She opened her beautiful eyes and stared right through him. So had she done since the day she arrived in Atualon, washed up like a bit of flotsam on the tides, to take her place at the shadowmancer’s side without a word of explanation to anyone. Not to the gold-masked Baidun Daiel, not to Ka Atu, and certainly not to his magic-deaf son, as if those eyes gave her the right to see and never be seen.
Aasah had explained to him once, after an eternity of questions, that cat-slit eyes were a mark of power where they came from. He would say no more, nor explain whether the magic was a gift of the eyes, or caused them, or what precisely Yaela could see that Leviathus could not.
Sometimes those eyes and their secrets intrigued him. Other times he was sure they mocked him, making him feel small, and ashamed, and angry.
“Have you spoken with my father tonight?” he asked Aasah.
“I have not.” Aasah frowned. “I have nothing to convey. I will not tell my liege that his… daughter… is dead while she yet breathes.”
The pause was brief, but Leviathus had been listening for it, and for the small catch in Yaela’s breathing as well.
So. Even the shadowmancer is not convinced that Sulema is the king’s daughter.
“You have not been to the sickroom today?”
Yaela shook her head fractionally, her face as expressionless as ever.
“Not today,” Aasah admitted. “The Dance requires a great deal of energy. I have been resting since they brought her back.”
Leviathus had been to the sickroom, and had watched the waxen face of his once-vibrant sister as she struggled to breathe, to live. The herbmistress’s exact words had been, “She has not died yet.” They kept her in a deep sleep, much as his father kept the dragon trapped. So she can heal, they said.
“The healer thinks she will live,” Leviathus said. “Hafsa Azeina agrees that we may move her, though we will have to travel overland, and that her chances will be better if we can get her to my father. He can heal her, where others have failed. I will travel with her, of course, and I would ask you and your apprentice to accompany us. It may be that you have saved my sister’s life, and I will not forget this debt. Nor will my father, when I tell him what you have done for us.”
The shadowmancer nodded. “I will be ready, ne Atu.”
“Excellent. Thank you, my friend.”
At that moment, a stick-thin figure burst into the courtyard, a fat bundle under one arm and a full wineskin under the other. The child stormed over to them, dumped its burdens unceremoniously at Leviathus’s feet, and was gone before he could utter a word of thanks. The smell of warm bread and cinnamon rose from the bundle, and Leviathus’s stomach growled appreciatively as he reached to unwrap it. Inside he found a small clay pot of honey, half a round of sheep’s cheese the color of old bone, and most of a loaf of spiced bread studded with nuts and dried fruit. He broke off a small piece of bread and handed it to the shadowmancer.
“I am glad you will be with us. I am determined to bring my sister home to Atualon alive and well.” He emphasized the words my sister, and bared his teeth in a hard smile as the shadowmancer and his apprentice shared a surprised glance.
I may be deaf to magic, my… friends… but I am not blind to your ambitions.
Yaela reached for the wineskin. Her pupils had grown so large that only the thinnest ring of iris showed, a flash of green fire in the shadow of the moons.
Leviathus broke off a larger chunk of bread for himself, drizzled some of the honey on it, and filled his mouth with sweetness. The shadowmancer considered him for a long moment before he, too, began to eat.
So, Leviathus thought, the dance begins.
THIRTEEN
Ismai dragged his feet all the way from the Youths’ Quarter, to which he had been banished until someone figured out exactly what to do with him, through the children’s garden and the kitchens, and down the red-stone path to the riverside cliffs, where the herbmistress had her rooms and where Hafsa Azeina had set up her tent. The Mothers had evicted most of the temporary residents, and Aish Kalumm was returning to a quieter level of chaos.
A pair of urchins broke cover and ran full-tilt toward him, brandishing sticks and screaming at the top of their lungs, startling him so that he almost dropped the bag he had been carrying. They came to a skidding and wide-eyed halt as Ruh’ayya poured down from a low wall like spilled shadows, and bounced off in another direction, leaving their shrieks and sticks to tumble through the air behind them.
They run like rabbits.
“Those are not for eating.”
