by S. C. Emmett
“I had breakfast.” His shoulders loosened for the first time since setting foot in the palace this morning. At least, in this one small sphere, he could be certain of a battle’s outcome. “Please, do not trouble yourself.”
“Breakfast, he says, and it is well into the afternoon.” Her dress, patterned with the subtlety of the veining upon jewelwings,13 made soft, sweet sounds. “You will waste away to nothing. Come, come, sit down. Tell me all the news. What happens outside my walls?”
“Nothing that should concern a pearl.” It was a tolerable turn of phrase, he thought. “War, and unpleasantness. Tell me of your music. How is the new sathron?”
She accepted the compliment with a ducked head and a shy blush, like a maiden again. There was a great deal of grace, but no coquetry, in the lady of lost Wurai. “Beautiful, and very true in tone. You are good to me.”
“You were the first person to be kind to me here.” He settled upon a cushion, and she set the lacquered sathron in its case, arranging the table for tea with swift grace. Even so, her hands trembled a little. Any excitement caused such tremors.
“It was the Emperor’s kindness that brought you here, Kai.” Delicate, one physician said. Sensitive, said another. A cold fever, said a third, but it was the fourth Kai had retained, for he fixed Kai with a piercing look and informed him it was a slow-creeping toxin, and to beware any gift. Especially one from a rich-robed viper.
Kindness, she said. As if Tamuron saw him as anything other than a tool to be used. “Are you sleeping well? Physician Kihon told me you had a fever two days ago.” Kihon Jiao in his shabby coat was worth more than a clutch of Gamwone’s prized physicians; Kai had felt little compunction about sending the man from the army to the palace. And with Kai’s own steward sent ahead from the field to arrange Kai’s quarters and also act for Kanbina, the Second Concubine’s living money was no longer stolen, her clothes no longer motheaten, and her Iejo quarters were as pleasant and polished as any in the palace complex.
“It is gone now.” She folded her hands, prettily, as the tea was brought. “And you? Tell me, do you still have the same cook? Is he preparing giaoin in honey for you?”
“He fusses over me almost as much as you do.” Kai paused. “The Emperor has granted me a hurai.”
Her mouth opened, her wide dark eyes shining, and Second Concubine Kanbina pressed her palm over her heart. “Oh.” Tears welled. “Oh, Kai.”
Her joy almost made the thought of the burden bearable. “He thought it would please you.”
“I…” She paled alarmingly, and her close-maid—a wide-eyed girl with thick cheeks and a scar near her lower lip—pressed her shoulders gently. “Did he say that?”
“He has no plans to visit you, never fear.” Kai nodded to the girl, and waited until Kanbina caught her breath. “He values your serenity.”
“I am overcome with gratefulness.” Her eyelids dropped, and an uncomfortable pause filled the room before she busied herself with the tea. The thick-cheeked maid hovered, protective of her new mistress, and Kai sipped at his cup. Now that the news had been given, the conversation could turn to other things, and after a short while, a flush returned to Kanbina’s thin cheeks. She did not cough quite as much, but still, Zakkar Kai knew it would not be long before she succumbed.
And for that, sooner or later, he would hold First Queen Gamwone personally responsible.
THIS IS MY PRIDE
Ashan Mahara, her round face delicately drawn and wistful in repose, settled upon embroidered cushions. Her pink-rimmed eyes blinked sleepily; she pulled at the edges of her sleeves, a girlhood habit. “I do not see why we must be trammeled each day.” Fretful each evening no matter how many games and diversions were offered, Yala’s princess was still as sweet-tempered as possible.
“Perhaps it is how royal ladies travel, among them.” Yala peered through swinging beads upon their well-knotted cotton strings, and pulled the shutters close. The diamond-shaped window looked down upon a street, paved—thankfully—instead of a choking mudwallow. This inn was of slightly better quality than the last; the best was offered to a traveling princess as a matter of course, but in war-stripped borderlands, perhaps best was a relative term. Yala pushed her shoulders back—she was sore all over from the carriage’s bumping motion, and there had been no proper baths since they left the outpost at Gurai, well before the actual border.
