“Well, he’s my responsibility too. And so are you. And your responsibility is to protect him, isn’t it?”
Iri was clinging to some invisible outcrop on the wall behind her with one hand. Her other crept to wrap around the child in his sling.
Himadra, feeling like he was gaining ground, took a breath and called up, “I will swear to guard Prince Drupada, Iri. I am many things, but I am not an oathbreaker.”
“You are so full of shit,” she yelled down.
“You don’t have a lot of better options that I can tell.”
She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall. She stayed like that for a long while, and Himadra forced himself to be quiet. So often if you just held your peace, people would give you what you wanted.
At long last, Drupada began to cry. Not a howl, as Himadra would have expected. But a low, exhausted snivel. Without opening her eyes, Iri sighed.
“Oh, fuck it. Send down the rope,” she said.
“Don’t move,” Himadra answered. He turned Velvet back swiftly, to find that Jeet had the horses all assembled in a string, and Guarav was turning over corpses, reclaiming what arrows he could assemble.
Guarav made a noise of disgust as Himadra rode up. “Dammit, two of these shafts are broken.”
“You need to practice more, so your targets always fall backward.”
“Most of them … right. I’ll get the rope, Sire.”
* * *
Still, Himadra did not breathe a sigh of relief until Iri stepped into the loop tied in the rope and let Guarav and Farkhad lower her and the prince to safety—or the nearest thing anyone could accomplish to it under current conditions.
Iri dusted herself off, settled her tattered skirts, and marched up to the gray gelding. He had stopped gasping, but still looked at her suspiciously as she approached.
“Not him,” Jeet said. “He still needs rest. Take this mare.”
The mare was one of the brigand’s horses, a dark dun, and while she was tired she had not been run into the ground the way the gelding had. Iri was eyeing her dubiously when Himadra said, “You lied about not knowing how to ride.”
She snorted. “Wouldn’t you?”
Himadra felt the smile bending his mustache despite everything he could do to prevent it. Another failure of stern warlord demeanor.
He didn’t answer, preferring to watch Iri, as she did not immediately take the reins from Jeet’s hand. Instead, she crouched down and wriggled a protesting Drupada out of his sling. It was only as she did so that Himadra got his first really good look at the boy.
Drupada stood blinking, holding her hand, protesting being dislodged but not throwing a fit about it. Himadra had seen his own brothers behave much worse in their time.
He could just hear what Iri was saying to the boy. “Do you want to ride the horsie? No, not by yourself. But you can sit in the saddle with me.”
It was a charming domestic scene, and Himadra could not help but feel it was being staged entirely for his benefit.
What could not have been staged, however, was the moment Drupada twisted around to look at Himadra on his horse and said, “But Auntie, he rides alone.”
Iri glanced from the boy to Himadra, dawning horror disfiguring her face. But children had no malice in them, only curiosity. So he answered the boy. “I do. But I’m an adult.”
“But you’re only little.” Like me, the boy didn’t have to say, though Himadra flattered himself that he had a few handspans on a two-year-old.
“I am not tall,” Himadra admitted.
“How old are you?” Drupada asked.
Himadra laughed honestly at that. “So old,” he said. “I am nearly thirty-two. See this gray in my beard?”
Drupada stretched up on tiptoe, frowning. Himadra pushed his beard forward with the fingers that were not holding the reins. The boy stared, then made a disappointed huff and turned away, realizing that Himadra was not a potential playmate.
Iri looked at him worriedly, but Himadra just waved her aside. What under the Mother River had he gotten himself into, with kidnapping this child and this woman?
He shook his head in self-amusement and glanced to the right. And nearly jumped clean out of the saddle into a fall that would have broken bones for sure.
“Mother’s milk!” Himadra spat. Ravana sat his horse to the side, as if he had always been there.
The bay was awash in nervous lather, ears flicking grumpily. But it always bore Ravana like a chore; it showed no signs of being tired—just angry. Himadra would have heard them, anyway, if they had come up at a canter.
