Beneath Ceaseless Skies #230 Read online

  I summoned the last of my strength and in a single vehement motion shoved my lover off the settee. His body hit the floor by the assassin’s feet, and with a cry, Ranra’s ghost dissipated into the air. The assassin lunged toward me over Tajer’s tumbling body, crashing headlong into a great fiery shape of a lion that leaped between me and them, leaped out of thin air in a great exultation of purple. The heat of Nihitu’s congealing form scorched me, jolting me out of the smoke-induced reverie. With a mighty shove of her paw, she flung the assassin away and pounced upon Tajer’s rising form.

  “No!!!” I shouted, my arms suddenly free, for in my desperation I broke through whatever bindings Urwaru and the assassin had imposed on me. The assassin twisted in the air—no longer in unsullied white, but no less potent. A person at the height of their power, skilled and armed and bound to one of the great rulers who hated me. And there had been only a few. One. The springflower city of Niyaz had a new ruler.

  Just two days ago I would have died for Ladder, died casually as I have died before, in weariness and great age, offering little resistance except to conceal myself in my star, so that my erstwhile lover would possess nothing of me but char. But today I did not intend to die of fatigue, for the Raker’s power had upheld me, and I had no intention of seeing him die.

  In this world, it is not possible to transcend the law of deepnames. Three is the limit of the deepnames a single person’s mind can hold, and I held such a configuration, the Royal House, a powerful but finite structure of one, one, and two syllables—rare and belonging to rulers, lending them power, stability, wisdom, and, in a fullness of time, a death in Bird’s embrace. Yet, for starkeepers and for them alone, there was a way to transcend all that.

  I lifted my arms and plunged them into the Hillstar, not the soft outer tendrils but the blazing core dense with thousands and thousands of single-syllable deepnames borne in a different world, before Bird had brought us the stars.

  As the assassin leapt, twin dirks spinning, I seized a shining net of deepnames and wrapped that around the white figure. The fire scorched, and every moment of it sent shivers down my arms, triumph beyond pleasure, a roar of joy beyond the measures of the world. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Urwaru and Nihitu both attacking the Raker, who fended them off, wrapped in a structure so steely, so immense that neither of them could have withstood him alone. I brought my arms closer, tighter, wrapping the assassin’s figure in a net of flame, tighter and tighter in my arms.

  “No!” I shouted. “No!” To the assassin, to Ladder, to every ruler of Niyaz who had chosen to celebrate the inception of his rule in this fashion, to Urwaru, who was just earlier today my best and trusted student, to Nihitu who was supposed to protect me but now sought to harm the only person in the room to whom I was not tempted to shout the word. “No!!”

  I shook my hands. Between them, nothing but flakes of floating ash.

  I felt immense. Still roaring with the power of my star.

  I clapped my hands together, and a net of fire wrapped around Urwaru. Nihitu’s paw glanced against the Raker’s chest, but the net of diamonds I had given him deflected the worst, and he twisted away from the killing blow. I lifted Urwaru up and flung her to the wall, then aside. The net I spun became a cage of fire.

  I shook my hands again, not ready yet to kill her. The cage I constructed would hold her as long as I needed.

  I turned my attention to Nihitu. And raised my arms. They were fire. All fire.

  If I killed her now, war would break out between my people and the Loroli, no excuses, swallowing the desert in a disaster far worse than anything inflicted upon me by the ruler of Niyaz.

  The Raker reformed his stronghold, no longer defensive—a fire of blue-black steel and stars that sped towards Nihitu with the intent to kill—averted only by a river of fire I unleashed between them, magic speeding out of the very heart of my star.

  “Desist!” I screamed. “Both of you! Desist!”

  * * *

  Move the seventh: a fire to circumnavigate

  They stepped back from the river of my magic, each snarling, as if ready to spring. At last Nihitu-lion shook her mane. I did not look away this time, watching the purple haze stream down from the dreaming wilds until she acquired the shape of a person.

