“Life is pain. Only death comes easy.”
The invaders came as a dark stain upon the moon-blue water, bladed keels of the great vessels hacking through the soft tourmaline skin of the great Dibris, sails like halberds stabbing into the sky.
Every one of the Atualonian ships was an artist’s life’s work. Carven dragon and kirin and roc glared across the water, offended that the peoples at water’s edge did not yet bend knee to Ka Atu, the Dragon King of Atualon. Each had oars bristling along its sides like the spikes on a quillfish, and colored lanterns hung fore and aft. Massive drums labored and throbbed with the urgency of a thousand frightened hearts, and one could smell the incense even from this distance.
In the very midst of this fleet was a massive war-craft, a king among serfs, his prow and sides fashioned into the likeness of a great wyvern. His black face was twisted in a silent roar, and he plunged and reared in the water like an angry river-beast. Dark sails snapped and bellowed in the wind, and his decks were so crowded with the gold-masked Baidun Daiel that a glittering slick of pure magic rippled in his wake.
Hafsa Azeina was not impressed.
At her signal, shofarot began to wail up and down the beach as women raised them to their lips and sounded the ancient calls of welcome and warning: two short blasts followed by a drawn-out bellow, the ululations lapping up and down the river’s edge until ears rang and teeth rattled. The sounds faded away, leaving an odd tingling sensation on the skin. As the last call rolled across the water, it was answered by a long, thin shriek. Some large serpent had found in their song an echo of its own pain and loneliness.
She smiled. That should get them out of their boats quick enough.
In her hands Hafsa Azeina held the shofar akibra, a heavy, curled instrument she had fashioned from the horn of a golden ram. It was a thing of beauty, translucent and shining as a river pearl, delicate and deadly and sweet. The spirit within whispered to her, as it always did.
Use me, it urged. Release me. With this instrument she could open a door between worlds and summon the Wild Hunt, and rid the world of the Dragon King. That the Huntress would kill her summoner first was a matter of little importance. What was a king’s life, against the fate of all the people? What was her own life, when she had taken so many?
Of course, if Ka Atu died without an heir, there would be no one left who could control atulfah, no one to hold the Dragon fast to her slumbering state, and the world would be cracked open like an egg in her struggles to break free. It was something to consider.
She lifted the shofar to her mouth, and pursed her lips, and blew. All movement on the beach stopped for long heartbeats as the song of the golden ram drifted upon the air, stilling the wind, beautiful and terrible and lost. The river-beast bawled in terror—it had swum closer in those few heartbeats—and bellowed farewell from a greater distance as it took its leave. Even the beasts knew that voice.
Hafsa Azeina lowered the shofar and wiped at the mouthpiece with the hem of her tunic, ignoring the throbbing malice of the horn’s frustrated spirit. She had chosen not to summon the Huntress after all. Perhaps she was not as ready to die as she had thought.
That was interesting.
Outland men and women poured from the dragon-faced ships in a riot of color and noise—crimson silk and white linen, armor of leather studded with brass, and cold steel bright in the sun. Soldiers and fancy boys, matreons and patreons and slaves… the City of the Sleeping Dragon had descended upon the Zeera.
I would not go to Atualon, she thought to herself, so Atualon came to me.
Hafsa Azeina knew many of the Atualonians, some from her youth, others from encounters in Shehannam. Her eyes were drawn first to the king’s shadowmancer, a Quarabalese man who stood head and shoulders taller than the rest. His skin was black, not merely dark but true-black and studded all over with gems so that he glittered like a starlit night. Cat-slit eyes the color of a summer sky blinked languidly against the noonday sun. He was accompanied by a lush young woman half his height, swathed neck-to-ankle in pale green silks. His daughter, perhaps, and surely a shadowmancer in her own right. Only a dark mage could hope to survive the journey from the Seared Lands.
