Old Mars

When I was a short distance away, the priestess came out of a tent with a flail in her hand. She was not young, her skin scarred and splattered with indigo patterning. I saw the spike through her lower lip that told me she was a deathspeaker, and her headdress jingled with the beads of her wealth. She did not look pleased to see me.

“Shan-hai,” I greeted her with her title, “I come with a message. From Cadrada.”

“I know no one and nothing in the cities,” the priestess snapped. “Do not lie.”

“I’m telling you the truth.” I dismounted and threw the scrap of fabric with the emblem of the Ynar upon it, above the personal totem. Her breath hissed in her throat as she saw it, and she snatched it from the ground as though I were going to steal it back.

“Where did you get this?”

“Give me water and I’ll tell you. I cut it from no corpse, if that is what you’re asking.”

She stared at me for a long moment, then shook the flail and spoke a word of Protection from the carrion gods of the Ynar … “You won’t need that for me,” I said. Her eyes widened: the dark green of winter forests. I remembered Hafyre and held my breath. The priestess was not as old as I’d first assumed. She did better than water, making me tea from the bittersweet verthane of the high slopes and keeping a polite silence until I’d drunk the first three mouthfuls. Then she said, “I ask you again. Where did you get this?”

“From a slave palace.” She had not yet realized that I was not a man. If I had my way, she never would. “What I was doing there—that’s my business. But I met a girl, who told me that she was a princess of the Ynar. Her name was Hafyre. She gave me this.” I pointed to the emblem.

“And you brought it back to us. Why?”

“I’m traveling across the Cold Deserts to Coyine. I want safe passage.”

“And so you buy it with an emblem of the lost,” she said, but consideringly, without condemnation. I could see that she was thinking fast.

“If you like.”

She gave a swift gesture of assent. “Very well. What else did you understand of the girl? ‘Princess’ is not a term we know.”

I affected disinterest. “I’m not familiar with your hierarchies.”

“Very well, I shall explain them to you, though no man can apprehend how the Tribes are governed.” She turned her head and spat. “You with your male-ruled cities—you cannot understand our matriarchies. Hafyre is ghost-touched, grass-haunted. There was a comet at her birth, and we believe that is a herald from the carrion lords who live between the winds, the land where death is. She is an oracle, a harbinger, and she is marked for power.”

“Then you’ll be wanting her back.”

“As you say. She went missing a year and a half ago; we had thought her dead, but the wind brought no messages from her, and I confess that I did not understand why.”

I looked away. “How do you plan to retrieve her?”

“Ah,” the Shan-hai said, “I don’t think it wise to tell you that.”

“It’s none of my concern, really. But you’ll guarantee safe passage?”

“Yes. You have done me a service. Even though you are a man, I won’t forget it. There’ll be a ceremony tonight because of this—you will stay. I say this not because I wish to honor you: It is the best way to inform as many people as possible of your presence, at once.”

“What does this ceremony involve?”

“A call to the winds and the gods who ride them. No more than that. You won’t be expected to do more than watch. The priestesses run things here.”

“Then it will be an honor indeed,” I said, and saw her cold, forest-eyed smile.

To the citizens of Cadrada, these people are barbarians. Remembering Halse’s palace, and the things that happened there, I rather think it is more even-handed than that. The ceremony to which I had been invited was held up in the rocks, on a low plateau looking out across the darkening plain and the red sun falling. The air grew colder swiftly and smelled of snow. Huge harps of sinew were threaded between tall poles, and, as the dusk breeze grew, they began to whine and sing. The priestess moved among them, whispering, in a dance that grew steadily wilder as the evening wore on. By the time the actual ceremony was due to begin, some three hundred people had gathered. I saw the banner of the Ynar again, but others, too. The women gathered about the fires; the men stood sullenly on the fringes, standing guard.