The whip struck again. Tung tried to block his ears to the sounds.
Katerina scratched her nose, and said, “Anyway, the Emperor has to fight us if he wants to retain the Ice-Bear Throne. Has to. And the Ashjavati army will face him there in the high mountains and die heroically in the snows of the Ehrul in a futile attempt to hold back the Cossacks. I estimate that they will last a week, two at most if they are extremely determined. While they are holding on so bravely, dying tragically for their homeland, your Celestial forces will occupy the rest of Ashjavat, streaming in through the unguarded border; and if they are wise, they will attack the Cossacks immediately when they come down into the plains. But I will leave all that manly war strategy stuff to the Conclave’s generals. So, there it is. The handover will be complete. Is there anything else?”
Minister Tung felt slightly sick. It was not the unguarded glimpse he had just caught from the far side of the courtyard of the naked dangling body, the back and buttocks so deeply lacerated that white bone could be glimpsed through the blood. It was the notion of this pretty young girl—no, this terrible icy woman—casually slaughtering her own troops merely to advance her ambitions. The Celestial Republic had its own share of wickedness, no doubt, many bad, powerful men and women, but he could not think of anyone who could match Katerina.
“No, Highness,” he said. “I have no more questions today. Perhaps I might be permitted to withdraw from your presence. I have . . .”
The Master of the Lash swung again and this time the sound of the heavy leather striking flesh was a deeper, louder crack. Andrei made no sound at all. He was limp.
“By all the Gods, I do believe that clumsy fool has broken the count’s spine,” said Katerina, rising from her chair to get a better look. “Eleven blows, that’s all—eleven! Not even a round dozen. The incompetent cretin. I’ve half a mind to string the Master of the Lash up there beside poor old Andrei and show him myself how it really should be done.”
CHAPTER 13
Extract from Ethnographic Travels by Professor Tolmund K. Parehki of the University of Dhilika
Two thousand years ago, there was a vast influx of peoples into the Laut Besar from the Indujah Peninsula. These sea-migrants were rice farmers, who kept pigs and buffalo. They craved land and were bold enough to risk a long and perilous ocean journey to find it. For there was land to spare in the Laut Besar and those who arrived safely said prayers to their God. For as well as their agriculture, they brought the religion of Vharkash the Harvester, then unknown here.
The sea-migrants displaced the native people, now called the Ebu; they cleared the ancient forests and built villages and pens for their beasts. The Ebu, who lived in small bands and made their livelihood through hunting game and gathering nuts and berries, were awed by the New People, as they called the incomers. The childlike Ebu did not know iron, they venerated their ancestors and practiced a simple form of blood magic. The Harvester worshippers, in contrast, lived in villages of many hundreds of folk; they generated a surplus in food, and were able to support high-status members of society who were specialists: priests and soldiers. The warriors banded together with others from different villages and regions and made armies, and they were soon able to push the Ebu into the remotest corners of the Laut Besar, to slaughter them if they resisted, or enslave them and set them to work in the fields.
In Yawa, once the Ebu were subdued, the incomers’ thoughts turned to their principal God, Vharkash, who had given them this paradise. To honor Him, and the other deities of their Pantheon, they created a vast temple complex in the jungly heart of the island, with great wooden bells to ring the hours, many altars and a huge statue of Vharkash in the main enclosure, the Harvester God ever poised with his scythe to slay unbelievers.
Men and women from all over the Laut Besar came there to serve the deity, to train as priests under the High Priest and his seven deputies. Some of these were even descendants of Ebu who, after hundreds of years, had been absorbed into the Yawa population. In those days, the Harvester religion was far more bloodthirsty—they regularly sacrificed living folk to Vharkash. Yet the Temple grew in wealth and power as the centuries passed. At the height of its glory, a thousand years ago, towns and cities from the whole of Yawa gave up annually one-seventh of their crops to the Mother Temple, and each year fourteen virgin boys and girls were given up to the priests, too, either as blood offerings or to become novices. Sometimes both.
