Northern Storm ac-2

by Juliet E. McKenna

  He set the shell-shaped lamp on one of the several tables lining the long room. The warm golden glow reflected back from brass discs of all sizes hung on the walls, each engraved with curving lines like the patterns of tiles on the observatory floor and overlaid with a second disc pierced to the likeness of a net of burnished metal.

  ‘The ordinary islanders of Chazen were impressed to see you making shift for yourself when need be on your voyage,’ Risala said without preamble. ‘They like that idea much better than having you take them away from rebuilding their homes and re-establishing their vegetable gardens and sailer plots just to dance attendance on you when you visit their villages.’

  Kheda was relieved. ‘How many days behind us were you?’

  Risala swatted with a bony hand at an importunate insect humming around her head. ‘Five or six, depending on the winds and tides.’

  ‘Your arrival didn’t cause comment?’ Kheda moved to the unshuttered window and looked out towards the north, now hidden in the night. He pulled the fine cotton curtains closed to baffle the winged night-biters. ‘I didn’t see many boats on the waters as we travelled.’

  ‘There still aren’t that many people moving around the domain.’ Risala shrugged. ‘But most villages were happy enough to see a poet as they turned their thoughts to the new-year stars.’ She twisted a heavy silver ring set with an uncut emerald around on one finger. ‘And everyone knows poets are mad, so no one really asked why I was sailing alone.’

  ‘What did you say to those who did?’ Kheda asked.

  ‘That my brother who had shared the boat with me had drowned when we fled the wild men through a rainy season storm,’ Risala explained, ‘which generally set people off on their own tales of last year’s deaths and disasters.’

  ‘Are they still burdened by the past?’ Kheda lifted a hand to one of the larger star circles hanging on the wall by the window. The paths of every constellation were incised on the brass plate, heavenly jewels inlaid on the net, measuring bar precisely aligned across it. ‘I read the local omens for the new year wherever we stopped. The portents were positive as far as they went. Were the islanders inclined to take my word on that?’

  ‘I came across quite a few who’d won wagers with their neighbours over signs that said you were right. There were a few muttering about you not being born to the domain.’ Risala perched on the table by the lamp, bare feet swinging idly. ‘They wondered how you could hope to draw together the threads of the past hereabouts and see how the future would be woven. Don’t let that keep you awake at night. They were generally the ones complaining that you weren’t travelling in the style befitting a warlord and they mostly got short shrift from everyone else.’

  She rubbed a hand through her tousled hair and yawned. ‘You wouldn’t have made any friends parading around in silks and jewels. Seeing the domain’s prosperity reflected in their warlord’s finery is all very well in times of peace and plenty, but not when half the islanders have to go naked if they want to launder their one pair of trousers. Most are quite content that you showed your commitment to the domain by driving out the invaders and then by claiming the lordship and manying Itrac when Chazen Saril died. They know full well they’d have been meat for the bone hawks if the domain had ended up without a warlord and Ritsem, Redigal and Ulla had joined battle over it.’

  ‘If they hadn’t been too afraid of the magic loose down here.’ Kheda moved closer. ‘They’re content not knowing exactly how I drove out the invaders?’ he asked with low intensity. ‘There aren’t too many wondering just how I managed to defeat the wild magic?’

  ‘There are enough survivors who were held captive in that final encampment and saw the savage mages fighting among themselves.’ Risala glanced involuntarily towards the archway and the darkness outside the hall. ‘Everyone I spoke to is happy enough to believe that a battle for overall power broke out among the strongest invaders and their wizards. No one but the three of us need ever know that it was Dev who started the slaughter with his enchanter’s illusions.’ She managed a crooked smile. ‘I found Bukai’s song cycle very popular, especially when I gave them the poet’s vision of the Winged Snake and the Sea Serpent eating each other’s tails. Everyone agreed the moral of that was more than proven: magic twists men’s natures and sweeps them to disaster like serpents mad with heat frenzy.’

  ‘Just as long as it doesn’t sweep Dev to disaster while he’s still masquerading as my body slave.’ Kheda pulled a stool out from beneath the table and sat down with a sigh.

