“There is farming near the river.” She considered. “Cattle in the hills. Is there mining?”
“Some,” he admitted. He tapped his nibbled cup. “And our clay is unparalleled.”
She nodded, her eyes faraway as she thought of the streaked clay cliffs in all their shades of red and pink and umber. “And trade routes. And tariffs?”
“Not so much in time of war,” he admitted.
“You can feed your people without raiding,” she insisted.
“That,” he agreed, “is true.” He eyed the tea dregs in his cup, and abruptly decided it was not too early for something stronger. His whole body still ached with the riding. With a gesture, he summoned wine.
She watched what he did, but the spookiness was fading. She watched until the little crystal glasses were brought, and filled, and until they had both tasted the drink. It was fermented from oranges and the orange rinds, with the bitter pith removed, and spiced with ginger and black pepper. It was served with slices of lemon to freshen the citrus, and to cut the sweetness somewhat.
Iri looked at it respectfully. “You don’t grow oranges here.”
“No,” Himadra said. “But we can get the wine from Sarathai-lae. By trade, or by raiding for it.”
She thought about spitting the wine out. Instead, she swallowed carefully. “It’s strong.”
“It is.” He drank, and allowed his glass to be filled again. “I can feed my people. But I cannot feed an army, and mercenaries. And refugees. And I cannot protect my people—or your people—without the army, and the mercenaries.”
“Aren’t you Anuraja’s ally?” she asked.
“He is fostering my two brothers, as I believe I mentioned.” Himadra shook his head. Gently, as he did everything. So as not to strain his bones. “I would like to see them home again. I would like there to be a Chandranath for them to come home to.”
He poured more wine. He offered Iri some. She did not refuse. She was looking at him very intently.
“It is useful to understand what sort of person Anuraja is. It is useful to understand what sort of person any rival or ally is. That is a big element of tactics, being able to judge what the opponent will do next. But in this case, Anuraja is the sort of person who always reacts to certain things in very predictable ways.”
“What sort of person is he?”
“A lousy one,” Himadra said, and laughed bitterly. “He is a person who has accomplished very little and inherited a lot. When the only reason you have to feel good about yourself is your ingrained prejudices about your innate superiority over another type of person, you will violently attack anything that threatens that bias.”
Iri picked at her bread. “You keep an army to defend yourself from your ally.”
He tipped his head, with a little smile. “A significant portion of my mercenaries are with him now. He seems to have invaded Mrithuri’s lands and is laying siege to Sarathai-tia. Some intelligence was waiting for me when I returned.”
“That’s terrible,” Iri said. “He’ll probably marry and murder that young girl, too. Just like his others.”
“Yes,” said Himadra. “But he has the money. He has the seaport. He has the armies and the lands. He has my heirs as hostages. There’s not a great deal I can do to stop him.”
She sipped her wine.
“I am kind where I can be, as you have no cause to doubt. But this is a world of hard choices and insufficient resources.”
“I see,” she said. “How will you protect Drupada from him?”
“Oh,” Himadra said with an easy smile. He did like surprising people. “I’ve adopted him.”
* * *
“I am worried,” said Mrithuri, reclining against the Dead Man’s arm. She shifted cautiously, so as not to impale him on her many hairpins, or smudge her elaborate makeup. She would be back on display this afternoon, reviewing the troops, walking the wall.
“We’re all worried,” the Dead Man said. “I’ve never been in a siege this quiet.”
“I suppose they are relying on us getting thirsty, eventually.” The rains still had not come. “More than that, though. Vara has not had contact with the Gage in days. Since he went into the poisoned desert.”
Her arm itched, then stung. Looking down, she realized that her fingerstalls had left red welts across the tattooed outline of the peacock and the blind porpoise that adorned her. She wanted her snakes. She wanted her snakes, and she did not want to see Chaeri.
She could remove them from Chaeri’s custody. But nobody else among her retinue would give her what she needed, when she needed it, without judgment and without argument. Without making her feel self-conscious.
She knew she was too reliant on the venom. But surely now was not the time to tackle that particular problem. Now, when she needed all her wits around her.
“Well,” the Dead Man said, “the Gage will take a while to cross the desert. And a while to explore the Singing Towers, I am sure. He is very tough.”
“We are dealing with somebody who opens up volcanoes for the joy of it.” She stopped herself from scratching again, just in time. She forced herself to think of the warmth of the arm around her, the lean strength in it. It should make her feel safe.
She was determined that it would make her feel safe. Or at least, a little safer. For a while.
He stroked her arm with the back of his fingers, because he could not stroke her hair. They might have walked in the gardens, she supposed, but there was no privacy to be had there anymore. The gardens were full of shelters now. The rajni was doing her part to help house and feed the refugees. Her granaries still held stores, but she read over the reports with Yavashuri and Hnarisha every day, and every day it became more evident that the time they could hold out was limited.
The river was not rising.
She had been too confident.
Gently, the Dead Man caught her wrist, and moved her fingers away from her arm. “Begging your pardon, my queen.” She should send for Chaeri, and not wanting to see her be damned. That would stop the damned itching. That would make her smart, and strong.
