Starless

by Jacqueline Carey

  If King Azarkal was unwontedly reserved, no one noticed. It was after the meal had concluded, when talk turned to the attacks and their aftermath, that the mood of the occasion changed.

  I could see a storm gathering on Princess Fazarah’s features, the pulse-points of khementaran beating more rapidly as the twins argued heatedly for doubling the City Guard and taking more aggressive measures in the lower levels. Seated beside her, her husband, Tarkhal, stroked her back in an effort to calm her.

  It was to no avail.

  “You are wrong,” she announced, unable to hold her tongue any longer. “Don’t you understand, the City Guard is part of the problem! Everyone knows they’re riddled with corruption.” She turned to the king. “Father, if you want to root out the malcontents, a show of beneficence and the offer of a reward would do a great deal more than an increased show of force.”

  King Azarkal gave her a brooding look. “Do you say so? The time for this counsel would have been before the Children of Miasmus attacked our household, daughter, not after.”

  Fazarah’s color rose. “I tried to offer you counsel, Father!” she said with dogged persistence. “You would not hear it. It has taken my brother’s death to give me a chance to speak!”

  The king’s features, unlined features that appeared younger than his own daughter’s, hardened. “You overstep your bounds.”

  “She speaks the truth, Your Majesty,” her husband, Tarkhal, murmured. His gaze was downcast, but the line of his jaw was stubborn. “Fazarah and I know the hearts of the less fortunate of Merabaht in a way that you cannot. Will you not at least listen to her?”

  Back and forth they went, voices rising with increased passion and acrimony, other voices chiming in as the argument escalated, Queen Makesha wailing at the desecration of her son’s funeral feast and the other royal women pleading for an end to the unpleasantness.

  Me, I wished I was elsewhere, and I knew Zariya did, too. As much as she admired her rebel sister, she loved her royal father, and it grieved her to hear them quarrel so violently.

  While the discussion raged, Prince Dozaren seated himself on a cushion next to Zariya. “I have a gift for you, little sister,” he whispered, holding his cupped hands out to her. “’Tis but a trifling thing. I meant to give it to you the night of Izaria’s wedding. Perhaps it will give you at least one happy memory of tonight.”

  She took a shallow breath. “Not another bird, surely!”

  “Oh, but it is!” Dozaren made his hands flutter like wings, then opened them to reveal a wooden whistle carved in the shape of a bird. He put the mouthpiece to his lips and blew a warbling tune, then gave it to her. “Now when your little friends sing their merry songs, you can join them.”

  Zariya examined the whistle with delight. “It’s so cleverly made! Wherever did you find such a thing?”

  Prince Dozaren smiled at her. “I met a cunning carver in the market one day and thought of you. Do you like it?”

  She kissed his cheek. “Very much so, my darling. Thank you.”

  Unexpectedly, Dozaren’s gaze shifted to me, his expression turning to one of grave respect. He moved his cushion so that he and Zariya and I were seated in a cluster. “Forgive me, chosen. I have been remiss in not thanking you for your service. I have heard wondrous tales of your prowess during the attack.” He offered me a salute, then took my right hand in his, clasping it warmly and looking into my eyes. “I have no words to tell you how grateful I am that my favorite sister has such a protector.”

  Although his tone was utterly sincere, I was uncomfortable. It was the first time I’d been the recipient of his attention, and I discovered he had an unnerving way of looking at a person as though no one else in the world existed. He had fine features with lashes as long as a girl’s, and he wore the mask of his youth more lightly than most members of the House of the Ageless. I had to remind myself that this smooth-skinned young man was at least seventy-five years of age.

  I inclined my head to him. “It is my honor.”

  Dozaren’s thumb stroked the back of my hand in a manner that was unsettling and intimate. “I am not the warrior that my brother Tazaresh was, but I have some skill with a blade. Perhaps you would consent to school me in the techniques of the brotherhood?”

  I fought the urge to yank my hand away. I didn’t know what game the prince was playing at, but it stirred strange sensations in me and made me uneasy. “Of course.”

