We Lie with Death

by Devin Madson

  Before I could even untie my sash, a splash and a gasp heralded Rah’s entrance into the pool. He spoke, his words coming to me through a haze of steam that seemed to have filled my head with wool. “Hot,” he said when I didn’t answer, Kisian words ever a delight on his lips. “Steam.” Then, with a laugh he added, “Tea!”

  “Yes,” I said, the voice mine and yet not mine. “There are hot springs in these mountains. I didn’t know they ran so close beneath the town like in Giana, but…” I trailed off, knowing he couldn’t understand my words and feeling foolish. As foolish as I felt still standing fully clothed beside the bath.

  Whether because he was genuinely curious or because he had noticed my embarrassment, Rah strode through the waist-high water to peer at the crack through which it trickled. And it was little more than a crack, allowing the ingress of a small amount of water, a delicate balance that seemed as lucky as it was fragile. Rah stepped in front of it, all broad back tapering to a waist adorned with a pair of dimples pressed into the skin, and again I pulled my gaze from so complete an expanse of bare flesh. While he was occupied, I stripped off my robe as fast as the damp, clinging material would allow, and gracelessly hopped in, dropping low so the stinging hot water lapped at my chin. I had to sit on the rough stone base of the bath to achieve it, but I would rather be completely uncomfortable in every way than risk ever moving again.

  Turning from the wall, Rah dunked his head beneath the water and emerged viciously rubbing the short pelt of his hair as though trying to get rid of it. Despite never having watched a Kisian man wash his hair I was immediately struck both by the conviction that this was not how they would do it, and yet it was exactly how they should.

  Leaning my head back I dropped my own hair into the water in a far more reserved manner, removing the other two golden hairpins and shaking it out. By the time I lifted it again, weighed heavy with water, Rah had retreated to the other side of the bath. It wasn’t a big bath, a few long strides all it would take to traverse, but the thick steam made him seem farther away, a mere memory in the haze.

  In all our days travelling together there had always been silence, but never before had it felt strained, a silence so desperate to be broken it lodged shards of glass in my throat. I tried to swallow them and think of something to say, but our easy exchange of single words seemed childish now, to point at the water and call it water the act of a fool. I chided myself that Rah was the same man whether dressed in mud-stained leathers or naked and lustrous in the lantern light, but I couldn’t convince myself it was true.

  Having finished with his hair, Rah leant his head back on the edge of the bath, baring the rigid line of his throat. He had closed his eyes, and knowing he could not see me I let myself stare a moment, revelling enough in the joy of discovery to outweigh my discomfort. Sparse stubble covered his jaw and the bulge of his throat was sharp, but an eye travelling down his neck to the place between his collarbones would find softness yearning for touch.

  I had never wanted to touch anyone before, my adoration for Edo having always been a passive thing as an observer enjoys a fine piece of art. I had yearned more for him to care for me as he had for Tanaka as their ever-strengthening connection shut me out, but though I had to look away again the moment Rah opened his eyes, I was honest enough to admit I wanted to keep looking, wanted to touch his skin, to know how it felt, how radiantly warm he was and a million other nebulous ideas I could not fully grasp.

  As though he knew my thoughts, he looked my way, his gaze heavy. He spoke in the quiet way he had, and although he had probably made some remark about the bath or being hungry or tired or bored, my heart pounded like a war drum. I wanted to escape. Escape the intensity of his dark eyes, escape the physicality of his presence, escape the uncomfortable feeling the bathwater had lit me on fire.

  “Miko?”

  He spoke my name with a drawn-out emphasis on the first syllable, at once both completely wrong and the nicest I’d ever heard my name sound. I looked up and he lifted his hands from the water, but before he could achieve more than pointing at me, a new voice broke upon our silence.

  “Who says he’s the one making the decisions?” someone said, the echo of their voice drawing closer down the stairs. “That’s what regents are for, isn’t it?”

  The words left me cold to the bone despite the water’s warmth.

  “He already lost one of those,” came a reply.

