by S. C. Emmett
“Your Majesty…” Domari Ulo sank upon his knees, his robe’s wide sleeves squirting through the clutching fingers of the guards. The bastard princeling had vanished, leaving only a short, exquisitely brushed message to his father— I have other business. “Your Majesty! What have you—”
“Hai Domari was raided this morning,” Kinreni Shonih said, halting before Domari Ulo. His boots, worn within walls and roof in defiance of good manners because a close-rider to the ruler must ever be ready, made sharp crisp noises upon the steps. “Just as you left to visit your mistress for morning tea, Lord Domari. Much was found, including certain papers detailing a conspiracy against the Crown Prince of Khir.”
Ashani Zlorih watched his chief minister turn yellow under the copper of his complexion, and the man’s soft, richly oiled hands shot out, supplicatory. “My lord…my lord king…Great Rider…”
“Those who attempt to dye their hands with the Great Rider’s blood face consequences,” Ganreni Taoyan stammered, glancing uneasily at Zlorih. “The Zhaon have killed our princess, now the heir is in danger.”
“Or already dead.” Zlorih regarded Domari Ulo, his chin level. “Well, minister? Where is my son? And what do you know of my daughter’s death?”
No doubt Ulo had thought his position unassailable. The forged papers detailing his “conspiracy” were thin proof at best, so Zlorih must move quickly now. Buried in the mass of spoil taken from Hai Domari might be a shred of some other proof, despite the stupidity of keeping such things to hand. Those who chafed at Ulo’s prestige had been brought forward, and would be too busy picking the carcass to give their Great Rider much trouble. Any alliance with the flour-pale barbarians of Tabrak could be confirmed if that migratory nation moved against Zhaon as their envoy promised, or set aside as Ulo’s traitorous pet project if necessary.
If required.
“Your Highness…” The chief minister’s protest was a small croak, though no doubt he thought his cry of surpassing volume. Ashani Zlorih was not the grieving father Ulo had grown used to, nodding assent as his chief minister suggested options or leaving certain matters in his minister’s capable hands— chief among those matters, the sacrifice of a certain royal Khir girlchild. “Great Rider…”
“Chief Minister,” Ashani Zlorih said, much more loudly than he needed to, and the hope rising on Domari Ulo’s face was, for once, transparent.
And transparently crushed when another man, much more soberly robed, his topknot held in a cage of carved bone with silver hammered into its lines and with a pin of similar make, detached himself from a knot of ministerial spectators to Ulo’s left, gliding on soft leather-soled, point-toed Keep slippers toward the dais, where he bowed with much grace.
“Great Rider, I am here.” It was Khitani Udo, the Spider of Hai Akaleki himself. And now, instead of merely bloodless, Ulo’s cheeks were almost pale as polished rai.
Almost, in fact, as white as the stinking Tabrak emissary who had been fêted and made much of for quite some time but was now confined to a safe, windowless, heavily guarded suite well within the Keep’s stony arms. Domari Ulo had taken pains to be seen conferring with the barbarian upon this or that question, thinking it advantageous. After all, with a weak Great Rider robbed of heirs, much could happen in the land of Khir.
Especially if the Pale Horde came riding as they had many times before and a minister had reached a secret accord with an envoy. It was not necessary for such an accord to be more than suspected; the suspicion itself was useful.
Ashani Zlorih had let it happen, even encouraged it. Had kept his face set and unchanging as the great stone wheel-calendar hanging over his throne, had buried his plans within each other until they were ready— much as he had arranged for his beloved Narikh Arasoe’s retirement from public life, her safety from assassins when her relationship with a man not her husband had become clear, and the education of their only son.
Ulo should have known, Zlorih mused, that no matter how pliant a Great Rider might appear, it was never wise to loosen his jesses even a fraction. Like a half-trained or a haggard hawk, the Rider could always bolt for freedom, and even if the bid was lost the ministers provoking it might not escape unscathed.
“I will leave investigation of this matter to you, Khitani Udo,” Ashani Zlorih continued, “and expect to hear where my son is, living or dead, within a tenday. You have the commission to use any means necessary.”
“Yes, Great Rider. I hear and obey.” Khitani Udo did not glance at his former rival, but his satisfaction was palpable.
