The Leopard

by K V Johansen

  She swallowed. Somewhere on the hills, with Cricket and Badger, the strings of harp or komuz singing under fingers, afterwards, and a song in the friendly firelit dark of the hall. Could she ever grow to be a bard, a scholar, with the history and the wisdom of the seven kingdoms in her head? Probably not. She certainly couldn’t carry the weight of a duina as a true queen should.

  But there was Marnoch. There was Yvarr. They gave her trust. Where else had she ever found that? And she shattered it. Everything she did went crooked.

  “I belong to the Duina Andara by my birth, but I need to be of the Duina Catairna,” she said. “It—it felt like home. Whether Catairanach wants me or not, the folk need a queen. Not to lead them. I don’t know anything of war, or justice and the laws. They need—they need someone, just a name, for Marnoch to stand behind as he leads them, to stop the lords turning each one to make their own bargains with Marakand. But the brigands, the ones that killed Badger, they were Catairnan folk, my folk, and they said the lords were all dead!”

  “Outlaws. They may not have known. They may have been excusing their own brigandage. You can’t ride alone to find your Marnoch. You can find your brother, though.”

  “He’ll just use me as an excuse.”

  “If it drives Marakand out of Praitan, then let him. And then be a queen for your own folk, make them your own folk.”

  “Catairanach doesn’t want me,” she repeated dully.

  “Catairanach,” Ghu said, with sudden hissing vehemence, “is no goddess worth your worship. Find your folk a new god.”

  “What?”

  But he seemed hardly to know what he had said. He blinked at her, vague and quiet, closed his hand over hers and stood, pulling her up with him. “Better you go to your brother than stand so near Ahj as I do. Hyllau may not care for the comparison.”

  “What?” She had been telling the story last night, Hyllau who killed her husband Cairangorm, or for whose sake he was killed, depending on the song, and the day of three kings, that ended with Deyandara’s own great-grandfather Hyllanim the infant king.

  “I’ll find you safe company to Dinaz Broasora; the queen’s folk there will know where the high king is.”

  He drew her back into the room and released her, which, Andara damn him anyway, should not make her feel as if she had suddenly been cast adrift, dropped into deep water. Or launched, like a hawk, into the empty and unsupported depths of the sky.

  Someone rapped at their door. They both froze. Not Ahjvar returning, surely not.

  “Lady Deyandara?”

  The innkeeper should not know that name. Besides, it was a woman and speaking foreign-accented Praitannec. The latch jumped, but the door was barred. Ghu jerked his head to the window, but Deyandara, belatedly, recognized the voice, though how it came there she couldn’t imagine. She crossed to the door and lifted the bar, ignoring Ghu’s aborted grab at her sleeve.

  “Lin?”

  Her brother’s Nabbani wizard greeted her Marakander style, clasping both Deyandara’s hands in her own. “Lady Deyandara,” she said, as if they had merely met crossing the stone-flagged yard between the hall and the maiden’s bower.

  Deyandara stepped back to admit her. No spearmen, no bench-companions of her brother followed her. The woman was alone. “Ah, we were just . . . we were . . .”

  Ghu stood with one hand behind his back, watching, gone utterly blank, eerily like Ahjvar in some moods, when he stared and there was nothing but darkness behind his eyes, eerily like Badger, smelling the danger she didn’t realize, just before he had gone for that brigand. She burned red, she could feel it, like a girl caught misbehaving with her young man in the byre, but surely Ghu didn’t look like someone’s secret lover; he looked like someone’s groom. Almost. Someone’s very handsome, very clean groom. And not a simpleton at all. There was only the one bed. And her neck was wet. She touched a knuckle to last night’s wound. The scab must have pulled.

  “It’s all right,” she said, and heard her voice shaking. “It’s all right, Ghu. This is Lady Lin, one of my brother’s wizards.”

  This was Marakand. The word could get Lin killed.

