LXIV. Dusty Travel
The trip to the lands of the main holdings of the Sawahir jansi begins in a far more pleasant way than the plundering venture down into the depths of the lower city. And you're not just saying that because you don't have to pay for it. You travel down to the lower city, where there is a Sawahir trade landship waiting for you, loaded up with purchases from Zorpondam. It is not so full that there is not enough room for passengers, though, and family members travel on the run enough that there is a guest room spare for you.
Not for Blue and Amigere, formally, but you're often willing to let them out of the hold where the animals and supplies and trade goods are kept to share your room.
The slopes of the valley are somewhat cooler, and more than that they are wetter. There are fields here, fed by thin streams running from the valley walls, and even in this season there are covered ponds within the irrigation channels. They have been shut off now, for the crops have been harvested and now the fields are bare, having been presumably sewn for the cooler months ahead. Even at this time of year, there is still yellowing lichen growing in the shade. You see scrawny sand-coloured deer grazing there, and a colony of tan feral cats lapping at a pool in a ruined shaded courtyard. And then there are the shepherds and the goat herders. Just like in the Cheraki mountains, people herd animals in places too rocky and rough — and dry here — for crops.
And there is a hint of chaos here. A little more life than the gods would want; a little more water, an oddness to the shape of the animals, a queerness in the occasional rainbow-coloured flowers.
You barely pay attention to it. Because you are still thinking about what the dedicate told you in the temple of Lela.
"He hides his name well, and he is obscure, seldom called on by sorcerers. But he is a count of the city of demons, who is sworn to the ancient demon-hag Sima, whose banner is a great seven-tailed comet. He is her librarian of prophecies, who collects records of futures that have not yet come to pass, and for that reason he is known as the Scribe of the new Aeon.
"He commands no great armies in the service of Hell, though it is said that many harpists and houses of murderous spies serve him — or perhaps once served, for who could tell where the loyalty of such creatures has gone while he was bound. These beasts, he sends out to gather more prophecies and perform fell deeds to ensure they come to pass.
"But this is not his darkest purpose in the service of Hell. For his prophecies are often keys for the lords and ladies of the city of demons. He finds — or scribes — books that foretell a circumstance when one of the mighty among demons can crawl forth from the pit in which they are bound. When that circumstance comes to pass, so does the release of an inmate from the prison of those wicked exiles.
"And so that is that his presence brings to a land; strife, famine, plague, the death of princes. Time gnaws too quickly at towers thought toppleless and mad prophets rave in the streets."
"All by his hand?" you had asked in horror.
"No. By his pen."
"No! This won't happen! I burned his books. The ones he wrote when imprisoned."
And the dedicate had laughed hard at that. "You did? From what the stories say, then he will hate you. Because you have destroyed every prophecy he wrote when he was imprisoned, and a prophecy that is not recorded — not known to others — is not truly a prophecy."
You stare over the side of the landship, feeling the road under you and watching the ruins pass by, and shudder. No. Those are not good thoughts. You might have accidentally delayed the doom of Cahzor that Zed would have brought — and for that reason he will be aiming for you.
Sei chuckles right beside you. You can see his shadow next to yours, sitting on the rail of the ship, but out of the corner of your eye you can see that there is no deer-cat there. "Heroism is a young woman's game, isn't it?"
"You're not wrong," you murmur.
"No insistence that you're not old? You must be acting your age for once. How are those crow's feet?"
You should shout at him normally, but there are other people on deck. And though you wouldn't admit it, you are feeling your years. Your dragon's blood keeps you looking young for far longer than a mortal woman, but on days like this you can feel the fact that you'd be in the grave decades ago if you hadn't been chosen.
Sei is right. Great deeds are for the young. For people with a profusion of years left, so they spend them so freely. You did great things once. Before you learned that gratitude is a currency with such a short lifespan. Like sweet fruit, it moulders quickly.
"He's a lord of the demon realm, Sei. A key to unleash uncounted horrors on this awful city that has it coming. And I am," the words are bitter, "just a woman."
"A dragon-child."
That is the crux of the matter, is it not? There are some dragon-kin who have defeated demon lords in battle; others who have outwitted them; others yet who have earned their respect. You know in your heart that you are no match for the mightiest of your distant kin. And Zed will not listen if you say you are weak, if you point out that you are no grand hero, no Immaculate grandmaster. So you will have to get much, much better if you are to save your own life from him. And you might even have to save Cahzor in the course of saving yourself, not that this parched ruin deserves it.
What a hateful feeling indeed. Better that someone like the Demio stops the demon lords so you don't have to. After all, as someone who rules part of the city, it's all in her interest that it not be destroyed. Why should you have to do this?
