Blood's Pride
Page 37
Her eyes lost focus; their angry flashing gave way to that weary, wounded look that had haunted him all these years. “Of course I knew.”
“Meiran…”
The knife still lay in her hand, dividing them, pushing them apart. She spoke haltingly, and her normally flat voice took on a peculiar, far-away cadence, like surf breaking on a moonless night. “At first I thought, if I just waited … I knew why you didn’t want me to know.” She looked down at the knife. “I knew what you were afraid of.”
“I had a duty to my people—” he started, but she stopped him.
“I know. I know what I am, and what I’ve done.” She closed her hand around the leather hilt, turned the knife this way and that, catching the dull light on the blade, making it gleam. Finally she looked up at him again. “I thought you might think better of me, that’s all.”
Some scorching mix of remorse and hope flooded through him, and he reached out and gripped her shoulders with both hands, holding on to her, feeling as if he were drowning and he needed her to stay afloat. Her arms went slack; the knife dropped into the dirt. “Tell me now,” he urged her. “Tell me what you want with Harotha—I swear I’ll trust you. I will believe anything you say. Anything!”
Her eyes searched his face, but this time she did not pull away. She hesitated, finding the words with difficulty, until she finally held up her scarred forearm and said,“I’ve already held him. They give him to me—they beg me to take him.” Her face took on a strange expression, softer than he had ever seen, but aglow with a possessive, almost frantic exhilaration. “He’s mine, Jachi: he’s really mine, and I won’t let anything happen to him. I won’t let anyone take him away from me.”
He caught his breath. “You mean the baby.”
She nodded. “I felt something. I don’t know what to call it. It felt like—like a reason to be alive.”
He was still holding on to her shoulders; now he gripped them even harder. He had promised to believe her, unconditionally, but still he asked, “Why would Harotha and Eofar give you their baby? Their own child?”
“They don’t want him.” She leaned in so close that he could see the hectic pulsing of the veins beneath her skin. “They don’t, but I do—Jachi, I’ve seen it all—he needs me. You swore that if I told you, you’d believe me. You must believe me—”
They heard a soft cry and turned to see Harotha trying to stand, holding on to the wall for support. Jachad rushed over and grasped her arm. The coldness of her skin shocked him, as did the frightening bluish tint of her lips, and the way her eyes were darting about as if they couldn’t focus.
“You said you had a midwife for her?” he called out to Meiran.
“The house—it’s not far. Your mother and the others, they’re waiting.” She circled around to support Harotha on the other side.
Meiran led them through the deserted streets, the two of them half-carrying Harotha. She pointed out a house with a homely light flickering behind its curtained doorway and a few fragrant wisps of smoke spiraling up from the chimney, but before they could reach it, Harotha inhaled sharply and her eyelids fluttered.
“Something’s wrong,” she muttered.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Jachad asked her, stopping.
“Keep going!” Meiran commanded.
“Something’s wrong. I can feel it.” She was slurring her words together, then she gasped again.
“Hurry,” Meiran pleaded, propeling them on even faster. They were practically dragging Harotha now, and her labored breaths had degenerated into rhythmic moans.
Suddenly the Shadari dug her heels into the ground and seized the front of Jachad’s robe with both hands. “Promise me!” she demanded. Her eyes were stretched wide open, but they were vague, unfocused, like a sleepwalker’s.
“Promise you what?” he cried.
“Promise you’ll save the baby—if you have to choose. You choose the baby. Promise me!”
“Harotha,” he pleaded, “don’t talk like that. Everything’s going to be—”
She reached out to Meiran. “You’ll promise me, won’t you? You— Oh!” She stopped speaking and the focus came back into her eyes. She stared into Meiran’s face as if she was seeing it for the first time. Her head fell to one side and the faintest of smiles crossed her lips. In an odd, soothing voice, she said, “It’s all right. It’s all right.” She reached out, as if she wanted to touch Meiran’s face, but she was too weak to lift her arm. “I know why you’re here. I know—” Then she fainted into Jachad’s arms.
“Shof help us!” he cried. Between them they lifted her up and staggered toward the house. Now they could hear small, urgent sounds from within: pots rattling gently, a fire snapping, voices speaking in serious undertones.
Meiran rustled the curtain over the narrow doorway and two Nomas women darted out and whisked Harotha inside without a word. Jachad was beginning to follow when he realized that Meiran wasn’t behind him. He turned around and found her backing out into the empty street with a ghastly look on her face.
“What is it?” he asked, running over to her. “What’s wrong?”
“Everything—it’s all wrong,” she murmured. “It’s just like the visions, but it’s wrong.”
He seized her arm. “What do you mean?”
Her voice ached with dismay. “I remember it all, every detail. Nisha brings me the baby. She says, ‘Eofar can’t bear the sight of him. You can’t blame him, can you? Harotha wants you to take him away from here. Take him away, and never come back to the Shadar.’”
In the long silence that followed, Jachad heard the blood roaring in his ears. “And you thought it meant they didn’t want him,” he said.
