The Daylight War (46 page)

Amanvah looked at him in surprise, but she quickly dropped her eyes. ‘Of course you are right, husband.’ She gave a slight shiver. ‘You and your companions are not the only ones eager to leave Everam’s Bounty.’

‘Why was your brother so angry?’ Rojer asked.

‘Asome believes I should have refused my mother when she told me to wed you,’ Amanvah said. ‘He argued with her, and it … did not go well.’

‘He doesn’t want your house allying with a greenlander?’ Rojer guessed.

Amanvah shook her head. ‘Not at all. He sees the power you command and is not blind to its uses. But Father has many
dama’ting
daughters whom he feels would serve. He has ever meant me as a gift for Asukaji, though it is not a brother’s right to give away his sister while their father lives.’

‘Why you?’ Rojer asked.

‘Because nothing less than his eldest full-blooded sister would do for Asome’s beloved Asukaji,’ Amanvah spat. ‘He cannot bear his lover’s children himself, so he tries to use the closest thing, as Asukaji did when he convinced Uncle Ashan to offer Ashia to my brother. Only my white robes have protected me thus far.’ She looked at him. ‘My white robes, and you.’

Rojer felt nauseous. ‘Where I come from, it’s considered … improper to marry your first cousin, unless you’re in some remote hamlet and haven’t got a choice.’

Amanvah nodded. ‘It is not favoured among my people either, but Asome is the son of the Shar’Dama Ka and Damajah. He does as he pleases. Already, Ashia has been forced to bear him a son that he and Asukaji treat as their own.’

Rojer shuddered, and breathed his relief as the carriage began to sway in its suspension, a sign they were finally moving.

‘Think on it no more, husband,’ Amanvah said, taking his right arm as Sikvah moved to his left. ‘It is our wedding day.’

A
bban gasped for breath, sweating onto the fine silk sheets of the master bed in the Palace of Mirrors. The very bed where Ahmann first took Mistress Leesha, a bed yanked out from under Damaji Ichach at Abban’s suggestion. It pleased him to steal his own pleasure there, marking the silk while the leader of the Khanjin tribe laid his head in some lesser place.

Shamavah was already on her feet, pulling on her black robes. ‘Up with you, fat one. You’ve had your draining, and time is short.’

‘Water,’ Abban groaned as he sat up. Shamavah went to the silver pitcher cooling on the table. Beads of water ran down the metal as she poured a cup, much as beads of sweat ran down his skin.

‘One of these days your heart will give way, and control of your fortune pass to me,’ she taunted, quenching her own thirst before refilling the cup and bringing it to him.

Had any of his other wives dishonoured him so, Abban would have taken the cane to her himself, but for Shamavah he only smiled. His
Jiwah
Ka
had never been the most beautiful of his wives, and her fertile years had long since waned, but she was the only one he bedded for love.

‘You already control my fortune,’ Abban said, taking the cup and draining it as she began helping him into his clothes.

‘Perhaps that is why you send me away,’ Shamavah said.

Abban reached out, taking her face in his free hand. He knew she was only teasing, but still it was too much to bear. ‘I will curse every minute we are apart.’ He winked. ‘And not just because I will need to work twice as hard without you.’

Shamavah kissed his hand. ‘Thrice.’

Abban nodded. ‘But it is for that very reason that I trust no one else to begin our dealings with the Hollow tribe. We must secure our operations and win the greenlanders over, even if it means red in the ledger at first.’

‘Nie take me first,’ Shamavah said. ‘It did not take long to buy the Hollowers’ trust, and they sold it cheaply. They do not have the stamina to hide their weakness for long.’

It was true enough. When they first set out from Deliverer’s Hollow, the Northerners all quieted whenever Abban drew near, mistrustful of any with a dusky tone to their skin. But Abban always came bearing gifts. Nothing so bold as gold or jewels – that would offend these people. But a silk pillow casually offered to one rubbing a sore backside from long days on a cart bench? A flattering word when it was needed? Exotic spices to flavour their cookpot? A few bits of common knowledge about his people?

These things the Northerners accepted freely, congratulating themselves over learning to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ in his language as if it were some great deed.

And so they began talking to him, still guarded, but with increasing comfort, letting him lead a conversation about the weather into talk of harvest festivals and holidays, marriage customs and morality. The Northerners loved the sound of their own voices.

It wasn’t the information Ahmann wanted, of course. The Deliverer wanted troop sizes and positions, points of military or symbolic significance, and maps. He wanted maps most of all. The Rizonan Messengers’ Guild had burned theirs the day the Krasians attacked, and the idiot
Sharum
had not bothered to stop them. The maps in Duke Edon’s library were extensive for his own lands, but for those outside his borders they were a decade old. To the north, Deliverer’s Hollow was growing exponentially. Small villages were swelling with refugees, and new settlements were forming, many far away from the Messenger roads Ahmann needed to move the full strength of his forces.

‘The landscape is changing,’ Ahmann had said. ‘We cannot achieve victory without understanding that change.’

It was sound military thinking, but gullible though they were, the Hollowers were not such utter fools as to reveal such information. Yet while Ahmann might turn up his chin at gossip and bickering, Abban knew it for the power it was.

