Speaking Bones, page 55
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Inside the Great Tent was the biggest assembly of the thanes of Ukyu-taasa in quite some time. Except for the thanes commanding the remaining city-ships and garinafins facing off against the Dara armada off the southern coast of Rui, every single Lyucu commander of note was present. Even the aged thanes who could barely pick up an axe and who were therefore assigned to watch over the native slave gangs at Tenryo’s Peak had returned.
Tanvanaki seethed at the three figures before her.
There was Noda Mi, kneeling with his forehead against the ground like a groveling dog. There was Goztan, standing with her shoulders hunched, the very image of defeat. Then there was Cutanrovo, circling around the two of them like a prowling wolf, declaiming at the top of her lungs, every phrase spat out like an invective.
“… to plead for the lives of the families of the saboteur slaves? Where is your fighting spirit? Where is your wolf-virtue? Why are you even alive? I should like to tear open your rib cage to see if you have the heart of a sheep—”
“That’s enough,” said Tanvanaki. “Goztan hasn’t even delivered the demands of the Dara invaders.”
“Why do we care? Dara-raaki must be destr—”
Tanvanaki growled and bared her teeth at Cutanrovo. The two locked gazes, and after a long moment, Cutanrovo backed up and lowered her eyes.
Everyone in the tent held their breath and listened as Goztan continued her interrupted account in a weary, dry voice. “I recite for you now the terms offered by Emperor Monadétu of Dara—”
Next to Tanvanaki, the huddled figure of Timu jerked involuntarily. In his mind, his brother remained the young teenaged boy with no patience for the books of the Ano sages and loved games of war. It was difficult for him to reconcile that image with the resourceful and audacious commander who had vanquished the might of the Lyucu expedition.
“—demands your immediate surrender and the cessation of all Lyucu resistance. All remaining city-ships and garinafins shall be turned over to the Dara fleet. All Lyucu warriors must disarm and yield themselves to the custody of native auxiliary commanders, who will cooperate with the landing of the invasion force and the subsequent liberation.”
“I see,” said Tanvanaki, her calm tone betraying no emotion. “Obviously, if we refuse, he will follow with a direct assault on Ukyu-taasa. But what will become of us if we agree to these terms?”
“Emperor Monadétu didn’t reveal his full intentions to me,” said Goztan. “But he did say that for each native who dies from this moment on, the debt must be repaid threefold, even if we attempt to escape beyond the Wall of Storms.”
Tanvanaki said nothing. Neither did anyone else in the tent.
The voice that finally broke the silence belonged to Timu. In halting Lyucu, he said, “My brother speaks harshly but has a compassionate heart. If we surrender and cooperate, I’m certain he will show us mercy just as he showed Thane Goztan mercy.”
Cutanrovo barked a harsh laugh of disbelief. “You think the Dara-raaki emperor will show us mercy? After that threat?”
“I agree with Emperor Thaké,” said Goztan. “Emperor Monadétu can be trusted.”
“Why?” sneered Cutanrovo. “Because he spared you in a moment of weakness? It’s a plot. The Dara-raaki can never be trusted because they are not Lyucu.”
Goztan was at a loss for words. She didn’t know how to articulate the feelings she had when she saw him fight her like a garinafin rider of the scrublands, when he put his sword away to salute her in the Lyucu style, when he dropped his weapon to weep for the senseless deaths of the native slaves.
Unbidden, the image of Oga Kidosu came to her mind.
He was sitting on the deck of Captain Dathama’s city-ship, gutting and cleaning fish in the predawn starlight.
“The sea laps the shores of Dara as well as of Ukyu,” he said. “Before the sea, all are brothers.”
“Because I have fought him,” she croaked, forcing the memory away. “I have seen the nature of his soul.”
Cutanrovo’s lips curled in contempt, but before she could say anything, Tanvanaki broke in.
“What will happen to us isn’t up to Phyro. He doesn’t hold the Seal of Dara because Jia remains the regent. Can you say you know the nature of her soul?”
Goztan held her tongue. She had been pinning her hopes on the young Emperor of Dara, but Tanvanaki was right. There was no telling what Jia would do to the surrendered Lyucu.
