Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04 (42 page)
'Not worth your life! Marron has carried it a long way—' '—And should carry it no f
urther. This kept him alive, to
be sure, but he must have be
en a living ghost. Look at him,
Elisande
...'
She shook her head. Jemel would do that, was probably doing it already. She'd seen Marron before in fatigue, in weakness and in pain; she didn't need to see him now, she'd rather look at her grandfather. Who looked suddenly weak, exhausted, deeply hurt - worse than he'd been after driving the 'ifrit-fragment out of Hasan, worse by a distance, if only because this time he had not collapsed. She could see the determination in him, the absolute certainty that he could not allow himself that luxury, and therefore would not; and she could see how even that determination was draining him further, costing him more.
More than he could afford, she thought.
This man lost a son today his only child, and very possibly his country too . . .
And slowly, respectfully, she reache
d out and took the Daughter gentl
y from his grasp, so that he could at least afford to fall if he must.
This time, he let her take it; she'd been sure that he would. She saw herself reflected in his eyes, and thought that she'd grown since last they'd stood together.
It was surprisingly light in her hands, but he seemed to be stronger for being relieved of it, if only marginally.
'You should sleep,' she told him, 'recover your strength.' That was how she needed him, how they all needed him: bull-strong, the spirit of his land.
'I should; but when will I get the chance?' The glimmer of a smile accompanied the words. That was reassuring, but not enough.
'Right now, while I find somewhere secure to stow this.'
He shook his head; even so little movement had him rocking on his feet, but thankfully
Coren was abruptl
y there to steady him with a grip on his elbow.
'No, child. I have one duty more, before I can think of resting. And so do you. The King's Shadow has kindly brought my son, your father home to me; it is for us to see to his resting now.'
And so she found herself going down, down many stairs to the crypt below the palace, with the Daughter still clutched like a talisman in her arms. Although she didn't like to use the slightest magic so close to something so old, so powerful, so little understood, she made a witchlight shine to show their way where no lamps burned. Her grandfather was past raising a glow - too old, too tired, too distressed: any one of those would have been excuse enough, and he could have offered all three if she'd asked him, which she didn't - and Coren didn't have a hand free to hold a torch, too busy using both to help and guard the Princip on the stairs.
Down and down, into the chill, still air that the hills hoarded in hidden caves. The crypt had been just such a cave once, that had been found by digging; quite how the Princip had known just where to dig, Elisande had never bothered to ask.
Now it was a place prepared, though never yet occupied. The walls were smoothly plastered white and set with sconces, with niches for lamps, with shelves for coffins or shrouded bodies. There were biers of white stone on the floor, on one of those lay Rudel, still in his travelling clothes, still in his blood.
On another were set bowls of steaming, scented water, cloths and oils, cerements of linen. Elisande thought this was a test, at Coren's instigation; she glowered at him, and he gazed neutrally back. Then she was certain.
Well, she could do this. With her grandfather at her side, she had to do this.
She set the Daughter to one side, lit the lamps in their niches and let the witchfire die. If she had to do it, she'd do it properly and with no distractions, nowhere to hide. Let these men see how grown she was, how ready.
She and her grandfather stripped Rudel's body, slowly and ceremonially. They washed blood and dirt from his skin, bound up the dreadful gaping hole that should have been his throat, anointed him and dressed him for his long sleep. At some point, one or the other of them had started to hum the
sod
ar,
now they were both doing it, though it was no part of any ritual that Elisande knew, Sharai or otherwise.
When the
y were done, the Princip said, ‘I
t should have been his task, to lay me here. I never thought to do the work for him. I built this place for me and mine, but they should follow me
...'
'Grandfer?'
'Yes, child?'
'Don't leave him here. It's cold. Too quiet for him, too far from, from Cireille.' Largely at Elisande's own sobbing insistence, her mother had been carried home to her family's estate on the other side of the valley, where she lay in warm earth in a grove of olives. 'Let him lie with her. Please? He'd have liked that so much more.'
‘I
built this place for me and mine,' again. 'Am I to be lonely here, when I come?'
'No, Grandfer. I'll follow you,'
if I don't come ahead
'Keep a place for me.'
'Would you not choose to be buried with your husband, little one, wherever he may lie? It is the custom. I miss my own wife's company, more even than I'll miss my son.'
Her grandmother was long dead, long buried in another land than this; she had never seen Surayon.