Ravana smiled at him.
“Where did you come from?” Himadra asked.
Ravana’s smirk turned into a chuckle. “I see you haven’t entirely lost your hostages.”
“No thanks to you. Were you off doing sorcery while we were fighting bear-boars and brigands?”
“As a matter of fact,” Ravana said agreeably. “You seem to have managed. And I did warn you I wouldn’t be responsible for women and children.”
Himadra grunted because the alternative was repeating himself, with more profanity.
“I’m glad to find you here,” Ravana continued. “Because our next step is tricky.”
“Our next step is evacuating the neighborhood of Ansh-Sahal before the sea explodes again.”
Ravana waved a dismissive hand. Himadra noticed that Iri had gotten Drupada into the saddle and mounted herself, much more competently this time.
Ravana said, “Not right now, it shouldn’t. And we should have dry weather for a while.”
Dry weather in the heart of the rains. But Himadra thought of the strange pile of clouds on the horizon, heaped like hungry sheep against a fence. Of the remarkable lack of rain.
Ravana probably had been off doing sorcery.
“No,” Ravana said, kicking his horse in the ribs to stop it sidling. “What you must do now is send word to Mrithuri.”
“Excuse me?”
“She’s under siege by Anuraja. Tell her that Ansh-Sahal has fallen and that its surviving prince is in your care. Send out banns announcing that you are Lord Protector of Ansh-Sahal now, in the wake of a terrible disaster, and that its prince is safely your ward.”
“Ansh-Sahal is a crater.”
“It will not always be. And some of its people and lands survived.”
“And the boy won’t always be two.”
“I’d say that’s up to you,” Ravana said, with a slicing gesture of his left hand.
“You counseled me not to take the child,” Himadra said, not bothering to keep the frustration out of his voice. “Now you counsel me to claim him.” And murder him, maybe.
As he made the complaint, he found himself struck by a flash of understanding that was almost an epiphany. Ravana had promised him many things, as part of their alliance. One of those things was an heir.
Himadra had not mentioned to Ravana his idea that Sayeh’s son would be clean of the curse that haunted his own bloodline. He had not mentioned it to anyone. He was in the habit of keeping his own counsel.
But he wondered now if Ravana had guessed, and if Ravana worried Himadra might come to that recognition if he had not, already. He wondered now if Ravana was counseling him not in Chandranath’s best interests, but in order to reassert control over him.
Himadra did not understand the relationship between Ravana and the other sorcerer, the woman, Ravani. They had come from the east, he knew. They were fairer-skinned than his own folk, but they did not have the willow-leaf eyes of the Rasan, Qersnyk, Song, or other eastern peoples. They might be siblings; they might be something else. And then there was the coincidence of names.
Maybe it was a title from their school of magic. He simply did not have enough information to understand, and Ravana was not receptive to … personal questions.
Things Himadra did not understand also worried him.
“I adapt to the circumstances,” Ravana said silkily. “And you are, al
ways, in control.”
10
Sayeh roused herself from her couch in the heat of the afternoon. Again she could hear no rain on the pavilion roof, and she could taste the dust on her tongue. A hot stillness lay over the camp, like the stillness of the dry season but worse—oppressive—because it was humid.
She levered herself up on her elbows. Sitting upright by herself without assistance struck her as far too risky, especially as her leg twinged warning. She blinked, trying to focus in such dim daylight as filtered through the pavilion. Of late, she had noticed that her vision did not seem as sharp, especially when she was attempting to read something close to her, or work a fine embroidery.
There was old age, lurking at the roadside, lounging by the corner, whistling with crossed arms as if it had nowhere to be and no particular plans. Lying in wait for her.
The worst part, for Sayeh, was missing her own bed. Not just because the lack was visceral, compelling. But because it was so small. So personal. From it, she could not hide behind her office. By such a trivial nuisance, she was made too small to be a rajni.
Other people had lost loved ones. Children, parents, lovers, spouses, friends. Homes and livelihoods. Pets. Lives. Sayeh herself had lost her kingdom, her home, her people, and—(she devoutly hoped) temporarily—her son.