  I screamed at Nihitu, hoarse now from the effort. “You trust a faked note and run away, then despite your professed duties you ignore an assassin about to slay me and instead attack my lover—explain yourself!”

  “Explain myself? You explain yourself, how, in defiance of laws of guardianship and siblinghood you tangled yourself with a menace from the dreaming wilds, from the entangled beyond!”

  The Raker shouted, “You’ve hated me from the moment you saw me, but I am no menace!”

  “You are not a menace? The ruckus of your thrashing in dreaming wilds alerted me even halfway across the desert!”

  “Something kept preventing me from waking,” he said, “or I kept falling asleep at odd times. I thought it was you at first—it wasn’t—but what would you want me to do? Run away like you did? Allow the Old Royal to be slain? No, I pulled on the power of true dreaming and I broke through it to defend them, and Bird peck your opinion of me.”

  She recoiled, as if slapped. Spoke slower. “You are a nameway, and yet you pulled on the power of the dreaming wilds. By what law? How, if not through a crime—?”

  “Of all that happened you would latch onto this, that I have a sliver of ability in the dreaming wilds? Fine. If you’re so curious I will tell you this tale and you will have to hear it.” He was not shouting now, but his voice filled the room, vast and seemingly uncaring. “Listen, then. It is like this. My sister had a friend.”

  I knew where this was going. And, over the shining might of my star, it would not go there tonight. I spoke with a finite firmness. “No. You do not owe anybody anything. You do not owe this story. Not everything must always be revealed.”

  “Something is owed,” Nihitu protested.

  “Nothing is owed by him.” I let my voice fill with the might of my rule. “I would go to war with the Great Lion before I had this story forced from his mouth for your titillation.”

  She stepped back, aghast. “How, titillation!”

  “For what other reason do you demand his story now?”

  “Not for titillation,” she said. “For law.”

  “He sought to protect me. You attacked him. I had to fight off both the assassin and his accomplice, her betrayal still fresh in the air. Many laws were broken here tonight, and yet you speak only of this.”

  Nihitu shook her head, as obstinate as the rest of us. “He has a power in the dreaming wilds, and they belong to my people.”

  I nodded. “Much of the wilds belong to the dreamway, but others can come that high, and acquire some power there. In that he is hardly unprecedented.”

  “As a menace—”

  “If he is so powerful in the dreaming wilds,” I snapped, “then how come he has no idea that he is accompanied, shepherded even, by one of his own ancestors, and who, while he sleeps, seeks to turn him into her tool?”

  Both Nihitu and the Raker gaped at me. Nihitu said, “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve had enough of this.” I sang, “Behold!” I drew upon the power of my star still coursing through me and opened my eyes to a level of perception only afforded by such an immense might. A tether of golden light stretched between the Raker’s mind and beyond, looping into the thin air. I stretched out my arm and grasped that. And tugged.

  Summoned by my expanded power, Ranra’s form flickered in the air between us. I expected her to look even more disheveled than the last time, but she looked composed. Resolved. The tattered garment was whole again.

  “Ranra Kekeri,” I said.

  The Raker stared at her, for once lost for words.

  “I wanted to avoid this,” she said quietly.

  “You followed me against my knowledge,” he whispered.

  “Not to make yo
u a tool,” she continued, in the same quiet voice. “Never that.”

  “You wrestled me for waking time, so you could do your will while I slept.”

  “I wanted you to become something greater than you are.”

  “Against my will.”

  “No. Never that. You would make that decision. To become a star like one of the stars brought by Bird, endless and vast, having absorbed the power of the earth’s naming grid and the willingly offered souls of people—”

  Nihitu stared at her, her mouth agape. The Raker looked simply exhausted. He waved his hand, gesturing the shining bond away. As Ranra’s form thinned out into the air, he looked at me. “Forgive me. I have no ability to tackle this now.”

  “Of course. Forgive me.”

  “Forgive me,” Nihitu said to him. “I misjudged.” And to me, “Forgive me.”

