Children of Earth and Sky (41 page)

It occurred to Drago that women were often expected to say things like this, helping men along with their stories. She poured more wine for her guest.

“From Rasca Tripon, as it happens. Men know him as Skandir.”

Drago's eyes widened. He was less skilled by far than either of these two at concealing reactions. It would be good to get better at that, he thought. It was probably too late in his life.

“They do,” Leonora agreed. “The party encountered Skandir? How interesting.”

“It seems they did. He attacked a good-sized company of Osmanli soldiers. Killed them all. He reports that Marin assisted
courageously, as did our Senjani guard. He says he parted with our group the next day, and that Danica Gradek left my employ and went with him. He apologizes for that, and commends my son for integrity and bravery.” Andrij Djivo drank. “It wasn't a prudent thing for Marin to do, getting involved with Skandir in a battle.”

“You fear for him?” Leonora asked gently.

“Well . . .” Her guest shook his head. “This will have happened some time ago. It is late now to fear.”

“A parent who loves his children must always be a little afraid for them, I suppose.”

And even Drago Ostaja, not the most subtle of men, as he'd have been the first to declare, could see the line that ran, straight as windbreak trees along the edge of a field, between those quiet words and what had happened here today—and in Mylasia some time ago.

They heard a tapping sound, approaching. All three of them turned. The empress came to the edge of the terrace. She seemed to be leaning on her stick more heavily now. Drago bowed again. Djivo rose and did the same.

Drago thought,
How often does one bow?
And then answered himself:
Every time.
The shame of Sarantium lay upon them. He felt it as a stone.

The old woman was looking at Leonora. Her expression was impatient. “A mistake. You ought to have had him executed,” she said. “It would have been better for your power if he died here.”

“I don't name that as my highest goal,” Leonora said. Her eyes, Drago saw, met the empress's.

“And we have told you it should be. A woman cannot afford otherwise.”

“We'll have to see. I did consider your counsel, my lady empress.”

“
I did consider your counsel
,” the old woman mocked, savagely.

Andrij Djivo was still standing, a hand on the back of his chair.
He looked uneasy. Not a clash he'd wish to be observing, Drago thought. His own feelings were simpler: he would protect Leonora Valeri against anyone, including a woman who'd worn porphyry in Sarantium.

“I am happier this way,” Leonora said mildly. “The ransom paid for me is redressed. A retreat will be built in Paulo's name. And I don't know how useful it would have been to become known as a woman who killed her father.”

“Not killed. Executed, with authority. For a crime. You had the law with you.”

“Perhaps. The law is slippery, and so are the men at the Patriarch's court. We didn't need further notoriety after Filipa di Lucaro. Or so I decided. Forgive me if you disagree.”

“You were afraid,” Eudoxia said bluntly. She lifted her head. “Women tend to be.”

Leonora shrugged, looked away and then back. “Will you take a glass of wine, your grace?”

The empress stared at her. “You would put us off like that?”

Leonora's expression changed. “I am not putting you off, nor will I ever. I was not fearful. I believe I found a better course. I am grateful for guidance but I will not abdicate from thinking. Would you have me do so? What power would I have then?”

Drago looked from one woman to the other. The breeze was cool from the west but it was still mild on the terrace.

The empress drew a breath. “We are tired,” she said. “He called us a hag.”

Leonora actually smiled. “He did, didn't he? A terribly foolish man. You do prefer to surprise people with your presence. That sort of thing will happen. The west is not familiar with empresses of Sarantium.”

“Sarantium is lost,” the older woman said.

“To our shame,” Andrij Djivo said, gravely.

The empress stared at him. “Shame? Really? You deal with its conqueror every day, merchant. Your son is there now, trading with him.”

Djivo inclined his head. “The world comes to us as it does, your grace. We can die in folly or in courage, or live as well as ordinary men can. We were not all born to be heroes, and peace is better than war for most of us.”

Another silence. Into it, Leonora said, as if to change the mood, “I spoke of empresses, and have had a thought. My lady, do you know the mosaics of Varena? There are two empresses of Sarantium in a sanctuary there, across from each other. They are said to be a thousand years old. I saw them once. My . . . my father took me with him there. We could go together one day, you and I, if you had any—”

“Really? Why would we want to see images of a whore and a barbarian woman presented to the world as deserving the purple?”

The words were a weapon. Drago bit his lip. He saw that his employer looked shaken again. Leonora did not. She said (and Drago Ostaja never forgot the moment), “Forgive me, empress, but it is known that the founder of your husband's line was an army officer from eastern lands, and also not the son of his father's wife. Your husband, may Jad shelter him, was famously ill-prepared for Osmanli incursions, and your son, who is surely with the god in light, was brave on the walls and reckless of death, but that recklessness included an indifference to the fate of half a million people in his city. I will never question your anger, my lady, but need it be extended to everyone? Even women dead long ago? I only ask, and I do know you are fatigued. As am I.”

