by Jill Braden
From the way Mityam said it, Voorus didn’t think he actually believed what he said. Not too far in his own past, though, Voorus knew he would have agreed with that statement. To his embarrassment, he still tended to assume that the lower castes were guilty when they were arrested. It was hard work to constantly climb out of that mindset.
“What finally brought Cuulon down wasn’t the disappearances or pile of bodies at his feet. It wasn’t the brutal beatings or the lack of trials. No. What got him exiled was the time he roughed up two scions of one of the thirteen families when he caught them burglarizing their aunt’s house. You see, they were upstanding lads from a good family, even though they’d apparently been breaking into homes of family and friends for almost a year. Boys of our caste have high spirits and play pranks; they aren’t criminals. But Cuulon treated them like the thieves they were, and that’s when he suddenly became an object lesson to the rest of the police in Thampur: make sure the person you’ve arrested has no powerful friends before you bang his head against the rocks and throw him into a cell with the rapists.”
“I shouldn’t be listening to this,” Voorus said uncertainly. It was fascinating, though.
“I’m a newcomer here. I can be forgiven for a little social blunder.” Mityam sipped of his cooled tea. “It sounds as if he took up exactly where he left off in Thampur. He’s judge, jury, and executioner. Which means, of course, that he’s a common murderer with the power of the state behind him.” He leaned back in his chair. “He’ll probably do very well when this war starts. His sort always do.”
Chapter 16: Nashruu Returns
Voorus gladly set aside the thick book when there was a knock on his apartment door. His brain was numb and his mouth dry from reading aloud and discussing the text. It had been an hour, and they were only on the second page. He’d take any break he could get. Maybe it was Kyam, bearing good news. Or even better, maybe it was QuiTai herself, come to let them know she’d been freed and to see if Mityam was settled comfortably. That was the kind of thing she’d do.
Expectations buoyed his mood as he rose. “Excuse me a moment, sir.”
Mityam motioned for Voorus to go ahead.
Voorus opened his apartment door, and the smile slid off his face. It was her, but the wrong her.
How had she found him? Why was she walking around Levapur without an escort?
He tugged the door tight against his body so Mityam wouldn’t be able to see around him. He couldn’t breathe. It was worse than the way he’d felt at the wharf earlier, because this time she saw him. He wanted to grab her by the arms and demand she explain everything. He wanted to kiss her and tell her he didn’t care that she’d disappeared without a word. He wanted to hug her and close his eyes and dream that they’d gone back in time eight years. But all he could do was save her reputation.
“You can’t be seen here. It isn’t proper,” he whispered.
“Is that any way to greet me after all these years?” Nashruu asked.
Her genteel voice sent him reeling back a step. Years ago, he’d hidden smiles when she’d imitated cultured tones. Only now he realized that was her real accent. No one ever expected a thiree to try to slum below caste. Was anything he knew about her real?
Nashruu lowered her voice but not her gaze. “We need to talk.”
“Not now,” he said between clenched teeth.
He turned back to see if Mityam were eavesdropping. All he could see was the old man’s arm and the back of his chair. However, Mityam’s hairy ears might be as sharp as his wit, so he shuffled closer to her and tried to close the door behind him. She might be seen in the hallway, though. He couldn’t decide if it were safer to let her into his apartment or risk a gossipy neighbor.
She pushed on the door. “I have to talk to you about Lady QuiTai. Right now.”
He didn’t understand. This woman looked like his Nashruu, but didn’t act like her. Her gaze was too direct and her bearing almost unfeminine. She didn’t look as if she cared what a man or her family thought of her, which was unthinkable. Ladies didn’t behave that way. Where was the obedient lover who had joyfully sacrificed herself in every way for his happiness? This thiree woman wouldn’t have lived in an apartment where cold air seeped around the windows and the hallways smelled of poverty dinners, as his Nashruu had. And how could she possibly know about QuiTai? How could QuiTai concern her? She’d only been in Levapur a couple hours.
