The Warrior of the Third Veil Read online

  Liqi the Strong Man stood at the entry-way. When the two veiled women approached, he bowed and let them through, to the disgruntlement of those who had to pay behind them. He appeared to accept the guards as their retinue, though Pali had asked them out of friendship and so that someone could watch the horses, and they separated once they were inside.

  The entertainers had hung lengths of cloths between their tents, to shape the path that people could take and make a maze of delights that hid one from each other. Sardeet and Pali drew a little aside, as the nomads went off to investigate, and examined the area from the safety of their veils.

  “The knife-thrower is to the left,” Pali said.

  “We will not go there first,” replied Sardeet. “I would see the woman dance with snakes.”

  And so they went to the right.

  THE AREA WAS FRAGRANT with sweat and human odour and sweet things frying in hot oil, with perfumes of many lands. They did not eat anything, though vendors offered them their wares with eager eyes. Instead they watched, observed, wondered, and Pali thought of all the places she had seen, and had yet to see, and Sardeet-savarel forgot what her husband the Blue Wind had told of other worlds, and fell in love.

  THE KNIFE-THROWER HAD heard the news that the Warrior and the Bride of the Wind had come after all. He was a young man of a high heart and quick—one might even say hasty—decisions. From a city far to the west, where the desert nomads were the barest rumour, Zamir had long since found his own handsome face and charm enough to win him any woman for an evening, whatever their cultural views of the matter. He had been much taken by the women of the eastern cities, and had left a trail of broken hearts behind him.

  The owner of the caravan—Walea who danced with snakes—had told him he must mend his ways before he was given over to the vengeance of a family, and was relieved that there were only three cities left before they crossed the river and started again through the familiar lands to the west, away from the places where the desert winds blew restlessness into them all.

  Zamir had sworn on his life that he would behave. And for two cities he had only flirted, and nothing more, with the pretty young women.

  When he saw the Bride of the Wind without her veil, for the first time he discovered what it meant to be the one yearning for the distant beauty who toyed with him.

  It took only two days for him to decide he was in love.

  It did not occur to him to ask anyone for her people’s expectations. His heart, he was sure, was true.

  When at last the Bride of the Wind and her attendant, the so-called Warrior (of whom the rumour-mongers said only that she was a woman; they did not say that she was reputed to have slain a Wind Lord for the ill done her sister), came before his show, he had decided what to do.

  PALI AND SARDEET OBSERVED the woman with her three six-foot snakes coiling around her, and Liqi off-duty from the gate lifting huge blocks of stone. They did not have their fortunes read—that was against the ways of their clan—but they did admire the rest. The lion tamer, the woman with seven trained monkeys, the magicians making things appear and disappear in puffs of coloured smoke, the scents, the shadow-players, the musicians, the dancers.

  At last they came to the knife-thrower.

  Zamir had covered his target with a scarlet cloth. He was in the middle of his set routine when they came up, juggling seven daggers in the air.

  He smiled at Sardeet when she stopped before him; the crowd opened to let her and the Warrior see clearly. Zamir said, “The merest glance of your eyes is like the dart of the sun,” and flung the first dagger behind him at the sun in the centre of the target.

  People tittered a little. He said, “Your eyebrows are like a bow, shooting your glances,” and two daggers followed the first.

  “The imagined splendour of your smile weakens me,” he added, and the four daggers thunked into the target, and he pretended to collapse.

  The audience laughed and clapped, but Pali and Sardeet walked away to their horses.

  THEY RODE SLOWLY TO the exercise grounds the next morning. The city was quiet after the market-day, and when they left the south gate almost no one was about. After they out of earshot of the gate guards, Sardeet said, “My husband that was told me that there are other worlds. I learned twelve ways to cross the boundary between this world and them.”

  “I have not heard tell of this!” said Pali, her imagination fired. The visions she had seen on her vision-quest at fourteen haunted her. None of them were of places she had yet met with in her travels. She had looked when she took the bones of the dead wives to their homelands. She was not in the Veils, not in those visions. She wore strange clothes, rode a strange horse, had strange companions; but in them she had seen her older self laughing with a wholehearted joy.

  Sardeet nodded. After a few moments, she continued, “I would see more of ours before I go seeking beyond. My husband was not certain if one might return or no by the same path.”

  “That would be less pleasing.”

  “Have you seen the lands to the west of the Ihil?”

  “No, save far in the north. When I went to the Pearl Islands I went by way of one of Arzu’s carpets, for I feared the storms and the sea, and I did not know how long such a journey would take.”

  “Your masters will rejoice when you tell of them of your deeds.”

  “Mm,” said Pali, who was somewhat concerned about this, for though she had shed no blood on her journey, she was not certain that throttling a god—even a lesser god, and a wicked one—would be considered acceptable. The point of the quest was to right a wrong without violence. She found her worries growing as her restlessness in the stone city increased, and did not know whether it was because of the restlessness or because she had the time to think. But she would not say that to Sardeet.

  They reached the exercise grounds, and after cantering twice around the circumference, they stopped before the caravan.

