Moontide 02 - The Scarlet Tides (9 page)

Pregnancy manifestation

A great wonder came to pass: Agnes, a mere human who had been taken to wife by Sertain, Magus Primus, became herself Magi of the Second Rank by virtue of bearing his progeny in her womb.

T
HE
A
NNALS OF
P
ALLAS

Gestational manifestation was once common place, as the Ascendants were young and virile. Now it is a rarity as the original Ascendants reach their old age and pass on. At times the human wife of a pure-blood might experience a temporary gnostic awakening, or a very weak permanent effect, but the last human woman we know of who has experienced full awakening through carrying an Ascendant’s child has long since died. New Ascendants created by the Scytale of Corineus have exclusively married pure-bloods, and any liaisons with human women have to my knowledge been fruitless.

A
SA
C
ENIUS
, B
RES
A
RCANUM SCHOLAR
, 911

Kesh, Antiopia
Rajab (Julsep) 928
1
^st
month of the Moontide

Ramita Ankesharan watched as the unknown woman she’d been staring at suddenly jolted as if struck by a thrown stone and looked wildly about her. She pulled the curtain across so their eyes would not meet and smiled to herself in satisfaction. In the other corner of the carriage’s pokey cabin her maid dozed, oblivious. More importantly, so did the armed man beside her.

Third one today
, she reflected, glowing inwardly. She had been trying to hone her fledgling gnostic skills, using the very least energy she could – any error might alert those with her, and she couldn’t afford that. It was like creeping past a slumbering snake: to misstep would be death. But so far she was treading soft and sure. She rubbed at the bulge at her belly.
I will protect you, my little ones. I will see you safe.

She had very little idea where in the world she was: Dhassa and Kesh were foreign lands to her, and she’d never paid much attention to maps – not that they’d had any when she was growing up in the marketplace of Baranasi. Now her world was limited to this carriage, rolling slowly eastwards on roads choked with all of humanity. Bench seats faced forwards and backwards, with barely room for feet between. The tiny windows were curtained to keep the dust out, but the air inside the cabin was hot and smelled. Sweat soaked the bodice of her salwar kameez and dripped from her face into her gauzy dupatta scarf. Her belly churned with each lurch. It was already visibly distended, though this was only the third month of her pregnancy. Her hands cradled the bulge protectively.

Prune-faced Arda slumbered in the opposite corner. She was Keshi, and the most close-mouthed woman Ramita had ever met. Not that conversation was easy in the nauseating bump-and-sway of the carriage. She found herself missing Huriya, until she remembered the way her lifetime friend had betrayed her, by her part in the murder of her husband, and she forcibly evicted the girl from her thoughts. At least Arda was a known enemy.

An armed man slept beside Arda. Mostly he rode above with the driver, where the air could at least pretend to freshness, but he liked to sleep in the afternoon. His name was Hamid and he looked all Keshi, but he had the Rondian magic, the gnosis – he sometimes made little flames dance on his finger-tips to show off. He was maybe twenty, with a cocky manner. He liked to leer at the female refugees they passed, calling out lewd offers, but he did not pester Ramita, to her relief. Of course she was a valued prisoner, so maybe he was frightened to tease her. Or perhaps being pregnant and a Lakh, he found her repulsive.

The journey was an ordeal. All of Dhassa and Kesh were on the move, fleeing the coming Crusade. The rich had left long ago, but the poor, with no incomes if they fled their businesses and farms, had hung on as late as they could before joining the flood of refugees. If she were to pull open the curtains she would see them up close: their handcarts weighed down with massive burdens, all their lives and property bundled up and lashed down. She would see barefoot people trudging through the dust and stones, faces set in hard-eyed blank stares: mothers carrying their children on their shoulders, others breastfeeding as they walked. Men who were already little more than skin stretched over frames of bone scavenged the refuse for anything they could feed to their starving wives and children. Occasionally horsemen galloped by, careless of those they scattered before them as they rampaged through, intent on their missions. Dhassa was emptying. In the last Crusade, the Rondians had plundered eastwards all the way to Istabad. This time would be worse, the people were saying.

