Gods of Nabban

by K V Johansen

  It had been the battered littlest one who found the sky-blue silk, several bolts of it, and had said, with un-slavelike confidence, “This, mistress! This is what you want.”

  It had been so, most certainly.

  There was a name for such service, even in Nabban, that was not slavery. Begin as her young god meant to go on?

  They had helped her lug the several heavy bolts of silk to this balcony beneath the highest gable facing the town, and they had rested and eaten cold dumplings and tea together, the four of them.

  She had dropped words into the dark of the night, startling their yawning into an apprehensive, disbelieving silence. “Children. I have decided that you three are to be my pages, if you will. Do you understand that? Only if you will. And if so, you must call me ‘my lady’ or ‘Captain Nang Lin,’ not ‘my mistress.’”

  Pages came of high and free birth. They had not quite dared to understand.

  “The heir of the gods of Nabban will have no slaves in his land.” So—it was said, and the castle must know it. How he thought this could be done and the land brought to peace and a place found for all, she did not know. There had always been debt-slaves in the law, with some limits on their terms and their service, even when she was a child. And then . . . there had been captives from Dar-Lathi, and from what were now the western provinces from Choa down to Asagama, once those were conquered, their kings and queens becoming Kho’anzis and high lords of their clans, but many of the lesser nobility had been taken captive and never freed. Hands had been required to work the land when the army called up the sons and daughters of the free peasantry to become soldiers for the invasion of Pirakul and the war there, where Jasberek Fireborn united the temples of the many gods against her. . . . And so it had grown, and sunk deep roots, and now it was the support and the frame of all the land.

  Her god must surely understand that it was easier to break than to make. They must take thought for that future, not, as it seemed Prince Dan had done, wake rebellion with no consideration how the folk of the land, slave or serf or free, would then feed themselves.

  Slave himself, and devoted servant, grown to manhood in his mad assassin’s shadow trying only to keep him from the dark, had Nabban yet learnt to look more than a move or two ahead, when he set a force in play?

  The game of long calculation held also the risk of paralysis. Dotemon had learnt that.

  Sometimes, was it not better to unleash the storm and hope to ride it? Yeh-Lin had taught her so.

  For now, they must all—all this castle’s folk swept, whether they adored or doubted, to follow Nabban—feed on hope.

  “If anyone presumes to order you back to your old places, you say you are the pages of the captain of the heir of the gods and they must come to me. And if you come to find you do not want to be in my service, we will find some other work you are suited to do, yes? But in these next days, I will need some quick-witted and willing servants. I would have those servants be you.”

  “Yes, mistress.” The round-faced boy—Kufu, that was the name, and he was the grandson of the garden-mistress, no doubt an aristocrat among the hierarchy of at least the outdoor slaves—had seemed doubtful, mistrusting but not disagreeing. He had licked nervous lips. “Yes . . . Captain Lin.” But the eyes of the skinny lad from the kitchens, Ti, the little one with the bruised face, had been wide with an adoration he could not have known she saw. The tall, bushy-haired girl, Jang, another belonging to the gardens, had given a brisk nod, and a “Yes, my lady.”

  Pages. So they must learn to read and write and have some training in arms and . . . had she so very much enjoyed playing tutor? Or did she yearn to be a mother and grandmother again? Perhaps she could do better this time around.

  “Children, Lord Gahur is coming. I said he would. The silk—you remember what to do?”

  “Yes, my lady.” That was Jang. Confident in the morning.

  She sent them to relieve themselves in whatever chamber-pot they could find in the abandoned room of Lord Daro’s imprisonment. Of such things must the god’s captain—and a good grannie—take thought.

  “Then wait. It may be a long wait. Kufu, you’ll go to the kitchens and fetch back something to eat. Don’t let them keep you. Don’t send Ti near the kitchens. I do not have time to argue with cooks to get him back.” And she would have a word with Castellan Yuro about how the kitchen-master treated his underlings, so soon as she had a moment to spare. “It may be a long wait, but you must keep watch faithfully and not let anyone drive you out or order you away.”

  A round of bows, nicely judged to the appropriate degree, but little Ti was frowning at her.

  “Yes, Ti?”

  He shook his head, suddenly afraid, staring at his bare feet, shoulders hunched.

