by Kate Elliott
Anji glanced at her; his hands were light on the reins, but his eyes were tight. She nodded coolly in return. He smiled, a flash that might have been loving encouragement, or anticipation of a cruel triumph as he forced his mother to accept a humble merchant’s daughter as his wife. She looked ahead.
The porch wrapping around the big house had been extended, and whole sections around the side screened off with canvas. Even in the few weeks since Mai had last sailed to Astafero to see Miravia and to coax Uncle Hari out of the valley and down to the assizes that one time, the house had been changed: whitewashing on the walls, curtains screening the windows, pillars wrapped with elaborately painted but half finished floral scenes. In addition to all this other decoration, the big house had been festooned with banners in the Qin style, a rainbow of colors: bold scarlet, sun gold, heavenly blue, bone white, mist silver, festival orange, night black, rain-sodden green, and a sighing purple that reminded her of Uncle Hari when she had last seen him flying away from Astafero’s assizes. How well the assizes had gone! She drew strength from the memory.
A figure was seated in an ornate chair placed on the high porch as if the entire settlement of Astafero had been built to display and enhance the seated person’s authority.
“Be brave, plum blossom,” murmured Anji. He carried Atani in a sling against his chest, the baby facing forward and looking around with his usual delighted expression, as if to say: all this! a parade for me! Not that Atani could possibly understand what was happening, or the import of this procession and what it suggested. When the Qin had taken over rule of Kartu Town, the city fathers and lords had processed to the fort in a show of humility. They had come to the Qin, not the other way around. So Anji approached his mother.
Attendants lined the plank walkway, sheltered from the sun by a new slate roof constructed over what had once been wings of canvas. Miravia stood on the lower steps, below the other attendants. Besides the kitchen women standing at the leftmost corner of the porch, Miravia was the only visible woman. Their gazes met across the gap, but Miravia did not descend to greet her. She glanced past Mai, searching for someone else, then self-consciously adjusted the scarf that bound her hair. Realizing what she was doing, she lowered her hand.
Anji signaled the troop to a halt, dismounted, and handed his reins to a groom. He beckoned to Mai. Tuvi dismounted and came to hold her horse. Swinging down, she paced as in a dream to Anji. He unwrapped the baby from his sling and handed him to Mai. To clasp the plump little fellow gave her courage. She had a piece of Anji that his mother did not.
They approached the porch and ascended past a silent Miravia.
The woman was seated in a lofty chair of bright blue silk embroidered with dragons in a darker blue thread; these intense colors set off her gold headdress and the gown with its draperies that flowed around her. She had a broad, bold face, no beauty but certainly handsome in the Qin way. She was not as old as Mai had thought she would be; her skin had a few wrinkles but no blemishes; her hands looked strong and capable, her shoulders were unbowed. She stared fiercely at her son—a man she had not seen for almost twenty years—and spared no glance for his wife and son.
Anji kneeled to touch her right slippered foot with his right hand, then brushed his fingers against his chest and his forehead before he looked up at her.
“Honored Mother.” He did not grovel. His pride elevated him. Whatever his true feelings were, he kept them reined in.
No one spoke as the mother examined her son. If joy or memory or tears welled deep in that steel countenance, Mai could not perceive them. She took her time looking him over, much—Mai supposed—as Anji had carefully examined Atani when he had first held the little boy. Banners snapped; ribbons fluttered. Hooves shifted as horses grew restless. The sun blazed on Mai’s back, but her body shielded Atani within its shade.
“You look well enough, my son. Not handsome, I am afraid. But you have grown up strong and fit.” Nothing frail about her voice! Or her first line of attack, cutting straight for a vanity he did not, in fact, possess. “Possibly you’re even competent, if the reports I have heard are true.”
Mai was abruptly glad he had made no gesture commanding Mai to bow and scrape as he had done, for even fixed on her son, his mother’s gaze had the biting remoteness of a desert adder’s. Mai was pretty sure she could not bring herself to show obeisance to a woman who refused to show even one drop of affection for the son whose life she had saved years ago, a child she had not seen in twenty years. Yet she must be strong enough to welcome the woman’s overtures, should they ever come.