As their boat rounded the rocky lighthouse point and came into the harbor of Sukatan, Jun was suddenly made aware of just how insignificant a personage he was. The city, the greatest urban conglomeration on Yawa, when seen from the water, appeared to be absolutely enormous—a sprawling collection of houses and godowns, temples, palaces, shops and taverns that filled both arms of the bay and rose up the slope behind it to the magnificent sun-reflecting golden roof of the Raja’s Palace. It must have ten thousand inhabitants, thought Jun, almost as many as in the whole of Taman and all crammed together into one port and town. Gold and slaves had made this place—and made it beautiful.
He had been here once before as a child to visit his cousin the Raja—the present Raja of Sukutan’s father—but they had come by the overland route, across the narrow straits between Taman and Yawa and through the long, twisting, mud roads through the jungle to enter the city from the south, but all Jun could remember of the journey was the boredom, sitting in the palanquin borne by six muscular Dewa porters and playing endless games of chess with his tutor or with War-Master Hardan as the stuffy wooden box jolted along. He remembered the palace itself, a vast, airy space, filled with a permanent hush and the sweet smell of incense, and sitting on a pile of cushions, sipping delicious sherbet, while the Raja, a kindly old man, had asked him endless questions about the health of his family. Questions he did not know how to answer. He remembered being punished, too, beaten painfully on the rear with a rattan cane for shooting his toy bow and arrow down a long, empty corridor and smashing a priceless blue Han vase on a plinth that had been his unthinking target.
“Look,” said Semar, standing in the prow, as Ketut guided the vessel toward a large stone pier, one of many that jutted out from the land into the harbor. “They are here, too!”
The old man was pointing to a large ship, square-bowed, but curving up sharply at the prow in the Han style into a carved wooden serpent’s head painted gold. A black flag with a broad green stripe through the middle hung limply from the central mast, a sudden gust of wind revealing the emblem of a golden snake coiled in the center. From Semar’s excited words, Jun realized that this was the vessel of his enemy—the sorcerer Mangku. He wondered if the Khodam was, even now, hidden somewhere below its crowded deck.
Two of the three masts of the ship, the ones at prow and stern, were entirely bare of spars, sails and rigging, presumably undergoing some sort of refit. About forty ill-looking men, many with shaven heads and scalp locks, others with dark woolly polls and great matted beards, were leaning over the side, spitting blood-red betel and chatting to each other or calling out to the dragonfly-craft, manned by women in round, pyramid-shaped sun hats, and nimbly maneuvered by one long oar at the stern, which whizzed between the shipping offering varieties of fruit, fresh fish or small, leaf-wrapped blocks of obat for sale.
Jun stepped shakily onto the unyielding stone of the pier as Ketut tied up the boat. Semar followed him up and a Yawanese man in a small, tight, orange-brown turban with a leather satchel over his shoulder came hurrying along the jetty.
“Five kupang per day,” said the man with no more welcome than a brief bob of his head in greeting. “Harbormaster’s fees.”
“Two,” said Semar. “It should be no more than two.”
“Five,” said the man, “or be off with you. There’s plenty more who would like a nice berth at the Yellow Pier.”
“Four, but only if you’ll direct us to a clean, reasonably priced tavern,” said Semar.
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Jun burrowed into his pack and produced a handful of copper coins from his purse. He had a store of money, salvaged from the Watergarden, but it was a paltry sum and he was relying on his cousin to furnish him with a good deal more.
“Why are we staying at a tavern?” asked Jun, as the three of them walked down the pier, following the directions that the Yawanese in the orange turban had given them. “Surely we should go straight to the palace and present ourselves to the Raja. He will give us free lodgings there, not to mention a hot bath, decent food and clean clothes.”
“The sorcerer is here,” said Semar tersely. “It would be wiser—don’t you think, my prince?—to make some reconnaissance, to get an idea of the way of things, before we go barging into the Raja’s affairs. By the look of that ship, it will not be leaving for days.”
