Usually our conversation ended after we crossed the city gate, but that night Aniv paused to let the rest get ahead. They parted around her and picked up the pace, hurrying back to food and rest in camp at the base of the bluff. When we were alone, she said, “It surprises me every time to realize again I’ve met a man from An Riel with desert sense in his blood.”
I laughed, assuming she meant it jokingly; only women could be star clan mages. “Is it a miracle from your gods? Because I’m a man,” I teased.
Her expression did not lighten with mine. She only stared, dark eyes wide to swallow me whole.
Faltering, worried I’d offended her with some sacrilege, I added, “I don’t … I’m sorry.”
“Rafel …” her voice trailed off, and she watched me strangely, and hopefully, I thought. But then I saw the exact moment she changed her mind. Her mouth squeezed in a quick frown, then she pressed her hand to mine. “I will see you tomorrow.”
I remained at the city gate, watching her walk slowly, gracefully away from me.
#theme: secrets
• • •
At night, lying on my cot while the desert hummed in my teeth, I made wonderful plans.
When the campaign was over, I would tell her my thoughts, tell her how I wanted her to come home to An Riel with me, see the ocean cliffs, meet my family, marry me. She would like my mother and all of my aunts but for maybe Lusha and Agata. And they would love her; they would love me more for bringing a woman like her home.
In An Riel, a noble man is expected to make his family stronger by earning the admiration of a strong woman—a woman who respects him enough to believe him worth leaving her family for. He says to her, Will you come to my home and be my family?
I imagined sharing time between the ocean cliffs and the desert, teaching our daughters to hear the hum, singing the melody of it to our sons. I would not only be Rafel the Gardener; I would not only be Rafel Sal AnLenia, lowly second son. I would be the husband of the first star clan mage in the royal family of Lenia, the father of Rielan magic. I fantasized about how Aniv’s body would change with a baby, though I knew little of women’s bodies. I only had seen one of my sisters swell as her most powerful muscle worked to make a daughter.
It all made me tremble to think of it: my great-aunt’s pride, Aunt Lusha’s wry acceptance, the salt-sea wind roughening the twists of Aniv’s black hair, what the hum would do when we came together—I imagined it would be like the revelation of electricity I felt when I grasped both sabers at one time, the closing circuit, like my body and the blades were one.
That is what I anticipated. That is what made me hot. That is what I dreamed of, how I fell asleep every night.
• • •
It took nearly four months to clear the citadel of Shivers, though it would have taken more if not for Dinah.
We moved to the seventh terrace because Dinah Aniv was the fastest, best star clan mage, the most efficient. The first afternoon on that highest and smallest of all the terraces, the air smelled like smoke, and we paused to admire the clan flags that curled in the wind, hung from the tower there, piercing up into the sky. We were near enough to touch them, to hear them snap. To pick out the patterns of rainbow stripes, one for each of the star clans. Behind them the sky was unadulterated blue, the wind cooled the sunlight, and the valley stretched behind us, a gaping, lovely red desertscape. It was refreshing to look down into the lower six terraces of Shiver and know they were nearly safe, nearly ready for the laughter of mothers and running children, for games and gardens and love again.
Dinah guessed, based on the square feet, there would be thirty-some mines up here, and so we could clear it all in two weeks if we were lucky. We began our hunting and quickly located the first target: a small pansy, the size of my fists held together. Made for maiming and easily hidden, this one was buried in an unobtrusive gutter.
Normal perimeter established, all men in their places, and me on the roof of a squat public bathhouse, we watched Dinah work. After merely ten minutes or so she stopped. She backed away from the pansy, eyes on the broken bricks of that wide avenue.
Very softly, she said, “Rafel.”
Not my title, not with urgency, but just my name, quietly, so as not to startle anyone.
Of course it had the opposite effect.
We all snapped to attention. I climbed carefully down to her. “Aniv?” I said under my breath.
She pulled off her veil. There was fear in her wide eyes. “Send the men all away, and go—only you—go and fetch every pacer and mage in the city below. I will remain and protect this mine.”
