“Feather and flesh and bone of an enemy,” he said, looking down at her with pride in his eyes. “Slain by your sword-sister’s hand, to be worn by you with honor.” He set the headdress upon Hannei’s brow, and fastened it into her hair.
Fashioned from the bright blue and green, indigo and violet and black plumes of the old she-bitch Sulema had killed, the headdress swept back from her temples and brushed the tops of her shoulders. Tiny silver bells and a teardrop of lapis lazuli as large as her thumb depended from a network of delicate silver chains draped across her forehead.
It was light as a breath, and lifted her heart for all to see. It was heavier than a mountain, weighted down as it was with her duty to the pride.
Next Ismai shook out a vest elaborately beaded with snake’s teeth, lapis and bone. He reached around Hannei and fastened the clasps, blushing furiously as he did so. He took great care never to touch her skin, and she resisted the urge to tease him as if they were still children.
Hannei thought she must look like a daughter of Zula Din preparing to ride into battle. For the first time, she felt like a warrior. The magnificence of the moment swelled in her chest until it threatened to spill from her eyes.
“Ja’Akari,” whispered Ismai, playmate of her youth, now in the blue touar of a man grown. “Aue, Hannei, truly you are Ja’Akari.” Then he winked. “I told you so.”
The First Warrior stood, stern-faced and proud as the Zeera herself, and thrust both fists high into the air in an age-old sign of defiance. “Ja’Akari!”
“Ja’Akari!” The crowd roared its approval. “Ja’Akari!”
Tammas raised his eyes to hers, and brushed his lips with his fingertips, and she could feel his kiss on her soul.
Hannei was not the only Ja’Akari honored by the Ja’Sajani that night. Many a new warrior found herself gifted with blade or bow or blooded mare, and more than one young woman looked upon the gift-giver with hungry eyes. When one has fasted on stale water and pemmican, Istaza Ani would have said, every dish makes your mouth water.
Still, Hannei felt herself set above her peers. Her beloved Sulema had honored her with lionsnake plumes, and the Zeera had honored her with the gift of a virtuous man. She half expected one of her elders to snatch it all away from her at any moment, with cries of “Khutlani! Khutlani!” and a walking-stick rapped smartly on the top of her head.
Her dreams had been made flesh.
* * *
The moons were drunk on starlight by the time the last gifts had been given, exclaimed over, and tucked away into the heads of the elders as a debt to be paid off at harvest-time when the Ja’Akari would play host to their brothers. Then came the dancing, the feast, the usca and the mead, and then, of course, more dancing.
Hannei was seated between the First Warrior and Tammas, and she was so completely overwhelmed that she forgot to be hungry. She sampled the dishes set before her—to do otherwise would have been unthinkable—though her stomach ached just to see the sheer quantity of food laid out before them. Paya-root bread and guava mash, salted fish on a bed of bitter herbs, and bowls piled high with roast meats and eggs. This sharib was meant to coax the year to plenty, and, ehuani, the tables groaned under the weight of it.
Tammas was the most tempting dish of all.
He sat by her side in his sky-blue touar. His hair curling out from beneath the cloth in a way that made her long to reach up and brush it back. A sapphire winked at her from his earlobe every time he moved, and the scent of him drew her like a bee to honey. She watched as he held a roast egg between his long, strong fingers, cracked its delicate shell, and brought the tender flesh to his mouth…
Yeh Atu, this man would be the death of her. All he had to do was eat an egg, and she was a puddle of lust shivering at his feet.
His eyes met hers, and his mouth parted, and he licked his lips.
“Stop that,” she hissed. “No fair.”
He laughed, and she wanted to tear his clothes off. His hand touched hers as they both reached for the mead, and another wave of heat hit her with such force she felt drunk before the first sip.
“I cannot take this a moment longer.” The First Warrior set her horn cup down with an irritated thunk. “I understand that you two cannot help it, but by Atu I am going to knock your heads together if I have to spend another moment in your presence.”
