by S. C. Emmett
Was he jealous? That was a good sign. “What’s wrong with him visiting his sister?”
“I did not come here to discuss the Second Prince.”
“I did not, either.” But she preened a little, hopeless to deny it, at the thought that he did not like Kurin’s attentions to her. Hope was a weed, the novels said. And wouldn’t Mother be furious if she found Sabwone reading some of them? They were exciting, and forbidden, probably because they were true. Not historical, and not practical, certainly, but the feelings contained in them were more honest than court life allowed. “Come now, Makar. Let us be friends. We always were, before. How is your mother?”
“A social call in the dead of night, Sabwone?” He did not fidget, but there was a sense of contained irritation spreading from him. “Out with it, or I shall leave you here and return to more appropriate pursuits.”
And what, exactly, were those at this hour? Dusty scrolls? He did not visit the Theater District like Sensheo did. Sabwone parted the hau’s hanging branches and peered at him. “You are not amusing anymore.”
“Have I ever been?” He waved the question away with a short, sharp motion, his sleeve fluttering. “What do you want?”
His impatience was delightful. Sabwone decided to reward him. “Merely to tell you that your little brother visited me again, and was very clumsy. He wanted to know about herbs.”
“Perhaps he means to study medicine. Or culinary refinement.” Now Makar had grown still, his eyes gleaming above his handsome nose. Not a hair out of place, ever. Takyeo might have been the eldest, but Makar looked the part of prince ever so much better.
“Oh, no doubt, no doubt.” She played with the hau stem-branches, twisting them in her supple fingers. “But he mentioned that physician again.”
“Which one? There are so many.” But by the sound of it, Makar already suspected what she was about to say.
“That ghoul who attends the First Queen.” She raised her sleeve as if to hide a smile, or a grimace of distaste. Branches caressed her shoulders. She was a court lady in a novel, hiding in the darkness, whispering to a lover. Her imagination, as usual, lingered upon the image. “You know what they say of him.” An open secret, and Father had allowed the mousy Second Concubine to adopt Zakkar Kai.
Giving her a son after all, even an upstart, solidified her position. The First Queen was probably furious, as usual. Delicious to think of that painted merchant’s daughter striding through her palace halls, ripping things from the walls like Lady Ohku in the last installment of Heart-Gems in Twilight. She wasn’t noble like Mother was. Why, her clan had bought its genealogy rolls.
But Sabwone had other business tonight. The next step, of course, would be visiting Sensheo, or arranging to make their paths cross. If Makar did not behave as she wished, Sensheo certainly would. The prospect of inconveniencing the elder brother with the younger was satisfying indeed.
Makar kept his stillness. It was a new quality of his, freezing in place like a thinleg bird or a cat intent on prey. Like everything else, it only made him more handsome. “And you tell me this because…?”
“You know how Sensheo is.” She found a thin, pliable green branch and wove it between her right fingers. Tighter, tighter. “He gets ideas in his head, and then he cries when they don’t go well.”
“Who puts such ideas in his head, Sabwone?” Makar did not fold his arms, or move away from the hau. He was worried, that much was plain.
Which meant Sensheo had been very naughty lately. “I’m sure I don’t know.” It was just too easy, really. “I admire my elder brothers, and I’d hate to see one do something… rash.”
“I’m certain you would.” No warmth in the words.
Now she aimed for her true objective. She’d warned him, so he would be grateful. “Will you take me to the Blossom Festival?”
Perhaps, like a woman, he could not agree right away. “Why not ask Sensheo?”
“Because I want to go with you.” He had never been this dense before. Was he deliberately misunderstanding her?
“No doubt Kurin would accompany you, then.”
“I don’t want to go with him, either.” Now was the time to apply pressure. “I could tell Father what I know of Sensheo and silver.”
“And what is that?” He already suspected, his tone said as much.
“Just that I’d seen him with a company of acrobats before the Knee-High. And that Sensheo asked me for silver.”
Of course it was true. Or, well, mostly true. Sensheo had come to her for money, since she was thrifty with her allowance and he had begun the yearly gambling early. She had made certain the household steward knew she was giving her brother a few slices of silver ingot, but not what it was for.
