The Leopard (Marakand) (15 page)

A man could crave simple human touch as he could water.

It was a good time to run, while Ghu had the girl in his charge.

He could go west, to Tiypur. Escape Ghu, force him to get on with his own life. Let Ahjvar vanish and take a new name.

He’d miss Ghu.

Never feed a cat.

He fell asleep, exhausted, and if he dreamed, it was only to twitch a little, as a dog might, unsettled.

The Leopard had not returned and the cut on her throat still stung. Deyandara pushed barley porridge about the bowl and watched Ghu, who had climbed out the window, squatting on his heels on the roof of the porch. He hadn’t touched his own food, though he had been up at dawn, requesting their breakfast, seeing that the horses had theirs. Apparently Ahjvar had ordered them to leave the city. She hadn’t even seen it yet; this dirty sprawl that served the caravan road was not Marakand of the golden-roofed library, the markets where the goods of the world were bought and sold, where you could hear songs in a dozen languages from the folk of two dozen gods, just walking down the street.

Ghu did not seem happy with his orders, if that was what they were. She touched the rough and still sticky scab and felt it move as she swallowed. Ahjvar could have killed her. A little more pressure . . . Nightmares. He had been going to
kill
her. There had been a noise, and she had thought she smelled smoke and woken out of some horrible dream to hear what sounded like Ahjvar and Ghu fighting. Ghu had shouted at her to get out the window, but she had been too sleep-muddled to even think where the window was. The sword had been cold, pressing her skin, but the hand that held it shaking—

“Ghu!” she called. He didn’t respond. She’d learnt that over the past days; he might be Ahjvar’s servant—or whatever. He certainly wasn’t hers. He went deaf whenever she gave him anything approaching an order. She went to the window. “Ghu?” And uncertainly, off-balance, because . . . because whatever had gone on last night, Ghu had saved her. He had been the one with the quick and believable lie; he had been the one holding all in balance, and . . . and he was not quite what she had thought him. His voice, not her screams, woke and mastered the madman. “Can I come out there?”

Ghu looked back at her then. It was the same mild, simpleton’s look, but . . . had she ever truly seen his eyes before? Black eyes, not mere poetry, not dark brown: black like the night sky and deep enough to drown in. He still said nothing. She took that for an answer, of sorts, and climbed out to join him, sitting down carefully. The tile roof sloped.

“There’s something wrong with him, isn’t there? Beyond being—what he is.” Godless and lordless, she meant.

Ghu looked away again.

“He was afraid,” she persisted. “He really did not know what he was doing.”

“No,” he agreed at last. Nothing more. And then, “There’s something bad in the city,” Ghu said.

“What?”

“I don’t know. Something. Something old. Ahj isn’t safe.”

That he wasn’t, in any sense of the word. She had been coming to think him tame, a short-tempered man who was no unwelcome companion to have on the road, a reassuring strength, however irritable. She had wanted to see some kind of honour in him, too, the champion the goddess Catairanach named him, like her brother’s man Lord Launval the Elder. That vision in blood and fire, the savagery of the night he,
they
, had saved her, had faded swiftly to almost a dream, the whole affair of the brigands had, except when she reached to touch Badger’s head, and the mastiff was no longer at her knee, no heavy head weighing down her ankles and groaning complaint when she rolled over in the night, no grinning shadow looking up at her whenever she glanced aside.

“You’re worried about him. You said he told you to take me away. He thinks I’m an idiot.”

Ghu’s smile startled her. “He does, yes. He thinks you’re very young.”

She bit her lip. “Maybe I am.”

He did not rush to contradict her.

“Would he beat you, if you disobeyed him?”

“
Ahj?
He never hits me. Except by accident.”

“By
accident
?”

“He has nightmares.” As if she hadn’t learnt that this past night. And he said it as though it were of small import. “Lady, Ahjvar needs me. Will you go back to your brother? We can find a caravan going east; you could travel to the lands of the Duina Broasoran in safe company and ask escort of the queen there.”

