The Veiled Throne, page 8
She recalled the little details in his story that seemed to be inspired by her homeland: the etching spine of the cactus, dwellings made from bones and hides, the hint of an ethos of dauntless courage and warfare as a way of life.
Oga had probably thought they would make the story more appealing to her, make her think well of him. Without the arrogance of the other Dara barbarians. Respectful to her and her people. To gain her trust.
She was alarmed by how close he had come to succeeding.
It was like seeing a shaman’s face before she had painted on the mask of Péa or Diasa. The very thought that he had been trying to manipulate her was revolting. But more than that, something about the way he had marshaled the details of what he knew about her people into his tale bothered her. She felt a rising fury that she could not explain, not even to herself.
“Parts of it I did learn in Dara,” he said, speaking carefully, watching her face. “But I changed some parts and added new parts.”
“Why?”
He seemed at a loss. “I guess it’s a habit. I used to love going to the folk operas and listening to traveling storytellers as they stopped in the village. After we had children, my sons begged me for stories. So I took what I could recall from the operas and storytellers, tales told by my father when I was a boy, gossip from the neighbors, histories recounted by the village tutor, and whatever I saw out at sea or in the fields that day, and mixed everything into a big stew, and sprinkled some spices I made up.”
“So you never try to tell a story about the gods just the way you learned it? Never try to pass on the truth?”
He looked even more confused. “Well, there are different kinds of stories… lots of stories told by the folk operas were just for fun, never claiming to be true. And I didn’t like the way some of the stories were told, so I made them better. I certainly wouldn’t tell the same story intended for the late-night crowd at a pub to my boys.” He smiled ingratiatingly. “Stories have to change for the teller and the audience, right? My sons certainly liked my tales, but you should hear my wife. She’s the real storyteller in the family.”
Goztan could not keep the deep sense of revulsion from her face. So this man had been telling her lies. Stories about gods and heroes were not sacred to him, were not the repository of truth. While she had shared with him one of the most important, unchanging truths in the world, he had been fooling her with something he made up. He saw no shame in hearing a story about his gods and then repeating it with changes; he was arrogant enough to think he could make the truth better, or, worse yet, make something new better than the truth.
The men of Dara were more alien to her than garinafins.
“What’s wrong?” Oga said. “Do you not change your stories? But stories are as alive as we are, and surely they change with each retelling. All my stories grow and learn, just as I grow and learn.”
She closed her eyes, thinking about the story of her own life. She thought about her girlhood, when the Agon had enslaved all the Lyucu, and portions of every hunt had to be turned over to the hated overlords. She remembered her father teaching her how to etch a drawing of a young woman holding a club, the goddess Diasa, into the scapula of the first mouflon ram she had ever brought down herself—though she didn’t get to eat any of the meat, which had to be turned over to the Agon thane’s daughter to show her tribe’s submission. Unfamiliar with the acid-etching process, she had burned her hand as she wrapped the bone inside layers of moss soaked in fermented gash cactus juice. She could still see the scars against her palm.
“Maybe you’ll teach me more of your ways,” Oga said, sounding conciliatory. “I’ve been very curious about how your tents are pitched.”
She thought about the hard winters and dry summers, when the Five Tribes of the Antler had fought one another over the little grazing that could be had in their territories at the foot of the World’s Edge Mountains. She remembered her grandmother walking into the storm one winter night so that there would be one less mouth to feed in the clan, and more of the meager stores could be saved for her and her cousins. She recalled the noise of the wind howling against the flap of hide that was the door to the tent, and how her mother had told her to stop crying so as not to dishonor the love and sacrifice of her grandmother.
“Not all of us think like Admiral Krita or Captain Dathama,” Oga said. “Some of the captains and most of those who were peasants don’t agree with what has been done to your people.”