“Is that Ma’am Nashruu Zul I hear?” Mityam asked.
Nashruu drew back. Now she had to understand why she shouldn’t be here. Voorus put his finger to his lips as he silently implored her to go away, even though they knew it was too late. She leaned against the wall and drew in quick breaths. Then the color came back into her face and she pushed the door open enough to walk inside.
“Yes, it is. Is that you, Mister Muul? What a pleasure to see you again.” She extended her hands to the old man as she walked around his chair. That darling dimple in her cheek showed as she smiled down at him.
Completely confused, Voorus watched his dream lover turn into a real person before his eyes. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
~ ~ ~
Nashruu settled into the chair Voorus offered. With downcast eyes and her hands folded into her lap, she looked like a proper Thampurian lady. Had it only been this morning that he’d found out she was alive? It seemed he’d always known, although the news that she was married to his half-brother had been a shock. QuiTai had explained things to him, things he hadn’t wanted to hear.
“This whole thing has the stench of Grandfather Zul to it,” QuiTai had whispered to him.
As Voorus looked at Nashruu, he began to hate her as passionately as he’d once loved her. Heat rushed over his face. He wanted to yell at her. He wanted to send her away. He would die of embarrassment if he cried, but his emotions were so muddled that he didn’t think he could control himself much longer. He was glad he was standing behind Mityam’s chair, so only she could see his shameful trembling.
“I’m so pleased to see you again, Mister Muul,” Nashruu said. Her gaze flitted up to Mityam’s face as she gave him a warm smile, and then fluttered back down to her hands. She pressed them together as if any moment she’d wring them in distress. It reminded Voorus of QuiTai’s deceptions.
“And I you. We were fellow passengers on the Golden Barracuda and spent many delightful hours playing tiles with Captain Hadre,” Mityam told Voorus. “What brings you here, dear lady? Shouldn’t you be resting?”
For a second, Voorus thought her expression hardened, but he blinked and she looked soft and biddable again. He was a bit annoyed at Mityam himself. This was his apartment; he was the host. If anyone should be chastising Ma’am Zul, it should be he, but the things he wanted to say couldn’t be repeated in front of a witness.
“I’m afraid that I have urgent business with Captain Voorus that can’t wait. I hate to impose, but it’s a personal matter.” She shyly glanced at Mityam as she left it to him to act on the implied request.
Curious to see what Mityam made of that, Voorus crept around the chair. Mityam seemed shocked, as well he should be. Married ladies didn’t have business with unmarried men, personal or otherwise, and certainly not in private. Voorus noticed she had yet to look at him again. Not even a coy glance. Why would she come to him and then ignore him?
Seething, he asked, “What interest could you possibly have with QuiTai?”
Now Mityam was truly alarmed. He turned to Nashruu. “Oh, my dear! A woman like that? No, no. This won’t do.”
Nashruu’s fleeting look of disgust changed quickly back to a properly docile mien. “I realize that it’s a bit unusual, but I have my orders.”
“I think your husband would agree with me that it’s best that you ignore these ‘orders’ you think you have. This isn’t befitting a woman of your station,” Mityam said.
Mityam struggled to rise from his chair, and Voorus put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll escort Ma’am Zul back to
her home. You can wait here for my return.”
Groaning, Mityam sank back into the chair. “Only sensible thing to do. I’d escort her myself, but…”
“Oh, absolutely. Ma’am Zul?” He bowed and indicated she should precede him to the door. To his relief, she didn’t make a scene, but they’d lived together long enough that he knew she was fuming underneath her polite expression. That made two of them.
“Have a talk with her husband,” Mityam called out.
Voorus nodded as he opened the door for Nashruu. He realized that they’d be alone. She might talk to him. He didn’t think he could bear it. He wanted explanations even though he already knew that none would satisfy him. There wasn’t an apology sincere enough to make him forgive her, but he wanted her to try so he could coldly, cruelly, let her know exactly what he thought of her. Some matters of honor could only be satisfied by drawing the soul’s blood. He wanted hers to pour onto the ground where he could spit on it.
