The Sleeping God

by Violette Malan

  “She’s no slave! Mar’s of our own fostering, orphaned of a House. We send her to her blood kin. It’s they who want her, having just learned of her, though don’t ask me how. And it’s they who’ll pay you for her delivery, safe and sound.”

  Dhulyn looked at Parno, blood-red brows arched. Parno nodded. Very possible for a House of Imrion to have a minor Holding or even a Household in Navra. Distant kin, but kin nonetheless.

  “And the girl wishes to go?”

  Weaver glanced at the girl standing so sedately at her side. The young girl met her foster mother’s eyes steadily until the woman lowered hers and looked back across the table. “We would have kept her and happily, for she’s a fine worker-reads, writes, and is learning to clerk. But she has little of her own, and we have no wedding gift for her, not with three of our own to pay for. This is her own kin.” The Weaver seemed to be repeating a well-rehearsed speech. Perhaps there was someone at home-a son, maybe-who had needed to be convinced. House or no, the woman was content that the girl was going. “There may be property, there may be money for her. Caids know there should be,” the woman muttered, looking sideways at the girl.

  Not by smile or change of expression did Dhulyn acknowledge how much the Weaver had unintentionally revealed. “I only wished to know if we must take her bound.” She tossed off the mug in front of her-hot sweet cider, no alcohol after the valerian-and handed it to Parno. He sighed and got to his feet, signaling to Nikola where she stood behind the bar.

  “Thirty weights,” Dhulyn said. “In gold.” The Weaver gasped in outrage, and Parno stopped paying attention. He threaded his way between the empty tables, to where the girl was pouring out for him. Two men had come in while the Weaver had been talking and were leaning against the bar.

  “I don’t care how well the Sleeping God sleeps,” the shorter man said in the careful diction of one who’s been drinking all afternoon. Nikola exchanged a look with Parno. “Turchara’s a good enough god for any sailing man. What I want to know is, why should they set their own prices? These are essential,” the man had some trouble with the word and had to repeat it, “essential services. We shouldn’t have to pay for them, and they shouldn’t be allowed to withhold them.” The man looked over and saw Parno for the first time-sure sign, were any needed, of just how drunk he was. “Not like they had to be Schooled, eh, Mercenary? No years hard training for them. They’re born with the Mark. It’s cost them nothing to get it, and look what they charge!”

  “I’d lower my voice if I were you,” Nikola said, taking the cups from in front of the two men. “There’s a Jaldean at the door.”

  The drunk who’d been speaking turned slowly in a great show of control, but Parno had to put out a hand to stop the man’s elbow from slipping off the bar. The doorway, as he’d known all along, was empty.

  “Might have gone to report you,” Nikola said as she wiped off the bar. “Best be off home before he gets back with a Watchman.”

  Parno watched as the man’s friend helped him out the door, before giving Nikola a wink and carrying the cider back to where Dhulyn sat with the Weaver woman. He put the Wolfshead’s cup down in front of her and turned his attention to the girl he had no doubt would be their fare to Gotterang.

  Even had he not been told, her heart-shaped face made it obvious Mar was no blood of the Weaver’s, and it was likely enough that she was indeed orphan of a House. She was already taller than the admittedly short towns woman, though manifestly young; she looked a marriageable age for a town girl if he was any judge-and he was. Unlikely that she would grow any taller, but she had inherited a good length of bone, regular features, good teeth, and abundant hair, though it did not shine much in the taproom’s lamplight. All testimony to good blood and good health. And what was more, sufficient luck to be fostered in a family which fed her well enough to let her keep these advantages.

  “So we’re agreed?” Weaver was saying as she pulled a pouch from the wallet at her belt.

  Dhulyn was still considering. Finally, she lifted her chin from her fist and held out her hand, palm up. “Give me your hand, girl,” she said. Parno tensed. What could Dhulyn be thinking? Better she didn’t touch anyone than to actually invite a Vision. Weaver looked at the young woman and nodded, but Mar was already holding out her square, ink-stained hand, palm down, for Dhulyn to take in her long scarred fingers.

  “Are you afraid?”

  “I am,” the girl said in a voice little more than a whisper. “But I will go.”

