On Fire’s Wings

by Christie Golden

  But she did not believe it.

  Several days after Tahmu had given the child to the Great Dragon, Kevla was filling up Yeshi’s tray with tidbits to tempt her to eat when Sahlik came up behind her.

  “No, no!” she scolded, pointing to a small cup of boiled balan. “Yeshi hates this cooked. Give her the fresh root, child. Like this.”

  She plopped a long yellow tuber onto the tray. Kevla was startled at the rebuke, and then she noticed a small corner of parchment peeking out from underneath the root. She sucked in her breath. Sahlik turned away.

  “You! Come here, child. You seem to like cooking. Do you know how to make bread?”

  Kevla’s heart pounded so hard she thought it would burst through her chest. There was only one person who would send her a written message.

  She shook so badly that she feared she would drop the tray, but managed to make it into a small room off the great hall which saw little activity. She unfolded the letter and read:

  Sahlik has arranged for me to have time alone in the cavern. Go to the kitchen first, then come find me there when it is time for someone’s afternoon nap.

  Kevla felt weak as joy and apprehension flooded her. Was this not what she had hoped for? To see him again, alone? She wished he had said more, but the letter could be dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands. She read it again, trying to decipher his intentions. He had seemed so aloof when she saw him in the halls, and the letter was brusque. Perhaps she should not go, but did she dare refuse? Then, as if he were present, she seemed to feel again his hands on her face, see his eyes glinting with starlit tears.

  She would go, as he had asked.

  Kevla returned to the kitchen, and put another piece of fruit on Yeshi’s tray. It was far too much for the khashima to eat; she barely tasted anything Kevla brought her, but Kevla needed an excuse. While she was there, she looked around. Everyone was busy doing something. She picked up a few crumbs from the floor and tossed them and the small piece of parchment into the fire. She watched it twist and curl up on itself, and then it was ash.

  It was only midmorning. She had many hours to wait. Finally, Yeshi decided it was time to take a nap. The girls scattered, each anxious to seize time alone, and Kevla headed straight for the kitchen.

  Sahlik was there, overseeing dinner preparations. Several loaves of bread were stacked high on platters. Roast meats turned on spits, supervised by dull-eyed five-scores. Other five-scores chopped vegetables for the huge pots of stew that bubbled on the fires.

  Sahlik saw her and gave her a wineskin. “Take this,” she said quietly. “If anyone notices you coming or going, say you are bringing wine to the young master.”

  Kevla couldn’t help herself. The head servant of the House of Four Waters was actually encouraging the khashimu to meet secretly with a lowly servant.

  “Sahlik,” she whispered, “why are you—”

  “I have my reasons,” the old woman said curtly. “Go.”

  Kevla hurried toward the small building, opened the door, took the torch and descended the cool stone steps, both aching for and dreading this illicit encounter.

  He was there. He was dressed in the men’s rhia, which clung to his still-damp body. He sat on the pool’s edge, his legs in the water. Droplets on his dark skin and hair glistened in the torchlight. He turned to see who had arrived and their eyes met.

  “Did anyone see you?” She shook her head. “Good. Come, Kevla. Sit beside me.”

  Nervously, she did as she was told, dangling her own legs into the cool water. She waited for him to speak.

  “I have seen…so much,” he said at last. He didn’t look at her. He stared down into the water, as if speaking to his own wavering reflection. “Kevla…I have killed a man. It was only a few moments into the raid. He charged at me, a dagger in each hand, screaming something—I can’t remember what—and before I realized what I was doing the deed was done. I had drawn my sword and cut deeply into his neck.”

  Her heart ached for him, even as her mind filled with images of gore and death. He was born to this, she told herself. And yet, she wished he had not had to experience it.

  “It didn’t cut his head off, not quite. But the blood—by the Great Dragon, it was everywhere, on me, on my sa’abah, on the sand—so much blood. And he was just the first. I cannot tell you how many ran at me, how often I swung my sword, how many I struck. My hand ached, my arm grew tired, and still I swung. It was so fast to be so…so thorough. It took much longer to round up the scattered women and children, tie them up like sandcattle—”

  He paused, swallowed hard. “Then when it was over, some of them men dipped their fingers in the blood and marked their faces. They laughed. They danced. I went behind a stone and was sick.”