Now they were in Zhaon, riding in a box upon wheels instead of a-saddle. The Khir retinue—small, but full of noblemen too old or young for the bloodletting at Three Rivers—had turned back the morning after Gurai with wails and lamentation, and they were in the hands of Zhaon soldiers and eunuchs as well as two sullen maidservants with fine robes and haughty, mushmouth Zhaon accents performing the least possible version of their duties for the comfort of their new—if temporary—mistresses.
Yala held her peace, for now. Travel was always uncomfortable, the classics said. When they drew nearer the capital, no doubt the maidservants’ mood would improve. If not, she would find remedies. Before then, though, she would watch and wait to see the slope, as Dowager Tala had always put it.
To know the quarry’s ground was half the hunt.
This inn-room was long and low, sleeping-mats behind a partition, the floor of glossy, well-cared-for wood. It was just the same as the rooms on the other side of the invisible border between Zhaon and Khir, except larger. The air did not smell much different here, and the people did not look much different either. The men wore topknots, the women plain loops or hairpins and braids according to their station; kaburei labored in drab clothes and the rich strolled in bright cotton-and-silk edging. Between the two were finer gradations, including scholars in their sober colors and Zhaon civil-scholars in their strange peaked hats showing their supposed impartiality. The buildings were lower, their roofs not as steep once the mountains retreated.
“I hate it here already.” Mahara sighed. “Come, the tea will grow cold.”
The Zhaons’ head eunuch Zan Pao in his eyebird-patterned robe visited every breakfast and dinner, a sneer upon his close-lipped face. A young scholar—Haor Pai, half-Khir from the look of his muddy eyes and sharp nose—translated the eunuch’s flowery speeches, leaving out the insults. Yala, listening closely, found herself thankful for the Zhaon lessons her father had insisted upon, since an educated noblewoman needed a knowledge of the Hundreds in translation as well as her native tongue. Zhaon shared a common ancestor with Khir, and the two had borrowed from each other for a very long while.
Still, it was best to keep her facility hidden until needed. Surrounded by the conqueror’s language, at least she was not helpless. She could gauge the feeling against Khir and perhaps send her father observations despite such an act being slightly ill-bred; a scout in a bower might hear things one a-horseback would not.
A Khir noblewoman was not supposed to lower herself to noticing politics, let alone dabbling in them, but Komori Dasho had hinted, at his daughter’s last dinner under his roof, that news from Zhaon would be of use to him.
And she did not think it likely that she had misunderstood.
Yala decided the window was unlikely to be peered through by any commoner and crossed the room, wood creaking underfoot. Settling next to Mahara upon the tasseled cushions, she lost herself in pouring fragrant tea, her wrist held correctly, the pot a graceful piece of Gurai slipware. If it is done at all, it must be done well. That was Hae Chur, the poet of Anwei’s first blossoming, who brought ink-and-brush to Khir.
Holding her sleeve just so, filling her princess’s cup, offering it with both hands at the correct angles, was soothing. “Today it is hala blossom.”
“Fitting for spring.” Mahara accepted the small idir-stone cup—proof against poison, since it would sweat in the presence of any toxins—with both hands, and her tentative smile was a balm. Her fine-feathered eyebrows were no longer drawn together, and the line between them had smoothed. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Any familiar face w
ould have been welcome, no doubt. Still, they had grown up together, and Khir’s court ladies knew that while Mahara was the princess, it was Lady Komor who watched for impropriety and insult. “I am, too. Imagine, Lady Nomar affected to weep when she heard she was not accompanying you.”
“Perhaps now she’ll be married, since the Yanchen no longer have hopes for me.” Mahara sniffed. The Nomar girl held affection for Yancheni Hejo-ai, who had not died at Three Rivers; Hejo-ai’s aunts and grandmother had pleaded for him not to be sent and the Great Rider had given his assent. He was the last male heir the head House of that clan could count upon, and had paid court to Mahara as a matter of course.
His sister and his girlcousins were kept out of marriage-bonds by their redoubtable grandmother and her phalanx of aunties, careful not to allow any girlchild to steal control of the clan by producing a son for a different house and equally careful not to breed infirmities into their line. Now, of course, with the princess-prize sold to an enemy to buy Khir some peace and time to rebuild, the shape of the game had altered.
