by Evie Manieri
She caught him with her right arm as he fell, but she couldn’t hold him. She dropped to her knees in the sand, cradling his quaking body against her chest. Using her own body to shield him from the sun, she pulled open the clasps of his cloak and pulled up his shirt.
He was right: she couldn’t possibly lift Rho into the saddle by herself, not one-handed. But she couldn’t just leave him lying on the beach, burning in the sun. Squinting against the glare, she saw a cluster of rocks not far to her right.
His lips moved against hers and his eyes opened again.
She ran back to Aeda, slid Fortune’s Blight from the saddle, and ran back, but by the time she reached him, he was unconscious again. She laid the sword vertically across his body with the hilt on his chest. Then she took his limp hands and closed his fingers around the hilt.
She picked her way over the flaming sands to Dramash. She had no idea what to say to him, how she would convince him to come with her, but he came forward to meet her and followed her without a word, as if he already understood. She helped him clamber up into Aeda’s saddle, and he buckled the straps of the harness himself, all the time as silent as a Norlander.
A few moments later they were setting down in the middle of the ruined palace, where a small crowd had reformed around Daryan and Omir. Most of them scuttled back against the walls as Isa landed, but Daryan ran forward to meet them.
‘Thank the gods,’ he called out in a strained voice as he ran up to Aeda. ‘You got him back— You just took off after Frea, and I didn’t know— What happened? Are you all right?’
Dramash undid the harness and slipped down off Aeda’s back into Daryan’s arms. The hush in the ruined hall was so intense that the clinking of the buckles rang out like claxons. Then the boy walked to Aeda’s huge head and began stroking the fur between her ears. Aeda lowered her head and narrowed her eyes with pleasure.
Isa stayed in the saddle, looking down from beneath the shadows of her cowl at the reins twisted around her fingers.
‘My sister is dead.’
‘Isa,’ Daryan breathed quietly. He stepped closer to Aeda’s neck so that she could see his face as he looked up at her. His dark eyes looked softly into hers. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sure you had no other choice.’
‘I must go. I must find a healer for Rho. I had to leave him on the beach. He’s hurt very badly.’
‘No, don’t go!’ he cried, very softly, but turned at the sound of someone running towards them.
‘Daimon!’ the breathless man called out as he neared them. The messenger caught sight of Dramash and decided to stop a good ten paces away. ‘Daimon, your wife is in need of you,’ he said more formally. ‘They sent me to fetch you – they say you should come at once.’
‘All right,’ Daryan said. The messenger quickly moved away from them, but stood waiting for Daryan to follow. ‘I have to go too,’ he told her, staring straight ahead at Aeda’s bristly hide.
‘Rho wants you to take Dramash. You and Harotha.’
‘Harotha will know what to do with him,’ he agreed. He glanced around at the crowd, at the messenger waiting for him, and then at Dramash, still standing by Aeda’s head. ‘They’re all afraid of him now.’ He swallowed, and then looked up at her again. ‘Are you all right?’
She twisted the reins in her hand. ‘No.’
‘Isa,’ he said, miserably. He made the slightest of movements towards her, and then checked himself. ‘I have to go.’ He held his hand out to Dramash and together they walked after the messenger.
Chapter Forty-Five
The messenger guided Daryan and Dramash through a district that had largely escaped the fires to an unassuming house with smoke streaming from the chimney and a Nomas woman waiting in the doorway.
‘Hello again, Daimon,’ she greeted him. It took a moment for him to recognise her as one of the women he had encountered in the street just before the temple exploded. He regarded her with unease. Her jaunty greeting felt forced and her face was grave. She moved aside and he started towards the doorway, but then stopped, seeing the Nomas king sitting by himself in the shadows. Jachad was leaning up against the wall of the house, and his eyes were trained on the ground. He appeared to be staring at nothing.
‘King Jachad?’
The Nomas looked up at him. A glance into his blue eyes, and suddenly the last thing Daryan wanted to do was to go into that house.
Then he heard a faint sound that he had heard only a handful of times before in his life: the mewing wails of a newborn child.
‘Harotha had the baby?’ he cried out, rushing forward and seizing the Nomas woman by the arm. ‘He’s all right?’
‘He’s more than all right,’ she whispered significantly. Her mouth broke into a wide smile as she pulled back the curtain and ushered Daryan and Dramash inside. ‘He’s the most beautiful baby I’ve ever seen.’
The interior of the house was dim. Three more Nomas women were inside: one silently stirring a pot of tea over the hearth, a second on her knees replacing instruments and pots of medicines into a case, and the third sitting with her back against the wall outside the curtained sleeping chamber, absently plucking at some linens jumbled up in her lap. A breeze rustled the curtain next to her as they entered, revealing a murmur of voices and a flicker of lamplight in the small chamber beyond. Then Daryan noticed the familiar shape of Strife’s Bane, with its twin dereshadi climbing the hilt, leaning up against the wall in its tooled scabbard.
‘Eofar! He’s here?’ Daryan cried out.
