The Storm Witch (24 page)

“Agreed,” she said. “If by ‘strike’ you include any and all physical discipline, including imprisoning me and withholding food.”

This time he did smile, but it was, she thought, a smile of admiration.

“Agreed.” He leaned forward. “You have satisfied me that to allow the Healers to treat you will destroy your Art, as you call it. There are two ways in which this Art can be useful to me. As a weapon against my enemies, and as a tool for the benefit of my people. That is what you can give me. What can I give you in return?”

Carcali tried to keep her face as impassive as the Tarxin’s, fighting not to show the surge of triumph and excitement that flowed through her at his words. She had to be very careful; he was experienced and tricky. She had to be sure to ask for
exactly
what she wanted.

“I will help you in the ways you’ve outlined.” She was pleased that her voice sounded so calm, so reasonable. “But I must be able to practice and develop my Art without interference. I need more authority as myself,” she said. “As the Tara Xendra.”

The Tarxin frowned, but not as though he meant to disagree with her. “That is difficult,” he said. “Women do not rule here, as they do across the Long Ocean, and many will find it hard to have a woman in authority over them.” He pulled at his lower lip. “It has been many generations since there was last a practitioner of the Art among our people, and the Scholars tell us that such Mages and Witches were wards of the Slain God, going to serve at his temple. In fact, Telxorn, the Chief Priest, has already asked for you.”

He’s trying to scare me,
Carcali thought. “Perhaps I should be having this discussion with him.”

“Perhaps.” The Tarxin didn’t look nearly worried enough. “But I remind you that whatever the common people may think about your holiness, Telxorn is a man grown old in the service of the Slain One, and to him you are still the Tara Xendra, a young girl he has known since she was born. He will expect you to be biddable and you will have to force him to give you what I offer you freely. Meanwhile I, and the rest of my people, would suffer at the weather along with him until he finally sees what I have already seen.” The man frowned, and then his face lightened as he snapped his fingers. “Of course. There has never been a practitioner of the Art with Royal Blood. We can refuse him on that basis. If you do not serve in the temple, then you will have both your status as Tara, and your status as a Holy Weather Witch. We can base your authority on that.”

There was something in his tone, or the crinkle of his eyes, that told Carcali the man was being tricky, but she still found herself nodding in agreement. He wasn’t being strictly truthful about the temple, but she was grateful to be kept out of the hands of the priesthood with their superstitious nonsense about the Slain God. Interesting what he’d said, though, about others seeing her only as the Tara Xendra.

“Tell me, Tarxin Xalbalil, how do you see me? Who do
you
think I am?”

He looked at her a long time, his eyebrows raised over his coal-dark eyes. “My dear child, what does it matter?”

T
HE CLOUDS HAD BROKEN up sometime before dawn, making the last leg of the journey from the final guesthouse somewhat hotter and sunnier than Dhulyn would have liked. The forest was far behind them now, and for some time their road had been taking them past cultivated fields.

“This close to the capital, these are all market gardens,” Remm Shalyn said, seeing her interest.

“I recognize some of the plants,” Dhulyn said. “Those are artichokes, and those potatoes. They are cultivated in Boravia as well. But here, I see, harvesting has already begun. Back there, most of these crops won’t be ripe enough to harvest for a moon at least.”

“Why would that be?”

Dhulyn looked across at him, but Remm seemed to be perfectly serious. “You are much farther north here,” she said, keeping her tone as neutral as she could. “The farther north you travel, the warmer it is, the longer the growing seasons, the earlier the sowing, and therefore the earlier the harvests.”

“And are the harvests very late, then, in your homeland?” Remm was interested, Dhulyn could see, but only just enough to be polite. He had a soldier’s practical grasp of things, and
that
she found familiar. A little irritating, but familiar and, in a strange way, comforting.

“In my homeland there is only grass for the horses, and then snow, and ice. It is civilized people who plant crops.”

“Ice, I’ve heard of, packed in straw and brought by riverboat from the mountains to the south to cool the drinks of the rich, but snow?”

