The Throne of the Five Winds

by S. C. Emmett

  “Then it is as well I am not indulging in it.” Yala settled her thimble more securely, set the plum thread aside, and pushed her needle through. “Su Junha, my dear, perhaps our visitor would like tea while he waits for the Crown Princess’s return.”

  “Yes, Lady Yala.” Worried but obedient, the girl rose and glided away. Sometimes she forgot herself, and hurried with straight steps like a farmgirl. No doubt she had been teased and snubbed for it, but at least here among so few court ladies and under Yala’s watchful eye, the teasing was good-natured and minimal.

  “She flees like a doe.” Prince Takshin did not move. “Am I truly that unpleasant?”

  “You do try to be.” Yala watched her stitches, fine and even, take shape. “But I find myself glad to see you today, as well as… then.”

  “Unpleasantness is a habit, nothing more.” He made a slight, restless movement, watching her hands. “Were you very glad then?”

  She had just said as much, had she not? “Yes.” How could I not be? The shaking threatened to return, and she paused, staring at her disobedient fingers. They settled only grudgingly.

  Takshin’s gaze was a heavy weight. “Do you know what happened to them?”

  “I do not wish to.” That was an unvarnished truth. Perhaps he would take it as such.

  “I should tell you.”

  She settled the sleeve in her lap and regarded him. Her wrists ached under carefully wrapped bandages, and she had chosen this sky-blue dress because the sleeves were Khir-long. “Why?”

  “So you know you are safe, Lady Komor Yala.” Very softly, and he leaned forward, a subtle movement closing off the rest of the room. “The wolf cares for his own.”

  Of course, he could not have any scandal attaching to Mahara’s husband. “The Crown Prince and his household are lucky to have your protection, Your Highness.” Would that satisfy him?

  “Oh, Takyeo’s my Eldest Brother, and I like him, too.” Takshin paused, still watching her hands. The impersonal glare, strangely enough, seemed to settle her fingers, and furthermore bolstered her liver. Perhaps she had used up much of her courage yesterday, and had to wait for the organ held to be the seat of that quality to refill. “That much is true.”

  Yala exhaled. Her shoulders loosened a trifle, then a little more. “I was very glad to see you,” she said, finally. “I would ask how you found me, but…”

  “Ask Kai. He loves to tell stories where I will not.” Takshin settled his hands upon his thighs, the posture of a retainer waiting in a lord’s hall, or a warrior careful of his weapons. She was, now that she had room to consider, thankful he had not seen her yue. “But now I will tell you something, little lure.”

  The nickname was not quite elegant, but she did not mind. It was even… well, somewhat comforting. There was a certain sense of relief in finding an edge that was not pointed at her, even if it somewhat halfheartedly menaced. He was difficult, this prince, but she sensed he might also be trustworthy.

  After a fashion, and always upon his own terms. “Continue, Third Prince Takshin.”

  “You are never to risk yourself in that manner again.” Delivered just as flatly as Baiyan’s own pronouncements, when he stepped into his elder-brother stirrup and decided to ride over Yala’s murmured objections. “Or I shall be angry.”

  To think she’d just been comforted by his presence. Or did he mean to scold her for not being a quick enough hare to distract and escape the hounds? Given his nature, it was most probably the latter. “We must all risk ourselves, in one way or another.” Her head bent slightly, and she picked up her sewing. This sleeve would have a beautiful curve when she was done, suiting Su Junha’s long arms. “My princess is more important—”

  “No.” He said it too loudly, drawing furtive glances from the gathered ladies. Thankfully, his tone dropped; he seemed to recognize little good would come of shouting at this turn in their conversation. “You are never to risk yourself like that again.”

  It was Yala’s turn to cling to silence as she stitched. Perhaps he did think of himself as an elder brother, and that would account for his manner. How very like Bai, indeed. Her irritation had a familiar, and very welcome, edge.

  “Do you hear me?” Prince Takshin leaned farther toward her, and his whisper was just as fierce as his expression. The scar upon his throat had flushed, and all trace of a smile, mocking or genuine, had fled. “Do you, Komor Yala?”

  “I hear you, Third Prince Takshin.” Certainly, she was possessed of ears and could hardly help it.

