And that was the gift of the people of Aram.
—Tales of the Sorcerer-Kings, Laocantus Aurus Iovit III
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Lin had been waiting outside the gates of the Sault for more than an hour by the time Kel arrived. She was grumpy; it had been drizzling, on and off in bursts. For the first hour, at least, she’d had Mariam’s company; they’d perched on the edge of a stone cistern, with Mariam watching eagerly for a sign of the Marivent carriage. She was delighted at the chance to lay eyes on the Prince’s cousin.
“He’s part Marakandi, isn’t he?” Mariam had asked. She’d had a bag of speculaas—spiced cookies from Gelstaadt—open on her lap and was munching happily. Sugar had been forbidden to the Ashkar in Malgasi, and Mariam had an insatiable sweet tooth.
“Yes.” Lin had answered slowly; she supposed she wasn’t entirely sure. The Prince had Marakandi blood through his mother; Kel did look very much like him, so she supposed it was possible, even probable. Still. She hated lying to Mariam, even about small things, and she’d been forced to do so repeatedly these past days.
“I remember Marakand,” Mariam said, a bit wistfully. “Such beautiful fabrics there. Silks and satins and brocades, all woven with these gorgeous patterns. I remember seeing a procession of the Kings once, in Kasavan. The courtiers were all wearing green brocade edged with saffron silk that looked just like flames—”
The Kings. Marakand had a double throne, currently occupied by two brothers. Queen Lilibet was their sister. If she had not come to Castellane, Lin wondered, might she have sat on one of those thrones? Or had her chances of queenship been greater here than in her mother country?
Mariam sucked in a breath. Lin looked at her friend, startled, and saw that she had gone bone-white. She was staring at something out in the Ruta Magna. Lin looked, but saw only a tangle of the usual traffic, damp pedestrians darting under stone arcades to avoid the drizzle. Among them was a massive dark carriage painted a deep charcoal gray, its lacquer top gleaming with rain. As it passed, Lin caught a glimpse of the blazon on its side: a black-and-gray wolf, teeth bared, ready to pounce.
“Mariam?” She put a hand on her friend’s arm. Felt her shaking.
“The vamberj,” Mariam whispered. She bolted to her feet, spilling her spiced biscuits into a puddle.
“Mariam!” Lin called, but her friend had already fled back into the Sault, leaving Lin torn. She wanted to go after her—she could not imagine what the shock of seeing a Malgasi carriage, all these years after she had barely escaped the vamberj soldiers, must be like for Mariam—but Lin could not chance missing Kel. He could not enter the Sault to find her, and if he thought she had abandoned him at the gates, he might not help her again.
Her worry over Mariam did nothing for her ill humor, though. By the time Kel arrived in the Marivent carriage Mariam had so wanted to see, Lin was as irritable as she was damp with rain. She clambered into the carriage, avoiding Kel’s hand, and settled onto the seat opposite him, tucking the lank tendrils of her hair behind her ears.
“I see,” Kel said, offering her a warm cloth from a basket at their feet—it took her a moment to realize it was for drying her face—“that rather than my physician being summoned to my side, I have been summoned to hers.”
“Hmph,” Lin said, scrubbing at her hair with the cloth. It was nice to be dry. “I needed someone to take me to the Maze.”
“The Maze?” Kel looked surprised, but pushed open the window on his side and relayed the information to the driver. The carriage began to move slowly through the cordon of waggons and pushcarts snarling up the Ruta Magna. “Why me?”
“You are the only one of the malbushim I know who owes me a favor.”
“Really? Kel settled back into his seat. “I’m the only one? What about Antonetta Alleyne?”
“Demoselle Alleyne is a respectable young lady,” said Lin. “She’d be horrified if I asked her to take me to the Maze. Whereas I am sure you and the Prince’s other friends spend plenty of time there, engaged in all sorts of unsavory activities. Besides—I rather think I’ve asked enough of her.”
“I was surprised you were able to convince her to sneak you into the Palace,” Kel allowed.
Mariam would have been disappointed in his outfit, Lin thought. He was dressed plainly, in black broadcloth and a white shirt, though the embroidery at his cuffs and collar must have cost more than Lin made in a month.
“It was easy,” said Lin. “She fancies you.”
Kel looked utterly surprised. Men, thought Lin. “She only has eyes for Conor,” he said.
“I saw the way she looks at you,” said Lin.
“She would never dare to even think on it,” said Kel, and there was a new harshness to his voice. “Her mother would disown her.”
Lin, realizing she had touched a nerve, thought it best to change the subject. “Perhaps.” She discarded the now-damp cloth. “But as an Ashkari woman, it would be illegal for me to be in the Maze after sunset.”
“Everything in the Maze is illegal,” Kel pointed out.
“It also wouldn’t be safe. Lawlessness does not protect me, even from unjust laws. Both are bad. Alone, I would be easy prey for a criminal in the Maze. If I am with you, it will be assumed I am like you. Malbushim.”
“You said that word before. What does it mean?”
Lin paused. The word was part of the Old Language of Aram, and such a part of her daily vocabulary she had forgotten it would be foreign to Kel. “It means non-Ashkar,” she said. “Well, literally, it means ‘clothes.’ Just clothes, like a jacket or a dress. But we use it to mean empty clothes—no one wearing them. No one inside.”
“Empty suits,” mused Kel. “No souls inside?”
“Yes,” she said, and blushed a little. “I don’t think it’s true, by the way. About the souls.”
“Not literally,” he said, in a gently mocking tone. “Speaking of respectability, what is it you want in the Maze?”
“The Ragpicker King asked me to find him a book there,” she said. “In exchange, he will let me use the equipment in the Black Mansion to distill medicines—like the kind I used to treat you.”
“Can you not do that in the Sault?”
“Most of the medical apparatus in the Sault is off limits to women. It was only with great reluctance that they allowed me to become a physician at all.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Kel said firmly. “You are clearly an excellent physician. And I say this as an unbiased observer whose life was not recently saved by your skills. Obviously.”
“Obviously.” Lin smiled. “How do you, Sword Catcher, know the Ragpicker King?”
“He offered me a job,” Kel said. “I told him no, but he’s very persistent.”
The carriage jerked to a stop. They had arrived.
An old stone archway, once a monument to a long-past naval battle, marked the entrance to the Maze. They dismounted from the carriage—Kel offered his hand to Lin again, to help her down, and this time she took it—which would wait for them here; the streets of the Maze were too narrow for it to carry them inside.