Soleri

by Michael Johnston

  She’d crafted a plan to fulfill all their wishes—an unconventional way, perhaps, but one that was within the emperor’s laws. Kepi was owed to the Ferens, and if she married Dagrun, his children would carry the royal blood he needed, and their marriage would guarantee a powerful alliance between their kingdoms. And this way, it would be Kepi’s sons with Dagrun who would be sent to the Priory, not Merit’s.

  Because in secret, Merit would have a man who loved her, a man she had chosen for herself and not one who had been assigned to her by the emperor. One day, their two kingdoms would stand together and defy the empire. Only then could they live openly together as husband and wife.

  But since Kepi had refused Dagrun, there was no alliance with the Ferens. There was no Dagrun in her bed. There was only Shenn, her husband, who had not even bothered to stand at her side for the gathering. Now I’m forced to seek you out, Shenn, so I don’t look like a bloody idiot at the feast.

  Pushing past the servant boys who were still gawking at the sky, past the soldiers who guarded the king’s family, she pressed deeper into the Hornring until she came upon her husband’s chambers. She threw open the door, and there was Shenn, sitting on a low stool, a young man kneeling between his legs, pleasuring Shenn’s manhood.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were busy,” she said as the door shut behind her.

  At the sight of Merit, the young man jerked bolt upright. He was naked and his flaccid cock bobbed up and down like a fish on a line as he searched for his robe.

  “It’s in the corner.” She nodded toward a sand-gray robe, draped haphazardly over a half-played game of Coin. The young man nodded his thanks as he took the robe and slipped it over his head. Shenn fussed with the laces on his breeches, but the young man just stood there, uncertain of what to do next, confused, a bit embarrassed.

  “Go,” she indicated the door. “Out. Don’t worry, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before.” And indeed it wasn’t. This was not the first the time she had found Shenn in the company of someone else, and she doubted it would be the last.

  “Go on,” Shenn said. He too looked embarrassed, but not as much as the boy.

  Merit waited until the door shut behind the young man, her eyes exchanging a knowing look with Shenn.

  “I thought I’d find you here,” she said.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for you to see that,” he said as he donned his ceremonial tunic of dyed black linen.

  “No doubt, but still … I wish you were a bit more discreet,” said Merit as she watched him dress. “You have duties to attend to—you are my husband, Shenn. I expect you to stand by my side, and I don’t enjoy looking like a fool.”

  Shenn was a friend, a co-conspirator, everything except for a husband, really. They made a handsome couple in public, Merit with her mother’s blue-green eyes, her father’s dusky skin, Shenn tall and strong-jawed and deeply bronzed. That the great beauty of Harkana was married to a man who was immune to her good looks proved that Tolemy, the bastard who had arranged her marriage, was not without a sense of humor.

  “You were absent in the King’s Hall.”

  “I know I should have been there, Merit, but you know how I dislike ceremony.”

  “You are worse than my father, but at least you are not hunting in the north. Perhaps in the future you can see fit to wait until the evening to seek out the company of others. It’s what the rest of us do.”

  “Right,” he said. Shenn fixed his hair in a circle of polished silver, moving his strong jaw from side to side. He could have made a decent husband, if only it were in his nature to love me.

  “The Devouring has come and gone,” she said, continuing her rebuke.

  “I was detained, by a messenger.”

  “That one?” Her eyes flicked toward the door, in the direction of the man who had just left.

  He shrugged. “Your waiting women told me about the sun and what Kepi said in the King’s Hall. I know Dagrun left the Hornring.” Shenn made his way across the room. He gave her a brief but comforting embrace. It felt good to feel the warmth of another pressed against her body. She’d loved him when they were first married. Even when she discovered he could not return her love, as her dearest friend and ally, she loved him still. But an endless parade of lovers had made her the butt of every joke from Harwen to the Cressel. Beyond, even.

  Merit longed for something of her own. Someone of her own. “Dagrun’s not gone,” she said, “not yet. I can still make this right. But for now we have duties to attend to. The Devouring is not yet finished.” Each year, when the games were over, Harkana observed a feast as part of the five lost days. The sun had not dimmed, but the ceremonies continued nonetheless—there was nothing else to do. The tables were set, the bread was warm and the amber cool. Merit saw no sense in canceling the whole affair.

