The spellsword did not flinch. Hiresha clawed her gloved fingers at the jewels stitched into their silk palms. She glared at the vizier, though he never bothered to notice. “I can vouch for Chandur,” she said. “Do not issue that order.”
The vizier ignored her and rolled a patterned cylinder over clay at the bottom of the scroll. His seal affixed, he passed it to a scribe who handled it with more care than a relic.
Hiresha stepped toward the scribe, knowing through her haze of weariness only that she had to destroy that edict before it killed Chandur. Two royal guards blocked her with the shafts of their polearms.
“The city,” the vizier said, “is willing to countermand the spellsword's sentence. If four conditions are satisfied.”
Her relief for Chandur came with a twisting sense of doom. “Four conditions?”
“Enchantress Hiresha will bequeath her Morimound estate and the entirety of her movable assets to the city.” The vizier handed another scroll to a scribe.
“Your sign here.” The scribe pressed a quill into her grasp.
“A family is living in that manor.” Hiresha's hand trembled as she thought of forcing the widow and her children out. She also assumed the empire would take Hiresha’s stores of jewels in the Academy, which amounted to most of what little she had accumulated in her life.
The vizier began writing again. “The monies are necessary restitution to the captains whose ships were destroyed today.”
“You can't blame me for that faulty pursuit.”
The vizier matched Hiresha's shout with a whisper. “Neither would I blame the priests their rashness in trying to recover the divine fennec, considering the city stands to lose an estimated fifty-seven hundred thousand ounces of silver per day the god is missing.”
One glance at Chandur firmed her resolve. She beckoned to Maid Janny, who gave the enchantress an ebony stick. Hiresha pricked her tongue with one end to prime its enchantment. Touching the other end to the scroll caused ink to flow outward into the circular design of a diamond uniquely faceted.
Hiresha flung the signing stick onto the glass floor. I'll earn new gems, she promised herself, and live long enough to craft them.
“The Golden Scoundrel must be retrieved,” the vizier said, “before his scheduled procession tomorrow afternoon.”
“By tomorrow?” Her mind contorted around the idea of finding a fox that tiny in a city this large.
The vizier did not even look at his scribe when he handed the next papyrus. “An individual must be executed for absconding with the god. The masses will demand it. It is up to you to provide an alternative.”
Hiresha dared to hope she would find the fennec with whoever had stolen him. That is three conditions. She feared she already knew the last. “I assume the fourth condition is for me to…marry the fennec.”
The vizier's quill hesitated above a scroll. “That event was assumed.”
“And you want more from me? If you'd force me into a sarcophagus, be sure I'll have nothing good to say about you to my divine husband.”
“The Opal Mind may see fit to interpose on my behalf.” He brushed a quill feather below his eye and the likeness of a baboon in kohl paint, a sign of dedication to the goddess.
Hiresha fumed at him. She worshipped the Opal Mind, too, after a fashion. “The Opal Mind was the greatest enchantress, and a human woman. She most decidedly lacked opposable toes.”
“She was also vizier and scribe who gained the essence of a wise animal upon ascent to divine death.” Gloss shimmered up and down the length of his false beard as he spoke. “They said you could have been as great.”
Hiresha took that as an invitation to plead her case. “Vizier Ankhset, my research discovers new curative enchantments every year. You mustn't allow the priests to wed me to a tomb.”
“Enchantress, you overestimate me. I am but another servant of the empire.”
“You have the influence to—”
“An empire whose merchants would panic if their god of fortune is lost, if his bride abandons him. Frightened merchants lead to weak trade. Weak trade leads to a weak empire, and a weak empire leads to invasion.” Stabbing his quill into the papyrus broke the feather. A scribe handed him a new one.
The enchantress was not ignorant to the implications. The bloodthirsty Dominion of the Sun would have invaded long ago if not for the barriers of the desert and the Sea of Fangs. She squinted at the lords and ladies in the palace and found the Dominion’s ambassador by his winged-sun tattoo. He wore the familiar monotony of white linen, but his necklace of green feathers and jaguar teeth spoke to his homeland. The ambassador stood out of earshot yet still smirked at Hiresha as if he knew her every secret.
