The Lioness Scorned

  Autumn, 401 Anno Astrum

  24

  The trip proved just as awful as Edric had predicted. He was not built for the dry heat of the regions around Sahara, especially when he and Sara both had to bundle up even more than usual. Though their coiled headwraps and long-sleeved robes were of thin Aegyptian flax, he still hated that he had to hide from the sun when Dalibor and Simend could strip down to their shendyts and let their fur protect them. It wasn't fair.

  But fair or not, life had to continue, and they had four full months of overland travel to weather. The first was spent sailing south along the Nilus. Edric hunted for fish and turtles in the river after they stopped for the evening, and Simend knew enough of the plants along the banks that they never wanted for food. Edric harnessed radiance to purify water for them while the swirling winds of Sahara pushed them upriver during the long days. Sara even managed to convince Dalibor to construct a makeshift harpoon to do his own fishing. And at least three times a day, either Edric or Simend would need to fire a burst of radiance at a serpenduck, dragonfly, or other beast that had decided to get closer to their barge than they were comfortable with.

  "It occurs to me I don't actually know where you're from," Sara told Edric one of the interminable mornings on the river. "Dalya's Sabwan, but he's not from Aegyptus. Did you grow up away from your Aspect too?"

  "I did not," Edric told her, laughing. "I was born in the Londinium ruins on the bottom of the ocean between Hibernia and Caledonia. They've been down there since the Star fell. One of the biggest Sior cities in the world."

  "So why'd you leave?" Sara asked. "Dalya and I both have tragic stories about why we left home. What about you?"

  Edric forced a laugh and shook his head. There was not a chance on either side of death that he was going to tell them that he fled the city at sixteen after his first serious girlfriend caught him getting railed by her brother and then proceeded to out him as a passive partner to their entire circle of friends. He'd learned quickly to never trust any woman with that secret. "Sorry. Nothing like that for me," he lied. Simend gave him a sidelong glance but said nothing. Edric thought Dalibor might have noticed anyway. The warlord was dangerously observant. "My family were fishmongers, and I didn't want to do that. It was boring. Why would anybody want to sell fish to sharks who live at the bottom of the ocean? So I ran away and joined the Legion. That's where Simend and I met."

  "You weren't legionaries though, right?" Dalibor asked. "You were from the special orders. And different orders at that. How'd you meet?"

  Edric glanced over at Simend, but the jackal was very intently navigating the ship. "We were some of the last non-Homines left in the Legions at the end," he said. "Most had deserted on their own before the order to kick the rest of us out came down. It wasn't a surprise to any of us, of course, but it stung all the same."

  "I gave them five years," Simend said. "Five. Years. And they kicked me out. Not because I wasn't good enough. No. I was a prodigy, they said. One of the best instructors in the Song. But I had a tail, and that made me less."

  "They had gathered up the few of us who were left and kicked us all out together," Edric said. "Simend almost murdered the messenger."

  "I wouldn't have stopped at just him, either," Simend snarled.

  "I was the one who held him back," Edric said. "Got myself a nice scar for it too. Not anywhere I can show you, though."

  "I remember when my father handed down the order to kick the beast… the other Aspects out of the Legion," Sara said. "That must have been five years ago now. Have the two of you been working together this entire time?"

  "We have," Edric confirmed. "He felt bad enough for slicing up my… for hurting me that he stuck around, and we hit it off."

  "Turns out," Simend said, licking his snout, "that kissing them makes them feel better."

  "Typical dog," Edric shot back by reflex. "Always looking to lick some balls." Dalibor's wince and Sara's gasp made Edric realize what he'd just said. He grimaced. "Sorry. I forgot we weren't alone. This is a thing we do."

  "It's fine," Dalibor said, rubbing his eyes. "It's not the first time I've heard the slur, but it occurs to me it might be the first time I've heard it directed at someone who wouldn't think it's an insult."

  Simend tossed back his head and laughed, letting his tongue hang loose to one side briefly. "I do love the feel of balls in my mouth," he admitted.

