The Black Wolves

by Kate Elliott

  He says nothing.

  “Atani, what makes you say such a thing about yourself? What do you fear?”

  The cot creaks as he lies down. “Never mind. I meant nothing by it.”

  A spike of anger drives pain straight up into her eyes. To spare him the troublesome ambition of his eldest son she has just arranged for that son to be killed. “How dare you shut me out after all the ways I’ve advised and supported you!”

  His voice whispers in the blanketing night. “I’m sorry, Dannarah. There are some agitated thoughts it’s better I keep to myself. I mean no reflection on you.”

  “You would have told Mama. Or Father.”

  “No, not even them. Go to sleep. Go to sleep.”

  The wind’s tug at the tent flap and the voices of nearby sentries and the whistle of a snowy nightjar from the trees calm her like a lover combing through her hair. She yawns. Atani’s is not a hoarding, jealous nature. If he has secrets that gnaw at him, then he will confide in her eventually. She just has to be patient.

  But Dannarah knew now, years later, that she had been too preoccupied that night to truly listen. People often spoke in the manner of poets with phrases dramatic enough to catch your attention. She’d thought that was what Atani was doing. She hadn’t wanted to hear what she didn’t want to know.

  For a long time I’ve known I am a demon, bound to the land.

  She examined her campsite more closely and realized that chance had brought her from Horn Hall not merely to a Ladytree and a Hasibal’s Stone but to a place even more closely tied to her dead brother.

  Between the offering rock and the empty road stood one of his law pillars, as wide as her shoulders and the height of a tall man. Yellow-green lichens fanned across its surface, obscuring the letters carved into the stone. Yet she knew them by heart even after all these years because she had listened to Atani go on and on about this project since the first year of his reign, back when she bothered to argue against it, before she had realized that he really did intend to erect pillars in every village and town and along every road, all of them carved with the same words.

  With law shall the land be built.

  The law shall not stand in only one precinct but it will stand beside all the roads and paths of the Hundred. Once a year it shall be read in full from every assizes court, in every reeve hall, by every town council.

  No one shall murder. No one shall steal. No one shall move a boundary stone without permission or negotiation. No one shall defile a temple. When a person sells their labor into servitude in payment for a debt, that person will serve six years and in the seventh go free. No one shall take a slave as a prize in war. All contracts shall be witnessed by the temples and sealed by the assizes courts.

  Generosity to the poor is the same as an offering to the gods. Offer refuge to the helpless and comfort to those who are ill, dying, or stricken by grief. Give respect and accept respect. Let kindness guide your heart.

  May the rains come at the proper time. May the harvest be abundant.

  The assizes shall serve justice. The reeves shall serve justice. May the world prosper and justice be served, because the only companion who follows even after death, is justice.

  Each pillar carved with the same words, the same law, the same sentiments.

  Only now as she traced incised letters with a finger did she finally realize what was missing: any mention of a king.

  Where did outlaws find refuge and aid, who defied the rule of kings? She thought of the red-nut rice spilling through Reyad’s fingers.

  In the morning she flew east across the golden Lend, through the Suvo Gap, across swampy Mar, to Salya and Plum Blossom Clan.

  51

  With a cap pulled low to shadow her face, Sarai followed Elit through Wolf Quarter at dawn. They were pretending to be laborers hauling cloth banners, draped over a pole. Elit carried the front of a pole and Sarai the rear so the banners mostly concealed her. Militia wearing the red and white of the queen’s men guarded the gate to the harbor district. Fear ate at her every step but Elit did not falter.

  A soldier halted them. “Where are you bound, verea?”

  “Upriver Dock with a delivery to a Three Ferries barge,” said Elit in her flirting voice. “You look bored, ver. I’ll come back and give you a kiss when I’m done, if you’ll buy me a cup of cordial.”

  He laughed. “Less bored than I was. Go on.”

  While Wolf Quarter was run down and derelict, the harbor district had clean streets, night lamps oiled and polished, and soldiers at every corner. Dawn brought a bustle of merchants, laborers, beggars, and food sellers to the wharf-walk with its barges and cargo boats tied up to slips.