  Dhulyn nodded, retaining her grip on the girl’s hand. Her pale gray eyes became fixed so markedly upon something over the girl’s shoulder that Mar turned around to see what it was. Dhulyn stared at nothing. Mar tried to pull her hand away. Dhulyn did not even seem to notice. Parno touched her foot with his under the table.

  “She will need a pony,” Dhulyn said, finally releasing the girl’s hand without comment. “Forty silver weights and we are agreed.”

  Weaver opened the small pouch, shook its contents into her hand and, coin by coin, counted out the forty weights. Most of the coins were the old minting, ship on one side, the old Tarkin’s head on the other, and dull with tarnish, but there were six gold pieces. Parno lifted his right eyebrow.

  “It is enough,” Dhulyn said. Weaver drew shut the strings of the pouch and slipped it back into her wallet.

  “When will you leave?”

  Dhulyn looked at Parno. He knew that her bargaining had taken into account several things besides the price of a pony, the purchase of heavy clothing, and provisions for traveling. There was the lodging they already owed Linkon Grey-besides the packhorse they’d bought from him and the extra cot for their room. Linkon might be an old acquaintance, but Nikola had four brothers and sisters who had to be provided for. Parno lifted his left eyebrow.

  Dhulyn turned back to Weaver. “Tomorrow.”

  “I’ll leave her now, then,” Weaver stood up. “The letter from her kin tells where to go. You can read it yourself better than I,” the woman added with a nod to the pages neatly piled on the table. Dhulyn looked up quickly, astonishment replacing the amusement on her face. The expression on the girl’s face hadn’t changed.

  “Stay, stay my good woman. If we’re to have charge of her now, then it’s not enough.” Dhulyn tapped the coins on the table with a long index finger. “You’ll have to pay for her lodging tonight, if you expect us to keep her here.”

  Weaver chewed on her bottom lip. Mar looked away indifferently. A great sigh, and Weaver took another two copper coins out of the wallet at her waist and placed them with the rest on the table. Parno swept them all into his own pouch.

  “Behave yourself, child,” the Weaver’s voice was gruff as she rose to her feet. “Let your House know how much we’ve done for you.” She did not offer to embrace the girl; her arms hung awkwardly at her sides. Parno caught Dhulyn’s eye and widened his own.

  “I will, Guillor. I will.” The girl was soft-voiced, her tone neutral, or was there a hint of steel? Weaver nodded, but Parno suspected the older woman did not leave entirely content.

  The young one sat down on the stool as soon as Weaver was gone, eyeing her present guardians like a new puppy caught between two veterans of the dog pack. Catching sight of Linkon behind the bar with his daughter, Parno roused himself with a sigh and went to explain matters.

  Dhulyn’s gaze drifted idly sideways, until it was caught and held by a line on the pages before her.

  “Why Dhulyn the Scholar?” the girl ventured finally in her soft voice.

  Dhulyn glanced up. The girl was relaxed enough, seeming to have put the parting from her family behind her. Of course, they were not her own family. Sun and Moon knew that could make a difference.

  “Few soldiers can read.” Dhulyn smiled gently enough that the small scar did not pull back her lip. “And it’s pronounced ‘Dillin.’ I am called other things as well.”

  “Dhulyn-” the girl broke off as the Mercenary held up her hand.

  “You m
ust not call me that,” she said gently. “Only my Brothers may use my name, and I theirs. You may call me Wolfshead, or Scholar, if you prefer. And Parno you must call Lionsmane, or Chanter. It is our way.”

  The girl nodded slowly. “My family-my House, will pay well for my safe delivery,” she said. “That, at least, is the truth.”

  “I believe it,” Dhulyn said, taking mental note of the qualification. So something else wasn’t the truth. Time enough to find out what, she supposed, when they were on the road. Her eyes strayed back to the tabletop. If they were leaving tomorrow, she must finish this book.

  Parno dropped into his seat. Dhulyn blew out another sigh and looked up again. “Linkon says he has nothing else free,” he said. “And he’s already given us an extra cot for the room.”

