Chapter Fifteen

 

 

Muktardagh. Another city. Gard clambered down from the elephant thinking that the Mohan was like a child’s toy; lift the roofs from Ferangipur and find Apsurakand, lift Apsurakand’s lid and find Muktardagh. Maybe Giremon would fit inside Muktardagh, and the other Allianzi cities inside it, until at last, at the center, was a village able to field only one warrior.

Each city was poorer and more fetid than the last. Each surrounding wall was thicker, its stones of cyclopean dimensions not at all like the refined ashlar masonry of Ferangipur. The divine artisans who had made the nesting cities had brushes only fine enough to paint detail on the larger ones.

Shikar bowed to Vijay. His look lingered briefly on Gard’s red beard and his legionary sword. His lip curled with contempt. Kundaraja. So what.

The Satrap shooed Vijay beneath the brick-and tile-facade of his palace saying, “So you went to Apsurakand first. We hope you did not suffer at your poor accommodations. Menelik has no idea of comfort, you understand. And his manners? We imagine he questioned you about your family with all the grace of an elephant treading chaff. His slaves are hopeless, are they not?—spilling soup in your lap and hacking half-cooked fowl?”

Vijay offered a pleasantry or two to fill the fleeting interludes when Shikar breathed.

Gard glanced about the maidan. A few curious eyes met his, many sullen ones did not. Half the populace seemed to be soldiers. He allowed himself a cynical chuckle. Perhaps Shikar and Menelik would start a war between themselves and leave Ferangipur to browse among the remains.

He followed Shikar and Vijay under the gateway of a palace which would have been no more than a respectable inn in Ferangipur. The sentries had evidently been using the passage as a latrine; the dragonet fanned its nostrils with a supercilious paw.

Shikar’s voice, half bark, half whine, continued, “. . . Menelik would have no power at all if it were not for us at his right hand. Muktari warriors are recognized throughout the Mohan as the backbone of the Allianzi army.”

A distracted murmur from Vijay. His turban tilted right and left, pointing into every room they passed.

The company arrived in another banquet hall. Smoke scummed the hot air. Gard followed a functionary’s wave to his own place at the table. Really now, he was seated with apprentices and footmen at the far end of the room! He consoled himself by making the tableware dance a jig for the boys around him, and was rewarded by suppressed giggles from them and suspicious looks from farther up the table.

Vijay and Shikar proceeded to the required exchange of gifts, Ferangi ceramics and jewelry for a Muktari carpet. Hard to believe that something that brightly colored could come from this drab place.

The banquet began. No saltcellar. No peacocks. And the wine was slightly sour. Gard set his cup on the table. All these dinners were starting to run together in his mind, like a nightmare caught between sleeping and waking, circling round and round in infinite variations. I am tired of these games, he thought suddenly. I want to go home. Not to Iksandarun, certainly not to Minras . . . I want to go back to Deva.

Vijay sat stiffly next to Shikar, his cup rising again and again to his lips, his eye drawn repeatedly to the zenana screen. If anyone sat behind it, the beauteous Yasmine or an ancient concubine, she was well concealed. Perhaps the man’s imagination had never been stirred before, so he was incapable of negotiating a truce with it.

Shikar squirmed on his throne, first leaning toward his guest, then away, as if trying to expand and fill the khaddi the way massive Menelik filled his. But Shikar was a smaller man. “Persis presumes to direct Menelik’s rule of the Alliance. We advised her to be wary of that lout Menelik adopted—the son of our sister, he claims. Fortunately we warned him to prune the infants born on the day of the Sun’s Awakening, so the search for the children of the prophecy is considerably narrowed. And we sent that witch Amathe to Ferangipur, so she could stir up trouble there. Menelik of course pays much more attention to our advice than to the pronouncements of the wizard Tarek.”

Vijay nodded, eyes glazed. Sure, Gard said to himself. And I have some prime farmland in the Sardian coastal swamp to sell you.

“Menelik is desperate for an heir, true—why someone so inadequate as Persis can put on airs is beyond us—but much better to marry the daughter Zoe off to a worthy prince, and so name an heir to Apsurakand.”

“She seems very young,” commented Vijay.

“She is fifteen, just the right age. Only her mother’s jealousy keeps her from being married off tomorrow. Our older son, now, is ten, and would make a most appropriate husband for her.”

Aha, Gard thought. An attempt by the charming and self-effacing Shikar to move into Apsurakand, failing his attempt to move into Ferangipur.

