Aquila's Ring Read online

  On the streets, sand peppered her face, driven by the wind. An omen of the change of seasons. She drew her hood up against the storm.

  She had bought the house. The last two days had been spent furnishing it with what she could, bullying used furniture from small shops. The slaughterhouse two doors down smelled of rotting blood in the wrong wind, but right now it blew away from her.

  She dismissed her guards at the door and went inside. The red tiles of the floor were chipped.

  When she had graduated, Nenyuk sent her presents. Her desk was one, a cool green marble slab flanked by a sagging wicker chair. She sat at it now, pretending to examine scrolls by the lamp’s oily gleam.

  She was less interested in thinking about rebels and spies than considering the night’s events. She touched her fingers, remembering the caress of his hands and lips.

  She wished that she had sisters to talk to, but her years in the Academy had isolated her from her family, and who in the Academy would she have been able to trust? The closest had been Sathis Valika, who had studied several history campaigns with her, and with whom she had spoken once about being homesick. She tried to imagine talking to Sathis, but picturing his narrow face, bewildered at her talk of romance, was something she could only smile at.

  She stacked the scrolls together and went to lie on her bed, wishing that sleep would come to her. She imagined Marius beside her. She had not played much at bed-games with her fellows – had exchanged a few kisses, nothing more. She imagined him kissing her, touching her breasts. Light from both moons, Jihae and Lirathu, fell in through the window, latticing the desk with shadows.

  The next day she went about her patrols and did not see Marius. The soldiers assigned to her followed her stride. They covered more than the usual territory – all through the Elementalists’ and Merchants’ Quarters in turn, and along Merchant’s Road back towards Meleth’s Circle. She lingered in the Traders’ Inn for a half hour that late afternoon, pretending not to watch the door.

  “Lady Aquila!”

  Even before she turned she knew it was not Marius. The voice was welcome all the same. “Hello, Sathis.”

  Sathis Valike sat down across from her. He gestured for her cup to be refilled, but she shook her head and lay her hand over the cup.

  “How are you enjoying life as a templar of the Ministry of War?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “I‘ve been analyzing reports from northern bandits and watching travelers in and out of the city. You?”

  “Reports from drunken Kuraci and addled spice hunters,” Sathis said with a grin. “Have you seen much of our colleagues?”

  She shook her head. He leaned in. “Be careful of Nestor,” he said in a voice pitched for her ears alone. “He spoke in favor of relaxing Allanak’s grip on the north and was dragged off to Tektolnes’ tower. He returned not at all himself. I’m sure he will be eager to fling someone else to the Highlord’s attention.”

  “Noted,” she said.

  “Have you no gossip for me?” he asked, slouching back comfortably in his chair. She had always liked Sathis’ air of ease, his assumption that everyone was as confident as he was. She smiled at him as she shook her head, hair falling around her face.

  “I hear you have been going about with Marius Tor,” he said.

  “We have played izdari and walked, and I have taken dinner at his house.”

  “Which is quite a lot for three days, when you think about it,” Sathis said. “What’s he up to -- does he want an alliance?”

  She shrugged.

  “Look,” he said. “I’m not so much interested in the Tors. What I’m wondering is whether you’ve thought where you’d like to be a year, or two, or ten even, down the line?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Of our class, only one or two will survive. You watch my back and I’ll watch yours – a partnership, what do you say?”

  His face seemed guileless. She had seen him lie – not yet to her, certainly –to others before. Was he serious or would he betray her? She wanted to trust him.

  “Why me?”

  “You think that being from a merchant House is a failing, but I see it as an asset,” he said. “The noble Houses hold grudges for generations. I could ally myself with a Borsail but sooner or later they will turn on me because my House once thwarted theirs.”

  She wavered.

  “Think about it,” he said. “That’s all I ask.”