“But they don’t—they don’t want him,” she insisted, clutching his torn sleeve. “They don’t want him. He’s a mongrel. He’s like me.”
“Meiran, you made a mistake. I know how you feel, but it doesn’t matter now. We have to—” But before he could finish, she ran off down the street. He stared after her with a feeling like he’d been kicked in the stomach. Then he walked back up to the house, each step heavier with apprehension than the last. He was just about to push past the curtain when a Nomas woman stepped out to block his path, wiping her hands on a piece of cloth.
“Now, now, where do you think you’re going?”
He stared back at her stupidly for a moment. She was an old friend, someone he’d known since childhood, but somehow he couldn’t remember her name. “Inside.”
“Oh, no, you’re not. No place for a man in there. It’s going to be a difficult one. I can always tell.” She flipped the cloth onto one shoulder and her clear, dark green eyes searched his face; when she spoke again, a hint of compassion warmed her crisp voice. “Best stay out of the way. You understand.”
“Oh— Of course,” he answered. He still didn’t move from the doorway.
“Jachi,” the woman said, more gently still, and the sound of his pet name roused him a little. “We’ll do the best we can for her. Lucky thing our Meiran had us prepared. Here.” She took him by the elbow and led him over to a little bench set against the wall of the house. “You sit here and the first chance I get, I’ll bring you out a nice hot cup of tea. How’s that?”
He looked up at her sun-kissed face. The morning breeze blew by and shook the scent of the sea from her hair. With depthless gratitude, he replied, “A cup of tea would be lovely, Mairi. Thank you.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Rho sat on a rock, looking out to sea. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been there, listening to the soporific pulse of the waves. He remembered that the sky had still been dark when he’d landed his exhausted triffon on the beach and tumbled out of the saddle. Now the eastern horizon had lightened by degrees from black to a deep blue, and the white tops of the waves appeared and disappeared, pale as wraiths. He liked looking at the water. He liked pretending that he was floating on those calm ripples, without any concern for what might be lurking in the deep water underneath.
The thump and snap of wings sounded behind him, but he didn’t turn around. He’d been hearing the wings on and off the whole night. There was never anyone there.
Now that dawn was approaching, he could see the shape of the huge ship more clearly, the tips of her tall masts pointing up to the cobalt sky. Very slowly they had succeeded in turning her back out to sea, but they hadn’t got very far yet—the tide must have been against them. They hadn’t lowered the boats, or tried to send anyone ashore. He supposed they had been close enough to see that the temple had been destroyed and decided to turn back. Not that it made any difference to him; it was just something to look at, part of the scenery.
He heard the sound of someone running across the packed sand behind him, and then a hand seized him and pulled him from the rock. The owner of the hand threw herself into his arms, saying,
Rho dutifully brought his arms up around Isa, but he could only return the mechanics of her embrace, not the spirit.
She drew back from him.
He noticed that her face was very dirty—soot, maybe. There had been fires. Behind her he could see Daryan walking toward them over the sand, looking ten years older than he had that afternoon. He found himself wondering what his own face must look like by now. He marveled that Isa still recognized him.
He looked back at her, surprised by her question. “They’re all dead.”
“But you got out. Maybe they—”
“They’re all dead,” he told her. He was very calm, like the ripples on the water. “They were all in the temple. They’re dead. I heard them screaming.”
Isa stepped back from him.
He had upset her—he hadn’t wanted to upset her, but the calmness—it didn’t allow him to be anything but brutally frank.
Daryan touched the tips of his fingers to her back. “We can’t stay here. If Frea’s still alive she’s going to make her move right now. She has no other choice. We have to get to Faroth. If he’s got Dramash out in the open we have to do something. If Harotha is there, maybe the two of us, together—I know it’s not much of a plan, but what else can we do?”
“But now we have Rho. He can help us.”
Rho returned to his seat on the rock. “I can’t help you.”
“Eofar can’t do anything more—he’s still alive, thank the gods, but Frea nearly killed him. We found him and took him to the Nomas,” said Daryan, talking over Isa without realizing it. “Only a dozen of the Dead Ones—the Norlanders—on your side are left, and fewer dereshadi. They’ve taken shelter in that cave Harotha found.”
“We know Frea still wants Dramash—but now you’re here, and Dramash trusts you. Maybe you can—”
“I can’t help you,” he repeated as he looked back out over the water.
Isa stood in front of him. “What’s wrong with you?”
“It took me a little time to work it out.” Out beyond the harbor, the white sails of the ship rocked, back and forth. “It was the coin—you remember the coin, Isa? Faroth must have waited for me to go to the temple, then he told Dramash that his mother was dead and that I’m the one who murdered her.”
There was a pause. Then Daryan, standing a little apart, asked in a low voice, “Why would he tell him that?”
The sound of the surf rolled in his ears. “Because I did murder her.”
