The Lions of Al-Rassan (12 page)

She said, “Wash that wound in the river. Then cover it with a clean cloth. Do that every day. You will be marked, but it might not fester. If you can have a doctor salve it soon, that will be better for you.”

She would never have imagined it would be so difficult to speak such words. At the perimeter of the open space, half in the ruined shadows, she suddenly saw her patient, Abirab, with the two little girls held close to her. Their brother, Ziri, had stepped forward a little and was staring at her. Enduring his gaze, Jehane felt her words as the most brutal form of betrayal.

She turned away and, without looking back, without waiting for anyone, began walking from the village, between the burning houses and then out through a gap in the fence, feeling the heat of the fires on her face and in her heart as she went, with no prospect of anything to cool her grief.

She knew Velaz would be following. She had not expected to hear, so soon, the sound of a horse overtaking her.

“The camp is too far to walk,” said a voice. Not Laín Nunez this time. She looked up at Rodrigo Belmonte as he slowed the horse beside her. “I think we each did something that cut against our desire back there,” he said. “Shall we ride together?”

She had been awed by him at first, by the scale of his reputation, then, briefly, afraid, then angry—though unfairly so, perhaps. Now she was simply tired, and grateful for the chance to ride. He leaned over in the saddle and lifted her up, effortlessly, though she wasn’t a small woman. She arranged her skirts and undertunic and swung a leg across the horse behind him. She put her arms around his waist. He wasn’t wearing armor. In the silence of the night, as they left the fires behind, Jehane could feel the beating of his heart.

They rode in that silence for a time and Jehane let the stillness and the dark merge with the steady drumming of the horse’s hooves to guide her back towards a semblance of composure.

This is my day for meeting famous men,
she thought suddenly.

It could almost have been amusing, if so much tragedy had not been embedded in the day. The realization, though, was inescapable. The man she was riding behind had been known, for almost twenty years—since the late days of the Khalifate—as the Scourge of Al-Rassan. The wadjis still singled him out by name for cursing in the temples at the darkfall prayers. She wondered if he knew that, if he prided himself upon it.

“My temper is a problem,” he said quietly, breaking the silence in remarkably unaccented Asharic. “I really shouldn’t have whipped him.”

“I don’t see why not,” Jehane said.

He shook his head. “You kill men like that or you leave them alone.”

“Then you should have killed him.”

“Probably. I could have, in the first attack when we arrived, but not after they had surrendered and sued for ransom.”

“Ah, yes,” Jehane said, aware that her bitterness was audible, “The code of warriors. Would you like to ride back and look at that mother and child?”

“I have seen such things, doctor. Believe me.” She did believe him. He had probably done them, too.

“I knew your father, incidentally,” said Rodrigo Belmonte after another silence. Jehane felt herself go rigid. “Ishak of the Kindath. I was sorry to learn of his fate.”

“How . . . how do you know who my father is? How do you know who I am?” she stammered.

He chuckled. And answered her, astonishingly, in fluent Kindath now. “Not a particularly difficult guess. How many blue-eyed Kindath female physicians are there in Fezana? You have your father’s eyes.”

“My father has no eyes,” Jehane said bitterly. “As you know if you know his story. How do you know our language?”

“Soldiers tend to learn bits of many languages.”

“Not that well, and not Kindath. How do you know it?”

“I fell in love once, a long time ago. Best way to learn a language, actually.”

Jehane was feeling angry again. “When did you learn Asharic?” she demanded.

He switched easily back into that language. “I lived in Al-Rassan for a time. When Prince Raimundo was exiled by his father for a multitude of mostly imagined sins he spent a year in Silvenes and Fezana, and I came south with him.”

“You
lived
in Fezana?”

“Part of the time. Why so surprised?”

She didn’t answer. It wasn’t so unusual, in fact. For decades, if not centuries, the feuds among the Jaddite monarchs of Esperaña and their families had often led noblemen and their retinues to sojourn in exile among the delights of Al-Rassan. And during the Khalifate not a few of the Asharite nobility had similarly found it prudent to distance themselves from the long reach of Silvenes, dwelling among the Horsemen of the north.

“I don’t know,” she answered his question. “I suppose because I’d have expected to remember you.”

“Seventeen years ago? You would have been little more than a child. I think I might even have seen you once, unless you have a sister, in the market at your father’s booth. There’s no reason for you to have remembered me. I was much the same age young Alvar is now. And about as experienced.”

The mention of the young soldier reminded her of something. “Alvar? The one who took Velaz with him? When are you going to let him in on the stirrup joke you’re playing?”

A short silence as he registered that. Then Rodrigo laughed aloud. “You noticed? Clever you. But how would you know it was a joke?”

“Not a particularly difficult guess,” she said, mimicking his phrase deliberately. “He’s riding with knees high as his waist. They play the same trick on new recruits in Batiara. Do you want to cripple the boy?”

“Of course not. But he’s a little more assertive than you imagine. It won’t harm him to be chastened a little. I intended to let his legs down before we went into the city tomorrow. If you want, you can be his savior tonight. He’s already smitten, or had you noticed?”

She hadn’t. It wasn’t the sort of thing to which Jehane had ever paid much attention.

Rodrigo Belmonte changed the subject abruptly. “Batiara, you said? You studied there? With Ser Rezzoni in Sorenica?”

She found herself disconcerted yet again. “And then at the university in Padrino for half a year. Do you know
every
physician there is?”

“Most of the good ones,” he said crisply. “Part of my profession. Think about it, doctor. We don’t have nearly enough trained physicians in the north. We know how to kill, but not much about healing. I was raising a serious point with you earlier this evening, not an idle one.”

“The moment I arrived? You couldn’t have known if I was a good doctor or not.”