They had walked several spans by the time Dhulyn gave up trying to describe snow.

The fields they passed now were changing. Up ahead were what looked like grapevines. Recent rains meant the fields were well watered, but it also meant there had been a growth of weeds, and that some of the new plants needed restaking. Dhulyn noticed that for the most part the field hands did not look toward them as they passed. Slaves, of course. Each field was being supervised by an attendant who stood at one end, under a planted sunshade, watching the progress of the others.

“Are the watchers slaves as well?” Dhulyn asked following the nearest one with her eyes.

“Usually,” Remm Shalyn said. “Only the very rich can afford to pay for this kind of work. In the free lands on the other side of the mountains, the farms and fields are worked by groups of free men who hold everything in common.” Remm looked sideways at her, one eyebrow raised in puzzlement. “Tell me,” he said. “How did you know that there would be runaway slaves?”

“Loraxin thought I was a runaway,” she said. “It followed. And it also follows that there must be some place to run to.”

Remm shook his head, his mouth twisted in a smile. “Are all Paledyn such deep thinkers as you?”

What answer can I give him?
she thought. There were Mercenary Brothers who did not think beyond the
Shora,
for certain. She knew many such. But Dorian the Black had told her many times, “The more you know, the more likely you are to stay alive,” and she’d believed him.

“So the servants I meet now will all be slaves?”

Remm Shalyn rubbed at his chin. He’d been careful to shave every morning. “Well, no. Especially not in the palace. Oh, I don’t mean there won’t be slaves in the kitchens, or among the cleaners, but some of the very rich live in the City, the Noble Houses—”

“The very ones who are rich enough to pay for service, and who use that method to show off their wealth.”

“Exactly.” Remm focused his attention on the vines they were passing. Dhulyn looked in the same direction but saw nothing unusual. Then Remm looked down at his feet. And cleared his throat.

Dhulyn decided to wait him out.

“I am thinking, Dhulyn Wolfshead.” Dhulyn raised her eyebrows, but Remm was not looking at her, so the effect was lost. “Perhaps it would be best if you uncovered your head,” he said finally. “Now that we have no servants with us, it would be best if the people we will now encounter see your,” he gestured at his own temple, “your Paledyn’s tattoo.”

“Have we much farther?”

“By midmorning, we will be at the walls.”

Dhulyn squinted upward, judging the strength of the sun. Parno had often teased her that the sun did not brown her, and it was true that next to the rich gold of his own coloring she never looked darker than old ivory. But pale as she might seem, she did brown, nevertheless. She pulled off her headdress, turning it back into a linen scarf and a knotted sash, and tying both around her hips.

“Will there be a problem since we have no runner to send ahead to tell the guards we are coming?” she asked Remm Shalyn.

“The palace guards are already expecting us,” he said.

Dhulyn pressed her lips together and barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes to Mother Sun. This would by no means be the first time that knowledge at the palace didn’t find its way to the ordinary soldier. “And the gate guards will have been told as well?”

“The gate is not guarded.”

No guards? Dhulyn pursed her lips in a silent whistle. She’d understood from what Remm had told her that the country of the Mortaxa was large, larger than any of the realms in Boravia, with the capital, Ketxan City, on the coast. But Battle Wings or no, were their enemies so far distant that the walls of the capital did not need guards? These were remarkably complacent people, and history had often told her what usually rewarded such complacency. Dhulyn knew how she would attack the city, if she were ever given the task.

The walls, when they finally arrived at them, impressed her even less. They were built of the same white-washed, stucco-covered mud bricks that she had seen used for building material in Berdana, but these walls were no taller than she was herself, and only just wide enough to allow someone to walk comfortably on the top.

And just as Remm Shalyn had said, the gates stood wide and empty.

Dhulyn looked at the gardens, walkways, and pavilions to be seen within the gates, and back at the cultivated fields without. “It seems that the primary purpose of these walls is to keep the fields separate, rather than to enclose and protect the city.”

