by Evie Manieri
“Daryan,” said Harotha, “where is Dramash?”
The moon was behind the rock, shadowing his face. She could not read his expression. “You won’t like it, but it’s too late now, anyway. There’s nothing either of us can do about it.”
“Daryan!”
He sighed. “All right. Dramash is still with Rho—in the temple.”
She felt the blood drain from her face. “You—”
“Listen,” he interrupted, “we need allies. We can’t fight Frea alone, or we won’t fare any better against the Dead Ones than our parents did. Rho and I came up with a plan. He’s going to lure Frea and her men out of the stables. Wait—” He held up his hand as she tried to interrupt. “He’s going to let Frea find out that we’re escaping. He’s sure she’ll abandon the stables to chase after Dramash.”
“But then she can follow us down the stairs.”
“No, no, I was the last one down. Dramash has already closed them. And Rho shut the secret door, so Frea won’t even know we were ever there.” He paused to yawn. “She knows about the secret room, but Shairav always kept the steps hidden. She won’t even know where to start looking.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
He frowned at her comment, but continued without addressing it. “It will take hours for her to search the temple, and when she finally gives up and goes back to the stables, she won’t be able to get in. All of the entrances will be blocked.”
“Because Dramash will have caved them in.”
“That’s right. As soon as the triffons come back, Rho, Dramash and the rest of them will leave. They’ll be long gone before Frea digs her way back in.”
“What about the Mongrel? Where is she in all this?”
“I don’t know. I can’t worry about her right now.”
“That’s your plan?” she asked, making no attempt to hide her consternation. “Not only do you give Dramash to the Dead Ones, but you make it possible for them to get him out of the temple?”
“To join us at the cave, the one you found,” he insisted. “We’re to meet Eofar and Isa and Rho there, and then go to the palace together. Rho will make a show of returning Dramash to his family—that should be enough to convince everyone that we can trust him.”
“Listen to what you’re saying! You’ve put our fate in the hands of Frea’s lover! Daryan, you can’t possibly be this naïve. Can’t you see how he’s tricked you? Who knows what he’s really going to do with Dramash, or what he might force him to do?”
“No, you’re wrong. Rho is on our side. He saved my life—I trust him.”
“He’s a Dead One!”
“So is Eofar.”
He said it quite calmly, but it hit her with the blunt force of a fist. “That’s different.”
“No, it’s not,” he said, “it’s exactly the same, and I think you know it.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Come on, Harotha. Why aren’t you with Eofar right now, somewhere very far away from here?” He sat forward and his dark eyes, black in the shadows, held an unexpected challenge. “It’s because you don’t really trust him. Hell, I don’t think you’ve ever trusted anyone in your life except yourself. I know you’ve never trusted me.” He sat back again. “Eofar really loves you, Harotha. Believe me, I’m lucky he didn’t murder me after you told him that lie about us. He may be a Dead One, but he’s a good man, and he’s my friend. All he wants is to be with you, but you keep pushing him away. I wish you wouldn’t do that to him. He deserves better.”
When she didn’t respond, he stood up and came slowly toward her, but she shrank back.
“Gods, are you crying? I never thought— I’ve never seen you cry before.”
“No. I don’t cry.” Ashamed, she scrubbed at her cheeks with both hands, but he caught her wrists.
“No, no, don’t do that. Go ahead and cry. Come over here and sit down.” She allowed him to lead her over to the little hollow in the rock, where there was just enough room for the two of them to sit together side by side. The sand was soft and deep, but it was cool and she shivered.
He put his arm around her shoulders. “Let’s get some sleep,” he suggested, and then he yawned long and loud. “It’s a long walk to that cave. Someday you’ll have to tell me how you found it in the first place.”
She leaned forward and reached around her belly, drawing her knees up so that she could massage her swollen ankles. His head nestled against her shoulder. “Listen, don’t fall asleep yet,” she told him. To her surprise she realized she had unconsciously made a decision she had not even known she was considering. “There’s more you need to know. I took the elixir, Daryan—the things I saw…”
She wove through the narrative of her visions, censoring nothing, and he listened without interrupting.
When she finally finished, he said thoughtfully, “Then you were right, getting Dramash back was more important than fighting Frea. I’m glad you ignored me. Thank the gods my stupid stunt with the fire actually helped you. I just couldn’t think of any other way to distract her so that Isa and Eofar could get out. So you and the ashas did stop it, in the end. They didn’t die for nothing.”
“It’s not over yet. We still have to keep Dramash away from the White Wolf. We can only hope that Rho lives up to the trust you’ve placed in him.”
