by Sonia Lyris
She looked out over the valley with bodies scattered around the walls of Hanatha, then to the rounded buildings of Ote, then the line of the far Rift. If she ignored the dead on the field and the dead to come, it was a beautiful land.
If not for her oath and her family she might have kept walking until she found a place where there was no more fighting, no more hunger, and no more Arunkel.
To rest her eyes from the close work, the elder woman in blue looked up a moment from her five-strand braid, drawing the tails from her companion in orange to her left and feeding the band into the hands of the man to her right, who coiled the result into large loops. Her attention back to her hands and the work, she realized that something had caught her eye. She looked up again.
He was not there, and then he was. In worn leathers, he might have been any cattleman between here and the distant ocean, but for the highlights of red in his hair that marked him as something other than Arunkin or Teva.
She stopped her work and put a hand to either side to touch her companions.
“Gallelon,” she said. “Welcome to Otevan.”
“Greetings, Elders,” he said, seating himself nearby. “You seem to have an Arunkel army at your door. What did you do to inspire such grand attention?”
“We allowed ourselves to become entangled in the empire’s bridles,” said the elder man as he collected his coils and set them aside.
“Ah,” nodded the mage. “Not wise to get close to that particular snake.” He looked curiously at the band the three of them were weaving, nodding a little as the woman in orange held it out for him to examine. “Has there yet been a cost of life?”
“A shaota is dead,” said the man flatly.
The mage waited a moment. “Any others?”
“Our emissaries, perhaps,” said the woman in blue. “Our son among them.”
“Ah. And Arunkin?”
“Hours ago their army attacked Hanatha,” the elder man said. “Our children made us proud.”
“I see. How many dead?” asked Gallelon.
“Hundreds,” answered the woman in orange. “The night before, we destroyed most of their food supplies. We had thought to encourage them to leave.”
Gallelon made an amused sound. “They do not have the aspect of an army preparing to depart. Indeed, they seem to be reassembling force.”
“Yes. We were mistaken. Will you help us prevail?”
The mage looked around the longhouse thoughtfully. “Does this mean you are offering me a breeding pair?”
“That we cannot do. The shaota decide for themselves. They—”
“Spare me the lecture. I’ve heard it. Many times. From you. From your forebears.”
“You are right,” the woman in blue said, dropping her head. “Our apologies, High One.”
“Spare me that, too. Yes or no?”
A moment’s pause.
“No.”
He looked at the elders, his expression one of surprise. “What? No ‘shaota can only be bred by the waters of Otevan?’ No, ‘should circumstances permit . . .’? No explanation or negotiation? Even now?”
The elder woman in orange shook her head. “I think we have insulted you enough, mage.”
He snorted. “Someone with a poorer sense of humor might say he is not your servant to come when you call, offering nothing in return.”
“Again, we apologize,” said the elder man. “If it were not so dire, if shaota were not at risk—”
“Yes, yes.” the mage waved a hand. “And I came. All this—it’s about the gold?”
“Even he knows,” the elder woman in orange muttered, standing and pacing the room.
“It is the many deserters you harbor, Elders. Someone was bound to say something. Still—” Gallelon put his hands out palms up then turned them to face the ground. “They seem to have brought rather a lot of force merely to find some gold. Is there something else?”
“Yes,” the elder man said, expression pained. “A handful of years ago, one of the Arun Houses required of us an alliance.”
“No choice,” the woman in orange said, her pacing more agitated. “The earth had shaken herself like a wet dog and there it was. Deep and bright. To stay quiet—to keep the snake away—we had to agree.”
“They were to empty the hole for us,” said the woman in blue softly, “but it seems inexhaustible. Now the empire is here and the House is not.”
“Give them up,” Gallelon suggested.
“You think the Arunkin will believe us? After we have smuggled gold to Perripur? Forged the empire’s coin?”
“Ah,” Gallelon said. “The problem clarifies.”
“Now we must defend our lands or the snake will take them.”
“Yes, that does seem to be the way of it,” said the mage.
The woman in orange spoke. “If we can find a foal to match you, mage, we will. You must spend years with us, but this we can perhaps do.”
“That is not what I want. What I want—”
“You cannot have,” finished the elder man firmly.
Gallelon’s annoyance was obvious. “Let me be sure I understand; a huge army at your door and you call me to your aid but the one thing I have ever asked of you, to that one thing you say no.”
The elders seemed to consider a moment. The woman in blue responded. “Yes, you understand correctly, mage.”
“Your breeding secrets are so precious to you?”
The elder man spread his hands. “Not everything is subject to negotiation.”
“You assume my good will far beyond reason.”
“Yes.”
After a moment he spoke again. “What exactly do you think I can do for you?”
The elders exchanged looks. “You are a mage.”
Gallelon laughed. “It is good to be thought so powerful, but do you really think I can stand down thousands of armed soldiers with a wave of my hand?”
The elders were silent, their looks less uncertain.
“No?” the elder man asked.
