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

by Elizabeth Bear

  Sayeh managed to keep the firewater she had just swigged in her mouth, but barely. She gulped it down, feeling her sinuses burn, and glanced at the woman’s muscular midsection.

  Ravani laughed—an honest guffaw, not a courtier’s tinkle. Sayeh envied her that laugh as well. What was it like, to be a woman and to be so free of pretense for the sake of men?

  “Oh, not like that,” Ravani said. “Gods, can you imagine? But as you are no doubt aware, he has had some difficulties getting one in the traditional fashion.”

  “I’ve heard he blames the women,” Sayeh said dryly. Liquor burned her tongue.

  Ümmühan added, “All five of them.”

  “Hah,” said Ravani. “Five is only the filet. Only the number he married. No, the problem most definitely lies with the raja. But I can do as I have said.” She waved a glittering hand. “It might cost the mother’s life. That life force has to come from somewhere, and Anuraja can’t provide it.”

  “Is he sick?” Nazia asked. “Can’t you just cure him?”

  Ravani smiled at the girl kindly. “Oh, probably. But that’s not what he bargained for, and anyway the damage is done. So that’s why—”

  “He lets you walk all over him,” Sayeh finished.

  Ravani toasted her with the glass. “That’s one way to put it.”

  “How are you going to find him a wife?”

  Ravani tossed back the last of her drink. “Oh, that’s where you come in. Because I can offer you a bargain, too. And a better one than—” She jerked her thumb.

  Sayeh had no place to set her glass aside, inside the confines of her couch. So she cradled it in her hands, breathing deeply away from the fumes in order to clear her head.

  Ravani was pouring for herself again.

  “I’m listening,” Sayeh said.

  “Well,” said Ravani. “I am a sorcerer.”

  “And still looking for consent.”

  “Or obligation,” Ravani admitted. “I am not picky. But here. I’ll sweeten Anuraja’s admittedly awful deal. Go represent him to Mrithuri, win her hand—and I will bring your people back together in a place where you can lead them. And I will get you back your son.”

  * * *

  Not too much later, Ravani took the hint of Sayeh’s yawns. After she had left, taking her little bottle of fiery cordial with her, Nazia and Ümmühan moved to help Sayeh undress.

  Sayeh needed the assistance. Between the stress of the day and the liquor and her unhealed injury, exhaustion weighed on her like the chains used to break elephants. The pounding in her head was likely to be with her into tomorrow, and possibly beyond. But she still noticed that Nazia seemed troubled.

  When she asked, the cloud deepened. But after some coaxing, Nazia said, “You’re not going to do what she asked.”

  Sayeh bit her lip. “I am a queen, Nazia.”

  “And what does that mean, Your Abundance?” The girl managed to keep her tone pleasant, but her words came out too quickly.

  “Come here,” Sayeh said from under her covers. “Sit by me.”

  The girl was skittish and reluctant, but also not ready to disobey a direct order. She came and sat down on a cushion by Sayeh’s good knee.

  “There,” Sayeh said. “Lean your head.”

  Nazia gazed at Sayeh with wide, untrusting eyes like a half-feral cat who knew her mistress was up to something.

  “Indulge me.”

  With a sigh of protest, Nazia did.

  Ümmühan busied herself cleaning up after their visitor. Sayeh smiled after her, wondering how she had survived without the poetess as a friend.

  “What it means,” Sayeh said calmly, picking up a comb, “is that I need to think of my son and my people, and make their well-being my priority.”

  The comb slid easily through the barely grown-out scruff of Nazia’s hair. It was coming in lighter than Sayeh would have expected: a rich coffee brown with brighter highlights.

  “But it’s wrong.” Nazia’s voice was small, but courageous.

  “So it is,” Sayeh agreed.

  Her calm tone made Nazia flinch. It couldn’t have been the comb, because Nazia had not enough hair to snag it.

  “Then why do it?”

  Sayeh was quiet for a moment. When she spoke, it was with care. “It seems to me that the difference between a good ruler and a bad ruler is not always what they choose to do. Sometimes it is how—and why—they choose to do it, and whether they justify it to themselves.”

  “You are avoiding my question!”