A laugh caught Yala by surprise, slipping free of her throat as she poured into her own cup, a rough white porcelain curve. “Can you imagine? Yanchen Uyala would be insufferable after any wedding.” The woman considered herself first among the Second Families, though her branch was of the youngest.
Mahara’s face twisted. “What is this, now?” she said, querulously, a perfect imitation of the spinster Yanchen sister, all sibilants lisped as was fashionable among Khir’s court ladies. “Shocking, simply shocking!”
Now Yala was not surprised to laugh, and Mahara moved closer upon the cushions. Since girlhood, they had often taken tea hip to hip, and it was a comfort indeed. A faint breath of hala, a touch of silken warmth along the tongue; Yala closed her eyes and savored. Pretending, for a moment, that she and Mahara were in the familiar chambers of Khir’s Great Keep hung with draperies against the cold, watched only by the ancient window they peered from, sometimes pretending to be besieged maidens during the Blood Years. The other half of a maiden’s day was endless lessons—dancing, hawking, riding, music, the classics, and the brush.
And, for Yala, the other lessons, Dowager Eun and Dowager Tala ruthless and exact. The yue did not forgive carelessness, so the dowagers charged with teaching its use had to be twice as sharp as the blade’s edge itself.
“Yala?” The princess set her cup down, gently. “I am frightened.”
So am I. “There is no need for fear.” She took another mannerly sip, letting almost-too-hot liquid lave her tongue. “I am with you, my princess.”
Next would come the lightest of suppers, then readying Mahara for bed. Teeth to be cleaned, hair to be combed, sleeping-robe already warming upon its stand over a brazier, all was in readiness. They were not in Khir, but Yala kept as close to the old rituals as possible, knowing it would comfort.
“Why did they only let me bring one lady?”
Could she not guess that the other clans did not wish to lose marriageable daughters to the southron folk? Plain truth was perhaps best, but in this case, Yala had a convenient deflection ready. “Perhaps they think all their princes will wish to marry Khir women, if they saw us.” And we could rise as one upon a wedding night and slay them, as our ancestors did to the Anwae. The seafarers had been lucky in war for a long while during the Third Dynasty, and had attempted to swallow Khir whole while digesting a frantic, disembodied Zhaon. The women of Khir had saved their husbands and sons as only a woman could, and the night of murder that followed taught conquerors that Khir was not to be trifled with even by a winning draught.
The historians said every child born between nine and eleven full moons after the Blood Weddings had been exposed on the slopes of Mount Khitrai, and the wood that grew there was full of small, soft cries at night, even in this modern age.
Mahara’s laughter was a bell. She covered her mouth, her grey eyes sparkling. “Ai, you are so bad!”
“Mh.” Yala lifted her cup again, seeking to banish a smile that did not wish to be sent forth.
The princess sobered. Her cheeks were so fine, barely needing a brushing with fine-pounded zhu powder to achieve a fashionable matte. “Yala?”
“Yes?” She checked the teapot again. You could not let hala blossom sit; a bitter note came out during longer steeping.
“Will you let me watch you practice, tonight?”
So that was her aim. Yala considered her tea, fragrant amber fluid losing its scorch, bleeding away vital heat. Dropped into the lowlands, you could not drink your tea a-boil, as was proper. “You should practice too.”
“Father said I could not bring my yue.” Mahara made a face, and her chin dropped. “I did not mind.”
How very strange. A larger question was why the Great Rider had accepted Yala instead of politely striking the Komori from the families listed in the summons, though perhaps only Hai Komori Dasho would not scruple to sacrifice his daughter with his last remaining son gone. That the Great Rider knew and had counted upon it so he did not have to send his daughter alone was the simplest explanation, but Yala did not think it the likeliest one, and that disturbed her sleep even more than travel did. “Well, mine is sharp enough for both of us.” As is my tongue. Though both had to remain hidden, for now. Mahara made no secret of hating yue practice, though she watched Yala’s avidly enough.
A soft knock at the door, and they both straightened, arranging their expressions. It was Zan Pao and the scholar, which meant supper was to be brought in. This time, Yala kept the bowls covered until the head eunuch reluctantly withdrew.
