Fox's Bride (15 page)

The blood in his veins felt sluggish and hot. He had taken to licking his parched lips between each gasp. Holding himself face up and moving away from the blackness below caused his muscles to complain with spikes of pain. Still, the bars above inched closer. One side of their metal flickered red while the other was painted in shadow.

Shouts and the sound of running feet leaked down to him.

“Abthys spotted the Golden Scoundrel. Dashing around the Opal Plaza.”

“When? I saw him just now, by the third tower.”

“Hurry!”

“What reward do you think I'd get for bagging him?”

“Enough for a month in the Lotus District. Come on!”

The guards thudded their way down a corridor and out of hearing. The prison sounded quiet and empty, except for a man's hoarse calling from a nearby oubliette. This worried Chandur because his idea had been to grab someone with the keys.

He slapped his hand up, pushed, gulped air, gagged on its dung-smoke scent. His right foot went up next, edging closer to the grate.

A new scuffle of footsteps echoed down the corridor.

Chandur reached the top of the shaft, though he faced the wrong way to see out the grate to the hall. He worried how long his legs could hold. He was a big man and not at all used to suspending his weight like this.

A few pairs of feet thumped closer. Two men spoke, and they sounded to Chandur like the guards posted at the prison entrance. “Never jailed a corpse before. Don’t seem right.”

“The skin-stitchers say why we’re stowing a dead woman?”

“No.” This third voice was wheezy but dangerous. “Just that the captain wanted her. Set her down here.”

“The captain? Huh. Not saying he worships a barred god, but this don’t seem right.”

The gruff voice of the second guard. “I’m having myself a look.”

Chandur reached up with one arm, folded his fingers around a bar. His second hand followed, and he swung himself to face the voices. His feet rested against the side of the well shaft. This position was easier, and he bet he could hold it for hours.

Through the bars, he watched a guard lift a blue cloth covering a body lying on the ground.

The first guard’s eyes widened, two glints in his face lit by a brazier. “That’s some tattoo.”

“Haven’t I seen that design before?” The second guard glanced to an adjacent oubliette.

“I’m proud to say I forged the tattoo myself.” Lines of metal appeared in the silhouette hands of the third man, and he stabbed the other two guards.

They both lurched back. A grunt, a high-pitched whine.

Chandur cringed, as surprised as the men who had just taken daggers to their necks.

“You’re poisoned,” the third man said. “Do as I say and I’ll give you the antidote. Now, against the wall.”

“Mercy! Can't breathe. Won't turn you in.”

“Against the wall and quiet.”

Both guards rested against the stone, one groaning, the other glaring at the third man. He folded the daggers under his robe and stooped over the grating of the oubliette next to the one where Chandur hid.

The first guard spoke with a whimper. “Please, give the antidote now. My neck's burning. I'm seeing spots.”

The second guard said, “What say we just take the antidote from the jackal?”

“I'm carrying a score of vials,” the third man said. “Drink the wrong one and it'll be like scorpions crawling down your throat. And I only gave you half doses, so you have time.”

After a metallic “snick,” the man stood and motioned the guards to lift the grate. It made a scraping sound, and Chandur took the opportunity to flex his muscles and test his own bars, but his grate was locked and held fast.

“Pull her up.” The third man handed a rope to the two guards then took his turn leaning against the wall. He wore an over robe and a belted sword, along with a modest wig beaded with green and blue glaze. Chandur thought he recognized the fine features of his face but could not place him.

The man coughed, and a dark liquid appeared on his hand. He flicked it into a brazier, and it sizzled.

His eyes darted to Chandur. The spellsword lowered himself too late into the shadows below the bars, and an image wracked his mind of daggers poking through the grating to try to prick him with killing poison.

Chandur peeked up, saw the man had not moved, had not given him away. That was when Chandur knew fate had sent this man to free him.

The other guards gave a final heave, and a scraggly figure rose in a basket from the darkness of an oubliette. She was spilled onto the floor beside the veiled body, the living woman a mass of rags and tangled black hair.

A guard fanned his nose. “Smells worse than the dead one.”

“Lower the corpse into her place,” the fated man said. “Good. Close the grate and you’ll have your antidotes.”

Two vials shone red in the light of embers. The guards snatched them from his open palms, lifted them to their lips.

One man gagged, and the other gripped his belly and collapsed against the wall.

“Hyena crack your sand-scoured bones!” The other guard drew his sickle sword. His arm drooped, and he could do no more than wave the blade at the third man. “You liar!”

“I gave you the antidote. It'll probably soak through your guts before your heart stops.” The fated man stepped out of reach of the sword.

The second guard groaned and toppled to the floor.

