Sword and Verse (16 page)

Though Belic's vow to keep the language of the gods for the nobility would please Gyotia, it tore at Sotia's heart. Her eyes fell upon the frowning face of Belic's attendant, his younger brother Iano. “You do not agree?” she said to him.

Iano lowered his head respectfully, but his voice was strong and sure. “Such a gift should be shared with all your people, my lady, so that all may know the glory of the gods.”

I SQUEAKED AS
I landed in a heap. Swearing, the guard leaped up and drew his sword. With its point at my chest, I didn't dare move.

He squinted at me in the dim light. He was a few years older than I was, with close-cropped black hair and a large Qilarite nose. His youth was hardly comforting though, as his sword was sharp and steady.

My mind raced as quickly as my heart. I had no excuse for my presence here, or for how I'd gotten past the guards. I had never prepared one; I'd always known there would be no surviving discovery.

The young man's eyes ran over my white and green dress, and I saw him realize who I was. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

No brilliant answer came to my lips, so I pressed them closed. This seemed to unnerve him; he motioned me to the wall. I scrambled over to it, and he followed with his sword.

I looked past him at the Trade Ministry office. Was there any way to warn Jonis and Kiti that I'd failed?

Not likely from the dungeons.

My captor called to another guard down the hallway. The other didn't want to come at first, but as the younger guard's voice grew more insistent, the other guard came into sight, grumbling, “This had better be important, Kirol. If the captain finds out I left my post—”

The younger guard, Kirol, stepped aside, revealing me behind him. I looked up into a weathered face, and recognized Peron, the lead guard from the day I'd knocked the letter out of its slot in the Library, a lifetime ago. He gasped.

“She just came down the corridor,” said Kirol, his voice rising.

I looked away, determined to reveal nothing. My stomach lurched—what if they suspected why I was here? Would they torture me if they thought I could tell them about the Resistance?

They muttered to each other. Kirol's swordpoint dipped as he listened, nodding, to Peron. “I think you're right,” he whispered back. “I've seen it too.”

I swallowed hard. What had they seen? Did they suspect that I'd been here before?

Kirol handed his sword to Peron, who pointed it at me. I cringed against the wall as Kirol bound my hands with a leather strap.
So this is it,
I thought. At least it wasn't a long walk to the dungeons.

Kirol took his sword back and sheathed it, and they each grasped me by an arm and dragged me toward the stairs—not the dungeons. I balked in confusion, so that they had to haul me up. Neither spoke as they pulled me up two flights of stairs. My feet stumbled on the soft carpet of the upper level of the palace—were they taking me back to my own room?—but they turned right instead of left, and stopped in front of a white door. Peron knocked and spoke to someone inside, then they pulled me through. I caught a glimpse of a small anteroom before I was dragged through another door and deposited in front of a huge desk of gleaming blackwood.

Mati sat behind it. He'd been writing something, but now he laid aside his quill. His eyes went from my face to my bound hands, then to the two guards who had stepped away from me as though I had the coughing sickness.

“What is this?” he demanded, sounding like the boy I'd known, not the king making a proclamation. I hadn't heard that voice in so long that it made my knees wobble.

As Kirol explained, I flushed; Mati would know immediately how I'd come to be in the scribe rooms, as he himself had told me how to get there. How was it possible that, after everything that had happened, I felt guilty at betraying his trust? I studied the flowers on the carpet, trying to think of an explanation, any explanation, for my presence in the rooms below. Maybe it was the way Mati's voice had sounded when he'd first spoken, but I hoped that if I
could
explain it, he might believe me. After all, the boy I'd loved had despised violence. He'd visited Tyasha ke Demit before her execution. Maybe he would be
lenient, even if he no longer loved me.

Kirol's words trailed off, and Peron cleared his throat. “We thought it best to bring her to you directly, Your Majesty.”

I peeked up at Mati, feeling much like I had as a terrified fourteen-year-old. Mati had saved me then, I told myself, and he hadn't even known me.

“You were right to do so,” he told the guards as he sat back and rubbed his eyes. His tunic was unlaced and his hair untidy, as though he hadn't bothered to dress properly—or as though he'd never gone to bed last night. He sighed. “Peron, Kirol, wait outside.”

