by S. C. Emmett
Mahara’s breathing came in quiet shudders. “Do you have your yue?”
How often will you ask? Perhaps Yala’s princess merely wished to see a piece of home. “Of course.”
“Let me see it.”
Yala rose from the edge of the bed, brushing aside a gossamer drapery on the inner curtain-rod. Her fingers found familiar, warm, cross-hatched metal, and she drew the sharp blade out carefully. This dress was not cut to hide the sheath, and if she sawed at the seams, it could prove embarrassing. “It is here. Does that ease you?”
Mahara slid from the bed, her bare knees meeting the floor of patterned wood with a sound Yala flinched at. She made haste to kneel as well, but the princess threw her arms around Yala’s waist and hid her face in her lady-in-waiting’s belly.
“Yala…” The word was muffled, and unbearably informal. “Kill me.”
She held the yue safely away, tried to free herself so she could kneel as well. “What?”
“You must. Quickly.” Mahara’s face turned up to hers, tear-streaked and deathly pale. “I will die a maid of Khir.”
If they come now, I must think quickly. Any faltering explanation she could give would not shield either of them from charges of lying in wait to assassinate a new husband. Yala swallowed, her throat dry as the High Waste buffering Khir from Ch’han’s bulk past the protective teeth of the Northern Lid, where only snow and sand-demons roamed. “Is that truly what you wish?”
The candles hissed. The brazier ticked, and Mahara trembled against Yala’s legs. “I… should I?”
Why do you ask me? Had Mahara brought her own yue, she could have opened her own jugular, instead of commanding another. Still, if the Great Rider Ashani Zlorih had forbidden his daughter her honorable blade… after a long day, the noise, the bustle, and the tension, Yala was not quite certain her head was up to the challenge of sorting such a delicate, thorny thought.
So she set her shoulders, as she had before Bai’s tomb, and took a deep breath. “If you truly wish it, if you are truly certain, I will, and open my own throat as well.” She even knew the correct sequence of moves to do so, including the turning of the wrist to drag the blade free of muscle and the half-step aside to avoid sticky, blinding bloodspray before lifting the flicked-clean metal to her own pulse. Mahara’s body shook; Yala expected her to say yes, do it now, the verb cut short and imperative.
Then they would have to see if the courage of a daughter of Komor was equal to such a task.
“Then it will be war again, perhaps.” Mahara’s arms loosened. “Yala, is it cowardly to want to live?”
Relief, hot and acid, boiled in her stomach. “Never.” The blade vanished into its secret home, and Yala helped her princess rise. The washbowl behind its partition in the westron quadrant of the room, fish-carved as well to signify abundance, was full. She brought back a small soaked square of cloth, wiped at Mahara’s reddened cheeks. “We are not men in battle, my lady.”
“It feels like a battle.” Now Mahara had arrayed herself to receive a charge, her chin set and a familiar gleam in her pale eyes. She often looked thus, when there was a disagreeable event to attend in the Great Keep’s high, drafty throne-room, or before a dinner with an ill-tempered father-god. “Do you think my father misses me?”
“I am sure he does. You are his delight.” Yala could not tell if this was a lie, either, for Ashani Zlorih was given to banging upon the table when his children were at dinner, and shouting if one or two of them had not performed as expected. Her head throbbed, and her shoulders were taut as a fully strung bow. She longed to rest, and such longing was weakness while she could still serve her princess.
“Yala… if there comes a time when it is necessary, you will use your yue? Upon… upon me?”
Did all princesses ask their ladies this upon a wedding night? Yala could remember nothing in the Hundreds or other classics to approximate it. Of course, those were written by men, with notable exceptions. Five women had works among the Hundreds, a few flecks of pungent berryspice to give paste-thick arzai23 some savor. You could not eat berryspice alone. “Mahara…”
“Promise me. Promise me.”
“I promise,” Yala soothed, taking Mahara’s hands. They were cold, but so were her own, and her princess’s trembling was her own as well. “But do not think upon that now.”
For there was commotion in the hall. Gongs, small drums, pipes, footsteps, loud cries.
Mahara’s husband was approaching.
