Trinity Rising: Book Two of the Wild Hunt (Wild Hunt Trilogy 2) (31 page)

The desertman fended off the pack with his free arm,
qatan
flashing in an arc. It met Gair’s longsword and glanced off with a fat spark. Across the street, his unexpected ally danced between two flickering blades, his own singing through fluid curves as it blocked and slashed.

Gair had only a second in which to settle his grip before the desertman attacked again. He parried quickly and was almost caught out when the Gimraeli rolled his wrists and brought the curved blade slashing upwards at his belly. Leaping back, he ducked the follow-through and then had to duck again as his opponent whirled and nearly separated his head from his neck.

He thrust himself back upright in time to catch the next slash on his sword. The
qatan
shrieked half the length of the blade and jarred against the longsword’s heavy quillon. Black eyes glared at him; Gair threw his weight forwards, slamming his right elbow into the desertman’s face. Bone crunched, and as the Gimraeli staggered backwards, sand-veil bloody, Gair swung. A grunt, and the
qatan
clattered to the ground.

The dance went on, but he had the rhythm of it now. It was in his head, in his blood; his sword carved the air into a web of silver around him. Crimson drops glittered like glass beads on a mandala, turning and tumbling through shape after shape before spiralling finally, gracefully, to rest.

Gair blinked and the illusion was broken. Dust and heat filled the alley and the air smelled sticky-sweet as a butcher’s shop. Over the thudding of his heart, he heard the hubbub of the souq a street away, but the music to which he had been dancing was gone. Even his headache had dulled, at least for now.

Slowly, he straightened up. He held his sword cautiously at the guard in case the threat was not over, but nothing moved in the alley save his unexpected ally, busy wiping his
qatan
on the shirt of a corpse at his feet. Two other bloody bundles that had once been men lay on the ground nearby, dark stains spreading beneath them. The first time he’d drawn steel against another man with real intent he’d felt a rush of nausea after. This time, he felt nothing at all.

When the desert-robed man was done, he scabbarded his sword and stood up, lowering his sand-veil.

‘That was neatly done,’ he said. ‘A straight blade rarely does so well against a soul-sword. I am N’ril al-Feqqin.’

Gair lowered his own weapon. N’ril was a few years older than him, with lively black eyes and a crescent-shaped scar across his right cheek. He pushed back his headdress, revealing long hair as dark and glossy as a raven’s wing held in a tail with a green and gold enamelled
zirin
.

Inclining his head, Gair gave his name. ‘The sun smiles on our meeting.’

N’ril grinned, clearly pleased. ‘You know the proper response.’

‘A friend taught me a little about Gimrael. I owe you my thanks.’

‘You owe me your life, I think, but we can discuss a bloodprice later.’

Stooping, N’ril ripped open the other two desertmen’s shirts. Each had a tattoo over his heart in the shape of a many-rayed sun. ‘Cultists, like the other one,’ he said. ‘I had not thought to see them this far from the inner desert. Alderan will be interested to learn of this.’

‘You know Alderan?’ Gair asked, cleaning his own sword.

N’ril flashed him a dazzling smile. ‘But of course. He asked me to find you.’

And that explained that. Gair slid his sword into its scabbard and slung his belongings back over his shoulder. ‘This is becoming a very strange day.’

‘It will get stranger before the sun sets, I think,’ said N’ril. ‘Strange days usually do. Shall we go?’

‘What about them?’ Gair jerked his head in the direction of the corpses in the dust.

‘Do not trouble yourself – they will be dealt with, and probably feeding yellowtails in the harbour by morning, I would think.’ The desertman showed his teeth. ‘But we should move, in case they have friends.’

With N’ril leading the way, it took only a few minutes to reach their destination. The house was no different from any other in the street: a wooden door set deep in the wall of a blocky, thickly rendered four-storey building on the corner of a narrow alley. The lower storeys had no windows at all, and those on the upper two were narrow and well shuttered. The blistered paintwork had once been green.

‘Protection against the heat, and the storms,’ said N’ril, following the direction of Gair’s gaze. ‘Like a woman, a home wears its true beauty inside.’

He unlocked the door and pulled it wide, revealing a passageway so deeply shaded that Gair was blinded after the intensity of the sunlight in the street. The passageway led into a square courtyard where fragrant herbs and bright flowers spilled from terracotta pots and a fountain burbled in a mosaic-tiled basin, providing an illusion of coolness. Around the sides ran cloister-like walks, the arches picked out with glazed tiles, a different colour for each of the four storeys. Shrieking swallows quartered the brilliant sky above.

