Dream Storm Sea (6 page)

“Promise me to never go near the sea.”

The silence that followed pressed down on Hiresha. Whether Sagai gave his word or not, the enchantress never knew. Sleep bore her away.

She waited in her dream world, gliding among the stars. The enchantress tried not to dwell on the story of the Murderfish, what manner of creature it was, what drove it to kill.
The Murderfish has no bearing on my escape plans. Unless Sagai abandons his duties to hunt it.

Hiresha discovered that she could not wish that of the spellsword, not even though he had held her down under the skin-stitcher’s knife.
Besides, I must escape before we reach Jaraah and the sea.
The lands beyond the city would dry into inhospitable desert then become too crowded on the flood plains. Hiresha’s chances of escaping unnoticed and surviving would only worsen.

10

Jaraah

The city glittered above the heat mirage. Domes of brass and green glass seemed to float above the rippling horizon. The camel beneath Hiresha swayed its way closer, and spires descended from their bulb-shaped roofs. A wall appeared, an arched gateway of gleaming metal. Jaraah shimmered into view.

The city docks pointed toward the desert. Sails billowed white as the land ships heaved their way over the dunes in sprays of sand. Enchantment reduced the weight of such vessels, and they carried trade goods throughout the empire. Commerce moved on magic.

Passing caravans cheered Arbiter Cosima. They paid Hiresha less notice in her gown without jewels. One captain steered his land ship close and hailed them, his hand bright with rings.

“Enchantress, may the goddess’s beauty ever shine through you. Will you honor my wretched ship by sailing aboard to the city?”

The arbiter lifted her hand to shield the sun. “We must graciously refuse, unless you have room for my entire company, our horse, and camels.”

“I’ll throw urns of oil overboard as needed, and may the goddess witness it.”

Arbiter Cosima demurred. They trudged onward. The heat and the entourage of flies were the least of Hiresha’s misery. She had failed to find an opportunity to escape. Sagai watched her every night. He seemed to doze only a few hours in the morning and afternoon, when any of the elite guards could alert him in time to catch her.

Monstrous.
Hiresha found his willful avoidance of sleep harder to believe than the tale of a murderous fish dragging a trained spellsword from the shore.

Hiresha had almost convinced herself that Sagai drew some kind of power from his interest in Naroh, that their bond granted him more vigor and alertness than was decent for a mortal. The enchantress realized that some more frivolous cultures in the empire might have said Sagai and Norah were in love. Hiresha had not been brought up to believe in such nonsense, but if she did allow for it, she would have named love as a perfect inconvenience.

Worse still, Hiresha had seen nothing of Spellsword Fos. A fraction of her held out hope that he had escaped the company of Inannis and Emesea and was a stowaway on a land ship that had passed her on the way to Jaraah. The majority of Hiresha maintained a respectable pessimism.

She smelled the city long before reaching its gates.
A whiff of spice, a stench of sweat, an aura of sesame oil, a sweet dryness of burning dung, and a gust of the sea.

Hiresha had traveled through the city before but never noticed the fishermen’s village.
A slum, to be precise.
The mud huts cowered against the outside of the city wall. Several of the homes that had sprawled too close to the water were crushed. No docks dared venture into the surf. The beach was a wreckage of boats. If any were seaworthy, Hiresha could not say. They looked puny, their sails patchwork rags compared to the proud merchant ships that cruised the dunes.

Even from a distance, the fishing slums stank of despair. Naroh refused to look, and when Sagai said something to her, she shook her head and faced the other way on her camel.

Seagulls teemed above the coastline. They scared the fennec fox. He crouched on Hiresha’s lap, ears turned down. His white paws dug at the fabric of her dress. He wore a harness that looped beneath his forelegs. Hiresha detested it. She wrapped the leather lead around her hand, which bore a whitish-pink scar in the shape of a moon crescent. Shielding the fox’s eyes from the sun comforted him.

As they entered the city, Hiresha’s stomach tensed, shrinking to the size of a shriveled fig. She would soon attempt her escape. Her plan had risks, but she could no longer wait for such an impossibility as Sagai sleeping.

