The Heart of the Mirage Read online

  ‘You still are,’ he said with a laugh. ‘Ligea, I am dirty with the dust of my journey. I’ve spent most of the day with my backside plonked in the saddle of a gorclak. I smell of sex and sweat and animal hide—how about a soak in that sunken bath of yours?’

  I tilted my head. ‘With me?’

  His eyes twinkled. ‘I thought you’d never ask.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I stood on the deck of the Flying Windhover and reflected that, for all the flying this ship did, it would have been better named the Wallowing Pig. I had taken the first convenient sailing, and I was beginning to regret it. It wasn’t that I was so eager to reach Kardiastan; it was just that being cooped up for so long in such a small space gave me an intimate understanding of why a lion paces up and down in his cage. Four weeks, and we still weren’t in Sandmurram. The seamaster blamed the weather and the cargo; the first because the winds were contrary, the second because the weight of the Tyranian marble we carried made the ship unwieldy. So he said. I was inclined to think the Flying Windhover probably always moved like a pregnant sow.

  ‘Why on earth are we taking marble to Kardiastan anyway?’ I asked Aemid idly. She was standing beside me, leaning over the rail watching the bow wave curl back like fruit-peel before a knife.

  She snorted. ‘Let me guess: so that your soldiers and administrators can build houses and public buildings to match their status. You people don’t like to live in homes made of our Kardi adobe—not good enough for you. And we Kardis are taxed to pay for the marble and the construction of course, because you say the Exaltarchy’s soldiers and civil servants are serving the Kardi people.’

  ‘And so they are,’ I said, nettled both by Aemid’s criticism and her deliberate use of the words ‘you’ and ‘we’. I gave her a sharp look. I didn’t like the change I’d noted in her ever since the first mention of going to Kardiastan. I liked neither the overt realignment of loyalties nor the suppressed anger I had detected once or twice. But it puzzled me too. Aemid was not in the habit of being provoking and I’d never had to question her loyalties before. What in all Acheron’s mists was wrong with the woman?

  I tried to explain. ‘Tyrans provides the soldiers for security and the administrators for efficiency, all paid out of Tyranian public coffers; so why shouldn’t Kardiastan pay for their housing and for the public buildings, buildings that will belong to Kardi Province when they are completed? There is always a price for peace, Aemid.’ I reached out—as I had often done lately—to touch her emotions, and felt her confusion. Just then the predominant feeling was one of bitterness.

  ‘Aemid,’ I asked softly, ‘what is the matter? You are not happy. Do you regret coming with me?’

  ‘Never.’ The word was uncompromisingly definite and I needed no special intuition to know it was the truth.

  ‘Then what is it?’

  ‘Memories. Just memories. The closer we come—’ She looked away from the sea to my face. ‘I have a son there somewhere, if he survived. All these years…I have tried not to remember. Now I think of nothing else.’

  I felt as though one of the waves had just slapped cold water across my face. ‘A son? You left a child behind in Kardiastan? But you were—what, twenty?—when you came to Tyr, so he could have hardly been more than a baby! Why did you leave him?’

  ‘Leave him? I didn’t leave, I was stolen! I was made a slave, sold, because I kicked a legionnaire who put his hand between my legs. Sentenced to the slave block for kicking a man’s knobs.’

  I was immeasurably shocked, not so much by the severity of the sentence as by its unlawful consequence. I protested, ‘But it is not permitted for slaves to be separated from their young children!’

  ‘Perhaps that’s what the law says, but who cares about the words of the law in the chaos following a conquest? A woman sells better without encumbrances.’

  ‘Oh, Aemid—I did not know…’

  ‘You never asked.’

  The words were stark, summing up a lifetime of attitudes, and they stung. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said at last, not sure just why I was apologising. For my ignorance? For Tyr? Even to my own ears the words sounded weak. Inadequate. ‘As you say, in times of conquest…Aemid, do you have any way of finding out what happened to him?’

  ‘None. I do not know who took him—or, in fact, if anyone did. He may have died of neglect within days. He is lost to me.’

