“Askander? First Warden?” Sulema closed her eyes against the sun and laughed softly. “So, you are still chasing that one, are you?”
“Irreverent brat. Chasing and catching, if it is all the same to you.”
“Tell him I said hello.” Sulema yawned wide enough to crack her jaw. “And your Inna’hael. I would have liked to meet him…”
“Jai tu wai.” Ani’s voice sounded very soft, and very far away. It sounded as if the youthmistress was weeping—but Istaza Ani never wept.
She cracked one eye open. “Jai tu wha’?”
“Jai tu wai. The cubs are saying that now, instead of ‘goodbye.’ It means ‘until we see each other again.’”
“Ah. I like that.” Sulema smiled again and let her eyes slip shut, just for a moment. “Jai tu wai, Istaza Ani.”
If Ani replied, Sulema never heard it.
* * *
She floated down, light as a wish upon the wind.
Sulema slipped lightly into the Twilight Lands and ran along a river’s edge. It was a wide, wise river, deep and swift, and her banks were littered with dead flowers. Sulema’s feet sank into the cool, silty mud and she gazed to the east and wondered why it seemed there should be a city just beyond the slumbering hills. She turned upriver and followed the fennec’s tracks once more.
They turned sharply toward the never-rising sun and disappeared into the tall green grass. She let her hands trail through the cool leaves, collecting dew, and stopped when she stumbled across an area where the ground had been trampled by some great and heedless beast. Here the fox’s trail ended, and within its last print lay a gift for her—a round and shining stone the color of water at midnight.
It was as big as a plover’s egg, smooth and heavy and cool as if she held a darkling moon in the palm of her hand. She rolled it between her thumb and forefinger, and when she saw that a hole had been drilled through she held it up to her face and looked…
…directly into the kohl-blacked eye of Mattu Halfmask. She screamed, dropped the stone, and…
* * *
…sat up so quickly she almost fell off the bench. It was dark. Her neck hurt, and one side of her face was wet, and the smell of the river clung to her clothes.
“I am sorry, ne Atu, I did not mean to wake you.”
Sulema shook her head and ran her hand over her face. She was damp with cold sweat. Perhaps the fever that had plagued her since the lionsnake incident had broken at last. She cast about her blankets, feeling as if she had forgotten something, lost something precious…
“Are you all right? Would you like some water?” The man’s voice was solicitous, but his eyes behind the lynx mask mocked her. “Mead, perhaps? I hear you have a particular fondness for barbarian drink.”
“Barbarian?” She dropped her hands and scowled. “Perhaps you would like to taste a barbarian ass-kicking?”
“Spare me, youngling. If you tried to kick my ass right now, you would fall on your face and I would be forced to have the healer tuck you back in bed.” He folded his arms across his chest, and Sulema scowled again when she realized she had been eyeing him. Men who strutted about in public with their legs bared were a distraction to which she had not yet become accustomed. “Or perhaps you would prefer I do it myself?”
Her head was spinning again. “Keep your hands off me.”
“As you wish.” He leaned back against the door frame. “I prefer my women somewhat wiser, in any case. Not to mention healthy. And…” he sniffed the air delicately. “Freshly bathed. Another time, perhaps.”
Sulema was awash in anger. Handsome or not, she was going to kick his skirt-wearing saucy ass so hard his…
Then he winked at her. Her mouth opened in shock, and a laugh spilled out. Once she started laughing she could not seem to stop. She laughed till her ribs hurt and her stomach ached and her bones had gone soft. Mattu Halfmask quirked his mouth at her, and that was all it took to send her off into hysterics again.
Eventually she was able to catch her runaway breath, and wiped tears from her face with the back of one hand.
“Oh you… you!” she half-laughed, half-hiccupped. “You are so rude!”
“I am absolutely rude. Rude, inappropriate, and inconveniently handsome, I know.” Perfect teeth flashed in his dark face, and then he sobered. “I am also the only person here who has been honest with you, and it will only get worse. The game is far along, and you do not even realize yet that you are playing.”
