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

by Elizabeth Bear

  “Oh, get up, Vidhya,” she said kindly. “After all that I’ll not have you drowning in a puddle. Is it only raining on this side of the river?”

  He could not seem to answer.

  She reached down and stroked his hair. “I am glad to see you made it here safely. And Tsering-la and Guang Bao? The rest of my men?”

  Vidhya pushed himself to his knees but didn’t get much farther. “Alive,” he managed. By speaking in gasps he managed the rest of his brief report. “Tsering-la and Guang Bao are here. In order to travel faster we left the rest of the men behind, to guard the refugees where they could.”

  “That was well-done,” the foreign rajni said. “Oh, don’t weep, Captain.”

  “I had heard you were … captive,” he said. And silenced himself with a wave of his hand.

  While he was pulling himself together, Yavashuri limped forward. “Greetings, Sayeh Rajni,” she said, with a bow over her injured leg. “I am Yavashuri, my rajni’s lady of the bedchamber. In her name, I greet you.”

  “And wonder how I got to be here, no doubt,” Sayeh said, with a smile. “I will explain when we’re inside. These are my attendants: Nazia, who is the apprentice of Tsering-la, and the poetess Ümmühan. I’m afraid we have come as emissaries of your enemy. No one is likely to be glad to see us for long.”

  The Dead Man and Ata Akhimah stepped forward. The Wizard said, “You’re injured, Your Abundance.”

  “It’s old.” Sayeh, still leaning, sighed. “And somewhat healed. But I’d like to get out of this rain if I may. And … may I trouble you for a crutch?” She wiped the water from her eyes. “Also, is there … a reason why some of you are wearing bathrobes?”

  * * *

  Mrithuri had just time to garb herself—quite plainly, in a suit comprised of a short belted jacket and loose trousers pegged at the ankles—and get Golbahar to comb out and braid her hair before the foreign rajni was shown in to see her. A drape would have shown the bandage over her ribs, and in any case she barely had the energy to stand, and her whole body shuddered with cold and the craving for her venom. She had wanted to rage when Ata Akhimah had come to tell her that Chaeri had escaped. She would have liked to hurl something. But her fingers did not want to grip, and the purpling wreck of Ata Akhimah’s left hand seemed to throb in time with her own ribs, and she was too tired to get out of her chair. Too tired to walk into the throne room. Too tired to do anything except rest, slumped forward, with her elbows on her knees and her neck bent down in contravention of every convention of regal propriety.

  She listened while Hnarisha sent for Tsering-la to be awakened, and listened with less than half her attention as Hnarisha clucked over Ata Akhimah’s hand. He was going to exhaust himself as surely as Tsering had—but no, he said his healing strength was not his own, but a gift from an immanence. His Cho-tse religion.

  How can I do it without the venom? I haven’t the strength. I haven’t the intellect. I haven’t the will. Her naked fingers found and pressed the tiny scarred indentations on her arms and collarbone, as if she could somehow squeeze the drug she needed into her blood from these old wounds.

  I should surrender now, and save the lives of more of my people.

  Golbahar had effaced herself against the wall. Mrithuri wondered how haggard she must look that the vivacious young noblewoman was making a point of standing back and leaving her alone.

  The scrape of feet in the corridor reached her in time for her to straighten her back and compose her face. She tried to arrange herself in a queenlike fashion on the chair, and for a moment felt self-conscious in her lack of pomp and plainness. Then she thought, Would a raja stand on robes and cosmetics in extremis? and shook herself, and made her expression grave and stern.

  Vidhya and the Dead Man and Yavashuri preceded the rajni from the north into the room. Mrithuri gave Yavashuri a stern glance, and Yavashuri gestured to the wrap around her knee. Mrithuri’s guardsmen bore Sayeh Rajni in on a litter, with two women walking behind her—one young and one old. They deployed stands and set her down across from Mrithuri, and a calculated handspan lower. She was swathed in toweling over her dripping-wet clothes.

  “Forgive me, Sister,” Sayeh said. “My leg is broken, or I would bow to you.”

