by Greg Keyes
From back at the gate there was a whistle. Perkar let another drop or two fall into the water, then, satisfied and strangely happy, walked back up to the barn, and sleep.
INTERLUDE
Jik
A polished deckplank creaked beneath Ghe’s foot, and he froze, waiting to see if the slight sound had been heard. After a moment he relaxed, satisfied that the little creak had been folded neatly into the hundred other wooden complaints as the barge rocked gently in the River, into the frogs and nightbirds singing in the Yellow-Haired-Swamp just downstream. The sharp features of his shadowed face quirked in a sardonic smile at his own nervousness, and he reached with his thumb to rub the little scar at the point of his pointed chin. I am a blade of silver; I am a sickle of ice, he mouthed.
He moved on, slipping past a guard nodding at his post, mesmerized, perhaps, by the distant lights of the city, or the even more distant lights of stars. Dressed in blackest shadow, Ghe moved as effortlessly as smoke, through an ostentatious arch encased in gold leaf into a spacious cabin, onto the rich carpet woven in distant and exotic Lhe. Toward the great bed, and its sheets of finest linen.
Ghe had not the faintest idea why it was his task to kill the man who slumbered there; the priesthood would never make him privy to such details. He need only know whom to kill and where to find them; the why of it didn’t matter to him. As a child, he had killed for nothing more than a few copper coins. Now his skills were for the priesthood, for the River himself.
He suddenly realized that no one was in the bed, and the hackles of his neck pricked up. The lights on the barge were extinguished; he had watched from the small boat that brought him until they had all gone out. That meant his target somehow suspected something, was hiding in the dark, waiting for his death to come looking for him and find a surprise instead. Ghe turned quickly on the balls of his feet, crouching at the same moment, searching with his eyes. After a moment of that, he sighed in exasperation and relief. He had overestimated this trader, this Dunuh, just as Dunuh had overestimated himself, somehow. For there he was, asleep in a chair, silhouetted against the lights of the city.
Ghe’s relief faded as quickly as it came, for there loomed another shadow, standing near the sleeping one.
“Ah,” the darkness whispered, “the much-vaunted Jik, I take it.”
Ghe said nothing. If he should fail and die, there must be no proof that he was actually Jik. He carried no emblem, no sign of the priesthood. Unlike the other priestly sects, Jik were not castrated, so there would be no evidence of that sort. Only overconfident words could betray him, and though Ghe was confident, he was not overconfident.
His blade snicked out of its oiled scabbard, caught moonlight like a silver eel.
“Jik,” the shadow went on, “I am Sin Turuk, from the ancient city of Kolem. You have heard of Kolem?”
Still Ghe did not answer. The man went on. “Kolem has many exports. The oil of the Kakla tree, textiles—and warriors. Warriors taught to fight from the moment we can hold a sword. Much-valued men.” White teeth appeared, then, amidst the black skin of his face. A faint hiss was his sword clearing into the night air.
“My master is a drunken fool,” Sin Turuk said. “But he is still my master.”
Sin Turuk leapt, pantherlike, lighted on the tips of his toes an armspan from Ghe. Ghe darted his ribbon of sword for the man’s heart, but his opponent stepped aside, the sword flickering by him. He saw his mistake in the instant he made it, that his lunge was what Sin wanted. Ghe had no time to recover his sword and parry. Instead, he dropped flat, and the foreigner’s sword whirred above his head. Ghe lashed out expertly with his leg, caught his enemy at the ankles, who fell, and yet Ghe could feel that it was too easy, that Sin had anticipated this move, as well, shifted his weight so as to fall controlled. This insight saved Ghe’s life, for instead of sprawling helplessly, Sin had somehow contrived to tumble over him, lashing out with the bright-edged crescent he held. Ghe dropped his own sword, lunged inside the blow, sweeping the strong arms on, delivered a Tsehats blow to Sin’s neck. The man grunted dully, lashed out again. He should have been dead, but at least he was injured, slow enough that Ghe could snake-draw his dagger and plunge it straight into Sin Turuk’s heart, jiggle it, and withdraw. Sin died silently, with the dignity a great warrior deserved.