Mattu Halfmask had come, as well. The younger son of Bashaba wore his usual leather half-mask, this one fashioned into the face of a bull. Matreon Bellanca, in her heavy robes of state, trailed a clutch of dour-faced patreons like a mother hen with her brood. There were servants and slaves, soldiers and guards—the royal family’s Draiksguard with their wyvern-headed helms, the king’s Imperators in their studded leather armor, and a startling number of white-robed Salarians, private troops trained and maintained by the salt merchants of Salar Merraj.
Hafsa Azeina frowned when she saw them, and her frown deepened when she caught sight of a half-dozen Baidun Daiel, the blood-cloaked, gold-masked warrior mages who answered only to Ka Atu.
Then she saw Leviathus.
The tall youth who raced laughing down the gangplank, arms spread wide, hair whipping about his face like dark flames, could only be the surviving son of Ka Atu, grown to manhood in her absence. His gaze raked across the crowd, caught on hers, and his grin widened even further. He jumped into the water and strode through the river toward her as if the two of them were all alone in the world, and then he caught her up in a spine-crushing hug, laughing and twirling her about as she had once done with him.
Hafsa Azeina squeezed her eyes tight and her heart even tighter. Of course you would send your son, she thought, you dirty bastard. He had told her, and more than once, that only a foolish king would play by the rules.
“Zeina! Zeina! I knew I would find you.” Leviathus dropped her to the sand and grinned, and she could see the little boy she remembered peering out from behind the mask of a man. “Ah, Zeina, you are more beautiful than I remember, and I remember you as the most beautiful woman in the world. But you seem to have gotten shorter… and your skin, spotted like a cat’s! I had thought those stories were rumors.”
Hafsa Azeina tilted her head back to look up into the face of the boy who had chased at her heels all those years past, and who she had loved as her own. He had been a sad and quiet toddler when she had come into his life, and a vibrant, noisy youth when she had fled the city. She could see both of them in this beautiful young giant standing before her, the shadow of hurt curled behind his laughing eyes.
Though he stood before her soaking wet and smelling of the river, and though her heart would see him always as a boy, Leviathus was a man grown. He wore upon his brow a circlet of gold and sparkling gems, cunningly wrought into the shape of the Sleeping Dragon of Atualon. He wore the blue-and-gold kilt of the ne Atu, royal family of Atualon, and the sword at his hip was plain and well used. And so Hafsa Azeina did not cling to him, or smile, or tell him any of the things her heart wished he could know.
“You are welcome to this shore, Leviathus ne Atu, son of Wyvernus,” she said.
“Welcome to this shore, and no other, hm?” He gave her a measuring look. “Have things between us changed so much, Zeina? I think not. I would have you…” His eyes fell on her ram’s horn, and kindled with enthusiasm so familiar she ached with it. “Is that a shofar akibra?” He made as if to reach for the instrument, but drew back at the last moment. “It is, is it not? Did you slay a golden ram?”
He had defeated her before the game was even begun. Hafsa Azeina held up the horn so that he could see, and smiled. “I see you have only grown on the outside. Go on, take it.”
He hesitated. “Is it safe?”
“Of course it is not safe. You may touch, but do not try to play it.” She smiled again at the expression on his face, an eager puppy that has been given a bone much too big for him to chew. Then there was nothing for it but that she should tell him of her hunt for the golden ram, how she had tracked the beast for six days along the cliffs above Eid Kalish, and how as it died it plunged into a chasm filled with blackthorn so that she almost lost her prize. She did not tell him what had driven her to the desperate kill, or show him the terrible scar high on her leg where it had gored her. As she told him the happier version of her story, he turned the instrument over in his hands, ran a reverent finger along its length, peered down its fluted throat.
He handed it back without meeting her eyes.
“I wish I could have been there,” he said.
She touched his arm, and let her hand drop away. “So do I.”
Sending Leviathus to her had been a very dirty trick.
Ani approached with the Mothers, a heavily pregnant Umm Nurati in their midst. Introductions were made and honorifics given. Leviathus went down upon one knee and kissed Nurati’s sunblade as if she were a queen. The Quarabalese man was presented as Aasah sud Layl, shadowmancer and advisor to the king, and the girl Yaela as his apprentice. Hafsa Azeina wondered if the pale and cat-slit eyes were usual among their people, or if it was the mark of a sorcerer.