Hannei felt her cheeks flush. “First Warrior…”
“No! Go! Gaaah, I do not want to hear it. I certainly do not want to see it.” She waved them away with both hands. “The two of you are not going to make it through the men’s dance, in any case, and I have no desire to watch a pair of cubs mating in the sand. Go. Go! Go find a tent, or a clump of grass, or something. Just go.” She reached for the mead as if she would wash a sour taste from her mouth.
“I do not think she is joking,” Tammas whispered. His eyes were as bright as the moons. “My tent is down by the river, just past the horses…”
Heat flushed through Hannei’s body in a way that was entirely new to her, and frightening. “It is early.”
“I am supposed to dance with the wardens this year.”
“But…”
“Naked.”
Hannei looked at Tammas, helpless and lost in a storm of her own making. When he stood and held his hands out to her, she let herself be led from the firelight, and out into the soft embrace of a Zeerani night. The moons had never hung so low, nor the stars shone so bright as they did then, and never had the sands sung so sweetly. Tammas held her hand, his touch warm and gentle and so filled with promise she did not know whether she wanted to run away with him, or run away from him, only that her legs begged her to hurry, hurry, hurry.
When they came to his dark blue tent, she froze like a doe before the vash’ai. Indeed, Dairuz brushed against her legs as he disappeared into the night, and she felt his touch against her mind.
Welcome, Little Sister.
A cool breeze picked up on the Dibris, born of rain and longing and the quickening of a world reborn. It caressed the bare skin of her temples, and teased through the feathers of her headdress, and set the small silver bells to singing as she shivered from a sudden fever. Tammas turned to her, and reached to take her other hand.
He opened his mouth, and she knew that he was going to tell her do not be afraid and I will not hurt you and you are lovely and all of those other silly things a man tells a woman when what he really means is you are mine. But Hannei found that she was not afraid, and that she wanted him even if there was to be pain, and she did not need his empty words half so much as she needed his touch upon her body. So she reached up, and unfastened the clasps of her vest, and let it fall away.
They never made it into the tent.
The moons and the stars bore witness as they came together under the desert sky, as they found delight in one another, as sa met ka and flesh met flesh and the desert sang them a song so sweet and so powerful they would have wept, had they been able to hear it over the cries and sighs and soft, soft sounds of their loving. Not till the moons were on the far side of the sky, and small Didi had begun to grow pale and weary, did they finally find their ease in a heavy and satisfied tangle.
Hannei felt the sweat of her lover drying upon her aching skin, and she could taste her own scent upon Tammas as she pressed her lips sleepily against his throat, and she wrapped her arms about her man and fell into the deepest, most heedless slumber of her life.
* * *
The sky in the east had just begun to pale in anticipation of Akari Sun Dragon’s first kiss when Tammas stirred, and stretched, and kissed the top of her head. Hannei tightened her arms around his waist and smiled, not yet ready to open her eyes or wonder where her clothing had got to or worry whether anyone might see them. She felt his laugh more than heard it—he purred like a great cat—and pushed away, leaving half of her chilled and bereft. She frowned, and opened her eyes, and stretched… oh. Oh. That stung a little.
“Shhh.” He leaned over and kissed h
er on the mouth, and his moons-shadow passed over her as he stood. “I have something for you.”
As loath as she was to have him leave, Hannei had to admit that even in the near-dark it was a pleasure to watch him walk away. And duck into his tent. And reemerge, carrying a wide goblet carefully in both hands.
“Nothing looks good on you,” she told him.
He looked startled. “What?”
She grinned, and rolled over to sit cross-legged in the sand. “Nothing looks very good on you.”
“Ah.” He laughed, and knelt before her. She rose on her knees to meet him, and her fingers twined with his around the loving cup. “Sassy girl.”
She felt shy, she felt brazen, and soft. Her legs still had not decided whether they wanted to run with him or to him, but they trembled so that she would probably do well to crawl into his tent and fall back asleep… eventually.
“Your girl,” she whispered, and her eyes felt full of the moons.
“My girl,” he agreed, and touched the cup to her lips.