“If we are staying, I want to go to the Temple of Vharkash tonight,” said Ketut.
“Why?” said Jun. Ketut looked sullen, said nothing and would not meet his eye.
The tavern, in a dim side street off the main harbor road that ran all along the waterfront, was neither clean nor reasonably priced. It was named The Drunken Sow, and a square wooden sign hanging at head height outside the low building showed a picture of an enormous white pig, rolling on her back, twin rows of nipples exposed with her eyes blissfully closed. It might have been used to depict the tavern keeper: a grossly fat Han, with a single black tooth in her slack, blubbery mouth.
Jun reluctantly parted with fifteen kupang and they were shown into a tiny room with three straw pallets on the floor. After a cursory wash in the slime-walled bathhouse and a hasty meal of rice and gristly fried pork with stringy, bitter, green vegetables, Semar announced his intention to begin his reconnaissance.
“You two stay here, take a little walk along the waterfront, look at the ships, if you must, but try not to get into any trouble. Stay away from the drinking dens, the brothels and the obat houses. I’ll be back—but probably not before dawn.”
When Semar left in the late afternoon, dressed in his oldest, grayest sarong and a gray baggy shirt, and carrying only his staff for protection, Jun and Ketut looked at each other. They had never felt easy in each other’s company, even after five days together in an open boat, and five nights of camping on the shore.
“We could play chess, if you like,” said Jun. “I have a fine set in my pack.”
Ketut gave him a searing glare of contempt. “I’m going out, richboy,” she said.
When the door closed, Jun waited for a count of twenty then set out after her.
* * *
• • •
Hiero Mangku released a long orange stream of urine into the porcelain bowl on the low stand in the corner of his chamber and gave a vast sigh of relief. His pissing was blissful; the release an almost sexual pleasure. He had long since given up marking the hour and day of his birth, and even, as the generations slipped past, remembering the year of it required an effort of mind. However, due to their extreme age, some of the organs of his emaciated body, including his bladder, occasionally refused to submit to the commands of his will. It had been troubling him all day, and now, as the shadows lengthened, this release was an exquisite pleasure.
As the pungent urine splashed into the bowl, Mangku gazed around his chamber in the Jade Tower of the Palace of Sukatan. It was well furnished, with golden fruit plates, crystal vases and fine Indujah rugs. Gauze curtains covered the wide-open windows, allowing the chamber to benefit from a cooling breeze. It was a mark of respect that he had been given this fine room; it was, he assumed, only a little less opulent than the Raja’s own quarters.
Good. They respected him. Or rather they feared him and his ability to bring down the wrath of his master. The performance he had given that morning to the sweaty little Wukarta puppy who now sat on the throne of Sukatan had been a resounding success . . .
Mangku had presented himself, alone, that morning at the doors of the palace and had announced himself to the various guards and servants and insisted that he be shown directly into the Green Withdrawing Room for an unscheduled private audience with Raja Widojo.
The boy—despite the feathery trace of a mustache on his upper lip and his twenty-one years of life, he could not truly be called a man—had been somewhat surprised to see a tall, lean and terrifying priest bursting in on him during his leisure hours. But he had borne it well. The Vizier had announced him as His Holiness Mangku the Wise and mentioned, only in passing, that his powerful warship, well provided with cannon and filled with a couple of hundred brutal-looking fighting men, was docked in the harbor.
Widojo had nodded solemnly as if he had been expecting this wonderful piece of news; he had bid the priest welcome, invited him to sit and asked exactly how he might possibly aid such a, um . . . such a well-armed servant of the Gods.
Mangku had taken a high hand from the beginning. “I am the special envoy and plenipotentiary extraordinaire of Ongkara, Lord of the Islands, Lion of the Southern Lands, Dragon of the High Seas, and I am making a tour of all the lands across the Laut Besar that owe him fealty. I shall remain in Sukatan for only a few days but I shall require from Your Highness a large quantity of fresh water and dry food stores for my onward journey.”
