by R. Lee Smith
“I can give my lineage back to the Prophet’s Uyane himself,” Meoraq said. “Send for the steward of Uyane to hear it.”
“There is no Uyane in Praxas.”
If he had been told there was no air in Praxas, he could not have been more astounded. For a moment, even Amber was cut from his mind. “Impossible,” he said.
“All of the great Houses are closed here. Even the governor is of House Rsstha.”
The name was a stranger’s. After ten years in service, fifty-three cities, hundreds of trials…he’d never heard of such a House. “What does that mean?” he asked.
“I do not say there is any meaning to it,” Onahi replied. “I say only that there is no one here to hear you, sir.”
“Then summon your governor and let him send a champion. God will give my proof. I am Uyane Meoraq and I will have this city. Open the fucking gate or I’ll kill you through it.”
Onahi, undisturbed, folded away his script. “If you are Sheulek, sir, my life is yours to take. However, the law of my caste allows me to pray.” His eyes narrowed. “Perhaps you will pray with me?”
Meoraq struck the lock-plate with the side of his fist, then folded his arms and said, “Have you any particular prayer in mind?”
“The prayer of Eshiqi.”
Meoraq’s spines twitched, caught midway between amusement and offense. “That’s a woman’s prayer.”
Onahi merely waited.
“Hear me, O Sheul, most loving Father, by whose eternal light we are all raised out of darkness. Breathe into me, for Your breath is life. Lay Your hand over me, for within Your open hands are found all shelter. Look down, O Father, and see me, for I am blessed in Your sight. Lo, You are the master at my husband’s forge and I rejoice. Lo, You are the lamp my husband raises over me and I exalt in Your light. Lo, Yours is the hand that shapes all clay—”
“That will do.” Onahi unlocked the gate and stood aside, saluting. “Praxas is yours, honored one.”
‘Be merciful,’ was the customary way to end this exchange, but the gatekeeper, so meticulous in every other respect, did not say it. And by the look in his steady eye, the omission was deliberate. Another time, this would have been curious. Today, Meoraq had time for only one investigation.
“You will tell me everything you know of the raiders who trade with this city,” he said.
“Raiders?” the other watchman echoed, attempting alarm.
“I am not permitted dealings with them,” Onahi replied calmly. “I would guess that they were here four days ago, because I was then held from my usual shift.”
“No one held you! Honored one, no one held him! They were changing mats in the barracks, is all! Hands were needed!”
“Suspicious work for a man out of his ascension,” said Meoraq.
“There aren’t enough boys!”
“Truth, so far as that goes.” Onahi gestured in a general way at the city enclosing them. “Praxas had scarcely five thousand souls at last census, with perhaps three hundred under the sign of the Blade.”
“That answers why I saw no one on your wall, why I met no sentries on patrol.”
For the first time, Onahi’s mask of cool civility slipped to show the real fury beneath. “My watchmen stand their posts. My sentries make their patrols.”
“And where are they today?”
“Turning sheets,” said Onahi, with only the slimmest trace of a hiss, “on all the new mats in the barracks.”
This was not the man he wanted, Meoraq decided. He was too honest. Meoraq turned away from the gatekeeper and studied the watchman instead. He looked nervous. That was only to be expected under a Sheulek’s hard stare, but what betrayed the man’s anxiety the most were his eyes, in which the pupils had contracted to mere points.
It wasn’t only nerves that did that.
“Show me your hands,” he said.
The watchman blinked rapidly, his flat spines twitching in confusion. Hesitantly, he raised his fist in salute.
Meoraq caught the man’s wrist, pried open his hand and examined the discoloration on the thin scales between his fingers. Fresh burns. And the thicker, misshapen scales where old burns had healed.
“Open your mouth,” ordered Meoraq.
The watchman glanced back down the tunnel, where running boots could finally be heard, but if it was rescue, he knew it wasn’t going to reach him in time. He cracked his mouth open, trying not to breathe.
His teeth were still good, if yellowed. Meoraq worked his hand in and forced the jaws open, waiting until the man’s need for air gave him that first bitter exhale and the stink of phesok.
