Aquila's Ring Read online

  Aquila’s Ring

  By Cat Rambo

  Copyright 2014 Cat Rambo

  This story originally appeared in Shadows and Light II, 2011.

  Aquila’s Ring

  When Aquila Nenyuk stepped out of the afternoon sun of Meleth’s Circle into the Trader’s Inn, she wore her new robes as self-consciously as her new status. She was one of the elite of the city of Allanak now, a Templar of the Highlord Tektolnes.

  Curtain beads tugged the cobalt fabric, clinked as she passed through, out of the Circle’s slants of sunlight and heat-stupefied shadows. Unlike the other Templars who had graduated from the Academy that morning, she hadn’t been born to silk. Even now, she was the lowest rank possible, a Blue Robe. But still, her presence sent beggars scurrying from her dark-eyed gaze and had the city’s commoners and merchants rising when she entered a room. As now.

  She barely acknowledged each cluster of people with a sharp-chinned nod, noting who rose and who did not. Junior nobles and high-status merchants filled the Inn’s smoky confines, with a scattering of servants.

  A Tzai Byn Lieutenant rose and bowed with stiff-backed precision at a back table. Was that a Fale with him? Perhaps some deal for an exhibition match? The Lords and Ladies Fales were always coming up with grand schemes designed to garner money for the noble house that everyone in Allanak knew was failing. Some of their schemes were even possible, but the execution invariably failed.

  Aquila read the composition of the tables carefully. A Templar knew who was in favor, who wasn’t, who was looking to change their situation, who would resist change.

  Tuluki spies were what she was supposed to search for, come southward in the service of the northern, twisted version of the Templarate. But unless she knew the political situation in Allanak inside and out, she would not be able to spot the oddities, the interruptions in the social pattern that pointed to outside influences. To visitors of the wrong sort.

  You could trace them through their money. She’d pass by her House’s offices later, to see what clues the Bank of Nenyuk held. Who had exchanged money or merchants’ tallies? Who had asked about buying or renting property? Who was spending money on gems or costly goods? The answers wouldn’t just tell her what outsiders were up to, but would give her insight into what her fellow Templars were planning. Allanak Templars were known for their fierce infighting.

  Being from a merchant house had its disadvantages as far as social status went. But it had its advantages as well.

  Someone beckoned to her – a red-cloaked noble, the sort she had never been allowed to consort with before. But here he was, trying to catch her attention. She looked back, her stare direct and to the point, squaring her shoulders as though about to marshal a battle squadron.

  He was pale-haired, dark-eyed. Even more appealing, he was also clean, in the way of nobility, clearly not a stranger to soap and water. Embroidered scorpions wriggled lavishly along his lapels. He must be allied with Tor. She kept revising her estimate of his age as she approached his table, finally deciding that he was her own age. Perhaps a touch older, but certainly, certainly, not much younger.

  He smiled at her.

  She was unused to that expression on a noble’s face. It was not one a merchant was likely to see. I’m templar first now and Nenyuk second, she thought with a thrill of satisfaction. Indeed, templars could find themselves ranked higher than many nobles. She resolved to work hard to achieve such a status.

  This was one of the moments whose vision had driven her through the Templarate Academy, through the lazy, callous cruelties of those who could do things no other caste could. The nobles could carry swords, could read and write all sorts of languages, down to small and petty laws – usually unenforced.

  “Will you sit down and drink with me, Lady?” he said.

  She considered him. His hair was deep reddish brown like wood that had gone to stone. His eyes an emerald bordering on black. A scar along one side of his face looked like an old sword. Some training exercise? His clothing was well-cut, but not ostentatious. Classic rather than flashy. Something about him was familiar.

  Should she decline? She was tired, not at her sharpest, despite the thrill of her first day out of the Academy. It had passed in a flood of details, finding her assigned housing, her designated guards, even the issued ring that gleamed on her finger. Embarrassment hit her when he seemed surprised as she nodded and sat.

