The Cerani had begun to hurry. At first they’d travelled the road only at night, but lately they set out while the sun still simmered low in the sky. Two hours had passed since they had climbed into the carriage, and Mesema was counting the burning seconds until nightfall.
Eldra made a little noise as the carriage rocked. “Why isn’t there any wind?” There was no answer to that. Without opening his eyes, Banreh said,
“Let’s begin another lesson. This time about the weather.”
“I wish I could swim in a mountain stream,” Eldra said in Cerantic. “That was very good.” Banreh smiled. “That’s not easy to say.” Mesema shot him a look, but he still had his eyes closed. Not to be outdone by a Red Hoof, she bent her tongue around the rough Cerantic words. “Windreaders can tolerate any weather without pain.” She used simpler grammar than Eldra, but she knew her accent was better.
Banreh cracked open one eye to give her a look of disapproval. “I want to learn how to say something to Arigu,” said Eldra. She smiled and shifted on the hard seat. “How do I say, ‘I enjoy your manhood very much’?”
Mesema looked out of the window while Banreh told her. He was as calm as ever. She felt like kicking him.
“What about, “Cerani are very good riders’?”
“Stop,” said Mesema.
Eldra giggled. “You’re just jealous. These men don’t want you.”
“There are no men here,” Mesema said, “only Cerani.”
“Banreh’s a man.” Eldra put a hand on Banreh’s good leg and squeezed. “Have you forgotten him already, Princess?”
Mesema turned away to the window, to the rock wall of the mountains. She would dash herself against them if she could.
“You’re an idiot,” she said to Eldra.
“ You are,” Eldra said. “This is a strong man, a fine man, but because of his leg you think he is a woman.”
“I-I didn’t-” Mesema hung her head out of the window and let the desert air dry the tears from her eyes.
Banreh kept silent.
Mesema looked up at the purplish rock of the mountains and the clouds that shrouded their peaks. There were Felting people up there in the cool, green valleys: Rockfighters and River People. She would never see them now. Her life would be sand, heat, and silk. In the spring, when her mother packed the wool into the stretcher, she would be idle, dipping her feet in the palace fountain. How strange, never to make felt again.
A flicker, and she saw it, or him; a man stepped back into the shadow of a dune. She watched him as the carriage passed. He kept his face turned her way, but it held no interest, nor fear. She felt a tingle along her arms when she remembered where she’d seen eyes like that before. When they had pulled her dead brother from his horse and lain him out on the ground, his face had held the same look.
The man grew small with distance before she could gather herself. “Banreh,” she whispered at last, “there’s a man watching us.”
“Probably just a bandit. They wouldn’t dare attack this caravan, not with so many imperial guards.”
“A bandit?” She didn’t know how to explain his eyes, so she said, “I don’t know.”
“Let me see.” Banreh moved to the window and she pointed. The dune was too far away now, its shadows hard to discern.
“I can’t see him. But we passed him all right, didn’t we?”
“I suppose so.” The man’s gaze had her shaking still. She hugged herself and leaned away from the window.
The time passed; the sun lowered in the sky. Eldra sang little songs to herself about the strange god of her people. The tunes were not of the Felting folk; the rises and falls held the sounds of some distant place. When Eldra finished singing, she pulled a shawl from under her seat and wrapped it around her shoulders.
“Arigu will fetch me soon,” she said, and it was true; the carriage stopped, and the general rode up on his horse. Behind it came Eldra’s own horse, bedecked with bells and ribbons in the Felting way.
“Come now, girl,” Arigu said to Eldra. He made Cerantic sound even uglier than it did already. His eyes were sharp as he glanced around the carriage.
Mesema wanted to tell Arigu about the strange man she had seen, but she was frightened.
Eldra giggled and jumped out of the box. Mesema could hear the horse’s little bells ringing, moving ahead of them. Soon the carriage lurched forwards once more.
“Why does he…?” Mesema let her voice trail off.
“He is a man,” said Banreh.
“And so are you,” said Mesema. Changing to the softer, affectionate tone, she said, “Banreh, before, I didn’t mean-”
“I know.” Banreh moved on the wooden bench, shifting his leg with one hand.
“Will you forgive me?”
He smiled. “As long as you promise to be nicer to Eldra.” She liked his voice when he spoke as family. It sounded soft, like the rustling of the lambskins he wrote on.
The desert had already begun to cool. Mesema took Eldra’s place next to Banreh and put her head on his shoulder. “I will. I want you to be proud of me.”
He turned his head towards hers, so close she could feel his breath blowing against the hairs on her temple. “I am proud of you.” He placed a gentle, ink-stained hand on her shoulder and pushed her away. “We won’t speak of it again,” he said in the formal tone.
We carry on.
Mesema slid across the bench to the other window. The west, beyond the desert, was a place of mystery: cruel fighting men who rode boats like horses, buildings bigger than her whole village, and an ocean so large that all of the Cerani and Felting lands could hide inside it. This was all true, if the traders-who-walked could be believed.
Wind rippled the sand, and Mesema tried to count the grains on her arm. How many questions would she like to ask Banreh? They couldn’t be numbered, and she knew it. There was no way he could answer them all before he returned to her father and his war.
It hit her, as hard as the desert sun: Banreh would be gone, and she would be alone. There would be no intermediary, no protector, no adviser. An image of the dead-eyed bandit arose in her mind.
“Banreh,” she said, still looking out towards the west, steadying one trembling hand on the window frame, “let’s continue our lessons. I want to speak excellent Cerantic.”
Sarmin moved through a darkened hallway. He passed a door to the right, two more to the left. He longed to turn and open one, but his body would not obey him. His feet moved forwards unbidden. Some force held his eyes fixed ahead to where, beneath shadowed tapestries, a man stood in a dim entryway. Above the man’s head, tiles depicted a battle in shades of brown-perhaps the famous Battle of the Well, where the Cerani had defeated the Parigols once and for all. Sarmin tried to judge for certain, but he was too close now to study the tiles. He couldn’t lift his head. Something forced him to look upon the man instead.
Tuvaini. Sarmin would have smiled, but his face paid him no heed. A dream. He left his room so often in dreams, and yet it always took a second miracle to make him realise he was travelling through nothing more substantial than imagination.
The vizier’s lips curled back, revealing small white teeth.
He looked up rather than down at Sarmin, his eyes full of disgust, and held back, as if he thought Sarmin would make him dirty.
Even Sarmin’s fever dreams had never seemed so strange. He’d never dreamed his body to be a traitor to his will-or taller, come to that.
Tuvaini’s manner fascinated Sarmin. If everyone were to treat him with such disdain, he could move through the palace practically unseen. He tried to ask Tuvaini what had caused the sudden change, but his lips held still.
“I did my part; you can hardly blame me that you failed.” Tuvaini held out a clean palm.
To Sarmin’s surprise, he felt himself hand Tuvaini a rolled parchment.