The Quartered Sea (56 page)

"I beg your pardon, gracious one."

"Good. And while you remember it, remember also that what isn't spoken can't be overheard." A toss of his head lifted the feathers braided into his hair. "Now I'm about to let my sister know how your trip through the tunnels left you a blithering idiot and how nothing you say makes sense. What kind of idiot would believe that a song would open the barrier of Sorquizic?"

"And she'll believe that?"

"She would never believe that we'd work together…" The tul paused just inside the door and threw an edged look back at the man in the bed, gratitude and resentment equally mixed."… karjo."

"Gracious one, his hair will grow, and you can put him in the sun again." Frowning deeply enough to pull the tattoos on his scalp out of shape, Ooman Xhai clutched at the tul's robe. "To return him to your sister might give you immediate gain, but it would lose you the future." He snatched his hand back as the tul's gaze flicked down to his fingers then up to his face. "Gracious one, please. The eye does not matter. He is still a warrior of Tulpayotee."

"After what my sister has done to him, I doubt it." Tossing a skein of feathered braids back over his shoulder, the tul motioned Xhojee back into the room. "Go, talk to him. Perhaps you can make more sense of his raving."

"Sorquizic?" Surprise stopped him in his tracks and he had to hurry to catch up. "There haven't even been priests of Sorquizic for generations."

"There's one now."

"But why, gracious one?"

"How should I know?" the tul growled. "But you can rest easy, I'm not giving him back. At least I'll die knowing I took something of hers."

"I thought not." Robe whispering against the floor, he swept toward his private apartments. "If I'm to wait on the Tulparax today, I'd best get ready."

Crossing the room, Xhojee wondered if Benedikt had lapsed back into unconsciousness. His head lolled against the wall, and something about him suggested he just wasn't there. "Benedikt?" To his relief, the startlingly blue eye—not less startling for being on its own—opened and fixed on him. "The tul says you were raving."

Sliding back down in the bed, Benedikt managed half a shrug. The strength he'd used to convince the tul had been almost all the strength he had, physically and emotionally. "Maybe I was." He expected the younger man to ask what he'd been raving about, but Xhojee only sat down and watched him carefully. Finally, he had to fill the silence himself. "You've gotten close to him since I left."

"Left? I thought you were taken."

"I wouldn't have been if I'd stayed inside." And if he'd stayed inside that day, how would things have been different? He used the pain from his missing eye to chase the thought away. "Well?"

"He hasn't many people he trusts."

Compared to his sister, Tul Altun didn't have many people, period. Still, when he came right down to it, he was no more alone than the xaan. Benedikt wondered if all the great houses were like that, or if fate and the kigh had played a cruel joke with their choice. "And he trusts you?"

"As much as anyone."

"You blushing?"

Xhojee's cheeks flushed a little darker. "No." He rubbed at the edge of his tattoo where a new addition to the pattern still itched and watched exhaustion paint shadows over the hope on Benedikt's face. Although it had vanished almost instantly, that same unexpected hope had marked the tul as he'd come out into the hall.

There could be only one reason for hope.

Xhojee had seen exactly what Benedikt had gone through to get away from the xaan, and he saw daily what the tul went through as the certainty of the change moved closer.

His hope was that the other two knew what they were doing because, based on what he'd seen before the bathing and the bandaging, he strongly suspected that if Benedikt came face-to-face with the xaan, he'd fall apart.

"Benedikt, what's the xaan like? I'm sorry," he added as the shadows darkened. "I just wondered if she was like the tul."

"Sort of. On the surface. They're both… what's the Petayn word for animals that eat other animals?"

"Predators?"

"Yeah. The tul is like a leopard." Benedikt, who'd grown up surrounded by cats, had been fascinated by the size of the pelts the xaan's guard wore over their ceremonial armor. "He's dangerous. Unpredictable. Personal. Stretching the metaphor, he likes to play with his food."

When Xhojee winced but didn't disagree, he went on. "The xaan is quicksand. Not exactly a predator but the same idea. She gives no warnings, plays no games. A traveler sees a leopard, steps off the path to avoid it, and disappears. It's not that she waits for her prey to come to her, she just
always
happens to be where it is."

He watched Xhojee thinking about the wet sand closing over his head, the terror rising in his eyes, and wished he'd kept his mouth shut. It was just such a great image that it had gained him a little distance from the reality. He looked for a way to give that distance to Xhojee. "I know it's supposed to be a disgrace, but there's an upside to having had my hair shaved. My head's cooler."