‘Of course he’s here. He’s with his wife and babe, where else?’ the woman who had greeted him tossed back.
‘Brigeth,’ cautioned the woman by the fire.
‘Oh, what’s the point of pretending?’ she said dismissively. ‘I don’t know how they managed to fool anyone at all – anyone with two eyes can see what they are to each other. Praise Amai, she brought him right to where he was supposed to be.’
‘So everything’s all right,’ he exhaled in relief. ‘Everyone’s all right.’
The Nomas woman stirring the pot stopped with her spoon halfway to her lips. The woman with the linens in her lap turned her head away.
Brigeth stepped close enough for him to smell the wild, briny sea in her hair. She laid a callused but gentle hand on his shoulder. ‘Harotha won’t live, lad. I’m sorry. There’s nothing to be done about it.’
He look
ed into her clear eyes and saw no chance for appeal. Her features melted into a blur and he found himself kneeling on the carpet, still clutching Dramash’s small hand.
‘It was too much for her,’ he blurted out in an agony of self-recrimination. ‘I should have kept her out of it. I should have—’
‘Belay that!’ Brigeth interrupted with spirit. ‘She could have spent nine months in bed and it might have ended just the same. No one can know what would have happened. There, now.’
He dropped Dramash’s hand. ‘Does she know?’
‘Hm.’ Brigeth sniffed respectfully. ‘She knew before we did. Not much gets by that one, I’m thinking.’
A faint voice from the other room called out a name, and the woman sitting on the floor dumped the linens out of her lap and slipped inside. A few moments later she came out again.
‘What is it, Raina?’ asked Brigeth.
‘She wants to see him.’
Daryan stood up. He tried to take a deep breath, but his chest was so tight that the air stuck in a lump and would go no further. ‘All right,’ he told Raina, ‘I’m ready.’
‘Not you,’ she said, pointing at Dramash. ‘Him.’
Daryan looked down at the boy doubtfully. Exhaustion showed in the puffy flesh under his glassy eyes and he didn’t appear to be paying any attention to the adults’ conversation, but then he looked up at Raina and without a word shuffled into the next room. Daryan followed behind him, but his courage faltered as he got to the curtain.
Inside, a familiar voice was speaking in the earnest, cajoling tones he knew so well: ‘—but she will love him, you see? That’s what she’s wanted all along. She’s never had anything else to love. It’s not just his safety I’m thinking about. And you know you have to go, otherwise the emperor—’ and then in an entirely different tone, ‘Dramash! There you are! Daryan, are you out there? You come in too.’
He pushed the curtain aside and saw Harotha, lying back against the cushions. She looked up into his eyes and instantly he stopped trying to think of what he was going to say to her. He didn’t need to say anything; she knew it all.
Eofar was lying next to her, a limp remnant of his former self. His face was haggard and one of his legs was heavily bandaged. He had his arm around the cushion behind Harotha’s shoulders, not quite touching her, and was brushing her damp hair with the tips of his fingers at compulsively regular intervals. His eyes were fixed on her face and he never looked up, not even when Daryan entered the room.
But the baby. Oh gods, the baby.
Brigeth had not exaggerated. He had expected him to look either Norlander or Shadari, or some discordant mix of the two, like the Mongrel, but no: here, all was unity. His skin had the warm glow of the desert sand at sunset, and his head was covered with delicate curls the colour of beaten gold. His round eyes, which at the moment were wide open, were a silvery blue around enormous black pupils, and ringed with thick white lashes.
‘Oh, Harotha,’ he breathed, dumbstruck.
She cuddled the swaddled baby closer to her breast, beaming with pride. The baby made a snuffling little sound and she leaned her flushed cheek against his tiny head with a soft coo.
Eofar’s eyes never left his wife’s face.
‘Come here, Dramash,’ she called over, patting the cushion next to her. The boy tottered over and plopped down by her side. ‘I want to talk to you.’ He was staring at the baby, and now he gave the child a little wave. ‘Dramash, are you listening to me?’
Daryan thought that he detected some truculence in Dramash’s swollen brown eyes, but the child nodded in response to her question.
‘It’s about your friend – what’s his name, Rho?’
‘Harotha, no!’ Daryan burst out, but she flashed him a warning look and he clamped his mouth shut.
‘Rho did a very, very bad thing,’ she continued, in the same carefully modulated tone of voice. ‘A very bad thing. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?’
The boy hunched up his shoulders protectively and a deep frown creased his brow. ‘I guess.’
‘You’re angry, and I understand that. I’m angry, too.’ She glanced up at Daryan, and then back to Dramash. ‘But I’m going to ask you to do something – something very difficult – and I want you to promise me that you’ll do as I ask. Dramash?’
After a long moment, he finally answered, ‘I promise.’
‘Good boy.’ She looked up at Daryan again, holding his eyes for a moment, making sure of him. ‘Daryan is going to take you to see Rho. He’s going to leave the two of you alone together. And you can say anything you need to say to him. But after that, Rho is going to be your protector. He’s going to look out for you, from now on, just as he did tonight.’
