The Red-Stained Wings--The Lotus Kingdoms, Book Two

by Elizabeth Bear

With him, she flew high spirals over men and horses, among dusty hills. She felt the wind among her damp feathers, drying them after the storm. The Cauled Sun warmed her. The weight of her body upon the air stretched her wings.

  But what did she see below her? What did she remember seeing, with Guang Bao’s eyes? Not an army, no.

  A band. Too many for her birdy intelligence to number, but not so many that they stretched out of sight. (Mrithuri, remembering with the shard of her human intelligence that remained, recollected that birds were not particularly good at large numbers. Even very smart birds, as the phoenix was, undeniably.) They were strangers, and they rode two by two on a red road climbing up the windward side of these sharp-ridged red mountains.

  The wind annoyed Guang Bao. It came from behind and shoved him forward, reducing his lift, making it feel as if the buoyancy was being sucked from beneath his wings. He let it push him—not even a dragon could fight the air—and rose into the mist below the low-hanging clouds that had piled up against the mountaintops. It would be enough to hide him, if he was careful.

  When he had passed the ridge, he turned. Banking into the rising currents, cupping them with his wings. His long neck stretched forward as the air picked him up and tossed him. He crested the wave and glided down its back slope. This was more comfortable and easier to control. The Daughter had cautioned him that the men below were not his friends, that they would harm him if they saw him. She had charged him to come back safe to her again.

  His second pass over the strangers was more controlled and leisurely. They did not seem particularly special to Guang Bao, however, being humans. The juvenile was familiar. One of his People. The phoenix beat his wings into the headwind to hover for a moment, getting a better look. The child didn’t seem injured. He rode ahead of a female adult that Guang Bao also recognized, he thought, though he was not so familiar with her.

  The others—

  Guang Bao’s gaze tracked a male as if drawn to it. This one was like the others. The rough outline was the same. The way it sat on a tired horse and urged the animal to climb, and keep climbing. But there was a dull glitter off its equipment that was compelling. Orange-pink stones, polished so they caught the light, studded the harness and shone around the edge of the tigerskin saddle blanket. There were shiny stones set into the tiger’s eye sockets, and they seemed to blaze with more light than could come from the cloud-dimmed Cauled Sun and the washed-out stars.

  That one was a predator. That one was a threat.

  That one’s head was turning. His eyes were rising. His arm coming up as if to point toward Guang Bao, hidden though the phoenix was in mist and darkness.

  Guang Bao slid sideways down the slope of the wind, rowing to hasten his flight. Curving away, at the mercy of a sudden spike of the same fear he would have felt if the shadow of an eagle had fallen over him. That one is going to eat me.

  He fled.

  * * *

  Mrithuri opened her eyes. Exhaustion, nausea warred in her. She wobbled and clutched the perch for safety.

  She wished only to lie down.

  He saw me. She was certain of it. He had seen through the blowing mist and seen not just Guang Bao. But somehow, he had seen Mrithuri in Guang Bao’s memories, as well. Before she had been there? In retrospect, as if she had returned to that time and been there in reality?

  She didn’t know. But she did not think she had imagined the recognition.

  “I think I saw their sorcerer,” she said to Yavashuri. “Fetch paper. I will describe him to you.”

  “And then you will rest,” Yavashuri suggested as Hnarisha bustled across the room for writing tools.

  Bedraggled Guang Bao reached down and groomed Mrithuri’s hair, tugging a lock free of her braid. It hurt, but she didn’t have the strength to disentangle herself. So she just let her knees fold to take her out of the way.

  “Yes,” Mrithuri said, sinking down to the blessedly cool flagstones, heedless that the dragonfruit might stain her clothes. “Then I will rest, for certain.”

  4

  Technically, the Dead Man supposed that he was meant to be with the military council. But Mrithuri had not left him specific instructions, and so the Dead Man appointed himself to accompany the Wizards. That sounded like it was going to be more interesting anyway, and he trusted Mrithuri’s new commander, Pranaj, to do the job of handling siege tactics as well as anyone.

