Speaking Bones, page 60
Jia stared at her. As understanding dawned, her face twisted in horror.
“No,” said Jia, backing away. “NO!”
“Teeth on the board,” said Risana, pressing forward. “Isn’t that what you believe?”
“No, no, no! Please!” Jia was backed up against the edge of the Moon-Gazing Tower. She brought her hands protectively up to her face.
Risana leaned in close and hissed in her face, her breath a blast of darkest winter. “This isn’t me. I’m just a part of you. You already know what you must do.”
Jia lost her balance and fell—
She gasped as she sat up in her bedroom, drenched in cold sweat. Alone in her room, she wrapped her arms around herself and wept.
* * *
Soto hurried through the corridors of the Imperial family’s private quarters. The ladies-in-waiting and the courtiers bowed as she passed.
Soto’s mind was all turmoil. She couldn’t find Zomi Kidosu anywhere, and she was afraid that the young hothead had committed some error impossible to fix. She had to go find Jia now.
Whatever Jia’s faults were, she was her friend. There was no way that Jia would be plotting with Cogo Yelu to collaborate with the Lyucu just so she could stay in power. Zomi’s conspiracy theory was too preposterous to be credited. Every fiber of her being told her it was untrue.
“You promised me,” Soto muttered to herself as she followed the winding hallways and through heavy doors. Jia had made her a promise on the day Risana died. She intended to hold Jia to it.
* * *
There was a vase in the corner of Jia’s bedchamber. Inside the vase were yellow flowers of different varieties: chrysanthemums, dandelions, peonies, sunflowers, eggs-and-noodles….
The petals, made of diaphanous silk, began to spin like tiny windmills, though there was no breeze.
The artificial flowers were connected via silver wires to golden dandelion-shaped medallions embedded in the walls of the long corridor leading to her bedchamber—a common decorative motif throughout the palace. At the center of each of those medallions, however, was a piece of oculium, a little eye. They responded to changes in the lighting in the hallway, and announced passing shadows via the signaling spinners in the vase in her room.
Just because she didn’t want Phyro to go to war didn’t mean that she didn’t appreciate his inventions.
Human guards, however vigilant, could never be as tireless and incorruptible as mechanical ones.
Jia sat up. It was time.
Are you going to finally abandon me, Soto?
Now that the moment had arrived, she felt preternaturally calm. The path she had chosen to walk was a lonely one, and she had always known that none of her mortal loves could survive it. Not her devotion to sensitive, vulnerable Timu; not her care for brave, self-reliant Théra; not her concern for adventurous, idealistic Phyro; and certainly not her affection for Soto, the one and only friend she had left.
She had to find a use for what she couldn’t keep. Had to.
She remembered once again the terror and isolation she had lived through as a prisoner of the Hegemon. Mata had believed he was reshaping Dara to be better, to cleanse it of the base and low. Who cared if the bones and blood of lesser beings paved his way? War ravaged the land and people died like ants.
Alone, she had saved the orphaned girls who would become the Dyran Fins. Alone, she had managed a household. Alone, she had raised her children.
Until Soto came.
In some ways, she felt closer to her than she ever did to Kuni. Soto was not a lover, but she was the mirror of her soul. Their bond was forged in the most unforgettable, horrific part of her life.
She forced those thoughts away. Risana was right. She already knew what she had to do. The best lies were made from truths.
She had to do terrible things to prevent even more terrible futures. Even if she had to sacrifice her family, friends, those dearest to her heart.
Her heart clenched and she found it hard to breathe.
But she had to. Had to. How else could she be sure that Phyro would not seek to emulate the Hegemon, a man who believed that any price was worth paying in order to confront evil? A man who believed in reshaping Dara by the sword, and who deemed all who fell quislings, traitors, cowards, slaves, of lesser natures?
She couldn’t trust. She had to do. She had to cultivate and encourage his nature, and in that process, save Dara as well as him from himself.
She took a deep breath, and began to speak.
* * *
Soto slowed down as she entered the twisting corridor that led to the empress’s private suite. Her steps were slow and silent. She knew that Jia had trouble sleeping these days, and she didn’t want to disturb her friend if she happened to be napping.
