“But I healed you. They wouldn’t even have you if I hadn’t come!”
As soon as she spoke, Isika knew what she said was childish and not of the ways of Nenyi, but the serious, disappointed looks on Olumi and Asafar’s faces made it even more clear.
“Dear Isika, you are upset,” Olumi started, but Asafar held up a hand.
“Young one, there are no transactions or borrowing and lending between Nenyi’s servants. But if you can bring Aria to me here, I promise I will try to heal her of the demon’s arrow.”
“Demon’s arrow?”
“You didn’t know? This arrow was crafted by a mud demon. It will suck life and strength out of Aria as well as deceiving her, telling her that she is better and more fulfilled. It is a most deceptive kind of poison.”
Isika felt like her heart was being torn open. Aria.
“And you still won’t come!”
Asafar sighed and began walking again, holding an arm out for Isika. Olumi hurried to catch up.
“If I left my people for every person who needed my healing, I couldn’t be what Nenyi wants, young one. I know where the Shaper has placed me, and I live only to please her. I am sorry I cannot help you in this way, but bring the girl to me and I will do my utmost to heal her.”
“How can I bring her to you if she is still poisoned by this arrow?”
“You must find that out for yourself. You are far more gifted than I am.”
“Then why could I not pull the arrow out of her?”
“I suspect because it was put there by your own father. This makes both you and Aria weaker to its magic. It is a powerful betrayal, layer upon layer.”
Isika looked at the sky. Dusk drew a curtain across the length of it. She saw the first stars appearing in the deep blue expanse.
“We leave tomorrow,” she said. “We will collect Aria and bring her back to Asafar.”
“And find something of the stolen ones, if you can, daughter,” Asafar said.
* * *
Asafar, true to his word, did not come with them. But two other Karee warriors came, wearing dull Gariah clothes. And the cats came, of course, easily traveling alongside them and sleeping beside Isika whenever they stopped for rest. They moved quickly over the landscape, walking at night, stopping to raise shelter during the day. Traveling with the Karee made it easier. The king had given them tents as gifts, and the shade was welcome as trees were nonexistent. The silver of the cats’ fur flowed like a river in the moonlight as they walked easily over the uneven ground.
As they drew out of the deep desert that the Karee inhabited, more buildings appeared, and they had to work harder to avoid them. One of the warriors approached Isika.
“We will attract attention with the cats following us,” he said. “And as we come near the city, we need less attention.”
Will you go? Isika asked Hera. The man is saying that it is not safe for you to come with us.
Do you want us to be less visible? Hera asked, blinking at her.
Isika stared at her. Hera sat at attention before her, gazing into Isika’s eyes with her own silver ones. The other Palipa lolled at her feet. One cleaned his paws, another turned on his back, batting at the edge of a tent with one paw. The youngest, the female, cleaned her fur.
What do you mean? You can become invisible? Isika asked.
She sensed them laughing at her in their deep humming purrs.
Well, we don’t disappear, if that’s what you’re thinking, like some common magician’s trick. But we have ways of directing attention away from ourselves, of thinning our presence, so people don’t notice us. Your friends the Keerza can do it too. And the Othra, but they rarely want to, because they like to be seen and admired. You also could learn it. You are the World Whisperer.
“What are they saying?” Ben demanded. “You have a very strange look on your face.”
Olumi stroked at his beard after Isika relayed what the cat had told her.
“I suppose that makes sense. It is a little like what you have been practicing with hiding yourself from Aria.”
“Except that I’m hiding what she senses of my presence, and they are hiding their presence from everybody.”
“That would be an incredibly useful trick if you really could use it, Isika,” Brigid said. “Teach me! I want to be invisible.”
The tension broke as they all laughed, and the cats had their way, traveling even into the towns on the outskirts of the city with the others. As Isika watched, people’s eyes clouded over briefly when they looked past the huge cats who padded along city streets, careful not to touch anyone.
One night when they were traveling in near darkness, the moon only a sliver in the sky, the Keerza turned up out of nowhere. Isika felt a jolt of gladness in seeing her old friends, but the Karee warriors sighed and shook their heads.
“This is getting ridiculous,” one of them said when he thought Isika wasn’t listening. Ben met Isika’s eyes and grinned.
Are you sure this is the mission for you? Isika asked the Keerza. I know about your ability to be unseen, but we are going into a city, and you are so wild, made for wide spaces.
We come to help, said the head Keerza, and Isika couldn’t turn him away. Later that night, Keethior came back from wherever he had been, and behind him, Isika heard hoofbeats.
Friend? Friend? she heard, and gasped. Ben turned to ask what she was hearing, but then he smiled as he recognized the music, and Wind and Night, their horses, galloped up to them. For a while, there was a mess of talking and laughing and exclaiming over how far they had come and how secretive Keethior was to summon them without saying anything.
“But Keethior, why?” Isika asked, leaning her head on her horse’s side.
