Fox's Bride (2 page)

A single amethyst from the enchantress' gown would have satisfied Inannis. Just one of the purple gems plucked by his hands and defiled. Her riches came from divine will. Stealing from her would be one more chance to spite the immortals who had cursed him.

Chills skittered over his skin, under his robes. His mouth was hot with fever, his tongue swollen. The urge to cough ground in his chest, but he steadied his breathing. No one looking at his calm face and priest robes would guess they hid a blighted body, an enemy of the gods.

Thoughts of stealing the jewel twirled in his mind in sweet pangs of anticipation, but he braced himself against them.
Won't risk for a trinket,
Inannis thought,
with a trove within reach.
A life other than his uncertain one depended on his success.

The details of his intended sacrilege turned over in his mind. On the last theft, his partner had been caught. This heist had to be perfect. Inannis hoped both to wound the pride of a god and break free his partner, before her execution.
She deserves better than a death of public amusement.

A few minutes before, when the enchantress' gown had passed within knifing distance, the fennec fox squeaked a yip. The priest holding the Incarnate of the Golden Scoundrel nodded to her. The fennec's furry ears rotated at the sound of her guard's thudding boots, the two cones full of white hairs on the animal's head moving in unison. The emerald stud in one ear taunted Inannis with its nearness.

His palms itched, but he stilled himself. Patience was his strongest muscle.

The enchantress walked toward the palace doors. Inannis wanted to weep at the sight of her jewels escaping.
One day,
he promised himself.

“Ah!” The priest holding the fennec jerked. The god had dug his sharp teeth into the flesh of the man's palm. With a flick of tail, the fennec leaped from the priest's grasp.

Inannis reached to catch the fox. The thief too had been caught by surprise since the furry god usually gave a muffled bark before struggling loose of his keepers. Inannis’ hands grazed the fennec's collar and shoulder but could not close in time.

Lunging, Inannis intended to snatch the fennec out of the air on his next leap. The fox always jumped again after freeing himself, a vaulting spring that would carry him out of reach. Inannis had developed a habit of anticipating him and took particular pleasure in outsmarting the small god.

The fennec did not jump this time. He trotted away between gilded sandals and manicured feet.

“Son Inannis,” another priest said to him, “why have you neglected your duties? And on Gods Week.”

Inannis gazed at his empty hands.
This is good,
he told himself. Now he knew not to depend on the fox’s habits. When it mattered, he would leave nothing to chance.

“The divine teeth are sharp.” The other priest sucked on the blood from his hand wound.

The priests pursued their god, Inannis behind them. They spotted the fennec marching around the enchantress, whitish gold tail rigid in the air.

“He's such an adorable god,” one lady said.

“Ooo! Look at his cute tail.”

A priest held out his hands. “Behold! He chooses.”

The fennec walked around the enchantress a second time. Inannis noted the god's gait was restrained, almost stiff, and for once he had given up his chattering noises for solemnity. Inannis had studied the theology of the Golden Scoundrel enough to pass as a priest, and he feared he knew what was happening here.

Don't you walk around her again,
he thought,
don't think claiming her will protect you.
An itching built in his chest into a greasy ball of flame that would burn him until he coughed. His teeth clenched even as he tried to hold muscles in his face slack.

The enchantress' gaze lagged behind the fennec. “I cannot possibly see what interest this fox has in me.”

She took two steps toward the door. The fox ran around her a third time.

Well played,
Inannis thought,
you big-eared ball of immortal fur and shit. But you'll need better. You won't stop me unless you make me hack out my heart.

A spasm from his chest bent Inannis over. A cough scratched its way up his throat. His eyes watered, face reddened.

The fennec rested one fore paw over the other and laid his white chin atop them as if bowing to the enchantress.

The priest swung his hands into the air. “The Golden Scoundrel has chosen his bride. All praise the god of family and fortune! All praise his betrothed!”

“Praise them! Praise them!”

The rich men lifted their ebony staves and their folded cloths. The women cupped hands to mouths.

“Oh! Now the year is perfect.”

“Why couldn't he have chosen me?”

“If only I had her dress.”

“...and with only four days left to the Newborn Year.”

“This is a good sign for the empire markets, a good sign.”

Inannis pretended to bow while coughing into the crook of his arm. No one could have heard him amid the shouting. A drop of blood landed on the blueness of his robes, but he sucked as much as he could back through his lips. If people knew a priest smuggled so much corruption inside him, they would kill him. If they found out he was no true priest—was as far from devout as a man could be—he would join his partner in a celebration of public gore.
An execution is one time she won't appreciate my company.

The enchantress' face was the kind that hid nothing. Her well-formed features wriggled in confusion, pinched in annoyance, oscillated between shock and embarrassment, then firmed with outrage.

“Will someone of sanity explain?”

As a priest began talking to her, Inannis found himself sorry for the enchantress. The gods had chosen to lift her to prosperity, but as was their wont, they betrayed their own. She might not know it yet, but this life of hers was over
.

Now he would never have one of her amethysts, unless he took to robbing tombs.

