Her tone softened subtly, imploring. 'I beg you, Ligea, don't make your death necessary. Hide your hand. Hide your knowledge of our language. Walk the streets of Kardiastan as a Tyranian, one of the dreaded Brotherhood. Because if you dupe Kardis into betraying secrets by using your knowledge of our language and your Kardi looks, there will be a hundred thousand people ready to fling a knife into your back.'
'You're going to tell them!' I accused. 'You are going to tell them I am a Kardi who speaks the language and is intent on betraying their leader.'
She shook her head and her distress was filling the air. 'I don't want to tell them. They would kill you the moment you stepped out of the door! Just promise me you won't disguise yourself as a Kardi and I won't say
a word, I swear. And I'll stop Othenid from mentioning what she saw in your hand. I can't tell them,' she added in a whisper. 'How can I? You are like a daughter to me. But I need your promise!'
I stared at her. She meant what she said; her truth was blatant. But did she know me so little? 'All right,' I said, my voice gravelled with genuine anger. 'You keep quiet and keep Othenid quiet, and I will do my work as a Tyranian. I'm proud of my citizenship, and I don't need to hide behind a Kardi skin. Now leave me. And be glad I'm not ordering your whipping.'
She left, her back proud and straight.
'Goddess,' I muttered. 'What is this Kardiastan?'
I looked down at my palm and rubbed the lump. A childhood memory surfaced: an old slave woman with aching joints and gnarled fingers telling me, after I'd held her hand, that I had 'the healing touch'. And a much later adult recollection: a tortured prisoner of the Brotherhood spilling out his secrets to me in gratitude because he thought I'd alleviated his agony, when all I had done was pat him on the arm in sympathy.
I shivered. It was all nonsense… surely?
A knock at the door prompted me to pull myself together. It was Brand, to tell me a legionnaire had arrived to take me to the Military Headquarters. 'Come with me,' I said, suddenly in need of company. I laid a hand on his arm, feeling the hardness of his muscle, taking strength from his solid reality. 'This is a mad land, Brand.'
He smiled slightly. 'I can't say I much like the idea of snakes on the portico. Does it have a certain symbolism, do you think?'
I tried to smile back. 'I hope not. Come, let us begin to make the acquaintance of this fellow, this Mir Ager.'
CHAPTER SIX
I braced myself to face the street again. I was back among those seething emotions that filled the air. Hatred dominated. Hatred for Tyrans, solid in its unity. The Kardis refused even to look at the legionnaire who was escorting us. Brand they stared at, intrigued. They considered me with initial interest, because of the darkness of my skin, but once they'd taken in my Tyranian wrap, my bare shoulder, my hair highlighted and styled in the Tyranian fashion, the glances would fall away, filled with contempt.
Brand bent to whisper in my ear. 'They look at us as though they wish us dead,' he said.
'They do,' I replied, with certainty. ¦lt'"' '
I felt uncomfortable. Had fate thrown my destiny into another wind, I might have been one of these people. They looked so much like me with their tan skins, earth-coloured hair, brown eyes. A desert people who would have blended into the brown soil and the burnt-sienna adobe of their buildings if it hadn't been for the bright patches of colour in their clothing. The men wore loose brown trousers, plain light-coloured shirts with full sleeves, sleeveless boleros, cloth belts -
and the boleros and belts were always in vivid, unpatterned primary colours. The women were all clad in the anoudain, and often the tops were brightly coloured, orxadorned with a spray of embroidery from the shoulder across the slope of a breast.
I eyed them with envy. I liked to wear trousers, but Tyranian custom frowned on such informality outside the home. I wondered if the highborn of Tyr would approve of the anoudain. The long thin overskirt, slit almost to the waist on either side, did lend a graceful femininity to the trousers underneath, yet the wearer still had the freedom of movement trousers provided.
Anoudain…
The harsh light of the square flicked out and memory swamped my senses.
/ was in a tiny room, being rocked with hypnotic rhythm. I was drowsing, lying back in cushioned comfort, a woman's arm round my shoulders, and the perfume I associated with happiness was in my nostrils… until the noise began. The room lurched. Screams, terrible screams of agony and anger. The woman became another person, a frightening person, ripping away the filmy skirting of her anoudain to reveal the more substantial trousers underneath; grabbing up a sword -
/ cried out in my panic. The woman turned to me, tenderness briefly returning. 'Hush, little one,' she said. 'Remember, you are of the Magor. You must be brave.' She took my hand in hers and curled the fingers closed over the palm. 'But from them -from them you must always hide it. Do you understand, my precious? Always.' She hugged me and looked over my head to the woman who was the third occupant of that tiny room. T leave her in your care, Theura. Do what you can.'
And then she was gone, jumping out with a ferocious cry.
When I moved to follow, the other woman held me back and drew the curtains so that I could not see – but not before I had glimpsed hell first. My mother bathed in golden light, surrounded by evil, her sword cutting a swathe of red blood… gold and crimson, light and blood.
And I began to scream.
The memory was abruptly, painfully, cut off. I tried to seize it again, to bring it into focus, but it blurred away.
I knew part of me did not want to remember.
'Are you all right?' Brand asked, puzzled.
I took a breath, forcing myself to nod. We were on the other side of the square from the Prefect's house and I had no recollection of crossing the open space to reach the white stone edifice dazzling in the sunshine in front of me.
Theura. That other woman in the room of my memory had been called Theura. And just this morning, the slave Othenid had called me Theura…
'The barracks,' the legionnaire explained unnecessarily. The number of gorclaks tethered outside, all wearing military saddles, made it clear what the building was. The animals did not seem to mind the heat of the street; their thick grey hides protected them from both sun and cold. I could never look at them without thinking of war. With their small mean eyes, their single razor-sharp horn, the folds of thick skin they wore like armour, the cruel spurs on muscled legs built for endurance rather than speed, they looked as if they had been created to be mobile battering rams. Machines of war, of death. I thought of Favonius. He rode a gorclak.
The legionnaire took us to meet Deltos Forgra, the centurion in charge, and Deltos took us, with obvious
reluctance, to see the weapon Mir Ager had used. Deltos was a tall, sad-eyed man with a slow, measured way of speaking, and he did not like the whole subject of Mir Ager, or his weapon, a fact he made clear. 'The sword is dangerous,' he said. 'We would destroy it if we knew how to.'
'Dangerous? Then why not learn to use it?' I asked.
He gave a hollow laugh. 'We don't even know how to pick it up.' He lit a torch and led us down into the cellars under the barracks, then still deeper down another flight of steps.
'Sweet Melete, wherever do you keep it?' I asked. 'In the sewers?'
'In the furthest dungeon cell. There are eight locked doors between it and daylight. Here we are.' He unlocked the last door and swung it open. In the windowless cell, a bundle lay on a table. Deltos remained standing by the door. 'That's it. It had to be pushed with staves onto the skin that wraps it now. Don't put your hand to it, Legata.' He nodded at Brand. 'You unwrap it, slave, but be careful not to touch it.'
I held Brand back as he moved to obey. 'No. I will.'
'Legata, if anything were to happen to you -' Deltos began to protest, but I was already unrolling the skin, spilling what it contained onto the table. At first I thought it was just a sword. It was far from gigantic; the Prefect's memory was faulty on that point. It was, if anything, abnormally short. The hilt and the hand-guard were ordinary enough, patterned but not jewelled. Then I realised the blade was not forged metal as I had at first thought, but translucent like frosted glass – and it was hollow. The tip was open, the edges razor-sharp. I reached out my left hand to touch the hilt.