by Linda Nagata
He must have looked like a ruffian in his bloodstained brown tunic with sleeves rolled up against the heat, trousers dark with blood and soot, and boots singed by fire. He carried a sword on his back along with a bow, a quiver of arrows, and his rolled-up coat. Two long knives hung from his belt. The girl gazed at him in stunned silence, her eyes so dark and full of life he imagined for a moment he was looking into Ketty’s eyes.
Ketty, who had sent him away in a fit of anger. Ketty of the Red Moon, cruelest of wives.
The women of Lutawa called him Dismay, but Ketty called him by another name, one he’d almost forgotten.
Smoke.
It hurt to remember. Pray to me, he’d told her, when you want me to come home. Two moons had passed since then and Smoke was still waiting for Ketty’s prayer. He’d begun to suspect she didn’t love him anymore.
“Dismay!” the serving girl whispered. To Smoke’s surprise she didn’t flee, but instead, after a cautious glance over her shoulder to be sure no one was watching, she scurried down the veranda’s three steps and slipped into the shadows beside him. He saw confusion, not fear, in her gaze. “Dismay, why are you here? I didn’t pray for you. Did the young mistress pray for you? It’s too soon. We’re not ready to call on you yet.” She gestured toward the driveway. “You must go. Later, maybe, we’ll need—”
Smoke bared his teeth and at once she stopped her whispered excuses. It astonished him the way his legend made its way through the countryside even ahead of his own swiftly moving presence, but tonight he was in no mood to be charming. He said, “Know this: It’s a dangerous thing to pray to me, but it’s more dangerous to send me away.”
“But Dismay, if the master sees you—”
“I’ll kill him.”
“No, please. He’s a good man.”
“Better if he doesn’t see me then.”
“But what have you come for? Why are you here?”
“I want a bath. And I’m hungry, and tired as well—tired of sleeping in barns and under bushes.”
“Oh.” Again she glanced back at the door. “The master is away at dinner this evening, and no one will be in the bathing hall at this hour. If I go there, can you find me?”
“Go quickly, and pray to me to come, when the way is clear.”
Her eyes grew bright with the excitement of doing something forbidden and sweet. “I’ll call the young mistress. She’ll want to meet you.” And with that she trotted back up the stairs, to disappear behind the brass door.
Smoke fixed his mind on the tremble and sway of the threads in the world’s weft so that he could follow her progress. She hurried through the great room, and then into a hallway where another woman joined her. The two rushed past a manservant, and then ducked into a room, pulling a door shut behind them. Several seconds passed. Then the serving girl remembered to speak to him in prayer. Come, Dismay. Come bathe and be comforted.
Scars
The girl’s name was Ui and her young mistress was Eleanor. They were of a similar age and in some ways they looked much alike, sharing the same dark hair and dark eyes. But Eleanor’s hair was carefully arranged, tied back from her face in intricate braids before being allowed to fall free down her back; and she wore a dress of soft-green, patterned silk, that somehow caught the candlelight in a way that enhanced the sweet curve of her breasts and her hips; and while her smooth arms were bare, her skirt brushed the floor, showing not even her ankles; and she carried herself with a trained grace that set off her beauty in a disconcerting way.
Ui was a pretty, lively girl, but she faded beside her pampered mistress.
Smoke could hardly take his eyes off Eleanor, and when he managed the trick, his gaze was caught by Ui instead. They were a delight to all his senses; their buoyant presence was a respite and a relief.
He was Dismay, after all, whose task it was to answer the prayers of vengeance whispered by women who could endure no more. Every woman he’d met these past two moons had been on her knees, abused and broken, overcome with hate, begging him for bloody retribution.
Eleanor and Ui only wanted to please him.
The flush he felt as he set his weapons aside had nothing to do with the warmth of the evening and everything to do with the presence of two cheerful young women.
