The Lions of Al-Rassan

by Guy Gavriel Kay

  A majority, however, among the courtiers of Valledo were ready to pursue the Ruendan party west along the Duric’s banks as soon as the word was given—but the constable gave no such order, and the king was still closeted with his queen and her new physician.

  Those who attended upon them reported that the queen appeared much improved—that she was likely to survive. There was, however, a new report that poison had been used on the arrow.

  All things considered, King Ramiro’s ensuing behavior—it was three days before he showed his face outside the queen’s bedchamber or the adjoining room, which he used as a temporary counsel chamber—was viewed as erratic and even unmanly. It was clearly time to order a pursuit of the Ruendan party before they reached the nearest of their own forts. Notwithstanding the presence of the clerics, there was enough, surely, to suggest that Ruendan fingers had drawn that bow, and holy Jad knew that revenge needed little excuse in Esperaña.

  Among other things, it had come to light by then—no one was certain how—that King Sanchez had had the audacity to draft a letter asserting authority over and demanding tribute from Fezana. That letter had not, apparently, been sent yet—winter had barely ended, after all—but rumor of the demand was rife in Carcasia in the days following the Ruendan departure. The city of Fezana paid parias to Valledo and every person in the castle knew the implications of a counter-demand.

  It was also pointed out by observant men that King Sanchez himself—known to be one of the finest archers in the three kingdoms—had been conspicuously errant with his own arrows for the two days before the morning of falconry. Could that unwonted incompetence have been a screen? A deliberate contrivance, in the event someone did trace a lethal arrow back to him?

  Had the arrow been meant for his brother? Had those days of poor shooting produced a last aberrant flight when a true one had finally been intended? It would not, the most cynical found themselves thinking, necessarily have been the first time one of the sons of Sancho the Fat had slain another. No one voiced that particular thought, however.

  The untimely death of Raimundo, the eldest son, was not something that could yet be forgotten. It was remembered that among a grimly silent gathering of courtiers that day long ago, the hard questions raised by young Rodrigo Belmonte, Raimundo’s constable, had been specific, shocking.

  Ser Rodrigo was far away now, exiled among the infidels. His well-born wife and young sons had, in fact, been invited to be among the Valledan company here, but Miranda Belmonte d’Alveda had declined, pleading distance and responsibilities in the absence of her lord. De Chervalles, the cleric from Ferrieres, had expressed some disappointment at this news when it came. He was said to be a connoisseur of women and Ser Rodrigo’s wife was a celebrated beauty.

  Jad alone knew what the Captain would have said and done today had he been here. He might have told the king this injury to the queen was the god’s punishment for Ramiro’s own evildoing years ago. Or he might as easily have pursued the king of Ruenda—alone, if necessary—and brought his head back in a sack. Rodrigo Belmonte had never been an easy man to anticipate.

  Neither was Ramiro of Valledo, mind you.

  When the king finally emerged from his meetings with Geraud de Chervalles and Count Gonzalez and a number of his military captains anticipation ran wild in Carcasia. Finally, they might be going after the Ruendan scum. The provocation was there: even the clerics could be made to see that. It was past time for Valledo to move west.

  No commands came.

  Ramiro appeared from those meetings with a sternly resolute expression. So did the men with whom he had been speaking. No one said a word, though, as to what had transpired. It was noted that de Chervalles, the cleric, shocked and sobered as he might be by what had happened, did not look censorious.

  King Ramiro seemed subtly changed, with a new manner that unsettled his courtiers. He appeared to be reaching inward for strength or resolution. Perhaps he was nurturing the desire for bloodshed, someone suggested. Men could understand that. Spring was the time for war in any case, and war was where a brave man found his truest sense of life.

  Still no one was certain what was afoot. The king showed no signs of leaving Carcasia for Esteren. Messengers went out in all directions. A single herald was sent west along the river towards Ruenda. Only a herald. No army. Men cursed in the taverns of Carcasia. No one knew what message he carried. Another small party set out east. One of them told a friend they were bound for the ranching lands where the horses of Valledo were bred. No one knew what to make of that either.