“A sickle of ice,” Ghe whispered to the man, as his eyes went from shocked to empty. “But you fought well.”
The idiot out on deck had not even heard anything. Ghe sighed, slipped his knife into the sleeping man in three key places—heart, base of the skull, and temple. He left the other guards alive, to shame them, to let them see that a battle of Giants had transpired within their earshot and they had known nothing.
On the way back to shore, he saluted Sin Turuk by dripping a bit of blood in the River and by touching a dot of it to his own chin, to the first scar he ever received in combat. For his intended victim—who had merely exhaled upon dying, a breath stinking of expensive wine—Ghe did nothing.
VII
Ghosts and Wishes
“You have ruined a five-hundred-year-old book,” Ghan told her—rather matter-of-factly, without real heat.
“It was ruined already.”
Ghan sighed. “No—it was damaged but repairable. Now it is ruined.”
Hezhi looked up from what she was doing—pasting the fragments of a Second-Dynasty plate to a new backing—and met the old man’s hard gaze.
“You don’t pay attention, that’s your whole problem. You don’t pay attention to what you are doing, but to whatever happens to be running around in your silly little head.”
One day, she thought, keeping her face neutral. One day I shall be an adult, adult nobility, and you shall disappear in the night, Ghan. I will have Tsem take you and stuff you down a sewer pipe.
“Like that!” Ghan snarled. “Like that, eyes gone all dreamy and stupid.” He stepped swiftly up to the table. “Here is what you are doing.” He gestured at the plate. “This. Keep your fingers and your brain together, for once.”
“I’ve been doing this for twenty days,” Hezhi muttered, trying not to snap. “Couldn’t I do something more interesting?”
“Like?”
“I don’t know. You mentioned something called ‘indexing.’”
“You can’t do that, Princess. You cannot read well enough.”
“Well, I’m tired of this.”
“But you’ve yet to do it well,” Ghan replied. “Why should I waste my energy teaching you another task when you have not demonstrated the ability to do even the simplest with proficiency? To teach you to index, for instance, I would first have to teach you to read, and I have no intention of wasting the kind of time that would take.”
“But I can already read some,” she began. Read? If the side effect of this bondage was that she would learn to read the old script, it would be worth it.
“Be still. Add a little more water to that paste. When you can paste a simple page together without ugly, overlapped seams, then we can talk about you doing something else. Or …” Ghan looked sly for a moment, calculating. Then he leaned heavily on the desk, stooped forward, so that their eyes were quite close together. “Or you can leave here this afternoon. But you must not come back, ever. I have gotten poor work out of you, but you have not yet paid your debt. Being here, you do more and more damage each day. So I will report your bondage satisfied. Just don’t come in tomorrow—or any day after.” He smiled wanly, straightened, and walked off without a backward glance. That evening, when she finally unkinked her back, put her paste and thread away, he did not acknowledge her. She left in silence.
Qey met her at the door, anxious. “You must take a bath,” she explained. Her fingers fluttered like butterflies fighting on her hands.
“I’m tired,” Hezhi replied. She had no time for Qey’s timid mothering.
“It matters not. Your father sends for you.”
“My father?” What could he want?
Qey
nodded vigorously. “You must attend court this evening.”
Hezhi frowned. “Must I? Send Father my regrets.”
“Oh, no, Hezhi, not this time,” Qey sighed, shaking her head. She glanced past Hezhi, presumably at Tsem. Suspicious, Hezhi turned, as well. Tsem’s face was carefully blank, but she could sense tension there. His neck muscles were drawn taut; he was grinding his teeth. “This time, little one, you must go. The messengers your father sent were very insistent.”
She digested that silently. She had managed to avoid court for the better part of a year. But perhaps—just perhaps—if she went to court, she could actually speak to her father or mother. Convince them to take away Ghan’s power over her. Just thinking about the old man made her furious. For two days after Ghan showed her the writ, Hezhi didn’t go to the library at all. Four men in the dress of the palace guard came and got her, forced her to the library and Ghan. Hezhi had to restrain Tsem; she saw the dangerous look in his usually mild eyes. None of the guards ever knew how close they came to having their necks broken or long bones splintered. But if she had allowed Tsem to defend her, he would have been mutilated or killed later. She could not stand the thought of that.
