Coin of Kings (The Powers of Amur Book 2)

by J. S. Bangs

“Infiltration is something that occurred to me as well. Lushatha-kha, majakhadir of Kaugali, is my eye within the city. And he guides my own spies, loyal khadir and majakhadir who bring me reports. But so far I have been unsuccessful in finding a way to pry open the Dhigvaditya. Why would you do better?”

  Kirshta stepped forward and touched Chadram’s arm. Chadram glanced over, and Kirshta whispered to him, “I could go.”

  “You?” Praudhu said with a contemptuous glare. “I thought you were a thikratta, not a spy.”

  Kirshta bowed deeply to the Prince. He had spoken loud enough to Chadram for the Prince to hear, hoping that Praudhu would address him and thereby give him license to speak. “I have friends among the servants within the Ushpanditya. I could infiltrate with them. And once inside, I could demonstrate my ability with farsight and the mastery of fire. Dumaya would recognize me as Ruyam’s servant and take me in.”

  “And then what will you do?”

  “Once I am trusted,” Kirshta said, “I will open the gates to you, my Prince, or convince Dumaya to do it.”

  “That could take weeks,” Praudhu said.

  “A battle would take just as long to prepare,” Chadram said, “and have less chance of success. And we don’t have the men for a siege.”

  Praudhu eyed Chadram skeptically. “So you want to send your thikratta into the Dhigvaditya as a spy?”

  Chadram hesitated. “I would regret it if something happened to him.” He looked at Kirshta. “This was his idea. He hadn’t spoken of it before now.”

  A look of surprise crossed Praudhu’s face. “Is that true?”

  Kirshta bowed his head. “Yes, my Prince.”

  “An excess of initiative is a dangerous quality in a servant,” Praudhu said. “Perhaps you should think more carefully before volunteering for work such as this.”

  “My initiative, dear Prince, is precisely what allowed me to acquire the arts of the thikratta from Ruyam.”

  “Are you contradicting me?” Praudhu’s tone skirted the edge between amusement and annoyance.

  “No, my Prince. I merely offer to put my initiative in your service.” Not least because entering the Ushpanditya would bring him to Vapathi.

  Praudhu looked from Kirshta to Chadram, a slender smile on his face. “Well, if the little thikratta thinks he can infiltrate the Ushpanditya, I’ll let him try.”

  Chadram seemed vexed. He glanced aside at Kirshta, his eyes burning with displeasure, but he nodded. “My Prince, I can hardly withhold Kirshta’s service from you once he has offered himself. Accept him with my blessing.”

  “I shall,” Praudhu said. “It’s better than anything else I’ve been offered since leaving Gumadha.”

  He tapped a silver gong next to him and ordered the servant girl who bowed at the door, “Bring some tea for our guests. Sit down, all of you. Now that I’ve dealt with my most urgent concerns, I want to hear about Virnas and whatever else you can tell me about the southern half of my empire.”

  The two men arranged themselves on cushions. As they sat, Chadram grabbed Kirshta shoulder and whispered in his ear, “You be careful with volunteering things for the Prince.”

  “I know what I’m doing,” Kirshta said. “I want to go in.”

  Chadram accepted a cup of tea from the serving girl, then turned back to Kirshta with a bitter glare. “Just don’t get yourself killed.”

  Navran

  Navran examined his mother’s room for the last time.

  The furnishing were modest but comfortable: carpets on the floor, a padded bed, a chest for her belongings, some silver lamps. Too much luxury would overwhelm her. It had overwhelmed him at first. But she was the queen mother, as strange as the title sounded in his ear. Her room was adjacent to the royal apartments where he slept. He had wanted to put her in the empty queen’s room, which abutted his and shared an antechamber, but the palace house-master had convinced him to keep the queen’s chamber open for when he should marry.

  Perhaps he would marry soon. His mother could see the wedding—

  He brushed the thought aside. First he had to receive her in the palace.

  He turned to the messenger and the maid waiting in the doorway. “The room is good. Where is she?”

  The maid bowed in relief. The messenger nodded and said, “Coming through the gates of Virnas. We sent the palanquin after her.”

