§
Alaina tended Tae in the slaves’ quarters, salving his back and laying a bandage on it at his direction. His clammy skin twitched under her hands. The other slaves trailed in, glancing at him and skirting Kyrin, who sat hunched on her mat. Alaina wished they would speak, say something. If she opened her mouth, she’d scream at them—the dogs, afraid of their shadows.
Red-haired Winfrey settled on her mat and whispered to the young Moor, Abul. “I know her kind, from the wild places, the heath and the forest. They say such as she can lay words on us—burn us to black husks, floating to our graves, the ship never to reach shore. Even the master sees it.” She lowered her voice.
Alaina pounded her knee with her hand and turned her back on Winfrey. Kyrin was no threat, but Winfrey saw only her heritage, the dark hair and penetrating eyes of those of the blood of the hills, the mystery and the magic woven by loose tongues. Alaina snorted.
Ali feared his new slave: he marked Kyrin with black jet, an earring of the eye, sigil of evil. And he shamed her, setting her to serve his wife at home, his unworthy wife. Alaina wiped her face. Her throat felt thick.
What would happen to her and Kyrin and Tae, three threads woven on a loom of loss? Her master had destroyed Owin. Was any of her family left? She did not think so. She was alone. But she did not have the strength to hate Ali, and Kyrin . . . She huddled on her mat, clutching a cloth spread with salve around her ears, shivering. Alaina almost touched her shoulder but pulled back. The necklace Ali had taunted her with graced her neck, shimmering. Beautiful. She had never touched such a thing.
Alaina reached out again, and drew back reluctantly. Kyrin was high-born, not used to a rough peasant’s hand. And Kyrin obeyed Ali because a peasant advised her so—and came near to death. Alaina looked at the floor; Owin had called her simple, once. She must be wiser. Such a necklace belonged with such a one.
How small she had looked when the Nubian pulled Tae away, her brown hair tossed around her pale face. Her unearthly eyes seemed to pierce body and spirit. A wild, untamed creature of twilight and the airy heights. Alaina wanted to stay close, to shield that spark. Somehow, Kyrin warmed her against Ali’s coldness. She scrubbed at her drying tears. It was like her master to bind her and Kyrin to Tae with an awful oath. And Ali would keep his promise.
But Tae in his turn would keep her and Kyrin, bound to protect his—his own. Alaina bowed her head. Ali bound them, but she had not heard Tae agree to his bed-right. Tae first belonged to his Master of the stars. But was he strong enough to keep his oath?
“Water. Please, water.” Tae’s voice was stronger. Alaina padded out to the barrel next to the ladder and returned with the dipper. She paused, water dripping on her toes.
Lying on his mat, Tae’s wide, muscled back was striped with her neat bandaging, spotted with blood. A pale scar stretched from his shoulder blade to his hip, running in and out under the bandages, disappearing at his trouser line. A sword scar from his fighting days in the lower rangdo ranks of hwarang, before Huen? Flecks of white swirled in his dark hair about Ali’s ring of ownership, snow at night about bronze flame. He was not so old.
Alaina closed her eyes. Lord of all, help us. Tae tried to help Owin: he did not break oaths, even those unspoken. Tae licked his lips, and Alaina lowered the dipper.
§
Kyrin turned her throbbing head to ease her cramped neck. Lord, not the wife-right. When the ship made land she would run. Would Alaina come?
Alaina sat with her back against the wall at the head of Tae’s mat. In the hatch’s last light, her breath ruffled her hair that hung in her face, sticking to smudged tears.
The red-haired slave muttered of Kyrin’s shame in the growing dark. Kyrin tried to think of nothing. At last Winfrey fell mercifully silent. The sun was going.
Kyrin’s eyes were open on darkness and shadows. Across the room a vague swordsman swung at her mother, who cowered against the wall. Kyrin screamed. The raider’s eyes snapped open. Ali’s dark eyes in his pale face were pitiless.
Kyrin swung the stones in her hands. They smacked against warmth and wet, smashing those dead orbs of vision. He fell.
Mist rose thick around him then wisped away in a breeze she did not feel. The tiger stood where Ali had lain, one paw lifted, his huge eyes green-gold. The falcon clung to his fur, a loop of her chain tinking, her wings spreading in alarm.