The guards bowed and left. I kept my gaze on the desk as Mati stood, and I made out the lower order symbols
tax
and
slave
on the page he'd been writing, before he walked around the desk, blocking the paper. He regarded me for a long moment, then leaned back against the desk. My wrists smarted where the strap cut into them.

“Obviously you've been using the secret passages,” he said. “I'm not an idiot, so I thought you might. But what were you doing in the scribe rooms?”

I swallowed. “Looking for orphans for the Selection,” I said, the lie popping out fully formed. “Girls in . . . bad situations.”

Mati looked away. “I can understand that,” he said softly. “It was stupid, though. You could have just asked me.”

My face must have said what I was thinking, because he laughed. The sound melted away the last of my fear. I knew now that I was not headed for the dungeons.

“All right, maybe not,” he conceded. “But I need you to be
more careful, Raisa. Things are touchy right now. If the council knew about this, I don't know if I could protect you.”

“But you're the king,” I said, proud that my voice didn't even shake.

He gave a humorless laugh. “So was my father. Look where that got him.”

It was a strange thing to say; I stared at him. Mati sighed. “My father's death was not an accident. He was assassinated. Likely someone on the council is behind it.”

I gaped at him. “But . . . the wound was . . .” Horrible. Bloody. Obviously from an eland.

“Oh, he was gored by an eland, that's true. But not because he jumped in front of me. We'd been stalking that eland all morning. We were waiting it out in the bushes. Suddenly Father started twitching and gasping. He staggered out and fell practically at its feet, and it gored him. I went after it with my knife, to get it off him, and it ran away.”

“You think he was poisoned?”

“I'm sure of it. His canteen disappeared in the confusion, and no one else was nearby when it happened, so I can't prove it. But I know what I saw. I just don't know who, or why.”

I nodded slowly. “That's why you wouldn't let anyone in to see him.”

“Yes. I still don't know who I can trust.”

I took that in. “Why are you telling me this?”

Mati's eyes were soft. “Because I trust
you
, Raisa.” His words hit me like daggers. Blood pounded in my ears so loudly that it almost drowned out what he said next. “And with the other
things going on right now . . . I need you to be careful. Don't give them a reason to accuse you of anything. I couldn't bear it if they got you too.”

He stepped closer. Instinctively I lifted my hands to stop him. He frowned. “Oh, sorry. I forgot.” He closed the distance between us and unbuckled the strap from my wrists.

“Thank you,” I said, rubbing my wrists to get the blood going. His nearness made it difficult to think. His familiar scent hit me, musky and sweet, and my body responded of its own accord, my pulse racing.

Mati took my hand. “Gods, I've missed you,” he whispered. In his eyes was the same longing that had been in my heart for nearly a year. He touched my cheek. My breath came in little gasps.

I turned my head and forced myself to inhale and exhale properly. “What other things?” I asked, my voice strained.

Mati dropped his hand from my cheek, looking at me quizzically.

“You said ‘the other things going on right now,'” I clarified. “What do you mean?”

Mati laughed. “Oh, some nonsense with the Resistance. My guard captain's set a trap—he's planted rumors about a weapons shipment coming through the mountain pass in a few days. They've obviously been stockpiling weapons—half the time they don't even touch anything else.” He shook his head. “They don't help their cause by doing that. It angers the council, and frightens people, and makes real change more difficult. Dimmin will have a squad waiting when they come for those weapons. He wants to
take out the leaders before the wedding. . . .”

He trailed off and looked at me apprehensively. I had let go of his hand, and obviously he thought it was because he'd mentioned the wedding. But I had realized two things simultaneously. First: Jonis and Kiti were walking into a trap, and even if I'd destroyed the shipping record, it wouldn't have saved them from it. Second: they had lied to me.
We need food for those children
, Kiti had said. And Jonis, harping on rescuing young ones with each raid . . .

Of course, I realized. Of course they'd taken that tack, when they'd seen my reaction to Linti's death. I'd seen those shipping lists myself, seen the numbers of swords and pikes listed there. How could I have been so naive?

I couldn't properly process my anger, not with Mati standing two feet away watching me anxiously. Then I realized—I was angry at him too. How dare he hold my hand and touch my cheek, and bring these feelings up in me after all this time?

It wasn't rational. I had just escaped punishment and should have been grateful, but all I felt was anger—at Mati, at Jonis, at my own folly. No matter what I did now, I would betray someone's trust.

