The Leopard

by K V Johansen

  Suddenly the other wizard prisoner rolled to her knees with her fingers wound in her own long hair, twisting, and the pair of temple guard standing by, like proud cats over two dead mice, dropped as if clubbed. The woman came to her feet, bolting for the door. The Red Mask who had captured her struck her again. She fell heavily and did not move.

  Blazing tawny eyes in a shallow pale face. Zora had never seen her before, Tu’usha had never seen her before, but . . . did she know those eyes? Grasslander, that was it—that was all. It went with the knotted cat’s-cradle of hair.

  She needed them. There were wizards to be fought Over-Malagru. There was danger stalking in her city.

  Zora swallowed bile. She couldn’t. Not today. Not Nour. He stared at her with wide, hazy eyes, uncomprehending.

  “Oh, Nour,” she said. “You should have fled Marakand long ago. Poor Nour. I am sorry.”

  They were waiting for judgement, all the priests, the guards. They knew the Voice would judge, declare them free of wizardry, and innocent, or wizards to be taken to the Lady in the deep well. But the Lady stood before them, and she spoke no judgement. She must.

  “Red Masks will deal with them,” she said in disgust, mostly with herself. Coward, weakling, who had never had to make such choices before. “Ashir, Rahel, come with me. Has anyone done anything about fit clothing yet? Or a meal?”

  Ashir babbled apologies and snapped at a minor clerk, “Why haven’t you seen to this?”

  Rahel, with a triumphant look aside at her discomfited spouse and the bowing, apologetic clerk, told her, “I’ll see to it at once.” Zora left the Red Masks to drag the bodies—living bodies—of Nour and his comrade down to the cells beneath their barracks. She had had them excavate it, long ago. A couple of them had been folk of the silver mines, with knowledge of such things still left to them. Who had died there? A senator or two who had worked against her in more recent years, after the executions in the palace plaza. A brother and sister who had raised all Greenmarket Ward in riot when the wells of half the ward went dry. Temple guard and street guard had died, then, a priestess sent to speak to them in the Lady’s name had been pulled from her carrying-chair and kicked to death before the Red Masks came and their terror quelled all except the fires. That had been just after Zora joined the temple; she had forgotten about that, but the smoke had blown into the dormitory window, she remembered now. She had considered ordering them sent to cages in the plaza as the defiant senators had been but had decided for a quiet disappearance, a quiet, slow, lonely death in the dark, where she could go herself to see them, to let them know their folly and how slow their deaths would be. They rebelled against her for water? They would never taste it again, and their souls would never find the Old Great Gods’ road, trapped underground unhallowed. Too many of the rebel senators in the cages had been given some token earth; only a few had lingered, fading, forgetting, their bones going chalky in the sun, and even their ghosts were gone, now. Who else? A priest who dared cry out in condemnation of the parents who brought a wizard-born child to her, accusing their own. Poor child. She had left the priest to die, with much time to think of his sin in defying his goddess, but the child she had killed. He was no use to her, too young, nothing in his mind but fear and childish lessons and the frightening discovery that his dreams held foreknowledge. Had he not foreseen this, the betrayal of his parents, or had he not believed his own foreseeing? She had drowned him, swift and merciful, out of pity.

  Yes. Fitting. Nour and his fellow wizard were likewise rebels. If in her mercy she spared them the death of the well, the living death of the Red Masks, their ghosts could learn to thank her. Meanwhile, Red Masks could seal them in, somewhere down there, leave them to deal with at her leisure. She might change her mind. It was merely sensible, to wait until she was more—more settled. She didn’t have to take pleasure in what needed to be done. She wasn’t Sien-Mor. It still needed doing, just . . . with a calm mind and cool head. Later.

  Meanwhile, she had her city to claim. And she was hungry for her breakfast. It had been a long time since she had tasted food.

