9

A Conversation, A brick, and a Bath

Dazhyen had often wondered, in the nights that he spent sleeping in the recruits’ barracks, how Eliza and Maryam were spending their evenings. Not, he supposed, doing bayonet drills until the musket seemed a lead weight, or collapsing in the mud after being outwitted by Cermak in a duel. He wondered about them in the same way that he had wondered about his father, his mother, and Dmitur; for they had been afforded considerable privileges in the Temple. They slept in great vaulted halls, waited on by a battalion of servants, eating the finest foods, praying and living in grandeur. It mattered not that he was the son of two Basanthas, or the personal apprentice of the Atashga – Dazhyen slept in darkness, on stone beds and rough mattresses, he ate gruel and lived in cramped confinement below the Temple. He imagined that Eliza’s and Maryam’s lives were not too dissimilar to his parents’, though they were perhaps kinder to their servants. Certainly, they were kind to him – far kinder than anyone had been in his life – and for this alone he liked them.

And Eliza, who now stood in front of him in a simple cotton dress, made his heart do summersaults. He never, however, let himself pursue that line of thought – it would not end well and nothing could be done, he was convinced.

“Hello, Eliza,” he said, returning her smile.

“Has Cermak given you the flawless functioning speech, yet?” she asked slyly.

“Yes, he has! Just now, in fact. But how did you know?” At this response, she laughed and Dazhyen felt all his tiredness leave him.

“He was the one who trained me to fight, when I was but 16,” she clarified. “He was a Captain then, and was the Training Officer for the Lifeguards. So, I learned to fight alongside all the other recruits – I wasn’t singled out for special training like you,” she smirked.

“Oh, I didn’t know that,” Dazhyen pictured Eliza in the dirt and firing muskets with the imposing figure of Bolina Cermak shouting at her, and grinned in spite of himself.

“Yes, it was a sight to behold!” she chuckled and began walking away, in the direction of the Palace, which was on the other end of Afor from the Cantonment, and gestured Dazhyen to follow. As they walked through the Cantonment, bathed in lamplight and the hue of the sun low over the horizon, Eliza glowed golden. Dazhyen knew this was a trick of his mind, and tore his eyes away from her, choosing instead to focus on anything else. In the meantime, Eliza reminisced of her days as a trainee.

“It didn’t matter to Cermak that I was a Princess,” she was saying, “because I couldn’t shoot straight. Couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn from the inside, he told me. I still can’t shoot well enough for his satisfaction. But I never gave up and that’s what he admires.”

“Yeah,” Dazhyen said, “I’ve noticed.”

“It’s because a soldier, a fighter, whatever you want to call it, can’t give up. The only real defeat is in giving up, not in failing.” They’d now left the Cantonment with its officers and soldiers, and were walking down a broad street. On either side of them were large and gorgeous buildings of government – court-houses, administrative headquarters, the archive, and even a museum – that were built out of marble, and sandstone, with shingled rooves, and eaves engraved with intricate patterns. Dazhyen had been intending to visit the Queen Anhida Mawer II Museum for some time now, but had never quite found the free time. It was erected in honour of their beloved late Queen, and held an exhibit of items that detailed the history of the Sapti and Azdavyery religions in Afor. Had he still been in the Temple, he would never have been allowed to set foot in that Museum. It was his way of rebelling, though his rebellion would not be seen by anyone but himself and the terrified little boy inside him.

“But my ability to scrap?” Eliza had continued speaking, “now that was something he respected. Of course, he nearly always won – he was a trained soldier and I was barely more than a girl – but he saw my ability. It was he who told me that I will never win a straight fight with a man of my size who had even slight training and that I should always even the playing field.”

“Sorry, Eliza,” her name still felt unnatural on Dazhyen’s tongue, “what do you mean scrap?”

“Ah, yes. You’re being taught to duel and fight. I was taught those things too, but my skill lies in scrapping. Unfair fighting, dirty tricks. Raidas calls it ‘gutter fighting’. You’ll be taught that too, once you have the fundamentals set up. I do believe I’ll be the one teaching you,” she said with a twinkle in her eyes. “But that won’t be for some time yet.”

