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

by Elizabeth Bear

  With an effort that hurt the muscles of her throat, Mrithuri reined herself. She pulled another pin out of her already tumbling locks with slow deliberation and laid it beside its brothers. Her mass of hair slid free, pins sliding in its length. The Dead Man sighed and stepped up beside her. He reached for her slowly and slowly, with the tips of his fingers, lifted free another pin.

  He handed it to Hnarisha, and Hnarisha put it with the others.

  Mrithuri was still vibrating with outrage as he searched among her tresses for the next golden pin, and the next. His touch softened her a little. She was not sure she wanted it to. “Vengeance? Do you think me a barbarian?”

  “Correction,” the Dead Man said. “Consequences.”

  She rounded on him so quickly he was forced to snatch the hand with the latest pin in it back from her face, lest it scratch her eye. But his expression was bewildered.

  “You are not jesting with me.”

  “Rajni.” He stepped back and bowed low, dropping a knee to the floor and stretching out his hands. “I am but a foreigner. I do not know what I have done to offend.”

  Mrithuri looked at Hnarisha. Hnarisha raised his eyebrows and tipped his head from side to side.

  “Oh, get up,” she said disgustedly. “I’m being an ass. And perhaps it would behoove me to remember, as a ruler of my people—for a few more moments at least—that not everybody holds to the same standards of justice.”

  The Dead Man stood. He folded his arms and stepped back against the latticed wall, though she noticed he checked the space behind it for nuns before he leaned against it. She wondered if he expected a nun to slip a knife between his ribs if he turned his back on her.

  Then she wondered if that was the sort of thing of which a nun would be capable.

  If they were like Nizhvashiti … without question.

  “With my rajni’s forbearance,” he said, “that was not a concept that I was previously acquainted with. Yes of course, the laws vary from land to land. The will of the local gods and the local magistrates must have an effect. But surely justice is justice? If you sever a man’s hand, should not your hand be severed in return?”

  “Is that what your Scholar-God teaches?”

  He tipped his hand, then made the sign of the pen. “Not in so many words, I suppose. The scripture tells us, ‘Justice lies in the redress of wrongdoing.’”

  “What if it was an accident? Where is the fair redress, then?”

  The Dead Man cleared his throat. “I’d say it doesn’t much matter to the man.”

  “And how does it help that man, if you are punished?”

  “It—well, he gets his own back, does he not?”

  Mrithuri felt Hnarisha behind her, continuing the process of taking down her hair. He raked his fingers through the tresses, being sure that all the pins were gone, then picked up the bottle of oil and the comb. “Does his field get plowed? Are his cattle milked? Are his young plants set into the mud?”

  “No,” the Dead Man said, after some thought. He was looking for the trap, she thought. And that was fine, because there was not one.

  Mrithuri did not nod, because the comb was in her hair. “What our justice tells us is that if you sever a man’s hand, you must provide him the replacement.”

  “So you must … go and be his servant?”

  She shook her head. “Perhaps you must hire him a servant. Or send one of your children to foster with him. Or simply plow and harvest his fields when you plow and harvest your own, and give him all that is his due without recompense. Or—well, yes, perhaps. You might find yourself his servant, if that is the will of the court”—she pressed the back of her ringed hand against her breast—“though really, I wouldn’t want the asshole who cut my hand off making my tea. So we try to avoid that sort of thing.”

  He stared at her. She turned away. “Braid my hair, my husband. I must go and meet the man who wants to poison my life and take you from me. Oh, and…”

  “Yes?”

  “Make sure I have my jewelry.”

  * * *

  Sayeh sat on the dais beside Mrithuri Rajni’s chair of estate, her own chair a little lower than the Tian monarch’s—and, to judge by the look of it, more than a little more comfortable. The hall was as wonderful as Sayeh had heard, tall and wrought as if its arches and vaults were the trunks and boughs of trees, with those panes of dragonglass making up the leaves. All of Mrithuri’s court was here, except for General Pranaj and Ata Akhimah. The majority of her men-at-arms—and the Song dignitary that Mrithuri referred to as “that asshole Mi Ren,” who had taken Anuraja’s offered safe passage with alacrity—would have ridden out of the city gates as they opened to admit the army coming in. They would have gone, and kept going.