  She kept her face expressionless, carefully still. He recalled himself and signaled with a studied, languid gesture for a servant to bring her wine.

  “Marius Tor,” he said.

  Hours of study boiled in her head as she tried to remember what she knew about Tor. Did he have a twin sister or was that the Renniks? The Rennik were prone to twins, after all.

  And yet his next words were “I am sorry my sister did not accompany me. She would have enjoyed meeting an envoy from the Minister of War as well.”

  A name floated up from her memory. “Jonnandra?”

  He smiled. “You know your houses well, Lady Aquila.”

  She betrayed no surprise in turn at his use of her name. Every noble and merchant house researched the crop of new Templar candidates. Most of her compatriots in the Academy had personal servants, often retained that had been with that particular noble House for years. She’d seen them gossiping about their masters and mistresses in the kitchen and scullery, and most of them sold information to eke out their salaries.

  She looked again at the scorpions on his cloak and then recognition shocked through her.

  “You!” she blurted out, startled.

  Three days earlier, all of the Templarate candidates waited to hear the results of the two-week series of exams they had taken. Many of them celebrated the results in advance, some because they were too cocksure, others with the confidence born of bribery or talent.

  Aquila would have liked to have thought herself in the very lattermost of these groups, but she didn’t want to think about it too much and jinx anything. Still, she had cautiously allowed herself to invest free time in future plans. One of these was property.

  She had been maintaining a strict financial discipline, saving up for one of the property opportunities she knew would come her way as a Templar. She knew a place that had been derelict for a while, down in the Commoners Quarter. Its rooftop garden was terraced, grown over with cactus and climbing, thorny vines. She planned to lock it up in city records soon. There were other properties she had seen, but she liked that one, liked its unassuming demeanor, as though it promised hidden depths.

  She had kept an eye on the place for a week or two to satisfy herself that no squatters had found a way to slip inside its walls. Its shutters were barred tight. She had been including it on her early morning walks and that morning, as the bloody sun gleamed on the city’s obsidian walls, she had given into the urge to step close to the windows and stand on tiptoes to try to peer through the shutter’s main crack into what she thought might prove to be the kitchen.

  This early in the day, few stirred on the street, and she had thought herself safe enough. Most were still enjoying the coolness that the desert’s night winds had brought. Drifts of fog lay along the street’s baked-clay bricks. Enough fog to conceal a figure until it was nearly upon her. She’d pulled away from the window as though from a wasp’s nest, as though caught in some criminal act.

  He’d kept on walking, politely ignoring her, but their eyes had met through the translucent air, and she’d caught the flash of sword at his hip, the scorpions at his hem. She flushed now at the memory, but his face betrayed no recollection of the incident.

  She took a breath, steeling herself. Had she been tapped by the Tors? Interesting, but not surprising – they fancied themselves the most military house, and they ha
d furnished many of the Ministry of War’s most notable figures. But why would they think her particularly corruptible? Her merchant blood? Nenyuk had served the citystate well for centuries now.

  “There were not many War Templars this year,” Marius observed.

  “Myself, Arrak Fale, Jerom Borsail, Sathis Valika, and Nestor Valika,” she said, nodding. The sharp, sweet wine had a dusty aftertaste of ocotillo bulbs. Expensive.

  Marius studied her as she sipped the liquid. “Templars from merchant families usually select the Ministry of Trade.”

  This time she did let an eyebrow arch in surprise at the directness. He flushed.

  “I have always preferred logistics to profits,” she said. “An army moves only as quickly as its quartermasters permit.”

  “Something many generals do not acknowledge,” he said. “Do you play izdari?”

  “I do,” she said, curiosity piqued. The game was often accounted common, an occupation of the low-born. But she knew – as did Marius, she suspected – that its patterns echoed those of desert warfare, supply wagons and blocking dunes, archers and ambushes, and provided exercise in both logistics and warfare/

  “Perhaps you would accord me the pleasure of a game.”

