by S. C. Emmett
“Ah.” Takshin let his gaze rest upon the sohju cups. A pretty set, even if they did not quite match the bottle. “The Lord of Shan is contemplating marriage, I believe.” The couriers upon the road to Shan’s borders had fairly flown, once Three Rivers was done and the bleeding of Khir no longer a counterweight to Garan Tamuron’s ambitions. “Or the courtiers are contemplating it for him.”
“Ah.” First Queen Gamwone tapped one bala19-lacquered nail against her cup—she did not dye her fingertips as old Zhaon noblewomen were wont to. Instead, she painted the nails with the resin, and the gleam stiffened her claws. She also disdained to wear a noblewoman’s filigree sheaths upon her smallest fingers to protect their nails, affecting that hers were strong enough not to need the support of a metal cage. “Suon Kiron still lives?”
“That he does.” And he knows what you would have me do about that.
She abandoned the pretense of calm. The flush had reached her cheeks now, and her kohl-lined eyes narrowed, almost lost in pouches of pampered flesh. “Why?”
“He is young?” What little enjoyment Takshin derived from this conversation lay in his sardonic tone. The phoenixes upon the walls watched this intimate family meeting with secretive grins, their beaks not quite crooked and their eyes imitations of the First Queen’s hooded gaze. “And in good health, and takes much exercise? Those habits generally make living easier, I am told.” He settled upon his heels. It would have been polite for her to offer tea, or even some of the sohju. It would have been motherly of her to greet him properly.
I hatched from a cold egg, he had told Kiron more than once.
Kiron’s reply never changed—a peculiar foxlike bark of laughter through a mouthful of bitterness. Did we not both?
The First Queen was not accustomed to being openly balked. “Do not play with me.” Finally, she could stand it no more and turned to face him, drawing her knees under her with a court lady’s practiced movement. “You were to bring me Shan.”
Indeed. It was a victory; at least now, he had her notice. Her attention. “How could I fit that in my pockets, Mother?” His air of bafflement was completely feigned, and she knew it. The thin wooden soles of his slippers, covered with a pad of cotton, dug into the backs of his thighs.
Kurin, staring at the silk upon the tabletop, looked faintly shamed. It was a lie, of course; he was no doubt enjoying this immensely, for his own reasons. He did not dare reach into his sleeve for his fan, though—she could just as easily turn on him once Takshin was handled.
Especially if Takshin had decided he would not be handled, or dealt with, or vanquished. Had it always been this easy?
No. It had not. He was a man now, not a frightened child.
The stain on First Queen Gamwone’s powdered cheeks deepened, each granule of crushed, polished zhu standing out in contrast. “My son must have Shan as a shield when he sits upon the throne!” Every sibilant hissed, but softly, softly.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” He did not bother to whisper. Let anyone who had ears hear it. He also did not shift his weight, regarding his dam with the narrow stare of a hunter used to patience, watching the prey strut stiff-legged as it thought itself safe. “There is a Crown Prince already.”
“A bastard—” Her face contorted, and Gamwone drew breath to finish a somewhat treasonous sentence.
It was so easy to provoke her, now. “Be careful what you say, Mother. The Emperor keeps his first wife’s shrine lit.” Today of all days, the reminder would be most unwelcome. Even the phoenixes looked away, the hangings holding their breath and the stifling, close air suddenly full of sharp heatless anger.
Queen Gamwone stared at her second son, obviously not grateful that he had interrupted an ill-considered statement. “I regret giving birth to you. Even your sister is more useful.”
“Thank you, Mother.” Takshin’s scarred lip curled. His legs tensed. “It was pleasant to see you again, too.”
For the first time, Kurin spoke. Nobody outside this room would ever believe he could sound so tentative. “He is weary from his journey, Mother.”
“Useless,” Queen Gamwone hissed, stabbing two fingers at Takshin as if he were a fox-ghoul, or a cannibal ghost. Her vowels had hardened, the accent of a merchant’s daughter rubbing through the indolence of noble speech. “Get out of my sight.”
With pleasure. Takshin bowed again, rose, and retreated. He passed through the ladies-in-waiting—hastily retaking their place, no doubt after pressing ears to the partition—like a burning wind, and it wasn’t until he reached the gloom of dusk outside in a water-garden’s dreaming coolness that his eyes filled.
