Soleri

by Michael Johnston

  Thank you, she said to the sun, though she had never been the praying type before. Thank you for restoring what was taken from me. I don’t know what I will do with this gift, but I accept it. I’m tired of running. If Feren is to be my home, if I am to be queen of the Ferens, I’ll do my best to embrace what is given to me.

  * * *

  At the entry to the caer, she caught sight of Dalla. The girl hurried toward Kepi, concern on her face.

  “Mistress? May I have a word?”

  “Speak, Dalla.”

  “Your master-at-arms, the boy, Seth? You asked me to look after him, to make certain he had a horse and provisions for his journey to Harwen.”

  “Yes.”

  “We couldn’t find the boy.”

  “Did you ask the master physician?”

  “He is also gone.”

  “What? Where are they?”

  “I asked the guards. But neither one has passed through the Chime Gate. They haven’t left the caer. There are whispers in the High City. Talk of traitors and men who are loyal to the old king.”

  “Find them. Find Seth, Dalla.” Kepi heaved a fearful sigh—What are you up to, Seth? “The roads are unsafe. We should make certain he has a proper escort to Harwen.”

  Kepi didn’t care about the roads—she was worried about Seth. The boy had clearly gotten himself mixed up with the old king’s loyalists. “Hurry, Dalla,” she said as she motioned for the girl to go. Dalla bowed her head and went, leaving Kepi once more alone, in the yard, a shadow interrupting the sunshine she had briefly enjoyed. It was the same shadow she had seen a moment earlier, the dark outline of a great bird. It’s the kite. Kepi had seen it many times before. It had come to her that morning when Seth betrayed her, then again as the Ferens led her into the High City, and now here it was, watching her. The gray bird landed on a wood spire. She held out her hand, but it would not approach. It seemed to watch, its black eyes keen, following her as she crossed the yard. “Do I look tasty?” she said to it. “Think I’m the midday meal?” It had a hooked yellow beak and a long tail that had feathers of a reddish-gold color, not uniformly gray as she had first thought. It was beautiful in a fierce, uncompromising kind of way. Kepi decided she was rather fond of it.

  She went around to the other side of the caer, circling the yard. Each time she disappeared from sight, the bird moved until it could see her again. What was it doing? It could not really be mistaking her for its prey, could it? The kite came to the king when he took his throne. Why had it come to her? She was not king.

  She watched the kite, holding out her hand again to see if it would land on her arm, but nothing happened. She climbed the post wall to move closer, but the bird retreated to a higher perch. She followed the kite, moving closer then waiting for it to retreat—reversing the game they had just played. The kite was certainly not hunting her. It seemed to observe her, but only from a distance. She recalled now seeing it off and again on her journey from the forest. Several times the soldiers had taken note of the great bird, astonished not simply by its magnificent wingspan but by its ever-watchful presence, its clear and obvious pursuit of their caravan. They had seemed almost afraid.

  “Why did you follow me?” she asked aloud, but the bird paid her no attention.

  Now a gang of slaves scrubbing the post wall with knotted brushes of blackthorn twine paused when the great gray bird alighted on the wall. They dipped their heads in reverence, falling to one knee and laying down their brushes. What are they doing? She heard a low chant—a prayer, perhaps? She knew the bird was worshipped here, but she had not witnessed the practice. The chants were low and sonorous, spoken in a language she could not understand.

  A Feren soldier approached the worshippers, knocking his spear on the wall, but the kneeling slaves did not move. When the guard lifted his eyes and saw the kite, he lowered his weapon and allowed the slaves to continue their silent worship. Then he too seemed to whisper, his mouth moving as if in prayer. Dalla had told her that in Feren legend the kite cried a great song, the Dawn Chorus, to announce the reign of a new king. It’s a song like your wedding hymn, the girl had said, but deeper, and louder. They say the song is the voice of Llyr, of the forest.

  Kepi retreated down the steps and across the wet grass, followed by the kite, who flew off the post wall and circled. Kepi was clearly not its prey, nor was it truly following her. She sensed the creature was watching, waiting—but for what?

