by S. C. Emmett
Had not the King of Heaven created much of Zhaon itself by using every item’s proper name?
“I do not know,” Yona said, quietly, almost as if she feared an explosion. “But perhaps…some wine? Or some sweets in a pretty box…”
“Too easily traced.” Gamwone made a short, irritable motion. Yona’s hand obediently leapt out, arrested itself halfway to the vial, and she glanced at her queen, hurriedly lowering her dark, somewhat bloodshot eyes. “Find another method.”
“But, my queen…” Yona fell silent as Gamwone turned her head slightly, eyeing her servant, whose hand still hovered in midair.
“Well?”
“The physician…the Emperor…and there is already much gossip…” Yona had gone chalky, her lips a most unbecoming shade.
“The Emperor? They are laying even that upon my steps.” It should not have surprised her; Gamwone tapped the long, resin-laden second fingernail of her right hand against her lips. “I do not care for gossip, chief servant. You will find a way.”
“Yes, my queen.” Yona’s fingers flickered and the vial vanished. She dropped her chin, staring at the table, and Gamwone picked up her teacup. The liquid steamed gently; she had always liked the sweeter teas. “Shall I have lunch brought to you, or…?”
“Yes, but not here. In the crushflower-papered room, and there must be sweetbroth for Gamnae. We must keep up her strength during this—”
“She is visiting the Second Queen, Your Majesty.” Yona’s throat must have had something lodged in it, or perhaps she feared Gamwone’s response to the news. “Our lord the Second Prince sent her there this morning, after breakfast. To offer comfort.”
Oh, that brat. But Gamwone smiled; she could afford to be generous now. Tian Ha was gone, Garan Tamuron was gone, soon Garan Takyeo would be gone, and the bath-girl too.
She wondered, idly, why she had not bestirred herself like this before. It was too ridiculous, her fearing discovery for so long; after all, Tamuron had done nothing and now he could do nothing to her ever again, especially if she engaged an exorcist or two to keep her house steps well-cleansed. She would do that, once the excitement died a little and Kurin, her beloved Kurin, was safely upon the throne. He would come to appreciate her a little more once he had warmed that seat some while.
And meanwhile, the spear-wife’s brat would succumb. He was no proper Emperor, leg-crushed and abed.
“Oh, very well,” she said, magnanimous. “I shall enjoy my tea alone, then there will be lunch.”
“Yes, my queen.” Yona bowed again, deeply, and heel-thigh retreated from the presence of her superior. The vial had vanished into her own sleeve, and thinking further upon the matter was not necessary now that it was all arranged.
The partition slid shut, and Gamwone gazed upon the garden. They were held to be healthful, but she preferred embroidered flowers. Those carried no dirt.
Those who ruled had to accept a certain amount of filth. It was duty, and she had ever borne hers, had she not?
She sipped her tea, listening to the muffled scurrying in the hall. Yes, despite Kurin’s little rebellions and the Gonwa bitch’s attempt to insult her, Garan Yulehi-a Gamwone was now feeling very calm indeed.
BRING OUR MESSENGER HOME
Wearing unto a bloody sunset, the day passed as any other except for late or missing dispatches, which normally arrived regularly as a heartbeat. Kai was not overly worried; sometimes a rider met misadventure, and a stack of correspondence waited for him anyway. The reorganization of the Northern Army was not quite a delicate task, but it was a time-consuming one, and he had to drive himself twice as hard as the lowest soldier.
A general always did.
Thankfully, the attempt upon him had not been met with indifference or worse, suppressed glee. Instead, his soldiers had clamored for the offenders to be given to them in the old fashion; those who resented not being able to vent their fury contented themselves with spitting upon the corpses— or performing other, less polite acts.
There were condolences to sort— carefully brushed from Jin, proper and scholarly but with an unsteadiness to their characters that spoke of true feeling from Makar, from Takyeo with a postscript that Kai was much missed, and even Takshin had taken time to brush one. Kai read them, setting aside the ones from court ladies, ministers, or those who were likely to be only formulaic. Every one would have to be answered by himself or Anlon, and small gifts sent to thank the writers for their kindness.