“So.” Meoraq drew his samr.
“Sir, I don’t know them! I swear I don’t!”
“Not another word!” boomed a voice in the tunnel. “I’m the warden here and if you want to deal with that sniveling son of a slave, you’ll deal with Myselo first!”
“He’s Sheulek,” said Onahi without emotion. “He holds Praxas in his shadow.”
“Piss if he is! Piss if he does!” Myselo came into the light—a great belly of a man bulging out of suspiciously fine clothes for a warden’s modest wages—and pulled a samr of his own. “Sheulek comes through mid-summer and this looks nothing like him!”
“It is Uyane Meoraq of Xeqor before you, a Sword and a true son of Sheul,” said Meoraq coldly. “And it is Uyane Meoraq who will be cutting the head from your neck if you don’t cover your blade.”
And, by God and Gann, even here:
“Uyane of…?” Warden Myselo’s spines flared as far as they were able. “Are you…any kin to…to Rasozul?”
“His son,” said Meoraq, trying not to hiss.
Myselo’s sword lowered. He looked at it in some alarm, as if it had only just now materialized in his hand. His spines flared again. He sheathed quickly and wiped both hands on his broad belly. “Eh…We’re honored to welcome—You honor us, sir. I’ll see you to, eh, to the governor’s House to host you, if it please—”
“Who stood as warden to these gates four days ago?”
Myselo glanced at the watchman, who had pressed himself to the tunnel wall in an attempt to disappear within it, then at Onahi, and finally down at the sword still drawn and ready in Meoraq’s hand. His spines lowered and shoulders fell. “I have the keeping of every gate in this city when its keeper is otherwise occupied, sir.”
“Then you admitted the raiders who brought their phesok to trade.”
“Admitted? No! No, most honored one, no. They weren’t raiders as the word be reckoned. Exiles, I must acknowledge, but does not the Word say, eh…as every man has a need for air…no, wait…does not every man that breathes claim the right to air?”
“Book of Admonitions, verse thirty-five,” Meoraq hissed. “Lo, a man’s need for air is not a promise of breath, for every life may be cut that goes against the law of God.”
Myselo struggled to take that in, then gave up. “It is not in me to see a man suffer!” he declared. “They come to trade, sir. Not phesok, I say, but only good game and hides, which this poor city has sore need of. Rsstha and his slit-licking merchants—”
“Then you admit you grow the phesok yourself?”
“I don’t know what grows in the governor’s fields, sir,” said the warden after a moment’s hard thought. “Nor what comes through the other gates when I’m away. I am just one man.”
“A man who trades with raiders. If you deny that’s what they are just once more, I’ll split your lying mouth,” he said as the warden began to speak. “They came to my camp last night. They took…everything…and I have spent this entire day chasing their trail in the wrong fucking direction. Now I will have lost it. So let me make this easy for you.” Meoraq stepped forward and seized the warden by the folds of his throat, thrusting the point of his sword under Myselo’s chin. “Tell me where they went.”
“Sir, I don’t know—”
“Do you wish to pray?” Meoraq interrupted. “If I can’t have them, I’ll have you, mar
k me. Tell me where they are or make your last prayer.”
“I don’t know!” the warden bayed. “They come and go! I don’t know them! I don’t—”
Meoraq gave the throat in his grip a calculated cut. It was hardly a mortal wound, but it bled. He was forced to deliver two restrained blows with the hilt of his sword to stop the warden’s struggles, and then had to wait while his senses came back into order. At some point during this process, he was annoyed to discover that the watchman had fled. Onahi remained, and as the warden recovered himself, Meoraq spared the gatekeeper an assessing stare.
Onahi raised his fist, neither hurriedly nor fearfully. “I would tell you if I knew,” he said without waiting for the question. “But I am certain someone here does know. Three days before the barracks ‘changed out their mats,’ trials were held for certain officers with accusations to make against their daughters. They have been awaiting exile in a holding cell beside this gate, but now they are gone.”
