Starless

by Jacqueline Carey

  Since the evidence was strong, but not conclusive, King Azarkal had his eldest son thrown in the royal dungeon.

  The women’s quarter was buzzing like a hornets’ nest, and Queen Adinah was in a towering rage. That evening the king paid a visit to her chambers, and it was not the sort of conjugal visit of which she would boast on the morrow; her sharp accusations and the king’s angry rebuttals rang throughout the quarter. To drown them out, Zariya played softly on the little whistle that Dozaren had given her, coaxing sleepy chirps and trills from her birds in their wooden cage.

  My heart was uneasy.

  In a mere two weeks’ time, the candidates for the throne of Zarkhoum had dwindled from five to three: Prince Tazaresh slain, and now Prince Elizar disgraced and imprisoned. No one had seen what befell Tazaresh in the chaos of the attack, but he had died with a dagger planted between his ribs.

  Elizar could not have done it. He was mounted, and his horse had not been hamstrung. Any blow he would have struck against his brother would have been a slashing blow from on high.

  It might mean nothing. If he was behind the arm of conspiracy that drove the Children of Miasmus, he could easily have commissioned an assassin to dispatch Tazaresh in the heat of battle.

  I sat on the carpet listening to Zariya play a lilting tune and thinking dark thoughts. The whistle was carved so that the wooden bird’s wings rose and fell with each note she played. It was indeed very cleverly wrought. Zariya’s profile in silhouette against the dusk falling in the lush green garden behind her was very pretty.

  I had not forgotten what she said to me about desire. I was yet uncertain what I felt about it.

  Some bitter resolution must have been reached in Queen Adinah’s chambers, for the arguing voices that echoed through the quarter fell silent.

  Zariya lowered her whistle and contemplated me. “What is it that you’re thinking? It feels weighty.”

  “You will not like it,” I warned her.

  Her gaze was unwavering. “Perhaps not, but I would hear it nonetheless.”

  I took a deep breath. “The only proof that Elizar commissioned this purchase of weapons is the stamp of his personal seal. And there is a thing that your brother Dozaren said that troubles me.”

  Zariya raised her brows at me. “Which is?”

  I nodded at the whistle. “He met a cunning carver in the market one day.”

  She was silent for a long moment. “So you think he had a copy of Elizar’s seal made? Why would he let such a thing slip if he were guilty?”

  “Brother Yarit once told me that one of the greatest challenges a thief faces is keeping his mouth shut,” I said. “That there is an almost irresistible temptation to boast after a successful job, to have one’s skill and cleverness admired.”

  “It would be a damnably subtle boast.” Zariya’s tone was neutral and I sensed she was displeased.

  “Your brother Dozaren is a subtle fellow.” I raised my hands palms-upward. “It is only a thought.”

  Zariya hesitated, then shook her head. “I could find it easier to entertain the notion if you and I had not been targeted in the attack,” she said. “I am aware that Dozaren’s kindness toward me may have begun as an attempt to curry favor with our father, but I do believe he has grown genuinely fond of me.”

  “I do not think the Mad Priest’s actions were under anyone’s control,” I said. “I suspect he made for an unpredictable ally at best.” She said nothing. “Are you angry that I said so?”

  “No.” Her reply was swift and sure. “For telling me the truth when it is exactly what I asked of you? Of course not, my darling. It is only that I hope you are wrong.”

  For her sake, I hoped so, too.

  But I didn’t think I was.

  THIRTY

  As though to mock my suspicions, the following morning I received a missive from Prince Dozaren making good on his request to spar with me.

  We met in the courtyard adjacent to the Hall of Pleasant Accord, where he professed himself interested in the two-handed technique of wielding a yakhan and kopar unique to the Brotherhood of Pahrkun. I did my best to instruct him, but it was a difficult thing to master, and all the more so when one had years of training in a completely different fighting style to overcome. Still, I learned in the process that Dozaren had been overly modest. He possessed more than a little skill with a single blade; certainly enough to have dispatched his brother in the thick of battle.

