by S. C. Emmett
“See that this gets to his sister, Sergeant Na Duanh.” Zakkar Kai tossed him the half-ingot. “Along with the message that her brother wishes her to keep it secret and approves of her marriage, for I shall be taking the letter. Where is this room you share? The Yuin, what street?”
In short order they had clear directions, the letter was in Kai’s pocket, and Takshin, boiling with restrained impatience, lengthened his stride. The rain showed no sign of slacking, but stopping for a cloak was a waste of time. They would get just as wet, oiled cloth or no. “Two horses,” he snapped to the palace runner at the barracks door, who took off for the stables at a gallop, ducking against a curtain of cold falling water. The princes would take the drier route, and by the time they reached the stables, Kai was just as deadly pale as Takshin.
He had reason, Takshin supposed. This was ill news.
“Lady Komor?” Kai repeated.
“Changed cloaks with her princess. Swift thinking.” Oh, she was sharp as the pin she had put through his earlobe, the little lure.
“Yes, she is prone to that.” Kai’s jaw hardened, a look familiar from the drillyard when soldiers were not attending to their practice-duties thoroughly enough. “And this guard, Huo, Jin killed him?”
“Is it his first? He did not seem overly marked by the experience.” Takshin’s boots all but struck sparks from the stone paving. Gardens bent and blurred under the assault, blossoms beaten free of branches. “Jin was certain the man is dead.”
“So they may not know they do not have the princess.”
Little lure. Takshin’s fury mounted another notch. “All the more reason to move swiftly, before they discover their error.”
“Yes.” Though slightly taller, Kai still had to stretch his legs to keep up. “What were they doing in the Yaol?”
“A gift for Takyeo, Princess Mahara said. Four guards and a kaburei with them; the arrows did not touch Huo or the women.”
“Ah. So yes, they wanted the princess.”
Ridiculous, to state the obvious. Takshin made an irritated noise. “I do not care what they wanted. They took Lady Komor, and we shall have her returned.”
“Let us hope.” Kai’s expression was thunderous. Of course, he had reason to be grateful to their Eldest Brother, too. Takyeo was refuge and intercession when the Emperor decided a youth had gone too far, when Kurin and Sabwone decided to play one of their little games, or when Sensheo, when much younger, had done his best to poke and prod another child into tears.
“It is not a matter for hope.” Takshin touched his swordhilt. Soon, he promised. They will die for taking her, and if they have harmed her, they will die badly.
A little lure indeed, and he was a hawk winging for prey. Takshin put his head down and broke into a run, and after a moment, Zakkar Kai did, too.
FILTHY LITTLE CORNER
’M jest sayin’ I doan’ like it,” the thick-legged man repeated. Perhaps he had wrapped his lower half against the damp, like an old rheumatic farmer. “She stabs Huo, and we ent stabbin’ her?”
“You’re an idiot.” The thinner man, the one in charge, wore a filthy scrap of cotton over the lower half of his face and tried to stamp mud from his hempen sandals. “We stab her, there’s no reward.”
“We ent no kaburei to drag packages.” This from the bowman, squatted against a pile of wooden boxes and carefully checking the fletching upon each of his arrows. “An’ who was t’other on the roof, with a bow? Not one of us.”
Yala huddled upon dirty straw, hugging her knees, her back pressed into the small room’s stone corner. Her bound wrists ached, and her head rang. She should have drawn her yue and made certain the stinking, traitorous guard on the floor was gone, but she would have to trust Prince Jin’s handiwork and in any case, she had been occupied with keeping just ahead of her pursuers until a basket of drowning, flapping, screaming eggfowl washed down a crooked Great Market alleyway had swept her legs from under her. Now, half-drowned herself and stripped of Mahara’s cloak, she shivered and pressed her forehead against her knees, listening intently.
“We ent no idiots to kill our singing pig, either. An’ the other arrowflinger ent none of our business. Prolly there to make sure we didna foul it.” The masked man’s tone clearly said that’s that. “Get a fire g’n, I’m half-dead.”
Other arrowflinger? Had there been another archer?
