Part 15 (1/2)
”I can't forgive you yet, Mari.” Belam's voice was sad. ”What you did...”
”I know,” she said. He smelled of oiled leather and sun-warmed gla.s.s from his armor. From goat's milk on his skin. Mari gave him a searching look. ”But that's something you need to reconcile with yourself. Don't take too long, Belam. The past days have shown us nothing is forever.”
”Do you think he'll take you back?” Indris asked as he fed Mari a slice of warm bread dipped in a tangy paste of sesame seeds. She leaned back into him, his chest and stomach warm against her back.
”Belam seems to think so. Father needs me, Indris.”
Earlier in the day the two of them had strolled the gardens of Samyala, hip to hip as they explored flowered mazes and old stone bridges to find sun-warmed rocks in dappled sunlight and ponds filled with lazy carp who lurked in fern shadows. They had kissed. Walked, talked, touched. Kissed. Then found themselves in Indris's bedchamber. Now they reclined, limbs entwined on a long couch under the geometric shadows of the fretwork screen on his balcony. Voices seemed distant in the yard below, the gentle hum of merged conversation, footsteps, and the breeze across burlap awnings.
”Be wary, Mari.” Indris's voice resonated in his chest, vibrating along her spine. ”Your father is in a dangerous position here.”
She craned her neck to silence him with a kiss. ”Make sure you find Ariskander and Far-ad-din and get them back here. I'm sure my father doesn't have long to live. The more help I can get him, the better chance he has of surviving.”
”Even if it means he's sent to Maladur gaol for his crimes?” Indris folded his arms around her shoulders.
Mari wriggled free and stood up. The mosaic floor was deliciously cool under her bare feet, the breeze soft against her skin. She felt Indris's eyes on her as she slipped her tunic over her head and pulled her breeches on. ”They know about us. Belam and my father. Probably others. But they think you're dead.”
”Sooner or later you'll need to betray the fact I survived to your father,” Indris said, as if it was the most logical thing in the world. Mari's head snapped up. ”Tell him everything you heard at Samyala. It makes sense, Mari. He'll find out anyway. He'll not trust you otherwise, and we need him to trust you, even it means revealing some of what you know.”
”I've already betrayed one man to his death,” she murmured as she padded over on quiet feet to sit in the curve of his arms. ”I won't do it again. Nor do I want to betray Ziaire, Femensetri, or the others.”
”Here's hoping it doesn't come to my death,” he said drily. ”But we can't underestimate either your father or his ambitions, and we need to know more about them. You need to get him to talk to you, so we know how to proceed.”
”I won't see my father or brother on a funeral pyre.”
”Of course. I feel the same way about my uncle and Daniush.” He smiled at her, a slight, lopsided twitch of his lips. An errant beam of light through the screen landed on his face. For the briefest moment, little more than a couple of heartbeats, she saw the swirl of yellow-flecked orange that lay beneath the normal light brown of his left eye. The pupil appeared to be more convex than round. She wondered whether he knew he murmured when he dozed, fragments of sibilant sentences that chilled her blood. Indris leaned forward out of the light, his eye once more in shadow, to kiss her.
She pressed him back. ”I know you'll have to do what you believe is right.”
”And if we end up on the wrong-”
She rested her fingertips against his lips. ”Trust me, Indris.”
”It's myself, with you, I don't trust.”
”I know the feeling.”
Theaters, concert halls, restaurants, few with signs to indicate they were open, lined the streets of the Astujarte. The breeze caught the tattered edges of printed advertis.e.m.e.nts promising the delights of actors and troubadours, poets and carnivals, all for a reasonable price. Many posters had flown free, or been torn down, to fade and rot in the street.
Most of the entertainments in Amnon had once been offered by Seethe troupes. Many of which had no doubt sought out gentler audiences than Amnon could offer them now. A few hawkeyed Seethe watched from their high windows and rooftops. The only establishments that remained open were the wine houses and alehouses, in the business of selling malcontent by the bottle to those who needed little encouragement.
A number of women and men, courtiers and duelists in the gray-blue colors of the Family Neyft, one of the Hundred Families sworn to the service of the Great House of Nasarat, eyed her darkly as she pa.s.sed them by. Their faces were flushed with drink. Five in all, their numbers were bolstered by the same number of Nehrun's blue-and-gold-clad soldiers. Nehrun glowered at her over the lip of his wine bowl.
”Good day to you, Pah-Mariam.” Nehrun rose from his street-side table, followed by his entourage.
