The Origin of Storms--The Lotus Kingdoms, Book Three, page 19
“Hnarisha,” she said, but he had seen it too and was already racing forward.
“Grab him!” he yelled to the soldiers. Akhimah would have to trust them to handle it. She resumed her interrupted lunge toward Tsering’s tent and whipped the door hanging aside.
Tsering-la stood there, clad in his shirt-sleeves and a pair of carpet slippers, surrounded by a wall of brilliant yellow light that outlined him like an enlarged carapace.
He looked up at Akhimah, frozen in the doorway, and blinked.
His brow furrowed. “You have blood all over you.”
“Somebody tried to kill me. You too, I presume?”
“They bit you?” The flare of light died, collapsing back into his skin as he took two quick steps toward her.
“They?” she said. “You got more than one?”
He stopped, outreached hand dropping back to his side. “What attacked you?”
“A snake,” she answered. “You got … several snakes?”
She felt a little offended in her dignity or her professional pride or whatever. Did Ravani take her less seriously because she was a woman?
He threw back his head and laughed until tears started in the corners of his eyes, and he had to grab the door pole for support. Akhimah knew it was the hysteria of death averted. She couldn’t help but start to chuckle too.
“Mosquitoes,” he said. “Fucking plague vectors.”
Somebody yelped behind them. Akhimah remembered the scuffle and whirled to see if Hnarisha and the soldiers needed help. She had the sense to rotate away from the door, so Tsering-la was beside her in an instant.
They were not needed. Unfortunately. Hnarisha and the other men were staggering backward as the soldier who had been making the gestures sparked, fizzed, and began to burn. Flame so hot it was nearly invisible raced over his skin, setting his clothes alight, leaving charcoal in its wake.
“Shit,” Akhimah said. “So much for asking questions.”
Tsering echoed her earlier thoughts. “Well, now we know we’re looking in the right direction, since we’re attracting attention.”
“If that’s attention, I’d hate to experience focus.” Akhimah fumbled for her belt and finally tied the front of her robe. “I guess he must be keeping an eye on us. Still, shit,” she said again.
She waved to the crumbled pile of char on the ground.
“Yeah,” said Tsering.
Hnarisha, panting, straightened up. He lifted one hand, displaying a wad of silk. An embroidered handkerchief. With something wrapped in the folds that glimmered in the lanternlight, orange-pink.
“No.” Tsering-la broke into a grin.
“It was around his neck on a cord,” said Hnarisha. “Don’t worry; I haven’t touched it.”
“I could kiss you,” Akhimah crowed.
“Please don’t,” said Hnarisha, but he was grinning. “Are you both unhurt?”
Tsering-la was inspecting his arms anxiously. “I don’t think they got me. There was a swarm.” He sighed and looked up. “I guess I’ll find out if I show any welts by evening.”
Akhimah held out her hand. “I cut myself with my own knife. Bloody amateur.”
Hnarisha bent over her. Tsering-la dimmed his light again. That was good, because a horrible headache had begun tightening behind Akhimah’s eyes. It eased, one throb at a time, along with the sting in her hand as Hnarisha touched her lightly.
He said, “Mosquitoes, huh? If he can do that, why doesn’t he just send disease pests to sicken the whole army?”
“Because he wants a fight,” Tsering said. “And he doesn’t much care who wins it just as long as the whole thing is sufficiently nasty.”
“Because a lot of mosquitoes would be a huge investment in energy,” Ata Akhimah added.
Nizhvashiti drifted toward them, its robes seeming an extension of the darkness that trailed after it. “I believe Tsering-la is correct,” it said. “The more we fight, the more we are divided—the stronger the beast becomes.”
Akhimah almost bit her knuckle before she remembered it was covered in snake blood. “It can’t break through, can it?”
Nizhvashiti’s head inclined. A nod. “If we make it strong enough, it can.”
* * *
They hadn’t been going to wake Mrithuri to tell her, but the ruckus had handled the waking for them. She sent a sleepy-eyed Golbahar to fetch them just as Akhimah was starting to wonder if she would be able to sneak away, set her wards up again, and go back to bed. If she had wanted to be short of rest, food, and baths, she would have chosen a less-comfortable career than court astronomer.
