Children of Earth and Sky

  The well lay near the end of Dimitar’s family’s land, towards the road and the stream but so much nearer than that rushing water, saving a long walk every time.

  Milena was alone, filling the two buckets, thinking about what it might be like to have a man sleep beside her, then thinking about her brothers who had gone away—who had been able to go away—when she saw someone coming along the road from the east.

  People did come past, it was a road, but it didn’t happen every day. Their road was lightly travelled, especially this spring. They knew the army of the khalif had been moving, somewhere to the east, headed for the Jaddite fortress. There were numbers spoken that made no sense to Milena. A lot of men was all she understood.

  This one was more a boy than a man, she saw as he came nearer. But she also saw that he carried a sword and a bow, though he wasn’t in a uniform of any kind. That ought to have caused her to retreat when he left the road and began crossing towards her at the well, but she didn’t. It was midday, her brothers were in their field, and Dimitar and his father could be seen on the far side of theirs. They’d have seen this one, he was walking openly.

  He stopped at a respectful distance and lifted a hand in greeting, called out, in Asharite, “Is it permitted to take water from your well?”

  “You can do that if you like,” Milena said in Sauradian. She didn’t like speaking Asharite. She thought it made her sound stupid and she knew she wasn’t.

  “I am grateful,” he replied, switching to Sauradian (not smoothly, but he did it, she noted). “It is a hot day to be on the road.”

  He looked younger than her, but he was taller, a big-shouldered boy-man, and the weapons made him look older, as weapons tended to, she thought. Men with swords or cudgels walked differently in the village, she’d noticed.

  On impulse, as he came up, Milena handed him the bucket she’d just filled. “Drink. I’ll fill it again.”

  He had red-blond hair and blue eyes—like her own, in fact, which was interesting. How such an obvious Jaddite could have weapons was a mystery.

  Not one she was ever going to solve, of course.

  He lifted the bucket to his mouth and drank. She knew their water had a metallic taste, but the boy showed no reaction. He splashed his hands into the bucket on the well rim and washed his face and neck. Then he took a leather flask and filled it.

  She saw his gaze go past her. He nodded courteously. “Good day,” he said. “Thank you for the drink. I needed it.”

  “Looks that way,” her brother Rastic said. He was the calmer of the two who remained on the farm. Milena glanced back. He was holding his scythe, but easily. This didn’t feel like anything dangerous, but she was still a little excited.

  “You’re well armed,” Rastic said.

  The stranger said, “Alone on the road. Have to be.”

  “You know how to use those?”

  “I do.” He didn’t smile.

  Milena decided not to think of him as a boy any more. It was interesting, Rastic heard those words but he didn’t bristle or become aggressive (Mavro might have, but he was down at the other end of their field). Rastic just looked thoughtful, and maybe, Milena thought, a little bit careful.

  “More rain than sun the last while,” he said.

  The stranger nodded. “All spring. Good for you or bad, here?”

  “Mostly good. We’ll need it dry come harvest.”

  “Then I’ll wish you that,” the stranger said, “and be on my way.”

  “Safe road,” Rastic said, leaning on his scythe handle.

  “Do you want to stay for a meal?” Milena said in the same moment.

  The two men looked at each other. Then Rastic smiled. “Yes, do that.”

  “Only if I can cut wood or offer something for it,” the other man said.

  “We aren’t so poor we can’t give a traveller a meal,” her brother said mildly.

  The man with the same colour eyes as Milena smiled this time. “I’ll be grateful for it, then. May I at least carry the water back?”

  “You can do that,” Rastic allowed.

  They waited for Milena to fill the buckets, since that was woman’s work, then the stranger shouldered them with the pole on his neck, and the three of them walked back to their house.

  The stranger’s name was Neven. He was headed south and west, didn’t say more than that.

  He stayed a year.

  The Eldest Daughter’s terrace was good for the breezes, Leonora was learning, as the weather grew warm. If you walked forward, you could see towards the harbour and any boats coming from there to dock at one of their landing places.

  Leonora had no idea who was coming now, but she did see a small craft pulling in. She was looking at Iulia Orsat in the herb garden—she was no longer with child but was still here, and had said she wanted to stay.

  There were, indeed, methods known—to the two older women who tended their herbs—to cause a girl to no longer carry a child, and Iulia had never wavered in her determination that this one would not be born.

  She’d never named the father. It was possible to guess darkly, and it was wiser—and perhaps kinder—not to do so. In addition to which, Leonora liked the Orsat girl, and was genuinely happy Iulia was staying. She was often in the garden, had shown a desire to learn from the older ones. She was healthy, not sad or angry. She had been teaching them songs from Gjadina Island. Some were extremely vulgar and very amusing.

  Iulia’s arrival had caused some entirely different thoughts as well. They were going to need, Leonora had come to realize, new ways of sustaining themselves on the isle, or life on Sinan would grow significantly less gracious than it had been.

  Under Filipa di Lucaro, it was now clear, their comfortable circumstances had been paid for—quietly, and by routes Leonora was still working through in the records—by Seressa’s Council of Twelve. For which Filipa had been an effective spy—and assassin.

