by S. C. Emmett
“Why would I need one?” It was distressing, Sensheo admitted, that not much had brought a reaction from his elder brother of late.
Makar still did not take offense. “You are drunk.”
“Enough to be honest.”
“Then I shall give your honesty the weight it merits.” Makar’s nose didn’t wrinkle, but it was close. He stalked away, and Sensheo climbed the rest of the stairs after him, halting again at the tiger. A stone mouth, forever frozen in a scream, dust and other matter collecting between carved teeth. Someone should be commanded to scrub it. Possibly one of the eunuchs, maybe even Queen Gamwone’s head physician, the one they called the Skull. That would enrage the First Queen, but she couldn’t deign to notice if a prince planned the event properly.
Sensheo, his head full of delight at the prospect of arranging such a fine joke, laughed.
THE TROUBLE TO LEARN
Mrong Banh could not drink as he used to, so Kai gave him to the care of a young golden-armored palace guard to be taken back to his blue-tiled tower full of strange instruments, shelves of scrolls and books, and models of the heavens. With that last duty fulfilled, there was only the walk to his own quarters to worry him, and Zakkar Kai set off through a collection of little-used halls and gardens, a circuitous route meant to avoid any further merriment.
There was much to think upon. The First Queen’s attempted interference with the new Crown Princess’s journey to the capital, the news from the great merchant city-state of Anwei of spring storms interfering with trade, a few petty intrigues among the eunuchs, and—last but certainly not least—how to approach the problem of the last assassin to penetrate the Palace.
It was the last he thought upon most. Mrong Banh had pointed out that so elder and obviously experienced an assassin would not be cheaply bought, and Kai had set his steward to a task or two related to that matter, having little time in the great bustle of wedding preparations and Council sessions.
Tamuron would chide him for not taking a rest where he found it as a soldier should. Or perhaps he would not, comforted by the fact that Kai’s brain, ever active, would not stop pawing at certain things lightly, turning them over, shaking them like a child’s gourd-toy, waiting to see what fell out.
Sometimes, that ceaseless scrabbling inside his skull was a curse. It took battle or hard drill to force it to slow, let alone halt. Even a courtesan’s most intimate attentions did not interrupt it for long.
Even sohju did not, though it filled Kai’s head with colorless fumes and he took care to step slowly. Overhead, great flowers of colored flame blossomed, fading at the moment of their birth. The noise was an irritation, especially to those with battle-nerves, so he stopped in a covered gallery, watching the flashes paint a dry-garden with an arched bridge over a river of smooth-polished stones. The moon was near full, quickening as the traditionalists hoped the new princess would soon swell, and between the flashes and the rabbit-face of the night’s greatest lamp, shadows leapt and spun. It dizzied him, so he tipped his head back, refusing to bow to brief disorientation.
When it passed, he let his chin drop. For a moment, he thought the alcohol had unveiled ghosts. A woman stood upon the bridge, her own head tilted far back, watching the flame-blossoms. They were reaching their peak now, and would trail away into nothingness after the loudest battle-roar. In the slum quarters, the feasting, tiny burning flowers, and sparksticks would go until dawn.
Black hair, dressed very simply, and a hairpin thrust into the braids, glimmers of red dangling from its proud straightness at a very fetching angle. She rested a mannerly hand upon the bridge’s painted-pale wooden rail, her cuffs sewn thickly with pearls. It was a beautiful dress, patterned with swallows stealing grain, other small pearls caught in embroidered beaks. That much he could see, and the arch of her throat as she stared into the moon’s face. Another flame-flower bloomed with a thundercrack; she did not flinch.
Instead, she recited. “I cannot, I cannot.” In the aftermath, while his dazzled eyes sought to recapture her, she spoke, in careful, heavily accented, very formal Zhaon. “I cannot return.”
I know that song. Kai’s feet moved without his conscious command, and he was faintly surprised the sohju did not tip him down the stairs and into a stand of wire-warped bonjai evergreens. His voice, sohju-loosened, slipped its bonds as well. “That is Zhe Har the Archer. The next line is the warrior’s reply.” Which escaped him for a moment, that next line, but he was certain he could hunt it down in a few moments.