  Dalibor winced again, but this time Sara snorted a giggle. Edric just glared at Simend. The jackal remained entirely impervious to shame. "Could you not, please?" he asked.

  "Aye, Captain Fish!" said Simend with a legionary's salute. Sara chuckled.

  Edric groaned. "It's Fisher."

  "Wait, what?" Sara said. "Your name is Edric Fisher?"

  "Okay, yes. Come on. Get it out of your system," Edric snapped. "I am a shark whose family name is Fisher. My family has been fishmongers for generations, and that's how we get our names back home."

  "It's funny every time," Simend said. Dalibor just shook his head.

  "I'm sorry," Sabina apologized. "I shouldn't have laughed at your name."

  "It's fine," Edric said with a sigh. "Everybody does the first time."

  They sailed south until, at last, they sailed past the worst of Sahara's curse and arrived in Kush, the eastern territory of the Sahelian Nations. "What are those?" Sara asked, staring at some locals working along the banks of the river.

  "The Kembo?" Edric asked. He waved at the laborers, and they waved back. The Kembo of Lost Aksum were the tallest of all the Aspects Edric had ever met. Not a single one of them, man or woman, stood less than six feet tall, and many approached seven. But it wasn't their size that had caught Sara's attention, of course. It wasn't even their massive, fan-like ears or their dark gray skin. It was their noses, or rather their trunks. The elephants had a two-foot-long snake for a nose that was strong and dexterous enough that they could use it as a sort of third hand. Of course, given her reaction to the sailors back on the Sanguine Siren, it could also have been the fact that none of the laborers, men or women, wore any more than what the princess would consider underwear that had caught her attention.

  "I've never seen anything like them," Sara said, waving as well. A few waved back with their trunks.

  "There really isn't anything else like them," Edric said.

  Three weeks after they had left Memphis, they reached the Kushite city of Mero?. They used their time there to rest in real beds and find mounts for their trip west. "Forgive me if this is insensitive," Sara said while they inspected the mounts at one of the local traders. "But isn't it a little odd that the Kembo sell elephants?"

  Edric chuckled. "It can be a little confusing sometimes if you don't use the proper name for the Aspect, I suppose," he said. "But the Sosym sell plenty of horses up in Numidia too."

  The trip southwest through Lost Aksum was probably the worst month of Edric's entire life. The former Kingdom of Aksum had been entirely consumed by Sahara decades earlier, and there was no water besides what Edric managed to condense out of the air and ground. They lived on nothing but preserved food for weeks. Simend had to take over managing the radiance shield that protected them from the winds of Sahara, since Edric could do nothing. Without being able to swim at all, he was deathly ill for the entire month. He vaguely remembered Sara insisting that they observe Dalibor's thirtieth birthday at some point, but the shark was so weak he could do little more than lay on his bedroll in their large tent during the long days, slump over his saddle during their nightly travels, and condense water from the air with his symbiote so they and their horses didn't die. He even tried raining some of the water on himself, but it didn't do much for him and felt wasteful of what little water they had. He needed to submerge.

  When they finally reached the southern coast, Sara was the one who helped Edric hobble to the beach and remove his robe and sandals. The indrawn hiss of air through her teeth when she finally saw how cracked his gills had gotten, how brittle his scales, how weak his limbs told him everything he needed to know about how pitiful he looked. He closed his eyes. "I'm sorry," he croaked.

  "Don't apologize," she said. "Here, lean on me and I'll help you to the water."

  She should have collapsed under his weight, but she managed to support him. How much had he wasted away? He couldn't even open his eyes now. "I'm supposed to take care of you," he said, his voice as dry as his gills. "I'm sorry I can't right now."

  "Nonsense," Sara told him. He could feel the waves lapping at his ankles. "You've saved my life more than once, Edric Fisher. This is the absolute least I can do to thank you."