Dramash and Daryan were both listening to the steady rise and fall of Harotha’s words as if she held them under a spell.
‘But that’s not the hard part. That’s not the part I asked you to promise me about.’ She nestled the baby closer to her breast, freeing up one arm so that she could lay her hand over Dramash’s. ‘I want you to promise me that you’ll try to forgive him.’
‘Harotha,’ Daryan exclaimed, aghast, ‘you can’t!’
Again she silenced him with a look. ‘I want you to forgive him,’ she repeated slowly. ‘It’s going to be very hard. It might take a very, very long time. But I want you to promise me that you’ll try.’ She reached out and touched his little dimpled chin with the tips of her fingers, turning his face up so that she could look into his eyes. ‘Do you think you can promise me that?’
The boy’s frown deepened as he looked back at his aunt. After a few moments’ thought his face relaxed and he nodded, then without pausing another beat he asked, ‘Can I hold the baby?’
She sank back against the cushions with a little laugh. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘He’s your cousin, you know.’ Daryan sprang forward and helped transfer the little bundle into his eager arms. ‘Hold his head,’ she reminded both of them. Daryan heard the slight slur in her speech and glanced up in alarm. Her eyes were closed, and now that he was closer, he could see the high colour in her cheeks and forehead and the feverish trembling in her limbs.
‘Dramash?’ he said softly, and the boy looked up from rocking the baby in his arms with a bit more enthusiasm than was necessary. ‘Are you hungry?’
He looked down at the baby, and then back at Daryan. ‘I guess,’ he admitted reluctantly.
‘All right,’ Daryan said, ‘give the baby back to your aunt and then go and ask the Nomas for something to eat; they’ll find something for you.’
Dramash handed the baby back to Harotha with exaggerated carefulness, but not before planting a sweet kiss on his golden curls. Daryan held the curtain aside and waited for him to shuffle out into the main room, then he glanced at Eofar. He hadn’t changed position, but now his head rested on the cushion next to Harotha’s and it was impossible to tell who was comforting whom.
Daryan knelt on the spot that Dramash had just vacated and lowered his voice. ‘Harotha,’ he said, ‘you can’t ask that boy to forgive Rho.’
‘I have to,’ she answered stubbornly. Her dry, feverish eyes burned into his. ‘Saria was more than just my friend – she was the closest thing I had to a sister. It’s the only thing I can do for her or her little boy now.’
‘I don’t think you know what you’re saying. You’re asking him to forgive the man who murdered his mother—’
‘And what about the person who murdered his father?’ she interrupted. Suddenly tears were streaming down her face, but she spoke as if oblivious to them. ‘Did you think I hadn’t heard that my brother was dead, and how? How long do you think it will be before Dramash feels the weight of what he’s done? How many souls does that little boy already have on his head?’ She took a deep breath and went on more evenly, ‘If he can find a way to forgive Rho, he’ll be able to forgive himself one day – think, Daryan: do you want another White Wolf on your hands?’
‘The White Wolf?’ he
asked, confused. ‘What does she have to do with it?’
‘It was the guilt, Daryan. Can you imagine what Dramash could become if we let it fester in him like it did in her? In that case it would be better for everyone if we went out there right now and stabbed him through the heart!’
‘Harotha,’ Eofar murmured, and she turned to him and met his eyes, then sagged back down against the cushions.
Daryan rocked back onto his heels. He couldn’t tell her that Rho had been badly hurt, that he might even be dead. He got to his feet. ‘There’s something I need to do,’ he told them hurriedly. He bent down and kissed her tenderly on the forehead; her skin was dry and impossibly hot. ‘I’ll be right back,’ he reassured her, and then brushed his fingers against the baby’s smooth cheek. ‘He really is amazing,’ he whispered, feeling the bitter tears snaking down his cheeks.
‘He is,’ she agreed, smiling.
He ducked through the curtain. ‘Brigeth?’ he called out, fighting to keep the panic out of his voice.
She looked up from breaking off some pieces of dried fish for Dramash.
‘There’s a Dead One – a Norlander – badly hurt, on the beach somewhere – I don’t know exactly where. He needs help. I should have said something before, but …’ He trailed off, feeling horribly guilty – the thought of Rho burning to death on the beach had felt like justice. Now he felt like he’d betrayed both Isa and Harotha.
‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ Brigeth reassured him, ‘that pretty friend of yours was just here; Mairi went with her. She’s our best healer; if anyone can save him, she can.’
‘Thanks.’ He looked into her open, honest face. ‘And thank you for everything you’ve done. We’re in your debt.’
Brigeth frowned, saying sternly, ‘You’re in no such thing. We helped you because it was the right thing to do.’ She pointed an accusatory finger at his chest. ‘Your people say we only care about money, but you’re the ones who turn everything into a transaction. I hope things can be different now, Daimon. I hope we can learn to understand each other better.’