  Dhulyn shrugged. “I’ll take the cot, then.” The girl across the table started and then was still. Her tongue darted out to wet dry lips. Dhulyn stifled her laugh. “No need to look like that, girl. There’s no help for it, I cannot share a bed for two days at least. It’s a vow,” she added in answer to the girl’s unspoken question. “You’ll be as safe in Parno’s bed as you would be in your own. Safer. He won’t touch you himself, and he’ll kill anyone else who tries.” Out of habit her eyes strayed back to her page, but she knew it for a lost cause.

  “You’re too young for my tastes, child,” Parno agreed soberly. “I’ll put a sword between us if you doubt me.”

  “What’s to do?” Dhulyn asked, surprised when the girl’s anxious expression did not change. “Are you virgin? And mean to stay that way? Has it importance, other than to you I mean?”

  “It might. There’s… there’s to be a marriage,” Mar said, lowering her eyes.

  “Oh, come now,” said Parno. “It’s only the High Noble Houses worry over such things, and, even so, it’s just until the birth of the heirs.”

  Dhulyn drew in her brows and shushed him. “A marriage? Your foster mother didn’t mention that.” She was annoyed with herself for not getting all the information. Well, she knew now, and this could up the fee at the other end.

  “She didn’t know.” Mar’s voice hardened, and she sat up straighter. She drew forth a letter from the bosom of her tunic and displayed the seal in the folds of parchment, lifted but not broken. “She can’t read, and she didn’t tell you everything, even of the things she does know. My name is Mar-eMar,” she said, putting the accent properly on the second syllable. “And my House is Tenebro.”

  Dhulyn looked at Parno. His lips were pursed in a soundless whistle that changed into a toothy grin. Someone who didn’t know him well would think he was delighted.

  Dhulyn sat folded into the window seat, reading Mar’s letter by the light of the room’s single oil lamp. She had made them wait and be quiet while she finished her book in the taproom. By that time it was getting crowded, and Parno had suggested they make an early night of it. Now Mar helped Parno shift their gear while Dhulyn examined the letter from Tenebro House. With three people, the whitewashed room under the eaves of the inn’s west wing was sadly crowded. Stowing the packs carefully left the beds free, but there was little floor space.

  Dhulyn was familiar with this kind of letter: a great deal of style and very little substance. Almost one third of the page was taken up by the titles and lineage of the woman who wrote (or who had it written for her, more likely) and of Mar-eMar herself, as the person addressed. The letter itself was quite short, stating that the family had just learned of Mar’s whereabouts and wished her to come urgently to the capital to occupy her place in the House. That was probably the marriage the girl had mentioned. Almost apologetically, a tone no doubt inserted by the clerk, mused Dhulyn, Mar was asked to bring with her any family possessions that might serve as proofs of her identity. What might such things be, Dhulyn wondered? She looked up to see Mar eyeing the bed dubiously.

  “I saw a play once about a man and a woman who lay together with a sword placed between them,” the girl was saying. “And it was taken as proof that they were chaste.” She looked up at the Lionsmane, towering over her. “But I do not understand how it… how it prevents…”

  “Lying between them? Well, no, perhaps that wouldn’t be proof of much,” said Parno, almost clucking in his imitation of an elderly uncle. Dhulyn smiled, her lip curling back over her teeth. “But then playwrights are not so very accurate. What do you think, Dhulyn? Shall you lay your sword between us?”

  For answer Dhulyn unfolded herself from the window seat, reaching out for her sword where it lay still sheathed on the cot. She straightened, drawing the patterned blade out smoothly and in one motion thrust it, point down, into the straw and ticking of the mattress. Two feet of newly sharpened blade stuck out, quivering slightly, a fence post in the center of the bed.

  “Do not brush up against it in the dark, my souls,” she said, laughing at the shock on the little Dove’s face. “It will cut you.”

  Three

  “BUT YOU TOLD GUILLOR you would buy a pony.” The girl eyed their packhorse dubiously. It was a small animal, little more than a pony in size, but Mar was also small, and by careful repacking of their weapons into their own saddlebags, the spare horse could carry both the girl and the balance of the provisions they would stop to buy.

  “I told her you would need a pony.” The corners of Dhulyn’s lips twitched. “Not that we would have to buy one.”

