On these feast days, however, they divided very clearly into linguistic groupings. The Caxangur contingent spoke formal Xangur at one table, the Wetherrin their modified version at another. Those from the southern canal strands spoke a language new to me, which sounded distractingly like an oddly accented variant of old Gantian. There were four or five different Ghanxhur dialects from the northern canals, who all sat separately.
There were a couple of Hrandish throwers, although most of their kind preferred to stay in Hranda and train in their own way; they were all fighters there, focused on their interminable petty wars. I kept well away from them, in case they decided to take up the challenge of trying to kill me on behalf of their kin outside the walls. However, like all the throwers, they were subdued and took no notice of me.
The largest grouping was of the desert people, whose odd clicking language was one I’d never mastered. They were small and light-footed, and their throwers made the best assassins, or so it was said.
And then there were the Mesanthians, our little group speaking High Mesanthian. Zak was the only other Akk’ashara, but there were several Dresshtians, the descendants of freed slaves, much paler skinned, and every one of them with a different colour of hair. Most were bargers and cooks and laundry workers and the like, but friendly enough, although they knew little of Mesanthia, having left it decades ago. Xando was the only Tre’annatha.
Or at first he was. But on the second feast day, as Xando and I took our places beside Zak, there was a girlish squeal from nearby and an explosion of joy hit my mind.
“Xando! Xando!” she shrieked.
Then a high-pitched rattle of their sing-song language, and a blur shot across the court and hurled itself at Xando. The look of horror on his face was beyond price. He backed away, she came at him again, trying to plant a kiss on his lips and missing, and he backed away even faster.
Zak’s mind was abrim with silent glee. I made the mistake of catching his eye, and we both burst out laughing. Poor Xando! He had no idea how to deal with his ardent pursuer.
Eventually, he did the only thing he could do. He stopped running, grabbed the girl by one wrist and dragged her across to where I stood with my hand over my mouth to hide my amusement.
“Renni, this is Allandra. My lover. Allandra, this is Renni, an old friend.”
Her excitement was snuffed out instantaneously. Eyes wide, she gazed at him, then at me, then back to him. Now she radiated distress, tears glimmering on her lashes.
“Lover?” Her voice was barely a whisper.
“Lover,” he said firmly.
“Oh.” She looked at me, then back at him, then me again, bewildered.
How I wished I could take her aside and explain that it wasn’t quite the romance it might seem, that I would be very happy to hand him back to her if I could, that I had another fish to catch in my net. But Xando was determined to leave no room for misunderstanding, and spent the rest of the evening clamped to my side, arm about my waist, much to Zak’s delight.
Zak, at least, had a clear picture of the true position, I was sure of that. He knew perfectly well that he could have me if he wanted. It seemed, though, that he didn’t want me, not at all. On the contrary, he seemed to attract a flock of hopeful women on these evenings, and he paid them far more attention than me. When the gathering broke up, he would disappear with one or another of them.
I wasn’t jealous. There was too much pride in me to fight for Zak against the cooks and woodworkers and novice throwers. I wanted him to choose me of his own free will, and not because I’d seen off the opposition. It helped that I knew he wasn’t much interested in any of them. Seeing into a man’s mind had its uses; with these interchangeable women, there was a certain amount of desire, and perhaps pleasant anticipation, but nothing more. It was only when he looked at me that he radiated real affection. Not love, but more than plain friendship: a kind of comradeship, although still with that edge of caution to it.
Besides, much as I liked Zak, I wasn’t ready to abandon Xando yet. For one thing, he was my shield against excess emotions. But more than that, it would upset Xando if I switched allegiance. He was still my friend.
~~~~~
Two days after Renni’s arrival, I was summoned to Errin’s office. I found her pacing up and down in a froth of anxiety.
“Here. What do you make of this?”
She thrust a piece of parchment at me, but she was so jumpy that she dropped it. We both scrabbled to pick it up, and I almost knocked her over. She was so tough in mind, but fragile physically. Standing up again, I left her to grovel for it.
