by Cate Rowan
“What’s zoolbiah?” Varene whispered.
“Fried dough soaked in syrup,” he said. “One of my favorite treats from the market.”
“They’re wonderful, Healer,” said Priya. “They’re my favorite, too. And it would only take a moment.” She smiled fleetingly at Sohad.
“Well, if you both agree, and it’s quick,” said Varene, amused. “I suppose I could use something in my stomach. It may be a long night.”
Sohad strode to the merchant. After a few moments of haggling, he walked back with three zoolbiah, three meatpies, and a grin. “They’re fresh—still hot from the fryer.”
“Thank you,” said Varene, taking her portion as they walked. “Much appreciated.”
“How much did you end up paying?” Priya asked, a hint of friendly challenge in her voice.
“Twenty khedas.”
“Ah.”
“Why?” Sohad asked. Varene could tell he was glad for the excuse to look at Priya at last.
“You bargained well.” Priya smiled. “Better than most. But you could have gotten him down to seventeen.”
“Truly? I bargained as low as I thought he’d go.”
Priya’s lashes lowered modestly. “My mother owned a stall here. I learned to bargain as soon as I could talk.”
“Well, then.” He smiled down at her. “The next time I won’t let my khedas leave my palm so easily.”
Thoroughly entertained by the show, Varene bit into the zoolbiah. “Mmmmm,” she said, closing her eyes to savor it.
Priya laughed. “I told you! And the meatpie is even better.”
They passed fruit mongers with geometric piles of juicy citrus and lirrfruit, cheese merchants displaying wheels and balls in every shade of yellow and white, jewelers with massive guards posted at each corner of the stalls, and clothiers’ racks of veils and skirts, trousers and tunics in hues ranging from desert sands and garden flowers to the sky, moon, and sun.
Seeing the clothiers’ stalls reminded Varene of Alvarr and Jilian’s daughter, Qiara. Kuramos had wanted to force the princess to marry him, securing the rulership of three realms for his progeny, but the wily Qiara had escaped. The daredevil redhead had hidden from Kuramos in this very marketplace. Varene knew the sultan had fallen hard for Qiara. Now she wondered what feelings Kuramos might still hold for the princess, five years after they had parted.
For Fate’s sake, that’s none of your concern, Varene scolded herself. Why should you care what goes on in his head?
She listened to the conversations around them as they walked. Mostly, she overheard the various stages of bargaining, from loud bickering and dramatic gestures down to murmured protestations between close-pressed heads. Two women spied each other across a dusty aisle and gave joyful shouts as if meeting for the first time in decades.
Sohad led the way through the packed aisles as if he were the captain of a sailing ship, proud and authoritative, with the two ladies behind him his esteemed passengers. When they had both finished their savory food, Varene linked arms with Priya and grinned. After a blinking moment of surprise, Priya smiled back.
Finally, Sohad slowed. The scents of herbs suffused the air, and Varene inhaled deeply. This was the aroma of home, of the hours spent among the supplies of her craft, studying plants, learning the name of each and the uses of the stems, the bulbs, the flowers, the roots. Hours of sorting in the Healing Rooms in Teganne, where if she just looked out the window, she could see the hill where Findar’s pyre…
Suddenly the sun shed no heat and even the herb scents turned stale, like old bread and moldy dreams. Grief tightened knots around Varene’s heart, and she slowed. Priya, sensing the shift in pace and mood, peered at her in concern. Varene unlinked their arms and waved a hand to forestall any questions. She forced her mind back to business.
The first stall held exotic herbs and dried flowers, some she’d never heard of. But though the herbs were plentiful, they didn’t look fresh. Many were brittle and too pale. Even the stall looked dingy.
She bypassed it without fingering any of the wares and moved across the aisle to one more promising, with stems of better color and stronger fragrances. Sohad took the cue. “Have you any sugarwort?” he asked the ample proprietress wearing silks the color of oasis grass.
The shopmistress eyed him curiously and spoke in a gravelly voice. “We don’t get many requests for that around here.”