Yes, perhaps she could reach her father’s ear, if only for a moment—if he even knew who she was, at a glance. He had, after all, not spoken directly to her for something more than a year.
“What are the colors in court today, then?” she asked. Qey looked relieved, almost happy.
“They sent a dress along,” she said.
“This is just the revival of a style from a century ago,” Hezhi complained as Qey helped her struggle into the monstrous dress. It had a laminated spine of rivershark cartilage that ran from the nape of a stiff collar down her back. The dress’s backbone parted company with her own at the pelvis—there it lanced out and back, supporting a stiff but mercifully short train that resembled the tail of a crawfish. This “spine” had to be held on, of course, so the rest of the dress worked at concealing the tight straps beneath her breasts and across her abdomen. It was lime and gold, spangled with purple mother-of-pearl sequins.
“Was it considered as ugly a century ago?” Qey asked, and she actually giggled—as if it were years ago, before she became so serious. Suddenly a bit happier, Hezhi modeled the dress for Qey, walking smartly, lampooning the ladies at court. Qey watched her with eyes full of wonder.
“You may grow up into a woman yet,” she said. “How did this happen so quickly?” Hezhi heard the obvious pride, caught the hidden sadness, the worry.
The dress finally on, Qey applied the thick, burgundy makeup presently popular in court, filling the hollows of Hezhi’s eyes, drawing a fine line down her forehead to the bridge of her nose.
Looking at herself in the glass, Hezhi was mildly surprised. She looked like a princess—not like the bondservant of a bald old librarian, not like the dirty little girl skittering about the hallways of the abandoned wing. No, she looked like the other women at court. Like her elder sister, whom she had met once. A princess; something she was used to calling herself, but had no sense of how to be.
Qey was still watching her. “Certainly you will have suitors now, whether you want them or not,” she remarked. Hezhi nodded glumly at the older woman, wished suddenly that she had Qey’s worn square face and thick limbs. But even those would not ward her from suitors; she was the daughter of an emperor. Her ambiguous feelings over her appearance settled more certainly toward disapproval; the taunting voice of Ghan seemed just in her ear, dismissing her as some pretty palace creature.
But what did she care what Ghan thought, anyway? She sighed and followed Qey from her room, out into the courtyard. Tsem was there, waiting, and Hezhi smirked openly at him. He was lashed into a black cotton kilt, a lime shirt, and an open, brocaded vest. His hair was oiled and braided, the braids piled on his head and tucked beneath a little square felt hat. He was trying hard to maintain a dignified, nonchalant air.
“You look beautiful, Tsem,” she remarked. “With your size and that vest, perhaps no one will notice me.”
Tsem snorted. “Shall we go, Princess?”
“I don’t want to.”
“Neither do I,” Tsem muttered fervently.
A room should seem diminished when full, but the Great Leng Hall was as imposing as ever. Though its floor thronged with people—more people than she had been in the presence of in more than a year—it still seemed as vast as the sky. Indeed, its vaulted roof imitated the sky, deep azure at the rims, paler toward the meridian. The great buttresses seemed like the pillars holding up the heavens. She noticed a bird up there—a pigeon, a swallow? It was lost in the immensity, the apparent size of a mosquito.
And the noise! Drums were pattering somewhere, but that was nothing. It was the voices, chattering laughing voices that roared in Hezhi’s tender ears, accustomed to the quietest corners of the palace. She felt buffeted by them, standing at the royal entry. When she was announced—Princess Hezhi Yehd Cha’dune—her name flew out into the din and was eaten, gone.
When her father came in, on the other hand, the voices dropped away, as if a hundred doors had been shut between her and them—one or two cackled on for a moment and then died, embarrassed.
