Stone Soul (Path of the Thunderbird Book 2), page 22
“I’d like to buy two.”
As they left the herbalist’s, Imir shot a sidelong glance at him.
“Within our Path, advancements are hard-won, Chieftain,” his white-haired steward said. “I do not know of one person who is close to advancing, let alone two.”
Nael sent him images of swimming in the mists and darting through the trees after small prey. Raijin replied with feelings of good-natured jealousy and the possibility of joining him later.
“Do you remember when Muna took that sunbright core shortly after we arrived?” he asked Imir. “His body purged itself of all the poisons he had put into it over the course of his life.”
Imir made a disgusted face. “I recall.”
“Afterward, he never shook or sweated when he craved qajong, and his cough was gone. Sunbright purges the impurities and diseases from the body. If Sri and Tanga each took a sunbright pill as part of the wedding ritual, they could begin their new life together free from the pollutions of their past life.”
Once again, her expression turned dark.
“This is a wise idea,” she said. “It will make them feel as if they have begun anew.”
“I propose adding it to every wedding ritual if Okioi can continue to supply us.” Raijin slipped the little packet containing the sunbright pills he’d purchased from the herbalist into his robes. “But you seem to object. If not by your words, then at the very least, your face.”
Immediately, Imir’s expression smoothed into nothingness.
“Forgive me. I’ve lived in freedom so long that I have grown lazy in masking my thoughts. I don’t object to your idea, Chieftain, but the past is a hard thing to be free of. The only part of it one can banish with a pill are the physical impurities.”
Raijin smiled. “This is why I wanted you to become the chieftain, Imir. You’re much wiser than I am.”
“Only in places where you have never needed to learn from your mistakes.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “While you were gone, my father sent a missive. Over the winter, it seems he grew very ill. Near to death. He said in his deepest fevers, he could do nothing but weep for banishing me and refusing to acknowledge me as his child. He asked me to forgive him and to return to the Dead Waters Kingdom as his heir.”
For several seconds, Raijin could think of no answer. He knew Imir had been greatly hurt by her father’s vitriolic expulsion of her. To Raijin, this seemed like an opportunity for the two of them to mend their relationship. Losing Imir would be a blow to the village, but the value of this chance to remake her family far outweighed the cost.
“I told him no,” Imir said.
Raijin’s brow furrowed. “No?”
“He disinherited me for causing him to lose face by doing exactly what he had attempted in secret. Now that I’ve succeeded where he failed, he wants me to forgive him and return. I will not go back. You, Hush, and Lysander might have a reason to return, however. The king and many in his household are dead. They were poisoned. As usual, immediate action was taken, and several people who may have been innocent were executed so it would seem as if the authorities were still in firm control.”
Raijin considered this.
“You believe your father wants you to return because your advancement will prove that your house is the strongest and best choice to replace the king,” he guessed.
Imir nodded. “I have kept in touch with my mother. She will have told him of my progress.”
“You know your father better than I do,” Raijin said. “However, I hope you will allow me to argue the counterpoint, as I have lost two people I regarded as parents, along with many friends. I parted with each of them on good terms, and still their loss was devastating.”
A flash of the dark months before he found the Uktena encampment came to him. Only Nael’s need for protection and care had kept Raijin from letting himself starve to death, and the guai-ray’s playful, loving nature had kept him from being consumed by thoughts of murder and revenge.
“I can’t imagine the weight of guilt and sorrow that would come from losing a father who had begged me to forgive him, no matter what he or I had allowed to come between us,” he finished.
At the far end of the village, Lysander and Hush had finally arrived. Hush headed in their direction, likely to check up on her patients and bring Okioi the new ingredients she had acquired, while Lysander stopped to comment on a lively game of Stones and Tiles. The elderly women playing it pinched his cheek and patted his arm fondly.