Despite the vizier’s claim, Hiresha believed she could serve her empire best by staying alive to craft enchantments. She worried her opinion would be moot with her own lands seemingly determined to sacrifice her.
She swallowed, feeling the chilling absence left by hope slipping away. The growing dread could not match her fatigue, and she listed to the left. She thought she saw Chandur try to stand to steady her, but a guard shoved him down.
Gasping back to near wakefulness, Hiresha found herself gazing past the vizier to the transparent wall. Through the curtain of flowing water, a pyramid swayed and rippled at the center of the city. An idea came to her. “The Opal Mind promised that her tomb would float, yet the pyramid has stayed remarkably land bound.”
“It is sacrilege to say the Opal Mind made a mistake.”
“If the fourth condition is to repair the enchantment, I'll require more than three days. You'll have to nullify the engagement.”
The vizier said, “The final condition involves a matter more pressing to Pharaoh and thus of supreme importance to the Oasis Empire.”
Three notes of melody pinged off the palace walls. Hiresha straightened at the chiming, and only as the pure sounds began to quiet their throbbing did she recognize them as laughter.
All conversations among the nobles died. One lady lowered to her knees while mouthing a word Hiresha thought she recognized. Pharaoh.
The scribe holding up the writing table cleared his throat and lifted another papyrus to the vizier. He rapped his staff on the crystal floor and read in a voice toneless and dry.
“Pharaoh Nephrynthian, She Who Sings Beauty for the Red Lotus, the Blessed of the Golden Scoundrel, the Honor of the Founder, Commander of the Army of a Thousand Stings...”
Lords and ladies threw themselves to the ground. Even the vizier knelt, still reciting.
“...Instrument of the Opal Mind, Ward of the Plumed God, Ruler of....”
Hiresha lowered a knee through the slit in her dress. Before she could bow, a girl ran to her and assaulted her with an embrace.
“You've come to cure my kitten!”
The closeness of that voice forced Hiresha to gasp. She could do no more than gawk at the girl who had trapped her in a delicate hug.
Rapture spread the girl's smile from ear to ear, her teeth isolated pegs in a gummy mouth. Her face was mainly lips and forehead, topped with a melon of a crown made of blue silk. A golden camel ornamented the crown, which dug into Hiresha's cheek once more before Pharaoh released her.
“Where's my kitten? Where's Sandy?”
Pharaoh clapped her hands with a splatting sound. Her fingers did not close together, and Hiresha thought there must be something malformed about them.
A servant hurled himself forward, sliding over the crystal tiles to lift a cat into Pharaoh's waiting arms. She twirled once, tipped close to falling, then combed that cat's fur with her stiff and twitching fingers. She hummed to her pet, and the strength of her voice pulsed in the air.
Only after the shivering tones subsided could Hiresha speak. “Do you lead me to believe that this girl is in charge of the greatest mercantile alliance the Lands of Loam have ever seen?”
“And ever heard!” Pharaoh's grin was engulfing. “I only rule on the important things, like what color fl
owers to use, the sound of happiness, and the sum of stars and hope!”
An inbred fluff-head on the throne, Hiresha thought, with a murderous vizier ruling the empire. At least she could assume the vizier was efficient. The last pharaoh's corpulent body had never been found, and he had weighed more than a carriage.
The cat was thrust into Hiresha's arms. “My kittens keep turning into mummies! So much less cute. You have to help Sandy!”
A purr rattled with mucus. Whiskers trembled. The small creature shuddered in Hiresha's hands, its breath whistling. Half the cat's golden fur had fallen out. Two of its white paws felt feverishly hot against Hiresha's thumb.
Hiresha approved of cats. They hunted vermin and did not forcibly marry enchantresses. As the kitten shivered against her, her gloved fingers stroked its whiskered cheeks, and she found herself eager to begin. An enchantment could secure the kitten's health. If only the other conditions could've been so easy.
“I will need a jewel,” Hiresha said.
The nobility surged forward. “I have a ruby for Pharaoh's cat.”
“My sapphire will suit better.”
