“Yes,” he said. “And you? Rhan Agoyian?”
“Just Rhan. Where you going, then?” Desert green eyes. Sharp, hard, intelligent.
“To Shiryia. The very edge of the Kingdom.”
“Why?”
“That is none of your concern.”
The jaguar named Rhan Agoyian smiled and pulled out a flask of what was probably sakeh. He took a swig, gave an exaggerated swallow, and turned those sharp eyes on the lion. “None of my concern, is it? Then I guess I’m done here.” And he rose from the table, moved to leave. The Captain reached for his arm.
“Please sit, sidi. It is Imperial business, but… I will tell you what I can.”
“Fair enough.”
The man sat back down. Waited. Kirin took a deep breath, stared into his tea. The night was cooling down, the nightlife heating up. Lanterns and candles and torches burned from every crevice, and the smells of roasting meat, smoke and liquor floated on the breeze. Someone was playing a lone setar, another a tey. There was laughter and conversation everywhere. Most cats would love this. The Captain, however, was not ‘most cats.’
Agoyian seemed to sense this. He shrugged. “Right, listen. You don’t need to tell me nothing. I’m fine with that. I’m very good at what I do. I can take you to the border, but I won’t go beyond. That clear?”
“Yes.”
“You know my fee?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll not be accepting Imperial promises. I have a wife and sons back home.”
“I understand.”
“Just answer me a few questions, and we’ll have ourselves a deal.”
Another deep breath, a long sip of tea. It felt good in his throat. “I will try.”
“You alone or you have a party?”
“There are 8 of us, plus horses.”
“All Imperials?”
“3 civilians.”
“You from Pol’Lhasa then?”
“Yes.”
“How’d you get this far without a guide?”
His heart thudded once. Pushed his emotions deep, deep down. “We had a guide. He is no longer with us.”
The jaguar smiled, but his eyes did not. He leaned forward, wagged a hand in the air. He was wearing fingerless gloves. He had black claws. “Now see that? That intrigues me. Why is your guide no longer with you? He dead?”
“No.”
“Just gone, then.”
“Yes. Just gone.”
“A guide leading an Imperial party, being paid with Imperial coin, just up and leaves. Funny how that happens.”
“Yes. Funny.”
“How many you start off with, then?”
Kirin sighed. The evening had turned to dusk, the sky almost black above the branches. The torches glowed golden and warm. He felt heavy, like a stone. “Fourteen.”
“Ah. So 5 dead, one just gone. That about right?”
“Yes. That’s about right.”
“Must be an important trip, to lose so many and still keep going.”
The man was sharp. Kirin would give him that. “Yes.”
“Does it have to do with the star, then?”
Kirin’s eyes snapped up and he cursed himself for the lack of self-control. Damn, but he was tired. He had just told the man everything.
Another smile spread across the jaguar’s face, and this time, his eyes followed. He slapped the table with the flat of his palm, glanced around at the fellow drinkers and ‘businessmen’ in the Daraband’s underground market and then back to the lion sitting next to him.
“I’m in then. But I have conditions. You agree to my conditions, and I’ll lead you wherever you want to go. Got that?”
“I do.”
“Half down – I pick it up tomorrow morning. The other half left at the Governor’s residence for my wife to collect on the day of the Ghost Festival, you know, in case I become your seventh.”
“Seventh?”
“Ghost.”
Finally, Kirin met his gaze. Weighed him, measured him, understood him.
“Those are acceptable terms, sidi. We will be leaving in two mornings, at dawn.” He rose to his feet, his tattered golden sash lifting in the night breeze. The jaguar grinned.
“That sash, its seen better days, yeh?”
“As have I,” Kirin managed to grin back. “Good night, sidi. Be well.”
And he left the crowds and the canopies and the questions but took the stone with him.
***
The long sun-filled corridor was filled with the sounds of sharp angry clacking and Sireth turned before knocking on the door.