  He hadn’t even realized that the palace had a morgue, so this was an exciting expedition. And information that might come in handy during the siege to follow, he mused morbidly. The Wizards walked down winding stairs side by side, the tall muscular woman and the round little man, and the Dead Man swept along behind them as if caught up in the skirts of a dust devil. Witchlamps danced around Tsering’s head, lending brighter illumination to a way already lit by oil lanterns hanging on chains.

  The palace dead were housed between the vast mortared columns of cisterns, in a basement sunk several levels down in the artificial hill upon which the palace rested. This was an interim step, a place of pause for the dead before they went to their final and lasting repose in the ossuaries, which were in catacombs levels below.

  The whole edifice—hill, palace, city, concentric walls and defenses—had been raised by the Alchemical Emperor during his reign. That explained a number of its architectural peculiarities, such as the Peacock Throne in the throne room, like a gigantic stub of melted and slumped candle studded with pavé gemstones, rising amidst barbaric glitter to higher than eye level. And such as the cisterns being mortared and cut stone, rather than dug into bedrock.

  Although, the Dead Man admitted, he wasn’t certain there was any nonporous bedrock to be dug into, here on this broad and muddy river plain. The dais the throne sat on was basalt shod in semiprecious stones, but he was given to understand that in raising that, there had been magic involved.

  In any case, it made for an admirable root cellar. And morgue, occasionally.

  “How deep does this go?” the Dead Man asked Ata Akhimah.

  “Down into riverine caves,” she admitted. “There’s limestone underneath. This time of year, they’re utterly flooded.”

  Their lanterns flickered, casting writhing shadows about them. Somewhere, a soft drip echoed.

  “We won’t run out of water, then.” The Dead Man placed a finger on his veil and rubbed it against his nose. Their footsteps echoed in the winding, chill spaces between the cisterns. There was food storage here, racks and bins and barrels. Mostly empty, now, at the beginning of the rainy season.

  Well, that was one reason to start a war at this time of year, the Dead Man supposed, thinking of the endless lakes of flooded rice fields outside Sarathai-tia, the tender seedlings about to be trampled under sandals and hooves.

  “There are fish in the caves as well,” Akhimah said. “Some big ones.”

  She must have seen the direction of the Dead Man’s gaze, and guessed the direction of his thoughts.

  “If only our men could breathe water we could swim out and take Anuraja on his flank.”

  “Huh,” Tsering-la said. “Let me think about that.”

  “Here we are,” said Akhimah, a moment after the Dead Man’s nose provided him with the same information. He was surprised by the tang of decay; the assassin had not been dead long enough for the rot to be so advanced. But as they approached the shrouded tables, the Dead Man noticed that more than one was occupied.

  He had not expected the second body.

  “Who is this?” he asked, having approached the more redolent and flipped the shroud back to show a middle-aged, mustached face above a stiff, embroidered collar. This body was not significantly decomposed enough to be disfigured, but it was far enough along that it had begun to smell.

  “Mahadijia,” Akhimah said, approaching the other corpse. “Honestly, in all the fuss, I had forgotten he was down here.”

  “Who was he?” Tsering-la folded down the assassin’s drapes with the unsqueamish respect of someone used
to approaching the dead. He sucked in his breath through his teeth when he saw the damage Syama’s teeth had done to the assassin. The Dead Man, who had been in the room when it happened and who was hardened to corpses, was still a little awed to be reminded of the extent of the damage.

  “Stabbed,” the Dead Man said, further inspecting the body. “A professional blow. Up through the ribs. Hard and certain.”

  Akhimah turned her head. “Interesting.”

  “Oh?” Tsering winced slightly at the sight of the assassin. Yellow witchlamps floated up from his body, forming into chrysanthemum squiggles. They cast a sunny, cheerful, utterly inappropriate light over everything. “That’s surprising?”

  “Well, yes,” Akhimah said. “He was stabbed by the rajni’s handmaiden Chaeri after he attempted to enter the rajni’s apartments carrying the weapon. He had been the court ambassador from Sarathai-lae before the assassination attempt.”

  “Anuraja’s man,” said Tsering-la.

  Akhimah nodded.

  “Chaeri’s not known to be a fighter, then?” The Dead Man hadn’t thought so, but he’d been surprised before. He checked the blow again. Yes, singular and clean.

