Queen of Slaves (The Powers of Amur Book 4)

by J. S. Bangs

  “Secrets?” Sadja asked.

  “There are the public hymns which all dhorsha know. But every lineage has secret songs, spoken in whispers before the altar, which no one else may know. If the Kushmaya dhorsha ever existed, their secrets are long since lost.”

  Sadja grumbled. He pointed to Daladham. “You, too, are of the Amya dhorsha?”

  “Yes, my Emperor,” Daladham said.

  “Then make your sacrifices as you see fit. When the Emperor of Amur goes out to confront the Mouth of the Devourer, he’ll bring a ram and offer his dhaur, as is fitting. But I will serve Kushma as I’ve done since the beginning, and we’ll see whom the Mouth of the Devourer fears.”

  He relaxed. “Meanwhile, the thikratta’s book will stay here in my library. It will be safer here than anywhere else in Amur. We have the thikratta’s prophecy for that.”

  “Prophecy?” Daladham asked.

  Sadja gave him a surprised look. “Don’t you know? It’s an old story here in Majasravi.”

  Daladham shook his head. He glanced aside at Amabhu, who shrugged.

  Sadja looked bemused. “The king who laid the foundations of the Dhigvaditya invited one of the thikratta to prophecy over it, and the thikratta proclaimed that no army would ever take the Dhigvaditya unless they first possessed a particular stone—a stone which is now buried in the foundation of one of the towers. And the story is true: the Dhigvaditya has never fallen to the might of arms.”

  “I see, my Emperor,” Daladham said. “You think that not even the Mouth of the Devourer can eat through the old thikratta’s proclamation.”

  “It has held for centuries already,” Sadja said with a note of finality. “So your book will be safe here. You may read it whenever you wish—the door-keeper will give you a token which allows you access to the library of the Ushpanditya. My astrologer will send out invitations to the scholars of Majasravi. Someone will read the book. Perhaps we’ll even find something of relevance to Kushma and his missing dhorsha.”

  He raised a hand. “You may go. We’ll see each other when the Mouth of the Devourer approaches.”

  They prostrated, rose to their feet, and backed out of the Green Hall. They passed through the curtain into the antechamber of the hall and stumbled into the door-keeper.

  Once out of the Emperor’s presence Daladham felt a heady mix of relief and nausea. He stumbled as if drunk and leaned against the wall. Amabhu smiled at him, wobbling with a similar set of emotions. Only Caupana and Teguri seemed unaffected.

  The door-keeper scowled at them. “Move along,” he hissed. “Others will be coming.”

  “We need tokens,” Caupana said. “For the library.”

  “So I heard.” The door-keeper rubbed his hands together and sighed. “You’ll have to go to the Emperor’s Tower. The imperial library is on the ground floor, beneath the Empress’s apartments. The door-keeper there can give you a pass. Take this, or else they’ll throw you out.”

  He rummaged briefly through a basket hanging on the wall behind him, then handed over a square block of wood with Ashti’s dolphin carved onto its face. Daladham took the block with a small bow.

  “Bring that back to me when you’re done,” the door-keeper said. “And don’t lose the token they give you. You have no idea how valuable it is.”

  “Oh, but I do,” Daladham said. He clutched the door-keeper’s token and waited for the spell of dizziness to pass. Access to the imperial library was more exciting than speaking to the Emperor.

  Teguri put a hand on Daladham’s shoulder and pulled him upright. “Follow me,” she said, gesturing to the two thikratta. “I’ll show you the way.”

  Mandhi

  Jhumitu crawled across the packed clay floor of the clan lodge and found a stray piece of straw fallen from the thatch. He rolled onto his back and stuck it into his mouth, chewing happily on the straw and gurgling at the ceiling. Tisking furiously, an elderly Kaleksha woman strolled across the stones and picked him up, plucking the straw from his mouth and scolding him in Kaleksha. In place of the straw she gave him a denuded lamb’s rib, which he stuck into his mouth and gnawed with unabated enthusiasm.

  Hrenge os Dramab. Jhumitu’s grandmother. Taleg’s mother. Mandhi’s mother-in-law.