The Chakunge of Nhol was an imposing man; Hezhi saw little resemblance to him in herself. He was tall, strikingly so, not thin or gangly. His shoulders were broad, his face sharp-boned but with no hint of femininity. Power swirled about him, power beyond that conveyed by his rich robe of saffron and umber, his turban and the golden circlet that held it in place. It was like the wavy outline of a ghost, or the burning of air above the hot tile roof in the summer. It made one’s nape tingle just to look at him. Sorcerer, king, child of the River—all of that one could see even if he were naked. When he was announced, every person in the room dropped to their knees. Those nearest the central fountain reached for it, to wet their foreheads.
Hezhi’s heart sank. She could never go near him, her father or no. And she felt … ill. There was a tightness, a weirdness deep in her stomach. It had been there before, all day, lurking, but now it redoubled. What was wrong with her?
A little hiss went up from the crowd, surprise. The Chakunge had not stopped at the dais upon which he usually sat; rather, he descended the steps onto the courtyard floor itself. The crowd parted away from him, like a mass of pigeons keeping well away from the feet of a pedestrian. His two bodyguards, hulking full-blooded Giants, walked ponderously on either side of him, massive gazes searching ceaselessly for any danger to their master. They were dressed like Tsem, but they looked even more ridiculous; they were less manlike than Tsem, longer of arm, very hairy, with brutal, flat faces and no chins.
Thus the floor emptied before the emperor until he stood at the very base of the fountain. Hezhi watched him carefully, her father, saw his sardonic face register some deeper, stranger sentiment as he approached the water.
It is the Blood Royal I need to understand, she reminded herself.
He brushed the tips of his fingers through the cascading water; that was all, and then he stepped back, eyes closed. The fountain was a simple one, a single jet rising thirty feet into the air of the hall and then roaring back down into a broad, alabaster basin. Now the water began to shimmer, though. Hezhi was still watching her father, and his figure seemed blurred, as if he were somehow vibrating like the plucked string of a lyre. The shimmering in the water increased, and suddenly the column was soaring up, up toward the vaulted roof of the hall. It grew like a great, watery palm, colors scintillating from it. Dark figures struggled in the water—fish? They were carried up, up the waterspout. Near the ceiling, the water suddenly ceased to shower down to its source, but instead spread out in a pool, a pool floating in the air. The pool quickly spread, shimmering and rippling, until the dome of the ceiling was obscured by it. Then the most peculiar thing of all; something about the water—not its wetness or its density, but something else, like the ghost of water, shimmery, feeling of depth—settled
down upon the court. A little gasp went around the floor, it was as if they were underneath the River, staring up at the surface of the water. The dark things were still there, but now they began to acquire a nimbus, black images limned in glowing colors, jade, white, aquamarine, topaz. They swam down from the ceiling, in and among the courtiers, brushing against them. Hezhi saw one swim through a woman near her. Hezhi felt a terrible chill that started in her abdomen and flashed out, and yet at the same time she was captivated. They were lovely, these things. They were all creatures of the River; some were weird fish, the length of a person, armored in plates as if they were warriors. Some more resembled insects or crawfish, but were not the insects or crawfish Hezhi was familiar with. No, these were the things that lurked as shadows in the waters of the River; ghosts of things that once lived and died in his waters, however long ago. Now they swam and pirouetted at her father’s whim.
“Princess!” Tsem tugged at her, pointing. Three of the things were “swimming” about her feet, gradually rising higher. One was a fish; the other was like a scorpion built for swimming; the third resembled a squid. These three were joined by four more, and they swirled all around Hezhi, like a cloud. She heard those nearest her gasp, and more than one whispered “Royal Blood.”
Soon she could see nothing but the creatures enveloping her. She should have been frightened, but instead she felt weirdly elated; the queasiness in her stomach seemed more like a glow now, as if there was something warm and strong in her. She laughed softly, reaching out her hands to touch the insubstantial fish. They seemed to suck at her, as if feeding, but she felt nothing.
Then they rose away, rushed back up to the watery pool above their heads, which was shrinking; with a sudden roar—the room had been nearly silent, save for awed whispers—the water began returning to the fountain, rushing down like torrential rain. The Riverghosts lost their shine, became shadows, less than that. In a matter of moments, the court was as it had been before her father came down. Save that now the people began to shout, shout her father’s title. Chakunge!