  Through the ensuing days and then weeks, the king remained inscrutable. He hunted most mornings, though in a distracted fashion. He spent a great deal of time with the queen, as if her passage near to death had drawn the two of them closer. The constable was a busy man, and he too offered no hint, by word or expression, of what was happening. Only the High Cleric from Ferrieres could be seen to be smiling when he thought he was unobserved, as if something he’d thought lost had been unexpectedly found.

  Then, as the spring ripened and flowers bloomed in the meadows and the forest clearings, the Horsemen of Valledo began to ride into Carcasia.

  They were the finest riders in the world, on the finest horses, and they came armed and equipped for war. As more and more of them appeared, it slowly became apparent, to even the dullest courtier in Carcasia, what was taking place.

  An air of disbelief mingled with a trembling excitement began to pervade the city and castle as the soldiers continued to gather, company after company. Men and women who had been markedly lax in their observances for some time, if not all their lives, began to be seen at the services in Carcasia’s ancient chapel, built in those long-ago days when Esperaña had ruled all of the peninsula, not just the northlands.

  At those services, frequently led by the High Cleric from Ferrieres, the king of Valledo and, after she was allowed to leave her rooms, his queen were present, morning and evening, kneeling side by side in prayer, sun disks of the god clasped in their hands.

  Over a span of centuries, the golden, fabulously wealthy khalifs of Al-Rassan had led their armies thundering north, irresistible as the sea, to raid and enslave the Jaddites cowering at the hard fringes of a land that had once been their own. Year after year after year, back beyond the memories of men.

  The last, weak puppet khalif in Silvenes had been slain, though, nearly sixteen years ago. There were no khalifs any more.

  It was time to start rolling back the tide the other way, in Jad’s fierce, bright, holy name.

  Eliane bet Danel, wife to a physician and mother of one, was not unused to strangers speaking to her in the street. She was known in the city, and her husband and daughter had both had a great many patients over the years here in Fezana. Some might wish to express gratitude, others to seek a speedy or a less expensive access to the doctor. Eliane had learned to deal briskly with both sorts.

  The woman who stopped her on a cool market morning in the early spring of that year fell into neither category. In fact, Eliane was later to reflect, this marked the first time in her life she’d ever been accosted by a prostitute of either sex.

  “My lady,” the woman said, without stepping from the shaded side of the lane, and speaking much more politely than was customary for an Asharite addressing a Kindath, “might I have a moment only of your time?”

  Eliane had been too surprised to do more than nod and follow the woman—a girl, truly, she realized—further back into the shadows. A small alleyway ran off the lane. Eliane had come this way twice a week for much of her life and had never noticed it. There was a smell of decay here, and she saw what she hoped were small cats moving quickly about further along the alley. She wrinkled her nose.

  “I hope this isn’t where you do business,” she said in her crispest tones.

  “Used to be, up above,” the girl said carelessly, “before they moved us outside the walls. Sorry about the smell. I won’t keep you long.”

  “I’m sure,” Elian
e said. “How may I help you?”

  “You can’t. Your daughter has, though, most of us, one way or another. That’s why I’m here.”

  Eliane liked things to be as clear as possible. “Jehane, my daughter, has treated you medically, is that what you are saying?”

  “That’s it. And she’s been good to us, too. Almost a friend, if that doesn’t shame you.” She said it with a youthful defiance that touched Eliane unexpectedly.

  “It doesn’t shame me,” she said. “Jehane has good judgment in whom she befriends.”

  That surprised the girl. As Eliane’s eyes adjusted further to the darkness here, she saw that the woman with whom she spoke was thin-boned and small, no more than fifteen or sixteen years old, and that she was wrapped only in a torn shawl over a faded green knee-length tunic. Not nearly enough for a day this cold and windy. She almost said something about that, but kept silent.

  “I wanted to tell you, there’s trouble coming,” the girl said abruptly. “For the Kindath, I mean.”