"Meira? Uh. That is, uh. Teacher?"
You half turn to see Inaan, veiled and covered up in the sun in pale blue. She pulls down her face veil to meet your eyes, squinting in the glare.
"Yes?" you enquire.
"You've been standing here for a while looking over the edge of the boat. Is there something out there?"
It takes you a moment to remember exactly what you had been doing before your mind wandered. "I saw some strangeness in the scrub growing in that tower ahead. I wanted to see it because I was worried we might be sailing into a bordermarch."
"We are. Well, not directly, but there's one close by. This close to the end of the year, the power of chaos up on the slopes waxes," Inaan says, her sing-song tone like she's repeating a lesson.
Oh, that is interesting. "Why are the slopes more prone to this? Does the same happen in the lower valley? What about the other slopes?" You tap your thumbnail against your teeth as you think. "Maybe it's specifically the south-facing valley side, because on the other slope it's shielded somewhat by the mountain ridge. It'll be less prone to capturing the changerain - oh and change-sand and whatever other chaotic weather patterns you see here, I'm sorry, this is still all awfully interesting - and there may be other climatic effects going on. But then why doesn't it pool in the old river channel? Maybe it does! Or—" and you notice then that Inaan is looking at you peculiarly. "I'm sorry?"
"You are definitely acting more like a sorceress now people know you're one," Inaan says critically. "You used to act more normal."
The cheek of that girl. But, "You know other sorcerers?"
"I know of a few. There are some tied to the family. Or to our branch lines."
"Fascinating," you say thoughtfully. Maybe you might be able to reach out to one of them. But still, the girl's cheek deserves a little testing. "How long until we get to… wherever we're stopping?"
"We should reach the estate of Ali al-Lazaar before nightfall, even if the winds don't pick up. That's what Zia said, at least," she reports.
"Good. Come below decks. I want to see if you're remembering what I told you about keeping your balance on a ship."
"But it's hot," she whined. "And I wanted you to tell me more about what you've seen on the way from the north. And the sea!"
Inaan likes stories too much. Stories you don't want to tell because they might lead to bits of the truth that you don't want to come out. So you'll just have to sacrifice your own health and exhaust her in the heat. "Now now. If a cold weather foreigner like me is willing to teach you, you need to put your back into your training."
You are going to regret this, but it's something that will distract your mind from endlessly, uselessly pondering what you were told about Zed.
You are not impressed by your upcoming accommodations. Not one bit.
Ali al-Lazaar is a jumped up peasant. The Cahzori would disagree, or at never admit it, but he is a noble of a line so fallen that he would have to look up to see dirt. He has a grand, derelict mansion in a parched place close to a place touched by the wyld, where he lives in a few rooms. The others are empty; everything in them, even the tiles on the walls, have been sold.
He might put on airs and graces and address you in a formal archaic Cahzori dialect you can barely understand when you and your companions arrive at the landdock, the one well-maintained place on the whole estate, but you saw him herding his scrubby goats before he ran inside. His dusty, faded robes are worn atop a farmer's garb. His skin is like leather. And the soil here is palm thin and dry above rubble; too thin for crops.
You are staying at the home of a foolish herder who plays at being a noble. Which would be much less irksome if his home didn't smell like a barnyard. And if he had water to spare on baths.
Yes, you are irked because you really want to clean yourself up and wash away the road dust, but all you can manage is sponging yourself down and then starting to try to strip out what you can with a toothcomb. All the best toothcombs are made of Northern baleen, and you are concerned how you'll replace this one when it breaks.
A knock comes at your door.
"Come in," you call out, after draping a shawl over your shoulders. Maybe it's one of your boyfriends who can help you with this, which might get you hot and sweaty again and oh it's Inaan.
"Teacher, what are you— oh! See, this is why I wore a veil for the trip. It keeps sand and dust out of your hair. That broad-brimmed hat just isn't as good," she tells you smugly. "And you're doing it wrong."
"Explain."
"You are brushing wrong. You need to work with very, very short strokes, starting at the base of the hair, and working out. It's even better if you have talq. Let me just fetch mine!"
Well, you're not going to say no to this offer. Inaan dashes out and returns with a clearly old and elaborately decorated pot, which contains fine white powder.
"Are you sure that's going to work? I have black hair," you point out. "I really would rather not come out of this looking like I've turned grey overnight."
"Look at my hair! Dark blue is nearly black!" Inaan retorts, flicking her own long hair back. "The talq absorbs moisture from the sand and dirt, and then you can brush it out much more easily without it sticking to the oils and moisture naturally in your hair. You're the foreigner; I'm the one who's from this place!"
