The song was eerie and sweet; the sunset was beautiful. The last filmy tendrils of the Cauled Sun’s corona flickered at the horizon, so flat and far away, taking the darkness down with the day. And the Dead Man looked at it and wondered. Even the sun went veiled here. Maybe that was another reason why he kept finding himself accidentally feeling at home.
Don’t get attached, he told himself. Don’t get comfortable. Don’t get used to this. Don’t you dare.
It was not permanent. It could not ever be permanent. And fantasizing that it might be—worse, believing that it could—was the fastest route to a broken heart he could think of.
The fact of the matter was that he was getting older. The fact of the matter was that he missed having a home. He was long since too old to make a living as a sell-sword, not that that had been stopping him. And yet here he was with a sword and the selling of it as the means of keeping his soul in a warm, clean, decently fed body.
What did old mercenaries do when they ran out of battles? Buy a farm and harness their old warhorse up to the plow traces? Wasn’t buying a farm a common euphemism for something else?
Maybe he should take his savings—money on deposit to a stonemason’s guild in Messaline—and invest in a nice mercenary company. Pay someone else to wield the swords they were selling.
Well, before he made any retirement plans, he’d probably better make it out the other side of this little war with his life intact. Maybe when the time came for them to part, Mrithuri would set him up with a sinecure.
He dismissed as infatuation the little voice that staunchly proclaimed his lack of desire to move on anytime soon, especially if that meant moving away from Mrithuri. Loyalty was an admirable quality in a man-at-arms.
So was pragmatism.
His breath caught hard as a marble in his gullet when Mrithuri emerged from her bedchamber, where he had never been. He imagined a silk-hung, incense-scented chamber, but the glimpse through the swift door was of a bright space with grand windows facing the rising stars, and Mrithuri silhouetted against them.
She did not even really look like herself—or how he was coming now to think of her. He had already grown accustomed to the battle-ready Mrithuri, and this was the rajni once again. She did not look to him particularly beautiful, though she was jeweled and draped and painted, hung with gauds he knew she chafed under. The lower half of her face was hidden behind a snarling golden mask; her eyes were winged in kohl.
She was surrounded by her people, including Chaeri and the Wizards. An austringer bearing one of her great bearded vultures followed after. Its wings, which it mantled over the man’s fist in the heat, were freshly ochre-red. The singing of the nuns swelled around them.
Yavashuri and Hnarisha were not with her, though the Dead Man had expected that they would be.
He and Golbahar turned to watch the rajni’s procession. Mrithuri’s eyes slid sidelong as she passed him. She said nothing, but one lid drooped its burden of soot-blacked cow-hair lashes across her cheek. She smirked saucily behind the mask.
Golbahar and the Dead Man slid in among the second rank.
The Dead Man touched the butts of his guns for reassurance, just needing that reminder that he had weapons should he need them. He wore his sword as well, and a softly chink-rustling coat of chain mail that draped his body with the pressure of swimming deep.
This was not just a court. It was a progress. They were going outside, among Mrithuri’s people, and the Dead Man did not put it past Anuraja—or whomever—to have primed an assassin or two amongst the folk of the city, or the recently added refugees.
Someone, after all, had already tried to kill her once. And possibly twice, if he chose to believe Chaeri’s version of events surrounding the death of Mahadijia. If the Dead Man believed the intelligence, then Anuraja could have no reason to murder Mrithuri—and, in fact, a dozen reasons not to.
The worst part was that the likely presence of enemy agents among Mrithuri’s people made it more essential that she go forth among them. More essential, and more dangerous, of course. But whatever the threat, it was love of their rajni and a sense of connection to her that would stir her subjects’ morale and keep them resolute through the weeks and perhaps months to come.
He fingered the scar on his bosom, but he could not feel it through the coat of mail and the padded coat he wore beneath it. Was it true, he wondered, that Anuraja had no reason to assassinate the rival queen? Maybe he thought it would be easier than marrying her.
And if Anuraja did not have such a reason, who did? And why were they using sorcery?