  The baby, as babies do, was fussing. Hungry, as babies are. The girls were sleeping with Auntie in the other room, so Talfan had the luxury of a bed nearly to herself, but she pulled on a caftan and went out into the screened porch, where there was more air and the scent of herbs hung to dry. Rain pattered on the roof, dripped in the leaking corner. The night air smelt clean, made her think of the mountains, always seen, never noticed, to the south. Her husband had seen the mountains, gone up into them, too, nearly got himself killed in a war there that had nothing to do with him. One of his friends had family there, he said. It seemed an unlikely reason for a caravan-gang to end up in the mountains. The gang was going out as mercenaries and not bothering with trade, was her guess, and he didn’t want her to know he was sliding down to one step above a desert brigand. He was certainly shifty on that point. Next time he was home, she’d try harder to worm it out of him. No baby, this time, at least, while she was still nursing. He’d been gone long enough he ought to be home soon, certainly before this one was weaned. She’d been expecting him back a month now.

  The rain pattered, the leak dripped, the baby sucked and smacked and made noises of contentment. The night was hers. Sitting on the cushioned bench where her solitude-loving eldest daughter so often slept—the wretched girl was going to turn out a poet, or worse, a wanderer like her father, if she wasn’t careful—Talfan stretched out her legs, leaned back against the wall, and shut her eyes.

  There was the scent not only of rain on dust from the lane below but smoke, coming in eddying gusts. Something was burning, somewhere in the city. Had she heard distant ward bells ringing the alarm for fire in her sleep?

  Talfan shifted the baby to her other breast and was heading indoors to climb the stairs to the roof when Watcher, the old brown bitch, set up a great clamour in the courtyard. Not any mild bark to let her know some cat had dared perch on the wall, either. Talfan went down the stairs to the kitchen behind the shop sure-footed in the dark, deposited the now-wailing and angry baby in the cradle there, and grabbed the lead-weighted cudgel that hung by the curtained door into the shop. But Watcher’s attention wasn’t on the house, and nothing rattled the latch of the street door. She went to peer through the tiny, deliberate crack in it to be sure. Silence. And street guard would come with lanterns.

  Temple guard would come with torches and Red Masks and great shoutings that she should open in the Lady’s name, she was certain. Back through the kitchen. The baby was screaming and Auntie calling from upstairs to know what was wrong, little Iris wailing in half-awakened sympathy.

  “Come take the baby!” Talfan called, for what good that would do; Auntie didn’t have what the little mite wanted. She fastened her sash and unbolted the yard door.

  Watcher was at the far end of the long, narrow enclosure, overlooked by Talfan’s own walls on two sides and a neighbour’s on the other, filled with laundry lines, the cistern, a weedy vine that got no light and never bore fruit. The doorway in the high wall there let out onto a narrow alley, overhung with porches and dark even by noon. Very private. She got close enough to see Watcher up on her hind legs, clawing, before something came over the wall, slithering down to land with a bump and a muffled noise that she realized was a sob even as the dog, her bark changed to welcome, jumped and knocked the small figure sprawling.

  A child, cold and wet and reeking of smoke, shaking, and he flung himself against her, weeping, choking. Talfan knelt and gathered him in.

  “Shemal? Shemal?” Sweet gods, Hadidu’s Shemal. “Where’s your papa?” she asked urgently. “Where’s Hadidu?”

  Hard to make out a coherent word, but a flung hand indicated the door. She could have figured out that much; little Shemal would not have been scaling her wall on his own. She put the boy behind her, waving back Auntie and the girls, the whole clan turned out by now, and lifted the bar of the gate with one hand, the cudgel ready in the other.
In case.

  Hadidu slipped in and had it barred again before she could even be certain it was he, except that Shemal abandoned his grip on her to seize him.

  “Red Masks,” he said. “They came for Nour. The Doves is burning.”

  She felt as if the beaten earth of the yard beneath her feet had given way, and she was dropping into some pit.

  “Girls, come inside,” Auntie ordered briskly. “Bring the little boy. We’ll make some coffee.”

  But Shemal clung and wouldn’t let go, till his father knelt, arms about him, whispering. Then he let Jasmel take him by the hand.

  Hadidu stayed where he was, on his knees in the rain, once Auntie had firmly shut the door on them.

