“Who are you?” I asked, lifting my makeshift weapon.
He turned to me now. He was smiling, which had the effect of scrunching his eyes and making them appear smaller than they were. “Should I ask you the same thing?”
I closed my mouth. He had spoken in Jinan, with none of the markers or ticks of somebody who had learned it late in life. On second inspection, his face appeared familiar. Perhaps the sound of the language and the way his face moved with the words reminded me of someone back home.
“Maybe it doesn’t matter,” I said. “Why did you attack me?”
“I didn’t,” he said.
“Someone did.”
“Did you get a good look at his face?”
I grimaced. “No.”
“His clothes?”
“A bit. They were dark.”
“So nothing like mine, then.” He indicated his white robes with flourish.
His smugness was irritating. I couldn’t keep the annoyance out of my voice. “Tell me where I am.”
“You are in this room,” he said, gesturing with his hands.
“Smart fellow,” I snorted. “Would you be as smart with a piece of metal in your eye?”
“Were you raised to use violence as a first resort? Come, now. I think you’ve got more sense than that. Besides, I am willing to bet you can’t hit my eye from that distance. Not with that, anyway.”
I lowered the fire poker. “Maybe you’re right,” I said. “It’d still hurt, though.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt that.”
“So are you going to give me any real answers?”
“Only if you ask real questions,” he said.
“Yuebek and his men attacked me on the streets. They left me to rot in a prison cell, and then I was drugged by the guard and woke up here. What for? If he just wanted to speak to me, why hasn’t he done so already? Am I still even in the Zarojo Empire?”
He held out one hand. “I should have said one real question at a time. Maybe you can answer them yourself. Have you lost weight?”
I looked at my arm. “I don’t think so.”
“Then you weren’t asleep for very long. A couple of days, perhaps. Is a couple of days long enough to transport you out of the empire?”
“I guess not.”
“And the closest city, one that could contain a building that could have rooms this big?”
“Maybe, if they put me on a horse…”
“And do you have any recollections of riding on a horse?”
“No.” I swallowed. “So I’m still in Zorheng. I don’t know how that will help me.”
“Sit down,” the young man said, indicating the sofas.
I heaved myself into one with a sigh, though I didn’t release the fire poker. The young man noticed that, but he didn’t comment—he only smiled. He sat across me and observed me for a few, silent moments. “You are Queen Talyien of the Oren-yaro,” he finally said. There was a hint of amazement in his voice.
“So what if I am?”
The young man cracked a smile. “Did that sound rude? I didn’t mean for it to be rude. It’s just amazing how far it’s come. In the old days, we didn’t have true queens. The Dragonlord’s wife held no power—to have given it to her would’ve been an insult to the other royal women. The Ikessars were chosen to lead, but his lady could have come from any clan, even a minor royal house, and so she bore his heirs and did no more. But you—they chose you.”
“You speak of Jin-Sayeng with much passion,” I said. “Have you been away for very long?”
“You could say that.” He was looking at me with an intensity that made me uncomfortable.
I cleared my throat. “Your clan…” I began.
“Oren-yaro,” he said.
I tried not to show my excitement and relief at speaking with someone I shared something with. “But which one?” I asked. “Which specific family?”
“It doesn’t matter. Like you said—I’ve been away for very, very long. Before you were born, I believe.”
“Then you must’ve been a child, because you don’t seem that much older than me.”
He scratched his chin, a playful glint in his eyes. “The Oren-yaro hide their age well. Everyone knows it. It’s why we rarely lose clans to other warlords.”
“Well, of course. We have to dupe them somehow into offering their allegiance.”
“Indeed. And of course, the word Oren-yaro was made to refer to both the city and the people, all the clans and commoners who kneel before the warlord of said city. We call ourselves Oren-yaro to remind us—not just what we are and what we are expected to do—but that we belong, a feat that no other ruling clan dare match. Outside of Oren-yaro, you could be of the Onni clan, kneeling to the Barajis of Bara. Or Shero, raising your banner for the Ikessars. But the Orenar think beyond that. We are swords first, servants first.”
