Blood's Pride (Shattered Kingdoms) (18 page)

‘All right,’ she agreed quietly.

He ordered Saria’s body brought back to the city to be prepared for her funeral and Harotha taken back to his house, to wait there until his return. Then he struck out for the palace ruins with his three companions jostling nervously at his heels. The rest of the men stood awkwardly around the body for a moment until someone took the initiative, then more hurried to help lift her up.

Alkar came forward to her, holding out his good hand. ‘Come with me.’ He reached out as if to take her by the elbow, but she jerked backwards, repulsed at the thought of his sweaty hand touching her.

‘No. I need to stay here, by the mountains.’ She needed time alone, to think. ‘The earthquake uncovered something over
there that I want to investigate. I know Faroth’s house. I’ll come later.’

‘I can’t allow that,’ Alkar told her. His eyes flashed dangerously. ‘Faroth said to take you with us.’

‘The sun’s already up,’ she argued.

‘I’ll be perfectly safe.’

‘I have orders. So do you,’ said Alkar.

She flushed, remembering a time when Faroth’s orders would never have countermanded her own. ‘All right.’

He smiled unpleasantly and immediately turned his back on her. The bearers swung around and headed northeast, in the direction of Faroth’s house, the rest drifting after them, in whispering twos and threes. She hung back, letting them get as far ahead of her as she dared. She wanted no more eyes on her.

‘Can I have my knife back?’ Jachad was standing behind her, holding out his hand. She had completely forgotten he was there. He flashed his disarming smile. ‘Please? It was a gift from my mother.’

She slowly handed him the knife.

‘Thank you,’ he said pleasantly as he returned the knife to its sheath. He adjusted his robes and then, in an urgent voice completely at odds with his open smile and the casualness of his stance, said, ‘They don’t trust you. You won’t be able to fool them for long.’

Something inside her chest fluttered. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Stop.’ He cut her off immediately, fixing her with his arrestingly blue eyes. ‘I’m Nomas, remember? This game you’re running wouldn’t have fooled me when I was five years old. Don’t worry; you’re in no danger from me. But I wouldn’t say the same about your sweaty friends over there.’

Alkar, bringing up the rear of the ragtag procession marching away across the sand, looked back suspiciously.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she persisted. ‘They’re waiting for me. I have to go.’

‘Get away from them as soon as you can,’ Jachad pressed. ‘Come to us in the desert. We Nomas have the blood of a dozen different races in our veins. No one will judge you there. You have my word.’

She looked into his eyes and saw the blue skies of a beautiful dream: roaming with the Nomas, no attachments, no obligations, no one to disappoint or to betray, beholden to no one and to nothing. Tears of exhaustion sprang to her eyes, but they refused to fall.

‘Harotha!’ Alkar called out impatiently. With an annoyed shake of his head, he began stalking back towards her.

‘I can’t,’ she whispered.

Jachad shrugged sadly and turned away.

‘Wait! Where are you going?’ she called after him.

Jachad continued walking as he called back, ‘To pray.’

Jachad stood up and brushed the sand from the front of his robes. Once again he had said his prayers alone, and once again, without his people around him, the familiar ritual had failed to comfort him. He was sick to death of the Shadar. As he shivered in the temple’s shadow, Shof, spilling his light extravagantly over the sea, had never felt more distant. He looked up at the temple’s blank, uncommunicative windows. Meiran was in there somewhere, and up to Shof knew what.

He squinted up at the spot where he had seen Nisha’s prearranged signal fire burning the night before. She was waiting on the mountain to accompany him down to the gathering place, and he was already late.

In his haste to reach her Jachad chose a path better suited to goats than people. By the time his shadow had shrunk down to a stout little dwarf, he was using hands as well as feet to climb. Loose rocks, gnarled roots and other hazards kept him occupied, but not even the physical demands of the climb could stop the thoughts churning in his head. They were driving him mad, repeating themselves, round and round, like the first phrases of a tune with a forgotten ending.

Midday had passed by the time he finally crested the narrow, flat ridge that Nisha had chosen for her camp. She had erected her tent of sailcloth – dyed a silvery blue and conjuring the
Argent
, the ship of which she was captain – on a patch bare of the scrubby vegetation. Nisha herself was sitting on a carpet in front of her tent, tending to a small fire with a kettle swinging over it. The silver medallion of Amai, the token of her office as high priestess to the moon goddess and queen of the Nomas, hung against her breast, flashing in the afternoon sun.

