by J. S. Bangs
Daladham put a hand on the heavy purple curtain. A shiver of fear passed through him.
“We have to go,” Amabhu said. “The Emperor isn’t here.”
“I know,” Daladham said. “Still…”
Caupana grumbled in irritation. He stepped forward and jerked the curtain open.
The inside of the Emperor’s chamber smelled of cinnamon and orange rind, cumin and roses. Daladham stepped carefully, his eyes roving every way. His feet sank into a carpet of purple and rose. Plates of gold and vases of blue-glazed ceramic glittered against the walls. A couch on legs of ebony wood sat in the middle of the chamber, and beyond it a low table of mahogany, its surface like a mirror with oil and lacquer. At the far end of the chamber, curtains of red silk enclosed the bedchamber, with dim light from a balcony leaking through them.
“Back there,” he said. “Find the table and the book.”
Amabhu and Caupana stepped through the empty bedchamber in ghastly silence. The only sound that disturbed it was the occasional echo of the fighting outside, wafting in from the filigreed balconies. Their steps padded as softly as tiger’s feet on the carpeted-covered marble.
“Here,” whispered Amabhu. He knelt in the back corner of the room, before a wooden shelf of hinged drawers, bronze handles set into their faces. Daladham and Caupana joined him.
Each of the holes in the bookshelf held a book or two, and Amabhu had pulled most of them open before he found the treasure of Ternas in its case of oiled ebony. He tucked it into his kurta and looked regretfully over the rest of the volumes.
“I don’t know what the rest of these are,” he said. “Seems like such a pity to leave them.”
Caupana rested a hand on Amabhu’s shoulder. “We have to go. Take only what’s most important.”
Amabhu sighed and lay a hand on the book. “We have it. Let’s go.”
They descended the stairs at a run, blurring past the floors they had searched so diligently on their ascent. When they reached the bottom stair, Daladham stopped. His blood bubbled with fear. He pointed out the door.
The courtyard before the Emperor’s Tower surged with Red Men. The shouts of the commanders echoed across the marble tiles: Do not fall back! Hold the Horned Gate! The screams of the dying and the roaring of the Devoured mixed with their commands. Men with bloody faces fled from the front line, while others surged forward into their places.
“We have to go,” Caupana said. “Run.”
Amabhu clutched the book of the Powers in both hands and gave a fearful glare at both Caupana and Daladham. “We’d better make it.”
They sprinted into the melee.
Daladham weaved among red-clad bodies, avoiding the points of spears. Faces stared at him in amazement and annoyance, but no one tried to stop him—he was neither Devoured nor imperial guard, so he was of no importance. The clashing of wood and bronze sounded from his left. Stones grumbled and walls groaned. In the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of bronze-clad doors with the curling horns of a ram in relief, slowly creaking open as a shouting, clawing mob pressed through.
The pink marble halls of the Ushpanditya showed ahead. He crossed into their shadow. Passed the last of the Red Men. Amabhu stumbled against a pillar, and Caupana followed a step behind him. For a moment they paused, panting.
The sound of screams and shattering wood in the courtyard urged them forward.
Panic-stricken khadir and grim-faced servants streamed toward the entrance of the Ushpanditya. They followed them, running wordlessly. At the foremost entrance hall a massive crowd was gathered, pushing against the arch and the stairs which descended to the Rice Gate.
“No, we can’t open the Rice Gate,” someone was shouting. “There’s nothing but Devoured on the other side. We go out that way and we’ll be torn to pieces in minutes.”
“Others already left!” someone else shouted. “Teguri-dhu and her party!”
“And they were the last!” It was one of the Red Men who guarded the entrance. “I closed it after she left, because I could see the Devoured approaching. It’s overrun now, and Am help Teguri-dhu.”
Daladham could make out Sadja’s voice responding, calm and reserved, but his words were lost in the throng. The hall shook with shouting for a moment, then the crowd gradually split. A handful of Red Men pushed their way through leading Sadja, dressed in emerald green with a glittering bronze sword, and a man in a scarlet kurta at his side.