  But Yala intended to do as she must, and if the next incident ended less happily than this one, it was the price of being Mahara’s own yue. Not held in a hand, but a blade kept hidden, waiting in service.

  And, if necessary, broken to allow the wielder to escape.

  “Third Prince Takshin.” Mahara was at the door, swaying gracefully in yellow-and-blue silk patterned with long stripes. “You honor us with a visit. Come, we must have tea.”

  The Third Prince was drawn away to make conversation with the Crown Princess, and such was Mahara’s gratefulness to him that she kept him for a long while though he often glanced away, his look arresting before it could quite reach Komor Yala.

  Yala kept at the seam, the needle tapping her thimble every so often, and said nothing else.

  A POWERFUL SPARK

  The Old Tower was even more of a refuge today. Perhaps its sheath of blue tiles warded away some of the heat. “You are quite certain?” Mrong Banh clicked his tongue, his hands diving into his sleeves. There was a smear of green ink upon his cheek—he had been at his horoscopes again, and he looked almost as tired as Kai felt. “Quite, quite certain?”

  Zakkar Kai stretched his aching hands. They longed to curl into fists, and his shoulders were tense as knotted silk between stretchpoles. No matter how often he reminded himself that she was safe, the battle-nerves would not loosen. At least he had been able to visit the baths. “Takshin is.”

  “And?” The astrologer’s eyebrows, thick enough to qualify as a bush for tiny birds to nest in, rose to almost caricature height. He wiped his hands upon his robe-front, and one of them left a muddy fingerprint of green ink.

  Kai had to suppress a weary laugh. “And that is good enough for me, Banh.”

  “Khir, using a Wurei catspaw, buying the services of thieves and kidnappers.” Banh counted each item off on his fingers, an inn-boy reckoning the bill. “And the Crown Princess…”

  “Can you think of a better way to light wet fuel?” Kai did not like how this chain was tending. Khir was bled white by years of southron trade choked as well as border skirmishes and the disaster at Three Rivers, true, but a princess dishonored by their conqueror was a powerful spark.

  And giving Shan a reason to back away from Zhaon’s trade hegemony would be disastrous. Unifying Zhaon and pacifying Khir was expensive business; recovery was fragile. The Mad Queen had been adamant in avoiding marriage negotiations for her son; with her gone and Khir no longer keeping Zhaon’s armies busy in the North, they had been concluded with almost unseemly haste.

  Banh frowned at his ink-stained fingertips. “Ashani Zlorih isn’t a fool, and she is his daughter. Why would he—”

  It was not like the astrologer to be so dense, but they had both passed a sleepless night. Kai settled in his usual chair with a not entirely untheatrical groan. “It could be a Khir noble, or a group of them.”

  “Yes, of course.” Mrong Banh’s eyebrows now came together, almost knotting in the middle. He turned halfway around, perhaps intending to make tea, then swung back, attacked by another notion. “How would they benefit, though? Paying tribute is cheaper than war, and the nobles were thoroughly winnowed.”

  That was what worried Kai, though he had not quite been able to articulate it. Of course Banh would strike upon the reed that needed to be heard. “Defeat is a stain upon a man’s honor, there.”

  “Sometimes you must lose a battle to win a war.” Banh came back to the table and picked up a round
-bellied teapot of Anwei yellowglaze. He hunted for two clean cups and poured, but no steam rose from the liquid. It was no doubt cold tea, bitter with long steeping, but the man was distracted.

  “I do not think many Khir noblemen believe they lost.” Kai shook his head. “This goes no further, Banh.”

  He rolled his eyes like a much younger man. “Of course. I do not drop words in market wells, Kai.”

  “I know.” Kai scrubbed at his face, stubble scratching. He wanted another bath, needed a shave, and could have put away a hearty dinner, too. And Tamuron wanted him in Great Council as well as the morning session. “I still must say it. This worries me.”

  “Which worries you more, the Khir or a certain lady?” Banh pushed the sloshing-full teacup toward him and cursed softly at the same moment, whisking rai-paper with arcane notations away from possible spillage.

  Kai closed his eyes. “Don’t.”

  “What was the other, that actress…” Banh’s mouth twitched.