It mattered little in her present situation. At least they had not molested her, not yet. The thick-legged one with hairy moles on his neck had cuffed her almost absently while pulling her from the streamlet; the masked man had hissed at him to stop. In a trice, she’d been thrown over a broad laborer’s shoulder, and now here she was in the basement corner of a hovel somewhere in the teeming of Zhaon-An, and these men were discussing what to do with her.
They still thought she was Mahara. So far, she had gleaned that they thought their situation a fine one, since they had escaped detection and had their prize, and the reward—offered by a gentleman they did not name—would not be split with the hapless, traitorous guard Prince Jin had stabbed.
She supposed she should not feel anything for the man who had betrayed his fellows and his prince, but the way the stunned body had moved when Prince Jin’s sword slid in…
Bile rose to the back of her throat. She longed for tea, for a brazier to warm her numb hands. Her ankles were bound too. She could perhaps get to her yue, though. It would require some thought and planning, and her head seemed full of uncombed cotton. Her nose was full, but wiping it upon her skirt was not permissible.
None of this was permissible. And yet, it had happened.
Had Mahara reached the palace? She had to. Anh was clever enough, and Prince Jin would no doubt have some ideas about slipping into the Jonwa undetected. Palaces were meant to be strongboxes, but instead, their walls were as porous as pierced, unglazed Trong ware with its beautiful scallops and gradations of earthy color.
After all, assassins could slide even into the Crown Prince’s room at night.
Yala took stock. Wrists bound cruelly tight, ankles bound less so since her shoes interfered with the rough cord. Mahara’s hairpin dug into her scalp, her dress was sodden clear through, and no attempt had been made to search her or take her reticule. Her yue-hilt dug into her thigh, the careful stitching around its sheath perhaps a trifle loosened. She raised her face, peering at sudden garish shadows cascading over daubed walls as they nursed a small, smoky fire into being.
Her captors, perhaps thinking her witless, went on with their tasks.
“When the Big Man comin’?”
“He’ll be along, don’t you worry.”
“I ent easy about Huo.”
“Me either. But he did what he did.”
“You figger she did for him?”
“Figger the boy did, then scooted. Wif’out waitin’ for her.”
“Ent that always the way?”
They thought Mahara’s attendants had abandoned her from sheer cravenness. Yala’s throat ached with the pointless urge to scream. A waist-high pile of wooden boxes mostly sheltered her from view, but also blocked any warmth the new fire spread in her direction. Dirty straw and dead rushes underfoot, a floor of packed earth, no windows—of course not, this was a cellar. The smoke caressed a low ceiling blackened from previous fires and rose for a doorway at the top of shallow stone steps, their centers worn down by many passing feet. Did it lead to the street, or one of the small, hideously crooked alleys?
The yue was to defend her honor. Could she perhaps use it to saw through her bonds and creep stealthily to the end of the boxes? From there… three men to run past, or to use the stinging, slicing blade upon. It was different than a sudden attack in a darkened garden. This would require coldly, calmly using the yue to tear at their throats.
And what if she was overpowered? What might they do then?
That is not the question, Yala. The question is, who would want your princess taken in such a manner? Were there those in Zhaon who wi
shed further war with Khir? Was this simply to embarrass the Crown Prince by staining his foreign wife? A noble Zhaon family who thought one of its daughters was a better match for the Crown Prince? An attempt at extortion? Each possibility made her aching head spin more than the last.
Most troubling of all, of course, was how they had known where to set their trap. Had her visits to the Yaol been watched? Or had one of the Crown Prince’s household let drop an inadvisable word—or, worse, a treasonous one?
Shivers gripped her in waves. Perhaps she would expire of chill in this filthy little corner. Once Mahara appeared at the banquet, whoever had planned this would likely realize their error, and Yala would become expendable.
No, a frontal attack was not the best use of her yue. Yala lifted her head a little more and began shifting cautiously upon the straw, edging further into shadow.
A bubbling noise, a sudden aroma. Her captors were making tea.
“Mebbe she wants some.”
“Mebbe you should shut your face.”
