“And you’ve hardly seen him since?”
“Not when it would have been useful.” Himadra stroked a thumb along the cool metal of the goblet, over the inset tumbled agate stones.
“Pardon me, Lord Himadra.”
The old woman had been so silent it took him a moment to realize that it was she who had spoken.
When he turned to her, she continued, “I have a question that you may find impertinent. As one sufferer to another—are you often in a great deal of pain?”
“A sufficiency,” he admitted. “Enough to have a little envy of our metal friend here.”
“Well, get you a Wizard,” the Gage said. “And give up your freedom for a while. And then find some reason to persist, after they die. I can’t imagine that enduring the pain of creation would be too much of a deterrent for one such as yourself.”
“Pain is an old companion,” Himadra admitted.
“So I imagined,” the old woman answered.
The Gage said, “It is hard for a prince to give up his arrogance and authority.”
“And obligations,” Himadra said.
“What are you obligated to?”
“My people need me.”
“I am sure it seems so.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you think the common folk much notice one prince replacing another? They are taxed and levied just the same.”
Himadra snorted. “More wine? They would notice Anuraja.”
The Gage held out his goblet. He cupped the metal as if he held the most fragile bubble of glass.
“You pour,” Himadra said.
The scent of wine rose.
“They might, at that,” the Gage admitted, folding his fingers around the goblet’s base. “So you do not think too highly of your allies, I take it? Anuraja and Ravana?”
It was eerie, Himadra thought, how silently this mass of metal could move. It was eerie as well how the wine just … disappeared from his goblet.
“Ravana promised me a healthy heir.” Himadra shook his head. “I have one now, though not of my body. I have three, if I can get my brothers away from Sarathai-lae.”
“And you don’t want Mrithuri? Everyone else seems to.”
“I doubt Mrithuri wants me,” Himadra said, with a self-deprecating gesture.
“Men don’t often care what a woman wants.”
“Even were I of a mind to, how could I force her?” Himadra asked the Gage, with a laugh. “She could crack my bones with her hands. Even if I could get a healthy child on her, which”—he gestured to his frustrating body again—“I can’t.”
“Not even with sorcery?” the old woman asked.
It occurred to Himadra that he was answering these two rather freely.
“It’s still not my joy in life to force myself on the unwilling. I might be a kidnapper. But I’m no Anuraja.”
“You know,” said the old woman, “pain is a terrible thing. But enough of it can serve as armor against certain kinds of persuasion. Possibly your sorcerer has decided he can get more of what he wants elsewhere, and left you to your own devices. Or perhaps he will be back. In which case I would guard myself strongly against his advice.”
“More of what he wants?” Himadra asked. His goblet was empty. Wine eased his pain a little but the wine carafe was too heavy for his wrists. He gestured to the Gage to pour again. This was getting interesting.
The old woman made a sniffing sound. “There are those beasts that feed on war.”
“Huh,” Himadra answered. “I always thought that saying was a metaphor.”
* * *
The Dead Man stood beside the window of Mrithuri’s bedchamber, arms folded, propped against the wall. His sheathed sword was in his hand.
The rajni—the Dowager Empress—lay upon her mattress, composed in a posture no one in natural sleep would assume. Her arms lay beside her. Her neck was straight. Her eyelids closed.
She might have been dead, except the heat that rolled off her was palpable from a handspan away. He went to her every so often and held his hand above her face to feel the warmth, leaned close to listen to the rasp of her breathing. Hnarisha and Tsering-la flitted in, and out. Golbahar, freed from her durance in the cloisters, came too. They dripped water between the Dowager Empress’s closed lips. They bathed her with cool cloths. She had been stripped of her cosmetics, her bulky jewels. He looked down now into the face of a starved and fevered child: unweathered, unaged.
Syama lay beside the bed, relaxed but unsleeping.
Riders had been sent to return the exiles, though Hnarisha had told them they didn’t necessarily have to bring back Mi Ren.
Sayeh seemed somehow to have brought the invading army to heel, and Ümmühan was spreading her truthful lies among them already. Pretty soon nobody would be able to remember what had really happened, because the poetry would have gotten in the way.
The Dead Man stood over his secret wife, and he waited.
If you make a home, it will hurt you.
He must be home, then. Because the feeling under his breastbone was as if he had been gutted, then sewn up again empty except for a single great stone.
He only knew it wouldn’t kill him because he had lived through this once before.
He was certain of what he was certain of, however. There was only one way into this room. He had two pistols. And the new sword had fitted itself to his hand.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to my agent and her assistant, Jenn Jackson and Michael Curry, and to my editor, Beth Meacham, without whom this book would not exist. Thank you as well to my copyeditor, Deanna Hoak, and to the entire production team at Tor Books, from production managers to proofreaders to designers and artists and everybody else involved, and to the publicity team that gets the word out. I’m sorry this manuscript was so much later than intended. I owe you all one.
Thank you to Nazia Khatun, Shveta Thakrar, Ritu Chaudry, and Asha Srinivasan Shipman, who helped provide cultural context for the world.
Thank you to my friends and colleagues of the DROWWZOO, who keep me sane through the writing process.
Additionally, thank you to my Patreon patrons, especially those contributing at a Help Feed The Dog level: Alexis Elder, Anne Lyle, Asha Hartland-Asbury, Barb Kanyak, BC Brugger, Brigid Cain-O’Connor, Christopher John Santucci, Curtis Frye, Diane Wightman, dirtytanuki, Edmund Schweppe, Fred, Glori Medina, Heather H., Heather K., Helen Housand, Jack Vickery, Jean Hontz, Jeffery Reynolds, Jodi Davis, John Appel, Kevin J. Maroney, Kim Gilligan, Krystina Colton, Lisa E. Baker, M Reppy, Martin Kotowych, Max Kaehn, Michael Gates, Nancy Enge, Nancy J. Olds Magnotta, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Persephone, Phil Margolies, the Riedesel Family, Sarah Hiat, Sara Joiner, Sharis Ingram, Stella Evans, Thomas Brincefield, Tiff, Graeme Wiliams, Clare Gmur, Brad Roberts, S.P., Hisham El-Far, Noah Richards, Cathy B. Lannom, Brooks Moses, Kelly Brennan, Emily Gladstone Cole, Jason Teakle, Dave Pooser, D. Franklin, Besha Grey, Jenna Kass, Jack Gulick, and Mur Lafferty.
Thank you to my family, who put up with me.
And thank you to Scott, who makes it worthwhile.
Any infelicities are (of course) my own.
Massachusetts, September 2018
TOR BOOKS BY ELIZABETH BEAR
A Companion to Wolves (with Sarah Monette)
The Tempering of Men (with Sarah Monette)
An Apprentice to Elves (with Sarah Monette)
All the Windwracked Stars
By the Mountain Bound
The Sea Thy Mistress
Range of Ghosts
Shattered Pillars
Steles of the Sky
Karen Memory
The Stone in the Skull
The Red-Stained Wings
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ELIZABETH BEAR was the recipient of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2005. She has won two Hugo Awards for her short fiction. Bear lives in South Hadley, Massachusetts.
Visit her online at www.elizabethbear.com, or sign up f
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Map
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Acknowledgments
Tor Books by Elizabeth Bear
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE RED-STAINED WINGS
Copyright © 2019 by Elizabeth Bear
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Richard Anderson
Map by Rhys Davies
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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ISBN 978-0-7653-8015-9 (hardcover)
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eISBN 9781466872080
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First Edition: May 2019
The Red-Stained Wings--The Lotus Kingdoms, Book Two Page 42