Mattu Halfmask winked at her, and kissed Umm Nurati on the cheek, an offense for which he might have been gelded on the spot had Nurati not signaled an angry young Ja’Akari to back down.
Leviathus shifted from foot to foot all through the formalities, and finally gave in to impatience. “Take me to her, Zeina… please. I wish to see my sister.”
Not “my half sister,” Hafsa Azeina thought, not “the girl,” not even “the daughter of Ka Atu.” He wishes to meet his sister. If she still had tears, she would have wept. And how would Sulema react? Not well, she feared. Too late, she wished that she had prepared the girl for this moment.
The Quarabalese girl, Yaela, began to protest. They had been on the river for days, they needed quarters and baths and food, in that order. Surely the prince would care to refresh himself first. Introductions could wait.
Leviathus glanced at her, and Aasah touched her shoulder, and she retreated into a stony and cat-eyed silence.
Nurati and the Mothers swept the shadowmancer, his apprentice, and the rest of their guests toward Aish Kalumm in a storm of grim hospitality that would not be denied. Hafsa Azeina turned to Leviathus.
“This way,” she said. “She is in the Youths’ Quarter.”
Leviathus surprised her by waving the Draiksguard off, and they surprised her by leaving without protest.
Bold, she thought. Bold and foolish.
Where did he learn that, I wonder? came the voice of Khurra’an.
Hush, she replied. You did not stay in the tent, did you? The vash’ai, wary and unpredictable around strangers, had been asked by their kithren to remain in the city while the two-leggeds attended to human things. But Khurra’an was a king, and a cat besides, and he did not play by the rules.
I am hunting, he told her, and she could feel his vast amusement.
Hunting what? she dared ask.
He did not answer.
They walked along the river’s edge together, Hafsa Azeina and the boy grown to manhood. The steps to Beit Usqut, the Youths’ Quarter, were so rocky and steep that one had to be young and foolhardy—or part goat—to attempt them. Hafsa Azeina went first, feeling Leviathus’s eyes boring into her back with a thousand unasked questions.
“I was starting to wonder whether we would make it this far upriver,” was all he said. “We lost two of our ships and a handful of boats to the river beasts.”
“I am surprised you did not lose more than that. The kin are angry. You will not be able to return by river, you know. Your boats and your magic will have the serpents in a frenzy for at least a moons’ turn. You will have to travel overland.” Hafsa Azeina turned her head, grimacing as the scab along her new wound stretched and tore. “Did you have trouble with wyverns?”
Leviathus shook his head. “Serpents, mostly, I think. We lost a few during the night, so it is hard to say for certain. We heard a bintshi on the third night, and some of our men went overboard before we could get them to plug their ears. You say the kin are angry? Is that why we saw so few barbarians?”
“Barbarians? Mind your tongue, boy, these are my people now.”
“Your people.” She heard him chuckle—he did not realize she was serious. “All right, then, your people. Still, I had expected to see more of them. Until we reached this place, we had seen only a few stragglers and fisher folk along the river.”
“The Zeeranim have never recovered from the Sundering, Leviathus. The people you see here are all that remains. A remnant.”
“The Sundering? But that was so long ago… surely the effects would have faded with time?”
“What did you think happens when empires collide? When the world burns, what happens to the people?” She shook her head. “For what? So this man or that man can sit in a golden chair, and wear a golden mask, and hope that one of his children might live long enough to watch atulfah kill him. The people will never recover, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand. Now the Dragon King turns his thoughts toward the Zeera once more. How many will die this time, do you think?”
“This land has made you bitter.”
“The world has made me bitter. This land suits me well.”
“Come back to Atualon,” he said, as if she had not spoken. “The orange trees are just starting to blossom, and the ginger as well. Do you remember how we used to walk together, before the city was awake? You would pluck down the ginger blossoms for me to taste, and tuck the flowers into your hair until you looked like a Twilight Lady from the pages of a story-book. You would hack off a bamboo shoot and we would roast it with soft-shelled crabs, right there on the beach, and you would give me a taste of wine.” He looked at her with the same wide eyes that had gotten him out of so much trouble when he was a boy.
