Queen of Slaves (The Powers of Amur Book 4)

by J. S. Bangs

  Kest’s mouth hung open. Hrenge pressed herself into his chest and began to sob.

  “The hides are slashed,” Kest whispered to Mandhi. “We can’t even take the skins.”

  The os Tastl men stepped back several paces toward the gate. Mandhi saw that the rest of the clan had come out, their swords and cudgels at the ready.

  Kest glanced back, then shook his head. He shouted to the os Dramab who were following, and some of them came forward and began picking through the edges of the bloody heap.

  “Take three or four back to the lodge,” he said. “Might as well eat lamb for a week before it all rots. But the rest…” He made a disgusted wave toward the heap of dead sheep. “Leave them here for the os Tastl to enjoy the smell.”

  He repeated these last words in Kaleksha loudly enough for the os Tastl to hear. Jeers and bellows answered him, but he turned his back to them and folded his arms.

  They picked out five relatively clean lambs and carried them back to the os Dramab clanhome. The walk on the footpath over the ridge was silent and glum. Jauda fell back to watch their rear, in case any of the os Tastl wanted to attack them, but no further movement came. Mandhi walked alongside Kest, watching his grim, unyielding expression. They said nothing.

  At the entrance to the os Dramab clanhome most of the men headed down to the stream with the lambs, to wash them and prepare them for proper butchering. Kest motioned for Mandhi, Hrenge, and Shadle to follow him. He muttered a command to one of the Kaleksha men, then pulled Mandhi after him.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “We have to talk,” he said. “In the lodge. Glanod and Adleg will join us. Bring Nakhur.”

  Mandhi found Nakhur in his little hut and relayed to him what they had found in the Tastl. He shared her disgust and accepted Kest’s invitation. A few moments later they were at the lodge.

  The lodge was now just a rectangle of stones filled with ashes and charred timber. The long pine trunks which had upheld the roof were nothing but charcoal poles, pushed to the side of the lodge to crumble. Hrenge and Shadle sat at one of the tables, now a blackened square with ashy corners.

  Kest stood nearby with his arms folded and his brows drawn together, his jaw jutting out in an expression of total intransigence. He had one foot up on a fallen foundation stone. He nodded tersely at Mandhi and Nakhur as they entered, the last two to come. Glanod and Adleg stood next to him with arms crossed over their chests.

  “We are doomed,” he said as soon as they were all present.

  Shadle whispered to Hrenge, the only one present who couldn’t understand Amuran. The old woman nodded and regarded her son with stoic reserve.

  “We have barely enough grain to last a month once winter starts,” he said. “We have a third of the flock. If we butchered every one of them, we might live through the winter—and then spring would find us with no lambs and no seed grain.”

  “That is not doom,” said Glanod, Kest’s eldest cousin. “We could get a loan.”

  “I might have extra money,” Mandhi said. “We could—”

  Kest cut her off. “We couldn’t. The os Tastl are against us, and we learned last night they have allies who regard you as oath-breakers.”

  Mandhi fell quiet.

  “They still have hleg against us,” Kest went on. “They will continue to harass us through the winter. It is likely some of us will die.”

  “Then what would you have us do?” Adleg said sharply. “Or did you just bring us here to extinguish our hope?”

  Kest shook his head. “We should go to Amur.”

  Mandhi caught her breath in surprise. Everyone else simply stared at Kest. “What?” she asked finally.

  “Amur,” Kest repeated. “Mandhi, wife, you said the Uluriya of Davrakhanda would accept us when we came as sailors. Will they accept us if we come for sanctuary?”

  Mandhi’s mouth hung open, unable to find words. She looked at Nakhur, who stroked his beard and chewed the corner of his lip.

  “Perhaps,” he said softly. “We could make it happen.”

  “You have asked an awful lot of us, cousin,” Adleg said.

  “I’m not asking you anything,” Kest said, his voice as hard as bronze. “I’m finding us a way out of starvation.”

  “Starvation,” Adleg said sarcastically. “We won’t starve. We can last a single winter, if we have to.”

  “With me and my mercenaries?” Mandhi asked. Her astonishment was ebbing. The idea, once presented, had a certain appeal to it. “What if I don’t want to wait out the winter shivering in the cold and eating half a handful of dried lamb each day?”