  The girl stood still, blinking. “Guillor Weaver’s considered a shrewd woman, a hard dealer,” she said finally, halfway between admiration and annoyance.

  “Nay, don’t be offended,” Parno said, chuckling at the look on the girl’s face. “Your foster mother’s reputation stands firm. But Mercenaries deal and bargain with all sorts, not just people buying cloth.”

  “And we deal for our lives, little Dove,” added Dhulyn. “That makes us sharper.” When she was satisfied that the girl wouldn’t fall off immediately, Dhulyn nodded to Parno and they mounted their own horses. Both Warhammer and Bloodbone knew what packs meant, and were fidgeting, impatient to be off. How they’d feel after a day’s long riding in this cold weather was something else again.

  Their first stop was the market, where, after buying a good supply of roadbread and dried fish, Parno and Mar waited with the horses while Dhulyn went to the book merchant’s stall. There she traded the three books she had finished-carefully rolled and tied into tubes-for a single new one, a copy of Theonyn’s poems bound into a traveler’s volume made of the lighter, imported paper instead of parchment, cut into pages and sewn into a binding of stiff leather. She could only afford the one book, and the poems would take longer to read than anything else of equal size.

  “What is it, little one?” Dhulyn looked up from stowing her book. Mar’s fidgeting was enough to make the packhorse itself restive.

  “Nothing, that is…” the girl hesitated.

  “A heavy silence for nothing,” Dhulyn said.

  “It’s just… I was wondering if I might be able to say good-bye to my friend Sarita at the weapons stall.”

  “Who would stop you? We take you where you wish to go, do we not?” Dhulyn spoke lightly. No point in terrorizing the girl. “Never mind, my Dove. Slip down and go. The Lionsmane and I will wait for you over by that barrel.” Dhulyn pointed out an empty barrel holding up one end of a baker’s stall. There it would be possible for them to stand at least partly out of the way.

  Mar glanced over at the weapons stall and nodded. “I won’t be long,” she promised as she hurried off.

  “You don’t think she’ll run,” Parno said, watching the girl weave her way between early morning buyers and sellers.

  “She hasn’t the look of it, no,” Dhulyn said, drawing down her blood-colored brows. “But then, we have a clear sight of the weapons stall from here, she won’t get far on foot, and we’ve our travel money to Gotterang in any case.” She smiled her wolf’s smile, and Parno threw back his head and laughed.

  It was not possible for them to stand completely out of ev
eryone’s way even so early in the day, but marketers tended to part around the two Brothers with little or no complaint. Mercenary badges often encouraged even the most unruly to mind their manners. They stood facing each other, their eyes drifting apparently aimlessly as they spoke, taking in all of their surroundings, never looking in the same direction at once.

  “How is it,” Dhulyn remarked in the nightwatch murmur that would be unintelligible to any passerby, “that I have lived thus long without ever hearing the name Tenebro, since it makes even strong men pale?”

  Parno bit back a curse. He should have known she would notice something. She would never have asked, but this was something he should have told her before. Caids knew, the middle of the market square in Navra was not the best place for his life story.

  “What if I told you it was just a trick of the light?” he said, forcing a smile to his lips.

  “You’d be lying.”

  Best place or no, he had to say something; this might be the last chance they had to speak privately for the next half moon.

  “I knew them.” He watched as her eyes widened and her mouth formed a soundless “oh” of comprehension.

  “Will they know you?” She was asking more than if they would recognize him. She was asking whether there was danger in it if they should. There were many reasons a man might leave his Household for the Brotherhood. Blood duel was only one of them.

  “Caids, not likely,” he said, making it sound as certain as he could. The difference between seventeen and thirty-one, he thought. A lifetime of change.

  “You would tell me,” she said, turning to nod and smile as the kitchen boy from the inn passed close to them-marketing on his free day from the look of his good clothes.

  “Of course,” he said, eyes flicking to her face. How could she doubt that he would fail to warn her of possible danger? They were Partnered, a sword with two edges.

  “Any odds it’s not the same House?”

  “I keep telling you, less poetry and more politics.” Parno snorted, relieved that she questioned him no further.