I did not say they smell like rabbits. She sneezed for emphasis and showed her tusks in a cat’s grin. Ismai smiled a little. She had been going out of her way to cheer him up, but it still felt as if he were dragging his heart behind him in a sack.
Finally, and too soon, he came to the arched entrance to the herbmistress’s rooms. He swallowed and tapped at the tiles, avoiding eye contact with the bright enameled skulls that grinned at him. When no one yelled at him to go away, he hunched his shoulders up toward his ears and entered.
Ruh’ayya sneezed, and flattened her ears. I will stay out here. This place smells of a trap. And piss. She sneezed again. I never knew humans were so… unclean.
Hafsa Azeina was seated beside Sulema’s bed on a low stool. Her eyes glittered in the dim light, and for a panicked moment Ismai was reminded of the grave-watchers of Eid Kalmut, fabled statues imbued with blood and bone of the living, cursed to guard the remains of their masters for all eternity. She had been there since the day they brought Sulema back from the Bones of Eth, chanting and burning foul-smelling herbs, playing that cat’s-head lyre that nobody wanted to talk about, and maybe dreamshifting. He had heard it whispered that the dreamshifter had been seen with fresh blood upon her lips and so he had stayed away all this time.
But nothing was going to keep him from saying goodbye.
He hovered for a moment, staring at her mouth, at the lyre leaning up against the wall, at the dried bundles of herbs and flowers that hung from the rafters, at the bottles and bowls and cups that littered the low table running the length of the far wall, anywhere but the too-still form on the bed.
Ruh’ayya roared outside, her fine voice urging him to courage. He could do this.
The dreamshifter turned her head to regard him, eyes unblinking, and he bit back a yelp of surprise.
“Ismai Zeeravashani,” she addressed him.
He bowed low, hoping his knees would not go out from under him. “Hafsa Azeina. Under the sun, I see you.”
“Do you?” She smiled. Her teeth did not look bloody. “Do you really? I wonder.”
Ismai straightened and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I have come to see Sulema. To… to tell her goodbye.”
She leaned her head back against the wall and narrowed her eyes to slits. “There is no word for ‘goodbye’ in Sindan.”
“Dreamshifter?”
“In the Forbidden City, you might say jai-hao, which means ‘until we greet again,’ or you might say jai tu wai, which means ‘until your path returns you to me.’ But there is no way to say ‘goodbye.’” Her lips pressed together in a wan and altogether humorless smile. “When we left Atualon I had planned on taking her to Khanbul, but we ended up here, in the Zeera, where ‘goodbye’ means forever.”
“I am sorry, Dreamshifter. I do not understand.” Nor did he care to. He wished only to stand beside Sulema’s bed, to bend down and wake her with a gentle kiss. And perhaps to go back to a time in his life when a wish felt like a possibility.
“Of course you do not understand,” she snapped. “You are just a boy. Your path leads from your mother’s tent to the kitchens and back, and no further. Just go away, and leave us alone.” She closed her eyes the rest of the way, and her tangled river-foam locks fell forward to obscure her face.
Ismai hovered for a moment, torn between fear of the sorceress and the fear of never seeing Sulema again. Then he took a long, slow br
eath and squared his shoulders. He was Zeeravashani.
We are Zeeravashani, agreed Ruh’ayya.
Thus emboldened, he crossed the room to where Sulema lay, though he kept the bed between himself and her mother. Bravery was all well and good, but to anger a dreamshifter was insanity.
Sulema’s left arm was bound in a cast of plaster, but her right arm lay upon the thin coverlet, palm upward, fingers curled gently like a shell that had been dropped and forgotten on the river’s edge. He picked up her hand in both of his and turned it over. He risked a glance at her mother and then pressed his lips to the back of her hand. Her freckled skin was dry and pulled too close over her bones, and in the dim light it seemed a ghastly shade of yellow, like a tallow candle once the light has been put out. There was dried blood under her fingernails, and ground into the skin at her knuckles, and at one corner of her mouth.
