The Poison Prince

by S. C. Emmett

  “Nothing unless it is uncertain, and the Crown Prince’s marriage is upon steady footing.” Suron did not bother to add a wish for his lord’s own to follow suit, knowing it would be an unwelcome jest indeed. “The Khir girl is a beauty, and seems docile.”

  “Maybe I should have asked for her instead.” Kiron shook his head, wishing once more that Takshin had seen fit to return, or better, not to leave at all. Some were no doubt glad that the Zhaon prince had not returned to his battle-brother’s side; Shin was singularly unmoved by petty considerations and thus, a dangerous influence upon a just-crowned king. “Go, and I shall meet her in good time, then.”

  The half of the wolf-pack who had not brought the princess from Zhaon replaced their gloves and helms, wheeled their horses about, and fell into a quick jogtrot down the hill to take their brothers’ places, helm-plumes floating with the motion. Summer promised to be long this year, enough time for ripening. Even this far north, the noblemen moved in formation, outriders to alert the main body should bandits appear and the rest staggered for greater flexibility of engagement.

  “The nomhya envoy will wish to give his congratulations,” Lord Suron murmured, sensing the king’s thoughts had turned in that direction. Those who had brought the bride home were now relieved of the responsibility, and Kiron would have the benefit of whatever news they had been able to gather, diplomatic or otherwise. “I take it he is still in the capital.”

  Tabrak was the matter upon everyone’s lips now. The stinking, dough-skinned barbarian menace from the west— bandits writ large, but without any of a bandit’s rough charm— was assuming larger and larger proportions in fever-dreams of peril his robed ministers spent their hours sharing aloud, and Kiron did not think those dreams overwrought for once.

  His mother had often spoken of the Pale Horde and its practices with great savor.

  They have the right idea, my love. When they come, not even a blade of grass is left standing. She only spoke thus when in a very good mood, and usually with her fingers in child-Kiron’s hair, pulled tight while he froze and tried not to grimace. Attracting her notice was just as dangerous as enduring her neglect.

  He set the memory aside, an interior motion performed so constantly nowadays it had become reflexive. The Tabrak envoy kept pressing for a reply, as if he thought Kiron too stupid to know any alliance with their Horde was provisional at best. “Indeed he is, waiting for the wedding celebration. We will have to give an answer.” The king of Shan attended to his own gauntlets, slowly. “And it will not be one they like to hear.”

  “I take it you have kept him occupied.” Suron paused, and even though he had been absent, very little would escape the grasp of his head-meat. And, though cautious, the strength of his liver was unquestioned. “Is it wise to immediately deny them?”

  I have had my fill of waiting. “It has been anything but immediate, Yonjak has been stewing the pale creature in the fleshpots nightly.” The queen’s demise had loosened more than one girdle, and the brothels had barely waited for the pyre to grow cold before reopening, ostensibly to celebrate their new ruler. That bothered him little; the noises made by the Pale Horde’s envoy disturbed him far more. What manner of king would he be if he sent earth and water to the Tabrak, hoping they would skirt his land to fall upon his neighbors? And yet a small gesture now might give Shan time to prepare for the inevitable blow, for sometimes even submission did not stop the Horde from riding through when it suited them. “And whatever wisdom there is in refusal is greater than that of accepting. Come, I would ride before I see the creature which needs taming.” The word— expressing a dangerous or well-bred animal known to have a temper— delighted him afresh, especially since Takshin would have caught the joke the first time it was produced. His battle-brother had a sharp, if well-hidden, sense of humor, much akin to Kiron’s own.

  Fortunately, Suron saw the humor now, and laughed. It had been a long while since Kiron heard that particular sound, and he relished it as the charger turned with alacrity, just as eager for a romp as his rider.

  It was good to celebrate where you could.

  WORLD, ORDERED

  Hot darkness full of insect-singing enclosed the palace complex, a night upon the edge of summer’s deep dry well. The crimson-tiled roofs, sharply pitched in most places, creaked and muttered as day-heat leached into air still just as scorching despite dusk’s advent, and there was no sleep to be had for one bred and born in the northern mountains.

