Fox's Bride (10 page)

A draft from the prison
disturbed the bare skin of Hiresha’s spine with a puff of chill.
Is Tethiel threatening me,
she wondered,
or does he know something I do not?
She reasoned if he had wanted to hurt anyone, he would have done it in the gloom of the prison.
Is it right for me to turn up my nose at help that could save Chandur's life?

I will hear him out.
She decided to be bold and strode out of the prison and past the guard.

The man with the sickle sword called after her. Several more guards with blades or flails started to follow. They had been speaking to Maid Janny, by the sedan chair. The maid started to go after the enchantress, too, but at the sight of the Lord of the Feast she turned away, muttering.

“Oh my, oh my! Not him. I just can't, can't, can't.”

The guards caught up to Hiresha as she neared the base of the brass tower. The Lord of the Feast waited for her, alongside three men with their faces concealed by turbans and veils. Their sword hilts twinkled with enchanted jewels, which she recognized with a pang.
My enchanted swords, in the hands of Feaster lepers.
With a shudder she wondered if they had lost anymore fingers since she last had seen them. The gloves they wore hid the disfigurement.

The Lord of the Feast snapped his gaze over the empire's guardsmen. As one, they stopped, took a step back and looked to each other.

“A moment of privacy for us, my hearts,” the Lord of the Feast said. “Past lovers, you understand.”

“We were most certainly not,” Hiresha said to the guards.

“I'm deathly jealous of her new fiancé.” The lord winked.

One guard laughed. Another started to say, “You know the fennec Incarnate has been—”

His captain gripped his arm and interrupted him. “Once the priests come back, the enchantress will have to come with us.”

The veiled Feasters motioned the guardsmen to follow. One masked leper drew an enchanted sword to show, and the hidden lepers and the guards began a conversation.

Hiresha moistened her dry mouth by swallowing. She was upset at the Lord of the Feast for implicating her.
Yet, better they think him a philanderer than a Feaster.

He gave Hiresha a subtle smile. Not even the greasepaint could hide the new lines of worry on his handsome face. He slouched as if he dragged chains with each hand, and he had the look of a defeated king, except for those pale eyes. In them swirled a chilling confidence, a will that could cut through stone.

“Tethiel,” she said and stopped, uncomfortable at how much she enjoyed saying his name. “You do know that they won't appreciate me leaving the sarcophagus, once they put me there. They plan to—”

“Suffocate you, I can smell that.” He inhaled then breathed out with a sigh.

“Asphyxiate, to be precise.” Hiresha folded her lips between her teeth. She had deduced Feasters to have some skill in sensing the fears of those nearby. “You may not care what happens to Chandur. Once, I thought you cared about me. Do you maintain that my slow, gasping death shouldn’t be my primary concern?”

“Death, no, I would advise against that. As an enchantress who specializes in regeneration and curing diseases, dying would ruin your reputation.”

Hiresha's face felt too hot, her heart beat too fast. She paced in front of the brass tower, her frustration mounting. The tower had no doors, its metal walls etched with hieroglyphs of men standing sideways, salt urns, snakes, a balance, and many other symbols.

She asked, “Then what would
the lord
advise?”

“For one, I know why your escape failed today.”

“So you have heard about that fiasco.” The pursuit of the camelry and ships had struck her as unreasonably fast. An idea flashed into her mind that petrified her with rage. “Did you tell the guards? Did you get Chandur thrown down a pit?”

“No, but I'll tell you who did.”

Hiresha eyed the Lord of the Feast. Scores of thin braids beaded with gold dangled from his wig. She wondered whom he would name, and if she could trust him.

“A Soultrapper,” he said, “wants to imprison you in this city.”

Hiresha did not much like the turn of this conversation. She had encountered a Soultrapper before and found him to be most ill-mannered. Magic users of that ilk had the bad habits of corrupting flesh and controlling minds. “Why suspect a Soultrapper? Have you seen abominations on the streets? The reek of urine hardly counts.”

He said, “I have not.”

“I am skeptical that I could tell if any minds were being controlled. What is the difference between mass stupidity and aberration?”

“Permit me to ask you this, Hiresha. Do you believe your fiancé is possessed by a god?”

One of the nearby guards frowned at this as if he had heard. Hiresha lowered her voice. “Not as such.”

“Then how do you explain a fox marching three circles around you then kneeling?”

“Animal training.”

“Mind control. How else would the fox know to pick you out of a crowd?”

Hiresha traced a finger between the precisely arranged garnets on her dress. “The mathematical laws of aesthetics transcend species.”

His gaze traveled up her, from legs to eyes. It felt like a caress of ice. She hoped this lord of murderers would not be the one to notice she wore garnets, not amethysts.

