Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04 (16 page)

Julianne was there and they were here and helpless, come so far to so little effect, blocked at every turn of the mind's eye, every leap of hope's imagination. It felt right, she thought, for Selussin: walls on all three sides, and an inaccessible darkness at the heart.

But she was not Selussid, and she refused to accept their count of what was possible, any more than she would accept Esren's. The 'ifrit could be no more certain than the djinn, of how any rescue attempt would turn out. She'd seen enough of those creatures die, to know that foreknowledge did not bring invulnerability. All they saw was possibilities, no more. If Esren saw three ways to try for Julianne, and each of them a failure - well, perhaps the 'ifrit could see no more. If she could find a fourth, she might surprise them both.

There was meant to be a fourth already on its way, what they were supposed to be waiting for, why they were wasting so much time and patience in this depressing town. Hasan was coming, with all the tribes of the Sharai. Necessarily he was slow, he lacked a djinni and had to carry water for so many men; it might take him another week to cross the

Sands. He was coming, though, and like the others she pretended that he brought their hopes with him.

Like the others, she had small faith in armies. To be sure, such a force could overrun a
castle
, slay a Sand Dancer and an 'ifrit; but however swift it was, it would be too slow to save Julianne. There needed only moments to slit a girl's soft throat, or pierce her belly with a claw.

Why Julianne had been taken was a question to which Elisande still had no answers. As bait, clearly — but bait for whom, and to what purpose? There was a fog in her mind, whenever she tried to think about it; even her curiosity didn't blaze bright enough to burn away the shadows. Answers could wait. The fire, the urgency lay in rescue. Rescue soon, rescue
now,
before Hasan came with his multitudes and his anger, to oversweep good sense and argument.

And so she was here in the dust and quiet of the morning, with half a plan in her head and small expectation. She'd left her companions in the little house they were renting by the southern gate; Coren had asked where she was going and she'd just said, 'Out, for a walk,' relying on her reputation for impatience and short temper to forestall any further questioning. He had smiled and waved a permissive hand, 'Try not to get into trouble.' Marron had still been chewing slowly on his breakfast bread; his red eyes had watched her leave, but he'd said nothing. Jemel, brewing coffee on the fire in the yard, hadn't bothered even to look up from his scented steam and his simmering, though she'd paused to call a farewell, determined that there should be nothing out of the ordinary for any of them to notice. A
restl
ess girl wasting energy while they simply wasted time in waiting, thinking, drifting - nothing unusual in that. It was the story of her life, she thought, and perhaps the story of life itself, that men would do what they wanted in defiance of what need
ed doing. Coren was more subtl
e than her father, more astute but no wiser when he should be, when she needed him to be, now. Marron was the opposite, more simple than her father, much wiser and more ignorant, hesitant to the point of immobility. Jemel simply followed Marron, who had no one to lead him; and her father - her blind, bull-stupid, blundering father, the epitome of all men, who could be absolutely relied upon to wait
too
long and then go roaring after shadows, as though noise and bluster could cover blood and waste — her father Rudel was not here yet but he was coming, with Hasan. He'd enjoy having an army to play with.

Which made it all the more urgent to forestall him, to snatch the bait but not to spring the trap; which was why she walked the streets of Selussin this morning, before the sun could rise so high that it would burn down even into the narrow, shadowed alleys of the township and drive all the inhabitants withindoors.

There was little enough traffic even at this time of day, and less chance of her finding any satisfaction from what few people were abroad. Once this place must have been open and outward-looking, welcoming to strangers, an oasis of the mind as much as of the body, a caravanserai to the world; now that it was isolated, cut off from the steady run of commerce and conversation, it had closed in on itself like a desert flower against the heat, preserving what it held. The houses and the people both were secretive, withdrawn: high walls and locked gates, shrouded faces.

By an hour after dawn, Elisande knew, all the boys of Selussin would have been already in their schools, chanting together as they memorised their holy books under a teachers stinging rod. The women and the girls would have been out in the fields, tending crops and harvesting the wiry grey-green reeds that flourished in what was marshland in the spring, when the rains ran down from the hills. Like everyone here, Elisande had slept beneath the shelter of a reed-thatch roof last night, on a mat of woven reeds. The tough fibres of those same reeds could be beaten and twisted into cords and rope, plaited to make belts and sandals, knotted into nets or mixed with mud to give strength to bricks. They pervaded this dreary life more thoroughly even than the teachings of religion; the only surprise was that the Selussids didn't eat them too. Or perhaps - remembering the tasteless stringiness of last night's vegetable stew, the effort it demanded to chew and swallow - perhaps they did that too, and simply didn't say so.

The women and children were accounted for, then, in schools and fields till noon; that left only the men. It was a man that Elisande was in search of: a priest, rather, an imam. But every man here was an imam, or seemed so: dressed in heavy formality with swinging chains and amulets above dark and decorated robes, bearded and remote, scowling normally, hurrying between school and temple, between lessons and prayer. There must be others, she supposed, old men and idle men, butchers and herdsmen, dealers in reeds. None that she could see, though, none that found any business outside his house at this time of a morning; nor that she had seen since they came here. The man they'd rented their house from was a teacher and a priest, but he wouldn't speak to Elisande.

Neither, apparently, would any of his brethren under God. She'd had small hope of that, indeed, but still she had to try. And had to fail, and so to try again
...

'Excuse me, sir—'

A glare, from beneath eyebrows like bushy crags; a quickened scurry of reed-soled feet in the dust. 'Pardon me, holy father—'

A hiss of indrawn breath, a tightening of the hood that hid the beard, a back as swiftly turned to the importunate indecency of girl, even girl as politely veiled and swathed as she was. It was girlness, femininity that offended, clearly, not a specificity of girl: not her in herself but in her body. Perhaps she should throw off the woman's dress and ape a boy again. Except that then no doubt she would be beaten for truancy, and dragged by the ear to her lessons
...