  She guided him out into the water and helped him lie down once the water was deep enough for him to float. He sighed as the water rushed over and through his gills. He could feel his skin soaking up the brine of the ocean, rehydrating him with every breath. "Praise the Oceanlord," he sighed. "I'm starting to feel better already." He opened his eyes to smile at Sara and thank her for her help, but he saw that she was entirely naked, standing thigh deep in the water beside him, before he could say a word. He sputtered and rolled away from her, splashing water wildly about him. "Why aren't you dressed?"

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  "Because we're in the ocean, Edric," she said. "I don't have fancy swimming gear like you, and I don't need saltwater drying in my underwear. You told me that yourself when we were swimming near the Pharos in Alexandria, remember?"

  He did, but she'd still worn her underwear then and had just rinsed it out in fresh water afterwards. He presumed, anyway. He hadn't seen the washing part. "Still," Edric said. "Why couldn't Simend do this?"

  "Because I don't have fur and so will dry quickly," she said. "Look, this is only weird if you make it weird."

  He grimaced and rolled back onto his back. She wasn't wrong. He paddled his feet lightly to push himself farther from shore. The moon was approaching full, and the stars sparkled brilliantly. "Why don't you lay down and join me in the water, then?" he asked.

  "Because it's freezing," she said, crossing her arms under her breasts. "I don't know how you can stand it."

  He paddled farther and farther from shore, and Sara followed slowly after him, gasping with every step. "Where are the others?" Edric asked eventually.

  Sara sighed. "Setting up camp," she said. "They knew we weren't going to travel the rest of the night with you needing time to recover."

  Edric hesitated before he asked the next question, but he knew he needed to ask it. "Dalibor didn't want to come out with you?"

  "Again, Edric. He's furry," Sara said with another sigh. "He insisted on staying behind to help Simend with the animals. Said he trusted me to take good care of you on my own."

  "Is everything okay between the two of you?" Edric asked.

  He wanted to submerge himself to escape the pained, confused look she gave him, but he was still too dry and buoyant. Why had he even asked? Did he want to offer support? What could he even do? Before long, they would all be back in Meleko. He'd be back with Binta at last, Sara would get her answers from Kamissa, and then she would be gone.

  She would be gone.

  After another couple weeks' walk along the sandy coast, each evening starting with a quick swim for Edric and Sara, they came to a harbor. Edric looked around in wonder at the long piers, large ships, and press of people moving through the dark night. All the Sahelian Aspects were present, with leopards and lions bartering and conversing with elephants and aardvarks. There was not a single building on the shore. Edric instead watched people climb in and out of burrows protected from the winds by large, decorated shells of baked mud bricks.

  One of the locals, a wispy Anuulan woman in a full-length robe and a headscarf that only showed her long, slender snout called to them as they approached in a language Edric did not recognize. "That's going to be a problem," the shark muttered.

  Simend called back to the woman in Sabwan, but she shook her head and responded in a tongue that Edric at least recognized as belonging to the Kinin of Daras. Simend grimaced but responded in kind. Edric thanked the Oceanlord that the jackal had bothered to learn some of the native language of Meleko, because he certainly hadn't. Simend and the aardvark spoke for a time, haltingly and with many pauses to curse in different languages, before they bowed to each other, and the woman hurried off.

  "What did you talk about?" Sara asked.

  "I'm not entirely certain, and I'm not sure she was either," Simend said. "I still have no idea what this place is called, and I think it's going to be the last city we see."

  "There's a city under those things?" Dalibor asked.

  "Yeah, the Anuulo live underground," Simend said, smoothing his whiskers. "I know we can stay here tonight if we want, but it sounded like most of their cities are inland and underground."

  Dalibor sighed. "And here I was hoping we'd have regular places to trade for supplies again," he said.

  "I'm going to go try and find us a place to stay," Simend said, eyeing one of the burrow entrances.

  "I'll come with you," Dalibor said. "I want to restock our preserved food, and I'm curious to see how they've adapted to living in the wastes. It's so much different than what we did up north."