  She nodded. At his gesture, a servant slid a board onto the table and set the pieces in alignment, carved from semi-precious stones – obsidian on one side, jade on the other.

  They played. His style was enigmatic. Hers was careful. She probed to discover his strategies, teased his flanks with archers and baited his intentions with knights.

  In the end she pushed too far, curious to see how he would react. He moved in for the kill.

  She tipped her king, chagrinned by the loss.

  “You play well,” he said.

  “My uncles liked to play,” she said. She sipped her wine – half of it gone in nearly an hour’s time.

  He looked at the level of the liquid and laughed. “Are you afraid that if you drink faster, people will take you for a drunkard?”

  She looked down into the goblet. “We were warned by our instructors to be sober,” she said. “They said citizens of Allanak would be quick to take advantage of weaknesses and that drink, spice and lewd behaviors might lead to perceptions of weakness.”

  “And so you are not prone to drink or spice or…lewd behaviors, I take it? Drink the rest and then walk its mighty effects off with me.”

  She did, feeling the warm flush of alcohol hit her stomach. It was soon gone, though, and had vanished entirely by the time they rounded the southwestern side of Meleth’s Circle. The great roadway, its stone blocks rutted with the years, curved around the Dragon Temple at the city’s heart.

  Promises of stars dotted the hazy sky. They moved down Caravan Way towards the western gate. Marius walked quickly, but Aquila matched his stride with ease. She had prided herself in the Academy that she could keep up with the others. Despite the slightness of her form, her hands were calloused and her shoulders corded with muscle.

  She noticed that Marius was not one for soft living. The sword that swung at his hip was well-balanced and blade scars marked his hands. He moved with ease despite a slight limp, his step purposeful.

  They passed the bustle and noise of a stable, the boozy fumes of the Gladiator Tavern, the silent echo of the King’s Stone court. Up ahead, two watch fires gleamed atop the gate.

  “You’ve been up here before?” Marius asked.

  “Once or twice, during training,” she said.

  “We won’t go up there yet – it’s most beautiful at sunrise.”

  She did not demur at the assumption that she would still be with him at sunrise. Instead they turned north along Wall Road and walked the Elementalists’ Quarter, passing along the silent, streets.

  Wherever they went, peace lay over the city. Unsurprising, Aquila thought, given the two soldiers that accompanied her, or Marius’ own bodyguards, who moved behind and ahead of them, a protective cage of bone and steel.

  Still, she didn’t permit herself to relax. She wouldn’t be the first templar to be assassinated just out of the gate. Many Houses preferred not to have to factor new Templars into the established equation. Like a clutch of desert snakes – only the strongest, the most determined, would survive

  She walked beside Marius, conscious of the citron scent he wore and his cape’s rustle, the gravel crunch of his boots on Ruk’s path changing to clipped footfalls on the flagstones of Whira’s Way.

  She breathed in the night air and the waft from an alleyway as they passed, cautious and alert and curious as to his purpose.

  As their steps sounded along the path of Elkros, they began to talk. Comparing their studies, they found both had made note of the northern campaigns, and that they agreed that Tuluk must be totally subjugated before Allanak could consider itself safe. Marius had recently traveled to the occupied territory but Aquila had not since she was a toddler.

  She remembered the North primarily for its trees. The greenness, the texture of the landscape after so many miles of desert and scrub plains had astonished and delighted her, but also left her faintly uneasy, as though something primal, basic were wrong, that there could be so many plants thriving in a single place.

  Marius nodded. “The desert landscape best expresses the soul.”

  Just before sunrise, they ascended the stone stairs. They nodded to the soldiers there and paused to warm their hands over a fire before ascending even further to the arch’s tip.

  Aquila leaned against the black stone, enjoying its chill bite against her legs. Marius stood beside her. He did not touch the stone but stood straight and still, like a soldier at attention.

