Qamar hid his amazement that they knew so little of the history of the last seventy or so years. Then again, they would not want their antecedents known to the local populace and so could not ask much about affairs back home—and the way the old man had declared that this was now their home held a certain defiance. The wicked ways of the al-Ma’aliq had exiled them. Very well; so be it. They were no longer of Tza’ab Rih.
But they remained Shagara. As Qamar rattled off pleasing little tales of how the Azwadh, the Tabbor, and the Ammal also remained faithful to the traditional ways—his audience was made up of healers who descended from those tribes—his gaze kept flickering to his supposed Tariq kinsman. White hair, lines, wrinkles; hands cruelly twisted by bone-fever; eyes dimming, muscles more feeble by the day . . . yes, they were still Shagara.
And so, through his father, was he. The distinctive Shagara coloring Jefar had bequeathed meant these people had let Qamar live. These distant cousins might honor him because of their shared ancestry, but honor and trust were two different things. Once he was recovered enough from his leg wound to rise from his bed and explore the intricate, inconvenient maze of alleys and passages between the stone buildings of their fortress, he was never left alone. One or another golden-skinned, dark-eyed young man shadowed him at all times. He was diverted from the outer walls, not permitted near the innermost fortification. As a Shagara, he was allowed certain liberties. As a cavalry officer of Tza’ab Rih, he was prohibited from taking advantage of them.
Some eight or nine days after he had fully recovered, a hammering rain woke him in the middle of the night. Just as well that it had: Someone was in the tiny cubicle he had been assigned, someone who moved in whispers of wool clothing and bare feet on cold stone. This person had not reckoned on lightning flashes through the high, barred windows. Nor, truthfully, had Qamar. When the sudden, fleeting illumination showed him the long gown and hooded cloak and startled face of a girl, it also showed her a man sitting straight up in bed with a clay candlestick in his hand.
“Who are you?” Qamar demanded.
“Singularly unoriginal,” she snapped as night devoured the room once more. An instant later came another crack of lightning, just enough to show her bringing a knife out of her skirt pocket. “I know how to use this,” she warned.
“I don’t doubt it.” He used the darkness to scramble out of bed, and tripped over his own boots. Her stifled giggle infuriated him. “That was a mistake,” he said, leaped to one side so she could not get a fix on his voice, tossed the candlestick toward a corner to further confuse her, and lunged for where he was sure she would be.
He grabbed empty air and lost his balance. Fetching up against a wall—hard, bruising his shoulder—he cursed and swung around. The room wasn’t that big; there weren’t that many places to go.
An abrupt rush of air and the faint squeal of a hinge told him she’d opened the door—which was always locked when he retired for the night—and gone back outside. More noise from the hinges, a stillness in the air—and a metallic rattle that meant she was about to lock him in.
He grabbed the bars of the grille set at head-height in the door and yanked.
A moment later he was on his backside on the uncarpeted floor, and brief lightning showed him wildly waving arms and a shocked face beneath hair the color of sand as she staggered into the room. By the time she landed on him, it was pitch black again.
He laughed and wrapped his arms around her. She was smart enough not to struggle; he was smart enough to pin her elbows to her sides so she couldn’t get at him with that knife. Lying back flat on the flagstones, he tightened his grip.
“Not that I’m not perfectly charmed by your visit, qarassia,” he said into her ear through a mouthful of her blonde hair, “but was all this stealth really necessary?”
She called him something unspeakably filthy in the barbarian language—Raffiq Murah’s little translation guide hadn’t included it, but it was a soldier’s obligation to learn how to swear at the enemy in his own language.
“Acuyib preserve me, such a mouth!”
“Let go of me!”
“Tell me why you’re here, and I might consider it.”
“I’ll scream!”
“If you haven’t by now, you won’t anytime soon. You’re not supposed to be here.”
“I had the key, didn’t I?”
“Stolen or borrowed, it doesn’t matter. Nobody makes a social call in the middle of a rotten night like this one. If your visit was legitimate, or even sanctioned, you wouldn’t be sneaking about with no shoes on. Now, why are you here?”
“I—I wanted a look at you.”
He smirked. “To judge for yourself whether or not I’m as handsome as rumors must have it?”
“To see if you’re really Shagara, like they say you are.”
“No, sorry, not good enough.” It was increasingly apparent to him that it was a sweet, dainty little bundle he wasn’t quite cuddling. Beneath the bulky skirt and heavy cloak—which was soaked with rain, and getting his nightshirt wet—he could discern a slim body with inspiring curves. “Why are you here?” he asked for a third time.
“I told you. Let me go before someone hears us.”
“I’ve been rather hoping someone will. After all, I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.”
“If I tell you, will you let me go?”
“Perhaps. If I believe you.”
She sighed, and relaxed atop him. He didn’t make the mistake of easing his hold; he’d played too many games with too many mistresses to be fooled by that trick. There was a blaze of lightning, and the rain pounded down harder than ever outside, but it was the roll of thunder that made her muscles tense again.
“I wanted to know if you really are the one I’ve been seeing.”
“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’ve seen you! How do you think they knew where to find you? I saw you, and—”
“They actually went looking? For me?” He paused as a thought occurred to him. “What’s your name?”
“Solanna. Solanna Grijalva. And yes, I’m the person you think I am—which is more than can be said for you!”
He crowed with derisive laughter. “Nonsense, girl! Everyone knows that Solanna Grijalva is a child and quite mad with her visions—”
“I’m fully seventeen, and I’m not mad! I saw you,” she repeated. “But I wanted to look at you with my own eyes, so I could be sure.”
“And you chose the blackest hours of a rainy night to do it?”
