The Last Hour of Gann (148 page)

He walked back to her, seized her by the chin, pressed his unfeeling mouth to hers and then scraped the end of his snout hard along her throat, filling his aching head with her scent, her taste, her soul.

She unclipped the kzung from his belt and held it in her hand, searching his eyes. She didn’t speak either.

He stepped back, turned away. He took a breath (one for the Prophet) and walked on.

3

U
nencumbered by humans, the journey to Chalh lasted only six days, the latter half on a good road. They were first hailed easily five spans from the city and escorted the rest of the way by three sentries in gilded uniforms. If that were not warning enough of Chalh’s nature, the walls of the city were trimmed in gold, or at least, gold paint, and a statue of the Prophet had been positioned over the gate, hands outstretched in benediction. The sleeves, Meoraq noted, were hollowed out, so as to pour hot oils or acids should any raider be fool enough to assault the first founding city of the Prophet.

“Where are the other five?” Meoraq asked, making half a joke in an attempt to appear patient while the
gatekeeper meticulously checked his book of Houses.

The
gatekeeper, having no sense of humor, replied, “Each has their own gate, sir. If you wish to be admitted through Gate Uyane, I can make those arrangements.”

Meoraq rolled his eyes discreetly. “That won’t be necessary.”

The gatekeeper continued his inspection with the same excruciating attention to detail, came to the conclusion that Meoraq was in truth who he claimed to be, and snapped his book shut. “It is Uyane before me,” he announced. “If it is your intention to seize the city of Chalh, you will have to wait in the arena hold for the Sheulek in residence to meet with you.”

“I am here to see my kin. My conquest shall be limited to that House.”

“Do you wish me to send for one of Uyane’s carriages?”

“Just a public carriage will do.” Meoraq tapped pointedly at the gate.

“Do you prefer to go under your House’s standard?”

“I would prefer to be behind walls before the damned year is out!”

The gatekeeper bowed and unlocked the gate. “If I can be of service—”

“Carriages for myself and my party, and an usher to take us immediately to House Uyane,” interrupted Meoraq, waving his people inside.

“It may take some time to locate a veiled carriage suitable to transport your, ah, women. Perhaps you would like to take the rooftop while you wait? The barracks of Lashraq’s Gate has an excellent meditation garden.”

“I must seem tense,” Meoraq remarked, but Amber wasn’t there to tell him he was, in fact, acting like a scaly son of a bitch and no one else was ab
out to argue or, worse, agree. “Any carriage will do,” he said, looking back out into the open wilds, thinking of Amber. “Just fetch a few blankets and we’ll cover the windows.”

“My apologies, honored one, we have no blankets in Uyane’s colors.”

“Cover them in grain-sacks then! I don’t care! Great Sheul, O my Father, give me patience! And you, just give me a damned carriage!”

The
gatekeeper bowed and locked the door before wandering unhurriedly away. And really, what could Meoraq do about it? It wasn’t as if he could just march all these unveiled women across the city on foot.

So he waited. The carriages eventually came, along with drivers and ushers and window covers emblazoned with the standard of the city. Meoraq put the women in one, the soldiers in the other, and himself alone in the last. The boy who held the carriage door passed him a bottle of cool tea before closing it. The driver leaned in through the window as Meoraq plucked idly at the cap and passed him a flask of hot nai.

“Keep it,” the driver grunted as Meoraq took his first swallow. “I see you’ve not got one, and it’s a hard lack on a long journey.”

Meoraq lowered the flask, staring.

The driver shut the window and snapped the tethers. Bulls bellowed. The carriage rolled on.

He knew what the days of hard travel had done to his appearance, let alone the battle at the raider’s nest, the mountain crossing, and all the days that had gone before. Meoraq
had been fully prepared to recite his lineage, show his signet, and perhaps even battle their champion to prove his kinship, but he did not expect the gates of Uyane to open on the steward himself.

