by S. C. Emmett
Lady Komor—it had to be her, visibly smaller than her opponent—touched her heels to her mount’s sides, and her bay shot forward again. This time she leaned to the right, the fractured cup at the bottom of her playing-stick catching the ball. Another turn of her wrist, the horse obeying the pressure of her knee-shifting and curving aside, and the ball bounded off the cavalry ground, almost shattering a carved stone torch-holder. It whistled as it flew, and Kai let out a sharp breath. Hopefully, there was nobody in the tangle-garden beyond to attempt catching it.
She regained the saddle with another swift movement, straightened, and threw her head back. Behind the blue cloth mask, another cry lifted. He’d heard its like before, fighting the Khir, but not so high-pure or shrill. The princess brought her mount around with skill, but Komor Yala had the gift of their horse-goddess.
“Ahi-a!” the princess called, stripping her mask from her face. Her knees clamped home as her bay slowed, and she rode with easy grace, only one hand upon the reins. “Yala! I thought I had you!”
Komor Yala let her bay slow to a trot, then to a walk. The horse tossed its fine head as she stripped her own mask, and the court ladies whisper-giggled, their dresses fluttering at the edges. Kai found himself upon the stairs, his heels landing hard, and lengthened his stride. Behind him, Crown Prince Takyeo hurried down another flight, his dark wooden topknot-cage gleaming. Kai was barely aware of Takshin at his shoulder and Mrong Banh’s puffing in their wake.
It was Jin who reached the women first, though. “Marvelous!” he crowed. “Do all Khir ride like that? Can you teach me? What is the ball made of? How did you—”
Lady Komor’s grey eyes burned, a high flush in her sharp-curved cheeks. She shook her head, but her smile was broad and breathless, stray blue-black strands sticking to her forehead and cheeks. The spring-blue costumes were Khir riding habits, wrapped close to allow freedom of movement while blurring a woman’s outline. She finished unwrapping her head with one hand, the other draping her reins with a quick habitual twist. “Easy there, long-legged one,” she crooned in Khir, leaning forward, looking down the bay’s right front leg. “Easy.”
“What does she say?” Jin blinked at Princess Mahara, who pulled her own mask free.
The princess’s soft, round face was alight too, and it suited her. “Husband!” She straightened in the saddle, her light eyes dancing with glee. “Did you see? Yala won, again.”
“I do not always win,” Komor Yala said, leaning to the left now, checking the front leg on that side. Her Zhaon, sharp-accented, was not quite as musical as usual.
“This is the only game she does not let me win.” Mahara slid from the saddle, landing light as a leaf. Even the boots were blue, and supple—probably a gift, plovers stamped and embroidered around their cuffs. “What ails your horse, aenbak?” The Khir word for sister, with an affectionate lilt—a high honor, indeed. At least Ashani Zlorih had sent a lady his daughter liked, even if he meant her lonely self to be an insult to the Zhaon who had required a small retinue.
“I never let you win.” Lady Komor shook her head, her long braid swaying. “I do not know. His weight is off.”
“You do let me win, but not at kaibok.” Mahara patted her mount’s neck. “Did you see? You cannot let someone else take the ball.” Kittenish now, she peered up at Takyeo, who looked frankly poleaxed, beaming soporifically. The Crown Prince reached for his wife’s gloved hands, and took the reins from her with courtly grace.
“We must walk him,” he said, in soft, clear Zhaon. “What is that, in Khir?”
The princess told him, and he repeated the words. She laughed, correcting him, and a strange relief mixed with unease filled Kai’s throat. The marriage was indeed upon steady footing, and he should have been glad of it—but to show affection so openly, did Takyeo not have any sense?
Lady Komor slid from her saddle. She resumed her soft singing to her own mount, who flicked his ears in her direction, his sides heaving. The bay gelding looked, as far as Kai could tell, extremely satisfied with himself, but the lady’s expression had clouded.
“Lady Komor.” Jin was still full of questions, towering over her by a good head and a half even before he finished the last of his growing. “Can you teach me how to play?”