Mati reached for me again, but I stepped back. “Don't,” I pleaded in a whisper. “We can't. You know that. Thank you for helping me. I'll be more careful. But we both need to . . . remember who we are.” I turned away.

Mati seized my arm, and when he pulled me back around, his face wore an aristocratic blankness. “It seems that you
have
forgotten just who I am,” he said coldly.

I stared at him in shock. A moment before he had been my
sweet Mati, but now he had become someone I didn't know. “Don't touch me,” I spat, shaking his hand off my arm. I whirled around and wrenched open the door.

The two guards in the anteroom jumped to their feet as I stalked past. “Let her go,” said Mati's voice quietly behind me. I paused for only an instant, but didn't look back.

I charged into the sitting room to find Laiyonea calmly sipping tea. I dropped into a chair next to her, still seething. My anger was masking fear, disappointment, and relief, I knew, but somehow the anger felt more comfortable, more righteous. So I clung to it.

“Have you gotten permission for me to go to the market?” I asked.

Laiyonea nodded, studying me over her teacup. “Just speak to Captain Dimmin when you're ready.”

I laughed, thinking how close I'd come to having an entirely different encounter with the guard captain. “This afternoon,” I said, grabbing a roll from the table and taking a savage bite.

Belic rebuked his brother sharply for his insolent words to the goddess—how dare he suggest that the language of the gods should be written by any but the noblest hands?

Sotia held her tongue, and presented the tablet to Belic, as the gods had willed.

THREE GUARDS ACCOMPANIED
me to the market later that day; thankfully, the two from my morning's misadventure were not among them. I explained that approaching an orphan with royal guards in tow would only frighten a likely candidate away, so they let me walk alone and question the merchants about where they might have seen children, as long as I stayed in their sight.

The market was a large amorphous space in the depression between the temple hill and the mountain that formed the city's southern border. Rows of stalls stretched off in every direction—though to call them “rows” was generous. They were more like meandering clumps, set up wherever sellers had decided to drop their wares. Often this was in the middle of an already established aisle, which forced shoppers to stop and wait for others to come through the narrow opening. And of course they browsed the wares in that stall while they waited.

I hadn't entered the market since my days running errands for Emilana Kret as a child. It hadn't changed much, but I had. I turned my back on the three rotting heads on pikes next to the arched entryway. Enough hair still clung to the misshapen forms to recognize them as Arnath—most likely the conspirators captured a few Shinings back.

Near the entrance, a smooth-faced young Qilarite on a raised platform hawked the virtues of the slaves tied up behind him. The eyes of passing Arnathim darted to those on the platform and away, any expression quickly disappearing as they hurried back to the tasks set to them by their masters. They moved about freely, and those on the platform would too, once they showed their new masters that same blank, passive look.

I could see that those on the platform already knew this—the raid that had brought me to the city had been the most recent, which meant that these slaves had all grown up here in Qilara and were being resold. Those of us from the islands had fought at the slave market. Margara had wailed and scratched the slaver's face when he'd sold her oldest daughter to a leering blacksmith. The slaver had raised his arm and sent her sprawling, her head hitting stone with a sickening crack. She had limped dizzily back onto the platform, and had been thrown over a servant's burly shoulder when some Scholar's representative had purchased her and the other women from our village.

Only the children had been left, and we were speedily divvied up among the buyers, with Emilana Kret claiming the smallest of us for the palace: Kiti, me, a seven-year-old girl called Elna, and Deri, Margara's five-year-old son. Deri had been sick on the
voyage, and died a few days after we came to the palace. Elna cried constantly; she was terrified of the platforms, and so it was perhaps inevitable when she fell and broke her leg. It never healed properly, and she was sent away—no one ever said where, and she never came back.

I turned away from the slaver and started along the meandering pathways, paying close attention to the children creeping under carts and hiding behind pillars. I approached two girls playing with stones in the dirt, but they scuttled away, and I lost them in the crowd.

I arrived at the market center, and turned back to make sure I was still in the guards' sight. One of the guards raised a hand in acknowledgment. I decided to head to the fountain. The crowd melted away in front of me; with my white and green dress, I had, of course, been recognized. I hurried on, my cheeks burning.

At the fountain, I found what I'd come for—with their scruffy clothes and underfed faces, these children had to be orphans. I smiled and walked toward them—seven children total, the oldest not more than six. I couldn't tell which were boys and which girls, for they all had long, unkempt hair and skinny arms poking out of their filthy rags.