  “Shall we?” she asked, ready to take her husband’s arm. She motioned to go, but something caught her eye. The young man had left a white linen scarf on the chair, the kind worn by the acolytes of the Desouk tribe.

  “That man, who was he?” she asked. Merit recalled his dark skin and shoulder-length black hair. “He wasn’t Harkan.”

  “No,” said Shenn. “I’d almost forgotten to tell you. He was a messenger. The Mother Priestess sent a scroll.”

  Merit gave no reply.

  “The Mother Priestess, she’s asking about our repository.”

  Shenn passed the scroll to Merit, who nodded as she read through the correspondence, keeping her face calm, even if the very mention of the Mother Priestess made her twitch. Shenn was watching her carefully. He never quite understood why Merit did not take better advantage of such a powerful affiliation, why his wife shunned any contact with the priests of Desouk. He had badgered her to reconsider her stance on the issue, but Merit was firm: she would have nothing to do with Sarra Amunet.

  She tossed aside the scroll, “Anything else?”

  Shenn shook his head.

  Merit walked to the door, her thoughts returning to Dagrun. I’ll try once more, she thought. I can’t go one like this, not with a husband who mocks me, and a kingdom with an absent king.

  “Merit.” Shenn’s voice held an edge. “What should I do about the Mother Priestess’s request?”

  “Give her what she wants. If the priests are after a few old scrolls, let them have them. Send your boys, have the scrolls ridden to Desouk.”

  Shenn shot Merit a questioning look. He was not accustomed to hearing her acquiesce to the Mother Priestess’s demands, but Merit was feeling generous that day, her usual stubbornness weakened by her sister’s disappointing cleverness, her father’s absence, her husband’s dalliance.

  “You heard me,” she said, her tone wry. “Give her what she wants. For once, I’d hate to disappoint my mother.”

  13

  “Order three cakes for my supper,” Kepi Hark-Wadi, the king’s younger daughter, told her waiting woman. The two were standing at the door to Kepi’s chamber in the Hornring. “One black bread, one barley, and a star of fast bread.”

  As her lady scurried toward the kitchen, Kepi took a heavy black cloak—a woolen mantle reserved for funerals—and threw it over her shoulders, meaning to ride as fast and as far from Dagrun and Merit as her horse’s hooves could take her. She had not attended the banquet that followed the Devouring but instead had stayed alone in her chamber, listening to the guards chatter about the failed eclipse. Kepi hadn’t given the sun much thought; like any Harkan, she had little patience for Soleri superstitions. But now she was hungry, not only for food but also company. So she fetched her mount from the stables and made for the nearby city of Blackrock, riding along a path she had taken many times, a trail that allowed her to avoid the guards who stood on the Hornring’s wall, and the sentries at Harwen’s gate.

  I need to be free of this place. For a moment she thought she might not return at all. If the empire would not grant her the freedom she desired, Kepi would take it for herself. She would flee and never return.
As if that were even a possibility, she thought.

  Kepi rode through a postern door, past the low hills and scattered dwellings, riding out across the lonely road that straddled the basin of Amen, the great plain that stood between the Dromus and the hilly highlands of Harkana. It was not Harkana’s safest road, but she had always been careful—she had never encountered any kind of trouble that her horse’s hooves could not outrun, and she concealed a pair of curving blades beneath her saddle.

  Ash, her gray-haired rouncy, carried her mistress quickly across the desert hills toward Blackrock. The steady thump of the saddle made the cut on her neck burn and the bruise on her cheek throb. Kepi was aware that once again she was trying to forget, to escape, though she knew she could do neither. She missed her absent father. Was it a month now? The king had never been gone for so long. I wish he would return. She needed allies, she needed the king at home and not off hunting as he usually did during the five lost days. She had so little family left. Her father was away, her brother and her mother too. Kepi had not seen either in a decade. The king of Harkana had his flaws; he could not abide the Soleri holiday, so he left Harwen each year at this time. But he always returned. Isn’t that what matters? she thought. Isn’t that the one thing a parent must do? Stay. Yes, that was it, she thought. Sarra had left them all behind when she fled to Desouk, and Kepi had never forgiven her for that. If her mother had a reason for leaving, Kepi didn’t know it. She didn’t want to know it. I’ve fled the Hornring, but I know I’ll go back. I’ll face Merit and Dagrun. She would not flee from her problems as she guessed her mother had done.