“Perhaps.” She glanced at the knot of onlookers, a quick calculating look. “Sixth Prince Jin, it is? Do you like horses?”
“He cannot stand them,” Takshin said, a little too loudly, and slowly, his Zhaon exaggerated at every edge. “He is afraid.”
“I am not!” Jin rounded upon him, as if they were much younger; Takshin simply folded his arms, his stare not quite as cold as usual but nowhere near warmth, either.
Lady Komor ducked under the bay’s head, clicking her tongue much like Mrong Banh. The astrologer scuttled cautiously backward as the bay sidestepped, though it was nowhere near him. The Khir girl led the horse away, a big lathered beast docile as a trained pig. By the time Jin and Takshin realized she had left, she was already taking the bay down the narrow, close-walled slope leading to the stable complex.
For a Khir, care of a four-footed cousin would come first.
Zakkar Kai watched Takyeo and Princess Mahara amble after her, deep in conversation. Mrong Banh halted at his side. “The whole palace will hear of this,” the astrologer said, quietly. “And the Emperor, too.”
“It may amuse him.” Kai lost sight of her. He glanced at the older man, while Jin let out an ebullient whoop and ran in pursuit of his latest amusement.
Prince Takshin stood, looking after the small group as well, his scarred lip twitching once.
THEY WEIGH UPON ME
Anh gently pressed the water from Yala’s hair with a long thirsty cloth while her mistress, seated at a low writing-desk in a round pool of mirrorlight, broke the thick red seal. Letters spilled out of heavy oiled-canvas wrapping. Most bore her father’s familiar brushwork upon the outside, his name written boldly but without pretension, the simplest character for each syllable or word chosen and practiced for long years. She remembered the smell of inkstone, her father’s fingers gentle upon her wrist as he guided her through the symbols.
Ko. Mo. Ri. It was the only time she had been allowed to sit upon his lap, while she was practicing her brushwork. For her own name, ko-mo-or, but her father and brother had the honor of the ri, with its proudly lifted stallion-tail.
There were three letters in another hand. She frowned slightly, examining them. The ink was sepia and the strokes delicate, though the horizontals were a little too thick.
The mystery was solved when she opened one and scanned the first line. It was the second of three letters from Narikh’a Daoyan, once a royal byblow, now Ashani Daoyan, Crown Prince of Khir.
She set them aside, arranged her father’s missives in the proper order according to the small, exquisitely brushed date on the back of each, and began to read.
Her father wrote of spring spreading through the two house gardens, and that he had visited Bai’s stone and found her arrangements for it, not to mention the upkeep she had performed, very filial. He wrote of the household, much quieter now since he had no need of servants for his son and daughter, and of the bronzefish in the south garden’s pond. They had survived the winter, of course, wise enough to sleep beneath the ice instead of wasting their energy upon fruitless struggle against the seasons.
As did the komor flower, with its tiny blossoms.
“So many characters,” Anh said wonderingly, chafing Yala’s hair. “Can you read them all?”
Of course. But the girl was merely curious, not sarcastic, so Yala did not mind questions upon the border of impertinence. “Yes.”
“Are they Khir, or Zhaon?”
Of course, plenty of kaburei did not read. Their traditional name in the Hundreds was shua-rei, the Voiceless. Yet times had changed some little—and slowly—since the canonical texts had been immured by the great Huan sage whose name was so auspicious it could only be referred to with the first and last
characters of its flow, k’oh and oung. “We use the same characters,” Yala answered, patiently. “Many Khir kaburei are literate; you are not?”
“I know only my name. Ah, Na.” The girl laughed, tossing aside scholarship and reading with a quick jerk of her chin. It was a motion she performed often, shaking away anything she had decided to leave to wiser heads. “Braids?”
“Just one, unless I am called for dinner.” It was not likely. Yala moved her shoulders slightly, her back taking its accustomed straightness. It was permissible to relax in the bath, but not here.
Not where anyone, even a kaburei, could see.
