“You could wear it instead,” she retorted.
As they set out down the road again, Tarn fell back to ride beside Raif, who had been quiet throughout Aline’s complaints and Gard’s teasing. Now, without looking at Tarn, he said, “We wore this before the Savattin came.”
“For good reason?”
“There are some things only a lover or the eyes of God should see. The Savattin made it a matter of shame and power. It was beautiful once. My father’s most famous poem, the one that brought him the Shah’s favor, was called ‘The Unveiling.’ It was about my mother.”
“Your mother?” Tarn asked. He had not heard any mention of her before.
“She died, in the year the Savattin came. I should have had a sister, but the Savattin forbid women to practice medicine and banned male doctors from touching a woman’s flesh, and the midwife did not know enough to turn the child in time. And so I have neither mother nor sister.”
“I am sorry.”
“The worst of it,” Raif added, his voice very low and calm, “was that my mother herself was a doctor. She was the Shah’s own physician.”
“You must hate the Shadow.”
“No,” Raif said, surprising him. “It acts in obedience to its nature. There is a place for evil in the world. How else could we know that God is good? Those I hate are the men who choose to follow it. The Dual God shows us the way to live righteously. He who chooses to give in to the temptations of evil is more to blame than the tempter itself.”
Tarn stared at him, discomforted. The Shadow needed to be defeated. Only then could its victims be saved.
Gard rode up behind them. “You look very serious, for a day filled with sunshine and peaches.”
“We are discussing the nature of evil,” Raif said somberly. “No doubt it is a topic that would bore you, Great Desert.”
“Nobody respects me,” Gard complained. “And no doubt at all. We have to live with it. Why make things worse by talking about it as well? Now, off with you, boy. I want to shower Tarn with obscene compliments, and your blushing will put me off.”
Raif bowed his head politely. “Enjoy your obscenities, Great Desert.”
As he rode away, Tarn glanced over to Gard. “That was rude.”
Gard shrugged lightly. “I like the boy, and you were scowling at him. I don’t want to see him eaten.”
“I don’t eat people,” Tarn said, with exaggerated patience, and then narrowed his eyes. “I hope you don’t like him too much.”
“Why am I not surprised that you get jealous?” Gard sighed. “I’m in the mood for older lovers right now, which disqualifies, oh, most of the world. Satisfied? And I still do not believe that you have never nibbled on someone irritating.”
“Other than you? The most intelligent thing I have ever eaten was a goat.”
“Goats are people too,” Gard said earnestly. “Or, at least, they could be. How do we know that they do not see themselves as the equals of men? What, after all, makes someone….”
EVEN GARD’S good humor had faded by the time they rode through the third village. The scars of war surrounded them—trees burned from the fields and houses with their upper stories charred and empty. The blazing red fields began to make Tarn’s eyes ache, and the thin papery whisper of the wind over the poppies set his teeth on edge.
As they rode past, farmers stopped in the fields, watching them with blank, wary faces. Women in dark, ragged veils pulled their hollow-ribbed children back into the houses. No one looked directly into their eyes, and even Raif and Namik were treated with suspicion.
The air had grown hot as they moved away from the mountain slopes into the valley. The soil was yellow and dusty, and it blew across the worn cobbles of the road in slow plumes. In places the road itself was broken, stones pried up to leave soft, slippery dirt that the horses labored through.
“They have taken the stones to mend their houses and repair their wells,” Raif said as Namik conferred with the headman of the village, who sat in the shade beside the well. “Few travelers pass this way now, and there is no work save grubbing in the dusty fields to survive. The Savattin burned the vines and trees of those who defied them and gave the land to their own supporters. Their eyes are on us now. Watch what you say and do.”
Namik came back to them, looking troubled. It was not until they were well away from the village that he shared what he had discovered. The villagers knew that the Savattin had marched on Istel, and approved of the action. More worryingly, they reported that more battalions had gone marching through to answer a summons to the capital.