“Our vineyards have grown, Zeina,” he continued. “We have a new master gardener from the northern isles, and with his modern techniques… I have been helping him with this new variety, we call it Purple Rain, the grapes are big as plums and so sweet they explode with sugar if you harvest them an hour late. We will be tasting the first wine from these grapes this year. Wait till you try the brandies!” His grin was infectious. “And the cheeses! We had so much pomace it was coming out our ears, so we got desperate and started feeding it to the goats. Now the city smells like a winery, and in the morning when the smell of wine and fresh-baked bread mix with the breath of the sea… the air in Atualon is as good as a feast anywhere else.”
She stopped at that, and turned to face him. Best to put an end to such thoughts before they could take hold.
“What of your neighbors? Do they feast as well in Eid Kalish, in Salar Merraj? Or does the Lady of the Lake look upon your laden tables with hungry eyes? Greed, lust, envy: these things are wont to stir the heart of the dragon to waking. Any child knows this.”
“Ah me, Issa, has your heart grown as dry as the desert? It is good that I am here. You need to lay down that staff and have some fun before that frown cracks your face. We could pack a loaf and a skin of wine and sneak off to spend the whole day fishing. And… my sister, Sulema… she could come too. Any sister of mine must love to fish.” He looked like a boy of six again, and Hafsa Azeina wavered. Sensing victory, he pressed harder. “Come home with me, both of you. Learn to smile again. You would be safe in Atualon, Zeina. She would be safe.”
“Safe, in Atualon? Have those responsible for the deaths of the ne Atu been found, then? Have their heads been soaked in honey and set upon a shelf? I had not heard. There is also the minor matter of a price on my own head. A thousand bricks of red salt, last I heard. I am hardly inspired to confidence.”
Leviathus grinned with delight as he shrugged a satchel from his shoulder and handed it to her.
“Ka Atu offers amnesty to Hafsa Azeina, Queen Consort of Atualon, and to her daughter Sulema an Wyvernus ne Atu. On one condition only: that they return home to him. To us.”
She took the satchel and opened it. Inside was a pair of heavy scrolls sealed with wax and the king’s signet. The long-forgotten smell of him curled out of the bag and caressed her cheek. Home. Hafsa Azeina closed her eyes, and turned away lest the longing burn her to a cinder.
“Zeina.” He spoke the words she had dreaded for sixteen years. “Why did you leave?”
“I had no choice.” It was a lie. There was always a choice.
His voice was so soft. “You left me behind.”
Just like that the years melted away and she was a young concubine, a young mother, abandoning the child of her heart in a desperate bid to save the child of her flesh. She had made a choice, and he had paid the price.
Silly humans. Khurra’an rumbled in her head. Life is pain.
Life is pain, she agreed. Only death comes easy. Nothing good ever came of opening a sealed tomb.
“Come,” she told the young prince, and turned away. “We are nearly there.”
The last twisting passage of the path was nigh vertical, and narrow enough that Hafsa Azeina’s shoulders brushed against bare gray stone. Mosses and fungi had been allowed to grow on and about the rocks. The footing was slow and treacherous, a natural defense against enemies. She stepped quickly across the smooth stones set into the very top of the cliff, and then turned to watch him. Leviathus clambered to the top, a bit slimed with moss and rock mold but not in the least out of breath.
He looked down at his ruined clothes with a bemused smile, and then glanced at her.
“Satisfied?”
A smile slipped through her resolve. “You will do.”
Akari Sun Dragon filled his wings with the desert wind and soared high and brilliant above the glittering white buildings of Aish Kalumm. Hafsa Azeina led Leviathus along a path under the trees so carefully planted and tended by the Mothers: sycamore and mulberry, lotus fruit and sandalwood and sant. The trees were a valuable source of fruit and shade, and this time of year the ground beneath was littered with fallen blossoms. The vash’ai loved them, loved to rub against the bark and doze in the shade, and were liable to attack any human who thought to fell a tree for its wood.
