The Lady by K. V. Johansen

Author:K. V. Johansen
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781616149819
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: 2014-11-16T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XIV

It was all falling apart, and Zora didn’t understand, the fool girl didn’t understand what she could do about it. Nearly a month, she had been besieged in the temple. No, not besieged. Her citadel. Where else should she await her champion? He would meet the Praitannec high king soon. Now. Today. And Praitan would be hers. Then he would return. She would bring him back to her, and the priest who had gone to be her voice would stay behind to speak her will as the Voiceless Red Masks could not; the armies of Praitan would follow the Red Masks. She might allow Ketsim to live; his Grasslanders, certainly, would follow her king-to-be. Grasslanders always followed a victor.

—It has all gone wrong.

So she was not besieged. She held her hand above her next move, that was all. Pointless to throw away resources she did not need to spend yet. Pointless, dangerous, to send her Red Masks out needlessly into the city, for the demon and the Blackdog to kill. Working through the Red Masks, she had long since rebuilt the spell of the divine terror. It had been no difficult thing at all to do so, a matter of a few days, and she did not think the wretched Grasslander wizard would find it so easy to tear apart, this time, when it came to the test. But not yet. Not here, yet. No, she did not reveal it by sending them out against the city. Only to be her eyes, she sent them, not to fight. She could not lose any more. Every death weakened her, leached wizardry away, she had none left but theirs, and she feared now her enemies knew it. But when the time came to send the Red Masks out openly again . . . the yellow-eyed wizard would be dead. Or of their number. She had not quite decided. Or perhaps she should even invite her to . . . but the folk could not love a Lady so hard, so worn by war. Besides, the Grasslander wizard would not be so easily seduced as the innocent dancer Zora had been.

Don’t think of that. I am the Lady.

The sowing of the fields, the summer days. These were the dances of hope and trust in the Lady’s kindness. Zora was on her third cycle through the pairing, and the santur-player had just brushed his mallets over the wrong strings, sounding a jarring discord. He would not play in the temple again; she would turn him out, priest or no. The Lady was dishonoured by such imperfection. Sweat trickled down her face, between her breasts, made her limbs slick, as she circled under the bright patch of daylight beneath the shattered eye of the dome, the blue glass flown to shards in her anger—anger, not fear—when Vartu came seeking her. Her feet were so light on the patterned floor. In the dance, there was quiet, the deep, restful quiet of the mind, where truth could rise and understanding blossom.

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