Oh, well. There was always something. At least Golbahar brought along a footman with water to wash in and gave her time to pull on a pair of trousers while he took the cobra carcass away. Tsering-la would want to dissect it as soon as possible. Seeing it in the light, Akhimah was relieved she hadn’t known what kind of snake she was dealing with.
Around that time, Nizhvashiti vanished. It had a disconcerting habit of going silently missing when you took your gaze away.
By the time they reached Mrithuri’s tent, the Empress Dowager was sitting up on a cushion, drinking tea, apparently having given up on any plans she might have had to go back to sleep. Which meant that nobody else was getting any more either. And Akhimah still had to clean up the snake blood.
Akhimah sighed and accepted the tea when Golbahar offered it around.
Sayeh and Ümmühan were present also, along with the girl Nazia and Mrithuri’s and Sayeh’s particular personal guards. It was always amusing to watch the Dead Man lift his veil and slip a cup beneath it. Especially when he burned his tongue.
Observing the tea incident out of the corner of her eye, Akhimah realized that the vertical pillar behind him, which she had taken for part of the structure of the pavilion, was actually the Godmade swathed in its tattered black robes.
“I’m sorry if the yelling woke you, Your Abundance,” Akhimah said, when tea had been passed to everyone. She thought it wasn’t the first time the leaves had been brewed. Would the troops think less or more of their leader to know she shared their shortages?
Something to discuss with Ümmühan.
“Actually”—Mrithuri’s tone was astringent enough to tan leather—“it was the enormous conflagration.”
Tsering-la shifted uncomfortably. It seemed like a bad time to point out that he had caused no fire, only light, so Akhimah did not bother.
Mrithuri continued, “Did you catch him?”
“Er,” said Hnarisha.
The Empress Dowager raised her eyebrows.
“He spontaneously combusted,” Hnarisha said. He held out the wad of silk. “We got a talisman, however.”
“Barren Mother,” Mrithuri swore. Akhimah was a foreigner, and not any more devoted to the local gods than she had to be for the sake of appearances, but she saw a couple of the others look aside or smirk, embarrassed by the blasphemy. “I want to string the body up on a pole as a warning to anybody else who might sell themselves to that sorcerer. They should know how she will honor their service.”
The Dead Man rocked forward slightly, as if seeing merit.
Hnarisha said, “It burned to ash.”
Ümmühan held her hand up. “Just as well. Stringing up bodies might be unproductive.”
Nazia stage-whispered, “But satisfying.”
Ümmühan made a pirouetting gesture with her hands. Akhimah did not know what it symbolized, but these Northerners had entire languages of gestures, even more elaborate than the stories the Lotus Kingdoms told through ritualized dance.
Hnarisha sighed. “Very satisfying. But with the likely effect of turning morale further against us.”
“Yes,” said Sayeh. Her voice was a husky murmur, but the authority in it still silenced the room. “But in the absence of a body, I think Ümmühan can probably spin enough of a morality play out of the agent’s immolation to help our cause. If the empress agrees, she could even suggest that anyone who has accepted a gift from Ravani might be pardoned and protected if they surrender it to us.”
Mrithuri’s lips tightened, then relaxed reluctantly. She set aside her tea. “Fine.”
“That has the advantage of getting us more talismans,” Akhimah said.
“Which we can use to find even more of them,” added Tsering-la. “I mean, we hope. Some of them, anyway.”
“Now we can test the detectors on this one,” Hnarisha said.
“We will be in Sarathai-lae before we can find all of them,” the Godmade said in its rustling voice, making Akhimah jump embarrassingly.
Mrithuri picked up her tea again. “Is that a prophecy?”
“No,” said the Godmade. “But I have a good idea of the size of your army. And I looked at a map.”
14
Dusty, thirsty, road-weary, and not a little triumphant, the Dowager Empress and her people came into Sarathai-lae. Sayeh chose to ride the elephant a little behind Mrithuri, as befitted her rank. She had made herself as magnificent as possible under the circumstances—weighed down with mirror-embroidered silk and bells, a gilt headdress woven into hair that needed washing even more now that it had been dressed in scented oils to hide the way the road dust dulled it.