Sohad held her shrewd gaze and shrugged. She gave Priya a cursory glance, and Varene’s pale face a longer one. “I might have some. Let me look.” She disappeared behind the curtain dividing the shopfront from the private area in the back.
Soon the curtains rustled. A pair of eyes a foot higher than the shopmistress’s peered out from between a slit in the panels. Her husband? Varene wondered. A hushed but heated conversation began behind the curtain.
Varene turned away as if staring indifferently across the aisle, letting the veil hide half her face. Sohad held up a vial of crushed starfoil and gave it a careful sniff. He pursed his lips with satisfaction and placed it in front of him on the white cloth of the counter as if he planned to purchase it.
Priya was eyeing scarves in the neighboring stall, seemingly lost in the interplay of colors.
At last the woman re-emerged, holding a darkened jar between her hands and a cotton bag draped over her arm. She placed them on the counter in front of Varene, instead of Sohad.
Varene looked up in surprise.
The woman merely gave a sharp, knowing nod and a wordless grunt. She twisted the stopper off the jar so Varene could inspect the contents.
The Healer pulled the twigs out. Though dry, the raisin color remained, and the ends were cleanly clipped, not pulled. The healing properties of sugarwort could be diminished through rough handling, but Varene was sure these would yield a strong decoction. Sohad, too, came closer and nodded his approval.
“You need it all?” asked the proprietress.
Varene only permitted herself a nod. This jarful, along with what she’d brought and a doubled decoction of the weak herbs from the palace, should be just enough.
The proprietress scooped twigs into the cotton bag. “That’ll be three hundred khedas for the lot.”
“Three hundred!” blustered Sohad, warming up for the bargaining. “Why, that’s—”
“A fair price,” boomed a new voice to Varene’s left, “especially for a Tegannese plant, and in such good shape.”
They all whipped their heads around, ready to shush the loud voice that had mentioned Teganne. Instead, a pregnant silence ensued. The boomer was the hulking shopkeeper across the way, the one Varene had bypassed.
“Tegannese? Did he say Tegannese?” came whispers all around them.
The shopkeeper sneered at the three of them. “Are you trying to pay less than the fair value? There must be a Teg among you, looking to cheat an honest Kaddite out of hard-earned khedas. Just like that Tegannese prince, when he cheated our sultan out of Qali Province. A prince of thieves.”
Varene balled her fists into stiff knots hidden only by the long sleeves of her cloak. Is THAT what the Kaddites think happened to Qali? If so, Kuramos, you lying sack of sh—
“Bafar,” the shopmistress said, “hold your fat tongue!” She raised an irate hand and leaned over her counter toward her belligerent neighbor. “If I want your stupid help, I’ll ask for it. Go tend to your own customers. If you have any left.”
“I was merely trying to help you get a fair return.” Bafar’s mouth split into a sarcastic sneer. “After all, Rupal, Tegs are known swindlers. But maybe you don’t mind. Maybe you like doing business with their kind—even with a filthy Teg sorceress.” He spat into the aisle.
How had he guessed? But Varene’s indignation at the insults to her realm sank under a growing apprehension. Clearly, rumors of the illness in the palace were now raging outside its walls.
She herself had spurred those rumors into existence when she’d lost her temper and shouted her furious taunts a
t the sultan, witnessed by a room of nobles. Some of whom, as Priya had mentioned, were likely seeking his very throne.
In the hot and dusty market, a crowd began to gather. Suspicious gazes seemed to bounce off Sohad and Priya and stick to Varene, measuring, sizing up.
Unease snaked through her limbs.
Sohad took a step toward the belligerent Bafar. “I’m purchasing what I like. I’m as Kaddite as you. Born and raised in Gida Province. What I buy here is no concern of yours.”
“Pah. You’re only a cover for the sorceress. Buying Teg plants to use on the ill in the palace.” He jerked his head north toward the palace’s domes and spires. “And how do we know,” the merchant said, taking his own step forward, eyes menacingly locked with Varene’s, “that she didn’t blight them with the sickness herself?” A growl rose from multiple throats among the crowd. “A Teg sorceress—an assassin, more like! Here to take Kad for her own prince. To conquer Kad and make us bow to an overlord from Teganne, just like happened in Qali. And Fallorm.” He lobbed another globule of spit into the dust between them.