I swallowed. “We.” He was an Orenar. But who was he? The last male aren dar Orenar had died when my father did.
“We,” he said. The smile faded from his face and he looked almost sad for a moment. He got up, patting his knee. “Follow me, my queen.”
I had never heard anyone give me an order with such contrasts before. A soft voice, but an air of command about it, like he didn’t expect me to say no. And he acknowledged my title. But of course, he was an Orenar, and perhaps such subtleties was a given with the weight of that name. I wracked my brain to recall where else I had kin, and if there was mention of any who had travelled to Ziri-nar-Orxiaro as a child. He had to be an aron dar Orenar, an offshoot. But I had long thought that other than Nor and her sisters, the few relatives I had under that name were aging, toothless men my father had left in charge of the rice villages in the hills around the city. I wasn’t even sure if they were still alive.
I realized he was leading me back to the library, and then to the door that led down to the dungeons. I dropped the fire poker, but hesitated. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“Are you afraid?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m just saying that I’ve been down there. There’s nothing to see. If you want to talk…”
“You are Queen Talyien of the Oren-yaro,” he said.
I sighed. “Yes. So we’ve established.”
“Then why are you frightened?”
“In case it’s not obvious, my title didn’t give me the ability to stop imminent death,” I said.
“We can go back for your fire poker, if you wish.”
I bristled. “If you’re just going to make fun of me…”
He chuckled. “You’ve got to admit it’s amusing.”
I sighed. “Let’s get this over with.”
He made a sweeping gesture and we continued down the steps. I heard the movement from behind the cell doors again and glanced at the young man to see if they bothered him. He strode straight towards the doors and it suddenly occurred to me that what lay behind them was the very thing he sought to show me.
He stopped in front of the first door.
“Who’s there?” a hoarse voice called from the other side. A familiar voice. I had not heard it for a very long time, but I would know it anywhere in the world. I would know it until the day I died.
The young man opened the cell door. “Father,” I said to the old man who sat, cross-legged, in the middle of the filthy floor. If I had not held his hand as he died—if I had not felt the frail fingers grow limp and cold to my touch while I uttered long prayers into the night—I would’ve found it easy enough to fool myself into thinking Yuebek had him captured, locked up here all these years.
He looked at me, eyes sharp as ever, with a face that had not aged a single day since his death. His pure white hair was bound in a bun. There was no layer of dirt on his skin. “Father,” I repeated, entering the cell. “We burned you in a pyre. I know. I was there. I lit it myself with a torch. I watched the fires claim you.” I didn’t dare take another step closer.
Yeshin’s face broke into a white-toothed grin. “So yo
u did,” he said. “Smart girl. Did the Ikessars ask me to be buried, like some Kag miscreant? I hope you told them to go to hell.”
“I…”
“Of course you didn’t. You let them orate at my funeral with that Kibouri filth, didn’t you? And the Ikessar brat didn’t come. You think he would’ve, given I kept his head from being paraded around on a spike. Never let them tell you that pious education is the Ikessar’s defining trait—it’s ungratefulness. Why is your mouth open, girl?”
“You’re dead, Father.”
“And the dead aren’t allowed to speak, is that it?”
“I’m sorry.” Only Yeshin could still frighten me into a stupor, even as a ghost. Or perhaps I was merely dreaming. Or perhaps… “Am I also dead, Father? Is this why we can speak?”
“The Ikessars would love that, wouldn’t they? To have gotten rid of you so easily. And you—fool girl—you let them. You let them.” He pointed a finger at me. “You fell in love with the brat.”
I considered the tone of his voice. “I thought—I thought I was supposed to, Father. You said…”
“Do not tell me what I said. I know what I said. I thought I raised you to fulfill your duties.”
“And I did. I was crowned Queen, even after he left.”
