“Something like that,” Portolés croaked, her momentary elation transmuted into dejection as she turned to the low lacquer table. “The Sunken Kingdom is often in our prayers. And what do the Immaculates say?”
“Witchcraft. A ritual gone awry. The wrath of the gods.” Jun-hwan smiled. “Superstition is universal, sister.”
Portolés hated the word “superstition,” hated how snidely it dismissed the miraculous and reduced the faithful to the feebleminded. “And what does a learned gentleman believe, living so close to where it all happened?”
“A weapon beyond our ken,” King Jun-hwan said in the easy manner of one discussing the weather. “There was a war between the ancient kingdom Jex Toth and the Star. Surely I cannot conjecture on the source of the conflict, but whatever the cause, both factions lost. They sought to control the uncontrollable. Jex Toth sank into the waves, and even from this great distance they dragged the people of Emeritus down with them. An end to war, and an end to the Age of Wonders, at a cost greater than anyone living or dead could conceive. The tragedy of our ancestors.”
“Don’t the Immaculates say time is one big mill wheel?” asked Portolés, trying to get her mind back on track—she was here for answers about the present, not the past. “What do you think that bodes for the Empire’s current trouble?”
“Another matter beyond my ken,” said Jun-hwan, and Portolés realized she was expected to sit first. Very well. Pulling out a cushion, she made herself comfortable on the floor as more servants flitted out of the screened door like so many drones leaving the nest. Kaldi was, of course, forbidden, but with a writ of absolvence in her pocket, she savored the heady smell of the decoction in her porcelain bowl. Besides, it didn’t do to be rude.
“Besides,” Jun-hwan went on, “you have your pagan heresies mixed up. It is the Ugrakari who think of time as a mill wheel. The Immaculates envision it more as a river, rushing along, with eddies and pools and a very strong current.”
“It must have been your bracelets that threw me,” said Portolés. “Do you ever miss the mountains of your homeland?”
Jun-hwan smiled, touching the silver serpent that guarded one lithe wrist. “Here I have both stones and sea. Furthermore, I was born on the Isles, to an Immaculate father. My mother was Ugrakari. These belonged to her. But did you come here to discuss genealogy or theology, sister?”
“Everything is theology,” said Portolés, sipping the kaldi. It was far more bitter than she’d expected from the smell. “I came here because I’m looking to stop another war. Ugrakari, Immaculate, or Imperial, surely we can agree war does little good.”
“It depends upon the war, I suppose,” said Jun-hwan, stirring cream into his bowl.
“Spoken like a general,” said Portolés. “Well, we need generals as much as nuns, I suppose.”
“Mmmmm,” said Jun-hwan, daintily sipping his kaldi.
“I will speak frankly, King Jun-hwan,” said Portolés, and played her bluff. “I am here on the express orders of Queen Indsorith. She is curious to know what came of your husband’s meeting with a woman claiming to be Blue Zosia, and whether Samoth ought to be concerned.”
Some stiffening there, in the hand that held the king’s bowl, but no other trace of acknowledgment. It was enough to convince Portolés she had struck true, she was sure of it—Brother Wan was always talking about how if you paid close enough attention, you didn’t even need to have the second sight to know when people were lying. Jun-hwan tried to play dumb, but it was too late. “You speak of my husband’s former commander, the woman your queen personally executed two decades ago?”
“That is she,” said Portolés, and decided to add some details to her wild speculation—so long as she didn’t overdo it, she had him, she could feel it. “Sharp a fellow as you are, King Jun-hwan, surely you deduced the identity of your husband’s guest? Forgive any seeming impertinence, but it will help to avoid an international incident if you are forthright with me on this matter. We know she met with Kang-ho, what we don’t know is what came of this conversation. That the man himself is absent when I call, well… surely you understand our concern. Especially considering that Hwabun sent no word to Diadem following Zosia’s visit. The Crimson Empire has always counted the Immaculate Isles as dear and faithful allies, but first you exploited our recent domestic troubles to illegally seize Linkensterne, and now this matter… Suffice to say, Queen Indsorith is curious what exactly she has done to offend.”
