by Zoe Marriott
“He is Sedorne, yes. But then, so am I. Half Sedorne, anyway.”
There was silence. I looked around at the shocked faces.
“He’s an honourable man. He has his own reasons to hate Abheron. He won’t betray me – or you. All we have to do is get ourselves to Fort Mesgao. Once we’re there, those of you with families will be able to go back to them, and the rest of us can try to contact the resistance. But first we have to get away from here, before word reaches King Abheron that his men found the temple empty. Once that happens, we’ll have very little time. Will you trust me?”
There was another moment of silence. Then Deo nodded decisively.
“Of course. We will go with you.”
There was a general murmur of agreement, and some nodding. A few people – including Rashna – stood back, unconvinced, but they did not voice their doubts. They were a minority. Looking around me at these people I knew so well, I saw a shining of terrible hope.
The temple people had lost their home and their leader, and now they had nothing left. These people – the ones who had started to kneel, the ones who looked at me with shining faces – would follow me as trustingly as sleepwalkers following a dream. I was a dream to them. A dream of the Chosen of God, the lost heir of the rei, who would deliver them from suffering. They were blind to all the flaws I had failed to mention. They would follow, and somehow I would have to lead.
Please, Mother, let me be right about Sorin, I prayed. Or they’ll be following me to their deaths.
CHAPTER
NINE
The following week was the worst I had ever endured. Travelling to Mesgao in clear weather in a well-sprung trap with a pair of strong ponies was one thing. Making the same journey with one hundred and eighty-three men, women and children, using only the three ancient nags and one rickety cart that the Sedorne had not seen fit to steal … well, that was something else entirely.
To make our misery complete, the blossoming of spring we had just begun to enjoy played us false from the first day. We walked, stumbled and fell through a world of treacherous mud, damply slithering mist and clouds so low that the mountains behind us were completely shrouded. We had been forced to leave behind the namoa’s thick red robes with their wide hoods: they were too distinctive. Most of the namoa had very little else to wear, and the Sedorne had not spared anyone’s trunks or closets, so none of us had enough warm clothing.
There wasn’t much food – only the provisions which Mira and her helpers had hastily grabbed before the attack – so the parents stinted themselves in order to give their children enough to eat. I did the same, not out of any sense of nobility, but because children cry when they’re hungry, a kind of high, breathless sobbing that goes on and on. Adults at least suffer in silence.
During the day we split into several groups, so as to attract less attention. One group took the cart and travelled along the main road. The others made their way through the rocks and scrub above as quietly as they could, or split into even smaller groups and walked on the road some way behind. Here, at least, the weather was an aid to us. The mists and rain offered camouflage and reduced traffic along the mountain route. Still, whenever we passed other travellers, the namoa with face tattoos of stars, birds or flames would quietly disappear into the rocks.
Once, a small unit of gourdin surprised us on a sharp turn, and stopped the group of fifteen or so people travelling on the road. They inspected the grubby refugees and insisted on searching the cart, and they weren’t very polite about any of it.
Along with a fighting namoa named Kapila, I hid in the twisted bristlecone tree arching over the road. Rocks clenched in our hands, we waited to leap down onto the soldiers’ heads if they showed any sign of violence.
One of the gourdin pulled a toy – a rag doll – from the hands of a little girl and casually ripped it apart, flinging it down into the road when it proved to hold nothing more exciting than sawdust. When the child screamed, the gourdin slapped her hard enough to knock her to the ground.
I gasped, and beside me I felt Kapila brace to drop. But instead of giving the order to attack, I found myself reaching out and grabbing her arm, holding her still. Kapila stared at me in outrage as the gourdin ground the remains of the rag doll into the dirt and then swaggered away. I felt outrage myself – what am I doing? What needs to be done: quiet! – but I could not seem to move my arm. A few moments later, the soldiers finished their inspection and went on down the road.
