by Kate Elliott
“Tumna?”
“Her reeve’s name was Horas.”
“Was?”
“She killed him. That same day you and Clan Hall and the outlanders rid us of Yordenas and his allies.”
“Eiya! I remember now. That’s a serious charge, when an eagle kills its reeve. When did she do this to you?”
She shook her head. “A few years back, when Horas first arrived here. She came to trust me later. We fawkners don’t dwell on such things or we’d not be able to do our work.”
He saw the warning look in her eyes, the set of her mouth and the way she had a breath half held in, but he couldn’t quite let go. Maybe only because he wasn’t sure if he’d betrayed her trust by allowing himself to sleep with her. “We all know the dangers of working with the eagles. But I’m only close to Scar, and he’d never hurt me. I don’t know how you fawkners do it, training the young ones, treating the ones who are injured and in pain and most likely to lash out . . . teaching an eagle who’s mauled you to trust you. Where do you find the courage?”
She slid a hand around the back of his neck and pulled him closer.
“It makes me feel alive,” she murmured, and kissed him.
Amazingly, her breath was still sweet, although he was sure his was sour. A great deal more came clear about what had passed between them last night, indeed it did, and he wrapped his arms around her and settled her closer.
A hard rapping, tat tat tat tat tat, sounded on the outer doors.
“The hells!” he swore.
She cocked her head to one side to listen, then grinned and stretched. “Take your pleasure while you can, Marshal, for they will be clamoring for you as soon as you blink.”
Didn’t anything ruffle her feathers? Neh, surely not. She had more courage than he’d ever know. She’d faced the creature that tried to kill her, and won its trust.
She began to gather the clothing tossed here and there about the tiny sleeping chamber. He stood and caught her lightly by the wrist. She looked at him, studying his face.
“Listen, Verena,” he said. “I thank you for what you offered me. I’m glad for it. But I’m marshal now, and I have to think whether it’s best for the hall that I share such a relationship with a fawkner who works under my authority. I just don’t know. It all came on me so suddenly. I’m not sure how to negotiate these currents, much less rebuild the hall after Marshal Yordenas tried his best to destroy it.”
“You’re honest. I appreciate that.”
“I’m not saying that—”
“Joss. I’m looking for a pleasant way to pass the evening now and again, that’s all. I think you’re pretty well accustomed to women’s admiration, so you have to believe me—even if it’s difficult for you to do so—that I’m not looking for more than that. Nor will I sit around pining for you. And maybe this isn’t such a good idea. We have enough complications as it is. It’s true enough that Argent Hall needs us all to work hard and together if we mean to restore it to what it ought to be. We have forty eagles or more come home to the hall looking for new reeves, and a raft of hopeful candidates knocking at the gates—”
The pounding resumed, a thapping that made his head hammer right between the eyes.
She grinned. “I would have thought you held your wine better than this. Go on.” She handed him the vest she’d unlaced last night, then tugged on her own pair of leather trousers.
“Marshal Joss?”
“I’m coming!”
He dressed, then tossed the coverlet back on the sleeping mat and decided to roll it up and store it away later. Verena picked up the empty pitcher and the pair of tumblers, slid the door open with a foot, and marched across the outer chamber of the marshal’s cote to the outer door. Joss, trying to smear the muzziness out of his eyes, stepped into the outer chamber and slid the inner door shut just as she slid open the outer door. A pair of reeves and a fawkner in a linen coat stood on the covered porch.
The fawkner said, “Morning, Rena,” as Verena stepped past him and hunted for her sandals by the stairs. “That cursed Tumna is still hanging about. We were thinking she’d fly on off to the mountains like any normal bird that’s lost its reeve does, but maybe she’s gone rogue. She’s looking for someone else’s head to rip off.”
Verena turned to give the other fawkner a hard stare. “She’s a good bird. Don’t go thinking otherwise.”