Still, she would and did try again and yet again, she had to: waylaying every man that passed, chasing after every dim-glimpsed distant shadow that moved, being rebuffed and spat upon and never winning a coherent word but yet not giving up, haunted by the image of her friend so close in the
castle
above, so unattainable by magic means that her own strength was all she had to fall back on, her strength of will and body that lacked only the one thing that these men could give her, except that not one of them would.

Her hopeless pursuit led her from the tight twist of alleys to the wide and empty marketplace where there hardly seemed to be a market any more, and on into the shadow of the greatest temple of Selussin, a three-sided tower — of course, three-sided - built of mud reinforced by a framework of wooden beams, whose ends jutted irregularly from the heat-baked, crumbling walls. In this high hot season, every day left its debris; every winter, or so she'd heard, the people would slather fresh mud between the beams to repair the ravages of another summer's sun.

There were more men here, coming and going through the low dark doorway, but still they dodged her or ignored her, importunate as she was.

At last, falling back yet again from the stiff outrage of a male back and trembling on the edge of acceptance, of defeat, she heard a soft chuckle from behind her.

And wheeled around in a fury - did they laugh at her, these silent men? they'd be sorry if they did - and found herself face to face with Jemel.

'Have you been
following
me?'

His hands waved in a calming gesture that could not
gentle
her, not while he was grinning so broadly.

'Only for a little, Lisan. I came to find what you were at.'

'Well, you have seen.' And had found it funny, seen a joke in her desperation which amused her not in the least.

'Seen, but not understood. I cannot see your thoughts, that drive you to such an effort.'

She took a slow breath against her rage, decided that he could perhaps be forgiven, if not quite yet — and made a point of looking past him, for one that she knew already was not there.

'Where's Marron, what have you done with him?'
Why aren't you sitting at his feet as usual, or shadowing his steps if he's about?

'I left him sleeping.'

There were two questions she might have asked to that,
why did you leave him?
and
why is he sleeping now, at this hour of the day, when he's had all nightfor that and besides I thought he never slept?
One answer she could guess at, though, and didn't want to; the other she could perhaps discover without asking. Days of dealing with Esren had taught her to be wary of too many questions.

So she said nothing, only waited until he put a question on his own account.

'What is it you seek, from these men who will not speak to you? You know they will not speak.'

'Yes, I know. But it's such a small thing to them, so important to me, and they make me so angry
...'
She hesitated a moment longer, then confessed. 'I want one of them to bless my knives for me, that's all.'

'To bless your knives?'

'To make them effective, against 'ifrit.'

What else? She didn't need to say it. He knew she wasn't a believer, in his God or any other.

She said it none the less, though, for his fee, payment in kind and in advance; so that he could say, 'Are you expecting to meet 'ifrit, Elisande?' and she could say, 'Were you expecting to meet 'ifrit at Rhabat, Jemel?' and he could smile and say, 'Give me your blades, then, and I will ask. And lay my scimitar beside them, in case I too should unfortunately meet 'ifrit all unexpected. I wish you had told me your thought before you came out,' he added, frowning.

'Why, so that you could have saved me this humiliation, begging in the street to no avail? So do I, then.' Perhaps. Though she'd have come out anyway, she thought, dogging his heels in another humiliation, sooner than stay and do nothing at the house where Marron slept and Coren thought his private thoughts about his daughter and would not share them with her.

'No, I enjoyed that,' with the flashing grin again, that came and went in moments. 'But I could have brought Dard also, for the blessing.'

'Marron doesn't need an enchantment on his sword, to slay an 'ifrit.' He was skilled enough - she thought, she hoped - to do it with a bare blade unblessed, a straight thrust to the hot red eye; or else he had the Daughter, he always had the Daughter. 'Besides, he doesn't like to kill.'

'I know,' Jemel said, his eyes briefly shadowed. 'Not even 'ifrit. He may have to, though, before all this is over. He might try not to kill, but if he did not know his blade was blessed, it might save him anyway'

She could see what he imagined, Marrons deliberately not thrusting at an eye, expecting his sword to skitter off invulnerable chitin. But, 'He's stupid, Jemel,' -
of course he's stupid he's a boy—
'but not that stupid.' Not that cruel - she thought, she hoped again - to leave them both bereft. 'And the Daughter wouldn't let it happen anyway. The Ghost Walker is very hard to kill, remember? Trust its good sense, if you can't trust his. Anyway, he'd know, I think, if you had Dard blessed behind his back. He knows more than he ought to, more than he thinks he knows.' And more, far more than was good for him.

'Well. Give me your knives.'

It was the only choice she had, but still she hesitated. 'They're my blades. I want to see
...'

He nodded. There was a bond between a weapon and its owner, of course there was, how not? Why else would so many give a name to steel? 'It will be done in the temple here, if I can find a man to do it. Unbelievers are forbidden to enter, but women are not, and the veil hides your race. Follow us inside. With luck, the imam will not know you.' The imam, she thought, would likely not even notice her. 'There will be a screen in the eastern quarter; watch through the lattice. You'll see as much as I do. It will be brief, in any case. These are busy men, these imams.'

There was a cynical note to his voice; she gazed at him curiously, remembering how many mornings she'd seen him leave even Marron and go off alone to say his prayers in the Sands. Mornings and evenings both, but it was the mornings she remembered: the pale light, the cool breeze and himself a silhouette against the new-made sun, all pride and purpose
...