“Isika,” he said, cocking his head to look at her out of one bright eye. “You don’t know what you are walking into. This is not Batta, this is not a fire in your own city. You are walking into Mugunta’s heart, and you need every strong friend, every bit of ancient magic you can get. You will need everything you have to get through this city and not succumb to its malice toward you.”
“It’s time to actually do it,” Abbas said. “Maybe we should discuss how we will get into the city.”
Isika, is there a stable where we can wait for you? We will be able to feel if you are in trouble.
“The Keerza are wondering if they can come inside, too,” Isika said. “They want to know if there is a stable.”
Olumi frowned. “How can we hide twenty gazelles in a city with walls?” he asked.
Abbas shook his head. “It’s not possible, Isika. They take up space, even if they can be unseen. The cats can come, but the Keerza . . . I can’t see how it will work!”
Isika looked at the head Keerza. He says it won’t work. Can you stay outside the walls?
We must send one or two with you, he told her. The others will wait outside the bounds of the city, but they will be ready to enter if they must.
And where will you stay?
We are nearly as good at hiding as the cats, the ancient animal replied. Don’t worry about us.
Isika filled the others in on what the Keerza had said, and though Abbas sighed again and shook his head, he shrugged and got the warrior to permit two of the Keerza to come, and the two horses, and all four of the cats. And the Othra.
“Have you ever tried to do anything secretly before?” Abbas asked Isika. “You’re not so great at it.”
“It’s not my fault,” she said, laughing.
“How do we get in?” Brigid asked.
“You forget that the Karee have been here for a very long time,” Abbas said. “We have ways.”
* * *
The way turned out to be an underground road, a tunnel that was wide enough for the two horses to walk shoulder to shoulder. Isika was focused on calming their spirits as they went, because the presence of so much poison had them skittish and dancing from side to side.
Abbas glanced at her as she walked. He held a lantern in on
e hand and seemed at ease, though there was so much earth that could potentially fall on them and they were walking straight toward his people’s most dreaded enemy, the one who had imprisoned him as a slave.
“This is why we don’t have horses in the city or in our camps,” he said. “Mules and camels are less vulnerable to magic. The magicians of the city lay some kind of spell on their horses, but it makes them sluggish. Horses would be useful to us, but they are sensitive.”
“Yes, I can see that,” Isika said, bringing Wind back down to all four feet and laying her face against his cheek. He settled with a shaky sigh. She glanced at Olumi.
“Do you know of anything I can do to help them?” she asked.
He shook his head. Unlike Abbas, he seemed quite nervous to be in the tunnel, jumping at sounds and cringing away from the ceiling, which was a long way above his head.
“I think you should ask your cat friends,” he said. “They must have secrets and tricks.”
Ask us what? The Palipa were different from the Keerza or the horses. They seemed to be able to understand everything Isika and the others said, even when Isika wasn’t using animal speech. But they tuned out for long sections of time, catching bits and then demanding to know what everyone was talking about.
Do you have any advice for the horses? Ways that they can feel more calm?
They don’t like us.
Well, you are predators and they are prey. But they can control their dislike if you can help them.
We would have to lay our magic on them. Are they willing?
Isika asked the horses, who shuddered and snorted and finally said yes. So the cats laid protective magic on them, and though the smell of it bothered the horses, Isika could feel the moment when they settled, when their muscles weren’t hard as iron and their minds quieted.
“Wow,” Ben said. “That worked.”
Isika looked back at him.
“Their songs are more like their pasture songs now, and not their imminent danger songs,” he told her. She smiled.
It was a lot easier to walk along the underground road with calm horses, and Isika let herself relax. She thought of Aria being installed as heir and shuddered. She felt a spike of resolve in her heart. She would simply not allow the king to lay more of his magic on her sister. She wouldn’t allow it. They would stop this, she and Abbas and Jabari, the cats and Olumi, the Keerza and Brigid and Ben and Keethior. Surely there were enough of them. And Nenyi would help them, as she always did. She walked faster.
“Let’s not be in the tunnel any longer than we have to be,” she said. “We have to get to Aria.”
Chapter 25
The holes in Aria’s memory seemed to be getting larger.
There were whole days when she would arrive back at her rooms and it was time for sleep, but she had no memory of the day that had passed.
Or sometimes on the small throne that her father had had set up next to his, she would blink and realize she didn’t know how she had come to be there.
One thing was certain, though. She loved her father. She loved everything about him, and she couldn’t wait to be named heir. He had told her of the festivities that would happen, starting with a procession early in the morning before they did the actual ceremony. They would travel through the whole city. And then would come the ceremony that would tie her to the throne and her ultimate destiny to be the queen of Gariah, and maybe, her father said, the whole world. She blinked. That was odd. Why the whole world? She must have heard him wrong.
“Why not do the ceremony first?” she heard herself asking one day, and even as she asked, she wondered why she was asking. Her father knew what was best, why would she question him?
She thought she saw his eyes tighten at the edges before he laughed.
“It will be so much better if they know you before the ceremony, Aria. The power of the ceremony will be stronger, bigger, grander, and they will love you more fully.”