“I—” She shut her mouth on indignant protest. “I’ll come with you.”

“No. There’s death in the city.”

“There’s death everywhere,” she snapped.

“True. But—there’s death on your heels, most of all. Better you go.”

“I don’t want to go to my brother.”

Ghu’s head tilted. “Why?”

Deyandara shook her head.

“Why?” he repeated gently.

“I’m their—they want me to be their queen. The Catairnans.” It was suddenly easy, telling Ghu, laying the words at his feet as if he could somehow carry them for her. “But their goddess sent me away. She—it was a dream. It seemed like a dream. But then I was out in the hills, and the night was around me, and I heard voices, the speech of the western road. The Marakander mercenaries. I didn’t know where I was, and I was afraid. So I went on. South, through the Tributary Lands, back and forth, to within sight of the walls of Two Hills, then down to Gold Harbour and around it. Wandering, doing what she had told me. Going to you. To Ahjvar, I mean. And I followed you because I couldn’t go back, not after what I’d done, running away, and to run and then go back with my brother, as his, his tool . . . I didn’t want to do that. But Marnoch will—they’ll think I ran away no matter how I return.”

“Did you not tell Catairanach it was wrong, to make you go when it was not your will?”

Deyandara shook her head, about to protest that she couldn’t have, not refused a goddess, no, but she could see Ghu doing just that, saying wide-eyed and simple and kind, as if explaining the obvious to a child, “But I don’t want to. I won’t.”

If she had tried—had she thought to try? Had she tried to wake, as she led Cricket out to the gate, Badger running ahead? Or had it all slipped into her so easily, because it was what she wanted, because it was easier, to run and to be able to say, it wasn’t my fault? Catairanach wanted me for a messenger, not a queen, it’s her fault, not mine?

Her eyes were watering, and she would not cry like a scolded child. She blinked furiously.

“I don’t know what to do.” It was a whisper. “Ghu, what should I do?”

His arm was around her, holding her, and she wanted to lay her head on his shoulder and weep for loneliness, but that wasn’t right, and how had he turned into someone she wanted to lean on, anyway? She wound her hands together in her lap and took a deep breath, blinking at the city rising over its walls away beyond the caravanserai. House piled upon house, it looked, steep tiers of flat roofs and roofs with shallow domes or red tile, all yellow-mud plastered or lime-washed and gleaming in the sun. She could even see the glare of what must be the famous library, a golden roof that burned the eye. Real gold, or some illusion? Hadn’t the senate palace fallen during the earthquake, killing all the rulers of the city? She turned her head and found Ghu studying her, far, far too close, and if she leaned just a little more . . .

His smile was sweet, like a little child’s. But then he looked away. “Do you see that man, down the street?”

Deyandara shaded her eyes. “The one sitting in the doorway?”

“He’s waiting for us.”

“You don’t know that. Why would he be?”

“I saw other Praitans ride down the road. He didn’t watch them. He doesn’t think they’re all spies. Just us. Just you, maybe.”

“Me? If he’s looking for anyone, it’s Ahjvar. Even the goddess of the Duina Catairna knew he was an assassin.”

“Catairanach knows him. No one else Over-Malagru who knows him knew we came here. I don’t think Catairanach would sell him to Marakand when she sees the death of the Voice as her only possible vengeance for Gilru who should have been king. The Marakanders only know Master Clentara, who came to the city with you. They don’t know the Leopard. They may know Clentara attacked a man following him last night.”

“Did Ahjvar kill him?”

“No.”

“Why not?” she demanded.

“Because he’s not that kind of man.”

“He’s an
assassin
. He murders people for
money
.”

Ghu hushed her, took her hand in both his own. They were warm and rough, a servant’s hands, distracting, overwhelming, and she shivered, as if he’d touched her far more intimately. She wanted to shut her eyes and just . . .

“He isn’t meant to be that kind of man,” Ghu amended. “Does your brother know you went to the Duina Catairna?”

