by Lara Morgan
‘I need to rest,’ she said.
‘How is the young man?’
‘He’s sleeping.’ Shaan hoped the Sister wouldn’t check on him but Lyria went back toward the room. Not wanting to deal with her questions, Shaan made for the end of the corridor, but before she reached it Sister Lyria had seen the man and was calling out to her.
‘Shaan, wait!’ She hurried after her. ‘He is much improved. I thought he would die; our healers held out no hope for him. How has this happened?’
‘Maybe he’s just lucky.’ Shaan stepped around her, heading for the door.
‘Amora touched the Stone as well,’ the Sister called out, her tone making Shaan stop. Lyria’s eyes were filled with a fervent belief. ‘It was she who set up this temple, she who began the healing of many injured in the revolution. Perhaps she watches over you.’
The look in her eye was disturbing and Shaan turned away. ‘I have to go,’ she said, and left as quickly as her aching leg would allow.
For the next hour she hid in her room with the door locked, trying to rest while she worried over what she had done and what the Sister might think of it. Lyria plainly suspected something, but would she tell anyone? Most likely. But what could the Sister do about it? She wasn’t going to confess and Lyria had no proof. Shaan wasn’t prepared to be made into some kind of healing angel for the Sisters — which was exactly what they would want her to become. She didn’t even know if she could control this power. It had a dark edge, Tallis had said; he had felt it, and so had she. Who was to say she wouldn’t get too tired and kill someone instead of healing them?
She was lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling and wishing she could talk to Tallis about it when there was knock on the door.
‘Cart’s ready, miss.’
She closed her eyes briefly then got up and opened the door.
‘Sorry, but I thought I should come and fetch you.’ It was the cart driver. He gave a small smile and ran a hand over his balding head. ‘Guardian doesn’t like to be kept waiting.’
‘No, she doesn’t,’ Shaan said, and glanced down at her now off-white laced shirt and old trousers. Her rough clothes weren’t exactly palace wear, but the only dress she owned was too dirty. ‘Just wait a moment, please.’ She quickly pulled a brush through her hair and straightened her shirt, then followed him back out to the stables.
The driver was a short man with dark skin wrinkled by the sun and a face that reminded her of a dried apple, but he was friendly, unlike some of the other workers in the temple, and he was always keen to take her to the yards for her swim every morning. She suspected he had some kind of game going with workers there, and now Nilah’s requests for visits had become so commonplace he had begun to make good friends with the muthu stable keepers at the palace as well.
‘Long visit this time?’ he asked as he helped her up into the cart.
‘Who knows? Long enough for a game or three of tiles, I suspect.’
He grinned. ‘Maybe even four,’ he said, and slapped the reins across the muthu’s behind. ‘Gerrup!’ The cart swayed forward. Shaan kept the curtains down this time as they passed through the streets, only pushing them back as they crossed the smooth stones of the palace courtyard.
The Guardian’s palace was an enormous complex of domed buildings, gardens and porticoes set around a large central courtyard and surrounded by a high stone wall. The stables were near the front, to the left of the great dome of the public entrance. Shaan could hear the raised voices of a group of visiting children coming over the wall as she crossed the stable yards to the gate that led to the central courtyard.
The guards barely checked the Guardian’s hand-signed missive before letting her through to the busy centre of the palace. It was still cloudy and the sticky heat had many people sitting on the edges of the three fountains while others sought the relatively cool shade of the trees planted intermittently between the smooth paving stones. Robed councillors sat on benches talking with administrators and council attendants while the many workers who kept the palace fed and watered sped about, as unobtrusive as moths. At the far end of the courtyard were the domed roofs of the council chambers and beside them lower flat-roofed offices, outside which many people were sitting at tables where meals were served beneath stretched awnings.
Trying not to draw any attention to herself, Shaan crossed the great space and headed for the freestanding portico that rose three steps above the paved courtyard. The Guardian’s residence and gardens were behind a thick wall beyond the portico and half a dozen guards were stationed between the pillars, keeping watch. They cast hard looks at her as she mounted the shallow marble steps and passed quickly through the cool shade to the heavy gate that led into Nilah’s private residence. The three guards there scrutinised her missive with great intensity, checked her for weapons and took the end of a crust of bread she had left in a trouser pocket before allowing her through. It was the same every time, even though it was always the same guards, who surely recognised her. But still Nilah’s mother, Arlindah, had been poisoned.
