by Sonia Lyris
A knife at her eye. A blade at her throat.
He was right: she had no way of knowing if he meant what he said. Perhaps it was better, as he suggested, to trust that he did.
Or was he only saying that to distract her from sensible suspicion? Surely if they were aligned in purpose—at least until she was in the Lord Commander’s hands—she could trust him. Unless, of course, he was only saying that to confuse her in some way. She shook her head, unable to follow the convoluted motives she could ascribe to him if she gave herself the chance.
She found herself trusting him in small ways, to let him load her pack, to carry her things, to bring her food.
When he told Maris where he’d been since they’d seen each other last, she could almost forget where she was and where she was going, the sound of their horses’ hooves on the road lost in the howl of raging seas or storms, or the drums and pipes of distant lands that he made come alive with words. She felt a hunger to go to those places, to go somewhere out of choice, to see what was there. Not to run from—
This man. Who rode beside her.
Maris told tales of merchants and musicians and governors. “And, of course,” Maris was saying now, “the problem with providing witness for that snarled contract was that then I had to enforce the damned thing. It’s usually not worth the trouble and time.”
“And yet, it pays.”
“That it does.”
Amarta shook her head in wonder. All her life lack of money had meant hunger and cold and rank, ragged clothes. For these two, it was like drawing water from a well that never went dry. When they wanted more, they worked and were paid more than they needed. It was a mystery to her, how some could have so much while the many had so very little.
Maris was in the lead when Amarta began to recognize the hut-shaped rises of rock and scrub plants and yellow grasses.
At Tayre’s look over his shoulder she kept her face as blank as she knew how. His horse slowed to ride alongside her. Much as she wanted to look around at the deadlands that held Kusan secret, she kept her eyes fixedly on the road ahead.
At last he spoke. “The hidden city. A slave city,” he said. “Am I right?”
If only she had made the three of them leave Kusan as soon as she had foreseen the threat, he might not now know this.
“I thought so,” he said to her silence, as if she had answered.
Ksava and her baby. The elders. Darad.
As he watched her, she struggled to keep her breathing even. She had to blink to clear her eyes, lest the tears show.
“I only suspected,” he said, “until now.”
“Damn you,” she said, exhaling a soft sob.
“I have no need to tell the Lord Commander or anyone else. Provided you do not change your mind about where we are headed.”
Could he be relied upon that far? She looked at him.
“My word is good, Seer.”
“I don’t trust you.”
“You don’t have to. Stay on the course you have begun, and I will keep my silence.”
They had stopped. A distant, gray column of smoke rose into a pale winter sky.
“Chimash, I would say,” Tayre said. “A rather large town. That much smoke would mean most of it is on fire or already ash.”
So they left the Great Road for the High Traveler’s Road, a detour that twisted its way up into the mountains, taking them up steep switchbacks through forests of evergreen and bare, twisted orange and gray limbs. As they rose in the mountains, the snow deepened, and the cold began to bite.
Tall pines painted dim, cool bands of shadow across the snow-covered road, fading then coming bright as high clouds moved across the sky. Wet, cold sprinkles fell, becoming white points of snow as they rode under the intermittent light of a fading, weak winter sun.
Maris and Tayre turned their talk to the inn where they planned to stay that night.
On either side of the road, snow-crusted banks rose. All at once Amarta felt the sharp pressure of immediate warning. She cried out wordlessly, yanking her horse’s reins. Tayre snapped out his bow, notched an arrow, and turned in his saddle.
Stepping out from behind the high bank was a horse and rider, blocking their way. On both sides of the banks above them were a handful of riders and horses with bows pointed down at them. Behind them another group. Sharp whispered commands, shouted cautions. Where had they all come from?
Motion exploded everywhere, suddenly. Amarta lowered her head to hug her horse’s neck, heard the twang of arrows, of shouts and screams. Looking sideways across the tawny mane she saw a man on the rise crumple, then another.
The pressure of warning vanished even while frantic movement continued. She looked around curiously, lifting her head. The man on the horse who had blocked their way slumped over in his saddle, then slipped down onto the snow-patched dirt below.
Then Tayre was facing her, bow up. Before she could move, he let fly an arrow. She yelped and again contracted tight against her horse’s neck. Behind her someone howled in pain.
Suddenly there was silence.
Mere heartbeats had passed. Only now did it occur to Amarta to pull the black-handled knife that Tayre had helped her strap to her boot. Her hand was shaking as she reached to draw it. She sat up, feeling foolish, the blade useless in her hand.
Maris spoke. “Ama, are you all right?”
“Yes,” she croaked, trying to keep her hand steady enough to put the knife back into its holster instead of into her leg.
“You foresaw this,” Maris said.
“Only at the last moment.”
“Sufficient for our needs.” Maris said. “Don’t underestimate the value of an eyeblink’s warning.”
Why had the sense of threat vanished so suddenly, even before the motion was done?
