by JC Kang
“Do not underestimate the princess, Your Highness,” the Scorpion said. “She could very well be Madura’s undoing if you do.”
Dhananad held her gaze. “That is why you will follow her moves, especially if the Teleri will not.”
The Ayuri music still echoed in Kaiya’s ears. Her arms and legs screamed to move to the beat of her guards’ marching boots. Her energy should’ve been drained after such an epic performance; but instead, she felt invigorated, as her vitality surged against her corporeal bonds.
The Loves of Prince Aralas was the longest solo dance she knew. The entire suite, when performed by an ensemble of dancers, lasted nearly two hours; the abridged solo version took ten minutes and tested the limits of her endurance.
Yet when the music had started, Master Sabal’s lessons on the barge came to her. She lost all volition as the melody guided her body’s movements and tangibly held her up in positions she had never achieved before. Each enunciation of a musical note pulled or pushed her, while her classical training allowed her to effortlessly articulate perfect postures.
When at last she had eased to a stop, having decided to leave out the tragic ending in favor of one of bliss and fascination, over two hours had passed— impossibly longer than the stamina of the stoutest warrior. Never in her life had she performed such a perfect dance.
She thought back to her audience, all enthralled by her, lulled into complacent reverie. Even the Bovyan, who as a race cared little for mundane pastimes, watched with rapt interest. She’d formed a connection, not with her voice as Lord Xu had taught her, but through motion. The beating of their hearts, nudged into harmony with hers. Just as Ayana had done with her elven magic to the Teleri spy.
Only the Golden Scorpion had seemed bored, and, like Master Sabal’s naga when he fought, her mask had emitted a soft blue light during the dance. The woman had resisted the connection, shrugged off the enchantment. Perhaps Paladins could do the same. If Madura indeed had two thousand of the Golden Scorpions... What an ingenious move it had been to recruit them.
Kaiya gasped. She’d forgotten to ask to see an image of Grand Vizier Rumiya, the man who had formed up the Golden Scorpion Corps.
CHAPTER 35:
A Prince by Any Other Name
After several days in Vyara City, Kaiya had grown accustomed to the bustling cacophony of its main boulevards. It made the district around the Ankiran maharaja’s villa seem quiet and eerie. It was as if they had crossed a bridge into a different city.
Worn boots clopped on the uneven pavement as several dozen soldiers in threadbare uniforms marched around the weathered white walls. The villa’s crumbling minarets cast shadows across a fetid canal, making the entire compound appear dark and cold. She tightened the sari around her shoulders, as if it would provide warmth.
In a city of spotless buildings, manicured boulevards, and sparkling canals, it seemed like they were visiting a castle that had been held under siege for the year. Poor Prince Hardeep. He’d come to this ramshackle building to recover from his wounds a year before. From his letters, he was still staying in Vyara City.
Maybe she would see him today. The lotus jewel felt warm at her waist. Her heart quickened and her palms sweated. Had her feelings for him been there all this time, tucked away by Zheng Ming’s attention?
A steward in a faded blue kurta guided them into a receiving room which spoke of desperate times. Light bauble lamps were three-quarters shuttered, perhaps to avoid illuminating the Ankiran royal family’s plight.
The steward pointed her toward a rickety-looking wood chair. Kaiya’s bare feet slid across the thinning rug. She gingerly settled on the edge, worried it might collapse beneath even her light weight.
Jie, despite her even slimmer build, eyed her own seat dubiously. Though invited to sit, Chen Xin and Ma Jun remained standing, either from protocol or their own doubts about the chairs.
A girl in Ankiran blue livery, if it could be called that, brought a large bowl with cracked enamel, filled with roti flatbread. She placed it on a low table with splotchy varnish.
Several guards watched her from the periphery of the room.
“Dian-xia,” the half-elf whispered in the Hua tongue. “How much clout do you think the Ankiran maharaja has?”
Kaiya glared at her Insolent Retainer, cowing her into silence. Let her believe it was all about alliance building. Soon, very soon...
The valet called out from the entrance, “His Majesty, Maharaja Bahir II.”
