The inhabitants of this shabby little town seemed to have no idea—and little interest, anyway—in who Katerina was or what she was doing in their midst. She was a great lady who was employing hundreds of local men in the building of three great ships of war—ships the like of which Ostraka had not seen in many years—and the dozens of foreign shipbuilders who bossed the work answered only to her. But, having determined that she was a rich one from the north, who might have a few weeks’ work for a sailmaker and his apprentice, or might not, they made no further inquiries and seemed overcome by a strange incuriosity. The men removed their caps and the women curtsied to her as she passed, but they simply did not find her very interesting—and for Katerina, who had always been in the public eye, dressed by servants since she was a child, told always to watch how she moved, how she stood and what she said, trained always to be on display, always to be viewed with a critical eye or an admiring one, it was at first perplexing then deliciously liberating.
Katerina had mentioned this quality of the local people to the Governor of Ostraka at a welcome feast in the Watchtower a week after her arrival.
“It’s all the batter they take, Highness,” said Governor Hiki, a tiny, balding fellow with moist, pink, mole-like hands, who certainly did know who she was and who was perfectly terrified of her. “Comes in on the ships from the south. There’s warehouses in Pirrus stacked high with chests o’ the stuff. Nothing we do can stop it.”
“What is this batter?” she had asked.
He blushed. “You wouldn’t know of it, Highness, I’m sure. Some more rightly call it obat.”
“Oh, I have indeed heard of it,” she said, smiling. “I have heard that it has certain beneficial qualities, calming the mind, cleansing the humors of the blood, and so on.”
“Well, these idle buggers—beg your pardon, Highness—these fellows here like to smoke it morning, noon and night. Always a little bit battered is your Ostrakan.”
As Katrina and her Minister strolled through the town, she told Tung how pleased and gratified she was with his service over the past few months, saying he’d done wonders in arranging everything with his masters in the Conclave of the Venerables, the swift building of the ships, the collection of the stores, weapons, powder and shot and so on, the smooth delivery of the Legion, and asking him if he had given any thought to a suitable reward.
“A reward?” Tung looked at her quickly out of the corner of his eye. “That will not be necessary, Highness. The only reward I seek is the knowledge that I’ve served the Celestial Republic and, of course, your Highness to the very best of my meager abilities.”
“I don’t believe you. And I do not care to be lied to,” said Katerina, looking at him coldly. “I would like to reward you with something slightly more tangible than the glow of satisfaction of a difficult task accomplished. So, Minister Tung, why don’t you try to be a little more honest and tell me what it is that you truly desire?”
“What do I desire?” said Tung. “I want to go home and see my wife and baby.”
“That may not be possible,” she said, and she stopped dead in the street. “But I may be able to offer you something much better than that.”
A dozen yards away a skeletally thin young man, dressed in nothing but greasy rags, was sitting propped up against the wall of a house, evidently asleep. His head drooped; despite his youth, his hair was almost all gone, revealing a pink scalp beneath the sparse gray-black strands. His long, thin hands were folded in his lap underneath a shapeless green woolen cap into which some kindly soul had tossed a few copper pennies.
Katerina put a hand to her waistband and pulled out a heavy yellow silk purse that chinked as it moved between her slim fingers. She beckoned to one of her Niho knights: “Your tanto,” she said, snapping her fingers. “Give me your short blade now.”
When she had the Niho dagger in one hand and the purse in the other, she turned to Minister Tung.
“This purse contains a hundred Khevan crowns, or perhaps a little more. A large amount of money anyway. And I happen to know that your ministerial salary from the Conclave of the Venerables is the equivalent of thirty-five crowns a month. So I have here in my hand what for you would represent three months’ salary. I will give it to you, if you will take this knife and cut off the little finger of your left hand. Right now. Will you do it?”
Tung backed away from her, and found that his backward progress was stopped by the wall-like body of one of the Niho knights.
