Heir of Iron (The Powers of Amur Book 1)

by J. S. Bangs

  Dinner was held on the roof of the castle, in the open air with the smell of the sea breeze mingling with the odors of butter, roasted fish, and chilies. Sadja sat at the head of the table with a stern expression and his back as stiff as a sugar cane stalk, dispassionately observing his staff serve Mandhi and himself. When the plates were arranged, he held out a hand to her.

  “The food was purified in the kitchens according to your laws, but I am told that you bless it at the table as well.”

  Mandhi blushed. Normally this wouldn’t happen in front of strangers, especially not important ones—but Sadja had gone to so much trouble to accommodate her. She traced a pentacle over the food and said, “No unclean thing will touch my lips, nor will I utter any unclean word. Depart, impurity.” She added I bow my head to Ulaur at the end, then folded her hands in her lap and looked to Sadja.

  He appeared bemused. A spark of anger jumped up in her—did he ask her to observe the customs of the Uluriya before him for his amusement? But the amusement on his face melted off a moment later, and Mandhi regained her composure. Whatever Sadja’s purpose in inviting them to Davrakhanda, she couldn’t well represent her people if her passions ran away with her. As her father taught her: Equanimity wins both battles and negotiations.

  Sadja broke off a piece of fish and began to eat. “There are not many of your kind in my city,” he said after chewing, “but there are enough. Most of them live in a neighborhood by the wharves, the Merchant’s Crescent. Have you been there?”

  She swallowed. “I’ve only been here once before, and we visited the Uluriya quarter. It’s the only place in the city where we could stay. Under normal circumstances, I mean.”

  “You should take some time to walk the city. I will provide you an escort if you’d like. It isn’t just royal pride that makes me say that Davrakhanda is the most beautiful city in Amur.”

  “The view from my chamber window is very beautiful,” she admitted. “The ocean…. I have seldom had the luck to travel near the ocean. Taleg did, when he was younger. He first came to Amur through Davrakhanda, in fact.”

  “Most of the Kaleksha in Amur do, alas,” Sadja noted dryly.

  “Alas?”

  “The people of Kalignas have a reputation for being—” he paused a moment to chew, then said delicately “–unruly.”

  “Taleg isn’t that sort,” Mandhi said with a frown.

  “Most of them aren’t Uluriya, either,” Sadja said. “Excuse my curiosity, but how did that happen?”

  Mandhi took a drink of rice beer and smiled. “Good fortune? He was hired on an Uluriya trade ship from Davrakhanda as a young man, his second or third voyage. Half the crew were Kaleksha, and half were Uluriya. There was some sort of disagreement in the crew—I don’t know the details precisely, some broken taboo—and the Kaleksha wanted to throw Taleg overboard. The captain, Adjan, stepped in and saved him, and kept Taleg in his protection for the rest of the voyage. When they reached land Taleg begged to stay with Adjan, but instead Adjan sent Taleg to his brother, Veshta. My father and I live in Veshta’s household, and when Taleg arrived my father saw the use for a loyal Kaleksha bodyguard. So long as he was willing to convert to the worship of Ulaur, which, fortunately, he was.”

  “A conversion of necessity, then.”

  “It might have been necessity, but Taleg has never flagged in devotion since then. Having his life saved by an Uluriya stranger had that effect on him.”

  Sadja broke off another piece of fish and chewed it slowly, examining Mandhi again with that piercing, hawk-like stare. It made Mandhi slightly uncomfortable, but she straightened her back and returned the gaze. Better not to seem intimidated.

  Sadja smiled and said, “And the two of you? How did you come to marry him?”

  She blushed a little but made no attempt to hide it. At this point in the conversation it was better to seem slightly nervous and girlish than to project too much strength. “Well, you know. My father sent Taleg and I traveling a lot once I got a little older—he is very old and could no longer travel much for his health. You can imagine how things proceeded from there.”

  “I can imagine,” he said in a tone of amusement.

  “And you?” Mandhi smiled coyly at him. “The seat beside you is empty. I gather that you have no wife.”

  “I have none,” Sadja confirmed. “The right spouse has not yet appeared.”