Meoraq grunted and pulled the stirring warden in his grip onto his feet. “How do you contact them?”
There were no more denials, no excuses. Clutching his neck as if he were all that held it together, Warden Myselo whispered. “We send…the boy.”
“Who?”
“Just some barracks-bastard. They took him…years ago. They take all the sprats they can find…when they raid…but this one, they brought back.”
“I know him,” said Onahi, already moving.
“He’s the only one who knows…” The warden’s rolling eye caught sight of his blood on the floor and his words broke. “Don’t…Don’t kill me, sir. I am…weak. Allow me the mercy to earn Sheul’s forgiveness, for I sense I can be forgiven, sir, I do.”
Meoraq spat and shoved him away. The warden fell into the wall and let it take him to the floor, babbling thanks and praise.
Ignoring him, Meoraq paced. It could not have been long before Onahi’s return, although it felt endless enough with Warden Myselo moaning in his ears.
The boy that eventually came with Onahi into the light was older than he’d anticipated. He had a man’s height, but was scrawny as a woman—as a girl—with a hunched, loping way of moving. He bowed when he saw Meoraq, raising not one but both fists in salute and peering through them at Myselo on the floor with a curious sort of frown.
“Do you know what I want of you?” Meoraq asked gruffly.
“To find Zhuqa’s camp,” said the boy.
“Zhuqa?”
“Their leader. He lets me pass to carry their messages. Before me, it was another boy.” He looked up at Meoraq. “Are you going to kill me?”
Spoken without fear, only a very mild interest. It was not courage, not even of that foolhardy kind that came so naturally to boys his age.
“Not without cause,” said Meoraq.
“Isn’t it cause enough to have dealings with exiles?” asked the boy reasonably. “Sometimes they give me a few points for the message. Isn’t that trade?”
“Words are not considered commerce by law and I would not judge it unforgivable to accept a gift of coin, no matter the source.” Meoraq gestured impatiently at the gate.
“I’ve taken their drink sometimes too,” said the boy. “When they offer a swallow. That’s against the Word, isn’t it? Strong drink?”
“I don’t care!” Meoraq exploded. “I want what they took from me, Gann damn you! I forgive you all your past! All of it! I don’t care if you rubbed your cock on the Prophet’s burnt bones, take me to their fucking nest!”
“Now?”
“Now!”
“I’ll ready supplies,” said Onahi and left them.
Meoraq opened his mouth to shout after him, but forced himself to close it again. He needed supplies. He needed water, if nothing else. He could not save Amber if he collapsed in the wildlands and ended there.
“It’s only an hour until dark,” said the boy, watching as he began to pace again.
“We’ll run through the night.”
“Do I look like I can run through the night?” the boy asked, amused. “I couldn’t run all the way down that tunnel. Hit me all you like,” he added as Meoraq swung back his arm to do just that. “I’m not a runner and you can’t make me one by beating on me. It’s three days to travel. Four with weather.”
Meoraq lowered his arm. It hurt. He turned his back on the boy with effort and began again to pace. Six breaths, he told himself. Six breaths, deep and slow. Six breaths, and think of Amber.
Amber.
* * *
She dreamed of Meoraq and the mountains, so that when she woke, the arm around her waist and the breath on the back of her neck felt safe and right and welcome. She had to wake up a little more before the bed she lay on had any meaning for her. It wasn’t until then that it all came back.
She must have tensed. Perhaps she made some sound. She did something, anyway, because Zhuqa’s sleep broke at once. He lifted his head, listening as she lay motionless, then grunted and pushed the cupboard door open.
“Hold still,” he said, climbing out into the room. In another moment, he had a light struck and two lamps burning. He glanced her way, saw her staring back at him, and smiled. “Have you a kind word for your man this morning?”
Amber opened her mouth, closed it, took a few breaths (six breaths just like meoraq always says six breaths and calm down), then said simply, “Hi.”
“No. Say, ‘I see my man, my Zhuqa, first. I pray, let him see me.’”
“All that, huh?”