The two reeves watched this exchange with interest, grinning first at the fawkners and then at Joss. He ignored them and sat down in front of the cluttered desk that was the marshal’s worktable, but all he could do was to stare in disgust at the hopeless disarray: two pots of unstoppered ink turning to sludge; a writing brush left uncleaned so its fine hair tip had dried into a twisted horn; a pile of paper needing a clerk to read to him; a mug filled with chits, each one marked with a name so he could resolve a long-standing dispute over duty rosters; a pair of blue and black glass-bead bracelets—what in the hells were those doing here?
“You didn’t waste much time,” said the older reeve, sauntering in when he hadn’t been invited. “The story in the hall this morning goes that she got you drunk last night and hauled you off by the—Eiya! A new version of the usual tale, I admit, but with the same ending.”
Joss squinted up at the man he thought of as “the Snake.” “Volias. Greetings of the day to you, too. Why are you hammering on my door?”
“That was Siras, here.” He gestured to the younger reeve, who was still standing at the threshold.
“Come in,” said Joss wearily, beckoning to Siras and the old fawkner, whose name he had forgotten. Verena’s footfalls crunched away down the gravel path. “I’m not awake yet.”
“I’ll fetch tea and soup from the cook,” said Siras hastily and, without attempting to come in, he took himself off.
“Is the news that bad?” asked Joss, eyeing first the Snake’s smirking face and then the old fawkner’s serious expression.
Unexpectedly, the old man smiled. His was a sweet smile rather like a child’s. “Neh, Marshal. It’s a good morning when we wake up to know we’re shed of Yordenas and the rest of his hateful crew.”
“I admire you fawkers and reeves who stuck it out despite everything for the sake of the eagles and the hall,” said Joss. “You did well. I mean that, Geddi.” The name surfaced at last.
“Begging your pardon, it’s Askar. Geddi is taller and about twenty years younger by my reckoning.”
Volias snickered.
“Why are you here to plague me?” asked Joss. “Didn’t I send you back to Clan Hall?”
“Commander sent me right back again. There’s trouble everywhere, Joss.”
“Wherever I see your ugly face. Aui! I recall now. You returned yesterday. High Haldia is fallen to an army larger and better-disciplined than the one that attacked Olossi.”
“That’s right,” said Volias more soberly. “That we managed a victory here in the South and sent that second army into flight is by the mercy of the gods.”
“ ‘By the mercy of the gods, and the cunning of the outlander,’ ” added Askar. “As it says in the tale. After you’ve had a sip of tea and a swallow of soup, Marshal, there’s duty rosters to sort out. The fawkners would like to talk to you about the injured eagles. The senior reeves need to talk to you. The training master wants a word about how to sort out so many novices at one time. The hall steward needs your imprint to ask for a tithing increase since we’re feeding so many new novices and eagles, with more to come. And besides there are a hundred new young hopefuls still waiting in the western parade grounds, each one eager to try for an eagle.”
“Amazing how they will come,” said Volias in a thoughtful tone, spoken in a way that made even Joss want to know what had provoked those words. Then he laughed scornfully, ruining the effect. “Eh! So this morning when passing out rice balls among them, Darga and Medard got to talking in loud voices about how that cursed eagle—Tumna—slaughtered her very own reeve. They did go into detail of what the remain
s looked like. A puncture wound in the chest big enough to slither through, which eels were doing. His head half ripped off, dangling by a few tendons, and one arm clean gone. By the time they were through talking, a good twenty of those bright-eyed innocents had slunk out the gates heading for home.”
Joss grunted, feeling the headache reemerge. “Askar, have we a clerk who can read all these contracts and correspondence, and write replies?”
“Neh, Marshal. Marshal Alyon did have a good clerk on retainer from the temple of Sapanasu in Olossi, but when Yordenas came in he sent the man packing and kept that Devouring girl to read his letters for him.”
“And read more of him besides, I am sure,” said the Snake with his habitual sneer.
Joss felt his anger rising. Siras clattered up the steps, kicked off his sandals, and brought in a tray of tea and soup, which he set on the desk in the last cleared space.
“Well now, Volias,” said Askar in his same serious tone, “you might think so, and many did think so, but I’m not so certain. I doubt the Devouring girl danced to Yordenas’s melody.”