You raise your hands in mock surrender. "I give in, I give in." That makes her smile. "Well, Inaan, then I would be thankful if you would do it right. I
hate being dirty."
"And you're a scavenger lord?"
Not by choice. You'd rather be a lady in her fortress far from watchful eyes and any temperatures hot enough to make you sweat. "We all make sacrifices," you say instead.
Inaan industriously gets to work, and though you hate the sight of your hair made grey by the powder, you have to confess she makes much faster progress with your toothcomb this way.
"What is this made from? I've seen a few combs like this before, but I'm awfully jealous that you came with one," she asks, as she works.
"It comes from the mouth of a whale. Hence the name, a toothcomb. Although these kinds of whales don't actually have teeth."
"A whale? What is that?"
How can she not know what a whale is? Of course you have to explain it, and it's only when she's nearly done do you catch the smile on her face. Oh, she tricked another sea story out of you — but you can forgive this one. After all, she has water in her blood. Of course she wants to hear about the ocean.
"Thank you," you tell her, when you run your hands through your hair and find that it is without that awful grittiness that was driving you mad.
She gives you a cocky smile. "Well, of course. You're a foreigner and you can't be expected to know these things."
Just for that, you decide she needs to be made to sweat some more. And maybe get thrown a few times.
After leaving Inaan to nurse her new bruises and with instructions she needs to improve her grip, you choose to take a short walk in the gardens.
The term 'gardens' is a blatant, obnoxious lie. There are the places where the animals graze, and then there is what perhaps was once a lushly watered green place but now is a tangled, snarled knot of woody desert vegetation. But even that is more than this land should be able to sustain, and the reason you are interested in it is that when the wind blows from that direction you can taste the wyld.
"Look at you," you murmur, running your hand over the snarled, rock-hard roots of a stunted tree. "Poor baby. You did what you had to survive, didn't you?" The roots have smashed apart the bowl of a fountain, and plunged down into the pipework trying to root out what water they can find. The statue which stood in prime position, holding a jar that once the water poured from is headless but the jar remains, shielding a bit of the plant from the parching winds. "It doesn't matter," you reassure the scrubby tree. "You're still more beautiful than this awful estate."
It reassures you, really. Even when this useless man gives up his futile pretence at nobility, the plants will remain. Indeed, without his wells taking water from the soil, they might even do better. And in the meantime, it is pleasant to stroll under the shade in the late afternoon, and see the remnants of this garden gone wild and feral. There are wyld-tainted blossoms, beautiful in their many-coloured glory in this dusty landscape, and chaos-touched insects hide from the sun in the shade. The smell is sweet and almost intoxicating, but you've been in much madder places before.
This foolish man has power so close to hand; a little here, more in the wyld-touched land. But he clings to the past, as if such rigidity, such calcification has ever saved anyone. It never has and never will. Embrace change and make it serve you!
On that note…
"Hello, Blue," you say to your faerie boyfriend, who also seems to have sought some relief from the uncongenial surroundings in this wyld-touched place. "I see you wanted to get away from that place too."
"Not just that place!" Blue folds his arms and glowers at you. "My lady! That
girl is trying to steal you from me!"
Your fingers twitch in irritation. Of all the— "Blue…"
"I wanted to brush your hair! But she stole that task from me!" he pout-sulk-fumes. "Maybe she is after you too!"
Oh dear. Jealousy. He hasn't found a way to slot Inaan into his story yet and he is considering her as a rival. "Blue. She is a little girl. Trust me, she is not a romantic rival to you."
"But she is a rival for your attention!" he fumes.
"I'm allowed to spend time around other people. Things would be so much less fun if I wasn't bringing you into contact with a cast of new people," you wheedle. "Things would get stale if it was just you, me and Amigere."
"That's true," he concedes, "but I don't like you having a student! I don't like the way things are going here! I'm bored!"
And there it is. "Poor darling," you tell him. "But we're travelling to somewhere much more exciting."
"My lady, this place is a pigpen," Blue complains.
"More like a goatpen," you say, because he's not wrong.
"Ah. Yes. Goats, not pigs. You are right. But still!" He cups your face with his hand, and you lean into his touch. "Come away with me, my love. Leave these wretched ones to pick over their dry stone. Come with me to that wyldwoods. I can smell them in the air, so close. They offer us freedom from this heat. Creatures as fair as you were never meant to be trapped in the lie of Shape."
"Is that a proposition, my princely Blue?" you ask him fondly. No, you do not have time to run wild like a beast, but Blue's offer that you both let down your boundaries is a tempting one.
"I am bored, Meira. Bored of this wearisome slow trip, when we should reach out and chain the west wind to our service in the shape of a horse. Then we could ride to wherever you want to be. Instead we travel with boring people across boring land and they even avoid the bordermarch that could provide a little excitement. And that
girl is taking you away from me so I don't have you keeping my life interesting." He sighs. "I am bored," he repeats.