Ismai had been so angry with her when he thought she had chosen another as her hayatani. Now he just wished she would open her eyes and laugh at him, and if she never chose him for anything at all he would not complain. Let her live, let her be happy, and he would never shadow her footsteps again.
“Sulema,” he whispered. “Sulema. I am so sorry. Sulema, do you hear me?” He cradled her hand against his chest and ducked his chin as his face crumpled like a child’s. “Sulema? I am leaving today. My Ruh’ayya chose me, above all others. I am Zeeravashani now, do you believe it? Do you hear me?”
He wanted to say so much more to her. To brush her hair out and wash it and braid it again, and tell her that she would be the finest Ja’Akari ever. To thank her for not laughing at him and his stupid dreams of adventure. But the words congealed in his throat and it was all he could do to keep from crying.
He held her hand for a long moment as Hafsa Azeina sat in the shadows, hair tumbled over her face and so still she was hardly there at all. He willed Sulema’s sunken eyes to open and see him, wished her fingers to tighten upon his, wished her cracked lips to smile, to speak, to frown and tell him to go away already. Anything. He willed her awake and well with all his heart, but the shallow rasp of her breathing was the only sound in the room.
She has gone, he thought, gone and left me all alone.
Tears spilled from his eyes and pooled in the palm of her hand, but the screaming of his heart was not enough to wake her.
Ismai brought her hand to his cheek, and then kissed her tear-washed skin one more time before tucking her arm next to her body. He smoothed a few strands of dull orange hair back from her forehead, wishing he had the courage to kiss her slack mouth one time. Perhaps she would wake if he did, and beat him silly. But her mother was close, and the teeth showed slightly in her half-open mouth, and Sulema looked so lifeless and hopeless and gone that he could do nothing more than pat her shoulder and wipe his face on the sleeve of his tunic.
“I am going,” he told her, and then, “Jai tu wai. I will see you again.”
Did the sorceress smile at that, did she peer at him through her tangle of bone-white locks? Ismai could not have said. The words that had gotten stuck in his throat spilled from his eyes, and he stumbled half-blind from the room.
There was a soft noise behind him. Ismai clapped his hands over his ears and walked faster. Nothing in the world had ever terrified him as much as the sound of the dreamshifter crying.
Ruh’ayya brushed against him, almost knocking him over. He clung to her neck and pressed his face into her hot, prickly fur, letting the rumble of her breath and the great booming drum of her heart calm him.
She was your mate? Ruh’ayya asked hesitantly. She was not very familiar with the silly ways of humans and hated to seem ignorant, but his distress was hers now.
“She was my friend.” Ismai pulled back and sniffled, glad there was no one to witness, and scrubbed his face again on his poor sodden tunic.
But not like Cub-in-Shadows.
He smiled a little, and his stomach growled. How could he be hungry when Sulema lay so close to death? “Not like Daru, no.”
We could bring her meat, she offered helpfully.
Ismai sighed, and then bowed formally because it seemed like the right thing to do and because she liked it when he showed respect in the human way. “Thank you, Kithren, that will not be necessary. My… friend… cannot wake to eat. But the thought is kind.”
Ruh’ayya dipped her head. The black tip of her tail swayed back and forth in a lazy pattern, and her eyes shone with pleasure. She tipped her head to one side, round ears flattening for a moment and then flicking forward again.
Dairuz says I must tell you that Tammas tells him we will be going soon. She blinked, and the tip of her tail twitched. I am not a bird, to carry messages.
Despite his heavy heart, Ismai grinned. “Tammas? Tell him I have one more person I would like to see before we go.”
Her tail jerked again, harder this time, and she stared.
“Please? Beauteous one?”
She flattened her ears.
Ismai bowed low. “If you would be so kind as to grant me this favor, O jewel in the night, we will stop at the kitchens on our way back and I will beg meat for you.”
Her ears flicked forward at that. Pig meat?
“A nice fat leg of pig for you,” he agreed. “Please.”
Very well, she agreed loftily. I like pig. I do wish you humans were just a little smarter, so you could tell him yourself. Her eyes took on the dreaming look that told Ismai she was conversing with another vash’ai. When she was finished, she gave him a sly look from the corner of her eye and began to clean one of her paws, flexing so that the cruel blue-black claws slid free of their sheaths. He knew better than to ask whether there had been a reply.