Kyrin sprang to her feet. The tiger took a stalking step, tail lashing, and crouched. The falcon flapped and shrieked, bobbing her head. The tiger opened his cavernous mouth. “Coward!” He roared.
Kyrin ran. She did not feel the ankle chain shackling her foot until it snapped taught, slamming her to her knees and elbows on unforgiving wood outside the door of the slaves’ quarters. She rolled to her back, facing the door, her arms and free leg drawn up to shield her.
A wind rushed through her, stirring every fiber, blood-beat, and bone. Then it was gone, and she was lighter, her heart and breath faster. Something bound her face; she smelled leather. She thought of a falcon’s hood and struggled to lift her arms. Air resisted, pushing, pulling—at feathers. Her feathers. But she dared not fly. His claws would find her.
She unfurled, and crouched, hoping her talons did not prick him to madness. No, there was a silk pad on his shoulders: the threads caught at her talons. His chest vibrated with a rumbling cough. He stretched out his neck, sniffed, and snorted. Her ankle chain clinked on the deck under his shifting body; he pawed at it, a claw scritching against metal. He would smell her, chained again, this time on his back, and . . .
With a stretching of unfamiliar muscles, Kyrin raised an unwieldy sharp-tipped foot to the hood that barred her sight.
Kyrin blinked muzzily. No feathers, no hood. She lay on her mat, Alaina at her feet.
Alaina nudged her ankle and tipped her head toward the door. Tae’s breathing was quiet where he slept on his mat. Umar, a tall, black shape, waited in the doorway.
At his gesture, Kyrin got up, stiff and slow. The scabbed lash marks pulled at her back, stinging. She was glad Umar let Tae be, though she wished for his warmth at her back. Alaina did not seem alarmed. So this was how a slave’s sunrise began. Kyrin followed her. The other slaves’ feet pattered behind them.
The deck was cold under Kyrin’s toes. Umar barked an order. The men and Winfrey scattered to buckets and bundles of rags beside the rail. Rags plunged into icy water and plopped wetly onto the deck. Kyrin helped them wash the endless wood planks, hauling fresh buckets of saltwater from the sea, dumping the dirty back.
Gauzy bands of red and purple lightened the sky. The sea slapped the hull. Kyrin wiped her warm face on her arm and rubbed the bronze ring in her itching ear. The jet earring dragged painfully heavy on the other side, and she touched it with one finger. When the others’ eyes fell on it they looked away, like Esther. She was a changeling this morn.
Umar cleared his throat and gave her a lizard grin, slapping the whip in his hand gently against his thigh. Kyrin scrambled back to Alaina and rubbed her rag hard over the planks. The pitch between them stuck to her fingers and did not keep out splinters. She flinched. It was worse than trying to reap grain with a straight-sword.
The wood deck gleamed before the sun grew hot, and Ali’s warriors brought spoil to be counted while Umar valued the heaps and tallied them. Aching from so long in one position sorting and piling, Kyrin watched for the warrior she had struck in the throat with her rock. She did not see him. So, one of her godfather’s men must have killed him. Good.
When the sun dipped below the horizon she rose from before the heap of brooches, rings, and arm rings ripped from Lord Fenwer and his men. Umar released her after the others with a cuff. “Nasrany dog!” She went to her mat, her hand over her stinging ear with the black ring, imagining the falcon dagger warm in her fingers. She went to sleep touching Tae’s herb bag.
§
Ala
ina woke. A muffled sob broke the blackness. “Kyrin, what is it?” She reached, found Kyrin’s shoulder, and slid an awkward arm around her.
Kyrin sniffed. “Alaina, are you—hand-fasted—at home?”
“No.” She sucked her lip. She had been friends with Aldhelm, though he felt more for her. His bread was good and light, as wholesome as his kindness, for all he was an apprentice baker. Had been, before he fell with Owin. Her breath quickened. “Ali is a pig!”
“Yes. He will fall to a hunter someday.” Kyrin’s voice cracked.
Alaina held her tight. “Do you have someone?”
“No. But better Tae than the others.”
“Yes, burn it.” Her voice wavered, with a sorrowful, bitter sound. They could jump from the ship, never mind if they drowned. But she did not truly wish death.
