by S. C. Emmett
Her thoughts had turned to Kai again, rebelling against all propriety. It pained Yala to consider herself possibly merely a treacherous, weak-willed sister in a low novel. How could she even consider marriage, much less to…
…an honorable man? There seemed to be a few of them in Zhaon despite the country’s sneered-at softness. Even the Crown Prince was kind and forthright, and had treated Mahara well.
Which led her, circling like embroidery thread tied in a strong knot, to scarred, mocking Garan Takshin, who bore yet another scar across his back for Yala’s sake; the weight of that strike— a whip against a nobleman’s flesh, distasteful and not to be borne— was a heavy debt accounted against her.
Of course he had done it because the shame of a whipping would reflect upon the Crown Princess, and thus upon his beloved eldest brother. Yala had been prepared to bite through her own tongue as the whip descended, hoping to bleed to death with some measure of honor left.
Yala almost shuddered, quelled the motion just in time. The young women would cluster her with solicitude, and she would have to wait to approach the Third Prince.
The urge to ask his aid was sudden, but not entirely unreasonable. He could, after all, ask questions she could not, if she could secure his more-than-mocking aid. He seemed almost well-disposed toward her, as a miser might prefer a pet bird in a cage to his human kin.
It was easier to receive a kindness from a stranger who could not, after all, harm you.
Yala settled her sleeves, rose, and glided across the sitting room. Hansei Liyue greeted her with quiet but unconcealed relief, and Su Junha hurried to pour the tea, smoky and overpowering to cut the summer drought-dust creeping into every corner and force the body’s humors to cool in reaction. Yala would have chosen something else for tea with Mahara; siao was much stronger than her princess preferred in the early afternoon.
For once, the Third Prince behaved admirably, inquiring with much interest into what Lady Hansei was reading. That turned the conversation into a woodland stream instead of a halting wax-drip from a guttering candle; nothing pleased dreamy Liyue better than speaking of imaginary figures caught in paper and characters. The prince listened to her statements upon Zhe Har’s Lament of the Water-Clock with much patience, and his own comments were brief and to the point but not dismissive, or even surprised that a young lady would be attempting such an intricate verse-work.
Yala was left free to exchange pleasantries and sewing plans with Su Junha. The primrose cotton and silk Lady Junha wore was a reworking from one of the deep ceduan chests in the attic, and Mahara had chosen it herself due to the quality of its cloth and the generosity of its cut, which could be easily altered to fit.
Junha did not smile when first presented with it, well-aired and neatly folded. Instead, her chin had trembled for a moment, and even Gonwa Eulin had studied her own embroidered cuff for a few breaths, allowing her fellow lady-in-waiting time to compose her features.
There had not been much to finish, even with Yala’s needle wandering griefstruck. Mahara and Liyue had already done most of the work.
After tea, the girls settled to put their sewing to rights, Hansei Liyue sneaking longing glances at the corner of a flatbook peering over the edge of her basket. Yala retreated through the partition-blinds to the porch, though air above the dry-garden’s stones rippled with heat. As she’d hoped, Garan Takshin followed, studying the vista with his chin slightly down and the suggestion of a scowl returning to his face like an old friend.
“Well?” he inquired, before she had even reached the railing. “Is it what you feared?”
It was almost what Bai would have asked, except he would have reached for a fan instead of simply crossing his arms upon his chest and directing a glare at some quite innocuous, thorn-spiked succulents.
“It is from a Khir merchant seeking patronage.” A ridiculous urge to offer the letter for inspection made her palms slightly damp. There was no more certain way to make him suspect something amiss, and while she wished for his aid, she did not think it prudent to draw attention to a message that might, after all, simply be one of Dao’s infrequent, subtle pranks, sent before he could have any idea what had transpired. “I worried for nothing.”
“Still. You are in pale cloth.” The scar along his cheek vanished into his hair, a grass-snake seeking escape, and the twist of his lip showed what he thought of such an impertinence from a mere merchant. “You thought it from your father. Do you wish to return home, and must politely decline when Takyeo asks as much?”
