by David Hair
She smiled at him a little sadly. ‘I’m twice your age, Kaz.’
‘You are timeless,’ he replied. ‘You will never grow old.’
She looked away, thinking about the lines on her brow, the crow’s feet and dark shadows about her eyes – and about the fact that swordplay was a young person’s game and some days she felt every one of her forty years. ‘I wish that were so.’
‘My adopted mother, Tanuva Ankesharan, used to say that a woman is only as old as the men in her life,’ Kazim told her. ‘That makes you as young as me.’
‘Good, because I’ve never wanted to grow old.’
‘You will. With me, and our seven children.’
She pulled a face. ‘Seven?’
‘Or eight. Maybe more. Enough for a kalikiti team.’
She laughed. ‘You might need to marry more than one woman if that’s your ambition.’
‘Fortunately, I am Amteh – this is permitted.’ He grinned wickedly. ‘You would always be my favourite wife, of course. At first, anyway.’
‘I should bloody think so!’ She cuffed him lightly and they kissed, then she pulled away before she was turned from more serious matters. ‘We need to decide on our first target. There is a way-station on the road to Hytel, twenty miles from here. The Dorobon caravans are coming through on the same day every second week.’
‘I know the one,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘There is usually only one mage and a cohort of legionaries to guard around a dozen wagons. Small enough for us to take on.’
‘The next one is due the second week of Febreux – Safar – and that’s next week. If we move tomorrow, we’ll have time to properly prepare.’
Kazim looked around the arid landscape and she could almost see his blood pump just that little bit harder. He was excited, but not with the innocence of the unblooded. He knew what killing was, and the cost that exacted. But he was eager for the test.
She was well past such emotions now. She saw only an unpleasant job that had to be done.
Gurvon. Rutt. Mara.
And Cera.
Oh, Cera …
4
Beggars’ Court
Alms-Giving in Brochena
Queen Lilludh has instituted a new custom: she doles out leftovers each morning in the gardens of the zenana. Hundreds of women and children are fed there now, and they are all so cheery. It’s rather sweet, and of course it does give the poor dear something to do.
SARNIA DI KESTRIA, ROYAL MISTRESS, JAVON 743
Brochena, Javon, on the continent of Antiopia
Moharram (Janune) 928
7th month of the Moontide
There was a small courtyard at the back of the Royal Palace in Brochena, a place they called the Beggars’ Court. It was near the kitchens and over time had become the place where alms were distributed – mostly leftover food, but on holy days it was the tradition to give out coins too. A clerk had been assigned to ensure that the alms went only to the genuinely needy, and it was all done in the name of the queen, as the Beggars’ Court backed onto the rear gateway of the gardens of the zenana, the queen’s suite within the palace. It was rare for the queen herself to attend; it was only expected at the New Year celebrations. As she had been only a regent last year, Cera had never done it.
But every day, women gathered in the gardens, and the distribution of the leftovers represented the opportunity she craved to return to public life.
I am a queen of Javon, she reminded herself, lowering her circlet onto her brow and examining herself in the mirror. She wore a violet dress, the colour of her family, House Nesti, and her thick braids were bound in gold chains and looped on top of her head. Glowing amethyst earrings and a larger gemstone set in a solid gold torc completed her dress. A long, serious face stared back at her, older than she remembered. She was too plain for beauty, but she could allow that she now had a dignity about her; her matronly look echoed her dead mother, as if she’d bypassed childhood and gone straight to middle age.
But it was not unbecoming, she allowed. She looked queenly, and that was what was required today.
And she was attractive enough to tempt Gurvon Gyle, apparently – sufficiently so that when she’d thrown herself at him whilst under gnostic influence he’d not pushed her away. He still looked at her in the way men looked at prettier girls. But the very thought of him filled her with loathing, even though she had flirted at times to try and get her way, both because he was the man who’d murdered her parents, and because all men left her cold.