Jia’s voice echoed down the corridor.
“Go find Lady Soto and invite her to tea.”
There was a pause, and someone seemed to be whispering deferentially before Jia’s voice sounded again.
“No. I’ll brew the pot myself. Once she is here, guard the door. Do not enter until summoned.”
Another pause. More whispers.
“Just one cup. That will be all.”
Just one cup.
A silent thunderclap went off in Soto’s head. She faltered, having to hold on to the wall for balance. She couldn’t hear anything except the rush of blood in her ears.
“Have I finally lost you, Soto? Will you plunge Dara into civil strife?”
“For the sake of the people, I will keep your secret for now. But if you do not give up the reins of power when Phyro is ready, I swear by the Twins that I will proclaim the truth to every corner of Dara.”
And here it was, the moment she had never believed would come. Jia, who preferred poison as her way of execution, was inviting her to tea.
Just one cup.
She had to go to Phyro and tell him the truth. She had to get out of here before Jia found her.
Quietly, she snuck away. She didn’t stop to return the bows of anyone in the palace, and she didn’t care that they looked at her strangely.
* * *
For a long time after the flower petals had stopped spinning, Jia sat in her room, staring at the wall as sunlight shifted and shadows chased each other across the floor.
There was no tea set on the table; no pot, nor a single cup.
She was alone in the room.
At length, she roused herself. There was indeed poison to prepare, and horrors only she could unleash. Once the treaty was concluded, the shipments to the pirates would increase. It was time to think about sprinkling the fungal spores she had carefully cultivated… perhaps into the next set of crates Wi and Shido would send to Tiphan Huto.
She left her room and strode toward the Imperial Garden, toward her shed. She walked alone, as she always knew she would have to.
LATER, OFF THE COAST OF RUI, NEAR KRIPHI.
Phyro listened quietly as Soto told her story.
For a long time, he didn’t respond. He was like a volcano just before eruption, the tension within boiling and building.
“Hudo-tika, talk to me,” pleaded Soto. She had escaped Pan by bluffing her way onto yet another Imperial messenger airship dispatched to Phyro. The empress’s favor for her was well known, and the crew had not dared to question her. Soto had sighed with relief when no guards came from the palace—perhaps Jia had not realized that she had gone and was still searching for her to invite her to tea, thereby burying the secret of Risana’s death forever.
Phyro didn’t care about the riddles being posed at the Dandelion Court; he didn’t care about Cogo Yelu’s betrayal; he didn’t care about Jia’s plot to keep the Seal of Dara for herself.
“She killed my mother?” Phyro asked, pausing between each word. He wanted to be absolutely sure he understood the only thing that mattered.
Soto nodded.
He closed his eyes wearily. So many things that never made sense before were coming into focus now. How else to explain the excessive honors Jia heaped on his mother year after year, while neglecting Fara’s mother? How else to explain the constant efforts to deny him power, to prevent him from making any decision that mattered? Jia’s conscience was troubled. She was guilty.
The word “aunt-mother” tasted like ashes on his tongue. To think that he had deferred to that unreadable mask of a face for so many years! He was indeed naive, too quick to trust.
She was more poisonous than a viper, more cruel than a wolf, more devious than a spider. She had murdered his mother.
“What are you going to do?” asked Soto.
Phyro didn’t know.
He had already decided to abandon the conquest of Unredeemed Dara and hand over the seal of command to Gori Ruthi and Lady Ragi—but he hadn’t done so yet. He could still summon Puma Yemu and seize the military monitors; he could announce the sins of Jia to his soldiers; he could march on Pan at the head of his army.
He could rebel against Jia, as she had always feared he would.
“O Mother, my mother,” he muttered.
Down that path lay the deaths of hundreds of thousands in civil strife, as brother fought against brother, son against mother. Was he willing to let the flames of war sweep across all the Islands?
He imagined the confusion of his soldiers as they were told that they had turned, overnight, from liberators into rebels.