"I am hot and tired and weary," you agree. "But the west wind is a little beyond you now, darling. I'd be so desolate if you were killed by a wind bear."
"But through its might we could go for such a ride—"
"And we still can." You pause, rubbing up against him. "Just… forget the West wind."
"So the South wind instead?"
Idiot. "We don't need a wind to go for a ride. Just you. And me." You try not to grit your teeth. "And I don't mean that you should call up your horse."
He frowns in terrible confusion as the thought percolates through whatever he has in place of a mind. "Oh! You mean…"
"Yes," you say encouragingly.
"You mean we should summon a great and terrible fire to lay waste to the house of this boring man!"
It's a good thing you're not interested in him for his brains.
You manage to pound the thought into his head and he returns the favour. And that's enough to distract him from his boredom, because you are wonderful and fascinating and his lady who can always hold his… attention.
At least for a bit.
Because once you're dressed and back in for an inadequate and milk-rich dinner, he's sulking again and shooting angry glares at Inaan because your host is sitting on your left and she managed to claim your right.
Your patience is growing a trifle thin by the time you set back in your way. You might be the kindest and most magnanimous of women, but even the patience of Pasiap would be tested by having to handle both Inaan being a teenage girl and Blue in a fey mood. And the more time you spend trying to placate him, the more she acts like a clingy brat. And gets stroppy. And finds contrived reasons to not give you time alone with your boyfriends.
Zia is absolutely no help at all. He seems to consider the fact that Inaan is being a pain to be some kind of righteous punishment for "encouraging her", and spends his time in his cabin reading. When he comes out, he just plays Gateway with Amigere, who has been trying to avoid getting involved in the whole mess rather than helping you placate Blue.
You try to get some space for yourself down in the hold of the land-ship, where the mounts and the supplies and the goods being taken to the Sawahir lands from Zorpondam are stored. A little time to read, to review your notes, to—
"Look! Up ahead! Wyld beastie!" Inaan's excited call brings you to onto deck.
You see exactly why she shouted. Sitting confidently atop a tree growing from a collapsed low-rise building is something bright red. The shape of the creature's head is unmistakably a fox — albeit with big, almost batlike ears — but it is not red like a natural beast. It is the arterial red of a cut throat, with eyes that reflect the sunset sharply. And it does not sit like a fox. Something about its posture is not quite right.
"What a fine beast!" Blue declares excitedly, emerging from behind you. "Meira, my lady, I will bring you it as my prey! Surely such red fur will look fine on you!"
"H-hey! You can't do that," Inaan immediately snaps. Her expression, under her veil, is mulish. "I saw it first!"
"You are a mere child," Blue says, looking down his nose at her.
Inaan squares up to him, and you groan at the thought that she might be fool enough to challenge him. "I've hunted down Wyld beasties like that before! Everyone says I'm a prodigy at the hunt!"
"A child like you hunts creatures of change?"
She tilts her head back so she can look down her nose at the substantially taller man. "If you're surprised, I suppose you simply don't come from civilised people. Meira is a foreigner, but at least she can be civilised about it. You're just her bodyguard." She sniffs. "And toyboy."
Blue's eyes narrow at that admittedly-quite-accurate description of him. "I am a cataphract, a brave warrior of the sands and sky! I do not brook insult from—"
Inaan coughs, and her cough seems to contain the word "Savage" in it.
See, this is why you don't do nice things for people. You have this frightful sense of obligation and have to step in and annoy them. And it isn't even the much more fun situation of two pretty boys fighting over you.
Either way, you really have to calm these two down, or at least stop Blue stabbing Inaan and eating her soul. That would cause problems for you. And that means separating them — which is a problem when you're stuck on a landship. So you're really going to have to send one of them off to chase the fox.
(But, a little nagging qualm points out, if you send Inaan out maybe you should accompany her. After all, she's just a teenage girl. And of course, you might be able to take the chance to have a heart-to-heart with her vis a vis 'not aggravating Blue' where other people can't hear you.)
Who Goes After the Fox?
[ ] Inaan is whining and desperate to prove herself to you. Letting her go hunting will take the edge off her neediness and will let you get some sleep. And maybe you want to see if her bragging is grounded.
-[ ] … but maybe you need to go along with her. The girl is your student - it would be rude to ditch her right now. She's just a child. Even if she is being annoying.
[ ] Blue is getting agitated and demanding. An act of heroism will help burn off some of that adorably stupid energy. You can catch up on some sleep without him. And when he comes back he'll be in a much better mood.
