Speaking Bones, page 27
“Votan! Votan! The Wall is closing! What should we do?”
Cutanrovo shook herself as if awakening from a nightmare, and she looked toward the horizon. There, the two disconnected parts of the Wall were drawing together, much like the curtains at the end of a native stage play—another corrupt Dara practice that she had stamped out.
But… the mud-legs’ ridiculous stories do contain a kernel of wisdom: They say that there is a second act, don’t they? It’s… like the triumph of Kikisavo and Afir after the horrors at the end of the Fifth Age.
She held up her hands, and the cacophony around her ceased.
“Votan-ru-taasa, votan-sa-taasa,” she began. Brothers, sisters. This was how Pékyu Tenryo had once begun the speech that rallied a despondent people into seeking vengeance, how every great hero of the Lyucu people had started the word dances that would lift them out of the cold, dark night into a sunlit morning.
“We are faced with a greater challenge now than we have ever faced in these islands. There will be no reinforcements from beyond the Wall of Storms, no aid from the homeland.”
Everyone was transfixed, their faces stony. Though Cutanrovo had simply voiced aloud what everyone was already thinking, there was a power to the articulation of truth with thinking-breath that shook them to the core.
“I know your hearts are heavy, and your limbs tired. I know you’re full of doubt and question. Without reinforcements, how can we overcome the crafty barbarians who breed like moonfur rats? How can we withstand their endless hordes, even if each Lyucu warrior fights with the strength of ten, nay, a hundred Dara-raaki? Even a sturdy reef will be worn down by the relentless tides, and even a brave wolf cannot vanquish a thousand bleating sheep in a mindless, cowardly stampede. Have we been walking down the wrong path? Is this how the gods intend to finish us?”
Shamans, thanes, naros, culeks hung on her every word. Somehow, speaking aloud the fear in their hearts also made it less frightening.
“I do not know the answers, votan-ru-taasa, votan-sa-taasa. Only the gods know the future, and they may have indeed abandoned us.”
The crowd murmured in agitation. Cutanrovo was speaking the unspeakable.
“However, it’s not the gods we should count on, but ourselves. It is in times of despair that we most need to remember who we are. Do you recall how Kikisavo and Afir had once stood naked in the world, without weapons, helmets, allies, mounts? Do you recall how Pékyu Tenryo had once been confronted with a fleet the likes of which no Lyucu had ever seen, each ship bigger than the biggest whale, each laden with barbarians wielding weapons that dealt death from a distance, that seemed as terrifying and powerful as the weapons of the end of the Fifth Age?
“Did the gods help Kikisavo and Afir willingly? Did the gods tell Pékyu Tenryo what to do?”
The crowd was mesmerized. Cutanrovo seemed to be showing them a new way of seeing the world. Even the shamans did not protest this challenge to their authority from their chief.
“No!” Cutanrovo roared. “The gods did not aid our ancestors until our ancestors proved that they didn’t need them! Kikisavo and Afir challenged the gods and defeated them through cunning and audacity, and Pékyu Tenryo enslaved the strangers with mortal guile and living courage. These stories are in our blood; they affirm our nature; we are the people who overcome gods and demons without anyone’s help but our own. We earn the fear of our foes and the trust of our divine kin!
“Pékyu Tenryo’s axe was called Langiaboto, and though it now lies at the bottom of the sea, its spirit, the spirit of self-reliance, abides with us. Even if the gods have abandoned us, we cannot abandon who we are.
“Ten dyudyu diakyoga?”
She waited.
The responses came in scattered, hesitant.
She asked again, louder, “Ten dyudyu diakyoga?”
This time, the responses were more coherent, in sync.
She screamed, her face red with blood, “Ten dyudyu diakyoga?”
The responding chorus boomed with confidence and strength, as though many tiny streams had commingled into a powerful river.
“Lyucu kyo!”
She turned to issue fresh orders to her guards. As they ran off, she turned back to the crowd.
