by Matt Larkin
“Handmaid,” someone shouted at her.
Chandi stumbled as she spotted the man. The potential from a year ago that rode the Warak Ngendog. Hard to forget him. Naresh. He now wore the cerulean uniform of the Arun Guard, a sleeveless baju, through which she could see the glittering sunburst tattoo on his upper arms and shoulders.
Travel sack slung over his shoulder, he approached her.
“Where are you off to in such a hurry, handmaid?”
Cinders and chamber pots.
“The empress is giving birth. I have to get back to the palace.”
“His Radiance will have a son? Glad to hear it. But what’s her handmaid doing away from the palace?”
Chandi scanned the Igni and Solar vendors that crowded the harbor. A fine looking teahouse bearing the sign of Rangda Demon Queen. No, not likely. She needed a ship? Right. Sure. “I needed to find a gift.”
Naresh cocked his head. “Why not the Market District, then?”
“I needed… I mean I was frazzled, not thinking clearly. My mistress is giving birth.”
Naresh watched her a moment, before shrugging. “All right, handmaid. We’ll both get gifts here. Best hurry.” He waved her to follow.
Chandi sighed under her breath, but fell in behind the Solar. At least the Guardsman didn’t window shop long. He selected a pair of embroidered silks from Mait. Maitian and Tianxian traders came to Puradvipa, and Solars brought the goods from all the Isles to Kasusthali.
“Charge it to the Arun Guard, by Naresh,” he said.
“Yes, Pak Naresh,” the Igni said.
Naresh handed her one of the silks. Soft and lush, with golden embroidery not so different from Lunar songket. A fine gift that would have cost her a heavy pearl. And why shouldn’t she spend the Arun Guard’s coffers?
Naresh had already started for the tube down into the city. She couldn’t afford to rouse more suspicion, so she followed. The Guardsman set a brisk pace. Only all those nights running through the city kept Chandi from growing winded.
“I haven’t seen you around since the wedding,” Chandi said, then regretted it.
He glanced over his shoulder without slowing. “I was training.”
And becoming Arun Guard. The greatest enemy of all Chandra’s children. The greatest threat to the Lunar Empire.
She followed him through the Civic District without speaking. Chandi had long since ceased to wonder at the underwater fountain before the palace. The gate guards paid them no mind as they entered the great hall. Kakudmi sat upon his throne, fretting. The Radiant Queen stood beside him, seeming to restrain him with her presence.
Naresh approached the pair and Chandi took the chance to break away. She ran up to the fourth floor where the Solars had given her and Ratna adjoining rooms, taking the stairs two at a time.
Ratna’s screams echoed down the hall. Still in labor. Chandi swung open the bamboo door and slipped inside the room. A young midwife already held the baby, was drying it. Ratna crawled across the floor, crying, trying to reach the midwife.
Chandi turned. The midwife wasn’t drying the child. She was suffocating it. The woman saw her, and their gazes met for an instant. Then she flung the baby at the wall.
Chandi had drawn her Moon Blessing and launched herself on instinct. She caught the infant, wrapped it in her arms as she collided with the wall, and shifted her gravity to lessen the impact.
The midwife jumped from the window to the sea just below. Chandi rushed to Ratna and put the baby in her arms. She lifted her cousin to the bed before she called for help.
Before anyone arrived, Chandi had already run out the window. Gravity shifted to the wall, she ran down to the sea. The midwife had swum to a patio at sea level and slipped into a lounge. Chandi ran along the side of the building, drawing her Blessings harder, making herself faster. She leapt from the building to the patio and dashed past startled servants.
The midwife’s wet trail descended stairs to the third floor. Chandi ran, leaping down the steps three, four, five at a time. Faster. She leapt to the wall at a corner and ran along it.
Fruit and sweet vendors clogged the third floor. The midwife darted around stalls in the open central lounge. Chandi dashed around several, almost colliding with a man selling gudeg.
She was losing her.
Chandi dove right through the next set of stalls. Goods and the owners scattered in all directions.
“Stop!” a palace guard called as she neared.