Accepting this truth about herself, that she was safian, still made her deeply uneasy. It was a stoning offence under al-Shaar, the Amteh law, and Sollan law would see her locked away in a convent for the rest of her life. But she knew herself now, knew what she was. It didn’t mean that suddenly she was lustfully eyeing the breasts or buttocks of every women she saw, but she finally understood why the men at court had always left her unmoved, even in happier times. There had been something missing, and now she held that missing piece.
Not that self-knowledge had made life – or love – any easier.
Portia Tolidi had revealed her secret to her, seducing and unravelling her with gentle patience, each of the painfully few opportunities a scary and beautiful ecstasy. But deep inside she knew that Portia was not safian herself, merely generous enough to give succour to a lost young woman.
She is the most beautiful woman in the kingdom; what rational reason is there for her to make love to me out of anything but pity?
Portia was also Francis’ favoured queen; he bedded her almost nightly. Recently she had succumbed to a bout of illness that Cera was certain was morning sickness. If she really was with child, their own fledgling relationship would soon be tested by separation as well as secrecy: the Gorgio’s arrangements with the Dorobon was that Portia would be sent north to give birth in her family home in Hytel.
The thought of being alone with her own longings unfulfilled ate at her sleep and tainted her thoughts. She’d always been contemptuous of those who became so overcome with adoration for another that they ceased to think; to be this lovelorn herself felt both ludicrous and heartbreaking.
So instead, I will throw myself into this new thing and see where it leads, she thought firmly.
The door slid open and Tarita, her young maid, poked her head through. ‘Are you ready?’ she asked, her pert face alive with mischief, no hint of subservience in her demeanour. She was Cera’s eyes and ears in the city, able to go out where Cera could not; it was her daily descriptions of life in the city under Dorobon rule that had given Cera this idea. ‘The crowd is gathering.’
‘Where is the king?’ Cera asked.
‘Asleep,’ Tarita replied with a wink.
‘And Gyle?’
‘Meeting with the senior Dorobon knights. Again.’
Cera nibbled her lower lip. Gyle had been seen a lot with the Dorobon knights recently; she thought they had cut some kind of deal, but she had no idea what. She’d tried to talk to Francis about it last month when they were alone, after he’d bedded her in his usual perfunctory manner, but he’d become enraged and stormed out of the chamber. It was as if he was too frightened to think about the consequences, she thought now. She turned her attention back to Tarita.
‘Well then, we should not be interrupted too swiftly,’ she said, trying to sound light-hearted. She stuffed her purse with the copper coins Tarita proffered and went to the alms-giving.
*
‘Sal’Ahm, Holy Queen,’ the woman said. ‘Light be upon you.’ It was early morning still, and the breath of the crowd made a steam that hung in the cold air.
‘His blessings upon you also,’ Cera replied formally, reaching through the iron bars of the gate to press her last copper into the woman’s upturned hands. Beside her, scullery maids were handing small loaves of bread through the grilles to the women who waited with mouths open like baby birds. There were three dozen of them at least. ‘What is your name?’
The woman seized her
hand, kissed it, touched it to her forehead. ‘I am Mukla, Holy Queen.’ She was wearing a bekira-shroud – all the women were – but here in the Beggars’ Court only women were permitted, so they were allowed to lower their hoods. Her deeply wrinkled face had been eroded by poverty and unending work under the harsh sun; her teeth were broken stumps and her nose was running in the chill air. Her tangled oily hair was fast turning grey.
‘How come you to be here?’ Cera asked. The woman still had not let go her hand.
‘My husband has cast me out for siding with my daughter over a matter of honour,’ Mukla replied, her voice simmering. She kissed Cera’s hand again. ‘The Godspeakers condemn her. You are her only hope.’
Cera glanced at Tarita, who lowered her gaze. This was the woman the little maid had told her to talk to.
This is it. If I have the nerve to go through with this plan, then it begins here.