“We will leave for the Dead Waters Kingdom after Sri and Tanga’s wedding rituals are complete,” Raijin told Imir. “In the meantime, please reconsider your decision. If your father is only manipulating you for his own ends, then the stain is on his character. But if he is sincere, then what you stand to gain is too great to risk.”
Imir crossed her arms over her chest, her face expressionless and blank as she watched the villagers training on the green.
“I will consider it,” she said.
Chapter Forty
ONE YEAR AGO
Entering the southern prefecture of the Dead Waters Kingdom with the prefect’s daughter was a much simpler affair than their previous attempt. As soon as they arrived at the gates, Imir’s father sent a palanquin to meet her. She and Hush rode inside, while Raijin and Lysander followed the conveyance under the pretext of being Imir’s guards.
Rather than waiting for them to be shown into the house by a servant, Imir’s parents stood waiting at the prefectural mansion’s gate. Prefect Ikindi’i was a thinner, paler man than he had been two years before, and he now leaned on a walking stick inlaid with white jade.
When he saw his daughter’s palanquin approaching, the prefect let his walking stick fall to the side and broke into a limping run. Through a gap in the palanquin’s curtains, Raijin caught sight of Imir’s stony façade. A tear slipped down her cheek.
“Stop,” Imir called to the bearers, her voice breaking.
She climbed down and ran to her father. The two of them embraced in the street, the prefect weeping into Imir’s white hair. They spoke quietly for a moment, then Imir led him back to her mother, allowing him to lean on her arm.
“Fake,” Lysander said under his breath.
Raijin looked at his friend. “What?”
“All of it. Not just Prefect Ikindi’i’s act, but Imir’s as well. It’s all pretense.”
“How can you say that?”
Hush climbed out of the palanquin, and the three of them followed after the prefectural family.
“Watch her mother’s face,” Lysander said. “That’s not joy, it’s smug satisfaction masquerading as joy.”
In the low light coming from the phosphorescent fountains, Raijin could hardly tell which direction Imir’s mother was looking, let alone see how Lysander would have got all that. He reached out with the guai-ray senses. Below the reunited family’s electrical signatures, he felt currents of a strange, cold happiness and long-simmering anger. Around each of them was an intense caution, as if they were each taking care not to fall prey to the others.
“Why would they do this to one another?” He understood addicts renting out their children or selling them for the money to pay their apothecary—that he had seen before—but these people had everything money could buy and their daughter back as well. Their wariness and anger made no sense.
“If I had to guess,” Lysander said, “they’re putting this act on for the benefit of the citizens. Bringing her back into the fold after telling everyone she was a traitor. This way they’ll have a legitimate heir to strengthen their claim to the throne.”
Raijin scowled. “This is what Imir feared she would find if she returned.”
“I wouldn’t be too worried about her, Raij. She’s as good at this as they are. Maybe better. If anything, they’ll be tricked into believing that she believes them. Now, the question is, what does Imir want enough that she’s willing to go through with this charade?”
Hush sent them both an impression of silence and two objects passing close to one another. They were approaching the prefectural family.
“You!” Prefect Ikindi’i opened his arms and embraced Raijin. “Esteemed chieftain, my daughter tells me you convinced her to come home to us. For this, you and your entourage will be treated as honored guests in the southern prefecture. Please, stay this night in the prefectural manse and join us for a celebratory feast.”
THE FEAST FEATURED several dishes made from a sweet pale moss that Imir explained was grown in the glowing water near gas-spewing vents in the farthest branching tunnels of the prefecture. A Dead Waters Kingdom delicacy.
Raijin tried each dish and responded politely, but found he had no stomach for the luxurious food. Not while the family carried on their endless pretense. Every contrived gesture of loving affection agitated the guai-ray senses like discordant notes in what should have been a beautiful melody. To see a family acting as he had always imagined one would while feeling their true schemes swimming just below the surface disgusted him.
