He hurried back to the others. “We will rest for a short while,” he said, “but then we have to find horses and ride as fast as we can. Southmarch is ahead of us and the enemy is behind us, but who knows how long until they catch up? The girl has given us a precious gift—we must not waste it, or waste the lives of our comrades either.” He turned to Willow. “I may wind up in chains for my part in all this, but if Southmarch survives, I’ll see you dressed in silks and laden with gold first.You may have saved us all!”
24. Leopards and Gazelles
GROWING JOY:
The hives are full
The leaves fall and drift slowly
Death is agreeable now
Qinnitan groaned. “Why do I feel so ill?”
“Get up, you!” Favored Luian slapped at one of her Tuam servants, who ducked with a practiced shrug so that the blow only grazed the girl’s black-haired head. “What are you doing, you lazy lizard?” Luian shrieked. “That cloth is dry as dust.” She reached out and gave the girl’s arm a cruel pinch. “Go and get Mistress Qinnitan some more water!”
The slave got up and refilled the bowl from the fountain splashing quietly in the corner of the room, then returned with it and resumed cooling Qinnitan’s forehead.
“I don’t know, my darling,” Luian said as if the outburst had not happened. “A touch of fever, perhaps. Nothing dreadful, I’m sure. You must say your prayers and drink dishflower tea.” She seemed distracted by something more than Qinnitan’s miseries, her eyes flicking from side to side as though she expected to be interrupted at any moment.
“It’s that potion they give me every day, I’m sure.” Qinnitan tried to sit straight, groaned, and gave up. It was not worth the expenditure of strength.
“Oh, Luian, I hate it. It makes me feel so wretched. Do you think they’re poisoning me?"
“Poisoning you?” For a moment Luian actually looked at her. Her laugh was harsh and a bit shrill. “My small sweet one, if the Golden One wished you dead, it would not be poison that killed you, it would be something much…” She paled a little, caught herself. “What a thing to say! As if our beloved autarch, praises to his name, would want you dead, in any case. You have done nothing to displease him. You have been a very good girl.”
Qinnitan sighed and tried to tell herself Luian must be right. It didn’t quite feel like being poisoned, anyway, or at least not how she imagined such a thing would feel. Nothing hurt, and she wasn’t exactly ill—in fact, generally her appetite was extremely good and she slept well, too, if a little too long and deeply sometimes—but something definitely felt strange. “You’re right, of course You’re always right, Luian.” She yawned. “In fact, I think I feel a little better now. I should go back to my room and have a nap instead of lolling around here and being in your way.”
“Oh, no, no!” Luian looked startled at the suggestion. “No, you… you should come for a walk with me Yes, let us take a walk in the Scented Garden. That would do you more good than anything. Just the thing to brush away those cobwebs.”
Qinnitan had been living in the Seclusion too long not to see that something was troubling Luian, and it was strange for her to suggest the Scented Garden, which was on the opposite side of the Seclusion, when it would have been much easier to stroll in the Garden of Queen Sodan. “I suppose I can bear a walk, yes. Are you certain? You must have things to do…”
“I can think of nothing more important than helping you feel better, my little dear one. Come.” The Scented Garden was warmer than the halls of the Seclusion, but the canopies atop its high walls kept it cool enough to be bearable and its airs were very sweet and pleasant, suffused with myrtle and forest roses and snakeleaf after a short while Qinnitan began to feel a little stronger. As they walked, Luian spouted a litany of petty complaints and irritations in a breathless voice that made her seem far younger than she was. She was more sharp-tongued with her servants than usual, too, so savage in her scolding of one of the Tuanis when the girl bumped her elbow that several other people in the garden, wives and servants, looked up, and the usually expressionless slave girl curled her lip above her teeth, as though she were about to snarl or even bite.
“Oh, I’ve just remembered,” Luian said suddenly. “I left my nicest shawl in that little retiring room here yesterday—there, in the corner.” She pointed to a shadowed doorway far back between two rows of boxwood hedges. “But I’m so hot, I think I’ll just sit down on this bench. Will you be a dear and get it for me, Qinnitan? It’s rose-colored.You can’t miss it.”
Qinnitan hesitated. There was something strange about Luian’s face. She suddenly felt frightened. “Your shawl… ?” “Yes. Go get it, please. In there.” She pointed again.
“You left it… ?” Luian almost never came to this garden, and it was famously warm. Why bring a shawl here? Luian leaned close and said, in a strangled whisper, “Just go and get it, you silly little bitch!” Qinnitan jumped up, startled and more fearful than ever. “Of course.”
As she approached the dark doorway, she could not help slowing her footsteps, listening for the breath of a hidden assassin behind the hedges. But why would Luian resort to something so crude? Unless it was the autarch himself who had decided it had all been a mistake, that Qinnitan was not the one he wanted. Perhaps the mute giant Mokor, his infamous chief strangler, was waiting for her inside the doorway. Or perhaps she wasn’t important enough and her death would be effected instead by someone like the so-called gardener, Tanyssa. Qinnitan looked back, but Luian was looking in another direction entirely, talking rapidly and a little too loudly with her slaves.
Her nerves now stretched tight as lute strings, Qinnitan let out a muffled shriek when the man stepped from the shadows.
“Quiet! I believe you are looking for this,” he said, holding out a shawl woven of fine silk. “Do not forget it when you go out again.”
“Jeddin!” She threw her hand over her mouth. “What are you doing here?” A whole man in the Seclusion—what would happen to him if they were caught? What would happen to her?
The Leopard captain quickly and easily moved between her and the door, cutting off her escape. She looked frantically around the small, dark room. There was nothing much in it but a low table and some cushions, and no other way out.
“I wished to see you. I wished to… speak with you.” Jeddin stepped up and caught her hand in his wide fingers, pulled her deeper into the room. Her heart was beating so quickly she could scarcely take a breath, but she could not entirely ignore the strength of his grip or the way it made her feel. If he wished, he could throw her over one of his broad shoulders and carry her away and there would be nothing she could do.
Except scream, of course, but who could guess what she would earn for herself if she did? “Come, I will not keep you long,” he said. “I have put my life in your hands by coming here, Mistress. Surely you will not begrudge me a few moments.”