“So the place will be crawling with soldiers?” Aline asked, lifting her veil to mop at her face. “Lovely.”
“To call them soldiers is a little strong,” Raif said, listening to his father. “They are, for the most part, men who have given up all chance of finding work and have dragged themselves, their sons and cousins, and any weapons they might possess, to the capital to join the army.”
“Untrained hotheads, then,” she said flatly. “Even better.”
THAT NIGHT, Tarn was woken twice by Gard tossing and turning. Eventually, he gathered him close and rubbed his back until Gard stilled and then muttered sleepily, “I’m not a cat. Don’t stroke me.”
“You like it,” Tarn pointed out, because he could feel Gard’s cock swelling against his thigh. He reached down and stroked that instead, to be obliging, and asked, “Can’t sleep?”
“Mmm,” Gard murmured, lifting his hips into Tarn’s hand. “I can’t feel the desert. We’re days from the border now. Never been so far from home. Feels wrong.”
“For a few days, you are safe,” Tarn reassured him. “We held councils, and many elementals fought with our armies. As long as they returned home from time to time, they took no harm.”
“Well, that’s nice historical trivia,” Gard commented sourly, “but I still don’t like it. It itches.”
“Want me to distract you?” Tarn offered.
“So selfless.” But Gard closed his hand over Tarn’s own erection a moment later, and he turned his head to meet Tarn’s kiss.
Neither of them were fully awake, and they moved lazily against each other, building to a slow rise that suddenly had Gard groaning Tarn’s name as he came in a wet rush. Three more strokes against the slick heat pooling between them brought Tarn to his own climax, and he slumped against Gard happily, entwining their sticky fingers. “Mine.”
Gard sighed, but for once went to sleep without further argument, his hand still in Tarn’s.
THE NEXT day they caught their first glimpse of the army, marching along the road on the far side of the plains, their black-and-scarlet banners blazing under the sun. They seemed a vast and shambling mass from here, shrouded by the dust their march cast up.
Gard frowned at their direction and murmured fretfully, “They’re heading for the coast. I hope Essam is ready.”
“We have our own mission,” Tarn reminded him softly. “Trust Myrtilis to manage the desert.”
They didn’t come face-to-face with the army for a few more days. When they did, Raif and Namik had to talk fast to keep themselves and Zeki from being pressed. Once the suspicious officers finally released them, Namik led them off the side of the road and across the fields, trampling the bloodred poppies beneath their horses’ hooves.
After that, they traveled along tiny lanes and back roads, where the fields sometimes spilled across the road in bright trickles of papery red flowers. They met more people on these roads: old men leading donkeys weighed down with lumber, lines of solemn boys walking to schools in distant villages, old women in heavy black veils who were always, for some reason even Raif couldn’t explain, carrying chickens. The sound of distant trumpets haunted their ride, but the smaller villages on these quiet roads seemed more welcoming of strangers. They were greeted more than once by an evening gathering in the village square, filled with quiet music, played on flutes and three-stringed setars, and the solemn, gracious hospitality of th
ose who had almost nothing but shared it anyway.
Here, Aline responded, producing little packets of medicine and seeds to exchange for the bitter tea and flatbread they were offered. In the first village, a crowd gathered immediately, and Zeki suddenly explained, “There are no doctors. Not since the war came.”
“I’m only a field medic,” she muttered, but after that she worked with Namik and Cayl to treat what she could, vanishing into low mud-walled houses with anxious women while Tarn paced outside.
“Whatever happens,” she told him that evening as they camped by a thin brown river, “if you survive this, tell Myrtilis we have to get some of our medics traveling through here in disguise. These women are dying of things even I can treat, all because the Savattin won’t let doctors see their bare flesh.”
“We may have more important things to worry about,” he pointed out.
“This is important,” she snapped back.