  When she returned home, a messenger waited beside the door. He pressed a wooden box into her hands. When she opened it she could smell new wood, a Northlands smell. The lamp on the table inside let her glance at the contents: a glitter of rubies and glass. A deadly looking but brittle dagger. Was there some message in that, or was it in the value of the jewels? She laid it on the desk and contemplated it.

  The white moon was rising, soon to be pursued by the red, when there was a knock at her door. She opened it to find Marius.

  “Walk with me?” he said. His face looked tired, but he held himself with a stiffness that made her fear the worst.

  They walked, fore-echoed and trailed by their guards again. This time they moved through the Commoners’ Quarter, and Marius showed her where he wanted to rebuild the Tor school. He bought smoked meat and cactus on skewers for both of them, and then honey and brandy cakes, sticky and delicious, for Aquila. “Because you like sweets, yes?” he asked. He smiled when she nodded.

  He did not take her to the western gate. Instead they ascended the flights of stairs to the deserted top of the eastern gate. This sunrise was more gradual – a spill of crimson on the parched white salt flats, tinting them to blood. The sun peered over the rim of the distant black mountains.

  Marius did not touch her hand, although she half expected it. Instead, he stood a breath away.

  “I want to ask you something,” he said.

  “Very well.” She wondered what Jonnandra had put in his head. She could hear the regretful words now in her head, “You’re a merchant…”

  But instead he said, “Will you marry me?”

  She stared at him in the morning light, her eyes wide, as though seeing him for the first time. “What?”

  He took her hand now. “Will you marry me.” Each word pronounced clearly, carefully, no chance of mistake.

  “Isn’t this sudden?” she said.

  “Love is sudden,” he said.

  “But how sudden?”

  “As sudden as someone walking into an inn, with their expression haughty and uncertain all at once.” He gathered her other hand in his as well and pressed them to his heart, stooping to peer into her face. “As sudden as the sunrise over the western gate.”

  “What will your sister say?”

  “She will say I have made an excellent choice or else she will say nothing at all,” he said.

  ***

  They met Jonnandra in the Trader’s the next evening. She murmured her delight at having learned the news earlier. Aquila wore the bright dagger at her waist and showed it to Jonnandra, who admired the sparkle.

  “I sent my guard on an errand,” she said, passing the dagger back to Aquila. “Lend me yours, Marius?”

  “I have but one today -- the other is sent on errand to Salarr,” he said. “But I suppose my Lady will see me safe.”

  He smiled at Aquila. She thought to herself, how could I have ever thought his expression bland?

  “We will go and celebrate with sweets,” he said and took her hand, lacing her fingers through his, as they exited the inn.

  A few blocks down, they paused outside the Silver Ginka bakery.

  “Go and fetch us honied cochras,” Marisus told the guard, pressing coins into his hand.

  They stood outside the shop, Marius and herself and the other guard, watching the evening crowds. Night was settling on the city and the torches along the plaza flickered. Aquila shivered as a beggar passed, his step a waver to the right, two staggers to the left. A rag concealed his eyes

  “Are you cold?” Marius asked.

  “My Lady,” the soldier said as the beggar lurched past, “it would be safer to –“

  He sagged sideways as the beggar stabbed him. Aquila pulled back even as Marius stepped before her and the knife flickered again. She drew her staff, unslinging it from across her back, swinging at the beggar even as he leaped back.

  She was dimly aware of the soldier, Marius on their knees as she pressed forward. He was quick, so quick and light, unencumbered with any armor, the speed of a small man. She was fast too, the blade reaching, his hand falling to the ground, still clutching the knife, blood spurting from the stump, face open with shock and surprise.

  She turned. Marius and the soldier were gagging on the ground. Poison! She knelt beside Marius, calling on Tektolnes, pushing the healing energies into his body, feeling the waves of sickness wrack through him, leave him helpless each time. The soldier gagged, his breaths labored.

  Marius fumbled, took a ring from his finger, pushed it on her finger. It was made of polished black bone, its surface unadorned. She tried to take his hands, make him be still.