A PLEASANT OCCASION
In the recesses of Khir’s Great Keep, a small round windowless room with a wide curved hearth held a similarly round table and chairs in the old style, their low arms mimicking saddle-horns. The timbered ceiling was low, age-blackened wood bare of any hangings just like the smooth-carved walls and flagstones with imperceptible seams. The art of making such seams had been lost at the end of the Second Dynasty along with much else, but such floors were a prized reminder of Khir’s traditional intransigence.
Daoyan’s back prickled afresh as he passed between bowing hall-guards in their dark, sober half-armor; both of them were too young to have been at Three Rivers. He wished he were wearing his armor instead of a dinner-robe of heavy komor-blue silk and palace slippers, both embroidered with interlocking long-necked characters, a nod to his mother’s personal seal. He could, he supposed, wear the Narikh clan’s standard, the graceful cloven-hoof huani sacred to the god of herding and pasturage and as such, not to be hunted. It would fill his mother’s remaining kin with fury they dared not show, but the satisfaction of lighting such a fire was not worth the cost of fuel or the risk of burning his hand later.
Yala would have approved of his restraint, even if Baiyan would have considered it beneath a nobleman to even weigh the thought of such a display. But then, Bai was legitimate, and could afford a measure of pride.
Daoyan paused just inside the heavy door. The table was laid, dishes gleaming and the tea ready to be poured.
The royal father was already seated in what must be the habitual royal chair, close enough to the fire to warm not-quite-elderly bones. Ashani Zlorih was possessed of a lean, severe face, his pale eyes piercing and disdainful, the great greenstone Ashani seal-rings chased with silver upon both his first fingers, his marrow-brown robe subtly embroidered with the Great Calendar in slightly contrasting thread, perhaps the work of an absent royal daughter. Zlorih glanced at the door, his mouth pulled into that same disapproving curve it wore whenever child-Dao had glimpsed him from afar.
A Great Rider did not deign to recognize his byblows, though he had visited the sumptuously cold manor still bearing traces of Narikh Arasoe and her dishonor regularly. Each visit had been heralded by scrubbing and tension, Dao drilled endlessly on proper deportment and accomplishments in case the Great Rider decided during that particular visit to lower himself to speak to his bastard son.
This was the first time Dao had been alone in a room with the man who had made him with an honorless mother on a hot summer night. When he was younger, he had longed for such an eating companion. Now he paused just inside the door, studying the table, the chairs, the fireplace with a small pile of unlit wood.
“My son.” Ashani Zlorih said, the word cut short and imperative. “Sit. Eat.”
A pair of commands, not a greeting. Well, what else had he expected? Certainly nothing of warmth could come from this man, or the Great Keep itself. “Hail to the Great Rider of Khir,” Daoyan intoned, bowing deep as a minor courtier. “You honor the humblest of thy servants.”
A chill silence scented with damp stone and dulum filled the round room to the brim. There was a dish of small birds in the sweetish, pungent sauce, but the king’s bowl was bare and empty. Was he was waiting for a filial son to perform the duty of scooping rai?
Perhaps the shades of Daoyan’s elder half-brothers would rise to do so, as in the tale of Ha Buan the Eldest. Dao had a vague memory of a nurse reciting a version of it in rough peasant argot, each hard consonant a click and ever
y sibilant half-swallowed as they did in the highlands away from Zhaon’s mushmouth influence.
“Cease the mummery, my son.” Zlorih’s hands lay upon the table, nails blunt and rough as befitted a warrior. A braid-knotted bracelet of waxed red thread with a tiny greenstone charm peeked from under his left sleeve, perhaps a princess’s gift. “I have longed to have you at this table; let us make the occasion a pleasant one.”
Of course he wished it to be pleasant for his royal self. Many a powerful man liked to avoid uncomfortable truths or admitting his own cowardice. “Have you truly?” Daoyan straightened, and his tone held nothing but mild inquiry. How often had he dreamed of this—a dinner with a distant father, that all-important childhood god? Lying in his narrow, luxurious bed, staring at a cold stone ceiling, how often had a child hated the trickles of hot water from his own eyes?
Nightly tears had stopped only when Daoyan decided hate was better than longing, and indifference better than either.
