Forget Me Not,

by Juliann Whicker

  He smiled at her, showing his even white teeth, bright against his tan skin. “The slave plays his part in the great order as does every other creature. We are all creatures with greater or lesser levels of development, but deep down we’re simple animals. Without society there is no meaning to the individual.”

  “I'd be more convinced of your sincerity if you did not occupy one of the highest levels of society.”

  He leaned close to Lady of Perr, closer than he'd ever come before, breaking the unspoken rules of etiquette. She could smell the cimarron on his bronze skin as he whispered, “Unlike you? Daughter of an Empire? Ambassador from the High City?”

  She turned away, fighting down the heat that rose to her pale blue cheeks that had nothing to do with the harsh sun or their heated argument. She plucked a plum from the pile of ripe fruit heaped in a cart, rolling the purple orb in her still pale hands. The seller looked at her smiling a gapped-tooth smile.

  “As you know, we have no slaves. Each house has its order, but within the order there is choice. I chose diplomacy over the ranks of the Rasha. My interest in linguistics over small magics or armaments brought me to my current position.”

  Her smile matched his as he studied her until he covered the fruit in her palm with his own larger and darker hand.

  “You speak of magic and choice in the same breath. Your magic, your religion would call your position destiny. Is relying on fate so much better than depending on state?” His smile widened as he held up his hand, and slid the plum in her open mouth, cutting off her response with the warm, sweet fruit. He took her arm and guided her away from the stall as he threw a coin to the seller.

  She followed unresisting with the taste of ripe plum and the smell of cimarron filling her senses.

  ___

  The Lady of Perr blinked as the gardener pulled her upright, away from the Barbarian's warmth. She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, barely noticing the throb in her ankle. The ludicrous idea that she should host Barbarians should never have occurred to the High Precept. Memories like that, memories that felt real enough to taste shouldn't happen to her. Maybe it hadn't been a memory but a fantasy. Of course, that must have been it. She'd been an ambassador over a century ago. Everyone from that visit would be dead and buried by now. That knowledge should have filled her with satisfaction, but instead her heart throbbed with pain.

  “Hatia?” the Barbarian said in a low voice she knew as he reached towards her with his sun kissed hand.

  She took a breath that sounded more like a gasp, glad for the pain that shot through her ankle when it touched the ground. She trembled as she leaned heavily on the gardener. Who had told the Barbarian her name?

  “Welcome to the House of Perr, Viceroy Balthaar. Pardon my clumsiness.” She turned away but not quickly enough to miss the look of bewildered anger on his face.

  It wasn’t until she sat in the kitchen with her ankle soaking in cool water infused with herbs that the gardener took her hand in his, squeezing her fingers painfully until she looked up at him.

  "You called him Balthaar. Are you familiar with the Barbarian?"

  She frowned, shaking her head. "Of course not. All the Barbarians I knew would be dead by now. Why are you crushing my fingers?" she asked, looking closely at him. He was only the gardener, but he seemed like someone else, something else that made her heart race. A memory balanced on the edge of her mind before he relaxed his grip and turned away.

  She frowned down at her bare foot, smeared with the brown potion the gardener had applied to her pale blue skin. She touched the stuff, feeling the coarsely crushed herbs, grainy in her fingers. His dark skin had been close to that hue. The warm color matched his warm skin. Maybe if she painted herself pink or orange, she wouldn't be so cold all the time. Who would name a Barbarian Balthaar? It seemed a strangely elemental name for a Barbarian.

  She must have imagined the dusky smell of cimarron.

  Chapter 8

  Balthaar stood in the hall, his heart beating hard in his chest. He’d tried to forget her name, hadn’t spoken it for a hundred years, but it rolled off his tongue as if it had been yesterday.

  ___

  The pungent smell of humanity toiling in the hot sun filled the courtyard while shouts rang through the air, echoing off the tall earthen walls surrounding the market. Balthaar escorted the ridiculously naive Elsyrian girl through the narrow stalls, blocking the malevolent glares and the evil signs with his body, signs she never noticed.