She glanced furtively at her sleeping companions, then opened the curtain once more. The last person she’d thrown her mental stone at was out of sight, somewhere behind them. She found her eyes drawn to two young girls, walking hand in hand, heads bowed, featureless forms in bekira-shrouds, utterly anonymous.

she called to the one on the right. Nothing. She tried again, a little harder, and both girls flinched, their heads whipping about, the narrow eye-slits both drawn straight to the carriage rolling past.

Chod!
Ramita dropped the curtain aside. She knew instinctively what she’d done wrong: by not focusing enough on one, she’d called both. She scolded herself. If her plans to escape were to come to fruition, she had to do better than that.

She’d been working hard, like a good Lakh woman, but she’d been subtle too, lest Hamid sense her activities. No one alive yet knew that she could do these things. To escape, she needed to perfect her call, to make it narrow, strong and focused. The people outside the window, changing by the moment, were the perfect subjects for practice, so she waited a minute, until the two girls were somewhere behind, and tried again on someone else.

Often, though, she could not bear to watch them. Even Arda’s blank scowl was better than the suffering she saw everywhere, especially when her eyes strayed to the sides of the road and she saw the remains of those who had just given up, women and children, mostly. Their skin was burning black in the sun but their souls had long gone. Sometimes a wailing child still clung to a fallen mother, ignored by the rest of the passers-by. Hamid and Arda would not let her stop and help them, and she hated them even more for that, though she could also see that if they tried to save them all, this carriage would soon be stacked high with infants and she would have to sit on the roof.

I have two of my own coming. They must be my only concern.

So for now, she concentrated on self-learning these strange skills her pregnancy by Antonin Meiros had bequeathed her: the last gift of her dead husband, and the proof that it was he and not Kazim who had fathered her children.

I will escape somehow. I will bear my children into freedom.

Arda woke, which ended her secret training session. The woman stared at her with contemptuous eyes, as she had throughout the journey.
To her I am a whore who sold myself to an old jadugara and let him impregnate me. But I don’t care what she thinks of me.

‘Where are we?’ she asked. Huriya and Kazim had taught her Keshi as they grew up together, and she spoke Rondian now as well, thanks to her husband’s tutelage, though she was not terribly fluent in that awkward language.

Arda considered her with her raisin eyes. She seldom responded even to direct questions, but for whatever reason, she answered this one. ‘Near Sagostabad.’

‘Is that our destination?’ Ramita asked, while Arda was in the mood to speak.

The old woman blinked slowly. ‘Halli’kut.’

Halli’kut. Where Rashid Mubarak is Emir.
Ramita felt an invisible cord tighten about her throat. She was pretty sure Rashid was the leader of the Hadishah; he’d certainly been the puppet master who’d contrived her husband’s death. The last time he’d spoken to her, he had laid out
her fate very clearly: if the babies in her womb were Antonin’s, then her blood rank would be strong and Rashid himself would take her to wife. If they were not, she would be given back to Kazim.

Ramita could not decide which fate was worse.

She found she’d lost her appetite for questions.

Sometimes they slept in abandoned houses, small, crude shelters of mudbrick. Other nights, they simply stopped, and Hamid and the driver shared the roof while Ramita and Arda each took a bench-seat. Neither woman was even five feet tall, but still the benches were too short and hard for comfort. The air was not much cooler than during the day, but at least the pitiless sun was gone. And all about them refugees suffered, rubbing blistered, aching feet and road-sore backs, sipping rancid water when their bellies cried out to be flooded. There was never enough of the lentils and grain, the only foodstuffs left, and Ramita dozed uneasily, the constant wail of hungry children permeating her dreams.

That night, though, the wagon turned off the main road some time before dusk and rolled along a dirt track away from the tide of people flowing east. As they wound their way up a slope, her eyes pierced the deepening shadow and she saw a gleam of smooth white stone higher up the rise.

Once through the single gate in a low dun-coloured wall guarded by a whole squad of soldiers, the road became steeper, but it was now paved, and lined with sturdy trees. Water that would have saved scores of lives on the road was being poured about the roots of the trees and over the manicured lawns by bent old men with shoulder harnesses for the buckets. The soldiers looked plump and self-satisfied.