“Game?”
“Do not play stupid with me, Sulema. We both know better.” Sulema found herself appraising him from a new perspective.
“What is your game?”
“Oh now, it would not be any fun if I told you that, would it?” He winked again. “It would certainly not be in character. Let us just say that I may be of use to you, for now.”
“I have been told not to trust you.”
“A very good piece of advice, ne Atu. Let me be clear—you cannot trust anyone in Atualon. Least of all yourself. Guard your words, guard your face—that delightful lush mouth of yours is a dead giveaway, you know. See, that is what I am talking about— that blush! Now, stop trying to peek at my legs and attend. Guard your dreams especially, dear girl. Atukos is the City of Dreams, after all, and we have been predators here longer than you have been prey.”
“Prey? You think so?” Sulema swung her legs over the edge of her seat. She was going to kick his ass. She was. Just as soon as the room stopped spinning.
“You see? This is what I mean.” His voice was soft, and warm, and very close. “You wear your heart as if it were a hawk in jesses, for all the world to see.” His hand was gentle as he turned her face to his, and his eyes were deep wells in the moonslight. He ran his fingers over the sensitive bare skin at her temple, and touched her braids. “The first time I saw you, you had a scowl on your face and fire in your eyes. Your hair… like the last sunrise. So beautiful. Your skin.” He moved closer, just a breath closer, and ran a thumb along her collarbone. “Honey and a sprinkling of spice. You are a long drink of cool fire to a man like me, Sulema.” His voice caressed her name, and his thumb caressed the skin at the base of her throat. Sulema felt the breath catch in her lungs, and saw his eyes deepen in response. His mouth parted… and then he stepped back. Not much, and not nearly enough. For the space of several heartbeats, only the sound of their ragged breathing could be heard.
A wyvern cried somewhere off in the mountains, a single, piercing, and terribly lonely sound.
Sulema tugged the edge of her robe up over her shoulder. “You should go,” she said, not wishing any such thing at all.
He smiled, and held out both hands to her. His eyes were hungry, and angry, and kind. Sulema let him pull her to her feet, and stood swaying like a willow at the river’s edge. Mattu Halfmask frowned.
“This is what I mean. If they see you like this, it will be all over. It is a wonder you have survived as long as you have. Has living among predators taught you nothing of hiding weakness?”
Sulema staggered and swooned against him, and as Mattu went to catch her, she took his wrist in her hand and twisted it around, up, and around again, till she had him in a lock and on his toes. When he laughed, she leaned in so close she could have kissed the edge of his painted leather mask.
And bit his ear. Hard.
“You were saying?”
“Peace!” He laughed again, and she twisted harder. “Ow… peace! Peace! I yield!” She let him go, and he rubbed his arms and grinned at her, rolling his shoulder. “Does this mean I will not have to carry you? Thank the moons… I was afraid I might throw my back out. Here I thought all you barbarian women were little desert flowers. Remind me to kill the next poet who tells such a lie.”
Sulema was torn between wanting to throw him out on his ear and wanting to drag him to her bedchamber.
“Did you come here to torment me?”
“No. Well, not just to torment you, anyway. I brought you something.” He waved for her to f
ollow, and ducked through the heavy curtains and into her rooms. Sulema followed him through the little room meant for dining, and across the wider round chamber with the fantastic dragon’s-head fireplace and the dropped floor, and then stopped so quickly as he entered her bedchamber that she rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet. Heat and apprehension coiled around one another in the pit of her belly like wrestling snakes.
Surely not…
His head poked out from behind the curtain. “Oh, come now, sweetling. I am hardly going to take advantage of your weakened state.” His eyes burned like dark coals behind the lynx’s sober face. “Come on.” With that, he ducked out of sight again.
