‘Then they lie.’ Her throat sac swelled out huge, turning gold in fury. ‘They lie and lie. We send-then emissaries to N’Dosha farm lands. Canton people treat-then our people like beasts. They wave-then sticks, they call-then names, they throw-then things.’
It was possible, Ammadin thought, that H’mai leery of the ChaMeech had refused them access to their roads. It was also possible that each side had misunderstood what the other asked, whether out of hatred or contempt or from simple ill-luck and fear. Water Woman stretched her neck and swung her massive face close to Ammadin’s own.
‘We have-then no choice, or so we feel-then. You see not see? No time, we have-then no time to think, talk. They turn-then us back.’ Water Woman moved her head a little closer, her throbbing voice urgent. ‘We try-then to reach the coast lands, where we know our children wait. They turn us back.’ She took her hand away from her scarf and flapped it in the air, a helpless-seeming gesture. ‘The children, they die-then. So: our men call war. Two year they fight-ever.’
‘Two years? I was always told it was five years.’
‘They lie-again. I swear-now to you: they lie and lie.’
‘All right. After two years’ war, what then?’
‘Our men force-then the roads and claim them. The Great Mother send-then females and many males with spears to reach-then the coast land. But they find-then no children alive. They find-then nothing that-year-way-long-back. The children all die-then-before we reach-then them. Next year after they find-then nothing again.’
‘That’s terrible! All your children, dead!’
‘You see-now. Good. The third year after the war, we find-then some children on the coast. Every year next-then we have roads, but they lead-only to a small strip of coast.’
‘You can’t travel down the Rift, can you?’
‘No. Near the sea, it be deep deep river. My people, we swim well, but this river, the current, it pull you way out to sea, and you drown-maybe.’
‘I should have thought of that, yes.’
‘So, some children find us. Others leave water I know not where.’ Her throat sac filled, she tossed her head back, and wailed a long sobbing note that brought tears to Ammadin’s eyes. ‘They find-never us. They die-always.’
‘I’ve seen them.’ Ammadin paused to wipe her eyes on her shirt sleeve. ‘Small grey creatures, all wrinkled, walking on four legs, with little arms, and they have pink gills all round their necks.’
‘Yes. The gills drop-next-soon. They breathe-already air, but the gills cling-still to their necks.’ Water Woman lowered her head and with a twist of her neck looked straight into Ammadin’s face. ‘They come-now up on your coast?’
‘Sometimes. We’ve never harmed them. Long ago our gods marked them as Bane to us. But they just wandered off, somewhere.’
‘They die-then.’ Water Woman pulled her head back and moaned. From their place among the trees her servants added their voices to hers in a long howl of pain.
‘We have to work out some kind of treaty, so you can come take them home.’
‘Be this a real thing? Your men, they agree not agree?’
‘I don’t know, but I don’t see why they wouldn’t. They don’t hate your people. They just like to fight with your young men when they try to steal our horses. The other spirit riders will help me, too. But if Soutan brings the Kazraks to your lands, it won’t matter, will it?’
‘No, it matter-not-then if Chiri and Chur, we all die in the mountains. Please, you come-soon meet Sibyl?’
‘I want to, but it’s likely that I won’t be able to find another spirit rider until we go back to the grass. This will take time. I’m sorry, but I can’t just ride off. The comnee, the families I ride with, they’re like my children.’
‘I understand-now. I wait-next near Rift. You go-next to plains, I follow-next you.’
‘That will work, yes.’
‘Very well. But we talk-next-soon with sky spheres?’
‘Yes. We’ll talk often.’
‘And you come-soon meet Sibyl?’
‘As soon as I possibly can.’
Water Woman held out her two-fingered hands. Ammadin clasped them in hers.
‘You have my word,’ Ammadin said. ‘First we’ll talk with Sibyl, and then we’ll see about the coast lands.’
‘My heart sing-now aloud. I help-next-soon all ways I can help.’
‘Good. And as for Soutan, he’s tried to murder a man who rides with my comnee. We’ll see what we can do about him and his Kazraki friends both.’
‘I be happy, and Sibyl also be happy when she know-soon. We honour-next-soon spirit of Chursavva.’
