by J. S. Bangs
“Sure,” Srithi said, handing over the girl with an expression of relief.
“I think she just wants to get out.” Before anyone could object Josi unwrapped Gapthi’s swaddling and laid her on the ground with nothing but the thick cotton cloth bound around her waist. “Now watch this.”
Gapthi rolled immediately onto her belly, felt at the cool grass for a moment, then got up on her knees and crawled forward. She reached Navran’s silk slippers, found the wooden beads on the end of the ties and stuck them into her mouth. She gnawed contentedly.
Amashi let out a gasp of horror. “For shame, Josi,” she said. “Cover that child up and get her away from the Heir.”
“It’s fine,” Navran said. He bent down and picked up the chubby, gurgling girl. Gapthi kicked and let out a cry of annoyance. Navran handed her gently back to Srithi. “So Srithi, are you pleased?”
“With Gapthi? Of course.”
“And with my child?”
“Oh,” Srithi said slowly, and her face darkened. She looked down. “I’m delighted that Mandhi’s well, but I do miss her. I wanted her to be here so badly when Gapthi was born, and I’m sure she missed me when she gave birth.”
“I could send you to visit,” Navran said. “Sadja-dar wouldn’t object. A small group visiting Davrakhanda. The cost wouldn’t be much—”
Josi shot him a glance and cleared her throat.
“—but I should ask my Purse,” Navran finished. He didn’t mention the fact that sending a delegation to Davrakhanda might give him cover for further espionage and finding out what other trap Sadja had laid for him.
Amashi tisked in disapproval. “Surely you wouldn’t send her with such a young child. Wait until she’s weaned, at least—”
“That could be another year!” Srithi cried.
Veshta stepped in. “We’ll discuss it later. I don’t think that Srithi is as fragile as you fear, mother.”
“Navran-dar,” Josi said. “You mentioned cost. Would it be too impertinent to ask to speak to you alone?”
“No,” Navran said, trying not to appear too pleased. “Follow me.”
Josi peeled away from the group and fell into step next to Navran. They wandered deeper into the garden, past the treasure house, to the shadowed corners where there were few others. Dastha quietly fell back to give them privacy.
“If I had a pretext to pry Srithi away from my mother, I’d take it,” Josi said. “Unfortunately I only have excuses to cover myself.”
“Excuses?” Navran said.
“My mother drives Srithi to despair. First she hounded her to have a child, and now she won’t shut up about the need to have a son. Obviously we all want a son, Veshta most of all—but give the girl some time. Veshta’s in no hurry. Srithi is still young. She has plenty of years left for bearing sons.”
“Adjan has a son,” Navran said. “Habdana. Their lineage is not in danger.”
A flash of pain appeared on Josi’s face, which Navran could not interpret. “Habdana, yes,” she said distractedly. “But Veshta is the oldest, and is her favorite. Amashi wants Veshta to have a son.”
“I see.”
Josi fell quiet. She and Navran passed through shadow and torchlight beneath the boughs of orange trees alongside pools of lotuses. The air smelled of jasmine and smoke. Josi seemed pensive. Navran was about to ask what troubled her, when she spoke abruptly.
“Since you pulled me away from my mother to talk about money, perhaps I should say something about money.”
“You pulled me away,” Navran corrected gently.
“Oh, you’re right,” Josi laughed. “Then I suppose I have to say something.”
Navran shrugged. “Or not. Speak to me as my Purse if you insist.”
“Insist? I don’t insist—but I should, so that my mother can’t accuse me of drawing you away under false pretenses. I mean, I would share this with you tomorrow, except that Srithi asked me to stay with her and Amashi all day. I have been thinking about salt. We should have more of it.”
“The food had plenty of salt.” This would be the first time that anyone had ever complained about Paidacha’s cooking.
Josi shook her head. “Oh, it does. Your cook is amazing. I say that every time I eat here, don’t I? Thank you so much for bringing him.”
Navran took a deep breath. It tasted of cold night air and orange blossoms. “It wasn’t my choice. Nor his.”
