They have other means of making any displeasure felt.
Ripples and currents touched me as she glided smoothly for the steps, a Lan’ai in miniature. Heat shimmered along my skin, worked into every pore and crevice, and once she was gone I could soak-bake my body and conscience at the same time.
“Atyarik is right,” she said as she lifted herself from the water’s embrace. Her supple, pale back bore no stripe or scar, and the curve of her hips was not yet in its full ripeness. She was a girl, still. And far from home.
I did not ask what her s’tarei was right about. I suspected she would tell me, and I was proven correct.
“You will kill him.” Flatly, and with terrible certainty, as she wrapped herself in a bathing-robe, her hair a river of molten darkness. “Because he came too late, and you will not forgive that, any more than you forgave your warlord friend for his lies.”
There is a point past which pain becomes indistinguishable from heat. I stayed in the bath for a half-candlemark after, pulling the chain once for more hot water. Nobody else came to disturb me, and I was glad, because the wetness on my cheeks could not be blamed on the steam.
Much to Chew
Scrubbing and a long hot soak will give a weary sellsword’s body much less of the ship-creak. It also tangles hair, if you are foolish enough not to close-crop like a Pesh bondslave. Working through the mass with a comb and two picks required patience and a palmful or two of cras-oil, the fragrant pressing of the white meat of a brown hairy fruit that ripens slowly but in prodigious quantities. Brought up the trade-routes from Pesh, it is not overly expensive in Antai as long as the summer has been good. It does not become rancid, and one can eat it, cook with it, and rub it into hair and body at will. The Pesh, in their city of dust and caged flames, even burn cras as fuel.
I wondered if the scent would cause Gavrin a pang. The lash cuts deep, and even if the scar heals, it still...echoes.
I settled on the bed, cross-legged, wondering if I wished for more sleep instead of dinner. The table in my room was laid for two, but it was not Thanourt who appeared as I finished the work of braiding and looping, my fingers making their quick habitual movements as I gazed at thick diamond-panes of amber-tinted glass. Late-summer sun filled them with fire, but the light had the sharp edge of almost-harvest. Winter would arrive soon, but I had brought them all, every one of them, safely to Antai.
At least I had accomplished one thing I had set myself to lately.
I heard his step in the hall, and braced myself. By the time he tapped at the door I was even able to say “Enter,” without the word sticking in my throat. It was only then I realized I spoke in G’mai, the sharp syllables giving polite permission. In a land where every inhabitant has some measure of Power, granting others a privacy is a necessity. Was it his heart beating quickly in my own chest and wrists? At least ship-work and exhaustion had meant I could not tell if the pain was his or mine, I simply endured it.
Every journey has a stop, whether it be camp, or waystation, or city. Every stop means there may be time to think. Or to answer questions.
“Kaia.” Quietly, as he closed the door. Black silk and leather, the cut different than any cloth in the markets of Antai or anywhere else on the Rim, allowing freedom of movement in equal measure to grace. His hand dropped—he had just pushed his hair back from his eyes, a short irritable motion that still held a great deal of fluidity.
“Darik.” I tied the last bit of ship’s twine in a lover’s knot, its roughness against my callused fingertips a scraping reminder that a true G’mai girl would have a pretty ribbon or two to hold her braids steady. Janaire certainly did.
“Are you well?” Eyes so dark pupil and iris blended. Not like my own golden gaze. The Moon’s children are night-dark in hair and eye; light irises are not quite common, and a little suspect.
I had often thought it a mark of my flaws. The only G’mai woman lacking Power, lacking the Moon’s gifts, the proper birthright of every adai, walking alone while the rest...Well. He had arrived, and everything had changed, and now I could lose him between one breath and the next. A moment’s carelessness could founder us both.
We are born to the twinning, and do not survive its breaking. Once, perhaps, in the very first days of bonding.
Not anymore.
“Are you?” Tradetongue made my mouth and lips feel too thick. I forced myself to think in the trade-pidgin, not the sharp lilting beauty of G’mai.