Meoraq knew at first sighting t
his was no toy-lord, no high-born diplomat with a stable of Sheulteb to do his fighting for him, but a Sheulek in his retirement. He dressed not in lordly robes, but in plain leather breeches with a warrior’s harness snug over his open tunic, displaying his scarred chest and hard belly with careless indifference. The bone hilt that cased the ancient blade hanging around his neck stood out like lightning over his scales, polished by use and yellowed with age.

They eyed each other, and then Meoraq took the first step forward and boldly raised his hand. “I come to you as kin and conqueror,” he began. “Your
House stands in the shadow of—”

Lord Uyane let out a rude, barking laugh. “By Gann’s crooked cock, you even sound like him.”

And before Meoraq had could even think of how to react, the steward stood aside, already beckoning to a small crowd of sleepy-eyed boys. Onahi and the other men of Praxas, along with their nervous women, were led away to be billeted and Meoraq was taken to the warden’s office to sign them all over into Uyane-Chalh’s garrison. As swiftly as this was accomplished, however, an usher from the governor still managed to be waiting before they were through, and Meoraq spent the next two hours reporting to Chalh’s leaders.

It should not have taken so long, but
Praxas had sent a messenger to warn against the ravings of the wildland-maddened Sheulek and even if they had not, Meoraq’s tale of men who sold their daughters to raiders and who kept scaleless people in cages was too fantastic to be believed. Meoraq answered their questions without embellishment, but when they began to repeat themselves, and worse, to ask if he were sure he had seen this or if he could clearly recall that, his temper began to fray. Ultimately, he was compelled to challenge them all for the truth, and after some muttered discussion, the governor sent down not one but all three of his Sheulteb to meet him. Meoraq was burning almost as soon as he crossed the threshold into the arena, and although he knew none of it, he supposed Sheul must have made an impressive showing in the battle that followed because the first thing he heard as he came slowly out of the black was the governor’s reedy voice ordering Praxas to be struck from the roster of cities under Sheul and all their people to be turned back from this hour onward as children of Gann. So that was done. Meoraq refused the girl the governor presented and left the arena hold at once, still spattered with the blood of three good men.

But it had been many days of travel, a battle, a mountain crossing, and it caught up to him at last. His desire to see Amber safely within his reach once more could not take the weight from his weary clay and when Uyane’s usher met him at the governor’s gates to escort him back to that House, he went.

The boy brought Meoraq to the vacant room of the steward’s own eldest son, where a warrior’s meal of cold meat and fat-toasted bread awaited him. As he struggled to stay awake long enough to eat it, a knock sounded.

It was Lord Uyane, accompanied by two servants, both carrying steaming ewers. Meoraq’s first impulse was to turn them all away, but remembering that he would be sleeping in another man’s cupboard and it might be a kind gesture not to cake it in the grime of an old trek through the wildlands and a fresh fight in the arena, Meoraq gave humble thanks and stood aside.

The servants brought a bath out from a closet and filled it, then bared their faces, demurely averting their eyes as they awaited his selection.

“Understand that I am not in
the habit of offering mere servants to the Sheulek I am honored to receive,” Lord Uyane remarked, watching Meoraq pointedly resume his meal. “But as we share blood, any kin of mine is kin of yours.”

“Understood and forgiven.”

“I suppose I should offer my wife,” the steward continued, casually folding his arms and laying his fingertips across the hilts of his sabks. “But she’s not feeling well tonight.”

“My prayers for her recovery,” said Meoraq.

The steward watched him eat. The servants glanced at one another. One of them fidgeted briefly with her sleeve.

“How long have you been traveling?” the steward asked suddenly.

The question caught him by surprise. He had to think about it. “I left the walls of Tothax mid-autumn…after the gruu harvest,” he said, recalling the last judgment he’d made there. Lord Arug and his curse of daughters. And Shuiv, another good man with a blade broken under Meoraq’s heel. “Not long after the night of the burning tower, if you heard of that here.”

