The Leopard (Marakand) (32 page)

Nonsense.

A throne. The Lady should have a throne. Here or in the palace, once it was rebuilt for her?

“The Lady,” said Rahel loudly, “has chosen to walk among us in the body of her new Voice. Show her honour.”

The guard captain, who had been following her with his eyes since she entered the hall, gaped, bowed, and flushed, looking down at his sandalled feet. She should kill him for looking at her so, her nipples dark against damp white cotton. But he, to be fair, could hardly have helped it.

Her champion, prompted by her thought, offered his scarlet cloak. That was better. She adjusted it serenely around her shoulders.

“The Red Masks I sent with you burned,” she told the captain, as she climbed the tight spiral of the stairs. No, that was not right . . . But she could not see, something slid aside . . .
they burned
. Yes. “Your lieutenant was burnt with them. A faithful woman. And you bring me two wizards, when I sent you for a priest and a leader of rebellion.”

The captain went down on his knees. “Lady,” he said uncertainly. She smiled encouragement. “Lady, the wizards laid a trap, and the Doves was burnt, as you say, but nobody escaped. We—the Revered Red Mask—took these two fleeing in the alleys behind the house. There were no others.”

“How do you know?”

“The street guard of the ward know Master Hadidu of the Doves, Lady. I ordered them—the fools sounded the bells for fire and stirred the neighbourhood up, but some I sent back indoors and some I arrested and had sent to the lock-up at Sunset Gate—I ordered the street-guard captain, Jugurthos Barraya is his name, and I will note his resistance to my orders in my report—to have the all-in curfew rung again, and I set street guard searching house to house, all around the market, for this Hadidu and his household.”

He had taken longer than he would have liked her to think to assert himself over the street-guard captain. Silly rivalries. Why did the temple guard have to play such games? They ought to have more confidence in themselves as the chosen of the Lady, superior to any mere thief-taker, ward-captain, gate-captain, or even a warden of the walls, for that matter.

“You shouldn’t have allowed street guard to have anything to do with the matter.”

“My Lady, I didn’t mean to. They just showed up.”

“I see.”

Grudgingly, he added, “They were helpful, in a small way. They did organize the folk of the neighbourhood to keep the fire from spreading.”

“I see,” she said again.

“I permitted it.” He flushed again. “But the captain nonetheless disobeyed my orders.”

“You did not permit it,” she said. “You went along with it. You failed to keep control of the situation. You allowed a street guard to defy you. You failed to use the power and protection of my name to assert your right to command, and you failed likewise to clear the gawking rabble from the streets.”

Would he argue that there were mothers and children among them, and devout householders whose only thought was to prevent the fire from spreading to their own homes? It was not an argument she wanted to hear from her officers. They needed to be strong. The city needed to be strong, and discipline was necessary for strength. A few beaten back would have sent the others indoors of their own will and won more respect for the temple guard than allowing them to witness his reluctance to clash with the street guard. That was what he had feared: riot breaking out and himself blamed for it, for fighting with street guard. Fool.

He bowed his head to the floor. “Forgive me, Lady.”

Was it useful to do so? Should she make an example of him? She shuddered at the thought of blood staining that polished floor where she had danced. She had not liked how he looked at her, not at all. But he was afraid, honestly afraid, devoutly so. He recognized her godhead, and he feared it. He thought she was beautiful. He wanted to worship her. But discipline was necessary, as well, and he was weak and foolish.

“You’ve been captain of the second company only two months, is that not so?”

“As the Lady says.”

“Yes. And you are the nephew of our beloved Beholder of the Face?”

Rahel made no protest, no plea. Her heart did not even leap in apprehension. Cold-blooded snake.

“You’ll return to the rank of common guardsman. I’ll appoint a new captain myself. A new lieutenant, as well.”

Silence. Then, “I only want to serve you, my Lady, however you think best.”

He seemed to think he meant it, but it was the Red Masks who were the shape of his fear.