  "I'll stay up here if it's all the same to you," Edric said. "Come get me when you're done."

  "I'll stay with you then," Sara said. "It's not wise for one of us to be left alone."

  The two of them found an unoccupied pier and sat down to wait for the jackals. It was late, and the moon was high and the Remnants dark. There were no clouds in the sky, and the stars shown down on the torches and lanterns that lighted the midnight harbor on the edge of the desert. Edric dangled his feet over the edge of the pier, staring out at the dark water. He was at the opposite end of the world from his home, but the ocean was still the ocean, breeze and spray and all.

  "Can I ask you something?" Sabina asked, staring up at the stars beside him.

  "Of course," he told her. "Anything."

  "Can you tell me about Binta?" she asked, and he realized that he hadn't actually meant it when he said anything. "I've been curious for a while now, but you never brought her up again after that one time you mentioned her in Alexandria."

  Edric took a deep breath. What should he tell her? But why would he tell her anything but the truth? And why was he hesitating? Both he and Sara were in happy relationships with other people, so why was it so hard to talk to her about this? "She is my mate," he said, looking down at his fingers.

  "The two of you are married?" Sara asked.

  He shook his head. "Not in the way people think about marriage in the Ring, we aren't," he said. "Things are a bit less formal in the Sahelian, but… We are committed to each other. We've been together for four years now. We share a house in Meleko, and she's always waiting for me when I get home."

  "Do you have any children?"

  "We do not," he said, trying to hold back the bitterness from his voice. She couldn't have known, of course. "We've tried, but… There was one time we thought we were going to be parents. I even sent Sim out on a job by himself so I could be with Bea." He sighed. "The baby was stillborn."

  "I'm so sorry."

  "Me too. I've always wanted to have a little boy of my own, but… No luck so far."

  "What's Binta like?"

  "She's Kinin. Pure-bred. Great golden fur and absolutely fabulous green eyes. Shorter than me. Taller than you."

  "Edric, everybody is shorter than you and taller than me."

  He laughed. "Some of the Kembo are taller than I am."

  "And some of the Draig are shorter than me, but neither fact means much," Sara pointed out. "I know I'm short for a Homin, but are you tall for a Sior?"

  "I am," he admitted. "Not many Sior are taller than me. I was always proud of that back in Londinium when I was little. Longest legs and smoothest scales."

  Sara cocked her head. "You don't have scales, though," she said.

  "I do though! Sharkskin is just really tiny scales," he insisted. He rolled up the left arm of his robe and held his unaugmented hand out to her. "Here, feel. They're smooth if you rub with their flow but rough if you rub against it." He demonstrated by rubbing up and down the back of his arm. She followed his lead, running her fingers down his arm towards his hand and then back up.

  She pulled her hand away when he winced on the backstroke. "Are you alright?" she asked.

  He chuckled. "Are you? It stings me a little if you rub against them quite that hard, but they can cut you if you aren't careful."

  "I did notice that, yes," she said, and went back to feeling his arm, a heavy touch against his scales as she stroked down and a lighter touch as she ran her fingers back up his arm. He could feel her heart remain steady even as his began to beat faster. He hadn't had anybody touch him like this since he'd left Meleko. Or before, perhaps. Binta loved his chest but didn't care much for his scales, and Simend always had other things in mind. "Does the white skin feel the same as the gray skin?" Sara asked, and Edric turned his arm over so she could stroke the lighter skin on his inner arm. She traced her fingers up and down his arm—firm, massaging strokes down and gentle, feather-light touches on the way up—and then down into his palm, tracing the shapes of his webbed fingers with her own. He watched her hand against his. Hers was so much smaller. He folded his fingers down and enveloped her entire hand in his own. She looked up at him, and he looked back down at her. The reflected stars shone in her dark eyes.

  Then he released her hand and they both turned away from each other. "Thank you," she said. "I've never felt anything like that before."