Her bed was such a small and comprehensible loss. And perhaps that was why it struck her so deeply and consistently. The other losses were so huge they were unspannable. Somehow, her own feather pillows, rugs, and bolsters—so small a thing—had come to symbolize the greater tragedy.
Perhaps it was just her broken thigh, and that she could not get up off this couch.
Perhaps it was time, wearing human life down as the Mother River’s roots wore down the very Steles of the Sky. Time was a series of terrible losses and unpredictable gains.
Ümmühan and Nazia were both within the tent. Ümmühan sat by a low table, books and pens and brushes spread around her. Nazia knelt by the brazier, stirring tea. The coals only added to the oppressive atmosphere, and Sayeh wondered how the thin girl could stand it, and why she had not taken the brazier outside in the absence of rain.
If the rains kept failing, would the Mother River carry enough water down from the Steles of the Sky to see people in Sarathai-tia and Sarathai-lae and the farmlands between through the dry season? What about those who lived along the Mother’s tributaries, or in places like Ansh-Sahal? (No one lives in Ansh-Sahal anymore, Sayeh thought, and bit her lip against a pain that had nothing to do with the injuries of her body.) Empty cisterns and catchments meant people dead of thirst. Or dead more slowly of famine when the crops failed.
It also meant armies on the move that much more easily, without mud and landslides to contend with.
From her couch, Sayeh could see the guard by the flap. At least one of them. From her current position, she could not see if the second one was present.
She cleared her throat. Ümmühan stood from her cushions, a little creakily but nimble. It took her a moment to straighten, but Sayeh—feeling the chill breath of mortality on her neck—hoped she made it so far and was still so spry when it happened.
Her leg felt so strange. No, that wasn’t quite right. She felt so … strange about the leg.
It wasn’t the pain. The pain was bad, but it was just pain. It was the terror that she struggled not to be incapacitated by. Terror of the leg never working again; terror of a permanent injury; terror of being hurt again. She was not afraid of the scar: she had scars, including a terrible puckered one sprawled across her abdomen through which Drupada had been born. What she was afraid of …
It was something visceral. Elemental. Profound. Self-protective, she imagined; a body’s way of reminding you that you had a lot to lose. That maybe risk-taking wasn’t the wisest idea, when—even if you survived—it could render you helpless. Who built us to be so fragile? So reliant on others when we come to grief?
She was a priestess of the Mother. She knew. And she knew why, as well. To teach people their interdependence. To teach them that they needed each other. That they could not live long alone, without relationships and pacts of mutual assistance.
She thought of Anuraja, and sighed. What a pity it was that some people could look that lesson in the face their whole lives, and learn nothing from it but the need to dominate and control.
Well, right now what she needed was the pot. And she was going to have to ask one of her women to fetch it for her.
That, she decided, would be humility enough for one day.
* * *
She might have tried to sleep again after. She felt exhausted enough. But sleep was not setting her free, except in a metaphysical sense. And there was a chance that plotting would.
So when Ümmühan helped prop her on cushions and Nazia brought her a share of the tea, she accepted it. And said to Ümmühan, who had drawn up an ox-collar chair to sit beside her, “The camp is quiet, is it not? Even for midafternoon.”
She spoke in an unremarkable conversational tone, without emphasis. Men did not always heed the conversations of women. Perhaps the one by the door would be deep in his reveries of glory or promotion or plundered gold or triumphing at a roll of the bones. Whatever it was that invading soldiers thought about while they were guarding a kidnapped queen in the territory of another queen whom they were in the process of besieging.
But it would do her no good to depersonalize him. Not when he had power over her, and she needed to get him on her side.
Ümmühan was a subtle one. She gave no sign that she had noticed the layers of meaning in Sayeh’s comment, except that her gaze lingered on Sayeh’s face for an extra moment. “They rode out while you were sleeping, Your Abundance.”
“But the camp is still here.”