Her body had begun to ache, a deep, satisfying ache that sang in her belly and in her limbs and down in her womb. The cup was cool, and his fingers were strong and warm. Hannei drank deep of the sweet, sweet water, and smiled at him over the rim of the cup. She could see her forever in his eyes. “My man,” she told him. “Mine.”
“Yours,” he agreed, and the moons cast a shadow over his face
—she remembered that, vividly, afterward. The moons cast a shadow over his face—
Together, they brought the cup to his mouth, and his lips parted, and the moons cast a shadow over his face.
The night spilled from his mouth to stain the water black.
He looked at her, and his eyes widened with puzzlement, and his mouth moved as if he would ask her a question
—and the moons cast a shadow over his face—
Blood spilled from his mouth to stain the water black.
He was still looking at her, his eyes full of the question she could never, would never, could never answer
—and the moons cast a shadow over his face—
His fingers went slack, and the cup spilled from his hands to stain the desert with his blood, and his hands rose slowly up to his chest, as if he would tell her, again, what was in his heart.
A blade jutted from his chest, a hand’s length of ugly metal gleamed red-black with his blood in the light of the grieving moons, and then it disappeared back into his torn flesh and blood spilled from his mouth, so much blood, his mouth formed a question and his eyes held all of the questions forever but blood was the only answer. He fell to the sand, and the shadows received him into their cold arms, as she had held him only moments before.
Hannei could not move.
A part of her—some cold, cold, wicked part of her—remarked that it was as if she had been turned to stone, to bone, to a pillar of sand, when the blade of the First Warrior pierced her lover’s heart. That tall, spare woman she had loved as a mother, respected as a teacher, looked at her with eyes full of the cold night sky so full of sorrow and pain there was no room left for remorse.
“I am sorry, child,” Her voice was low, and slow, as if it had traveled from beyond the stars to reach them.
The strength bled from Hannei, and she toppled sideways into the sand. She saw the dull gleam of Tammas’s shamsi lying just beyond him and her hand twitched, but she could not… could not…
“I am sorry, child.” Sareta insisted, and her voice was soft and warm and lifeless. “But the line of Zula Din has grown soft and wicked, and so must be ended. Best to cut the taint out now, than let it continue to poison the prides until there is nothing left of the people but old stories and bones in the sand.”
Poison. Hannei trembled, and then shook, as pain wracked her body. She burned, she burned, a fire had been set into her flesh that nothing could soothe. Water, and blood, and poison… Sareta kicked the loving cup away almost casually.
On the far side of the moons, vash’ai raised their voices in a song of fire and fury.
We come, little sister. We come.
The First Warrior knelt beside her, face full of cold starlight and colder sorrow.
“You are Ja’Akari,” she insisted, “you must understand. The pride comes first. That woman would have sold us to the Dragon King, would have trapped us in cities of stone and mud until our hearts grew soft and rotten. The line of Zula Din would have been the death of the people.”
Hannei saw the flash of a blade and would have flinched away, or cried out, but her own body was no longer hers to command. Something burned into the palm of her hand. A knife, a fell thing, and her flesh cried out in horror at the touch.
We come…
But nobody was coming to save them, it was all in her head. When the First Warrior pressed the heavy torc of ebon and pearls into Hannei’s other hand, she knew—she knew—that it was too late for any of them. The line of Zula Din was ended. Nurati, and Tammas, and Neptara… and the children? Had they killed Ismai as well, and the little children?
Hannei had strength enough for a single tear. It spilled from her eye, and across her face, and down her newly shorn temple, before it was finally swallowed by the desert. So many tears, so many tears to make a desert. So many tears.
Screams, screams in the dark, and the smell of smoke.
The First Warrior stood and turned away, looking out across the desert toward the tents, and the rising flames.
“Thus perishes the line of Zula Din,” she said, more to herself than to the slain enemies at her feet. “In the end, she was right— love kills more swiftly than the sword.”
She left them there without so much as a single backward glance.
