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

by Elizabeth Bear

  The Dead Man had been impressed before by the power of the bear-dog Syama’s jaws. Now he was overawed.

  Her first bite seemed to have crushed the assassin’s arm. The next had been enough by itself to kill, destroying his face and driving finger-sized canines through the bones of the skull before the closing leverage of the jaw cracked and pulverized it. Though she had then torn his throat out for good measure, there was no possibility that he might have felt it. He had been dead before Syama shifted her grip the second time.

  Tsering-la paused then, and took off his coat. He hung it on a hook that Ata Akhimah showed him, and rolled up his sleeves. Both Wizards donned aprons. The Dead Man resolved to stand well back.

  By the time Tsering-la cut into the assassin’s belly, the Dead Man had forgotten any squeamishness he might have harbored in the light of a newfound intellectual curiosity. He watched, fascinated, as the sublime edge of the black glass blade parted waxy flesh, revealing the pink meat and the gelled blood beneath.

  “That’s so sharp,” the Dead Man said, aware he sounded childish and not sure he cared.

  “It cuts right through the little capsules that make up the flesh,” Tsering-la said, with satisfaction. “No crushing or bruising.”

  The Dead Man wanted to ask about the capsules. He guessed that now was not the time.

  Tsering-la opened the abdominal cavity with the same care the Dead Man would use in gutting a deer. He parted muscle and membrane cleanly, then reached in and scooped the slippery gray mass of intestines aside, piling them into a basket held by Ata Akhimah. Intact, to the Dead Man’s relief. He knew from personal experience how profoundly terrible the contents smelled.

  “Are you looking for something in particular?”

  “I try not to,” Tsering-la said. “Preconceptions influence the outcomes.”

  That struck the Dead Man as a reasonable point. He was starting to think he could get used to being around the sort of Wizards who applied some recognizable logic to their behavior, novel though they were in his experience.

  Next, Tsering reached into the abdominal cavity and groped out the liver, which was enormous and wet. The Dead Man had not previously realized the size of a human liver, or quite appreciated its resilient floppy slipperiness and the intricate lacework of blood vessels that cauled it.

  “What next?” Ata Akhimah asked, as she held out another tight-woven basket to receive the organ. The meat had a soft gloss in the glow of the witchlamps.

  Still fresh, the Dead Man thought.

  “I’ll go up through the diaphragm,” said Tsering, and suited actions to intent. The lungs, deflated, looked exactly as the Dead Man had expected them to—frothy pink bits of sponge. The heart …

  Something cracked loudly when Tsering-la moved his knife for the heart. It sounded like a stone whacked on stone, and Tsering-la jerked his hand back with a yelp.

  There was bright blood among the wine-dark, and Tsering-la clutched his hand with a gesture that the Dead Man too well remembered. Ata Akhimah leapt forward even before the Dead Man. She grabbed Tsering-la’s wrist and dragged him around until he was facing his own witchlamps. The Dead Man handed her a clean cloth from the toolkit as she peeled Tsering’s clutching fingers apart.

  The blood, at least, dribbled and did not gush.

  Ata Akhimah clucked her tongue. “Well, it could be worse,” she said. “What happened?”

  “The knife broke.”

  “The knife—did you strike a rib?”

  He looked at her with lips pursed, as offended as a cat. “Really. Did it sound like a rib?”

  “I’m sorry.” She pressed the small cloth to his wound. Blood that had been spattering the floor was absorbed. “Well, the cut doesn’t look too deep.”

  The Dead Man’s attention was drawn away from the tableau by a sound. A rustle, behind him.

  “What’s that?”

  He turned.

  Impossibly, the corpse was sitting up on the table, one arm pressed across its empty cavity as its sightless, faceless skull turned around. It lifted its chin, and the Dead Man could not shake the sensation that it was staring directly at them.

  He shook his head, suddenly exhausted. “I wish the Gage were here.”

  5

  Ravani had been correct. The raja did wish to speak to Sayeh that morning.