“You’re dismissed,” she said, and waved a hand. “Revered Beholder of My Face, you will invite the commander of the temple guard—” who had sent this company captain rather than going himself as she had intended, and perhaps he had earned a term as a mere company captain himself, “—to dine with me. Now, these wizards, these enemies of my peace, these enemies of the peace of Marakand, these schemers . . .” Babbling. Stop it. Yes. She smiled. “Let me see them.”

Those standing near the prisoners drew back, leaving only guards by them. The woman was feigning unconsciousness still. Nour was only half aware, weak with loss of blood, with exhaustion. He had escaped the Red Masks once inside the Doves. She remembered. Someone had slain them, freed them. How? Ilbialla had no way to reach into that house. Ilbialla was sealed in her tomb.

How? Pay attention. Ask him. Reach inside and rip the knowledge from him. He saw. He knows. Wake him. We need to know, I need to know.

But it didn’t matter. Once he was hers, once he was Red Mask, she would know. She would take him apart, then, as she killed him.

But he’s Nour. He gave me a silver bangle for my birthday, when I was five, was it, or six? In her father’s last year she had sold it for the rent, but he had been kind to a little girl who had few treasures.

He was my father’s friend.

She saw him, saw herself, arms about him, pulling him into the well, pulling his soul from him, like ripping out a heart. Less mess, less blood, no need for the stink and the shrieking and the—Great Gods, but Sien-Mor was insane. She felt sick at the thought of embracing him, kissing him, flesh to flesh as he died, as he drowned.

There were other ways to kill him and take what she needed, make what she needed, of him. Cleaner ways. The end result would be the same. She had lost five Red Masks this night and one during the day past. She had a war to fight and no wizardry of her own. Moreover, though a living wizard might be deceived for a time, a wise wizard would know she was no goddess. A wizard, a scholar, would puzzle over words and bindings and maybe, maybe—no, the very tongues were lost, no scribes recalled, all gone to dust long ago and she had burned the books, the ancient books of the east, they would not find any trace, any memory, that could puzzle out those bindings and prise the gods from their slow decline to death.

No one could hear, no one could know the Lady was not the Lady was she was the Lady, Nour would not know, he would not see, he would love her and trust her and serve her, his friend’s dear daughter—

Stop that.

No wizards in Marakand. She needed them. She needed servants, wizards to be the extension of her will, needed their thin, weak-watered power of the divinity of the earth, lest she break the earth and leave it burnt and dead, releasing her full strength in the world. She remembered the dead lands, the wastelands, the abomination they had made . . . Wizardry, they needed, to temper themselves. They had not come to destroy the earth. Wizardry to be controlled, wizardry that could not seek to control her, not taint her, corrupt her . . . strange that she felt so reluctant to be wizard herself again, when she had had so many, over the years, she could have chosen from. Some among them would have agreed, though few had been great enough to be worthwhile. Her champion, maybe . . . to be a man? Her stomach turned. She felt an almost physical fear, not of him in specific, but of taking another such strong soul into her own—or was it deception, was it Sien-Mor’s jealousy, not wanting to share Tu’usha’s soul . . . but Sien-Mor was dead. It was her own wisdom had prevented her joining with a new wizardly soul. It was better to control, to rule, than to risk the taint of another will. Zora could be ruled. She was Zora. She did not need to be wizard. She had more wizardry at her command now than Sien-Mor had ever wielded.

Zora’s fingers circled her wrist, remembering that child’s slim hoop of silver, how sorry she had been when it would no longer fit. Her father said, “Put it away for your own daughter, someday,” and she had, thinking, smiling, of Nour, who had brought her other things, later, a carved and lacquered cat, a tambourine. But that bangle had been the first pretty thing she had ever had of her own, because they were poor and Mama didn’t like charity from her father’s friends. Nour had been
kind
. They had been like family, like uncles, he and Hadidu. Sharp-tongued Beccan who owned the coffeehouse had been an auntie who fed her sweetmeats. She thought of Beccan roasting, twisting in fire, but she had seen no wife when she was the Voice, when she said when she saw the Doves would burn. Dead already, yes, she saw that now, saw infants dead and babies lost before they were ever born, and finally one who would live, had lived, and Beccan bleeding white in a white bed . . . So she hadn’t killed Beccan, at least. Not her fault.