In the cool of the shadiest walk stood a long carved table set for a meal. Alderan was taking his ease on a bench beside it, his back against the wall and a cup in his hand. He looked up as they entered.

‘All safely gathered in, N’ril?’

‘There was a little trouble,’ the Gimraeli said. ‘Cultists. Three of them.’

‘You’re sure?’

N’ril nodded. ‘They had the mark.’

Alderan grimaced into his cup. ‘Something tells me they didn’t open their shirts and show you because you asked them nicely.’

‘Indeed no! We were quite impolite about it, although they were most rude first.’

N’ril gestured that Gair should take a seat, the sweep of his arm encompassing the bowls and covered dishes arrayed on the table. ‘Please, Gair, be at ease in my house.’

‘No one saw anything? There was nothing that could connect them to you?’ Alderan reached for a tall pitcher on the table and filled two more cups.

‘The alley was empty apart from us and them,’ said N’ril. ‘They had cornered Gair – it would never have ended without bloodshed.’

‘We could have done without it, though. I was hoping to slip in and out of Zhiman-dar without attracting any attention.’

N’ril dropped into a chair and tugged off his headdress, tossing it onto the table. ‘The Cult is not well liked here. The city has prospered lately through trade with the Empire, and the Zhiman-dari merchants worship at the altar of commerce. They will not take kindly to any who disturb their devotions. No one will grieve much over those three, except perhaps their brothers-in-arms.’

Now that he was out of the sun, Gair found his headache easing further, enough to feel a little hungry. He explored the dishes in front of him and found sticky boiled rice in one, an aromatic stew with raisins in it in another. A third dish contained some kind of vegetables in a sharp-sweet yellow sauce. A basket held doughy flatbreads wrapped in a cloth. His stomach growled.

N’ril smiled at him as he filled his bowl. ‘Sword-work gives you an appetite, yes? Eat your fill, my friend.’

The food was strangely spiced to Gair’s northern palate, but for all its savour he might as well have had ashes in his mouth. Nothing tasted good any more. Nonetheless he needed sustenance, so he worked his way through a goodly helping, chewing and swallowing mechanically, washing it down with wine until his stomach was full.

Afterwards he pushed his chair back from the table and stretched out his legs, trying to relax. But his muscles felt tight and twitchy, ready at any second to have him up and pacing, and even when he unfastened the silver
zirin
and shook out his hair the headache wouldn’t budge completely.

The quicker this errand to Gimrael was over the better he’d like it. It felt too much like sitting still when what he wanted – what he needed – was to be moving, to be taking the battle to the enemy, not wasting time in some library. He kneaded his temples and sighed.

‘So, Alderan, what do you need?’ said N’ril, when they had finished eating. ‘I can arrange horses, provisions for your journey. Is there anything else?’

‘Desert clothing and temporary adoption into your house.’ Alderan topped up their cups. ‘And news from the capital, if you have any.’

‘Not much that is new; still less that is good. When the Cult’s Emissary speaks, more and more people are listening. The peace holds, but increasingly only at the end of an imperial lance. Theodegrance has had to strengthen the garrison in El Maqqam and I do not think it will be long before he has to send troops to the other cities as well, maybe even here now that the Cult is bold enough to assault travellers on the street in daylight. When that happens, he will exhaust his desert legions and I fear sending in heavily armed
ammanai
– forgive me – will only inflame the situation.’ N’ril spread his hands. ‘It is only going to end one way, I think.’

Frowning, Alderan tapped his cup against his chin. ‘What’s Kierim’s position?’

‘My princely cousin has a
lyrran
by the tail: he cannot hold on and dare not let go. If he clamps down on the Cult’s activities he will offend the tribes who are sympathetic to the Emissary, which will make his rule even more uncomfortable than it already is. But neither can he allow the Emissary and his followers to become so powerful that they have influence enough to force him to cede from the Empire. When the Cult’s sway was confined to a handful of deep-desert settlements, they were little more than a nuisance. Now that they are gaining a presence in the cities, especially those which have forged strong links with the Empire, well . . .’ Leaning on his elbow, N’ril raised his cup to his lips. ‘I would not be in his boots for all the horses in his herd.’