Dazhyen’s heart skipped a beat and he almost faltered. What an odd set of circumstances he’d found himself in. What would Dmitur have said to these arrangements? He’d probably have had the flesh flayed off Dazhyen’s back.

“I suppose I should tell you where we’re going,” she said, with a musical lilt to her voice. Dazhyen guessed she was happy and he was too, he noticed, on this cool summer’s evening. From somewhere not too far away, there was a smell of good food and strong coffee – for coffee shops had become all the rage in Afor over the past few years – and he wondered what the evening might look like if he entreated Eliza to stop there and eat and drink. He did not, of course, ask this and said, instead, “Yes, please, it’s a lot of mystery!” with a laugh.

“Raidas has been investigating,” she began, and Dazhyen thought he detected a hint of anger in her voice but did not interrupt, “and he has something he wants to tell the three of us. Maryam is with him already.” Dazhyen nodded, for he knew that every evening Raidas was training Maryam in the use of her powers. “So, I came to get you,” she looked up at him and smiled, “because this is rather important.”

Dazhyen stumbled, not out of any reaction, but because his right leg got tangled with the left causing him to lose balance. “Are you alright?” was Eliza’s immediate response as she reached out to help him up. Dazhyen stood up with some ease and noticed that people, all well-meaning bystanders, had rushed to help. Cries of “Your Majesty, is everything okay?” and “Your Highness, do you need help?” filled the air, as they rushed to inter themselves in their Princess’s good graces.

“Yes, I’m fine,” he replied to Eliza’s original question, nursing a split chin which now leaked blood at a rate of knots, “just tired,” he laughed as if to downplay the small, shallow pool of blood that was now forming at his feet.

“Oh dear,” Eliza mumbled but turned, then, to the crowd around her. One particularly enthusiastic young woman had approached them with a white bandage that, Dazhyen realised when she got closer, was just the woman’s scarf. “I am fine, everyone, thank you,” Eliza smiled at her subjects and, among the crowd, Dazhyen could now see four Lifeguards, who swiftly dispersed the gathered onlookers. As invisibly as they had appeared, the Lifeguards fell away again. “My escorts,” explained Eliza, “as insisted on by Gunada. They keep their distance, though. They know I don’t need them, least of all in Afor, and I like at least an illusion of freedom.”

“Now come, let’s get your chin sorted out,” she picked up her pace. The Palace was still at least two kilometres away, and yet it loomed large on the end of the road.

“Again,” Raidas instructed. Maryam hated that tone he used – flat, unimpressed, always reeking of disappointment. Perhaps she was just reading too deep into it, but she hated it. Regardless, she did as she was told for she’d quickly learned that arguing back with Raidas never produced a result – good or bad. He had the patience and the heart of a stone.

Maryam stared at the brick that stood in front of her. It was, in every way, an unremarkable and perfectly ordinary brick. Brown and tough, rough to the touch and solid. Next to it, on a table, was a pitcher of water. Her task seemed impossible – to force the water into the imperceptibly small holes on the surface of the brick. She’d tried more than a few times now and had failed every time – succeeding only in making the brick wet. In this event, she then had to dry off the brick by controlling the lazy flame of a barely burning oil lamp. She was certain it was impossible – how could the tiny holes of a brick hold that much water? But then Raidas had done it, and when commanded by him, the water seeped into the brick as though it were a sponge. Predictably, this instantly annoyed her. The effortless display of skill, which seemed Raidas’s favoured teaching method, only showed her how much was possible and how little she could do.

Burning with anger and drenched in sweat, she lifted the water out of the pitcher and floated it over to hover above the brick. Her eyes closed, she reached out in the meya until the brick was visible in her mind in dull shapes of black and white. “Focus on the brick. Focus on it and sharpen your sight of it! You cannot succeed until you see and feel the imperfections in the brick!” Raidas instructed her.

I’m trying, she thought through gritted teeth. “Focus,” Raidas said again, and that tipped her over the edge. She erupted in anger, a yell that shattered the still air in the dank basement room, and opened her eyes to find Raidas staring at her, unfazed.

“I’m trying, Master,” her voice was raspy, “but I can’t!”

“Can’t you?” he cocked his head. “Look at the brick.”

