Starless

by Jacqueline Carey

  “Oh, Zariya!” I gasped; though it might be a breach of protocol, I could not help myself. “It’s wonderful!”

  She took one of her slow, careful breaths and glanced around the hall at the smooth, ageless faces of her family. Her mother’s expression was suffused with painfully obvious hope; her father’s was stoic. The others ran a gamut, but Prince Dozaren wore a look of tender concern that sparked a faint pang of guilt in me, as well as annoyance at the eternal scheming and maneuvering of the House of the Ageless that pitted them against one another.

  Although, having partaken of the rhamanthus, I understood it a bit better. It was a powerful experience, one I could imagine being anxious to ensure was not taken from me if I understood it to be my birthright.

  With my blood still singing in my veins, I watched Zariya place the seed in her mouth and swallow.

  It would heal her.

  I was sure of it.

  I saw the moment of awe strike her, heard her inhale sharply and fully. Her eyes widened. Canes braced in her left hand, she straightened. Now, I thought in exultation; now is the moment when Zariya will cast aside her canes and stand squarely on her own two feet, her body purged of the fever’s lingering damage.

  But no, I was wrong.

  Instead, Zariya raised her right hand; a girl’s hand, delicate and manicured, yet strong from a lifetime of gripping her canes. The gold-embroidered sleeve of her crimson silk gown slipped downward, baring the intricate traceries of Anamuht’s blessing that trailed up her slender forearm.

  The marks were alight with a golden glow, flickering with a beat that owed nothing to her heart. Her raised hand was limned in brightness. The mica-flecked scars on my cheekbones itched and prickled with a strange sympathy and I felt a breeze stirring around me.

  “Is it khementaran?” someone asked uncertainly. “So soon?”

  Sister Nizara shook her head wordlessly; whatever it was, it was nothing she’d seen before.

  “It’s not khementaran.” Zariya’s voice was thick with awe. “It’s nothing of the sort, but I don’t know what.”

  Beating more rapidly, the golden glow sputtered and died like a new-kindled flame starved for air, leaving behind the faint red marks that laced her hand and climbed her arm like a vine. With a sigh, Zariya lowered her hand. I felt the breeze around me die, too. Averting her head, she shifted one of her canes back into her right hand and leaned on both of them.

  My heart ached for her, and even though I knew the answer, I had to ask the question. “Your legs?”

  Lifting her head, Zariya met my gaze. Her luminous eyes were filled with a mixture of wonder and profound regret. “I’m afraid those limbs remain unchanged, my darling.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  There was a great deal of speculation in the wake of the rhamanthus ceremony, none of it leading to any conclusions. At a loss to explain the phenomenon, Sister Nizara pledged once more to scour the archives.

  Zariya was quiet and withdrawn, offering little to the discussion. I felt her disappointment as keenly as the edge of a blade, but she bore it with dignity during this last night on Zarkhoumi soil.

  It was not until we were alone in her chambers that she allowed herself to weep, curled tightly into herself atop her bed, her shoulders shaking and her breath hitching in her chest. I climbed onto the pallet behind her and held her in my arms, offering what meager comfort my presence afforded her, my throat tight with sympathy.

  Still, it was not long before Zariya turned to me. Her face was wet with tears, but her expression was fierce. “No more!” she breathed. “That is the last time you’ll hear me weep for my affliction, my darling.”

  I touched her damp cheek. “It is the only time, and you are more than entitled to your grief.”

  She shook her head. “It was hope that made me weak. Now I must be strong. And I must remember I have been given gifts I never dared dream of. Tomorrow, we set sail across the sea, you and I.”

  I smiled at her. “I daresay you are a bit more excited by the prospect than I.”

  “You will be a wondrous sailor,” Zariya said in a firm tone. “As you are wondrous at so many things, my heart. And if there is in truth a darkness rising against which I must stand, I will do so because I have you to lean upon.”

  “And I will be beside you to the end of the earth,” I said. “No matter what may come.”

  “Miasmania.” She gave the word a wry twist, pulling herself upright and scrubbing at her tear-stained face. “I think the Therinians are right, we have been isolated here in Zarkhoum. And I do not believe that they will be so quick to dismiss the signs of prophecy.”

