While people drifted in and out of the garden areas, their hazy shadows began to lengthen. Men and women fought; some lost, some won, but there never seemed to be a loss of dignity. The aromas of foods caught my senses when the wind remained calm and I considered getting something to eat.
I was about to ask Leana if she, too, would like a snack, but paused upon seeing her expression of intense focus as she looked to her left, across the hundreds of faces in the stand.
‘Is everything all right?’ I asked.
‘No. There is a man, approximately your height and build, though of a slightly paler complexion, moving ever-closer to Nambu. He has been watching her for some time – though I cannot say for how long precisely. Long enough that I have noticed, and I can confirm he does not look trustworthy.’
‘I can’t quite make him out . . .’ I tried to follow her gaze, but she quite rightly did not want to point at him in case he spotted us.
‘He is standing under the banner pole nearest the lower step, looking away from the events.’
‘Oh yes, there he is.’ The man was tall with blond hair, and a gaunt face, wearing what looked to be a fitted leather breastplate and a black cloak.
‘We should probably get a bit closer.’
No sooner had I spoken, when the crowd all rose and applauded as another pair of finalists – two bare-chested and enormous wrestlers – moved before the stand and stomped their feet into the grassy mud opposite each other.
‘Go quickly,’ I urged, and we shoved our way through the great and good of Koton, apologizing as we went.
We were nearing the banner pole where we had seen the man, but he had now moved.
‘He is higher up,’ Leana said, ‘nearer the queen.’
‘No, the queen is further down there.’ I pointed to where she was speaking with the wrestlers. ‘He’s going after Nambu.’
We changed course and headed right for him, but he was using the opportunity of the moment to move quickly up the steps of the stand, right towards where Nambu was seated and to where the queen was returning.
Leana vanished amid the throng as she sprinted nimbly towards him, leaving me to continue ungracefully pushing my way there.
I caught a glimpse of his leap towards Nambu.
Leana intercepted him and engaged in close-quarter combat. A scream came from the crowd. People turned their attention to the two individuals fighting on the upper step of the stand, pushing each other against the waist-high stone wall that was between them and a forty-foot drop.
I reached Nambu just as the eunuch, Brell, ushered her to safety.
First Leana disabled the attacker’s knife arm by smacking his wrists repeatedly against the wall until the blade fell over the side. Then, while pinning down his wrist, she stamped sideways into his stomach before slamming his head upwards with her knee. Still he attempted to fight back, losing all sense of control now as he flailed his arms. The crowd watched, curiously silent, as Leana finished him off with blows to his legs.
As if realizing that he would be captured, he leapt head first over the side of the stand. With a collective shriek, the crowd, myself among their mass, surged towards the wall and peered over to see if he had survived.
The man’s body lay sprawled and broken on the stone below.
If he had landed on the grass a few feet to one side, he might have survived, but a trickle of blood began to emerge, suggesting his head had connected with the hard surface.
Leana moved next to me, breathless and regaining her composure, sweat glistening on her brow. There was a small cut to her hand, but aside from that she looked well, and soon she had regained her breath.
‘Are you hurt?’
‘No,’ she replied. ‘He was very good though. I am sorry if he is dead. I tried not to kill him. Though at least it is not my fault this time, no?’
Down below, a few spectators had moved to the side of the body, crouching down and gesturing over it.
‘We should get down there and take a look,’ I said, ‘before that lot mess with him too much.’
‘It will take us just as long to get down there as it did to get across the stand,’ Leana replied, indicating the thick mass of bodies that stood before us. ‘Is it not interesting that, despite all the civilized competitions that have been going on today, this lot are still far more interested in the sight of a corpse.’
‘Who is this man?’
‘You saved my daughter’s life,’ the queen announced.
I hadn’t noticed the queen approaching until she spoke to us. There was a renewed firmness in her voice and only now did I realize how tall she was, how much presence she possessed within a group of people. That others bowed at her arrival only added to her lustre of a goddess among them.
The sun was almost ready to set now and an orange light washed across the scene. Leana, Sulma Tan and myself were kneeling by the sprawled body of the attacker. The crowd were separated from us by a ring of twenty soldiers in the blue and black of the equestrian regiments. Surrounded by a coterie of eunuchs in red gowns, Nambu was standing between two soldiers. Her expression was one of embarrassment, though she had no reason to feel that way. Perhaps, with youthful pride, she felt that she could defend herself now thanks to Leana’s lessons in swordplay. Still, at least she had witnessed just how talented Leana could be in combat.
‘It was my duty.’ Leana never liked a fuss being made over her, but she was probably going to have to put up with what was coming.
‘You are a hero of this nation,’ the queen declared, loud enough for anyone nearby to hear. ‘You have protected the Sorghatan lineage. I knew it was wise to leave her in your skilled hands.’
‘Again,’ Leana bowed her head, ‘please think nothing of it. You entrusted your daughter to our care. This is our job.’
‘You shall be rewarded,’ the queen declared. There was no getting out of it. But, as if the previous conversation had not happened, she snapped her fingers at the corpse. ‘Who is this man?’