  It was hard for Mandhi to grasp it. Mandhi could only pronounce the name Hrenge with the greatest difficulty. But Hrenge doted on the little boy with all the care that Mandhi expected from an Amuran grandmother and more. The fact that she and her clan were effectively hostages of Mandhi’s mercenaries didn’t seem to bother her at all. She slept in the lodge, and every morning Mandhi and Aryaji would come to the clan lodge and find Hrenge making breakfast, eager to kiss her grandson and serve Mandhi and Aryaji with boiled sheep’s milk and fried wheat cakes.

  “He has more teeth coming in,” Shadle said, translating some portion of her mother’s monologue.

  “I know, he bites me when I pick him up,” Mandhi said. Jhumitu already had a pair of little white incisors piercing his upper gums, like chips of marble that glittered when he smiled.

  Shadle chuckled. She repeated Mandhi’s words for Hrenge, who murmured something and disappeared into the rear of the clan lodge for a moment carrying Jhumitu at her waist. She returned with a greasy-smelling jar which she set on the table in front of Mandhi.

  Mandhi opened the jar and peered inside. A semi-solid, glistening cream waited inside. Hrenge rattled off some sort of explanation.

  “Something for your fingers if they hurt,” Shadle translated. “Sheep tallow and honey.”

  “Thank you,” Mandhi said quietly.

  She admitted that she liked having Taleg’s mother around. She had never enjoyed this kind of grandmotherly care before. Her own mother had died when Mandhi was very young, and the nearest thing she’d had to a mother in the House of the Ruin was Amashi’s chilly oversight. Mandhi had benefited from Aryaji’s care in Davrakhanda, but Aryaji was a maid, not a mother.

  She glanced aside at the girl. Aryaji sat on a bench at the end of the table spinning wool. A girl’s task, but the maid seemed content enough to do girl’s work and let Hrenge take over the duties of childcare and looking after Mandhi.

  The door of the clan lodge opened, sending a shaft of noon daylight through the gloom of the lodge. Jauda and Nakhur appeared in silhouette at the door, then the darkness returned and their footsteps sounded on the clay floor.

  “We’d like to speak to you, Mandhi,” Nakhur said. He greeted Shadle and Hrenge with a brief nod. His hand rested on his niece’s shoulder.

  “Of course,” Mandhi said. She reached and plucked Jhumitu from Hrenge’s grasp and turned toward the men. “Here?”

  Jauda nodded toward the back of the lodge. “Private.”

  They went to the back of the lodge, out of earshot of Shadle and Aryaji. The clan’s household idols were here, old grotesque images of blackened wood in stylized shapes of a vole and rabbit. Mandhi turned away from them with a shiver of distaste and met Nakhur and Jauda’s eyes.

  “We need to talk about the os Dramab,” Jauda said firmly. “The men are getting restless.”

  “Restless?” Mandhi said. “Why?”

  “It’s been fifteen days since we took the compound. Nothing is happening, and no one knows what our plan is. And you don’t have enough money to pay us in perpetuity.”

  “We have plenty of money,” Mandhi said. She and Nakhur had carefully counted money in the chest stolen from Ashturma and knew exactly how many days they could afford to pay the mercenaries.

  “But we don’t have plenty of patience,” Jauda said. “At least, not here in Kalignas. The men want to know when they’re returning to Amur.”

  “And I want to take my niece home,” Nakhur said. “It’s not right for me to keep her here in a foreign land for so long. She belongs in Davrakhanda.”

  Jhumitu squirmed on Mandhi’s hip and reached for the hem of her choli. Mandhi gently slapped the back of his fist. “Explain to me,” she said to Jauda, “what the problem is wit
h your men? Guarding the os Dramab is hardly work. They just watch the sheep and do their farming. We took their weapons, and our mercenaries are nearly as many as the men of the clan anyway.

  “Impatience,” Jauda said.

  “It took us longer than this just to find the os Tastl.”

  “But then there was a goal. The promise of battle and plunder to come. Right now they watch the os Dramab like the os Dramab watch their sheep.”

  Mandhi scowled. “I understand. But we have no idea what to do with them.”

  Jauda made a noise of annoyance. “We could leave them. You have your son. What happens to the rest of them is not your problem.”

  Mandhi glanced at Hrenge, chatting quietly with Shadle while Aryaji spun wool next to them. “Nakhur,” she said softly, “should I leave my husband’s family to be slaughtered by their enemies?”

