The Hidden Queen, page 19
No. I will not go without armor again. Not here, where I cannot tell enemy from friend.
It’s strange, traveling by palanquin. The Krasians see it as a sign of status, and power, to ride in a carriage borne on the backs of men, rather than pulled by animals. I’d just as soon be on the back of my own horse, able to run or fight as needed, but I am a royal visiting the Palace of the Holy Mother, and I do not wish to give insult.
The palanquin is armored and carried by my own spear brothers, surrounded in turn by burly Cutters in their enameled wooden armor. We draw stares as we move down the street, folk leaning from windows and a crowd of gawkers following down the street.
I have the same feeling I get in the Maze, when anticipating an ambush. Like there’s demons around the next corner, and I need to be ready to fight. My spear is in easy reach, but it will do little good in the palanquin. Instead I grip the hilt of my hanzhar, ready to slash.
But there is no attack, and soon we are at the gates to the Palace of the Holy Mother. My escort stops, and I feel the palanquin lowered. I peek through the window and see a white-sleeved guard kneeling to greet me.
White-sleeved Sharum serve as temple guards of Sharik Hora and the Holy City in Krasia. It makes sense to find them here, as well. As I understand it, Kajivah isn’t even a dama’ting, but she is mother to Shar’Dama Ka, the Deliverer. In the eyes of the people, that makes her as close to Everam as any who live.
A dozen paces up the road, a squad of white-sleeved guards outnumbering my escort two-to-one has taken a single knee, spears and shields in hand. Submissive to my rank, but prepared to fight, should they feel the Holy Mother threatened.
The guard kneeling to greet me has the white veil of a kai, but he moves to put his hands on the ground in submission.
The act offends me. Mother always hated folk bowing and scraping at royals, and for my part, no warrior who has fought the alagai, regardless of rank, should have to put their hands on the ground simply to greet me.
“Tsst.” My hiss is that of a scolding Krasian mother, and the guard instinctively freezes, wondering how he has given offense. I should have just let the man bow. In trying to spare his honor, I may have bruised it further.
I deepen my voice to compensate for the womanly hiss. “Rise, honored Kai, and look me in the eye.”
I do my best to imitate a Kaji accent, but it feels stilted, even to me. The Krasian Studies teachers back at Gatherers’ University were Kaji, but it was only among the Majah that I was immersed in the language and truly became fluent.
The warrior seems mollified at that, rolling back onto his heels and standing in one smooth motion before raising his gaze. I punch a fist to my chest, the traditional greeting among kai’Sharum, and again he seems taken aback, though he mirrors the gesture on instinct.
“You honor me.” This time he offers a warrior’s bow. “Greetings, Your Royal Highness, Prince Olive asu Ahmann am’Paper am’Hollow. I am Kai Neven, and it is my honor to serve you. My men will be pleased to offer water and shade to your escort, for the duration of your stay.”
“Of course, Kai Neven.” We knew to expect this. The Palace of the Holy Mother is a women’s space, and the temple guards do not allow other armed men inside the walls. There are stables and housing on the grounds outside.
At the gate my bodyguards and I give up our shields and the short stabbing spears—in Hollow they would be called fencing spears—we harness at our backs. Neven eyes the hanzhar at my belt, but he does not demand I turn it over.
The inner courtyard is vast, and abustle with activity. There are streams of servants and courtiers, but also dama and dama’ting. Like me, the priestesses wear hanzhar at their belts.
The clerics are trailed by acolytes carrying paper and writing kits, which tells me there is real power and influence here—if of a different sort than that of the Damajah’s court. It reminds me a little of Mother’s keep in Hollow, the courtyard dominated by a vast walled garden.
Separate from the main palace is a tall tower, ringed at its base by white-sleeved dal’Sharum, half of them facing outward to guard against attack, and half looking in, as if to keep someone, or something, contained. Occasionally, white-robed clerics and acolytes enter or exit the building. The guards eye them and what they carry carefully, but do not hinder them, otherwise.
“What is that?” I ask Kai Neven.
