The fennec rippled through the air in leaps and bounds of fur. He tipped over glasses of plum wine, to the delight of the men.
“The Golden Scoundrel!”
“And his new bride.” They clinked red-glazed glasses and drank.
Janny propped pillows behind her mistress, so she would not slump too far as she dozed. Hiresha's jewels glimmered. Her eyes shifted in her sleep, a bulge turning this way and that under each closed eyelid. The movement both disturbed Chandur and fascinated him. He knew enchantresses could only work magic in their sleep, a trade secret the spellsword mentors would flog him for telling.
Her closed eyes shifted to look in a new direction. Chandur wondered what an enchantress would see in her dream.
Hiresha carved a gem with her mind. She never felt more awake than in her lucid dreams.
The greyish lump of an uncut sapphire levitated above her palm. Five hundred and forty-eight beams of color bisected the stone, along the facets she would cut. After tweaking a last few angles, she touched the rough rock with an enchanted golden chisel.
Crystalline flakes exploded in a glittering dust that drifted toward the dark walls of her dream laboratory then faded to nothing. The naked jewel floated above her palm, a sapphire of rare clearness carved into a snowflake too delicate to survive in the real world. She had cut out the flaws in the raw stone, leaving a perfection of crystal and mathematical design. The attention she had lavished upon it caused the sapphire to glow with dream power.
With a sigh, the enchantress blew the jewel across the laboratory. Its facets flashed white as it tumbled through the air above a table of black rock, past other floating jewels colored pink, green, and blue. The snowflake sapphire collided with a full-length mirror.
It did not shatter. The glass flowed around it, pulling the jewel into a scene not of Hiresha reflected at the middle of the circular room but instead of Spellsword Chandur as she had last seen him sitting beside her at the inn. She was sorry he would not witness the sapphire snowflake, made as it was from dreams. The jewel danced past his image and landed on his jasper sword. The dream gem soaked into the hilt, powering the enchantment that allowed him to swing the massive weapon.
Other mirrors slid along the dome ceiling of the laboratory. They reflected Hiresha's recent memories. Time flowed backward in the mirrors, and people walked in reverse. Glimpses of guards rubbed their hands together as servants took away baskets bursting with food. Camel milk slid out of a priest's mouth and upward into a cup.
She gazed at the mirror with Chandur's still image. Armor that she had enchanted for toughness and reduced chafing clung its bronze scales to the muscles of his chest. She always worried about him overheating in his coat, though he seemed at ease in the desert climate. A more pressing concern was his lack of helmet. To escape the priests and their guards, she might have to lead him into danger.
“I must enchant Chandur a protective circlet,” she said to herself. She had planned to have had time to search the city bazaars for a likely item. “Tonight.”
“We want the circlet to be so truly him.” The second voice was also Hiresha's, though it came from one of the mirrors. A reflection of the enchantress wore a dress of identical style but of a different color. Yellow silk glistened, and topazes bedecked the fabric in a hue of citrus.
With a wave of her purple glove, Hiresha summoned a balance for weighing options. The risk-measuring device appeared on the basalt table in front of Hiresha. “I must find the safest route of escape from the city. I'll not allow Fosapam Chandur to come to harm on my account. Nor even Maid Janny.”
The reflection made no effort to copy Hiresha's movements. She hopped up and down on her yellow slippers, pointing at the balance. “Mind the desert scorpions. We hate those.”
Hiresha circled a finger, and a glass scorpion blinked into existence atop one gold tray of the balance. The insect was small, corresponding to the potential danger. A shadow fell over the scorpion from the figure of a man riding a camel. The large probability of nomads waylaying them in the desert weighed down that arm of the balance, alongside the threat of being overtaken by ships that sailed over the sand.
The next arm represented the choice of hiring passage on a land ship. This part of the scale teetered under statuettes of sailors who might decide to try to stop them. The vizier stood taller yet on the same plate, the risk of him discovering their plan. The scale had more than two arms. On another, glass models of priests towered over throngs of guards and pilgrims who would search for Hiresha if she tried to hide in the city.
