'The Princip, is it? Am I in Surayon?'
'You are.'
And so is your army, Julianne thought, though she said nothing. Hasan gave a short, soft sigh that might have meant anything. All he said was, 'That family seems to be dogging me. The son, the granddaughter, now the old man himself...'
Now she had to speak, and did. 'We brought you here to save your life, Hasan. Rudel lost his, in fetching you through the Folding.'
'Is Rudel dead? I am sorry, though my people may not be. These are stories that need to be told; later will do, if it be not too late. For now, immediately, show me my recovered jewel, Sherett. I promise, I will lie as still as— well, I had meant to say death, but not that. As still as an ailing man in the presence of his newest lady, not wishing to make a flailing, whimpering idiot of himself...'
Sherett took her hands away and Julianne slid forward, to where he could see her easily without either turning his head or squinting into the suns glare. She remembered to hold the cloth across her face as a substitute veil; he reached up and touched his fingers to her brow, much as he had saluted her sister-wife.
'Julianne. Wife. I looked for you . . .'
'I know you did. And found me,' in a manner of speaking, and too late.
'Did I? I remember finding a madman ...' He frowned, and she could almost see the memory slip from his tenuous grasp. 'Well. Later. Show me, I said . . .'
His hand had no stronger grip than his mind, but it served to nip the veil from her unresisting fingers and ease it aside.
'Don't worry,' he said, 'I won't be scolded. There's only Sherett to see, and it'll be you that she blames.'
Now he smiled, and it had been worth long waiting for. Now he stroked her cheek, and pushed back her hood to draw her long hair free. She knelt patient while he played, not daring to risk a glance at Sherett. It was all she could do not to kiss at the inside of his wrist, where the skin might smell sourly of his recent illness but was still his, was a part of him and so near, so tempting, so easily reached for kissing after so long; and who cared if that made her no better than some tavern slut in Marasson, kissing every man who came in reach? There had been only the two come that close to her, and thus far they'd both escaped her kisses.
Thus far, and just a little further: she did resist the yearning, not to shock Sherett beyond bearing. Then she did take her husband’s hand and lay it firmly back on the blanket that covered him; and she did tuck her hair back inside her robe, and draw the hood up over, and pull her makeshift veil across her face again.
'You're too thin,' he said, reaching out again in defiance of her discipline, folding his hand loosely around her wrist. 'A girl should be slender, but not hollow. Were you much mistreated?'
She shook her head, but not in denial of anything he'd said. They were all of them too thin, she and all her friends; each of them had their reasons. 'Later,' she said, throwing his own word, his own decision back at him. 'Time enough for all our stories then. I'm being fattened up again, in any case. For now, if we can't talk about little things, things that don't matter — and they couldn't, how could they, when something that mattered so much was going on all about them, and they were the cause of it all? — 'then let's not talk at all. You may feel like you've slept an age, but most of that was with an 'ifrit inside you,' and even that was more than she should have said, judging by the bemused interest on his face. Hastily, trying to cover up, 'You still need rest—'
'—And food,' he interrupted, with a grin: thinner and less piratic than his standard, but convincing enough. Bathed in malice, she thought it.
'Yes, and food. Fit food,' with a little gentle malice of her own. 'No meat, no sweets, no feasting. Not till you're recovered.'
He groaned superbly. 'How shall I ever recover, if you starve me on slops?'
'Slowly,' Sherett said, reinforcing Julianne. 'In your sleep, largely. We're going to leave you for an hour now, will you lie still and rest, or shall I call up my sodar to enforce you to it? I'll fetch the Princip after, and then if he allows it you can sit up, take a drink and a little to eat.'
'Where is the Princip?'
'With his granddaughter,' Julianne said. 'With Rudel.'
'Then go, by all means, wherever it is that you are going. I have Jemel for company - and will you wake Marron, as you did me? What's wrong with him?'