  “They aren’t Uluriya,” Nakhur said. “They aren’t your responsibility.”

  “Uluriya or not, they are my husband’s mother, brother, and family.”

  Nakhur pinched his brows together. “Yes. I understand. But—”

  A shriek interrupted him. In the center of the lodge, Aryaji lay sprawled on the ground shaking violently. Shadle and Hrenge bent over her. Nakhur cursed and started across the lodge toward them, with Mandhi and Jauda on his heels.

  Aryaji spasmed. Her hand reached out and clasped Hrenge’s collar, and she pulled her face close to the old woman’s. She spoke: short sonorous words, rumbling with thunder and the crashing of stones against each other. Not Amuran, not a single word that Mandhi could understand. The old Kaleksha woman’s face blanched. Shadle gasped and put a hand over her mouth.

  Aryaji went limp.

  Nakhur was at his niece’s side. He pressed his palm against her face. “She’ll be fine,” he said, his voice at the edge of a sob. “Bring us water.”

  Hrenge babbled incomprehensibly. Shadle stared with her eyes wide. Mandhi shook her shoulder, and the woman suddenly came to her senses and ran after the bucket of water by the entrance into the lodge.

  “Help me,” Nakhur said to Mandhi, who stood with Jauda at Aryaji’s feet. “Carry her to one of the mats.”

  On the east wall there was a set of three bedrolls for anyone who slept in the lodge, though only Hrenge’s was regularly filled. Mandhi and Nakhur dropped the limp Aryaji onto one of the mats, and Nakhur pulled a blanket over her.

  “Stars upon her,” Nakhur said, in a tone more like a curse than a blessing.

  All at once Hrenge and Shadle descended upon them, clucking and muttering to each other in Kaleksha, elbowing Nakhur aside. Shadle dipped a rag into the bucket of water and began washing the sweat off of Aryaji’s face, while Hrenge clutched Aryaji’s hand to her chest and murmured constantly.

  Nakhur stood and murmured to himself. His voice quaked. “She’ll be fine. She’s always fine.”

  “You should go,” Mandhi said firmly. “The women will take care of this. There’s nothing for you to do until she wakes up.”

  He peered down at his niece in consternation for a long time, then shook his head. Jauda joined him on their way out. For a moment the inside of the lodge glowed with sunlight, then the gloom returned.

  Hrenge patted Aryaji’s forehead and smoothed her hair. The girl seemed to be sleeping calmly now, her left hand twitching once or twice. She rolled onto to her side and tucked her hand into the straw.

  Shadle let out a long, slow breath. “What happened to her?”

  Mandhi spoke quietly. “There is a spirit that takes her sometimes. An amashi.”

  “This has happened before?”

  “A few times. It began while we were sailing to Kalignas. Last time was when the os Dramab attacked us in the woods.”

  Shadle translated this for Hrenge. “Why do you call it an amashi?” she asked.

  “The amashi are the spirits who serve Ulaur in the heavens. This amashi brings her prophecies.” She hesitated. “At least, we hope it is an amashi.”

  Hrenge gave a long, sonorous response to this, looking down at Aryaji with pity and constantly smoothing her hair. Shadle translated hesitantly. “It’s difficult with people touched by the Powers. We had one of these in Kalignas in my grandmother’s day.”

  “Really?” Mandhi said. “A woman who prophesied?”

  The response was long, and involved a lot of back and forth between Shadle and Hrenge. At last Shadle explained, “There was a clan who lived by the sea. One of their daughters spoke to the Power of the Sea, not to prophecy, but simply to listen to his voice. One day his voice came to her and told her to ride across the sea on his back. She walked into the sea and climbed atop the orca whales, who carried her across the sea clinging to their fins. The whales carried her to the land of the slow people, and she never returned to her clan.”

  Mandhi waited. “And?”

  “And what?”

  “What happened when she went to the slow people?”

  Shadle laughed. She asked Hrenge, who responded with angry exasperation. Shadle translated, “Who knows? Many years later there was some rumor that she achieved renown among them, but the important thing is that the Power drew her away from her clan. That’s why we avoid having any entanglement with the Powers.”

  Hrenge told the story with some bitterness in her voice, but she looked at Aryaji the whole time with an expression of pity.