“You have lost, old friend,” said Tanvanaki, her voice weary. “The defeated have no voice, no claim to be heard.”
Goztan continued to hold her tongue. What Tanvanaki said was the rule of the scrublands, and how could she claim that it didn’t apply equally to Dara, to Ukyu-taasa, to this very tent?
Timu spoke again. “I will plead for mercy from my mother.”
Around the Great Tent, many Lyucu thanes, even those in the hard-liner faction, looked hopeful at this. Timu was, after all, Jia’s flesh and blood. It was rumored that she had always wanted him to ascend to the Dandelion Throne rather than his brother. The puppet Emperor Thaké, whom they’d always despised, now seemed the best bulwark against the mighty Dara invasion fleet.
“Please, Tanvanaki, there is no point in sending more warriors to die. Dyu-tika and Zaza-tika are my mother’s grandchildren. If all four of us go to her and beg for the lives of the Lyucu people, she will soften. We’re family—”
Tanvanaki turned and struck him with a quick blow to the side of the face. Timu tumbled to the ground. After a moment, he climbed up and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. He did not speak again.
Tanvanaki looked around the tent. “Twice I’ve looked into the eyes of Jia and sounded her soul. At the Battle of Zathin Gulf, she ordered her marshal to target her husband in order to win. And now, though Phyro has been full grown for years, she refuses to let go of the reins of power. This is a woman consumed by ambition without an ounce of human feeling. Do any of you really think she’ll give in to the sniveling tears of a weak boy and two grandchildren she’s never met?”
The spark of hope that had lit up in the eyes of some of the thanes dimmed.
“The moment we disarm ourselves and turn ourselves over to the native auxiliaries,” continued Tanvanaki in her calm voice, as though discussing a new way to divide up pasturing land, as opposed to the very survival of Ukyu-taasa, “what do you imagine will happen? Think about what we’ve done to them and put yourselves in their place. Do you trust that your slaves will show mercy to you?”
She glared at the assembled thanes in turn, and each averted their eyes.
Cutanrovo, her eyes burning with fervor, spoke. “Votan, the Lyucu spirit remains unbowed. Goztan’s failure comes from her refusal to trust in the traditions of our people—”
Goztan couldn’t let this stand. “Had I not deployed the fire archers, we would have lost even earlier and perhaps none of us would have returned alive—”
“You have learned nothing!” roared Cutanrovo. “You corrupted the spirits of our warriors by advocating change! You lost because you put slaves on our sacred garinafins! Are you so blind? Even the mud-footed Dara-raaki could only triumph by learning our ways. We are the predators and they the prey. If only we would return to our pure ancient virtues, if only we would follow the example of the pékyu-votan—”
“What exactly do you propose we do?” interrupted Tanvanaki, her voice icy. “Should I re-create Langiaboto and board a leaky bone raft to charge at the invading fleet, invoking the name of my father? Would you be satisfied if I ordered everyone in this tent to drink kyoffir and smoke tolyusa until they lived in dream-haze and rode forth on the last of our garinafins? Do you believe the Lyucu spirit will magically make us invulnerable to their light-seeking missiles? Look around, Cutanrovo. What. Do. You. Want?”
Cutanrovo looked around the tent. So many of her old comrades had died to subdue this cursed land, and the survivors were either too old or too young. The invasion force that Pékyu Tenryo had taken to these islands had been decimated, and so many of their children were togaten, weakened by native taint.
For a moment, her heart ached with despair and sorrow.
If only the pékyu had listened to me earlier. If only she had attended my spirit rallies and smoked tolyusa with my warriors. If only she hadn’t been deceived by her weakling concubine and the defeatist Goztan!
But she straightened her spine and proudly strode toward the pékyu.