  A man wearing a Three Ferries badge on his jacket fell into step beside them. “I’ll take the banners from here. Step into the skiff with the orange moon banner.”

  Elit gave a night hatch’s whistle, their old signal, and when the man stepped in midway along the pole and got his shoulder under it, Sarai let the banners slide away as he carried them off. She stood bare-faced in the bright sun for a shocking instant before Elit pulled her onto a wharf with several slips. A woman coiled rope in the stern of a skiff flying an orange moon banner. They hopped in, rocking the hull, and before Sarai quite realized what was about, the woman had poled out into the current. The boat bellied out and began to come around.

  “The Lesser Istri has a pull like a woman’s smile,” said Elit with a lilt like sunrise.

  “A woman can work while she’s talking, just as the river does all night and all day,” said the sailor, handing both women an oar before setting back to the rudder.

  Sarai plopped down next to Elit and they began to row, although Sarai kept skipping her oar over the surface of the water.

  “Keep your head down,” Elit said. “The cap can only hide so much, and your scar is distinctive.”

  They slid downriver alongside the wharves and passed the rocky jumble of an old stone breakwater that divided the shore side of Wolf Quarter from that of Flag Quarter. The sun’s stare warmed the back of Sarai’s neck: Elit had clubbed up her hair to make it look less like curly Ri Amarah hair and more like straight Hundred hair. Too fast they came up behind a barge poling in toward Flag Quarter’s narrow Fortune Wharf.

  “My friends,” said the woman, “as soon as we get this barge between us and the shore, you’ll stow the oars. Jump in and swim to the boat with the orange flag between two green. Now is not the time to tell me you can’t swim.”

  The barge’s canvas walls cut off their view of the near shore.

  “Keep close,” said Elit, and stepped over the side smoothly. Sarai adjusted the strap of the oilcloth pouch she’d been given and sent a prayer to the Hidden One that the oilcloth was truly waterproof. Then she tumbled in. The water was sluggish for all its power, cold enough to constrict her chest. She kicked for the surface and breached sputtering. A rope ladder slapped her bare head. Curse it! She’d lost her cap.

  “Grab my hand!”

  With Elit tugging, she heaved herself over onto the deck of a single-masted cargo vessel. There were four other people in the boat, an awning at the stern for a cabin, and canvas tarps roped over cargo amidships. A man held up the bottom fold of a tarp, and Sarai followed Elit under.

  The hold absolutely reeked of fish, and the planks were slippery with scales and grime. Even though there were no fish left she almost choked on a stink so thick it fouled her tongue and made her eyes water.

  “Stay put until I say otherwise,” said the man.

  Trembling, Sarai untied and unrolled the oilcloth, and found the leather case and book dry within. She shut her eyes and breathed a soundless prayer. Abruptly, the boat lurched and its stern swung around. After a few terse commands were flung like a rope from one to another of the crew, the vessel swung back into line. A new strength gripped the hull; the boat almost seemed to startle forward as might a deer sensing a wolf.

  “We’ve just hit the River Istri,” remarked Elit.


  “How do you know?”

  “Every river is a journey with its own tale. Can’t you feel how the waters changed? Here, rest your head on my shoulder.”

  She was too exhausted to be angry or horrified or indeed really to feel anything except relief, even with the stink. An oily skin of water coated her back as she listened to the mighty voice of the great river, the plop of wavelets against the hull, the murmurs of the boatmen. Elit began to chant in a low voice. She was not reciting an entire tale but working through a repetitive series of exercises meant to facilitate memorization. Her mellow golden tone soothed Sarai into sleep.

  She blinked awake when the canvas was peeled away to let in a blast of fresh air.

  “Look at you two, like pups curled up together.” The boatman’s face was obscured in the purple-rose hues of dusk, but his tone sounded distinctly more friendly than it had when they had come aboard.

  “Blessed Tears! How far have we come?” Elit helped Sarai up.