  The women behind Sayeh were the poetess Ümmühan (the real one, this time, and not a counterfeit, Mrithuri presumed) and a young girl who Ata Akhimah had informed her was the apprentice of the Wizard Tsering.

  “We are sisters,” Mrithuri answered. A thousand pretty speeches flashed into her head. She shook it, and discarded every one. “You do not bow to me. We are equals.”

  Sayeh laughed bitterly. “I am a rajni without a state. And I am here to plead with you on behalf of your enemy.”

  “Our enemy,” Mrithuri said. “Why?”

  The older woman waved her hand. Her fingers were elegant, blunt-tipped, long. “I had to get away from him. And from his sorcerer.”

  “As simple as that?”

  “As simple as that. He wishes to marry you. He offers freedom for your people, an end to war, an alliance. All you have to do is put him on the Peacock Throne.”

  “Such a trivial gift,” Mrithuri said. “Is he as bad as they say?”

  Sayeh shook her head and shuddered. “I told him that if he wished your compliance, he must give you a way to concede to him that would seem honorable to you.”

  “And did he agree?”

  Sayeh sighed. “He listened. He did not offer any instruction. I believe I am encouraged to lie to you, Mrithuri Rajni.”

  “You are trusting me with a great deal, and very quickly. Without knowing me at all.”

  “Whom else have I to trust? I see my captain here with you, and you seem to have taken him in, and he does not seem to be under duress. I know him to be a man of honor; his service vouches for you. I have nothing. I have nowhere to turn. Lying to you gets me nothing. And I have heard my Wizard is here as well—”

  Who, with his usual impeccable timing, chose that moment to bustle in, with the phoenix on his gloved hand. He looked exhausted, but at least he was dressed. Yavashuri and Akhimah, Mrithuri realized, had also procured clothes somewhere. And the Dead Man had on a dry veil and dry coat. One of the ones she had had made for him.

  Sayeh turned to look at the Wizard and his burden. She smiled brilliantly at Tsering-la. “You look tired.”

  “War interferes with my sleep, my rajni.”

  “Where are your men?”

  “I sent them north,” he said. “To help the refugees.”

  She sighed in bright relief. A few less deaths to carry with her to the Mother.

  Vidhya bowed low and offered her a gauntlet. Once she had accepted it, her familiar, Guang Bao, made a happy cluck and tucked his head under her chin, seeming not to care about the water still dripping from her.

  “Oh, Guang Bao,” she said. “What have they done to you?”

  “His feathers were much damaged,” Mrithuri said. “I had them imped with the molted feathers of my own. They are bearded vultures. I thought—” She shrugged. It hurt. “—he would prefer to be able to fly.”

  “That is tremendously kind,” Sayeh whispered, with tears in her voice. She sniffed them back. “You look ridiculous, Guang Bao.”

  As if in answer, he preened her damp hair.

  “It is well you sent the phoenix with your men,” Mrithuri said to Sayeh. “We encountered your people once before, but they were only an illusion.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Mrithuri explained about the assassin disguised as the poetess, and the illusory Vidhya and Tsering who had accompanied him. She did not mention that one of her people had been killed and another wounded. It seemed like more than her cousin could stand, because when Mrithuri told Sayeh about the padparadscha ring, and the veins converted to sapphire in the animate corpse, Sayeh pressed her hand against her mouth and turned quite green.

  Tsering-la, seeming to intervene, turned to Mrithuri and said, “I’d like to ex
amine my rajni’s leg, if Your Abundance is willing.”

  Too many rajnis in this room, she thought, and nodded. “Hnarisha, if you would help him? And guardsmen, you may go. Send someone to bring fresh clothes for the rajni and her ladies. And Captain Vidhya. And send food and tea.”

  Vidhya smiled at her with a grateful duck of his head.

  It did not take long for Tsering-la to render his verdict on Sayeh’s injury. “You’ll have a limp. Or we try breaking it again.”

  “Mmm. Not right now. Maybe after the war. My sister—” She turned to Mrithuri. “Would you believe me if I told you that I have come to believe it might not be a terrible thing for you to marry Anuraja, if you can find a way to put off bedding him until after he sits on the Peacock Throne?”

