With a speed and agility surprising in a man of his age, the old slave turned and hastened from where he hid, back along the paths to the house where Lady Hariawan dwelled. He must be swift indeed, for the handmaiden would not be long, and what he must do, he must do before she discovered him.
He mounted the steps, slid back the door, and passed like a shadow through the corridor and into Lady Hariawan’s chambers; first, the outer chamber, where he had slept this last week and more, along with his fellow slaves; next, the middle chamber which was Sairu’s quarters, though she never used it.
Then he slid back the door of the innermost chamber and beheld Lady Hariawan lying still upon her bed.
Lady Hariawan. The Dream Walker.
Tu Domchu drew a knife from his belt and stepped forward.
The stones beneath Sairu’s gaze dappled dark with spots of rain. Slow spots, for the storm was not yet ready to break, and even now might pass overhead and on down the mountains to drench the valleys below. But a few drops speckled the white stones of the path and splashed on Sairu’s face, disguising any tears which may or may not have been visible.
She moved as though in a trance, but her mind spun with possibilities, with plans, with daring rescues and escapes, one after another, each more intricate than the last. Her head was bowed, her hands hidden deep inside her sleeves, but her eyes were bright with concentration.
She could find no solution. She could not protect both Jovann and Lady Hariawan. And she was bound to her mistress by all the most solemn vows of her order.
The injustice of it all screamed in the back of her mind, ready, if she would only set it free, to trample the plots she considered into furious dust. It was so unfair, for Jovann wanted nothing but to help her mistress! And she . . . she had asked him to. She had brought this fate, this certainty of death down upon his head. She, and she alone, was to blame.
She saw the face of Idrus, the dead slaver. And she felt sick to her gut.
“Your only thought is for your master. Your only concern is for his wellbeing. Nothing else matters. No other lives, no other cares, no other dreams. Nothing but your master.”
So Princess Safiya had instructed her girls again and again. As though she herself scarcely believed it, but clung to the idea as the only safety amid the storms of the world. One purpose. One drive. One knife-like point of focus. And so life could be borne.
“Nothing but my master,” Sairu whispered, her speed increasing as she moved up the path. “Nothing but my mistress.”
My mistress . . .
My mistress!
Instinct struck with inexplicable force. Even as she had known once before of Lady Hariawan’s peril before there was reason for her to know, she sensed again, with a sickening thrill of dread, danger, danger, danger. She was running before her thoughts had formed any coherent notion of what she did or what she would do.
And she felt the truth of what Princess Safiya had ingrained in her soul since she first came to the Masayi: Nothing else matters.
She did not run to the door, but around the side of the East Building, straight for the window into Lady Hariawan’s chamber. The whole house stood on a high foundation; the window sill was a good three feet above Sairu’s head.
It did not matter. She ran, and she leapt, and she took hold. Her body slammed against the wall, and her arms strained in a burst of adrenaline to pull her up.
She heard a shriek.
For a heart-stilling moment she believed it was her mistress. But the next moment she knew it was a man’s voice that screamed. Then she heard Sticky Bun’s ferocious growls, and she knew what she would see, even before she hauled herself up into the window and over the sill.
The shadowy form of a man she did not yet recognize stood on one leg in the middle of the room, his other leg shaking to dislodge the plump little body fastened there by a set of needle-sharp teeth. He did not see Sairu at first, but cursed again and again, “Dragon’s teeth! Dragon’s teeth!”
Sairu saw the knife in his hand. She saw the flick of his wrist, and knew what was about to happen.
The next instant, her arms were about his middle, and she hurled him to the ground with all her strength, landing atop him, but rolling off at once into a defensive crouch. Sticky Bun, dislodged, flew across the room and lay where he landed for several heaving breaths before leaping up and barking again, this time staying well out of reach of the intruder.
The assassin, surprised, pulled himself up, searching for his knife. His eyes met Sairu’s. She saw his face.
“You!” she gasped.