There was no need for a person who insulted Mahara to have the honor of a meal shared with a scion of the Great Rider, even if only a girl.
Bend forward, touch the toes. Kick the skirt back, swing the leg up and over, hands on floor light as a jewelwing’s touch. Then swing the other leg, the hip joint protesting as tendons and ligaments altered by steady practice from childhood pressed it into artificial motion. A child was clay to be shaped into something most serviceable to clan and family, and doubly so if that child was female.
Suppleness was called for, and jolting in a wheeled box all day did not help. But Komor Yala did not stop.
The yue had no hilt. Or, more precisely, the blade and the hilt were one, the end of the too-long dagger or too-short sword merely unsharpened and cross-hatched for gripping. The blade itself was keen enough to part silk with a whisper, and any scar upon a noble Khir girl was referred to as a yue’s kiss. Except for the mark of hawk-claws upon a noblewoman; those were often called hawk’s kisses, and rubbed with astringent ink while still bleeding.
Peasant and kaburei women carried short claw-curved daggers, those of a better class slightly longer ones, meant for carving meat as well as protecting their virtue. The yue, however, was only for the Second Families, and its secrets jealously guarded.
Up again, over, foot lightly kissing the floor again as she spun in the low-strike, opening an invisible attacker’s femoral artery, twisting against the suction of invisible muscle. Soft, soft as a jewelwing’s flutter. Mahara was asleep under coverlets that smelled of home, and the inn was quiet.
In secret, in the dark, Komor Yala’s breath came high, light, fast. The blade clove air as she danced. The star-strike, the prayer-strike, the throat-opener, and the parry, flowing through different stances—Hill, River, Hawk, all worn into her bones by long practice.
The maiden’s blade was meant for close combat. It was the last resort for a woman whose honor was threatened, or worse, taken. To kill your attacker or open your own throat was the duty of a daughter of Khir menaced in that terrible fashion.
Finally, warmed and loosened, she rested the flat of the yue—her Jehng mother’s, greenmetal with a dappled blade, the secret of its making long lost with the First Dynasty—against her own pulse, high and frantic in her neck. Warm living skin, throbbing against chill metal.
Each practice ended this way. You are Khir, Dowager Tala would say, softly.
This is your duty.
“I am Komor,” Yala whispered. “This is my pride.”
Dust shaken free by movement filled her nose. Finally, she lowered the yue, inspected it, and slid it into its supple, fine-grained scabbard. Keeping it hidden was merely a matter of sewing your clothes correctly.
Her skin crawled. The closer they drew to the capital, the better the inn-baths would be. She pushed the low table back to its place, slid the partition aside, and watched Mahara sleeping before easing into the bed beside her.
The princess’s round face was serene, a moon in a clear sky. Why had the Great Rider told his daughter not to take her yue? She was not a married woman yet, her honor not in the keeping of a husband. What would he be like, this Crown Prince Takyeo? A Zhaon, who perhaps would not value her enough to protect what was his.
Even a married woman could use the blade if she had to, or if her husband was truly brutal. But Mahara’s nature was obliging enough. She would wish to be a good wife, even to a conqueror’s bastard spawn.
Still, it bothered Yala. The Great Rider had to know Komori Dasho’s daughter would never dare to leave her yue behind.
There were dangers even in the great palace of Khir. Tam Duanam, for one. How long ago had that been—ah, yes, the summer of Yala’s thirteenth year. Whispers in the Keep, and the day the tasters took away Mahara’s dinner. The princess thought she was to be punished, and wept openly; Yala refused to eat her own dumplings. Some of the other girls had laughed at Mahara’s weeping behind their sleeves, but one or two sickened after that meal.
Those who had greedily bitten did not recover well, if at all.
A tenday later, the lord of the Tam family, Duanam, had been broken in the Keep’s courtyard for treason and poison. His screams had echoed for a long while. The Tam were dissolved—not a Second Family, so their fate was of little interest to thirteen-year-old Yala.
You do not know how dangerous the world is, little sister. Bai, acting the important big brother, had refused to tell her more and she had poked him in the ribs each time he said it. She had never dared ask directly about the Tam clan.
