Sisters of the Raven

by Barbara Hambly

  “It is, my lord.” Proath dipped a clumsy salute. “Nebekht’s followers do not lack for what they need, neither meat nor drink. Nor do rats and mice spoil the granaries there.”

  The door opened again, admitting Verth Marsent-Jothek and Chalath Wildstorm, sheikh of the Riders of the Stone Forest, a thin, hard-faced man whose simple white robe and burnoose showed up startlingly against the brilliant golds and purples of Lord Akarian’s clothing, the bullion embroidery that crusted the sleeves of the younger of the Akarian sons.

  “Lohar was a Sun Mage, wasn’t he!” asked Mohrvine, and Whorb Akarian looked profoundly shocked.

  “Lohar, the Mouth of Nebekht, voluntarily surrendered his powers,” he said, “when the commander of the universe appeared to him in a vision and told him that this was what he must do.” His tone implied that Mohrvine should have known all this—Mohrvine certainly had heard the tale. “And it takes more power than any wizard ever possessed to bring water to the dry wells. That he would, flout Nebekht’s expressed will to . . . to hocus granary walls is unthinkable!”

  “My dear sir, of course it is unthinkable, nor do I think it.” Mohrvine threw into his voice precisely the note and inflection Chrysanthemum Lady had used when assuaging the elder Akarian’s anxieties about supper.

  “Sorry I’m late—damn silly of me.” Iorradus Akarian breezed in, handsome in the crimson tunic and cloak of the Guards of the Marvelous Tower, his wheat-colored curls like gold on broad shoulders. “Velvet Mare foaled and I simply couldn’t leave until I made sure she was safe. A breech presentation, you know, and her dam always had trouble . . . . Finally killed her, poor thing. Sunrise Mare, I mean, not Velvet Mare. Velvet Mare is fine.” He salaamed deeply to Lord Akarian. “I abase myself, Uncle. And as for the lovely Chrysanthemum Lady, if she made me sit in the corner and eat millet and water I shouldn’t blame her.”

  “Nonsense!” exclaimed Marsent-Jothek, clapping the young man heartily on the arm as the smiling Chrysanthemum Lady opened the garden door for them all. “I remember the time Sunrise Mare birthed War Captain. That was a breech presentation too.”

  Mohrvine sighed inwardly and rolled his eyes. The stable-yard conversation bubbled behind him as if the men were loitering in their home courts rather than walking through one of the most exquisite gardens in the realm. Candles touched here and there the feathery leaves of the pepper and jacaranda trees, picked out shaggy-textured bark like an artist’s brush in gold. An unseen fountain murmured; the green, cool smell of moss and water was succeeded by the sweeter song of jasmine, the musky breath of exotic lilies. He’d invited the personable young nephew of the Akarian clan precisely to be company for the horse-minded Marsent-Jothek—whose support Mohrvine had been seducing away from his nephew for months—so it was possibly all to the best, but he still wished for more entertaining company. It was going to be a long evening.

  Lamplight through leaves, amber in cobalt. Fiddles and flutes gentle after the daylong wailing of the far-off Citadel horns. The men mounted the three rustic steps, Chrysanthemum Lady bowing them to the low tables. The divans were cushioned in plain gray-and-black striped silk, the tables wrought of cedar, simply formed and without ornament beyond the grain of the oiled antique wood and their own graceful shape. On the other side of the lattice-and-paper partition, the damsels played songs from the latest plays. The woman Honeysuckle Lady, waiting by the door, performed perfectly the most complicated of the twenty salaams appropriate to women, then rose and greeted each man so adeptly, asked so knowledgeably about his interests, that it was barely noticeable when Chrysanthemum Lady excused herself and disappeared.

  Three serving girls brought in the heavenly morsels, kneeling to offer the lacquered willow-work trays to Honeysuckle Lady, who placed the plates before Akarian, his sons, his nephew, the other guests, their host in exact and effortless order of precedence. They might be the daughters of whores, or farmers, or nomads, reflected Mohrvine, watching those earnest, sweet faces, the precise grace of their movements. And they might be destined for marriage, or a position as a courtesan in some house like this one . . . .

  But wherever they went, they would always be ladies of the Blossom Houses.

