“Bad news,” she said.
Tsering’s hands fidgeted as if on their own. He wrapped them in the black petaled skirts of his coat. “What Ümmühan has described to me as the threat … what we saw at the sea earlier. I think I know what the omen portends.”
Sayeh waited. The Wizard paused for a long time, then just shook his head.
“Tell me,” said the rajni.
“You know I was born in the shadow of the Cold Fire. That I lived my apprenticeship and further training in the Red-and-White Citadel.”
The Cold Fire was a smoking mountain, the greatest—as far as Sayeh knew—that anyone had ever heard of. The heat of its bowels soaked the narrow valley of the river below it, rendering it habitable year-round despite its position high in the Steles of the Sky, and providing the Rasan Empire with their fortified summer capital, Tsarepheth. The Citadel that was the seat of the learning of the Wizards of Tsarepheth bridged the gap between it and its even larger neighbor, called the Island-in-the-Mists, like a tremendous dam of alabaster stone and crimson tile.
Deep within that Citadel, Sayeh supposed, were Wizards who spent their entire lives studying the science of the Cold Fire. It had erupted twice in living memory—once in her grandfather’s lifetime, and again, less significantly, in her father’s. The first eruption was generally supposed, at least in Sahal-Sarat, to have been a direct effect of magics thrown irresponsibly about by the embattled sides in the Necromancer’s War some decades before Sayeh was even conceived.
She thought of the reek of sulfur, and had a sickening sense she knew what Tsering-la was about to tell her.
“There’s a volcano under the water,” he said. “And it’s active again. That’s what’s causing the acidic plumes—do you understand what I mean by that?”
She bit her lip. She thought she did. She could almost visualize it. But it was a wise ruler who admitted when they did not know sometimes, so she shook her head. “I’m not sure.”
He picked up Drupada’s slate, and a wet brush. “Here.” With quick, sketching gestures he drew a series of horizontal lines, and then a vertical curve cutting over them. “Hot water rises, you see? So the springs that normally feed the drinkable water into the depths of the Bitter Sea produce cold water, and it stays down there, even though fresh water is usually less dense than salt water and floats upon it. Eventually the fresh water comes up, and dilutes the salt, but by then it’s too brackish for us to drink. But this water, now—it’s been heated by gas or molten rock, and it’s absorbed the gasses of burning brimstone from the volcano’s breath. These gasses can become dissolved in water just as salt or sugar can, but instead of making the water bitter or sweet, they convert it into a burning fluid we call the oil of vitriol, or the vitriolic fluid. Which is what burned Nazia’s hands and yours, and killed her mother. The mild tremors we’ve been feeling are a sign of the underwater volcano’s reawakening.”
“There are earthquakes all the time, in Ansh-Sahal,” Sayeh protested. “They’re never bad. These haven’t even cracked stones.”
“They likely will,” Tsering-la said gently.
Sayeh’s stomach tightened and her throat closed as implications crowded her. “So there will be no water to be had in the next dry season? Only this oil of vitriol?”
“Unless the volcano sleeps again,” Tsering said. “And worse could happen. Far worse. The volcano might erupt in truth.”
“Walk with me.” Sayeh needed to be out of the suddenly stifling confines of the nursery, away from all this closeness and clutter. She swept the poetess and the Wizard into her wake as she turned and headed out the door. The guards closed it quietly behind them.
Sayeh would have strode out confidently, just to hear the decisive patting of her sandals on the floor. But the slippers—hers and Ümmühan’s—shushed against the tile, and Tsering-la’s bootheels thumped counterpoint.
It struck Sayeh as somehow deliciously ironic. This should have been portentous, epic—a storyteller’s scene of decision. Instead, she got slippers.
She held her tongue, contemplating what she should do next. The poetess waited a few polite moments and then filled the silence. “I knew another Tsering-la once.”
Tsering’s face did something strange, as Sayeh glanced over to chart his reaction. “I’m sure you did.”
Ümmühan shrugged lightly and smiled. “It is a common name.”
