The Winds of Strife (The War of the Veil Book 1)

by John Donlan

  She was not so naïve as to believe it would last forever. Her beauty might fade with age, but by then, it would not matter. By then, she planned to have everything she desired and more. And as the cousin to the empress, and highly placed in the line of succession to the throne of the Tho'reen Empire, those desires were well within reach.

  “You may proceed,” she said at last.

  The man breathed out in relief and lifted the ivory scroll case from his belt. He opened it, pulled out the vellum parchment from within and began to read. He relaxed visibly as he recited the information from the scroll, as though the ritual of his work could lift him from his nervous state. He was in his element with this, and Shuvani's nakedness forgotten.

  She smiled to herself and beckoned to one of the nearby slaves. The woman moved forward at once, knelt beside the bath, and using the jug she carried, began to pour hot water over her Shuvani's arms. The Jagir sighed in luxurious pleasure from the heat that warmed her, and from most of the information that was being relayed to her.

  “Your father's sister has given a gift of twenty slaves to the empress' household,” the man said. “An offering well received by your cousin.”

  Shuvani laughed softly. She had suggested that very thing to her aunt two months ago. Subtly of course, so that her manipulation would not be obvious. She had thought her aunt wily enough to have seen through the ruse, however, so it was a surprise to see that she had taken the advice to heart.

  “The empress will see that as a weakness,” she said. “A sign that my foolish aunt is desperate for attention. She will keep on taking until Yaseena has nothing left. Ah, but it was almost too easy.”

  Yaseena Maraat was in line for the throne, as was Shuvani. But she was higher in the line of succession. Or she had been. Once she was reduced to near destitution and bled dry by the empress her claim would be worthless, her supporters would abandon her in droves, and Shuvani would climb one rung higher on the gilded ladder of her eventual destiny.

  “Continue,” she said.

  The man read out the rest of what he had learned as head of Shuvani's spies. It was all good news. The slave who had been relaying information from Shuvani's holdings back to the empress had been found and dealt with; false and incriminating evidence had been planted on two nobles in the royal court who had been slowly gaining favour with the empress; and best of all, the damaging information she had garnered on one of her rivals had borne fruit, and she had been given an additional one hundred soldiers to add to the army she was currently training as payment to keep quiet. Not that she intended to do such a thing, of course. The information would be leaked, the news would spread, and her rival would be finished, allowing Shuvani to sweep in and claim the rest of the woman's warrior stock, another three hundred well trained soldiers to swell her own forces.

  Everything was going well. A little too well. As the spy neared the end of his report, Shuvani frowned. He was looking nervous again, and not because he would soon be forced to acknowledge his Jagir's nakedness once more. He had something else he needed to tell her, and he was afraid to do so.

  Shuvani waved away the slave who had been bathing her and leaned forward, eyes narrowing. Her full breasts rested atop the water like bronzed spheres, while her dark hair spread out behind her, snaking through the water.

  “You have more to tell me, Zadik?”

  The man gulped audibly and mopped at his brow. “I do, Jagir, but it is far from the news you wished for. It concerns your partition to the empress to commence a war council. My spies in the royal house confirm that it will be denied. Has already been denied, if not in an official capacity. The empress dismissed it almost as soon as it was raised.”

  Shuvani felt her body tense in anger. All the benefit of the hot bath being scoured away in a single moment. She had set out all of her pieces so that her petition would succeed, had bribed and threatened, coerced and manipulated everyone she could think of to bring the empire to the brink of war, only for her stubborn bitch of a cousin to thwart her at the last moment. The soldiers she had acquired would go to waste; worse, she would still need to house and feed them, all at great expense. Fifteen thousand men were an expensive drain on her resources.

  She brought her fist down on the water, heavily, and the spy winced. But he was not done yet. Shuvani saw it written all over his face. “Tell me the rest!” she hissed.

  “Your cousin, the empress, has sent a delegation north, across the border, to meet with King Tumar and to broker a mutual peace.”

  Shuvani screamed in outrage. Her cousin had been working behind her back all this time, plotting and scheming. Promising Shuvani the world with one hand, while clutching a dagger with which to strike her down in the other. She was not as naïve as Shuvani had come to believe. She was clever, resourceful, and she had seen the plans Shuvani had meticulously laid out with apparent ease. Seen them, and wiped them away with one fell swipe of her hands.

  “When? When did she send them?” Perhaps there was time to pull this humiliation out by the roots before it became common knowledge.

  “Two months ago,” the man said. “They will already be across the border by now, and well on the way to meet with the king. They are beyond even your reach, my Jagir.”

  She rose from the bath in anger, water dripping from her toned and sensual body in rivulets. The spy blanched and looked away, but Shuvani barely noticed. She climbed the steps and then stood as a slave draped fresh white robes over her body. The peace and satisfaction she had felt upon entering the water was gone, replaced by a heated rage that threatened to swallow her whole.

  “Leave me,” she said, and with a wave of her hand, the spy was dismissed.

