“This one is pleased to see his kinsmen returned safely. Greetings, Sandun and Basil.”
Sandun smiled and said, “Good to see you also, Valo Peli, kinsman. We reached Jupelos before sundown only to find the fleet had already sailed north. No delays, then?”
“Lord Vaina has impressed everyone with the urgency, or rather, the necessity of speed. Two more commanders were demoted when he found their units were not prepared to move out after breakfasting this morning. If we can keep up the pace, we will reach the walls of Kemeklos six days from now. Nilin Ulim’s army will have little time to react, which is all to the good.”
Valo Peli studied Sandun’s face. “What of your mission? Did you find raiders up in the eastern hills?”
“We did. We destroyed a band of some seventy-five savages who had attacked a village named Olitik. However, that’s not all. Valo Peli, did the Piksies, I mean the Junithoy, did they once live in Serica?”
Valo Peli looked out at the army campfires. “There is some question on this issue. Old stories, legends, even some artifacts. For every story and item, there are scholars lined up one side or the other. The scholars of the Water Kingdom mainly held that the tales were all exaggerations. The consensus of the Academy at Naduva was that the so-called Junithoy of Serica were just secretive human settlements. Why do you ask?”
Sandun took out the golden dragon-circle from his money bag and held it up. As he held it, he felt it come alive. He stood straighter; his drowsiness faded away.
“It’s quite a lovely piece. Very fine craftsmanship,” Valo Peli said. “I don’t recognize it. I gather you think this is a product of the fabled Junithoy of Serica?”
“We can examine it more closely in your cabin, perhaps?”
“Indeed.” Leading the way to the rear of the ship, near the captain’s cabin, Valo Peli stepped over his new bodyguard, who was sleeping soundly on a thin mattress in front of the door. Inside, he used the light from a small oil lamp to examine the circle. Sandun wondered what effect it would have on Valo Peli, but the disk did not react to Valo Peli’s touch, at least not in any fashion that Sandun could perceive.
“There is writing on the outer edge. Most curious. Nothing that I can make out. I am tempted to say this is not Serice. You wouldn’t be playing a trick on an old scholar, would you? You didn’t pick this up in Gipu?”
Sandun shook his head.
“If we were in Tokolas or, better still, at the Winter Palace Library in Daka…” Valo Peli sighed. “But here, past midnight, there is nothing more I can say. Will you tell me about it, or is this another mystery you Keltens seem to revel in?”
Sandun told his friend the whole story: Ghost Wolf’s appearance, cutting through the door, and the words of the mad spirit. After an hour, he finished. Valo Peli reached into a small drawer and pulled out a small metal flask. He poured a little brownish liquor into two small Serica-glass cups and offered one to Sandun, and then he drank the other.
“To think that Basil’s Junithoy knife is a stone cutter!” Valo Peli’s voice was thick with emotion. “King Banatar once gave an entire palace in Solt’varkis to a man in exchange for a stone-cutting knife. I feel that this is all a dream and that when I wake tomorrow, you will ride up to the boat and talk of chasing mere rumors for the last few days.”
Sandun took Valo Peli’s hand and said, “I’m no dream. And, yes, Basil does have a stone-cutting knife. But what do you think of the mad ghost’s words?”
“I hardly know what to tell you,” Valo Peli said. “Are there hidden cities of the Junithoy, locked behind stone doors, concealed from the scholars by mountain shamans intent on preserving their secrets? Two hours past, I would have said such an idea was fit only for storytellers in the markets. But I must believe you. If one exists, why not others?” Valo Peli yawned and closed his eyes. “I am weary. Many tasks have a claim upon my time.”
“One last thing,” Sandun said. “I was thinking about giving this golden circle to Lord Vaina.”
Valo Peli shrugged and then shook his head.
“Wait till after the battle.” He yawned while covering his mouth and then continued. “It is customary to give gifts after a successful battle, but not before. Giving gifts to a commander before a battle is seen as disrespectful to the will of heaven. We offer sacrifices to heaven before a battle, to bless us with sharp minds and unswerving resolve. Afterward, weapons, horses, and other spoils of war are given to the commanders for their heroism or wise leadership.”
“I see.”
“Good night then, Sandun.”
Sandun found a spot on the deck and used some old cloth for a pillow; he slept until dawn.
Chapter Eight
Miri’s Story
Miri looked out into the night. Lord Vaina’s flagship was at rest, tied to the shore with ropes thicker than her arms. The sun had set hours ago, and now the sky and river were one and the same. The campfires of the army of Kunhalvar were smaller this evening and much quieter. They were across the border, on dangerous ground; attacks might come at any time. There were watchmen on every boat, calling out to each other at intervals.
On the far side of the river, flashes of light came from the trees. Fireflies were out in considerable numbers this evening. Silent lights blinked on and off as they flew about, like cold sparks in the night.
Like the fireflies of Marsolil.
She didn’t really want to think about Marsolil, but she was alone this night with her thoughts, and the fireflies flashed mindlessly the same as they had in Marsolil. It was a year ago now. So much had changed in the last twelve months; she was here now, far from home, because she went to Marsolil.