“They're fakes. This is true Morimound diamond.”
“Take this topaz, from the empire's most devoted servant.”
Some went as far as to shove their gemstone rings and necklaces onto the enchantress. A citrine brooch was pressed against Hiresha's breast, and she cupped the yellow jewel in her purple glove.
“Now I require a place to sit. To contemplate.”
As she stepped forward to find a chair, her sleep-heavy eyes sagged. Her slipper landed on a dropped necklace, and her leg whooshed outward. Elder Enchantress Hiresha—a ringing embarrassment in her chest—toppled forward to land on the sand cat, in front of a crowd of the aghast.
Spellsword Chandur watched as a necklace of glittering blue shot out from under Hiresha's foot. Eyes bulging, he saw that the maid was not there to help. She had stolen off in search of wine. The nearest guard looked too surprised to reach Hiresha in time.
Chandur heaved himself forward. Muscles in his thighs and waist tightened as he strained and broke free from the grasps of the men holding him. The heat of his blood thumped within his neck.
She was tipping forward, the small cat in her arms.
Reaching out to pull her upright, Chandur felt the bite of the wood shackling his hands. He could have given up then, but he knew it was not his fate to allow Hiresha to drop in front of the empire's nobility.
Ducking in front of the enchantress, he pressed upward against her with his shoulder. His boot squeaked as he wrapped a leg around one of hers and used the leverage to right her.
“Thank you.” Her words were the faint sounds of a woman drifting toward sleep.
Only then did Fosapam Chandur notice twenty blades lowered at him. The royal guards had formed a wall of cutting bronze between himself and Pharaoh. A few of them stalked toward Chandur, but they stopped when Hiresha supported herself on his arm. All the court peered at her holding Pharaoh's kitten.
Hiresha's eyes only blinked open once every few breaths. He did not understand how she saw her way as she staggered forward, between the kneeling men and women, toward three seats: two thrones and a stool. The cushioned throne of the empire resembled a couch, except with no back and more jewels. A second throne of silver crouched on a lower dais, and for a teeth-gritting moment, Fosapam Chandur feared Hiresha intended to sit on it. Crocodiles formed the armrests, mouths shiny with fangs. A stool of inlaid ebony sat next to the Silver Crocodile's Throne. She'll sit on the stool, he thought. She has to have heard of the Silver Crocodile.
The enchantress sat on the silver throne. The room gasped. Fosapam Chandur could not move, worried that whatever he did would disrupt fate.
Hiresha blinked then got up. “What is the point of a chair no one's to sit on?”
Pharaoh's peal of laughter ripped away all tension and replaced it with breathlessness. “Don't you worry. I sat on the Crocodile's Throne once and look! I haven't been eaten!”
With Hiresha safe on the stool, she rested the kitten on her lap. Fosapam Chandur hoped she could help the poor soul. It reminded him of an alley cat he had once given a saucer of milk, except two bands of dark fur wrapped around the forelegs of this desert kitten.
“Maid Janny,” Hiresha said, “my gloves.”
The maid hustled into view, set down two wine glasses, then coaxed off the enchantress' elbow-length gloves. Hiresha wrapped her arm back around Chandur's elbow.
“Spellsword Chandur, support me.” Her fine-boned hands nestled around the kitten. She bowed forward, and her hair curtained her face and most of the little cat. A sheen of white traveled down her black locks.
Concern for what she was doing dried his throat. First, sitting on a chair dedicated to the Silver Crocodile. Now, breaking an Academy rule by enchanting in front of all these people. A spellsword could be imprisoned for telling the trade secret of enchantresses only being able to cast spells while asleep. She was doing both, with an audience.
The spellsword lifted a concerned brow at Janny. She shrugged and raised a wine glass to his lips. He wetted his parched throat then bowed his head in thanks.
When the enchantress fell asleep, light from her amethysts turned half the silver throne violet. Reflected sparks of light traced over faces stretched with awe. Chandur listened to the guest's loud whispers.
“Look, she's dipping into her magic.”
“Are we quite safe?”
“Never seen an enchantress cast before.”