  Yeh-Lin dropped to her knees, a finger tilting his chin up. Eye to eye, she said, “Never be afraid to ask me a question, Ti. Nang Ti.” A full and formal name, freedman, free man. Her name, but it ought to have been Daro, as they were of the Daros. Too late. “What is it?”

  “You changed your colour.” Whispered.

  She laughed and sat back on her heels. “Good. I did. And did Daro Kufu and Daro Jang think it would not be polite to mention it, or did they not notice?”

  “But you’re a wizard, my lady,” said Jang, unquashed.

  “Ah, but what Ti wants to know, really, is why I changed the colour—am I right?”

  The boy still hardly dared nod. She ruffled his hair.

  Changed her colours. Black-lacquered armour. Yesterday it had been deep-blue and rose, old colours from before the time of Min-Jan, which only an historian would know. The armour, her brocades, were all formed of memory, but as real as the roof beneath her, as the body she wore. What, stripped of the workings of power, had she actually clothed herself in? Some simple shirt and trousers of Praitan, she suspected. She did not remember. She shaped them to what she would. The blanket and scarf she had given Ahjvar were real enough; she had them from Deyandara when they parted.

  “I changed the colour in the night, yes. Black is my god’s colour, your new god’s colour, the heir of Nabban. Black for the night sky, and blue,” she added, as his frown returned, puzzling over a god of night, maybe, or thinking of the bolts of silk, “for the day. As you knew was right, when you helped me in the storeroom.” And she touched the trailing silk ribbons of the helmet she had set on the parapet, drew them through her fingers and let them see the azure spread, like morn breaking upon the world. But she left the scarlet of her sword’s tassel. Hers. Always. Real as her bones.

  She vaulted back up to stand on the railing, forgetting till too late her grey hair. Ah well.

  “Hah! They come from the town now, to demand word with their general. Perhaps I should go to greet them. Keep your watch, my faithful pages. You won’t mistake my signal.”

  “No, my lady.”

  “No, Captain Lin.”

  “It will be like in a song,” little Ti said abruptly, as she leapt down again and strode for the door.

  Yeh-Lin paused, one foot over the threshold, to look back. “Yes,” she said. She had better find some instructor in the pipa or another minstrel’s instrument for that one, it occurred to her, and some books of the old poetry. That was the seed that struggled to sprout in his heart. “Do it right, and it will be a song. And it may be that someday you will make it.”

  “You can’t mean to let them in,” Lord Daro Raku, the Kho’anzi’s cousin and commander, protested. He leaned heavily on his sergeant rather than the pike he had taken as a prop. The last of the Daro prisoners to be released, he had been thought dead; mere chance found him in the deepest cellar, alone, with the water rising past his waist. Raw and festering wounds from his shackles girdled both ankles, though Yeh-Lin had claimed to have a minor talent in physician’s wizardry and driven out the rot that would have killed him. The sergeant glowered at Yeh-Lin, as if holding her responsible for her commander’s refusal to withdraw safely to his bed.

  Lord Yuro chewed his
lip, straightened up when he caught Yeh-Lin’s eye on him. “She does mean it,” the new castellan said, which was vulgar, to talk about her so before her face, no title.

  The sergeant switched her frown to him, but he was only as blunt and forthright as the peasant girl from Solan had been when first she sat smiling in the tea-house by the gate of Solan, hunting, as the orchid-spider hunted, by waiting under the guise of a passive flower for some lordling who might give her a chance at a wizard’s education. No corps of imperial wizards to take her in, in those days.

  “But what does she mean to do after?” Yuro asked. “Captain Lin?”

  He was unnerved, greatly, though he hid it well. That he should take counsel with captains and lords, and be heard.

  Yeh-Lin smiled sunnily. “We shall see,” she said. “That depends, of course, entirely on Lord Hani Gahur. Mount.”

  Because their enemies were coming mounted, and it would not do to be looked down upon, or overridden. The blue-eyed piebald stallion a woman held for her was showy and restless. Yuro’s choice. A test, a message, or an acknowledgement of confidence, she wasn’t certain. No time to persuade it of her benevolence. It knew her for an alien thing and twitched its skin as if swarmed by flies, rolled its eyes. She took the lightest of holds on its mind, as if she seized a lock of mane in her fist. Twisted, to tighten her grip.

