"When I was very young, I'd have thought so. I like to think I've learned better since." Lussadh turns around and draws her toward the bed. On each other they lean, arm to arm. "Shall we trade stories of our youth? Though I haven't been young for a long time, whereas for you such stories are not too distant."
"From what your body tells, I would never know. You're so hale and so—mighty." Nuawa takes off her shoes and draws her legs up into the nest of heavy pelts. Lussadh always piles those up for her sleep, a preference for animal hide with iron weight over soft fabric. "I feel like an unruly adolescent, secretly stealing away to a sweetheart's bed. Not that I ever got to do such a thing."
"Can it be that you weren't courted at that age?"
How easy it is to tell true stories and yet never the truth. "My aunt said the countryside children were beneath me in intellect and education; I believed her. I'd killed my first wolf long before I'd gotten my first kiss. Actual bedding—I was twenty-seven. I had just won my first major match, and one of the spectators was this woman with eyes I liked."
"A champion may have her pick. Fitting." Lussadh has tied her robe shut, though it still leaves much of her chest bare, the anthurium now glinting on her breast like a shuttered sun. "My first lover was from Shuriam. We were of an age, seventeen, and she'd tell me of her country: a land of bone fastnesses and ivory sentinels. As it happens, she was also a saboteur and a spy. My grandaunt had me execute her and Shuriam invaded. We annexed it three years after. This was to teach me a lesson in strength, in power and in who wields it. And that those weakened by sentiment do not deserve to."
Nuawa teases stray hair out of the pendant's chain. "Is that why you bargained with the queen?" Already Nuawa is thinking of how to edit her own past to echo the general's, to embellish or lessen to engineer common ground. And perhaps that is what all lovers do, embroidering and snipping their individual threads until they march in unison, in rank and file as infantry does.
"No. Or rather not the whole of it." Lussadh winces as she reaches for her bedside table—the wound troubling her still, despite her assertion that she is now at ease—and brings a platter over. Baked gold drops, marzipan fruits, coconut crisps. "The whole of it was, where did I stand in the king's regard? How much choice did I have to not serve my birthright? I desired option. Of course, I do govern Kemiraj now, and so Ihsayn had her way, in the end."
She looks at the platter between them, at the glitter of sugar and yolk, at the luster of glazed marzipan. Sirapirat desserts. There, then, a lover's thoughtfulness, to have this delivered from some Sirapirat confectioner. It might even have come on the same train that carried her brother's casket. Lussadh's tenderness, her brother's carcass. The question is not which weighs more, but what scale to use. "What would you have chosen, left to your own devices?"
The general laughs, the sound like new-smelted platinum, precious and coruscant. "I have never thought about it deeply. I would say a glassblower; how marvelous it would be to work with a substance so fascinating, but I don't have the finesse. A florist then. To have a glasshouse larger than this room and fill it with anthuriums, bromeliads, snapdragons. Then a basin of lotuses and cattails, and water irises."
"When I can afford one—" She does not think of Indrahi's persimmons. "I'll buy you just such a glasshouse, and we'll see if you can make things grow."
"And you'll have to watch me fumble through sacks of fertilizers and watering cans, and I'll press upon you stunted water irises that didn't grow quite right."
"Every last one I will treasure all the same and press dry between books to preserve." Nuawa fits herself against the curve of the general's arm, the line of the general's flank, and closes her eyes. How easy, after all. The correct scale all along is forgetting.
When Lussadh has fallen asleep, Nuawa gently extricates herself and for a time watches the general rest. Then she turns aside. She has been tasked with a hunt, and there's no time to waste.
Eleven
Lussadh gives herself one more evening to recuperate before she puts herself to statecraft. Despite four decades of practice, it remains something she has to prepare for, the way one works up to a lengthy run or a climb up sheer, high cliffs. The details, the moving parts, the hinges on which decisions turn. The inescapable notion that she is merely assuming King Ihsayn's role, for all that she promised Kemiraj a reign more just, a reign more equitable. Ideals wither before the ravages of reality.