“Yes, well, let’s leave that for tomorrow. I’ll die if I don’t get some sleep. And we’ve got that long walk in the morning.” He nestled more comfortably against her, and she found herself taking a surprising amount of comfort in the solid feel of his body and the rhythm of his slow, sleepy breathing. Just before they both fell asleep, he added drowsily, “I have a lot more to tell you on the way.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Once he was certain no one in the stables could see him, Rho leaned against the wall of the blocked tunnel and reached gingerly underneath his shirt, clenching his stomach muscles tight against the anticipated pain. As soon as he touched the swollen ridge he wanted to pull his hand back, but he forced himself to trace the whole length of the wound. The moisture he felt could have been perspiration—the cavern was still ridiculously hot, even with the fires out—but the throbbing and the feverish heat were harder to dismiss.
Dramash slid down against the opposite wall and laid his dirty cheek down against his knee. “I’m tired.”
“Only one more,” Rho reassured him, “but we have to wait.”
“Why?”
“We said we’d leave the last one open for King Jachad—” He cut that explanation short; Dramash wasn’t likely to have forgotten the feel of the Mongrel’s knife at his throat, even if she had let him go without hurting him. “Some of our friends aren’t back yet,” he said instead.
An alliance with the Mongrel was the last thing Rho wanted, but Falkar had dismissed his objections: the mercenary had aligned herself against Frea, and under the circumstances that was enough to make her an ally. Now she and Jachad were keeping Frea and her rebels busy in the tunnels while the loyalists, as Daem had facetiously dubbed them, secured the stables. When they returned, Jachad planned to take one of the triffons and rally his desert people to their cause.
“And then we’re going home?”
“When the triffons come back down.”
“Are they back now?”
“If they were—” he began, but again he checked himself. “I’ll see. Stay right here.”
He hurried back out into the main cavern to assess the situation. Daem was keeping watch over the last open tunnel and Falkar was overseeing the furious effort to clear the stable floor and dissipate the remaining smoke.
dn’t appear to be doing any good, but Rho thought it best not to comment. As many as thirty men, many with as-yet untreated wounds, were trying to sweep aside the ash and dragging or tossing the bigger pieces of rubbish strewn across the floor into the blocked tunnels. Frea would not have an easy time digging her way back in.
He wanted to tell Falkar that one day this would all be over, that everything would go back to normal, but the wound in his side was sapping all of the energy he needed to lie. He headed back over to Dramash instead.
The ugly yellow flashes around Daem’s words were not a good sign.
Rho thought Dramash had fallen asleep, but when he got a little closer he saw the boy was watching him through bloodshot eyes.
“You’re going to take me home?” he asked again.
“Yes.”
“To my mama?”
The hilt of Fortune’s Blight scraped against the stone as Rho leaned against the wall. “To your father, after we meet some other people first.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t go.” Tears welled up suddenly in his round eyes. Rho didn’t really understand crying, but now he wondered if it was strange that the boy hadn’t cried before this. “He’s mad at me because I wanted to stay here. Can you take me to Mama instead?”
Rho could feel Daem’s presence sneaking in the background and he strained to keep his panic at bay; he could handle this, just keep talking about his father instead. “Your father’s not angry at you—he’s your father, he loves you and he wants you to come home.”
“Why can’t I stay here and take care of the dereshadi like the White Wolf promised? She said Mama could come here and live with me.”
“She was never really going to let you do that.” He didn’t want to upset the boy any further, but he had to get him out of the temple. “She brought you here to do things for her.”
“Bad things?” he whispered.
“Yes, bad things.”
Dramash put his head down again and said in a muffled voice, “Papa says all the Dead Ones are bad. He wants to hurt all of them, just like he hurt you.”
“He has his reasons.” What was taking that cursed Nomas so long?
“Mama says it’s wrong to hurt people.”
“Sometimes you don’t have a choice,” Rho ventured, but he knew that wasn’t the right answer. He tried again. “Sometimes people make mistakes.”
“Are you going to punish him?”
“No.”
“But you’re a soldier.”
“I would never hurt your father.”
“Why not?”
For a moment he was at a loss, but then the answer came to him, and it was simpler than he had imagined. “Because I know you wouldn’t like it.”
A rush of air warmed his skin as the first triffon spiraled down from above and Dramash sprang up and ran toward it. At the same moment Daem called out, and Jachad, the Mongrel and a string of Norland soldiers came clattering down the narrow tunnel.
