“Say something.”
“There is nothing to say. You did not kill Roghan. It was his drunkenness that led to his end. You only did what you had to do. We are not so different, Kepi.” He folded her short locks, cupping her neck, her cheek. “At our wedding, during the offering, I was glad when you freed the slaves, happy to see the tradition ended. It’s a barbarous practice—a wedding sealed by a sacrifice.”
He placed a woolen mantle on her shoulders to cover her. “I will not take what is not given freely and I will not hold you in Feren against your will. In the trunk there is a dress, sandals, and a cloak. Go, out the door, past the wall. Leave if you like.” He gestured to the door. “My guards will not stop you.”
Then he was gone, and Kepi felt curiously bereft. A small part of her thought it might not have been so terrible if he had stayed.
36
Sarra’s caravan left Desouk on horseback, riding in a thin wisp of smoke just after dawn, riding hard and making camp outside the Dromus, on a strip of land that straddled the Harkan border. The escort she requested while still in Desouk arrived as her priests pitched tents. The Harkan soldiers dismounted and their captain announced himself: “I’m Sirin Dasche.” He told them that Barca, the Soleri traitor, was approaching at a terrific pace from the south, the San from the north and west. “You’ll have no more than a week in the Shambles before you’ll need to turn back. If you stay any longer, Barca or the San will block your retreat.”
Sarra considered her situation. Wars were unpredictable things, but the Shambles was a desolate place. It held no strategic worth. She had to hope the outlanders would ride around the barren land and not block her path.
Her eye caught something odd: Dasche wore a strip of black fabric wrapped around his arm. Black was the color of Horu. Sarra had worn it in Desouk to illustrate her grief. “What is it?” she asked. “Why do you wear the black?”
“It’s…”
“It’s what?” she asked. “Is it the king?” Her husband was aging, perhaps something had happened to him.
Dasche nodded. “He was summoned to Solus, to meet the emperor.”
“‘To meet the emperor.’” She repeated his words. Immediately, she wondered why her informants in Solus had not relayed this news prior to her departure. Perhaps the riots were to blame, or Barca’s army.
“When?” she asked. “When was he summoned?” Sarra doubted much time had passed or she would have heard the news.
“The call came just after the Devouring,” he said, spitting when he named the high feast of the Soleri. “An entire legion of the Alehkar arrived in Harwen. I heard the king slaughtered a dozen soldiers before they took him, just to show the men what he was made of. He left Harwen some time after the Devouring.”
“Then it is done,” she said, her words a whisper. The march from Harwen to Solus was not long. Arko had met the emperor when she was still in Desouk. He had seen the face of the god and perished.
She walked to the edge of the camp, motioning for Ott to attend to the men.
Arko is dead.
A meeting with Tolemy had no other outcome. No man entered the Empyreal Domain, save for the Ray, and survived.
Sarra cursed.
There was something she’d wanted to say to Arko before he died, a matter she had kept hidden for a decade—one that would now stay hidden. That realization hurt her more than the news of her husband’s death.
She rubbed her sandals against the rocks. Damn you for leaving like this, Arko.
She pictured the king of Harkana, the rough beard and hulking shoulders. The white stone he wore around his neck. She had begged him to discard the thing, but he refused. She wondered if he kept it still, if he wore it on his neck when he met Tolemy. Was the stone burned to ash just as Arko was surely turned to ash when he stood in the emperor’s presence? Were the stories even true? Perhaps Suten’s guards had simply cut off Arko’s head.
“Are you okay, Mother?” Dasche asked, looking concerned.
Sarra tried to smile, but her lips would not move. “Yes, of course.” She ground her teeth. “I’m fine—just feeling a little regret,” she said. “Tell your men to pitch tents and prepare the camp. We leave at first light,” she said sternly, not wanting to look weak as she had a moment prior. She turned from the others, leaving Dasche to direct the men while she took a soldier aside to help her raise a tent so she could sleep.
She made camp, but found little rest.
*
The next morning, while the desert hills were still black with shadows, Sarra and her caravan set off with their Harkan guard, moving fast, resting little, up from a dry creek bed into a brown landscape of sandy cliffs pocked with small holes where sacred statues of ancient gods had once sat, then down into the dry, sandy valley.
This part of Harkana was desolate in a way that had always depressed her, as a younger woman, as a queen—it was nothing but rocks and sand. When she was a child in the southern islands there was always the water, the movement of the sea, the endless blue horizon, the pale clouds, and gray, fog-hooded mountains, the chirping of birds. The island kingdom had not yet fallen to squalor and poverty then, but was a place of peace and relative plenty. Harkana had none of that. When she had first seen the north, the desert plains and the Shambles, when she had crossed the land as a young woman, it had made her heart sink. She saw neither homes, nor herds, nor any other sign of settlement. Even the buzzards had abandoned this place, moving on years ago to the more fertile hunting grounds of Feren. There was some life in the lowland plains and in the hunting reserve, in the high mountain pastures where trees and grasses grew and the eld hunted, but there was none here. Nothing moved and nothing lived, and the bareness of the landscape did little to improve her mood.
“Noll,” Sarra called to the boy as she rode up alongside him. “Pass me your map.” Noll drew forth the parchment, pointing out a few monuments to help Sarra orient herself.