Fourteen

S E C R E T S

 

Strange place, Súnam. The territory bordered the Sovereignty’s southern reach, hedged up against the low lands to the north and south of the Narrow Sea by the twin desert passes on either side. Beyond that, what was known of the place itself was limited. A collection of largely rural provinces scattered across jungly forestland and stretches of desert, punctuated by a few great cities deep within its boundaries that no one from the Five Lands had seen firsthand for more than two centuries. Beyond that, no telling how far south the land stretched, or its population. Which was why, Daneel thought as he squatted beside Josef in the undergrowth, it was strange for Hassan and Yasmin to be here.

True, Dumea in many ways was a city unto itself, abiding by its own laws, just as it had since the day it was stripped of being crown city of Hardeny when Kosyatin the Bloody conquered the land half a century ago. He’d left Dumea as the country’s only surviving stronghold, a walled island surrounded by nothing but villages and homesteads for miles. Apparently, it had been his one act of mercy, and that only because his scribes begged him to resist destroying the place to preserve the famed library of Hophir that sat within its walls. So for Dumea’s ruler to have now journeyed here to Súnam, the one land to have successfully defied the Sovereignty since the Cull was, well, unexpected. Perhaps even concerning. More so given the journey now seemed to have involved meeting a young Súnamite who, by the looks of her, was probably some kind of dignitary. A noblewoman perhaps, if they had such things here.

From their vantage point, Daneel and Josef watched Hassan and Yasmin step out from the hut and wander beneath the shelter at the centre of the clearing. Hassan went to the far side, leaving Yasmin, and stood by the endpost, staring out toward the road that had brought them in. The Súnamite noblewoman exited the hut a few moments later and signalled to her guardsmen, preparing to leave.

“Interesting,” Daneel said.

“Very,” Josef said.

Daneel glanced to the rest of the group beneath the shelter. There was Bilyana daughter of Yoaz, fanning herself with a banana leaf she’d had set with twigs. Her brother, Ziyaf, sat beside her, scratching his neck and muttering in her direction. Several handmaids and servants were gathered together on the other side, laughing with the colourfully dressed locals whilst their masters brooded in the shade.

Tracking them here had been easy enough. No need to follow too closely with a party this size, especially with the trail of debris and camel dung they left in their wake. More difficult had been the heat, along with the unfamiliar animals and plant life. Choosing what fruits and leaves to pick and where best to bed for the night was a continual guessing game. In the end they’d settled for following the choices of those they were tracking, using the discarded shells, twigs and skins of Hassan’s travelling party as a guide for what to eat. This wasn’t the Dumean’s first trip down here after all.

Daneel watched him now, leaning to one side for a better look. Hard to see Hassan from this angle, a pair of claybricked huts on the periphery blocking the view, and Hassan kept passing in and out from behind them as he stalked agitatedly around beneath the canopy.

“They were in there quite a while,” Daneel said.

“They were.”

“Who do you think she is, the Súnamite?”

Josef shrugged. “An emissary maybe. Perhaps a princess.”

“You think she is royalty?”

“You saw the elders leave when she entered. And she was wearing turquoise. Only those of royal blood are permitted to do so here.”

“Interesting.”

“Yes.”

“We should follow her.”

Josef looked at him.

“What?”

“That would be risky. Not to mention your decree is Hassan, which, since I’m here with you, makes it mine too.”

Daneel snorted. “That was before we witnessed him consorting with the throne of Súnam.”

“We don’t know that.”

“You just said she may be royalty.”

“Only maybe.”

“Then we should make certain.”

“We have our decrees, Dan.”

Daneel looked at his brother as he would a stranger cracking a bad joke. It had always been this way with Josef, even since childhood. No imagination. Given to stubbornness. Take this scroll he’d been carrying, hidden in his coat since Dumea. Daneel had noticed it several nights before amongst Josef’s things when they’d made camp on their way here. The edge of a page prodding from a hidden inner sleeve when Josef had got up to relieve himself. So of course, Daneel had gone over to look at it. Why not? Why would he expect his brother to keep something from him? Secrets were for others. Not for them. They were blood. Twins, no less. Two souls in one flesh, like Mother used to say, back before Ilysia, when they were still a family and she was still alive. Back before Father did what he did and then forbade his little sons from ever speaking of it or her. That was a vow Josef kept but Daneel wouldn’t, no matter how many times Father beat him, which was something Daneel still hadn’t forgiven Josef for, his continuing refusal – out of obedience to a man who was now dead – to speak of their mother.

“I’m going after her,” Daneel said. “The Súnamite.”

Josef glanced sidelong at him. “You can’t do that.”

“Take it you’re not coming then.”

“We need to stay with the steward.”

“You need to stay with the steward. The advantage of there being two of us is we can divide our interests. We can keep to our decree and investigate at the same time.”

“Daneel.”