Fool. Did you think she would be happy to see you?
No. He had long since given up that dream.
Still, it stung, a pointless almost-grief mixed with slow dull-crimson fury. His hands burned, begging for a hilt, until he could breathe deeply and dispel the fire. It retreated underground, but it did not abate.
It never did.
EVEN A KIND ONE
The noise was unrelenting. They lined the broad stone avenues, a sweltering mass of crafters, traders, merchants, kaburei given or stealing leave for the day, children agog at the spectacle, women selling fruit and cheap fans, mothers lifting babies to see that mythical creature, a princess of Khir.
Mahara, in the heavily embroidered robe and fine linen underthings the Fourth Prince had presented—all red as fresh blood, the color of luck and marriage—stood under a huge crimson canopy. The entire platform moved upon grinding wooden wheels, pulled by sweating horses and pushed by sweating kaburei, lumbering over thrown flowers and scattered slips of red paper, fragrant water splashed in its path. Tiny sparksticks swung in excited hands both young and old; shoving and fistfights bloomed at the edges of the crowd.
Yala lifted a small wooden cup of cooling yeoyan juice to Mahara’s dry, carmine-dabbed lips. “Courage,” she whispered. “Courage, my princess.” The crowd, of course, would not see the sweat or Mahara’s fluttering eyelashes, her deadly paleness. They would see the wagons heaped with Zhaon marriage-gifts and the guards in their gold and red livery, the great canopy and the labor expended to carry a lone woman in red and her lady-in-waiting along. Just like a sacrifice bound and dragged to a temple, crashing cymbals, wailing flutes, and the roar of the conqueror’s city deafening those brought to be immolated. Before the First Dynasty, such sacrifices were common, or at least the Hundreds hinted as much.
Zhaon-An couldn’t possibly be this big. How did the inhabitants breathe in this warren of stone, timber, so many people pressed cheek-by-jowl? The Great Keep of Khir and its city-skirts were not half as large.
Yala’s head throbbed, not just from the lurching motion or the constant crowd-roaring. She settled watchfully into kneeling, thankfully shielded from view by a hip-high, flimsy wooden partition. She could massage Mahara’s legs and provide some little comfort, but the princess had to stand inside the gold-heavy robe, head high with its cargo of twisted, sculpted hair and gold cage-work in two horns, red silk tassels depending from each. The heat was monstrous, crushing, but at least there was shade, and some slight breeze from the contraption’s movement.
It had all started before dawn at the massive southron gate of Zhaon-An, with Mahara assuming her place upon the wide platform while horns blared her arrival from the city’s newly repaired walls. It was auspicious for the princess to enter from the same direction as the warming spring winds, the Fourth Prince and his advisors had said, but as Yala stole glances at their surroundings, she realized the route was planned to show off Khir’s offering to the royalty of Zhaon through as much of their ancient capital as possible. Khir had paid dearly at the Battle of Three Rivers, but so had Zhaon, and this spectacle was to show the common people it had been worth the blood and toil.
No doubt there had also been a triumphal march when their army returned, laden with whatever spoils were wrung out of the borderlands or plundered from the Khir tents at Three Rivers. Heavy tribute was lev
ied from Khir for the next ten years, and Mahara was the first payment. The terms of surrender could even be called magnanimous, since there was no military viceroy lording it in the Great Keep and the tolls and tariffs for trade through Zhaon did not increase.
Khir was defeated, its border garrisons withdrawn and tariffs levied upon the goods that passed through from Ch’han far north and the Yaluin’s several tribes, not to mention any of Khir’s goods traveling through Zhaon to Anwai. Many a petty invader had learned Khir’s high wood-clothed mountains and the deep fertile valleys made for stubborn defense, and contented themselves with levying tribute. Zhaon was no different, and furthermore needed their northern neighbor to act as a stopper against the wild tribes of the Yaluin wastes and the designs of far Ch’han.