“Hello,” I said gently. They fled in all directions. One small girl who had been bathing her feet in the fountain splashed me in her haste to get away.

By the time I had wiped the water from my face, the children had all disappeared. One of the guards hurried over. “Are you all right, Tutor?”

I tucked a sodden strand of hair into my braid. “Fine, just wet.”

“We could round them up for you.”

“No,” I said quickly. “I'd rather do it this way.”

The guard shrugged and took up a post near the fountain. I moved down the adjacent row, peering between stalls. I reached the end without spying a single child.

“You'd have better luck,” said a voice in my ear, “if you shop at the stalls for a bit. They'll come back. You're a curiosity.”

I turned, but a warning pinch on my arm stilled the movement. Anyway, I knew the voice. Jonis's superior tone infuriated me—not least because his suggestion was a good one.

I caught the guard's eye and gestured that I was going to visit the vendors, then approached a busy glassblower's stall.

I wasn't surprised to find Jonis next to me, idly turning over a dish as though inspecting it for flaws.

I leaned closer, pretending to look at the dish he held. “The shipment from the valley is a trap,” I whispered. “Don't go after it.”

The dish lay still in Jonis's hand for a fraction of a second, and then he set it down. “How do you know that?”

“I just know. They made it weapons specifically to tempt you.” My fingers curled into my skirts. “Did you even save any of those children, or has it always been about stealing weapons?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“I've
seen
the supply lists,” I shot back, leaning forward to inspect a bowl. “I'm not stupid. If you ask me to risk my life to help you, you could at least tell me the truth.”

Jonis looked sideways at me. “Would you have agreed to help us if I had?”

I didn't answer. Jonis nodded as if he had scored a point, then
moved to the herbseller's stall, swinging the market basket in his hand. I waited a few minutes, then followed as though the herbs were fascinating. “You're going to get a lot of innocent people killed,” I told him in a low voice.

“What're we supposed to do?” Jonis shot back without looking at me. “Wait for the benevolent Qilarite king to give us our freedom?”

“He might, if you'd stop scaring the rest of them,” I said, and though I no longer knew whether the first part of that statement was true, I understood that the second part was what Mati had been trying to tell me that morning.

Jonis snorted. “If you believe that, you deserve to be lied to.”

“Did you know that the council wants to send raiders to the Nath Tarin, because of you?” I said through gritted teeth.

“Do you really think they wouldn't send them anyway?”

I pressed my lips together and nodded to the herbseller as she approached. Mechanically I sniffed the sirret that she held out to me, asked her to send a packet to me at the palace, then trailed Jonis to the other end of the stall. “But untrained slaves against soldiers?” I whispered angrily. “Those lives are on your head. How many children have you sucked in?”

Jonis looked at me quickly, and I gasped as I saw his face. His right eye, bruised and blackened, was nearly swollen shut. “What—” I started to ask, but Jonis touched my wrist and surreptitiously indicated the oilseller's stall nearby.

“See that tall man with the brown hair?” he said. I looked, and located an Arnath with a laughing face, deep in conversation with the oilseller, whom he towered above. I nodded. “That's
Ris ko Karmik,” Jonis said. “It's thanks to you that his head is attached to his shoulders, instead of on a pike over there, and his wife and child are safe.”

“His mission was successful?”

“Yes.” Jonis looked sideways at me again. “I don't take stupid risks with people's lives. We only do what we have to do.” He paused. “Just like you. You're here to gather girls for the Selection, aren't you?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

Jonis was silent. Remembering my pretense, I lifted a plate of herbs and smelled it. The stinging scent of nettleblossom made my eyes water.

“How many do you need?” Jonis asked at last.

“At least twelve. Orphans, no older than five.”

Jonis nodded. “I can help you, but you have to make sure a certain girl is chosen.”

“That's not how it works.”

But Jonis wasn't listening. He turned and walked away; I was clearly meant to follow. I waited a few minutes, then gestured to the guard to tell him where I was going. I stayed far enough behind Jonis to avoid arousing suspicion, but when he turned and disappeared between two stalls, I stopped, at a loss.

A weaver's cart stood in this less-crowded corner of the market, and the woman in green behind it called out to me. “Tutor,” she said, “come see these fine new fabrics from Master Ky.”