‘Chursavva was true Chiri Michi, wasn’t she?’
‘She be-then-long-time Great Mother, yes.’
‘And then, when you say, true Chiri Michi, it means?’
‘One who give living children to the rivers.’
‘Ah. I thought so. I just wanted to make sure. And then, the Chur are your males?’
‘Yes, males and females who give-never children to the rivers.’ She turned and waved a pseudo-arm at her servants. ‘They be Chur. But there be true Chur, Chur Vocho, males who –’ She paused, lowered her head, and fluttered her pseudo-hands.
‘I understand.’ Ammadin spoke fast to end Water Woman’s embarrassment. ‘No need for details. So, if I need a name for all your people, what is it?’
‘Chof. In your language, it mean “us”.’ Water Woman stamped a foot to show her amusement. ‘Just us.’
After Zayn took care of the horses and pitched the tent, he had nothing to do but wait. He paced up and down in front of the tent while his imagination wove images of treacherous ChaMeech killing Ammadin or taking her hostage. Finally, when the sun hovered low in the sky, Maradin unknowingly saved him from his black thoughts by joining him.
‘Are you hungry?’ Zayn said. ‘I can cook for both of us if you’d like.’
‘Well, thank you, but they should be back soon,’ Maradin said. ‘The White Ruins aren’t very far off.’
‘You think she’ll be safe there?’
‘Of course. She’d know if something were wrong. She’s a spirit rider.’
‘Of course.’ Zayn managed a smile and hoped it was convincing.
‘While Dallo’s gone,’ Maradin continued, ‘there’s something I want to talk to you about.’
‘All right.’
‘You know an awful lot about Tribal ways, but I wonder if maybe you’ve missed something. You and my husband are great friends, aren’t you?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘I see you together a lot, and I can see how close you’ve become.’ She paused, thinking something through. ‘If you want to have sex together, it’s all right with me. As long as he’s not siring children on someone else, what he does is his business, not mine.’
Zayn felt his face burning. He turned away, realized that the gesture made him look foolish, turned back to find her watching him in concern. She laid a hand on his arm.
‘I’m sorry,’ Maradin said. ‘I didn’t mean to embarrass you.’
Zayn tried to speak and cleared his throat instead.
‘We look at things like love differently out here,’ she went on. ‘Since you’re one of us now you need to know that.’
‘Yes.’ Zayn cleared his throat again. ‘Guess I do.’
‘Now, look, Dallo’s never said anything to me about you or anything. I was just trying to sort of clear things up in advance.’
‘Thank you. I suppose.’
‘Oh gods, I hope I haven’t make you uncomfortable around him or anything.’ Maradin caught her lower lip in her teeth for a moment. ‘Me and my mouth again!’
‘No, no, you haven’t. It’s fine.’
‘All right, then. Don’t men have affairs with each other back in Kazrajistan?’
‘What? No! It’s against the laws of all three prophets.’
‘You Kazraks do lots of things your prophets forbid. Why not that?’
; ‘Probably some men do. They don’t talk about it, though, especially not with their wives.’
‘What? And let them think they’re off with other women? That must make their wives worry, if you ask me.’
‘Didn’t.’
Maradin tossed back her head and laughed, then patted his arm with a maternal gesture. ‘Poor Zayn! Well, you’ll get used to us sooner or later.’
‘Let’s hope it’s sooner.’ He tried to smile, then gave it up as a bad job.
With one last maternal pat on his arm, Maradin took herself off. Zayn sat down in front of the tent and hoped he could look Dallador in the face from now on.
The Herd was rising in a sweep of silver clouds by the time Ammadin and her guards returned. Zayn was so relieved to see them riding up that his relief turned to rage. Damn her anyway, for making him worry! Ammadin came back to the tent alone, leaving Dallador and his cousin to tend her horse as well as theirs. She was carrying her saddlebags slung over her shoulder, and in her hands she was holding a long metal tube. Zayn held open the tent flap to allow her in, then followed her. She laid the saddlebags down on her bedding, but she kept the tube.
‘What is that thing?’ Zayn said.