“What?”

“Look at the brick,” he encouraged softly, and she did as was instructed. It was dark brown now, and water was slowly dripping out.

“Huh?” She made a noise like the grunt of a surprised cow.

“It seems that your control over your ability is tied to your emotions,” said Raidas, coolly. “That is dangerous, if you are left to your devices.” He was silent for a moment and Maryam felt a heat behind her. She turned around, confused, to see that the oil lamp’s flame had risen to a few feet tall. “See, Maryam? Your connection to the meya responds well beyond measure when you’re in a heightened emotional state. Typically, frustration or anger. That will have to be either trained out of you,” as he spoke, the flame began to die until it was finally dancing a lazy, lonely waltz, “or you will have to learn to control it. I prefer the second option, don’t you?”

“Yes, Master. I do,” she said, turning her attention back to the brick.

“Now for a harder task,” Raidas’s voice was tinged with anticipation and, perhaps even, some excitement. “Take the water out of the brick and place it back in the pitcher."

“Yes, master,” Maryam responded, fighting back a yawn. It was well past dinner time and she’d not had a morsel to eat; and all she wanted to do, bone tired as she was, was sit down, eat, and then read till she fell asleep with the book on her face. But no such luxury for the damned.

So, she turned her attention back to the wet brick, and closed her eyes letting the world form itself around her in the hazy black and white. As she breathed to steady herself, she considered Raidas’s words. What was it about her emotions that made her succeed? Acting on a hunch, she reached deep down inside herself and felt. The annoying parties and boring meetings had left her with a resentment for the fortunes of her birth, the terrible men and the prospects of an imprisoning marriage had made her angry at her parents, her lack of freedom had chided her no end – and all this she had suppressed. This brick, she decided, would not bloody well defeat her an eleventh time and she trawled through those buried angers and resentments, letting herself feel each one of them.

With each one resolved, the world around her sharpened into focus until, finally, she could see with her eyes shut. “Good,” Raidas’s voice was finally approving, though Maryam could not guess how he had known the workings of her mind. “Now,” he said, “The water.”

The wet brick lay in front of her and she could see the water, dormant inside it. She willed it to rise but, unfortunately, it was not the water that rose – it was the brick, which shot itself through the air and smashed into the ceiling, snapping Maryam out of her focus. Chunks of wet brick crashed into the ground as she opened her eyes, her heart heavy with disappointment.

“Why can’t I do one thing, Master?” she nearly wept, turning to Raidas for comfort or advice – anything.

“You will, in time. You’ve made a big leap forward today, though,” he reminded her, “haven’t you?” She nodded meekly. “Emotional repression, years of it being trained and tutored into you, has stifled your abilities. Let go of the irritations of your past,” he took a pause and considered before speaking, “which many would take to be luxuries,” he added with the barest hint of resentment. “Let go of that as you did today and you will feel your connection to the meya in every fibre of your being. The rest,” he looked at a chunk of brick, “is a matter of practice.”

Silence once again filled the dank basement room but also, for the first time in a long time, Maryam felt something other than misery. She felt hope.

“Let’s eat,” said Raidas, making for the door, and she gladly followed him out.

She was late to the dinner, but the Palace staff had seen to it that food was set aside for her in her sitting room. When she entered, still reeking of sweat and sporting an immense headache, she noticed that the table had been set not just for her, but for two extra people. Resolving to sort out the matter after her bath, she ignored the place setting and disappeared into her bathroom, where Mae had already drawn her a bath.

Throughout it, she could not help but play out today’s lesson in her mind. The brick, her frustration, Raidas’s endlessly irritating demeanour – it had answered some questions, yes, but raised many more. Chief among them was this – how much different her life would have been if she’d learnt to say what she felt and feel what she said. No compartmentalisation, just truth.

As she bathed, she had some delight, however, in using a trick she’d learned from Raidas in one of her previous lessons. The water had begun to cool and, instead of calling for new water to be poured by Mae, she closed her eyes and slowly heated the water up. “Ice, steam, and liquid are the three states of water,” Raidas had explained, “and can each by controlled by you. Whether it is boiling, frozen, or mist in the air, water is water and you can convince it go from one state of being to the other.”