  “Ha! You believe that nonsense? No general is going to take orders from a girl, whoever she is. More likely Grace Bachita fell in battle and they’re using his death to make sure no one will support the bastard princess. I don’t want an Otako on the throne, but to say she killed him is ridiculous and doesn’t do the young emperor any good.”

  Hope had begun to take root in my mind since Rah had spoken of Minister Manshin, hope there might be a way through this political mire, but… those names, spoken here, my story so dismissed. I was but a foolish girl again with ridiculous dreams.

  One of the speakers stepped through the narrow doorway, surprise halting him in place. “Oh, looks like we have company.”

  I had not cleaned myself as completely as I would have liked, but I would rather leave the task half done than remain. “We were just finishing up, if you would give us a moment,” I said.

  The man shrugged, glancing back at his companion stuck behind him on the stairs. “We’ll wait.”

  They stayed standing in the stairway, continuing their conversation in lowered voices. I knew not whether I was most trying to hear what they said or trying not to, and climbed out of the bath with my heart racing. I had my towel around me before I thought to see if Rah was looking, and glanced over my shoulder to see him drying his hair, the rest of his body bare from head to foot.

  “Ah, if she’s sensible we won’t see her again,” came the voice from the stairwell. “Surely even a stubborn Otako can see when they’re not needed anymore.”

  A laugh met this and I needed to get out of there now. Yet even as I gathered my robe around me, I thought that a sensible woman would stay to glean what information she could, not allow herself to be frightened away by a few sneers and a total lack of respect.

  But today I was not a sensible woman.

  We made our way up the stairs to find two overflowing food trays sitting outside our door. It all looked delicious, but right in the centre sat a large dish of cabbage leaves stuffed with crab, a speciality of the eastern highlands that my nurse had always ordered when I felt poorly as a child.

  Tears leaked unchecked from my eyes. Another life lost to a war that seemed infinite in cost yet scarce in triumph. If Rah noticed my tears he said nothing. He must have been as starving as I, but still he waited until at last I wiped my cheeks, and dragged the trays inside.

  We ate. We drank. And perhaps to keep from our own thoughts, we spoke, each on our own subject and to our own purpose, though I liked to think that there in that warm, dry space surrounded by the hum of the inn, we knew each other’s meaning. Rah sat across the fast-emptying trays, one leg beneath him, the other bent before him in a way no Kisian would ever have dared sit, picking at the broken remains of the last crab roll with one hand and patting Shishi’s head with the other.

  As the evening wore on the noise from the main room got louder and more rowdy until at last people began to depart, the bang of the front door punctuating almost every thought. Footsteps started coming up the stairs too, some alone, others accompanied by slurred and giggling voices. People thudded around in their own rooms and murmured conversation spread through every wall, stealing our comfort. Silence fell between us then, because if we could hear them, they could hear us, but after I slid the empty trays back into the hallway and closed the door, I could not but feel there was more to our silence than caution.

  Still with his hand upon Shishi’s head, Rah did not look up when I returned. Yet seeing him sitting at ease beside the guttering lantern I thought of his gleaming skin and realised with a start more pronounce
d than the revelation deserved that we were alone. We had been alone since the disaster at Syan, yet somehow, out in the wilds, sleeping in caves and haylofts, it had been all right. Here, surrounded by civilisation, with an actual feather pillow and the sounds of people enjoying each other’s company all around, alone meant something more.

  The muddied feelings from the bathhouse returned, and to busy myself, I rolled out the sleeping mat. There was only one—the overlarge sort inns always provided, even to travelling emperors and their families. I had wondered why when our palace mats were narrow, and now that I understood I felt ashamed of my younger, naive self. Of course the serving girl hadn’t blinked upon being asked for a second pillow.

  By the time I had the mat unrolled, Rah still hadn’t moved. His attention was caught to Shishi, yet I became increasingly aware of his every tiny movement and the rhythmic intake of his breath. Was he thinking the same thoughts as I? Probably not, I told myself, tugging a wrinkle out of the mat. After all, what attractions did I have apart from my name? A name that meant nothing to a Levanti used to a very different sort of woman.

