He remembered this intersection, now, from the ride into Ansh-Sahal. The larger road was a smoother but less direct path into the city, of the sort that might be preferred by wagons and caravans. What Himadra did not recall was seeing the muddy surface of the road freshly and heavily churned, trampled into a slimy mire that the horses would flounder up to their fetlocks in.
“An army,” Himadra said, tasting the rain on his beard as his lips parted. “Between when we last passed, and this morning.”
“A day ago at least,” said Junayd, who was the most accomplished tracker of Himadra’s trusted band. “Headed south and west, away from Ansh-Sahal.”
“Refugees?” Himadra asked, second-guessing himself. Though he could not see how refugees could have gotten ahead of them on the longer road, unless they had left after the first earth-tremor.
“Too many horses.” Junayd didn’t dismount as they came up on the intersection. “Not enough other cattle. No small tracks: no children. No small dogs. Only mastiff prints, along the shoulder. Army, almost definitely.”
“Well,” Himadra said certainly. “It isn’t our army.”
There was a jingle of harness close behind. Too close for the horse to have come up without being heard, and yet it had.
“Anuraja,” said the sorcerer Ravana, before Himadra was finished jumping in startlement. Ravana had seemed in a trance after the anti-shrieking spell. Apparently, now he was out of it.
“Not a Rasan come to take advantage of Sahal-Sarat’s disarrayed politics?” Junayd asked.
Himadra chuckled. “That king of theirs seems to be operating on the theory that it’s better to marry your rivals than bury them, and by the Mother’s grace he does seem to have enough offspring to go around. They marry early and often up in the hills.”
The hills were mountains that scraped the sky, but Himadra trusted that Junayd would appreciate his humor. As for Ravana—well, who knew what Ravana appreciated? Whatever it was, he didn’t often share it.
“Not much else to do up there,” Junayd answered. “Well, we know Anuraja has fielded an army. But he’s supposed to be on his way to Sarathai-tia, not anywhere near Ansh-Sahal.”
Himadra smiled past the churn of his gut. “Are you always where you tell your allies you were going to be, doing exactly what you said you would?”
Ravana chuckled, and after a nervous pause, so did Junayd. They were not, in fact, where Anuraja expected them to be right now, although the main body of Himadra’s army was. And they were definitely not doing what Anuraja was likely to expect.
Velvet sidestepped anxiously, crowding Junayd’s bay. Her head was up, her ears seeking as if she heard or scented something. Himadra was grateful for the bolsters that protected his leg from crushing.
He strained his ears, trusting the mare’s senses and instincts. A slight scraping sound, maybe, under the gentle drum of rain—the noise of a hoof on stone? The rustle of motion of a large animal?
“Ambush,” Himadra murmured to his lieutenant.
Junayd twisted in the saddle, reaching for the crossbow on his gelding’s rump.
A rock fell, skittering down the slope rising on their left. Himadra jerked around, the sudden movement exacting a tax in pain. His eyes came up, his body tensing as he sought the silhouettes of riflemen or archers cresting the ridge—
A bloodcurdling porcine squeal shocked Himadra into grabbing for his pistol. Big galloping shapes crested the ridge, but not riders. Rather, the hunch-shouldered, bristly forms of a half-dozen monstrous bear-boars hurtled down on Himadra and his party.
The immense animals were mottled in shades of ivory and brown. They stood horse-tall and were heavier. Their crocodilian heads hung from slablike slopes of shoulder on necks bulging with mastiff muscle. Tusks shone with drool in their long snouts. Piggy eyes squinted deep in their massive skulls, armored behind bulwarks of bone. Ludicrously tiny cloven hooves, like ballet shoes on spindly legs, splashed mud and scattered pebbles, and somehow carried the gigantic animals faster and faster down the slimy scree toward the startled men and the screaming horses.
3
Mrithuri Rajni stared down her nose at the interlopers. It was ineffectual, because her mask (snarling leopard, today) hid her expression. But if they couldn’t see her displeasure, perhaps they could sense it. And it was satisfying nonetheless to glare.
