2: Servants of the Crossed Arrows (6 page)

He seated himself to Laurie’s right. Bill took the chair on her left. John noticed the little movement as Laurie squeezed Bill’s hand under the table.

“Rashan Pivan’ro’Bousim has told me that you are called Jahn,” the lady said.

It took a moment for John to recognize Pivan’s name in its full form. His rank of rashan, cavalryman, sounded a little like Ravishan and for an instant John had been deeply confused. He tried not to let it show.

“Yes,” he said, “I’m called Jahn. This is my sister Loshai and her husband, Behr.”

“Sky and Honeybee. What lovely names.” The lady turned to the younger woman on her right. “They go together, don’t you think?”

“Yes, they certainly do. Perhaps it was fated that they should be wed.” The young woman smiled, showing a little gap between her front teeth.

The lady nodded and then returned her attention to John.

“Your sister is so very proper. She wouldn’t speak a single word in her husband’s absence. She put all our gossiping to shame.” The lady didn’t look or sound entirely pleased.

John wasn’t sure how to respond. He couldn’t say that it was good, but he didn’t think he should say that Laurie’s silence was wrong either, since it was apparently proper. He decided to try and just sidestep it entirely.

“I’m sorry for having to ask this, but I’m not sure how you would like best to be addressed.” John bowed his head slightly.

“That is difficult, isn’t it?” the lady said. “If we were to hold ourselves to the holiest codes, you would not be here in my presence at all. But Rashan Pivan’ro’Bousim says that you may have saved my son’s life, and also that you fought the Fai’daum demoness, Ji Shir’korud, for the very life and soul of Rashan Alidas’ro’Bousim. So it would seem that I am most deeply in your debt. I certainly could not bar you from my table. But what shall you call me?”

She sighed and lifted the small bowl in front of her to her mouth. The chains on her fingers clicked against the porcelain bowl.

As she drank, John became acutely aware of the smell of the food wafting over him. He hadn’t eaten since the night before and then it had only been broth. Succulent slices of what looked like pork steamed in heaps on a silver platter in front of him. The distinct scent of fresh bread drifted up from golden rolls and there even seemed to be something like the smell of coffee in the air.

His stomach groaned.

The lady glanced up at him in obvious amusement. The two young women on either side of her put their hands over their mouths to hide their grins.

“I should decide before you are starved to death, shouldn’t I?” The lady laughed but without making a sound. Her lips parted and the small tremors of laughter shook her chest but all that came out was breath.

John stole a glance to Laurie and Bill but the two of them looked as bewildered as he felt. John could only guess that noblewomen of Basawar trained themselves to laugh mutely. He had seen groups of common women out in their fields cackling with laughter. It seemed to follow what the lady had mentioned earlier about Laurie’s silence being proper.

“You may call me Gaunvur Bousim. Since I am the only one of Gaunsho Mosh’sira’in’Bousim’s wives residing in this city, there shouldn’t be any confusion,” the lady decided.

John nodded. Ravishan had told him that wealthy men often took several wives, and that in aristocratic gaun’im households, each wife held a formal title according to the number and quality of sons she bore her husband. John didn’t even try to remember the husband’s full title and name; he just concentrated on the lady’s: Gaunvur Bousim, Lady Bousim.

“It’s an honor,” John said.

“The honor is mine as well.” Lady Bousim swept her hand out over the trays of food. “Please, eat all that you like. I only regret that I have such poor dishes to offer you. If we were in Nurjima, I would give you fruit and flowers from my husband’s garden. Here, at the edge of the shattered world, I can only offer you this.”

“This is more than enough,” John assured her. “Thank you.”

John took one of the empty plates and filled it with food. He wasn’t sure if Laurie or Bill had followed much of the conversation, so he simply passed the plate down to Laurie. She passed it to Bill while John filled a second plate for her. Last, he served himself. The three women also ate, but much more slowly than any of the three of them.