  I wondered if he meant for me to know it.

  I wondered if I was right about him.

  “How can you be but sixteen years of age?” he exclaimed in a good-natured tone when we had finished. “You fight like a seasoned warrior in his prime! No, belay that. You fight like no one I’ve ever seen, Khai of the Fortress of the Winds.” He gazed at me beneath his long eyelashes. “It’s a pleasure to watch you.”

  Only a few days ago, his regard would have made me uncomfortable; now, I felt differently, armored against his charm by what I suspected. “I am what I was trained to be, Your Highness.”

  “And nothing more?” Dozaren inquired. “Is that your sole purpose in life? It seems … wasteful.”

  “Do you seek a dalliance?” I asked him bluntly.

  It startled him into laughter. “Does it appear thus? I suppose it must. As Zariya noted, I have a habit of flirting.” He shrugged and sheathed his blade. “You are a stranger to me, chosen, a stranger who in the blink of an eye became closer to my favorite sister than any other living soul beneath the starless sky. Do you blame me for wishing to know you better?”

  “By sparring?” I said.

  Dozaren gave me a disarming smile. “It seemed to me that steel is the language you speak most fluently. But I would certainly welcome a dalliance. Do you fear for your honor? Such things can be managed discreetly, you know.”

  “The only dishonor I fear is failing in my duty to Zariya,” I said to him. “Your Highness, I do not know what game we are playing. I do not care whether or not the king names you his successor, and I do not care…” I paused, wanting to give voice to my suspicions without stating them outright. “If I were a whit less skilled, if I had not had Vironesh as a mentor, Zariya would have been abducted or killed in that attack. Only tell me this. Do you mean her harm for any reason?”

  He drew in a sharp breath. “No! Gods, no!”

  His response was as swift and sure as hers had been last night, and I gauged it genuine. Once again, Zariya was right; he did care for her.

  But I was right, too. I felt it in the silence that stretched between us, the balance of power shifting back and forth. I summoned Pahrkun’s wind and looked into the spaces between inside him; between what was said and left unsaid, between ambition and affection, between resentment and resolve, between calculation and risk, and I saw the truth written there.

  Dozaren was guilty.

  I knew it.

  He must have seen the knowledge reflected in my face. Breaking my gaze, he looked away from me. “Your suspicions do me an injustice, chosen. I could never wish to harm Zariya.”

  “And yet the Mad Priest sought to do so,” I said, edging closer to the unspoken truth. “Kill the shadow, seize the princess. That’s what he said.”

  “There is a reason they called him the Mad Priest,” Dozaren said dryly. “He also claimed that Miasmus will swallow the world in darkness. As I told you, I am sincerely grateful for your service that night.”

  So I was right about that, too. The Mad Priest had been a weapon no one could control. I wanted to ask him more, but I sensed that this was a moment that could easily go awry, so I chose my words with care. “Why do you suppose he wanted me dead and Zariya seized?” I asked. “Have the physicians learned anything about the man and that … thing inside him?”

  “No.” Dozaren shook his head. “I only know sailors’ gossip. There are rumors that it’s happened elsewhere. Apparently he was a perfectly ordinary fellow, at least for a pirate, until the thing afflicted him. His shipmates abandoned h
im here after he began raving.”

  “And found an eager audience for his message in the poor quarters of Merabaht,” I murmured. “A tinderbox awaiting a spark.”

  Dozaren glanced around to confirm no one else had entered the garden while we were engaged in conversation. “Chosen, I do not believe my sister Fazarah and her husband are wrong in their estimation of the realm’s troubles,” he said in a low voice, and it seemed to me that the mask of his casual charm had been replaced with something more serious. “And I will tell you this: My brother Tazaresh would have been a ruler in exactly the same mold as our father.”

  It was as close, I thought, as he would come to an outright admission of guilt. “And Elizar?”

  “Elizar would be worse,” he said.