  Balthaar had been assigned to watch her, protect her. He’d quickly dismissed the assignment as beneath a viceroy, one who would join the ranks of the Bashai, the priests of the Emperor, but over time he had grown to accept and almost enjoy the ridiculous creature. Her naivete and innocence came with a shocking breadth of knowledge and intelligence while her eyes, shifting between amethyst and darker blue sapphire mesmerized him. Balthaar had been wary of her using her magics on him, been warned by the Emperor's own high priest Targen, but so far she hadn't done anything other than argue eloquently for a cause other than her own.

  Balthaar watched in amusement while the slaves in her periphery shifted, taking aggressive stances. He barely paid attention to his own words as he prepared for unpleasantness. He spoke about slaves, animals, the part they all played, watching her expression shift, her eyes widen in shock before they gazed up at him beseechingly as she defended the slaves, her own elevated position.

  The voices behind him rose, the hissed curses came before the flung fruit. He leaned into her, close enough to smell the delicate scent of her skin, some kind of foreign flower while he felt the sting and thud on his armored back with flecks of over-ripe fruit splashing up his neck.

  So close he only had to whisper. “Unlike you? Daughter of an Empire? Ambassador of the High City?”

  She turned away from him as he’d intended, escaping the threat behind Balthaar, never seeing it. Her vulnerability stirred something, envy maybe for a creature who had lived without the need to anticipate violence.

  She faced a seller behind a stall who froze with wide eyes and slack mouth as she spoke to Balthaar about becoming a soldier, one of the legendary Elven Rasha the silver armored soldiers who fought like lightning. The idea that his young companion could choose a life of fear and rage when she didn't even notice an attack made the Barbarian’s stomach clench. He covered the plum in her hand, a plum with purple streaks that matched her eyes.

  Magic. Her eyes must be filled with elven magic if they could make Balthaar feel so protective towards one who was not his own kind. She smiled unconsciously as Balthaar took the fruit, filling her mouth with its flavor as he took her arm, too intimate a gesture, but those behind had not stopped their hissing.

  Balthaar led the way past the fruit seller, throwing more coin than the plum was worth to the man. The merchant, who knew who oiled his cart, wheeled his wares into the space behind them, blocking the slaves and allowing them to exit the market without her knowing how close she'd come to tasting the slaves' fear and loathing for the blue-skinned demon.

  ___

  Balthaar stood for a long time in the cool hall at the bottom of the stairs with the two men from the ship as his silent companions.

  “You know Wind Spinner,” the green-skinned man said in a voice with a hint of anger beneath the calm. He’d never spoken before to Balthaar.

  “Wind Spinner?” Balthaar repeated, struggling to control his emotions, his voice thankfully hard and even.

  “Lady Perr, or Hatia you called her. We call her Wind Spinner,” the green creature said stepping forward to raise his chin and show his teeth in a subtle challenge.

  Rasha did not usually threaten. Their swords would slash and bodies would fall. The blue Elsyrian put a hand on the other’s shoulder. “He does not know of her. You can see it in his eyes. Also, I fought this Balthaar before the fury.” He spoke Elsyrian in a low voice that Balthaar shouldn’t have been able to understand.

  They knew who he was, general o
f Barabbas, merciless killer of their kind. Why did they not draw their swords and take him to the dungeon, or at the very least, separate his head from his body?

  The green-skinned man dropped his angry eyes, nodding as his features regained their passivity before he turned and left in the direction the woman, Hatia, the Wind Spinner had gone.

  “Why do you call her that?” Balthaar asked, after waiting a long stretch of moments.

  The blue-skinned man simply stared at the wall to the left of Balthaar, arms crossed over his silver breast-plate. Finally, Balthaar turned and walked up the steps she’d come down. They’d taken his trunks in that direction. He needed to bathe, to change, to have space and time to clear his head.

  “Why do you call her Hatia?” the blue-skinned man replied in a low voice that Balthaar thought he may have imagined.