“Come on, Dramash,” Rho said. “Time to go.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
No one came forward as Jachad landed the triffon at the edge of the Nomas camp; an onlooker might have assumed that no one had noticed them, but he knew better. His people were watching, but keeping their distance, at least for the moment. He struggled out of the harness and slid down the triffon’s shoulder onto the cold sand. Ah, the sand: he could have dropped to his knees and kissed the ground.
He waited by the beast’s foreleg while Meiran undid the buckles, one by one. They had not spoken a word to each other during the journey, or in the temple. She had acquiesced to Rho’s plan with a few terse affirmatives; that was it. He had not asked her to come with him to the desert, but she had vaulted up into the saddle behind him without a word.
And now here they were.
He scanned the vast tent city, the whole Nomas nation in a thousand or more bright dwellings, gathered here from every part of the world. It was past midnight and the children were long abed, no doubt exhausted from a giddy day of chasing each other around the site. The married couples had retired as well, eager to make up for the months they’d spent apart. The fires remaining were mostly tended by young people: girls lounging around one, boys at another, both groups coolly pretending not to notice each other. Jachad smiled nostalgically. Soon one of the girls would stand up and announce that she needed to stretch her legs; then one of the boys would do the same. And in a little while, in some dark spot, that boy would be drowning in the sea-scent of that girl’s hair, and the touch of her hands, and the warmth and softness of her body. How he envied such beautiful simplicity.
Meiran walked past him into the camp, making her way toward the spot where Nisha’s blue silk tent shimmered in silver ripples in the last of the moonlight. He trailed after her, letting the distance between them widen. The soft voices of the teenagers around the fires rose self-consciously as they passed, trying too hard to pretend that Jachad and Meiran’s movements did not concern them.
He stopped when he saw the tent flap move. A pool of lamplight spilled out onto the sand and his mother’s silhouette appeared. She slipped outside, letting the silk fall shut behind her. She looked at Meiran, and Meiran stopped.
Nisha’s hand reached up to clutch the silver medallion at her breast and Jachad saw her lips move in what was surely a prayer to Amai.
Expectant sparks wound around his fingers. It wasn’t too late: if Meiran ran into Nisha’s embrace now, everything would be all right. Wrongs would be redressed; wounds would heal.
But Meiran walked toward Nisha like a general on the battlefield marching out to parley with the enemy, her boots striking the sand with military rigor.
“I need to speak to you,” she said, “alone.”
Nisha nodded and led Meiran into her tent. The sudden splash of lamplight as she held back the flap dazzled Jachad’s tired eyes, but a moment later the two women had disappeared inside and the light was gone.
As if by mere coincidence, men and women began emerging from their tents and milling sociably around the dying campfires. Jachad steeled himself for their inevitable questions. He had not realized how much he had been counting on Nisha and Meiran’s reunion to change the situation; now that it was clear that it would not, he just wanted to be alone to nurse the pain of his disappointment in private.
“Well, here you are finally, King Jachad!” cried a clear voice, and while others hung back out of a mixture of sensitivity and apprehension, pretty little Dannika, second mate on the Veruna, skipped up to welcome him. “I’ve been keeping a seat for you by my fire for the last two days, you know.” She swept her light hair back from her bright-cheeked face, the tiny bells on her bracelets tin
kling invitingly.
“That was kind of you, Danni,” he told her. “I’m sorry I disappointed you.”
She regarded him searchingly for a moment, and then frowned. “Not sorry enough to make it up to me now, I’m guessing.”
“No, I’m afraid not. A lot has happened since the last gathering. Things are different now.”
She shrugged, a gesture so quintessentially Nomas that he couldn’t help but smile. “Why wait for the wind when there’s oars a-plenty?” she said with a saucy wink. “That’s what our captain always says.”
“Captain—?” he repeated, reminded of the original purpose of his visit. “Danni, can I ask a favor? I need to speak with all of the chiefs and captains, right away—can you round them up for me? Tell them to meet by those rocks over there on the south side of camp.”
“Now?” Her eyes widened. “It’s only the third night, and it’s late—you know what they’re all doing.”
“I’m sorry, but yes, all of them,” he insisted. “And right away.”
“If you say so,” she agreed reluctantly. “At least I won’t be the only one going unsatisfied tonight.” Despite the grousing, she sauntered off on her errand with no ill will, leaving others pressing forward to welcome him in turn. He responded vaguely to those who asked what had delayed him, promising that they would all know more soon enough. As he listened to a trio of young men recounting the tale of a particularly profitable trip to the spice markets of Chervong, the crowd around him suddenly fell silent and he turned to find that his mother had joined them. She was alone.
Jachad excused himself and he and Nisha began strolling along the makeshift streets, heading for the edge of camp where the emptied wagons had been put to use as paddocks for their animals.