  “Shh, shh. Behave,” she told the rolling eye, and settled it, not in any manner either Yuro or Nabban would approve, as she allowed the stable-hand to hold the stirrup for her mounting.

  Despite the thick walls, they could hear the hooves on the bridge already. Bold. Stupid? Genuinely deceived by the banners and the report of illness? Surely not that stupid. She would not have trusted that the timbers were not sawn through. A sudden thunder of drums demanded entrance. She fastened her helmet, but left the mask raised.

  A soldier signalled from over the gatehouse. Twenty. Was that really all? Yeh-Lin half-shut her eyes, counted what she felt, the small warmths of their souls, and the beasts they rode. Twenty-two riders, and many more afoot back behind the gate of the town on the other side of the moat. Three wizards out there somewhere, one of modest talent, something more than a common Camellia Badge diviner, the sort who could be Plum or Palm depending on how hard they strove, two surely among the greater of Palm Badge Rank, if not a Bamboo lord or lady. No, only one, somewhere; the others she had thought she had felt were gone. Both. A mistake? Unlikely. Odd. No time to pursue that vanished tickling presence.

  “Open the gate,” she said.

  No hesitation in obedience. Hesitation beyond, though, the bridge-narrow front of imperial officers clearly having expected some shouted negotiation from the gatehouse and an ultimate refusal.

  The imperial commander faced pikes and crossbows, two dense wings of them, and a complete stranger in anonymous black armour flanked by lords blazoned with the Daro roundel.

  They could, of course, still charge the gate, and they might very probably win through in the end, but it would be those in the van who died in the first piercing hail. She did not give them time to nerve themselves to it.

  “Lieutenant-Commander Lord Hani Gahur? I am Nang Yeh-Lin, the captain-general of the Holy One of Nabban. With Lord Daro Korat the Kho’anzi of Choa, I hold the White River Dragon for my lord, the heir of the gods of Nabban. You will surrender Dernang and command of its army to me, in the name of the heir of the gods.”

  Lord Gahur, his helmet slung at his saddle-bow, was a young man, soft-faced. Fat would come with age if he were not careful, but for the moment he had only a still-boyish roundness, and his arrogance was a boy’s, too. His brief moment of startlement turned to a smile.

  “Yeh-Lin? Your mother chose you an ill-omened name.” An appraising look, a curl of the lip. Was his youth and high rank a sign of competence, or was he some kin of the general’s? Or promoted for an apparent lack of ambition, perhaps, but there was a cunning in his study of her, a calculation. Miscalculation. The look assessed and dismissed her. “I’m surprised the traitor Daro Korat would trust a colony mercenary.” His bow in the saddle was entirely mocking. “Ah, Daro Raku, a pleasure to find you in good health.”

  “You will dismount and lay down your arms, and order your banners struck. Dernang is claimed for the heir of Nabban.”

  “Don’t be a fool, woman. Where is General Zhung Musan? Release him, and I may let you flee over the border.”

  A lie on his tongue.

  “Quite dead. He attacked the gods’ chosen. You haven’t had the pleasure of meeting the—” Not gewdeyn, no. Rihswera. That was the word she wanted, and very much on her mind now, because—this young lordling was too arrogant to be bluffed into caution, into negotiation and the putting aside of his advantages. Ahjvar was not here, but there was more than one sword would serve Nabban. “—the rihswera, which is to say, the champion, of the young god. I assure you, there are some would rather face me than him. And that is saying more than you know.”

  “Would this be the man and his—creature, who fled the castle last evening?”

  Lord Raku’s horse jibbed at some twitch of the bridle-hand. Yuro did better, impassive, but Hani Gahur smiled, seeing his words find their mark.

  “Oh, yes, my wizard was watching your walls. Did you think not? We expected spies, but the Daro puppet seems to have had second thoughts about his role in your wretched last gasp of rebellion. He’s run for the hills.”

  Creature? Wizard enough to see something amiss in Ahjvar—definitely Bamboo Badge, and that was dangerous. But even a Bamboo lord was not necessarily more wizard than Ahjvar could deal with, she told herself. Wizard, Hani Gahur said, not wizards. He had been careful about that. Too careful? My wizard . . . How easily and arrogantly he put himself in General Musan’s place.