Mrithuri was slim and straight in shining white, and the only jewels upon her body were the Queenly Tiger in her navel and the wedding bangles on her wrists. She looked older than her years, and out of flesh, and Sayeh worried for her.
No one farther away could have seen that she was drawn, however, so cunningly had Golbahar made up her cheeks and lips to provide the illusion of health and color. Her eyes were pools of kohl whose direction could be read from as far away as anyone could have seen her face at all.
Sayeh had hoped to see the time away from the serpents bringing renewal to Mrithuri. But whatever health she had gained at first from giving up her drug, she had lost again to the rigors of travel.
Still, her people cheered her. They lined the streets and waved pennants and threw dyed rice in blessing. They leaned from balconies and dropped the petals of marigolds. Sayeh was sure she was not the only one who watched the Dead Man and Mrithuri’s guardian bear-dog both fret, and circle, and stare first one way then another as they struggled to train their senses in all directions at once.
It was a gamble. To let the people see Mrithuri, to let them close enough to her to feel as if they had personally been recognized by their Empress—it built a bond. It made them feel like her people.
It also gave them the opportunity to strike against her. If anyone would risk the wrath of the Mother by raising a hand to Her priestess, or the wrath of the land by raising a hand to its Empress. Or if they were under the influence of Ravani and her damned cursed baubles. There were probably plenty in the city who were.
The Wizards’ sweeps of the army had turned up several more talismans—two of which had been in the possession of soldiers who swore they did not know the rings were among their belongings—and Ümmühan had encouraged three more to turn their rings in with promises of lenience.
Her effectiveness was probably not hurt, Sayeh suspected, by word of the incinerated soldier having gotten around.
But there were no doubt more secret assassins concealed in the ranks, biding their time. Waiting for what, Sayeh did not know.
She tried to pull her thoughts back. She could not afford to think about it now. It would be an embarrassment to her rank and to the Empress Dowager if she started rocking with panic, thinking about all the ways this progress could go wrong.
Besides, the Dead Man and Syama were worrying enough for everyone. Sayeh should strive to be more like Hathi, who paraded along with her trunk lifted, waving her ears with pleasure at everyone applauding her.
You only come into a city for the first time once, Sayeh thought, and decided that if the professionals were there to worry about their safety, she would focus on noticing other things.
The first of those was that Sarathai-lae was not built of the same grim granite as Ansh-Sahal, or the wood and adobe and brown stone of muddy Chandranath. Nor even of the golden translucent marble of Sarathai-tia.
No, it was a city of shining white and blue—marble and lapis lazuli and blue tiles from far Asitaneh, brought by ship down the Arid Sea. That was not all that came by ship, either: Sayeh saw rich clothing in a dozen styles and faces of a dozen complexions. She saw turbans dyed blue or brown or orange, and headwraps in bright prints, and a man sweating in a fur-lined cap that he must have brought with him, stubbornly, a relic of whatever cold climate had spawned him.
She saw a man with more tattoos than Mrithuri, shockingly blue against skin that was shockingly pale. His straight, braided hair had been dark once, though it was graying fast. She saw a woman darker than Ata Akhimah, her skin reflecting blue highlights from the Heavenly River overhead. She saw houses five or six stories tall, their upper floors ringed with metal balconies and hung with flower gardens.
Sarathai-tia might be the once-capital of the fallen empire, but there was no mistaking that Sarathai-lae’s place as the rich hub of trade.
The jealousy of the Daughters for each other made perfect sense to Sayeh. How could the Mother give so much to some of her children and so little to the others?
As if reading her mind, Nazia leaned forward and whispered near her ear. “What are you thinking, Rajni?”
“That I would like to trade cities with these people,” Sayeh admitted.
Nazia chuckled. “I was thinking I’d like to burn it all down.”
“Stone doesn’t burn well,” Golbahar said from behind them, her voice as dry as Nizhvashiti’s flesh. “Consider using black powder.”