  She inferred his intent: for a king, the choice of spouse was always strategic. For you and me both, she thought, unless I can recover Navran and make him a worthy Heir. But her die was already cast; if Navran would not be the Heir, then her marriage to Taleg would be inevitably found out and the scandal immense. But perhaps… the thought occurred to her that being mother of the Heir might not be the worst she should fear, if the alternative were handing the Uluriya over to Navran.

  They finished their meal with only the lightest conversation. The sun’s last red light was fading in the west when Sadja stood and dismissed his servants. To Mandhi he said, “Follow me into the garden, if you will.”

  They descended a staircase from the rooftop dining room towards an inner garden. They passed several pairs of saluting guards and entered at last on a path of white sand that wandered through the torch-lit garden. Palms and golden shower trees rustled overhead in the gentle wind, and a few loose flower petals drifted down in the torchlight. Sadja walked beside Mandhi, and they meandered through the garden for several minutes without saying anything.

  “We have an enemy,” he said at last.

  “We Uluriya have many enemies. But I don’t know that we share them with you.”

  “You do now. The guards that Bhargasa fought off, or rather, their master. If he didn’t know of me already, he does now.” He paused for a moment, searching the darkening sky for something then shook his head. “I’m sorry. This is not how I envisioned meeting you.”

  “And what did you envision?”

  “First, I envisioned meeting your father Cauratha or brother Navran.”

  Mandhi considered a few different responses to this. The truth seemed to be her most potent weapon. “My father is an ailing old man, and my brother is a gambler and a drunk. You’re better off meeting with me.”

  Sadja laughed. “Forthrightness is not a quality that I meet much in my position. What a delightful change.”

  “I hope you don’t underestimate me for it.”

  “No underestimation is intended.”

  “What I meant was, don’t call me delightful. You may think of me as an insignificant girl from a strange cult, but I have lived most of my life traveling Amur, meeting merchants, conducting business, directing saghada, and doing all the work that my father cannot do. You wanted to speak with a leader of the Uluriya? Here I am.”

  Sadja studied her in the lamplight with a direct, shameless gaze. “I wouldn’t dare think you insignificant. If I did, I wouldn’t have invited you to talk to me. But you deserve an explanation.”

  “You might start by explaining how you found out Navran’s name, and why you called for him.”

  “I have the gift of farsight.” He shrugged with something like embarrassment, as if admitting to owning a troublemaking slave.

  “You don’t hear of many kings with that gift.”

  “I was never supposed to be king. That was my brother, ten years older than me and groomed for the throne. I was, well—when I told you the story of Khaldi, it wasn’t idle conversation. As a young man I aspired to follow in Khaldi’s footsteps and ascend to be one of the Powers.”

  “A modest goal,” Mandhi said. “Why didn’t you settle for being Emperor?”

  Sadja laughed. “I’ll accept the empire as my consolation. But as a child my teachers recognized an affinity for the ways of the thikratta, and I was sent to Ternas to learn what I could from the monks, with the thought that I would be made a eunuch and return to serve my brother the king. No, don’t make that face—being a eunuch is a better fate than many younger brothers to a powerful king get.
In Ternas I became a disciple of Gocam. You know of Gocam, I believe.”

  Mandhi raised an eyebrow. “I had wondered how you knew Gocam. He counseled my father for decades.”

  “Then I envy your father. My time with Gocam was short, because my training had barely begun when news reached Ternas that my father and brother had both perished while at sea in a squall. In a day’s time I went from being a thikratta-in-training to being the king of Davrakhanda.”

  “And then, from your lofty seat as king of one of the great cities of Amur, you foresaw that a drunken Uluriya named Navran was indispensable to you?”

  Sadja laughed. “My gift is poorly developed, alas. I barely sent my men in time to find you and Taleg, for example. But as for what I foresaw…. Follow me.”

  They stopped in front of a niche set into the wall of the garden. Within the niche was a sculpture of Ashti, two of her arms crossed before her in the Nectar posture, and the array of her other thousand hands forming a disk behind her shoulders. Offerings of butter and rice lay cold on the ground before her.