  She held out her hand once more.

  The kite studied her. In its black eyes she saw an almost human intelligence, something older and wiser than anything she knew. She wanted to understand why it followed her, but the creature let forth a piercing cry and flew off, beating its wings until it disappeared above the trees.

  When she went back inside and opened the door to her room, Dagrun was there, sitting across from the entry, his eyes fixed on the door, his expression hollow. “Where were you?” he asked. “I had my boys looking all over the caer for you. I was worried.”

  “I was outside,” she said. “In the yard. Just getting a little air.” She came closer. “Is she gone?” Kepi asked, referring to her sister.

  “She’ll depart in the morning.” He took a step toward Kepi. “She … has no further business in our kingdom.” His words were awkward, but she understood his meaning: Dagrun was done with Merit; their alliance was finished.

  Kepi advanced, her head shaking. “Thank you … for paying her ransom.”

  He nodded.

  “And thank you for sending her away,” she said boldly.

  “I will have no further contact with Merit … and all of Harkana for that matter. Feren is retreating from the lower kingdoms. We will shelter behind the Rift valley and wait out the conflict. It is what we have always done, and will do again. If you want to leave, this is your chance. You can ride out with your sister, her husband, and their entourage.”

  Kepi considered his offer but even before he had finished speaking she knew her answer. She moved closer to him, expecting him to touch her somehow, embrace her, to draw her close as he had done that first night, but Dagrun waited, his eyes hungry but patient. “You are my husband,” she said, her voice knowing. “I’m not going anywhere.” She wrapped a hand around his back. Her fear was gone, her anger too. She was done waiting and worrying, tired of keeping those she loved at arm’s length. The warmth of his body pressed against hers and she knew in that instant that Roghan, her first husband, had kept her from loving a man, kept her from trusting a man, a good man. Seth was a boy, a foolish, childish infatuation. A pebble in the ocean of her feeling for Dagrun. Her husband. The king of the Ferens.

  Dagrun was so close now. She could feel his breathing, heavy and thick. He grabbed handfuls of her hair, and he pulled her head back, pressing his mouth to hers, the door slamming shut as he laid her on the bed.

  55

  It was not quite midday when Sarra Amunet rode into the stony courtyard below the Ray’s Antechamber, the bronze veil glinting as it had on the day she returned to Solus. Arko’s shadow was absent this time, but she knew he waited within the chamber, or nearby. Her husband had accepted her request for an audience with an almost desperate haste. He’s all alone in Solus. She guessed he had no allies in the city of the Soleri.

  A soldier strode past Sarra, then another, their bronze armor clanking as they marched. Saad’s soldiers were packing the courtyard, stamping their feet where the priests and viziers had once congregated for the naming ceremony. Two times twenty men assembled in the court and more stood in the distance, waiting out of sight.

  Saad was moving quickly. Good.

  She rode past the soldiers, past the lines of shining armor. She left her horse with the groom and climbed the Antechamber stair. Say the words and go. She interwove her fingers, forcing them not to fidget. Tell him the truth and be done with it.

  Up ahead, the bronze doors stood open. Suten’s desk waited in the vacant Antechamber, looking emptier than it had when she’d last met the ma
n. She recalled his decaying corpse in the throne room and how she had left it there. Sarra crossed the threshold, the amber windows catching her attention.

  “Trying to catch a glimpse of Tolemy?” A door opened, a puff of air hitting her face. Sarra prickled. Her husband stood so close she could feel the heat coming off him in waves.

  “No.” She retreated, taking a moment to observe the man who had once been her husband.

  Ten years ago, on the day she left, when she found him asleep in their bedchamber with his mistress draped over him, he’d had the same rough, handsome features, his neck thick as a bull’s, his shoulders broad enough to hold up the moon. Maybe he was grayer now, more grizzled, his face more lined, but otherwise he was the same, and she felt the same drop in her stomach when she stood now in front of him, the same hope. Don’t do this to yourself, she thought. Remember why you’re here.

