Fall of a Kingdom (The Farsala Trilogy) (4 page)

Kavi grimaced. “There won’t be blood. Or, if there is, it’ll be chicken’s blood or goat’s. That’s just a ploy so we can’t complain when they raise the taxes, to pay for this new war. ‘Look what the commander of the army sacrificed—surely you can be paying a few more stallions.’”

The deghans never paid for anything.

“I don’t care about the commander’s daughter,” said the guard. “But if you’re wanting your girl back, unscarred with all her fingers, you’ve got nine days to raise the sum. All of it.” He turned and headed back toward the guard station, swearing as he ran into something in the dark.

“Kavi, we don’t have it!” Sim whispered furiously. “No one has that kind of money.”

“Some do.” Kavi reached out absently, tousling the boy’s thick curls. He wondered what the men the guard owed had threatened to do to him. Broken joints, from the sound of it. But worse might come to Hama, at the magisters’ hands. “Some do. It’s just a matter of figuring how much we need and the safest way to get it.”

T
HEY SPILLED ALL THEIR MONEY
onto the table in Nadi’s main room. The hearth fire glinted on stacks of copper, brass, and tin, a bit of silver, and fifteen gold eagles.

“Seventeen eagles short,” said Nadi grimly. “Seventeen and a bit.” Her warm brown skin was pale.

“How much could we be getting for the stuff in your packs?” Sim demanded.

“Not more than four eagles, at the most,” said Kavi. “Not here, for apprentice work. Even if I sold Duckie, she’d only bring a few falcons more.”

“I could sell the house and the laundry,” said Nadi. “That’d fetch it. But it would be hard to do, in just nine days.” The flickering light picked out worry lines on her face. She looked old.

Kavi snorted. “And then sell yourself? And your daughters? You’re still thinking honest, woman. We’ve got gold enough below to fetch the sum without adding in a single coin.” He gestured to the pile on the table.

Nadi’s breath caught. “Sold in just nine days? Never get greedy, you told us. Just one or two pieces in a month. Give them long enough to forget your face.”

“And for you, who live in this city, that’s true,” said Kavi, faking a confidence he didn’t feel. “But once I’ve finished the selling, I’ll be gone for six months. No reason for me not to sell the lot.”

“But what if someone up and cuts one of your deep-coated buckles in half? What happens to you?” Nadi’s eyes were dark with hope and guilt, gratitude and fear, but she looked younger. Kavi’s heart lightened to see it.

“Then I’ll smile, bow, and run like a djinn was on my heels,” he said. “Just like I taught Hama. My time for the Flame hasn’t come yet, Nadi. I promise.”

T
HE ROBES WERE RICHER
than any Soraya had ever seen, so crusted with gold embroidery that they could probably stand upright without her inside them. She gazed gloomily in the polished, steel mirror, watching the maids hustle about the small room, under Sudaba’s vigilant gaze. Once, as a child, she had wiggled into her father’s cuirass and put on his helm, which promptly covered her eyes. She’d been all but blind, staggering down the gallery to show off her finery. She swore these robes were even heavier.

But at least she could see. In fact, Sudaba had braided all her hair back from her face, dressing it even more elaborately than her own. Soraya thought she’d seen an eagle’s drab feather among the hawk feathers her mother braided in, but that had to be wrong. Eagle feathers could be worn only by the gahn and his immediate family, those closest to Azura among men, just as the eagle was closest to him among birds. And Sudaba would never make such a mistake. Which could only mean her mother had done it on purpose. Defiance? Insult? But to whom? And
why
? Layers within layers.

Soraya unclenched her teeth and took a deep breath, trying to slow her pounding heart. She’d been in the city for over a week while this farce was being prepared, and she hadn’t been allowed to see her father once. She’d become so desperate to find out more about his plans that she had approached her mother. Unlike her father, Sudaba took Soraya’s marriage seriously. But the only time Soraya had succeeded in getting her mother alone, Sudaba refused to tell her anything except that her father had everything under control and that all Soraya had to do was obey. She had stressed the final word firmly enough to silence her daughter.

I could obey better if I knew more about what was going on,
Soraya thought for at least the hundredth time. But perhaps she should look on the bright side: Once she was “sacrificed,” in an outland hovel, no one would braid her hair so tightly that her scalp ached.

Yet another maid entered and approached Sudaba. “Lady, it is time.”

In an ordinary household the maids would probably be half-blood children, like Jiaan, or the descendants of such—sisters of the men who provided the deghans with foot soldiers and archers when they went to fight. But in the gahn’s household the maids weren’t peasants, but the second, third, or fourth daughters of the poorer deghans. They had watched her, surreptitiously, as they helped her dress. Soraya wondered who
they
reported to. Layers within layers. She suppressed a shiver.

