by Tad Williams
“Of course.” Luian laughed, pleased. “Yes, and you have learned your first lesson. Everyone in the Seclusion is beautiful, wives and Favored. Even if one of us should hold a knife to your throat and demand to be told she is looking poorly that day, just a little peaked around the eyes, perhaps, skin just a little less rosy than it should be, you will say only that you have never seen her more beautiful.” For a moment Luian’s kohl-rimmed eyes grew hard and shrewd. “Do you understand?”
“But I meant it sincerely.”
“And that is the second lesson—say everything sincerely. Goodness, you are a clever girl. It is too bad that I will have so little to do with your training.”
“Why is that, Luian?”
“Because for some reason the Golden One has ordered that you must be schooled by Panhyssir’s priests. But I will keep a close eye on you and you will come to take tea with me often, if you would like.”
“Oh, yes, Luian.” Qinnitan wasn’t quite certain what she’d done to rate such attention, but she wasn’t going to turn her back on it. Having a link to one of the Favored, especially an important one like Luian, could make a world of difference in one’s accommodations, in the skill and tact of one’s assigned servants, in any number of things up to and including the continuing favor of the autarch himself. “Yes, I would like that very much.” She paused in the doorway. “But how did you know who I was? I mean, I would have been not much more than a baby when you left our old neighborhood—how could you recognize me?”
Luian smiled, settling back in her cushions. “I didn’t. My cousin did.”
“Cousin?”
“The chief of the Leopards. The very, very handsome Jeddin.” Favored Luian sighed in a way that suggested she had complicated feelings about this handsome cousin. “He recognized you.”
Suddenly Qinnitan, too, remembered the solemn-faced warrior. “He . . . recognized me?”
“And you did not recognize him either, I see. Not surprising, I suppose. He has changed almost as much as I have. Would you remember if I called him Jin instead of Jeddin? Little Jin?”
Qinnitan put her hand to her mouth. “Jin? I remember him—a bit older than me. He used to chase after my brother and his friends. But he was so small!”
Luian chuckled deep in her throat. “He grew. Oh, my, he certainly did.”
“And he recognized me?”
“He thought he did, but he was not certain until he saw your parents. By the way, please write and tell your mother that she will be invited to visit you when the time is right, and to stop pestering us with pleading messages.”
Qinnitan was embarrassed.“I will,Favored Lu...Imean I will, Luian. I promise.” She was still stunned by the idea that the slab-muscled Leopard captain could possibly be Little Jin, a perpetually wet-nosed boy whom her brothers had more than once smacked in the face and sent home crying. Jin—Jeddin—looked now as though he could break any of Qinnitan’s brothers in half with one hand. “I’ve kept you too long, Luian,” she said out loud. “Thank you so much for your kindness.”
“You are quite welcome, my darling. We Cat’s Eye girls must stick together, after all.”
“The gardens are beautiful!” said Duny. “And the flowers smell so lovely. Oh, Qinnitan, you live in such a beautiful place!”
Qinnitan drew her friend away from the climbing roses and toward a bench at the middle of the courtyard. Queen Sodan’s Garden was the largest in the Seclusion and its hedges were low, which was why she’d chosen it.
“I live in a very dangerous place,” she told Duny quietly when they sat down on the bench. “I’ve been here two months and this is the first conversation I’ve had where I won’t have to worry whether the person I’m talking to might decide to have me poisoned if I say the wrong thing.”
Duny’s mouth fell open. “No!”
Qinnitan laughed in spite of herself. “Yes, oh, yes. My dearest Dunyaza, you just don’t know. The meanness of the older Sisters back at the Hive, the way they’d get after the younger ones or the pretty ones—that was nothing. Here if you’re too pretty, they don’t just push you down in the hallways or put dirt in your soup. If someone is jealous of you and you don’t have a powerful protector, you’ll end up dead. Five people have died since I’ve been here. They always say they fell ill, but everyone knows better.”
Duny looked at her sternly. “You’re teasing me, Qin-ya. I can’t believe all that. These women have been chosen by the autarch himself ! He wouldn’t allow anything to happen to them, praise to his name.”