Tu Domchu dove for the knife, but she dove as well, catching his arm and wrenching it, even as he had seen her wrench the arm of the enormous Master Pirwura, their guide. Tu Domchu hissed in pain, but he was prepared for the attack. He reached down with his other arm, caught Sairu by the ankle, and overturned her.
Sairu fell, her fingers losing their hold on Tu Domchu’s arm. She landed hard, the wind knocked out of her. Her body did not wait for her to catch her breath before it set into motion. Still lying on her back, she lifted a leg and kicked, connecting first with Tu Domchu’s stomach then, as he doubled over, with his face. He fell, his teeth flashing in a snarl-like grimace.
Sairu struggled to her feet, her long sleeves whipping as she pulled out one of her own two knives. Blood thundered in her ears, and she realized, distantly, that her mouth was open in a roar. She flew at Tu Domchu, striking with the blade.
But she did not expect him to be so much stronger and faster than his old man’s frame would indicate. He dodged her blow and caught her by the wrist. He whirled her around, his other arm across her neck, squeezing, squeezing. She twisted her knife hand, trying to free it from his grasp, but his grip was like iron, ready to break her bones. He should not be so strong!
Blackness burst on the edges of her vision as her breath caught in her lungs and blood could not flow to her head. She tried to catch his leg with her foot, to trip him, but he was prepared, and his legs were planted. He tightened his grip. When she dropped her knife, he let go of her hand, and now she clawed at his arm, unable to loosen his hold.
Then suddenly he screamed and fell away. Sairu, choking for air, her vision almost entirely blacked out, collapsed onto her hands and knees. She looked up and for half an instant thought she saw Tu Domchu grappling with a tall, golden stranger who had him by his thin, scraggly hair.
They fell through the doorway into the other room, out of Sairu’s sight. Inhaling deeply, and desperately shaking her spinning head, she forced herself up and, forgetting her knife, lunged through the doorway into the middle chamber.
She saw no sign of the golden stranger, but she did not have time to wonder at that. Tu Domchu was on his hands and knees as though just flung there, and he was gathering himself to rise.
Sairu leapt upon his back and wrapped her long sleeve about his neck, pulling tight. He hauled himself upright, once more proving the lie of his age, and sought to dislodge her. But she fastened her legs about his middle, clinging like a sucking leech, and pulled even harder on the sleeve. He whirled about, his arms flailing, and struck her face twice, three times, each hit weaker than the last. She held on. She felt the strength draining from him. He collapsed to his knees, gagging, his face contorted.
Then his body went limp and he fell forward, Sairu still on his back, still clutching her strangle-hold. She did not stop for some moments.
Then, slowly, she loosened her hold and pulled the sleeve out from around his neck. Her breath shuddering from her body, she placed two fingers on his neck and felt for a pulse. Faint, but still present. He wasn’t dead.
“Prrrrlt?”
Sairu looked up and saw the cat crouched in the shadows, tail lashing. “Monster,” she said, but nothing more. She was already unwinding her long sash, which was of a strong weave. Spinning it into cord, she proceeded to truss up Tu Domchu, securing his hands behind his back, and looping a length around his neck as well so that any struggling would produce strangulati
on.
The cat stepped forward, pink nose twitching. “You didn’t kill him?”
“No,” said Sairu, shortly.
“If you don’t, he’ll tell his masters what he knows.”
“And what is that?”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
She did. She knew all too well. She studied the side of Tu Domchu’s face, and she read it now as she felt she should have been able to read it before. She should have seen. She should have known.
Whoever else this man was—whoever else he might have been—he was an assassin.
She remembered Lord Dok-Kasemsan suddenly. She had not thought about him since that day of the test, so long ago, when he had attempted to poison Prince Amithnal’s ambassador and been thwarted by Jen-ling. A Crouching Shadow, a hired assassin. And yet, that had not been his purpose in coming to Lunthea Maly at all, only his pretence.
For, as Sairu had discussed the possibility of her new assignment with Princess Safiya, she had seen that Lord Kasemsan did not lie unconscious but listened to every word exchanged. And she knew that his interest was not an assassin’s fee at all.