“No! Yes.” She swallowed, opening her eyes again. “He would by now. Lord Yvarr sent letters, in my name as queen, asking him to raise the tribes. It’s—it’s a king’s right, a queen’s right, when the threat is to all Praitan Over-Malagru. Our right to ask aid of all the
duinas
, and the high king’s duty to give it. The messengers had left before I did.”

“So he’ll have had the messages by now. He’ll know you’ve declared yourself queen.”

“But I haven’t!” But in signing those letters and setting Cattiga’s seal to them, she had.

“And he may have heard you’re missing. And your folk—”

“Not my folk. I’m not fit to be their queen.”

“Your folk—your lords, at least, know you are their queen, and that you are gone in the night. They may think you went to your brother, following the messengers. They’ll have sent to him again to find you.”

“Yes, but even if, even if they did, and a messenger was captured by Marakanders and made to talk, they didn’t know I was coming to Marakand.
I
didn’t know I was coming to Marakand.”

“But even if no messenger were captured, someone else may have been taken and told the Marakanders that the high king’s sister was wandering alone in the west of Over-Malagru. A girl alone, a bard too young to be a bard, with hair like copper in the sun.”

That was—nice. Copper in the sun. His finger was tracing the lines of her palm.

“They might keep an eye out for such a one, in the event she crossed their path. A hostage against the high king, perhaps. Or perhaps to kill, as Cattiga and Gilru were killed. The Voice of the Lady of Marakand wants your land for her own, and she does not seem to care what offence she does to the goddess of the land to get it.” He frowned. “Though I do not think your goddess is a wise one, to have sent you away, and in secret from her lords and yours. Ahj calls her a fool, often.” He considered again. “And worse. With cause. Lady, what do you want to do? What’s in your heart, now, if you could choose, now and for the rest of your life? Where would you be?”

She swallowed. Somewhere on the hills, with Cricket and Badger, the strings of harp or komuz singing under fingers, afterwards, and a song in the friendly firelit dark of the hall. Could she ever grow to be a bard, a scholar, with the history and the wisdom of the seven kingdoms in her head? Probably not. She certainly couldn’t carry the weight of a
duina
as a true queen should.

But there was Marnoch. There was Yvarr. They gave her trust. Where else had she ever found that? And she shattered it. Everything she did went crooked.

“I belong to the Duina Andara by my birth, but I need to be of the Duina Catairna,” she said. “It—it felt like home. Whether Catairanach wants me or not, the folk need a queen. Not to lead them. I don’t know anything of war, or justice and the laws. They need—they need someone, just a name, for Marnoch to stand behind as he leads them, to stop the lords turning each one to make their own bargains with Marakand. But the brigands, the ones that killed Badger, they were Catairnan folk, my folk, and they said the lords were all dead!”

“Outlaws. They may not have known. They may have been excusing their own brigandage. You can’t ride alone to find your Marnoch. You can find your brother, though.”

“He’ll just use me as an excuse.”

“If it drives Marakand out of Praitan, then let him. And then be a queen for your own folk, make them your own folk.”

“Catairanach doesn’t want me,” she repeated dully.

“Catairanach,” Ghu said, with sudden hissing vehemence, “is no goddess worth your worship. Find your folk a new god.”

“What?”

But he seemed hardly to know what he had said. He blinked at her, vague and quiet, closed his hand over hers and stood, pulling her up with him. “Better you go to your brother than stand so near Ahj as I do. Hyllau may not care for the comparison.”

“What?” She had been telling the story last night, Hyllau who killed her husband Cairangorm, or for whose sake he was killed, depending on the song, and the day of three kings, that ended with Deyandara’s own great-grandfather Hyllanim the infant king.

“I’ll find you safe company to Dinaz Broasora; the queen’s folk there will know where the high king is.”

He drew her back into the room and released her, which, Andara damn him anyway, should not make her feel as if she had suddenly been cast adrift, dropped into deep water. Or launched, like a hawk, into the empty and unsupported depths of the sky.