Sadja stopped when he saw Daladham and the others. He pointed at them. “You three. Where were you?”
Daladham’s legs grew weak. “My Emperor, we recovered the Book of the Powers of Amur. Don’t be angry—”
“Angry? I was furious with myself for not thinking of it,” he said. “Bhargasa, bring them with us in the first group. They must come with us to Davrakhanda.”
“Davrakhanda, my Emperor?” Daladham asked.
“No time,” the Emperor’s man in scarlet said. “Follow us.”
The guard around Sadja stepped aside to allow Daladham and the thikratta into the little guarded knot. Then they marched ahead with impatient steps.
“Where are we going?” Daladham whispered to the guard beside them. He was nearly running to match the pace of the Red Men. Only Caupana’s long legs kept easy stride with the imperial guards.
“Davrakhanda,” the guard said. “Bhargasa knows a way….”
Their path took them away from the Green Hall and the orange garden, toward the inner chambers of the Ushpanditya and the servant’s halls. They stopped at an unassuming storage room. Bhargasa, the man in scarlet, tore the curtain aside and motioned Sadja through. Daladham heard scraping inside, then a muttered command. The Red Men pushed them through into the chamber, then formed into a wall across the door. The babble of the crowd that had followed the Emperor sounded from the hall behind them.
Bhargasa pushed sacks of rice to the sides of the storeroom. A trap door hid in the floor, which Bhargasa pried open. A narrow wooden ladder descended. Bhargasa stood next to it with his arms folded.
“Down,” he commanded.
Daladham glanced at the others.
“You first,” Amabhu said. “I’ll hand the book down to you.”
Daladham descended the ladder, placing his feet one careful step after the other on the sagging rungs. When his feet found the dusty floor, he reached up to Amabhu.
“Send it down.”
Amabhu dropped the book into his hands. The thikratta joined him at the foot of the ladder.
“Follow the tunnel,” Bhargasa said. “We’ll come after you.”
To his right stretched an unlit passage through the stone, from which a dusty breath exhaled. “There is no lamp,” Daladham said.
“Keep your hands on the walls. Go!”
Caupana grabbed Amabhu and Daladham’s hands and pulled them into the tunnel. Darkness swallowed them.
For long minutes, Daladham could hear nothing except their breathing and the scuffling of their feet against the stone floor. His fingers trailed along the stone surface of the tunnel. His hand clutching the book of the Powers grew sweaty with the strength of his grip. Caupana’s soft footsteps sounded a few feet ahead of him. Behind him, a clatter of a stone. Amabhu swore. They pressed forward.
Ahead, a dim green light. It grew, outlining the tunnel through which they passed. Caupana appeared as a silhouette in the pale glow. They turned a corner, and Daladham saw with a moment of understanding: an artificial cave cut into the stone along the bank of the Saru. Sunlight filtered through the vines and flowers which grew over the mouth of the cave, leaving green reflections on the pool of water within the cave. Three small river barges waited in the water.
“Get in the boat,” one of the Red Men behind them said. “As soon as Bhargasa reaches us, we push off.”
Daladham stepped down into the barge and knelt in the bottom. Amabhu and Caupana sat next to him. Daladham pushed the book into Amabhu’s hands. Too precious for him to hold. The rocking of the boat was making
him sick.
“What about the rest of the Ushpanditya, my Emperor?” he asked quietly. “The whole crowd followed us to the storeroom.”
Sadja was quiet. “At the mouth of the Saru I have a dhow which will take us to Davrakhanda. There are two more boats here for those that come down the tunnel after us… they’ll have to fight over spots among themselves.”
“And where is the Empress?”
A cloud of anger passed over Sadja’s face. “She won’t be coming,” he said. Daladham didn’t dare inquire further.
Steps sounded in the tunnel that Daladham had just emerged from. Bhargasa, a pair of khadir, and a few more guards emerged and ran directly to the barge.
“Push off,” Bhargasa commanded. “Others are following.”
Two of the Red Men took up barge-poles without further comment, their poles making quiet splashes in the water. They slipped out through the overhanging foliage into the slow, silty waters of the Saru. The vine-covered bank slowly receded.
