(Shadowmarch #1) Shadowmarch (40 page)

“But, Qin, that’s terrible!”

She shrugged. “It’s how things are here. I have some friends, too—not friends like you and I are friends, of course, although I may make some of those too someday. The kind of friends you have to have if you want to stay alive, if you don’t want to fall over dead after drinking your tea some evening.”

Duny looked at her without saying anything for a long time—a long time for Duny, anyway. “You seem different, Qinnitan. You seem hard, like one of those traveler girls that dance in Sun’s Progress Square.”

Qinnitan’s laugh was a little harsh, but something about Duny’s innocence made her angry. It was the fact that Duny could still afford to be innocent, more than anything else. “Well, I probably am. Everyone talks nicely here—oh, they do talk nicely. And other than the occasional hissing catfight, everything is quite peaceful and comfortable. Do you like my dress?” She lifted her arm and let the pleated sleeve fall, graceful and translucent as a dragon-fly’s wing.

“It’s lovely.”

“Yes, it is. As I said, everything is quite peaceful and comfortable . . . on the surface. But underneath, it is a pit full of scorpions.”

“Don’t talk like that, Qin. You’re scaring me.” Duny took her hand. “You are a queen! That must be wonderful, even if the people here are tiresome. What is the autarch like? Have you . . . did you . . . ?” She colored.

Qinnitan could not resist rolling her eyes—after all, it was a self-indulgence she could not allow herself most of the time. “Duny! Don’t you listen? I already told you the autarch almost never comes here. When he wants to see one of his wives, he has her brought to his palace. Well, I suppose this is
all
his palace, but you know what I mean. He has never spoken to me since he bought me from my parents, let alone made love to me! So, yes, since you are wondering, I am still a virgin. As you may remember from listening to the older girls, in most cases a deflowerment requires the man and the woman to be in the same room.”

“Qin-ya, you shouldn’t talk like that!” Duny said, but whether because she was embarrassed or because she did not want to suffer further damage to her flowery illusions wasn’t clear. After a moment, she asked, “But if he didn’t fall in love with you, and you’re not a princess of somewhere—you’re not, are you?—then . . . then why did he marry you?”

“First off, he hasn’t married me yet,” Qinnitan told her. “At least I don’t think so. I’ve had some religious instruction from the priests—some very strange rituals—so maybe that’s why, to prepare me for the marriage ceremony. Some of the women here went through ceremonies, but some others were . . .well, just taken. But as to why he chose me . . . well, Duny, I don’t know. And nobody else in this poisonous place seems to know quite why either.”

 

“I have such a nice treat for you, darling,” Luian announced when Qinnitan arrived, a little breathless, in the Favored’s chambers. “We must primp and prepare, both of us. We don’t have much time.” She snapped her fingers and her pair of silent Tuani slave women came into the room like shadows.

“But . . . but, Luian. Thank you. What are we . . .”

“We are going to the palace, my sweet. Out of the Seclusion, yes! Someone very special wants to see you.”

For a moment Qinnitan found it hard to breathe. “The . . . the autarch?”

“Oh, no!” Luian threw up her hands and laughed. The Tuani girl with the curling iron, who had come within an eyelash of burning her mistress on the arm, paled a little. “Oh, no, if it was the autarch himself they’d be preparing you for days. No, we are going to see my cousin.”

It took a moment for Qinnitan to understand. “Jeddin? Of the Leopards?”

“Yes, my dearest, we are invited to see handsome Jeddin. He wishes to speak with you, to hear stories of the old neighborhood. I am going along as chaperone, lucky girl that I am. I do so admire that young man.”

“But . . . am I allowed to meet with any men at all?”

A look of annoyance creased Luian’s powdered forehead. “He is not any man, he is chief of the Leopards, chosen by our autarch himself, praise to his name. Besides, I will be with you, child, I told you. If that is not respectable, what is?” But the Favored’s eyes darted briefly to the Tuani slave beside her, and Qinnitan could not help wondering if it was truly all as obvious and ordinary as Luian made it out to be.