Because of Maris and Tayre, she realized: the attackers might have put an arrow through her during that first moment, but with Maris and Tayre there, that first instant had been the only one in which she was likely to be harmed. Past that instant the danger was gone, so the warnings had ceased, even though the action had not.
Maris turned her horse around and surveyed the bodies on the ground. “Who are these idiots, Enlon?”
“You two did nothing to disguise yourselves in Kelerre. Word spreads, and Innel isn’t the only one who wants her. Mountain tribe, by the look of them.”
“Are they dead?” Amarta asked timidly.
“Asleep,” Maris said. “They’ll wake in a few hours.”
“And come after us again,” Tayre said.
“Four are dead from your bow, Enlon. If the rest don’t take that as a clear message, next time I’ll see to it that none of them wake.”
“It would be better to leave them unable to say anything about us.”
“I see no reason to take more life here.”
“We have a ways to go yet,” he said. “Let’s not make this trip more difficult than it already is. Shall I take care of it?”
Maris was silent a long moment. “No. It is done. These will tell no tales of our passing here.”
Amarta looked at Maris, realizing what these words meant. That it was easy for Tayre to kill, that she knew, but Maris as well?
She looked at each body as they passed, wondering who they were, if they had families and people at home who would miss them—surely they must—and what they had hoped to gain here by her death. Or her life.
As they rode in silence through the tall corridor of trees that darkened with nightfall, Amarta’s thoughts returned again and again to the men lying on the ground. Death seemed to come so easily. Like a sharp gust of wind taking a candle flame. How many more would die because of her?
Slush squirted out from every step of her horse’s hooves, splattering Tayre’s horse’s back legs ahead of her. Above, beyond the trees, blue sky mingled with white, hinting that somewhere there might be sunlight. How long had it been since she had looked up and seen anything but white?
From a distant hush the sound o
f river steadily grew into a roar. When the hillside dropped away on one side, Amarta saw the wide, broad Sennant through the trees.
“Wait,” she said, pulling to a stop. “I know this land.”
“What do you mean, Ama?” Maris asked from behind her.
Tayre looked back at them.
“Enana,” Amarta replied, looking at him. “Her family. What did you do to them?”
“Would you believe any reply I gave you?”
“Answer me anyway,” Amarta said.
He turned his horse around on the path to face her. “I told her that I had wronged you, that I sought now to make amends, to bring you an inheritance. She believed me. I left them unharmed.”
“Is it true?” she asked Maris.
“How would I know? His body has always been a cipher to my reading. I believe him, if that is sufficient.”
She stared at him, trying to see truth or lie with her own eyes, even knowing she could not. “I want to see them.”
“Where are they?” Maris asked.
“East of the Sennant,” Tayre said. “Near a village called Nesmar. I can lead you there if you wish.”
That was part answer, then; if he knew where the farm was, he had been there.
“Yes,” she said.
They continued on. The High Traveler’s Road met and followed the Sennant River for a time, veered off, snaked back.
Images of Enana and her family flickered through Amarta’s mind. The tall woman lighting the lamp at night, her wide smile, the games they would play after eating their fill of a stew that was never the same twice but was always astonishingly good.
Then: the feel of hard ground under her, a knife at her throat.
She inhaled the brisk air, put a hand on the warm neck of her horse, and brought herself back to this moment. He glanced at her.
“Why should I believe you at all?” she demanded angrily.
“You shouldn’t.”
“Then why answer me?”
“Because you asked.”
Curse him for giving her reason to hope and to doubt at the very same time. Why did he do that?
She began to recognize landmarks. There, by the bend in the road, was where he had first surprised her that warm summer day in the forest, where vision had crashed over her, impossible to ignore. There she had lain on her back under the high green canopy, then rolled him off of her long enough to rise and run.
A twisted tree, there, grown but recognizable, one that she had spun around in her dash to escape.
And there, where she had dropped to the ground, ankle in searing pain, staring up at him, his arrow aimed at her heart.
That man there, who rode before her. She could have killed him that day.
No, she could not have. It had not been in her to do so.
Would it be now?
He led them off the main road where he had once chased her, a side road, up onto a hill. There they stopped in a wide ring of alders, small buds dusty mauve and green with early spring, and dismounted.
Through the trees and down the hillside, through pine and bare branch, she could see bits of Enana’s farmland and house.
“Is that it?” Maris asked.
Amarta nodded.
“Know this, Seer,” he said, “before you go to them: you risk them, doing so.”
“What do you mean?”
“It is likely we are being tracked. Any who follow us will ask them questions. Less skillfully than I did.”
“Or maybe you don’t want me to see what you did to them.”
“They are your friends; risk them if you wish.”
“Why should you care?”
“I care about getting you safely to the capital, and I prefer not to leave behind a trail of signposts. If your friends have not seen you, they can’t tell anyone you were here.”
“I want to know if they are well.”
“And you won’t believe whatever I tell you, so—” He stopped, made a thoughtful sound. “Perhaps you can find your answer without risking them.”
“What do you mean?”
“Decide to see them. Then look into the future and see what would occur when you go to the house. If they are well, change your mind and decide not to go. If you can do such a thing.”
