Of Absence, Darkness, page 20
Both the king’s aunt and Emelan looked at him in surprise. Then Taranah said, “Yes, Nola Danyel, just so,” and Emelan bowed his head in agreement.
“Oh, that’s cheerful,” said Jenna. She was trying to keep her tone light, Daniel thought, but she hadn’t quite succeeded. “What’s that over there, Nolas-ai Taranah?”
“That” was some kind of enormous cupola, maybe a quarter-mile away, just across the black wall that separated the black noble’s city from the common city. One evidently reached this cupola by riding across a long slender bridge that arched over a deep steep-sided canal. Both the bridge and the canal were made of black stone, but the road that led to the bridge was made of the plainer gray stone of the outer city. Even from this distance, it was easy to see that both road and bridge carried plenty of traffic: brightly-clad nobles as well as ordinary people streamed in both directions.
“Ah,” said Taranah Berangilan-sa, following Jenna’s gaze. “That is the Badan Kulirang, the House of the Oak. That is the oldest of any shrine dedicated to the Martyr himself. The oak there is not the very one on which the Martyr made his great sacrifice, but it was grown from an acorn of that tree. Today—” she broke off.
Emelan said, his tone curt, “Today, folk go in gratitude to the feet of the Martyr because Nolas-Kuomon came in peace with Mitereh into Nerinesir. It was a sacrifice of pride from him, and then from her, and all great sacrifice is loved by the Martyr. So it is said.”
Daniel looked at the steady procession of people crossing that bridge and thought how strange it still seemed that Tenai could be the cause of such alarm, that her peace with Mitereh could be the cause of such an outpouring of relief.
“You should also show your regard for the Badan Kulirang,” added the king’s aunt. “I must return to the court, but I perceive no pressing urgency requiring your presence, Nola Jenna. Your man is certainly able to advise you regarding propriety.” She turned to Daniel. “Nola Danyel, you would do very well to cross the bridge and lay your hand on the Martyr’s oak. I am entirely certain Mitereh would agree with me.”
Her expression had become, not less warm, but faintly calculating. She obviously meant that the king’s foreign guests—or Tenai’s foreign friends—ought to visit the House of the Oak as a political gesture, though maybe she also thought it was just the right thing to do. He would have preferred, say, a little snack and a soft couch, but it didn’t seem politic to say so. He said instead, “I’m sure we’d be happy to visit the, um, Badan Kulirang.”
“Oh, yes!” Jenna was sparkling with enthusiasm, more than ready to play tourist.
“And you must certainly grace my apartment tonight, Nola Jenna. And you, Nola Danyel. Indeed,” Taranah said thoughtfully, “I believe I may be able to choose one or another guest who might benefit from becoming acquainted with friends of Chaisa-e. Yes. I do request you attend me this evening, Nola Danyel, Nola Jenna—unless Mitereh requires your presence elsewhere, as he may.”
Daniel had no idea how the king or Tenai meant to parcel out his or Jenna’s time, or for what effect. That all sorts of people must be calculating the political effect of each step they both took, he was now certain. He closed his eyes briefly, wishing that it was midwinter and all the maneuvering over, and Jenna and himself back home where they belonged. What had kings and high-level politics and deified martyrs to do with either of them?
“I’d love to! We’d love to!” Jenna assured Taranah, glowing with enthusiasm. She, at least, suffered from no such doubts. “Thank you!”
The king’s aunt reached across the small distance that separated their horses and patted the girl on the hand. “My dear, you are as a breath of clean air from the high mountains. I shall inform my women; they will admit you whenever you arrive. Do go make yourselves known to the Martyr’s oak, and I shall make you welcome within my household this evening.” She gathered her entourage around herself with a wave and rode away toward the white city of the court.
“If you would,” Emelan muttered, nodding toward a different road.
