Sanctuary

by Lynn Abbey

  Molin wed his delicate bird on a warm summer’s day. He brought Rosanda home and within a week she’d taken over his life, replacing all of his servants, most of his wardrobe, and many of his campaign-days friends. Before she was finished, Rosanda had transformed her young husband from a battlefield priest into an Imperial confidant.

  Rosanda asked only one thing in return for her labor: sons. Molin hadn’t objected—he was as adaptable as he’d been ambitious and truly grateful for the doors his wife had opened, doors no slave-born priest of Vashanka could have opened on his own. He performed his duty and gave his wife four babies in the first five years of their marriage, three sons and a daughter, each born with a shock of jet black hair and every one buried by the kitchen hearth before a month was out.

  Molin’s lady wife took to her bed after they buried their fourth child. The best physicians in Ranke opined that if Rosanda’s fever didn’t kill her, a broken heart or another unfulfilled pregnancy would. They suggested a change of surroundings … and separate bedchambers. Lord Uralde went a step further: He spread the tale that his daughter’s misery was the tragic—but not surprising—consequence of a slave’s son marrying into the oldest, purest bloodline in the Empire.

  Privately Molin agreed with his father-in-law’s conclusions, if not the logic behind them. The bloom was off Rosanda’s flower by then. She echoed her father’s prejudice, and blamed Molin for the pregnancies that had taken her beauty without leaving anything in return. Rosanda consoled herself with sweetmeats and gossip which, more than once, threatened to get both of them banished to the eastern provinces.

  Hoping to end the hostilities, Molin offered to petition his brother-in-law, the emperor, for a divorce, a privilege the Empire granted husbands, not wives. He’d thought Rosanda would leap at a chance to return to her father’s household. He’d forgotten—or, more accurately, failed to consider until Rosanda, in full shriek, pointed out to him—that only men were freed by divorce. Divorced wives went home in shame, without hope of remarriage. It wasn’t unheard of for a divorced woman to live out her life as a servant to her brothers’ wives or, worse, to die in a “kitchen accident.”

  Rosanda made it clear that sole hope for freedom was widowhood, and she’d made it very clear that she intended to live in her lawful husband’s home until he was tucked away in a crypt. Then she planned to live precisely as she wished, with no father, husband, brother, or son to stand in her way.

  Siege became the way of life for Molin and his wife until the newly enthroned Emperor Abakithis had the notion to send his troublesome half brother to Sanctuary. Molin and Rosanda were natural choices to accompany the young prince. Molin had accepted not out of loyalty to Abakithis or love for his nephew, but to deprive his wife of the capital life she loved.

  He should have been more suspicious when Rosanda agreed to exile without a single complaint, should have guessed she’d fallen into someone’s plot, should have known it would be abortive. As it turned out, she’d thrown in with disgruntled army commanders in a plot to disgrace Kadakithis and—not coincidentally—get her husband hung as a traitor. The prince himself had unraveled the plot before damage was done and properly doomed all save one of the conspirators.

  Molin interceded to spare his wife’s neck. Lord Uralde never guessed the disgrace with which his daughter had almost burdened the oldest, purest bloodline in the Empire. Rosanda interpreted the reprieve as a warning that she’d never again have the upper hand in her household. The shrew became a mouse who catered to her husband’s every whim, real or imagined.

  A man could live with an enemy. An enemy kept his wits sharp. Indulgence softened him, left him vulnerable to passion. When he’d least expected it—when Rosanda had most nearly transformed herself into one of her favorite cream-filled pastries—Molin succumbed to a second love even more inappropriate than his first had been. Not only was Kama young enough to be his daughter, she was, in fact, Tempus Thales’s sole acknowledged child and a fully initiated member of a mercenary band—the Third Commando—so renowned for its ruthlessness that even Thales steered clear of it.

  Rebellion had no doubt played a role in Kama’s choices—if her father couldn’t appreciate her talents, then, by the god they all shared, she’d find someone who would. And in those days—the same days when witches, gangs, and cognizant corpses ran riot on the streets of Sanctuary—Molin had needed all the talent he could get. A set of eyes and ears inside the Third Commando was a gift he could never have purchased and couldn’t refuse when Kama offered to provide them.

