Isa’s wordless fury struck him like a slap. <I don’t understand you, Eofar. It’s written in The Book of the Hall. How can you just ignore tradition—?>
<It’s a pointless ritual, Isa,> he said, sick to death of the whole subject. <Two women bang their swords together a few times, the older one lets herself get pricked in the arm and then everyone goes off and gets drunk in the hall. It’s just a chance to show off for the neighbors. We don’t have any use for that kind of thing out here. We don’t have anyone to impress.>
<That’s not the reason you don’t want me to fight. You think I can’t win. Eofar, you don’t know how good I am. Rho has been sparring with me, and he says he’s never—>
<What I know is that Frea will hurt you—badly—if you’re foolish enough to fight her.>
<What do you expect me to do when we get back to Norland, Eofar?> she pressed, flexing her long white fingers and then lacing them together. He could feel the undercurrent of her anxiety like a sinking in the pit of his stomach. <What do I tell people when they ask me about my Naming Day? That my family didn’t think it mattered? Don’t you care anything about our honor?>
Eofar shut his eyes. This wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have with her, and he certainly didn’t want to have it now. <Isa, it may be years before—>
<Frea says she’s going to do whatever it takes to get us recalled before next winter.>
<It’s not up to Frea. It’s the emperor’s decision.>
She looked away from him, toward the shuttered window, as if she could see through it all the way to the snow-covered mountains of Norland, far across the sea. <But we will go back some day. We have to. It’s our home.>
<A home we’ve never seen,> he reminded her. <Maybe you wouldn’t like living where it’s always dark, high up on a frozen mountain. Maybe we’ve grown … different, out here on our own, in the desert.>
<That’s ridiculous,> she said, but he could feel her shoving back some emotion she didn’t want him to see. He had touched a nerve. <Of course we’ll go back. There’s nothing for us here.>
<There could be,> he told her. <Work. Friends—>
<Friends?> she asked incredulously. <Who? The soldiers? Or do you mean the slaves?>
<They’re Shadari, Isa,> he reminded her, his blood warming. <They weren’t always slaves, and one day they may not be again. And yes, why not?>
<Because I know what’s proper and apparently you don’t. Like that woman.> A blue flush tinted her pale cheeks. <It’s not right for an unmarried man to have a female hand-servant. Father should never have allowed it.>
<Harotha is dead, Isa,> he said, imparting a note of warning. <She’s been dead for five months. You know that.> He forced himself to stay calm. <Well, what about Daryan? He’s my friend, and he was yours too, once—practically a brother. You’ve known him since you were five years old. For Onfar’s sake, you used to chase each other up and down these hallways when you were little. Now you treat him like he’s just another invisible servant.>
<So Daryan is your friend?>
<Yes.>
<And you trust him?>
<Yes, why not?>
<Why not?> Isa asked with bitter triumph. She beckoned him down the western hallway and around a sharp corner to the doorway of Daryan’s room. Then she thrust her white arm at the dark opening. <So where is he right now?>
Eofar stepped past her and glanced inside the little room. The straw pallet was disarranged and the bedclothes were half on the floor, as if Daryan had risen hastily. <I don’t know, Isa,> he said, <maybe he’s getting an early start on his duties. Maybe he went to the washroom. Maybe he’s with a pretty girl. The more interesting question,> he said, stepping closer to his little sister, and looking into her eyes, <is how you knew he wasn’t here—unless you had already been here looking for him?>
A complicated mix of consternation and pique sputtered out of her, but before she had time to respond she suddenly stumbled, as if she’d been pushed from behind. She lost her balance and fell down on one knee. Over her head, Eofar saw the person who had just come around the corner and crashed into her.
The female slave, struggling to keep hold of a gigantic bundle clasped in her thin arms, took a moment to realize who she’d knocked into and then let out a sharp cry that pierced Eofar’s head like a dagger. “I’m sorry, my Lord! My Lady!” the slave whispered, frantically reverting to the low tones in which the slaves were taught to address their masters. Rahsa, that was her name. She was new to the temple, but he remembered the unusual reddish tint of the hair straggling out from beneath her scarf, and the odd air she had about her.