Shikar teetered on the edge of his khaddi as though on an unsteady saddle. “But Persis knows her place at Menelik’s left hand much better than your sister Srivastava knows her place. Tell us, is it true that Srivastava rules Ferangipur in place of Jamshid, so powerful that she takes as lovers actors and gladiators, camel drivers and slaves?”

Vijay’s expression was as bland as custard, reacting to the insult by only a slight stiffening of his jaw. Bravo! applauded Gard silently.

Shikar assumed a more insistent stance. “Our wife Yasmine is a model of virtue. She was a virgin when we married her, all of sixteen, and so modest.”

Vijay choked on his refilled cup. His dark eyes focused abruptly.

Shikar grinned, yellow teeth appearing moistly in his beard. “Menelik gave her to us as a token of his esteem. Who would enjoy a poor stick like Srivastava when he has Yasmine to play with?”

A rhetorical question, although Vijay looked as if he would like to answer. He resorted to an elaborate yawn. Immediately, Shikar was on his feet, shouting directions to his flunkies—bedrooms, baths, pillows, fans . . .

Gard hefted the roll of the gift carpet over his shoulder. As they followed slaves into a hallway like a worm tunnel. Vijay grinned wickedly. “Do you suppose he uses the plural pronoun because he has intestinal parasites?”

Gard smothered a laugh. Ah yes, he did like Vijay.

 

* * * * *

 

The lodgings were, surprisingly, quite decent. Gard stretched, feeling his muscles creak. The clear morning sunlight had not yet been dulled by heat, and the air teasing his beard and uncovered hair was almost cool. In the courtyard was a terebinth tree in a large pot, its piercing turpentine odor reminding Gard sharply of Senmut’s workshops. Exercises—yes . . .

His diminutive daemon stretched and extended its wings. They were a blue-veined crimson this morning, as sheer as a courtesan’s gauzy dress. He stepped, bent, turned, twisted. Shakhmi, shakhmi. The dragonet repeated his movements. The scent of the terebinth and the feel of his own body, his own power, made him almost lightheaded. Deva, Deva. How could Bhai have no magical powers? Senmut was the most powerful wizard Gard had ever met. Or else, caught off-guard, he had been easily impressed . . .

By what? What had he actually seen Senmut do? Admit to an uncanny perception, yes—the old monk sensed auras, his bones aching—but he had not so much as levitated one pebble. Instead he made clever machines. Not pretty toys like Bhai. And not mysterious detonating powders.

The dragonet’s wings tickled his heart and strummed his bones. He stopped, arms extended and head tilted. Vijay was watching him. Gard inventoried his senses; all accounted for. “Nazib?”

“Shikar is pleading other business,” said Vijay. “Torturing slaves or something. He says we will talk later. Now I want to explore the palace.”

“Yes, Nazib.” The dragonet sat down, paws primly together, head tilted inquisitively.

They strolled from the garden, through the bedchamber, into the dim and narrow corridor and around several corners to a featureless anteroom. “Here,” Vijay directed. “See that bolted door? Several serving-women took clean linen through there.” Each individual hair of his mustache shivered expectantly, like seedlings just penetrating the covering dirt.

“The back door to the zenana,” Gard hazarded. “You want to find Yasmine.”

“It would hurt nothing to look at her. Imagine—the most beautiful woman in the world!”

“That was by the account of another woman.”

“Yes, it was.” Vijay’s brow furrowed. “Gard, I have been thinking.”

He made it sound like an exotic activity. “Yes?”

“What woman would praise the true beauty of another?”

“An old one, perhaps, extolling the charms of a daughter. One with a motive, at the least . . .”

Vijay waved away his reply. “Suppose those women we met were really—” he glanced from side to side “—goddesses?”

The dragonet’s keen glance stopped Gard from whooping with laughter. The pentacle ignited with a soft hiss. “And what if they were?”

“They promised me Yasmine. A reward for my courtesy to them.”

“Yes?” Gard said warily. Was Yasmine growing on a tree so that all Vijay had to do was pluck her? The door was solid oak, the iron bolt locked.

“This is a serving hatch, not Shikar’s door. No sentries.”

Gard managed to turn a snicker into a discreet cough. The young prince’s horizons had certainly expanded, if they now included the concept of a servant’s entrance. He touched the lock; it tingled faintly at his query. A simple tumbler mechanism—he had made one at Senmut’s forge. Frowning, he focused. The metal shivered against his skin. The lock snapped open and the bolt slid back.