Hannei blinked—she could do that, only just—blinked away that last tear, and the sand, and the salt of her lover’s sweat, and perhaps his blood as well. She watched as his chest rose, and fell.
Rose, and fell. His eyes stared through her as his chest rose…
And fell. Rose, and fell.
Rose…
The moons roared. We come, little sister.
And fell. Rose…
And fell.
And fell.
And fell.
THIRTY - EIGHT
Sulema exploded up through her invisible opponent’s defenses, arms arrowing up and out in Blackthorn Unfolds. The movement carried her up and over in a spin. She trapped an imaginary arm next to her side and ran her sword backwards through an imaginary midsection. Pivot and carry-through, and she stood in victory in a pile of her imaginary enemy’s imaginary guts, real sweat pouring down between her breasts.
The stiffness in her fingers and the numb cold creeping up her arms—these things were real, too. This morning she had nearly dropped her cup of coffee, and Daru’s eyes upon her had been much too sharp.
“Trust no one in Atualon,” Mattu had said. “Do not put your trust in the Halfmask,” her brother had insisted. Even young Daru had warned her… about shadows, of all things. “The shadows here are not to be trusted,” he had said. All very good advice, she was sure.
Sulema had never had much talent for taking good advice.
She breathed as she ran through her forms, deep strong breaths as her father had been teaching her, trying to imagine herself drawing power from the ground. To see this power as a pulsing cord, or as a web, pulsing blue and gold. But it was much easier to picture herself covered in the blood of the man who had killed her Azra’hael and broken her warrior’s body.
Nightmare Man, she promised, I will find you.
A tap sounded at her wooden door. Sulema swept her dead opponent’s invisible guts out of the ring with her bare foot, and had begun Dance to the Moons before remembering that an outland guest would not enter her room without an invitation even if, as now, their presence was expected.
Her sword arm swept up, and Sulema imagined a vash’ai sitting back on his haunches to sing the moons down from the sky. A young vash’ai, mane scarce, eyes the color of a red-s
un dawn and a voice like honey in her heart.
Azra’hael, she mourned, and turned to face the enemy that stalked her from behind. He was Azra’hael, and he was mine.
Her sword split the air, it split her enemy’s skull, it split time itself so that she might reach through the rift and touch her kithren mind-to-mind. He was mine, and I was his.
“Enter,” she called, but her voice was thick with unshed tears. Weak and tremulous, and that would not do. So she scowled and cleared her throat and tried again. “Enter!”
This time, it was a command.
This time, he obeyed.
The door swung open, and Mattu stood there wearing the face of a ram and a battle-kilt of studded leather short enough to make a blind woman stare.
“You sent for me, Meissati?”
Sulema flicked her wrist, underhand sweep parting the two halves of her enemy’s throat, turning her face away from the spray of heart’s-blood and flowing into a defensive stance, holding onto victory for a heartbeat and then bowing low to the moons, grateful that their light had shown her the way to victory as they had so many times before. Then she let it drop away—the moons, the soft desert night, the song of the vash’ai, the smell of death, everything— and stood in the middle of a white chalk hoti, dripping sweat onto the cool stone floor.
Mattu stepped forward, but she held up a hand to forestall him.
“Ah-aat,” she warned. “Wait.” She erased part of the circle with a bare foot, and then smiled at him, wondering whether she had given offense. These outlanders, she had learned, had very sensitive skin. But he just smiled.
“I believe this is yours.” He coaxed Sulema’s little messenger from his shoulder onto his finger, and held the mantid out toward her mistress.
“Leilei! Good girl!” she called, and held out her own hand, whistling the little six-note tune as Loremaster Rothfaust had instructed. Leilei hopped onto her hand, clinging with her prickly little feet and combing her antennae between delicately serrated front legs, as she did when she was pleased. “I did not know if she would find your rooms. Usually she finds the kitchen. I suspect your hearthmothers have been giving her sweets.” She lifted Leilei into her bamboo cage, where the pretty little insect began preening and crooning to herself. Mattu was still standing in the doorway. “Oh, you can come in now.”
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