The Quartered Sea (38 page)

"People talk in the bath." Smiling broadly, she limped out into the tent. By the time Benedikt finished drying off she'd returned with clean clothes. "The senior leather worker finished these for you last night," she said holding out a pair of sandals.

Although they looked ludicrously large dangling from her small hand, they fit perfectly. The clean sawrap was still too short, but under the robe it didn't much matter.

"You're lucky you got it," she told him as he sniffed it distastefully, then put it on. "It's not rainin', so there's gonna be about six different kinds of blood bugs swarmin' around until we're outa the bojos."

"I'm Herexi." She jerked her head toward the boy, who sighed the sigh of the elder and wiser. "This is Domez. Are you gonna sing 'The River Dances' today?"

As the First—the xaan's Troop-Captain as near as he could translate the position—pushed past him and into the bathing room, Benedikt waved and dropped the flap. It felt good to be appreciated instead of merely useful.

On his way to the barber, he realized that had been the longest conversation he'd had with anyone but the xaan since leaving Xhojee.

* * *

That morning, they broke camp even later than usual. The wagon boxes, once reassembled, had to be hung with silvered ropes caught up behind huge silver disks embossed with the spread hands and crescent moon symbol of the Kohunlich-xaan. Blue pennants with silver tassels flew from poles on the wagon tops, and the plain gauze curtains that usually hung around the xaan and her companions had been replaced by gauze embroidered in blue and silver along both the top and bottom.

As the sun rose higher, great clouds of biting insects swarmed out of the bojos.

The xaan stood it as long as she could but finally called a sudden halt to the refurbishing, ordering the caravan out onto the causeway.

"You can finish before we reach Atixlan," she told the caravan master, a drop of blood running down her cheek. "We're not staying here another moment. And I'm
telling
the Tulparax what I think about the time of year he chose to begin dying," she added, grinding the words out through her teeth. Handing Shecquai, wrapped in a protective bit of gauze, up to Hueru, she climbed up to join him on the wagon top. "Benedikt, get up here. We're leaving."

The entire caravan agreed with the wisdom of presenting a moving target. Had it not been for the double row of guards setting the pace out in front, Benedikt suspected that the cadence caller would have had the xaan's wagon moving at a trot.

Just out of sight of the capital, a fresh breeze cooling the bloody welts on exposed skin and lifting small waves on increasingly less muddy water, the caravan master called a halt.

The guards replaced leather greaves and vambraces with silvered metal and added white plumes tipped with blue to round helms—the size and number of plumes rising with rank. Finally, they draped the pelts of great spotted cats down their backs, tying them over their metal collars by the front legs. They looked both barbaric and beautiful and Benedikt found himself searching for a song for the first time since the kigh had taken the
Starfarer
down.

Behind a hastily erected canvas barrier, the priests exchanged robes no longer white for robes so brilliantly clean they were difficult to look at in the sunlight. Yayan Quanez wore silver embroidery almost as high as her knees, the senior priests a little less, and a gleaming thread wove around the hem of the juniors. Although the high priest remained with the xaan, the rest left former positions and fell in, massing behind the guards.

Girdles of silver-and-blue net were handed out to those at the wagon crosspieces and the coloas' harnesses were quickly fitted out with silver tassels.

Faster than Benedikt thought possible, the whole glittering caravan began moving again.

"Keep your hood forward," the xaan told him, "or you'll have to wear the gauze. Fortunately, you're not too dirty. Remember to ignore the people."

You've gone to a lot of trouble to impress people you're about to ignore
, Benedikt thought.

Atixlan was a lot larger than Benedikt had expected and, unlike Elbasan which had grown undirected between the harbor and the Citadel and spread from there, it had obviously been planned. Even from the far side of the river he could see that the streets had been laid out in a grid around a central square of huge buildings.

As the causeway put down stone arches and crossed the river, Benedikt found his place on the wagon harder and harder to bear. Bards walked.

"What is it, Benedikt?"

He spread his hands apologetically. "I feel isolated from the people, peerless one."

The xaan stared at him for a moment, nonplussed, one eyebrow raised. "Good," she said at last, and that was all Benedikt dared say about that.

The caravan came to a halt between a pair of temples bracketing the Atixlan end of the bridge. The temple to the left had been built in the familiar square shape of Tulpayotee and even before the caravan had stopped, three priests and half a dozen temple attendants had emerged and arranged themselves on the broad steps. The attendants were swinging spiked orbs at the end of lengths of chain, and not even a coat of gleaming yellow enamel was symbolism enough to hide their function.