“I am not advocating meaningless suicide, votan. We still have thousands of native troops who would fight for us willingly: some because they had betrayed the Dandelion Throne and they know they’d suffer the same fate as us in the event of a Dara conquest; others because they’ve suffered under the lash for so long that they’ve become arucuro tocua, obedient shells without their own will—”
Tanvanaki broke into her impassioned oration with a long, bitter series of guffaws. “You fool! Your idea of compelling obedience through a regime of terror might have once had some merit, but you carried it too far. You’ve torn down their temples and cities; you’ve desecrated their ancestral graves and spiritual shrines; you’ve turned fertile fields into drought-baked ground; you’ve killed tens of thousands through hard labor and mindless slaughter. You left them with no hope that obedience will improve their lot!”
Cutanrovo refused to back down. “They should have no hope. That is the point.”
“No, you left them with no hope from us,” snarled Tanvanaki. “What do you think will happen if you bring them to the battlefield and they see the hope represented by the invading army of Dara? And as for the Imperial troops who had betrayed the Dandelion Throne and surrendered to us—why do you think Phyro has released the native auxiliaries along with our Lyucu warriors from Crescent Island? He’s sending a message that he’s willing to grant them mercy—”
“Then let’s take away their hope,” countered Cutanrovo. “Votan, you fear a battlefield mutiny by the natives, but the dead slaves at Crescent Island show that we can eliminate that possibility. Let’s augment our strength with an army of able-bodied native slaves between the ages of twelve and sixty and compel their cooperation by gathering their families in killing pits.” Her voice grew louder and louder until it cracked. “If that whelp Phyro tries to invade Ukyu-taasa, his army will pay a heavy price for every inch of ground. What if ten slaves die for every invader? They’ll only be killing their own. We will never yield! We will fight in the beaches, in the fields, among the forests, in the torn towns, across rivers, on the mountains—”
“How exactly do you suggest that we carry out this grand plan of yours with a few thousand surviving Lyucu against tens of thousands of restless natives?” Tanvanaki shouted back just as loudly. “How will you hold half the population of Ukyu-taasa prisoner while forcing the other half to fight? I know that calculation and planning have never been your strength, but surely even you understand that our precarious position has been sustainable only because, despite the horrors you’ve visited upon them, the natives have so far had enough to eat. But we’ve been able to feed them and ourselves only because of tribute shipments from Dara, which have stopped. We can’t even look toward a harvest this fall because your endless purification campaigns have destroyed the agricultural base. When the natives realize that the only choice is between certain death by starvation or a general uprising against us, how do you think that will end?”
“I’ve been working on solving that problem,” protested Cutanrovo. “I’ve already increased the amount of grazing land—”
“Oh, yes, you’ve certainly done that. You’ve razed cities and towns and declared them pastures. You’re driving native slave gangs to dig earth from the mountains to fill in the sea to create more land. But what do you have to show for these efforts? Only the most stubborn of grasses that cut the lips of the cattle grow there, salty and bitter, and our herds are thinner than ever—” Tanvanaki stopped, as though choking on the torrent of words pouring out of her.
The gathered thanes, including Cutanrovo and Goztan, were stunned. Never had the pékyu spoken so forcefully against the hard-liner faction.
At length, Tanvanaki continued in a frosty, calm tone. “At first, I listened to you because you seemed to speak for many warriors who doubted my path, and then, I listened to you because I feared civil strife among the Lyucu. But step by step, I lost my way. I should have pushed hard for Ukyu-taasa to be truly independent, to develop our own agriculture and economy and not become addicted to Dara tribute. It’s too late now; all too late. O Father, how I’ve failed you.” The anguish in her voice was like the cry of a wounded garinafin calf.
Cutanrovo was unrelenting. “That way would have been madness, votan. We cannot become as the barbaric natives and enslave the land to dig food out of mud. It’s not our nature. We came to liberate the land—”
“You speak of liberating the land, but look around you: We live in a land of ashes and waste. There isn’t enough meat and milk for the children—”
“It’s still better than eating rice and sorghum like the slave sheep! Votan, if we must, we can eat the slaves—”
“If I may be granted a few moments of your time, votan.”
Everyone stared at the speaker. It was the forgotten Noda Mi, still kneeling with his forehead pressed into the earthen floor.
“There is no place for you to speak here, slave,” snarled Cutanrovo.