“Major, please. Just one moment more.”
“We have wasted already too much time. There is no need for sleeping on a morning like this. We should be outside.”
“Major, I have spent more time outside these past months than all the time in my life. Besides, I am far too hot to go outside. I’d rather be hot and miserable inside for a change.”
“It is not that hot and you are lazy.”
“Sometimes. And I shall be lazy for one more moment. Just…just …please wait.”
Ursa sighed and folded her arms across her chest, but to her credit, she leaned against the gold-painted plaster to wait. Sireth turned to rap gently on the door.
Sherah al Shiva opened it.
“Sidi?” she purred.
“Are you going into town, sidala?”
Golden eyes narrowed, looked back into the room, then back again. “Yes, I believe I will be going into town, sidi.”
“Good,” said Sireth. “Go now.”
Behind him, Ursa snorted.
The golden eyes grew like steel. “I do not wish to leave the Scholar. She is still walking in circles.”
“I will take care of the Scholar, sidala. Please leave this room now, or I will wring your neck and stuff you out that big window there. We will pretend to look for you for a few days, but finally we will give up and continue our travels in peace.”
Ursa snorted again.
The cheetah’s tail lashed once, but she quickly composed herself and slipped past the Seer and out into the Governor’s ornate hall. Sireth stepped into the room she had vacated, turning back one last time.
“Oh, and be sure to bring back opium. Lots and lots of opium.” He smiled at her, but his expression was anything but pleasant.
She nodded. “Of course,” and padded away, Ursa’s ice blue eyes watching her go.
***
His heart broke when he saw her.
“Khalilah,” he said softly.
She was sitting on the floor, back against a rich plum-stained wall, arms clasping her knees. Her eyes were rimmed with red, for she had been weeping.
He knelt beside her, reached out to brush a now-white lock of hair from her face. She looked up at him, tears brimming until they spilt over her lashes and down her face.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she moaned. “Why didn’t anybody tell me?”
“What could you have done?” he asked. “We needed you to become well again, and knowing this would not have been helpful. Would it?”
“It’s my fault.”
“It’s no one’s fault –“
“No,” she was insistent. “He wanted to go. He said he needed to find his brother. I wouldn’t let him go. It was my fault. The Captain should have punished me.”
“Khalilah,” he sighed. He didn’t know what else to say. She had been inconsolable for days now, since she’d found out.
“It wasn’t his fault. The Captain shouldn’t have sent him away. It was wrong.”
“I know, but the Captain believes he was doing the right thing.”
“Well, he wasn’t. I hate him.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do. I hate him so much. I’ve never hated anyone before now. I don’t like it. I don’t like how it makes me feel. But I hate him. I do. And when I can walk straight, I’m leaving too.”
He saw his opportunity and took it. “So you are stil
l not walking straight?”
She took a deep breath, swallowed a few times and shook her head. “Nope. It’s like my right leg is longer than my left. I keep going in circles. I get dizzy.”
He smiled.
“Sherah checked. My legs are exactly the same length. Exactly the same! So why am I going in circles?”
“Perhaps I can help?”
“Do you think so?”
He shrugged. “I can try.” He pulled at the fingers of his gloves, laid them in right angles on the tiled floor at his knees and slipped his hands into her hair, thumbs to temples, cradling her skull.
She gasped, and he felt the struggle of fear and, but he shushed her. “Breathe, Khalilah, just breathe. We will restore your balance…”
And so she relaxed, trusting herself completely and literally, into his hands.
He found her heart, steadied it’s beating, found her lungs, filled them slowly, deliberately with cool morning air then released, filled and released, filled and released, cleansing with each breath, washing away the fears, the anxieties, the furies, releasing and cleansing with each and every breath. She was imbalanced but not in her legs and he found that too, correcting and restoring and straightening crooked paths and crooked thoughts and broken thoughts and broken hearts at broken roads. He did not open the memory of lightning but saw again the vision of kittens, grey striped kittens, was tempted to share it with her but refrained, for then there was also a vision of water, very big water and of man.