The Devouring girl.
All memories of the sweet night he had spent with Verena vanished like so much chaff blown away under a stiff wind. Hoping his hand’s tremor would be interpreted as exhaustion and wine-sickness, he sipped at the tea. The cook had kindly brewed thin medallions of ginger with a sprinkling of dried purple arrowroot flowers, good for hangovers.
“With your permission, Ruti will fly me into Olossi this morning so I can go to the temple of Sapanasu and see about them sending us a clerk for the work needs doing here,” continued Askar. He went into detail about what needed the marshal’s oversight and what usually ran well without his interference.
As Joss listened, he drank the spicy soup and drained the tea, glad to have the conversation move onto less volatile ground. Askar hadn’t much of a sense of humor, but he knew what was needed for a reeve hall to run smoothly.
“I’m fortunate to have you,” he said when Askar had done. He set bowl and cup on the tray, grabbed a knife, his short staff, and, after a moment’s consideration, a pair of loose jesses. “How did you and the others manage not to lose hope while Yordenas ruled here, with those dirty, corrupt reeves gathered around him? They must have made life miserable, and dangerous, for the rest of you.”
Askar shook his head. “We did what had to be done. Of course, now we know there was another mind, working at a distance to corrupt Argent Hall and the council of Olossi. That Yordenas was simply a tool.”
“This battle isn’t done yet,” said Joss. “Our war is just beginning.”
7
Standing in the shop of her Ri Amarah hosts, Mai studied the wares for sale: netted bags; varying qualities of linen and cotton cloth, from stands-up-to-hard-use to dainty-for-festivals; needles of varying length and thickness; and two shelves packed with thread and yarn of diverse luster, strength, and color. Behind the counter, Eliar’s father presided over cubbyholes and shelves and baskets packed with medicinals.
“Isn’t that oil of naya?” she asked Isar, indicating a display of vials containing a pale liquid.
“Oil of naya is famed for its healing properties, verea.” Isar had Eliar’s good looks, aged and mellowed, and Eliar’s charming manners, but in other ways he reminded Mai of her own father: he liked tidy shelves and tidy rules, because he arranged them. “This is finest-quality water-white, useful against certain skin conditions and ailments. Crude oil of naya has the property that it burns even when water is thrown on it, so it is hard to extinguish.”
Mai leaned against the counter to steady herself as the memory of living men engulfed in flame flashed in her mind’s eye. Fifteen days ago, she had watched from the women’s tower of the Ri Amarah compound as Anji and his troops, with the aid of the Olossi militia and the reeves of Argent and Clan Halls, had attacked the army invading the city. They had won a victory against a numerically superior force by dropping oil of naya on the army’s encampment. Merciful One! Everything had burned, even flesh.
“Are you well, verea?” Isar asked. “If you’d prefer to go back to the women’s quarters, you might find it more suitable.”
She took in and released a measured breath, just as Priya had taught her, cupped a hand over the curve of her belly. After the battle, Anji had stayed with her for one night, and then he had ridden off with his troops in pursuit of the remnants of the broken army. He had his work. And she had hers. She would do what must be done.
“I am grateful to you for sheltering me, ver,” she said a little hoarsely. “Your house has shown me nothing but kindness and generosity. But I find I miss the bustle of the market. It keeps my mind off those things I cannot change.”
Isar seemed about to object when a pair of matrons entered the store and demanded his attention in their quest for an ointment to soothe abrasions and burns that men in their family had received while fighting the fires that had sprung up in the lower city during the attack. Mai sat on a stool reserved for customers, relieved she did not have to answer his objections, and watched the give and take. She never tired of bargaining. She could learn much observing how others conducted themselves. In addition to selling his wares, Isar acted as an apothecary might, refusing to recommend any tisane or ointment until he had led the women through an exhaustive list of symptoms to identify the severity and precise nature of each ailment. A pair of turbaned younger men entered from the back, bearing a tray with tiny cups. They offered this fragrant tea to the customers, but both women refused.
