The enchantress' face was the kind that hid nothing. Her well-formed features wriggled in confusion, pinched in annoyance, oscillated between shock and embarrassment, then firmed with outrage.
“Will someone of sanity explain?”
As a priest began talking to her, Inannis found himself sorry for the enchantress. The gods had chosen to lift her to prosperity, but as was their wont, they betrayed their own. She might not know it yet, but this life of hers was over.
Now he would never have one of her amethysts, unless he took to robbing tombs.
Enchantress Hiresha had no reason to believe the fox was divine. She worshipped different gods.
“I'm a woman of principle, and I cannot be married to a fox.” Hiresha swept a gloved hand toward the enormously eared creature.
The fox hopped and bit her.
Pain zinged up her arm, and she looked to see four holes in the purple silk covering her finger. “The vermin!”
“The fennec.” An older priest bowed to the creature then lifted him. “A desert fox inhabited by the soul of the Golden Scoundrel.”
“It’s natural for a bride to feel unworthy.” This priest gulped air and grinned with joy. “The fennec never marries more than once a year.”
“One fox, one bride,” a third priest said. His gaze was sleepy, his lips ruddy. “For the dying year.”
Hiresha leaned back, mouth agape. “'Marries once a year?' Just how many wives does he have?”
“Twelve wives while he lived as the pharaoh.” The second priest's jowls jiggled as he beamed. “And a hundred and twenty-one children.”
“After his entombment,” the first priest said, puffing his chest out, “the god has married seven hundred and thirty-eight worthy maidens.”
Hiresha rested a hand on her brows, felt a clammy dampness there. She had taken care to organize and schedule her life around her sleeping condition. Marriage to a small carnivore in no way fit her plans. Though she had studied the foreign gods of the desert capital while at the Academy, she had a poor memory for such things while awake. She believed something about the marriage ritual had horrified her at the time. And now it's happening to me. A buzzing feeling of unreality filled her with hot sickness.
“And I will be the first to congratulate Hiresha,” the Lord of the Feast said. A sheen of greasepaint on his face concealed the black triangle she knew branded his brows. “To be courted by a god is a grand thing, but I wouldn't go through with the marriage. Arguing can't be fun with the infallible.”
A few priests spluttered. “Not go through with the marriage?”
“But she must.”
Hiresha turned from the Lord of the Feast and the night magic lurking inside him, to Spellsword Chandur. Embarrassment scorched her that both men had watched her become engaged to the potentially rabid, polygamous fennec.
“You should have done something,” she said to Chandur. “You're in charge of defending my honor.”
A priest lifted one white paw of the fennec. “It is an honor.”
“Quiet, you.” Hiresha shook with her anger. Married to a fox, she thought, preposterous!
Her eyes swung back up to Spellsword Chandur. His hair was short but all his own. His cuffs gleamed with the edges of his bronze-scale armor. Chandur had a broad chin and broader shoulders, which he held up with a wealth of assurance. Most importantly, his features displayed the symmetry belonging to those of good health and lineage.
Once she had developed a spell to cure herself of her sleeping disease, she intended to have courted him. Nothing might have come of it, she granted, as a difference in age would have caused awkwardness. That dream still seemed safer than her being with a Feaster.
And now this farce, she thought. The fennec yawned at her with needle teeth filling a mouth the perfect size for nipping fingers. Hers still stung. The fox’s onyx eyes seemed to leer at her, and black whiskers twitched with mischief.
“I am not marrying that animal. I decline. I refuse, reject, and renounce his claims.” She gazed over the assembled noblemen. “My enchantments have helped many of you. I've saved some of your lives. Will any here break me free of this engagement?”
Ladies hid their faces behind fans of ostrich feathers. Lords bowed their heads toward the fennec. One nearby nobleman wearing a cape of beads spoke. “Who are we men to meddle in the affairs of gods?”
A desolation spread over Hiresha, and she wondered what use her years of service had been if not even one noble would speak for her now. Maybe they haven't the influence. The thought chilled her as she began to believe no legal route could nullify her engagement.