  At least her entrance into the city would be comfortable. “To the courtyard, then.”

  He had learned the protocol for receiving the queen mother from the converted khadir, and then demanded that they change half of it. His mother certainly had no idea what they were supposed to do, and she would be even more uncomfortable than he would with an excess of pomp. When he got to the courtyard, he saw exactly what he wanted: his personal guard forming an aisle from the outer gate to the entrance, with cushions of silk set at the foot of the stairs where his mother could kneel to him, and he to her. The old saghada Bhudman stood next to the cushions to bless her to enter the purified interior of the palace. The rest of the protocols—the incense and offerings of flowers, the obeisance of the khadir and their wives—those they abandoned.

  A blast on the ram’s horn sounded above the gate. An escort of two guards preceded a palanquin with blue curtains, carried by four men stepping sharply. They carried the palanquin to the foot of the stairs and set it gently on the ground.

  A herald stepped forward, “Bhundi-dar, mother of Navran-dar the Heir of Manjur and the King of Virnas, approaches the king. Stand and behold with awe.”

  With awe, Navran thought. If anyone would be awed, it would be his mother, alas.

  But no one stirred. The curtains did not move. The silence stretched awkwardly.

  “Send a maid,” Navran whispered to Bhudman. “Someone help her.”

  Bhudman gestured for one of the palace maids standing behind the line of soldiers. The girl stepped forward and parted the curtain. She said something inaudible. Then a shaking, withered hand came out from the curtain, and Bhundi emerged.

  Horror filled him.

  They had said she was ill, but well enough to walk. But, no—this woman looked half dead. Her cheeks were hollowed, her limbs thin, and she shook as if palsied. Stepping out of the palanquin, she nearly collapsed into the arms of the maid.

  He forgot protocol. Down the stairs, ignoring the flares of pain from his feet. He pushed past the guards and grabbed his mother’s free hand. The maid let go, and he pulled her into his arms.

  “Mother,” Navran said. His breath left him. “You aren’t well.”

  “Navran?” she said in a tone of total amazement. “Aye, Navran. It’s true. I didn’t believe them when they told me.”

  “It’s true,” he said. “I’m here.”

  She trembled and wept. She kissed his cheek, leaving his face wet with her tears. “How? What happened? When I saw ya—”

  “Too much to tell, Mama. Hush, I’ll explain later. But I promised to come back, to take care of ya. I’m keeping my promise.” He paused. “But what happened? You look—”

  She closed her eyes and rested her head against his chest. “Hard road. Let me sit.”

  “No. We go inside.”

  He glanced around at the maids and soldiers watching them with uncertainty. None of this was according to protocol.

  “Carry her,” he said. “To her room.”

  “I can stand,” Bhundi said.

  Navran didn’t believe her. But a pair of young women came forward and took each of her hands, and between the two of them she did succeed in stepping forward slowly, painfully, and ascending the stairs into the palace. Bhudman stepped in behind her and sprinkled her with the tincture of milk and ram’s blood, purifying her with his prayers.

  The maids carried her into the inner chambers and laid her on the bed. She collapsed onto the cotton-filled bedroll, breathing heavily, her eyes glassy and strained. She gave no signs of even noticing the silk coverings and silver accoutrements of the room. As soon as the maids had arr
anged her in the bed, Navran pushed them aside and knelt beside her.

  “Mama,” he said. Speaking to her, the upriver dialect of Idirja came unbidden to his tongue. “I’m sorry. Ya shouldn’t…”

  She shook her head. “No being sorry, my son. Ya took me.”

  “If ya was so weak…”

  She closed her eyes. Her breath came heavy. “Glad to see ya. Look very fine.”

  He bowed his head. “Ya rest now.”

  He held her hand. Her eyes didn’t open again, and her breath settled into an even rhythm, roughened by the heavy laboring of her lungs. An illness of the breath. She should never have traveled.

  He stayed kneeling by the bed until he was sure that she slept. When he rose, he saw the maids and two of his personal guard crowded around the door to the chamber.

  “Take care of her,” he told the maids. He pushed past them and confronted the guards. “Where are her escorts?”

  “Right here,” someone said, and a man about Navran’s age stepped forward and bowed from the waist.