  The soldier’s breaths died away as she kept pouring magic into the man before her. She preserved him in agony for another ten breaths before he choked out, “For the love of Tek,” meeting her eyes.

  She broke her grasp, looking away with a sob, and let him die, let his life ebb away as she held him.

  She tried to hold him to her, but death tore him away, a leaf loosed from its branch in a bitter wind, and they moved apart, apart, so far apart, and were lost.

  The funeral came in scraps. She remembered standing at attention with her fellows at the ceremonies. Jonnandra gave her poisonous looks throughout. Before the crowd had dispersed, she launched herself at Aquila, all fingernail and fury. “The assassin wanted you! And so my brother lies dead.”

  “And what if his guard had been there instead of guarding you, Lady?” Aquila said and almost regretted the words when she saw Jonnandra’s face wilt.

  But the woman was not done. Seeing the ring on Aquila’s finger she cried out.

  “He’s mine! That’s mine! You have no right!” She pulled the glass dagger from Aquila’s belt and slashed at her. The blade broke against her armguard, sending shards everywhere.

  She would have given the ring back, but rage at being robbed of the knife, the only other token of Marius she had, shook her. She turned away and blamed Jonnandra’s shrieks on grief.

  Still, afterwards, her fellow Templars avoided her. Why, she wasn’t sure. No one had even had a chance to learn of the engagement. Had the attempt been aimed at her? Was it some unknown enemy of Tor, of Marius? She thought back. Twelve hours earlier, she had felt delight. Its loss left her speechless, bereft, and unable even to summon tears.

  She sat towards the back of the Traders’ and ignored the looks and whispers. Sathis found her there.

  “Well?” he said.

  She stared at him numbly.

  “I was thinking about our alliance,” he said. He leaned forward. “I don’t know if you’ve ever contemplated marriage –“

  She could not even breathe.

  “But you could do worse than me. And that way we would know we could trust each other. Being married. What do you think?”

  Behind him in the doorway she saw Jonnandra start to enter, catch sight of her, and turn away. She was so like Marius that it tore Aquila’s heart to see the pale hair exiting. She turned the black ring on her finger and looked at Sathis again.

  ***

  Many of the other templars attended their marriage in the Dragon Temple. Both she and Sathis wore their Templar robes, and afterward Aquila moved into the home Sathis had secured, with a gilded hallway and stiffly-lined, arching rooms, and a rooftop gardens with carefully tended plants. She kept her little house in the Commoners Quarter and used it to store unused furniture.

  It was never a love match, but they grew used to each other and came to trust each other. The days and then the months passed in comfortable fellowship. They advanced. They thwarted plots against themselves and each other. It was a good match.

  She thought of Marius at night in her bed, lying beside Sathis. While she didn’t feel the same for her husband, she trusted him. She felt safe with him.

  Until the day she forgot her amber beads and went home mid-day to fetch them. In the upstairs hallway, she heard murmurs from the terrace.

  She hovered in the doorway, watching them without emotion. The blonde woman – a northerner, surely – straddled Sathis on the lounge. Her eyes were closed, head thrown back. He held her wrists, pulling her forward onto him, whenever she lurched away. His eyes were closed as well – Aquila had never seen that particular grimace, even in their own lovemaking.

  It alarmed her. It was not a look that said he would honor their partnership above all things. It said he would betray her in a heartbeat for this woman that she hadn’t even known existed.

  She stepped into the hallway, out of their sight, and stood there, listening to them, until he grunted out release.

  “In the future,” she said crisply into the air. “I would prefer you not do that in our house.”

  There was long silence before his voice replied. “Very well.”

  She fastened her beads around her neck and left, taking care to lock the door behind her.

  She went to the western gate and remembered the feel of Marius’ fingertips on her own. She twisted the black bone ring on her finger and tears ran down her face. She slipped it off and threw it to the ground, turning away.

  “My lady?”

  The unexpected voice startled her, and she gasped, turning.