They were all growing short-tempered as they began to approach the capital, the ground becoming steeper and rockier beneath them. Cayl and Aline spent endless hours quietly discussing and refining their plan, but Tarn barely listened. He trusted them to get him to the Shadow, but after that, it would just be him against his most ancient enemy. When things were that simple, there was no more need for plans.
He spoke with Namik instead, picking his way through the few words they shared to discuss far more abstract and lovely things than war and suffering. Gard sometimes deigned to translate, but he only cared for poetry and quickly began to yawn when the discussion moved to more intellectual matters. It was, inevitably, Raif who did most of the translation. He, like his father, rejoiced in philosophy, but whereas Namik’s views were tinged with a dry cynicism, Raif was an idealist, ablaze with certainty on the nature of good and evil and the moral standards that all men should meet.
“I dread the day when he is disappointed,” Gard said that night, half serious for once. They were out on guard together, and he had clambered onto a sloping rock to survey the sky, where the stars were scattered in blazing arrays. “All men become cynics in the end, though, from what I have seen.”
Tarn thought on it, considering those he had known and loved. “Save those who die too soon.”
“Let’s not,” Gard said, shivering, and slipped down off the rock to lean against Tarn instead. “Moonlight suits you, you know. All that pale hair turns silver.”
“We’re supposed to be on watch,” Tarn pointed out in amusement as Gard buried his hands in his hair, pushing his loose headscarf all the way off before coaxing him closer. “This is exactly what the Savattin would arrest us for.”
“Well, if we’re going to get arrested anyway,” Gard murmured and kissed him lightly, quick teasing brushes of his lips over Tarn’s mouth and jaw.
Tarn caught his face in his hands and turned it into a real kiss, slow, warm, and sustaining. Then he pulled back and reminded Gard, “We must keep watch. You’re too much of a distraction.”
“It’s not as if we could see anyone coming,” Gard grumbled. “Too many trees.”
Tarn eyed the thin scrub and low clumps of cypresses and chuckled, thinking of the towering forests of his previous home, where the very air was stained green and damp. “I’ll show you real trees one day, when this battle is done.”
Gard wrinkled his nose in distaste. “I don’t like trees, Tarn. Give me some nice rock formations any day. Far prettier, and much more likely to be amusingly shaped.”
Recalling some of the distinctly phallic rock pillars that decorated the desert, Tarn chuckled. Sitting down on the rock, he reached for Gard. “Come here.”
“Why?” Gard asked, but settled down between Tarn’s parted legs without any more argument. Tarn looped his arms around Gard’s waist and pulled him back against his chest.
“Watch for trouble,” he said, and hooked his chin over Gard’s shoulder, rubbing his cheek against Gard’s hair. “Kiss me later.”
“And to think people are scared of dragons,” Gard complained, but he leaned back against Tarn’s chest and let Tarn hold him without further complaint. He was a warm, solid weight in Tarn’s arms, and Tarn breathed in, calmed by the quiet of the night, and felt stronger with every moment that they shared.
THE NEXT morning they finally sighted the capital. Set within a low river valley, sheltered from the winds by the mountains on all sides, it still bore the traces of former glory. Pointed towers rose from the haze, caught by the thin golden light of dawn. Old walls wrapped around it, and the mist smoothed the ragged edges where the modern city had broken through in a spill of low brown houses. The river rushed along the western wall, gleaming like gold, and the mountains rose beyond it, silver washed and capped with clouds.
But even from here, Tarn could see that the vast stone lions over the gate had been beheaded, the scars of the axes showing pale against the age-dulled stone of their bodies.
The roads leading into the city seemed to writhe from a distance, filled with marching lines of soldiers converging on the camps that straggled around the city like a fraying hem.
“How do we pass that?” Aline asked, squinting down the mountainside.
Cayl turned to smile at her, although there was little humor in his eyes. “I say we pretend to be in the poppy trade. I did a favor for the Prince of Shara a few years ago. He’s one of those who sent us south in the first place, and I know enough about his court to be able to fake being a trade emissary.” He added reflectively, “And what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him, no matter how much he’d hate the idea.”
