The Leopard

by K V Johansen

  Ghu gave no answer to that. He would, of course. Ahjvar left without a word to the bard.

  “Dumplings,” he heard Ghu saying to her. “Here, try. They’re good. Spicy.”

  There were a few purchases he wanted to make, anyway. The caravanserai district was always a good place for picking up odds and ends. And he needed a new rope.

  Travellers new-come to the city would find themselves a bathhouse, have their linens laundered, find a tavern, hear the news. Not in necessarily that order. Ahjvar walked, and kept his ears open. He bought his rope, then picked up a cameleer’s coat in a lean-to against a caravanserai wall that functioned as a pawnshop, in another, a couple of the striped shawls or scarves of the sort caravaneers so often wore swathed about their neck and shoulders, ready to pull up over head and face against the dust. Deyandara wore a scarf, but it was a very Praitannec weave and too memorably bright. He bundled it all up and found a tavern serving something claimed for Northron-style beer, though he didn’t see many Northrons drinking there, and the host was a woman from the Great Grass. Tasted it and thought he knew why his was the only blond head in the place. Listened, asked a few questions. They’d travelled so swiftly and secretly, keeping well away from even outlying farmsteads, dodging other travellers until they were on Marakand’s own highway rising to the pass, that he’d had no news out of the east. Even with an army, the high king could have been in the Duina Catairna by now, if he’d set out as soon as he had word of the queen’s murder. If Durandau had taken such swift action, Ahjvar wanted to know.

  This tavern was full of gangs come in from the west who knew nothing of the Duina Catairna and cared less. Useless. Still in his role as Clentara, he wandered on, tried other places. Picked up a rumour here, a word there. Had a worrying thought about the rider in the red tunic, as the red did mean temple guard, and it was couriers who rode ponies between the eastern and western forts and the city. Temple courier. Watching for Praitans? Not much he could do now if they had been. What he really wanted to know about was the Voice, though. She kept to the temple and was never seen in public, these days. Was she the real power in the city? No one knew. The other chief priests weren’t spoken of as if they were rulers; nor was the Lady herself. It was always the temple and the Voice. Maybe Catairanach had identified her enemy accurately after all.

  No curfew in the suburb, though by full dark the place had quieted down, most gangs gone to their rest. He found a wineshop full of stragglers, edged into them, asking about the road, as anyone might, and the army the city had sent to the Duina Catairna. He’d had to leave his homeland out in the east, not their business why, was it? Wandering a bit now, took service with a lady to get here, but didn’t think much of her. Wondering if there would be much profit in going back to join this army, was there any land promised . . .

  There was not, he was told, and no hope of it. The temple had hired the war-band of a Grasslander chieftain last winter, and they had their own temple guard and their own corps of holy warriors, the Red Masks, as well. The Grasslander warlord Ketsim might take him, if he really thought he wanted to take oath to Ketsim, but he wouldn’t get any land out of it.

  “The same godless bastard that was governor of Serakallash after the Lake-Lord took it, and we all thought he was dead when Sera retook her town,” said a Red Desert man with a horse-tattooed face. “And up he pops here, not so long after, with far too many of the Lake-Lord’s scum trailing after him. Collected them on the way, I guess. They’ll sell their spears to anyone. The temple bought them and sent them Over-Malagru.”

  “It’s the temple will be getting what land’s going,” someone else said, leaning in from the shadows. “No hope for you, friend. Go home and marry a rich widow, if you want land.”

  Someone threw in a story about someone they knew who’d done just that, only to have the first husband turn up, not lost with his caravan after all, and how the threesome settled down together, back in the Western Grass . . . After a while, Ahjvar asked a question or two about the Voice. Goddess and queen of the city, wasn’t she?