  “My thanks.” He turned my hand over, running his thumb over the thick ridge of callus below the base of my fingers. “Here’s to the hand that saved Zariya’s life. I would kiss it if I dared.”

  “Leave Khai be, my dearest.” There was a rare edge to Zariya’s voice. “It’s disrespectful of you to flirt at our brother’s funeral. And where is your lady wife this evening, anyway?”

  Dozaren released my hand and smiled at her. “Eilish is indisposed. And flirting with your shadow is more respectful than arguing with Father, little sister. Tazaresh would certainly have preferred the former.” He rose gracefully. “I’ll arrange a time when we might spar, chosen.”

  I managed a nod. When he had withdrawn to his own seat, I gave Zariya an inquiring look.

  She responded with the Shahalim hand signal that meant later.

  At the head of the low table, King Azarkal was declaring a forcible resolution to the argument with his rebel daughter, who bowed her head in a gesture of acquiescence that did little to conceal the fact that her anger continued to smolder as surely as her brother’s funeral pyre. The king surveyed his unruly household, and the mask of his youth weighed heavy on his features.

  “My son is dead,” he said in a harsh voice. “Let us offer one last toast to his memory.” He hoisted his goblet. “To Tazaresh!”

  “To Tazaresh,” we echoed, and drank.

  TWENTY-NINE

  While Prince Tazaresh’s funeral pyre crumbled into ashes in the Garden of Sowing Time, Zariya and I whispered in her chambers.

  “I am sorry if Dozaren disturbed you.” Her eyes glimmered in the light of a single oil lamp. I sat cross-legged on my pallet, resting my chin on folded arms on the edge of her bed. “He meant no harm by it.”

  I could still feel his thumb stroking my hand, and the unsettling sensations it stirred in me. “Why, then?”

  Zariya hesitated. “Dozaren takes his pleasure with men as well as women,” she said quietly. “It is why our father has never favored him.”

  I said nothing.

  Her gaze was shrewd. “Have I shocked you?”

  I shook my head. “No, I knew such things existed. Brother Yarit told me so. But why me?”

  “Oh, my lovely boy!” Zariya gave her soft, breathless laugh. “Need you ask?” She touched my cheek. “You combine the best attributes of both. I daresay my brother looked upon you tonight, took notice, and desired you. But we have never spoken of desire, you and I, have we?”

  My shoulders tensed. “No.”

  She regarded me. “I often know your thoughts before you give voice to them, my darling. And yet, I know nothing of your desires. It is a closed door I have not attempted to open.”

  I looked away. “There is nothing to tell.”

  “Have you never considered your body as aught but a weapon, Khai?” There was genuine curiosity in Zariya’s voice. “Have you never considered it as an instrument of pleasure?”

  I flushed and looked back at her in the flickering lamplight. “Have you?”

  “Ah, well, it is a damaged instrument,” she said wryly. “But yes, of course, I have considered it.”

  “Of course?” I echoed.

  “I am crippled in body, my darling, not in desire or imagination,” Zariya said. “Do you not know that most of the royal women, including my own mother, are convinced I’ve already taken you as a lover?”

  I stared at her in disbelief. “Is such a thing even permitted?”

  “Permitted?” Zariya laughed. “Oh, gods, no! But that’s never stopped such dalliances from happenin
g in the women’s quarter, and it’s considerably less risky than dallying with the captain of the Queen’s Guard like Rashina. You’ve never noticed?” I shook my head mutely. “Ah, and now I have shocked you,” she observed. “Though perhaps that is not altogether a bad thing. As charming as I find your innocence, it may be to your benefit if you were not quite so naive in the ways of the world.”

  “Shall I take your brother for a lover, then?” I said stiffly. “Or both of you?”

  “Don’t be angry with me, my shadow,” she said. “It is only that desire is a part of being human, and I would not have you deprive yourself of such knowledge, or be discomfited by its existence.” She yawned. “Forgive me, but it has been a long and difficult day.”

  I dragged my pallet to block the door to Zariya’s bedchamber and blew out the lamp, but sleep evaded me.

  Desire.