  There was also nobody to witness her, so Yala, fretful and sweating, loosened the laces of her sleeping-shift. Anh was deeply asleep, sprawled upon a mat before her lady’s bedroom door, and had not even moved when Yala stepped over her, a slow careful movement akin to sliding past a snoring maiden-auntie’s guard in the halls of Hai Komori, silent as a tiny bronzefish in a garden cistern. Her bare feet spread, toes gripping slick wooden flooring, she edged through the Jonwa’s spare, ink-dark halls, avoiding the guarded passages.

  It was not so difficult, when one was accustomed to patience.

  A dusty, neglected staircase rose into a little-used slice of the attic, the partition at its foot closed without a click. Slow, careful movement, the wood giving no betraying creak or moan as she moved with infinite care— just as much practice as the stretching before every yue session and the moments of silence after, heart thundering and ribs heaving as a cold blade rested against the frantic pulse high in her throat.

  She moved silently between lumps of shrouded furniture, loosening her laces even further. The thought of stripping material free and practicing naked as in a bath-house was wonderful, liberating, and impossible.

  Still, she was tempted.

  There was a wide rectangle solicitously swept clear of dust; Yala had attended to that duty herself many weeks ago and regularly since, so her princess would not put her face in the grit of ages during stretching.

  We must find you a husband, too, Yala. Light and laughing.

  What would Mahara think of this? Would she call Yala honorless, or foolish, for even granting the general some hope? She had liked Zakkar Kai well enough, considering; he had proven a good friend to both princess and lady-in-waiting. It was Kai whom Mahara had thanked for Yala’s safe return after the matter in the Great Market, and very prettily too.

  Thank you for returning my Yala to me.

  And Kai, bowing, his reply formulaic but uttered with such genuine warmth. It is my duty, Crown Princess.

  Tonight Yala did not wish to stretch, but she did anyway. The split tree, the jewelwing’s hips, the inclined plank, flowing upright and beginning the standing poses, small teeth nipping and snarling as they hid in her muscles. One courted injury without proper stretching, but Yala drew the yue from its sheath after only perfunctory bending and exhales.

  A slim greenmetal blade, its unwrapped hilt merely a longer cross-hatched tang, the yue clove air with a silken whisper as she began the warming exercises. Even those did not satisfy her.

  Her memory was well-trained. She stood, eyes closed, and lifted the blade, thinking of the Jonwa’s great receiving hall and her princess seated next to the Crown Prince, both of them determined to do their own duty. A false eunuch had sprung from the crowd crying For Zhaon, his fan-case weighted and springing a sharp blade from its length. The jolt of parry, the cut in return, bending aside as a dancer, and next would come the attack from Hawk Stance— except it had been interrupted, that battle, by a palace guard who had vanished afterward.

  Those guards, in their bright armor, were supposed to be unimpeachable, and personally, wholly loyal to the Emperor himself.

  Yet another golden-armored palace guard had been suborned earlier than the attack in the hall; their plan had been to kidnap Mahara in the Great Market. Yala had saved her princess from that particular indignity, and performed her duty later in the receiving hall too. That she had been taken to a prison cell afterward, leaving her princess unguarded, gave her cause for much thought.

  For Zhaon, the man had cried.


  Here, with dust stinging her nose and the yue whispering, she could think clearly— and uninterrupted as well, as she hardly ever was during the day.

  The false eunuch had not expected Yala to be armed and ready. Had the guard who stabbed him from behind been part of the plot, simply retreating to try again another day? She had heard the arrowheads from the attempt upon both the Crown Prince and Mahara while riding were large, barbed, and Northern.

  Ihenhua. Horse-killers.

  Then there was the dreadful gleam of a shinkesai, its glitter lingering between stone and wet metal, clasped about the finger of an assassin in a Jonwa dry-garden just after the wedding. Zakkar Kai had stabbed that fellow while Yala was busy fending him off; the honor of the kill belonged to the general. She seemed to be a front-lure or a feint, drawing out the prey while the hunters rode it down.

  An honorable position, indeed. The more danger, the greater the esteem. And it occurred to her now, as the maiden’s blade whispered and her body sang with effort, that there had been so many attempts, of such different manner and nature…

  Was it possible they had flowed, like some rivers, from more than one source?

