Blood's Pride (Shattered Kingdoms) (8 page)

‘My Lord?’

Eofar fumbled under the table in front of him, produced the key to the trunk and laid it on the arm of the chair. ‘The writing instruments. Get them.’

Daryan remained where he was, stock-still. ‘I can’t,’ he said tightly. ‘You know I’m not allowed to touch—’

‘I know you’ve been stealing them,’ Eofar informed him curtly and he flushed, but before he could protest or even apologise his master said, ‘Your rules, not ours. I would have given them to you if you had asked. Now get them.’

Daryan went to the trunk, unlocked it and lifted up the lid. For a heady moment he breathed in the dry, musty smell of everything that made his life bearable: secrets and truth, dreams and action,
hope
. Inside the trunk were the flat squares of dried pulp – the Shadari had no word for them, but he had learned the Nomas word, ‘paper’, along with ‘book’, ‘ink’ and ‘pen’ – piled up amongst quills and little pots of dark, vinegary-smelling ink. On the other side of the trunk were leather and cloth-bound books imported from the Dead Ones’ homeland. He reached for the writing implements, then stopped.

The large book with the tattered red cover on the top of the stack belonged to Isa. He had a vivid memory of her sitting with it in her lap, her white hair tumbling down her back, staring at it, while he’d jealously spied on her from behind a chair. With a thrill of trepidation he took a moment to lift up the book. It fell open near the middle. On the left-hand page swirled a Norland script so ornate that he couldn’t tell where one word left off and another began, but on the right was a drawing alive with colours so bright they made his eyes ache. It showed a woman in a flowing cape of scarlet trimmed with gold, riding a dereshadi. Seated in front of her, wrapped up in her cape, was a little girl. In the distance a silver castle perched on a mountaintop like a wisp of cloud. The sky was dark, but bright yellow and azure flags fluttered from the castle’s innumerable spires, and ornaments of a lustrous purple were shown in the lady’s pale hair. The edges of the paper were smudged with dirt as if someone had turned to it many, many times.

‘Daryan?’ Eofar called softly.

He flipped the book closed, scooped up the requested materials and returned to his master. Eofar led him to the desk, where he set everything down, but before the Dead One could begin to write, the clay lid of the inkpot began to rattle, and then the pot itself began to skid very slowly across the desk.

Daryan watched in confusion until he became conscious of a faint, deep grinding sound, coming from a long, long way down. ‘Earthquake,’ he announced in alarm, but almost immediately the sound died away and the inkpot trembled to a stop. ‘Just a tremor,’ he breathed with relief. ‘That’s the second this month.’

Eofar moved to pick up the pen, but instead, after a moment’s hesitation he unbuckled the sheath of his dagger from around his leg and dropped it down onto the desk. ‘I want you to take this.’

‘My Lord, I can’t!’ Daryan glanced behind him towards the closed curtain. ‘You know what will happen to me if I’m caught with a knife—’

‘Take it,’ his master insisted, pushing it closer to him. ‘I may have to go away tonight, and I might be gone some time, so keep it with you. Just in case.’

‘My Lord – did you see something about
me
?’

‘I’m not sure. Maybe, but it was hard to tell,’ said Eofar. ‘Please take it.’

The sheathed dagger lay on the desk in front of them; it wasn’t going to go away on its own. ‘Are you ordering me, my Lord?’ asked Daryan.

‘Accept it as a gift – from a friend.’

Finally he picked it up, and a little shiver of danger raced through him. It was too big to put in his pocket so he slid it underneath his robe and then tied his sash tighter to hold it in place. Satisfied, Eofar picked up the quill and dipped it in the ink.

Just as he touched the point to the paper he said, ‘I have been waiting for a message from someone.’ He spoke very slowly, as if finding the right words took some effort. ‘The message should have come a long time ago – I was worried that this person might be in danger, or—’ He left the thought unfinished, but his meaning was plain enough. ‘The elixir was the only way to find out.’

Daryan drew close enough to feel the Dead One’s chill eddying around him. ‘What person, my Lord?’

Eofar’s quill scratched across the paper. ‘I saw things – bad things – and a place I must find. This place.’

Daryan watched the lines forming under his hand and felt an unexpected flush of panic. He looked again at the curtain. He really shouldn’t be part of this.

‘Do you know this sign?’ Eofar asked, lifting his hand away.