‘The Emissary?’ Gair asked. ‘I thought the Suvaeon executed him after the war?’

N’ril smiled thinly. ‘I think perhaps they executed a wild-haired zealot who claimed to be the Emissary, but only he and God know the truth of it.’

Gair blinked. ‘You mean they beheaded an innocent man?’

‘There’s no such thing as an entirely innocent man, Gair,’ said Alderan, frowning into his cup. ‘Not in a time of war – and there certainly wasn’t in that one.’

‘But—’

‘Does it matter?’ The old man’s lips twisted as if the wine he was drinking had turned sour in his mouth. ‘The Knights exacted their retribution, and justice was seen to be done. Does it really matter whether the man who died twenty-odd years ago, after a failed uprising, was the actual Emissary or not?’

Somewhat shocked that Alderan could be so callous, it took Gair a moment to find his voice. ‘It should.’

‘In a perfect world, I’d agree with you,’ Alderan said, ‘but we have to live in the world that is, not in the one we might wish it to be.’

‘You must understand, my friend,’ N’ril put in before Gair could retort, ‘the Cult believes Lord God Himself chooses the Bearer of the Word. Any one of their initiates would gladly sacrifice their own life to protect his – to die in the Emissary’s service is to walk the path to heaven.’

Behind Gair’s eyes the headache was intensifying again, beating time with his pulse. He rubbed his temples harder, wishing he could will it away. ‘Maybe if the Church had executed the right man, we wouldn’t be having all this trouble now.’

‘If they had, the Cult would merely have heralded a new Emissary. This is not a snake that can be killed by simply cutting off its head.’ The Gimraeli broke off a piece of flatbread and sopped it in one of the dishes. ‘The Voice of Heaven is eternal, for he speaks the Word of God,’ he intoned, and popped the sauce-laden bread into his mouth.

So it really didn’t matter, in practical terms, who had died that day. ‘Is it likely to be the same man, though?’

N’ril chewed, considering. ‘Probably, but I cannot be certain. They say he speaks from behind a curtain to spare him from the sins of the world. Nobody sees him but his chosen preachers, who translate the Voice of Heaven’s commandments for the masses.’

‘Most of which can be interpreted as “Death to the unbeliever!”,’ said Alderan sourly. ‘An impossible situation indeed. Still, Kierim’s an able politician – he’ll thread a path through it if anyone can.’ He drained his cup and looked over at Gair. ‘We should do something about your shoulder.’

Gair glanced at the bloody rip in his shirt. ‘It’s just a scratch.’

‘Even a scratch can turn rotten overnight here, in the heat.’

‘I said it’s nothing.’

Anger sparked in the old man’s eyes again, sudden as summer lightning, gone just as quickly. ‘Come and see me when you’ve got cleaned up. I’ve a salve that will help.’

Standing up, Gair turned to their host. ‘N’ril, is there a bathhouse I can use?’

‘Of course.’

The Gimraeli gave him directions to it and where to find his room after. Shouldering his belongings, Gair excused himself and left. He had a feeling he knew what they would talk about next, and he did not want to hear it.

The door into the house swung closed quietly behind Gair, but Alderan rather suspected that if they hadn’t been guests, the Leahn would have slammed it. He was coiled up inside like an over-wound clock and had been for the last two weeks, ever since he’d realised he had to come to Gimrael or break his word of honour.

If only the boy could see that this was the best way to stop Savin. But he was young, and all tangled up in the bramble-thicket of his own hurt. Who could blame him for wanting – needing – to lash out, after what he’d been through? Staring into the dregs of his wine, Alderan sighed.
I wish you’d trust me more, lad. I’d tell you all of it if I could
.

From the corner of his eye he saw N’ril reach for the wine jug, and after only a brief hesitation set his cup down firmly and slid it across the table to be refilled. Goddess help him, he needed a drink.

N’ril topped up both cups. Leaning his elbows on the table, he began picking at the last flatbread. Out in the courtyard, half a dozen brown and black birds no bigger than sparrows swooped down to the rim of the fountain’s basin, to drink and splash and chatter amongst themselves. From time to time they cocked an eye towards the two men in the shade, watching.

‘He has a true gift with a blade,’ the Gimraeli said at last. He threw a few crumbs out into the sunshine and watched the birds squabble over them.