"Good." The xaan held Shacquai on his back in the crook of her arm and absently scratched his chest. "Did my ears and eyes mention what my brother doesn't believe?"

Serasti nodded. "Yes, peerless one. Your brother says that the karjo has come out of the tunnels raving that he is a warrior of Sorquizic."

The xaan set the dog onto his feet and watched indulgently as he began digging in a cushion. "Altun hasn't searched for my eyes and ears since just after he came to Atixlan. He knows I have someone in his household. What comes from his mouth to me is what he wants me to hear."

"So he
does
believe what the karjo says?" Hueru asked, frowning.

"That's impossible to tell."

"But, peerless one…"

"Don't strain yourself, cousin. Tell the First you speak with the mouth of the xaan; I want to know immediately if anyone in my brother's house takes more than one step toward the harbor."

What he knew of Benedikt marched visibly, point by point, across Hueru's broad features—the flood on the road, the wave on the pier… "Is he a warrior of Sorquizic, peerless one?"

The xaan lifted ebony brows into a sardonic arch. "Does it matter?"

"She's watching the house and everyone in it." Wearing only his sawrap, Tul Altun turned from the window and held out his arm so that Xhojee could began removing the designs painted from fingertip to elbow. "I, however, am only watching her and she's still at the palace."

Xhojee looked shocked at the implication of pandering, but the tul smiled. "Not that I noticed." When his arms were clean, he crossed to the bed. "Imixara said you slept most of the day. Have you regained your strength?"

"Does it matter, gracious one?"

"No. Tomorrow night is the rebirth of Xaantalicta. She'll come for you then, so she can use you as soon as she has you. Having lost you once, she won't move before she has to and risk losing you again. We have to be out of here and away before then."

"But she's watching the house."

"So? If in the cool of tomorrow morning, while the streets of Atixlan are full of people, I leave here with banners flying, with you and all my guard, what can she do? Start a pitched battle in the street? No. She can kill me in the privacy of my own home, that's a family matter, but a great house taking its quarrel to the street would bring the guards of the tulparax and immediate execution, House Kohunlich and all its assets claimed by the palace. It's a very old law that keeps up appearances for the common people and ensures a certain amount of political stability. All she can do is send her guard after us and all we have to do is get to the harbor before her. If she cuts us off, we'd have to retreat back to the house."

Where it's legal for her to kill you
, Benedikt added silently. It was a strange system, and he found it hard to believe it worked as well as it seemed to. "Do you have a boat?"

The tul examined the sheen on his fingernails. "We'll take the
Kraken
."

"Her boat?"

"No." His upper lip curled. "The
Kraken
belongs to house Kohunlich and I am the Kohunlich-tul." Eyes glittering in the lamp light, he smiled. "Until the change, I am the head of the house and the ship master will obey me."

One dry summer, Benedikt had seen lightning start a forest fire. Something in the tul's smile reminded Benedikt of that now. The ship master would either obey or die—a dead master would no doubt bring the mate around. It wasn't a scenario Benedikt cared much for, but he couldn't see that they had a choice; he had no more chance of controlling the tul than he'd had of controlling that fire. "If you can get us onto the
Kraken
, I'll make sure she can't be caught."

"You're sure he's sent no one to the harbor?"

"Positive, peerless one."

"And that he's not spoken in private to…" She ran over which of the great houses had deep-water ships in Atixlan. "The Shanshich-tul or the Palenque-tul?"

"We had him watched all day at the palace, peerless one. The Shanshich-tul was not present, and he never approached the Palenque-tul."

* * *

The lookout had spotted land at midday, and the kigh had brought the
Vixen
into shore cloaked in a heavy fog. During the course of the day, the captain had chewed three pipe stems to splinters. The bards had taken turns reassuring him with only partial success.

"It feels like we've sailed off the edge of the world," Jurgis murmured, tucking a strand of hair back behind his ear.

"You're not helping," Karlene told him shortly. During the day, it had been just barely possible to make out the shadowy outlines of the bow from the sterncastle but since they'd lost even the filtered sunlight, visibility had dropped to an arm's length. Lanterns remained unlit but ready, and bows had been given out to all crew members who could shoot. Karlene had instructed the kigh to keep them away from other ships and made objects like piers, but she wasn't certain of either how much they'd understood or were willing to cooperate.

Sitting on the bench built into the rail, her stumps allowing her to face the sea, Evicka leaned over the side and trailed her fingers through the fog. "I don't know whether to Sing air or water to this…" Frowning, she straightened. "We've stopped."