Oh, Owin, I am glad you are not here, but I wish you were. You would cut down Ali like the pig he is. And I—I would finish learning to read with Sister Ethelbert, and not have to marry both—no, don’t think of that. Tae may keep his oath. My sister—she would be free.
Kyrin whispered, “I will ask Tae not to touch us. He knows we are pure.”
Alaina pulled back. “Do not say so. Tae has not spoken. Do not ask him!” If they never spoke of it, it never happened. If they never spoke of it, they could not betray each other if Ali found out.
“I must, Alaina. I must find my father. But—don’t hate me.”
Alaina squeezed her shoulder. “I won’t. Sister,” she added under her breath.
A voice came out of the dark. “It seems we agree before the Master of the stars.”
Alaina jumped, and Kyrin stifled a cry.
Tae’s mat rustled, and his voice held solemn promise. “Huen waits for me. I think of her at sunset and sunrise. To me, you are the daughters she longs for.”
He was not taking the wife-right. He was keeping his higher oath. Alaina gripped Kyrin’s arm hard in hope. But what would Ali do? Drowning would be gentler.
“Do not fear. Ali knows you are too young. I will make you herb draughts to strengthen you for sons. You will drink them; they will improve your digestion. Then, when you become women, we will find another reason, another way.”
“But how can you keep—what you say?” Kyrin’s voice wobbled.
“By this, for you. I will think of something for me, for the nights.”
The herb bag crackled. Tae’s warm fingers holding a sharp, cool edge skimmed Alaina’s arm. Kyrin’s falcon blade: beautiful, farseeing, deadly. Alaina drew away with a shudder. It spoke to her of death, maybe because Kyrin was so full of anger when she looked at it.
“It is well,” Kyrin said, a lord’s daughter again. “I did think you might know him who gave us the sign of the fish. Is he the Master of Heaven you speak of?” Alaina smiled in the dark.
“Yes. Sleep now.”
“Yes, Tae.”
“My thanks.” Alaina’s voice was faint, but her heart leapt. She pressed Kyrin’s hand and whispered, “Whatever happens, I am of your hearth and salt.”
Kyrin pulled her hand away. “You are not my servant.”
“I did not seek to be.” Alaina’s heart thudded. She dared much, but to not be alone . . .
“What do you mean?”
“We mean to rise together, to stand, bound to each other’s good,” Tae broke in.
“He has said it—sister.” Alaina dared to loose the word to the waiting air.
“But you know what I did. My mother fell because I feared—I’m not . . . worthy.” Desolation choked Kyrin’s voice.
“Oh that,” Alaina said airily, and held her close. Kyrin cried, drawing a shivering breath in her arms. Had Kyrin never had a sister? Alaina hugged her hard.
Sniffing, Kyrin raised her head from Alaina’s shoulder. “Tae, what did Ali mean, calling you ‘flower warrior, fighter for spirits’?”
Tae was silent then he sighed. “You know I am hwarang. It means one of the flowering youth of my land, flowering warrior, though my years pass. I fight for Him whose sign you carry at your neck, since my people deem me unfit to raise my hand beside them against the riders of the North.”
Alaina touched her throat. The iridescent necklace she had envied Kyrin. She smiled slightly. She had known such a graceful thing signified something beautiful. “Jesu,” she said softly.
“And our Father and his Spirit.”
“It is good.” Kyrin whispered.
“Yes.” Their voices mingled.
Alaina lay down and wriggled joyously closer to Kyrin’s warm back. “Well then, good night to you, sister. Good night, Tae.”
“Good night, daughters.”
It was good. Alaina sighed. Kyrin had huddled amid the streaming ash and dead coals, defiant, sure of her death. Now she was her sister. Alive.
Alaina shivered. Ali would have to go through her to get to Kyrin again. And if the last scop she had heard gossiping in the village before the raiders came was to be believed, though the horse lords trampled the land of silk and dragons in the East, Tae’s hwarang, even if they were ten to their enemies’ fifty, would defend their country and triumph. Never give up. Tae said it, and he was hwarang.
6
Oaths
O mine enemy. ~Micah 7:8
Ali leaned on his elbow beside the table, a half-eaten date on his plate. His new slave watched him and the ship’s master at their gambling, her face pale, her eyes the color of the jet eye of evil in her ear. He beckoned, and his worthless one stood beside him, her bare feet noiseless enough, holding out a silver serving platter.
