Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04

by Chaz Brenchley

  'What would he think, that I was here by duty and heedless of him, just taking my pleasure in the sun?'

  'No, he'd think he had married a girl with sense enough to eat when she was hungry' This from a blunt, solid woman in her middle years, simply dressed and simply spoken. 'No better way for him to wake, child, it'll have him thinking about his own belly and its emptiness. I like a hungry patient.' I cant...’

  'Oh, don't be so foolish. If you're too delicate to eat alone and that Sharai boy won't join you, then I will. There's plenty here for all.' She set her tray on the parapet and plumped herself down beside it, picked something from a platter and passed it to Julianne.

  Golden-brown pastry, sticky and flaking between her fingers; the sweet savour of ground meat and spices flooding her senses, flooding her mouth. She had bitten before she knew it, had swallowed without chewing and bitten again; the meat-cake was gone in moments and she was licking her fingers and looking for more.

  'That's better, isn't it? ‘knew,' the woman said smugly, as her fat, nimble fingers filled a plate. 'You've a starved look about you, girl. I don't believe you've eaten well for days. Take this and set about it while I put some water in the wine, it'll go to your head else and make you foolish.'

  Days? Weeks, more like: the last good food she'd seen

  had been at her wedding-feast, and she hadn't eaten that. The last of any food she'd seen had been in her cell, and yesterday: far away, a different world - bleaker, more frightening but less doomed, she thought, sitting in the sunshine and smelling smoke - and suddenly very, very long ago.

  She ate like a starveling indeed, ravenously, with both hands and no manners. Shadow's daughter, Hasan's wife -and Imber's wife too, just as much, just as little — she shrugged off a lifetime of courtly graces and barely contrived to keep one eye on her sleeping man; she kept no hold at all on the guilt she'd thought would consume her. Let him wake now - please? - and she'd greet him with delight, with her mouth full and her hands greasy, her lips coated in crumbs ...

  When she could talk again, when there was space and breath for words, she asked, 'What's your name? I'm Julianne.'

  'I know you are, pet. The Lady Julianne, and all your tides too, but I can't be troubled with that. They call me Gerla, when they remember who I am.' That might have, perhaps should have sounded bitter, but did not; Julianne thought that actually most people who mattered to her would remember Gerla.

  She saw the woman casting thoughtful, determined glances at the heedless Jemel, who had resumed his position stone-still at Marron's head. Working out some way to make him eat in his turn, no doubt...

  'Leave Jemel to me,' she said, 'I'll see that he finishes what's left on that tray. You don't need to wait on us, Gerla. I may be the lady Julianne with enough tides to trip over, but I've grown used to looking after myself. And others.' Stubborn boys a speciality...

  'Oh, yes. Grown used to going hungry because you lack the sense to eat, I suppose. But it's a girlish trick, and feeding boys is another. Aye, I'll leave him to you, if I have your promise for it. There's plenty else for me to be doing.'

  'Gerla, tell me something, before you go?'

  'Aye, lass. Anything.'

  'Why are you still here? In the palace, I mean. Fetching trays of food to awkward children, when ...'

  When a wave of her arm was all that she needed, and all that she had to express what she was burning to say: that Surayon was burning, and she didn't understand why the most loyal servant would stay.

  'What, should I run away?'

  'Not run, no - not unless you chose to.' Though hiding from the Sharai was no bad idea, in Julianne's estimation, and hiding from the Ransomers was a better. 'But there must be people you're worried about, people you could help, something you'd rather be doing than this, somewhere else you'd rather be ...' In Marasson, she thought, a similar disaster would have emptied the palace; and she thought that was right, it was proper. Even slaves should find freedom in catastrophe.

