Unholy War (65 page)

Ramita looked at the plinth. Mughal Tariq was leaning forward, licking his lips, his stance subtly eager. He was leaning slightly to one side, towards his right, where Vahraz and his Godspeakers stood. All afternoon he had leaned more towards his left, towards Hanook. She realised that this was the part of the afternoon the young man had been waiting for.

‘Does he ever give clemency?’

‘In some cases,’ Dareem said carefully. ‘Lady, a ruler must be feared as well as loved. He must never be seen as indecisive or weak. That is why these open sessions are held, so the ruler’s hand is visible to his people.’

‘I understand,’ Ramita replied. She did, too. In the market, people had to understand that you weren’t a soft touch. But her sons would be waking soon. ‘I don’t need to see this. May we go?’

Dareem looked reluctant to leave, but he took her arm and steered her through the crowd and back past the cordon and into the masses beyond who were all pressing forward, no doubt eager to see blood at sunset. It was a struggle to break through into the quieter backstreets.

‘A queen does not need to see the workings of the court, Lady. The wives are confined to the zenana from marriage until death. Only if the mughal goes on a processional are favoured wives permitted to travel.’

The same four walls until death, locked behind them in a permanent war with the other wives. I would be nothing but a pampered broodmare – is this what I want? Is it truly what my husband intended, after going to such lengths to make me into a mage? Is this my duty now?

She had always been a dutiful daughter.
Though I was not a faithful wife
. She felt tears brimming behind her eyes at the thought of the life laid out before her.

‘My Lady?’

She straightened, met his eye. ‘Sorry. I am ready to go on now.’

‘We will look after you, Lady,’ Dareem said, understanding in his eyes.

By which you mean that you will install me in that boy’s harem and reap what benefits you can.

*

An old Lakh scholar with a hacking cough tugged at the stack of scrolls, making the whole bank of shelves rattle alarmingly. Alaron considered using telekinetic-gnosis to ensure it stayed upright, then decided the shelves had probably survived such treatment for centuries and went back to his transcribing. Hanook’s library was cool, but not damp – the vizier had gone to considerable lengths to ventilate the long room with dry air. The scrolls contained centuries of mostly Lakh writing; they were completely undecipherable to Alaron, but the Hanook had added to the library during his own tenure, and that included texts from Yuros. It was one of those that Alaron was copying now with increasing excitement.

The sheath of parchment he’d found stacked in a pile labelled ‘Yuros’ was old, but not ancient: a copy of an original document given by Antonin Meiros himself to Hanook forty years ago, during one of the vizier’s clandestine visits to Hebusalim. Hanook himself had told Alaron about it when he had first asked to do some research; the vizier had appeared to be mildly unsettled by the request, and Alaron wondered if he had said the wrong thing.

‘No – it is just something that Antonin Meiros said when he gave me these papers: he told me that researchers might come here, and that I should be sure of them before I allowed them access.’ Then Hanook had looked at Alaron intensely. ‘My father and my uncle kept me as a family secret all my years. Even my Aunt Justina didn’t know of me. They did not trust even their own people in the Ordo Costruo with the knowledge of my existence. This was in part because Antonin had declared that no magi should operate in Lakh and I was a violation of his own edict.’

Alaron shifted uncomfortably at this. Ramita worshipped her dead husband and it didn’t sit well that the old mage might have been a hypocrite in certain matters.

This must have showed on his face, because Hanook had gone on, ‘The very fact that Adric Meiros came to Khotriawal tells you that the Ordo Costruo took a keen interest in matters beyond Hebusalim. My father told me that even then they were becoming aware that other groups with the gnosis were abroad in the lands, trying to win status in kingdoms all over Ahmedhassa. Most were weak, low-blooded, but from time to time they came across powerful magi – sometimes renegades of his own order, but also Souldrinkers, the so-called Rejects of Kore. I myself have faced these beings at times, trying to inveigle their way into court. We kill them, or expose them to the Godspeakers anonymously and let them deal with them. So Antonin Meiros’ vigilance in this matter was right and necessary.’