Za fik. So be it. Sulema followed him into the room which was meant for sleeping, but which was larger by half than the quarters she had used to share with a whole fist of girls. Mattu stood at the edge of her curtained bed, looking altogether too well pleased with himself, mask or no. He held a finger to his lips, and winked. Then he brought his other hand out from behind his back and, with a flourish that made her jump, bowed and presented a small glass flask to her.
Sulema hesitated for a moment, and then took the bottle. It was a pretty thing, green and delicate, and filled with a thick reddish fluid that swirled and moved within the bottle as if it had a will of its own. Whatever it was, it looked disgusting. She wrinkled her nose, dreadfully certain that he was going to tell her she had to drink it.
“Drink this,” he urged her. “Tonight, if you can. It is best if you drink it after a heavy meal, but no strong spirits, and—” he grinned wickedly “—when you are near a washroom.”
“I hate medicines.” Especially medicines that looked like something that lived at the bottom of a cistern and maybe had things living inside it.
“This will clear the rest of that venom from your system. You were bitten, you know. Do you remember nothing of what happened out there, when you hunted the lionsnake?”
Eyes. A snake’s eyes, staring into hers, waiting for her to die. “What is this, exactly?”
His eyes searched hers. “It is, ah, a potion distilled from the venom of a lionsnake whelp. It is said to be effective against many types of—”
“You made this?”
“I bought it from Loremaster Rothfaust, and it cost me dearly. Do you trust me?”
She peered into the vial. “Not one bit. Do I have to take it with food, or can I drink this on an empty stomach?”
His mouth twitched. “You can take it on its own, but it is not advisable. Are you always this stubborn?”
“No, I am usually worse. This will take the weakness away? Do you swear it?”
“It will take several vials of the stuff over several moons’ time, and the loremaster says it would be best if he has a sample of your blood to work with. But, yes, sweet warrior. I do swear it. I will taste it myself, if you wish.”
“Why would you help me? It is not as if we were pridemates.”
“Whoever tried to kill you may be trying to kill me—and my sister. There have been attempts.” His merry eyes went cold and hard. “It is past time we discover who is behind the deaths of the ne Atu, and you may be our best hope of finding this viper in our midst. What are the words of your people? ‘I fight against my sister, but I fight with my sister against my cousin…’”
“‘…and I fight with my sister and my cousin against all outlanders.’ You are an outlander.”
“Perhaps you might fight with an outlander against a common enemy. I would have you as an ally in this battle, Sulema Firehair.”
Never step into a pit without first checking for vipers.
Sulema narrowed her eyes, considering the strange half-masked man who had come to her rooms. Then she unstoppered the bottle and raised it to her lips in a smooth motion, and knocked the stuff back as if it were a horn of usca.
“That is not so… gah. That is… pfaugh!” She shuddered, dropped the flask onto a cushioned chair, and rubbed at her mouth. “Za fik, what is in that? Churra piss and corpse fluids? Gaaaaah!”
“Churra piss and corpse fluids, for a start.” He patted her shoulder. “It will get worse before it gets better, but I promise—it will get better. By this time tomorrow, you will be thanking me.”
“Gaaaah. By this time tomorrow, if I live—za fik, that is nasty.” She shuddered. “Remind me to thank you for your gift, once I have cleaned my teeth. Gaaaah.”
Mattu laughed, mismatched eyes bright in the lynx’s face. Sulema laced her fingers together, lest they give in to the sudden urge to snatch his mask away.
“Why do you wear a mask?” The words were out before she could stop them, and Sulema could feel her cheeks flush hot.
He just smiled.
“Everyone wears a mask.” His voice had gone quiet. Soft. “I am simply more honest about mine.”
“I do not.”
He considered her for a long while. “No,” he said at last, “I suppose you do not, at that. Maybe that is why…” His voice trailed off.
“Why what?”
“Why this.” Then he was standing close, so close she could feel the heat of him. He cupped her face in both hands as a man dying of thirst might cup a handful of water, and leaned in, and he kissed her.
