Chapter Two
It was the Month of Sunsets and beyond the city's rooftops the sky was aglow with citrine and amethyst. For me, the fiery hues only signaled the coming Dark season, as I climbed the stairs to my chambers the next waking. The stairs were broad enough that no one concerned themselves, should the Change come and make me dizzy. Not so long as I stayed close to the wall of the tower.
Jia, Faru's wife had been dosed with the d'har nectar, deadly poison if not administered by a trained assassin. When used to coat blades it killed instantly. The instructor stood over me as I mixed the vial of pearly gray syrup with wine and herbs. Through the Hours of Repose, at each turning of the sandglass, she placed one drop of the liquid into the cut we'd made on the lady's arm. I was to watch but she dared not give this duty to me, though she knew I was competent. Faru was, after all the Khalji's favorite son and heir. As the Khalji's daughter by the Ru'al Harani, suspicion would turn on my mother should Jia lose life or child.
I had hoped to be allowed to witness the birth. Once the lady's eyes had glazed, I lingered in the background. I felt every breath, each moan of pain as if it were Aldrar's. Eventually Eltanii's priestesses had sent me away, along with a multitude of sister-wives, nenfariis and attendant servants. It promised to be a long birth, and the crowd made Jia nervous. Perhaps they would allow our return later.
A light zephyr blew up from the Waste, now, causing a thousand chimes to tinkle softly. Far below, the priests of Zarta Time-giver sang out invocations to the Sixth Wind, praise to the Wind-binder sorceress. I made the sign of gratitude automatically. My mind replayed the impatient sorrow shadowing my mother's eyes. The same expression she would wear at the breaking of a favored weapon.
Perhaps it was time we all accept that the training I had undergone since I could barely hold a staff had been wasted. I could never aspire to the rank of harani without the Change.
Would it be so terrible not to live as a member of the assassin caste? Illistanirda would be the most disappointed. She had little warmth for me, yet would not wish to hand the bone ring of office to any other than her own child. Our blood had held the rank of Ru'al Harani for eight generations.
I stood on the very edge of a wide stone step. Its sun-baked heat burned through my sandals. Daring the gods to send the Change in this vulnerable moment, I gazed over the city. Far below, a herdsman chased a stray silk-goat through the bazaar. A slave was hanging laundry. In the women's compound of the palace two little girls practiced a combat dance, knives flashing. Would I feel the impact or was it true that faced with such a plunge, the heart would stop from sheer terror?
The gods did not take my challenge. I resumed climbing the stairs. Aldrar would have the words to calm my fears. She always did.
I took the stairs two at a time. As I neared the top, the door to my chambers opened and a man wearing the smoke-darkened robes of a priest of Shagul, god of Prophesy, stepped out. He carried a squirming bundle from which small, ruddy arms waved.
I backed down three steps, recoiling. Even though Aldrar was herself nenfari, she was not immune to the laws of nenfar. Ministering to Faru's wife, I had not let myself consider that Aldrar's child might be taken.
My hands clenched beneath the trailing cuffs of my sleeves. "What do you here, Sulios?"
The High Priest lifted his beak-like nose. I could see into the recesses of his skull. "Shagul has chosen."
"Give it back, Sulios. Choose another nenfar for Faru's babe. Aldrar has lost enough."
"Your slave's loss is no concern of mine. What has been foretold must be. Ever, you haraniis believe yourselves above Fate. In the end, all serve Shagul's scheme."
"The kolbaniis take your Waste-blasted prophesies! Do not vent your hatred for my mother or myself on Aldrar. The rivalry between us is no fault of hers." I sliced a lunging blow at him, but he held the babe out of reach. I did not dare use the tactics which would bring him to his belly, fearing he would drop the child. An instructor's words came to mind, "A harani must care for nothing but the goal before her and the wills of the Khalji and he to whom she is bound. When she puts the lives of others before her goal she becomes powerless."
Hands groped for me. A priestess of Eltanii pulled me back. Despite my fury, the red-gowned crone's presence filled me with the stillness that was their gift.
Sulios brushed past. "Shagul has chosen this nenfaron. Would you scorn the gods?" He stalked down the steps.
"Come, child," said Eltanii's priestess. "You must look to your nenfari."
Nenfaron, Sulios had said, not nenfari. A male child. I fisted the crone's gown, stopping her. "What news of Jia's birth?"
"No news. It goes on." With a long and tattered sign, the closest to a sob that a harani might permit herself in public, I let the midwife lead me upwards.
Inside, the bedchamber was silent save for the distant jangle of wind bells through latticed shutters. Aldrar was a crumpled ball of damp cloths, face turned against the wall, finger tracing a crack in the baked clay as if one demented. A trickle of blood stained the floor beneath her. Another dripped from a cut high on her cheekbone. Aldrar had fought when they took the child away, and hemorrhaged, explained the crone. They had been able to control the bleeding. Sulios had stayed until certain she would live. If the mother died in childbirth, the nenfar could not be consecrated.
I should have been here. Should have stopped this. Rather than coming straight to my apartments, I had lingered in the bazaar. In my purse, the lodestone weight of the amulet I'd bought Aldrar. "Why was I not sent for?"
"We dared not disturb you at the bedside of the wife of the Khalji’s heir for a mere born-for slave. She has lost much blood...."
"She will not eat," whispered another priestess. This one was younger, but a few years past child-bearing age. "I know her fear. My daught--my first birth was for the Lady Tya."
"But my child is male." The harsh, croaking voice was unrecognizable from Aldrar's usual proud tones.
I grasped my nenfari's shoulder with the awkwardness of one who has been too long the consoled and seldom the consoler. My hand plummeted to my side like a pigeon shot from the sky. "Please, faiir. When Faru's son is born I will allow you a year's freedom so that you may raise the nenfaron." At my signal the junior priestess brought a broth of herbs and healing fungus. "Eat now."
"A command, revered lady?" Aldrar turned from the wall. She took the bowl with a shrug. I was stung, both by the formal title and by the cold light which gathered in Aldrar's eyes. "But what if Lord Faru's child should be female? What then?"
"Do not even let yourself think of that," shuddered the junior priestess.