Snare (77 page)

In the centre of the village, the Great Mother’s servants were unrolling her green and white ground cloth. Her spear Chur had taken up positions among the houses as well as at the village perimeter. Herbgather Woman trotted this way and that, booming out instructions, waving her pseudo-hands, alternately raising and lowering her neck as if she felt unjustly treated. Her servants and yellow-kilted Chur loped back and forth, following her orders. Water Woman had gathered her people out in the grass off to one side. Carrying her saddlebags, Ammadin and Loy were standing next to her, and a young Chur had taken charge of the horses.

‘Zayn Recaller!’ Water Woman said. ‘Where be Jezro Khan?’

‘Bathing,’ Zayn said. ‘They were kept prisoner in a filthy hut, and they didn’t want to insult the Great Mother.’

‘Good, good, this be smart of them. I go-now tell-next Stronghunter Man some things.’

Water Woman hurried off towards the canal, booming and thrumming. Zayn watched until he saw Stronghunter Man coming to meet her; then he gathered his courage and strode over to Ammadin.

‘Ammi?’ he said. ‘I’ve got to talk with you.’

‘All right,’ Ammadin said. ‘Here?’

‘No. Privately.’

They glanced at Loy, who smiled as if to say she understood.

‘Ammi,’ Loy said, ‘I’m going to get my horse and mount up, so I can see what’s going on. Should I fetch yours?’

‘Yes, good idea.’

Loy hurried off, and together Zayn and Ammadin walked through the mob of spear Chur to the grassy meadow beyond. She slung her saddlebags over one shoulder and laid her free hand on his arm.

‘You look terrified,’ she said. ‘What’s wrong?’ ‘I’ve broken Bane.’

Ammadin took her hand off his arm and stepped back. ‘How?’

‘I told Jezro Khan about your quest to meet Sibyl. Soutan heard me, and that’s why he’s out here. He was following you.’

‘Gods, that was stupid!’

He winced. ‘I know. I’m sorry, oh God I can’t tell you how sorry. It’s been hell, this past few days. I knew I should tell you, but I was – well, hell, I was afraid of what you’d think of me. I was afraid you’d just send me into exile.’

Ammadin crossed her arms over her chest and looked at him for an agonizing span of moments. The noise and bustle around them was quieting, he realized. He glanced back and saw that Water Woman had returned. The Chiri Michi was both talking and thrumming, pointing this way and that with her pseudo-hands as she gave orders to her servants.

‘I might have done just that, once.’ Ammadin spoke at last. ‘I might have spat in your face and turned you out of the comnee to live or die alone.’

‘I was afraid of –’

‘Let me finish! I’ve learned too much, these past few weeks. I’ve lost something, Zayn. I used to feel so sure of the laws of the gods. Now I don’t.’

‘You must think I’m contemptible anyway.’

‘No, I think you were really stupid. Why did you tell him?’

‘I’d mentioned you were with me in Sarla.’ Zayn could no longer look her in the face; he stared at the ground between them. ‘So the khan asked me why you were there. And I forgot who I was. Can you understand, Ammi? Just being with Jezro and Idres, I turned back into the man I used to be. And that man was a Kazraki
officer, not a comnee man, and the idea of Bane – I forgot it, because Kazraki officers don’t give a shit about it.’ He forced himself to look up. ‘But later I remembered. It was like waking up from a dream. And I knew I’d done something wrong. It’s been eating me alive.’

‘It should. You’re ritually unclean. You will be until I give you some kind of penance, and you do it. Until then, you’re going to have to eat by yourself and ride at the rear of the herd – well, behind us all, I mean – and you can’t speak to anyone but me unless there’s some kind of danger threatening. I’ll explain the ritual to your friends.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘So am I. Very sorry.’

Ammadin turned on her heel and strode off, leaving him heartsick behind her.

Out in the centre of the village the Great Mother was sitting haunched on her striped cloth. Herbgather Woman and Water Woman had taken up positions in front of her with their spear Chur behind them. Loy had retrieved her black horse and was sitting on horseback some yards off to the side with the grey gelding in tow. Ammadin trotted over, took the reins, and mounted.

‘I couldn’t see a damn thing otherwise,’ Loy said, ‘not in all this confusion. God, I hate being short!’

Chof, both male and female, were bustling around, approaching the Great Mother, backing away again, rushing from house to house or standing talking in little groups. Both horses, Loy’s black and Ammadin’s grey, snorted and pulled at their bits. At times when the Chof came too close, the horses danced and tossed their heads, but they never made a serious effort to bolt. Neither Water Woman nor Herbgather Woman seemed to be in any hurry to have the formal proceedings start – if indeed there would be a formal proceeding.

