The Very Best of Kate Elliott (45 page)

“But Fee—?” Ami’s protest died as Fee tossed a clean gown at her and shook out a second gown, one cut to fit Fee’s more generous figure.

“He’s got no beard. We’ll dress him in a gown, veil his face in a shawl, and tell the guards at the gate that he’s my cousin come to visit me for the day and leaving now for home. His hair is long and beautiful enough to be a woman’s. Once he’s outside he can take off the gown and go about as a man, although it will be cold without a coat.”

“My sister will find me a coat,” he said, much taken with this idea as he swiped Ami’s drawers from the bench and pulled them on, covering them quickly with the trousers so she wouldn’t notice and thus object to his stealing them. So soft!

“You’re brilliant, Fee!” breathed Ami in a voice so tender and admiring that he paused while buttoning up the front flap of the trousers. They were gazing at each other as if they wanted nothing more than to lick each other, and he abruptly felt that while this had been a pleasing dessert for them, he wasn’t truly necessary to their repast.

After all, he was leaving, wasn’t he? He had to return to his family, and they naturally would make their own little pride in the territory where they roamed. A sigh escaped him nonetheless.

“Dearest Rory!” said Fee at once, rushing over to him. “You’re so honorable and good.”

“Am I?” he asked, not to demand their agreement but because he wanted to be honorable and good. That was what males were meant to be, wasn’t it?

“You are,” she assured him. “Let me help you with those buttons.”

Ami dressed also. “I still don’t know what we’re going to do with darling Coco,” she said as they all finished dressing and the women helped sort out the gown so the drape and flow did not reveal the men’s clothing beneath.

“I have an idea,” said Rory as they wrapped the shawl around his head in way that made him seem a modest woman who did not wish to be stared at on the street. “A very cunning and devious idea. But you can’t know, and you mustn’t watch. Wait here.”

“You can’t let anyone see you!”

“There’s no one outside right now. The highness is wailing in her bedchamber and the servants are either waiting on her or shivering about out in the cold.” He gave them his sternest look, the one he reserved for moments of extreme danger or when he really had to convince his mother not to swat him after he had played a trick on his spoiled and obnoxious little sister, the other one, not Cat. To his surprise, they opened the door enough for him to slip through. He picked up the stinking remains and sneaked out.

Stealthy as only a cat can be, he sought the den of the foul beast, behind the curtained alcove.

Then he returned to the women.

“It’s taken care of,” he said with a smile. “Trust me.”

The voice shook the walls. “Where are those sluts? Where is my darling Coco?”

“Hurry.” Ami dragged him out of the bath chamber and along a servants’ narrow hall by the light of the lamp Fee carried. A pair of lamps marked a door barred from the inside. Ami pulled open a square view hole and peered out.

“Who’s out there? Ah, Captain Gaius, it’s you. Open up. Lady Felicia’s cousin has to get home. She was visiting, but Her Royal Highness is in a pet.”

The soldier standing at guard laughed. “Are you telling me that’s something new today? I reckon I’m glad I’m out here and you’re in there tending to her fits and starts. Stand back, girls.”

Ami slid shut the view hole and then gave Rory a sound kiss. On the other side, the guard fiddled to unlock a mechanism, for evidently the door was barred on both sides. Fee unbarred the door. As it swung in, the captain raised his lamp to take a good look at them with a proprietary air that made Rory want to claw him. But he knew better than to pick a fight and draw attention. So he smiled winningly instead. The man was rather good-looking, with the bluff, muscular build of a fellow who spends a lot of time wrestling and running and hacking at helpless objects. His broad hands looked as if they might be very adept at squeezing and kneading. His gaze was certainly probing.

“Who is this lovely? I’ve not seen her before, and I know all you girls by sight and by that lovely sway of your ass, Lady Felicia.”

Lady Felicia was not, perhaps, as enamored of Captain Gaius as Rory thought he could be, given the chance.

“This is Rory,” she said in a cool voice far removed from her passionate utterances not long ago. “She’s not a serving woman to the princess, Captain, so you must show her respect.”

Ami added, “She’s really a saber-toothed cat dressed in a man’s skin and wearing a woman’s clothes.”

“I have very nice man’s skin,” said Rory helpfully. “Do you want to see it?”

Captain Gaius laughed, slapped Rory on the ass in a most gratifying way, and then, unfortunately, stepped back. “You women and your jests. Go on. There’s a commotion brewing, for I heard the wall captain call up half the men. If the old bitch finds me chatting up you lot, she’ll have my balls. Get out of here.”

A male voice shouted for the captain. With a frown he signaled to them to stay put as he stepped away around a corner and into a guardhouse. Across a courtyard, a closed gate in a high wall promised access to the city beyond.

“I can’t believe you told the truth, Ami,” said Felicia under her breath. She was still holding Rory’s hand, and with obvious reluctance she released him. “About Rory, I mean.”

“The benefit of telling the truth is that so few people believe you. You must go, Rory. Though I’m sorry to lose you so soon after finding you.”

“All will be well,” he assured them. “The highness will never suspect you.”

At that moment, out of the depths of the princess’s wing, a mighty shriek cleft the night like the anguished howl of a wounded monster.

“My chub’ums! My Coco! Aieeee! Ramses! HOW COULD YOU?”

Rory smiled smugly, imagining how sour Ramses must look with his nose smeared in blood and his paws dabbling in the moist remains. The two women looked at him with wide eyes. He kissed each one on her warm, willing lips, and stepped away as the captain returned, looking grumpy.

“Hurry, lass. Get out of here, as the lord general is bound to make his rounds with all this fuss. Cursed women! Either scolding or wailing.”

One last glance was all he was permitted as the captain hustled him to the servants’ gate and thrust him out into the cold night. The captain shut the gate.