They came to another guarded door—the entrance to the royal apartment. Sayeh waited a moment for the guards to acknowledge and admit her—the one with the key was young and fumbled a little—and led her little party of visitors within. The first room was a sitting room, fit for receiving guests. A long wall of expensive, louvered glass windows looked out upon the courtyard, which was dim now with rain. The palace cisterns kept it watered in the dry season, so Sayeh’s Orchid Court did indeed sport its namesake flowers in every season. Now, though, they were beaten down and rain-swept wherever they had peered out from under the sheltering arbors.
Sayeh’s pet bird roused itself on its perch as they entered, fanning brilliant wings and raising its trailing crest to flash all the dozen colors there concealed. No lammergeyer for her court, foul carrion beasts that they were. The rajni of Ansh-Sahal kept a phoenix—a feng, a gift from a distant relative in Song, and not from the equally spectacular but more common Ctesifon or Kyivvan species.
“His name is Guang Bao.” Sayeh could not entirely keep her pride from her voice.
“After the poet?”
Ümmühan was obviously delighted. Tsering, who had seen the bird before—and knew about the volume of his voice and also about his unfortunate tendency to bite, stood well back.
“He was a gift of the prince of Twenty Palaces to my husband, Ashar.” She chirruped to the bird and he cocked his head at her and trilled back. “But he liked me better. Didn’t you, Guang Bao?”
If you did not take the crest and train into consideration, Guang Bao was the size of a large parrot or conure. He was kept unclipped, for the glory of his intact plumage, and as he spread his wings now and shook out his tail, the room—even in dimness—seemed to blaze with reflected light. His primary colors were orange and teal, and something in the structure of his feathers made the individual strands act like they were strewn with powdered diamonds, or with tiny mirrors. The plumage itself scintillated from the gorgeous blue-green head to the vermilion-copper-malachite eyes on the lyrelike feathers of his tail, which almost brushed the floor though his perch was as tall as Sayeh’s chest. He also reflected pinpoints of light everywhere, so they sparkled like tiny glass beads on all the furniture, the walls, the clothing and skin of the gathered people. The leading edge of his wings was also beglittered, and that same richly iridescent blue-green color. The primary and secondary plumage, revealed when he flapped lightly, was shades of flame.
“O great is God,” Ümmühan said, pressing one hand to her chest. “I have never before encountered such. I understand why some say they are afire!”
“You should see him in bright light,” Sayeh replied. “I think their greatest protection is that they dazzle and sun-blind anything that might care to eat them.”
The poetess had paused arm’s length from the perch and was examining Guang Bao with elaborate awe. She glanced back at Sayeh and spoke significantly. “For so many of us, it is our only natural defense, to be in some way dazzling.”
Sayeh felt an enormous rush of kinship with Ümmühan in that moment. She scratched at the all-but-invisible spots on the back of her hand with her thumbnail, then forced herself to stop. “And to find new ways to dazzle, when the old feathers grow worn.”
Ümmühan winked. “Pretty bird,” she said to the phoenix. “Who’s a pretty bird?”
The phoenix cocked his head at her, alternately smoothing and fluffing his crest in interest. Tsering-la handed her an imported ground-nut roasted in its shell, and the poetess offered it gingerly to the bird on the flat of her hand. She’d spent more time around horses than around parrots, Sayeh decided.
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Guang Bao leaned way out to pick it up, stretching his neck to the utmost as he kept his body back, balancing by fanning his tail and wings. He clucked cheerfully to himself as he settled back, moving the nut around in his bill with his thick, black tongue. He lifted one horny taloned foot to grasp it, and nibbled at it experimentally.
Ümmühan watched with the excitement of a small girl as he picked the fibrous shell open and extracted the two nodules inside, one by one. They were crunched up and vanished with little ceremony, and then the bird dropped the shell and looked around for more. “Pretty bird,” he said, in a distracted tone. “Pretty.”
“Oh,” Ümmühan said delightedly. “He talks!”
