Soleri

by Michael Johnston

  “A relief,” said Merit. And it was indeed a relief. She had sought only to marry her sister off, not to see her set loose among the outlanders. Immediately, it felt as though a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. When she’d first heard of Kepi’s escape, of the battle at the Rift valley, Merit had briefly doubted the path she had chosen. She feared she had gone too far. But now that Kepi was safe once more, Merit’s confidence had returned.

  “Your husband,” Dagrun said, without looking at her, “have you heard from the man?”

  “No. Shenn will join us when he is finished.” She hoped he was finished, she hoped her husband had done what her men had failed to do in the Hollows and again in the bordertowns. It is mercy, she told herself. It is better if the boy never reaches Harwen—better if I never see his face. She’d spent years telling herself the kingdom was better off without a ransom for a king. But in truth, she had gotten used to the throne and had no intention of giving it up, least of all for her father’s true heir.

  Dagrun and Merit were not alone. For appearance’s sake, an emissary from Rachis and three warlords of Feren had joined them on the ceremonial platform. The man from Rachis, Kal Bendal, dressed in the deep purple of the mountain lords, occupied a folding stool, while Ferris Mawr of Caerwynt and Deccan Falkirk of Caerfrae sat on blackthorn stools and chewed nuts as the slaves sawed at the tree. Each man wore the colors of his clan. Deccan wore the gray and white, while Ferris donned the green and black. The last of the tribal warlords refused to sit. Brock Sutharian of the Northwoods—the land of the graythorn, the forest beyond the Gray Wood—paced, looking uncomfortable. Merit guessed he was unused to ceremony. The men of the Northwoods were said to live within the trees themselves, in great hollows carved in the ancient graythorns. Brock wore clothes of his own making and did not offer a greeting when Dagrun introduced him to Merit. She guessed he was not rude but rather not fluent in the emperor’s tongue, although looking at him she decided that perhaps he was not fluent in any tongue.

  As with the other lords and grandees, Merit was an honored guest, nothing more. She kept her chin up and her face impassive as they watched the slaves work. The process fascinated Dagrun and she tried to share his interest. Above, on the scaffolds, slaves chipped at the hard, spiky bark like quarrymen. When they had opened a furrow wide enough to work, the men lifted saws. It took four of them to draw a blade across the tree and another four to pull the blade in the opposite direction. They heaved one more cry and the log tumbled to the ground.

  When she had first thought to marry her sister to her admirer and co-conspirator, she had not factored in any jealousy on her part, but she could not deny that the elaborate preparations for their new queen were making her heart ache a little. As always, she felt slighted. In more ways than one, this was her wedding—her day and her tree. This was her triumph, but she had to pretend she was nothing more than an observer. She had to act as if the whole affair were a bore, rolling her eyes and heaving great sighs of exasperation.

  Dagrun called out instructions as another section of trunk thundered to the ground. The wood caught on one of the tree’s lower branches and crashed awkwardly against a neighboring blackthorn. The king of the Ferens took the overseer by the neck and turned him around, patiently detailing the man’s error until he was interrupted by a shout. A young man rushed the platform, brandishing a blackthorn spear. “False king!” the man cried at Dagrun. He hefted a long and sharply pointed stave.

  The king of the Ferens ignored his heckler, pointing to a winch that was poorly placed, a knot that had slipped. Dagrun coolly went on speaking to the overseer as a pair of soldiers cut the protester down with a couple of bloody swings from their swords, the body falling in three pieces, four.

  Dagrun brushed a gray needle from his tunic as he ushered the overseer from the platform. Behind him, the seated warlords folded their hands uncomfortably but said nothing. Brock Sutharian gave a smirk, but only Merit acknowledged the incident. “Walk with me,” she said, leading him down the platform steps and away from the ears of the others. She gestured to the fallen man as they passed. “After all this time?” she asked. “They still do not accept you as king?”

  Soldiers followed Dagrun at a distance. He waited till the clinking of their armor ceased. “It’s the damn Night Vigil.”

  “I thought you underwent the Waking Rite.”

  “No. Didn’t bother,” he said as the soldiers collected the protester’s remains.