“The Golden Scoundrel is the perfect husband.” A priest slipped an emerald bracelet over her wrist.
“He bit me,” Hiresha said, “and what is this?”
The priest tapped the fennec's emerald collar. “Enchanted. Will keep him from escaping too far. He has his moods.”
“I want him to escape.”
“You'll have four days to come to love him.”
“Four days? Until the end of Gods Week?”
“And the marriage, of course.” Two priests beamed. The third looked serious.
The Lord of the Feast said, “Asking a woman for her hand must be trying work. The little heart is sleeping.”
The fennec curled his head under a paw in the priest's arms.
“He proposed, and now he sleeps.” Hiresha threw up her hands. “The mark of an attentive husband? I think not.”
“Shh! Now take him, gently.” The priest tried to ease the fennec into the enchantress' arms. She pushed him away. The man insisted. The fox woke, barked, and splayed black paw pads.
“I'll take him.” Spellsword Chandur folded his fingers around the fennec and cradled him in one hand. The fox yipped at him, companionably. “Er, do gods like their tummies rubbed?”
Hiresha cast him a severe glance.
Looking satisfied, the priests stepped back. A few ladies stayed to coo at the fennec. Hiresha dug her gloved fingers into her palms as the Lord of the Feast leaned closer.
“Hiresha, my heart,” he said. “We must once again celebrate a common purpose. Not another word now. Those ears could hear through walls.” He nodded his chin toward the fennec.
The enchantress could not tear her eyes away from the Feaster as he strode between the glass doors and out of the party. Tethiel, she said his name to herself while worrying that any purpose he hoped to draw her into would involve both danger and scandal.
A shadow and a sensation of heat warned Hiresha that a large person had stepped next to her. She assumed Spellsword Chandur, but she met with the surprise of an orange and black mask. Eyes bore down on her from within painted circles of white and red.
“Enchantress Hiresha, you deserve better than a god.” The masked man wore a white shawl and black kilt.
Hiresha recognized the vulture-mask design. She had worked with such men before, comparing knowledge of the human body gleaned from her magic and their grisly experience. “You have my attention, Skin-Stitcher.”
A priest bobbed beside them. “This cannot be a suitable time to speak with her. Only now betrothed and...and....”
The skin-stitcher forced him back with a faceless glare. “Hiresha, I am Ubis son of Odji, Royal Embalmer. You should hear what I have to say. Would you walk with me?”
Hiresha had not met the Royal Embalmer before, but she felt inclined to trust him. He had not seemed enamored with the fennec. After motioning Spellsword Chandur to stay back with the creature, she extended a hand to the man in the vulture mask.
The embalmer escorted her along a glass wall that rippled with water. Nobles shied away from her and her companion. He smelled of salt, with a hint of rot.
“I ask you not to wed the Golden Scoundrel, Hiresha. He has too many wives to care for any one.”
“I have no intention of participating in this ridiculous ritual.”
“You don't?” He removed his mask, but his most remarkable feature, his eyes,
did not change. Their color was of damp soil flecked with gold and lit by sunset. The kohl powder that lined them intensified their deepness. “An eternity in a god's court is no prize when you are but one more body in the harem.”
“Exactly my thoughts.” She considered lowering her voice but decided she did not care who heard. “You assume I believe in the Golden Scoundrel. That fennec may be inhabited by nothing more than fleas.”
“The Golden Scoundrel does rule the ages, but yes, I can tell you are too intelligent for his glamour.”
They both glanced at the fennec. Spellsword Chandur, still holding the sleeping creature, met Hiresha's eyes.
“Most women,” the embalmer said, “cannot look away from the Golden Scoundrel. His power blinds them, the promise of everlasting prestige lures them. They sacrifice their lives, and they mean nothing to him.”
“Yes, yes, and the fennec bit me. I think the mummification process would only improve him.”
“I have waited years for a woman like you.” The embalmer faced her, clasped her hands in his. “You I can save.”