“Maris?” she asked.
“He’s likely correct,” the mage said, “that we are being tracked and your friends would be endangered if you went closer.”
She felt a vast longing to see them, but that was not reason enough to put them at risk. Surely she had already cost enough people so much.
Leaning against a tree, she stared at the distant farmhouse and tried to ease her mind into placidity. She closed her eyes, pushed herself into the future.
She would, she resolved, go to the farmhouse. In a few minutes. She would do this.
And then . . . ?
A walk down the hill, leaving the others behind. A scrape of the back of her hand on a thorned brush she had not seen, wrapped around a trunk. She would wipe the bit of blood on her trousers. A knock on the door. There was Cafir, Enana’s youngest, now with a full beard, filled out solid across the shoulders. It would take him a very long moment to recognize her, and she would be smiling so wide, and then he would call out excitedly to his mother. Enana would run, and she, too, would smile, and Amarta’s heart would swell with joy as she swept her into a hug, and—
She pushed further, days hence.
Would someone else come, asking questions?
A boot on the ground, one she did not recognize. A hand on a tree trunk, examining a broken thorn. A heavy knock on a door. The look on Enana’s face as she opened it to see the men who stood there.
Amarta opened her eyes, blinking away vision, struggling to come back to this moment. The one in which she would not go to the farmhouse.
Tayre had been telling the truth. And that meant what?
It meant nothing.
“Amarta?” Maris asked softly.
Taking the reins of her mare, she put a foot into the stirrup, pulled herself up into the saddle. “I don’t need to see them,” she said.
More days of travel took them back to the Great Road, having circumvented Chimash and the trouble there. More nights in inns, more days of riding.
In the evenings, Maris often left them for a time to go walking by herself. Tonight Tayre was performing his usual movements, his stretches and twists, turns and jumps, drops and rolls. He would start slow then speed up, the fast, flexible motions sometimes hard to follow. A lethal dance with an invisible attacker.
It was stunning to her, what he could do with his body. Until she had seen him do all this it had not even occurred to her that he would need to practice. Nightmare creatures did not need to practice to be what they were.
When he finished tonight, his face damp with sweat, he sat and drank water, turning his chair slightly to face the door.
Guarding her.
“You have been south of Kelerre? To Dulu? To Timurung?” she asked.
“I have.”
“What are people like in other places?”
“Strip away language and dress and they are much the same. They eat, sleep, make babies, and die. Some talk, some dance, some do fancy tricks with rows of beetles, some sit burning thin scented sticks, waiting for the day when their luck will change.”
“I would like to see all that.”
“Perhaps you will.”
At this her smile vanished.
“Look what I found,” Maris said cheerfully when she returned. She set a carafe of wine and some small ceramic cups on the table and poured, handing the cups around.
“Do we celebrate tonight, Maris?” Tayre asked.
Maris downed her cup and poured another. “I have come rather farther north than I intended to, my friends. But now that I am satisfied that you”—she gestured at Tayre with her cup—“will see Amarta safely to that wretch Innel, it may be time for me to go. I thought we could all use a little help brightening the prospect. That
is, unless you’ve changed your mind, Amarta, and will return home with me?”
Amarta felt her stomach go leaden. She had come to like this, she realized, being in company with Maris. And, yes, even Tayre. It had become easy to forget what this was about, where she was going. And why.
For a moment she let herself imagine returning to warm lands. To Dirina and Pas.
“No,” she said softly. They would not be safe with her there. She took a sip. “Oh,” she said, her mind suddenly and entirely on the rich, smoky wine. “How marvelous.”
“It had better be, for what I paid for it.”
“So like a Perripin to pay too much for wine,” Tayre said.
“Certainly not,” Maris said. “Just enough.”
It warmed her throat and stomach, easing the ache of sorrow she felt deep inside. She held out her hand for more. Maris refilled.
“Aren’t you having any?” she asked Tayre.
A shake of the head. “It would slow me.”
“You don’t have to be fast, at least not tonight.”
“It’ll slow me tomorrow some as well, and who knows what I’ll have to be tomorrow?” He smiled.
Maris chuckled at this, and for some reason it struck Amarta as funny, too. “He’s fast,” she said. “Have you seen him move? So fast. Like that time with the dart.”
“Not fast enough, though, was I?”
“That wasn’t you. That was me. I saw it coming. So I”—He had come so close that day. So close. Now she was willingly going to the man who had sent him. She had reasons, she reminded herself. Good ones. “What will happen to me at the palace?” she asked.
Maris snorted softly. “Why ask us? Don’t you see the future?”
“I don’t, always. It’s”—she exhaled frustration, trying to clear the haze of her thinking enough to explain—“too much. So many images I can’t make sense of them. Or understand how one thing that only might happen could lead to another that only might happen, if that and tens of other things happen in just the right way.”
The future was always shifting. Trying to hold it was like trying to hold a live fish with greased hands.
“But sometimes you know,” he said.
