“I mean Chandur and myself. Over half my life has been spent asleep, and those years should not count against me.”
The enchantress rested a hand on Janny's shoulder to balance herself as she eased her feet into slippers. The maid asked, “Should I call him in then, without pants? Will be your last chance before you marry that ladle-eared critter.”
“I'll not marry the fennec. You'll bring Chandur. He will be decently clothed.”
Janny made a “pfff” noise but returned soon with the spellsword. He stood at attention, eyes locked on Hiresha’s jeweled slippers. Hiresha bid Janny shut the door. A deep part of the enchantress wanted Chandur to notice that she wore her garnet dress, but he did not. These gems were smaller and more faceted than the amethysts. The differences are so obvious. Hiresha interpreted his lack of comment as indifference toward her jewels and herself.
The enchantress explained that the marriage ceremony between her and the fennec would contain an unacceptable amount of dieing. She mentioned the warning of the Royal Embalmer. Chandur did not speak, but Maid Janny cried out.
“Aaah! A marriage night in a stone coffin? Now I have goose-pimples all over.”
“Spellsword Chandur,” Hiresha said, “I depend upon you to find a captain sailing from the city tomorrow. We will depart without notice.”
Emotion seemed to hold him silent, either sadness from her decision to flee the sacrificial ritual or from relief. Hiresha liked to think it was the latter. Chandur at last choked out two words.
“I understand.”
Hiresha said, “If anyone impedes us, I count on you to protect me from capture. However, try not to kill soldiers of the empire.”
“Why ever not?” Maid Janny clutched the top of her turban. “Maybe spare the cute ones, but they want to murder you for their god.”
“You can't go around killing people merely because they are oafish idiots with ridiculous religious beliefs.” Hiresha glanced at the greatsword’s hilt above his shoulder, capped with a purple sapphire. “Today, use discretion.”
After another nod, Chandur propped the stone sword against the wall. He left, and the enchantress turned to speak to Maid Janny.
“I have a vital errand for you, to purchase a circlet in the bazaar.”
Hiresha gave Janny a few specifications for the jewelry. The maid left with reasonable cheer, but the enchantress could not find in herself the same hope. The priests would no doubt ask the vizier to pursue her tomorrow. They'll not let their sacrifice escape without a chase.
Her party would need a lead of at least a day in the desert before the city guards realized where they had gone. Any less of an advantage and Hiresha had to believe she would be caught.
Chandur walked through city streets and under sky streams. The overhead waterways had always reminded him of blue snakes slithering above, each flow lighter than air thanks to magic. If he strained his eyes, he could see a glint of a metal strand within the water, a chain of silver. Enchanted by someone like Hiresha, he thought with pride. He spotted a few ornate boats rowing on the shaded underside of a stream that curved downward to the palace's roof. Since Chandur was not a noble, he had to travel the city by more conventional means.
Besides, the enchantress had ordered him to find her a land ship without drawing attention. The cut of his coat and its regal purple would mark him. He searched for and found a fabric merchant, striding between colorful racks of cloth.
A thin robe hid his coat, and he wrapped a maroon turban over his head then looped the swaths under his chin and up over his face. Concealed, Fosapam Chandur paid for the clothes and walked on, feeling fleet without having to trudge around with the weight his stone greatsword.
The smell of camel dung stirred memories of turning out the stables, and his eyes locked on the three-storied white barracks of the Royal Camelry. He strode by a familiar wall painting of a camel with a scorpion's tail. He considered visiting but realized that his friends would be patrolling the Gods Week festivities.
He had looked forward to having time while Hiresha had waited to receive commissions from nobles for her healing jewels, before her engagement had turned everything on its back. He could have caught up with Three-Thrust Khelu, Asp Eye, and Dejal—him most of all with his striking blue eyes, quick blade, and quicker laugh. Fate pulled Chandur elsewhere, though, and he turned down another street, toward the northern docks. His first duty was to the enchantress, and he would not fail her.
