An Accident of Stars (8 page)

“Most prominent?”

“Most powerful or accomplished, and don't think nobody ever argues about it, because they do. If you want more details–” and here she teetered again, on the precipice of admitting her own marriage, “–Pix is the best person to ask. She has two husbands, Araden and Pelos, and a wife, Mayenet. But right now, we're talking about the royal family, and for them, the mahu'kedet has different rules. By design, it's a hierarchy – it's meant to mirror the marriages of the gods, lots of specific affiliations between roles and tiers and deities, but you don't need to know all of that now. What matters is, the children born to the royal mahu'kedet don't necessarily have royal blood, and while most noble families prefer to pick their heirs based on competence, not birthright, it's different for the throne.”

“But how do they know whose children are whose?” asked Saffron, blushing slightly. “I mean, are there rules about, um, about having sex, or–”

“Magic,” said Gwen. “It's called
maramet
, the blood-spark. Among other things, it's used to determine paternity, though it's commonly part of healing. A specialisation, rather than a discipline in its own right – but I'm getting off track again.” She took a breath. “The point is, the ruler before Vex Leoden – Vex Ralan, his name was – died without either siring an heir or naming one. Killed in his sleep by an aneurysm, no sign of foul play, though you can be sure there was plenty of speculation and panic before Teket's Kin gave their verdict. So: a sudden death, the court in flux, and everyone scrambling to see who'd get the crown. You still with me?”

“I'm with you.”

“Good. There were three main contenders: Tevet and Amenet, sisters related to the royal line through their mother, and Leoden, who was Ralan's nephew and born to the mahu'kedet besides. Which made things tricky – Ralan had always favoured Tevet, but Amenet was the elder, and neither sister was likely to step aside for the other without a fight. Which left Leoden, who was younger than both, but had the closer blood claim. Not an ideal situation, to say the least. Factions started forming almost before Ralan was cold, and the way things were headed, the worry was that we'd end up in a civil war. We wanted, Pix and I, to make sure it didn't come to that. The best laid plans of mice and men.” She laughed bitterly.

“I won't bore you with the politics of how and why and who helped, but in the end, we came up with a possible solution: if Tevet and Amenet would support Leoden, he'd bring them both into his mahu'kedet as Cuivexa and Vex'Mara – that is, his most powerful marriage-mates. It was Leoden's idea, of course, though he made us think it was ours. There was plenty of negotiating on all sides, but in the end, only Amenet agreed to Leoden's terms. Tevet didn't.”

Abruptly, Gwen fell silent, the grief of it lodged in her throat. Saffron watched her, silent and still, and though her lips parted, she didn't ask.

Softly, Gwen said, “When Leoden met with Amenet, he ambushed her. Killed her, and all her faction leaders. Tevet was furious; we offered to stall with negotiations, give her more time for her levies to arrive, but rivals or not, she'd loved her sister. Wanted to avenge her. She tried–” she broke off, laughter jagged at the painful absurdity of it, “–gods, she tried to siege Karavos. It was her forces that broke the walls, but once she was here, she had to try and fight her way through the city. You've seen the streets. It's a maze, uphill, and even if she'd had all her forces, it would've been nigh impossible with Leoden entrenched on the high ground. He picked off her troops on approach, and by the time she reached the palace, all he had to do was circle around and cut off the remainder. It was a massacre. He hung Tevet's body from the walls afterwards.”
My fault. My fault.
She bowed her head, and breathed until she could speak again. “He didn't want the competition, you see? Didn't want to share power. If Leoden had really married Amenet, she was independently loved enough that his rule would have been a constant negotiation. Instead of Tevet, his Cuivexa is a young noble girl from one of his faction's families, and instead of Amenet his Vex'Mara is a former Vekshi priestess, one whose people exiled her for the same heresy she's now determined to spread throughout Kena.” Gently, she reached over and tapped the back of Saffron's maimed hand. “You met her yesterday, in the Square of Gods. The Vex'Mara Kadeja. She's the one who took your fingers.”