Maybe then she would come up with some kind of an answer.
“They are waiting for something,” she said. “That’s the only answer.”
“Rajni?” He had not been paying attention, she thought. He, too, had been ruminating over their predicament, chewing the problem of the siege over as if it were cud that could be mashed into a digestible form if only they masticated it enough.
“Why it’s such a boring siege. They’re waiting for something, right? They tried one push, to see if they could get in the door before we got our defenses settled. We tried one push, too, to see if we could break through. Now we’re just staring at each other. The logical answer is that they expect something to change.”
“They expect us to run out of food and water. And you expected the river to rise.”
“The river is not rising,” she admitted. If anything, it was falling. “I should have used the dolphins.”
“It’s not too late. Have you asked Ata Akhimah if that line of boats could be some kind of a binding? Some of this … Vastu Shastra she told me about. Geomancy. Wizardry. That might hold the river back.”
She felt her face flex under the cosmetics. That was the sort of thing she really should have thought of herself. “If I send the dolphins now they will be slaughtered. The Mother is low; and there will be no fight on land to distract Anuraja’s troops from defending from the river.”
“We could make the fight on land happen. Your troops, honestly, would welcome the distraction.”
The Dead Man did not mention how much of his time was taken up in keeping order with those selfsame troops. Mrithuri knew. Hnarisha told her. The defenders were restless and bored and cooped up. It was a volatile situation.
She said, “I think I was too proud, Serhan.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
She closed her eyes. It was easier to talk if she pretended she was speaking into darkness. �
��The oracle told me I would be a bride and get an heir before the year changed. I said I would not sell myself to a marriage that meant I would not rule.”
His body tensed against hers. She felt all his arguments collide within him in their eagerness to escape. He made a suffering sound and swallowed every one of them.
“Say it,” she commanded.
“The Scholar-God’s prophet Ysmat has written of this.”
“I will hear the words of your prophet. They are usually pretty.” The tension in her voice was entirely the need for venom. That was the anxiety that itched at her. Underneath it, she felt languorous, and a little cruel. Not very cruel. She was never very cruel. But a little, in that way that reminded her that she had power, and could choose the exercising of it.
Possibly it was the thought of losing that power that made her feel cruel.
The Dead Man said, “Would it be considered a becoming modesty in a prince, if he said that he would choose a wife to be lord of him?”
Mrithuri waited, but he did not continue. “That’s it?”
“Don’t you think it’s enough?”
Why was it that what was considered the rightful exercise of sovereignty for a man was considered … unbecoming, unnatural … in a woman? Thinking about it made her feel uncomfortable. Twisted inside, with fear and rejection and an … attractive disquiet. A need.
A desire.
Restless, she rose. The Dead Man let her go. Only when she had stepped away from him did she realize that she missed his mild scent of sandalwood and oil. She paced back and forth. They were in a little antechamber, with silk gauze over the windows and Syama snoring valiantly on a cushion by the door, so of necessity her steps were short.
“I never imagined a future I wanted before,” she said. “For me, I mean. Not because I was expected to do a thing or be a thing. Not because it was my duty or I could make a difference or had a gift. Not because I was needed. That was what I had before. But now I see something I want, Serhan. I want you.”
“But why?” he asked, in honest puzzlement.
“For me.”
He stared at her. She blew across her face in annoyance. “I want you because you see me as a person. I want you because I look at you and for the first time I see a chance at a life that feels like living, not just like performing a series of chores.”
“We all have to carry the trash outside.” The corners of the Dead Man’s eyes wrinkled up. “Well, not you. You have servants.”
Her chest tightened in frustration. She wanted to stomp a foot, but he already wasn’t taking her seriously and displays would not help.
So she made her voice cold and said, “Do not mock me, sirrah.”
His expression smoothed, what she could see of it. “Forgive me, Rajni.” He rose to face her—which he should have done when she stood, for propriety, but there was no propriety in this room—and sketched a perfectly serious little bow.
She glared, her hands uncoiling. Marks from the fingerstalls smarted in her palms.
“I could abdicate,” she said impulsively.
He regarded her, his air formal and solemn now. “Could you?”
She bit her lip. Breathed out. Breathed in.
“No.”
“You will not discover that I am of hidden royal birth, I am afraid.”
“Are you sure?”
“Well.” His head tipped playfully. “I am an orphan. That is how one becomes a Dead Man to begin with.”
There was a tension in the room, a tension between them. A lack of connection, and she could not, quite, find it and get her claws into it to cut it open and inspect its guts for the portents that would tell her what was going on in this damned love affair.
Except she knew. She knew she knew.
It was the acknowledgment from both of them that it could only ever be a temporary thing. That they must hold themselves in reserve, and not give fully. And maybe it was all right for him: he had had a wife, whom Mrithuri believed he had cared for deeply. She had … she had this. And then she would have a marriage, possibly to Anuraja or to somebody chosen by Anuraja. She would …
She would never have anyone to be close to. Not in that way. Not in that circle of trust she found herself, suddenly, craving.