Jia was not Mapidéré, nor was she the Hegemon. Though she had abandoned the people of Rui and Dasu, she had ushered in a period of unprecedented prosperity in Dara. She was not, to most, an unfit regent and sovereign.
Still, they would follow him, he thought. At least enough would that he would have a viable chance at conquering Dara at the head of an army.
But that would be wrong. They had joined him to fulfill a vision of freedom, to liberate the Islands from the cruel Lyucu. For him to lead them into the horrors of civil war would be a betrayal of that vision, of mutagé, of everything his father and mother had believed in.
Risana was born a commoner, and she had always believed it was unjust for the lowborn to die for the ambitions of the great lords. If he were to plunge the Islands into chaos and slaughter to satisfy a private craving for vengeance, he would be no better than Noda Mi.
He was no longer Emperor Monadétu, no longer Prince Phyro, no longer the commander of the army of Dara. Even if he hadn’t already decided to abandon the conquest of Rui and Dasu, Soto’s revelation changed everything.
Jia had murdered his mother, and it was up to him, as a man, as a son, as Hudo-tika, to avenge her. Nothing else mattered. Empire, duty, freedom, mutagé—none of these abstractions weighed as much as that one incontrovertible, concrete truth: He loved his mother, and one fought out of love.
“Lady Soto,” he said, “I thank you for telling me the truth.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Soto again.
“Years ago, my father slew a white serpent, and became the man he was,” Phyro said. “I’m going to slay another serpent.”
“Are you going to rebel?”
“No,” he said. “From this moment on I’m no longer a member of the House of Dandelion, but a fury-driven sword of justice. She may be the most powerful ruler in all the land, but she breathes and bleeds as any mortal.”
Jia had killed Risana with her own hands, not with an army; the only honorable response was for him to kill her with his own hands, like the wandering swordsmen of old, righting a personal wrong in person. It was his nature.
“Then I’m coming with you,” said Soto. “You’ll no longer have your army, but you still need friends.”
Phyro summoned Puma Yemu and gave him the seal of command, to be turned over to the Imperial envoys in the morning. Then he handed over Na-aroénna.
“Rénga! What is this—”
“I’m leaving. I cannot go back to Pan a prisoner—”
“What!? How can you—”
“Listen to me! There’s no time to explain. This sword, a sword to pacify armies, is too heavy and unwieldy for the task I have in mind. Hold on to it for me. When you’re back on the Big Island, go find Zen-Kara and give it to her.”
“Why?”
A slight hesitation. “If I should succeed, she’ll know by this sword that I meant what I said when I made a promise to her. If I should fail, it is something to remember me by.”
Puma looked bewildered and crestfallen. “Are you certain you know the right path?”
“I have no doubt.”
Accompanied by no one except Mota Kiphi and Lady Soto, Phyro strode across the deck of the city-ship and boarded a tiny messenger airship. The teardrop-shaped vessel soon faded into the predawn darkness.
PART THREE STONE-TWISTED ROOTS
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE THE BONEYARD
THE BONEYARD, UKYU-GONDÉ: THE TWELFTH MONTH IN THE TENTH YEAR AFTER THE DEPARTURE OF PRINCESS THÉRA FROM DARA FOR UKYU-GONDÉ (SEVEN MONTHS AFTER PÉKYU THÉRA’S ASSAULT ON TATEN AND THE DESTRUCTION OF THE LYUCU EXPEDITION FLEET).
Before Phyro had launched his failed invasion, before the armies of Ukyu-taasa and Dara had clashed within the Wall of Storms, before the Dandelion Court had been shaken to its very foundation for an old crime, another grand drama was playing out on the other shore touched by the great belt current…
* * *
It took Tovo most of the summer and fall to consolidate power in the chaotic aftermath of the death of Pékyu Cudyu.
The loss of the centralized garinafin army meant that the Lyucu tribes reverted to their ancient state of war of all against all before Pékyu Tenryo’s unification. Since Cudyu was too young to have designated an official successor, surviving thanes fought over the young pékyus-taasa like living symbols of the pékyu’s office, each harboring dreams of becoming the next ruler of the scrublands.