  His eye slipped slantwise to Lord Akarian, who was staring at the trio of fledglings with a greedy intensity and absent-mindedly fingering the front of his pantaloons. Honeysuckle-Lady came and engaged him in chat—as much as one could refer to a sermon about the true nature of Iron-Girdled Nebekht as “chat”—but the old man’s attention clearly kept straying to the young girls. When the dancers came out, he watched the serving girls still: sweet, serious, virgin children in robes of cherry red, and butterfly blue, and one girl in simple white and black.

  The dark-haired girl came to Iorradus with a cup of sweet mint tea, offered it to him timidly, her face schooled but adoration in her jade-green eyes. Mohrvine sighed, well aware of the effect of the young man’s good looks on any and every girl whose path he crossed—and evidently on Honeysuckle Lady too, for as the handsome guardsman smiled at the girl in black, the courtesan turned, with every appearance of naturalness, from her applause of Chalath Wildstorm’s story about the mouse and the hippopotamus and intercepted the cup from the child’s hands. She took it as if to hand it to Iorradus herself, then glanced down into the cup, pursed her lips just slightly and made some kind of laughing remark—and a little moue of disgust—to Iorradus, as if she’d found a hair floating in the tea, or a drowned mosquito. She put the fragile vessel down on the table and leaned to pour him out another cup. The dark-haired girl made no change in expression, but if looks could kill, thought Mohrvine, deeply entertained. Honeysuckle Lady would have left the chamber on a plank.

  “How can you tell if a stallion is going to be a prizewinner, so soon after he’s foaled?” Honeysuckle Lady inquired of Iorradus with every appearance of deep fascination, and the question served to pull his eyes from the girl in black, and to plunge him into a detailed explanation of his private system for gauging a colt’s speed, conformation and heart, apparently while still in the womb.

  For a moment the serving girl stood back, her face still sweetly smiling. That, Mohrvine had heard, was another skill they taught in the Blossom Houses. How to smile through nearly anything, no matter what they felt inside. A skill worth learning indeed, more than all the years of poetry, cosmetics and twenty different salaams.

  Honeysuckle Lady had it, he thought, watching her. Gorgeous in her stiffly pleated golden overdress and her emeralds, gems twinkling in her lacquered hair. Beside her, the girl in black was only a girl, lovely as a lily in the way only a fourteen-year-old girl can be who has known nothing evil in her life.

  Only a girl, and spitting mad, oblivious to Lord Akarian’s devouring gaze.

  “My lord.” Mohrvine leaned closer to the elderly clan lord and spoke beneath the music, beneath the soft patter of talk and the shadowy perfection of the dancers who drew the other men’s eyes. “We conversed the other day concerning the True God, the great Nebekht of the Iron Girdle—and I’ve been giving some thought to what you said. Uncomfortable thought, I’ll admit—thoughts about the nature of truth, the nature of the universe, that I’ve never allowed myself to see in my heart before.” He made his face earnest, molded his features into the expression of a man who has had a profound spiritual experience—much as Honeysuckle Lady, he reflected, was molding hers into the expression of a woman who would love nothing better than to hear graphic details of every foaling experienced by Velvet Mare, and her dam, Sunrise Mare, through the previous two decades.

  “Open your heart, then!” urged Lord Akarian, seizing Mohrvine’s hands. “Your heart is the wisest guide you can have, my lord. Are you willing, now, to see that Nebekht is not simply the war god everyone thought him, but in truth the commander, the ruler, the giver of law for all the universe?”

  Mohrvine said gravely, “I am.”

  Not only were few actual reigning kings the heroes of ballads, reflected the Summer Concubine th
e following morning, but the companions of those who were heroes generally seemed to be people without griefs, tenors and ills of their own. This did not, alas, seem to be the ease with Oryn.

  She stood in the doorway of the Wisteria Pavilion behind the library, between the sharp morning sunlight of the Green Court behind her and the gloom of the curtained study, the fug of stale brandy an unmistakable reek in her nostrils. The door had been open when she’d passed the place on her way back from bidding Oryn farewell in the shadow of the Marvelous Tower. It had crossed her mind that Soth might be late getting his things together, for she hadn’t seen him among the riders, guards and baggage wagons assembling in the Golden Court.

