Speaking Bones, page 95
“Because… because I was terrified”—Noda glanced at the angry faces of the Lyucu warriors all around him—“that those loyal to the evil Cutanrovo would silence me for daring to accuse their leader!” He wriggled on the ground like a worm, struggling to slam his forehead into the sand before Goztan as quickly as possible.
“You’re right about Cutanrovo plotting against the pékyu and the emperor,” said Goztan. “But you’re also part of that plot.”
Once again, Dyana held up her father’s letter and read from it. “ ‘Only in a crisis do we see the truth that lies deep within the human heart, like a beam of moonlight illuminating the ghostly flocks drowning in the still water at the bottom of a well, crying out silently.’ Do you know what my father meant or which poet he was quoting?”
Noda Mi shook his head in confusion.
“It wasn’t any of the Ano poets,” said Goztan. “This was, in fact, a paraphrase of a line from a poem by Vocu Firna, my dead friend and also a confidant of the emperor. He enjoyed writing poems in Classical Ano, but filled them with images and myths of the Lyucu. Among our people, the moon is known as the mouth of the goddess Nalyufin, the Hate-hearted. Vocu Firna sometimes used the image of a moonlit well filled with death as a synecdoche for Cutanrovo, because Cutanrovo was the Thane of the Flock of Nalyufin. Ironic that the Loyal Hound of the Lyucu would know so little of our traditions.”
Noda Mi said nothing. He had never paid much attention to Lyucu myths and legends, and that ignorance had given Timu an opening.
“The emperor placed your name within the same paragraph in which he refers to Cutanrovo,” said Goztan, her voice placid but implacable. “This was also the same paragraph in which the emperor described the enemies attacking him and the pékyu. In this way, the emperor revealed that you and Cutanrovo were coconspirators.”
“No! No! Please—”
“When Zaza-tika came to me with her suspicions,” said Goztan, “I believed her but couldn’t do much. After all, an accusation framed through riddles could not convince the other thanes. So I had to create the impression that no one was watching you, and then observe what you would do. The pékyu-taasa was very brave to agree to be the lure. Like a wolf pretending to be a loyal hound, it was only a matter of time before you revealed your true nature.”
At that moment, several of the Lyucu warriors, who had been searching the sloop, exclaimed in horror and rage. Soon, they returned to the assembly and set down their findings reverently.
Three human heads, preserved with lime, rested in a row on the sand. Tanvanaki and Cutanrovo were grimacing, their eyes locked open as though still raging against their foes. Timu’s face, on the other hand, was a mask of tranquility. Dyana wailed and leapt to the heads of her parents, cradling them against her chest.
No one spoke in the face of this gruesome scene. At length, Goztan broke the silence.
“You plotted with Cutanrovo to kill the pékyu, and I suspect you then betrayed your coconspirator in order to secure some personal advantage, as is your wont. I don’t fully comprehend your scheme, but it doesn’t matter. The fact is that the charges against you have been proven—”
“I can help you!” Noda Mi screamed. “I can help you pacify the natives and become the pékyu! Listen, I have lots and lots of good ideas for how to leverage these two children to force Empress Jia to submit to your terms. With me by your side as counselor, Ukyu-taasa will once again rise to greatness. I swear by all the gods that I will be loyal—”
“Treason is in your nature,” said Goztan. Without warning, she swung Gaslira-sata and bashed in the skull of the screaming Noda Mi, silencing him instantly. Blood, bone fragments, and brains splattered over Goztan and the kneeling figure of Dyana, still crying and hugging her dead parents. Neither made a move to wipe the gore away.
* * *
At dawn, thanes and warriors, healthy or laid low with tolyusa-madness, gathered on the beach to hear Goztan explain Noda Mi’s betrayal at Kigo Yezu.
Messengers were dispatched all over Rui and Dasu to recall the marauding bands of warriors. The severed heads of Cutanrovo, Tanvanaki, and Timu were reunited with their torsos and laid upon driftwood funeral mounds. After the requisite mourning period, the bodies would be given to the wilderness so that the departed could begin their pédiato savaga.
“You’re not at peace,” said Goztan.