She sat on her chair of estate wearing—and surrounded by—all her regal trappings. Hnarisha and Yavashuri—advisors, spymasters, guardians, and guides—rested in chairs behind a screen to her left. On her right was the perch for a bearded vulture, her massive ivory-and-black head, breast, and wings streaked with the colors of fresh and dried blood from the ochre she had groomed into her feathers. On the steps at Mrithuri’s feet curled her handmaiden, Chaeri, re-robed in gold-embroidered silks and with the rain toweled out of her freshly oiled hair. At the bottom of the dais lay Syama, the brindled bear-dog, in her golden collar that Mrithuri could have worn low on her hips as a girdle. Mrithuri’s bare feet were gilded in gold dust. Her fingers clattered in golden stalls—tick, tick, tick on the carved arm of her chair as she slowly tapped with them. Her head ached with the weight of her ornaments. She was grumpy and overwrought and tired out and hungover from the strain of the royal sorceries she had relied upon over the past days, and there was no hope in sight for rest. Her very veins itched with craving for the venom of her Eremite serpents, but she could not afford to indulge again so soon, though Chaeri would bring them to her at a word.
The venom was a poison, though, as well as a stimulant. And Mrithuri had been using too much.
So she gathered herself, and tried to keep the acid from her voice, perhaps not very successfully, as she addressed the sodden Wizard, phoenix, and captain of the guard arrayed before her.
“Haven’t I met you two already?”
The Wizard—a small plump fellow in a threadbare Rasan coat—sighed. “So I am given to understand.”
Mrithuri’s new man-at-arms and newer lover stood behind them on one side. His coat was red, and even more threadbare. The Dead Man crossed his arms, making the bullet hole at the center of the coat’s chest stretch, the fabric of the coat itself ripple stiffly where fresh stains the color of the stains of the bearded vulture’s feathers were. Mrithuri tried to drive from her mind the source of those stains, and the reason for the absence of another old retainer who should have been in the room with them.
On the other side, and also behind, was Mrithuri’s Wizard, Ata Akhimah, who had been her childhood tutor not so long ago.
The foreign Wizard—Tsering-la—cleared his throat and continued hesitantly. “I don’t suppose you saved the cadaver?”
Akhimah stepped forward and grinned toward him. “And the gun.”
“Mother keep those two parted,” Hnarisha murmured from behind the screen.
Too late, Mrithuri thought. She gathered her drapes about her with the hooked tips of her fingerstalls, and stood. Syama stood as well, coming around the chair of estate to fall in at her heels.
“You trust these two?” Mrithuri asked Akhimah, gesturing with her chin.
“Your Abundance—” Chaeri protested. Mrithuri stopped her with a gesture.
“I’m willing to work under the assumption that they are telling the truth, for now,” Akhimah answered.
Mrithuri reminded herself to give the air of considering. The fact of the matter was, she had already made up her mind.
“Take my cousin’s Wizard to the morgue, then. My royal cousin’s familiar can be housed in the royal aviary, with my own allies.” Mrithuri reached out an arm and stroked Najlii’s feathery nape with a single gold-wrapped finger, wishing she could feel her plumage. “Captain Vidhya, you will come with me. Once Tsering-la and Ata Akhimah have examined the assassin, and I have spoken to my commanders about the army at our gates, we will convene again that I may hear a report of your findings. And we will discuss how best to go about rescuing your rajni then.”
She turned to go, gratified with the start
led surprise with which Tsering-la and Captain Vidhya swept their courtesies. Maybe she had time for a short nap and some tea before Yavashuri and Hnarisha assembled the generals.
Syama followed at her heels as she swept away.
* * *
“You’re pretty quick to trust them,” the Dead Man said to Mrithuri softly, having caught her in the hall. Her confidants drew back a little, to give them privacy for soft speech. There were no real secrets, for a rajni. Syama head-butted him, a show of affection she usually reserved for Mrithuri and Yavashuri only.
Mrithuri’s pulse quickened a little as she looked at him. Silly girl. She also felt a little anger, that he challenged her.
She reminded herself that he had been raised both to interrogate his liege’s judgment, and to follow it unhesitatingly once the decision was made. He was doing his duty as her servant.
“You brought them to me.”
