The Dead Man struggled under a great and heavy weariness as he considered whether those negotiations might have any effect. They needed to lift the siege. If Mrithuri could show strength, and the ability to withstand her cousin’s advances—military and otherwise—she would be in a good position to negotiate an advantageous marriage. Preferably to a younger and malleable son of a kingdom that might dower him with some significant military might.
Mercenaries, the Dead Man thought, watching Yavashuri settle herself.
Mrithuri’s kingdom of Sarathai-tia was not wealthy in trade or resources. It was wealthy only in the sense that it was agriculturally rich, and had a thriving and skilled population. Those were resources, and useful resources in a war—or to a conqueror. What she needed now, however, was more troops.
It was traditional to recruit men into one’s army with the promise of spoils. But for that to happen, Mrithuri would have to first lift the siege, and then pursue Anuraja’s army back into his own territory, laying its people to the sword if they resisted the pillaging that was sure to follow. Mrithuri would see those people as her people—or as her great-great-grandfather’s people, in any case. She would resist the expedient path to victory.
This was, the Dead Man thought, a reason to follow her. And a reason why he might wind up dying by her side.
The Dead Man suddenly realized that in thinking, he had lost track of the conversation. And done so at a singularly bad moment, because what brought him back to attentiveness was Yavashuri’s venomous, flat drawl. Without the slightest edge or rise to her voice, the old spymistress was saying, “Chaeri, it was you who gave Anuraja the excuse he needed to invade when you stuck a knife into his ambassador. So perhaps you will forgive us if we treat your political counsel with a certain skepticism now.”
“It was his own knife,” Chaeri replied acidly. “Would you rather I’d stood aside and allowed him the opportunity to stick it into our rajni?”
The Dead Man was contemplating intervening, but again was stopped by not really being a part of this society, these relationships. If he stepped in, he would be placing himself in the position of target on both sides, and … whatever he felt for Mrithuri, the politics between her retainers were not his business.
But apparently she realized that they were hers, because she stood abruptly, and the quarreling stopped mid-word. “Solutions,” she said. “Not arguments.”
The Dead Man said the first thing that popped into his mind. “There are a lot of diamonds paving the Peacock Throne, Rajni. And the throne itself … is gold.”
“And yet here I am, a woman and not an emperor or even a raja, and forbidden to sit in it,” she answered.
“It’s the treasury your ancestor left you, is it not? A few of those could hire a lot of loyalty. Mercenaries, I mean. If we borrowed them … against future replacement.”
“The Mother would likely set fire to your hand if you tried,” Yavashuri said. “You don’t think Her Abundance sits in a chair of estate beside the damned thing because she doesn’t want to claim the authority that throne would give her, I hope?”
“I assume somebody in history has tried sitting in it? Somebody not entitled, I mean?”
Hnarisha folded his hands. “Actually, I don’t believe so. But the Alchemical Emperor made the thing, and it was he who proclaimed that only a true raja of the Lotus Kingdoms could sit in it. Mrithuri’s grandfather did, and was not destroyed, so it is not necessary to be an emperor. The kingdoms had already broken apart during his father’s long illness, and his grandchildren and cousins and nieces and nephews have not felt … inclined to test the Alchemical Emperor’s ban. Or have not had access to the throne in order to test it. For obvious reasons.”
“Can you … explain the line of descent? And how Her Abundance’s grandfather came into possession of the throne, but not the empire?”
Hnarisha looked at Yavashuri. “You grew up here.”
Yavashuri shook her head. “It’s a mess. Here, I need paper.”
She found some, and a brush and ink, and sketched. “Here’s the Alchemical Emperor. He died … sixty years ago or so. At a very advanced old age of something like a hundred and ten.”
“One hundred and eleven,” Hnarisha said helpfully.
Yavashuri rolled her eyes at him. “You do it, Yavashuri,” she mocked. “I’m a wee outlander with no history.”
Hnarisha ducked his head and grinned. His complexion was such that the Dead Man could not tell if he blushed.