“And you did not let that little thing distract you, did it? You ruled with a clear head, made it clear to the land that what the boy did was treachery and that the Ikessars were not made to rule after all? Did you try to change their opinion at all, girl, to secure your claim on the throne?”
I swallowed, trying hard not to let it show how much the sound of disappointment in my father’s voice could tear holes through me. “My duties entailed that I remain loyal to my husband. He is, for all his faults…”
Yeshin spat. “That’s what that fool woman said, wasn’t it? The Governor’s daughter. Before he knifed her in the gut.”
“Zhu Ong,” the young man offered helpfully.
Yeshin turned to him. “And now you speak up. Did you tell her, Taraji? Did you remind her which of her many duties come first?”
Taraji was my eldest brother’s name. Despite the fact that I was convinced that none of this could actually be happening, I glanced at the young man to take in the features of his face. I had never met him in my life—he was dead long before I was born. He smiled knowingly at me. “We are swords first, servants first,” he said, repeating his words from earlier. “The land comes first. Jin-Sayeng.”
“I know that,” I said. “And I did everything I could to hold it together. It wasn’t easy, father. Every year, Lushai would come up with some odd reason to pick a fight with me in front of the Dragonthrone council. The Jeinzas remain tight-lipped and indifferent, and the river land lords continue to argue amongst themselves as if they do not even belong to the nation. Lady Bracha is at her wits’ end, trying to get them under control. And you know how the Orenar foothills rely on trade from the Osahindo River Lands to keep going.”
“So why are you here?”
“Bringing Rai back would help with the peace.”
“I thought you’ve said, more than once, that you do not need him to rule.”
“I don’t. But—”
“So why are you here?” Yeshin thundered. I lowered my eyes. “Is he like Rysaran’s dragon, and the only way you can see yourself at peace with your rule is if you have somehow brought him back, complete with ball and chain?”
“You already told her the answer, Father,” Taraji murmured. “She loved him. Is that not reason enough?”
“For a simpering daughter of some other royal clan, perhaps,” Yeshin snapped. “Not my daughter. Not the heir of the Oren-yaro. Love? What foolish notion is this? Who taught you to be so weak and risk all I have worked for simply because of the whims of your emotions?”
“It is not entirely her fault,” Taraji said.
“No. Not entirely. If you hadn’t gotten yourself killed by Rysaran’s mad dragon, we wouldn’t be here. But you did, and we are, and so…” He looked at me. “And so we have a queen who cannot even acknowledge when a man has betrayed her, a man who isn’t worth a single drop of the tears she has shed for him. If I had been alive when this happened, he wouldn’t have lived to see another day.”
“Too bad you were too old,” Taraji grinned. “Rotting away. Too dead to see the loathsome Ikessar boy marry your precious daughter.”
Yeshin ignored him, reserving his anger for me. “Instead, you gave him a second chance, fool girl. And then a third chance, and now here you are. Why are you looking at me like that? Of course I meant that you could’ve had him deposed that first time when you caught him with the Baraji slut. That snivelling Lushai—I wouldn’t be surprised if her own father put her up to it.”
“Father,” I said. “I thought…that you would’ve wanted me to carry on with the betrothal. You had agreed to it, after all.”
“A betrothal I was forced to agree to!” Yeshin snapped. “Do you think I wanted it, my own get breeding with an Ikessar whelp? The very thought disgusts me. The fool brat offered you a way out, but like some feather-brained wench, you ignored it. Twice. What did you need to take action, some shining signal from the heavens?”
I felt Taraji’s hand on my shoulder. It was solid, but the warmth you would expect from such a touch was absent. “Have you run out of insults now, Father?” he asked.
By the look on Yeshin’s face, the answer was no. “You could’ve called his own guard. Caught him in the act. Trumpeted the deed from the tip of Shirrokaru, and all the way to Kyo-orashi and Akki and every other dusty corner of Jin-Sayeng. But you kept your mouth shut. You chose loyalty and love for the brat over loyalty and love for your nation. He broke his oath. Instead, you made a son with him, another pawn for the Ikessars to get their grubby hands on. And I thought Taraji had been the bigger idiot, parading around with his foppish friends and that peasant woman he wanted to marry. The gods must have cursed my loins.”