  Eliane felt something icy slide into her. “What does that mean?” she said, involuntarily looking over her shoulder, back where the sunlight was, where people were moving, and might be listening.

  “We’re hearing things, outside. From the men that come. There’s been sheets posted on walls. A nasty poem. A . . . what do they call it . . . an allegation. About the Kindath and the Day of the Moat. Nunaya thinks something’s being planned. That the governor may be under orders.”

  “Who is Nunaya?” Eliane realized that she had begun to shiver.

  “Our leader. Outside the walls. She’s older. Knows a lot.” The girl hesitated. “She’s a friend of Jehane’s. She sold her mules when Jehane left.”

  “You know about that?”

  “I took her to Nunaya myself that night. We wouldn’t have let Jehane down.” Defiance again, a note of pride.

  “Thank you, then. I’m sure you wouldn’t have let her down. I told you, she knew where to choose her friends.”

  “She was always good to me,” the girl said, with a shrug, trying to seem indifferent. “Don’t see what’s so wrong with calling the moons sisters, anyhow, myself.”

  Eliane had to be careful not to smile, despite the fear in her. Fifteen years old. “Some disagree with you, unfortunately,” was all she said.

  “I know that,” the girl replied. “Jehane’s all right?”

  “I think so.” Eliane hesitated. “She’s in Ragosa, working there.”

  The girl nodded, satisfied. “I’ll tell Nunaya. Anyhow, that’s all I wanted to say. Nunaya says you should be careful. Think about leaving. She says people here are nervous again because of this claim by that other king in the north . . . from Ruensa?”

  “Ruenda,” Eliane said. “About the parias. Why should that affect the Kindath?”

  “Now you’re asking the wrong person, aren’t you?” The girl shrugged again. “I hear things, but I don’t know much. Nunaya thinks there’s something funny about it, that’s all.”

  Eliane stood in silence for a moment, looking at the girl. That shawl really wasn’t at all warm enough for this time of year. Impulsively, surprising herself again, she took off her own blue cloak and draped it over the girl. “I have another,” she said. “Will this be stolen from you?”

  The girl’s eyes had widened. She fingered the warm, woven cloak. “Not unless someone wants to wake up dead,” she said.

  “Good. Thank you for the warning.” Eliane turned to go.

  “My lady.”

  She stopped and looked back.

  “Do you know the toy-maker’s shop, at the end of the Street of Seven Windings?”

  “I have seen it.”

  “Just past it, by the city wall, there’s a linden tree. There’s bushes behind it, along the wall. There’s a way out there. It’s a small gate, and locked, but the key is hanging from a nail on the tree, on the back side, about my height.” She indicated with her hand. “If you ever need to get out that’s one way that will bring you to us.”

  Eliane was silent again, then she nodded her head.

  “I am glad my daughter has such friends,” she said, and went back into the sunlight, which did not warm her now, without her cloak.

  She decided to forgo the market this morning, though it normally gave her pleasure. One of the servants could go. She was cold. She turned back towards the Kindath Quarter and the house that had been her home for thirty years.

  Think about leaving. Just like that.

  The Wanderers. They were always thinking about leaving. Moving like the moons against the fixed and gleaming stars. But brighter, Ishak had liked to say. Brighter than the stars and gentler than the sun. And he and she had had their home here in Fezana for so long now.

  She decided to say nothing to him about this.

  The very next day a Jaddite leather worker approached her as she walked out in the morning to buy a new cloak—her old one was distinctly frayed, it turned out.

  The man had been waiting just outside the guarded gates to the Quarter. He came up as soon as she turned the corner. He was respectful, and evidently afraid. He wasted little time, which was fine with Eliane. His message was the same as that of the girl the day before. He, too, had been a patient of Jehane’s—or his young son had been. Eliane gathered that Ishak’s absinthe dilution, offered for a nominal fee, had broken a dangerous fever the summer before. The man was grateful, had not forgotten. And told her it might be wise for them to leave Fezana for a time, before the spring was much further advanced. Men were talking in the taverns, he said, about matters that did not bode well.

