by S. C. Emmett
Kurin made a slight restless movement, instantly controlled. Even his topknot-cage was unpleasantly dark today. “It pleases me to know, therefore, I do.”
“Well, you’d do better to be pleased by whatever your father is hiding.” Gamwone heard the sharp note of irritation in her words, and decided it was justified.
“Oh, that? He’s caught some rash from the baths.” Kurin waved the mystery aside with one hand, short and chopping instead of a languid movement. “The physician in favor now is a shabby little thing Zakkar Kai found, and the Emperor likes him.”
A rash from the baths? Gamwone shuddered. Probably from the filthy, shrinking little mouse he kept there. Gamwone had plans for that courtesan, and all they required was some careful waiting. “Zakkar Kai.” The very name itself was hateful.
“Quite a hero, our God of War. And Hailung Jedao needles him every chance he gets.”
Well, such was to be expected from the Second Queen’s uncle. Gamwone’s own uncle Binei Jinwon, newly arrived at court for his traditional half-year of service, did not suffer fools or jumped-up peasants either. Gamwone sighed. “I should recommend civility to my uncle, but I am only his poor forgotten niece, slighted and despised.” Uncle Jinwon had not hurried to visit her upon his arrival, and that was highly disappointing as well.
“Oh, Mother.” Kurin’s eyes did not roll, but he made a restless movement. “The Yulehi are thriving, don’t worry about them. I take very good care of our clan.”
So, Jinwon had visited Kurin instead. Of course, her darling was a man now, and the head of the clan would pay homage to its prince. “You are a joy to your poor mother.” She paused, examining the fan. There were no holes in the paper blade, but she suddenly wished for one. Punishing a thoughtless maid for such a transgression would have been a welcome relief from the mounting pressure. “Has your father said anything about your sister?”
“He is worried for Sabwone, too. I gather she’s writing to her own uncle.”
Was he deliberately misunderstanding her? “I mean Gamnae, of course.” Gamwone’s daughter must be a queen, too, but not in Shan even if an accident could be arranged for Luswone’s brat. That country had changed Takshin, who had been marred anyway but might have been useful if they had not done… well, whatever it was they had done to him. Ch’han was too far away, but they were mighty, and Anwei had no king, only a collection of princely houses fighting among each other for scraps.
There was a Crown Prince in Khir. Maybe that would do, except Khir was smaller than Shan.
Her son now examined his nails, frowning slightly as if he found something amiss upon their blunt, buffed surfaces. “Oh, he likes her singing.”
“Kurin, do be serious.” Gamwone’s irritation mounted another small fraction. And the morning had started so well.
“I am.” He had fine hands, her firstborn, and used one of them to accentuate his point, but it was another sharp, unlovely movement. He was not himself, and she wondered at it. “He thinks she has a lovely voice.”
Well, if it pleased him to be opaque, she could play that game, as well. “Does he, now.”
“In short, Mother, all is well in hand.”
All desire to be hazy in her meanings, or to play, vanished in a hot flash of almost-anger, igniting deep in her belly and rising for her throat. “It cannot be well in hand. That brat, that goatbird,54 is still Crown Prince.”
A shadow of matching annoyance crossed Kurin’s face, cheering her immensely. “You had best not say that where anyone unreliable can hear you, Mother. The Palace is strangely restive, of late.”
Well, of course it was. The Emperor was no longer the dashing warlord of years ago, firm in the saddle and straight as a sword. His shoulders were stooping by fractions and his profligacy of wives was beginning to mark his face. Each time Gamwone saw him, at ritual intervals or in passing, she secretly stored up each of time’s ravages upon his countenance. He had visibly deteriorated even since the Knee-High, and that sight was welcome indeed.
When he was gone, she would be free—oh, not completely, for a woman was subject to all manner of awful restriction.
But it would suit her very well to be a dowager. Very well indeed.
“Mother?” Kurin stretched and began to move, arranging his robe as if he intended to leave. “Do you hear me?”
“What?” Pulled from a brief dream of liberation, she regarded her eldest somewhat narrowly. Her fingers were not cold, and a prickle of sweat had begun along her lower back. She was always chilled, except for when she was too warm before the dry days, and today was turning out to be simply hideous even before lunch.