  “You’ve met her,” Akhimah answered.

  The Dead Man nodded to himself. Yes, he had.

  Leaving the ambassador half-uncovered, the Dead Man walked over to the other table. The raw meat of the assassin’s gnawed face and throat smelled like freshly slaughtered lamb. “What can you tell from looking at him?”

  “Well,” said Tsering-la. “If the illusion spell had been a talisman, it would not have ended so neatly when he died. But I see no evidence on his body that he’s any wielder of magics, any weaver of spells. The illusion shielded him, and it ended when he died. But I don’t think the illusion was intrinsic to the assassin.”

  “You can tell that from a corpse?” The Dead Man was interested despite himself. “Do Wizards have an … aura, or something?”

  “Magic does.” Ata Akhimah wrinkled her nose. “A smell, anyway. To me, at least.”

  She looked over at Tsering-la.

  He shrugged, and looked back with blatant interest. “Really? Does a dead Wizard smell different than a corpse who, in life, had no gifts?”

  “Sadly, no.” Her half-smile twisted her face ruefully. “‘Gifts’ is a funny word for it. Your lot earn magic through self-sacrifice, and not all of you even come into ready power that way. Mine earn it through years of study.”

  “Shamans,” Tsering said. “They’re born with it, or get struck by lightning. Chosen, somehow.”

  “And those of you who do make those sacrifices have much more direct power over nature than the rest of us who follow other paths.”

  “There are sorcerers,” Tsering reminded. “Usually more powerful than any Wizard.”

  “Yes, but they sacrifice others to get their strength. There is still, at the bottom, a sacrifice. Here, look at this. Now that reeks of a spell.”

  The Dead Man, who had somewhat drifted off into daydreams during the theoretical discussion of magic—a failing, he knew—looked down to see what Akhimah was holding up in a hand protected by her handkerchief.

  It was a ring, a single coral-colored cabochon gemstone set in heavy, twisted, ruddy gold. As she turned it slowly, it caught the glare of Tsering’s witchlamps and a brilliant cat’s-eye shimmered across it.

  “That’s magic?” he asked.

  “It’s some kind of a talisman,” Akhimah confirmed.

  The Dead Man shoved his hands into his pockets. “What does it do?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “It smells like … a link. A connection of some kind. For communication? That’s what that sort of thing usually is.”

  Tsering produced and donned a leather riding glove, and lifted the ring from Akhimah’s hand. He squinted at it. “It’s theoretically possible that one could cast spells across such a thing.” He hefted it. “I would not recommend putting it on.”

  “You still haven’t explained why you think he was not a Wizard—or a sorcerer—though,” the Dead Man said, “if you can’t tell whether somebody would work magic when they were alive. Can’t smell a gift on him, did you say?”

  “Again, magic is not really about gifts—” Akhimah sighed, and shook her head. “That’s not the answer to your question. The actual answer is that if he were some form of spellworker, a Wizard—or a sorcerer even more so—I would expect him to be positively festooned with little artifacts, hung about with charms, dripping amulets and talismans.”

  “Are you dripping talismans?” the Dead Man asked, very interested.

  She smiled secretly. “A few more than Dr. Tsering, here.”

  He snickered.

  Akhimah continued, “But this faceless fellow has a single, fairly powerful, and I think quite simple artifact. Which suggests to me that somebody gave it to him.”

  “How do you know it’s those things? Powerful and simple?”

  “The materials are rich,” Tsering said. “Power is often reflected by craftsmanship and expense, though not always. But it’s easier to make a valuable thing more valuable, rather than dross valuable at all. It’s just because of the assortative principles of magic.”

  “I see,” said the Dead Man, who didn’t.

  “And the more complex the design, the more complex the patterns of the spells that can be woven into it.”

  That made a little more sense, and the Dead Man said, “Oh.” He eyed the elaborate collar of fine carved jade panels and misshapen baroque pearls that clasped Tsering’s throat above the round, simple neckline of his six-petaled coat.

  Tsering caught him looking and winked.