His directness was the relief of a tepid bath in this terrible heat. “I cannot imagine how such a journey could be attempted, in the present circumstances,” Yala admitted. Misting sweat, gathering along her neck and in the hollows under her arms and behind her knees, would bring no relaxation. “Which leaves me in a somewhat delicate position.”
“Dangerous is the word, little lure, but have no fear.” His profile was startling; even with ill temper drawing his eyebrows in and turning his mouth down there was an intimation of handsomeness. Shan’s severe dark tunics suited him, but she wondered what he might look like in more princely garb.
Have no fear, he counseled. Easy enough for a prince to say, but there seemed nothing in Zhaon but suffocating sweat and creeping dread. “I have already been sent to a prison cell once, Third Prince.” And, her tone suggested, she had no desire to repeat the experience.
Unless it would somehow uncover who had paid for a princess’s death. Was it cowardice to hope such a move would not be necessary? She was marshaling her forces for a different war than men performed; if she was still at court when the end of her mourning came she could begin to sift gossip and carefully, subtly set Junha and Liyue to gathering more— very delicately, of course, as delicately as if she were performing some foiling of intrigue in Khir’s Great Keep, shielding Mahara from ill-luck and envy.
Takshin’s scowl deepened a fraction, and his fingers tensed upon his upper arms. The greenstone ring, its characters sharp-carved, gleamed wetly. “And were you harmed by such a visit?”
“No.” All in all, for visiting the palace dungeons, she had returned remarkably unscathed. Yala decided to address him much as she might Baiyan, and chose unembroidered truth. “You suffered for it, though.”
Garan Takshin continued studying the garden. It was upon those very stepping-stones she had used her yue in earnest for the first time upon a hot spring night, holding a murderous man at bay.
Zakkar Kai had killed that first assassin. This place had sought to murder both Yala and her princess from the very beginning.
“My princess rides the Great Fields,” she continued. The obstruction had returned to her throat, a hot rock to match polished stones reflecting the sun’s terrible, all-seeing eye. “I would know who sent her thither, Third Prince Garan Takshin. I would know who paid for the deed, too.”
He did not move, not even to eye her sidelong. Was he offended by the mere request? “And what would you do with such knowledge?”
What I must. “I know I have little right to ask, Third Prince. I owe you much for your—”
“No.” Now he moved, a single restless step with his head just barely restrained from tossing, a wary, restive horse longing for the gallop as a nobleman might long for the hunt. “I told you there is no debt, Yala. Do not provoke me.”
She decided that were he truly provoked she might well pray to Heaven for protection, for all the good it would do. Still, he had not denied her outright. “Will you be happy if I ask for your help instead?”
“Exquisitely.” But he turned his head slightly and his mouth drew down upon both sides, his scarred lip twitching once. “Ask away.” When she hesitated, he glanced at her, but not sharply. “Well, what will you have of me?”
“What I have already asked.” It had seemed much simpler when the idea of this conversation entered her head a few moments ago. She had expected him to require some manner of circumlocution, giving her more time to hint and prepare. “
I wish to learn who paid for the deed, and who performed it.” They honored their ancestors in his adoptive Shan as well as here and in Khir; perhaps that consideration would move him. “I must, Third Prince. For her shade.” And my own honor.
“Do you think we have not been looking?” Now he half-turned upon one leather-slippered heel, not watching the garden but facing her, and a girl who had not grown up with Komori Baiyan’s rough affection might have quailed under that dark glare. “Do you think I would let such an event pass unremarked?” Especially, his tone said clearly, when my own brother was the likely target?
The Crown Prince had leaned upon his cane at Mahara’s pyre, his round face set and terrible— and resembling, very much, the portraits of his father Yala had seen far more often than Zhaon’s living Emperor. There was deep strength in Garan Takyeo, for all his kindness.
“I may ask questions or hear news you may not. And you, likewise.” Yala folded her sweating hands inside her sleeves. How did they breathe, here? She longed for a bath; perhaps she would stay in the water until she grew fins, as in one of Murong Cao’s delightful but terrifying little fables. “I would not be kept ignorant of news you come across.”
