Gently he came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. When he saw she did not pull away he drew her gently to him, until she rested her head against his chest. “You bear the blood of the Protectors in your veins,” he said softly. “There is a magic in that we do not understand, save that we know it was given to us by the gods to protect us. Trust in it to guide you.”
“They think we are ignorant savages, you know.” Her voice was fierce with bitterness. “They will never say it to my face, not even Danton, but I can hear it in their silence. Superstitious savages with strange blood rites who worship rocks and talk to trees, like the men of the Dark Ages did. Danton would never have asked for my hand if had he not feared that the Lord Protectors would look askance at his northern ambitions . . . this marriage bought him a border treaty that lets him swallow up other nations at his whim, provided he leaves the Protectorates alone.” She sniffed. “Apparently he did not mind wedding a barbarian for that.”
“It is the fate of royalty to be bartered for treaties,” he said quietly. “Especially the daughters of royalty. You know that.”
She shivered against him as if she were cold; he wrapped his arms around her. “I know,” she replied.
He kissed her gently on the top of her head and sighed. “Ah, Gwyn. I wish I could stay with you longer than a few days. You need to be with your own people for a time . . . more than even I guessed. But I cannot.”
Silently she nodded. “I understand. I have my duty as Protector to be sold into foreign lands, to safeguard my father’s domain . . . you have a duty to see that the Wrath never wavers.” She sighed. “Had you not told me that tale before I might beg you to reconsider . . . but with that in mind I cannot.”
“We are both creatures of duty, yes?” Gently he released her. “Not a thing I expect a ‘civilized’ king to understand.”
Despite herself she smiled faintly, sadly.
“I will ask Father if he can send you more servants from home,” he told her. “You need the comfort of your own language, and to be surrounded by those who do not need to be taught your customs. Servants whose silence is only silence.”
“I would not ask that of him, Rhys.”
“I know, little sister. You are far too proud . . . and far too stubborn. That is why I will ask him for you.”
He knelt down in the moist bed of pine needles that covered the ground and picked out a slender white object from among them, where she had dropped it. It was made of bone and carved with figures in an ancient style, of creatures whose names had long ago been forgotten. “You were going to make offering.”
“Yes.”
He handed the pin back to her. “So tell me then. Will the gods accept the sacrifice of a halfbreed?”
She put her hand over his and gazed into his eyes. They no longer seemed dark but comforting, familiar. “The gods will welcome the offering of a Guardian,” she told him gently. “And I that of a brother.”
In the light of two moons, in the circle of House Kierdwyn’s ancestors, they offered up a drop of blood to each of the stone spires in turn, and prayed that the world would not be destroyed a second time.
Chapter 16
YOU ARE the witch from the tavern?”
Startled, Kamala turned around. She half expected it to be some sort of local authority addressing her, backed by members of the guard perhaps, and as she turned she braced herself to let loose such power as was necessary to keep them at bay, but it was only a single man, and one not even carrying weapons. She blinked, surprised, but no guards appeared. Nor was there anywhere nearby for them to stage an effective ambush.
“Who are you?” she demanded. “And why do you ask me this?”
Truth be told, he looked less than happy about being there, in one of the worst neighborhoods of the Quarter, and he glanced back over his shoulder repeatedly as he spoke to her, as if expecting an army of thieves and whores might descend upon him at any moment. When his woolen cloak parted once Kamala could see flashes of fine silk clothing, but he quickly grabbed the edges of the cloak and wrapped it tightly about himself, denying her any more insight. No doubt that was the reason there were beads of sweat running down his face; it was a warm day to be wearing such a wintry wrap.
“My master sent me to search you out. He said . . .” He hesitated. “He said, ‘look for a tall girl dressed like a boy, with hair as red as the Hunter’s Moon, for that is how they have described her, they who were at the place.’ ”
“Who is your master?” she demanded. “And what makes him think this is a witch he describes?”
He pulled at the neck of his woolen cloak, allowing the sweat to trickle down inside the collar, and glanced back down the narrow street once again. “It is said by those who were there at the time that this woman stood single-handed against a gang of ruffians and killed them all, and must either therefore have witchery of her own, or have as a patron someone of power.”
Kamala cursed inwardly. She had hoped no one would put two and two together after her little adventure, but that was apparently too much to ask. It was her own fault. She should have stayed behind to watch the aftermath of her battle, to take what steps were necessary to guard her anonymity, but all she had wanted then was to put as much distance between her and the slaughter as possible. Now she was paying the price for that choice.
This meant she would have to leave the city soon. Not because she feared what the local elite would do if they found her—they rarely gave a damn what happened in the Quarter or muddied their silk shoes trying to fix things—but simply because this was not the way she had wanted to begin her new life.
Of course, she thought to herself, you could just wear women’s clothing for a while. No one would recognize you then.
He was still there, silently waiting. The servant of a nobleman, waiting on her. The thought was oddly pleasing.
“You did not answer my first question,” she pointed out.
