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

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The Red-Stained Wings--The Lotus Kingdoms, Book Two Page 24

by Elizabeth Bear


  Would he have noticed, honestly, if she had been more subtle? Because she had not been subtle, did he now not know how to say no?

  Did he want to say no?

  He didn’t even know how to determine that.

  Gages were not much accustomed to thinking about what they wanted.

  He had gotten that far along the path of contemplation when he realized: in all of the musing he had done—all of the musing he was doing—about how Chaeri felt about him, he hadn’t given a scrap of thought as to how he felt about Chaeri. In fact, he still didn’t know, as his footsteps carried him tirelessly into the east.

  16

  The thing about sieges, the Dead Man remembered, was that they were dull.

  And so the Dead Man had decided—certainly all on his own, without any veiled looks or urging from Ata Akhimah or Yavashuri—to keep an eye on Chaeri. And it was quite possibly the most boring bodyguarding job he had ever undertaken.

  It involved … not quite following her from place to place. That would have kept her out of trouble, but it also would have been crowningly obvious, and part of his remit was in not putting her guard up. And if her guard went up, she would not do anything treasonous.

  The thing about sieges was that they were boring.

  He did find time to check in with Hnarisha, who told him that nothing new had been discovered in Mahadijia’s old quarters—“Why all the drama, then?”—and with Golbahar to make sure that Ritu was settling into her new role. But it was crammed in between chasing Chaeri around. And since the times when he was reasonably sure Chaeri could not be getting into too much mischief were when she was with Mrithuri—and therefore under the eye of Yavashuri, Golbahar, and Ritu—it meant the Dead Man himself had very little time to spend alone with his rajni. Which currently, the love affair being new, felt like a major sacrifice.

  He rather hoped Chaeri wouldn’t do anything openly treasonous, because it would break Mrithuri’s heart if she did. For Mrithuri’s sake, he wanted Chaeri to be loyal.

  For the Gage’s sake … well, the Gage would manage. Although the more time he spent around Chaeri, the less sure the Dead Man was what the Gage saw in her. If, indeed, he was just not too polite to send her on her way. Because Chaeri almost never did anything that was not utterly routine and stultifying.

  Her main task was caring for Mrithuri’s sacred pets, a task that carried, at best, ritual significance, as each of them had their own attendants. It wasn’t as if her duties required her to haul hay to the elephant, or scavenge carcasses for the bearded vultures. Or shovel up the result of either of those. So she helped Mrithuri dress, and then she made her rounds of stables and mews. She did trouble herself to cast a little barley to the peacocks at least. And sliced fruit for Guang Bao.

  Syama would take food from no hand but that of Mrithuri Rajni alone. But since she never left the queen’s side, Chaeri was not necessary to care for her.

  The Dead Man found himself wondering how the animals would fare, if the siege persisted. They were sacred, it was true. But sacred cow fed a hungry man as well as the profane sort. Eating one was slightly more likely to turn your gods against you, however.

  After those tasks were accomplished, Chaeri mostly wandered. Morning and night, she fed the wild birds in the palace gardens. She flirted with those above her station and quarreled with those below. She gossiped, which was not so bad, and changed the tales between tellings to cast people in a worse light, which was more of a problem. She seemed to leave scowls behind her wherever she went.

  Or perhaps that was because that asshole Mi Ren always seemed to be around as well, and Mrithuri’s people treated him with the absolute barest politeness due a foreign dignitary, and a scraping obsequiousness that the Dead Man, a lifelong servant himself, knew for the disguise worn by sneering sarcasm. They certainly didn’t treat Mrithuri that way.

  Mi Ren would probably think it was because Mrithuri’s people respected him more. Since he was a man, and since he obviously knew how to treat them.

  Anyway, when he wasn’t scraping up to Mrithuri, he was scraping around after Chaeri, leaving the Dead Man to wonder exactly what he thought he was accomplishing.