“She ent pretty. I heard the girl was pretty.”
“You ent pretty either after a dip in the street.”
“Some rain, eh? Bad omen.”
“Good omen, for us. Means we got away.”
“G’on now.”
“I ent no priest, but I can tell a bad sign.”
Hideous, misshapen laughter. Yala squeezed her eyes shut, shifting some more. Stealthy, silent movement, an increment at a time.
The yue was meant for confined spaces, and for defense. She could draw it carefully from its sheath if she could move a few layers of silk, then saw through the bindings at her wrists and ankles. When they came for her, she would be prepared, a viper lying in wait for an unwary, bare ankle.
If they overpowered her, well, there was a remedy to keep her honor. Heaven seemed determined to grant her a chance to find out if she was worthy enough of the Komor name to open her own throat.
The heavy, nasty drumming of rain began to recede and her stomach growled. She told it to be quiet, braced her knee against the stone wall to her left, and strained.
Her fingers slid through silk, searching, and finally the tip of her right second finger touched warm metal against her left thigh. She let out a silent sob of relief, her mouth contorting. Sweat dripped stinging into her eyes, yet the shivers would not stop. Her teeth clenched so they did not chatter, and she listened to smacking lips and desultory talk, three men deciding how they would spend the silver they would earn from handing her to a shadowy Big Man.
Slowly, with infinite care in the odorous darkness, Yala kept at her work.
TRAPPED AT A FEAST
It was a great success. The great banquet hall was hung with brushwork characters upon flowing fabric, each as tall as a man, joy and home and Heaven in reddish-brown ink. The Emperor’s table groaned under delicacies, mounds of snowy polished rai and small finger-bowls with crushflower petals floating to dip the fingers between each course. Each pair of eating-sticks was carved with the name and rank of its user, and Mahara’s were rubbed with crimson. Each toast lifted had its ending-sting dedicated to her, and she had to smile and duck her head shyly each time, letting the gold beads from her hairpin chime sweetly in decorous thanksgiving.
She had to perch upon a soft pillow, her knees numb and her throat dry, and take a mannerly, infinitesimal sip of sohju whenever the Emperor or one of the queens raised their own cups—mellow burnished silver, in the Emperor’s case, or fine polished gold thimbles in the queens’—in her direction. Second Queen Haesara did so thrice, smiling each time; First Queen Gamwone, perfunctorily, once.
The Emperor showed special favor to his first daughter-in-law, raising his cup thrice as well. A shout went through the banquet each time, implements and fists tapping the tables, and the Emperor was heard to remark that soon, Heaven willing, he should be a grandfather.
Wonders were dragged from the steaming hells of the kitchen, the Head Cook bellowing at his flushed, almost-naked underlings. Small disasters were covered up, sauces saved at the last moment, inauspicious bits trimmed away, platters arranged; kaburei chopped and sliced, feeding the fires, scrubbing cooking-surfaces free of splatter and crust, plunging dishes into water and scrubbing with handbrooms and wrinkled, aching fingers.
“Do not be afraid,” Takyeo kept saying, leaning close as the court beamed at this example of a solicitous young husband, perhaps tempting his new bride to taste an unfamiliar dish. He laid strips of basted tahnu52 from his own bowl upon her polished rai. “Takshin will do what is necessary.”
If he believed it, she could not tell. She was trapped at a feast, her stomach a mass of writhing and her throat too dry to accept much of what she put in her mouth. She chewed each bite thoroughly, dutifully, bland Zhaon food without the heat of home.
Would she lose her taste for spiced su-hua, or high mountain tea? They did not have mu-erh here, the milk thickened by days in a gut-bag attached to a saddle. Nor did they have the long thin peppers each house scraped the seeds from all winter to plant in a kitchen garden’s rich furrows, the most sheltered, sunny corner gathering heat all through torrid summer to explode with flavor in the bleak months.