  I dumped both pillows on the sleeping mat and said defiantly, “I am going to sleep,” pointing at the mat and miming sleep in such a way that stole all decisiveness from my words. “Goodnight.”

  He replied. Calm. Gentle. Unchanged. No sign of the consternation I felt at being alone with a man whose handsome features and lithe, powerful body were suddenly all too present. Almost I wished we had snuck into a barn and slept on straw so I need not have thought about it at all, about him. But we hadn’t and I was.

  Despite the robe having been fresh, I’d donned it in such haste in the bathhouse that it was damp from my skin and the long, sodden skein of my hair. Had I been alone I would have taken it off to dry, but what would he think of me if I did? What would he think of me if I didn’t? If I lay on dry sheets in a damp robe? The thought made my skin crawl.

  Still patting Shishi, Rah sat with glazed eyes, staring at nothing but the play of lantern light on the matting. Not the actions of a man interested in the woman with whom he shared the room, so, unsure whether I felt more anger, disappointment, or relief, I turned down the lantern and undressed as fast as I could. I kept my back turned so I couldn’t see his face, then having hung my robe I dashed to the mat in just my skin, defying him to find me attractive enough to move.

  The pillow was soft and the duvet warm—a real sleeping mat like I had not used since leaving Mei’lian. Yet still I scowled as I snuggled into it, keeping to the very edge so he would not think I sought his touch. It wasn’t long before I heard him move, heard the sound of one sandal hitting the floor, followed by another. Fabric rustled. Then, as I had done, he padded barefoot across the matting to wrestle his robe onto a hook. I glanced up, wondering if I ought to help, but one glimpse of his dark, bare skin and I closed my eyes again, intent on being asleep no matter how fast my heart was beating.

  A few minutes later he had either given up on the hooks or succeeded, for he padded back across the room, spoke a few soft words to Shishi, and slipped in beside me. The sheets moved, cool air teased my warm skin, then stillness settled. I was all too aware of his warmth beside me then, of the sound of his breathing and even his smell, but he shifted no nearer to the central line than I had done, leaving my inner turmoil complete.

  It took me a long time to get to sleep. Sounds of revelry and sleep and pleasure surrounded us, but I could only hear the even rise and fall of his breath and wonder if he too was lying awake.

  I awoke feeling less rested than when I had lain down. Busy sounds made their way through the floor, but by the darkness creeping between the shutters it was not yet dawn. Rah was asleep with one arm up over his head, his dark skin and even darker chest hair making the inn’s off-colour sheets appear white by comparison. I dressed, and though I was glad he wasn’t looking, the heat of the night seemed to have dissipated, leaving me feeling like a foolish, gangly girl. But as I thought of everything I had overheard the men say the night before, my dashed pride hardened into resolve. Of course they doubted me. Of course they underestimated me. But I would show them, as I would show them all, that the empire was mine.

  My robe was not quite dry, but I slipped it on, wriggled my feet into my stolen sandals, and crept into the hallway, gesturing for Shishi to stay when she lifted her head, tail wagging.

  An older woman stood behind the bar downstairs, tending those patrons sitting silent in the predawn light. She looked me up and down with even more distaste than the man had shown the night before, but she forced a smile and asked what I wanted. Breakfast and passage to Mei’lian, I said. I didn’t care if we went sitting in a wet hay cart or on stolen horses, one way or another I had to get back.

  17. DISHIVA

  I sat beneath the jutting eaves and watched dark clouds piss upon the yard. It had been three days of relentless rain. Three days that had brought more and more pilgrims, two deaths having done nothing to stem their enthusiasm for Leo Villius.

  “And then you nail it on and these nails, see…” Loklan said. “They’re shaped like that so they bend outward and can’t hurt the hoof.”

  And Leo had smiled at me. Had blessed me. Had assured everyone I had been with him and could not have loosed the arrow.

  “Bo says it will make the difference between them splitting and not. It’ll take a while to make all the shoes, of course, but—”

  He broke off, and after a few moments his silence drew me from my scowling stupor. I turned. My young horse master raised his brows toward his freshly shaved scalp. “Everything all right, Captain?”