“Well enough.” He held himself tall and tense, shoulders rigid under black cloth. His clothing, altogether fine enough for a traveling princeling, was mended with expert, tiny stitches. Probably Janaire’s, since my needlework was fine enough for split flesh or coarse sellsword’s shirt and jerkin. Not nearly enough, though, for an exquisite mending of subtly patterned G’mai silk and linen, not to mention leather.
“Then I am, as well.” I tried a smile. It sat unnaturally on my frozen face. “Shall you be dining with me, princeling?”
“If it pleases you.”
My hands dropped too, loose and useless now that my hair was braided and coiled. No rope to catch, no canvas to check or mend, no salt-scoured wood to clutch, no pitching and tossing underfoot to fight. Just one G’mai sellsword facing a battle she did not want.
There were battles one could crave, in youth or fury. They grow rarer, the longer a sellsword survives.
My tentative smile fell away, and we studied each other in a small Antai innroom, the fire speaking its subtle language of light, heat, and ash.
“You do not have to,” I said, finally.
“What if I wish to?” He did not move. I knew he would not raise his voice, or attempt to strike me—a s’tarei simply does not do such things.
Still, I was unprepared for him to be this...this calm. “Why would you wish to?” I finally flung the words at him. “I left your side during a battle, Dragaemir. I am no adai.”
He shook his head, once, a graceful negation. Indicated the table with a brief gesture, as if inviting me to sit. “I am a fool. That is all.”
A cold wind began in the center of my bones. I set my jaw, swallowed a heavy bitterness. “Do you wish me to return your dauq’adai?” The Seeker lay, its gem a colorless brightness, under my much-mended shirt and my second jerkin as well, supple leather hanging loosely on me now. There are words for a s’tarei flung from the grace of the twinning, but none for an adai’s fall. The bearers of life and Power are simply too precious to contemplate mistreating. Even I, born flawed, had been cared for.
Darik simply regarded me. “Kaialitaa.” Very softly, the purest G’mai sending a spike through my chest, lingering on my name to turn it into an endearment, little brave one. “I will have no other adai. Is that clear enough to penetrate even your stubborn skull?”
“Why?” My hands had folded into fists. “I am a disappointment, Darik.”
“To whom?” The inquiry, given in such a tone of mild interest, hung lightly in the room. He crossed to the window, long efficient strides, as the sunlight drained from the glass. His boots were just as scarred as my own, now, and probably still held traces of the Lan’ai. Other than that, and his leanness, he was unmarked by the passage.
Must you make me say it? The thought leapt from my consciousness to his, the voice-within so long denied it almost hurt. “You.”
“Am I allowed my own feelings on the matter, adai’mi?”
My hands had turned to fists. He stared at the panes, his dark hair damp and brushed back. Was the pain in my chest his, or mine?
“Of course.” I denied the urge to stand, the urge to touch a knifehilt. I sat perfectly still, braced for disaster again. “I would like to know those feelings.”
“Look, and find out.” Do I need to say it again, Kaia? The voice-within allows for nuances, shadings, that speech cannot hold. His anger would have hurt me less than the wash of pure, clean warmth, the tenderness blooming along an invisible cord stretched between us.
“Perhaps I need to hear it.
” Why were six small words, delivered in soft, almost lisping G’mai—because my lips were numb—so difficult? My stomach twinged, hunger returning now that I was clean and there was a chance of my belly being filled. Nothing is as sharp as the emptiness that sees it might soon be satisfied.
“I had lost all hope.” He spoke softly, in G’mai, and the dauq-adai warmed against my breastbone. It had been fading when I’d picked it out of Redfist’s pocket, a cheap streetseller’s gaud, but now...
Now it was completely different. Everything was.
“You are my adai. Not even the Moon Herself could make me turn from you.” He nodded, sharply, and turned from the window to regard me, chin set, eyes ablaze, the very picture of a s’tarei. He was too fine for an innroom. Too fine to be dragged along a sellsword’s life, from one mouthful to the next, gnawing hunger in the belly and the chaos of battle ringing in the head. “In’sh’tai.”
So it is.
We watched each other for a long breathless moment. A soft rap at the door broke the headwaters of whatever river had gathered inside me—it was Thanourt, bustling in with the first of many lacquered trays in his beefy paws, the smell of chaabi stew suddenly overpowering. Behind him, two inngirls peeped through the door, and cautiously entered with the wine-jugs and another tray.
