Curt Benjamin - [Seven Brothers 03] - The Gates of Heaven

by Curt Benjamin

  Mergen-Khan’s face became thunderous. The slight was obvious. A Harnishman, particularly a man of position, made alliances in many degrees, but anda was the closest. Blood brothers for life, sealed by gifts and held in the heart, the anda was a cherished friend. Occasionally more, which caused no trouble in the tents of a man who also kept to his wives and his husbandly duties to his clan. But Mergen had no wife, and his anda, Otchigin, had died fighting the stone giants of Master Markko.

  The Lady Chaiujin threatened civil war with Chimbai-Khan’s unborn son as her instrument, but Llesho didn’t think that Mergen had noticed that. She’d called his dead anda a coward and a thief, stealing Mergen’s duties from his clan. The khan’s eyes went flat. “Better my anda than the serpent who made my brother’s sleep so permanent,” he said, and raised a hand as if to strike her.

  She flinched, but the action didn’t save her. By prearranged signal, the guards of his dead brother, newly sworn to their elected khan, came forward. Two who had been Chimbai’s oldest and most valued friends seized her between them, and Mergen’s own swordmaster stepped up behind her.

  “Strangle the murdering witch,” Mergen said, and the swordmaster wrapped his hands around her neck and squeezed.

  “You’ll pay,” she choked out. With a twist of her neck, she turned into a jewel-green snake. Her grin exposed bared fangs she sank into the meat of her strangler’s hand.

  “Ah!” he screamed, and dropped her as his hand throbbed with venom. Her captors struggled to hold on, but her arms had vanished. Slipping easily out of their grasp, the Lady Chaiujin glided quickly into hiding between the layers of rugs on the ger-tent floor.

  “Everybody out!” Mergen ordered. And to his guards, “To sword! Find her and put an end to her.” He reached out and grabbed a goblet from the chest that sat by the fire and raised it over his head. “This jeweled cup to the man who brings her dead body to me: snake or woman, I don’t care which. Just find her!”

  Chapter Four

  MERGEN-KHAN’S swordmaster died with blood running from his nose while the Harnish women shook out the heaped furs and beat the rugs, rolling them afterward as if they were going to shift camp on the moment. Men searched the firebox and under all the chests and boxes, and looked in all the surrounding round white tents. They dismantled the ger-tent palace of the khan and checked in all its lattices before setting it up again at a distance that shifted the orientation of the camp. Then they had to move many other tents to keep everyone in their proper place according to their status in the ulus.

  The Lady Chaiujin had vanished. Neither the Tinglut princess nor her totem form, the emerald-green bamboo snake, could be found anywhere on the great high plain.

  In a moment of quiet, Llesho rode out with Prince Tayyichiut to exercise their horses and their own camp-restlessness. Two hounds followed them, a black dog with a lolling grin and a red bitch with bright, intelligent eyes.

  “I didn’t know you kept dogs.”

  “The Lady Chaiujin claimed a fear of their barking and had them banished to the sheep pens. Perhaps she guessed they might recognize her for what she was.” The prince cast a fond glance at his hounds. A little bit of the weight seemed to have lifted from his shoulders since the lady’s disappearance, another of many changes in the camp since they had arrived, just one of many things he had to think about.

  When they had gone a ways from the camp so they wouldn’t be overheard, Llesho hesitantly asked Tayyichiut about the Lady Chaiujin’s claim against Mergen that gossip did not answer in his presence.

  “About Mergen-Khan’s anda—” His own cadre rode behind with Tayy’s guardsmen, out of hearing but not out of sight or the range of a bow. The Harnish prince could answer the question in confidence between friends of equal rank if he chose to do so, but Tayy deflected the request.

  “It’s none of my business, or yours,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

  “It’s not that I disapprove.” Llesho cast a glance behind them, where Bixei and Stipes both rode in his defense. “I’m trying to understand what the Lady Chaiujin was trying to do when she said that about Otchigin and your uncle.”

  “A treasonous suggestion that Mergen had reasons to wish his brother the khan dead.” Tayy snapped, clearly unhappy with the question. Llesho waited out the scalding glower until the prince relented.

