If she had not regained consciousness by then, she might never.
She had collapsed while screaming incoherently at the most important men of the expedition. Foaming at the mouth like a rabid animal. Some kind of seizure, it appeared, most likely triggered by the frustration of finding herself disbelieved. Cushions scattered everywhere, senior members of various Alliances scattered along with them. Noise and confusion. Lenares convulsing unregarded in their midst. Captain Duon calling for order, no one calling for assistance. Torve forced to watch, unable to help, as the important men dusted themselves off and sought somewhere else to reconvene their meeting.
By the time everyone bar a few guards had left, and Torve could go to her without fear of being seen, Lenares was in a bad state. Tongue bitten, blood and foam all over her face, limbs contorted and still twitching, bruised from where she had crashed against people. He picked her up and draped her carefully over his shoulder. So light, so insubstantial, as though most of her was somewhere else. She did not stir.
There was only one place he could take her. He tried to act as though he had a right to be carrying an obviously ill woman, but despite his efforts his progress attracted stares and comments. The cosmographers had their own tented area near the more informal tents of the camp followers. He made his way towards it.
‘Goodness, what happened to her?’ a male cosmographer said when Torve found their tents at last; but it was not a question, because the man turned his back when the Omeran began to explain. ‘Arazma, Vinaru!’ the man called. ‘Come quickly, you are needed. Lenares has had some kind of accident.’
Two women, one old, the other of middle age, emerged from the nearest tent and together took Lenares from Torve’s shoulder and carried her inside. Through the tent flap Torve glimpsed many curious faces. The man followed the two women into the tent, drew the flap closed behind him and said, just before he went beyond Torve’s hearing, ‘There is no one to tell us what happened…’
Abandoned outside the cosmographers’ tents, barred from Lenares’ side, Torve found he could not leave. Someone from one Alliance or another would scoop him up and put him to work, and he might not get back to Lenares until well after dark, if at all. He would have to hide. Thought translated into action: he found a half-empty hay wagon perhaps twenty paces from the tent, let the nearer side down and squeezed underneath the shelter it afforded.
Barely in time. One of the soldiers from Captain Duon’s gathering made his way towards the tent. No doubt a belated thought from Captain Duon—or, more likely, ma sor Farouq. Gather her up if she is still alive. Question her, empty her out, dispose of her.
Short for a soldier, the man walked without that rolling gait they all seemed to adopt. More of a swagger. Definitely one of Farouq’s men.
His calls drew the male Torve had seen before. ‘You are the senior cosmographer?’ the soldier asked. An answer in the affirmative encouraged the soldier to deliver his message.
‘I am a mercenary newly taken into the service of the Elboran Alliance. Should you see the cosmographer Lenares, my new master, ma sor Farouq, would consider it a personal favour if you were to let him know. He is concerned for her wellbeing, having witnessed her experience a seizure, and believes one of his physicians, skilled in fatherback medicines, can aid her. Be assured that Cosmographer Lenares is not in any kind of trouble, and she will be delivered safely to you when my master has finished with her. Her care is my master’s primary concern. After all,’ he added with a straight face, ‘none of us would like the cosmographers to experience more tragedy, would we?’
Without waiting for a reply the soldier turned on his heel and strode away. When he was out of earshot a head—the middle-aged woman Torve had seen previously—appeared through the tent flap. ‘Was that a threat?’ she asked the male cosmographer.
‘Oh yes,’ he replied. ‘Most definitely. Instruct the others: no one is to tell anyone that we have Lenares here. The fool girl has done something to offend the Elborans. We need to find out what it is, while keeping her out of the grasp of that soldier and his master.’
‘Do we?’ A calculating look spread over the woman’s narrow face. ‘Let them have her. Mahudia should never have insisted we go on this expedition, and if anyone ought to have remained behind, it is Lenares Lackwit.’