  “You weren’t followed.” Old Great Gods, if Hadidu had been followed . . . but he wouldn’t have come here if he thought that. “I’m sorry.” She put a hand on his arm. He wore only a caftan pulled on hastily and was barefoot and shivering. Shock, she decided. He needed sweet coffee and dry clothes as badly as his son. “Tell me quickly, before we go in. The girls don’t need to hear the worst.” If they hadn’t already.

  “They came for Nour,” he said, never lifting his head. “Broke down the door. I shouted to him, but—I never saw him. He didn’t answer. I don’t know where he was. They all knew what to do, the servants, the way over the roofs. I took Shemal—I had to take Shemal, I couldn’t look for Nour—but there were temple guard and Red Masks coming behind. They pulled him from me, Shemal, and—my lodger, you know, the scribe, she rented a room—she was a wizard, and I never knew, she attacked the guardsmen and held the stairs—against Red Masks, Talfan—while we got up to the roof. But it was on fire and—we got over next door and along until a safe house and down to the back street. Master Farnos took the servants and was going to pass them on, get them away right over the wall to the suburb before dawn if he could—”

  Master Hadidu at the Doves always took on other people’s waifs and strays, the unwanted bastards, the stammerers, the simple, the deaf, the birth-marked (Talfan looked after such things herself—amazing how a raspberry-blotched face kept most people from ever seeing beyond the mark), and gave them a bit of work before they drifted off into worse trouble or better positions. Next-to-free labour it was and considered by some charity on his part and by others sharp practice—except they were the wizard-talented youths of Marakand, and when they vanished, it was with a caravan of the eastern road or a merchant of the Five Cities, and the Five Cities was where they usually ended up, apprenticed here and there, scattered. Marakand’s wizards in waiting. Some, of course, were only what they seemed, and it was his charity, and he did train them well and find them better positions. But for the last month, awaiting the right caravan, he had had three, all very young, one runaway fortunately found by Jugurthos and two whose parents had heard rumours of rumours of a refuge.

  So those children were safe. Maybe.

  “Nour may have gotten away too,” Talfan said. “He must have. Surely.”

  Hadidu shook his head. “I saw Jugurthos, briefly. He hadn’t seen Nour. And Ivah, the scribe—a mercy if she died before the Red Masks took her.”

  Talfan didn’t want to say it. She’d seen how he watched the woman as she sat at the table by the door, brush or pen in hand. “Hadidu, if anyone betrayed Nour . . .”

  “Betrayed us both,” he said faintly. “They were shouting about the priest, too. They knew who I was.”

  “She—”

  “No. No, Talfan. Ivah didn’t know anything. She fought them.”

  “A wizard, to turn up lodging at your house. You don’t take lodgers.”

  “I liked her,” he said. “We have—we had the space. Convenient to the market.” He got to his feet, wrapped his caftan tighter. “I won’t stay,” he said. “Varro isn’t home, is he?”

  “No. But I started expecting them last month. It could be soon, Old Great Gods willing.”

  He nodded. “Keep Shemal for me? Hide him? I don’t know, dress him as a girl, maybe nobody will notice, among all yours. And send him away. Out of the city. Maybe someone in your husband’s gang has family that would foster him, away west.” He sounded like he was arranging for the boy’s funeral. “Just—let him forget Marakand. Worship the god of the land he comes to and be at home there.”

  “Hadidu!”

  “I can’t bring him up like this.”

  “You’re in no state to make decisions tonight, and if they’ve followed you, we’re all as good as dead anyhow, so you might as well stay.”

  Watcher, who’d settled down to sleep again, leapt up in renewed barking. There was a glow of lantern-light beyond the wall. Nobody would carry lights but the guard. She ignored the dog, gestured at the wall. Hadidu, after a moment, caught on and made a stirrup of his hands to boost her up. As she’d expected, the guards, two of them, were staring at the door, watching, listening, not looking up. One was a stocky man with officer’s ribbons trailing from his helmet, the other a short and very comfortably curved woman. If she’d had a big rock . . .

  Talfan slid back down and dropped the bar. Captain Jugurthos and his adjutant Tulip surged through, seeing, like Hadidu, to the barring of the door themselves.