Ashani Zlorih studied him. Daoyan tucked his hands into his sleeves and kept his slippers—and the feet inside them—stubbornly still.
“You have her eyes,” the Great Rider said. “I’ve often thought so, over the years.”
It was a wonder the Great Rider hadn’t ordered them plucked from his byblow’s head. Why had Daoyan even been left alive? “Do I?” Again, he spoke mildly, quietly, an impression of a tutor in his adolescence who had been fond of slipping an ink-stained hand into the lap of his almost-royal charge while he recited passages.
What was that man’s name again? It bothered Daoyan that he could not recall. Instead, he thought of red blossoms, a burst skull, and a wide spreading splatter. A long open-air gallery with a stone bailey beneath, a weakened wooden railing… oh, it had been easy.
When there were none to defend a boy, he learned to defend himself. Now Narikh’a Daoyan would see if he had been a patient and enduring enough student.
“Will you sit? You must have questions, boy. I am ready for them.” The bitterness did not leave the Great Rider’s mouth, pulled tight against itself like thread in a loom. “Do you wish to know of your mother? The fever took her when you were but four winters old.”
The honorless bitch who whelped me, you mean? Over and over, they had whispered it behind richly embroidered sleeves, tittered into amused ears at the theater while he often sat upon display with the Komori siblings, or even said within earshot at festivals and great dances where he was a half-welcome guest. Royal blood could not be openly sneered at, no matter the admixture, and some among the Second Families no doubt thought themselves clever, hedging their bets by showing a certain bland politeness to Zlorih’s mistake.
“I have her yue,” he said, finally. “It is in the finest box I could commission, and I look upon it frequently, Your Majesty.”
Zlorih made an irritated movement. “Will you not call me father? I wish to hear a young voice do so again.” If the allusion to Narikh Arasoe’s honor made any impression upon him, it was impossible to discern.
“I was always told never to use that particular word.” Daoyan put on his most winning smile, one practiced even while his teeth ground. “The lesson has become a habit, Your Majesty. Please forgive your servant.”
“Stubborn, just like her.” Zlorih showed his teeth. “And sharp, too. Eat or leave, Ashani Daoyan.”
Daoyan chose his footing with care, crossing the room, and settled upon the chair he was obviously expected to occupy. “I cannot refuse your invitation.” Who in Khir could?
“You must be angry with me.” Now it was his cursed father’s turn for deceptive mildness.
“The truly filial does not allow anger to enter his heart.” Daoyan’s smile did not alter. His face had frozen much like the Thread Pass in winter, the sea beyond only a distant murmur.
“Pai Banh, the Ninth Book of Sorrows. I see your tutors were worth their pay.” The Great Rider indicated the large covered rai-bowl, and as Daoyan lifted the lid he imagined nacre-poison nestling amid the piled grains, io-ia powder in the dulum sauce—what could be slipped into the pickled waxfruit? Perhaps anjba, donjba’s toxic little sister, destroyer of the liver and stiffener of muscles.
The very idea soothed him and he piled high his father’s bowl, taking only a moderate measure in his own. “My education was thorough, Your Majesty.”
“I can imagine.” Ashani Zlorih did his bastard son the great honor of carving strips of dulum-drenched meat and placing them in Daoyan’s bowl with his own eating-sticks. “A Great Rider must be as stone, Daoyan. Never forget that.”
“I listen and obey, Your Majesty.” He inclined his upper half, a very proper almost-bow. His hands, occupied with eating-sticks and bowl, could not turn into fists. “Please, speak further, if you will.”
The Great Rider of Khir preened under the flattery, but there was a troubling gleam in his pale gaze. He chose a thin slice of meat, chewed with relish, and bent a paternal smile upon some point above Daoyan’s head. He had obviously decided to make do with the materials at hand, no matter how shoddy and second-rate he thought them.
Strange, Daoyan mused, as he set himself to be charming or at least inoffensive. He had thought a Great Rider would be different than a merchant or a petty noble, but they were all the same—merely men, grasping and vain.
He had often cursed his own birth, the necessity to pretend a lack of ambition, and the nobles of Khir at once. Perhaps, instead, he should be somewhat relieved his bastardy freed him from having to pretend gratefulness inside his own heart.
