The Black Wolves

by Kate Elliott

  Only then did Kellas really look at the fifth person in the little group.

  Only then—so late!—did he recognize the youth who strode beside the woman, head bent toward her and listening in the intent way that endeared Prince Atani to so many.

  The hells!

  A single look at the youth and the woman, profiles side by side, revealed exactly what King Anjihosh had kept secret for so many years.

  As if the woman felt his gaze on their backs, she turned her head to glance behind. Kellas ducked down so the cartman’s stout form obscured him. He retreated to a side street and stood there on the shade side of the street trying to take slow, steadying breaths, but his heart still pounded and his pulse roared in his ears.

  The hells.

  Unless he was badly mistaken, Atani was this woman’s child, not Queen Zayrah’s, even though everyone called Atani the eldest child of Anjihosh and Zayrah.

  Well, and after all, why did it matter? Anjihosh was king. His son would become king after him. As far as Kellas could make out, in the Sirniakan Empire a child’s father and his kinship line were of paramount importance, not like here in the Hundred where a person was known equally by kinship from both mother and father but a mother’s claim came first.

  When he thought about how calmly Lady Irlin had spoken of the need to murder any boy-child born out of Queen Zayrah, sweat broke down his neck and back. He had killed a few people on the king’s orders, but never children. What would he do the day the king ordered him to kill a child? How could he be sure he would never be given such an order by a man who had smothered his own newborn daughter, whatever excuse he had made?

  Who was to say he had not already been the agent of a child’s death? What happened to the children of the people he silently executed in the king’s name? How did their lives proceed afterward? Death was not the only way to destroy a life. He hadn’t bothered to think about it quite so directly before. Serving the king on behalf of order and prosperity had been enough.

  He gave up on the usual disciplines he used to focus and sought out a street vendor selling coconut milk flavored with cinnamon. The sweet, cool liquid drained the last of the rush out of him and he could at last breathe normally.

  Afterward he went to the market and from a stall that sold used clothing bought a pair of loose sailor’s trousers, faded, and a mended cotton sleeveless laborer’s vest. Laborers’ clothing in the city of Toskala had tiny differences from what men wore here in the south. Little details mattered. If Lady Irlin’s agent heard a man had been asking questions in the inns, he would be looking for a man dressed like a city man, not a sailor. People got stuck seeing what they expected to see and often did not look beyond hairstyle and garments. A good infiltrator disguised himself in plain sight.

  Returning to the inn he was actually staying at, he took an early meal of spicy fish and noodle soup in a tamarind broth garnished with mint. As he ate he struck up a conversation about his travels with the congenial server.

  “Cloudy today.”

  The old man gestured to the clouds pushing in from the east and inhaled deeply. “It’ll rain hard tonight, mark my words. Maybe high winds and a storm, too. Feel the pinch of that breeze?”

  “Last time we came into port we got caught in a storm out past the islands that tore our sails to ribbons.”

  Because it was midafternoon and custom was slow, the server lingered, clearly bored enough to find Kellas’s tale more engaging than washing dishes in the back.

  “We barely limped into port, and we were just fortunate our cargo chests held tight because we were carrying silk, and water getting in would have ruined the cloth. We sold the cargo to one of the merchant clans here … I can’t recall the name of the clan although I remember they flew a banner with flowers on it. I could scarcely forget the woman who did the negotiating because she was so young and pretty.”

  “Whsst! You must mean Plum Blossom Clan. That would be Mistress Mai. Mai. What kind of name is that for a woman, I ask you? Sounds more like the number ‘one’ in the trade language outlanders speak. I wouldn’t call her pretty, though.”

  Kellas blinked out of sheer surprise. “You wouldn’t?”

  “Neh. My granddaughters are pretty. Smart girls, too, I’m that proud of them. But that woman is beautiful. Not just in her face, in her spirit as well. The gods may favor any person with attractive features but what lies beneath is the true measure of them.”