Enchantress Hiresha had no reason to believe the fox was divine. She worshipped different gods.

“I'm a woman of principle, and I cannot be married to a fox.” Hiresha swept a gloved hand toward the enormously eared creature.

The fox hopped and bit her.

Pain zinged up her arm, and she looked to see four holes in the purple silk covering her finger. “The vermin!”

“The fennec.” An older priest bowed to the creature then lifted him. “A desert fox inhabited by the soul of the Golden Scoundrel.”

“It’s natural for a bride to feel unworthy.” This priest gulped air and grinned with joy. “The fennec never marries more than once a year.”

“One fox, one bride,” a third priest said. His gaze was sleepy, his lips ruddy. “For the dying year.”

Hiresha leaned back, mouth agape. “'Marries once a year?' Just how many wives does he have?”

“Twelve wives while he lived as the pharaoh.” The second priest's jowls jiggled as he beamed. “And a hundred and twenty-one children.”

“After his entombment,” the first priest said, puffing his chest out, “the god has married seven hundred and thirty-eight worthy maidens.”

Hiresha rested a hand on her brows, felt a clammy dampness there. She had taken care to organize and schedule her life around her sleeping condition. Marriage to a small carnivore in no way fit her plans. Though she had studied the foreign gods of the desert capital while at the Academy, she had a poor memory for such things while awake. She believed something about the marriage ritual had horrified her at the time.
And now it's happening to me.
A buzzing feeling of unreality filled her with hot sickness.

“And I will be the first to congratulate Hiresha,” the Lord of the Feast said. A sheen of greasepaint on his face concealed the black triangle she knew branded his brows. “To be courted by a god is a grand thing, but I wouldn't go through with the marriage. Arguing can't be fun with the infallible.”

A few priests spluttered. “Not go through with the marriage?”

“But she must.”

Hiresha turned from the Lord of the Feast and the night magic lurking inside him, to Spellsword Chandur. Embarrassment scorched her that both men had watched her become engaged to the potentially rabid, polygamous fennec.

“You should have done something,” she said to Chandur. “You're in charge of defending my honor.”

A priest lifted one white paw of the fennec. “It is an honor.”

“Quiet, you.” Hiresha shook with her anger.
Married to a fox,
she thought,
preposterous!

Her eyes swung back up to Spellsword Chandur. His hair was short but all his own. His cuffs gleamed with the edges of his bronze-scale armor. Chandur had a broad chin and broader shoulders, which he held up with a wealth of assurance. Most importantly, his features displayed the symmetry belonging to those of good health and lineage.

Once she had developed a spell to cure herself of her sleeping disease, she intended to have courted him. Nothing might have come of it, she granted, as a difference in age would have caused awkwardness. That dream still seemed safer than her being with a Feaster.

And now this farce,
she thought. The fennec yawned at her with needle teeth filling a mouth the perfect size for nipping fingers. Hers still stung. The fox’s onyx eyes seemed to leer at her, and black whiskers twitched with mischief.

“I am not marrying that animal. I decline. I refuse, reject, and renounce his claims.” She gazed over the assembled noblemen. “My enchantments have helped many of you. I've saved some of your lives. Will any here break me free of this engagement?”

Ladies hid their faces behind fans of ostrich feathers. Lords bowed their heads toward the fennec. One nearby nobleman wearing a cape of beads spoke. “Who are we men to meddle in the affairs of gods?”

A desolation spread over Hiresha, and she wondered what use her years of service had been if not even one noble would speak for her now.
Maybe they haven't the influence.
The thought chilled her as she began to believe no legal route could nullify her engagement.

“The Golden Scoundrel is the perfect husband.” A priest slipped an emerald bracelet over her wrist.

“He bit me,” Hiresha said, “and what is this?”

The priest tapped the fennec's emerald collar. “Enchanted. Will keep him from escaping too far. He has his moods.”

“I want him to escape.”

“You'll have four days to come to love him.”

“Four days? Until the end of Gods Week?”

“And the marriage, of course.” Two priests beamed. The third looked serious.

The Lord of the Feast said, “Asking a woman for her hand must be trying work. The little heart is sleeping.”

The fennec curled his head under a paw in the priest's arms.

“He proposed, and now he sleeps.” Hiresha threw up her hands. “The mark of an attentive husband? I think not.”

“Shh! Now take him, gently.” The priest tried to ease the fennec into the enchantress' arms. She pushed him away. The man insisted. The fox woke, barked, and splayed black paw pads.

“I'll take him.” Spellsword Chandur folded his fingers around the fennec and cradled him in one hand. The fox yipped at him, companionably. “Er, do gods like their tummies rubbed?”

Hiresha cast him a severe glance.

Looking satisfied, the priests stepped back. A few ladies stayed to coo at the fennec. Hiresha dug her gloved fingers into her palms as the Lord of the Feast leaned closer.

“Hiresha, my heart,” he said. “We must once again celebrate a common purpose. Not another word now. Those ears could hear through walls.” He nodded his chin toward the fennec.

