Ulamat hefts his glass. “To your everlasting victory.”
She follows suit. “To the queen’s eternal reign.”
Chapter 3
Nuawa comes across a medallion bearing a likeness of the general’s grandaunt in Tezem’s collection. She must have seen it before, but has never had a reason to pay it any special heed, just another unremarkable object eclipsed by much more unusual curiosities.
Her manager’s office apes the aesthetic of an antique shop, full shelves and cabinets, preserved paintings and outdated maps on the walls. Most of them are exotic: there is a miniature greenhouse that holds live flora cycling through the seasons that once were, budding green and fruiting the bright shades of summer—ruby lychees and quartz rose apples, amber carambolas and golden papayas. Tezem boasts that the tiny things, no larger than Nuawa’s fingernail, can be extracted with delicate tweezers and needles to eat. That is a treat they reserve for special guests and the most exceptional duelists. Nuawa took some home once for her mother.
At the sight of them, Indrahi wept; it was the only time Nuawa had seen her mother cry. The reminder of seasons that were, the fruits themselves. She couldn’t tell and did not ask.
Her manager has not emerged yet, though their appointment has gone fifteen minutes past. Nuawa knows Tezem too well to knock on the small door to their private study. Instead she waits by the miniature aquarium, another expensive curio and toy, in which the waters thresh bathyal green; tiny shadow-carps dart through the darkness, flashing black-light fins and starlit eyes.
Compared to them the medallion is ordinary, out of place in its mundanity. A flat disc of some pale metal that has not oxidized, circumscribed with a script Nuawa can’t read but recognizes as the Kemiraj alphabet. The face resembles General Lussadh’s only in passing, but the familial tie is visible if one looks for it. Harsh cheekbones, prominent philtrum, angle of the eyes: the king of Kemiraj before winter took it. Lussadh—prince back then—would have been the next in line, chosen as successor for her gift at statecraft and languages.
Instead, Prince Lussadh had struck a bargain with the Winter Queen in secret: she would surrender in Kemiraj’s name, and in exchange she would not only be spared but granted favor with the queen. The entire dynasty was slaughtered. No al-Kattan survives save Lussadh herself—not her grandaunt, not her siblings, not her parents.
An unnatural child, Mother said, and Nuawa is inclined to agree. She has killed her share of opponents in duels and more besides in contract work; she feels no remorse for it, but this gives even her pause. She can’t begin to model a mind capable of that. Even the queen is easier to conceptualize—alien and therefore logical in her inhumanity. At least she has not, to Nuawa’s knowledge, committed fratricide.
By the time Tezem deigns to present themselves, Nuawa is seated primly in a chair that has escaped colonization by unusual instruments or amber-encased manuscripts, well away from the medallion or anything else. She has disassembled one of her knives: its fishbone ribs cling like angular lace to the back of her hand, twitching, as she cleans out its core with a pin.
“I hate it when you do that,” they say as they relocate a pile of books, freeing a divan for themselves.
“Someone’s shadow got stuck in it. I don’t want it to congeal.” Nuawa flicks out a shred of void. “Good morning, Tezem.”
“You are here to discuss signing up for the tribute game, aren’t you?”
She re-binds the sliver-knife and sheathes it. “Do you object?”
Tezem crosses their legs. Their eyes are painted metallic, courting ocean colors, and underscored with kohl. Austere clothes, in deliberate contrast. Tezem enjoys dressing in opposites. “You’re one of the best ten duelists in Sirapirat.”
“One of the best five, I’d prefer to think.”
“The competition involves three hundred participants. By the deadline, that’ll have swollen to four hundred if not more. That is a great deal of unknown variables. Fifty Sirapirat duelists? That I’ll bet on. Gods know how many foreigners? That’s a different set of odds entirely.”
She knows from Yifen that most tribute participants are not from Sirapirat, but rather from adjacent constituents. Those who did not make it in the qualification preliminaries there, those who survived defeat—without being fed to the ghost-kiln—through some escape clause. No doubt they believe Sirapirat fighters to be of an inferior grade, that they’ll have an easier time here. “I appreciate your concern. Life is nothing but unknown variables.”
