by David Hair
Gurvon will know it was me by dawn.
She went down the stairs, Kazim a heartbeat behind her. A Jhafi man was at the foot, caught in an agony of indecision: the whoremaster, she guessed, torn between trying to protect his assets and keeping his hide intact.
She’d never much liked men who sold women for money. It took just one thrust.
She kicked open the doors to the taproom and went through at a flat run. Steel flashed and she parried, then let energy burst from her, throwing the men who’d gathered about the doorway backwards. She dropped another with a mage-bolt that fried his face to the bone, then blocked two swords at once. Suddenly she was pressed, cornered—
Then Kazim burst in. His first blow to the back of one of the men attacking her went into his neck and through his spinal cord. He went down in a boneless heap, blood spraying, and without pausing she spun to face the flanking legionary, blocked his solid shortsword, ducked beneath a roundhouse swipe and skewered his heart. A thrown knife skittered off her shields and more men erupted from the far corner. She picked out the first and raised a hand, ready to blast him, when Kazim stepped across her and threw up his own hands.
Fire blazed from his fingertips: a sheet of heat that washed over the entire side of the room. She knew she’d never be able to survive such an attack herself; the rankers didn’t stand a chance. They were torched by the flames that washed over them and up the walls.
‘Shut it down!’ she shouted. ‘Keep the building intact!’
For a second she didn’t think he’d heard her. His blood was up, and his face was alive with unsated fury. But he raised his hand again and she watched, impressed, as the flames were sucked back into his palm, fizzling out as they struck it. It reminded her that he had an Ascendant’s power, and a growing competence to go with it. He turned to her, his face still impassioned. ‘You should stay behind me,’ he snapped. ‘I’m the stronger.’
‘You shouldn’t fucking step in front of me in a fight!’ she retorted. ‘I almost loosed into your back!’
‘You’re my woman.’
‘It’s not a bloody joust!’
He reached for her and she knocked his hand away. For a second she saw anger, and then he relaxed. ‘I’m sorry. It frightened me, to see you in danger.’
‘Okay. I understand. But don’t do it again.’
There was shouting outside, someone calling, ‘Petar? Langer?’
Kazim pushed her aside and went for the door, surging out through the billowing smoke like a demon erupting from the Fiery Pit, battering down the man’s guard and slashing his throat open. Elena followed, fired a mage-bolt into a crossbowman as he took aim, and lined up another. The remaining Rondians must have realised what they were facing now, because they turned and ran.
They didn’t get far: the first one to reach the stables vanished inside, only to stagger back out with a pitchfork through his chest. He waltzed sideways and fell on his side, twitching violently. Elena blasted him with a mage-bolt out of pity. The rest of the Rondians took to their heels, running for the open desert as the Jhafi emerged, armed with tools and kitchen knives, first a dozen men, then suddenly many more, women and children too.
The kitchen staff were among them, pointing and jabbering, speaking too fast even for her ears. She went to Kazim’s side as the eldest Jhafi man barraged him with questions, then interrupted, ‘Do you know who I am?’
The Jhafi shook his head, but the crowd of people behind him were pointing and murmuring, and one of the women jabbed a finger at her and shouted, ‘You are Alhana, the queen’s champion. I saw you once, in Brochena.’
Kazim looked at her questioningly.
The Jhafi smiled cautious smiles.
‘Is there aught you need?’ the spokesman asked carefully.
‘Food, perhaps? We have some coin.’
‘No coin.’ He shook his head.
‘I insist.’ She indicated the bar, reminded that her throat was very dry. She’d not drunk beer for – what, six years? That was a Hel of a long time for a girl from Norostein. ‘Some food and drink, perhaps? And a few comforts?’
The man nodded acquiescence – it wasn’t his tavern anyway – and followed them inside, a crowd of his people trailing cautiously behind. Several of the women tried to kiss her feet but she wouldn’t let them, pressing coins into their hands instead, then going behind the bar where she pumped a glass full of Easenbeer, brought by the Rondians to give their rankers a taste of home. The strong smooth malty taste was divine on her tongue, soothing on her throat.