Many a beloved friend had been interred in this place and remembered in marble and granite, carvings so skillfully wrought and so tenderly cared for it seemed a pride of vash’ai dozed in the dappled shade. Here a great black-maned sire stretched out full on his side, there a queen lifted her head to stare across the water, perhaps thinking to rouse her pride to the hunt. A younger male, ruddy mane spare and disheveled, lay curled in deep sleep. A wreath of palm leaves and flowers had been laid at his head, and the ground there was scorched. Someone had recently made a burnt offering, someone who mourned their heart’s friend.
Hafsa Azeina averted her eyes from the proof of another person’s grief.
“Beautiful,” Leviathus whispered. “I would never have imagined this place would be so beautiful.”
As she led him deeper into the Mothers’ Grove, the stone vash’ai they passed became older, worn with wind and time and grief. More of them depicted aged companions with battered tusks and an air of deep wisdom about them. The great cats, like their human companions, had lived longer lives in ages past. Many of these older statues wore wreaths about their necks, though the humans who loved them were also long dead. Some, in the olden style, sat or crouched or reclined upon slabs of white marble.
They passed one sire in his prime, all white gold and bronze dapples, his black mane and striped legs so exquisitely detailed it seemed he would lift his head and roar at them.
The statue lifted its head and roared at them.
Leviathus yelled and scrambled backward, tripped over a stone tail and landed hard on his backside in a pile of flowers. Hafsa Azeina put her hands on her hips and turned to glare at Khurra’an, now sitting upright and letting his mouth hang open, displaying his tusks in a cat’s-grin of victory.
“Was that really necessary?” she asked aloud for the boy’s benefit.
No. But it was entertaining. Khurra’an grunted, pleased with himself, and shook his mane out before padding over to watch Leviathus pick himself up. Whose cub? He smells like your she-cub.
Same sire, different queen. Aloud she said, “Khurra’an, sire of the Leith-Shahad, under the sun you see Leviathus ap Wyvernus ne Atu, cub of Ka Atu, Dragon King of Atualon.”
Leviathus bowed deeply to the sire of the Shahadri pride. “My kill is yours,” he intoned, and Hafsa Azeina could feel him pushing his thoughts outward in a clumsy attempt at shaaiera. She shot him a sharp look, and he smothered a grin.
So, she thought, the young cub has been reading old books. That was interesting.
Khurra’an took his time in stretching, and then padded over to her, butting his enormous head under her throat in an affectionate display of possession. This one is arrogant, he thought, a good strong cub for the pride. I approve.
Leviathus’s eyes were as big and round as mangoes. He had gone very still at the big cat’s approach. “Magnificent,” he breathed. Then he quoted, “O golden king of the Zeera, how I tremble at your might.”
Khurra’an purred. I like him.
Hafsa Azeina shook her head. “You quote poetry as well? I am not familiar with that line. Whose words are those… Kibran’s?”
Leviathus flushed red from his neck to his hairline.
“Yours? I would not let the girls here know that you are a poet, ehuani. You would not survive three days.”
“‘Ehuani’?”
“It means ‘beauty in truth.’ The Zeeranim are not fond of lies. Or of liars.
“I will keep that in mind.” Leviathus was still transfixed by the vash’ai, who had begun sniffing and rubbing against the trees. “Where did you get him?”
Khurra’an stopped in his rubbing, and shot the boy a look of contempt.
“We found each other.” Hafsa Azeina smiled at the affronted cat. “On a dark and bloody day, he saved me.”
We saved each other. The voice was soft with remembered grief.
“But that is a story for another day, perhaps.” They had come to the edge of the grove, and were walking now through a miniature forest of calf-high saplings fussed over by a tree-nurse. Hannei stood guard at the gate, eyes heavy-lidded. Hafsa Azeina knew that the girl’s attitude of boredom was an artful sham.