Chandi grabbed his hand when he reached for her. With a twist she stepped behind him and flipped him. She’d dashed around the corner before he hit the floor.
The door to a guest room swung back and forth. Chandi raced in to see the midwife running for a servant’s exit. With her speed, Chandi reached her before the woman had gone three steps. A sweep kick had the midwife on the ground.
“Who sent you?” Chandi demanded.
When the woman didn’t answer, Chandi punched her in the gut, careful to release her Blessing first.
“What kind of monster murders a newborn?” she said, punching the woman in the face. “You think Surya wants that?”
The woman sneered. “Surya?”
Not a Solar. “Igni?” Chandi asked. The woman’s hesitation answered her.
The door swung open before she could say more. Naresh, keris in hand. He took in the scene in an instant.
Chandi stepped off the midwife, and Naresh hauled the woman to her feet with one hand.
“Well done, handmaid,” he said.
“My name’s Chandi.”
Naresh shoved the woman forward toward the palace guards gathered by the door. “I’ll remember that.”
CHAPTER SIX
Though the Igni District featured a crystal dome like the rest of Kasusthali, there the similarity ended. Instead of glistening white-gold stone, the buildings were rattan shanties. Only the oldest areas featured stone, and even there it was a lifeless gray stone.
The wooden structures looked like any ramshackle village in Swarnadvipa. Except that here, sunlight passing through the water above cast Chandi in a dancing pattern of light and shadow.
The Ignis stared at her. What would prompt these harmless people to murder a newborn? Chandi eyed each with care. She needed to find their leader before the Arun Guard arrived, blades in hand.
Ragged children rushed by her, playing with an ultop. The blowgun-like toy cracked like a whip, but caused no other harm. Chandi refused to let the children see her jump.
A year in the Solar city, but she’d never seen such poverty before. These people ate enough to stay fit, true, and if not cast next to the majesty of Kasusthali they might not seem out of place. Was that why the Solars secluded them? Or did the Ignis seclude themselves?
As near as she could tell, the fire priest Semar led them. Officially they had no government, but they looked to their priests in all things.
Finding the Shrine of Sacred Flame in the maze-like District proved no easy task. By the time she located the building—stone, like the rest of the old section—the priest waited outside, by the brazier.
“Semar?”
The man nodded. Tall, with hair just longer than hers, and bright blue eyes unlike any she’d seen. Foreign ancestor?
“Welcome, Chandi.”
Chandi bristled. She hadn’t given her name to any of those she asked for directions. These people had tried to murder Revati. Ratna had told her the baby’s name in a fit, as if fearing something more might happen before she could name her daughter. And didn’t Ignis use the Solar titles of respect?
Empu Baradah had posted guards all around the woman and child. And Malin was there now. The Macan Gadungan would never let so much as a mosquito near them.
“I need words with you, priest.”
Semar nodded, but led her not back to the Shrine, but to the Circuit. The circular tube connected the Igni District and other secondary districts to the main tubes. Though fear had kept her in the palace the first month, af
ter that, Chandi had often taken to running the Circuit at night. Long after most Solars slept, she ran through the darkened tubes, until she knew her way by the undersea landscape around her. Nine districts composed Kasusthali—eight beneath the domes, and the Harbor District, where Semar seemed to be leading her.
Chandi shook her head. “One of your people tried to murder the empress’s baby this morning.” Should she have been more subtle? Rangda take subtlety. These were murderers.
“Some say such things. Most who say them, say them quietly.”
Chandi sped up to keep pace as he entered the sloping tube that lead up to the harbor. “Don’t expect courtesy. I’ve a mind to turn you over to the Arun Guard.” Or kill him. “But I’m willing to hear your reasons first. Justify yourself, if you can. Where are we going? Would you look at me, dammit?”
Semar clasped his hands behind his back, but did glance over his shoulder at her. The Solars would come, of course. “You think it necessary for me to justify myself, even if I did not order the woman to kill the child?”