  Of Toskala they saw no sign. The river was so wide, and they nothing more than a stick cast upon it. There were other boats, some sailing upriver with the wind and others drifting downstream with the current. Along the northern shore a road ran parallel to the river, seen through gaps in the trees. Birds flashed along the bank, and skimmers swooped over the river on the hunt for bugs.

  Sarai and Elit rinsed off with buckets of water drawn from the river. Afterward they ate a meal of nai porridge so thick they scooped it with their fingers.

  The shoreline faded as night fell. One of the boatmen hung a lamp from the prow and one at the stern. This late in the year and especially out on the water a chill kissed the night. The sailors kindly ignored them where they sat clasped together at the stern. Elit’s arm curled around Sarai’s waist, fingers brushing the curve of her breast with the remembered ache of shared pleasure.

  Melancholy pervaded Sarai’s flesh and spirit. She opened Elit’s free hand on her lap and traced its lines. “What have you become, Elit?”

  “I serve Hasibal, who shifts form to fit the trial and teaches us that all of life is contained within each least grain of sand and drop of blood. As Hasibal’s players we walk the roads from village to village telling tales. Most people don’t remember the old versions, so we remind them of how things once were. Then we tell them new versions to teach that things could be different if people ruled themselves with laws and councils as it is said was the tradition in the old days, before there was a king.”

  “But the Black Wolves serve the king. That is why my mother is dead.”

  Elit was silent, emotions chasing across her expressive face as lamplight winked over the restless waters. A fish splashed, and the noise jolted her into speech. “You know how sorry I am that your mother died before you had a chance to know her. But I can’t undo the path I am on, Sarai-ya. Not even for you.”

  “I guess it was wrong of me to think you could walk out in the world for three years and not be changed by it. All the Ri Amarah chroniclers agree that war is butchery, however noble or necessary its cause. Is this a war?”

  Elit pressed a finger to Sarai’s lips. “I shouldn’t have said as much as I have, and I hope you will not repeat it. Tell me about Lord Gilaras.”

  “Are you jealous?” She seized on the change of subject, although it was almost as uncomfortable.

  “Yes. No. I don’t know.” She spread a hand over Sarai’s belly as if to sound what grew within. “I’m the one who left you to walk Hasibal’s path. I shouldn’t begrudge you finding a path of your own. And good sex!” Elit nudged her shoulder with her own, then nipped her ear. Yet her attempt at humor fell sharp. “Was it good?”

  “I taught him all the things you and I do together.”

  Elit laughed, ran her fingers down the length of Sarai’s spine in a well-remembered caress that made her shiver, and kissed her.

  “It’s hard not knowing if he’s well or if he’s suffering. If I’ll ever see him again.” Thinking of Gil made her smile, and yet recalling his shorn hair and tattooed face made her frown, because it reminded her of how he had laughed when he’d told her he was going to become a spy.

  “What’s wrong, dearest?” Elit whispered. The tilt of her head made Sarai squeeze her tightly.

  “You know I love you. You know I wanted you to follow Hasibal’s calling. I knew you had to go because that is where your spirit calls you. But to become a Wolf, like the man who killed my mother!”

  “It’s just a name.”

  “Nothing is just a name. Gil, too. He’s now a Wolf, too, isn’t he? It’s as if my fortune is that the ones I care for will be ripped from me by predators, and I will be a stone in a tomb, marking what is left behind.”

  “Don’t say so!” Elit embraced her, her presence so familiar because they had always been like two souls destined from birth to twine together. “It will all be fine now. We’ll reach Nessumara, take a ship to Salya, and you’ll find refuge there until it’s over. I’ll come back for you then.”

  “What if I don’t want to go to Salya?”

  “Where else can you go?”

  Out of the night rose the sound of hooves, easy to hear over the flowing river. On the road lamps bobbed into view from upriver and swept past to reveal a pair of riders headed downstream. Night couriers, traveling at speed.

  They watched until the light vanished.

  “The queen, the king, and your clan aren’t going to stop looking for you,” added Elit as gently as she might to a sick child. “Going to Salya is the best and safest course for you.”

  “Will you stay with me all the way to Nessumara?”

  “Of course.”

  They sat in silence for a long time watching the dark river and the bright stars.