Kaiya turned back to the doors. An old man strode into the room, shoulders square and head held high. Just behind him walked a youth whose face looked not much older than Jie, but whose broad shoulders and barrel chest could have belonged to a fierce warrior. He entered the room cradling a middle-aged woman’s hand in the crook of his arm. A dozen guards flanked them as they walked to the front of the room and sat.
“Greetings, Princess Kaiya of Cathay,” the maharaja said. Like the boy, he wore a royal blue kurta with a gold lotus emblazoned on the left breast.
Kaiya pressed her hands together and bowed her head. “Thank you for receiving me, Your Eminence.”
The maharaja motioned toward the woman. “This is Queen Shariya.”
The queen shifted the blue sari on her shoulder. Her eyes narrowed to slits. “We are something of outcasts to Vyara City’s high society. To what do we owe this royal visit?”
Cold and blunt. Kaiya sucked her breath in. “I bear greetings from my father, the Emperor of Cathay.”
The queen’s tone went from unfriendly to downright hostile. “Does he wish to gloat at Ankira’s occupation? Your trade mission’s decision thirty-two years ago to sell guns to Madura doomed us.”
Guilt yanked at Kaiya’s heart. The ugly side of unfettered mercantilism enriched Hua at the expense of others. She would’ve never considered the implications if not for meeting with Prince Hardeep. She folded her hands in her lap and bowed low. “I... We—”
The queen thrust an obtuse finger at her. “And there you sit wearing fine silk and the latest fashions and rubbing our misfortune in our faces. I should have my guards hold you down and rip your dress from you and share you many times over, before cutting your pretty head off and sending it back to avaricious Cathay on a spear so that your Emperor will know how Ankira suffers because of his selfish decisions.” The queen panted to catch her breath. Tears ran down her weathered cheeks.
A chill raced up Kaiya’s spine. Embassy robes ruffled as the imperial guards tensed. Jie reached into the band of her langa. They were hopelessly outnumbered.
Fixing his attention on Kaiya, the boy raised an open hand. He spoke in a deep voice which matched his build but not his face. “Please calm down, Grandmother. You cannot blame the Princess of Cathay for something that happened before she was even born. Princess Kaiya, please forgive the queen. All of her sons were lost in defense of our homeland, her daughters married off to secure alliances which never materialized.”
Lost? All of her sons? Kaiya met his gaze. The lump in her throat strangled her words, and she had to clear it before continuing. “Does Prince Hardeep still live?”
The queen burst into sobs. The boy prince looked at her with sympathetic eyes.
Oh Heavens, no. Kaiya’s spine might have been made of jelly, the way her body wanted to fold in on itself. “I am sorry for your loss.” Her loss. She slipped off her chair to her knees and touched her fingers to the rug. Her retainers dropped to a knee as well. “I was very touched by my meeting with him two years ago.”
Queen Shariya wiped her eyes and cocked her head.
“That is impossible,” the boy said. His brow creased.
Impossible? A presumptuous kid she just met was judging her emotions! Kaiya straightened. “He came to our palace to request an alliance against Madura.”
The queen choked on tears. “Two years ago would have been too late, anyway.”
The boy whisked his hand to quiet his grandmother. He nodded at Kaiya to continue.
/> “We exchanged correspondence up until just a month ago,” Kaiya said.
Queen Shariya pursed her lips and snorted.
The boy shook his head. “That is just not possible.”
The gall of the little brat, questioning her emotions. Heat flared in Kaiya’s cheeks. She reached into the band of her langa and withdrew the lotus jewel. It pulsed with a warmth in her hands. “He gave me this lotus jewel.”
The queen and the boy gaped at it. The maharaja leaned forward, squinting. Perhaps now they would believe her.
At last, the boy spoke in a low monotone. “That is not a lotus jewel. I don’t know what it is, but it is not a lotus jewel.”
Kaiya stared at the trinket in her hand. For two years, she’d gazed at it, stroked it, held it to her heart many times, all holding on to the memory of her prince. “But what about Prince Hardeep? When did he die?”
The prince cocked his head. “My uncle Hardeep died in infancy. Before you or I were born.”
The world spun and Kaiya thrust a hand back against the chair for support. This could not be right. She’d seen the royal registries in the foreign ministry archive herself. No death date for Prince Hardeep had ever been entered. He’d been there, before her eyes.
