Page 44 of Fate of the Argosi

The wetness I’d felt on my lips? That had come from something far less sinister, but nearly as unsettling.

‘Did you . . . ?’ I gawped at Arissa, unable to get the words out, refusing to believe it was possible even as my arta eres went back through every single step of what she’d done. Events of only seconds before flashed through my memory like a deck of cards being riffled before the last deal of the game. ‘You spun around, knocked all six sword points out of line, then jumped up in the air. You threw my cards, all while gambling that I’d manage to knock half the guards out of the way before you landed to give you enough space to duck down before the other three could complete their thrusts. And then . . . in that split second between narrowly surviving this insane manoeuvre and almost certainly getting skewered, you risked it all just to . . . kiss me?’

I have seen a great many grins in my eighteen years. I’ve worn plenty of them myself. But never have I seen a grin so fierce, so mischievous, so damnably smug as the one on Arissa’s face when she said dropped a mock curtsy and said, ‘Ta-da!’

As if on cue – and a part of me wondered whether somehow, on top of everything, she’d somehow timed it precisely that way – the cords holding the tapestry above the balcony gave way. The strands had been cut clean through by the razor-sharp edges of the cards Arissa had hurled while spinning in the air. With only twelve cards and a single flick of the wrist, she’d sliced through all six cords.

I was definitely going to need more practice.

We all watched as the tapestry fell, first across the railing to dangle precariously for a few seconds, before the weight of the top half caused the whole thing to slide over and land at the feet of the Jan’Tep delegation below. From the shadows of a narrow passage behind the balcony, seven figures emerged. They spread out along the railing to gaze down at Ala’tris and her coven. None of them spared the rest of us so much as a glance.

I thought something was wrong, that for some reason Colfax had brought us before not the Mahdek elders but a group of ageing Daroman nobles. Most were close to his age, a couple even older. They wore fine garments, men and women alike draped in long coats of varying colours and fabrics, ruffles of cream or pale grey down the front of the shirts beneath. Their sleeves glinted from the ornate inlay of silver or gold thread, and the bright ribbons at their cuffs matched those binding their elegantly coiffed hair into elaborate arrangements. I wasn’t the only one who noticed this departure from Mahdek custom, which usually called for the hair to be worn down.

Laughter boomed throughout the hall, bitter as an early winter freeze, all of it coming from one man. ‘Look at these parading dandies!’ Chedran declared. ‘Witness what has become of the venerable elders of the Mahdek, who cast me out for standing up to those who’d massacred our people! What has happened to you all? Some sad-eyed, slack-jawed Daroman marshal gave you permission to run rampant through closets filled with abandoned courtiers’ clothes he considered too foppish to wear himself?’ He started prancing about in a small circle like a show pony. ‘Now you preen about his home, playing at being the aristocrats of a people too feeble and destitute to even feed themselves?’

The silence his performance left behind was a damning indictment. Six of the elders shuffled aside, making room for a woman shorter than the rest whose darkly tanned skin was crinkled like paper left out in the sun too long. When those wrinkled lips parted, I half expected a gasping wheeze to come out. Instead, hers was a voice as strong and clear as Chedran’s, only more so because there was nothing brittle or frenzied in her response. ‘A people on the brink of extinction do not have the luxury of hanging on to outdated traditions. Tattered and flea-ridden rags bestow no great dignity upon the wearer any more than childish outbursts confer moral authority to a murderer.’

Chedran’s reply was quieter than before, less manic and yet with an edge sharp as a drawn blade and twice as threatening. ‘You, above all others, should not speak to me of moral authority, old woman.’

The elder gripped the railing with both hands, fingers curled around the brass so tightly that I half expected her to leap over and hurl herself at him. ‘And you,beneathall others, should know by now that I will speak however I must,dowhatever is necessary for the survival of our people. That is no less true now than on the day I exiled you, my beloved son.’

26

Sovereign Diplomacy

There’s too much pain in the world. Too much suffering.

That’s not my bleeding heart talking, that’s a fact, plain and simple. Some pain, some suffering, is inevitable: avalanches, earthquakes, disease, drought, old age, lost love. Every Argosi will readily acknowledge that these things are part of life, and must be, if not celebrated, at least recognised as the essential darkness without which light and joy would be meaningless.