Isa cried out in pain as the Shadari’s touch burned into her cold flesh—though of course Rahsa couldn’t hear her—and wrenched her arm away violently, but not before the cold of Isa’s skin bit into Rahsa’s fingers. The slave choked back her own scream as the realization of her terrible mistake broke over her; she dropped her bundle and stared at Eofar and Isa, quaking, her big brown eyes stretched wide in terror.
“I’m s-sorry,” she stammered.
“Go,” Isa hissed at her menacingly in Shadari, and Rahsa turned and fled down the corridor, leaving her bundle behind on the floor. Eofar heard the sound of her bare feet slapping against the hard stone.
<Isa! Bloody Onfar, was that really necessary? I know it stings, but a little touch like that isn’t going to kill you,> he fumed as Rahsa disappeared into the darkness. <You frightened that poor girl half to death. For all the complaining you do about Frea, you certainly do your best to act just like her sometimes.>
Isa stood up slowly. She compacted her emotions down into a dark brood and now she stood before him so still that she might have been a statue carved in ice. <I’ll make Frea fight me,> she told him coolly, <without your help.> And she turned and left him alone in the hallway.
Her feelings were like blinding colors; a conversation with her always left him spent and disoriented. He wished she could have remained the little girl who had liked nothing better than to throw her skinny arms around his neck and rest her white head on his shoulder.
He tapped the hard lump of the little bottle in his shirt pocket, and started back for his room.
<Lord Eofar!>
Striding down the corridor in front of his room came two of the garrison’s soldiers, dressed for duty in their embroidered tabards and white sun-proof cloaks, their broadswords sheathed across their backs.
<What is it, Rho?> he asked impatiently.
<Sorry, my Lord; I was just wondering if you’d seen Lady Isa. I went by her room but she wasn’t there.>
<She was just here, but I don’t know where she went,> Eofar told him. <Why?>
<I was supposed to spar with her tonight, but Lady Frea wants everyone down at the mines. I just wanted to tell her.>
Eofar paused with his hand on the curtain to his room. <I wish you wouldn’t encourage her, Rho,> he said. <I know this is a way for you to get back at Frea, but Isa could really get hurt.>
He felt Rho’s anger, but the soldier was too well-bred to answer back to the governor’s son. There had been a time when Eofar thought he and Rho might become friends—but then Frea had taken Rho under her wing and into her bed, and by the time she dropped him, it was too late.
<Come on, Daem.> Rho said to his companion, and Eofar watched them go, listening to the strike of their boots echoing down the featureless red rock hallways.
<Wait,> he called out after a moment and ran to catch them up. <Why does Frea want everyone at the mines?>
Rho’s chill displeasure darkened to uneasiness. <There might be trouble tonight. I overheard some of the slaves talking. It sounded like they were planning something.>
<An uprising?>
<Sounded like it to me,> said Rho.
He would know, if anyone would, Eofar thought. With apparently minimal effort and even less intent, Rho had learned to speak Shadari more fluently than anyone else in the garrison, including Eofar, who had lived there his whole life. <Did they mention anyone by name?>
Rho betrayed a little flicker of suspicion. <No. Not that I heard.>
<All right.> Eofar looked at Rho and Daem in their immaculate uniforms and was suddenly painfully aware of his rumpled, damp shirt. He knew what the soldiers thought of him; the gossip that had circulated three months ago, after his father had given control of the garrison to Frea, even though he was the elder by nearly two years. He tried his best to ignore it; he had more important things to worry about. <Well, good luck down there.>
He left Rho and Daem and returned to his room, ducking his head automatically under the lintel of the doorway never meant for someone of his stature, climbed up to the dais and sat down on the bed. He took the little bottle out of his pocket, tipped it one way, then the other.
He pulled out the cork, poured a few drops onto his tongue and swallowed them. And waited.