“Why?”
Dinah’s brows twitched in annoyance.
I said, “I will obey, Dinah, but why?”
Leaning in, she whispered against my ear, “This is the first of a wreath that I believe winds all throughout this top terrace, a wreath of thirty or more bombs, and I cannot disarm one without detonating the rest.”
I shivered and glanced at my boots against the dark orange bricks. Wreaths were nearly impossible to set—the one at the Irisu Dam had killed the mage who linked them. As far as I knew, all the known wreaths had exploded or been carefully detonated by a group of mages. None had been destroyed without killing somebody. “Dinah, you should go with me.”
She shook her head. “I have been working on a theory for dismantling wreaths, and today I will see if it works.”
• • •
It was twenty hours before the mages and pacers of all other teams detonated their last bombs, cleared every other terrace, and joined us.
I spent those hours supporting Dinah, bringing her water and little pieces of food she could eat without breaking concentration. Once she was alone, she’d immediately engaged a net around the pansy with thread and river stones and tiny opal charms, sitting before it and adding her own hands and strands of her hair to the mix. Then she did not move for all those hours: sitting, sweating, staring through her veil at the wreath.
Magical details should fit the culture from which the magic comes, the culture and the landscape. Star clan magic is lovely and elegant and practical, hence local stone, on-hand items, and pieces of the opal lines that make the desert glow.
Darkness fell, and we remained. No light, no candles, for flame and oil would introduce chaotic elements to her very fine balance. A net like this, she whispered to me, required flow. Elasticity and curvature, a boundary that would move with the mine, move with Dinah herself, and flex between them. There could be no rigidity, no flickering.
#theme
The stars expanded overhead as the sun set, and the moon gazed down upon us, bringing out tiny silver lines in the creamy white of her veil that I had never seen before.
The hum pulsed.
It was Dinah’s heartbeat.
I tried to breathe in time with it, to make myself a part of the atmosphere, a part of the net—flowing, not rigid, though I am very good at being rigid.
#theme x2
She allowed me to lift her veil off her mouth and feed her morsels of cheese, dry meat, and olives until we realized she’d have to spit the pits back into my hand. Her shoulders dipped, I thought with humor, and she asked me to wet a cloth she could suck on, for she could not move her hands to drink, nor allow me to interfere with her line of sight so much as to put a cup to her lips.
Food choice is also 100 percent world building. What they eat and how.
Once I briefly left her to relieve myself, but she allowed herself no such luxury.
I settled beside her, alive and tense but trying to be smooth and easy. I listened to—felt—the hum and stared at the small, oddly shaped little pansy bomb. It shone in the moonlight as if made of metal—strange for a flower mine—and I stared at the triangles of net around it, wishing to understand how the tools engaged with the desert song.
Late in the night, when the air was cold, she leaned against me, just her shoulder to mine. I concentrated on being solid, on the sweet, cold air in my nose and th
e hum in my teeth.
Dinah whispered, “The woman who created this was truly mad, Rafel. Desperate in it.”
• • •
With the dawn came Jarair and his mage, then Leonor and his. We waited three more hours for Sars. The star clan mages immediately replaced me at Aniv’s sides, touching her shoulders and joining the rhythm of their breath to hers.
She whispered to them, and they dispersed. Each pacer went with his mage, and I touched Dinah’s shoulder so she knew I remained.
• • •
It seemed like all the times before; the work was invisible to me, tense, with Dinah moving nothing but her hands; gracefully, certainly.
The sun lifted to its zenith, beating down upon us. My stomach growled, I was thirsty—I may have neglected myself in my effort to take care of Dinah Aniv.
The hum was a cord between us, between me and the city, me and the sun, the air, the Sweet itself. It was all around, and as I watched her, I held onto the awareness of my peripherals, doing my job, though what I wished to do was focus with her, see the magic, sense the wreath. She said I had magic in me; I wanted to touch it, not only listen to its song.