He felt Isa recoil, but just as quickly she pushed her horror away, as he had known she would. “But what happened? You must have—”
“Because Frea asked me to. That’s why I did it.” He cut off any justification she might have produced, and then went even further, correcting himself, “No, I’ve been telling myself that, but it’s not true. Frea only wanted me to keep her quiet; it was my idea to cut her throat.” More of an impulse than an idea; but no matter. “Dramash was already in the air, waving to her. I held her up while she died so he wouldn’t notice. She bled on me. You remember, Isa? You spoke to me just after that, in the temple. Her blood was still on me then.” It was easy to talk about it now that he no longer had anything to hide. He could have gone on, but when she drew back from him he knew he had said enough. He greeted her disgust and disappointment with relief. “So, now you see,” he told them again, “I can’t help you.”
Daryan had not moved throughout Rho’s recitation, but his face had gone very red. “So that’s it?” he asked. “Now you’re just going to sit here and do nothing? You’re not even going to help us save Dramash from the White Wolf?”
Rho watched Isa walk down the sloping shore, toward the water, shells crunching under her heels. Her boots splashed in the shallows. He said to Daryan, “If I hadn’t turned on Frea, Daem and the others wouldn’t have either—they wouldn’t have been in the temple. And without me, Dramash would have had no reason to destroy it. You see? The more I do, the more people die. Daem tried to explain it to me, but I wouldn’t listen. And now he’s dead. Now they’re all dead.” He rested his hands on his knees and watched Isa turn and walk along the waterline. “So yes. I’m just going to sit here.”
Daryan stepped closer. His face was still red and his hands were clenched into fists at his sides. “You saved my life. I haven’t forgotten that.” His mouth moved as he tried to compose his thoughts. “There’s no excuse for what you did. You can’t undo it—”
“I know.”
“—but that doesn’t mean you’re allowed to give up. Do something. Fix it.”
The surf was getting rougher. Was the tide going out, or coming in? Isa walked back up from the water with the spray chasing her heels. Wet sand caked the hem of her cloak as it dragged behind her.
“I’m sorry. You just don’t understand,” he told Daryan.
Isa walked back toward them—he thought she was coming to join them, but instead she kept walking right by them, making for Aeda, who was dozing in the sand.
“Isa!” Daryan called out, “aren’t you going to say anything?”
She kept her eyes straight ahead. “No.”
“But he’s your friend!” Daryan protested, jogging after her.
She paused with her foot in the stirrup. “That’s not my friend. That’s not Rho,” she said clearly. She turned to look at him over her shoulder. Then she spoke in Norlander, but not with the hatred that he’d wanted and expected, but with love and concern that came stabbing at him with the sharpness of a dagger.
A moment later, they were gone.
And a moment after that, Rho was in the saddle of his own triffon, buckling himself in with hands that trembled with urgency.
There was enough light for him to keep Aeda in sight, but by the time he landed next to her, on a street lined with the blackened lumps that had once been people’s homes, the two of them had already gone. He poked around until he found a charred blanket stinking of smoke, took off his sword and threw the blanket over his head and shoulders, concealing both his features and the weapon in his hands. He hurried down the gray street and soon found himself caught up in a steady stream of people heading in the same direction. As they passed through the broken walls of the old Shadari royal palace, he hunched his shoulders and rearranged his makeshift cowl. He avoided the press of bodies as best he
could, not trusting the blanket to disguise his Norlander chill. The crowd was hushed enough for him to hear voices: Daryan was already there, speaking to Faroth.
“Dramash has done enough, hasn’t he? You’ve got to get him to some place safe. We have to decide what we’re going to do about the White Wolf.”
“The White Wolf is dead—and you don’t give the orders here,” Faroth said. Rho’s breath had turned the air under the blanket moist and stifling. Sweat dripped down from his forehead and into his eyes. “Did you think we’d forgotten all those years you spent in the temple, Daryan, getting fat with Shairav? You stood up to the Dead Ones now because you had no other choice. That doesn’t give you any right—”
“I never said I was fit to be daimon,” Daryan conceded diplomatically, “but are you? What do you plan to do—rule over the Shadar using Dramash to threaten anyone who disagrees with you?”
“He’s my son and I’ll use him as I see fit.”
Warm bodies jostled against Rho as more and more people tried to get close enough to hear what was happening. He edged his way forward.
“As you see fit? As you saw fit to destroy the temple?” Daryan’s voice rose wrathfully. “What about the Shadari who were still trapped in there, and the others who were buried alive when it fell?” he thundered. “And the Dead Ones you killed—most of them were our allies!”
Suddenly someone tugged at the blanket over Rho’s head and he yanked Fortune’s Blight a few inches from its scabbard—but he checked the impulse, just in time. He had not been recognized; he was just being pushed to one side to make way for an even dirtier and bloodier group of Shadari men forcing their way through the crowd. From beneath his cowl he saw a heavy rock-hammer swinging in the hand of the man who’d pushed him.
Anticipating disaster, he stepped out behind the man and followed in his wake, keeping his head bowed and his eyes to the ground until he saw an empty patch of ground in front of him that signaled he had come to the front of the crowd. He ventured a glance and recognized the tall Shadari, Omir, stepping into the wide circle that already contained Daryan, Faroth and Dramash. He couldn’t see either Isa or Harotha.