Guang Bao chose that moment to spread his wings wider, emit a piercing cry that was stunning in its volume, and defecate into the tray of pebbles in which the base of his perch had been strategically placed. Ümmühan surprised Sayeh by laughing out loud in delight. She might be old, but her voice still rose on light, feminine peals. Sayeh knew very well how much practice it took to laugh like a bell, and appreciated the art in it.
“So it is with all beauty,” she said cheerfully. “Every glory also shits.”
* * *
Guang Bao had obviously taken a liking to the musicality of Ümmühan’s laughter, and spent the remainder of the afternoon practicing his own version of it. This incited the poetess to more laughter of her own, and bribing the bird with bits of fruit and seeds until he finally consented to step onto her hand. Sayeh had expected the old woman to strain under the weight, but Ümmühan held Guang Bao up easily, and showed no fear of him even after Tsering and Sayeh both warned her that the big bird would bite.
Tsering, watching with slightly envious amusement, shook his head. “She could charm snakes from their dens, that one. I’ve never seen that bird of yours take to anyone that way.”
It was true, even if Guang Bao did seem to despise Tsering-la in particular. Sayeh shrugged. “He’s a contrary beast, for certain. But it’s also said that the phoenix has a particular love for poets. Maybe he can smell it on her.”
“You wanted to talk further,” Tsering reminded her.
Sayeh scratched at her cheek. “You would counsel that we evacuate?”
His lips thinned. He looked away from the burgeoning love affair between old woman and gaudy bird and faced her directly before nodding. “I would, yes, so counsel.”
“Now? Or after the harvest is in, when we will have some resources to travel on?” Sayeh caught herself picking at her cuticle with an opposite thumbnail, and forced herself to stop.
“It’s a hard question,” he said. “Every day increases risk. And every day increases the opportunity for Himadra to mass at the borders and stop us from leaving.”
She sighed. “You’ve been talking to Vidhya.”
“You should listen to Vidhya,” he said. “Your Abundance.”
It made her laugh—just a little, but enough. “So we’re caught between a sword and a boiling sea. How long would it take to get everyone moving, if we started today?”
“The whole city? The whole nation?” He shook his head. “Some won’t. Even if you make of yourself and your court an example.”
“I could have the army force them out,” she answered. “But every man I detail for that is a man I then won’t have to move to the border and block Himadra, if he advances.”
“And it won’t bring you any love from the people.”
“Leaving them there to suffocate or die of thirst or burn won’t win me any love from the people either,” Sayeh pointed out.
Ümmühan looked up from where she’d been gently scratching Guang Bao at the top of his neck, under the upraised feathers of his crest. “You don’t need an army for this.”
Sayeh tipped her head to one side, aware even as she did it that it probably made her look a lot like Guang Bao. “What do I need, then, poetess?”
Ümmühan smiled tightly. “You need an augury.”
9
Druja’s brother was named Prasana, and whatever strength had sustained him through scrambling into the ice-boat had apparently been his last. He had wedged himself well into the ice-boat’s bilges, and then lapsed entirely into unconsciousness from which he could not be roused. If the thin, ragged sound of his breathing had not echoed, amplified by the wooden hollow, they might have all assumed he was dead.
The Gage was strongest, but too large for the confined space. So, when the caravan was safely beyond sight of the border, the Dead Man and one of the acrobat Ritu’s slender, athletic grown sons clambered down into the bilges to attempt to retrieve him.
The space between the hold and the hull was narrow and stank of wet wood and mildew, two of the desert-bred Dead Man’s least favorite scents. The spores made him sneeze repeatedly despite the protection of his veil. The wood was slimy under his hands. The curve of the hull bent his spine as he slithered through the trapdoor. When he and Ritu’s son, who was named Amruth, finally managed to get their hands on the well-concealed alleged assassin, they had to drag him out by his ankles, far less gently than the Dead Man thought salutary to someone whose moaning and muttering could not quite be dignified with the description “consciousness.”
“Like serving a breech birth,” Amruth muttered as they maneuvered Prasana’s head around an obstruction.
“I was thinking it was like getting a terrified kitten out of a privy hole,” the Dead Man admitted.
