The Hand of the Sun King

by J. T. Greathouse

  He assured us that the dog could have a place by the hearth, and if it recovered and was able to work, one of the farmers would take it when we moved on. Doctor Sho seemed relieved by this. I was not so sure the dog would be willing to stay.

  The common house at Burrow was the largest we had visited, three stories high and with four long tables on the bottom floor. The smell of a long-simmering stew had seeped into the wood panelled walls, and though a band of musicians played the air was so full of conversation that only the flautist’s highest, most keening notes were audible.

  Doctor Sho and I were not the only folk of the road planning to weather the storms in Burrow. There was a traveling tinsmith working through a stack of kitchenware and a bowl of stew in turns. Nearby sat a merchant and his guards, who were loudly gambling with a group of farmers, a young woman dressed in blacksmith’s garb, and--I was surprised to see--a pair of Sienese men dressed in the uniforms of garrison troops. Like many of the larger towns Burrow had a magistrate and a garrison, but usually the Sienese locals kept away from the common houses. Here, they mingled with Nayeni women and showed no sign of offense.

  I mentioned this to Doctor Sho while we shrugged out of our coats and hung them on the crowded pegs beside the door.

  “The magistrate here makes a point permitting the Nayeni their ways,” he said. “He was born in this country, and likely sat for the same examination as you.”

  This surprised me. Usually the Empire sent magistrates far from their home province. The belief was that the fewer ties the magistrate had to the people over which he ruled, the less opportunity there was for corruption or favouritism. And, more nefariously, dislocation meant that the magistrates were more comfortable with the prescriptions of imperial doctrine than the ways of the local populace. I wondered which of the young men in my cohort had been given such an unusual, indulgent posting.

  Before I could ask Doctor Sho more about this strange magistrate, one of the hostesses led me to a table at the far end of the hall, near the musicians, where it was far too noisy to carry on a conversation without shouting. Doctor Sho set down his chest of drawers and went to join the card game. The hostess brought an old quilt for the dog and arranged it near the hearth, for which I thanked her, though her polite nod told me she did not hear a word.

  A loud bang and the sound of the wind howling fell on the common room like a stifling blanket. At once, every woman stood and hurried toward the stair to the second floor. The captain of the patrol we had passed earlier stood in the open doorway. Soldiers shuffled past him, and the room rearranged itself to suit them as they took seats near the hearth. The rumble of thunder and drum beat of the rain cowed any of the Nayeni men from leaving. They bunched together, travelers and townsfolk alike. I was unwilling to leave the dog’s side, and equally unwilling to move him. Doctor Sho left the dissolving card game and joined me.

  “Warm up, men,” the captain said brusquely. “I will inform the magistrate of our presence.” He faced one of the older Nayeni men, ignoring entirely the hostess who had been in charge of the common room before his arrival. “I apologize for intruding upon you a second time. My soldiers require food and watered wine. As soon as the storm ends we will be out of your way.”

  The man--who was only a farmer, and in no way responsible for the common house--nodded, though it was clear the better part of the captain’s burst of Sienese had been lost on him. The patrol captain shut the door on his way back out into the storm, deepening the quiet, now broken only by the sounds of the soldiers dragging a bench over to the hearth and arranging their sodden cloaks to dry.

  One of them, whose scowling face I recognized from that afternoon, noticed the dog, then Doctor Sho and I. He put on a mocking grin.

  “Oy, Doctor, it was only a joke,” he said. “What sort of fool wastes medicine on a dog?”

  He laughed, and elbowed one of his companions until he, too, laughed, though his heart did not seem in it. They took seats across from us. Doctor Sho glowered but said nothing. The soldier snickered.

  “What? No sense of humour?” the soldier said. He kicked off his boots. “Well then, how about some work? My toes are a mess of blisters.” He waggled them and laughed again.

  “Ten cash,” Doctor Sho said.

  The soldier cocked his head. “What was that?”

  “Want me to come anywhere near those putrid stumps? Ten cash.”

