by J. S. Bangs
“I’m sorry I fell,” he said. “I don’t know what thikratta discipline Ruyam sent against us, but I couldn’t understand anything.”
“I understood,” Navran said quietly.
“Was there a message?”
Navran shook his head. His breath came heavy, and he felt the familiar numbness of despair settle into his chest. He had failed after all, and soon it would be over. “I’ll explain after I’ve spoken to Mandhi,” he said. “We have to go back to the estate.”
Mandhi
The orange of the sunset and the orange of distant fires mingled in the window of Srithi’s chamber, lighting the interior with ghastly, smoky forms. Srithi knelt on a cushion near the window, rocking baby Gapthi gently and rising to her knees every now and again to peer out at the chaos then turn away muttering. Mandhi stood near her, arms folded under her breasts, looking out the window with a scowl.
The riot had not been intended.
The first news of the violence in the streets had startled her, but the news of Thudra’s loyalists coming through the gate was a shock. She had intended for Ghauna to spread the news of Navran’s past to the saghada, and for the priests to demand that he abdicate at the acclamation. But evidently the word had spread beyond just the saghada, and now the city burned for it. Veshta had barred the doors to the estate, and Mandhi had stayed since then in the upper chamber with Srithi, watching the city gradually blacken and bleed. Even if it came to the worst, there was hope, though. The tunnels through the Ruin still held.
“We’ll get out one way or another,” Mandhi whispered.
“You can’t be sure,” Srithi said. She stroked Gapthi’s face and cooed. She seemed to be soothing herself as much as the child. “Ruyam could already be in the city. And what if the baby comes?”
“I’m sure he could, but still—”
Panicked shouting filled the alley beneath their window. Mandhi backed away from the open space, wary of a stone or torch that might fly though. There was pounding at the door of the estate. Srithi winced and put her hands over her ears. “Mandhi! They’ve found us.”
“Quiet. No one is looking for us.” But one of the voices outside was Navran’s, and Mandhi’s pulse galloped.
They heard the heavy creak of the estate door opening then closing again. The bar across it fell with a shudder. Srithi let out her breath and began twisting the ends of her hair. “At least they got it closed. Why would they open it? Go see who it is.”
“Sure.” But as soon as Mandhi stepped onto the balcony of the upper story, the visitors spilled into the inner courtyard lit with golden torchlight: Navran first, smeared with blood and ashes and dragging a sword limply in one hand, followed by Sadja and three soldiers from Sadja’s militia. A shiver of outrage passed through her at seeing them, for the inner courtyard of Veshta’s estate was holy, and the unclean polluted it by entering. But a step behind them came Veshta, shouting for Habdana and Kidri to bring water and food, and Mandhi swallowed her displeasure.
Navran sat on the lip of the pool at the center of the courtyard. The sword dropped from his hand. He looked around with a dazed expression, the torchlight making the blood on his face seem black. He looked up at Mandhi. Their eyes met.
He knew.
She drew back from the railing, hoping to hide the tremor in her hands. His eyes were as cold as iron, his expression direct. He had pieced it together, and he had survived and reached her. She was undone.
She slipped back into Srithi’s chamber and curled up on the cushion next to her friend. Srithi felt Mandhi’s shaking and put her hand over Mandhi’s, bending to kiss Mandhi’s fingers. She probably thought that Mandhi was merely concerned for the ruined city.
“Who was it?” she asked.
“Navran and Sadja,” Mandhi whispered. “And a few others. No one I knew.”
“Navran and Sadja!” Srithi’s voice rose into a squeal. “Then they’re alive.”
Mandhi’s response was monotone. “Yes. They’re alive.” Would he kill her? Could she throw herself on his mercy?
“By the unborn Power,” Srithi said. “Maybe there’s still hope.”
Mandhi said nothing, but she hid her face in Srithi’s shoulder.
A few minutes later a servant appeared at the door of Srithi’s chamber. “Mandhi,” the boy said. “Navran wishes to speak with you.”