Josi looked at him quizzically. “What a cryptic thing to say.”
“I’ve never told you…” He thought for a moment whether he ought to defend the memory of Paidacha, shield the man from his past—but no, he would have to speak to Josi of more sensitive things before the night was done. “Paidacha gave me over to Ruyam shortly after I became Heir. His daughter had been threatened, so he poisoned me. The Red Men took me away.”
Josi’s eyes grew wide. “Oh,” she said. “I had no idea.”
“Most don’t. Mandhi and Taleg rescued me, then we returned to Jaitha.” Some day he would tell her the whole story of the baleful rescue, the flight to Ternas, and the journey with Gocam back to Jaitha. But not tonight. He said simply, “Paidacha repented. When Ruyam burned Jaitha, Paidacha came with us. He’s served me since.”
“Amazing. And you still trust him?”
Navran smiled. “He’s the most trustworthy person in the palace.”
They had reached the far wall of the garden, where the torches were few and the air cool. Navran glanced behind him and saw Dastha waiting, a silhouette drawn in the torchlight. “But you were saying something about salt,” he said.
“Ah, yes. In the Chronicles of Ghuptashya it says that Manjur sold salt. I think you should, too.”
“Sell salt?”
“A salt monopoly, more precisely. We need money, you see, and this would be a reliable source of money. Everyone needs salt.”
“And how does this work?”
They began strolling back toward the paved outer courtyard. Navran diverted them onto a side path, so they wouldn’t reach the crowds too quickly. He still had another topic of conversation to pursue, and it would go better in the dim light and solitude of the garden.
“We buy the salt from the existing merchants who bring it up from Sadhura. We make it illegal for anyone other than the king to sell salt in the city, and then we sell the salt ourselves, and keep the profits. At first, we keep the prices the same. That way neither the sellers nor the people have much cause to complain. But I admit, part of the attraction—and don’t you tell this to anyone—is that once the monopoly is in place, we can raise the price of salt whenever we need to.”
“An interesting solution.”
Josi tossed her head diffidently. “Not entirely my own idea. I had heard the passage about Manjur selling salt, and I asked a saghada what it meant. He explained what I just told you.”
Navran stopped in the path. The lamplight played across them. “Wit and piety. A rare combination.”
Josi smiled and looked down, putting a hand over her girlish smile. “You flatter me, Navran-dar.”
Navran’s heart began to beat harder. “There is no one else in the kingdom that I trust as much as you.”
“Not even Mandhi?” Josi’s eyes twinkled impishly.
“Mandhi isn’t in the kingdom.”
“A fine point.”
“So,” Navran said, attempting to quell his rattling nerves. “I want to offer you a more permanent position.”
Josi looked taken aback. “My appointment as the King’s Purse was temporary?”
“No. I mean something that goes beyond administration.”
For a moment Josi’s face was clouded by confusion. “Oh,” she said quietly. A look of fear and bitterness darkened her eyes. “Oh.”
He had said something wrong. “I spoke too soon,” he said quickly.
“No,” Josi said. Her breath was coming quickly, and she turned away from him. “No, it’s just—”
“I should speak to Veshta first.” Navran fra
ntically tried to locate what he had said wrong. “Someone else? He is your eldest brother. He would answer for you since your father has passed.”
“Veshta, yes,” Josi said, her voice quivering. She did not turn around to look at Navran. “You should have spoken to him first. That would be proper,” she said, putting heavy, bitter emphasis on the last word.
“But you… I wanted to know it was agreeable to you.”
“Agreeable?” She finally turned back to Navran, and he could see that her cheeks were wet.
“I’m sorry,” Navran said. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Josi said. “Just—no, I’m the one who is sorry.” Her voice cracked. “Go… go talk to Veshta.”
“Josi,” he said, reaching for her shoulder.
“No,” she said firmly. She brushed his hand away. Her voice acquired a brittle hardness over her tears. “Go talk to Veshta if you want to know the truth. As for me,” she took a deep breath, and her tone softened into something like pity, “I am happy to be the King’s Purse.”