  Lin said nothing. Of all Durandau’s servants, Lin was the only one who might say nothing to him, if she thought Deyandara had run off with a lover; be sarcastic in private, yes, lecture her on a woman’s responsibilities and the thoughtlessness of bringing a child into the world unwanted, yes, she would that, but not feel it was anyone’s business beyond Deya’s own. Hard to believe, especially now, as the wizard gazed past Deyandara to Ghu, expressionless as a statue. She looked dreadfully respectable, dreadfully regal, like a queen herself, elegant as always, beautiful even with the weather-lines of age creasing back from eye and mouth, her hair, cut at her shoulders, a sheet of iron grey here, shot silver out in the sun. She dressed, almost always, in the Nabbani fashion. More: she often wore vast wealth in silk brocade, though she kept not a single servant. Even here, where she must have travelled the caravan road, her short, wrapped gown, though slightly dusty, was blue brocade, great sprawling peonies in red and amber over all the breast and shoulders, and her leather leggings were dyed deep crimson. The red-tasselled Nabbani sword at her shoulder looked a queen’s weapon, too, even the scabbard patterned in anemones and set with jade about the mouth. Carried to assert her status among a warrior people, maybe; Deyandara had never seen her draw it, and she made no move to do so now. Or to spread her fingers into the signs whereby she drew her wizardry from the air.

  “You’re not of this city,” Lin said to Ghu. “This isn’t your place. What are you doing with the king’s sister of the Praitans?”

  “You can’t have her.”

  “I don’t want her. Her brother does.” Lin’s eyes narrowed.

  Whatever Ghu said next was in Imperial Nabbani but harsh with menace. Deyandara put herself between the two of them, which was a mistake. Ghu grabbed her as roughly as Ahjvar might have and thrust her behind. Strong . . . His hand went back to the hilt of his curved knife, but he still didn’t draw it.

  Lin spoke in Imperial too, but she sounded amused now, not—no, she had never sounded angry. Startled, at first. Shocked, even. Definitely amused, now. Ghu shook his head, denying something. Demanded something. Repeated it. Lin’s answer was disdainful.

  “Lady,” he said, without glancing aside at Deyandara. “You know her, truly? Is this truly your brother’s wizard? Do you trust her? Is she a woman of her word?”

  “She’s served my brother Durandau for three, no, four years,” Deyandara said. “She was my tutor. Of course I know her. She came from Nabban before that. She’s not from Marakand, if that’s what you’re afraid of. She swore fealty to him.”

  Did she trust Lady Lin? Did she trust anyone of her brother’s hall? In some things yes, in some no. Ghu didn’t wait for her to decide.

  “How did you find her?” he asked, of Lin, this time.

  The wizard held up a hand, smiling now, touched what seemed to be a ring of pale, thin cord on her forefinger. “She left her big harp behind, but she played it often till then. I took a string. It’s a simple spell, once I was close enough. It led me to the very door.”

  “What do you mean to do with her?”

  “Ghu . . .” Deyandara protested.

  Lin ignored her, answered Ghu. “Take her to her brother.”

  “Who is where, now?”

  “And why do you need to know that?”

  Ghu said nothing.

  Lin shrugged, a rasp of heavy silk. “The high king’s army is at Dinaz Broasora, as it has been some time, waiting for the kings of the Lellandi and Galatan to join us. Yesterday we finally had word from a man sent, I think somewhat belatedly, by Lord Yvarr of the Duina Catairna, that Deyandara was no longer with them, though they had sent out letters to her brother in her name. They hoped she had gone to meet him, this messenger said. In his defence, he had had to go up into the Duina Praitanna and had travelled all the way to Dinaz Andara to find the king gone. Durandau was q
uite upset. We divined for the girl again and found that though she had been roaming far south of the road, as far as the coast, she was now in Marakand. Much to Durandau’s horror, as you can imagine. He sent me to fetch her back, and so far as I know, he’s still at the queen’s hall in Dinaz Broasora, with a few rather irate caravans detained in his train, lest news of his advance should run ahead to the city. I trust I do have your word you will not pass that information on to the temple?”

  Ghu didn’t answer that. Maybe he thought there was no need. “Her brother should have sent you seeking her months ago. Will he do well by her now, do you think?”

  “He’ll do . . . as a high king must.”

  More Nabbani followed, but Ghu took his hand from the knife at the small of his back and went to sit cross-legged on the bed. Absurdly like a king holding court, like Ahjvar in the ruin, with Lin standing before him, legs braced, arms folded now, tilting her chin, raising her fine eyebrows. Deyandara felt her anger growing. Was she being haggled over, sold, transferred from one guardian to another? The Leopard’s horseboy had no right.

