Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04 (64 page)

Marron supposed that he was not the only one who had not slept the night just gone. He was not even the only one who had passed it or part of it on the palace roof. There had been watchmen, long-sighted in starlight as he had used to be when stars were red to him; briefly there had been the Princip and a handful of his officers, though why they had come to peer through and at the darkness when there were lights and maps below, Marron couldn't guess.

Why he himself had chosen to sit, to stand, to pace cold hours out on roof-leads when there was a warm bed and a warm body awaiting him below — well, he could pretend not to understand himself, but it was none too convincing a pretence. He had come from Sie
ur Anton; he could not go directl
y to Jemel. The facts were as simple, as insurmountable as that. And Jemel no doubt was lying waiting for him, considering the same information and misunderstanding the result, and there was not a thing Marron could do about that.

He had watched the watchmen as they came and went, he had watched the Princip and his lieutenants in their turn; he had not spoken to them, nor they to him.

He gazed out at the inclosing darkness of the valley walls, up at the stars' fading and wished, yearned to have the Daughter back to show him what he could not see. At the same time he was deeply grateful to be free of it, to feel the aching misery in his bones and the hollow yearning in his belly and be able to name them weariness and hunger, nothing more. To be human again was to be false again, and there was great relief in that.

Streaks of colour in the sky, colours that were not red: dawn was coming, the sun was rising out there in the world. Not here. Here there was no sun at morning but only light, a greying that resisted colour, and today made an unwelcome end to an unwelcoming night. He'd sooner pace the stars around again, match their wheeling with his own.

He'd faced Sieur Anton, because he'd had to; he could not face Jemel. Now he stood facing cold shadow, a dawn that barely lifted the murk of night; he stared north and could see nothing, and wished fervendy and without reservation to have the Daughter's eyes again, if only for a while.

If he went down to the terrace below he might see better, there was a
subtle
ty in the air there that made distance clearer, though never so clear as the Daughter did; but one thing he had seen by starlight even before the dawn, Elisande's slight figure swathed in the darkness of a Sharai robe, watching and waiting as he was.

If he couldn't go to find Jemel, if he had spent a long night not going to find Jemel, he certainly couldn't go to Elisande.

He could have gone out, away, alone; he could have run off, not to escape his burdens but to take them with him, somewhere they could do less damage. Somewhere they could damage only him. He would have done that, surely, when he was younger — three months ago, one month. Perhaps a week, a day. Yesterday, he might have done that. Today it wasn't possible.

Besides, the djinni had told him to stay here. Others could leave, others were leaving - below him now there were voices, Elisande and Julianne: and the tall girl was saying what the short girl wanted most to hear, and she of course was arguing against herself and would lose in the end because she wanted to, and they would go out into the field together to fight or to heal or simply to learn who fought, who died, who lived besides themselves — but not he could leave, the djinni had all but said so.
Stay in the palace, if you cannot cross the worlds,
it had said.

Oh yes,
he'd snarled,
stay safe while others die. Of course. Perfect employment, for a man who will not fight.

I did not say so,
it had said, unbearably calm.
If others must die in the morning, you may still die in the afternoon. If the battle is lost in your absence, be sure that death will seek you out regardless. And you would be little use in the field, if you will not fight. I will not take you there, or anywhere. You were better to remain here.

And do what?
Stupid with worry and weariness and temper, he'd heard his mouth shoot the question before his mind could stop it.

Stay out of the way of those you should not question, perhaps,
the djinni had said, mockingly.
‘
will not give you answers; seek your own. But seek them here, if you value anything that you have found here.

As usual, he hadn't understood it. As usual, when it mattered, there was no one he could ask for any guidance.

Instead he would and did stand and watch while the girls left, while they were lifted and carried by an unseen power on an invisible wind towards the dull glimmer of the river far below; he would and did stand and watch and make no sound when a last group of horsemen rode out to seek the war, and there was one in Sharai dress among them who didn't need to cast back his hood or turn his head for Marron to feel that jolt, that physical pain that came with a night's separation and a weight of words unspoken, impossible to speak.

And then he would and did turn his back on the brightening day and face the near emptiness of the palace, a near echo of his heart: chambers that he could not map nor guess a use for, chambers beyond chambers, beyond and below, every step he took or could take must lead him down from here. Down and away, further and further from his friends, although he would not run nor leave the palace walls without the djinnis say, and he did not think the djinni would speak to him again unless he called it, and he would not call it back from Elisande.

Jemel had passed the night as a betrayed man must, or thinks he must: alone, awake, afraid. For all the pictures his mind could draw in darkness, for all the stories he told himself against the silence, there was only the one fact that mattered, that everything turned around. It was the kernel of what was true, at the heart of all his miserable imaginings; it was the cold grit that lay swathed in the veils of the grey pearl, the stake that held the raging lion captive on its leash, the pit that was the point and purpose of the fruit.

Marron had gone to Sieur Anton, but that was not it. Jemel understood that, could even find it in himself to honour that. He still meant to kill Sieur Anton, and not for Marron's sake; that was an oath that he carried like a pebble in his mouth, unforgettable. He would delay that requital, though, until matters were otherwise resolved in Surayon. He thought that Sieur Anton would not die until he came to kill him; God would be kind, he thought, to one who had been desert-true until he'd left true desert. That had been a mistake, and Jazra had died for it. It had also led Jemel to Marron, and so to uncountable betrayals of God and his people, his tribe and every other oath that had ever mattered to him. And so to the last betrayal, this: that betrayed as he was, he still could not regret his choices or wish them all undone. If a djinni took him back to the Saren, to the spring, and Jazra was alive again and he had the chance to keep him so, to say
no, we will not go, let Hasan march with others against the Patric infidels, that is no fight of ours; what, should we die, one or the other or both together, while we are young and the days are long and the nights are longer yet? Let the old men fight their old wars, priests and imams together; we are Sharai and wefight each other, we fight
for camels and gold and pride but not for God.
We
belong in the Sands, He set us here; why would
He
have us move?
— if he were given the choice to say all that and make Jazra attend him and so live, he couldn't be sure that he would do it.