Startled, the woman retreated a step, past the crown of the bridge. Pearls, dark hair, and swaying beads of her hairpiece, a pale gleam of eyes—for a moment, he was on the battlefield again, horseback Khir with their strange bleached gazes ranged in serried ranks.
They had refused to flee, those northern highborns. Foolish, and yet he had expected no less, poking and prodding at their borders, out-thinking them, delivering carefully calculated insults to drive them into pitched battle. Once committed, they rode to death or victory.
If a man was measured by his enemies, you could do worse than those proud northern riders.
That pale gaze was a dousing of cold trough-water, shocking a body back into sobriety. Ah. I think I know who you are. “The lady-in-waiting,” he continued, moving forward step by slow step. “From Khir, yes?” His tongue, unshocked, would not quite obey him, slurring his consonants in Zhaon.
She halted again upon the downward slope, and something in her posture reminded him of weapons practice. A young soldier, but swathed in too much material. Another flash of burning powder and ground-fine dye overhead, showing a sharp-honed face, catlike eyes blind with the color of Khir nobility, arched cheekbones. She was not pretty—there was no softness to her cheeks, her eyes were too wide and smudged with weariness besides. An inky tendril with a blue undertone had escaped her piled braids and brushed her cheek, evidence of exhaustion as well.
It had been a busy day for any Khir woman in the palace, no doubt.
“Who are you?” She used the most formal of intonations, and the most archaic of grammar. Her accent was not displeasing.
He could have laughed, challenged by this sentry. And I thought I would be recognized by any in the palace. My pride takes a hit, albeit with weighted wood. “Zakkar Kai, High General of Zhaon, greets you most humbly.”
Her silence lengthened. Somewhere in the palace, a burst of cymbals, singing, and beaten drums reached a brief apogee. He waited for her name, but she did not give it. Instead, she bowed, a hurried but exquisite little movement. “I apologize for disturbing you, then.” Her accent, strangely songlike, turned each consonant into the end of a verse. “Enjoy the celebration, High General.” She moved as if to turn, the pearl-heavy sleeves swaying under their own weight. She wore the brocade like a soldier in armor, barely noticing the weight.
Wait. “You speak Zhaon well.”
“I took the trouble to learn.” Again, archaic and formal, but well-accented.
She was definitely Khir, and could only be the princess’s maid. The silk meant noble-born, so not a servant, and due a formality or two. “What is your name, lady?” The pearls meant she was well bred, at least.
“I am of no importance.” Again, in curt, imperative book-Zhaon. She turned, her heavy skirt swaying, obviously meaning to retrace her steps. Like any well-born girl, fleeing a strange man in a foreign garden.
So a Khir could retreat, after all.
Kai’s steady movement had brought him within striking distance, a warrior’s reflex. He did not quite lunge, but his hand flashed out and caught her sleeve. “Wait.” A thin tremor communicated itself through stiffened fabric. A doe of a girl, lost in this stone wilderness. “I won’t hurt you,” he found himself saying. “You are the Khir lady, are you not? The Princess’s companion.” In Khir, the word was different, the iah at the end too clipped for a mouth used to the music of Zhaon.
There was nobody else she could be, and he was soft-headed for even asking. Her response was
what he could expect from any demure maiden.
In short, she retreated at high speed, and with surprising strength. “Let go.” Material tore, pearls biting his palm. “Or I shall make you.”
He tried again, but she was quick, pulling up her skirts and achieving shadowed stairs with deerlike speed. Kai was left in the garden with a head full of sohju, holding a scrap of embroidered silk with three pearls sewn securely to their prison. He lifted it as if to examine the stitching, found himself clasping it to his nose like Banh with his folded scraps when faced with something disgusting. A tang of female, a breath of ceduan used to keep moths from fabric—the robe had been a gift, then? No perfume—perhaps there had been no time to anoint herself, caring for her princess upon this auspicious day.
A shattering paroxysm of colored flame burst overhead. It occurred to him that she was Khir, and the Zhaon general of Three Rivers would be a hated name to her. Had it been fear, making her shake and retreat so? Disgust?
