Blood's Pride Read online

  Before he could say anything further another Shadari dressed in stableworkers’ brown, Shairav’s fawning new assistant, Majid, came through the door. “Shairav’Asha,” he said in a low voice, “you’re needed in the stables. The White Wolf is already awake and the whole garrison is preparing to ride out.”

  Most of the other Shadari, having quickly realized that Rahsa’s dramatics did not concern them, had already left the funeral chamber to resume their duties. Just as Daryan turned to slip away with them, his uncle thwarted his escape, calling, “Walk with me.”

  “Of course, Uncle,” he said, suppressing a sigh. He took his place at Shairav’s side and they strode off toward the stables where his uncle’s beloved dereshadi would be having their messy breakfast of rotting goat. The refectory where Eofar’s breakfast was waiting to be fetched lay just beyond the stables. He could think of no good excuse for going a different way from Shairav but he knew what would happen the moment they were alone together.

  Shairav did not disappoint. “I do not want to hear that woman’s name mentioned, by you or anyone else, ever again,” he said as soon as they were alone. The old man hated her, of course. Until Shairav had taken over as breedmaster, the dereshadi had been steadily dying out. Harotha had been the only one with the courage to point out that without enough dereshadi at their disposal, the Dead Ones might not have been able to maintain control of the colony.

  Daryan found himself compulsively counting the empty brackets between the few torches the Dead Ones—who could see in almost total darkness—allowed the slaves to light. Two, three, four, five …

  “Daryan. Did you hear what I said?”

  “I’m not the only one who thinks she should be honored,” he argued, carefully keeping his tone amiable. “Her mother and father were both ashas. Her family has produced at least one asha in every generation as far back as anyone can remember—”

  “And they died, along with the others. So her parents were ashas; she was not—the presumption, coming here and demanding to be shown the secret staircase, expecting me to ordain her—”

  “So she could carry on if something happened to you,” he put in. “Otherwise all the knowledge of the ashas will die with you.”

  “She wanted power for herself,” said Shairav, “and she would have used it to destroy everything you and I have spent our lives preserving. Do you think it has been easy for me to keep my vow not to use my powers? And if I had broken my vow, do you think you and I would still be alive?”

  “I know that,” said Daryan, looking down at the stone floor. “If you hadn’t brought me here I’d be choking on black dust in the mines or sweating blood in the smelting shacks, or laid out on a pyre, just like that girl.” He had already forgotten her name. Was it Inara? “But what about the other things Harotha did? She and Faroth were organizing the resistance in the city, and she allowed herself to be brought to the temple of her own free will—”

  “Which was foolish. And look where it got her.”

  “Dead,” he murmured darkly, rubbing at his smoke-stung eyes. “Falling down the stairs.” He shook his head with a grim laugh. “Someone like Harotha just hits her head and dies. It’s not right.”

  “It was the will of the gods,” Shairav intoned. “She was not your friend. She was using you.”

  “She wanted the daimon to be more than just a name,” Daryan mumbled to himself. He could almost hear her, exhorting him to action in that firm but cajoling voice of hers. She had expected more from him; she had wanted him to expect more from himself. And here he was, months after her death, so useless that he couldn’t even give her a proper funeral. “She wanted me to do something.”

  As they entered the stables the reek of spoiled meat assaulted Daryan’s senses. The vast cavern, shaped like an inverted bowl with the bottom knocked out, was already abuzz with activity. Soldiers in white capes with great swords slung across their backs strode around waiting for their mounts to be saddled. The light was dim and the faint glow of the Dead Ones’ skin stood out clearly. Dereshadi sleepily leaped or glided down to the straw-covered floor from dark berths chiseled high up into the cavern walls, and then lumbered about, rolling their massive heads, and endangering slaves and Dead Ones alike with lazy stretches of their fleshy wings. Slaves hustled about with complicated harnesses or lugged heavy saddles from the storerooms. Feet whispered among the straw, booted and sandalled and bare, and metal clanked and leather creaked, but no voices were raised except for the occasional sibilant whisper.

  “You give our people hope,” Shairav was saying, “the hope that the Shadari will survive this torment and will someday, with the gods’ help, triumph. You are the preserver of our way of life—”

  But Daryan was no longer listening to the lecture.

  Isa was there.

  Chapter Five

  Isa whisked aside the red curtain hanging across the doorway to Frea’s chambers.

  Frea asked without turning around. She was buckling her scabbard across her chest, and her long immaculately plaited braids swept across the unadorned hilt of Blood’s Pride as she yanked the buckle tighter.