  I was younger, and much more foolish then. Kai winced. Every part of him ached savagely. “Banh. Don’t.”

  “You only like the unavailable. Is she married? Or betrothed?” It was small comfort that Banh had not guessed the identity of the lady Kai had been drinking to yet.

  He could never again get drunk around the man, that much was certain. “For the last time. Don’t.”

  “Mh.” Banh sobered, his attempt at levity deflating like a festival bladder. He traced the rim of his cup with a green-dyed finger, frowning. “The Emperor knows?”

  “Of the suspicions, yes. He no doubt has suspicions of his own.” It wasn’t like Tamuron to see lurkers where none existed, but current uncertainties and failing health made a man cautious.

  “Poor Lady Komor.” He shook his head, his loose topknot flopping. He must have scratched under it several times while watching the stars. “Is she… I mean, is she well?”

  Kai regarded him narrowly, sniffing at the cup. Eong, heavy and smoky, bitter from oversteeping and stone-cold besides. At least it was tea, and did not have ink in it. “Why the interest, Banh?”

  “She borrowed a book or two from me.” Banh touched his own cup with a fingertip, snatching his hand away as if it were hot. He frowned, contemplating his hand, and made a face. “I’d like them back, that is all.”

  “You never let anyone borrow a book since Jin was caught with The Pleasures of Lady Eight-Legs.”

  “He stole that one to look at the pictures, just as the rest of you did. He was more careless, though. Anyway.” Banh clicked his tongue. “A Golden Guard, seduced. It hardly seems possible.”

  “Well, he paid for it with the final coin. Jin made sure of that.” Kai stretched. If he was careful, Banh would not insist upon him drinking more than a single cup of the cold, quite nasty tea.

  The astrologer lifted his cup, paused. “You look tired.”

  “Yes, well, the Emperor wanted me in morning council. I cannot tell why, his temper is too short for listening.”

  “He trusts you.” Banh said it like a certainty. Dust danced in shafts of mirrorlight, a golden glow edging shelves of flatbooks, limning every item upon the cluttered tables. Cool air touched Kai’s cheeks, a welcome caress.

  Last night, Yala had clung to him as they mounted the stairs, her eyes all but closed. Trust. A dangerous thing. “Yes, well.” I owe Tamuron everything. And yet I do not care for his current temper.

  The Emperor was forgetting his sons were merely flesh, requiring more and more of Takyeo. You could not drive soldiers like beasts for too long, or they would break. Even oxen would drop in their tracks, if used mercilessly enough.

  “It won’t be long now,” Banh said, quietly. Apparently his own thoughts were wending the way Kai’s did. “Afterward, there is the Crown Prince’s coronation.”

  “And keeping him alive for it.” Their gazes met. Kai cleared his throat. “Banh, should untimely ill befall either of them…” Who else could he even broach the subject to?

  “Let us not borrow trouble.” The astrologer’s tone was uncharacteristically grave. “Whatever happens, Kai, we are still friends.”

  “I should hope so.” After all, Banh, you are not a threat to any Garan who sits upon the Throne. “I shall pass along your good wishes to Lady Komor.”

  Banh lifted his cup and took a deep draft. A curious look came over his round face, though he did not splutter.

  Kai regarded him, levelly. Eong was hardly pleasant at the best of times, despite several sages chanting its praises.

  Banh swallowed, his throat bobbing, and coughed, his cheeks and ears turning pink. “Ah. Well. Yes.” He grimaced, deeply, and coughed. “Please do.”

  WELL IN HAND

  There are the strangest rumors flying about.” Kurin lounged elegantly enough upon a bolster, his robes quite unwontedly somber today. Even his forehead was troubled, and today he wore no zhu powder upon his gleaming face.

  “Don’t frown, it spoils your looks.” Gamwone smoothed a scrap-square of silk upon her knee, considering its dye and grain. For once, she was not cold. The tapestries swathing the walls trapped summer’s bountiful heat, and she could loosen the top of her dress for once, though not enough to show the claw marks of former pregnancies upon her breasts. “Rumors?”

  “Nobody is looking at my face with yours about, mother dear.” Kurin did not reach for a fan or his teacup. His daily visit to his beloved mother was not proceeding as usual. “Yes, there are rumors that one of the Crown Princess’s ladies is ill.”