“You’re determined then.” Tezem gives a long, theatrical sigh. “My best-earning duelist gone to a ghost. Truly I’ll miss you. Well, my ledgers will miss you. Do you reckon I could write you off as a tax deduction?”
“Very touched. You’ll need to ask your accountant.” Nuawa makes a show of examining her fingernails. “Or you could consider this an investment. Put me in the game; I understand a reputable manager can get me in this late without me having to jump through hoops. A number of the foreign competitors are fugitives. Sirapirat law enforcement doesn’t apply to them—wrong jurisdiction—and if they succeed in the tournament, they’ll be pardoned fully. Until the game begins properly though, the original bounties on their heads stand.”
Tezem taps the divan’s armrest with a steel-tipped fingernail. “What’s in it for me? I won’t get into this just for sentiment’s sake, you must realize.”
“The bounties I can’t collect without going through bureaucrats and I expect you can take care of that, so every last coin made from that is yours. My presence in the tournament will attract new clients for you. What have you got to lose?”
They look at her, frowning. “I’ll get you a list of the fugitives,” they say at length. “You get until the hard deadline to put them out of commission. Then and only then will I sponsor you into the tournament.”
The hard deadline being in six days. “It’s a deal,” Nuawa says, already calculating the logistics of each coming kill.
* * *
The alacrity with which Tezem secured enforcer documents is this side of divine intervention: profit motivates them, as ever, to sharp immediacy. Nuawa receives the warrants in the form of temporary tattoos that she presses over her shoulder. They bind to her blood, granting her legal authority from six different provinces to act on eight separate bounties. Eight in six days: cutting it close, but not impossible. She’s faced tougher contract work when money was tight, before she came into the comfort of the Marrow.
Her first pick is an occidental who immigrated to marry his husband. Apparently the husband cheated and, in a fit of pique, the occidental set a building on fire. The prize on his head is not high, but neither is his low-rent room secured. Simple enough to slip in and wait. She skimps on ammunition, opting to take him with a blade.
It is quick business and he falls almost before he realizes there’s an intruder in his room. Confirming the kill is the messier part: she has to carve out the man’s heart—not for the first time she’s glad she keeps her knives whetted and well-fed—and daub blood on the warrant. That tattoo turns warm, nearly scalding, before it evaporates and takes the blood with it. Nuawa leaves the body and the heart; both seep fluids into the rough floor. She doesn’t envy the janitor or landlady, but neither does she wish to bother with corpse disposal.
By the fourth day, she has gone through six bounties.
She is waiting for her seventh in the university’s library. An odd shelter, but rooming with a professor offers somewhat better protection than the previous six, who all lived in isolated apartments. Nuawa blends in with ease: she’s too old for an undergraduate, but she has no trouble affecting the harried look of a postgraduate or academic staff. Her profile gives no hint of hidden weapons. A smoothness of line aided by clever cutting in her clothes and her practice at carrying concealed. Nuawa puts a great deal of value on good tailors, invests much of her earnings into them. She’s also put aside all the accoutrements of a duelist, the customary accessorizing of enemy signatures as tr
ophy: no spent bullets button her shirt, no pearl molars embroider her throat, and no chips of shattered blades glitter in her hair. Amidst the stacks and dragonfly papers, ink-stained and tousled as any student, she waits and watches with a book before her. Now and again she squints at its marginalia and copies it onto a sheet of folding resin.
She hears the quiet in gradients, in ripples—conversations extinguishing, pens stilling, amber pebbles juddering to a stop on abacuses. A thump of books dropping on tabletops, a thud of writing slates falling to the stone floor. Their sequels: papers scattering, record-panes shattering. In a moment, the only sound is General Lussadh’s steps, and those of her companion.
Nuawa forces herself to calm, her rhythms to even out. Her entire family has changed their names, scattered far from Sirapirat, and most have already disowned her mothers. And when Tafari died in the kiln, the general was still a prince. Lussadh would never have met Tafari.