  The man before her was dark-haired, dressed in armor of a style centuries old. He held out his hands in reassurance.

  “Who are you?” she demanded.

  “Kai, servant of the ring.” He knelt to her. “Do you wish me to assume its shape again?” His face was expressionless as he looked up. “I am yours to command in all things.”

  She stared at him. “Become the ring,” she said hoarsely.

  His form shrank, dwindled, collapsed in upon itself. The ring lay there and he was gone.

  She picked it up.

  ***

  She went to her little house, downwind of the slaughterhouse. Once the door was locked, she dropped the ring again.

  Kai stood there as before.

  “Who are you?” she demanded.

  He shrugged.

  She walked around him, studying him from every angle.

  “What are you?” she demanded.

  “An artifact. I have been in the ring for centuries, serving the Tors.” His eyes checked the rings on her hands, the silver signet of the Templarate, the gray stone band of the Nenyuk. “But you are not a Tor.”

  She squared her shoulders. “You were given to me by Marius Tor.”

  “Ah, Marius – I have only spoken to him once or twice. Is he here?”

  “He’s dead,” she said flatly. Rage filled her at the words. She saw him again on the ground. She felt his fingers in her own. A flash of Sathis and the northern woman.

  “You are mine to command in all things?” she demanded.

  “Your will is mine.”

  She swept the papers off the green stone table. She took him there, took the initiative as Sathis had taken it with her, held onto Kai with the same urgency that she had seen on the Northern woman’s face. She bit his shoulder, his neck, crying out Marius’ name, her eyes closed, blind to his expression.

  After that, she came together with Sathis only rarely. Did she still trust him? She wasn’t sure, but he had no reason to betray her. He could not marry his northern woman, not and stay in the Templarate. If anything, his marriage kept the woman safe from charges of subverting a Templar.

  She wore the black bone ring. At a Fale ball she saw Jonnandra across the room, staring at her. Mischief possessed her and she raised her hand, touching her lips to the ring.

  At the anger in Jonnandra’s face, she smiled.

  ***

  Aquila became known in the Ministry of War. She was agile of mind and quick to sniff out sedition, bringing in a traitor, sometimes more, every few days. She worked hard in the mornings, gathering information, analyzing it, sorting through rumors and street ballads.

  She sent her soldiers each afternoon on patrol outside the city and went to her house to write up her reports. Inside, she barred the door and went upstairs to the bedchamber and its bed, a massive thing she’d coaxed from the Nenyuk estate. It was an antique, centuries old, but Kai said its style seemed jarring and new to him.

  “How old do you think you are?” she asked him. He looked off into the distance.

  “I was born in the Eighth Age. So I am around nine hundred years old.”

  “How much of that time have you spent in the ring? What is it like?”

  “As the ring, there is no passing of time. There is no transition between awakenings.”

  “That must be odd.”

  He shrugged. He never spoke much except in answer to direct questions. Pressed for details of his history, he was elusive and slow to elaborate. The perfect servant, Kai. Silent and unobtrusive until he was wanted.

  In the third year, Sathis came to the house. His soldiers battered down the door in two great blows, like a giant knocking. She had enough time to put on her robes, smooth the bed linens, slip the ring back on her finger.

  Sathis stormed upstairs. “Where is he?” he shouted. His black hair had been cut recently, and badly. It stuck up in awkward, sweaty spikes. “He must be here – my soldiers are watching the back.”

  She was as cool as the evening wind. “I come here to think and plan, Sathis.”

  “You can’t do that at home?”

  “I need a space where I can be silent and alone.”

  He spat a curse at her and went about taking the place apart, searching every hiding hole. At last he was forced to admit defeat.

  “Is he some magicker, to slip away into the shadows?”

  “On my oath to the Highlord, I have never laid a finger on a magicker,” she said, shocked. She wondered at her hypocrisy, to recoil at this idea but take a man whose life -- whose very form! – was governed by magic to her bed. Over and over again to her bed, a habit as regular as breakfast.