The woman wobbled to her feet. Welts spotted her legs. A tattoo of a reptile bared its fangs on her neck. Lifting a hand with long and dirty nails, she parted the hair from her face. In a hoarse voice she spoke a single word vibrating with emotion and relief.

“
Inannis.
”

The man lunged forward to kiss her. Their mouths locked, and they clutched each other in a trembling embrace.

Chandur's eyes were wide. He had not expected that, such strength of tenderness between sick man and sickly prisoner, here in Bleak Wells of all places. It felt doubly wrong to stare, but he could not look away. His own heart danced at the hope he might find such affection. The people of his homeland had never spoken of love, but his time in Oasis City had awakened him to the possibility of passion between two people.

Inannis stepped back from her arms. He lifted a wig and a vulture mask from a pack. “Wear these.”

While the woman dressed herself, she nodded to the prone guards. “Shouldn’t I cut their throats?”

“No need. I added a pinch of memory bane to their antidotes.” Inannis bent down to the other grate. Chandur did not know what he was doing until he heard the click of it being relocked.
Lock up a corpse?
Chandur gritted his teeth.
While I'm hanging here?

The woman took a pink bottle from the pack and sniffed. “Lotus perfume?” She began to sob.

Licking his lips once more, Chandur said, “You are going to free me.”

The woman jerked a knife up from the pack, and her masked face turned to Chandur. Red and white paint circled her eyes. She lowered her blade. “Don’t want to kill this one.”

“We can’t take him along,” Inannis said. “He’s a huge spellsword.”

“You're meant to free me,” Chandur said.

Inannis held twisty metal instruments. He glanced down the corridor at the sounds of several sets of feet. His bloodshot eyes returned to Chandur.

He crouched, fitting the crooked bits of metal into the grate lock. The nod Chandur gave him was not returned.

The voices of men echoed down the corridor. “A fast little god, ain't he?”

The picks paused in Inannis' hands. He breathed in and out with a rattle in his throat. “I'm sorry.”

Chandur tensed, not knowing what he meant.

The lock clicked.

Another man's voice. “Not called the Scoundrel for nothing.”

“Yeah, won't have the markets straight for days.”

Inannis and the masked woman supported each other as they walked away into the shadows.

Chandur pumped his legs against the wall, and he flexed his spine backward. The unlocked grate heaved upward with a screech.

“Hey! What was that?” Feet shuffled faster.

The spellsword swung one leg out onto the floor, then the other. Pushing back on the grating, he rolled away from the pit and onto firm stone. Chandur was free.

He stood up over the bodies of the two poisoned men. One looked up at him with his eyes but did not otherwise move.

Five guards rushed him. “By Queen Sting's barbed backside! How'd he get out?”

“God-blighted spellsword!”

First, Chandur thought to fight. Even weakened by thirst and long strain as he was, he believed he could have taken two, maybe three. Next, he thought to run, but by then they had already tackled him, begun to stomp him and bash him with the hilts of their swords. Finally, Chandur understood that fate would bring Inannis back to help, and the spellsword yelled for him and bellowed.

A strange thing happened next. Chandur had no power to explain it.

Inannis and the woman did not come back. The guards continued to beat Chandur. He could do no more than struggle as they spooled rope about him then kicked him back into the oubliette. He thumped at the bottom, gasping and bleeding into the sand. Far above, the grate clanged shut.

Chandur hurt all over. His ribs throbbed in jolts as he breathed, but a greater ache pulsed deeper in his chest. Between the pain and ropes, he could not move.

He squinted into the squirming darkness, trying to remember if his execution was scheduled for tomorrow or the day after. He thought his good fate had better hurry up.

“Where am I?”

Hiresha blinked awake in a sedan chair. The hefty priest carried a fennec beside her, and she had a sense his collar and earring shone with true emeralds. A shocking relief froze her spine and chilled her insides with pulses of surprise. The sky shone white with heat, and she felt dizzy and lost.

“Is that….That’s your Golden Scoundrel?”

The priest’s brow turned to a puzzle of creases at the question. “You wish to hold your betrothed. You may, bride of my god.”

The enchantress warded him away with upraised hands. “What? No, my maid will hold the fennec.”

“Can't.” Maid Janny gripped a fan like a weapon.

The royal guards surrounding Hiresha’s sedan chair only increased her confusion. The men wore jeweled swords, loincloths, and pectorals—each a swath of gold, malachite, and turquoise that covered their hearts and required they wear a counterbalance amulet behind their shoulder blades.

“Maid Janny, did the vizier send for me?”

The priest answered for her. “Enchantress Bride, you will remember Pharaoh's summons. She Who Sings Beauty for the Red Lotus awaits you at the Heart of the City.”