  “Otchigin and Mergen were closest friends from the time they were fostered together as boys. After my father became khan, when the clan had named Mergen chieftain, Otchigin brought him gifts and swore his personal loyalty to Mergen and the Qubal people. Together they committed their lives to the service of the khan.

  “Lady Chaiujin hoped to make the chieftains believe that Mergen had placed the personal relationship above the political. She hinted that my father wanted to seal a treaty but that Mergen refused any marriage. The clans were supposed to suspect that Chimbai-Khan sent Otchigin out to die so that his brother wouldn’t have a reason to disobey him anymore. From there, it wouldn’t be hard to convince them that Mergen killed the khan to avenge Otchigin’s murder.

  “She didn’t have to prove anything; if she’d raised enough doubt, Mergen would have lost the confidence of the clans. Then she could have demanded a new vote to take the khanate in the name of her unborn child. My uncle was ahead of her, of course, but I don’t think it would have worked out the way she expected anyway. Yesugei has held the clans to Mergen till now, but he’d stand for the khanate himself before he’d let the ulus fall to infighting between the clans.”

  “No one could have guessed what Master Markko would raise out there,” Llesho objected, “It was supposed to be safe, a simple scouting expedition.” But he wondered why someone of Otchigin’s rank had ridden on a such a lowly mission. It began to add up in ways that raised question about Chimbai’s motives.

  “No one,” Tayy agreed with a warning in it, not to let his thoughts run down that path. At his heel the black hound, fretful at the sudden change in his master’s mood, added its own cautionary growl. “Nor would Chimbai-Khan have had such a need—Mergen obeyed my father’s every wish. And the khan had decided that Mergen should have no wife.”

  “Are all Harnish relationships about politics?” Llesho asked. He’d thought they shared a growing friendship based on common age and rank, and even similar losses. Before the khan had died, he’d offered Tayy a place at his side, as part of his cadre. Now he wondered if the prince saw him, like Otchigin and his uncle’s nonexistent wives, as a political agreement on horseback.

  Tayy’s answer didn’t make him feel any better. “In the royal ger-tent, yes, I suppose they are. How else could it be?”

  “Sometimes, people just like each other.” Llesho felt stupid as soon as the words were out of his mouth, and he knew the answer Prince Tayyichiut would give him before he even said it.

  “No one just likes a prince, any more than a prince—or a khan’s brother—is free to make friends who do not serve the khan.”

  Tayy must have thought they were still talking about Mergen, because he returned to his uncle’s case with an ironic laugh. “In any event, Sechule would have been surprised to hear that Mergen held an exclusive affection for Otchigin.”

  “Who’s Sechule?” Llesho could figure that for himself, but guesses could lead even a Prince of Dreams down a tangled path.

  Tayy’s predatory smirk was answer enough without his words: “A loyal woman of Yesugei’s people, and the mother of two of Mergen’s blanket-sons, born outside the ger-tent as we call it. They ride behind us now among my guards.”

  “Two of?”

  “Marriage—even undeclared marriage—is political. But if a person wanders into a certain tent more often than into others, who is to say?”

  And that worked out so well for Chimbai-Khan,Llesho thought, but didn’t say out loud. Chimbai-Khan may have loved Tayyichiut’s dead mother for all the politics of their marriage, but that left his second wife in a cold corner of the ger-tent. “Wouldn’t the Lady Chaiuj
in have known that? About Mergen and Sechule, I mean?”

  “There is nothing to know about Mergen and Sechule,” Prince Tayy reminded him stiffly. The dogs had run off to chase rabbits through the flowers and he followed their progress with his eyes while Llesho worked that out.

  A relationship would have meant a political alliance with Yesugei’s clan. But. With a sudden, blinding grasp of the obvious, Llesho wondered how many other blanket-sons and -daughters Mergen had scattered through the ulus, and what political ties those relationships “weren’t” binding to the khan. Tayy gave just a little twitch of an eyebrow to acknowledge the dawning light in his face, and then finished his vastly understated explanation.

  “Tinglut-Khan sent his daughter in the spring. From the start she liked the Qubal no more than our hounds. Chimbai-Khan wouldn’t have confided in her, and Mergen is hard to know even among his own.”