  Sayeh almost laughed. The girl was so utterly unimpressed with royalty. But Nazia only would have thought that Sayeh was laughing at her. So Sayeh kept her voice soft and said, “I have not decided that I will do this thing.”

  “Murder your cousin so that Anuraja can get an heir even though his jewels are rotting?”

  “As you say.” The comb moved gently, making a scratching sound. “If I do decide to go ahead with it, however, I will not lie to myself. I will not say to myself that it serves a good cause, or that Mrithuri, too, gets an heir out of it—for what is an heir of one’s body whom one has no raising of?—and I will make no pretense that I have chosen to do the right thing. Such a deed can never be the right thing. Do you understand?”

  Nazia did not shake her head, for she was settling under Sayeh’s petting. “No. If it’s not the right thing, then why do it?”

  Sayeh suddenly felt even more exhausted, as if the last of the food, the spirits, the sweets, the tea, and her own tension and fear had all simultaneously abandoned her system.

  “Because sometimes the wrong thing can be a necessary thing,” she said. “For my kingdom. For my own child. For you, and all my subjects. But being necessary can never make a wrong thing right.”

  Nazia seemed to think that over for a little, as Sayeh hid a yawn. Finally, she ventured, “For me?”

  “Among others.”

  “You dismiss me as of no family,” Nazia said, her voice going flat to slip between her teeth. “Of no consequence.”

  Sayeh eyed her calmly, and as Ümmühan brought up the crutch she had somehow obtained while Sayeh and Nazia were at dinner, gently took Nazia by the upper arm, stood her up, turned her around, and set her back a few steps in order to look at her better. Her heart broke, a little.

  She had wished for a daughter. A daughter as well as a son. Nazia was not a daughter, but if Sayeh had had one, well, she wouldn’t have wished for a girl like Nazia—sulky, daring, headstrong, too smart for her own safety by half—but she wouldn’t have been surprised to get one.

  “Why do you suppose that is?” Sayeh said.

  That drew Nazia up as sharply as a hand on the rein.

  Sayeh leaned on the crutch and shook her head into Nazia’s silence. “Do you suppose it would benefit you, if Anuraja thought you of good-enough family to trade on your worth as a broodmare? If not for him, for one of his noblemen made officers, perhaps? His courtiers?”

  Nazia bit her lip and shook her head.

  Sayeh dropped her voice to a murmur. Not a whisper. Whispers carried. “Worse yet, what if he knew you were an apprentice Wizard?”

  Nazia’s hand covered her mouth. “Oh.”

  Sayeh nodded gently. “Oh, indeed.”

  “I’m not much of a Wizard. I have no power, and Tsering-la had only time to teach me a little theory.”

  Sayeh accepted the crutch from Ümmühan, and with the old woman’s assistance, stood. “Anuraja will let us go, if I will work for him.”

  “‘Us’?” Nazia asked deliberately.

  For a moment, Sayeh wondered if she would leave the girl, if that was the only way forward, or the only way to freedom. She was a queen, and queens were meant to be ruthless. Especially where their own safety and the well-being of their people was concerned.

  But Nazia was her people. Her own frustrating, rebellious people.

  Sayeh dismissed the thought of a solo escape as unworthy of herself, and tried to quell her self-doubt. Picture yoursel
f as a warrior, her late husband would have said, and you can find the path to become one.

  She missed him so.

  But she was the only one who could get his son back.

  Sayeh distracted herself from dwelling on her own potential inadequacies by becoming angry, briefly, at everyone who had let Nazia down. Whoever they were. Whenever it had happened. She determined she would not be one of them.

  Nor would she forgive. Forgiveness was for people who acknowledged wrongdoing and sought to make amends.

  “Us,” Sayeh said.

  Nazia looked down. “I should tell you a thing, Your Abundance.”

  As Ümmühan led Sayeh toward her cot, Sayeh said, “I am listening.”

  She swayed on her feet. Nazia sprang quickly to balance her with a hand on her arm. “The sorceress.”

  Her words seemed to stick. Sayeh stayed quiet, giving Nazia space to finish.

  “I met someone like Ravani before,” Nazia said softly.

  “Someone?” Ümmühan prompted, after a little while. “Nazia, what’s wrong?”

  Sayeh waited, busying herself with trying to keep her sagging eyelids open. Nazia obviously wanted to tell her, so tell Sayeh Nazia would. In her own due time, if Sayeh did nothing to startle her.