“Of course.” He glanced back over his shoulder once more—there was still no one closing in on him from behind—then bowed to her. How odd it felt, to receive such a gesture as if she were some highborn lady! “My master is Pahdman Ravi. No doubt you have heard his name.” He waited for an answer. She blinked and said nothing. “He wishes me to extend his hand in greeting to the lady of power, who has helped clean the streets of his city of some of its more bothersome vermin, and to suggest to her that he may have business that would be of interest to her, if she would do him the honor of attending upon him to hear it.”
She had never heard the name of Ravi, but she could guess what it was associated with. Likely it was one of the many ambitious merchant houses that swarmed about the political heart of the city like flies on fresh dung. Many such houses owned property in the Quarter, and periodically a name would arise suddenly like foul gas from a swamp when some brothel collapsed beneath its own weight, or when a building project ill-suited to time and tide blocked the waters that drained the city of refuse, turning the summer air into a thick soup of rotting garbage.
She bound enough soulfire to determine that there was no malicious intent inherent in the invitation. That this man knew about, anyway. His master was another matter.
“What does he want with me?” she demanded.
He bowed slightly. “I am not privy to that, my lady.” There was ever so slight a hesitation before he spoke the title, as if the word was sour on his tongue; it pleased her in a darkly perverse way that a creature more accustomed to stone-paved roads and silk hangings had been ordered to address her thus. “Perhaps if you will accept my master’s invitation, he will explain it to you himself.”
She bit her lip and considered. All her childhood instincts warned her against trusting such an invitation. Ravi might be impressed by her power but he still regarded her as vermin. Class distinctions did not disappear just because one had power, though a subtle man might dance around them carefully if it suited his purpose.
Then the truth struck her.
H
e does not know what you truly are. He has no clue as to your origins. You are a clean slate, a cipher, and he will know of you only what you allow him to know.
She glanced down instinctively at her hands and noticed how clean they were. It had been a long time since the ingrained dirt of the Quarter had stained her pores and marked every crease in her flesh; Ethanus had seen to that. How many other signs of peasant birth and harsh use were no longer apparent? What would a well-born man who had no more information than the ambiguous she killed some men in the Quarter think of her?
It was a heady thought.
She remembered the moments right before her fight. The frightening discovery that though soulfire was nearly unlimited in its potential, it still took time and concentration to use, and that that could mean vulnerability. She also remembered the warnings Ethanus had given her, especially about Transition: When your current consort dies you will be helpless, as you must concentrate upon seeking another. That state lasts only a moment, but if you are in the presence of enemies at the time, a moment can be enough. Being a Magister might help keep her safe, but it was not proof against all possible threats.
But.
She also remembered the feel of the power coursing through her, so awesome in its rage that no man could bridle it. Like some vast creature bellowing its fury from inside her soul, so magnificent and powerful that it made her giddy. It made her hungry. It made her want to test herself against the world.
What have you to fear from this Ravi? He does not know what you truly are, so he can hardly set a trap for you.
The servant was waiting. He would wait all afternoon if she so decided. So had he been ordered, clearly.
That was what decided her.
“Lead the way,” she told him, in her most imperious voice. “I will meet your master.”
She had never been to the Hill before, save for one brief journey by her mother’s side, when the woman had sought a better price for her daughter’s virginity than the small town of their birth could afford. Even at that young age Kamala had been acutely aware of how out of place they were there, how vast and impenetrable the cultural barrier was that divided peasant from gentry, and how clear it was to everyone on the other side of that divide that she and her mother had not crossed it. She could see the scorn in men’s faces as they passed by, the disgust with which they acknowledged her mother’s offer of peasant flesh to serve their pleasure, as if she was serving them food at a feast and had offered them a plate of rotten meat.
She remembered trembling all that day, in fear and shame, until her mother had declared the day a failure and brought her back to their ramshackle home in the Quarter. At which point Kamala had fled to a secret place beneath one of the wooden walkways, a dank cubbyhole suspended above the brackish tide where only a child might fit, and stayed there until hunger finally forced her to return to the world at large.
Later her most precious commodity had been sold to a dark-skinned tourist from the southern kingdoms whose skin was redolent of musk and sweat and who considered every natural orifice of a young girl fair game for his pleasure. It could have been worse. She knew of young girls so debased in their breaking that they drowned themselves rather than live with the shame of it. Though she sometimes wondered if their experiences had really been so much worse than hers, or if the girls were simply not as strong as she had been, did not cling to life with the same fiery passion, willing to do whatever it took to stay alive, knowing that tomorrow could not be better if one failed to survive today.
No man would ever touch her like that again.
No man or woman would ever profit again from the sale of her dignity.
May hell claim anyone who thought otherwise.