  It had also crossed her mind that she might find here exactly what was visible through the still gloomier curtained door of the inner room, where Oryn’s friend and tutor lay heavily asleep, still dressed as he had been the afternoon before. The cat Gray King sat on the table beside the bed, dipping his paw into the dregs of the librarian’s wine cup and licking the potent date wine from his toes.

  The Summer Concubine took the cup and poured it out onto the grass beside the outer door—Rohar only knows what it will do to the flowers, she thought—and, looking up, saw Oryn walking along the path from the Marvelous Tower in his robes of scarlet and flame like an immense persimmon in the sunlight.

  He sighed. “Oh, dear.” The fact that he’d come back alone told her that he, too, was not surprised by what he found.

  “The ride out would probably sober him,” she remarked as he came to stand in the doorway at her side.

  “Judging the quantity he’s taken by the smell, it would likelier kill him.” He stepped over a stack of books and around an overset stool, and made his way to the round, tiled hearth, stone cold and heaped with warm ashes; shed his outer robe and gingerly scraped the mess aside. Somewhere he’d learned how to arrange a fire—the Summer Concubine reached out with her mind and touched the kindling with flame, and Oryn half turned on his heels, the gold light warm in his hazel eyes.

  “Thank you, my Summer Child. With luck this will last until he wakes . . . . Oh, good, he has beans roasted.” Straightening, Oryn opened the inlaid lattice of a cupboard and lifted the lid of one of Soth’s coffee canisters. “Is there water? Well, one out of two isn’t bad. Don’t blame him,” he added, turning back to the doorway with the water jug in his hand.

  She shook her head. “My uncle Uzuk would do this,” she said. “I’ve told you about Uncle Uzuk, haven’t I?”

  “The one with all the hats?”

  She smiled. Ordinarily no Blossom Lady—let alone a Pearl Woman—would speak to any man about her family once she’d left the house where she was born, though she had known Blossom Ladies to make up eccentric families for the purpose of telling amusing stories about them to patrons. But from the first Oryn had been like a brother to her as well as a lover.

  “Drink was like a shadow that followed poor Uzuk. It would seize him without warning, no matter what my father or my mother would do. I can understand that Soth would not wish to ride out to the camp and hear them whisper, if only in his mind, There goes the man who was once a mage and who is nothing now.”

  She took the water jar from Oryn’s hands and carried it to the end of the courtyard path, to the thick-twined arbor gate that set off the library grounds from the rest of the Green Court. She left it there for the palace water bearers to fill when they came by. When she returned to the pavilion Oryn was in the inner room, gently pulling off Soth’s slippers and covering him with a blanket.

  “Do you think you could find a hex mark?”

  The Summer Concubine hesitated. Last night the page she’d sent out to the Weavers Yard had returned with the information that according to the neighbors, Fergit the Weaver’s missing wife had not, in fact, returned. She’d scried repeatedly for Corn-Tassel Woman, reaching her mind into the Sigil of Sisterhood from within the strongest power-circle she could make. She had felt nothing, had gotten no reply.

  And had waked gasping from nightmares that folded themselves away to nothingness, leaving her weeping in Oryn’s arms.

  She was aware of Oryn watching her now, worry in his eyes.

  “I will try, of course.” she said slowly. “But by your leave, I’d like to return here tomorrow. Corn-Tassel Woman . . .”

  “You’ve heard nothing of her still?” Generally the Summer Concubine had met her friends alone, but on one occasion Oryn had happened to arrive while Corn-Tassel Woman was there and had thoroughly charmed the usually unflappable glassblower’s wife. He had offered what help he could in finding her, but at the moment there was very little he could do.

  The Summer Concubine shook her head. “I don’t know what help I can be to her, or to Turquoise Woman—or to whoever else this peril will touch—by remaining here until I hear from Raeshaldis. But like you riding after the teyn—or indeed to the aqueduct today—I would feel better were I here.”

  “Of course.” Oryn put his hands on her shoulders, looked gravely down into her eyes. The Green Court being seryak, the public area of a house, she had worn veils to walk with him to the tower. He bent now and kissed the two fingers of brow above her eyes that was the only part of her face exposed. “And I thank you for riding out with me today. I shall tell Bax to have one of his men bring Soth out to the camp this afternoon as soon as he’s able to crawl into a litter. I would have the guards bring you back tonight, if it weren’t so far.”

