Authors: Laura Resnick
After one of the guards read it aloud, Derlen said in his punctilious way, "You will now sheathe your swords and treat the
torena
with the respect which is her due."
It was an impetuous comment for a Silerian to make. Although some fighting continued throughout Sileria, the Valdani had essentially withdrawn all the way back to Shaljir. Most of the country was already under rebel control. Outlookers were surrendering their remaining outposts throughout rural Sileria and fleeing to the dubious safety of Shaljir. This was their final stronghold, the site of their last stand in the island nation they had conquered two hundred years ago. They were awaiting Josarian's siege of the city, bracing themselves for the ultimate battle in this bloody war, and they were clearly not in a humor to tolerate
anything
from their enemies.
The city walls were gruesomely decorated with the heads of slain rebels. Dispossessed Silerians were leaving Shaljir in a steady stream. Most Silerians trying to enter the city had been turned away from this gate while Elelar had been awaiting her turn. Anyone who made it past the initial examination, as Elelar now did, was required to submit to a lengthy search. Elelar had anticipated that her baggage and her male servants would be searched, but she was appalled to discover that she and her maid, Faradar, must now submit to the pawing hands of two Outlookers if they wanted to reach their destination inside the city walls.
"I am a
torena
of the Hasnari clan," she snapped with regal anger. "I am also the wife of a Valdan. And I have already shown you my imperial pardon. How dare—"
"Body search or back to the mountains," a tall Outlooker interrupted with open rudeness. "The choice is yours,
torena
." He made her title sound like an insult.
Some more Silerians were being turned away from the gate. Elelar suspected it was only her status as a Valdan's wife—a situation made clear in her written pardon—that had let her get this far.
"My husband,
Toren
Ronall, will hear about this," she bluffed, still hoping to avoid the indignity of a search. Silerian women, even a Silerian woman with morals as flexible as Elelar's, did not submit to the touch of strangers.
"He will doubtless understand that we're doing this for his safety," the Outlooker replied, moving toward her with purpose. "No weapons enter Shaljir except those which will be used in defense of the Empire."
"Oh, for the love of Dar."
Elelar had to get into the city, and there was no other way. So she instructed Derlen and her other two male servants to cooperate, and she kept Faradar close to her as they submitted to the disgusting intrusion of the Outlookers' search. It was humiliating, particularly when the tall one felt between her legs without any warning or apology. She had to grind her teeth together to control her fury. However, she knew that Faradar had smuggled Tansen's swords into Shaljir by strapping them to her legs, when he had come here to rescue Elelar, so she realized the Outlookers weren't doing this for pleasure. They had simply stopped being careless. Besides, this man gave the impression of being bored beyond measure as his hands roamed freely over the two well-dressed women before him. Elelar supposed it was a small blessing that he had evidently done this so often that any prurience had by now faded into indifference.
As for telling Ronall.... Actually, Elelar hoped her half-caste husband had already fled Shaljir for the mainland. She had married that whoring drunkard, born of a Valdani father and a Silerian mother, strictly out of duty. She had taken advantage of his wealth and his Valdani connections to serve the Alliance. It was through Ronall, in fact, that she had met Borell, the former Imperial Advisor in Sileria. No matter how distasteful Elelar found Borell's bed, becoming his mistress had given her access to information that helped Josarian drive the Valdani out of the mountains. Soon after Elelar's arrest, Borell committed suicide when he realized he couldn't avoid the public disgrace earned by his careless passion for a woman who had repeatedly betrayed his trust to help the Silerian rebellion.
Ronall had, in his ineffectual way, tried to get Elelar out of prison by convincing his Valdani father to petition the Imperial Council on her behalf. When Ronall visited her once in prison, Elelar discovered, with mingled confusion and exasperation, that he even loved her in his strange and self-pitying way. The Valdani took Ronall hostage after Elelar's escape, but they eventually released him. Elelar didn't care, either way. What happened to Ronall was no longer any concern of hers. With her true loyalties exposed and with freedom so close she could smell it, the reasons for which she had married Ronall no longer applied. He was a Valdan and should go back to Valda. She hoped he already had. If not, if he was still in Shaljir, then she would make sure he left immediately. It shouldn't be hard, after all, to convince a coward like Ronall to flee Shaljir before it came under Silerian control.
Which it must. No matter what I have to do.
When the Outlookers were finally done with their lengthy search, Elelar was allowed to mount her horse and proceed through the Lion's Gate into the exotic city of Shaljir.
Here in Sileria's ancient capital, the island nation wore her long and tumultuous history like the jewels of an aging courtesan. Thirty-seven sky-reaching marble spires still rose gracefully above the city, though there had reputedly been three hundred of them during the reign of Daurion, the last Yahrdan of Sileria. The tall, round towers of the Moorlanders, who built thick walls around the city they had conquered after Daurion's death, still guarded Shaljir from enemies; and the enormous stone dragons and horned creatures which decorated these towers still protected Shaljir from the demons whom those hairy barbarians had feared more than they feared any mortal.
The complex and sophisticated culture of the Kints, who had taken Sileria from the Moorlanders, had gifted Shaljir with hundreds of red-domed stone buildings which had lasted even longer than Kintish rule in Sileria. The Kints had made Shaljir a city of fountains and flowing water, of bath houses and floating gardens.
The Society, of course, had changed much of that, gaining strength and power as the centuries passed, and making all of Sileria pay heavy tribute for the blessings of water. Even the Valdani, whose Emperor had waged relentless war against the Society for the past forty years, gave the waterlords what they wanted in order to ensure the flow of water into the conquered cities of Sileria.
And even the Valdani, Elelar admitted grudgingly, had contributed to the beauty of Shaljir. Their elaborate public palaces, ornate villas, and fine homes were impressive, if sometimes vulgarly ostentatious. Their broad boulevards and massive city-squares gave Shaljir an aura of grandeur that belied its humble status as a conquered city.