And maybe it was an illusion. Maybe it was a thing nobody ever found: someone they could trust implicitly, and rely on. Maybe it only existed in tales.
“I’m sure Ata Akhimah can produce some convincing documentation, given a little time.” She said it jestingly, but she said it. And watched the skin around his eyes tighten. “Of course you have no wish to be raja-consort to the rajni of a beleaguered state. My city will fall, and you will move on, if you survive the falling. And I will be left here married to that slime creature, who will probably kill me and definitely kill all my children with his poisoned seed.”
“That’s a foolish thing to say,” the Dead Man answered. He put a hand on the window ledge as if to steady himself. “This could be my home, Mrithuri. I would stay with you if I could. I would roost here until my wings molted off, and sing a praise of each morning. But you know and I know that that is not who I am. And this is not who we are. For the same reason you can’t abdicate. I can’t convert to your religion, which would be the bare minimum required.”
She stared at him. She was, she realized, spoiling for the fight she had been trying to provoke with him. She was brittle and unmoored, and she wanted the certainty of attack and defense. She wanted to see him flare up and know he cared about her. That he would fight for her.
He would fight for her, which is to say, he would fight on her behalf. He would not, she acknowledged, fight to keep her. She would have to hold herself by him, for he would never reach out and take her, even just to hold onto her if she seemed to be drifting away.
“Ah.” She stepped back and turned aside, defusing the confrontation. She waved one hand. “No one would believe you were a lost prince anyway.”
He laughed, and she saw his shoulders soften. “Too many bullet holes, for one thing.”
Distantly, the nuns took up their plainchant. This room was one of those with no access directly to their cloister, but their voices still echoed through hollow stone.
Mrithuri dusted her hands down her front, smoothing her drape, careful not to snag her fingerstalls. Now she was rajni again. Now it was time for her to go and do what she was born to do. Hold Sarathai-tia together, and make a display of herself. “I want to see you this evening.”
“My lady’s request,” he replied.
18
The Gage kept walking. The wind rose; a boiling, globular wall of darkness towered against the sometimes-frozen, sometimes-burning stars. It looked like crystals of malachite, but it moved. It bubbled with lightning, and what light filtered through from behind it seemed to arise from within. The bit of dragonbone was slipped into a pocket of his increasingly ragged desert robe.
The dust storm encompassed him. What whispered against his carapace was more silt than sand; so powdery it seemed to have no texture. It slipped within his joints anyway, where coarser stuff would not. It made them grit, and grind.
His feet, blunt and heavy and indelicate, could not grope their way across the badlands. You must be able to feel to resort to groping. But he pushed on regardless, thinking, Once I am out of this I will lubricate. I will be fine.
The wear, though, was happening. He could feel it restraining him. It was not painful, not precisely. It just … slowed him down.
The wind and the dust also slowed him. They had a weight. A pressure. The dust wore his surface away. It spoke against his skin in uncounted tiny voices, myriad soft words. A million whispers told him No. A million whispers told him Stop now.
You cannot fight this. Even you, who are invulnerable. Even you, who are immortal. Even you, who are armored in metal and who cannot feel pain.
Even you cannot stand against the wind, and the dust, and the ceaselessness of time.
Gritting, he walked. Grinding,
he moved forward. He did not stagger. He could not see. None of his senses availed him. Though he did not use eyes to see, there was nothing to see but the dust, its pale green glow ashen and multivalenced. Though he did not use ears to hear, there was nothing to hear but the dust, and all it spoke in was whispers.
He slowed. Grit constrained him.
I will be a statue here in the waste, and the help for my friends will never come.
The legs of the massive insectoid object descended through the miasma around him.
They moved with the rippling motion of a centipede, as he had suspected. But there were rank upon rank of them. Like a hundred centipedes harnessed side by side. They descended through the swirling, poisonous dust, and each one was an architecture of glittering steel and olivine dragonbones. Each one came to a chiseled point, and ascended into invisibility in latticed triangles, obviously meant to bear weight down.
The Gage, half-destroyed by the storm, moving painfully and slow, expected at any moment to find that he had been impaled. But the feet moved deliberately, and each rank that emerged from the miasma set down in the same place as the now-vanishing rank in front of it had before it lifted. The points stepped over him, and did not harm.
He strained his senses into the swirling storm that was destroying him. There was a bulk overhead; he caught glimpses through swirling gaps in the dust. Lights burned within it. He heard … perhaps he heard voices.
He doubtless heard the snapping and ripping of enormous canvas sails shaking in an incomprehensible wind.
A city. A walking city. Powered by the endless desert wind. That’s what he had been seeing on the horizon: city-ships walking on wind-powered legs across vast sandy flats.
But hadn’t one that he had seen—the first one—been walking against the wind? Well, ships could tack, couldn’t they? Was this just a vast ship, geared and walking on feet, but in its own way a less strange feat of engineering than him?
This one, that he had thought was coming toward him. Perhaps even seeking him. Had it only been running before the storm?
But how does it move when there is no wind? And if it is built of dragonbones, how do the people within survive the dragon-sickness?
The Red-Stained Wings--The Lotus Kingdoms, Book Two Page 28