Nazia made another sound, a little hum low in her throat like a worried dog. Sayeh almost saw Ravani’s ears prick, wolflike, to hear it. The corners of her mouth tilted. It wasn’t a smile.
“I see your point,” admitted Sayeh.
“Excellent,” Ravani said. “I’m sure we can be of benefit to one another. Send your girl if you wish to talk to me, and I shall come and see you by and by, when I think I can be of use.”
She jerked the horse’s reins savagely. It half-reared, settling on its haunches and pawing in distress. Ravani yanked the bay mare’s head around and kicked her much harder than needful, sending her careering back down the line of the army at a good clip. Despite her terrible horsewomanship, she could ride. She sat the mare’s canter well, Sayeh thought, for the few strides that it was visible.
“Ugh,” Nazia breathed, when she was gone.
“Ravani,” Sayeh said. “Ravana. Remember him?”
Ümmühan nodded.
“Are they twins?”
Ümmühan frowned after the woman with the tigerskin horse-blanket. “They’re something.”
“I don’t trust her,” Nazia said, and seemed as if she might be about to say more. But she wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and shook her head as if she were shaking off the chill of premonition.
“Neither do I,” said Sayeh. “But I need allies if I’m going to rescue my child.”
2
Himadra had lied about the army.
It was far from his first time lying about such things. One did not garner a reputation as a master strategist by telling people all about your plans. Nor, in fact, by telling them anything they did not need to know in order to do their jobs and solve the problems they encountered doing them. Knowing what information each such job required was one of the chief parts of Himadra’s duty, and there were certainly people who needed to know things that he didn’t. The ones he trusted to do so, he also trusted to sort out what he needed to be made aware of.
One also did not gain a reputation as a master strategist by sticking to an old plan when a better opportunity presented itself.
He and Ravana and his small group of men had been on a scouting expedition in his neighbor’s territory when the earth tremors that began the destruction of Ansh-Sahal struck. Himadra had realized instantly that he could use those tremors as a ruse, and that if he rode into his cousin Sayeh’s damaged city and offered help, other opportunities might present themselves. The help would be real, after all, and the very worst that would come of it was that she would owe him.
Also real would be the opportunity for reconnaissance. The fib about an army at his back would be enough threat, he thought, to keep his widowed cousin from developing bright ideas about taking Himadra himself as an honored guest—which was a polite way of saying “hostage.” Sayeh was a gifted politician, and she would think of political solutions before brute-force ones. Also, Himadra was certain that Ravana could spirit him away if necessary, although he preferred to owe the sorcerer as little as possible. Debts to magic-wielders had a way of accruing interest until they began to multiply.
But when Himadra’s clever sergeant Navin saw a chance to make off with Sayeh’s heir—her miracle child—Himadra had agreed to it. There was a hostage worth having. Especially as Sahal-Sarat seemed to be drifting inevitably from a period of cheating to one of fighting, as was the way of government among the squabbling kingdoms that had once been an empire. The move toward war was largely at the instigation of another of Himadra’s many cousins, the wealthy Anuraja of Sarathai-lae, whose kingdom controlled the mouth of the Mother River, and therefore trade across the Arid Sea.
Anuraja was the last of the previous generation, older even than Sayeh Rajni, and he had dreams of empire reclaimed and of sitting on the Peacock Throne. A throne he did not hold, for it was in the palace of their very young cousin Mrithuri. Himadra, however, had accepted something that Anuraja had not, despite having buried five wives without living issue.
Himadra had accepted that the fragile body that housed his acute mind would get no heirs of its own. He had two brothers, it was true. Both much younger than he, for there had been children born between Himadra and these surviving siblings who had inherited the same curse Himadra had, and who had not survived their first hours. Neither of the surviving brothers seemed ill, but who could say what would happen to their descendants, when they got of age to get some?
Himadra’s brothers were both guests fostered at Anuraja’s palace, under Anuraja’s thumb. Himadra had not seen them in years now. Who knew where their loyalties lay?
He could not say where the curse—or lethal sport, if that was what it was—had entered his father’s house, or if it would end before that line died away entirely. But Himadra was a soldier, and soldiers are gambling men by nature.
Sayeh was the daughter of his father’s father’s brother. And Sayeh’s line showed no evidence of being touched by the curse.
Himadra might get no heirs. But now he had stolen one.
Ansh-Sahal wouldn’t miss the boy. Judging by the billowing plume of smoke and steam receding to the west behind them, and by the brutal shocks that still jolted the rocky passages of the mountains called the Razorbacks under his mare Velvet’s steady feet, Himadra did not think there was much of Ansh-Sahal left to do any missing.
He guided Velvet around a recent rockfall, trying to think clearly despite the fog of pain that rose from his frail bones to cloud his wits. If Sayeh Rajni was alive, Himadra mused, she might thank him for rescuing her child.
Well, probably not. But a man could hope.
Himadra hoped the pretty rajni had herself survived, and managed to get some of her people away. She was like him, he thought. A misfit. Stuck in a body that was not shaped to obey the dictates of a mind that knew very well what it had been made for.