Ammadin was just as glad of the delay. Zayn’s confession had caught her completely off-guard, to the point where she hardly knew what she felt, except a certain dull anger that she’d been sleeping with a man who was ritually unclean. Had they been back on the grass, she could have consulted another spirit rider and come up with a purification for both of them. As it was –

‘What’s wrong?’ Loy said suddenly. ‘Something is.’

‘It shows?’ Ammadin said. ‘I was just wishing I’d never left the plains. I used to know exactly what to do about almost everything.’

‘What?’ Loy turned in her saddle to look at her.

‘Oh never mind! Here come Jezro Khan and Warkannan, anyway.’

Stronghunter Man and a cluster of his spear Chur were striding through the village. In their midst walked the two Kazraks, dripping from wet clothes, bearded and shaggy-haired, but clean. When Stronghunter Man filled his throat sac and boomed, the yellow-clad Chof scrambled out of his way. Stronghunter Man and the Kazraks stopped at the edge of the striped cloth, and even though Jezro carried his walking stick, they both stood straight-backed and proud, officers still, at attention before an authority, but an authority over equals, not superiors. The Chur Vocho gestured at his two charges to stay, then led the rest of his men away to take up a position behind Water Woman. Loy leaned in the saddle to speak with Ammadin.

‘Where’s Zayn?’

‘I don’t know, and at the moment I don’t care.’

Loy’s eyes widened.

‘We’d better be quiet,’ Ammadin said. ‘It’s starting.’

The Great Mother boomed several times, and gradually the other Chof fell silent and stood still. She folded her pseudo-hands across her chest, stretched out her long neck, and studied Jezro and Warkannan with her pairs of golden eyes. The two Kazraks held their ground. Jezro was even smiling in a pleasant sort of way. Through his dark beard welts of scar tissue glistened with damp.

‘So now,’ the Great Mother said in Hirl-Onglay. ‘You be Jezro Khan, son of the former Great Father of Kazrajistan?’

‘I am, your highness,’ Jezro said. ‘I’m honoured to be in your presence.’

‘You speak-now nicely for a Karshak. I hear-two-day-past about your brother. I think-then, this brother be a foul sort of H’mai, stealing from his own people.’

‘Yes, foul’s a good word for it. I have a personal reason to hate him, too.’ Jezro raised a hand and pointed to the scars across his face. ‘He had this done to me. He was trying to kill me, you see, so I wouldn’t pose a threat to his rule.’

‘I hear-then he kill any person who speak-dare to argue with him.’

‘That too, and he’s demanded so much money from his people that many of them don’t have enough to eat.’

The Great Mother made a trilling sound through both nostrils. ‘He be-very a bad ruler.’

‘Very bad, yes.’

The Great Mother considered him for several moments. ‘So then,’ she said at last, ‘you go home not go home to fight this brother?’

Jezro took a deep breath. ‘I am going home, or I should say, I’ll go home if your people allow me to. At the moment we seem to be your prisoners.’

‘Not my prisoners, no. So, you go-soon home if you have power to go home. What you do-next there?’

‘Try to take the throne away from my brother. My friends tell me that I’ve got an army waiting for me.’

‘I hear-then this, too.’ She lowered her head a scant foot and peered into his face. ‘So, you swear not-swear upon your god’s name that all this be true?’

Jezro Khan stood silently, staring at her, his face a little pale, his mouth half-open in mute surprise. Warkannan made an odd sound, rather like a whoop of triumph suddenly cut off, then raised a hand to cover his mouth and pretended to cough. The Great Mother swung her head and contemplated him.

‘You be wet and cold,’ she said, then returned to studying Jezro. ‘I ask-then you a question. Jezro Khan, you swear not swear?’

Jezro took a long deep breath. ‘I swear to you, Great Mother. By my god the Lord, the merciful and compassionate, I’m going to go home and try to free my people from my brother’s misrule.’

‘Good. This please-now me, and it please-next your people even more.’ The Great Mother turned her head and looked at Herbgather Woman. ‘Lastunnabrilchiri, you hurt-not this man. You set-now him and his friend free. You give back their horses. You give back all their goods. You let him and his friends go free from your village.’

Herbgather Woman whined, but she lowered her head almost to the ground. ‘I obey-now and next and soon you, Great Mother.’

‘Good. Tomorrow Jezro Khan leave-next your camp with all the H’mai. I stay here with my people. I visit-not you in too long. It
be time-many-days for a nice visit, and we share much food.’

