by S. C. Emmett
“Who would dare such a thing?” Tian’s shock, performed with round eyes and an open mouth, was perhaps for the benefit of the single guard, who suddenly became very busy studying his boot-toes. They called Physician Tian the Skull for his habit of grinning, and the physician perhaps liked the name. A tick, burrowed well under Queen Gamwone’s bleached, pampered skin, swelling with putrid happiness. “And in the Palace, no less.” His mustache and goatee gleamed in candle and lantern glow, oiled just as expensively as his hair. A seal-ring of carved bone dangling from a thong at his neck, not tucked underneath his robe, was the only marker of his hurry.
“The Emperor’s wrath is assured,” Mrong Banh murmured, bending to inspect the corpse’s nostrils.
“Did the stars tell you that?” Tian Ha approached the body, his long fingers crossed over his lean middle. Only the smallest upon his right hand moved, a twitch now and again. His fingernails, long points dyed with the effluvia of medical tinctures and pastes, gleamed.
“Merely common sense.” The corners of Banh’s eyes crinkled, as if he smiled pacifically under the perfumed cloth. Either that, or simply baring his teeth as he glanced up. “It is an attack upon a royal family member.”
“Ah, yes.” Tian’s long nose wrinkled. The hem of his robe was dusty—he must have hurried through the gardens. “Congratulations upon your great good fortune, General.”
“It is as the Emperor wills.” Kai pushed the corpse’s tunic aside. A slightly sunken chest, other needle marks down the left side, inked vines clustering the heart. A very proficient darkwalker, indeed, and perhaps that proficiency was why whoever had engaged him had only sent the one. The clothing held nothing of interest, except traces of reddish mud upon the slipper-soles. Interesting. That mud was from river; perhaps this fellow had come in through the baths. “As ever.”
Tian Ha could not argue with such a formulaic response. No doubt he had hoped to be the first one to examine the body, and perhaps cover traces if there was a chance one of the First Queen’s many intrigues had gone too far to halt. Kai was more than happy to disappoint him, and took his time completing the survey. At the end, he glanced at Mrong Banh, whose gaze was level, worried, and entirely too sharp for Kai’s comfort. The astrologer would realize, of course, that this was merely a prelude. The conspiracies were rank and ripe, now that Tamuron was older and his sons men instead of boys.
The astrologer would also realize there were precious few clues. Some mud, some needle marks, and pockets empty except for the implements of an assassin’s trade—nothing to show who had paid the man, or his guild-mates, for a death.
Kai, however, was occupied with a different question. Who could guess how many assassins had been originally slated for the night’s games, and been called off when the news of the hurai gifted to him spread? Killing a general, even a well-regarded one, was nothing compared to attempting upon the life of one given a greenstone seal-ring.
Kai stepped back, beckoning Tian Ha forward with a magnanimous gesture. There was little harm in letting the ghoul crouch over fresh meat. It might even sweeten the physician’s disposition somewhat.
Yes, the thought of how many assassins had perhaps been called off was unpleasant. Even more disturbing, though, was the idea that perhaps it had not been news of a prince’s seal given to a victorious general that had halted the plans.
Or, worst of all, that this was merely a prelude to the approaching wedding. Kai’s loyalty to Crown Prince Garan Takyeo was well known, and Tamuron’s first son had many enemies.
Especially in the palace.
UNWELCOME REMINDER
A beautiful spring sky arched over Zhaon-An, a few creamy clouds serving to accentuate deep, aching blue. The palace, white stone and red-tiled roofs, brooded at the head of the city, safe from the smoke and bustle of the markets, the stink and scurry of the slums. Riding toward the crown of the anthill was never guaranteed to put a man in a good mood.
Not if he had any sense.
Garan Suon-ei Takshin, Third Prince of Zhaon and battle-brother to King Suon Kiron of Shan, drew rein in the stone-walled palace bailey with a clatter and considered spitting. He also considered sliding from the Shan gelding’s back and drawing his sword. Taking the head of a creature from that familiar but still hateful country would suit his mood perfectly, and it might even send a message that couldn’t be ignored through this pile of stone and unrelenting power.
But it was unprincely to strike a dumb beast for no reason other than your own frustration. Especially when one had been considered a dumb beast handy for striking one’s whole life.