In Sayeh’s case, to be a queen. In Himadra’s, to be a mighty warrior.
Well, he said to himself. We both get by.
And maybe with the leverage of her child and her damaged kingdom—and if Sayeh lived—Sayeh could be induced to marry again. If not Himadra, one of his brothers. There were odder things in politics than a dynastic marriage between a third-sex rajni of four decades and a prince of twelve. And such an alliance would repair both of their positions and that of the boy.
Himadra thought he could make a convincing argument, with the resources at his disposal. Especially if he had a bargaining chip good enough to get his brothers back.
What would he do, he wondered, if Anuraja took it into his mind to offer to exchange Vivaan and Rayesh for Drupada? Himadra did not think Anuraja would harm the boy. But he would want the leverage over Sayeh. The question was, would he want it more than leverage over Himadra?
Himadra would rather have Sayeh as an ally. But he couldn’t afford Anuraja—wealthy, well-armed—as an enemy. Perhaps he could convince Sayeh that he and she together could protect her son.
And if not, well. Maybe a still-better opportunity would happen along if Himadra just kept playing to strong positions.
He would be ready for it if it did.
* * *
The ride continued. He had a dozen men with him, and they had less than two dozen horses. The mountains were rising up around them, seeming somehow steeper and more rugged than when they had passed through on the way to Ansh-Sahal.
Himadra did not fool himself that there would be no pursuit. If Sayeh survived, or if any of her household survived and had managed to organize, riders would be following, hard and fast. Riding until they pissed blood.
So Himadra’s folk would ride until they pissed blood, too.
These were battle-hardened, his personal guard. His wiliest and wisest veterans. Used to hunger, accustomed to exhaustion. Able to accomplish miracles, pushing their bodies past the limits of endurance and strength. And they would do so now.
And so he, with all his pain and frailties, must also.
His men would accept that his body was weak, that h
is arm could not lift a sword. They would accept that the Mother had twisted him for her own reasons, and they would follow him nonetheless, for the sake of his wit and his sense of how a battle would turn. People said the true-born sons of the Alchemical Emperor had gifts. Himadra’s gift might be a seventh sense of the pulse and movement of battles, as if he were an Aezin physician, and battles were living things.
Or perhaps that was the result of all his time, and study.
Whatever it was, his men would accept that he could not lead them into a battle with a sword in hand, as was proper. They would not accept it if he did not bear the hardships of the road with the same amused pretense of grumpy endurance as did they, and they would not understand that it was worse for him.
Well, Himadra had not had to choose to be a warlord. Though nothing else would have been open to him except abdication to a beggar’s cup or the priesthood. You couldn’t count on the support of family, when you were heir to a kingdom. Even so rough and stone-hewn a kingdom as Chandranath.
And there were no other adults in his family to abdicate to, which would have left—he sighed—Anuraja. Or one of the rajnis, who could barely hold their own lands.
His people were hungry. Himadra himself was hungry. He was hungry in the immediate physical sense—they had abandoned food, supplies, and the pack animals to carry those supplies at their camp near Ansh-Sahal, in order to make it look occupied a little longer as they snuck away with the heir. As a result, they were without shelter and short of rations. And he was also hungry in the larger sense that Chandranath was a stony, arid place that did not widely reward farming. There was only so much market for the fired clay pottery for which his folk were so justly famed, and so his people lived largely by trading and raiding, and by taxes on the goods obliged to travel through the land to richer realms that might buy them, and also down to the sea.
That hunger was also true, Himadra admitted, in the larger metaphorical sense. He wanted greatness. He craved it.
Very well then. He was hungry.
The child was not.
The child was fed and cared for and as cosseted as a child could be, when carried by a war-band moving fast, and kept by one nurse as stolen as the child was. His nurse had a horse of her own—a gentle gelding far more interested in meals than in running away or bucking—and had tied Drupada to her with a sling, so he could sit on the saddle in front of her and clutch at the gelding’s mane without danger of falling.
Himadra was not innocent of children. He had those two, much-younger brothers. He knew this child was a mere toddler, of no age to reason or regulate his emotions. He was no more responsible for his weeping and calling and fits of temper than a weanling colt screaming for its mother.
He was also just as likely to call the tigers down upon them all as that lost and terrified foal. But after catching a glimpse of a phoenixlike flash of color high above, out of bowshot, a cold and grumpy Himadra Raja asked his sorcerer to lay an illusion of silence around him and his nurse.
He’d never gotten a satisfactory explanation from Ravana of what the difference between an illusion of silence and a real silence was. “The sound still exists, but I render it imperceptible” sounded to Himadra like nonsense or philosophy, which were two words for the same thing. In what manner did an imperceptible sound differ from a silence?
In any case, Himadra hated to ask for the magic, because he did not like giving the sorcerer an excuse to work magic on the child—or on anyone—but it would be worse luck for everyone if Sayeh’s people or a clan of hill bandits caught them. Or actual, rather than metaphorical, tigers. Or jaguars. Or bear-dogs. Or whatever else they had in these Mother-unloved mountains that might want to eat horses or men.
