Golden Daughter (21 page)

“Not Umeer’s daughter,” she replied. “I’m merely Sairu, handmaiden to my Lady Hariawan. But that’s not the burning question, now is it? No, for we all want to know who
you
are.”

He glanced carefully around the room as though trying discern who “we all” referred to. He saw no one but the girl and the large orange cat, who hissed at him. Frowning, he focused his gaze back on the handmaiden. He considered lying, uncertain whether or not it would be safe to reveal his identity here. The girl was obviously Kitar, after all, and his enemy by birth. But as he met her oh-so-innocent gaze and glimpsed the keen mind hiding just behind it, he suspected she would know a lie when she heard one.

Besides, what harm could a handmaiden do him?

“I am Juong-Khla Jovann,” he said, still slowly, still carefully, “son of the Tiger Chief. I am prince of my people, and I am . . .
betrayed.
”

“Is that so?” said Sairu, regarding him from behind her smile. She saw truth in his face, and she had already guessed he must be a chieftain’s son. But there were other secrets behind that proud mouth, secrets it would be as well he did not speak just yet. “Well, your story is certainly more romantic than I was willing to credit. Time to sleep again.” She took up a clay pot and poured lukewarm brew into a little cup, which she held to his mouth.

“No,” he replied, turning too sharply so that the room once more spun. “No, I must rise. I must find . . . I must . . .”

“You must do as you’re told, noble prince,” Sairu replied, “just as you have
not
been doing, judging from the scars on your back. Hulan’s mercy, is it any wonder they laid the cane and whip upon you so heavily? Now take your orenflower like a good Chhayan boy. Pretend it’s buffalo milk, or whatever it is you drink. It’s not so nasty as all that. Far less nasty than buffalo milk, I should think!”

She hoped her steady stream of talk would be enough to lay him flat once more. Indeed, his head bobbed and his eyes unfocused, and she even had the cup right up to his lips. Another moment and she was quite certain she’d have gotten the brew down his throat and seen him off to sleep once more.

But a knock sounded at the open doorway.

Sairu turned, dribbling orenflower juice over her fingers, and saw none other than Brother Tenuk’s wrinkled face peering at her through the gloom. Sairu was on her feet in a moment, standing in such a way as to hide the slave with her skirts, and bowed respectfully.

“My daughter,” said the abbot, “how fares Lady Hariawan’s slave today?”

“He is better, thank you, holy brother,” said Sairu. Still bowing, still holding her robes to form a curtain, she approached the doorway, hoping her approach would make the abbot shy away. “I expect to see him wake and rise in another day or so.”

“That is good,” said the abbot, eyeing Sairu uneasily. “That is very good. Does he now sleep?”

“He rests, holy brother,” Sairu replied.

“Good. Good.”

The abbot stood there, looking at her without seeing her, making no move to leave, saying nothing. His hood was set back far on his head, offering her a clear view of his face; his wrinkled, age-scarred, thin face from which those too-young eyes watched and made her shiver, for she could not understand them. He made no move, and neither did she, and they studied each other closely. So they could have stood for an hour or more.

But Sairu smiled, and it was enough to break the spell.

“Very well, my daughter,” said the abbot, backing away and making signs of blessing with a trembling hand. “See to your duties as your mistress bade you.”

So he tottered away, leaning heavily on his stick, looking back over his shoulder every few paces. He left the infirmary door and moved on down the path. Sairu watched the abbot go until he had vanished into the main temple building. Then, breathing a heavy sigh, she turned back to her patient.

He was lying flat once more, but his eyes were open and watching her.

“Who was that?” he demanded.

“A holy man,” said Sairu, still smiling. She returned to the pallet on the floor and once more picked up the cup of brew, which was by now quite cold. “Drink, noble prince,” she said.

“You must bear a message to my father,” the slave said.

“No, I must not,” she replied. “Drink.”

“I command you.”

She laughed. “Drink,” she said again.

“I am the son of Juong-Khla, and I order you to—”

“You are a slave without a name, without a people, without even a stitch of clothing to call your own. You have nothing but your claims, and no one to believe them. So you will drink as you are told, and you will recover, for it is the will of my mistress that you should do so; and she is your mistress now as well, so her wish is, as they say, your command.”

He snarled then, but without much force, for he hadn’t regained much of his strength. “Handmaiden. Fetch-and-carry girl,” he said. “Don’t try putting on your Kitar airs. You’re no better than a slave yourself and have never been anything else, judging by your hands.”

The venom of his words was cut by fatigue, however, and succeeded in provoking nothing more than another smile from Sairu. “Drink,” she said again. This time he obeyed. Then he slept.

All this the cat observed from a perch on a low stool nearby. He sat with his paws curled up to his chest, purring to himself. When Sairu settled back, she glanced his way, and her smile dropped away into a frown.

“What?” she demanded.

The cat said nothing. He purred on, looking as pleased as though he’d just done something rather clever.

Brother Tenuk did not sleep. Sometimes he would come close to sleep, so close that he could almost smell the flowers of the Realm of Dreams, could almost taste the sweetness of repose offered him.

