Shadowed By Wings (46 page)

Nor did any before me possess the pure ivory tones of the Emperor.

A Djimbi woman with a magnificent bosom and a hideous scar that ran along her left jawline placed a hand upon the neck of our brooder. Her skin was the color of wet cinnamon mottled with sage whorls, lighter toned than some of those around her, darker than others.

“I am Tansan, and I’m waiting for bull wings to bless the herd of Xxamer Zu,” she said, her voice bold, the directness of her gaze challenging.

I looked from her to the dragonmaster, from the dragonmaster to her. But as if it were normal for a woman to extend the ritual greeting to a stranger while in the presence of men—however few of them—and as if the word she’d used to describe herself was a typical Malacarite name, the dragonmaster did little more than scowl more deeply.

“May your waiting end,” he snapped. “May bull wings hatch.”

“We’ve been expecting you, hey-o,” an old man said, speaking around an unlit looped pipe stuck between his blackened lips. He shuffled forward slightly, subtly stepping ahead of the woman who’d greeted us. “Word came a clawful of days ago.”

“What of it?” The dragonmaster looked every inch the part Gen had told him to play, that of the prideful, furious caravan owner who’d lost all his wealth in an inopportune Arena wager. It was no act, in many ways. After all, he’d lost his command of Clutch Re’s grandiose stables of winged dragons, had been reviled by the masses and attacked in Arena by one of his own apprentices, and, beneath his tunic, was suffering a great suppurating chest wound given him by a bull dragon he’d once succored.

“Here’s the brooder and cart.” The dragonmaster gestured at the mentioned items. “You’ve agreed to the barter in advance, now take them, and give my roidan yin and me food and drink.”

This rude directive was met with stoic looks; then orders were given to the children to unhitch our ancient brooder from her yoke and herd her within the warehouse. While this activity burst out around us, the dragonmaster turned and glared at me.

“Get out, then. Don’t sit and gawk.”

I stifled a caustic retort and struggled down from the cart. Pain hot and white as lightning blasted across my ribs.

As soon as my feet touched earth, I was surrounded by dusky, mottled women. They pressed about me, the heat of their near-naked skin tangible through my bitoo. The woman with the jawline scar—Tansan, as she’d identified herself—stood directly before me, so close that her proud, outthrust breasts brushed against my chest. I don’t like people standing that close, uninvited. I backed up against the cart.

Tansan looked my age, eighteen, or perhaps a little older, and stood several inches taller than me. Calm, thoughtful, and confident, she studied me with lambent eyes fringed heavily with black lashes. Her lips were full and stained black like her kin, but free of canker. Her broad shoulders were very straight but rounded softly at the ends. Muscle rippled under her smooth skin as she reached up to my cowl and pulled it back. “Let’s see you, hey-o.”

Murmurs and clucks as I was revealed.

I would have snapped my cowl back over my head if not for the pain of my broken ribs. Instead I had to content myself by glaring at her. She ignored my hostility and continued to study me. I felt like a yearling being examined before purchase.

My neck bore a thick scar that ran from the left side of my cheek down to my collarbone, given me by a dragon’s tongue while in Dragonmaster Re’s stables. For the sake of unobstructed vision in combat, I wore my black hair short, as a young boy does. My eyes were heavily bloodshot, and the blacks of my pupils were marbled with white from past abuse of dragon venom. There was not a square inch of my skin that wasn’t covered by bruises, welts, or oozing scrapes—wounds received during my battle in Arena only days before. Not that Tansan or her clan would know that I’d received them there. They saw only a woman sorely abused by her claimer.

I’d argued with Gen over his choice of my disguise, disliking even the idea of playing the part of the dragonmaster’s mistreated woman. But a disguise was necessary, and given the dragonmaster’s temperament and my own battered state, the pretence of being a beaten woman would be readily believed.

That didn’t stop my pride from chaffing as the bold, sensuous woman with the peculiar name of Tansan examined me.

I defiantly stared back at her as the warmth of her chest invaded my breasts and surged to my throat. The dragonmaster followed a group of men to one of the arbiyesku huts.

“You’ve had a debu life,” Tansan pronounced, and those about her accepted the observation with calm nods.

Debu.
A derogatory word that Djimbi use for cursed. I’d heard my mother use it, in my youth.

I was gripped with the urge to wipe the certainty from Tansan’s face. Who was she—indecently dressed, in clothes so worn they were all but threadbare—to pronounce my life cursed? How dare she—surrounded by kin and kith, safe from the insanity of Arena on this far-flung impoverished Clutch—declare my life damned?

That she was right only inflamed me further.

She turned on her heel, arms balanced at her side, not a tense line in her body, and walked away. An old woman carrying a baby in a sling upon her back touched my wrist. The whorls on the old woman’s loam-brown skin were the color of damp hay, her eyes the color of snails. Her lips and tongue were black from slii stone.

“Come, yes, we’ll give you food, water.”

Walking proved difficult after days of travelling in the back of the cart, drunk on milky maska wine for the pain in my ribs. The women surrounding me showed the good grace not to notice or remark upon my shambling gait. Ahead of us, Tansan walked erect and loose-hipped toward the wooden stairs of a long bamboo-beam and woven-jute structure on stilts: the women’s barracks. She walked with the same sultry fluidity as my sister, Waivia.

Waivia.

After a decade of believing her to be dead, I’d seen her while I fought for my life in Arena. She’d been in the crowd, upon the balcony adorned with Clutch Re’s pennants and standards. One of her arms had been linked intimately, territorially, through the arm of Waikar Re Kratt. That had always been her ambition, to be Wai ebani bayen, Foremost First pleasurer, to Kratt.

I couldn’t rejoice that she was alive, though, for I was too unnerved that she was with Kratt. With her by his side, Kratt now had access to my mother’s haunt, that powerful, insane creature that could so facilely disguise itself as a Skykeeper. But surely Waivia wouldn’t command the Skykeeper to do Kratt’s bidding. She had no reason to.

But what if she did?

Then I’d have to kill him.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Janine Cross
has published short fiction in various Canadian magazines and was nominated for an Aurora Award in 2002. Her nonspeculative fiction has appeared in newspapers and a local anthology,
Shorelines
. She has also published a literary novel.