by Evie Manieri
A scrap of memory floated through his mind: walking Ravindal’s battlements on a seamless Norland night, listening to the wolves howl, breathing in the cosy scent of wood fires on the sharp air, watching the lights from the town of Ravinsur twinkling far below. He had been alone then, but not lonely, not like now. he told her.
He noticed the jug of wine she had presumably brought for him left out on the table. Beads of sweat rolled lazily down its side.
Frea circled around to the opposite side of the table and jerked another chair underneath her.
Rho wasn’t flattered; intelligence was a quality she neither liked nor admired. At the same time, he couldn’t help but notice the way her left hand rested on the table, with her white wrist visible between the top of her gloves and the sleeve of her shirt, and he found himself staring fixedly at that sliver of naked flesh.
Her warning slapped into his mind, but he didn’t flinch. Whatever she was planning, it had put her in a position he had never believed possible: Frea needed him.
There was a sour taste in the back of Rho’s mouth and he took another swig of wine.
He was stroking her forearm, lightly but insistently, and he saw her fingers move, responding to his touch. Then she stood up suddenly, knocking the table, and he caught the jug just before it fell. Wine sloshed over his hands and ran onto the table and the floor.
Frea looked down at him. Her words fell softly into his mind: the stillness of a frozen lake, a moonless winter night.
And then she told him her plan, and he marvelled at how badly he’d underestimated her ambition. He had thought only of the damage the boy’s power could do in the Shadar, but Frea had seen beyond that: she had seen a weapon that could turn other weapons against those who wielded them. Her genius for mayhem took his breath away.
Frea took the jug and drained it to the bottom.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
They landed on the roof instead of in the stables: Harotha’s idea. Jachad had never driven a triffon before – if that was even the right term – but he followed the same advice he had given the Shadari and tried to do as little as possible. To keep himself from thinking about the ground far below them, he’d told Harotha a tall tale about how his third cousin’s wife had given birth to her son in a crow’s nest in the middle of a gale, with a gull for a midwife and the ship’s flag for swaddling. Harotha had laughed and then in her calm, competent manner pointed the way to a well-concealed trapdoor and a staircase that, judging by the dust, hadn’t been used in decades. She didn’t tell him how she had found out about it, and he didn’t ask.
He should have asked her to stay with him a little longer – at least until he had his bearings – but she’d gone her own way as soon as they breached the temple without giving any indication of her destination or her intentions. So now she was gone and he was lost – and he badly needed to find Meiran, because the moment he’d heard of Shairav’s death, he’d known something had gone very wrong.
He turned another corner to find corridors branching out on both sides, blank walls vanishing into darkness. He looked back the way he had come: nothing but darkness. The air was stifling, making it hard for him to think clearly, but he took a deep breath and tried to dispel the panic that was beginning to prick at him. He’d always hated the temple, and never more than at this moment.
As he hesitated, he heard a rustling sound from somewhere behind him and he hastily slipped back into the shadows, pressing his back up against the wall. A few moments later a Shadari woman passed by, moving quickly and keeping close to the wall. She was cradling a largish jar protectively against her chest. For lack of a better plan, he decided to follow her; wherever she was headed, she meant to get there fast and that was good enough for him.
He followed her carefully, waiting for her to turn each corner before dashing forward, peering ahead and then waiting again, all the while looking for some familiar object or mark. All of the walls and doorways looked the same – so it came as a shock when the next corner revealed the woman not six feet away, speaking furtively to a group of four or five Shadari men. Just beyond them loomed one of the entrances to the stables. If the rest of the temple felt empty, it was because everyone appeared to be there; he could see the great cavern ablaze with light and swarming with activity.
‘I think it’s all right,’ he heard one of the Shadari say. ‘So many soldiers came in at once they never noticed the place was unguarded. Good thing you thought to move the bodies of those guards when you did, Omir.’
‘How close are they to flying out?’ asked someone else.
‘We have some time. The dereshadi are still being fed and watered, and the saddles haven’t even been brought down yet – it must be hard to get so many ready without Shairav. He would have—’ The speaker broke off abruptly. ‘I’m sorry. I—’
‘No, no – it’s all right,’ said the other speaker. ‘That big pile on the other side, that’s the one. It’s nice and dry. If we get enough oil on that, it’ll go up fast.’
‘Will the fire be enough
to make the dereshadi bolt?’
‘I think so – there’s no way to know for sure, but we’ve been over this already and no one’s come up with a better idea, have they? The White Wolf is planning something big and we’ve got to stop her, or at least slow her down. All right, give me the jar, I’ll do it.’
