The Forbidden City

by Deborah A. Wolf

  Both guards laughed uproariously, and the mistress of keys burst into a fit of giggles so hard she choked, but the warden turned on them with a ferocity that belied his size.

  “If you wish to keep your jobs,” he hissed at the guards, then at their prisoner, “and if you wish to keep your damned head, for Snafu’s sake shut the fuck up. I will not have you offending my guest. Do you understand?”

  “Sir!” the guards said as one. Their faces went soldier-stone, eyes straight ahead. The mistress of keys fell behind as they again started down the hallway at a brisk pace, now and again making a strangled noise as mirth and panic fought for supremacy.

  “Where there is life,” Ani had said to him, more than once, “there is hope. Where there is hope, there is room for foolishness.” Leviathus had, once again, shown himself to be a fool. Perhaps some day that would serve him well. On this day, he decided to keep his mouth shut, and live.

  There was a room at the end of the hallway. Leviathus had spent a bit of time in it when Ishtaset had brought him there. It was a small room, square and with a low ceiling, without ornamentation or windows. There was but one entrance or exit, a heavy wooden door bound in black iron, with pegs that could be set into the stone. The table and chairs were as solidly built as the door. It was a secure place meant for negotiating the price and return of hostages. The warden led Leviathus into this room, the mistress of keys locked that door behind him, and he could not help but feel like a bull taken to slaughter.

  Though the walls were crowded with sconces, on this day the candles at the far end had been snuffed out, leaving everything there in deep twilight. In the heart of this shadow a figure stood and waited for them, a man unlike any Leviathus had seen in all his long travels.

  Had he been standing, the top of his wide conical hat might have brushed the ceiling. As it was, his bulk dominated the space entirely. He wore loose trousers tucked into tall wyvern-hide boots of a blue so deep that it almost appeared to be black, a flowing linen shirt, and layers of veil beneath that hat which concealed all but a pair of wide bright eyes, slitted like half-moons.

  Aside from his sheer size, the man’s most remarkable feature was his short cape. Woven of linen as white as sand beaches, it was embroidered all over in geometric shapes featuring beasts and monsters in black and yellow and red. Their eyes had been fashioned of abalone shell beads and glittered in the thin light. Leviathus was reminded of nothing so much as Hafsa Azeina’s tent, and shivered beneath those fell stares.

  There were two guards to either side of the giant, lesser men dressed in a similar if lesser fashion. All four held hooked spears. Though menace rolled from them like a heavy fog, it was nearly an afterthought in the presence of their master.

  The woman took a seat at the table. The warden bowed low, and he swallowed three times before he was able to squeak out a greeting.

  “Mahmouta,” he managed at last, “Ransom House is honored by your presence.”

  “Indeed.” The giant did not stir, did not so much as blink. It was a woman’s voice, low and rough but quite beautiful. Leviathus would have stared, but one of his guards hissed a command, grabbed the back of his neck, and threw him down onto his knees on the rough stone floor.

  “There is no need for that,” the enormous woman chided. “I will not thank you to damage my goods before I have had a chance to inspect them. Rise, son of Wyvernus, and let me look at you.”

  Leviathus had been born and raised in Atukos, the heart of power. He needed no urging to stand before this woman, or to bow as he might to any foreign queen. The winds of power had shifted, so that in this place, at this time, they would blow in whichever direction this woman bade them.

  “An honor,” he said at last, “though I regret to admit I do not know your full name.”

  Laughter bubbled from the shadows. “Oh, but you shall know me hereafter,” she told him. She inclined her head toward the warden, and a hundred tiny bells along the brim of her hat laughed a merry tune. “Now that I have seen the little dragon prince, I am most certain,” she declared, “I must have him.”

  “Mahmouta…” The warden coughed.

  One of her guards leaned forward, frowning, and tapped the butt of his spear on the floor. “You will address my mistress as ‘your Audacity’.”

  “Your Audacity,” the warden continued, “I, ah, I cannot, that is… I am forbidden by my agreement with the Mah’zula from, ah, ransoming the prince to any but the Dragon King. My sincerest and most abject apologies. If it were anyone else…” Leviathus could smell the man’s fear sweat. I should be afraid, too, he thought. As it was, he could hardly refrain from laughing out loud. I must be the greatest fool this world has ever known.