With a grin, Vijay pushed open the door. They slipped through and closed it behind them. This corridor was, if possible, even dimmer and narrower than the other.

Gard’s nostrils flared and his ears pricked at the same moment. He snorted, blowing the odor of terebinth from his senses. Roses, and a fragile voice singing a ballad accented by cascades of bells. Vijay’s ears perked up. “This way,” Gard said, tiptoeing across the stone floor. The dragonet stepped stealthily across his stomach. Vijay walked.

Corridors, small sleeping rooms, windows overlooking larger rooms. There were several women sitting in a circle, sewing and chattering in quick counterpoint to the alluring melody of the ballad.

The singing voice was plaintive but clear; what it lacked in vibrato it made up in delicacy, blowing the song like a glass vase to contain the evanescent murmur of the bells. It was coming from outside; Gard peeked through the door. The sunlight was so bright he could see nothing, only a glittering mist as the fragrance of roses swept over him.

Vijay gasped. Gard snapped around. He had once heard a gasp like that during the campaign along the Royal Road, when the young centurion beside him had taken a spear through the heart . . .

The sunlight parted like an opened drape, revealing a garden banked with scarlet roses, the profusion of which was doubled in the still waters of a circular pool. A white swan glided forward to take a morsel offered by—

Yasmine. She was indeed blond—except for the goddess Kyphasia, the only blond woman Gard had seen since leaving Iksandarun. Her hair was spun gold floating over her shoulders, decorated, not confined, by a headdress of tinkling bells. Her face was a work of art, her eyes inlaid jewels, her lips shining cloisonné. The curves of her body were defined, not concealed, by the flowing pleats of a pale pink sari that fell past her feet to lie in artless folds upon the ground. Her hand and arm repeated the curve of the swan’s neck; her long opalescent nails held a bit of bread crust as if holding a pearl. Her entire attitude was softly appealing. She was very young and very lonely—Gard wanted to rush to her and hug her.

The dragonet melted down his ribs and puddled in the bottom of his stomach. He seized Vijay’s arm and jerked him back into the hallway.

And suddenly he saw Deva, her black hair bound into a severe knot at the back of her head, decorated only by its sheen. Her white cotton sari, its hem swishing above the firm brown skin of her ankles. Her fingernails cut short and practical. Deva had to work; Yasmine did not. Yasmine is beautiful, he heard Deva say dryly. And like many beautiful things, trivial.

The sour remark of a plain woman struggling for beauty, Gard retorted. The joy that beauty brings to its beholder is enough excuse for its existence.

Twin maces smashed into his shoulders. Oh—Vijay was grasping them, his knuckles white. His eyes drilled into Gard’s so directly that for an instant Gard was sure he would see the dragonet sprawled beneath his heart. “Win her for me,” commanded the prince. “Make her give herself to me. Make her love me.”

Was that hoarse voice really easygoing Vijay’s? Gard wrenched himself away. “I am no procurer.”

“She is hardly a whore.”

“Shikar . . .”

“Slime demons take Shikar. If he cared for her, he would not have left her here alone and unguarded.”

The dragonet picked itself up and grinned, small white fangs glittering. “Rajinder . . .”

Vijay had not blinked. “Just once I would like to have something bloody Rajinder does not have.”

Do not be disappointed, Gard told himself, that Vijay finally sounds like a younger brother. “The gods themselves . . .”

“. . . promised me Yasmine! And I mean to have her!”

“You have skill with women,” Gard protested. “Why me?”

Vijay shook his head, turned, paced away, spun back again clumsily. “Not with this one. She is—she is enchanted.”

“I should be the one to decide on that.”

Here came the hands again. Gard dodged. In the garden the song and the bells trilled on, accompanied by a gentle splashing of water and the murmur of a breeze among the roses. In the shadow Vijay’s face was contorted with intensity—too much dignity to be piteous—too much need to be venal . . .

“You have been in battle,” Vijay stated. “Have you ever seen a veteran lose his nerve? He has been in so many skirmishes, he has so much knowledge of war, that the significance of the coming battle overwhelms him!”

Gods, Gard shouted mutely, the man is almost eloquent!

“You have power. You win her for me”

Gard hissed, “Do not overestimate my powers.”

“You will get me Yasmine, Gard, or you can walk back to Ferangipur. And when you arrive, I might well have taken your wife for my own zenana, in retribution for your disobedience.”

