Throne of Ruins (The Powers of Amur Book 5)

by J. S. Bangs

  “I hope you’re not leading us to our deaths,” he said bluntly.

  Mandhi glanced into the hold, where Hrenge sat atop a barrel and played with Jhumitu as he toddled among the barrels and nets. “I hope so, too,” she said.

  The dhow approached the dock. Three of the mercenary sailors rowed out to the dock in a coracle, threw lines to the stones, and pulled the dhow alongside. A man with a green-trimmed kurta left the customs-house and came to meet them.

  “Get down,” Kest said. He moved into the prow where Nakhur was waiting.

  Mandhi clambered down into the hold and took up a spot next to Hrenge. She squeezed her mother-in-law’s hand. They had decided it was better that they not put a woman in the front at first, especially not given that the second dhow, waiting in the bay, was half-full with Kaleksha women whom the Amurans had never seen.

  Mandhi heard the man shouting from the dock. “Your name and cargo.”

  Nakhur bowed. “I am Nakhur of Davrakhanda, and this is Kest os Dramab of Kalignas. We come bearing women and children of Kalignas, our allies. We have received word from Sadja-daridarya, whose name we say with fear and trembling, assuring us of our safe arrival.”

  “Show it to me,” the harbor-master said.

  “We don’t have it written,” Kest said. “But let us down and you’ll see we tell the truth.”

  A pause. Mandhi wished she could see the man’s reaction. “If you say you’ve spoken with the Emperor, then you’ll allow me to send a runner to the palace and confirm.”

  Kest’s brows knotted, and he glanced aside at Nakhur. Nakhur nodded. “Of course, my lord.”

  They waited. The Kaleksha men on the rail watched the dock, while the harbor-master and a handful of the dock guards milled below. The second ship waited two hundred yards behind them in the harbor.

  Noise sounded above the general hubbub of the harbor. Mandhi pulled herself to her feet and peered over the edge of the deck, spotting the green banners of Davrakhanda marching toward the dock on the main thoroughfare, mingled with the red and gold of the Emperor. She dropped back into the hold.

  “Sadja-daridarya is coming,” she whispered to Aryaji.

  Aryaji nodded. Jhumitu toddled over to Mandhi and grabbed her pinky. She pulled him up into her lap and ran her fingers through his wispy black hair.

  The voice of a herald sounded from the dock, audible even above the creaking of boards and ropes. “The Emperor of all Amur, Sadja-daridarya, whose name we say with fear and trembling, approaches. Bow and make obeisance.”

  Nakhur and the mercenaries above dropped to their knees on the deck, and after a moment of confusion the Kaleksha men did the same. A familiar voice began speaking in calm tones oiled with patience.

  “Where is Mandhi of Virnas?”

  Mandhi winced. She drew Jhumitu close to her chest.

  Nakhur answered in a nervous, uneven tone. “My Emperor, she sails with us.”

  “Is she in your boat?”

  Hesitation. Nakhur said, “Yes.”

  “Bring her to the prow. I will speak to her.”

  The Kaleksha on the deck turned and peered into the hold. Mandhi breathed heavily and stood. If Sadja wanted to punish her… well, at least she would see him face-to-face.

  “Give me Jhumitu,” she said. “I want the Emperor to see him.”

  She clambered out of the hold to the decking and took Jhumitu from Aryaji. The Kaleksha on the deck parted to let her walk to the prow, where she stood in the empty space next to Nakhur and looked down at Sadja.

  He was aged. It had been a year and a half since she had seen him, but it seemed that time had not been kind. Gray had appeared at his temples, and creases of worry had deepened around his eyes. He stood in a rigid version of the Nectar posture, his bearing full of imperial arrogance. But his expression softened when he saw Mandhi and the boy, and a strange look—was it relief?—flashed in his eyes. He nodded to her, and she bowed.

  “Mandhi,” he said, just loud enough for her to hear. “You returned. And it seems that you recovered your child.”

  “I did,” Mandhi said. A dozen possible ripostes mingled on her tongue. Should she ask about Sadja’s nephew Sundasha, whose kidnapping had opened the door for her adventure? Mention the old regent’s indifference? Explain the presence of the Kaleksha? But she couldn’t show weakness to Sadja.

  She spoke carefully. “The Heir is safe with me. Your alliance with Virnas is not endangered.”

