Servants of the Sands, page 15
He snorted. “No signs of that. Marker-posts say they were Scratha allies. I figure they found other places to support them when trade dried up. They left firewood and supplies in the travelers’ outbuildings, and there’s no signs of the wild tribes messing about with the place. It’s safe. Come on.”
She shook her head and followed him, seeing no way to get rid of him. Persistent, that was Irrio, and stubborn as the roots of a mountain.
“That’s patient as the roots of a mountain,” he said over his shoulder, sounding amused.
“Stop prying, and stop showing off,” she said tartly. “Aerthraim sayings are different from Darden. I learned it as stubborn.”
“I suppose that explains a lot,” he said, laughing at her openly.
She kept silent, no retort coming to mind that wouldn’t end in a real fight.
The border village had held up remarkably well for the years of abandonment. Great blocks of stone made up the central building, and a combination of brick and sturdy timber for the homes, barns, and businesses. Most remained intact. Even the sandstorm-walkways showed few holes in their walls. In the absence of human sweeping, great drifts left by the seasonal storms lay up against walls and topped low roofs, obscured doors and filled passages.
Irrio guided Azni without hesitation into the main building through a leeward door, already kicked clear of debris. “You’ve been staying here, I take it?” Azni said. “Should I listen for snoring?”
“If you like,” he said, “but as I can’t abide snoring, they aren’t. Over here.”
A single long torch in a wall holder flared to smoky life.
Azni blinked, resetting her vision, and stumbled. Irrio’s arm tucked under hers, supporting and steering her to a seat. A few moments later, ready tinder in a freestanding fireplace caught, adding light and heat to the large room.
Irrio settled next to her, shoulder to shoulder, and said, “Hungry?”
“Not particularly,” she replied, disinclined to take anything he offered; then, reluctantly, “Yes. I suppose so.”
He leaned sideways and dug oilcloth wrapped packets from a large backpack as he said, “Hard cheese and bean-bread. Nothing elegant, but the trainees won’t eat the hard cheese, so there’s more than enough to spare. And yes—I heard you thinking—I’m not the one carrying this monster of a bag. That’s a business for trainees. Does them good, builds up muscle.”
“Leaves them tired and easily influenced at the end of a long day’s walk,” Azni said, desert dry. Irrio grinned and made no attempt to deny the charge.
“Water?” He looked at her sideways, offering her his own flask. She sobered, humor fading instantly.
“I’ll draw from my own,” she said. “Thank you.”
He took an ostentatious sip, his gaze never leaving her face, then said, “So you see it.”
“Yes. Is it dry all the way around?”
He nodded. “In a wide belt.” He unwrapped bread and cheese, passed them to her, and rewrapped the remainder.
“You’re not eating?”
He arched an eyebrow. “I don’t need food yet.”
She sucked in a breath, then said, “Bastard. Why must you throw that at me, every time?”
He shrugged. “It’s amusing,” he said. “You’re still an arrogant Aerthraim, Azni. I can’t help how that gets under my skin.”
“And you’re an insufferable Darden, but I don’t throw your lacks at you.”
“I don’t lack anything,” he said, smiling, then raised a hand to indicate enough. “Eat, Azni. Time isn’t kind to either of us in this situation. I’ve taken the walk round that you’re about to do. Don’t bother. I’ll tell you right now: the belt runs about a half mile to a mile outside Scratha Fortress proper, then nothing until close to the outer border, all the way around. Scratha ha’rethe isn’t pushing water to anything but the central spot.”
The bread and cheese lay abandoned on her knees. She stared at the air before her, blinking hard, shivering a little at the dreadful confirmation of her suspicions. There was no question of his honesty. She could hear the misery underneath his flat tone. Seeing the area so desolate hurt him, as it would hurt any desert lord with an understanding of what it meant.
“You ought to get everyone out,” Irrio told her bluntly. “You need to get out of there. Scratha’s done something stupid along the way, is my guess, and doesn’t have the faintest idea he’s done it. That’s his style, to blunder from one disaster to another and point fault to someone else every time.”