  Isa adjusted her white shirt where it had slipped off her shoulder. It was one of Eofar’s cast-offs, and too big for her. The brown leggings were Eofar’s as well. The black boots had been Frea’s. Importing cloth and leather was expensive, and Isa, as the youngest, was expected to make do. Her father hated waste.

  she asked boldly, stepping across the threshold and into the dark room. A single lamp burned on a tall iron stand in the corner. Around the walls hung her sister’s collection of weapons, some from Norland, some from places Isa couldn’t even name. Despite the desert climate, Frea had perversely covered her bed with thick animal pelts and her silver helmet with its figurehead of a snarling wolf gleamed atop the dark furs. The only other piece of furniture in the room was the carved wooden stand displaying her black-bladed imperial knife, given to her by their father on the day she had assumed responsibility for the mines. It was nothing compared to Eofar’s sword, of course, but he’d still needed special permission from the emperor to make it for her.

  Frea snapped as she grabbed the helmet from the bed and jammed it down over her head. She extended her right hand and with a whir the imperial knife whisked itself into the air, flew across the room and slapped neatly into her waiting palm. She closed her fingers around the hilt with a squeeze of possessiveness and thrust it into the sheath strapped around her thigh. She strode out of the room, walking past Isa without a single glance.

  Isa hurried out into the hall after her sister. she reminded Frea.

  Frea replied. Her words felt tightly wrapped, as if she had bound them in iron bands. She was walking so quickly that Isa had to practically run to keep up with her.

  she countered as they turned another corner in the maze of passages and then pelted up a short, narrow staircase. Every corridor looked like every other corridor in the temple, and even Isa, who had lived here her entire life, still got turned around. When her father had first come to the Shadar as governor he had ordered markings placed on the walls, but the Shadari’s abhorrence of writing of any kind was so deep that they’d scrubbed away the signs as fast as the Norlanders could put them up.

  Frea answered as they turned yet another corner.

  she shot back, ignoring the familiar sting of her sister�
��s contempt,

  They turned another corner and suddenly, right in front of them, was the archway leading into the stables. Through it Isa could see triffons lumbering across the floor, others lounging in their tomblike berths. The rustling of their wings sounded like a swarm of insects massing in the dark. Then the smell of damp hides, dirty straw and spoiled meat hit her. She drew back and reached her hand out to steady herself against the wall.

  Frea turned to her, her silver-green eyes glittering in the darkness behind the visor. she said.

  Isa snatched her hand away from the wall. She could do this—she had to do this.

  she called after her sister as she followed her inside.

  Frea called back. She speeded up and vanished.

  Isa stopped and looked around. She’d lost her. All around her were uniformed soldiers, meek slaves and triffons, but her sister had disappeared. Sweat crawled underneath her shirt. She could not see the way back to the archway they’d just come through. Worse, she couldn’t see any of the other entrances either. And people were beginning to notice her. She could tell the Norlanders were gossiping about her precisely by what she couldn’t hear them saying. And the Shadari: she could feel them staring at her, and whenever she looked they turned away with a particular expression on their changeable faces. The heat and the smell were stifling. It was getting harder to breathe … harder to think.

  Then across the room she saw Daryan. He had been looking at her, she could tell, but when she looked toward him he turned away just like the others. She saw him touch another slave on the shoulder, perhaps asking him a question, but she knew by the way he clutched briefly at the curls straggling over the back of his neck that he was well aware of her gaze. A warm, unpleasant flush traveled down her arms and into her fingertips. Disgusted with herself, she turned sharply away.

  And there was Frea again, standing beside her triffon, Trakkar, while the slaves finished buckling on his saddle. Her silver helmet turned slowly as she surveyed the preparations in the stables.

  Frea suggested with a trill of cruel merriment. Even though the sun was already down, she had donned her white cape and now began pulling on her long riding gloves. Isa could feel her sister’s enjoyment of the moment. She had made sure to speak so that the other Norlanders around her could understand every word.

  This was usually the point where Eofar would step in and tell Frea to leave her alone, but Eofar wasn’t there. she tossed back with all the bravado she could muster. She tried to focus her eyes on Frea’s helmet and not on Trakkar’s bristly hide and fleshy, sweeping tail, or on the massive bulks of the other triffons shuffling all around her. How could anything so heavy and ungainly possibly fly? Even standing with both feet on the ground, she could feel the earth pulling at them, pulling at her, grabbing and pulling—

  Frea kept on. She had Isa exposed now, and her words dug like sharp fingers into the invisible wounds. Frea circled around Trakkar, eyeing the preparations of the slaves who were visibly trembling under her scrutiny.

  Isa whirled around and addressed the first slave she saw. “Get my sword,” she commanded. The words scratched and clawed at her throat and fell heavily onto the voiceless silence of the room. Then she picked another slave. “You. Saddle Aeda.”

  Frea was right. What good would it do her to carry her mother’s sword if she couldn’t fly? She could do this. Eofar wasn’t here to stop her, and anyway, she wasn’t a little girl any more, relying on him for everything. No, this was possibly her last chance to prove that she was just as much a Norlander as anyone else here. Her mind was made up: this time would be different.