“Save me? You'll rid me of the fennec?” Hiresha began to think she was missing something. She also grew uncomfortable with his closeness, and he presumed much holding both her hands at once.
“All the others I had to prepare,” the embalmer said. “Husks of women, killed for a golden shadow of love.”
“Who is killing? Who's dying?” Hiresha tried to step away from him, but his grip was unrelenting.
“You don't know? The marriage ceremony is in the afterlife. The bride and the fennec go through the gates of death together, in a sealed sarcophagus.”
Hiresha felt her intestines fold over each other like fingers nervously interlacing. Her own hands stung where he held her.
“You will die on the last day of the year,” he said. “Hiresha, I do not—”
“This year?” Sweat dribbled down her back. “As in, the year ending four days from now?”
“Yes, and—”
“As in, the priests will try to kill me in four days?”
“Seal you in the Golden Scoundrel’s Pyramid and wait for you to suffocate, but I can get you away. I may just be an embalmer, a man of only one title, but I've been planning for years. If you trust me, if you come with me.” He broke off as Spellsword Chandur clapped a hand over his and stripped his grasp from Hiresha.
Chandur still held the fennec, a curled pastry of golden-white fur. The embalmer glared at the sleeping creature in Chandur's arm, his full lips compressing into lines of resentment.
The embalmer returned his black and orange mask to his face. “We will speak again, Hiresha.”
“I thank you for the warning.” Hiresha messaged her numb hands. “Yet I'll not need your assistance.”
“You said you wanted to live,” he said.
“My spellsword will ensure I do.” Hiresha trusted Chandur more than any vulture-masked stranger.
The eyes within the painted rings shifted their intensity to Chandur. “A man of greater means than a simple embalmer. Most sensible, Hiresha.”
The embalmer walked away. Beads of lapis and gold clicked in the black braids of his wig.
“Thank you for interposing yourself, Chandur,” Hiresha said.
“What was that embalmer talking about?” The jeweled hilt of a massive sword jutted out from behind Chandur’s shoulder. Hiresha had enchanted the weapon, and the sight of it always reassured her, as did Chandur’s sudden look of concern. “Oh! Is he yours? That is, the embalmer who’s going to, you know. I’ve always thought it’d be painful.”
“You do know people aren’t embalmed alive.”
“Ah, right.” Chandur grimaced and lowered his chin toward his left shoulder.
Her spellsword had spent more time in Oasis City than she and clearly knew something of the marriage ritual. Hiresha hoped she could rely on him to help her escape, and she wanted to plan that departure now. With fatigue heavy on her and eyes flickering closed, she spoke.
“I am feeling faint. Chandur, return the fennec. Accompany me back to my apartments.”
“No, no.” The voice of a priest was sickeningly cheerful as he intruded on the conversation. “The Golden Scoundrel should stay by your side during Gods Week. But if you wish to leave, we have your escort ready.”
“My escort?”
“The Golden Scoundrel never travels with fewer than ten men. Sometimes it is his will to test us by running. A fennec is harder to catch than salt on the wind.”
Ten men, Hiresha thought. Escaping Oasis City might be harder than she had imagined. She could not very well have Chandur knock too many priests around without the empire taking offense, the empire that owned the Academy, her research, and her home.
Spellsword Fosapam Chandur was sorry that his mistress did not wish to marry the fennec god. True, the betrothal had taken her by surprise, but he had always suspected Hiresha's fate to be exceptionally bright. No common man would have done for the enchantress. He had been told as much by his mother.
She and Hiresha had been childhood friends, or perhaps enemies. Chandur had never been clear on that part. He thought he remembered hearing “that jewel-shitting spinster” thrown about a few times when he was a boy. His parents had sent him away to Oasis City to study as a scribe, and when that did not work out, he had trained as a guard. They had written letter after letter telling how well the family gem cutting business was doing, had urged him to stay in the expensive city. When calamity had forced him to return to Morimound, he had learned his father had earned nothing but debts. They had lost the family's manor and good name.