F
or a long
, silent moment, Saffron couldn't breathe. She'd been taking care to follow Gwen's story, trying to get a sense of the situation, but at the mention of Kadeja, everything went blank. She stared at Gwen, dimly aware that she was still talking – something about gods and omens, Vekshi laws and blasphemy – but unable to process any of it. “She cut my fingers,” she said, numbly. “She cut my fucking
fingers
!”

She wanted to laugh, or scream, or maybe both. A queen… An
almost
-queen – the Vex'Mara – had cut off her fingers and dropped them in a fountain. How the fuck was anyone meant to process a thing like that?

She was saved from trying to answer by a fortuitous knock at the door. Without looking up, Gwen called out in Kenan, and in came Zech, the skinny girl who'd rescued her. Seen in daylight, her skin looked calico, like a cat's fur: mostly pale, but splotched with varying darker shades in streaks and shading. Her eyes were grey, her face pleasantly androgynous, and her hair – which, weirdly, was also grey – hung raggedly at jaw level. She was small and wiry, dressed in wide-legged pants and a square-necked tunic top, both made of washed blue cloth embroidered around the hems with white vines and flowers. Her feet were bare, and in her hands was a tray of breakfast: strange foods whose thick aroma of yeast and sharp herbs caused Saffron's mouth to water.

She was the perfect distraction. Saffron almost cried with gratitude. “Good morning,” Zech said – in Kenan, Saffron was startled to note, and yet the words were intelligible. Her gaze whipped to Gwen, who smiled and stood up, snagging a strip of flat, pale bread from the tray. “Zuymet,” she said, by way of explanation. Biting into the bread-thing, she chewed and swallowed meditatively, then said, as gently as before, “You're in good hands, and I need to speak with the others. Let Zech teach you some Kenan, and then you can both join us. Until then, stay. Eat. Get cleaned up. I won't be far away.”

Almost, Saffron begged her to stay. But then she caught Gwen's gaze, and knew she was being given the chance to digest their conversation in private – or, better still, to pretend it away entirely, at least for a while.

“OK,” she said, and forced herself to smile.

Z
ech waited
until Gwen was gone from the room before setting the tray down and dragging the chair over to Saffron's side. Saffron watched her with sharp resignation, as though nothing Zech could do or say would surprise her. Impishly hoping to disprove this attitude, Zech resettled the tray on her own knees, gestured to its contents and said firmly, in the language her magic told her was called English, “Eat.”

Much to her satisfaction, Saffron's eyebrows shot up. She started speaking eagerly in the same tongue, but much too quickly for Zech to comprehend. Raising a hand to stop the tirade, she reached out and took the older girl by the hand, letting her magic seep between them.

“Zuymet,” she said, and this time, she could tell Saffron understood. Closing her eyes, she concentrated on strengthening last night's connection: a tentative mind-link, poorly built, that had nonetheless fostered trust between them. Matu would be proud of her, she thought, which was the highest praise she could imagine. Though kemeta, he'd once been offered a coveted place with Sahu's Kin – but then, one had only to look at Matu to realise he would've been poorly suited to a life of worship, study and service.

At that thought, Zech's concentration wavered. Nearly a month had passed since Matu had left the compound on some unknown errand for Yasha: his departure had come bare days after Gwen's, and in all that time, Zech had had no word from him. Biting her lip, she steadied her connection with Saffron, then broke it off cleanly.

“That's enough,” she said in Kenan. “Do you understand?”

Saffron blinked, then slowly answered in the same language, “Yes, I do. I… wow. I'm really making sense?”

Zech beamed at her. “Yes! That's it. I speak, you speak, the magic moves, and we both understand. It's tricky, though.”

“How does it work? What are the, ah,
limitations
?” This last word in English: evidently, Saffron hadn't yet received the Kenan equivalent from Zech's vocabulary.

Zech frowned, trying to remember how Matu had originally explained it to her. “Learning from other people is harder, though still faster than regular learning. But talking to me is different. The more you talk to me, the quicker you learn. Even without the magic, we're linked now. Zechalia and Saffron.”

Saffron gave a small shake of her head, but offset it by smiling. “
Saff
-ron,” she corrected. “Not Sa-
ferrin
.”