  Meanwhile, if Mrithuri was holding court to be her people’s lawgiver, Chaeri was the only one of the rajni’s intimates who went out of her way to avoid it. When she could not avoid it, she drowsed decoratively on a cushion on the dais like a silk-clad pet. And then Mi Ren did not have to divide his attentions, but lurked in the gallery in Mrithuri’s line of sight and sulked.

  The Dead Man considered Syama more useful.

  Perhaps it was just the rivalry of a new favorite for an old. Perhaps it was a new romance sparking his protective instincts, but it was a new romance, and he was acutely aware of how fragile his position was. Politically even more so than with the rajni. He didn’t think for a moment that Pranaj the general or Ata Akhimah would hesitate to slip a knife between his ribs if they thought he was exerting undue influence on her.

  It was possible, he supposed, that the problem with Chaeri was that she simply didn’t have enough to do to keep her out of trouble. She definitely didn’t have a rich enough internal life to make up the lack with interests and accomplishments.

  If she had cared about anything other than being the center of attention, she might have found useful things to do, even amid the boredom of the siege, than play the other courtiers and the servants off against one another. It was her way of being important. Her way of making herself the center of activity, of surrounding herself with drama and color and a sense that she mattered. That she was the one holding the secret scrolls.

  He thought of the burned papers in Mahadijia’s rooms, and wondered. If it was correct that someone could have taken a talisman off Mahadijia’s corpse and gone there and burned them … the logical person to have done that was Chaeri. But she had been in hysterics after the killing. Could she have managed to slip away from her minders in order to conceal whatever intelligence Mahadijia had wished to present to Mrithuri?

  There was, the Dead Man reminded himself, at least one illusionist somewhere in the mix. If only he had a better idea what illusionists were capable of.

  After the second day—another day of siege when nothing happened, and nothing changed: a day that for the Dead Man could have been more fruitfully spent doing just about anything defensive or logistical, because the problem with sieges was that they were a battle of endurance, seeing who might succumb to hunger, exposure, boredom, thirst, the need to go home and get the crops in, or disease before the other—after the second day, he started to wonder even more.

  He began to wonder how anybody could endure such a pointless existence.

  The Dead Man sometimes had ambitions of retiring to a little fishing boat, perhaps. A small market farm in a pleasant climate. Maybe a sword shop or a tavern. But this … this existence of Chaeri’s was so profoundly dull that the most exciting way she spent her time was in feeding wild birds. And at least the songbirds found her trustworthy.

  At that moment, the Dead Man—perhaps overcome with charity or an uncharacteristic fit of fairness—admitted to himself that he could see why people might like Chaeri. She did have a few good qualities.

  The Dead Man was observing her from atop the garden wall, the same one that Captain Vidhya and Tsering-la had come in over. He had arranged to be there already when Chaeri arrived, gazing plausibly into the distance toward the enemy encampment, which he could not actually see from here. It helped assuage his feelings of uselessness to be checking some element of the palace and city defenses, anyway.

  He’d glanced at the handmaiden once, when she appeared below. Now he imagined what he’d observed before, Chaeri scattering stale crumbs in a flurry of wings. The bolder ones would even fly to sit on her finger and trill. He could imagine it as she chirped back, a counterpart to their tiny noises, her pointed face tilting from side to side behind her hair.

  It was a few hours before sunrise, and the sky was still brigh
t, the birds still active. He did not turn again to see what she was doing. He could hear her, and that was enough. Instead, he watched Pranaj walking the wall, speaking to the troops on guard there. Mrithuri’s men had been out among the refugees and the denizens in the city, recruiting new soldiers. There was room in the Alchemical Emperor’s barracks for an entire army; he could wish that Mrithuri had caused the dusty rooms to be swept out and refreshed and started building such a force earlier than she had. Of course, the Alchemical Emperor had not left stores to feed an army along with the roofs to house them. And leaving an army sitting around with nothing but time on their hands was asking for a military coup.

  The eternal balancing act of princes in a world with wars.

  The Dead Man shoved his fists deep into the pockets of the red linen coat that Mrithuri had given him, his shoulders hunching. The rajni had been delighted with glee like a child to deliver the present, passing it to him with her own hands that very evening.