Mukla too glanced at Tarita, her own face anxious. She had been primed, but it was clear she did not truly believe her prayers might be answered. She dropped Cera’s hand and waited expectantly as Cera returned to the throne on the plinth behind her.
She seated herself and clapped her hands for silence. ‘My people,’ she said, pitching her voice to fill the courtyard, ‘I have given you what alms I can, but there is another gift I can give you: my attention. I would hear from you of those injustices you suffer, the reasons you are here in the Beggars’ Court, instead of home with your family.’
An immediate clamour rose from the small gathering. ‘I’m constantly beaten, for no reason!’ one woman shouted.
‘They took my child away!’ called another.
‘My husband is missing – his brother killed him, then paid the Godspeaker not to investigate!’
‘My son is to be stoned for buggery, but it is a lie!’
‘They cut off my hand for theft, but I didn’t steal anything!’
‘The Godspeakers won’t listen to cases brought by women!’
Cera raised a hand. ‘Please! Please! I will hear you all, but you will sit, and I will listen to your stories one at a time.’ She watched as the women reluctantly complied, jostling for position then sitting cross-legged on the ground before the grilled metal gate.
When the hubbub had died down, she pointed to Mukla and said, ‘You – please, step forth now and tell me your story.’
Mukla stood and came to the gate. Clinging to it as if for strength, she started, ‘Please, Holy Queen, I am Mukla, daughter of Rabab the sandal-maker, and I am married to Hazmani the belt-maker. We have six living children. My Oviya, the eldest, is now fourteen and she has newly been blessed with the sacred blood, so we began to arrange suitors.’
The seated women murmured amongst themselves: when a girl began to bleed, it was a delicate time for the whole family. They were expected to marry immediately, but they were often moody and changeable at this time. Cera thought it an inhumanly young age to become a wife and mother, and she was eternally grateful that her own parents had been of the same mind.
‘One young man – a metalworker, like his father and uncles – looked to be a match, but my daughter did not like him,’ Mukla continued. ‘We asked about and found that he was known to be intemperate, and that his father was not as well-off as he pretended, so we curtailed the courtship.’
A hum of worried anticipation filled the courtyard: such a scenario was often a precursor to unpleasantness.
‘The young man came to our door, asking to see our daughter one last time, to beg forgiveness, and we foolishly admitted him – but as soon as my daughter appeared, he pulled out a waterskin and squirted liquid into my daughter’s face, then ran away.’
The woman broke off speaking and wailed out loud, and Cera shuddered at the grief in her voice. After a moment she said gently, ‘Mukla, I must have the whole story.’
One woman put her arms around Mukla, and she wiped her face on the sleeve of her bekira-shroud before saying brokenly, ‘The liquid was acid, used for decorative etching of metalwork, and before we could wash it away the left side of my daughter’s face had been burned right through to the bone. My beautiful girl lost her left eye, and her skin was burned from the acid which splashed all down her front …’
Cries of sympathetic anguish filled the courtyard, frightening the pigeons and crows into the air, and it was several minutes until Mukla could speak again. She could not stop weeping now. ‘At first, my husband Hazmani and I were united: the young man must be arrested and punished.’
‘Vaii!’ the crowd shouted, ‘vaii!!’ Yes, it must be so.
‘But the Royal Court would not hear us!’ Mukla shouted, indignation giving her the strength to continue. A pregnant hush fell over the crowd and the women eyed Cera warily, waiting to see how she would took this.
And this is the heart of the matter, she thought, right here. This is why I am here.
Octa Dorobon had demanded the constitutional laws be redrafted in her bid to legitimise Dorobon rule, and Don Francesco Perdonello, the rigorous and upright head of the Grey Crows, Javon’s bureaucracy, had to comply, meaning he could no longer staff the justice courts adequately with clerks who knew the statutes and could advise the young King Francis. And Francis had no interest in the law anyway – his idea of kingship was all war, banquets and hunts. So instead of the royal courts settling civil cases, such matters were now falling into the hands of two feuding factions: those seeking to mete out religious law and those looking to administer vigilante justice.