  “True enough!” agreed Kellas, and used the opening to veer the conversation onto a girl he’d once fallen for who had turned out to only want his coin, a story he made so tedious that the old man excused himself.

  “I’ve got to get the awnings rolled out if there’s rain coming.”

  Kellas thoughtfully finished his soup. He spent coin for a bath, tied his hair up in a club, dressed in the sailor’s clothing, sheathed one knife at his belt and two more in his boots, and strapped on a pouch containing various small tools. At dusk he made his way up the main thoroughfare to the highest terraces, where the wealthier people had their homes. Like all residential streets in Salya the quiet lane where she lived had walled compounds on either side, the walls high enough to hide their buildings and gardens. The public face of each household was a long veranda where visitors could meet and visit without entering the intimate private chambers within. These verandas boasted splendid views over the lower city and the bay although no one was sitting out on them now. At dusk people were inside eating their last meal of the day.

  The only other piece of information the king had volunteered was that the compound was guarded day and night by special agents under personal order from the king, identifiable by their red caps. The first thing Kellas had done after arriving was to scout out the red caps: One kept watch over the alley that ran along the back walls of the compounds, while another stood right out in plain view of the veranda to mark who entered and left.

  Setting a guard on a woman’s household was a cursed odd thing, when he really got to thinking about it.

  Kellas strolled up to the red cap on duty. Dusk made it impossible to make out his features until he got within a few paces. Abruptly recognizing the man’s frowning face, Kellas shifted tactics.

  “Heya, Feyard. How are things?” He smiled, trying to remove any sting of pity. “I didn’t know you’d drawn this duty.”

  Whatever the hells this duty was.

  “Have we met?” The man had a way of hunching his left shoulder that made him look like he was about to duck. “I don’t know you, do I?”

  “We trained together in Nessumara, in the Year of the White Crane. I’m Kellas.”

  Feyard squinted, then said, “Hu! So we did. I remember you now.”

  “The basket moon breathed her last under the Shiver Sky.” Kellas trotted out the code phrase and waited as the other man’s eyes narrowed.

  “Then the sun rose,” Feyard answered, then shook his head disbelievingly. “You’re a red cap now? I thought only those of us too good for the regular army but not quite good enough to make the cut as silent wolves got stuck with this duty. Everyone was sure you were destined for great things. I never saw anyone who could climb like you.”

  “I’m not here to relieve you. I’m here about that youth who is in the house now. Have you seen him? A good-looking boy, sixteen.”

  “Ah. That one. Handsome lad.” He clucked his tongue mournfully.

  “Does he have any companions with him?” Kellas still had not found the two Qin bodyguards.

  “Neh. He showed up alone. Took me by surprise but you can tell the lad’s an outlander, can’t you? I’m surprised she let him in the house. Usually she’s more careful. And I wouldn’t have thought her to have a taste for the young ones. A shame he has to die but there it is.”

  The confusing spill of words muddied Kellas’s thoughts. “What do you mean? Let him in the house? Careful? He has to die?”

  The hells! What if Lady Irlin hadn’t sent an agent at all but rather bribed one of the red cap
s to carry out the deed?

  Feyard gave him a curious look. “Surely you were given the same instructions as the rest of us?”

  “Which are?”

  “We have standing orders to kill any man who is alone with her. Excepting the man who is married to her sister, the boy-children who live in the house, and the current reeve marshal of Bronze Hall because he’s not fashioned that way.”

  Kellas stared at the lamp burning on the household veranda, a beacon welcoming late visitors. A gust of wind caused the flame to flicker. A spray of rain spattered the street before tailing off. He turned back to Feyard.

  “I don’t understand what you mean, kill any man who is alone with her. That doesn’t even make any sense.”

  “Why does it have to make sense? The king came from outside the Hundred. Those outlanders keep strange customs, if you ask me. One god instead of many gods—busy work for only a single god! Think about how the palace women live in separate buildings from the men. I guess this is something like that. She’s to live in a separate room and no men are to enter it.”