  Was that what I felt when Dozaren stroked my hand? I didn’t trust him; and yet something within me had responded to his touch, to the way that he had looked at me. And something within me had been profoundly shocked by the ease with which Zariya had said the royal women believed us lovers. What she referenced with such careless ease seemed a world-shattering notion to me.

  At length, I did sleep; and in the morning, I found that I looked at the world a little bit differently.

  I discerned relationships between the king’s wives that had utterly evaded me before, affinities and jealousies that were owed to more than just ambition, rivalry, and shifting alliances. I saw the indulgent assumptions that they made when they looked at Zariya and me.

  Zariya … yes, I looked at her differently, too. My soul’s twin, the reality of her presence still so new to me. I saw her fierceness, her delicate beauty, and her courage in a different way. I considered the shape of her lips, the subtle hollow at the base of her throat. At unexpected times, my heart gave a strange, startled flutter within my breast at the sight of her.

  I could not help it.

  She bore it with quiet amusement.

  I had assumed that Sister Nizara would postpone her retreat for at least a day after holding vigil over Prince Tazaresh’s pyre, but she paid a visit to the women’s quarter to offer a final word of condolence to her mother and bid us farewell before venturing into the desert.

  “Are you sure it’s wise?” Queen Makesha fretted. “If anything were to happen to you…” She did not finish her thought.

  “I am sure of nothing, Mother,” Sister Nizara said somberly, her eyes red-rimmed with sleeplessness. “And that is why I must do this.”

  The High Priestess meant to ride to the Fortress of the Winds to take counsel with Brother Yarit and retreat to one of the high places in the mountains where the Seers sought clarity, hoping that Anamuht might find her there. A handful of priestesses and two score of the Royal Guard would accompany her.

  “Have you any words for the Seer, Khai?” Sister Nizara asked me.

  “Tell him about the Mad Priest and the sign of the black star.” I paused, remembering the maimed woman at the Lucky Tortoise. Why had she aided me? Unless it was for some deeper reason that had not yet been revealed, it could only be out of a sense of guilt at having betrayed Brother Yarit. “And tell him … tell him I think that Belisha did her best to make amends.”

  The High Priestess looked bemused. “Belisha?”

  I nodded. “He will know what it means.”

  In the wake of shocking violence and unexpected grief, the women’s quarter settled slowly into a new pattern of normalcy. I spent more time training the Queen’s Guard and recommended to Captain Tarshim that he replace their ceremonial spears, which were impractical in close quarters, with yakhans or a serviceable short sword. He gave me a dour look and informed me that the procurement of steel weaponry was a sensitive topic at the moment. It was a pity, but I did my best with what Vironesh had taught me of the tactics of fighting with a spear.

  At least it helped hone their skills and it kept me from losing my wits at the sheer tedium. Within days of the funeral, I would have welcomed the opportunity to spar with Prince Dozaren no matter how disconcerting I found the experience, but he had not contacted me.

  Eventually Zariya took pity on me and dispatched me to the city to learn what I might.

  The lower levels of Merabaht were in a sullen mood. It had been almost two weeks since the attack, but the City Guard was still out in force, swaggering through the streets, hands on the hilts of their kopars. There were few women venturing out in public, and those who were hurried about their business. Here and there I saw the sign of the black star painted on walls and doors, and it seemed to me that it had gone from a symbol of desecration to one of defiance. For the first time since I’d been pelted with rocks in Three-Copper Quarter, I felt apprehensive.

  “Hey, girl!” The leader of a squadron of City Guardsmen hailed me. “What are you doing out here on your own? Don’t you know it’s dangerous?” He sauntered over and looked me up and down, his men gathered behind him. “Looking to put a bit of food on the table, are you?” He jingled a purse at his belt. “We’ll help you out in exchange for a bit of sport.”

  “No, thank you,” I murmured, and moved to pass him.

  He moved to block me, his men fanning out. “Be polite, eh? I made you a generous offer.”

  I eyed him. “And I am not who or what you think I am. Step aside.”

  The guard leader laughed and raised both hands in a gesture of mock fear. “Oh, dear! What is it I’ve found here? A mouse with the heart of a lion?”

