The Quartered Sea (30 page)

"They're still fields of laborers, peerless one." Arms behind his head, so that the tattooed muscles of his chest and the taut ripples of his abdomen showed to their best advantage, he lay back against his woven support and closed his eyes. "Wake me when there's something interesting to see."

The xaan raised a thin eyebrow but said nothing, so Benedikt returned to watching the scenery, determined to find it fascinating because Hueru found it dull. He hadn't forgotten either blow—his cheek would bear the mark of the second for some time—nor had he forgiven. Thrust into yet another situation where his choices were made for him, he clung to his anger, using it like an anchor. It was the first uncomplicated emotion he'd had for some time.

Panels of the same gauze that masked the features of the priests hung down around the platform but did little to obscure the view. Up above, a brilliantly patterned square of silk provided welcome shade. The platform itself rode on top of a storage compartment almost a man's height deep that held both the xaan's personal tent, the household tent, and most of their furnishings.

Although large, long-necked, vaguely sheeplike animals called coloas carried packs and pulled small carts, the actual forward movement of the caravan was provided by the single and double braids who served the xaan. Two long poles with many smaller crosspieces extended out from the front of each of the three large wagons. Two shorter poles trailed behind.

At his first sight of men and women taking their places by the poles, Benedikt had been appalled, but Hueru had made it quite clear that he was to climb the ladder, sit down, and shut up. He found himself searching for the girl from the bath, wondering if her limp excused her or made an expected service painful and difficult. He didn't see her at the xaan's poles, but there were two other wagons.

Getting under way was as bad as he'd imagined it could be—backs straining, heavy, ridged sandals digging into the causeway, angry voices demanding a greater effort. Once the wagons were moving, it didn't seem so bad.

The causeway had been built up with hard-packed gravel and kept as smooth and as level as possible. The wagon wheels were so large and narrow that very little of them came in contact with ground at any one time. The pace never moved above a fast walk. The xaan's staff could catch up, climb the ladder, conduct their business, and climb back down again all without interrupting the steady forward movement of the caravan.

Friends pulled or pushed side by side, talking or singing. Even the four junior priests walked at a crosspiece, robed and gauzed.

"They'd be walking anyway," the xaan had pointed out, amused by his reaction. "I don't use whips or chains, and those who call the cadence walk with the rest. There are brakemen for the hills, and I don't travel during the heat of the day. If you weren't so noticeable, you could try it yourself and see that I'm not forcing my people to endure untold hardships."

Benedikt, who had walked from one end of Shkoder to the other, carrying almost everything he owned on his back, found it difficult to argue. Later, he found himself watching the fields pass by and not even thinking of how.

"Xaan Mijandra cannot sleep and wants you to sing to her."

Having just gotten rid of the senior groom, who seemed to determine to teach him the chorus of a dozen songs he didn't actually know the verses to, Benedikt opened one eye and peered wearily up at the old woman looming over him. Before the groom, he'd endured an incredibly long dinner in the big audience chamber surrounded by strangers who also had six braids and nothing else in common with him—although the caravan master had attempted to include him in a conversation about causeway repairs. All he wanted to do was spent a quiet moment trying to absorb the day. "She wants me now?" he sighed.

Backlit by the small lantern hanging from the central crosspiece of his small tent, the xaan's senior attendant gave Benedikt much the same look she'd have given a bug found in the bedding. "No. She wants you to sing to her tomorrow so that she can sleep tonight. Get up, fix your hair, and follow me."

The server had two braids, Benedikt had six.
It seems the number's less important than the head the braids are hanging from
, he reflected, reluctantly doing as he was told.

The xaan's personal tent was only slightly smaller than the household tent. Two guards stood under the awning that protected the entrance from the weather but, to Benedikt's surprise, they were the only two guards he saw.

He followed the attendant across a sitting room, through a belled flap in the inner wall, and into the xaan's bedchamber. The bed, a thin mattress over the ubiquitous dais, looked large enough for six or seven people, but it held only the xaan and her dog.

As they entered, the dog's head rose, his ears went up like triangular flags, and he began to bark, bouncing stiff-legged forward and back on the embroidered coverlet.

"Hush, Shecquai!" Smiling fondly down at him, the xaan reached out and scooped him back to her side where he continued to glare at Benedikt even as he thoroughly licked her fingers. "Leave us, Zulich."

Benedikt's small tent had been raised close to the xaan's at the point of maximum privacy and minimum time needed to get to her side should she send for him. To his astonishment, the senior tent raiser had a number of such positions drawn on a map of the camp with the lines of sight drawn in and the time needed to reach the xaan marked precisely in each.

The tents of dependents with more than five braids and no blood tie consisted of two long, supple poles, crossed and pegged at the middle with their ends shoved into the earth. A square of thin waxed convas was arranged over the frame as the occupant required—illusion of privacy balanced against necessary air flow.