“Will his name get us in the gates?” Tarn asked.
“His name alone, no,” Cayl said, and his grin went sharper. “His signet, on the other hand….”
“Must have been some favor,” Aline commented.
Cayl shrugged. “There’s more than one reason I came with you. Let us ride.”
Chapter 26: Pledging
CAYL’S STORY, somewhat to Tarn’s surprise, got them through the gate. He suspected that had more to do with the press of the crowds than anything else. The guards looked bleary eyed and weary amid the roar of battalions marching in and townspeople trying to pour out, their valuables clutched to their chests. There were clashes, with steel ringing, horses bellowing, and children screaming, and Tarn’s shoulders were locked with tension until they fought their way off the main thoroughfare and into side streets.
He could see that Aline was just as tense even through her veils, her hand curling against her horse’s reins as if it gripped a sword, and he wondered if guards who were any more than half awake would have been taken in by her costume.
These narrower streets were busy too, with small crowds gathering anxiously on the corners. The old men eyed them suspiciously, and all conversation stopped as they passed, but no one stepped out of the shadows of the pocked and soot-stained walls to stop them.
“Where are we going?” Tarn asked Cayl quietly, scanning their surroundings nervously. The buildings were high, packed-mud walls without windows, but he could see movement on the rooftops, people watching them pass with frightened eyes.
“Sethan has a trade agreement with a member of the local merchants’ guild. I hate to pull Omay into our trouble, but we need fresh information and some shelter until we learn enough about the situation here to make our move. His home is in the northern quarter, not far from here.”
“Lead on,” Tarn said, and slowed his horse to travel at the rear again. The houses here looked poor, their facades flaking, and he shuddered as they passed a whole wall daubed with the symbol of the red fist, the paint still glossy.
The northern quarter was barely tidier. The plaster on the walls was a little fresher and the streets a little cleaner. There were a few shops open on the corners, all tended by sad-eyed women in dark veils, selling twists of bread, flat slabs of white cheese, and flowers that hung in wreaths as intricate as the embroidery on Tarn’s sleeves.
From the outside, there was nothing to mark the house the
y stopped at apart from its neighbors, save the intricate enameled gates, decorated with bluebirds among spiraling brass branches, that filled its entrance. A polished bell hung in the middle of the left gate, and Cayl rang it quickly.
The servant who came running was elderly, and clearly hard of hearing, as Cayl had to repeat his request a few times as the man bowed and argued. When at last he opened the gates to them, they passed along the covered passage at the side of the house and into chaos.
The house was built around a courtyard, with long shuttered windows on the southern walls, facing the sun. The courtyard was full of people and animals milling around a covered wagon as a loud argument raged. As they checked their horses, a rotund man pushed his way out of the mill and bowed a greeting to Cayl. He was balding and clearly anxious, his round face sweaty and heavy eyed.
“Peace be with you, Cayl Lattimar, and be welcome to my home. I am sorry, but I cannot offer you the hospitality I would in any other season. We are leaving for the country, and I dare not linger long.”
“I am sorry to hear it, Omay.”
“I am not sorry to go,” Omay said, rubbing the back of his hand against his forehead. “I have daughters, and the Red Fist’s soldiers have hungry eyes. This is no place for a trading man, not anymore.”
“I’m sorry,” Cayl said. “Do you have somewhere safe to go?”
“My wife has cousins, up in the sun’s own country, near the pass.” He sighed, patting his generous belly. “I’m too old to work the fields, but better a new trade than die in the old one. The Dark God does not favor fools.”
“And the Bright Lord blesses those who help themselves,” Raif murmured.
The comment was so soft that Tarn wasn’t sure it was meant for Omay, but it fell into a moment of quiet, and the merchant turned to look at Raif with an eager nod. Then he paused, his eyes widening as he stared at Raif and at Namik behind him, still in the shadows of the entranceway.
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