The Veiled Throne, page 105
A chill came into his heart. A dead story doesn’t change: a made-up story that must be told exactly the same way each time lest it is revealed for the lie it is.
The stories from the refugees concerning Cutanrovo had the ring of truth because he could compare them against his own experience at Kigo Yezu. If he believed those stories by refugees, why wouldn’t he believe the stories from refugees about life under Tenryo? Why wouldn’t he believe this account by Zomi Kidosu?
There never was a paradise in Ukyu-taasa. Cutanrovo is doing exactly what Pékyu Tenryo wanted. My mother, Emperor Thaké, and Tanvanaki were all lying.
He dropped the scroll and cradled his head in pain. That the play by Mota and Arona was closer to the truth than the heroic figure of Pékyu Tenryo he had constructed in his head was intolerable.
Had he encountered these texts, these stories, before he had come to Ginpen, before he had lived among the people of Dara, before he had fallen in love with their breast-hoard and lungsong, he could have easily dismissed them all as fabrications, as propaganda. But such refuge was no longer possible. Beneath the words lay something as self-affirming as the dances of the shamans, as hard to doubt as the power of the garinafin: experience, the only teacher that convinced.
He staggered away from the shelf, unable to bear the horrors that it forced him to confront.
The lights went out, plunging everything into darkness. The darkness was more complete than any he had experienced. Because they were inside a cave, there wasn’t even starlight or moonlight to alleviate the complete absence of light.
Screams. Shouts. Curses echoing from all around the library. It was too chaotic to make out what anyone was saying. Instinctively, he shouted too, adding to the cacophony. The noise of ladders and racks and who knew what else crashing to the floor. The grinding of metal against metal. More screams and grunts and barked orders.
Stumbling, crawling, shuffling, he made his way toward the last place he had seen Dandelion, a few bookcases away.
As quickly as they had gone out, the lights flooded back on, forcing him to squint against the blinding brightness. He crouched down and waited until his eyes no longer throbbed with pain. Far too many people were talking all at once for him to understand what was going on. Peeking cautiously around the shelf he was hiding behind, he realized that soldiers had taken over the library.
Widi was on the ground, bound hand and foot.
Mota, the invincible Mota, was kneeling quietly by a pile of scattered books, his hands bound behind him. A sword rested against his throat. His eyes were on Arona, kneeling opposite him, also with a sword against her throat. A line of blood trickled down her neck as she held very still, and the soldier wielding the sword stared at her grimly. Soldiers around them barked question after question, but they kept their lips tightly sealed.
Where’s Dandelion?
He heard her voice, as clear through the hubbub as a siskin’s song among the clucking of chickens. Frantically, he looked around and finally located her near the entrance, where two soldiers held her by the arms, and a third was trying to bind her legs. Angrily, Dandelion kicked and writhed against her captors, shouting all the while.
“Just let me wipe off my makeup! You’ll be very sorry once you see my face!”
Her eyes looked as imperious and commanding as ever. But the soldiers were unmoved.
A woman, dressed in the formal robes of a high-ranking court official, stood near Dandelion. She held up a hand and said something, and the clamor in the library died down. Her back was to Kinri.
“Let her go!” Kinri shouted.
The official snapped around, and dozens of soldiers instantly ran at Kinri, ready to take down this last intruder. Kinri grabbed a long and heavy book box and ran at the official, heedless of the soldiers rushing at him from every direction.
The soldiers slowed down when they saw that the intruder, shouting in the voice of a man, was in fact a woman. They pulled up in amazement, however, when they saw the intruder’s face. As the soldiers skidded to a stop, they looked back and forth between Kinri and the official in command, unsure what to do.
Kinri raised his book box like a war club and grunted a threat. Grim-faced, the official strode toward him, showing no fear. He opened his mouth to shout some more, but the breath caught in his throat as he got close enough to see her face clearly.