  “I knew a woman so named once,” he answered softly as he took the stone steps two at a time.

  “Is she why you went to war?” the man asked, strangely persistent.

  Balthaar stopped in the upper hall, grand stone ceiling curved above with elaborate wall hangings on either side.

  “Yes.” He continued walking. The Elsyrian must have pushed Balthaar, used some small magic to wrangle the confession. He would never otherwise reveal something he guarded so closely.

  “My name is Hortham. I also knew her before. She returned home from your country, released from the dungeons of the Bashai. They marked her, laid curses in her skin, curses we cannot cure. You saw the madness. I believe they did it intentionally, to raise the Elves to the fury. Before The Wind Spinner returned broken, the Elsyrians were not united against Barabbas.”

  Balthaar stopped, frozen, fighting the urge to trace his own arms and chest, the marks the Bashai had left on him. “It is impossible for the Bashai to mark any that are not their own,” he said in a wooden voice before he continued away from Hortham. How dare he lie, to spread the poison of doubt through Balthaar’s mind against his kind? He determined to be more on guard against these Elsyrians who used the weakness in the past against him. Perhaps she was mad, but the Bashai could not curse those who did not embrace their mark. Balthaar’s own mind and will was the Emperor’s, that was his destiny as one of the Emperor’s blessed, or cursed, but no Elsyrian could be touched by Bashai. He’d seen proof of failed experiments that showed the limits of the Emperor.

  Chapter 9

  Hatia stayed in the kitchen fingering herbs while her ankle ached. It would heal soon enough from the ministrations of the gardener. Elsyrians were supposed to be renowned for their grace. Ordinarily it wouldn’t bother her that she had the unhappy circumstance of being the only Elsyrian lady clumsy enough to fall down her own stairs.

  The Barbarian diplomat must think her such a fool. Had he truly said her name? How could it be? Perhaps he was a descendant of Herrin Balthaar, from one of the many from his numerous concubines no doubt.

  Hatia could still feel his hands, calloused and rough, catching on the flimsy fabric of her dress. He hadn’t had the soft pads of a dignitary.

  Hatia limped up and down the passageway between the kitchen and the morning room, passing through sunbeams and motes of dust that carried the scent of faraway places. The air had been stirred by the Barbarian's presence. When Hatia realized that she had been focused for hours, not slipping out into the gentle oblivion that was customary to her, she paused, leaning against the cool pale stone wall.

  Things were changing. Could it be for the better? Of course not. Nothing to do with Barbarians was good. She knew that much even if she couldn’t remember why. She frowned and tried to focus on the new pain in her ankle, the sharp bright pain that would keep her from thinking of the old wounds that had never healed, but the gardener had done his work well. She frowned at him as he approached with the graceful, ageless walk of their kind. He seemed so familiar, but he’d come with those the High Precept had sent. She didn’t know him, did she?

  “When is the Convotion? How soon shall we leave?” she asked, testing her ankle with her weight.

  "You remember about the Convotion?" he responded, his eyebrows lowering over his golden eyes.

  She frowned back at him. “Obviously. What is your name? How long have you worked here? I know you, don’t I?" She studied him as she walked beside him, barely using the crutch.

  "I’m the gardener,” he replied, and gave her a slight smile, as mocking as their kind could get. “Is my lady Perr going to the Convotion in her present state of dress?”

  His tone was one of complete condescension. At some times in her life that tone would have bothered her. She looked down at the dress, aged and worn, not exactly exalted. She shrugged. She'd fallen down her own stairs. The dress matched her frame of mind. “I don’t see why not. Is he ready?”

  “He?” the gardener folded his arms over his chest, an overt sign that matched his flared nostrils and bared teeth.

  “The Viceroy.”

  “I thought he was an Ambassador.”

  She frowned, biting her lip. “Yes, of course, the Ambassador. Pardon my error, errors..." She sighed. "Is the Ambassador prepared for the Convotion?"

  "It has been moved to two days hence."

  "Why?" she asked, stopping to stare at him full in the face.

