by Sonia Lyris
“I only accept contracts I intend to fulfill. Yes, even then. Why?”
“How much did he give you, to find me?”
He shook his head. He wouldn’t tell her.
“I only want to know how much such contracts cost.”
“That depends on many things. The contract. The various terms. Who holds it. You, perhaps?” She started to answer, but nothing came out. “As I have said, I can’t take another contract now. I still have this one to fulfill.”
This one. To deliver her.
“But when this contract is done . . .” Done with her. One way or another. “When this is over, you could then be free then to take another?”
“Tell me what is in your mind.”
She glanced at the window. Clouds rushed past against a blue-gray sky. “I don’t have the kind of money the Lord Commander does.”
“Few do. Tell me, Ama.”
“I need someone to . . .” She took a breath. “To help me understand what I am. To teach me to use vision in a way that does not cause more suffering.”
“You think I can do this?”
She looked down at her hand, still in his. “You aren’t like anyone whose future I’ve seen. Most struggle toward something or run from what terrifies them. As I’ve been running for so long.” From him. She looked away, at the sharp sword in the tapestry on the wall. “I can see what might happen tomorrow, yes. But you . . .” She could feel him there, listening intently. “You see what happens today and now. I think that might be just as rare. I must learn to see better so I can avoid making futures I have no business making, and hurting people I want to protect. If I can’t do that . . .” She looked at him. He met her gaze evenly. Watching, always watching, with his hunter’s eyes. “Then I will need someone to help me stop. To help me die. I don’t know who else I could ask that of, who I could trust.”
He leaned toward her a little, the intensity of his look startling.
“Don’t trust me, Amarta. I am not in your employ.” Nor was he her friend. She knew this.
“But if you were—if I could somehow get the money—I could trust you to do what I had hired you to do. Yes?”
“Yes. If.”
“If I ever get free, I want to see things. Learn things. About myself. About the world. I need someone to guide me. Just—if.” She lay down next to him. “Will you think on it?”
“Yes.”
“Now, will you show me what a second time is like?”
He laughed a little and smiled. For a moment it seemed to her that she could believe this reaction. True or not, she smiled in response.
“Yes,” he answered.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Triangles of bright sun cut dust-filled shafts from the ceiling and high walls of the long-house, casting bright shapes on the dirt underfoot. At a table sat an old man, his skin nearly as tanned as the deer hide he worked, his straight, white hair braided into three tails, a shock of black through the one that swept back from his face. “I think you are mistaken,” he said.
On either side of him sat two white-haired women. They might have been mirror images of each other but for the pale blue jacket one wore where the other’s was orange. One woman was slowly feeding two lines of thin dried stems through her fingers from a nearby basket, passing them across a heavy double spool that sat on the table in front of the man. From there the lines went to the other woman, who wound them together onto a spindle, feeding the resulting twine back to the man between them. With a large needle he pulled the twine through holes in a skin on his lap.
“Do you want to trade places, then, and you can do my work instead?” the woman in orange asked mildly.
An amused snort from the other woman. The elder man smiled.
From the end of the long-house a large door came slightly open. A small, striped horse, nose first, pushed its way inside, walking slowly along the length of the house toward the woman in orange. He stopped there, nosed at her shoulder. She halted her work, forcing the other two to stop as well, turning in her seat to face the shaota, a chuffing sound coming from her throat. She bore the animal’s affectionate nuzzling and then the slightly wet snort that followed, patting the horse’s side as it turned away, flicked its tail, and wandered back outside.
The woman in orange turned back to the table. The three resumed their work.
“Perhaps you are not wrong,” the man said after a time.
At this the woman in blue laughed a little.
Another door opened, a smaller one nearer the table. In came a man and woman breathing hard. The woman brushed her dark hair back out of her eyes. The man clasped his hands together.
“Forgive our intrusion, Elders. We have urgent news.”
“We listen, Mara and Jolon,” said the man, not looking up from his work.
“Our unpleasant associates come riding on their large, clumsy horses. A ten count.”
“Ah.”
The three elders’ hands stopped their motion. The old man put his work on the table.
“Were they followed into our lands?”
“They were not,” said Jolon.
“What do you wish us to do, Elders?” asked Mara.
The three elders found each other’s gazes, small expressions flickering across their faces.
After a moment the woman in the coat said, “What choice is there? None. Bid them welcome.”
The Arunkin, who they knew better than they wanted to, stepped inside the long-house. Two of his kind followed, each standing on either side of the door as if they owned it.
He was tall, the Arunkin, feet set wide on the dirt floor as if to claim the land on which he stood, perhaps by virtue of his size. There was little in this Arunkin’s wordless message that the elders had not seen before.
He adjusted the cuffs of his long riding coat, cuffs and lapels woven through with silver thread, extravagant to the point of impracticality. The rest of the outfit was brown. Not the deep, rich soil brown of one of their gaudy Houses, but the brown of trees in winter, the brown of their dull horses.