  “Why not? A single night in the Cragwood? You’ve survived worse.” She glanced at the forest floor, where only a bit of red remained in the place where the young man had fallen.

  Dagrun grimaced at the bloody spot, his brow furrowed in dark ridges not unlike the rings of the trees around them. “No, it’s more than a night quarreling with outlanders in the forest. When the king wakes, he is supposed to find a kite circling above his head. The kite chooses the king. It joins him on the throne, like some kind of great bloody turkey.” The king of the Ferens shook his head. “I took my throne. I earned it with blood and coin. I don’t need a damned symbol—I have an army. But some think that without the kite, I have no right to call myself king. Superstitions and nonsense is what it is.” A flurry of silvery branches crashed one after another to the ground. In the distance, his soldiers maintained their guard.

  Merit crossed her arms. “People live and die by superstitions and nonsense. It might be to your advantage to go through the rite, if only to put an end to the people’s reason to oppose you.”

  Dagrun shrugged. He bent, as Merit had, to recover a spiky blackthorn seed. His callused fingers squeezed the thorny pod and it popped open. “Even if I did undergo the rite, there would still be opposition and strife in the kingdom,” he said, plucking out the soft nut and crushing it between his teeth. “The kite is just the latest excuse for their unhappiness.” He chewed. “If Barrin were still king, they would oppose him. I’ve made changes, I’ve helped my kingdom, made the crofters and foresters profitable.” He collected a pair of seeds, bunching them between his fingers. “Feren is blessed with great resources. But in other ways they curse us too. Blackthorn foresting requires legions of unskilled workers, slaves. We need these men and women to harvest the trees, but we cannot feed them. Many starved under Barrin’s reign; others were sold off to Soleri traders. Feren has half the workers it had a decade ago.”

  “How is this possible? Is the forest not plentiful?”

  “The forest is not the issue, the empire takes half of what we grow. Each month Tolemy asks for more and Feren must comply.” They walked deeper into the forest and Dagrun motioned for his soldiers to stay behind. He cracked the second nut and raised a finger to indicate the forest, the infant trees struggling upward around the old giant, now missing its top branches. “This is what we earned for betraying your grandfather. When Dalach abandoned Koren Hark-Wadi in the Children’s War, the Ray swore to him that no imperial solider would ever set foot again in the Gray Wood, that Sola would leave our blackthorns alone. We keep our trees, but the empire takes our crops. We have an army, but not the resources to feed that army.” Dagrun shook his head, leading her into a grove thick with blackthorn trunks. “If we had joined Koren, it might have ended that day.” His eyes hardened. They were alone now, standing in a forest of tall bracken and spiky trees. “I’d have joined him. I would not have left your grandfather holding his cock on the battlefield.” Dagrun glared at Merit, his eyes black, his face colored by regret.

  “If only you were king then,” she said. “If only Dalach had been as strong as you.”

  Dagrun brooded on that. His voice fell nearly to a whisper. “I will not see it happen here, the way it’s happened everywhere. Dalach was a coward and a weakling; he gave his boy to the emperor. Barrin gave his son to Tolemy.”

  “You can give Kepi’s to the emperor. And one day, after we’ve overturned Tolemy, we’ll have a child that no one can take from us.”

  “One day?” he asked. “Isn’t the wedd
ing all but finished?” His hand brushed against the neckline of her dress and pulled at the fabric gently, so that his finger brushed her nipple until it stood firm.

  “Not now.” Merit’s whole body flushed as she pressed herself against him, against the heat at his core. Dagrun groaned against her neck, his hand still cupping her breast, the other one impatiently lifting her skirt to touch her underneath. The trees and bracken sheltered them on all sides.

  “I’m nearly through waiting, Merit.”

  “You will not have to wait much longer,” she whispered, taking his hands away from her body and kissing the tips of his fingers. His soldiers were not far and she did not want to be seen standing so close to the king, so she took a step back. “But I cannot be yours. Not until after your wedding night, not until I see the bloody sheets.”