  She slowed. The yue did not forgive inattention, and there were thread-thin scars upon her thighs and upper arms to prove it. Not many— she was a good, careful student, and some of the marks upon her forearms were hawk-kisses instead, with ink rubbed into their stinging to prove she was of noble blood.

  A series of flurries, her toes tapping at each impact, pulling back instead of committing to each blow. Dancing to bleed an attacker dry.

  It would be so easy, after all. A moment’s miscalculation, a bright jet of blood, and she could atone for her failure in the old way. It was frowned upon nowadays, of course; these were modern times. Robbing the clan of your service by honorable suicide was even, in some quarters, seen as selfish and detrimental.

  Only in some, though. Not in Hai Komori’s dark, ancient halls. Was that what the shades of her clan would demand of her?

  The yue spoke, a thin thread of fire over her left knee, stinging. She would worry about the slice in her sleeping shift later. Yala bent aside and began to work in earnest, holding each pose— Mountain, Hill, Hawk, River— for a bare moment, blurring between them lightning-quick, short exhales when the blade met imaginary flesh, letting imaginary blood and other vital humors free.

  The blood she had washed from Mahara’s broken body was not imaginary. She could still feel the clots and the silken tepid water, still feel the aching in her throat as she keened, singing to speed her princess’s passage and to ward off hungry spirits who would cluster a shade as it left, seeking to seduce it into thirsty and malignant lingering.

  Not Mahara, though. Yala’s princess would ride swift and true, free at last and braver than many a warrior.

  It was blasphemous to think so, of course. They were only women, and not of much account. Still, the sacrifice in marriage had halted Zhaon’s demands for more concessions from the conquered, and now, the revocation was a spark upon dry tinder. In what manner had the news reached Khir, and how much of it? The princess was killed, of course. By the Zhaon, some would add.

  They expected little good of the South, especially in the borderlands.

  Now Yala wished she had spent more time listening to politics, though a woman did not intrude into male business. The men rode to war, the women to hunt, and between them, the world was ordered.

  The world, however, did not seem particularly ordered now.

  Well, little sister. Bai’s voice, a thorny comfort. Shall I give you the answer?

  Her memory of him would provide nothing new. The dead did not speak to the living, unless it was to an exorcist or to some few exalted by the Awakened One’s favor. Yala was neither nun nor shade-cleanser.

  Moving more quickly now, feinting with her left hand clasped over the thumb-side of her right to brace the stab, twisting the blade free of muscle-suction as she retreated, ducking the inevitable thrust or swing in reply— now she knew why yue practice was constructed in its particular manner, each heavily accented point in training only achieving its proper proportion once a battle had been won through.

  Or merely suffered.

  Yala whirled upon the ball of her left foot, the yue a whisper-scream through hot southron stifling. Sweat greased her limbs, gathered in her hollows, and the nightdress was a sodden irritant.

  Faster, Yala. Spinning again, fending off two-at-once, the yue a needle and she the thread drawn behind its singing point.

  The shadows did not bleed. They were everywhere at once, crowding her, and a scream rose in Yala’s throat, a hawk-cry as if she rode at kaibok or to hunt.

  Yala. Mahara’s soft voice now, the most hurtful of all. Stop.

  The floor gave a small, sepulchral groan; her hair swung, the heavy braid done by Anh’s quick clever fingers whipping as she spun, the yue swiping at the terrible, jostling specters. Then, stillness, and the finishing of every practice, the flat of the blade against her own throat.

  It would take so little to turn it, to drag the edge through her own flesh. She would join her princess, perhaps— not riding, for she had not died in the battle of childbed or defending her honor.

  No, she would trudge the plains, listening to the horns and hoofbeats and cries of the hunt, barred from the joy and glory, and still she would be left behind.

  There was another matter, too.

  You may not open your throat with that claw-toy of yours. Takshin at her bedside, after carrying her from Mahara’s pyre. She had intended to mount its wooden hill, and stand amid the flames.

  The fire could hardly pain her more than the loss of her sister, her princess, her…friend. Her best of friends.