”Indeed it is.” Mari forced a smile and kept walking. She was unarmed and unarmored. ”Though if you'll excuse me-”
”Stay a moment,” he insisted.
Mari kept up her pace, despite the sounds of booted feet gaining on her. One person came closer than was wise. A hand dropped on Mari's shoulder. In one fluid motion she reached up. Grabbed the hand by the wrist. Rolled her shoulder as she dropped to one knee. Her a.s.sailant cried out as she was flipped. Landed flat on her back. The air was forced from her lungs. Mari slipped the long blade from the sash at her attacker's waist. Stood to face the others, who were even now spreading out to surround her.
”I've no quarrel with you, Nehrun,” Mari said quietly. ”Don't force me to make this a pleasant day for the carrion eaters.”
”Oh, I know your reputation. Erebus fe Mariamejeh. The Blood-Dancer. The Soulreaver, the Queen of Swords-”
”What of the more festive variations?” Mari was neither frightened nor intimidated. ”Did the Atrean amba.s.sador Karkos not call me the Great Wh.o.r.e, even arrange a play to be written about me after I rejected his advances? The Angoths call me the Deadsinger. The Imreans, the Steel Courtesan. I'll let you be the judge of which name suits me best.”
”The Great House of Erebus owes me, though it seems reluctant to honor its obligations.” Nehrun gestured for his followers to close in.
”Are you insane, Nehrun?”
”Your father has had his use of me.”
”You're in a hole of your own making, Nehrun,” Mari warned. ”Don't make it so deep you can't find your way out.”
”Take her!” Nehrun snapped.
The first soldier she felled would likely have never seen the blow. Her sheathed sword flashed out. Mari felt the tug on her wrist as it cracked against the soldier's throat. Instinct and training took over. She stepped back, left, back. Kept her enemies in a line. Prepared to dispatch them one by one by one.
She reversed. Leaped forward. Her knee landed in a soldier's chest. His collarbone snapped as she brought the scabbard of the sword down like a club. Another leap, and this time it was her fist, around the hilt of her sword, that shattered a woman's nose, split her lip, sent her reeling. A high strike drove one man back, followed by a kick that broke his s.h.i.+n.
Mari glided back. She did not want to kill if she could avoid it. Her teachers at the Lament had always taught her death should be a last resort. To take a life was to take a person's future, to take everything they had been, as well as everything they could ever be. Words could be taken back. Apologies given, accepted. Death was a gift that gave until the end of time.
”You're four warriors down, Nehrun.” Mari let them wonder who might be next. Nehrun had made a mistake in reminding his friends of her reputation. Let their fear simmer, apprehension come to the boil. ”Nothing has been done which can't be forgiven. Their wounds will heal.”
”b.i.t.c.h!” Nehrun snarled from behind his companions. ”Your father owes me for what I've done for him, and if he can't pay, you will.”
”You doom your friends, while seeming quite content to stand behind them. My father's debts to you aren't mine to pay.”
Only one soldier from the Family Neyft remained. He looked askance at Nehrun. The other four Nasarat soldiers remained focused on Mari. She wondered whether they knew what their prince had done, in sacrificing Rahn-Ariskander to the spirits of Nehrun's ambitions. Mari looked at the soldier who wavered. She shook her head, looked pointedly at the bodies that littered the ground. The Neyft soldier sheathed his sword, backed away, palms held outward in peace.
”If this continues, Nehrun, more blood will be spilled. Do you seriously think, even for a moment, you or yours will walk away?” Mari tapped the sheathed sword on her open palm. ”I'm the Queen of Swords.”
She hated the name, yet it served its purpose.
”Father?” she said hesitantly.
Corajidin turned to look at his only daughter. Mari stood in a band of light, where it streamed through a tall window. In the reflection of the mirrored corridor, the sun turned her hair to dark-gold fire, shot with white. Mari saw sorrow writ on her father's face, blended with the furrows of his physical pain.
”Daughter,” he replied, not ungently. ”You are well?”
”I am, thank you. I wanted to say I was sorry,” she murmured. ”Sorry for disappointing you. I know you've only ever wanted what was best for me.”
”And all it took was being beaten to near death by your former comrades to remember it?” She saw he regretted the words as soon as he said them; his expression was crestfallen. ”Mariam, I...”
”I don't expect you to understand why I've done what I've done. Perhaps you might never forget, but do you think you can forgive?” Her father raised his chin in defiance. There was a hardness in his gaze she knew well, and she cursed herself for a fool. It had always been this way between them, even when she was a child. Mari had ever been her mother's daughter. ”Just as I can't forget what you asked of me. But I can forgive. In time.”