was so deeply embedded in the Favored’s wattled neck that most of it was invisible. Luian’s murderer had found that thick throat hard going: a muddy bootprint stood out starkly on the middle of the back of Luian’s white nightdress like a religious insignia on the robe of a penitent.
Qinnitan was fighting her roiling stomach when a huge, fresh wave of misery washed through her. “Oh, Luian…!” She had to turn away. If she looked any longer, she would start weeping again and never move until they came for her.
She was rummaging furiously through Luian’s baskets and chests of belongings when she heard a sound behind her. Her hands flew up to protect her neck as she turned, certain she would confront the grinning, dead-eyed face of Tanyssa, but the rustling noise had been made by the mute slave boy, the Silent Favored who had brought her Luian’s message, as he tried to hide himself deeper into the room’s naked corner. She had walked right past him.
“Little idiot! You can’t stay here!” She was about to chase him out the door, then realized she might be throwing away the one thing that could save her life. “Wait! I need some of your clothes. Can you do that? Some breeches like the ones you’re wearing. I’ll need a shirt, too. Do you understand?”
He looked at her with the wide eyes of a trapped animal and she realized he had been even closer to Luian’s killing than she had. Still, she had no time to spare on sympathy.
“Do you understand? I need those clothes, now! Then you can go. Tell no one you were here!” Qinnitan almost laughed at her own fatal foolishness. “Of course you will tell no one—you can’t talk. No matter. Go!”
He hesitated. She grabbed his thin arm and pulled him upright, then gave him a shove. He hurried out of the door, bent so low his hands almost trailed on the floor tiles, as though he were crossing a battlefield where arrows flew.
She turned back to her search and a few moments later found Luian’s stitchery basket. She took out the jewel-handled scissors—a present from the Queen of the Favored, Cusy, and thus hardly ever used—and began to shear off her own long, black hair.
Even after she had taken the pile of clothes and thanked him, the boy would not go. She gave him another push, but this time he resisted her
“You
He shook his head, and although terror still filled his eyes, his refusal seemed more than just fear. He pointed at the other room—Qinnitan could see the naked feet through the doorway, as though Luian had merely decided to lie down on the floor for a nap—and then at himself, then at Qinnitan.
“I don’t understand.” She was getting frantic. She had to get out, and quickly. The chances were good that Tanyssa had already checked her room and was now looking for her all through the Seclusion, perhaps raising the alarm. “Just go! Go to Cusy or one of the other important Favored! Run!”
He shook his head again, sharply, and again his finger traveled from the corpse to himself to Luian. He looked at her with imploring eyes, then mimed what she realized after a moment was writing.
“Oh, the sacred Bees! You think they will kill you, too? Because of the letters?” She stared at him, cursing Luian even though it was beyond the laws of charity to besmirch the dead before they had received the judgment of Nushash. Luian had ensnared them all, she and that handsome, foolishly arrogant Jeddin. It was bad enough what the two of them had done to Qinnitan, but to this poor, speechless boy… ! “Right,” she said after a long moment. She remembered what Jeddin was probably going through at this very moment and her anger died like a snuffed candle. “You’ll come with me, then. But first help me get these clothes on and clean away the hair I chopped off. We can’t burn it, since anyone would know that smell, so we’ll have to put it down the privy. And here’s another important thing—we’ll need Luian’s writing box, too.”
The boy immediately proved his worth by leading her out of Luian’s rooms and down a back corridor Qinnitan hadn’t even known existed, skirting the Garden of Queen Sodan entirely, which would be full of wives and servants after the evening meal, especially on a warm night like this one. They encountered only one other person, a Haketani wife or servant, carrying a lamp—it was hard to tell which because Haketani women all wore veiled masks and shunned ostentatious dress. The masked woman went past with no reaction whatsoever, not even a nodded greeting; even in the midst of a desperate escape Qinnitan felt a reflexive irritation until she realized that the woman saw only tw.o slave boys, and no matter what the woman herself might be, they still were beneath her notice.