  I sat and crossed my legs beneath me. “Nor the notion that you might have a role to play.”

  “You and I, my shadow,” Zariya corrected me. “Wind and fire. You felt it, didn’t you?”

  I nodded.

  She spread her fingers, then clenched her hand into a fist and regarded it. “In the moment, I truly felt I might summon the lightning like Anamuht herself. But then…” She opened her hand again as though to release some fragile, ephemeral thing in her grasp. “The moment passed.”

  “Then it will come again,” I said.

  “But will I be ready when it does?” she inquired. “You are Pahrkun’s chosen, capable of channeling his wind, and your life has been honed to a single purpose. All I have done is manage to survive my family.”

  I thought about it. “Well, it seems to me that Anamuht considered that quite sufficient.”

  It won a smile from her. “A fair point, and perhaps it is so. It is to be hoped that we will learn more of what the Therinians know on our journey.”

  “We can but try,” I said dryly, making her smile again.

  Zariya glanced toward the doors onto the enclosed garden. “The hour grows late and we ought to sleep, dearest.” Her voice changed and took on a vulnerable note. “Would you mind staying with me tonight instead of taking to your pallet?”

  I shook my head. “Of course not.”

  Nim the Bright Moon was three-quarters full and high overhead, the sole occupant of the starless skies that night, spilling silvery light into the bedchamber in the small hours before dawn. I held Zariya close, tucked into the curve of my body, feeling her ribcage rise and fall beneath my arm. She slept like a child, perfect and trusting. I gazed at her profile, lips sweetly parted, eyelids yet swollen from her bout of tears.

  I thought about the fact that at the end of our journey, she would wed the Therinian Lord Rygil. We would always belong to each other, Zariya and I. But it would be different.

  “You are my life,” I whispered to her in the moon-silvered darkness. “You are my heart and my home. You are my honor. And I promise you, this will never change.”

  She murmured an unintelligible affirmation in her sleep.

  At length, I slept, too.

  In the morning, Zariya set her birds free.

  I did not know what she was about when she asked me to bring the three-tiered wooden cage into the garden, though of course I did so willingly. Her little friends chirped and cheeped and clung to their perches, beating their wings in confusion. Zariya followed on her canes. “There,” she said breathlessly, and I set the cage down on a bench. With deft fingers, she opened the door.

  The yellow songbird that Prince Dozaren had given her was the first to venture across the threshold, taking wing with a trill. The others made more tentative forays, but one by one, they took flight. One fellow with iridescent green feathers circled the garden multiple times, returning to chatter at us, but in the end even he vanished over the high wall.

  With a sigh, Zariya closed the door of the empty cage. “Onward, my darling.”

  I picked up the cage. “Onward.”

  Members of the Queen’s Guard came to fetch Zariya’s trunks and cart them to the ship, accompanied by her maidservant Nalah, who would attend to Zariya during the journey.

  There was to be a formal procession from the palace to the harbor, but among the ro
yal women, only Sister Nizara would accompany it. She waited with me, carrying a steel-bound coffer in her arms, while Zariya bade her final farewells to her mother and aunts and those of her sisters who had come to be there on this last morning. For my part, I would miss Zariya’s birds more than her kin, but I kept my mouth shut on that thought, only asking Sister Nizara if she had found aught of significance in the archives. She shook her head with quiet regret and promised to continue searching.

  Somehow, I did not believe there was anything to find. Whatever was happening, I doubted there was a precedent for it.

  Once again, I wished Brother Yarit was here. But no, the Fortress of the Winds was far away; and today, I would leave it even farther behind me, taking with me only the lessons and the training that had been instilled in me there.

  When the procession gathered, Sister Nizara made a ceremony of opening the coffer she carried to display the bounty within it, an incalculable wealth of rhamanthus seeds glowing like a great pile of embers.