“Eiha, you’re the one who’s mad! Do you think I have any more freedom within these walls than you do? Didn’t you hear my name? Grijalva! The Shagara despise me as much as they do you!”
Qamar considered. Although it was quite nice, having an armful of girl again, the chill stone floor was not being kind to his backbone. He sat up, still holding her fast, but allowed her to turn so that she was seated between his thighs with her back pressed to his chest. Her head, he noted, fit just beneath his chin.“There, that’s better. Why should they despise you? Religious disputes?”
“So you believe the story Princess Baetrizia put around, do you? She thinks my visions and voices are visitations by the Mother.”
“And you did nothing to disabuse her of this notion, did you? Quite the rise, from humble peasant to confidant of royalty!”
“You know nothing about it!”
“The fact remains that you were a guest of the simple-minded Baetrizia for quite some time. How did you come to be a guest of the Shagara?”
“I’m here on purpose! Which is more than can be said for you!”
Ayia, she had him there. What puzzled him was why, if she was here in his room clandestinely, during all their conversation she had not troubled to lower her voice. Although he knew himself to be the only occupant of this particular floor (the third) of the building, and the clattering rain and rumbling thunder and occasional crash of lightning were admittedly very loud, surely someone ought to have heard their voices by now. “Did you drug or bribe your way in?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Having nothing but your delightful self to offer—and you really don’t seem that sort of girl—it must have been drugs.”
Grudgingly, she said, “I have trouble sleeping sometimes. They’re very good with medicines, you know. The Shagara won’t fight, but they sent healers to tend our soldiers.”
So that much at least of Shagara capabilities was generally known. Interesting, that the imperative to use their healing gifts in service to others remained so strong. He nodded, his lips tickled by her wildly curling hair. “You did come here on purpose, then. You want the Tza’ab out of your country, and you thought you could convince the Shagara to help you do it.” By the way she stiffened—and not in response to thunder—and then sagged against him, he knew he was right. Smarter than a seventeen-year-old girl; his mother would be so proud. “You might as well explain all of it,” he invited, “in as much detail as whatever you used on the guards will allow.”
“Only about an hour,” she confessed. “Eiha, what do you want to know?”
“That lazy old king of Cazdeyya not moving fast enough for you, I take it? And you know what the Shagara can do by way of potions and—and things.” How much did she know? “Poor qarassia, aren’t you aware of their history? They left my country because gr—greater men than they used Shagara knowledge in ways they didn’t approve!” He’d almost said great-grandfather.
“And thus they hate you Tza’ab almost as much as we do. In the end, we’ll make common cause and throw you out. You don’t belong here!”
“The land belongs to us now. You might as well accept it.”
“You don’t belong here, and you never will! Just because your troops march all over a country doesn’t mean you own it. Land belongs to the people who belong to it.”
This notion sounded vaguely familiar. He was distracted from chasing it down inside his head by her sudden wriggle to get free. To his surprise—and hers, to judge by her gasp—he let her go.
“The rain has slacked,” he said as he got to his feet in the darkness. “And it’s been nearly an hour, hasn’t it? You’d better lock me in. If you’ll forgive me, I’ll wait until you’re outside before giving you back your knife.”
“Whoever you are, you’re certainly a fool. An open door, sleeping guards—and you ask to be locked up again!”
“An open door, sleeping guards, and an entire fortress filled with many, many more guards between me and freedom. How far do you think I’d get?”
“How did I get here?” she taunted.
“Ayia, you are here, so why don’t you have that look at me that you say you want so much?” He went to the corner where he’d thrown the candlestick, not surprised to find it in pieces. The candle was still intact, and he groped on his bedside table for flint. “I warn you, I’m not looking my best. I need my hair trimmed by someone who actually knows how, and a nightshirt isn’t the most flattering of garments.” He struck her knife against the flint and the candlewick ignited. Turning toward the door, he smiled.
She caught her breath. He might have been pleased with the reaction but for the nature of her shock. “You—you’re so young! And there are no scars—”
His brows arched. “The nature of your visions dismays me, qarassia. You saw a scarred old man and mistook him for me?”
“I only saw you lying there in the dirt,” she snapped. “I didn’t see your face that clearly.”
“Yet you had an impression of age and scars? I must have looked even worse than I felt at the time!”
“You don’t understand! Nobody ever understands!”
With her brown eyes flashing and her chin jutting out, she didn’t look seventeen. More like five or six, and threatening an impressive tantrum. He had to laugh. She really was rather adorable. Not precisely pretty, not to his usual tastes, but the pale hair was intriguing, and he suspected she had an enchanting smile. Not that he was likely to see it anytime soon.
“I saw you old,” she hissed. “I saw it just as I saw Ra’amon al-Joharra’s death in battle! And it came true! I saw it last summer, and this summer he died!”
“Ra’amon is dead?” Qamar had no time to feel anything. A deep and angry voice echoed off the stone walls all the way to the third floor, bellowing about lazy stupid louts who got so drunk they passed out while on duty. Fresh lightning and an immediate thunderclap couldn’t drown out his roars.
Solanna flinched so violently that she dropped the key. Qamar bent to retrieve it, pushed her through the door, and blew out the candle.
“Go on, hurry! But don’t forget the lock!”
Swinging the door closed, he heard her fumbling attempts to insert and then turn the key. More lightning, more thunder—and the enraged voice almost shaking the walls as the abuse went on and on. But it seemed the guards were in no condition to appreciate the creativity of his invective; most of the yelling consisted of orders to wake up.
“He’ll have to go for help,” Qamar told the girl through the barred window. “If you’re careful, you can slip out then. Will you lock the damned door and get out of here?”
She said nothing, but in the darkness he heard the clink of metal on stone on the floor within his room. He had to wait for the next flash of lightning to be sure. But it was indeed the key.