  31

  The carriage followed a road that led slowly up into the mountains outside Rifka, the air cooler, wetter, the land greener. Kepi held the shutter open. Refusing to speak to her captors or to Seth, she focused on the workers streaming toward the High City: slaves in rags, burly woodworkers with their tools on their backs, tired-looking boys half-asleep on their feet. The Feren soldiers forced the workers away from the road to let the caravan pass, holding them away at sword point. If this were Harkana, Kepi would have said something to them about their roughness with the workers, that there was no reason to terrify them on her account. But this was not Harkana, and Kepi was not yet their queen. At the moment she was no better off than the workers shivering under the glare of the soldiers—none of them were masters of their fate.

  When she and Seth were captured in the Cragwood, the Feren soldiers had pinned Seth to the standing stones at sword point and searched him. Seth had seemed to think the soldiers would thank him—he kept talking to the one in charge, a broad-shouldered man with a gray beard, as if they knew each other—but they tied him with ropes and kept warning him to stop talking. When he refused, they knocked him on the head, and he fell to the ground like a bag of old linens. Like a fool, Kepi thought sadly. Don’t hurt him. He’s just a boy.

  The soldiers had not tied Kepi, though they had kept her closely and respectfully guarded as they led her to the Rift valley, where a vast contingent of Feren soldiers held the border. Dagrun was not present at the camp, though she knew his men sent a messenger to the king who was attending the Cutting Day ceremony with her sister. The felling of the blackthorn honored the new queen, but it was Merit who would enjoy the pageantry. Kepi was not bothered—in some ways she guessed this marriage was more Merit’s than her own. Leaving Kepi to brood over her second wedding, the soldiers gently led her back into the carriage, locking it once more from the outside. Seth had come and knocked on her door once, but she hadn’t the heart to answer. “Talk to me, Kepi,” he begged. “I promised you we’d be together. I saved you, Kepi. That was all I did.” Eventually he went away.

  The caravan continued over the high mountain pass, drawing ever closer to the High City, the horses climbing slowly into a green meadow with rocky, crumbling sides, the roads growing more and more crowded with workers, with traders and soldiers traveling to Rifka. Once, she thought she saw the great gray bird, the kite, but she could not be certain. She saw its shadow among the crowds, but the narrow carriage window prevented her from seeing the sky. Afterward, the caravan descended into the cover of trees, passing into shadow, the roads thick with carts and wagons, the world closing in around her small carriage. She lost track of the sky and the kite as the forest’s cool air wrapped her skin like an unwelcome hand. She longed for the open desert plains of Harkana, for the dust of the Hornring, even for the amber house in Blackrock where she and Seth had met in secret.

  No, not Blackrock, she thought with a pang, and not with Seth. She should have ended it a long time ago. He was soft, unprepared for the harshness that was her life. She would try to help him as best she could. Perhaps he could find meaningful work for himself in Feren.

  A shout rang out as a soldier announced their arrival in Rifka. The carriage stopped and the door opened in front of the gatehouse of the caer, a round fortress surrounded by a high stone wall made of the same granite as the Cragwood, the solitary fortress into which the people would scurry in times of war. Soldiers approached. The men led her out of the carriage and across the blackthorn bridge. Above, logs hung from chains—the Chime Gate, they said, named for the forest chimes the hanging logs resembled.

  When she passed beneath that gate, so like the mouth of a hoary beast swallowing her alive, Kepi knew she would not be able to leave, not this time. This was not Roghan Frith’s shabby village in the woods. There would be no locks in her chamber, but she was a prisoner just the same; the men who stood at her door would not allow her to pass, and everywhere guards would be told not to trust the Harkan woman, the woman who would be their queen.

  “There is news from Desouk,” said the tall Feren who walked at her side.

  Kepi was uncertain of how to react, news from Desouk meant news from her mother, Sarra Amunet.

  “This morning we received a missive from the Mother. She wrote to inform the faithful that she survived the riots on the last day of the year.”

  “Riots?” Kepi asked as they left the bridge behind. She had heard whispers about unrest in the capital, but she hadn’t stopped to consider what that might mean for the Mother Priestess. “What happened?”