  “Is that so.” Gamwone had to dispel her own frown. Her attempts to insert an eye or two into the foreign bitch’s bower had not met with much success. That nose-in-the-air Shan whore Kue had an iron fist over the Jonwa, and the Crown Princess—oh, how annoying it was indeed, to name her thus—had a foreign lady who controlled her coterie much the same way. She’d even taken in that simpering Su girl, the one with the calluses and the clumsy feet.

  She had a good bloodline; the Sus were an ancient family. But Heaven had turned away from them, and they were threadbare now. Ill-luck rubbed off like cheap dye, and Gamwone wanted nothing to do with it.

  Kurin studied a tapestry of Yu Hoan the Sage on his barrel, bare-legged and drifting down the Pai River. How many fingersore servants had filled in the blue waves? Gamwone reserved herself for the delicate work.

  Finally, her most acceptable son half-lidded his eyes, and continued. “My little Shan brother is living in the Jonwa, too, and someone seems to have caught his eye.” He was very thoughtful this morning, occupied with problems he did not wish to share.

  “Oh?” Another disappointment. Takshin did not call at her palace; he seemed to have forgotten he had a mother. And that was a new development; he had made visits dictated by etiquette before, and sent brief uninformative letters she stopped replying to after his second year in Shan.

  Her letters to him could have been opened, of course, and she would have had to be distressingly clear. He was not like Kurin, who understood from a look, or a gesture. It irked her that Kiron of Shan was still alive.

  It should have been so easy, and Takshin was not one to cavil at drawing a blade. Why, the scars proved as much. He had no doubt left the Shan prince alive to pique his mother. The heavens knew nobody could be counted upon to make Gamwone’s life easier.

  “The Khir girl.” Kurin’s smile was pained. “Can you imagine?”

  For a moment she thought he meant the Crown Princess, and a delicious heat curled through her. Then she realized what he meant. “You mean the foreigner’s bigmaid?” An insulting term, but it applied. Gamwone wiggled her soft toes inside silken house-slippers embroidered with umu blossoms. It was a shame that sly head eunuch had made the scent of umu his signature; Gamwone would have liked to wear it more than once in a while.

  “She is a noblewoman in her own country, Mother. A high-ranking one, too, enough to wear silk daily.”

  She picked up her own cup. The tea was cooling too quickly. Today was rapidly be
coming unsatisfactory, and it was only morning. “A lady among horsefuckers is no lady.”

  “How very vulgar.” Kurin straightened, pushing the bolster irritably aside. Against its red and blue, his burnt sienna silk was not pleasing at all.

  Gamwone took a delicate sip. “I am an old woman, I may say what I please.”

  For once, Kurin did not immediately flatter her. Instead, he looked at a scroll upon a different wall, a delicately rendered and very expensive scene of a snowy mountain with a crane flying in the distance, signed by a master whose name escaped Gamwone at the moment. “It seems the lady snapped a golden leash upon our Taktak, and he is quite docile now.”

  Her interest piqued, the queen set down her inadequately warm tea and picked up an ivory fan with a rai-paper blade. It did not fold, but it moved the air in broad sweeps, and that was what she had wanted this morning. “Really.”

  “Yes. But that’s just gossip.” Kurin traced the characters upon his hurai with a fingertip, straightening instead of lounging. “It is not what worries me.”

  Ah, so now they came to it. “What worries you, my darling? Tell Mother.”

  “I have not heard from Sabwone.”

  Gamwone clicked her tongue, shaking her head. The affection between Kurin and the First Concubine’s brat daughter had often seemed… well, not concerning, not unnatural, but… the word escaped her, at the moment, and that was another irritation. The day was turning out to be full of them, and her temper would fray as a result. Could not anyone think of her struggles, her delicate nerves? “She may be too busy for you, my dear. She is, after all, a queen by now. How proud that concubine must be.” Distressingly proud. She would have to think of how to bring Luswone down a measure or two. Perhaps through her son… hm.

  “She has not reached the Shan border yet, Mother.”

  Her interest sharpened, and so did the sense of danger. Gamwone brushed at her throat with her fingertips, a dragonwing’s light footstep. “And how do you know that?”