“Ah, Iron Flower! I bring you much to chew.” Thanourt did not bow, but he inclined his upper half a little, rounding his shoulders. Perhaps I was the only one who could see the almost-flinch. The body never forgets, once the collar has been pinned shut and the coffle begins to move.
By the end of a slave’s first day, iron has stamped the spine into a curve.
“Thanourt, my friend.” I rose, wincing a bit as my lower back reminded me I had spent too many nights sleeping in a swaying clump of netting. “Is that chaabi I smell? What news do you bring me?” The peculiar slur and lift of Antai’s tradespeech takes a little while to fit in the mouth properly, but once it does, one never loses it. It is a division of common that flows and changes more than any other place’s except perhaps Shaituh, that navel of a great empire sinking under its own weight.
“Oh, there’s much afoot,” he said, cheerfully. “Perhaps I shall drink a cup with you and your hasti there, and tell you all, were I invited?”
Hasti? Who told him I was married? To deny it would only cause a need for explanation. “You need no invitation, tis your own wine.”
“True enough, but better with friends.” His quick, broad-palmed hands soon had the table set to rights, and Darik drifted closer, pausing at the foot of the bed. How could a princeling look so uncertain?
I beckoned, indicating the other seat with what I hoped was good grace. “Sit. Thanourt’s chaabi is famous. Unless he’s rid himself of that ill-tempered cook.”
The innkeep threw up both hands, an exuberant Antai gesture. “Alas, I cannot. I married him. He sends his regards, and tells you he did not spit in your soup.”
The cook Senpha Subo, former thief and master of many a kitchen, had once threatened to poison me if I caused Thanourt grief, and I thought it likely there was an attraction between them. “No extra flavour for me, then.” An unwilling laugh forced its way free of my throat. The inngirls—one Pesh-fair, one Shainakh dark with the proud nose of a full blood— both gazed at me with open-mouth wonder. “Tell me, young ones, does Nansou-kin here treat you well?”
They blushed, and the Shainakh girl dropped her gaze and almost the wine bottles. The Pesh, though, gave me a pert little wink and a broad smile that showed a missing canine. The other was pearly, and very sharp. “Ay he does, Kahaai Iron-petal. What we din’eat go straight to the hog, and not the other way turned.”
It wasn’t so much what she said—it was a passable enough jest—as it was the broad Shainakh accent.
Kahaai. In the slang of the Shainakh irregulars, it meant a balky mare, and many had been the laugh at a particular couplet or two likening me to one during the Danhai campaign. It reminded me of Ammerdahl Rikyat, and the dream.
I do not have the future-dreaming. It was only my fears, and exhaustion, and a bad sea-crossing.
“Kaia?” Darik took another step forward, and Thanourt was eyeing me curiously as well, shooing the girls out to bring yet more covered dishes up for our repast and a chair for his own oddly graceful bulk.
“Nothing.” I shook my head, the heaviness on my shoulders not merely the weight of the braids atop my head. “Come, Thanourt, and pour the wine.” I was clean, and rested, and an ocean away from the man who sought to use me; I had brought my troupe safely to the closest thing to a home I had in Antai.
I should have known it wouldn’t be enough.
What Is Owed
A good chaabi stew is savoury-sweet, just enough heat to make the throat sing and the eyes prickle, but not enough to make either weep. The meat is tender, long-simmered, but the meatroots must still have some tooth left in them and the balance of spices must be smoky and deep, with layers like a good Quort wine. Thanourt’s husband was a marvelous cook, and though his chaabi was not as sublime as Kesa’s, it was still a work of art, and a reminder that I had survived yet another crossing of the Shelt’s dangerous blue depths. Two kitchens, divided by water, and should I settle someday with my own inn I would have time to perfect my own chaabi. Tis said to be one of the Four Recipes a cook can spend a lifetime inching towards mastery of.