Yala should have been at Mahara’s side, refilling her glass and making small observations that tormented both of their faces with the effort to keep from laughing. She should have helped Mahara dress, fussing over the waistband, tucking the undersleeves correctly, clicking her tongue at the kaburei. Instead, Su Junha filled Mahara’s cup too much each time and did not know how Mahara liked her fingercloth folded, or that she did not care for their shudua sweetmeats. Gonwa Eulin did her best behind Mahara, gesturing to the hurrying servants when lady or lord required or wished for aught.
The hollows under Mahara’s arms were full of rank dampness. The banquet dragged on, and on. The small of her back was sodden. Su Junha had a fan, and fluttered ineffectually with it until Mahara was struck with the sudden vicious urge to slap her.
Yala would not have irritated her so.
But Yala was… who knew? Was she wandering the giant city, lost and at the mercy of passing men? Had those who wished to capture a princess been furious upon discovering their error? Or had they merely wanted to draw close enough to kill her without possibility of an arrow flying wide?
She did not know, and her head hurt. She accepted a toast from Second Prince Kurin, whose lips moved with something that made the Emperor’s faint benevolent smile turn hard at the corners.
Takyeo affected not to notice, turning aside as if he had dropped a fingercloth or wished to arrange a fold of his banquet robes. Mahara blinked, staring into her rai-bowl. Beautiful whisper-thin Aulon ware, made by monks famous for their devotion to the goddess of the river cutting through the clay banks they used for their bowls, cups, and tiny statues of the Great Consort whose throne of silver-chased greenstone stood in the innermost chambers of Heaven itself. Her handmaidens came forth with the Great Edicts, those immutable laws that even the Emperor of Heaven could not alter, subtle and carved into time itself.
The Aulon river-goddess was held to be an emanation of the Consort, but some said she was instead an emanation of the Huntress, sister of the thunder-god, and sometimes their respective monks came to blows during arguments. The nuns, immured in their temples, were silent upon the matter.
Or if they were not, who would listen?
Yala would make an allusion to that. Yala would know what Mahara was thinking upon, and smile. The heat in the banquet hall, an oven-breeze fluttering the character-hangings but cooling no brow, turned the bright robes and laughing faces, the chewing jaws and the gleaming jewelry, into a scroll held under calm water, ink blurring and lifting from paper.
Oh, she understood very well they could not acknowledge the attempt on her life or worse, her honor. Third Prince Takshin’s absence caused little comment, but a few people remarked upon Zakkar Kai’s. The Emperor seemingly took no notice, flushed and benevolent, gazing at his heir and the decorous f
oreign wife bought with bloodshed.
Who had to sit and chew like a cow, nodding and smiling with bovine good temper, while her stomach boiled and her throat was a scorching pinhole, while tears she could not allow to drop blurred the entire banquet hall. Su Junha exchanged nervous looks with Prince Takyeo, but neither remonstrated with her.
There was no need. Mahara understood, very well, that Yala was most likely dead or worse, and not all the glittering hairpins, greenstone hurai, mounds of food, or costly fabrics would bring her friend back.
Her only friend.
“Are you well?” Takyeo whispered, hiding the words with his sleeve and indicating a platter of roasted ruddy-breast birds, their skins crisp and golden with cooked honey and their tiny heads dipped in chu powder.
No. But she had to lie.
So Mahara lifted her chin and smiled, nodding a little. The banqueters beamed and cheered at her modesty.
SPEAKS A STRATEGIST
The closet near the Left Market shared by Huo Banh and his shield-square was cleaner than Kai expected. He opened a cabinet affixed to the wall with thin laths and began searching, a clay lamp purchased from a weary street hawker and filled with numbing care lifted high enough to shed a small golden glow. Takshin had already torn the bed apart and was going through a pile of rags near the door, searching for anything likely to hold a clue.
The cupboard held shaving implements, a small leather bag with alloy bits in its throat—and, tucked in the very back corner, in a nest of cobwebs and scrap paper, the other half of the copper ingot, as well as a smaller curved humpback of silver.
“Ah,” he murmured. So Huo had meant to return to this lair and collect his fee, after taking care of his sister’s hidden dowry. A woman with half an ingot could leave a husband if he proved unsatisfactory, though few did. Staying alive once one had left one’s station and place was a difficult proposition at best.