But Tanvanaki held up a hand. “We might as well listen to him—”
“He’s already failed at Crescent Island—”
“He’s about the only native we can trust now,” said Tanvanaki. “He’s hated by his people as much as we are. After all he’s done, you can be sure Jia will show him no more mercy than she’ll show us. Since fighting and surrendering are both terrible choices, perhaps the Loyal Hound can pull something out of his knotty, twisted intestines.”
Noda Mi slammed his head against the ground. “Most Merciful Pékyu, this loyal slave does think there is a third way, beyond surrender and a fight to the last brave Lyucu….”
When he was finished, the inside of the Great Tent was so quiet that even the angry screeching of falcons fighting over carrion in the distance could be heard clearly.
Cutanrovo was the first to recover. Gradually, the stunned expression on her face turned to hope, excitement, pleasure. She was about to step forward to offer her support—
A bloodcurdling howl shattered the silence. “Have you lost all decency?” Timu screamed at the kneeling figure. “Are you even human? Tanvanaki, please, oh please! This will enrage the gods—”
A hard punch drove the air out of his lungs and left him curled up on the ground. Tanvanaki waved her hand, and two naros ran up to drag the spasming body of the emperor away.
“I will not be part of this,” said Goztan, her voice quiet but resolute. “Tanvanaki, when will you stop? Is there no line you won’t cross?”
“We must win,” said Tanvanaki. Both her voice and gaze were pleading. “The defeated have no voice.”
Goztan shook her head. “No victory can come from Noda’s proposal. It is a betrayal of the very Lyucu spirit that you hold so dear.”
Cutanrovo took a threatening step toward her. “Do you intend to rebel against the pékyu?”
Goztan looked at her with pity and contempt. “You are crueler and more harmful than any rebel because you’ve blinded and deafened the pékyu with your fantasy. But you’re nothing but a coward and a worm. I will fight you to my last breath.”
“You leave me no choice,” said Tanvanaki, weary and pained. “Goztan, you’re hereby stripped of all your rank and command. To protect the morale of the warriors from your defeatism, you are to be placed under constant guard until you change your mind.”
She turned to Cutanrovo and Noda Mi. “Make it happen.”
PAN: THE EIGHTH MONTH OF THE ELEVENTH YEAR OF THE REIGN OF SEASON OF STORMS AND THE REIGN OF AUDACIOUS FREEDOM.
The airship Grace of Kings had once been the vessel of choice for Emperor Ragin as he traveled around his realm. It was the ship he had ridden as he departed the Big Island for the last time on that fateful expedition to take back Rui and Dasu from the Lyucu invaders more than a decade ago. It was also the ship that could have carried him to safety as his forces were surrounded by Pékyu Tenryo’s army—until he chose to dismount to save the lives of his people.
Sleek, light, and equipped with both kite-sails and feather oars, it was the fastest airship the Imperial engineers had ever designed.
Since then, the airship had been a trophy Tanvanaki displayed from time to time to honor the gods and to rekindle memories of the glory of Lyucu arms. On these occasions, native slaves were brought out to row the airship to take Tanvanaki on a tour of Ukyu-taasa.
Years after its departure from the core islands, Grace of Kings was once again winging its way over the turbulent sea between Rui and the Big Island. Only this time, it was on a mission not of conquest, but peace.
The Lyucu warriors onboard whipped the oar slaves mercilessly. The enslaved natives gritted their teeth and didn’t cry out. When some finally succumbed to exhaustion and collapsed in their seats, they were tossed into the endless waves below.
Faster! Faster! urged the Lyucu overseers. They were in a race against time. Tanvanaki had dispatched messengers to the Dara armada explaining that she needed time to consider his terms, and Phyro had given her an ultimatum of five days. In the dark of the night, Grace of Kings had taken off with a secret delegation headed by Noda Mi, and the ship had made a long detour to the east around the Dara armada before turning for the northern coast of the Big Island.
On the morning of the second day, after half of the galley slaves had died in the mad dash across the ocean, Grace of Kings was intercepted by several Imperial airships off the coast of old Rima. The Lyucu ship displayed the white flag of truce and was escorted to Pan.
