by David Hair
Perno grinned. ‘She has some fire, this Makani girl.’
Hessaz growled something in his ear and as he whispered something back, they were all openly measuring Huriya. Their eyes made her quiver. ‘Did you know my father?’ she asked Zaqri in a bid to conceal the flush building about her neck.
‘I did,’ Zaqri replied. He glanced questioningly at Sabele, who nodded. ‘He rejected our ways. It hurt us all.’
‘After he was burned by the Crusaders he went south to Lakh. My mother was already pregnant.’ Huriya stopped then, deciding all of a sudden to wait and see before revealing Kazim’s existence. She saw Sabele nod appreciatively.
‘So you are twenty-two?’ mused Zaqri, accepting her words at face value. ‘You look younger.’ Then he frowned. ‘You spoke of your father in the past tense. Is he dead, then?’
‘Last year, in Baranasi.’
Zaqri looked surprised. ‘How did you come north then?’
‘I found her,’ Sabele put in, her lie sounding like truth. ‘I brought her north.’ Clearly some secrets were not for telling, however much respect she might give these others. Her voice made it clear that the subject of Huriya’s past was now closed.
‘What new task do you have for us?’ Perno asked.
Sabele glanced at Huriya. ‘I seek a former companion of Huriya. She too has the gnosis, but she is hiding from us. We need a different set of eyes. Her name is Ramita Ankesharan. Huriya will show her to you, mind to mind. Then we must find her. There is much at stake.’
Huriya presumed that it was Ramita’s unborn children that Sabele wanted. Well, whatever it was, she looked forward to communicating with Zaqri, mind-to-mind, and in other ways …
Zaqri bowed his head. ‘We will find her for you, Seeress.’
‘I have every confidence in you, dearest grandchild,’ Sabele purred, glancing about at the room, settling upon an energetic couple a few yards away. ‘I wish I had the vigour of youth still,’ she cackled lasciviously.
‘You are young where it matters,’ Perno told her.
‘Flatterer,’ Sabele replied dismissively. ‘Go and play, all of you. I need to think.’
She made a disgruntled Huriya clear away the food and plates while the Dokken pack drank and fought and mated on the rugs scattered about the floor. After she’d finished her tasks, Huriya slunk away. She feared the pack when they were in this mood; it was almost as if they were one organism, sharing their minds and bodies, and outsiders were detested. As she returned to her room, she glimpsed Ghila and Zaqri together. The Lokistani woman was skeletal, her ribs clearly visible beneath her black skin, but Zaqri looked lost in her eyes as he tangled his limbs with hers. Huriya stopped, hungering for him as he took one of Ghila’s small but engorged nipples in his mouth; his majestic body was coiled above his woman, his immense prong engorged, and Huriya felt her mouth go dry as she watched. Then he looked up and saw her, and Ghila turned her head too. Zaqri growled, and Huriya fled.
11
Fishil Wadi
The Dorobon Monarchy
One powerful Rimoni clan in Javon, the Gorgio, refused to be a party to the Javon Settlement, as they wouldn’t intermarry with the Jhafi. They retained voting privileges, but were constitutionally ineligible for the succession. Consequently, despite the hatred most Rimoni harbour for both Rondians and magi, the Gorgio supported the Rondian invasion, and that aid was vital in securing the kingship of Javon for the Dorobon family, kin to Emperor Constant.
The Dorobon reign lasted until after the Second Crusade when, weakened by insurrection and rebellion, they succumbed to the Nesti-led Javonesi. Neither the Dorobon nor the Gorgio have ever recovered.
SOURCE: ORDO COSTRUO COLLEGIATE, PONTUS.
You do not graft a sick branch onto a healthy tree
PROVERBS, THE KALISTHAM
Brochena, Javon, Antiopia
Shaban (Augeite) 928
2nd month of the Moontide
Gurvon Gyle stole into the tiny whitewashed cell and sat beside the bed. Mercifully, the sole occupant, a thin shape with fire-blackened skin, was asleep. There was almost no flesh on the face of the burn victim at all, and the entire front of the body was charred, but the gnosis – and sheer bloody-minded tenacity – had kept the victim clinging to life.
Her body didn’t stir, but Coin’s mind woke.
