Toads and Diamonds (11 page)

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CHAPTER ELEVEN Diribani

GURATH
looked smaller, seen from atop an elephant.

A little shaky still, but clean, fed, and dressed in borrowed finery, Diribani knelt in a corner of the howdah's curtained platform, among a group of older women. She lifted the gauze drapery just enough to peek out, hoping to distract her thoughts from what had almost happened back in the garden. And what
had
happened: a man's death. And its aftermath, upsetting in a different way, given Zahid's fury, Alwar's excuses, and Ruqayya's cool voice insisting that the regrettable incident not delay their departure. Diribani had searched her soul: Could she have done anything to prevent the man's death? She didn't think so, but the violence weighed on her.

She tightened her hold on the waist-high railing and forced her attention to the scene below. The fort receded, the ladies' quarter invisible beyond tall walls, the cannons so many dark twigs poking out of stone parapets. Gurath's customs house, marketplace, and warehouses, the oceangoing ships with their tall masts...all

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dwindled. The twisted length of the river San shone a dull green, like a basking snake.

Tana.
Where was she, this sunny afternoon? In the short time they'd been parted, Diribani had stored up a hundred things to share with her sister. As the royal procession wound through the merchant quarter, Diribani searched the crowd of upturned faces. From up here, the people looked tiny, their cheers and shouts rising from little puppet throats. She couldn't distinguish her home from the anonymous-walls facing the street. That tall pinkfruit tree might be the one growing in Trader Nikhat's courtyard, but it was gone in a roll of the elephant's broad shoulders.

The platform's motion, rising up and down, then tilting from side to side like the deck of a ship, made Diribani queasy. She leaned her elbows on a bolster and closed her eyes. When she opened them at the trumpets' brazen blare, the head of their long procession had already reached the parklike area just inside Gurath's easternmost gate. Cow Gate, dedicated to Mother Gaari, earth goddess, protector of the poor and helpless. The governor's escort would leave them here.

Diribani felt a moment of shock when the trumpeters rode straight through the gate without stopping. Of course, the white-coats didn't worship the twelve. But it felt wrong, to pass a goddess's shrine without offering even a flower. She parted the gauze curtains. Ignoring the older ladies' cries of consternation, Diribani folded her hands. "Please bless our party, Gaari-ji," she said softly. Several sprays of wheat stalks, heavy with grain, fell from her lips.

The she-elephant shivered at the kernels bouncing like hail off her gray hide. The mahout soothed her, and the enormous animal lumbered on.

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"Safe travel, Mina Diribani!" A young man on a white mare waved at her. Diribani recognized Kalyan and Jasmine. She leaned out and waved in return.

Alerted to her presence, other townsfolk, too, folded their hands, smiling and calling their farewells. "Eyo, Mina Diribani."

"Remember us in Fanjandibad, Mina-ji!"

"Come back soon, diamond girl."

Most of the white-coats pretended they hadn't noticed her, but one girl stepped out from the shade of a rose arbor to blow kisses at Diribani's elephant.

Diribani's lips shaped Tana's name. But before Diribani could be certain she had really seen her sister dressed in overseer white, one of her companions hauled her inside and twitched the curtains together.

A ring of outraged faces confronted her. "Perhaps it escaped your notice that none of us are veiled?" one of the ladies said in an icy tone. "The curtains stay closed."

"Please excuse me, Lady Yisha," Diribani said.

"It mustn't happen again."

As the women murmured among themselves about the lilies and rubies at Diribani's feet, she settled back against the bolster. Had Utsav the crow god tricked her eyes? She had wanted so badly to see her sister one last time before what could be a long separation. She might have imagined the familiar features, the smile brilliant with affection--and relief, too, now that she thought about it. No, that had definitely been Tana, wearing a white coat. She had been standing a little way beyond Kalyan and Jasmine. Maybe the trader was teaching her to ride? That was the most likely explanation.