The man winced. ‘I don’t know why Mahudia was so enthusiastic about this journey,’ he said, sighing. ‘But I do know the Emperor ordered Lenares to accompany Captain Duon, and Mahudia convinced him that we should all come. Whether her decision was ill-advised or not, it cost her everything, Vinaru. I think we have an obligation to…to her adopted daughter.’
‘Bah. The lackwit is a disturbance, and undermines the discipline necessary to produce good cosmographers.’ This last was said as though it were the worst crime the speaker could think of. ‘The moment I think we are in danger by sheltering her I’ll shove her out of the tent myself, and they can do what they like to her.’
Torve watched the two cosmographers withdraw into their tent, disturbed by what he had heard. These were the people Lenares had grown up with, yet at least one of them would have no misgivings about betraying her. How could Torve abandon her to her friends, if her friends proved to be her enemies? And what could he do to protect her, if her friends refused even to acknowledge his existence?
All he could do was wait and watch.
He stretched, trying to find a comfortable position on the riverbed gravel. No breeze penetrated under the wagon; the air, intensely hot, was stupefying, and the last three days had seen him worked extremely hard. So what happened next was inevitable. Despite his concern for her vulnerability and the awkward discomfort of his position under the wagon, Torve fell asleep.
He awoke with a headache. He always did after short naps. Four pairs of feet, two shod with boots, two with sturdy walking shoes, stood directly in front of his wagon; the discussion going on above him had pulled him out of a restless sleep.
‘Are you sure?’ The voice of an authoritative male.
‘We saw her.’ A young girl’s voice, pleading to be believed.
Another girl added, ‘Nehane tried to keep her secret, but the rest of the cosmographers abide by the law.’
‘You are good citizens,’ said a second man. Torve cringed at the insincerity in his voice. ‘Once we have the girl, you may come to our quarters for your…reward.’
Both girls giggled, obviously unconscious of the menace in the man’s inflection. ‘Don’t forget our names,’ one said. ‘Rouza and Palain, faithful to the Emperor and his brave, bold soldiers.’
‘Are any of your people armed?’ asked the authoritative voice.
Don’t answer, Torve willed. You will ensure the death of anyone you name.
‘Only Nehane,’ said one of the girls airily. ‘He has a sword thing, but he doesn’t know how to use it.’
Torve willed the last of the muddy pain gone from his head. How could someone training for a position requiring a keen intelligence be so simple-minded? He slid out backwards from under the wagon, away from the four pairs of feet, grimacing as the stones rattled under his body.
The second man spoke. ‘You two wait. No matter what you hear or see, don’t move from beside this wagon. You will be safe here.’
If that is not warning enough of what you have unleashed, then you are both truly ignorant young women.
Torve forced himself to wait. The thought of Lenares in the hands of the Elborans ate at him, but any foolish action on his part would be seen and dealt with by the soldiers. The two men approached the tent: not until their attention became fully absorbed by talking to whoever answered their summons did he stand up and walk briskly away from the cosmographers’ area. As soon as he was out of sight he broke into a run, circling around behind the tent.
A moment’s effort saw him under the side of the tent and up on his feet. He found himself in a small space, a partition curtained off from the main room, filled with three small pallets. He sprang towards the on
ly one occupied, to discover someone hovered there already. A cosmographer, not a doctor. The woman he recognised from the tent flap earlier, the one who wanted to hand Lenares over to the Elborans.
‘Who are you?’ she asked, squinting as though struggling with imperfect eyesight. ‘You’re the Emperor’s Omeran. How dare you intrude on our quarters!’
‘Be silent,’ Torve said, trying to inject emperor-like strength of command into his voice. ‘In the name of the Emperor I claim this woman.’
‘You are taking her?’ She drew a knife from her robe. ‘I can’t allow that. The girl’s lived too long on sufferance; I’ll not have her causing the cosmographers continual trouble. She draws attention to us at a time when we’d be best to remain forgotten.’
The blade was for Lenares, not him, Torve realised.