  He sent for her as the army made camp and the sky began dimming at the rim with sunrise. His nervous young messenger arrived as Anuraja’s cowed personal physician was changing Sayeh’s dressings. The messenger was just as obviously overawed, despite her bloodstained clothing and the unwashed hair that lay oily on her shoulders, itchy and lank with the dust of the road. The young man kept glancing behind himself as if expecting to be corrected by an invisible sergeant, but he managed to stammer out that Anuraja wished to receive his royal cousin at his pavilion for the morning meal, and that he would send bearers to lift up her litter.

  Then he excused himself. His going provoked the static silence of waiting women into a flurry of activity as Nazia and Ümmühan rushed to make Sayeh regal. Or as regal as could be expected, under the circumstances.

  Anuraja had gone out of his way to make Sayeh comfortable, providing her with an airy pavilion, mats she couldn’t currently walk on—though they did keep the dust down—and bedding that still smelled faintly of the cologne of the junior officer who had no doubt been turned out of his quarters to make room for her. Sayeh hoped he wouldn’t hold a grudge.

  Sayeh also wondered if she should be worried about the concern for her comfort. She didn’t think it was charity, or religious concern for her as a priestess and avatar of the Good Mother. Possibly—probably—Anuraja was smart enough to understand that protecting her royal privilege and prerogatives supported his own. Most likely he wanted something. And, of course, nothing precluded him from having multiple motives.

  In any case, Ümmühan produced a comb from her traveling kit, and a flask of scented oil. She and Nazia combed as much of the dust as possible from Sayeh’s dirty hair. For want of a crown or any formal symbol of rank, they dressed it as best they could and braided it through with ribbons, twisting it into an improvised diadem.

  They also brushed and beat her clothes before helping her to dress in a cropped blouse from her dead gelding’s saddlebags. With a great deal of cursing and a small amount of hopping, and Sayeh holding herself upright against the center pole of the pavilion, they managed to work her legs—and her splint—into a pair of Ümmühan’s loose desert trousers, which were made from contrasting layers of gauzy silk and rich enough for a hard-riding queen.

  Nazia cleaned Sayeh’s face with oil, and Ümmühan blacked her brows and lashes and the line around her eyes with lampblack fixed with coconut oil. Sayeh herself, as a priestess as well as a queen, had a little sandalwood traveling box with two compartments. One, when the carved lid was slid aside, contained slaked turmeric, which was bright red in color. The other side held the plain turmeric spice powder mixed with sandalwood, which was fragrant and golden. With those, Sayeh dressed the part of her hair above the braids and marked her forehead as well.

  She sat back down on her litter with a sigh. It had been left propped on two sawhorses with rugs thrown over them so she could get in and out more easily, making it the only elevated seat in the pavilion.

  “I need a set of crutches,” she said.

  “You need to stay off that leg, if you want it to heal straight,” Ümmühan said, no-nonsense.

  “Do you talk to your own queen like that?” Sayeh asked, laughing.

  “I’d talk to my prophet like that,” Ümmühan responded tartly.

  She made Sayeh miss her grandmother. Even more so, as she brought Sayeh tea, then stood protectively before her as two soldiers scratched politely at the flap for entrance. They were the same bearers as before: the ones who had ridden the horses so stolidly. They had returned to lift Sayeh up and take her away. Apparently they were detailed to her as some combination of guards and legs.
<
br />   Sayeh would have to make a point of learning their names.

  She worried briefly about Vidhya and Tsering-la—and her familiar, Guang Bao—and whether they would manage to win their way south and find shelter and assistance. Then she put that thought from her. She was in worse trouble than they were.

  Probably.

  She smiled at the soldiers in a regal fashion.

  “Your Abundance, your attendance is requested,” said the older of the two. They were much alike, as career soldiers can seem. Both wore their hair twisted up into a military topknot, and both wore elegant mustaches. But this one was a little shorter, broader, and grayer than the other.

  “I am ready,” Sayeh said. “Nazia, attend me.”

  Nazia stepped forward.

