Moontide 02 - The Scarlet Tides (36 page)

They broke the connection without pleasantries. The relay-stave was almost burned out anyway. He poured himself a nip of whisky, savouring the smoky taste on his tongue before swallowing. The one perk of dealing with the Dorobon was that their lands in Rondelmar were famous for the potent spirit. Then there was a knock at the door, and he reflected that there were other benefits was well.

Olivia Dorobon slid her ample body through the door when he opened it and fell eagerly into his arms. She was voluptuous, bordering on plump, but eager – definitely that. And there was much to be said for eager.

*

‘Tell me more of yourself, Yvette.’ Gyle could speak aloud to her now. Her eardrums had rebuilt themselves sufficiently, and the lobes he’d severed from a freshly dead young man had now integrated with the rest of her mutable flesh. The new eyes were almost functional too, but they were too newly settled to be used; there was still a bandage over them.

‘Why should I do that?’ Coin’s voice was still barely comprehensible, but he listened with his mind as well as his ears.

‘I like to know the people I work with,’ he replied reasonably.

‘The people you use,’ Coin corrected.

‘Being a captain of magi is all about knowing the people around you,’ he said softly. ‘I care about all those I work with.’ It was an utter lie, but Coin was a child, intellectually.

‘No one cares about me, not even Mother.’

Your mother is the coldest being on this planet.
He touched her hand gently. ‘Yvette, for someone to care about you, you need to share something of yourself.’

Coin’s head lolled sideways towards him, the bandaged eyes giving it a blank strangeness that was unsettling. But at least it was easier to look at than the skinless mess of flesh slowly regrowing over
her torso and arms, the naked sinew and organs pulsing wetly with every heartbeat, every shuddering breath.

‘What would you like me to share?’ she asked contemptuously. ‘My beauty? My merry nature?’

‘How old are you?’ he asked her, his voice dispassionate.

‘Twenty-seven. Mother sent me away. I was raised by priests of the Kore.’

‘When did you discover the gnosis?’

‘When I was ten – it came early for me, they said.’

‘How did it manifest?’

‘I changed shape – I made my cleft close, because I was ashamed of it. I wanted to be a boy, like the young priests. They were my friends.’

Gyle raised his eyebrows. A mage’s first expression of the gnosis was almost always elemental, not one of the more difficult Studies. For her to go straight to morphic-gnosis spoke volumes of her affinity. ‘Then what happened?’

‘One of my friends, one of the novices, wanted me to be a girl so that he could lie with me. The older priests saw what was happening and I was taken away from the monastery and sent back to Pallas. To Mother.’

Gyle squeezed her half-formed hand gently. It felt wet and raw, and left a smear of blood on his fingers. ‘And then?’

‘I was given a tutor: Renata, an Arcanum woman:. She was Palacian, one of my cousins. She trained me.’

Gyle knew the name. ‘She’s dead now, isn’t she?’

The lack of lips made it look like Coin was grinning. ‘I killed her. She lost her temper with me, so I made her heart stop.’ Her mental voice was hollow but satisfied. ‘I hated her.’

Gyle felt his complacency evaporate. Willing another’s heart to stop was not easy at all.
She’s a pure-blood, Gurvon, four times more powerful than you are. Never forget that
. ‘What came after that?’ he asked carefully.

‘Mother taught me how to become other people: I had to learn their shape and their mind, and use mesmerism to get inside their heads. Mysticism would work better, but I have no affinity for it. So
I’m better at impersonating a person’s shape than their behaviours.’

Gyle had already noted that trait in her. ‘Who is your father, Yvette?’

‘Wanting to know if it’s my mother’s brother, are you?’ she said with tired bitterness. ‘That was a lie: one that my
father
– the Emperor Hiltius, my mother’s husband – allowed to be spread, to explain why I was a freak. I hated him for that. I was glad when he died.’

When your mother killed him, you mean? Or do you even guess at that?

‘I’ve never believed that piece of gossip,’ he told her, not entirely truthfully. ‘It must have been hard for you to grow up this way.’

Coin turned her head away. ‘It was Hel.’

‘But you helped the family by killing the Duke of Argundy?’

Coin’s voice turned reflective. ‘Mother said he was plotting against the empire and she wanted Echor to take over as Duke.’ She giggled faintly. ‘I bet she regrets that now.’