  Sayeh hoped they would be allowed to go, and that there was no ambush awaiting them.

  She heard the march of boots through the hall of the palace now. She heard doors upon doors flung wide to admit the invaders who were coming. Anuraja, and Ravani, and the rest. Tramping forward in a beat that seemed to make her heart jump and keep the same accelerated time.

  Mrithuri’s knuckles whitened around the sheathed sword that lay across her lap.

  Sayeh leaned into Mrithuri. “Flutter a little,” she whispered behind her hand. “Look scared. He’ll enjoy that.”

  The young rajni already looked suitably green around her gilt mask, shaped like a snarling bhaluukutta. Mrithuri’s actual familiar, Syama, was locked away for now for her own safety. Mrithuri’s hand kept creeping down to stroke empty air. Then it would come back up, and clench around the silver snake coiled at her throat.

  Honestly, Sayeh felt terrible for the girl. But not quite terrible enough to tell Mrithuri what Sayeh’s plan was. Either she would get her hopes up, in which case Sayeh would feel even more terrible if it didn’t work—or she would think Sayeh was clutching at straws, and be that much more terrified.

  “Sister, what have you gotten me into?” Mrithuri whispered.

  “I told you he was awful.”

  The doors at the bottom of the throne room were cast wide, and men in livery the colors of blue and orange sapphire streamed into the room. Their ranks were drilled and perfect. They parted as they entered like a fan, and they streamed into the long hall in columns, herding the courtiers away from the walls and away from the central walkway up the tiles as well. They had nearly filled the room, it seemed, by the time they stopped. The tramping of boots stirred the powder of gold the floor was strewn with until all the air sparkled and swirled. I’ll be wiping that out of the corners of my eyes for weeks.

  In the pause that followed, Sayeh’s hands clutched at the arms of her own chair. She scanned the crowd, picking out Vidhya, Tsering-la, Nazia, Ümmühan. The former two were dressed as simple courtiers. It reassured her to see them.

  And there had been no word in the terms of surrender dictating that her captain of the guard and Wizard must leave Sarathai-tia. Only the people beholden to Mrithuri.

  An oversight, to be sure.

  Sayeh kept her face still, very still indeed.

  The soldiers still within the grand doorway parted, and a man walked toward them, up the aisle. At first, Sayeh thought she did not recognize him. His limp was gone, and he walked with the vigor and authority of someone much younger. No pain showed on his face above the long beard, and his sallow complexion seemed brighter. Behind him and to the left came Ravani in her barbaric trousers and wolf-fur, gems glittering, braid bouncing on her shoulder with each stride. Shimmering gold particles flicked up in spirals to each side of the raja and his sorcerer, like desert dust curling from a falcon’s wings.

  Anuraja came up the dais without stopping, leaving the sorcerer at the foot of the stairs while Sayeh struggled with her crutch to kneel. She thought he would turn to Mrithuri. Instead he paused beside her chair of estate, standing in the spot where Sayeh had watched a perch for Mrithuri’s bearded vulture be disassembled mere minutes before. Anuraja put his hands on his hips and leaned
his head back to admire the whole sweeping height of the Peacock Throne.

  Sayeh had to admit, behind the silence of her own bitten lip, that the cascade of solid gold simulating feathers, and the glimmering gemstones that paved them, were an imposing sight.

  This close to Anuraja, she could still smell the festering of his wound, no matter how much authority he moved with. Another illusion, she wondered? Or some reserve of strength—or liquid courage?

  He turned violently and snatched the mask from Mrithuri’s face. The ribbons binding it snapped taut. He yanked them free, sending jeweled pins scattering, their tiny pings resonating through the cowed hush that filled the room. Tears started in Mrithuri’s eyes. Her hand touched the nape of her wrenched neck; the blood at the lobe of her ear. The other remained at rest on the sword across her knees.

  Anuraja tilted his head, examining Mrithuri. Then he shrugged and gestured at the throne. “I’d put up with worse for that pretty thing. Are you going to give me that sword or not?”

  Shaking, Mrithuri slid from her chair of estate and knelt. She raised the sword on her palms, not following the motion with her eyes. Sayeh watched sidelong from behind her hair. A bowed head did hide the direction of one’s gaze.