Dinah took a thin knife I’d never seen before from her robes and carved into the bricks. She scratched slowly, methodically, cutting through her net. She used chalk and drew pale lines that danced around the carvings. Around and through, weaving in and out. She moved, she stepped lightly. Her veil shimmered in the sunlight, the ends of her thick hair-ladder reddened with dust.
Then she knelt before the tiny pansy mine. She hummed a long, low song with only two notes. She lifted the thin blade in both hands. The sun caught the edge, flashing in my eyes.
When I blinked, I saw a vibrant, violent illusion: like lines of watery silk all around her, a near-invisible net. She was at the center, and it knotted around her knife. Strong ropes of it flared off, up and down the street. It was a wreath of water and air, of desert song.
Dinah Aniv cried a sharp, screeching note and drove the knife into the small metal flower.
The shock wave hit my chest. Knocked me off balance like an ocean wave. I braced, but there was no explosion. The bluff beneath us trembled, and the entire city shivered.
A thinner, gentler aftershock swept around my ankles, traveling back toward the center point, toward Dinah. Like the tempting undertow as the tide goes out.
Dinah stumbled back.
I scrambled down from my perch and raced to her. I put my arms around her from behind, and she leaned back into my chest. Her head lolled to my shoulder.
“Done,” she gasped. “Safe.”
And her knees gave out.
• • •
I carried her home.
Her knees tucked up to my chest, her head on my shoulder, arms around me. She was tall and lankier than I’d realized, but she settled well into me, loose and almost unconscious. I paused to awkwardly spool her laddered twists of hair around my forearm like a rope. I went carefully down through the city, slow as I needed to be, along the broad avenue of stairs that led from the seventh terrace straight down to the first, opened into a great red courtyard, and marched out the city gate to the rougher path down the bluff.
The sun beat down—it was after lunchtime—and many, if not all of the refugees and special service members not actively engaged in their duties lined the way. They all knew, somehow, from the released detonation teams I guessed, what we’d been doing—and what Dinah Aniv had done.
I nodded at the service members. They saluted me with knuckles to lips. The star clan refugees—men, women, children, all in rainbow-striped robes, their black hair twisted and woven in long plaits, dark eyes painted with respectful desert mud—reached out to skim their bare hands on Dinah’s robes, or on her hair. They crowded in, murmuring blessings, murmuring Dinah.
I swelled with joy, with pride. Also with heat, and sweat smeared dust down my face and neck. It pooled in the small of my back, collected there by the belt of my red uniform pants. It rubbed in my boots. I tasted it on my lips.
The refugees created a path for me, leading me for the first time through the canvas partition to their side of camp. Here everything was bright and colorful against the desert. No raw canvas tents for them, but dark blue, purple, red, green, woven rugs and braided rugs, flags and fired pottery, striped robes hung out to dry—all of it faded from sun and time, ragged and dirty, but the colors shone through still. It was merry, despite the dingy press of time. It was a home.
They led me to her tent, one of five conical tents all in the same sky blue, at the edge of camp, facing east. One man pulled open the flap and tied it high enough I did not have to duck. Nobody followed me inside.
I laid her down in a nest of blankets and rough straw pillows. Carefully, I unwound the rope of her hair from my arm. The air smelled of roses—the hand oil, probably. In the dim light I saw two carved trunks, one set with many squat candles and a scatter of raw opals. I wondered if I should wake her gently and help her undress, get her drink or food or take her to a bathhouse. But her body relaxed away from me, sinking into the bed. All I did was remove the crumpled veil from around her neck and spread it carefully over the second carved trunk. As always, she wore no shoes.
Leaning back on my heels, I admired her. I wished to lie beside her, be near as I’d been all morning and night. I was exhausted too. I wanted to press against her back, her hips, hold her tightly and pretend it was all over. That tomorrow I could ask her to come home with me to the sea.
Instead, I brushed my lips to her cheek, barely enough to feel it myself, and left.
• • •
There was a celebration that night.