His interest was the Dream Walkers.
Kasemsan was far away in Lunthea Maly, deep in the dungeons beneath the Crown of the Moon. But did that mean he was the only Crouching Shadow concerned with the Dream Walkers?
Sairu finished securing Tu Domchu and rolled him onto his side, gazing deeper into his unconscious face. She could only read so much without looking into his eyes, but there were still secrets to be found. For one thing, she knew that his age was a disguise. She pulled at his repulsive spotty skin, but found no sign of mask or cosmetics. Nevertheless, she knew it was not the truth, even if she could not guess how or why. He had moved too swiftly, and the muscles of his limbs had been far too well-developed. How had she not seen it? How had she not suspected?
He must have been planted in the Crown of the Moon years ago, a humble, foolish, aged slave to whom no one would pay any heed. But while working for his enslavers, he had ever sought the Dream Walker—the most powerful Dream Walker. The one whom the Crouching Shadows, for some reason Sairu did not know, sought to kill.
Except, the most powerful Dream Walker was a woman. And he had not been able to guess that. Not until he heard that a Golden Daughter had been hired to escort one of the temple girls into hiding. Only then did he begin to suspect.
He could not have known for certain, Sairu thought. Otherwise, there had been any number of chances when he could have killed them on the road. Assassin though he was, she could read in the lines around his mouth no blood-thirst. He would not kill unless certain, unless necessary. And when, upon the Khir Road, they had rescued the slave Jovann and, at Lady Hariawan’s insistence, taken him into their care and keeping . . . that must have left him wondering.
Perhaps the Golden Daughter had been sent to meet the Dream Walker? Perhaps this journey with the temple girl was nothing but a ruse?
Sairu cursed suddenly and bitterly. What a fool she had been! A true Golden Daughter, prepared for and intent upon her task, would have recognized this man for what he was. What was she playing at, pretending she could protect her mistress?
What was she playing at, allowing herself to become distracted?
The cat watched Sairu, guessing some but not all of the thoughts racing through her head as she looked into the old slave’s face. “What will you do with him?” he asked at length.
“Nothing,” said Sairu, standing up and folding her hands, once more the demure handmaiden. “I will not kill him.” She saw the face of Idrus and his dead men again. Men whose lives she had caused to end, even if she had not wielded the weapons which slew them. She shuddered and said again, “I will not kill him.”
“Will you tell Brother Tenuk?”
Sairu turned to the cat, who sat so calmly before the unconscious assassin. The only sign he betrayed of any ill-ease was the dilated pupils of his eyes. These were large and round as dead moons.
“I’ll tell no one,” Sairu said. “I will take my mistress, and—”
She stopped.
She realized she had not heard so much as a sound from Lady Hariawan.
Sairu whirled about, her un-sashed robes loose on her frame, and all but fell to the door of the sleeping chamber. She had heard no sound from her mistress. She had not even seen her mistress, so intent had she been upon Tu Domchu from the moment she entered the room. Did Lady Hariawan even now lie dead in a pool of blood? Sairu, her face ghostly white with fear, entered the room and gazed within, expecting to discover horrors.
Instead, she saw her mistress sitting upon the floor in the middle of the room, even as she had the night before when playing with the dogs. Sticky Bun, her protector, nosed about her, sniffing her arms and circling her, as though determined to make certain that she was truly safe and sound.
Lady Hariawan stared at nothing upon the floor, unaware of the dog.
“My mistress?” Sairu spoke in a whisper, as though afraid one loud noise would ruin this sight, would shatter this vision and show her the lady dead upon the floor.
Lady Hariawan looked up, her face a still mask. She said: “It is strange, is it not? How these dogs would risk their lives. How they would die for love of me.”
She put out one hand, the fingers long, delicate, and trembling. They closed upon the hilt of the assassin’s knife lying on the ground beside Sticky Bun.
“I would have it for myself,” said Lady Hariawan. “The power of life and death.”