Two letters from Gamnae, of all people, another from Takshin— why would he bestir himself so?— and three from Yala. Did she miss him so much? A warmth quite separate from the day’s sweat and dust poured through him, and he almost forgot how his skin was crawling with the need of a bath. Breaking the seal on the first of Yala’s three letters was a pleasure, sharp anticipation filling his belly.
It was a pleasant enough missive, except for a postscript asking what incense his late mother liked, so it could be taken to her tomb. There was some message he could not decipher hiding between Yala’s lines, and he wondered if Kanbina’s passing had been…tranquil.
Kai settled a little more heavily upon his chair, staring at a lady’s exquisite brushwork but seeing a thin face instead, with large dark lustrous eyes and pain-hollowed cheeks. The toxin hidden in some food or drink years ago had damaged internal organs; it was a wonder she had clung to life so long, a late, fragile jewelwing upon a frost-etched autumn leaf.
Well, Kanbina was safely beyond the reach of any misfortune now.
He reached for Takshin’s letter, despite Yala’s unopened missives temptingly close. He would have to ration their sweetness.
Takshin’s hand was fine, though his characters somewhat spare. Kai read with mounting alarm, his teeth aching as they sought to grind, chewing at impatience— a bitter dish, and one he hated. The most common character for ill news was tall like the pierced spire of a Shan temple, but to Kai, its lower half had always looked like a lump in the throat. Like the one which bobbed when a man spoke, a strange insurance against lies— not very effective— or choking, which might have been mildly comforting if one could be certain of just how it worked.
Of course Takshin would be the one to send, quietly and plainly, an account of Kanbina’s last words. It had arrived later because he had arranged for it to be privately carried, as he explained in the last few lines, and Taktak did not wish his friend and brother unaware.
A thorny mercy, like any from that quarter.
“My lord?” Anlon hesitated at the door, and afterward cold sweat would drench Kai, because he almost waved a hand and told the man not now.
The habit of conscientiousness was worn too deeply, but he was not particularly gracious. “What?” he barked, and his steward did not quite quail.
But it was probably close. “There is a rider,” Anlon said. The bandage was hidden under his tunic and half-armor; his wound was well on its way to healing. “Waving a yellow standard with the characters for snow-pard painted upon it, and being chased.”
For a moment Kai was not certain he had heard correctly; then he sprang from his chair. “My boots,” he said, briskly, “and the long-eye. Archers to the wall, and mounted archers ready to bring our messenger home.”
What else, under Heaven, had happened while he was away? He should have refused to leave the capital— but how could he? Tamuron was not merely his Emperor but also his friend, and he had trusted the man through worse than this.
It was not until he reached the keep’s high, ancient wall and trained the tube of the long-eye upon faraway figures dancing through a wavering curtain of summer heat reflecting the last gleams of a long and unsatisfying day that he realized just how ill the news was likely to be.
A slight figure, wrapped in muffling cloth upon what was indisputably a war-trained grey meant for princes and the Golden, clung to the saddle with sweet natural grace as at least half a dozen other figures urged their own horses— a motley group, two bays, several indeterminate lathered cobs, a
nd one fine deep-chested black mare— like hounds after a fulvous brushtail. The standard was a message-flag from Takyeo’s time at his father’s side fighting Khir before Three Rivers, a particular victory in the snows of a mountain pass.
And as Kai watched, it was almost torn from the lone rider’s hands as one of the pursuers urged their beast closer.
The silk tore and the standard fluttered, a jewelwing’s graceful death trampled under shod hooves. The lone rider still retained the stave and dropped the reins, rising with that fine, natural grace. Even though the grey pounded and careened underneath, the rider was steady, small adjustments of one born into the saddle keeping him upright. He leaned slightly and the flexible sapling whipped; the pursuer who had ripped the silk free tumbled from his own saddle and Kai’s mouth was sour.
The spear of ice in Kai’s guts knew before he did. There was only one slim, short being under Heaven’s great arching halls he had ever seen ride like that, bending supple as a hau tree’s flexible branches. A blurring bolt— they had horsebows, the beastfucking bastards— flickered past.
It cannot be.
But it was. His eyes were not deceived, nor was his liver, though it turned cold too and settled crossways inside him.