“I can’t.” She ran her fingers over the coarse bread and the slick, slightly heat-sticky cheese. “I can’t leave, Irrio.”
“He’s not worth it,” Irrio retorted with sudden, vitriolic vehemence.
“Gria is,” she answered, as quiet as he’d been loud. “And Riss, and Seg, and a dozen dozen others in that place. I can’t sneak them out without Cafad knowing, and Cafad isn’t....”
“Bright enough,” Irrio supplied. “Not trained enough, not selfless enough, but mainly he’s just a sour little fuck—”
“Stop it,” she said, not raising her voice. He fell silent, looking away. “It might only be a question of time. This is a peculiar situation in more than one way. Maybe the issue is as simple as that nobody’s specifically asked it to push the water back out to the land yet.”
He shook his head, frowning at the fire. “You’re a fool, if you don’t trust your own instinct,” he said. “Don’t you feel the oddness in the air?”
“Of course I do. But you’re Darden. You’re paranoid when you’re off your Family lands.”
“Better paranoid than dead. I honestly don’t know how you survived this long.”
“Neither do I,” she said, then sighed. “Go back to Darden, Irrio. Take your trainees to safety, if nothing else. They’re innocent in this whole mess.”
“Innocent?” he said, incredulous, and hooted laughter. “They’re Darden, Azni.” He laughed again, then shook his head and made a motion with one hand as though to warn her against asking questions.
Not particularly interested in the answers anyway, she picked up the cheese. “Take yourself home, then,” she said between bites. “You’re going to annoy Lord Scratha and your own Family if you linger, even if you stay in the neutral zone.”
“I’m not afraid,” he said, laughter fading to a sullen expression.
Azni noticed the quick, frowning glances he aimed her way every few breaths, as though unable to keep his eyes off her for long. She doubted he even realized he was doing it. She brushed cheese and bread crumbs from her fingers and said, deliberately pragmatic, “But you’re still due to go home, so which way are you taking?”
“Ought to go to Sessin, to be practical. But I don’t like the feel of their ways, or at least the path from Sessin to Darden. It’s rancid.” He looked at her sideways, adding, “I’ve heard the complaint before, from others, so I know I’m not just being paranoid.”
“I’ve been through it myself,” she said. “I agree.”
He looked momentarily disappointed at her calm response. “Only other option is overland via the Qisani, and hope they’re willing to send us on,” he said. “At the least we can supply there, and rest, and maybe teach my two fools a hard lesson about what they’re in for. Acana will knock the romantic notions out of them fast enough, I’m guessing.”
Azni shook her head. “I never met her. I wouldn’t know.”
Irrio’s smile was a mixture of rueful and sad. “I took my own blood trials there,” he said. “It was about the same time that you were going through your training at Darden Fortress, and our protector wasn’t—pleased—with having you around. We don’t exactly count Aerthraim as allies, and it wasn’t understanding the concept of special circumstances.”
Azni sat up a little straighter, turning her head to look full at him. His profile, in the flickering light, held a warm, bronzed sheen, a young hue. She bit her lip and made herself not think of Regav. Or of Binto, for that matter—an even worse subject to raise around Irrio.
“Protector.” She focused on wording to avoid memory. She’d never thought about the term before, but now, for some reason—“Why aren’t you saying Darden ha’rethe?”
“We host a lesser ha’ra’ha,” he said, not taking his gaze from the fire. “We haven’t had a full-blooded ha’rethe for over a hundred years, and its child died young.”
“You have a second generation?” she blurted, appalled. “Then I—” She put a hand over her mouth to stop herself.
He looked at her, contemplative, and took his time answering. Eventually he said, “No. Your lack of ability isn’t from being Aerthraim and naturally resistant to such things, no matter what jokes I aim at you. Your teachers knew they couldn’t bind your loyalty to Darden alone, and they weren’t about to give you any dangerous secrets. I’m one of the last three fully functioning desert lords left in Darden Family. We won’t have any more once myself, Lord Darden, and—” He hesitated, then finished: “Once we’re gone, that’s it. You were never going to get what you were promised.”
