Speaking Bones, page 110
Fara held his hand, moved beyond words. Her intended had decided to formally adopt the Dara name “Kinri Rito” before marrying her. Like Dyana being given the title of Imperial Princess, Kinri’s gesture would do much to reassure everyone of the sincerity of the Lyucu desire to become part of the people of Dara.
Names didn’t matter, but they also mattered a great deal.
“My teacher, Master Nazu Tei, gave me that name, ‘a sign.’ I never realized, until now, that it is the act of naming, not the name itself, that is the sign.”
Though he assured her that he had come to the decision willingly, she couldn’t quite dispel a twinge of guilt.
“I know this wasn’t the path you envisioned for us—”
He held up a finger against her lips. “I haven’t forgotten what you taught me about poetry; I understand your Imperial name.”
The Classical Ano logogram in Fara’s new name was usually translated as “observant.” But for those familiar with the history of old Xana, the local topolect reading for the logogram, “shizona,” was an onomatopoeia for the sound made by the rustling knot-bells worn by dancers at the court in Kriphi.
Words lie, but not the music of your limbs
Sweeping over me, moonlit ocean waves.
Centuries ago, the Imagist poet Suzaré had composed those lines about her lover, Lady Jito of White Sleeves. One could readily imagine the gentle susurration of the knot-bells as the legendary beauty twirled, glided, and leapt across the flagstones of the Grand Audience Hall, enchanting the king, the ministers, the generals, and the admiring poet alike.
Fara had continued the musical theme of her family in choosing an Imperial name, but it was coded to allude to the moment when she and Kinri had fallen in love. The dream of a life free from obligations, duties, politics, and the weight of history and re-remembering was not dead, only put on hold.
“Whatever names we are known to others by, I will always be your Thasé-teki and you my Dandelion. You’re the mirror of my soul, my wakeful weakness.”
She pulled his face down and locked their lips in a long, fierce kiss.
PAN: THE THIRD MONTH OF THE TWELFTH YEAR OF THE REIGN OF SEASON OF STORMS AND THE REIGN OF AUDACIOUS FREEDOM.
For the first time since her wedding, Empress Shizona came to see Jia Matiza. Kinri was occupied with seeing to Zomi’s departure, and Fara suspected that he wasn’t eager to meet this particular in-law.
With the help of Lady Ragi, Jia was packing for her departure as well. She had few possessions, and one trunk was more than sufficient. Dressed in a plain hempen robe and wooden walking shoes, the former empress looked like any other aged herbalist from fog-shrouded Faça. Having been stripped of all titles of nobility and rank, she was now simply referred to in the official court histories as “Jia Matiza, first wife of Emperor Ragin, a commoner.”
“Rénga,” said Jia, bowing in jiri.
“Aunt-Mother,” said Fara, bowing back. “I wanted to see if you had everything you needed.”
After her pardon, Fara had offered Jia the choice to stay in the palace the rest of her life in seclusion. The former empress was such a controversial figure that it was hard to imagine her emerging from these walls. But Jia had petitioned Fara to be allowed to travel to Ukyu-taasa, where she thought she could conduct research on the sequelae of tolyusa-madness and the various chronic conditions suffered by victims of Lyucu torture and hard labor, and devise cures. She also volunteered to help with the effort to bring back the unenhanced varieties of tolyusa that had been devastated by her engineered blight.
The people of Dasu and Rui need healers.
The empress had consented. But Fara also noticed that Jia refused to call the new province by its formal name, Ukyu-taasa. Jia accepted the empress’s policy toward the Lyucu, but that didn’t mean she agreed.
“The Imperial Academy has been most helpful,” said Jia. “Ragi and I have all the equipment and herbs we need. I expect we’ll be ready to leave for Ginpen this afternoon.”
Fara nodded. She had a thousand things she wanted to say to Jia, and yet, none seemed adequate. Her aunt-mother was going to live among the very people whose lives she had done the most to harm. Was it an act of courage? Of contrition? Of defiance? Of seeking absolution? She suspected that even Jia didn’t know. The heart was complicated.
