A woman’s voice answered him. “I wait for you, Eyul of Nooria, son of Klemet, Fifty-third Knife-Sworn.”
A pause. “Come closer, then.”
The wind billowed her robes as she stepped across the sand. Her hood fluttered, then fell free, allowing dark curls to twist in the air. She came within twenty paces. Skin like roasted butter-nuts, eyes darker stilclass="underline" from the Islands.
She held his gaze.
He pointed his bow to her right, but kept it drawn. “You have used my name, but have not offered your own; that is a rudeness in the desert.”
She bent her knee slightly, but the curve of her mouth did not suggest humility. “Apologies. Amalya. Of the Tower.”
A wizard. He returned his aim to her throat. “Amalya. Go back to your Tower. Tell your masters that my business is not theirs to supervise.”
“You will deny the Tower?” She was brave to smile so in the face of his arrow, and braver still to step forwards, holding out one hand. A hand that held a Star of Cerana, sparkling in the moonlight. “Will you deny the one who gave me this?”
Eyul relaxed the grip on his bow, feeling the ache in his arm for the first time. Who had given her that Star? Beyon? His mother? Tuvaini? He felt old once more.
“You are as brave and obedient as I have been told,” she said. “I am glad to have such a companion on my journey to the hermit’s lair.”
He took a moment to secure his bow, his surprise hidden in the practised movement. He spurred his camel towards the dune. “And what can I expect from my own companion?”
Amalya raised her face to the moon, eyes closed, her feet finding their own way. “Well, I can cook.”
The scents of the marketplace lingered on Eyul’s robes. He took a deep breath. “This is good,” he said, “but surely you haven’t been sent to fix my meals.”
She laughed at that, a velvet noise, and tucked the Star in a pocket.
Eyul turned his eyes to the sands, looking for more surprises.
“We are safe here, gri she said, as if reading his mind.
A cold wave swept over him. “And if I ask who sent you?”
“I would not answer.” She opened her eyes as if waking. “I am not here to hurt you, Eyul.”
Before he had time to linger on those words, she spoke again, in a conversational tone. “My camel’s not very cooperative. I fear I may have to walk across the desert.”
“I’ll help you.” Eyul pulled the half-staff from his saddle-pack. “I speak fluent camel.”
The debate, punctuated by staff-blows to the beast’s flanks, proved short and productive. The camel agreed to bear Amalya as directed and keep its complaints to the traditional spitting and passing of wind.
Eyul took the lead. He had crossed to the Cliffs of Sight before, but that had been ten years ago, and no trail lasts long in the desert. He found his bearings by the stars; in the hot season the Scorpion’s tail pointed the way.
They rode in silence. Eyul liked it quiet, but the wizard took the comfort from desert’s calm. Each mile added to Eyul’s unease until he longed to speak, and he had never been one to make talk for its own sake.
Eyul followed the line of the dunes where he could, but as the night wore thin their course took them from crest to crest, labouring up from the dips with the sand slipping around the camels’ pads, sapping energy.
“Dawn,” Eyul said, the first word to pass between them since their journey started.
The eastern mountains glowed gold and orange: the full heat of day would be upon them soon. Eyul slid from his camel with a groan. Months in the palace had left him soft, and his wound smarted. He watched Amalya climb down and took quiet satisfaction in the stiffness she tried to hide.
“Show me how they cook in the Islands,” he said.
Amalya smiled and turned to unbind the roll of her belongings. Wizard or no, Eyul could see she had a magic to her. Her robes fell against her as she moved, showing her to be long in the leg and generous in hip and breast.
Maybe not such an old man after all. Eyul’s lips twitched at his own foolishness.
Amalya brought out pans, small jars filled with spices, strips of dried meat, a bag of grain, and slices of dried apricots on a string. Eyul placed his own contribution on the sand in front of her: five cakes of camel dung, dried and pressed.
Amalya gathered the dung between two fire-stones and blew on it, softly, as a musician might blow upon a singing stick. Flames licked at the fuel.
She was flame-sworn, Eyul realised, like Govnan the high mage. He had met Govnan once, by chance, in the dark halls beneath the throne room. Govnan had lit a flame in his bare hand and asked to see Eyul’s Knife. Neither had queried the other’s purpose in the secret ways; it hadn’t seemed polite. That same sense of etiquette kept him from asking too many questions of Amalya, but he knew that within them all mages carried an elemental, air, water, earth or fire.
Amalya wrinkled her nose as she brought her pot to sit across the stones. “In the Islands we don’t cook on dung,” she said. A gentle humour softened her words.
Eyul reached for a handful of sand and let it trickle through his fingers. “We could burn the dune instead, if you’ve the magic for it?”
Amalya did not rise to his bait. She poured water from her skin into the pot, careful, spilling none. “I’ll save my magic for the sauce.” She sprinkled cornflour from a small bag. “Some things are best left to simmer.”
Eyul smiled. He yawned and leaned back against his pack. The sky shone with a faint shade of pearl, and as he watched it brighten he wondered who had sent Amalya, and why. Get across the desert first. Then we will see. He closed his eyes and breathed in the smell of her cooking…
He must have drifted off, because he opened his eyes to low sunshine and a bowl of stew. He accepted the dish, and Amalya crouched in the sand to eat her own meal.
“This is very good,” he said, rolling the mint and pepper together on his tongue. He remembered the foods he’d passed up outside the city wall; this tasted better than rose-camel.
“Island cooking,” she said with a smile.
“I should move to the Islands.” He took another bite.
Amalya blew on a small morsel of meat on her spoon. “I couldn’t tell you what it’s like there now.”
He nodded, understanding. “How long have you served?”
“Oh…” She tilted her head, fingers drumming a beat on the wooden bowl. “Fifteen years, just about. They told me I would protect the Boy Emperor. He and I are the same age, you know. I had romantic notions-Not that kind,” she said when Eyul smiled. “But the idea of children ruling and defending the empire-it appealed to me. It made it easier to leave.”
“They took you.”
She nodded. “They came for the tribute-children when I was eleven.”
Eyul scraped the last of the stew from his bowl. He remembered the terror of being taken by the guard, rough hands on his shirt collar, tears on his face. How old had he been? Seven? Eight? “You must have been frightened.”
“Not for long. Govnan saw me-he wasn’t the high mage then; it was before his great journey through the desert, before Kobar chose him as the Second. Govnan pulled me out of the line and claimed me for the Tower.”
“And now you carry the Star of Cerana. You’ve come a long way. To think that Lord High Vizier Tuvaini himself would design a mission for you-”
Amalya put her bowl down in the sand and chuckled. “Nice try, KnifeSworn. But I won’t tell you who gave me the Star, or who didn’t.”
“But you will give me your leftover stew?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Only if you tell me how you became an assassin.”
She meant it as banter, but the words cut, unexpectedly. How many years since he had thought of it? The cold stone floor, the stink of urine, his own voice, pleading… the pain. That broken boy reached out to him through the decades. No. “I… I can’t.”
Amalya handed him her bowl without speaking, no doubt regretting her question.
Eyul took a few bites in the silence and she watched him, kindness in her eyes. It made him uncomfortable. “Why don’t you get some rest?” he asked. “I’ll clean the bowls.”