Who had visited her?
And if Hardeep was dead, who had she been exchanging letters with?
Jie had seen Prince Hardeep from a distance at Wailian Castle two years before, but was curious to see what he was really like. She knew Princess Kaiya had a thing for transparent men like Young Lord Zheng...but a ghost?
She laid a hand on the princess’ shoulder. Her trembling body radiated an unnatural heat as she staggered to her feet and slumped back into the chair. Which creaked, but by an act of the Heavens did not collapse into a tangle of firewood and princess.
Jie’s focus shifted from the maharaja to the queen and back. The woman crumpled onto herself, crying inconsolably. The old man’s face might as well have been frozen, like a Moquan brother under interrogation, revealing less than a Golden Scorpion’s mask.
The boy was the real king, setting up the old man as the primary target for Madura. Though no doubt, the child was no safer than the decoy. Which was why the royal treasury must have been strained to finance so many guards protect the sole heir to the Ankiran throne.
No point in revealing her suspicions. Jie turned to the old man. “Your Eminence, I am sorry to ask in light of the sad circumstances, but an impostor with full credentials visited Princess Kaiya back then, requesting assistance in your fight against Madura. Who from Ankira authorized the visit?”
The decoy remained impassive, but the boy stroked his beardless chin. “I do not recall any missions to Cathay. Two years ago, it would not have mattered anyway. It could have been anyone looking to make mischief.”
Princess Kaiya found her voice. “He had pale blue eyes, unlike any other Ayuri I have ever seen.”
The boy maharaja exchanged looks with the others and the soldiers murmured among themselves.
His grandmother set her hand so the pinkie and index finger stuck out, the mudra for warding evil. “Only one Ayuri in history has had blue eyes, though he disappeared thirty-two years ago. Madura’s Grand Vizier, Rumiya.”
Jie hesitantly looked back at the princess.
Her knuckles were white around the armrests. Tears glistened in her eyes. She mouthed painting, but only a gasp came out.
Jie bowed toward the old man. “Do you have a painting of Rumiya?”
The boy motioned toward a female servant and pointed toward the entrance. “Go to the library. Retrieve the Chronology of Madura.”
The girl disappeared and the room fell into a nervous hush, broken only by the princess’ and Queen Grandmother’s occasional sniffs. Jie used the awkward silence to ponder the bigger picture. If Prince Hardeep was really the evil wizard Rumiya, where had he been for thirty years before visiting the princess? And who had she been corresponding with? Oh, to be as good as Tian at drawing connections!
Tian. The answer dawned on her and she turned to draw the princess’ attention, only to find her looking back, mouthing the same name.
Peng. It fit what Tian had said: several years after the fact, he realized Lord Peng had set him up to take the blame for the horrible mistake that got him banished. Peng was a snake to be sure, and this was certainly the same sort of vicious prank that inevitably hurt others.
Unless Peng had more sinister reasons beyond pure maliciousness.
When the servant returned, the boy motioned for her to deliver the heavy bundle of scrolls into the princess’ hands.
Kaiya sat in her room at the Hua embassy, fingers trembling as she flipped through the sheaf of yellowing scrolls the Ankirans had loaned her. Her focus settled on an entry.
When the Hellstorm and Long Winter laid low the first great human empires, dynamic individuals forged new nations with strategic skill, diplomatic acumen, or the sheer force of will. In the region that would become the Kingdom of Madura, that individual was Madukant, who had been a captain in the Ayuri Empire’s armies.
A masterful military tactician, Madukant made up for his lack of charisma with a combination of brute force and cutthroat political maneuvering. He ensured his soldiers survived the Long Winter by plundering the land of all its value. He set himself up first as a regional warlord. After absorbing nominal friends and crushing enemies, he declared himself maharaja.
His descendants inherited his ambition but not his skill, and had barely expanded the borders of the original Kingdom for a century and a half. That all changed when the sorcerer Rumiya rose to Grand Vizier.
See Illustration on the next page.
Kaiya tightened her hand into a fist. Was it worth seeing what this Rumiya looked like? It was bad enough she wasted two years of her youth pining for an imposter. If that imposter turned out to be an evil wizard...
