To her relief, she saw she had chosen the correct corridor: the passageway led her to the wide and busy Avenue of the Fallen, which ran behind many of the great houses whose estates fronted on Great Garden Passage. Several times she passed other travelers who looked curiously at a mortal woman staggering under the burden of two enormous sacks, but each time Tzoja did her best to take on the bent, long-suffering attitude of a mere slave, and here, for once, her mortal shape and features helped her. Since the end of the Storm King’s War and its terrible losses for the Hikeda’ya, the nobility had begun using mortals for many tasks that had once been done only by their own kind. Also, as with Tzoja herself, the nobles had discovered that mortal women were fertile in a way their own wives and concubines were not. Leaders like Magister Viyeki had worked hard to overturn some of the oldest taboos, to permit not just the legitimate birth of halfblood children, who in the past had nearly always been executed along with their mortal mothers, but to broaden their acceptance in places that had always been barred to them. Even so, the rise of Viyeki’s own daughter Nezeru to the exalted role of Queen’s Talon, especially at so young an age, had astonished many in Nakkiga, not least of whom had been Tzoja herself.
At last she reached the deepward gate of House Enduya, the back door of the clan’s residence. It was guarded, of course, but she had prepared this ground earlier and felt more confident than she had in the royal kitchens.
“Greetings, Queensman Daigo,” she told one of the guards as she set down her sacks. “I return as I promised.”
Daigo, a sullen fellow that she had cheered a few times in the past with gifts of food she had saved for him, looked her up and down. “Haya, Mistress Tzoja,” he said. “You return.”
“And I have brought you something.” She reached into the bag and brought out a stone jar sealed with wax. “Cloudberries. Kept under cold water all winter. Take them to your servant and have her make something nice for you.” Cloudberries were picked in late summer, and were a delicacy even when they were plentiful. At this point in the circle of seasons, during Otter’s Moon when the new berries were not yet ripe, they were like jewels.
The other guard, whom Tzoja recognized but did not know, made a face. “A gift for Daigo but none for me?”
Tzoja blessed the fortunate star that had warned her this might happen. “What a surprise, Queensman—I have some for you, too!”
As she handed the jar to him, he gave her a look that was a bit less grateful than she would have expected, which made her skin tighten. Had she done something to make them suspicious? “Did you see anything interesting while you were out, Mistress?” the second guard asked. “They say that Lord Akhenabi himself was seen on the Glinting Passage.”
She hid a shudder—very few living things in Nakkiga frightened her more than the master of the Order of Song. The noises that echoed at night from his great mansion were heard by many, but spoken of by none.
“No,” she said to change the subject, “that honor was not mine. But several men from the Order of Sacrifice threatened and insulted me when I passed them. They called me a bricklayer’s bitch.”
“Bricklayer?” Daigo was frowning, but not, she suspected at the idea of a Sacrifice calling her someone’s bitch. “That’s what they said? Bricklayer?”
“I paid little mind,” she said. “Now forgive me, but I must get back to our apartments and continue my preparations.” She had told Daigo something earlier about preparing a meal for Khimabu. But if I truly did, she thought, I would make sure that the cloudberries and everything else were poisoned.
Daigo and his fellow guard were already arguing over which Sacrifices might have been insulting the Order of Builders, and in which soldiers’ tavern along the Glinting Passage they might be found later. She hoped she had not overdone it with her improvised tale—a fight between orders that drew the attention of the Queen’s Teeth would do her own plans no good whatsoever—but there was no doubt that between the supposed jibes from the Order of Sacrifice and the gift of cloudberries, the guards were well and truly distracted. She bowed to them both, although they hardly noticed, then shouldered her sacks again.
None of the servants she passed on her way through the clan-house seemed to pay much attention to her; she made it all the way to her own door without being challenged. But as she set her sacks down to withdraw the orichalcum key hanging on its chain around her neck, she saw that her door was already open.
Tzoja’s blood seemed to turn ice cold in her veins. She had not left the door so. She would never have left it so, and she specifically remembered locking it and then checking it again before she set out. Her heart beat so loudly she doubted she would hear anything else, but she leaned close to the door anyway, listening.