He said, “I fear the Soultrapper married you for the wrong reason. Revenge.”

“I doubt very much that I could have offended...ah.” Hiresha kneaded her forehead with three fingers. People across the Lands of Loam believed the city of her birth had recently been attacked by the Lord of the Feast. Hiresha trembled to think what would happen if they learned the truth: The Lord of the Feast had helped her save the city from a Soultrapper. “You think this hypothetical Soultrapper knows about the incident in Morimound?”

“He might've taken an interest in the enchantress who killed his apprentice.”

“I am not convinced.” She did not want to believe it.
I have too much else to worry about.

“Soultrappers draw glyphs on the dying, to enslave the power of their spirits. This city is covered with glyphs.” His arms stayed limp at his side, but he nodded toward the brass tower and its panorama of etchings. “I can't scent him because he doesn't fear me or anyone. He's cleverly pretending to be dead, in a city with more mummies in residence than the living.”

Hiresha glanced up the hieroglyphs etched into the bronze tower. Three stories above street level, the rows of sarcophagi began. Stone faces gazed over the city, each built into the structure and enclosed by bronze. More such towers loomed nearby, and in the distance to the north and west, lines of them converged on the pyramid at center of the city. Hiresha understood that many people wished to be entombed close to the gods they worshiped.

“Oasis City,” the Lord of the Feast said, “centerpiece of the Oasis Empire, and the most fashionable place to be dead.”

She asked, “The Soultrapper is a forward thinker who buried himself before his time?”

“No, his time is long past. His magic keeps him bound into ancient flesh. He'd not take kindly to me opening tombs at random, but your heroic brain could find the one crypt among thousands. His burial haven.”

She had to hold in her next remark while a passerby walked close. The pilgrim laid a clay plate at the base of the spire, among hundreds of other tablets. In a hushed voice, he said, “May you have overcome every trial in the afterlife, my brother.”

Scribes had taken up positions around the tower, accepting coin to write benedictions on tablets for pilgrims.

Hiresha resumed in a quiet but pointed voice. “The hieroglyphs are not the same as Soultrapper glyphs.”

“But similar,” Tethiel said. “Every Soultrapper has traveled, has visited Oasis City. At least those my children have killed.”

“Every citizen of the empire aspires to the pilgrimage.” Hiresha turned to Bleak Wells Prison and saw the blue robes of priests at the doors. Soon the guard captain would notice, and she had little time left with the Lord of the Feast. “Assuming I do find some non-speculative evidence of a Soultrapper, you would assist Chandur and me in leaving? Hypothetically, of course.”

“Catch and kill the Soultrapper, and you won't need my help. He is the city's silent ruler. Leave him alive, and the night has nothing that can save you.”

Hiresha asked, “You believe the Soultrapper is influencing the vizier?”

“If the Soultrapper has hoarded spirits for centuries, he could influence most anyone. But I'd like to think that I'd distrust the vizier regardless. He has thirty titles but won't wear an ounce of gold. Nothing is more pretentious than humility.”

Hiresha remembered thinking the same, but her eyes were on the guard tromping toward her. She said, “I must go.”

“One last thing, my heart.” He matched her stride toward the priests. “Why would you be afraid of my noticing your jewels are not...something. Amethysts?”

She pressed the fingers of her left hand into her neck.
Chandur should have said something,
she thought,
not him.
Hot bile filled her stomach, and a cramp panged within her and broke her stride. At least the Lord of the Feast had not identified the jewels as garnets.

Walking stiff-backed, she accompanied the guards to the round building of Bleak Wells. With each step she took away from Tethiel, fatigue piled onto her shoulders. She closed her eyes for paces at a time.

One guard asked her, “Who was that wigged hyena?”

Another guard snickered. “Bet he has sand in his salt.”

“He is a lord, and you would do well to remember it.” Hiresha was surprised that she had not hesitated to defend him.

The priests waited for her in the shade of the building. The larger one with plump cheeks burst out talking. “Once the Golden Scoundrel is found, the enchantress will be reinstated as his bride.”

“With full honors,” the older priest said. He wore a false beard of silver.

“I do not consider death an honor.” Hiresha wished her eyelids would stop drooping so she could give the priests a proper glare.

“You are nervous. Most brides are.” A priest folded his hands together. “Come. We've collected a possible accomplice.”

The other priest said, “Of the god thief, he means.”

Hiresha's eagerness to begin a search for the miscreant warred with her fatigue. Through lidded eyes, she glanced back and was surprised to see the Lord of the Feast. He seemed ready to follow her into the prison.

Can I trust Tethiel?
she wondered. More to the point, she wondered if she could trust herself to not get too close to him.