Steelflower

by Lilith Saintcrow

  I had already decided, waking from a short sleep with my course planned as often happens. The risk of twinsickness, if I stayed near him and the dauq’adai convinced me I was somehow his adai, was enough to make a treeleaper’s quick panic under my ribs. I could not endure much more of this.

  After dinner, Redfist buried the bones a fair way from the fire, and I settled down in my little grassy hollow. Darik moved to sit at my feet, ignoring my glare. “You are kind to the barbarian,” he said, in G’mai. “Why?”

  I shrugged, yawning. Fishbreath. Ugh. I could barely wait to buy a packet of toothpowder. Why indeed. Can he not guess? “I am akin to him. Both of us alone, without clan, House, or country, living by our wits. Not so long ago I was as lonely as he seems.” Another yawn took me. I was comfortably full, oddly warm, and safe for the moment.

  Good enough. I have snatched sleep in far worse places—in a saddle, during a slashing sleety rain while patrolling a gods-forsaken stretch of the constantly shifting border between the Danhai and the Shainakh Empire. The tribesfolk seemed able to hide behind a single stalk of grass; you could never tell when a bolt would come winging from the dusk or dry noon. Still, it was possible to snatch moments of rest in the saddle. The constant picking-off of scouts and patrols began to seem like the hand of luck or the gods, plucking sellswords from the face of the earth.

  I was, at least, lucky not to still be an irregular in the God-Emperor’s army.

  “You seem lonely still.” His voice had the singsong intonation again, and the personal inflection. My shoulder throbbed—his must be hurting.

  I surfaced from unpleasant memory, blood and grass and thirst even in the cold rain. “You speak in the wrong inflection,” I told him, formally.

  He nodded as if I had said something profound. “Mmh.” Neither an agreement nor an argument. “Do you wish to know my name, Kaialitaa?”

  “No.” I closed my eyes. It took a long while before I fell asleep. My arm hurt with his pain, and I cursed us both.

  * * * *

  I did not wake until morning, opening my eyes with a faint sense of something awry, confused when daylight greeted me. I sat up and stretched, yawning, and tasted my mouth with a grimace.

  Darik sat next to the fire, asleep, his back propped against a boulder. Redfist paced back and forth at the other end of the camp.

  I looked at the G’mai man, his eyelashes making two perfect charcoal arcs against his cheekbones, and my entire chest twisted. Why could I not have been born with some Power? A small crumb, for others had enough and to spare.

  I thought this, as I had not since I was sixteen summers high. He was unshaven, and just as dirty as we were. Yet still, he seemed a statue, each line and curve made for maximum aesthetic effect.

  The wind rose a little, tossed the branches, and I felt wetness touch my cheeks. Was it raining? That was all I needed, rain now. I would catch lungrot before we reached the Crossing.

  I wiped tears away, angrily. The movement caught Redfist’s eye. I waited for him to speak, but he did not. “So he sleeps. Who took my watch?”

  “We shared it, lass. Ye looked so peaceable, we decided t’let ye rest. Done ye good.” The ginger-haired man nodded smartly. “Ye were right pale last night.”

  “Just lack of a proper bath, and being run out of Hain by the Guard. And a pack of bandits.” Tis your fault, large one.

  It did not trouble him in the least. “Aye.”

  Darik opened his eyes, immediately awake. “I thought I heard you.” He stretched, turned the stretch into a graceful movement bringing him to his feet. “How do you feel?”

  He spoke in G’mai, the personal inflection, again. The very tone a s’tarei would use with an adai. Anger flared red in my chest, died away.

  “Very well, thank you,” I answered politely, in commontongue. “If we go quickly today, we may well be in an inn by sundown.”

  “An’ I would thank me gods.” The Skaialan stretched with a gusty sigh. “Let us break camp, lass?”

  “Do as you please.” I was hard-pressed to keep a civil tone as I gained my feet in a graceless lunge. “I wish to wash my face. Then we shall see what the road holds.”

  Chapter 14

  The Whitegull

  The lights of Arjux Crossing glimmered through rainy dusk. I was too wet, cold and tired to care. We splashed through the freetown’s mercifully clear streets, the storm having driven most of the citizens inside their houses and taverns. Half-height walls were manned by crossbowmen in huts built onto the walls themselves, a remnant of the Blood Years when the former God-Emperor had tried to extend his borders to this stretch of coastline. The freetowns had disputed hotly, a loose federation that nevertheless banded together for common war and made the God-Emperor reconsider before his death.