We’ll take a keg of this if we can … Then she remembered what she’d been like when she’d drunk at the monastery, and changed her mind. No, better we don’t.
While Kazim arranged food, including a sack of lentils, she went upstairs. The girls were gone and the bodies of the soldiers were lying lifeless on the floors in pools of blood. She stepped around them, fished about in the whores’ room and found a few comforts: some scent, some soap. The mage’s room yielded parchment, quills and ink, and best of all a piece of Brician smoked cheese, the aroma alone enough to make her salivate.
When she got back to the taproom, Kazim was downing a mug of beer himself. One of the whores was hanging about him, a narrow-faced girl with a businesslike manner, but he was ignoring her. Only just, though, my lover. He was breathing heavily, and his eyes went straight to Elena’s body as she walked up. Fighting for one’s life did that to some men, made them randy as Hel afterwards. It was something about the margins between living and dying. It looked like he was affected that way, though it left her cold.
‘Get the goods into a handcart,’ she told him. She fixed the whore with a cold stare and she fled. ‘I need to speak to the headman, then we’ll go.’
They returned to the street in front of the tavern, where people were milling about in confusion. The younger ones were becoming boisterous, chanting, ‘Death to the Rondians’ and other shihadi slogans. She found the spokesman and said, ‘Rondian magi will come here, asking questions,’ she told him. ‘You must all leave.’
‘You will not stay?’
‘We can’t.’ Gurvon will rip their brains out looking for clues.
He became afraid. ‘Stay with us, Lady Alhana – or let us come with you.’
‘It’s not possible. You must get out of here.’
‘When will Queen Cera call us to arms?’ a woman asked. ‘We are waiting for her call!’ She looked fierce enough to be in the front rank.
‘One day,’ Elena replied, though she doubted Cera had any such intention. ‘But for now, you must hide.’
‘The queen is married to the infidel now,’ another spat. ‘She does not care for us.’
‘She does care,’ Elena replied. They want to believe in her and I can’t damage that, whatever I think. ‘But she is a prisoner, and so is Timori. The time will come, I swear!’
It took a long time to extricate themselves, and then to shake off those who followed them, either curious or just unwilling to let go of this new hope. Finally they were alone, trudging through the desert, Kazim hauling the handcart. They reached the skiff and she sagged against the hull, inhaled the cooling air in relief.
‘Well, we’ve made a start,’ she breathed.
At once Kazim was all over her, clutching her from behind, his hands kneading at her chest. She twisted in his arms to face him. ‘Hey, no!’
He grunted, a bundle of needs. ‘Ella …’
‘No!’ she told him firmly. ‘I’m filthy and I need to wash.’
‘But—’
She put the flat of her hands against his chest. ‘No! I’ll not have it.’ She scowled. ‘Gurvon was like this too. But I’m not, and I’ll not have you remind me of him. Understand?’
He sagged, not happy, but the name of Gurvon Gyle soured his mood. ‘All right.’
She kissed hi
s cheek. ‘Tonight, when we’re safely away from here, and clean, I’ll be all yours.’
*
The flight to their camp seemed to Kazim to take for ever, but it was only two hours. They arrived after dawn, but Elena was confident no one had seen them as they flew overhead. They washed, and as she emerged from the pool, Kazim couldn’t take his eyes from her. His blood had cooled, but the sight of her, all wet and sleek, rewakened his ardour. She lay on the blanket on her side, turning away from him, and he moulded himself to her back, then pushed himself into her, slowly filled her yoni. Their lovemaking was gentle and his climax mild, yet it felt profound, as if he had poured more than just bodily fluids inside her. Afterwards the dawn sang gently through them, blissful and engulfing.
‘When this war is over, what will we do?’ he asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
She wriggled about to face him. ‘Kazim, we might not have a lot of time together. We’re going up against an empire, and sooner or later the odds are going to be against us. I’m not going to think beyond the next mission, and nor should you.’
He hugged her to him. ‘I love you,’ he told her. I just thought love would be simpler than this.