‘No, Daryan – one of those soldiers might recognise you as Lord Eofar’s servant. I’ll take it.’
Jachad heard the other man laugh warmly. ‘Omir, you’re a lot of things, but inconspicuous isn’t one of them.’
Daryan? Startled, he took a closer look. He had seen Daryan many times during his previous trips to the temple, and he would never have guessed that confident voice had come from Eofar’s unassuming, spiritless servant. Here was another change – and changes were crowding in thick and fast, every place he looked, affecting everyone he met. He suddenly remembered a play he’d seen once at Prol Irat: with no warning, and for no apparent reason, the principal actor had abruptly left the stage. The other actors, completely at a loss, had stayed in their places, marking time: the scribe kept on writing his letter, his head bent low over his desk; the young girl with a heap of sewing in her lap stitched, and stitched, and stitched, her cheeks burning with embarrassment; the stony-eyed servant stood mutely beside his master’s empty chair, awaiting his command. Ever since Meiran had left the Nomas, his life had been trapped in that same tense, endless pause, and now he realised for the first time that he was not the only one. The actor had returned to the stage at last, and now the play rushed on.
‘I stole the oil. I’ll do the rest, too,’ the woman offered. There were protests, more volunteers, but Jachad turned his attention away: he was now fairly certain he knew where he was, and he was just about to go when he heard something that shifted his attention back to the Shadari.
‘When is the Mongrel supposed to be here?’
‘She said before sundown, so she should have been here already,’ Daryan said anxiously. ‘Isa and Eofar should have been here by now too. The Mongrel’s supposed to draw the guards away so they can escape without being seen. If she doesn’t come, we’ll have to think of something else.’
‘The White Wolf may have already have found them. They may already be dead.’
‘No, they’re not. I don’t know about the Mongrel, but Eofar and Isa are on their way, I know it. You’ll just have to trust me.’
Jachad didn’t wait to hear the rest. The Shadari had confirmed his misgivings: all was not going according to Meiran’s plan. He went quickly, sure of the route now. A few moments later he was standing in Shairav’s chambers, staring down at the corpse laid out on the bed.
The old man had been arranged with the utmost decorum: hands folded, eyes closed, brow smooth and composed. Even in death his mouth had set in its typical self-satisfied line. Jachad had been in this chamber many times before, taking orders from Shairav for rugs, cushions, urns, ornaments; he’d stand in the doorway making small-talk while the old man counted out his payment. He remembered the effort it took to keep his broad smile from slipping as he imagined the coins tossed so carelessly into his hand steeped in Meiran’s blood. He remembered how badly he had wanted to clasp his burning hands around the old priest’s throat and make him beg for the mercy he’d never offered her.
With a disgusted breath, he puffed out the flame in his hand. He had already noted the bar of light in the corner and he knew what it signified. He made his way to the opening and slid through – and stopped short.
He let out a low whistle. The chamber looked as if it had been torn apart by wild dogs. Every object had been smashed, crushed, or pulled to bits, every scrap of cloth ripped to shreds. Dolls’ heads, bodies, arms and legs were bleeding out their sandy innards among the broken furniture. A puddle of flaming oil from an overturned lamp was slowly spreading outwards across the floor. He hurried to stomp out the wayward flames.
‘Don’t do that.’ Her low voice came from just behind him, but when he spun around, he couldn’t see anyone. ‘Doesn’t Shof love fire? Wouldn’t he like to see it all burn?’
Finally he found her sitting with her back up against the wall, surrounded by the wreckage. She’d pushed the patch up onto her forehead and her mismatched eyes were swollen and bloodshot. He stamped out the last few flames, then carefully righted the still-burning lamp and sat down on the bed. He watched her in silence for a long moment. Her face looked strangely naked in the low light; the gentle flickering smoothed over her scars and it was if the years had been wound back, as if everything that had happened to her, everything she’d done, had been erased. And he was surprised to find he didn’t like it – he had come to see the scars as a part of her; without them, she seemed incomplete. He found the realisation disturbing, and wondered which of them it said more about.
Suddenly a memory whisked him away to the desert nights of his youth, to the tent he and Meiran had shared, to the stillness that descended after the voices and music of the Nomas had been replaced by the lonely sound of the tent-ropes singing in the cold wind, and to the memory of pretending to sleep so that he might watch her staring up at the brightly-striped cloth rippling above their heads. Her face, her expression – they had been just the same all those years ago, and just like then, he wished he could go to her and stroke her dark hair and lie with her until those depthless, mismatched eyes finally found sleep.