He released her and sat back.
“Um, I…I feel better,” she said. “Thanks.”
He smiled. “Stand up. See if you can walk.”
She did, pulling herself up and stretching her arms over her head and then yawned so that her tongue curled inside her mouth. She took a step, and then another, and then another.
“Oh,” she gasped. “Look! I’m going straight!”
And she did, very straight toward the window, spun on her heel, very straight back toward him. Turned in a circle, performed a little bow, held a hand out for him. Smiling, he pulled on his gloves and accepted her hand, allowing her to pull him to his feet. She hugged him.
And he kissed her on the forehead. “Now, how would you like to accompany the Major and I into the heart of TheRhan? I hear they have wonderful markets. Perhaps we can find a kz’laki or… a bookshop?”
She grinned, pushing the curvy white-streaked locks from her forehead. She still wasn’t used to it and it’s new texture, and it kept falling into her face. “Sounds great. Let’s go.” She offered him an arm and he took it, and together, they headed for the door.
Rather, they tried to head for the door.
The Seer was leaning as he stepped, tilting leftwards, almost as if his right leg were longer than his left. Almost as if he were walking in circles.
***
The rest of that day was spent as if the Tao wheel had been flipped, as if black was white, Yin was Yang and everything was turned on its ear.
The Captain of the Guard spent the day tending horses.
The Major took her pupil, the Scholar, to the markets and purchased for her a dagger, a short sword and two kz’lakis.
The Seer sat on the roof of the Governor’s residence to try to reestablish his balance and cure himself from walking in circles.
Their new guide, Rhan Agoyian, spent the day with Rhajni, his wildly clever wife of seventeen summers and his four wildly clever sons.
The Alchemist did not, in fact, go to the marketplace, but rather spent the day in a second storey alcove overlooking the stables, casting lots and drawing with chalks and for the first time in her life wishing she were someone she was not.
And Path, the falcon, perched high above them all, on the peak of a minaret that towered above the city, watched and waited and somehow knew that, of the ten of them that would be leaving in the morning, only three would be returning.
***
Kirin Wynegarde-Grey had never considered himself good at reading people.
Yes, he was a leader of men. He knew how to command armies of soldiers, how to negotiate treaties with nations, how to win cooperation within Imperial ministries and how to secure compliance in individuals. But that was generally due to his complete and utter confidence in the Bushido, how it compelled peoples of all races and natures to its code of honor and justice. The Bushido gave order, created peace, made sense. People never did.
And yet, for all his lack of ‘people skills’, somehow he knew that this jaguar, Rhan Agoyian, liked to live his life on the edge of a blade.
He arrived before dawn of the second morning, set about to inspect the horses that had been housed in the Governor of Hiran’s fine stables. The Governor had prided himself on being quite the horseman, and Agoyian immediately identified the Captain’s horses from the rest.
One of the first things he said upon his arrival that morning was that none of the Captain’s horses were ‘pretty.’
Kirin hoped that was meant as a compliment, as even the remaining Imperial horses were taking on the lean, hardened look of the desert ones. Here in the stables, he himself had taken the opportunity to roach manes, trim fetlocks, bind tails, inspect hooves, everything Kerris had done these past months and he had even commissioned a full-body massage for each and every animal, as nothing soothed weary muscles like the feline touch. The Major’s grey mount was slipping again, its breathing growing raspy and wet once more, and he debated leaving it behind, but she was insistent that they at least take it with them, allowing it to follow without saddle. She would ride one of the desert horses, and she had picked out for herself a fine blue roan with a white snip on the end of its tiny muzzle. They were strange looking, indeed, but he had to admit they had their strengths.
