Guardians of the Desert (Children of the Desert) (11 page)

After sunset, the desert, moonless, became
black
; and cold. The teyanain servants had each produced a number of thick fire-coals from their packs, then gathered a surprising amount of deadwood from the nearby brush. The resulting blaze largely chased away both the shadows and the chill air, and the circle of
shalls
set up around the campfire seemed to trap the heat.

Alyea sat cross-legged on a mat, a heavy shawl wrapped around her torso, socks over a layer of salve on her feet. She kept her hands wrapped around a hot cup of thopuh, and shivered from nerves as much as from residual cold.

“That was slow?” she said, and heard it come out more caustic than intended. Apologizing would do no good, not in this company. She tilted her chin instead and directed a flinty stare at Evkit.

He grinned, his light shirt and breeches serving another reminder to Alyea that she wasn’t nearly his match. She thought, sourly, that he didn’t even seem tired from the day’s long march. If anything, he seemed refreshed, as though the impossibly long trek had somehow given him energy, not wiped it out.

He laughed, not in the least offended by her snappishness, and said, “But that was slow, Lord Alyea. We go much faster tomorrow.”

She stared at him in open disbelief. Beside her, Deiq made a soft noise, an almost-chuckle.

“My feet are
raw
,” Alyea protested.

“Salve help,” Evkit said, still grinning. “And you desert lord now. You heal fast. Tomorrow, you be fine. And then you have—” He lifted one foot out, waggled it briefly. “You have hard skin.”

“Callus,” Deiq murmured.

“Yes. Callus. So you not hurt so bad tomorrow night.”

Alyea barely stopped herself from saying
That’s not possible
. Apparently she wasn’t beyond being shocked by anything these people said or did, after all. She glanced down at her one visible foot—cross-legged, the other was tucked up under the opposite thigh—and wiggled her toes thoughtfully. It didn’t feel quite as raw as it had at the end of the day’s march; still, she wasn’t inclined to peel off the covering to see the current state of the damaged flesh.

Deiq said nothing, his gaze on the fire-pit. Shadow seemed to gather under his eyes and in the hollows of his ears and neck, moving just slightly off the rhythm of the flame-cast shadows around them.

Alyea blinked and shook her head to dispel the illusion. From the other side of the fire-pit, Evkit’s grin widened.

“How far did we travel today?” she asked abruptly.

“No more than Qisani,” Evkit answered.

Alyea frowned, and Deiq clarified, not looking away from the fire: “Due west from Scratha Fortress, about fifty miles.”

“Tomorrow we go fast,” Evkit said, and stood. “Tomorrow we go double.”

“
Double?
” Alyea said involuntarily. Deiq shut his eyes, a muscle twitching in his cheek.

“Good sleep,” Evkit said, and turned away. Alyea watched him climb into his
shall
, and found herself yawning.

“Gods,” she murmured, setting the cup of tea down on the mat in front of her. Almost immediately, a servant snagged it up and away. Another servant stepped close, as though to help her to her feet.

Deiq, glancing up, flicked a hand in peremptory dismissal. The waiting servant bowed and moved away without protest, and Deiq went back to watching the dancing flames.

One by one, everyone else retired for the evening. Deiq and Alyea sat alone by the fire, save for one servant and the fire-tender. Alyea sat quietly, staring into the fire, and let the tension of the day relax from her muscles.

At last, feeling the pressure of being watched, she looked to her right and found Deiq looking at her, his eyes glinting with tiny reflected flames. It gave him an uncannily demonic aspect, and she repressed a shiver. His mouth twisted into his usual sardonic smile; she knew he’d been reading her thoughts again.

She said, low-voiced but sharp, “Stop that!”

“Wasn’t,” he said economically. “Your face said it. I still scare you.”

“Do you blame me?” she retorted.

His gaze flickered to the surrounding tents, to the fire-tender, the now-drowsing servant, and back to her.

“No,” he said, one eyebrow tilting, and grinned with more real humor. “But
I’m
not what you ought to be scared of right now.” Again his gaze made the rounds of the camp.

She bit her tongue, well aware that the quiet only made voices carry more clearly, and thought through her reply before speaking.

“Of all the things that worry me just now,” she said, “you’re not nearly at the top of the list.”

“I won’t hurt you,” he said, his stare turning oddly intense; she had the feeling that he was saying more than she really understood at the moment. Then he shook his head, the dry smile returning, and the shivery heat faded from his gaze.

“I know,” she answered, not at all sure she believed her own words—or his.

(excerpt)

We come at last to the matter of commerce, that which remains within the southlands and that which moves beyond the borders to cross kingdom soil. As might be expected, the supplying of a large, well-populated stone fortress set in the midst of wasteland is a tremendous endeavor, and over the years an intricate web of agreements and alliances has formed between the major and minor Families to ease the process.

Deiq of Stass has actually been a severely disruptive influence on that network. His Farms, improbably, flourish, turning miles of wasteland into terraced and raised gardens of astounding fecundity. His farmers form a strange collective, working, regardless of gender, to their capacities and strengths, and receiving shares of the profits from their labors. There are, for example, designated merchants, who handle the selling of the produce; cooks, who turn the produce into various jams, jellies, pickles, and other long-store items; field hands, who labor to coax the most from their green charges.

Strangest of all, if I understand correctly, each of these is seen as equal and paid accordingly. A merchant shares the profit at the same rate as that of the field hand, who may have no understanding of money but is skilled at picking out the healthiest seedlings and bringing them to top yield, which the merchant is hopeless to achieve.