It was cruel to keep the burned shapeshifter alive, but he didn’t care, nor did he care whether she was suffering or not, unless it impaired her recovery. Coin was an asset, and when he’d discovered that she was still clinging to life he’d contrived to save her. In truth, though, it was Coin’s own tenacity that had preserved her; Gyle had mostly just hidden her away while he tended her, then, once she was out of immediate danger, buried another in her place. Coin had been caught in a fire-blast – Gyle still didn’t know why; she must have moved in the wrong direction when Inquisitor Targon had attacked Elena. He couldn’t work out how Elena had killed Targon, either – but he’d taken credit for it when reporting to Mater-Imperia Lucia, Coin’s mother.
he told her, truthfully. The clean flesh at the edges of the burns was fighting a slow war of attrition against the burned tissue. Any normal person would be dead, and most magi too, but whatever else she was, Coin was a pure-blood magi with power to burn.
He touched her hand and sent her empathy. He really did admire her courage in going on. That she’d risen above her state to become the most feared shapeshifter in the underworld of the magi was to her immense credit. She was a strange thing: a malformed personality with an utterly malleable body, like a child in many ways. An abused child.
Not that I’ve much of a team left right now. Sindon’s attack had cost him three: Drumm and Nevis were dead, and Elena had vanished. Rutt Sordell had come scuttling back to him and the scarab was currently in his pocket, trying to persuade him to let him have Coin’s body once it was healed. Mara was unharmed, and he’d summoned others fro
m their assignments in Hebusalim to replace Nevis and Drumm, but their position felt precarious. The thought of Elena, alive and in control of her own body again, made him more nervous than he had been for months. His resources here were spread dangerously thin, and at such a crucial time. Tomorrow, the Nesti marched north.
she groaned.
He put the other in place and could immediately feel her gnosis working the connections of the eyes, fitting them to her own burned-out sockets. It wasn’t going to be easy, and it would take days, but if she got it right, it would be a giant step towards her rehabilitation.
He touched her hand, the half-healed one. he promised, and she flooded him with gratitude, with worship.
He busied himself with cleaning Coin’s tortured body, applying what little healing-gnosis he had. For the hundredth time he missed Elena, who would have had Coin halfway to recovery by now.
Afterwards, he climbed the stairs and, after checking for silence, pulled a catch and slid open an opening into a cobwebby cellar filled with debris. Another stair took him into the web of tiny passages that riddled Brochena Palace. It was late evening and the upper levels were quiet. Finally he wriggled into the secret space adjoining Cera’s room.
A grey shape huddled beside a small candle turned to face him as he approached. The watcher was a bony woman with an enormous nose pierced by a large gold ring that hung down to her upper lip. Her grey-black hair was pulled away from her face. Her name was Hesta Mafagliou; she was a Lantric quarter-blood about fifty years old. He didn’t know if he could fully trust her, even though he’d known her for a decade or more, but she’d been posing credibly as a Rimoni in the city since she’d arrived a few weeks ago, and her primarily Sorcery-based affinities were useful.
‘How is our princessa?’ he whispered in Hesta’s ear. She smelled stale and bookish, as if she spent most of her time in abandoned libraries.
‘Writing at her desk,’ Hesta whispered back. Her breath was laced with coffee and tobacco. Her big eyes loomed like moons in the dim hidey-hole. ‘She’s a homely thing,’ she added cattily. Hesta’s desire for other women was the weakness that had driven her from society and into Gyle’s circle of agents. She might have been attractive when she was younger, but these days her sagging breasts and paunch meant she’d have to use her strong Mesmerism affinity if she wanted to seduce anyone.
‘Fancy her, do you?’ he asked.
Hesta shrugged. ‘There are prettier women here.’
‘You’re here undercover,’ he reminded her. ‘You will touch no one until I allow it.’
‘There will never be anyone for me again,’ Hesta said softly, her eyes briefly distant. Her safian lover had reneged on their relationship when it became public and had somehow managed to escape the total ruin that had enveloped Hesta’s family, all because of her ‘unnatural’ desires. There is only ever one true love in anyone’s lives, she’d told him once. All the others dwell in its shadow. It had made him think uncomfortably of Elena.
He nudged Hesta aside and stared into the room. Cera was visible in profile, her long, serious face mostly hidden behind her curtain of black hair. She wore a heavy velvet robe over her nightgown and was signing sheet after sheet of paper, all minor orders and authorisations. The bureaucrats had overloaded her with last-minute matters.
‘Has she had any visitors?’ he asked.
Hesta shook her head. ‘Only the little maid.’
‘Tarita? What do you make of her?’
‘Observant. Spirited. Loyal to Cera.’
‘Is she an informant?’
‘Possibly. She has the nerve for it, I deem.’ Hesta glanced sideways at him. ‘Would you like me to find out?’ Her tone suggested exactly how she’d ‘investigate’ Tarita.