There’s another kind of pain though, another kind of suffering. It’s the kind that shouldn’t exist, that’s unnatural. The kind that’s just plain wrong. No wife or husband deserves to be beaten by their spouse. Nobody should be made to starve or have their body subjected to torture. Those aren’t part of the natural order of things. They’re not the consequences of fate or acts of the gods. The world could turn for a thousand ages just fine without any of those awful acts ever being committed.

There has to be pain, there has to be suffering, and, sure, maybe sometimes a boy has to be exiled into the wilderness, cast out by his own clan. But you tell me, is there any reason in this world or any other why the person who condemns him to almost certain death should be his own mother?

Therein lies the difference between some folks and the Argosi.

‘You gonna lose it?’ Arissa asked me.

She wasn’t worried about Chedran any more. He was practically in his element: standing tall, chin raised, jaw clenched at the injustices heaped upon him. He almost seemed relieved when the Mahdek elders, far from being shocked at his return or, better yet, condemning their leader – Stoika, they called her – for having exiled him in the first place, pretended not to have heard the exchange between them. Instead they stood calmly behind the curved railing of the balcony, listening with studied indifference as Ala’tris presented the secret island she and the other restitutionists had found for the Mahdek people.

‘They’re acting like aristocrats,’ I muttered, only dimly aware that Arissa had asked me something a moment ago. ‘Like they’ve elected themselves sovereigns.’

The Mahdek never had much use for sovereigns these past three hundred years. The war with the Jan’Tep had ended in a series of escalating atrocities committed by both sides in response to the other. Eventually we’d run out of people and stopped being a nation. In most great conflicts, the conquered are assimilated by the victors or else disperse to become part of other countries. That didn’t happen in the case of the Mahdek.

The Jan’Tep were obsessed with the idea that somehow the Mahdek might one day regain control of the oases and poison the magic against them. Tales of Mahdek spellshapers and shamans consorting with demons persisted until gradual genocide became a practice not only justified but considered necessary to preserve the peace. And, as everybody knows, peace is the one cause so just and noble that no amount of violence is too great a price to bring it about.

The funny thing was, without all those generations of young Jan’Tep mages going off to hunt us ‘demon worshippers’, without their diplomatic envoys spreading accounts of our vile deeds and disease-ridden blood, there wouldn’tbeany Mahdek left in the world. Our ancestors would’ve settled in other places, mated with other peoples and slowly faded from history. But since nobody wants to make babies with a demon worshipper – especially when doing so might get you a late-night visit from some hextracker or bounty mage or even one of your own especially patriotic neighbours – the Mahdek bloodlines remained almost as pure as the hatred between our two peoples.

‘What a coup it would be .?.?.’ said one of the elders, a man with craggy skin and sallow cheeks at odds with the rich auburn locks tied in a gentlemanly ponytail with dark green ribbon. The hair of a Mahdek doesn’t grey or whiten with age. In fact, some codgers like to claim it becomes ever more vibrant with the years. He banged the palm of his hand on the brass railing of the balcony from where he and the others looked down on the rest of us. ‘What a triumph for a young coven of mages to return home with the scalps of the last two hundred and eighty-seven living Mahdek, eh?’

Neither the Jan’Tep nor anyone else, other than the occasional outlawed Berabesq religious sect, scalps their enemies any more. It makes a good story for when you’re trying to terrify Mahdek children into never straying from the clan though.

‘Then it would seem a poorly conceived plan, given we have turned ourselves over to you,’ Ala’tris said evenly. Lines of weariness were beginning to show on her otherwise smooth forehead. She gestured behind her. ‘Perhaps next time we attempt such a scheme we’ll make the gift seem more enticing.’

A floating island constructed from shimmering, multi-coloured sand dominated the centre of the greeting hall. It rotated slowly for all to see, upon the calm waters of what appeared to be an ocean of pure onyx. Sar’ephir, who’d been holding the spell for nearly two hours while Ala’tris attempted to explain the nature of the island and why it had remained undiscovered so long, was struggling to stay on her feet and pale despite the thick make-up she always wore.

‘How better to rid your people of us once and for all,’ coughed out a second man whose brocaded burgundy coat was a near match for the thick red curls ribboned in black, ‘than by marooning us in the middle of what may well be a hell itself!’

Ala’tris sighed. Jir’dan threw up his hands and only kept quiet when Ala’tris gave a short, sharp shake of her head. Even some of Colfax’s guards rolled their eyes as the endless cycle of argumentation returned yet again to its central proposition.

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