  Walea, the snake woman, stood beside Liqi and one of the older men, who had a long beard in three braids tied about with bells and ribbons. He was one of the fortune-tellers, and wore garments of white cotton washed with indigo into brilliance. Zamir the knife-thrower appeared a moment later, to stare with utter adoration at Sardeet.

  “Come away with me,” he said abruptly, before the sisters had dismounted or anyone had said anything.

  Sardeet looked down at him, the woman veiled in white on the golden horse, like something out of a romance of the City of Enchanters to him, a young man of good family who had run away for adventure.

  “What will you offer me?” asked Sardeet. Her voice was not dismissive. Pali watched Walea trying not to frown. Liqi and the fortune-teller were observing Sardeet with nearly as much adoration as Zamir.

  “Adventure,” he said. “Glory. Love.”

  Sardeet paused a moment, and Pali knew by the sudden motion of her horse, swiftly controlled as it was, that her sister had been touched at some deep chord. If a handsome young man had made her such an offer, Pali thought—

  “I will consider your earnest,” said Sardeet, and she and Pali rode away.

  Zamir did not know the ways of the desert, and did not know that to invite a woman under his roof with the offer of a token was to ask her to marry him, and that a bride-price of acceptable quality and quantity would be exacted, one way or another.

  He was, however, smitten, and if he had known, likely would have said the same.

  ON THEIR RIDE BACK Pali said, “There are other ways to seek adventure, my sister, if you desire them.”

  Sardeet had lifted her veil to feel the wind on her face, before they reached the city and the stares of strangers who knew her story—or thought they did. She smiled at Pali before letting the cloth drop down again. “I know.”

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON Naarun took Pali aside. He paced up and down for a few moments, evidently finding it difficult to gather his words. Pali watched him patiently. She thought she could guess what had prompted this meeting, for when the
y had returned after their ride Sardeet had asked her aunt if she wished to join them in a visit to the caravan of entertainers that evening, or if their cousins might prefer to come.

  She was not disappointed. After a few false starts and huffs through his moustache, he said: “Daughter of my brother, I know that many customs are different in the desert than in the city.”

  She nodded and said nothing. He paced about some more, started again: “We of the city know that some women choose to take on men’s clothing and occupations. Like you, often it is one in a family of daughters, where otherwise there would be no one to guard and protect her sisters. And so I speak to you, Warrior, for you act as the brother of your sister, that you take care of her! It is not appropriate for a woman of her class to go to the travelling entertainers. She will bring shame upon herself and her father’s house.”

  “And on this?” asked Pali, gently, when he paused.

  Naarun looked a bit conflicted. “Women are the vessels of honour,” he said. “While your sister stays beneath our roof, she is ours to keep safe and pure.”

  “I see,” said Pali.

  “It is not that I am ungrateful that she should be so much recovered,” he said hastily. “A woman’s three glories are her beauty, her dowry, and her virtue. Your sister’s beauty is unparalleled, her dowry is extensive, and her virtue ... I would not see it tarnished, when her reputation is so close to holy.”

  “I see,” said Pali.

  “You stand between her and the world, surely you do not wish to see her hurt?”

  Pali smiled at her uncle, though as she had just come in from tending her horse, she was still veiled, and he could only see her eyes crinkle. He found it reassuring that she went about veiled, for it meant he could forget she was only a young woman, and treat her as an equal.

  “No,” she said, “I do not wish to see her hurt. However. We have a saying in the desert, that no one may cast another’s shadow. My sister is a woman grown. It is not my place to tell her where she may go or what choices she should make, and nor would it be were I her brother, or her father, or her son. I do not stand between her and the world, any more than I stood between her and the gods when the Wind Lord chose her for his own. I have my own shadow to cast, my own roads to ride.”

  “Yet,” he said, uncomfortably.

  “Yet should she need it, I would ride against the world as I rode against the Wind Lord who did her wrong.”

  “It’s not suitable,” Naarun cried in a pained voice, and he sounded so like her father when her mother brought him some unwary traveller’s belongings to choose a trinket from that Pali smiled kindly.

  “My uncle,” she said, “I will speak to my sister. We both owe you much gratitude for your hospitality and care, my sister especially, and we would prefer not to cause you distress.”

  And with that, Naarun had to make himself content.

  WHEN PALI REPORTED this conversation to her sister, Sardeet said: “But that’s absurd!”

  “I know, but it matters to our uncle. And our aunt.”

  Sardeet had been deciding which colour to make into a garment first, and stood frowning between the bronze and the purple. “As if I would give my wealth over as a dowry to a husband! What does he think I am, a fool?”

  “I don’t think he understands the ways of the desert.”

  “Evidently!” Sardeet looked around the room her uncle had given her. Her aunt had hung it with tapestries, which made Sardeet feel less enclosed by stone, and it was bright and colourful. Five wooden chests stood against the walls, each filled with the treasures she had claimed from her husband’s palace. She thought of the forty-one milk-white camels and five horses that were her portion of her inheritance. She thought of the knife-thrower—Zamir—with his flashing eyes and strong hands, and the strange livelihood of the entertainers.