Several young women dressed in good quality silks ventured in, laughing together. As they spread out bolts of fabric, they glanced at Mai, whispering with heads bent together. The Hundred folk favored bold colors and patterns: stylized flowers too bright to be realistic, playful butterflies and bats representing day and night, handsome motifs formed out of ranks of green-on-gold vegetation. Their chattering, the strange patterns, the smell of unfamiliar herbs, and even the color of the dirt made her feel an utter outlander, tossed into a foreign land with no choice but to fight for her own survival.
She could not allow it to overwhelm her. She and Anji, and their company of about two hundred soldiers and additional grooms and slaves, had chosen to make their stand here, to carve out a life in exile.
“Verea, is there anything you need?” asked one of the young men hesitantly. When she smiled at him, he reddened and tugged at the cloth wrapping his head that concealed his hair, as if the action would deflect her gaze.
“No. I thank you.” She rose.
Isar looked up from his customers, marked her exit with a creased brow, and offered a brief and possibly disapproving nod.
If only his daughter were permitted to accompany her, but of course that was impossible.
She pushed through the hanging banners stamped with the signs that signified to customers what was sold within, and emerged onto the porch. Every storefront had such a porch, set a few steps up from the street, on which folk left their street shoes before entering. Her attendants waited outside. Priya sat cross-legged on the porch, watching the passing traffic. Her lips shaped the words of prayers that she chanted to herself whenever she had a quiet moment. Chief Tuvi and four soldiers stood guard. Eliar, her chosen escort and local guide, was leaning against a wooden pillar chatting with O’eki, the mountainous slave, about wool.
As Mai bent to strap on her sandals, Priya rose. O’eki broke off his disquisition on the importance of a long and lustrous fiber to a carpet that would stand up to repeated wear.
Eliar grinned as he pushed away from the pillar. “Did my father talk you out of your reckless scheme, Mai?” he asked, as casual with her as if she were his sister.
Chief Tuvi gestured, and the soldiers fell into formation, two in the vanguard and two for the rear guard. “Mistress? What is your wish?”
She gathered her courage, let out a held breath. “Surely shopping must be the same in every town, even a foreign one. I am ready to go!”
&nbs
p; THE MARKET STREETS in Olossi brimmed with ten times the wonders that even the twice-annual market fair in isolated Kartu Town could ever ever ever boast. Along one narrow street you could browse the stalls and shops of papermakers, with rice-paper lanterns, plain or painted fans, decorative paper for folding, and painted landscapes suitable for screens as well as ordinary white rice paper for windows and doors. An alley snaked between shops selling fabulous creatures carved from bone. She found mirrors backed with bronze lacework, braided cords to ornament jackets, and silk ribbons woven plain or patterned.
“You’re dickering,” said Eliar as they strolled down a rank of stalls that sold nothing but beads: wood, ceramic, stone, crystal, polished, unpolished, in so many colors she could not name them all. His silver bracelets jangled as he gestured toward the bustling shops. “But you’re not buying.”
“This is my first time out. I was fearful of venturing out, after the battle, with everything in disarray. Then your sister told me it was also the year-end festival with ghosts and such. So I thought it would be better to stay indoors. But now that’s over—” She laughed. “You can see it wouldn’t be wise to buy when I don’t really know how bargaining works here.”
“The same as any other place, I suppose.” Eliar heaved a sigh that ought to have shaken earth and sky together. “Not that my father and uncles will let me travel to other towns and see.”
“The roads aren’t safe. Didn’t a man from your house get killed on the road to Horn last year?”
“Yes. But they wouldn’t even let me ride out with the militia during the battle. All I was allowed to do was fight the fire in the lower city after the army had already run!”
Mai shuddered, remembering the way buildings and tents and living creatures had burned and burned and burned. “People died fighting those fires.”
“So they did. I shouldn’t make light of it.”
A girl scuttled up to the pair of soldiers standing rear guard. Ducking her head shyly, she held out a wooden platter of sweet rice dumplings. “My papa asks you take these as a gift, for fighting for the city. The Silver isn’t permitted any.”