by Grace Draven
It was close to dawn before the gathering broke up, and guests gathered their things in preparation to leave. Ildiko hid a yawn behind her hand as Brishen helped her with her cloak.
“Did you enjoy yourself?” he asked.
She rested her hand in the crook of his elbow and leaned her head on his arm. “Thoroughly,” she said. “And your luck held. No potatoes at dinner.”
He nuzzled the top of her head. “Proof that there are merciful gods. Or at least a merciful cook.”
Serovek approached them after bidding farewell to another couple. “It’s been a long time since I’ve visited Saggara. Has your wife had much time to put a woman’s mark on it yet?”
Brishen recognized a hint when he heard one, and Serovek’s was less than subtle. “A little. Let me return the favor and invite you to share a meal with us.”
Serovek’s reply came as no surprise. “I heartily accept. Name the day and time. I’ll be there. I look forward to meeting your lieutenant again. A fascinating woman, that Anhuset.”
By the time they’d descended the mountainside and tracked a path through the tall dropseed grass toward Saggara, it was early morning, and the sun cut a blinding swath of light across the plains. While the entire Kai troop retreated into the depths of their cloaks and hoods, Ildiko dropped her hood and turned her face to the sun. Eyes closed, she bathed in its rays with a smile.
Brishen watched her silently for a moment before speaking. “Do you miss human companionship, Ildiko?”
She opened one eye to stare at him. “Sometimes. Your people, however, have been very welcoming to me.”
“Except for my mother.”
“Your words, not mine,” she said with a smile. “But it would be nice not to flounder so often or listen so closely to voices because I can’t always read Kai expressions.”
“It’s been a trial for you.” The words felt heavy on his tongue. He wanted her to deny them.
Ildiko shook her head. “No, simply a challenge. There’s an easiness to being among familiar things and people. You don’t have to try as hard.”
Though he agreed with her about the difficulty in reading expressions—he dealt with the same when interacting with humans—he offered a counter argument. “We smile as you do. Frown as you do. Laugh and joke as you do.”
This time she opened both eyes and sat straighter in the saddle. “True, but I think a lot of human expression comes from the eyes—how they move, blink, change color with emotion. We learn to read such signs from birth. It becomes second nature. I have a difficult time with the Kai because your eyes don’t change. If they move, I can’t tell. If they change color, I don’t notice it. Do the Kai weep when they grieve?”
It was if she’d cracked the lock on a chest he’d been trying to pick for years. The eyes. The key to understanding humans was learning to read their dreadful eyes. The same could be said of the Kai.
“You have that mysterious smile again, husband.” She arched an eyebrow.
“You’ve made me consider something I hadn’t before. We have a lot to learn from each other, wife.”
Ildiko stared at him for a moment before pulling her hood back over her head. “I’m eager to learn.”
“So am I,” he said.
By the time they made it through Saggara’s inner gates, Ildiko was asleep in the saddle, kept upright purely by her body’s instinctive memory of how to ride. Brishen carried her upstairs to her chambers and left her with an equally sleepy Sinhue to prepare for bed.
He didn’t expect her to join him later, so she surprised him by appearing before him as he sat on the edge of his bed pondering the information Serovek had given him.
Dressed in one of her white nightrails, she nudged his knees apart until she stood between his legs. Her scent—cloves and the green of dropseed—seeped into his nostrils. Brishen tilted his head up. “I thought you’d be asleep in your bed.”
Her hands were soft on his cheeks, fingertips stroking delicate lines and swirls across his cheekbones and temples. He closed his eyes as she threaded his hair through her fingers. “Am I no longer welcomed in your bed?”
Brishen sighed his pleasure as her hands tracked paths down his neck to his shoulders and began to knead. “Don’t be foolish, wife.”
“What troubles you, Brishen?” Ildiko’s magical hands traveled into his scalp, massaging gently. Brishen moaned. “You’ve been acting strangely, ever since the dinner at High Salure. What did Lord Serovek tell you?”