They had not brought the whole army into the city, which was just as well. The boulevards were broad and straight, with long sight lines. As they came within view of the palace grounds, it was evident that the soldiers would have filled up the whole of the route from city walls to castle gates, with plenty left over. Sarathai-lae was wealthy, then, but not vast.
That was, on some level, reassuring.
Some people dealt with the fear of meeting new people by imagining them naked. Sayeh preferred to imagine all the palace inhabitants scrambling to make ready for their new and unknown empress, rushing to and fro, scrubbing floors and bringing in armloads of flowers. She looked at Mrithuri’s hands clenched on her trousers and leaned forward herself to whisper, “They need to impress you more than you need to impress them.”
Mrithuri gave her a tight little smile. Sayeh wished she could lay a hand on the young woman’s shoulder and comfort her. Rajni, empress, dowager, precariously holding on to a position of power she might lose at any time—and half Sayeh’s age. It was unfair what the Mother asked of so many of them.
A runner came out of the palace ahead, feet slapping in a street swept so clean that no puffs of dust followed his sandals. The gate—gilded ironwork—stayed open behind him. Mrithuri’s vanguard moved to intercept, and the slim young man bent himself low.
He held up a scroll bound in a great number of ceremonial ribbons and dangling an orchard of dull lead and bright wax seals. One of the men took it and brought it to Vidhya, who was the ranking officer present. Pranaj and Zirha had stayed outside the walls with their armies.
Vidhya accepted it with all due ceremony and reined his mincing horse back until Hathi caught up. He held the scroll out, and there were gasps and cheers from the onlookers as Hathi plucked it daintily from his hand with her trunk and passed it up to Mrithuri. While the elephant walked on, Mrithuri passed it to Sayeh. “Read it to me.”
Sayeh was not entirely confident in her ability to read the southern dialect of Sarathani with clarity, but—well, when the empress says “Go and die,” one does one’s best.
She broke the seals, unknotted the ribbons, and by the time they passed under the arch of the gate, she had puzzled the words out as well as she was likely to.
Within lay a courtyard, meant for reception and not defense. Mrithuri’s honor guard fanned out, facing a revue of what must have been palace guards and various dignitaries.
“It’s from the chancellor,” Sayeh said. “He offers greetings and the usual assurances. He says that you will be guided to your private apartments, and once you have refreshed yourself, he will attend at your convenience.”
Mrithuri turned and looked over her shoulder. Her lips pursed. “Oh, shall he?” she drawled.
Sayeh smirked. “The power grab begins already.”
Mrithuri lifted her chin: an implicit command. Sayeh knew what to do. Leaning down, she handed the scroll back to Vidhya.
“Send me Sergeant Sanjay, would you?” She’d made sure that her favorite members of Mrithuri’s army—the ones who had been her guards, when she was Anuraja’s prisoner—came into the city. She was now pleased with her foresight.
Sanjay was with them in a moment. Up ahead, functionaries intoned meaningless greetings in loud voices. It was Hnarisha on their side, and some man in a sleeveless, embroidered, open-fronted long coat that looked like a token of office on the other.
Sayeh leaned down, steadying herself with one hand, and spoke in a low voice. “Do you know where the apartments that belonged to Anuraja are?”
He nodded. Sayeh hid her smirk. Anuraja’s tendency to command his men directly was useful to them once again. As was his tendency to mistreat them, which had enabled her to make the ones she’d befriended fast allies in so little time.
“Catch me,” Sayeh said, and slid down the elephant’s shoulder.
Surprised, Sanjay caught her, lowered her more or less gently to her feet, and stepped back.
Sayeh said, “Give Her Abundance a hand down and lead us to the raja’s rooms, would you? Send … oh, send Nazia, with a couple of loyal soldiers who know the way, to put eyes on the princes and protect them. And get somebody to tell that chancellor that he’s wanted immediately. Not later. He can bring the snacks himself, if he requires them.”
Sanjay’s eyes cut sidewise. “Where were they sending her?”
“Lord Chancellor Dehan hasn’t specified, but at a guess it’ll be some consort’s apartment.”