“We heard. I admit I heard it for a child’s knee-time tale, but I believe it better than I believe a man could walk away a quarter of the year and not want a woman.”

Meoraq glanced at the servants. They dipped their necks in unison and let out twin mewls. He had to suppress a shudder as he turned back to his meal. “I thank you for your consideration, steward, but I would make poor company tonight.”

Lord Uyane’s spines twitched forward. He looked at the servants and then at Meoraq again. “Company?” he echoed. “If it’s company you’d rather have
, I could set out a game of Crown-Me or read the Word with you, but unless you make it a Sheulek’s command, I’ll be damned if I bathe you.”

It wasn’t worth the explanation. “You, then,” said Meoraq,
waving at the girl on the left.

At Lord Uyane’s nod, the other girl hooded herself and took Meoraq’s boots away with her to be cleaned. The steward remained, unabashedly watching as Meoraq unbuckled his harness. “Have you any other requests of me, honored one?” he asked, and immediately snorted and muttered, “Honored one. To think I’ve lived so long as to give Razi’s sprat my obedience. You are
the very image of him, you know.”

“How did you know him?” Meoraq asked, allowing the servant to finish undressing him.

“He came crawling over the mountains in his first striding years and stayed the winter with us. New Sheulek, eh? They want to see the sun rise over the edge of the world and drink the waters that come washing in from whatever lies beyond. Never understood that,” he added. “The sun is the sun no matter where it rises and that water tastes like fish fuck in it. You look a little old for that nonsense, yourself. Pilgrimage?”

“Yes.”

“To Xi’Matezh? What else is out here?” he asked wryly at Meoraq’s startled glance. “They tell me Gedai used to be the center of the world in the age before the Fall. Ha. Nothing out here now but rock and ruins. And the ocean, I suppose. Where the fish fuck. I could tell you the way to the temple easily enough,” he went on. “There’s no road as roads are reckoned, but there’s a broad enough footpath most of the way and a few underlodges for pilgrims to take a night’s ease. I try to make the walk myself once a year. Usually try to time it with the Festival of the Fifth Light so I don’t have to listen to all those fucking bells.”

“Have you ever seen the doors?
”

“
You mean, have I seen them open? Not for me and not for your father, but I know they do. Happened right in front of me once.”

Meoraq’s spines swept forward and he sat up fast, splashing water over the sides of the bath.

The steward glanced down, scratching his toes through the spreading puddle on his tiles. “I don’t like to think of it, but it’s truth. I’d been there most of the day and I’d have sworn to our true Father’s face that I was alone the whole time, for I never heard a sound inside, but then the doors opened. A man came out. Sheulek. I didn’t know him. He looked…” The steward’s gaze shifted to the servant, who was trying very hard to be invisible as she went about her duties despite what must be very exciting talk to one of her kind. “He looked like a dead man,” he said finally. “And he looked at me like I was a dead man.”

Meoraq felt the servant shiver a little as she scrubbed his back.

“I was burning a candle there. Nothing fancy, just a sign to the Six. Most do. He looked at it and he looked at me. Then he started walking. He took his blades off—his sabks, I mean—and he broke one and stabbed the other through the Prophet’s mark without ever breaking stride. He walked through the doors and out of the shrine and then he walked himself right off the edge of the world. There’s a drop, you know, and the rocks where the ocean rolls in. He never said a word, never took a breath to brace himself. He went over like it was what Sheul told him to do.”

Amber’s voice, like a
chill breeze through a warm room:
If you jump off a cliff, God doesn’t catch you
.

“Never said a word,” the steward said again, rubbing at the side of his throat with one rough thumb. “To say truth, that was the last time I went in as far as God’s doors, but I keep going back. How long will you be staying with us, honored on
e?”

“Just the night.”

“I’ll freshen your pack then. Have you any special requests of my provisioner?”