She would parade twice around the city tomorrow if they liked, on her way to meet with the en-Kameral, but tonight would be spent in the comfort of the Adaran embassy. Or rather, the mansion next to the embassy that had been hurriedly purchased and added to embassy property in preparation for the Reinine's visit. The previous embassy would never have held all the people she brought with her—the troops and bureaucrats, diplomats and bodyguards, not to mention the Reinine's entire family.
The primary reason for Kallista's refusal, the one she hadn't shared with the Daryathi, was that she did not want the children exposed to public scrutiny. No one could miss a caravan the size of this one. Everyone would know who entered the city. But with their faces veiled against the pervasive, invasive dust that coated everyone—ruler, soldier and servant alike—it would be more difficult for an enemy to mark who was who. And tomorrow, during the processional—only once around the city—the children would stay safely tucked inside their quarters.
Leyja spurred her mount, riding alongside the Reinine's duty bodyguard—Jondi, today—to be first behind the troops through the gate. It was dark and cool in the deep, long shadow beneath the thick city wall, and smelled of sand. Once inside, the troops kept marching, following their Daryathi escort to the embassy. Leyja and Jondi stopped just inside the gate to watch for threats as the Reinine and her family came through.
The three oldest girls—Kallista's twins and Aisse's Niona, born during the rebellion—perked up as they entered the city. The younger children were waking with the noise, save for year-old Lissta, sleeping in Aisse's arms. Nothing short of a gunpowder explosion would wake her once she slept, and sometimes Leyja wondered if that would. Sired by Keldrey, Lissta felt more truly Leyja's than any of Aisse's four.
Leyja was smiling, her gaze moving on to the massed bureaucrats coming through the gate behind the family, when an anomaly registered in her mind. Something was different about the children. Was it something
wrong
?
She scanned back over them, urging her horse forward, alongside. There. Rozite had a necklace dangling halfway down her sturdy child's body, a large, faceted red globe pendant on a heavy gold chain. It might have been glass, but it wasn't.
Leyja had been present when the infant Rozite had latched onto the walnut-sized ruby as a toy. Serysta Reinine had insisted she keep it. Lorynda had a matching sapphire and Niona an emerald. Serysta had always been fair. But the other girls weren't wearing their necklaces.
With a sigh, Leyja pushed her horse though the troop escort. “Rozite Varyl Reinelle."
The girl jumped at the sound of her full name and title. Guilt flashed across her face before it vanished under false innocence. “What, Mami Leyja?"
“What have you been told about wearing that necklace anywhere but in quarters?"
Rozite hid her face behind a too-long fringe of sun-bleached hair. “I don't know,” she tried, before giving up the attempt under her Fifth Mother's stern gaze. “Not to wear it."
“So where should it be?"
“In the luggage.” Rozite's shoulders moved dramatically up and down as she drew breath. “But Mami Leyja, the luggage is all packed up on the mules. I can't put it there."
Leyja held her hand out to Rozite. Who looked at it, then looked up at Leyja as if asking why she was doing such a thing and what she expected Rozite to do with her hand.
Leyja crooked her fingers, beckoning. “Give it to me, Rozite. You knew you weren't supposed to wear it, and you did it anyway. Now it's mine."
Rozite clutched the big stone to her. “Not
forever.
"
“For now. We'll decide how long some other time.” Leyja beckoned again. “Give it here, Rozite. Now."
“I don't want to. I'm the Reinelle. I should wear necklaces."
“
Now,
Rozite.” Leyja reached to take it off her and finally, reluctantly, the child pulled the chain over her head and laid it in Leyja's hand.
“You're
a
Reinelle, not
the
Reinelle,” Leyja said as she tucked the necklace into a thigh pocket. “You have eight sedili who are all Reinelles just like you. You're special because you're Rozite Varyl. Not because of who your birth mother is. You don't need a necklace to make people notice you."
Rozite didn't look particularly comforted by Leyja's lecture. “But I
like
it. It's pretty."
“It is. And you can wear it again in quarters when you can remember that
that
is the place to wear it."
“When we get there?"