“I am come from Sirniaka, Son. Your half brother Azadihosh is dead. I do not regret his death, or his family’s slaughter, since it was his people who wished to kill you when they took pride of place in the palace. So do the gods work, in cutting the throats of those who forget that fate has a hand on every knife. Your cousins now hold the throne and its power. I am released from my prison and return to comfort you, Son. I do regret the many years we have been forced to live apart.”
For all the sentiment of the words, her voice did not quiver. Still, incredibly, she managed not to look at Mai or the baby.
“Why did they let you go?” he asked. No pretty speeches; no joyful embraces. They got straight down to business. “Once a woman is brought into the emperor’s palace, she is released only by death.”
“Not even then,” she said with a curt laugh, “for the white robes capture her spirit in their blessing bowls and confine it forever to the jar of misery that is all the afterlife they will permit women.” Her smile held bitter victory. “Your cousins feared what might happen if they attempted to have me put down like a broken horse. My brother betrayed me when he sold me to the emperor in exchange for border trading rights, but he made sure the Sirni understood that my life and honor must never be tarnished. However, your cousins released me: to act as their emissary.”
Her gaze flicked to Mai, like a blow: comprehensive, swift, and meant to make Mai flinch. Mai found her market smile and fixed it on like paint. The baby gurgled and reached one sweet little hand toward his father, babbling, “Baba. Baba.”
“What business could my cousins have with me?” Anji asked as he smoothly took the baby out of Mai’s arms and settled the silk-swaddled bottom on his upright thigh. He glanced down at the crowing infant. “Hush, sunflower,” he said fondly.
Atani hushed, gazing raptly at his father.
The old woman’s gaze tightened in exactly the way Anji’s did when he was annoyed.
Mai felt her smile pinch toward a smirk, and she battled it back to the innocuously pleasant face she wore when men tried to grope her or women to cheat her. It was the face she had perfected through years of dealing with her hated Uncle Girish. Merciful One grant her open-heartedness! How could she have taken such a powerful and instantaneous dislike to a woman she did not even know?
The woman rose, and in rising displayed the smooth weave and magnificent embroidery of her gown. The silk was astoundingly rich and cunningly embroidered, a veritable treasure house of fabric. This was emperor’s silk, not for the likes of a girl born to an insignificant sheep-herding clan in a dusty desert trading town.
“Your cousins are not unaware of the difficulty your existence poses to them. You have a legitimate claim to the imperial throne.”
“Which I forswore by leaving the palace. By going into exile, I became as one dead to the imperial court.”
“Dead to the court, but not dead in your physical form. The former is one style of death. The latter is more permanent. Naturally your cousin fears you may change your mind and choose to live. But your uncle, my brother, the var, might take it amiss if you were to die at the new emperor’s hands.”
“My uncle, the var, ordered me killed. Were you unaware of the bargain he made with Azadihosh?”
“I hear whispers, as must any woman in the palace who values the life of her son. My brother desired an easy path into the rich trade offered by the border towns. Your
half brother Farazadihosh was desperate. He was newly come to the throne. He suspected his cousins meant to contest him, and he knew they commanded better and more numerous troops than he did. He sought an ally. Your uncle my brother sought advantage.”
“And my life was the piece on the board my uncle was willing to sacrifice. Did that part of this tale escape you, Honored Mother?”
She brushed a hand over his head in an intimate manner, touching his topknot. “Of course it did not escape me. Do you think it was chance you survived?”
“Commander Beje gave me the opportunity to escape with my life.”
“Did this surprise you?”
“It did, I admit it.”
Her disapproval flowed hot like the sun. “It should not have. Your wife is Beje’s daughter, a woman of suitable rank and noble lineage. I arranged the marriage myself through Beje’s wife Cherfa when I sent you back to your uncle, the var, for safekeeping. Serpent and snake that he proved to be—my own brother! Hu! He had betrayed me beforehand by sending me to that terrible place. I should have expected nothing less from him. Naturally, in later years, when whispers reached my ears of my brother’s further treachery, I turned to Cherfa again. She told Beje to aid you.”