  Shuvani swept into the main part of her home in a fury. Not only would she be left with an army that was useless to her, but she would be humiliated over the mistake, her standing reduced, her eventual claim to the throne compromised. And it was not because of her own decisions. She had listened to the advice of another, one she had come to rely upon and find indispensable. One she had grown to rely upon far too much, it seemed.

  One of her slaves was already pouring a goblet of juma wine in realisation of her mistress’ temperament. Shuvani snatched it from the girl's hand and downed it in swift gulps. When she was done, she slammed the empty goblet down on a table and moved to one of the open windows.

  Her home was perched on a cliff that looked down on the sea on one side, and into a sandy valley on the other. Here, on the western coast of the empire, the desert was less harsh and the climate more agreeable. The great river cut through her holdings like a sinuous knife, and ran through a cleft on the southern side of her home, giving her lush lands along the banks which the people she governed and controlled could farm. Much of her wealth came from the crops grown here, sold to the cities of the empire in exchange for gold to fill her coffers. She earned more from the purchase and sale of slaves, but that particular avenue was growing stale. With no new lands to conquer, slaves had become much more difficult to acquire. Now, however, many of the crops she relied upon had been torn out, the earth turned over, replaced with training grounds and housing for her growing army. The window she was standing at looked down into some of those new grounds, and the sight brought fresh anger roaring to the surface.

  She could see the rough stone walls of the compound below, could see the men sweating as they trained and honed their skills. Fifteen thousand strong. A force that was second only to that of the empress'. It was to be Shuvani's crowning glory. The army that she would bring to bear in the war against the northern swine and help secure a victory for the empire. With that victory, she would cement her place in line for the throne, and when the empress died – far sooner than she was probably expecting, if Shuvani had anything to say about it – Shuvani would rise to her rightful place.

  And now, there was to be peace! All her careful planning was in tatters.

  She gripped the edge of the windows and her pristine nails dug into the sandstone. No. It was
not over. She would find away to repair the damage. One way or another, there would be war.

  She turned from the view and beckoned to one of her slaves. “Prepare my palanquin,” she said. “Have it made ready for a trip to the city.”

  The slave bowed low and hurried away to do her bidding.

  Shuvani was feeling calm again now, strong. She would speak to the priestess, find out why she had lied. And if she did not like what she heard, Shuvani would cut the woman's tongue from her head herself.

  Four

  She was caked in mud. Thick, black mud that covered her from the top of her head all the way down to the bottom of her hide boots. Only her eyes showed through the layer of slop, and even those were lidded and barely half-open for fear that she would be seen and cut down like the rest of those she had been travelling with.

  She crouched in the swamp like a beast, enclosed on all sides by the tall, stinking white plants that the escort had referred to as skullshead. Though the stench of the plants burned her nose and made her eyes water, she was glad of them. They concealed her from view as much as the mud did. She did not even mind the large, fat flies that buzzed around her in angry swarms, biting at exposed flesh and gorging themselves on her blood. The winged horrors were everywhere in the marsh, and they would do nothing to draw attention to her hiding place.

  She was still and silent, hardly daring to even breathe. Through gaps in the foliage she could see men. Several of them, in fact, all crouching close to the butchered remains of her erstwhile companions and the soldiers that had escorted them from the border keep. Though she was fairly certain that these new arrivals had had nothing to do with the slaughter, she was not willing to take any chances, not after what she had witnessed, not after the horrors she had seen. She could no more have voluntarily revealed herself to the men than she could have cut off her own head. She was rooted to the spot, paralysed for the moment with a fear so profound she felt it could kill her as easily as a knife to the gut.

  Her name was Needra, and up until two hours ago she had been a slave of the Tho'reen empire, in service to the diplomat Khavashi Jhovaan, emissary of the empress. They had been travelling for several months; first through the south-western deserts of the empire, then through the grasslands of the north, eventually up into the mountainous, colder terrain that marked the border of the empire. Just two days earlier they had descended from the treacherous passes into the dank and dire marshes than lined the southern extent of the Kingdom of Losarn. They had been met at the keep that reared over the pass by soldiers of the kingdom, and several of those same soldiers had joined them as escort. Their goal was to meet an entourage from the duchy of Southmarsh, who would play host to the delegation before they made the final trek into the heart of the kingdom to meet with King Tomar. It had been a long, tiring journey, but it had ended more suddenly than any of them had expected.

  That had been the plan, as far as Needra knew it or had been made aware. She was a slave, and the intricacies of her lord's business was often a mystery to her. She had been told only what she needed to know to perform her duties. Other pieces she had learned through eavesdropping. Not that she did such things intentionally – if she was caught listening in to Khavashi's business it would have meant the loss of a finger at the very least – but it was often impossible to avoid. Slaves were invisible to the Tho'reen nobles until they were needed, and Needra had become adept at keeping herself away from unwanted attention.