In a flash her arm twisted up, and she drove the blade straight for Sticky Bun’s eye.
The cat found Sairu behind the low wall of the kitchen garden, her shoulders hunched, her body shaking with sobs. Steady rain soaked her garments and ran through her hair. She clutched Sticky Bun close to her heart as she wept.
Ears flattened against the rain, the cat darted up to Sairu’s side, relieved to have located her. As he approached, Sticky Bun caught his scent and began wiggling in his mistress’s grasp, yipping rather uneasily but still determined to ward off the devil.
The cat puffed through his whiskers, glaring at the dog. He raised his voice to be heard above its barking.
“So the beast’s alive. Not even harmed from what I can see. What is all this weeping and wailing for?”
Sairu startled and pressed her wriggling dog closer as she looked down at the cat. Her eyes were wide and full of terror. Several times she tried to speak, but the words stuck in her throat. At last she managed in a hoarse whisper to say: “I struck her.”
“And a good thing too,” said the cat, shaking his head ineffectually against the downpour. “She did, after all, try to kill your hedge-pig.”
“No. You don’t understand.” Sairu’s face was paler than the cat had ever before seen it, and dark circles ringed her eyes. “I struck her!”
She buried her face in Sticky Bun’s fur, muffling her sobs. The dog whined and twisted about, snuffling her hair and licking her ear and any other part of her he could reach. Their animosity momentarily forgotten, he even permitted the cat to put a paw on his mistress’s shoulder, purring and rubbing his whiskered cheek against her head.
“There, there,” said the cat through his purr. “There’s a good little mortal. Have your cry, and then we’d better decide what we’re doing with our would-be assassin. He could be discovered at any moment by his fellows. We must dispose of him somehow. Can’t leave him trussed up in the middle chamber.”
This brought Sairu’s head up. For a moment her expression of horror revealed all the tumult of her soul. But only for that instant before her training leapt into play. She smoothed out her features, relaxed the muscles of her cheeks, softened the line of her brow. She assumed the mask of utter calm.
Only her eyes betrayed her.
“Monster,” she said, “you must do something for me. Something I . . . I do not think you will like. But you must promise me to do it.”
He stepped back, his tail swishing ag
ainst the rain, one white forepaw upraised. “You’ll have to tell me what it is before I make any promises.”
Sairu looked down at Sticky Bun. She’d relaxed her hold, and he sat in the spread of her skirt, bulging eyes fixed on the cat, but submitting to his mistress’s caresses. “I need you to take my dogs back to Lunthea Maly,” Sairu said.
“What?”
“Listen to me,” she continued, and her voice was her own again: controlled, dominant, forceful. The cat, immortal devil though he may be, shrank before it, his whiskers tense about his face. “I must get my Lady Hariawan out of this place. I must return with her to the Crown of the Moon and there discover the truth behind all these secrets, all these lies. I must learn exactly why she is being hunted, why the Besur sent her away. I must learn these things so that I can protect her. Otherwise I’m marching blind into battle. I will fail her.”
“I understand,” said the cat. “But I don’t understand why—”
“I cannot do it,” Sairu interrupted. “I cannot safely guard her all the way back to Lunthea Maly if . . . if I am afraid.”
A shudder passed through her small frame, threatening to break her mask into pieces. And the cat saw then what she most feared. He saw why she wept, why even now she looked ready to crack into a thousand shards of hopelessness.
He saw that she was not undividedly devoted to her mistress. And that this realization terrified her.
“Please,” Sairu said, though her tone was one of command. “I know you have strange powers. I know you’re not what you appear to be. You can get them home for me. I cannot leave them here. They need me. They trust me. It would break their hearts. But to get Lady Hariawan back to the city, I will need all of my skills, all of my concentration. And I do not . . .” She stumbled over the admission but forced it out. “I do not trust myself.”
The cat’s gaze shifted from her to the dog and back again. “So you want me to take them?”
“Yes.”
His lip curled in a disconcerted sneer. “Why do we not all journey together?”