The Hand of the Sun King

by J. T. Greathouse

  “Not for a year,” I said, thinking of Oriole on the blood-soaked ground. “More, actually. In truth, my training in sorcery is incomplete. Hand Usher thought it best that I begin my work here in An-Zabat and suggested that that one of you might teach me.”

  “Well, even a neglected blade can be sharpened,” he said, and gestured toward the target dummies. “Show me what you can do.”

  The canon was there, where last I had left it in Iron Town. A maze of canals transmitting--and constraining--the power to rewrite the pattern of the world. Power surged through me, the scent of cinnamon, the warmth and then chill of battle-sorcery’s wake. Lightning crackled from the tetragram on my palm and blasted a dummy in half.

  I held steady in the channel to shape a blade that hissed from my hand. Thin slices of straw arms and legs arced through the air. I imagined Frothing Wolf and Burning Dog’s faces on the burlap heads of the dummies as the current of violence pulled me along. The scent of ozone and charred straw hung over the archery range. Sweat soaked my scholar’s robes.

  “Sorcery comes as naturally to you as poetry, it seems,” Cinder said, and squeezed my shoulder. “If all Easterlings are so gifted, it is no surprise the rebels have claimed a foothold in your homeland. The fourth channel is binding sorcery, and after that, shielding. I might find some time to teach you, if--”

  “Thank you, Hand Cinder, but I should focus on my duties as minister,” I said, feeling a churning disquiet in my gut..

  Cinder studied me, confused. “I thought you intended to continue your education in the canon,” he said. “I promise you, Rill and Alabaster will be far worse teachers than I.”

  “I am sure,” I said, and--as politely as I could--stepped backward and out from under his hand. “Only this display has reminded me how badly out of practice I am, and how much there is yet for me to learn. I should practice on my own for a while, I think, before burdening you with my ignorance.”

  Cinder seemed to be formulating a response, but I did not give him time to voice it. I thanked him for his time and left him there. I wanted to learn, but not from him, and not the canon. Reaching for it again had only reminded me of its limitations. The Emperor was not interested in giving his Hands knowledge or understanding, only the tools to do his bidding, even when that meant leaving a friend in the grip of death.

  Hand Alabaster was no better company. His endless melancholy over his distant betrothed grew exhausting, and I began to suspect that he whiled away his days composing verse for her and doing little else. As Minister of Culture, he ought to have been preparing An-Zabat to hold its first imperial examinations. When I visited his office, I saw only small packages of correspondence, less than a tenth of the meager pile I dealt with on a given day.

  One evening, while he read and re-read a lovelorn couplet, my frayed patience finally snapped.

  “How many tutors have you brought to An-Zabat?” I said.

  He peered over the top of his spectacles. “Excuse me?”

  “Are there any promising students you expect to sit for the first examinations? Have you arranged for proctors to be sent from Sien?”

  “These provincial barbarians will never rival the scholars of Sien,” Alabaster said. “What does it matter whether there are examinations in this wretched city?”

  “Nayen was once such a province.” I felt heat rising in my face. Alabaster had been kind to me, but did he, like Cinder, think of me only as an Easterling, albeit one with enough literary sensibility to amuse and distract him?

  Alabaster shrugged and said; “It still is.”

  I left without a word. He did not call after me, nor did he ever apologize, and I lost any hope of finding companionship in An-Zabat.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Dancer

  I continued to do my duty, but my life became stagnant and repetitive, punctuated only by solitary walks through the garden, which were wont to deepen my misery rather than lift it. The bamboo groves and shimmering ponds consumed preposterous quantities of water that might have been used to expand the city’s greenbelts and weaken the windcallers’ grip. More, An-Zabat’s eternal summer robbed the garden of the seasons and their rhythm of new growth and decay, stripping it of the dynamic complexity that defined the pattern of the world. How was the Empire served by this poor simulacrum of the Sienese heartland?

  A monotony broken, at last, by Jhin’s frantic knock at my office door one bright morning, when I had just begun to work through the ledger on my desk.