  “Of you, too, I beg forgiveness,” I said to her. “I should have told you that I grieved for my guardian, I should have allowed myself to grieve for her. I should have spoken with you when I felt disrespected by your words and your actions, instead of pushing you away.”

  “Forgive me.” She shook her head. “The ruler of Niyaz...”

  “Later,” I said, echoing his words. “I have no ability to tackle this now.”

  He said, “I wish to rest. Alone. If it is possible.”

  There were plenty of spare rooms still untouched in the treasury of the rock-carved chambers. “I will show you the way.”

  “I will endeavor to stand guard for both of you,” said Nihitu.

  If that was an offer of reconciliation, I would accept it from her. Bird knew, we both had behaved badly. “You have my gratitude.”

  “It is my duty.” She spoke this without her past indignation but also without her past conviction.

  I said wearily, “It is your duty only if you choose it.” Behind me, the Raker shuffled on his feet.

  She made to say more, but then reconsidered. “Until later, then. When I have had time to think.”

  I brought the two of them to the doors of a small chamber with walls carved roughly out of the dun mass of sandstone. I wanted to make it comfortable for him, but my invisible servants had already done this work, laying out precious textiles for bedding, carafes of honeyed water and trays of sweetmeats, and wild crystal for adornment.

  I stood with him at the entrance, while Nihitu hovered just out of earshot. He looked listless and drained, as if a very great storm had broken in him without spilling a drop on the ground. He had not spoken or shown reaction for a while, and he did not speak now.

  I made the attempt, even though I thought little would come of it. “I would offer you my presence and my company. Not to speak. Or as you will.”

  He looked away, into some distance. Then he said, “Remember how you asked me—if I ever said no?”

  His tone was flat, emotionless, but everything just turned inside me. A lurching feeling. I did not expect him to ever say no. That question too, had been a lesson. Years ago, it now seemed.

  I gathered myself together, bowed, and left him, and did not protest. Perhaps one day he would allow that pain of his to be held.

  * * *

  A place where all the sandbirds fall

  Nihitu waited for me outside and accompanied me just a little ways to the room where I, too, would rest. She watched the Raker’s door with some deep feeling I could not recognize. She turned to me and said, in Old Loroli, as if she feared that someone—maybe Ranra—could still overhear. “I figured it out and I was wrong.”

  “How so?” I asked quietly in the same language.

  “He learned from you, just by watching. So I guess he acquired some dreaming power from observing someone. His—his assailant.”

  I nodded.

  Nihitu continued. “But he does not really use it. It just hovers there. Powerful, but clumsy. That is what I felt that first time in the sands, when I told you that it was no menace. But I changed my mind because, I thought, what else it could be?”

  I shrugged. “His so-called crimes are those of defense. But you cannot simply dismiss them, either, because he is too vehement. Yet he restrains himself. Barely. He will need to learn better, going forward.”

  She nodded. “I will need to learn better as well. My wounded pride was not worth your endangerment.”

  “I am glad you stayed close,” I said.

  “Close?” She bared her teeth in a self-deprecating grimace. “I went all the way back to the Great Lion.”

  Oh.

  “They told me to figure it out. They asked me who would stand to benefit the most from a conflict between your people and mine.”

  I sighed. “The ruler of Niyaz. Should such a war break out and I become distracted to the east, his line of attack would be open.” It pained me to think of Urwaru now, and how of all Niyazi women who had suffered nameloss, she was allowed to keep hers—I guessed now, at a price of becoming a spy. She had been an eager and brilliant student, and her loss would haunt me.

  “I was on my way back to the capital when I heard the commotion in the dreaming wilds. And yes, I thought about it. I would do my duty to you not because I have been dispatched, but because I want to.” She crossed her arms, as if expecting me to rebuke her. “Though I do wonder why you need it. You burned the assassin to cinders with your bare hands and imprisoned the traitor in moments.”

  You unraveled my secret. I do not need anyone. I can teach my classes and take them, too. I can protect my realm and inhabit it on my own. I shrugged, swallowing the retort. “I also eat and sleep and I instruct students and I become listless and brooding, or I fall ill; or, indeed, I take lovers.” I sighed. “I would be glad to accept your guardianship. And your counsel, should you choose to give it.”