As he stepped through the low arch and into the first light of morning, Ismai nearly crashed into Hannei. He caught himself on his toes at the last possible moment, arms pinwheeling, once again nearly dropping his bag as he tried to stop his forward momentum from tumbling them both down the steep path. Hannei laughed and reached out to steady him, splaying one hand against his chest.
“Yeh Atu, Ismai, always in such a hurry.”
“You are looking well, Ja’Akari.” She was—her face was still a bit pale, the shadows under her eyes and cheekbones told of weight lost too quickly, but after Sulema’s still form she seemed full to bursting with life.
“Under the sun I see you, Zeeravashani. That is a lovely friend you have there.” She nodded to Ruh’ayya.
I like this one. She smells of smoke and meat.
Ismai shuffled his feet, wishing he could leave without seeming rude. Hannei glanced toward the herbmistress’s rooms.
“You have been to see Sulema?”
“Yes. She is… sleeping.”
“Is the dreamshifter still…”
“Yes.”
“Ah. Well, I should go and… I need to say goodbye.”
“Jai tu wai.”
“What to who?”
“Jai tu wai. It means… until your path brings you back again. Not goodbye.”
“I like that. Jai tu wai. I suppose you will be leaving with Tammas?”
“Yes.” Such a difference a tenday could make. “I wanted to find Daru first, and say…”
“Jai tu wai. Be well until our paths cross again, cousin.” She surprised him by leaning forward and planting a kiss on either cheek.
“She will get better,” he blurted.
“Of course she will.” Hannei clenched her jaw and blinked. “She is Ja’Akari, and we are no easy meat.” She bowed to him, and again to Ruh’ayya, and then ducked past.
Ismai rubbed his cheek reflectively and started down the path to the river’s edge. He had become Zeeravashani, and he might some day be Ja’Sajani, but he would never, ever understand girls.
The dreamshifter’s tent was not far down the path, off to the side of a little clearing that was used in the summertime for drying and smoking the giant am’kal. Thousands of the little bones crunched underfoot, and the path was slippery w
ith silver scales. Ismai had fished for am’kal with his father, when he was a small boy, and smiled at the memory. Perhaps some day he would be a father, and would brave deep waters and hungry serpents for an afternoon spent fishing with his own son.
First, though, he would need to figure out how to get a girl to look at him twice.
He looked up at Ruh’ayya’s growl. The sound was high and whining, and set his teeth on edge. She crouched on the path, staring at the dreamshifter’s tent, hairs bristling in a fine line from the back of her skull to the tip of her tail, which lashed wildly from one side of the path to the other and sent the glittering scales aflight.
“Ruh’ayya?” He stepped closer. Her face wrinkled almost comically as she pulled her lips back, exposing her white tusks, red tongue lolling.
He comes.
The creatures embroidered all upon the tent of Hafsa Azeina writhed and billowed, and the tent flap was blown aside as if by a great wind. The massive form of Khurra’an flowed from the darkness, glowing as his dappled golden fur seemed to catch fire.
Ismai raised his brows, puzzled, as the king of cats raised his head and regarded them, the black tuft of his tail swaying gently back and forth. His tusks, long as a woman’s forearm and banded with gold, gleamed dully in the morning light. “Is he not your sire?”
Yes. Her thought was a whisper, trembling in his mind. My sire.
“I do not understand.”
No. You do not.
Khurra’an wrinkled his lips back and began a series of grunts that led up to a bone-rattling roar. He stared at Ruh’ayya, who had closed her eyes and flattened herself along the path, before giving a final, satisfied grunt. His tail curled upward and he turned away, strolling with an air of absolute unconcern toward the river.
Ismai realized he had been holding his breath and let it out with a whoosh, as wide-eyed and awake as if he had drunk an entire pot of coffee. “What was that all about?”
Ruh’ayya opened her eyes the tiniest slit. Her hackles were standing straight up in the air.
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