It was as if, Drago thought, a cannon had just gone off. One ship hitting another broadside, wreaking devastation. And with words only, spoken quietly, even gently.

Leonora Valeri, he decided in that moment, was unlikely to need his protection, except in ways she requested herself.

He waited for the counterblast. It never came. Instead, to his astonishment, the one who had been an empress smiled faintly at the younger woman. “Interesting,” she whispered. “We were wrong. You weren't afraid. Not all of us are fearful.”

“Not in all things,” Leonora replied. “I have many fears. I would like you by my side for a long time yet.”

The empress nodded her head, did so with grace. “We are not leaving you. The length of time is with the god, as all things are. We will retire now, and perform the evening rites and eat in our own chambers tonight.” She paused. “In the morning, Eldest Daughter of Jad.”

“In the morning, empress of Sarantium.”

“Sarantium is gone,” the other woman said, a second time.

Drago felt within himself that weight again, years and years of it. He watched her turn and withdraw into the chamber, through shadow.

Not long after, he took his employer back across the choppy harbour waters as the sun set behind them, lighting the red-tile roofs of Dubrava.

—

THERE WERE TWO WOME
N
waiting for her inside, a servant and an acolyte, but she was alone for a moment, finally, for the first time that day. Leonora lingered on the terrace, watching the sun go down.

The Daughters would assemble to pray soon in their small sanctuary: for Jad in his battles, and for themselves through the night to come, and for those they had lost, each one naming her own.

Just now, sitting at the table, feeling the breeze becoming colder with twilight, she was trying to picture Paulo's face and discovering that it was hard to do so. A little panicked, she tried to remember Jacopo Miucci, who had died only at the beginning of spring—and his face wasn't clear to her either. The two men
she'd lain with. Shouldn't she be able to hold them in her mind? Shouldn't she?

But no. They were both blurred just now, this evening. What she was seeing vividly was her father long ago. When he'd taken her to Varena (she had no idea why that memory had come to her) and had lifted her up, effortlessly strong, so she could see over the heads of others the two empresses in mosaic on the walls. And then his face, changed and not changed, this morning. When she'd said she'd let him live, and go away.

She did not weep. She could have, no one was there to see, but she did not. She watched the sun slip towards the sea and then, before someone came out to remind her she was needed, she rose and went to lead the others in prayer, as Eldest Daughter of the god on this isle.

D
anica knew she needed to become better on horseback. Also, that she might have to kill or injure one of Skandir's men, as soon as tonight. She was in a mood to do harm, wrapped tightly around grief and anger. Not a good thing, and she knew that, too.

She'd told herself, riding south, that her brother had not been in her life since he was a small child, and her grandfather had only been within her, a part of her, for the short time since he'd died. She ought not to be so bitterly mourning now. She had things to learn, she needed to be
here
, not entangled by sorrow.

For one thing, if another of Skandir's raiders (or the same man again) assailed her with his attentions tonight she would need to make something so clear to him—to all of them—it would never be repeated. She had tried to be restrained about this. She was past that.

She was aware that their numbers were few, that recruiting was difficult, that killing a good fighter would not please Rasca Tripon, who led them. Didn't matter. Not in this. Some messages needed to be unambiguous or she could never be one of his company.
She was not going to lie with anyone if it was not her choice, and if someone persisted . . .

A part of her was unhappy about what might be coming tonight. Another part—if she was honest—was in a mood to hurt someone badly, or even kill. There would be no battles with Osmanlis to assuage that desire—Skandir had said as much. Not for a while, he'd said. There were so few of them riding south. His mood was wintry.

“But you won there!” she had said to him yesterday. “Against djannis and their best cavalry!”

They'd been riding together. He had assigned her one of the captured horses, red saddle, superbly trained. There had been grumbling; they were coveted prizes, and she was new, and a woman. But she had also killed twelve men from by the forest.

“I won?” he'd repeated. “I cannot have another such victory. Think about our dead. They are
your
dead now, Senjani. The khalif will have fifty thousand in Sauradia, more if he isn't dealing with the deserts east. I had forty—forty!—in this band, and perhaps twice that, scattered, that I can summon at any time. And not all are trained. If we lose as many as they do in any fight . . . we lose.” He looked at her. “There will be women and children grieving when we get back with this tale.”

“If you don't want anyone grieving because of you,” she'd said, “stop fighting. Why not do that, Ban Rasca?”

He swore. “Am I going to regret bringing you with me?”

“No,” she'd said.

Then she undermined that assurance.