  “And you would be a reformer in the mold of your rebel sister?” I asked, keeping my tone light.

  “If you’re asking if I would dismantle the monarchy to install a system of governance in accordance with the code of Obid the Stern, no.” He summoned a wry smile. “It is a little too stern for my taste. But if you are asking if I would seek a better balance between the people of Zarkhoum, yes.”

  I studied Dozaren, thinking that he could not have done this on his own. “Do you count Fazarah as an ally?”

  He laughed. “My sister Fazarah would make for a dangerous ally. You have seen there is no love lost between her and our father.”

  So not Fazarah; no, of course not. Her grief at her brother’s death had been genuine and she would not have countenanced a plot to kill him. And yet someone with ties to the lower levels of Merabaht had to have been involved to organize such an attack, to identify three hundred men desperate enough to undertake it, to distribute weapons enough to arm them.

  Brother Yarit had taught me to throw zims blindfolded; with Pahrkun’s wind yet stirring within me, I threw out a question like a dagger in search of a target. “What of her husband?”

  Something subtle shifted in Dozaren’s expression. “Tarkhal is a good man who believes in the work he does, but he holds no sway in the House of the Ageless. What use would he be as an ally?” He cleared his throat and steered away from the topic. “I would gladly count our dear Zariya as one, but she has made it clear that she does not wish to play at politics. Still, if her heart were to change, I would welcome it.”

  “I do not know if she could condone your methods,” I said to him.

  “To the lion go the spoils.” He fixed me with an intent gaze. “She knows that as well as I do. Tell me, chosen, how will you relate this conversation to her?”

  I hadn’t the faintest idea.

  “I do not know, Your Highness,” I admitted. “But your sister and I have sworn to be honest with each other.”

  “It is an admirable goal,” he said mildly, his manner suggesting such a thing was impossible.

  “It is an extension of who and what we are,” I said. “In and of ourselves and to each other, Sun-Blessed and shadow. I do not expect you to understand it.”

  Now Dozaren’s expression held a complex and undecipherable mixture of emotions. “Should I envy or pity you for it, Khai of the Fortress of the Winds?”

  “I do not know that either, Your Highness,” I said. “But if you are asking if I will share this conversation with anyone save Zariya, if I will give voice to what I think we have said without saying here today…” I shook my head. “No. I will not. I told you, I do not care about the succession. My duty is to Zariya, and Zariya alone. I think she loves you too well to betray you, and I am glad of it, for it means neither you nor I need attempt to kill the other over this conversation.”

  He offered me a half-mocking salute. “At least not yet. I confess, I would not relish the prospect. Are we done here?”

  I paused. “Do you know who was responsible for infecting Zariya with Dhanbu fever when she was a child?”

  “So she suspects as much?” He shook his head. “Not for certain, no. But I’d wager on Queen Adinah.”

  “Whose fortunes have been brought low with her eldest and last surviving son’s fall from grace,” I observed.

  “Yes.” There was no apology in his voice.

  I returned his salute. “Now we are done.”

  Knowing that Zariya would be in equal measure grieved by our separation and curious about my encounter with Dozaren, I should have returned to the women’s quarter to report to her, but my heart and mind were too full. Instead, I departed from the palace and took to the streets of the city, enduring the aching hollowness engendered by my Sun-Blessed charge’s absence in exchange for the solace of solitude. The knowledge that I had gained this day felt like a series of stones cast into a deep well.

  One …

  Two …

  Three …

  Dozaren was guilty; Dozaren had helped orchestrate the attack and was responsible for one brother’s death, for another brother’s imprisonment.

  In this, I gauged there was a good possibility that he was in fact aided by his sister’s husband, Tarkhal, who was well connected in the impoverished quarters and might have believed strongly enough in his cause to engage in a conspiracy to murder his own wife’s brother.

  The Mad Priest’s reasons were his own.