  Not a course available to Leonora, by inclination or opportunity. Which meant pursuing alternatives.

  They might need to begin more widely offering the idea that women of good family (and not just those with reasons to withdraw from the world for a while) could find their lives richer here at the retreat. Younger daughters, especially, and perhaps not only from Dubrava. Families paid for this elsewhere, endowing a retreat to ensure their daughters lived in a manner that did them honour, perhaps also preparing the way for prayers when members of the family went to Jad and light.

  The isle could also become a resting place for the dead, Leonora thought. The retreat could promise prayers in the sanctuary for ten, fifty, a hundred years, or even forever—at a cost, of course. Forever would cost a lot. Prayers from holy women were valued, though. She would need to learn what the price was elsewhere.

  There was room to expand their cemetery, or introduce the idea of people being laid to rest in the sanctuary itself. This was, after all, the retreat where the last empress of Sarantium had chosen to live for twenty-five years in a life of piety. She amused herself a little with that thought. There weren’t any people with whom she could share it, though.

  A shame, thinking about it, that Eudoxia was laid to rest in Varena. Even though it had been Leonora who had planted the thought. Still, they did have her last belongings: jewellery, books, two sun disks, even the bed where the last empress had gone to the god.

  There could be pilgrimages here. Perhaps the High Patriarch would consider making Eudoxia a Blessed Victim? That was worth exploring. There were, Leonora thought, possibilities. Life, on a day in late spring—especially after they’d learned the khalif’s army was in retreat—seemed more full of promise to her than it had in a long time.

  She looked west at the morning sea, whitecaps on a blue that was nearly violet just now. She turned and looked down towards the pier, where that small boat had now docked and was being tied. She
saw Pero Villani step out and start up the path between the vines, towards her.

  Pero was aware—and always would be—that his being alive was astonishing. You could call it a miracle. He ought to have died in Asharias, or on the way home, at best.

  He had been sketching and drawing compulsively since they’d left the city. At every stop for the night, even when they halted by the road for a rest or meal, sketchbook on a table or his knees, charcoal in hand. He was recording memories of the court and the city as rapidly as he could. There had never been anything like this urgency for him.

  He did drawings of the khalif. The marketplaces. Cemal, as he had been in that room beyond the tunnel with the quick blue flames. He sketched those flames. The Courtyard of Silence: fountains, orange trees. Stars hanging from the dome in the vastness of the temple. Fallen marbles in the Hippodrome. One of the reliefs he’d seen there he kept trying to capture on paper. But you couldn’t do that, could you?

  He kept drawing hands.

  He didn’t speak much, though Marin tried to draw him out in the first days and nights. Pero could read concern in the other man’s expression. He had a friend, it seemed. It ought to matter more, he told himself. Perhaps one day it would. Or perhaps, the way lives tended to unfold, they’d never see each other again after he went home to Seressa.

  He was alone in the room the two of them were sharing at an inn, upstairs, when the attempt on his life took place.

  He was supposed to be guarded. They had eight djannis escorting them—not entirely happily, but it was obvious the soldiers had been given extremely clear instructions that the Jaddites were to arrive home safely. Pero understood by now that failure in this would be a mortal one for the guards.

  He was standing at the window late in the day. He had the shutters pushed back against the outside wall. He was sketching again, using the late light, sketchbook on the window ledge. A drawing of the vizier: soft cap and neat beard, heavy, fur-trimmed robe, belt of office, the hooded, watchful eyes.

  The arrow hit the shutter beside his head. No one had defended or saved him. He was not a difficult target, framed in an open window. The distance was not so great—only across the courtyard, from near the stables, it seemed. There was no real wind and the light was fine, good enough to sketch by, good enough for killing a man.

  The archer had simply missed.

  Pero scrabbled back into the room, almost falling. A second arrow—loosed quickly—flew through the window where he had been and hit the far wall. That one would have killed him had he not moved.

  He heard shouts below, running footsteps. He stayed where he was. The sketchbook was still on the window ledge, fluttering slightly.

  The man was found in the back of the stables, trying to twist through a loose board he’d discovered or created. When the djannis caught up with him, he apparently drove a knife into his throat and died there. The bow, Pero was told that evening by Tomo, was a soldier’s.

  Prince Cemal had indeed decided that the artist from the west was not to be allowed home to tell a story. He had said as much to Pero in that room in his brother’s palace.

  That night—and every night after—Marin Djivo kept his sword by him in the other bed and two guards were outside their door.

  They continued west. Pero kept making sketches.

  This had been expected, hadn’t it? You couldn’t let fear define you, he told himself. He told Marin that, too, when the merchant asked how he was.

  Something had happened to him, Pero now felt, while he was painting those two portraits. One of them would have been destroyed by now and the other he would surely never see again. But he knew they had been strong work. He knew what he had done, what he might be able to do going forward, if allowed. He had journeyed to Asharias and had been changed by that. He didn’t yet know exactly how, but he knew it had happened. Silence was a way of guarding this feeling, just as the djannis were guarding him.