Banners fluttered from pike-heads, from archer-towers rising squat along the palace’s girdling walls. Hung with weighted ends on either side of every entrance large enough to warrant such treatment, painted material pulled taut upon a high, warm spring breeze. Takshin freed one booted foot from the stirrup, slid from the saddle, and landed upon flagstones; behind him, the Zhaon escort thundered to a halt. They had not dared to curb his pace once he crossed the border. Kiron’s bloodriders had left them at Haoran, with the traditional bloodcurdling yells the Shan used at every parting from a lord or loved one.
Takshin wasn’t sure if he preferred the noise, or the deathly silence he’d left Zhaon-An wrapped in each time he must return to his duties as hostage.
Do not arrive when they expect you. And yet, at the end of this familiar, freshly swept bailey rose a flight of dun-colored softstone steps, and a tall man in a yellow robe stood at their head, his wide gold-worked belt denoting princedom and his square, wisp-scruffed face alight with pleasure. Crown Prince Garan Takyeo leaned forward slippered toes, as if he wished to descend the stairs with a little more speed than such an august personage should display.
Beside him, Garan Kurin the Second Prince stood in bright orange silk, his hand at the Crown Prince’s elbow, restraining him. Or seeking to, at least, but Takyeo shook him off and hurried down, his boots landing solidly—he was not in slippers or buskins; perhaps he planned to go riding later. Takyeo’s gold-caged topknot was perfectly placed as usual, and Takshin, his own knocked askew by the speed of his passage, set his Shan-style tunic to rights with a few quick yanks, his sword passed from hand to hand with unconscious speed.
“Takshin!” The Crown Prince halted, a polite distance away but still leaning on his toes, a horse ready to race, waiting only for the heel. “You’ve grown.”
Of course, their eldest brother wouldn’t mention dust, sweat, road-filth, or the scars, but Takshin felt them all the same. His lip, his cheek leading to the seam running under his hair—reminders, as if he needed them. The lowest of the low, despite his place in the birth order. “Crown Prince.” He bowed, just the correct measure of respect. Sweat, road-dust, and grime hung upon his black silk and leather, the costume of his adopted prison.
“No, no.” Takyeo finally swept forward, enfolding Takshin in a bear hug. The Crown Prince smelled of mint-water and fragrant hair-oil as well as the faint leathery note of a man past his first youth. “It is good to see you.” He pounded Takshin on the back, and a shadow behind him was Kurin, orange silk heavy and fine but only leather caging his topknot. Kurin’s expression was set as he surveyed his birth-brother’s horse, the winded guards, and the spectacle the Crown Prince was making.
“The servants are watching.” Kurin produced an eyebird-painted fan with a snap and waved away an invisible, importunate fly. He had inherited First Queen Gamwone’s heavy eyes, and the languid lids had led more than one unwary soul into thinking he was kind.
Or unintelligent.
“Let everyone see how happy I am to greet my brother,” the Crown Prince returned, equably, and held Takshin by the shoulders. “Let me look at you, Taktak.” The childhood nickname was not meant to sting, at least. “Oh, Father will be pleased, and everyone else, too. Have you eaten? Take his horse, there! Come, come.”
A flutter of roseate silk and white brocade arrived at the top of the stairs. Garan Gamnae, birth-sister to Pri
nce Kurin and Prince Takshin, blinked her own depthless, well-lidded eyes. What was indifference and almost unattractive on Kurin was quite fetching on her, and when she was older they would call her pleasure-eyed, that languid gaze bespeaking loss of married sleep. “Taktak!” Each syllable ringing against the bailey, that silly name again since Kurin had lisped badly until his ninth winter and refused to address his younger brother properly. Gamnae had called Takshin thus from the start, and no amount of pinching could stop her. “You’re early.”
“I hurried to see you, sister mine.” Takshin barely nodded to Kurin, despite the bow that would be due his elder. A small defiance, one he’d probably hear complaints about later. “How lovely you are.”