  ‘Indeed,’ Risala agreed dryly, looking down at him. ‘I take it he’s still itching to go and see if there are any wizardly secrets to be learned from the last remnants hiding out in the western isles? The anchorage is full of the news that you’re going to lead a campaign against them instead of waiting for thirst and disease to make an end of them.’

  ‘It’s time to do it, now that I’ve acquitted my responsibilities in surveying the domain before the new year. There are portents saying as much wherever I look’ Kheda nodded, fingering a crystal inkwell with a silver lid. ‘What were the augurs around the islands saying? Do I need to fear travelling soothsayers muttering dire predictions of disaster under my rule?’

  No,’ said Risala slowly. Not that they’re seeing a bright new future of peace and plenty, either. Most are talking about uncertainty, in the future and in the omens, and are sticking to strictly limited and local forecasts.’

  ‘Which is as good as I can hope for.’ Kheda nodded. ‘What else did you manage to do for me? We really need some means of getting reliable news from the domain, and fast, without having to rely on Dev snooping with his bowls of scrying spells.’

  ‘I’ve found us eyes and ears on all the big islands and in nearly all the coastal villages, and most are well placed to hear news from inland and from the lesser isles.’ Risala swung her legs, leaning forward with her hands on the edge of the table. ‘We’ve agreed a few basic ciphers and there should be enough boats doing the rounds to carry routine reports soon enough. Though the key men and women need courier doves, for the news we need fast.’ She looked at Kheda, black brows rising to be lost in her ragged hair. ‘I’ll ask Itrac for all she can spare.’ Kheda pushed the inkwell away. ‘I’m grateful for your help, as always. Now you’ve done this . . .’ He hesitated. ‘Don’t forget you’re free to sail north, to go back home, whenever you like. You were Shek Kul’s poet and emissary before you were mine. If you want to return to your own domain to make a new start with the new year, to tell Shek Kul how he helped me find the means to save Chazen—’

  ‘I think the last thing he’ll want to hear is that his suspicions were right and Dev did prove to be a spying barbarian mage,’ said Risala with a shudder. No, I’ll wait.

  When Shek Kul sent me his token, he ordered me to do all I could to make these southern islands safe from the evils of magic. I don’t think we’ve achieved that yet.’ She twisted her heavy silver ring with its uncut emerald.

  ‘Do you think your lord would understand that we had no choice but to use Dev’s powers as the lesser evil?’ Kheda rubbed a hand over his beard, staring unseeing at the far wall with its array of star circles. ‘He gave us the blend of herbs to dull a mage’s powers.’ Risala laid a hand over Kheda’s where it rested on the table.

  ‘Don’t you think he intended we should use it to cripple the savage wizards so that we could kill them by less dubious means?’ Kheda looked up at the girl.

  ‘Which is what we did,’ she pointed out firmly, ‘as far as your friends among the neighbouring warlords and their wives are concerned. You needn’t favour the rest with any explanation.’

  ‘I don’t think Rekha believes that fireside tale of me as the bold hero, risking my own life to sneak in among the invaders to poison their mages’ cook pots, however far and wide you’ve got village versifiers proclaiming it.’ There was little humour in Kheda’s words. ‘I can’t see her and Janne letting their curiosity lie any time soon.’

  �
��You still have some of Shek Kul’s powder, don’t you? Couldn’t you show it to Rekha?’ wondered Risala.

  ‘And feed some to Dev to show her how it works?’ Kheda smiled to take the sting out of his words. ‘Then tell how we half-poisoned, half-blackmailed this mage from the north into using his own enchantments to defeat the sorcerous southerners? Then explain how we didn’t let him die of the wounds he suffered from their spells but patched him up and gave him the protection of being my body slave?’

  ‘When you put it like that, no, let’s not.’ Risala grinned back but Kheda could see the shadow in her eyes.

  The same shadow that lies over me.

  ‘I don’t imagine Itrac would be any too pleased to learn just what her new lord and master is capable of,’ he said wearily. ‘And you could be certain Rekha would tell her. I don’t think the ladies of Daish want to see me making a success of this marriage they wished on us.’