Scarabs buzzed overhead, and he kept pace with them, grinning up at their flutter of red wings. His face fell with sorrow that Hiresha would have to flee Oasis City with him, a man still struggling to believe it all. Chandur supposed he should not be surprised he was mixed up with gods and elder enchantresses. The priest had read his destiny in the strands of a spider web and had told him his fate was bright.
He marched up the stairs alongside the city wall, rising above the square buildings. The rooftops glittered blue and white with countless salt crystallization pools. The air throbbed with heat and moisture while the sky rivers twisted their way toward the center of the city to channel into one rippling globe. Below that sky lake gleamed a bluish-marble pyramid, a hub from which branched processions of brass towers, posts of glinting luster.
The scope of the grandness forced Chandur to stand and stare. It bewildered him to imagine that Hiresha would try to escape the empire that had built such a city. Thinking of the enchantress sent an aching mix of respect and sadness churning through him. He was sorry her life's thread wound through such difficult tracts.
Her plan to escape by land ship worried him, for her sake. He would have gone about leaving a different way. A trustworthy guide and a few camels would have bought them disappearance in the desert. They might have had to contend with bandit nomads, and he admitted he had never seen an enchantress ride a camel before. Still, he would have preferred the smaller party, fewer to mark their leaving. He had not challenged her decision because Chandur was not one to wince at where fate took him.
Destiny would be generous to Chandur, the priest had told him as much, but it would never let him marry Hiresha. He felt he owed it to the enchantress to tell her. The cleaner the cut the less chance to fester, he told himself. True, he felt he had the most important duty in the world protecting her, and happiness had stolen his powers of speech after hearing she planned to stay alive, in this world. But, no, nothing could exist between them. Fate is fate.
After a last check that his over robe covered him, Chandur ascended to the top of the steps. On the other side of the wall, ships floated above the sand. The vessels were bound to the docks by heavy ropes, their sails furled. Most bobbed above the sand drifts, telling Chandur that they had not weighed themselves down with cargo.
None of them will be weighing anchor without ballast. Chandur's fears played out, in that he found few sailors about. Most seemed to have gone on leave in the city. He had trouble finding anyone who would accept payment for passengers, or even a single ship captain to talk to.
One deckhand shrugged and gestured to the docks. “The captain isn't here. That's where he is.”
“Quite the severe shortage of captains,” Chandur said. “Know any ships riding the dunes tomorrow morning?”
“You mean before the Newborn Year? No pilgrims want passage 'til then.”
“I do.” Chandur pressed a coin into the man's hand.
“Then you're sure to be sore waiting.” The man hopped from the dock, over the long drop to the sands, and onto the ship.
Chandur sat on a post and cupped his chin, staring out into the desert. He figured Enchantress Hiresha had the coin to buy a ship and crew. She had not asked him to do that, and he thought it was because it would attract too much notice. If a captain changed plans with the dockmaster at the last moment, the guards would be wise to it. He had caught a few thieving merchants that way himself.
He needed a ship scheduled to leave tomorrow. Nothing for it, he thought, have to try the south docks.
A man stepped between him and the sun. “I always see beauty in its emptiness.”
Chandur stood to match the man's height. The figure wore the black shawl and vulture mask of a skin-stitcher, and his voice was muffled but familiar. The spellsword followed his gaze out onto the desert.
Wisps of sand rose from the peaks of dunes. The yellow and reds of the land met the blue of the sky in a battle of rippling air.
“No matter how many years I may live,” the skin-stitcher said, “I would never wish to leave this city. But I can understand why you do.”
“What?”
“The enchantress seeks flight, does she not?”
“What enchantress?” Chandur touched the cloth covering his face. He had not given himself away. A tightness spread from his chest down his right arm.
“You must forgive me.” The man pulled off his mask.
Chandur recognized the man's braided wig, and, yes, those eyes. He was the embalmer from the Water Palace. His face matched the desert: golden brown in tone, smooth in its ridges, and breathtaking.
The embalmer said, “I am used to identifying colleagues by their eyes and how they stand. You have a fearless stance.”