  “I hate to trouble you, Your Excellence,” Jhin’s voice trembled with urgency. “There is…ah…a disturbance at the citadel gate.”

  I opened the door to find Jhin dabbing sweat from his forehead, eyes wide and worried.

  “Well?” I said.

  “The windcallers--their leaders, that is, or at least those claiming to lead them--they are here,” Jhin said. “At the gate. In force. Demanding an audience with you--or, rather, with the Minister of Trade. They did not ask for--”

  “Did they give a reason?”

  “No, Your Excellence.”

  I brushed past Jhin, my mind full of questions, my heart pumping with excitement for the first time in what felt like months. The windcallers had most fascinated me, but I had been able to spend a disappointingly scant amount of time studying them. Now they had come and demanded to see me. It would be negligent, wouldn’t it, to deny them an audience. A breach of propriety not to do my duty as their elder brother in the vast family of Empire and receive them with all hospitality.

  Jhin fell into step behind me. “Voice Rill and the other Hands have also been notified,” he said, and I quickened my pace, desperate to reach the gate before Rill intercepted me with a speech about the importance of allowing the imperial bureaucracy to serve its function. Jhin kept pace, muttering through his quickening breath.

  I took the stair to the battlements two steps at a time and shouldered my way through a crowd of a dozen guards, their hands drifting towards their quivers or the bandoleers of grenades they wore. On the plaza below, arrayed in an arc before the gate, stood six An-Zabati--four men, their burly arms inked with whorled tattoos, and two women. One of the women wore a sword on her hip. The other surprised me more, for I recognized her immediately by her short-cropped ringlets and the silver-glided scarf draped across her shoulders.

  “Are you the one we came to seek?” said one of the men, old and gray-haired but with a voice that boomed to the top of the battlement as easily as across the deck of a windship. He spoke Sienese, thickly accented.

  “I am Hand Alder, Minister of Trade to An-Zabat,” I shouted back--my voice like a reed flute in comparison.

  The gray-haired windcaller nodded. “I am Katiz. We should speak. I am happy to do so here, if I must.”

  As he finished speaking, I heard the clank of armored footsteps on the stairs behind me. Hand Cinder appeared on the battlement, arrayed in armor of glimmering scale. He studied me, arched an eyebrow, and crossed his arms, apparently satisfied to spectate, unless my bungling turned this political incident into violence.

  A crowd had begun to gather, peering cautiously from the mouths of alleyways and the doorways and windows of nearby homes. Not the most conducive audience to a sensitive conversation about economy and politics, as I was sure this would become.

  “My steward will escort you to the audience hall,” I said. “I will meet you there.”

  Again, Katiz nodded.

  “Your Excellence, this is--”

  “Jhin, if you would be so kind,” I said, again brushing past him, and Hand Cinder, to mount the stair.

  “Good luck, Alder,” Cinder said, then shouted; “You heard the Hand! Get that gate open, and I want an honor guard with the steward. Move your asses!”

  The guards sprang into motion, while I hurried as fast as dignity would allow toward the audience hall at the center of the citadel. Only moments after I had situated myself on one of the four seats atop the hall’s dais and draped my stole of office around
my neck, the windcallers arrived, led by a fidgetyJhin and flanked by a dozen soldiers with hands on the hilts of their swords.

  “I’m sorry, I must insist, before you enter the presence of the Hand--” Jhin said.

  “No!” the sword-bearing An-Zabati woman blurted in Sienese, then, to Katiz, she went on in An-Zabati; “I will not let you walk into the den of our enemy unguarded!”

  “And I would not expect you to,” I said. The windcallers all paused in their stride to hear me speak their language. The younger woman--the dancer I had seen when I first arrived in the city--burst out laughing.

  “He speaks like he has a mouthful of sand!” she said, in her own tongue. “But at least he has learned to speak. It is good for rulers to know what their subjects say, yes?”

  Jhin, uncomprehending, looked from the sword-bearer to me, his face pleading.

  “It’s alright, Jhin,” I said. “Have these guards wait outside. I have the canon for my defense. And I doubt these people have come to the citadel to instigate violence that would only cost us all, and the people of this city most.”