  “Your agreement with the Mah’zula.” The great woman frowned, and the chair upon which she was seated groaned a protest as she leaned back. “What about your agreement with me, eh, Jainan? Your many agreements with me? You would abandon our long—acquaintance—in order to do business with pretenders who cling to the past?”

  “‘What is past is gone. Do not be with it,’” one of her guards quoted.

  “Badi?” Leviathus could not help but ask.

  “Shaumi el Sha’eir.” The guard winked. “Earlier work.”

  The big woman glared at them both. “If you two are finished debating poetry? Yes? Warden Jainan, let me introduce to you my twentieth husband, Husni el Bulbul of the golden voice. Fancies himself a bard.” Behind her veils, Mahmouta’s eyes all but disappeared as she smiled. “We all have our weaknesses. Even I.”

  The warden bowed. “A thousand congratulations, Your Audacity. I wish you much prosperity in your union.”

  Mahmouta shook her head, and the tiny bells sang again. “Nineteen husbands are for prosperity, everyone knows this. The twentieth is for pleasure.” All four of her guards laughed at this, none harder than Husni. “Come to think of it, Jainan, I did not see you among the guests at our little party? It was not very… friendly… of you to decline our invitation.”

  The warden swallowed. “A thousand apologies. I was…” swallowed again.

  Mahmouta held up a gloved hand. “Ah-ah, let there be no lies between us, old friend. I do not need your apologies any more than I need your congratulations, truly. What I need from you is this.” She indicated Leviathus, “Nothing more, nothing less. Consider it a belated wedding gift, if you will. Adnan? Rahi? If you would, please show our host what it is we offer in return for the little prince.”

  The guards to Mahmouta’s left bent to lift a wooden chest the size of a small child. This they set upon the table with a solid thump and a grunt of effort. The guard closest to Mahmouta unlatched the lid and opened it with a flourish.

  “One thousand tablets of white salt,” Mahmouta purred. “One thousand of rose. One thousand tablets of red salt. A ransom fit for a king, never mind a king’s son.”

  Leviathus heard a low hiss as the warden sucked air through his teeth. The box was filled with salt tablets—red, rose, and white—enough to make a man wealthy for life.

  Certainly enough to buy a man’s life.

  For the first time, he felt a pang of real fear. What man would be strong enough to withstand such temptation? Not this man, apparently. The warden took a small step toward the large fortune, sealing all their fates.

  “What will I tell the Mah’zula?” he asked, but he was not listening for a reply. His head was already filled with the song of salt.

  “Tell them that you thought I was an agent of Ka Atu—that is not a lie. Not a complete lie, at any rate. Tell them that you were tricked. Tell them that I made you an offer you could not refuse.” All four guards went stone-faced and still, knuckles whitening as they gripped their spears. “That is not a lie, either. Or tell them nothing. With wealth such as this, you could start running today and keep running until you die of old age, happy and surrounded by your children and your children’s children. I care not what you tell the Mah’zula. I care only what you tell Mahmouta.” Those crescent eyes
were hard as dragonglass as they stared at the warden. “Do we have an accord?”

  The warden’s voice was a thin whisper as he made one final, feeble, attempt at decency.

  “What will become of the Atualonian prince?”

  So hard, those eyes. So cold.

  “I deal in exotic wares, Jainan. Perhaps I will sell him to the Sindanese emperor, for use in one of his comfort houses. Perhaps I will keep him for myself, or trade him to the shadowmancers for passage across the Seared Lands. Once the little prince is my property, he is my business—and you do not wish to pry into my business, do you?”

  “No,” Jainan whispered. “No, Your Audacity, I do not.”

  “You do not,” Mahmouta affirmed. “Do we have an accord? Say it.”

  “We have an accord,” the warden said. His voice broke a little on the last word, but he never took his eyes off the chest of salt tablets. Mahmouta clapped her gloved hands together in delight, and laughed.