“And for such a critical diplomatic mission, the Queen of Samoth sends a lone wildborn war nun as her envoy? And this envoy is sent first to call upon my husband at Hwabun, instead of to Othean to meet with Empress Ryuki?” Jun-hwan carefully put his bowl back on the table. “You are fishing, Sister Portolés.”
So much for her cunning ruse. “I am. And I shall catch something, here or elsewhere, but I have no intention of returning home hungry.”
“Well, never let it be said the Immaculate waters are barren,” said Jun-hwan. “Perhaps your bait is lacking, sister. What if you tried another lure?”
“Forgive me, King Jun-hwan, but I am no more a courtier than I am a fisher. Talk in riddles if you must, but don’t expect a humble nun to decipher them.” Portolés drained her bowl and stood, hoping she had aroused the man’s curiosity enough that he’d try to talk her back down. During the card games Heretic had taught her around their campfires, he had chided her for following up one bad bluff with another, but Portolés didn’t have any other strategies here. “I was sent here to ask a question. You’ve given me one answer, and I expect to receive a different one from the Empress of the Immaculate Isles when I meet with her two days hence. Both shall be returned to the queen, unfiltered by the simple mind of the messenger.”
Jun-hwan stood as well, not nearly as ruffled as Portolés would have liked. “May you find better luck casting your line in Othean. The Autumn Palace has many pools for you to plumb.”
“If you or your husband do happen to run into a dead woman who goes by the name of Zosia, let her know that I’m looking for her,” said Portolés. “It’s important. Tell her…”
Tell her what? That Queen Indsorith had nothing to do with the slaughter at Kypck, that this was an obvious plot to set Zosia against the Crimson Empire? That Queen Indsorith suspected the Burnished Chain had found out about Zosia and sent Colonel Hjortt to kill her people to create this very situation, where Stricken Queen sought vengeance against Crimson, and the church could rule absolutely after they had destroyed each other? That the Crimson Queen had sent Portolés to alert Zosia to all this, so that another needless war could be avoided? The only thing more insane than the truth was the notion that Portolés say anything more to Jun-hwan on the subject; already she had given too much away. “Just tell her Sister Portolés needs to parley.”
“I say again, I believe you are confused, Sister Portolés—I do not know this woman you speak of.”
“Thanks for the kaldi.” Portolés looked back to the distant fogbank, and Jun-hwan stepped around the table. In a low voice, so low Portolés barely heard him, King Jun-hwan said:
“There are others you could ask, sister.”
“I told you, I’m no good at riddles,” said Portolés, holding his gaze. Now, at last, there was something more than an impenetrable mirror meeting her eyes—eagerness.
“The schools of harpyfish swim farther and deeper than any creature in the Isles,” Jun-hwan said as he leaned down, popping open a hidden recess in the center of the table and retrieving a tiny, pink-lidded cream pitcher. “As deep as the Sunken Kingdom, some say. Those who drink of their essence are granted a deep communion with friend and foe alike, and stranger folk still. There is no deception in the realm of the harpies—we could share everything with one another, and know that our exchange was equal.”
Portolés took the miniature carafe and opened the hinged lid with her thumb. The oil within shimmered as black as the Gate in Diadem, into which all anathemas had to cast any devilish scraps the Papal
barbers had removed from their malformed bodies before first being admitted to the Dens. It smelled of kelp turned up on desolate spits of rock, and the draught sang to Portolés’s scarred tongue, setting her blunted teeth on edge…
“But would I remember a damn thing afterward?” Portolés smiled as she poured the harpy toxin over the balcony, into the sea far below. It hurt so good to refuse the temptation. “I’ve heard of your devil milk, King Jun-hwan, and politely decline the invitation.”
Jun-hwan hissed through his teeth; even for a highborn gentleman of the Isles that stuff must be worth a fortune. “I had hoped one of your descent would have a more enlightened view.”
“Hope isn’t really a dependable purview,” said Portolés, shaking out the last few drops before gingerly returning the ceramic vessel to the table. “Faith, well, that’s something you can fall back on, when hope doesn’t pan out.”
