Part 11 (1/2)
”Your grandfather has a number of-of a.s.sociates, whose names are best not bandied around the town,” her mother said. ”Not that he has a thing to be ashamed of, except his disgraceful language. You aren't eating your bread and b.u.t.ter, dear.”
”One of 'em's Noyad the jeweler.” Yellow Hen stood up from the hearth, dusting ashes from her hands. ”Your grandfather got him a pitch in the best part of the Grand Bazaar-a place other jewelers have waited years for-in exchange for a cut of his profits. And Ahure works for Noyad these days.”
”Doing what?” Shaldis had seen the haughty old Blood Mage's elaborate peep shows of illusion and machinery, designed to keep Lord Jamornid believing in his ability to do magic. She couldn't imagine Ahure coming down to do anything so mundane as keeping a jeweler's books.
”He won't say,” replied Yellow Hen. ”And if anyone asks him he merely looks haughty and denies it. But word's spread around the town that Ahure's found a way to imbue gems with good luck or ill.”
”That's silly.” Shaldis obediently tore her bread into pieces and consumed it, the b.u.t.ter dripping down her fingers. ”Ahure couldn't imbue a sponge with water. No mage can.”
”You sound awfully sure of that, dearest.”
”I am awfully sure of it, Mother. And I'm certainly awfully sure of Ahure.”
”Be that as it may,” said her aunt with her crooked, toothy grin, ”by looking wise and tapping the side of his nose and raising his eyebrows when anyone asks him questions, Noyad-who swears Ahure only 'does him favors' and won't say what-is charging three crowns for turquoise pendants that no one in their right senses would pay three dequins for . . . and is getting it, and getting it so fast he can barely keep up. What he asks for real jewels that have 'pa.s.sed through Ahure's hands,' I'd hate to tell you.”
”Oh, please. And Ahure and my grandfather fought?”
”Ahure came to the house three or four days ago,” temporized her mother. ”Of course no one heard what they said, but Nettleflower-who was up in your uncle's room on the gallery over the garden-said that she saw Ahure storm out of your grandfather's study, shouting back at him that he would put such a curse upon the house that it would crumble to the ground. Of course,” she added with a glance sidelong toward the storeroom where Nettleflower's body lay, ”though she was quite a . . . a good-hearted girl underneath, I'm sure, sometimes Nettleflower wasn't entirely truthful.”
That, reflected Shaldis, as she licked the b.u.t.ter from her fingers, was putting the matter mildly.
Whatever had actually happened between her grandfather and the former wizard, Nettleflower was the only possible witness.
And a few days after that, the girl had met the old man in the marketplace.
Money? With a promise of more, if she'd let him into the house by the alley door?
And before the next day's sun had risen, Nettleflower was dead.
”What is it?” Oryn rolled over on the loose bed of cus.h.i.+ons laid out for him on the ground, propped himself on one elbow, and immediately wished he hadn't. The bruises that had seemed minor a few hours ago had stiffened and he felt as if he'd been racked. Dear G.o.ds, I never properly appreciated what the guards go through. I really must raise their pay, give them a special liquor allotment, have a special baths built for them in the palace, or something.
Summerchild was sitting up beside him already. Even within the shelter, the heat was like being slowly roasted to death. No wonder he'd dreamed about being bricked up in a furnace. . . .
”What's burning?”
She pinned her veils over her face and hair again and crouched her way to the tent flap, Oryn hobbling behind. He noticed that Summerchild, who had taken just as many blows in the battle as he had, still moved with the lithe unconcern of a dancer.
Jethan and two other troopers were also out of their shelters, talking to the pickets around the camp. A column of smoke stood in the eastern sky.
Summerchild asked, ”Is that Three Wells?”
”It's the only habitation in that direction, lady.”
”Can you call up the image of the place in your mirror?” asked Oryn, looking down at his ladylove, and Summerchild's brow puckered.
”I'm not sure. I've never been in Three Wells, but I could try focusing on the smoke. I'm not sure how much I would see.”
”Try it,” said Oryn softly. ”If the town is deserted, and all there are dead, I am most curious as to who set the fires. And why.”
TWENTY.
At no time of the day or night did the Dead Hills appear welcoming. There were those who said that the broken badlands east and south of the Lake of the Sun had earned their name from the tombs that honeycombed them-those of the kings more isolated, those of n.o.bles or the wealthy merchants dotting the dry wadis that could be reached from the Yellow City in a few hours. But those who looked on the hills, or rode through them, quickly came to the conclusion that the name had come first, the tombs, after.
Summer or winter, they had the appearance of a land the G.o.ds hated, or at least those G.o.ds who had the good of humankind at heart. The bleak waste of pale-brown stone was like a dream landscape of half-buried skulls, riven with twisting canyons; a world whose parched shade offered no coolness. Dusty precipices and blank stretches of broken talus flung back the day's heat even in the deep of night. Even where the King's Aqueduct pierced them, a gray finger pointing toward the distant Oasis of Koshlar across two hundred miles of desert, the hills seemed dead, waiting silently for some night when they might silently swallow up the work camps of men and teyn and camels.