Chapter Four
Daryan’s heart sank when he realized how late he was to arrive. He stopped in the doorway, guiltily glancing around at the other Shadari ringing the pyre, but every one of them had their watering eyes fixed resolutely on the flames. There were at least sixty people there, and probably more of the two hundred-odd slaves in the temple would have come if their duties had allowed it.
He moved in among the mourners as quietly as he could. The flames had already caught the hem of the dead girl’s robe and before long were sweeping over her body and consuming the filmy veil covering her face. He watched the garments char away. The heavy, drowsy scent of the oils in which the garments had been soaked rolled through the room—it was oppressive, but at least it masked other less pleasant smells. Acrid smoke spiraled around the pyre and drifted into the room, but the draft pulled most of it up through the aperture in the ceiling and out to the stars. Suffocating heat pulled at his limbs, reminding him longingly of his bed, and he sighed heavily.
“I know. She was so young. And she’d only been here a few weeks,” the young Shadari woman standing next to him commiserated in a tragic whisper. She had her hands pressed to her heart, but when she saw him looking at them she self-consciously curled them up under the sleeves of her robe; her knuckles were swollen and red with sores, most likely from scouring floors. “She would have been honored to have you here, Daimon.”
A tall man on her other side, so tall that the top of the girl’s head did not reach up to his shoulders, nudged her gently. “You’re not supposed to call him that, Mariya,” he reminded her in a low, deep voice.
The girl brought her swollen hand to her mouth. “I’m so sorry, Dai—” she began, and then stopped herself. “I mean, I’m so sorry, Daryan,” she amended, emphasizing his name with a shy giggle.
“That’s all right,” he said, smiling back at her. He turned back to the fire.
On the far side of the pyre behind the leaping flames, he noticed his Uncle Shairav glaring at him from beneath his heavy black brows. Daryan dropped his smile.
The tall man—Omir, he remembered—looked up through the skylight. “Almost dark,” he said to himself. Daryan looked upward as well, anxiously scanning the cobalt sky for any sign of the White Wolf’s patrols. Anyone flying over the temple on a dereshadi might easily notice the smoke.
He looked round again at the ring of solemn faces. The Dead Ones had outlawed the burning of the dead as a waste of resources, just as they’d outlawed drums because of the noise, and a host of other Shadari rituals for offending their sensibilities in one way or another. The punishment for participating in this ritual—not to mention the related crimes of stealing oil and straw and exhuming the girl’s body from the Dead Ones’ tombs—would be unpleasant, to say the least. And yet here they all were, huddled in this unused room while someone kept watch out in the corridor, just to liberate the soul of a young woman most of them barely knew.
Shairav walked forward into the circle, taking a large jar of sand from one of the waiting Shadari. Daryan thought he looked ridiculous in his gaudy ceremonial robes with their silver and gold constellations crudely worked over a ground of flamboyant indigo, but his dark, deep-set eyes, straight shoulders and black hair shot through with silver were still impressive. Shairav poured the sand out onto the floor while the rest of the Shadari knelt down on the hard stone. Everyone—except for Daryan—assiduously averted their eyes while the old priest scratched the prayer into the sand; he was watching Shairav carefully, mouthing the words to himself as they emerged from beneath the asha’s sharp fingers.
“You don’t look away?” Mariya whispered to him with a thrill of fear in her voice.
“No—it’s not a sin for me, because I’m the— you know,” he whispered back. “Not many people know it, but it’s one of the ancient privileges. All the daimons used to read and write. My uncle said my father and my grandfather never bothered with it, but I made him teach me anyway.”
Mariya looked up at him, wide-eyed. “What for?”
He answered with a tiny shrug, but when she looked away again he allowed himself a secretive pat to his chest. Underneath his robe, he could feel the flat, square object hidden inside his pocket.
“We inscribe these prayers to the gods on behalf of their daughter Inada,” Shairav was intoning solemnly, “that they may see her and take her spirit upward to join them in their eternal dance.”
“The gods are merciful,” murmured the assembly.