“There’s no point in trying to bring the supply wagons and whatnot across the river, I suppose.” The old woman stirred her tea and sipped, making a grimace of satisfaction after. “This keeps everything out of ballista range. And if they have to retreat from the siege position, they won’t be forced to leave behind their equipment and food.”
Nazia said nothing, but watched the old woman intently, a furrow between her brows. Sayeh had seen her look at Tsering-la the same way.
Sayeh said, “You’ve quite the head for tactics.”
Ümmühan laughed lightly, the practiced peal of a professional beauty. “This is not an old woman’s first war.”
Sayeh glanced sidelong toward the flap. The guard—there was only one—had slipped outside.
“Do you think it can work?”
“I have been captive in more dire straits than these,” Ümmühan said. “And yet from that captivity I changed the world, and the people around me.”
“Yes, but you are Ümmühan.”
“And you are Sayeh.”
That was inarguable. And perhaps being Sayeh would be enough. Sayeh took a breath, thinking to ask for advice on how to begin her campaign, but was interrupted by voices from outside the canvas wall. She couldn’t make out the words, but the timbres were clear enough. One belonged to the guard … and the other was the contralto of the woman Ravani. Back to trouble them again.
Footsteps approached, quick and determined, boot-heeled. Sayeh put her teacup before her face, more to hide her expression than because she was thirsty for the sweet, spiced, milky brew. Reflexively, she scraped her teeth along the rim of the cup, but it was Song porcelain and not the unglazed clay of a proper teacup, meant to be nibbled along with the tea.
The flap drew aside, admitting the tall sorcerer, borne on a puff of hot air and dust. Somehow, none of the dust seemed to have settled on Ravani, however. All her jewels, silks, embroidery, and bullion shimmered undimmed.
Sayeh contemplated whether it was worth taking up sorcery just for the reduction in laundry. It was a means of making her face expressionless as she lowered the porcelain cup at last. “You came back.”
Ravani squared herself as the flap fell back into place over the door
way. “They’re marching on your cousin’s city, Rajni. I have no desire to be present for the boiling oil.”
“Rational,” Ümmühan commented.
Ravani glanced sidelong at her.
Sayeh cleared her throat. “You are a sorcerer. Why have the rains stopped coming?”
Ravani looked at Sayeh in enough surprise that it took moments for her to find her voice. “Rajni. Someone has obviously decided they should.”
Sayeh said, “Can one just do that? Decide?”
“The Alchemical Emperor could.”
Sayeh wondered how the sorcerer knew.
“If anyone sat on the Peacock Throne, that might be of some use.”
“What is true now is not true forever.” Ravani waved aside an offer of tea from Nazia. She pointed to Sayeh’s leg. “How are you healing?”
Sayeh eyed the sorcerer suspiciously. “I’ll walk again eventually, I suppose. Are you offering to speed the process?”
“Are you giving me consent to work magic on you?” A steady gaze, challenging. Behind Ravani, Ümmühan rose abruptly with the tea tray, ready to let it “clumsily” tumble all over the sorcerer.
Sayeh let a little smile curve her lips. “Perhaps … not.”
“The rajni is cautious,” Ravani replied. “The rajni is wise.”
Ümmühan stepped back with the tray and turned aside, to set it upon a stand.
“Still,” Ravani continued. “It would be convenient to be able to walk, would it not? Especially if it were not generally known that one had regained one’s feet ahead of schedule.”
“And the agent of one’s captor is just the person one would trust to keep such a secret from him,” Sayeh observed, equally as bland. Nazia retrieved the teapot from the tray Ümmühan had moved and refilled her cup. Again, Ravani refused.
“I am no one’s agent.” Ravani’s voice held an edge. Sayeh wondered if it were honest anger, or an actor’s art. “I am my own, and I act for my own reasons.”
“Then what are your reasons for helping Anuraja invade?” Nazia said, forthright, what Sayeh only considered.
The Red-Stained Wings--The Lotus Kingdoms, Book Two Page 14