  'By all the saints and martyrs, girl — do you think we're saints or martyrs ourselves, to stay to serve our lord when we're crying to be gone? Or bonded here, and frightened of our master?' She seemed genuinely incredulous; Julianne found herself blushing. 'Listen, then, and mark it: you were raised to another understanding, maybe, but you're in Surayon now. All the men fit to bear arms — yes, and some of the women, too - are long gone, to fight or find their families. The rest of us, from Pym the page-boy to old Shalira in the laundry, we're here because we want to be. You couldn't chase Pym from the Princip's side, not if you carried a battle-axe and had a hundred 'ifrit howling at your back. And me, well, I've no family that I care a button for, and I can be useful here. Not just to feed foolish children, either. The hurt will be brought here, as swiftly as may be. I'm not the Princip but I have some skills in healing, and there'll be too many for him to tend them all, even when he's in the palace. This is my place, Julianne; I wouldn't be anywhere else, a time like this.'

  Briefly her gaze moved beyond the parapet to where the ravages of war were closing on her country. Even after seeing the expression on the woman's face, Julianne still couldn't regret her question. She felt better than reassured, somehow, she felt as though a promise had been fulfilled. She'd never expected to find Surayon a haven for all that was good in the world, despite Elisande's portrait of it. What she had wanted, what she had needed to find was a country that was simply different from what she'd known thus far: the cruel subtleties of Marasson, the chill dedication of the Ransomers, the hot but fickle fires of the Sharai. She'd ached to see a land where generosity governed ambition, where trust displaced fear, where above all hatred could not dominate.

  There was loyalty everywhere, of course, from the Roq to Rhabat, even in the Emperor's court; but elsewhere it was shaded by desire or duty or tribal allegiance. Here it seemed to be freely given, won by love. To Julianne, today, that was a plashing fountain in a dry, dry garden.

  She stood up, and stooped over Gerla to give her a gentle kiss on the cheek 'Actually,' she murmured, T think, neither would L'

  Then she picked up the tray - that still felt heavy enough to feed a small army, despite her own and Gerla's depredations - and carried it over to where Jemel sat next to the unconscious Marron.

  'He won't be stirring for a while yet, love. Look at Hasan, he was healed first, and he shows no sign of waking. So take your eyes off Marron for a moment, and look at this instead. You're desert-bred, you don't believe in waste; the Sharai feast in time of plenty, and there's plenty here. Besides, if you eat your fill now, you'll be ready for when he does wake, you'll be able to tend to him without feeling faint from hunger.. .'

  That won her a look, a sort of startled glare at the suggestion that a Sharai should ever feel faint, for whatever feeble reason. She simply grinned, and kissed his cheek too.

  'Jemel, you'd feed a camel before you took it into the Sands, wouldn't you? Well, feed yourself, then. I don't know what kind of mood that boy's going to wake into, but it's going to be something different from anything you've seen before. He's going to be a different person, all himself instead of half the Daughter, only that I don't know if he'll remember what self that is. It could be a long journey to find out, and you've got to stay with him. So eat, you'll need your strength.'

  That was the argument that swung him. He fell to among the meats and pastries; purely for companionship - unless it was perhaps also a little for teasing, because a Sharai warrior would not ordinarily eat with a woman, and she liked to remind him sometimes just how far he'd fallen from the figure of his own ideals — she squatted down beside him, picked up a soft almond biscuit and nibbled on it. She was wondering if perhaps she should try to make him talk, or if that might be a step too far, when he glanced up and then a little further up, above her head. His eyes widened momentarily, before he could control them; she could feel the effort that he put into his voice, to sound quite matter-of-fact as he said, 'Elisande’s djinni is returning, with your husband’s wife
.'

  It sounded so odd, when he said it like that. Perhaps it was supposed to - except that it wouldn't seem odd to him, that Hasan was much-married. Harder for Jemel to understand was her own uncertain status, with two husbands living. To be sure, it was quite hard for her also. By Sharai custom her marriage to Imber was annulled, because it had not been consummated - but then, neither had her second marriage to Hasan. Not yet...

  She was confident that no church court in Outremer would recognise that annulment, if only because they had been Sharai who decreed it. So in the Kingdom she was married yet to Imber, in the Sands she was married to Hasan; that seemed to be the easiest way to think of her legal condition. Privately, personally, it was more complicated. In her body, she was married to neither; in her heart, she thought, to both. Here in Surayon, where Sands and Kingdom met, she would have spun like a dizzy dancer between the two and never guessed or hoped which man's arms would seize her first; except that Imber was not here, and Hasan was in need. That made things easy, for today and perhaps for tomorrow. She didn't dare look any further forward.