Hiresha had given his sister a home, had taken them both back to the Mindvault Academy and sponsored their training. The elder enchantress deserved all the fortune the gods placed in front of her, and Chandur was proud to carry one such god sleeping on his left arm.
To his right, Hiresha slept, too, sitting in a sedan chair decorated with opals and a silk canopy. He could tell she had fallen asleep because the jewels of her dress flashed purple. Branching curves of gems were stitched within silk, and the light of their glowing forced him to blink.
Four of the priests' men had taken up the honor of carrying the sedan chair. Now they lowered Hiresha's transport to the ground, setting down their poles. Above, a camel was painted on a wall. The building's plaster shone too white to look at in the sun.
A guard inhaled an aroma of cooking onions and lentils. “The enchantress bride already brings us good fortune. She chose an inn with a kingly kitchen.”
“Hiresha.” Chandur bent down to face her. “Enchantress Hiresha, we're here.”
The jewels on her dress dimmed. She drew air into her nose in a gentle hiss, and her eyelashes lolled open then closed again. She extended a gloved hand to Chandur. His fingers grazed a jewel on her palm, and he activated the enchantment within the gem. Using his spellsword training, he felt like he fitted a key and spun it around three revolutions until magic Lightened the enchantress. For one second she weighed so little that she floated out of her seat, her slippers gliding over the street tiles. She tilted sideways, her balance no better than someone who had woken in predawn darkness.
Chandur steadied her, his hand behind her shoulder warmed by the enchantress’ skin. Her dress left her shapely back bare, and her spine was visible down to her waist. Fosapam Chandur felt guilty for stealing the glance.
The cut of the dress was sleek, fitting, and bold. He had never seen another woman wear a gown with the same design. Then again, he supposed the same could be said of many things done by the enchantress. A pang raced through him, knowing that Hiresha would soon leave this world for the gods' realm. Don't be selfish, he thought, she goes to a better life.
She rocked against him as she staggered into the building. Shade and chill inside the inn soothed Fosapam Chandur. He heard the jingle of the proprietor's many amulets.
“Elder Enchantress Hiresha, my humble home—” The man's face flinched at the sight of the f
ennec, though he recovered into a grin. “The Golden Scoundrel honors this worthless abode. This is a holy day, indeed it is.”
“A banquet.” The guards burst in. “Your finest for the fennec and his bride.”
“His bride, indeed, yes, she is beauty wrapped in fortune.” The proprietor rummaged through amulets of scarabs and camels. He found one of a fennec and pressed it to his forehead as he bowed.
Men stacked their bows against the arched door and rushed inside, chanting. “Banquet! Banquet for the fennec!”
The god's long ears perked up. He sprang from Chandur's arms, tail snapping back and forth as he zipped around the men, yipping and squeaking.
“Your house has been blessed already.” A laughing priest pointed to a grey dropping the fennec had left on an ornate rug.
“Oh, yes, indeed yes, it is so.” The proprietor closed his eyes and bowed to the floor again. “Gods are eternal!”
Hiresha murmured that she wished to go to her room, but the priests insisted she stay. Fosapam Chandur unlatched his sword from his back so he could sit beside her on a rug. With a strain, he set down the blade of stone. Veins of black and white crossed within the redness of the sword's jasper.
A maid entered carrying a bowl of berries and melon. She was Janny, and at the Academy, other spellswords had warned Chandur to heed her because of her longstanding friendship with the elder enchantress, though he had seen little outward affection between the two. Janny served her mistress simple food that Hiresha did not eat. The house servants carried baskets brimming with lavish fare that Chandur and the other guards devoured.
Crunchy crickets baked in honey and sesame, steamed crocodile and spices, cucumbers and quail, cobra in camel-hump soup, and even some seafood that Chandur felt bad about eating because he knew fishermen had risked their lives far from the city to catch it in monster-infested waters. The priests inhaled the cooking aromas with sighs though they partook only of milk.
Fox's Bride Page 2