The enchantress could not tear her eyes away from the Feaster as he strode between the glass doors and out of the party.
Tethiel,
she said his name to herself while worrying that any purpose he hoped to draw her into would involve both danger and scandal.

A shadow and a sensation of heat warned Hiresha that a large person had stepped next to her. She assumed Spellsword Chandur, but she met with the surprise of an orange and black mask. Eyes bore down on her from within painted circles of white and red.

“Enchantress Hiresha, you deserve better than a god.” The masked man wore a white shawl and black kilt.

Hiresha recognized the vulture-mask design. She had worked with such men before, comparing knowledge of the human body gleaned from her magic and their grisly experience. “You have my attention, Skin-Stitcher.”

A priest bobbed beside them. “This cannot be a suitable time to speak with her. Only now betrothed and...and....”

The skin-stitcher forced him back with a faceless glare. “Hiresha, I am Ubis son of Odji, Royal Embalmer. You should hear what I have to say. Would you walk with me?”

Hiresha had not met the Royal Embalmer before, but she felt inclined to trust him. He had not seemed enamored with the fennec. After motioning Spellsword Chandur to stay back with the creature, she extended a hand to the man in the vulture mask.

The embalmer escorted her along a glass wall that rippled with water. Nobles shied away from her and her companion. He smelled of salt, with a hint of rot.

“I ask you not to wed the Golden Scoundrel, Hiresha. He has too many wives to care for any one.”

“I have no intention of participating in this ridiculous ritual.”

“You don't?” He removed his mask, but his most remarkable feature, his eyes, did not change. Their color was of damp soil flecked with gold and lit by sunset. The kohl powder that lined them intensified their deepness. “An eternity in a god's court is no prize when you are but one more body in the harem.”

“Exactly my thoughts.” She considered lowering her voice but decided she did not care who heard. “You assume I believe in the Golden Scoundrel. That fennec may be inhabited by nothing more than fleas.”

“The Golden Scoundrel does rule the ages, but yes, I can tell you are too intelligent for his glamour.”

They both glanced at the fennec. Spellsword Chandur, still holding the sleeping creature, met Hiresha's eyes.

“Most women,” the embalmer said, “cannot look away from the Golden Scoundrel. His power blinds them, the promise of everlasting prestige lures them. They sacrifice their lives, and they mean nothing to him.”

“Yes, yes, and the fennec bit me. I think the mummification process would only improve him.”

“I have waited years for a woman like you.” The embalmer faced her, clasped her hands in his. “You I can save.”

“Save me? You'll rid me of the fennec?” Hiresha began to think she was missing something. She also grew uncomfortable with his closeness, and he presumed much holding both her hands at once.

“All the others I had to prepare,” the embalmer said. “Husks of women, killed for a golden shadow of love.”

“Who is killing? Who's dying?” Hiresha tried to step away from him, but his grip was unrelenting.

“You don't know? The marriage ceremony is in the afterlife. The bride and the fennec go through the gates of death together, in a sealed sarcophagus.”

Hiresha felt her intestines fold over each other like fingers nervously interlacing. Her own hands stung where he held her.

“You will die on the last day of the year,” he said. “Hiresha, I do not—”

“This year?” Sweat dribbled down her back. “As in, the year ending four days from now?”

“Yes, and—”

“As in, the priests will try to kill me in four days?”

“Seal you in the Golden Scoundrel’s Pyramid and wait for you to suffocate, but I can get you away. I may just be an embalmer, a man of only one title, but I've been planning for years. If you trust me, if you come with me.” He broke off as Spellsword Chandur clapped a hand over his and stripped his grasp from Hiresha.

Chandur still held the fennec, a curled pastry of golden-white fur. The embalmer glared at the sleeping creature in Chandur's arm, his full lips compressing into lines of resentment.

The embalmer returned his black and orange mask to his face. “We will speak again, Hiresha.”

“I thank you for the warning.” Hiresha messaged her numb hands. “Yet I'll not need your assistance.”

“You said you wanted to live,” he said.

“My spellsword will ensure I do.” Hiresha trusted Chandur more than any vulture-masked stranger.

The eyes within the painted rings shifted their intensity to Chandur. “A man of greater means than a simple embalmer. Most sensible, Hiresha.”

The embalmer walked away. Beads of lapis and gold clicked in the black braids of his wig.

“Thank you for interposing yourself, Chandur,” Hiresha said.

“What was that embalmer talking about?” The jeweled hilt of a massive sword jutted out from behind Chandur’s shoulder. Hiresha had enchanted the weapon, and the sight of it always reassured her, as did Chandur’s sudden look of concern. “Oh! Is he
yours
? That is, the embalmer who’s going to, you know. I’ve always thought it’d be painful.”

“You do know people aren’t embalmed alive.”

“Ah, right.” Chandur grimaced and lowered his chin toward his left shoulder.

Her spellsword had spent more time in Oasis City than she and clearly knew something of the marriage ritual. Hiresha hoped she could rely on him to help her escape, and she wanted to plan that departure now. With fatigue heavy on her and eyes flickering closed, she spoke.