“I would not presume to judge for my rajni,” he said, with a courtly flourish. “I would not mind understanding the logic of her judgment, however.”
She soothed herself with a deep breath.
“Guang Bao,” she explained.
The lines around his eyes rearranged themselves. She was getting used to reading his expressions despite the veil.
“Daughters of the Alchemical Emperor have a special way with animals.”
He nodded thoughtfully. He had, after all, seen Mrithuri with her vultures. And—her cheeks heated despite the chill in her blood—her snakes.
“If the phoenix had been sent away from Sayeh without her consent and instructions, he would not be so calm or trusting of his captors. Once I have a chance to inspect him in private, I will be able to say more. My cousin Sayeh is of the bloodline. She is a true daughter of the Alchemical Emperor, and so her familiar’s willing acceptance of these men means that they are acting with her blessing.”
“Oh,” the Dead Man said. “It doesn’t make a difference that she’s third-sex?”
“That doesn’t make her less of a woman,” Mrithuri rebuked.
The Dead Man accepted it with a wince. “All the same,” he said. “I think I’ll monitor these guests.”
Mrithuri laid the backs of her fingers, where the stalls left them bare, briefly against his cheek above the veil.
“Thank you,” she said.
* * *
“Well,” Mrithuri said. She crossed her arms, fingering the gold-wrought cuffs of her blouse where they ended just above her elbows. “It’s not every day one is privileged to interview a mythological creature.”
The phoenix cocked his head. “Pretty bird?” he asked, experimentally.
He had been fed, bathed, and allowed to groom himself dry, and was looking significantly less bedraggled. Some of the long jewel-like feathers of his crest still flopped, broken, but Mrithuri knew that when her austringers had more time, they would be able to do a great deal to repair the plumage, as well as the less obvious but more crippling damage to the strong primary feathers of his wings and tail. The process was called “imping,” and involved using sections of feather shaft glued into place to splint and reinforce the bent and broken feathers until they were molted out, in the natural course of things.
Until that happened, Mrithuri doubted that the phoenix would be able to fly well, if at all. But at least for now he looked better: clean, dry, accoutered in his rightful shades of shimmering orange, golden, black, and teal as iridescently as if he were decked in silk.
“Pretty bird,” Mrithuri agreed. She stepped closer, bare feet whispering on the rug. Such a relief to be stripped of her own gaudy court plumage and dressed in only a blouse, embroidered drape, her snake torc, and a dozen or so chiming glass bracelets. Her bare arms revealed the tattoos of the sacred animals, marking her rank. Her hair was braided plainly down her back, with only a rope or two of pearls. She was alone in her chambers with her closest advisors: Chaeri, Yavashuri, and Hnarisha … and of course the omnipresent rustle of the cloistered nuns behind the pierced wall panels.
“Your Abundance,” Yavashuri began. Mrithuri’s belly muscles braced. Yavashuri only used her title in that particular tone when she was about to, ever-so-politely, tell her rajni off.
“Yes, my child?” It was a gentle rebuke, and a deniable one. Of course, to Mrithuri in her ceremonial role as the Good Mother, every one of her people was her child. But Yavashuri was more than twice Mrithuri’s age and had more or less raised her.
Yavashuri was not cowed. “It would be wise to rest before you attempt this, Rajni.”
Mrithuri pressed the knuckle of her thumb to her aching forehead. She knew, of course, that Yavashuri was right. She also felt the driving ache of duty pushing her to do more.
“How would I feel if I were in Sayeh’s place?” Mrithuri asked her advisors. Hnarisha, who had seemed as if he were about to speak, looked down. “My royal cousin has entrusted me with her safety, and sent her men—and her familiar—to plead with me on behalf of her, and her heir.”
“That is well, Your Abundance,” Yavashuri said. “But you cannot help anyone if you exhaust yourself unto destruction. You do not have an heir of your body, and while I do not dispute that you owe your royal cousin a duty of care, you owe one to your subjects as well, that you do not leave us at the mercy of Anuraja.”
Mrithuri looked at the old woman and breathed out through her nose to contain her irritation.