“There is war coming, sister, but not the one you’re expecting,” said Jun-hwan, his smile just a hair too wild for Portolés’s liking. “Your superiors in the Chain are busy as wastewasps with their preparations, even if they keep their plotting far from the ears of the wildborn they convert through mutilation. Or the queen, for that matter. You could have learned much, if you hadn’t stopped your ears with divine mud.”
“Divine mud, huh?” she said, already aching inside at her decision to dump out the drug—she always regretted the sins she had passed up more than those she had indulged. But she couldn’t risk revealing the weapon Queen Indsorith had entrusted her with, even for something as tempting as a taste of the black brine that flowed through the Sunken Kingdom. “Mud’s dependable, too. I put stock in the ground beneath my feet, even when it’s soft, rather than jumping over yon railing and hoping the sea air is more to my liking.”
“Good afternoon, Sister Portolés,” said King Jun-hwan, and two servants sprang out of the door like wooden dolls on a Cascadian cuckoo clock. “See that our guest and her, ah, prisoner are escorted directly back to their ship. They are in a haste to be away on other business.”
“Thanks again,” said Portolés, following the servants.
“And do give my regards to Empress Ryuki,” Jun-hwan called after her, which put Portolés in half a mind to actually sail straight to the capital—with her paperwork, she might actually be able to finagle an audience. But that wouldn’t do her any good, and would show the queen’s hand more than Portolés already had. Ah well, if nothing else she’d finally gotten to try kaldi, though as far as sins went that one hardly ranked.
CHAPTER
7
Plotting and executing a coup isn’t the sort of thing you can rush into willy-nilly, but Zosia thought she’d done an impressive job given her tight time frame. Better still, she got to spend some time catching up with Singh and properly meeting her children. The reunion almost made her happy to ride a week in the wrong bloody direction to get the revolution started in Thantifax, the targeted Dominion even farther out on the Souwest Arm than Zygnema. Almost.
Now, though, it was time to escape the city and let the Dull Kriss revolutionaries do all the heavy lifting. Past time, if she wanted to be pedantic.
Outside, in the narrow warrens of Thantifax’s streets, the fighting was well under way, the wattle walls of the temple shaking as another explosion tore through the city. Inside, Zosia took one more hard pull on the familiar pipe Singh had scared up for her, a poker-shaped briar piece she’d meticulously rusticated and stained to resemble a piece of Flintland frost coral. That had been a quarter century back, and it’d apparently been gathering dust on Singh’s pipe rack for the better part of a decade.
It hurt to know Maroto had pawned the pipe she had spent so many hours carving for him, but she was relieved he’d had the decency to sell it to another Villain. Knocking the bowl out against her thigh to make sure she didn’t set her purse on fire, she stowed it and shouldered her pack. Choplicker whined and scratched at the hollow altar in the back of the temple, no doubt peeved he wasn’t permitted more than a taste of all the desperation wafting off of the hidden orphans Zosia and Singh had led here just before the rebellion began in earnest.
“I’m going to stay and help,” said Singh, cinching her breastplate tight. “I understand if you’d prefer not to, and we can reconvene in—”
“I’m not hearing this, Chevaleresse,” said Zosia, expecting this bullshit but nevertheless perturbed at the aroma. “A deal is a deal is a deal, here as anywhere on the Star, or beyond, as far as I know. Don’t tell me Raniputri knights started reneging on their oaths while I was away.”
The barricaded doors shuddered, and not from another bomb. Idols teetered on their shelves, and the priestesses prayed all the louder as they lifted their writhing snakes toward the graven rafters. Singh tried to stare Zosia down. As fucking if.
“My oath was to help you only after you helped me, and until we can be sure Thantifax falls you haven’t fulfilled your end of the bargain.” Singh tucked the ends of her mustache under the chinstrap of her spiked helm. “My children—”
“Will win this war with their own blades,” said Zosia. “Or lose it, I don’t really care. I spent weeks planning the attacks with Masood, and wheedling your daughters’ allegiances to boot, which wasn’t part of the original agreement. Nor was laying the explosives myself, nor was herding up all those brats and shepherding them to this safehouse. Don’t think I’m too thick to realize we’re in the worst loyalist quarter of the damn city, either. Just getting out on the road to the Empire is going to involve a whole lot of killing. I haven’t bellyached once, Singh, so don’t you dare try this shit on me now, just so you can gloat over the success of your brood.”