  “Yes.” I brought my attention from the rain-soaked yard to the dimly lit warmth of the stables. “This could mean the difference between being able to ride in this climate and not, and if we’re making this our home then nothing could be more important.”

  “Why then do I get the feeling you weren’t listening, Captain?”

  A faint smile traced his hurt features. His skin needed thickening, but he was a good horse master, so I stood and clapped my hand upon his shoulder. “Because I wasn’t,” I said. “My thoughts were elsewhere, but that doesn’t make what you’re doing any less important. It just makes me a terrible captain for not listening to my horse master’s counsel.”

  His smile stretched to a grim line. “For what little it means, Captain, I believe you didn’t have anything to do with that pilgrim’s death. Or the attempt on Emperor Gideon’s life. It’s not like you were near either.”

  And yet somehow, despite these facts, despite my loyalty, whispers were getting around.

  I pointed to the horseshoe in his hand. “If you’re sure these will work then have them put on all our horses. You’re excused from guard duty to get it done.”

  Loklan saluted. “Yes, Captain. Thank you.”

  “If it saves our horses from going lame then thank you.”

  His cheeks darkened and he looked away, shuffling his boots in the dust.

  Out across the yard the gate gong sounded for the third time that morning, and sheltered in their storm cloaks, four soldiers dashed through the pelting rain to open them. I had been about to walk, or rather run like a wild rabbit across the sodden yard to the manor, but leaned against the wall to wait until the new arrivals cleared the area. The gates would open. A handful of pilgrims would shuffle through. One of the Kisian soldiers would take them to see Leo and then I could get on with my work.

  The gates creaked open. Figures appeared in the widening aperture. Not just a gaggle of pilgrims. A crowd. With flags. And horses. My hand leapt for my sword, but there had been no warning called and I stayed, rooted to the ground and squinting through the rain. Movement around me stilled as others stopped to stare at the newcomers.

  “Kisians?” Loklan said. “Is that the duke’s flag?”

  Others spoke Bahain’s name and I had to agree it looked like the horse galloping from the waves he had blazoned on his banner, but his soldiers had all arrived with him days
ago. “Not pilgrims?” I said.

  “It doesn’t look like it, Captain.”

  “Good.” And yanking up the hood of my hated storm cloak, I strode into the rain.

  But Grace Bahain was ahead of me and I stopped halfway to the gates to watch him speed across the yard, a tail of retainers and guards flying behind him. Matsimelar was there too, the sole Levanti in a very Kisian scene.

  As the lead rider slid from the saddle, Grace Bahain met him with a bone-crushing hug. The stiff, proud duke let the newcomer go as quickly as he had embraced him and stepped back, the heavy rain stealing their words from my ears. Foot soldiers spilled into the camp, blocking my view of the scene—a scene that seemed to be devolving into an argument. Or more accurately, a rant. The new arrival bowed his hooded head before a whole new storm.

  While the shouting continued, our Kisian allies met the newly arrived soldiers in a dance of whispers. News spread around me, and in the centre I stood caught like a fly in a silk web. Something was wrong. Trouble rumbled as loud as the thunder overhead.

  I pulled my feet from the sucking mud and continued on toward the hovering Matsimelar. “What’s going on?” I said as I approached, turning my head so I could hear his answer rather than just the patter of rain on my hood.

  He didn’t look my way. “Grace Bahain’s son has arrived.”

  That made sense of both the embrace and the berating. “He doesn’t seem pleased.”

  Matsimelar sighed. “What do you want, Captain?”

  “I want to know why the Kisians are all so worried. It’s—”

  “Part of your job to know, yes,” he finished for me. “Just like it’s part of your job to question pilgrims who end up dead.”

  “Oh yes, just like that. Really that’s at the top of my list. Questioning people who don’t end up dead is just a waste of time.”

  The saddleboy snorted. “It’s hard to follow since Grace Bahain is hissing a lot, but I’m guessing his son was meant to capture Empress Miko and failed, and His Grace seems to believe it’s a deliberate betrayal and isn’t pleased.”