  “Look there!” called the sailor who stood watch at the prow.

  On the northern bank a lantern’s light flashed three times, vanished, then flashed three times again. Out of the muzzy night a man’s reedy voice floated in a melody: “The sad girl and her happy lover, What a striking pair they made. One in shadow, and the other in light…”

  “That’s the safe conduct signal,” said the elder boatman. “We’re landing.”

  The boat skimmed toward the bank, rocking against the current. In the shallows they scraped past a thick overhang of flowering bushes and nudged up against a line of pilings with planks fixed on top. A man caught their thrown rope and secured them to this makeshift pier.

  The old boatman disembarked and followed the stranger into the brush. Elit grabbed her sticks, and Sarai slung her oilcloth pouch over her back in case they had to jump into the river and swim for it. But soon enough the boatman returned leading a woman dressed in what Sarai recognized as reeve leathers. She looked as much an outlander as the Ri Amarah in having similar eye-folds, but where Sarai’s people had light complexions hers was black. The young reeve swung onto the boat and paced up and down it as if looking for spies and murderers, then paused in front of Elit and Sarai.

  “Are you Elit?” Tracks of affliction had worn grooves into her weary, anxious voice, giving it a raspy scrape. “I’m called Lifka. I’ve received orders from the commander to fly you south, on my eagle. You have a new assignment.”

  “On your eagle?” Elit breathed, hand squeezing Sarai’s fingers. “Hu! Is it safe?”

  “Yes.” The reeve gave Sarai a polite nod leavened by a distracted smile. “Verea. My apologies for ignoring you but we’re in a hurry.” She addressed Elit. “If you’ll come with me then we can get everyone else aboard and the boat can go before any other soldiers pass on the road. Hurry.”

  The reeve jumped back onto the pier and hurried away in the brush. In silence Elit shifted from foot to foot like a child waiting for permission to bolt. What was the use of raking her over coals whose heat Sarai could not extinguish?

  “Just go,” whispered Sarai, feeling all the wind punched out of her.

  Elit embraced her. “I love you.”

  She knew the words for truth. She murmured an
echoing reply.

  Yet when she let go of Elit and had to watch as her lover disembarked and slipped away into the night, Sarai tasted the dust of her mother’s grave. She might herself become dust and allow the wind to blow her to the four corners of the Hundred, spread thin so no one and nothing had a hint of her passing.

  More people than she expected emerged from the brush: several children including a baby in arms, an old man tottering and helped along by a girl, a young man carried by two other men. She counted them as the sailors handed them aboard: fifteen in all, weary, thin, ragged, and looking as out of place and grief-stricken as the young reeve. They even coaxed two skeptical mules onboard, followed by two dogs, followed by two goats whose bleating made Sarai stifle a giggle because after everything this was just one absurdity too much.

  “Be well! Be well!” cried the young reeve from the shore to the boarding family. With lantern light shimmering over her, she sang with hands speaking in the old gestures. “The road runs to the hills, to the city, to the sea.”

  They cast off. The current caught the boat, drawing it onto the waters. Sarai stared at the landing but night had already swallowed the night-blooming white-thorn and the lonely dock.

  Elit was gone.

  A lamp hung on a bent pole out beyond the prow. The watchman scanned the river with a pole in hand to push off debris. The new arrivals arranged themselves in the reeking hold, children snuffling and adults calming them in loving voices. They murmured words of reassurance, settled back-to-back and heart-to-heart.

  A man groaned in stifled pain, “If only I had died instead of Denas!”

  “Don’t say so, Nanni!” said another man. “His wound sickened and yours did not. There’s nothing anyone could have done. Sometimes it is just in the hands of the gods. Your children and wife are glad to keep you here. So are we all. Now close your eyes and drink this.”

  She pulled the sleeve off her mirror. The polished surface glistened under the flickering flame of the lantern hanging above the stern. Blue threads chased within the engraved spiral, and she rubbed her eyes to unhaze her vision. But still they glimmered there like a spiderweb at dawn hung with fiery dew. Her face pale with sorrow hovered like a chained bird in the misty reflection.