  Kellas did see. He found it an ugly sort of picture. “If he can’t have her then no man can.”

  “If the king wants to keep her sealed up like a bird in a cage it’s not my part to question it. I remember the war. I lost a brother, a sister, an uncle and aunt, and five cousins to the demons. I’ll happily serve the man who conquered the demons and saved us. There is something uncanny about that woman anyway. Makes you wonder why we never heard a whisper of this in the army, doesn’t it? I never knew anything about this household until I was sent on this assignment two years ago.”

  “I certainly never heard a breath of this in the palace or among the Wolves.” The situation dizzied Kellas, like he’d been dropped into a spinning wheel and had nowhere to go except tumble.

  “Folk in Salya won’t speak a single bad word about her, though. She’s held in great respect. But there’s a few who will talk if you get them drunk enough. A man told me she’s a demon who bewitched the king and then abandoned him. Said the king tried to win her back but she insulted him instead. After that the king swore if she would not return to him, she could cursed well live alone and never take another husband. By which he meant not even a lover.”

  Words died on Kellas’s tongue. He licked parched lips as his thoughts mired in a morass of disbelief.

  “You’re not here guarding the child?” he asked, thinking of the infant smuggled out of the palace and brought here to be raised in secret.

  “The child? You mean that lad you spoke of? No, there have been red caps guarding this household for fifteen years, which if you ask me is a cursed long time for a man—even a king!—to hold a lover’s grudge like that. Still, we have our orders. Thus, that lad will have to die. We’re just waiting to get him alone. So far he hasn’t left the house except in company with Mistress Mai.”

  “Oh the hells, you cursed fool.” Anger boiled up to oil his speech. “That lad is Prince Atani. I’m here to fetch him back to the palace. None of you will touch him.”

  “Huh.” Feyard scratched his chin as he eyed the house with all the suspicion of a man who is sure his rival has just scarfed down the last of the custard buns. “I thought he looked familiar but I’ve never seen the prince up close. What an odd thing he should come down here.”

  “The king sent me to bring him back.”

  “That’s all very well, then, but how are you going to fetch him? He’s staying in the household. If you go inside, I would have to kill you.”

  Kellas laughed.

  “I would!” objected Feyard, squaring his shoulders. “No exceptions.”

  Kellas stared the other man down until Feyard recoiled a step, touching the hilt of his sword as if to remind himself he was still armed.

  “I’m here to collect Prince Atani and take him back to the palace,” Kellas said in as mild a tone as he could manage. “You will not interfere.”

  Feyard looked him up and down with a pitying sneer. “You think you’re safe because you can take me in a fight, and you’re right about that. But here’s what you can’t do. You go in that house and I or one of the other red caps will report it. Once the king hears, you’re dead. It’s that simple.”

  You are already dead, King Anjihosh had told Kellas on the day he climbed Law Rock. What belongs to me is mine to control.

  Kellas had not succeeded as a silent wolf by being slow to adapt to a sudden change of circumstances. “Very well. I obey the king. Do they go to the market every day?”

  “Usually, yes.”

  “Then I’ll pull him from the street. One other thing.”

  But he hesitated. If that eight-year-old boy he had seen was Anji’s son, then he had no authority to reveal that particular secret to Feyard and the red caps if they did not already know, as it seemed they did not. He would have to take care of Lady Irlin’s agent without their help.

  Feyard, strutting a little from the rush of having bested a silent wolf, said cheerfully, “What’s the other thing, then?”

  Kellas shifted ground easily. “I’d like to find out if Prince Atani’s two personal guards are somewhere in town. If you red caps could help me with that, without giving away my presence here, I’d be in your debt.”

  “We’ll find the guardsmen for you. Just because we’re not silent wolves doesn’t mean we are incompetent fools. What we do here isn’t a trifling duty, I’ll have you know.”