Arches of mosaic tiles covered the streets and turned them into tunnels. The shade felt like bathing in cool water, bringing gasps of relief from the elite guards. The only light squeezed in through slits in the roof, and motes swirled in the bright beams. The streets of Jaraah had the feel of traveling through caverns, passages full of the treasures of merchant stalls. Shadows shimmered with half-seen glassware.

Hiresha uncovered the fennec’s eyes, and he started hopping and yipping. His ears and tail stuck up with glee. The camel turned her head around and blew her lips at the tiny creature on her back.

“Fennec, you must feel at home in this palatial desert burrow.”

Hiresha’s voice caught because she knew she would have to leave the fennec behind. She whispered to the earsome troublemaker.

“Would—would you forgive me if we parted ways?”

As if in answer, the fennec wriggled from her grasp and leaped from the camel. The fox had not even taken a backward glance. The leash caught him, and Hiresha pulled him back up by his harness.
I can’t give him up just yet.
Seeing his furry legs paddling in the air tore at her.

“I could accuse you of an unequal level of commitment, fennec.”

The fox squeaked a bark. Beyond his chatter, someone called out from the shadows.

“Lady of Gems, paint your eyes with the sign of your goddess.”

Hiresha considered herself the Lady of Gems, even if she currently possessed only the singular, and she thought she recognized the woman’s voice. Glancing about, she saw many people with kohl paint darkening their eyes. Designs of scorpion tails or ostrich plumes spread over their cheeks and temples to declare homage to a god, after the fashion of the empire’s capital. Hiresha never saw who had shouted, and she began to think it had only been a merchant calling out to Arbiter Cosima.

Dozing, Hiresha saw the truth.

Her dream was a place of dark rock and bright jewels, of lotus-tiled floor and domed ceiling. Its air had the crystalline pureness of never having been breathed before. Here, nothing had weight unless Hiresha willed it. Tourmalines of yellow and garnets of green bobbed through the air overhead, while mirrors coasted along the walls. In the laboratory that Hiresha had built in her mind, every magic bauble stood in its proper place on the shelves. She wore her preferred dress of amethyst spirals. Everything was as it should be.

A mirror revealed the recent memory of a woman standing in an alcove. Her eyes looked similar in shape to Naroh and Sagai’s, but Emesea was stockier, her face rounder, and she wore green eye shadow of crushed malachite.

“I can’t be surprised Emesea would smear a poisonous gemstone around her eyes,” Hiresha said to herself. “She does have an affinity for toxins, such as Inannis.”

In the mirror, Emesea called out to the “Lady of Gems.” Then she hid herself under a shawl and walked away.

The next voice that spoke had a similar timbre to Hiresha’s but a more youthful melody to its speech. “She scares us more than a cradle full of vipers.”

The words had come from high in the dome. Hiresha did not need to look up to know that Intuition sat atop the laboratory, dangling her legs through the skylight.

“Inannis’s accomplice.” Hiresha nodded to the mirror with Emesea. “But no sign of Fos.”

“Where could he be?” Intuition floated down from the skylight. Her face was much like Hiresha’s, though without any worry lines. She clapped her yellow gloves against a mirror to peer into the memory.

“Perhaps they have him hidden in a city cellar. Fos is rather conspicuous,” Hiresha said. “Emesea yelled that she wants me to paint my eyes, perhaps to better disguise me.”

“Sounds more fun than our plan.”

Hiresha touched her lips and Attracted the mystic topaz up her throat and into her hand. Her magic then Burdened the unsavory liquids off the jewel. Droplets fell onto a dais below her levitating slippers.

Intuition took a few hesitant steps toward Hiresha and grasped her skirt. “We aren’t really leaving Fos and the fennec behind, are we?”

“I have but one easy way forward, and that’s to accept my imprisonment. Anything else will be an ordeal.”

An image of Spellsword Fos appeared in a mirror, looking as she had often seen him, his obelisk of a sword secure on his back and his hands occupied rubbing the fennec’s furry belly. Her memory of Fos’s laugh flooded her with warmth.