'I'll not marry,' she said softly, almost thankful for it as she gazed at the empty niches, that might otherwise have waited for her own children. 'I'll live and die as I am, and when I'm dead I'll come to you, Grandfer, and our ghosts can guard Surayon above till the stars fall.'
'If it's there yet, if we can guard it now,' was the dry response. 'Coren, I'm too weary for all those stairs again
...'
Coren smiled, and they all stepped into light; and she thought, remembered, realised that they could have done this coming down, he could have brought them here in a moment. Which meant he'd had a reason not to do it, which her grandfather had understood. Old men, they were hateful sometimes; it sometimes seemed to her that they had planned her every word and action. After the long toil of the descent and the hard reality of her father's body waiting at the bottom, of course she would rebel against leaving him here in the cold alone. They must have known that, they had known it. And so he would lie where he had wanted, where they wanted, where she had spent half her life insisting that he should not be, at his dead wife's side. They'd made her ask it; she felt used, manipulated, nothing new.
It was a small gesture towards a petty independence, but she needed something and she needed it now; so without asking consent, without even saying what she'd done, she left the Daughter where it was, in a vacant niche in the wall of her family crypt. It was, she thought, as safe as anywhere, now that Surayon was no longer safe at all. They would realise or remember soon enough, if they didn't know already, but just for this
little
while she could pretend, she could convince herself that she had made her own choice and acted on it. She could even make believe that her father was not entirely lost from her story, that she left him on watch over the Daughter, though she'd never let him watch over her.
A Blade fo
r
a
Boy
Servants came, with an offer to carry Hasan and his pallet back inside the chamber; Julianne said no, persuaded them rather to help Jemel bring Marron out to join him. They would wake sooner, she thought, man and boy, with the sun on their faces and the whisper of a breeze across their skins. The breeze whispered war', even she could smell the taint of smoke though it came from miles off; she would have spared them that if she could, but thought grimly, bitterly that they were men and warriors both. They should rouse to that, if nothing else.
She had more trouble with the servants when they brought her food, and she refused to eat it.
I’l
l eat when my husband eats,' she said softly, stubbornly, wiping the vivid scars on his cheek with a cool cloth and willing him to wake soon, now, at any rate before Sherett arrived. She had no idea how fast the djinni might fetch her sister-wife; it might have been an eyeblink, it might yet be hours, but Sherett was coming and should not come to find him still asleep.
He should wake, and he should do it soon if Julianne s wishing had any power; but what he should not do was wake to see her face-full and chewing, callous and careless of h
is needs. She explained this hotl
y to the Princip's servants, when they pressed.
'What would he think, that I was here by duty and heedless of him, just taking my pleasure in the sun?'
'No, he'd think he had married a girl with sense enough to eat when she was hungry' This from a blunt, solid woman in her middle years, simply dressed and simply spoken. 'No better way for him to wake, child, it'll have him thinking about his own belly and its emptin
ess. I like a hungry patient.' I
cant
...
’
'Oh, don't be so foolish. If you're too delicate to eat alone and that Sharai boy won't join you, then I will. There's plenty here for all.' She set her tray on the parapet and plumped herself down beside it, picked something from a platter and passed it to Julianne.
Golden-brown pastry, sticky and flaking between her fingers; the sweet savour of ground meat and spices flooding her senses, flooding her mouth. She had bitten before she knew it, had swallowed without chewing and bitten again; the meat-cake was gone in moments and she was licking her fingers and looking for more.
'That's better, isn't it?
‘
knew,' the woman said smugly, as her fat, nimble fingers filled a plate. 'You've a starved look about you, girl. I don't believe you've eaten well for days. Take this and set about it while I put some water in the wine, it'll go to your head else and make you foolish.'
Days? Weeks, more like: the last good food she'd seen
had been at her wedding-feast, and she hadn't eaten that. The last of any food she'd seen had been in her cell, and yesterday: far away, a different world - bleaker, more frightening but less doomed, she thought, sitting in the sunshine and smelling smoke - and suddenly very, very long ago.
She ate like a starveling indeed, ravenously, with both hands and no manners. Shadow's daughter, Hasan's wife -
and Imber
's
wife too, just as much, just as little —
she shrugged off a lifetime of courtly graces and barely contrived to keep one eye on her sleeping man; she kept no hold at all on the guilt she'd thought would consume her. Let him wake now - please? - and she'd greet him with delight, with her mouth full and her hands greasy, her lips coated in crumbs
...