Yavashuri’s brush darted, dotting little symbols on the paper and connecting them with lines. “Anyway, he collected brides and concubines like one of those Song princes. Who can keep track of them all? And he outlived his own senior wife, and all the senior wife’s sons. The grandchildren who lived were both daughters.”
“These?” The Dead Man pointed at the rightmost set of squiggles.
“No, I didn’t bother putting them down.” Yavashuri pointed at the left edge of the paper. “They’d be over on this side. Now here’s the line that did inherit. The Alchemical Emperor’s son, Gurmitra, here—he became emperor after.”
“But that’s not Mrithuri’s line.”
“Nor Anuraja’s,” Yavashuri said. “Though this royal family has an annoying tendency to refer to all their older generations as ‘grandfather’ and ‘grandmother,’ which worsens an already confusing dynastic situation.”
“The Boneless and brothers have some of that on the distaff, I think,” said Hnarisha. “One of the daughters is his … grandmother?”
“Anyway,” said Yavashuri, “Gurmitra was already very old when he inherited. This happens when your father dies at one hundred and”—she looked askance at Hnarisha—“eleven. Two of his older siblings were already gone. And he managed to hold the empire together for a few years. But his health wasn’t good, and … well, it was a big family.”
“With a lot of ambitions,” Hnarisha added.
“Long before he died, the whole thing crumbled. That would have been—well, Sayeh would have been a very little girl. And I was still pretty enough to be dangerous.” Yavashuri fluttered her lashes in parody.
“It’s not a big family now,” the Dead Man observed. “So there was a civil war.”
With slashes of her brush, Yavashuri obliterated several entire lines of descent. “There were a lot more, but the family never really recovered from them all slaughtering each other. So, in the end, what was left was a bunch of cadet branches scattered around the Lotus Kingdoms in little townships and keeps—and one remaining main line of the royal family who declared truce and decided to split up the bigger cities as spoils of war and stop killing each other. Mrithuri, Sayeh, Himadra, and Anuraja are all descended of that line.”
“But isn’t Anuraja oldest? Why isn’t he emperor?”
“The winners of the bloodbath, if you can call them winners, were the children of Harsha Raja, son of the Alchemical Emperor. Harsha did not survive the war himself. Anuraja is from a distaff line. His mother, Indumathi, had married a wealthy commoner, somebody with a lot of shipping, I think. Her husband declared himself raja of Sarathai-lae based on fiat, royal marriage, and a private army. He had a lot of money and a lot of mercenaries and none of his in-laws really wanted to fight about it anymore, as I understand the matter.”
“‘Indu,’ in her name. I don’t know that word.”
Yavashuri looked at Hnarisha. Hnarisha said, using the Asitaneh word to translate, “It means ‘moon.’”
“But your sky doesn’t have a moon.”
“Oh, it used to,” said Yavashuri, and before the Dead Man could muster words through his surprise to ask, she continued, “Indumara was our raja in Sarathai-tia. He was the oldest surviving son of Harsha’s line. He was our rajni’s grandfather. His youngest brother, Jagadisha, was Sayeh’s grandfather. He ruled the north, and it would probably still be unified if he hadn’t split the kingdom between his sons, giving Ansh-Sahal to Sayeh’s father and Chandranath to Himadra’s grandfather. The argument at the ti
me was that they had different languages and no good route between them, but I think he just wanted to avoid a family quarrel while he was on his deathbed. I think I’ve got that all right. I may have missed a generation somewhere.”
The Dead Man pressed his fingertips to his eyes. “So nobody has a really good claim to be emperor. Which is why Anuraja wants our rajni. To consolidate his claim. Didn’t anybody write this down?”
“Records,” she said, “can vanish when they are inconvenient.”
The Dead Man subsided. For all he knew, these heathen gods probably would strike him down for his temerity if he tried prying a few stones loose. Never mind the look on Mrithuri’s face if he suggested it to her. These bans and proscriptions frustrated him, however. Surely the rajni’s illustrious ancestor would not have wished his descendent to fear claiming her rightful legacy simply because she happened to be a woman, and he had shortsightedly declared that only a rightful raja could sit upon his throne?