Breath stilled in her chest. It took a massive, concentrated effort to inhale, to exhale, without shrieking loudly enough to be heard at Scratha Fortress. She shut her eyes and focused on breathing. Words—any words—felt far too dangerous.
Regav took his trials at Darden Fortress. He didn’t know. He couldn’t have known. Outrage burned through her entire body, prickling the hair along her arms.
“Ah,” Irrio said, his tone turning sour. “We’re back to Regav, aren’t we? Always Regav. Next you’ll be whining about my other worthless sibling—”
Azni started to her feet. As quickly, Irrio faced off with her, no humor in his face. He thrust out a hand as she came forward a step, and gripped her shoulder, holding her away.
She twisted free and lashed out with muscle and mind. He let out a creaking groan and went sideways and down, tumbling across the floor like a newly-emptied bag. As he rolled to recover his feet, she pinned his shoulder to the floor with one foot.
He blinked up at her and held still. “You’re not so old and weak after all,” he said, the half-smile back on his face. “Just have to provoke you enough, apparently.”
Through gritted teeth, she said, “My children are dead, Irrio.”
The smile faded immediately, his breath catching just as hers had.
“If I’d known,” she said. “Did Regav know? Did he know he wasn’t as strong as he should have been? Did you ever tell him, Irrio?”
He shut his eyes, his throat working. She quelled the urge to put her foot through his neck and made herself step away, then turned to put her back to him.
“Your own brother.” Her voice scraped in her throat as though laden with acid. “Gods! How could you?”
“It isn’t that simple,” he said, sounding far older than she herself felt. “Azni, I didn’t understand the difference myself until I’d finished my trials at the Qisani, and by that point he’d already gone off to find you. I never expected—” He paused. “No. I’m not going to offer excuses. Not to you.”
She heard him climbing to his feet, brushing himself off.
“I’ll give you facts, not excuses,” he said. “It was bad timing that Regav won the draw and went through the trials first, before you arrived, and at home. Bad timing that I won the draw when I did, and went to the Qisani instead.” He paused, then added, bitterly, “It was bad timing that Binto drew when he did. Apparently poor fortune runs in threes, in our branch of the family.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and her teeth together, drawing silence across her mind with every ounce of willpower she could summon.
“None of us had any control over that part, Azni,” Irrio said. “The draw is pure, random chance. The blood trials don’t take the eldest son first, not even at Darden. And it’s always a risk, no matter how prepared you are. Protector or full ha’rethe, the danger is the same. All it takes is one stupid mistake in that final trial to wind up insane or dead. One moment of being too emotional, one burst of anger at the wrong time. Binto knew he wasn’t ready to take those trials. He should have refused.”
“He was trying to prove himself,” Azni said, voice thick and stifled. “Because of me. Because I provoked him—”
“He was trying to prove himself because he was an insecure fool who didn’t know the difference between love and lust,” Irrio said. “What he did wasn’t your fault—I know that isn’t what I’ve said in the past. I was wrong.” His hands settled on her shoulders from behind. She moved her head. He let go and backed up a step.
The apology meant nothing to her, lost in the thundering pressure of a larger issue. “You should have told Regav,” she said. “Someone should have told him.”
He sighed, a long, pained exhale. “We don’t tell any of the trainees,” he said. “My soggy little trainees won’t know the difference. They won’t learn half as much as I was taught at the Qisani, because they’ll never be able to use it. Darden training isn’t what it used to be—” He stopped talking abruptly, and his breathing went ragged. “Azni, I know—I know! But this is my family we’re talking about. Have some mercy on me.”
Her involuntary spike of rage in reaction to his words had hurt him. She found herself savagely pleased by that. “If Regav had known he wasn’t a fully capable desert lord,” Azni said, measuring the words out with precise care. “If I had known we weren’t as strong as we thought—”
“No,” Irrio interrupted, his voice steadying. “No. Look at the facts. Regav was a hothead and a fool, and you were no less, back then. For the love of the gods, Azni, you both traveled alongside Roise F’Heing without blinking! That wasn’t anyone’s fault but yours. And what you set off from there is entirely on your head.”