  There was anger, he said. And the more fiery of the street corner wadjis were not being kept under control the way they usually were. She asked him directly if he was leaving with his family, if the same dangers applied to the Jaddites. He said he had decided to convert, after resisting for many years. At the first branching of streets he walked away from her without looking back. She never learned his name.

  She bought herself a cloak from a small, reliable shop in the Weavers’ Lane, someone she had done business with for a dozen years or more. It might have been her imagination, but the merchant seemed cool, almost brusque with her.

  Perhaps business was simply bad, she tried to tell herself. Certainly Fezana had endured grief and then real hardship this past year, with almost all of those who were central to the life of the city dead in the moat last summer.

  But to drive the Kindath away because of that?

  It made no sense. The taxes paid by the unbelievers—Kindath and Jaddite, both—went a long way towards supporting the wadjis and the temples, fortifying the walls and supplying the parias Fezana sent north to Valledo. Surely the new young king in Cartada understood that, or his advisors did? Surely they were aware of the economic impact if the Kindath Quarter of Fezana was emptied by a migration to some other city?

  Or by something worse than that.

  This time she told Ishak about the warnings. She thought she knew exactly what he would say, in the mangled sounds she had learned to understand since last summer.

  He surprised her, though. After all these years he could still surprise her. It was the tidings from Sorenica, he explained, laboring to be clear. Something to be read in that: a new mood in the world, a swinging again, like a pendulum. Change in the air, in the winds.

  The two of them, with their household, began quietly preparing to leave for Ragosa, and Jehane.

  They weren’t quite fast enough, however.

  Their daughter, in the same week her mother received these warnings of danger—which was the same week Ines of Valledo nearly died—was, with more anticipation than she liked to admit, preparing for Carnival in Ragosa.

  Alvar de Pellino, off-duty and walking up to meet her on a crowded street corner one morning, with Husari beside him and trailed by the watchful figure of young Ziri, privately decided that Jehane had never looked more beautiful. Husari, to whom he had impulsively confided his feelings about her on
e night, had warned him that springtime did this sort of thing to young men.

  Alvar didn’t think it was the season. Much had changed in his life since the summer before, and changes were still taking place, but what he had felt for Jehane before the end of that first night by the campfire north of Fezana had not altered, and was not about to. He was quietly certain of that. He was aware that there was something strange about such certainty, but it was there.

  Physician to a court and a military company, Jehane bet Ishak was surrounded by brilliant and accomplished men. Alvar could deal with that. He had few expectations of any kind. So long as he was able to play a role, to be nearby, he would be content, he told himself.

  Most of the time that was true. There were nights when it wasn’t, and he’d had to admit—though not to pragmatic Husari—that the return of the spring flowers and the gentling of the evening breezes off the lake had made those nights more frequent. Men were singing in the streets now at night under the windows of women they desired. Alvar would lie awake listening to the music as it spoke of longing. He was aware at such times of how far he had come from a farm in the northlands of Valledo. He was also aware—how could he not be?—that he would be going back north one day, when the Captain’s exile ended.

  He tried not to dwell upon that.

  They came up to Jehane and greeted her, each in his fashion: Husari with a grin and Alvar with his rapidly improving Asharite court bow. He’d been practicing, for amusement.

  “In the name of the moons, look at the two of you!” Jehane exclaimed. “You look as if you’re already in costume. What would your poor mothers say?”

  The two men regarded each other complacently. Alvar was dressed in a wide-sleeved linen overshirt, ivory-colored, loosely belted at the waist, over hose of a slightly darker shade and Asharite city slippers, worked with gold thread. He wore a soft cloth cap, crimson-colored, bought in the market the week before. He rather liked the cap.

  Husari ibn Musa, silk merchant of Fezana, wore a plain brown Jaddite soldier’s shirt under a stained and well-worn leather vest. There were knives tucked into his wide belt on both sides. His horseman’s trousers were tucked into high black boots. On his head he wore, as always, a brown, wide-brimmed leather hat.