Hiresha remembered nothing of the sort, but she was beginning to think this had to be the next day. Vague memories swam through her mind from yesterday of curing poisoned priests and guards with jewels, of enchanting the bronze-reinforced crutches to reward the man who had caught the fennec, and of sailing on a river of hands above cheering pilgrims while in a Lightened boat.
That couldn’t have all happened, could it?

The noonday heat mixed with her drowsiness to melt her thoughts. She leaned from her chair toward Janny. “Did I sleep through this morning?”

“Don't blame me,” the maid said. “Tried to wake you at dawn, like you asked.”

Sleep grogginess was familiar enough to Hiresha, but she hated to believe she had lost the entire morning.
Chandur will be executed in two days, and I married to death. No, wait. That's tomorrow.

“And I agreed to meet Pharaoh?”

“Not so much,” the maid said.

Hiresha had no desire to speak again with someone so undeserving of power as Pharaoh. If that influence could be directed to help Chandur or herself, though, Hiresha could endure the company even of a girl inclined to burst without provocation into song.

The priest gasped as the fennec squirmed from his arms to chase a scarab. The beetle's blackness glossed blue. It opened its wing shields and began fluttering. The fox snatched the scarab, flipped it in the air, and caught it between his jaws. While the fennec munched, the priest picked the fox up and foisted him upon Hiresha.

The fennec hopped onto her lap, claws prickling her through her dress. He smeared yellow beetle innards over her glove. Even more offensive to Hiresha were the emeralds on his collar and ear stud.

“Emeralds, the most flawed of gemstones.” The green-jeweled bracelet manacled to her arm clashed with her dress.

An odor assaulted her nose, and she squinted down to see the fennec had evacuated his bowels on her sleeve.
My garnet dress,
she thought with bitterness. The creature yipped with delight at several nobles passing nearby riding on ostriches. The lords’ legs appeared scrawny next to the thick thighs of the birds.

She lifted her sleeve to a priest. “One could criticize a fiancé for such manners.”

“The blessing shows his love.” The priest scraped off the grey blob and threw into the street crowd. A merchant caught it, holding his hand in the air and yelling in triumph.

A boat waited for them above a fountain, prow pointed into the air. A sky stream wound upward, and light skimmed over the water’s surface in streaks of white. The royal guards marched onto the boat to stand horizontal above the street.

Enchantress Hiresha lifted one slipper and set it on the vertical boat. Her weight shifted from groundward to the center of the stream in a sensation that some found disorienting but had long since stopped upsetting the enchantress' stomach. Her skirt lifted in a moment of weightlessness as she was Lightened, and then it and her hair fell forward from Attraction magic pulling her toward the stream.

The fennec voiced urgent squeaks and scuffled at her dress as if trying to dig through its folds. The furred imp settled down to gnaw at her garnets.

“Can't fault his taste.” Maid Janny chortled as she sat beside Hiresha in the vessel.

The guards rowed them upsky, between the brass towers, with stone faces of sarcophagi staring out at them amidst metal riddled with hieroglyphs. Below, recrystallization pools shone as thousands of mirrors on rooftops.

The sky stream connected with other ribbons of water, all leading to a shimmering blue globe that floated above the center of the city. Hiresha felt a moment of reverence for the Opal Mind. Her enchantment Attracted all airborne moisture into this sky pond, which channeled the clean water back into a reservoir beneath the city at the end of the day.

A groan escaped the maid's lips. She covered her eyes with a hand.

“Maid Janny,” Hiresha said, “one might imagine you'd be well used to this after years walking up Academy walls.”

“We're upside down, in a boat, who-knows-how high.”

“Fewer than a thousand feet, I should think.” From Hiresha's perspective, everything below her was blue. Above, the pyramid at the center of the city pointed down.

The maid lifted one finger from her eyes, shuddered, and replaced it.

Boulevards formed a square outline around the Pyramid of the Opal Mind. Its top shone of quartz, its sides the lavish blue of marble. Multicolored bands scrolled down the pyramid, countless dots of glaze, each a hieroglyph, a symbol and word in the enormous incantation proclaiming a woman a goddess.

Hiresha’s vantage offered a unique view through the pyramid's crystal summit. Irregularities within the quartz blurred the details, but an open space appeared to descend down the core of the monument.

Chains large enough to be visible from this height piled around the pyramid base, in case the pyramid should ever try to fly away. Hiresha found it reassuring that even the greatest enchantress could err. The Opal Mind had promised her pyramid would float, and there it lay.

Hiresha had never been convinced that the desert people could elevate their most esteemed rulers into gods through hieroglyphs. She had to yield, however, that she strayed toward belief while suspended upside down above a monument built of stone cliffs and the willpower of legions.