Some of Elelar's tension faded in her pleasure at returning home. She loved this city and had been away for too long, exiled in the mountains while her enemies continued to strategize an increasingly desperate war from Shaljir's Santorell Palace, the seat of imperial power in Sileria.
People from all the nations of Sirkara, the watery heart of the world, usually filled the crowded streets of the city. Men and women from all walks of life normally bustled and jostled for their place in the throng. But all that had changed since Elelar was last in Shaljir. If Advisor Kaynall had received news of Josarian's death, he had evidently not yet announced it to the city. Shaljir was still awaiting the rebels' planned siege—the long, bloody battle which the Alliance's betrayal of the Firebringer was supposed to make unnecessary. Josarian's death was meant to secure surrender and peace, to spare the Silerian rebels what promised to be the worst fight of the war. Shaljir had been conquered too many times to be thought impregnable, but it would be very costly for the rebels to take the city by force.
Houses, palaces, and shops were now boarded up and abandoned. Foreigners were conspicuously absent, though Elelar supposed that might be due to Valdania's two-front war on the mainland as much as to the battle expected in Shaljir. The colorful Kintish merchants and free Moorlander traders who were usually so abundant in Shaljir might have deemed it prudent to depart the Valdani-ruled city while their own nations were locked in deadly struggle with the Empire.
It was the two-front war on the mainland, of course, which had created the opportunity that Sileria had needed to make its bid for freedom. The Valdani had never expected it, and they couldn't rally the men, money, and supplies needed to suppress the Silerian rebellion before Josarian had driven them all the way back to Shaljir. But if they could hold on to the capital for a year, perhaps even just half a year, who knew which way the wars on the mainland would go? If the Kintish Kingdoms or the last free tribes of the Moorlands surrendered, the rebels in Sileria could never withstand the might which the Valdani could then bring down upon them with the mainland armies they would then be able to spare.
Whether through the secret treaty or—Dar forbid—the expected siege, Sileria must take Shaljir
now.
Delay could well mean disaster, an end to the rebellion, the death of all their dreams, and a brutal Valdani reconquest of Elelar's homeland.
"I feel almost as if we are strangers here," Elelar heard Faradar murmur to Derlen. "Everything has changed so much since we were last in the city."
Now there were no
shallaheen
, no sea-born, so Society assassins, no
zanareen
, and even very few lowlanders to be seen in Shaljir. Any faction known to support Josarian couldn't safely enter the last Valdani-ruled domain in Sileria.
There were Valdani everywhere, though, and many, many Outlookers. Even as darkness descended, Elelar saw long lines outside the few shops that were still doing business; people were evidently trying to hoard what food they could still find. So much water had been stored that Elelar even saw barrels on roofs and in courtyards. They thought Josarian would convince Kiloran to turn the Idalar River back on itself and starve the city of water. Or that, failing that, he could convince his ally and Kiloran's notorious enemy, Baran, to find a way to do it.
Thinking of this brought a sick lump of dread back into Elelar's belly. What would Kiloran do now? Whose side would Baran take in the coming struggle? How would the
shallaheen
respond to the news of Josarian's death? And what would Advisor Kaynall do?
It was with relief that she found her own house looking relatively normal under the encroaching night sky. Although Ronall was Valdani, they lived in a Silerian section of the city—because they lived in Elelar's house, the palatial residence she had inherited from her grandfather, Gaborian, who had founded the Alliance. Along with Elelar's parents, who had died when she was young, Gaborian had taught her to devote her life to the Alliance. She loved this house, as she had loved her grandfather. She had guarded its many secrets, as he had. Since her arrest, however, only one of its secrets remained: the mystical Beyah-Olvari who lived in the ancient tunnels running beneath the cellars.
"
Torena
," Derlen said, gaining her attention again. "I will go in first and ensure that you are properly received."
Elelar thought that was a little absurd, given the circumstances. She been in prison since last inhabiting this house, had spent most of the rainy season in a cave on Mount Niran, and lately had been living in a drafty, ruined villa outside of Chandar—and openly sharing her bed with Zimran, a
shallah
rebel. She knew that her house here had been sacked by the Outlookers when she was arrested, and she didn't even know if any servants had been inside it since then. It seemed doubtful, since no torches blazed outside the massive doors to herald the night. So Derlen's concern for her being received with the dignity due a
torena
almost made her laugh.
However, she nodded her head graciously and allowed him to do as he thought best, watching him as he entered the house.
Derlen was a Guardian, though he did not, of course, wear his insignia here in Shaljir. Guardians had been outlawed by the Valdani centuries before the rebellion, and they were now known to have been among Josarian's earliest supporters. Derlen was a fussy, slightly pompous widower whose rather irritating young son (left safely behind in Chandar for now) probably accounted for the early graying of his short hair. Born to a family of wealthy city-dwelling merchants from Shaljir, he had left the mountains to become part of Elelar's household during the rebellion, pleased to return to the city and act as a link between the Alliance and the Guardians. After escaping Shaljir when Elelar was arrested, he had, like most of her other servants, rejoined her when she settled temporarily near Chandar. They had never actually discussed it, but he now seemed to be a permanent part of her household. He still carried messages between the Alliance and the Guardians, but he was increasingly devoted to ministering to her household's spiritual needs. Although more than a little lapsed in her religious observances, Elelar accepted his presence as fitting. It had once been the custom for
toreni
households to have a Guardian in residence. It should, she decided, become the custom again.
Whatever Elelar was expecting next, it certainly wasn't that Derlen would come flying backwards out of the imposing front door of her house and roll painfully down the broad stone steps to land in a heap before her startled mount.