Fallorm. Never had she thought that place would be an issue here in Kad, so many hundreds of miles away…
The crowd growled again and jostled to take a closer look at her. Priya clutched Varene’s sleeve.
“Bafar,” shrieked Rupal the proprietress, “stuff your filthy talk up your bulbous nose!” She exited her stall and marched toward Bafar, followed, somewhat reluctantly it seemed, by her much larger husband. “You’re bitter because your wares are brittle and blighted, and no one wants to deal with a man who cheats his customers.” She glared up at him, hands cocked aggressively on her ample hips.
Murmurs spiked among the throng, and soon the shouting Bafar and Rupal were ringed by onlookers who hooted and jeered at each verbal jab.
“We should leave,” whispered Sohad in Varene’s ear. Then he placed a reassuring hand on Priya’s back, something Varene doubted would have happened under normal circumstances. Priya looked up at him with nervous eyes and nodded, seeming to take strength from his presence.
And though Varene was well used to fighting battles for her patients and even for herself, for just a moment she wished someone special would give her that kind of reassurance, too. Findar would have. She was sure of it.
Varene looked back at Bafar, whose face was growing crimson from his shouting match with Rupal. Varene hungered to put the towering bastard in his place, but ten people depended on her for their cure.
She shook her head. “We can’t leave without the sugarwort.” She eyed the cotton bag and the precious contents peeking from it and sidled closer to them. “Take the herbs and leave Rupal the money,” she hissed. “Twice as much as she asked.”
But as soon as Sohad spilled the appropriate coins on the counter and put his fingers on the cotton bag, a meaty hand closed over his own. “Now, now, that’s not yours.”
The three of them looked up at the owner of the fist, another behemoth, one who reeked of drink and ill temper.
“Let go, please,” Sohad said. Tall though he was, he was a stick compared to his adversary. “I’ve made payment, as you can see.” Six silver coins glinted in the reddening light.
The stranger ground out his words, slow and deep. “Rupal didn’t say you could have them yet.” His sodden breath wafted out.
Sohad thrust his chin forward. “She was showing them to us for purchase—at half this price!”
“Nothing was settled.” He bared his teeth in a menacing gleam.
Varene’s heart thundered in her chest, easily as loud as the noise of the crowd. She wanted to say something, fix this somehow, the way she always salvaged situations—but her nationality had already caused enough trouble. Drawing additional attention to it by arguing would only make more.
The mob rumbled and swarmed. People pressed around the squabbling merchants, cutting them off from Varene’s view, while another surge of people closed around Rupal’s stall, eyeing the tableau of Sohad and the drunken brute. Soon they glared at Varene’s face and veil. Bewildered, she looked down and saw that strands of her unruly hair had slipped from her ponytail and now dangled in view.
“That’s her, that’s the one.” Whispers skittered like dried leaves through the crowd, gaining more color and strength as the moments ticked by. “Do y’think she can cure the sultan’s family?”
“She’s a Teg witch. Why should she?”
“She’ll kill ‘em all, more likely.”
“Maybe we should kill HER.”
Not since Varene had been a small child had she wanted to be a mage, with magic and might beyond human form. She had only a fraction of a mage’s power, but had never envied Alvarr or Rokad or Qiara their inborn gifts…until now, when she’d have given anything to disperse this horde and rescue her companions and the precious sugarwort.
Priya took a half-step forward. “Don’t listen to rumors!” Her high voice shook with fright. “No one else can help the sultan’s family! They’ve tried, but only this woman—” and she grabbed Varene’s hand— “knows how to cure them. Let us return to the palace with the herbs!”
“She cursed them, like Bafar says!” bellowed a voice in the mob. “Why else would she know how to stop the illness?”
The crowd began to merge in Varene’s mind, becoming one menacing and hungry beast licking its fangs. Voices came at her so quickly she could no longer identify the sources. Varene, Priya, and Sohad found themselves backed against Rupal’s wooden counter.
