The Storm Witch (16 page)

She looked up again, eyes narrowed, face set like stone. Whatever it was that had passed between his sister and his father, Xendra at least had not put it behind her.

“You are no longer betrothed,” he said—and stopped. He could have sworn that an expression of relief had flitted over Xendra’s face.

“I’m sure the Tarxin, Light of the Sun, had his reasons,” she said.

Xerwin licked his lips. What was happening? A suspicion began to form in the back of his mind, one that he studiously ignored.

“It was Naxot,” he said. “The Scholars of his House told him that you were a Holy Woman now, and that Brides of the Slain God didn’t marry in the ordinary way.”

“I see,” she said. “Well.” She looked around her at her maps. “I do expect to be quite busy with my other duties. You might tell the Tarxin that I’m working very hard, when you see him.”

“Do you have any message for Naxot?”

“Who?”

“Naxot. Of House Lilso. Your former betrothed.”

This time it was her turn to stand, blinking. “Please say whatever you think appropriate,” she said finally.

The floating, hazy uneasiness that had been with him since he’d come into the room suddenly solidified. There had been that moment when it seemed Xendra hadn’t recognized him. Then her total lack of concern for Kendraxa. Now she appeared not to remember a man she’d been making moon eyes at her whole life.

Who are you?
Once again, hard-won caution kept him from speaking his suspicions aloud. In fact, it might be better to pretend that he had noticed nothing unusual, at least, until he had a chance to find out more.

Which begged the question. Did his father know? Xendra’s accident seemed to have done more than give her the powers of a Storm Witch. But was this simply memory loss that was being concealed, or—Xerwin could hardly form the thought—was this in some way no longer his sister?

He made what excuses he could—it wasn’t hard, she was already focusing on her maps—and almost ran out of his sister’s rooms. When he found himself heading for the Tarxin’s wing, he slowed. He needed to know more before he confronted his father—if he did so at all. Xerwin tapped his fingers on the leather-wrapped hilt of his formal sword. He needed more information. Who would be likely to have it?

He nodded slowly, lower lip between his teeth.

Kendraxa.

The swordsman Remm Shalyn had been assigned as her guide and servant—and her minder and jailer, Dhulyn Wolfshead suspected, though
he
at least was under no illusion that he could stop her from coming and going as she pleased. She’d been given other servants as well, among them a personal maid, a woman to bathe her, and a little page boy to run errands. They were all, as far as she could tell, terrified of her. She’d refused the voluminous skirts, constricting bodices, and teetering shoes laid out for her in her suite—fashions obviously designed to show that the wearers’ husbands, fathers, brothers, or owners were rich enough that their wives, daughters, sisters, or concubines need not perform any actual labor. But as Dhulyn had learned in the courts of the Great King in the West, such dress also prevented any serious physical exercise, any running away, or even any simple walking, for Sun and Moon’s sake.

Dhulyn had insisted on carrying a dagger, and wearing a version of the kilt and tunic that Remm himself was wearing, although hers was slightly longer and fuller for modesty’s sake—his, not hers, Mercenary Schooling being sufficient to do away completely with body shyness. Good thing she’d had some recent practice in walking with skirts. Loraxin Feld could not actually restrict her to the women’s quarters, Remm had told her, though she guessed the Noble House would certainly have liked to. According to what Remm was telling her, “roof, table, and bed” was a very specific offer, and couldn’t be modified.

“So the Tarxin is your ruler.” Earlier conversation had established that this land was, indeed, Mortaxa. In that, Mother Sun had smiled on her.

“Exactly, though you should say ‘Light of the Sun’ when you say his name or title. The Tarxina, his wife. A Tar, or Tara, son or daughter. And all of their names will begin with the most noble letter ‘X.’

Frowning, Dhulyn tried to catch the accent, the “x” sound being somewhere between a “k” and a “z.”

“At present, there’s Xalbalil Tarxin, Light of the Sun. His heir, son of his second Tarxina, Tar Xerwin, and Xendra the young Tara, daughter of the third Tarxina. The children of the first Tarxina have all perished.”

Was it Dhulyn’s imagination or did Remm’s voice falter a bit when he said the Tara’s name?

“The Nomads who were bringing me here spoke of a Storm Witch.”

“She is part of the royal household.” Again, Remm Shalyn hesitated, but said nothing further. Dhulyn nodded as though her question had no significance.

“And where does Loraxin, House Feld, fit in?”

“He’s one of the least Nobility, though it wouldn’t please him to hear me say so. He’s entitled to be called ‘Xar,’ and his wife ‘Xara,’ but you’ll notice the noble letter doesn’t appear until the third syllable of his name, so that marks where he stands.”

Dhulyn nodded. Remm, she’d noticed, had a proper surname of his own, not just “Feld” like the House.

“You’ve got some very interesting scars, if you don’t mind my saying so, Dhulyn Wolfshead.”

It had taken some doing to get even Remm to stop calling her “Xara Paledyn.” She’d had to give up with the servants—even in her own mind, she refused to use the word “slaves.”

“I was a very stubborn student, and often disciplined,” she said, having learned the hard way that in some places it was best not to admit you had ever been a slave.

“And the, uh . . .” Remm Shalyn gestured at a spot on his own upper lip.

“The tip of a whip that flicked ’round and caught me on the face,” she said. And so it had, though it was her then master’s Steward of Keys who’d been on the other end of the whip, and not her Schooler, as she was letting Remm Shalyn believe. And a lucky thing for her it had been, for the facial scar had ruined her for her master, who’d sold her to a passing slave merchant and it was while she was in that slaver’s ship that Dorian the Black had rescued her.

She’d been eleven years old, and a Mercenary ever since.