"The tent suits me fine, peerless one."

"Good."

Benedikt stared down at his bare foot and wondered, as the silence stretched and lengthened, if he was supposed to speak next. He'd been brought here to sing; should he just start?

It was very quiet. The multiple layers of fabric between the xaan and the camp made the silence seem weirdly muffled.

And then he realized where here was.

They were
alone
in her bedchamber. Him. And the xaan. And that barking rat. Trust? Or a test? Or… He'd been alone with the tul more than once but never in his bedchamber. He felt his ears begin to burn.

"You aren't very old, are you, Benedikt?"

Startled, he raised his head to find her watching him speculatively.

"Don't worry, I'm not belittling your manhood. I was wondering if your relative youth makes it easier or harder to be so far from your home."

He spread his hands, attempting to appear unaffected by her interest in his feelings. "Having never been any older than I am, I cannot say, peerless one."

"Well put," she acknowledged, her mouth curving momentarily up into a smile. "But still, it must be difficult to be so different from everyone around you. Every face you see emphasizes how alone you are."

Her casual sympathy almost undid him. Not even Xhojee, intent on following the tul's commands, had realized how alone he'd felt. Tears pricked at the inside of his lids and it took him a moment to find his voice. "Not
your
face, peerless one."

It was the kind of charming, throwaway compliment that Tadeus might have used, but Benedikt meant it. For the first time since he'd opened eyes in the tul's compound, someone had seen him. He felt as though he were suddenly doing more than merely surviving; that he'd started to actually live again.
I'm not wearing the bear suit anymore
.… He could never thank the xaan enough for that.

She leaned back against her cushions, the dog curled up in an indignant, wide-eyed ball by her side. "Pinch off that lamp to your right and come closer."

The bed came up to Benedikt's mid-calf—an awkward height at the best of times and more so under these particular circumstances. He sat as gracefully as he could and as near to the edge as possible.

The dog lifted its tiny head and growled.

"I don't think he likes me, peerless one."

"Shecquai doesn't like most people, but he'll get used to you in time." Half lidded, her eyes glittered in the remaining lamp light. "What are you wearing about your neck? It is
not
a sign of Tulpayotee, or I would have had it removed."

Removed. Lost. Like all the rest. Benedikt's hand closed around the coin. "It's a token from my
queen
, peerless one."

"Queen?"

He didn't know an equivalent word so he'd used the Shkoden. "My Xaantalax. She rules my land."

"Ah. Should I be jealous?"

Anyone else might have thought she was flirting, but even as off balance as he was, Benedikt was still a bard. Xaan Mijandra had meant the question as asked. "No, peerless one." And reluctantly he added, "She's a part of my past."

"You still wear her token."

Slowly, his hands rose to the thong and lifted it over his head. He felt as though he were watching himself do it—too shocked to stop himself. Dropping the coin into his right palm, he closed his fingers tightly around it.

The xaan made no further reference to his queen or the coin, but he could feel her approval and that helped. A little.

"I often have trouble sleeping when I travel," she told him, stroking the dog. "Can a song brush away the day's distractions and help me rest?"

"Shall I try, peerless one?" When she nodded, he sang one of the songs Xhojee had sung to comfort him the day he'd fallen so desperately apart; a children's song about an old woman who tucked the animals into bed, but because there were so many animals, it was daylight before some, like the bats and the anteaters, were asleep. Although the small dog stared at him throughout, occasionally quivering with indignation, the xaan visibly relaxed. He could have ensured that she slept but remembering how she'd reacted to "The Dark Sailor" he was afraid she'd be aware of the manipulation.

When he finished, she sighed sleepily. "A stranger sings the songs of my childhood better than my own people. I'll have to make certain you learn others." One hand waved a minimalist dismissal. "Many of the great houses keep personal entertainers, but I never have. Perhaps I was waiting for you."

Standing, he bowed. "I'll try to be worth the wait, peerless one."

I am the personal entertainer of the Kohunlich-xaan
, he thought as he left the tent. He grinned at one of the guards and was pleased to see the flicker of a reaction in spite of discipline.

It felt great to know who he was again.

Hueru pushed aside the canvas at the end of Xaan Mijandra's bed and thrust himself forward into the room. "I don't like him being alone with you, peerless one."

"The waves obey
him
? Does he think we're fools, peerless one?"

"No. He doesn't, which is why I'm inclined believe him."

"I don't believe it," Hueru muttered, shaking his head. "I still say the Kohunlich-tul intended you to take him so that he could turn on you from within your defenses."

"Don't be an idiot. Benedikt is of more use to my brother with my brother." The xaan sat straighter, rippled hair falling forward to bracket the swell of her breasts. The movement distracted Hueru as she'd known it would. It was a game she played with herself, seeing how little flesh would make him hers all over again.