  “I love this city,” she said. Her guards shared a grin.

  Leviathus stared at the chest as they replaced its lid. I would have hoped it might take a larger box, he mused, to hold the worth of my life.

  * * *

  The sun felt good on his upturned face. Almost too good. Leviathus had been fed—a real meal, complete with good cheese and very good wine—allowed to bathe, and given new clothes. They were plain, such as a workman might wear—nondescript trousers and a tunic—but at least they covered his arse, and for that the king’s son was so grateful he might have wept.

  How low the mighty has fallen, he thought, but there was laughter in it for him, as well. Even clad in his soldier’s kilt and the robes of the ne Atu, he had never been more than the king’s surdus son, the deaf disappointment who could never sit on his father’s throne.

  What might become of him now? Most likely this woman, Mahmouta, would sell him back to his father for a nice profit. As for the life of a brothel slave, Leviathus had decided before the trunk of salt tablets had been carried away that he would not accept such a fate.

  I will run first, he promised himself. Or I will die first. I will not be touched like that again. He bared his teeth at the thought of Mariza and her riders. Never again. So lost was he in thoughts, and in the memory of Mariza’s death, that he ran into one of his guards.

  They had stopped, and he had not. Just as well they had stopped, too. The group had come to the docks at the river’s edge, and had he kept walking, Leviathus would have received an unpleasant dunking at best, or have been eaten by a river serpent.

  A gull cried out, mocking him.

  “We are here, little prince,” the man said. “Welcome home.” His name is Husni, Leviathus remembered. He is the twentieth husband of the woman who bought me, and he knows poetry. It had never occurred to him that a man who loved poetry might be a wicked person.

  That disappointing thought was interrupted by the sight and sound of a young boy, scarcely older than Hafsa Azeina’s apprentice, hurtling through the dockside crowd toward their group.

  “Mammana!” he bellowed in a voice that would make a blue ram proud. “Mammana! You did it! You got him!” He all but flew into the laughing embrace of Mahmouta.

  “Of course I did, little man.” The giant of a woman squeezed until Leviathus thought the lad would break in half. “Do you doubt your mammana? Do you dare?”

  “Never.” The boy grinned.

  A crowd formed around their little group, men and women dressed in the same loose clothing and short capes as his captors. Most were armed with hooked spears like those the guards carried. Some were veiled, many were not. Those who were not sported an astonishing number of facial tattoos and piercings, and a few of them rivaled Mahmouta for size.

  “We did it, we did it!” The boy squirmed from his mother’s embrace and ran to Leviathus, shouting. “You are free!”

  Wait, he thought. What?

  I am… free. The words made no sense, not when strung together into a sentence and strung across the context of his life. I am free?

  Quick as thought, the boy whipped out a small knife such as all small boys carry. With a skinny brown hand he grabbed one of Leviathus’s forearms, and with the other he cut the ropes that bound Leviathus’s wrists.

  “What…?” Leviathus gaped in open astonishment at his freed hands, then at the giggling boy.

  The crowd burst into laughter.

  “Do you not remember my son?” Mahmouta stood behind the lad, and placed her enormous hands on his skinny little shoulders. “Do you not remember saving him from the Mah’zula? And now he has saved you. A life for a life.”

  “A life for a life,” Husni echoed, hands held out before him like the pans of a merchant’s scale. “Balance.”

  “Balance,” the boy agreed, staring up into his face. “Do you not remember me? You saved my life.”

  “I am sorry—” he began, but then it hit him. It had been a dark night, and he had had to pee. He had caught Hafsa Azeina’s little apprentice in the act of freeing… “The slaver?”

  “We are not slavers, we are merchants,” the boy huffed, offended. “Sometimes we are pirates.”

  “Sometimes,” Mahmouta agreed. “Only sometimes.” She took one great stride forward, so that she stood so close Leviathus could see the veils sway as she talked. This close, the merriment in her eyes was more apparent—but so, he thought, was the danger.

  A deadly woman, he thought.

  “You released my son from slavery, and spared him a terrible fate,” she said in a voice so low it tickled his bones. “I have done the same for you. We are square, Dragon Prince, you and I. Balanced.”