It was the same man again. Skandir had told them on the first morning that she was now one of them, a Senjani raider, battle-tested—not to be harassed as a woman, for fear of his wrath.

Certain things, it seemed, overrode fear of a leader's wrath. Some felt the need to test willingness, or might decide they could accept some punishment for pleasure seized in the dark.

They were sleeping outside, near a stream east of the path. There was some fear of snakes, but no ready alternative in sparsely inhabited countryside. They were already well south of the road that ran west to Dubrava. Two were on guard at a time. The man who felt entitled to her body was one of them. He came to her when the white moon rose. He wasn't especially quiet. Perhaps not feeling a need to be silent, perhaps he thought she'd be ashamed to cry out. Or that her having been discreet before in rejecting him was an invitation to try again.

Danica was awake. Her thought had been that one or two nights of sleep might have to be sacrificed to this. Had her grandfather been with her, she thought, he'd have told her the same thing—she was sure of it. She felt loss, and anger.

Even so, she didn't kill the man.

She waited until he knelt beside her, she lay as if asleep. He whispered to her, face close, then laid a hand on her breast (which still hurt, from her brother's arrow). She gave him until that moment.

“Tico,” she said.

Her dog was a hunter, and would die for her. He had been restrained the previous time only by her order to stay. He was released by his name, like an arrow in the dark.

Tico took Skandir's man in the shoulder, not the throat. Perhaps because her voice had been calm. Probably that, she thought. He knocked the man flat, teeth sinking in, as the raider cried out in terror and fury. He called her a Senjani witch. She saw him grapple for his dagger to stab her dog, so she put her own blade in his other shoulder and called Tico off.

She didn't kill him. She had told herself she would not. She stood up. He was on both knees, cursing in pain. Tico had backed away, not far. He was still growling, rigid, ready to spring back at a word. She had tried being discreet. That was over.

She said, loudly, so that no man could ever say he'd slept through this, “Again? You shame yourself and our leader. It would
shame me to kill a worm on legs, but I will do so—you or any man who tries this again. Do not ever doubt me.”

Men were stirring where they lay. One stood up, came over. The white moon was nearly full. She saw that it was Skandir.

“Niklas? After what I said? Stand!”

The wounded man scrambled awkwardly to his feet, both arms hanging.

“The dog attacked me! Then the bitch stabbed me!” he snarled.

“Did she? And what were you doing? To cause her to do that?”

A silence.

“Answer!”

“My lord, you can't expect a man to—”

“What? But I do expect! I said as much. I gave a
command
.”

“Some things are not natural! A woman in a fighting company. You cannot tell us—”

Danica winced. A foolish man, she thought. Skandir had carried his sword and scabbard here. He drew the blade.

She stepped forward. “Please, my lord. No. You need fighters. This is a fighter. I don't want his death on me.”

He stared down at her, his bearded face grim in the white moonlight. He said, “It is not on you. That is presumption. I gave an order. I cannot
expect
, Niklas? I am mocked! Someone can ignore me? The offence is to
me
!” he shouted, looking around in the night. But he hadn't ordered her to stand aside. If he did, she would have to do so and the man would die. She knew it.

Skandir sheathed his blade.

He said, “If anyone cares to, treat his wounds.”

“I'll take his guard post,” Danica said.

Someone relieved her after a time. She went back to sleep, Tico beside her, warm. She laid a hand across him.

Night passed. No snakes were seen. They heard wolves, but wolves were always out there in the dark. They woke at sunrise, said the prayers. They filled their flasks at the stream, ate stale
bread, rode south. Niklas needed help to get on his horse with both arms bandaged, but he rode.

It was a blustery day. She caught up with Skandir. She was apprehensive. It might be wiser to avoid him just now, but she'd had a thought. They said nothing for a time. She could feel anger coming off him like heat.

“You need to use your legs more, riding,” he said, looking straight ahead.

“I know it. I'll learn. I deliberately didn't kill him, you understand.”

“And I deliberately intended to. It was a direct command I gave them about you.”

The land was flat, occasional groves of pine and oak, the river to their left. The sort of path farmers would use taking products to a market. Somewhere south of here Sauradia turned into Trakesia, she wasn't sure where, didn't think anyone was sure. Another shifting border in men's minds.

He said, “You need to know something everyone fighting with me knows. If there is a battle where I am about to be taken, I am to be killed first. Do you understand? I must never be captured by them.”

Danica looked over at him. A very tall man, not young, greying hair and greying beard. Easy in the saddle after so many years. He looked back at her this time, the blue eyes, a darker shade than hers. “Do you understand?” he repeated.

“I will kill you if I need to,” Danica said.

He grunted, nodded. A small, necessary matter addressed.

She had her own small matter.