She bowed to him. “My lord and king,” she said. Then she turned and ran down the path back toward the crowds and the lamplight.
Navran watched her go. Her steps faded until the only sound was the distant murmur of celebration and the hiss of the garden torches.
Quiet footsteps approached him from behind.
“What happened?” Dastha asked.
“I don’t know,” Navran said, watching the movement of revelers in the far-off courtyard. Josi had disappeared into the throng. He couldn’t find her any longer. “I really don’t know.”
Kirshta
The footsteps were neither Vapathi’s soft steps nor the steady steps of the dungeon guard. These were hard, fast footfalls. Several people, in a hurry. Their torches glittered in the puddles at the bottom of the dungeon stair.
Kirshta was slipping out of the meditative trance. The men charging into his dim gloom demanded that he be awake and present. Awareness of his body meant awareness of pain. Pain is nothing.
“Here,” one of the men said, still distant from Kirshta.
“No, that’s not him,” the other answered. A moment later their torchlight fell upon Kirshta, bright orange suns which hurt his eyes. “This is the one.’
“Hurry up with it.”
The first one bent with a key and unclasped the manacles around Kirshta’s hands. The sensation of having his wrists freed from the cold iron clasps was strange at first, as his wrists complained of pains which had been ignored for so long that he had forgotten them. They erupted again once the metal no longer dug into his skin.
The man jerked Kirshta to his feet. “You damn well better have strength to walk,” the man said, “because I ain’t gonna carry you.”
Kirshta walked toward the stairs with careful, mincing steps. He didn’t answer them.
“Faster,” the man said. He grabbed Kirshta’s wrist and pulled him forward . They took the steps two at a time and emerged into the Dhigvaditya.
Something was amiss.
The place seemed empty of soldiers, but far off Kirshta heard shouting. He turned his head toward the source of the sound, but the man ahead of him jerked him in the other direction.
“Stay with me.” Fear and anger mingled in his voice.
Behind them was the passage which let out into the training yard and the Bronze Gate. But the soldier led him the other way, deeper into the Dhigvaditya, toward the Horned Gate of the Ushpanditya. Were they going into the palace?
At the last stair before they reached the Horned Gate itself, the man pulled Kirshta to the side and directed him up the stairs. They ascended until they emerged at last onto the porch on the top level of the barracks.
Dumaya was there, wearing the red silk of the commander of the imperial guard, his hands held behind his back. He was wringing his fingers together nervously. As soon as the guard pulled Kirshta onto the porch he shouted, “Bring him.”
The guard shoved Kirshta to the railing of the porch. Dumaya grabbed Kirshta around the neck and pushed his belly against the stone rail, and two spear-points dug into his back. The courtyard tilted beneath him vertiginously. Three stories of air between him and the stones below. His vision blurred, refocused, and picked out the shapes of the men in the courtyard.
There was fighting in the Dhigvaditya. Little knots of men with red sashes guarded the entrances to the barracks beneath him, and the tips of nocked bows showed from the windows on the floors below. But across the way, the guard tower and the gate were overrun by Red Men. A different host of Red Men, with ragged uniforms and battered weapons. Beyond the wall, the banners of the Prince Imperial waited outside the Bronze Gate. And in the middle of the yard, just below Kirshta, stood a man in a circle of archers and spear-men.
“Chadram!” bellowed Dumaya. “I have your little pet.” He grabbed Kirshta’s hair and shook his head.
The man in the circle looked up. From this distance, Kirshta could not read his face, but he recognized Chadram’s voice.
“So you do,” Chadram said coldly. “But I have your fortress.”
Dumaya let out a bitter laugh. “You think so? I still hold the barracks. Half the Dhigvaditya is still a better fortress than anything else in Amur.”
Chadram shook his head. “Give up, Dumaya,” he shouted back. “The Prince Imperial will take the palace and be crowned Emperor. You can’t win.”
“And will you give up the life of this child for it? His treachery is what got you through that gate in the first place.”
