Fox's Bride (14 page)

Chandur's boots sank into the sand as he leaped into darkness.

His hands slapped stone, feeling the edge of a block where the well of rock emptied into the room of his oubliette. His fingers slid, and he dropped into a soft gloom.

Chandur had sawed through the ropes with is teeth, strand by greasy strand. His lips were raw and bleeding. He bet eating would pain him, but the guards had been considerate enough not to feed him. The cup they had lowered through the grate had spilled most of its water on the way down. They had jiggled the rope and laughed.

To calm himself, he recited the first line of his prophecy. “Fosapam Chandur's fate is bright…”

His heart beat hot as he shoved more sand to the center of the oubliette. His fingers touched something hard, another bone.
Man or beast?
Either way, he was grateful. He felt out the corner stacked with bones, thinking he might need them to bolster the platform.

Enchantress Hiresha had ordered him to escape, and escape he would.

Another heave into the sand. He shaped it into a mound. Stepping upon it, he spoke the second line. “His parents will be proud...” He sprang upward.

Cunning architects had built the oubliette wide and the roof high, but Chandur was a tall man, with a fate that burned inside him.
I cannot fail
.

His palms slapped stone. He swung his legs upward.

“...That he'll finish his fights...”

If he could plant his feet on one side of the prison shaft he thought—he hoped he might—push off and catch the far side with his hands and make a human bridge. Then he could creep upward, toward the flickering grate above.

His hands slid, and he tumbled backward into darkness. The sand forced a grunt out of him.

Chandur did not see it as a failure.
Just a delay
.

“...Gain or loss, he will be unbowed.”

He imagined the thread of his fate, curving side to side amid thousands of souls in the Weaver's grand tapestry of life. Soon he would rise to the front of the pattern. His thread could not end before then.
They can't execute me,
he thought.
I will escape.

After picking grit from his sore lips, he set to building a higher platform of sand.

Janny Barrows felt an uncommon pang of guilt for enjoying herself on the city streets. The midday sun shone on the linen hanging from roofs like white banners. The scarabs pattered in alarming numbers, but few flies or children bothered her. Every merchant stall was packed with treasures. One man flaunted his skill at an upright loom, a rug flowing from his fingers while his wife sat at a smaller loom beside him. They called out “Gods are eternal!” to the passersby.

An overhead stream had shaded the street, but the floating water-worm twisted away to expose Janny to the beat of sunrays. To better endure the heat she felt inclined to treat herself by staring at the toned backside of a young man walking in front of her. He wore a loincloth under his gauzy linen skirt, and Janny's chin nodded in time to the swishing stride of his thighs, corded muscles sliding under his skin above the calves of a god.

Her guard escort walked ahead of her and blocked her view. Janny tsked. “Rather selfish of you to wear pants, don't you think?”

The guard looked back at her. “What?”

He had wide shoulders, so Janny winked at him over the chest of clothes she carried. It held the enchantress' amethyst gown and other valuables. Janny had collected it from the inn and was to bring it to the temple compound. The thought of Hiresha under guard tonight then thrown into a stone coffin the day after tomorrow upset Janny's digestion and left her insides gurgling. The stress of the last few days had made her positively windy.

The guard's neck had flushed. When he glanced back again, Janny felt too out of sorts to even given him the second-wink treatment.

Poor Hiresha,
she thought.
And poor Fosapam.

Men shouted. A crash and a holler. Janny began to turn toward the commotion when a fox dashed past her in a flash of black-tipped tail and a sparkle of green jewels.

The guard froze. Janny blinked.

She asked, “That wasn't…was it?”

A flood of elbows and pushing shoulders spun Janny about. People yelled as they rushed after the fox.

“The Golden Scoundrel!”

“Catch him, Snedja! Catch fortune!”

“He's worth a ship.”

“The priests will pay.”

Janny was forced against a wall painted in stylized palm trees. Her first thought was to duck into a doorway to escape the press of people. Then she noticed an attractive alley.
A good hideaway.
The shadow of a pharaoh's statue also looked safe.

Wasn't Hiresha searching for the fox?
The thought of touching the bundle of teeth and claws terrified Janny, but the vizier had said something to Hiresha about getting the fox back.
A god's worth her freedom, isn't it? Maybe Chandur's, too.
More than anything, Janny wanted to save the enchantress.
Can't let her die 'til she's had some butter-butter between the sheets.

Dropping the chest, she shoved into the crowd. Janny bounced her way between pilgrims. Grabbing arms and shoulders, she pulled herself forward more than she used her legs.

She spotted the fennec spring from a jug onto the canvass above a feather-merchant's wares. It carried an ostrich plume in its mouth as big as itself.

One man laughed. “He'll blow away.”

People boosted their fellows onto their shoulders, grabbing. The fox leaped on top of a building. Men crammed into the front door, but Janny saw a pair of ears and a tail moving across the rooftops, then a scramble down a fig tree and onto a street, one feather poorer but squeaking and yipping in glee.

The fennec zipped in front of Janny, and she dove after it. The creature hopped over her, prancing around legs, weaving between camel guards, and whisked around a young man.

Never'll catch it,
Janny thought.
Wait, what's this?

A black nose and whiskers peeked from an alley then dodged out of sight. Janny crept between the buildings to see a puffy tail waving, dirt flying as the fennec dug. The emerald stud in its ear twinkled at her.

Janny had seen the fennec running the other direction moments before, and she did not know how it could have gotten its furry paws in this alley so fast.
Maybe there's something to this god business.

In Janny's profession, listening to keyholes was considered an act of attentiveness, and she prided herself on her light step. With dismay, she watched the fox's ears perk up and rotate backward to face her. The fennec spied her with its black-bead eyes. It chirped. It launched down the alley.