  On the road now he was always bracketed by four men, against an arrow or gunshot from the woods or meadows. The djannis scanned fields and trees all the time.

  They didn’t save him, however, when the second attack came.

  Two assassins that time, as they came up to another inn, late in the day, as always. There was a delay entering. A party of travellers was ahead of them, Kindath merchants, waiting for their mules to be taken to the stables.

  It wasn’t another merchant party, and they weren’t Kindath. Not all of them.

  The djannis were checking the courtyard inside and the rooms they were to take. Nodding their heads and smiling, two of the merchants walked over towards where Djivo and Pero were standing. Tomo was attending to their baggage on the mules.

  “Swords,” Marin Djivo said.

  Looking back, Pero wondered at how calm the man’s voice had been. It was more a crisp announcement than a shout. But Djivo had his own blade out before the two men did. They pushed back their blue hoods. They were not Kindath merchants: those of that faith could not carry weapons in Osmanli lands or they died.

  These two did die.

  Pero remembered Marin on the Blessed Ingacia, crossing the deck to fight the raider who’d killed the doctor. Later, Drago Ostaja had told him that Djivo would surely have slain the man if he’d been allowed a fight. Which had not been likely that day.

  Marin had drawn his sword another time on the way east—to defend Danica as she loosed arrows at soldiers not far from here. Marin had killed men that day, but not in a fight, just dispatching them in tall grass. A man not afraid to end a life.

  And, it appeared, skilled at doing so. They were djannis he faced now, but they hadn’t expected resistance, and one of them was dead—of a sword in the chest—before his weapon cleared its scabbard.

  The other did draw from beneath the deception of his Kindath robes. He twisted away from Marin, turning to Pero—who had no weapon, of course.

  He heard Tomo shout a warning from by the mules. He backed towards his voice. He could use the animals as a shield, was his thought.

  He didn’t need to. Marin Djivo engaged the assassin, forcing the man to turn to him. Djannis were the best of the Osmanli army. Taken in childhood, trained all their lives, only the very best elevated to rank.

  This one had to know he was going to die here, Pero realized after. There were noises from the courtyard, the guards would be rushing out any moment. Better to end in glory? Doing your duty? The man did do that, but it had nothing to do with other djannis coming for him. He fell to a sword thrust from an infidel, someone not even a soldier: a merchant from Dubrava. It didn’t even take long. It was a difficult thought for Pero Villani, but what came to him outside that inn yard was that dealing death could be elegant.

  Later that evening he asked Marin, “How did you know how to do that?”

  It had been so smooth, too fast to follow for an eye not trained to combat. Djivo had been breathing quickly when it was over. He’d cleaned his sword, then sheathed it again.

  He said, by candlelight, “Two winters in Khatib, waiting for the weather to let us sail. I took lessons, beyond what I’d had at home. Two different masters, different styles. I was young. I didn’t want to be a target in the world. I wanted to be one of the others.”

  “The ones who kill?”

  “Almost,” Djivo said, after a moment. “Say, one of those who can.”

  There had been screaming earlier in front of the inn. Their djanni guards had killed the rest of the Kindath merchant party, six of them and their servants. An ugly slaughter. And unnecessary, in the event. Afterwards, the innkeeper would vouch for those merchants, they were often on this road, staying here. The assassins had, obviously, joined them approaching the inn. For safety on the road, they would have said.

  But his assigned guards had failed twice now, and people really did need to die because of that. Better that they were only Kindath, Tomo said, later. He
said it bitterly.

  Djivo was the quiet one that night. Pero left him alone. He did say thank you before they put out their lamps. The other man still had his sword by him. Pero wondered how many times Djivo had killed. Eventually he fell asleep.

  There were no other incidents. They didn’t stop at the village where they’d spent a night on the way to Asharias, and they didn’t leave the road, or slow, when they passed the place where a battle had taken place a little farther west. They had no reason to. None at all.

  Their guards took them right to the walls of Dubrava, arriving late in the morning on a sunny day. The djannis did not enter the city with them. Pero was asked to sign a document affirming that he had been delivered safely. He did so. Djivo witnessed it, and affixed his family seal. The djannis turned and started east again, the long road.

  Pero Villani and Marin Djivo watched them a moment, then they turned and entered together through the gate, walking along the Straden, past the last fountain. They went into the sanctuary near the walls. It had new frescoes, Pero saw. He remembered being told about these, meeting the artist. They knelt and signed the sun disk and prayed.

  “Thank you,” Marin said when they stood up. “You saved my life and I will always know it and remember.”

  “I didn’t . . .”

  “You did. I’d have died in Asharias if you hadn’t arranged to take me out with you.”

  It was likely true. Others had died. Word of violence had caught up to them, carried by mounted men on their way with instructions for governors and the retreating army. The khalif had told Pero what might be coming. It was why he’d asked to bring his friend.

  “Anything I can give you. As long as I’m alive,” Marin Djivo said.

  Pero found he had nothing to say for a moment, no words came. He was still guarding what had changed, what was still changing within him. He would need to leave that inner space now, he thought, given where they were. He nodded.