by Kate Elliott
Only later did it occur to him to wonder where Mountain had found the bead nets and, once he’d asked him, how unsatisfactory Mountain’s answer was.
“Right up by the big rock where we were camping when the storm hit, Master Shai. Just lying there, like she’d torn them off. Or they’d been torn off her.”
15
Midmorning the next day they rode out onto an escarpment from which they could view the spectacular Mariha Valley sprawled below. Irrigation canals cut the land into a bright patchwork beyond which the lush colors faded quickly to a dull yellow-brown. The old city was a vast honeycomb seen from above, ringed by stout walls and graced by a lake at the center where, Tohon said, priests had once worshiped their ancient god and now the Qin watered their horses. There was a holy tower dedicated to the Merciful One, recognizable by its tiered rings, and a second monumental building concealing a courtyard within a courtyard which Anji told her was a temple for the worship of the god Beltak, one of the manifold names given to the Lord of Lords, King of Kings, the Shining One Who Rules Alone. Next to the Beltak temple lay another palatial structure.
“Is that a second temple?” Mai asked. “It has two courtyards, too, but they’re separate, side by side, not one nested inside the next.”
“That’s the royal palace, built in the Sirniakan style,” said Anji. “The larger courtyard is where men congregate and the separate smaller courtyard is for the prince’s women.”
“How strange,” said Mai. “Do you actually mean to say that women cannot go where the men congregate, and men cannot walk in the women’s courtyard?”
“I mean to say that in Sirniaka, the palace women—a dozen wives, a hundred concubines, and all their serving women and slaves—are sequestered, kept completely apart. Only the master, his sons, and his slaves can visit the women’s quarters. Any other man who tries to walk there would be killed. Executed.”
Mai laughed. “That’s a good story! It’s quite a big palace, though. There must be lots of people living there in order to need two courtyards that big.”
“You don’t believe me?” Anji raised an eyebrow in that sweet way he had of showing amusement. He was so handsome!
“How could people live that way? Women kept apart! And so many that they need a place that big! How could one man keep so many women? Two wives is plenty, as the old song goes.”
“You don’t believe me,” repeated Anji, shaking his head. “It seems strange to me now, I admit, because I’ve lived among the Qin for so many years, but it didn’t seem strange at all when I was a child.”
His words caught her up short. She’d been about to laugh again, but he was perfectly serious. He was, briefly, a stranger, looking at her through eyes whose glance had recently become so very intimate.
Tohon whistled. “Captain! Best keep going. I think we’re being followed.”
“They’ll see our dust.”
“True, and our tracks. We need only reach Commander Beje’s posting before they reach us.”
Anji signaled. Chief Tuvi whistled, and they set off again, riding at a bruising gait that jarred her up through her teeth. Now and again they would reach a vantage point from which they could get a good look behind them, and always there rose that telltale haze of dust, moving as they moved, hard on their trail.
In midafternoon they rode down into a green vale watered by three streams trickling down from the heights. An old stone watchtower on one slope had been abandoned and replaced with a fortified villa on lower ground. It was a one-story compound surrounded by a small orchard, a garden, a single field of grain, and an inner wall of stone and outer palisade of logs ringed by a ditch. Sheep grazed between the two walls. A black Qin banner flew from the gate. They crossed a narrow bridge, single-file, and the gate was closed after them by a silent guardsman.
“This way.” Tohon led them across the pasture and through a second gate, guarded by stone dragons.
Inside lay a stableyard, dirt raked in neat lines. Captain Anji dismounted and gave his reins to Sengel.
“Come,” he said to Mai. “Bring Priya.”
No one else—not even Sengel and Toughid, who shadowed Anji everywhere he went—was invited to accompany them. There were guards on the walls and a score of soldiers lounging in the stableyard, all armed. The captain’s troop dismounted but did not otherwise disperse, as if they expected to have to leave at a moment’s notice.
“Are we safe?” she whispered to Anji as Tohon led them into the shade of a long porch. “Who do you think is following us?”
