But now that childless rival comforted the soldiers of a distant barracks while she basked in Xiane’s favor. As for the cooks—well, good cooks were harder to come by than concubines. She’d forgiven them after they’d been beaten. It had been Murohshei’s inspired idea to force them to eat a millet bowl each of the same foul stuff they’d inflicted on her. They would never cross her again; they knew how lightly they’d gotten off and were grateful.
“Lady.” The soft voice interrupted her memories. “Lady, your bath is ready. Will it please you to enter it now?”
Shei-Luin nodded. The woman brushing her hair hastily pinned it up again to keep it dry. Shei-Luin stood, ran a hand over her flat stomach; two children and still the figure of a maiden.
“When Murohshei returns, send him in to me,” she ordered as the bath attendants handed her down into the bathing pool. She sank into the hot water and sighed with pleasure. This was one of her chief delights; as a lesser concubine from a noble but exiled family, she’d had to share a bathing tub with at least two other women. Since no one else liked a bath as hot as she did, she was always outvoted, and the water was always too cold for her.
I don’t think I shall move for a long, long time, she thought with lazy indulgence and leaned back, closing her eyes.
It was some time later that Murohshei returned to her chambers—not until the women were almost through toweling her dry. Zyuzin followed him; the boy carried his zhansjen under one arm. Murohshei touched the younger eunuch’s cheek lightly. Zyuzin smiled and fluttered his eyelashes a moment at his lover before sitting down. He ran delicate fingers over the strings.
“And?” Shei-Luin asked.
“A messenger was sent to the Phoenix Lord at the Temple of Ancestors this morning. It’s only the second day of offerings, Lady; you have ample time to prepare for him,” Murohshei said. His voice betrayed nothing.
Good; I have until tomorrow night, then, for my reprieve. He must finish the ceremonies there and they are long and tedious, Shei-Luin thought. Then I must enchant him. I wondered if he bothered to visit the boys while he was there; their pavilion is near the temple.
“I await that auspicious moment eagerly.” Her eyes said, Go. Find out everything. Find out what I want to know.
Murohshei bowed and left once more.
Shei-Luin stretched languorously on the table in the bathing room, reveling in the feel of the slave’s strong fingers as the woman kneaded fragrant oils into her skin. Zyuzin sat nearby, fingers seducing a tune from the zhansjen, his voice raised in a love song, his plain, round face transformed with the joy of singing.
His voice is a gift of the Phoenix, Shei-Luin thought sleepily. Though Zyuzin was now sixteen, he still had the beautiful, clear tones of a younger boy. It was what the eunuch masters hoped to preserve each time a boy singer was castrated. More often than not something changed in a boy’s voice as he aged, the precious clarity slowly blurring with the turning of the seasons until it disappeared like a snowflake in the hand. That Zyuzin was here was but further proof of the Phoenix Lord’s favor. Now the Jewel sang just for her.
And it pleased her that Murohshei had found a lover in the boy. Faithful heart that he was, he deserved this happiness—however long it lasted. Shei-Luin was all too familiar with the shifting loves among the eunuchs. For Murohshei’s sake—and Zyuzin’s—she hoped this was one of the rare matches that held.
The slave found a particularly tight knot in her muscles. Shei-Luin made a noise of protest and the talented fingers gently eased the stiffness out.
She heard the door to the outer chamber open, but there had been no rapid tip-tapping signal that warned it was Murohshei or another servant. This was an intruder.
Who dares? she thought, waving the bath slave off, raising herself angrily onto her elbows. Who dares disturb me at my bath? She took breath to order the interloper whipped.
A startled chirping of her women’s voices from the outer chamber, and a sudden terrified silence brought her sitting upright upon the table, the words stillborn on her tongue. Zyuzin’s song ended in mid-note.
“Precious Flower,” the despised voice called and the Emperor of Jehanglan surged through the doorway. The bath slave and Zyuzin, zhansjen hastily set aside, went to their knees and bowed, foreheads touching the teak wood of the floor again and again.
No—it couldn’t be. Astonished fury seethed within her breast. She fought it down before he could see it.