Remm frowned. “Certainly, it’s considered a sign of status among the Noble Houses to have winter places in the Upper City. I think it was the present Light of the Sun’s father who declared there could be no more building here.”

“Naturally. It would be in the interest of those same Noble Houses to make sure the precinct was as small and exclusive as possible.” She looked around her, but there was nothing but gardens and the single-story pavilions as far as she could see. “And the palace?”

“There’s no direct entrance from the Upper City, but do you see those pillars?”

Dhulyn looked where he was pointing and saw that there were indeed a set of five pillars to be seen to the north and east.

“That marks the official entrance to Ketxan City itself.”

“The entrance?”

Remm gestured with his hands. “To the Lower City, of course. Ketxan City is built into the rock cliffs that face the Coral Sea.”

As they approached the entrance to the Lower City, the buildings became more impressive, many of them built of stone. The same stone, Dhulyn guessed, which had been carved out and removed to form the rooms and corridors of the city below them. The entrance itself consisted of the five pillars they had seen from a distance, which flanked a descending ramp of polished terrazzo leading down to enormous open-worked double doors made from metal bars, like a portcullis. Dhulyn stopped, fists on her hips, and looked upward to examine the gates more carefully, disbelief making her shake her head.

As if to confirm her worst fears, the guard was actually a porter, an elegantly robed man whose round eyes and widened nostrils showed exactly what he thought of a Paledyn who turned up on foot, bareheaded, wearing a short kilt, and with only one attendant. He looked as though he wished to turn them away, so Dhulyn gave him her wolf’s smile. As he backed away from her, she stepped forward.

“The Tarxin, Light of the Sun, has sent for me.”

 

Dhulyn kept her attention on the man on the throne, without in any way losing sight of the pikemen stationed along the walls, and in particular the two who stood one to each side of the Tarxin. Was he another Loraxin Feld? Would he feel the need to test her? But the guards did not move, did not even, as far as she could tell, shift their eyes to follow her as she approached the throne. She could not be sure, never having met the man before, but she would wager her second-best sword that something about her pleased the Tarxin Xalbalil very much indeed. How best to keep him that way? She had been given a chance to bathe—in fact, the Steward of Keys who had met them at the entrance to the palace itself had insisted on it—and once again she had turned down women’s garments in favor of what Remm assured her was appropriate clothing for a young man of a high Noble House. Only the absence of jewelry and perfume distinguished her from many in the audience room.

Now Dhulyn ignored everyone else, took a stride forward, and, bending from the hips, placed her palms flat on the floor in front of her. Such was the bow one gave to the Great King in the West, though she suspected no one here would recognize it. It was very impressive, however, to anyone who hadn’t seen it done routinely. She straightened.

“I greet you, Tarxin Xalbalil, Light of the Sun. I am Dhulyn Wolfshead, called the Scholar. I was schooled by Dorian of the River, the Black Traveler, and I have fought with my Brothers at Sadron, Arcosa, and at Bhexyllia with the Great King to the West. I have come to serve.” She inclined her head again.

“I had not thought to see a female Paledyn.” Though, from the evenness of his tone, the Tarxin had been warned what to expect. His voice was cold and rough, like a knife dulled by hard use drawn across a stone.

“The Slain God chooses whom he wills.” Dhulyn touched her fingers to her forehead in salute. Nothing a great ruler liked more than plenty of respect.

“That he does.” The Tarxin touched his own forehead, as did everyone else in the room.

Interesting.
Dhulyn kept her own face from showing any reaction, seeing the Mercenary salute used here as an acknowledgment of the Slain God.

“I have heard tales of your prowess in my land, Paledyn,” the Tarxin said. “You have already fought and defeated many with your bare hands.”

Did the man’s eyes flick toward Remm Shalyn, still down on one knee behind her? She inclined her head. “You are too kind, Light of the Sun.”

“Go now, and rest from your journey.” The Tarxin flicked his hand and another Steward, not the one who had met them at the entrance, stepped forward. There was a vertical frown line between this man’s gray brows, but Dhulyn had the feeling it was permanent, and had little to do with her.