The Hand of the Sun King

by J. T. Greathouse

  A path that would mean leaving all I had found in An-Zabat behind.

  I searched Atar's face, the arch of her cheeks, the emerald glint of her eyes, the slope of her neck, and carved them deep in my memory as once I had carved the doctrines and aphorisms of Sien. Let all my education, all my mastery, all that had earned me wealth and comfort be stripped away. Only let me remember her face.

  “My battle isn’t here,” I said. “My grandmother--”

  Atar pressed her forehead to mine, breathed deeply.

  “I understand,” she said.

  We stood together, her shoulder against mine, our hands entwined, her body tense as we watched An-Zabat and the life she had known fade to a distant glow on the horizon. When even that had vanished from sight, she leaned close to my ear.

  “Know this, Firecaller,” she said. “You will have a place with us, always, should you need it.”

  Her hand tightened, then opened. She pulled away from me and turned to Katiz.

  “Windcaller!” she said. “Strike an eastward course.”

  At the edge of the waste, where scrub and brush jutted from the sand, where mountains emerged from the haze of the eastern horizon, I called a wind that would carry me on falcon’s wings across Sien and the sea, then bid them each farewell in turn, and thankedJhin a final time. He only nodded and returned to sulking at the rail, gazing southward, toward the Pillars of the Gods and Toa Alon.

  Last, I stood before Atar. She touched my cheek and caught a tear that had gathered there. Regret gnawed at me, and again my mind and heart did battle. But tomorrow had come, and our day had ended. She had been my first love, borne of shared struggle, of shared curiosity, of the resonance between two hearts entwining for the briefest moment before the pattern of the world carried them into separate futures. A love I would leave behind for the sake of a larger purpose, at the prodding of a god.

  “Farewell, Firecaller,” she said. “Nayen calls you home.”

  Part Four

  A Witch of the Old Sort

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Return

  I made my way wide around even the smallest of settlements as I flew toward Nayen. Each night I found a clearing or an abandoned cave in which to release my spell and curl into a ball of cramping muscles for a few hours of dreamless sleep. I ate an eagle-hawk’s diet; sparrows, rabbits, and fish snatched on the wing, and wondered whether I could sustain myself indefinitely as a beast. When I became human again, would parasites and diseases that my eagle-hawk body resisted return to afflict me? I muddled over these questions during the two-week journey eastward over Sien’s mountains and river valleys, if only to distract myself from deeper anxieties.

  Was my grandmother even still alive? Had she told my uncle about me? Would either one of them accept me, after all that I had done? After Iron Town?

  How would Oriole have felt, knowing I went to join his killers?

  Fretting over such questions was fruitless. My first goal was to find this so-called woman of the bones. Okara had claimed that she would teach the deeper secrets of magic, beyond the canon, beyond even the witchcraft of my grandmother. If she did not exist or refused to teach me, I would find the rebellion and throw in my lot with them, if they would have me.

  As I soared over the rolling sea--careful to avoid the imperial warships that patrolled the strait between Nayen and the mainland--I puzzled over the gods’ interest in me. Perhaps it was as simple a thing as stealing a tool from the Empire and turning it to their own purposes. Maybe it was enough that I could be turned. My grandmother had planted seeds of rebellion in my childhood. Atar had watered them, and Okara had come to collect the harvest.

  After two days on the wing, the familiar mountains of Nayen appeared on the horizon. My body ached, and I longed to land on the shore, find a meal, release my spell, and sleep. But I had never spent so long in an unhuman body. Even the cramps and exhaustion I had felt after a single day left me incapacitated for hours.

  I pressed on, flying past the beach, toward the interior of the island, now with a landing site in mind. A safe place, if it still stood.

  I landed in the overgrown garden of the Temple of the Flame. The altar was dead and cold as I had left it. My feathers--which became my clothes--were crusty with the salt air of the sea. Spasms worked up my arms and legs, across my chest, down my spine. The urge to sleep weighed heavy. I shrugged it off long enough to open the brass door and conjure a flame, which lit the coals there as though they were soaked in oil.