Heading past the guard station inside the gate Shaan walked down the path between the lawns and shrubs to knock on the front door of the large, one-storey building. After a short while the door opened and a young serving girl admitted her and showed her to Nilah’s sitting room, which was an airy room overlooking the garden. Sitting on one of the low couches, Nilah, the Guardian of Salmut, was staring out through the windows. A sheaf of parchments lay unrolled and scattered at her feet across a crimson-coloured rug.
‘I’m here.’ Shaan crossed the room to sit on an armchair, her left leg throbbing in complaint at the amount of exercise it had been doing.
Nilah didn’t turn around. ‘I hate the season of rain,’ she said. ‘Mud in the streets, grey skies, and I always feel sticky.’ She looked at Shaan. ‘Let’s go for a swim.’
Shaan looked at the parchments on the rug. ‘Don’t you have work to do?’
Nilah rolled her eyes. ‘Not you too.’ She slumped back against the couch.
A light rain began to fall and the serving girl came in to light lanterns as the cloud cover deepened.
‘Stop it.’ Nilah glared at her. ‘Go away. Find something else to do.’
‘Yes, Guardian.’ The young girl immediately stopped what she was doing and, making little bows, left the room.
‘Close the doors,’ Nilah shouted, then looked at Shaan as the doors clicked shut. ‘I’m going to have to get a new girl, I think,’ she said. ‘She bothers me. All that fussing. I don’t like it.’
‘I thought Guardians were supposed to have people fuss over them?’
Nilah’s fine, narrow features reminded Shaan of a cat as she regarded her. ‘I can do without it,’ she said. ‘I have enough people fussing around me when I am outside these rooms. I don’t know how my mother could stand it.’ She got to her feet. ‘Wine?’
She went to a long, gilded cupboard against the wall and poured two glasses before Shaan could answer. ‘What I want,’ she said as she handed Shaan a glass, ‘is to be like I was before. Go anywhere, do anything I liked. Well —’ she made a face, ‘— anything until Rorc found out, anyway. We should go to an inn like that one we met at — the Serpent Inn, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, it was. But don’t you remember how your visits to inns turn out? I had to rescue you from a man with a knife.’
‘The second time, yes, but when we first met wasn’t it Balkis who had to rescue you?’ Nilah looked at her sideways. ‘But that’s all boring details. I was fine … and so were you.’
Shaan put down her wine. It was true that when they’d first met she’d had too much wine and would have been raped had it not been for Balkis intervening. It still shamed her to think of that night. She’d been stupid, careless.
‘I didn’t know you knew of that,’ she said.
Nilah waved a hand and shrugged. ‘Past mistakes. Just like you having to rescue me from that crist seller. We both survived, anyway.’ She smiled brief
ly.
Shaan couldn’t smile back. The day she’d saved Nilah from the drug seller in the alley she had taken her back to Morfessa’s house and things had changed from then on. Discovering what the dreams meant, Azoth finding her. Not that any of it was Nilah’s fault.
‘Come on, Shaan,’ Nilah said, ‘let’s sneak out.’ A mischievous light had bloomed in her eyes, but Shaan didn’t have any desire to drown her worries in wine.
‘Don’t you have too much to do here to think of going out drinking?’ Shaan said. ‘How about Azoth coming? Or the people dying from the wasting disease in the temple, don’t you care about them?’
Nilah stared at her and for a moment Shaan thought she was going to order her to leave, but then she laughed and sat back down on the couch.
‘No one else would dare say such a thing to me, you know,’ she said, her blue eyes glittering. ‘Not even Commander Rorc — although I’m sure he says plenty behind my back.’
‘I can leave if you want me to.’
‘No. Why do you think I keep asking you to come back? You’re the only person who treats me as they would anyone else.’