Dyana made a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a sob. “The very idea that the woman who murdered my parents will receive the same honor as them turns my stomach.”
“Preserving Thane Cutanrovo’s reputation is required—”
“Don’t.” Dyana took a deep breath. “I am my mother’s daughter. I understand.”
The night before, after Noda Mi’s confession and execution, the Lyucu thanes who were present and loyal to Cutanrovo negotiated a pact with Goztan. The truth of Cutanrovo’s attempted coup against Tanvanaki would be suppressed, at least for now, and Goztan promised no further investigations to ferret out other coconspirators; in exchange, the hard-liner thanes would lobby the rest of their faction to support Goztan’s claim as the first thane among equals and guardian of the young pékyus-taasa.
The compromise, though imperfect, was the most expedient way to prevent a civil war among the Lyucu in Ukyu-taasa.
“The living need peace more than the dead need justice,” muttered Dyana. “But I need time to grieve.”
“My heart beats in sync with yours, votan,” said Goztan, her voice gentle but firm. “However, grief is a luxury the Pékyu of Ukyu-taasa cannot afford at present.”
Dyana looked at her, startled. “The… pékyu?”
“Your brother cannot be handed the signaling spear for the people of Ukyu-taasa.”
Reluctantly, Dyana nodded. Todyu’s mind, already fragile from tolyusa-thirst—unbeknownst even to his own family, he had become addicted to the enhanced tolyusa supplied by Cutanrovo—had collapsed under the weight of the revelations of last night: Cutanrovo, the warrior he worshipped as a paragon of Lyucu virtue, had been plotting against his own mother; Timu, the man whose blood-tie he had always despised, had avenged his wife by writing the truth with his blood; Noda Mi, the one native he trusted, had been trying to use him like a hunting trophy…. He had erupted into violence, lashing out at his guards and screaming that he would avenge his dead mother by killing everyone in sight. Goztan had had no choice but to have him bound and gagged.
“We won’t survive the winter,” said Goztan. “Our granaries and smokehouses are empty, and our warriors and garinafins are sick. Long before starvation, there will be a uprising against our people. The Lyucu in Dara will be no more, and many natives will die as well. You must chart a new course for Ukyu-taasa.”
“Is it really up to me?” Dyana cast a glance at the towering woman standing next to her, her eyes lingering on the fearsome war axe in Goztan’s hand: Gaslira-sata, the Peace-Bite.
Goztan heard the fear in the girl’s voice. She sighed. After all that had happened, she could hardly blame the girl for being suspicious. “You have nothing to fear from me. My ambition lies not in rule. I served your mother, and her father before her. Now I will counsel and serve you.”
“Because I am young and easy to manipulate?”
“Not at all.” Goztan paused to sort through her tangled thoughts. “You know, I met your mother for the first time when she was about your age. And even then, I saw two qualities in her that told me she would become a worthy pékyu. You share her nature.”
“Which two qualities would those be? Let me guess: Her skill as a garinafin rider? Her charisma as a war leader? Unfortunately, I have neither.”
“No. First, she could tell true stories apart from false ones. Second, she was empathetic, able to see the world through others’ eyes, to feel what they feel.”
Dyana laughed mirthlessly. “Yet she couldn’t see through Cutanrovo’s lies, nor could she feel what my father felt as Ukyu-taasa fell into ruin.”
“She failed because she lacked an even more essential quality, a quality that your father possessed in abundance.”
Dyana locked eyes with Goztan. “Which is?”
“The courage to live true to one’s nature.”
Dyana heaved a deep breath and looked away.
Goztan went on. “Your mother lived in the shadow of her father, believing that she had to fulfill his dream of Lyucu supremacy. Fearful that she would appear weak, she hardened her heart against the suffering of the native people and willfully blinded herself to the consequences of her actions.”
“I am my mother’s daughter.”
“And also your father’s.”
Cactus drums had been erected around the largest funeral mound, the one belonging to Dyana’s mother. Shamans danced around her body, singing the deeds of the dead pékyu as they banged on the drums. Because Tanvanaki left no spirit portrait, these voice paintings would be the final summation of her life. The voice of Flash-of-the-Garinafin, now merged with the winds, would be heard no more.