“He scarcely ever comes, and there are hundreds of us, anyway. I doubt he remembers more than a few. Most of the brides are chosen for political alliances—you know, important families in other countries—but some of them are like me. Nobody knows why we’ve been chosen.”
“We know why! Because he fell in love with you.”
Qinnitan snorted. “I thought I asked you not to make up stories about me, Duny. Fell in love with me? He scarcely noticed me, even when he was making the arrangements with my parents, such as they were.” She made a sour face. “Not that they could have said no, I suppose, but they sold me.”
“To the autarch! That is not being sold, that is a great honor!” Duny’s face suddenly froze. “Won’t you be in trouble for saying such things?” she whispered.
“Now you know why I brought you out here, where there are no walls or high hedges for spies to hide behind.” Qinnitan felt as though she had aged ten years since leaving the Hive, felt very much the older sister now. “Do you see that gardener over there, over by that pavilion?”
“Him in the baggy clothes?”
“Yes, but not a him, and the gods save you if you ever said that in front of her. That’s Tanyssa, one of the Favored. Most of them go by women’s names here. Anyway, it’s her job to watch me, although I don’t know who’s given the job to her. Everywhere I go, there she is—for a gardener, she seems to travel from one part of the Seclusion to another very freely. She was in the baths yesterday morning, pretending to have some errand with the young Favored boy who heats the water.” Qinnitan looked at the well-muscled gardener with distaste as Tanyssa pretended to examine the leaves of a monkeyfruit tree. “They say she killed that young Akarisian princess who died last month. Threw her out of a window, but of course they say she fell.”
“But, Qin, that’s terrible!”
She shrugged. “It’s how things are here. I have some friends, too—not friends like you and I are friends, of course, although I may make some of those too someday. The kind of friends you have to have if you want to stay alive, if you don’t want to fall over dead after drinking your tea some evening.”
Duny looked at her without saying anything for a long time—a long time for Duny, anyway. “You seem different, Qinnitan. You seem hard, like one of those traveler girls that dance in Sun’s Progress Square.”
Qinnitan’s laugh was a little harsh, but something about Duny’s innocence made her angry. It was the fact that Duny could still afford to be innocent, more than anything else. “Well, I probably am. Everyone talks nicely here—oh, they do talk nicely. And other than the occasional hissing catfight, everything is quite peaceful and comfortable. Do you like my dress?” She lifted her arm and let the pleated sleeve fall, graceful and translucent as a dragon-fly’s wing.
“It’s lovely.”
“Yes, it is. As I said, everything is quite peaceful and comfortable . . . on the surface. But underneath, it is a pit full of scorpions.”
“Don’t talk like that, Qin. You’re scaring me.” Duny took her hand. “You are a queen! That must be wonderful, even if the people here are tiresome. What is the autarch like? Have you . . . did you . . . ?” She colored.
Qinnitan could not resist rolling her eyes—after all, it was a self-indulgence she could not allow herself most of the time. “Duny! Don’t you listen? I already told you the autarch almost never comes here. When he wants to see one of his wives, he has her brought to his palace. Well, I suppo
se this is all his palace, but you know what I mean. He has never spoken to me since he bought me from my parents, let alone made love to me! So, yes, since you are wondering, I am still a virgin. As you may remember from listening to the older girls, in most cases a deflowerment requires the man and the woman to be in the same room.”
“Qin-ya, you shouldn’t talk like that!” Duny said, but whether because she was embarrassed or because she did not want to suffer further damage to her flowery illusions wasn’t clear. After a moment, she asked, “But if he didn’t fall in love with you, and you’re not a princess of somewhere—you’re not, are you?—then . . . then why did he marry you?”
“First off, he hasn’t married me yet,” Qinnitan told her. “At least I don’t think so. I’ve had some religious instruction from the priests—some very strange rituals—so maybe that’s why, to prepare me for the marriage ceremony. Some of the women here went through ceremonies, but some others were . . .well, just taken. But as to why he chose me . . . well, Duny, I don’t know. And nobody else in this poisonous place seems to know quite why either.”