  Adleg’s lips pulled together into a snarl. “You joined yourself to us, woman, and you brought down this doom on all of us. Are you so faithless to abandon us now, after ruining the clan and burning our home?”

  “You joined yourselves to me,” Mandhi said calmly. “And I’m not abandoning you. I will be with Kest, and we’ll save you.”

  “Saving us,” Glanod said, his voice as rough as gravel. “At such a great price. What are we, if the clanhome is burned, the clan’s guardians are gone, and our patriarch suckles at a foreigner’s breast?”

  “The clanhome was burned by our enemies,” Kest said. “Enemies that will destroy us given the first chance.”

  “Enemies she brought down on us,” Adleg said.

  “False,” Kest said softly. “We can’t blame Mandhi for making the os Tastl hate us. Our hleg is ancient.”

  “But our defeat is at her hands,” Adleg said, thrusting an accusing finger at Mandhi. He began to pace, turning away from Mandhi and Nakhur. “Isn’t it? Ours was an old hleg, but we faced the os Tastl without fear until this whore stole the patriarch’s son from our number. She seduced him, took his seed, bore his half-breed child, and disrupted our lineage. This Amuran wench is the corrupter of our clan and the cause of our downfall.”

  “Careful,” Kest said, rising fully upright. He crossed the charred floor of the clan lodge to where Adleg paced. He put a hand on Adleg’s chest. “You’re talking about my wife, and my brother’s wife.”

  “Your wife,” Adleg said. “Your precious Amuran whore, your bed-mate, your black spread-legged slattern.”

  Kest’s fist flew and crushed into Adleg’s jaw. They both fell into a bellowing heap. Adleg pummeled Kest’s side. Kest tore at Adleg’s hair. Both of them let out throaty screams of rage and pain. A moment later Glanod was among them, and then Hrenge.

  All Mandhi could see was thrashing limbs. She heard furious cries in Kaleksha. After a few piercing shouts from Hrenge, they separated. Glanod pulled Adleg back, pinning his arms behind him, while Hrenge stood in front of Kest with her hand on his chest. One of Adleg’s eyes was black, and blood trickled from Kest’s nose.

  Hrenge scolded them fiercely. Shadle didn’t bother to translate, but Mandhi caught the gist from her livid tone. Adleg slumped in Glanod’s grasp and slid to the ground, sulking on the floor with his arms crossed. Kest shook his shoulders and wiped the blood from his nose on his arm, then returned to where he was standing next to Mandhi. He put a sweaty, blood-smeared hand on Mandhi’s shoulder.

  “Don’t talk about my wife that way,” he whispered.

  Mandhi wetted her tongue. “Do you think you can drive me off with harsh words? Is that how you cow your os Dramab sisters into fear?”

  “Our women know their clan and their duties,” Adleg said bitterly. “You know neither.”

  “On the contrary,” Mandhi said, “duty is exactly what I’m offering you. Shall we count the ways in which I have taken up the cause of the vole?” She raised a fist and began to count on her fingers. “First, I gave myself freely to Kest in order to respect my duty to Taleg and to this clan.”

  She glanced at Kest as she said it, and he averted his eyes. No one other than them needed to know that he had so far refused her gift.

  Adleg snorted and whispered whore just loud enough for them to hear. Kest lunged a step toward him, but Glanod’s arm fl
ew out and stopped him before he got around the table.

  Mandhi ignored him. “Second, I am protecting your clan with my army, under my pay.”

  “Some protection you’ve given. Our lodge and fields are burned!”

  Hrenge shouted something in Kaleksha. Adleg cowered. She moved to stand right in front of him and shouted again. The second shout reduced him to silence. Hrenge’s stare lashed him with an icy, matriarchal glare. When the silence had gone on for several moments she stepped down and said a single word to Shadle.

  “You may continue,” Shadle said quietly to Mandhi.

  Mandhi took a deep breath. “Third, I submit to my husband and your patriarch. I offer you passage with my coin, to a place where your clan will be renewed and a home rebuilt for you.”

  “We don’t want a home to be rebuilt,” Adleg said bitterly. “We have a home. Generations of us have lived and died in the Dramab.”

  “This valley is our name and our home,” Glanod added reluctantly. “We cannot leave it casually.”

