by Dave Duncan
“He’s back?”
“Indeed, His Honor has returned, ma’am, but I should …”
She did not stay to hear his warning.
The mad thumping of her staff on the tiles announced her approach, of course. The door was open, the fire blazing, and the lamps sparkled. Veer was lounging in his favorite chair, with a good imitation of happiness on his face. Podakan sprang up and came to meet her. He wore a commoner’s gray tunic, but he still had his collar and he bore no visible torture scars. He even looked glad to see her and accepted her embrace readily enough.
“Where did you go? How did you get here in this weather? You’re looking well. You’re a great hero. …” Irona realized that she was babbling and stopped.
“I’m well, thank you, Dam. Machin tells me that you are in good health.”
“Too old and far too overworked. But tell—” She saw that there was a fourth person present, as Edziza had tried to warn her.
Podakan took her hand and led her over to the stranger, who was standing motionless, eyes downcast. She was tall and very slender, with jet black hair bound high on her head; her face and arms were Elbrusian tan. Her dress was a miracle of some fabric Irona had never seen before, as fine as silk and shimmering in all the tints of oil on water. It covered her from her shoulders to her silver shoes. Her earrings, necklaces, bracelets, and rings all glittered with diamonds, and her diamond-studded belt alone was worth a fortune.
“Dam, may I present my consort, Princess Koriana?”
Irona glanced briefly at Veer, who had his eyebrows raised higher than normal but obviously was not about to comment.
“Princess?”
“That’s the closest her title translates,” Podakan said, “unless you wish to address her as Precious Gift of the Moon and Stars.” If his lifetime ambition was to surprise, he could aim no higher than this. Benign recognized no royalty of its own and paid only grudging respect to the rulers of allied kingdoms. “Won’t you say hello?”
“Koriana, you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, and the most welcome guest ever to enter my house.”
“A bit gushy,” Podakan murmured, but he rattled off what must be a translation in a guttural tongue.
The girl responded, but to him, not Irona. They exchanged more words.
“She says you are very gracious. She wishes to kiss your feet, but I told her you would not like it.”
Koriana lifted her head a moment, but at the same time covered her eyes with her hands, crossed with palm out, so that Irona caught the briefest possible glimpse of her features before the move was over and the girl was staring at the floor again.
“That’s their salute. You’ll have to give her time, Dam. She was raised in deep seclusion. At the moment she feels about the way you would feel if you were dragged before strangers stark naked. She had never even seen a man, let alone spoken to one, until she was popped into my bed. Why don’t we sit down?”
They did. Veer helped Irona set her useless leg on the footrest and brought her a beaker of wine.
“We thought you had died in the battle,” she said. She needed time to think before she asked about the girl.
“So did I, for a while.” Podakan raised the hem of his tunic to show a puckered scar in his thigh. “I took an arrow and started bleeding a cataract. Other men were being chopped apart and still fighting, while I was blacking out from one silly little hole. Then Intractable rolled and I was in the water, clutching a spar and sending out a blood trail to every shark in the ocean, although there were more bodies than fish there that day. Someone saw my collar and thought it might be valuable. I came with it. So I became a prisoner.”
Modesty had never been Podakan’s strong point. Lying was. If he wasn’t inventing all this tale, he was at least pruning the truth to shape. Koriana sat beside him on the couch with her hands clasped in her lap, fixedly staring at the floor.
“And what happened then?”
“That’s a bit fuzzy. They brought me back to life. They soon learned who I was. I was taken before the king of kings in all his splendor. I thought my happy days were over, but he wanted to hear my side of the story—his officers had probably been lying their teeth out to him. He asked how many ships I had led. I said twelve but I had sent one back to bring help in case I needed it. He said there had been over one hundred in his fleet, so why had I attacked. I told him: to sink them.”
Podakan smirked. And paused to tell the girl something. She did not react.
“But I did explain that his crews were poorly trained, his ships both badly designed and shoddily built, and they had been so overloaded with men that they couldn’t maneuver. Their archers barely had room to shoot at us and had no experience of shooting from a rolling deck anyway.”
“How did he take that news?”
“Very well. His courtiers just stood there with pee running down their legs. He asked me if I could design better ships and train his crews properly. I said I couldn’t and wouldn’t if I could. And if I could and would, it would take a generation to build a competent navy, even if Benign didn’t keep coming around to sink it. He asked how he could get his islands back. I said he couldn’t. My mother had started the war and I had finished it, and there was nothing he could do about it.”
“What language were you talking?” Irona asked. She was being very careful not to look at Veer, who probably believed much less of this story than she did. Yet she could usually tell when her son was lying and just then she didn’t think he was inventing all of this.
“I was speaking Benesh. He was speaking the language of his court, High Cabalian. They have good interpreters.”
“That’s what you were speaking to Koriana just now?”
He nodded. “See, the king of kings had a loss-of-face problem over the islands. He cannot be seen to lose a war or give up territory. I suggested he marry off a daughter to me and give her the islands as a dowry. And that’s what he did. Face saved.”