  “So someone sent him here, and monitored him, and used an illusion to make him look like Ümmühan and make him seem as if you—Tsering-la—and your colleague Vidhya accompanied him.”

  “Precisely,” Tsering-la said.

  “And somebody within the castle sewed one of Ümmühan’s hairs into my coat,” Akhimah said.

  “What?”

  The Dead Man recollected that Tsering-la had arrived after that particular revelation. It was confusing, what with him having arrived twice.

  “Just so,” said Akhimah. “I did not recognize the illusion for what it was because countermeasures had been enacted, and the hair was linked to a camouflaging spell.”

  “Ümmühan was not taken captive by the enemy until quite recently,” Tsering said. “I used a dragon-gate to speed Vidhya and I on our way. There happened to be a pair conveniently aligned.”

  The Dead Man cleared his throat. “What, exactly, is a dragon-gate?”

  Tsering-la made a face. “Well, nobody knows if the name is accurate. It’s an Eremite artifact that can link two places as if there were no distance between them. A Wizard—who shared my name, as it happens—spent a good deal of time mapping them, about fifty years ago.”

  The Dead Man had always thought that such things as mystical connections from one part of the world to another, usable by those with the right magic skills, were fairytale nonsense. And yet, here were respectable Wizards talking about them as if they were common, practical knowledge.

  He filed that information away to consider later.

  The Dead Man said, “So whoever has Ümmühan must have known that Tsering-la and Vidhya had been traveling with her, and that we might have some communication with them in order to know that.”

  “It’s never wise to assume that information is not traveling when Wizards are involved,” Akhimah said.

  “It’s never wise to assume it is traveling, either,” Tsering replied with a grumpy laugh.

  “In any case,” the Dead Man continued, “the sorcerer or whatever must also have had access to Ümmühan’s hairs, and gotten some to an agent here in the castle to sew into your sleeve. So we must assume that that agent is still within the palace, because this cannot have happened long ago.”

  “The sorcerer must be able to cast illusions,” Akhimah said. “Which narrows it dow
n some. And must have been able to send the assassin here ahead of you, Tsering-la. Despite the fact that you used the dragon-gates.”

  Tsering-la made a furrowing frown. “Well. Shall we get on with the autopsy, then?”

  Akhimah reached down beside the table and lifted out a satchel that chinked heavily when she shifted it. Her tools, the Dead Man supposed. He assumed that she had had a servant fetch them down, or that they were stored here for this purpose, or perhaps she had conjured them from her rooms, as he would have noticed if she had carried them. Was conjuring a thing Aezin sorcerers did?

  Would it be impolite to ask?

  He had not the slightest idea.

  He moved a little farther away from the dead ambassador to get the smell of rot out of his nostrils. That brought him closer to the aroma of raw meat, but it was less objectionable.

  That was good, for it was soon to grow stronger.

  It did not seem to bother the Wizards that the assassin’s face had been bitten half off. Working together, as if they had done this many times, Akhimah and Tsering wielded their shears to lay the would-be assassin’s body bare. The clothes—stiff with blood and less appealing substances—they set aside and saved.

  The Dead Man had seen some exceedingly sharp blades in his day. Razors. Scalpels.

  These tools put all those to shame. They would have been useless for war: they seemed to have been chipped from black glass. Their knapped facets glittered with barbaric splendor. But however sharp they were, they would be brittle, and they would not survive the least contact during a parry.

  He’d heard of the skills to which Rasan Wizards were trained as surgeons. And he had heard as well of their volcanic obsidian dissecting knives. Said to be imbued with the power to cut living flesh so cleanly that it barely hurt, and might heal without a scar.

  These knives seemed to belong to Ata Akhimah, which was logical, as she too was a Wizard. Tsering-la had apparently left his possessions behind in Ansh-Sahal, but the Lotus Kingdoms were not far from Rasa, as the trade routes ran.

  Tsering-la handled the blades both meticulously and reverentially. His hands and his witchlamps were steady as he explored the wounds in the dead man’s face, arm, and throat. As he did so, he discussed what he found, and Ata Akhimah also shared her opinions. The Dead Man listened, and found himself leaning closer, fascinated. And learning a few useful things about anatomy in the deal.