  Ignorant tribesman. The business of setting him right took another two jugs of wine, which somehow he ended up paying for, and a platter or two of greasy flatbread and salty cheeses, likewise. Not only was the Voice neither the goddess nor a queen, she was possessed, she was mad, she was the power ruling the city, she was a hermit living in a cave beneath the temple, she was kept locked in a tower above the ravine—this though anyone on the road could see there was no tower—she didn’t exist at all. The Marakander-born mistress of the wineshop grew fed up with them and squeezed in on the bench between Ahjvar and the Red Desert man. He flinched away from her, losing the thread of what he had been saying. He hated being trapped, hated being touched at all. He let nobody but Ghu that close to him, and pinned against a heavyset Grasslander, he had nowhere to go when the woman spread herself contentedly, thigh against his, to set them all straight over a third? fifth? jug, for which nobody seemed to need to pay. He ducked his head, shut his eyes a moment against the panic, the racing of his heart, forced his breath to slow, hands to unclench on the table. Pay attention, now that he’d finally worked them around to what he wanted to know. The Voice of the Lady was not the ruler of the city. The goddess of the deep well, the Lady herself, was; she spoke for the Lady, that was what Voice meant. And no, you could not go and ask her to tell your fortune, she wasn’t some hill-folk soothsayer, she spoke only to the priests.

  “And it’s a base lie that she’s mad.” The woman glared around the table. “She’s a pious, holy woman living a modest, secluded life, not like some of the priestesses you hear about in foreign parts.”

  A few sidelong glances, a few shrugs. Grass and desert folk; their gods and goddesses had no priests.

  “She lives in an apartment in the old hospice along the ravine, where they used to tend the dying in my father’s day. I should know; my own brother’s wife’s sister is a cook there. Towers and caves! The Voice spends her day in meditation and prayer, and the world would be none the worse if a few more did likewise.”

  “What about the Lady, then?” Ahjvar—or Clentara—asked. “Have you ever seen her?”

  Shock. Only the priests and priestesses, and the Red Masks, were permitted to visit the Lady. Not like some gods, out carrying on like everyday people.

  “Goddess in the mountains took a human husband,” a darkly tattooed Westgrasslander man said, and started a wandering tale about a battle up in the Pillars of the Sky and a lake-goddess there, wizards, demons; the human husband never did get into the story. Hard to say what his point actually was, as he kept forgetting what he had said, repeating himself, interrupted by the Red Desert man; it became a muddle of horse-goddesses and sandstorms and warrior-priestesses. The wineshop-keeper’s hand was doing some wandering too. Ahjvar let the conversation go and tried to shut her hand out from his mind, since he couldn’t do much else about it without drawing attention to his doing so. They were on—he’d lost track, but it was someone else paying now, and he hadn’t even been drinking, really, since the first cup. A lot of gesturing and sloshing took care of most of it. His good tunic, too. He caught the woman’s hand and pulled it up to the table. Avoided her eye. She wasn’t getting the reaction she hoped for, and he kept thinking of how a knife between the bones of the wrist would keep her damn hand on the table where it belonged, which wasn’t quite the shape of his mind, Great Gods, please. It was a plump, beringed hand, clean nails, and it turned, fingers closing over his. She oozed a substantial pair of breasts around his shoulder, lips hotly crawling on the back of his neck.

  Sliding under the table as if drunk to insensibility would just leave him stuck there getting kicked for the next hour or so. Leaning over to the desert man and saying, “Here, I don’t want her, she’s all yours,” might get him kicked too, more maliciously. A graceful exit, that was what was needed, now that they were onto the merits of Serakallashi horses, and the Voice was a topic long in the past. Before he turned the table
over and killed someone, without even the madness to blame it on.

  “Here,” he said, and squirmed out from under the wineshop-keeper. “You talk to my friend. Ou’side a moment. Be back.”

  He staggered away, bouncing, he hoped convincingly, off a few other tables, making a wide circle around a boy collecting empty cups. Found the street door by fumbling his way along the wall. He stumbled down the steps from the porch. Movement in the corner of his eye, shadow on shadow in the black corner by the door, scent of a body.

  He continued unsteadily along the dusty, churned-up lane, turned the corner of the building, as a man might in such need.

  Another corner. Around that too. He waited. Waited. Finally heard breathing, cautious movement, and then saw the hint of solidity in the darkness. He shoved the heel of his hand into where a face should be, kicked high as the shape reeled back with a grunt, and heard the man fall, followed by the reassuring moan of a body that wouldn’t be getting up in haste.