“That is the Tower of Nothing, Highness,” Neven says. “It is the prison of Prince Asome.”
Asome. My half brother, second son of Ahmann Jardir, who was called the Prince of Nothing, because he was set to inherit no title or power. Asome, who killed the council of Damaji in the night so he could ascend to the Skull Throne when Father disappeared with Arlen Bales fifteen years ago and was presumed dead.
Asome, who broke Father’s oath to the Majah and tore the rift that sent them back to Desert Spear, even when they were desperately needed in Sharak Ka.
The rift that destroyed my life and forced me to build myself anew.
Suddenly I feel it was a mistake coming here, but it is too late to turn back now, and I hasten the pace.
“You are wise to keep your distance,” Neven agrees. “Prince Asome has wealth, power, and influence still. He has spent his exile delving into dama’ting witchery and honing his sharusahk. It is said he is the greatest living master, save the Deliverer himself.”
The words are meant to unsettle me, but instead they strike an unexpected chord. I, too, studied dama’ting magic in the Chamber of Shadows, and my last months have been nothing but sharusahk. Asome fathered a single son, Kaji, so he is technically not push’ting, but that word carries deeper weight than its definition in scripture. It is well known Asome prefers the company of men.
We’re escorted to the gardens, where we are met by eunuch guards, wrists and ankles bound in gold to symbolize their servitude.
“Your men will need to wait here,” Neven says. “Even I am not allowed into the gardens, save by appointment to visit my wife and children.”
It seems the muscular eunuch guards, armed with clubs at their belts, are not considered bound by this rule. They bar the path of my bodyguards, and one has the audacity to reach for my hanzhar.
“Tsst!” Again that instinctive, scolding hiss, heard so many times from my sister Micha as I was growing up. The eunuch recoils as if burned, and I bare my teeth at him. “Eunuch or no, you are a man, and the hanzhar is not for your hands.”
There is a pause as the eunuchs’ fingers flit almost too quickly for the eye to see. Men guarding women of holy order often give up their tongues as well as their stones, and speak in a silent language of hand gestures that Micha only had time to teach me the rudiments of. Perhaps I can ask Favah to teach me more someday, but for now I can only guess at their meaning.
They are discussing, I expect, whether to allow me entrance with a weapon, refuse me, or, worse, go to the Holy Mother and ask. At last they wave me through, with one unlucky guard, the one who reached for my hanzhar, rushing ahead, no doubt to inform Kajivah of the irregularity.
The Holy Mother’s gardens are a maze of hedges, meant to give privacy and layers of protection to the women within, that they might shed their veils and black robes in feminine company.
The Sharum in me, born in the Maze of Desert Spear, tenses as I enter. Once I would have seen only the beauty of the flowers, or the privacy offered by the secluded bowers. Now I see ambush pockets and choke points. Even as I try to shake the feeling off and see the garden for the plants, part of me is planning its defense.
The outskirts of the gardens are a kind of neutral area, where husbands may meet with their wives, or male children with their mothers or sisters. Not yet of marriage age and royal in blood, I am escorted deeper than other males, though still not into the center, where even eunuchs may not go.
I hear the Holy Mother before I see her.
“Fool!” I thought Rojvah exaggerated in her letters, but my cousin spoke honest word when she described Kajivah’s voice as a sand demon’s shriek. “Did they cut off your brains when they gelded you? You are lucky Prince Olive did not kill you where you stood, for attempting to put hands on your betters. Now begone, before you upset my grandson further.”
The eunuch messenger comes darting around a hedge, nearly bowling me over. His eyes bulge at the sight of me and he moans, bowing so low his hands touch the grass. But he doesn’t stop moving, and before the first slippered foot appears from behind the hedge, he has fled.
Here in her private gardens, Kajivah’s veil and scarves are down around her shoulders like a shawl, over finely tailored silk robes in tones of orange, covered in elaborate wardwork stitched in thread of gold. I doubt this woman has ever as much as seen a demon in the flesh, yet here she is in the light of day, covered in more warding than a Sharum in the Maze.