  "After the Ambassador's long journey, they assumed it would befit him to rest in your..."

  "Nonsense." She cut him off, brushing past him, leaving the unnecessary crutch against the wall. "He must be greeted immediately by the High Precept unless this entire debacle is nothing more than pretense. Why not tar and feather him at once if there is no intention of following protocol? And why in the name of the five magics have I been involved if not to use my experience as an actual ambassador of the Barbarians?"

  He shook his head slightly, offering her an amused smile. “You take this small matter too..."

  "Small matter?" She drew herself up to frown at him, wishing that her veils were not so clouded. "We are going to see the High Precept this evening whether they have prepared the Convotion or not. You may not realize the greatness of this slight, but I do. They should have called someone else to the duty if they didn't want it done according to tradition.”

  He stared at her, seeming at a loss for words. Finally he softly said, "I will inform the High Precept of your intent."

  "Indeed," she said, stepping out of the hall and into the garden, relieved that the conversation was over. Gardeners should not argue back, not when you were discussing protocol rather than beans.

  "The Barbarian is hardly likely to be here as an ambassador. Spy or assassin is more like," he said coolly, following her.

  "Obviously," she replied keeping her voice even with a great deal of effort. How much easier it was to go through life without noticing that anyone else was in it. "However, if we wish to be above Barbarians, we must treat them as we know we ought, instead of stooping to their level."

  "Do you know their level? Do you realize how close we are to complete destruction?" His voice came out cold, emotionless, but when she looked in his eyes, she felt fear, his fear.

  "Things that come into existence must pass out of it."

  "I know the name, Balthaar, a general who leads his men fearlessly against us, knowing all our ways the better to destroy us. They say that he's killed so many Elves that he's taken on our immortality, spreading death and terror in an endless red parade. We should kill him while he is in our power."

  She blanched at his easy sentence to one she'd been assigned guide and protect. "If an execution order comes, you may take him away. Until then, we proceed with our guest according to custom. If you are uncomfortable with the Barbarian's presence, I will ask the High Precept to release you from your duty.”

  "And leave you alone with the calloused murderer?"

  She lifted her chin. "I am hardly defenseless."

  He had the temerity to laugh. Elsyrian laughter should hold joy and spread like a flame to those around them. His laughter tasted of acid, eating away at
all it touched. He bowed, one hand on his heart. When he straightened, the laughter had gone, replaced by Elven calm.

  "My Lady Perr has spoken."

  "So, she has," she nodded, passing him to the fountain. His words seemed to echo in her ears. Murder. Destruction. All of that seemed so familiar.

  "What did you do before you were my gardener?” she asked.

  "Ever since I came from the hermitage up north. You know the Olbase,” he replied evenly enough, but there was something off about his words. The Olbase housed injured soldiers coaxing them back to full health. The gardener seemed too young and mentally whole to be a retired soldier. She couldn’t imagine being in his way when he carried his pruning shears. If he had one of the enormous swords that the Rasha carried... She shuddered.

  She could almost see him with a sword, dust rising around him as he smiled, sharp glistening teeth before he spun and brought the sword down. She blinked and the sound of metal clashing and men screaming, the smell of blood and dirt, sweat and fear was replaced by the sound of the fountain in the courtyard where the gardener stood calmly gazing into the distance.

  She rubbed her temples, willing the scenes far away. She'd been asked to guide and guard the Barbarian. So she would as long as the High Precept needed her, even if it made her heart ache and her throat grow tight to hear a Barbarian say her name exactly like he had.

  Chapter 10

  As she stood waiting with the gardener, mixed images flitted in front of Lady Perr’s mind's eye: screams, blood, a large sky stretched infinitely above her, a bright blue flower crushed underfoot. The gardener spoke but the meaning of his words eluded her. When she looked at him, his face may as well have been carved from stone as he looked past her and made a crusty bow.

  She forced herself to focus. She’d have to keep an eye on him to make sure the viceroy didn’t wake up dead one morning—no, not viceroy, ambassador.