Leyja hid her smile at Rozite's attempt to avoid penalty. “I don't think so. Your parents will discuss it and we will let you know."
“Why do we have to have
ten
parents to be mean to us?” Rozite's lower lip shoved forward in a pout.
“You think just four would be any nicer?” Leyja made a mock-fierce face and got a smile from the girl. “We'll get there soon. Try to act like a Reinelle until we do."
“Yes, Mami Leyja.” The agreement came out on a heavy, put-upon sigh, but it was agreement.
Leyja eased her way back out to the edges of the caravan, wondering just how far they were going to have to travel through the city to get to the expanded Adaran embassy. A long way, most like. The government house, where the en-Kameral met, was at the heart of the city, like the Reinine's palace in Arikon. But the Seat, as the building was called, was not also a residence. The homes of the Hundred Lines were arrayed around the Seat of Government, with the various governmental offices and the embassies interspersed among them. To reach their destination, the Reinine's caravan would have to traverse half of Mestada. Leyja didn't know how far that was.
The streets were narrow, forcing the caravan to stretch out, riding no more than two abreast along much of the way. Occasionally, a low stone bridge would take them across one of the canals that interlaced the city, exposing them for a moment to the open. Leyja didn't like it, nor did any of the other bodyguards. She could tell by the way they sat their mounts, the way their hands rested near their weapons. At least they were relatively safe from attack from above. Most of the streets were shaded by awnings stretching from one side to the other.
Even where the streets widened into a sudden square with a well or trickling fountain for the locals to obtain water, poles held up the awnings to provide shade from the sun—and hide them from anyone lurking on the flat roofs or the upper floors of the buildings. Most of the buildings in this sector of the city rose no more than two stories, and many were only one. Though, ahead in the city center, Leyja could see a few tall, sharp towers punctuating the skyline.
As they passed through a market square that seemed to be devoted primarily to flowers and fruits, someone bumped against her horse. Leyja would have thought nothing of it—the square was crowded with shoppers—but afterward, her balance had changed, just a bit. The necklace was gone from her pocket.
Instantly, she went beyond alert to that bodyguard state of awareness, cataloguing every person in the square by level of threat. Was this the beginning of an attack on her family, or merely theft? People stared at their passing, but with curiosity, not malice. Mostly, they went about their business.
There. The youth walking away toward the fountain, adjusting his clothing as he went. Slightly better than rags, they were not the sort of clothes one fussed over.
“Stop!” Leyja cried, using one of the words she remembered from Obed's language lessons. “Thief!” she shouted in Adaran. She pointed at the boy—man—his age didn't matter—and set her horse after him.
“Stop him.” She ordered a pair of foot soldiers out of ranks to circle round and intercept him as she took the more direct route straight through the crowd.
The thief looked back over his shoulder at her, showing wide, startlingly blue eyes above the cloth that wrapped his face and hair. Then he ran.
He was fast and slippery, sliding through the crowds like an eel through water. He left the soldiers—unaccustomed to the heat—behind easily. Leyja, mounted, was harder to shake. He climbed to rooftops. She followed from below. He ducked into buildings and she found her way round to the exit. He wove through a warren of narrow streets and narrower alleys, doubling back until she was utterly lost, and still she followed.
Until finally her horse clattered into a tiny square with a well in the center and no sign whatsoever of the thief. He wasn't on any of the rooftops, hadn't gone down any of the streets. He had simply vanished.
Shehadn'theardasplash,butsherodeover tothewellanywayand peered into its depths. Nothing. She screamed out her frustration to the sky.
“That necklace was my daughter's,” she shouted then, hoping he might still be close enough to hear. “Do you steal from children?” Probably he did and was glad to. It was easier.
The thief would speak only Daryathi and she'd shouted in Adaran. It would do no good, but still she added an appeal. “Let me redeem it. Come to the Adaran embassy and I will pay you what it's worth. You won't get half that from anyone else."
Leyja scanned rooftops, doorways, windows, looking for any sign of a response, but they remained empty and silent. “Adara!” she shouted. “Leyja.” She pointed at herself. “Ask for Leyja."