“I suspect we’ll never see each other again,” said Jia. “But there are a few words that I wish to be relieved of, lest they stick in my throat like fish bones. May I be frank?”
Fara nodded.
“What you’ve done will cause endless strife and suffering down the ages,” said Jia. “To leave in our midst a population full of contempt for our traditions, to allow those responsible for massacres to pass on their language and desire for supremacy generation after generation, to give them the room to assert their own identity and to hold themselves apart—you have buried the seeds for a future rebellion, a disaster that will lead to the deaths of thousands.
“If that were all, it would be bad enough. But you’ve done worse and more. You’ve chosen to commemorate the victims of Lyucu misrule rather than allow the atrocities to be forgotten, thus ensuring that the wound of history will remain ever-open and suppurating. There is nothing more powerful than constant reminders of the past to push the descendants of victims to demand justice and descendants of the perpetrators to feel themselves victims. You’ve set Dara up for unending cycles of mutual hatred and vengeance.
“Kuni Garu knew that some enemies cannot be lived with; he had to pursue the Hegemon to the bitter end. Your act of mercy today may in decades to come be seen as an act of cruelty, a gesture worthy of that Moralist fool who tried to show compassion to the wolves, Zato Ruthi.”
Fara’s face turned stony. Jia had spoken aloud her deepest fears.
She was plagued by doubt that she had been too soft, too accommodating, that she lacked the edge of cruelty necessary for a good sovereign, that empathy was not, in fact, enough.
Terror flooded her heart. The lives of the countless future victims of her weakness, of her compassion, formed a bloody sea, a sepulchral storm. She felt like a woman on the verge of drowning, a kite about to be ripped apart.
The voices of Phyro and Kinri spoke in the maelstrom of her mind.
The world may not be fair, but we must strive to make it so.
The world is a dark place, but we must strive to make it brighter.
Like Lord Lutho’s helpful turtles, they kept her afloat; like twisted silken strands, they tethered her to the ground.
“You speak of possibilities, of tendencies, of potentialities, not certainties. You cannot see the future. You can be wrong.” As she spoke, her faltering voice grew stronger. “You were so fearful of the threat of militarism that you did everything you could to weaken the army, to keep Phyro from fighting.
“Yet, he convinced the people of Dara to back his war, despite your interference. And when the fatal moment came, when the lives of millions hung in the balance, he stayed his hand on his own, without your manipulation.
“Do you also know that because he defeated the Lyucu with honor, he is viewed with great admiration among them? It was out of that sense of trust he had earned that the Lyucu, after the fall of Ukyu-taasa, believed they could come to Pan to seek peace rather than to struggle on, saving hundreds of thousands from senseless deaths.
“You never foresaw what kind of man Phyro would become. You never foresaw that even in death, Phyro would do his part to defend and preserve the lives of the people of Dara.
“You cannot read that which has yet to be written.”
Jia stood still, looking impassive. Was she surprised? Or had everything, even Phyro’s aborted invasion and the effect it had on the Lyucu, been part of her plans?
At length, Jia said, “Neither can you.”
“No, I cannot see the future,” Fara shot back. “I cannot be sure that my decisions will be judged by history to be right.
“But to deem only that which guarantees survival to be virtuous is to think like Cutanrovo; to believe that only that which leads to victory and conquest is of value is to follow the faith of Tenryo.
“Compassion and empathy are not safe and easy paths, and they require the striving of all the people of Dara, Lyucu and native alike, for generations. But such is the lot of mortals. Even the wisest, most farseeing leader cannot hope to determine the fate of their descendants.
“Step aside, Aunt-Mother. I will resolve the crisis facing Dara my way, not yours.”
For a long, tense moment, Jia remained still.
“ ‘It is both a curse and a manifestation of grace,’ ” she muttered to herself, her eyes unfocused, looking into the distance.
Gradually, her face relaxed. She bowed deeply to the empress.
“You sound just like your sister.”
After a pause, she added, “I once thought it best for Dara to be a land in which it didn’t matter who was the sovereign, but I’m glad it is your hand that holds the Seal of Dara.”
Fara breathed hard. Had that been a test? Had she passed? She wondered if she would ever understand Jia, the most subtle and fearsome leader of Dara.