Jazra but no Marron, and it was a betrayal even to think that Marron with no Jazra was a better thing, even to wonder whether it might be so. It was a betrayal, one of many, Jemel was used to thinking it quite harmless; there was no djinni would work that magic for him, it was only a story and not for telling, an inner dream of grief.

But no Jazra and no Marron either, and lying in a bed too wide and kept wakeful by the space and the silence and the chill of it: this was the other face of betrayal, and small wonder then that he had risen before the dawn to escape that bed and the constant fact that had shared it with him. Marron had come back from Sieur Anton, and had not come back to him. Jemel would have stayed with the tribes last night only to avoid this, not to have to know; but the djinni had brought him back regardless, and he had had all night to learn and to have that learning underscored by the slow, slow hours during each of which - during each minute, each waiting second of which - Marron still did not come back to him.

So he had risen into darkness, and carried the darkness with him where he went. In that dull, bitter mood, facing what seemed likely to be interminable days of equal loss and stubbornly ready to ensure it with a few sour and unequivocal words if he could only find Marron to say them to, he had found others and been offered a fight instead of an argument. Had accepted heedlessly, almost joyfully; had run to fetch weapons, more weapons than he was carrying, all the weapons that he owned or claimed; had returned to find himself being led - not without some sideways glances among his new companions, but led none the less - into a place he had never, never imagined himself encouraged or permitted or even physically able to enter.

He had broken into the imams' house in Selussin, climbed the gate and bullied the guards and shouldered open the door onto the chiefs' private council; he would not have dared, would not have dreamed of coming here despite the ever-open door and the welcome carved into the stone of the lintel, which Marron had read out to him when they passed this place before.

The men he had met readying themselves for battle were Patrics of course, Surayonnaise of course; and it seemed that the latter was the louder of their voices if they could welcome a Shara
i among their number when it mig
ht be Sharai they rode against, when certainly Sharai were among the invaders hacking a brutal path through their country's broken peace.

Startled by their trust — and deeply, disturbingly unsure that he could in fact be trusted - Jemel had followed them unthinkingly along a corridor and through a doorway, beneath that inscription that he could not read; and only then, only when he was through did he stop thinking of war and grief and the grief of war, start thinking about God and faith and another face of loss.

Too late to turn and walk out, he was here now. Besides, he wanted these men to trust him, to take him with them freely to the war. This might be a test, even, conceived quickly between them while he was fetching weapons:
if he will pray with
us—if
the God will allow it — then he
may
ride with us. If not, he stays.
Or perhaps,
if
not, he dies.

Perhaps they thought their God would kill him anyway. He half thought it himself, walking stiff as a brand through the doorway of a Patric chapel; he thought he might burn as a pitch-soaked brand can burn, seemingly from the inside. Their God was fierce, Jemel knew that from Marron, who had confirmed a hundred rumours true. They did burn children, these Patrics; they had done that at the Roq after the attack that failed, the boys who had let down ropes for Hasan had gone to flame and ash along with their ignorant, innocent fellows. And Marron might blame the Ransomers and the cold hearts of their leaders, but Jemel was free where he was not, Jemel could blame their God.

And so fear their God, and so give that one a credit he denied his own. It had been a long time since he'd prayed, and a longer journey; he was heretic now in his heart, which should go well with being a traitor in his body, if he did find himself fighting the tribes today. He didn't mean or want to do that, he'd still choose his own people over Marron's to hold all this land - if for no reason else, at least the Sharai did not burn children - but there were greater aims at stake, and he'd fight any man who set himself in way of their pursuit.

Any man, or any God: he glared a challenge at the ceiling. And found his eye caught by decoration, by figures painted in red and gold and green, pictures that perhaps he could read where the letters defeated him; and so was staring upward to decipher their meanings as he walked, and so walked solidly into the back of the man ahead where he was kneeling, and would have sprawled ungainly on the tiled floor if he hadn't been caught and held by the belt, by the man behind.

'Easy, boy,' in a rough rasp. 'I don't care whether you give the God your prayers, but give Him honour at least in His own house.'

'I meant no dishonour,' hissed between his teeth as he wrenched himself free, ready to start the clay's fighting here and now if he had to. 'I was—'

'—Staring up at the saints, I know, instead of watching where you walked. All the Catari do it, when they come in here. Tell truth, lad, I don't care if you gawp or not, and I doubt the God does either; those paintings are there to be seen, or what's the point of 'em? Just don't tread all over Markam as you go, it's disrespectful.'

To
the God or to the man, Jemel wasn't clear, but it didn't after all seem worth fighting over. So long as these men's idea of respect didn't involve his kneeling as Markam was. He wouldn't do that for his own God now, far less anyone's else.

But then Markam rose, and stepped aside from the central aisle; and now that he was looking down rather than up, Jemel could see what the Patric man had been about. Not praying, or not solely praying; he had laid his weapons on the floor there before the altar, an impressive cluster of blades and only the latest in a line of such clusters.