‘I hoped you might be able to shed some light on the matter.’ The words escaped my mouth before I had a chance to think. Even Leana looked surprised.
‘Why?’ the queen glared at me. ‘Do you think I know him?’
There was a tension thickening the air between us. Though I represented the Sun Chamber, I knew I had to be respectful before a royal – especially one who clearly did not suffer fools, or challenges to her authority.
But it was Nambu, surprisingly, who came to my assistance, pushing forward from her eunuch escort into the parted circle. ‘He means, Mother, that he’s not stupid.’
‘Do not speak to me like that, girl.’
‘You don’t just hand me over to strangers without being seriously worried for my safety in the palace. He knows that. We both know that. If he thinks there might be more to this, he’s entitled to know.’
The crowd were utterly silent. Birds shrieked from the nearby treetops and the banners could be heard snapping in the wind. The queen’s gaze moved repeatedly between her daughter and myself. I was anxious to see how a subtle tyrant queen might react to her daughter’s indiscretion.
She gave a command for the soldiers to widen the circle and to disperse the crowd. They held aloft their glaives and the crowd, naturally fearful, stepped back. The horses began to canter clockwise, edging out more and more until the nearest person was a good hundred paces away.
‘Now that any spies are out of earshot . . .’
Or rather, I thought, now anyone else at all was out of earshot.
The queen now stood in a noble pose, her head tilted up, her face stern. Her make-up was cracking slightly. ‘First you should realize this: I know very little about the attack, the attacker, or indeed why Nambu is being targeted. I am the queen and yet I remain in the dark – this is not something I am accustomed to. You will notice I have very few servants compared with many other rulers – this is not representative of how we are as a people. Indeed, as a result of my father taking over Koton
by military might, to make a show of his power he possessed hundreds of servants, many of whom were barely more than unsanctioned slaves. No, the reason I surround myself by so few is because I trust so few people. A guard may slip a knife into one’s back with remarkable ease.’
Though I never spoke the thought, it did occur to me that her father had claimed the throne with a military coup, and that he may well have passed on his paranoia to his daughter. ‘And you fear that would happen to Nambu – that one of your guards would hold some grudge against your family?’
She remained perfectly still as she regarded me. ‘I do not know what others think. I can judge only on what I see. But what I do know is this: there have been moves in the past, within the palace, to take Nambu. To take her from under my eye. Two men we caught previously were both killed while trying to escape. One cut his throat before my guards could get to him.’
A silence fell upon the scene, and I contemplated the efforts to claim Nambu. It did not seem prudent to divulge that there had been another attempt recently. The queen did not need to know such things at the moment.
‘Do you know of any schemes to end your lineage?’ I asked.
The queen laughed. ‘I suspect schemes are being planned all the time,’ she replied. ‘But it is nearly always talk cooked up in taverns known for their political discussions.’
‘People wish for more say in the affairs of state?’ I asked.
‘What good would it do? They would only derail our nation’s progress with their own trivial desires. They would seek to redistribute wealth among their own kind and say it is for the good of people. Petty men with petty ideals make up my government. They are ill-suited to lead and to bring about progress. They would have the women of our nation at home weaving again, instead of being my secretary,’ she gestured to the quiet Sulma Tan, ‘or a future queen’ – a gesture to her daughter. ‘No, old feuds coming to the fore are the usual reason for talk against me. But as I say, this is only talk. But there is action to take a young girl and do Nastra-knows what to her. That is why I wanted her to go with you, so she would not follow the predictable rituals of state. So whoever it is who has repeatedly breached my court will not have an easy opportunity.’
She steered me back towards the corpse. All of us stood in a circle, staring down at the attacker. Leana knelt down and turned him over.
‘I do not recognize him,’ the queen said.
‘Is it possible he comes from some secret organization?’ Leana asked.
‘A religious group maybe?’ I added. ‘Or fanatical cult?’
‘Sometimes,’ Leana muttered, ‘I find it hard to understand the difference between such things in Vispasia.’
There was a smile on the queen’s lips. ‘This is why we have only the one major religion in Koton.’
‘It could well be a professional assassination attempt on the princess.’
Nambu looked at me, her wide eyes betraying little. She shrugged. ‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about.’
‘Quite,’ the queen snapped, lifting her chin, ‘and we’ve enough to worry about as it is with good friends and powerful people being murdered, let alone a further conspiracy. Astran’s mercy . . .’
‘With greatest respect – and I ask only to aid my investigation – what happens if neither yourself nor Nambu are on the throne? To whom does power devolve?’
‘An interim government would be formed, much like in Detrata,’ the queen replied without hesitation. ‘The next in line will be sought and that could mean either of two of my cousins, one of whom is a lay preacher in the community of Astran and Nastra, and the other is confined to a faraway temple – because she is a leper. The preacher wouldn’t be permitted to rule since we have a separation of the temple from the affairs of the state – unless he chose to forgo his religious calling.’
‘They are not exactly challengers to the throne then,’ I added.
She looked down at the body one last time. ‘Not exactly, no. We will hang this one’s corpse as a warning.’ Then, to her daughter, she said, ‘Come.’ For the first time there was something resembling normal affection – a gentle hand on her shoulder as she was led away. Sulma Tan followed while Leana and I knelt beside the corpse, staring hopelessly at its resting form as the sun dipped below the horizon.