“Ishak of Fezana’s daughter? I can allow myself an educated guess, surely?”

“I’m sure the celebrated Captain of Valledo can allow himself anything he wants,” Jehane said tartly. She felt seriously at a disadvantage; the man knew much too much. He was far too clever; Jaddite soldiers weren’t supposed to be at all like this.

“Not
anything,
” he said in an exaggeratedly rueful voice. “My dear wife—have you met my dear wife?”

“Of course I haven’t,” Jehane snapped. He was playing with her.

“My dear wife has imposed strict limitations on my behavior away from home.” His tone made his meaning all too plain, though the suggestion—from what she knew of the northerners—was improbable in the extreme.

“How difficult, for a soldier. She must be fearsome.”

“She is,” said Rodrigo Belmonte, with feeling.

But something—a nuance, a new shade of meaning in the night—had been introduced now, however flippantly, and Jehane was suddenly aware that the two of them were alone in the darkness with his men and Velaz far behind and the camp a long way ahead yet. She was sitting up close to him, thighs against his and her arms looped around him, clasped at his waist. With an effort she resisted the urge to loosen her grip and change position.

“I’m sorry,” he said after a silence. “This isn’t a night for joking, and now I’ve made you uncomfortable.”

Jehane said nothing. It seemed that whether she spoke or kept silent, this man was reading her like an illuminated scroll.

Something occurred to her. “Tell me,” she said firmly, ignoring his comment, “if you lived here for a time, why did you have to ask what was burning, back in camp? Orvilla has been in the same place for fifty years or more.”

She couldn’t see his face, of course, but somehow she knew he would be smiling. “Good,” he said at length. “Very good, doctor. I shall be even sorrier now if you refuse my offer.”

“I
have
refused your offer, remember?” She wouldn’t allow herself to be deflected. “Why did you have to ask what was burning?”

“I didn’t
have
to ask. I chose to ask. To see who answered. There are things to be learned from questions, beyond the answers to the question.”

She thought about that. “And what did you learn?”

“That you are quicker than your merchant friend.”

“Don’t underestimate ibn Musa,” Jehane said quickly. “He’s surprised me several times today, and I’ve known him a long time.”

“What
should
I do with him?” Rodrigo Belmonte asked.

It was, she realized, a serious question. She rode for a while, thinking. The two moons were both high now; they had risen about thirty degrees apart. The angle of a journey, in fact, in her own birth chart. Ahead of them now she could see the campfire where Husari would be waiting with the two men left on guard.

“You understand that he was to have been killed this afternoon with the others in the castle?”

“I gathered as much. Why did he survive?”

“I didn’t let him go. He was passing a kidney stone.”

He laughed. “First time he’ll ever have been grateful for that, I’ll wager.” His tone changed. “Fine, then. He was marked by Almalik to die. What should I do?”

“Take him back north with you,” she said at length, trying to think it through. “I think he wants to do that. If King Ramiro has any thoughts of taking Fezana for himself one day—”

“
Wait!
Hold, woman! What kind of a thing is that to say?”

“An obvious one, I should have thought,” she said impatiently. “At some point he has to wonder why he’s only exacting
parias
and not ruling the city.”

Rodrigo Belmonte was laughing again, and shaking his head. “You know, not
all
obvious thoughts need be spoken.”

“You asked me a question,” she said sweetly. “I am taking it seriously. If Ramiro has any such thoughts—however remote and insubstantial they may be, of course—it can only help to have the sole survivor of today’s massacre with him.”

“Especially if he makes sure everyone knows that man came straight to him from the slaughter and asked him to intervene.” Rodrigo’s tone was reflective; he didn’t bother responding to her sarcasm.

Jehane felt suddenly weary of talking. This was a day that had started at dawn in the market, in the most ordinary of ways. Now here she was, after the slaughter in the city and the attack on Orvilla, discussing peninsular politics in the darkness with Rodrigo Belmonte, the Scourge of Al-Rassan. It began to seem just a little too much. She was going to set out on her own path in the morning, and morning was not very far off. “I suppose you are right. I’m a doctor, not a diplomat, you know,” she murmured vaguely. It would be nice to fall asleep, actually.

“Much the same, at times,” he replied. Which irritated her enough to pull her awake again, mostly because Ser Rezzoni had said precisely the same thing to her more than once. “Where are you riding?” he asked casually.

“Ragosa,” she answered, just before remembering that she hadn’t planned to tell anyone.

“Why?” he pursued.

He seemed to assume he had a right to an answer. It must come with commanding men for so long, Jehane decided.

“Because they tell me the courtiers and soldiers there are wondrous skilled in lovemaking,” she murmured, in her throatiest voice. For good measure, she unlinked her hands and slid them from his waist to his thighs and left them there a moment before clasping them demurely again.

He drew a long breath and let it out slowly. She was sitting very close, though; try as he might to hide a response, she could feel his heartbeat accelerate. At about the same moment, it occurred to her that she was playing the most brazen sort of teasing game with a dangerous man.

“This,” said Rodrigo Belmonte of Valledo plaintively, “is distressingly familiar. A woman putting me in my place. Are you
sure
you’ve never met my wife?”

A moment later, very much against her will and any reasonable expectations, Jehane began to laugh. And then, perhaps
because
she was laughing, genuinely amused, she remembered again what she’d seen in that small hut in Orvilla, and then it came back to her that her father had spoken his first words in four years tonight, and she was leaving him and her mother, perhaps forever.

She
hated
crying. Laughter and tears, Ishak used to say, were the nearest of kin. It wasn’t a physician’s observation, that one. His mother had told him that, and her mother had told her. The Kindath had survived a thousand years; they were laden with such folk wisdom, carrying it like their travelling baggage, well-worn, never far from reach.