Well, maybe he would. And serve him right if he wound up with Anuraja as his heir because of it.
“Anyway,” Mrithuri said, “that throne is a symbol of the Alchemical Empire. I will not be the one who defaces it.”
Even to save the people of that empire? The Dead Man managed to keep his lips closed over that sentiment, but he did say, “There is no Alchemical Empire. Except in that your cousins wish to marry you by force to resurrect it.”
As the words left his mouth, he flinched, expecting outrage in response. He was not prepared when Mrithuri grinned at him, showing more and sharper teeth than the Dead Man would have expected a pretty girl to have. “Let them try.”
Then her frown returned. “Leave me,” she said, with a grumpy sweep of her palm.
The Dead Man was the first on his feet.
“Not you.” Mrithuri dismissed the rest of her entourage with a chopping gesture, more abrupt than the last one. “The rest.”
“Rajni,” Chaeri protested, the box of Eremite serpents in her hands, just as Hnarisha said, “The propriety—”
“Are you going to mutter about me in corners?” Mrithuri snapped. “No? Then go.”
Chaeri set the box on the table, perhaps harder than was necessary. Heavy bodies slid within. Chaeri smelled of sandalwood and irritability as she brushed past the Dead Man on her way to the door.
Yavashuri was already leaving, unlocking a filigree door that the Dead Man had not previously noticed, into the filigree halls of the cloister. Hnarisha looked after her for a moment with concern, as if he might call her back. Then he followed Chaeri out with much less ostentation, closing the door behind himself with the utmost softness.
No melodrama there.
Yavashuri stopped, the door half-shut behind her. She spoke through the openwork carving. “You protect her because she is your favorite, Rajni. And because she feeds your craving for the venom and does not make you ask.”
“Do not forget that you are my favorite too,” Mrithuri said.
“Your Abundance…” Yavashuri drew herself up. “Ask yourself whose advantage is served by my counsel, and by Chaeri’s.”
Mrithuri closed her eyes. The Dead Man saw how delicately she avoided turning toward the box of serpents. “You may go, Yavashuri. And don’t ask the sisters for any favors while you are in there. I need you back.”
With a smile and a precise bow, Yavashuri closed the door behind her. It sealed seamlessly into the panels, even the hinges invisible to all but the closest inspection. She whisked away in a rustle of draperies, vanishing into the shadows of the cloister.
“Hnarisha will listen at the door, you know,” the Dead Man said in a lowered tone.
“I should be disappointed in him if he did not.” The tartness of Mrithuri’s tone was leavened slightly by a belated smile. “But I am a queen. I can endure having only the illusion of privacy. So long as I at least get that occasionally.”
She shook her head. “I wanted to ask you in private. Do you know what has become of Nizhvashiti?”
The Dead Man felt his face tighten. He thought back, picturing the gods-gifted priest who had accompanied him and the Gage to this besieged little city from a place in the mountains. “I do not know. I have not seen them … it … since … since right after the assassination attempt.”
“Well.” Mrithuri sighed. “It is freshly dead. Freshly revenant? I imagine some aspects of that might require privacy. And priests are known to meditate. Still, I will send pages to seek it, when we are done here.”
“I wonder why Anuraja is holding his attack.”
“He seeks some advantage.”
“Possibly merely to make us anxious and hasty.”
Mrithuri touched the back of his hand with the back of her own. “Would you show me your face?”
The Dead Man felt himself smile behind his veil. He hoped he sounded as if he were smiling. “If we were married.”
She touched the veil. “I would not like for you to have to kill me.”
“Let us avoid that outcome, then.”
Mrithuri said, “I had hoped we might have a little uninterrupted time together.”
“We have what we have, what is written with God’s pen. And no man nor woman may know what the next day brings, no matter that we can convince ourselves otherwise.”
“What about Wizards? What about portents and prophecies?”
“Man plans,” the Dead Man teased. “God edits.”