Anger drained into a sickly sense of shame. She sat down slowly and put her face in her hands. He sat down as well, making no effort to touch her.
“Fresh from the trials, there’s not that much difference. You come out of it with less of the gift to burn through, and without the basic support of at least a protector you can’t renew yourself.” He paused. “In your case, I suspect you faded considerably faster than you should have.”
She glanced up, her gaze going to the white scar snaking across his face, but didn’t answer immediately. His head dipped in a slight nod, his mouth tightening.
“They had my children,” she said finally, a hoarse whisper in the back of her throat. “I tried to trick Roise into releasing them. It didn’t work. But he found it amusing enough that he left me alive... and even let me go, after showing me the consequences of my... errors.”
Her children, laid out cold and lifeless on stone slabs. The image would haunt her for the rest of her life. Vibrant eyes like twin blood moons in the blank darkness, while an aching, searing pain wrapped around her body like animate threads of knife sharp wire. And Regav’s wide-eyed, horrified stare....
Irrio hissed as though he’d picked up on the memory, and his near hand settled on her shoulder. This time she let it remain. “Azni,” he said, voice low and intense. “Come back to Darden with me. I have status enough to protect you—”
“No, you don’t,” she said flatly. “You just threw Roise in my face. What do you think your kin would do if I stepped onto their lands again? You’re a fool for shadowing me, Irrio. You’re a fool for thinking of me at all. Go back to Darden with your trainees and find someone suitable to spend your attention on.”
With abrupt ferocity, he said, “Fuck suitable, Azni—I’m so tired of all these games! Darden, F’Heing, Aerthraim—what does it matter?”
Azni shook her head. “I still have to play the games, Irrio,” she said, and pushed his hand from her shoulder. She stood. “Thank you for the food. I’ll find another place to sleep tonight.”
As she stepped away, he said, “Don’t go back, Azni. At least do that much for—for yourself: Get off Scratha lands. Please.”
“I’ll do as I think best,” she said.
“Because that’s worked out so godsdamned well for you already!” Irrio shouted after her.
Azni chose not to answer that, and walked into the desert dark without looking back.
Chapter 21
Shaking from a combination of hunger and the exhaustion of chasing the boy over half the damn city, Allonin ate every piece of the trail jerky and stale bread he hadn’t wanted earlier. As he ate, he went over the information he’d managed to get out of Tanavin before having to put the boy into a healing sleep.
So Dasin, the other viable kathain from the mahadrae’s pet project, was out of Aerthraim Fortress as well. That meant Kallaisin had hedged her bets in a very different way than Allonin expected. He’d thought she would keep the boy close to hand in case another situation arose. Sending him out into the world was... interesting, and a bit alarming.
Tanavin clearly still saw Dasin as someone to protect... which might be good, and it might turn into a raging disaster down the road. It all depended on how thoroughly Dasin had absorbed his own Aerthraim training, which was markedly different from Tanavin’s. Tanavin was taught how to fight, how to channel his formidable anger into a weapon.
Dasin had been an unwitting backup in case Tanavin failed in the mission to destroy Roise F’Heing and the mad ha’ra’ha beneath Bright Bay. Lacking the phenomenal anger Tanavin could draw upon, Dasin had instead been taught to use his natural intelligence. He’d learned dangerous Aerthraim secrets about strategy. And he’d been groomed with a deep loyalty to Aerthraim Family, and to the mahadrae in particular.
Out of my hands, in any case, Allonin thought. He’d chosen to sit on the floor as he ate his belated and thoroughly unsatisfactory meal. Now he leaned his head back, swallowing the last crumbs, and shut his eyes for a few moments. He needed to sleep, gods he needed to sleep—but not around Tanavin, not when the boy was injured, exhausted past all reason, and half-crazed. I’m not chasing him all over the city a third time.
He forced himself to stand, dug through his pack for his writing kit, bent over the small wooden table and wrote as coherent a note as he could. Then he packed up his gear and went to talk to Basil about getting another room—on the other side of the inn, if possible.