“Flatterer.” Gamnae preened, ear-drops of gold leaf chiming as she turned her head this way and that, conscious of the picture she presented in sunlight. A tense-shouldered palace maid held a rosy sunbell over the Second Princess, and with her hair dressed high, Gamnae looked very much like the First Queen, except not so plump—or so harsh. “I have had your quarters aired and arranged them just the way you like them.”
As if you know anything of what I like. And as if he would sleep in the Kaeje, especially in quarters connected to the First Queen’s. The very thought made his skin crawl. “Very thoughtful of you.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Kurin snapped his fan, a sharp, dry sound. “You cannot bring a weapon into the Palace, brother.”
Of course he would be the one to notice, and furthermore to affect surprise. Takshin allowed himself a sour half-smile. “Neither a man of Shan nor a prince of Zhaon should leave his blade behind.” I sound surprisingly steady. If Kurin decided to play this game and called the guards, Takshin could turn, call for his horse, and be on his way back to Shan in short order.
It might even please him to ride a beast, however innocent, to death.
Kurin’s own smile was far less sleepy, and a good deal more satisfied. He had obviously made up his mind to rob Takshin’s homecoming of any joy. “The Emperor will not—”
“Oh, it’s just Takshin.” Gamnae’s laugh was clear as a bell, and she took Takshin’s sword arm. The scabbard touched her skirts, but she was oblivious. “I’ll speak to Father for you,” she continued, in a child’s confidence-sharing whisper. “He’s at the shrine.”
Father they said, so easily. It was a wonder the word didn’t stick in their throats.
Nothing would ever change. The Emperor was making offerings at the shrine of his warlord wife, the one who had birthed the Crown Prince and died before the overlord of southron Zhaon became conqueror and then Emperor. The candles at that shrine were ever-lit, and none were allowed to disturb Garan Tamuron while he prayed there with his kombin, endlessly flipping his hand and reciting whatever moved him.
“Mother wishes to see you,” Gamnae continued, and Kurin had no choice but to trail behind. It probably galled his elder brother to no end; Takshin banished a wolfish smile. Now that he had halted his headlong ride, the sun was pleasant, his face no longer whipped by spring chill. Horse-rhythm still beat inside his bones, and he would need a bath or two to shake it free.
“She can wait,” he said, shortly. “Crown Prince, my brother, tell me, are you well?”
“I am. And you? How was your ride?” Takyeo did his best to drag Kurin along, but the Second Prince was having none of it and turned away, his fan moving briskly. “Tell me the news. We shall have tea, and you shall eat, or Gamnae will scold us both.”
“Will she dare?” Takshin glowered sidelong, and the Second Princess tossed her head and laughed. Her maids, each in the requisite blue-and-white palace garb, scurried to take their places, the one holding the sunbell almost tripping in her haste. Each wore the tiny pink-and-white rosette of Kaeje servants, with the thin yellow ribbon denoting service with a queen’s household in their plain, soberly dressed hair.
“I have grown bold while you were away, Elder Brother.” Light and winsome, but Gamnae cast a sharp look at the sunbell-maid as a sliver of sunlight managed to slip through its guard and touch her zhu-powdered face. “You shall play hanai17 with me, for now I never lose.”
Probably because you cheat. “A challenge thrown.” Takshin let them bear him along, and no more mention was made of his sword. Kurin soon disappeared, no doubt to carry a tale of the Third Prince refusing to give up his slightly curved sword with the Shan ruby winking in its hilt. There would be many a listener, chins wagging and tongues working, to guess at Garan Takshin’s intentions.
The game had recommenced.
Bathed, with his black hair oiled and brought to a plain topknot, in a Zhaon-cut robe of dark grey with subtle embroidery at the chest and sleeves and a pair of trousers much looser-legged than the Shan wore, Takshin halted at the end of the hall. His war-trained ears sharpened as he closed his eyes, and the scars were perhaps flushed from the heat of his bath. The thick one across his neck, the cut on the right side of his top lip making a perpetual sneer, the one across his left cheek vanishing on a seam of once-burned flesh under his hair—all of them visible, all of them ugly.
Very well, then. Let the First Queen of the Zhaon, the Beautiful Land of the Five Winds, see what she had wrought.