I stepped closer. “I am not shopping for cloth today, I'm afraid,” I said. I looked behind her to see Jonis seated on the ground beside a tiny girl wearing a man's faded green tunic as
a dress. A half-finished cloth waited on a handloom behind the woman, and the girl sat patiently with the thread from the loom spooled around her raised hands.

I glanced at the guards. From their vantage point, they wouldn't be able to see Jonis or the little girl. I angled my body so they couldn't see my face either, and pretended to examine the length of fabric the woman held out to me.

Jonis laid a hand on the girl's dark hair. “This is my sister, Jera,” he said. “She'll be five at Second Shining, the right age for a Tutor.”

The woman turned her head away and folded her arms.

I stared at him, my fingers stilling on the fabric. “You want me to take your sister?”

Jonis looked up at me, resigned. “No Arnath has the opportunities a Tutor has.”

Perhaps so, but he obviously didn't understand the dangers. “I'm . . . supposed to find orphans,” I managed to say.

Jonis and the woman looked at each other. She was his mother, I realized. How had I not seen the resemblance immediately? She had the same green eyes, the same sandy curls pulled back under her scarf. Jera's dark eyes were the same shape, but her black hair flowed straight down her back like a Qilarite's, and her skin was darker than theirs.

Jonis and his mother seemed to be having a silent conversation, and after a moment they both looked at me. The woman's shoulders slumped. “She may be an orphan soon enough,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “She'll be safer with you.”

I didn't understand her meaning at first, but then it dawned on
me that she was referring to whatever the Resistance had planned.

I bit my lip. “I—I can't promise she'll be chosen.”

Jonis just looked at me steadily.

“It's not under my control,” I said, my voice rising.

Jonis slid the thread from Jera's hands and draped it carefully over the loom. “Turn around, Jera,” he said. The girl turned obediently, and he lifted the back of her tunic-dress. My hand rose to my mouth when I saw her back, crisscrossed with thin white scars. I knew it was common practice in the city to whip disobedient slaves, but what could this tiny child possibly have done to earn that?

Jonis dropped the edge of Jera's tunic and pulled her onto his lap.

Part of me understood that he was playing on my sympathy for children just as he had all along . . . but that didn't matter. Jera couldn't stay with such a cruel master.

I swallowed hard. “You won't be able to see her again. I'll have to pretend she's an orphan.”

The woman's eyes tightened, but Jonis nodded somberly. “We know. It'll be better that way.”

Jera had watched our exchange seriously. I had the impression that she knew what was happening, despite her age. She didn't cry or make a sound, though—she'd probably been well trained not to give away secret hiding places and clandestine meetings.

The woman knelt beside Jonis, and he handed Jera to her. She held the little girl close and spoke to her softly. I had to look away.

“We won't ask anything else of you after this,” said Jonis. “Just take care of her, Raisa.”

“But I can't promise that . . .” My voice trailed off as he frowned at me. “I will,” I said, though I had no idea how to make that statement true. “Won't her master notice if Jera disappears?”

Jonis shook his head. “They'll both disappear. My mother isn't staying with that—”

“Not here, Jonis,” said his mother mildly. He shot her an incredulous look.

I glanced nervously down the line of stalls. Two of the guards stood together at the other end, talking as they watched me. I knew they couldn't see Jonis or Jera behind the stall, but still, I had lingered far too long.

“You'll have to send her out to me,” I whispered urgently, folding the fabric and setting it on the cart.

“Yes,” said Jonis. “Go sit by the fountain. The children will come to you.”

I forced myself to wander casually down to a silk merchant's stall closer to the guards. I made a point of speaking to the owner, an elderly half-deaf Qilarite, for even longer than I'd spoken to Jonis and his mother. I questioned him loudly about whether he'd seen any children.

He didn't understand, so I repeated myself, but a louder voice than my own made me stop and look around.

“There you are, you useless tialik. Dawdling again, are you?” The harsh voice came from a brawny Qilarite; as he turned, I recognized Horel Stit from the fair at the palace. Jonis's master. He stood in the pathway, gripping Jonis by the chin, and shook him as he spoke again. “Don't you keep Mistress Kelia waiting. And I want all that wood chopped before I leave tomorrow morning,
or your face won't be the only thing smarting.” A second Qilarite stood a few feet away, watching unconcernedly. The few other shoppers nearby passed without even glancing their way.