  I felt an irrational guilt and did not know what to say. Finally I asked, sounding more abrupt than I intended, if she would tell me more about Kardiastan. I added, ‘After all, it is my land too. Why did you never tell me about it?’

  ‘The General forbade me. The only thing he allowed was that I taught you the tongue. That, he wanted. Don’t you remember how he used to question you about all I said to you? He checked up on me whenever he could.’

  ‘He was interested in all I learned.’

  ‘Oh yes. Indeed.’ The bitterness was there again. ‘He made sure you were brought up Tyranian, every thought in your head.’

  ‘He adopted me legally so that I could be a citizen of Tyrans. It is natural he wanted me to be loyal to his country, the country he made mine.’ Tyrans was the hub of the world, filled with people of every hue and varied customs, a place where my skin tone and the place of my birth could be rendered irrelevant by my citizenship—but only if I was seen to be Tyranian in every other way. And I was. I was proud that every thought in my head was Tyranian.

  I hid my exasperation with Aemid and said, ‘But tell me about Kardiastan.’

  ‘Like what? As you yourself were quick to remind me, the place I knew twenty-five or thirty years ago is not going to be what’s there now, is it? We were free then! I was free…’

  I was still casting about for a way to answer that, to give her some speech about the benefits of Tyranian rule, when she poured out more of her bile: ‘Tyrans may have conquered our bodies, but there are two things the legions can never kill.’ She beat the side of her fist against her chest. ‘What’s in here. Our essensa.’

  I didn’t know the word, so she added, ‘The life-force in every Kardi heart.’

  ‘And the second thing?’

  She pushed herself away from the railing and looked me straight in the eye. ‘The Magor.’

  ‘The Magor? What is that?’

  ‘The day you understand the Magor will be the day you renounce Tyrans, Legata.’ Without waiting to be dismissed, she walked away across the deck to the companionway. I frowned at her back as she disappeared below. Aemid was becoming much too forward; I hoped I wouldn’t have to discipline her. I wasn’t even sure how to go about it. Anyway, Aemid, like Brand, was almost family. Bought in a slave mart about the same time as I had arrived in Tyr, she was the only mother-figure I could remember with any clarity. I ran to Aemid when in trouble as a child; it was Aemid who dried my tears. My adoptive mother, Salacia, had mostly ignored me.

  I sighed and was glad when Brand, who had been sitting on a nearby cargo hatch, moved across to me, unbothered by the ship’s roll. He’d spent most of the voyage out on the open deck and his skin had darkened; it was now a match to my natural colouring. His hair, on the other hand, had lightened. The red streak had become a flash of copperish gold.

  ‘Aemid been upsetting you, Legata?’ he inquired.

  ‘Oh, shut up, Brand. I sometimes wonder if the two of you are worth the trouble!’

  ‘Ah. Well, I do know of a remedy for that, of course,’ he drawled, fingering his slave collar.

  I ignored that and changed the subject. ‘Brand, has Aemid ever spoken to you about Kardiastan?’

  He dropped the pose and was serious. ‘Never, Legata. I wish she would. I’m curious about the place myself. It’s funny, that; I’ve met a number of Kardi slaves over the years and there’s not one who’s ever told me a thing about their homeland. Still, it shouldn’t worry you; the Brotherhood must have been able to tell you anything you wanted to know.’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ I said gloomily. ‘
All I received from my esteemed Brothers was a history lesson about the conquest. As remarkable as it may seem, they know nothing about the Kardis. They don’t even seem to understand much about the situation there now, and yet we purport to rule the place.’ Even as I said the words, I wondered if they were true. Perhaps it was simply that the Brotherhood had not been honest with me. Rathrox, for example, must surely have known about the coming Stalwart invasion, yet he had not mentioned it, any more than I was going to mention it to Brand now.

  Distrustful old bastard, I thought, thinking of the Magister Officii.