  “Mandhi send you to Idirja?”

  “Yes, my lord and king,” the man said.

  “And you made her travel to Virnas in this state?”

  “No, my lord and king,” the man said. He bowed his head and clasped his hands over his belly in a plaintive version of the Grass posture. “She was not so ill when we found her. The saghada of Idirja said that she was nearly recovered. But her illness grew worse again as we approached Virnas.”

  “You… I hope you haven’t killed her.”

  “My lord and king,” the man said and dropped to his knees. He bent and kissed Navran’s feet. “Be not angry. We tried—”

  “Get up,” Navran said. He wanted to chastise him further, but his heart wasn’t in it. They had done what they were told to do. Worry bubbled in his veins. “Send for the doctor. And the saghada for their prayers. Where is Bhudman?”

  “I’ll find him,” one of the maids said and scurried off.

  Navran leaned against the wall and breathed heavily. His burns were aching. “I’m going to my chamber,” he said. “Call me when the doctor is done.”

  * * *

  An oil lamp burned on a chain above Navran’s mother’s bed. It swayed in the gentle breeze coming through the window, making the yellow light in the room rock gently. The effect was hypnotic and peaceful. Navran held his mother’s hand. The silk sheets rose and fell with her labored breathing.

  Dastha stood at the door, nominally to guard the king and his mother. In reality Navran kept him there to see a familiar face. They hadn’t said anything all night.

  “Five days,” Navran said. “And she hasn’t risen from the bed.”

  “The doctor said it was bad,” Dastha said quietly. He leaned against the edge of the door, his hands resting on his belly. He watched Navran and his mother quietly.

  “I brought her here. My fault.”

  “She was sick before she left Idirja.”

  “She was getting better.”

  Dastha shook his head. “You don’t know that. And you had a debt to her.”

  Navran murmured. He stroked his mother’s hand. “I did.”

  They lapsed back into silence. Bhundi turned halfway over, her lips moving silently. Her breath rattled in her throat.

  “Where is your mother?” Navran asked Dastha.

  “Mine? In Gurudi. But my mother and my father are still alive.”

  “Not far from here?”

  “A long morning’s walk from Virnas.”

  “You should go visit them.”

  “Navran-dar,” Dastha said reluctantly, “you don’t have to make up for your mother’s illness by sending me to visit mine.”

  “I don’t?”

  His mother turned in the bed again. Navran pulled the sheet more tightly over her.

  “You don’t,” Dastha said with serious finality. “It’s not your fault she fell ill.”

  “Maybe,” Navran said. He looked to Dastha, dimly lit in the rocking yellow lamplight, stripes of light and shadow moving across his face. “But the rest of it is my fault.”

  “The rest of what?”

  He stroked her hand. “How she lived. Poor. I left them… how many years ago? Twelve. Father was a drunk, and soon so was I. I ran away to escape. The ring was the only good thing I ever got from him. And after I ran, my father died, my mother became a pauper. Don’t know how she survived. Then Mandhi found me, told me what the ring was. And when I passed through Idirja I swore that I would do right by my mother. Since I hadn’t for many years.”

  He turned his hand palm-up and let the light play across the dark, cool metal of Manjur’s ring. With a quick tug, he pulled it off his flame-scarred fingers and dropped it into his palm. “Had no idea what this was,” he said quietly.

  “It doesn’t look like much,” Dastha agreed.

  Navran laughed. “That’s the joke. If I had known it were valuable, I would have sold it for beer. I kept it because I thought it was worthless. Now, it’s worth my kingdom.”

  Bhundi stirred in the bed. Navran closed his fist over the black iron ring and rested his hand atop hers. A heavy breath rasped in her throat. Her eyes came half-open. Her feeble limbs rustled beneath the silk sheet, and her head turned.

  “Navran,” she said.

  “Mother.”

  She blinked repeatedly as if trying to clear dust from her eyes. Her lips parted and her tongue flexed as if she wanted to say something, but no wordd came out. A rustling groan sounded in her throat.

  “Thank you,” she said at last.

  “For what, mother?”