  His successor Azkillian afterward turned his attention to the Danhai plains, and the freetowns were allowed to go on their way, some with tax and trade agreements with the Empire, all with a prickly sense of civic pride and freedom that caught like fire all up and down the coast. They quarreled with each other more than anyone else, but woe to the foe who attacked a freetown; for the others would come to their neighbors’ aid. It was too dangerous for all to allow a foreign power to intrude on even one of their ilk.

  Doryen’s inn—the Whitegull—was a comfortable three-story brick and wooden building, very near the wharves but remarkably clean and peaceful. We came through the door into a blast of damp heat and noise that was the commonroom, and I stamped mud off my feet on the thick wovenraff mat. “Doryen!” My battlefield-bellow cut through the noise. I was in no mood to be tactful.

  “Who the blasted—” Doryen was near the roaring fireplace, mugs of beer in either hand, setting down the drinks for a group of scream-laughing, worn mercenaries. Bound for Shaituh. I noted the kiyan one of them tossed to the innkeeper, their hilarity bespeaking much mead. Tis the only place they could be bound for. Is the Shainakh Empire planning another war? As if they can afford it, Danhai is bleeding them dry.

  “Ah!” Doryen was an exceedingly round, red-faced man with the dark hair and yellow face of a half-Hain. He had acquired unusual height from his mother, a Pesh slave. He saw me, bedraggled and dirty as I was, and his face lit up. “Lady Kaia!” he yelled. “The Iron Flower herself! An honor, an honor!”

  He made it across the commonroom the moment Darik entered behind me, then Redfist, soaked to the skin and shivering. He had taken a bad spill in the street, and was coated with mud.

  Doryen stopped, his red cheeks going pale. “Ai, lady, what did you bring me? He looks to be a giant!”

  “He is,” I said, humorlessly, “but even giants need beds. Two rooms, Doryen, bath, and board, for at least three nights. Eight kiyan.”

  “Eight? Eight?” He puffed up. He loved this part of the game. “Three Shainakh reds, and not a sundog less. I am not running a hospice!”

  “No, last I looked you were running a flea-bitten ramshackle inn. Ten kiyan.” I was not in the mood, but the barter had to be played. My tone, however, was so sharp it could have cut meat.

  “Ten…” The look of disbelief he gave me was practiced and innocent. “Two Shainakh reds or twenty kiyan.”

  “Twelve kiyan, and a Shainakh red if you find me two good horses by tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Fifteen kiyan, and a red for the horses. I will find you fine horseflesh.” He rubbed his fingers together to indicate how fine of horseflesh he could find me.

  It was too much, but I had taken my fill of walking in the rain. I did not care if it was expensive, I wanted a bath and a bed. And when we left the Crossing, I wanted to be a-horseback.

  I held out my hand. “Done,” I said, and he touched my fingers with his. “Two rooms, with a watercloset between them.”

  “Oh, yes. I have always room for my friends.” He turned and led us through the commonroom, up a flight of creaking stairs to the second floor. The pouring rain outside was muted to a soft low sound here, and the occasional burst of noise fr
om the commonroom hardly penetrated once we made it to a far corner of the building. “Timon Taxcollector was asking about you, Lady Kaia,” he said soberly, once he was sure nobody else could hear.

  I yawned, rubbed at the back of my neck. “What the drosh for?” I had no business concerns in the freetowns; the Thieves Guild operated in some of the larger ones but only respectfully. There would be no reason for a tax-collector to speak to me.

  “The time you paid the taxes on the inn. With the Ponstahken holding the Maior this season, Timon’s head is too big to fit through a decent door, being Ponstakh-kin. He even bought a Pesh bondgirl.” Doryen stopped, unlocked a door. “Here is the first room.”

  What does a tax-collector and a slave have to do with me? But Doryen was an inveterate gossiper, like most freetowners, for any usable piece of information they will give you four of no use at all. I motioned at Redfist and Darik. “Go. Take a bath—I shall be along.”