“Here.”
I scanned it quickly. The first part was in Hrandish.
‘Hail, you who are not of the blood. Written with the authority of the Most Mighty Kru Hrin, Prince by right of blood, by right of the sun, of the great nation of Hranda in the Seventh Moon of the Year Three Thousand Two Hundred and Sixty-Nine after the Revelation. It is required that the Mighty Prince Kru Hruart, son by blood and chosen by the stars as Favoured of the Most Mighty, be received by you. It is required that the Lady Flethyssanya Dre’allussina attend also. It is required that blood-price be paid for the untimely and grievous death of the Mighty Prince Kru Karn one year ago in the outcomer city of Caxangur. It is required that such blood-price be according to the traditions and rights of the Mighty of Hranda.’
The second part repeated the first in very bad High Mesanthian.
I started to laugh. Blood-price! That was a change. Although perhaps if the spear-hurling morons outside the gates had succeeded in taking me alive, they would have hauled me off to Hurk Hranda and the issue would have arisen then.
“What is so entertaining? What does it mean?” Her voice rose dangerously high, and her anxiety threatened to swamp me.
“Nothing bad, I assure you. Blood-price is compensation, that’s all.”
“We cannot pay compensation!”
“No, no. Not you. Me. They want me to compensate them for killing the Most Mighty’s chosen heir.”
“Oh. Do you have enough money for that? I imagine a blood-price would be quite high.”
I laughed again, and perhaps she saw something in my face, for she said doubtfully, “Not money? They want something else from you?”
“Something else, yes. So we negotiate. Let us have this Prince Kru Hruart in here and see what sort of deal we can come up with.”
She shuddered. I understood why. Hrandish princes had a fearsome, and well-deserved, reputation for savagery, but I wasn’t afraid. Perhaps I should have been, but excitement coursed through me. Let him come, this prince, and we would see which of us would get the better deal from it.
28: Blood-Price
Prince Kru Hruart made rather a splendid entrance into Brinmar. He stood in the prow of Zak’s barge, head high, arms crossed over his chest in the traditional pose of a high-ranking warrior being carried into battle. Perhaps he truly saw it that way. It was hard to say with the Hrandish, but they tended to see everything as a battle of one sort or another. He wore what they regarded as skirmish gear – silk trousers and tunic, arms bare, with only a leather vest for protection, and the usual feathers and armbands and trailing this and that which passed for high fashion in Hurk Hranda. None of it concealed the fearsome array of scars on his arms and body; Hrandish boys trained with real knives from the age of five. Behind him, similarly adorned, stood his two krin haar, warriors whose job was to protect him, and were supposed to die by their own hand if they failed.
I had insisted they brought no weapons except their hyarn, the ceremonial dagger whose name, literally translated, meant ‘desperation’. The weapon of last resort, to be drawn only when all others had failed.
This had caused a problem.
“We cannot allow him in here with daggers,” Errin said firmly. “This prince must demonstrate his goodwill by coming here unarmed.”
“He will never agree to that,” I said. “The hyarn is the symbol of his manhood, given to him by h
is father on the day he was acknowledged as a warrior. It would be unthinkable for him to leave it behind. He wears it day and night. But it will be hidden away. You will not see it.”
“That makes it worse. I can’t allow any of my throwers near him.”
The obsession with protecting throwers was tiresome. Where were all these deadly assassins and battle-hardened fighters? And my books had already told me of several methods of training flickers as protection against arrows and swords. But of course they were afraid of the consequences if a thrower was killed, especially within the walls of Brinmar, with so many flickers to be affected.
In the end, it was Zak who went to collect the prince, Zak who had no weapons, no flickers, nothing at all for defence if it came to that. He was muscular enough to be quite handy in a fist fight, I imagined, but if the Hrandish chose to take offence he would be a dead man.