‘I don’t know – I don’t know what that is,’ he stammered, turning his head away from the paper, just as the Shadari at the funeral had turned away from the sand-written prayer. But despite himself he had already seen the character, a curving line with three small vertical lines beneath it: the Shadari character for ‘truth’. A character that Eofar couldn’t possibly know.

His hand ached with the desire to snatch up and rend that forbidden figure, to tear away the disaster that it surely boded. ‘Only the ashas were allowed to read and write. You know that.
They’re all dead.’ He laid his hand down over the paper, covering up the symbol, and looked at his master. ‘My Lord, who are you looking for? Who is in danger?’

Eofar clutched the quill even harder, and his eyes darted away. ‘I wanted to tell you – this secret, it was not my idea.’

‘Tell me what?’ It was beginning to dawn on him that whatever Eofar had been hiding was far more serious than he had imagined. ‘My Lord,
who
is in danger?’

‘My wife.’

Daryan’s face went slack with shock. ‘Your
what
?’

‘We made plans to leave the Shadar. I helped her escape, so she could see her family again. She didn’t tell me where they were; she said it wasn’t fair to them. We had a signal for when she was ready to go. It should have been a few days, a week. I waited. I’ve been waiting for five months. I couldn’t wait any more.’

‘Escape? But that would mean—’

‘You have never seen a place with that?’ In his impatience Eofar’s voice had risen to a squeak like a rusty hinge. ‘A doorway, like this,’ he drew the shape in the air with his free hand, the other still holding the quill, ‘with this above it?’

Daryan shook his head. ‘No,’ he responded truthfully, still reeling, ‘I never have.’

‘Not in the Shadar? Before you came here?’

‘I don’t know what you saw, my Lord, but it could not have been in the Shadar,’ he said definitely. ‘No Shadari would ever make a mark like that – or allow one to be made.’

‘Harotha’ – Eofar paused. His eyes blazed in the low light – ‘would she make a mark like that?’

‘Harotha is dead.’ The words felt cold and hard leaving his mouth.

Eofar looked down at the desk. The lamplight tinged his white hair with amber.

‘Harotha is dead,’ he said again, blinking rapidly to ward off the sharp pain that had suddenly sprung up behind his eyes. Some unwelcome creature fluttered awake in his chest. ‘Lord Eofar, Harotha is
dead
.’

Eofar set down the quill and looked into his eyes.

Daryan reached out and grasped the edge of the table. When he tried to speak again, the creature in his chest crawled up into his throat and choked him, so that he barely had breath enough to whisper, ‘
Isn’t she?
’

‘Move over, Dramash.’

‘You move over.’

‘No – you! My mother can see me from here!’

‘No, she can’t, Cara. The laundry’s in the way.’

‘I didn’t ask
you
, Beni.’

‘He’s right, and she’s inside, anyway,’ said Dramash. ‘Come on, let’s go over there. We’ll see better from there.’

Harotha pulled her dark shawl closer around her face as the three children scuttled away from the side of the house. She heard their bare feet rustle through the dry weeds and caught a glimpse of their little figures as she shrank around towards the back. A moment later she heard their voices again, just a few feet away. She was trapped; if she moved too much further around the curved wall she’d be in view of the house opposite.

‘I’m scared. I want to go home,’ said the little girl.

‘There’s nothing to be scared of,’ Dramash said kindly. Harotha smiled at his gently patronising tone; the girl was about a head taller than her little nephew. ‘Just wait. They’ll fly right over us. You’ll like it.’

‘You said if we stayed out until curfew we’d see something special. I’ve seen dereshadi before,’ said the other boy. He sounded older than Dramash and from his height she guessed he was eight or nine.

‘Not like this,’ Dramash insisted, his enthusiasm undampened. ‘When they change shifts they fly in a big triangle. It
is
special. When I’m a soldier I’ll have a dereshadi of my own. I’m going to teach it to do tricks.’

‘I don’t think your mother will let you do that,’ Cara said doubtfully. ‘She won’t even let you go fishing on your cousin’s boat.’

‘She’s scared of everything,’ said Dramash, but even though he meant it as a complaint, Harotha could hear the sadness underneath. He was right, too; Saria
was
scared of everything. ‘It’s okay – she doesn’t know it yet, but I’m going to protect her.’

‘Protecting her is your father’s job. Why doesn’t
he
do it?’ asked Beni. Harotha imagined a sneering, ugly face; she knew it was wrong to dislike a child, particularly one she had never even met, but she couldn’t help it.

‘He’s busy,’ Dramash answered stolidly.