“I have such a nice treat for you, darling,” Luian announced when Qinnitan arrived, a little breathless, in the Favored’s chambers. “We must primp and prepare, both of us. We don’t have much time.” She snapped her fingers and her pair of silent Tuani slave women came into the room like shadows.
“But . . . but, Luian. Thank you. What are we . . .”
“We are going to the palace, my sweet. Out of the Seclusion, yes! Someone very special wants to see you.”
For a moment Qinnitan found it hard to breathe. “The . . . the autarch?”
“Oh, no!” Luian threw up her hands and laughed. The Tuani girl with the curling iron, who had come within an eyelash of burning her mistress on the arm, paled a little. “Oh, no, if it was the autarch himself they’d be preparing you for days. No, we are going to see my cousin.”
It took a moment for Qinnitan to understand. “Jeddin? Of the Leopards?”
“Yes, my dearest, we are invited to see handsome Jeddin. He wishes to speak with you, to hear stories of the old neighborhood. I am going along as chaperone, lucky girl that I am. I do so admire that young man.”
“But . . . am I allowed to meet with any men at all?”
A look of annoyance creased Luian’s powdered forehead. “He is not any man, he is chief of the Leopards, chosen by our autarch himself, praise to his name. Besides, I will be with you, child, I told you. If that is not respectable, what is?” But the Favored’s eyes darted briefly to the Tuani slave beside her, and Qinnitan could not help wondering if it was truly all as obvious and ordinary as Luian made it out to be.
When they were both ready, Favored Luian, rigged like a festival ship in a fringed-and-beaded robe, and Qinnitan in a less ostentatious and properly virginal white robe with a hood, different only in quality from something she might have worn in a Hive procession, they set out. Despite her misgivings, Qinnitan could not help being excited: it was the first time in three months she had been outside of the Seclusion’s walls, even if it was only to another part of the great Orchard Palace. Other than Duny, and Qinnitan’s mother, (who had spent most of her visit weeping over their family’s good fortune) this would be her first chance to see anyone from outside. And, needless to say, Jeddin would be the first natural man she had seen since he and his soldiers had brought her here, to this invincible prison of beautiful blossoms, splashing fountains, and cool stone arcades.
The Favored who guarded the Seclusion’s outer gate did not dress a bit like women. They were the largest people Qinnitan had ever seen, a half dozen hulking creatures with ceremonial swords whose flat, curved blades were almost wide enough to use as tea trays. They engaged in a long whispered discussion among themselves before Luian, Qinnitan, and the two silent Tuani servants were at last allowed to pass out of the Seclusion and into the greater palace, but only with one of the guards bringing up the rear of the small procession like an enormous dog guiding a herd of sheep. The little company continued on for a good portion of an hour, through lush but empty gardens and unused corridors and courtyards so opulent that they seemed to have been prepared for some royal princeling who had not yet moved into them.
At last they reached a small but prettily decorated courtyard that rang with the sounds of a fountain. At one edge of court, where the tiles gave way to a pocket garden with paths of pale sand, a muscular, sun-browned young man sat on mounds of cushions beneath a striped awning big enough for a dozen guests. As if he were the groom to Qinnitan’s bride, he, too, wore a robe of flowing white. He stood as they approached, hesitated a moment between Qinnitan and Luian, between nominal rank and actual power, and then lowered himself to one knee before the girl.
“Mistress. So kind of you to come.” He rose and turned to Luian. “Respected cousin, you do me honor.”
Luian produced a fan from her sleeve and snapped it open with a clack like an eagle taking wing. “Always a pleasure, Captain.”
Jeddin beckoned his visitors to join him beneath the awning, then sent his servant to fetch refreshments. After an appropriate time of small talk with Luian about her health and the health of various important residents of the Seclusion, he turned to Qinnitan.
“Luian says you remember me now.”