  “Now he asks for payment!” The soldier looked to his comrades, who seemed just as annoyed with him as Doctor Sho. “He treats a mongrel dog for free, but from a defender of the Empire he asks for coin.” He leaned across the table and jabbed a finger in Doctor Sho’s face. “What sort of loyalty is that? Maybe he’s a rebel spy, eh? You know what we do to spies?” His grin became a snarl. “Worse than we did to that dog.”

  “Your breath smells like piss.” Doctor Sho slapped the hand away. “I’ve a prescription to amend that, for fifteen cash.”

  The soldier’s face reddened. He leaned back in his seat and looked to his companions. “You hear that? My breath smells like piss! Ha! Funny one, this doctor. Wonder if he’ll still be laughing after we’re through with him.”

  “Enough,” I said, mustering some of the commanding tone I had learned leading men at Iron Town.

  The guard was taken aback for a moment, then shifted his attention to me. “Who’s this? Your bodyguard? What, is he going to fight the lot of us?” Again, the uncertain glance at his companions.

  “Leave off, Cutter, for the last time,” one of them said.

  “You’ll let this bastard insult the imperial legions?” Cutter said, acting hurt.

  “You’re no legion,” I said, tired of this foolishness. “You’re a road patrol. Lower than a garrison guard. They, at least, get a warm meal and a cot every night. Now leave us alone.”

  Cutter’s face darkened from red to purple. His arm whipped out to slap me. I brought up my hands to shield my face. A stupid mistake. Cutter stopped his swing and stared bug-eyed at my palms.

  “He’s witch-marked,” Cutter barked in surprise. “And that scar on the... Lads! It’s the severed Hand!”

  At Cutter’s words the atmosphere in the room shifted yet again. The subdued tension between Nayeni and Sienese became a taut wire between the soldiers, Doctor Sho, and I. A wire that snapped as the soldiers reached for their swords and Cutter caught my wrist in one calloused hand.

  “Run for the captain!” someone shouted.

  The world narrowed, a thousand possible ways the night may have gone collapsing at once as I made a fateful decision that seemed correct, if only in the blind rush of panic.

  I sent a spear of wind through Cutter’s eye. He flopped onto the table, and I sprang to my feet. Sienese shouts of outrage mixed with Nayeni cries of alarm. And above it all, Doctor Sho, screaming; “What the fuck are you doing?”

  I moved through the hall, dancing with the wind as Shazir had done, killing on her behalf, on behalf of the people of An-Zabat and Nayen and Toa Alon whose lives were broken by the grasping hands of the Empire. For my grandfather, who had lost his life before I could know him, and my grandmother, and my mother--forced to sacrifice dignity for safety. The soldiers in that common house became emblematic of the Empire as a whole, and I took my vengeance.

  The stink of blood and offal and the pleasant smell of that long-simmering stew mingled in a sickening bouquet. When I reached the door a dozen soldiers lay dead behind me. Eight more stood before me, their swords drawn and faces full of terror. I paused, blades of wind swirling in my hands.

  In the lull, while the horror of what I had done settled in the back of my mind, Doctor Sho moved among the corpses, a roll of linen in hand, feeling for pulses and muttering curses under his breath.

  There had been twenty-four. One, the captain. Another, his aide, who had accompanied him to the magistrate. Two unaccounted for.

  The door behind them flew open, and a figure dressed in the robes of a magistrate strode out of the rain. A familiar splash
of freckles marked his cheeks.

  Clear-River paled to see the carnage I had wrought, even as he placed himself between me and his men. The captain followed at his heels, but a gesture from the magistrate made him stand back.

  We studied each other, two men whose lives had crossed briefly in youth. He was no longer the whip-thin, clever boy who had threatened me by way of a rumour. His freckles stood out on rounded cheeks, and his thick, reddish beard had been carefully groomed to frame his mouth. He wore silks, while I wore peasant’s clothes stained by the road.