  She got to her feet again, turned around and understood Jemel’s brief reaction, the equivalent in him of goggling surprise. Never mind that they'd both seen miracles, these last months; never mind that she'd travelled this way herself, and so had he. They'd neither of them seen it from the ground before, and for all that she'd been waiting to see it, it was still an astonishing thing to see. Perhaps his eyes had caught the figure in the sky when it was simply a dot far distant, perhaps he'd tried to think of it as a bird at first, until it became impossibly large and unlikely.

  For herself, looking too late to be deceived, it was a wonder that came with a cold shudder of sympathy, her own terror transferred. She watched Sherett glide down towards the terrace, seeming utterly unsupported in the air; she wondered how the woman could look so calm, how she could bear to keep her eyes open as she hung so high with nothing for her hands to grip to.

  That was Julianne's own nightmare, though, and others she knew did not share it. Elisande positively relished flying by her djinni's grace. Perhaps Sherett was another of that kind. Or else she simply had that same Sharai pride that could make a posing idiot of Jemel, and would sooner die than shame herself by showing fear, even when she'd been snatched into a hurtling horror-ride that must have out-raced the wind to bring her here so soon .. .

  Julianne walked a few steps away from Jemel, away from the sleeping on their pallets. Her sister-wife was so much lower now that she could see the djinni as a spinning thread of distortion in the air, behind her shoulder. She could see also that Sherett's veil was demurely in place below her hood. That brought a soft, unexpected snort of laughter, affectionate admiration rather than mockery. That insistence on the decencies was a part of what she loved about the woman, along with her fierce independence of thought and her open delight in her husband, their shared husband. Those should all have been contradictions, Julianne thought, but somehow were not in Sherett.

  Bare feet touched to ground, as lightly as a falling feather; curse her, she didn't even stumble as she turned graceful, impossible flight into graceful, stalking walk along the terrace.

  It was Julianne who stumbled a little, suddenly running: hurling her arms around Sherett's neck when she'd meant to be so cool and dignified, brutally disarranging that modest veil as she kissed a greeting, almost sobbing as she mumbled, 'Oh, Sherett, thank you for coming ...'

  Dark eyes flashed in the sunlight, hard hands hugged her too briefly, a caustic voice said, 'I wasn't offered a choice. Snatched from our tent, under the eyes of all our family — they'll be talking about it still, and blaming me. Or you, perhaps.'

  Julianne's family too, although she didn't know them; there were still two senior wives she hadn't met, and children also. To her shame, she realised suddenly, she'd never even asked their names ...

  Well, there would be time enough. A lifetime, possibly, if the luck fell that way. For now, 'They can blame me, if they choose. I asked for you. Do you, did the djinni tell you why?'

  'It said Hasan was sick, no more than that. I didn't ask further.'

  No, of course she hadn't asked. For swift mercy's sake,

  Julianne forced a smile. 'He should be well now, only he hasn't woken yet. I'm sorry, I should have thought to tell the djinni to say he had been healed. He was very ill, though, an 'ifrit wounded him and he might have died; I thought you'd want to be here, I thought he'd want to see you ...'

  'You were twice right, then — but what you mean is, you wanted me.' A hand gripped hers, greatly reassuring, and, 'Take me to our husband, then; and while I watch him, shameless, you can find yourself a veil.'

  'Oh, Sherett, you don't need to wear it here!'

  'In a stranger's house, for my husband to see me exposed before princes and slaves? Indeed I do, and so do you.'

  Julianne groaned inwardly, but found a sudden determined stubbornness. 'I will not leave him,' she muttered forcefully, 'to go bothering servants in a house at war to fetch me a useless length of cloth. Sherett, I will not!'

  'You are married now, we are married together — and you will dress and behave as a wife ought, and you will do as I say. I will teach you that, if I teach you nothing else. However,' relenting abruptly, surprisingly, 'there is perhaps no point in chasing a veil until someone brings you a decent robe to replace that filthy rag you're wearing. This is too fine a house for such neglect - but as you say, they are at war. I have seen that, though I barely know where I am. Here...'