  This done, I curled up, let warmth soothe my aching body, and prayed for a dream.

  * * *

  A shaft of light spilled through a torn window screen and woke me. I had little notion of how much time had passed, beyond a pressing need to relieve myself and a rumbling hunger. The wolf god had not visited me. I was left with no direction but north and a vague faith that Okara would not have called me back to Nayen if he did not have plans for me, and the intention to instruct me in those plans.

  The first of my pressing needs was simple enough to satisfy; hunger was more difficult. I might have veered again and hunted some small creature--I had yet to experience any ill effects of living on an eagle-hawk’s diet--but I was still stiff and sore from returning to human form and shied from the possibility of worsening that condition.

  My father’s estate was a short walk away, and unless his business was suffering--which it may well have been, given my fall from imperial favor--his larder would be well stocked. My parents had escaped retribution for my grandmother and uncle’s role in the Nayeni rebellion, but I was certain they would suffer for my treason. As the sage Traveler-on-the-Narrow-Way wrote; fruit, sweet or sour, is a reflection upon the branch that bore it. A preposterous idea, now that I considered it. I owed my character to Koro Ha, my grandmother, Hand Usher, Oriole, and Atar. My mother and father had borne me, but not formed me.

  I gathered a few of the books my grandmother had left behind. I could not carry them all, so I selected those that would teach me the most about Nayen; the myths and legends of the Sun King and the unification of warring states into a single nation. Age, experience, and my new frame of mind would reshape these stories, which I only hazily remembered, and leave me with a clearer view of the people I had chosen for my own.

  As I left the Temple, I paused beside the statue of Okara. It seemed smaller than I remembered, and more weathered. Vines crawled up one of its legs, and its back was spattered with the stains of bird-droppings. Yet the eyes held the same intensity, staring out from a familiar tangle of scars that I knew better from my dreams than from childhood memory.

  Studying Okara’s scars reminded me of my own, and I unwrapped the blood-crusted linen that bound my left hand. The wound was healing, but slowly. At least there was no sign of infection. I rebound the wound with a strip from the hem of my sleeve and set off on the familiar overgrown path.

  Facing my father would not be easy, especially if I had outrun news of what had happened in An-Zabat. It would fall to me to explain what I had done there, and why. Likely he would disown me, and any hope for reconciliation would die once I joined the rebellion.

  What of my mother? She would curse me for following in her mother and brother’s footsteps, I feared. Yet I remembered her cool hand on my forehead, her care and kindness. She was not a callous woman. At least, I did not remember her as such.

  A flock of tawny sparrows fluttered over the garden wall that I had climbed so many times in childhood. The late spring afternoon was cool, with a faint brushing of mist and the smell of green and growing things. My heart--despite itself--filled with the warmth of nostalgia. I imagined my father in his reception hall, sipping the day’s first cup of warm rice wine while he reviewed a letter from a distant business partner. Perhaps my mother sat nearby, humming to please his ear as she had often done when he was home. Koro Ha was present in this idyllic scene, reviewing my latest essay, tutting and shaking his head and smearing it in commentary. There was tea flavored with citrus r
inds waiting for me, and a warm soup of fresh caught fish and fiery peppers. And a book I had yet to read, and a warm bed, and no need to fight in wars or wonder at the motivations of cagey, fierce-eyed gods.

  A deep, shaky breath drew me back to reality, where I was a fugitive and there could be no going home.

  I dropped from the wall and hissed in pain at the stiffness in my hips and knees. I ducked into a nearby stand of tall, fragrant grasses and looked for any sign that I had been spotted. Two servant girls carried buckets to the spring at the north end of the garden, and a steward set off toward an isolate pavilion with a ledger under his arm, muttering and shaking his head. If my father were at home smoke would have risen from the chimney of his audience hall, and servants would have bustled about bringing teas and fine wines.