A faint peal of thunder overhead, as though the gods wanted to break the tension.
It was time to get on with the business she had come for.
“I wanted… to offer you a ride to Ukyu-taasa.”
She turned and summoned the future pékyu-governor through the door.
“Grandmother,” said Princess Dyana.
A variety of emotions flickered across Jia’s face. “You look just like my Toto-tika.”
“My father spoke often of you,” said Dyana. “He always regretted not being able to carry out the proper duties of a son.”
Jia forced back the tears. “What is your name?”
“Dyana.”
“A Lyucu name,” muttered Jia.
“Yes,” said the princess, “for I am a child of the Lyucu as well. But my father also gave me a nursing name: Zaza-tika.”
As in Matiza.
“Sit by me, Zaza-tika. I… am glad to know you.”
Unobtrusively, Fara retreated from the room. A winter’s worth of ice could not melt in a single spring day, and neither could a wound lasting half a lifetime heal in a single meeting. But it was a start.
I think I’ve just found the name for my reign.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX SPEAKING BONES
UKYU-GONDÉ: THE THIRD MONTH IN THE TWELFTH YEAR AFTER THE DEPARTURE OF PRINCESS THÉRA FROM DARA FOR UKYU-GONDÉ.
Spring.
Life returned to the scrublands, as did wars. The remnants of the Lyucu and the scattered Agon tribes fought and clashed, killed and died.
The chiefs and thanes fought for the memories and dreams of dead pékyus, for grievances lost in the mists of mythological dance-stories, for titles and honor and treasured artifacts of long-vanished fleets. They fought, in other words, for grand, epic stories.
But the naros and culeks, unmoved by such high ideals, fought for a much simpler story that was no less compelling. The scrubland was a harsh and unforgiving place; there were always too many people for too little food. Those who won had garinafins, cattle, sheep, pemmican, fire-dung; the victors didn’t have to push their grandparents into the eternal storm; the conquerors didn’t have to leave their babies behind as they chased the green grass sea.
It had always been this way, and so it had to be a true story, didn’t it?
* * *
Rumor sped across the scrublands on the wings of garinafins and by the mouths of the wandering tanto-lyu-naro. Something was happening in Taten-ryo-alvovo, the City of Ghosts, the land of forbidden mounds on the shore of the salt flats.
As the spring winds blew across the salt flats, stirring up columns of white smoke, hulking beasts of pure white bone emerged from the haze.
Comparable in size to adult garinafins, the walking arucuro tocua were cobbled together from the bones of aurochs, mouflon, and dead warriors. In form they brought to mind not so much the warlike monsters that had ended the Fifth Age, but fantastic beings of grace, lightness, playfulness: ethereal whales with wing-fins, wobbly muntjacs with stilt-like legs, turtles with wise-seeming heads looking in six directions… and many beasts that had no earthly analogs at all.
In place of hearts, the beasts had in their empty rib cages massive, dangling charms. Fashioned from articulated bones that rattled and clacked with each step, the charms were enlarged versions of the talking bones invented by Théra’s sons: “fire” plus “movement” to mean dance-story; “mouth” over “air” over “mouth” again to mean re-remembering; “lifted empty hand” enclosing “heart” to mean hope.
Propelled by the strong wind that undulated the membranous sails over their backs, the arucuro tocua beasts, devoid of pilots, strode resolutely out of the salt flats and spread in every direction. Every few hundred steps, when the bone gears inside had revolved a preset number of rotations, the beasts stopped, and began to sing.
The singing mechanism had been adapted from the Divine Voice, the aural weapon that had once devastated the Lyucu host. Inside each beast, as a garinafin wing-tip needle ran through the groove in the unwinding scroll, the tiny, trembling voice that emerged was transmitted to the sympathetic vibrating membranes of a set of mammoth storm pipes. Powerful cords of twisted sinew then squeezed the sail-pumped air sac, driving the compressed air through the garinafin bone pipes, vibrating the vocal cords, until the beast amplified the voice a thousandfold, and a thunderous spirit portrait boomed across the land.
* * *
The scrolls animating the bone beasts had been prepared by Çami and Sataari.