The boat bobbed its way onto the Heart of the City Lake. Hiresha glanced overboard, where waves lapped with glittering crests tinted with color. Rays of pink light were like ribbons in the water. At the center of the lake, two gold chains connected at either side of a jewel that shone in front of the sun. Ripples and her drowsiness distorted Hiresha's vision, but she estimated the peach-colored sapphire to be the size of a coconut.

Her attention refocused on her own shifting reflection. Kohl paint shaded her eyes and stained her cheeks with stylized fox tails. She rubbed a hand from her ear to her chin, worried she could feel the powdered lead soaking through her skin to deaden her brain. The priests must have desecrated her face with the sign of the Golden Scoundrel, and Hiresha felt both embarrassed and disloyal to her own gods.
Forgive me, Opal Mind. I will not close my mind to inspiration. I'll do the impossible in your name.

Their boat rowed to the underside of the lake, where waited a royal barge. Silver hieroglyphs emblazoned the boat's every plank of ebony.

The fennec’s ears lifted at the music of Pharaoh's voice.

“Hiresha! You haven't been eaten yet!”

The enchantress waited to speak until they pulled up alongside the royal barge. She had forgotten about the incident of the Silver Crocodile's Throne. “Being eaten is the least of my concerns.”

“Wonderful!” Pharaoh wore a headdress of lapis lazuli and gilt thread that draped down her shoulders and chest like striped hair of blue and yellow. “I always tell Vizzy that the Silver Crocodile is just a big, grumpy lizard.”

Hiresha frowned in thought as a guard helped her onto the barge. Servants irritated her with baskets full of food and a chalice of wine. A spectrum of thirty hues of meat lay before her, from bloody to blackened, from white to red, from crocodile to quail. She could not think of eating, since dread made for a poor sauce, and she accepted only a crystal jar of jasmine tea.

Hiresha's stomach had felt as twisted as a puzzle box. The tea unlocked the tension with a caress of soothing flavors, and anxiety seeped away in warmth. The fennec, too, seemed to relax, and the corners of the fennec's dark eyes twitched in weariness.

A breeze cooled her face. The Heart of the City shaded the barge, and if one did not mind looking up to see a fall of hundreds of feet to the point of a pyramid, the outing could be called peaceful. Hiresha began to take full breaths again.

Pharaoh pranced across the barge. All other conversations were drowned under the stream of her voice, words chased by raptures of song. Between the girl and the pink sapphire pulling thousands of pounds of water from the air, Hiresha began to doubt which commanded the most energy.

“I love your purple dress. I want one just like it, only more green!

“I can't wait for my jubilee. Only thirty more years!

“Look! This is my favorite bird for today.” Pharaoh leaned over sideways to try to match the pose of a bird of paradise. It hung below a perch in a cage, its tail feathers an arcing yellow. “Who's upside down now? Who?

“Oh, Hiresha! I'm so happy for you. Did you know? I'm related to the Golden Scoundrel. So soon you'll be my great, great, great, great, great, great...” She took a gasping breath, her face radiant with her smile. “...great, great, great, great, great aunt!

“Did I say enough 'greats,' Vizzy?
Vizzy
?” Pharaoh gazed around the barge, but the vizier was not aboard. Her face crashed, and her lip quivered. “Vizzy's not here, and—ah!—where's the spellsword? Where have you hidden him?”

Hiresha said, “In a dungeon.”

Pharaoh put a finger between her lips and nodded. “That is a good hiding place!”

By the girl's height, Hiresha guessed her to be over ten years old. The enchantress wished she would act half her age. Hiresha had met a three-year-old with a longer attention span.

Hiresha said, “The vizier sentenced Spellsword Chandur to death. I was hoping you might consider—”

“Vizzy always does that!”

“Yes, well, you are the ruler of the—”

“Him and the priests, always telling me who I can't marry....”

Whom,
Hiresha thought. Indignation stung her throat.

“...that I can't make Sandy the guard captain, can't have a dress of rainbows, can't build wings for me, can't ride terror birds, can't hug everyone in Tent Town!”

Pharaoh flung herself onto velvet pillows. Servants fanned her with palm fronds braided with silver thread.

Hiresha, too, felt disheartened. If Pharaoh lacked the power to overrule the vizier, then Hiresha would have to turn elsewhere for help. Nonetheless, she persevered and argued for Chandur's innocence. Pharaoh seemed to hear none of it, lying with an arm slung over her temples and sighing.

The fennec roused himself, stretching paws over Hiresha’s lap. He tilted his head to the side to scratch his ear with a back foot. White hairs curled within the ear, which wobbled as he batted it.

The fox set his paws at the edge of the barge. He barked at his reflection. Hiresha secured him with a hand wrapped over his chest, not wishing him to fall into the water.