Perhaps it had not been wise to let the Spider remain among the living, and Ulo’s head-meat no doubt raced with ways of remedying the error. If the Domari clan hall had been searched and the close-guard purged, who remained to be suborned or depended upon?
He was perhaps so occupied with the question he made no protest as Ashani Zlorih paused, waiting for the customary wailing protestation of innocence. When none arose, it was a relief— it would appear to the court that Heaven’s thunderbolt had not missed its aim. The Great Rider made another short gesture. “Close-riders, take this filth to the dungeons. Chief Minister, I hold you personally responsible for drawing all secrets from it.”
“I hear you, Great Rider,” the Spider repeated unctuously, and perhaps that was what broke Domari Ulo, his court cap snatched from his head and his arms grasped by disdainful close-riders too young to have been caught in the morass of Three Rivers or ministerial influence. He began to wail brokenly as he was dragged from the throne room, and the scribe at the Great Rider’s side trembled even more.
A clan did not live without its head, and even its junior branches might feel the weight of royal displeasure. But Ashani Zlorih merely glanced at the boy. “Who has yet to appear?” he asked, mildly, and the scribe hurried to check the list.
“The l-lord of Hai T-Toshani, G-Great R-R-Rider.”
“Good.” One royal hand waved, the heavy silver and greenstone ring of office upon its first finger glinting, and Khitani Udo hurried after the receding knot of close-riders bearing his unfortunate predecessor. What evidence Zlorih hadn’t managed to forge the new Chief Minister would, if only for the pleasure of seeing his greatest enemy writhe upon the knife. “He should already be in the Keep. Send two close-riders to fetch him to my study, little scribe.” His tone was almost fatherly; perhaps the scribe’s name reminded him of his own son, vanished like morning dew.
The Great Rider rose, and as he passed all hurried to make their bows. A half-dozen of the new close-riders moved with him, raised unimaginably high for their age and minor nobility. Where else could loyalty be found, some would comment behind their fans— especially the ministers who felt no little satisfaction at Domari Ulo’s fall? If a Chief Minister was found to be rotten, a Great Rider must be as severe as a father uncovering unchastity in a daughter or cowardice in a son.
Yes, Khir might soon be at war. All preparations spoke of it. But some few among the ministers wondered precisely whom they would ride against this time.
Let them wonder. The massive doors to the throne room opened and the calls of Ashani Zlorih’s presence and passage began to reverberate through the Great Keep’s high, cold, stony halls. He had room for future maneuver now, whether Zhaon asked for reinforcements or Tabrak for assurances against Khir’s traditional southron foe. If he discovered whither his remaining son had vanished, he would have even more.
And if he discovered the boy was dead, Khir would find out its Great Rider still held a whip— and a few teeth left to bite with.
SPILLING SECRETS
The palace complex was full of fine gardens, but some of them held an air of benign neglect. This one had that particular advantage, being upon one of the less popular routes to the Kaeje’s back entrance. “Gone to Takyeo the day before yesterday, I hear, and no doubt spilling all our secrets.” Fifth Prince Sensheo, in bright venomous green silk with a glittering enameled topknot-cage, matched the rustling babu shade for shade. He studied a carven
stone trunkbeast, its sides running with moss, mired in the center of a padflower-choked pond. No mourning band was upon his arm— of course, a junior mother’s passing was regrettable, but not a tragedy. A senior mother’s son was released from many of mourning’s niceties, should he desire to be.
“He cannot spill what he does not know.” Second Prince Kurin, his own armband glaring against a dark-orange sleeve, eyed his little brother speculatively. “How goes your betting lately?”
“I have decided the chariot I will back.” Sensheo turned to his elder, his smile wide and guileless as if he was a youth caught stealing plums from Kanbina’s garden again. The princes’ last meeting had ended badly but no worse than many other childhood scraps, and it was silly to mention such a small matter. “And you?”
“I only wager as much as necessary.” Kurin glanced along a colonnaded walk leading to the Iejo’s bulk in the distance, and his expression did not change. “Ah, Makar! We were just speaking of you.”
