“If she is bound to the Golden One, then we will take her to him,” the officer said. “Or rather, we will take her to the Leopards, who will take her to the minister in charge, who will decide what happens next.”
“But I must…” Gunis began.
“With all respect, Brother,” the captain said, “you must do nothing except what you are told. If the prisoner is so important, why did you bring her without even the seal of your superior?”
“The seal?” Gunis seemed dazzled and confused by the mere idea. “Do you mean I should take her all the way back to the high chaplain?”
“I’m not saying anything.” The mulasim was a squat, grizzled man with the skeptical face of a market peddler but the arms of a wrestler. Now he stepped up until he was face-to-face with the young priest; the soldier was no taller, but a great deal bigger. “I’m saying that this is a problem, and you haven’t helped me any by showing up.” He scowled fiercely and looked around. “I’ll need at least two men to take her forward, and the gods know, I’ve none to spare.”
“But I have two guards… !”
The captain laughed. “These?” he said, gesturing at the soldiers who had accompanied them from the surface. “These two pricklepigs? Fat lot of good they’d have been if you’d run into a pack of those Yisti devils coming up out of the ground! No, you two can turn and hurry back to your important work guarding the dung pits. Go on with you, or I’ll have you in irons just like this little girl!”
The guards did not need another warning. They were already a dozen hurrying steps away when Gunis finally found his breath. “What about me? I… I was entrusted with this girl. I must be the one to accompany her.”
“Entrusted?” The officer looked from Qinnitan to the monk. “By slavers?” He turned back to Qinnitan. “Do you speak any of our tongue, child?”
For a moment Qinnitan was too surprised to have been addressed to say anything. “Yes. I am Xixian. Please, do not send me to the Golden One! I was taken by mistake from the Hive.…”
The captain glared. “I asked you a question, not to sing all the verses of the Morning Prayer. In a million, million years I would not interfere with something that was a matter for the Golden One, or at least those around him, to decide.” He turned back to survey the men in his vicinity. “Now, who to send… ?”
Somebody shouted, then there was a loud crash. Everyone around Qinnitan turned. A cartload overstacked with stones had run one of its wheels off the track on the level just above and the cart was wobbling precariously, half off the edge. A moment later it overtipped and several of the stones fell, sending the men staring up at it from below jumping hurriedly out of the way. The cart wobbled and then the whole mass slowly toppled over and broke into pieces on the stony ground below, sending rocks bounding in all directions.
Qinnitan did not need to be invited: she ran, shaking the loose shackles off her wrists as she went. She did not have time to think, but simply chose the nearest passage leading out of the wide chamber and sprinted toward it, sharp stones poking through the flimsy Marchland shoes the farmer’s wife had given her to wear.
Darkness punctuated with the glow of torches. Men’s faces turning toward her as she ran, some with their mouths open like masks of roaring demons, shouting questions at her. Qinnitan knew her one chance was to get out of sight of any witnesses and then hide.
A soldier snatched at her as she dashed past, and although he could not hold her, his brief grasp made her stumble. As she wobbled, trying to get her weary legs back beneath her, somebody else stuck out a foot, and she tripped and fell hard on the stony ground.
“What’s this?” someone demanded in a harsh desert accent as she lay whimpering and trying to catch her breath. “A spy?”
She did not get up, or at least did not remember getting up. A moment later something hit her hard on the back of her head and drove the rest of the thoughts away.
It was the bees. She knew that buzzing, had felt it deep in her bones and guts many times. On a day when the bees were said to be happy they could be marked throughout the Hive, a sturdy rumble so low it was felt, not heard.
It had all been a dream, then—just a dreadful dream. Duny was in the next bed and soon they would be up, washing their hair together in cold water. She would tell her friend the silly dream she’d had and they would laugh—as if little Qinnitan, who scarcely had grown breasts, would ever be chosen as a wife of the great autarch! All the girls would laugh, but Qinnitan didn’t mind. She was happy to be in her home, and safe—watched over by the bees, and by the priestesses, and even by great Father Nushash himself.
But why did the buzzing of the sacred Bees of Nushash have words… ?
“… is Panhyssir? You summoned… hour…”
“… too much. The high priest would… than he…”
Her head hurt. Her knees hurt. Her arm hurt badly. She wondered if it might be broken. What had happened?
“Enough, Vash, you are tiring me, walking around flapping your hands like an old woman. Besides, she is awake.” The friendly warmth, the feeling of safety, both vanished in an instant. Qinnitan knew that voice.
“Awake?”
“Can’t you tell? Her breathing has changed. She is lying there, bent like a bow, trying not to be noticed. And she succeeded—at least with you!” The laugh, high-pitched and musical, only made her guts churn. It was like listening to music made with instruments of human bone and skin.
Someone bent over her—even through closed lids she could see the shadow. Whoever he was, he smelled like fruit pomanders and scented oil. “Are you sure, Golden One?”
She wanted to throw up. She wanted to cry out.
“More than sure.” Another laugh. “Give her a little love-pat on the cheek. Open up your eyes, my frightened bride! You have returned to your rightful master at last.”
She did not want to see. She did not want to know. The worst had finally happened.
“Open your eyes, or I will have them opened in a way you won’t like.” Still, he spoke sweetly, reasonably. Qinnitan gave up and looked at him, feeling empty and deathly cold inside.
Sulepis was unchanged, taller than any man she knew, handsome and golden-skinned as he reclined on a mound of cushions that covered most of the floor of a large, lamplit tent hung with costly fabrics and mirrors. The autarch wore his golden falcon helmet, golden finger-stalls, and golden sandals, but nothing else. His brown flesh appeared smoother than any mere human skin, as though he had been carved from soapstone.
He raised his hand toward her, spreading his long fingers as though he could stretch them out from a dozen feet away and wrap them around her. “Your blood flows true, priest’s daughter. Your heritage feels the nearness of destiny, of the great change coming to this world, and draws you to me. You have returned just in time.” He smiled, a brilliant slash of white across his narrow face that in someone else would have looked joyous, but which was inhuman as a crocodile’s smirk. The autarch had her—for all her frantic labors, she had failed and it had all come to nothing.
He pointed a long, gold-tipped finger. “You are a rare one, child, and that should be rewarded. I promise you will die last so you can see it all—yes, you will see me put on glory like a cloak of peacock feathers.…”