Mrithuri, the Dead Man could tell, was nervous, though she was surrounded by her Wizard and her men-at-arms and two ladies, with Tsering-la along for good measure. She had offered Mi Ren a place to walk with her. He had discovered a pressing need to be elsewhere. But Ritu and her family would meet them at the gates, so the rajni would be preceded by jugglers and acrobats who were also capable swordspersons.
Despite all that, and despite the Dead Man’s sword at her back, and despite that she stood straight and let her hands hang soft by her sides, the rigidity of her neck and her short quick steps gave her away.
He wondered again where she had sent her two most trusted advisors. Or had Chaeri managed to maneuver them away?
Surely they would not choose to skip such a dangerous errand unless prevented.
* * *
The Dead Man did not need wonder for too long. Because as their slow parade was passing through the grand processional that led between the Great Hall on one end and the Grand Doors to the palace—where they were meant to meet the acrobats with their baskets of strewing petals and their spools of ribbons—on the other, he heard two pairs of footsteps coming up behind them at a run.
His hand that had been resting on the butt of his gun closed over it. But before he could whirl and level a pistol, Ata Akhimah caught his eye and shook her head ever so faintly. So, instead, he managed to turn just his head, calmly, in time to see the missing Hnarisha pelting toward them. Yavashuri huffed along in his wake, her robes lifted in her fists to enable the pursuit.
The Dead Man himself, growing too old for sprinting, felt for her valiance.
Their faces were not masks of fear, desperation, or horror, so the Dead Man assumed that neither the enemy nor another indestructible revenant were in pursuit. What their expression did reveal was profound urgency, above and beyond the tension so consistently reflected in the faces of everyone since the siege began.
Whatever drove them was obviously a matter of great importance.
The Dead Man kept a portion of his attention on Chaeri as the other two drew up. Her expression was tight. Apprehensive.
“My rajni,” Hnarisha said with a little bow. He was the less out of breath of the pair. “We have news from the north.”
Chaeri’s demeanor shifted suddenly. The tension—call it what it was: fear—on her features passed as if a hand smoothed sand, leaving a hint of superior anticipation. She shifted her gaze to Mrithuri’s face, as if the rajni’s reaction interested her more than did the news.
For his part, the Dead Man wondered briefly how any information was coming into the sealed gates of the city. That was, he supposed, why one kept such … connected persons … as Yavashuri in one’s employ. But that was also the moment where he lost any doubt that Chaeri was, in the very least, withholding information. And why she would do that if she was not some species of traitor, he did not know. He could construct scenarios where she was waiting, in order to aggrandize herself by being a hero at the last minute with some critical item of intelligence—and he was sure Mrithuri would make those excuses for Chaeri, if he pressed her on it—but they were not, to his critical eye, plausible excuses.
So he shifted his gaze to follow Chaeri’s and also watched Mrithuri’s expression as she drew a breath, visibly steeled herself, and said, “Word from Ansh-Sahal?”
“Word from Chandranath,” Hnarisha said. “Concerning Ansh-Sahal.”
“Well, don’t roost on the news like a hen,” the rajni snapped.
Hnarisha glanced at Yavashuri, who seemed now to have collected herself and recollected her breath.
“Prince Drupada lives,” she said. “And Lord Himadra has taken custody of the child and declared himself the Lord Protector of Ansh-Sahal.”
The things Mrithuri’s face did behind her mask were indeed worth watching.
“Regent of a wasteland,” Chaeri scoffed. “How … effectual.”
But the Dead Man recollected the precision displayed by Himadra’s men when he had passed through Chandranath with Druja’s caravan. “He has a plan.”
Yavashuri exhaled crossly. “I don’t suppose you might know what it is?”
“I could guess,” the Dead Man said. “But they would be guesses only. However, I wonder if there are any assets in Anuraja’s camp who can tell us how that worthy is reacting to the news, if he has it yet?”
Yavashuri and Hnarisha exchanged a glance while the Dead Man wondered why it was that Chaeri wished to downplay this news to the rajni.