“Highness, if I have offended you, I most humbly ask your pardon,” Tung said. Sweat was already pouring from him. His silk tunic was suddenly drenched.
“Answer my question: Will you do it? Will you cut off your finger for one hundred crowns?”
“No, lady, I would not willingly do that.”
“Very good.” Katerina nodded, as if confirming something to herself.
A fat elderly lady was approaching them, leading a donkey by a rope halter.
“Mother,” said Katerina. “May I speak with you?”
“Certainly, my lady, how can I help you?” The Ostrakan woman curtsied and looked blearily up at Katerina, smiling happily, a little drool escaping from her slack lips.
“I have a hundred crowns here.” Katerina clinked the heavy silk purse up and down in her palm. “And it will be yours if you would cut off one of your fingers, just a little one would do, and sell the separated digit to me right now.”
The woman laughed. “You are a queer one, lady; they said you was a strange bird, even for a Northron—but wait till I tell them this! Oh my, how they will howl.”
“Will you do it? A hundred crowns for a little finger.”
“No, lady, I need all the fingers I’s got. But I thank you kindly for the laugh. Oh, they will bray like asses when I tells them this at home . . .”
And she was gone, pulling the donkey along on its bit of frayed rope, chuckling to herself and saying over and over, “For a finger, oh my, for a dab-laddle little-bitty finger—a hundred golden crowns. Oh my!”
Katerina had already forgotten her. She walked forward and stood over the young beggar, shaking his shoulder to rouse him from his stupor. Tung saw the man look up: his face was greasy with sweat, his skin pale as a corpse’s; he was trembling. His eyes though were huge, seemingly twice normal size, glossy and black as hatred.
“What? What do you want?” he was saying. “Why did you wake me to . . . this?” He seemed to be weeping, his vast dark eyes brimming with tears, the shudders of his bony body spilling them from his lids and down his thin white cheeks.
“I have money for you, lots of money,” said Katerina.
“Gods bless you, lady, bless you,” said the young man, shaking even harder in his joy.
“But I want something from you in return,” said Katerina. She bounced the clinking yellow purse in her hand. “You may have this—it is a hundred golden crowns—but you must give me something very precious to you.”
“Anything, lady,” he said. His eyes were fixed on the yellow purse.
“I require your organ. I require your male member. Cut it off with this knife, right now, this moment, and put it into my hand, and I shall give you all this money.”
“No, lady, you jest, surely?”
“One hundred crowns—all for you. To spend on whatever you may desire.”
“You swear you will give it to me?”
“I swear.”
Tung turned his face away as quickly as he could, but he saw the beggar accept the short Niho blade from Katerina, holding it in his right hand and thrusting the questing fingers of his left into his rag of a loincloth.
Tung heard no more than a grunt, and a little sigh, and then the man saying: “Here, lady, take it. Here it is. Now the money. You promised me the money.”
Katerina was looking over at Tung when he finally raised his eyes. She was holding the money bag i
n the air above the sitting man’s head. The Niho knight had retrieved his short blade and was cleaning the blood from it with a piece of cloth. The beggar looked between Tung and Katerina, bloodied and now exquisitely fearful.
“If I give him this money,” Katerina said, “he will be dead from obat poisoning inside a few days—week at most. I know that for certain. If I give this to him, he is a dead man.”
“Lady . . . I swear . . . I won’t smoke that much . . .” said the beggar.
“Shh, quiet now, you,” said Katerina. “Shall I give the money to him, Tung?”
“No, for pity’s sake, Highness, get him to a doctor. A physician, if we can find one, or even a harborside apothecary. We must get him some help.”
“He can buy the services of a doctor with that money. If he chooses to.”
“Lady, I beg you . . . the money . . .” whined the young man.
Katerina dropped the heavy bag into the man’s cupped hands, said, “There!” and turned from him and strode off down the cobbled street, the Niho knights all around her. Tung spared one look at the half-naked man with the gore-drenched loincloth but that wretch too was up and moving fast in the opposite direction, the bulging yellow bag clutched in his bloody fingers. Tung watched him go, a hard, bitter lump forming in his belly—he was watching a doomed young man running eagerly, even joyfully toward his own death—then he hurried after his princess.
