by J. S. Bangs
“Have mercy, my Emperor,” Ashturma gasped.
“Mercy,” Sadja said. He lowered himself into the throne. “Let me tell you about my mercy. You will be killed quickly and painlessly in the courtyard of the Red Men. Your body will be returned to your sons, that they may burn your bones and mingle your ashes with those of your forefathers. And your family will not fall under my wrath. You would certainly have gotten less than that from Praudhu.”
Ashturma trembled, his hands clasping and unclasping, his mouth gaping like a fish’s. He slowly bent at the waist and pressed his forehead against the green marble.
Sadja gestured to the Red Men. “Take him out of here. I don’t want to see him or his body. Send word to his household in Davrakhanda when it’s done. When Sundasha-kha returns to Davrakhanda he may pay his respects at his father’s grave and inherit his father’s title.”
The Red Men came forward. The sound of their marching covered the echo of Ashturma’s weeping.
Sadja pointed to the imperial scribe sitting to the left of the throne. “Write a message to Navran-dar in Virnas. Let him know—”
He stopped. The room suddenly seemed to tilt to the right, and the light coming in through the pillars took on a piercing brightness. Not now. His hands clenched the arms of the throne.
Could he? No—there was no fighting it. He took a heavy breath.
“Never mind,” he said quickly. “I’m going to my chamber. I’ll dictate the message to Navran-dar later.”
He descended the throne, turning toward the Emperor’s Tower with as much haste as he could muster. Running was unbecoming of the Emperor, but it was even less fitting for the Emperor to fall into a prophetic fit on the throne. Fortunately, he had learned the signs of its onset.
The stones underfoot seemed to slip under his feet. The voices he heard echoed and melted into noise. A smell like burning oil soured his nostrils. He crossed the courtyard before the Horned Gate and found the entrance to the Emperor’s Tower, took the steps hastily, stumbling only once.
It had taken practice to learn how to delay the trance as long as this. After the initial spasm which had overtaken him at Basadi’s wedding—cleverly explained away by the dhorsha and the astrologers—the spirit had only taken him in private, where Basadi and a few of the servants saw. Basadi regarded the affliction with contempt. What the servants thought, he never knew.
He reached the door to his chamber. Pulled the curtain shut. His valet came toward him, speaking incomprehensibly. Sadja pushed him aside. He found the cushioned couch just before the spirit plunged him into darkness.
* * *
His head throbbed. His mouth was dry, as if he had spent all night drinking, and his fingers tingled as if being pricked by pine needles. The room was dim, lit with cautious orange light that reflected off the flowers painted on the ceiling. Evening sunlight. It had only been a few hours.
He rose from the couch. The room wobbled, his legs bending treacherously beneath him. He grabbed the edge of the couch and steadied himself. His balance returned. He stood, cleared his throat, and called for the valet.
The man appeared immediately and bowed to the ground.
“Bring me water,” Sadja said.
What had the man heard?
On the first night, when the red star appeared, no one had recorded what he had said when the spirit took him. He remembered very dimly that first prophecy, and the details had been pieced together from the memory of others so the dhorsha astrologers could attempt to work out what it meant. Since then, though, no one had written down the spirit’s babbling, and he remembered nothing. It was too dangerous to let people know that the Emperor suffered from prophetic seizures. Better to pretend nothing was amiss.
Well, except for the bright red star in the heart of the Serpent.
He thought, not for the first time, that he should practice his farsight again. Perhaps it would help control the prophecies. Perhaps he could unify the random exuberance of the spirit with the slow discipline of the thikratta, and find some way to channel and understand what the spirit said. Or at least remember it.
The valet returned with a silver cup full of cool water. Sadja drank deeply. When he was done, his tongue had regained some of its plasticity and his headache subsided.
“Where is Basadi-daridarya?” he asked.
“In her chamber, I believe,” the valet said.
“Have her dine with me shortly. In the private chamber. I want no khadir or dhorsha bothering me tonight.”
The valet bowed. “I’ll notify the kitchen and tell the Empress to prepare.”