  The darkness changed all at once in the space of a single breath. One moment there was only blackness and then red light cascaded from behind them as Suk-Krath tipped the eastern plain. The shadow of the city’s walls swept out for leagues across the crimson desert. Black ripples marked hump and star dunes, configurations of sand and wind, each line a variation on a theme. The landscape echoed through her and brought tears to her eyes.

  Marius’s hand touched hers. His fingers intertwined with hers and then slipped away before she could react.

  “Will you think me forward, Lady Aquila Nenyuk of the Blue,” Marius asked. “If I ask you to dine with my sister and I two nights from now?”

  She let the question hang between them until she caught his sideways, uncertain look. Then she smiled.

  “I have long taken care to be straightforward, my Lord,” she said. “Even though it is not a quality all Templars cultivate. So if I might be forward in turn, Lord Marius – what is it you wish of me?”

  He faltered. “Every house is eager to ally itself with Templars,” he said. “Tor has no representatives in this year’s ranks. My sister and I wish to revive the Tor training grounds, where the city once trained its best officers. To succeed, we need allies. And myself, I appreciate Templars who are straightforward.”

  She descended the steps before him. The freshly-minted sunlight wavered on the black stone. The city’s sounds floated up to her as it awoke and lit its ovens and cookfires.

  “I will come to dinner,” she said.

  ***

  “These honied cochras are too sweet – take them back and bring us something less cloying,” Jonnandra Tor snapped at the servant beside her. He bowed and exited.

  Aquila watched the heavily sauced beetles depart with regret. She liked sweets, herself, and the exertion of a Templar’s life kept her slim enough to enjoy them. She realized Marius was watching her and forced a smile his way.

  Jonnandra and Marius’s shared birth showed in their coloring and features. Jonnandra wore her hair in a crown of braids, but aside from that, her face was as intelligent as Marius’s, although its cast was more prone to impatience

  When Aquila and Marius had been together alone – or as alone as soldiers and bodyguards permitted – the young noble had seemed different to Aquila, had evidenced a personality that unexpectedly meshed
with hers.

  Here with his sister, he seemed bland and flat, a backdrop to Jonnandra’s more vivid speech and motions. Aquila shifted in her chair. Her robes felt uncomfortably warm. A trickle of sweat made its way down her back, between her shoulder blades.

  The meal dragged on.

  When Marius excused himself from the room briefly, Jonnandra said to Aquila, “You know that for my brother, family will always come first.”

  “Understandable,” Aquila said, trying to sound unargumentative and agreeable.

  Jonnandra’s stare was direct and challenging. “Even before a wife.”

  Startled, Aquila said, “I wasn’t aware we were talking of such things.”

  “Indeed?” Jonnandra’s eyes swept over the outfit Aquila had chosen to honor the occasion: the gold earrings shimmering against the amber of her crimped hair, the silk of her under-robe, the embroidered slippers.

  Aquila held her shoulders straight. “I think there must be some kind of mistake.”

  “A mistake?” Marius asked from the doorway.

  Jonnandra said, “The Nenyuk is not looking to wed, she says.”

  Anger flickered beneath Marius’ calm. “Jonnandra, you presume too much.” To Aquila, “I beg pardon – my sister has ever been intemperate” even as Jonnandra protested, “But you told me –“

  “Enough!” he said, cutting her off.

  “I must beg pardon in turn.” Aquila stood. “The hour is late, and I have papers and reports to read yet ere tomorrow.

  A scowl lingered on Jonnandra’s face but Marius reverted to his usual lack of expression. “You’re sure? Very well.” He insisted on escorting her to the torch-lit courtyard and then to where her soldiers sheltered in an unoccupied stable stall, rolling dice. They rose hastily at the sight of her.

  At the gate, swinging it open, Marius said, “I hope you will not pay my sister any mind.”

  What did he mean? Did the notion of marriage linger yet in his mind, or had Jonnandra’s disclosure been false, intended to embarrass her sibling? Or perhaps he had changed his mind. She stared at him, at a loss for words. He leaned to kiss her fingers. She left feeling his lips’ warmth lingering on her skin.