-12-
It turned out that even though the bridge had seemed fairly close, to reach it they had to backtrack far around through part of the outer city. This part of the city was the first neighborhood through which they’d passed that gave Daniel the impression of having grown up organically; the haphazard placement of structures required one detour after another. Tall, narrow, gray buildings leaned close together with no room between one and the next. They were not actually ugly, Daniel decided. The construction was too solid to be ugly. And the tiles on the roofs were handsome. But everything looked rather as though it had been built by people who hadn’t much cared if it were attractive or not. And all this only a stone’s throw from the Serpentine Wall that delineated the noble’s city; it was a more abrupt transition of style and tone than Daniel was yet used to.
The streets were narrower here, too, and the traffic was of a less formal kind: carts and wagons and people on foot. For the first time there were more women on foot than riding. Children appeared—toddlers and young children with their mothers, older children in small groups. And for the first time some of the people they passed looked like they were poor—though, to Daniel’s surprise and relief, he saw no one who looked starving and they passed no obvious beggars. The interest the people here showed in Daniel and Jenna was still polite, but far more overt than it had ever been in the inner districts of Nerinesir. Now and then, someone even pointed.
Wheeled booths appeared along the sides of the street, selling fruit, bread, roasted chickens, fried pastries—enticing smells filled the air. Daniel and Jenna looked at each other, and then at Emelan. The big man’s mouth crooked in wry humor, and he reined his horse to the side for a moment and came back with a pair of fat flaky turnovers that proved to contain a spicy filling reminiscent of Indian samosas. They were delicious.
“Wait, Emel, didn’t you get one for yourself?” Jenna asked him, surprised.
Emelan shook his head and said, “I will eat later, Nola.”
“But—” she began. Far off in the distance, bells began to ring, long mellow notes that spread out across the city and lingered on the ear, and she paused.
Emelan explained. “That is the Cathedral. The bells are to mark the hour. Ordinarily there would be a service now, but not today. The cardinals held a service this morning before the king came there with Nolas-Kuomon and again after they had departed. At midnight there will be another service, but now it will be quiet. But they still ring the bells.”
“There’s a service at midnight?” Jenna asked. “Always, or because today's special?”
“Today, it is because of Nolas-Kuomon. Midnight is the time when the dark night breaks and turns toward day. On occasions when special thanks are owed to God, there is always a midnight service.”
They had come into an area of narrower streets and fewer carts. There were still people, though. They turned to watch Daniel and Jenna, or leaned out of windows or came out onto balconies, craning for a glimpse. Celebrity status felt very strange.
Somewhere close at hand, people were playing some kind of stringed instruments and something like a flute, the music distinctly audible between the ringing tones of the bells. A woman was singing in a high clear voice.
Jenna smiled, tilting her head to listen. “That’s—” she began.
A scattering of quite young children ran out into the street in front of Jenna’s horse, waving to make her look at them. They waved at Daniel, too, but he was only foreign and interesting, whereas Jenna was beautiful and radiated friendly good humor. They called out, words Daniel didn’t catch.
“Far too bold,” Emelan said, and started to ride forward.
“Oh, don’t!” said Jenna, waving back at the children, who were delighted and pressed forward. Two of them—girls in brown and tan, with plain nets over their hair—threw handfuls of flower petals over her as she rode past them. The horse laid back its ears at the shower of petals. Jenna laughed and leaned forward to accept a flower from the hand of one of the girls.
Something whicked through the air right behind her. At first Daniel thought one of the children had thrown something, or that some kind of large insect had zipped past. He didn’t understand right away, even when Emelan leaped out of his saddle and swept Jenna out of hers: he turned in the saddle, staring, and a crossbow bolt went past him with a startling sharp buzz and buried itself in the neck of his horse. The horse reared, screaming, and Daniel immediately fell off. This saved his life, as the next bolt cut through the air right where he would have been, if he’d stayed in the saddle.
Children were scattering all around him. One of the little girls had fallen in the street, horribly close to a plunging horse. Somewhere people were shouting in outrage. Daniel scrambled to his feet, caught the girl up in his arms and ducked for the protection of a doorway across the street—then wondered if he’d done the child a favor when he’d grabbed her: whoever was shooting hadn’t been aiming at her.