“We’re not suggesting that you abandon Sayeh,” Hnarisha hastened to add. “Only that you accept that you can do nothing to assist her at this instant, and that what you are about to attempt will be safer and more effective if first you rest.”
“I see,” said Mrithuri. It was, in fact, a pretty good argument. As she turned it over in her mind, inspecting it for flaws as she might inspect a jewel, she felt a certain pleasure along with her annoyance. She had chosen her favorites well.
“If I may—” Chaeri began.
Yavashuri shut her up with a look. “You need rest too. Otherwise I cannot feel confident in the judgment of either of you.”
Mrithuri laughed and raised her hands. “All right!” she said. “All right, Yavashuri, you win. Send for food. I will rest until I have eaten it, and then I will talk to the bird. And once I have done that, I will sleep. Until I am rested, or until the next crisis demands my attention.”
“Acceptable,” Yavashuri said. “If you are willing to endure my judgment as to what constitutes a sufficient crisis to awaken you.”
“Somebody had better come get me if the enemy are breaching the walls,” Mrithuri grumbled.
“They have not even reached the river yet,” Hnarisha assured her. “Now, please, Rajni. Won’t you lie down?”
She did, and even slept a little, and felt the better for it. It nagged at her that she and her soldiers had nothing better to do than sit within walls, waiting for the enemy to surround them. They would have been better to march out, to meet the enemy in the field. To prevent the siege from happening entirely. But the enemy had appeared as if from nowhere, with unknown capabilities and—as far as Mrithuri knew—at full strength.
She could rush her own people out to try to prevent the siege … and perhaps see them cut to ribbons.
Also, Pranaj—abruptly elevated to general in the wake of the assassination that had been meant, instead, to claim Mrithuri—had pointed out that because Anuraja’s army had bypassed their borders rather than crashing through them, Sarathai-tia’s defenses remained intact at his rear. The border troops might rally, and even come to lift the siege. If they could be contacted, they could be called.
And Mrithuri had her birds. So perhaps relief could be arranged.
They would permit Anuraja to surround them, and fight his numerically superior force from within the transient safety of city walls.
The food came—delicious morsels, lovingly arranged and prepared. Mrithuri forced herself to eat. Mechanically, as an act of stoking. Who knew for how long there would be fresh food?
She did feel
better after, though the light meal sat inside her like a boot on her stomach. A little energy had returned, and she could stand up without bracing herself. Yavashuri flanked her nonetheless, and Mrithuri did not point out the ridiculousness of the older woman serving as a prop for her queen.
Guang Bao, obviously as tired out by his recent adventures as any human and less self-conscious about it, had tucked his head under his wing and was indulging himself in a nap. He woke as Mrithuri approached him. She offered him a slice of dragonfruit from her own tray, and he accepted it with delicate gentleness. It was too large to swallow whole. He shifted his weight to grasp it in one large claw and clucked happily as he turned it in place, nibbling at the edges and shedding bright red, sticky bits over the footing of his perch.
Mrithuri stroked his nape with a fingertip, careful not to touch him overmuch. The balance of his feather oils was no doubt already destroyed by unceremonious and exigent handling, not to mention the bath. But she did not want to disimprove it further. He seemed to enjoy the attention, anyway, rousing and chuckling to himself and turning to preen the side of her hand.
With her left hand, she drew a jewel-tipped straight pin from her drape and jabbed it into the back of her right hand. The blood welled slowly. Mrithuri reminded herself to drink the tea she had poured and then left untasted, cooling. She turned her hand and let the thick droplet brush Guang Bao’s beak.
The phoenix preened up the blood with a beak already sticky with dragonfruit. With her other hand, Mrithuri repinned her drape.
Her fingers tickled through roused feathers, finding the softness of down and the strange, prickly warmth of feathered skin. The bird made a happy cheeping noise, and Mrithuri eased herself into his memories. She saw what he had seen; she felt his confusion, his fear. She steadied herself against the heavy polished-wood perch and closed her eyes to rid herself of the disorientation of double vision. Triple vision, really—what she saw, and what the bird saw, and what the bird remembered having seen.
The Red-Stained Wings--The Lotus Kingdoms, Book Two Page 4