Gallelon’s amused smile vanished. “No. I could tremble the ground a bit. Perhaps bring a wind. Set a handful of them to napping. But these tricks won’t change the outcome. Little can divert bloodlust once set in motion. I might have talked them out of it before you took life, but now?”
“We did talk. Arunkin do not listen well.”
“Even so,” Gallelon said, “I am not standing in the path of thousands of armed soldiers. Not for you. Not for anyone.”
“Advise us, then.”
“If discussion has failed, Elders—if you have no choice but to face Arunkel in full force . . .” He shook his head. “You are the Teva. Show them what you can do.”
The woman in blue shook back her sleeve to reveal the many raised inked scars encircling her forearm. Wrapping her wrist with thumb and forefinger she drew her fingers up her arm across the many ridges of limisatae. “The youngers will welcome the game,” she said with a small smile.
“Thank you for your counsel, High One,” said the woman in orange, ceasing in her pacing.
“What will you do now?” asked the woman in blue as she stood.
“Get well out of the way. Perhaps I’ll come back for the aftermath and see if I can help.” He looked around the room, pursed his lips. “Then again, perhaps not.”
After a time, feeling something like refreshed, Amarta reluctantly returned to the camp and the pavilion. Each step back required that she remind herself of her oath and contract.
The guards were visibly relieved to see her, stepping aside to let her in, then watching her gloweringly, as if intending to forget how they had lost track of her before. And in their eyes, that look of fear.
Innel was speaking urgently to Nalas and the general, gesturing to a set of maps. He saw her, turned a look of smoldering anger on her, held it, then went back to his discussion.
Amarta exhaled, sat down, then resolutely set about sorting through his futures. So many possibilities, all narrowing, again, to a singl
e event, dark and bloody, a sort of funnel through which everything else seemed to pass.
Bright red on his fingers. Fear on his face.
As the light faded, lamps were lit and food was brought. Amarta ate a few bites of what was set before her but soon lost her desire for it, pushing the rest away. Tonight so many were going hungry, so many whimpering in agony, at their broken bodies and hearts, weeping for dead friends left to rot in the fields of Hanatha.
The weight of consequence settled heavily on her shoulders. If she had known more about herself and the world, would more of them be alive and whole now? There were dead and mangled people who she might have been able to save but had not.
It seemed to her that being the wolf should mean more than this.
When a servant came to take her plate away, the weight she felt warred with hunger, so she kept a bread roll, putting it in her pocket for later. The act put her in mind of Dirina and Pas. She wondered if they were well. If they were fed.
She glared back at the Lord Commander. They had better be.
As night deepened, the Teva curled up on their cots and slept. Tired herself, she found her own cot.
Some time later a commotion outside woke her.
“A messenger from the capital, Lord Commander,” someone said outside.
She meant to ignore it and return to sleep, but the feeling of a storm cloud rushing toward her roused her. She stood and, ignoring the guards, walked outside the pavilion.
The night was partly overcast, a waning moon overhead giving some light to the ground. From nearby the Lord Commander’s voice called out: “Cahlen. My sister. Let her pass.”
At this a deep thrumming went through Amarta. She pushed herself into vision and time seemed to slow.
She began her next inhale.
The approaching mounted figure was moving, holding something, turning, a motion that Amarta recognized with a shot of dread before she understood what it was: a bow, drawn, aimed.
Her lungs still filling, she tried to think. Surely all of this, all she had been facing, would be far simpler without him. Wouldn’t it?
Would it?
The queen sat on a floor, head down, shuddering with sobs. A jumble of metal rods, flats of wood, and chain fell clattering to a marble floor.
Screams echoed across the months and years. Bodies hung from scaffolding. Heads atop pikes marking the place town gates used to be.
No. He had to live. However bad it was now, it would be worse without him.
Amarta felt a thin line cross time, one of action and consequence, like an unraveling thread connecting two birds flying in opposite directions.
And still her lungs were filling. She moved, tasting vision, comparing each motion of her right hand and arm to what she had foreseen, questing forward for the one movement that could keep the thread from breaking.
Forward, then back to the present. Forward, back, shutting her mind to everything else. She twisted slightly, reaching across her body, matching how it should feel in each moment’s future. Into her pocket. Taking the roll. As her lungs reached capacity and began to compress again with exhale she flung the bread at the Lord Commander.
It hit him on the neck. He began to move toward her, turning to see what had hit him. Turning just enough that he was edge-on to the horse and rider and the arrow cutting through the air toward him.
Amarta was still exhaling as she came fully back to the present, to shouts and cries and the Lord Commander stumbling, falling. Loud voices. The woman on the horse was yanked off her saddle, pulled away.
Amarta staggered back through the doorway, clumsy with the seeing haze, making room for the four men who carried the Lord Commander past her. She heard him hiss: “Nalas. Don’t let them hurt Cahlen.”
The doctor rushed forward, pushing past Amarta, kneeling by his cot.
“Everyone get back,” she shouted. Then, more softly: “This will hurt, ser.”