“The answer for every new challenge can be found in our past, in the stories that have been passed down from generation to generation, through living breath. The barbarians have nothing to rely on but the dead wax word-scars of their ancestors—as mindless as the tracks left by aurochs herds hurtling over cliffs, as disgusting as mouflon dung piled by water bubbles in grass seas, as lifeless as charred prairie partridge carcasses in the wake of scrubland fires, as breathless as moonfur corpses buried in their trampled tunnels. What should we do with them? What should the tusked tiger do to the silence-shocked calves? What should the wolf do to the trembling lambs?”
The crowd roared, stomped their feet, slammed their weapons against the masts and gunwales. “Kill them!” “Castrate them!” “Roast them!”
Cutanrovo’s guards returned, pushing through the crowd. The two in the front carried a large wooden barrel. Behind the guards came twenty Dara slaves in chains—many of them had served the crew as cooks, drudges, garinafin grooms, sexual outlets for the warriors.
“What should we do with them?” Cutanrovo asked again.
“Dara-raaki must be destroyed! Kill! Kill! KILL!”
Cutanrovo raised her fists and slammed them together. She took several steps back, the skull cape rattling on her body. Her guards left the chained slaves on the foredeck, where they stood, dazed. They carried the wooden barrel in front of Cutanrovo and popped off the lid.
Cutanrovo reached in and grabbed handfuls of the rich, bright red tolyusa of Dara, the only good thing in this gods-forsaken land, and scattered them among the crowd.
“Feast! And manifest your nature!”
The fevered crowd rushed forward and grabbed the tolyusa berries, catching them in the air or picking them off the deck before they were trampled. This was a supply that would have lasted days for thousands at the Winter Festival, but now it would be consumed by the ship’s crew in a single afternoon.
As the berry juice boiled their blood and filled their minds with visions of glorious battle, the warriors turned on the terrified slaves. Screams and piteous howls filled the air as the Lyucu beat, kicked, bit, tore. Soon, the Dara slaves were submerged beneath a bloody tide of nails and teeth.
By the time the tide finally receded, the slaves were gone. Some of the Lyucu warriors held up torn limbs or pieces of flesh, many had blood dripping from their lips, and the deck was streaked with gore.
Cutanrovo stepped forward, bending to pick up a severed head. The white skull showed through where the flesh had been bitten off. She poked a short bit of sinew through the eye sockets and attached the bloody trophy to her skull cape.
“Ten dyudyu diakyoga?”
“Lyucu kyo!”
“Who don’t need the favor of the gods at all?”
“The Lyucu people!”
Clouds raced across the sky, never settling into any form. As the Wall of Storms closed, a new storm was brewing in Dara itself. The will of the gods, native or otherwise, remained elusive.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN CONSPIRACY
GINPEN: THE SIXTH MONTH OF THE ELEVENTH YEAR OF THE REIGN OF SEASON OF STORMS AND THE REIGN OF AUDACIOUS FREEDOM.
Historically, Ginpen had never been a great trading hub. The city’s Moralist scholars disdained commerce, which they viewed as a distraction from the high-mindedness of Haan’s people. The Tiro kings of Haan taxed the harbor heavily and didn’t allow much to be done in the way of expansion or maintenance.
The Xana conquest, which sank most of the Haan fleet in the harbor, further reduced the attractiveness of sea routes to the city. It took years of dredging and salvaging under the reign of Emperor Ragin to clear out the wrecks and restore full access to the docks.
But the tributary trading missions to the conquered islands of Rui and Dasu gave the port of Ginpen a new significance. Fear of a Lyucu invasion led to heavy investment by Empress Jia in the naval presence at Ginpen—one of the few military expenditures she approved of—and the harbor had to be deepened and the wharves expanded to accommodate the large, deep-draft warships and cargo vessels. Large warehouses were constructed to store the goods destined for Unredeemed Dara and many stevedores had to be hired to load the ships.