Sadja went out onto the balcony. Majasravi already lay in the shadow of the Ushpanditya, the city darkened by the silhouette of the Emperor’s Tower. The first stars glittered in the lavender sky. The red omen, the Serpent’s wound, burned in the west.
The dhorsha were studying it, he told himself. No use tying himself in knots. He lowered himself onto a cushion on the balcony and drank water, wishing it were something stronger.
Something was going to happen. He didn’t know what, and he couldn’t prepare. This was what galled him. Helplessly knowing that doom lay ahead, without even knowing from which direction it came. Maddening.
He set the empty goblet of water aside. Ah, well. Basadi awaited him.
The private dining area was a small, lamp-lit chamber with a low table that could seat no more than six. Only two places were set with cushions and reed mats. Sadja sat at the head, and Basadi entered a moment later.
She wore the Empress’s finery to the table, rubies on her fingers and a pair of gold rings in her nose, with chains of silver draped around her neck and over her breasts, which she displayed in a low-cut choli and a loosely draped sari. Not to impress anyone other than Sadja—she and Sadja were the only two people at the table—but for herself, or perhaps to enjoy the long, admiring stare that Sadja gave her. She smiled at him with impish impetuousness and bowed.
“My Emperor,” she said. “So you’ve woken from your trance.”
Sadja stiffened and dropped the smile from his face. “What trance, my Empress?”
“Oh, you know, the spirit that keeps you rolling on the floor every now and then.” She lowered herself onto the cushion, and the servant girl trailing her arranged the folds of her sari. She gave Sadja a cold grin.
“Does it bother you?” Sadja said, just as coldly.
“To have an Emperor who falls prey to some babbling spirit?” Basadi looked around with impatience. “Where is the food?”
The dining room chief signalled in panic, and a heartbeat later the servants began to lay out the dishes before them. Sadja took up the bowl of rice beer as soon as it appeared at his elbow and swallowed a long draft.
“Perhaps you’re jealous to have a husband who not only rules all of Amur, but is favored by the Powers.”
“If you call that favor,” Basadi said. She took a leaf of roti and scooped up a pinch of the stewed lamb, licking broth off of her fingers.
“I do,” Sadja said.
They ate in silence, giving each other glares of hardened bronze. Sadja would rather not duel with Basadi—he was tired, and he spent most of his day testing the resolve of the khadir and the dhorsha, trying to read the secrets of their intent in the lies they told him. It would have been nice to have Basadi clearly on his side.
Of course, he had known better than to expect that when he married her. The price of marrying the old Emperor’s daughter.
“You’ll come to my chamber tonight,” he said.
“Will I?” She took a careful sip from her bowl of rice beer, looking at him with an arched brow just barely visible above the rim of the bowl. “To see a spirit-addled man speak prophecies he doesn’t understand?”
“You’ll see just how spirit-addled I am.”
“Perhaps I will, perhaps I won’t.”
“Do you really want to test the cost of refusing the Emperor?”
She glared at him. But the rest of the dinner passed withou
t further aggravation. Basadi’s conversation wandered off into familiar topics: the chatter among the ladies of the court, her anger at her servants, the fate of the tiger she had received as a wedding present. They ate pleasantly. It became almost like an ordinary dinner between spouses.
The sky was black and bursting with stars by the time Sadja returned to his chamber. The valet lit a lamp, then glanced over Sadja shoulder and quickly disappeared through the door. Sadja heard the rustle of silks, and turned to see Basadi standing alone in the entranceway.
“My Emperor,” she said.
“So you decided not to test my wrath,” he said playfully.
“Test your wrath? Do you still have any?”
Sadja laughed. “I executed a man today. I have wrath to spare.”
She moved toward him, closer, until her face nearly touched Sadja’s and her breasts pressed against his chest. “It’s been four days since you called for me.”
“I’ve been very busy. Ashturma and his cowardice, along with everything else.”
“Too much abstention might be contributing to your wrath.”
“Four days is too long for you?”
“I could get bored.” She raised a hand to fondle Sadja’s chin.