Wife? Deva? I would like to see you try to take Deva . . . Gard’s thought concretized and his bones skreeled. The dragonet swung gleefully upon the pentacle, a pendulum in his chest. Retribution? Shikar had captured Deva, had tried to rape her, had sold her to a slave dealer. Poetic justice, to take his wife in the midst of his own zenana. The greatest challenge yet . . .

Vijay shuddered, eating his words and finding them hard to swallow. “Forgive me, my friend. I would not threaten my servants—I would buy their loyalty, not steal it from them. I would not speak resentfully of my brother.”

“I do not sell loyalty, Vijay. I offer it freely. For good reasons.”

Vijay’s eyes glittered feverishly. His dark cheeks were swept first with carmine, then with pale saffron, then with carmine again. “Then, do you have reason to serve me?”

Gard peeked around the doorpost. Yasmine had not moved. She might have been a portrait edged with gold leaf, except that no artificial pigment could capture the living colors of her face. Appropriate, to place upon her head those tinkling bells. Her laughter would sound like that, her manner would be as airy and insubstantial. Her mouth would taste of roses.

Vijay might be possessed, but he trusted his wizard . . . Gard laughed under his breath. The dragonet leaned back, smirking, legs folded. How tidy, to avenge Deva and amuse myself at the same time. To spite Deva, and to honorably do as my employer—asks, not demands. “Watch me,” he said.

He tickled the dragonet and it jumped up, limbs outstretched, poised. He sent his thought into the pentacle, and the wings upon it unfurled and spread. He soothed the jangling of his bones, gathered their excruciating perception, molded it.

Vijay. The angle of the brow, so. The breadth of the shoulders, so. The mustache like a banner displayed upon the parapet of Ferangipur, so.

Vijay’s eyes opened so wide the whites glinted around the dark irises. “Nothing astonishing,” said Gard. He pirouetted. “We are not too different in body build, after all.”

Vijay made some strangled assent in his throat. Yasmine’s voice stopped, but the chimes continued.

A strange sensation, thought Gard. Not as strange as becoming a tiger or a cat, but still very peculiar to be inside someone else’s body. Vijay’s dark brown eyes admitted not less light, but less imagery than his own gray ones. Vijay’s limbs were heavier than his own, more stolid, if less likely to betray clumsiness, then equally less likely to exhibit a lithe and infernal grace. The dragonet was larger, filling his entire chest, half choking him. It would take more effort to sustain the illusion than to work the seduction.

If he was still capable of seducing anyone. “Go back to your room,” he whispered to Vijay. “Lock the door on your way out. And wait.”

Vijay’s throat heaved in a gulp. Muttering something under his breath, what might have been a prayer or a curse or both, he went.

If I stop to think about this, Gard thought, I will not do it. He stepped into the garden and said quietly, “Greetings, Lady Yasmine.”

Her hand jerked and threw the crust of bread into the pool. The mirror-image of woman and flowers and blue sky shattered into glinting tiles. The swan galloped over the surface of the water and with wing-beats like whip cracks launched itself into the sky.

Gard smoothed his voice into honey, like the honey clotted in his throat. “Forgive me for startling you. But—but I had to speak with you.” He took a step closer.

The hand that had been splayed protectively upon her breast fell like a fluttering leaf into her lap. Her eyes were a lustrous aquamarine, measuring the man who stood before her. She smiled.

Emboldened, he stepped to her side, captured the hand, brushed it with his lips. Odd, to have his chin hanging beardlessly out in the atmosphere . . . Roses. Her flesh was surely made of rose-petals. The all-pervading scent dizzied him as surely as a flagon of strong wine.

She giggled, blushed, and snatched her hand away. “How did you get in here?” she inquired. Yes, her words did tinkle like bells.

“Locked doors are no barrier to true love,” he said gallantly. The daemon in his throat gagged. He shoved it down. Vijay, he reminded himself. I am Vijay. “I am Vijay, prince of Ferangipur. I heard of your legendary beauty, and my heart was filled with it. I had to see you, to talk with you, to . . .” Gard seized her again. “. . . touch you.”

This time she did not rescue her hand. Her expression kindled and began to shine into his own. Had anyone ever bothered to talk to her, or had her body been sold like a choice cut of meat?

“You are the brother of Srivastava,” she murmured. In all innocence, perhaps, remembering a gossiped name. Or perhaps her husband had rebuked her for not being Srivastava.

Gard unleashed his—Vijay’s—most devastating smile. She fluttered, her lashes beating like butterflies. She wriggled, the sheer silken layers of her garment sliding like falls of glistening water over her body. The pool stilled itself so that Gard could see Yasmine and Vijay seated together, surrounded by lush frills of scarlet, against the depths of the sky. The garden was a world in itself. Nothing else mattered.