  “I am… most deeply grateful.” Leviathus bowed low, and it took everything he had left to keep his voice steady. Every fiber of his being trembled in the wind like a ship’s sails. “What now? Am I free to go, just like that?”

  “If you wish,” Mahmouta agreed. He thought there was some sympathy in her gaze. “Though nothing is as simple as that, as we both well know. I will carry you to Atualon, if you wish it.” She turned and swept her arm toward the Dibris, and a great fleet of merchant’s ships outfitted for travel and war. “In my little boats.” The crowd erupted, once more, in laughter.

  “Or I can offer you a different path, Son of the Dragon King.”

  Leviathus blinked. “Another path?”

  “In Atualon, you are a great man. You dress in fine robes, you eat fine food and drink fine wine. You have guards. Your guards have guards. Most likely every woman in Atualon desires to take you as a husband.”

  “A first husband, even,” one of the guards agreed. More laughter.

  “Out here, you would be another grunt, another body on the boat. You would wear the plain clothes of a merchant’s man, perhaps one day become a merchant yourself. Or a scholar. Or a poet.”

  “Or a twentieth husband, meant for pleasure!” Husni suggested.

  “You would live your life as one drop of water in the river, one grain of sand in the desert, no more than one man among men—but you would live that life under the sun, far away from Atualon, from the shadow cast by your father. You would be free, if you so choose.”

  “Free,” he echoed, and the crowd leaned in to hear the word. It tasted, to Leviathus, sweeter than the finest of wines. A vintage he had never thought to sample.

  “What do you say, Leviathus ap Wyvernus ne Atu? Have you ever dreamed of being a pirate?” Mahmouta held out one enormous gloved hand. Leviathus grasped that hand and held it fast as a grin spread across his face.

  “All my life,” he said.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  “Your estate is coming along quite nicely, Sen-Baradam.”

  Jian jumped half out of his skin and whirled around, heart pounding, hand on the hilt of his sword. Giella walked slowly up the stairs toward him, grinning.

  She had very sharp teeth.

  Jian grinned back, shaking his head. He liked this girl. Like his Tsali’gei, she had been born in the Twilight Lands
and given over to the land of men in her sixteenth Nian-da, as the ancient law decreed. There was a wildness to these girls that spoke to his own, and gave him comfort. It was not a safe kind of comfort, like a small fire well contained by a stone hearth. Theirs was a dangerous comfort necessary for the soul’s survival, like a wildfire on a cold night.

  Or maybe, that part of him said, I just like the company of pretty girls.

  “The main house should be done within the two-moon,” he agreed. “Look here, see what the engineers have done.” He lifted a foot from the top step, where he had been standing, and stepped onto the wide boards of the front porch. The wood sang under the slight weight, a soft chirruping noise like the voice of a cricket.

  Or the song of a nightingale.

  “It will warn of assassins,” he told her, and he stepped again. Squeak-squeak-squeak. Giella’s face lit with delight.

  “Oooooh,” she breathed, “let me try!” She ran the rest of the way up, beaming as she stepped onto the first board and it sang beneath her weight. “Ooooh,” she said again, clapping her hands like a small girl at festival. She picked up the skirts of her robe and ran down the length of the porch—chirrup-chirrup-squeak-squeak—her red robes fluttering behind her like wings, and pivoted at the end with her arms held high above her like an oulo dancer commanding her audience’s attention. The red sleeves fell loosely and her skin glowed white like porcelain in the sunlight.

  “But what if,” she asked him, “the assassin can fly?” Still smiling like a naughty child, she danced her way back to him, golden slippers flashing from beneath the hems of her robe. Giella swayed with her hips, she wound her arms and wrists and hands this way and that, dancing to an ancient song that Jian could almost—almost—hear.

  It was not until she reached him that Jian realized the boards beneath her feet had remained silent.

  “Your face!” she exclaimed, doubling over with laughter. “Ah, brother, your face!” She straightened, giggling and dabbing tears from the corners of her eyes with her long red sleeves. “Not to worry, Jian Sen-Baradam. Very few assassins are as good as I.”