“Be careful what you say.” He uncoiled from his cushions, and his expression had turned remote. “Especially now. I would not have you ruin things.”
“Ruin what, my darling?”
But he only smiled, and gave her a very filial bow.
“Kurin, ruin what? Answer me.”
But her first son, her joy, merely widened his smile, and left without asking her leave.
Gamwone’s anger crested. A naughty little boy, but he was always this way when he was preparing a gift, was he not? Of course he was. She had raised him well, and he was cautious. Gamwone had only to wait.
Again. As she had all her life.
She clapped her hands for her maids, and looked about for evidence of their carelessness. She would find some, she always did. They were lazy, none of them diligent, and she was cursed to suffer small insults all her life, too.
Her soft face set and her eyes flashing, the First Queen picked up her beautiful, fragile Shan bonefire teacup, and flung it across the room.
METAL OF NECESSITY
How strange it was, the Great Rider of Khir thought. How strange.
A padded stone bench, its legs carved with ancient symbols whose meaning, if they had ever carried one, was long forgotten, a thin red velvet cushion. Behind it, the great wheel-carving of stone not native to Khir, the divisions of the calendar chiseled sharp and deep, immutable as the word Khir itself.
The name meant people, and time—the passage of seasons over the great grass sea the First People had ridden with the gods before settling among the sharpspine mountains and deep lush valleys. It meant honor, and burden, too.
But the word was not the thing, or so Ashani Zlorih often thought as he clasped his hands behind his back and regarded the cruelest master to set foot upon a royal kaburei’s neck.
It did not look like much. Just a bench upon a dais, with the stone circle looming behind it. Sometimes he imagined the Great Calendar loosening from whatever ancient, rusting moorings held it fast to the palace wall, toppling forward with a great heaving groan, and smashing everything beneath. Including the frail sack of meat and humors who sat upon the bench and said, This is what must be so.
Overhead, standards taken in battle or sent from noble houses to indicate fealty rustled. A draft whistled through with the mirrorlight, both caught outside where they roamed freely and forced into servitude. The light would dissipate and the air, well, who could tell what happened to invisible things once they were used?
“Your Majesty seems troubled.” Cat-faced, soberly robed Domari Ulo, clan-head and Grand Councilor, was well accustomed to the royal moods.
Perhaps too accustomed.
I miss my daughter. But such a thing could not be said. “These are troubling times, Ulo.”
“Indeed. We are all called upon to sacrifice.” Ulo’s tone was placid, oiled, meant to spread calm upon a sharply troubled humor. He was ever urbane, ever soft-spoken, and ever full of intrigue for his own advantage. He was chief among those restive lords who would topple the house that ruled them if they could, and descend into a chaos of bloodletting until a new Great Rider rose from the wreckage of the Second Families. Those who could have proved a counterweight to Ulo were dead at Three Rivers or had retreated in grief, like Komori Dasho.
“Will there be anything left of Khir, after the immolation is finished?” Zlorih
rubbed at his forehead. His fingers met warm metal—the simple circlet of beaten silver worn since the First Dynasty, a small smooth oval of greenstone resting above and between his eyes. The traditional silk padding to make it fit upon the wearer’s head, wrapped securely with crimson thread, was not very thick.
The ruler conformed to the metal of necessity. Silk, and flesh itself, was more giving than governance.
“Is there anything left for Khir if honor is lost?” Ulo sounded certain. It was one of his nieces who would be married to Daoyan, if the boy could be found. Not a daughter—that would have been too much. But he no doubt had many ideas about arranging Khir to suit his mood, and as a loving uncle he no doubt would use access to the heir to do so.
“Still no news of him?” Zlorih’s fingers tightened against each other. Daoyan had never been troublesome, not until acknowledged. In fact, had he not resembled Zlorih so closely, the Great Rider might have entertained certain… doubts.
A woman once honorless could be so again, though it pained him to think such a thing of her.
“None, Your Majesty.” Ulo even sounded uneasy at the young heir’s absence.
