The captain's wife Tedora looked up from her stool by the table. She had started her day of drinking wine early that morning-part of the reason Qinnitan had left the house-and judging by the jug and cup set beside her, not to mention the blurry, sly look on her seamed face, she had not slackened her pace in Qinnitan's absence.
She must have been pretty once, Qinnitan often thought. Pretty enough to catch a captain, no small trick in Onir Soteros. The bones were still good, but Tedora's skin was as cracked as old leather, her fingers knobby with age and hard work-not that Qinnitan had seen her do much of that.
"He's waiting for you." Tedora gestured to the bedroom, a sour smile flitting across her face. "Dorza. He wants to see you."
"What?" For a moment Qinnitan could make no sense of it. Was Tedora sending her in to become the master's concubine? Then she realized that, of course, in a house so small, the single bedroom would be the only place to carry on a private conversation-she had seen Dorza take some of his crewmen back to talk about matters of the ship and of their involuntary exile from Xis.
A chilly heaviness lodged in her gut. A private conversation, was it? She felt certain she knew what he wanted, and had been fearing it for days. Ax¬amis Dorza, saddled with the feeding of two people who should have not been his responsibility, was going to try to marry her off to young Nikos, to bind her properly to his household so that she could be set to work. Qinnitan had no doubt it was Tedora's idea. If, as she suspected, Dorza had another family back in Xis, he would be more than willing to do it, just to keep the peace here in his Hierosoline harbor. The thought made her heart as cold as her stomach.
"You asked to speak to me?" she said as the flimsy door fell shut behind her. It was dark in the room, only a single small oil lamp burning atop the large sea chest Dorza used as his captain's table. The shape there stirred, but so slowly and strangely that for a moment Qinnitan had to fight back an urge to scream, as though she had found herself locked in with a savage animal.
The captain looked up. His face, normally as clean-lined as a ship, seemed to have lost its bones, chin sunk against his chest, eyes almost invis¬ible under his brows. "I have been… talking," Dorza said slowly. "With men newly come from Xis." She could smell the wine on his breath from halfway across the small room. "Why did you not tell me who you were?"
A different kind of chill descended on her now. "I have never lied to you," she said, although that was another lie. She wondered if sacred bees were dying in the Temple of the Hive, as a few were said to do whenever one of the acolytes abused the truth or thought an impure thought. If that's so, I must have killed at least half of the poor bees by now. What a sinner I have be¬come in this last year, in the simple matter of saving my own life!
"You did not tell me all. I knew you were…" He lowered his voice. "I knew you were Jeddin's woman. But I did not understand…"
"I was never Jeddin's woman," she said, anger overcoming even her fear at Axamis Dorza's strange, grim mood. "He thrust himself upon me, put my life in danger. He did not lay with me, nor has any man!"
"Well, no matter that," said Dorza. He seemed a little surprised by her claim. "The knot at the center of the thing is this-you are fled from the autarch's own Seclusion."
She took a breath. "It is true. It was that or be handed over to Mokori the strangler, although I had done nothing wrong."
Dorza lurched to his feet, swaying. "But you have murdered me!" In-roared.
"I've done nothing of the sort, Captain Dorza. You have done nothing
wrong, and can say so. You gave a young woman passage on your master's order, without knowing your master had fallen out of favor-and certainly without knowing anything of the woman herself…"
He staggered a few steps toward her, looming over her like a tree that might topple. "Nothing wrong! By the fiery balls of Nushash, do you think the autarch will care? Do you think he will call off his torturers and say, 'You know, this fellow isn't so bad. Let him go back to his life again. You liar. You heartless bitch! You slut…!" The captain's hand shot out and clutched her arm so hard she could not escape, although he could barely stand straight.
"I have done nothing wrong!" she shouted. "Nushash himself is my wit¬ness-I was taken as a virgin from the Temple of the Hive and Jeddin came to me in the Seclusion and told me he was in love with me. Is it my fault he was mad, the poor dead fool?"
Dorza's free hand rose up, trembling, to strike her, but then it fell again. He let go of her arm and stumbled back to his chair. "Then that son of a bitch Jeddin has destroyed me as surely as if he had shot me with a musket ball." He turned a red eye on Qinnitan again. "Go. Get out of this house and take that idiot child with you. I do not care where you go-I never want to hear your name again. When the autarch's men come to cut my head off and drag my wife and children into slavery, I will be certain to tell them what you said… that it was not your fault." He made a horrible bark¬ing sound, half laugh, half sob.
"You are casting me out? With nothing? Out of fear that some of the autarch's spies might find out…"
"The autarch's spies? Are you whores of the Seclusion really so ignorant? We always thought you knew more of events than we outside the palace ever could." He spat on the floor-shocking from such a tidy man. "It is only a matter of a few moons or so before the autarch's fleet sails. He is out¬fitting new warships and arming soldiers even now." Dorza took a key from his belt, then bent and clumsily unlocked the chest chained to the table leg. He took a few pieces of silver out and dropped them to the floor. One coin rolled right to Qinnitan's feet, but she did not stoop for it. "Take those. At least you may then get far enough from me before you're caught that I will gain a few more weeks of life."
"What do you mean, the autarch's fleet? Sails where?"
"Here, you foolish, foolish girl. He is coming here, to conquer Hierosol, then the rest of Eion after it. Now get out of my house."
6
Skurn
Here is truth! The light was Tso, and Zha was the wife he created out of
the nothingness. She fled him but he followed. She hid, but he discovered.
She protested, but he persuaded. At last she surrendered, and at their
lovemaking the heavens roared with the first winds.
— from The Revelations of Nushash, Book One
GUARD CAPTAIN FERRAS VANSEN woke to the sickly glow of the shadowlands, unchanged since he had fallen asleep. His cloak was no longer covering his face and rain spattered him. He groaned and rolled over, scrabbling for the hem of the heavy woolen gar¬ment, but it was trapped between him and the dampening ground and he had to sit up, groaning even louder, to free it.
He was just about to roll back into sleep when he saw a hint of move¬ment at the corner of his gaze. He held his breath and turned his head as slowly as he could, but saw nothing except the long, wet grass and the fa¬miliar lump of Barrick's sleeping form. Beyond lay the terrifying creature called Gyir, but the warrior-fairy also seemed to be asleep.
Vansen let out what he hoped sounded like the honest snort of some¬one whose slumber had been briefly but inconsequentially disturbed, then lay silently, praying that his heart was not really beating as loudly as it seemed to be. He knew he had seen something more than the simple bouncing of rain-bent grass.
Movement resumed beside the soggy remnants of last night's fire, a
rounded shape bobbing along slowly only a few paces from the sleeping prince.
Vansen flung his cloak at it and dived after; the thing let out a muffled squawk and tried to escape, but it seemed to be tangled. Vansen scrambled across the wet ground on elbows and knees and managed to catch it before it disappeared into the darkness again. As he held it wrapped in the damp wool, he found it smaller than he had feared and surprisingly light, loose as a bundle of sticks and cloth in his hands: even with a poor grip on it, his strength seemed more than equal to the task of holding it. The captive crea¬ture let out a terrified, whistling shriek that sounded almost like a child's cry. He could feel by its struggles that it was a large bird of some kind, with wings that must stretch nearly as wide as a man's arms.