They chose not to. Zak’s little barge bumped against the wharf softly enough not to joggle its artfully posed passengers. There were six of us to meet the prince. Errin baulked at the number but I insisted and Tsanda backed me up: two receivers for every Hrandish guest was the polite form. Errin had brought her most senior administrator, as well as Tsanda and another tutor. Xando made up the numbers. Again Errin had protested, but he argued that I was to be there and I was a thrower, so there was no reason not to have another thrower there. It was logical, but I could have done without him. I could only hope he wouldn’t say the wrong thing. I hoped none of them would say the wrong thing, or speak at all, frankly. They were ill-suited to such diplomacy, whereas I had been trained for it from birth.
The meeting took place right there on the wharf. That was another Hrandish custom, that all important meetings or ceremonial events take place out of doors and standing. At Hurk Hranda, they had beautifully carved pavilions for the purpose, roofed but open at the sides. Here we stood in an awkward circle, while the prince and I exchanged formal greetings in Hrandish.
He was a handsome man, the Mighty Prince Kru Hruart, younger than I’d expected. With the silk scarf around his head and his dark skin he could almost be Akk’ashara, except for the large, hooked nose, typical in his people. If he left off the drab brown silks, the colours of the desert where the Hrandish originated long ago, and wore decent clothes, he could pass for a civilised man. I didn’t remember him from my time at Hurk Hranda, but then the Most Mighty had many wives and many sons, who dropped in and out of favour with alarming frequency. There was a new heir almost every year.
Eventually we got past the formalities to the point.
“The blood-price must be paid, outcomer. My brother died under your care, therefore the blood-price is for you to pay.”
“I hear your words, but the Mighty Prince Kru Karn was not under my care.”
“You were his zarn azay. It follows that he was under your care.”
His zarn azay! His betrothed. Well, that was easy enough. “I hear your words, but I never enjoyed the honour of being zarn azay to the Mighty Prince Kru Karn. I had a husband already.”
He shrugged. “What does that matter? He was not of the blood, he was no husband. My brother planned to make you wife, you were his zarn azay. He died before it was completed, so blood-price is required. Your life is forfeit.”
Tsanda was the only one there whose Hrandish was fluent enough to follow the exchange. I’d expected shock in her, or perhaps indignation, but instead she was full of intense curiosity. Truly she had the mind of an academic, that one.
There was no point in arguing round and round. I would never admit liability, but it hardly mattered. He could see things only through the lens of his own people’s customs. I belonged to his brother, he was now dead, therefore I owed them my life in exchange. But the blood-price was not a death sentence. There were many ways to fulfil it.
“I hear your words. I await the wisdom of your judgement. What blood-price do you ask?”
His eyes gleamed. He thought I was conceding. “I ask that you fulfil your appointed role. I ask you to be wife.”
I almost squealed in triumph! And how conveniently he solved one of my biggest problems. My plan had always had a weakness, and now the problem was resolved, and so easily. I needed to get into Hurk Hranda. He was offering me the perfect entry. All I had to do was to marry him. Well, I’d married for practical reasons before, I could do it again. And he was rather a splendid specimen of manhood, so the sex itself would be no hardship. Living in Hurk Hranda, with all the petty restrictions imposed on women there, and being owned by the prince – by all the princes – that would be more troublesome. But I had survived difficult situations before.
Naturally I put up some token resistance. It would never do to agree too easily, or he would surely be suspicious. So I argued back and forth for a while, but in the end, showing due reluctance, I agreed to it.
The only potential problem was timing. My plan would unravel if he insisted I go directly to Hurk Hranda. So I explained that I couldn’t leave Brinmar until my flickers were trained, and then I had some matters to attend to at Mesanthia. He accepted that readily. A little too readily, perhaps. He would await me in Hurk Hranda, and I was to go there as soon as I could.
He made me swear to it, of course. There had to be a commitment, so I swore on the blood. I knew all the proper words. The Hrandish are always swearing oaths on the blood, the most common are well documented. But he caught me there.
“You cannot swear on the blood. It is not your blood, outcomer. Swear an oath of power to you.”