  Lin abruptly drew her sword. Deyandara yipped and backed a step, but the wizard only clasped her own hand around it, held up her palm with a thin red line blooming, spoke, hissing, now almost angry. But Ghu nodded and smiled suddenly at Deyandara, the open smile of the simpleton, with nothing behind it at all.

  “She swears she means you no harm, lady. You can go with her safely. It’s better so. Ahj and I might be the death of you.”

  The high king’s wizard was making oaths in blood to the assassin’s groom. Deyandara quelled the urge to stamp her foot and scream at them, settled for sarcasm. “Thank you for asking what I thought of it.”

  “I didn’t,” said Ghu. “I need to find Ahjvar. You should go, before the guard finds you.”

  “What guard?” Lin demanded.

  “He thinks the Marakanders are looking for me,” said Deyandara in disgust. “He says there’s someone watching the inn. He’s the one who came to town with an assassin, but—”

  “An assassin?” Lin frowned, snapped more Nabbani.

  Ghu shrugged, bland, blank. “But you say you are nothing to do with whatever is in the city,” he said, in answer to the question Deyandara had not understood. “So you should not care. I do. I care for him very much. You can tell me, and maybe I will answer. But what he is and what he does I will not tell, not you.”

  Lin’s lips thinned.

  “Or you cannot tell what you know,” said Ghu kindly. “We’ll find our own way.”

  Lin turned on her heel. Deyandara had never seen her disconcerted before, not by anything. “I know nothing. Do you have a horse?” she demanded.

  “Me?” Deyandara asked. “Yes, still Cricket.”

  “I need to find—to buy a horse.”

  “You walked? All that way? It’s, what, ten days’ or a fortnight’s ride.”

  “I did not. I was with the king yesterday, as I said. I wish you would learn to listen, child, and more, to think. You don’t need to live down to your brother’s expectations, you know. But you can’t travel as I do.”

  “Ah,” said Ghu suddenly. “Mistress Lin, you could borrow Ahjvar’s horses. Borrow.”

  Lin turned back, and Ghu frowned, but only as if he were puzzling over some detail. “Can you ride a horse?”

  “Of course I know how to ride.”

  “Did I ask that? Will you hurt my horses, to do so?”

  “I like animals,” Lin said. “I am not wantonly cruel to beasts.”

  “No?” That was definitely a question. “Use them well, then. We’ll ask them of you later.” Ghu frowned again. “I will. If I can. If I need to.”

  “And how are you going to travel, then, after you find Ahjvar?” Deyandara demanded of him. “No, you have to come with us. Ahjvar told you to leave the city, too.”

  “Ahjvar is not my master.” That didn’t even sound like Ghu, stern, reproving. He smiled. “He’s mine, to care for. Whatever he thinks.”

  “And you’re needed elsewhere, my lady,” said Lin. “Master Ghu’s company would be, I think, awkward for you to explain.” And she bowed again. To which of them, Deyandara wasn’t certain.

  And awkward? Her face burned. “We—I didn’t . . .”

  Ghu seemed oblivious. “I can always find horses,” he said, and his smile now was a fox’s, seeing an unguarded flock of hens. “When I need them, I find them. Come with me. The innkeeper’s to be paid; then I’ll tell them they go with you.”

  The white mare put her ears back when Lady Lin stroked her neck, and the piebald pulled to the end of his rope to get away, but the golden gelding only shuddered his skin under her hand and lowered his head to the bridle. He was used to Ahjvar, Ghu said, as though that explained something. Whatever it was, it made Lin frown.

  Ghu had overseen the packing of the saddlebags, making his own belongings and Ahjvar’s, and another heavy purse Deyandara hadn’t known they had, up into a roll, tying it over his shoulder. He had also put on a somewhat tattered caravan guard’s coat, hiding the forage-knife at the small of his back beneath it. In the inn’s yard, the horses introduced to Lin to his satisfaction, he wrapped a scarf over Deyandara’s hair, too, a great striped earth-coloured shawl. She had not braided in the bard’s ribbons this morning. Just as well; she would have blushed with even greater shame under Lady Lin’s knowing gaze, caught in that lie.

  “Your death is still on your heels,” he said, with no more weight than if he mouthed some conventional blessing for the road. “Perhaps it isn’t Ahj, after all. Go warily. Pray for Ahj. Someone should.” For a moment, as he stood with his hands on her shoulders, she thought he would kiss her and was quite certain she would not mind if he did. But he only brushed his thumb over her lips, which made her shiver again, and stepped away.