Shaan rubbed her eyes and drank some wine which, on a mostly empty stomach, made her light-headed. ‘You are just like everyone else,’ she said, ‘apart from being the Guardian and having all this.’ She waved a hand around at the room.
Nilah smiled ruefully. ‘All this,’ she echoed, and gestured at the papers at her feet. ‘Do you know what all this is? Notes from Lorgon and the rest of my Council of Nine, telling me how important it is right now to focus on the problems with the trading routes to the Free Lands, notes about the increasing number of mercenaries raiding the caravans.’ She picked up a handful of parchment. ‘Notes about how angry the Free Landers are that I’m apparently not doing enough about it, and notes about how much coin we are losing, or rather the traders are losing — and by that I mean the councillors — because Free Lands trading partners are withdrawing all their coin from our houses of commerce!’
She shook her head and kicked at the pile of papers, then took a long drink of wine. ‘They don’t mention anything about the serpents disappearing, or the villages that have been crushed, or even the Fallen, the gods help us, coming back. Not a word! It’s all about their coin. So what do you think I should do?’ She turned to Shaan, but gave her no chance to reply.
‘Lorgon thinks we should attack the Free Lands. That it’s their army behind the mercenaries — and you know, given what they have been doing, I wouldn’t even be surprised. I’m almost inclined to agree with him.’ She took a long breath, seeming to have run out of energy. ‘I don’t know. It all gives me a headache.’
‘I don’t know much about politics, Nilah,’ Shaan said, ‘but your biggest problem isn’t the Free Lands, it’s Azoth.’
‘So Rorc and Morfessa say.’ Nilah tapped one fingernail on the side of her glass.
‘Then why don’t you listen to them?’
‘Because they’re …’ Her face scrunched in frustration. ‘Because they won’t listen to anything I say. They think I’m a child, that I don’t know how to be a Guardian.’
‘So what?’ Shaan said. ‘You’re doing nothing, then?’
‘No!’ Nilah frowned. ‘But all they talk about is what my mother would do and that I must ready the city to fight Azoth. And all the council, especially Lorgon, talk about is how it’s the Free Lands that are the danger, that they are making everything unstable and will make it easier for Azoth to take over if he comes.’
‘You mean when,’ Shaan said. Nilah looked at her and Shaan leaned her forearms on her knees. ‘He is coming, Nilah. I know it.’
The Guardian’s eyes narrowed. ‘Yes, you were with him, weren’t you? You’re his descendant. Tell me, what’s he like?’
Shaan hesitated. ‘He is someone to be afraid of.’
‘Of course, everyone says that. But he was masquerading as Morfessa’s assistant, Prin, wasn’t he? I saw him there. He was a handsome man, amazing eyes.’ She leaned toward Shaan. ‘A lot like yours.’
Shaan flinched and for a moment wanted to slap her. ‘He’s not a man.’
‘I know that.’
‘Obviously not.’
Something changed in Nilah’s face. She pulled back. ‘You’re angry. I’m sorry, I forgot he hurt you.’
Shaan took a long breath. ‘He has hurt a lot of people and you’re talking about him as if he’s someone you could bed.’
Nilah half smiled. ‘All men are beddable. And I confess I did try to entice him when he was being Prin, just the once.’ Her smile faded. ‘But he refused me. He was strange. He scared me a little.’
‘He should scare you a lot. You know how many villages his rogue serpents and Scanorians have attacked? People are dying, Nilah.’
‘I know.’ The smile had gone from Nilah’s face and she looked pale and tired and very young. Shaan realised that sometimes she forgot their new Guardian was only seventeen and that her mother had been murdered a few months ago.
Nilah shrugged. ‘Let’s talk about something else. How about sept leaders? There are some fine men to talk about in that lot.’ She smiled and raised her eyebrows. ‘That Balkis Mondial, he’s got a walk on him, doesn’t he?’
Shaan felt a brief stab of anxiety at the mention of his name. ‘I wouldn’t know,’ she said.
‘Really?’ Nilah laughed softly as Shaan got up to refill her wineglass. ‘I heard he spent an awful lot of time at the temple after your brother brought you home, couldn’t be drawn away by any of the young serving girls making eyes at him.’