All across the scrublands, the long-subjugated Agon tribes, sensing a power vacuum, began to raid some of the lesser Lyucu tribes. Refugees from the defeated Lyucu tribes streamed to Taten for aid.
This gave Tovo the opportunity he had been craving. Naming himself Protector of the Lyucu, he rallied the dispirited remnants of Cudyu’s army and the refugees at Taten. Though there was much mutual suspicion among the surviving Lyucu thanes, he persuaded them to put their power struggles on hold until the Agon-Dara alliance under the upstart Pékyu Théra had been defeated and Pékyu-votan Cudyu’s death had been avenged.
That meant an assault on the Boneyard, where Théra had established her new rebel base, even if the war had to be fought in the heart of winter, the harshest season in Ukyu-Gondé.
While Tovo had on hand only a small number of garinafins, scouting revealed that the Agon-Dara alliance also had few garinafins of their own. Tovo decided that they couldn’t afford to wait. Recapturing the escaped garinafins would take years, and with each passing month, he risked having Théra grow stronger.
The assault on the Boneyard would then have to be conducted mainly from the ground, which didn’t frighten Tovo in the least. Even at the height of the Lyucu-Agon wars, when both sides fielded giant armies of hundreds of garinafins in each battle, the ground assault remained an important part of warfare. Garinafins could unleash great destruction on a ground army with no air support, but air superiority alone was insufficient to subjugate a determined enemy.
* * *
About two hundred miles to the northeast of Taten lay the Boneyard.
If the terrain of most of the scrublands resembled the rough but flat hide of a garinafin, then the badlands of the Boneyard were the massive battle scars. The torn skin and muscle had healed imperfectly over cauterized blood vessels, leaving the surface full of deep gouges, ridges, bumps, and cords.
Thunderstorms in spring and summer caused flash floods and raging torrents that carved deep gullies and ravines into the landscape, and the constant howling winds deepened and widened these, leaving mesas and buttes towering over the treacherous maze. In winter, water trapped in seams turned into relentless ice, and entire cliff sides and rock spurs fell away like calving icebergs. The patient sculptor that was nature turned the region into an uninhabited metropolis of monumental architecture: mountainous arches as breathtaking as rainbows, precipitous bridges sized for city-ships, buttes and spires whose profiles brought to mind the ancient monsters at the end of the Fifth Age of Mankind, lofty hoodoos that rose like the columns of ruined temples erected by larger-than-life heroes for unimaginable gods.
The latticed landscape, alternating parts exposed to the merciless glare of the sun and parts in permanent, deep shade, created a thousand different miniature climate regions, each no more than a few miles squared. While the parched side of a ravine felt like the middle of the Lurodia Tanta, a few hundred feet away, inside one of the caves, a salty spring bubbled and left crystalline growths on the rocky walls like the ice blossoms of Nalyufin’s Pasture.
The drastic microclimate variations also meant that the badlands, as well as the scrublands immediately bordering the region, brimmed with constant, strong, but also unpredictably shifting winds in all seasons. Updrafts, downdrafts, tornadoes, wind shears… there was perhaps nowhere else in Ukyu-Gondé where navigation and sustained flight were so difficult for birds as well as garinafins.
Viewed from above, the badlands resembled the skeleton of some gigantic, mythical creature whose desiccated skin was in the last stage of sloughing off. But that was not how the region got its name.
* * *
Across the frost-encrusted scrubland, ten thousand Lyucu warriors marched with Tovo.
“Ten dyudyu cupéruna?” he shouted, to keep up their spirits.
“Lyucu kyo.” The responses were scattered, lackadaisical.
The warriors, clad in thick furs, marched uneasily, their moods as varied as their mismatched banners and weaponry. This was no longer the professional army of Pékyu Tenryo, buoyed by the vision of conquest, nor was it the disciplined brigade of Pékyu Cudyu, determined to crush all outbreaks of rebellion; rather, Tovo’s troops were like a collection of raiding parties temporarily united by a common prey, with each thane barely acknowledging the authority of the “Protector” because they trusted him just a little bit more than they trusted one another.