  It was the wrong shade of red, the cut wasn’t what he was used to, and the fabric didn’t move properly. Everything about it was wrong.

  Of course he wore it.

  He put it on without complaint, and took care not to scowl where the rajni could see him. And the coat was, he admitted—if only in silence and only to himself—a more fit fabric for this oppressive weather. It let the breezes through and kept the sun off, and the fabric did not cling in the humid warmth.

  He missed his old one. But as the Scholar-God’s scriptures taught, one always mourned who one used to be.

  And who one might have been, also.

  * * *

  Time passed dully, and Mi Ren was following Chaeri around also. And doing a much worse job of it than the Dead Man. Especially since about half the time, he was escorted by one of his justifiably nervous lackeys. He was easy to lose, however—so easy even Chaeri could do it. And did.

  The Dead Man wondered if Mi Ren had been after Chaeri to press his suit with Mrithuri. There was still, the Dead Man noted, no evidence of Mi Ren’s father’s armies.

  The Dead Man was spending an uncharacteristic amount of time in the gardens, what with following Chaeri around. The heat and dryness were having an effect. Trees that had been preparing to flower heavily shriveled, their leaves hanging dusty and limp. The water in the river was not rising.

  After the third day, he noticed the silence. It was not that there were no birds. It was just that there were fewer.

  He wandered the gardens in the lingering cool of early morning, watching the day grow dark and the strange, sculptural shadows of the Cauled Sun refracting through the crevices between wind-stirred leaves.

  He didn’t expect Chaeri at this time of the morning. She should usually be helping Mrithuri prepare for bed at this hour. So what was he doing out here, alone, in this strange verdant place?

  The verdancy was fading. In a nearby fig tree, he could see the outlines of a troop of monkeys roosting through the heat of the day. Their silhouettes were plainly visible against the sky because the leaves that should have concealed them drooped with drought. Fig trees were among the first to suffer from the lack of water.

  The Dead Man found himself crunching slowly along a path graveled with the crushed shells of river shellfish. Their whiteness seemed to glow faintly through the dusk because of reflected daylight. He let his steps carry him where they would. Perhaps his God would guide him to the destination he needed—some portent, some clarity, some revelation.

  Not a portent, it turned out. But an elephant.

  He found himself at Hathi’s enclosure. The elderly elephant herself was nothing but a pale shadow in the dusk, but he walked up to her fence—she could have shattered it with ease if she desired—and leaned his elbows on it. She was calmly eating a pile of river reeds and lotus that was probably the last of the fresh fodder for her, unless Mrithuri started raiding the ornamental gardens.

  Mrithuri would, no doubt, soon be raiding the ornamental gardens.

  The Dead Man stood in the dark and breathed. Sweat seeped from his pores. It might refuse to rain, but the humidity was unrelenting. The elephant moved comfortably about her pen.

  Quiet steps slipped up the path behind him with a whispered crunch, crunch.

  “The coin shows the other face now,” Chaeri said silkily. “I am stalking you.”

  He did not turn. “Maybe you are stalking that asshole, Mi Ren.”

  She came to lean against the fence beside him. He was not tall, but she was a good deal smaller than him. She pursed her lips and pushed a coil of hair behind her ear. “No,” she decided. “My rajni already despises him. You have nothing to gain by it.”

  “Is that my motivation? Personal advantage?”

  She smiled and glanced aside, or so he understood the ducking of her head in the darkness. “He should be along in a moment. Will you confront him for harassing me?”

  “And here I understood that you were following me.”

  “You certainly did excellent work of making it seem so. Did Yavashuri give you my schedule?”

  Hathi came over to them. She reached out with her dexterous trunk, fumbling for treats. Chaeri, who had come prepared, handed her a dried date. The elephant turned it over once or twice, sniffing, then stuffed it into her mouth.

  “Did Yavashuri teach you your tradecraft?” the Dead Man asked in reply.

  Chaeri shook her head self-deprecatingly. She handed the elephant another treat. “You learn a few tricks when you work with somebody.”