At first John was so hungry and ate so quickly that he hardly noticed anything about the food that he devoured. But as the sharp pangs of hunger abated he began to realize how little flavor there was to the dinner fare.

Though it had obviously been roasted, the pale cutlets of meat were as tasteless as if they had been boiled for days. The bread was as bland as a communion wafer and the cheese tasted like thick slabs of unsalted butter.

Once his stomach no longer hurt, John didn’t really feel the desire to eat more. Laurie and Bill seemed to be having the same problem. Bill chewed on a piece of bread with kind of expression that he normally reserved for tricky math problems. Laurie’s plate was only half empty, but she was already cutting pieces of her meal into smaller and smaller bits as if she hoped to reach the atomic level and render them invisible free-floating particles.

Lady Bousim idly sipped from her bowl. Then she turned to the young woman on her right.

“Inholima, my dear, I have just realized that we have no more daru’sira to offer to our guests. Won’t you go to my chambers and find my jars of tea so that we can make a little more?”

There was a momentary pause before the girl responded and John thought that she might refuse. Then she nodded and stood.

“Do be quick, my dear.” Lady Bousim smiled at her as she left the room. The moment the girl closed the door behind her, the smile evaporated from the lady’s face.

“Ohbi.” She looked to the girl on her left but said nothing more. Instantly, the girl sprang to her feet and crept across the room to the door. She knelt down and, muting the slight creak of the doorknob with her hands, opened the door and peeked out.

John, Laurie, and Bill all watched her in silence.

She closed the door and rushed back to her seat beside Lady Bousim.

“She’s out of hearing,” Ohbi whispered.

“Very good,” the lady said. “You hid the teas?”

“Yes, Gaunvur.” The girl beamed.

The lady looked straight at John.

“The girl, Inholima, is my husband’s spy. You must never trust her.”

“All right.” John didn’t know what else to say. Whatever was going on in this household was already beyond him.

“Tell your companions this,” the lady said to him.

“What do you mean?”

The lady leaned forward over the table, her dark eyes fixed upon John’s face.

“I know what you are. I know that you speak the Hell-Tongue
 
of the Eastern Kingdom. I had my servant boy, Bati’kohl, listen to you when you thought that you were alone in the bath. Tell them in your own language that they must trust none of my servants but Ohbi and Bati’kohl. Any of the rest will see them burned at the hands of the Payshmura.” She all but spat the name of the priesthood.

John hesitated, suspicious that this might be some kind of trick to uncover them. But he couldn’t see how he could make it worse since she already knew that they didn’t speak Basawar. The genuine intensity in Lady Bousim’s expression made him want to believe her.

He turned to Bill and Laurie and explained what the lady had said.

“We don’t have much time to talk,” Lady Bousim continued the moment John had finished, “but you must know that I am your friend.”

“Thank you,” John replied, “but why would you want to help us?”

“Because my great-grandmother was from the Kingdom of the East. She came here when she was just a child, before the Payshmura called down the Rifter from Nayeshi and had him tear that beautiful land to shreds.” Her small hands tapped nervously over the porcelain bowl, clicking the silver chains against its surface.

John realized with some relief that the Lady Bousim did not, in fact, know who they were after all. He, Bill, and Laurie weren’t from a lost Kingdom of the East. They weren’t even from this planet. Ravishan had said that the Basawar name of their world was Nayeshi. Apparently, the Rifter was called from the same place.

“My great-grandmother knew spells,” Lady Bousim went on in a quick whisper. “She could call fire and bind the waters. She was a proud, beautiful woman—a free woman. Her hair was golden like yours. Only a little of her blood flows in me. I don’t know her words of power. I speak only Basawar. I bow before the Basawar god in his temple and my hands are chained with Basawar wedding rings.” Her expression turned sad and she clenched her hands into fists around the chains. “But I have never forgotten that I am a descended from Eastern queens. I have never stopped looking for others like me. My people. I always knew a few of us had to have survived. Our home may be lost to us forever but we will never forget that there was once a great kingdom where there is now only that hideous chasm.”