It was hard to think while Ildiko caressed him into a stupor. Who knew that something so simple as a scalp massage would reduce him to a clod-pated idiot? He wrestled his thoughts together. At some point he’d have to tell her of Belawat’s plans. While he disliked the idea of scaring her, ignorance had killed more than its fair share of people, and he wanted her aware of the danger.
Still, there was time enough to disturb her sleep tomorrow. For now, he’d offer something else—something that would disturb his sleep for many nights to come.
“Lord Pangion called you stunning.”
For a moment the massaging stopped, only starting again when Brishen clasped her wrists and nudged her to continue. The feeble light cast by stray sunbeams that crept through the closed window shutters revealed the shadow of a blush on her cheeks.
“Did he? That was very kind of him.”
His homely wife—beautiful, yet not. Stunning to a man whose gaze had caressed her from head to toe and whose voice had proclaimed both approval and interest. “Or simply very truthful.”
Ildiko laughed and tugged teasingly on a few strands of his hair. “Ah, my husband, what a silver tongue you have.” Her fingers traced the curves of his ears, sending gooseflesh across his back and down his arms. His eyes closed as he sank into the sensation.
A question that lingered in the back of his mind since Serovek had first come through the doors to greet them rushed to the forefront. Brishen opened his eyes to meet Ildiko’s smiling gaze. “And Serovek, Ildiko? Would human women think him handsome?”
Twin frown lines marred her brow before fading as she pondered his question. “Honestly? Extremely handsome.” A seeping cold settled into Brishen’s blood at her words. “That he’s wealthy and intelligent as well doesn’t hurt. That he’s also unmarried puts a target on his back for every Beladine matchmaker in a nine-league radius.” She gave Brishen a lighthearted grin. Such a human smile. So much like Serovek’s. “Why do you ask?”
He couldn’t answer her. The impetus for his question had been sparked by a jumble of emotions and thoughts. He needed time to sort them out, make sense of them to himself before he could make sense of them to her. The clearest emotions he had now were regret—regret that he’d returned the offer of dinner to the Beladine lord—and the unshakeable certainty he’d invited a wolf among them.
“Brishen?” Ildiko’s smile had vanished. She worried her lower lip between her teeth. Brishen had the stray thought that if a Kai had done such a thing, they’d turn their mouth into a bloody mess.
He shrugged. “Just curious. I’ve had little interest in humans until now. With a human wife, it will do me good to learn more about them.”
She started to answer him but was stopped by another yawn which she hid behind her hand. Brishen rose and folded back the bedcovers. “In with you,” he said. “You’re asleep on your feet, and my head aches from all the sunlight.”
Ildiko scooted across the bed to the side she claimed. She was asleep the moment she snuggled into her pillows. Brishen used that boon to strip naked. Unsure of how she might react and not wishing to scare her back to her chamber, he always slept half clothed beside her. It was hot and uncomfortable but worth it to have her in his bed. This time he’d sleep as he usually did when he was alone.
He slipped under the covers and pulled her against him. Her braid slid across his arm, a colorful serpent. He captured it and wound its length around his forearm before letting it unwind and fall away to shelter behind Ildiko’s slender back.
“I’m not human, wife,” he whispered into the darkness.
Shock rounded his eyes at Ildiko’s response, slurred with sleep and nearly incoherent. “But you’re still mine, husband.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
If there was anything more odorous than an amaranthine dye house, Ildiko had yet to learn of it. She covered her nose with a handkerchief and followed the master dyer into the billowing clouds of choking steam that poured off the tops of open kettles suspended over fires. The smells of salt, soda ash, and shellfish combined to make her eyes water and her throat close.
Kai laborers worked in teams, taking turns at tending fires, dunking cloth in boiling vats of amaranthine, and setting the cloth to dry on wooden horses. The house’s muddy floor looked like an emptied battlefield before all the blood washed away in a rainstorm. Puddles of water in shades from palest pink to deep ruby splashed across her boots as she trudged through the muck. She was far too busy trying to keep her balance to pay much attention to the stares her presence drew.
Anhuset muttered under her breath as she followed Ildiko. “It would have been easier to have someone deliver samples of the cloth to the fortress.”