Hamid was on the roof with the driver, but he dropped to the foot-step outside the carriage door and pushed the curtains aside. ‘Tonight, we dwell in paradise,’ he declared cheerily. ‘Hot spicy meats and gravies. White man’s beer. Real beds. Young maids with juicy yonis.’ He was almost dancing with delight as he clung to the side of the carriage. It was the most he’d said to either woman the whole journey. He leapt to the paved road and trotted alongside, grinning broadly.

The carriage rolled into a courtyard flanked by white marble pillars and pink sandstone walls. There were people everywhere, guards and servants, milling about in apparent chaos. Ramita stared, taking in the Keshi patterns of the men’s chequered head-scarves as well as the heavy black bekira-shrouds the women wore. None of the women looked to be of rank; they scuttled about with straw brooms, their backs permanently bent by their labours. Amidst them, the men, servants and soldiers alike, strode straight and tall.

The carriage made one last turn and they lurched to a halt, the horses neighing irritably. She glimpsed a welcoming group, a cluster of brightly coloured figures on the steps, and looked down at herself. Her sweat-soaked bodice was sticking to her breasts and droplets were running down to her distended belly and pooling in her navel. Even when she was a market-girl in Baranasi she would not have let herself be seen like this. She hastily pulled her bekira-shroud over her head. Arda, who always wore one despite the heat, covered her nose and mouth with her scarf and raised the cowl. Ramita followed suit, for once grateful for the all-enveloping garment.

The doors opened, and hands reached in to offer aid. Arda pushed ahead peremptorily and Ramita caught her thought:
The whore does not precede me
. She smiled to herself. She’d heard Arda’s thoughts as clearly as if she’d spoken aloud. Her self-taught fumblings with the gnosis had not been in vain.
Newly hatched birds eventually learn to fly
, she told herself. But when she left the carriage, blinking in the light, her legs wobbly for disuse, she saw who awaited her and shut her mind down completely, as her husband had taught her.

‘Hello, Ramita,’ Alyssa Dulayne purred. ‘Welcome to the Haveli Khayyam.’

Ramita’s fright at seeing the woman did not prevent her from noting the name:
Haveli Khayyam.

Alyssa Dulayne’s honey-coloured hair tumbled about her bare shoulders, a shocking display in this setting – but pure-blood jadugara always did what they liked. She wore a Rondian gown with a deep cleavage, showing her pale skin in flagrant disregard to the
rules of the Keshi Amteh. Once Ramita had thought Alyssa a friend, but she knew better now.

Behind her were two others, probably also magi. The paler-than-normal Keshi men with lordly demeanours had gems at their throats. One was middle-aged, with a worldly air; the other was bright-eyed and puppyish. Ramita thought she recognised them from her one foray into Ordo Costruo society. The rest were Keshi nobles and their soldiers.

Alyssa stepped forwards and stroked Ramita’s cheek as if she were a child. ‘How was your journey, my dear? You look dreadful.’ She spoke in Rondian. Her voice was smooth and playful.

Ramita jerked away. ‘I am a prisoner, and have been treated as one.’

‘A guest, my girl – a very
special
guest. The unborn are well?’

Ramita’s hands went to her belly reflexively. ‘They are well.’

‘But no manifestation?’ Alyssa enquired, reaching out, her periapt suddenly pulsing beneath her chin, lighting her skin with a flickering blue-green glow.

Ramita felt as if the air about her had turned solid, as if she were frozen in glass, held immobile effortlessly. Alyssa herself was unimpeded. Her fingers caressed Ramita’s brow, and she winced a little at the sweat.

The penetration came next, the mage-woman’s needle-like mind enveloping hers, making her tremble. She didn’t try to hide the fear; that would be expected. She thought about the journey, the discomfort, the loneliness, the fear of what had gone, and what would be: a mask of memories, held up for the Rondian jadugara to see.

Alyssa paused thoughtfully.

Ramita refused to rise to the bait. She let her mental mask speak for her, a narrow emotion-palette of loneliness, resentment and fear. It wasn’t hard – even a non-mage could do it, and she’d learnt from Antonin Meiros himself. She smiled inwardly as Alyssa lost interest. Another little victory.