She said, “As to the other thing. Last night. There is a way I can stop your men, these and those we are riding towards, from causing that trouble.”

“Leaving us? You can do that any time. No one is ever forced to stay with me.”

“Not that,” she said. “I am here because I choose to be.” She looked straight ahead. “If I pick one man and he's strong enough, the others will accept it, won't they? Respecting him.”

He said nothing. She concentrated on using her legs with the horse. She needed to be better at this, she told herself.

“It is your choice,” he said finally. “I am prepared to kill any man who disobeys my order.”

“I know you are. It isn't . . . the best thing, is it? Truthfully?”

“No,” he said. “Truthfully, it is not.”

“My way would be better?”

She looked at him again. He didn't meet her gaze, kept staring ahead, where they were riding. But he nodded. “It is likely better, yes. Your choice, though. I mean that!”

“Good,” she said. And felt an unexpected amusement—and something else. “I accept your offer. My choice. I will sleep wherever you are tonight.”

He flushed crimson. She refrained from smiling, but did feel an impulse to do so. Small pleasures life could give.

“No, no!” he cried. “I didn't . . . that isn't what . . .”

Danica permitted herself to smile, after all. “My choice, you said. Why would I choose anyone else?”

A glance at her. She had genuinely disconcerted him, she saw. He said, “Because I am old and broken down.” He returned his gaze to the road.

“No you aren't. I saw you fight.”

Another silence. The wind was from the west, there were ripples in the tall grass. He cleared his throat again. He said, “If you truly wish this. I will . . . I will always be gentle.”

Danica smiled again. “I won't always be,” she said. And let her horse slip back among the others, riding with them.

Three were injured now. Niklas rode with both hands low, refused to meet her eyes. Some of the others would say this trouble was
because of her. How did you sort that out in a fighting company? Was it hers to sort out? It seemed to be, fairly or otherwise. And why did men or women ever invoke
fairness
in the world? That was foolish, really.

She could hear her zadek saying that.

She looked for her dog. Tico was loping along beside them on the right, keeping up.

Riding away from everything she knew, Danica thought about her dead and then, suddenly, about Marin Djivo, who was still on the road to Asharias and who had not come out to say goodbye when she'd wanted him to. That had been harder than she'd expected, his not coming out to her.

A little later she thought she saw something up ahead. She moved forward beside Skandir, looking again, then was sure.

She told him.

“You are certain?” he said. “Don't point! Don't do anything but ride.”

“I am certain,” she replied. No raider from Senjan would ever have pointed, but she didn't bother saying that.

She had her bow, and she wanted to kill someone. It was why she'd come with him, wasn't it? It was, she had told Marin, what her life was about.

Farther along they reached the point where she'd glimpsed two men guiding their horses off the road, through the scrub into a grove of trees. One of them, at least, also had good eyesight, she thought, though a larger mounted party was easier to see.

“Here,” she said.

Skandir ordered a search.

They found them in the trees. The Osmanlis were dragged back to the road, pushed to their knees in the dirt before Skandir. Neither was a soldier. One was weeping, shaking with fear. She thought he might soil himself.

It was not tax-collecting time, not in spring. And there would have been guards and wagons for that. These two were only checking the household rolls in farms and villages here, in preparation for the harvest tax.

Danica expected they'd kill them. She wanted to.

Instead, Skandir ordered them stripped and sent on their way on foot, naked as at birth.

He took their satchels and records. Make someone do it all again. These two, even, if they survived. They might not. Someone might murder them.

Others would come, if so.

Humiliation, he said—laughter shared in a village, among the farms—was sometimes a better weapon than killing insignificant men.

He had been doing this a long time, Danica thought.

She was still unhappy, trying to gain control over this desire to kill any Asharite she saw.

She told Skandir that later, alone in the night.

They were in a village—the one the taxmen had just left. They had offered the sundown prayers outdoors (no sanctuary here) and had been fed. The two of them had a cabin to themselves. He had been here before, she understood. He had sheltered in many places over the years.

He didn't make love to her. He undressed in the dark, then turned on their pallet and made as if to sleep. She lay beside him for a time, then came to a decision. She aroused him, and herself in doing so. She mounted him. He wasn't so old and broken down after all, and she whispered as much, mouth to his ear. He had many scars. She could feel them, hands on his body as she moved.

She heard the wind blowing, an owl hunting. They were in a village somewhere near Trakesia, or maybe in Trakesia. She didn't know its name. This wasn't how she had seen her life unfolding.
But this man was fighting Osmanlis and had been doing that from before she was born, and he intended to die doing so.

This was, Danica told herself, the proper place for her to be. She might be wrong, but how could you be sure of not being wrong?

“Thank you,” he said unexpectedly in the darkness, after.