She said, “I will return for them, once I have more gems.”

“We’d give up all the gems for them.” Intuition placed her hands over her heart. “We love them so much.”

“No, I’m merely used to their company and concerned for their wellbeing.”

Hiresha closed her eyes on the dream and opened them on Jaraah.

Biting her lip until the pain brought some measure of wakefulness, Hiresha saw a curious sight. A warrior in red robes permitted a beggar girl to lean against him. Her lamed foot bent at a wince-worthy angle as they walked. Her paleness contrasted with the warrior’s ebony skin. She met Hiresha’s eye.

The enchantress focused beyond the street denizens to the alleyways. Some passages had stairs, and light trickled down them. Hiresha knew the city had an upper level of walkways reserved for women. Those who could bear the heat of the rooftops walked to market without need of a chaperone.

Hiresha spotted a stairway next to words painted in flowing letters. The sign translated to “relief for women.” A stink of offal and burning incense wafted from this alley.

“Stop.” Hiresha pointed with one finger; the rest of her hand clenched the topaz. “I must use the facilities.”

Arbiter Cosima glanced at the sign. “This is not suitable for a lady. Can you contain yourself until the inn?”

“Affairs will become even more unladylike unless I stop here.” Hiresha remembered to press her knees together, the universal sign of desperation.

A guard was soon untying the ribbons that secured Hiresha to the top of the camel. Hiresha swayed her way to her feet, stroked the fennec’s whiskered cheek one last time, and handed him to Spellsword Sagai.

“I’ll return for him presently,” Hiresha lied.

Naroh led the way up the stairs. Hiresha glanced behind to see Sagai passing the fox to an elite guard. The enchantress had a moment of piercing worry, but the spellsword stayed at the foot of the stairs. As Hiresha had suspected, some places a prince would not go, even a third son.

Hiresha had often complained to the Academy chancellor about the lack of female guards.
Women can be spellswords, and men enchanters.
Hiresha was certain of it, though today she was happy for the discrimination.

Not one of Hiresha’s guards followed her to the open-air hall. A series of holes in a stone bench buzzed with flies. A few women sat with their skirts up, talking, waving away insects. Naroh grasped Hiresha’s arm, and the maid positioned herself beside the enchantress on the bench. They had not gone so far from Sagai. The first shout from Naroh would bring him up the steps sprinting.

Hiresha noted the second flight of stairs leading to the rooftops. She spoke in a low voice. “I’ve heard that happiness is a matter of perspective.”

Naroh studied her own yak-leather boots.

“For example, I could’ve killed you with this jewel.” Hiresha pressed the topaz against Naroh’s hand. “Instead, you’re merely rendered speechless and stuck to a latrine.”

Naroh’s mouth clicked shut. She tried to stand, but Attraction enchantments bound her to the filthy slab. Her fingers splayed out to either side, and she could manage nothing more than outraged grunts.

“You don’t look happy. Well, I don’t believe that perspective nonsense either.” Hiresha smoothed down her skirt and strode toward the stairs.

One woman cringed at the struggling Naroh. “Poor girl. We’ve all been there.”

“The peril of insufficient prunes,” Hiresha said.

She reached the rooftops. The whitewashed stone gave Hiresha the sense she walked atop an angular cloud. Every surface blinded her. Hope had numbed her legs, and she felt as if she floated.

I am free. No one is watching me. How blissful to be overlooked.

Children led their mothers over paths worn black by sandals. One woman carried a table’s-worth of glassware atop her head. She smiled at Hiresha. Hiresha smiled back.

This is happening. I’m escaping. Now to reach a high enough elevation for the wind to carry me away.
Hiresha would Lighten herself, and the salty musk of the sea would whisk her inland, into the sky and freedom.

The enchantress took woozy steps toward a tower. Its onion-shaped top shone like a second sun. A bridge arched from her rooftop to a middle level of the spire. She touched the tower's blue-tiled doorway to rebalance herself. Excitement throbbed its way from her toes to her fingers. Then she heard Sagai’s shout.