On his cheeks below each pupil descended a black streak of a camel's tail. The Founder's mark, Chandur thought. So he honors the god of hard work and truth. To his side and at the corner of the city, the step pyramid of the same god rose in square foothills of stone stacked on top of each other. Murals of oases colored the blocks green and blue, and painted men followed a colossus of a camel with the sun balanced on its hump.
Aware he had clasped his hands into fists, Chandur relaxed his arm. “She told me you were the one to warn her.”
“And she trusted her spellsword to help her.” The embalmer's smile was as white as a cheetah's.
“I'm to find a ship, one leaving tomorrow.”
“You are fortunate to have found me. I know of one.”
Chandur felt the hand of fate in this meeting. Relief pooled through him at the thought of a goddess guiding his future. “It casts off in the morning?”
“At noon.”
“Are there any before then?”
“No.” The embalmer still smiled, teeth edge to edge. “The only ship to leave this week.”
“Then it’ll do.” Chandur clasped the embalmer's arm in a sign of friendship. He felt a hardness of muscle. “We have saved her.”
“You have.” The embalmer returned the gesture. “No need to mention me. I think you two have a connection, and I shouldn't want anything to distance you from her. She is most fortunate.”
Chandur frowned under his turban. He wished Hiresha could have a fate as bright as his own, but he wondered if it was not meant to be. As he walked down the docks with the embalmer, he worried for her.
My future is victory and happiness and a family, he knew. Can't die until I have that. He was oath bound to give his life for Hiresha, and he would if he could. The fate given him warned Chandur that if it came to a balance of lives, something would prevent him from sacrificing himself for the enchantress.
He could only hope it was not her fate to die.
In the dimness of the next day's predawn, Fosapam Chandur checked the inn hallway for any servants awake as early as he. A glance downstairs showed three guards lounging in the common room. He crept past a display case holding historic coins, glinting with the faces of dozens of pharaohs all portrayed to look fit and noble and exactly the same.
The door to Hiresha's chambers opened to his touch. He locked it behind him.
Janny scowled. “You walk like a gouty elephant. Every servant must've heard you.”
“Sorry,” he said.
A curtain covered the window, and the light that seeped into the room came from a rent in the ceiling. Water dripped from the hole into an urn. Whitewashed rocks were piled in one corner while in another sat urns full of cloudy water.
“Um.” Chandur blinked up at the ruined ceiling. “I didn't hear any pickax crashing last night.”
“The rubble was Lightened during its fall,” Hiresha said. “Maid Janny used pulleys to press me against the ceiling. I slept, Attracted it down on top of me. Channeled the falling water from the recrystallization pool toward jewels in urns, using much the same enchantment employed to condense water vapor into the sky streams. Simple work, yet thank you for noticing.”
“Ah.” Chandur had also noticed today a henna design of lotus leaves spread from her eyes, in the fashion of a worshiper of the goddess of desire. A white dress of plain linen clung to her curves. A disguise, for her. He looked away, to the curtains. “Nothing against climbing through ceilings, but wouldn't it have been easier to use the window?”
“Someone is watching it.” She crossed her arms over her breasts. “Enough dawdling. The sun has risen. Maid Janny, the rug.”
Janny's knees creaked as she knelt. She unfolded a throw rug under the hole in the ceiling. Hiresha slid her slippered feet over the carpet's gold-thread design of a garden with palms. She squinted upward, blinked a few times, flicked her own earlobe—perhaps to wake herself—then leaped eight feet upward onto the roof.
When Chandur stepped onto the rug, he felt a Lightening enchantment breeze over him. The air seemed to thicken, pushing him, buoying him onto the balls of his feet. The instant that he jumped, his weight returned, but his unnatural momentum carried him through the hole to land beside Hiresha in the drained rooftop pool. Salt crunched under his feet.
Janny tossed Chandur a pack from the chambers. She said, “Not sure I have the bones for this sort of frog work.”
“Maid Janny,” the enchantress said, “if I can manage in half a doze, you can with half a mind.”
“But Fosapam could pull me up with this rope, couldn't he?”
