The Throne of the Five Winds

by S. C. Emmett

  “You are more in the nature of a reserve, Maki.” The nickname slipped out, and could be explained by Kai’s gratefulness for his calming presence. “Jin?”

  “Right here.” The youngest prince straightened self-consciously, attempting to smooth his own hair. “What shall I do?”

  “Take charge of Crown Princess Mahara’s body; it is under guard at the Star Garden. Have her moved to the House of Bees, and set a guard. Stay with her. Will you?”

  “Princess… oh.” He turned even paler, and almost swayed on his feet. “Kai…”

  “Kai.” Makar’s tone wasn’t unkind, but it was stern. His hurai glinted, and he wore the set expression of a man determined to finish any disagreeable task before it bloomed into something truly unpleasant. “Perhaps I should attend to that matter.”

  “No.” Jin straightened. “No, I can do it. Everything will be done well for the Crown Princess, Kai.” He turned and marched away, his bright green robe flapping slightly upon the hot breeze. The onlookers parted for him, slowly but thoroughly.

  “Well done, lad,” Kai murmured, before beckoning Makar into the Jonwa’s shade and snapping again orders for the household guard to move farther up the stairs into the shade, and to bar all passage past this point to all but Takshin.

  Lady Kue was just inside the door now, resettling her hairpin in a nest of braids and wide-eyed with shock. “My lord Head General, Fourth Prince.” She hurried to bow, a short distracted motion. One of her sleeves was pushed high, and one of the buttons upon her Shan-style dress hung from a twist of thread. “The Emperor and Kihon Jiao are with my lord the Crown Prince.”

  “And Prince Takshin?” Makar accepted the bow with a nod. His gaze softened as it touched her face.

  Lady Kue lowered her gaze. She stared at Kai’s slipper-toes, and her voice was a monotone. “He went into the city early this morning, upon an errand for the Crown Prince.”

  “Lady Komor,” Kai said, in an undertone. “How does she fare?”

  Makar glanced at him, a quick sideways sipping motion, and settled his sleeves.

  “She is… Lady Gonwa Eulin returned as soon as she heard, and has taken her to the Star Garden.” Lady Kue’s hands wrung at each other, nervous birds in a cage. “We could not stop her, she was… my lord general, I fear for her state of mind, and—”

  “Send two of the household guard and her kaburei to attend her.” Kai would have preferred for Yala to stay here, but… well.

  Her face when the news arrived, all color draining away, her eyes gone cold and dark—it was a torment to remember, and he had other matters to attend to. He could have laughed, a soldier’s bitter, unamused bark when the worst had happened and looked likely to continue.

  The Crown Prince’s bedroom was alive with mirrorlight. Kihon Jiao was at the bedside, his hands slippery with jau and smears of fresh blood, snapping orders at two under-physicians. Takyeo, his hair streaming across cushions and his face pale as polished rai, tipped his head back as his left leg streamed blood upon a pad of thick, absorbent cotton. The arrowhead worked free, heavy and barbarous, its triangular head a tearing snake-mouth. More blood welled.

  Kihon Jiao made a short, irritated noise and his fingers flashed, applying pressure to the subtle body where it met the physical. The bleeding turned sluggish. “Start grinding the kohai root.” One of the under-physicians hurried to obey, untangling a plump, maggot-pale herb from its wrapping and settling it in a mortar-cradle, pushing his sleeves up to reveal forearms no doubt much exercised by the making of pastes and tinctures.

  “Kai,” the Crown Prince said. His fever-glittering gaze lit upon Kai. “My wife. Tell me.”

  “Save your strength.” The Emperor loomed behind the physicians, his gaze fixated upon his son’s crushed thigh. “Bring him something for the pain, physician.”

  “Not yet,” Kihon Jiao said immediately, and in tones that brooked no disagreement, royal or otherwise. “I need him alert for some short while.”

  It was too late. Takyeo read the truth upon Kai’s face, and if he had not, it was plain enough upon Makar’s. The Crown Prince sagged back onto hastily piled pillows, a short groan escaping his chapped lips.