Both? Of course, being accosted in a strange garden at night would make any woman hesitant.
Kai tipped his head back, looked at the moon again. His own voice startled him once more. “I cannot return, the Moon Maiden cried.” The next line arrived at last, a guest hurrying through the front door. “Then I will come to you, the warrior said.”
Pleased at having remembered, he took his bearings again, and set out for his own quarters once more. It took him several steps before he realized he was looking about him, hoping to catch a glimpse of pearls, of dark hair, of embroidered swallows upon heavy silk.
The sohju had made him foolish. He firmed his expression and his step, and strode on.
A COWARD AFTER ALL
Her eyes were full, and Yala told herself it was only the increasing need for sleep wringing salt water free. After wrong turnings, stepping aside into shadow to avoid revelers or guards in their fantastical golden armor, blurred gardens lit by lurid explosions, and the moon’s pitiless glare, she finally saw a familiar brightly painted wooden statue of a phoenix rising from a brass censer and behind it, the steps to the Crown Prince’s residence, the back half of a palace they called Jonwa. The palace complex was as large as a town in itself, and she could have wandered until morning if not for the habit of watching landmarks while riding the hunt.
Did they hunt here? There was no room. Buildings or gardens everywhere, pressing in upon you. Even the mountains above the Great Keep were not this… confining.
She was not challenged at the door, both gold-dipped guards dozing, probably helped along by the thin, fiery, colorless sohju the entire palace was apparently swilling. Once she entered the long low main hall, though, she halted, somewhat at a loss. It was cool, and bare except for a massive stylized carving of a snow-pard lit by thick pillar-candles. The second floor looked down into this space through highly carved stone screens, and the floor was polished pieces of wood laid in godflower patterns, wheeling here and there, enough to make her dizzy.
“My lady?” A soft, hesitant Zhaon voice. “My lady Komori?”
It was a girl in Jonwa garb—white under-tunic, blue over-tunic, with the skirt of a lady’s attendant instead of the trousers of the lower servants, not one of the mass of lower palace servants and attendants, with their practical stain-denying goldenrod cloth. Yala blinked at her, searching for a name to go with a halfway-familiar, round, kittenish face. The girl’s hair, in two braids over her shoulders, was wrapped with leather upon each side—a kaburei, then.
“It’s Anh.” The girl spoke very slowly, as if she expected Yala not to understand. Still, she did not raise her voice overmuch as if volume would aid comprehension, as some of the Zhaon did. “Your close-servant, we met before the dinner. I was about to look for you at the Kaeje.”
Kaeje. The largest palace, the Emperor’s private dwelling; the queens’ palaces were part of it, and called by a different name. The ceremony of Mahara’s wedding had been planned in minute detail, except for what Yala was supposed to do after leaving her princess to her fate. She had not asked, either, all her concentration upon performing her duties to that point.
“My close-servant?” She repeated it slowly, in Zhaon. “Ah. I had not thought I was to be so blessed.” Not here, at least. When she spent a week at the Great Keep at Mahara’s frequent invitation, the princess’s maidservants helped upon the rare occasion calling for much finery. Mahara preferred Yala’s attentions to many of the servants’, and she was content to have it so.
There was a pride in knowing her place, after all.
The Zhaon girl laughed, cupping her hand over her mouth as they did here to hide honest breath. “You speak Zhaon well, Lady Komori.”
“Komor,” Yala corrected. “Komori is my father, and my house. I am Komor.” Merely a woman, an afterthought. She took care to keep her tone from sharpness.
“Oh. Your pardon.” She bent in a bow, and those wide dark eyes were full of mischief and awe in equal measure. “Is it done? Is the princess… forgive me, is…”
So someone else did not know quite what to do at this moment, either. It was obliquely comforting. “She is with her husband, in the Kaeje.” Yala’s shoulders ached as much as her head did. Her back was a bar of iron, and her legs felt heavy, full of wet dirt packed in bags to hold the side of a rai-patch against too much flooding. “May I see my quarters? The day has been long.”