Her emotions now under iron control, Shei-Luin gracefully descended from the massage table, deliberately heedless of her nakedness. She knew what effect it would have on Xiane. He would see only that—not the anger that she knew she could not keep out of her eyes.
A flush rose along the high cheekbones of his long, horsey face. “Out,” he said. “All of you—out.”
The servants scuttled from the room, their eyes averted from the Phoenix Lord. Shei-Luin waited, eyes cast down now with girlish modesty, a tumble of black hair falling over her shoulder to conceal her breasts. “My lord,” she said.
Xiane held out a trembling hand. “Here—come here. It’s been too long, Precious Flower.”
She laid her hand in his, forcing herself not to wince when he crushed her fingers. “August Lord, I thought you were at the temple of your ancestors this day.” Thrice a fool! Xiane, not even you could be stupid enough to cut short those ceremonies—could you?
His presence was answer enough. Did not Jhanun and his coterie hate her enough that this idiot must give them more reason? She ground her teeth behind her soft smile.
“Most High, you must have ridden hard to return here so quickly from the Khorushin foothills.”
Which was easy enough to guess; the Emperor of the Four Quarters of the Earth and Phoenix Lord of the Skies stank of horses and sweat like a slave from the stables. Xiane hadn’t even stopped to bathe before coming to her.
She breathed through her mouth. But she couldn’t help asking, “Have you seen our sons? Is little Xu’s leg—”
He pulled her impatiently into the next room. “Yes, yes, I saw them,” he said as he yanked at his robes. “They’re well. But Xu will bear a scar on his leg. Stupid woman, to let a burning coal fall on him like that.”
The outer robe tore free under the wrenching fingers. The inner robe was more resistant; when she went to help him, Xiane pushed her down onto the bed amid the fragrant silks. He knelt by her feet and hiked the offending garment up. She watched him, unmoved, as he loosened the drawstring on his baggy breeches.
He continued, “You were too easy with her, Precious Flower. Strangling was a mercy; she should have been given the death of a thousand cuts.” Then he fell upon her, toying with her hair, running possessive hands down her body, fondling her small feet.
As he murmured idiocies over each delicate toe, Shei-Luin thought, I know how Tsiaa should have died, pig, if she had truly been clumsy. I promised her as gentle a death as possible. May it not raise suspicion and undo me—but what else could I do? I could not let her suffer. She was mine.
She would pay him back. She smiled and opened her arms to him. “Come to me, my lord. Perhaps we can make another son to prove your glory to the world.”
Silence hung over the Zharmatian camp like a shroud, broken only by a faint sound of drumming. Even the horse herds ringing the camp were quiet, as if they knew that something was wrong. Somewhere among the horsehide tents a baby suddenly squalled; just as suddenly, the noise stopped. Though it was nearing dusk, no cooking fires were lit.
Here and there some of the People gathered together, tight little knots of men or women, their heads together, whispering. The knots made way for Yemal as he strode through the camp, his hunting leathers stained with the sweat of a fast, hard journey. Wary faces turned to watch him and the young men who walked behind him.
Yemal saw knowledge in the eyes that looked down in submission when they met his.
The old wolf is dying.
Here walks the new leader and his pack-brothers.
Here walks power.
Those eyes were right. Yemal reached the door of his father’s tent, his foster brother Dzeduin on his heels. From behind the closed flap came the drumming he’d heard. On either side of the door sat his father’s lesser wives, blood dripping from self-inflicted cuts and scratches on faces and arms. Some sobbed in honest grief; most merely looked lost or frightened. One or two of the young ones eyed him boldly.
And sitting among these lesser wives was the mother of his brother, Yesuin. Yemal smiled coldly at her. She stared back, her face hard. But behind the hardness was fear.
She was wise to fear; unlike her son, Yesuin’s mother was no fool. Yemal’s smile widened as he pushed aside the flap to the tent and went in, Dzeduin following.
The stench of sickness hit him like a blow. Yemal nearly gagged, controlled it with a fierce effort; it would not do to show weakness before the ones waiting here.