While I slept, soldiers and refugees pulled down the partitions and moved tents and the mess hall in order to create a wide public space—star clan and An Riel—for a great fire and party. Jarair woke me at sundown, dragged me to wash up, put a fresh uniform on me—buttons included—and dug around my tent to find my medals and rank pieces. I protested, but he only grinned and grabbed my collar. Nearly choking me in his insistence, he pinned everything in place and said, “Now brush your damn hair.”
I did, and tied it back. He clapped my shoulder and said he approved. Together we went out where the other pacers waited, and as a unit we joined the celebration.
The food was fast-made, but delicious—both star clan and Rielan, with a lot of goat and cheese, olives from home, roasted desert beetles, even candied Sweet leaves. There was watery wine—better than nothing—and some special flasks of rice liquor. The fire danced taller than me, and we had our whistles, but the star clans brought out drums and gut harps and round, haunting pipes to add to the song.
The hum connected everything. Most of the drumming and all of the pipes seemed to affect it, to draw it thinner or faster, somehow. I felt it hard in my chest, making my sternum vibrate—and realized it was the medals, accentuating it, making my heart into a target.
I went around with Jarair, smiling, eating and drinking, but mostly quiet. I listened to the others tell stories about things I’d done—here and before, during the war that most of my current comrades had never seen. But mainly we spoke of pacing, of the mine and the desert, of the stars that spread as the evening wore on, filling the black sky with light.
The dancing began before I found Aniv. Just a few young refugees at first, and then a serviceman asked the wife of the star clan chief to dance with him. Our commander asked the chief in turn, and that popped the bubble. Soon the wide circle around the bonfire was alive with dancing and laughter. Jarair abandoned me quickly to join in, and I held to the edges with other wall-huggers, tapping the toe of my boot and drinking my watery wine. Commander Saria AnYar’s daughter Yarlia, the camp second, took my wine and brought me out to dance with her—for show, she said, offering me a polite way to not enjoy myself.
Even though I’ve never come out and said “An Riel is run by the ladies,” every time I’ve mentioned authority in An Riel there have been women there,
especially compared to the initial dismissal of Rafel as “only a second son.”
I assured her I was, though she barely heard me over the noise of the fire and the dancing.
And then I saw Dinah Aniv, a few feet away, in robes striped red, pink, purple, and black, with silver and golden threads that caught the firelight. Her hair was a great mass of darkness spreading around her head and shoulders. When she stepped toward me, little shafts of light shot through it, ribbons made of the same golden thread as her robes. I’d seen the robe—she only has three—but not the ribbons in her hair, not the dark paint around her eyes. Not the slippers on her feet.
I went straight to her, no hesitation, no pretense, and held out my hand. She took it. Hers were in thin silk gloves, nearly as soft as her skin. She smiled without teeth and I returned it. I put our palms together, and we danced.
It was star clan dancing—only our hands touched. I was not used to dancing at all, but when I had, it always had been in An Riel, where the woman chooses the path and rhythm. That night with Aniv, more was expected of me. I led, I pressed gently with my hand, one way or another, or I drew her to me by releasing pressure. She came and went with me, our eyes locked.
The hum was peaceful.
But I was not peaceful, I wanted more. I wanted to grab her hips and pull her tight against me. I wanted to embrace her, spin faster, bury my face in her thick hair.
Even in the flickering firelight, it must’ve been apparent in my eyes, in the way I couldn’t stop moving my mouth; licking the bottom lip, chewing on the inside, pursing, stretching like I was going to smile, but stopping. Nerves, lust, anticipation; all of it unsettling me.
I gripped her hands, lacing our fingers together.
It ruined the dance: we were supposed to move palm to palm, gracefully.
Aniv faltered and then pulled me away from the fire and chaos of bodies, into the darkness of camp—the special services side, which was emptier, lonelier tonight than her people’s side. When she found a completely secluded space along an alley of barracks tents, we stopped. I stepped close, almost panting, I was so eager. “Aniv,” I said. Only the second time I’d said it aloud.
The Anatomy of Curiosity Page 13