“Where does your ambition lie, if not in rule?” Dyana asked abruptly.
“I wouldn’t call it ambition, not exactly.”
She thought back to her life in Ukyu, to the days when she had fought first to free her clan from the haughty Agon thanes and then to liberate her tribe from the degradations of Admiral Krita. She remembered that heady moment when Pékyu Tenryo first sketched the dream of a new Lyucu homeland in wealthy, temperate Dara. She summoned the memory of the night she parted from her son, a child she had raised to be as much Lyucu as native, when she had sent him into the world to search for home.
She recalled that night on the deck of Captain Dathama’s city-ship, when she had conversed with a stranger from Dara whose stories and domestic hopes seemed so familiar, not at all like those belonging to an implacable enemy.
If we can’t go home, we’d like to live together, in peace. Paradise may not exist, but we can try to build it, side by side.
She couldn’t be sure she had remembered Oga’s words exactly. It had been, after all, such a long time ago. Time had a way of reshaping memories much as the relentless sea reshaped the shore, rubbing smooth what had once grated.
Her hand tightened around the handle of Gaslira-sata, her fingertips caressing the strong ribs that spoke of a dream of unity.
“I wish”—Goztan hesitated, searching for the right words—“for the Lyucu in Dara and the natives to become the people of Ukyu-taasa. Cutanrovo thought that a betrayal of my people, but I think it is the only vision grand enough for the Lyucu spirit.”
Dyana nodded. “You speak of a devotion to ever-enlarging circles of empathy, of a yearning for new identities that transcend old enmities. Among my father’s people, there’s a word for that: mutagé.”
“Mutagé? Interesting. That’s not the way Vocu Firna explained the word to me… but I see that it fits.”
“My father, like his father before him, was prone to new readings of the classics…. How do you know serving me will be the same as serving this vision of the people of Ukyu-taasa?”
“It’s in your nature,” said Goztan.
Dyana smiled. “No. I think it’s in all our natures.”
Goztan turned to face Dyana, lifting both arms and crossing them at the wrist. Dyana accepted the salute wordlessly, the way a new pékyu should.
“My father had a suggestion for what to do next,” said Dyana.
In response to Goztan’s surprised look, the young pékyu took out the bloody letter from Timu and read from it. “ ‘Carry on the legacy of your father, and hope will glow in your hands like iced tolyusa.’ ”
Goztan shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“The native word for tolyusa is ‘zomi,’ given to the plant by the great scholar Luan Zyaji. The Classical Ano word means ‘pearl of fire.’ But if the fire were put out by ice, then what is left in our hands is simply a pearl.”
Goztan gazed anxiously into the empty cupped palms of the pékyu.
“The name of my uncle, the Emperor of Dara, means ‘Pearl in the Palm.’ My father always told me that unlike my implacable grandmother, his brother has a deep streak of mercy that can be reached. Appealing to my uncle instead of my grandmother is our best chance of surrendering without losing everything.”
Goztan felt relief flooding through her body.
“There will be many voices raised in opposition, both native and Lyucu,” said Goztan. “Those who followed Cutanrovo think surrendering to the Dandelion Throne worse than death, and native collaborators who betrayed their own people will hardly want to face the consequences.”
“Remedying the errors of one’s parents is never easy,” said Dyana, a steely edge coming into her young voice. “Are you with me?”
“Always.”
“ ‘All the people of Ukyu-taasa are your charge, and remember to do what is right,’ ” Dyana read from the silk cloth. “And that’s no riddle at all.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT BOOKS
A SECLUDED SEASIDE VILLA BY LUTHO BEACH: THE TWELFTH MONTH OF THE ELEVENTH YEAR OF THE REIGN OF SEASON OF STORMS AND THE REIGN OF AUDACIOUS FREEDOM.
They waited.