  He looked at her then, his eyes haunted, expecting ridicule. Kevla bit her lip and her eyes filled with tears.

  Suddenly, violently, he tugged off his rhia, exposing his thin boy’s chest. An ugly scar snaked from his left nipple to his navel. Kevla gasped.

  “My lord—are you—”

  He smiled bitterly. “I’ll be all right. It was a shallow, clean wound and Maluuk is a skilled healer. He said I should be proud of it. Proud.” He almost spat the word. “Father made me sit through the celebrations. But when I went to sleep that night all I could see was the face of the man I had killed…his head spoke to me, called me murderer….”

  He buried his face in his hands. “And then to come back and discover I was about to have a brother or sister…I thought it was a blessing, a sign that life went on even after what we did. But Kevla, we—I—I lost a sister! My father left her to die on the mountain, and I can’t even talk about her to anyone. My father walks as if his steps are dogged by ghosts. My mother will not see me, it’s as if I’m dead to her now, too….”

  He shuddered as a deep sob racked his thin frame. “My little sister….”

  Kevla could keep the barrier between them no longer. Jashemi’s torment called more loudly to her than her fear or her sense of propriety. He was in pain, and she had to do what she could to ease it. Deliberately, knowing full well she might regret it later, she put her arms around him.

  Jashemi clung to her, burying his face in her neck. She felt the cool wetness of the water and the warm wetness of his tears. She ran her fingers through the thick softness of his hair, closing her eyes and opening to him, taking all the hurt and shock and angry grief into her own soft, compassionate body. She murmured nonsense words as if he were a baby, and rocked him until the violence of his grief was spent.

  “My sister,” he whispered, over and over, “My sister….”

  The time passed. Each day that unfurled was a step away from the terrible tragedy that no one was permitted to mention. The servants stopped speaking in whispers. Tahmu started to laugh and carry himself with confidence again. Even Yeshi seemed to revive, though there was a hardness about her that Kevla had not seen before. Her tongue was sharp, her words cold, and her laughter, when she did laugh, had an edge to it that made Kevla’s skin prickle. Yeshi had recovered, but she had not healed.

  Nor did she ever call for her son.

  Kevla suspected that she was the only one who knew how deeply Yeshi’s avoidance of Jashemi cut the youth. He did not show it in word, expression, or deed, but she knew how badly the rejection pained him. They stole time where they could, with Sahlik acting as their touchstone, but it was difficult. He never referred to their embrace in the caverns, nor did she; but there was a new ease in their mannerisms with one another, as if some barrier had been lifted.

  One day, as Kevla was gathering up Tahmu and Yeshi’s bedclothes, she noticed certain stains on them. She stared, disbelieving. She knew exactly what sort of stains they were, having cleaned her mother’s linens, and if Tahmu had not been gone for several days visiting the Star Clan’s khashim, she would have thought nothing of it.

  But Tahmu was gone. Had been gone since before these linens were put on the bed….

  This could not be.
Yeshi would not jeopardize her position. Infidelity to the khashim was treason. Tahmu could have her put to death for it. And why would Yeshi do such a thing? From all that Kevla could tell, Tahmu was a kind husband and probably a gentle lover.

  Kevla felt a rush of anger at the betrayal which abated a moment later. It was not her place to either defend her lord or condemn her lady. She was a servant here, nothing more.

  And perhaps these stains were something else. Perhaps she was making assumptions that weren’t true. Quickly, she bundled them up and was about to take them downstairs when she paused. A half-filled glass of wine sat on a small table. She took the wine, opened the sheets to expose the telltale stain, and poured the wine over it. Better the women who washed Yeshi’s sheets think her clumsy than adulterous.