As they entered the Harbor District, she spotted the Serendibian captain who had brought her here a year ago. Bendurana. The man followed a flock of parakeets, parrots, doves, kingfishers, nightjars and other birds she couldn’t identify. A rainbow flock, soaring in impossible intersecting circles over one of the piers.
Despite her desire to speak with Semar, Chandi followed the birds to the pier, Semar trailing behind. They drew, just as the birds themselves seemed drawn by forces beyond themselves. She stood beside the Serendibian captain, but he never saw her. Hundreds of people had gathered, cheering at the display. The birds seemed to follow the command of a woman, an Arun Guardswoman by the cerulean baju. Her long black hair blew with the breeze, glistening in the sunlight. She stood, arms outstretched to the sky and eyes on the birds, and the flock responded to her every gesture.
“The Solars revel in the imperial birth,” Semar said. “Most will never know how close to tragedy they came today. How would this crowd react, were you to tell them?”
Then, in a heartbeat, it all stopped. The birds flew off in their own directions, as if waking from a dream. Whatever beautiful, unreal dream the Arun Guardswoman had worked on them. The people dispersed like the birds, flocking to vendors selling gudeg or other sweets for the celebration.
Chandi followed Semar into the Rangda Teahouse, pausing at the inauspicious name. The windows were thrown wide for the last days of the dry season, casting the room in streaks of light. Bamboo walls separated the rows of tables on each side of the teahouse, creating the illusion of privacy. Scents of tealeaves, spiced satay, and cloves filled the room.
Semar took a seat at a table. The Igni owner brought them tea without a word from the fire priest.
Chandi glared first at the teacup, then at the priest who offered it. “I want answers.”
“You haven’t decided on the proper questions, yet. What do you think would happen if the War King’s grandchild died on the watch of the Arun Guard? How well would the empress take that? How well would the War King?”
The Fifth War. If the Solars allowed Revati to be murdered, Rahu would have to respond. He could never allow such travesty to visit his own family without response.
“You want the Lunars to attack the Solars again?”
“Why would I want that? After four wars, who of us is better off? The Solars said it was your people that broke the Pact. But they cast out the Ignis as well. More than a thousand years have passed, and who is better off? Maybe the Solars, though they have lost much as well. Certainly not the Ignis. Once the three dynasties kept the Astral Temple in trust together. Now? Now the Ignis are servants to the Solars because they held to their traditions. Because they wouldn’t convert to Solar ways.”
Chandi blew out a breath through pursed lips, watching her teacup. Unlikely the owner had poisoned her tea. She sipped it, let the warmth fill her. Maybe Semar had nothing to do with what happened. Maybe the midwife had acted alone. The Solars would see her pay. And if Semar hadn’t ordered her, to murder him would make her as bad as that woman.
The Igni proprietor brought peanut satay, though still Semar had ordered nothing. Chandi looked from the dish to the priest. A Lunar dish. Without taking his eyes from her face, Semar pulled a piece of the satay off the stick, dipped it in the peanut sauce, and ate it.
Her chase through the palace had left her famished. Chandi pulled a piece of the satay off the stick. “You want the temple, too.” The peanut sauce didn’t quite have the kick Swarnadvipan sauce did, but close enough for Solar lands.
“What use is warring with Solars and Lunars over a building that was left in the care of all three dynasties? You think because the Ignis live like this, scorned by the Lunars for their weakness, disdained by the Solars for supposed inferiority, that such a life means there is nothing more to lose? There is always more to lose, Chandi.”
Chandi rose, licking the peanut sauce from her lips. “Ignis might not want war with the Solars, but you all but admitted many would welcome war between Solars and Lunars. If I feel so much as a tingle of a threat to Revati or Ratna, we’ll find out what you have left to lose.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Arun Guard waiting in the hall did little to reassure Malin of Ratna’s safety. The girl hadn’t wanted him there for the birth. Just as well. Didn’t want to be there. Still, his absence had almost cost her daughter’s life.
Malin paced the shadows of Chandi’s room. Ratna wanted to rest alone with her daughter. For the first phase she hadn’t let him leave her sight. But exhaustion, fear, they took their tolls.