  My mother would be in her apartments, waiting for the evening meal she would eat alone. Propriety suggested I should request an audience from her stewardess and wait to be admitted to her apartments. But she was not Sienese, and neither was I. I had known my grandmother, and I had known Atar, yet the strongest impression I had of my mother was clothed in gossamer and silken drapery, distant and concerned but never active in my life, save in my sickness and in that fraught conversation just before my departure to An-Zabat.

  Her door was open. She was alone in the house now, save for her servants, and she had no need to cloister herself from them. They, too, were means to my father’s ends.

  She sat beside the window, framed by the cool light that diffused through its paper screen. A serving girl poured tea while my mother paged through a book of poetry. Black hair fell in two rivers that spilled over her shoulders and curled into ringlets at their tips; I wondered how she dyed it. There was a reddish tint to her skin--most visible along her high cheekbones--but she was pale after so many years cloistered and out of the sun.

  The teapot slipped from the serving girl’s fingers. She did not scream, though her lips trembled as her wide eyes locked on mine. Her hand found my mother’s wrist, and my mother followed the girls’ gaze.

  She stood in shock, but her expression warmed with recognition.

  “Alder--” Her voice caught in her throat.

  “Mother,” I said. “I’ve come home.”

  “Orchid, fetch another teapot,” she said to the serving girl. “Tell the stewardess not to worry about the one that broke. I should have warned you that my son was coming.”

  The girl forgot to bow as she left for the kitchen, and eyed me warily, but otherwise kept her composure. When she was gone my mother rushed to me and wrapped me in her arms.

  “My son,” she sobbed. Her arms were thin, but warm. Her tears wet the kaftan I had been wearing when I left An-Zabat, dirtied by the salt of sweat and sea and by many nights of sleeping on the earth. “I thought they had you, surely, by now. When they came looking--” she gasped and shook her head, burying her face deeper into my shoulder. “What have you done, Alder?”

  There were words that would vindicate me, but I could not collect my thoughts well enough to speak. I wanted to weep. Her suffering, too, I laid at the feet of the Empire.

  The serving girl returned with green tea that smelled of moss. My mother released me and dabbed at her eyes with a kerchief.

  “Put the pot on the table there,” she said, and lowered herself into her chair. I took the seat opposite. Orchid glanced from my mother to me and back again.

  “It is alright, dear,” my mother said. “It is only young Master Alder come to visit me. I was not expecting him to arrive for a few more days.” She took a deep breath and smiled. “It is overwhelming how much young men can change, isn’t it? Run along, now. Why don’t you have a ginger candy from the kitchen?”

  The girl bowed and retreated from the room, though her suspicion did not fade.

  My mother poured tea. She stared at the earthenware cups and took slow breaths, regaining her composure, collecting her thoughts. I endured till I could endure no longer.

  “I’m going to join grandmother in the north,” I said.

  “Speak Nayeni,” she said.

  She placed one of the cups in front of me and went on, her sadness simmering into anger.

  “Of course. You have no other choice now, do you? The magistrate himself came a week ago with a sealed missive from Voice Golden-Finch in hand. You have burned every bridge I built for you, shredded your every honor and distinction, and now there is nothing left for you but to die on a battlefield.”

  “Mother--”

  “I said to speak Nayeni,” she snapped. “Have you lived with servants for so long that they are like mice and cockroaches to you? Every word we speak, they hear, and will sell to the local magistrate if we talk of things like rebellion or say names like Broken Limb and Harrow Fox. Thank the sages your father hired these expensive servants from the mainland, else we would have no way to speak openly.”

  “Fine, then, I will speak Nayeni.” I uncurled my fists and took a deep breath, which did nothing to calm me. “Mother, can we talk of something else?”

  “There is nothing else to talk of.” She sipped her tea.

  “I followed the path that father set in front of me,” I said. “But now I that I am grown, I have made my own choice. The Empire is cruel. You must see that.”