  She closed her eyes, and her chest heaved. For a moment the only sound was her labored breathing. Navran rested a hand on her limp, moist cheek and pulled away the strands of gray hair lying across her face.

  She opened her eyes again. With great effort she drew in a breath and said in a phlegmy voice, “Glad I saw ya here. Glad I came.”

  “Mother, rest. Didn’t want ya to come here just to be poorly.”

  Her head twitched in a tiny, imperceptible nod. She closed her hand over Navran’s. Her frame shifted under the sheet again. She grew relaxed, and her breathing fell again into the regular rhythm of sleep.

  Navran stayed with her until dawn, when her breathing grew thick and slow. The sky grew yellow in the window. Her breath rustled in her throat. And then it stopped.

  * * *

  The bier was raised outside the palace walls. A small human form wrapped in a white sheet lay atop the stacks of clean wood, sprinkled with myrrh and the tincture of milk and ram’s blood. Navran stood in matching white, mourner’s white, brown hands and the gleaming black ring peeking out from within the folds of white clothing. A blazing brand was in his hand.

  Bhudman was chanting, an incense burner in his hand. The thin gray smoke of the incense dissolved into the afternoon breeze. Crowds of Uluriya pressed around the bier. Navran heard nothing that Bhudman said. His thoughts dissolved like the smoke of the censer.

  Bhudman turned to him and gave him the sign. Navran put the brand to the small branches at the bottom of the bier. A hesitant crackling, as the dried twigs bloomed into flame. The orange heat spread through the kindling and crawled up the branches. In a few breaths the bier was roaring with flames, black woodsmoke swallowing the white incense trickling up from the censor.

  He watched the fire. He saw nothing else. He watched the whole time that the bier burned, branches turning into gleaming coals, white wrappings reduced to ashy dust, his mother reduced to blackened bones resting on a bed of fire.

  When he finally turned to step down from the platform that held the bier, most of the gathered crowd had dispersed. A few remained. He spotted Vaija and Dastha, then Veshta and Srithi.

  Josi stood behind them, her eyes peeking out of the folds of a white mourner’s veil. She met his gaze, and an involuntary smile pulled at the corners of her eyes.

  Navran could not quite bring himself to smile, but he was glad she w
as there.

  Kirshta

  “You,” Apurta said with his lips extended into a pouty sneer, “are an idiot.” He lay on his back on his bedroll in their tent, tossing a blunt arrowhead into the air and catching it.

  Kirshta was dressed in the pauper’s clothes that Chadram had acquired for him. “Tell me why,” he said with a little annoyance. “I’m dying to hear it.”

  “Because you volunteered,” Apurta said. “Do you have a death wish?”

  “Do you have a wish to sit forever at the gates of Majasravi without going in?”

  Apurta didn’t take the bait. He tossed the arrowhead a few more times, snatching it out of the air with a lazy swipe. “Do you know how bored I’m going to be if you die?”

  Kirshta briefly considered the problem of his hair. His wavy black hair made him look like one of the mountain-folk, which made him look like a slave. But there was little that could be done about that now. His frayed dhoti and simple cotton kurta would have to be enough to pass as a peddler. He turned back to Apurta. “So, am I entertaining you now? Maybe you should save up, so that you can live off of these memories after I go into Majasravi.”

  Apurta grinned. “Well, at least you’re good for something.” He paused a moment. “I’ll miss you. Seriously, now, just don’t be an idiot and die or something like that.”

  Kirshta was unsure how to respond. “Why do you care?”

  “You’re interesting,” Apurta said. “Everybody else in the Red Men, they’re just interested in whores and drinking.”

  “I thought you liked drinking.”

  “Shut up,” Apurta said without malice. “It gets boring if that’s all you talk about. But you tell me about thikratta and history and the Ushpanditya.”

  Kirshta snorted. “I think most people would get bored if I talked to them about that. They want the whores and drinking.”

  “Oh yeah?” Apurta rolled over onto his stomach and looked Kirshta in the eye. “How do you know? Do you talk to them?”

  “Well.” Kirshta paused for a moment. “No. Until I met you, I only talked to Ruyam and Vapathi. Or my other masters, before Ruyam took me, but they didn’t buy me for my conversation.”