  There was a subtle movement from the crowd around her and then Daryan was suddenly there, right in front of her. His eyes were wide, but his usually soft, mobile mouth was as hard as stone. “What do you think you’re doing?” he whispered to her. “You know you can’t—”

  Frea clouted him from behind: a tremendous, sweeping blow with her forearm that snapped his head around with terrible force and dropped him to his knees on the hard stone floor. Then she thrust her stiff boot into his back, sending him sprawling onto his face in the dirty straw. The other Shadari gasped: a harsh, involuntary sound that rent the silence. Frea remarked.

  The Shadari stared at Daryan, their tasks forgotten. Isa had the sense that they would have rushed to him if they hadn’t been too afraid of Frea. She saw him roll over on to his side, breathing hard. Blood—red Shadari blood—smeared the side of his mouth and his face was creased with pain. He kept his eyes fixed on the floor in front of him.

  Frea asked, walking back to her triffon and unhooking the reins from the pommel of her saddle. The silver helmet gave the illusion of casting its own light in the gloom.

  Isa walked forward. Trakkar swung his big head around and she saw his slippery black eyes, like weedy, bottomless pools. she told Frea.

  Frea replied.

  Isa hooked her left foot into the near stirrup, just over the point where the tough ridge of cartilage joined Trakkar’s wing to his body, and then reached up and grabbed the pommel of the saddle. In one smooth motion, she lifted herself up and straddled her right leg over, then searched with her foot until she found the other stirrup. The floor of the stables looked much further away than it should have been. Frea’s saddle felt hard and uncompromising, as if it knew she didn’t belong there. In front of her was the harness, a complicated framework of tough leather straps and burnished brass buckles.

  She saw that Daryan was sitting up now, wiping at the blood trickling from his mouth. He was not looking at her, but everyone else was. She could feel their eyes on her, Norlander and Shadari alike. She reached out for the harness, but when her fingers touched it, she felt nothing. Her hands had gone numb. She shook out her wrists and flexed her fingers but the tightness had started in her chest and the next breath she took lodged somewhere in her throat. She reached down and gripped the side of the saddle with both hands as her head began to swim. A drowsy blackness rolled through her and she felt herself listing. She was going to fall. Blindly she kicked her right foot out of the stirrup and brought her leg up over the saddle. She was trying to get down, but her left boot caught on the stirrup on the other side. She clung to the pommel, swinging crazily, until her foot finally came free and she crashed backward down on to the floor.

  She didn’t think about anything then. She just got up and ran away.

  Chapter Six

  Daryan raced past the refectory without stopping; his master’s breakfast could wait, especially since he never ate it anyway. He dragged his fingers along the wall as he rushed through the corridors, a habit left over from childhood when the bad light and blank walls had made him dizzy; when he reached Eofar’s room he found the curtain over the doorway still pulled shut. He halted before it, rolling his stiff jaw and calling softly, “Lord Eofar?” When no answer came he called again, a little louder; then, with a sour feeling in his stomach, he brushed past the curtain and into the room.

  Sure enough there was his master, just as Daryan found him most evenings now: sprawled across his bed, half-dressed, sleeping off the wine he’d drunk the night before. It had been the same for three months now, ever since Governor Eonar had transferred command of the garrison to Frea inste
ad of Eofar. The shift had begun even earlier than that, though. It had started a few weeks after Harotha’s death, only Daryan had been too numbed by his own grief to notice or care that after twelve years of easy companionship, Eofar had suddenly shut him out completely. Now Daryan spent most of his time staring at the wall in the corridor outside while his master drank alone, envying even a servant’s drudgery over the nights of mind-numbing boredom.

  You’re his slave—not his friend. He’s lonely, that’s all, Harotha had told him when she’d first come to the temple, refusing to listen to his explanations about why Eofar wasn’t like the other Dead Ones. It had taken three years to prove her right. He only wished he could hear her say she’d told him so.

  He walked up to the dais, trying to think of some way to rouse Eofar out of this lethargy, for Isa’s sake, but just as he was about to call his master’s name more loudly, he noticed that there were no emptied jugs of wine or puddled dregs on the table, and that although his master appeared to be sleeping face-down on the bed, his hands were clutching the bedlinen so hard that Daryan could see the blue veins throbbing in his wrists.

  “Lord Eofar!” he cried, leaping up to the dais. The Dead One’s shoulders jerked at the sound of Daryan’s voice and he twisted his neck around. His eyes were fixed and cloudy, as if he’d been blinded. “My gods, what’s wrong?” Daryan gasped. “I’ll get the physic—”

  As he turned to jump down from the dais, Eofar reached out as if to grab his robe. “No!” he moaned, but his hand fell away and he pitched over onto his back, throwing an arm across his face as if the dim light hurt his eyes. Strands of his pale hair had come loose from the leather binding and stuck to his forehead. His skin was a sickly grayish color and his lips were no longer blue but nearly black.

  “You’re ill, my Lord. You need help,” said Daryan, trying to remember to keep his voice low.