Especially before the dying one. His father lay on his sleeping furs, swaddled in blankets like a baby despite the mildness of the evening and the stuffy heat inside the tent. Oduin’s eyes burned with pain; one of his foster brothers, Kiu, supported him while he drank from a horn that Mejilu, his chief wife and Yemal’s mother, held for him. A thin trickle of white mharoush, the fermented milk drink of the tribes, dribbled from the corner of his mouth. But from the way his father’s eyes cleared, Yemal knew there was more in the horn than mharoush. Poppy, no doubt, and enough to send a healthy man into the realm of dreams—or death. To a man wracked by the demon that ate Oduin, it merely brought a temporary respite. When the horn was emptied, his mother wiped the milk away, and Kiu helped Oduin settle back against the pile of cushions that propped him up slightly.
“Father,” Yemal said, “I am here.” He glanced at his mother; she rose quietly and withdrew to the half circle of watchers ringing the walls. This was men’s business.
For a moment he thought his father didn’t hear him. Then Oduin turned to look at him. How did he still live, Yemal thought. The demon inside Oduin had eaten him away until his head looked like a thin, worn drumskin stretched over a skull. Yemal knew that were he to tear away the blankets, the ravaged body beneath would look the same. Only the eyes, glittering fiercely in the light of the oil lanterns hanging from the roof poles, looked alive—at least until the poppy wore off once more.
Those eyes regarded him. Yemal bowed to his father, then moved to kneel at the foot of the bed. He sat back on his heels and waited.
“So you shall have your wish at last,” his father rasped. “You will be temur.”
“As you have raised me to be,” Yemal countered.
Oduin snorted; it turned into a hacking cough. When the paroxysm was over, he said, “And what will you do when you are temur at last?”
Yemal smiled slightly. “You know well what I will do, Father. What you should have done years ago.”
Shriveled lips drew back in a wolf’s snarl. “So—you still intend to wage war upon the Jehangli? And what of your brother?”
“My brother has turned Jehangli,” Yemal said with a sneer. “You’ve heard how he lolls in the palace with the emperor, living a life of decadence fit only for a eunuch, not for a man! If he dies, it will be only a Jehangli that dies—and that is as nothing.”
Oduin sat up a little straighter and raged at him then, in a thin, wheezing voice that had no force behind it. Yemal sat through it without moving. When it was over, his father’s eyes were glazing once more with pain.
“Lie down, lie down,” Kiu urged. The old man flashed a reproachful look at Yemal as he settled his foster brother against the pillows and drew the blankets up. “Rest now.”
Oduin closed his eyes. Soon the tent was quiet, save for the sound of his final battle: each wheezing, rattling breath as the temur fought to hold on to life.
A pounding on the door of their sleeping chamber brought Linden out of bed with a curse. Maurynna was right behind him.
“Who is it?” he growled. A quick look at the window told him that it was still far from dawn.
“It’s Eustan from the ship,” a boy’s voice called. “The cabin boy—remember? The captain sent me to tell you that the wind’s shifted, and if everyone hurries, we can be off on the morning’s tide.”
For a moment Linden was too stunned to speak.
“Hello?” the voice called. “Did you hear me?”
Linden pulled himself together enough to answer, “We heard. Have you told the others?” He tossed up a globe of coldfire.
“Not yet. Now that I know you’re up for certain, I’ll rouse them as well.” The sound of quick footsteps faded away down the hall.
Somehow a cold pit had opened in his stomach. Linden turned to find Maurynna standing in the middle of the floor. She was deathly pale.
But the look in her eyes was calm and resigned, and when he opened his arms and she stepped into them, only the rapid beating of her heart hinted at her fear.
He held her tightly, unwilling to release, until she said, “There’s still much to do.”
“Aye, there is. We’d best …” He let her go, and they set about packing as quickly as they could.
A wild howl of grief snapped Yemal out of his half doze, sitting by his father’s feet. It was followed an instant later by more howls and long, quavering cries. Yemal rubbed his eyes and looked at the still figure in the bed.
His father’s eyes were open and glassy, staring unseeing at the ceiling. Yemal heaved himself to his feet, stiff after the long deathwatch. He drew his belt knife and made the first of the ritual cuts on his arms, then his cheeks.