“Elders,” he said, dipping his head.
The woman in blue spoke. “You make a path to us, like a painted arrow. Do you mean to show someone the way?”
“This problem is urgent and can’t wait for a circuitous approach.”
“We listen,” said the old man.
“People are asking questions in Varo and Sio Provinces. About gold. Nuggets. Coins. All the ways you ship across your borders. Someone has started to talk.”
The old man said, “In the years we have been about this, it had to happen that someone would ask such questions.”
“Yes, but the problem now is that someone is answering the questions. One of yours, I suspect. Your townspeople. Or the strays you take in.”
“No,” said the old man. “It is not any of ours.”
The tall Arunkin snorted. “You are so confident of their loyalty?”
The old man replied, “The Hanathans are our own. We protect and care for them. They would no more tell our secrets than would the shaota.”
“And the deserters you keep taking in?”
“Why would they betray us when we give them sanctuary?” asked the woman in orange.
“You shock me with your naivete. Have you never met those who want more than they are given through largesse? You think these who deserted their sworn obligations are so full of honor?”
“Do you think them so full of ingratitude?” the old man asked.
The woman in orange put a hand over his on the table. To the Arunkin, she said: “We make you welcome in Otevan, and then we argue. Let us save time and say you are in the right. What do you want us to do?”
“My people will do what we can to quiet the rumors and obscure the arrow that leads to you. But you—you must send no more shipments. Delay your next caravan. No figurines, nuggets, coins or any of the other myriad of ways you have been transporting gold out of Otevan, not until things are quiet again.”
“This we can do,” the woman in orange replied. “What is ready to go now, though, you take.”
“No. Too many are watching the roads from Otevan through Sio and Varo. When it is again safe, we will tell you, and you can resume your deliveries.”
“Again,” said the old man, “we take the risks while you take the benefit.”
The woman in blue spoke up. “We relied on your promise to empty the mine.”
“It is not our fault the vein turned out to be so unusually difficult to exhaust.”
“This was to be finished years ago,” the woman in orange said.
“Plans must change as circumstances change. You will pause your mining operations until we tell you otherwise.”
A grunt from the old man. He looked to the woman on one side, and then to the other. Then to the Arunkin he said, “Do not mistake our hearing you for compliance. We ask you to take all that is above ground, and we forgo claim to our part. The mine we can bury, as we originally intended.”
“No, you can’t. There is no burying a thing that can be dug up again. Too many know. Your people. Ours. The only way forward is to empty it.”
“And yet this seems as impossible now as it did when you first thrust this bargain upon us.”
“Dig faster. Use more of your grateful Hanathans and those deserters you are so fond of.”
“There is only room in a hole for so many before they are mining body parts instead of metal. Take what is ready to leave Otevan and go, or we will dispose of it ourselves.”
“Dispose of it?” the man asked, confused.
“We have an even larger hole to the east of us.”
“The Rift? You will not. Half of that is ours.”
“All of it is yours if you take it now.”
“I say again, that is not possible. You will wait until we tell you to resume shipments. Then you will do so.”
“Arunkin, we have spilled a great deal of blood these last three centuries to insure we are beholden to no one.”
“I wonder how the crown would react if they knew what you’ve been doing here these past six years.”
“Yes. The threat. Again.”
The Arunkin shrugged. “You’ve broken the queen’s law. Not merely mining gold, but selling it, and forging coins.”
“At your insistence.”
“Harboring deserters. Now listen to me: be patient, be quiet, and we will soon be back to our previous and beneficial partnership.”
“We hear your words,” said the old man.
“Do more than hear them, Elders, unless you want to test the strength of the Anandynars’ respect for your borders.”
Silence fell on the room for a long moment.
“Don’t make enemies of Arunkel, Teva.”
The Arunkin waited a time for the Elders or Mara and Jolon to answer, but they were silent. Finally he nodded slowly and left, taking his men and brown horses with him.
“Bury the mine?” asked the woman in blue of the other two.
“He is right,” said the old man. “If you can bury it with a shovel, you can uncover it with one.”
“Do we change direction and veer away from these associates, despite their threats?” asked the woman in blue.
The woman in orange nodded her head. “Because of their threats. I say yes.”
“Let us circle this question again,” said the man, who then addressed Jolon and Mara. “You have traveled among the Arunkin. What do you advise?”
A humorless snort. “Do not trust them.”
“That we see.” His eyes searched those of Mara and Jolon. “If you stood where we stand, what would you do now?”
“Can we not simply wait,” Mara asked, “As he advises? Are we so weak we cannot take advice from someone who insults us even when it may be the best path? Can we not let him quiet the arrows that point to us, and, at least for now, do nothing?”
Jolon said, “But how long do we ride in their shadow?”
“A time, perhaps,” said the elder in blue.
“Is there wisdom in this?” the old man asked each of the women.
