What is certain is that the labyrinth does not adhere to architectural logic; even now the sky is already blotted out, the walls slanting inward and cutting the light to thin sheets. Each combatant would have entered through their own gate and there should be as many radiating pathways as there are competitors. Once there is only one duelist standing, the dream should end. No doubt she won’t be the only one to have deduced this, and some of her competition would ally to secure triumph. Though even those would have to turn on each other in the end.
The path curves and slopes upward. Within the wall, some of the bones spasm into signs: a map, an arrow. Others flow and resolve into game-grids, in which chips of femur arrange themselves, twenty-three pieces to represent twenty-three duelists. Nuawa doesn’t follow the arrow, quite, though it trails her with unnerving persistence. Herding her. Hardly any sport to be had if the course lasts too long and the combatants do not meet.
A thud of weapon on weapon. She stays behind, wishing that the walls were not so sheer and provided some footholds—the arena is created to force direct confrontations, all but prohibit ambush. When the noises quiet down, she rounds the corner and takes aim. Her shot connects.
Standing over the two bodies—one with a shadow shredded by her bullet, the other not—she appreciates that mirror guns appear to work here much as they do in the real world. Whichever oneirologist crafted this for the Marrow, they must be exceptional at detail. In the wall, the grid pulses and femur fragments unravel. Twenty-one.
By the time five pieces remain—not all of them Nuawa’s doing—she has sustained a catalogue of injuries that attests to the diversity of techniques, styles, and weaponry: her mouth tastes of dead suns rising and ash spirals, hollowed-out anthills flicker in her vision, and a gash in her side is parched to a raw ache, as of jungle going to desert. Her shadow and spirit however she has guarded with resolve, accepted no more than a few shallow necessary cuts. Experience tells her those will be the most grievous wounds taken here, the most lasting in the physical world.
She hears the metallic scrape almost a heartbeat too late. As it is: sufficient time to dive out of the way when the knife hits, deflect it when the knife—torn out of soft sand, guided by its chain—darts by for a second strike. Her opponent is swaddled head to toe in strips of leather and wreaths of fabric, faceless, hanging slantwise to the wall. Feet like talons, digging into stone. An animal’s grace. She thinks of the wolves around the village she grew up in, where Indrahi spirited her away until she was fifteen. Nuawa put down her share, mostly with bullet and once by blade, but even when she hunted them she found them magnetic. An existence of primal, easy purpose, nothing in them wasted or superfluous.
This faceless person is the only one she regrets defeating as her knife flowers in their stomach, a bloom of fractal slivers almost as bright as the eruption of viscera. To the end, they show no sign of fear or hesitation.
The game grid empties. One piece—Nuawa—remains.
When she wakes, it is to a room full of bodies lolling in chairs. Catatonic, head canted back or sideways, disarmed. Vulnerable. So is she: she reaches for, and finds herself without any of her weapons. A puncture on her arm, blood welling. She was the only one injected with the antidote to what must have been a fatal dose. The rest would be led to the ghost kiln, to be harvested unknowing. But then all sacrifices are sedated, and hearsay suggests there’s a reason. As terror spoils meat in the slaughterhouse, perhaps serotonin sours the soul in the kiln-chamber, producing inferior ghosts.
Nuawa stands, blinking. A sick-sweet aroma lingers in the room. There is no window and the light is dim. She is, more or less, lucid. Her balance is good. Her head aches, the throb of a mild hangover. She wouldn’t bet on herself in a fight right about now, but she’s fit for self-defense. A glance: she looks for, and fails to find, the faceless duelist. Everyone lies with a face scarred or not, beautiful or ugly, but each is bare and plain to view. She counts, and recounts. Twenty-one faces, and her the twenty-second. And yet in the oneiric arena there were twenty-three.
A hand on her shoulder. She rounds, coiled for combat, to find a soldier. They stiffly present her a copper brooch the shape of a hyacinth, framed by tiny snowflakes. “Congratulations, duelist.” When they look up she catches sight of their rank insignia; realizes they must be the new lieutenant, the one who received their commission in Jalsasskar. “General Lussadh has requested the pleasure of your company.”