It was the same face that he had seen earlier when he looked into the mirror in Arona’s hand, right after she had finished his makeup.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN FAMILY
LAST BITE: THE SEVENTH MONTH IN THE NINTH YEAR OF THE REIGN OF SEASON OF STORMS AND THE REIGN OF AUDACIOUS FREEDOM (TWENTY-TWO MONTHS UNTIL THE REOPENING OF THE WALL OF STORMS).
Inside the library cubby used as Zomi Kidosu’s office and bedroom, Fara knelt in mipa rari on a sitting cushion, looking defiant. She had finally taken off her makeup, and Zomi had almost fainted at the sight.
Agitated, Zomi paced back and forth in the cubby.
“What is your explanation for this, Fara?”
“I wanted to have a bit of fun.”
“A bit of fun! This is one of the most secure facilities in all of Dara. And you decided that it would be all right to help a bunch of spies break in—”
“They’re not spies! They’re just people curious about the truth.”
“How can you be so naive! Look at how well planned this whole operation is. They even managed to find a look-alike to impersonate me. Does that sound like idle curiosity to you?”
“I never said it was ‘idle’ curiosity. It’s purposeful!”
“Yes, exactly. Did they know who you are? Were you targeted?”
“No… Yes… It’s… complicated.”
Zomi let out a deep sigh. “Oh, I’m sure it’s complicated. I cannot believe Aya has been covering for you this whole time—”
“Aya doesn’t know anything! Leave her out of it!”
“You are going back to Pan, and you’re not going to set foot outside the palace for a long time. I have half a mind to tell the empress to keep you under lock and key in your bedroom—”
“O Rata-tika!” Tears burst out of Fara’s eyes and streamed down her face. “Oh if… if only… if only you could see—”
Zomi sighed. The manipulation was so transparent yet effective. The young princess did look a lot like Théra at that age. “Stop bawling! And leave your sister out of this. I’m going to interrogate your ‘friends’ and find out just what they’re after. You better hope they’re not Lyucu spies.”
She was about to turn away, but the flitting look of terror on Fara’s face made her pause. No, it can’t be. A chill seized her heart.
“Look at me, Fara.”
Fara locked eyes with her.
“Is there something you want to tell me?”
Fara shook her head.
“Even if you’re an Imperial princess,” said Zomi slowly, enunciating every word, “treason is a capital crime. Do you understand? This isn’t a game.”
Fara looked away.
“Is it the old woman? Is it the tall man?…” As Zomi went through each of the captives, she kept her eyes on the young woman’s face.
Fara looked annoyed, twisting her face away from Zomi’s gaze and muttering impatiently.
“Is it the young man who looks like me?”
Fara continued to look annoyed. Almost reflexively, she swallowed.
Zomi’s eyes narrowed.
“Stay here,” she said. “I’ll deal with you after I’ve gotten the truth out of him.”
* * *
Farsight Secretary Zomi Kidosu, charged with defending Dara against Lyucu espionage, stared coldly at the young man kneeling in front of her, held in place by two guards.
This young man who inexplicably looked like her, she felt, was the key.
From his companions, she had received a preliminary account of what the “extended Blossom Gang” had been up to the last few months. It was obvious to her that while the gang thought they were using the young man, he had instead been using them to get close to Fara and to acquire knowledge of Dara engineering. The mastermind’s elaborate ruse and depth of planning was breathtaking, and the fact that he had not only seduced Fara but even revealed to her that he was connected with the Lyucu—judging by her reaction—showed a streak of boldness that verged on recklessness. That gamble had apparently paid off.
His papers were a sham, as one would expect of a spy for the Lyucu. But even worse, based on the extent of his knowledge of Lyucu lore and an apparent sympathy for the Lyucu cause—as shown by his role in the third contest between the Splendid Urn and the Treasure Chest—Zomi suspected that the young man wasn’t even an Anojiti from Unredeemed Dara, but a Lyucu operative.
How could he speak our tongue so well? How could he know so much of our customs and history? If Tanvanaki has more spies like him, how can we possibly ferret them out?
Zomi’s mind returned again to Fara’s look of terror.