No discussion of Water Lilies or the royal poisoning was allowed during the feast. Even Imir agreed that they should speak about it after the morning meal, during the properly allotted time for business and governing concerns.
“In the Dead Waters Kingdom, night is a time for spending with the family.” Imir reached to her side and clasped her mother’s hand. “A time that, over the past year, pained my heart with its emptiness. Now that I am home, I can indulge once more with a true appreciation for its value.”
Lysander hid a grin behind a cup of mineral wine. Raijin wanted to scowl, but so long spent among the Uktena helped him to dampen the response to a stony stare.
When the meal ended, servants showed Raijin, Hush, and Lysander to their rooms in the guest wing, leaving the family to discuss matters in private.
“I’m going out,” Raijin told his friends as soon as the servant was out of earshot.
Lysander smirked. “But we’re your family, Raijin. Don’t you want to spend time with us?”
“I’ve had all the family togetherness I can stand,” Raijin said.
Hush laid a gentle hand on his arm. She sent him an impression of a parent crushing a child in a hug, a warm hearth, love, and a much-repeated event.
“I believe you that those types of families are more common than this one,” Raijin said. “That’s what makes it so much worse. It’s as if they know how to mimic love, but not how to actually feel it.”
“Welcome to the Dead Waters Kingdom,” Lysander said. “The name is suitable on every level.”
Hush frowned up at him, concern shining in her dark almond eyes.
Raijin smiled at her. “I am fine. Shall we find someone who might be willing to speak about the poisoning outside of the regular time for business concerns?”
Chapter Forty-one
ONE YEAR AGO
The southern prefecture of the Dead Waters Kingdom was arranged in layers like sedimentary rock. In the outcity were the poor. The first level of the inner city housed the slightly better off as well as many shops and businesses. After that came apothecaries, healers, and low-level officials. At the center of the prefecture was the prefectural manse, surrounded by its opulent estate. After this came another wave of officials and generally wealthy, dotted with fine places to buy a meal. Next came schools for the common people’s warrior art—the Path of the Living Blade—as well as the training grounds for the guards assigned to each level. And then the level for the people who farmed the areas surrounding the glowing waters for an umbrella-shaped orange fungus, and a thin running root that shot up white hairs from the thin soil.
These were all the respectable echelons of the prefecture. Each of their streets emptied for the night, leaving few outside but the guards.
The farther into the cave system Raijin, Hush, and Lysander traveled, however, the seedier the levels became. One held nothing but teahouses, qajong parlors, and gambling dens. Raucous celebrations filled the streets punctuated by dozens of different musicians, all playing different songs. The guards stationed there were hardly paying attention to their duties, and many of them were drunk.
“Keep one hand on anything you value,” Lysander said, his hand dipping inside his robes. “If it’s not attached to you, it’s likely to go missing.”
With nothing to lose but the clothes on his back, Raijin wasn’t terribly concerned.
They passed into a densely populated area with far too many homes crammed into too small a space, wooden additions haphazardly filling in the gaps between the older stone column dwellings. There, the night was filled with shouts and laughter, people crowding around doorsteps, drinking or smoking and playing Stones and Tiles with mismatched pieces. Dirt-smeared children ran free, screaming and shouting, in spite of the late hour.
Finally, the three of them came to the back of the prefecture’s enormous cavern. Unlike the rest of the echelons, there were no guards watching over the transition. There was only a narrow, dimly lit passage wide enough for one person to traverse at a time.
“The wealthy never come in so far,” Lysander explained. “They take carriages aboveground to the other entrances if they’re looking to travel from prefecture to prefecture.”
“We must be going in the right direction, then,” Raijin said.
They ducked into the tunnel. From that point, the cave system was broken into a series of winding, uneven halls and crude rooms. Rivulets of the phosphorescent water flowed down unsculpted walls, giving just enough illumination to see the footpath worn into the rock and to catch the occasional glimpse of eyes watching them through natural windows.