Amruth laughed easily, leaving the Dead Man comforted, and wary of his own desire to find in this young man a friend.
They were still probably more gentle than the Dead Man, in his irritation, would have preferred if they had been handling a healthy man. But he could be tender to the wounded, despite what those who maligned his profession might think of him, and he in his own turn had spent enough time in hiding and in flight to allow a certain sympathy in leavening of his choler.
So they got the man out, bruising and scraping him and bruising and scraping themselves, and Lady Golbahar insisted on the peculiar extent of charity to offering him her “cabin,” as everyone referred to her sheet-delinated emergency boudoir. “We’re still flying the plague flags,” she insisted. “If they come after us, he’ll do for a sick man, don’t you suppose?”
The Dead Man grunted and went off to clean himself, leaving the lady and her small entourage contentedly walking beside the wallowing ice-boats. He had glanced at a map that evening, and seen the curve of the Sarathai bending close again. They would, he supposed, be back in the river soon, and picking up pace—as soon as they reached the trade town where Druja meant to sell off the current group of oxen. They were getting too far south for these hairy ones, anyway: even in the intermittent rain, the beasts were suffering visible distress from the heat. Best to offer them up to somebody who would rest them for a week or two and then turn them around for a leg back up into the mountains.
So it was good for Lady Golbahar to walk and stretch her legs as she wished, as long as she could do so. Good for all of them. Men were not meant to be raddled up in wooden coffins and cast adrift down rushing streams. No matter how much quicker it was than riding honest horses, or being drawn by honest oxen.
They could sail downriver. There would be black water-oxen to tow the boats back up, or so Druja had told them. The Dead Man and the Gage did not intend to be with the party returning. Even if Druja decided to risk the brewing war and make a quick return rather than waiting it out, or trading farther south in the Lotus Kingdoms, or east through Song to the Banner Isles, the Dead Man and his partner would leave the caravan in Sarathai-tia and deliver their message.
And then what?
A nameless frustration welled up in the Dead Man. It was composed of equal points loneliness, alienation, and lack of direction, and he did not know what to do with it. Or where to take it. Drifting from place to place was not much of a purpose in life for one who had been raised as he had. But what was there for such as he to give his loyalty to?
And
he could not bear to rest still in one place, when he could not call such a resting place his home.
Having cleaned himself and changed to a dry shirt and trousers—not that that would last, in the rain, when even his fine red wool coat dragged at him with steamy dankness—he went to find Druja. The caravan master was in the cabin that had until recently been Lady Golbahar’s, staring down at his restless, unconscious brother.
The Dead Man drew up beside him and cleared his throat. Druja didn’t turn, but he stood up a little bit straighter, so the Dead Man was sure he’d been seen.
He asked, “Is this man’s escape why you chose this course for us, caravan master, instead of an easterly path? We could have gone through Ansh-Sahal.”
“What’s in Ansh-Sahal that’s worth trading for?” Druja replied. “It’s even poorer than Chandranath.”
That wasn’t much of an answer. The Dead Man thought about calling Druja out on the risk he’d placed them all under, but Ritu had already tried that gambit and had garnered only a little information. “There shall be increased traffic on the road soon, now that we’ve navigated the border.”
Druja nodded but said, “We won’t be in the lowlands until tomorrow. I’ll pull the plague flags down now that we’re past the border.”
It would save them some explaining coming into the caravanserai if nobody had seen them flying those.
“How much further to Sarathai-tia?”
Druja shrugged. “The roads are better here. And the river is swift with the rains. We’ll travel fast once we’re in it. Ten days at the most. He glanced over at the Dead Man and smiled. “There will be a bonus for you and your partner if we make it intact.”
“Arriving intact is the only way either of us may expect to be paid, as it stands.”
Druja looked at him levelly. “We’re out of the Boneless’s territory. Are we entirely free of his agents?” The caravan master swallowed, likely to steady his nerves. “Are all my guards immune to being bought? I’ll sleep better once we’re on the river, in any case.”
The Stone in the Skull Page 19