The part about the acrobats… she could very well come up with plausible details. It would be up to Sensheo to think quickly then, just like skip-whip in the hallways, dodging guards and chaperones, accomplishing mischief that could be blamed upon another. She did not have to hide her smile in the darkness, and the dark enjoyment filling her was better than the thimbles of sohju Mother would let her taste.
Makar was silent for a long moment. “This is not a game, Sabwone.”
“Take me to the Blossom, and I won’t say a word.” She hoped he’d be reasonable. After all, when he was twelve he had kissed her cheek and promised her he would always care for her.
“No.” Makar turned. “Do as you please, Sabwone. You will anyway.” He set off for the garden entrance, and Sabwone’s mouth fell open a little.
Had he forgotten, or did he not care what happened to Sensheo? “You’ll be sorry,” she said, loudly enough to carry, and drew back into the branches. When he halted, her heart leapt. Had he reconsidered?
“Or perhaps,” he said, not even turning to look, “you will be the sorry one. Ask Kurin which suitor Father’s chosen for you, little sister.”
It was ridiculous. “Father won’t marry me off just yet,” she managed, but her cheeks were hot and her pulse had decided it did not like her ribs. Instead, it gathered in her throat, a dry, feverish weight.
Makar did not reply. He simply glided out of the garden, vanishing into the dark at its mouth. Sabwone grabbed a fistful of tree-limbs, green and sap-full in the dark. She closed her eyes, uselessly. After a few moments, though, a series of new ideas struck her.
Makar already suspected Sensheo of something naughty, which meant Father did. Hard not to; he’d always been a bumbler, lagging behind even Gamnae, who at least could strike without warning if she was prodded hard enough. All Sabwone had to do was wait for an opportune moment, and tell Father. She could even summon tears, be pale and somber, and then both the Second Queen’s sons would learn it was better not to ignore a concubine’s daughter.
It was a pity about Makar. But he was only the Fourth Prince, anyway. There were plenty of other possibilities for Garan Tamuron’s firstborn princess. All the same, her cheeks were slick and her eyesight blurred. Nothing had been satisfying lately, and she would have to find new amusement.
And someone, anyone else to take her to the Blossom Festival.
SIGN AS IT PLEASES
A clack-clatter of weighted wood hitting weighted wood under a hammerblow of spring sunshine, sweat stinging his eyes and his leg all but numb from a lucky shot—Takshin leaned aside, boots scraping on stone, and unleashed a flurry of blows that ended with his sparring partner sprawled upon dusty sun-hot pavers, helmet slightly askew and his knees bent, a turtle upon its back.
“Well done.” Takshin pushed aside the face-guard on his own padded helmet and offered a hand.
The man—a spare, wide-shouldered Golden whose silent ferocity cared nothing for his opponent’s rank—had a firm friendly grip, and when he was set upon his feet again he stripped his own helmet free and shook his sweat-damp topknot. “My thanks,” he said, pleasantly. “It is a pleasure to dance with you, Third Prince.”
“Likewise, Jolong.” An unaccustomed smile stretched Takshin’s mouth, and the ot
her man didn’t look at his scars. Jolong simply bowed and turned with military precision, setting off for the edge of the drillyard with his splinter-edged practice-blade.
Most of the Guards avoided sparring with him, Jin was at his brushwork, and Kai was at Great Council with the Emperor, no doubt wishing he were here. Sun and sweat were preferable to sitting upon cushions and mouthing platitudes and politics.
You simply dislike speaking, Kai had said once, and Takshin had shaken his head.
I dislike empty words, when a sword will do. And there they had left it. It was not quite true—a sword was a tool with only limited applications—but it was close enough.
The heat would soon become unbearable and there was no prospect of another reasonable opponent, so Takshin placed his own splintered practice-blade in the pile for sanding and stripped his practice armor, consigning it to the care of a kaburei too old for pink cheeks and a stammer. The man did stare at Takshin’s scars, and perhaps that accounted for the Third Prince’s savage mood as he strode along a long colonnaded walkway. It was almost forgotten, this avenue, but it passed close to the Crown Prince’s palace.