  Yeshi took to retiring early and dismissing her women. Tiah and Ranna were only too happy to be relieved of their duties, and immediately rushed to meet with their stableboy lovers. But Kevla worried that Yeshi and her unknown lover—or lovers—would grow careless. She made it a point to be the first to attend Yeshi in the mornings, and sometimes she noticed something that would have given Yeshi away, such as finding two glasses of wine where there should be one.

  To Kevla’s great relief, the liaisons ceased when Tahmu was in residence. Yeshi might be indiscreet, but she was no fool. Sometimes she wondered who Yeshi was taking into her bed, but she had no real interest in learning the man’s identity.

  Yeshi moved as if she were a dead person trapped inside a living body.

  The last thing she had felt, really felt, was overwhelming grief as Tahmu snatched their child from her arms. She had raged, sobbed, railed against the Dragon, screamed curses at her husband, beaten her still-swollen and sensitive belly with her fists for not housing a clean child.

  Then the darkness descended. Later, she would find it difficult to believe that she had even been able to continue to draw breath, that her heart had not simply stopped beating. Despite her desperate wish to die, Yeshi lived.

  She had vague recollections of soft skin, of concerned eyes, and gentle hands that pressed tidbits into her unwilling mouth, that bathed a soiled physical shell. Her body ate, used the food, excreted what it did not need, and demanded more. How strange, that it continued when her soul felt so dead.

  The emotions that came afterward were pale in comparison to her grief, but she clung to them anyway. She hated Tahmu for what he had done. And she could not bear to lay eyes on her beautiful, healthy son. Why should he live, if his sister was born only to die of exposure on a mountainside? Why should Tahmu laugh and move forward with his duties, when he had been the one to execute the dreadful deed?

  No matter that the traditions were clear on this point. No matter that it would have been impossible to disguise her daughter’s disfigurement. No matter that there was no other course for anyone to have taken. There was no sense in anything Yeshi felt now.

  She took her lover not out of passion and desire, but of an urgent need to feel something. She would not let Tahmu touch her, but she wanted arms around her in the night, wanted to taste the salt of sweat and remember that she wasn’t dead yet, even though she yearned for death’s graces.

  The one place where she felt even the faintest brush of peace was when she was alone in the caverns. Before the tragedy, she had not often liked to be alone. Now, she craved the solitude. She did not need women to scrub her back and dry her body. She needed a place to be embraced by cool water, where all was silent save her own racking sobs.

  So when she descended the steps, padding softly on bare feet, she felt a lightening of the grief that clung to her like a burning shroud. She was just about to enter the cavern when she heard voices. She stopped, straining to listen.

  “Why do you always pick red?” It was Jashemi’s voice.

  “I like it. It’s pretty.”

  Kevla! She shouldn’t be talking with Jashemi, she was just a servant. Yeshi straightened and turned the corner, her mouth open to rebuke both son and servant, when she went still as stone.

  Her steps had been light, and they were too engrossed in their game of Shamizan to notice her approach. They sat with their dark heads bent over the board, foreheads nearly touching. Jashemi wore a cloth around his loins, and Kevla wore a damp, sleeveless rhia. Yeshi noted distractedly that her son had a scar across his chest, but Jashemi’s war injuries were of no concern to her, not now.

  The two children were of the same height and build. Both had their gazes on the board, but simultaneously they looked up and grinned. Two mouths of the same shape pulled back from even, white teeth; two pairs of eyes the same color tilted up at the corners in an identical fashion. Jashemi said something, but Yeshi heard no words. Blood pounded in her veins.

  How could she not have seen this? She knew every inch of her son’s face since she had held him in her arms a few seconds after his birth. Kevla had attended her for almost two full years. She had thought the girl looked familiar when she had first laid eyes on her, but it had never occurred to Yeshi that Tahmu had…that he would….

  Yeshi was so shocked that she had to lean against the stone steps for support. She was cold, so cold, and her stomach churned.

  Betrayers. All of them. How they must have laughed at her ignorance, her stupidity, her inability to see what was right before her eyes. Did the whole household know? The whole Clan? Was she the only one who labored under the misapprehension that her husband had been faithful?