  I continued, confirming my thoughts with my own words, ‘And this even though Rathrox Ligatan was actually there for a time. Years ago, though. He was assistant to General Gayed. Although Pater wasn’t in charge of the original invasion; Bator Korbus was.’ I nodded at Brand’s startled expression. ‘Yes, the Exaltarch himself, in the days when he was High General and nothing else. But I’m not surprised you didn’t know; believe me, taking part in that first Kardiastan campaign is not something any of them boast about.’

  Intrigued by the Exaltarch’s personal interest in my mission to Kardiastan, I had done some research. As a result, I thought I now knew just what had prompted the bitterness in Korbus’s voice when he spoke of the land of my birth. More than twenty-five years ago he’d had his pride wounded and time had not effected a cure; on the contrary, the original injury had festered. The Exaltarch hated Kardiastan.

  The thought of a Tyranian defeat apparently amused Brand. He smiled as he asked, ‘The campaign wasn’t successful?’

  ‘Tyrans was thoroughly routed at a place called the Rift. I gather it’s a huge valley gashing the country from side to side. Rathrox described it to me as a place of howling winds and inhospitable terrain. When our legionnaires tried to cross it, fearful windstorms maddened their gorclaks and swept away their stores and camps. And all the while the Kardis harried them. So many soldiers were never seen again, and those who did manage to retreat told strange tales.’ I snorted in disparagement as I recalled Rathrox’s account. ‘Such silly stories: warriors—both men and women—glowing with an eerie light, whirling winds that whipped swords out of hands, legionnaires who suddenly dropped dead with burn marks scorched through their cuirasses…Silliness to explain an inexplicable defeat. What is true, and almost as hard to believe, is that the legions involved were nearly wiped out. That first campaign was a dismal failure, the only time Bator Korbus ever personally lost a battle. He returned to Tyr immediately afterwards. He left the problems to Gayed and Rathrox and went back to begin his bid for the Exaltarch’s seat.’

  ‘So how did Tyrans win in the end?’

  An unexpected gust of wind hit the Flying Windhover and we were dappled with spray as she heeled. I said, ‘There were other campaigns in the years that followed, some equally disastrous. Eventually the legions changed their tactics. They used small groups of legionnaires in quick attacks and ambushes and then they were more successful. In the end, though, it was treachery of one of the Kardi nobility that brought Kardi noses down into the dirt at the feet of Tyrans.’

  ‘One of the nobility? They had a royal line? A king?’

  ‘As far as I could find out from Brotherhood records, there used to be a kind of royal oligarchy with a hereditary leader. All administration was in the hands of this ruling group.’

  ‘It must surely have been quite large,’ Brand remarked, shifting stance with easy grace as the ship changed tack.

  ‘Yes. The nobles were scattered all over the country, but the highest rank lived mainly in Madrinya, the capital. It was impossible for an ordinary Kardi to move into the ruling class.’

  ‘The Exaltarchy has changed all that since, naturally,’ he said, his voice as bland as his expression. ‘Now anyone who proves his loyalty to Tyr can serve in a position of importance.’

  Although there was nothing to indicate he was mocking the Exaltarchy, I knew he was. The normal method of rewarding loyalty wasn’t successful in Kardiastan: no one there wanted to serve Tyrans. And Brand must have found that out. He smiled, a lazy smile in my direction. ‘Sailors,’ he explained, weaving a hand in the direction of one of the crew. ‘They gossip.’

  ‘What else have they told you?’

  ‘They say the ordinary Kardi was not even part of the army back before the Tyranian invasion. That it was only the highborn who fought. Is that true?’

  ‘Rathrox said as much, yes. He told me there were rumours saying the nobility possessed special powers that made them invincible, but that was all superstitious nonsense, of course. Still, the nobles must have been fine fighters, otherwise how could they have put whole legions on the run? Especially those led by a soldier like the Exaltarch? And later by my father, Gayed?’

  ‘What happened to this highborn traitor?’