  “Wizard or wizards, Lord Gahur? Did you send your best strength after the holy one on his pilgrimage and keep only your diviner here? I hope you took a proper farewell; he or she is marked for death. The heir of the gods has gone to speak with his gods, and when he returns, it will be to take all Choa in his hand. Will you give me your sword now, and spare yourself?”

  Hani Gahur was disinterested rather than baffled, impatient, turning to speak to the man beside him.

  She shrugged. “No? And I asked most courteously, too.” She raised her sword, wished for a moment she did have a god to pray to. Lord Gahur’s gaze snapped back to her, eyes widening, lips beginning to part. Do not let the crossbows mistake the gesture, horseboy, as you love me, as I and they are yours. “The new goddess is a lie and the empress is a traitor to the gods, an usurper of the land, no daughter of any gods small or Great. The throne of Min-Jan will be cast down.”

  Behind her the castle was a range of swooping eaves, white and dark, against the dawn and the sun just showing a burning edge, a shaft of light piercing through the clouds and the gaps of the buildings to strike on her uplifted blade. She breathed a word. It was wizardry, a great wizardry such as she doubted even the Pine Lord or Lady, whoever they might be in this time, could work single-handed, but it gave no offence to the gods. She did not promise them, or Nabban, that she would always work so.

  Yeh-Lin did not need to look behind to see the sudden glint on gilded thunder-charms rearing on the peaks. It was before her eyes like a reflection on water, and in the staring eyes of Hani Gahur and those about him, two-score uplifted mirrors. The banners of the Min-Jan flared like polished copper catching the sun.

  And they burned.

  Scarlet, yellow, white flame—roaring, announcing itself as if all the keep were afire. Folk cried out, staring, even Yuro and Raku turning in the saddle, the horses laying back their ears, nostrils flaring. The imperial banners shrivelled to black, floated away in ashy flakes like dry leaves dropped on a bonfire. Too brief a fury, maybe. Had enough seen in all the yards of the castle, in the town, the camp . . . throughout the land, as every banner of the Min-Jan in all the empire turned to ash? Neither soot nor smoke would be staining the plastered walls of the W
hite River Dragon; no charring would mar its beams. She would not swear it was so at the imperial palace in the Golden City.

  A small miracle of the new god. She did hope the empress, wherever she might be, had word of it and took due note of the omen.

  Or challenge.

  And now—almost she held her breath. Now Yeh-Lin did risk a glance back, and up, but the children were true to their time. A push was all it would take—yes. The three bolts of heavy silk unrolled, spilling down the white wall, rippling like water, floating out on the wind like the dragon the Wild Sister had once been. Against the lime-washed plaster and the curdling grey of the clouds that closed again over the sun they blazoned the promise of clear skies.

  “I will have Dernang for my god,” she said. “Lord Hani Gahur, our forces are more evenly matched than you know—” A lie, but she did not think the wizard back somewhere among the footsoldiers was capable of sifting her truth. “—and we are all folk of Nabban and folk of Nabban’s god. Dernang has seen enough of blood. Will you fight me, champion against champion in the manner of Praitan, for command of this place and this army?”

  His mouth, open to gawp like a child for all he must recognize wizardry, snapped shut. “Are you insane, old woman?”

  “If you would rather not face me, you may of course appoint another champion to stand for the empress and her false god.”

  “In the manner of what?”

  “A tradition of the king’s justice of Praitan, particularly apt, here, where we two can agree on no god’s judgement.”

  “You want to fight me? Old woman—”

  “Not so old as all that,” she snapped, with careful indignation. “Some might say, there is an imbalance here yes, of long experience set against a young man so clearly promoted above his competence for—what, family connections, a pretty face?” Though not one to her taste, especially when he flushed the colour of old brick. All flesh and no bones. “All I have heard of you assures me—” you are arrogant and a fool “—that you are an honourable man who would keep his oath once given and would abide by the judgement of fate and the sword, and would demand the oaths of the lords and officers under you to do likewise, or I would not have offered this challenge. If you fear—”