While she tried to focus, her reflection chattered about details she spotted in the other mirrors. The woman in the yellow dress distracted Hiresha with observations about how the string on a guard's bow had worn to the point of snapping. Three of the oysters in one basket were dry and shriveled, revealing themselves as rotten. One priest's shoulders shivered from a fever he was trying to hide.
Hiresha, meanwhile, decided she favored a sudden departure. One option was to travel at night when no one else dared to leave their homes or tents. The figurine of the Lord of the Feast crushed this possibility all the way down to the stone table. He appeared in his nighttime aspect, a man with no arms and three heads, riding a most unbecoming basilisk. The image disturbed Hiresha, but she was thankful for the reminder of how his magic distorted him. Fleeing into the night alongside him had tempted her.
“We're afraid what he'd do to Chandur,” the reflection said.
Hiresha nodded. “And encountering him would be a near certainty at night.”
The reflection pressed her fingers against her cheeks, lips quivering as she gazed through her mirror at the balance with all its arms weighed down with statuettes. “Too much clutter.”
“Too much risk.” Hiresha pointed to another arm, its plate pressed down with the sculpture of a sarcophagus. “Yet anything is better than accepting that airless fate.”
After Chandur enjoyed his third course of delicacies, the enchantress' eyes opened. Her gloved finger drifted as she pointed and tried to focus her bleary eyes.
“Mind the oysters,” she said. “And that priest is ill. He should be resting.”
Fosapam Chandur always liked it when the enchantress did this, plucked truth out of her dreams. Again, he found himself sorry to think of her gone in only a few days.
The priest bowed. “I am feeling well enough, Enchantress.”
“Nonsense. You mixed pigment with oil to hide your pallor.”
Chandur's brows rose at this. The other priests chortled and slapped the man. “Son Inannis, that’s why you missed catching the god today?”
The bowing priest spoke with calm. “You are most wise, Enchantress. I will rest until I am well.”
The fennec whirred around the priest's feet as he left. Chandur joined the men in throwing bits of cricket that the god caught with his teeth.
“How hideous.” Hiresha shielded her eyes from the fennec.
“Nothing wrong about that leap,” Chandur said. “Look at him go.”
“My fiancé is snapping cricket heads out of the air. Abominable.”
“Oh.” Chandur rolled a ball of coconut and date between thumb and forefinger. “Did you never want to marry?”
She propped her temples up with her fingers. Pursing her lips, she glanced at him but did not answer.
Janny plopped down to sit on the other side of Hiresha. “It's a fair question,” the maid said. The skin of her freckled face was peeling from too much sun. “Could've had yourself some real full shirts and full pants. Didn't want them. Now don't want this toothed-bunny god?”
“He's a fox.” Chandur ran a hand over the fennec's back as he dashed by.
“I wanted to marry,” Hiresha said, “yet it can't be done anytime one pleases.”
“Yes it can.” Janny had a face that wrinkles had etched into a smile. A turban wrapped her hair with grey fabric. A dress of the same color was filled by a body that Chandur could only respectfully call practical a
nd built to last. “Can even happen when you don't please. 'Specially a hurry-up-please-before-father-finds-out wedding.”
“There is nothing more vulgar than the unplanned,” Hiresha said. “A life isn't great by chance, but by design.”
“I could use some vulgarity tonight.” Janny winked at two of the guards. “Hope they don't drink too much.”
“Janny, don't expose others to your thoughts. It is indecent.”
The maid said, “Just tell me I won't have to pick up your wee husband god. Or comb him. I don't think it's fair for me to be bitten by an animal. Been bit by my fair share of own children.”
“I assure you,” Hiresha said, “you'll have to do no such thing.”
“A toast to the bride.” Men lifted their glasses. “A ring of praise to honor her.”
“A ring of praise. Her face is more beautiful than water in the desert.”