“I never saw Beje’s wife, although he mentioned her,” said Anji. “I will say that Commander Beje behaved in all ways honorably toward me.”
“He is our ally. The soldiers he sent me are for you. He hands them over to your command.”
“Mine? Hu!” He blew out breath between his teeth, swiped a finger along his beard as he considered this unexpected harvest. “Certainly I have no complaint of Commander Beje. However, I am no longer married to his daughter. She ran away into the west with a demon.”
“Hu! I had not imagined Beje and Cherfa could sire a weak-minded female. Still, she may yet be alive.”
“To me she is dead.”
She brushed his topknot again and this time found a corner of wrapped ribbon a hair out of place and tweaked it to fall into line. “Too much pride is a weakness, Anjihosh.”
“Call it what you wish. I was married to her at one time. Now she is dead.” He hoisted Atani and, finally, rose; he was taller than his mother was but not enough for his height to intimidate.
His mother cut off his attack before he could pursue it further. “Come inside, Anjihosh. We will drink a proper greeting.”
Her gesture commanded him to accompany her—into the house without taking off his boots! He could not refuse his mother, yet to walk with her forced Mai to walk behind.
Mai thought probably her ears were flaming red from anger, but she would not let her anger rule her. Miravia’s clear gaze met hers. Mai gestured as the thought bloomed. Miravia mounted the steps to fall in beside her. Let Miravia stand for her allies, all the women and men in Astafero and Olo’osson who respected her as a woman of means.
Side by side, they walked behind Anji into the house that had once been hers and which was now transformed with all manner of fabrics and low couches and a slumbrous perfume of smoky incense that made her want to sneeze. Sirniakans evidently did not sit on pillows like civilized people. They raised themselves up on low couches, as if they could not be bothered to keep their floors clean by keeping people’s dirt-laden shoes off the fine mats.
They tromped barbarically across the mats into an inner room whose doors lay open to receive light from the private central courtyard of the house. The doors to the outer audience chamber slapped shut behind them. In the courtyard, under the shade of the inner porches, sat about twenty women, from sweet-faced girls to wrinkled crones. One quickly covered her face with a wing of pale blue silk shot through with silver cross threads. The others hid their mouths behind their hands and measured Anji through sidelong, coy gazes.
He was the only man in the chamber.
Anji’s mother seated herself and indicated that Anji must sit opposite on a couch facing both her and the courtyard. He remained standing until Mai reached him. He nodded toward the couch; when he sat, she sat beside him. Miravia slid in to kneel gracefully on the floor by Mai’s legs, her back a solid comfort. She turned a little, and Atani smiled boldly at her and allowed himself to be passed into Miravia’s arms.
Mai settled her now-empty hands in her lap, palms up and relaxed, in the manner of the Merciful One’s bounty. She’d faced worse in Kartu Town’s market, haggling over peaches. The women examined Mai more boldly than they had examined Anji. She did not flinch. Let them look! She knew her own worth.
Anji’s mother clapped her hands. Slaves scurried out from whatever shadows they’d been skulking in to lay out cups and platters around a silver teapot. Out of this pot steaming hot water was drawn and poured into a ceramic blue teapot to rinse it, and the rinse water sluiced into a brass basin. Blackened leaves were sprinkled into the pot, water poured over them, and the teapot sealed with a lid. The aroma was powerful and very fine.
Two cups only, so finely wrought they seemed as thin as paper, sat on the low table.
Anji washed his hands out of the brass basin, his expression so collected Mai knew he was plotting as he wiped his hands dry. He grasped the teapot’s handle, filled one cup a third of the way, the other to the full, and finished filling the first. After setting down the teapot, he picked up one cup with both hands and offered it to his mother. She took it, not hiding her smile, meant to announce her victory.
Anji picked up the second cup with both hands and offered it to Mai.