‘I know you do,’ was the best response he could get from her. She seldom said exactly what she felt and it was beginning to eat at him. She tilted her head, and he felt her gnosis engage as she examined their bodies. ‘Our auras keep binding, do you notice? It’s like they are growing together. Sometimes it’s like I’m the earth, and you’re a tree taking root in me.’
‘I don’t know how to make it stop.’
‘It’s especially bad right now. Maybe because we just fucked. Or because you depleted your gnosis. Maybe both.’ She kissed his cheek, just above the line of his beard. ‘It’s like a sticky spiderweb, your aura; I can feel your tendrils all round me. There are too many to sever. They’re too thick.’
He gave her a hopeful smile. ‘Perhaps it is because of love?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know.’
‘Whether you love me?’
‘Yes – no, I don’t know. I meant that I don’t know about Souldrinkers.’ She stroked his cheek. ‘Kaz, for what it’s worth, I’ve never really been good at being in love. The stuff Gurvon and I did together, the plots and the scheming, felt like love at the time but wasn’t. Since then, I’ve kind of had to grow back my heartstrings. Maybe I’m falling in love and I don’t know it?’
‘You would know,’ he told her. ‘I do.’
*
Cera stared up at the windship, her whole frame quivering with too many emotions to bear. Lines from too many ballads and poems filled her head, all about love and loss, love and pain, love and parting, love and regret, and damn all this stupid obsession with love anyway. Her eyes were stinging and her skin going from hot to cold in flashes. She could hardly breathe around the lump in the back of her throat and if she had to speak she was going to scream.
It was a two-masted windcraft, larger than the single-crew skiffs the air-magi liked to use but much smaller than the trade windships that occasionally came and went. Cera had never been in one, not even Elena’s. It was big enough for half a dozen soldiers, two magi and one precious passenger: Portia Tolidi, clutching her barely swelling belly, her downcast face lost in her cascade of russet ringlets.
Francis Dorobon was prattling away in Rondian, a tongue neither of his wives understood, playing to the gallery of stony-faced Dorobon adherents who looked at his ‘foreign’ wives with utter contempt, mingled in Portia’s case with barely concealed lust. The young king was flanked by crafty-faced Craith Margham and dour Guy Lassaigne, the only ones paying him much attention.
The two queens had already said their farewells, stilted words leaving too much unsaid. Neither could be sure that they were not being spied upon, so they could do no more than hold each other in a chaste embrace and whisper. The reasons for sending Portia north to have the child made little sense to Cera; some complicated part of the Dorobon’s dealings with the Gorgio clan of Hytel. It felt like some vindictive plot by a cruel world to tear her heart in two. That Portia felt it less only increased the pain. The mother-to-be was closing up like a night-flower at dawn. Already their love-making felt like it had happened to different people in another lifetime.
How will I ever find happiness?
Cera clutched Tarita’s hand and gritted her teeth. The little maid was putting on a bravely cheerful face to help her through. I won’t cry.
She managed to stay dry-eyed, even as the windship lifted into the air and the tethers fell away, or as it climbed and the sails caught the breeze, or all the way back to the palace. I refuse to cry.
*
She did though. All that night and through the next day. Then she rose, moving like a galmi, a Brician walking statue. She put her hair up and her violet dress on, and returned to the Beggars’ Court.
The halls leading through the zenana were filled with palace maids, who used every excuse they could find to overhear what was said in the courtyard. They dropped to their knees as she passed, brushing her hems with their fingers or their lips. Voices called out blessings. She emerged into the small gardens, the dew steaming in the early spring sunlight. Voices thrummed among the crowds gathered before the iron gates. There were palace soldiers on the walls above, many more than there had been a month ago when she first started this. Servants were handing hard-baked biscuits of grain and honey through the bars, and they were being passed back through the crowd, but that all stopped when they saw her and a wall of shrill noise rose, resounding amongst the walls and towers.
‘Cera! Cera! Cera!’
I wonder what Francis thinks when he hears that sound.