  Darik looked as if he wished to speak. He was gaunt and splattered with mud, but the glitter in his eyes and the beauty of his G’mai bones shone through the dirt. The twin hilts of his dotanii made him into a grim picture.

  Redfist grunted and ducked into the room. “My thanks,” he growled over his shoulder.

  “Do not think on it, m’lord,” Doryen said nervously.

  “Is there a door between this room and your room, Kaia’li?” Darik, in G’mai, his tone unwontedly serious.

  “There should be.” I replied without thinking in the same tongue. “What of it?”

  He nodded, and then half-bowed to Doryen. “My thanks, innkeeper.” His commontongue was lilted with G’mai, it was a pleasure to hear him speak. A pleasure I scolded myself for.

  Doryen looked too shocked to reply.

  “Oh, go.” I motioned at Darik. He stepped inside the room, I closed the door behind him. “So, Timon is causing you trouble about the cache of coin and gem I left with you for safety. And he has taken the inn apart to find it more than once, and come up empty.” Since his kin are ruling the Maior council this season, you cannot gainsay him, either. There is nothing more galling than a petty freetown bureaucrat.

  “Well, yes.” Doryen continued down the hall. He unlocked the next door.

  “You lost it.” It was the only explanation. “To Timon?”

  “Well…” Doryen looked as abashed as it was possible for a round freetown innkeep to look. “The stable-girl, lady. The one with the nasty gleam in her eye.”

  I remembered her, a sharp thing with curling hair and a tongue that could flay a man in seconds. For all that, she was gentle with horses, even if she did scold their riders for mistreating the beasts.

  “The curlyhair wench? I liked her. Come in, Doryen.” I dug in my purse, pulled out three of the Shainakh reds by touch. Handed them over as soon as he passed the threshold. The room was just as I remembered, down to the faded bedspread worked with roses and the lead-glass windows. “Will that aid in the payment of your taxes?”

  Doryen’s jaw dropped. “I hid it in the stable. Under the—”

  “And the stable-girl found it, and you’ve not heard of her since. Well, at least she has some sense.” Even if you have precious little. I found myself yawning. The heat was delicious after the penetrating rain outside. “If the tax collector comes again while I bide here, I shall make certain he troubles you no more.”

  Doryen bowed, flushed with relief. “I still have your armor, lady, and your travel-packs. Saddlebags and gear. Tis all stowed safely.”

  Well, that is good tidings and better luck. “Good. I may need to leave here quietly, Doryen. It is good to know I can trust you.”

  “Trouble on the road between here and Shaituh. Talk that the crazed flea Azkillian is fighting with the Danhai again. Yet the armies are massing to move south and east.” He waited, having been bursting to tell me this.

  A few more pieces of gossip clicked into place inside my head. “Pesh. Tis news, that is. Why would he do so?” I dropped down in a hard wooden chair—the mud clinging to me could be cleaned off it with little trouble, and Doryen gave me a grateful look. “By the way, the bandits plaguing the coast road have met with a bit of bad luck. Especially the ones running near Hain with a man that looks like a frog.”

  “Hm.” Doryen nodded. “Tis news too. You are the sixth pair of G’mai I have seen in the past moonturn.” He handled the glottal stop better than any other non-G’mai I had ever heard.

  Why do I feel I will receive the worst of this conversation? I stared openly at him, my jaw dropping. “Five pairs of G’mai and me?”

  Doryen’s eyes were bright with interest. “Your man in there is G’mai. Is he the prince?”

  “What prince?” I felt a complete idiot. My brain had turned into soup, between the rain, exhaustion, and the relief of finally being inside. Warmth unloosed my shoulders, I heaved a sigh of relief as it reached the small of my back.

  “The prince the G’mai are seeking?” Doryen repeated, slowly, as if I was a lackwit. “Never seen you with a captive before. You seem sure of him.”

  “He is no captive.” If anyone is captive here, tis me. Shackled to a G’mai who thinks I am adai and a barbarian without enough sense to come in out of the storm.

  “Then is he your twin?” He knew a little about my people, having run his inn for long enough to collect all sorts of information. Besides, he had asked me once.

  I had been drunk enough to reply, that night. Mead breeds truth and loosens tongues.

  A sharp, short pain lanced through me. “I am no man’s twin. I am to help him find his adai, tis all. What prince?”