  Not long after the low sun had turned the desert’s gray sand into a shadowy mass of purple, Kepi caught sight of the badgir-spiked silhouette of Blackrock’s wall. She rode toward the black stone pylon with her cloak bunched around her shoulders, her hood pulled down. She rode past the city gate, past the statue of Ulfer, past the stables and barracks that housed the garrison’s men and horses. Up ahead stood the lime-washed walls of the Elba—an amber house whose only advertisement was its chalk-white walls and the loud sounds of drinking and cursing that echoed through the open archway. Kepi slipped from her mount and tethered her horse. A boy rushed from the archway; she flipped him a copper turn and asked him to make certain Ash was watered and fed.

  Inside, she strode past the crowded front toward the alcoves that ran along the back walls. There in the far corner she saw a boy sitting at a table with three cakes of bread. One black, one brown, one shaped like a star.

  “You got my message,” she said, taking the seat across from him.

  Seth caught her eye and grinned. “How could I miss it?” He laughed. “No one ever orders black bread. I think the kitchen girls are starting to suspect something.”

  She beamed as she tugged back the hood of her cloak. Seth tracked every order that came through the kitchens. If Kepi asked for anything—a glass of amber, salted quail, or a cake of bread—Seth was the first to see her order. Courgettes and olives was an invitation for Seth to visit her chamber; tagins in pots meant to meet at the market; lamb with tagins meant the stables. Cakes of emmer meant Assur. Black bread signified Blackrock. Fast bread told Seth to come quickly, that same day, when he had finished his work. Barley bread, in this case, told Seth to meet her at the Elba.

  “This is the third time this month you’ve ordered black bread and everyone hates black bread,” said Seth.

  “So do I. I don’t like barley bread either.”

  Seth shook his head. “Barley bread was all I ever ate growing up.”

  “So you hate it too?”

  “Can’t say I do, it’s like hating amber—what’s the use in hating something you can’t live without?”

  “I assure you a person can live without barley bread—it’s as hard as rock,” Kepi said as she lifted the cake and broke it in two.

  A girl arrived with a cup of amber. Kepi took the clay vessel before the girl could place it on the table. She drank and nearly emptied the cup. “Did you know that my brother was born on the last day of the year?” she asked, putting down her cup.

  “Today?”

  “Ten and three years ago, but I doubt he knows it. They say the ransoms don’t celebrate such things,” she motioned for another drink.

  “I don’t know much about the ransoms,” Seth said, taking a sip of amber. “Do you remember your brother at all?”

  “Not really. I was only six when he left. I think Merit remembers him, but she won’t admit it. I tried asking her about him once, but she said she couldn’t recall much, nothing worth sharing.”

  “I’ve got eight brothers, but I can’t imagine having one taken when we were young.”

  “I would like to see his face. They say the ransoms have gray hair and white skin. They are boys, but they look like ghosts, like withered old men who have never seen the sun.” She shook her head. “That sounds silly—doesn’t it? There are so many stories, but no one really knows the truth.” Kepi took another drink. “Tell me something happy, Seth.” Even if she had seen him only the day before, it felt as though months had passed since they last spoke.

  “Not till you tell me what he said. I heard Dagrun proposed, that’s what the cooks are all saying. You replied with some long speech that no one understood, but in the end you turned him down. The bakers all said there’d be war, that Dagrun would come for you for certain.”