Sohad shouted out. “I am the Royal Physician’s assistant! The Great Sultan himself sent us here for the herbs! We must return with them—”
“Excuses!” howled a bass. “Are you the witch’s herald?”
“Or maybe the witch’s adept!” shouted a baritone.
“We’d better save the pretty miss there from the sorceress’s clutches. I’m sure I can savor—save her, ha ha.”
Priya’s hand again clutched Varene’s arm, which had now grown stiff with fury. Varene and Sohad crossed protective arms in front of the smaller woman, nudging her behind them against the counter. Sohad glowered at Varene and whispered, “If you have more power than you’ve admitted, wield it now!”
She glared back, enraged at her own deficiency. “If I had it, I would have done so already!”
“I’ll savor the sorceress next,” rumbled a bass.
“Careful, you rapacious thugs,” spat one of the few women in the crowd. “The maid’s dressed in the sultan’s livery.”
“Yes,” shrilled a white-bearded man in a turban. “Touch her and you might never see your hands again.”
At least someone in the crowd didn’t crave their blood. If there were others, perhaps they could shift the mob’s mood. A breath caught in her chest.
Sohad jumped upon the shaky counter and grasped the sugarwort bag to his chest. “Guards!” he shouted out, staring down the aisle and waving his other hand. “Guards!”
Palace guards! Hope sluiced through Varene’s limbs. Sohad jumped down, pressed the bag into her hands, and pulled her and Priya through the crowd toward the free space beyond.
Around them, the horde hushed and stilled, as if the beast it had formed were debating whether to retreat.
Varene’s pulse throbbed in her throat. Her gaze swept down the aisle, looking for the flash of the setting sun on armor or spears—for salvation.
As they pushed through the bodies and the moments ticked away, she realized Sohad had taken a spectacular gamble. He’d hoped the threat of palace guards would give the three of them a chance to escape—but there were no guards in sight, and never had been.
Soon the horde realized it, too.
“Liars—there’s no one there!” roared a bass to their left.
“And what if there were?” shouted a man closing in on them through the bodies. “We’d turn over three traitors scheming to murder the royals. We’d be rewarded!”
“Grab them all!” yelled another. “And take those Teg herbs from the
sorceress. End her power!” Dusty bodies closed in again around Varene, Sohad, and Priya—a sweaty press of flesh reeking of ale and hate.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The palace of the sultan of Kad was enormous, but Gunjan the jencel-bird located his master at last, hard at work in an office overlooking the lush central courtyard.
Gunjan flew past the doorway without entering, wanting a moment or two to compose himself. After all, it wasn’t easy to interrupt a sultan. Especially after one had been, er, deliberately absent from one’s usual post.
And during Gunjan’s fly-by, the sultan hadn’t looked particularly welcoming. In fact, there had been a distinct frown on his face as he’d stared down at his books.
What if, Gunjan thought as he flew on, his own caretaker had informed Kuramos of his absence, and that was the reason for the sultan’s ill mood? What if Kuramos was so angry with him that he’d be shut back in his cage for good? The sultan had never punished him before, but what if he did now? Oh, how Gunjan would miss the wind, and the sun on his wings…
It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate his home in the golden Cage and the many treats and honeyed nuts often served to him—but he liked freedom better. Much better.
Still, the Healer had seemed very sure the sultan would permit Gunjan to fly to Teganne. And she’d also been certain this mission to Teganne could help the sultan’s family. This trip was important. And so, therefore, was Gunjan’s role in it. His chest puffed out a bit as he considered that.
But to make the journey and bring a Tegannese to Kad safely with the herbs, he’d have to speak with the sultan. A possibly livid sultan.
Well, then he would have to do it. Even if it meant he was about to get his feathers blasted off.
After three deep breaths, he turned and flew back toward his lord and master.
He landed as quietly as he could on a silver étagère against the wall. The sultan was sitting at the mahogany desk, staring at ledgers. The late afternoon sun warmed the colors of the courtyard garden outside, but it didn’t seem to improve the sultan’s mood. Scowling, he tapped his fingers on the desk as his eyes scanned down the columns. He seemed distracted, though; his gaze kept losing focus and he had to begin again at the top of the page.