How did Tana feel, wearing the costume brought to Gurath

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with the invaders? Diribani glanced down at her own borrowed dress wrap. Ruqayya must have sent one of her ladies to the marketplace, unless she traveled with a store of garments from each of the Hundred Kingdoms. The blouse was fine cotton, light as air against Diribani's skin. Embroidered irises in a maze of gold ribbon-work banded the dress wrap's length of butter-yellow silk. She felt a fraud in it, but her new maid's horrified expression when Diribani had suggested she return it to Princess Ruqayya and ask for a plainer one had convinced Diribani to wear it. The princess hadn't struck her as a frightening figure, but Diribani's circumstances were different from her maid's.

It didn't matter, since only these severe ladies would see her in it. Diribani hadn't decided whether their disapproval stemmed from her being a non-Believer, a commoner daring to wear a queen's dress, or a conjurer spouting flowers and jewels. They tended to ignore her, so she returned her attention to the countryside. Which, in its own way, was less than satisfying.

The howdah consisted of a platform with a tent built over it, the frame's four corners rising to a peak in the center. The thin fabric that covered it prevented people from seeing the unveiled ladies within, but also obscured the view out. The travelers passed through a misty landscape of shrouded fields and forest.

While admitting some air and light, the enclosure concentrated the mingled scents of sandalwood hair oil, the lilies and carnations Diribani had spoken, and a strong odor of garlic from the bread served at the meal just before their departure. It had tasted delicious, hot and puffy from the fort kitchen's brick ovens, then slathered with melted butter and herbs. The garlic, alas, lingered on the breath.

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Lady Yisha smelled it, too. Her aristocratic nose wrinkled in disgust.

As Diribani watched, the courtier opened a wooden box on the carpet beside her. It unfolded into a portable desk, complete with paper, pen, inkstand, and flat leather-covered surface for writing. Lady Yisha composed a short note and tucked it into a purse whose long strap ended in a metal clip. One jeweled hand reached outside the howdah and clipped the pouch to the elephant's harness. "Eyo, driver," she called.

The mahout riding on the elephant's neck, below the platform, reached up for the pouch. He whistled. One of the servant girls riding alongside them guided her horse closer and caught the pouch the driver threw her. At least, Diribani assumed it was a servant; a scarf covered her hair and lower face. The royal party were more particular than Gurath white-coats about women veiling themselves. Even the servants covered their faces in public.

Not caring if it was low-class to admit her curiosity, Diribani put her face against the gauze fabric to see what was happening. The girl opened the pouch and read the note. She rummaged in her saddlebags, but didn't find what she was looking for. Diribani admired how the servant kept her balance on the moving horse, holding on with her legs and guiding the animal with just one hand on the reins. The white-coats' costume made sense, she had to admit, for riding astride. Perhaps she'd ask the princess whether someone could teach her. If Kalyan had given Tana lessons, Diribani could ride with her the next time they were together.

The girl approached another servant, with better luck. The pouch was filled, and the first girl rode back to the elephant. Instead

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of tossing the pouch up to the mahout, as Diribani expected, the servant held the strap out at arm's length and clicked her tongue.

Without breaking stride, the elephant picked up the purse with her trunk. As delicately as a woman clasping a chain at her neck, the elephant's trunk reached over her shoulder, found an opening between the curtains, and dropped the purse inside the howdah.

"Oh, well done!" Diribani clapped her hands. Outside, the mahout echoed her praise, calling God to witness his elephant's cleverness. The ladies tittered at Diribani's enthusiasm.

Except one. "Dried fennel?" Lady Yisha said reprovingly.

The other faces became prim again.

"Thank you, my lady." The pouch reached Diribani last. She, too, took a pinch of the aromatic fennel seeds between her fingers and chewed them.

Soon the garlic smell receded. The women made themselves comfortable on the carpets and cushions. Some dozed, some slept, a few gossiped quietly about people Diribani hadn't met. The southeastern road to Fanjandibad seemed drier than the road from Lotus Gate to Naghali's well. The puddles were farther apart, too. Diribani heard only a faint squelching as the elephant walked along. The howdah's rocking motion and the low hum of conversation combined to make her sleepy. As she relaxed against the bolster, Diribani realized that, for the next little while, nothing was expected of her.