  “I know.” Kepi lowered her voice. “Dagrun will return. He won’t rest until I’ve married him or one of his lords. The damn Ferens have too much pride, they think they own me,” she said, shaking her head. “Even my own sister seems bent on arranging the marriage. The two were practically grinning until I told him I was still in mourning for my old husband.” Kepi sighed. “You should have seen it, Seth, the Feren slaves, packed shoulder to shoulder, an entire army of them, barely clothed—it was a strange sight, ugly and cruel.”

  Seth scratched lines in the table, digging the pointed end of a knife into the soft part of the wood. The candle on the table tipped forward, dripping wax. “You don’t have to marry him—or anyone else,” he said, righting the candle.

  “It looks like I have no choice—if not Dagrun then some other Feren. I’m only stalling.”

  He shook his head. “There has to be another way.”

  She stuck her finger in the melted wax, liking the sharp pain from its heat. They had had this conversation before, and there was nothing she could say to him that he wanted to hear.

  “So that’s it then? We just accept it?” Seth’s eyes were red, he wanted to help, but there was nothing he could do. “Maybe one day we could…” His sentence trailed off to nothing.

  “Yes, one day,” she echoed faintly. It seemed too cruel to raise his hopes. Try as she might, she could see no way out of the marriage Dagrun had proposed. She knew she was only stalling. Arko was stalling—but what good did it do? The emperor decided on her fate, and her fate was tied to Feren. The empire would threaten war if she did not do as she was told. And when it came down to it, she would not resist, she would not put her life above the lives of her people. Arko had given up Ren, his heir. Arko had seen his father revolt against the empire. In the Children’s War, Koren had fought to keep his son, Arko, out of the Priory. He succeeded but her father suffered nonetheless. Arko lived with blood on his hands—he dreamed each night of the fathers and sons who had died to keep him out of the Priory. They haunted his every moment. She did not want to live as her father had, burdened with guilt. She wanted her freedom, but she saw no way to attain it.

  Seth reached out his hand, but she drew back hers. “Let’s get out of here tonight. Your grandfather resisted the empire’s edicts and he’s practically a hero. In the north they sing songs about Koren.”

  “Thousands of Harkans died to keep one child out of a cell—Koren was brave, but foolish. I think sometimes my father would be happier if he had gone to the Priory—he’d be free of his guilt then. He wouldn’t spend half his time in the Shambles drinking
and hunting. My father did the right thing when he sent my brother to the emperor—no one admires him or tells stories about his decision, but he made the right choice, the hard choice.”

  “You’re not your father,” Seth said.

  “No. But I am his daughter.”

  Seth did not reply. The room felt big and empty, hollow for a moment. The two sat in silence: Seth’s eyes downcast and Kepi studying his features. The three cakes he had brought from the kitchen caught her attention. A fourth cake, one so slim she had not noticed it, sat beneath the black bread. “What’s this?” she asked, breaking the silence.

  “That? Nothing—just a little something extra,” he said, looking as if he wanted to hide.

  She knocked the upper cakes aside. Below sat a curious square of white, flat bread. “What is it?”

  “It’s nothing really.”

  Kepi picked up the crumbling square. Her eyes widened. “You’re from Barsip, aren’t you?”

  He dipped his head in acknowledgment. The northern tribes—the villages that populated the hilly lands north of Harwen, near the Shambles and the Feren Rift valley, where the land was rocky and crops were hard to grow—made a special cake, a cake reserved for weddings.

  “It’s a Barsip cake,” she said.

  Seth frowned. “I wasn’t going to propose or anything. Don’t worry, I won’t make you turn down two men in one day. I just thought it would be nice. It’s a special cake, the most special we have, and so I baked one for you.”

  Though they were part of Harkana, the northern tribes practiced customs unique to their lands, customs not shared in Harwen. Kepi had never tasted a Barsip cake, but she had heard of it and heard it was quite good. Seth took the flaky bread, snapped it into halves, and offered one to Kepi. She took a bite. The cake was hard, almost brittle, and when it broke, the crack revealed a hundred finely rolled layers, one piled on the next. It tasted sweet on her tongue. She wondered if he was lying, if he had meant to propose, and she had cut him short with her comment. She hoped he had not. She wanted things to remain as they were, there was no use taking the arrangement any further.