* * *
Entering the palace as a guest rather than supplicant is a peculiar experience, novel to Nuawa. Even entry is different, direct through the front gate, in carriage rather than on foot. The palace courtyard in the mirage-Sirapirat is crowded with topiary, kinnaree with enormous wings and elephants with killing tusks. The real one is smooth, just grass and trellises, the rare evergreen. The lieutenant leads her through the entrance hall, where portraits of the previous governors line either side, busts of winter’s military heroes. Sirapirat’s past rulers are absent, Sirapirat gods barely allowed to be present. There are no shrines.
In the general’s suite, she finds the parlor empty; is stiffly told by the lieutenant that the general—victor of a dozen wars, governor over ten provinces—will be present shortly.
This gives Nuawa time to appraise the chamber, though she supposes that this serves as merely a temporary office; the general’s permanent residence is elsewhere, in the capital where the footpaths are made from elephant bones and buildings are carved of ice blocks, glazed and crowned in snow. Where white bears roam the streets, so they say, and the queen’s handmaidens race each other in rooftop runs. Ice-girls, hair like sleet and eyes like tourmalines.
Almost nothing of the old palace has been retained save the wood floor. The curtains are new, monochrome pastels rather than the gold- and pearl-threaded textiles for which Sirapirat is known. Pale corals grown into divans, frosted glass tables, all acute angles and bold lines. White silk upholstery. A taxidermied hummingbird perches on one of the tables, looking as though it’s about to take wing or burst into song. Beautiful, even exquisite, but foreign. Everything traces the queen’s image, echoes her voice. Conjures her shadow, as though every piece of her possession must be stamped with her fingerprint.
Nuawa schools herself to show nothing.
Lussadh emerges from one of the inner doors, her hair damp. A cloud of fragrance—bath oils, soap—wreathes her, though her clothing is impeccable. It is less austere than what Nuawa last saw, but still pressed and crisp. The collars are open, baring clavicles. Hardly risqué, but Nuawa catches herself fascinated by the play of shadow at the base of the general’s throat, the dip of bone there. The way Lussadh’s skin runs bronzed-sienna under this light.
She forces her gaze away—aware that the general must notice—and tenses slightly. This is not like her. A remnant of the dream drug has loosened her thoughts, dampening her reason.
“I owe you a second apology,” Lussadh says. “For what I did back in that library. I do have my reasons, but it must have seemed irregular and I understand Sirapirat has strict ideas regarding chastity.”
Only for nobility, of an era past, and families with ties to high administration. Or if she were a monk. But she says simply, “Not at my age, General. I’m long past maiden-time and have never sought ordainment. In any case, what you did would impair no one’s chastity, even in the strictest of Sirapirat households.”
“How does one … impair the Sirapirat concept of chastity?”
“The same one would any other, I should think. Provided the subject is chaste to start with.” Nuawa folds her hands before her. She has studied the literature that Lussadh likes, acidic poetry and pragmatic strategy, tragedies of families rent and radical philosophy. Nuawa is nothing if not a quick study, a chameleon of thought-schools. Last time she was not prepared—this time, she is. “As for Sirapirat’s national chastity, that was forfeited centuries past. We have been occupied before, as most countries have been. Doubtless far back in our ancestry, primitive
tribal hunters vied for supremacy or grazing rights.”
It works as she meant it to: the general looks at her and laughs unbridled and sudden. Pleased without being flattered, acknowledging the slight jab that nevertheless admits Sirapirat is not new to conquest—that the Winter Queen is not especially brutal, especially immoral, is merely acting out the natural consequence of human expansion. And therefore Her Majesty cannot be held any more or less accountable than bygone conquerors or those apocryphal tribes. “You are made to cut, aren’t you? So sharp. Please, have some of this.”
Food is served, a basket of flatbreads and bowls of chutney, a yellow curry. Both sight and smell seize Nuawa, oneiric after-effect amplifying her appetite. It demands; she accedes—her eating is ravenous, neat; with its ubiquity she has become adept at having Kemiraj cuisine without smearing and spilling everywhere. It is good, warming, the exact kind of fare that chases out the chill. Such fare has become popular for more reason than just the general’s favor.