The little princess is inexperienced but clever…. Did this man tell her that he’s a Lyucu, or did she figure it out on her own? In any event, how could she show such poor judgment!
Fara’s foolishness aside, this was without a doubt the worst security disaster in Zomi’s time as Farsight Secretary, and she was even more incensed by the disguise the spy had chosen: It felt like a deliberate slap in the face.
Yet, instead of cunning and arrogance, she saw only bewilderment and confusion in the young man’s face.
“Why do you look like that?” he muttered.
The same question was on Zomi’s mind. Even with his makeup removed, the resemblance between them, once highlighted, was impossible to ignore. The very idea that the gods would choose to make a Lyucu look so much like her was unsettling.
“What is your name?” Zomi asked, keeping her voice emotionless.
“Kinri Rito,” he said.
“A lie. Where are you from?”
“I’m a refugee from Rui.”
“Another lie. You may be from Unredeemed Dara, but you’re no refugee,” said Zomi. “There is no record of such a name in any of the refugee camps, and your claimed parentage is pure fiction. You’re a Lyucu spy, aren’t you?”
He flinched, but he gave no denial.
“What is your mission?”
He laughed bitterly. “If only I knew.”
“What do you mean by that?”
He closed his eyes and turned his face away.
Zomi sighed. In some ways it was too bad that she had caught him only now. Under Empress Jia’s regency, torture and collective punishment had been steadily reduced and phased out of both the domains of the Minister of Justice and the Farsight Secretary. The kinds of interrogation techniques that had once made the farseers so feared in the Islands of Dara were no longer practiced. Had the young man been caught by one of her underlings in years past, no doubt his confession would have long been completed.
No matter, she thought. Torture is neither reliable nor always effective. There are other ways to weigh the fish.
She turned to the objects recovered from the young man’s person. There wasn’t much: a little money in a knotwork purse; a few pieces of polished bone—one was apparently in the process of being carved into a hairpin with a dandelion-shaped knob at the end; a silk handkerchief with a sappy message—clearly Fara’s hand; and a turtle shell etched in the style of the scrubland tribes.
The turtle shell caught Zomi’s interest. Such objects of Lyucu handicraft, due to their rarity in Dara, were prized by smugglers and collectors, and Zomi was familiar with them from contraband seized from pirates as well as the turtle-shell messages sent by her beloved from beyond the Wall of Storms.
But instead of the three-legged kunikin, the carapace of Kinri’s shell showed a map of Dara. She shook her head, puzzled. Perhaps a rough guide used by the spy to find out where to go once he arrived in core Dara?
She flipped the shell over to look at the plastron.
Time seemed to stop; what she was seeing was impossible.
There was a portrait of a family: a father, a mother, two older boys, and a baby. The figures were dressed in the style of fisherfolk from Dasu, familiar from Zomi’s childhood. The figures were outlined roughly and devoid of distinctive features except for the woman, holding a scale from which a fish dangled, and the baby, swaddled in clothes decorated with the image of a tiny cat.
The woman was weighing the fish.
Zomi spun the shell around again and examined the carapace closely. Yes, there was a dot in the coastline of Dasu on the map, marking the location of her home village.
How could this be? This was a picture of her own family shortly after she had been born. Her mother always spoke of weighing the fish to understand the truth of the world, and she had been named “Mimi” because the way she rooted for milk and mewled reminded her mother of a kitten.
“My family,” she croaked. “How did you…”
The shell fell from her hand, clattering against the table.
“Secretary Kidosu!”
“Are you all right?”
“Summon the doctor!”
As her aides and guards fussed about her, Zomi locked eyes with the young man, and the same expression of overwhelming shock at a nascent, impossible truth appeared on both faces.
* * *
It took time for the stories to be told.
But in the end, Kinri and Zomi had to face the truth: They were brother and sister, votan-sa-taasa, both children of Oga Kidosu, though born on two shores separated by an ocean.