He paused before entering. The terrace was floored with sandstone, recently swept, but the pillars, eaves, and roof of the porch were all of well-polished wood. A youth knelt at the far end of the porch, not even looking up as their footsteps tapped on stone; he rubbed at one of the pillars with a linen cloth.
“We are safe with Commander Beje,” Anji said. “Look. There are faces in the pillars.”
The subtle faces of guardian animals peered out from the wood. They leered or snarled or smiled, each according to its nature, and as they crossed the porch and entered the interior, Mai had a fancy that one of the guardian beasts winked at her. Inside they crossed an empty room to a wall of screens that, when slid aside, revealed a quiet courtyard. Their shoes crackled on gravel. Like the first room, the courtyard lay empty except for a quartet of low benches surrounding a dry fountain shaped like a tree with bells hanging from the branches. No wind disturbed the bells. It was utterly silent. A sliding door led them into the dim interior of another immaculate room with wood floors and no furniture whatsoever. All the windows were shuttered, filtering the light through white rice paper. The air smelled faintly of cloves.
Tohon slid a screen to one side, and they emerged under an arbor roofed by vines and surrounded by a net of trees, some flowering and some boasting the small green bulbs of early fruit. A multicolored carpet had been thrown down over flagstones, and in the shade a stout man sat on a camp stool, his back to them, whittling. He set knife and carving on the carpet before rising to face Captain Anji.
He was a good ten years older than Father Mei, a robust man with a face red from too much drinking, and the typical Qin smile, generous and quick. “Anjihosh!” He wore slippers of gold silk embroidered with red poppies. On these he padded forward to slap the captain on either shoulder. Anji placed his right hand atop his left and bowed respectfully.
“Good you came.” The commander’s arkinga was a little different from Anji’s. He voiced some of the words in a new way and sometimes used a phrase Mai had never heard before. “Who is this lovely orchid?”
“My wife, Mai’ili.”
“Not concubine? She’s not Qin.”
“No. She is my wife.”
Beje studied Mai for what seemed an interminable time. He had black eyes, and laugh lines that betrayed humor, but he looked her over in the same way a discriminating buyer handles peaches and melons, knowing which are ripe and which not ready for sale. She did not flinch, although she was desperately uncomfortable.
The father of Anji’s first wife, of whom she knew nothing except that the woman was dead. Some of the aunts had speculated the Anji had beaten his first wife to death because the Qin were known for their violent temper as well as their hearty laugh, but if that were the case she couldn’t understand how the father of that woman could greet Anji so affectionately.
“She can stay, then. If she’s your wife, I’ll treat her as if she were my daughter.” He pointed to Priya. “No wife, this one. Why is she here?”
“She is educated. She can read and write.”
“A woman of value! Bring khaif for everyone, Sheyshi.”
The young woman stood so still within the curtain made by drooping vines that Mai actually didn’t notice her until Beje said her name and she padded away through the trees on a white gravel path.
“Is she your concubine?” asked Anji, looking amused.
Beje looked confused. “Concubine? Sheyshi? No, just a slave. I don’t l
ike these Marihan girls. They smell funny, but Cherfa likes to be surrounded by pretty things, birds and kits and so on, and she likes pretty slave girls, too. She may sleep with them. I don’t!”
“Who is Cherfa?” asked Mai.
“My chief wife. A good woman. She takes care of me. You take care of Anjihosh here, and he’ll make you a good husband for all your days.”
“Yes, sir,” she said automatically, because he was the kind of man you addressed with respect. Then she flushed, thinking of lovemaking.
He chuckled, but turned somber as Tohon brought stools, unfolded them, and they all sat down. There was still no wind, and the air was warm but not unpleasantly sticky. It was so quiet that Mai could not even hear the noise of Anji’s troop.
Beje sighed as he settled his bulk on the stool. “I’m sorry, Son. I’m still ashamed. You could have shamed my whole clan and harmed our position in the var’s eyes, but you did not.”
“It was not your fault,” said Anji. “There was nothing you could have done.”
“Maybe so. Maybe not. She was a headstrong girl.”