By having a spirit-portrait player sing into the ear of a spirit-portrait taker, they made many copies from one original by tracing and retracing. The copies weren’t perfect—fidelity was degraded, extraneous noises introduced, the now indistinctly layered onto the already, becoming a whole always. Such was the nature of all stories passed from lips to ear, whether the organs were of flesh or bone. But the truth in the voices, through the hisses and skips and distortions, remained intact.
The score consisted of multiple voices, spliced and wound together, a chorus of the re-rememberings of the Lyucu and the Agon, of ancestral voices and present thinking-breath: ancient heroes of the Fifth Age, Afir, Takval, Théra, refugees in the City of Ghosts….
The voices spoke of the past, of the beauty that had once been and the beauty that was still within reach. They spoke of the glory that had once illuminated the city of mounds on the shore of a Sea of Tears teeming with life, of fields of viridian barley and patches of marrow tubers. They spoke of the drying of the rivers, the shrinking of the lake, the coming of starvation and strife, the fall of a way of life.
They spoke of the ascension of Théra, and the love that allowed Takval to give her his last breath. The body was gone, but the breath lived on.
Adapt, adapt, sang the voices. Discard old enmities. The way forward is not to be afraid of change. We have always changed; we always will, to be who we are. The best way to honor our nature is to re-remember the future.
Come to the Barrows. Gather on the revitalized shore of the Sea of Tears. The scars of drought have healed; the water of life has refilled. Here you’ll learn a new way of life, which was once the way also of Afir and Kikisavo. Here you’ll join a new people, a people who cultivate hope from long fallow fields, who conjure living breath from silent bones, who have turned the City of Ghosts into the Gathering of Life. For us to triumph doesn’t mean they have to lose.
As the singing bone beasts wandered the scrublands, passing herders, Lyucu, Agon, and tanto-lyu-naro, stopped to listen. Long-haired cattle lowed; garinafins moaned; dogs yelped. The hearts of the people were moved, enticed by the spirit portrait of the soul of a people.
The warring chiefs and thanes, alarmed by the singing beasts, ordered their warriors to attack with fury. But the feral garinafins that had been released by Théra came to their rescue. Survivors of the feral garinafin assaults affirmed that the singing arucuro tocua were protected by the gods. Legends grew; myths multiplied.
In time, some of the beasts would become tangled in the grass sea and collapse; others would be destroyed by storm and rain; still others would fall prey to fire-cattle stampedes or garinafin breath, commanded by the ambition of thanes and the pride of chiefs.
But once the story of the Gathering of Life had been told, it couldn’t be untold. Tyrants could burn books and bury scholars, slaughter story-dancers and mutilate spirit portraits. But a lungsong passed from mouth to ear, from heart to mind, could never be silenced.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN THE REIGN OF ENDURING SPRING
THE SHIPPING LANES BETWEEN RUI AND THE BIG ISLAND: THE FOURTH MONTH OF THE FOURTH YEAR IN THE REIGN OF ENDURING SPRING.
The wine-dark sea was dotted with ships.
Once, the waves this far north of the Big Island had been the favored hunting ground of pirates. But city-ship battle groups now patrolled the shipping lanes, their complements of garinafin riders ready to take off at a moment’s notice to enforce the freedom of the seas. The merest glimpse of General Gozotan Rito’s standard—a stylized depiction of Gaslira-sata, the Peace-Bite—was enough to make every remaining pirate captain flee beyond the horizon.
Four years ago, in the immediate aftermath of the Lyucu surrender, most of the ships heading to Ukyu-taasa had ridden low in the water and returned empty. Supplies and workers had to be brought to the devastated islands of Rui and Dasu: rice, sorghum, jars of pickled vegetables to feed the hungry; bolts of cloth and stacks of blankets to clothe the cold; seeds and implements for the empty fields; tools and construction material for the rebuilding of Kriphi—and many, many skilled artisans and workers needed to put everything to use. The Imperial Treasury’s program for the reconstruction of Ukyu-taasa had been like a rich banquet at which everyone wanted a seat, and merchants of every description competed for a lucrative government contract.