Daladham glanced at the precious book in Amabhu’s arms. Amabhu and Caupana clasped each others’ hands. The barge moved into the current and nosed slowly downstream.
The Emperor looked up at the fortress receding behind them with a grim, sorrowful expression. “The Ushpanditya,” he whispered. “The Dhigvaditya. Never taken by force.”
Above the river the sandstone slopes of the Ditya rose like the shoulders of a great beast. The walls of the fortress glowered over the waters, the Emperor’s Tower and the domes of the Ushpanditya like crowns above them. And over it all hung a haze of red dust like blood leaking into the sky.
Vapathi
Kirshta walked among the dead and dying around the Horned Gate like a crow picking through refuse. A pack of Red Men walked with him, prodding at their fallen former comrades, looking for those who still breathed. Vapathi watched them from the shadows of the gate, leaning against the stone.
A man twitched and groaned. Kirshta knelt next to him.
“You still alive?” he asked.
The man gasped and raised his hand. Kirshta clasped the man’s hand in his and pressed it to his chest.
“Do you want to live?”
“Devourer,” the man whispered.
“You may live, if you give me your name,” Kirshta said. “Quickly, now, you don’t have much time. You don’t—”
The soldier pulled his hand free of Kirshta and pushed feebly at Kirshta’s chest. But his shoving grew weak, and his groan petered out. His hand fell to the ground.
Kirshta rose, shook his head, and looked at Vapathi with an expression of chagrin. “Too late for him, I guess.”
“Not everyone wants to be Devoured,” Vapathi said.
“They would rather die?”
She walked forward, out of the shadow of the Horned Gate and into the marble of the courtyard, placing her feet carefully between the dead bodies and the pools of blood.
It felt so strange to be back in the Ushpanditya. She had spent so many years here, had passed through this very gate hundreds of times. It had only been…. what? Less than a year since she had been sent away from Praudhu.
Sent away. A thrill of delight passed through her. She had come in with a jar of blood, torn a hole in the Dhigvaditya, and made the Emperor’s courts into a field of bodies. No one would send her away again.
“Any sign of where Sadja-daridarya went?” she asked.
Kirshta shook his head and rubbed his temples for a moment. “The Red Men questioned some of the newly Devoured. They said he escaped. A secret passage. We’ll see if any of the living remember the way.”
They had penned a whole flock of khadir and the servants down in the garden, guarded by the Devoured and Kirshta’s Red Men. Vapathi looked across the courtyard to the entrance of the Emperor’s Tower. “Is anyone in there?”
“They said no one’s alive in there.” Kirshta said.
“I’m going in. Perhaps it’ll be a good place for me and Apurta to stay after he’s healed.”
Kirshta laughed. “Go. Make your home in the Emperor’s bed if you want.”
The foyer was entirely unchanged, silver offerings to the Lord and Lady across from the entrance, painted marble stairs climbing to the upper rooms. She ascended the stairs slowly, going into every floor. The kitchens, where she would hide and chat with the cook’s staff in spare moments. The Emperor’s dining room, where she would bring the evening meal to Ruyam. The Empress’s apartments, unoccupied and lightless the whole time that Vapathi had served in the Ushpanditya.
She paused before the curtains of the Empress’s apartments. This might be a good place for her. She didn’t really want to live in the Emperor’s quarters, no matter what Kirshta said. She had spent enough time there serving Ruyam. But the Empress’s rooms were no less luxurious, a fitting place for the Queen of Slaves.
She parted the curtain embroidered with the image of Ashti and stepped through the door. Here there had been great changes. The rooms were dark and cluttered with unused furniture when Ruyam had been here, but now the curtains over the far balcony were parted, pouring white afternoon light across clean carpets of scarlet and rose. Polished brass mirrors hung on the walls. A giant fan of pink coral sat on a table before the balcony, glowing with the light of day. A deep, curtained alcove near the balcony held the Empress’s bed, the curtains glittering with gold rings in the scarlet fabric.
Vapathi stepped around a table set with silver figurines of tigers and dhows and a couch draped with silken blankets. She gasped.