She thought about Pékyu Tenryo’s daring rebellion against the Agon, and the all-too-brief years of joy that had followed its success. She thought about the catastrophes that accompanied the landing of the city-ships, and the horrors her people continued to endure from the people of Dara. She thought about the blindness of the arrogant Lords of Dara and the admonition from Pékyu Tenryo to bide her time. She thought about the pain and heartache of watching companions and kin die in battle, but she also thought about how the All-Father and Every-Mother had crafted the Lyucu to be dedicated to war: against the harsh landscape, against the vicissitudes of nature, against death-dealing monsters and trickster gods, against false hope and despair, against enemies who would enslave and murder and rape and tell stories that sounded sacred but were in fact lies.
“If we can’t go home,” Oga said, “we’d like to live together, in peace, and teach you everything you want to learn so that you could live a better life. Paradise may not exist, but we can try to build it, side by side.”
Finally, she understood the full extent of her rage at Oga.
It wasn’t just that he had made up a story that sounded like a myth. That was between him and his gods. The ease with which he admitted his lying simply showed how little the story mattered to him.
Into this made-up story he had incorporated bits of what he knew about the Lyucu—the craft of shell- and bone-etching, the art of using the skin and bone of the dead for shelter, the joy of affirming one’s existence in battle.
These were strands of her way of life, as inseparable from her as her arteries and sinews. Together, they told the most sacred story of them all, the story of who the Lyucu were.
Yet Oga had stolen these things, just like how he had stealthily spied on her people to learn her language, just like how he had sneakily copied the art of cactus-etching, and placed them into his story like bits of decoration, like baubles to entertain children, like the treasures of her people seized by the Lords of Dara to add a dash of “primitive” color to their cabins.
He had stolen them, but he had not understood them, not really. He had not even a babbling baby’s grasp of the honor of being descended from Kikisavo, of the grace of her people, of the sanctity of the scrublands way of life. Instead, he had reduced them to twisted, meaningless caricatures in his story—sprinkled some spices, as he put it—and he had been arrogant enough to think that she would be pleased.
She gazed at him, her face flushed but her breathing deliberately measured. He had intervened on behalf of the Lyucu litter-bearers, it was true, but he had done so for his own gain. He had used the art of the Lyucu to etch a map of Dara, to tell a story that belonged to him and his, not her and hers. He had spoken of teaching her, of giving her and her people a better life, as though he belonged to a race of gods, not a group of refugees who had turned on their hosts and enslaved them. He might be a peasant of Dara, but in his eyes, he felt infinitely superior to her, the daughter of a thane, a great warrior.
He was, at heart, not really that different from Dathama.
And she had almost fallen for his slippery words and crafty plot. She had almost seen him as a friend, a brother. The Lords of Dara were horrid wolves, but Oga was a wolf too, even if he also cowered before Dathama.
She could never be votan-sa-taasa with this man. He was Dara, and she was Lyucu. He was the enemy, and there was a gulf between their natures that could not be bridged.
“Good-bye,” she said, and turned away, leaving a stunned Oga Kidosu behind. “You are not my ru-votan.”
“Wait!” he called out. “I’m sorry—I don’t know what I said—”
She did not stop or turn around. She also had been tossed by a storm away from home, into the midst of a strange people, and she would nurture her nature until it unfolded into a deadly blossom.
CHAPTER FIVE BIRTHRIGHT
UKYU-GONDÉ: THE YEAR THE CITY-SHIPS ARRIVED FROM DARA (KNOWN IN DARA AS THE FIRST YEAR IN THE REIGN OF RIGHTEOUS FORCE, WHEN EMPEROR ERISHI ASCENDED TO THE THRONE AFTER THE DEATH OF EMPEROR MAPIDÉRÉ).
For a few days, she worried that Oga would report his suspicions that she was plotting treachery to Captain Dathama. When no such report seemed forthcoming, she gradually relaxed. She blamed herself for almost jeopardizing the pékyu’s grand plan, and she vowed never to let her guard down before a crafty Dara barbarian—peasant or lord—again.