Mandhi rose slowly to her feet. The first rush of panic had passed, and she didn’t feel the tremor in her limbs or the urge to scream. “I’ll come,” she said. “Srithi, you stay here. I’ll talk to him in private.”
* * *
Navran was alone in his chamber, standing with his back to the window and his hands folded at his waist. A lonely lamp lit his face in red, making the wrinkles around his eyes seem like cords of black pitch. Mandhi let the curtain fall shut behind her, cutting off the rest of the household. The room tumbled into silence, spiced with the faint whispers of distant shouts that drifted through the window.
“You did this,” he said.
She raised her chin and answered imperiously. “What did I do?”
His shoulders sagged, and he put his hands to his temples. “Rioters in the east and the south. Thudra’s loyalists. Uluriya chanting Death to the false Heir. They threw open the east gate. We almost had it closed, but… Ruyam sent a message.”
“And which of these is my fault?”
He looked straight at her. “You told them I am not Cauratha’s son.”
His expression was fixed and determined, and his fists were clenched at his side. There was no hint of uncertainty in his posture. Denial would get her nowhere. So she said, “I am carrying Taleg’s son.”
“Should that pardon you?”
“You should understand. Cauratha’s line is carried through me. You are an unfortunate misunderstanding. And you trampled on the traditions of the Heirs, risking not only yourself but all of the Uluriya for your misplaced confidence. So yes, I plotted to displace you, by spreading the truth of your heritage. If the Uluriya have rejected you because of it, you can hardly blame me.”
He looked out the window and sighed. “And now? If we barricade the estate we can survive the night. But tomorrow the city is lost.”
“The secret route from the city. Veshta knows the way, and I checked the tunnels myself a few days ago. They’re clear all the way to the exit, a little cave in the rocks beneath the wall. Everyone in this household can escape.”
“And the rest of the Uluriya in Virnas?”
“Their deaths are on your head. You were the one who goaded Ruyam into a siege. In any case, the Uluriya are not limited to Virnas. Ruyam will never get us all. And the Heir—my son, I mean—will escape in secret and live in secret, as the Heirs have always done.”
He began to pace across the room. He paused at the window and watched the fires for a few minutes. When he turned to her his face was full of anger. He opened his mouth to speak, but he seemed to reconsider his words, and a moment later he sighed and resumed his pacing. “You’re right,” he said at last.
Of course I am “About what?”
He gestured out the window. “These deaths are on my own head. I played the game, and I lost.”
“Am I supposed to take consolation in your admission?”
He sighed and shook his head. “Jahaparna.”
“What?”
“Do you play jaha?”
“Jaha? Is that what’s on your mind right now?”
“In jaha, when one player has three towers, he offers his opponent jahaparna. It’s almost impossible to win once your opponent has three towers. You always take the jahaparna, unless you are very bold or very stubborn.” He sighed. “I am very stubborn… but maybe not as stubborn as that.”
Mandhi folded her arms and watched him. His intent was clear enough, but she let him write it on palm leaves for himself. For a long moment he stood with his hand over his eyes and breathed deeply.
“Ruyam has offered jahaparna,” he said. “I give him myself, in
exchange for the peace of the city. I am the Heir. He’ll take me, and you will escape beneath his notice.”
It was an honorable offer, and she felt a moment of vertigo at the thought of Navran being honorable. Perhaps I have misjudged him. But the memory of Taleg dying in the street strangled her remorse. If Ruyam took Navran, she and her child would escape in peace and save the lives of many hundreds of Uluriya besides. It was a fair trade.
“If you’re offering this,” she said slowly, “I can pacify the city. Ghauna, a saghada of the East Quarter, carried the truth about you to the Uluriya. If we can send a message through him—”
“With a guard. We’ll send someone.”
“He’ll carry the word and get the Uluriya, at least, to lay down their weapons.”
Navran nodded. “At dawn we send an envoy to Ruyam.” Navran pulled Manjur’s ring off of his finger. He held it up to the light, burning red in the reflected glare of the fires, sighed heavily, and clenched it in his fist. Then he gave it to Mandhi. “Take it. I never deserved to wear it.”