Anji’s smile ghosted, and vanished. “Precisely her charm.” He glanced at Mai but said nothing more.
Beje looked at Mai, too, and nodded as if in answer to an unspoken question. “Truly, this one is a beautiful woman. I have seen many handsome women in my time, but this one I can see has been kissed by the Merciful One with grace of spirit. Still, no need to have married her as she is not Qin.”
“A man may keep a knife hidden in his boot in case he falls onto hard times and needs to defend himself when attack is least expected. She is my knife.”
Mai flushed again as Beje examined her, frowning.
“Is she? Hmm.” They sat in silence.
How odd that it should be so very quiet, as if a spell veiled them. Mai kept her hands folded in her lap and examined first her husband and then the old commander, who after a bit picked up his knife and began to whittle. The whit whit of the knife strokes sounded like a bird’s cry, heard from a distance. She couldn’t tell what shape was emerging from the wood. Anji sat so still that she would have thought him asleep except his eyes were open, though he didn’t precisely seem to be looking at anything. Lost in memory, perhaps. Surely he was thinking of his first wife, whoever or whatever she had been.
Headstrong. She had shamed her family.
That didn’t sound promising.
I will never shame him or the Mei clan.
A bug tick ticked. Leaves rustled. Beje set down his carving just as Sheyshi reappeared, bearing a tray with four painted bowls on it. Now Mai got a better look at her. Her complexion had a richer brown color than that of Kartu people, whom the creator of all had admixed with the clay and sandstone of the desert, and she had a more prominent nose, in some manner resembling Anji’s. She had pretty eyes and pretty ways and a pretty smile as she offered Mai a pretty little bowl filled with steaming khaif, a real luxury, which Mai had only ever tasted once in her life at Grandmother’s double-double anniversary four years ago, when she had counted four rounds of twelve years. Even Priya was handed a bowl, out of respect for her learning.
They sipped as the servant girl waited, kneeling, by the sliding door. Priya nodded appreciatively, but said nothing.
When they had each emptied their bowl and the heady aroma and flavor had quite gone to Mai’s head, making the world seem large and pleasant indeed, Sheyshi collected the bowls and departed through the trees.
“So,” said Beje. “So, Anjihosh, you are wondering.”
I am.
“Do you know why you were sent east?”
“Yes. To take over command of the garrison and army at Tars Fort.”
“A lot of transfers, troops being moved along the border, and to the border.”
“Yes. I have wondered about that also. The var is too wise to attack the empire. We can’t defeat them.”
“It seems unlikely. I can now tell you that all this movement is part of a larger plan, one the var has only recently unveiled to his regional commanders. We are massing an army along the border to ride to the aid of the emperor.”
Anji blinked but otherwise revealed no emotion. “Why would the Qin act as servants, as hired soldiers, for the emperor?”
“The var wishes to maintain stability. No way to trade with the empire, or collect tribute from their outlying towns, if they’re torn apart by civil war, is there?”
“Why would the empire have civil war? Emperor Farutanihosh is a strong administrator. The empire is at peace, and well run.”
Beje reached inside his blue silk tunic—only Qin commanders were allowed to wear that particular shade of heaven blue—and withdrew a pristine folded-rice-paper message sealed with the stylized horse-stamp sigil that every merchant recognized because it represented the authority of the Qin var. Only the var’s officials carried such seals. With a manifest bearing that seal, any officer could requisition a family’s entire stock of grain or their best ram or bolts of silk hidden away for weddings and prayer offerings.
He held it up now. “Emperor Farutanihosh is dead.”
Anji paled. The words struck him hard, but he said nothing.
“The emperor’s eldest son Farazadihosh has become emperor. However, another claimant seeks the throne. There is dispute, and there is fighting in the southern provinces. The var has offered to help Emperor Farazadihosh put down his rival in exchange for the Qin receiving certain trading privileges. The new emperor has, it seems, not as many troops as the claimant, who seeks to oust him.”
Anji seemed struck dumb. Mai stared. She had never seen him at a loss. Never. Never.