“I’m going.” Daneel spat the words, saw his brother’s eyes shift to him in what, for Josef, could almost have passed for a flinch. Daneel couldn’t even make himself feel bad about it. Why should he? For days he’d waited for his brother to show him the scroll. To share it with him, explain the strange markings and items stitched into the page, speculate on the fact it bore the name of Qoh’leth, the father of the Brotherhood, of all people. For Daneel, just failing to confess he knew of it had been a struggle. Josef, however, had seemed able to remain his usual serene self, as though keeping things from his brother was the easiest thing in the world to do, a way worn smooth with habit. Daneel was beginning to think it was time he got some secrets of his own. He stepped back from the hedge of bushes in front of them.

“I’m going,” he said again.

“Dan, you can’t just go and…”

But Daneel was already moving, striding out of earshot, too far for Josef to call out to him without raising alarm. He quickly clambered down a shallow verge in the undergrowth and worked his way south in the same direction the noblewoman had arrived from, angling away from the settlement and deeper into the cover of the jungle that surrounded it to flank her travelling party as they journeyed further in. Fat-leaved saplings, greener than any green Daneel had ever seen, slapped at his waist and thighs as he jogged through the vegetation, weaving his head to avoid the low-hung boughs weighed down by the foliage. He soon caught up with the noblewoman’s party, watching them in the distance ahead of him as they marched on through the undergrowth. Daneel slowed his pace and kept low, just like Tutor Hamir had taught him. That old bald tyrant had made Daneel and the disciples do this sort of thing a thousand times or more back in Ilysia. Mountain deer, doves, hares and any other skittish animal he could think of, Hamir had had the disciples stalk them all, watching to see how close they could get without disturbing their prey.

Thick pillars of sunlight shone down into the forestbed like giant gleaming blades where the canopy parted, glinting off the gold in the young Súnamite’s glittering headdress and vestures and making Daneel squint. A minor problem. If he kept following much longer he’d have bigger things to worry about. It was going to be dark soon, and this place wasn’t like the Sovereignty. In the Summerlands, the sun didn’t leave by degrees. Instead day turned to night like a snuffed-out candle. Which meant if Daneel was still following this… whoever she was an hour from now, he was going to struggle to find his way back.

He watched the woman step clear of the forest into a broad clearing of broken rocks and ruined walls. Her guards didn’t follow, remaining along the fringe of the glade and turning away to stare back out to the forest. The place seemed like some kind of ancient shrine. Markings were dug into the large bulky stones of the walls on the far side, grooved divots so deep it was hard to imagine what sort of tool could have made them. The stone-carved head of a bull lay upended in the centre of the space on a paved platform, lying on its cheek as though trying to hear secrets of the earth. Daneel stayed low and still, staring at it, and then realized the head had more than one face, a bull on one side, the face of a woman on another, and who knew what lay on the side facing away from him. It reminded him of the temple ruins near his home as a child, and the ancient defaced monument of Gilamek that lay near it – a huge full-body likeness of the old god with his torso bared, and his arm cocked back like a javelin thrower’s as he clasped a spear. Daneel had always liked it, the way the whole thing had been carved deep into a cliffside the size of a palace too many centuries ago for anyone to remember how or why. It wasn’t until he was brought to Ilysia that he realized the country was littered with the things – broken, scratched out murals on the outskirts of cities, huge defaced statues in forests, ancient rubbled walls with strange markings sitting in open plains – fragments of a time before the Sovereignty, scattered throughout the Five Lands like tombstones from another world.

He was crawling nearer on his belly, trying to get a better look when a hooded figure seemed to suddenly emerge from behind it. And that was when things got confusing.

Daneel watched as the supposed Súnamite royal stepped toward the hooded figure and – after saying a few words, and still decked in her gold and turquoise accoutrements – knelt, bowing her head. Daneel frowned. As unfamiliar with Súnamite custom as he was, he felt certain royalty were not in the habit of bending their knee to any man or woman who did not themselves sit on a throne, and even then they mostly only did it when compelled by conquest or the threat of death.

He stayed and watched as the hooded figure moved forward, resting a hand on the Súnamite’s shoulder and gesturing for her to rise. She got slowly to her feet, and then walked away with the man beyond the ruins and into more jungle on the other side, leaving the guards by the clearing to bar the approach for any who might attempt to follow.

Daneel stayed for what might have been another quarter hour, watching the guardsmen and hoping for the royal or the hooded figure to return. When neither did, he crawled through the brush and out of sight before making his way back along the route he’d taken as the sun swiftly lowered and ushered in the night. It took him longer to return than it had to go, only the glow of fireflies and whatever moonlight managed to slip through the dense canopy overhead there to guide him. By the time he’d made it back to the village he’d been gone for several hours.

Josef eyed him carefully as he finally returned to their camp. “So,” he said drily, as Daneel sat down. “You decided to come back.”

“Well, you know me, brother. Wouldn’t have you lonely.”

“So, is she royal or no?”

“Hard to say.”

“Why? What did you see?”

“That’s hard to say too.”

Josef looked at him.

Daneel just turned and held his gaze for a moment, daring his brother – after having hidden this scroll of his and who knows what else – to insist on the full truth. “I followed them into the forest,” he eventually said. “Watched them make camp, and roast a rat or two. The woman is an able cook. As for what else she may be… well. Like I said, brother. It’s hard to say.”