“Ja’Akari!” she snapped. “Het het!”
Hannei jerked to attention. “Aho!”
“Sulema itehuna?”
“Aho!” Hannei affirmed.
“Maashukri, ya Hannei.” She turned to Leviathus. “She is here. Stay close. The streets of Beit Usqut are no place for a man to walk alone, especially during Ayyam Binat.”
“I would be pleased to guard his backside,” Hannei murmured. Leviathus turned to her, mouth hanging open. The young woman stood guard still and proper as if she had not said a word, though her eyes shone and dimples played at the corners of her mouth.
Hafsa Azeina snorted. “As I said… not safe. Now, stay close.”
Khurra’an rumbled as they passed the guard, and she nodded to him. “Sire.”
The streets of Beit Usqut were indeed treacherous. They had been laid out as a labyrinth, intended to draw invaders into the heart of the quarter and their death. Young women strode about in the manner of young vash’ai, assured of their place in the pride and definitely on the hunt. The second time one of them had laid a hand on him, Leviathus turned to Hafsa Azeina with such an expression of horrified confusion that she burst out laughing.
“Did I not warn you of Ayyam Binat?” she chuckled. “You had best take care. These girls are fresh from seclusion and deep into the hunt.”
“Do I want to know what they are hunting?” He edged closer, and Khurra’an gave an amused grunt.
Young females in heat can be dangerous, he suggested helpfully. It is best to simply give in to their demands before the claws are unsheathed.
A short and busty young warrior stopped dead in her tracks and raked the boy up and down with her eyes, hands fiddling with the laces at the front of her vest. He scooted by nervously, and her grin would have done a vash’ai queen proud.
Hafsa Azeina swallowed her laughter. “All I will say is this… if one of these girls offers to cross swords with you, run. Run away as fast as you can.”
Khurra’an turned his sunset eyes toward her, great forehead wrinkling. If he runs, they will give chase.
I know. She grinned. Shahad will be rolling in red-headed cubs this time next year.
Leviathus could not have heard the exchange, but he glared at them both.
“Ah! Here we are.” She paused at an arched entrance. “Are you ready?”
Leviathus took a deep breath and nodded.
They stepped through the wide arch and into an open courtyard, and Leviathus blushed at the sight of several young women bathing in the central pool. As one, they turned toward the newcomers. An image came to her mind of a fat tarbok parading before a pride of young queens, and Hafsa Azeina smiled.
The tarbok stands a greater chance of survival, Khurra’an purred. This one does not even know he is being hunted.
They crossed the courtyard and climbed the narrow stairs to the third level, where the rooms were smallest and least open. They stopped midway down the hall and Hafsa Azeina raised her hand to knock.
Khurra’an roared.
He used his indoor voice, a very small roar, but it was still loud enough that she covered her ears and glared at him in reproach. Leviathus staggered three steps back, arms cartwheeling, and almost ran into the opposite wall before clapping his own hands over his ears. His eyes were enormous.
“Do that again!” he yelled.
Hafsa Azeina glared at the vash’ai. Was that necessary?
Khurra’an let his jaw drop open and huffed a cat’s laugh between his tusks.
Doors all along the hallway banged open, and young women in various stages of undress spilled into the hallway. Perhaps a third of them were armed, and every one of them was dangerous. Leviathus lowered his hands slowly and his eyes darted about, seeking escape, but there was no escape to be had. Finally he settled for standing very still, eyes straight ahead and staring at nothing— especially not at the shapely and very naked Lavanya standing so close she could have reached out and touched him with her knife.
Lavanya smiled at him, opened her mouth, and then noticed Hafsa Azeina at his side.
“Dreamshifter.” Her bow was deep, her voice set to carry. “Ina aasati, ehuani.” Still bowing, she backed into her room and closed the door with a faint snick.
And snick, snick, snick, bang, snick… the hallway was empty.
Leviathus glanced at her and raised his brows.
Yes, she wanted to tell him, they fear me. As should you. As should every living creature, save one.
Khurra’an twitched his tail.
