sounding almost glum.

  “Old Great Gods! You should be relieved!”

  “You don’t need another wizard who can’t fight the Red Masks. You need something else.” She looked up. “But I’m not that. You need the gods of Marakand.”

  “They’re gone.”

  She nodded, coiling up her braids of bark, as Kharduin and the men with the litter came in under the trees. Nour lay limp. Mikki shambled up and snuffled him.

  “Now what?” he asked.

  “Up,” said Kharduin. “There’s a dry stream cuts a way down under these trees, lots of fissures and crevices and caves up there. We get Nour into one we can defend against whatever comes and wait it out. And if they don’t come, we wait till it quiets down and he’s fit to ride, get what carriage we can even it’s no more than a few bales of camels’ wool for the Five Cities, and get the hell out of Marakand.”

  “Every wizard they take in the suburb is another Red Mask,” Ivah said. “The problem with fighting Red Masks isn’t only that they’re already dead and so wounding them doesn’t stop them. They have too many layers, the fear, the way spells run off them. The fear’s the worst. It means people just collapse and don’t fight any further. Who knows, a wizard might find a way through their other defences, if someone had a clear head and could try. If there are Red Masks among them, the temple gua
rd doesn’t even have to fight. If you take a shield from an armoured man, he still has his armour, but he’s that much more vulnerable. If taking his shield meant you could go on standing on your feet and fighting . . .”

  “Can you?” Mikki asked.

  “I don’t know. I wonder. Now that I know what they are . . . The suburb would fight if it could.”

  “The Lady’s there,” Mikki said.

  “I know. Holla-Sayan?”

  “You know,” he said. “What you asked, Ivah, earlier? Gaguush is pregnant.”

  Ivah looked down at her hands. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “You should have just killed me.”

  He cuffed her shoulder.

  “We need to go,” said Kharduin. “It’s all very well, but we can’t save everyone. We do what we can and don’t throw our lives away for nothing.”

  “There’s no one following,” Mikki said, low-voiced, looking at Holla-Sayan. “These should be safe enough on their own. When the Lady works her way to Shenar’s, they’ll be set on our trail, not before. No one’s going to keep secrets from her, however much they want to, and I would think she could track you, dog, if she tried. We’ll be fighting them all anyhow, one way or another.”

  Unless we just abandon these and run. He sighed. Sooner rather than later, you think?

  The two of us together might have a chance, even against one of the seven.

  I doubt it. It was a handful of human warriors killed the last Blackdog. It didn’t take the Lake-Lord himself.

  He wasn’t what you are.

  Maybe not. Moth’s still missing? Mikki, is she dead? I’m sorry, but what else could hold her?

  “Not dead,” Mikki said aloud, quietly. “I’d know. But gone. Like the gods of Marakand.”

  “Nothing we can do about that here and now, then.” And if the Lady overcame her, what hope do we have?