He stripped off his filthy clothes and at Ui’s invitation he sat on a stool. Together the two set about washing his long hair, and then scrubbing his skin clean. It was exquisite to simply be touched again, but because they were young and lovely and kind it was arousing too. His passion swelled beneath the towel laid over his lap, but it was tempered as his thoughts turned to his wife Ketty, cruel Ketty of the Red Moon, who didn’t care for him anymore, who had forgotten his name, while he had forgotten nothing: not her warmth, her voice, her sweet scent, or the wild joy of entering her sacred gate—
“Ah, Dismay,” Eleanor said, softly, shyly. “You have so many terrible scars.”
She stood behind him, her fingers lightly tracing the ropy lines of the wounds he’d taken, touching first his shoulders, then his back, and then his arms. Smoke closed his eyes. Ketty used to touch him like that, kissing his scars and whispering her gratitude that he was still alive—but Ketty had been born on a night when the moon turned red, and the spirit of the red moon was pig-headed and stubborn.
Eleanor’s soft hand slipped over his left shoulder, to explore the ragged, hideous scar that spoiled the curve of his neck. “That,” Smoke said in a low growl, “was given to me in battle by a Lutawan officer when I was a Koráyos soldier fighting for the Puzzle Lands.”
“Ah, you were in the war,” Eleanor said sadly.
Ui did not share her melancholy. “Did you kill the officer?” she asked with a breathless excitement.
“Long after, but finally, yes.”
Ui held a fresh ewer of water which she poured slowly over his shoulder and chest. “And how many other wicked men have you killed?” she asked, her eyes bright with a bloodthirsty light. “Hundreds and hundreds, I’m guessing!”
Smoke shrugged. “I don’t count them.”
“But why does the King let you do it?” she wondered. “Why does He let you get away with it? Why does He let you live?”
Smoke chuckled, charmed by her naiveté. “I’m a demon. What can he do to stop me? Unless he’s a demon too?”
“Of course he’s not a demon,” Ui chided, turning the ewer upside down to pour the last of the water. “He is the King! And it’s the King’s power to strike down anyone with infernal fire! He should strike us down for talking to you.”
Smoke laughed at her zeal. “Infernal fire? What is that? Is it something I should fear?”
“You don’t know about infernal fire?” Ui’s lovely eyes were wide with astonishment. Her voice dropped to a whisper, as if the King himself might overhear. “It’s the King’s fire. He may summon it, anywhere, anytime, to punish the wicked, and it can’t be put out, no matter what.”
Smoke’s eyebrows rose. “Am I wicked?”
He expected her to blush and apologize, but instead she grinned, still holding the empty ewer in her hands. “The King must think so.”
Eleanor’s hands settled possessively on Smoke’s shoulders. “Ui, you are incorrigible.”
Ui gave her a sour look, but then she turned again to Smoke. “Why does he let you live?”
“Not because he loves me.”
Ui laughed in delight, but Eleanor’s hands tightened on his shoulders. “Dismay, Ui is right. You must be careful. The King watches over all of Lutawa, he sees everything, everywhere, and he does burn up his enemies with infernal fire.”
It was one of Smoke’s gifts that he could always tell if a person spoke the truth, so he knew that both Eleanor and Ui devoutly believed what they were telling him. He puzzled over it, wondering aloud, “What man can do such things?”
Eleanor caught her breath. Then she leaned down to whisper in his ear. “Don’t you know? The King is not a man. He is God-in-the-world.”
“God-in-the-world?” Smoke echoed skeptically.
“Yes.”
How very interesting.
Smoke recalled that his sister, Takis, had once asked him to kill the Lutawan King. That was before he’d left the Puzzle Lands, before he lost Ketty.
He had two sisters, twins, who were like two halves of one soul. Tayval commanded the fence of spells that guarded the border of the Puzzle Lands, while Takis was the Trenchant and commanded the army. Both his sisters wanted an end to the endless war that had gone on for generations between Lutawa and the Puzzle Lands, but the Lutawan King refused to consider peace, so Takis had asked Smoke to kill him. She hadn’t mentioned that the King might be more than a man . . . but then their sister Tayval had doubted his success—and why would Tayval doubt that he could murder a man? Unless she suspected the King was something more?
A wild hunch took hold in Smoke’s mind. “Do you know the King’s name?” he asked Eleanor.