  “Our father thought I wanted to give over my portion to the temple and enter a priory, and for that reason brought my share of the herds here. My uncle has been most gracious in his hospitality and care. I do not wish to repay him ill for his kindnesses.”

  “The obligations are heavy,” Pali agreed, enjoying the sight of her sister seized with enthusiasm, and a little wary of where it might take her.

  But before her thoughts went too far along that concern, she thought of her own future, and whether having travelled so far, she wanted to bind herself to the mountain fastnesses, or even to the sweep of land her clan claimed as their territory, and so she did not give voice to any of the other concerns she might have raised.

  IN DEFERENCE TO THEIR uncle, they did not go to the entertainers that night. Instead, after the evening meal was over, Pali and Sardeet retired to her room and discussed their plans.

  “I am growing tired of the city,” Pali began.

  “I would rejoice to see you in the robes of the Second Veil,” replied Sardeet.

  There was a pause. They were sorting through jewellery. Pali had been the one to collect the treasury of Sardeet’s husband Olu-olurin, but she had been in a fog of wonder and exhaustion at the time and had forgotten most of what was in it, and Sardeet had not seen the contents at all.

  “It occurs to me,” said Sardeet, “that my uncle would find it more pleasing to have the revenue from a date-palm orchard or two than forty-one camels that he does not know what to do with.”

  Thus proving that she had been listening when she sat silent at the dinners with her uncle’s household.

  Pali nodded. “It is true that men of the city do not understand the importance of living wealth.”

  In their hands were treasures of a thousand years of gift-offerings to the Blue Wind and his wives. Pali recognized the designs of certain of the realms she had visited in her travels.

  “I would like to see more of the world,” said Sardeet.

  “It is full of many wonders,” agreed Pali.

  After three hours they had not finished going through one of the chests. Sardeet looked down at the wealth spread out across her carpets, looking even to Pali’s eyes like a goddess above her tribute. Sardeet said, “I am sick of idleness.”

  “Even shadows desire the opportunity to give shade to the weary,” Pali replied, and the two sisters smiled at each other and said no more.

  Six

  TEN DAYS AFTER SHE arrived in the city of Rin, Pali left it for the desert.

  She did not ride alone: she was accompanied by thirty-seven camels and the other three nomads of her clan, who were full of stories of their months in the city and trying very hard not to speak too much of the way in which Sardeet-savarel, the Bride of the Wind, had put off her widow’s white in favour of bridal scarlet, and ridden off to join Zamir the Knife-thrower and the caravan of entertainers.

  They did not tell Pali what they thought of Sardeet’s choice. Pali reflected that surely this could not be as disastrous as her sister’s first husband, and tried to put aside her disquiet. This was only partially effective, for if she succeeded in keeping her thoughts from the sister she left heading into the unknown behind her, that led her only to dwell on the likelihood of censure rising before her.

  Two years and three months ago she had taken the First Veils and headed off to remedy an injustice. She had borne no sword nor knife nor any bladed weapon in that time: the Rule of the Mountain was that no one who could not remedy an injustice without violence deserved to go forth armed into the world.

  Pali had not lifted a blade, though her right hand ached for the feel of a hilt in her grasp, and in the course of her travels an ordinary knife would have proven itself of great use in matters large and small and many times over, indeed—but the injustice she had righted had involved the slaughter of a god.

  A lesser god, and a wicked one ... but still. Pali had no regret whatsoever that she had broken the Blue Wind’s neck for him, but she did look on her future, and wonder if she should not have asked Sardeet for the ways one might pass beyond the borders of the world, and not returned to the Mountain afraid of the judgment of her
masters.

  IN HER MOTHER’S TENT she stayed only three nights. One night filled with feasting for her return, one night filled with news of her father’s brother and city (and her own travels) on the one hand, and the doings of the desert in the years of her absence on the other, and one night filled with recriminations that she had let Sardeet hare off after a knife-thrower to the other side of the Ihil.

  Neither Lonar Avramapul, the Bandit Queen of the Oclaresh, nor Aldizar aq Naarun aq Lo, once of the city of Rin, were as sanguine about their youngest daughter’s choices as Pali, and their middle daughter’s status as a Warrior of the First Veil was of far less weight than it had been to her uncle in the city. Nor did either mother or father set much store by the old sayings about each person casting her own shadow.

  “It seemed to me her heart was woken after long slumber,” Pali said, looking to her eldest sister for support. Arzu, sitting at her mother’s right hand, made a face and shrugged as if to say this was not a matter in which she could well intercede. Pali fumbled through too many solitary months. She had never been able to speak her thoughts fluently; only with a sword in her hand, or a horse between her legs, or a brush in her hand could she even begin to express her surface desires, let alone the deepest whispers of her soul. She spoke with blunt annoyance. “How could I stand between her and her heart’s desire?”

  “Her heart’s desire! Her son is the newest of the gods! What need has she to run off after a lover from the cities? Does he even hunt?”

  “He throws knives,” Pali said. “He was handsome. He offered her a token she accepted. I will see he pays the bride-price she requites. What more do you want?”

  “This is your fault,” said her father to her mother.