“My apologies, esteemed scholars; it wasn’t my intent to disrupt.” Said with perfect courtesy. “I’m showing my guest around the university, though I should have notified your superiors beforehand, shouldn’t I? Send the costs for damage I caused to the palace steward and I’ll see that you’re properly reimbursed.”
Behind her rampart of papers and manuscripts, Nuawa studies the general. She has seen Lussadh before in broadcasts, never in person. The queen’s right hand is tall, superbly made and at forty-six superbly fit. Immense eyes that might have been called limpid on a younger, less severe face. The jawline is beautifully tapered, the angle of chin and nose definite. The whole is striking, even handsome. Appealing if not for the mind behind it, the allegiance it is yoked to. And oddly familiar, in a way she can’t quite place.
Their eyes meet, for the push-pull of a heartbeat.
The general leaves with her companion—a young occidental woman, like some diplomat—to their business, and soon Nuawa leaves to hers.
By the time she is done, her seventh bounty is a pile of ashes and dissipating shadow. A few smoke talismans help her dispose of the corpse, more or less neatly. Blots of gore linger on her clothes, result of too much struggle and resistance. She covers them up with her jacket, longing for hot baths.
On the way out, she turns to the library, knowing that a hasty exit would mark her. Not that collecting the bounty is criminal, but she prefers to make no scene. Seven down, one to go. She takes no pride in the kill but she does take pride in the efficiency.
By now the library is empty except for the general. Who has been here for some time, Nuawa supposes, and whose presence has chased out students or professors alike. The occidental woman is gone.
Nuawa takes her time with the books, browsing the shelves, taking out and putting back volumes on ancient textiles, orthogonal warfare, swamp ecology. Subjects of incredible specialization, and which have been subjected to incredible organization. The university has an exacting library system. In the end she takes a volume on lapidary, heavy and plated. Holding it to her chest, she joins the general. “Glory to you, General, and to the grace of winter absolute.” There was a time, young and full of ideal, when those words would have stung her tongue and stoppered her throat. No longer; now they are rote. Existence is a performance.
“An interesting choice of reading.”
“The illustrations are beautiful,” Nuawa says, and they are. Brilliant inks, intense as jewels or scarab wings, primary colors and bold lines. “I don’t see them often.”
“Actual butterflies? No, one wouldn’t. They are not insects built to survive, too specialized. Fragile, but I’ll agree that they are beautiful.” Up close, Lussadh looms, with or without meaning to. The Kemiraj are statuesque, their royals even more so. She wears a faint scent, some subtle myrrh. “A moment of your time, if I might?”
Said with the surety that no is not an answer any sane person will give. “It would be my honor to give the general my time, though it is as of little worth as rubble next to a pearl.”
“In most circumstances, rubble is of more practical use. Paperweights. Burials. Their uses are infinite, but pearls have just the one, and not even an interesting one at that.” The general takes her elbow, a courteous gesture, but the grip is firm.
Her pulse beating copper percussion in her throat, Nuawa follows the general into a reading room. A plain oblong table; five chairs, two stacked with a student’s forgotten assignments; a wide clear window, full of dusk and lake. Rimed, with frost lotuses floating blue and serene. No tadpoles, fish, waterstriders. Aquatic life native to Sirapirat were never meant for the cold. Humankind alone adapts, if only just. Indrahi would tell her, when she was little, of all the infants succumbing before Sirapirat surrendered and was granted ghost-heat.
Lussadh does not block the door, but she does pick the chair closest to it. Gesticulates. “Next to me.” Nuawa complies. “You smell of blood and smoke. Somehow those don’t seem like a combination the biology faculty would produce.”
Giving her a chance to wriggle on the interrogation hook. “Perhaps I work at an abattoir, General, or the kitchen.” She’s careful to lace this with irony, edge it with a half-smile, to show that she is not saying it seriously—that having nothing to hide, she needs not lie or make excuses. That all she is doing is fencing.