“Soraya?” said her mother.

“Yes. I’m ready.” She turned from the mirror and faced them. She’d already decided she couldn’t bring off tragic grandeur—how
was
a sacrifice supposed to act, anyway?—and decided to go for subdued pride. She should be proud.
I am proud, curse it!
She would serve her father in this, and even Farsala itself, by making his plans come right. It was a deghass’s duty.
Yes, that’s the attitude. Proud and calm.
Her chin rose. “I am ready.”

Sudaba leaned forward, dutifully presenting her cheek for Soraya’s kiss, and Soraya dutifully kissed it. Then Sudaba grasped Soraya’s chin and inspected her face for a moment before leaning down to kiss her brow.

“Make me proud, daughter.”

Soraya barely managed to keep her astonishment out of her voice. “Yes, madam.”

Acting for the maids, no doubt.
It had already been decided that Sudaba would not be required to be present for her daughter’s “sacrifice.” Too hard for a mother’s heart to bear. Little did they know. But if they knew Sudaba so little, they knew Soraya even less. So maybe she could bring this off after all.

The maid who had come for her led Soraya out of the wing where she and her mother had slept last night, one of dozens of bewildering wings in the gahn’s palace, and through a wide court lined with fountains. They made it a bit cooler. Azura’s sun was blessing the harvest, which was fine for the harvest, but Soraya’s robes were as hot as they were heavy.

Fortunately, her guide didn’t seem to be in a hurry, and all the steps they encountered led down. A deghass shouldn’t arrive covered with sweat.
Proud and calm.

The White Palace perched on the very edge of the cliffs that separated the plains from the lowlands, but here, beside the Amol Falls, the river had worn down the land. Here the cliffs were no more than a steep slope, and on that slope the Hall of Whispers had been built.

The arch of the hall’s great dome appeared before her. Not so impressive from this side, about twenty feet tall, and only the back of the gahn’s dais visible within. But on the other side the structure ran down the slope like water falling from pool to pool, its every wall open to the winds. The high, arched ceiling not only shaded the crowd within from sun and rain, but by some trick of the echoes it carried every word spoken in the great dome down to the deghans and deghasses who gathered there. In the past Soraya had stood on the second level down and marveled at it.

Now the words the arches carried would be hers. She took a deep breath.
Proud. Calm.

She passed between the great horse statues that flanked the entrance, signifying that the current gahn was of the House of the Horse. Her father’s leopards were only two down in the row of sculptures that stretched away from the horses on either side. Only Jandal’s gazelles and Garshab’s ravens were higher in the gahn’s esteem.

Soraya climbed the steps and took three paces across the marble floor. Her fourth step echoed, and she jumped like a frightened doe, her eyes flying to the dome above. So much for calm.

The maid who was guiding her shrugged and led Soraya around the back of the dais, her own steps raising not even a whisper. She’d shed her shoes at the entrance.
Curse the girl. She could have warned me.
If her failure to do so was some subtle attempt to throw Soraya off stride…well, it had worked.
Djinn take her. Djinn take them all!
Soraya stood where she was—the girl could hardly go on without her—and breathed deeply, relaxing her quivering muscles. She’d been hunting often enough to know how to soften her footsteps. She could do this. She walked across the floor without making the ceiling echo, but it took sufficient concentration that the roar of the crowd as she came around the dais startled her.

She’d expected to see the deghans and their ladies, filling level after level of the hall as it fell away. But she hadn’t known that the slopes outside the hall would be crammed with people. The crowd stretched almost as far as she could see, and she realized that the men perched at each arched opening were stationed there to shout the words that came down from the high dome out to the mob—a crude version of the echoing ceiling.

The peasants loved a show—Soraya had heard that public executions drew a huge audience—but they must have emptied the whole city! Were they so eager to see her blood? So confident? Soraya’s lip curled. The jackals would be disappointed today. Her father would protect her. She was certain. It was only the heat of the robes that made her sweat so.

The maid led her around to the platform directly in front of the gahn’s dais. Soraya’s gaze fled to her father’s platform, where he sat with the heads of the other twelve high houses. He met her eyes—his steady gaze a greater promise of safety than a thousand empty words from another man. Soraya lowered her own eyes to hide her expression—the picture of a modest maid—but she couldn’t suppress a sigh of relief.

The ceiling above her platform had been pierced; flakes of light flashed on her robes. Soraya resigned herself to becoming even hotter as the ceremony wore on—if she was sweating, no one would wonder why. Only when she’d stilled her expression completely did she look up at Kay Amin, the gahn.