But this never failed to send him upright in heart-pounding terror.

Then he would lie back upon his bed and stare out his open window, resting his body as much as he dared but not sleeping. Never sleeping. It was this as much as anything that had aged him so far beyond his time and left him teetering on the very brink of madness. Not long now and he would fall, he knew. Then madness would swallow him up entirely. But he hoped . . . oh, how he hoped there remained to him time enough to accomplish his purpose!

Some nights his window opened on nothing but darkened sky, when heavy clouds shrouded the Lady Moon and her sparkling gardens. These were the best nights. He could rest then without so much fear. There was always some fear—Brother Tenuk could not recall his last fearless moment. But there was less of it when Hulan could not see him.

But this night her great silver eye was open a mere slit, a shining crescent in the darkness above. He felt as though she spied on him and him alone, gazing out from under long lashes of night.

He scowled at her from his bed, the humble woolen coverlet pulled up to his chin as though he were a boy once more, afraid of spooks. But this was one enormous, all-seeing spook, and his woolen blanket could not hide him from her.

“Not long now, my lady,” he whispered to the shining goddess whom he had journeyed so far and so long to serve here in her mountain temple. Hatred laced his words. “Not long until all traitors are betrayed!”

Suddenly across his mind there flashed a memory. He saw it as clearly as waking day. He saw white Kulap suspended on the end of a long black talon that punctured her heart and drew her blood. But then the memory twisted and became an evil dream. It was no longer Kulap’s white breast stained with blood. It was no longer Kulap he saw stabbed on the end of that talon.

It was Lady Hariawan.

Brother Tenuk awoke with a start, choking on his own scream.

Sairu stood outside the door to her mistress’s set of chambers, considering the face between her and the entrance. It was the face of Tu Domchu. There were so many little details making up its composition that filled her with an overwhelming and (a reasonable side of her suspected) unfair dislike. His eyes were too close together, for one thing, which seemed in that moment an unpardonable sin. And she could probably map out whole constellations in the red spots, moles, and pock-marks on his cheeks and forehead. His lower jaw was constantly churning like that of a cow chewing her cud, save when he paused every so often to spit a foul stream across the hall to spatter the wall opposite his position. His voice was the voice of one who always said what he had been coached to say by someone more intelligent than he, probably Tu Syed. Beyond that, she could tell by the look in his eye that, orders notwithstanding, he had maliciously determined to thwart Sairu at every possible opportunity for the pure sport of it.

“Sorry, miss, but you ain’t permitted in.”

He wasn’t sorry at all. The blasted bull-cow!

“My mistress needs me,” Sairu said. The patience of her voice and the smile on her face betrayed nothing of her mounting fury. “I must tend to her.”

Tu Domchu chewed roundly for a full half-minute. Then he spat. This accomplished, he went back to chewing for another half-minute before finally answering her. “Sorry miss. You ain’t permitted in.”

“Under whose orders?”

“Lady Hariawan’s. She says to me, says she, ‘Tu Domchu! Don’t you let nobody in. Not even my handmaiden.’”

Sairu doubted the truth of this claim very much indeed. Lady Hariawan, she was sure, did not even know the old slave’s name! A muscle in her jaw began to twitch. Everything,
everything
in her being rebelled. Her nature, so finely tuned to serve, to protect, cried out against this separation, which had now lasted an agonizing seven days. She could guard her mistress from the outside, making certain that no living mortal passed into the chambers by door or window.

But what of those phantom presences she had sensed in the darkness of Lady Hariawan’s chamber? What of those?

“Let me pass,” she said, putting all the force of her diminutive yet formidable self into the command.

Tu Domchu blinked. Then he spat again. “Sorry, miss. You ain’t permitted in.”

She considered for an instant all of the painful things she could do to this man who wore his own body like a sack of bones, and whose face she doubted even his own mother had found appealing. She considered all of the options available to her, options that would cause either momentary or lasting agony. Nothing could keep her from that chamber unless she allowed it to be so.

Sairu whirled about so that her ample skirts struck the narrow walls of the passage on both sides and stormed down the corridor, back out into the temple yard. She stood then, blinking and shading her eyes against the brilliant sunlight, watching the shadows of various young acolytes scrambling to avoid her gaze.

For some reason she did not like to guess, the faces of the dead slavers flashed across her mind’s eye. Idrus, Eyso, and others whose names she never learned. She saw their eyes full of life—and then she saw them dead, gazing into a void she could not see. Gazing into darkness.

She shuddered, cursing herself for a weak little fool. It was no concern of hers! Her mistress was safe, and it wasn’t as though she’d killed them by her own hand.

“I would have,” she told herself as she gathered her skirts and began to walk with a determined stride, though she could not have said where she went. “I would kill anyone to protect my mistress.”

She wondered whether or not she lied.

Her dogs appeared from various places about the temple yard and fell into step behind her, a waddling entourage. They began to growl, and she looked up, realizing she had unconsciously taken the path to the infirmary. The cat sat just inside the doorway, grooming himself and pretending the dogs didn’t exist.