In fact, she never saw Oga after that day. Perhaps Dathama had promoted him in gratitude for his discovery of the “portent” so that he no longer needed to clean fish or trot along next to Dathama’s litter. Perhaps Admiral Krita’s new favorite had decided that it was better to send Oga to another ship so that he would never have to be reminded of how he had come by his good fortune.
Sometimes she wondered if she had been wrong about him. She recalled his pure joy at learning her words; his sorrow as he thought of his family; his mischievous laughter when comparing Dathama to a horrid wolf; his look of concentration as the two of them worked together to save the litter-bearers from torture. Maybe he really wasn’t like the others; maybe she had been too harsh with him, too quick to blame him for the sins of his people, too impatient to attribute to him an ill intent—yet, what did the intent of an individual matter when two peoples were locked in a bitter contest for their very survival?
But there was no time to dwell on such thoughts. Other portents turned up: sandcastles that were purportedly sculpted by the waves and the winds to resemble the grand palaces and awe-inspiring towers of Pan, the Immaculate City; a sheep’s liver that, when seen from the right angle, resembled Admiral Krita’s profile; a kitchen maid who was scalded by boiling water, leaving behind a large scar on her back shaped just like the sitting form of Admiral Krita, with smaller scars that resembled a crowd of kneeling Lyucu subjects.
Admiral Krita stroked his beard in pleasure and held banquet after banquet. No one pointed out to him the suspicious footprints found near the sandcastles or the rumors of two servants who claimed to have heard the scalded woman screaming in a locked cabin for half the night before the day of her supposed accident.
One of the captains, drunk at a celebration, boasted that he could nibble a piece of liver into a portrait of any of the Lords of Dara. “I’ve done… done… done it!” The other captains scattered from him as though he had vomited. Admiral Krita walked past the drunken man impassively, as though he had heard nothing.
The next day, evidence came to light that the liver-chewing captain had been plotting against the admiral with Lyucu servants. He was promptly disemboweled so that his liver could be retrieved and examined. It was said to be shaped like the logogram for “guilt.”
Another portent.
Lies begot more lies, and it was no longer clear who was fooling whom.
* * *
Then came the day when Pékyu Tenryo finally gave the order.
Preparations for Admiral Krita’s coronation as the Emperor of New Dara had exhausted everyone in the fleet. Even the guards charged with keeping an eye on the native servants had drunk too much and snored loudly. The Lyucu servants aboard the city-ships had little trouble securing the armories, the cockpits, the officers’ quarters.
She took great pleasure in laying Dathama flat on the ground with one well-placed kick to the back of his knees, and, holding his neck against the floor with one foot, she easily dispatched his guards with his sword.
Overnight, the Lyucu became the masters of the city-ships. The tail-wagging pups had revealed their fierce wolf-nature.
Pékyu Tenryo, after reserving to himself the weapons and books and navigational instruments of the captives, heaped all the treasures of the Lords of Dara in an open field to be divided among the Lyucu thanes, with the women who had done the most to bring about the invaders’ ruin getting first pick.
Instead of paying any attention to the bundles of silk and chests of malleable gold and colorful corals, which the other thanes fought over, Goztan took her time sorting through the plundered Lyucu artifacts so that every carved whalebone ancestor pole, every stomach-lining spirit portrait, every vellum voice painting, and even every single cactus-etched arucuro tocua toy could be returned to the family from whom it had been taken.
She picked up the “miraculous” etched turtle shell that had started it all and gazed at the portrait of the family on the carapace. She didn’t know where to find the man who had once saved those young Lyucu litter-bearers from the lash but who had also sought to reduce bits of her way of life into decorative beads in his stories. He had wanted to call her sa-taasa, as if the gulf between them could be bridged simply by a man belonging to the fleet of enslavers extending a hand to a slave. He was foolish, but he was also not unkind. He was like the other men of Dara, but he was also different.
The shell felt heavy in her hand. She held on to it.