  “After the sun failed to dim, there was chaos on the wall and in the Waset, burning and rioting, but the Mother was ferried safely through the crowds by her followers. She is out of harm’s way, in Desouk, where she will remain. I thought you might want to hear the news.”

  “Thank you. That was kind of you,” Kepi said. The soldier must have known that Sarra was her mother. She supposed everyone knew. He was trying to be kind, to bring good news to the girl who would soon be his queen, but his message had the opposite effect. It reminded her that her father was gone, and she had not seen her mother in ten years.

  The soldiers led her across a great yard, to a fountain where slaves dressed in homespun wool greeted Kepi with sober eyes and folded hands. Their thin woolens, open at the chest and neck, revealed scrawny torsos and protruding ribs. Over the left breast of one she saw a scar in the shape of a tree. She had heard the Feren soldiers, on their journey, refer to these slaves as plodders and drudges. From what she knew, most Feren slaves were neither property nor prisoners, though now and then a few were culled from the prison ranks. Instead, servitude was a station they inherited and kept for life—the lowest caste in the kingdom, and hence the whole empire. Barbarous. Even in Harkana, where life was rough, people were not bound to one class.

  In the yard, the servants and slaves came out to watch Kepi’s arrival. A whisper echoed among them and grew and grew until it was all that she could hear—words like “captured” and “survivor” and “fugitive.” Perhaps they had heard of the night she had spent in the Cragwood, the sacred forest. During the long ride from the Rift valley to the High City of Rifka she had heard that Dagrun had not suffered the Waking Rite. She knew he had taken his kingdom by force, but she had not known that he had neglected to complete the Feren custom. More than one soldier had muttered that the king of the Ferens was cursed for not having undergone the ritual. She hoped the soldiers’ words were true, she hoped the man who had once held a sword to her throat was cursed, but doubted the truth of what the soldiers said.

  She spent a restless afternoon alone in a vast, drafty bedroom of the caer, a room with a single well-guarded door. A great fire roared at one end of the chamber. She pulled the feather-stuffed bed toward the flames and basked in their warmth. Feren was said to have great stores of wood, forests packed with birds and small animals. She hoped she would find more wealth in Rifka than she had found in Roghan’s hovel. She hoped the forest’s abundance was not just one more lie told by the men of the Gray Wood.

  The fire was warm and its constant crackle rattled in her ear, but it was Seth who kept her feeling
uneasy, or rather thoughts of Seth. She remembered the way he had come to the carriage window and begged for her to speak with him.

  A knock at the door startled her. She stood up, expecting to see Dagrun, or at least one of his sworn men, perhaps even her sister, but instead a group of slave girls, their faces unfamiliar, stepped inside. “Where are my waiting women?” Kepi asked. The girls had accompanied her from Harwen.

  “Gone,” murmured one of the slave girls. “Taken by the San,” said another.

  No one had bothered to tell Kepi. Shocked, she bowed her head as the Feren girls filled the room. Her waiting women had been servants, not slaves. They were free women and her friends, but the Ferens acted as if they were nothing, as if their loss was of no importance. Kepi blinked back tears as the slaves surrounded her. They carried a simple dress, its white fabric a textured linen woven from flax and sewn into a single long piece of cloth. It appeared simple to her eyes, severely plain even, but she’d noticed almost every other woman she had seen in Feren wore little more than a rag at her waist or neck and a necklace of wooden beads, so she supposed she should have been grateful.

  The girls unrolled the dress; they held it up for Kepi to inspect.

  “What is it?” she asked, and the girls told her. “Your wedding dress, mistress. The king had it made specially for you.”

  “Wedding?”

  “Yes, mistress,” said the eldest girl, a dark little sprite not much older than Kepi herself.

  This is my wedding dress? She sighed and took the slip of linen in her hands. The fabric snagged on her bitten-down nails. She had lost her friends, her waiting women, her possessions. And now she must marry a man she hardly knows? She thought of her father—he had been with her the first time she came to Feren—and longed for his companionship. She wondered if he still lived, if he had met the emperor yet. Would she ever know what had become of him? Or was her father just gone, without a funeral, without closure, without the courtesy of a day on which she could mourn the end of his life?