She goes through the minor matters first, the ones Ulamat has filtered for her. A note that the monk's body has been sent to the Seven Spires for the bhikkuni Kabilsingh to tend. Next, a schedule for removing the barricades and returning the city to civil law, now that the Heron has been disposed of. She puts her signature on a stack of documents, then a stack of letters. Her pen is running out of the chrome ink that makes forging her sigil difficult. Governance is ultimately mundane, whatever load of titles one carries about like the train of an impractical dress.
"Veshma," she says without looking up. "Thank you for coming. I can always count on your punctuality."
The minister quietly sits. Lussadh half-expects her to draw a gun, bare a knife. But Veshma is the same Veshma as ever, prim and a complete stranger to force of arms. But the look in her eyes is familiar, the same one in Sareha's before the old woman unsheathed her machete. This look is beyond bargaining or intimidating: like Sareha, Veshma has made her choices and is at peace. She can no more be disturbed or reasoned into guilt than a sarcophagus can.
Lussadh spins the pen across her fingers, a whirl of red wood and metal cap. "I never used to think of politics as limited by stationery supplies. Yet here I am, unable to sign the next thing because I'm running low on an ink. We're thwarted by such trivialities. What do you think?"
"I have no opinion, my lord."
"Do you," she says, conversational, "miss King Ihsayn? Sun-Bearer, Ghazal of Conquest, the final king of Kemiraj. She really did have striking titles."
Veshma turns her gaze to one of the masks. A plain one, made of white rice paper layered over a rattan frame, with small perked nose and mouth. "No, my lord. The dead are not for missing. They have other purposes entirely."
"Now you sound like a fakir." She takes the mask from its hook on the wall and offers it to Veshma, who recoils as though it could transmute into a bouquet of thorns, a goblet of poison. "No? Fair enough. These are eccentric items to collect. On to the matter at hand. I think you were as surprised at what happened at the feast as I was. Fortunately, I am blessed with access to expertise on this specific subject. After I learned how such alchemical violence came to be, I thought and thought, how strange—a shard of the queen's mirror cannot be slipped into food like a toxic seed, a pinch of venomous petals. It's a very intentional act and, I suspect, quite painful. To have a piece of glass, not small, inserted into you. Sedated or not, it would leave a mark."
The minister does not avert her gaze. Her composure is comprehensive.
Lussadh returns the mask to its place; it rustles in her hand, a fragile moth-noise. "The mirror pieces don't take in all soil." So the queen said. "It can reject the flesh in which it's been planted, to disastrous result. As you yourself have seen. I don't know what the Heron said the queen's glass would do for you, grant you the powers he wielded perhaps? Mostly it let him dictate the hour of your death, provide a conduit through which he could spy on me when he couldn't pierce the palace's wards. Small wonder he knew my comings and goings so well. I assume he had you poison Lieutenant Nuawa." To remove a glass-bearer.
"He never did say why he wanted her gone. I suppose I'll be dying soon."
"Not so abruptly as Juhye did." Had the shard taken root and marked Veshma as a viable glass-bearer, this conversation would have gone in quite another direction. "You're taking it well. However one is born—of the enamel or elsewise—the fire of Kemiraj flows through all of us. It smelts our spirit harder than any steel. We have our pride. You're Kemiraj to the end, and I respect that."
"Had you ruled t
his country in your own right," Veshma says abruptly, "it would have been different. We thought that you would sit the throne—formally, informally, what did it matter—and govern this land we've given ourselves to. Instead we got an official content to work on the Winter Queen's behalf, remaining here but rarely, running Her Majesty's errands abroad and conquering in her name. Sareha had reasons of her own, but ours arose because we believed in you. You the symbol, you the person. The pride of our prince."
She brings order to her desk. She holds up a stack of papers, taps the edge against the table until the entire stack is as perfectly aligned as a marble slab. She gathers up her pens and pencils and puts them in their holder. Once the disarray is gone, what is left behind is the emptiness of a new-made map, borders not yet drawn, territories not yet inked. "I promised justice. I promised liberty from my grandaunt's hand. Both of these I have delivered. What you and Juhye and the rest wanted is not what I sought; it never was. As long as I breathe, I'll guide Kemiraj, but I will not be shackled to a throne or ruled by a crown."