“Some excuse must be given.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” The same conversation, repeated for weeks. The new prince had vanished, leaving only a cryptic letter for his royal father.
There is business to attend to, my lord. Please excuse me. Brushed in a steady hand—oh, Zlorih had made certain no education was lacking for the boy, and his mother Narikh Arasoe’s tomb was swept regularly. Dying in childbirth was as honorable as any victorious battle, but she had succumbed to a fever and he would gladly trade any victory for a single afternoon with her again. A sathron ringing in her particular way, fingers plucking at strings and her profile serene with concentration.
Flesh, so much more giving, and perishable as well. A Great Rider must be as stone. Had not his own father repeated as much, over and over again? Affairs of state, the single word in Khir a piece of stubborn gravel trapped in a shoe during a long walk.
Zlorih closed his eyes. It was no use. He could still see the bench, the hovering calendar. Arasoe’s face, round and calm, and her laughing, silvery eyes. If she agonized over her lost honor, she had made no sign, and the fire in Zlorih’s blood had not cared. He could have married her, he supposed, if he had not been required to keep his councilors from committing mass mutiny. They had wanted him to marry some minor Ch’han princess, and while Ch’han was mighty, Zhaon was closer.
And far more dangerous.
“Your Majesty…” The words trailed away. “Sooner or later, our agents will succeed. It is the only way.”
They all said as much, his crafty, conniving councilors. Zlorih pushed the metal band up, slipping fingertips underneath its circlet. What, really, would refusing or demanding a retraction of orders accomplish? Another set of buttocks upon the bench he now viewed, a more tractable Great Rider in the hands of counselors craving more blood, more agony. They were not satisfied with Khir’s current ragged state, and doubly unsatisfied with a Great Rider whose last battle had not been completely won.
“Very well,” Ashani Zlorih repeated, heavily. “But it must be quick. It must be painless.”
“There are assurances given.” Did Ulo feel the heaviness? No, all that noble vulture felt was the insult to his pride, and the lure of the profit he stood to gain when a royal pawn was sacrificed.
“Ah. One more thing, Ulo.” Zlorih opened his eyes again. He had thought long and hard upon this move, and found he did not care if the consequences were unhappy. “Those who eventually perform the deed, and those who pay them, must be punished in the old way.”
“Your Majesty…”
“What?” Zlorih’s lips stretched, a predatory grin very much like his bastard son’s. Only one son left, and he had vanished like the wind itself. All gone like an unwilling hawk—wife, sons, daughter, lover. Only metal and stone remained, and one last chance to strike back at the men who sought to hobble a Great Rider. “The punishment for killing one of the throne’s saddle-bred is hot lead run into belly and head, and for the ears to be presented to the Great Rider.” The oldest term for king, short and sharp. “Surely you do not intend the law to be cheated.”
“No, Your Majesty.” Ulo had gone pale; he only spoke so when he was choked by something unexpected.
Zlorih did not turn to witness, however satisfying the sight might be. Oh, my daughter, my summer wind.
Once it was done, he had a clear course to follow. He was trapped upon this wheel, bent upon the arc of the Great Calendar, and he would go to his end with the necessary tranquility.
But not, he thought, before a manner of revenge. Domari Ulo would be the first to feel that sting. Ashani Zlorih’s position was weakened, but he was still the Great Rider of the First People, chosen of the Great Mare, and he would wreak a few last stabs upon his foes.
Both inside Khir, and without.
“Leave me,” the Great Rider said, softly. “I would think upon these things alone.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” The Grand Councilor bowed and hurried away, his lacquer-soled court shoes clicking. He was no doubt feeling the first intimations of disquiet, and Ashani Zlorih was content to have it be so.
Let Domari Ulo wonder if his Great Rider was quite as weak as he appeared. Let them all wonder.
“Oh, my daughter,” Zlorih said, softly. “It will be quick, at least.”