‘Put the knife down,’ he growled. Unless she was blind, she could no doubt see the shock and anger on his face. To do this to one of your own…
‘It would be a kindness,’ she hissed.
‘Not to her,’ Torve said. ‘Now, do as I say and be silent.’
‘You’re too late,’ the cosmographer said, malicious glee ruling her voice. ‘I sent for the soldiers. They will be here in a moment.’
Torve brushed past the woman, gambling that she would not use the knife on him. He lifted Lenares up from the pallet, along with a blanket, and cradled her in his arms. He was aware that his life would be forfeit for this action, but some indeterminate time ago he had stepped over a line he hadn’t even noticed, and his current actions seemed fated, driven by some external source. Or perhaps the Emperor was right: each person had but a few real moments of life, comprising the vital choices they made, and the rest was merely filling.
Raised voices came through the curtain. Torve spoke to the cosmographer: ‘Say nothing, woman, or the two girls you sent will die.’ Her face confirmed his guess and she held her tongue. She could not know his threat was hollow.
It took longer than he’d hoped to lift the canvas side of the tent, roll Lenares out and follow her, but the argument in the main room showed no sign of ending. He took Lenares up and, even with the threat of discovery, snatched a moment to look on her face. By no means beautiful even by Amaqi standards, let alone Omeran, her features were further spoiled by the absence of consciousness; whatever beauty she possessed came from her animated, almost frenetic liveliness. He looked more closely. She breathed still, but seemed little more than a shell.
He swung his head left and right. Nowhere to go. No ally in the camp to whom he could take her. His only friend lay insensible on his shoulder. Bred for obedience, the Omeran found himself with no one to tell him what to do. Thirty thousand people nearby to tell him what not to do. He would not listen to them. He would nurse Lenares back to health and listen to her.
In the meantime, however, she remained unconscious and could not give him guidance. Choosing what to do, making decisions that could differentiate between life and death for the woman in his arms, did not come naturally. He found it hard to force his mind along unfamiliar pathways. Freedom. They call it freedom, he told himself. Then why did it feel like another kind of servitude?
Eventually he chose to take Lenares in a fatherbackly direction. His decision was made not through any rational thought process, but because they would be discovered should they remain where they were. There were good reasons for his choice, though he thought of them only after the fact: the passage through the camp followers’ disorganised tent city took him away from any searching soldiers and made him less conspicuous. He was unknown here. Certainly, fewer heads turned. Indeed, he saw far stranger sights than a man carrying an unconscious woman: a little laughing boy riding a pink pig; two women wrestling on the stones, hands in each other’s hair, being cheered by a crowd of onlookers; and a desperate knife fight taking place in the shadows between two tents.
His shoulder ached. Insubstantial she might be, but Lenares, unconscious, had become a burden disproportionate to her size. Eventually he passed the last tent, worked his way through the pickets and stumbled out into the desert solitude. Found a place in the shadows hidden from sun and soldiers both. And now he sat beside the unconscious cosmographer, totally helpless, waiting for her to awaken.
Not knowing what he would do if she did not.
He cleaned her face with a cloth strip torn from his shirt and as much spit as he could muster. Waited. Shifted her slightly to keep her out of the sun, arranging her limbs to give her the least discomfort. Waited. Wished he had water to give her, and contemplated going back to the camp to get some, but imagined her awakening on her own out in the desert and decided not to leave her, not yet.
Waited.
The sun caught up with the two of them as it fell towards the daughterwards horizon. He tried to move his makeshift shelter, but it collapsed in a clatter of sticks. Lenares made no response. She was alive, but damaged inside her head. She reminded him of some of those the Emperor had experimented on, looking to capture the moment between life and death, searching for any way to hold life in a dead vessel. They would gaze blankly, free from pain and from every intelligent thought, and die eventually anyway.