Shairav took the tattered hem of his robe in his hand and with a long, careful sweep of the fabric, smoothed away the sacred inscriptions so that none but the gods would ever look upon them. “Your daughter Inada’s spirit has been freed from the flesh and returns to the winds and the sands. May the gods watch over us all this night, and all nights.”
The ceremony was over. Obeying a gesture from Shairav, the rest of the Shadari scrambled to douse the fire with the mound of blankets they’d brought for the purpose. Daryan stepped back out of their way and collided gracelessly with someone behind him.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, but his apology was drowned out by a chorus of anxious protestations of concern on his behalf. “I’m fine, really,” he started, but then he caught sight of an older man with a long nose and sharp, intelligent eyes. “Tal!” he called out, walking over and taking him swiftly by the arm. He pulled him back a little from the others. “Did you ask him? What did he say?”
Tal began to speak, but then the expression in his eyes suddenly changed. At the same moment Daryan’s nose caught the stink of dereshadi.
“Ask me what?” His uncle stood behind him, already changed out of his asha finery and back into the brown breedmaster’s robe in which he’d seen more than fifty of the stinking creatures into the world. His eyes were bloodshot from the smoke.
“We thought—” began Daryan, but Tal interrupted him.
“It was my idea, Shairav’Asha,” Tal lied. “These ceremonies are so heartening for everyone; we thought that perhaps we could do something for Harotha—”
“Daryan and I have already discussed this,” said Shairav, looking not at Tal but at Daryan. He finished tying his sash with an angry tug. “I cannot perform the funeral rites without a body. Have you found her body?”
Daryan’s jaw tightened. “You know we haven’t.”
“Well then.”
“But she has to be in one of the tombs. We just haven’t found the right one yet. We’re still looking—”
“You’ve been looking for five months.” Shairav shook his head. “I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do.”
Daryan, emboldened by the presence of Tal and the other Shadari surreptitiously watching and listening as they bustled around the room, pleaded, “You’re our only asha—the last asha. Can’t you just make something up? Make a new ritual? We’re not asking you to use your powers. Just to say a few prayers for her
. After everything she did for us—”
“Stirred up trouble, that’s what she did,” Shairav began, but Daryan was spared the rest of the lecture when the sound of footsteps echoed down the corridor toward them. The Shadari all turned toward the sound.
“They’ve found us!” someone cried out.
“The White Wolf!” gasped someone else, but Daryan recognized the rag-doll’s tangle of reddish hair as a dark figure slipped through the door and hurtled toward them.
“Oh, Shairav’Asha, it’s the governor’s daughter, please, it’s Lady Isa,” Rahsa panted, throwing herself at the old man’s feet.
“What’s wrong?” Daryan asked.
Rahsa looked up at them, her eyes swimming in tears. “I was taking the laundry up, like they told me, and I— I didn’t mean to—” She stopped to gulp down the sob rising in her throat. “I never expected anyone to be there so early. They were outside your room, Daimon—”
“Rahsa,” Shairav interrupted, “you know you must never refer to Daryan as the daimon, even when only we Shadari are present.”
Rahsa dropped her eyes. “Yes, Shairav’Asha, I’m sorry.”
“My room?” Daryan asked, but she was already hurrying on.
“I couldn’t see over the bundle I was carrying and I knocked into her, and then I tried to help her up, and I touched her arm—Please, I didn’t mean to do it. Please hide me! I don’t want to be—”
“Rahsa, calm down!” Daryan bent down and forced the hysterical girl to get to her feet, thinking how unfortunate she was to be pretty enough for temple service; the sensitive ones never fared well. “You couldn’t have hurt her badly if you only touched her for a moment. It might have stung a little, but that’s all. It was just a mistake. She’s probably forgotten all about it by now.”
Rahsa looked up at him with a reverential gleam in her eyes. “Do you really think so?” she asked.
“I’m going to take Lord Eofar his breakfast right now—I’ll talk to him about it. It will be all right, I promise you. Go on, now. You should be getting back.”