She sighed. “Dismay, don’t you understand? The King doesn’t have a name because he is God. He is not a man to have a name.”
Smoke bared his teeth in a wicked grin; his heartbeat quickened with excitement. For two months he’d wandered Lutawa, killing casually, waiting for Ketty to call him home, but now . . . he suspected the Dread Hammer had a greater task in mind for him. “I think I should kill the King.”
Behind him, Eleanor gasped. Her hands left his shoulders, and she backed away. “Dismay, you must not say such things! The King is God. He can’t be killed, he doesn’t die.”
Smoke turned his head to look at her frightened face. “I have always heard there is only one god in Lutawa, and his name is Hepen the Watcher.”
“It isn’t true,” Eleanor insisted. “I mean, there is only one god and he is the King, but he has no name.”
Smoke dismissed this with a shrug. “You Lutawans have forgotten his name, but we remember it in the north. Hepen the Watcher has long been the enemy of the Dread Hammer. If he and the King are one and the same, then it must be my task to kill him.”
Ui wasn’t afraid. She crouched beside him, balancing the ewer on her knee. “Who is the Dread Hammer?”
“She is the god of the north.”
“She?” Ui whispered in awe.
Eleanor was equally astonished. “A woman who is a god?” she asked, creeping around to stand by Ui’s side.
Smoke eyed them both with a lazy smile. “Yes. Long ago, the Dread Hammer and Hepen the Watcher were lovers, but he was cruel. They fought, and she tossed him out of the north. He had no choice but to become the god of Lutawa, and who would want to be that? So of course he’s angry with her still. It’s why he sends the Lutawan army to attack the Puzzle Lands. The war will never end while he’s alive.”
Eleanor looked at him sadly. “Then the war will never end, because whether he has a name or not, the King cannot die. Come, Dismay. Soak for a time in the bath, while I comb out your beautiful hair.”
Smoke slipped into the brass soaking tub, sighing as the steaming water enfolded him. Eleanor brought a comb and set to work smoothing the tangles from his long, honey-brown hair, while Ui set about the more mundane task of cleaning the stool and the surrounding floor.
Closing his eyes, Smoke touched the threads within the world-beneath. Ui had wondered why the King didn’t strike him down. Smoke was sure it was because the King couldn’t see him. He kept himself hidden from those who could see within the world-beneath, including his sisters, and the Hauntén demons of the Wild Wood who were also his kin.
But though he was hidden, the people around him were not. The shape and vibration of the threads told him of a manservant walking in the hallway outside, and of two older women at work in the kitchen. More interesting to him were the strong threads knitting Ui and Eleanor together. “Are you sisters?” he asked, without opening his eyes.
Eleanor’s comb moved gently over his scalp. “We have the same father, but different mothers.”
“And different fates,” Ui said, a bit breathless. When he looked, he saw that she was on hands and knees, scrubbing the floor. “My mother is a slave in the household, as I am. Eleanor is the young mistress, who will be sold soon to a husband. I think the master would keep her safely home forever if he could, but she is nineteen now, and she must be married.”
“Will you accept your husband?” Smoke wondered. “Or will you call me?”
“I don’t know,” Eleanor admitted in a quiet voice.
Ui got up, leaving her scrub brush on the floor. “The master—our father—he wanted to marry Eleanor to the son of his friend, a young man he knows well, who would have made her first wife—but everything has changed.”
“My brother died badly,” Eleanor explained.
“Badly?”
“Without honor or consequence. He was an officer in the King’s army, but he made a mistake when he was at war against the Puzzle Lands—I don’t know what—and he died with all the men under his command. The King declared my brother a traitor and my father was required to disavow him along with his wives and children, and to pay recompense to the families of his men. There was money enough for it, of course, but now there is no heir. So my value has gone up. Whatever man gets me will become his son and the next master of Cuhoxa, when God chooses to take my father from the world.”
“We listen at the master’s door,” Ui confessed. “There are powerful men in the army and in the palace who would like to be our father’s heir, and who would be offended if he chose a lesser man.”