The people in the tunnels were skittish and afraid. Even after Raijin and Lysander began to hand out the bread they had bought from the prefect’s cooks and Hush saw to the sick, few of the Dead Waters untouchables wished to talk to the outsiders. Raijin tried to coax information about the king’s poisoning out of them, but they wouldn’t even listen to his questions.
“They’re scared of Iniv the Mutilator,” a young man perhaps a year or two younger than Raijin explained while Hush examined his wasted little brother. “You talk without her permission—” He held up the stump of his arm, gone below the elbow. “—you pay the price.”
“You’re not afraid of her?” Raijin asked.
“Oh, I’m plenty afraid,” the young man said. “But if I send you straight to her, I’ll get to rest easy knowing me and Abi won’t be meeting the business edge of her saber tonight.”
Lysander eyed him. “How much does she give you for each new arrival you bring in?”
“Tenth of a link apiece.”
“How many are ever seen again?”
The young man grinned sidelong at Hush. “I see the women sometimes in the teahouses.”
Raijin stepped between the one-armed young man and the silent physician.
“She’s healing your brother,” he growled.
“Just so we’ll talk to you,” the one-armed young man retorted. “From where I stand, there ain’t much difference between you getting what you want in return for your friend’s healing and Iniv getting what she wants in return for selling your friend to a madam.”
A wave of killing intent and deadly threat filled the little stone room, radiating from Lysander. The young man stepped back, his grin faltering as he manifested a glowing red dagger in his hand.
Raijin raised his hands in Inviting Attack. The young man wouldn’t understand where the sudden wash of terror was coming from, which made it all the more likely he would lash out at random unless Raijin presented him with a target.
Before the young man could attack, however, Hush stepped between them and reached out her hand. After a wary hesitation, the young man took it. Since she’d been with them, Hush had improved her communication to the point where she could often send impressions to those whom she hadn’t known for long, but for these impressions to be strong enough, she had to touch them.
A moment passed, then the young man’s shoulders slumped, his hardened expression shattering.
“What does that mean?” The word came out in a whimper. “Can’t you fix him?”
Hush squeezed his hand and shook her head.
“You’re lying!” he shrieked. “You’re just doing this because I said that! You’re scum! Blackmailing scum! All you rich people are the same!”
Unaffected by his outburst, Hush pulled the young man into a hug. He pulled back his dagger, ready to stab it into her unprotected belly, but Raijin grabbed his wrist and twisted. The glowing ruby blade disappeared, the Ro returning to the young man’s heartcenter.
From Raijin’s side came a flash of motion so small that he wouldn’t have caught it without the guai-ray senses. Lysander had disappeared something into his robes. Raijin could taste the electrical signature of his friend’s burled steel dagger.
Before them, the young man let his head fall onto Hush’s shoulder and sobbed.
“I won’t sell you to Iniv,” he promised. “I’m sorry. I won’t do anything bad anymore if you heal Abi. Please, just heal him.”
Hush closed her eyes tight and let out a long breath, rubbing the young man’s back and rocking him slightly like an infant.
“She would if she could,” Lysander finally said. “In spite of what you might think, she wouldn’t withhold healing from anyone, even if they were trying to kill her.”
Gathering himself once more, the young man stepped away from Hush.
“Can you do anything to ease my brother’s pain?” he asked.
Hush nodded. She gestured behind him.
“She wants to move him to wherever you stay,” Lysander explained. “The soothing is stronger if he’s in a familiar place.”
The young man nodded, then knelt next to his brother, sliding his one arm under the boy’s wasted legs.
“Put your arms around my neck, Abi. Last time, I promise.”
The boy moaned, but didn’t open his eyes.
“Come on, Abi. Please—”
“Here.” Raijin scooped up the child, little more than a bundle of bones. He could feel Abi’s heartbeat like a dying mouse twitching against his chest. “It will be faster if you are focused only on leading us,” he said to allow the one-armed young man to save face.