“No,” said Jia, backing away. “NO!”
“Teeth on the board,” said Risana, pressing forward. “Isn’t that what you believe?”
“No, no, no! Please!” Jia was backed up against the edge of the Moon-Gazing Tower. She brought her hands protectively up to her face.
Risana leaned in close and hissed in her face, her breath a blast of darkest winter. “This isn’t me. I’m just a part of you. You already know what you must do.”
Jia lost her balance and fell—
She gasped as she sat up in her bedroom, drenched in cold sweat. Alone in her room, she wrapped her arms around herself and wept.
* * *
Soto hurried through the corridors of the Imperial family’s private quarters. The ladies-in-waiting and the courtiers bowed as she passed.
Soto’s mind was all turmoil. She couldn’t find Zomi Kidosu anywhere, and she was afraid that the young hothead had committed some error impossible to fix. She had to go find Jia now.
Whatever Jia’s faults were, she was her friend. There was no way that Jia would be plotting with Cogo Yelu to collaborate with the Lyucu just so she could stay in power. Zomi’s conspiracy theory was too preposterous to be credited. Every fiber of her being told her it was untrue.
“You promised me,” Soto muttered to herself as she followed the winding hallways and through heavy doors. Jia had made her a promise on the day Risana died. She intended to hold Jia to it.
* * *
There was a vase in the corner of Jia’s bedchamber. Inside the vase were yellow flowers of different varieties: chrysanthemums, dandelions, peonies, sunflowers, eggs-and-noodles….
The petals, made of diaphanous silk, began to spin like tiny windmills, though there was no breeze.
The artificial flowers were connected via silver wires to golden dandelion-shaped medallions embedded in the walls of the long corridor leading to her bedchamber—a common decorative motif throughout the palace. At the center of each of those medallions, however, was a piece of oculium, a little eye. They responded to changes in the lighting in the hallway, and announced passing shadows via the signaling spinners in the vase in her room.
Just because she didn’t want Phyro to go to war didn’t mean that she didn’t appreciate his inventions.
Human guards, however vigilant, could never be as tireless and incorruptible as mechanical ones.
Jia sat up. It was time.
Are you going to finally abandon me, Soto?
Now that the moment had arrived, she felt preternaturally calm. The path she had chosen to walk was a lonely one, and she had always known that none of her mortal loves could survive it. Not her devotion to sensitive, vulnerable Timu; not her care for brave, self-reliant Théra; not her concern for adventurous, idealistic Phyro; and certainly not her affection for Soto, the one and only friend she had left.
She had to find a use for what she couldn’t keep. Had to.
She remembered once again the terror and isolation she had lived through as a prisoner of the Hegemon. Mata had believed he was reshaping Dara to be better, to cleanse it of the base and low. Who cared if the bones and blood of lesser beings paved his way? War ravaged the land and people died like ants.
Alone, she had saved the orphaned girls who would become the Dyran Fins. Alone, she had managed a household. Alone, she had raised her children.
Until Soto came.
In some ways, she felt closer to her than she ever did to Kuni. Soto was not a lover, but she was the mirror of her soul. Their bond was forged in the most unforgettable, horrific part of her life.
She forced those thoughts away. Risana was right. She already knew what she had to do. The best lies were made from truths.
She had to do terrible things to prevent even more terrible futures. Even if she had to sacrifice her family, friends, those dearest to her heart.
Her heart clenched and she found it hard to breathe.
But she had to. Had to. How else could she be sure that Phyro would not seek to emulate the Hegemon, a man who believed that any price was worth paying in order to confront evil? A man who believed in reshaping Dara by the sword, and who deemed all who fell quislings, traitors, cowards, slaves, of lesser natures?
She couldn’t trust. She had to do. She had to cultivate and encourage his nature, and in that process, save Dara as well as him from himself.
She took a deep breath, and began to speak.
* * *
Soto slowed down as she entered the twisting corridor that led to the empress’s private suite. Her steps were slow and silent. She knew that Jia had trouble sleeping these days, and she didn’t want to disturb her friend if she happened to be napping.