Katerina waited for Tung at the end of the street, which opened out into a broad expanse of tamped sand. The princess stood there, waiting for him, staring out at the parade ground and the wall of brightly dressed soldiers, oiled muskets gleaming on their right shoulders, their Han faces impassive, their ranks perfectly aligned, blue-and-green banners fluttering in the sea breeze above a thousand burnished steel helmets.
With Tung at her side, and the three Niho knights behind her, Katerina marched across the ground, the sand crunching under her kidskin slippers, toward a trio of men, all portly and bearing square silk hats with big, colored-glass buttons on the crown.
It was not until they had greeted Colonel Wang and his two majors, and begun the tedious process of walking very slowly up and down the lines of statue-like figures, peering at the men of the 42nd Celestial Legion, that Katerina spoke to Tung again. The Colonel and his two senior officers were a dozen yards ahead, glowering at the men they passed, huffing with displeasure or occasionally giving a nod of compliment, when Katerina said, “You think that I am a cruel woman, Minister. You probably imagine that I am a little mad, or drunk with power. But that is not the case, I assure you. It is true that I am harsh with my enemies and with those who stand in my way. But I do not take any pleasure in inflicting pain on others. I will not shrink from it; but it is not for my gratification. There is always a purpose behind the things that I do; and, however monstrous they might seem to you, my actions are not mindless.”
“Highness, I only wish to serve you. I am not in a position to judge . . .”
“Be quiet, Tung. I don’t need you to talk. I need you to listen.”
Katerina stopped in front of a tall Han musketeer. She slapped him on the chest, a hard flat blow, that raised a puff of blue-dye dust from his tunic. “This is a particularly well-turned-out young fellow,” she said loudly. “A fine young soldier. Strong as an elephant. Brave as a tiger. What is your name, Legionnaire?”
“Undercorporal Chin, Highness, at your service.”
“Undercorporal Chin, I accept your service with gratitude and humility. I need good men like you. You are a credit to the 42nd Legion, Chin. And a credit to me.”
Tung saw the soldier struggling to hide a beaming smile and thought, She has enslaved him with two dozen words. This man will now gladly die for her. What is this strange power she wields over men? Whatever it is, it is not right and natural.
They walked on a few steps, and Katerina said, “That young fellow back there, the wretched obat-slave—do you know why I made him do what he did? Do you know why I gave him the means to smoke himself into the next life? I do not think that you do.”
Tung said nothing.
“There are two reasons for that encounter. Firstly, I made him mutilate himself to show you the unstoppable strength of the craving that excessive obat-taking can provoke. Do not fall prey to that vice. A true obat-slave will do anything—anything at all—for his next pipe. But more than that. Imagine what an army of obat-slaves, or even a nation of obat-slaves would be able to accomplish for the woman who controls the supply of their pleasure.”
Tung tried to imagine a slave nation composed entirely of wretched folk like the young man with the bloodied loincloth, but his horrified mind rejected the thought.
“Obat is farmed only on certain islands of the Laut Besar. Only there will the obat trees grow properly. I mean to take those islands. Indeed, I mean to gain control of that whole region. A year from today, and with luck maybe sooner, I shall be the Lord of the Islands. I shall control the obat groves, and the production of all the obat in the whole world. And every obat-slave in the Laut Besar, and elsewhere, will also be my slave.”
Tung thought about the scope of her ambition and was not in the slightest part surprised. In fact, the thought of her lording it over a bunch of ruthless pirates and drug-addled natives three thousand miles away made him feel rather better—the key point, he felt, the essence of the thing, was that she’d be three thousand miles away.