  “Hurry, the kohai,” the physician said. “Move back… yes, there. More boiled cloths! You, fetch the Shan jau paste, we shall need its cooling.” His sling-satchel lay open upon a swept-clear table at the bedside; small items lay scattered upon the floor. His fingers flashed again, and he was a general marshaling reserves, a lean hound upon the scent. Viewing a man working in the heat of the calling Heaven had decreed for him was normally a fine sight, one to be met with applause… but not now. “Ah, the bone is not crushed, or fractured. You are lucky beyond measure, Crown Prince.”

  “Lucky,” Takyeo managed a faint, tight grin. “I would hate to see the opposite.”

  “Avert,” Makar murmured, his left hand making a sign to push aside ill fortune. Uncharacteristic of him, and a sign this had rattled even his nerves.

  Jiao’s hand flashed again. He hit a pressure point, and Takyeo’s body relaxed with a low grunt. “There. Not much longer, Crown Prince, then we will give you something for the pain.”

  “I can bear it for some while longer.” Sweat oiled Takyeo’s face. “Kai… Mahara… her… her body. Where?”

  At least Kai could ease this concern. “Star Gardens. Jin is taking her to the House of Bees. Lady Komor is already with her, I should think.”

  The Emperor’s face darkened at the mention of Yala, but he said nothing. His eyes were very dark, pupils swollen, and there was an uncertain glaze to them. “But you will live,” he said. “Takyeo, my son, you will live.”

  “Oh, yes.” A bitter laugh; Crown Prince Takyeo had no strength left to practice restraint. “No doubt. You will not have it otherwise, Father.”

  Whatever reply the Emperor might have made was lost, for Garan Tamuron, dry-lipped and far-eyed, swayed. Kai leapt, and was barely in time to keep the older man from collapsing onto Physician Kihon’s back.

  SISTER’S PRAYER

  The House of Bees held none of those docile, humming honey-makers. Instead, it was named for its shape, a dome with a round aperture through which the sun shone once a year at noon upon the summer solstice. It held no mirrorlight and its walls of porous stone were washed thrice yearly—once in the dead of winter by keening women, once at the height of summer by silent men, and third at the time of the rai harvest, when graves and tombs were also cleaned and families spent long twilight evenings singing and feasting amid their ancestors.

  Inside, blocks of black stone stood rayed like the character for fire, and a crushed, limp form had been placed upon the largest, with its head pointing north.

  Smashed-in ribs slumped, one leg did not match the other, and the bowl of the pelvis was shattered; a leg was longer because the horse had fallen and rolled to iron anything trapped beneath it flat, a fourfoot cousin maddened with pain and already dying as well.

  Mahara’s face was strangely untouched, her hair raveled out of the careful braiding and looping Yala had accomplished just that morning. Stiff with dried blood, the embroidery upon her torn riding habit glittered a little—the pale thread had set off dark brown silk, a cheerful contrast. The habit was of Zhaon cut; it was new.

  Mahara would never wear it again. It would be burned, and the ashes buried with ritual curses.

  Yala’s throat burned. Her eyes, too. The fire was within her; its invisible smoke stung her nose and filled her head.

  Springblades to cut dirty clothing loose, warm water full of bitter herbs to wash cooling, unresponsive flesh. Scrub harder, Yala. I will never be free of dirt if you merely swipe with that cloth.

  Shall I scrub your skin right off, then?

  Mahara’s laughter, and the splashing when they were younger and at the bath together.

  White linen arrived, strips and squares rolled or folded. Gonwa Eulin, pale and weaving, had to stop and rush outside, her throat full of bile. Su Junha, though, kept at t
he work, her face set and her tenderness speaking volumes.

  She, like Yala, had performed this duty before, perhaps upon aunties taken by illness or old age.

  Spiral grooves in the floor caught water poured jug by jug, carrying it toward the central drain. When Mahara was as clean as they could make her, every laceration pitilessly exposed, Yala leaned upon the stone and heard her own voice, reciting in Khir.

  O She who rides endless,

  Endless hear my plea;

  Alone upon the wild wind

  Upon the grassy sea…

  It was the prayer for a sister dead in childbirth. Wrong, of course; she should be reciting the prayer for a princess, but those words would not come. Mahara had not died in the battle of bringing forth a son, but a death come while riding was a warrior’s all the same.