The thought amused him, and Daoyan ate with good appetite.
ABOVE PETTINESS
Kurin cannot help himself, he was born feet-first.” Fourth Prince Makar, bright-eyed despite the hour, looked up as burning flowers bloomed under the starry hood of night. He straightened his leaf-green robe and his wide, princely belt with quick motions. It was a family truism that he had always hated to be disarranged, even in his swaddling. “You should not encourage him.”
Sensheo, rubbing meditatively at his horn thumb-ring, blinked owlish in the sudden glare. They had accompanied Takyeo to the wedding chamber; their ceremonial duties ended with that small journey. Jin and Kurin were gone, one to bed and the other to the sinks of the Theater District, Takshin had disappeared again. Zakkar Kai, of course, remained with Mrong Banh, the two of them drinking three more to celebrate, and three more again.
Fifth Prince Sensheo, Makar’s younger birth-brother, had other things upon his mind, and a walk to clear the sohju fumes was first on the list. “It pleases me to hear him say what we all think.” His topknot was loose, but he did not reach to straighten it. Why bother, when it was so dark?
“And what is this opinion you think the world shares?” As if Makar did not know. With his attire put to rights, the Fourth Prince clasped his hands behind his back and affected the walk of a much older man, unhurried, only slightly swaying from sohju. A line of maids from the palace baths—goldenrod tunics crossed at the waist, long yellow skirts, and the two simple braids marching over their heads—hurried, intent upon some task or another, in the opposite direction, the first and last holding swinging lanterns. They bowed, but neither man acknowledged such lowly creatures.
“Come now, brother dear.” Sensheo indicated a familiar flight of stairs, one they had both climbed many times after a celebration. These were new, part of the remodeling, and did not have the softened edges of the smaller, ancient keep Zhaon-An was built around. Time ate all things, even in the blessed Land of the Five Winds. “A hurai, for that commonborn dog?”
“He rendered us great service at Three Rivers, and before.” The Fourth Prince kept his pace ever more sedate, despite his longer stride. Their slippers shushed companionably, wooden soles padded with leather outside, silk inside. “Or have you forgotten?”
“You don’t give a dog a golden collar for barking.” It was a neat turn of phrase, Sensheo thought. Graceful, even. Stinging, and to the point.
He should write it dow
n.
“What do you give a wolf?” Makar shook his head, his cheeks flushed. He was not truly irritated yet, but it was only a matter of time. “You’ve been attending Saba’s little tea parties again, haven’t you.”
“And why not?” It was not difficult to affect the right note of injury. Sensheo let his step falter a bit. Really, the world was clearer with a little sohju in your belly, and things went easier when people thought you were a wastrel. They said things around drunkards they would never dare voice otherwise. “She’s our sister.”
“Indeed.” Makar’s face settled into blurred thoughtfulness. “And every time you and Sabwone play, someone ends up crying.”
It wasn’t his fault if nobody else could take a joke. And at least Makar wasn’t making even veiled hints about… other suspicions. “We are not children anymore.” Sensheo halted midway up the steps. There was a tiger carving at the top, one First Princess Sabwone had often garlanded with paper flowers and told stories of bringing to life. Baby Jin had ever been terrified of such tales, and that was good amusement each time.
“Then do not act as such, Sensheo.” Makar’s sigh was a direct imitation of Mrong Banh’s, right down to the slight whistle at the end. Fireflowers exploded, a transitory gleam, making bright embroidery upon their belts sparkle. “You are a prince, not a courtier. You must be above pettiness.”
“And you?” Sensheo put his hands behind his back. “You interfered with the First Queen’s travel arrangements, didn’t you? And sent one of her eunuchs to the border. How wise was that?”
“I did so upon Father’s orders. Do you really think he doesn’t notice those little games, just because he says nothing?” Makar shook his head. “You do not think, Sensheo. Mother worries for you.”
“Maki-maki, Father’s little lapcat.” The pun upon his brother’s name was old, and perhaps still had the power to sting.
Or not. Makar simply looked away, across the low stone balustrade and over a small, gemlike dry-garden with three rough stones set in raked sand surrounded by thorny succulents that had to be well-wrapped during winter. “Find a new insult, Younger Brother.”