Jia’s voice echoed down the corridor.
“Go find Lady Soto and invite her to tea.”
There was a pause, and someone seemed to be whispering deferentially before Jia’s voice sounded again.
“No. I’ll brew the pot myself. Once she is here, guard the door. Do not enter until summoned.”
Another pause. More whispers.
“Just one cup. That will be all.”
Just one cup.
A silent thunderclap went off in Soto’s head. She faltered, having to hold on to the wall for balance. She couldn’t hear anything except the rush of blood in her ears.
“Have I finally lost you, Soto? Will you plunge Dara into civil strife?”
“For the sake of the people, I will keep your secret for now. But if you do not give up the reins of power when Phyro is ready, I swear by the Twins that I will proclaim the truth to every corner of Dara.”
And here it was, the moment she had never believed would come. Jia, who preferred poison as her way of execution, was inviting her to tea.
Just one cup.
She had to go to Phyro and tell him the truth. She had to get out of here before Jia found her.
Quietly, she snuck away. She didn’t stop to return the bows of anyone in the palace, and she didn’t care that they looked at her strangely.
* * *
For a long time after the flower petals had stopped spinning, Jia sat in her room, staring at the wall as sunlight shifted and shadows chased each other across the floor.
There was no tea set on the table; no pot, nor a single cup.
She was alone in the room.
At length, she roused herself. There was indeed poison to prepare, and horrors only she could unleash. Once the treaty was concluded, the shipments to the pirates would increase. It was time to think about sprinkling the fungal spores she had carefully cultivated… perhaps into the next set of crates Wi and Shido would send to Tiphan Huto.
She left her room and strode toward the Imperial Garden, toward her shed. She walked alone, as she always knew she would have to.
LATER, OFF THE COAST OF RUI, NEAR KRIPHI.
Phyro listened quietly as Soto told her story.
For a long time, he didn’t respond. He was like a volcano just before eruption, the tension within boiling and building.
“Hudo-tika, talk to me,” pleaded Soto. She had escaped Pan by bluffing her way onto yet another Imperial messenger airship dispatched to Phyro. The empress’s favor for her was well known, and the crew had not dared to question her. Soto had sighed with relief when no guards came from the palace—perhaps Jia had not realized that she had gone and was still searching for her to invite her to tea, thereby burying the secret of Risana’s death forever.
Phyro didn’t care about the riddles being posed at the Dandelion Court; he didn’t care about Cogo Yelu’s betrayal; he didn’t care about Jia’s plot to keep the Seal of Dara for herself.
“She killed my mother?” Phyro asked, pausing between each word. He wanted to be absolutely sure he understood the only thing that mattered.
Soto nodded.
He closed his eyes wearily. So many things that never made sense before were coming into focus now. How else to explain the excessive honors Jia heaped on his mother year after year, while neglecting Fara’s mother? How else to explain the constant efforts to deny him power, to prevent him from making any decision that mattered? Jia’s conscience was troubled. She was guilty.
The word “aunt-mother” tasted like ashes on his tongue. To think that he had deferred to that unreadable mask of a face for so many years! He was indeed naive, too quick to trust.
She was more poisonous than a viper, more cruel than a wolf, more devious than a spider. She had murdered his mother.
“What are you going to do?” asked Soto.
Phyro didn’t know.
He had already decided to abandon the conquest of Unredeemed Dara and hand over the seal of command to Gori Ruthi and Lady Ragi—but he hadn’t done so yet. He could still summon Puma Yemu and seize the military monitors; he could announce the sins of Jia to his soldiers; he could march on Pan at the head of his army.
He could rebel against Jia, as she had always feared he would.
“O Mother, my mother,” he muttered.
Down that path lay the deaths of hundreds of thousands in civil strife, as brother fought against brother, son against mother. Was he willing to let the flames of war sweep across all the Islands?
He imagined the confusion of his soldiers as they were told that they had turned, overnight, from liberators into rebels.