Sadja squeezed Basadi’s wrist in his fist. “Get too bored, my Empress, and you’ll see what my wrath really looks like.”
She drew back half a step, far enough to look directly into Sadja’s face. Her lips narrowed, and her eyes glittered with pleasure. “Then you’d better keep me well entertained.”
His grabbed her other wrist. Pinning her arms behind her back, he lifted her into the air and carried her behind the curtain.
Mandhi
Land at last.
A shore of mottled gray stone, splashed with white by the waves breaking against the rocks. Above the shore stood a wall of black pines, the tips of their heads waving in the wind. A gentle slope rose from the shoreline, the long train of a mountain’s cloak climbing from the sea toward a rounded gray pinnacle, white medallions of snow in its valleys, exhaling a plume of steam from its peak. In the west huddled a naked, moss-covered headland and a little sod house with a black curl of smoke rising from the vent in its roof. A tall, pale man in a shaggy cloak raised his hand to salute them.
Kalignas.
Aryaji’s hands curled around Mandhi’s. She pressed herself into her, nearly hiding her face in Mandhi’s chest, and whispered, “We’re finally here. The stars upon the shore.”
A cold, foreign shore, Mandhi thought. Her gut twisted into strange shapes, fear and premonition and promise fighting each other in her belly. Somewhere beyond this shore was her child. She would not leave this land without him.
The sailors ran forward into the prow and signalled to the man on the point. A series of hand signs passed between them which ended with a shout toward the captain that they should continue around the point and into the harbor. Great hollers of rejoicing went up from the sailors.
Aryaji shivered. “Will it always be this cold?” she asked. She was wrapped in a heavy woolen cloak, the warmest garment on the ship, which Nakhur had given to her when they’d sailed past the last of the islands and the waters had turned gray and cold.
“This is the end of spring,” Mandhi said. “It should get warmer in the summer. But if we stay until winter….”
Aryaji shuddered. “We couldn’t possibly stay in Kalignas until winter,” she whispered. “We’ll find Jhumitu before that.”
Mandhi nodded with more confidence than she actually felt.
They rounded the point, passed the lonely house on the headland, and came in view of the harbor itself. The name of the port sounded on the lips of the sailors: Mabeg! Mabeg!
Jauda, the captain of the ship and commander of the mercenaries, stood at the stern with his fists at his waist. He was tall, with long hair tied in a glossy black braid and a deep chest that resounded with his shouted orders. The mercenary sailors scurried to handle his commands, clambering over sails, masts, and ropes, a great mess of movement which Mandhi didn’t attempt to understand.
The harbor of Mabeg appeared: a jumble of wooden buildings crowded along the shallow slope rising from the shore, unpainted boards stained white and gray by sea-spray, roofs of long, shaggy pine planks, tiny windows looking out over the choppy gray water of the harbor. Farther away from the shore the wooden buildings grew sparse, and the space between them was filled with sod houses like the one they had seen on the point. Here and there were great, long buildings of stone with peaks two and three stories high. The colors were all gray and green, though some had a red-dyed flag hanging from a window. Three long wooden piers extended into the water, with a number of dhows tied at their cleats. A handful of people wandering up and down the planks. Mandhi felt a strange jolt of recognition at the few brown Amuran faces among them.
At the end of one of the piers stood a man who gestured to them with the sailors’ hand-signs. He pointed them toward an open berth. The process of bringing the boat in was long and tedious, especially as Mandhi waited holding Aryaji’s hand on the bench by the rail. But at last the ropes reached the pier and were wound on the copper cleats on the dock, and a little wooden ladder bridged the gap between the dhow and the pier.
Mandhi rose to descend. Captain Jauda waved her down.
“Is something the matter?” Mandhi asked. “I want down, before the rest of you unload—”
“Let the harbor-master talk first,” Jauda said. He pointed to the ladder, where a head of straw-colored hair appeared over the top of the rail.
