Chapter 2
Dance of Blades
The riders’ introductions complete, they were
seated at three tables facing the makeshift stage of sanded stone
where servants brought them trays of sweet meats, and pitchers of
spiced wine and yeasty beer. Sahar returned to the royal table,
where she sat staring straight ahead at the stage the servants were
preparing, studiously avoiding meeting her parent’s questioning
gazes. After what seemed an eternity, her father stood and the
gathering quieted. Again, he held his hand out to his queen, and
again she took it and stood beside him.
“My queen and her sister will sing and dance
and play for us,” the King announced.
He smiled at his wife with pure adoration
before loosening his hold of her hand, and the queen returned his
smile as she slowly slid her hand from his. Sahar glanced at her
brother, Asim, and they exchanged quick smiles.
Their parents had been holding hands their
children’s entire lives, and always seemed loath to let go. While
it had been wonderful growing up amidst and aware of their parent’s
love for each other, it had also sometimes made them feel like
outsiders, though they had neither of them ever felt any lack of
love from their mother or father.
Since the night they had first met as the
Black Mane and the Swan, her parents had lived in a world of their
own, a world that others could be a part of, but never fully
inhabit.
Sahar’s auntie, Lyrra, gave her husband,
Nasim, a tender kiss on his cheek and took her place on the stool
in the middle of the stage and began to run her fingers over her
harp’s strings, slowly at first, then faster and faster, until she
had the harp, Nightingale, singing a series of scales. Satisfied,
she nodded to her sister, the queen.
“We will sing ‘The Sailor’s Tale,’” the queen
announced, smoothing her skirts.
It had been Grandfather Aaron’s favorite.
Dead and gone these ten years past, he had been the only
grandfather Sahar had ever known, and the man who had taught her
how to navigate by the stars. A seafaring Northman trader, it was
he that her mother and Aunt Lyrra had sailed across the Mid-Earth
Sea with some twenty and three years ago, setting into motion the
events that had brought them all here.
“The Sailor’s Tale” was a song about a man
who had left his family to sail the open seas in quest of treasure
and adventure, and his twenty-year journey home. It was a song
Sahar knew by heart, and she sang along, her voice barely above a
whisper as her mother swayed her hips and rolled her arms and
shoulders in rhythm to the sea’s swells, her gaze a thousand
leagues away. Her father never took his eyes off of his wife, as if
he could keep her from sailing away from him with sheer will. And
in a way, he had.
He had gone against the Panther, his own
father and king, to win her mother and sister their freedom. As
part of a bargain struck with the Panther, the Black Mane had sent
the Swan and the Dove away, but the Panther went against his word
and ordered his guards to go after the sisters and kill them. The
Black Mane and his brother, the Cheetah, discovered their father’s
betrayal and rode after the sisters, saving them from the king’s
guards. They took refuge in the palace of the Oryx, where the Black
Mane and the Swan were married. When they had returned to the
Panther’s palace, they were husband and wife, but the Panther had
refused to accept their marriage, and so they left the City of the
Great Valley and never returned.
Sahar glanced over at Yago the Wolf, whose
parents had been part of that tale as well, for it was Yago’s
mother, the Fox, who the prince Black Mane had been betrothed to,
and his father, the Ox, who bore a scar across his cheek from the
Black Mane’s blade in defense of the Swan. Their son, the Wolf had
been born only seven moons after his parents’ quiet, hasty
marriage.
Sahar and Asim, twins who were as far apart
in looks as in temper, were the Black Mane’s and the Swan’s only
children, born ten and eight moons after their parent’s
marriage.
Where Sahar was dark-haired and green-eyed
with a temper that flared quickly and burned hot and fast, Asim was
light-haired and golden-eyed with a temper that could cook at a low
simmer for days before coming to a full boil, if ever. They were a
strange mix of their parents, both the good and the bad, as Sahar
supposed all children were. But being twins and the progeny of such
well-known parents made them all the more noticeable, and notable.
It seemed every person who ever met or even heard of them had an
idea of them, whether true or not, including that bastard son of a
Northern king, Aleksandr—who had called her soft and proud and
spoilt—and now watched Sahar almost as much as he did her mother
and aunt as they played and sang.
Yago the Wolf watched Sahar as well, though
not so boldly. His manners were more courtly, his actions more
princely, and it had been he who had stepped aside and opened a
space in the line of riders for her. When her mother and aunt
finished their song and took their bows, it was he who clapped
first.