“The new emperor is interested in the var’s offer. Of course. He’ll lose without our support. Even a fool can see it. But he has one demand. Just one, before he allows our troops into the empire. He wants proof of your death.” He waved the message. “This message, here in my hand, is an order. For your head. By order of the var himself.”
“Ah.” The sound escaped Anji on an exhale.
Beje waited, but the captain said nothing more. His hands were in fists, his gaze sightless, and he did not move.
“Why does the new emperor, this one called Farazadihosh, want you dead, Anjihosh?”
Mai had gone hot, arms tingling, as though fire burned nearby. She held her breath, waiting.
Anji found his breath, and she breathed again as he spoke, his voice so low she strained to hear him. “Because I’m his younger brother.”
Beje waved the message dismissively. “I know you’re the new emperor’s brother. Why does he want you dead?”
“Ah. Ah, well.” Slowly, he recovered himself, like a man pulling himself by rope out of flooding waters: hand over hand. “It is the custom of the emperor to kill all his half brothers when he ascends to the throne. Usually his full brothers as well, if he has any.”
“Half? Full? What does this mean?”
“The same man sired us. We had different mothers.”
“But surely your father the Emperor Farutanihosh had a chief wife. Her sons would always take precedence over sons by secondary wives and concubines.”
“No. The emperor may elevate any of his wives or concubines at any time he pleases. He may disinherit, or give preference to, whichever son is his favorite, or the favorite of whichever wife grips his staff most firmly.”
“Tss! That’s no way to be strong. Brothers should support one another.”
“Not in the royal court of the Sirniakan Empire. Azadihosh’s mother tried to have me murdered once my mother fell out of favor. That’s when my mother had me smuggled west to the Qin.”
Beje scratched an ear. “To her brother, the var. Then if princes are so ruthless in the empire, how comes there to be a claimant to rise against the new emperor?”
“My father the Emperor Farutanihosh has always been a canny and ruthless administrator. No one contests—contested—that. No one who contested that survived. But the noble clans consider—considered—him to be a
softhearted, weak man, because at the request of his mother he left alive his younger full brother, Ufarihosh. He even let him marry and govern the southern provinces. The brothers were on good terms, if royal brothers can ever be said to be on good terms in the empire. Azadihosh and his mother must not have been able to murder Ufarihosh’s sons before a claimant rose out of their ranks.”
“Yet these would be the nephews of the emperor, not the sons of the emperor. Surely that would damage their claim.”
“Perhaps. The southern provinces are populous, and traditional, old-fashioned. The son of an emperor known to be weakhearted, like Farutanihosh, might not receive their support if a better claimant raised his spear. Anything could happen there. I don’t know. My mother hoped to keep me out of palace politics by sending me away to her own people, to the Qin, where it would never matter what happened to me. I would be an exile. I would be dead to the court. But now they’ve come to find me, just as she feared. She meant to keep secret what had become of me. Do you know how my brother found out where I was?”
“I do not.”
“Hu. A mystery, then.” He kept his gaze on Beje, each man watching the other intently, as if waiting for a knife to be drawn. “What do you mean to do, Commander?”
Beje tucked the message back inside his tunic. He scratched one ear again, pulling on the lobe. Mai remembered to breathe. Anji nodded at her to show he hadn’t forgotten her, before looking back at the commander.
“It’s too bad that you never arrived here,” said Beje. “After that terrible storm in the desert some days ago, I sent out a scout. We found dead horses, dead men, and your banner, torn and dirty, but recognizable. Your ring, too, that gold lion given to you by the var when you were twelve and first come to court. A shame! The storm must have caught your troop unprepared.”
“It never would! That’s a slur on my competence!”
The commander smiled sharply. “You must choose between incompetence or death, Anjihosh. This is the chance I will give you, because I am shocked that my cousin the var would betray his own nephew to the Sirniakans. But then, this is the same man who gave his sister to their emperor as a plaything. It’s like spitting at the gods to treat a woman of our people in such a way. I hold to the old ways.”