  “You will look after her. Your blood and word,” he told Lin, and was gone, trotting out of the inn’s gate.

  Lin turned the yellow gelding in a neat circle. “You didn’t sleep with him, did you?” she asked. Her Praitannec was good, but she had an odd accent, not of the Five Cities. Ghu had no accent at all; he might have been Praitan-born, in the west. Ahjvar’s accent. Catairnan.

  “No! He’s a groom.” Deyandara added, flustered, “Anyway, he’s in love with Ahjvar, I think.”

  “Do you think so? Ah, well, perhaps you’ll be given another chance. He’ll have to come collect his horses, after all.”

  “Ahjvar’s horses. And the only reason he gave them to us is that he thinks Ahjvar’s going to die, and he wants to go die with him.”

  “The mysterious Ahjvar. Yes. I must meet him someday soon. However, let’s be off for now. If these stalkers of yours do give chase, I’m going to cut your pony loose, child, so I do hope all the important baggage is on the piebald.”

  There was hardly any baggage but a few blankets, her change of linen, and some socks that needed mending, anyway. The komuz she had slung on her back, the bow and quiver handy behind the saddle. Little food. Had Lin thought of that? Hunting would delay them, and the horses, if not the hardy pony, would need grain if they were to travel swiftly. Deyandara patted Cricket and whispered, “Keep up” in his ear. Ghu talked to horses as if they understood, after all. The white mare turned to eye her as she settled in the saddle but set out willingly, a long, fluid stride. Nobody was going to catch her, at any rate.

  Ghu had vanished, though Deyandara looked for him. They rode past the man he had claimed watched them, still sitting idly in a doorway, whittling. When she looked back, he was gone too. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t outdistance them when they were heading straight for the Eastern Wall.

  They rode in silence, and the city wall of Marakand beyond the ravine’s green river of scrubby forest seemed to taunt her. Fetched home in disgrace, like the silly little fool she was. No. Maybe she was a fool to have tried to travel alone, so inexperienced, so—ill-fortuned, as fate proved to her, time and time again. Not a fool to have wanted her freedom, t
o desire to be more than a petty afterthought in her brother’s hall.

  “I’m not going to Durandau,” she said.

  “No?” Lin turned to look at her.

  Deyandara took a breath. “I’m not going back to Lord Yvarr and the duina in my brother’s shadow, his, his dog at heel. He’ll have been sending scouts west into the duina, won’t he?”

  “Naturally.” She eyed Deyandara sidelong.

  “If you were really with him so recently, you know where the Marakanders are, as well as his war-leaders do, or better. You can divine for them.”

  “They’re in Dinaz Catairna,” said Lin.

  “But Marnoch was going to burn it.”

  “The Marakanders rebuilt.”

  She pictured herself slinking along the caravan road south of the Duina Catairna and into Broasoran lands, a laggard, a truant, rounded up by her brother Durandau’s scouts, brought humble before the high king, with whatever other kings and queens had assembled there to witness her scolding.

  “Do you know where Lord Yvarr and Lord Marnoch are?”

  “Alive. They’ve gone west and north into the hills, we think. There’s their dinaz deep in the Red Hills, but I haven’t heard if that’s where they’ve made their stronghold or not.” Lin eyed her sidelong. “But I can find them for you.”

  “Can we get to them, instead of going to my brother? Without being taken by the Marakanders?”

  Was that a smile, a fox’s glint of tooth, like Ghu contemplating horse-theft?

  “We can make the attempt. This Ketsim, the Marakander captain, seems not to like the steep hills and the woodlands.”

  “Good.” Deyandara bit the word off and wondered why it echoed in her mind. Ahjvar.

  “I am,” Lin said, a bit hesitantly, “yours to command, my lady. Not your brother’s. I swore so to your pretty-eyed friend just now.”

  “Oh.”

  “You’ve been travelling in dangerous company.”

  “Ahjvar’s not—He’s—he . . .”

  “I meant the other one.”

  “Ghu?” Deyandara coughed to hide her squeak of protest, coughed more earnestly and pulled the scarf across her face. Lin had gotten them mixed in with the tail of a caravan. The horses blew at the dust. “Dangerous? He’s not dangerous. He’s the most gentle . . . half the time I think he’s not even all there!”