As soon as they were out of sight, Kapila wrenched her arm away. “Why did you stop me?” she demanded, gesturing down at the still sobbing child, now being rocked in a namoa’s arms. “He might have killed her!”
A deep, cold voice that I barely recognized as my own answered, “She’s fine. Would you have risked all our lives over a rag doll and a few tears?”
Kapila stared at me in disbelief. “Just what are you?”
“One thing I’m not is a fool.”
She flung herself down out of the tree without even looking where she fell, landed badly, and limped away. I climbed down more slowly, my whole body shaking. I felt sick. Inside my head I heard Kapila’s question echoing in my own voice. But whose voice was it? Who had spoken? Who had held Kapila’s arm? Me? Was Zahira me, or Zira?
Who had made that choice?
Deo approached me a little while later, when we had moved on. “You did right,” he said quietly. “It was a hard decision, but a good one.”
“Thank you.” I touched his arm and turned away before he could see my expression. He didn’t understand. It wasn’t hard. For me – us – it wasn’t hard at all.
At night we gathered again, taking what comfort we could in one another’s company. There wasn’t much comfort to be had, especially as the days went on.
It was inevitable that the journey would take its toll on our most vulnerable. The first to be lost was old Theri. He was seventy years old and had been confined to the infirmary for weeks before the attack with a weak heart. As dawn broke on our second day of travel, his daughter – brave, reckless Kapila – went to wake him and found that he had slipped away in the night. We buried him by the roadside. Kapila, weeping bitterly, vowed to return and place a marker there before the year was out. Afterwards she stared at me as if I were a murderer. I felt like one.
Esha, a young temple woman, was heavily pregnant when we began our trek. Her birthing pangs started on the third day of the journey, a month early. When the dreadful thing was over, we buried her tiny stillborn son under a mountain vetch that was alight with yellow flowers, and then tucked the devastated woman, still weak with loss of blood, into the cart and carried on.
On the fifth day, the worst came. Padma, a four-year-old refugee girl, had been receiving treatment for her weak chest from the first day she arrived at the temple; deprived of that, and in the cold and the wet, she sickened rapidly. The herb namoa told me it was an infection in her lungs, and there was nothing to be done.
Padma had come to the temple as an orphan. She had no family to offer comfort in those final moments. It was me who held her, stroking her shuddering back, rocking her, until her painful, rattling breaths finally stopped. I dug her grave, and built a cairn of pale stones to mark the resting place, praying that the Holy Mother would warm the little girl’s cold face and hands in the world beyond. Rashna came to help me, and though I caught her hard, doubting look, I still valued her silent company. There were too many voices in my own head now for me to enjoy conversation with anyone else.
I waited, almost hopefully, for someone to point a finger. For the moment when someone would cry, “She did this! She’s responsible! She’s not fit to be our leader!” Each day I saw faces that were angry, tired, accusing. I saw people turn from me in bitterness or despair. I knew the first night that someone slipped away under cover of darkness into the mountains, leaving their friends behind because they could not or would not endure our trek; and I knew that it continued to happen every night afterwards. I waited – but the
moment did not come. They might weep and rage and doubt, but still … still they followed me.
They looked to me for everything. Comfort, guidance, a sense of hope, a promise that everything would be all right again. Even Mira and Deo treated me differently. It was as if their friend Zira had died – or, worse, as if she had never existed at all. When they looked at me, they saw someone else. I began to realize, with a creeping sense of fear, that I no longer had a single friend. Only followers.
It was at those times, more than any other, that I missed Surya. I missed her wry smile and her teasing. The way that she had read from the Book of the Holy Mother, and made me believe in the words. I had lost her so quickly, so unexpectedly, that I could hardly believe she was really gone, even though I had been the one to wash her body and prepare it for death, and lay her in the ground of the flower garden, under her favourite blue starflower. Grief ached like a rock lodged in my chest.