  She’d wasted no time eliminating Tayy’s mother, her competition in the khan’s ger-tent, which meant she understood the politics of her own marriage. Lady Chaiujin must have wondered why her husband hadn’t given Mergen a wife, and she’d come up with the only solution available to her in plain sight.

  Bortu had told them the answer, however, when she honored her living son—the smart one, she’d said. Chimbai, too, must have recognized his brother’s subtle mind. While making use of his brother’s discreet attachments throughout the ulus, he’d assured that no legal heir gave Mergen ideas about securing a dynasty to his own line. In the true affection of the brothers for each other, the Lady Chauijin might have seen Chimbai-Khan’s caution as a weakness, that he allowed his brother to slight his family obligations for his heart’s desire—little knowing the politics long at work in the ger-tent of the khan.

  When Llesho put it together himself, however, the Lady Chaiujin’s veiled accusation made sense even if she didn’t have all the facts. Chimbai-Khan had loved his brother, but feared his ambition enough that he had not permitted Mergen to marry or recognize an heir. As khan, he’d sent Mergen’s anda on a mission that eliminated any political maneuvering under Otchigin’s influence. Now, Chimbai-Khan himself was dead and his brother, who had denied any such ambition, sat alone on the dais of the ger-tent palace. Chimbai’s son remained, as Mergen’s heir rather than his khan, but for how long? Mergen-Khan could marry as he wished now, or declare his blanket-sons his heirs. Would his uncle disavow Prince Tayyichiut then, or have him killed to remove the threat to his own rule? All that Chimbai may have feared in his brother seemed to have happened.

  Questions kept Llesho awake in his tent while the Great Moon passed overhead. Bolghai surely knew the answers, but wouldn’t likely tell them to an outsider. Master Den might give him answers as well, but the trickster was no god to the Harnish people and his idea of a good match for Emperor Shou left Llesho doubting his expertise in matters of a royal heart. Shou, however, was older and a mortal man who understood the politics of the palace and the bedroom. As emperor, and as the human lover of the mortal goddess of war, he must.

  Llesho considered a dream-walk, and groaned at the very thought of dragging himself back off his cot. He’d had lessons in dreams before the shaman, however. The Tashek had taught him to travel in his sleep, which seemed a much better idea in the ghostly light of Great Moon Lun. He had scarcely thought it when his eyes pulled shut, his limbs grew heavy.

  His dream brought him to the governor’s palace at Durnhag. Llesho scanned the area, saw no one. But there—he tensed for attack as starlight glinted off silver at the corner of his eye. Pig, dark as the shadows except for the fine silver chains that wrapped his black body everywhere, sat on a bucket as if he’d been waiting for Llesho to come along.

  “What are you doing out of bed?” Pig asked, “You have a big day tomorrow; you need your sleep.”

  “A big day of waiting,” Llesho grumbled. He’d relaxed as soon as he recognized his guide in the dream world, but the rush of fear left him edgy and overreacting to the taunt. “Mergen-Khan has refused to honor the agreements we made with his brother. He wants to ask his own questions before he makes up his mind to help us and he won’t hear us at all until he’s done interrogating the prisoners he took in the fight with Tsu-tan. He’s still mad that Lling killed the witch-finder before he had a chance to interrogate him.”

  Pig made a sweeping gesture with an imaginary broom “Tsu-tan’s master would have seen his old minion dead before that could happen, but not in time to save Lling, or your brother.”

  Tsu-tan had slipped his leash, driven mad like a rat in a trap with his master’s threat in one direction and his enemy’s forces in the other. Even Markko couldn’t control his lackey’s murderous impulses by then. Llesho didn’t regret Lling’s actions one bit, but Mergen still had to wonder if they had removed his best witness to keep some secret from their Harnish allies. Which left them sitting on their hands until Mergen decided he trusted them.

  “In the meanwhile, we wait,” Llesho finished.

  With a smirk on his face that promised more, however, the Jinn waggled his piggy eyebrows. “Ask, young king.”

  “I don’t think so.” He acknowledged the old joke between them. “You can’t fool me that easily, old Jinn.”