In the Valley of the Hawk, twelve miles from the aqueduct and fifteen from the walls of the Yellow City, the silence and the waiting seemed more perilous.
Foxfire climbed stiffly down from the litter in which she'd swayed, suffocating with heat, since the previous night and asked, ”Who in their right mind would build a house in this place?”
The villa lay before them, the same dusty brown as the surrounding rock. At one time the pylons on either side of its gate had been painted with scenes of lion hunts and crocodile spearings. At one time there'd been sycamore trees in front of the pylons. Their desiccated trunks remained, behind which the flaked eyes of hunters and prey stared hopelessly across the desolation of dust.
”What did they teach you in that school of yours, girl?” demanded her grandmother, swinging down from the horse which she'd insisted on riding, knee to knee with her son. ”A hundred and fifty years ago there were springs in a dozen places in the foothills, and the lords of House Jothek hunted lions in the desert from here. If she's to remain under your roof,” she added, regarding Mohrvine as he dismounted, ”that daughter of yours had best put in her spare time here studying the lore of her own House.”
”I shall mark it down as a future course of study for her,” replied Mohrvine smoothly, crossing to Foxfire's litter and putting a gentle hand on her shoulder. ”Let us use the time here to the better purpose of making sure our House remains the House of Kings. Then she shall take her place in its lore”-he smiled down into her eyes-”rather than merely reading of the deeds of others.”
Foxfire looked around her, hating the place. Hating the sense of being watched by something just out of sight in the shadows of those sun-blasted arroyos. She was deeply grateful for Opal's little veiled shadow in the second litter she'd insisted her father provide for her maid.
”Must I stay here?” Her voice was barely a whisper. ”Won't you need someone in your household in the city who can communicate with Granny at a moment's notice? I'm much better at it than I was.”
The hopeful eagerness as she brought out this fib warmed her father's eyes, turned his coldly handsome face gentle and human. In that moment she would have done anything for him. Anything except remain here, if given a choice.
But her father did not believe in choices. Not when the advancement of the cadet branch of House Jothek was the prize. ”My child, your grandmother has more need of your powers than I do. Pigeons can carry a message from the city in a matter of hours. They will have to do.”
Behind them a baggage camel groaned. The caravan that had accompanied the litters moved forward as the villa's gates opened between the pylons. Foxfire looked through them into a courtyard as dust-choked and brown as the hills.
Beside the camels a line of teyn walked, chained neck to neck. The lead boar balked at the sight of the hills; and Foxfire's brother Zharvine, who was in charge of the baggage train, tapped him with the end of his six-foot rod. ”Don't start giving us trouble now, Dogface; you'll have worse than the sight of those hills to think about, believe me.” The teyn only looked around them in silent anxiety, not understanding a word.
Her least-favorite brother, urthet, emerged from the gate, squat and stocky. He walked up the little rise to where Foxfire and their father still stood beside the litter. Even the litter bearers-teyn matched and trained to respond to the commands of the human team captain-cl.u.s.tered together, swaying fearfully from foot to foot as they gazed at the parched wadis, the sharp columns of grayish-buff rock.
”Well's dry as a crust, sir.” urthet practically spit the words out. Twelve hours traveling in the blistering heat, with only the shortest of noon halts, had done nothing for his temper. ”We've put the waterskins in the cellar. We'll have to ration.”
”We'll send out for more tomorrow,” promised Mohrvine with the casual ease of one who has at least three of the city's gangster water bosses in his pay. ”Is there enough for Belial?” He glanced with a kind of affection at the tall-sided wagon that had been nursed and lifted over nearly fifteen miles of rutted path, the wagon whose black felt canopies and tarred sides glistened with damp and smelled of murky wetness and filth.
”Should be, sir. Though he'll need more soon.”
”He'll have it.” Mohrvine's smile widened as his green gaze followed the wagon down through the courtyard gate. Still affectionate, but all gentleness had disappeared. Then he turned back to Foxfire and laid his gloved hands on her shoulders again. ”Be a good girl, and do exactly as your grandmother says,” he admonished and leaned down to kiss her forehead. ”Don't leave the compound for any reason. These hills shelter nomad raiding parties in the summers and bandits-they pa.s.s through the wadis to have shelter in attacking the rangelands around the city.”
Foxfire looked out past him at the hills, reflecting that the warning was hardly necessary. He could have given her a million gold pieces and a written promise from Deemas, the patron G.o.d of thieves, attesting their nomad-less state and she still wouldn't have gone anywhere near them. There was something within them, among them, that watched her and waited. She knew it.
”Learn all you can from Soral Brul,” her father went on, naming the young adept, formerly of the Sun Mages, who was even now walking back to the gateway with urthet. ”And from Urnate Urla.” He nodded at the crabbed and skinny little man who, after his powers of earth wizardry failed, had gone to work as secretary for one of the Slaughterhouse water bosses. ”But don't tell them anything, don't trust them, and don't let yourself be alone with them. Understand?”
”I understand.” Her grandmother's horse appeared from around the corner of the compound wall, and Red Silk leaned down from the saddle to address the two former mages, young and middle-aged. She made a sweep with one arm, as if describing a barrier, and Foxfire heard Soral Brul hoot with laughter.