When they were both ready, Favored Luian, rigged like a festival ship in a fringed-and-beaded robe, and Qinnitan in a less ostentatious and properly virginal white robe with a hood, different only in quality from something she might have worn in a Hive procession, they set out. Despite her misgivings, Qinnitan could not help being excited: it was the first time in three months she had been outside of the Seclusion’s walls, even if it was only to another part of the great Orchard Palace. Other than Duny, and Qinnitan’s mother, (who had spent most of her visit weeping over their family’s good fortune) this would be her first chance to see anyone from outside. And, needless to say, Jeddin would be the first natural man she had seen since he and his soldiers had brought her here, to this invincible prison of beautiful blossoms, splashing fountains, and cool stone arcades.

The Favored who guarded the Seclusion’s outer gate did not dress a bit like women. They were the largest people Qinnitan had ever seen, a half dozen hulking creatures with ceremonial swords whose flat, curved blades were almost wide enough to use as tea trays. They engaged in a long whispered discussion among themselves before Luian, Qinnitan, and the two silent Tuani servants were at last allowed to pass out of the Seclusion and into the greater palace, but only with one of the guards bringing up the rear of the small procession like an enormous dog guiding a herd of sheep. The little company continued on for a good portion of an hour, through lush but empty gardens and unused corridors and courtyards so opulent that they seemed to have been prepared for some royal princeling who had not yet moved into them.

At last they reached a small but prettily decorated courtyard that rang with the sounds of a fountain. At one edge of court, where the tiles gave way to a pocket garden with paths of pale sand, a muscular, sun-browned young man sat on mounds of cushions beneath a striped awning big enough for a dozen guests. As if he were the groom to Qinnitan’s bride, he, too, wore a robe of flowing white. He stood as they approached, hesitated a moment between Qinnitan and Luian, between nominal rank and actual power, and then lowered himself to one knee before the girl.

“Mistress. So kind of you to come.” He rose and turned to Luian. “Respected cousin, you do me honor.”

Luian produced a fan from her sleeve and snapped it open with a clack like an eagle taking wing. “Always a pleasure, Captain.”

Jeddin beckoned his visitors to join him beneath the awning, then sent his servant to fetch refreshments. After an appropriate time of small talk with Luian about her health and the health of various important residents of the Seclusion, he turned to Qinnitan.

“Luian says you remember me now.”

She blushed, since many of her chief memories were of him being humiliated by older boys. It was even harder to reconcile that with the present now that she saw him again. The Leopard captain’s muscles moved under his dark skin like those of a real leopard she had once seen in a cage in the Sun’s Progress marketplace, the most fearsome animal she had ever encountered. For all its strength, though, despite its dreadful teeth and claws, that leopard had seemed sad to her and not altogether present, as though it saw not the crowds of people around it but the shadow-splashed woodlands where it had once roamed—saw those places, but knew it could not reach them.

Oddly, she thought she saw something of this in Jeddin’s eyes as well, but knew she must simply be romanticizing, muddling this handsome young man with the trapped beast. “Yes. Yes, Captain, I do remember you. You knew my brothers.”

“I did.” Like an eminent man asked to recall the pivotal moments of his career, Jeddin began to reminisce at length about the days in Cat’s Eye Street, describing the adventures of a group of young scapegraces—of whom, he felt compelled to admit, he had not been the least mischievous. To hear him speak, he had been one among equals, and none of the miseries she recalled on his behalf had ever truly happened. It was strange, as though he had lived his childhood on the other side of an ornamental screen from the rest of them, making up his own mind what things meant, seeing only what he wished to see. Several times Qinnitan had to bite her tongue when the urge to correct him became strong. There was something about Jeddin, the way he talked, that made her feel as though telling him now that even a small part of his memory was faulty would be no different than the way her brothers had sometimes pushed him from behind as he ran, making him go so much faster than his legs could carry him that he stumbled and fell.