Jia was not Mapidéré, nor was she the Hegemon. Though she had abandoned the people of Rui and Dasu, she had ushered in a period of unprecedented prosperity in Dara. She was not, to most, an unfit regent and sovereign.
Still, they would follow him, he thought. At least enough would that he would have a viable chance at conquering Dara at the head of an army.
But that would be wrong. They had joined him to fulfill a vision of freedom, to liberate the Islands from the cruel Lyucu. For him to lead them into the horrors of civil war would be a betrayal of that vision, of mutagé, of everything his father and mother had believed in.
Risana was born a commoner, and she had always believed it was unjust for the lowborn to die for the ambitions of the great lords. If he were to plunge the Islands into chaos and slaughter to satisfy a private craving for vengeance, he would be no better than Noda Mi.
He was no longer Emperor Monadétu, no longer Prince Phyro, no longer the commander of the army of Dara. Even if he hadn’t already decided to abandon the conquest of Rui and Dasu, Soto’s revelation changed everything.
Jia had murdered his mother, and it was up to him, as a man, as a son, as Hudo-tika, to avenge her. Nothing else mattered. Empire, duty, freedom, mutagé—none of these abstractions weighed as much as that one incontrovertible, concrete truth: He loved his mother, and one fought out of love.
“Lady Soto,” he said, “I thank you for telling me the truth.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Soto again.
“Years ago, my father slew a white serpent, and became the man he was,” Phyro said. “I’m going to slay another serpent.”
“Are you going to rebel?”
“No,” he said. “From this moment on I’m no longer a member of the House of Dandelion, but a fury-driven sword of justice. She may be the most powerful ruler in all the land, but she breathes and bleeds as any mortal.”
Jia had killed Risana with her own hands, not with an army; the only honorable response was for him to kill her with his own hands, like the wandering swordsmen of old, righting a personal wrong in person. It was his nature.
“Then I’m coming with you,” said Soto. “You’ll no longer have your army, but you still need friends.”
Phyro summoned Puma Yemu and gave him the seal of command, to be turned over to the Imperial envoys in the morning. Then he handed over Na-aroénna.
“Rénga! What is this—”
“I’m leaving. I cannot go back to Pan a prisoner—”
“What!? How can you—”
“Listen to me! There’s no time to explain. This sword, a sword to pacify armies, is too heavy and unwieldy for the task I have in mind. Hold on to it for me. When you’re back on the Big Island, go find Zen-Kara and give it to her.”
“Why?”
A slight hesitation. “If I should succeed, she’ll know by this sword that I meant what I said when I made a promise to her. If I should fail, it is something to remember me by.”
Puma looked bewildered and crestfallen. “Are you certain you know the right path?”
“I have no doubt.”
Accompanied by no one except Mota Kiphi and Lady Soto, Phyro strode across the deck of the city-ship and boarded a tiny messenger airship. The teardrop-shaped vessel soon faded into the predawn darkness.
PART THREE STONE-TWISTED ROOTS
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE THE BONEYARD
THE BONEYARD, UKYU-GONDÉ: THE TWELFTH MONTH IN THE TENTH YEAR AFTER THE DEPARTURE OF PRINCESS THÉRA FROM DARA FOR UKYU-GONDÉ (SEVEN MONTHS AFTER PÉKYU THÉRA’S ASSAULT ON TATEN AND THE DESTRUCTION OF THE LYUCU EXPEDITION FLEET).
Before Phyro had launched his failed invasion, before the armies of Ukyu-taasa and Dara had clashed within the Wall of Storms, before the Dandelion Court had been shaken to its very foundation for an old crime, another grand drama was playing out on the other shore touched by the great belt current…
* * *
It took Tovo most of the summer and fall to consolidate power in the chaotic aftermath of the death of Pékyu Cudyu.
The loss of the centralized garinafin army meant that the Lyucu tribes reverted to their ancient state of war of all against all before Pékyu Tenryo’s unification. Since Cudyu was too young to have designated an official successor, surviving thanes fought over the young pékyus-taasa like living symbols of the pékyu’s office, each harboring dreams of becoming the next ruler of the scrublands.