A dead man lay on the floor behind the couch. A eunuch, lips painted red and eyelids blackened with kohl. Its throat was cut, blood pooling on the marble floor and soaking into the carpets. A silver-handled knife lay on the floor next to its hand.
“Didn’t even wait for us to get here,” Vapathi said. Ah, well. She had no use for eunuchs.
A groan sounded from the Empress’s bed.
Someone still alive in the Empress’s apartments? Could be a trap. Vapathi bent and picked up the silver knife. She walked slowly forward. A hand on the red cotton. She tore the curtain aside with her left hand and held the knife at the ready.
“Are you going to kill me?” the woman in the bed asked.
She was a young woman, barely more than a girl. She lay on her back with her hands folded on her belly, dressed in the grandest imperial finery. A choli of thin white cotton, stitched with purple peacocks and golden suns. The eyes of the peacocks were tiny pearls. A sari of red and blue stripes, with a golden fringe. Rings of gold on her fingers, a pink ruby stud in her nose. She looked on Vapathi with practiced noble contempt.
“You must be the Empress,” Vapathi said.
“And you’ve come to kill me,” Basadi said. “You can do it more quickly with that knife, if you’d like.”
“Why are you so sure that I’m going to kill you?” Vapathi spun the knife between her fingers.
“Because you kill everyone,” Basadi said. “I’ve heard the rumors.”
“Perhaps the rumors you heard were false. We kill our enemies. We spare our friends.”
Basadi laughed bitterly. “Your friends are slaves and peasants. The Mouth of the Devourer destroys every khadir and dhorsha that he meets. Isn’t that what you’ve been saying since you came down from the mountains? You want to free the peasants and slaves. You’re not going to spare the Empress.”
“Don’t be so sure.” Vapathi felt a strange pity for the girl, lying there motionless on her bed and waiting to die. Despite the luxuries draped around her, her face was that of a young woman who knew even less of the world than Vapathi did. “Where is your husband?”
“He left. I didn’t want to come with him.”
“Why not?”
She laughed. “I married Sadja-daridarya to become an Empress. I’m not about to become a fugitive.”
Vapathi sat on the edge of the bed. The Empress looked at her curiously. “You know, I also heard rumors about you here in Majasravi. I heard quite a lot about the Ushpand
itya in the days before we broke in.”
“Delightful,” Basadi said. “Please tell me, what do the peasants say about their Empress?”
“I’m not sure you’re much better than a slave yourself,” Vapathi said.
Basadi’s face flashed with anger. “Don’t pity me, slave.”
“You, like me, were sold from man to man for the profit of your body,” Vapathi said. “Your father locked you away for half a decade to protect his interest, didn’t he? And then he traded you to one of his allies. Finally, Sadja-daridarya stole you, not for yourself, but so that he could gain the Ushpanditya.”
“I chose to marry Sadja-daridarya.”
“So you did,” Vapathi said. “And your devotion to him is so great that you’ve chosen to die in the palace instead of leaving with him.”
Basadi fell silent. She refolded her hands on her stomach and closed her eyes. “It doesn’t matter,” she said quietly. “The poison will take effect soon.”
“Poison?”
Basadi’s hands trembled. The creak of a suppressed sob crept into her voice. “My eunuch took the fast way out. I was too afraid of the blade.”
“Do you want to die? You can still live.”
“No I can’t. The poison is already in me.”
“Listen,” Vapathi said. She leaned forward and spoke urgently. “The Mouth of the Devourer will take you.”
“Take me how?”
“Give him your name. Become deathless and unafraid, like him and the army of the Devoured.”
A sudden cry split Basadi’s lips. Her fingers curled and dug into her stomach. “The poison!”
“You don’t have much more time,” Vapathi hissed. “You want to be the Empress? Your Emperor has already fled. Join us and become the Empress of the Devoured.”
“Go!” screamed Basadi. She curled up, clutching her stomach. A howl of pain in her throat.
Vapathi ran to the door of the apartments, down four flights of stairs, and into the courtyard before the Horned Gate. A few of the Devoured were carrying the bodies of the dead out.