  He did not gloat, nor comment on my fall from power. Yet I felt the urge to justify myself, to explain how the man who had bested him in the examinations had become this ragged, unkept wanderer.

  “What are you doing, Alder?” Clear-River said, recognizing me more by my reputation than by my appearance, I was sure. “Why did you come here?”

  A few of the Nayeni sidled toward the door, as horrified as the Sienese, and I realized that I would have to kill everyone in the village to stop word of this massacre from spreading. Even then, in time a passing traveller or a patrol would stop, expecting to find a welcoming common house, and would carry news that would soon reach Voice Golden-Finch.

  I had been walking the edge of a cliff, and grown complacent, and now I had fallen.

  “You’ve done well for yourself,” I said, stalling while my mind sought a means of egress without spilling any more blood. “Someday I’d like to ask how you managed to secure an assignment in Nayen.”

  “We’ll never have that conversation,” Clear-River said. “You’re a murderer, and a traitor. You should have listened to me, all those years ago. The tale of the pollical cat proved a prophecy. They found your secret, as I knew they would.”

  “Let me go,” I said. “And no one else needs to die here.”

  The captain stiffened. Clear-River put out a restraining hand.

  “I know you could kill every man, woman, and child--soldier and townsfolk alike--if you wanted to,” Clear-River said. “I do not think you want to.”

  “I do not need to,” I said. “I only need to cut my way through you. The townsfolk will not pursue me. I am not their enemy. Let me go, Clear-River, and I will let you all live.”

  “You dare threaten an imperial magistrate?” the captain bellowed, despite his quaking hand. “Your Excellence, a severed Hand stands before us. We will be disgraced if we allow him his freedom.”

  Clear-River took a steadying breath. The rain and the wind lashed the open doorway behind him. For a crazed moment, while we stood on the precipice of violence, I felt a pang of envy for his quiet life, working to make Burrow a place where Nayeni and Sienese could live side-by-side, growing to understand one another, to see humanity in place of an enemy. If the Empire were ruled by those like Clear-River, there might be no cause for rebellion, no need to destroy the Obelisks of An-Zabat, no cause for promising youths to die tortured in the rain.

  A notion Atar would call foolish and optimistic.

  Behind me, Doctor Sho spat a curse and stood from the last of my victims.

  “What have you done with the position you stole from me?” Clear-River said. “Destroyed a foreign city. Turned the Emperor’s ire on our home. Brought violence to this place of peace. You do not deserve to go free, as you did not deserve to wear the tetragram.”

  “I did deserve it,” I said. “I earned it. But I should never have wanted it, and I should have heeded your warning. As you must heed mine, now, if you want this to end without more violence.”

  Clear-River studied me, incredulous and outraged, but calculating, weighing his duty to do everything he could to stop me against the likelihood that he would die in the attempt. When we were young he had been willing to lie and manipulate his way into power, sacrificing honour for the sake of pragmatism. I had to trust that he would make the same sacrifice again.

  “No more need to die today,” Clear-River said firmly. He stepped to the side and bade the captain and his men do the same. “Go, Alder.”

  “What of the doctor?” the captain said. “They were together on the road.”

  “The doctor had no part in the killing,” I said. “There is no need to cast him out.”

  “Yes, there is,” Doctor Sho said. He shouldered his pack and came to my side, though he kept his eyes away from me. “I arrived in your company. You think the friends of these dead will forgive that?”

  “If he stays, he will either be murdered by a mob, or he and I both will, unless I put him to death,” Clear-River said. “Something you will not abide, I imagine. He goes as well.”

  “There is one more thing,” I said, and returned to the hearth, where the dog lay awake and agitated, whimpering and pawing at the floor. I gathered him into my arms. We collected our coats, all the while watching the naked blades of the soldiers around us. Did they know how easy it would be to cut my throat? Their minds reeled and wondered, I was sure, whether steel could hurt a man whose sword was the wind.