My apologies, she amended, save two.
The door before her opened slowly. Sulema stood framed in sunlight, though its golden glow could not match her for radiance. Her braided hair was flame, her eyes beaten gold, she was lean and tawny and strong. She wore a pair of loose linen trousers, and her muscled torso was slick with sweat. Her eyes flashed as they lit upon the tall youth, and away again, dismissing him as a threat.
In one hand she held a heavy quarterstaff, bound at each end with cold iron and battered from long use.
Those eyes, so like her mother’s, revealed nothing at all. Not anger for the interruption, and certainly not pleasure. Sulema shifted her grip on the staff and executed a bow so correct it was just short of insulting.
“Khurra’an,” she said, and then, after a short pause, “Mother.”
When no invitation was forthcoming, Hafsa Azeina made an effort to swallow her irritation. “Sulema Ja’Akari. May we come in?”
Sulema shrugged and stepped back from the door, then turned and walked back into the room. As Hafsa Azeina followed, she saw that what few furnishings there were had been pushed up against the walls, and a hoti had been drawn in red chalk on the floor. The girl walked to the center of this, bowed to an invisible opponent, and drew herself up into Crane Watches the Sun.
“Sulema. I need to speak with you.”
Crane Watches the Sun became Lotus Morning, and then a flurry of high kicks and a spinning short-strike with the staff brought Sulema to the very edge of the hoti. She met her mother’s eyes with an insolent stare, and then whirled away.
“So. Speak.”
Hafsa Azeina’s mouth tightened. She drew a breath deep, stepped forward and erased a hand’s width of chalk. Then she stepped into the circle and banged her cat’s-head staff down thrice.
“Het het het!”
Sulema was a warrior now, and no warrior could refuse a challenge.
Cat Stalking the Moon flowed into Halving the Wind. Sulema’s braids whipped about as she whirled, front kick flying and staff slicing downward so quickly that the air whistled as it passed. But her opponent was not there.
Hafsa Azeina grasped her sa effortlessly and floated between one heartbeat and the next as a feather between gusts of wind. Holding the moment, she extended her staff and struck lightly, contemptuously, at the side of Sulema’s head.
Time released her and she stood facing the girl, leaning easily against her staff. Sulema was sprawled on the other side of the room. She raised a hand to her temple, lowered it again to stare first at the blood, and then open-mouthed at her mother.
Hafsa Azeina hardened her heart against the look on Sulema’s face, and the shock on Leviathus’s. She must learn, or she will die… the time for childhood has passed. The dragon is waking.
“You forget yourself, girl,” she said. “You may hold your mother in contempt, but never turn your back on a dreamshifter.”
Khurra’an rumbled approvingly, and sat with his back to the door. One look over his shoulder dispersed the audience their scuffle had drawn.
Hafsa Azeina stood and lowered the end of her staff to the floor. Blood splattered Sulema’s new trousers, but she resisted an urge to comfort the girl. Life is pain, she reminded herself harshly. Only death comes easy. The girl was no longer a child, and a child’s tantrums could get her killed.
She watched Sulema’s mouth harden. Those round eyes, so strange, so like her own, blazed with fury.
I have taken this bright child, Hafsa Azeina thought, and I have forged her into a weapon.
Better a weapon than a corpse.
Sulema sat up, folded her legs lotus-style, and clasped her hands loosely in her lap. “Sit,” she invited Leviathus. She ignored her mother, as she ignored the blood that dripped from a shallow cut by her eye. “Would you like tea?” She rapped at the wall beside her. Thin wood and linen were no barrier to snooping.
“Tea… would be welcome.” Leviathus sat, and crossed his legs somewhat less gracefully. He was trying to watch Sulema without looking at her chest.
Hafsa Azeina snatched up a pale blue tunic that had been discarded on the floor, and tossed it to the girl. Sulema wiped her face with the linen and moved as if to set it aside, but at her mother’s glare pulled it over her head. She looked at the rumpled linen, now smeared with blood, and then at her mother, as if adding one more bead to the string of hurts. Khurra’an grunted and moved away from the door as a young boy entered and bowed.