  Edric cleared his throat. "Any time," he said. "It's been a while since anybody felt my scales like that."

  "You must really be looking forward to getting back to Binta then," Sara said.

  Edric nodded. Binta never felt his scales like that. "I am," he said. Because he was. Binta had to be waiting for him back in Meleko, just like Dalibor would be waiting for Sara in whatever room the jackals found for them that night. It didn't make sense to get closer to her. They would only be around each other for another month or two, and then he would be back home.

  She would be gone.

  By the time they reached Meleko, it was early September. They'd begun traveling during the day once the jungles in northwestern Daras were dense enough to block the winds off Sahara, but it was still after sunset as they made the final approach to the city. "Nearly eleven months," Simend said. "I think that's the longest we've ever been gone."

  "Is it safe for us to get closer?" Dalibor asked, staring at the glowing buildings from afar as they approached the city around the curve of the southern bay. "That looks like a lot of Astral relics."

  "They're perfectly safe," Edric said. "One of the best things Kamissa's done over the years is figure out how to seal any radiance leaks in the relics so they're safe even for non-luminaries. Her techniques are how I was able to patch up our shield at all."

  "It looks like something out of a fairy story," Sara said, trying to take in every detail as they got closer and closer. "Everything is bright. The buildings are all fantastical. It's hard to believe it's real."

  Simend laughed. "That's Meleko, alright. Just wait until you meet the people. There's more luminaries here than any other single place in the world."

  "Speaking of people," Edric said. "We have to take Sara to meet Kamissa."

  "Shouldn't we wait until tomorrow?" Dalibor asked.

  "No," Simend said. "You can wait until tomorrow to meet her, handsome, but Sara's got something Astral in her. Kamissa will throw a fit if we try to sneak an unidentified artifact into the city, and people tend to end up hospitalized after Kamissa's fits."

  "I should be there with her then," Dalibor said.

  "It's best if you aren't," Edric said. "It's easier to deal with Kamissa when there are fewer people. Why don't you let Sim show you around the city, and we'll meet up with the two of you when we're done. Sim, could you let Bea know I'm home finally?"

  Simend flicked his ears. "Are you sure you don't want to tell her yourself?" he asked. "I can take Sara to Kamissa as easily as you can. Our job's pretty much done now. You should go be with your lover."

  Edric looked down at Sara, and she looked back up at him. He could not place her expression. It was entirely unfair how inscrutable Homin expressions could be. With immobile ears and no tail, it was too easy for them to hide what they were actually feeling. Would she mind if he left her? Would it bother her to have Simend accompany her instead of him? Did she care that he had a lover that he was returning to? Her face offered no answers. All he could think instead was that this could very well be their last chance to spend time with each other.

  She would be gone.

  "No, it's fine," Edric said. "You're more likely to get into a fight with Kamissa than take care of Sara. Especially since we're going to have to explain who she really is if we want Kamissa's help. We'll meet up with the two of you at that plaza near your house."

  "Alright," Simend said, shaking his head. "Let's go, Dalya. We'll find a place for the two of you to stay, then I'll show you my house on our way to Binta's. Sounds like my place might be pretty familiar, though."

  They parted ways at the outskirts of the city, with Dalibor and Simend taking all four horses to find an inn with a room for Sara and Dalibor. Edric made sure to keep the sack with the radiant shield with him. Then he took Sara by the hand and led her through the city to Kamissa's workshop. The entire way, Sara tried to look everywhere at once. She said nothing, instead gaping at buildings and lights and people as if she'd never seen anything of their sort in the past. Edric smiled. It felt warm and pleasant to be able to show off his city like this. He so rarely got to show newcomers around his home. He looked down at her wonder-filled smile and wide-open eyes as she tried to take in the entire city at once, and the warmth he'd felt began to fade. She wasn't really a newcomer. She was just passing through on the way to wherever the rest of her life would take her. He would be left behind, rooted to his own life and unable to follow.

  She would be gone.