“I hear your words.” I chewed my lip. There was only one oath that had power to me. “I will swear on my name, but I must do so in the language of Mesanthian law.” He nodded, eyes glimmering with triumph again. I suppose he thought I was trying to trick him, but if he’d been properly educated he would understand enough of the language to be sure I wasn’t.
I knelt down, bending forward to touch my forehead to the ground, then sat straight again, arms held before me, palms upward. “I swear that I, the Gracious and Beneficent Lady Flethyssanya of the Most Noble Line of Dre’allussina, Highest of the Empire, accept the terms of the requested blood-price. I swear this on my name. I swear it on the name of the Empire that was and will be again. I swear it on the name of the One who guides us. I swear it with head and heart and spirit.”
And he smiled at me, his mind exultant. I wasn’t sure whether he was pleased because he expected me to comply, or because he expected me to flee, and he would have the pleasure of chasing me down and making me pay a more serious blood-price.
After we saw the prince away with due ceremony, we all followed Errin back to her office.
“So what did he say?” Xando said eagerly, as soon as the door was shut. “You are pleased, I can see it, so you must have made a good bargain with him.”
“I did, a very good bargain.”
“And?”
“I am going to marry him.”
I wish I’d had a painter with me, to capture the look of abject horror on the poor man’s face.
~~~~~
That evening, Zak came to our court to talk to me. I was delighted to see him, for Xando hadn’t said a word all evening, sitting, head drooped over his plate, crumbling his bread in restless fingers. Renni, on the other hand, who regrettably shared the same court, was tactlessly jolly, chattering inanely.
“You aren’t really planning to marry him?” Zak said, before he’d even sat down.
He caught me with a mouthful of curried goat, so it was a moment or two before I could answer.
Xando’s head came up at once, filled with hope, and I cursed Zak for putting the thought into his head.
“Actually, I am.”
“So this is not just a cunning ploy to fob him off?”
“No. Well, it is a cunning ploy, naturally, but there is very little point in trying to fob off a Hrandish warrior. He’ll only put out a blood-curse on me, and I’ll be feeding the fishes in no time.”
Zak laughed, but Xando slammed dow
n his spoon. “How can you joke about it! You are going to become a concubine for that – that savage!”
“And all his family,” Zak added. “You do know what you’re getting yourself into, I take it?”
“Of course, and Xando, they don’t have concubines. Only wives.”
“A lot of wives,” he said sulkily. “You are insane, Allandra. You are a thrower now, you have no need to be subservient to this man.”
“Oh, yes, he was terribly intimidated by my thrower’s coat, wasn’t he? Look, the Most Mighty’s son and heir died in strange circumstances in my house in Caxangur. A lot of people died. Inevitably I was blamed. I tried to disappear but it didn’t work. The Hrandish want blood-price for their prince, and that is not much fun, no. But King Craxtor, bless his vindictive little heart, wants my head on a pike for murder. If I ever end up back in Caxangur, I’ll be publicly executed, and I doubt there will be the formality of a trial.”
“You are a thrower!” Xando protested. “You cannot be executed.”
“I don’t imagine that argument carries much weight with the king. Given the circumstances, I’m better off with Prince Kru Hruart, don’t you agree? At least I’ll be alive.”
“And you don’t mind being stuck in the zarn adrish, to be summoned like a street whore whenever one or other of the princes feels a little horny?” Zak said.
“It’s not quite as simple as that. There is the zarn azay stage first, and the formal documents and so forth. Since they will have to deal with Mesanthia, that could take a while. Even once the marriage is acknowledged, I will be a zarn loyth first – a wife of the heart. That means I would belong solely to Prince Kru Hruart for a full year at least. That won’t be so bad. I’ve slept with a lot worse.”
“And a lot can happen in a year,” Zak said.
“Exactly.” I was pleased with him. He was very sharp.
“So you do have a cunning ploy in mind!” he said.
The Magic Mines of Asharim Page 27