She’d succeeded, so far, in only making the water tepid – steam, ice, and mist were beyond her. But tepid was what she needed in that moment, and was glad to be able to do it. After her bath, as she changed, she heard voices from her sitting room; voices that she recognised to be Dazhyen’s and Eliza’s.

Well, she smiled to herself in the mirror as Mae did her hair, I missed them! “I’m glad you’re happy, ma’am,” Mae smiled at her in the mirror. Mae was her maid and had been for as long as Maryam could remember having one. She was a few years older than was Maryam and had tended to her since she turned 14. Maryam would never admit this around her family, all of whom cared only about propriety, but she had come to love Mae and see her as an aunt. Mae was a slight Dunwennish woman with fiery hair and who Maryam would describe as simple in her beauty. Maryam was glad that Mae had come with her on her trip to Afor.

“Yes, I am, rather,” she responded. “It’s friends, you know… you know how one can get. These past months have been hard and it’s been a long time since the three of us have been together.”

“I understand completely, ma’am. Truly,” she smiled as she worked, “I am so very glad to see you totally happy. It has been a long time coming,” Mae’s warmth spread through Maryam like butter on warm toast.

As Mae finished up her hair, Maryam was struck by a pang of fear. What if they failed? What if the Gaunt came? Mae would suffer a horrible death.

“There!” Mae said chirpily, smiling in the mirror, “all done!”

“Good thing dinner’s ready, I’m bloody starving,” Maryam got up, and forced a smile, stifling with great expertise the feeling of dread, fear, and doom. “Thank you, Mae!” with that she entered her sitting room and hugged her friends hello.

10

A Pleasant Dinner

In the soft glow of candle-light, and cooled by the evening sea-breeze, Eliza sat down to enjoy a meal with her friends. The last three months had been busy for Eliza, and she hated that she’d had to be secretive. For the two months before the briefing, she’d been occupied with training that was alien to her. Raidas was preparing her for a new threat – and one she thought she might never have to face. She was learning how to close her mind off from being read, to shield it from the prying eyes of other pur raktalis.

So far, she’d only succeeded for mere minutes and Raidas had always broken through. That was not, however, her chief secret. Since the day Gunada briefed them, she’d been whisked away from the regular life she’d wanted to return to and been enrolled in a new class. Gunada, who taught her these lessons, called it “the art of evasion”. She’d spent nights and days in the city and beyond, alone and without support, trying to hide from pursuers. If she was lucky, it was the Lifeguards – who were competent, but, for Eliza, easy to avoid. On the unlucky days, she was tested by Gunada himself.

She was yet to evade detection by him. Always he found her – no matter the disguise she donned and then rapidly switched, no matter how careful she was when skulking through forests, and regardless of how she was sure she slipped through towns and villages unseen. He always found her. On Eliza’s part, her goal was simple. She would be blindfolded and taken somewhere on the island, usually within two nights’ walk from Afor, and she had to make her way back to the city. During this time, she would be hunted, and if she made it back to the city without being spotted, she had succeeded.

Success was its own reward, she had learnt in her childhood of harsh training. Certainly, on the occasions that she was successful, she felt elated, and when she failed she simply tried again.

Eliza blinked, having realised that she’d been staring at a painting without moving for several minutes, and returned to the conversation that Dazhyen and Maryam were having. “-must be bloody exhausting,” Maryam was saying, having put away a course of curried chicken and naan.

“Yes, Princess,” Dazhyen was saying and Eliza’s heart smiled. It was an adorable thing, Dazhyen’s naivety. “In fact,” he continued, “I can barely hear you speak now, so constant is the ringing in my ears.”

Maryam was silent a moment and took a sip of wine before speaking. “Daisy, listen,” she leant forwards in her chair, “call me Maryam. Not princess, not your highness – none of that. We are going to be risking life and limb together, and you are coming with us not as escort and not as servant, but as companion, do you understand?”

“Yes, Maryam,” he exhaled, relieved. “It’s just that you’d not given me formal permission yet, and I did not want to seem impertinent,” he explained himself and Eliza grinned at Maryam’s exasperation.