  Hands tugged at her clothing, and she remembered with a sinking heart just how filthy it was indeed, and how filthy she was herself beneath it. Just at the word she could feel all the grime and the greasiness on skin and fabric both, the lank mats of her hair; no doubt she smelled quite rancid to one newly come from the dry clean air of the Sands. Probably she ought to go and seek out a change of dress, at least a jug of water if not a bath. Even if it meant missing Hasan as he woke, she oughtn't to let him see her in this state...

  But Sherett pulled the hood up over her head, found a way to twist the robe so that there was an extra fold that could be pulled across nose and mouth and held there, so long as she remembered to hold it.

  'For now, that's sufficient. Till he wakes, till he's seen you and spoken to you. He's been hunting you so long, he wont want to wait. He has no more patience than a puppy, that one.'

  That was so untrue that she might have protested it, if she hadn't been so grateful not to be sent away.

  She guided Sherett — pointlessly, the woman could see perfectly well for herself, but she did it anyway — over towards where their man lay quiet on his pallet. First there was Jemel, with his own quiet man; the two Sharai greeted each other, exchanged compliments and hopes, for all the world as though they had met by chance on neutral ground in the heart of the mul'abarta.

  Hasan still hadn't stirred. Only his blood stirred within him, and it was hard to be sure even of that. Every now and then Julianne was shaken by memories of the black sludge creeping from his veins, so that she had to snatch at the pulse of his neck or wrist to count the slow, healthy beating of his heart for reassurance.

  No such fretful fancies for Sherett. She squatted beside his pallet, laid one hand firmly on his brow and spoke in a normal, everyday voice, as though halfway through a conversation with him.

  'Well, you my man, you've been sleeping long enough.

  The tribes are riding, and its time to wake. What, will you let them ride without you? Their head is yours if you will take it, man ...'

  For a moment, he seemed to shift beneath her touch. Sherett merely tutted, and went on talking. 'Very well then, laze. If you will sleep deeper than my sodar could have sent you, I'll rouse you ruder than your mother ever did ...'

  And she set her two hands, one on either temple of his head, and began to sing: soft and slow and gentle, so that Julianne became deeply confused. She knew the sodar that sent strong men to sleep and restless girls with them, that ha
d even lulled the Daughter into stasis. This sounded like enough to that, but simply overhearing it - in sunshine after a long night and a heavy meal, when she could and should have been drifting, drowsing, even solidly asleep despite every duty and summons of the day - her blood was stirring and her skin alive, crawling beneath the strata of her dirt. What it must be like for Hasan with that call focused on him, beating into his head and heart as he lay fathoms-deep in dreaming, she couldn't imagine and thought she never wanted to learn.

  The effects of it were clear to be seen, however it felt inside. Hasan frowned, and his whole body shifted on the pallet; he opened his eyes and blinked up at his wife, while her hands shielded him from the sunlight and incidentally from any glimpse of Julianne. Well, perhaps it was incidental. 'What, still no rest?' he murmured, sounding more amused than querulous, more awake and aware than he had any right to be.

  'Too much, already. Besides, God and the tribe and all the tribes together have claimed all the common hours that you have; and yet you are a husband too, though you are inclined to forget that. Is it any blame to us poor abandoned wives, if we seize any stray minute that we may?'

  He must have heard that deliberate plural as clearly as Julianne did. He lifted his hand slowly to touch Sherett's brow in a gesture that was simple, private, modest and somehow heartshakingly erode all at once; then he said, 'Where is she?'

  'Here, Hasan.'

  He tried to turn his head, against the strict constraint of his wife's strong and determined fingers; and grunted as he felt it, and said, 'May I not look on what is my own, Sherett? Has she become ugly, since I saw her beauty last? Or is she marked,' seriously now, a tug of anger in his voice as though a sluice had opened, 'has that demon Morakh done her damage?'

  'Oh, you may look all you like, so long as you lie still to do it. You are the one who has been marked, Hasan,' and a thumb stroked lightly over the triple scar on his cheek. 'You have been walking with death, and are barely back from the journey. What you may not do is move about, until the Princip has seen and spoken with you.'