“Should I make a sign against ill-luck?” Makar paused, folding his hands into his sober brown sleeves. He was aping the scholar more and more these days, and even his gait had become ponderous. “I go to Father’s bedside, Elder Brother.” He nodded, coolly, at Sensheo. “Younger Brother. Mother missed you at breakfast.”
“So formal. Tell me, does our Eldest Brother still intend to retreat with tail-between-legs?” Sensheo used the term for a whipped cur; it was faintly enjoyable to see Makar’s gaze drift over his brothers’ heads, circling and dipping to see if anyone was close enough to hear the ill-advised comparison of the Crown Prince to an offal-eating dog.
“Perhaps.” Despite his roving eyes, Makar’s expression betrayed nothing but faint distaste. “Where are you two bound? Will you visit Father with me?”
“Heaven knows I am there in spirit.” Kurin delivered the platitude with his own gaze turned up to the stifling sky. In this light he looked sallow, and the burnt-orange silk of his robe, while expensive, did his complexion little good.
Still, they were not women, to show themselves to advantage in such light. A prince must be handsome, but appear uncaring of the arts used to make him so.
“As are we all.” Sensheo restrained a smile, but not very successfully. Perhaps Kurin didn’t even suspect the substitution of one small bottle with a soakwood stopper for another. It would be just like him to use the thing and then blame someone else when the effects were gaudy instead of subtle, and Sensheo could not wait for the occasion. “I, for one, hope Takyeo has the sense to run away. It will make everything easier.”
“What nonsense are you speaking now?” Makar visibly wished he had taken another route to the Kaeje. Perhaps he had thought this path would give him time for the deep thought he pretended so frequently. “Our mother will—”
“Oh, Mother,” Sensheo all but sneered. “You are brave, to hide behind her hem. Is she still worried about me?”
“If you visited her, you would know.” Makar glanced at Kurin, and the message was clear: Will you rein Sensheo’s tongue?
Sensheo almost wished him luck with the task. Soon enough he would be able to say anything he pleased, and the prospect filled him with a warm glow quite unlike summer’s heat. “Go upon your way, then. We do not need your presence.”
“I begin to think you do.” His closest brother folded his hands within his scholar’s sleeves. He should be wearing a court-hat instead of a topknot, if he would dress so drab. “Well, then, Kurin. Ask what you have placed yourself here to ask.”
Sensheo suppressed a flare of irritation. How like his brother, to assume Kurin wished to speak to him.
Kurin, however, extracted a fan from his sleeve. A few lazy flicks of its carved scentwood fins stirred the breathless heat, and its decoration was a sinuous, elegant painted curve with a suggestion of scales. The snake was a lucky symbol, constantly renewing and kin to the great powers of fecund earth. “I wish to know if you are with me, Makar.” He did not glance at Sensheo. “I know your brother is.”
“Ah.” Makar did not take his gaze from his little brother, and his mouth tightened. “Is he?”
So. Kurin had steered them here. Sensheo’s irritation mounted, and he hoped it was not too apparent. “I wish what is best for Zhaon.” There. Let them take that as they would.
“Have you done anything ill-advised lately?” Makar persisted. “I hope not, for I will not save you from yourself this time.”
“You nag like a wife.” Sensheo stroked his archer’s thumb-ring. The heavy horn was satisfyingly solid. You did not, despite what some of the stupid said, have to meet your foe in the open. It was often more efficient to wait until you had a bow to hand. “Takyeo is weak, and he has no allies.”
“Except Takshin. And Kai. And Mrong Banh, and probably that cursed head eunuch.” Makar’s hands did not move, but his tone suggested he was twitching a finger for each name on the list.
“Takshin is easy to distract and will go back to Shan anyway once he’s given the proper inducement. Banh’s an astrologer, he’ll lick the hand of whoever’s buttocks are firmest upon the throne. Zan Fein is a eunuch, and no threat.” Sensheo’s cheeks ached with the effort of keeping his expression neutral. “And Zakkar Kai…well, there are many dangers in an army camp.”
“Again?” Makar studied him for a long moment. His sigh was a long-suffering elder’s. “You,” he said finally, “are a fool.”
“Oh?” Kurin’s eyebrows shot up and he regarded Sensheo with something like surprise, for once. “Ah, so that was you.”