“'Desert?'“ The man to his left grimaced. “Tough one. Oh! She's the most valuable Oasis import.”
He pronounced the last word to make it a close rhyme to “desert.” The two priests slapped their knees in approval.
“And she's the most fortunate woman in the lands.”
Chandur was next in the circle. Even with everyone staring at him for the next verse, he did not worry. Either he would think of a matching phrase or he would not.
“She has a healer's hands,” he said after some thought. “Her work honors the Opal Mind.”
The following man rhymed that with “kind,” and around the circle they went praising her dress, wealth, and wishing her happiness in the afterlife. Hiresha seemed to weather the compliments well. At least she kept her groans quiet.
Chandur liked to see others compete to come up with the most original verse in praise rings. He thought it odd, though, that he had heard poetry describing a woman's beauty, but never a man's. Men had a different sort of fineness to them, which he did not know how to put into words himself but thought someone should. He was sure Hiresha must have noticed that the skin-stitcher she had been speaking to in the palace had been most handsome.
The last man to speak picked up the fennec, rubbing his sides. “Now what do you have to say to your bride?”
The fennec trilled like a bird. The men roared their approval.
Chandur shook his head in amazement. The fennec was the most adorable creature he had ever seen. “You know, I always wanted a fennec. Even more after I lost Bracelets.”
Janny lowered a cup from her mouth. “Bracelets?”
“Had a snake. She had bands, red and black. Or maybe 'he.' No way to know.” He smiled, remembering the smooth feel of her scales. “Slept curled around my arm.”
Hiresha rested her head against the side of her hand. “Why would you keep a snake?”
“Well,” Chandur said, “her tongue could tickle your cheek.”
The maid pretended to gag. “If you like snake kisses so much, you should've bought yourself another fanged missy.”
He had often thought of it. “Wasn't sure the time was right.”
“Snakes are seasonal?” The maid pinched his arm. “Like mangos?”
Chandur worried he might not be meant to buy a snake. Perhaps he was supposed to own a bird, a fennec, or nothing. He wished the Priest of the Fate Weaver could have given him a longer reading, could have told him exactly what the goddess had designed his future to hold. Life expected far too many decisions from him.
He said, “If someone gave me a snake, then I'd know it was fated.”
Janny threw him a strange look.
Hiresha asked, “Did your snake eat rats?”
“Yeah, if I killed them first,” he said.
“Why,” Hiresha asked, “keep something with no purpose?”
Sometimes the enchantress’ mannerisms puzzled Chandur. He looked across to Janny for help, but she was exchanging glances with a man wearing silver-fennec jewelry. “Well,” he said, “haven't you ever had a pet?”
“I had a baby goat, once,” Hiresha said. “She would've produced milk, but I fell asleep and an eagle pecked out her eyes. To punish me, my mother made me kill the goat myself. I was six. I could barely lift the mallet.”
Chandur was disturbed, once by her story and twice by her quiet voice in telling it. She sounded like she was falling asleep again. It both troubled and impressed him that she never seemed farther than a few breaths from sleep. He had to lean closer to hear her murmuring.
“Cannot have goats before you're ready. Have to plan. Everything in its proper place and time. Such a shame, my wedding would've been a masterpiece.”
“Oh?” Janny ate a few berries from Hiresha's plate. “Who’re you thinking of marrying?”
Her chin drooped toward the amethysts on her chest. “Chandur, of course.”
“I knew it.” Janny cackled.
Chandur had been lifting a piece of crocodile to eat it. He froze, with mouth open. A burning itch spread up his throat, attacked his cheeks in pulses of heat, and climbed to his scalp. He felt he had overheard something the enchantress had not meant to say. That she thought of him in that way bewildered him as she had never treated him with more than an aunt's kindness. Sweat wriggled between his scale armor and his skin.