~ ~ ~
“You wanted to speak to me?” Voorus winced at the pinched sound in his voice.
Now that they were out of his apartment, Nashruu seemed less bold. She stared forward grimly as she walked, as if the strangeness of Levapur already bored her. At the next road, she suddenly stopped and faced him.
“I’m sorry. Sorry for everything. Sorry for leaving you without a word. Sorry for returning in this manner. I’m not supposed to apologize to you, but I feel it’s in order. We’ve treated you poorly. If it’s any consolation, he uses all of us horribly.”
“He? Who? What?” he asked, although he knew already. Not all of it, of course. Even QuiTai admitted she hadn’t known all of it, but she’d known – guessed – enough the moment Nashruu had walked down the Golden Barracuda’s gang plank. He’d frozen in terror, anger… he couldn’t even name all the emotions that had washed over him in that moment.
Thank goodness QuiTai had had the sense to drag him behind the crates as Nashruu, Khyram, and Kyam strolled past.
“I think I know why I was exiled,” he’d told QuiTai when he was able to speak.
“Me too,” she’d said.
His throat had hurt. “I didn’t know she was married.”
QuiTai had put her finger to his lips. “Spies, everywhere, Captain. You don’t want them to know your business.”
A burst of hysteria had overwhelmed the confusion and grief. He’d laughed, bitterly. QuiTai was right, though: he didn’t want anyone to know his business – except her, because right now she was looking at him with such sympathy that he realized it had been a very long time since anyone had been kind to him. He’d bowed his head so their foreheads nearly touched. This woman, whom he’d tried to have hanged more times than he could count, shed a tear for the injustices he’d suffered.
Voorus didn’t touch Nashruu as they walked through the Quarter of Delights toward the Dragon Bridge. He didn’t need to. A spark flowed between them as if they held onto one of those new electrical fantasies.
“My Grandfather,” she said.
It took him a moment to realize she was answering him. He corrected her carefully. “Our Grandfather.”
Nashruu’s hand went to her mouth.
“I slept with my cousin. I guess I really am a Zul,” he’d told QuiTai.
“So you figured that out,” Nashruu said. She started walking again.
“I’m not stupid. I have a mirror.” He was angry with her, with their Grandfather, with the entire Zul clan.
They crossed over the Dragon Bridge, a small stone arch that spanned a gully, into the neighborhood where only members of the thirteen families lived. It was the flattest land in Levapur. Each compound was huge, with massive main houses and several outer buildings around the large inner courtyard.
The compound walls sat behind a row of trees that shaded the dirt road. Despite the wealth behind them, the walls were plain stucco and the gates that broke the long expanses were small and often unpainted. By each gate there was a bell pull that would summon a servant. It was very much like Thampur, and yet no one would ever mistake Levapur for Surrayya. The colors were too vivid. The sun was unrelenting. Everything simmered here.
“Even though we’re the only two people on this road, take my arm and I’ll whisper. Oh come on, I won’t contaminate you. That’s much better. We look like friends now. I hope we are,” Nashruu said.
“You were talking about our Grandfather.”
“He’s your true Grandfather. He’s more of a second cousin to me, I think. The charts are complicated. And like you, I’m only half Zul. You’d be surprised how many of us are. Half Zuls pretending to be full Zuls, that is. Bastards, all of us, which explains a lot.”
Voorus wondered if others behind the compound walls they passed were suffering through their own turmoil too, if the entire world were constantly unhappy and hurting, but none of them would dare show it.
What would it be like if people were permitted to be fragile when they were going through hell? Would everyone speak in gentle voices and try to make their way easier, or would they attack? You never knew. People surprised you. QuiTai had surprised him.
And what about Nashruu? Should he try to make her feel how much hurt she’d put him through, or should he treat her soul like delicate glass? Was this awkward and hard for her? Had she also been used?