“I say we have had enough,” answered the woman in orange. “It is time to come out from the shadow.”
“I say we can wait a time longer,” replied the one in blue. “Mara’s words have sense in them.”
The man tilted his head at them both.
“We will wait, then,” answered the woman in orange. “But we must consider and prepare for the worst possible outcomes.”
A long moment’s silence. Jolon and Mara watched the elders, all of whom seemed deep in thought.
“Is Gallelon still living in Mirsda?” asked the old man.
“You speak of the mage, Elder?” asked Jolon.
“If this goes very badly,” said the woman in orange, “we may need to ask his help.”
“We will go and see if he is still there,” answered Mara.
Chapter Twenty-eight
“I think you are delaying, Seer.”
“No,” she said as she packed her things, but her hands and her mouth seemed to belong to different minds. Fingers trembling, she could not seem to tie the knots on her pack. He watched a moment, then took over for her.
All too soon they were ready to leave, atop their horses, and riding north on the Great Road.
The wide road was now crowded. Donkey-pulled wagons, hand-held carts, hundreds of people, all urgent to get somewhere, shouting and shoving, but getting out of the way of their horses. Tayre’s occasional glances and smiles at her seemed distracted. She finally realized he was watching the many people around them, looking for threats. She could have reassured him that vision told her she was not in danger of bodily harm, not until the palace itself, but she would not expect him to rely on her word any more than she would rely on his.
The gates of the city were huge and heavy, many times the height of a tall man. She watched them in wonder as they passed, picking out the many symbols twisted into the iron and spikes.
So many people. Even in Munasee there had not been this many people, swarming in all directions, children slipping behind gawkers around a puppet show, being pushed away, vendors calling their wares, people shouting. As they rode, thunder cracked across the sky, sending a brief fall of frigid rain that cleared the street not at all. Such a chaos and array of colors, sights, and sounds, that Amarta found herself looking back at the man who had been her hunter just to see something familiar.
He gave her a smile whose sincerity she no longer bothered to consider. She smiled back, but it felt weak, fragile, and insincere.
As the horses climbed the steepening road, vision tightened, a near ache in her head and neck and shoulders, confused half-warnings, tantalizing snatches of what it would be like to drop from the horse and lose herself in the people and buildings of this strange city. To avoid this day’s conclusion. She pushed it all away.
At last they reached the summit of the hill where a huge square opened, huge sprawling houses on each side in dual colors, their gates and walls so ornate and beautiful that she could not quite take her eyes off them. The Houses, she realized with a shock. The capital city was where the Houses had all begun. Where the empire itself had begun.
At the center of the square rose a pale pink marble fountain, carved into sprays as if it had been transformed from a geyser of water, birds and flowers frozen in the water.
Then she turned her attention forward again. Ahead another large gate. Walls atop which men walked. And beyond that—
The palace was huge. Silvered windows reflected the sky. Flags of red and black and white rippled in the high breezes. She could not take it all in at once. Her mouth dropped open.
“Amarta,” Tayre said softly from the ground. She tore her gaze away to look down at him. He had dismounted, and signaled her to follow. Then he was talking to someone, handing them something that looked like coins, and the horses were led away. She patted the side of her mare affectionately, sensing the unlikelihood of seeing her again.
Tayre took her arm, gently pressing her forward. “No hesitating now, Seer.”
Red-and-black clad soldiers stood at the entrance. Traffic in and out of the palace gates was thick. A crowd clustered before them, waiting to be let in. They were being checked, one by one.
“Thank you,” she said softly to him. “For saying yes.”
He still held her arm, and she let herself believe he meant to impart some measure of reassurance, not merely to convey his readiness should she at this last minute change her mind.
He spoke softly. “Once inside, for your benefit as well as mine, I am not Tayre. You understand?”
She looked ahead at the gate and not at him. “Yes.”
He came closer yet, put an arm around her shoulder, his mouth by her ear. “Do not depend on me, Amarta, not even in thought. My loyalties are to the Lord Commander and not at all to you. Expect nothing from me.”
“I know.”
“You know it in thought only. Listen carefully: when we walk through those gates I will leave you. There will be no good-bye, no more time. So, now: is there anything else you want to say to me or ask me before then?”
Was there?
How do I survive this?
No. She had given away hopes of her own survival or she would not be here now. “Your advice. Anything at all.”
He made a low, thoughtful sound. “Your instincts have served you well these years you’ve run from me, escaping every time. Trust them, but go further yet: ask questions. Think on the answers. Consider the intentions behind spoken words.”
“Thank you.”
He pressed her forward again. She took a breath, then another. Then a step. Then another.
Close enough to the gate to look through, Amarta had not until now realized the palace was a single, enormous structure, larger than any she had ever imagined. The walls stretched up four and five stories tall, glittering pink and white stone interlaced among sparkling glass windows, towers and etched spires climbing higher yet.