I shake my head, thinking of the many similar dresses I have in Hollow. Most of them I made myself, back when I thought the alagai had all been destroyed in the Deliverer’s Purge. Who am I to judge this woman? I know little of her trials.
Lowering the veil is supposed to put folk at ease, but Grandmother’s face remains severe, pinched like she hasn’t been to the privy in days. Her dark hair is streaked with white, like lightning splitting the night sky.
Like the point of a flight of wind demons, an entourage of women in brightly colored silks fans out behind my grandmother. Some have raised their veils, but many have not, and I recognize some of them from court.
My sisters. Like Micha, they are twice my age, but still in their primes, beautiful and vibrant. They cluster together at the sight of me, hanging back and whispering to one another as Kajivah approaches.
A pair of veiled women in dama’ting white trail the group. They have the look of servants, but I expect truer is they are the Damajah’s spies. Part of Asome’s coup was a failed attempt to assassinate his mother and replace her on the Pillow Throne with Kajivah. It is unclear if Grandmother was a pawn in that game, or if she knew full well what was happening and craved the Pillow Throne as much as her grandson did the Skull Throne.
“Olive!” Kajivah shrieks, opening her arms and rushing to me as if we have known each other all our lives. She embraces me warmly, kissing my cheeks.
Mother taught me to keep a smile painted on my face in circumstances like these, and the training serves me well. “Grandmother.”
Kajivah waves the word away like a stink. “You will call me Tikka.” The Krasian word for “grandmother,” it is both a literal term and an honorific for respected elder women. She steps back. “Let me have a look at you.”
I oblige, spreading my arms. Tikka rotates a finger in the air, and I turn dutifully for her appraisal.
“Handsome,” she says at last, “and strong. But skinny. They must have starved you in Desert Spear. Majah cooking has always been offal. A warrior son of House Jardir should have more muscle on his bones.” She turns to one of the veiled women at her side. “Have food brought to the gardens. Meat, and my special couscous.”
I bow. “Thank you, Tikka, but that really isn’t—”
“Phagh,” Kajivah cuts in as the woman scurries off. “I cannot have my grandson looking thin as a pillow wife. Bad enough your heasah mother shamed you by raising you as push’ting.”
I step forward, eyes cool but unyielding, like Micha’s when she stared down Grandmum Elona. “I fear our visit will be short, Tikka, if you intend to speak ill of my mother.” My tone is quiet. Calm. Firm.
Kajivah blinks, then laughs, kissing my cheeks again. “Of course, you are a dutiful son, whether it is deserved or not! How could a grandson of mine be anything but? They said I was cursed for bearing three daughters after your father, but I say Everam blessed me with a son so great, he needed no brothers.”
Was Asome a dutiful son, when he tried to have Inevera murdered? I am wise enough not to ask the question aloud. Indeed, I might not like the answer.
Kajivah reaches out and takes my chin, turning my face this way and that as she examines me. “I worried you would have the greenlanders’ look about you, but my son’s line breeds true. We will have no trouble finding you a proper Krasian Jiwah Ka.”
“It will be months, yet, before I reach my sixteenth year,” I say, hoping to deflect the topic. In New Krasia, weddings begin at sixteen, and Mother used that to keep their marriage brokers at bay.
“Indeed, it is late,” Kajivah agrees. “You should already be betrothed, and your intended selecting sister-wives. But no matter!” She pinches her fingers together, smushing my cheeks. “Fifteen, and a hero of the Maze! Royal of blood and beautiful, with a throne all your own!” She turns to my sisters. “I do not think it will be hard to find this one a match!”
Dutifully, the women all laugh.
“No doubt the Damajah already has designs on you,” Kajivah says. “Some dama’ting viper to keep you in line.” At her back the two dama’ting in the entourage do their best to study the grass.
I cross my arms. “That won’t be happening.”
“Everam willing, it will not!” Kajivah agrees. “I will find you a proper bride, to keep your home and raise your children, as I raised Ahmann and his sisters. To pay your debts and warm your bed, not insert herself into matters that do not concern foolish women.”