And it was easier to think once the child stopped wailing. The nurse wailed for a while, thinking the prince had been injured in his spirit, but when she—and he—discovered that he could still speak in a normal voice, she settled quickly. And eventually, without the stimulus of his own shrieks egging him on, so did he.
These mountains were muted shades of tan and orange, colored sediments streaking their flanks as rain ran down them. The narrow, switchbacked road through their passes was slick with the intermittent monsoon. The rain fell in squalls and sheets, soaking everything. Then a wave of heat would follow, and the sodden everything would steam into a humidity that could have cooked rice … until the next drenching happened.
Himadra would have retreated into a blur of misery and ridden in that daze, trusting Velvet’s sense of the footing. But he could not. His men were counting on him.
And so was the child, and the child’s nurse. Whose name, he realized, he ought to find out. As she was likely to be a member of his household now. He’d meant to keep her until he got the boy back to the fortress city of Chandranath and pay her passage back to Ansh-Sahal, since there was no way he could ever count on her loyalty. But now there was no Ansh-Sahal to send her back to. And while Himadra had no compunctions about having his men cut the throat of an enemy soldier, he was not so without honor as to kidnap and murder defenseless women.
At his left hand rode one of his capable sergeants, Navin—the crease-faced and wiry fellow, graying in streaks at the temples. Navin was loyal, capable, independent-minded, and perhaps a tiny bit pompous, but he made up for it with a sharp-tongued wit, and Himadra had long since accepted that surrounding himself with people who were docile would require accepting that he was also surrounding himself with people who were stupid. Being a raja had never meant being unchallenged, to him.
Perhaps if his body had been large and strong, it would have. But Himadra had learned early and well how to persuade people to allow him to use their strength as if it were his own. It was not unlike training a horse to respond to a touch on the rein. The horse must be kept from realizing that it was much stronger than the rider, it was true. But the horse also had to trust the rider’s judgment more than its own instincts, on occasion. And that was a trickier prospect than brute force would ever be.
Himadra turned to Navin and said, “Go make friends with the nurse, would you? And find out her name and family for me?”
Navin gave him a grin and a saucy wink. “In your service, Lord Himadra.”
Himadra sighed and waved the sergeant off. Navin went, but not as if he had been dismissed. As if he were whistling on his way to work.
Himadra stroked Velvet’s dappled neck. Her wet hair stuck together in little tufts, and her drenched mane hung in cords. The mare was specially trained for his needs. She was a wise and gentle palfrey that he had hand-raised from a foal to trust him and see him as the source of all good things. Her dam was one of several smooth-gaited western mares he had imported, in foal to various stallions, specifically to get strong, calm horses that moved with the running walk that would not jolt his body, a necessity for his safety that others had bred into the animals for comfort. His bones were not much stronger than a cat’s, and he was a good deal heavier.
Despite all that, he rode her with a strong curb bit that was far more aggressive than what so steady and willing a horse would have required of an able-bodied rider. He hadn’t the strength to manage even a gentle, soft-mouthed horse without the leverage it provided.
His saddle, too, was specially designed and quite different from the simple slip-saddles preferred by his men. It was padded, and made so that his weight rested on cushions. Quilted sleeves were belted around his legs and waist to support him if Velvet shied or sidestepped. If the mare fell, he’d be trapped—but the risk of falling off was much greater.
It was dangerous for Himadra to ride. He knew that, and he acknowledged the danger. A fall would be disastrous, and he did what he could to mitigate that danger. He also allowed his sorcerer to weave spells of protection around him.
But whatever the risks, Velvet was his freedom. She was his strong legs, his stout heart. Battle was dangerous, after all, and other warriors went into it. Himadra, in point of fact, went into it. A general could not command from
behind the lines.
Velvet did not come into combat with him, however. She was too valuable, too trusting, too gentle. Too beloved. No, when Himadra went to war, his men carried him on their shoulders, lifted on a shield as if it were a litter. From up there, he could see farther than a tall man, and his words could be heard by those whose voices carried.
He was a good leader. He knew that, though he was aware also that a raja—and a general—must always be alert against self-flattery. There was no one around him to enforce him to modesty, so he must enforce it upon himself.
That was another reason he valued men like Navin. Such men would not cosset him.
He was a good leader. A good general. A good raja. A good brother, in as far as he could manage to be when his brothers dwelled in the house of another king, and one whose honor Himadra did not trust in the slightest. To his widowed mother, he still strove to be a good son.
But Velvet … to the mare, he thought, he was a good master, and a trusted friend. And she rewarded that friendship richly, not because he was raja and she sought the advantage of his regard, but because he was fair and kind to her.
He was musing on that still, the mare walking on a slack rein at the head of their little party with his lieutenant Farkadh on his dun gelding beside them, when he became aware that what he had half-assumed was the next switch of the road, glimpsed off to the right and winding down the mountain, was in fact a different road. A second and wider road, big enough for more than the two abreast or two passing of the way they now followed.
As they crested a rise, Himadra could make out the intersection ahead through the mist. He could see, too, that after that intersection his own road widened—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that his own road disappeared into the larger one as a tributary.
The Red-Stained Wings--The Lotus Kingdoms, Book Two Page 3