  Thief, preying on drunken caravan-mercenaries? Working alone didn’t seem too wise. Most of them would be leaving in straggling gangs. A spy set on to watch the little band of Mistress Deya, because of all wandering Praitans a bard was the most obvious agent to be gleaner of information for her high king? Fast work, if so, but his party was perhaps not so hard to find. He left the man curled up groaning and slunk warily back to the inn, where the young porter wasn’t any too pleased to be woken to let him in, but since he’d left by the door, better to return by it as well.

  Ghu had, of course, given up the one bed, easily big enough for three, not that he’d intended to allow her into it, to the girl’s modest solitude. Ahjvar stripped off his wine-reeking tunic and shirt to join him on a thin mat on the floor.

  “Nice evening?” he asked. Deyandara seemed to be asleep. He didn’t much care if he did wake her.

  “We met a family of Stone Desert singers. They juggle knives, too, and dance on a rope. Deya told a few stories.”

  “Kept her out of mischief, anyway.”

  “About the Duina Catairna, mostly. It seems to be on her mind, and of course, people are interested, since Marakand’s at war with the Catairnans. She was looking,” said Ghu, in his ear, “at your sword. I took it away from her. How about you?”

  “I was nearly ravished by a woman with an enormous bosom.” It was funny now, yes. He could make it so by telling Ghu.

  Ghu’s hand found his face, a light touch, no more. Ghu knew it wasn’t funny, not deep in the marrow. He’d told Ghu too many things in the dark nights.

  “It’s your yellow hair. They can’t help themselves. You should stay out of taverns.”

  “It was a respectable wineshop, I thought. And someone was following me.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “He might have just been after my purse, so—no. I bought you a coat.”

  “Do I need a coat?”

  “In case you need to turn into a caravan guard. It has nice big pockets you can put things in.”

  “Ahj, you sound drunk.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You smell drunk.”

  “I spilt a lot of wine.”

  “Wasteful.” He could hear the smile in Ghu’s voice. The hand slid down to his chest. Not possessive, not intrusive. Just . . . there. “You must have spilt some of it down your throat, I think. For such a big man, it doesn’t seem to take much to make you silly. Go to sleep.”

  “I’m leaving in the morning. Soon as I get a little sleep. I think Mistress Deya and Clentara had best have had a falling-out. Better yet, you can hint delicately that I’m just some godless mercenary she took up with on the road. Blame it on yellow hair. And once I’m gone I want you to take her and get out of here.”

  “Out of this inn?”

  “Out of Marakand. Head back east. Wish for a different clerk on the gate. Don’t make it an obvious rush, but go tomorrow. I’ll give you a day before I do anything to stir anyone up. Try to time it so you’re going out with all the home-going market-folk, lots of bustle, right? You know what you’re doing. We’ve done it before.”

  “Leave you a horse?”

  “No. And devils take her tongue, put her on the best horse and some baggage on the pony. Someone’s bound to question if she’s really the one in charge, otherwise. Get the lot of them good and dusty. Better, sell them and buy yourself a couple of hill-ponies. Or if you think you’ll have to run, desert-breds, but don’t buy pretty ones. You have appallingly lordly taste in horses, for a slave, y’know. Change her name. Call her your wife. Put a scarf over her shiny hair. Tell her I’m going to kill her if she opens her mouth at all before you’re a day’s ride from the eastern fortress. I don’t like the attention we’ve gotten, and I’m liking less, the more I think of it, that someone tried to tail me coming out of that wineshop.”

  “I’ll come back after I find someplace safe for the lady.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  Ghu made no answer to that and seemed to fall asleep, close against him.

  Ahjvar did not. The girl’s breathing was too loud, too—present. It hadn’t been so bad when they camped, she on her side of the fire, he as far from her as he could be without making it obvious, and Ghu choosing to lie close by him. Under a roof, within four walls, he could hear her, smell her. She and Ghu had found a bathhouse; they both smelt of soap and scented oil, but she had chosen poison jessamine, not jasmine. He could feel her there, between him and the window, which he didn’t like, which was foolish, when he could throw her with one hand.

  Don’t be stupid, he told himself. You’re used to her by now. She’s nothing to do with Hyllau; red hair and upturned nose or not, she’s never heard of Hyllau but in a song; she certainly doesn’t know what scent the hag wore. Go to sleep.