“Say it, Eshiqi. Use my words. Say it as best you can.” Now he looked at her, just the shine from one eye. “To please me.”
She tried. He did not correct her, although she knew she couldn’t have possibly hit all the right tones and that every pause as she fought to fit her mouth around his stupid words changed its whole nuance. He let her wrestle it all out, and only after she was done did he look at her again.
He smiled. “I see you.”
“I’m thrilled.”
“Now come,” he said, beckoning. “Do you remember how to show your man a proper respect?”
Amber got out of the cupboard. She went to him, fighting to keep her face a safe blank and hold all the hate on the inside where it couldn’t kill her, but still, when the time came to kneel in front of him, she slapped the back of her open hand on the ground next to his bare foot and let that flat, brittle sound be her ‘good morning.’
Zhuqa’s smile became a tolerant laugh. He patted her on the head and moved away to put his boots on. “I’m going to leave you now. Just for a short while. I hope you are not tempted to do anything foolish while I’m away. I would hate to lose you so early in this game.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Amber got up off her knees and went back to sit in the cupboard.
Zhuqa grunted, shrugged into his harness and strolled over to the door. He looked at it, at her. He waited, buckling buckles, smiling.
“Oh, you son of a whore.” Amber heaved herself up again and opened the door that kept her his prisoner. “I really, really hate you.”
He nuzzled at her stiff neck before he went out. She shut the door…but she didn’t slam it and she made sure she wouldn’t catch him on the ass. She couldn’t bring herself to be good, but she wasn’t dumb enough to be as bitchy as it was in her to be.
She waited in the cupboard, for no other reason than because she was naked and it had blankets. She didn’t know how long he was gone. Ten minutes or an hour felt like the same empty, elastic time. She tried to think of Meoraq, but it was hard to visualize him without seeing how big the world was. He was looking, she knew he was looking, but he’d been looking for Scott and Nicci and the others too. And never found them.
The door opened. Zhuqa let himself in. He did not have the breakfast with him that she’d hoped for, although he popped the last bite of something into his mouth as he entered. He caught the look on her face as he chewed, or perhaps he heard the sullen rumble of her stomach. His spines flicked forward. “Hungry?”
>
She looked away.
His smile broadened just slightly. “Not hungry enough, I see. Come here, Eshiqi. I have something for you.”
“I’ll bet,” she muttered, but she went.
And it wasn’t what she’d thought. The bundle of something half-glimpsed in the crook of his arm turned out to be a woven garment, shapeless as a hospital-gown, stained so often and by so many substances that it was impossible to tell just what its original color had been.
Amber took it, shook it out, turned it over in her hands. She could count her fingers through the threadbare fabric and when she rubbed a fold, her skin pinked up like she’d taken a scouring pad to it.
She couldn’t help herself.
“Good enough,” she said, speaking lizardish with extreme difficulty, “for Zhuqa’s woman?”
His spines shrugged, amused. “At least I mean to dress you.”
“In crap,” she agreed, switching back to English. “And I happen to know you have plenty of good clothes, you thieving bastard.”
“My Eshiqi isn’t happy,” mused Zhuqa, leaning back to study her. After some thought, he rolled the shift back into a bundle and tossed it aside.
And then he just stood there.
It took a long time, fighting not to squirm under that stare, not to anticipate too obviously the blow that he never threw, before she suddenly got it.
And he knew she got it, because no sooner had the thought hit her brain then his eyes narrowed and his chin raised. So there was no point in faking ignorance, only the question of whether or not she’d rather go naked.
And no, she’d really rather not.
So, biting down on all the dangerous things she wanted to say, Amber knelt and smacked the back of her hand onto the floor again.
“That was cute the first time you did it,” Zhuqa remarked far above her. “Now do it right.”
She took her hand back, calmed herself with a few deep breaths, and quietly bent to lay it palm-up beside his boot.
“Very good.” Zhuqa tapped the top of her head and moved away to the cupboard. He opened a compartment above it, rummaged through its contents, then tossed her a new bundle.