“An abattoir where they smoke the meat in-house and their employees leave with pristine clothes? A kitchen where the cooks keep their hair this neat and don’t smell at all of lard or condiments?” The corners of Lussadh’s mouth edge upward, trajectory following Nuawa’s. The general too accepts that this is a pretense, a joke. “You are not the kind of danger I expect to encounter at an institution of learning. Here one expects the bureaucrat’s hazard, the academic’s tenure failure, not a killer. Are you here to remove me? It’s been too long since the last attempt and I’ve grown indolent.”
Still the edge of a jest, veering toward not quite. “There’s no one alive more dangerous than you, General.” Nuawa keeps her voice and face bland, composed: it is not flattery she means to give, nor obsequiousness she means to project. From what Indrahi said, the general enjoys neither.
“I can think of a few things. A pack of wild wolves, uncontrolled weather, fate’s vagaries. I am but one person.” Lussadh drums her knuckles against the tabletop, frowning. Her fingers still, as though she’s reached a decision. “I’m about to do something indecorous and ask that you not hold it against me. It’s not out of lust or malice.”
Nuawa has time to tense—brace herself to dodge, to counterattack—before Lussadh leans in. The general’s mouth on hers is so abrupt and so improbable that her senses blank out. When they return to function, it is a rush: the roughness of a scar on the general’s philtrum, the contrasting softness of the general’s lips, the pressure of the general’s hand on her jaw. And then the tug on her nerves, almost physical, ice that at once burns and chills her arteries.
Lussadh draws away. Runs her tongue along her own mouth, tasting Nuawa. “Carrying concealed is all very well, but it does show. Of course, I do know what to look for and I’ve perhaps gotten much closer to you than most. You’re a fighter of some kind, correct?”
Dazed, Nuawa says without thinking, “Yes.”
“Good. I hope to see you at the tribute tournament. May I have your name? Mine you already know, more’s the pity. Everyone has the advantage of me.”
“Nuawa Dasaret.” And saying that she snaps back to herself, caught by the mortification of having answered so simply and truthfully. But then, if Lussadh wants to find out more about her, the general has plenty of channels. Lying about her name—a name far disconnected from her giving-mother, from Tafari’s history—would serve her poorly. And her original name is, after all, dead. A child, six-year-old, buried under granite and soil.
“A hypnotic name.” The general smiles, a flash of well-kept teeth, and makes a gallant bow. “I’ll remember it.”
Chapter 4
Night. Wind slices across Lussadh’s neck, garrote-sharp, and she wakes. A gun in
her hand even before she registers the parted window: so much life and habit have taught her, honing this reflex until it is as natural as blinking. The curtain flutters and in the distance, an owl hoots. She’s come to think of owls as an everywhere animal, canny at surviving in all weather and habitats. Even at home, so long ago, her grandaunt kept several pet owls. A symbol of resilience and cunning. If not for tradition, her grandaunt would have abandoned the hummingbird for an owl, something dark and wide of wings. Something with beaks designed to tear open meat.
There is no movement. She is alone, despite the evidence of entry. Slowly she shrugs off the furs and strains to see, to listen, but the rime cobwebs overhead are undisturbed and the frost-spiders quiescent: a gift from the queen to keep watch over her better than any human guard, as much alarm system as the first line of defense. Capable of reducing a person to bones in minutes.
“Your Highness.” The voice is the crackle of wood wilting in fire, of sand-waves lapping at a dune and desert sails snapping in the wind. The voice is one that belongs to another lifetime.
And so she says, with difficulty, “That was a country ago, Ytoba, and a title that no longer exists.”
“Blood is forever. To me you will always be of your dynasty, and your children thereafter should you spread your seed.” A pause. The shadow does not move: it is so thin and flat against the wall it could be paper, monodimensional, not a person at all but a memory and a grudge. “No doubt you thought me dead. I was close to it and my recovery was long. What you meted out to me would have been the death of most. Strange to nearly die by fire given who your new master is.”
She attempts to imagine what Ytoba looks like now, shrouded in scraps of gloom and cradled in the interstices between light. Back then, a nation ago, ey was whole and strong and one of Kemiraj’s best assassins. Pledged for life to the crown. “You’re hardy, as ever.”
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