“Why does he do this to us? What’s the point of sending you to seduce me, then making you leave me? He did make you leave me, didn’t he?” Voorus hated that his heart so plainly rode his voice.
She nodded, but not with any conviction. “I left because I had what I was sent for.”
“What could I possibly have given to you?”
“A son.”
He couldn’t breathe. So it was true. That boy on the wharf looked too much like Kyam. But Voorus looked like Kyam too. QuiTai had whispered all of this to him as they’d hidden behind the crates, but the meaning of her words hadn’t sunk in until now.
Voorus repeated QuiTai’s prophetic words. “Fresh blood.”
How did QuiTai see such a vast conspiracy from the way he looked at Nashruu? All he’d done was look. QuiTai had let go of the boy she’d saved from falling off the wharf and turned to him. Then she’d looked back at Nashruu. When she’d turned back to him, he’d seen the truth dawn on her as if a god sat on her shoulder and whispered the secret to her. One glance from him to Nashruu, and QuiTai had known they’d been lovers. All from a single glance.
Nashruu’s hand wrapped tighter around his forearm. “Yes. Exactly. Our King likes the idea of a pure line and doesn’t think of the consequences of inbreeding. Thankfully, Grandfather does. He learned from his father. Kyam’s son and the King’s eldest daughter would have been first cousins through all four parents. Our son and the princess are first cousins only through two. It isn’t perfect, but it’s better than a prince with no chin and the wit of a flounder.”
They spoke of treasonous deception and unforgivable manipulation as casually as the weather. If the people living in these expensive estates had any idea… They wouldn’t believe it. Who would? It was a monstrous fantasy. He felt as if the real him walked like a ghost beside his shell and someone else were inside his body. His life couldn’t be this complicated, could it? Intrigue was for QuiTai and Kyam and the rest of the dammed Zul clan, not bastards from the wrong part of town. He didn’t belong in the historical annuals, not even as a footnote.
“The King should be grateful to be saved from his own folly, but I can’t be thankful for being forced into this scheme,” Voorus said.
His son was betrothed to the King’s eldest daughter. His son.
Maybe if he thought about the next generation instead of himself, he could be at peace with Grandfather’s schemes.
They walked over interlaced tree roots spreading over the road’s surface. In Thampur, a road through the richest part of town would be paved with bricks. Here, it was dirt.
“It was the best year of my life,” Nashruu said. “I didn’t leave because of yo
u. I wrote a note that said that, but lost my nerve and took it with me. I still have it, if you want to read it. It was just that I didn’t dare give you hope. You were the type who would look for me forever if you thought there was hope, so I thought it was kinder to make sure you had none. But it was never because of you. Please believe me. The best part of coming here was that I could say that to you.”
And just that quickly, he forgave it all and loved her again.
~ ~ ~
Voorus and Nashruu stood at the Zul family compound’s gate, but didn’t go inside. Up close, Voorus could see the fine etching of time on Nashruu’s face. After so many years in Levapur, the sun had done worse to him. But now that the shock was over, he saw the Nashruu he’d known.
“Grandfather argued against it, but I thought you deserved the truth finally. Besides, it’s clear that Lady QuiTai would gladly spill our secrets to you. She doesn’t like Grandfather,” Nashruu confided, as if he didn’t know that.
“I need time to think about all this.”
She smiled kindly at him, even took his hand. “Take all the time you need.”
He could have stood there until the sun set.
“But,” she said.
He held his breath. What was it with the Zuls that they never let anyone enjoy a moment?
“I’ve been ordered to save Lady QuiTai from the fortress. I have the power of a writ, signed by the King, to let her out, but I was told only to use it as a last resort. So I went to the fortress–”
“You went…” Horrified, Voorus braced a hand against the compound wall for support. He was glad the only other person on the road was a Ponongese servant far off in the distance. A Thampurian would have hurried over to see if there was gossip to gather.
“Lady QuiTai is stubborn. She seems to prefer to die than to pledge her support to Grandfather,” Nashruu said.