The Javon nobility had spent centuries trying to wrest control of civil justice from the Amteh Godspeakers, whose arbitrary interpretations of the ancient holy scripts were not only a mass of contradictions but, more worryingly, enshrined racial, sexual and gender bigotries endemic in the religion. The justice administered by the nobles might not always be better, but at least it had been relatively consistent and understandable – and now Francis Dorobon’s lack of interest in justice meant those hard-won rights were falling back into the Godspeakers’ hands.
Which was why Cera had selected this case specifically for the Beggars’ Court. Few there would know that she had no authority – even a queen could not administer justice unless she was sole ruler in her own right. But she could listen.
‘Your queen is hearing you now,’ Cera said loudly, and as a sigh ran through the gathering, Mukla looked up at her, gratitude and belief on her face: belief in the magic of titles and authority to make things happen.
‘We had no choice but to go to the Godspeaker,’ she said, her head bowed as she gathered her courage. ‘But the Godspeaker did not give us justice.’
The gathering exhaled as one, and again their eyes searched Cera’s face, looking for signs of reproof. Criticising a Godspeaker in public was not something done lightly.
‘Tell us,’ Cera invited.
Mukla’s hands tightened on the iron bars. ‘The family of the young man lied! They claimed that my daughter had committed indecencies upon the boy, to lure him into marriage!’ Her voice was shaking with anger, each sentence ringing through the court. ‘They swore on the holy Kalistham itself and then told their wicked lies!’
‘Were the boy and girl ever left unsupervised?’ Cera asked gently.
‘Never! There were always uncles from both families present,’ Mukla said.
‘And why would this boy harm your daughter?’ Cera asked loudly, wanting the answer to be heard by all. This was becoming too common in Javon: that a young man would seek to harm any girl who rejected him, because it hurt his pride and damaged him in the marriage market; too many refusals and the whole family might be affected. Some tried to blame the prospective bride to protect their own reputation, but the worst were those who sought to exact retribution like this boy, using acid or knives to mutilate faces and breasts.
‘He ruined my daughter from spite!’ Mukla shouted. ‘He was ashamed of being refused!’ She burst into tears. ‘She was so beautiful, my Oviya, the light of my life! She deserves justice! Justice!’
Cera threw up a hand as the call for justice echoed from the palace walls and as silence fell, asked, ‘How came you and your husband Hazmani to fall out?’
‘At the Godspeaker’s court Hazmani took money from the boy’s family to withdraw the charges,’ Mukla said.
Cera had to suppress the urge to growl in disgust. This too was disgracefully predictable – the sort of thing that happened far too frequently … which was why she and Tarita had selected this case. No doubt the father could see no point in defending the honour of a ruined girl, so why not take a few coins, allow the girl to bear the guilt and no doubt hope she would become another’s problem. She was now unmarriageable, nothing but a burden on her family, so unless some man could be found to take her in out of pity, her fate was either slavery or, if she converted, a place among the Sollan sisters. That wasn’t an option for most Amteh. Many girls in such a plight took their own lives – though Cera suspected that many such suicides were assisted, and involuntary.
‘You refused to agree with your husband?’ Cera asked gently.
Mukla nodded, tears streaming down her face. ‘I stood before the Godspeaker and denied these lies, even as my husband was changing my daughter’s plea. So he cast me out without my dowry, and my daughter too, and now I can live only through charity. If I cannot have justice, my daughter must be sold into service or we will starve together.’ She made begging gestures with her clasped hands, and repeated, ‘She was so beautiful, Holy Queen—’
‘Is she here?’ Cera asked.
Tarita had spent a day persuading Mukla that it would be necessary to display her daughter to the queen. A small figure completely covered by her bekira-shroud was ushered to the front. Her mother turned to her and slowly lowered the hood. The crowd hissed as her left side was presented to them, but Cera at first saw only her right side: a sweet, sad face; she could have been any pretty girl in the market.