“My horse.” Zakkar Kai handed the long-eye to his second adjutant, the somewhat dour Gua Yuen, and strode for the stairs. “My horse, now!” The repeat was a bellow, and he began to run, his boot-heels all but striking sparks from old stone eroded by the elements and the repeated passage of mail-shod feet. “Now, or I will have every last one of you whipped! Open the gate! Move!”
SMALL BUT DEFINITE
To be a physician was always to fight a losing battle; Kihon Jiao’s teachers had been extremely clear upon that point. The body, both physical and subtle, was not imperishable though the shade might survive for a long while if one’s descendants were properly filial. The Awakened One spoke of a state beyond life or death, but that was not a physician’s matter.
Yet sometimes Kihon Jiao hoped it was indeed true, and that certain of his clients— by no means all of them— would achieve such a status. To attend the body’s many imbalances and improprieties uncovered a great deal most would like to keep hidden, from cowardice to infidelity, and it was best to be an impartial observer.
Or so Jiao had always thought until this moment, as he palpated the wound with gentle fingertips and tried not to notice his royal patient’s sudden loss of color and great clear drops of forehead-sweat.
“You do not have to say,” Jiao said, flatly. This Jonwa bedroom had become familiar, its spare luxury speaking volumes about the palace’s most high-ranking occupant but now cluttered with the tools and impedimenta of the medical trade. “I can see it hurts.”
“Quite a lot, too.” Garan Takyeo was braver than his father, that much was certain, and that was very brave indeed. The wound did not look like much, but now it was clear it had breached a gut-channel. Rot was settling itself in the vitals, where food was turned into shit.
And that, no matter how Kihon Jiao worked, was almost certain death.
“Most men would scream, were I to touch them so.” Jiao tried an encouraging smile, but it felt unnatural upon his frozen face. The consciousness of impending failure packed his throat with dry cotton. “My lord…”
“You do not need to say, either.” Takyeo’s eyes half-lidded, their pupils large with nightflower’s screen keeping the worst of the agony at bay. “I can feel it crawling through me. When it reaches my liver—”
“I may reopen the wound.” Jiao considered the body before him, seeking to lay aside everything as transitory as feeling and see the problem logically. “Express the foul matter, and perhaps sew the tear. There is nightflower laced with omyei to keep you from feeling the event, and cinnabar to flush the wound.”
“Strong medicine.” Takyeo exhaled softly. “Do as you please, physician. I shall endure it.”
“You sound like your father.” Jiao realized it was an inadvisable thing to say, but hoped his audible admiration would outweigh such impertinence. At least this patient did not seem of the stripe to order an only halfway insolent physician flogged, even after health was miraculously re-achieved.
“A fine…” Takyeo paled even more and coughed, his belly rippling. The sound was broken in half by a swallowed moan of pain, and there was a scratch at the door. “A fine compliment, Honorable Kihon. Thank you.”
“Don’t feed his liver so, it will explode.” The Shan-black leanness of Garan Takshin stepped catfoot into the room and glanced mildly at Kihon Jiao. “And what are you about, physician?”
“I am at my work, Third Prince.” Perhaps you should be about yours, whatever that is. Jiao took his fingers away and twitched his patient’s bed-shirt back into place over the muscled abdomen. It was a criminal thing, to mar a man so finely made.
“Takshin.” The Crown Prince— Emperor now, though he had not yet been carried to the throne room— smiled, and it hurt to see the effort he expended to cover evidence of agony. “How goes it?”
“Oh, Kurin thinks he owns me now.” The Third Prince did not glance at Jiao, who retreated to the table to tug thin, fine kidskin gloves upon his hands and mix the cinnabar paste. If he could express the foulness from the wound, sew whatever channel had been cut, and replace it with the astringency…risky, very risky, but it could work.
At least his patient was willing to try. Jiao could do no less, though failure might cost him his own head. He might almost welcome it, seeing a patient so manifestly meritorious slip away.
“He should know better.” Takyeo suppressed a cough, and paled even further at the resultant wave of pain. His pupils ate his irises, and the sick-smell in the room was almost as thick as the reek of herb, paste, tincture, and unguent. “You are not to be owned, Taktak.”