“Are you a free man, Remm Shalyn, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I don’t know what things are like where you come from, Dhulyn Wolfshead, but here we don’t put weapons into the hands of slaves.”

“Where I come from, slavery is considered a false economy at best, and an abominable practice at worst.”

“Well, for the Slain God’s sake, don’t mention that to House Feld, whatever you do. It would give him apoplexy, for certain.”

“You never know, apoplexy may suit him.”

Dhulyn took mental note that Remm Shalyn called the nobleman by his title, and not more formally as “my House.” A hired guard, then, who did not consider himself a member of the Household.

They had been walking through the village that had grown up around, and indeed was mostly an extension of, Feld House. The walls of town and homes alike were whitewashed stucco, such as Dhulyn had sometimes seen in the Galanate of Navra, and covered the small prominence which some long-ago Feld had chosen as the site for his House. They were at the southern end of the village when the narrow alley they followed dead-ended in a rectangular terrace enclosed by house walls on three sides, and a low balustrade on the fourth. The terrace was featureless except for weeds growing up through the cracks between the flagstones, and what looked like two large, stone chimney tops, pierced along the sides and stoppered shut with large slabs of wood at the top like corks in a bottle.

“Ah, the cistern,” Remm Shalyn said. “Would you like to see it?”

Dhulyn’s shoulders were already twitching upward when she stopped the shrug and took a deep breath. “Why not?”

They retraced their steps halfway back along the alley, the ground inclining away from them as they walked, until Remm indicated an archway to their right. The entrance was recessed into the wall, and guarded by a metal grille, pocked and marked with rust, which stood open. Remm stepped back in an attitude of respect, but Dhulyn waved him in ahead of her. The temperature dropped almost immediately as they cleared the threshold and began to descend the worn stone steps. At the bottom, there was barely room for them to stand on the ledge that ran along the width of a long, narrow chamber with an arched and vaulted ceiling into which were set the stone openings they had seen from above.

“There are another seven ledges identical to this one below the surface,” Remm said. He squatted down and dipped his hand into the water, shaking off the drops as he stood again. “Rain’s collected from all over this quarter. They tell me the cistern’s never been this full before, but we’ve had so much rain in the past three months . . .”

Remm went on speaking, but Dhulyn was watching the ripples of water that moved outward from where he had touched the surface as they caught and reflected the tiny slivers of light that found their way into the cistern from the terrace above them through the pierced openings of the small stone chimneys.

Ripples. Tiny waves.

Dhulyn became aware that Remm Shalyn was no longer speaking. She cleared her throat.

“So the water collects on the terrace above?”

“Mmmmm.” Dhulyn glanced sideways. Remm Shalyn was studying her with his head tilted to one side. “Do they mean anything?”

“What?” She heard his voice as if from far away, and her own, equally distant, answering him.

He gestured at his own temples. “Your tattoos. Is there significance to the color or pattern?”

Dhulyn swallowed, blinking. “They show where you have been Schooled. Blue and green are the colors of Dorian the Black Traveler.”

“And the black line is his mark as well?”

Something squeezed her heart and her throat closed. She took air in through her nose and released it through her mouth. Forcing her hands to relax and open. “No. The black lines show that I am Partnered. My Partner has . . .
had
an identical pattern marked on his badge. He was killed in the storm that threw me into the water.”

“A great loss.”

Dhulyn nodded and turned away. Remm followed her back up into the outside world.

The wind had risen in the short time they were below ground, and the sky was dark with clouds.

“It appears your cistern will be overflowing by morning.” When she glanced at him, Remm was staring at the sky, eyebrows drawn sharply down. He tilted his head to look sideways at her.

“You said earlier that slavery was a false economy. What did you mean?”

Dhulyn looked up but could see nothing in the sky that would have prompted such a question. She sighed. “Everything that I have read tells me that, though slavery has been practiced by many since the time of the Caids, invariably the society which depends upon it fails.”

“Again, I’d keep that to myself, if I were you.”

Remm started off down the alley but Dhulyn stood still, waiting until he stopped, looked over his shoulder, and came back to her.

“Which one of us is supposed to turn in the other?”

“Pardon, Xara?” From this angle, and in the light of the overcast sky, it was hard to be sure, but Dhulyn thought the man had paled under his soldier’s tan.

“That’s twice you’ve implied that you and your employer don’t see things the same way; twice you’ve led me to do the same. So which of us is expected to run telling tales?”

Remm pressed his lips tight together, the muscles in his jaw jumping. “Dhulyn Wolfshead. You are a Paledyn. Loraxin Feld has no power over you. Even now messengers are being sent to prepare your journey to Ketxan City, to the Tarxin himself.” He glanced away and then back, his expression grim. “Me, House Feld can destroy.”

“And yet you speak so freely?”

He lifted one shoulder and let it drop. “You are a Paledyn.”
And you are testing me.
Though it was reckless of him to do so. Dhulyn closed her eyes. She should feel something, she knew, something besides this sudden exhaustion, this hollowness. The man’s danger was real. Without work as a guard he would very likely starve, or, worse, have to sell himself to feed whatever family he had. He was trusting her, depending upon her as would a soldier under her command in the field. She should care.

But before she could follow that thought, however reluctantly, she was stopped by the sound of approaching footsteps.

“Xara Paledyn, the House sends for you.” In the young page’s voice and eye was his awareness of what might have happened to him if he had not found her—or what might still happen if she did not come with him now.

“Is there some urgency?” she said, indicating even as she spoke that she would follow the boy.

“He has some livestock he would like your opinion on.”

Horses.
She began to run. Horses to take her to the Tarxin. And where he was, the Storm Witch would be.