The sun turned past its zenith. Yala’s princess was even paler; her jaw clenched as the contraption wheeled into what Yala later learned was the Yuin, also called the Left Market, cleared over the past few days of stalls and temporary dwellings. Troublemakers, rabble-rousers, and beggars were rounded up and dragged away too, as often happened before a festival. Flakes of dyed paper whirled and scattered; the crowd swirled and pressed against the irregular sides of the stone-floored market-bowl. Heaving forward, foot by foot, the platform passed through another lane, this one between two great theater complexes with their distinctive stacked-angle roofs, their front steps painted scarlet in honor of a royal wedding and acrobats upon them whirling, dancing, doing tricks to delight both princess and crowd. Several corners through the city had held tableaux, or story-sellers with their wooden plaques clacking through painted renditions of ancient scenes, all of marriages. The Moon Maiden and the Warrior, Ha-Wone and the Poet, the Two Wives of Hau Dabeo, and more.
The passage was not over yet. The Yuin was merely a prelude, the smaller market where you could buy the not-quite-legal. The Yaol, or Great Market, had been cleared too, and across its pitiless, burning stone expanse shod hooves clattered, the wheels made heavy noises, and the haulers groaned, their shoes slipping, woven fiber soles walked almost through.
Red and gold, leather creaking and mail jingling, the city garrison spread out, pushing the mass of onlookers back, back. Pikes appeared, the horse of the palace guard in their golden ceremonial finery spokes of a crimson wheel. City and palace, both sending their personal armies to bring one small woman to the gutting-block.
Mahara swayed again, and Yala massaged her princess’s trembling thighs, coaxing the muscles to stay to their task.
“Just a little longer,” she soothed, though she did not know how much more either of them could endure of this din.
More noise. More golden riders, approaching from the north where a white bulk with red roof-tiles could be seen—the palace, the seat of Tamuron the cursed. Gold-clad riders swept across the stone plain, red plumes waving atop their helmets. Quick hands, belonging to the sword- and pikemen who had marched with their shoulders to the platform’s wheels, loosed satin cords. Draperies fluttered, and a bloody shade descended under the canopy as cunningly designed fabric walls were pulled taut. Now they had some privacy.
Mahara sagged into Yala’s hands; tassels swayed from the crimson horns upon her bowed head. Yala held the wastewater pot, set it aside when the trickle stopped, and chafed at Mahara’s legs while hooves thundered outside. Next would come the bridal sedan, and for the rest of the journey Mahara could recline in something close to comfort.
She laved Mahara’s hands with cool, crushflower-scented water, pressed a dipped, wrung cloth to the princess’s nape. Without the slight forward motion, it was already stuffy inside the tent. Yala’s quick fingers neatened the two gold-caged horns of hair, seated the princess’s ear-drops hung from thin crimson satin ribbons more firmly, arranged the heavy golden collar studded with gems, helped her princess into the soft embroidered slippers a noble bride should wear. Mahara submitted, her eyes half-closed, her shoulders sagging.
“I will be just outside the palanquin,” Yala repeated. “Every step. The Emperor and the Fourth Prince will peer in to see that none else have taken your place. Then the bearers shall take you to the bridal chambers. There will be a proper bath, and dinner.” The Fourth Prince Makar had patiently explained it all while Mahara clutched at Yala’s hand, whitened knuckles hidden under their paired sleeves. Yala had made him repeat it once, until she was certain of every step and what ceremony was required.
She did not wish her princess to stumble.
“Do not leave me.” Mahara’s knees buckled. Yala caught her, and both women almost slid to the platform’s indifferently cushioned floor. “Do not leave me, Yala.”
“You know I will not.” Her cheek against her princess’s brocaded shoulder, Yala closed her own eyes for a moment. Gold thread scratched at her jaw. She was shorter than her princess, and wished she were not. It would make comfort easier. “The Crown Prince is kind, they say. He will know you are frightened, and will be gentle.”
Mahara’s reply was a cricket’s whisper. “Yala?”
“My princess.” Booted feet, outside, the reading of a proclamation. She caught words in Zhaon—the Emperor’s name, the Crown Prince’s, a list of titles. It would take some little while for the ceremony to reach its agonizing end. “Let us move your legs, my lady. They may stiffen in the palanquin.”
“You have your yue?” Mahara whispered.