“We will sing ‘The Tale of the Spring
Maiden,’ ‘The Lord of Winter,’ and ‘The Sun God,’” her Auntie Lyrra
said, smiling as shyly as a newlywed bride at Nasim, her husband of
over twenty years.
Halah came and sat down beside Sahar in the
queen’s empty seat as their mothers got into character. The oldest
of Nasim’s and Lyrra’s four living children, she was more like a
sister to Sahar than a cousin. Daughters of sisters married to
brothers, they had grown up together in the palace along with Asim
and their cousin’s younger brothers and sisters. Sahar’s heart
dropped as the laughing face of Ommar, Halah’s deceased older
brother and Asim’s childhood friend, came to her unbidden, and she
took several slow, calming breaths until her heart resumed its
normal rhythm.
“Munir has asked to speak with my father
after the feast this evening,” Halah whispered excitedly into
Sahar’s ear. “Our Auntie Mouse told my mother that she saw Munir at
the gem bazaar yesterday.”
“Oh, Halah,” Sahar said, pushing the memory
of Ommar back into the deep, dark recesses of her soul in which it
dwelt, hidden and obscured but never fully buried. “I am so happy
for you. Munir is a good man and he loves you so.”
“As I love him.”
Halah was glowing, and Sahar truly was happy
for her, if perhaps a little jealous, but if anyone deserved to be
happy it was Halah, whose heart was good and pure.
“Come to my chambers after things are settled
between you,” Sahar said, standing. “Tell me everything then. Now I
must go prepare for the knife fight.”
The fight was actually a dance she and her
brother, Asim, performed. Though well-honed, it was not without
some risk, for they had discarded their wooden blades the year they
turned ten and six, and now danced with metal blades. They had
teased and argued plenty over the years about who would win if they
actually fought. Sahar was quicker and likely more cunning, but
Asim was stronger and had a longer reach. Still, Sahar was glad
they would never have to find out. They had shared a womb for nine
moons and a bedchamber until they were seven years of age, and they
would gladly sever a limb before they would willingly harm the
other.
Plus, Asim was going to be a father soon.
Sahar gave Rima, Asim’s pregnant wife, a reassuring smile, and then
watched as Asim gave his beloved a tender, lingering kiss before
standing to join his sister. Sahar turned wistful. Her brother and
his wife had found their true loves, as had her parents, her Aunt
Lyrra and Uncle Nasim, and, it seemed, Halah and Munir. She sighed
and looked up and across the courtyard to find Aleksandr watching
her, his head cocked to one side. He grinned and cocked his head to
the other side, and with a flick of her skirts, she turned on her
heels and headed for the changing room where her maid servant,
Safa, waited with Sahar’s clothes and blades. The last thing she
meant to do was encourage the man, no matter how charming and
boyish he looked with that cursed shock of sun-kissed hair falling
onto his forehead.
Aleksi’s grin widened at the sassy sway of
Sahar’s skirts as she sashayed from the courtyard. Did the woman
never simply walk? A young man who had been sitting next to the
king and who was no doubt her twin brother, Prince Asim, stood and
followed her. Tall, broad shouldered and lean hipped, his hair a
lighter brown than Aleksi’s, Asim had the same tawny skin, sharply
angled face and round eyes as his sister, though Aleksi could not
tell their color from where he sat. The prince was married to Rima,
the eldest daughter of the Oryx, King of the City of Hills, and his
one and only wife, the Willow. By the sweet kiss Asim had given
Rima, she was likely to be his one and only wife as well.
For now.
Aleksi knew only too well how quickly
circumstances could change. She might give her husband nothing but
daughters and he could marry another, or others, to assure a male
heir to the throne. Then what would become of their love and their
marriage? It was better to marry for practical purposes. A strong
body for bearing children and life’s hardships, and an easy temper
to bear it all with a smile, that was what Aleksi was looking
for.
The sound of clapping brought his attention
back to the stage where the queen and her sister were taking their
bows. It was obvious where the princess got her looks from. She was
a perfect blend of her father’s dark features and her mother’s
graceful build. Her family’s physical beauty had not been
exaggerated, nor likely their pride. Aleksi had pricked Sahar’s
this afternoon. He grinned, recalling the fire in her eyes and the
heat of her voice as she had threatened to geld him for his brazen
boldness, and his grin widened as she strode back into the
courtyard dressed in a sleeveless short tunic and leather leggings
the color of plum wine, causing a surge of heat to pulse in his
groin where she had pointedly menaced him with her blade.
Her tight-fitting tunic clung to breasts as