  He didn’t ask questions when Kama began visiting his palace chambers at midnight, slipping in through a window, never the door. If she stayed until daybreak, that was because they shared a fascination with intrigue and a need for uncensored conversation.

  Kama took Molin completely by surprise when she suggested they share his bed for “curiosity’s sake.” Vashanka have mercy! Molin enjoyed Kama’s company, her friendship; she could take a joke at a time when jokes were scarce. He knew who and what she was, of course, and that she made a ritual out of sleeping with each of Commando’s new recruits. When she sat cross-legged on Molin’s worktable, bantering politics and philosophy, her hair hacked short, and her woman’s body encased in a mercenary’s scuffed leathers, it had been remarkably easy to forget that she was a woman. And even if Molin had seen the woman in her, Kama was Tempus Thales’s daughter, and no man who knew the Riddler wanted him for a father-in-law.

  But wine had flowed freely that night and once she’d raised the flag, Molin discovered that he, too, was, curious. Kama proved adventurous between the sheets and he—he’d only recently begun to explore the gifts his witchblooded mother had left him. There’d been a moment, as the sun rose, when they could have laughed and declared their curiosities sated, but that moment passed in silence.

  Fate facilitated their passions. The situation in Sanctuary went from bad to worse—the fish-eyed Beysibs, the Nisi witches, a host of mages, Kama’s fellow mercenaries, her father’s Stepsons, a Wrigglie revolt, a usurper on the Imperial throne, and a necromancer or two all conspired to reduce the city to chaos. As the first among Prince Kadakithis’s advisors, Molin needed to meet with Kama almost every night. They were discreet but happy, and those who knew them best sensed the change.

  Tempus Thales took his daughter’s choice of lovers in stride. If anything, the revelation eased the tension between the two men. But Rosanda, who hadn’t graced Molin’s bed in a decade, judged herself betrayed—all her tightly cherished dreams of a prosperous widowhood were doomed if Kama bore Molin a son. Rosanda was not bold enough to confront Molin directly, instead she found a man—several of them—to advance her cause.

  After the assassination of Emperor Abakithis, and under the aegis of Lowan Vigeles, husband of yet another of Lord Uralde’s daughters, Sanctuary became a true sanctuary for what remained of the Imperial family. Their Land’s End estate, though closer to the city walls than the similarly named Serripines estate, served the same purpose—a bastion of false hopes as the Empire crumbled. Armed with her version of events, Rosanda appealed to her brother-in-law. More to the point, she appealed to her niece, Chenaya.

  If by some chance Molin Torchholder lived a thousand years, he’d never fathom why Savankala had chosen to imbue Chenaya with a measure of immortality. The girl couldn’t lose a contest whether it was a simple coin toss or a fight to the death on the hot sands of the gladiatorial arena. Perhaps all the Rankan gods were mad, or at the very least self-destructive.

  Children needed the taste of a defeat or two if they were to mature into useful citizens of the Empire. Chenaya had grown bored with winning bloodless games while yet a child and picked up steel instead. If Tempus, Vashanka’s minion, was the ultimate Rankan warrior, then Chenaya, Savankala’s misbegotten daughter, longed to be the Empire’s ultimate gladiator.

  Chenaya had help in that quest. Her father had a passion for vicarious combat and the wealth to indulge it. He’d endowed one of the mo
st successful gladiatorial gymnasiums in the Empire and, with her father’s blithe indulgence, Chenaya had started her training while still a child. Thanks in no small measure to Savankala’s blessing, she was as good with steel as she thought she was. Another thing Molin wouldn’t live to understand was why those, like Tempus and Chenaya, to whom the gods had granted a measure of immortality, felt the burning need to test that gift time and time again.

  When Lowan Vigeles relocated to Sanctuary, he brought his gymnasium with him. Just what the city had needed: another cadre of hotheaded fighters!

  Chenaya’s attitude and exploits had inspired her aunt Rosanda to take up swordwork—Molin had imagined why, though he’d never taken the threat seriously. Prince Kadakithis’s estranged wife, Daphne, who they’d all believed had died in an unfortunate caravan raid on her way from Sanctuary to the capital, was another matter. Obviously, Daphne hadn’t died, and by the time Chenaya rescued her from slavery, the traumatized woman harbored an understandable grudge against the prince and his advisors, who had never, it was true, searched for her. Worse, during her absence—when he’d believed himself a widower—Kadakithis had made an alliance a few steps short of marriage with the exiled queen of Sanctuary’s fish-eyed invaders.