“At once, Maid Janny.”
Grey turban leading, the middle-aged woman tumbled upward and landed on her bottom. She scuttled to her feet, glanced at the salt crusted on her backside. “Could you brush this off for me?” She winked at Chandur.
Hiresha stepped between them. A rope had been tied around Janny's waist, and the enchantress used it to pull up the throw rug. Janny took the rug, rolled it under an arm, and she followed Hiresha and Chandur to scramble onto an adjacent roof.
As Chandur stepped over the gap between the buildings, he thought he saw a woman staring up at him from an alley, a scar stretching across her face. He felt as if he swallowed water that was too cold, and it froze his stomach. Either the woman had been a servant who had risked the break of dawn, or she had waited outside the inn at night. Only Feasters went out under the stars, them and their prey.
She can't harm us now, he thought. It's light out.
They used the gilded carpet to spring between buildings farther apart. Landing in salt pools cushioned their fall but splattered their clothing. Chandur wore the same turban and over robes as the day before, with the bulk of his enchanted sword strapped to his back. Though his robes covered the blade and the turban was wound around its jeweled hilt, anyone could tell he carried something huge.
On one rooftop, a pool had dried to leave a snow of salt. Chandur had jumped first, and he Lightened his sword, landed, and bent his knees to absorb the impact, skidding on the white crystals. Not wanting the women to slip and strain something, he turned to catch them. Janny was the softer of the two.
After traveling a city block, they threw the rug down into an alley. Chandur dropped from the rooftop onto the gold patterning and felt as if he had fallen no more than an inch. Hiresha tilted away from the rug as she fell and would have smacked into the ground, but Chandur caught her again.
Janny called down. “She's doing it deliberate, you know.”
Chandur could not help but notice a red tint to the cloth between Hiresha's breasts as if she wore a jeweled necklace. He knew that could not be, though. Such pendants were engagement presents in Morimound culture.
Hiresha pushed out of his arms and began furiously scrubbing at the salt caked t
o her dress.
After Janny landed and tucked the rolled rug under her arm, the three of them set off toward the southern docks. They walked below two brass towers, and Chandur grinned up at the tall buildings. Colorful carvings ringed the structures in likenesses of wealthy men and women. He always found it hard to believe that each painted sarcophagus encased in the perimeter of the tower covered a mummy entombed in brass.
The enchantress, spellsword, and maid had to cross through the center of the city for a chance of reaching the docks by noon. Crowds had already begun to gather in the boulevards around the Pyramid of the Opal Mind, awaiting the procession of gods chosen for that day. Above the blocky roofs of countless white buildings, a gold chain coiled into the sky like a floating strand of sunlit hair. The pilgrims gaped as water wicked along the chain, growing into a stream in the sky.
Chandur did not believe he and Hiresha would be caught. His insides disagreed with him, prickling and tensing. To fulfill his good fate, he kept watch for guards. The camelry might think he and Janny looked like thieves lugging valuables. He blinked at the gold-embroidered rug.
“That's the inn's?”
“Maybe it is,” Janny said, “but we couldn't leave it on the street. Anyone might step on it and hurt herself.”
A guard sitting on a camel's hump came into view. Chandur felt the guard's gaze cut through him, but the spellsword continued as if he had nothing to fear, guiding the women to walk behind some tall tribesmen. After a few thick breaths, he decided the guard had not given chase.
Hiresha had them stop at the side of the pyramid so she could kneel before a false door, a rectangular indentation in the marble. Chandur worried someone might remember the oddity of a woman bearing the face paint of the Red Lotus praying to another goddess, the Opal Mind, but neither did he want to keep Hiresha from her devotions. Several baboons made of glaze rested in the alcove as offerings. The enchantress frowned down at the figurines then placed an opal among them. She closed her eyes, muttered a few words, and slumped forward in sleep.
Janny hauled her upright, waking her, and they were on their way again. Palms swayed and rustled overhead. High among the green fronds hung yellow and orange clusters of dates.
Fox's Bride Page 4