I missed my family too, almost too much to bear. Anything might stir memories of them. The smile on a woman’s face that reminded me of my mother. A stumble in the dirt that recalled my brother’s clumsiness. A certain tone in a man’s voice as he spoke to his child that sounded for a moment like my father. The young girl playing with her hair, just as Indira had once done. The images were so sharp, and so very painful. Zahira longed for her family, wanted them, needed them in a way that Zira had never needed anyone, not even Surya.
I slept little that week. At night, as I huddled against Mira’s back for warmth, I stared at the impenetrable darkness of the sky, searching in vain for a star. Whenever I could fool myself that I saw a glint of light, I would beg my family’s forgiveness for having forgotten them. Then I would beg Surya’s, for the way the pain of her loss had been swamped in the greater flood of my grief over a family that I had barely known.
I had longed for a family all my life. I’d had one, and lost them. I grieved for what I had lost, and I grieved for what I had never had. I felt as if I were swimming through foreign emotions all the time, but the emotions were mine. Mine. There were two hearts, two souls, within my body, and I could not figure out which truly belonged to me.
I did not know who “me” was any more.
We reached Mesgao on the seventh day, circling the town warily. Dividing into even smaller groups, we scrambled down the terraced hillside as swiftly as possible, taking cover in the thick foliage offered by the tea fields.
I crouched in the gathering darkness, the wind tugging at my hair, and looked up at Mesgao. The rain had stopped a little while ago, and the sky spread above like a dove’s soft grey wing, so close I felt I might reach up and stroke the iridescent pink feathers of the clouds. We had pet doves once; they were soft, and they fluttered so gently in my hands, like a warm heart beating… I blinked, trying to push Zahira’s memory down and call on Zira’s of Mesgao. That was what I needed now.
The hump of the fort was outlined against the sky; I could see the flicker of firelight behind the oblong openings of the windows, and fancied I could make out the flutter of a pennant against the clouds. The rest was hidden, blanked out in the dimness. As the namoa and temple people began to settle for the night, I went back to my meagre pack of possessions, opened it and drew out two items which I hoped would help bring me success in my task.
The first was a red hooded namoa’s robe like the one I had worn that day in the marketplace. I stroked it for a minute, struggling with two sets of memories: Zira’s of seeing people wearing such robes every day and wearing them herself, Zahira’s of listening to a man in such a robe read stories from a book when she was little. I shook myself free again, trying to concentrate. I thought the status it conferred might allow me to get past the guards.
The second thing was more precious. I had known when I returned to my cell that the wind chime Sorin gave me would be gone. But in their haste to tear down the valuable silver, the outlaws had snapped the fine threads that held the chime together. When I entered the little room for the last time to gather up my blankets, I found a gleaming strand among the debris, still intact. It was a gently curving silver chime, with one tiny mother-of-pearl fish suspended from its tip.
As I stared down at the gleam of silver in my hand, I felt my resolve firming. I couldn’t wait another sleepless night. I would go now; then at least we would know all our fate when the sun rose tomorrow. I pulled the warm robe down over mud-splattered, ragged clothes, and tucked the silver chime into one of the pockets.
“What are you doing?” Mira asked, looking up anxiously from the tiny fire she was attempting to build. She was kneeling on a rolled-up blanket, one hand rubbing absently at her back; I could see she was wretchedly uncomfortable. One more reason to get this over with.
“I’m getting ready to go up to the fort,” I said. “There’s no reason to wait, is there?”
“But – but…” She waved a piece of kindling helplessly. “Surely—”
“Mira.” I kneeled before her and took her waving hand in mine. “It’s best to find out as soon as possible what choices we have. Don’t worry.”
Mira turned her head away. “Deo!”
“Yes?” He glanced up from the broken sword strap that Rashna was showing him.
“Deo, Zahira intends to go to Mesgao tonight. In the dark. Alone!” Mira stared at him meaningfully. He in turn looked at me.
“Is that really necessary?” he asked quietly. I could tell that he just managed to restrain himself from adding “Majesty” to the end of his sentence.