  Kellas did not have to fake the uneasiness building in his heart. “I can imagine. I want to take the prince with as little fuss as possible, so I will give you an alert before I move. It may be tomorrow or in a few days.”

  They parted on amicable terms, for they were, after all, comrades in arms about the same mission: soldiers protecting the Hundred so it would not fall back into the war that had almost destroyed it sixteen years ago. People remembered those awful days. People liked to be able to walk the streets safely at night, to go about their business without being robbed, to raise their children without fear they would be enslaved or raped or murdered, and to eat, drink, and celebrate all of life’s festivals.

  King Anjihosh had returned peace to the Hundred.

  Kellas walked back along the lane, counting gates as he went. Night settled as the rains came in. There were five substantial compounds between Plum Blossom Clan and the main street headed down to the harbor. Unlike Toskala, where the king mandated night-lanterns be posted on every corner, the thoroughfare was dim, lit only here and there by lamps burning on verandas. The darkness protected him from the red caps’ watch. The way all the compound walls ran together made his task simple for a deft climber.

  He tested handholds and finger’s-width ledges in the mortared brick of an outer wall, then stepped back as a small lantern bobbed into view up the street. Four people ran past, poorly sheltered beneath a single umbrella; they called out a laughing greeting, a friendly jest about getting soaked, and hurried on without stopping.

  He scrambled up the wall as the rain washed over him and tipped himself over into a garden. There he crouched in silence under the branches of a jabi bush as a woman rolled down screens over rice paper windows in the nearest building. After she finished he crept through the unlit garden to the next wall. By this means he worked his way through five compounds until only a single very high wall separated him from Plum Blossom Clan.

  A work shed’s shingled roof got him up high enough to swing over onto the adjoining wall. Dogs whined on the other side. He lay motionless atop the wall in the drenching rain as the dogs thrashed through bushes planted along the wall as a clever means to detect an intruder: Anyone climbing down from the outer wall would make a great deal of noise in the branches. The dogs sensed something was wrong but in the rain could not catch his scent. A whistle from inside the house caught the animals’ attention and they loped off.

  Lightning flashed in the distance, revealing for an instant the tiered and tiled rooftops of an expansive building with several wings and a spaci
ous garden wrapped around the back. The dogs were now sniffing along a covered walkway a stone’s throw away.

  Thunder boomed, and the dogs yelped and bolted away around a corner, out of his view. He calculated the distance from the wall to the nearest roof and waited.

  When lightning flashed again he counted, then leaped blind into the darkness as thunder rolled. Its rumble covered the thump of him hitting the roof. He slowed his slide down the slope by splaying his feet and hands and pressing his knees against the tile’s ridges. Reaching out to give himself as wide a span as possible, he eased up the wet tiles until he could hook an arm over the long ridged apex of the roof.

  He rested there as he waited for another flash of lightning so he could plot out a route into the central building, which had a multilevel roof he could surely squeeze inside as he and Atani had in the palace.

  The rain slackened. No lightning came. Children shrieked with laughter, and little footsteps pounded as they trampled around in some kind of game. A comfortable babble of adult voices rose from below, punctuated by more laughter and then a woman’s voice raised in song.

  A cheerful home, it seemed.

  From this angle he could see down onto the covered walkway the dogs had been sniffing along. The raised plank walk led from the central building out to a little gazebo set within the shadows of the garden. To his surprise Atani appeared on the walkway beside a pretty girl about the prince’s own age. They weren’t touching but every line of their bodies, the way their heads were canted, the heat of their smiles, told him more than he needed to know.

  “The hells,” he murmured under his breath.

  “That’s what I said.”

  The shock of hearing a quiet feminine voice not an arm’s length away actually caused him to flinch hard enough that he lost his grip on the roof. Tile scraped under his knee, and he caught the ridge barely in time to stop himself tumbling.