  “Accept this sword in token of our surrender, my royal cousin.”

  Anuraja continued to study her, lip curling. Mrithuri stared down at his boots. Sayeh wished she dared reach out and stroke Mrithuri’s disarrayed hair, or her goosefleshed arm. But she could not be seen to give the young rajni comfort.

  “I accept your surrender,” he said, lifting the sword from her palms. “And I am glad to see you have honored its terms. You will not find me an intolerable master, little thing. You need not tremble so. And your blood and my blood will make me emperor, and you the mother of emperors to come.”

  “I feel unwell, my raja,” she whispered, lowering her unburdened hands to press against her stomach.

  “Get up,” he commanded.

  Mrithuri stood. Her head stayed bowed as if she were humbled. Ravani was climbing the dais now. She stopped beside Anuraja.

  “You told me she could give me a healthy heir,” Anuraja said to the sorcerer.

  Ravani poked Mrithuri’s belly with a long forefinger and smirked. “She seems sound enough.”

  “Sayeh,” Anuraja said, “get up and deal with this. Get her presentable for a wedding. We’ll be married before sunrise.”

  Sayeh struggled up. The crutch Ata Akhimah had provided was better than the ones she’d left behind in Anuraja’s camp, and did not slip on the massy lapis of the dais. “My lord,” she said, bowing her head in a show of obedience. “You should know—”

  She turned her face away from those below. He took a step closer to her and leaned his head down toward hers. Hurriedly, into Anuraja’s ear, Sayeh murmured, “The child is on her courses, Your Competence. Can we not delay a day or three?”

  His lips made that little writhe of distaste again. “Can’t be helped, I suppose. Well, wedding tonight, consummation in a day or two. Good timing, anyway; if she’s fertile she’ll catch quick.”

  He hung his new sword at his belt and rubbed his hands together. Then he turned back to his audience and spread his arms.

  “My people,” he said. “My people of the unified lands of Sarathai and Ansh-Sahal, from this point henceforth to be known again as the Lotus Empire! I invite you to a wedding! Tonight, here in this throne room, a little before dawn! Can somebody find me a priest? Does this palace have such a thing as a priest in it?”

  Of course, Sayeh thought. He wouldn’t have one of his own. She remembered, though, what had been said about the one the Tians called Nizhvashiti.

  “My lord,” she murmured. “There is a Godmade in residence. I will cause that sacred one’s meditations to be disturbed for such an august occasion.”

  “Good,” Anuraja said. “A Godmade, eh? Then nobody can claim the union isn’t clerically blessed and all that nonsense.” He turned to speak privily to Sayeh once more. “Let’s see what that dwarfish shit in Chandranath says now, shall we? I’ll show him how you seize power.”

  * * *

  Anuraja left them there, and Mrithuri could not stand on her own. Her knees were too weak; her body betrayed her. Sayeh, crutch and all, had to bend down and take Mrithuri’s cold hand in her own warm, long one and lever her to her feet. Hnarisha, looking strangely shorn with his earrings stripped out, came up the steps a moment later to assist, and between the two of them they got her down the steps and into the antechamber behind the dais. Yavashuri waited there, leaning on a cane. She and Sayeh looked at each other and both laughed.

  It wasn’t the sort of laugh that has much humor in it.

  “Did you see the shine in his eyes?” Mrithuri was horrified to hear how small her voice sounded.

  “Snakebite,” Hnarisha agreed.

  “Oh,” said Sayeh. “Is that what it was? I noticed he seemed much more … vigorous than previously.”

  “Well, I guess we know for sure who Chaeri was working for,” Yavashuri snarled. “I wonder if he’ll have the gall to bring her in here.”

  Mrithuri felt herself flinch, her whole body cringing. Out of kindness, the people surrounding her did not acknowledge it.

  “Come along, my sister,” Sayeh said, stroking her disarrayed hair. “One more little thing, and you can rest.”

  * * *

  Syama and the Dead Man were both waiting for Mrithuri in her apartment, and having the bhaluukutta come and lean against her knees when she had settled herself on the bench by her vanity was only equaled in comfort by the—chaste, in front of company—hug the Dead Man gave her as she came in. She didn’t think they were fooling anyone. She knew she ought to care, and she couldn’t find the caring in her.