  Cessation of frantic motion brought a manner of clarity. Zakkar Kai had not borne her from the flames, and he had not stepped between her and a whip. It was uncharitable of Yala to think that the Third Prince would not help her exactly as he had promised, despite his sharp, prickling disdain.

  Zakkar Kai wished her to be safe. But she had not married him yet, Yala decided. And her obedience— that central quality of any Khir noblewoman, that greatest of womanly virtues— was not owed directly to a prospective husband, or even— another blasphemous thought— to her father, safe leagues upon leagues away in Hai Komori.

  She was dependent upon her own wits here in the palace of Zhaon, and furthermore, her obedience was wholly owed to the shade of a moon-faced, pretty girl who had sat next to Yala through endless cups of tea, hip to hip, sharing warmth. To the princess who had, with chin high and mien serene, done her duty to homeland and Great Rider, offering herself as sacrifice.

  The immolation was accepted by Heaven, a princess cut free of mortal life. Was she now insubstantial but present, watching her lady-in-waiting as she often had viewed Yala’s yue practices, with bright eyes and clasped hands?

  Yala? You are my friend. My best friend.

  Yala’s lips parted. She almost spoke her princess’s name— an act to be avoided even though the end of mourning approached. There was a letter from Garan Gamnae waiting upon Yala’s bedroom table below, with pretty sentiments upon loss and an invitation, once Yala’s time in unbleached silk was done, for her to accompany the second of the Emperor’s daughters to the theater. Here in Zhaon princesses could do the unthinkable, and watch such things with the common crowd instead of sending their ladies to report upon staging and acting.

  Mahara had never visited the theater. Now, riding with the great goddess, she never would.

  Yala had, and as she squeezed her eyes shut, seeing a reflection of flame-flowers across the inside of her lids, flat metal warming as her pulse pounded against it, she decided Garan Gamnae could perhaps be half an ally. Or, if necessary, a well to be plumbed. Perhaps her mother, that hateful First Queen, wished to use Yala in some fashion.

  It did not matter. Yala’s wits were sharp enough to sting even a queen who sought some mischief. After all…

&n
bsp; You are Komor, the dowager aunties who had trained Yala in the yue chorused, as they did at the end of every practice. This is your duty.

  “I am Komor,” she replied softly, and denied the urge to turn her wrist, loose her own blood and humors, and gratefully slip from confinement as she would slip from this sleeping-shift were she not Khir. “This is my pride.”

  For pride, then. And for Mahara.

  Yala lowered her yue, exhaled sharply, and retraced her steps from the attic with a tranquil heart.

  CAUTIOUS MANEUVERS

  The Noble District, hugging the walls of the palace complex like a child at motherskirts, also held a princely home for each of Garan Tamuron’s sons. Kurin’s was among the smallest, but it was exquisite and upon the most desirable, well-swept avenue sprinkled daily to damp the dust. His mother’s padded, draped palace, every edge cushioned and every wall smothered to keep any chill from touching her round softness, contrasted with the more restrained preferences of her eldest son. Instead of gardens there was a central courtyard, saplings and shrubs in pots moved when the season changed, only the central stone cistern with its heavy bronzefish moving lazily in still depths staying in place. Yeoyan had been much in garden-fashion this past spring, but the saplings were gone to be planted in orchards at one of the Second Prince’s country estates; tall rustling babu and lyong had taken its place, the courtyard’s stones reflecting heat upward and masses of carefully tended flowers in stone boxes or between turf strips watered from the cistern each morn and evening.

  The tall ruddy-robed owner of this effort barely glanced at it, indicating a small table and two lyrate chairs near a carved-stone railing on the second level mezzanine, all three of superb craftsmanship like the chessboard upon the table’s wide marble surface. “I had thought you would return an excuse again, Makar.”

  “We all have our duties, and Father required me last week.” The Fourth Prince, in his sober dark scholar’s garb of much higher quality than a poor scribe could dream of, glanced at the board. Long-nosed, with winged eyebrows, he was held to be the most serious of the princes, and indeed saw little use for levity in one of his position. “A new game?”