The door he found was locked. Daniel tucked the girl behind him, against the door, and turned to look for Jenna. His heart all but stopped when he didn’t see her—then he did, hidden behind Emelan in a narrow alley between two buildings. Only a bit of her hair and part of her face was visible behind the big man.
But, thankfully, there were no more crossbow bolts. There was a lot more shouting. The door behind Daniel opened abruptly and hands dragged him and the little girl he still held into the building and slammed the door again.
“My daughter—” Daniel gasped, turning to the man who’d pulled him inside, and couldn’t get anything else out past the urgent terror that closed his throat. He meant that he wasn’t going to be able to stay in safety and leave Jenna out there where he couldn’t even see her.
There were two men and a woman in the room. The light wasn’t good, as all the shutters had been slammed shut, but Daniel could see that the woman had gathered up the child he’d grabbed and was comforting her.
The men, both built big and broad, looked reassuringly able to handle trouble. One had a close-trimmed beard; it was this one who gave Daniel a hard assessing stare, nodded, and ordered, “Stay there. I'll check on the bright lady.” He glanced at the other man, who lifted the bar on the door and opened the door just enough for the one with the beard to slip through. There was shouting, indistinguishable and alarming.
But the man was back in moments. “Safe behind her guard,” he told Daniel. “The assassin will be long gone,” and he gave a grim little nod that said, He’d better be gone. “But just you wait a little, Nola, so we may all be certain. Guardsmen will be coming. The king will send men of his own personal guard, I’ve no doubt of it.”
“You’re certain Jenna’s all right?”
“So her guard promises,” the man assured him, and then caught Daniel’s arm when he swayed, dizzy with terror and relief and fury.
There was a chair in an inner room—Daniel was illogically reluctant to go even that much farther from his daughter, but the men insisted, and he needed to sit down. The floor would have done, but they insisted on the chair. Men came and went. Someone came in and muttered something to the bearded man, who nodded; someone else, a younger man, came in and bowed low to Daniel, taking his hands and pressing them to his forehead. Daniel blinked, trying to understand; he gathered at last that this was a brother of the little girl he’d picked up in the street.
“She was only in danger because of us,” he protested.
The brother bowed again. “But when she fell, Nola, it was you who protected her,” he said, and went away again. Daniel gathered there were passages between the buildings and that people were coming and going through them. And if that was so, where was Jenna?
On that thought, she arrived. A lean man with a nose like a blade and the white streak of a scar through one eyebrow led her in. She ran across the room. Daniel stood up to catch her, but she hit him with such force that she knocked him back into the chair. She didn’t speak. Neither did he. He simply held her, bending his head over hers, feeling his heartbeat slow as he absorbed at last the visceral fact of her safety.
When he looked up, Emelan was watching them. His expression was neutral, yet there was a kind of bleak wistfulness to him. A wistfulness for families lost and not regained, Daniel understood, and looked down at his daughter again. He said, “Thank you.”
“It was my duty,” Emelan said harshly, and went to consult with the bearded man.
Apana Pelat arrived soon after that, with two of the king’s own guards, plus a largish troop of soldiers.
“Nola Danyel, Nola Jenna,” Captain Pelat said, bowing to each of them.
“We’re all right,” Daniel said.
“I want to go home,” Jenna said, in a small voice. Daniel knew she meant home and hugged her, wanting to take her there immediately, knowing it was impossible.
The captain missed the subtext. “We will escort you back to the palace at once, Nola,” he assured her, and offered them both tiny knives made out of some white material, alabaster or porcelain. They were much too small to be weapons.
“Nolas-Kuomon sends these from her own hand,” Captain Pelat explained. “The king did not wish her to come for you herself, and so sent me in her place. Yet Nolas-Kuomon sends you her own protection in these charms. She asks you to take these from me as from her hand and bids you keep them close: they will turn the point of a bolt or the edge of a blade.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Jenna, recovering herself a little. She took one of the knives and tucked it away in the sort of small soft pouch ladies carried here in interior pockets of their vests.