  “Zariya of the House of the Ageless, Sun-Blessed sister, here is your dowry,” she said formally to Zariya. “Three thousand seeds tallied by my own hand.” Closing the lid, she turned to the king. “My liege and father, I give this into your keeping that it may be kept under guard at all times until the wedding takes place.” King Azarkal accepted the coffer, then turned it in his hands. Sister Nizara removed a key strung around her neck on a golden chain and locked the coffer, then presented the key to Zariya, already seated within her litter. “My sister, I give this into your keeping as a token that the dowry is yours and yours alone to bestow upon your household.”

  “May it be given into Khai’s keeping instead?” Zariya inquired.

  Her sister hesitated, then gave a decisive nod. Beckoning me forward, she placed the chain around my neck. “I can think of no safer place for it.”

  I tucked the key beneath my tunic, and with that, we were under way.

  The procession wound its way through the streets of Merabaht, flanked by a double line of mounted Royal Guardsmen, a score of whom would be accompanying us to Therin. As before, I walked beside Zariya’s litter, trusting more to my skills afoot than on horseback.

  I would not say the mood in the city was peaceful, but it was calmer than it had been since I had first set foot within it. Prince Dozaren had taken measures to quell the unrest he had exploited. The Mad Priest was dead and gone and Anamuht the Purging Fire had trod its streets for the first time in living memory for many of its denizens, who were waiting and watchful, mindful that she had renewed the longstanding pledge of favor that the Sacred Twins had bestowed upon the Sun-Blessed.

  I daresay no one wanted to invoke a goddess’s wrath, and for that, I did not blame them one whit.

  The Therinian state-ship was even larger than I remembered it. A vast barge four stories tall, it bore rows of massive oars that protruded from its lower levels. Atop the uppermost deck were four masts affixed with myriad furled sails, pennants in the cool blue and green colors of Therin fluttering atop them.

  Lord Rygil hailed us from the top deck. “King Azarkal, I am unworthy of the honor!” he called merrily. “I pray you and your daughter, my most dearly betrothed, will accept our humble excuse for hospitality on our sojourn together.”

  The king and his honor guard and other members of the entourage dismounted, and there was a flurry of farewells there in the harbor, the sea breeze blowing from the west.

  Somehow, I found myself caught up in an unexpected embrace from Prince Dozaren.

  “My dear Khai,” he murmured against my temple. “I am sorry about the way matters fell out.” His strong hands flexed on my shoulders, his black hair falling over his brow and his dark gaze intent upon my own. “Promise me that you will keep my sister safe?”

  By all the fallen stars, he confused me.

  I gave him a brusque nod. “Honor beyond honor, my lord. All that is within my power, I will do.”

  Dozaren released me with a final squeeze and a sigh, turning to part the curtains of Zariya’s litter and plant a kiss on her veiled cheek. What they said to each other, I did not hear.

  And then there were no more farewells to be said. Sister Nizara lifted her hand in a formal blessing. “May the Sacred Twins grace and guide your journey, and Zar the Sun, the father of us all, ever light your path.”

  The king and half the guards boarded first. I walked behind Zariya’s litter up the wide boarding ramp, the remaining guards bringing up the rear. Above us, Lord Rygil saluted us and called out a welcome.

  Zariya and I parted ways with the king’s entourage when cheerful attendants directed her bearers to a private chamber allotted to us on the third story of the ship, where Nalah was arranging Zariya’s trunks and unpacking some of her things. It was even more richly appointed than the chamber in which Lady Marylis had received me, and I was pleased by the indication that the Therinians meant to treat Zariya with the respect due her stature.

  Once the bearers had departed to stow the litter, Zariya sank into one of the tall, high-backed chairs, allowing her eyes to close briefly. “Are they treating you well thus far, Nalah?”

  “Well enough, my lady,” her maidservant said uncertainly. “I’ve been given a berth to share with the other ladies’ maids. They are not unkind but their manner of speaking is … strange.”

  “So it is.” Zariya opened her eyes. “But I trust we will all become accustomed to it. At least you no longer need spy upon me and carry tales to Queen Adinah.”

  Her maidservant flushed. “It was never out of spite or malice, my lady.”