‘Have you eaten?’ she asked.

He stared at his mother for a moment and then laughed heartily, diving onto the carpet beside her. He touched his forehead to hers in greeting and inhaled from her hair the fresh, blustery essence of the sea. ‘Oh, I’ve been away too long, Mother,’ he said, still chuckling, falling back on his elbows. ‘That’s just what I needed: some good old hard-headed Nomas practicality. No, I haven’t eaten.’

‘Or slept either, hmm? You look terrible, Jachi.’

‘I know,’ he said, rubbing at his aching eyes. ‘Smells good. What is it, fish soup?’

‘Want some?’

‘I could stick my head right in the pot.’

She dipped a bowl into the pot and handed it to her son, who sat up, took a sip, grimaced as it burned his tongue and then sat back on his heels to blow on it.

‘So, how was the bargaining?’ she asked.

‘Good. Profitable. Here’s the fee for bringing Meiran. That’s all going into the treasury.’ He untied Faroth’s purse with one hand and tossed it down on the carpet. ‘But the elixir – now
that was a pretty piece of bargaining. I sold it to Eofar for thirty-one eagles, even though the bottle was only half-full. How’s that for a result?’

‘That’s wonderful, son.’

‘Although,’ he mused, scratching thoughtfully at the wiry growth of beard he was now sporting, ‘if I had known he was really going to use it on himself, I might not have sold it to him.’

‘Yes, you would have,’ she disagreed blithely.

‘Yes, I would have,’ he conceded with a grin and playfully grabbed at his mother’s legs. She swatted him away.

‘Stop it, Jachi. Eat your soup.’

He obeyed, and they sat in silence, kept company by the gentle rustlings of the tent flaps in the mountain breeze. Eventually Nisha’s lashes fell lower over her blue eyes – eyes the colour of a shallow sea in sunshine – and she gazed pensively down at the city below.

‘All right, old lady. Out with it,’ he prodded gently.

She waited a moment and then without looking at him, asked, ‘So, how is she?’

He considered the question. ‘Complicated,’ he answered finally.

‘Did she tell you why she left us?’ she asked. Her eyes were shining.

‘Come on, Mother. We already know that: she was sick and we were arguing over her. She must have thought that what happened in the temple was starting all over again.’

‘But it was all so long ago, and she was so young. Maybe she doesn’t even remember what happened.’

‘Oh, I think she remembers,’ he assured her darkly. ‘Otherwise she wouldn’t have come back here.’

Nisha sat up. A worried frown creased her forehead. ‘Does she understand now why she’s ill?’

Jachad pushed the empty wooden bowl aside and stood up. ‘No, I don’t think so – not the real reason, at least. She’s not interested in us Nomas at all, as far as I can tell. She’s more concerned with this ridiculous Shadari rebellion – though for the life of me I can’t figure out which side she’s really on.’ He began pacing the ridge, knotting his fingers together as he walked. ‘I did try, but you know Meiran: you can’t really ask her anything. I gave her the full Nomas charm, but got nothing. It’s like trying to charm an oyster.’

She watched him pace, and finally told him sternly, ‘What’s wrong here was not your doing. What’s done is done. No one said it was up to you to make it right. You take too much on yourself.’

‘I don’t know,’ he mused. ‘I’ve been praying to Shof for guidance. He hasn’t seen fit to give me any.’

‘Shof?’ She gave a little snort. ‘It’s his fault – and old King Tobias’ – that we’re in this mess in the first place.’

‘Mother,’ he implored wearily, ‘I don’t want to have this argument again. It’s just as much Amai’s fault as it is Shof’s – more, even, if you’d just admit it. Meiran was dedicated to Shof first, and you know it.’

‘She was a female child. The old king had no
right
to keep Meiran, no
right
to consecrate her to Shof,’ Nisha retorted with her lips pursed.

‘She wasn’t Nomas, Mother! What right did you and your
women have to steal her from our camp and consecrate her to Amai? Behind our backs?’ he demanded.

‘We did not
steal
Meiran!’ Nisha insisted majestically, rising to her feet. ‘She came wandering into our midst that gathering like a lost soul, searching our faces as if she were looking for someone. Our hearts went out to her. We thought she needed us. We wanted to help her.’

‘She didn’t need you. She was already consecrated to Shof.’