For a fleeting moment Alaron feared that Hanook took him for such a thing, but the old vizier had fixed him in the eye and asked, ‘Do I need to know what it is you study, young man?’

‘Sir,’ he’d replied, ‘if you are at all unsure of me, I withdraw my request.’

Hanook had studied him silently for a few seconds, then said slowly, ‘I have gone over these papers many times and found nothing but matters of scholarly interest. They are mostly botanic in nature. Antonin Meiros was a Sylvanic mage of great skill, as you may be aware. Is that your interest?’

Alaron had shrugged, though his heart was pounding a little faster. Botany might have been the dullest topic of them all at college, but it was possibly also the key to unravelling the remainder of the Scytale’s mysteries. ‘I’m just looking for something to do,’ he’d said as nonchalantly as he could.

Apparently spending his Arcanum years alongside Ramon Sensini had turned him into a proficient liar, because the vizier had given permission.

And he had found the
exact
text he needed.

The title inscribed on the scroll-case was perfectly innocuous:
Herbal Compounds and Associated Materials
. Inside were sheaths of notes in a spidery hand that Alaron recognised as Meiros’ own. He didn’t understand the words, except for a sentence at the top:
Final compound variants, from memory
. It was dated 1183LCii, which meant nothing to him. The characters beneath it were foreign to him, line upon line written in an alphabet he didn’t know, but as he stared, he realised it did look vaguely familiar. He almost put it aside, but something made him leaf through the next few pages. And he stared.

From the third page on, a list of symbols were placed in a column on the left, with adjacent blocks of text, still in the unknown script, but what made him stop and start quivering in excitement was that he recognised those symbols: They were the exact symbols he’d been staring at for months, inscribed on the inner cylinder of the Scytale.

He’d almost shouted aloud, but at the last minute he’d managed to turn his whoop of joy into a coughing fit like those of the old scholar at the next table. The old man said something conciliatory in Lakh. ‘Yeah, the dust,’ Alaron replied, trying to stop his hand from trembling.

Now he was copying out the scrolls words for word, as exactly as he could. He might not know the symbols of the alphabet Meiros used, but this was a language, and languages could be translated – how or when or where, he had no idea, but he’d find out.

It was the same thrill he’d felt when he, Ramon and Cym had unravelled the trail of clues that led to the Scytale in the first place. He found himself missing them both hugely, and hoping that somehow they were both alive and well.

He finished writing and waved the copies about to thoroughly dry the ink, while wondering if he really did now hold the secret of the Scytale; that he had the ingredients to the ambrosia that turned men into magi. It seemed unbelievable – but then, so had finding the Scytale in the first place. He carefully rolled his copies up, found another unused scroll case and slid them in.
I’ll conceal this with the Scytale …

‘Alaron?’

He started guiltily, but it was only Ramita. The old Lakh scholar in the corner looked at her like she was an intruder and barked a warning. They eyeballed each other, but Ramita was clearly agitated, so Alaron stepped between them. ‘I’m done here,’ he said softly, trying to convey some of his excitement.

She caught his look, and her eyes lit up faintly.

‘How was court?’

Her nose wrinkled. ‘My behind is sore from sitting all day. And the children were squalling when I got back. These servants of the vizier know nothing about how to care for babies.’

Alaron grinned. ‘Let’s go and feed them.’ For the last week they’d been trying to get the twins to eat more solids, to help the weaning. It was messy, but kind of fun. His latest trick was to distract them with one hand while slipping food into their mouths with the other. The results had been mixed.

Ramita smiled warmly. ‘You are good with them, bhaiya.’

So they adjourned to the upper level, wrapped the twins in their heavily stained feeding blankets and spooned a stodgy mess of pumpkin and soft rice into demanding mouths, all the while making silly noises and pulling faces to entertain their charges. The food going in triggered waste coming out, and Alaron changed Nasatya’s wraps, then handed him to Ramita.

‘You know, I do not think my father ever helped my mother with these things, for any of us children,’ Ramita remarked, looking up at him with a fond look on her face. ‘It is not considered manly.’

Alaron shrugged. ‘My father cared for me. He was plenty manly.’