He must be roasting,
was her first thought. He stood in a shaft of full sunlight, his robes, even more heavily embroidered than hers, surrounding him with a glowing aura, as if the sun itself shone from him. Did the peasants, crouching in the dirt, mistake that glow for divine farr? Probably. But farr, the nobility of nature that showed in every thought and action, wasn’t a glow of light. It was the weariness in her father’s face when he sat up late planning supply routes, so his army could eat wherever the battle led them, without stripping the countryside. It was the way he grimaced in pain when the old wound in his thigh caught him as he mounted, but never uttered a word of complaint.
Maybe the gahn has farr too,
thought Soraya rebelliously. But watching his eyes shift nervously from one of the twelve high deghans to the other, Soraya doubted it.

The gahn stepped up to the edge of the dais. “Commander Merahb, is this the lady Soraya, your daughter?” Here, beneath the dome itself, his voice didn’t seem to echo, but to swell, stretching farther and farther as if to encompass the world.

“Yes, High One.” Her father’s voice grew, just as the gahn’s had, strong and somber. “As you see, she is as I described her: beautiful beyond compare, as courageous as a maid might be, and yet so warm of heart and gentle of demeanor that the very sun might envy her. She is without flaw…”

Soraya, recalling a certain childhood incident concerning honey, feathers, and horse dung, fought down a giggle.

“…and her loss will grieve me sorely, for she is as dear to me as any living soul.”

All desire to laugh vanished. Even through the formal phrases, you could tell he meant it. A murmur of sympathy rose from the crowd.

A thin man, his black robes trimmed in gold, like a crow in barding, stepped up beside the gahn and the murmur died.

“So, good priest,” said the gahn seriously. “Will she serve the temple’s purpose?”

Soraya bristled.
He gets to decide if I’m good enough to sac—

“Yes, High One,” said the priest. Even his soft voice carried clearly. “Her blood is pure, as the djinn demand. She will serve.”

Sincerity burned in his voice, and Soraya felt cold, despite the stifling robes. He sounded as if he really meant it—as if he intended to see her blood running over the marble floor. Hadn’t anyone told him this was a hoax?

Soraya looked at her father; his expression, his posture were the same, but she could tell his muscles had stiffened in real alarm. And if her false sacrifice would increase Garshab’s power, what would her true sacrifice do for the temple’s? Her hands jerked to the stiff robes, to lift them up and flee, but that would be useless, worse than useless, for it might force her father’s hand. He had planned for this, right? And the gahn himself knew it for a farce?

The sudden alarm that underlay the gahn’s expression of regal calm did nothing to steady Soraya’s quivering nerves. The ruler of all Farsala looked, betrayingly, at the man whose platform was only one remove from the dais. Soraya had seen Garshab a time or two before, though never with his fit, stocky form so richly dressed. Garshab was too shrewd to meet the gahn’s gaze. Did it matter to Garshab if her father was forced to save her here and now? It might even be better for him—a public betrayal of the high commander’s unworthiness! Soraya sought frantically for something, anything to say.

“I would make a stipulation,” said her father, a bit too swiftly.

The gahn turned to him, a flicker of relief in his frozen face.

“I would first remind you that the djinn have permitted our armies to win countless battles over the centuries since Rostam cast down Zahhak, without sacrifice of blood, and that Azura abhor—”

“It is for the temple to deal with the powers of both light and darkness,” the priest hissed. “Thwarting the one and seeking the blessing of the other!”

“But in this case,” said her father, “you plan to propitiate the ‘powers of darkness,’ not to thwart them. And Azura abhors blood sacrifice.”

The gahn laid a hand on the priest’s arm, quelling him. “You are the one, Merahb, who insists that the Hrum are no ordinary enemy.”

“Yes, High One,” said her father respectfully. His voice was calm. But Soraya would have felt better if his hand hadn’t been resting on the hilt of his sword. “I do not seek to defy the temple’s will. But all acknowledge that Azura is mightier than any djinn, and we dare not forfeit his favor. I ask only that my daughter be exposed in the mountains, without shelter, food, or aid. If the djinn claim her, so be it. But if Azura takes pity on her, he himself might shelter her—as he did Rostam’s father when he was a babe, exposed by his own father at the ancient temple’s order because he was born with a djinn’s white hair.”

A noise like restless surf rose from the crowd. It was true; Azura had, in ancient times, rescued and sheltered sacrifices exposed in the mountains. It was generally held that this was Azura’s way of telling the priests that they had gotten it wrong.

The priest flushed. “The girl is ours! The manner of her sacrifice is ours to choose. It is for the temple to deal with the djinn and to interpret Azura’s will!” But his eyes now went to Garshab, who shook his head so slightly that even Soraya, who was watching, wasn’t sure she saw it.

Her father’s hand left his sword hilt.

“Merahb’s request seems both pious and fair,” said the gahn hastily.

The priest still looked angry, but Soraya could see her father relaxing. If this had been some ploy to force him to reveal himself, it had failed.