  And… well, in her own way, Mahara was braver than any Khir lord upon his horse. To go unarmed and almost alone to a foreign husband in a country brimful of assassins was a bravery overmatching any rider’s, and though the Hundreds, the classics, the lords, and her own father might not agree, Komor Yala knew it was true.

  Same-womb bore us,

  Fire receive us,

  Hoof-thunder consume us,

  Ai, sister, I shall follow thee.

  Clan Komori followed the old ways, and though Yala had no sister she had memorized the ancient prayers. It was the duty of a noble daughter to wash the body of a higher-ranked kinswoman and wrap it safely. There were no brothers to stand guard, but they would be watching, called by Yala’s voice. Perhaps even Bai would be there, a shade among shades, watching as she fumbled this most important rite.

  “O, Elder Brother,” she whispered in Khir when the prayers failed her. “Help me. Please help me.”

  What would he say? He would shake his head slightly, not at her weakness but in resignation, and then his shoulders would rise, taking on a brother’s burden. He would not have let her leave Khir, and Mahara would have gone alone. Mahara’s brothers—Ashani Keiyan, Ashani Tlorih, dark and tall and pale-eyed, mild to their baby sister but fearsome to foes in battle—would no doubt tease Yala gently as they had in childhood when she forgot or fumbled a line of poetry. Wrong words, Komor Yala. Recite again.

  So she did, but the proper prayer would not come. As she washed her princess’s blood-caked hair until the water ran clear, as she gathered the linen, gently pushing aside well-meaning Zhaon hands, only the sister’s prayer dripped from her lips. Perhaps the ancestors or Mahara’s brothers were speaking it through her, she decided, and gave up resisting as she had given up withstanding the force of tradition, decorum, the weight of service to her clan.

  To flow under the weight instead of shattering beneath it—but that was untrue. She had broken just as surely as Mahara’s ribs, Mahara’s poor left arm, Mahara’s too-loose, almost certainly splintered neck.

  Komor Yala, sent to be a yue and a shield, had failed in her duty.

  That failure bore down mercilessly upon a living throat, upon shaking hands, upon a heart still traitorously beating instead of stopped with grief. Upon a voice singing an ancient prayer, over and over, weaving among notes that echoed drumming hooves, wind through grass, the cry of a hawk as it dove for prey.

  She who rides endless,

  She who begins,

  She who gave us grass,

  She who makes,

  She who gave us honor,

  She who gives,

  O She has taken back.

  She has gathered thee to Her,

  She has given thee peace.

  She who rides—

  Mahara had passed the dark gates, ridden a spectral skeletal warhorse down the poured-ashen tide of the White Road to the end of all roads, and was now upon the Great Fields, where small white flowers were crushed by the hooves of the horse-goddess’s tireless steeds. Ashan Mahara rode knee to knee with her vanished brothers and with Yala’s own dead kin, and their song was glorious. Yala’s own plaint would be lost in their joyous thrumming of hoof, hawk, and hunting-song.

  Thou dost ride with Her now;

  Thou who art endless

  Thou who rideth, rideth eternal…

  Same-womb bore us,

  Fire receive us,

  Hoof-thunder consume us,

  Ai, sister, I shall follow thee,

  I shall follow thee,

  Ai, sister, ai, my sister,

  I will follow thee.

  Outside the House of Bees as a long hot still afternoon crumbled into slow slumbrous evening, the guards in snow-pard livery listened to the song, a foreign woman keening as their own grandmothers, mothers, aunties, sisters, or wives did when a family member was washed and wrapped, readied for the kiss of flame.

  Strange, they thought, those men of Zhaon, as thunder muttered over the fields of rai and a summer storm lingered in the distance, held away by the dry days.

  Strange, she sounds just like one of our girls.

  SIMPLE MOURNING

  In a Zhaon summer, the pyre must be quick.

  It was built high and towering, and the linen-wrapped body, its shape the character for corpse, was laid upon and amid scented wood drenched with costly, fragrant oils. A great crimson and black headdress, gold thread glowing at its seams, crowned the many-wound layers of cloth; the great crimson wedding-robe was laced securely around the motionless Crown Princess. New slippers of red silk, their soles having never touched earth, were tied securely to the well-wrapped feet. Cushions of red-dyed cotton and plain red silk cradled her, and the stacked wood was built into a high prow on one end, a sharp stern at the other.