Slowly, messengers made their way from the capital to the estate by the black sands of Lutho Beach. Mostly escapees from the massacre at the Examination Hall, they recounted the startling flight of the mechanical dyran through the rainy night, homing in on a bright beacon of hope; the long standoff against the palace guards, when morale among the rebels burned as brightly as the whale-oil lamps behind them; the growing anxiety as the promised firework signaling success never came; the sudden assault by soldiers in a moving arrow-tower; Mota Kiphi’s last stand. Confusion, terror, death.
Over the following days and weeks, more news arrived from Widi Tucru’s spies in the capital. Soldiers patrolled the streets, stopping pedestrians and carts at random. Farseers, disguised as commoners, listened to conversations in teahouses and markets. The disturbances that had crippled the capital on that rainy night were blamed on bandits and saboteurs. Heralds proclaimed that the wise leadership of the empress had quelled the troublemakers before much damage could be done. Even the missing garinafins had been safely recovered after a bit of a scare.
The palace announced that there would be no formal court for a while; the empress was indisposed.
There was nothing said about the emperor.
Savo came to Fara. “I’m afraid the worst has happened.”
Fara nodded, acquiescing in the truth but unwilling to speak it aloud.
Although the couple had been unable to convince Phyro to veer from the path of vengeance, they had persuaded the young emperor to authorize certain contingency plans to be carried out should he never return.
Fara carved Phyro’s name in wax over a wooden tablet and built a makeshift shrine in the walled garden, among a patch of withered weeds that should be blooming with dandelions come summer. Kneeling before it, she wept. Lady Soto knelt down beside her and pulled her into a tearful embrace.
Leaving the two to grieve, Savo went to the hutch and attached message-holding bamboo tubes to the cooing inhabitants. He released them one by one, watching as they took off and melded against the oppressive, snow-laden winter clouds.
* * *
All over Dara, messenger pigeons landed at the story halls of veterans’ mutual benefit societies.
The directions contained in the bamboo tubes were cryptic, but as they were signed by the personal seal of the missing Emperor Monadétu, his followers carried them out faithfully.
Under cover of night, tattooed Adüan gangsters snuck into warehouses at Ginpen’s harbor to retrieve unlabeled boxes from obscure corners and loaded them onto ships bound for all quarters of the compass….
From Toaza to Müning, from Boama to Çaruza, stevedores unloaded the boxes and stacked them on carts in caravans bound for cities and towns in the interior….
Discharged veterans, employed in private security and public town watches, received the boxes from caravan drivers and unpacked them in the middle of the night….
Then they turned the contents over to their sons and daughters, many of whom were clerks or household servants for people of power: city magistrates, provincial governors, Imperial ministers, circuit intendants, military monitors, grand scholars, and academy researchers….
And when these Lords of Dara, nexuses in the all-encompassing system, cogs and levers in the even-tempered machine that was the bureaucracy of the empire, came to work in the morning, they found stacks of books on their desks.
MEANWHILE, IN ZUDI.
Naro Hun, Mayor of Zudi and the very model of a good official in Jia’s system, stared at the stack of books dominating his otherwise empty desk.
Has a storm struck Pan that even the distant reef shrimp cannot escape?
* * *
As the spouse of Mün Çakri, First General of the Infantry and one of Emperor Ragin’s earliest and most decorated followers, he could have lived a life of ease and luxury after Mün’s death at Naza Pass during the ill-fated counterinvasion of Rui. Instead, Naro had volunteered for Gin Mazoti’s army, whose cause had seemed hopeless in the face of the mighty Lyucu invasion fleet. Though he possessed little in the way of strength or skill with arms, he was not an unbrave man.
After the Battle of Zathin Gulf, during which he served in the logistics corps, Prime Minister Cogo Yelu asked him what he wanted to do. Mün Çakri, a marquess, had left Naro a generous benefice, and Naro could have leveraged his connections among Mün’s friends at court to become a very wealthy man.
“Give me a real task suited to my abilities, from which I can make an honest salary to take care of myself and Cacaya-tika,” said Naro. “As for Mün’s title and benefice, let them escheat to the Throne.”
Cogo looked at Naro, his eyebrows raised.
“My son does not need to be a marquess,” said Naro. “The starling at the head of the flock sees the first glint in the falcon’s eye; the leaf at the tip of the branch feels the first chill of winter.”