They had lost a foal as well in the last days since Kerris had been dismissed from their company. It had progressively grown weaker and weaker, until one morning, the day before entering TheRhan, they had awakened to find it dead, lying beside its mother. The mare had not wanted to leave the foal behind so they had been forced to rope her and drag her from her baby. Her milk had already begun to dry up, and Kirin was faced with the prospect of deciding whether or not to find another nursing mare for the paste. Again, that would have been Kerris’ call.
His little bay friend was still sound, however, and Kirin found himself growing attached. He hoped it survived the journey.
Agoyian had inspected all the horses, checked all the tack, listed the supplies, all with the same wry expression on his face. A grin that said play but eyes that said steel. Absolutely confounding.
The second thing Agoyian had said upon his arrival that morning almost got him instantly killed.
He had called the Major ‘Snowflake.’
The rest of the Imperial party had joined them very early on, each in their particular desert gear, but of course, the Major had insisted on her doeskin, and Agoyian had immediately set about to change her mind. It was during his attempt that the word was uttered, and Kirin knew enough about people to know that it was not meant as a compliment. It was only the quick reactions of the Seer as he snatched her up by the middle and walked away with her, kicking and swearing and furiously trying to set her claws on spotted flesh, that had kept him in one piece.
He had turned to the Captain, grinning again, green eyes glittering, and Kirin could almost detect enjoyment in the danger. For the briefest of moments, Kirin wondered if the man didn’t sincerely wish to become their seventh ghost.
And so they traveled that day in much the same way as they had in days previous. Agoyian led the caravan on a tough little horse that looked more Mongol than either Imperial or desert, square of conformation and big of bone, and he had to admit it reminded him a bit of Quiz, the mountain pony. He wondered if it were simply a coincidence or whether most guides chose tough little horses for a reason. He made his mind up to ask him at some point.
They stopped at midday, somewhere out in the middle of a flat, arid plain and Kirin rode up to the jagu
ar’s side. The man had slid off his horse and was untacking.
“Why do we stop, sidi?”
“Well, in these Dry Provinces, the sun will kill you if you ride all day like this.” He dropped the saddle to the ground, tied the reins up on the horse’s neck and walked stiffly over to the cart. “We let the horses rest for a few hours and ride longer at night.” He pulled a water barrel out of the cart, and Kirin noticed all the horses began to make snuffling sounds. Agoyian’s Mongolian horse had followed him, and it plunged its stout muzzle into the barrel, drinking deeply. In fact, it set his own mouth a-watering.
“Our previous guide did nothing of the sort,” said Kirin.
“Well then, good thing he’s just gone.”
“May I remind the Captain that he sent our ‘previous guide’ away at a set of hot springs?”
All eyes turned to the Scholar, seated on her red desert horse. There was something unusual in her posture, but something most definite in her tone.
Agoyian put his hands on his hips. “Eh? What’s that, then, Sunshine?”
“Well, we don’t know what our ‘previous guide’ would or would not do in these Dry Provinces, because the Captain sent him away only two days outside of Khanisthan. He’s implying that either you don’t, or he didn’t, know what you or he, are or was doing. It’s arrogant assumption, very much like what a lion would imply.” She smiled at him. “Don’t you think?”
The Captain clenched his teeth but said nothing. He had no words for her.
Agoyian glanced from lion to tiger and back again, the steely-eyed grin threatening to split his face.
“Smashing. Absolutely smashing. I’m so glad I’m here. Right, now everybody untack your horses and let them drink. We’re going to eat and drink and have a little sleep with our heads under our saddles, got that? Unless you want the bother of setting up the tents. Even you, Snowflake. Tuck that pretty little head of yours right under that stinky old saddle…”
The Seer caught her as she launched herself from her horse.
Kirin sighed and rubbed his forehead, wondering if he had not made the biggest mistake of this journey.
The Way of Things: Upper Kingdom Boxed Set: Books 1, 2 and 3 in the Tails of the Upper Kingdom Page 49