  If Molin’s northern features had made him a mongrel in aristocratic Rankan eyes, what must Daphne have seen when she first beheld the Beysa Shupansea with her bared and painted breasts and her wide, staring eyes?

  Indulged utterly by Lowan Vigeles, Chenaya and her spearcarriers, Rosanda and Daphne, pursued their dreams of redress and retribution. Of the three, only Chenaya understood the consequences, but obscenely blessed as she was by Savankala, Chenaya didn’t need to worry about consequences.

  Chenaya collected men—not that she’d ever have admitted it. She especially collected men who had no interest in women, because they spared her any need to consider the absurdity of the path she’d chosen for herself. She collected enemies, too, in a far more haphazard way and very nearly accomplished the impossible: uniting all Sanctuary’s irreconcilable rivals in common cause against her. The need to get the self-styled Daughter of the Sun out of Sanctuary before she brought the wrath of every god in creation down around their heads had been one of the few things Molin and Tempus had agreed upon without negotiation.

  If only they’d had the ear of a god worthy of their combined prayers …

  If only Vashanka hadn’t sunk into obsession with the Beysib mother-goddess, so many things might have turned out different. No soldiers, sorcerers, or Bloody Hands of Dyareela fighting their private battles on Sanctuary’s streets. The city might have made something of itself. Molin might have died in his prime rather than on a crumbling window ledge overlooking equally crumbling walls. So many things that might have been, but one thing was certain—

  When Chenaya’s massed enemies finally paid a call at Land’s End, it had been Rosanda who had paid the price. Kama swore that neither she nor anyone else of the Third Commando had been along for the raid that night, and Molin chose to believe her, even though the men they did catch and charge with the crime—a home-bred gang that didn’t know the difference between freedom and anarchy—owed their tactics and weapons if not their viciousness to the Third in general and Kama in particular.

  It was Kama’s opinion—voiced the night of Rosanda’s funeral, which Molin had not attended—that Sanctuary owed the gutter rats a pardon. They had, after all, demonstrated to Chenaya Vigeles—in no uncertain terms—that her invulnerability did not extend to those around her and that she didn’t have to fight in the contest in order to lose it.

  Kama was right. Chenaya’s overlong childhood ended the night Rosanda died. She didn’t exactly repent, but she chose her enemies with greater care thereafter and brokered a reconciliation of sorts between the prince and Daphne. Molin even got some leverage on the gutter rats after Kama persuaded him to release their leader with his limbs and manhood intact.

  Rosanda Uralde had not accomplished half so much in life as she did by the simple act of getting in the way of a man with a sword. And for that reason alone, Molin Torchholder sank into a morass of guilt from which Kama could not lift him. She left him and Sanctuary.

  Molin never saw her again, or took another lover.

  Chenaya stayed. So long as the city was gods-ridden, it held her interest. But when the stuff of sorcery began to dry up, when the witches left, the Beysib, and all the warriors, too, she was left with only her father’s gladiators for company. When her cousin Kadakithis announced his intention to return to Ranke and stake his claim to the Imperial throne, she buckled on her weapons and armor and went with him.

  Two years passed, two endless, silent years without word from either of them nor about them. Lowan Vigeles swallowed his pride and came to the palace, begging for information, believing Molin still had influence with Vashanka and the Imperial court. Nothing could have been further from the truth; Vashanka was utterly vanquished at that point, and Molin survived in Sanctuary because his enemies in Ranke assumed he was dead.

  Molin had no desire to attract attention by reawakening his web of spies, but a father’s desperation was difficult to ignore. After months of alternating pleas and threats, he betook himself to the bazaar, to a blacksmith’s stall and the little home that stood behind it. The S’danzo still dwelt in Sanctuary—it would be another nine years before they pulled up stakes—and Molin was on good terms with the best of them. He’d gotten Illyra’s boy out of Sanctuary before either the witches or the gods could lay their hands on the gifted, fated boy. Arton had grown to near manhood on the distant Bandaran Islands, and though Illyra had confessed that she did not expect to see him again in her lifetime, she welcomed the messages Molin brought her two or three times a year.