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ I frowned again, remembering. It had been Rathrox who told me about the treachery leading to Kardiastan’s fall and he had been deliberately vague. ‘The details don’t matter,’ he’d said. For once, I’d been puzzled by his reticence. I was going to be working alone, so I would need all the information I could get. Instead of giving it to me, Rathrox had been evasive, even contradictory. The idea of a traitor did not seem to fit with what he had earlier told me about the Kardis never betraying their own, thus making the work of the Brotherhood impossible in Kardiastan. I sighed and rubbed at my left palm with my thumb tip. ‘He probably committed suicide,’ I said, in answer to Brand’s question. ‘I’ve noticed such people often do. They can’t live with what they’ve done. And this man had done a lot—because of him, almost all the top stratum of nobility was slaughtered while they were unarmed, attending a feast.

  ‘Another full legion was sent from Tyrans after that, and General Gayed became High Commander for Kardiastan. A major battle took place, which Tyrans won this time. You see, with the death of so many of their highest nobility, the Kardis lost most of their military commanders and civil leadership. The war wasn’t entirely over, but Gayed and Rathrox went home to Tyr anyway. Fighting continued in Kardiastan for a further five years. Just skirmishes mainly.’ I turned to look out over the stern. A few seabirds with huge wingspans cruised effortlessly in our wake, clipping the wave crests with their wingtips. ‘You know, it’s strange—I hadn’t realised both Rathrox and my father spent so long in Kardiastan. They must have been there all of four years. Neither of them ever told me that.’

  Brand leant beside me as a small flotilla of fishing dhows dipped and wallowed their way out from the coast we had been following, their hide sails taut with the wind. The seabirds left us to follow them instead. ‘Where do you fit into all this anyway?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know the details. I was never told. I was just an orphaned Kardi child Gayed came across somewhere. As I said, he and Rathrox were recalled to Tyrans soon after the victory following the betrayal, and I went with them.’

  ‘You are probably the child of one of those noble families.’ He snorted. ‘The Magister Officii and the General would have loved the irony of that.’

  ‘I don’t suppose for a minute my father knew who I was, or cared. In a war, children get separated from their parents all the time. They get orphaned and abandoned. And it certainly doesn’t matter now. I am Tyranian, and glad of it.’

  Brand looked back at me, expressionless. ‘And now the Magister Officii wants you to put down the beginnings of a rebellion against Tyrans. One would almost think the ordinary people of Kardiastan are not grateful at being freed from the oppressive rule of their nobility.’

  There was no inflection of mockery in his voice, but I stirred uneasily nonetheless. Suddenly nothing was as it had been; I was questioning things I had never questioned before: Aemid’s love, Brand’s loyalty, Tyrans’s strength…I shivered and rubbed still harder at my palm.

  ‘Legata!’

  I turned to see the Flying Windhover’s seamaster trying to draw my attention to something from where he stood inside the wheelhous
e.

  ‘Sandmurram!’

  I followed the line of his pointing finger and saw the brown blotches of a town against the dusky blue of the coastline. With an unexpected feeling of wonder, I realised this might have been the port I had sailed from some twenty-five years earlier. Perhaps I had stood on the deck of a ship similar to this one and had seen this same scene recede just as I would now watch it approach.

  In theory, I was coming home—but to Ligea Gayed, this had never been home, and never would be. Why then did I feel fear: not of Kardiastan, but of what it would tell me about myself?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Sandmurram: the main port of Kardiastan. A bay that was a natural harbour, with the port buildings tiered from its edge; a town on flatter land beyond. Flatroofed, two-storeyed houses of brown adobe, unplastered, unpainted, squatting along the streets like cattle dozing in the sun.

  I saw it all with the eyes of a stranger; I had no recollection of ever having seen it before. Beside me, Aemid gripped the rail and stared, her emotions and the avid hunger of her gaze so intense they startled me.

  The seamaster flag-signalled my presence on his ship as soon as we approached the port, so I was met at the dockside by a legionnaire escort. The officer in charge offered me a litter ride to the Prefect’s house, but I preferred to walk. I wanted to survey this land, not because it was the place of my birth, but because the hunter needed to know the haunts of her prey.