  She was better at this than the Dead Man would have expected. Good enough to nurture his suspicions.

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  She handed another morsel across the fence. “Feeding the elephant.”

  He made a noncommittal noise.

  She gestured to both sides. “Do you think these trees will set fruit, Dead Man?” Her voice was mocking and chilly. “Do you think there will be dates and mangos in the fall? Do you think this fence will hold her when she is hungry?”

  The Dead Man assumed that these questions were intended as rhetoric. He did not immediately answer. He was still contemplating them, and what to say about them, when both he and Chaeri reacted to the sounds of someone “sneaking” through the garden beds. It was true: the shells would have crunched underfoot if that someone had stayed on the nearest path. But there were other paths, some flagged with laid stone. And walking on any of them softly would have been more quiet than parading through the dark ripping up the shrubbery.

  Chaeri blew her hair back. “Another fool betrayed by romance.”

  “Mi Ren,” the Dead Man murmured.

  “That asshole,” she agreed.

  As they turned to face the newcomer, the Dead Man thought sadly that he much preferred this Chaeri to the flighty, dissembling one. Pity this was the one who probably needed killing. The rustling stopped in a nearby shadow. The Dead Man waited three heartbeats—his heart was beating strongly enough to be easily counted—and called out, “Prince Mi Ren?”

  A crack of a twig, and a moment of silence, as if someone in the darkness had stepped back sharply before freezing. Shuffling followed, as Mi Ren moved forward into the dim daylight.

  “So!” He made a grand gesture with his sleeve. Silk fluttered where the shrubs had tattered it. “I have at last caught you two in the act of plotting treachery!”

  Hathi tugged at the Dead Man’s veil, annoyed that she was no longer the center of attention. The Dead Man raised one hand to hold it in place. It would be a pity to have to kill Mi Ren right now.

  Well, sort of a pity.

  Mrithuri still had uses for him.

  “If by treachery,” he drawled instead, “you mean feeding the elephant.”

  Chaeri snorted in laughter. He wondered if he had ever heard an uncalculated laugh from her before. It sounded very different. They were allies in the moment, though they were not allies at all.

  Mi Ren drew himself up to a furious height. It was probably more impressive whe
n he was in a petty kingdom where his petty word was law. The Dead Man did not even bother to feel for his sword. “We’ll let the rajni be the judge of that. Why, when I make my report—”

  Chaeri chose that moment to beat her retreat with a tattoo of quick little steps. She edged past Mi Ren with the sketch of a curtsy but no real deference, so that he scowled after her.

  The Dead Man decided to distract him. Not because he cared about Chaeri, exactly. Or Mi Ren. But because Mrithuri would prefer the peace be kept. “Even if you’re right, the rajni will not like you for it. Bearers of bad news rarely win the lady’s heart.”

  Mi Ren turned back just to better aim his scoffing. “She doesn’t think that much of you.”

  The Dead Man smiled into his veil. He nodded after Chaeri. “I wasn’t talking about myself, Your Highness. Not all of us always do. And that lady who just left us is the rajni’s dearest friend.”

  “That servant?”

  “Lady-in-waiting,” the Dead Man said. “Not entirely the same thing. And a person of some power and influence, I assure you.”

  * * *

  The unopened flowers were dropping from the golmohar trees. The Dead Man watched them fall, drifting through air that should have been swept with raindrops, and mused on the similarity to the name of Lady Golbahar, who stood beside him watching the Heavenly River rise. He might have remarked on the coincidence, but they were alone, waiting for Mrithuri to come forth from her chambers, and it might have seemed too forward if he did.

  They were both discreet behind their veils, and he did not wish to appear overfamiliar. Or flirtatious.

  So they stood, a little apart, and listened to the nuns sing behind their partitions. The lady had a bowl of tea in her slender fingers. She had allowed her palms to be painted with henna. The custom was familiar, but the designs were strange. The result was very beautiful.

  Home, that was it. She felt like home. And she felt as strange as home no doubt would, after such a long absence, even if he somehow found his way back there.

 

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