The Kaleksha man climbed over the rail and stood in the prow. Like all Kaleksha he was enormously tall, a head bigger than most of the Amurans, with long hair that reached halfway down his back and a beard like an unshorn goat. His gaze lingered for several long moments on Mandhi and Aryaji sitting near the rail, then he looked at Jauda, the only Amuran who approached him in size.
“You seek safe landing, black friend?” the Kaleksha men asked, in a voice heavy with thick vowels and rumbling consonants.
Mandhi wondered for a heartbeat whether ‘black friend’ was an insult. But Jauda was unaffected. He bowed and said, “Safe landing, safe seas, yellow friend.”
“And what brings you?” The man glanced again at Mandhi and Aryaji again.
“What brings all boats to the gray shore,” Jauda answered. “Trade and courage.”
The Kaleksha man rumbled in consternation. He stepped into their hold and pulled open the lid of one of their baskets. It contained dried roti, now soggy and salty after the long journey. The man’s face curled up in disgust, and he glanced over the other, unopened baskets in the hold.
“You have no trade cargo.”
“We have business to conduct,” Jauda said firmly.
The man pulled himself out of the hold, then crossed his arms and glowered at Jauda. “I see two women, no trade goods, and no Kaleksha. A ship full of men, not all of them sailors. I see spears and swords. You cannot land in Mabeg if you have no Kaleksha sailor in your crew.”
“Am I not Kaleksha?” Captain Jauda said.
The harbor-master looked at his dark skin and black hair and laughed.
“My father was one of yours,” Jauda said. He slapped his thick chest and stepped up eye-to-eye with the harbor-master. “Now you let me through to your harbor.”
Mandhi felt a twinge of curiosity. Mandhi hadn’t known that Jauda was a half-breed until now. A vision of her son’s future—though she hoped that the Heir of Manjur would be more cultured than a mercenary captain.
“The son of an Amuran whore is not a Kaleksha,” the harbor-master answered firmly. He hesitated. “But I might let you unload in my harbor if you answer me straight. What are you doing here?”
Mandhi spoke up. “We’re looking for someone.”
Jauda shot her a furious glare, but it was too late. The harbor-master gazed at Mandhi with deep suspicion. He studied the women for several moments, then turned back to Jauda.
“What does the woman want?”
Jauda sighed. “She spoke truly. We’re looking for someone.”
“With spears and swords?”
“It might be a difficult search.”
The man glanced over the Amurans again. “This is a hleg,” he said. “I will not have men bringing hleg into my harbor.”
Mandhi looked up at Jauda, hoping he might give her some clue as to what the man meant, but Jauda seemed just as confused as Mandhi.
“Yellow friend—” Jauda began again, but the harbor-master cut him off.
“Swords, spears, and men to carry them. That is not a cargo you’ll unload here.” He stepped onto the top rail of the ladder to descend.
“Friend!” Jauda shouted. “We’ll do no violence in Mabeg! No swords, no spears. Not in the city.”
Mandhi bit her lip at the false promise. If Jhumitu was here in Mabeg, then Mandhi was quite determined to bring swords and spears into the city.
It didn’t matter. The harbor-master shook his head firmly, and made a sailors’ sign at Jauda. “Not in my harbor, and not in the city. I’ll be letting the guild know of your approach. If I see you or any of your crew in Mabeg, we’ll cut your throats and throw you into the sea. Now untie your ropes and sail out before I send the strong men to do it for you.”
He descended the ladder.
Jauda watched him go, a mask of impassivity on his face. As soon as the harbor-master was down, he growled to his men, “All right, pull up those ties.”
“Wait,” Mandhi said softly. “So what if he sends the strong men? We have an entire boat full of mercenaries.”
Jauda looked at her with horror. “We do not spite the harbor-master. Not unless we all want to meet our deaths here in Kalignas.”
“But captain, we have to fight eventually—”
“No.” He shook his head firmly. “We fight when we find someone we have to fight. Until then—keep untying, you dogs, unfurl the sail and bring out the oars—until then, we respect the Kaleksha authorities. Especially the sailor’s guild.” He looked with a grimace toward Mabeg. “If we didn’t, we’d have every man in this city crowding the docks to kill us.”