Rory stood on the cobblestone street, savoring the adventure. That had felt good! And he had learned something important about himself, just as Cat would have urged him to do: By understanding what it meant to flow and change, he could now shift from cat to man and back again whenever he wished. Sadly, he knew he would never be able to tell Cat about all the best parts of the night, because she would no doubt be affronted and embarrassed.

A curious watchman paused to eye him and, when Rory snarled, hurried on. He stripped off the gown and shawl and folded them up to carry. He took in a draught of air. Beneath the many heated smells of the city, he sought his sister’s distinctive scent, blended of both worlds.

Dressed in his man’s clothes with his soft woman’s drawers beneath, he sauntered off in search of her. Sometimes things did work out. He had righted a tiny wrong, done some good in the world, maintained his honor, and been well petted in reward.

It was good to be a man.

M
AKING THE
W
ORLD
L
IVE
A
GAIN

LIKE A CREATURE OUT of the old stories, caught between earth and sky, Eili stood with mud coating her feet and the sun rising at her back over the endless tidal flats and marshlands.

“‘Hiai! Hiai!’” she sang. “‘Before the first grass grew out of the mud, before the first tree grew from the ground, before people sprouted from the earth, before the first house was built, before the first village came to be, before the first city was made, the sea existed, nothing else. Then Eridu was built.’” Mud splashed her ankles as she danced.“When I’m a woman, I’m going to travel to Eridu and see the big temple for myself!”

“If you don’t get back in the boat,” said her brother, “we’ll get home late. Then the only place
you’ll
be going is to dredge the old canal with the slaves.”

“And I’ll take the dates with me!” she retorted, laughing.

“Not if you don’t get in the boat!”

Eili swung a leg over the side, balanced the basket of dates against her hip, then slid in as her brother poled off. Thick with reeds on its shoreline, the low island hillock was crowned with a cluster of date palms whose bounty they had just harvested. The palms broke the flat expanse of water that glittered under Anu’s morning rays.

“Look!” said Indu as his eyes swept the shore where Eili had danced and sung.“Some animal’s been hurt. Do you see the blood?” He pointed with the pole as the boat slewed round in the water. A few drops of bright red blood spattered the muddy verge.“Hiai!” he muttered.“What kind of sign is that? Should we tell the priest?”

As they stared, a swell of water eased over the tracks Eili had left, obliterating all trace of her passing as well as the mysterious blood. “Huh.” Eili grunted, dismissing it. “It’s nothing to do with me.” She set down the little basket of dates and settled her feet on a pile of rushes left by the last occupant.“A whole city built all of bricks! What do you think of that, lazy Indu?”

He grinned, teeth a bright flash against his face. Indu had been blessed by the gods with an endless capacity to be cheerful. “I think it would take some poor artisan many long days to make so many bricks, and some other poor sore-backed laborer would have to lift them all up into place!”

She snorted.“You’re always going to stay in the village if that’s all you can think about!”

“I can think of things much more interesting than the big temple at Eridu which such as us will never see the inside of, no matter what we do.”

Her breechclout had caught under her thigh; she hitched herself up and tugged it free. Like all girls, she wore a bare leather cord around her waist. She ran her fingers along it now, tracing it. When she became a woman, she would get to decorate it with beads, shells, and feathers to show she was of marriageable age. Indu had become a man last year at the New Year Festival, so he could wear a man’s kilt over his breech clout: a length of cloth wrapped at the waist and reaching to his knees.

“Hiai!” she exclaimed as the marshflies swarmed round them. Not even a breechclout could protect against stinging flies and all the other voracious bugs that loved the marshlands and tidal flats. “Can’t you move us any faster? These flies will eat me down to the bone.”

“Rain’s coming.” Indu shielded his eyes from the sun as he peered eastward.

“Rain comes almost every day in the winter, Master Wisdom!”

He only laughed and lowered a hand to trail it in the water. Expression brightening, he shoved the pole into her hands, then touched a finger to his lips for silence. She poled while he fished. His hand trailed in the water as the boat skimmed along almost noiselessly. Reeds brushed its wood belly. In her hands, the pole dipped and rippled through the water as quietly as a heron’s stalking. This boat, made of wood floated down from the faraway place called “Upriver,” was the visible mark of their family’s prosperity.

Indu darted forward, hands clapping together under the water. He twisted and silvery perch flew through the air to land in the belly of the boat. It flopped around until Eili took a clay net weight and clubbed it on the head.

Indu smiled triumphantly, and they poled on while he trailed a hand again through the water. Birds sang among the rushes or called to each other. She knew their voices: the harsh crow, the cheerful ducks, the croaks of night-herons settling in to their daylight nest. A cormorant stood on a sand bank, wings outspread.

Indu darted again, twisted, and flipped another fish into the boat. In this manner he caught five sea-perch before the shoreline came into view. Reed houses, their entries framed by thick pillars woven of reeds, marked the farthest limit of the village, which was set on the high ground above. Beyond them, under the shade of date palms, Eili could see the square block of the mud-brick village shrine set below the levee just outside the village. A stand of pines grew along the banks of the big canal and several small plots of cultivated land lay between the village and the marshlands: lentils, flax, and herb gardens.

Her mother squatted in the garden, thinning the onions. In the village, women sat before their houses. Some wove reeds into baskets and mats. Others painted pots or hunched over a grinding stone while their young daughters laughed and chatted behind them, spinning flax to thread and watching over the smallest children. The men would be dredging the canal against the spring floods, or weeding in the grain fields out in the irrigated lands, or watching over their sheep. Day in, day out, year in, year out, Eili watched them plant and harvest, bake pots over fires and paint them and then bake more, cook, fish, bury those who died, birth babies, and take offerings to the temple. It was always the same.