She thought how pleasant it might be to ride like Ruqayya and the capable servant girl. Especially if the prince accompanied them to point out the landmarks. Zahid seemed like the kind of person who might know the history of each stone they passed along the road. And if he didn't, Ruqayya would twitch her fingers--flick,

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flick--and summon a clerk to read them all the appropriate chapter in a book carried for the purpose.

Her last thought, before she drifted into a nap, was how swiftly the goddess's gift had changed her. Two days ago, Diribani would never have imagined herself conversing with royalty, let alone judging their potential as traveling companions. Ma Hiral's warnings aside, being a diamond girl wasn't so bad. Except when people tried to kill you for it.

Like a blow, memory struck. The blood, and the screaming. Diribani sat straight up. A sour taste coated her tongue.

"More fennel?" A lady passed her the pouch.

"Thank you." Diribani crunched the seeds between her teeth, hardly noticing the licorice flavor. She pretended that the ugly memories rising through her mind could be blown like smoke out the gauze curtains, to disperse in the afternoon breeze. Silently, she prayed to Sister Payoja, goddess of healing and peace, that, whatever his twisted reasons for attacking her, the deluded man might choose a better path in his next life. Then she prayed to Naghali-ji.
Give me the strength to bear your gift with grace.
If the goddess had arranged for Diribani to travel to Fanjandibad, she would find a purpose there, or perhaps along the way. She needed to pay attention, and hold herself ready.

Outside, a piltreet sang: "Lazy girl. Lazy girl, girl, girl." Cart wheels creaked, and marching feet drummed against the road. Insects buzzed in the fields. A frog shrilled; another answered. As its brothers and sisters and uncles joined in, a full-throated chorus rose from the flooded ditches. Comforted by the reminder of Sister Naghali's constant presence in their lives, Diribani's mind quieted. She slept.

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CHAPTER TWELVE Tana

TANA
ducked under the arbor to collect her bedding, which shed hidden behind a climbing rose. Thorns pricked her hands, but the pain didn't stop a grin from spreading across her face. Relief surged through her, washing the fear taste from her mouth.

Diribani was well, as glorious as the princess in a tale. The sun-colored dress wrap set off her dark beauty as it deserved. That handsome Prince Zahid had better watch his heart. Tana would bet a diamond of fifty ratis that, after several weeks' travel in her sister's company, he wouldn't care that she'd been born a commoner, and a non-Believer at that. Princess Diribani--why not?

Happily planning her sister's grand future, Tana waited for the prince's entourage to file through Cow Gate. When the governor's guard had also departed, she hoisted the bedroll onto her shoulder and turned south, toward Horse Gate. She'd taken only a couple of steps when she found an actual horse in her way. Face averted, Tana

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turned and hurried back the way she'd come, pretending she'd forgotten something.

Two steps, four steps. No buildings in the grassy area near Cow Gate. She made it past the arbor and dashed behind a tree, only to find herself nose to nose with Jasmine. The white horse whickered in greeting.

Cursing her own carelessness, Tana reached up to stroke the velvet nose. The white-coat disguise wasn't so good if a horse could catch her.

"It
is
you!" Trader Kalyan slid off the saddle and landed next to Tana.

At any other time, she would have been thrilled that he sought her out. Today she put him in danger. And why did he have to find her dressed like this? She was conscious of Gulrang's sweat-stained coat, the trousers crumpled and creased with bits of ground-in hay. Tana stepped back. She shifted to put the length of her bedroll between them.

Then, of course, she could see how fine he looked in court dress, a tan-colored coat which, unlike Tana's, fit him quite well in the shoulders. Light but not white, the color complemented trousers two shades darker. Had he been at the fort this morning, selling jewels to the visiting ladies? Perhaps he'd seen Diribani, or heard about the incident with Gulrang's brother. Tana lifted her eyes in hope and got an unwelcome surprise.

Amiable Kalyan wore the expression of a man who'd picked up a wolf snake and discovered he held a venomous krait. "What in Father Ghodan's name are you doing here? In their clothes?" he hissed. "You're going to the well this instant, Mina."

Tana frowned in surprise. She shook her head.