  “The man who told me about the bitter water. To bring an ill omen upon your reign,” Nazia said at last, reluctantly. “He had eyes like hers.”

  Sayeh thought of her son, of the story about the elephant and the tiger prince he had made up and told her, his childish morality play.

  Ümmühan turned her face aside. “There are beasts that feed on war.”

  “Ah,” Sayeh said. She leaned on Nazia’s arm, and handed Ümmühan the crutch. “Well. I do know one thing.”

  “And what is that?” asked Ümmühan, returning.

  “I know what I mean to do,” Sayeh said, in a tone intended to carry no farther than the ears of her women as they lowered her into bed. She ached with tiredness. She wasn’t sure she could have managed more than an exhausted whisper if she had needed to.

  “Tell us, Rajni?” Nazia asked, her lips parted but barely moving.

  “It’s going to be dangerous,” Sayeh said. “For me, and for all of us. Anuraja will see what I mean to do as treachery, if he finds us out. And that’s without considering his sorcerer.”

  She shivered a little, and told herself it was exhaustion.

  Nazia regarded her with wide eyes. Ümmühan, long accustomed to intrigue, was oiling a pad of cloth with which to wipe Sayeh’s makeup away. The touch of it upon Sayeh’s temples, scented and soft, helped a little bit—though perhaps not as much as the ice would.

  “I will need both of you to accomplish this,” Sayeh said. “Nazia, you must be my legs for now. Ümmühan.” She smiled. “You must be my words.”

  They nodded, each in turn.

  In her bones, Sayeh felt the thrill of fear. Fear, and yes—excitement. She drew her lips back tight against her teeth. “Let my cousin think I am cooperative. But—sorceress or no sorceress—I am going to take this army away from him, before too long.”

  6

  Mrithuri Rajni folded her hands in her lap and contemplated a bouquet of monsoon flowers set on the low table before her.

  Critically appreciated, the arrangement was … unharmonious. An amateur effort at best, and one that did not reflect much natural talent or vision on the part of the person who had stuffed it into the ornate water pitcher it now resided in.

  Taken on a personal level, it was an affront. For the focal point of the arrangement was a towering if slightly bedraggled bough of fragrant white almond blossoms, wrenched from a tree in Mrithuri’s own sacred gardens. It had been shoved in among a huge bundle of campanula, marigolds, and other violently conflicting colored blossoms that did no favors to its delicate architecture and pale bloom. They were already wilting, as well, because the arranger had not been careful in collecting them, and many of the stems and petals were crushed.

  But politically … oh, politically, it was useful.

  Mrithuri did not delude herself for a moment that Mi Ren, the arrogant Song princeling, had wet his scented head in the chill rain or sweated in her hothouses to uproot her gardens with his own hands. But she was meant to think he had, and to be flattered by it.

  She did wonder for a few instants if the largely—but by no means exclusively—azure-and-saffron color scheme had been a calculated affront. Probably not, she decided. Mi Ren was not subtle, and beyond a certain animal cunning he probably didn’t pay enough attention to anything outside his own immediate needs to realize that those were Anuraja’s colors, and that Anuraja was the person laying siege to all of them.

  Mrithuri gave the folds of her costume a flick to smooth them on the cushions around her, reminding herself at the last moment to make it a ladylike gesture rather than one that was irritated. Not that it mattered too much, when the only people in the room with her were her ladies of the bedchamber and Hnarisha. And of course the nuns in their cloister within her walls.

  Mrithuri was no fool. She knew perfectly well that the builders of empires, such as her great-grandfather’s father, had a vested interest in convincing onlookers—and perhaps even themselves—that their empires had precedent. A lineage, a history.

  Mrithuri could be that, for the right prince. Or rather, it was a honeyed fig she could tempt them with.

  She stood and went to her window. The city lay below, rooftops stretching to the walls that encircled it. If she were to turn and cross the room, look out another window, she would see the gardens down to the river, and the high walls bounding them. And the dust of the army beyond, or the smoke of their camp. But from here, she could see flocks of birds rising into the brilliance of evening, and the darting gray shapes of long-tailed monkeys running across the rooftops. Their shrieks rose up with the smoke of cooking fires as they contested territory between two troops.