Great
things
can
be
found
in
small
talk
, his father Chabin used to say.

Shamavah had done much the same when the greenlanders came to the Palace of Mirrors. All Abban’s wives and daughters spoke Thesan, but on her orders they had pretended only a handful of words, turning simple interactions into such complicated pantomime that the Hollowers had quickly stopped bothering to speak to them despite their near-constant presence. They silently brought food, cleared away refuse, changed linens, and carried water, all but invisible.

After weeks on end, the greenlanders no longer bothered to hide their petty squabbling. Even when they thought they were alone, more often than not they stood near one of the palace’s many air vents, and Shamavah had women ‘cleaning’ the central shafts continually. Abban read their reports, detailing everything from privy habits to sexual encounters. Some he read with more pleasure than others.

Now the leanings of the Northerners’ hearts were open scrolls.
Know
a
person’s desires,
his father had told him,
and
you
can
charge
whatever
you
wish
to
fulfil
them.

Like the steps of a ladder, he had built their trust, keeping their secrets and offering sound advice. Occasionally he even seemed to suggest a course not to his master’s advantage, a tactic any child in the bazaar knew to mistrust. But the trick always seemed to work on greenlanders, the best of whom were poor hagglers.

Most delicious was when he could offer up a secret about Inevera, buying their trust even as he helped thwart the manipulations of the Damajah.

She was beginning to suspect his hand now, but it mattered little. He had made his opening moves too subtly for her to oppose him openly, using unwitting agents – including Ahmann himself. The Shar’Dama Ka might publicly heap abuse on Abban, but he tolerated none of it from others, brutally putting down even his sons and closest advisors when they tried to bully the
khaffit
.

But it was not enough. Sooner or later, Inevera or one of the others would have him poisoned, or killed in his bed, unless he vastly increased his protections.

‘I fear for you while I am gone,’ Shamavah said, as if reading his thoughts. ‘You and the rest of our family, now that we must leave the Palace of Mirrors.’

‘Look to your own concerns in the coming months,’ Abban said. ‘I can see to my own protection, and that of our women, while you are gone.’

‘And our sons?’ Shamavah asked.

Abban let out a deep sigh as he straightened his turban in the mirror and reached for his camel crutch. ‘That will be more difficult,’ he admitted. ‘But one problem at a time. For now, you have a caravan to catch.’

When he had seen his wife and the greenlanders off, Abban limped back to Ahmann’s palace. Duke Edon’s manse was the most impressive and defensible structure in Everam’s Bounty, though it was dwarfed by the palaces of the Desert Spear. Abban himself had larger holdings in Krasia, though his were disguised as crumbling warehouses in poor districts. It was unwise for a
khaffit
to advertise his wealth to the local
dama
and
Sharum
.

The
Damaji
and most powerful
dama
had claimed all the grandest structures in Everam’s Bounty when the city was captured, and the
Sharum
had snatched up the best of what remained. Abban had been left with a humble abode in the poorest and most remote section of town, the building not even large enough to properly house all his wives, daughters, and servants. His pavilion in the new bazaar was grander.

In the short term, Abban had solved the problem by moving everyone into the Palace of Mirrors while he quietly bought all the land in his poor neighbourhood. Slaves worked day and night, secretly tunnelling the perimeter. He would fill the tunnels with poured stone to found his outer wall, the materials already stockpiled. By the time anyone knew what was happening, the wall would be up, and safe from prying eyes, though even those would see only a squat block of a building with nothing to note the splendour within.

But a wall was nothing without warriors to guard it. Abban was no warrior, but he knew their value. He had many muscular
chin
slaves, but they were no match for true
Sharum
. If he wasn’t prepared, the
Damaji
would take his new palace from him the moment the final brick was laid.

The halls of the Shar’Dama Ka’s palace were full of
dama
and
dama’ting
, with
Sharum
marching to and fro, guarding every archway and door. Black-clad
dal’ting
scurried about carrying trays and laundered linen. Abban kept his eyes down, exaggerating his limp as his crutch thumped a steady beat on the thick carpet.

Always
appear
weaker
than
you
are
,
Chabin had taught, and Abban had taken the lessons well. Shattered decades ago, his leg pained him still, but not half so much as he let on, even to Ahmann. A simple cane would have sufficed, but the crutch made him seem that much more helpless. As intended, almost everyone avoided him with their eyes, that they not show their disgust.

Hasik stood outside the throne room, and glowered as Abban approached. Ahmann’s entire inner circle despised the
khaffit
, but Hasik had a capacity for hatred and sadism that surpassed any man Abban had ever met. Tall and muscular enough to wrestle the Northern giants in Deliverer’s Hollow, he had been given special training in
sharusahk
since becoming bodyguard to the Deliverer. Pain meant nothing to Hasik, and even
kai’Sharum
feared to face him. For Hasik did not simply defeat his enemies. He left them crippled and humiliated.

They knew each other from
sharaj
, when Abban and Ahmann had been friends, and Hasik Ahmann’s greatest rival. Now Hasik served Ahmann fanatically, but his hatred of Abban had only grown, especially since Abban took every chance he could to flaunt the fact that Hasik was only a bodyguard, while he had the Deliverer’s ear.