‘So are you,’ Ramita replied, unlacing the front of her smock. She allowed the twins only two feeds a day now, but it helped to ease the discomfort she was feeling. ‘You are a very good man.’

Something in her voice resonated with recognition, of something inside him or herself – he couldn’t tell which, but he found himself looking back at her, a sudden lump in his throat.

She’d been breastfeeding in front of him by necessity for so long he’d stopped noticing. it was like being with the lamiae women, who went topless all the time. But the mood was different tonight and he found himself consciously averting his eyes. They’d played out this scene so often, but this time his eyes kept sliding sideways, back to her. The evening light was glowing softly through the windows and onto her face, making her skin radiate and turning her eyes into luminous orbs that glowed. And she was looking at him differently too, not with her normal businesslike sheen, but more vulnerable.

She knew it too, because she abruptly shook herself and snapped, ‘Bhaiya, are you just going to stand there and stare, or are you going to change Dasra’s wraps?’

He changed Das silently, his back to her while she put Nas to her nipple. Her soft groan as the infant latched on was perhaps the most erotic thing he’d ever heard. His hands shook as he cleaned up and he had to swallow before he could speak.

‘So,’ he managed at last, ‘how was court, truly?’

She didn’t reply immediately, and as the silence drew out, he looked back at her and saw that she was silently crying, tears flowing in rivulets from the inside corners of her eyes. She cooed something to Nas and shifted him from the breast, looking down at him and stroking his head.

‘Tariq is just a boy,’ she said eventually. ‘He is fourteen and surrounded by old men who tell him what to do. He is suspicious of everyone and lives in fear. He overeats and he drinks more than he should for a boy of his age. He is turning to fat already. He plays favourites and lives for pleasure. But what he enjoys most is holding the power of life and death in his hands.’

‘He told you this?’

‘I could tell this by looking at him. He reminded me of those rich men who used to come to the markets, buying and selling what they pleased, careless of the cost. We traders would bow and scrape to them, do whatever they wanted, but we fleeced them and despised them.’

‘So you didn’t like him then?’

‘No, I did not.’

‘Will you marry him?’ he asked, his voice faint.

‘I don’t know. Hanook and Dareem think it’s for the best, but I am not so sure.’

Alaron swallowed. He wasn’t sure that his advice on this matter was entirely neutral any more. He enjoyed her odd mix of pragmatism and spirituality, and despite the growing feeling that Hanook was as good a person as any to hand over the Scytale to, doubts remained. He knew that the moment he surrendered it, his role in this drama, and in Ramita’s life, was effectively over, and that was scaring him too. What was he without the Scytale? Just an outlaw in his own lands.

If I give up the Scytale to them, I may as well become a monk after all … But I don’t want that … I want a family, and my friends around me. I want a life, not a hermitage …

He swallowed and concentrated on pinning Das’ wrap, then went to Ramita and bent to take the snuffling and contented Nas, while she fastened the front of her smock. Before he could move away, she seized his right hand and pointedly examined his rakhi-string. It had lost its decorations, and the orange colouring had been all but leeched out from months of bathing, sweat and travel. ‘I need to get you a new rakhi, bhaiya. Tomorrow is the feast of Raksha Bandan, the celebration of brother and sister. You must bring me a gift.’

‘I don’t have anything to give you,’ he said, his voice husky. ‘Only my loyalty.’

She smiled sadly. ‘That is more than enough, bhaiya.’

He pulled his hand away. ‘Ramita, Hanook told you where your family is. You could live with them, safely hidden. You don’t have to submit to what he wants. It isn’t Destiny or Duty.’

‘You don’t understand, bhaiya,’ she whispered. ‘After I returned with Dareem, Hanook told me that the mughal has agreed that my sons will be adopted if I wed him. They will be princes, perhaps even mughal one day! That is the essence of my Duty: to do well for my children. That is what my father did for me, and now I can do the same for my children.’

‘But—’

‘Bhaiya, I need to be alone now. I have heard your advice, but I do not need to take it.’

‘Ramita, we’ve got the Kore-bedamned Scytale—’

Her eyes flared. ‘
OUT!
’

The twins burst into tears at the sudden shout, and the cacophony drove him from the room.