Shaan almost spilled the wine as she poured. ‘I think you need to read through your scrolls,’ she said.
‘You’re no fun.’ Nilah pouted as she turned back, then let out a long sigh and held out her glass. ‘All right, refill mine and I promise I won’t say anything more about tall blond men with fine, fine —’
‘Nilah!’ Shaan said.
The young woman rolled her eyes and exaggerated closing her mouth. Shaan took her glass, fighting to hide a smile. For all her faults, Nilah at least could sometimes make her laugh.
***
Making her way out of the palace to the stables in the late afternoon, Shaan stepped through the gate and saw Balkis talking to one of the stable men. She hesitated then stopped, a ridiculous fear filling her throat. She hadn’t seen him since Tallis had brought her back. First she’d been too ill and then too unsure. She didn’t know what to say to him and it had become easier to avoid him. She had an impulse to race back the way she had come, but any moment he would see her and she would look ridiculous. She still remembered his face when Azoth took her away; the look of frustration and fear as he ran to the top of the dome. She still remembered kissing him on a dark street.
He looked the same: tall, well muscled, striking. His blond hair was streaked with dust and pushed back from his face, strands curling in the damp heat against the tanned skin of his neck. He wore the sleeveless leather vest of the riders and dark green trousers, and had a sword belted around his hips. He saw her and she took a breath and started walking again, trying to seem as if she had been doing so all along. He strode toward her, surprise on his face.
They met near an empty cart parked close to the stables.
‘Shaan,’ he said, his blue, blue eyes wide, ‘you’re out of the temple, what are you doing here? Are you feeling better?’
‘Nilah asked to see me.’ She put a hand on the cart, leaning on it to rest her leg.
‘You’re walking.’ She felt messy, flustered, as he took in the rough trousers and old shirt. ‘Your hair is longer,’ he said.
She resisted the urge to poke at it. It was just past her shoulders now and seemed always out of control. ‘I might cut it again,’ she said without knowing why.
He smiled and she tried to ignore the way she felt seeing it, and then he was leaning in toward her, his voice quieter as he said, ‘I came to see you, every day for a time. Why wouldn’t you let me in?’
She looked away, her chest tight. ‘I wasn’t well.’
‘You seem better now.’
She tried to take a deeper breath and failed. ‘I’m better but I’m not the same.’
‘You’re alive.’ He pushed a strand of her hair behind her ear, his fingers lightly brushing her cheek.
‘Barely.’ She pulled back as she glimpsed some of the stable hands behind him watching, but Balkis ignored them, keeping his eyes on her with an intensity that was unsettling.
‘Let me come and see you,’ he said.
‘No.’
‘But why?’
‘Because …’ She let out a breath, not knowing what to say.
‘You have no reason to refuse me.’
‘I touched the Birthstone,’ she said. ‘It changed me, it …’ She lifted her left hand and he looked at it in puzzlement.
‘What?’
She stared at her palm. What could she tell him? That she had healed someone, that she could feel his blood running through his veins if she tried? He wouldn’t understand.
‘I suppose it is only your brother you can tell now, is it? Your twin.’
‘We’re different from before, Balkis, Tallis and I.’
‘Only in some ways,’ he said. ‘In others you’re still the same.’
‘What is that supposed to mean?’
He rested his hand on the pommel of his sword and looked over her head for a moment before lowering his gaze. ‘You don’t trust people, Shaan.’
‘I do, I trust —’
‘Your brother?’ His tone was irritated. ‘And what about me, do you trust me?’
‘I hardly know you.’
His laugh was harsh. ‘Oh, I think you know me a little. Besides, we could change that.’
How had they come to this? She leaned wearily back against the cart. ‘I’m tired, Balkis,’ she said. ‘It’s been a long day. I need to rest.’
‘So you’re not as well as you pretend.’
‘I’m not pretending.’
He smiled. ‘Will you trust me to help you into your cart then?’
‘I think I can make it on my own.’
‘No. I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘Give me your arm, or would you prefer to be carried?’