I blink, stunned. Why would I want that any more than some dama’ting viper?
“That’s kind of you, Tikka, but I am afraid there is no time. I leave for Hollow on the morrow.”
“Of course, of course,” Tikka says. “Perhaps I should accompany you? I would like to see the palaces of the North, and I can bring candidates for you to consider…”
I bow. “You honor me, Tikka, but we must travel at speed, and I fear the mode will not befit the Holy Mother. You will need more than spears in your retinue. Perhaps you can visit in the spring, after the snows have melted?”
By then, whether it be to Safehold or the Spear of Ala, I will be long gone from Hollow. And if I should make it home alive, an overbearing grandmother will be the least of my fears. Perhaps she will lock horns with Elona and spare me entirely.
“A wonderful idea!” Kajivah shrieks. She turns to another of her veiled servants. “Begin making lists and preparations. And where is that food? Find that lazy chef and whip her if it takes any longer. Bring chilled nectar for Prince Olive, as well!”
As the second woman is sent running, one of the dama’ting bows to Kajivah. “Holy Mother, I do not believe the Damajah will think it wise for you to travel to the green lands…”
“Of course not!” Kajivah barks, uncowed. “Just as she did not think it wise for Ahmann to honor Prince Olive’s chin mother by taking her as a proper jiwah. I will see to my grandson’s matchmaking personally.”
The priestess doesn’t argue further. Like everyone in Kajivah’s orbit, she seems to think it best to humor the volatile woman.
I’m no better, truly. I hope the priestess is right, and all this can be solved by simply warning Inevera of Tikka’s plans.
“Walk with me, Olive.” Tikka takes my arm, leaning symbolically—though she’s still fit at what must be close to seventy winters—and steers me like a horse.
“You honor me, Tikka.” I allow myself to be pulled along as we stroll past fountains and statues and manicured flower beds.
“We’ll need to do something about that Majah accent,” Tikka notes. “A prince of your stature should not speak like one of those savage ginjaz.”
Again, I am caught without a response. Kajivah laughs, tugging at my arm. “Oh, I don’t blame you, my boy! It must have been difficult to live among the unclean, yet you return their master! Your father’s blood runs true in more than your handsome face. We will find an instructor to remove the last vestiges of their offal from your princely tongue.”
It’s only been minutes, but she’s managed to insult her own servants, my mother, my people, the Damajah, and now an entire tribe. I wonder how long I need to stay, in order to be polite.
“You must visit your brother, before you go,” Kajivah says, as if reading my mind.
“I don’t think…” I grasp for a response.
“Do not let rumor poison you against your brother without meeting him,” Kajivah says. “Asome is a good man, and wise. Your father had disappeared and the chin were in revolt when he took power. We would have been unprepared for Sharak Ka, if not for his leadership.”
That’s not the version of the story I heard, but considering the low opinion Kajivah seems to have of her own gender, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised she can find no wrong in her eldest living grandson.
“Asome put his duty to Krasia first,” Kajivah says. “A good prince does not have the luxury of doing otherwise.”
The words are reminiscent of something Mother would say, and I wonder, not for the first time, where my own duty lies.
The shadows grow long before Tikka and my sisters are finished cooing over me. I exit the gardens and stand in the courtyard, staring up at the Tower of Nothing. It looms in the yard, rising high above the walls of the Palace of the Holy Mother to look out over the city of Everam’s Bounty.
A prison, perhaps, but a princely one.
As with Tikka, I am curious about my disgraced half brother despite the warnings. Depending on who you ask, which histories you believe, Asome is a murderer and a madman, or a hero burdened by noble purpose. Some say he betrayed the Majah and caused the rift between the tribes, while others—most here in New Krasia—blame the Majah for abandoning Sharak Ka rather than submit to the Deliverer’s son.
What drives a man to murder for a throne? To kill his uncle, his father-in-law, even sending assassins after his own wife and mother? I can make guesses, but that is all they will be if I don’t have the stones to go and ask him directly.