  “We don’t leave it casually,” Kest said. “We will leave with sorrow and mourning. Bury the Dramab in our hearts and weep for it all the way to Amur. But bury it we must.”

  Everyone was silent.

  “Is that all?” Glanod asked when the silence had grown cold.

  “There is one more thing,” Mandhi said. Fear chilled her veins and made her breathing heavy. She placed her words with the care of placing tiles in a mosaic. “Jhumitu is not just the patriarch of your clan.”

  “Mandhi,” Nakhur broke in. “Be careful.”

  “I have to tell them,” Mandhi said. She looked at Kest and Glanod with a serious expression. “You must come to Amur to receive the iron of heaven. Manjur’s ring belongs to Jhumitu.”

  “What is this nonsense of the Amuran Powers?” Adleg hissed.

  “Let her finish,” Kest demanded.

  Mandhi went on. “Nakhur taught you the name and history of Manjur when you were purified. What he did not say is that my father Cauratha, the stars upon his memory, was the Heir of Manjur. He wore the star-iron ring which Manjur forged. Currently my step-brother Navran has the ring and rules the city of Virnas which Manjur founded, but the next Heir in line is my son. Jhumitu.”

  Glanod stepped forward and put his hand on Jhumitu’s head. He looked down at the boy with a curious expression, then up at Mandhi with puzzlement and distrust on his face. “Do I understand you correctly? This child Jhumitu is… what? A prince?”

  “Yes,” Mandhi said. “If Ulaur keeps him, Jhumitu will be king of Virnas and chief of all the Uluriya. But we must return to Amur with him, and soon.”

  Kest swore in Kaleksha. He looked at Adleg, whose face was twisted up in anger, then paced over to his mother Hrenge. When he finally looked back at Mandhi, his eyes were angry rather than delighted. Mandhi was not surprised.

  “Why didn’t you say this before?” he said.

  “I wasn’t sure I should,” Mandhi said. “You wanted to stay in Kalignas. Jhumitu needed to return to Amur. It was possible for him to lead both Virnas and the os Dramab, but difficult, and I wanted to wait until his position in both clan and cult was secure.”

  “And if we come to Amur?”

  “We’ll go to Virnas. My brother Navran-dar will give you lodging in the palace, at least at first.”

  “A palace,” Glanod snorted. He kicked a burned chunk of the rafters. “It might be better than a burned lodge.”

  “Nakhur,” Kest said, motioning to the saghada with a nod. “How soon could we sail out of Mabeg?”

  Nakhur flicked his thumbnail and counted on his knuckles. “Next month, at best,” he said. “That’s assuming we could find ships in harbor to carry this many people.”

  “Would we beat the fall storms?”

  “Barely. It’d be risky.”

  Kest looked up to Glanod. “You’ve sailed to Amur more than I have. Could it be done?”

  Glanod grumbled and stood upright, running his fingers through the tangle of his beard. “It could,” he said reluctantly. “But if we don’t sail before winter…”

  “We would have to wait for spring,” Kest completed his thought.

  “And we’d be worse off than we are now.”

  Kest nodded. With a black glance at Adleg, he turned on his heels and went to the fire circle, where he knelt before his mother. He kissed both of his mother’s hands and began to speak to her in Kaleksha.

  Mandhi moved to Shadle and squeezed her shoulder. “What is he saying?”

  Shadle shook her head. “It’s not for you to hear.”

  Tears began to run down Hrenge’s face. Kest, too, began to weep, and Mandhi looked up to see both Glanod and Adleg wetting their beards with their tears. Kest bowed and rested his head on his mother’s knee. Hrenge ran her bony hands through Kest’s hair, then bent and kissed the top of his head.

  She rose to her feet, reached over, and took Kest by the hand. She led her son to the rear of the lodge, bent and picked up a smoke-blackened stone from the foundation of the lodge and a piece of charcoal which had fallen from the rafters. She placed them into the Kest’s hands.

  Hrenge turned and addressed Mandhi. Shadle translated quietly.

  “We bring these with us to remember the home which we lost. We will bury them in the place where we make our homes anew. Now we will go to Amur.”

  Vapathi

  The Dhigvaditya rose before them like a hunted tiger, wounded and alone, but still bearing teeth and claws. Muscular shoulders of stone rose from the plain of Majasravi, holding up the red sandstone walls of the fortress and the pink marble of the Emperor’s palace. The ramparts glittered with bronze spears. Archers stood with arrows at the ready on the parapets. Sadja’s green banners fluttered in the Emperor’s Tower.