“Ferangipur,” she repeated. “I have heard of its magnificence.”

“Its splendor is a mere shadow of your beauty.” She looked down into her lap. Gard secured her other hand and held them both. They were fragile shells in his strong brown grip; he could crush them if he chose. But why should he choose to hurt her?

The wind chuckled among the roses. The swan circled the garden and landed again in the pool, sending ripples through the images on the water. The headdress shivered delightfully. No indecision between beauty and plainness for this woman. She was exquisite, in shape, in gesture, in voice.

A shame, Gard thought suddenly. Her beauty was so delicate that the least sag of an eyelid, the briefest crease of a cheek, might spoil its illusion. Youth, after all, was transitory. And who was there to notice its moment of glory? Shikar?

Gard’s body stirred with desire and wilted, the effort of maintaining his image too great for such indulgence. The dragonet filled him, so that he felt that if he sneezed, his own face as well as Vijay’s would fly off and reveal the pointed snout, the sharp teeth, the limpid gray eyes of the daemon.

He must not sneeze. He must not let anything so mundane as lust tarnish the ephemeral beauty of the moment. The dragonet smirked into his collarbone.

Yasmine looked coquettishly through her lashes. She pulled herself away and, lifting the folds of her sari so that she could walk, glided swanlike across the garden. Gard followed her. From his mouth spilled the proper words, wheedling phrases, compliments, teasing expressions of interest.

She answered, too innocently to be truly flirtatious, but promisingly, nevertheless. He moved on to winsome crooked smiles and light, as though accidental, caresses.

It was a dance, a curious variation on the dance of power, himself with himself. A dance of himself and dragonet with illusion, male chimera with feminine mirage, more unreal and yet at the same time more vital than any activity he had pursued since . . . More unreal and more vital than any activity he had pursued since he had seduced Deva and she him, to such drastic effect.

The dragonet flounced. Gard smothered a burp, collected himself, quelled the sprouting red hairs below Vijay’s mustache.

“. . . Apsurakand,” Yasmine was purling. “. . . merchant’s daughter. Honored by the Shah . . . somewhat dismayed in Muktardagh . . .”

She had a child’s consciousness of her own body; her hands smoothed her dress over her hips, her fingertips toyed with the spill of gold at her ear lobe, her tongue repeatedly tasted her lips. Did she sense her power over men, or did she simply, like an infant, lack anything else to be aware of?

“My husband,” she said, with a quick frown as though she were not quite sure of his name, “keeps me only for show. Not that anyone ever sees me, except on the occasional feast day, when he parades me like an idol before his warriors. Who stink of sweat and sour wine.”

Gard said something sympathetic. Yasmine twirled across the pavement. She bumped, quite inadvertently, into his chest, so that he had to steady her with an embrace. It was like holding a milkweed pod, bits of fluff clinging to him with soft inconsequence.

The marvelous aquamarine eyes sparkled into his. “My husband has only come to my bed three times,” she confided. “I had heard that such—activity—could be pleasurable. I never believed it until now . . .” Her voice died away. Her breath was as fresh as a newly blown rose. Gard reeled in its draft. His hands excavated the layers of fabric she wore.

Hah, probably Shikar was incapable. Vijay would be doing Yasmine a favor, teaching her the finer things in life.

“You,” breathed Yasmine, “do not smell of sweat and sour wine.”

I should hope not. Gently, firmly, he took her chin in his hand and turned her face up to his. She made a pretty show of resisting, turning her head, squirming in his arms, so that in the end they were pressed even more tightly together and his lips were immovably lodged against hers. Yasmine’s lips were sweet crushed berries.

Now. Leave her wanting more. Gard released Yasmine and set her a few paces away from him, careful to leave his hands open, empty and yearning. “I presume, lady,” he sighed. “I force myself upon you. I should leave you.”

Her lips were still parted, still damp from his kiss. Her eyes were unfocused. “Come back,” she panted. “The zenana is locked for the night after the eleventh hour. Come back to me, Vijay.”

Vijay? Oh . . . How much softer the prince’s name was than his own. Gard murmured something soothing and backed away.

She followed, wafting across the garden, roses bobbing like boats in her wake. Her eyes shone, her cheeks blushed, her hands stretched, fleshly tendrils, after him. “You will come back to me. You will.”

“Yes, yes, lady. At the eleventh hour.”