It was not an affectionate press of the lips against cheek or forehead, nor yet the quick slobbery awkward attempts at love between younglings hiding behind the tents. Mattu teased with his lips, his tongue, his teeth, he licked the inside of her mouth as if he might taste the answer to all his questions. Sulema found herself rising to meet his wordless plea, heat on heat, need on need, flesh on flesh. When he would have pulled back she refused, curling her hand against the back of his neck and holding him close. He laughed into her mouth and submitted to her demand for more.
Finally they parted, a hair’s breadth only, and Sulema’s body protested the loss. Her breath was ragged and caught in her throat.
“Why?” she asked again. But the question had changed, and her voice had changed. Her world had changed, and all for the kiss of a man in a mask.
“Because you are beautiful,” he replied, “because the moons are full. Because we are young, and it is spring, and there is a song in the air. Mostly because I am a fool.”
“I do not think you are a fool.”
“Then you are a fool as well. This is likely to land us both in a great deal of trouble.”
“It is only trouble if you get caught,” Sulema told him in her woman’s voice.
Then she kissed him again.
THIRTY - SIX
One thousand salt jars, thought Ani. Talieso pinned his ears and shook his head at her, but moved closer to the clattering wagons. One thousand salt jars.
“You look as if you fear they will jump off the wagons and run away,” Askander said. “Relax, pretty lady. Your little clay children will be fine.”
“A hundred salt jars for each pride,” she told him, “and hundreds more for the Mothers. Imagine what this means for us.” They had such a long road before them, a long road and treacherous.
“We are going to have to take cover before those rains hit.” Askander frowned up into the angry sky. “Much as I hate to say it, we would be best off sheltering within the city until this bitch blows over.”
“Much as I hate to say it, you are right. Too close to the river, too slow with these wagons, and we have too much to lose.”
“Say that again? I have waited a lifetime to hear those words.” His mouth twitched in that way that made her want to kiss him.
“What? That we have too much to lose? I was not speaking of you, ehuani. Middle-aged warders are as a plague of locusts upon the earth. Only worse—the locusts, at least, are edible.”
“If I am not edible, O beauteous one, why do you insist on trying to bite pieces out of my hide? Anyway, that is not what I meant. I wanted to hear you say ‘you are right’ again.” He looked at her face, and doubled over in his saddle laughing at her.
“Males are such a pain in my ass.”
“You know you love us, Ani.”
“Mmf.” She turned to the horn-helmed young man who led the salt merchants’ caravan. “Bretan, we will be wanting to lodge within walls until that storm blows over.”
Bretan Mer was as handsome as his younger brother Soutan, but there the similarity ended. Where Soutan Mer was all mischief and sunlight dancing on the water, this one was as serious and staid a youth as she had ever met. He was built like a bull and wore a bull’s horns upon his helm, and though his big brown eyes were thoughtful and quiet, they did not seem to miss much. Ani knew full well that he was the reason so many of the Ja’Akari had volunteered to return to the Zeera with her, and that he had rebuffed the attentions of at least two of them.
The poor boy did not stand a chance. Someone should probably explain Ayyam Binat to him, before it was too late.
On the other hand, she thought with a hidden grin, let the girls have their fun.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. She had not heard such a sound for many years—real thunder, the kind that presaged a cold, hard rain, and flash floods, and mudslides. She remembered, her father’s eyes, his face creased with worry as he looked up into the angry sky—
Best get the horses in, he would have said. She could almost remember his face, his voice. But the memory was like a fistful of mud—if she tried to close her fingers, it was gone.
“Istaza Ani?” The young man regarded her with concern.
She raised her brows at him. Impertinent brat.
“Forgive me, Meissati. Have I overstepped my bounds?”
“The boy has already arranged lodgings for us in Bayyid Eidtein.” Askander kept a straight face, but she would bite him later for laughing at her with his eyes.
“Yes, Meissati.” He saluted in the odd manner of the salt folk, fist to shoulder. “The rains are often hard this time of year, and I had thought it best to be prudent. Have I erred, lady?” He seemed genuinely concerned.
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