“Fighting’s hungry work,” the general says. “So much I can attest.”
Common ground extended, as though negotiating a treaty. She is regarded if not as equal in status, then at least a type of professional colleague. Nuawa wipes her hands on a warm, wet cloth. “We think ourselves as creatures of intellect, mind over matter, soul ascendant over flesh. But the stomach growls and we eat. The skin commands and we obey. Nerves respond to stimuli and we are helpless to the fact. It’s almost, I think, shameful.”
Lussadh cleans her plate, meticulous. Wasting nothing. “I watched you fight.”
Duelist pride pushes her to fish for compliments. Prudence pushes her to say, “It’s my sincere wish that I could provide the general with suitable diversion, however fleeting.”
A guttering hah. “Giving praise for your techniques seems superfluous. You’re consummate at killing and you know it well. Those dream drugs though, they are tremendous. Any battlefield can be conjured, from sheer fancy and cruelty alike, from history or fable. Called maya in Sirapirat’s precursor language, aren’t they, such vivid hallucinations?”
“Loanword from the ecclesiastic register, General.”
“Not a distinction of which most Sirapirat natives are aware.” A smile pricks the corners of Lussadh’s mouth. “Might I offer you accommodation at the palace? It’s close to the Marrow and ought to be more convenient for you.”
Her stomach twitches. Crawls, slightly, with suspicion. “I am honored,” Nuawa says. “But I’m not sure I warrant such treatment. It seems an unusual privilege to extend.”
“So it is, but my aide is an admirer of yours. He was most insistent that I treat you well and would be very cross if I didn’t try.”
No doubt, if the aide in question even exists. Lussadh wants to monitor her closely. The why will have to wait for later: it could be anything, from her background to the circumstances of their first meeting. “This is overwhelming generosity.” And an opportunity, cutting both ways, to get close to the general. “I will not slight you by rejecting it.”
Chapter 6
Nuawa sends word, by couriers of feathered shadow and fissured dream, to her mother. The message would arrive piecemeal and circumspect, a fruit-laden twig on the table, a red cicada on the window, mercury beads where no liquid has been spilled. Indrahi is no stranger to slotting code and cant together, produce from them useful meaning—she was the one who taught Nuawa after all, and back in the days being the master of seditious intelligence let her elude capture whole and well-off. Nuawa always wanted to ask her mother how it was that she could not save Tafari, but that question is beyond even Nuawa’s power of candor. More amputation than reopening a wound.
On their part, Tezem is beyond elated, cocksure that Lussadh’s invitation to the palace is a sign of the highest favor. That even if Nuawa’s first victory is her last, Tezem’s fortune is all but made for the next several years. Nuawa doesn’t see the connection, but they aren’t the only one to indulge in this fantasy. As the news of her living arrangement spreads—the velocity of wildfire—four of Sirapirat’s best managers contacted her with offers of patronage. She’s turned them all down, more for convenience than out of allegiance to Tezem. Now is not the time for negotiating new contracts.
She takes stock of her new accommodation. Twice the size of her apartment in Matiya, ten times as ostentatious and no less outlandish than Lussadh’s suite. The same pastel upholstery and curtains, furniture in azure glass and cinderous resin rather than coral. Unthinkable opulence, even the ghosts given a diet so fine that they are almost inaudible, invisible, perhaps even happy. Tributes to the queen and taxes fund this, and the newer a constituent, the higher the tax rates.
A hallway separates her from the general. She is surprised Lussadh hasn’t outright sent an attendant to shadow her, though no doubt some form of surveillance is present within the suite. A toilet is attached to her room, but for ablutions she is to share the wing’s bath-chamber with Lussadh.
In spite of everything, she is elated; accomplished, even. This close to the general. The rest, she thinks as she fingers the drapes around her new bed, is a clear and straight line. It will require wit, effort, unstinting vigilance. But it is plausible.