Male voices, quiet but forceful. More than one, and they were inside her room. If she had been innocent she might have walked in and demanded to know who they were, but carrying two heavy sacks full of contraband foodstuffs, she did not dare.
The voices grew louder. They were coming out.
Tzoja looked desperately from side to side. The sunken doorway of an unused apartment was a dozen steps away. The door would be locked, but the doorway would be deep enough to hide her when the strangers came out, as long as they turned back toward the main hallways. If they didn’t—well, no point in thinking about that or she would lose her strength and fall down right here before her own door.
She clutched her bags and huddled as far back in the doorway as she could, holding her breath as the searchers stepped out into the corridor. She could make out only a little of what they were saying but thought she heard one of them say, “she will be unhappy” and her heart slammed in her breast. Khimabu? Had her beloved’s wife sent someone to kill her?
To her relief, the men turned in the other direction and their voices grew quieter. Summoning her courage, she leaned cautiously out from the doorway and looked toward the two men just before they disappeared around the corner of the passage.
White. Their armor was white. And on their heads they wore the sharply peaked helmets that proclaimed them Queen’s Teeth. What could the queen’s own guard want with her?
Oh, great gods, she thought. Viyeki warned me that the queen wanted to send all mortal concubines back to the slave compounds. Have her guards come for me, then? Or is it something worse? She remembered her secret cabinet and the things hidden there—things that would mean her death if someone saw them. She had secured them as well as she could, but had thought she only had to hide them from the servants. Oh, merciful halls of heaven, have they found my hiding place?
But even that terror faded into insignificance when she realized that she was no longer safe even in her master Viyeki’s house. The Queen’s Teeth might return any time, and then the most fortunate thing that could happen to her was that she would be returned to the slave compounds, to be raped by any noble with a taste for mortal flesh, no matter how powerful an official her beloved might be. More likely Khimabu would simply arrange for her to be killed. Because Viyeki was gone.
The time for planning and preparing was gone, too. Tzoja needed to flee for her life.
The horses could go no farther up the increasingly treacherous slopes, and Makho declared they were to be left behind before the Talons climbed any farther, so they found a cave with a freshet of water from a source deeper in the mountain. The entrance was slippery with ice where the water trickled out, but inside the cave was dry.
Nezeru found the blocks of pressed fodder at the bottom of the saddle bags and, with the mortal Jarnulf’s help, crumbled a dozen of them in a corner at the back of the cave for the horses. Saomeji built a fire near the opening, and Kemme and Makho, who were both still weak from their injuries, settled next to it.
“We will warm ourselves for an hour, Singer,” Makho declared. “But after that we must climb again.”
“I beg you to reconsider, Chieftain,” said Saomeji. “We need to rest longer—look, Kemme’s wound is bleeding again. We may have dealt with the Skalijar, but there are other creatures in these mountains, not least the dragons we actually seek, who know the smell of blood.”
“Also,” said Jarnulf, scattering the last of the fodder, “some of us cannot climb so well in darkness. In any case, I doubt we need to keep hiding our presence by climbing only in darkness. The giant said he cannot smell any trace of the bandits or any other two-legged enemies.”
“Do not seek to instruct me, mortal,” the chieftain said.
“You two.” Saomeji gestured at Nezeru and Jarnulf. “Go and find us something to eat. A night of full bellies will do us all much good in the morning.”
Makho pushed himself up to a sitting position, his face almost as hard as Queen Utuk’ku’s silver mask. “Do you give the orders here now, Singer?”
“My apologies, Hand Chieftain. Of course not.”
Makho stared at Saomeji for a long moment, then turned to Jarnulf. “You and the blackbird, go out and be useful, as the Singer suggested. I am tired of looking at your faces.”
“Bring back meat,” said Kemme. “We are not Zida’ya, to live on flowers and bee’s milk.”
Jarnulf turned and walked out of the cavern, splashing through the water that spread into a tiny cataract at the cave’s mouth. Nezeru followed him. Why did Makho keep throwing them together? Did he hope to entice her into some treacherous alliance with the mortal?