When she could talk again, when there was space and breath for words, she asked, 'What's your name? I'm Julianne.'
'I know you are, pet. The Lady Julianne, and all your tides too, but I can't be troubled with that. They call me Gerla, when they remember who I am.' That might have, perhaps should have sounded bitter, but did not; Julianne thought that actually most people who mattered to her would remember Gerla.
She saw the woman casting thoughtful, determined glances at the heedless Jemel, who had resumed his position stone-still at Marron's head. Working out some way to make him eat in his turn, no doubt
...
'Leave Jemel to me,' she said, 'I'll see that he finishes what's left on that tray. You don't need to wait on us, Gerla. I may be the lady Julianne with enough tides to trip over, but I've grown used to looking after myself. And others.'
Stubborn boys a speciality
...
'Oh, yes. Grown used to going hungry because you lack the sense to eat, I suppose. But it's a girlish trick, and feeding boys is another. Aye, I'll leave him to you, if I have your promise for it. There's plenty else for me to be doing.'
'Gerla, tell me something, before you go?'
'Aye, lass. Anything.'
'Why are you still here? In the palace, I mean. Fetching trays of food to awkward children, when
...'
When a wave of her arm was all that she needed, and all that she had to express what she was burning to say: that Surayon was burning, and she didn't understand why the most loyal servant would stay.
'What, should I run away?'
'Not run, no - not unless you chose to.' Though hiding from the Sharai was no bad idea, in Julianne's estimation, and hiding from the Ransomers was a better. 'But there must be people you're worried about, people you could help, something you'd rather be doing than this, somewhere else you'd rather be
...'
In Marasson, she thought, a similar disaster would have emptied the palace; and she thought that was right, it was proper. Even slaves should find freedom in catastrophe.
'By all the saints and martyrs, girl — do you think we're saints or martyrs ourselves, to stay to serve our lord when we're crying to be gone? Or bonded here, and frightened of our master?' She seemed genuinely incredulous; Julianne found herself blushing. 'Listen, then, and mark it: you were raised to another understanding, maybe, but you're in Surayon now. All the men fit to bear arms — yes, and some of the women, too - are long gone, to fight or find their families. The rest of us, from Pym the page-boy to old Shalira in the laundry, we're here because we want to be. You couldn't chase Pym from the Princip's side, not if you carried a battle-axe and had a hundred 'ifrit howling at your back. And me, well, I've no family that I care a button for, and I can be useful here. Not just to feed foolish children, either. The hurt will be brought here, as swiftly as may be. I'm not the Princip but I have some skills in healing, and there'll be too many for him to tend them all, even when he's in the palace. This is my place, Julianne; I wouldn't be anywhere else, a time like this.'
Briefly her gaze moved beyond the parapet to where the ravages of war were closing on her country. Even after seeing the expression on the woman's face, Julianne still couldn't regret her question. She felt better than reassured, somehow, she felt as though a promise had been fulfilled. She'd never expected to find Surayon a haven for all that was good in the world, despite Elisande's portrait of it. What she had wanted, what she had needed to find was a country that was simply different from what she'd known thus far: the cruel subtleties of Marasson, the chill dedication of the Ransomers, the hot but fickle fires of the Sharai. She'd ached to see a land where generosity governed ambition, where trust displaced fear, where above all hatred could not dominate.
There was loyalty everywhere, of course, from the Roq to Rhabat, even in the Emperor's court; but elsewhere it was shaded by desire or duty or tribal allegiance. Here it seemed to be freely given, won by love. To Julianne, today, that was a plashing fountain in a dry, dry garden.
She stood up, and stooped over Gerla to give her a gentle kiss on the cheek 'Actually,' she murmured, T think, neither would L'
Then she picked up the tray - that still felt heavy enough to feed a small army, despite her own and Gerla's depredations - and carried it over to where Jemel sat next to the unconscious Marron.
'He won't be stirring for a while yet, love. Look at Hasan, he was healed first, and he shows no sign of waking. So take your eyes off Marron for a moment, and look at this instead. You're desert-bred, you don't believe in waste; the Sharai feast in time of plenty, and there's plenty here. Besides, if you eat your fill now, you'll be ready for when he does wake, you'll be able to tend to him without feeling faint from hunger
..