Suddenly the other wizard prisoner rolled to her knees with her fingers wound in her own long hair, twisting, and the pair of temple guard standing by, like proud cats over two dead mice, dropped as if clubbed. The woman came to her feet, bolting for the door. The Red Mask who had captured her struck her again. She fell heavily and did not move.

Blazing tawny eyes in a shallow pale face. Zora had never seen her before, Tu’usha had never seen her before, but . . . did she know those eyes? Grasslander, that was it—that was all. It went with the knotted cat’s-cradle of hair.

She needed them. There were wizards to be fought Over-Malagru. There was danger stalking in her city.

Zora swallowed bile. She couldn’t. Not today. Not Nour. He stared at her with wide, hazy eyes, uncomprehending.

“Oh, Nour,” she said. “You should have fled Marakand long ago. Poor Nour. I am sorry.”

They were waiting for judgement, all the priests, the guards. They knew the Voice would judge, declare them free of wizardry, and innocent, or wizards to be taken to the Lady in the deep well. But the Lady stood before them, and she spoke no judgement. She must.

“Red Masks will deal with them,” she said in disgust, mostly with herself. Coward, weakling, who had never had to make such choices before. “Ashir, Rahel, come with me. Has anyone done anything about fit clothing yet? Or a meal?”

Ashir babbled apologies and snapped at a minor clerk, “Why haven’t you seen to this?”

Rahel, with a triumphant look aside at her discomfited spouse and the bowing, apologetic clerk, told her, “I’ll see to it at once.” Zora left the Red Masks to drag the bodies—living bodies—of Nour and his comrade down to the cells beneath their barracks. She had had them excavate it, long ago. A couple of them had been folk of the silver mines, with knowledge of such things still left to them. Who had died there? A senator or two who had worked against her in more recent years, after the executions in the palace plaza. A brother and sister who had raised all Greenmarket Ward in riot when the wells of half the ward went dry. Temple guard and street guard had died, then, a priestess sent to speak to them in the Lady’s name had been pulled from her carrying-chair and kicked to death before the Red Masks came and their terror quelled all except the fires. That had been just after Zora joined the temple; she had forgotten about that, but the smoke had blown into the dormitory window, she remembered now. She had considered ordering them sent to cages in the plaza as the defiant senators had been but had decided for a quiet disappearance, a quiet, slow, lonely death in the dark, where she could go herself to see them, to let them know their folly and how slow their deaths would be. They rebelled against her for water? They would never taste it again, and their souls would never find the Old Great Gods’ road, trapped underground unhallowed. Too many of the rebel senators in the cages had been given some token earth; only a few had lingered, fading, forgetting, their bones going chalky in the sun, and even their ghosts were gone, now. Who else? A priest who dared cry out in condemnation of the parents who brought a wizard-born child to her, accusing their own. Poor child. She had left the priest to die, with much time to think of his sin in defying his goddess, but the child she had killed. He was no use to her, too young, nothing in his mind but fear and childish lessons and the frightening discovery that his dreams held foreknowledge. Had he not foreseen this, the betrayal of his parents, or had he not believed his own foreseeing? She had drowned him, swift and merciful, out of pity.

Yes. Fitting. Nour and his fellow wizard were likewise rebels. If in her mercy she spared them the death of the well, the living death of the Red Masks, their ghosts could learn to thank her. Meanwhile, Red Masks could seal them in, somewhere down there, leave them to deal with at her leisure. She might change her mind. It was merely sensible, to wait until she was more—more settled. She didn’t have to take pleasure in what needed to be done. She wasn’t Sien-Mor. It still needed doing, just . . . with a calm mind and cool head. Later.

Meanwhile, she had her city to claim. And she was hungry for her breakfast. It had been a long time since she had tasted food.