The refreshments came, and as the servants poured tea and piled sweetmeats on plates, Qinnitan watched Luian watching Jeddin, which the Favored did with the sort of avidity she usually reserved for things like the rosewater jelly being spooned into her bowl. It seemed unusual, not that Luian should find Jeddin attractive—he was more than that, his body as hard and wonderfully defined as a statue, his face befittingly serious and noble of cast, with nose straight and strong and eyes a surprisingly bright green under the heavy brows—but that someone like Luian, who in all other ways seemed to have settled into a kind of premature, matronly old age, and who, after all, had given up her original organs years ago, should still have such feelings at all.

“Well,” Luian said abruptly, ending a silence. “To think that after so many years we of the old neighborhood should have a reunion here!”

The captain’s emerald eyes now turned to Qinnitan. “You must be very happy, Mistress. Of all of us, well as we have done, you have risen highest. A wife of the Golden One himself.” He dropped his gaze. “An unmatched honor.”

“Yes, of course.”
Although I might as well be married to a hassock or a sandal for all that comes of it
, she almost said, but didn’t. Jeddin had the look of a religious man, and obviously he must be devout at least where the autarch himself was concerned. “I am blessed by his notice.”

“And he is blessed by . . .” He paused and to her amazement appeared to blush.

“And he, our autarch, is blessed by all the heavens, and especially by his heavenly father Nushash,” said Luian abruptly and loudly.

“Yes, of course. All praise to the Golden One,” said Jeddin. Qinnitan echoed the blessing, but could not help feeling something important had just happened and she had missed it.

“We should go now, Cousin.” Luian waved for the Tuani girls to help her to her feet, which they did, fighting the Favored’s great weight like nomads trying to put up a tent in a high wind. “Thank you for the refreshments and the courtesy of your company.” There was a new tone in Luian’s voice, faintly cold.

Jeddin scrambled to his feet. “Of course, respected cousin. You grace us with your presence.” He bowed to her, then to his other guest. He did it with some grace, but that didn’t surprise Qinnitan; she imagined that even for a soldier, bowing well must be almost as important in the autarch’s court as handling a sword or a gun. “I wish you could stay longer.”

“Propriety forbids it,” said Luian shortly, setting sail for the door with her servants and Qinnitan fluttering in her wake like gulls. The huge Favored guard fell in behind them in the corridor, mute and sleepy-eyed.

“Did I do something wrong, Luian?” Qinnitan asked after they had walked for some distance in silence and were nearing the gate to the Seclusion. Luian only waved her hand, whether because of discretion or irritation was hard to say.

When they had left the immense guard behind and were back within the walls, Luian leaned toward her and said, in a harsh whisper that might or might not have been too quiet for the Tuani servants to hear, “You must be careful. And Jeddin must not be a fool.”

“What do you mean? Why are you angry with me?”

Luian frowned. The paint on her lips had begun to smear a little into her face powder, and for the first time she appeared grotesque to Qinnitan and even a little frightening. “I’m not angry with you, although I will remind you that you are no longer a low-caste girl in the alleys behind Feather Cape Row. You have been given great honors, but you live in a dangerous world.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Oh? You couldn’t see what I could see as clearly as my own hand at the end of my arm? That man is in love with you.”

Even in her astonishment, Qinnitan could not help thinking that the anguish on Luian’s face seemed less like that of a guardian unheeded than a lover scorned.

16

The Grand and Worthy Nose

C
OLLUM DYER HAD BEEN cheerful all through the day’s ride, full of mocking remarks and droll assessments of life in Southmarch, and had managed to coax a few weak smiles out of the merchant Raemon Beck, but even Collum was grimly silent as they reached the crossroad. Dyer came from near the Brennish borderlands in the east and had never seen the old Northmarch Road. Ferras Vansen had passed this crossroad many times, but still found it a disturbing place.

“Gods,” said Collum. “It’s huge—you could drive three team-wagons abreast on it.”

“It is not that much wider than the Settland Road,” said Ferras, feeling a need to defend the more mundane thoroughfare that had so entranced him in his youth, which had led him to Southmarch and his current life.

“But look, Captain,” said one of the foot soldiers, pointing along the last clear stretch of the huge and disturbingly empty Northmarch Road before it vanished into the mist. “The ground drops away there on either side, but the road stays high.”