“You cannot seem impertinent, you Ushushki oaf! You are a friend and friends are incapable of impertinence!” Eliza laughed, and Maryam – at her wit’s end after a long day of her own – could do little else but join in.

“I’d known him three months before he stopped calling me your highness or any of that tosh,” Eliza paused her uproar, “and even then, it was at my insistence,” she smiled lazily at Dazhyen as she said this. "You are silly, Daisy," he blushed and she laughed again.

Slowly, but not without repeats, everyone stopped laughing and a joyful calm took its place in the room. As Maryam leant back on her chair and Dazhyen began to help himself to desert, Eliza felt her smile slowly melt away as she watched him clumsily navigate a serving spoon. She liked him, that was certain. But she liked Maryam, too, no? You can’t fall for a boy just because he’s the only one who’s not been an arsehole to you, she said to herself. But he was a good man – or at least he tried to be.

“By the Twelve, I am tired,” Maryam yawned loudly and uncouthly before righting herself. “I cannot believe that Raidas has called a meeting this late at night. I just want to sleep,” she mock-cried.

Eliza turned to look at her friend, who now wore a silk robe that hung loosely over her nightgown. “You shouldn't have changed for bed,” said Eliza, who was still in her white evening dress. Dazhyen now resumed his seat, still in his shirt and trousers that were caked with mud and blood, his chin bandaged by the Palace surgeon, and his face freshly washed. His hair was slicked back as he’d been attempting to grow it out, to match the other Lifeguards’ fashion.

“Yes, Maryam,” he grinned, as he took a mouthful of a sweet liquid desert, made of milk, cream and sweet spices. “Look at me – straight from the range, tracking mud and blood through the Grand Palace of Afor,” the desert seemed to have interred in him some social confidence.

“Yes,” said Maryam, after a long yawn, “but you wouldn’t mind a bath, would you? A nice, long bath, and then a…” Maryam dozed off.

“Not me, Maryam,” said Dazhyen loudly and, when Maryam jolted awake, he pretended as if he’d not realised she’d slept off. “I have to be up at the crack of dawn. I’ve to run up and down Watchtower Hill,” he referred to the lonely hill East of the city with the abandoned tower atop its peak, “within 2 hours.”

Eliza grimaced as she had a flash of memories from her own “Watchtower Marches”, as Cermak called them. On the face of it, it was an easy thing for the hill was not particularly steep. But to do it in 2 hours was a tall order, for even the best runner. If Cermak was feeling particularly brutal, he made the runners eat a full breakfast before running – resulting in many an upchucking by the time they returned.

“Well,” Maryam said, failing to hide her irritation at being woken, “at least you’ve got something to do. Me?” she said, closing her eyes and throwing her head back, “I’ve got draw water from a stone.”

At that moment, there was a sharp knock on the door, and Cermak’s voice graced their ears. “Raidas is ready for you,” he said roughly.

“How is he allowed up here?” muttered Maryam. “These are the ladies’ bedrooms!”

“I was allowed up here,” offered Dazhyen, mouthful of desert.

“That’s because you were with me, Daisy,” Eliza strangled a smile before it graced her lips. Stop smiling at him! “You’ll be hard-pressed to find someone who will tell off the Heiress,” she said. “Well, come on, now,” Eliza got up and reached for the door, and as she did so, she felt her heart beginning to sink, though she didn’t know why.

Cermak led them through the Palace silently and quickly, until they were in the labyrinthine basements. Here, too, he was quick and sure-footed, as only he and Eliza could have been among those mustered to meet Raidas. The hulking soldier had an air of uncertainty about him, which, Eliza knew, was a rare thing. She suspected that he knew little more than did she of this strange and uncommon meeting.

“We’re here,” he said, standing in front of a heavy door, made of dark wood.

“I know this room,” Maryam spoke up, “this is where I train every day.” Having paid little to no attention, at least by way of acknowledgement, to Maryam’s interjection, Cermak pushed the door open to reveal Raidas standing at the far end of the room, hands folded behind him.

“Ah,” he said, looking up at the arrived party, “good evening. This is going to be quick. I do apologise,” he smiled at each one of them and nodded curtly at Cermak, who returned the nod, “for calling this meeting at such an absurd hour. But the information is fresh and can’t keep.” He beckoned them closer, and the trio did as they were asked. Cermak, for his part, melted into the shadows and, Eliza noticed, opted to listen in.