I should be thanking the Holy Hive instead of grumbling.
The closer they got to the Lily Gate of the Seclusion, the faster her heart beat. Loose hairs were working their way down the back of her neck, making the rough cloth of the boy’s shirt feel even more maddeningly itchy, but that was the least of her problems. Many more people were in the corridors now, servants off to shop for their mistresses, slaves with bundles piled high on heads or on shoulders, some even pulling small carts, a female peddler with a wheeled cage full of parrots, a Favored doctor in an immense, nodding hat arguing with a Favored apothecary on their way to examine the herbs at a local market, and although the presence of each person added to her fretfulness, especially the two or three servants she thought she recognized, she also told herself that the crowding made others less likely to notice two Favored boys, and certainly a lot less likely to wonder whether one of those two boys might be a Bride of the Living God.
Still, it was all Qinnitan could do to stand in the crowd waiting at the alcove on the Seclusion side of the gate when every instinct told her to shove her way through and bolt to freedom—-just let them try to catch her! She did her best to slow her breathing, tried to think of what she would do on the other side. Small fingers curled around her hand and she looked down at the boy. Despite his own wide, fearful eyes, he nodded his head and did his best to smile, as if to tell her that all would be well.
“I don’t know your name,” she whispered. “What is your name?”
His mouth twisted and she felt cruel—how could he tell her? Then he smiled again and lifted his hands. He laced his thumbs together with the fingers held out on either side, then let the fingers flap like… wings.
“Bird?”
He nodded happily. “Your name is Bird?”
He frowned and shook his head, then pointed up to the ribbed ceiling. Here, so close to the gate, the remains of nests still stood in some of the shadowed angles. She could see no birds in any of them. “Nest?” He shook his head again. “A kind of bird? Yes? Sparrow? Thrush? Pigeon?”
He grabbed her hand again and squeezed, nodding vigorously.
“Pigeon? Your name is Pigeon. Thank you for helping me, Pigeon.” She looked up and discovered they had almost reached the front of the line, which narrowed like a bottle’s neck before a trio of large Favored guards. The Lily Gate was only a few paces away, glowing with the lantern lights of the outside world like something magical from a story. Two of the guards were busy looking through a peddler woman’s cart before releasing her back into the city—dwarfed by them, the peddler wore an expression that was so obviously and carefully no expression that it was almost insolent in itself—but the third guard was all too ready to look over Qinnitan and her companion.
“Where are you going… ?” he began, but was interrupted by Pigeon making grunting noises. “Ah, one of the tongueless whelps. Whose business?”
Qinnitan’s stomach lurched. She had worked so hard on her other forged letter that she had completely forgotten she would have to produce some kind of permission to leave the Seclusion as well—slaves, even the relatively select Silent Favored, could not simply wander in and out at will.
An instant before she would have broken and run, the boy reached into his pocket and pulled out a small silvery article the size of a finger and showed it to the guard. Qinnitan’s heart climbed into her mouth. If it was Luian’s seal-stick and the word had already gone out…
“Ah, for old Cusy, is it?' The guard waved his hand. “Don’t want to make the Queen of the Seclusion grumpy, do we?” He stepped aside, glancing with idle but focused curiosity at Qinnitan as though he sensed that something about her was not quite right. She dropped her eyes and silently recited the words of the Bees’ Hymn as Pigeon steered her past the huge guard and in behind the peddler woman, who was just being released, apparently innocent of contraband.
“They say they were lovers once,” one of the guards who had been searching the cart said quietly as he stepped out of the peddler’s way. Qinnitan was startled until she realized he was talking to the other guard.
“Him? And the Evening Star?” asked his companion, equally quiet. “You’re joking.”
“That’s what they say.” The guard’s voice dropped even lower, to a whisper—Qinnitan only heard a little of