The streets of the Hill were paved in stone, not out of necessity—unlike the rest of Gansang it stood high above the water table—but to distinguish it from the muddy roads and mildewed wooden walkways of the poorer districts. The very air Kamala breathed seemed to be cleaner here. Drier. Overhead she saw towers soaring into the sky, expanding upward rather than outward, making the most of that small bit of prized real estate. Slender bridges joined them one to another so that a nobleman might visit neighbors without ever setting foot upon the earth; silken curtains fluttered in hundreds of windows like brightly colored birds. The lowest levels of the towers had been given over to merchants, and their wares filled shop after shop with jewelry, fine leather tack, polished knives, and bolts of silk as sheer as a spider’s web. Kamala wanted more than anything to stop and look at everything, to run her fingers over the treasures of the rich and powerful, to drink them in with all her senses, but the servant would not pause for such indulgences. To him this display was commonplace, merely one more thing to hurry past on his way to more important affairs, and if she paid it more than a passing bit of attention she would be revealing more than she should about her origins.
You can have any of this that you want, for a bit of power. Pay for it with false coin or simply take it, as you please. Later, at your leisure.
He brought her to a gray stone tower with a crest engraved on the heavy oaken door. Servants opened it from the inside before her guide even knocked. They seemed to know who Kamala was—or at least they knew that some sort of important guest was due—for they ushered her past with lowered eyes, in which she almost did not see the passing glance of disapproval for her weathered attire.
It was clean inside. Very clean. You could not keep a house this clean in the Quarter no matter how hard you tried; the mildew alone would defeat you. The stone walls had been painted an unblemished white and the windows along the stairwell were large, inviting in the sunlight. Noting the lack of dust anywhere, hearing the flurry of servants behind her as they rushed to sweep up the dirt she had left on their stairs before their master noticed it, she guessed he was likely a cruel man whose servants lived in fear that the slightest speck of dirt would displease him. Or perhaps he was the sort of man so unnerved by disorder that he must exert total control over every aspect of his environment. Or perhaps both.
He was waiting for her in a room that was bigger than the entire house she had been born in. Most of the space was empty, wasted, with a single ornate table with finely carved chairs set by the fireplace at the far end. He nodded as she entered, acknowledging her presence with requisite politeness but no particular humility. Overhead . . . overhead there were murals of the most extraordinary design, covering the top third of every wall. In each was depicted some scene out of mythic history—the birth of the Huntress in one, the destruction of the Souleaters in another, the founding of Gansang in a third—with eerily lifelike figures the size of living men. Yet it was not that which made the display so remarkable. It was the man who stood before her, who was depicted in each and every mural, not as a participant in the scene but rather as a tourist passing through it. His painted image seemed to show little interest in the events depicted, but rather looked outward toward the viewer in the manner of formal portraiture, turning the most dramatic events of human history into no more than a backdrop for his presence. Goddesses were born, Souleaters lived and died, but the eye was drawn to him.
It was the most astonishing—and expensive—display of human ego she had ever seen.
So this is what men do with money when they are not wasting it on whores.
The man whose face was so meticulously reproduced above them was perhaps thirty years of age, and his clothing betrayed the same meticulous attention to detail that she had noted in the maintenance of his abode. The layers of heavy silks that he wore and the gold rings which adorned both hands made it clear he had money and wanted others to know it. His long robe was embroidered with some sort of heraldic motif—likely a family device, she thought—and was clasped loosely below his waist with a belt of figured gold and rubies. He was not a bad-looking man, overall, though the long curls of his black hair looked like they came from a hot iron rather than nature and his carefully plucked eyebrows were a tad effeminate for her taste. But she was
hardly one to criticize such things, with her own close-cropped locks and boy’s attire.
They took each other’s measure for a long silent moment, and she could see one plucked brow arch a bit as he took note of the dust that clung to her boots. No doubt he was concerned that she might spread some of it about his whitewashed home if she moved. Well, she thought dryly, that is what happens when you summon someone fresh from a brawl in the Quarter. Take it or leave it. With a long stride she crossed the room toward him, not a little amused that as she did so she probably left a wake of dust stirring behind her. Serendipity.
“I am Pahdman Ravi,” he said. This close to him she could smell his perfume, a faintly cloying sweetness, like that of sugared fruits. “Welcome to my house.”
She met his gaze with brazen frankness. “You don’t even know my name, do you?”
One corner of his mouth twitched slightly. It might have been a smile. “You did not give it when you arrived. Not that my men could discover.” He reached back behind him and pulled a braided cord that hung upon the wall; its upper end disappeared into a hole leading somewhere else.
“You can call me Sidra.” She said it in a tone that implied there was more to her name than that, but she wasn’t yet ready to share it all. It seemed appropriately pretentious.
“Very well.” A servant appeared, replete with a tray holding two silver goblets and a decanter to match. He brought it to them and set it on the table, then backed, bowing, from the room. Ravi did not acknowledge his presence in any way, but when the servant was gone he uncapped the decanter, poured an inch of something thick and syrupy into each goblet, and gestured again for her to take a seat at the table. “From the vineyards of Seraat. Sidra.” He raised his cup to her. “To your . . . power.”
Her eyes fixed upon him, she sipped the offering. It tasted as syrupy as it looked and coated the tongue like the aftermath of a hangover. With a whisper of effort she applied enough soulfire to change it into something more palatable. Her eyes never left his. Her faint smile never left her lips.