The Farms are independent of any other political entity or Family; they do not owe their first crop to Sessin, for example. They sell equally to all, and hold the same price regardless of status or volume. Only geographical distance affects the cost, such that in local areas and the southern ports of Agyaer, Stass, Port Sand, and Terhe the prices are far lower than when the goods arrive at your kingdom ports of Bright Bay and Sandlaen, and higher yet if sent to the independent city of Kismo in the north. The Farms only concern themselves with sale to those primary ports; the Stone Islands seem to hold no interest to their trading goals, and their merchants rarely if ever go there.

The Farms only exist along the eastern coast, and there are four of them to my current, certain knowledge. Another is rumored to exist high in the mountains between Agyaer and Terhe Ports. What items of interest could possibly grow in so inhospitable a territory is beyond my comprehension, so the rumor is most likely just that: an amusing fiction.

The prior arrangement, which still exists along the western coast south of the Horn, involved Families working very hard to create and protect the secret of an essential crop or staple item. F’Heing, for example, in the fertile crescent of land protected by the Jagged Mountains, has established rice farms, wheat fields, bean crops, and even enormous, exotically colored flowers, seedlings of which are routinely shipped north and sell for outrageous prices. Thrifty farmers, I believe, save the seeds from the matured seedlings and try desperately to coax them into life the following season, with sharply limited success.

The Jagged Mountains, incidentally, contain the secret home of the famed “F’Heing Ridge Mountain Coffee”, which no doubt you have heard of and perhaps even tasted. This variant of the bronze-leaved high mountain coffee bush produces a superior bean which, when roasted under the (also secret) F’Heing-developed process, is sought after by coffee experts and gourmets throughout your kingdom and the southlands.

That F’Heing is also noted for some of the more troubling drugs circulating throughout our shared world is not surprising, especially after the advent of the east coast Farms cut heavily into some of their staple sales. If, in your drive to cut these drugs from your kingdom, you offend F’Heing Family, you run the very real risk of F’Heing ships refusing to bring rice, grain, and beans to Bright Bay. This may sound minor, especially with the aforementioned Farms, as well as Arason, serving as prime sources for wheat, corn, and beans, but I suggest checking with your stores-master and merchant guilds on the ratios of who supplies what.

In my understanding, Arason sells most of its produce north of the line of the Great Forest, and very little volume trickles down the long road to Bright Bay. Likewise, the southland Farms pass out their produce mainly south of the Horn, with little of it reaching Bright Bay and Sandlaen Port. I am told that the farms local to Bright Bay barely produce enough, some years, to feed a hundred people besides themselves; the soil has been overworked and is becoming, frankly, exhausted. The farmers of the F’Heing enclave, meanwhile, can load their abundant produce onto a fast ship and be at your docks within two days of harvest.

A satisfactory alliance with F’Heing Family, then, is critical to the survival of your giant city.

A common saying in the southlands may be germane here:
Nothing is ever simple
. So it is with politics; so it is with trade. Remember that, and perhaps you will be the first northlands king in some time to hand down the throne to a legitimate child of your line.

From the collection
Letters to a Northern King of Merit
penned by Lord Cafad Scratha during the reign of King Oruen

Deiq sat outside the
shall
the teyanain had provided for Alyea, disinclined to crowd into the small space with her; all too aware that the sleepy nodding of the night-servant and the blank stare of the fire-tender were shams intended to make outsiders careless.

Idisio, still bound to human habits, had gone to sleep. Deiq, older and more rooted in his other heritage, rarely bothered. The deep sleep at Scratha Fortress had been the most vulnerability he’d allowed himself in years, and he’d only risked it because of the presence of a full ha’rethe—which was a mixed blessing. While ha’reye protected their own, they also had a tendency to consider those they protected to literally be theirs—as a human might own a cow.

Deiq had been careful to give Scratha ha’rethe no reason to breach courtesy and pry through his mind while he slept. Ha’reye were, by nature, essentially lazy; intruding into even a ha’ra’hain mind took more attention than they cared to spare for a trivial curiosity or amusement. Lately Deiq had been more grateful for that than he cared to admit.

He sat on neutral land now, a place unclaimed by any ha’ra’ha or ha’rethe. Here it was safer to brood over things he didn’t want to share. Not completely safe; not with three athain nearby. But the day’s labor had been a drain on even them, and he could feel them resting in deep, restorative trance-sleeps. Lord Evkit’s presence burred against Deiq’s perceptions as the teyanin lord slowly dispersed the gathered energies he’d been channeling all day and settled to sleep.

At last, the entire camp save Deiq, the fire-tender, and the night-servant were in true resting mode. Only then was it finally safe to
think
, for the first time in days. To calculate, based on the direction they’d taken, the speed Evkit had announced, and the games the teyanain liked to play, where they were headed. Out of ten different routes Evkit might have chosen across the deep desert, Deiq suspected he knew where they’d be at the end of tomorrow’s march.

Evkit knew about the ruins.

Deiq stared into the dark, remembering translucent white draperies and apricot walls, grand hallways and seductive scents; remembering a black glare filled with hatred and the pride that shattered an entire city.

He knew what the ha’reye would say, what they
had
said, at the time:
Those who choose not to serve are not worthy of our protection.

But those you don’t protect aren’t going to want to serve
, he thought; and wished he’d understood that concept much, much sooner.