  The bearers glanced dubiously at one another. Apparently, the older one was nominated to do the talking again. “The raja has requested only you, Rajni.”

  Sayeh offered him a gentle smile. “What is your name, soldier?”

  “Sergeant Sanjay,” he said. “This is Sergeant Pren.”

  “I am flattered to have two experienced men such as yourselves as guardians.” She gazed up through her blacked eyelashes. “Your raja did not instruct me to come alone. And I certainly cannot expect him to wait on me with his own hands.” Sayeh thumped her silk-concealed splint for emphasis, then regretted the careless gesture, especially as her leg was already disgruntled by her previous calisthenics. She kept her face placid despite the flutter of pain.

  Sayeh needed to win this confrontation, subtly though it must be played. She needed to establish her authority at once—to carve out a little space and, with luck, to keep expanding it. A plan was forming in her mind. She didn’t look at the idea too closely, lest she startle it away. Instead, she followed her hunches.

  Sayeh did not look down.

  Confronted with the implacable regard of a rajni, the soldiers held on to their resolve for only a few moments before they quailed. They sorted themselves to the appropriate stations and lifted Sayeh as smoothly as any of her own litter-bearers at home.

  Nazia fell into step beside. Ümmühan caught Sayeh’s eye as she stood aside to let them past. Sayeh could have sworn the old poetess winked above her veil.

  * * *

  The journey across the encampment might have been a trial to one less used to being on display than Sayeh Rajni. Anuraja’s men were too well-disciplined to point or stare ostentatiously. But they did openly observe the litter’s progress. And in observing, they freed Sayeh to observe openly in her turn.

  She could have wished that Anuraja’s soldiers were a little less disciplined. But she watched them boldly, and noticed gear in good repair and men in decent health, much to her disappointment. There were tidy ranks of tents well-pitched: no rough bivouac, this. Latrines, a cook tent, busy ostlers caring for the horses.

  She kept the disappointment off her face, however. Equally, kept her curiosity as to why they had not yet crossed the river to Sarathai-tia to begin the siege, but camped on the farther shore. Kept her expression queenly and serene.

  The city rose across the milk-white river. It looked prosperous and wealthy, and Sayeh felt stabbed by envy as she regarded it. Behind its many tiled rooftops in all their brilliant colors was the palace, like a golden crown atop its conical hill. Flowering vines and trees festooned the tops of its high walls.

  It was no mystery to Sayeh why Anuraja would covet this place. She half-coveted it herself. But why had they not crossed the river?

  Once again, she wished Vidhya were with her. She wished she had studied combat and warcraft rather than leaving such things to men. She wished she knew better how to estimate troop strength and get an idea of what terrain and forms of combat an enemy was specialized for.

  Well, if she didn’t have those skills, she would just have to try to live long enough to acquire them. And based on the look on Nazia’s face, Sayeh was not the only person feeling slightly overwhelmed.

  Perhaps they both needed a distraction.

  “Look, Nazia,” she said. She raised her eyes again to the golden stone walls ringing the hill beyond the river, and pointed. “It is Sarathai-tia. The Peacock Throne is there.”

  “Does it matter?” The girl’s question, for once, seemed not sharp but open, girlish, genuinely curious.

  “Does what matter?”

  Nazia waved generally in the direction of the golden city. “The Peacock Throne. Who sits on it. Empires. Is one king really better than another?”

  “One king might be worse than another,” Sayeh answered mildly, trying not to show her amusement.

  “I mean—” Nazia seemed to remember abruptly who she was speaking to. “Begging your pardon, Rajni.”

  “Pardon granted. Please speak on.”

  “But they’re all kings. What are kings good for, from the perspective of the common people, except dragging your folk off to fight in other kings’ wars?”

  It was, indeed, an excellent question, once Sayeh closed her gaping mouth and thought about it. “We do a little to keep the roads open. Feed a few poor. Appease the gods and keep the brigands down.”

  “When the brigands aren’t your own soldiers bored between battles,” Nazia muttered bitterly.