‘There! That’s what I’m talking about,’ she crowed, gesturing triumphantly. ‘Why didn’t the old king tell anyone about her? Why did he consecrate her to Shof in secret? Why did he deliberately try to hide her from us at that gathering? Unless he knew he was doing something wrong, hmm? He should have discussed it with us first and we could have decided together what was best for her. Meiran would never have been harmed.’

He folded his arms over his chest and pressed his knuckles against his lips, saying with dark reflection, ‘Maybe he just couldn’t face the risk of being parted from her.’

She took a deep breath as if gathering strength for another volley, but instead she let it out again in a long sigh. Her lips curled into a rueful smile. ‘He did have a big heart, old Tobias. As big as the desert, we used to say. And he loved Meiran, didn’t he? He was never the same after she left, poor man.’

Jachad’s eyes lost their focus and the ridge, his mother and the Shadar below all disappeared. ‘Yes, he loved her – it was impossible not to love her. That day she crawled into our camp, burned, bleeding, hungry, speechless from thirst – she was nearly dead, and we never did find out how long she’d been out there on her own. The old king himself nursed her back
to health like she was an infant. He put her in my tent and treated her as if she were my sister. She’d wake up in the night, Mother, screaming like you never heard, and nothing would make her stop, not until he came in to comfort her. Some days she would just sit by his side, silent as a mute, watching him, those mismatched eyes never leaving his face. Other days she was just another kid, like the rest of us, laughing and playing, fighting and making up and fighting some more – until you lot got hold of her and consecrated her to Amai and the attacks started coming.’ Jachad looked at his mother. ‘And then one morning I woke up and she was gone.’ He rubbed his eyes and looked down on the Shadar. ‘What did we do?’

‘We blessed her twice, Jachi. Worse things have been done in this world, believe me.’

‘But there must be something we can do to help her.’

‘Is it very painful for her?’ she asked, coming to him and squeezing his shoulder with her rope-callused hand.

He nodded. ‘The attacks still come at sunrise and sunset, but it looks like the pain is much worse than I remember. I’ve seen Amai and Shof push her almost all the way to death, squabbling over her. And I’ve noticed other things – I think they’ve taken different bits of her over the years, like she was a map and they were generals claiming territories. They’ve taken an eye each – she can’t see properly out of both of them at once any more, that’s why she has to wear that patch. And she drinks with her left hand at night and her right hand during the day, things like that.’ He narrowed his eyes, looking at the sky. ‘That’s how they show their love for her: they torture her. They’re driving her mad.’

‘Amai and Shof are gods,’ Nisha reminded him sternly. ‘The war they fight stalemated at the dawn of time. If they both want her, what can we do about it? I’ve prayed to Amai to release her claim; you have prayed to Shof, but it’s no use: we’re a stubborn people and we have stubborn gods.’

He circled his arm around her waist and hugged her to him. ‘Mother, I’m not coming to the gathering with you,’ he told her gently. ‘I can’t leave things the way they are. I have to go back – I have to know what she’s trying to do. I may have to stop her from doing it.’

He felt her stiffen in his embrace. ‘Are you going to tell her the truth?’

‘How can I?’ he demanded bitterly, releasing her. ‘I’m the king of the tribe of Shof, the king of the Nomas. I don’t know what she’ll do if she finds out the truth. My first duty is to my tribe. I haven’t forgotten that.’

She put her hands on his shoulders and looked at him through a blur of tears. ‘You are a king, Jachi, and you do have a duty to your people, and that’s all well and good. But you’re afraid to tell her the truth, for the same reason I am: you’re afraid she’ll hate you for it.’ Her tears spilled over and he hugged her, burying his face in her sea-swept hair.

‘There,’ she said finally, disentangling herself and plunking a motherly kiss down on his cheek. ‘You don’t need to worry about the gathering. Come here,’ she commanded, holding out her hand to him. Her rings flashed in the sun. ‘Come!’

He took her hand suspiciously and allowed her to lead him past her tent, over to the other side of the ridge towards the desert, away from the temple and the Shadar. The undulating
dunes, tinged red and yellow and white, stretched to the horizon. He felt a sharp pang of homesickness at the sight of them. Somewhere out there his tribe was getting ready to see the wives and daughters and sisters and mothers and lovers who had not set foot on land in the rising and setting of six moons. Even now he could see the dust cloud on the horizon that was probably his tribe, journeying towards the traditional meeting-ground, eight long days’ journey from the Shadar.