He decided he should pretend he had not heard her. It could never come to anything, he told himself. The enchantress' betrothed was running around the feet of the revelers, and besides, the goddess of fate had promised Chandur to another. He forced his mouth to close over the bit of meat that sat oily and too hot on his tongue. Despite his greatest efforts, he could not swallow it. Neither could he look at Hiresha.
By her tone, the enchantress must have woken herself. She spoke in an increasingly rapid and agitated manner. “It was only sensible. He could accompany me on my expeditions as a spellsword and invite no moral dispute. Fosapam Chandur and I both came from Morimound. We could agree on a wedding ceremony. I have the location planned, the phrasing of the invitations memorized, the food to be served, everything except whether he would wear white or yellow. I feel it important that the groom have some input.”
Janny nodded to the fennec. “You got it close. He'll wear white on bottom and gold on top.”
Chandur shifted the food to the side of his mouth. He thought he could feel the blooming heat of Hiresha's embarrassment. Not knowing what else he could do for her, he got up and tried to leave.
The men were weaving in a drunken dance, with the fennec jumping among them with chest-high hops. A priest urged Chandur to join them. A dancer jostled into Chandur as he began to say something, and the bit of meat slipped down his throat and stuck.
Chandur found himself on his knees, clutching his neck. Men slapped his back and yelled. The fennec squealed. The spellsword's world began to swirl with black and red. He told himself not to fear. It was not his fate to die.
The Fate Weaver's Priest promised me.
“Out of the way, you fools.”
The amethysts on Hiresha's dress dug into his back as she gripped him. It felt like she punched him in the stomach. The meat shot out of his mouth. He gasped on his hands and knees.
As he staggered to his feet, the room was silent, except for the fennec. Chandur's eyes stayed on the rug’s sand-dune patterns. He heard Hiresha speak.
“I think I’ll retire for an afternoon bath. I mean afternoon nap. I mean both. Yes, well, goodbye.”
The green window panes of Hiresha's rented chambers shone with midday sun. Droplets of water shaded like emeralds rolled off her skin to splash on the tiles, and she stepped back from the glare to keep her face in shadow. Her nervous fingers circled between her breasts and around a diamond, feeling the transition between warm skin and cool stone. Between soft and hard, between life and craft.
The tinted window glass darkened the red diamond to a dusky jewel, the gem that the Lord of the Feast had given her, that she had enchanted with protective magics, that she had implanted into her sternum so she would never lose it. Skin encased its edges, revealing only the
diamond's largest facet. One corner of the triangular surface pointed upward.
As the triangle between his brows points downward. Few had seen the Lord of the Feast's brand and lived. Hiresha wished she had never had to meet him. She wished she had never had to leave him. I should've thrown his red diamond into the sea.
Her hand covered the gem as Janny approached with her dress. The maid knew about the jewel, but Hiresha believed the sight of it disturbed her.
“Not the amethyst dress, Maid Janny.” Hiresha would always wear the same design of dress, though she had variants with different jewels of similar color. Wearing her preferred garnet gemstones on this day would bolster herself against her doubts.
“I swear you're threading me a good one. It's the same dress.” Janny held up two backless dresses with the same spiral patterns of gems.
“Those are purple garnets, not amethysts. You could doubtless differentiate them if you did not destroy your eyes trying to see improper things in the dark.”
“Oh no, I go by feel.” Janny held up the garnet dress, steadying Hiresha to help her step into it.
“I suppose,” Hiresha said as the jewels slid up over her chest, “you think me exceedingly foolish. To hope Chandur would ever marry me, when I am significantly older.”
“Foolish, yes.” Janny guided her arms through the sleeves. “For not already bedding him. With your wealth and delectables, I'd have him myself and five young misters besides.”
“Maid Janny, you are a pestilence of indecency.”
“Seriously, can you glow me up a gem for youthful looks? Or is it that you get less sun than an earthworm?”
Choosing to ignore the maid, Hiresha said, “Our ages are not so far apart, if one considers—”
“You are four pregnancies younger than me.”
Fox's Bride Page 3