  Although I had no conscious destination in mind, my feet carried me to the harbor, which was relatively quiet today. Without thinking, I had ventured out fully armed in my desert woolens; realizing I had done so, I left my face bare. Today, I wanted to be myself. Folks who would not have spared me a glance as a veiled woman saw the marks of Pahrkun on my face and saluted me. I did not venture into Three-Copper Quarter, and no one in the vicinity of the wharves had ever hissed shadow at me.

  In the harbor, I found an empty pier and made my way to the end of it, sitting on the edge and letting my feet dangle. I gazed at the sun sparkling on the water and watched crab fishermen in the bay drawing up their pots. It reminded me that I had not yet sent word to my family in their coastal fishing village, a notion that was still immensely strange to me.

  And I could not begin to think what I would say to them.

  Dear Mother and Father, whom I remember not at all, I am well and serving as Princess Zariya’s shadow in the Palace of the Sun. Today I learned that her favorite brother is behind a deadly conspiracy. Do I have any siblings? If so, I hope they are not in the habit of murdering each other.

  It was going to be a hard thing to tell Zariya; hard because she did not want to believe it, and hard because it was difficult to explain my certainty. I had no proof. Dozaren had not actually admitted his guilt.

  Then again, if he had, it would have been a dangerous piece of knowledge to possess.

  I thought about these things.

  And I thought about desire, a subject we had not discussed since the day that Zariya broached it.

  Do you not know that most of the royal women, including my own mother, are convinced I’ve already taken you as a lover?

  Of course I had not known, but it seemed to me that there was a question beneath the question. On the surface, it was a question posed by my far more worldly and sophisticated Sun-Blessed princess, who already knew the answer, to prod me out of my naïveté. Ah, but underneath, it was a question posed by an uncertain young woman who had been taught to believe herself damaged goods by cruel women jealous of her father’s affection for her.

  Am I worthy of desire?

  And that was knowledge that made my heart ache for Zariya. She was oh, so very beautiful to me, and her strength and courage and daring vulnerability only made her the more so. Since she had posed me the question and I had begun to look at the world through different eyes, I had begun to see that it would be a profound and wondrous thing to explore with my soul’s twin, to discover my body as an instrument of pleasure and not merely a well-honed instrument of death. But I thought that it would be a dangerous thing, too.

  I sat in contemplation until I had reached a conclusion, well past the beginning of the midday rest.

  When I returned to the pal
ace, I found Zariya reclining on the divan in her sitting room and reading.

  “I thought to see you back ages ago, my heart!” She pushed herself upright. “Is everything all right? You didn’t quarrel with Dozaren, did you?”

  “Quarrel?” I shook my head. “No. But I have two things I must tell you, and neither one is easy.”

  “Well, that sounds ominous,” she observed.

  I sat beside her on the divan. “First, there is something that I very much want to do.” Taking Zariya’s face in my hands, I leaned over and kissed her, hoping I was doing it right. It caught her by surprise; she stiffened slightly, then softened and returned my kiss with unabashed ardor. Her skin was as smooth as silk and her lips were the softest thing I’d ever felt.

  It was so sweet and lovely it grieved me to end it, but I did.

  Zariya regarded me gravely, her dark eyes luminous, a faint furrow etched between her brows.

  “I have been thinking.” My voice was a bit unsteady. “We are already so much more than lovers, you and I. In some ways, what would it matter to take one more step? We know each other’s hearts and minds. Why should we not know each other’s bodies as well? But I do not think it is the purpose for which Pahrkun and Anamuht joined our souls at birth, and there is this.” Vironesh had been broken and devastated by Prince Kazaran’s death; how much worse might it have been if they were lovers? I clasped my hands tightly together in my lap. “Zariya, if you were to become any more precious to me, I fear my heart truly would shatter into a thousand pieces.”

  Outside, the sun shone brightly. The birds in their cage hopped about and chirped merrily.

  Zariya gave me a quiet smile filled with love and regret and understanding. “You are wise beyond your years, my darling. Now, what is this second difficult thing you must tell me?”