Soleri

by Michael Johnston

  Merit held her breath, waiting for Kepi to yield so that the match would be over, but her younger sister gave no sign, no indication that she would relent. Right, thought Merit. She isn’t going to make this easy for me.

  The two combatants stood, unmoving, the Feren blade held at her sister’s throat, the crowd whispering, as soldiers from both sides began gathering at the edge of the field, ready for war. All eyes turned to Merit. But she remained impassive, unwilling to release her sister from her fate. Instead she caressed the folds of her blue dress as she watched Kepi shudder beneath the blade, watched her squirm while the crowd held its breath. Let Kepi worry.

  When the moment had stretched for a sufficient time, Dagrun, the king of the Ferens, tired of holding his sword, let his blade nip her sister’s throat, drawing a sliver of blood.

  Forcing Merit’s hand. Save her sister or send her to her death.

  She had little choice.

  Merit slashed the air with her hand, surrendering the match to Dagrun.

  You won’t taste death today, Kepi.

  After all, Merit had plans for her little sister.

  3

  “I should have gutted Dagrun while he held the blade to my throat,” said Kepi Hark-Wadi, the king’s second daughter, as she threw her black leather armor across the room so that it expelled a trail of blood onto the floor. It left a star-shaped stain on the dusty brown sandstone, a mark she knew her father would see, no matter how much she would scrub it later. “I’m fine!” she barked, waving off the consolatory murmurs of her waiting women, the worried clucking of the physician who wanted to see to the bruise on her cheek and the cuts on her neck and chest that were still dripping blood from her fight in the arena. “Leave!” she told the physician.

  Kepi didn’t care about cuts and bruises. She seldom shied away from pain; in fact, if the words of her physician were to be believed, pain was the thing she sought most in life. Pain helped her forget. Whenever there was even the smallest chance of remembering her past, she would pick up a blade and pick a fight instead. Hitting things made the memories go away, and on occasion, taking a good hit did the trick as well.

  She had taken more than a few hits in the arena that day, but her humiliation hurt more than the slash of any blade.

  Merit should have let the king of the Ferens kill her; surely death was better than this. So close. She had come so close to defeating Dagrun. She could see it in her mind’s eye—if she had taken one more step to the right, if she had used her size and speed to react just a moment faster, she could have ducked his arm and come up behind him, caught him around the neck and pressed her blade against his throat, made him submit to her while around him rang the cheers of her countrymen. A Harkan victor in Harkana’s games. A victory against the people who had wronged her. She touched the cut on her throat and her finger came away wet with blood.

  “My, my, look at all these cuts,” murmured the girl who was washing her.

  “You’re black and blue,” said another. “You look like you been stompin’ grapes—like you’re covered in wine stains.”

  “I’ve had worse,” Kepi said as she untied the last of her leathers. Around her, the girls fussed and fretted, cleaning the dirt and the blood from her neck and chest, bringing her fresh water and a clean gown, something suitable for the gathering in the King’s Hall.

  “That’s what I’m going to wear?” Kepi looked at the flimsy linen dress and laughed without mirth. At ten and six years, slender as a teenage boy, with her wide shoulders and high forehead, Kepi was not as conventional a beauty as Merit. Her hair was a mossy brown and cut at the nape, short as a boy’s, and she had her father’s black eyes and thin nose. But Kepi cared little for her looks. In truth she had her own brand of charm, a beguilingly crooked smile, a brightness in her eyes, but as she was often standing next to her sister at public events, many found her plain.

  “You’ll make a poor sight in the King’s Hall, in your fine gown and golden bangles, and that bruise blackening half your face,” said the girl who was helping her with her dress.

  “You forgot about the cut on my arm,” Kepi said with a wan smile. The slash on her forearm was festering, turning purple, a sorry sight indeed for the people of Harkana, not to mention their guests from Feren.