Daniel took the other. He had the larger sort of pouch men carried, but no money in it; even if he’d had money, he was afraid it might not be suitable to offer it to their benefactors. He turned toward the bearded man, searching for words to express his gratitude.
The man bowed at once. “Nola, we think you are safe to go out, and wish you good fortune and the protection of God and the Martyr.” Then he turned to Captain Pelat, offering him a much more profound bow. “Captain, my name is Menai. I can show you the house from which the bolts came. The assassin shot from the roof of my cousin Laitan’s house. I swear before God and the Martyr, neither my cousin nor any of us was complicit in this wickedness. We are offended, we are most seriously offended that an assassin would attempt Godless murder against the king’s own guests here from amongst our houses. There are many ways to flee from that roof, that is why the assassin was there, the only reason, Captain. We pursued this assassin at once, but he fled and evaded us.”
Captain Pelat returned a grave nod. “I have no doubt of you, Menai. I believe everything you tell me. However, I must ask this cousin to present himself to me. And I will indeed wish to see this house.”
In the end, Laitan was asked to accompany the troop back to the palace. He turned out to be a big man with broad shoulders and thick, powerful arms and an air of quiet competence. He showed the king’s men his house and his roof. Two of the king’s young men, Ranakai and Iodad, set up a spell meant to trace the path of the assassin’s flight, but came back shaking their heads; Daniel gathered they had found some kind of counter-spell in their way.
Menai, on his own request, came with his cousin. The cousin was, Daniel understood, actually under a kind of polite not-quite-arrest. He didn’t believe for a moment that the cousin, or any of the people of that neighborhood, could have been involved. But when he said so, Captain Pelat merely answered, “The king will wish to make that determination himself, Nola Danyel,” as though the statement had the force of natural law.
The king was waiting for them in a room Daniel hadn’t seen before. It was a large, square room at the western edge of the palace. A mosaic of gray and white marble and turquoise swirled like water around the walls. A wide low-silled window was set into the center of three of the four walls, looking out onto the palace gardens or out over the white and pink walls and crystal rooftops of the lower wings of the palace. A single table occupied about half the floor space. A map, probably hand-drawn, was pinned out on this table, held flat by six-inch-high marble pyramids. More maps—Daniel presumed the scrolls were maps—occupied racks in each corner of the room.
There was one chair in the room, drawn up close to the table. Mitereh was sitting in it, but he wasn’t looking at the map. He was watching Tenai. She had been pacing, but spun round to face them when they came in. The king didn’t move, except to turn his head to watch them enter. His arms rested along the arms of the chair; he was, in fact, almost ostentatiously relaxed. Daniel got the impression he’d been using his own stillness as a foil against Tenai’s violence. Because Tenai was absolutely furious.
Mikanan Chauke-sa and Keitah Terusai-e were also present, along with several young men of the king’s guard. They all looked much relieved to see Apana Pelat and his party arrive. Everyone looked stiff and worried. Given Tenai’s demeanor, Daniel couldn’t blame them.
“Daniel!” Tenai exclaimed, and came forward to take his hands in a strong grip. She looked into his face and then turned to draw Jenna into an embrace. “My bright child. Are you well? You are not harmed?”
“We’re fine,” Jenna assured her, making a brave attempt to look as fine as possible.
“When I heard—” said Tenai, and drew a hard breath. “I would have come after you myself. I wished to.” She shot a savage look at Mitereh.
Daniel, not wondering at all that the king hadn’t wanted Tenai out on the streets of his city with that kind of rage radiating off her, said, “Emelan protected Jenna. I think he saved her life. Neither of us understood fast enough what was happening.”
“Next time you say I need a guard, believe me, I won’t argue,” Jenna said fervently.
Tenai blinked, and blinked again. The dangerous blankness eased from her face. Redirected from her fury, she turned at last to Emelan.
Emelan flushed and bowed his head. He did not look at Keitah, who spared his brother only a brief glance.