Sulema smiled at the boy, and her face was transformed. When she smiled, she was the very image of her father. Hafsa Azeina heard Leviathus’s sharp intake of breath.
“Tea, Talleh. And coffee. Maashukri. Oh, and something to eat.” She was still smiling when she turned to address Leviathus. “We just broke fast this morning, and I am starving. Yeh Atu, forgive my manners! I am Sulema.”
Hafsa Azeina sat upon the floor as well, so that the three of them formed a rough triangle. Khurra’an curled at her back and she leaned into his warmth, grateful for his support. Her daughter’s disdain did not hurt any less for being deserved.
“Leviathus ap Wyvernus ne Atu,” he replied. Now that Sulema was clothed, Leviathus watched her closely, waiting for a flicker of recognition. When he saw none, he turned to Hafsa Azeina, a look of puzzlement and accusation on his face.
“You are with the outlander delegation?” Sulema asked.
“I am…”
“The son of an old friend,” Hafsa Azeina interrupted.
Sulema looked from one to the other. “An old friend, hm.” Her eyes flashed. But the laws of hospitality were as old as the Zeera, and Sulema was Zeerani to the marrow of her stubborn bones, outland-born or not. She would not pry until they had shared bread and salt, meat and drink.
These came soon enough. Nobody went hungry in the Youths’ Quarter during Ayyam Binat. Talleh returned with a handful of brown and barefoot youngsters, most of whom Hafsa Azeina did not recognize. A simple meal was laid out before them. Loaves of heavy flat bread sprinkled with precious red salt, goat’s cheese and dried figs, still fat and sweet with last year’s summer. And, of course, there was tea. Sulema laughed openly at the look on Leviathus’s face.
“We Zeeranim may be savages,” she teased, “but we are well-fed savages.”
Hafsa Azeina poked at the food without much enthusiasm. She was not eager to speak the words which would bring nothing but pain to her daughter.
When the food had been pushed aside, they sipped at their tea. It was Riih Atu, Breath of the Dragon, grown by the Mothers along the banks of the Dibris. Leviathus inhaled the fragrant steam, took a small sip, and sighed appreciatively.
“Wonderful,” he said.
Then Sulema asked the question that broke a fragile peace.
“Why are you here?” she asked. “Surely you did not come all this way just to have tea with your father’s old… friend.”
Leviathus turned the horn cup round in his hands.
“Leviathus ap Wyvernus,” Hafsa Azeina prodded gently, “son of Ka Atu, tell her why you have come.”
Sulema choked. “Son of Ka Atu? The Dragon King? Then you are a… prince?”
Leviathus stared at her, and then turned to Hafsa Azeina, brows drawn together in a thunderous expression that reminded her painfully of his father.
“You have not told her? Zeina, how could you not tell her?”
“Son of Ka Atu?” Sulema repeated, and then, “Tell me what?”
Leviathus folded his arms across his chest and they both glared at her.
Hafsa Azeina folded her hands in her lap, took a deep breath, and closed her eyes.
“He is your father.”
“My father?” Sulema stared at Leviathus, puzzlement writ across her face plain as sacred script. “My… what… but you are so young.”
“Not I.” Leviathus leaned forward to take one of her hands in both of his. The girl, in shock, did not resist. “My father. Our father. I am your brother, Sulema.” He laughed, a little breathless, waiting for her to react.
“My brother…?” She turned to Hafsa Azeina at last.
“Half brother,” she explained. “You share a father.”
“Ka Atu is my father.” Sulema repeated. The years seemed to melt from her face. She was a little girl again, eyes and mouth round with shock. “My father.”
Leviathus gathered her other hand and brought them both to his mouth. He kissed her fingertips tenderly, formally, and looked into her eyes. Sulema came back to herself and tugged away from his grip. She reached a tentative hand to his face, his cheekbones, and then his hair, red as her own.
“I have a father,” she whispered, and burst into tears.
Life is pain. Only death comes easy.