  That’s us, Mrithuri thought. That’s all this nonsense amounts to.

  Bitter tiredness swamped her.

  She turned back to Hnarisha, Yavashuri, and Chaeri, who were all studiously engaged in appearing absorbed at such small hand tasks as embroidery and letter-writing. They were already looking up before she cleared her throat.

  “I need a list,” she said. “Other than Mi Ren, what nobles can I string along into competition for my hand in marriage?”

  Chaeri said, “We’re under siege. Won’t it seem a little obvious?”

  Mrithuri laughed bitterly. “Men think a grateful woman will overlook their flaws.”

  “Do you plan to marry one of them?” Yavashuri asked.

  “Will that be necessary in order to secure my position? Or will making a few of them hopeful suffice?”

  “How will you get messages out?” Chaeri asked.

  Mrithuri restrained herself from rolling her eyes. Just. She raised her hands, thumbs interlocked, to symbolize the bearded vultures that were among the sacred beasts tattooed on her arms.

  Hnarisha chuckled. “Well, that will impress the lads.” He paused, and glanced at Yavashuri.

  She nodded.

  Hnarisha said, “I think we should consider sending messages to all of your potential suitors, my rajni. The Rasan princelet, and maybe a Qersnyk barbarian or two.”

  “How bad are the barbarians?” Mrithuri asked.

  “I hear the oldest princelet has some democratic ideas.” Hnarisha shrugged. “I’ll also make a list of Song princes.”

  “They’re all mass-marriers of one sort or another, aren’t they? Rasan, Qersnyk, Song?” Mrithuri said, feeling her lip curl. She didn’t want one spouse, really. Never mind a couple, and whatever other spouses they might marry. She was a ruling rajni, though. Surely she could set the expectations of any such alliance.

  Yavashuri said, “We should also consider who you might actually choose to marry, in the end.”

  Chaeri moved with nervous steps, pouring tea, as if the conversation discomfited her. Despite her ability to gen
erate dramatic situations, Mrithuri knew that she did not care for change.

  Well, they were all going to have to adapt. Assuming they survived the siege at all.

  Mrithuri said, “What about Sayeh’s son?”

  “Well, what about him?” Chaeri said snappily.

  “He’s only twenty years younger than I. If he were a girl-child, they’d have him betrothed off already.”

  “Twenty … two, I think,” said Hnarisha, staring into space thoughtfully.

  Mrithuri shrugged, as if it were of no consequence. “I am in no hurry.”

  She really was not. Twelve years, perhaps, before the boy could marry. Four years longer than that before the marriage should reasonably be consummated, whatever men did with their young brides. But he could be betrothed right now. If his mother would permit it.

  They both needed allies.

  Mrithuri could find a stronger ally than Sayeh, to be sure. One with armies and lands. But Sayeh had already reached out to her.

  And could Mrithuri find one who was less likely to try to usurp her power?

  “You’d still need to get an heir somewhere,” Yavashuri said tartly, which wasn’t a declaration that it could not happen. She moved behind Mrithuri with a brush and a comb. Hnarisha brought the old woman an oxbow chair, and Yavashuri sank into it. She began untangling and undressing Mrithuri’s hair.

  Mrithuri sighed in relief as the pulling pins and baubles came out of it. “Well. Let’s hope the Gage is successful, then.”

  * * *

  The bear-boars came down the slope like an avalanche borne on stiff, piggy legs. Loose rocks scattered before them. Himadra suddenly had his hands full as Velvet shied, spooked, and seemed to relocate herself an arm’s-length to the right without ever traversing the intervening spaces. He stayed on her through equal parts skill and saddle design, coldness prickling along his neck and in the pit of his stomach at the thought of what a fall would mean.

  At least it wouldn’t hurt long, once the bear-boars got their tusks into him.

  Velvet’s bit was far harsher than such a mild and willing mare would ever have needed, had her rider been normally strong. Himadra used the mechanical advantage of its long arms now. He touched the reins, bringing her head around, forcing her into a tight circle away from the sharp dropoff on the right. This turned her in the rough direction of the charging bear-boars, doing nothing for her physical or emotional equilibrium. It did, however, get her pointed in a straight line again, with Himadra still solidly in the saddle.