  “Well, that depends on the disposition of my nephew,” Sadja said with an edge. Then the edge dissolved, and Sadja smiled at her. “But Sundasha-kha is safe and well. I would have brought him back to Davrakhanda, but I think that Virnas is safer for the moment.”

  Her veins tingled with relief. He was not angry. Navran and Virnas had not been ruined.

  “Ashturma-kha has been rightly recompensed for his irresponsibility,” Sadja added. “Now tell me, what cargo have you brought to my harbor in these two boats?”

  “My family,” Mandhi said with a strange pride. “My husband’s clan, newly purified into the Uluriya law.”

  “Kaleksha,” Sadja said bluntly.

  “The os Dramab.”

  “Do you have housing for them?”

  Mandhi flinched a little. She and Nakhur had argued about this. They didn’t know for certain where the os Dramab would stay, but they’d have to find something. “It’ll be provided.”

  “Would you and the closest members of your new….” He hesitated a moment, “…your family come and take residence in the palace?”

  Mandhi laughed. She felt a sudden rush of boldness. “Sadja-daridarya, I have had enough of the hospitality of your palace. I am not here as your captive any longer. That arrangement ended when my son was kidnapped and your regent did nothing to save him. If I’m going to enter your city at all, it’ll be to live with my own people in our own homes.”

  “Very well,” Sadja said, and his expression grew suddenly sharp. “You’re not here as a royal captive, which means that you’re also not here under my protection. You and your people may come ashore, but I demand recompense for the theft of my treasury and one of my dhows.”

  “Recompense?” Mandhi said. There’s no way they could pay back the amount that Mandhi had taken. It would take her ten years.

  “Both of your dhows will do nicely,” Sadja said. “Besides, one of them is mine.”

  Mandhi felt a pang of disappointment. She had hoped to use the dhows to bring the Kaleksha to Virnas. Without the dhows, they would either have to undertake a long overland journey, or they would have to buy passage on a trade vessel. Both options were expensive. They would be stuck in Davrakhanda for a long time while Sadja had them close at hand for whatever games he wanted to play.

  But if this was the price of returning to Davrakhanda, she had no choice but to take it. “Very well, you can have them.” You clever bastard.

  Sadja addressed the harbor-master. “Let them land and unload. Let them dock their ships in the harbor, then notify the captain of my guard. But give them no other privilege.”

  He marched away, and the banners and the rest of the entourage closed around him.

  Mandhi sighed. Nakhur beside her smiled and tousled Jhumitu’s hair.

  “We’re safe,” he said. He shouted to the Kaleksha. “Bring the dhows up to the dock and unload. Wait here until I come with you.”

  A long period of disembarking and unloading followed, as the dock grew more and more crowded with Kaleksha men and women, barrels of food and water, and the goods they had brought from Kalignas. A crowd grew on the far end of the wharf.

  Kaleksha men were not a strange sight in Davrakhanda. But Kaleksha women were entirely unknown. The Amurans on the wharf stared openly. Some made the sign to ward away evil. Hrenge and the rest of the os Dramab aunts huddled together in the center of the group with Aryaji standing next to them, glum and hostile.

  Nakhur pulled Mandhi aside. “We should go to the bhilami,” he said. “We can house abo
ut half of the os Dramab there for now—”

  “In the bhilami?” Mandhi asked. “Is there no other place?”

  “There’s some,” Nakhur said, “but it may take time. We have fifty-six os Dramab, which is almost as many Uluriya as exist in all of Davrakhanda. There will be….” He shook his head. “I spent the two months on the sea figuring how we will house them all. I have to go talk to my nephew Sudran, the other saghada, and to the heads of the wealthier households. It may be some hours before we have a place to put them all.”

  “Let me come with,” Mandhi said.

  “You? Why? Stay here with the women—”

  “I’m carrying the Heir on my hip,” Mandhi said pointedly. “Perhaps the heads of the households will require some persuasion.”

  Nakhur murmured. “Very well. Aryaji should come, too—I don’t think that Kidri will ever really forgive me for bringing her to Kalignas, but seeing her safe might blunt her temper. I’ll tell the mercenaries to guard the os Dramab and our belongings.”

  In ten minutes they reached the tiny Uluriya district and passed through the white pillars that marked its boundary. The door of Nakhur’s home was open, and a woman’s singing came from inside. Nakhur and Aryaji ran forward, and Nakhur called out, “Kidri!”