Smoke scowled. “That makes no sense at all. You and Ui should be your father’s heirs and you should choose your own husbands. Why do Lutawans make everything so complicated?”
They found this funny. Both women laughed merrily, for no reason that Smoke could see, but at least the gloom that had descended over them was dispelled. Ui bent to pick up her scrub brush. “Young mistress,” she said, looking up with a coy smile. “I’m sure you must have combed every tangle from Dismay’s beautiful hair. It’s time to consider where Dismay should sleep tonight.”
The comb hesitated. “You’re a wicked sister, Ui.”
Ui giggled, her hand over her mouth. “Well, then, if Dismay may not share your bed, and I already share my bed with my mother—”
Eleanor bent close, her breath soft in Smoke’s ear. “You’ll be safe in my brother’s apartment. His wives and children are gone and no one’s allowed to visit there anymore. The door’s locked, and only my father has the key.”
Smoke sighed, basking in her warmth, her nearness. “You should not tease a man.”
“Are you a man?”
Her lips brushed his cheek. He turned his head and her mouth touched his, but she was only teasing. She drew back with a sad, regretful look. “If I’m not a virgin when I marry, my father must kill me.”
She was utterly beautiful, but untouchable, and as the wavering candlelight glistened in her eyes he was reminded again of Ketty—and suddenly he was angry. Eleanor saw it. She straightened and stepped back. “Your eyes! They’re glittering with a green light, as dragon eyes are said to do.”
“So? I am Dismay.” He held a hand out to her. “Come.” She was reluctant, but she didn’t dare to offend him, so she took it. “Eleanor, will you pray to me, if you don’t like your husband?”
“No. I will pray to you only if my husband is intolerable.”
Smoke cocked his head. “What Lutawan man is tolerable?”
Eleanor cast a nervous glance at Ui, but Ui was unfazed, giggling behind her hand. “None of them are tolerable,” Ui declared. “Even the master, who makes me sleep in the kitchen when he desires to visit my mother.”
Eleanor’s tone was suddenly sharp. “Ui, go fetch food for Dismay.”
Ui’s smile vanished and, chastened, she hurried to the door. Eleanor followed her. She unlocked the door, held it open just wide enough for Ui to slip out, and then locked it again. When she returned to Smoke, he felt her fear in the threads. “Dismay, I don’t want to be sold
to any man who lives in the palace. My brother’s mother was born there. She said that all the women there have the three petals of their demon flower cut away—”
“Their demon flower?”
“That place between a woman’s legs where her husband takes his pleasure.”
“Ah, her sacred gate.” Then he realized what she’d just said. “They cut it? Why?”
“I don’t know! But she showed me her scars. She said it’s done at the King’s command. It doesn’t matter if the woman is the wife of an official, or if she’s there with her husband only for a season. The King knows if she’s whole. His order comes. It’s done.”
Smoke smiled. Yes, he was sure now the Dread Hammer meant for him to kill the King—and what a pleasure it would be to slit the creature’s throat, whether he turned out to be a god or a man. “Is the King always in the palace?” he wondered.
She nodded, her eyes glistening with tears as she contemplated her likely fate. “It’s said the palace is the only place holy enough to contain His sacred presence.”
“Do you know where it is?”
She shrugged. “Somewhere south, where the nights are warmer.”
“Warmer than here?” Smoke was horrified that any such place could be. Just thinking on it made the bath feel too hot. He stood up, and Eleanor hurried to bring a towel, patting him dry as he stepped from the tub.
“You can’t put on your soiled clothes,” she told him. “Ui has to clean them. But in my brother’s apartment, you’ll find clothes that you can wear.”
Smoke took the towel from her and wrapped it around his waist. “You would dress me as a Lutawan?”
She looked up at him, tears sparkling in her eyes. “Forgive me, Dismay. I don’t know how to dress a demon.”
“Would you serve one?”
She caught her breath in fear . . . but then she nodded. “If I can.”
“If you’re sent to the palace before I find my way there, then pray to me. Your prayer will make a thread that I can follow, first to the palace, and then to the King.”