“Ah.” He nodded as if she had said something profound. His scars were not flushed; he did not seem to notice the oven-breath from the garden. “You drive a hard bargain, little lure.”
“I am no merchant,” she bristled in return, and his smile was unexpectedly soft.
“There she is,” he murmured, and his arms relaxed. He dropped his hands to his sides. “There is my Lady Spyling.”
Were the heat less enervating, she might almost think him attempting to fret her, another echo of Bai. She almost envied Takshin’s sisters; a damoi was a poking, prodding burden but also intercession and a measure of protection for any noble girl. “I am no spy, Third Prince.”
“Do you trust me?” Now Takshin regarded her intently, and his tone lacked all levity or mocking. He sounded younger, without the weary cynic’s drawl and faint echo of Shan’s dialect.
Did she? The crack of a whip, a bloody furrow sliced through skin, and her yue wrapped solicitously in silk, laid in her palms again. Yala’s throat had dried like the powdery sands of the Third Rainless Hell in some of Hanjei the Monk’s more fevered visions, but she was able to produce a single syllable. “Yes.”
He nodded gravely, and did he look like this more often, fewer of the court ladies might consider him terrifying. He might, in fact, find himself outright pursued. “How far?”
“As far as you will let me, Takshin.” Did he mean he might solicit her for intrigue in order to uncover the culprit? A woman must not meddle with high politics in Khir; it was not seemly. Here, though, they spoke freely of such things while sewing and sipping tea, and Yala was beginning to think it was the only way to achieve any progress. “You hate to be complimented; I should think you despise trust as well.”
“When it is a trap, yes.” He leaned forward slightly without shifting his feet, a swordsman’s readiness, and examined her face as if deciphering cramped characters on shoddy paper in an ill-lit corner. No doubt an onlooker would think them merely discussing some household matter, or perhaps the Crown Prince’s health. “In Shan, a wolf must be wary. But he must also care for his own.”
If it was an allusion, she had not read its source, but the meaning was clear. He meant to find those who had attacked the brother he, despite all his prickliness, cared deeply for, and in that, his aim and Yala’s were two arrows for the same target. “You sound almost as if you miss it.”
“Someday I’ll take you, if you like.” Another slight toss of his head, shaking aside the jest and returning to the matter at hand. “They will pay, Yala. I will bring you their heads to make the ball for that horse-racing game of yours.”
Now she was beginning to doubt her senses; had he been studying the history of kaibok?
He did not give her time to wonder. “And I shall tell you all I learn along the hunt, if it will make you content.” He offered his arm, a carelessly polite gesture that could be retracted if she refused. “Come. You are wilting.”
She did not need his aid to retrace their few steps, but she laid her fingers in the crook of his elbow. His heat was of a different order than the day’s relentless steaming. Would the rain break the back of the dry drought-snake, or simply turn it into a cloudveil bath? “Do you promise?”
“Wolves don’t promise.” Garan Taksin halted, gazing down at her. “They simply bite.”
“You are a prince, Garan Takshin.” Yala took care to keep her pace slow, decorous. Was he warning her, or seeking to reassure in that sharp, oblique way of his? Either was likely, and once more, missing her brother was a sharp ache in her heart. “Not a wolf.”
“Most scholarly lady, you are innocent indeed if you think one is very different from the other. And my answer is yes. Since you ask it of me, I promise I will bring you their heads.”
That is not what I asked. “And tell me whatever you learn.” It was, she discovered, exactly like wheedling a favor from Baiyan, only this was not a light mischief or a book with certain strange illustrations filched from her father’s library.
No, this was a different game. He was a mercurial ally indeed, and Zakkar Kai a steady one— but Kai would be gone soon, with Zhaon’s Northern Army. If war came again, the general would do his duty, and many a Khir would die.
It was a sobering thought, especially to a lone, trapped, foreign woman.
“No merchant, and yet you press me for a bargain?” Takshin’s levity, edged afresh, was indistinguishable from a warning. “I said I would, Yala. That is enough.”