He blew her a kiss. He paused at the door for an elaborate bow. Either a cloud momentarily blotted the sun, or the crystalline purity of the scene was smudged by vapors of lust . . . He spun into the corridor, skirted the other doorways, opened the lock and gained Vijay’s room before he dared to breathe.

A surge of nausea swept over him. He clutched at the doorframe as his vision blurred, as ants crawled under his skin and the dragonet shriveled in his stomach. His disguise peeled from him. He was Gard, king of Minras, wizard of Ferangipur, serving one ruler by abusing the hospitality of another.

Vijay was sitting upon the gift carpet, knees crossed, arms crossed, waiting. “Well?”

“She is yours,” wheezed Gard. The dragonet looked up with a groan. “Go to her tonight. I hope you enjoy yourself.”

Vijay rose. “You did not—I mean, for yourself . . .”

Gard slid bonelessly down the wall and huddled on the floor. He cackled with laughter. How? he shouted silently. With what? “No, Vijay. She is as perfect as she ever was.” If not, he added to himself, quite as pure.

Oh no, he was no procurer. And she was no—well, she was naive and foolish, certainly . . .

“Ah, then,” Vijay cleared his throat and headed for the door. “I must go and perform my diplomatic duties.”

No “thank you”? But of course not. Vijay was the master, Gard only the servant. Used like an old cloak to mop up spills upon the floor.

Something lay heavily upon his shoulder. A long blond hair. He pulled it off and held it shimmering before him. Spun gold, already a bit tarnished.

The dragonet was violently ill in his gut.

 

* * * * *

 

Gard felt stretched so thin that surely a passerby could have seen his bones outlined through his flesh. But he was alone, lying in his cot staring at the cracked plaster of the ceiling, sorting nightmare and reality among its interstices. Neither quite fit.

All night his dreams had been haunted by Yasmine’s and Vijay’s whispers and moans. He could, if he cared to look deeper into vision, see them together. Long black hair entwined with the blond. Beauty in face and form, shallowness in perception. They deserved each other.

The dragonet stirred in its sleep and pricked an ear. Vijay murmured, “A jewel like you belongs in Ferangipur. What a waste, to leave you here, alone and unappreciated.”

Yasmine’s sleepy, satiated sigh was a rill of tiny bells, “Ah, my love, I would follow you anywhere.”

“Then come back to Ferangipur with me, and be my wife.”

Gard bolted upright in his bed. Vijay, you idiot, do not start taking yourself seriously! An adventure in Muktardagh, a cheap but enjoyable prank is one thing. Actually stealing Yasmine away is another.

An insult, grumbled the dragonet, is not nearly as satisfying when unexpressed. Would Shikar dare to tell the world that the ineffectual young prince of Ferangipur had stolen his wife from under his nose? If he could not even keep his own wife, how could he aspire to the rule of the Alliance?

The taste of honey and roses congealed in Gard’s mouth, scumming his teeth and tongue. He crawled from the bed and searched for his tooth twig. Deva, Srivastava, we have avenged you . . .

But Deva, too, had haunted his dreams, at one moment placing a soothing hand on his forehead, at the next slapping him silly.

And Senmut. He had seen the old monk hobbling down from the gates of Dhan Bagrat toward a caravan, at each step his stick striking little whirls of dust and disgust from the ground. “What arrogance, to challenge the gods themselves,” he muttered. “I knew that boy had a black streak in him, too bright outside, too dark inside.”

Gard threw down the twig and seized his clothes. Damn it, Senmut, how am I supposed to read the tangled will of the gods?

He strode out the door, out of the palace, past yawning sentries, up a staircase to the top of the city wall, so wide he could have driven a chariot along the top. What a place to plant a dainty rose like Yasmine; Ferangipur, yes, that would be much more appropriate.

The plain of the upper Mohan was a vast basin. The citadel of Apsurakand beetled like Menelik’s brow beyond fields and groves that drifted uncertainly in the mist of dawn. The distant mountains were tenuous gray against a rose quartz sky.

He kicked a pebble along the wall. The dragonet rode in his stomach as Deva rode in a howdah, slightly green. There, fleeing down the western sky, was the nacreous oval of the moon. In two days’ time, at the full, he would be twenty-two years old. Last year at this time he had begun courting Raisa.

Soldiers came running at him, brandishing their spears. “You are not allowed here, Ferangi! Be off, and quickly!”

He could have turned them into toads, but it would not be worth the effort. With placating gestures, he went. The moon vanished and the sun rose behind him, consummating the day, but he ignored them both.