  “You have chosen violence and stubbornness,” she said. “Just as your grandmother and your uncle did. Children, the lot of you.”

  “You chose to marry one of them!” I said, shocked at my own words but unable to stop them from pouring forth like water through a broken dam. “You made yourself his possession, to be locked away in a single wing of his pleasure garden.”

  “Do not speak of your father that way, or of things you cannot understand.”

  “Yet you would speak of my choices, when you have never been shown a path and followed it into a pit of vipers?”

  “I loved him, Alder.”

  I looked at an empty corner of the room and tried not to grind my teeth.

  “You loved him?”

  “Yes.”

  I thought of Atar, of her determination and ferocity, and felt the deep ache of longing in my chest. Then of my father, a simple man, over-fond of wine and interested in little but silver. For such a man, my mother had sacrificed her people.

  “What about him is there to love?”

  She set down her cup and slowed the pace of her speech. “He was handsome, and intelligent. He had a wit like I had never seen, and though he was never much of a poet the simplicity of his expression struck me to the heart. He protected me when soldiers came to our town looking for women. And again, when they came hunting the family of Harrow Fox.”

  “You married him to protect yourself.” I raised my eyes, ready to challenge her, but she had turned her gaze to the window.

  “No. I was already pregnant, then. He lived in Nayen as a merchant long before the Empire sent its armies.” When she faced me again, her anger had faded to quiet frustration. “I knew they would come, though. Your father taught me the logograms, and I studied his maps. The Empire was always growing, and I knew it would swallow us eventually. Your grandmother and uncle dreamed of avenging themselves and restoring the Sun Throne. Idle dreams. Conquest was inevitable. But you would be one of them through your father’s line. And you would have the best education your father could afford. I thought, perhaps, that our family could survive--thrive, even--in the new world.”

  “You gave up before the battle began.”

  “Did your grandmother teach you to think this way? To see everything as a battle? The world changes, son. We must change with it to survive.”

  “Who fit into their world better than I? I had their education. I passed their examinations. I fought for them in the north and watched the best friend I will ever have broken and slaughtered.” The cup in my hand cracked. I set it town, pressed my thumb against a cut in my finger. “I did not choose to become their enemy, mother. They had already drawn swords against me.”

  My words hung for a mom
ent. She sipped her tea, then leaned back and folded her hands. “Your grandmother, too, saw persecution in their every act.”

  “And you are blind to it!” I pounded a fist on the table--gritted my teeth against the pain when I realized that it was my left, and that my wound was still scabbing. “Do you forget what they did to your father?”

  Her composure slipped. “What has that to do with you? I should never have let her teach you. The sages know I tried to…” her eyes drifted from my face to my hand, where blood oozed through my bandage and formed a thin trickle on the table.

  “Nothing serious,” I said. “When it became clear that the Empire only valued me as a tool I cut the tetragram from my palm.”

  “Oh Alder…why?” She cupped my hand in her own. “We are all the tools of others. Often unwittingly, but always. You have read the sages. We all serve things beyond ourselves.”

  I pulled away from her, overcome with a sudden loathing. She was blind to cruelty, even cruelty toward her own son. And a cruel thought of my own found its way to my tongue.

  “Why did you bear me, mother?” I said.

  Her back and shoulders went rigid. She regained her composure, restored her expression of motherly worry. “What sort of question is that? Because I loved your father and we wanted a child.”

  “But only one? What if I had died? The early years are the most dangerous, aren’t they? Most Sienese wives long to bear their husbands two, or even three sons, and some bear a host of daughters in the process.”

  “We tried--”

  “Did you?” Vindication gave my voice an edge, even as my sadness deepened. “He could have cast you out when the soldiers came. It might have been easier, certainly safer. But you gave him a son, and that raised your station, elevated you in his eyes--”

  “A foolish son pries into his parent’s bedchamber,” she snapped, but I pressed on.