Ildiko chose not to answer her, preferring to keep her mouth closed and the odor of the dye off her palate as long as possible. It would indeed have been much easier to order samples brought to the fortress, but Ildiko wanted to see the dye houses and learn how the Kai made the valuable commodity that made the human kingdoms covet the vivid amaranthine.
She listened closely as the master dyer, a weathered Kai with hands permanently painted reddish-purple, described the process of extracting the dye from the freshwater bitter mollusk they fished from the nearby lake and dying the stacks of bleached linen, wool, and silk stored in another room. It was messy, smelly, sometimes dangerous work involving boiling the mollusks, racking the slime and impurities from the top, straining the dyes and boiling them again with salt and soda ash.
Fabric dyed in the jewel-toned magenta was stretched on the wooden horses in various states of drying. The master dyer had explained to her and Anhuset how the amaranthine didn’t fade after years in sunlight as other dyes did, but instead, grew more vibrant over time with the saturation of light. Ildiko thought it ironic how a people who shunned the daylight were known for creating something that grew more beautiful with exposure to it.
Mollusk slime racked from the top of the boiling dye was pushed into a noxious pile near one of the middens. The congealing heap glistened in the moonlight, glowing green from the thousands of buzzing flies that swarmed its surface. The smell sent Ildiko’s stomach into an endless tumble, and she turned away before she lost her breakfast.
Anhuset stood beside her, hand over her nose, a thunderhead of disapproval darkening her brow. “That bow-legged Beladine rooster isn’t worth this.”
Ildiko silently agreed, but she wasn’t here solely to handpick a gift of hospitality for Serovek’s visit. This was one of four principal dye houses in the Kai kingdom and under Brishen’s guardianship. Ildiko felt it her duty as his wife to learn some small thing about the product that had secured an alliance between her people and his and this marriage between them.
She inhaled a grateful breath of clean air when the dye master led them outside and away from both middens and the pungent steam roiling out of the kettles. He pointed to another set of vats, these planted on the ground with no fires beneath them. Kai dyers used pulleys to raise and lower dripping cloth into more of the dye.
“This is the cold dye stage, Your Highness. The color has been racked and strained and left to sit in the sun for eleven days. We dye the silks in this amaranthine.”
Ildiko drew closer to one of the vats and peered into a contained sea of magenta-colored liquid. The dye shimmered under the glow of hanging lanterns strung from poles driven into the ground. Her typical everyday garb reflected the colors she preferred – blacks and greens, dove grays, and the ambers and browns of autumn. She had never before favored reds or pinks, but staring at the lustrous amaranthine tempted her to consider a scarf in that color at a later date.
She leaned farther into the vat.
“Be careful you don’t fall in, Your Highness.”
The dyer’s warning came too late. While Ildiko didn’t pitch headlong into the vat, the necklace she wore slipped its clasped and fell into the color with a gentle plop. Its onyx cabochon and chain sank, leaving behind an expanding pattern of circular waves to mark where it fell.
“Oh no!” Ildiko didn’t hesitate and plunged her arms all the way in into the vat until the dye lapped at her collarbones. Heedless of the dyer’s and Anhuset’s cries, she flailed in the dye, fingers clutching until she caught the tail end of the sinking chain on which the cabochon hung. She jerked it out of the vat, splashing dye across her neck and the underside of her jaw.
The necklace hung from her dripping fingers, and she lifted it to show Anhuset. “Got it!” she crowed triumphantly.
The master dyer stared at her silently, features pinched. Anhuset also stared at her but with eyes narrowed and lips alternately twitching and compressing as she held back her laughter.
Ildiko glanced down at herself, soaked to the skin in dye. Her green tunic had turned a muddy brown, and where the color had washed bare skin, she was painted an interesting plum shade. She looked again to Anhuset whose sharp teeth flashed in a wide grin. The master dyer didn’t share in her amusement. The pinched look had been replaced by a wide-eyed stare and a face gone pale as old ash. Even Ildiko couldn’t mistake his dread.