  She shook her head again. “No, tomorrow morning is as well. I’ll have Pepper and Lupine get my things together. We won’t be but a few minutes.”

  “Nonsense, my darling, Geb assures me that even for overnight it requires a minimum of a week to prepare properly.”

  She smiled beneath the concealment of her veils and, reaching up, touched Oryn gently on his sunburned nose. “I’m sure for Geb it does.”

  Watching the slim, straight little form walk away through the Green Court’s sunlight, Oryn thought, She should be the hero of the ballad, not I.

  Then, Quite possibly she is.

  “Gone?” Raeshaldis looked at the maid Lotus in alarm.

  “It isn’t anything amiss, I don’t think.” The stout girl’s eye flickered to the Golden Gate’s head porter. The Golden Court was basically a public square; to enter the Green Court beyond, one had to be escorted by someone from the palace, or be known to the porter. Shaldis wondered how Enak and Barbonak had managed. And, almost certainly because she recognized Shaldis from her meeting with the Summer Concubine in the Jasmine Court, she added, “They rode out with tents and baggage and guards and all, about two hours ago.”

  “Oh.” Shaldis relaxed. After what she had felt through the wood of the doorways yesterday evening, she had feared desperately that she would come here and find the Summer Concubine dead—or missing.

  Through the wide windows of the porter’s lodge Shaldis could see into the room where the palace pages waited, young boys all clothed in red and gold. She thought, How could anyone get in to take her?

  And then, He’s a mage. He could get in.

  She shivered, just the memory bringing panic to her breast.

  She had dreamed last night of her father.

  Dreamed of coming home from the marketplace, climbing the ladder up the rear of the house to her attic sanctum, stripping off her brother’s clothes as she went. The hot smells of dust and mice. The sweat on her face and the noise of two of the maids chattering as they sewed in their little dormitory. The sight of the floorboards in her attic torn up, the concealing mattress tossed to the floor. The panic, fury and despair in her throat as she scrambled down the ladder again, all those worn, fat oaken rungs shaking under her feet, to find her grandfather on his knees by the kitchen hearth, feeding the last of her books into the fire.

  Her father had been in the kitchen too. Bigger than her grandfather, burly where the old man was wiry, but burly with a curious gentleness, like a big dog whom none of the other dogs will fight. His father had had th
e flat-eared malign intensity of a terrier killing rats. Auburn and freckled, like she was, like her grandfather, like Second Sister and brother Tulik, whom Grandfather had early taken to be his heir.

  And as she saw herself screaming at them both, grabbing at the fragments of her notes—the pages and scrolls that she’d copied so laboriously by hand—it had occurred to her sleeping self to wonder if her father was in the kitchen because he’d tried to talk his father out of burning the books.

  At the time she hadn’t asked; had only stormed out of the house, weeping.

  It was the last lime she’d seen either of the two men.

  Or been in her grandfather’s house.

  In her dream the street outside hadn’t been drenched in hot yellow summer light as it had been on that day eighteen months ago. It had been dark, wintery and cold under the mad, staring eye of the full moon, and the air had jangled like softly shaken chains. Someone waited for her at the end of the street, someone she couldn’t see. Wreathed in the smell of lightning, haloed by blue light that illuminated nothing. Holding something small and glittering to his breast. Something that moved.

  “If you’d care to leave a message, miss?” The head porter cast a quelling glance at the maid, who looked as if she might have added something else: He obviously didn’t approve of servants telling more than they absolutely had to about the movements of their betters. He scrupulously used the form of address appropriate for a child, or for a well-born man’s unmarried daughter.

  “What about Lord Soth?” asked Shaldis. “Would you tell him that Raeshaldis of the Sun Mages is here . . . .”

  “It’s my understanding,” said the porter stonily, “that Lord Soth is unwell, and not able to see anyone.”

  “Thank you,” said Shaldis, and turned from the gate, not certain what she should do. A line of white-robed priests crossed the court behind her, jingling sistrums and striking triangles, to burn Oan Echis’s daily ration of incense in the god’s small shrine. The scent of it was sweet against the day’s rising dust and the smell of cut flowers and frying sausage from the vendors in the court.