‘Watch.’ Ammadin held it up, took a breath, and intoned a single word. Yellow light sprang from the tube and turned the tent bright. Zayn gasped and took a step back. She chanted a brief phrase, and the light dimmed to the glow of an oil lamp.
‘I don’t want to exhaust the spirits,’ she said. ‘This was a gift from the ChaMeech woman.’
‘Maybe there’s something good to say for the females. I’ve never seen any, after all. How would I know?’
‘You don’t have to pretend for my sake. Were you worried?’
‘No, of course I wasn’t worried.’
‘I just wondered. It took us a while to get back to camp.’
‘Well, I’d thought the ruins were closer, yes, from what everyone said.’
‘I stopped to scan.’ Ammadin frowned at the tube in her hands. ‘It was the strangest thing. We left before Water Woman and her servants, and we hadn’t ridden far at all when I stopped, which means they couldn’t have gone far either. But I couldn’t see them anywhere.’
‘They might have been hiding in the forest.’
‘I suppose.’ She shrugged the problem away. ‘But it was interesting, talking with a Chiri Michi. Which reminds me –’
‘I do not want to talk about ChaMeech.’
Ammadin raised an eyebrow. Zayn grabbed his bedroll from the floor.
‘I’m going to sleep in the grass. If it rains, too damn bad.’
Before she could answer he left the tent. He strode across the campground, walking fast, and if she ever called him back, he didn’t hear it. In the middle of the night the rain came, soaking him awake. He lay in his sodden blankets and listened to the others rushing back and forth, finding a space to sleep in one tent or the other. Once the camp fell quiet, he got up and went to sleep under the wagon, or to drowse, really, shivering in his wet clothes.
By morning, a warm wind was scrubbing the sky clear of clouds. Zayn draped his blankets over the wagon tree to dry, then went back to Ammadin’s tent. He was expecting some comment on his damp clothes, but she said nothing about them. While he was cooking breakfast and packing the tent away, she never mentioned the ChaMeech, either. Zayn decided that he’d made his point.
When the comnee rode out, Zayn walked his sorrel gelding into his usual place in the riding order, beside Dallador at the head of the line of pack horses, even though the memory of his conversation with Maradin made him profoundly uneasy. Dallador seemed to notice the change in his mood. For a couple of miles they rode in silence; then Dallador turned in the saddle to look at him.
‘Something wrong?’
‘No.’ Zayn realized both that he’d snarled and that he had a plausible explanation close to hand. ‘Sorry. It’s the damned ChaMeech. It really gripes me, thinking of Ammadin having anything to do with them.’
‘She mentioned that you had a grudge against them.’
‘Me have a grudge? They’re the ones who raid our borders and lay traps for our cavalry and kill our horses. Why the hell wouldn’t I hold it against them?’
‘Our cavalry?’
‘Well, it was mine once. I lost two of the men under my command to ChaMeech. It still hurts.’
‘Now that I can understand.’
‘Thanks. I figured you would.’
Dallador answered with an easy smile, affectionate enough to make Zayn look away. He leaned over his horse’s neck and pretended to be fussing with a snarl in its mane to cover the gesture. Damn Maradin anyway! he thought. Just like a woman! Ahead on the horizon he could see the dark swell of the forest, rising nearer.
‘Dallo?’ Zayn said. ‘Nannes is on the other side of that forest, right?’
‘Yes, about half a day’s ride. We’ll make camp once we’re through the forest and then ride into Nannes the next day.’
‘How far past Nannes will the comnee go?’
‘What?’ Dallador turned in the saddle to look at him. ‘We never go anywhere but Nannes. It’s the trading precinct.’
‘I didn’t realize that.’
‘It’s like the horse fair at Blosk. Anyone who wants horses comes to Nannes to buy them.’
‘Makes sense.’
‘It’s not just that, though,’ Dallador went on. ‘The people of the Cantons don’t like foreigners. When I was a boy my grandfather told me about the way things were in the old days. If the Canton people caught a foreigner out of the trading precinct, they killed him. Just like that – no trial, no nothing. But by the time Grandfather was a child, nobody cared that much any more. A lot of people have forgotten the old laws, I guess.’