“Of course. You are safe, my princess.” Yala’s heart thumped along like the hoofbeats outside. The crowd had hushed to listen. Speakers at every corner of the market repeated the words, echoing like ghouls in the mountain passes leading the unwary astray. Mahara’s trembling threatened to infect her. This was not like a Khir wedding, she decided. Where did they find all the flowers they had thrown? What was Zhaon, that it could waste so flagrantly? The magnificence made her uneasy. It was said in Khir that the Zhaon were soft, that they did not have bones-of-the-mountain or the fierceness needed to sustain in adversity.
And yet they had won, and wrested Yala’s princess from her home.
“You are safe,” she repeated, briskly, as if they were young again in Khir’s Great Keep and Mahara awakening from an ill-dreaming. “I will be right beside the palanquin.”
The proclamation ended. A massive cheer rose outside, shaking the platform, rippling the cloth screens and curtains. Mahara let out a small, wounded cry, prey caught in the hunter’s net, and it took all Yala’s waning self-control to remain calm, leading her for a few steps back and forth along the uneven floor so the princess’s legs would not fail her. Over and over, she repeated her assurances, and when the three taps of a staff upon the vermilion-painted steps at the head of the wheeled platform resounded, it was time for her to look out between scarlet edges and make certain the temporary passage to the sedan was firmly screened, so no evil gaze or impropriety could descend upon her princess before she was closed in the conveyance.
“It will all be well,” she said, softly, as she took Mahara’s arm again. Inside her, though, a different drumbeat sounded.
Please, my ancestors, hear me. Please do not let it be a lie.
Even a kind one.
BEARS WATCHING
A toast! A toast to the bridegroom!” Sixth Prince Jin, just past the gifting of his first suit of true armor, raised his lacquered cup with a grin as bright as the golden embroidery upon his belt. His cheeks were still soft and his dark eyes were merry, his topknot held with a short wooden tube and a silver pin.
This banquet-room was familiar, a small private enclosure in the Kaeje’s bulk, walled in dark wood and bearing a long, scratched, scarred heavy table suitable for all manner of feast and merriment. The princes had often gathered here, and Zakkar Kai as well once he was old enough. Mrong Banh the astrologer had gone to fetch a jar of what he promised was an exquisite vintage saved for such a wedding, and without that moderating influence the conversation had grown… loud, lapping against wooden screens and pounding at the long, low, heaped-high table.
Second Prince Kurin, grin
ning foxlike in a fulvous tunic embroidered with long-necked fishbirds, poured another round for every brother. “So, have you seen her? Did you get a peek?”
Takyeo, at the head of the table, was trying to avoid overdrinking, but the brothers kept filling his glass. Candle and lamplight painted his triangular face, and he had laid aside the bridegroom’s tufted headpiece for dinner. “Of course not.” He reached for his eating-sticks, but Fifth Prince Sensheo with his archer’s thumb-ring of heavy, finely carved horn snatched them away to hold hostage. “Makar has, though.”
“If you stuff yourself, you will not be able to perform. Drink again.” Sensheo’s high, whistling laugh punctuated another general shout of merriment. “Makar? Tell us of this Khir girl.”
“Ai, I cannot say.” Makar, relieved of escort duty, scratched at his cheek. He had lost some little weight, organizing the entry of the foreign princess and fending off requests from the aristocratic families along their route. Tonight, he seemed more than ready to drink and forget.
Zakkar Kai, seated upon the least elaborate cushion he could find at the Crown Prince’s right hand, downed a cupful of sohju all at once, a soldier’s habit. “Come now, Makar. You are the scholar, you must have observed.” Directing the conversation into safer channels fell to him, since Mrong Banh was temporarily absent.
Kai did not quite feel up to the task, especially with the amount of sohju flowing. The fare was spicy, to provide the marriage with passion, and it brought about a powerful thirst. Kurin was largely unpredictable and Sensheo wished to be, but you could always count upon the latter to poke and prod.
“Is she ugly?” Kurin leaned aside, his elbow upon a padded bolster. He had wanted the shutters opened to catch the night breeze, he said. Takyeo demurred, not wishing to be on display again so soon. “You can tell us.”
“I was too busy arranging inns and processions to notice.” Makar made a face, his proud nose wrinkling. Washing away the road-dust had done wonders for his mood, but he was not inclined to give Kurin any leeway. “Ask Father, he saw her more recently.”