I’m sure she does.
‘Do you have any friends?’

Coin went still, and then slowly shook her head. ‘How can I? I am never me.’

I am never me.
He thought about that. ‘I know what you mean, Yvette. I too have to spend much time pretending to be someone else. Being “me” is a luxury. We’re not so unalike.’

‘It’s not the same,’ Coin rasped. ‘I’ve never been me, not since the monastery. I don’t even know who “me” is.’ Her hideously grinning flayed skull turned to him, her voice going from empty to suddenly full. ‘I can be
anyone else
you want me to be.
Anyone at all
. But I don’t know how to be me.’

‘I’ll help you find your true self,’ he promised, because it was what she wanted to hear.

The nature of God

I say this, that there is one God, and that God is known by the Amteh as Ahm and the Omali as Aum, and the Sollan as Sol. One God, with many faces. If we can reconcile ourselves to this fact, then there will be peace in all of Ahmedhassa. You will note I exclude the God of the Kore, for this Corineus is merely a fabrication of Shaitan to justify the powers of these afreet they call Magi.

I
MAM
A
LI
-Z
AYIN, HERETICAL
G
ODSPEAKER,
AT HIS TRIAL AT
S
AGOSTABAD
, K
ESH
, 698

All gods are equal. Equally imaginary.

A
NTONIN
M
EIROS
, 791

Mount Tigrat, Javon, Antiopia
Shawwal (Octen) 928
4
^th
month of the Moontide

Kazim pictured an attacker, a spearman, lunging at his back; he spun, blocked high and then thrust, driving him backwards, before finishing with a lateral sweep of the blade. Decapitation. He froze, examining the positioning of his feet.
Too close together.
He practised the move again and again, until he was regularly finishing with a stronger stance. He exhaled slowly, then straightened as the dust he’d kicked up swirled all around the little courtyard.

A surreal rhythm had settled over the old monastery as the days turned to weeks, the hours emptied of everything but the blade in his hand and the enemies in his head. Each day he pushed himself
a little harder, a little longer. The time it was taking to regain his strength told him how close he’d come to dying of Mara Secordin’s venom, and reminded him again that he owed Elena Anborn his life.

That thought led his mind to the garden on the other side of the monastery. It had better air, better sun, more room – but he refused to go there, because that was where Elena trained. He was still struggling to deal with her as a person and as a woman. In Lakh, men and women lived shared lives, but the distinctions between roles and duties was been well-defined: men led and protected and women provided and obeyed. In Kesh, the divisions were even more pronounced; men and women lived almost entirely separate lives from childhood until marriage, and even then everywhere was segregated, from the Dom al’Ahms to the public baths. They even lived in separate parts of their homes.

But Elena acknowledged no such rules.

There were a few women in the Kalistham. They were of two sorts: dutiful wives and deceitful harlots. Elena was neither. She was like no one he’d ever imagined existing. She was
only
a woman, but she was as fast as any man he’d seen. Part of him longed to cross blades with her, to test her –
no, to put her in her place
. He knew how Haroun would see her: as a deceitful harlot. But she’d not lied to him, so far as he could tell. He avoided her as much as he could for she had no sense of propriety. When he told her that the way she dressed offended him she’d just laughed – but then she’d taken to covering herself more modestly in front of him, an unexpected concession. And she spoke of interesting things: magi, and wars in Yuros. Her manner affronted him, but she had a strange fascination too. Though she did not conform to his idea of femininity, he could not deny her grace of movement.

He took a swallow of water and tried to put her from his mind. She too was training hard. She claimed that the afreet which had possessed her had neglected her body, something he shied from thinking about. The idea of someone inhabiting another’s body was nauseating, and of course it made her doubly nefara.

‘What does nefara even mean?’ she’d asked him over breakfast a week ago when he’d used the term to describe one of the deceitful harlots from the Kalistham.

‘Nefara women are impure and unholy. They have polluted themselves. They corrupt any man who—’ He broke off and coughed, suddenly embarrassed. ‘Anyone who has congress with a nefara woman must purify themselves or Shaitan will reap their soul.’

She’d raised her eyebrows in that quizzical way she had. She had little respect for holy things, even the teachings of her own heathen religion. ‘How does a woman become nefara, then?’