High General Zakkar Kai. A name to frighten children with, and she had not cut him with her yue. She had fled, a coward after all. She could have struck him down, perhaps, a vengeance in the conqueror’s palace.
Except the consequences for Mahara might be… unpleasant. The ones for Yala herself did not bear thinking upon.
“Of course. Come with me.” The girl, her red-black braids swinging, bowed her along. Anh was young but capable, and in no time Yala was whisked through a confusing tangle of passages and shown the door to the Crown Prince’s quarters, the Crown Princess’s antechambers, bowers, and bedroom, Yala’s own room as chief lady to the princess with its communicating door meant to be left half-open, in case Mahara needed her at night. Anh’s cubicle was across a short passage floored with rush mats, bare and spare, in the event of Yala needing her at night. Boxes within boxes; Yala had not needed a personal maid since she came of age and Dowager Eun became senior housekeeper instead of nurse to the Komor daughter.
Lord Komori had not thought his daughter would require one, or he simply had not thought of the detail. Yala had not minded much, except when dressing required another pair of hands.
In short order, the girl freed Yala’s hair and slid the heavy overdress from her shoulders. The only difficulty was hiding her yue in its plain, supple sheath, but that was easily accomplished when Anh bustled into the chest-closet to bring out a sleeping-shift fragrant with ceduan and fresh air. “It is too big,” she fussed. “You are small. Now, your robe… there. Have you eaten? Something small, before sleep? A thimbleful of sohju? No? I’ve warmed the bed, there now. In you go.” Out were drawn the brazier-warmed, satin-soft stones, and Yala sank into unaccustomed softness. “Now, I am a light sleeper. All you must do is call for me. Do you have the night-terrors?”
“No.” Was this what Mahara felt at night, bundled into warmth and well-aired bedding? “It smells good,” Yala said, taking care with the formal inflection.
“No, no, my lady, do not use the vu. I am your maid.” The girl pulled the covers up. “I had them wash the bedding twice, and once more for the princess, too. The Crown Prince ordered nothing was to be left undone to make her comfortable.”
“His kindness is deep.” Yala’s tongue was thick, her eyelids heavy. She watched the girl pace the room, snuffing the lamps—so many of them, such luxury. No wonder Khir had been overwhelmed, there was nothing to match this wastefulness. A sea, of sand or water, could wear even the harshest stone bones to smoothness, and swallow them whole.
And yet, there were sharp things to be found under waves too, if the stories were true.
“Oh, y
es. It is better than in the First Queen’s palace, shu! Lady Kue is the housekeeper here, and she does not use the whip, only the sudo.24 She will be glad of a mistress to care for; she thinks the Crown Prince has waited too long to marry, though the Emperor… I should not say such things.”
A chatterbox was useful, if she did not chatter her mistress’s secrets about as easily as others. “I shall tell no one.” Yala smiled, sleepily. “Is that the proper inflection?”
“It is!” Anh’s grin was wide, unfeigned, and cheersome. “You have studied well, my lady. Now sleep.”
Finally, alone as she had never been while attending Mahara, Yala turned onto her side.
Her princess was married to a Zhaon. And she had been within dancing distance of the terrible killer of Khir’s sons. Had the general, perhaps, struck her own brother down?
Would he know if he had? A battlefield was a confusing place, the classics said. Songs spoke of the work of untangling the dead after an engagement, crows and human scavengers going from corpse to corpse, bodies locked together in death instead of that other, life-giving congress.
Yala’s hand wormed beneath the square pillow, touching the comforting hilt of her yue. Small sleight of hand kept her secret safe, and she had a sharp spine to stick in a consuming throat, like the shanshells the Anwei ate in stews. The girls on the quays who shelled them had black-stained fingers from the creatures’ bile, like noblewomen with suma or hakua paste, or a physician’s tinctured nails.
How strange. I thought I would weep. Before her eyes could fill, sleep claimed her, and Komor Yala spent her first night at the palace of Zhaon-An without dreams.
A SIGN OF DELICACY
Chill spring dawn rose over the palace of unified Zhaon, greeted by a weeping woman deep in the Kaeje’s ancient bulk.