  “If it comes down to it, I can fake my courses as well as any woman,” Mrithuri admitted. The Dead Man looked shocked behind his veil. She stifled a laugh, and so did not manage to ask her next question before the conversation moved on.

  “Rajni,” said Lady Golbahar, who had not spoken.

  Mrithuri was amused to note that both her head and Sayeh’s snapped around.

  “We have to hold out as long as possible and give the Gage a chance to get through and return. Have we a means at our disposal to delay negotiations with this Anuraja, while making him think that you would seriously consider his … offer?”

  Mrithuri’s head throbbed. Her skin itched as if with the bites of a thousand insects. “We can still hold out for a while. If the walls will hold back the Mother Wyrm—”

  “Begging your pardon, Rajni,” Tsering-la said, “but that is an ‘if’ as large as an elephant. We don’t know what else he has in reserve. He, and his sorcerer.”

  “I feel so utterly helpless,” she said. “If the river would just rise—”

  She knew at once that she should not have said it. These people relied on her to be strong. To be flawless. Not to be weak and human and scared.

  But there was Sayeh, looking at her with kind eyes, then putting a hand on Ümmühan’s elbow to usher the old woman forward. “I believe my poetess has something to say to that.”

  Ümmühan chuckled. “How did you know?”

  “I can see it in the way your mouth twists under the veil.” Sayeh turned back to Mrithuri. “With permission?”

  Mrithuri nodded.

  “Helplessness, the state of accepting that one is a victim, is not learned, my rajni. It’s taught. And the course of instruction is written in powerlessness, in kicks and blows. In dismissals. It is taught in the language of being unable to protect the things and people you value from violence. Of being unable to protect yourself from violence. It is written with the pen of denigration upon the paper of desperation. There is an older term for it.”

  Mrithuri raised her chin.

  “They called it ‘breaking the spirit,’ Rajni.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Mrithuri. “So they did.”

  “The agent who fled. She was a confidante.”

  Mrithuri, despite herself, nodded.

  “She took with her things you needed. Perhaps what felt like a piece of yourself.”

  “You are not a poetess,” Mrithuri said. “You are mind-reader.”

  “I cheat,” Ümmühan said. “Poetry is the essence of cheating.”

  The Dead Man straightened the hem of his coat. Mrithuri realized that he was a little overawed to be in the presence of this straight-backed old woman. His voice was more quizzical than confrontational as he said, “Did not Ysmat of the Beads write that poetry is a means of speaking the truth?”

  Golbahar stepped away from the wall to stand behind Mrithuri’s chair. “Those things are not incompatible, you realize. Especially when a woman uses poetry to speak truth when the truth would go unheard if spoken plain.”

  Ümmühan laughed. Her laugh was youthful. It made her seem to glow. “A poem is a fact / with an angled blade.”

  How does she do that?

  The door cracked open and a small face peered in. A page girl, who caught Yavashuri’s eye with an urgency that sent the old woman limping rapidly out into the corridor. She was gone only a few instants, which those left in the reception room filled with tense silence. When she came back in, she shut the door firmly behind her and stood with her back against it. “My rajni,” she said to Mrithuri. Her voice shook.

  It was the most terrifying thing that Mrithuri had ever heard. She could not find her own voice. She held her breath and nodded.

  “Perhaps best in private?”

  “Oh, by the Mother. Just tell us now!”

  She had surged to her feet, she realized when those around her fell back.

  Yavashuri swallowed. “The water in the cisterns is fouled.”

  Mrithuri felt her fingertips dig into her arms. Some time passed. She was not sure how much did. She took a breath, because she felt faint and realized that she had not been breathing at all. “Our water is fouled.”

  “Yes, my rajni.”

  “All of our water.”

  Yavashuri shook her head. “What’s in barrels in the kitchens and other reserves is fine. Pitchers. There are barrels in households in the city, and some of them might have cisterns as well.”

  “How did this happen?” Mrithuri demanded.

  Ata Akhimah cleared her throat. “Feathers and blood and bird shit. Washed into the cisterns.”