Well, that sounded good. So she avoided Herrith’s eyes and the uncomfortable feeling in her stomach at the sound of her father’s laugh.
There were so many things that her father taught her. She had been deceived for so long by people she had considered friends and family members. For instance, Nenyi was part of Mugunta, imagine that! The two were intertwined and could not be separated. And Isika was weak, because she had only chosen one half of the whole.
This and many things she learned from her father while they sat in their chairs, eating giant plates of food—Aria nibbled at hers—and being waited on by the slaves. Sometimes Aria got a funny feeling in her stomach when her father hit a slave, but he never hit Aria. Only once, when she was walking back to her room, her cheek throbbed with pain, and Herrith seemed very angry. When Lena saw her, she burst into tears.
She also spent a lot of time with Herrith. It was different from being with her father, mostly because her stomach hurt more when she was with Herrith, and she didn’t have those gaps in time. She could see more clearly, but sometimes she didn’t want to see more clearly. Lena had this effect on her too, so that she was mostly awake when she was in her own rooms, but often sleepy in the king’s chambers.
She mentioned this to Herrith one day as they were walking in the gardens. He looked down at her with what she had begun to think of as his soft face.
“Why do you think that is?” he asked.
She thought about it. She loved her father so desperately. She loved his face and his strength, his way of being commanding and the way he made her feel like she would be the most powerful queen he had ever seen. She loved how he was strong with the slaves, hitting them when they were disobedient. No—wait. She looked up at Herrith. She didn’t like it when her father hit the slaves. She and Herrith had talked about that before. What had Herrith asked? She couldn’t remember. She asked him, and he sighed and shook his head gently.
“It’s okay Aria. Let’s talk about Nenyi.”
“Nenyi is the same as Mugunta.”
“No. Remember? We’re talking about how maybe that’s not true. But that you shouldn’t tell your father that. Because he gets mad and he might hit you, right?”
It came back then, and with it, her stomachache, which she thought had more to do with understanding what was really going on than an actual problem with her stomach. She had told her father the things she and Herrith had been speaking about, that Nenyi was actually quite different from Mugunta, and her father had whipped his hand back and slapped her. She had fallen off her stool and laid on the floor crying while her father strode around the room shouting, the wild colors in the floor going mad. He had left the room, still shouting, and after a moment, one of the slaves had run over to Aria and picked her up, murmuring to her and stroking her hair. After a while, Herrith came, his face like a storm, and when she was ready, they walked back to her rooms, where she curled on the couch while Lena and Herrith had one of their angry whispered conversations. Lena had made her hot tea and given her a soothing balm for her face, and Herrith paced, then abruptly left.
She looked at him, her eyes wide.
“You remember?” he asked.
She nodded, her eyes very wide.
They sat in a corner of the garden, under the shade of a large palm.
“Aria,” Herrith said. “Do you feel more clear right now?”
She nodded again. Her stomach hurt so bad it was moving into her chest, so her heart hurt as well, feeling as though it was going to come out of her. She stared at him, the white in his beard and at his temples.
“Are you very old?” she asked him.
“Quite old,” he said, “But maybe not as old as you think.”
“Do you remember my mother?”
“She was my dearest friend,” he said. “But Aria, even when you are with the king, when your mind feels less clear and you are forgetting things, you can never ever tell him about my friendship with your mother. You can’t tell him what we talk about here in the garden. You can’t tell him I told you these things. Yo
u can’t. You have to ask Nenyi to help you be quiet, and not tell about what we say here.”
“Because the king will grow angry and hit me?”
“Worse,” Herrith said, his eyes very, very serious. “He assumed what you said today was only what you had learned in Maween. But if he knows it is coming from me, he will take me from you. And then you won’t have anyone to help you clear your mind.”
Aria considered that. In a way, it would be easier if she never cleared her mind. It was such a painful thing to do. When she was foggy, things seemed nice, her stomach and heart didn’t hurt, and she didn’t have to think about all the things that hurt her. In a way, it seemed like the healing she had been seeking for so, so long.
“What will happen to you?” she asked. “Where will he take you?”
“He will kill me,” Herrith told her.
And that was different. Because even if it hurt when her mind was clear, she didn’t want Herrith to die. Herrith and Lena had been very kind to her, kinder than anyone else in the palace. She wouldn’t tell her father anything. She would keep the secret.
“How can I remember?” she asked.
“I think you need to remind yourself over and over again. Tell yourself not to talk about what we have learned here.”
She looked back at him.
“Why would you risk telling me?” she asked. “If you know my mind is cloudy and I will tell him if I forget? And then you might . . . you know?”
“Ah,” he said. He looked off into the distance. When he looked at her again, he blinked as though he was surprised to see her there.
“Because of your mother. And because I have stayed here all this time, within reach of the king, because of you. Waiting for you.”
“Not for Isika?” she asked him.
“For both of you.”
She frowned, but then there was a rustling of leaves and one of the palace guards stood before them.
“Robed one,” he said.
“Yes?”
The man started to say something, then stopped himself, looking at Aria. He paced back and forth quickly.
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