He shook his head. ‘She will go north with Cera and you will not. I want you here to secure Timori. You’ll have Mathieu Fillon with you.’
Hesta sniffed. ‘Fillon is just a boy.’
‘He is a Fire-mage of some talent.’
‘He refuses to take orders from women.’
‘He will do as I tell him, and I will tell him that you are in charge.’
‘What about Sordell?’
Gyle’s mouth twitched. ‘Without a body he is useless for now.’
‘Put him into Fillon’s body.’
‘Rutt let me down. He does not deserve another chance so swiftly. And you would find him even less biddable than Fillon.’ He patted the woman’s shoulder. ‘I’m relying on you and Fillon to secure Timori. Do not fail me.’ He could feel Sordell’s anger at his words but didn’t care. Learn, Rutt.
Hesta’s yellowed teeth glinted between parted lips. ‘I’ll do my part, boss.’
He stared through the spy-hole and decided Cera needed a little reminder of who controlled her. He touched a latch, opened the panel and slipped into the room, masking the noise with gnosis. He was within a few feet of Cera when she looked up abruptly and almost screamed.
‘Hush, Princessa,’ he told her. ‘It is only me.’
‘Wh-what do you want?’ Her eyes flew about the room, then came back to him.
He reached down and caught her chin, watching how she flinched at the contact. They say she is passionless, but I don’t believe that. They just mistake her passions: her drives are led by the mind. As are mine. He was surprised to realise that she stirred him, but he shook off that urge. Francis Dorobon would expect her to be a virgin. But he did wonder if one day she might, despite everything, become a true ally. He liked her rational manner; he saw elements of himself in her.
‘Cera, during the march my people will be near you at all times. Nothing you do will be unknown to me.’ It wasn’t quite true, thanks to the loss of Elena, but he needed her to be afraid.
She looked away. ‘You’ve told me this.’
‘Breathe a word of doubt to anyone and I will have their throats cut. Then the Dorobon forces will be unleashed upon your people, and your family and all their retainers will simply cease to exist.’
She swallowed visibly.
‘You must exude confidence at all times. You must project belief that your forces will crush the Dorobon.’
She nodded mutely.
‘And remember: my people here will have Timori at their mercy.’
‘I know,’ she whispered.
He seized her shoulders, his hands gentle, and pulled her upright, tilted his head and made her meet his eyes. Again, he was surprised by the urge to have her – then he realised why: she is the closest thing to Elena I have. The thought quelled his latent desire.
‘Cera,’ he said, ‘I …’ For a moment he lost track of what he’d meant to say, then recalled himself. ‘Cera, you remember our earlier conversation? I have suggested to Francis Dorobon that he keep you as a
hostage. He is young and lusty and I will urge him to bed you, to show himself your master. You could gain a mage-child and introduce the gnosis into your family, if you are willing.’
Her eyes filled, but he could feel the desire for power warring with revulsion, not just at the thought of Francis Dorobon, but also at the idea of doing something that he, Gurvon Gyle, wanted her to do. He watched dispassionately as a tear rolled down her cheek.
‘Yes,’ she whispered huskily, and he pulled her close, as if offering comfort, though he could tell his closeness revolted her.
Perhaps that was why he did it.
*
Cera’s only previous military march had been when she’d led the Nesti in reclaiming Brochena last year. Of course, they’d known before they left that the Gorgio had fled and that there was no likelihood of battle, so it had been more like a parade. Every village had greeted them with cheers and songs, and waving cloths dyed violet, the Nesti colour.
This time was different. This time they were marching north to certain battle against a terrifying enemy. Conventional wisdom was that to have any chance you had to outnumber the Rondians five to one, and be willing to endure almost fifty per cent casualties. She tried to imagine every second man dead; it was a hideous thought.
It’s down to me to ensure it does not come to that, she reminded herself grimly.
Some nights she slept in the main suite of whichever noble’s house lay in the army’s path. Tarita looked after her every need, and was quick to administer a tongue-lashing to anyone who did not instantly supply whatever Cera required. Other nights, when there was no convenient place to stay, she and the little Jhafi maid shared a tent, and her presence helped to keep her despair at bay.
She’d not seen Elena – Rutt Sordell – for days. He’d apparently been sent on a mission, and she’d been obliged to repeat that to her councillors. It was a relief not to have Not-Elena close by, but it puzzled her too; that hadn’t been the original plan. She allowed herself the faint hope that somehow Gyle’s schemes might be unravelling.