  A woman’s face appeared in the doorway. An expression of wonderment and joy split her face.

  “Nakhur! Aryaji!” She ran out the door.

  Heavy, hard embraces enveloped both of them, Kidri covering her husband’s face and her niece’s head with kisses, crushing them into her chest, running her hands in their hair. Tears rolled down Aryaji’s and Kidri’s faces. Nakhur crushed his wife’s hand in his own, and Aryaji was pinned between her aunt and uncle in yet another embrace. Their sari grew wet with the tears of reunion, Nakhur’s beard glistened, and innumerable kisses pressed into every cheek.

  Mandhi watched it from a pace away. A throb of regret. Kest and I will never have this reunion. Jhumitu fidgeted on her hip. She blinked away a sudden swell of tears.

  Finally, Kidri pulled herself away from her husband and niece and noticed Mandhi and Jhumitu. “Mandhi,” she said. She came close and embraced Mandhi, crushing her into a hug as powerful as the one she had given to her husband. “You returned, and you brought back—is this him?”

  “Yes,” Mandhi said. “Jhumitu, the next Heir of Manjur.”

  “The stars upon him. He’s gotten so big. Last time I saw him you could wrap him in a roti.”

  “It’s been almost a year,” Mandhi said with muted pride. “He walks. He knows a few words.”

  She dropped Jhumitu to the ground, and he toddled to Kidri and fell into her skirts. The woman picked him up and squeezed him against his chest.

  “What happened?” she asked. “Where are—”

  “Kidri,” Nakhur broke in. “There’s far too much to tell. Right now we must work to find houses. We have guests. Many of them.”

  “Guests?” Kidri said, her eyes still on Jhumitu. “We can put three or four up in our house, it should be no problem.”

  “We have fifty-six.”

  Kidri froze. She pushed Jhumitu back into Mandhi’s arms and stared at Nakhur. “Fifty-six?”

  It took a few minutes to explain to Kidri what had happened, and the woman grew more and more agitated as the story continued. Eventually Aryaji insisted they go in and make tea for everyone, merely as a way to soothe her aunt.

  The ritual of tea-making distracted the bewildered Kidri for a while. Jhumitu explored, tugging the edges of the floor rugs while Kidri and Aryaji stoked the hearth fire and set an enormous pot to boil. Mandhi hovered near the door. She would have helped, but it seemed prudent to leave Aryaji and her aunt to themselves.

  She heard an angry Amuran voice in the street. She went to the door.

  “—by yourself,” a man in a white saghada’s gown shouted at Nakhur, standing a foot away from him. “Without consulting anyone else, an entire clan.”

  Nakhur calmly crossed his arms. “Who was I supposed to consult? I was in Kalignas.”

  “Which is why you shouldn’t have done it!” the man bellowed. He glimpsed Mandhi out of the corner of his eye. “What do you want?”

  “I want to know why you’re shouting,” Mandhi said coolly.

  “Ah, yes, you’re the Heir’s wild daughter that got us into this situation,” the man said with a bitter sneer. “You encouraged my uncle to bring a foreign clan into the Uluriya on his own accord. That seems like the sort of rash and reckless thing you would do.”

  “I was neither rash nor reckless,” Mandhi said. “We brought them into the worship of Ulaur and saved the life of the next Heir and his family.”

  “Ah, yes, his family,” the man said. “Whom you had to purify for the worship of Ulaur, across the sea from Amur.”

  “Am I not the eldest of the saghada in Davrakhanda?” Nakhur said. “Don’t I have the right to accept into the worship of Ulaur any who wish to enter?”

  “But a whole clan? Of Kaleksha?”

  “You seem to have some objection to them being Kaleksha,” Mandhi said.

  The man gave her an angry, dismissive wave. He turned to Nakhur. “You know how they are.”

  Nakhur sighed. “Forgive my nephew Sudran,” he said. “He doesn’t mean—”

  “I know exactly what he means,” Mandhi said. “But I submit, Sudran, that after traveling to Kalignas and living among the Kaleksha for six months, that we know the Kaleksha better than you do.”

  “And?” Sudran looked at Nakhur. “They so impressed you with their piety and industriousness that you added them to the ranks of the Uluriya?”