  Jhin hesitated, then bowed, and led the guards--fingers still twitching at their weapons--out into the garden, to lurk nearby in case this audience did, indeed, spark a sudden war. The windcallers fanned out before me, standing with crossed arms and impatient postures, unaccustomed to the formalities of court.

  “Now then,” I said, again speaking An-Zabati and attempting an aloof posture even as my pulse thrummed in my ears. “Tell me your concerns, that the Empire might address them.”

  The dancer covered her mouth. “Please,” she said in Sienese, stifling laughter. “We like that you have learned the tongue of the waste, but we all speak the tongue of the conquerors better, I think.”

  “Our concern is the Empire,” Katiz went on.

  “What in particular,” I said--speaking Sienese as the dancer had requested, though that stifled laugh had chafed.

  “You have made a new tax,” Katiz said. “Grain. You fill silos with it. Do you think we cannot see what you are doing? Do you think we do not understand why?”

  I recalled the letter I had received some weeks ago, undersigned by unknown names.

  “I received your petition,” I said. “Were you unsatisfied by the efforts taken to ease your concerns?”

  “What efforts?” Katiz said. “The tax must be rescinded.”

  “It is a common practice to keep a grain reserve,” I said--and resolved to send out reprimands to the bureaucrats I had tasked with solving this problem, and possibly a demotion or two. “Such a reserve protects against disruption of the food supply by famine, war, drought--”

  “Drought?” the dancer said, that lilt of laughter still in her voice. “I can see how you might forget, coddled as you are in this garden behind your walls, but it does not rain in An-Zabat.”

  “I meant a drought in the heartland,” I said, fighting to maintain a diplomatic tone. “In which case, the strategic reserve will stabilize the price of grain, while it lasts, and keep the poor of this city from starving.”

  “If there is a drought in the east, we will buy from the west,” Katiz said. “So it has always been. Let us be honest with each other. It is not for the sake of the poor that you do this. It is so that the next time you pluck windcallers from the harbor, chain them in your dungeons, and do all you can to strip our power from them, we will not be able to fight back as we once did.”

  “You will not be able to starve the city, you mean,” I said. “I must protect against any disruption in the food supply. My concern is for the people of An-Zabat.”

  “The people of An-Zabat!” the dancer said. “What do you know of them? What have you seen of their lives? They do not fear starvation--they fear you. Come out into the city, and I will show you the people of An-Zabat.”

  Heat rose in my face. She had struck too close to my own shame, my own frustration with the garden. She was right, of course, but my isolation from their lives was not my fault, but yet another limitation in my life forced upon me. I wanted to tell her of Voice Rill's prohibitions, to argue against the accusation of indolence she implied, but I dared not so openly violate propriety while holding an audience.

  “You are bold to threaten one who could order your death,” I said, venting my frustrations in a somewhat less productive way.

  The sword-bearing woman’s hand fell to her weapon. I felt a chill down my spine in the wake of windcalling, though the air in the hall was still.

  “Oh?” the dancer said. “Are you so desperate to see how long your strategic reserve will last?”

  “Atar, enough,” Katiz cut in. “Shazir, take your hand off your sword. We are not here to start a war, but to maintain peace.”

  “And how do you suggest we do that?” I said.

  “You created the problem,” Katiz said. “You must solve it.”

  I considered that, and my options, and arrived at a solution. “I cannot give up the strategic reserve entirely,” I said. “Regardless of what you think, it does serve a benevolent purpose. One key to the stability of this city. A bulwark against any number of possible tragedies.”

  “And we cannot allow you to have it,” Katiz said.

  “Then I will give it to you,” I said.

  The windcallers exchanged baffled glances.

  “Consider it a gesture of good faith,” I said. “I am genuine in my desire to help the people of An-Zabat, and to ensure the prosperity of this city. I will continue to levy the tax on grain, and my agents will continue to fill the silos, but you will have charge of defending and distributing that reserve.”