She hastened to assure him. “No harm done, Master Soté. Nothing a good scrubbing with soap and hot water won’t fix.” Ildiko almost smiled but changed her mind at the last moment. She might not possess the fangs the Kai sported, but that didn’t mean they found her smile any more reassuring than she found theirs.
Anhuset snorted. “Don’t count on it, Highness. Remember what Soté said earlier, and you’ve seen the dyers here. The amaranthine holds fast. Cloth, skin, hair. You’ll be an even more unusual color for several days.”
Brishen had once said her skin reminded him of the bitter mollusk the Kai boiled to release the dye. Ildiko raised a bright pink arm, turning it one way and then the other. Her clothing was ruined, but at least now she could brag she had color to her skin. She shrugged and tucked the broken necklace into her bodice. “Might I borrow a dry cloth, please?” she asked the dyer.
Master Soté leapt to do her bidding as if shot from a crossbow. In moments, she clutched two towels while Anhuset stood attendance, holding a spare set.
Her dip into the dye vat cut their tour short. Once dried, Ildiko apologized for the trouble and promised a fearful Master Soté that the herceges would not be angry and skin him for saddle leather just because his wife managed to tint herself pink in his dye house.
Soté was all that was polite and accommodating as he escorted her and Anhuset to where their mounts waited, but Ildiko had the distinct impression he couldn’t get rid of them fast enough. She mounted her horse, ignoring the raised eyebrows and gawking stares of the rest of their escort.
Anhuset handed her cloak to her. “You’re still damp, Highness. The cloak will keep you from getting cold.” And keep her from distracting the Kai guardsmen who’d accompanied them from Saggara to the dye house and tried not to be too obvious in their gaping at her.
Ildiko sniffed and wrapped the cloak snugly around herself. She didn’t regret her actions. They had been instinctive and careless, true, but the necklace was precious—a last gift from her mother before she died. Ildiko would have dived headfirst into a vat of boiling horse piss to retrieve it. Still, she didn’t relish the idea of her neck and arms being stained the color of young plum for a fortnight.
They travelled the main road to the manor, the young Solaris oaks silent sentinels to their passing. The trees gave way to a series of earthenworks and masonry walls that formed Saggara’s outer redoubt. Behind the barriers perched one of two stables tha
t housed the many horses kept at Saggara and a set of barracks that provided hearth and roof for those soldiers who’d chosen not to live on the lakeshore.
Cheers, whistles, and catcalls sounded nearby. Ildiko had heard them before when she’d ventured out onto one of the balconies to admire the landscape or the pattern of stars that wheeled above her. She glanced at Anhuset. “What is that?”
Anhuset called out a command, and their party turned as one toward the sounds. She pointed to a low earthen wall on which several Kai either stood or sat and watched something beyond Ildiko’s line of sight.
They followed the curve of the wall and paused at a wide entrance that opened onto a makeshift training arena. Archers’ targets shared space alongside one wall with straw men in various states of dismemberment. Weapons of every type, from wood to steel, occupied another space. There were other contraptions as well, items that looked like they were used for training from horseback, but in the dim torchlight flickering across the arena, Ildiko could only guess at their purpose.
The cheers and shouts that drew her here were for the combatants in the middle of the arena. Nine pairs of Kai faced off against each other, each man or woman intent on grappling their opponent into submission. The men were dressed down to simple linen cloths that girded the loins and were knotted at the waist. The women wore similar clothing except for the addition of a sleeveless gambeson cut to above the navel. Quilted and layered, it protected the breasts like a padded breastplate.
Sinuous and muscular, the battling Kai reminded her of cats. The light from the torches cast the combatants in high relief. Their skin glistened with sweat as they crashed together, bent, twisted, and threw each other to the ground in multiple attempts to win the match.
Anhuset tapped Ildiko on the shoulder and pointed to one of the battling pair. “There is Brishen, Your Highness. He fights Nefiritsen. A difficult opponent to wrestle.”
Ildiko guided her horse to a better spot so she could see. Brishen and Nefiritsen were locked in a knot of arms and legs, muscles straining as they each tried to bring their opponent to the ground.