Water food water blood gift water back to Highwind… The familiar litany of our problems repeats itself in my head. The fort’s one working well won’t supply us for much longer. We’ll have to dig another and if we don’t find water soon, we’ll have to go out to the nearest oasis for it.
Assuming it still exists. The desert’s changed since I was last here.
I drag my mind back to the present and the slender man dismounting in front of me. A faded man—faded clothes, hair of indeterminate color, average features, mid-brown skin. Hard to tell his age, besides “still young”.
Doesn’t look or move like a warrior. No weapons visible on him, though the loose clothing might conceal some. Ink stains on his hand. A scholar?
He faces me, and his eyes, though mild, show wit and intelligence. He bows his head. “Kato Vorsok.” He’s not at all surprised to see me.
I jerk my head down in response, stopping the cringe in time. No more anonymity for me. Too many people know me by face in Taurin’s lands.
I feel a cool draught at my back, and the man’s gaze flickers over my shoulder for an instant.
Flutter.
“I’m Daral Askari from Jalinoor.” He speaks the common tongue of the itauri. It rolls off his tongue in fluid syllables.
The same speech is sludge-like in my own mouth. “The university, you mean.” It’s strange to be speaking it after hiding myself in Highwind for all these years.
“Is it so obvious?” He looks at his soft hands and smudged fingers. “Yes, from the university.”
“It’s a long way for a scholar. Why are you here?”
He looks up, raises an eyebrow. “I was summoned.”
“Summoned?”
“Yes. By Sera of the Farusi clan.” He doesn’t say your wife, but it hangs in the air anyway.
“Sera’s dead,” I say, brutally, shaping each word like a blade, letting it hurt on the way out.
“I am sorry.” He seems sincere, at least.
“Don’t be.” The pain is better than the emptiness. Anything is better than this emptiness. “This was all Sera’s plan and I was not part of it. I came to it late and I know nothing of her scheme, save that it was to break open Tau Marai.”
“It failed, then.”
I want to clench both my fists, but I have only one hand to do it with. Tension builds inside me and my spiders swarm in agitation. I’m not under physical attack, though I feel like it. They don’t know what to do, and they have little power to do it with.
Flutter puts a hand on my arm, her touch cool on my heated skin.
“Yes, it did. And good thing, too. Why did Sera summon you?”
“She sent out a bataur. To everyone. The judges of Jalinoor, the Tols of Sau Veria and the Raams of the Bakken. She used her seal as judge of the Ferusi to summon all here to Kaal Baran on this day. She said that we would find Tau Marai cracked open like a turtle shell and its insides ready for the plundering or the burning.”
“And you’re the first?” I look behind the man’s shoulder, as if the Tols on their rough ponies and the Raams on their bejeweled elephants were coming up behind him. But the road is empty.
“I’m the only one.” He says no more, but I can well imagine the reaction to Sera’s bataur. The presumed-dead wife of the disgraced Champion, claiming victory over Tau Marai? Who could blame them for thinking it a hoax or the ranting of a mad woman?
I could. She was one of their own, and she’d sent a bataur. They should’ve come. According to our laws and customs, they should’ve come!
“Pity,” I say, finally. “We could’ve used the food they brought. One small scholar shouldn’t stretch our resources that much, though.”
“And one mule,” Daral puts in, stroking the animal’s nose. “And he’s not for the eating, either.” He directs this at the eerie men, who look obviously hungry.
I remember the blood gift. I should take them out hunting. I am very tired again.
“This is Flutter,” I say, half-turning. “She’ll look after you if I’m not around.” Flutter looks grey and grainy, cobwebby. The darkness of her eyes and pale curve of her finger nails don’t inspire confidence.
To his credit, Daral doesn’t look fazed by the Highwind contingent. Perhaps he expects all foreigners to look strange. He puts his hands together at his chest and bows, as if to a great woman.
“She’ll understand what you say,” I go on. “She—” I start to say is eilendi, but stop. That’s Flutter’s story, not mine. “She’ll understand.”
And then Flutter’s eyes flicker to hexagonal facets. Sigils flash blue in her wings, and she swoops for Daral, claws outstretched.
“Gash, Bound!” I lunge for Flutter, but she goes through my arm and side in a splash of heat. My hand grasps empty air. The two eerie men leap, faster than a blink, till they’re standing right in front of Daral, pushing him back with their bodies.
Daral’s already on the ground—he moved fast and I think, Not just a scholar. Gash and Bound flick out their whips, but Flutter turns shadow-thin, slips in between the seeking tongues. All I see is her cloak, billowing back, bleeding smoke and blue, and I grab again, futilely.
For a moment, I touch substance, cool in my hand.
The next, she’s flown apart, and there’s nothing there.
The eerie men’s eyes widen as they rear back from their strike, trying not to hit me. Daral’s face from behind their legs is narrow-eyed and thin-lipped.
Flutter’s gone.
The evening shadows lie long over Kaal Baran, barring the sun-gilded courtyard in stripes of grey. An out-of-tune, oddly-enunciated chorus of the Greater Invocation rises thinly into the air—eerie men and cobble crunchers co-opted to try to bring Flutter back.
Daral watched, bemused, as I