“Come back here, you furry grasshopper! You toothsome bunny. You preening hard-to-get!”

Janny was not the running type. Or jogging type. At best, she was the quick-walking-with-feet-pointed-inward-in-search-of-the-nearest-chamber-pot type. She could only puff and huff in a jiggling gait. Soon she lost the fennec, but listening, she heard a high-pitched bark. The sound led her to a courtyard with what looked like blocks of ice on display in a fountain, though she supposed they had to be chunks of glass.

Two men leaned over a box painted with the sign of the Golden Scoundrel. One said, “Must be a fennec in there.”

“Think we should bring it back to the temple?”

“Weren't paid to go back. The priest didn't look the type you’d ask for seconds.”

“What did he say? This was some fortune charm for the city?”

“Something like.”

“Wait. Where's that clicking sound coming from?”

The men twitched back in surprise as the box snapped open. A fennec blinked in the sunlight then squealed in joy, leaping into a bed of flowers. Clusters of pink-white petals swayed, and two foxes bounded past Janny and onto the street. Both wore emerald earrings and collars.

“Two gods! My poor heart.” Janny pressed a hand against her chest, panting as she scuttled after them. If she had known she was to be seeing double foxes anyway, she thought she really ought to have drunk more lotus wine that morning.

The twin fennecs sparked uproar in the street. They flitted between scribes and pilgrims and passed someone wearing a vulture mask.
The balmy Royal Embalmer,
Janny thought. She was not about to forget a man of his height.

The embalmer leaned back, clutching the oiled skin of his belly. He laughed in whooping chortles.

The fennecs scrambled up the hieroglyphs on the side of an obelisk. Tails brushed the slanted pillar of rock. Men jumped against the obelisk but could not reach them. The foxes hopped down over their heads and raced by a man walking on crutches. A woman wearing a blue headband touched the cripple's shoulder, motioning him forward. He astonished Janny by hurling himself into the chase, his crutches scraping the streets. With a hopping gait he passed men who had both their legs.

The foxes left a path of destruction as people rushed to grab them. Wagons of orange and green melons tipped and rolled. Glass sculptures shattered. Jugs fell, broke, leaking wine, and Janny thought she could cry.

The maid fell behind. Her insides sloshed in a manner she could only think was unhealthy. Breathing hard, she leaned against a whitewashed wall to see another mob running on an adjacent street, a third fennec in the lead.

She gasped and gulped. “How—how many of the winkers are there?”

This fennec spun around a fountain three times. A chain and stream stretched skyward from the stonework. A scribe caught the fox, and Janny yelled at him.

“I'll pleasure you for that animal!”

The distracted scribe received a tail slap in the face, and the animal in question wriggled free.

Guards on camels shouted for order even as their mounts barreled people aside to close in on the fox. A merchant screamed when the hunt crossed over his perfume stall. Glass bottles tinkled, and aromas drenched Janny of flowers and spice. She coughed and spluttered.

A man jogged beside her. “What a time! They do this every year?”

“Out'a my way.” Janny bumped him aside with her hips.

The fennecs were quick, but she was determined to catch this one. It wore not only an emerald collar but a bracelet, too, secured around its neck. Janny recognized that bracelet.
This's the one, Janny! Get it and they'll have to let Hiresha go.

She did not care for the idea of losing her employer, not a whit. With Mister Barrows thankfully dead these last seven years, Janny's children relied on her income. Her daughter, Minna, hoped to attend the Mindvault Academy next year as a novice, but Janny knew that would never happen without Hiresha's patronage.

Janny kept her daughter’s education in mind as she trundled into a bazaar. She might have had a walker's body, but she pushed herself to run. The fennec vaulted into an urn full of salt and started digging. The crippled man in the chase astounded all with his athletics by springing past three others for a grab. In a white spray, the fox jumped sideways.

He pivoted on one crutch to face the fox. The determination in the man’s eyes frightened Janny.

Racks full of ivory spilled in a rolling clatter. Furry feet pranced over a cart full of dates. The merchant lowered himself, murmuring thanks for the blessing of the god, only for his wares to be jostled into an avalanche of brown sweets.

What Janny lacked in speed, strength, and grace she made up for in ferocity and padding. She plowed gawkers out of her way. Some fell into merchant stalls, capsizing displays and scattering idols of gods. Ostrich eggs wobbled over the street and were trampled. A falling jug of beer was rescued by Janny, and she refreshed herself on the pursuit.

The savory brew sprayed out of her mouth at the sight of the fluffy ears bouncing onto a rack of shrunken heads. The grey leathery masks of skin had their eyes sewn shut, and the fennec tangled itself in black locks of a dead man's hair.

A guard dismounted his camel to try to beat Janny to their goal. The fox was trapped in the shrunken head and fit to be caught, but the guard tripped over a scarab's dung ball.

“Ah ha!” Janny neared the front of the pack. In an act of acrobatics that she never would have expected of herself, she vaulted over a carpet cluttered with cobras made from polished wood. She landed on her belly and breasts. “Oof!” Her arms swung around the fennec.

In a flurry of tail and ears, it twisted about and leaped. Janny was left gripping only the shrunken head.

“No!” Janny had to watch the cripple and a score of other men sprint after the animal. “Come back here, you bride-killing brute!”

Chandur's arms trembled, and his legs strained, holding his weight lengthwise in the shaft above the darkness of the oubliette. He had done it, lunged upward and wedged himself. Sliding one hand and one bare foot—for he had stripped off his boots—at a time, he crept up the prison well.