‘Yes, Great Mother,’ Herbgather Woman said. ‘I be-now so glad you visit me.’ Her words dripped misery, but she stamped a flaccid foreleg anyway. ‘We share much good food.’

The spear Chur on both sides boomed and pounded the hafts of their spears on the ground. Water Woman could no longer contain herself; she stamped her forefeet in such a rapid flurry that she seemed to be dancing. Herbgather Woman turned and strode off, thrumming to her servants, while the Great Mother’s servants rushed to tend their mistress.

In a few brief moments the Chof villagers changed from participants in an orderly court of law to a random sort of mob, with individuals wandering this way and that, booming and chattering among themselves, picking up sacks and bundles only to lay them down again elsewhere, over and over. Loy and Ammadin dismounted and led their horses through the confusion to join the khan. Jezro hurried forward to meet them with Warkannan right behind. The captain’s height and the strength his body displayed surprised Ammadin. She’d seen him so often as a tiny image that she’d been thinking of him as short and slender.

‘Spirit Rider,’ Jezro said, and he bobbed his head in respect. ‘I’m willing to bet that you’ve got something to do with this.’

‘You’d win the bet,’ Loy said, smiling. ‘I’m impressed, Ammi, I’ll admit it.’

‘I’m glad you said yes, is all,’ Ammadin said to Jezro. ‘They might have killed you otherwise.’

‘So Hassan told me.’

During this conversation in Vranz, Warkannan had merely listened, his expression so blank that Ammadin suddenly realized he’d not been understanding a word.

‘Do you speak Hirl-Onglay, Captain?’ Ammadin said in that language.

‘I do, but not Vranz.’ Warkannan was struggling to keep from laughing. ‘Was it you who told the Great Mother that Jezro should go back to Kazrajistan?’

‘Yes. I didn’t want to see you both killed.’

‘Then I need to thank you, too, but for more than you probably realize. Our khan was trying to avoid going home, you see, and I was beginning to run out of ways to persuade him.’

‘You bastard, Idres,’ Jezro said. ‘Gloating over the way I’ve been
trapped. I suppose you think I’ll go through with this now.’

‘Of course.’ Warkannan turned solemn. ‘I know you’ll never break any oath you swear before God.’

‘And you’re right, damn you.’ Jezro growled like a shen and turned back to Ammadin. ‘What can I do to repay you?’

‘Repay?’

‘Well, I want to do something, and something large, at that. You did save my life.’

‘I suppose that’s true.’ Ammadin considered his offer, too generous to dismiss with a few polite words. ‘Someday I might take you up on that. There’s nothing important that I can ask you for now, although I could use your help in dealing with Yarl Soutan.’

‘There’s nothing I’d like more.’ Jezro suddenly smiled. ‘You can count on us to help you hunt. I wouldn’t mind meeting this Sibyl person, either. Hassan told us about your quest –’

‘I know.’ Ammadin interrupted him. ‘He admitted it to me earlier.’

‘Merde!’ Loy whispered. ‘Now I understand!’

Utterly puzzled, Jezro glanced back and forth between the two women.

‘I know he told you,’ Ammadin said. ‘Do you realize he broke Bane when he did? He’s ritually unclean now, and I’ve ordered him to stay away from everyone.’

Jezro winced. ‘That’s my fault, Holy One. I ordered him to tell us. By rights I’m the one who should pay for it. Set me a penance and I’ll do it.’

Ammadin considered him as he stood with his head bowed, his eyes lowered. Even without her hypernormal sense of smell she could intuit that this man was incapable of lying. ‘You’re the heir to your country’s throne. I’m surprised that a man of your rank would take the blame for something like this.’

‘My rank? I don’t have any rank, not out here.’

‘But Zayn obeyed your order.’

‘Yes.’ Jezro winced again. ‘I owe him and you a thousand apologies. I didn’t realize what it meant.’

‘You’re not a comnee man. Bane doesn’t concern you, any more than your Kazraki sins concern me.’ Ammadin turned to Warkannan. ‘Did you witness this, Captain?’

‘I did, Spirit Rider. The khan had to order Zayn twice before he told us anything.’

‘Well, that makes an enormous difference, yes. All right, he’s forgiven. I’ll go tell him.’

‘Thank you,’ Jezro said. ‘Do you want me to do some kind of penance?’

‘No, of course not. You have your own god. Mine won’t care what you do.’

‘I see.’ Jezro allowed himself a slight smile. ‘That’s one way to keep the theology simple.’