  Zariya regarded her. “The women’s quarter of the Sun Palace was not an easy place to be a child, and I daresay in most ways it was more difficult to be a servant. Let us make a clean start of it, shall we?”

  Nalah offered her a fervent salute. “Yes, my lady.”

  There was a knock at the chamber door, which was unlatched and swung open before Nalah could answer it; moving without thinking, I spun and drew my weapons, yakhan and kopar singing free of their scabbards.

  Lady Marylis blinked at me. “Oh, my! Is that a traditional Zarkhoumi greeting?”

  I scowled at her in response and sheathed my weapons. “Of course not.”

  Ignoring my rudeness, she addressed Zariya. “Your Highness, if it might amuse you to watch the departure, there is a deck at the rear of the ship on this level secured for your privacy.”

  “That is kind of you,” Zariya said to her. “You need not go to such measures to accommodate our customs.”

  “Your customs.” Lady Marylis pursed her lips. “Such a quaint word, is it not? Such a small word for the differences between us. We are, shall I say, unaccustomed to such segregation between women and men in Therin. If you would care to join my brother on the top deck, I suspect he would not mind in the least.”

  Zariya smiled wryly. “I do appreciate the invitation, but perhaps it would be best not to scandalize my father on our first day at sea.” She hesitated, then added, “And I fear I might find it difficult to make the ascent without assistance. You see, I suffered Dhanbu fever as a child, and it has left me with … certain limitations.”

  I saw Marylis take in the implications, saw her bright gaze dart to Zariya’s canes propped nearby. “Ah. I infer that you and my brother will not dance the wild gavotte at your wedding.”

  “No.” Reaching for her canes, Zariya levered herself to her feet and lifted her chin. “Does it matter?”

  A series of complicated expressions crossed Marylis’s face. “Call it a selfish whim, but my brother is desirous of an heir, Your Highness.”

  “Of course.” Zariya inclined her head. “The physicians assure me that I’m perfectly capable of bearing children.”

  “And Zariya’s dowry of three thousand rhamanthus seeds is also assured,” I muttered. Although I liked the woman well enough, I was mindful of the fact that no matter what manner of man her brother was, he would never have sued for the hand of the least daughter of the Ho
use of the Ageless were it not for her staggering dowry.

  This comment, too, Lady Marylis ignored. “I suspect it was not your choice to withhold this piece of information,” she said to Zariya. “Thus I shall flout convention and thank you for your candor in the hopes that it will encourage you to likewise flout custom, for my brother is eager to make greater acquaintance with his bride on this journey.” Her expression softened. “Doubtless it escaped your notice, but we in Therin value quick-wittedness over physical prowess. The game of questions to which you put your suitors surely demonstrates the former.” She paused. “Indeed, I made mock of my brother for being so foolish as to wonder whom you might have chosen had the other Granthian proved victorious.”

  It was clear that the comment was a question, and Zariya frowned as she considered how best to answer it in a manner both truthful and diplomatic. “I cannot say, my lady. The opportunity to make that choice was taken from me, and though it cost a man his life, perhaps I must be grateful for it. I do not deny that Sandrath the Quiet’s gift and his answers moved me, but I am not sure I would have been happy in Granth. The questions were not the only test,” she added. “Khai donned the guise of a palace maidservant that he might observe my suitors as they awaited their audiences. Your brother spoke courteously to him.”

  Lady Marylis let out a delighted laugh. “Ah, well! You shall be downright miserable in Therin.” She gestured. “But for now, Your Highness, shall we witness your departure from the shores of Zarkhoum?”

  “I would like that,” Zariya admitted.

  It was a sight to behold.

  Twin sets of oars on either side of the state-ship dipped and hauled, churning the water and propelling the mammoth barge out of the harbor. Standing beside Zariya, I watched the coastline recede. Above us, I heard the rush and snap of sails unfurling and catching wind. We picked up speed, although not a great deal of it. As I understood, the inbound journey from Therin had been swift and smooth, the ship riding the great eastern current. Our return would be neither, for now we must navigate the complicated labyrinth of smaller counter-currents and eddies closer to the Nexus and rely more heavily upon wind- and oar-power.