The attendants gasped, hiding faces behind veils of cloth or concealing hands.
Mai took the cup but kept on her placid market face as she met the older woman’s steady gaze. So. Now they would stare in the manner of wolves waiting for one to submit to another. Mai would not look down. Neither would Anji’s mother.
“Bring me a cup,” said Anji, his tone so clipped it shocked Mai into looking at him.
A cup was brought. He poured for himself. He drank first, and then of course both women must hasten to drink as the women on the courtyard whispered, like leaves stirred by the rising wind off a coming storm. Anji drained his cup and set it down. His mother finished likewise, and Mai took a final swallow and set hers next to Anji’s.
“You are being stubborn, Anjihosh,” said his mother. “I see that has not changed.”
“I came, obediently, as soon as I heard you had arrived in the Hundred, despite pressing events elsewhere that need my immediate attention. You are of course welcome to set up your own household here, if you do not wish to return to the empire or to the Qin. With what message do you come as an emissary from cousins I have never met, do not wish to meet, and who must by the custom and law of the empire seek my death?”
She folded her hands on the glorious silk of her gown. “I bring this message: Remain in exile, never to set foot in Sirniakan or Qin territory again, and they will not trouble you.”
“Why should I believe they are willing to allow me live unmolested when there have been several attempts already on my life?”
“If the red hounds pursued you, it was by the directive of your brother Farazadihosh. Your cousins were too busy raising an army and fighting their war to trouble themselves with you.”
“But now they do trouble themselves with me. The offer is too generous for me to believe it honestly meant. Surely you cannot believe they harbor no grievance against me, Honored Mother. Why is it you agreed to act as their emissary?”
“Because my first duty, my only obligation, is to keep you alive, Son. They know that. I know that. You know that. No other person will protect you as I have protected you and will—indeed must—protect you. Am I not correct, Anjihosh?”
He bowed his head. “You are correct.”
“I assured myself that they meant what they said and that they were not attempting to betray you through my agency. Do you think I am a fool?”
These words were spat so sharply Mai winced, and although Anji’s mother did not look at Mai, it was quite obvious by the way her mouth tightened that
she had noticed Mai’s reaction.
Anji held a breath longer than he ought, and expelled it as he gripped the teapot and poured a second round of tea into the cups. He did not wait for the women. He drained his cup and set it down hard on the table’s polished grain.
“No more a fool than I am,” he said.
“We shall see.” She gestured, and the woman who had veiled herself at their entrance rose like a puppet and walked with graceless stiffness—the poor thing was either terrified or haughty—to stand at the foot of the couch on which Anji’s mother reclined.
“Remain in exile, never to set foot in Sirniakan or Qin territory again, and they will not trouble you,” Anji’s mother repeated with a gloating satisfaction in her tone like that of a customer who feels she has gotten the better in a long tedious bargaining session. “The bargain to be sealed by a marriage between you and their sister.”
The sister’s eyes were all Mai could see; they were traced with a thick black line that emphasized their shape; her lashes were thick, her gaze exotic because it was all that existed of her. She might be beautiful; she might be plain. It was the mystery that excited.
“I have a wife,” said Anji.
“You have a concubine, Anjihosh. And very pretty she is, as I am sure you wish me to mention. The child is yours, I collect. A handsome boy.”
Her voice warmed as she deigned to examine Atani, who regarded her with the same equanimity as he regarded all people: he was sure they loved him. Hu! The woman could not be all horrid if she admired Atani.
“But a pretty girl of no rank or consequence is not the wife of a prince.”
“Mai is my wife,” said Anji.
“Furthermore,” she went on as if he had not spoken, “you must marry in order to protect your life. My life. The life of your handsome son. Even the life of the pretty concubine is at stake.”
The sword thrust home.
His eyes flared, as though he had taken a blade to the gut, and he sat back as swiftly as if he’d been hit and flung an arm out as though to shield Mai from the blow. He did not quite touch her; he had more control than that. Yet the gesture betrayed him.