"Then," the minister says, "the Kemiraj we fought for is dead."
"The country continues. With luck, what we've established will persist beyond our lifetime." Indeed, Her Majesty, being immortal and inclined to let Kemiraj run as Lussadh wishes, guarantees the fact. Winter is bulwark against change, against corruption of Lussadh's legacy. "Kemiraj is Kemiraj. I've secured this to the best of my ability, Veshma."
Veshma stands and collects stray papers that, despite Lussadh's efforts to keep tidy, have fallen from her desk. She is meticulous. "I remember when you were a child," she says as she works, "how solemn you were and how you made it look effortless to meet King Ihsayn's standards. To anyone with a working eye it was obvious who'd rise to be heir. And some of us could see, too, that becoming Ihsayn's ideal caused you pain. You were a tender child."
"On the contrary I was an ambitious one, a hungry one." Yoked to the need to be the last one standing more than anything.
The minister straightens and presents to her a daguerreotype, framed, that's fallen to the floor and lain buried beneath office detritus. It is old, an outmoded thing from before images could be recorded in color. It shows a group of children standing uneasily together in two files. Some tall, some short, all with the al-Kattan look. "You don't need to forget everything, my lord. And now I ask for a boon. Let us—Juhye, myself, the others—enter history as we were, as the ones who've been there with you from the beginning. You owe us at least that."
"I do." Lussadh retrieves from one of her drawers a small vial. "I do owe you that."
Veshma gazes deep into the vial, at the sap-thick poison, a formula perfected for painless death. Meant exclusively for al-Kattan use: there were a multitude of reasons a member of the family might require a fast end. Failing the king, trespassing against the strictures placed on all who bear the name, bringing shame to the throne. "Might I have something to wash this down with?" Veshma asks. "I hear it's saccharine. I've never liked sweet things."
Wordlessly Lussadh opens her liquor cabinet and fetches her bitterest vodka. She pours a cup three-quarters full, adds two drops of the al-Kattan toxin, and thinks back to when she contemplated swallowing it herself. Straight from the vial, undiluted, a clog of sugar thickening in her throat until she could no longer breathe. It was not during moments of stress or fear; rather she considered this in times of idleness, when she was entirely rational and calm. More than anything, living like that under Ihsayn convinced her to take that irrevocable step, sent her to the Winter Queen.
"Here," she says and slides the cup toward Veshma. "I'll remember you fondly, and any will you've drawn up I shall honor. Your kin will not be wanting. Rest well."
The minister drinks without flinching and drains the cup of every drop.
In hardly any time at all, Veshma slumps in the seat, eyes shut and limbs slack. Lussadh gazes into the distance—her window affords her a stunning view, this view of the city that dwells within her heart and occupies her dreams. The jeweled architecture, the soft mist that rises at dawn, the bridges that clasp like lovers' hands.
Is it weakness, she thinks, to want company now; to not have to stand here alone and remember where she misstepped? To confront her faults in all their sordid hierarchy, examining each by each like a piece of faulty clockwork.
There is the queen, all-giving, all-permissive. Then there is Nuawa, who is neither of those things.
Back in her sickroom, the palace chiurgeon is ready to clean her wound and change her dressings. They ignore as best they can that the Winter Queen stands in a corner, vigilant, a scrim of frost like opals radiating from her bare heels. The chiurgeon remarks that Lussadh is healing fantastically and that she'll be good as new in no time; she thanks the chiurgeon and sends them on their way.
"The chiurgeon's hands were shaking." The queen sweeps her foot over the buildup of rime, a dainty gesture, and makes it disappear. "Humans scare too easily."
"Their hands were steady enough during the operation and I'm in fine trim. Mostly thanks to you, but chiurgeons have their uses." Lussadh pulls the queen to her, stroking down one long, glorious leg and nuzzling a slim hip with her mouth. "Have you seen Nuawa about?"
"She's elsewhere. Your lovely lieutenant asked me for a precious prize, and I mean to make her earn it."
"What might that have been, greatest of queens? Nuawa's usually modest in her wishes." A promotion in rank or an estate seems unlike the lieutenant to request. Power in Sirapirat, plausibly.