  He did. But the smoke stole into his dreams.

  Not here, he said. Not now, not yet, but the words made no sound. A blackened claw of a hand bright with the wineshop-keeper’s rings seized him, pulled him down, rolled onto him, heavy flesh that crackled, skin flaking, and Deyandara grimaced above him, face contorted in what could have been a grin or a leer or a snarl of agony, hand wound in his hair, pinning his head down, forcing her mouth onto his, and the flames roared louder than his screaming. A sudden sharp pain in his ear.

  Not his screaming but the girl’s, and Ghu had an arm around his throat, was gripping his wrist with his other hand, dragging his arm back, hissing, “Ahj, Ahj, wake up! Wake up!”

  He froze. Night. Dark. Not sure where he was, where they were, not sure for a moment of anything except that Ghu had him, Ghu was safe, his ear hurt, and the stink of heavy smoke was fading. It was only nightmare, only the old nightmare, back too soon, but not the sick burnt-hollow feeling the curse’s tide left behind when it swept through, consuming him, not that yet, not yet. He didn’t remember dreams then, didn’t remember anything, which might be a blessing. Some would say so. Not knowing what he had done, whom he had slaughtered to feed her could be worse. But he remembered the dream, so he hadn’t been killing. She stirred, but didn’t wake. Not yet. He was not empty, not hollow, scoured, burnt to a husk. Not yet.

  He was muttering that under his breath. Not yet, not yet, no.

  “Ahj, are you awake?” Ghu asked.

  He sighed, which the man took for answer enough. Ghu’s arms relaxed, turned into more of an embrace, a hand sliding down to his, a gentle pressure prying his fingers loose . . . he was gripping his sword, and he had not even known where Ghu stowed it after he gave it into his hands in the afternoon. “You can let go now,” Ghu said, his gentle, talking-to-idiots-and-horses voice. “It’s all right, let go.”

  There was a whimper, just a breath, hardly that, and far too close. Ahjvar flinched and dropped the sword, found he was standing with one knee on the bed.

  “Ghu . . .”

  “It’s all right. She’s all right.” Ghu spoke Praitannec, then. “You didn’t hurt her. You only scared her a little. That’s all.”

  “Sca
red . . . ! Seven d-devils!” Shadow of an indignant squeak. It turned into a stuttering, gulping chain of sobs. Ahjvar slid boneless to the floor, sickened. Ghu let him go and crawled onto the bed. By the sound of it, he was being thoroughly wept-upon.

  “It’s all right now, it’s all right.” More of the horse-soothing voice. “He has nightmares.”

  Ahjvar made some inarticulate noise, head bowed to his knees, shivering. Nightmares.

  Someone rapped on the door. “Mistress Deya? Mistress Deya!”

  Another frozen moment. He hauled himself to his feet, sword in hand again. “What?” he snarled.

  “A woman screamed,” said the voice on the other side of the door, warily. “I—I’d like to speak to Mistress Deya.”

  “The lady has nightmares,” Ghu called. “She’s well enough now. Thank you.”

  “Nevertheless . . .” That was a second voice, the innkeeper himself, not the young porter.

  Ahjvar ground his teeth on obscenities. Good people, brave people. No idea where the sword’s scabbard was. Ghu trod past him and kicked it skidding his way over the floor. It hit his foot as the door opened onto lamplight. He sheathed the blade, hoping it would look as though he had merely grabbed it up at the unexpected knock.

  “I beg your pardon,” Deyandara said, and she came forward too, wan and dishevelled and shivering, wrapping a blanket over her nakedness. She’d undressed fully with Ghu in the room? But she no doubt thought him uninterested. Not, Ahjvar was fairly certain, the case. There’d been something between the boy and the Widow Akay’s eldest daughter, nighttime walkings-out unknown by the village and the girl’s mother, that first year he’d come to Ahjvar, till the girl up and married a fisherman down the coast.

  “It’s . . . it’s been an affliction since childhood,” Deyandara almost whispered. “I thought it had passed off for good, but . . .” An embarrassed smile, apologetic, ashamed, directed half at the floor. “I do thank you for your concern.”