Chandur began to think that none of them realized she was sleeping. Though her shoulders bowed, the nobles seemed to believe she only concentrated. Guess they don't expect her to sleep sitting, in front of them all and Pharaoh, too. No other enchantress could have done it, that much he knew. Gratitude for her skill eased the tension constricting Chandur's abdomen. She'll help the kitten then find the fennec and the thief. I won’t have to meet the scorpions.
An exquisite note of pleasure sliced out of Pharaoh's mouth, and she lunged past her guards toward the shining enchantress. Spellsword Chandur was afraid she would wake Hiresha. He sidestepped as far as he could while still supporting the enchantress, nudging Pharaoh back with the wooden block of his shackles.
The vizier and his scribes had shuffled next to the dais of thrones. He leaned close to Chandur and doused him with a breath potent with the scent of sesame oil. “Did you just lay hands on Pharaoh?”
“Don't think I could have.” Fosapam Chandur lifted the block of wood covering his hands. Pharaoh was grinning up at him.
“In the reign of Queen Sting,” the vizier said, “eleven men were drowned in sand for touching the pharaoh. A relevant bit of trivia, you could say.”
“I didn't—”
“It would be a travesty for the elder enchantress to secure your pardon, only for a second crime to demand your execution.”
The spellsword told himself that he was not fated to be tied to the bottom of a pit and have sand poured over his head. He felt less than comfortable when Pharaoh swung herself around his arm. She hugged him, and though her grip was light, he could not breathe.
Her smile came up to the height of his chest. She was taller than a girl, but neither did she look like a woman. Fosapam Chandur thought something was different about her face, something otherworldly. It was not only the lotus leaves painted over her plump cheeks.
She asked, “Don't you love being in love?”
“Ah, what now?” He shifted in her clutches. He glanced to Hiresha, still asleep and pulsing with light.
Pharaoh beckoned him with a stiff hand.
He lowered his head, to hear what she had to say.
She pecked his lips then drew back and gasped. “You kissed me!”
“I didn't. You—”
Her lips darted in a second time. “You kissed me again! Vizzy, he kissed me!”
The vizier did not look up from his writing. “Must the city smother him in sand, Pharaoh
?”
“No!”
“Brand his palms?”
The spellsword's blood scalded his veins. He felt hot and sick, buffeted between rulers of the empire, and he had to remind himself of the bright future the Priest of the Fate Weaver had promised him.
“No!” Pharaoh clung onto the spellsword's scaled vest. “Can't you see we're in love?”
“Forgive me, Pharaoh. My eyesight must be deteriorating.”
Fosapam Chandur snapped his gaping mouth closed.
Enchantress Hiresha swayed to her feet. Her amethysts no longer glowed. She rubbed one hand over a handkerchief provided by Janny. She then secured the yellow-jewel brooch to the kitten's collar. “The discharge in the sand cat's lungs is removed. This citrine should prevent further infection from the damp air.”
“Sandy!” Pharaoh launched herself at the cat. In her arms, he mewed triumphantly, slapping her face with his short tail. “Oh, Sandy. I love you more than all my mummy cats together!”
She ran off with the kitten, her squeals echoing down the palace halls. The vizier rapped his staff twice, and the nobles stood, some with hands pressed to their sore necks or backs.
“Pilgrims admire a creative execution,” the vizier said, looking past Chandur's right shoulder. “For every infidel sentenced to excruciating death, the city earns an average of seventeen hundred thousand ounces of silver.”
“I didn't kiss her,” the Spellsword said.
“Are you pronouncing Pharaoh a liar?”
“No. But she...that is we may have by accident....”
“What is this?” Hiresha touched his arm with a hand once again gloved, drawing him away from the vizier, for which he was more than relieved. “If you will excuse us, Vizier Ankhset, I should begin the search for my fiancé.”
“I would bow to you, Enchantress,” the vizier said, taking three more papers from his scribes, “but I am simply too busy.”
Chandur followed the enchantress out of the Water Palace. One noble left in front of her, and a young man led an ostrich to his master. A sedan chair waited for Hiresha. A pack of camelry guards waited for Chandur.
Fox's Bride Page 7