Which time? It was annoying; all the silver Sensheo had spent had still not gained him what he longed for. Still, what else was there to do but spend it? “The difference between us is that you sit and speak, and I perform.” Sensheo relished the shock upon Makar’s shaven, youthful features. His elder brother should have been a eunuch; he had the smooth cheeks and the creeping cowardice. “In any case it is unproven, and unprovable.”
Makar sought to lecture him again. “And once he is gone, Khir will be emboldened. Not to mention others.”
“Well, sooner or later they would anyway,” Sensheo allowed. “But they are weak.” After all, they had been vanquished by a foundling, Father’s little dog.
“Now Khir is weak. Later they might not be so. A dagger pointed at the heart of Zhaon,” Makar quoted sententiously.
Sensheo had heard Father say the same thing more than once, and it was just as craven now that his big brother was mouthing it. “By the time the horsefuckers decide they wish to test Zhaon again, there will be a strong son of Garan on the throne.” He took care to gaze admiringly at Kurin while making that pronouncement. With everyone so worried about the First Queen’s eldest son, a cautious man could lay his own plans in relative safety. “And Shan is married to us now. If Khir wishes to trade, they will have to swallow their pride and treat with us too. We can do without far Ch’han; Shan and the routes to Anwei are another question entirely.”
“So, you have been paying attention to a few lessons lately.” Kurin’s expression was very similar to Makar’s. The two elders gazed at each other now, as if they could not believe their younger sibling had outdone them at last. “And yet you say Kai has outlived his usefulness.”
“You may argue he hasn’t. But when Father ascends to Heaven, matters change.” Sensheo settled his sleeves with a quick pair of tugs upon embroidered cuffs. “Jin may be sent off to head the armies, and Maki will be a minister, of course. I have no ambition, unless it is to rid Zhaon of weakness.” It was a pretty way of putting it, if he did say so himself.
“I am heartened by your confidence.” Kurin had evidently decided that was enough to speak about, at least in front of Makar. “But it grows warm, and Maki is right. We should visit Father.” Who knows, his tone added, when we will have another chance?
“It will do him good to see three of his sons in accord.” Makar did not stir a step, just yet.
“Considering his eldest will not visit.” Kurin tch-tch ’d like
an old dowager auntie. “Somewhat unfilial of him.”
“Who knows?” Sensheo was tired of listing Takyeo’s inadequacies. Sometimes it seemed Kurin could think of nothing else, and did not see the other dangers. Then again, that was best for Sensheo’s own plans. “Perhaps he even loved that foreign wife of his. And that foreign lady-in-waiting might encourage him.” Why keep the skinny, ugly, ghost-eyed lady in his household, otherwise?
An awkward silence folded around them. Makar looked pained, and Kurin’s cat-smile was that of a child watching a tiny jewelwing struggling upon a slowly piercing pin.
Sensheo might have continued reciting his argument for another few moments, but he was interrupted by a deep, frantic tolling. The largest bell in the palace complex shattered the storm-stillness, and the three sons of Garan Tamuron all turned in unison toward the sound, as if their gazes could pierce walls, gardens, the bulk of the Kaeje, and fly past coverings to a body under a silken counterpane that had breathed its last.
So, Sensheo thought, as the bell continued its wild clamor. And so.
It begins.
UNCOMFORTABLY HIGH ESTIMATION
They had been hurried into the palace complex, far more deeply than Ashani Daoyan could have penetrated on his own without the cover of night. The place was a hive, and he could not even be glad of the chance to scout an enemy’s inner defenses, for the lady he had come to rescue had not only proved recalcitrant, but their interview had been interrupted in most unsatisfactory fashion.
A dark, relatively cool hallway, a statue of two snow-pards snarling at each other and conjoined in their lower half, hallways with partitions on either side, and finally a sitting-room with every appurtenance of Zhaon wealth and taste swallowed their party, and he could not even speak to her.
“Who is this fellow?” The newest arrival— a scarred man in Shan black buttoned to the right, a greenstone hurai upon his left first finger and a kyeogra in his ear— looked to Komor Yala for an answer, but she was pale under her copper, holding her left arm as if it pained her.