* * *
By then, she was also several months into her pregnancy—she could hardly have made Dathama wear a lambskin sheath, after all.
The growing life in her was a source of unending stress. She could not sort through her own tangled feelings. It was a constant reminder of the humiliation and rapes she had endured from Dathama, but it was also her first opportunity to be a mother, to bring another voice into the world.
The child quickened. She felt it move.
Other Lyucu warriors in her position would have long since taken the bitter brew that cleansed the unwanted fetus from her womb. It was not uncommon on the scrublands for the children of nonconsensual couplings to be slaughtered when the captive partner finally freed themselves, and shamans were skilled with abortifacients, sometimes needed to preserve the lives of mothers or to ready a tribe for war.
But Goztan hesitated. She could not even explain to herself exactly why. The very thought of Dathama made her skin crawl, but she could not bring herself to end the pregnancy. Could the sins of the father be attributed to the child, who was also of her flesh, sustained by her blood and breath?
They are blank pages upon which their feeble senses etch the truth, bit by bit, like a child pricking out her future upon oracle bones with the spine of a cactus.
But then she woke up one morning and suffered the worst back pain she could remember. There was bleeding between her legs, the stains on the sheepskin sleeping mat dark and thick. She no longer felt the movement inside her.
She recognized the symptoms of a miscarriage and went to the shamans of the Third Tribe of the Antler. They gave her a brew that purged the remnants of the dead fetus.
Had the gods chosen to intervene to do what she could not do herself? Did the gods work like that?
She remained bedridden for several days, both from the physical ordeal as well as the psychic strain. She felt empty, but not clean.
(Years later, she would wonder whether this experience was also partly responsible for her reluctance to become pregnant again. The scars left in minds were invisible, but they dictated the course of lives as much as physical disfigurements.)
At least she was finally ready to resume her old life.
Tenlek Ryoto, her mother and the chieftain of the tribe, who had not visited earlier during Goztan’s recovery, showed up one afternoon as Goztan was taking a walk around the camp. Stone-faced, the thane explained that it was the consensus of the elders and shamans that Goztan could never be her heir.
“Why?” Goztan managed, her voice rasping in her throat.
The pregnancy had tainted her, her mother explained. How could the elders trust that she would be true to the interests of the tribe and the Lyucu after she had first allowed the seed of Dara to be planted in her womb and then refused to purge herself at the first opportunity? It was proof that her nature was weak.
The accusation struck Goztan hard—as though voicing aloud the doubt in her own heart. She had wanted to keep the child. She had almost befriended a barbarian. She had found beauty in some of the stories of Dara, even wisdom, hadn’t she?
But even in her shocked state, her mind remained keen. Her mother’s reasoning was absurd. Allowed the seed of Dara to be planted…
“You think I’m… weak? Because of my womb?”
“You’ve spent too much time among the invaders.”
Goztan suspected the real, unspoken reason. She had willingly yielded up her share of the gold, silk, corals, and other baubles captured from the city-ships. She would have preferred to see these foreign things, these barbaric artifacts, consigned to garinafin fire or the briny deep. What good were they for life on the scrublands? She couldn’t even understand why Pékyu Tenryo had insisted on protecting the navigation instruments and books. No Lyucu knew how to decipher the wax logograms on silk scrolls, so what was the point of saving them?
“They contain the secrets of the invaders’ magic,” the pékyu had said when she confronted him.
“But we don’t want any of their magic,” she had said.
“In war, we become more like our enemies,” the pékyu had said, “whether we want to or not.”
Though she had not wanted to believe him, his prediction had turned out to be true. The baubles from the city-ships had become the most desired treasures on the scrublands, and the tribes fought over them. Even though silk was inferior to fur and hide as protection from the elements, a two-pace length of silk was sometimes enough to be bartered for five heads of long-haired cattle. It was as though the people had gone mad, coveting these Dara objects solely because they were rare.