“In about a month’s time, a ship is going to be putting in to Afor. She’s coming from the city of Priestfall,” Eliza’s eyes widened at the word. The city of Priestfall was the jewel of the Uttar Raegis desert and was among Eliza’s favourite places on Alma. “And we know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that aboard her come at least four Azdavyery assassins. These are not,” Raidas looked at Maryam and Dazhyen sternly, “the untrained rabble you fought in Casat. They are considerably better trained – near enough on par with Eliza, if not better.”

“I must dispatch them?” Eliza guessed.

“Yes, you must. I will help, if your life is in danger, but this will be your assignment,” Raidas was flat in his delivery.

“We believe they’re here to kill the new High Priest of the Blue Temple, and, unfortunately, not quietly. They will make a show of it, and claim to do it for Azda-Mara.”

“Clumsy,” came the assessment from Cermak, who still lingered behind them all.

“Yes, quite. Heavy-handed and on-the-nose, but it gets the job done,” Raidas agreed and Eliza, too, felt the same.

“Understood,” Eliza said.

“Use what Gunada has been teaching you, little one. But work backwards,” he offered, and Eliza simply nodded. She could feel Maryam’s gaze burying into the back of her head.

“What about the other thing?” Cermak chimed in.

“I was getting to it, Colonel,” Raidas was as unbothered as ever.

“Dazhyen, this next thing is to do with you. Well, two things. First, you will act as support for Eliza when she tracks down the assassins. You may not yet be an equal for them, but it is vital that you two learn to function as a team. And,” he offered some comfort, “with you and Eliza working together, they lose the slight advantages they may have had.”

“Yes, sir,” Dazhyen’s response was soldierly.

“The other thing is more immediate. There is a man, older than you but not by much, that claims to know you. His name is Bor Adamik, and he’s a beggar known to hang about in Hangman’s Square. Does the name ring a bell?”

“Yes, sir. He was in the Temple with me. We were…” he faltered, in his eyes a faraway look as if imagining the harshness of his past. “That is, we were both apprentices of Dmitur.”

“Good,” Raidas smiled an empty smile. “Thank you for the truth,” somehow, Eliza figured, he knew the truth already. A familiar rage cropped up insider her, but she made no show of it. Raidas, she kept reminding herself, did what he did for the right reasons. Always for the right reasons, and always at a cost, she said to herself.

“The trouble is, he claims you’ve turned. That you’ve betrayed Azda-Mara and you’re working to bring the faith to its knees.”

“What?”

“Yes. He’s being a bloody loudmouth about it, too,” Raidas was genuinely frustrated. “He’s not done anything illegal, so we can’t arrest him. He says he’s in a mind to give you a thrashing for your betrayal,” Raidas’s tone implied that this was a comedic underestimation of Dazhyen’s skill on Bor’s part, but Dazhyen looked baffled. “Your assignment, then, is simple. Find Bor and shut him up – as quickly as you can. We don’t care how, but try not to kill him. That would complicate things,” Raidas then turned his attention to Maryam, while Dazhyen forced his agape jaw shut.

“Maryam, student mine,” he smiled warmly. This, Eliza felt, was odd unless Maryam had impressed him. “I know you may be feeling looked over, that you didn’t get an assignment. But I am afraid there is nothing yet that requires your skill-set. This, I must confess, is not all that bad, as it gives us time to train. And,” his smile disappeared, though he still spoke softly, “you need more time yet to be ready to fight.”

“I understand, Master,” came a dry response from Maryam.

Raidas waved them away, and they turned to leave, before he recalled them with a yelp.

“Almost forgot! Dazhyen,” and Dazhyen nearly snapped to attention, “you are to have some help with Bor, in case things turn ugly. Your ship, the Heiress, is soon to be tied up here and a Bosun has been volunteered by her Captain to assist you in the matter. Bert or Mert, I believe. I’m afraid the name escapes me.”

“Thank you, sir. That is good to hear,” he was struggling, Eliza could tell, not to beam with relief.