No. There was only one thing he could do, so he did it. He performed his Defiance in the face of the sun, in the face of death; and this time he tried to dance it, holding an image of the desert dream-children in his mind as he moved against his impossible, inexorable opponents. Flowing from stance to stance as he had seen the children do, the stances themselves disappearing until everything he did was one movement, and the sun could not trap him, and death could not hold him, and he towered like a giant above the world and everything in it, achieving for the very first time that state of exaltation others had told him about.
The moment lasted forever.
‘That was beautiful,’ Lenares said.
Her voice pulled him back into the world of heat and death. His eyes flew open. Impossibly, there she was, kneeling on the sand, smiling sunnily, her heart in her eyes.
She should be dead, or at least suffering a brain-sick agony. He knew how people who’d had seizures behaved when they awoke. Instead, she crawled on her knees towards him, concern growing on her face, as though he were the sick one and she the rescuer.
Could it have been his Defiance? Had he pushed death back for her? Relief, shaded with awe, flooded through him.
‘Oh, Lenares, I was so worried about you,’ he said, and burst into tears.
Her deep eyes widened. ‘Don’t cry, Torve,’ she said. ‘Don’t cry.’
‘I’m sorry. I thought you were dead.’
She frowned. ‘I don’t remember what happened. There was a meeting, you were there, we were hiding, and then…and then, nothing. Is the meeting over? Why are we out here in the desert? Where is the camp?’
‘Lenares, you fell sick—’
‘I can’t remember! But I always remember. What happened to me? Torve, you were there. What happened?’
Her face, so beautiful a moment ago, now looked drawn.
‘Shh now, let me tell you.’ He described the conversation at the meeting as best he could, then told her about her seizure and subsequent events, remembering that she could see through lies. What a dreadful gift, he thought as he explained why they had ended up out in the desert. No buffer between oneself and reality. A gift—or a lack? Was the buffer something humans had made to protect themselves? Another thought, as his mind raced: was this part of what separated humans from gods? Did gods truly have no illusions to limit them? The Emperor would say—he put what the Emperor might say out of his mind. The Emperor, a man with few illusions of his own, was not here.
Lenares nodded as he told her about the seizure, and did not become upset. She hissed when he explained the treachery of the cosmographers, and smiled when he described how he had cleaned her up.
‘I’ve had seizures before, when I was a child,’ she said. ‘Mahudia called them fits. I had them when people wanted me to do impossible things, like say so
mething wasn’t true when it was. I don’t remember what I said to Captain Duon and the others, but if they tried to stop me telling the truth it might have made me have another fit.’
Torve thought carefully before asking his question. ‘And did you…did you recover quickly after your fits?’
‘No, I spent days in bed, mostly asleep, before I—oh.’ She ran her hands over her face. ‘Perhaps I have recovered more quickly because I am older.’ She shook her head. ‘No, I don’t see…The numbers only start again after I woke up, and I was already better.’
Torve licked his lips. ‘You were unconscious all afternoon, with cuts and bruises over your face and arms. You bled from your mouth where you bit your tongue during the seizure. When I started my Defiance, the dance you saw me doing, you were unconscious still. But when I finished, you were awake and…and healed.’ Impossible.
‘Show me,’ Lenares said. ‘Show me your dance.’ She settled back expectantly, as though a mystery was about to be solved.
‘Lenares, I cannot. The Defiance is a secret dance. I can’t defy my enemies when—’ he was about to say when one of them is present, but bit back on his words just in time ‘—when I am not alone. At least, when I believe I am not alone.’
She caught his shading of the truth, he could tell, but did not press him. His own thoughts wandered: he had been watched twice recently, once by Lenares and once by the desert children, both times unknowing. But the dream-children had danced the Defiance with him as an audience. Perhaps they had not seen him as an enemy. Or would the Defiance work even when observed by his enemies? If the desert children were indeed of his imagination, perhaps none of the rules held.
Lenares seemed preoccupied with something else. Various expressions chased each other across her expressive face: calculation, thoughtfulness, frustration.
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