He picked up a wooden sword and toyed with it aimlessly, until at last he asked, ‘Are you all right?’
Her eyes lost focus. ‘I’m tired, Jachi.’
He rubbed his forehead and huffed out a long sigh. ‘Why don’t you go home, then?’ he suggested.
‘Isn’t that what I’ve done?’
‘Not here.’ He stood up and hurled the wooden sword across the room. It made a satisfying crash as it banged into the wall and rattled to the floor. ‘I mean home – with me. In the desert.’ He clasped his fingers behind his neck and shut his eyes, trying not to sound pleading as he said, ‘Leave it, Meiran. Whatever it is, whatever you came here for, just leave it. Come home with me – tonight. Mother is there. She’s crazy to see you, you know.’
‘Nisha?’ she asked softly, with just the hint of a plaintive look in her eyes.
‘She’s waiting with the others, just on the other side of those mountains. Meiran, let’s get out of this – this damned tomb.’
She stood up to meet him, but it was a lurching movement, starkly at odds with her usual grace.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked again, and this time the question was not rhetorical; as she reached up and pulled the eye-patch down over the Norlander eye he caught sight of her bloody knuckles and the fresh scrapes on her forearms. But the cuts weren’t the cause of her shallow breathing, or the tension throbbing in her neck and shoulders; she was in pain.
His eyes searched for the bulge of the flask under her vest. ‘Where’s your medicine?’
‘Gone.’
‘Is there more somewhere?’
She gasped out a ragged laugh. ‘No.’
‘Meiran.’ His hand just brushed her arm. ‘Come on. Let’s go.’
‘All right,’ she said, then added, ‘to the Shadar. Not the desert.’
‘The Shadar? Why?’ he demanded. ‘What for?’
She stared mutely back at him, unblinking, as silent as a stone.
‘Oh, for Shof’s sake,’ he cried, ‘Eonar is dead. Shairav is dead. That’s enough death, isn’t it, even for you?’
A hostile spark flashed in her brown eye and she moved her arm away from him. He flushed and felt the warmth of flames tickling over his palms. He was angry with her – and angry with himself too, though he didn’t know why. ‘You don’t even seem surprised to see me here, after you left me behind. Aren’t you at all interested in how I got here?’
‘Isn’t that what you do?’ she asked, as she moved away from the wall. She kicked a broken chair out of her way. ‘Follow me around?’
Fury burned in his chest like acid. He tried to control himself a
s she disappeared through the doorway, but a moment later he went charging after her. He needed to confront her, to make her tell him what she wanted here, or he’d force her hand one way or the other. If she meant to hurt someone, anyone, he would stop her.
But when he came through the doorway, he found her collapsed over a chair, convulsing, fighting for air.
‘I can’t breathe,’ she choked out. She was shivering violently, but when he gathered her into his arms, her skin was as dry as paper and much too hot. He settled her down in the chair and looked around for water, but he couldn’t see a jug or waterskin anywhere. The sight of the impassive corpse infuriated him, setting flames dancing in his hands. He snuffed out the fire with a clench of his fists and grabbed a blanket from a nearby chest.
‘Here,’ he said, wrapping her up. She had stopped convulsing, but her stillness was more like paralysis than ease. In the faint light shining in from the other room he could see that her eyes were squeezed shut and her mouth was open. Each breath was a tiny moan of pain.
He found her sudden and total vulnerability unbearable. ‘Some interesting things are happening up here,’ he babbled, trying to overlay the sound of her torment with his gossipy chatter, as if the two of them were lounging in a tavern over a carafe of wine. He wanted to rid himself of the image of her tortured face, but it hung there in the darkness in front of him, full of reproach. ‘The Shadari are determined to keep Frea in the temple, at least for tonight – sounded to me like they’re planning to light a fire in the stables and frighten the triffons into bolting before she can leave, which is not a bad idea. But they’re going to help Eofar and Isa escape first, isn’t that odd? I suppose that’s Daryan’s doing. I’m surprised he’s so loyal to Eofar, but maybe that was Harotha’s idea. It was certainly brave of her, flying back here with me, but I think she may be too courageous for her own good. I hope she gets out with Eofar – I don’t like to think of her trapped up here – but I’m afraid she might not leave without Dramash. You remember him, don’t you, from the tavern? Cute little thing; a little precocious, maybe. I sort of had an idea that he might—’ He stopped as he felt a tug at his waist.