Of course Takshin found himself using it almost every day. At different times, and of course only to judge whether Takyeo’s palace was watched.
Of course.
Today, of all days, while he dripped with sweat and his leg threatened to drag, he saw a swaying shape passing between bars of light and shadow, silk the green of new yeoyan leaves embroidered with soft curving yellow at the sleeves. Her hairpin dangled a single amber bead, catching fire when she passed into sunshine and dying as she moved into the shade of a column, and she held a well-oiled rainbell carefully away from her skirts with her left hand.
If she recognized him, she made no sign, moving at the same unhurried pace. Takshin would remember it long afterward, the heat, the slight breeze ruffling the edge of her skirts before mouthing sweat drying upon his skin and pushing dust in lazy golden whirls inside glowing bars. A prison of shine and shade, holding a small guttering flame.
He stopped at a reasonable distance and let her draw closer. Her course did not waver, her gaze fixed at a moving point some bodylengths ahead, pale Khir eyes tracing a route among stone flags.
“Lady Spyling,” he said, and cursed himself for not making her speak first. “Peering between columns again?”
Her chin rose. She halted at a decorous distance, in shadow, the edge of her green skirt flirting with sunshine. “Third Prince.” A bow, correct in every degree, a bending of a supple stem. The amber bead kindled, was snuffed. “Your manners are ever the same.”
What could he say? He had learned to treat all with equal indifference. A crackle-glaze of sweat all over him itched. “Are you well?”
“Well enough, thank you. The weather is very warm.” She was a wary fencer, her gaze not quite meeting his.
Takshin’s throat swelled with a few inconsequentials. He was trying to decide among them when she straightened, and took the first thrust.
“I am glad to see you. There is something I would speak upon.” Careful Zhaon with strange edges to the consonants, not blurred as it was in the Shan dialects.
“Then speak away.” Takshin winced inwardly. He did not mean to sound harsh, did he? It was merely a habit.
She did not seem to mind overmuch. “You were at the banquet for the Knee-High Festival.”
“Yes.” He regarded her warily. His leg throbbed, not yet accustomed to its work again. Was she asking for gossip, or after information?
“I would thank you.” Now she looked at him directly, pale eyes thickly fringed with charcoal lashes. “For my princess’s life.”
Oh. Was that it? He had moved to protect Takyeo, without thought or intention. “The Crown Prince is my eldest brother.” A reflexive parry, dismissive and stinging at once. “It was my duty.”
“He is very kind to my princess, and so to me.” She studied him, cool and remote, her skirt moving a little. The wind was uneasy today. “I will thank you for both lives, then.”
So she thought Takyeo kind. Who would not? “It is nothing,” Takshin managed. It had been a long time since anyone, especially a woman, offered more than perfunctory politeness. “Anyone would have done the same.”
“In any case, Third Prince, I am most grateful, and give you my thanks. I shall trouble you no further.” She stepped aside, slippered feet testing the walkway toe-first before committing her weight, moving with the assurance of a cat or a body acquainted with swordplay. Or it could simply be a dancer’s grace. She moved as if to sway past him, but Takshin took two gliding sideways steps of his own, blocking her path. The edge of her skirt, brushed forward by that soft stray breeze, almost touched the top of his boot. Her right hand dropped close to her side and her steady, mistrustful gaze rose to his face again.
“I have something to speak upon as well.” The words even came naturally. Now he had a course, he might as well commit himself. “You mentioned, a few weeks ago, something about an earring.”
“A kyeogra.” She nodded, and her rainbell was no longer quite so ready to rise in her defense. Did she expect to be caught in an afternoon storm? Where was she going? “I recall you did not like the idea.”
“That is not my memory.” What did a man say, in this situation? He thought it quite likely she might poke him with the closed rainbell if he fretted her again. “I would be honored, Lady Spyling. If you are still amenable.”
“You wish me to pierce your ear?” Wary in turn, and very soft. Khir women seemed incapable of raising their voices.