‘How much longer do we have to wait?’ Cara broke in anxiously.

‘Until it starts getting dark, dummy,’ Beni answered. ‘Anyway, you
can’t
be a soldier,’ he said to Dramash. ‘Only Dead Ones can be soldiers.’

‘I’m going to be one anyway.’

‘Then you’ll be a traitor.’

‘No, I won’t. I’ll only do good things. I won’t let anyone get
hurt in the mines, I’ll get more food for everyone, and I’ll punish anyone who’s bad.’

‘But you’d have to live in the temple with the Dead Ones,’ Cara pointed out in an awed voice. ‘Won’t you be afraid?’

‘I’m not afraid of the Dead Ones.’

‘You’re not?’ Cara asked, breathless. ‘How come?’

There was a slight pause before he said, ‘I can’t tell you yet. It’s a secret.’

‘You’re just a big liar,’ said Beni. ‘You’re never going to be a solider. You’re going to go into the mines or the temple, just like everyone else.’

‘I’m going to be a
good
soldier,’ Dramash persisted, ‘and my father’s going to punish all of the bad ones.’

‘No, he won’t. Your father’s no good for anything. He’s a cripple.’

Harotha’s jaw clenched and she felt that familiar sick cramp in the pit of her stomach. She had to remind herself that she was a grown woman, not a child; she was too old to knock Beni down in the dirt for saying nasty things about her brother.

‘I’m going home,’ Cara announced. ‘I don’t want to get in trouble. Okay, Dramash? What are you—? Ow! Something fell on me!’

The other boy made a similar noise and Harotha heard them both scrabbling in the dirt. ‘Look, those stones came from right up there. Stupid Mitharia should fix her wall. I’m bleeding! This is stupid. I’m going home.’

‘Me, too,’ Cara agreed hurriedly.

‘Don’t go,’ Dramash pleaded, ‘you don’t have to be scared. It’ll be fun—’

‘
Cara!
’ A shrill voice rang out from somewhere across the street and Harotha jumped. She didn’t know the voice but she knew the tone right enough; every child who had ever stayed out too late or gone where they weren’t supposed to go knew it well. She also knew that such a shout was likely to draw the head of every other mother within earshot out of the street’s curtained doorways. No one could see her where she was standing but she drew her scarf closer anyway.

‘
Coming!
’ The girl bade her friends a hasty goodbye, then Harotha heard her running furiously across the street. Beni wasn’t far behind, and to her relief, Dramash pushed through the drying laundry and circled around towards the front of the house.

She sagged back against the wall. Nothing to do now but wait for Saria to come back out as she’d promised. The light was beginning to fade and the dry weeds pricked at her legs and made her swollen ankles itch. When she and Faroth had been children, this little scrap of land had been a tidy garden fussed over by their indifferent guardian, an unattractive, unmarried older cousin. The cousin and the garden were long gone, but she still felt like she was trespassing just by standing there. From time to time she could hear the put-upon strains of Saria’s voice through the whitewashed clay as she gave Dramash his supper.

She didn’t know what to make of her nephew’s bizarre ambitions. Saria loved to talk about her son when she came to bring Harotha food and water, but she had never so much as hinted at anything of this kind. That wasn’t surprising, though; Saria was far too concerned with other people’s opinions to ever say
anything that might reflect badly on her family. Dramash couldn’t be the only little boy to covet the dereshadi, but it troubled her that he aspired to be one of the soldiers who oppressed and brutalised his people. What had Faroth been telling the boy? Whatever it was, the message had become badly muddled.

‘So you are still here,’ Saria whispered, rounding the wall of the house. ‘Anyone else would have had the sense to go back, but not you.’

‘What took you so long?’

‘I told you, I have to have supper ready for Faroth when he gets home or he’ll ask too many questions. But I don’t know why you bothered waiting at all. You came all of this way for nothing – I’m not going to change my mind.’

Harotha adjusted her shawl, took a deep breath and tried again. ‘Saria,’ she said, ‘I know you think something terrible will happen, but I have to talk to Faroth. Tonight. He’s making a serious mistake.’

‘Absolutely not,’ Saria said stubbornly.

‘He’s still my brother,’ Harotha reminded her.

‘Yes, he is – and he thinks you’re dead. He
mourned
you. I don’t think you have any idea what losing you did to him. The gods help me, why do I have to explain this to you over and over again? Why did you come here when every time you asked me I told you to keep away?’