“There is more.” It was a new voice. A whispering one. And the Dead Man nearly shot himself in the foot with his still-holstered pistol, it made him jump so hard.
The Godmade drifted out of the shadows with no more sound than the rustle of stiff fabric. At first, the Dead Man imagined wildly that the already tall and gaunt figure had somehow mysteriously grown and attenuated more. Then he realized that his instinctive reach for the word “drifting” to describe Nizhvashiti’s movement was because the Godmade floated a handspan above the tiles, lower limbs hanging motionless within the column of its robes. Trailing fabric from its hems stirred runnels of gold dust that had exfiltrated the throne room into flittering swirls.
“Of course there is,” Mrithuri sighed. It was a sigh that would have impressed any large, tired dog that the Dead Man had chanced to know. In fact, Syama glanced up at her mistress with a rapt expression in her liquid eyes.
Mrithuri’s robes swirled elegantly around her limbs as she pivoted on the balls of her feet. She gazed up into Nizhvashiti’s face and said, “Do your worst, child of the Mother.”
“I have journeyed to communicate with the Gage.” The Godmade spoke from an impassive face. “He is well, although traveling through blighted, blasted territory.”
“You have been right here,” Chaeri protested. “Do not lie to my rajni.”
The Godmade’s stone and metal eyes each made faintly different grinding sounds when it rolled them. “I did not travel physically, but projected my spiritual self. I was not quite really there, but only my physical form remained here.”
“Are you really here now?”
“But we have learned this,” the Godmade continued, as if never interrupted. “I do not think the sorcerer—”
The Dead Man listened with increasing horror and resignation as Nizhvashiti related their adventure. He wished something in the story surprised him more, but the corpses laced and animated by stone were too familiar. As was the utterly ruined city, air and sea and land all poisoned, for different reasons. That it should have happened in this way at this time seemed only a logical extension of what they knew already.
Nizhvashiti’s description of the sorcerer they had met drew Tsering-la up short, and sent a tingle through the Dead Man’s spine as well.
Tsering-la spoke first. “I’ve met him. In the company of Himadra. During the fall of Ansh-Sahal.”
“I…” the Dead Man faltered as eyes turned toward him. “There was a woman very like that. In Chandranath, with both rajas. They said her name was Ravani.”
“This one was named Ravana,” Nizhvashiti said.
“There are two of them?” the Dead Man said.
Chaeri laughed as if it were the most ridiculous thing she had ever heard.
“There are beings that can change their appearance at will.” Nizhvashiti folded its hands inside its sleeves. The Dead Man wondered if a revenant could tremble. “And we already knew we were dealing with an illusionist.”
“Unwholesome beings,” said Ata Akhimah.
“Mostly,” Nizhvashiti agreed. “Himadra may be under this creature’s influence, then. He seemed … nonplussed … that he could not easily make the Gage and me see reason. As if he expected to be found reasonable despite being so magnificently not.”
“Are you resistant to such effects?”
“That is an excellent question.” The Godmade gestured as if shrugging off rain and tapped its chiming eye. The illusion-shattering peal went forth, a nearly visible ripple running with it. It felt, when it passed the Dead Man, as if he stood in water in the path of a wave. It pushed and pulled him, and seemed to slurp a bit of the tile floor out from under his feet though he moved not at all. “At least to some degree, it seems.”
“The Gage often is,” the Dead Man said.
Hnarisha tilted his head. “I’d like to discuss it sometime.”
Chaeri’s expression shifted to practiced boredom with a gloss of mild superiority.
Tsering-la’s restrained excitement burned in his voice. “I’d like to get in on this conversa—”
Mrithuri cleared her throat. “Returning to the matter at hand, is this sort of … eruption … something that could happen here? If Himadra has the power to call up deadly vapors from the place where earth and waters meet, to boil the seas, and use it as a weapon … could something like that come out of the Mother River and end us all?”