Mrithuri looked crestfallen, but he liked her too well to lie to her. She would learn. Grab what you can when you can honorably grab it, because everything would end in dust before long.
What lasted?
Honor. Reputation. What one built with one’s hands.
The Gage.
The Dead Man smiled at that, the veil moving against his face. Yes, the Gage would last.
He wondered how his old friend was faring. He should ask the queen, who had sent one of her bearded vultures with him so there was some connection there.
But not now, not right this second. In a little while, when her grief had—not passed, for when did grief ever pass?—but settled. When they had dealt with the immediate crisis of … well, of waiting, and defending. Of determination.
Of will.
8
I wish the Dead Man were along on this one, the Gage thought, watching the ochre-stained wings of Mrithuri’s bearded vulture familiar circle overhead. That was a foolish wish, of course: where he was walking, no flesh could follow. He was bound to a poisoned land. And no flesh could keep pace with him along the path to get there, either. The Gage had no need for rest. He could maintain his ground-eating stride day by day, night by night, year by year if need be.
He was not made to need rest. He was not made to need sustenance. He was not made to need companionship, or conversation, or a kindred spirit.
What his self had, by his nature, needed from before his making—or his remaking, if one prefers—well, those needs, no self-respecting Wizard would accept responsibility for. Those were between who the Gage had once been and ceased to be, and a more ultimate Creator. No interim god need be concerned.
In any case, it was a long walk. And the Gage was in a hurry.
By night, the bearded vulture flew slow loops overhead in the light of the Heavenly River, pausing to feed when they came upon something that had been unlucky. By the darkness of day, the bearded vulture found a place to roost, and the Gage toiled on. The bird always caught up again in the mornings.
The Gage realized that he did not know if the bird had a name. He’d neglected to ask, and Mrithuri had not volunteered the information. It seemed to him that he needed something to call the creature. Especially after a few days, when it came and rested on his shoulder, drying its huge wings between rainy-season squalls, in the lightless heat of the Cauled Sun, then tucked its head and roosted there.
After that, they were not parted.
Despite the lack of name, the Gage sometimes spoke to his feathered companion. He decided to call it Vara. It
never answered, but he suspected Mrithuri could hear whatever he said to it, if she happened to be listening. So he related his progress, and sometimes, for lack of anything better to do, he offered a bit of his philosophy.
They were counting on him, back in Sarathai-tia. The Eyeless One had sent them a message. More than that, she had all but ordained this mission as necessary to their survival. And Wizard-Princes did not normally waste their strength on optional prophecies.
The Gage kept walking.
It occurred to him, not for the first time, that he could have made much better time on the way to Sarathai-tia, alone. He wondered if he could have survived walking across the bottom of the Arid Sea, or if the pressure of the water would destroy him. But the Eyeless One had sent him and the Dead Man, so she must have believed that the errand demanded both of them.
The Gage was lonely, but he was also comfortable being alone. Being who he was, what he was, when he was around people he must always be cautious. It was too easy for him to harm anything he touched—whether flesh, or artifice. So he could only be relaxed in solitude. That’s when he didn’t have to worry constantly about the fragility of people and dwellings and things.
The bearded vulture was his responsibility, it was true. But the vulture could largely take care of itself. And being winged, it could keep up. Or simply ride upon his shoulder, if it grew tired.
This freedom could have been intoxicating, the Gage thought. Addictive. He’d almost forgotten how fast he could move when no one was restraining him with their human frailty. He could get addicted to his own strength and independence, given half a chance. There was a joy in covering ground so efficiently. A joy in the straightness of his track, uninhibited by the need to rest or deviate in response to variances in the terrain as he would if he were accompanied by humans.
He just walked. And kept walking, through the rain and the rice fields and the mango plantations, their trees hung with black pepper vines. Through the villages and the places where cotton was planted, and up the slopes where the tea camellias grew.
People turned to watch him, and withdrew from the road before him, when he bothered to be on the roads. He paid them no heed. He walked.
The Red-Stained Wings--The Lotus Kingdoms, Book Two Page 11