Zayn considered for a moment. He was afraid of showing too much curiosity, but Dallador had no reason to be suspicious of his interest. ‘So anyway,’ Zayn said, ‘they’d let a single comnee man travel around, now, I mean?’
‘Maybe even two or three. They sure don’t want an entire comnee riding past Nannes. Apanador says they’re afraid of us.’
‘Stands to reason. They’re just farmers and town folk.’
Dallador nodded his agreement. So, Zayn thought. Soon he’d be leaving the comnee behind, heading out on his own again – alone, the way he liked to be. He was damned glad of it, too, or so he told himself, although he had to repeat the thought a good many times before he believed it. He would be free at last to learn the truth about this sorcerer, who must have somehow or other corrupted Warkannan. Zayn simply could not conceive of Idres turning against his old loyalties on his own, not Idres, who had risked his life again and again to protect the khanate.
Earlier in the same day, Warkannan and his men had left the forest, but instead of heading east to Nannes, Soutan had led them south along a dirt road. On either side, fences woven of vines and bamboid marked out fields of wheatian and other food crops. Now and then they saw in the distance a white-washed farmhouse or barn. Once they passed a farmer in a long dirty-brown smock as he was strolling through a wheatian field, pulling a seed-head here and there to test for ripeness. When he saw the horsemen coming, he ran to the fence to lean over and stare until they’d ridden by.
‘These fields all belong to my supporter,’ Soutan remarked. ‘Or to his father, to be precise, though Alayn will inherit them when the old man dies.’
‘He must be pretty well off,’ Warkannan said.
‘By the standards of the Cantons, yes. By Kazraki standards, no. You’ll see. We’re almost to the manor house now. But even though they don’t live in luxury, Alayn’s family is an important one. His father is what they call a zhay pay, a local magistrate. He can try petty criminals and remand the more important cases to the ruling council in Nannes. He also keeps a cadre of private soldiers.’
Late in the afternoon they reached the villa, or as Soutan called it, the estate. About half a mile from the forest edge, a thorn and vine wall set off a long l
awn of green grass. Behind it stood a cluster of plain, square buildings, made of woven bamboid and sticks of true-wood with pale blue roofs of bundled thatch. A gravel path led them to an iron gate, all twisted and rusty, and as they dismounted at the fence, noise broke out – some animal, Warkannan assumed, yapping and making a sharp sound rather like ar ar ar. Sure enough, when he looked over the fence he saw a pair of four-legged animals, covered in close-cropped tan fur, charging straight for them. They had prominent muzzles, long floppy ears, and skinny tails that waved back and forth as they ran.
‘Those disgusting shens,’ Soutan said wearily. ‘They bark like this all the time. We’d better wait till someone comes to see why they’re making this racket before –’
The barking shens threw themselves against the gate. They had lustrous black eyes, black noses, and black lips, pulled back to reveal sharp white fangs. Warkannan’s cavalry-trained horse stood its ground, but one of the pack horses whinnied in terror and tried to rear, a gesture that started the others dancing. It took all the men’s attention to keep them from bolting as the shens yapped and howled. Warkannan was ready to draw his sabre and slap the shens down when a young man came running out of the nearest building. As he raced up, yelling something or other in Vranz, the shens quieted, and in a few minutes so did the horses. With a laugh the young man began to untie the gate. He was slender, with pale skin and an untidy shock of red hair, and dressed in a pair of blue leggings and a white shirt made of coarse-woven cloth. He should have been handsome with his fine features, but there was something unsettling about his pale eyes. They glittered in deep sockets above dark circles, so livid that it seemed he’d not slept in days. At one corner of his mouth hung a brown wart the size of a fingernail.
‘Yarl!’ The young man held out his hand, then asked a question that sounded like ‘say too?’.
‘Daccor!’ Soutan shook it, but briefly. ‘Alayn!’
Warkannan understood nothing of the flood of Vranz that followed. Eventually Alayn turned to the Kazraks and smiled.
‘Come in,’ he said in heavily accented Hirl-Onglay. ‘The shens, they not hurt you. You are my guests.’