  “I rather like the way I look,” Kepi said as she glanced at the patchwork of red and blue that covered her skin. The girls all shook their heads as they adjusted her gown, tugging it up across her slight breasts and flat stomach, correcting the pleats. The fabric was thin and she wore nothing beneath but her contempt, ill at ease at having to stand in the King’s Hall during the Devouring with a man whose people she so despised. Whose idea had it been to invite them to Harwen? Especially Dagrun, that brute and no-name. How can Merit tolerate the man? She had heard the rumors about her sister and the new king of the Ferens and hoped they were not true. The mere thought of the Ferens—liars, slavers—made her stomach roil.

  Kepi’s history with Feren was something she tried daily, without success, to forget—how as a child the emperor had promised her in marriage to a warlord of the blackthorn forests. How she had nearly died at the hands of her new husband and his kin. Imprisoned, starved. Abused. Her year in Feren was easily the worst of her young life.

  Kepi tried to push the thought from her mind as her cuts burned and her bruises throbbed. On any other day the pain would have distracted her, but not today, not with the Ferens so close. On a day like this, she could not forget what had happened to her at their hands.

  The betrothal itself was not unusual. Since the War of the Four and the penances that came from losing to the Soleri, every year legions of commoners from the lower kingdoms were sent to Sola to serve as slaves, while the ruling families sacrificed their children. Sons were sent to the Priory of Tolemy, while daughters were matched in marriage by the emperor himself. Like slaves, the children of the lords and kings of the lower kingdoms had no choice: they had to submit to the emperor’s will, for the good of the empire, for the sake of their country, for peace.

  And submit they did. Three years ago, Kepi had traveled with her father and sister and a small coterie of lords and ladies and soldiers, crossing the Rift valley on a rickety wooden bridge and making their way into the strange, dark land where green plants and trees grew wild, monstrous blackthorns so tall their tops were hidden in the low clouds, keeping the land in a cool gray shade, in a perpetual twilight that made everything seem hushed and secret. Even the noisy Harkans had been silenced and spoke only in whispers when they entered the forest kingdom, where there was no horizon, where the trees themselves seemed to lean in to listen.

  It had all seemed so exotic—the land, the lushness and greenness of it, so different from the deserts of Harkana. So empty. Met only by the calls of the black-winged kestrels wheeling high overhead, the Harkans traveled two days without seeing another soul, not a village, not a city. Kepi started to think the Ferens were a dream, not a people as much as a myth.

  No. She didn’t want to recall her tortured little wedding, the night of drunkenness that followed, and the way her husband’s body had looked when she found him dead the next morning, lying on his face in a pool of his own spit. She tried not to think about it. She always tried not to think about it, but was seldom successful. She’d spent a year in a Feren prison, accused of the drunkard’s murder, before her father had arrived with a legion of Harkan soldiers and demanded her release. When the prison guards balked at the Harkans’ demands, Arko’s men had cut down the Ferens, hacking their way into the prison. It was Arko himself who broke through the great wooden door of her cell, shattering her chains and carrying her to his horse.

  When she crossed the Rift valley, passing from the Feren kingdom into Harkana, she had spit upon the earth, vowing never to return. When she arrived in Harwen, Arko declared Kepi’s commitment to the Feren kingdom fulfilled. She had married Roghan Frith as the emperor had commanded and Roghan Frith was dead. Kepi was free.

  The Feren
s felt differently, of course. They believed that Kepi was a widow of the Gray Wood and one of them now. She was owed to them. When Dagrun took the throne, the new king of the Ferens had quickly petitioned her father with offers of marriage to his various warlords. The fact that Kepi had been accused of murdering her first husband was not a deterrent. The Ferens would claim her, Dagrun had threatened, by the emperor’s decree.

  Arko swore to his daughter that he would never allow it. And in the meantime, Dagrun had proven to be nothing but a saber-rattler. So far he had not gone to war over her, even if the threat of another Feren marriage was ever in the air.

  I should have beaten Dagrun today. She was no longer ten and three, but sixteen, and the most nimble soldier her Harkan trainer had ever seen. I wanted to bring him to his knees. She was disgusted with her failure to do so. Since the wedding, she had dreamed of nothing but her freedom. She wanted to make her own way in the world, to be free of the empire’s influence, free of Feren marriage proposals. She wanted to determine her own path in life.