  “What is this?” Mandhi asked. “I’ve seen shrines to Ashti.”

  “Do you see the fresco painted behind her?”

  The interior of the niche was painted in flaking colors, which were initially difficult to distinguish in the torchlight. After a moment the shapes resolved, and Mandhi made out the image of Kushma and the serpent in battle: Kushma, a fearsome figure with a fanged mouth, wearing a necklace of skulls, a harvester’s knife in his hand, and his legs splattered in blood up to the knees. He pierced the serpent with his knife, wearing an exultant expression of joy made more terrible by his fangs, burying the serpent’s body in the earth, while the head of the serpent re-emerged from the ground to bite Kushma’s feet. Mandhi bit her tongue and glared for a moment at Sadja.

  “I know only a little of your doctrines,” Sadja said, “but I believe this scene is not unfamiliar to you.”

  “It was Ulaur, not Kushma, who bound the serpent beneath the earth. But I’ve seen this version of the image before. And Ulaur is the light unborn, the Power of the heavens. Not this terrifying monstrosity. It’s a corruption.” She almost mentioned the ancient frescoes of the Ruin, but restrained herself. She did not need to prove herself to him.

  Sadja looked up into the skies. “It’s here,” he said. He motioned for Mandhi to follow then continued speaking. “I am not a dhorsha, and you are not a saghada, so perhaps we can leave the religious argument to our respective priests. But surely you see the similarity. A fearsome power struck the serpent and bound her to sleep beneath the earth, whether we attribute that fact to Kushma or to Ulaur.”

  “If you’re going to talk this way, I don’t see how we can avoid a religious argument.”

  They had climbed the stairs to a darkened alcove along the lower wall of the castle, sheltered from every hint of torchlight. Sadja pointed into the east. “Never mind Kushma and the serpent, then. Do you see the Serpent in the sky?”

  The Serpent consisted of five bright stars in an arc through the western sky, visible just above the black of the garden wall. Mandhi nodded.

  “Look closely between the second and the third stars. Do you see a small red star?”

  “I do,” Mandhi said with surprise. It was very faint, a tiny chip of ruby barely perceptible among the brighter points of the Serpent’s body.

  “My astrologer tells me that this star is new. A year ago it was not there. It has no name and is not listed on any chart.”

  A chill of fear and curiosity passed through Mandhi. “An omen?”

  “An omen of something. A point of blood in the heart of the Serpent. I am not an astrologer, so I don’t dare make any detailed prediction. But no one who sees that star could doubt its significance. The only reason it hasn’t yet caused an uproar, I suspect, is that very few have yet noticed it.”

  She folded her arms and studied Sadja closely. He did not flinch at the directness of her gaze. “You, Sadja-dar, are the one with farsight. You tell me what this means.”

  He smiled, the curve of his lips barely perceptible beneath his mustache. “Change. But you hardly need an astrologer to tell you that. As for myself, after I first saw the mark, I began to meditate again, practicing the union with the Powers which the thikratta teach. Meditation clarifies both farsight and ordinary wisdom. And so I learned two things: first, than an Uluriya named Navran would be the spark that lights the fire to follow, and that he and I shared an enemy. Unfortunately, I was too late to save him from capture by that enemy.”

  Mandhi swallowed a laugh. “Navran is what? And why do you consider the enemy of the Uluriya to be your enemy?”

  “Am I being too oblique? Then let me be direct: I believe that Navran will restore the Kingdom of Manjur.”

  A mixture of a shout and a laugh escaped from Mandhi’s throat. “How do you even know of that doctrine? We Uluriya don’t speak of it to outsiders.”

  “I’ve taken these months to learn everything I could about your people.”

  “I don’t believe that we appreciate the attention. We have enough trouble with the emperors as it is, and we don’t need them thinking that we’re attempting to reestablish the Kingdom in Virnas.”

  Sadja raised his hand. “Please. I’m not trying to endanger you. I actually want to be your ally.”

  “Now? With Navran? Perhaps you need to develop your farsight more.”