  Ten days had passed since they had marched into Majasravi, unopposed by the Emperor and the remnants of the Red Men. The city’s inhabitants had fled or surrendered themselves to the Mouth of the Devourer. But the Bronze Gate and the Rice Gate were shut. And every time Vapathi ventured into the streets of the city and looked up toward the fortress, she remembered Apurta.

  Oh, how she hoped that he lived.

  Kirshta stood in the doorway of a khadir’s home, now abandoned, just beyond the reach of the Dhigvaditya’s arrows. He watched the fortress walls. The captains of the defecting Red Men stood around him, watching the walls with the same intensity, occasional glances of nervousness flitting between them.

  Vapathi waited on a couch in the shaded entrance hall. None of the Red Men paid attention to her, but Kirshta’s gaze slipped her way repeatedly. He was nervous.

  “We’ve been in Majasravi for ten days,” one of the captains said. “Sadja-daridarya is never going to open the fortress to us, and it’s been far too short a time for them to accede to a siege.”

  “I do not want a siege,” Kirshta said. His hands were folded behind his back. He paced slowly the width of the antechamber, limping, glancing now and then down the road to the Dhigvaditya, then back at Vapathi. “We will never take the Dhigvaditya in a siege.”

  “But Majasravi is overrun,” the captain said. “They have no way to get food in. Eventually they have to capitulate.”

  Kirshta laughed. “By all reports, Sadja is very clever. If we give him weeks to plan, he may escape the siege or somehow turn it against us. And he has the prophecy of the Dhigvaditya on his side. No army may take the Dhigvaditya by force….”

  The captains were silent. “I thought you wouldn’t fear the prophecy,” one of them said at last.

  “Fear, no. But it was nonetheless a true prophecy, and a true prophet may bind even the Powers.” Kirshta shook his head. “Send the Devoured. Remind Sadja that we’re here. And Vapathi—” He turned suddenly to his sister. “Bring me the dhorsha.”

  The captain sighed and bowed his head. “Yes, Mouth of the Devourer.” He stepped from the shadowed antechamber into the white sunlight and shouted for the company of the Devoured. A ram’s hor
n blew, lonely tremors echoing down the sun-beaten, deserted street. From the shadows of the houses, the forces of the Devoured slowly emerged.

  Vapathi rose from the couch and walked over to Kirshta. She put her hand on his shoulder, and they watched the Devoured form into ranks and march down the street to the Bronze Gate. He sighed heavily and rested his cheek against her hand.

  “What dhorsha do you want?” Vapathi asked.

  “The ones in the temple mother’s house. You know the place.”

  Vapathi nodded. “But why?”

  “I want to see the book with the prophecies of the Dhigvaditya. They must have a copy. I need to read it closely.”

  “Will this get us through the gates?” And to Apurta?

  “I don’t know,” Kirshta said. “But it might help.”

  “Then I’ll go.”

  She stepped out of the doorway and into the sun-drenched street. For a while she watched the Red Men herding the undisciplined Devoured in the direction of the Dhigvaditya, a futile gesture of aggression against the impregnable walls. She didn’t know why Kirshta kept up these useless attacks. She suspected he only did it to remind Sadja he was there, and perhaps to harden the Devoured for battle. The men got scratched by the arrows which the Red Men shot at them, but they didn’t bleed, and when they learned their injuries couldn’t harm them, they quickly lost all memory of fear.

  But Vapathi herself had plenty of fear. Apurta remained mortal. If the Emperor didn’t want to keep him alive….

  She started quickly across the streets toward the place where they held captured dhorsha, pressing her nails into her palms to drive away the black thoughts. The Red Men had said the Emperor kept Apurta alive. Still alive.

  Majasravi had emptied itself in a mad rush when the news of the Mouth of the Devourer’s approach had reached the city. Half of the houses that Vapathi passed were abandoned, and the others were inhabited either by the Devoured or by the denizens of Majasravi who had sworn allegiance to Kirshta after he had taken the gates. Aside from the unbreakable stone of the Dhigvaditya, they hadn’t met any resistance in the city itself.