'Let him sleep,' Julianne said shortly. That was another story she didn't want to tell. 'The longer the better, for Marron. And you're not to plague Jemel with questions. Jemel, if he tries, you have your own sodar—'
'—And will use it. I promise.' She believed him. He ached visibly for silence, for solitude, so long as he could share them both with Marron. This all-but-empty palace was too populous for him, as Rhabat had been before. He wanted his friend fit and the open Sands, a spare camel and his wits and skills to live on, nothing more.
Perhaps he could have that now, she thought, with an unexpected flare of hope. Marron was harmless without the Daughter, meaningless in the machinations of the wise. They had no reason to keep him, and he surely had no reason to stay. So he would go, and Jemel would go beside him; and they would find no welcome anywhere in Outremer, so they would be bound for the desert in the end. For the desert and perhaps for happiness, in some scale...
As was she, perhaps, in some scale. Hasan could make her happy, she thought, if he didn't bring too great a burden of grief and guilt dragging in his shadow — if he didn't seek to instal her in Ascariel, junior wife to its tyrant overlord of her conquered people. If he did that she would be needed, yes, useful beyond the uses of a junior wife, but not she thought happy.
Sherett could make her happy also, in other ways. Sometimes quite unexpectedly, as now, plucking her up by the elbow and wrenching her away without a word, without time to say another word to Hasan. For a moment she felt as though she'd been ripped from all the good that was left in her life. Then, as she was towed through the solarium, she found breath enough to ask, 'Where are we going?'
'In search of a bath, and fresh clothing. I have been caught in a sandstorm and felt cleaner afterwards than that djinni has left me, with all the wind's dust in my hair; you stink worse than a midden. Patrics may not care about such matters, but you will learn that we Sharai are a fastidious people.'
It might not, surely it could not last; but for the moment at least, Julianne felt blindingly, blisteringly happy.
If she'd come this far into the palace earlier, she wouldn't have asked Gerla that foolish question about her staying. It was all too clear that the building was half abandoned. They bustled through corridor after empty corridor, and Julianne was just beginning to think they'd have to stand in the great hall and shout for attention when at last they found their way into the kitchens.
Here at least there was life, and activity. In her experience there always was, in kitchens. No Gerla, alas: but a steward with a limp, a staff and a compensating scowl, a couple of women chopping vegetables at one end of a long table, a sullen boy up to his elbows in water, scrubbing pots.
Here was proof positive, Julianne thought as she faced their range of bemused and curious stares, that Gerla had been wrong in one aspect at least. Not everyone still in the palace wanted to be here. The steward, she guessed, would sooner be out in the field, but that his twisted leg prevented him; the boy she was sure of. By the hunched look of him, the steward must have been working out his own temper on the boy's back when the appeals grew too insistent or too impertinent.
'Ladies? May I assist you at all?'
The steward's staff clicked on the tiled floor as he made his slow way towards them. Julianne wanted to gesture, to tell him to be still, not to trouble himself on their account; Sherett said nor did anything, though, and so neither could she.
Just before he reached them, Sherett showed her own pride, in a swift murmur. 'I don't speak your tongue with any ease, Julianne. Ask him for the bathing-chamber, and a change of dress. Say that we don't need hot water, cold will do . . .'
&
nbsp; Julianne shivered, at the thought of a hard scrubbing in icy water. Before she could speak, though, the steward smiled thinly, and changed languages with a quiet fluency. 'I understand Catari, my lady. My name is Baris, and I am steward of this house. I do apologise, that you have had to come and seek me out; we are short-handed and distracted today, but that's a poor excuse for neglecting guests. Of course the baths are ready, and the fires hot. Roald will show you where.'
A snap of his fingers and the boy scuttled forward, abandoning his pots and apparently his sulks both at once. Julianne was glad to have the improvised veil to hide her smile as she saw how carefully he kept out of reach of the steward's staff.
His bruises couldn't be that bad, though; they hadn't marked his curiosity, nor his confidence. He shifted his shoulders beneath his loose, grimy shirt of damp linen, found a slouching way to walk that didn't hurt too badly as he led them back up the stairs and demanded boldly, 'Ladies, is it true that you flew in here this morning on a magic carpet?'