All across the scrublands, the long-subjugated Agon tribes, sensing a power vacuum, began to raid some of the lesser Lyucu tribes. Refugees from the defeated Lyucu tribes streamed to Taten for aid.
This gave Tovo the opportunity he had been craving. Naming himself Protector of the Lyucu, he rallied the dispirited remnants of Cudyu’s army and the refugees at Taten. Though there was much mutual suspicion among the surviving Lyucu thanes, he persuaded them to put their power struggles on hold until the Agon-Dara alliance under the upstart Pékyu Théra had been defeated and Pékyu-votan Cudyu’s death had been avenged.
That meant an assault on the Boneyard, where Théra had established her new rebel base, even if the war had to be fought in the heart of winter, the harshest season in Ukyu-Gondé.
While Tovo had on hand only a small number of garinafins, scouting revealed that the Agon-Dara alliance also had few garinafins of their own. Tovo decided that they couldn’t afford to wait. Recapturing the escaped garinafins would take years, and with each passing month, he risked having Théra grow stronger.
The assault on the Boneyard would then have to be conducted mainly from the ground, which didn’t frighten Tovo in the least. Even at the height of the Lyucu-Agon wars, when both sides fielded giant armies of hundreds of garinafins in each battle, the ground assault remained an important part of warfare. Garinafins could unleash great destruction on a ground army with no air support, but air superiority alone was insufficient to subjugate a determined enemy.
* * *
About two hundred miles to the northeast of Taten lay the Boneyard.
If the terrain of most of the scrublands resembled the rough but flat hide of a garinafin, then the badlands of the Boneyard were the massive battle scars. The torn skin and muscle had healed imperfectly over cauterized blood vessels, leaving the surface full of deep gouges, ridges, bumps, and cords.
Thunderstorms in spring and summer caused flash floods and raging torrents that carved deep gullies and ravines into the landscape, and the constant howling winds deepened and widened these, leaving mesas and buttes towering over the treacherous maze. In winter, water trapped in seams turned into relentless ice, and entire cliff sides and rock spurs fell away like calving icebergs. The patient sculptor that was nature turned the region into an uninhabited metropolis of monumental architecture: mountainous arches as breathtaking as rainbows, precipitous bridges sized for city-ships, buttes and spires whose profiles brought to mind the ancient monsters at the end of the Fifth Age of Mankind, lofty hoodoos that rose like the columns of ruined temples erected by larger-than-life heroes for unimaginable gods.
The latticed landscape, alternating parts exposed to the merciless glare of the sun and parts in permanent, deep shade, created a thousand different miniature climate regions, each no more than a few miles squared. While the parched side of a ravine felt like the middle of the Lurodia Tanta, a few hundred feet away, inside one of the caves, a salty spring bubbled and left crystalline growths on the rocky walls like the ice blossoms of Nalyufin’s Pasture.
The drastic microclimate variations also meant that the badlands, as well as the scrublands immediately bordering the region, brimmed with constant, strong, but also unpredictably shifting winds in all seasons. Updrafts, downdrafts, tornadoes, wind shears… there was perhaps nowhere else in Ukyu-Gondé where navigation and sustained flight were so difficult for birds as well as garinafins.
Viewed from above, the badlands resembled the skeleton of some gigantic, mythical creature whose desiccated skin was in the last stage of sloughing off. But that was not how the region got its name.
* * *
Across the frost-encrusted scrubland, ten thousand Lyucu warriors marched with Tovo.
“Ten dyudyu cupéruna?” he shouted, to keep up their spirits.
“Lyucu kyo.” The responses were scattered, lackadaisical.
The warriors, clad in thick furs, marched uneasily, their moods as varied as their mismatched banners and weaponry. This was no longer the professional army of Pékyu Tenryo, buoyed by the vision of conquest, nor was it the disciplined brigade of Pékyu Cudyu, determined to crush all outbreaks of rebellion; rather, Tovo’s troops were like a collection of raiding parties temporarily united by a common prey, with each thane barely acknowledging the authority of the “Protector” because they trusted him just a little bit more than they trusted one another.