  “But the enchantments—”

  “I would guess,” the Wizard continued, inexorable, “that the enemy sorcerer—”

  “Ravani,” Sayeh said. “Her name is Ravani. She seems to have a brother up north with Himadra whose name is Ravana.”

  “Twins?” asked Tsering-la.

  Sayeh shrugged. “Maybe.”

  Ata Akhimah cleared her throat. She cradled her disaster of a hand across the crook of the other arm. She said, “It seems likely that Ravani considered that when she bespelled her fetches.”

  “Where is Nizhvashiti?” Mrithuri asked.

  “On the battlements, still,” said the Wizard Akhimah. “I will go and speak with the Godmade.”

  “Of course,” Tsering-la said. “We can try to clean it, but not knowing the magic she used—” He sighed. “As I believe I mentioned, I am not a particularly powerful Wizard.”

  Yavashuri said, “With this rain, the river might rise—”

  “The rain is only here,” Sayeh put in. “Or at least, it has not crossed the river. It does not seem to be upstream, where it would raise the flood. And there is not enough of it anyway,”

  “The river is not rising,” Mrithuri said. It hurt her to admit it. She had comforted herself with the lie for so long. “The river is not rising. With all Nizhvashiti could do.”

  Everyone in the room was looking at her. Everyone in the city was relying on her. To make a decision. To save the day. She could trust Sayeh. She might have to trust Sayeh. She was cold and in pain and alone, because whatever had to be done, there was no one to do it but her.

  This was what it meant to be rajni, really. She could rely on others to be her hands, her eyes, even her intellect. But she had to be the heart and the will that synthesized and guided them.

  “I am going to talk to the cloistered sisters,” she said.

  Of all the people in the room, perhaps it was only Yavashuri who knew what that portended. Of all the people in the room, it was only Yavashuri who raised her voice to ask, “My rajni, are you sure?”

  Mrithuri shook her head. “No. But I am out of ideas. Figure out a rationing plan until I get back, would you? You and Ata Akhimah and Hnarisha are the council in my absence. And make our new guests comfortable. I may be gone some time.”

  * * *

  When all was said and done, Sayeh found herself again in the care of the healer, the little fine-boned man who reminded her somewhat of Tsering-la. Apparently some form of rationing had been worked out, because once she was settled and had dismissed Nazia and Ümmühan he came to what he said would be her rooms for as long as she stayed, with ca
kes and tea.

  “Your ladies are not here?” he observed. “I can go away and come again.”

  “I am an old barren widow,” she replied. “No one will care if I entertain a charming gentleman without a chaperone.”

  He laughed and came in and set the tray down. She asked him to be seated; he obliged.

  “My lord Hnarisha—”

  “Just Hnarisha.” He smiled and poured.

  “What the rajni is doing. It is very dangerous?”

  “Sometimes,” he said. Faint singing came through the walls. “You do not have similar cloisters in Ansh-Sahal?”

  “We have cloisters,” she thought, remembering the abbess. Mourning rose up her throat in bitterness. “Not like this.”

  “Ah,” he said. And that was all.

  “Hnarisha would seem to be a Cho-tse name,” Sayeh said.

  “That is so,” he agreed mildly.

  “Those would seem to be Cho-tse earrings,” she commented.

  “You are very observant.” He handed her tea, and a delicate plate of Song porcelain with three tiny cakes on it, each decorated with a different candied edible flower.

  She picked up the cake with the marigold petals sprinkled over it. The edges sparkled with gold dust. Did they dine like this as a matter of course, under siege or no? Or was this a special show for the foreign queen? She placed the cake on her tongue. It melted into mysterious and complicated flavors. Earthy and strong.

  Perhaps she should have first tasted the one decorated in rose petals. Or orange blossom. Intricacies of experiencing fine dining had not been much on her mind of late.

  “My son,” she said slowly, having swallowed the tidbit, “told me a story about a tiger once.”

  Hnarisha cupped his tea in both hands and tilted his head at her politely. “Was it flattering to the tiger?”

  “Well,” Sayeh said. “It was from the point of view of the elephant.”

  Hnarisha laughed. “How old is your son?”

  In answer, she held her hand at knee level.

  He laughed. “A terrible age.”