“You require it, do you?” said the Raja, bristling slightly.
“I demand it, Highness,” said Mangku, lifting his chin to look down his broad nose.
The Raja opened his mouth to say something but Mangku interrupted him. “I shall also require—or demand, if you prefer—a chest of your finest obat and two tuns of marak. And other sundry ships’ items that I will not trouble your ears with. And in payment, I shall be most happy to give you a paper guaranteed by the Lord of the Islands himself.”
The Raja frowned.
“As the special envoy of Ongkara the Fearless, I speak with his voice,” said Mangku.
There was a long, awkward silence in the Green Withdrawing Room. The Raja looked at his Vizier, a silk-wrapped butterball with a long, plaited white beard. The Vizier looked back at the Raja and then merely shrugged helplessly.
“Whatever the Lord of the Islands requires, of course,” said Widojo sulkily. “And, of course, there will be no need for any such payment. It is an honor merely to be of service.”
He knew as well as any man in the room that the paper receipt from Ongkara was worthless. He also knew that refusal to provide the ships’ stores for his guest meant inviting immediate brutal retaliation from the most powerful warlord in the whole of the Laut Besar.
“The Raja is most gracious,” said Mangku, without a trace of irony. “There is one other thing: I should like, if I may, to view the Eye of the Dragon, perhaps even to be allowed to hold it in my two hands. If Your Highness would consent to that signal honor.”
Widojo sat up on his cushions at that point. The Dragon’s Eye was an enormous and extremely valuable gemstone the size of a small pig—it took a strong man two hands to cradle its weight. It was the most prized possession of the Rajas of Sukatan, discovered in the Konda Pali mines generations ago when the Gold Masters had burrowed as deep as they dared into the quartz rock below the Gray Mountain, killing a thousand slaves in the process, or so it was said. The Eye of the Dragon had been found, encased in a pure gold nugget, and it had been the centerpiece of the Sukatan royal treasury ever since.
“Ah, I’m not sure that would be . . .” began Widojo. Then he stopped.
Mangku wondered briefly if he would be forced to make a more overt threat to persuade this princeling to agree to his demands, or whether he would be obliged to perform some simple feat of magic to cow him. Perhaps not. He fixed the Raja with his gray, black-veined eyes and saw the boy flinch from his gaze. The boy was clearly a weakling.
“The Lord of the Islands would esteem it a great privilege, if you would consent,” he said slowly, twisting his lips into a smile for the first time that morning.
“I have been tasked by the Lion of the Southern Lands with assessing all the great treasures of the kingdoms of the Laut Besar—I must report back that they’re all secure and being properly cared for.”
“Oh, well then . . . I suppose then we might arrange a viewing. Shall we say tomorrow at noon in the Grand Courtyard. If we are getting the Eye out of the vaults, we might as well let the people of Sukatan catch a glimpse of it for once. It is rather spectacular. We can arrange that, Vizier, can’t we? Spread the word. Tell the people. In the meantime we must find Your Holiness some suitable lodgings and refreshment.”
The Raja clapped his hands.
* * *
• • •
Outside the slatted windows of Mangku’s chamber the dusk was swiftly turning into night. The whine of mosquitoes caught his ear. And the deep booming of the hollow log bells of the Temple of Vharkash. He pushed open the casement and cocked his head, listening. How he remembered that sound! Even now it seemed to call to the marrow in his bones. He had spent twenty years in the Mother Temple, first as a lowly serving boy, then a novice and finally as a priest. All his days and nights had been governed by the sound of those bells.
It was as a serving boy in the Mother Temple that he had first become aware of his inferior blood. He was fifteen, no, still just fourteen when he was first called a Mudskipper by one of the older novices. It had burned his soul then, and even the distant memory of the insult made him flinch now, so many, many years later.
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