His throat was dry, and blocked. He had to cough to clear it, but to do so in a court lady’s face was unprincely indeed. So he croaked an affirmative, like a stone frog in a child’s tale. “Yes.” Salt and dust itched all over him, and his leg, while glad of the rest, was also full of the deep ache that meant a bruise was rising for the skin-surface.
She studied him for a few more moments; that pale gaze held the shadows of thought moving swift as bronzefish in a bright spring stream. “Very well, then. It will take me some short while to find the implements in the markets.”
“Have you… I shall ask… do you require an escort then, Lady Spyling?” At least his scars and a glower would keep market thieves from accosting her. He could be useful to a court lady; there were a few who had found as much before they inevitably moved to less difficult prey.
A slight shake of her head, that amber bead almost touching sunshine before hastily retreating. “There are many kaburei and guards in the Crown Prince’s household to accompany me. In any case, I am not bound there now.”
“Where are you bound, then?” The question slipped forth before he could halt it, and if she showed disdain now, he would fling whatever cutting words he had into the breach of his walls.
“To the Second Concubine’s palace, to practice the sathron since my princess and her husband are viewing the gardens.” So she knew the Second Concubine, and by the softening of her expression, liked her too.
Which meant she had fine taste, this Khir girl. “Auntie Kanbina? You know she adopted Zakkar Kai, yes?”
“Yes.” A small smile, working wonders on her sharp, solemn face. Was it affectionate? Polite? Amused, disgusted?
He couldn’t decide, and his discomfort grew by the moment. “Well, then. When shall we meet again?”
“I shall send you word when I have found the implements, Third Prince?”
A familiar scowl took refuge upon his face. “My name is Takshin.”
“Third Prince Garan Takshin.” A mischievous twinkle in those pale eyes. She might have bowed, except he was far too close. “Where shall I send my messenger, to find you?”
“The Old Tower. I stay there, with Mrong Banh.” He was abruptly conscious of his topknot in its leather cage askew, his black Shan costume rumpled and stiff with dust, the sweat and grime in every crease. His scars would grow livid if he flushed. “Or send word to Zakkar Kai. He will find me.”
“W
ill he?” A bright spark of interest in her gaze now. What would a Khir lady like about the God of War? Of course, Kai was unscarred.
“He always does.” He did not mean it to sound so grim. “When we were young… but that would bore you. Go, Lady Spyling.” The right half of his mouth pulled up, an unwilling almost-smile, and he stepped aside with a bow. “If I may not accompany you, I shall await your letter.”
“Will you know who it is from, if I sign it?” She did not return the bow, simply regarded him sidelong, and he realized, with a measure of shock, that she was teasing him.
There was no hint of ill-humor in it, or of Sabwone’s languid waiting to pounce. Instead, she looked a little like Jin when he was about mischief, or Gamnae when she was very young and attempting to fret one of her many elder brothers into paying attention to her. Except with her eyebrows slightly up, and that catlike curve playing at the edges of her lips, she was not a child.
“Only if you sign it little spying nuisance.” It was a tolerable pun, he decided, since the last two syllables could rhyme with Komor.
“I shall sign as it pleases me, Third Prince Garan Takshin.” A slight, deliberate mispronunciation, turning his name into a high, inaccessible cliff, distant and forbidding. She did not bow as she stepped away, and he did not follow.
He watched her float upon her path, a yeoyan branch laden with green, its blossoms spent but still fragrant in a drift about the tree’s roots. Something beautiful, and fragile, waiting to be stripped by a spring storm or a sudden icy wind.
He was cold, Takshin realized, just before a scalding went through him, topknot to toes. Sweat crackled on the side of his neck when he scratched, and the warm satin of his greenstone hurai reminded him of status, of power, and of things he disdained.
“Third Prince,” he murmured. Even sent to Shan and adopted by the Mad Queen, he had his hurai. And his pride. Neither would be very attractive to a court lady from Khir, now would they?
It mattered little. Still, when she vanished at the far end of the colonnade, he turned sharp right and stretched his legs, going up stairs and into a timbered half-hall that would eventually spill him in the direction of the Old Tower. He could bathe, and change, and if he hurried, perhaps Auntie Kanbina would be glad to see another boy she had fed plums and gently scolded long ago.