  Sayeh pressed her lips together, contemplating her own rebellious army. She’d been certain of the palace guard. Certain of Vidhya. Not so her army, from common soldier to general, it was true. They had been loyal to her late husband, for all she was Gurunath Raja’s daughter.

  She wondered just how much of her army had survived the catastrophe.

  “Does that happen at home, Nazia?” she asked carefully.

  Sayeh was conscious of the listening ears of the guards, but there wasn’t much she could do about it now except keep the conversation fast and idiomatic. The odds were that one or both of these men would have been assigned to her because he spoke fluent Sahali. It’s what she would have done, after all, if her role and Anuraja’s were reversed. But maybe she would get lucky.

  And Anuraja already knew her city was a shambles. There was no point to pretending otherwise. Let him think her a pretty idiot who could not keep a secret.

  Nazia, obviously, did not yet have the political awareness to consider the consequences. She really had been raised in a box with a litter of puppies, hadn’t she? The girl just shook her head and said, “Well, it doesn’t matter now, does it?”

  Sayeh bit her rouged lip, tasting slaked turmeric. It did matter. It would matter, if Sayeh had anything to say about it.

  * * *

  The walk to Anuraja’s quarters was not a long one, which Sayeh supposed was fortunate for the bearers. Sayeh wished she had a better idea of what percentage of the camp it took her through. If she’d thought the space seconded to her was luxurious for a war camp, a glimpse of Anuraja’s pavilion disabused her.

  True, it was technically a tent. But as tents went, it was a palace.

  The walls were pale silk, dyed with Anuraja’s colors of saffron and sapphire in patterns that reminded Sayeh of the marbled endpapers between which the leaves of some books were sewn. They approached, and someone drew a drape aside. Sayeh was carried seamlessly within. Nazia padded after, her footfalls silent by comparison with the soldiers’.

  The interior was as sumptuous as anything out of an illuminated painting in one of those selfsame books. The pavilion had double walls, to keep out the heat and dust. The interior panels were brightly illustrated, but they were not tapestries, which would have been heavy. They were painted canvas, she thought, and the dead air space between the outer wall and inner made the space within surprisingly cool. Some of them had been drawn aside to let the fading light filter in through the translucent outer panels. Its glow, and the glow of the lamps hung by chains from the stays of the ceiling, was caught in several framed looking glasses. Those were heavy. And fragile. And Sayeh wondered at the waste of effort and resources to bring them along, though they did make the space quite merry.

  In that
excellent light, it would be possible to read the books and maps stacked on the low table surrounded by cushions without eyestrain. And it was equally easy to see the bright colors on the embroidered cushions, the stacked rugs, the long velvet divan on which reclined the raja.

  He wore a silk robe in moiré saffron, and his bad leg—she remembered that he had a bad leg—was propped up on a pillow. Well, that was something they had in common, then. Perhaps she could build in the connection.

  The bearers set Sayeh’s litter down upon a set of stands not too far from Anuraja’s chair. Nazia stopped beside her as they withdrew. The girl kept Sayeh—and the litter with its long poles—between herself and Anuraja, and Sayeh could not fault her instincts.

  It didn’t stop Anuraja from eyeing her speculatively, stroking his beard the while. He turned his gaze back to Sayeh, his eyes bright and clever. “My darling cousin,” he said. “It is so very good to make your more familiar acquaintance. You will forgive me if I do not rise.”

  He had a good voice. Resonant. And his face might have been handsome in a distinguished fashion behind the luxuriant whiskers. It was hard for her to tell.

  She let herself laugh—tinkling and pleasant. He would never know how practiced. Men like that, so full of themselves, never knew how much women must rein themselves in, present themselves as a work of art. A performance, as much as any dance. “I hope Your Competence will also forgive me for a seated greeting.”

  “And this pretty child? Is she another cousin? Or some relative on your husband’s side?”

  “She is of no family,” Sayeh said dismissively. She felt stiffness rise through Nazia, even though she did not look at the girl. “An orphan. Under my care.”

  “Ah,” Anuraja said knowingly. “A little young for you, isn’t she?”