  “The prince the G’mai have left their land to seek,” he said, slowly. His eyes were on my face, sharp, missing little. “You mean you have not heard?”

  “I do not concern myself with the G’mai. I have other concerns—the first of which is getting the mud out of my clothes. So the G’mai are seeking a prince?” What prince? Why would one of the Houses leave G’maihallan, and why would five pairs of G’mai be looking for him? Unless he is outcaste, or a kinslayer. For a moment I felt cold; but I could not think that of Darik. He could not be a kinslayer, it was not in him.

  As if I knew him.

  Why was he outside the borders of the Blessed Land, then? It made no sense.

  “Survived an attempted palace coup and disappeared without a word. The G’mai are frantic. They sent their own over the sea to find him.” Doryen folded his arms. More than food or drink, he loved gossip, and this was juicy.

  Palace coup? That means Dragaemir. But there are no Dragaemir princes. “A palace coup? But the only palace is…” I paused. “Someone rebelled against the Dragaemir? How is that possible?”

  “Apparently not very successfully,” Doryen said dryly. “The rebels must have been crushed, for the prince to be sought so.”

  I shook my head. It defied imagination. Rebelling against the queen was akin to misusing a dotanii, such things were simply not done. I yawned again, rubbed at my forehead, mud crackling in my wet braids. “Is there aught else?” I sincerely hoped not.

  “Not that I can bring to mind. If more G’mai come, what shall I tell them?” Doryen wiped his hands on his apron, a rare show of nervousness. But then, I made him nervous the way few other mercenaries could. He owed me favors.

  “Nothing. Tis not your task in life to tell them tales of me.” Rain brushed the walls, and I was endlessly glad to be hearing it from this side. A bath, a real bed—I could hardly wait.

  “As you like, lady. I think some know your reputation by now, though. There is a fair amount of talk.”

  I groaned, with feeling. “Oh, no. Do not say such things—a minstrel?” Another thought occurred to me. “No. Not that one.”

  “Yes, returned he has, and he has a new song. Full to the brim of the Iron Flower and the King of Thieves.” Doryen’s eyes sparkled, his mouth twisting as he fought to contain a smile.

  I dropped my head back against the chair. “Oh, no,” I groaned, again.
“You are jesting. I thought nobody believed that story!”

  “Tis a stirring tale, and delivered with such grace one can hardly help but believe, lady.” Doryen retreated to the door, grinning like a dog hearing its master’s voice. “I will have a pair of horses for you. The giant cannot ride, though.”

  I waved a hand. “A saddlehorse for me, and a pack-horse for them when they go on their way. My thanks, Doryen Innkeeper. Tis a great pleasure to find I can still rely on you. If more G’mai arrive, you will warn me?”

  He nodded, his hair flopping forward over his eyes. “I shall. My thanks, lady.”

  “And you have mine, innkeeper.” I smiled at him, through the mud and exhaustion. “Just keep that buggering minstrel away from me. Send up some food, if you please.”

  He grinned even wider and retreated. I rose with a little difficulty—soreness already settling in—and crossed to the window. We were on the wharf side, looking out onto docks, warehouses, and the bay’s heaving glimmer. The room was comfortable, rough but clean, and Doryen had good service here. At least I would not be throat-slit in my sleep.

  Rain beaded against the diamonds of leaded glass, requesting an entrance that would be denied. Twas lucky we had gained shelter before the worst of the storm.

  A G’mai prince. Startling, but not impossible. I was of a noble House myself. But I had not known of a prince among the Dragaemir. He was older than me, how had I not heard of him?

  If he was Dragaemir, and not of a rebel House. I could not see him as a kinslayer, but I could see him—just possibly—as a rebel. He had a stubborn streak, this G’mai.

  One does not rebel against the queen. It is simply not done. So why do they seek him?

  I paced to the door of the watercloset between our two rooms, knocked, and entered.

  The blue-tiled room glinted under the lights, a privy in its enclosure, a washbasin, and—thank the gods—a fallwater.

  Nobody was there, another boon. I stripped down, put my clothes in the basket set in the corner, and selected a bathing-robe. I piled my weapons on my bed and used the tiled fallwater, scrubbing the worst mud off. Wrapped in a freshly laundered robe patterned with kingflies, I sighed as the clean cloth touched my skin.