Zech tried to copy her, but the syllables sat strangely on her tongue. She called up some of the English words she'd acquired, trying to find others with a similar cadence.
Battle. Lecture. Copycat.
When she tried again, her attempt was closer, but still not right. She pulled a face.

“Safi?” she offered – a compromise.
Saffron
was too long for everyday use, anyway, no matter how you pronounced it.

The older girl laughed. “Safi,” she agreed.

Zech grinned. “You say mine now,” she instructed. “See if it sounds right.”

Safi considered. “Zech,” she said at last. “Zechalia.”

Gleefully, Zech corrected her. “Soft at the end, not hard.”

Safi tried again and again. Even knowing that the zuymet extended only to vocabulary, not accent, there was still something delightful in seeing it proven true. After her eighth failed attempt, Safi laughed. “Fine! You win.” Shyly, she gestured to the breakfast tray and asked in English, “What is all this stuff, anyway?”

With growing happiness, Zech began to tell her.

“
S
he's awake
, then?” Yasha asked.Gwen nodded. “And coping surprisingly well, too – certainly better than I did the first time. Zech's with her now. As soon as she's all cleaned up, we can hear about Kadeja's latest heresy.”

“And won't that be exciting?” Pix said sarcastically.

The three of them were seated around a table in Yasha's wing of the compound, sipping warm cups of
mege
, a Vekshi tea brewed from sweet, caffeinated leaves and soup stock. It was a great favourite among traders and travellers alike, but though Gwen was far from being a convert, she'd gone long enough without a cigarette to appreciate its restorative properties. Beside her, Pix fidgeted in her seat like a miscreant schoolchild. The ex-courtier, for all her airs, felt partially responsible for Saffron's fate, and as Gwen considered this to be a right and proper state of affairs, she was in no hurry to alleviate her guilt. Besides, she had bigger things to worry about. Though the same priest who'd healed Saffron had declared Trishka to be on the mend, she was still confined to bed, her usual chair disquietingly empty. As, indeed, was Matu's. Though discussion of Kadeja's crimes could certainly wait until after they'd heard Zech's testimony, no such restriction applied to Matu's mysterious absence.

Turning to Pix, Gwen assumed a blank expression. “Speaking of excitement, it's not like your brother to miss any. Where is he?”

Pix made a noise that was half disgust, half anger. “Who knows? I certainly don't. If Yasha deigns to tell me now, it'll only be for your sake, never mind that I've been out of my skin with worry!”

“Enough!” In lieu of thumping her staff, which was propped up against the far wall, Yasha settled for banging her mege
cup emphatically on the table, though without, of course, spilling so much as a single drop. “Am I allowed no peace in my own house?” She rolled her eyes, invoking her goddess as witness. “As though Ashasa didn't make men to go wandering! It's unnatural, the way you Kenan women cling to them. No wonder your palace is in such disarray!”

Mercifully, Pix didn't rise to the bait, being long since accustomed to Yasha's outbursts on the subject. Like Gwen, she merely waited for the matriarch to take another sip of mege, smack her lips and then, finally, continue.

“As it so happens, he's running an errand on my behalf.” Pix snorted in triumph. Yasha ignored her. “Just after you left, Gwen, one of my little friends–” this being a favourite euphemism for the matriarch's spies, “–suggested I take a closer interest in the goings-on at Kena's northern border. Well, it was vague enough advice that I paid it no mind, even with all that scandal over Kadeja's expulsion. Still, it hardly seemed useful. Such obvious advice!” She waved a hand. “But once that died down, the friend came back to me. He said that someone on the border wanted to speak with Pixeva ore Pixeva, and was willing to try to reach her through me. So of course, I sent Matu instead. That was a month ago.”

Pix looked murderous. “Someone on the border wanted to speak with me, and you said nothing? You sent my
brother
?”

“And what if it was a trap?” Yasha asked archly. “You're good with a knife, girl, but Matu is better with many weapons, both sharp and blunt, and unlike you, he has no dependents.”

“No legal ones, anyway,” Pix muttered. “Honestly, I swear that boy should've been born Vekshi. He's bad as a tomcat.”

“High praise indeed!” chortled Yasha.

Pix flushed. “I didn't mean it as a compliment!”