She waited another long moment, but finally had to give up. Now she looked around her for some indication of the way back to her ilian. A faint tug at her magic came from—mostly west, but a little north. Kallista was showing her the way home. Leyja found a street leading west and followed it.
* * * *
Inside the well, far enough below the level of the street to be hidden in shadow, a niche had been painstakingly dug out of the well's side and lined with stones pried up from the paving. The niche had been enlarged over the years, made taller, wider, deeper, but still the thief barely fit inside it. He had grown as his hole had.
He held his breath, or rather breathed as quietly and smoothly as he could. After that chase, running across most of Mestada, not to mention all the climbing, jumping and ducking, it was breathe or die. Though if the choice was between not breathing, fainting from lack of air and falling to the water some fifty paces below to drown, or being dragged out of the well by his hair and skewered by that warrior queen...?
He rather thought he'd prefer the skewering, if it came from such a magnificent specimen of female. Not that he lacked female companionship when he wanted it. When he could pay for it. But the females of his general acquaintance tended to be soft and somewhat squishy, women who wheedled, who used tears and seduction to get what they wanted instead of chasing him halfway across Mestada, then offering straightforward bargain.
It wasn't the bargain that intrigued him. It was quite literally the words that Leyja the warrior queen had shouted. Words in a language he hadn't heard in fifteen years, a language that reminded him of who he'd been. Who he truly was.
Padrey.
That had been his name once. Before.
He was a thief now, one whose head would be parted from his body if he was caught. He was a very good thief, which was why his head was still attached at the ripe old age of twenty-six or thereabouts. But once, he might have become something else.
Padrey reached inside his shirt and pulled out the gaudy trinket he'd stolen, carefully, lest he drop it in the water just past his left elbow. The well was low this time of year, but still deeper than he cared to dive through after the thing. The chain weighed more than he'd expected. Could it truly be gold? Could the stone be more than glass?
He'd stolen it on a whim, just to prove he could. The vast caravan with its huge guard escort had been too tempting to ignore. But a stone this size—he'd seen the glint of red before he'd hidden it in his shirt. He didn't dare hold it out in the well's drop to try to catch a ray of sun. No sunlight reached inside the well this time of day anyway, and there was a chance someone might see the jewel. In fact, if he did not exit his hidey-hole soon, he would have to stay till full dark, after everyone had drawn their water for the evening.
Padrey tucked the necklace inside the box he kept in his hiding place. The box had been his reason for digging out this niche, back in the beginning, a place to hide the coins he saved to purchase his freedom—before he understood that he would never be allowed to do such a thing, that any time he neared the amount, the price would go up. And so he had freed himself from his slavery, after a fashion.
A thief's life was only marginally better than a slave's in terms of food, shelter, or housing, but one advantage it did have. It was his own.
Padrey closed the lid on his new treasure. If the necklace was indeed gold, and the stone a garnet or even—wonder of wonders—a ruby, the warrior woman was right. No one he knew would give him full value. But before he presented himself at the Adaran embassy, hand out to trade, he wanted to know more about these people. Who were they? What were they doing here? Could he perhaps gain more from them than mere money?
Idiot
. When had money ever been
mere?
What else was there of value? Nothing. He'd learned that lesson well. The things he remembered could be nothing more than child's illusion. He was a child no longer. He knew how to see through illusion. So he would watch and learn and decide how to best use what he saw.
He listened another moment more, hearing only silence in the afternoon's heat. Finally he unfolded a leg from its knee-to-ear position and the arm that had been wrapped around it, reaching out of his niche for the carefully concealed hand- and footholds. Tonight he would find the Adaran embassy. He tried to squelch the tingle of excitement, but he couldn't quite eliminate the lingering whisper of
home
.
* * * *
Kallista strode into the extensive family quarters set aside for the Reinine, playing the best “majestic” she could summon at this moment. She was tired. More than she should be, she thought. She waited, then waited a bit more while a whole army of servants carried in luggage. She would have wondered how much luggage nineteen people could require, but she knew. Mountains of it.