  “All this over a dog,” Doctor Sho muttered, and we stepped out into the storm.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The Woman of the Bones

  Thunder rolled, and lightning crackled in the sky behind us. I flinched, fearing battle-sorcery. It was only the storm. The dog twisted in my arms. Though its sodden bandage had slipped off some time in the two days it had been with us, its wounds no longer bled.

  We had not rested since leaving Burrow, and neither had the storm. Trees creaked and bent and snapped in the wind that howled around us. Doctor Sho plunged through the rain ahead of me, at the edge of the column of whirling winds I had called to shelter us. Though holding the spell was simpler than creating it, it still drained me. The phantom chill of its wake sent shivers pulsing through me. As flesh pushes out a thorn, so the pattern of the world pushed against my windshaping.

  At least I no longer feared leaving a wake in the world. If any Hand felt my magic and was willing to brave the storm to hunt me, then so be it. They would come eventually, after what I had done.

  Images of blood-smeared tables, of limbs scattered like bamboo beneath the scythe, had been painted in red on the back of my eyelids. Every blink returned me to the common house.

  I had seen so much violence in my short life. It was an easy thing to reach for. As though the human mind sought it below the level of conscious thought. Yet it solved so little and caused so much suffering.

  My foot slid out from under me. Burdened by the dog, I lost my balance and crashed to the muddy cobbles. The spell I had been holding slipped my grasp, and the wind raked at me with renewed ferocity. Exhaustion that I had been fighting through the night and a long day reached deep into my bones to hold me down and drown me in the mud.

  A warm tongue pushed at my chin. I had dropped the dog, and it now crouched beside me, licking insistently. I levered myself to my feet and prodded at my side for broken ribs. The dog took shelter behind my leg.

  “It can walk now, can it?” Doctor Sho shouted. “Guess it wasn’t as bad off as it seemed. What about you?”

  I nodded, taking deep breaths against the pain.

  “Then whatever you were doing, start doing it again,” he said. “My pack’s catching the wind like a bloody sail!”

  “We need to get out of the storm.” I shouted when I found my breath. “I can’t keep this up forever.”

  “We were out of the storm!” he shouted back, an edge of outrage in his voice. “Now we're at its mercy, thanks to you. If we camp, we’ll like as not be buried by a mudslide. It’ll take another day to reach the next village, at this pace. We could be warm in Burrow, if you hadn't…” He trailed off, his expression strained. He shook his head and made a whirling motion with his hand. “You’re our shelter for now, boy!”

  Reaching for magic was like dragging my hand through thick, clinging mud. The power to shape the wind was there. When I reached for it I felt its wake--a cool breeze, incongruous with the muggy, soaking rain and howling storm. It was not exhaustion
of the body that slowed me, but of the mind, and the pattern of the world’s resistance to my spell.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and rebuilt the cyclone. It whirled out from me, slower and smaller than it had been. Quiet descended, as though we stood in the eye of the storm, though it was only a dozen steps across. The wake of the spell was not the cool breeze of windcalling, but a frigid chill that seeped into my spine and left me shivering.

  “You look ill,” Doctor Sho said.

  “I feel it,” I replied. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to do that again.”

  “Then you’d best keep this one going.” He stood, adjusted the straps of his pack, and plunged ahead.

  * * *

  Darkness fell, and though the summer night was warm shivers shook my body. Doctor Sho mashed a handful of herbs and rolled them into a soggy pill, which I swallowed, but which did little to help me. The storm still roiled around us. Though I held it back I could only manage a few steps before resting.

  The dog now raced out ahead, into the brunt of the storm, always returning with spatters of mud along its tawny coat. It nuzzled my hand with its scarred nose, as though urging me on to some shelter that lay just around the next bend in the road.

  “Come on,” Doctor Sho said. He put out an arm to brace me and looked at the cliff that followed the left side of the road, a wall of rock topped with earth that threatened to fall on our heads as the wind and rain loosed and pried it free. “We can’t rest here. You’d be hard pressed to stop a landslide as well as a storm. We’ll be away from these cliffs in a moment.”