It was not, but Yala’s stomach settled and trembling certainty bloomed all through her, ink wrung from a brush in clear water. “I shall hold you to it,” she murmured, and Garan Takshin, surprising everyone in the sitting room— including Yala herself— threw back his head and laughed without any bitterness.
Su Junha frankly stared, but Hansei Liyue, her thumb caught holding her place in a bound-book, beamed like a scroll illustration, softly, myopically, upon hearing that joy.
A CLEAR POND
A few restless, splattering drops fell upon thirst-groaning earth as Mrong Banh hurried along a long colonnaded walk, his scholar’s robe brushed clean and the ink upon his fingers likewise scrubbed but retaining its vigor. His topknot was redone, pulled high and tight, and he winced as he raised a hand, perhaps intending to loosen it and visibly realizing mid-motion such an operation would make him late. He dropped his free hand, hugging the scrollcase to his chest like a noble boy hurrying to a tutor’s studio, and a flash of saffron across a garden merely earned a distracted glance.
The orange-yellow was Second Princess Gamnae’s dress, and she was accompanied by lithe, usually smiling Sixth Prince Jin, their heads close together as they conferred. It was almost enough to make Banh feel young again, seeing children he had welcomed into the world and done his best to instruct.
He had been so busy there was no prospect of children of his own unless he married with haste. A wife would disrupt his well-ordered existence; an astrologer, humble or exalted, was married to the chariots fording the riverbanks of the night sky, dancing to express the will of Heaven.
Garan Tamuron’s descendants would perhaps be the only ones to offer at his tomb, and sometimes Mrong Banh thought hard upon that prospect. The hours of darkness lent themselves to much consideration of one’s previous life, he found, and though others might laugh at his dishevelment and the wildness of the machines he created from thin sticks and cunningly twisted or treated rai- or pressed-paper, theoretical constructs satisfying in their wild fancy and sober attention to detail, he was not ill-content.
After all, he had been born a peasant, sold to a tavern-master during a lean apprenticeship year, and been swept up in a warlord’s reunification of the Land of Five Winds. His was a lucky lot, though he sometimes, as any man so blessed, lost sight of as much.
Why, even the c
ourt eunuchs in their sober dark colors and high clicking jatajata sandals separated to allow him ingress to the Kaeje’s great chambers of state, passing through the vermilion-pillared Great Hall where many were at low tables, administering stamps and seals to well-brushed scrolls meant to be sent to other ministries. The Emperor commands, the Emperor disposes, the Emperor requests. The machinery of rule, varied and intricate, was of a different order than an army’s direct, simple rules.
The apartments of Zhaon’s ruler, spare but comfortable, folded around Mrong Banh like a well-worn robe. Courtiers both noble and ministerial bustled and more eunuchs hurried, all with varying airs of distraction or nose-high disdain, but none challenged him or gave him more than a passing, indulgent glance. He was part of the very machinery, and sometimes Banh thought of a great mill-wheel, splashing and spinning, and himself a simple slat meant to catch the current and pass its message of power to the miller deciding what to grind.
Garan Tamuron was no longer the tall warlord, firm in the saddle with laughing dark eyes. Now he was a wizened man with a great prow of a nose and thinning hair, held fast in a bed’s soft embrace like an ox trapped in a mudhole, and his gaze was a caged tiger’s— dark, hot, and promising vengeance.
That gaze was very much like his third son’s, or his fourth’s. Or even Zakkar Kai’s direct, weighing look, in fact. Banh performed his bow, clutching his scrollcase, and took stock of the royal temper.
It appeared much the same as ever. Some said a man changed when power arrived at his doorstep, but Banh was of the opinion that particular millstone merely polished away courtesies and uncovered the man beneath. None were so polite as the weak, and none so merciful as the truly strong.
“Ah.” The Emperor attempted a smile. His teeth were still as fine as ever; the malady had not attempted to take that fortress yet. “There he is, my tavern companion. Come, Banh. Draw up a chair, and let us hear what the heavens hold.”
“This is a strange tavern, my lord.” Much relieved by the heartiness of the greeting, Banh did as he was ordered. “No sohju jug, and not a dish of qur sauce to be found.”