As if his movement were a signal, other knives came out, and other arms, other faces were slashed. Blood flowed like red tears.
Then Yemal went to kneel by his father’s side. As he shut the open eyelids, blood dripped down his arm and hand to streak Oduin’s face.
“Good-bye, Father,” he murmured. “I am temur now. And as soon as your death rites are over, so is the treaty.”
The sweet morning song of a bird woke her. Shei-Luin grimaced at the weight of Xiane’s arm across her chest, crushing her breasts. She eased it aside, pausing as the tone of his snoring changed. For a moment she thought he would wake. But though he snorted and snuffled and groaned, Xiane slid back into sleep. Shei-Luin crept from the bed. Casting a silk robe about herself, she left the sleeping chamber.
She wanted a bath.
Murohshei tended a teapot in the other room. Without a word he offered her a cup of fragrant soonan tea, its smoky scent tickling her nose as she breathed it in. Let the courtiers turn up their noses at it, she thought, because the Zharmatians drink it. This was the tea of her childhood. It comforted her.
She drank, long and deep. “Ah, thank you, my Murohshei. That was good. Now, what news have you for me?”
He told her of the many little scandals that were the underlife of the court and made her laugh. Then, taking a deep breath, he quietly gave the news that Yesuin’s father, old Oduin, who had been temur of the Zharmatians for as long as anyone could remember, was rumored to be gravely ill, even dying.
Shei-Luin went very still. She knew what that meant. “If Oduin dies, then Yemal leads the tribes.” Fear wove a cold knot in her stomach. Yemal free upon the Western Plains, fretting at the treaty forced upon the Zharmatians in his father’s time. Yesuin here in the palace, hostage to that same treaty—and no love lost between the brothers. All that stood between them was their dying father. “Yemal will break the treaty.”
Of what use is a hostage then? Shei-Luin’s mind said. Yesuin will be—She could not say the words even in her mind. They hung on the air like an executioner’s spear and pierced her heart.
“But there may be worse, Lady,” said Murohshei.
Shei-Luin could only stare; what could be worse than a threat to Yesuin’s life?
The eunuch took the empty teacup from her cold hands. “Do you remember the Lady Nama, Favored One?”
Shei-Luin frowned, thinking. “Ah, yes; the niece th
at Jhanun foisted upon Xiane for a concubine. A pretty little thing with the heart of a rabbit. What about her?”
Murohshei met her eyes. “She’s with child. It was confirmed this morning.”
“That’s impossible!” Shei-Luin blurted. “Xiane cannot father a child!”
She stopped. No, Xiane couldn’t father a child. At least that was how she interpreted the prophecy that had brought Lura-Sharal and her to the palace: only her sister could bear a child by Xiane. Her mind darted back to the feast of Lady Riya-Akono. Jhanun must have guessed her secret that day, and decided her game could be played by two; she would never believe that little rabbit would have had the nerve to seek out a lover on her own—not with the punishments awaiting an unfaithful concubine. Likely Nama’s uncle had forced some Zharmatian, captured just for this purpose, upon her. Shei-Luin wondered if the poor wretch’s body would ever be found now that his job was done.
And the crowning irony was that she couldn’t denounce the girl, not without giving herself and her own children away. No, she and Jhanun would dance around each other, each keeping the other’s secret though it was bitter as bile.
Shei-Luin clenched her teeth in frustration. Remembering how she had been guarded throughout her pregnancies, she knew it would be impossible to do anything to Nama—soon to be Nama noh Jhi.
Yet she had to. While she had been the only one to bear an heir to the Phoenix Throne, there had been no question of who might wear the robes of the empress someday. But now, if Nama bore a son …
What contest would there be between a woman of one of the great noble houses and the daughter of an exile? A daughter born, no less, of a Zharmatian concubine.
Already many of the ministers feared her for her influence on Xiane. If she—and her sons—became expendable, and the ministers supported Jhanun …
I will kill Nama, Shei-Luin swore. For the sake of my children, I will kill her and her babe with her.
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