Zomi was thirty-two, Kinri nineteen. They were only thirteen years apart in age, yet the gap felt like many lifetimes.
“All that time that old Oga lived with us, I never knew he was my father,” said Kinri in wonder and sorrow.
“He might not even have known the truth himself,” said Zomi.
Kinri thought back to the way her mother had always kept his paternity vague. He thought back to the conflicted manner in which his mother had treated old Oga—kind one moment, impatient and demanding the next. He could see why his mother had done such a thing—the best way to keep her fractious husbands in line was to dangle before them the hope that any of them could be Kinri’s father while ensuring in reality that the hope would always be illusory. It was a stroke of luck that Oga was from Dasu, whose inhabitants tended to be lighter in complexion than much of the rest of Dara, and so the ruse that Kinri was pure Lyucu could be maintained. He could also see why his mother, torn between the myth of a visionary pékyu-votan who wished to integrate the natives into Lyucu society, a myth she had helped to cultivate, and the reality of a Tenryo who saw no future for the natives except enslavement and death, a reality that he was only reluctantly coming to accept, would vacillate and keep the truth of his paternity from everyone, including himself and Oga.
“What was he like?” asked Zomi. “I never knew him except near the moment of his death.”
And so Kinri shared with Zomi his memories of Oga. He spoke of the old man’s tales about the heroes of Dara, his songs about his lost homeland, the times when he had reminisced about his family: the sons who had gone off to fight for Xana and never returned, the baby daughter he had known for only a few days before long-lasting exile, the wife whose struggles and sufferings he wished to share but could not.
“But why did he…” Zomi could not finish. “And how did you…” Her voice trailed off.
Kinri understood what she wanted to ask, but he could offer no insight. He had been too young to know if Goztan had taken Oga to bed often, the nature and origin of their bond, or even if it had been a bond of affection and love or something darker and involuntary. After reading the testimonies of the refugees, the smiles he had seen on the faces of the native concubines he had known growing up in Kriphi took on a far more sinister shade. Could there ever be love between a Lyucu and a Dara, when the difference in power was always so stark and the re-rememberings between their peoples so knotty?
Unbidden, Dandelion’s face surfaced in his mind. He pushed it away resolutely.
And he was not yet ready to tell the story of how he had truly come to be in Ginpen.
“I never knew I had a sister,” said Kinri, because there was nothing else to say. He didn’t know her at all, yet he could see shades of himself in her: the shape of the chin, the tilt of the brow, the look of concentration when contemplating a puzzle. He felt drawn to her—she was family—yet she also frightened him.
“I never knew I had another brother,” said Zomi. “How much you must have suffered in Unredeemed Dara!”
Tears flowed down both their faces as they embraced each other. So much pain and regret had been visited upon their family because of the whims of Mapidéré’s mad schemes and Tenryo’s boundless ambition.
“I’m glad you could tell me something about his life,” said Zomi at length. “Even on the other side of the River-on-Which-Nothing-Floats, I’m sure he’s smiling to see the two of us.”
Kinri nodded, but his mind was all confusion. Zomi had spoken sympathetically of his suffering—but had he actually suffered at all as a thane-taasa of the Lyucu? All along, he had thought of himself as a descendant of the conquerors; should knowing that he was togaten, that the blood of Dara also flowed in his veins, change the nature of his experiences?
He realized that he had not asked Zomi about Aki, Oga’s wife in Dasu, and Zomi had not asked after Goztan, his own mother. Though they were siblings, there was also a wall that divided them, a wall that he feared was as impenetrable as the Wall of Storms.
“What is this place?” he asked, his arm sweeping in an arc to indicate the bookcases that formed the walls of the cubby, more to fill the silence than because he was interested in the answer. He needed time to come to terms with the many, many revelations of Last Bite.
“This is where I come to think,” said Zomi. As her gaze lingered on each object on the shelves and the table, her eyes softened. “My work in Pan is full of darkness and strife, but Last Bite is a refuge. These objects bring me comfort because they remind me of people who I love and love me.”