For a moment Irona closed her eyes, trying to imagine the king of kings high on his throne, close to immobilized in all his imperial glory, scowling down at a prostrate Podakan wearing a jade collar, bronze fetters, and probably little more. Any ruler of the Three Kingdoms had to be a ruthless despot and the present one was reputed to be a fiend in human shape. The boy at his feet had humiliated him before his empire, before history and the world. So he agreed to marry his …
She opened her eyes again. “I find that bit a little hard to believe.”
Her son grinned. “All right, I admit. … It was his idea, not mine. Even I couldn’t have thought that one up, Dam. But I’m the closest thing to royalty Benign has, see? A Chosen and son of a Chosen. I command flotillas and attack fleets ten times their size. They declared me semidivine, because that’s the only explanation for my success. Peace treaties are sealed with marriage contracts. That’s how their minds work. And the king of kings has problems knowing what to do with daughters. He has twenty sons and I don’t know how many …” He asked Koriana something; she replied. “She doesn’t know either. A whole lot of daughters, and nobody royal enough to marry them. So here we are. I came home with a treaty that says the islands now belong to her, but she belongs to me, so Benign owns the islands. Her boobs aren’t much to brag about, but she’s a pretty good lay in spite of that. She does anything I tell her to. Pass the wine, citizen.”
“Yes, Your Honor.” Veer rose and took him the wine bottle. Podakan held out his goblet to be filled.
“But you know,” Irona said hastily, hoping to head off the inevitable confrontation between those two, “that Chosen cannot marry.”
Podakan shrugged. “She’s my wife in the Kingdoms. Here she’s just my sex toy, like the fat man over there is yours.”
“Does she know this?”
“She knows women can own property in Benign. What else matters? When you die, your dauber will ge
t thrown out on his fat ass, and his kids would too, if he’d ever been man enough to put any in you. But Koriana came with two sea chests full of jewels. She’s going to buy a palace here and her children can inherit that. I won’t trouble the Property Commission.” He turned to the girl again and spoke at length, never hesitating over a word.
Irona had asked the Beru how it had learned Benesh so quickly. Dreading that she would hear the same answer again, she said, “How did you become so fluent in Cabalian so quickly?”
Podakan stood up, the girl following his lead instantly. “You’ll have to excuse us, Dam. We spent the last two nights in a barque that kept moving in every direction at once. Koriana is very tired and I always need to get my rocks off before I can sleep. See you in the morning.” He glanced at Veer. “And you, I suppose.”
Irona watched them go, his arm around the girl’s incredibly slim waist.
Veer said, “That’s twice he dodged that question.”
And Irona was fairly sure that Zard 699 had once told her that High Cabalian was the most difficult of all languages to master. “So what do you think the answer is?”
“I think the whole thing is unbelievable: the language, the king of kings’s daughter, the jewels, the islands as dowry. It has to be Maleficence at work. The king of kings fixed him.”
After a moment she said, “Or Podakan fixed the king of kings?”
This was, after all, the second time her son had performed a miracle. He had apparently killed the Beru, Hayklopevi. And now he had gelded the king of kings, who by rights should have killed him by inches.
“You said that, love, not me.”
She sighed. “I’ll take him to the First in the morning so he can hand over this draft treaty he claims he has.”
“Make sure His Excellency is well guarded,” Veer said. “His daughters must be too old to interest your boy, but he may have grandchildren who would.”
Podakan’s miraculous return sent the city insane. He had won an incredible battle, he had brought peace, he had claimed a daughter of the king of kings as his concubine, he was the hero of the century. When Midsummer came around and Caprice chose a boy called Ayakan, the similarity of his name was at once taken as proof of her approval.
Irona watched her son perform in the Scandal Market and Assembly Hall, and he always impressed. The studied vulgarity he threw at her and Veer was completely absent. In public he was an earnest, respectful, and hardworking young man. She knew it was a mask, but she saw it slip only once.
He was elected to both the Customs Board and Treaty Commission, prestigious offices normally reserved for much older Chosen, but he was kept away from the military committees. A man who is captured by the enemy but released with a king’s daughter and a great fortune cannot be free of suspicion. When a vacancy among the Seven came up, young Meluak 723 nominated Podakan 725. That was too much, and not just for the old guard: he was defeated fifty-three to five. He returned to his seat with fists clenched and face scarlet with rage. One thing he had in common with Irona was that they both hated to lose.
Interlude: 728–734
Politically the next few years were uneventful in Benign. Mallahle kept the ship of state on an even keel but explored no new oceans.
True to his word, Podakan did buy a fine palace for his illegal wife, spurning Irona’s offers of better homes for token rents. He took on enormous workloads, so that other Chosen hated being on his committees, which might labor far into the night. He was well thought of otherwise, but still excluded from military affairs.
Early in 728, Koriana bore a handsome son with surprising ease for a woman of her gracile build. Podakan refused to name him after his grandfathers, as was customary. Vlyplatin, he said, had been a loser and Koriana’s father boasted a dozen names, all unpronounceable. So he named his firstborn Avazan, which he said was High Cabalian for “noisy,” and therefore very apt.