  They held a brief, whispered conference. I leaned back in my chair and watched them and thought through the explanation for my actions that I would offer to Voice Rill.

  “I say this is a trap,” Shazir said in An-Zabati, loud enough for me to hear. Katiz chided her and resumed their hushed conversation. All the while, the dancer--Atar--stared at me, her emerald eyes bright with curiosity.

  “You are not Sienese,” Atar said suddenly. “Where do you hail from?”

  “My mother was Nayeni.” I showed the palm of my left hand. “Whatever my parentage, I am Hand of the Emperor, am I not?”

  “Perhaps,” she said. “But this is not something they would do. You think differently, Nayeni, with wisdom the Empire lacks.”

  “And who are you, to stand with these masters of trade and magic and negotiate with me?” I said. “I saw you dancing for coin in the Bazaar.”

  She answered with a smile, and my heart stuttered. “As I said, Nayeni, you know very little of An-Zabat.”

  “Very well,” Katiz said, turning away from the other windcallers and back toward me. “It is a good compromise, though we will not tolerate any interference in our distribution from the silos. We may see fit to use this reserve in ways the Empire would not consider.”

  “Very well,” I said, dragging my gaze from Atar, feeling a little dizzy and a little insulted and very interested in seeing her dance again. “So long as my bookkeepers will know how much goes into the reserve, and how much is distributed.”

  Katiz nodded and put out his hand with the first two fingers slightly bent. “It is agreed, then.”

  I stepped down from the dais and took his outstretched fingers with my own. Atar quirked an eyebrow--I could almost hear her say you speak our language, of course you know something of our customs. Their business done, the windcallers left the audience hall. Atar was last to go, and at the threshold glanced over her shoulder, as if to invite me for a third time out into her city. She left the scent of lavender in her wake.

  * * *

  No sooner had the windcallers left than Voice Rill summoned me to the Gazing Upon Lillies pavilion. As before, the light of transmission flickered from his brow. This time, he bade me approach before severing the mental tie between himself and the Emperor.

  “Your creativity is boundless,” Voice Rill said. “You must forgive your superiors, who sometimes fail t
o grasp the intricacies of such strategy. Would you please explain why you have given away our best defense against the windcallers--one that you devised, I might add?”

  I bowed, for I spoke not only to the Voice, but to the Emperor himself. “Imagine that conflict between the Empire and the windcallers foments into open war. What then will they do?”

  “Close the ports,” Voice Rill said. “Starve the city. As they did in the past.”

  “Indeed,” I said. “At which point Hand Cinder might lead the garrison out to seize the silos we have been so dutifully filling. The fighting will cost us, yes, but the windcallers cannot hope to defend the silos against our legions. They will have no choice but to abandon the strategic reserve, and we will capture it, in which case it will have served its original purpose.”

  “Or they could put the silos to the flame,” Rill said.

  “They could,” I said. “But think of the people, Voice Rill. It is one thing to stand behind the windcallers when they refuse to sail until their captured fellows are released. It is another to watch them burn perfectly good grain while your children wail, and your cheeks grow hollow with hunger. If the windcallers burn the strategic reserve…well, the citadel larder and the garrison are always kept well stocked, are they not? We will hide behind these walls while the very flame that lights the silos ignites the rage of the An-Zabati, and they will side with us. Let us see how long the windcallers can hold out against the hatred of their own people.”

  “You have given them their own undoing,” Voice Rill said. A troubled expression crossed his face, as though he had found some fault with my plan, but it resolved into a placid smile. “Well done, Hand Alder. I am glad we were not mistaken in giving you this responsibility.”

  I bowed, for I heard in his words an echo of the Emperor, and then excused myself. I should have felt satisfaction as I walked back to my office to resume the day’s paperwork--which would now include the official orders transferring control of the silos to Katiz and his windcallers. Instead I was needled all that day by the feeling that I had overlooked something. Something in Voice Rill’s expression, or in the political situation of the city. And the dancer’s words lingered in the back of my mind--you know very little of An-Zabat--and with it her invitation, and the curve of her neck.