* * *
Innel was annoyed. By the pain, by the yelling, by having his orders disregarded. He had important plans to assemble. A battle in the morning. He turned his head to look at his shoulder, which hurt. A bolt, fletched black and red, was embedded there. But it didn’t hurt that much. He was fine. Would be fine.
Cahlen, he remembered, had shot him. But why?
Oh, right: because he had killed their brother.
No, that wasn’t it. That had happened years ago. In Botaros. When he’d met the seer.
The seer. Where was she now? Had she escaped again? He looked around for her.
His shoulder hurt.
His mind circled back to Cahlen. She had been trying to kill him. Why would she do that? But the seer had saved him. Why, again?
The pain in his shoulder caught his attention again. No—he could not, would not, allow himself to be distracted. He reached across his body with his left hand, gripped the hilt of the arrow, and pulled.
“Stop that, ser,” said the doctor sharply, grabbing his wrist and the bolt both, separating the two. When he brought his hand back, his fingers were wet and sticky. Where had all this blood come from?
He felt odd. Numb.
In shock, he realized. He was in shock.
“Nalas,” he said. His cot was surrounded by people, but somehow Nalas was not among them. “Nalas!”
“Here, ser.” Nalas wormed his way between two of the doctor’s assistants. He looked worried.
“Cahlen?”
“She’ll be—a bit bruised, ser,” Nalas said, “but she’s all right.”
“Why?” he managed.
“I don’t know.”
“You know something. What?”
“She had a message, ser. The general took it.”
“What message?”
Suddenly the pain was deep and searing and Innel groaned. The doctor pushed Nalas away.
“Arrow’s gone deep,” she said to him. “We must—” She spoke to someone else, something he couldn’t make out, and turned back. “Open your mouth, ser.” Not waiting for him to comply, she leveraged his jaw open, dripping something gooey and bitter at the back of his throat. “Swallow,” she said. “More. More yet. You’ll need it.”
“Wait,” he managed, trying to get the words out around the sticky stuff. “Where’s the general?”
But the doctor did not answer, calling for her tools. When she looked back at Innel, she was watching him with an odd intensity.
Why, he wondered, wanting to put voice to this question, along with the other questions he had, but somehow unable to do so. Then he lost consciousness.
When Innel woke again, he was in his bed. His head ached as if it had been in a melon press. His shoulder felt as if it had a spike through it.
Lismar sat on a chair by his side.
“I’m taking over, Innel,” she said when she saw him blink awake. “You are injured beyond your ability to command.”
“What? No. I can—” He tried to sit up, gave a sharp exhale as the pain wrenched through him. He lay back. “The seer,” he croaked. “Where is she?”
“Your pet has escaped again, Lord Commander. Perhaps you should leash her more tightly. Try iron next time.”
He wondered how well that would hold her when an entire set of guards couldn’t.
“She saved my life.”
“Of course she did, ser.”
Lismar didn’t believe him. For a moment he thought to try to explain, then he realized there was no point.
It was subtle, what Amarta had done. If he hadn’t seen the round of bread bouncing away as he turned to look at her, he might never have realized it. It was easy to miss things, even those right in front of you, if you weren’t looking at them. Or looking for them.
“Cahlen,” he said.
“Anyone else, I’d have her executed on the spot, Innel. Calm yourself: she’s fine. Chained, guarded, but alive. I’ll even allow her some food, little as there is left of it.”
“What was the message she brought?”
“When you�
��re better, Consort. Rest now.”
As Lismar rose, he reached out with his good hand and gripped her wrist as tightly as he could, which didn’t seem very tight. He forced the words out: “What’s the damned message I was nearly killed for, General?”
He met her look. A tiny smile played around her mouth, making her resemblance to the old king quite clear. After a moment she nodded, reached inside her vest, and pulled out a scrap of bloody paper, holding it to him. He released her and took the paper, blinking through blurred vision to make sense of it.
Garaya.
Everyone dead.
“No,” he breathed.
“Very much yes, it would seem. Apparently this was sent right before they were completely overcome, by some soldier at the back with the birds, setting them free. Signed by him, even. You know this Selamu?”
Selamu. Cahlen’s Selamu. Now he understood.
“I need the seer.”
“No, you need to rest. I’ll handle this.”
“Handle what?”
“Tomorrow we take Ote. Whatever cracks the Teva are hiding in, we will flush them into the open so we can bring this matter to a conclusion. We have held the empire for a thousand years, and I’m going to show the Teva how. Tomorrow night we feast on roast shaota.”
“Wait, no, you can’t, not without me—”
“Oh, no. I will not risk the life of the queen’s consort. You will stay in bed and heal.” She spoke to a guard. “See to it that he stays in his bed and heals.”
“Yes, ser.”
“You can’t—” Innel said.
But the general was gone.
“Wait,” he croaked, struggling to get up. The room swam around him and he fell heavily to the cot.
Sleep took him again.
Amarta looked at Jolon. I might help you get free. she signed. I need two things.
Yes?
Deliver something to your elders for me.
What?
Amarta struggled to remember her signs. She could not remember how to show names.