“No, you didn’t,” she said.
She put it onto her own hand above the ring that she had received as the Heir’s daughter. A little thrill of wonder passed through her. Manjur’s ring. She had seen it on her father’s hand countless times, but it had never been hers to wear. Even now, she wore it in proxy for her unborn son—but still she wore it. She had won. “This is the best thing you’ve ever done for the Uluriya.”
“Bring someone who can write,” he said. He turned his head, and in the shifting light from the window she saw that tears ran silently down his face. “I will dictate the terms.”
Navran
“The imperial guard will withdraw from the valley, as far north as the horizon,” the red-clad emissary said. He stood at the north gate in a semicircle of Red Men with the sun above his right shoulder, facing across the stone threshold of the city at Sadja, Navran, Mandhi, and a guard of Sadja’s militia.
It was mid-morning. The smell of smoke and blood wafted from the city, and Sadja’s guard watched the inner alleys with as much apprehension as they watched the plains. A grim and pathetic spectacle greeted the emissary, and the black odors settled like a melancholy grime over Navran’s heart.
“Only Ruyam and his manservant will remain on the field before the gates of the city,” the emissary went on. “Thudra and his militia will withdraw likewise until the exchange has been made. Once the Heir is in the power of Ruyam, Ruyam and the Red Men will return to Majasravi, and Thudra will reclaim the city. Sadja and his forces will withdraw from the interior of the wall but will remain encamped on the field to ensure the agreement is respected and the Uluriya are unharmed. Is this agreeable to all?”
“The Uluriya will be held blameless,” Navran said. “By Thudra and Ruyam. After I go, there won’t be any more retaliations, purges, or punishments.”
The emissary made a dismissive gesture. “Ruyam’s hunger will be sated once he has the Heir. As for Thudra, you’ll have Sadja to watch him.”
“And Ruyam told you his hunger would be sated?”
“I heard his words with my own ears.”
Navran looked at Sadja, who nodded. Mandhi’s jaw was clenched in an impassive glare, but her eyes suggested a smile. She, at least, was getting what she wanted. And the Uluriya would survive. Even if Ruyam betrayed his word—and Navran had no confidence that Ruyam would keep it—he had gained the Uluriya extra days to flee before the Red Men would return to the city, and he had bequeathed Manjur’s ring to a new Heir. It was all he could have hoped for.
Well, he might have hoped not to die.
“I agree,” he said. That was the price, and he would pay it.
The emissary bowed. “The Red Men will begin their retreat immediately. Thudra will send a few men to guard the Heir and escort him to Ruyam, while the rest of them remove to the west field to receive the city tomorrow. Tonight, the Heir will come to Ruyam.”
* * *
The last pale streaks of sunlight died in the west. Navran huddled in the north gate and looked out across the empty field, where the fires of Ruyam and Thudra had burned the night before. A single tent waited there now like a cast-off ember, with a dim glow lighting its red fabric from within.
Sadja stood next to him, and Thudra’s guard of four men fenced them. Sadja’s expression was grim, and he kept looking down and running his hand through his hair with a heavy sigh.
“I came here to save you, not to hand you over,” Sadja said. “I can’t say that I’m happy about this.”
Navran watched the red tent. Its very loneliness was ominous, as if the darkness had claimed its victims on the field, save one. Navran shook his head to clear the thoughts. Very quietly, below the hearing of Thudra’s militia, he said, “Mandhi and her child will escape. We would have gotten less than this without your help.”
Sadja murmured. “They should be preparing now. And I need to return to them.” He set a brightly lit oil lamp into Navran’s hands and looked at the guards. “Is it time?”
Their captain shrugged. “Close enough to dark. No use waiting.”
Sadja put a hand on Navran’s shoulder and kissed his cheek. Navran murmured in surprise. His touch lingered for a moment, and he looked at Navran with a mixture of pity and admiration, then he turned and left. The guard prodded Navran forward, and they descended from the gate.