  What little patience I possessed deserted me. I plucked his twin kopars from his sash and bashed him neatly on either side of the head. He went down like a sack of rocks. The other guards stood stunned.

  “Shadow,” someone whispered from an alley; I’d betrayed the guise of my women’s garments with a single display of prowess. “Shadow!”

  The back of my neck prickled. The Mad Priest had exhorted his followers to kill me; I could not guess if they yet wanted me dead, or if in defying the City Guard, I might, like the black star sign, become a symbol of something else. And I did not mean to stay and find out. “Stand down or face the Scouring Wind’s wrath,” I said softly to the remaining guards. They moved out of my way with alacrity. I tossed their leader’s kopars on the hard-packed dirt of the street and made my way out of Three-Copper Quarter, heading for the wharves.

  In the harbor, I found more guards—Royal Guardsmen this time—and a commotion.

  “I am a man of Granth and an honest trader!” a thickset Granthian fellow was shouting in fury. “You have no right to detain me! No right!”

  Intrigued, I sidled closer.

  “No one is saying you are guilty of wrongdoing, messire.” The assurance was uttered by a slender, nervous-looking Zarkhoumi in robes befitting a wealthy merchant or a palace official. “But I have been tasked by the king with examining the manifests for cargo delivered within these past six months.” He waved a piece of parchment. “According to this, Prince Elizar of the House of the Ageless commissioned and accepted delivery of a shipment of Granthian daggers from you.”

  The Granthian glowered. “What of it? Do you say that if a crown prince of Zarkhoum wants to buy five hundred pig-stickers, I should refuse him?”

  “Again, no one says such a thing,” the official assured him. “It is only that King Azarkal wishes to know more of this bargain.”

  “Well, tell him to ask his bloody damn son!” the Granthian said in an aggrieved tone.

  Prince Elizar.

  That was news in truth, and a greater piece of it than I had expected to learn; and if it had not been for my encounter with the City Guard, I would not have been in a position to learn it before it reached the court. I did not wait to see how events played out with the Granthian, but made a hasty retreat back to the palace.

  I found Zariya in the Hall of Harmonious Beauty and signed talk privately to her; she excused herself to use the privy.

  “What is it, my darling?” she asked
in her chambers.

  “I was down at the harbor,” I said. “Your father’s men have found a Granthian trader with a piece of paper that shows he delivered a shipment of daggers to your brother Elizar.”

  Zariya sat down on the divan and covered her mouth, eyes wide with surprise. “Elizar!”

  “You don’t think him capable of it?” I asked.

  She frowned. “I thought him resigned to the fact that our father favored Tazaresh, and Kazaran before him.”

  “Both of whom are dead,” I said. “To the lion go the spoils.”

  “Unless the lion gets caught,” Zariya said. “The question is, what do we do with this information? Is there any advantage to being the first to possess it? I might warn Adinah and earn my way out of her bad graces,” she mused. “If Elizar did it, she had to be involved. She’s the ambitious one; he cares more for his precious collection than the throne. But then, if Elizar is guilty, then he is guilty of sedition and behind the attack on the wedding procession as surely as the Mad Priest. No.” She shook her head; “I think we do nothing with this knowledge, my heart. It will be out soon enough.”

  “Perhaps,” I said. “The trader was uncooperative.”

  “Granthians are notoriously stubborn,” she noted. “And you said there was a record of the shipment in the manifest. I daresay the ambassador will be called in to sort it out in short order.”

  Zariya was right. By the day’s end, the details had reached the women’s quarter. Prince Elizar had been accused of purchasing a shipment of Granthian daggers and using them to arm the Children of Miasmus. Under duress, the trader had confirmed that the daggers matched the weapons used in the attack. He reported that the purchase was arranged by a representative of the prince and produced a letter of commission stamped with Elizar’s personal seal, an intricate stamp familiar to dozens of traders who had procured curios for his collection over the years. Elizar adamantly denied the charges and claimed that the stamp must have been stolen from him, even as another precious item had been stolen from him. A search of his quarters determined that the stamp was in his possession.