“It’s not gloating,” said Singh sternly, then softened. “Well, maybe a little. It’s just so good to see the family come together for once. Give me this boon, Zosia, and I’ll see that a hundred riders accompany us to the Crimson Empire—surely that’s worth dallying another day, to do what you do best?”
“If you’d asked me outright…” said Zosia, looking to Keun-ju. The Virtue Guard shrugged, and with shaking fingers cupped one of Singh’s wasps to his neck, shivering as it administered its dreamy kiss. He still looked peaked from the bloodbath of the morning. Apparently for all his fighting of cantaloupe devils or whatever back home, shedding human blood wasn’t something he was used to. Give him time. “Curse me for a sentimental old fool. Two hundred Raniputri dragoons, Singh, and not a hump in the bunch—we’ll need real riders where we’re going, not loafers or greenies still figuring out their straw foot from their right.”
“You didn’t even make me say please,” said Singh as the doors began to buckle. “Soft as a kitten’s belly, as I’ve always said.”
“Softer than that, but only for you, sister,” said Zosia, whistling to Choplicker. The dog looked up at her but made no move to leave the shrine. “Hey there, old buddy! Hey! You ready to be a good doggie? Maybe not just sit there and watch me get knocked the fuck out for the third time in a row?”
Choplicker beat his tail on the floor in time with the wailing of the snake-handling priestesses, his thin canine lips pulled back to show his full array of slimy yellow teeth.
“Yeah yeah, what’s in it for you?” Zosia brandished her war hammer and strutted to the rattling door. “Come on, then, might as well feed the dog if we’re not leaving right away.”
“Thank you, sister,” said Singh. “We’ll be on the road in two days, at the farthest.”
“You hear that, Keun-ju?” said Zosia. “You want to see your Princess Pumpkin again, you’ll get off your bee-stung ass and use that two-tiger of yours.”
“Four-tiger,” said Keun-ju, all energy now that the wasp was in him. “Let them bring their sharpest steel and their fiercest devils. Nothing, not even their pagan gods, will stop me from meeting my bride.”
“Yeah, well, pagan gods have their ways of reuniting lovers that aren’t reliant on all parties being alive,” muttered Zosia. “First things first: we figh
t until the fighting’s done, have a victory feast with the chevaleresse’s family, ride out with our new cavalry, and deliver you to your girlie. That order.”
The doors splintered wide, an arm wriggled through and shoved the bar open, and then raging loyalists poured into the temple even faster than the sunlight at their backs. Time for Zosia to do what Zosia did best.
If the Thantifax loyalists had been sensible and led their attack on the temple with a volley of arrows or simply rolled in a bomb, things might have turned out very differently. To be fair, they only expected to find a gaggle of priestesses and refugees, so Zosia could forgive them their rash tactics. Most of the charging loyalists wielded short katars, but a few had khandas much like the heavy serrated sword flashing in Singh’s hand.
None wielded their blades as well as the chevaleresse, however, as was made intensely clear when the first man was deftly deflected by Singh, her sword bouncing off his and cleaving neatly through his finely ornamented helmet. When one of his fellows tried to seize the moment and hack into Singh’s exposed armpit he discovered that Keun-ju’s thin four-tiger sword might not pierce a bronze helm but could certainly glide through an eye-slit and skewer a skull. Zosia covered the chevaleresse’s other flank, the insatiable pick on the back of her hammer punching through a breastplate and sending the woman who wore it tumbling back into her fellows. Despite their superior numbers, the flood of raging loyalists broke upon the three defenders and then fell back like a retreating wave rebuked by a seawall.
They were well armed and armored, these warriors, most wearing the deep purple and violent green of minor Thantifax nobility, and not as foolhardy as they’d initially seemed—with Zosia and company pressing their advantage, the bulk of the loyalists quickly pulled back to the street. Their fallen and falling comrades slowed Zosia, Keun-ju, and Singh just long enough for the loyalists to pass around a stack of chakram, and as the three rebels burst out of the temple doors they were greeted by half a dozen grinning bastards brandishing the wide, razor-edged rings. An especially cocky fucker was twirling one on her finger.
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