“Oh, not by him, at least.” The Third Prince’s grin was just the same as ever, a pained baring of teeth holding little true amusement but a great deal of that quality the Khir called hunrao and the Zhaon termed oxhoof, the refusal to retreat though the battle was lost. His gaze had settled on Jiao, who bore it patiently as he measured and ground. “What is our plan now?”
Amazingly, the new Emperor attempted a laugh. “Honorable Kihon will clean me out, stitch some innards, pack the wound with cinnabar and other similarly strong things, and sew my outside like a festival bladder. I shall be a medicinal pillow before long.”
“I shall put you in a theater-flower’s bed.” Takshin’s gaze did not alter either, but Jiao’s hands were steady. He had been watched by far harsher critics. “And what chance has this of working, physician?”
As much as anything else, at this point. He wished, not for the first time, that he could use a comforting lie. Unfortunately, this particular patient did not wish for such softness, and Jiao had always disdained to engage in such frippery. Skill and truth should speak for itself, though the man who used both was often passed over for those of lesser merit. “A small one. Small,” he amended, “but definite.”
His own arrogance was a burden no less than his patients’ pain.
“And— I must ask, Ah-Yeo— you are determined upon this treatment?” The Third Prince addressed the new Emperor, whose smile was just as strained as Jiao’s felt.
“Completely, Taktak. Before I consign myself to it, though, I wish for you to bring me paper, an inkstone, and a brush.” The patient did not shift upon the bed, but his attention turned elsewhere, a general marshaling dispositions. “There are a few matters I must settle.”
“Ah, I visit as a brother and am turned into a kaburei, running to fetch.” The scarred man rolled his eyes as a young boy might, and Takyeo’s laugh was for once unforced, even if the pain strangled the sound halfway through.
A flicker of something dark and wounded crossed the Third Prince’s face, a transitory flash like flame-flowers. Jiao finally dropped his gaze to the cinnabar paste, careful to keep his own bare wrists free of any stray droplet. Cinnabar was hungry; it ate certain di
seases whole. The trouble lay in calculating the dosage so its appetite did not consume the patient as well.
The Third Prince knew his eldest brother was likely to die, and it pained him. All at once Jiao’s own feelings about the scarred man were different too. You saw what they were made of, these fragile creatures upon whom the whole of Zhaon depended for good or for ill. Excellence and nobility aside, they were merely men, just like peasants and kaburei. Some good, some bad, most indifferent— but these two, Kihon Jiao thought, were worth serving as far as his skill would allow. Like Zakkar Kai, whose concern for a man of much lower rank and willingness to trust Jiao’s shabbiness had led the physician to the very heart of the settled world.
The Third Prince strode to the door, calling for paper, inkstone, and brush; Takyeo’s gaze met Kihon Jiao’s. The truth was there, graven with suffering-lines upon the new linchpin of Zhaon.
So. He knew he was about to die, too. And yet he faced it a great deal more calmly than many Jiao had witnessed.
The physician bent to his work again. It was no use to set oneself against an accomplished thing. Yet his patient was not dead yet, and while he ran the course, the physician could not do otherwise.
YALA’S RIDE
Dry indigo scarves filled the westron horizon, muffling the falling disk of a setting sun. Under other circumstances, it would have felt more like playing kaibok and less like impersonating a long-ear chased by hounds. Perhaps she might even have enjoyed the ride, but Komor Yala was far too busy to feel anything other than high fierce exhilaration fueled by complete terror.
Archer, understanding they were pursued and that his rider did not wish to be, longed to run flat-out. Yet she held him just a touch under that supreme effort, her weight telling him what she wished. At least he was willing, perhaps thinking it a grand game with new friends. Yala bent away from a cavalry hookblade seeking her midsection as another bolt hummed past. She swung the sapling she had sawn through with her yue early that morn after a long night spent riding dodge-a-kite with the men after her now, felt its long springiness whip across a man’s face. They were wolves and she a stag, fleet but tiring and armed only with her yue— useless at a gallop unless she wished to open her own throat to save herself from dishonor— and the whipping staff with pale yellow silk-knots still clasped to its frayed length.