And leaning against the doorpost stood Jovann, the slave.

Sairu scowled at him. No one had ever dared tell her that her scowl was nowhere near so terrifying as her smile, so she did not know that it made her look like a petulant child of three, quite adorable and completely unthreatening. “What are you doing up?” she demanded.

Jovann grinned as he would not have dared do had she smiled. He was still weak from his long fever, but seven days in Daramuti had already done wonders toward restoring his vigor. The scars on his back, however, would never fade, not entirely. And the skin of the healing wounds was tight and tender, making his movements hesitant.

“I cannot sleep for the clamor that beast of yours makes,” he said, indicating the cat with a toss of his chin. The cat paused mid-lick, and one ear twitched. Then he went on with his grooming just as though he were a normal cat—not a devil—and didn’t understand. “He sits on my pillow,” Jovann continued, “and growls in my face. It’s disconcerting.”

“I think that is a purr,” Sairu said, narrowing her eyes at the cat, who winked at her. “And he’s not mine. He’s a monster. Feel free to toss him out the window.”

Jovann raised one arm, displaying a new set of scratches from hand to elbow. “I tried.” He tucked the hand back under his opposite arm. “How can something so fluffy be so vicious?”

“Looks can be deceiving,” Sairu replied. “Back to bed.”

“No,” Jovann replied. “I am better, as you see, and I need to be on my way.” He swayed even as he spoke and was obliged to hold tight to the doorpost. But his face was determined. He had paled significantly during his convalescence, losing much of the rugged tan typical to Chhayan nomads. Indeed, he looked almost delicate standing there, with his narrow eyes sunk into his face and his cheekbones a little too sharp.

Sairu folded her hands demurely and felt the smile returning to her face. “And what do you propose to do, noble prince?” she asked. “After clothing yourself in fine raiment of sackcloth, will you weed the cabbage patch? Or haul water for the priests’ ritual baths? Or are you more of a mind to tend flocks on the lower slopes? I hear there are wolves in these mountains, and a sturdy fellow such as you would make fine wolf bait.”

Jovann’s expression darkened. “I will return to my clan.”

“I hate to remind you,” Sairu said, though her expression indicated otherwise, “that you are my Lady Hariawan’s property. She delivered you from your previous owners and saw to it that you were treated for wounds that would otherwise have been your death. You are hers by rights even a Chhayan must concede.”

Jovann took an angry step, landing on the cat’s tail. The cat exploded with an irate “
Reeeeeeeowl!
” and launched himself through the doorway. Immediately upon leaving the sanctuary of the infirmary, he found himself set upon by Dumpling, Rice Cake, and Sticky Bun and obliged to flee for his life to the nearest tree. The world filled with barks and snarls for a few moments, and neither Jovann nor Sairu attempted to interrupt, but watched the pursuit until the cat was safely ensconced in a lower bough, the three dogs circling the trunk below.

Then Jovann turned to Sairu, and he wore the patient, condescending expression which had grown all too familiar in the last few days. But she could tell he wore it only to mask other, more revealing expressions. Behind the mask she saw fear. Fear that she spoke truth; fear that he was, indeed, no longer free.

“I am the son of Juong-Khla, and I have important business with my father,” he said. “It cannot wait.”

Sairu sighed, and her smile, for a moment, became almost pitying. “You are in Kitar country now, noble prince. The business of a Chhayan chief means nothing here. Don’t,” she hastened on, seeing the muscles in his throat contract with mounting curses, “don’t think that I have no sympathy for you. I do not regard your situation lightly. But you must understand the truth of your position. And you must accept it, gracefully if you can.”

“Accept it? Slavery?” Though he still held to the doorpost with one hand, Jovann stepped from the doorway and stood before Sairu, gazing down on her, his lips drawn back a little from his teeth as though in a snarl. “That may be good enough for you, little miss, but it can never be so for me. My father is betrayed by his eldest son. By my own brother. Even now, who knows what treachery Sunan prepares? I cannot remain here, high in these mountains, while down on the plains a great evil brews, and . . . .”

She realized that he no longer saw her face before him but gazed instead into a world—a future—hidden from her eyes. Sweat beaded his brow and lip, and she saw his supporting arm tremble. She touched his shoulder. “Go back to bed,” she said.

But just as she spoke, Jovann uttered a great gasp, and she saw his eyes snap back into this world with an intensity she had never before witnessed in his face. He whispered, “Umeer’s daughter!”

Surprised, Sairu looked back over her shoulder, following his gaze. “Anwar above us,” she breathed.

For Lady Hariawan was walking down the temple path. She no longer wore the humble garb of a pilgrimess, the wide-brimmed hat, the veil. She was clad instead in a gown of silk trimmed in red glass beads and embroidered in black vines that bloomed into equally black blossoms. Her hair was loose down her back, which did not surprise Sairu (for how could her mistress hope to style it on her own?) but shocked her instead with its impropriety, especially here, sheltered behind holy walls. It flowed past her waist and was so thick and so glossy as to seem like a waterfall of ink.