  Arko strode past her, not looking twice. His servant, Wat, followed. She noticed that Arko had forgone the golden robe that signified his power, his position—a mistake, she thought. He looked more like a common soldier, dirtier perhaps.

  “So you survived the riots? You were torn from the wall, but escaped without harm?” The question caught her off guard. She was accustomed to formalities—the recitation of titles, ceremonial nods and genuflections. Sarra had forgotten the frankness of the men of the lower kingdoms.

  “Were you even in Solus on the last day of the year?” He gave a sideways glance, but she resisted the urge to return it.

  She smiled thinly. “The Mother stood on the wall,” she said, glancing at Wat.

  Arko gestured to Wat, and Suten’s old adviser stepped from the chamber. She waited until the door closed before she spoke. “How have you fared in Solus?” she asked.

  “Perhaps you can tell me. This is your place, not mine.” Arko tapped his finger on one of the amber windows. “I’m starting to think all this”—he waved a hand around the chamber—“is nothing but a joke at my expense.”

  It was the first time they had been together in ten years, since the day Sarra had left her husband and daughters to join the priesthood, the only place a woman in her position—married but apart from her husband—could go. Arko was calm; perhaps the years had dulled his anger, or at least his resentment. At any rate he seemed unsurprised to see her here, almost as if he had been expecting her. As if they were simply continuing a conversation that had started an hour before instead of a lifetime ago.

  “Like me,” she said, her voice full of stone. “I was a joke at your expense, wasn’t I?”

  “You weren’t my idea,” he said. “Suten Anu was the one who arranged our marriage, not me. A punishment of sorts, for Harkana’s rebellion against the empire. At least, I preferred to think of it that way.” Arko met her gaze, his eyes repentant. “But you felt differently. I know that.” So he knew she had loved him.

  “Only at first. I learned my lesson.”

  He gave her an appraising glance and she drew herself up, her long red hair flowing over her shoulders, her chalk-white robe cloaking her like a suit of armor.

  “You look well.”

  “And you look like shit,” she said.

  Arko left the amber window and slipped around the table, but instead of coming to embrace her, the way she feared, he walked around her and shut the doors through which she had entered. “You’ve done well for yourself, Sarra. I knew you would. You were always smarter than I was.”

  “Are you trying to make me laugh?”

  “It’s the truth. Your upbringing in the Wyrre may have been modest, but you have a gift for flattery, for knowing how to make people do your bidding, sometimes without even realizing they are doing so.”

  “Flattery never worked with you.”

  “It did sometimes. You know it did, especially when it came to the children. Telling me how much they loved me, how desperate they were for my attention and approval when what you were really after was keeping me away from—” Her old husband stopped, his eyes distant.

  “I merely told you what you wanted to hear—that you were a decent man, a good enough father—and turned it to my advantage.”

  “I could use a bit of that cunning myself. It would be useful, in my position.”

  “Now you are flattering me. Learned a few things since coming to Solus, have you? Finally figured out that you cannot subdue a problem by hacking it to bits?”

  He rubbed his forehead. “I’m an old man who’s come up against his own regrets, that’s all.”

  He never used to speak to her this way, never with such openness. Perhaps he was telling the truth, that he had grown something like a heart in the years since she had left him. “Do you regret me, then?” she asked.

  He raised his eyes to look at her. His look was haunted, hollow. “I should never have married you. I should have dared Suten’s disapproval and refused. It would have been better for you, for me. For all of us, if you had never come to Harkana as my bride.”

  Sarra felt the sting of his rejection once again. In spite of herself—in spite of all that had happened in the years since she had left him—it still hurt, that he did not want her, that he had never wanted her. The girl she had been, the poor, ignorant child who had come across the sea to marry the great and formidable king of Harkana, the girl who had wanted so badly to be loved—she was still in there, buried deep, and she still wept for what might have been. Why? cried that young girl, who despite everything was not dead yet. Why give your love to that whore and not to me?