  Shaking with anger and pain, Yeshi turned and made her way up the stairs as silently as she had come.

  Tahmu had begun coming to bed late. It was easier on them both if he lay beside Yeshi while she was asleep rather than awake. He disrobed quietly in the bedroom, not lighting the lamp, when suddenly one flamed to life.

  He turned, surprised. “Yeshi, I hope I did not….”

  The words died on his lips at the expression on his wife’s face. He had thought that he had seen the worst she could offer him when he had taken their daughter, but now he almost physically quailed. There was stone in that gaze, and a hatred that went much deeper than mere rage and grief.

  “I saw them today,” she said, her voice calm, almost conversational. “In the caverns, playing Shamizan. Talking. Laughing. Just like brother and sister.”

  He should have known this day would come, but he had hoped…“I never wanted you to know,” he said.

  “Of course not!” Yeshi’s voice cracked like a whip. “Of course you wanted me kept ignorant, wanted me to be laughed at by my son, my women, your Bai-sha daughter—”

  “I did not want to hurt you,” Tahmu said. “Jashemi and Sahlik are the only ones who know, and Sahlik tells me none of the other servants suspect. Not even Kevla knows.”

  “Well, then, that makes it all right, doesn’t it, that you broke our vows, slept with—”

  “Kevla is older than Jashemi, or haven’t you noticed?” replied Tahmu defensively. “I never broke my vows to you.”

  “Then it’s the halaan’s child?”

  Tahmu flinched at the crude word, sick that the epithet was truer than Yeshi knew.

  “By the Dragon, Tahmu, that makes it worse….how could you do this? How could you take our daughter, born legitimate, and leave her to die, and yet bring your Bai-sha into our home?”

  For a moment, she looked down at her hands, balled into small fists atop the silky sheets. She looked less angry and more hurt, and Tahmu felt pity stir in him. As he had said to Jashemi, Yeshi’s only real crime was that she was not the woman he loved. He went to her and sat beside her on the bed, but as he reached to put his hand over one of hers, she jerked to life and struck him. He tasted blood.

  “I want her out,” she hissed between clenched teeth. “I want her beaten until the blood runs down her skinny little back, I want to scratch her face and—”

  “No.”

  His conviction halted her flood of vitriol. She seemed startled. “What?”

  “No. Kevla will not be beaten. She will
not be sent away. She has done nothing wrong.”

  “She is your Bai-sha!”

  He met her gaze levelly. “That is my wrongdoing, not hers. The only thing Kevla has done is to be a good servant to you. Until today you doted on her.”

  “She should not have been with Jashemi!”

  “I suspect the boy is at fault, not Kevla. But I am responsible for the girl. I swore to keep her safe. That she would always have food, a place to sleep, protection. I will not break that vow, not even for you.”

  Yeshi’s eyes flashed, then the light in them seemed to die. “I cannot order her from this house without your permission, khashim. But I will not have her attend me another moment. I will put her to work in the kitchens. I will find a place where she cannot have the comfort of other women to laugh and talk with. And I will forbid my son to ever, ever see her again.”

  Tahmu felt as if he had swallowed a heavy weight. This was not what he had envisioned, that day two years ago when he had set Kevla before him on Swift’s back, when he had taken her away from everything she had known.

  Now, he would have to do that to her again, except this time, she was not trading a difficult life for an easier one. This time, she was trading a life she had come to enjoy for one that would be harsh and trying. He had taught her to believe that she was worthy of a good life. Now, he would rip that away from her.

  His voice breaking, he said to Yeshi, “You told me she was almost a daughter to you, Yeshi.”

  “‘Almost,’” said Yeshi, “is a very big word.”

  Kevla was asleep when the door to the women’s room burst open. There were startled shrieks as the women groggily realized that their sanctuary was being intruded upon by three men, all with torches.

  “Which one is the Bai-sha?” their leader demanded.

  Tiah and Ranna pointed to Kevla, who shrank back before the accusation. Gulping, she tried to appear calm.

  “I am Kevla Bai-sha. Who asks for me?”