She blushed, since many of her chief memories were of him being humiliated by older boys. It was even harder to reconcile that with the present now that she saw him again. The Leopard captain’s muscles moved under his dark skin like those of a real leopard she had once seen in a cage in the Sun’s Progress marketplace, the most fearsome animal she had ever encountered. For all its strength, though, despite its dreadful teeth and claws, that leopard had seemed sad to her and not altogether present, as though it saw not the crowds of people around it but the shadow-splashed woodlands where it had once roamed—saw those places, but knew it could not reach them.
Oddly, she thought she saw something of this in Jeddin’s eyes as well, but knew she must simply be romanticizing, muddling this handsome young man with the trapped beast. “Yes. Yes, Captain, I do remember you. You knew my brothers.”
“I did.” Like an eminent man asked to recall the pivotal moments of his career, Jeddin began to reminisce at length about the days in Cat’s Eye Street, describing the adventures of a group of young scapegraces—of whom, he felt compelled to admit, he had not been the least mischievous. To hear him speak, he had been one among equals, and none of the miseries she recalled on his behalf had ever truly happened. It was strange, as though he had lived his childhood on the other side of an ornamental screen from the rest of them, making up his own mind what things meant, seeing only what he wished to see. Several times Qinnitan had to bite her tongue when the urge to correct him became strong. There was something about Jeddin, the way he talked, that made her feel as though telling him now that even a small part of his memory was faulty would be no different than the way her brothers had sometimes pushed him from behind as he ran, making him go so much faster than his legs could carry him that he stumbled and fell.
The refreshments came, and as the servants poured tea and piled sweetmeats on plates, Qinnitan watched Luian watching Jeddin, which the Favored did with the sort of avidity she usually reserved for things like the rosewater jelly being spooned into her bowl. It seemed unusual, not that Luian should find Jeddin attractive—he was more than that, his body as hard and wonderfully defined as a statue, his face befittingly serious and noble of cast, with nose straight and strong and eyes a surprisingly bright green under the heavy brows—but that someone like Luian, who in all other ways seemed to have settled into a kind of premature, matronly old age, and who, after all, had given up her original organs years ago, should still have such feelings at all.
“Well,” Luian said abruptly, ending a silence. “To think that after so many years we of the old neighborhood should have a reunion here!”
The captain’s emerald eyes now turned to Qinnitan. “You must be very hap
py, Mistress. Of all of us, well as we have done, you have risen highest. A wife of the Golden One himself.” He dropped his gaze. “An unmatched honor.”
“Yes, of course.” Although I might as well be married to a hassock or a sandal for all that comes of it, she almost said, but didn’t. Jeddin had the look of a religious man, and obviously he must be devout at least where the autarch himself was concerned. “I am blessed by his notice.”
“And he is blessed by . . .” He paused and to her amazement appeared to blush.
“And he, our autarch, is blessed by all the heavens, and especially by his heavenly father Nushash,” said Luian abruptly and loudly.
“Yes, of course. All praise to the Golden One,” said Jeddin. Qinnitan echoed the blessing, but could not help feeling something important had just happened and she had missed it.
“We should go now, Cousin.” Luian waved for the Tuani girls to help her to her feet, which they did, fighting the Favored’s great weight like nomads trying to put up a tent in a high wind. “Thank you for the refreshments and the courtesy of your company.” There was a new tone in Luian’s voice, faintly cold.
Jeddin scrambled to his feet. “Of course, respected cousin. You grace us with your presence.” He bowed to her, then to his other guest. He did it with some grace, but that didn’t surprise Qinnitan; she imagined that even for a soldier, bowing well must be almost as important in the autarch’s court as handling a sword or a gun. “I wish you could stay longer.”
“Propriety forbids it,” said Luian shortly, setting sail for the door with her servants and Qinnitan fluttering in her wake like gulls. The huge Favored guard fell in behind them in the corridor, mute and sleepy-eyed.
“Did I do something wrong, Luian?” Qinnitan asked after they had walked for some distance in silence and were nearing the gate to the Seclusion. Luian only waved her hand, whether because of discretion or irritation was hard to say.