  “I know you never wanted the children,” she said, keeping her voice steady.

  He gave her a mirthless little smile. “You’re right. But I loved them all the same. I tried. Sarra, have you ever thought that your own ambition took you from Harkana as much as my indifference? You were made for Solus, for Desouk. You would never have been happy in Harkana, ordering around waiting women in the scullery.”

  She started to feel her blood rise, the pulse of it in her ears, in her face. How she hated this man. Hated him because he was both right and wrong, because what he said made up for none of what he had done. She had never disliked anyone as much as Arko Hark-Wadi, claiming it was not in his nature to be a husband, a father, when the truth was he’d never even tried. He had been more interested in pleasing himself than seeing to his responsibilities. He hadn’t changed, not in the ways that mattered. He was only saying the truth out loud now, admitting it openly instead of pretending to be noble, putting on the face of a loving father and a good king.

  “How are the children, by the way?” she asked through clenched teeth. She had been forced to leave Merit and Kepi behind when she left Arko. While they slept, she had kissed them goodbye before she departed. Sarra had known she could not take her girls with her. The heirs of Harkana remained with the kingdom, mother or no mother.

  “Are they well?” she asked.

  “Well enough, anyway. They’ve missed you, Kepi especially. She’s turned into quite the tomboy. She would have done better with a mother’s love than with mine, but she’s a smart girl, tough as her father and clever too. Merit I think has not forgiven you for going, or me for being the cause of your going.” He fixed his gaze on the ceiling, his thoughts moving toward the past. “Ren I can’t speak for—I don’t know. I’m worried for him, though. Whether he’ll manage Harkana all right on his own.”

  “Has the Priory damaged him much?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not as much as I’d always feared.” He gave a great sigh. “Is this what you came here for, Sarra? To have a chat about the children? What do you really want?”

  “I wanted an audience with the new Ray. Suten and I used to meet often.”

  “So? If you have business, let’s hear what it is.”

  “I wanted to ask if our lord and emperor is well.”

  He laughed. “That’s what you want? To ask after the emperor’s health? Want to find out how often he moves his bowels, whether his digestion is good?”

  “Tolemy’s
proclamation has caused quite a stir. Has he offered any explanation for it?”

  Arko just shook his head. “I couldn’t say.”

  “No? Doesn’t Tolemy confide in the Ray? You simply carry out his orders?”

  “Sarra—”

  “Did the emperor tell you why he had chosen a man from Harkana, of all places, to be his ears and eyes? Has he forgotten your father’s war so quickly?”

  “I can—I will not say,” Arko said. “Dammit, woman, is there a purpose to this audience, or have you come only to badger me?”

  “You haven’t changed at all, Arko. Not even a little, not since the morning I found her name engraved on that white stone.” Arko’s hand twitched. Was the rock still dangling from his neck? After all these years, he still held her close? Serena. The girl her husband had loved. The girl her husband would have married if it weren’t for the emperor’s decree. If it weren’t for her own arrival in Harwen.

  Serena Dahl.

  Serena had been sent to Harkana with her father, Arko’s tutor. He had known the girl since childhood.

  When she married him, Arko had promised Sarra that it was nothing but a childhood crush, a young man’s folly, that it had ended long ago. He had pledged his trust to her, promised his love, but he had lied. He had loved Serena all along, loved her before and after Sarra.

  “If you were as smart as you thought you were,” Arko thundered, striking the arm of the chair now, the white stone falling out from his robe, “you wouldn’t have asked me about her in the first place. Other wives learn to look the other way, Sarra. My own mother did it. Why couldn’t you? Why did you always have to push, and push, and make yourself miserable, and make the children miserable, not to mention me?”

  “Because I had a little respect for myself,” she murmured. Her vision narrowed down to a single cold, dark tunnel, with Arko at the end of it. “Because looking the other way is for cowards and fools, and I am neither. I always knew the truth when it came to you. I wanted you to know that I knew. And that I was glad, I was glad when she died.”