  A knock rattled the door. A messenger. From Merit, no doubt, who was wondering what was taking Kepi so long and had sent a boy to fetch her younger sister to the gathering in the King’s Hall.

  “A moment,” her servant called. Kepi was not yet ready.

  “A long moment,” Kepi muttered, still not certain if she wanted to go through with the gathering.

  “What are we going to do about the bruises?” asked the girl who had dressed her. The others all shook their heads; they were clearly at a loss. “Isn’t there some way to hide them? Chalk powder? Ochre?” The girls fiddled and murmured until Kepi lost patience with their fussing. She pushed them all aside, glanced at her reflection in the polished silver, and laughed.

  “I think I look splendid,” Kepi said. She would not conceal her wounds. If she must make an appearance, if she must face Dagrun, let her meet him not with the face of a king’s daughter, but that of a warrior fresh off the field—bruised but defiant.

  4

  Ren’s stomach tightened as the first drop of honey landed on his forehead. He caught a second splash on his nose and cheek and licked what he could. Is this my morning meal? Had they come to feed him? The honey ran over his shoulders and down his stained tunic. The heavy syrup clung to the loose, homespun fibers. He brushed at the honey, catching it on his palm, licking it up greedily.

  A day had passed since Adin had left the Priory, since Oren Thrako had sentenced Ren, the Harkan king’s son, to the Sun’s Justice. His skin was red, his forehead burnt, his lips cracked. He had seen the sun as it wound its way across the sky; he had stood in darkness and watched the daylight approach. I’ve seen the sun, but it’s nothing like what I imagined. In his cell the sun was nothing but a vague, barely perceptible glow, something to be hoarded and conserved, like water or food. But in the lightwell, that same sun was a tyrant, a fiery demon that spun through the sky, burning his skin and eyes.

  “More,” Ren cried, the honey clinging to his lips. “More,” he said again, but no one answered.

  A fly buzzed. Ren swatted at the creature but missed.

  “Is that it?” he asked, but no one replied.

  The buzzing came again. Tiny legs tickled his skin. The thick, syrupy honey had trapped a fly on his brow. Ren smashed his fist against his forehead and the buzzing stopped. He rubbed his hand on the hot stone, smearing fly guts over the rock. I miss the gray water, my morning bath.

  He licked honey from his lips.

  Not much of a meal. In truth, it had only made him hungrier.

  The buzzing resumed. A gnat tickled his eyelashes, a black fly bit his nose, another crawled across his chest. “Do you think I’m a corpse? I’m not dead,” he said, swatting at the flies, “not yet.” His head ached, as did his stomach and the muscles in his arms and legs.

  Pain makes the man. He hummed the priors’ favorite mantra, hoping it meant something. I’ll be quite a man if I survive this.

  He smashed another fly, the wings sticking to his palm.

  This was not a meal, he realized. The honey was not enough to fill his belly, nor was it meant for him to eat. The priors are feeding the flies. The honey’s scent had drawn the black-winged creatures to him. They swarmed his head, landed on his ears and nose, on the nape of his neck, and the ridge of his forehead. “Get off me,” he said as he brushed aside the honey with his sleeve, but he could not scour the sweet scent from his face. The flies nipped at his eyelids and ear lobes, they slithered across his back beneath his shirt.

  How long is this going to last? Ren nearly fell from his perch as he flapped his hands in the air, scattering the flies, but only for a moment. “Do I taste good?” he asked.

  Ren wanted to kneel, to make himself as little as possible, but the ledge was too small. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. He could cry out. No. His voice would ring through the shaft, then the sound would echo through the Priory. Every ransom and prior would know that he was broken. It was too early for that, too soon to submit. Ren bit his lip and punched the air.

  Get me out of here. The words thundered in his head.

  The sky turned white, the sun seared his neck and shoulders, his forehead, and the tops of his feet. In Solus, the twelve hours of the day were divided evenly between sunrise and sunset. In the summer, when the time between these was longer, the hours were longer as well. A summer hour was a long hour. In this well, every hour is a summer hour. Every moment feels like years.