Queen Gamwone’s head lady-in-waiting was still Yona, a dry round pucker-mouthed thing whose dun robe was still spotless, still sharply creased in the appropriate places, and still making the soft, terrifying sound of uncaring authority. Takshin did not miss how the other maids—all but children; his mother must have just requisitioned a new crop, ready to press all life and youth from them at leisure—leaned away from the head lady as she moved among them. Yona’s hair held no veiling of grey. Perhaps she stole youth from the terror of those under her as well.
She learned well, from the best of teachers for that skill.
Still, Yona’s bow to him was utterly correct, and reasonably respectful. “Third Prince Takshin.” She slid the door open herself, bent again to motion him inside his mother’s informal receiving-room.
Her elbow upon a low table, a fluted glass bottle of sohju18 set upon a bed of white silk and two small Gurai slipware cups with gold chasing waiting obediently, First Queen Gamwone held a silken-sleeved hand to her mouth, affecting amusement and a well-bred hiding of teeth. Her dress was sun-colored, turning her into a round flame in the belly of a cushioned lamp. Second Prince Kurin, in his orange of a deeper shade patterned with spreading ox-horns, had taken the other side of the table, his elbow resting familiarly as well. It was the picture of a mother and son sharing confidences, and Takshin’s empty hands ached for a hilt.
Even a paring knife would do.
He had left his blade behind for this, but not to please her or Kurin. Or anyone else. A wise man knows himself, Suon Kiron was fond of intoning, mimicking their ancient, liver-spotted tutor from the days before the Mad Queen’s grasp upon reality had completely sundered.
When Takshin was tempted to strike, it was often Kiron’s voice he heard. A steady, gauntleted hand upon the leash of a hunting animal—and yet, brother, Kiron called him, and even seemed to believe it. Such loyalty was rare in the Mad Queen’s court, and Kiron had done what he could to protect the hated, helpless interloper.
That was in the past now. The battlefield before him would not forgive inattention. It irked Takshin to take his knees at the edge of Queen Gamwone’s rug, and he hated the low bow a child must give his parent as well. “Mother.” The formal inflection. All correct, there was nothing for her to find fault with.
Yet she would.
She poured with a dainty, plump, powdered hand. All of her was round and soft, from her zhu-powdered cheeks to her smooth forehead, the backs of her hands with dimples instead of knuckles, her short legs hidden under high-waisted Zhaon gowns. Even her hair, dressed in fantastical loops and decked with pearls, was round and looked pillowy, though the lacquer keeping it in place would be stiff to the touch. The walls were hung with phoenixes embroidered upon falls of thin silk over wool matting; t
he window was closed, for she felt chills keenly. As a result, it was stifling, and the heavy rugs deadened every sound unfortunate enough to be uttered here.
Finally, she acknowledged Takshin with a quick, distrustful glance, her gaze doing its best to avoid the scars. “Oh. It’s you.”
As if you’re surprised. “How is your health, Mother?” Again, a correct inquiry, polite and delivered with the proper deference.
Kurin said nothing. Of course, he did not need to, and it was always best not to interfere when the First Queen showed even the slightest hint of displeasure. A childhood spent in Gamwone’s presence drove that habit in deep, rubbing dye-ash in whatever small cut it could find, and the marks remained.
“You must not address me so.” Her beringed hand waved, a weighted, languid claw. “You were adopted by the Queen of Shan.”
A hostage is under no obligation to lie or tell the truth. The thought was just as edged as every other time he’d used it for comfort. “The Mad Queen doused herself with snow-water, Mother, and took ill. Her funeral was in the month of heavy ice. Did that news not reach Zhaon-An?”
It was not what she had expected him to say. One of her manicured eyebrows lifted, enough to make a palace maid quake. “And your brother?”
Now was the time for less politeness. “He sits next to you, Mother.” The precise tone of bored almost-insolence, well practiced, was both shield and sword now. His back did not prickle with sweat, nor did the hollows under his arms, or so Takshin told himself. “Ask him.”
A flush began in the zhu-dusted creases of her neck, her collarbone lost under a pad of wealth. Her little maid-spiders would be scurrying for cover now, and even Yona might pause, stilling with the instinct of a cat sensing a hawk’s shadow floating overhead. “Suon Kiron of Shan is your brother.” Gamwone enunciated each word clearly. “What of him?”