‘Many ways.’ He frowned, trying to remember what Haroun had taught him on the journey north through the desert. ‘Any major sin pollutes them – lying, theft, murder, adultery. Unnatural acts with a man or a beast. Performing witchcraft. Failure to attend prayer … There are so many.’ He faltered a little as his memory faded. ‘Wearing red clothing,’ he added hesitantly. ‘And drinking urine.’

She’d laughed. ‘Drinking piss!’

‘It is a sin.’

‘But who the hell would drink piss?’ she demanded, slapping her thighs with mirth. ‘Or do you mean alcohol?’

‘Do not mock. You are nefara yourself.’

That stopped her, though not out of respect or anguish at the state of her soul. She’d choked on her water and fled for the privy, still snorting with laughter. He liked to think that Ahm would chastise her for that.

He sighed heavily and decided that enough was enough. He went to his new sleeping chamber. It was bigger, and on a higher level than the tiny cell he’d first slept in – it had probably belonged to one of the more senior monks. Elena had the other similarly sized room down the corridor. It had a better mattress too, one she’d brought from Brochena months ago. He’d swept his cell, even though such work was beneath a warrior – but who else was going to do it? It had a view of her training garden and he tried not to look down there, although sometimes when she was down there performing her deadly dervish dance it was difficult not to stare.

I’m learning where her weaknesses are
, he told himself. So far he hadn’t spotted any.

*

Elena pulled on a clean salwar kameez and smoothed it down, then wrapped her hair in a towel. Then she gathered her soaked training clothes and headed for the laundry. On the way past Kazim’s room she knocked on the door. ‘Hey Brother, I’m going to do some women’s work. Throw out your laundry.’ They’d each been doing their own, mostly to teach him that she wasn’t his servant, but she decided the point had been made and she could afford to be generous.

No reply. ‘Hey!’ She poked her nose through the door, wincing at the sound of her own voice. That damned throat wound had left it deeper and she hated it.

Kazim appeared wearing nothing but a towel, and she stopped, struck by his physique. His hair was longer now, tied back in a loose ponytail, and he was freshly washed. His still-damp bronze skin glowed in the half-light and any Pallas sculptor would have paid good coin to use his body, a study in lean musculature, as a model.

She forgot what she was going to say.

‘What do you want?’ he asked coldly, his voice a bucket of cold water.

Grow up, Ella!
She sobered quickly. ‘Would you like me to wash your dirty clothes?’

He frowned. ‘So long as I don’t have to do yours.’

She half-smiled. ‘No.’

He indicated a mound of clothing lying about his bed, then walked back into the niche he was using as a dressing-room.

She picked up his clothes, then after a moment, took his sheets as well. They had a stale musk that was both unpleasant and enticing. She felt enveloped in his scent as she hefted the pile and took it down to the laundry room. It set off an unexpected reaction inside her, the musky tang of fresh male sweat bringing Lorenzo back to her, reminding her of what she was missing. She remembered all over again that he was dead, but now she thought of the good things too: the way he smiled, the way he kissed, the way he laughed. She hurried
to the laundry, thrust the clothing into the great stone trough and set the taps running.
Get over it, girl.
But a gnawing hunger had been set off, as if a starving man had smelled cooking food, and she couldn’t stop salivating inside.

That night, sitting alone after her meal, she gave in and opened a bottle of red wine. It went straight to her head. She was wise enough to stop after two glasses, and she took herself to bed before she decided to wake Kazim up and get into some stupid argument over his idiotic ideas about the world. She lay awake in the warm night, her stomach churning as she tried not to think about the way Sordell had poked and prodded at her body in full knowledge that what he was doing disgusted her.

But he’s gone now. This body is my own.

She stroked her breasts slowly, fighting the urge to be sick.
It’s mine. My own.
She shuddered, felt her gorge rise, and swallowed a mouthful of acidic bile.
No, Rutt. I won’t let you keep this hold over me. I’m going to forget you, even if I have to erase my own mind.

She pushed her hands down the flat plain of her belly. Her body was returning to its peak: strong, lean and toned. After all the indignities Sordell had put it through, she finally felt like herself again. To prove it, she combed her fingers through the soft, fine hair of her mound, then pushed her forefinger into her cleft. It was dry, but only for a few seconds. She swirled the slick fluids over her nub and sighed as a shiver stole over her.

This is my body. I reclaim it.