  “Ah, but you overestimate your danger.” He tugged at the corner of his mustache and glanced around, as if to be sure that no servants overheard. His voice dropped, and he spoke quietly. “It takes no farsight to see that this emperor may be the last, or at least that the empire will change after his reign. Surely you see it in the displeasure of the people. What you may not see is how many of the kings of the great cities and other nobles are eager to get out from under the imperial yoke, and how corrupt the imperial system has become.”

  “Wasn’t it always corrupt?” Mandhi said ironically.

  “Not like this. The imperial censor comes through Davrakhanda every third year to collect the Emperor’s poll tax. But I have an easy arrangement with him: instead of counting, say, two hundred people in a village, we only count one hundred fifty. But we collect the whole tax, and the surplus is split between the censor and me. I would be shocked if the other vassal kings of the empire didn’t do likewise. In the same vein, I give up men from my lands for the levies of the imperial guard, but I bribe the inspectors to ignore the fact that the militia of Davrakhanda is three times larger than what the Emperor allows me. In these and a thousand other ways the empire is weakened, and the hands of kings grow stronger. And Jandurma-daridarya, whose name we say with fear and trembling—” he added the customary epithet with an ironic wave of the hand “—is very old and feeble. The rumors which reach me from Majasravi suggest that he is entirely under the control of the Emperor’s Hand.”

  “And what does this have to do with Navran?”

  “He is the chisel which will shatter the stone of the empire. Yes, this I do know through farsight, but I know it nonetheless. I am surer of this than I am of anything else. Even Gocam agrees with me.”

  Gocam had said nothing of the sort to Cauratha, as far as Mandhi knew, but he had sent them looking for Navran. It wasn’t enough to make her trust Sadja, but it was enough to keep her listening. “Very well, suppose that I believe you. What is your interest? What do you want?”

  Sadja looked in both directions to ensure again that they were alone. “It’s very simple. I want Navran to become the tool that splits the empire. And to ensure that happens, I will help the Uluriya keep the south so I can rule the north.”

  Mandhi laughed. “So I have to give you something I don’t have, in exchange for something you’ll never get?”

  “Don’t be so sure I’ll never get it. My full name is Aidasa Sadja darya Davrakhandaha. The kings of Davrakhanda are a cadet line from the first emperor. We have a better claim to the Ushpanditya than the Kupshira lineage that clai
ms it now. If the empire shatters, I’ll be well positioned to gather the pieces. I’ve been preparing for years.”

  “I was right when I said your ambitions were modest. But invoking Aidasa doesn’t endear you to me. Aidasa was the one who first persecuted us, long before Ruyam was born.”

  “That was two hundred years ago.”

  “We haven’t forgotten.”

  Sadja grimaced. He looked out over the black harbor and pulled on his mustache, then closed his eyes. A long silence followed. Finally, Mandhi spoke.

  “Sadja-dar, let me tell you how I see things. My brother, my husband, and I were invited from Virnas by a man we had never met, claiming an interest which he had no right to have. On our way to meet him, my brother was kidnapped, and my husband was nearly killed. And now that I’m here, you tell me that my brother is going to destroy the empire and restore the Kingdom of Manjur and you want to help him do so in exchange for getting to rule the other half of Amur, an exchange so fantastical that I’m still not sure I believe it. So I have to consider the possibility that you are the cause of all these misfortunes, and that this conversation is part of some imperial scheme to find the Heir of Manjur and finally kill him. Or maybe your meditation has driven you mad. In either case, if you want something from me and from the Uluriya, you have to give me a reason to trust you.”

  “Does saving Taleg not count for something?”

  “It’s a start. You might continue by getting back Navran. If what you say is true, then you’ll need him anyway.”

  “Navran is in the power of our enemy.”

  “You said that once before, but you didn’t say who the enemy was. The Emperor? Evidently you’ve been scheming against him—”

  “No, not the Emperor. The Emperor doesn’t care about the Uluriya, and by all accounts he’s been feeble and impotent for years. It’s someone else in the imperial court. I suspect the Emperor’s Hand, though from this distance it’s hard to be sure. Whoever it is has surely seen the red star and is preparing for the breakup of the empire, just like me. Someone who has the gift of farsight, or has a thikratta advisor with that gift, and knows the name of Navran.”