  Her first words were about her son. “Have you had word from the Isles?”

  “No,” he’d admitted. “The ship I sent isn’t due back until autumn. I’ve come to beg a favor. I’m looking for my niece. You remember Chenaya … ?”

  When Molin thought of Illyra, he always saw a girlish face framed by dark chestnut curls in his mind’s eye, but the truth was that Illyra had been young no longer when he went to the bazaar to ask his brother-in-law’s questions. Her hair had dulled and the skin around her eyes was wrinkled from too many hours spent squinting at her cards, looking for trouble. The look she gave him when Molin mentioned Chenaya’s name was both ancient and bitter.

  Chenaya might have mended her ways after Rosanda’s death, but she hadn’t changed anyone’s opinion.

  “Two years have passed since she left Sanctuary with Prince Kadakithis and no word from either of them—”

  “They rode to their doom. It was no secret. He should have sailed off with the Beysa and she … She should have stayed away from Sanctuary,” Illyra replied.

  The moment that followed had been of the few times Molin Torchholder had been at an utter loss for words. He knew more about Sanctuary’s hidden lives than anyone else, but he had no notion what Chenaya had done to earn Ilyra’s coldest disdain. They’d sat there on opposite sides of Illyra’s scrying table, staring at each other like the fish.

  Clang, tap! each time the hammer struck the anvil then rested while Dubro worked his trade nearby. Clang, tap! Clang, tap! There was a face burnt into the metal, a face reflected in a mirror as it shattered. The same face—the Face of Chaos—stared up from the deck of cards at Illyra’s elbow, mocking Molin as his heart sped up to the hammer’s rhythm.

  “It’s not for her,” he’d said at last. “But for her father. If there’s anything you can tell Lowan Vigeles about his daughter’s fate …? You know that pain.”

  She took up her cards. Age had crept into the seeress’s hands, but it had not robbed them of their grace. She fanned the cards before Molin.

  “Choose three.”

  He’d reached, hesitated, then dropped his hand on the cloth-covered table. “It’s not me who asks.” The cards were tricky, like gods. Sometimes they revealed fates unconnec
ted to the querant’s question, fates a man might not want to know.

  Illyra loosened her grasp; a single card fell facedown on the table. She straightened the rest and set them aside. When Molin would not touch that card either, she sighed and turned it over herself.

  The painted scene was a study in grays, greens, and the pale, terrified face of a man drowning in sight of the shore.

  “Six of Ships,” Illyra announced. Molin had seen many of her cards over the years, but he’d not seen that one before and did not know its name or guess its meaning until she whispered: “Undertow.”

  Long before, when a very young Chenaya had first come to her uncle, seeking an explanation of her uncanny knack for winning, Molin had done some scrying of his own. He’d had the power then, when some said it was Vashanka, not Savankala, who ruled in paradise; perhaps he’d had it still. He knew what the card revealed without Illyra’s help.

  The was a catch to the gift Savankala had bestowed upon Chenaya. Had there ever been a god’s gift that didn’t have a catch as sharp and deadly as a serpent’s fang? The Daughter of the Sun was vulnerable to water, to drowning.

  “She’s gone? Drowned in the ocean?” he’d asked, unable to maintain silence.

  “There are worse deaths in water than drowning,” Illyra replied, as cryptic as she was honest.

  Molin, who could be as cryptic and honest as any seer when the need arose, had trekked out to Land’s End and told Lowan Vigeles that his daughter had crossed water and was not likely to return in his lifetime. Rather than take what Molin offered, Vigeles promptly sank all his money in a ship and sailed off in search of her.

  That autumn, the seas off Sanctuary boiled with storms that leveled stone houses and wrecked every boat in Sanctuary’s harbor. Lowan Vigeles’s ship was last seen racing the black winds off Inception Island, and the ship Molin had sent to the Bandaran Isles never made it home to port. With the loss of its captain and navigator, the Isles themselves were lost, along with the Beysib Empire. Like Chenaya, Illyra’s son had crossed water, never to return in his parents’ lifetime.