*

Turn. Lunge, retract, spin and duck. Kazim felt a flash of panic as a movement caught the corner of his eye, throwing him off balance. Elena was watching from the doorway. He stopped, panting, and glared at her. ‘What do you want?’

‘We should train together,’ she replied bluntly.

He went stock-still. ‘Why?’

‘Because men move differently to training routines. Because your technique is flawed and will get you killed.’

He scowled. ‘My technique is perfect.’

She lifted her eyebrows. ‘Come and prove it. If you’re up to it.’ She vanished from the opening.

He glared after her, furious.
How dare she?
He’d been taught by some of the Hadishah’s best.
Who did this bitch think she was?
But he was following her up the stairs before he’d even thought it through.

She waited for him in the garden, on the central bridge; a curved stone arch with a knee-high wall either side above a dry pond. She held a wooden stave the size of a sword. She tossed him another. ‘Basic movements.’

He caught the staff, took its balance and measure, then swished it about. She was almost a foot shorter and maybe two-thirds his weight, so she had a far shorter reach. But she was also a mage, with full access to her gnosis.

‘No magic, jadugara,’ he growled. She’d not freed his gnosis, despite their agreement, and he’d not complained, for he loathed the very thought of it most of the time. But right now the fact that she could use her magic against him made his skin crawl.

‘I won’t need it,’ she answered blithely, making his hackles rise.

All right, you.
He stalked towards her.
Basic moves – ha!
He went high, left–right, then low, right–left. Cross blow, right to left, then back again. She parried each casually, her movements economical.

‘
Hyar!
’ he cried as he lashed out at her face, bullocked forward and hacked at her legs with his right foot.

Except she’d already wafted away. She went under his high thrust and lunged. The tip of her stave took him in the groin, all the air went out of him in one painful gust and he collapsed, moaning, on the bridge.

‘Just the basic moves, Brother,’ she said flatly.

He gasped for breath and slowly clambered to his feet. Part of him was utterly furious, desperate to launch himself at her, but the other part, the one that connected his balls to his brain, probably, was screaming at him to slow down and go easy.

He’d never been good at listening to that part of himself.

He roared, and launched a series of overhead blows culminating in a charge that she sidestepped with almost contemptuous ease before
pirouetting and kicking him off the bridge. He grazed his knees and palms as he landed, but didn’t pause; instead, he erupted in a leap that took him back onto the rim of the bridge, all the while swearing belligerently, until she swiped him across the throat and left him choking and fearing a broken windpipe. He went again, though, until she smacked her stave across both shoulders, then thrust it into his belly, leaving him winded on the ground once again.

‘Are you ready to play nicely yet?’ she asked drily.

He tried to look up at her, to let her know just how much he hated her at that instant, but his eyes were watering too much to see if she noticed.
All right, bitch. Point made, and taken.

Thus began a new phase, like a new moon rising. He put aside his pride and went back to basics, and as he listened to her, he found she had much to say that he could value. To his surprise she made him start each day with yoga, the slow exercise technique developed in Lakh. He’d always disdained it as womanly – a man’s exercise should be vigorous – but to his chagrin, he found the positions harder than he had thought. He still couldn’t see the point, until she challenged him to skewer a specific knot on a wooden post with his blade. Most times he missed, though only by inches, but she could do it every time. ‘Control’, she kept saying. ‘Every blow must count.’

It wasn’t just yoga. She made him run and skip, and drill for hours. She ruthlessly eviscerated his fencing technique, showing him all the bad habits he’d never suspected. It was a painful experience, his ego taking as many blows as his body. She was a Rondian, and a woman – and not even a big one. There was no visible sign that she was using the gnosis, but she could block every move, match him blow for blow and anticipate all he did.

She taught him how to anticipate, how to read movements, how this thrust leads to that riposte, and how to use that knowledge to deceive an opponent. Their sparring gradually evolved to an almost ritualised dance.

But he couldn’t lay a blade on her. It was galling – freakish; he’d sparred with enough people in the past year or so to know that even a badly outmatched fighter occasionally got lucky. But it was as if
she saw all he did before it happened, and she was able to evade everything he tried, which made him mutter darkly to himself that she was cheating, using the gnosis after all. But when he accused her, she just laughed.
And chod, she could move!
She was like liquid, like air, flowing from place to place in an eye-blink. His blows were always a split-second too slow. She made him feel clumsy as a baby elephant.