  But she had not always been a slave, and she still yearned for the days of her youth, when freedom had seemed a thing that would last forever. Old ways were hard to leave behind, and so she had listened, learned, taken chances she perhaps should not have. Very little of what she had heard had ever been of use to her, but she had stored it all away, memorised every word, not because she felt that it would help her plight, but because it felt good to steal secrets from her often cruel master; it gave her just a small taste of the freedom she had once taken for granted.

  Needra had been born on the Crescent Isles, a tropical archipelago that lay far from the western coast of the empire. Until thirty years ago, the isles had been an independent nation of separate tribes. Hunter-gatherers, free spirits who rarely looked beyond the beaches of their island homes. Then the Tho'reen empire had come, slaughtered those who defied them or stood against their armies and enslaved many others. Then they had left, proclaiming the isles an extension of the empire. But they had come back, year after year, to perform what the islanders called the culling, when the empire would take the choicest of the island’s young as new slaves to feed the machinery of empire. Her people had hated the invaders, but had neither the numbers nor the means to stand against the Tho’reen. Primitive axes and spears were no match against tempered steel and plate armour. Six years ago, on her sixteenth birthday, Needra had been one of the culled, and she had begun her new life as a slave.

  Lord Khavashi had claimed her for his service, and that had been a lucky break for Needra. Many of the nobles of the empire treated their slaves as less than human, as tools to break when they wished it. Khavashi, for the most part, knew the value of his stock, and treated them as well as a slave could expect. She had a small room of her own, and though it contained nothing but an uncomfortable bed and a place to wash, it still offered her an escape from the toil that her life had become. She was fed, and given relative freedom of the noble’s home to perform her duties.

  But there were sides to her captivity that she despised and hated. Khavashi was a lustful man. He bedded Needra when his own wife was away, and had her serve them both when his wife was home. But he was gentle, mostly. Needra had learned to live with his needs and wants and desires, and she had faired better than others as a result.

  It was because of her compliant behaviour that the lord had chosen her for this journey. That, and because he needed a warm body to take to his bed at night.

  Now he was dead, and Needra felt no remorse over his passing. He had been her master, she his slave, and there could never be any love or respect between them. She had never shown it, but she had hated him. She was glad that he was gone.

  But the way in which he had died would haunt her dreams. She had watched from the mud as his head had been cruelly cut from his body. Watched it tossed like a toy between his killers before they had dumped it into the morass. She had watched and she had struggled not to empty her stomach.

  The things that had murdered the delegation were... no, she could not even risk summoning thoughts of them. She already knew that they would become a fever dream in the days and weeks to come. A nightmare she could not forget. That they existed at all was enough to bring her into a cold sweat.

  Needra had been fortunate. When the attack came, she had been separated from the party, sent away so that she might relieve herself. She had been accompanied by a guard, of course - the lord never took the risk of a slave attempting to escape - but the man had been unconcerned by his duty. When the slaughter started, he had forgotten her and rushed to aid his lord, and had been cut down with them as a reward for his loyalty.

  Needra had hidden in the mud and the reeds and the stinking plants. She had been able to see the rest of the delegation rush into the swamp in a vain effort to escape. They had been chased down, mutilated, defiled before her eyes. Not all of them, though. A handful had been taken away by the attackers. She had no idea what had become of them. Carried away, perhaps, so that those who had attacked them could find fresh amusement. She did not know, and she did not care. All she cared for was that she was alive. And free!

  It had not occurred to her that with the death of her master, she was free once again. Now that it did, it served to temper some of the horror and fear she was feeling. Enough that she was finally able to break the spell of paralysis that had claimed her body and turned it into a statue.

  But she could not leave yet. Not until these new men were gone and she could escape in safety.

  Two of the men were talking together now. She could not hear wh
at they were saying, but she could see the worry and concern that was etched into their features. That enough was to convince her that they were not a part of the massacre, that they were as horrified by the carnage as she was. But it was not enough to convince her to reveal herself. She did not know what the men of the kingdom did with slaves. She had heard that slavery was non-existent here, but she did not know that for certain. The risk was too high. Instead she remained in hiding, watching.

  The men finished their brief discussion, and after a brief look back at the butchery, they turned and trudged out of the swamp and back to the road. Needra breathed a deep sigh of relief, but she waited until she was sure that they were gone before emerging from the muck and filth of the bog.

  The simple cotton dress she was wearing was ruined now. She could not hope to clean and patch it enough that it would not draw attention. She would need new clothing, shelter, food and clean water.

  She considered her options. She felt the pull to turn south again, to go home. It was an almost physical force, tugging at her, urging her in that direction. But what was the point? In the Tho'reen Empire she would be nothing more than a runaway slave. Her branded neck would stand out like a beacon. And she had no real home to go back to. Her people were broken, living in fear of their conquerors. They were as likely to turn her over to the empire as they were to shelter her and welcome her back with open arms.

  So what remained?

  She turned to peer through the swamp to the north, into unknown lands and towards unknown people. Perhaps she could make a life here, somehow. If it was true that slavery was not tolerated here, then it was possible she could live freely. Find work, earn a few coins. A place to live.

  The idea was a tempting one, and only the thought of the things that had butchered her master and his company were able to taint it.