  “What are you doing, running around with lights?” Talfan demanded. “Idiots!”

  “Patrolling,” said Tulip. “We sent the rest along the alleys on the other side. Not bad sorts, but no loss if they get lost.”

  “Out of your ward? This far out of your ward?”

  “Pursuing fugitives,” said Jugurthos, and embraced Hadidu. “Sweet gods be thanked, you’re safe, at least.”

  “Nour?”

  “Yeah,” Jugurthos pulled off his helmet and dragged a grimy hand through his hair, standing it on end. “Hadi, I’m sorry. I didn’t know, when we met at the baker’s, but they got Nour in the back lane, him and the scribe both. Just one Red Mask, but he had plenty of temple guard to help him. They’ve been taken to the temple. There wasn’t any chance. If I’d gotten to them first—I had some trusted patrols out searching—but we were too late.”

  “We’re all dead,” Talfan said.

  “Nour doesn’t know me,” Tulip said.

  “Much good that’ll do when they take Jugurthos before the Voice,” Talfan observed.

  Nour couldn’t be saved. Nour was dead, even if he still breathed. Talfan made her heart stone. That was done. Over. Lost. What could be saved? That was what she needed to ask. The children. Auntie. They had plans, they had always had plans, she and her aunt, who wasn’t really any kin at all, but who had been nurse to Jugurthos when he was small, in the palace-like Family Barraya mansion in the eastern shadow of Palace Hill, before the earthquake took his grandparents, and his parents were murdered by the temple and he was dispossessed, to drift up, a grudged fosterling of the distant cousin who had grovelled to the temple for the Barraya inheritance, in the street guard. They had plans, and part of the plan was that Talfan didn’t know the plans. Because they’d always known this might happen.

  The baby would have to stay with her, though. Watcher—Watcher had better go with Auntie. Protection for the girls. They could muzzle her till they were out of the city. There was a way, a house built against the wall not so many streets distant, with a tunnel in the cellar. It emerged under a neglected Family Barraya mausoleum, in the long stretch of private cemeteries and tombs between the city and the ravine where it plunged down from the southern mountains. The brothers that owned the house would have to disappear too, since they were known to her and to Jugurthos, though not to Hadidu and Nour . . . She was ticking points off on her fingers. Hadidu seemed to have lost the will to move. She tugged him up by the arm.

  “Inside,” she said. “Something to drink and clean clothes. Ju?”

  “I should get back to the fort,” Jugurthos said. “I can’t do any good here. There are people to warn. Things to clean up.”

  “Things to burn,” Tulip said.

  “That too. Hadidu, old friend, I’m sorry. You and Talfan
stick together, make your own plans after we’re gone.”

  “If the temple guard come for you—”

  “We won’t stick around to fight and be taken.”

  “We won’t?” asked Tulip. Jugurthos gave her a long look. “Oh,” she said. “Yes, it’ll have to be that way, won’t it? Why did I ever let this man talk me into bed? Well, they say a ghost can keep its secrets in the face of the gods themselves, but I intend to haunt the fortress. The men’s barracks, I think.”

  Talfan saw them out, barred the yard gate yet again, and urged Hadidu into the house, where Shemal was already asleep, wrapped in a quilt on the floor. Jasmel and Auntie were packing a bag of food; Iris and Ermina, already dressed, sat side by side on the bottom step, solemn-eyed. Talfan squeezed her eyes shut a moment.

  “I listened at the window,” Auntie said. “I’m very sorry, Master Hadidu. Master Nour was a good man. Jas, you go get your clothes on, and bring down Ermina’s from last year out of the yellow basket for Shemal.”

  Too soon—Watcher whining and pawing at the improvised muzzle, Iris scrunching her face heroically against wailing, Shemal silent and almost stunned, and Jasmel and Ermina being self-consciously grown-up and brave, they were gone, a little band of shadows flitting down the alley in the night.

  “Where are we going?” Hadidu asked. He was dressed in clothes left behind by Varro, with the cuffs rolled up, and a pair of Auntie’s old sandals with the soles worn paper-thin. The sweet coffee had put some life back into him.