The Wizards, Hnarisha, and Nizhvashiti looked at one another. The Dead Man, watching them, remarked to himself that there were certainly many branches of metaphysics in the world. He had grown accustomed to learning what he needed to know about them from the Gage. Being confronted with the realization of how many branches of knowledge were accounted among the wielders of mysterious forces here made him feel strange, as if along with the new coat his religion were not fitting exactly as he was accustomed.
He was luckily saved from too much contemplation when Tsering-la answered. “I should not presume to answer categorically, but consider that the Bitter Sea is, in fact, bitter. And that it has a history of such events, which to me would tend to indicate that it, like the Cold Fire”—naming the great volcano that crouched over the city of Tsarapheth—“might rest over a primordial natural furnace deep in the roots of the world. Possibly the same one, if such things can extend so far. So Sarathai-tia should be safe. At least, from that.”
“I tend to agree,” Nizhvashiti said. “There’s other evidence as well that it is a local phenomenon.” And told them about the befuddled, possibly ensorcelled, chain-smoking volcano goddess.
“Nonsense,” Chaeri said, into the silence that followed. “Charlatanry. You pretend to go into a trance, and you come back with … tales of sorcerers and corpses and summoned gods? No one can summon the Mother. That’s … that’s blasphemy.”
“And yet,” Nizhvashiti said in level whispers, “it is I who am the priest here.”
Mrithuri raised her hand for silence. “An unsettling priest. One who many might find uncanny.”
Nizhvashiti tipped its head in acknowledgment.
“Perhaps it would be best if you did not process with us through the city, Godmade.”
“Perhaps not,” Nizhvashiti agreed.
“My rajni,” Chaeri said. “Perhaps it would be safest if we canceled the event. You can review your people another day. The council perhaps should meet, and decide what is to be done with Nizhvashiti—”
“Shut up,” Mrithuri said, her voice made hollow by the mask.
Chaeri’s voice stopped as if her mouth had been sealed by magic. The Dead Man felt a small thrill of pleasure at the blessed silence following.
Mrithuri rubbed her arms. “I am going to see my people, and reassure them that I have their best interests at heart. Is that plain enough for you?”
Chaeri, downcast, nodded. Her teeth were sunk in her lip. How can you not see how she manipulates you? the Dead Man wanted to sh
out.
Mrithuri snatched the mask away from her face.
“Rajni,” Chaeri began.
The Dead Man had to admire her persistence.
Mrithuri’s gaze swung toward her. A long silence stretched. No one else dared speak to snap it. Mrithuri chafed her upper arms as if they hurt. As if, the Dead Man thought, she was driving the venom of the Eremite vipers more swiftly through her veins, massaging it under her skin. She finally let her glare slide off Chaeri, and slapped it on each of her followers in turn. “No one?”
Apparently not.
She tossed the mask aside. It landed on sea-colored tiles with the ring of gold, and dented. “Right then. Let’s get this parade underway.”
* * *
The procession was an anticlimax. At least, from a security point of view. Ritu and her family of tumblers and acrobats led them, turning handsprings and waving their banners, clashing swords in the best martial style. They were, the Dead Man thought, a nice distraction. And a nice bit of softening up for the crowds. Everyone, after all, loved a good parade.
Along with the tumblers, criers went before her, announcing the rajni and priestess by all her titles, announcing that the people of Sarathai-tia and the refugees who had taken shelter in her walls would be fed at the rajni’s expense, from the rajni’s coffers. That there was and would be food and shelter for all.
The Dead Man hoped fervently that Mrithuri’s people had a plan for that.
Mrithuri was cheered through the streets until they grew tired. And then beyond that, because the Dead Man witnessed a transformation.
Mrithuri began tight and dutiful of expression under her cosmetics. Her face seemed weirdly marked, pale and blank, where the mask had covered it. But as they wound down the slow spiral of Sarathai-tia, as he would have expected exhaustion to press her, he saw instead her head grow higher.
The Dead Man’s focus must lie in taking the temper of the crowd, not the temper of his rajni.
The Red-Stained Wings--The Lotus Kingdoms, Book Two Page 25