Within a minute guards came to take the body away.
‘Search his possessions thoroughly,’ I said to them, but judging by the haphazard way they tried to lift him, I doubted their job would be anything like thorough.
Evening Discussions
Once again I studied the papers taken from the premises of Naval Exports, hoping that something new might materialize. The word evum still stuck out, calling to me from the page, but there was little more that could be made of what was presented.
The candles flickered and burned down low. Somewhere beyond the closed door, Allius Golt stood on guard.
Leana was taking Nambu through some of her stretches. When we had arrived back in these quarters, there had been a gem-studded bracelet waiting for Leana as reward for her service earlier in the day. The item was wonderfully ornamental, and the emeralds in it were worth a year’s wages. Leana was totally indifferent to the trinket, and merely shoved it in her belongings.
There was an extra level of determination in the young princess’s face now, as if she had been unsettled by the events earlier in the day. Perhaps it was a point of honour, to want to defend herself rather than have others protect her.
Talking about it might help her process things so, after they had finished, I put that thought to her and wondered what she would make of it.
Exhausted from some dynamic moves, the young girl perched on the end of the bed and untied her hair. Leana slumped across the couch, and I turned fully from the desk to give the princess all my attention.
‘I want to be prepared in case it happens again.’ She dabbed the perspiration on her forehead with her sleeve.
‘And you think there will be another attack?’ I asked.
‘I want to be prepared,’ she repeated. ‘For whatever happens to me. I do not want to have to be saved again.’
I shot a brief smile at Leana. ‘You heard her – next time let the attacker claim her.’
‘That’s not what I mean,’ she replied. ‘Leana, thank you so very much . . .’
Leana dismissed her thanks with a wave of her hand. ‘Think nothing of it. The amount of times I have saved his skin . . .’
‘Well, I’m grateful,’ Nambu continued. ‘I just don’t want to have to be a burden to anyone. I want to be able to look after myself. I have led such a protected life. I’m old enough now to know better than that.’
She was still young, of course, but when was a bad age to learn the arts of defence?
‘Do you think you could cope,’ Leana asked, ‘with your blade above a man’s heart, your hand poised to press down and end his life – do you think you could do that?’
‘Yes,’ she replied, somewhat hesitantly.
‘The moment you do will end your childhood.’
‘I’m not a child,’ Nambu snapped. ‘I’m older than a child.’
‘The path to adulthood is not through a numbered gate.’ Leana leaned up in the chair. ‘Many are still children though they are twice your age. They live their lives cushioned from the realities of the world. They are infantile. They have had everything done for them. They have earned nothing. They have the souls of children, but they live in grown-up bodies.’
‘Are you saying I’m cushioned?’ Nambu asked, before looking glumly at the floor. ‘It isn’t easy, you know.’
Leana sighed. ‘When I was your age, my family had all the money I could wish for. Spirits save me, we had a palace as grand as this. We wore clothes of such fine weaving. We were surrounded by art. Atrewen culture, at its height, would have eclipsed anything that Vispasia could offer. One day I was walking along polished onyx floors, through gold arches that glittered in soft sunlight. The very next day, the civ
il wars broke out in our district.’
A natural pause developed, and I felt I did not wish the conversation to end. In a few sentences Leana had muttered more about her past than I had really known. She talked very little about those days.
‘Then what?’ Nambu asked bluntly.
‘I had been sheltered from the war,’ Leana continued. ‘I led that soft existence. I knew very little about why we were fighting – even who we were fighting. But it was my mother who made me eventually watch. She said it would be for my own good. Standing there in my precious silk gown I looked from our balcony as fires took the forests surrounding the palace. We could hear the screams of the villagers as they were cut down before they had the chance to get out of bed in the morning. The soldiers protecting our compound stood in their brilliant white tunics, their shields glimmering in the morning sun. I remember them being so neat – those crisp white lines. The walls of our compound soon gave way to the assault. The gate collapsed. The walls were scaled. We were besieged. As those fine soldiers protected us, being slaughtered so that we could live on, some of my family ushered a few of us through tunnels until we emerged in the cliffs, then dropped down by rope to the shore and escaped on ships. That was the moment I stopped being a child. Within a year I had learned the skills of a warrior, for there was no other choice. I watched as my own father was beheaded in battle. My mother was stabbed through the stomach trying to defend his corpse. Later I led rebel forces in retaliation, and we had some success. Men and women would have died for me.’
‘Oh my.’
‘Think on that responsibility, young Nambu, for it will be yours one day . . . But the wars became more violent. My people were wiped out because of their spiritual preferences or simply because they were associated with my family. The rest of my kin I saw killed, spirits save them. My husband – for I married when I was just a little older than you are now – was killed in front of me. Eventually I became the last in my bloodline to survive. I met Lucan here amidst an ocean of corpses – corpses that were there on my behalf, trying to restore my family’s name to the throne of Atrewe. It is quite a responsibility for a young woman to bear, I can assure you.’
Retribution (Drakenfeld 2) Page 28