.'
That won her a look, a sort of startled glare at the suggestion that a Sharai should ever feel faint, for whatever feeble reason. She simply grinned, and kissed his cheek too.
'Jemel, you'd feed a camel before you took it into the Sands, wouldn't you? Well, feed yourself, then. I don't know what kind of mood that boy's going to wake into, but it's going to be something different from anything you've seen before. He's going to be a different person, all himself instead of half the Daughter, only that I don't know if he'll remember what self that is. It could be a long journey to find out, and you've got to stay with him. So eat, you'll need your strength.'
That was the argument that swung him. He fell to among the meats and pastries; purely for companionship - unless it was perhaps also a little for teasing, because a Sharai warrior would not ordinarily eat with a woman, and she liked to remind him sometimes just how far he'd fallen from the figure of his own ideals — she squatted down beside him, picked up a soft almond biscuit and nibbled on it. She was wondering if perhaps she should try to make him talk, or if that might be a step too far, when he glanced up and then a little further up, above her head. His eyes widened momentarily, before he could control them; she could feel the effort that he put into his voice, to sound quite matter-of-fact as he said, 'Elisande
’
s djinni is returning, with your husband
’
s wife.'
It sounded so odd, when he said it like that. Perhaps it was supposed to - except that it wouldn't seem odd to him, that Hasan was much-married. Harder for Jemel to understand was her own uncertain status, with two husbands living. To be sure, it was quite hard for her also. By Sharai custom her marriage to Imber was annulled, because it had not been consummated - but then, neither had her second marriage to Hasan.
Not yet
...
She was confident that no church court in Outremer would recognise that annulment, if only because they had been Sharai who decreed it. So in the Kingdom she was married yet to Imber, in the Sands she was married to Hasan; that seemed to be the easiest way to think of her legal condition. Privately, personally, it was more complicated. In her body, she was married to neither; in her heart, she thought, to both. Here in Surayon, where Sands and Kingdom met, she would have spun like a dizzy dancer between the two and never guessed or hoped which man's arms would seize her first; except that Imber was not here, and Hasan was in need. That made things easy, for today and perhaps for tomorrow. She didn't dare look any further forward.
She got to her feet again, turned around and understood Je
mel’
s brief reaction, the equivalent in him of goggling surprise. Never mind that they'd both seen miracles, these last months; never mind that she'd travelled this way herself, and so had he. They'd neither of them seen it from the ground before, and for all that she'd been waiting to see it, it was still an astonishing thing to see. Perhaps his eyes had caught the figure in the sky when it was simply a dot far distant, perhaps he'd tried to think of it as a bird at first, until it became impossibly large and unlikely.
For herself, looking too late to be deceived, it was a wonder that came with a cold shudder of sympathy, her own terror transferred. She watched Sherett glide down towards the terrace, seeming utterly unsupported in the air; she wondered how the woman could look so calm, how she could bear to keep her eyes open as she hung so high with nothing for her hands to grip to.
That was Julianne's own nightmare, though, and others she knew did not share it. Elisande positively relished flying by her djinni's grace. Perhaps Sherett was another of that kind. Or else she simply had that same Sharai pride that could make a posing idiot of Jemel, and would sooner die than shame herself by showing fear, even when she'd been snatched into a hurtling horror-ride that must have out-raced the wind to bring her here so soon
..
.
Julianne walked a few steps away from Jemel, away from the sleeping on their pallets. Her sister-wife was so much lower now that she could see the djinni as a spinning thread of distortion in the air, behind her shoulder. She could see also that Sherett's veil was demurely in place below her hood. That brought a soft, unexpected snort of laughter, affectionate admiration rather than mockery. That insistence on the decencies was a part of what she loved about the woman, along with her fierce independence of thought and her open delight in her husband, their shared husband. Those should all have been contradictions, Julianne thought, but somehow were not in Sherett.
Bare feet touched to ground
, as lightl
y as a falling feather; curse her, she didn't even stumble as she turned graceful, impossible flight into graceful, stalking walk along the terrace.
It was Julianne who stumbled a little, suddenly running: hurling her arms around Sherett's neck when she'd meant to be so cool and dignified, brutally disarranging that modest veil as she kissed a greeting, almost sobbing as she mumbled, 'Oh, Sherett, thank you for coming
...'