Then she ruined everything by saying, “I may be away for some time but I will surely return. Once I have secured control of the obat production and have the Lordship of the Islands in my hands I will return here, to Ashjavat. And I need to be assured that I will be welcomed when I return. Khev is my home and I shall not abandon it forever. And that is why I need you, Tung An Shan, Minister of the Crown, my loyal and hardworking friend.
“I wish you to become the Prince Regent of Ashjavat. In my absence, you will rule here on behalf of the Celestial Republic— I have already discussed this with the Conclave and all the Venerables are in agreement with me that you are the perfect man for the job. You will occupy the Palace of Ashjavat and rule the province with three full Legions permanently stationed here to support your dignity. Your wife and young son will move to Ashjavat. You may take as your due in taxes, one-tenth of all the trade that flows into Ashjavat through the port here at Ostraka—and that trade will be greatly increased, I believe I can promise you—and you can set about becoming a rich man, a very rich man indeed. With me gone across the seas, with more money than you have ever desired or could ever spend in ten lifetimes, and with your loving family all around you, I think you may have all you need, my dear Minister, to allow yourself to be happy.”
Tung was speechless. The whole world seemed to be whirling around his head. He was dimly aware of Katerina slapping the chest of another strapping Legionnaire and saying the easy words that made the soldier swell with pride. He tottered after the small woman as she moved to the next rank of soldiers, watching her look fascinated and nod wisely at some nonsense that Colonel Wang was spouting about the particular quality of this company.
Then she was speaking again in his ear. “And that was the second reason why I had the wretch mutilate himself,” she said quietly. “I made a bargain with him. And even though I knew the money would kill him, I wanted you to know that I always keep my bargains—always. I made a bargain with my husband the late Prince Khazeki to be his faithful wife and to submit to his will until the day that he died. And I kept my bargain. And this shall be the bargain between us, if you accept it. Are you listening to me? You become Prince Regent of Ashjavat and rule the principality in my stead, make yourself rich, enjoy your growing family, and when I return—and this part you must swear to keep to yourself—when I return, you hand over the reins of power immediately to me, or to my heirs and successors, and without the slightest quibble or complaint. And on the day I regain the Throne of Ashjavat, you will be free to
return to the Celestial Republic with your wealth and your family, to enjoy a well-earned retirement in the land of your birth. Now tell me, my friend, do you accept our bargain?”
CHAPTER 16
It was long past dawn—indeed, it was almost midmorning—when Semar shook Jun’s shoulder and roused him from his straw pallet in the tiny, fusty-smelling room on the first floor of The Drunken Sow. Jun sat up and rubbed his eyes. His face felt swollen and his brain soft and cloudy from the obat fumes, but he had slept very well after stumbling home from the Temple alone and falling into his bed. On the far side of the room he saw Ketut rummaging in her pack and pulling out a small gray linen towel and the earthenware pot of soap she used for her ablutions. He stared at her, remembering in full the transformation he had witnessed the night before. But she refused to look directly at him and after a moment or two she slipped out the door.
Semar handed Jun a cup of hot Han tea and he sipped gratefully. The old man seemed to be full of life, gathering up his belongings and shoving them into his pack, rolling up the straw pallets and stacking them in the corner. And even going so far as to seize a threadbare broom from the corner and sweep the dust of the little room from one side to the other. Jun had been moved from his position by Semar and his energetic housework twice, when he said, “You know all about her, don’t you? In fact, I’d say, you always knew.”
“Knew what, my prince?” said Semar, sweeping industriously.
“You knew she was a Vessel. You knew she was one of those Vharkashta freaks.”
“I did know, my prince, you are quite right about that. Well done! I did indeed know that she is one of those rare people who is so blessed that the Gods choose to inhabit them when they come to visit this mortal realm. Yes, I knew. So what? I would think you would welcome the blessings of the Gods on this difficult quest. Moreover, I took pity on her: she’s had a hard life, you know. I have decided to help her along her path, teach her a few of the things I’ve picked up along the way, make her my pupil, for want of a better word. I hope it does not displease you, my prince, that I should seek to help those less fortunate than us?”
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