  ‘You couldn’t very well do anything but many Itrac.’ Risala sounded indignant, folding her arms across her meagre chest. ‘When Janne Daish refused her further shelter and the domain she was born to spurned her as irrevocably tainted with magic. What were you supposed to do? Let some brute like Ulla Safar catch her, call her rape a man-iage and try claiming the Chazen domain for himself on the strength of wedding the last living survivor of the true warlord’s family?’

  ‘Since you put it like that, no, not really.’ Kheda shared another brief smile with Risala.

  ‘Speaking of Itrac, she’s making a fair job of patching up Olkai Chazen’s web of informers,’ Risala said briskly. ‘I found myself nearly tripping over their snares more than once.’

  ‘What are the islanders saying about Itrac?’ Kheda asked, diverted.

  ‘Half want to see her waddling around like a broody duck’ Risala was scornful. ‘The other half see that she has far too many tasks as it is to add the trials of pregnancy and childbed.’

  ‘Let’s hope Olkai’s informers pass on that message loud and clear,’ said Kheda with feeling. ‘And there’s no likelihood of Itrac inviting me to give her a baby any time soon—though Dev has his own explanation for that,’ he added sardonically. ‘Given that no domain would actively seek an alliance with such an insignificant warlord, he says that Saril plainly must have had something else to recom—

  mend him to his wives. He reckons Itrac doesn’t want to risk taking me to her bed and finding I don’t measure up.’

  ‘That sounds like Dev,’ said Risala with contempt. ‘He should let his hair and beard grow in rather than shaving to look like a man’s man or a zamorin, even if he is a barbarian. Then some girl might take him to her bed just for the novelty of it and he’d be a lot easier to live with.’

  ‘Or even more intolerable,’ countered Kheda.

  ‘Mind you, there’s no end of speculation around the cookfires as to where you might find a nicely fertile second wife,’ continued Risala, blue eyes bright with mischief. ‘Or even a second and a third, to sit and nurse their swelling bellies while you and Itrac restore Chazen’s fortunes. You fathered enough children for Daish, so there’s no doubt as to your virility.’

  ‘That’s just what I need.’ Exasperated as he was, Kheda couldn’t help grinning. ‘Some lesser daughter prepared to risk the miasma of magic hereabouts in return for such a rise in her status. Have there been any rumours about who might put themselves forward? Perhaps that explains Rekha’s boldness.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Risala was puzzled.

  ‘Rekha Daish did her best to seduce me earlier.’ Kheda shook his head with mingled amusement and disbelief.

  ‘What did you do?’ Risala demanded with unexpected sharpness.

  ‘What do you think?’ Kheda raised his eyebrows. ‘I made my excuses and left as fast as I could, to try to work out what she was cursed well after.’

  Risala cleared her throat.

  ‘Do you think I was tempted?’ On an impulse he didn’t stop to examine, Kheda reached out and took Risala’s hand.

  ‘Were you?’ She looked down at him, eyes shadowed beneath her raggedly cut hair.

  ‘A little.’ Kheda stood up and brushed the black locks away from her face with gentle fingers. ‘That bothers you, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ She didn’t blink, sapphire gaze fixed steadily on him.

  ‘I missed you so much while we were on that interminable voyage.’ Kheda caressed her pointed chin. ‘More than I realised I would. More than anyone else. I missed having someone I can talk to without weighing every word. I missed having someone I could trust not to judge me. I missed having someone who knows the worst of me and is still my friend.’

  ‘I just missed you.’ Risala pressed her face against his hand.

  ‘As for Rekha Kheda shrugged. ‘I’m far more tempted right now.’

  ‘Good,’ she breathed. ‘It’s taken you long enough to get around to it.’

  He bent and kissed her. Her lips yielded, roughened by wind and sun. He could taste the salt on her. Risala reached a hand up to the back of his neck to kiss him harder, demanding more. Kheda broke free to catch his breath. ‘I’ll never hear the last of it from Dev if I get my elegant new clothes all creased.’

  ‘That’s something else the islanders like about you.’ Risala kissed him again. ‘You’re not some Redigal Coron, to be ruled by your body slave.’ She lifted her other arm up to encircle his neck.

  Kheda set his hands on either side of her waist and drew her close, feeling his own passion rising as he kissed her long and urgently. Risala closed her eyes with a sigh of fervent pleasure.