She has a couple days before the next match, and while she’s sustained no injury she doesn’t want to risk an ether infection. The general has offered her the palace chiurgeon, but she demurred saying that she prefers her own. Not untrue. The palace chiurgeon, like most high-ranking officials, is from the capital and loyal first to the governor and the general. Few native Sirapirat serve at the palace above the rank, at best, of clerks.
It takes some circumnavigation to reach her chiurgeon’s clinic, an informal practice above a bookshop. Past teak shelves and stacks of secondhand volumes, she climbs the scuffed steps to a door. Knocks. It cracks open grudgingly.
Rakruthai is one of those people who will always look ageless, though of late the seams and crosshatched nooks are beginning to show. Mid-forty and male today, to go by the upturned collars. The chiurgeon doesn’t always signal it so clearly, but most of the time also doesn’t much care whether they’re assumed to be woman, man, or neither. It is immaterial to his profession and his patients accord him reverence however he dresses or speaks. He gives Nuawa a glance, up and down. No greetings.
She makes a half-curtsy. “I need a consultation.”
He tuts. “I’ve got a chronic fatigue sufferer in fifteen, twenty minutes.”
The clinic is lit by silvery daylight coming in through the wide windowpane. Expensive scrolls on the wall. They stir gently, moved by a breeze of their own, echoing air currents in a land far off. Where Rakruthai hails from, perhaps, though he has adopted a Sirapirat name. It is forever bandied about that he was a chiurgeon to some head of state, then winter happened as it so often does, and Rakruthai’s position became untenable. Nuawa does not know the specifics and does not press, though like anyone else she is curious.
The chiurgeon pushes a chair toward her. “Your shadow looks in good shape. You don’t look dead on your feet. No crippling injuries. What do you want?”
“I’d like to protect myself from poisoning, curses, and grudges. A little like what Yifen’s got.”
Rakruthai peers at her over the rim of his spectacles. “Really. Her modification was begun when she was a child, carved onto her one piece at a time, and she’s an expert practitioner. It isn’t a shortcut to immunity against all harm and ills; it is a lifetime of discipline and devotion.”
“Some lesser form must exist,” Nuawa says. “I need it for just a month, two at most.”
“Some lesser form must exist,” he mimics in falsetto. “It doesn’t. Not safely.”
“If it’s less dangerous than being poisoned by the competition, doctor, I’ll consider the risk more than worthwhile.” Or cursed by someone in the palace, someone in the army, who would see her as a rival in Lussadh’s favor. There are infinite permutations of potential enemies; she intends to avoid most of them.<
br />
Rakruthai snorts. “Very well. I’ll have something prepared for you, but note that it will cost you dearly. Speaking of which, you’ve been drawing a lot of attention. I don’t mean from your field.” He pulls an envelope from under a paperweight. “Someone knows I’m your physician and left this at my window. I opened it. Sorry.”
He doesn’t seem particularly sorry, though Nuawa would grant that he has good reason to check the contents. The envelope is thin leather, the paper inside browned and ink-spotted. Its author has an unsteady hand, but her name is spelled out clearly: For Nuawa Dasaret. The blots and crossed-out sections tell her they are used to a horizontal script rather than a vertical one. Not a native speaker of Ughali, then. The message begins with a line from Vahatma’s second banner of radiance: That which bends does not always break. The following verses are a selection of scripture ruminating on the cycle of rebirth and reincarnation.
“So?” Rakruthai leans forward.
“Bad theology. Bad allegory.” She rereads the ending stanza, which is not from any scripture she knows of: Under deeds of righteous vengeance, from a river of blood and sand, Vahatma may once more rise. Textually it makes no sense; Vahatma—in scripture—has never fallen, endures as eternally as the wheel of consequence. The only Vahatma that has ever been vanquished is the one that stood in defense of Sirapirat. “Really clumsy. Maybe I have a particularly shy fan.” She puts the envelope away in her jacket. “It’s nothing.”
* * *
Her second stop takes her away from the genteel streets around Rakruthai’s clinic, away from the low, curling gardens that garland the respectable households in ice-bitten evergreens. It is not that the Filament House is disreputable; it is more that its clientele and commodities are foreign, and a quality that carries with it a specific stigma. But this once, foreign is exactly what Nuawa wants.
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