  Nakhur cleared his throat and rubbed his temples. “I did it for the sake of the Heir.”

  “The half-breed Heir,” Sudran said angrily. He shook his head. “Well, I’ve called the other heads of household, as you asked. But I won’t have them in the bhilami.”

  “You can’t prevent them,” Nakhur said. “I am the chief of the saghada in Davrakhanda—”

  “You just returned after a year’s absence. Perhaps you should defer to those who served Ulaur here in Davrakhanda while you traveled.”

  “I served Ulaur—”

  “—or maybe you’ll find,” Sudran said, “that the chief houses of the Uluriya here would rather defer to me than to you.”

  Nakhur fell silent. For a moment the threat hung between them like a sword. Hot sunlight glittered in the sweat on Nakhur’s face.

  Mandhi stepped forward. “The young Heir is in Nakhur’s house now. His grandmother, my husband, and the rest of my family are coming whether you like them or not. Now, will you take them as Uluriya into your houses or not?”

  Sudran gave her a stare with narrow eyes as hard and brittle as obsidian. “Do you force them on us?”

  “Take them as guests,” Mandhi said.

  “Guests,” Sudran said, “are invited for a short time.”

  “We will find them homes. In fact, I intend to sail with most of them to Virnas. But that will take some time.”

  Sudran’s shoulders sagged and his posture relaxed. “Virnas?”

  “My brother the Heir will take them in,” Mandhi said. “Whether or not the Uluriya of Davrakhanda are kind enough to do so.”

  Sudran made the sign of the pentacle and grunted in displeasure. “Spare me. I’ve already called the heads of households together, but I wanted to warn both of you before they got here. Bring your Kaleksha. See how they like it.”

  Nakhur dropped his head and stepped into the shade of the doorway. He wiped the sweat from his brow. “You have blessed water in the bhilami?”

  “A little,” Sudran said. “You’re unclean from the sea?”

  “All of us,” Nakhur said. “Prepare a chamber for me, and then I can purify the os Dramab as they arrive.”

  Sudran scowled but nodded. “It’ll be a few minutes.” He disappeared into the door of the bhilami, adjacent to Nakhur’s house.

  Nakhur turned and grasped Mandhi’s sh
oulder. The skin under his eyes was dark and sagged, and a heavy frown weighed down his mouth.

  “I’m sorry, Mandhi,” he said. “I hadn’t imagined that the Emperor of Amur would offer us better hospitality than the Uluriya.”

  “Sadja-daridarya doesn’t offer hospitality,” Mandhi said sharply, “he only sets traps. At least the Uluriya are honest about their reluctance. When you return to the docks, see if you can find any boats that are going to Uskhanda. I need to send a message to Virnas.”

  Nakhur smiled slightly. “A message to Navran-dar?”

  A pang of hope mingled with regret throbbed in her chest. “I want to tell him I’m coming home.”

  VAPATHI

  For days Vapathi had been working up the courage to show Apurta what she knew. Today she would put it off no longer.

  Apurta spent most of his days in the Dhigvaditya with the Red Men, old comrades and new friends who had thrown their lot in with Kirshta. Vapathi had never joined him. So when she passed through the Horned Gate into the Dhigvaditya, expecting to find the same military order that had held under the Emperors, she was stunned to find two Red Men with their arms wrapped around young women from the Ushpanditya. All four were clothed, but she didn’t expect that state of affairs to last much longer given the passion with which their soldiers’ hands were groping.

  “Excuse me,” she said, stepping past them with a mild feeling of annoyance.

  One of the soldiers looked up at her. “You want in?” The girl with him laughed. Devoured.

  Vapathi shook her head. “Carry on,” she said, and she rushed past them.

  Kirshta would need to reign in the commanders of the Red Men if this was the condition they were in.

  The northwest corner of the yard was the place where the off-duty soldiers usually gathered. She could hear the cheers and groans of a loud game of sacchu before she reached the place. When she turned the corner she saw six different men with sticks in their fists throwing dice into the circle, and a large number more standing beside and shouting encouragement or mockery. Big bowls of rice beer were scattered throughout the crowd, and the bleary eyes of the players suggested that most of them were drunk. They were liberally mixed with young women, draped across the legs of the Red Men or leaning on their shoulders, laughing and flirting. The women seemed to be drunk as well.