Julianne choked on a sudden, startled giggle. When she'd recovered, she said, 'I don't know. Is it? I suppose it could be. Didn't you see?' He was the sort of boy who should surely have been watching, staring, pointing, yelling — there had been enough of those, a dozen or more hanging out of the palace windows and streaming onto the terrace to make a circus of their coming, when she'd been so fraught with grief and hope together.
'I was in the stables,' he said disgustedly, 'and everyone else ran off, but I had my hands full with the Princip's brute of a stallion, and I couldn't just leave him loose, could I? By the time I had him stabled, I was the last left, and the master wouldn't let me go.'
'No, I don't suppose he would.'
'And then the Princip wouldn't let me ride out with the other men, even as a messenger. He needs messengers ...'
'I'm sure he does. He probably also needs to feel that those in his charge are as safe as they can be. The time will come when he'll have to answer to your family, Roald, for his care of you.'
‘I haven't got a family, that's why I'm here. The Princip takes us into the palace, until he can find us another home; some of us he keeps. I've been here five years,' which was obviously a source of pride rather than humiliation, except that his voice turned suddenly as he went on. 'I'm not a child, though! He sent the little ones away this morning, up into the hills, and he tried to send me with them, only I wouldn't go.'
'So what did you do?' Julianne asked, knowing the answer already, feeling guilty already for dragging it out of him.
T hid,' and surely he couldn't get any redder. 'Until they'd given up on me and gone. Then I came out, I was sure they'd let me ride messenger now - but Baris caught me before I got to the Princip, and he took me to the kitchens.'
And beat him into the bargain, but Roald was clearly not going to mention that.
'And then we came.'
'And then you came, and the baths are just here, and I'll build up the fires for you, lady, because the other lady's Sharai and you both came from the desert and I expect you like it really hot — but tell me about the magic carpet? Please?'
Julianne laughed. 'It's not really magic. A djinni brought us here, and there were so many of us, it was just easier' — easier for me, and Elisande thought of that, even while everything else was happening— 'if it carried us in on a carpet, like half a dozen glasses on a tray. It fetched Sherett for me later, and she flew in with nothing to stand on at all.'
'Oh.' That was obviously something of a disappointment. A djinni was one thing, a magic carpet something else entirely. A boy might dream, she supposed, of finding or buying or possessing a magic carpet, but not a djinni. Emphatically, not a djinni. 'Why was the djinni doing that? They're not usually so ...'
Helpful? Cooperative? Exciting? Involved? A gesture filled the space of the missing word, and she sympathised deeply.
'Never mind why,' Sherett said sharply, as they came into the first cool chamber of a simple hammam. There was a shelf of oils and unguents there; she inspected it while the boy ran off to tend to his fires.
He came back sweating under the weight and hammer-heat of an iron basket full of scorching rocks, which he carried through to the inner chamber. When he came out, following billows of scented steam, Sherett ambushed him with a grip on his elbow, a push towards a long bench and a brisk command: 'Take off your shirt, and lie down.'
'What? Lady, no ...'
'You might as well,' Julianne said, amused. 'She'll do it for you, else. And give you more bruises on the way.'
Sherett snorted. 'I wouldn't beat a boy useless, on a day like this.'
'I'm not useless!' A furious protest from Roald, even as he clung desperately to his dignity and his shirt, wrapping his arms tight around his body in an effort to keep them both together.
'You will be when you start to stiffen up, unless you let me at your muscles now. I found a salve here that'll help to soothe the burning, and don't tell me it isn't burning now. I know all the stages of a beating, me.'
Of course she did, and from both sides, most likely. The boy was mulish, though, eyeing the door in hopes of a getaway, determined to keep his clothes on and his privacy secure; it was Julianne who found the weapon to break down his resistance.
'If you won't be medicined, you'll need to be healed; there's no room here for a boy who can't work. Can Gerla do it, do you think, or must I ask the Princip?'
The horror of such an idea struck Roald mute, as it seemed; he made no answer. Slowly, though, very slowly he unlaced the neck of his shirt and pulled it off over his head.