Ali grunted. She was too quiet. A slave should go unnoticed by all but her master, who must know where every slave stood around him. The angry, finger-long cut at the base of her throat glistened with the hakeem’s salve, and her fingers that clutched his platter were torn. They had bled. She was learning, and she gave him a way to instruct another. Kef had questioned him about his sailing course.
Ali raised his eyes to his opponent. Sweat rolled down the shipmaster’s nut-brown cheeks where he bent a shrewd gaze on the ivory markers on their polished board on the table. He moved his marker, pulled it back, and studied the board again. He cursed, fingering his lip.
Below the table, Ali switched a loaded mark with one from his sleeve. He cast, and won three marks. Kef would not rebuke him again for the brazier being lit while his ship was under sail. Umar could frown until his forehead stiffened. Allah knew such a game was to him the wager of his horse against another’s, a lawful bet. His worthless one sniffled, and Ali gave her a chill glare.
She ducked her head and muffled her sneeze in her arm, lowering her watering, dark, unsettling eyes to the floor. A strange curse caster: incense and rose water tormented her.
He shook his head. A foolish thought that the heat in her hungry spirit called to the fire and it answered. Where had he heard the whisper that such evil dried up the seed of men for children? The eye of evil would not work now through one so marred as she. The beauty of the moon on a silken black night or the light grace of a gazelle: those drew the regard of the eye. But if the source of darkness sought to hide its intentions for his house?
Ali shook his head. His house was known as the merciful. Yet—the ring in the slave’s ear shivered, glistening. Blessed be Allah, his robe had been blue, and deflected her intent from the seat of the continuation of his house to the brazier. Dry spoke to dry. He would get a worthy heir, and no power would stop him.
He cuffed the slave and grabbed her neck, pulled to her knees. She was so slender, a twig under his hand. She steadied and submitted, quivering. Her fingers whitened on her wide dish, her arms sagging under the burden of dried fruit and almonds, and the milk in her bowl rippled. She refused to look at him. Ali sighed his regret, cradling his markers in one hand. Umar had instructed her. She did not allow a date to fall or a drop of milk to
spill.
“You see, Kef, this”—Ali flicked the jet ring in her ear—“is her glorious binding. It marks her among those who serve me. The cautious eyes of many make the most careful master. Until such a time as she comes under the mark of her future lord.”
Kef glanced at the slave, grunted, and shrugged.
Ali scowled and shoved her away. His worthless one stood without meeting his gaze. The evil was quelled. He grinned and cast his markers, slanting a look at her. She bent her head, rubbing her black earring viciously against her shoulder. An intuitive one, who divined his words without needing his hakeem to interpret.
Ali grinned. His new slave’s eyes were almost black, her hatred for him a river. The roiling flood quite overcame the dying god’s forgiveness. Ali flicked a crumb from his sleeve and smoothed away the resulting wrinkle. That god did not compare to the evil eye, and the eye was a mote to Allah, who favored the righteous.
Ali glared at Kef. There had been fear in Shema, and anger, when he inquired why she desired the desert of his absence instead of their son. He had thought a son might comfort her, one who carried their blood, his rich heritage. But this worthless one was a flawed jewel, to be set in Shema’s lap both as gift and warning. Ahh, yes, a warning. One was due.
Ali lifted his hand, palm down, and spread his fingers. His guards flanked the worthless one in an instant, their hands on their blades. She shrank, wilting before Umar’s smile. His bandaged hand quivered on his sword.
“Ahh, such eagerness, Umar.” Umar was his blood, indeed, though of low stock. Ali smiled, then nodded, and Umar dropped his hand, reluctant. The Nubian had not touched his hilt. Ali frowned. Did he think to read his master’s mind so easily? It was a danger if he thought so—
“Aha!” Kef crowed.
Ali jerked back to the markers. Kef was grinning, taking a marker in triumph. He burped, his stomach straining over his red sash, and drained his tea-cup to the dregs. The red-haired slave leaned over to pour for him. The steaming brown drink hit the table and splattered.
Falcon Heart: Chronicle I an epic young adult fantasy series set in medieval times Page 6