  “But if you have no entanglement with the Powers, what are the idols in the back of the lodge?”

  Shadle glanced backward following Mandhi’s gesture. “Oh, those? Those are clan guardians. They are nothing like the Powers you serve in Amur.”

  “We do not serve the faithless Powers,” Mandhi said firmly.

  “You don’t?” Shadle said in surprise. “Are you not Amuran?”

  “We are Uluriya,” Mandhi said. “Amuran, yes, but we sacrifice only to Ulaur.”

  “And who is Ulaur?”

  “The light unborn, the word unspoken, the fire of ages,” Mandhi recited. “Who keeps Manjur and his children in purity and the good.”

  “Sounds like one of the Powers to me,” Shadle snorted.

  “Never mind, then,” Mandhi said irritably. She shook her head and watched Aryaji for a moment. “Did you understand what she said?”

  Shadle hesitated. “Yes,” she said quietly.

  “Tell me.”

  Shadle sighed deeply. She spoke with Hrenge for a while before turning to Mandhi. “As we remember, it was something like this: Carry the fire that will burn the dry land. Graft a new branch onto the ever-blooming tree. Mend what is broken; break what is whole. Burn the field; scatter the seed.”

  “Does that mean anything to you?”

  Shadle laughed mirthlessly. “Of course not. Does it mean something to you?”

  Mandhi stood and went to sit on the bench of the table near Aryaji. “No,” Mandhi agreed, “but part of it resembles what she’s said before. Mend what is broken; break what is whole. Burn the field; scatter the seed.”

  “That’s no help.” Shadle sighed and sat down on the bench next to Mandhi, then called for Hrenge to join them. The old woman sat and extended her hands to Jhumitu, and Mandhi handed him over. The boy was growing heavy in Mandhi’s arms. It was so nice to have a grandmother around.

  Hrenge amused Jhumitu for a moment with a coo, then turned to Shadle, losing all of her grandmotherly affection. She said something sharp to Shadle.

  “So are you finally going to leave us for the os Tastl?” Shadle asked.

  Mandhi felt a twinge of regret. “We have not decided,” she said quietly. A question she had been chewing on since coming to the os Dramab. But it stirred a different curiosity in her, and now seemed like the best time to ask. “Tell me about Taleg.”

  Hrenge responded to Mandhi’s translated question with a long ramble. Shadle kept up as best she could. “What about him? He was my son, my first. I had three daughters and another son after him, but he was my favorite. Clever and rambunctious. Loyal. Cautious. As a b
oy he befriended one of the yearling rams, insisted that it not be gelded, and raised it himself until it grew to be the flock’s stud. Taleg boasted that it took after him. We were happy to give him to the sailors’ guild for a few years, confident he would do us proud, bring us good money when he was done.”

  She fell quiet. A pain began in Mandhi’s stomach. She could not avoid the next question, but it was necessary. “So why would he stay in Amur? If he knew he was to be patriarch, why would he”—she tripped over the word, which felt like a knife in her mouth—“abandon you?”

  Hrenge took a long time to reply. A globe of tears appeared at the corner of her eye. “I don’t know,” Shadle translated. “When he left, his father and grandfather were alive. He probably expected to have twenty years before he was called upon to be patriarch, and if he hadn’t returned in that time, he would certainly have been declared dead by the clanmoot, and Kest could have taken over. Still, he should have known better. Neither of you seemed to think much of your families when you married.”

  Hrenge looked at Mandhi with a glare that skirted the edge of accusation. But her gaze softened when it fell on the dozing Jhumitu.

  Mandhi rubbed the tips of her fingers together. A sorrowful silence filled the lodge.

  “Shadle, help me,” Mandhi said. A heavy weight of regret and responsibility warred with the anger inside her. And as much as she blamed the os Dramab, living with them for two weeks had blunted the edge of her wrath. “I will not leave Jhumitu. But I don’t want to leave my husband’s mother and family to be killed. Help me understand what can be done.”

  Shadle said something to Hrenge, and the old woman rose to her feet and walked off toward where Aryaji slept, rocking Jhumitu gently in her arms. When Hrenge was gone, Shadle turned toward Mandhi and whispered urgently, “You need to understand the clan-law.”

  “Explain it to me. What happens if I leave with Jhumitu?”