Julianne deliberately turned her head aside, not to increase his mortification, and didn't look back until Sherett was done with him, until he was easing his shirt on again and flinching as the worn linen fell against his skin. She thought the salve might be doing some good, watching as he straightened his shoulders cautiously, as he looked a little surprised that it felt no worse than it did; she thought she had a salve for his soul, which might do even better.
'Roald, come here.'
He came, bristling with suspicion, wary of some further degradation. She smiled and said, 'I have a task for you. A secret task, can I trust you not to shout it?'
'Of course, lady!'
'Good. Who guards the Princip, with all the men gone to the war?'
'The Princip never has a guard, lady. He is . . .' Again a gesture, in lieu of the word he didn't have; the gesture seemed to mean all-powerful, invulnerable, perhaps simply 'Princip'.
'Well, he may need one now. There is more than one army in Surayon, and creatures more subtle and more evil than men; even the Princip may have his mind distracted, and his eyes not watching his back. I want you to do that for him, as much as you may. The older boys have gone, his little page is too young for this, and who else is there? Baris would be too slow, even if he had no other duties, and it is no task for a woman. Here, take this.'
Roald eyed the blade that she offered him, with something close to yearning on his face. All he said, though, was a stout, 'Lady, I have my own knife.'
'I'm sure you do.' She was sure she knew its type, too: a nocked blade handed down through generations of lads, hollow from too many years' rough sharpening on any convenient stone, its handle split and bound with fraying string. No doubt he cut his meat with it, and his nails too when he thought to cut them; she doubted strongly whether it was good for much besides. 'This knife is special, though, for more reasons than you can see,' and he should be able to see plenty in the chased steel blade, the wicked double edge, the haft inlaid with mother-of-pearl that must be vanishingly rare in this country, must have been more rare still in Rhabat where Elisande had found and claimed it and its sister. 'It has been blessed by priests, to be proof against 'ifrit and other spirit-creatures. This blade will protect the Princip, where perhaps nothing else can do it. Will you take it? For him, and because I ask you to?'
She pressed it into his hands before he could answer, to let him feel the cold smoothness of the hilt,
the vicious edge. Even so, he hesitated.
'Lady, this is too good for a kitchen-boy . . .'
'Yes, it is. But it's not too good for the Princip's ward; and it's essential for the Princip's chief bodyguard, his secret bodyguard ...'
And to overcome his last wavering doubts, she unknotted the ties of her robe and began to slip it down off her shoulders.
The boy fled, taking the knife with him.
A minute later she was pouring a dipper of water over stones so hot that they cracked in their iron cradle, she was breathing deeply and sighing luxuriously as steam engulfed her and she felt the sweat start to break through her ingrained crust of dirt. She could sit here and lose more than the stink of her prison cell; she could lose all the distress of the last weeks, all the darkness that had gathered in the corners of her mind, wash it all away and be pure, clean, her father's proper daughter...
Sherett cut across her thoughts with a question. 'Why did you give that boy your knife?'
'Because he needed it. Everyone in Surayon needs something today,' and she wished that everyone's need could be so easily satisfied, or satisfied at all.
'You'd best warn the Princip, or he'll wonder why he's being shadowed everywhere by a kitchen-boy with a dagger in his hand.'
'I will. If we see him. He may ride out again, when he and Elisande are finished . . .' And then, because that reminded her of what he and Elisande were doing, which reminded her in turn that she couldn't after all wash or sweat the world away no matter how hot the bath or how dense the steam, she said, 'Sherett, what's it like out there? The djinni brought you over in daylight, you must have seen . . .'
'Aye, and been seen in my turn’ the woman said, with half a smile that was clearly for something that might have been half funny, on another day. 'But yes, Julianne, I saw. I saw what my people are doing, bringing the dry desert to this wet country, covering the green with ash and smoke. They are burning crops and villages, and slaying where they ride: my greedy people, destroying what they cannot take away. And doing all in the name of God, Julianne, to recover the holy places. We say that God chose us from all the people in the world, and set us in the Sands to test us, to keep us pure. If that is true, then perhaps God is using us now to test the people here, fetching in the fire and death that we live with daily to see if they are soft or strong.'
Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04 Page 32