So instead he crouched in darkness, muscles itching for the sun to set. Itching for vengeance he couldn’t afford to take. While Chandi walked the streets alone, looking for murderers.
He’d sworn not to fail them again. Malin cracked his neck, left then right. Rahu shouldn’t have sent them here. Shouldn’t have sent his own daughter into a nest of vipers. As soon as Chandi found what they needed, Malin would pull the girls out. Revati, too, now. Couldn’t forget his newest charge.
Footsteps, soft. Chandi’s scent preceded her into her room. The girl tossed a purse of coins on her dresser, then dropped back onto her bed. Her hair fell about her face, splayed over the silk sheets he had bought her, imported from Au Lac. Chandi didn’t look up as he approached, but jolted as his shadow fell over her face, launching herself into a fighting stance on top of the bed.
“Malin. Not a good idea sneaking up on me today.” Chandi stepped off her bed and walked to her window.
“You shouldn’t have gone after that assassin. I could have tracked her scent. Instead I had to track down witnesses, make sure no one saw you use your Blessings.”
“And did they?”
“No one that knew what they were seeing. It was still foolish.”
Chandi glared, then turned her back on him to walk to her dresser. Though short and slim, she had an athletic frame. Her soft face belied what a fierce opponent she could be. If Ratna had half Chandi’s skill, even weak as her Blessings were, she might not need Chandi as a protector. Of course, Malin wouldn’t want to be here without Chandi, either.
Chandi retrieved the sandalwood jewelry box. After removing the false bottom, she handed him crumpled scrolls. Malin glanced over them. Ship deployments. Trade routes.
Pirate cabals, given bits of this, might weaken the Solar trade empire. Malin often found himself forced to deal with their ilk. Sometimes Moon Scion Houses sanctioned the cabals. Sometimes rogue Scions, like Malin’s so-called friend Asamanja went into business for themselves. Unscrupulus, savage, cheap. But useful. Of course, Malin would never share it all. Not only because he needed the edge over the damn pirate. The man would use it too fully, and the Solars would change their tactics. No, he’d feed Asamanja just enough information to weaken the Solars without raising their suspicions.
Malin stuffed the scrolls into a case and tossed it aside.
“The Ignis claim the
woman acted alone,” Chandi said before he could ask. “Maybe the fire priest tells the truth.” The girl ran her fingers over the toyaks lying on her dresser. “They tried to kill Revati. Could have killed Ratna, too.”
The Macan Gadungan in him roared for vengeance. It tore through him even if no else could hear it, sending tremors through his limbs. Protect and avenge.
“What do you want to do?” he asked.
Chandi grimaced. “Why not turn them in to the Solars? The woman will burn for treason, but if she had conspirators, maybe they deserve to join her. Even the fire priest said the Ignis wouldn’t mind seeing another war between the Solars and us.”
Malin paced the room. Every word she said was true. He twitched his jaw, willing the tiger spirit to quiet. “You should pursue alliance with the Ignis.”
Chandi scoffed. “Why? What could we gain from alliance? Why the interest in the Solar slaves?”
“Slaves want to be free.” His tone sent stumbling away. Malin knew what it was to face servitude. He’d faced it too long. His brethren suffered under it. His children would be born to it.
“You want to start a rebellion?”
“The Ignis form the basis of the Solar workforce and much of the merchant class, your own reports said so. By relying on slaves, an empire can forget how to do its own work. Without them, the Solar Empire would fall in on itself. If we work with them, we can ensure we’re in position to strike when the time comes.”
“You want to work with the people that tried to kill someone you’re sworn to protect?” Chandi slumped onto her bed and stared at the ceiling. “How can you trust them?”
“You want to go home? You may have to set aside your desire for vengeance. Just make sure they know Revati and Ratna are not to be harmed. Make sure they know the consequences if harm does come to either. Earn their trust.”
After watching the ceiling in silence, Chandi answered. “I do want to go home. You’re right. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Malin started to reach for her, though she still didn’t look at him. “You don’t have to find out.”