“Not tonight, Lady Kue said the Crown Prince and Princess are at dinner together. Love-birds.” Anh sobered when Yala did not laugh or otherwise respond to the sally. “I shall be quiet, lady.”
“Mh.” Yala kept still as the comb drew through her hair. She opened another letter, scanned it, another. Closer reading could wait for the second or third time, and she could also search between the characters for other meanings.
House Komori did not lower itself to much politicking, but she would be a fool not to send her father what information she could glean of Zhaon’s intentions, even though a mere woman was not supposed to worry over or notice such things. Her father was no fool, and would no doubt keep her apprised of anything that might impact her princess, too.
Her father wrote of the flowering trees, of household matters, of the price of sohju, salt, and rai, of fine silk in the market that he would send her if she wished for it. The dresses she had left behind were kept safe in the ceduan clothespress, and if she wished, he would send them as well. Perhaps she would find a use for them, even in the south.
All the letters were full of such mundane things, and Yala’s eyes prickled with heat.
The last letter broke off halfway, then continued after a long, curving line meant to denote time had passed.
I received a packet of your letters, written every week. You are very faithful. The South is a warm place, but a dangerous one. Take care with the princess, but more importantly, care for yourself. Keep your honor close and your sight unclouded. I keep you in my thoughts, daughter.
The character for thoughts was close to the one for heart, especially with the small added fillip on the last upstroke. Now she wondered if her own letters, full of careful distance—how long they had traveled, what they had eaten, the strangeness of the Zhaon houses with their roofs that would not shed snow so easily—had not pleased him. Or had they perhaps… wounded him, in some oblique way?
She sighed, folding the last letter carefully, returning it to its folded sleeve. Perhaps it was possible to say things with a brush that you could not, otherwise. She would have to speak less generally and more distinctly in future missives.
She opened Daoyan’s letters, arranged them, and paused for a moment as Anh began a loose braid. “Anh. Some tea, perhaps, before you commence.”
The kaburei girl paused. “What kind?”
“Something soothing.” Dinner would be brought soon, and kaibok gave one an appetite. Still, she wished to read whatever Daoyan had to say without someone breathing behind her.
Even a kaburei.
Anh retreated to the door, bowed, and pulled the partition closed. Her soft footsteps, hurrying away, were the release of familiar bonds, and Yala’s shoulders dropped a trifle, then a little more.
Komor Yala, greetings. You have been gone two days, and they weigh upon me. Dao also spoke of spring, but not as her father did. Instead, he spoke of the planting, and that he waited for news of Zhaon, and hoped her journey was smooth and her health did not suffer. He wished for her to write, if she could find the time.
Komor Yala, greetings. You have been gone twenty days, and they weigh upon me.
She shifted, her legs aching. A game of kaibok after not riding for a few weeks jarred muscle and bone. A hot bath instead of a tepid one was called for, but it would make her sleepy, and the letters required thought and attention.
She did not wish to be sleepy. Not now.
Komor Yala, greetings. You have been gone thirty-two days, and they weigh upon me.
Oh, she recognized the quotation, of course. It was from Kao Yanbin’s letters to Princess Shurimake in the Third Dynasty. Kan’s play about the lovers had been wildly popular the winter before Three Rivers, when Zhaon was just a slow-boiling menace ravaging borderlands and choking the Anwei trade-roads. She had gone with Bai and Dao to see it, at the theater in the royal quarter. Seated between chaperoning brother and friend, her fan fluttering, nothing worse on the horizon than Mahara’s pestering—Khir’s princess could not attend a play, even chaperoned, and was forced to find amusement when the Great Rider summoned a theater troupe to the palace—for every detail of the staging, how the lines were delivered, recitals of the most passionate moments…
Each day, I ask the Great Rider if there is news of the princess. Perhaps he suspects I have thoughts above my station. There are rumors that the marriage has indeed taken place. I think of you alone in the palace of our enemies, and my blood boils within me. I know such a statement is unwelcome, but I cannot stop myself. Forgive me.
She touched the brush-lines of his signature. He signed himself in the old way, without any pretensions. Dao, the character for a shield, not a small buckler but a heavy round shelter.