John felt a pang of sympathy for the woman. Her pained expression and voice alone would have elicited his compassion, even if he had not understood her words. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears.

She said, “I have prayed every night since I was a child that I would find you.”

Laurie and Bill both looked to him for an explanation but John didn’t want to interrupt Lady Bousim.

“Later,” he whispered.

Ohbi held out a thin white circle of cloth and Lady Bousim took it and wiped the tears from her eyes.

“I’m so foolish,” Lady Bousim whispered. “Inholima must not know that I’ve been crying when she comes back or she’ll run to Rashan Pivan right away and tell him.”

“How did you know that we were from the East?” John asked. He wasn’t sure how well she would take the revelation that they weren’t. If he could avoid telling her, he thought that would be for the best.

“I’m sorry to say that I didn’t recognize you at all the night you brought warning to us on the Holy Road. When Ohbi peeked out from the carriage and described you to me, I thought you must have been some filthy peasant. You disguised yourself very well. But then Rashan Pivan came to me and told me that you, a ragged peasant, had stood against the demoness, Ji Shir’kurod. I knew you couldn’t be a common man, so I sent Bati’kohl to attend you in the bath and to listen to you when you were alone among yourselves.”

John had thought that he had heard someone outside the door.

“Bati’kohl brought me a piece of your raiments before he burned them.” She slipped her hand inside one of her long sleeves and pulled out a small strip of blue Gortex.

Ohbi gave a small gasp as she saw it.

“I have never seen such a brilliant color in all the world,” Ohbi whispered.

“You never will again.” Lady Bousim turned the material through her fingers. “The great queens of the East are all gone and all that remains of their splendor is this scrap. My great-grandmother had gowns the color of the sunset and of violets. They all had to be burned when she went into hiding. Not a single thread could be saved.”

“I’m sorry,” John said.

“You’re sorry for me?” Her expression verged on defiance, and then she smiled. “I think I am sorry enough for myself. You must not indulge me too much or I will have myself weeping again. And what do I have to cry over that you three do not have worse? Here you three are, starved and beaten from a lifetime of living at the edge of the world. Here you are among strangers whose language only one of you knows and whose customs are all wrong to you. And yet you are not crying. It makes me proud to see you and a little ashamed that my ancestors hid among the nobles when yours did not.”

She pondered the scrap of blue fabric in her fingers and then handed it to Ohbi.

“Burn it.”

The girl reverently carried it to the fireplace and then dropped it into the flames.

“Seeing the three of you together,” Lady Bousim went on, “I knew at once that you were the children of Eastern mothers. Your golden hair, his blue jewel eyes, and Loshai.” She gazed at Laurie like she was looking at work of art.

“Silver hair, pale eyes, delicate witch’s bones,” Lady Bousim said. “I might have known just looking at her. But I wouldn’t have been sure. It was only when I saw the three of you together before me and Bati’kohl had told me that you spoke in a strange language that he had never heard before that I knew instantly who you are.”

“Do you think others here know?” John asked.

“No, most of them don’t even know that customs of the Eastern Kingdom have survived. That is how well the Payshmura destroyed us. Now, you see a fair-haired child and no one thinks anything of it, not even the child’s own mother. She may have Eastern blood but it doesn’t matter because her soul has become Basawar. It’s pitiful.”

“My lady,” Ohbi returned to her seat next to Lady Bousim, “I’m afraid Inholima will be returning soon.”

Lady Bousim sighed.

“I must not ramble during this little time we have left. There are things you must know.” She turned to address John directly. “If Rashan Pivan’ro’Bousim asks you why you were out in the wastes, you must tell him that you were on your way to Amura’taye to beg the priests to pray for your brother’s health. Rashan Pivan is a religious man. He will be pleased to know that you are as well. You will have to make sure he sees you going to the first step of the Thousand Steps and chanting prayers, but it’s a small price to pay for his trust.”