She closed her eyes and flipped to the next scroll. With a deep breath, she looked down.
The full-color painting captured her Hardeep’s dark bronze features just as she had remembered. How often had she dreamed about the line of his jaw and the thin curled beard? And of course, the luminous blue eyes which saw her.
The image blurred as hot tears clouded her vision. He had never truly loved her. Her own genuine feelings, wasted. A single drop splattered on the painting, causing the rust-red in his kurta to run.
Why had Rumiya come to Hua? Surely not to free Ankira, as he claimed. Why the interest in her music and the Dragon Scale Lute? And why had he rescued her from Wailian Castle?
Kaiya dabbed the tears, grateful for the solitude of her room. With magic involved, there was one person who might be able to tell her more. She unwound Lord Xu’s magic mirror from its silk wrapping.
Her reverse reflection gazed back at her, eyes rimmed in red. It would not do to let Xu see her like this.
After a few minutes, she cleared her throat. “Jie, please bring me some water.”
Presently, the door swung open and the half-elf slunk in, a decanter in hand. With a rare look of sisterly concern, she sucked on her lower lip. A squeak escaped when she opened her mouth to say something, but she then fell silent.
The very fact that Jie had actually done something handmaidenly, without protest, made Kaiya feel a little better. She flashed a bittersweet smile. “Close the door behind you, Jie. I want you to be privy to this conversation.”
“Conversation?” Jie raised an eyebrow, but turned and did as she was told.
Kaiya waved her hand over the mirror. “Lord Xu, please answer me.” She waited until her impatience got the better of her. “Lord Xu?”
At last, her own reflection faded and the ageless elf shimmered into view. He peered back with half-lidded eyes, and his hair looked as if birds had recently nested in it. “Dian-xia. How may I be of service?”
“What can you tell me about Madura’s Grand Vizier Rumiya?” Her voice choked on the man’s name.
Xu yawned and scratched his head. “He
claimed he would expand Madura to Hua’s Great Wall. But Madura spread too fast, and its armies were stretched too thin, suppressing rebellions in its north and defending the east against the Paladins.” His brow furrowed.
“Then what?” Kaiya prompted.
Xu eyed her for a second. “When the Dragon Avarax awoke from a thousand years of sleep, many of the Paladins stationed at Madura’s border redeployed to the edge of the Dragonlands. It allowed Madura to resume its northward expansion into Ankira. However, Rumiya was not around to see his dreams realized.”
Not around? “Where did he go?”
Xu shrugged.
A shrug? Kaiya glared at him through the mirror. “Rumiya visited me as Prince Hardeep. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Xu’s brows scrunched together. “I know a lot, young lady, but I did not know it was him. He might have cloaked his energy signature. From what I know, his magic resembled the sorcery of the Aksumi humans, which in itself is beyond the capability of an Ayuri human. And much more powerful. No human should wield so much power.”
Kaiya sighed. Xu supposedly knew everything. Could do virtually anything. Yet now, he told her no more than the scrolls.
Xu looked beyond her. “Half-elf, you are smarter than you look, I’m sure. Use that pretty little head to piece together everything you know. A lot happened thirty-two years ago...”
Why did Xu always speak in riddles? Kaiya started to complain when his image faded out, revealing her own perplexed expression.
CHAPTER 36:
Titles Bestowed, Titles Earned
From his command tent near the cove entrance, Zheng Ming counted his blessings. Had he not received the imperial missive to return to the capital, he would’ve boarded the Golden Phoenix and been trapped after Peng’s men captured it. The dead bodies of sailors caught on board bobbed in the harbor, a feast for the birds, victims of Peng’s brutality.
Now, by order of the acting Tianzi, Ming was elevated to Dajiang and tasked with the immediate recapture of the flagship. He examined a rough map of the cove and its surrounding bluffs. With Princess Kaiya’s escort of a hundred imperial guards, joined by a thousand infantrymen with a hundred guns, they had superior numbers. Yet despite what Prince Kai-Wu might think, numbers alone wouldn’t prevail in this situation. If only he had the services of the Tianzi’s mysterious agents, he could send them aboard under the cover of darkness.