  A Jinn could bind a human who made a wish. Llesho didn’t think Pig would close that trap even if he fell into it. They both served the Great Goddess, after all, and the Jinn would never risk his place in her gardens. It was a point of honor between them, a game of matched wits. So he chose to understand it, to remain on friendly terms with his guide in the world of dreams. With a wry tilt of his head, therefore, he made his move:

  “I do notwish to know what you are talking about, though I will be happy to listen if youwish to tell me more.”

  “Let it wait, then. You’ll find out soon enough.” Pig laughed, accepting his loss this round but not giving up his information. “I suppose you’ve come to see the emperor?”

  “Yeah.” He might even need her ladyship’s advice, though he wasn’t sure he had the nerve to ask. Face a charging army? Llesho had done that plenty of times. Discuss the marriages of kings with the mortal goddess of war? That took more nerve than any combat. With a shake of his head, he made for the wide central door.

  “Not that way.” Pig stopped him with a forehoof on his shoulder. “Unless this is a formal visit of state, which would raise questions of its own.”

  “It’s personal,” Llesho confirmed, though he might just as easily have called it spycraft. He remembered the secret ways of the palace at Shan and travelers arriving under cover of darkness. He could enter through the front door; he was a king, a trusted ally, and had that right. Having it, however, he found that he preferred to see Shou in the old way, before he knew he was a king making an ally of an emperor. “I just need to talk to him.”

  Pig nodded sagely. “Woman trouble,” he guessed, and Llesho held a tight rein on the urge to smack him.

  “Not woman trouble. At least, well, sort of. But not mine.”

  “Oh.” Pig led him up a walled stairway carved into the thick palace wall, onto a narrow protected balcony, one of many that dotted the palace. “That explains everything.”

  Light shone through a pair of doors made of colored glass that left shadows thick in the corners. Pig reached for the catch with a flourish. “Here you are—” He gave a less than mystical yelp as a figure stepped out of the dark.

  “It’s you.” Shou slid his sword back into its scabbard with an emphatic snick. “Trouble?” He didn’t invite them in and Llesho didn’t ask what Shou was doing out on the balcony in the middle of the night.

  “Maybe.” Llesho gave a twitch of a shoulder to emphasize his answer, or lack of one. “I’m not sure. You know about Chimbai-Khan?”

  Shou nodded, enough to tell Llesho he didn’t have to explain the khan’s death. “Kaydu reported that the clans placed his brother in Chimbai’s place. You don’t trust this brother?”

  It wasn’t quite a question. If he’d trusted Mergen, h
e’d be in his own bed, not dream-walking to find Shou in the middle of the night. Llesho didn’t bother to answer it except to say, “He doesn’t care if we trust him, and he certainly doesn’t trust us.”

  “I can see that would be a problem,” Shou said. “I wasn’t thinking clearly the last time we met or I would have left you with a larger force to lend weight to your arguments.”

  That was all he said about his torture and near-madness as the witch-finder’s prisoner. Master Markko had crawled around in his brain and made him watch the torments of all the dead in his wars. For a little while, it had broken his mind. “Still, this new khan has accepted you as a guest if not an ally. Harnish rules of hospitality should keep you safe enough.”

  “I’m worried,” Llesho admitted. “Prince Tayy loves his uncle. He believes the Lady Chaiujin killed his father on her own—” which raised questions about Shou’s own treaty with the Tinglut—“but I’m not so sure now it wasn’t Mergen.”

  “Then you’d better come inside.”

  He opened the door and went in, leaving Llesho to follow with Pig coming last in their little procession. The room was sumptuously draped in a richness of color and style that the Guynmer people would abhor, but which had suited their corrupt governor until his emperor removed him from his palace, his office, and his earthly existence. The bed lay empty now, its covers smooth except for the single untroubled indentation a man’s still body might have made.

  In a white robe richly draped and clasped in gold, the mortal goddess of war stood at a table covered with maps. Llesho remembered her this way from another dream. He would have wondered if she existed outside his dreams at all, except that her magician, Habiba, stood at her side. Kaydu’s father. He said nothing, but searched Llesho’s face for tragedy, relaxed when he found only confusion.

  “What have you brought us?” The Lady SeinMa asked. Her eyes glanced off him, to Shou, who lounged against the doorjamb, but returned to Llesho with the full force of her gaze. He squirmed under the attention.