  She was observing the proprieties if not the niceties, and she was a conquered rajni of a conquered nation, now.

  It would have to do.

  Ritu came in a moment later, bearing an armload of silks and cosmetics. She set them down and started going through them. “Red, my rajni?”

  Mrithuri looked up from her misery. “Pardon?”

  “Red?” Ritu shook out a drape in an appealing shade, like blood. “Traditional for weddings.”

  Mrithuri thought of the red lotus. She nodded, closing her eyes.

  Sayeh had brought along the poetess Ümmühan as well. Ümmühan joined Ritu and Yavashuri in undressing and painting Mrithuri, while Sayeh supervised. The Dead Man took up a guard’s station beside the window, and Hnarisha made himself useful procuring tea. Mrithuri, wrapped in a thin shift that did nothing to keep her from shivering, sat stolidly through the dressing and twisting of her hair, the painting of her face, the gilding of her feet and fingers. She refused tea; she refused every sweet and savory Hnarisha tried to tempt her with. Only when Yavashuri bullied her did she manage to choke down a few mouthfuls of plain rice.

  Her stomach churned. Her eyes would not focus.

  “I don’t even know where,” Ritu was saying, “to begin to go to cover that shade of green.”

  When the door slid open abruptly, without even a scratch of warning, she jumped in her chair and blurred the line of her kohl, but she was too far divorced from her body and its sensations even to scream. That’s good, she told herself. Sayeh’s plan was likely wishful thinking. Being divorced from her body could only be a benefit to her.

  “Your Competence!” Yavashuri protested as the raja stepped into the door.

  Anuraja laughed, and shouldered the old woman aside. “I’ll not be barred from my wife’s chambers. Besides, who’s this?” He waved at the Dead Man and at Hnarisha. “A couple of cocks among the hens!”

  “My rajni’s secretary,” Yavashuri said, bowing low despite her limp. “And her bodyguard.”

  “And you let him go about with that rag on his face?” Anuraja shook his head. “That won’t continue now that I rule here.”

  Syama did not care for his abrupt manner. She rose from her place against Mrith
uri’s legs with muscular ease, her eyes trained on Anuraja and her hackles rising as relentlessly as the sun. She growled, but not aloud, thank the Mother. So deep inside that Mrithuri did not hear her—just felt the vibration through the contact between them, and in her bones.

  Anuraja still wore her sword at his belt. It was an elaborate thing, studded with fat blue sapphires and carnelians that she had thought would please him. It had belonged to her grandfather, but it had not been her grandfather’s sword: it had been one claimed in battle by the Alchemical Emperor, left in Sarathai-tia’s treasure ever since.

  A sword of surrender now twice over.

  He drew it. The blade slid out whispering; it flashed in the light. She had had it cleaned and oiled. But not sharpened.

  He advanced on Syama, whose lip curled in a snarl. Mrithuri placed a restraining hand on the bhaluukutta, feeling the rumble under her cold fingertips.

  Icy sweat covered her. She shook; her knees were water. She laid the other hand on the edge of her vanity to steady herself. “If you kill my familiar, you kill me, my lord. Then there will be no marrying.”

  “Keep it away from me,” he answered, not taking his eyes off Syama. She, in turn, did not take her eyes off him. “Once we’re wed, your death will be less of a threat … Your Abundance.

  “You will make yourself presentable for the ceremony,” he said. “I suppose your ladies can manage that?”

  “My raja,” she said, and somehow kept her eyes up and her chin lifted until he snorted in disgust, turned, and went, the bared blade still dangling from his hand.

  It seemed long moments before anyone in the room moved, or even breathed. But the sound that broke the silence was a soft click from the windows by which the Dead Man was standing, as he gently lowered the hammer on the pistol she had not seen or heard him cock. It still rested in its holster, but she knew how fast he could get it free.

  She met his eyes over his veil, and knew that he would not have let Anuraja harm her. Or Syama. And that if Anuraja had died in her chambers, there would have been no controlling his men, who occupied the palace and the city.