  Ren was no stranger to isolation, to boredom. In the confines of his cell he had learned to pass the long hours. He had built towers in his head, constructing the spires one stone at a time. He had made up stories, tales that sounded funny spoken aloud but in his head provided marvelous entertainment every night. Some evenings Tye would sneak over, and they would pore over old scrolls she had stolen from the archive. At least I spared her this torture.

  As evenfall approached and shadow filled the well, he tried to recall one of his stories, but his head hurt too much to think. He tried to create a tower, but the pain in his legs made it difficult to focus. Only thoughts of Tye, safe in her cell, gave him comfort as he shifted uneasily, as the stiffness spread through his joints, the pain rising through his legs and midsection.

  What have I done to deserve this?

  Sandals slapped on the stones above, a voice rang in the shaft. “Alive?”

  Ren grunted.

  The sandals slapped again, fading away as the prior left him.

  “I’m alive,” he said, thinking the prior had missed his reply. I’m here and I’m hungry. Feed me or kill me, but please don’t ignore me.

  The tapping of footsteps returned and this time a shadow passed over the shaft. A prior upended a wooden bucket, spilling its contents into the well.

  “Eat, gutter rat,” the prior said as objects hard and soft clattered against the stone, striking Ren’s head, falling on his lips, his shoulders.

  “Eat this?” he asked. The sickly sweet smell of rotting meat and wilted vegetables made him wince, but he was hungry, terribly hungry. He caught a half-eaten date and took a bite from it without hesitation. It was likely a leftover, a discard from the priors’ table. The ransoms ate everything given to them.

  “Wait, boy. Don’t fill your belly yet,” said the prior. “I have more.”

  No doubt, thought Ren as the prior cast a second bucket over the lip of the well and more rotten fruit fell around him. Ren caught a sweet-smelling fig. He devoured it without thought or hesitation, and quickly regretted it. There had been maggots wriggling through the sweet flesh of the fig. His stomach heaved, he coughed and spit it out.

  “Give me something decent to eat,” he said as he shook the filth from his tunic.

  There was no reply.

  “Say something—you can’t ignore me,” Ren said, but the only reply was the soft thud of a door slamming shut.

  The day passed, the sun vanished, and the sky turned black. Flies swarmed in and out of the lightwell, coalesc
ing into black clouds. He ate what he could scrape from the shaft wall, watching as half-chewed olives hardened on the warm stone. Ren was prying a seed from between his teeth when he heard footsteps once more. The tap-tapping of sandals on stone echoed from the roof above.

  “Alive?” a voice called.

  Ren snorted, shifting his weight in the darkness.

  A hand reached over the rim of the lightwell, fingers glowing orange and red, shadows mixing with the light. The prior laid a stubby candle on a protruding stone, then added a second, and a third.

  “Why?” Ren asked.

  “For company,” said the prior with a mean chuckle.

  The candle spread golden rays across the shaft. This is no gift. The light might keep the rats at bay, but the flickering glow would bring moths and black beetles. Leave me alone. Let me rest. Let me die in peace.

  “You can keep your candles,” he said as he transferred his weight. He raised his right leg, shaking out the cramp, massaging the muscles as he swatted at moths. His fingers swept something acrid into his nose. What’s this? The odor was rich and loamy. The scent stung his eyes. A trail of smoke crept up from the darkness below, weaving its way toward the night sky as slowly and carefully as a thief stalking the darkness.

  Pipe smoke. And the smell was familiar. Oren Thrako often walked the Priory, pipe in hand, smoke trailing behind him. Ren followed the line of smoke down to the midpoint of the shaft. There you are. A faint glow emanated from an opening in the wall. The light brightened, grew warm and orange. He saw a pipe winking red in the darkness, a yellow sleeve and five stubby fingers.

  “Alive?” the question reverberated in the darkness. The smoke swirled, its white tail curling through the air, the familiar scent filling Ren’s throat. The Prior Master stood at the opening, provoking Ren. Alive? He asked. Still fighting? Why resist? Why not jump?

  It would be easy to jump. One step, then another—then the end. No more pain, no more flies, no more rats. No more tap-tapping of sandals on the stones. No more rotting remains. No.