"It is a closer, more personal thing. Very ... avaricious. She's full of hidden desires."
Something in the words, something about the way this is said, stops Lussadh short. "What duty has she been set to?"
Her queen does not often hesitate. There is half a beat before she says, "Nuawa is out hunting the Heron. What is left of him."
Lussadh looks up into those deep, ocean-trench eyes. "Your Majesty, you've never been false with me. Is the Heron still dangerous? Is he capable of harming her?"
"Your lieutenant is dangerous in her own right. She is currently alive."
"Where has she gone?"
The queen does not blink. "I could forbid you to seek her out."
"My queen," she says softly, "when I entered your service, we made a covenant. King Ihsayn made me kill my lovers to affirm my loyalty to the throne. You promised that you would never test me that way."
"Yes." The queen takes one step away, not far, but it is a withdrawing. She winds together her perfect fingers, each tipped in nails that are slightly blue, as though they have been lacquered. But it's merely her natural color, part of the luminescence that flows under her skin. "In my making, there shouldn't even have been a component capable of this. You're my weakness, Lussadh. The one person to whom I can deny nothing."
"Please."
"The Heron has gone to lick his wounds in that old crematorium. You remember it well."
The place where she first properly met the queen. Lussadh passes her hand over her wound-dressing to make sure it is secure and starts putting on warm clothes. She locates her weapons—the gun with its conventional bullets, ones that stand a chance of scratching the Heron—and straps them on. "I will be back swiftly, Your Majesty."
"See that you do." The queen has turned away. Ice crackles and hisses as it rapidly wraps the windowsill, branching into fractal wings—crane and crow, hawk and hummingbird. "I shall not forgive your failure to return in perfect condition."
* * *
The military carriage takes Nuawa to a point half a day's walk from the crematorium. Any closer and she might alert the Heron too soon. She has eaten before she came, though the food—fine as it was, cooked by the best chef in the palace—left no lasting taste. She has brought dried fruits and meats, just in case.
What was once desert spills out around her, gray and occasionally patched with sickly moss. She hears from Guryin that this land was much more dangerous once, the dunes inhabited by predatory wind-lynxes with a tas
te for human flesh. They died out, unsuited to the new climate, the new order. Nuawa has thought that the presence of cold should have rejuvenated the sand, shifting barren tracts to fertile, making meadows of sand-bitten crags. Perhaps this is possible on the furthest borders, but for most of Kemiraj's territory there must be a fundamental incompatibility, a land that's known emptiness for so long nothing can grow upon it.
In the distance, the crematorium looms and she is surprised to find familiar features: naga scales, finials, a spire that once vented smoke. Nobody in Kemiraj ever burned their dead—too wasteful—and instead gave corpses to carrion eaters. There must have been Sirapirat presence here, once.
When she reaches them, she finds the walls wrecked, reduced to stubby outcrops like pulverized teeth. The spire is shorter than Kemiraj minarets, dressed in stone the color of old skulls and trimmed with faded curlicues.
She walks steadily through the snow, which outside civilization is allowed to accrue, piling up and up: it is as high as her knees, though soft and loose, like wading through sawdust. Easy now to see what her mothers did, that snow erases and turns what it touches into a copy of itself. Her breath curls out. It has been so long since she has been outside a city, longer still since she has had only herself for company. By nature, she is solitary, and she has forgotten that in the push-pull of Sirapirat, the fumes of the tournament, and then the general. The general most of all, who has made her misplace herself.
Nuawa sets her face against the low, susurrating wind. She half-expects to hear animal cries, but there are only the currents of the air and the flattened, empty sky. Still this is closer to the landscape of her adolescence than she has ever been in for decades, the countryside where she stalked the trails of bears and wolves. Bears more than wolves, those being unsocial and easier to bring down, not running in packs. She remembers the first time she tracked one to its den and shot it in the head, the wet heat of blood steaming on stone. Already the iteration of her that wept over Lussadh seems apart and distant, not really her at all. It is the Nuawa from before, young and running like she is born to the tundra, that is the true essence.
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