  Crown Prince Takyeo, fever-cheeked but otherwise deadly pale, held a spitting everflame torch, drops of burning resin eating themselves into ash before they reached the ground. He leaned heavily upon Fourth Prince Makar, for his right leg was splinted and wrapped tightly in thick stiffened cloths impregnated with astringent oils and packed with pungent wound-healing herbs. Takyeo’s plain bleached-silk robe bulged over the bulk, and Sixth Prince Jin carried a heavy ob-wood cane with a silver head for him.

  Second Prince Kurin was in attendance, as was Fourth Prince Sensheo, the two standing shoulder to shoulder in their pale mourning-robes. Neither spoke, and neither smiled. Their ceremonial behavior was correct in every degree, and their funeral gifts piled amid the oiled wood lacked nothing in respect or costliness. It was generally agreed that the Second Prince had covered his mother’s regrettable lack of etiquette in that direction upon this particular occasion. Second Princess Gamnae hovered behind her brother, her white gown entirely sober for once and her eyes wide like a frightened cat’s.

  Second Concubine Kanbina, heavily veiled, had left her seclusion for this event and stood with the Crown Prince’s household. She held the arm of the foreign, grey-eyed court lady who stood straight as a young whitebark, her uncanny gaze fixed upon the lifeless crimson shell. The Khir woman’s hair was unbound, a river of black, and her bleached-silk dress was torn. Her hands worked at its material, clutching and clawing, until the Second Concubine caught them in her own and held tightly.

  Upon the foreign woman’s other side, Lady Kue was rigid, her lips moving slightly as she repeated Shan prayers. Court Lady Gonwa was there too, veiled as the Second Concubine, her magisterial bulk leaning upon a cane with a fluted ivory curve near its top.

  The ranks of the Crown Prince’s personal guard were in full armor behind Head General Zakkar Kai, who—in deference to foreign feelings, no doubt—wore no armor himself, merely simple mourning. Third Prince Takshin, also robed in the pale colors of death, his arms folded, did not take his place with his brothers but lingered near the general, watching the pyre as if he expected the lifeless husk to perform some interesting feat.

  Drums pounded a slow, heavy cadence. The Emperor was abed, having collapsed at his son’s bedside. Consequently, the First and Second Queen were called to attend him, and First Concubine Luswone no doubt thought it best to refrain from making an appearance. It was taken as great deli
cacy upon her part; her son the Sixth Prince had brought her funeral gifts, nestled tastefully in their proper place.

  Courtiers stood attentively, in order of precedence. Behind them, the eunuchs stood. Zan Fein had not brought his fan, and stood under the harsh morning sun with no sign of sweat or discomfort.

  The astrologer Mrong Banh, in pale mourning as well, knee-bowed upon shimmer-hot stone. His had been the task of choosing the quickest, most auspicious date, and rumor had it his reddened eyes were not merely because of watching the stars but also with grief for the Crown Prince’s loss.

  The largest palace bell, in its squat five-sided casing upon the great Imperial Avenue leading to the Kaeje’s largest door, vibrated. It was struck five times by a great timber as large as some battering rams, pulled back and released by those among the Golden chosen for this most momentous of tasks when the shadow under the bell filled the marker Mrong Banh had traced with red-dyed chalk upon the white stone floor of its house.

  It was time. The astrologer knee-bowed thrice more and clasped his hands before his chest when he straightened the third time.

  At that signal, the Crown Prince limped painfully forward, leaning upon the cane the Sixth Prince offered. In his other hand, the torch spat and crackled. He would not hear of staying abed to heal; he had felt much affection for the foreign wife foisted upon him to buy peace with the Khir horse-lords.

  The pyre bloomed, flames thin under the assault of summer morn-sun. The Crown Prince retreated, step by step, a rushing crackle swallowing the tapping of the ob-wood cane. When he rejoined the Fourth and Sixth Princes, his face was pale as the sun-scorched stone beneath them, and sweat gleamed upon it.

  A ripple ran through the onlookers.

  The pale-eyed foreign court lady had rid herself of Second Concubine Kanbina’s grasp—not harshly, but with the neutral irresistible force of a mother prying a child’s fingers from her skirt for a moment. She stepped forward, and the court watched curiously—was this some Khir custom, like her unbound hair?