Once all this infrastructure had been built, it made little sense for it to remain idle for much of the year, in between tributary trading missions. Since the civil service code by which roaming Imperial officials were judged and promoted measured, as one of their accomplishments, the economic productivity of the regions under their charge, successive governors of Haan and mayors of Ginpen sought ways to promote more efficient use of Ginpen’s modernized harbor. In this endeavor they were also helped by the sensible Imperial tax policies initiated by Prime Minister Cogo Yelu, which promoted trade to make Dara more robust against natural disasters, to encourage the mingling of Dara’s peoples, and to reduce lingering regional prejudices.
In this manner, Ginpen became one of the busiest port cities in all Dara. Even if the city wasn’t quite as prosperous as sprawling Dimushi or old-money Toaza, it was a far more commerce-driven city than elegant Müning or fog-shrouded Boama.
At first, the city’s elders and taste-making noble families saw the influx of barely literate merchants obsessed with profit as an assault on the city’s scholarly character—not only did they make everything more expensive, but they also hired away the best servants with higher wages and caused a veritable flood of uncouth peasants into the city in hopes of finding jobs as laborers. But over time, as Imperial officials wisely encouraged merchants to donate to Ginpen’s civic and religious institutions, opinion began to shift. The new money gave ancient public academies modern lecture halls and state-of-the-art laboratory equipment (powerful silkmotic generators were not cheap); attracted scholars from afar to found private schools teaching fresh ideas; expanded existing temples; funded new shrines (the biggest new shrines were for Luan Zyaji, the great explorer—many merchants braving the seas for profit claimed to see themselves reflected in the man’s maritime exploits—and to Mata Zyndu, the Hegemon, now improbably worshipped by the marines and sailors of the navy and scholars cramming for the Imperial examinations alike, as both groups claimed “courage” as their defining trait); renovated the statues of the gods; and brought artists, craftspeople, folk opera troupes, street performers, and inventors from every corner of Dara into Ginpen’s bustling markets.
The Moralists now spoke of Ginpen’s new golden age, a time when scholarship flourished as never before. They might still disdain petty commerce, but they enjoyed its fruits.
All of which was to say that Ginpen, as a microcosm of Dara under the regency of Empress Jia, was the perfect stage for political drama.
* * *
Aya Mazoti, the newly appointed Admiral of the Tributary Fleet, couldn’t understand how a routine tributary mission had turned into such a disaster before she had even set foot aboard her flagship.
Riding tall on a horse at the head of a cargo convoy escorted by a full regiment of the empire’s elite soldiers, a ceremonial cape embroidered with a thousand sword-petaled dandelions draping over her golden armor, a giant flag showing a blue breaching cruben on a red field flapping over her head—she was the very embodiment of the authority of the Dandelion Throne. This should be a moment of triumph: the full redemption of the Mazoti name. She had finally fulfilled the expectation of her mentors and teachers. The daughter of an accused traitor was now an admiral!
But instead of celebrating, the agitated crowd lining both sides of the street screamed and cursed at her. Behind her, soldiers cowered in silent resentment. In front of her, a young woman, an official, lay in the middle of the road. To make forward progress, Aya would have to trample her with her horse’s hooves.
Hundreds of scholars—toko dawiji, cashima, even a few pana méji—knelt in neat rows beyond the official, holding up silk scrolls with giant logograms: Traitor, Coward, Death before dishonor, The writing knife stands with the fighting sword!
And beyond the last row of scholars, she saw ranks of men and women standing in silence, all of them middle-aged or even silver-haired. Some were dressed in the hemp clothing of the peasantry, some were in tattered rags, and a few looked like prosperous artisans or merchants. Many stood with the aid of a crutch or wooden leg, some sported an artificial arm, and a few sat in wheeled chairs.
No matter their wealth or station, the silent protesters were united by the same resolute expression and the small wooden tablets they held up, covered in wax military insignia: red for the air force; blue for the navy; green for the army; five bars for the rank of fifty-chief; a circle for the rank of hundred-chief; cruben scales in increasing numbers for ensigns, sergeants, corporals, captains; a sword for a soldier or a marine; an oar for a sailor; falcon wings for an aviator; stylized flowers for distinguished service, acts of bravery, wounds suffered in battle….