  Kheda paused in his kisses, though he still held her tight. ‘Itrac doesn’t need her life complicated by me taking a concubine.’ As he spoke, he slid one hand beneath Risala’s loose tunic, feeling her warm skin, her firm ribs.

  She lifted his hand to cup one of her modest breasts. ‘And I can hardly be your eyes and ears if every eye is on me.’

  Not if people think you’re anything more to me than my poet.’ Kheda felt her enticing softness harden beneath his palm.

  ‘Because the servants and slaves will soon spread the gossip.’ She pressed herself against him, claiming his lips with her own.

  ‘So we really shouldn’t be doing this.’ He kissed her again. Not where anyone might see us.’ No,’ she agreed before kissing the corner of his mouth. ‘It’s foolishness.’

  ‘I could get used to this kind of folly.’ Kheda shivered involuntarily. ‘But they would call you an old man’s folly.’

  ‘I’m old enough to know my own mind.’ Risala’s words were muffled by his kisses. ‘And you’re in your prime, not your dotage.’

  ‘Jevin, is that you? Are we wanted?’ Dev’s voice, artificially loud, rang out in the night beyond the archway.

  Risala released him from her embrace and Kheda reluctantly wrenched himself away. ‘And speaking of folly, I have to go and spend a charming evening trying to stop Rekha and Itrac scratching each other’s eyes out before we’ve seen the new-year stars align themselves.’ Despite the heavy footfalls on the steps outside, Kheda kissed her one last time, swift and thorough.

  ‘I don’t think I have a poem suitable for that.’ Risala slid down from the table and tugged her tunic straight. ‘So I’ll go and get that bath I was talking about.’

  Kheda took a deep breath to try to calm his racing blood at the notion of her wet nakedness. ‘Are we going to continue this conversation?’

  ‘What conversation?’ Dev appeared in the archway.

  ‘When we can find the time, and the privacy.’ Risala looked at Kheda, her expression eloquent. ‘What’s going on?’ Dev demanded with scant courtesy. ‘Any news I should know about?’

  Not as such.’ Kheda walked swiftly past Dev and out into the velvet night where the lamps along the walkways glowed like amber. ‘Just an unexpected turn of events.’ He smiled into the darkness. ‘And a reminder that the unexpected need not always turn out badly.’ He took another long, deep breath and strode t
owards Itrac’s distant pavilion, leaving Dev hurrying to match his pace.

  Though best not get there too soon or Rekha will certainly see that you welcomed another woman’s embraces after you spurned her. This evening’s going to be fraught enough without adding that complication

  But what will tomorrow bring, if you and Risala can find somewhere away from the ever-present eyes?

  Chapter Five

  Well, we won’t be overheard, but I wouldn’t call this private, Kheda.’ Risala looked around the deck of the Amigal and then up at the Gossamer Shark towering above the little ship. Dev looked down on them both, stony-faced, from the rail above. ‘What made you change your mind about continuing what we began in the observatory?’ she asked bluntly.

  ‘I was hardly in the mood for dalliance after an evening sitting between Rekha and Itrac,’ Kheda said ruefully. ‘And besides, as I saw all the shipmasters watching our every move, weighing our every word . . .’ He sighed. ‘I really cannot complicate Itrac’s life by being seen to take another woman. And you were right: you can hardly be my chief spy with everyone knowing you’re my lover.’

  ‘And if they don’t know?’ Risala looked steadily at him. ‘What then?’

  Kheda hesitated.

  ‘What then?’ the girl asked again. ‘Come on, Kheda, there are no secrets between us. I want to know where I stand. I’ve been waiting for eight days. You didn’t even come to tell me you were launching this expedition the very next morning. I had to hear it from Dev.’ Her tone was reasonable but firm. There was a sign when we read the stars: silverlight shimmering all around the Ruby and the Spear,’ Kheda began slowly, ‘which were opposite the arc of foes, which is where the new-year stars aligned.’

  ‘I didn’t ask why you decided to launch this expedition so quickly,’ Risala began. ‘Never mind.’ She turned away from Kheda, reaching a hand out towards the little ship’s mast.