UNTIL THEY HAVE THE MEANS
The Great Oval, once a shallow depression in bedrock but now a sunken amphitheater, was full of shoving both good-natured and ill-tempered. The crowd—kaburei filching time from their duties and betting alloy slivers, peasants from the provinces gawking, tradespeople and artisans betting with triangular alloy coins and sometimes square iron, nobles reclining under striped awnings—was the roar of surf upon a hungry shore, and at the bottom of the depression sand was being scraped for the second race of the day.
The best seats were cut out of the worn rock itself, and starred with bright-striped cotton awnings. Above, the stands turned to wood and masonry, crammed to groan-overflowing. Sometimes the danger of timber giving way and spilling the lower orders upon the heads of the higher even spurred repairs. The noise crested on the sixth race or later, betting reaching a frantic pace, but by then Makar customarily left his little brother to it and retreated to his study.
For the first few races, though, the Fourth Prince normally enjoyed himself roundly, though he rarely bet. Today, however, was different.
“Was it you?” Makar examined the crowd upon either side, idly waving a fan painted with a quotation from Xhiao the Younger. It was not quite fitting, but it was the one he had selected today, and there was no use in putting it away.
Sensheo poured them both a measure of jaelo tea. “What are you on about?” Come the fourth race, he would begin upon the sohju, and Makar would begin his preparations to retreat. Always leaving before the true fun started.
Makar frowned, turning his attention to the cheap, block-printed broadsheet with weights upon its corners, spread upon a low table before them. A flagrant waste of space, that table, but such was the manner of nobility. “Was. It. You?”
“Was what me?” Sensheo studied the broadsheet too.
“Come now, little brother.” Makar’s brows knitted as he brushed away a fly. Where there were races, there was dung; where there was dung, there were shiny carapaces and buzzing wings. Much as there were bright robes and buzzing at court, or under the awnings of the noble patrons of the Oval.
A great swell of crowd-noise drowned whatever Sensheo might have said, for the sand-scraping was finished and six light chariots had appeared, the drivers hung with floating ribbons and the archers bare-chested, slathered with sweetnut oil and gleaming just as the proud-stepping horses. Two from the Green faction, one from the Red, one from the Blue, and two unaffiliated—a purple-and-yellow-striped kaburei racing for his manumit, and a masked nobleman in a gilded chariot who set the
audience packed in the high-tiered cheap seats abuzz.
Normally the game of deducing just who would be foolish enough to careen about in the bowl with commoners would have amused Makar. Today, however, he was after different prey, and it was proving more canny than usual.
Sensheo, stroking his archer’s thumb-ring, settled against the cushions their kaburei had brought and lifted a flask to his carmined lips. He had taken to outlining his eyes, too, perhaps to make them appear less bloodshot.
Out late again last night, apparently. Had he been trawling the Yuin?
“Mother is concerned,” Makar said, leaning over and cupping his hand near Sensheo’s ear. The crowd bayed as each horse trotted demurely on a single circuit of the obstacle-free outside lane. Dust rose from pounded sand. This late in the season, the juicy green of spring growth at the sanded edges was yellowing, chunks of packed sand-sod replaced by the Oval’s kaburei each evening. Last week’s fourth-race had been during a sudden cloudburst, and highly unsatisfactory amid the gritty mud.
Sensheo had taken to spending nights away from the Kaeje and his own princely house; Makar’s ears, sensitive to gossip, heard whispers of time spent in the sinks near the Left Market instead of the more respectable holes of the Theater District. And Sensheo’s regular mistress, an actress much beloved at the Ta Kau Theater for her portrayal of thin, consumptive heroines, was now linked to another lord, one whose merchant pedigree was only whispered of—for though he was not quite noble, the man in question had touchy pride and enough money to make revenge a pleasant pastime.
Betting intensified, high and furious. Sensheo shook his head. “Care to wager, brother? I like the striped fellow, he’s got a reason to win.”
No. He likes his horse too much. Makar refused to be distracted. A hot breeze ruffled his robe and his topknot, but he could not retreat just yet. “You are causing gossip, little brother, and Mother is worried.”
“Oh, Mother is always worried, it is what mothers are.” Sensheo was not quite nettled yet, but he was well upon his way. “They should redraw the maternal characters in all the Hundreds to pau-an,55 indeed.”