“Father,” Taraji said. “Enough.”
Yeshin licked his lips, but he did fall silent for a moment, giving me time to gather my thoughts.
“What would you have me do, Father?” I asked.
He fixed me with a stare. “Can you not make decisions for yourself, girl?”
“I thought I did,” I said. “You’ve just pointed out all of them were wrong.”
“Let the oathbreaker rot in his own filth,” Taraji said. “Return to your duties. Show them what it means to be a wolf of Oren-yaro.”
“If I’m dead, it’s too late,” I said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Yeshin snapped. “You’re not yet dead.”
“We are,” Taraji said, a mournful note on his voice.
“Forget this madness,” Yeshin said. “Go home, child.”
~~~
I blinked, with the sensation of having fallen asleep and then awakening only a second later to a clearer mind, like the morning after a long night. I was still in the cell, but there was no one else with me. Yeshin and Taraji were gone.
The emptiness came at me like a wave. Yes, they had lectured me and insulted me, but for someone who had spent so many years alone in a sea of polite faces, solitude had become unbearable. Even the overbearing company of family was preferable to the grating echo of my own heartbeat in my ears.
I decided that Yuebek’s guards had rattled my head loose during my capture and that my addled brain had conjured the phantoms. When I walked out of the cell and saw the shadow appear by the stairs, I prepared to greet it with a smile. And then I saw the glint of a blade in the near-darkness, barely perceptible in the faint lantern light. I held my arm out as the shadow flung itself at me. The blade cut through my sleeve and sank into my flesh. The hot sting of pain and the iron tang of my own blood was real enough.
I smashed the lantern into the side of my attacker’s head and watched as its clothes caught on fire. It gave me time to slip from its grasp. The figure was still blocking the door, so I ran towards the other end of the hall,
hoping I wouldn’t hit a dead end.
It didn’t. It led to a tunnel, formed from a crack in the wall. One step in and I would be in total darkness. I heard something crash and realized my assassin was still alive and probably very, very angry. I wrapped my torn sleeve around my wound before plunging into the shadows.
I could hear dripping water all around me, and then, unmistakably, the howling of the wind, with the hollow ring of a sound coming through a pipe. That I could feel fresh air in my lungs—at least, air a little fresher than in that damp basement—gave me hope that the tunnel opened up to somewhere. I groped around blindly, letting the wall be my guide.
Behind me, I heard movement.
I stopped walking and pressed against the wall. The sound of heavy breathing was followed by footsteps. I couldn’t see much, but I could make out a faint silhouette that lumbered past me. It paused a few steps away.
I had been holding my breath this whole time, and I experimentally let a small huff loose. The figure turned.
I leaped to the other end of the tunnel just as the figure sprang to where I had been standing. Just as swiftly, it leaped towards my new position. I realized its hearing was too sharp to outwit and dashed down the tunnel, hoping I was at least faster than it was.
The darkness faded into a faint grey. I saw faint specks of sunlight dancing in front of me from the grates above. The assassin was gaining on me—I was not faster—and I decided to stop, bending low and bracing myself. The abruptness caught the assassin by surprise. A lean body crashed over me. I gripped the extended foot.
I heard a soft grunt, confirming my suspicions: the assassin was a woman. It gave me the confidence to heave myself over her figure and smash my fist into her exposed jaw. But she had tougher skin than I thought, and an even tougher head. The blow barely rattled her. I felt her struggle under me as she tried to reach for her blade.
I grabbed her wrist. She smashed her skull against mine, her teeth sinking into my shoulder. I smelled burnt flesh and leather as I tried to twist the blade from her grasp.
The Wolf of Oren-yaro (Annals of the Bitch Queen Book 1) Page 26