Darkness closed around them like a sheath, which Navran’s dim lamp split at with a timid yellow light. The village below the city had been deserted. The rustling stalks of the rice fields underlined the mourning of owls. Above them, the points of stars pricked through the canvas of the night’s darkness.
We bow to Ulaur, who dwells in the untouchable heavens, who snuffs out the unclean fire…
How many old fragments of the songs of Ghuptashya floated around his head these days? But unless Ulaur was ready to cast another stone from heaven to free him from Ruyam, it was too late for any help to come to him from above. He was the help which the Powers had given the Uluriya: he would give himself up so his countrymen could escape.
The glowing ember of Ruyam’s tent approached. Dread sat in Navran’s stomach like grease. A smell like charred flesh, stale smoke, and rancid oil filled the air. The guard escorting Navran slowed.
“I don’t want to get any closer,” one of the men said.
“That won’t be necessary,” said a shape which stepped into the circle of light provided by their lamp. Kirshta stood there with his hands folded behind his back, a stern, haughty expression etched onto his face. He jerked his head towards the west, in the direction of Thudra’s camp. “You can go. Navran will come with me.”
The soldiers looked at each other nervously then retreated from Ruyam’s tent with a sudden rush of release. When they had gone, Kirshta examined Navran with an expression of impatience and exasperation.
“What were you hoping to accomplish giving yourself up like this?” he said.
“What would I have accomplished if I had resisted?”
“About the same,” Kirshta said bitterly. “I was impressed when you took the city and hoped that you would be able to hold it. It would have given me more time.”
“Time for what?”
He shook his head. “Though Ruyam never knew it, we are both his enemies. But that does not mean we are friends. Ruyam is waiting. It will be harder if you delay. You go in alone.”
He pulled the flap of the tent aside. The interior glowed with dingy red light obscured by smoke. Navran hesitated. He could flee. Would Kirshta chase him? Would Ruyam? He could hide in the darkness of the fields, then melt away into the countryside and wash up somewhere in Patakshar or Ahunas again. He could return to Idirja and try to make good by his mother.
But what then of the rest of the city? The black oil in his stomach churned. He glanced up.
….whence comes our help.
There was no sudden surge of courage or divine valor which drove him into the tent. The dread in his gut subsid
ed, and the sweat which had beaded on his forehead cooled. He had come this far. His duty was to Mandhi, to Manjur and the inheritance of the Heirs, and to the Uluriya. This one duty, at least, he would fulfil.
He went through the door and into the tent.
Inside he saw nothing but a confusion of smoke and shifting light. Shadows wept down the walls in chaotic blurs. He heard the quiet crackle of burning embers. The stench of blood and smoke saturated the air. The rasp of the dying fire drew itself together, and resolved itself into something like a laugh.
“Navran, Heir to Manjur,” Ruyam said. “What an ignoble end for that lineage.”
He couldn’t see Ruyam. Only shadows, embers, and smoke. The voice seemed to rise from a bed of coals.
“Did the Heirs see that they would meet their last in a drunkard, a gambler, and an idolater? Perhaps they would have ended themselves more quickly if they had known.”
Navran took in a lungful of the gasping smoke and coughed. He spat on the ground to rid his tongue of the oily taste. “You bring me here to insult me?”
“I brought you here to rid Amur of the Heirs. I insult you because it pleases me.”
Then he wouldn’t give Ruyam the pleasure of responding. He closed his eyes against the burning air.
“No, open your eyes,” Ruyam said. The crackling of embers increased, met by a moist, bloody sound that made Navran think of a knife tearing through meat. “Open your eyes and see me.”
Navran opened his eyes. In the darkness where previously he had seen only a bed of coals, he now made out a ghastly form glowing with slow-burning fire. It had once been human. Now its flesh was charred and hung in strips from blackened bones, coals glowing in its veins. He had taken it previously for the bed of a banked fire, but recognized now that it—he—had lain across the fire. Or perhaps he was the fire. His face was a skull painted with strips of raw flesh and ash, the mouth hanging open horribly and exhaling black smoke. The jaw moved, and some remnant of a tongue slithered between its teeth. The voice like crackling tinder spoke again.