“It’s better than waiting,” I said uncomfortably. I didn’t know which was worse, Deo’s deference or Mira’s mother henning. “And I don’t intend to go alone. I’ll take … um…” I looked around. “Rashna.”
The other woman jumped at the sound of her name. I couldn’t see her face very well, but I’d have wagered she was narrowing her eyes at me.
“What’s happening now?” she asked. I thought she only just managed to restrain herself from saying, “What trouble is Zira getting us into now?” Oddly, her attitude was a comfort.
“I’m going to see Lord Mesgao tonight. I’d like to take you as an escort, Rashna.”
“Me?” Now I was sure her eyes had narrowed. She hesitated, then said, “You know how I feel about us coming here. But if you want me with you, I would, of course, be honoured.”
I smiled at the fine edge of sarcasm in her tone. “Good. See if you can find a clean robe somewhere, and we’ll walk up.”
“Very well.” She turned away.
The walk up the hill, through the quiet town and to the fort was accomplished in silence. I could feel Rashna simmering with objections beside me, but I was too full of tension myself to try to reason with her. Even if I had been utterly calm, I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to make conversation. Rashna and I had never been friends and I doubted that we ever would be.
From the time when we were both children, Rashna had always taunted me with the fact that I was the noirin’s little favourite, that I received special attention. Of course, it was true. Surya did love me and single me out. I’d always assumed it was the promise she had made to my dying mother that made us so special to each other. Now I realized she had been taking care of the heir to the throne, doing her duty.
Holy Mother, it hurt to accept that. Yet she said she loved me – that I was like a daughter to her. There could be no greater honour than that. To be the daughter of a woman like Noirin Surya – even if only for ten years. I squeezed my eyes shut for a second, pushing the terrible ache of loneliness away.
In any case, Rashna had good reason to resent me as a child – and she had taken revenge by making me miserable whenever she had the chance. Oddly, I had never been able to stir any real hatred in myself towards Rashna, even when she was bullying me mercilessly. I just found her sarcasm tiresome.
As we approached the massive, iron-braced gates of the fort, I glanced at Rashna out of the corner of my eye.
“Keep close to me,” I said. “And keep quiet too.
I don’t know how we’re going to be received here.”
“Not so confident now, Reia?” she asked, folding her arms. “I assume I’m to intervene if anyone shows signs of harming your precious person?”
I sighed. “I’d appreciate that, thank you.”
Before she could speak again, I stepped forward and banged as hard as I could on the door. I rubbed my smarting knuckles and waited for a response.
A moment later, a little door in the bottom of one of the giant gates opened and a gourdin, dressed in casual leather uniform, stepped out, a spiked halberd in his hand. The man was only an inch or so taller than me, but I found myself stepping back nervously. It was something to do with the silhouette of his helmet, with the intricately braided coils of reddish hair beneath it, and the wide, square shoulders of his armour. I had been brought up to fear and hate these people most of my life and it was hard to break that habit.
“I…” My voice wavered horribly and I stopped, clearing my throat to cover my embarrassment. “I need to see Sorin Mesgao. He knows me.”
“Does he indeed?” The man smiled broadly. He looked back through the door, presumably at a fellow guard, and called out, “Esfad e mourns Rua grinei. Mesgao far e maera!”
There was a burst of laughter from the other side of the wooden barrier.
“There’s a little Rua tart here. Reckons she knows Mesgao!”
I frowned as I realized that I understood the foreign words – and then gasped with anger as the name the man had called me sank in. I was dressed as a namoa, and he called me a tart? I stepped forward again, thrusting my face up into his. The light from the torch burning above fell full on my face and the soldier blinked as he met my furious eyes and saw the scar glaring at him from my cheek.
“Watch who you’re calling a tart, soldier,” I hissed in Sedorne.
The man gaped at me. The laughter behind him stopped abruptly.
I continued, still in the foreign tongue, “Take this to Mesgao – he’ll see me, I promise you.” I pulled the silver chime from my pocket and held it up to the light.