  “I don’t have any counsel right now.” She shuffled one foot on the ground. “But maybe in time. And maybe in time I could become your friend.”

  Like your old guardian had been, and many before her, but she did not speak it, and I was glad.

  “I think we will both enjoy that.” For now, what I would most enjoy was rest.

  In the morning sand-sleighs and people arrived to take us back to the palace and to transport my prisoner as well. My joints gave me some pain, but I felt invigorated after sleep, rested in a way I had not felt in a while.

  I found the Raker by one of the covered sand-sleighs, a sleek lacquered construction powered by three named strong. He looked refreshed but still as if at a distance. The diamond edge of my net glinted at the opening of his tunic. “They tell me I get a carriage all to myself.”

  “If you wish.”

  He nodded. I watched for a shadow of that smile crease a corner of his mouth, but he was serious when he said, “I wish to ride with you. If you wish.”

  And so the two of us shared a covered red lacquered sleigh steered by Marvushi and accompanied by Nihitu in lion’s form, and for once the desert wind was mild. We rode in silence for a while, side by side, but not touching. I hoped that he would speak, but he did not.

  I began to sense my star more strongly as we neared Che Mazri, the tendrils of it stirring the hairs on my arms. I broke my silence at last. “Can I touch you?”

  He seemed startled by that, and I was not quite sure why. But he nodded.

  I took his hand in mine and brought it to my lips. He snatched it back from me, as if scalded. “What do you think you are doing?” But he did not lash out. His deepnames flickered only momentarily.

  “I did things with you I have not done with anyone for over a millennium. Or, ever with anyone, really. Not even with Ladder.”

  “But you are not beholden to me. You do not submit. You are a sovereign in your land and the strongest of its personages of power.”

  “Is that what bothered you? That I kissed your hand? I did it because I wanted.”

  I took a deep breath. Because I knew myself and I did not want to be safe, I would bare my desire for him. One more time.

  “Tajer, if I can call you t
hat still—Tajer.” His name rolled off my tongue, the Coastal sounds transmuted in my mouth into heat. “I want more.”

  He threw his head back, as if in pain, and closed his eyes.

  I continued. “And I understand— I understand if it was just the one night for you. The longest night.”

  He said, his eyes still closed, “I believe there were two nights and a day in there. Not counting what we did before.”

  “I will not pursue you beyond this. But I wanted...”

  “You judge me too lightly,” he suddenly said, pain surging in his voice. “It is an alluring difference, for sure, between those who wanted to cage me and you, but this is too easy. Everything else, perhaps. But I have harmed my sister. I would not have that discarded.”

  I nodded, attending to him, waiting.

  “I know this now, that your pull reveals secrets. Surely I wanted to spill mine. Even though it was wrong. But now—if you even want to hear—I will tell you something. I would choose to tell it. But I do not know if you want to hear.”

  “I would hear it.” The enormity of that trust he had just given me filled me like hot liquid. “And I will do my best to hold it.”

  “Thank you for stopping me last night.” He reached out and took my hand in his, his touch clammy and hard. “I do not want any of this known.” He did not look at me.

  “My star knows what I know. I may be able to conceal your secret from it, but I am not sure.”

  He nodded. “I understand.”

  He sat in silence for a while, still squeezing my hand, as the carriage entered Che Mazri and began its ascent towards Starhill. He said, quietly, “After... after. I went to my sister. I should have waited. But I hurt, and I wanted to warn her, and my judgment was clouded.”

  Oh, youth. The blazing nighttime sun. “You said you were thirteen. Thirteen—”

  “Listen,” he said. “Listen.”

  I sat still for a moment while he gathered his thoughts, his deepnames tight and cold around his head, an iron crown. “She did not want to listen. Said she would not hear his name maligned. She thought I hated him for other reasons. I was— I was awkward. And I hated her friends. She said I was jealous.”