In 730 came news that the king of kings had died in spectacular fashion at a banquet. Bloodshed had begun in the palace that very night; civil war would likely follow. The Seventy reacted with cheers and derision, plus many speeches about the drawbacks of hereditary rule, as opposed to Benign’s resplendent theocracy. Since Podakan had left the city the previous day on a mission to Genodesa, Irona took it upon herself to break the news to Koriana.
It would also be a chance to meet with her grandchildren. She rarely got to speak with her daughter-in-law at all, and never without Podakan present. Koriana was a recluse. She had used two pregnancies in less than three years as an excuse to decline invitations, but even before or between her confinements, she was rarely seen in public. She still spent more time staring at the floor than looking people in the eye, and she spoke little, although she was now competent in Benesh. So far as Irona knew, she had no friends.
Irona was shown to an upstairs nursery, where she found her daughter-in-law nursing Adwa, her six-month-old daughter. Avazan was sitting in a corner, hammering wooden blocks relentlessly, and ignored his grandmother’s arrival. No Benesh woman would have received even a close family member bare breasted, but Koriana seemed quite unconcerned and just asked forgiveness for not rising. She looked lovelier than ever. Veer had begged to paint her, and Podakan had predictably refused. Veer had done so anyway, from memory.
“I am so sorry to disturb you. … Goddess, but she’s growing fast!”
“Not fast as Avazan. He will have like his father’s bigness.”
“Yes, he will. Adwa’s a lovely name. What does it mean?”
For once, Koriana caught Irona’s eye before quickly looking down at her child again. “My husband told you it is most suitable, being Cabalian word for ‘messy.’” A rare smile touched her lips.
“I know. But what does it really mean?”
“Dark Jewel.”
“She is a jewel, certainly. And what does Avazan mean?”
“He Who Conquers.”
“That is good, too.” And typical of Podakan. “Koriana, my dear, I am afraid I come with very terrible news.”
“You heard that my father is dead?”
For a moment Irona was speechless. Then: “How do you know that?”
“A dream. I told Podakan forty days ago.” She spoke with certainty but showed no emotion except happiness as she regarded her nursing child.
“I am sorry. I know how devastating it is to lose a father, although I admit I was not close to mine.”
“I never met him.” Koriana gently touched Adwa’s cheek with one finger.
“Never met your father?”
“And my parents never saw me. Women of our family are very ill-omened. Only our mothers are immune to the bane of our eyes.”
Again Irona was at a loss for words. This belief might explain why Koriana had been trained never to look directly at people. It certainly explained why the king of kings had married a daughter to his worst enemy.
“Does Podakan know this?”
“He laughed.” Koriana showed a trace of a frown, which was unusual. “He will not even let me keep Avazan away from Adwa.”
Not for the first time, Irona wondered if her daughter-in-law was insane. Was it the women or the mad who were regarded as baleful in Acigol-Nevsehir? She changed the subject. “We heard no details of what happened to your father, except that he died at a banquet.”
“Oh, no. He died in bed. I saw it.”
“Saw it?”
“In a seeing.” Koriana threw back her head as if staring at the ceiling, except that she covered her eyes with the backs of her hands in that strange gesture. “The hairiest man I have ever seen, in bed with two girls, young ones, new ones. They had been delivered to him naked, of course—no weapons—but they had hidden strangling cords in their bandages.”
“Bandages?” Irona asked, at a loss for anything intelligent to say.
“New girls, I told you! The king of kings l
ies only with blind women and their eyes had not yet healed. He mounted one, the other tried to garrote him, but he wore a powerful tandikat. So the cord snapped and it was the girl who choked to death. He laughed as he watched her death throes.”
Merciful Goddess! “Just what is a tandikat?”
“Word means, ‘echo.’ You would call it a fix. An assassin slayer. Only works once. He would have had a spare somewhere near, did not reach for it in time. While he was enjoying the first girl’s death, the other brought out her cord and killed him.”
“You mustn’t even talk about fixes in Benign, Koriana. Not even to me. Or about prophetic dreams. However your father died, I expect one of your brothers will succeed?”
“Two already have. More will. It takes a while.”
“Are you guessing, or are you certain of that? I mean, do you often have dreams come true?”
Uniquely then, Koriana looked up and stared at Irona for several seconds. Her eyes were enormous and incredibly lustrous. Although Podakan ought to have no complaints about his nursing wife’s figure at present, her face was still as spare as carved and polished wood, perfect skin taut over slender bone. Her lips had the brilliance of rubies.
“Special dreams. My husband wishes many children. I have told him I must bear them quickly, while we have time.”
“No! You don’t mean you will die soon? Or he will?”
“What is soon? Perhaps not dead but not child making. You …”
“What about me?”
Koriana changed her mind. “I cannot see so far. My babe has done milking me, go you must now.”
“May I just hold her for a moment?” Irona still had wistful hopes of being a better grandmother than she had been mother.
“That would not be proper!” Koriana said. “Or safe for you.”
“May I stay and play with Avazan?”
Koriana looked quite shocked. Bewildered, Irona apologized and left.
Koriana was as good as her word and gave birth more often than was decent. Irona, finding herself with so many grandchildren, accused her son of wanting to make her feel old. She was not entirely joking.