Perhaps it was a foolish sellsword’s dream, but it was mine. Six rooms for guests, seven waterclosets, linens hung in the sun. I would be the one passing news to weary travelers and bargaining with tax collectors. I could not imagine a Dragaemir condescending to such a thing, though. And had I really expected to save enough to buy an inn? Water flows through a sellsword’s hands, and so does money. Replacing gear when one has to leave a city quickly, or making caches, are both expensive as a R’jiin courtesan’s favors.
In Antai they do not serve the courses as the Free Cities and Shainakh do. First there is the hearty fare, then there is fruit of other small sweet things, and there is no piri sauce to be found, only semi-sweet havaou to douse crumbling white cheese on flatbread for an appetizer.
I set to with flatbread, eating picks, and a will, and Thanourt began with taxes, with Antai news, and some few hangings or imprisonments. Some of the Thieves’ Guild had been a little less than circumspect lately, and the Pesh merchants were nervous. Which led to the Dokka and the Guard lacking even a hint of a sense of humor, or propriety.
Of course one can’t have too many thieves running about, Thanourt remarked, but really, their Guild works hard, too. No better investor than the head of that Guild, they say.
I could have agreed, but I let Thanourt tell me. The Guild doesn’t speak of its business to innkeepers. It is an ancient and honorable institution, and has spread its tentacles far. Any trouble with local Guard or governor was a matter of finding the right pressure to apply to return the world to equilibrium.
Or the right throat to cut. I was halfway through my second bowl of chaabi and my third glass of tart, sweet Kshanti white wine before the scope of the conversation widened.
The innkeeper settled, folding his capacious hands. He even left scrapings in the bottom of his lacquerware bowl, to show his husband he was not hungry. He wore no band around his first left finger, but now I could see the chain about his neck. Finemetal, thin and beautiful, and it probably held the contract-ring. “Old Golden-Arse is gone mad, they say. Sent two of his nephews and three of his concubines to the chopping block.” Thanourt sighed. “The Pesh were hoping he’d forget his expansion dreams, but now that he’s put that rebellion down—”
I set my bowl down. “Rebellion?” Old news to me, but...put the rebellion down?
“Ahi-ya, a good one, too. Twas said even the harvest goddess was behind him, but women are fickle always.” Thanourt smiled, stroking his moustache, smoothing the mellow clay beads. D’ri glanced at me, and it was some small comfort to see he’d laid aside some of his exquisite palace manners and lifted his bow
l like a sellsword, shoveling the chaabi down with all due speed and a scallop of flatbread. “Even you, Kaia-hanua.”
“A sellsword can’t afford to be too rigid,” I returned. “The sea is changeable, and she a woman too.”
“At least you admit it.”
I shook my head, hefting my goblet. If he was about to tell me what I suspected he was, I would need it. The wine poured down, cool and crisp and utterly ineffectual. “So, a rebellion.”
“Led by some petty noble who survived the second season of Danhai. Some said he won a battle, then lost one. Either way, his corpse was carted back to Shaitush for the cage, they say.”
My stomach turned over, the chaabi briefly rising from its intended home. I breathed out, then in, forcing food and wine back down into my cellar. “I thought they only did that to live criminals.”
“Well, old Golden-Arse wanted him brought back either way. Ah, here’s the ciri-fruit! A good harvest this year, and I have darkhoney from Clau. Subo has something special in mind for it.”
“The mead will be very fine,” I replied, numbly. Darik lowered his bowl, and his dark gaze had grown sharp. He did not miss much, the Heir to the Dragon Throne, and he kept his own counsel. Would I ever be privy to it?
Thanourt grunted, staring into his own goblet. “No doubt, but if Shainakh marches on Pesh, prices will soar all about, and the Council is nervous.”
“Yes. They are right to be.” I took a long swallow of wine, wishing it was mead or even hanta. Getting drunk and picking Redfist’s pocket had begun this mad chain of events, perhaps a good head-bending with liquor would end it. Thanourt gave me a strange look, and I roused myself to carry my end of the news-pole. It is how innkeeps and sellswords pay each other for annoyances, that balance. “They were announcing taxes on staples, searching for sellswords, and horseflesh was scarce between Hain and Vulfentown. Past that, I do not know. But yes, Pesh. Azkillian is a fool if he wishes another season in the grasslands; the Danhai are more demon than flesh.”
Steelflower at Sea Page 5