The temple to the left rose up on the same platform of steps but the pillars at the top were arranged in a circular pattern. A single priest, almost indistinguishable against the white marble, waited halfway down the stairs.

Benedikt watched in surprise as the caravan master approached the priests of Tulpayotee and handed over a purse. He must have made some noise, for the xaan gave a quiet snort and said, "Until the change, Tulpayotee collects the toll."

Yayan Quanez muttered something behind her gauze, words lost but bitterness clearly audible.

"Soon," the xaan told her. "Soon."

The wagon began moving again. Xaan Mijandra turned and nodded toward Xantalicta's temple. The lone priest acknowledged her gesture with a graceful bow.

"I see the Xantalax took my advice and replaced Yayan Laruta with someone younger. I only hope they'll have temple attendants ready and waiting."

"Do you expect trouble, peerless one?"

The xaan glanced over at Benedikt, her face expressionless. Hueru, who'd been silent all morning, stirred, anticipating punishment to be meted out. Xaan Mijandra raised a hand and stilled him.

"I expect the change," she said.

The outer edges of the city weren't much like the cities Benedikt had left behind. Not only were the buildings on both sides of the causeway made of thick adobe, painted in a visually painful kaleidoscope of colors and patterns, they were farther apart than anything in either Elbasan or Vidor.
No need to huddle together for warmth
, he decided, sweat running down his sides under the robe.

The caravan moved farther up and farther in through heated air thick with the smells of civilization. They were unimpeded by traffic, and Benedikt wondered if the xaan had sent news ahead to clear the road or if the people of Atixlan got themselves out of the way when they saw her coming. He suspected no one in their right mind would challenge her to the right of way. Small crowds had gathered at each of the cross streets, although he wasn't sure if they were waiting to cross or merely enjoying the spectacle. A few of those watching wore the familiar unbleached shifts, sawraps, and house tattoos, but most wore multicolored cloth that clashed with the walls around them.

Close to the causeway, the noise seemed muted although Benedikt could hear the normal sounds of life and commerce rising up from unseen streets.

The buildings began to get bigger, walls surrounding them, flags flying from the rooftops—building materials aside, very much like the houses of the wealthy and wellborn in Elbasan. The causeway, which had been climbing slightly, leveled out again, and Benedikt could see a large open area directly ahead.

A strip of trees and gardens appeared on either side of the wagons. Already overstimulated after so many days of nothing but rain-drenched fields or bajos, Benedikt blinked in amazement at the rainbow stripes that had been painted around the trunks of some of the trees. A thick stone wall topped with steel spikes ran behind the gardens and behind that, a three-story building that seemed to go on, unbroken for a very long time. Gardens, wall, and building all ended in the largest paved square Benedikt had ever seen. Six huge buildings filled three sides and on the fourth…

This time, he knew he made a sound; he just wasn't able to prevent it.

"The Great Temple," the xaan told him quietly. "Soon it will be ours again."

It was a temple of Tulpayotee on an almost unfathomable scale. There was a large double entrance at ground level and then six or maybe seven stories of stairs rising up to the pillared platform. It was the temple where he was to have Sung the dawn as a warrior of Tulpayotee.

"It looks like my brother has arrived before us."

Arrived where
, Benedikt wondered, and then he realized that the caravan was pulling up in front of one of the six huge buildings and that a blue-and-gold flag was flying from the southwest corner. Two things hit him at once. The first, was that he was no longer traveling toward his new life, he'd arrived. The second, was that the xaan's brother had arrived before them.

The tul had arrived before them.

Tul Altun was in Atixlan.

"The Kohunlich-tul can't be here," Hueru growled, getting to his feet as the wagon stopped. "We left days before he did."

"Will happen soon enough." She passed Shecquai over to his junior attendant, waiting on the ladder with a basket. "And I'd like to be unpacked before it does."

The front of House Kohunlich, the building, had been divided into thirds. Each of the exterior pieces had an identical entrance—double latticework doors within a pillared colonnade. The central portion had been exquisitely tiled in more shades of blue than Benedikt had realized existed, with gold accents to the left and silver to the right.

In spite of an eerily empty square and no sign of life from any of the other buildings, Benedikt couldn't shake the feeling he was being watched. Glancing up, he thought he saw a familiar face at a third floor window.
Xhojee
? Then the window was empty.

Don't be an idiot
, he told himself.
Why would the tul bring Xhojee to Atixlan ? You're only seeing him because you want to see him
.

As the xaan walked toward the door on the right, it opened, and a middle-aged woman wearing multiple braids took three steps forward and dropped to one knee. "Your return to Atixlan is greeted with joy, peerless one."