Perhaps she should have stayed. But any offer he made for her would have foundered upon the king’s need to keep his only remaining heir—unless he had other mistresses likely to carry fruit—available until the political situation settled. And her brother’s shade might well have risen to throttle her, should she have entertained Daoyan’s ideas.
What would her father have said?
I denied them all, I kept you close.
“My lady?” Anh pushed the partition aside, brought the tea-tray through, and knelt to close the door again. “I brought you ao-sai, it is powerfully calming. There is honey, too, and flatcake. It is almost dinnertime.”
Yala set the letter aside and smiled, her face a stiff mask. She could not think upon what might have been. “Very good.”
No, there was no use in what might have. Instead, she had to think of what is. It was well enough for Daoyan to write such things, safe in Khir as he was. Nothing but jealous nobles and poison to avoid, and the king’s favor to court closely instead of at a distance as he had done all his life. It was still a dance he was well accustomed to, and well practiced in.
The problem of how to reply to her once-friend, she decided, could wait until morning. After dinner she would write her father, again, and perhaps, just perhaps, find a way to tell him… what? That she was well, and the princess was well, and that he should not worry. She busied herself with arranging her sleeves as Anh settled and poured the tea, offering a fragrant blue-painted cup with both hands.
And that he must take another wife, she reminded herself. A junior branch must not take Hai Komori. A daughter’s duty to family and clan, even over the many leagues separating them, was not done.
It would never be done.
WHO IS COMMON
In the antechamber to the Crown Prince’s bedroom, the table was laid and servants retreated. On other occasions they would not withdraw, especially when there were guests at the table in the great dining-room, but for now, dinner was often at this small, intimate board. It was a pleasant enough room, with a sliding door to a porch overlooking the Jonwa’s largest water-garden, full of small stone pagoda-fountains and their tinkling music restarted now that any danger of ice was past.
The antechamber was sparely furnished and full of the smell of dusk as the day’s heat leached away, a note of brassiness from the water, a breath of sweet-panil vine blooming early upon trellises at the garden’s far end. Two scrolls hung upon the plain wooden walls, both bearing quotations from Cao Lung’s Book of Rule. Round and draped with restful black fabric, the table had room for four. Only the most honored of guests would share this intimacy, but that was for later.
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br /> After she had given them an heir.
Mahara set her carved eating-sticks down carefully, tips resting upon the fish-shaped holder like during a festival. “It is very good,” she said, diplomatically. “I am merely unaccustomed to Zhaon cuisine. Forgive me.”
Her new husband was not so bad, even though his eyes were… troubling. In a noble Khir gaze you could see the thoughts moving; a black gaze was a kaburei’s slyness, they said. Waiting to betray, opaque because they lacked trustworthiness.
“There is nothing to forgive. I should tell you, Lady Kue has found a new cook, one adept at northern dishes.” His eyebrows drew together, a worried look she began to suspect was habitual. He was handsome, yes, especially his wide forehead and growing beard—the very illustration of a scholar-warrior, with wide shoulders and leonine grace. She had not seen him ride yet, but surely he would not be bad at it. He did not seem bad at anything a prince should do.
It was better than she had hoped, really. Except the food. Mahara studied polished rai, pearls jumbled in a crimson porcelain bowl. The meat was bland and there was no curd. “That is very kind of her.” A drink of tea, then, to calm her stomach. She lifted her cup, other hand holding her sleeve just so, and studied him afresh.
A pleasant, triangular face, and those shoulders. There was a deceptive softness to his cheeks, but his middle was lean and his legs long. His topknot was caged in leather, but the cage was finely wrought, and the stick holding it fast was threaded with hammered gold. He did not shout, or strike the table like her father did in private when momentarily displeased, even when she dared to pour his tea without asking. Of course, it was early in the marriage; he could change at any moment.
Even honorably secluded in a princess’s bower, she knew that much of men.
Her husband selected a few strips of meat and indicated a plate of spear-shaped green vegetables in lacy breading. “Do you like these? Have you had them?”