‘Look! There is a Godspeaker here,’ Tarita muttered, pointing out a white-clad man with an imposing beard, waiting by the gates. He stood apart from the women, visibly upset at the press. Half a dozen rough-clad men with staves surrounded him, prodding and poking to keep the women back. The smell of so many people washed over her as she ascended the steps to her throne and the women cried out in welcome, waving their hands in the air, fingers wriggling like grass in the wind.
She raised her hand, and silence fell. There was a routine by now, a call and response that felt inclusive. ‘Good morning, my sisters,’ she called. ‘Sal’Ahm and buongiorno,’ she added, though she’d seen very few Rimoni among the women here. Most of the Rimoni in Javon were of a higher caste than the Jhafi working women who filled the courtyard; their families had a tendency to sort out their own legal issues without involving the throne. It wasn’t something Cera approved of: Rimoni vendettas were infamous.
‘Sal’Ahm!’ the women chorused, every day the response that much louder, rolling back through the crowds as those at the back reacted slower to her presence.
‘May Ahm and Sol bless our gathering.’
‘Sal’Ahm!’
‘May Bekira and Luna touch our hearts.’
‘Sal’Ahm!’
She put on her public smile, pointedly ignored the Godspeaker beside the railings and turned to her clerk. The scribe looked harassed already, and why not: what was supposed to have been a ten-minute job each morning had become an all-day marathon of note-taking and organising. Cera was vaguely surprised that Don Perdonello had not complained to her, but perhaps Gurvon Gyle had already dealt with that.
The Godspeaker hammered his staff against the railings of the iron gate. ‘Blasphemy!’ he roared. ‘Blasphemy!’ He was a big man with a big voice that boomed off the walls, blending with the resounding clangour of his staff. The crowd shrank fearfully from him, as he jabbed a finger at Cera. ‘It is blasphemy to invoke great Ahm in conjunction with your heathen Rimoni gods!’
‘The royal family are patrons of both faiths,’ Cera responded. ‘It is our right and duty to invoke both.’
‘But the women here are Amteh!’ the Godspeaker shouted back. ‘They are forbidden to speak the names of your pagan idols!’
‘They didn’t,’ Cera replied shortl
y. ‘I did.’ He could haggle all day over such trivialities, I don’t doubt. ‘Do you have a purpose here, Godspeaker?’
The holy man drew himself up to his full height. ‘I am Godspeaker Ilmaz, and I come bearing a message from the Maula of Fayeedhar Dom-al’Ahm.’ The Maula was the chief Scriptualist, most senior of those Amteh scholars in charge of the preservation and interpretation of the faith. A Maula rarely left his assigned Dom-al’Ahm, but their word held considerable weight.
‘Then perhaps you will deliver your message in private to me later today?’ Cera said evenly.
Godspeaker Ilmaz looked at her disdainfully. ‘The words of the Maula are intended also for those gathered here. They are, after all, the wives and daughters of the men of his Dom-Al’Ahm.’
Cera gave him a measuring look, decided she couldn’t stop him and would look foolish if she decided to try. She waved a hand of assent. This won’t be good.
Ilmaz puffed himself up as he drew out a scroll, ignoring the clamour rising from those at the back without a view of the proceedings who were wondering aloud what was happening. They began to surge forward and the Godspeaker’s guards shook their staves warningly. There was a feeling of impending danger in the air and Cera saw the women at the front would have little hope of staying out of harm’s way if the jostling got worse, but the Godspeaker paid no notice as he drew himself up and began to declaim:
‘Ishemmel, Maula of Fayeedhar Dom-al’Ahm, declares the gathering of women at the Beggars’ Court to be un-Amteh! It is a usurpation of the judicial rights of the clergy! He declares the passing judgement on civil cases by a woman un-Amteh! He orders all here to go home and be about their lawful business!’ He glared about him at the wall of female faces staring at him with expressions of fear and apprehension.
His words were passed back through the crowd, repeated over and over, and Cera could see the fear and the anger intensifying on the faces of those he addressed. The Rondian soldiers on the walls were looking at each other nervously, and a runner was already scooting along the walls towards the central tower.