“Your own men, the ones with any sense, were the ones who opened the gate. As for Kirshta,” Chadram waved his hand dismissively. “His life isn’t worth the Dhigvaditya.”
Dumaya pulled Kirshta’s face back and jeered at him. “See how much your commander values you? See what your treachery was worth?”
Kirshta didn’t answer. Instead, he dipped into the inner silence. The well of power opened to him as easily as falling. The shouting and shoving of the Red Men grew distant. He heard them, but his mind was not disturbed. He listened.
Dumaya shoved Kirshta back to the front of the rail. He hardly felt the movement. “Very well, Chadram. I’ll rain his entrails on your head.”
Dumaya hurled Kirshta into the arms of the Red Men who had pulled him out of the dungeon. “Gut him and throw him over,” he ordered.
The soldiers’ fingers dug into his sides. His ragged clothes were torn aside. A blade pressed against his stomach.
If he were to do anything, he needed to do it now.
The balcony exploded with flame.
He did not direct it. He called it into being, everywhere in every direction evoking the nature of fire, feeding it with air, releasing the flame bound into clothes and the flesh of the men around him. The fire breathed, not a little gasp that lit up a lamp, but a whirlwind, a storm that fueled the conflagration on the porch.
Above the roar of the flames, Kirshta heard screaming. The hands that held him loosened or burned away, and Kirshta fell to the stone floor and curled into a ball. He felt pain, but pain was nothing. He lay in a pool of stillness, the nature of the elements laid out before him like threads in a tapestry, and he wove them into flame over and over, with hardly a thought from his conscious mind.
Men screamed and fire roared. Screams faded into gurgling and silence. Either his purpose was accomplished, or it never would be.
He ceased to breathe life into the flame, let the elements of fire fall into quiescence. He rose and inhabited his body again. He became aware of the smell of soot in his nostrils, the pressing of the stones of the balcony into his side, heat and pain in his limbs. He opened his eyes.
The stones before his face were blackened. He lifted his head and gingerly rose to a sitting position, feeling the complaints of his own scorched skin and aching joints. He was not badly burned, but the flames had singed his hair and seared his skin red and raw. His bones creaked at the movement.
Near him,
two charred red-and-black corpses lay on the ground. A shard of hot bronze, once a dagger, rested between them, its handle burned away. Kirshta’s own clothes, as ragged as they had been, were ash. All across the upper balcony lay more corpses, burned and melted, smoking upon the blackened stones.
He stood up, naked, and felt the weakness of his legs.
The sound of weapons clattering in the courtyard below reached him. He took a step toward the stairs which descended back into the barracks, and his legs buckled beneath him.
Go.
He would have to move. The battle was not over, and standing alone on the balcony was a sure way to get killed. He forced himself to stand, though his knees wobbled and the strength of his legs was inconstant and strange. He managed to run forward a few steps. He didn’t have the strength to stand. He crawled instead. The weakness was in his body, alas, and there was no way to add power to his muscles with the force of his mind.
He found the top of the stairway and got his legs onto the first step. He managed to stand, supporting half his weight on his arms, and he descended. One stair at a time. At the bottom, there were shouts around him, and he glimpsed men with arrows and spears through the doorway. The arrows pointed into the courtyard, toward Chadram’s men. These were not his friends.
He attempted to descend the stairs, gingerly placing his feet where he could. Two more levels to reach the ground floor, where Chadram might find him.
Then there was a clatter and a grunt, someone ascending from below. He was helpless in this position, sprawled across the stone and trying to lower himself as gently as possible. Up? He could get back to the floor above and hide while the men passed—but it was too late. A man with a red sash and a sweat-drenched face appeared below him, holding a spear at the ready.
“You!” the man said as soon as he saw Kirshta, eyes wide at Kirshta’s nakedness. “What are you doing? Get out of the way. They’re almost here.”
“Yes,” Kirshta croaked feebly. He turned onto his belly and began to crawl back up the stairs.
“Wait,” a voice from farther below said. “That’s the one. That’s Dumaya’s prisoner.”