They were veterans from Dara’s wars, and even without armor or weapons, their disciplined mute formation offered a solemn rebuke to Aya even more severe than the clamorous commoners.
* * *
Back in Pan, Princess Fara had warned Aya.
“You must decline the appointment!”
“Why should I do that?” asked Aya, miffed that her best friend wasn’t more excited for her.
Fara had changed a great deal in the two years after those hectic months in Ginpen, the first time she had been away from the palace on her own. Though she still took delight in provoking insufferable Prince Gimoto and mocking his friends, she was more subdued at riddle parties and no longer obsessed after every bit of gossip about handsome actors. In fact, often she turned down Aya’s invitations to playhouses and amusing outings, claiming to be too busy. Fara’s maids told Aya that the princess painted, wrote poetry, read histories, played music, and often went to the markets alone, watching the performances of folk troupes and talking to the rustic performers. Aya had no idea why Fara found these plebeian, sentimental stories interesting. All she knew was that the two of them, once inseparable as sisters, were no longer as close.
“Haven’t you been paying attention?” asked Fara. “The empress’s desk is groaning under the weight of petitions from the College of Advocates denouncing this mission.”
“I don’t care how many of those young hotheads are carping about the empress’s choice,” said Aya contemptuously. “She is the decider and she has made her will known.”
“It’s not that simple,” said Fara. “Oh, by the Twins, I’m no good at politics and intrigue, but even I can tell you that there is more to this than what the empress wants.”
Aya resented the way Fara sounded… so adult. “I’m so glad to have your tutelage, my wise sister. I hadn’t realized that you are much more experienced with the world than I.”
Fara ignored the sarcasm. “Having traveled around Dara, I can tell you there are many who don’t want this peace. The veterans’ societies are influential, and there are more and more folk operas celebrating resistance.”
That was another thing that had changed. Fara would often leave on long trips by herself to Ginpen, Boama, or remote hamlets in Faça and Rima. Ostensibly, these were trips to visit Widow Wasu or distant relatives from her mother’s side of the family, but Aya found Fara’s answers about what she did on these trips evasive and vague. Mystified, she had abused her authority as an anti-piracy commander and demanded that the farseers keep the princess under surveillance on the pretext of protecting her from pirate abduction attempts. The farseers’ reports showed that Fara spent a lot of time visiting refugees from Unredeemed Dara who had settled in small communities all over the northern shore of the Big Island.
“Who cares what some aged veterans think?” said Aya. “The holder of the Seal of Dara decides to go to war or not, and it’s the job of the army to carry out the sovereign’s will. Anyway, this appointment is a great honor. I’ll be the youngest person ever to be given command of a fleet of this size!”
“But it’s a fleet to deliver tribute and a treaty akin to terms of surrender—” Fara paused. “It’s hardly an… honor.”
“Says who?” Aya’s face reddened. “ ‘To achieve a peace without slaughter is the highest of victories.’ My mother said so. Even if my job appears to be only delivering a message, it is an important command and a crucial step in my military career.”
“Since when have you cared about your military career?” Fara asked in disbelief. “It was always Zomi and Phyro who pushed this life on you, trying to tell you that you must fulfill a destiny. But you don’t have to live up to the stories others tell about you.”
Fara is right, but she doesn’t understand, not really, Aya thought.
* * *
Reluctantly, Aya dismounted and approached the official lying on the ground. She covered the short distance on foot with some difficulty—the heavy golden armor and clingy water-silk cape looked good but weren’t very practical.
This official, whoever she was, was clearly the leader of the protest.
She tried to kneel down in mipa rari, but found that the stiff armor prevented her from doing so. Making a mental note to adjust her costume—no, uniform—for more comfort and range of movement in the future, Aya bent forward awkwardly, placing her hands on her knees.
“Perhaps there is some misunderstanding,” she began. She tried to imitate the demeanor and tone of Prime Minister Cogo Yelu: authoritative but not arrogant, firm but also understanding. “My mission is of great importance, authorized and commanded by Empress Jia herself. It cannot be delayed. If you have some grievance that you wish to bring to the attention of—”