Her grandmother had been the abbess of the Nunnery of Eternal Benevolence in Marsolil. After the old woman’s husband had died, Nana had shaved her head and wrapped the beads of contemplation around her neck. All the family in Birumaz came out to bid her farewell. Miri’s father had come up from the coast; his expression was grave, as already the black clouds were gathering around him. He and his brothers and sisters bowed down while Nana formally renounced the world, her family connections, and her earthly possessions. Then she had smiled briefly at them all and stepped up into the carriage that would take her away to Marsolil. Nana could have retired to a nunnery closer to Birumaz, but Marsolil was where she had been born, and an old childhood friend had retired to the Nunnery of Eternal Benevolence a few years earlier.
In the months that followed her grandmother’s retirement from the world and from the family, Miri’s father had been removed from his command at the shipyard and sent north in disgrace to be a lowly officer on the frontier. Meanwhile, the secret army of liberation surrounding Birumaz was waging a clandestine war against the Kitran soldiers and officials. In towns and villages, the Kitran officials were murdered, and Kitran soldiers driven out by so-called peasant insurrections. Jay and Ven were part of this secret army, and Miri heard stories from them, behind closed doors, when they came into the city for supplies and to recruit more men for the fighting.
To Miri, it seemed very exciting. House Kirdar was essentially unified in the undeclared war against the Kitran, but it had to be done secretly for fear that the court in Sorabol would bow to pressure from the Kitran Nakovit, their ambassador and would-be governor, and attack Birumaz. Her father had been demoted primarily due to his often-expressed hate of the Kitran occupation. He had been sacrificed, offered up to the court in Sorabol as proof that House Kirdar was serious about maintaining peace with the Kitran.
Fortunately for House Kirdar, as the campaign against the Kitran had gathered strength, the government in Sorabol did little but mouth empty promises to the Kitran Nakovit, claiming the peasant revolts would soon be suppressed. House Kirdar was emboldened by King Olvin’s inaction. By the spring, now sixteen months gone, the secret army came into the open. Jay and Ven and others recruited in the market of square of Birumaz. Marsolil
was liberated almost bloodlessly in the waning days of summer, as most of the garrison fled in the night before the Kirdar warriors broke down the west gate.
A month after Marsolil had been taken, Miri had been given permission to go there and see her aging grandmother. With her maidservant, Diasu, she had ridden in a carriage along the flat rice fields that surrounded Birumaz and then up into the hills.
The summer’s heat lingered in the flatlands. The rice fields spread about like a green sea. The water reflected the fierce sun, lighting up the long-legged white cranes that stalked the paddies in search of unwary carp. Despite all the windows being open, inside the carriage it was stifling, and Miri had to take off her outer silk robe while she and Diasu fanned themselves ceaselessly.
By sunset, they had climbed partway out of the plains. Cool air drifted down from the higher hills, and she had to put back on her outer robe of black and gray. Not that she had any choice; she couldn’t possibly leave the carriage wearing only her inner silks!
Word had been sent ahead in the form of a runner, and the inn’s guards saluted her as she stepped out of the carriage. The innkeeper bowed and showed her and Diasu to a small private room. The food, rather plain fare, was brought up to them so they didn’t have to eat downstairs with the ordinary travelers, laborers, and soldiers. Miri sent Diasu down to inquire of news from the leader of the soldiers guarding this crossroad.
The commander, a young man with some education, came up and politely answered her questions. Not daring to look at her face, he told her that the Scythe was operating around the city of Gial. The Scythe was the name of the brigade that Jay and Ven were part of. The commander of the Scythe was a middle-aged man who was not officially part of House Kirdar though his family had served them for hundreds of years. Miri was certain that Jay and Ven were the real leaders of the Scythe, but since the Rutal-lil were supposed to fight at the king’s command, they had no rank within the unit. Since the Scythe pretended at being a peasant army, it was very informal by Shila standards.
Miri had never been to Gial, though her father had an extremely remote claim to the throne, as the ancient city had been taken by the king of Sorabol many, many centuries ago. Her distant ancestors had fled to Birumaz and had never been allowed to return. The government of Shila had a memory that spanned the ages. But it wasn’t just Shila that remembered. Miri knew that House Kirdar, once allies of the ruling family of Shila, had never forgotten the insults that had led to the civil war five hundred years past. Not only were the Kitran and their flunkies being driven out of the towns and villages around Birumaz, so too were the tax collectors from Sorabol, replaced by men loyal to the high lord of House Kirdar.
The next day, the carriage threaded its way through the hills, which were embroidered with tall pines. On the map, Marsolil seemed so close, but fallen tree branches and streams cutting across the road slowed their passage to a crawl. On several occasions, she had to get out and walk as the carriage needed to be pushed out of a ditch or a patch of very soft earth. Miri wished she could have ridden, but Diasu didn’t know how to ride, and it was unseemly for a woman her age to be seen riding unless the need was exceptional.
Reading was barely possible on the smoothest stretches of the road. She had brought The Book of Earth, partly because she didn’t understand much of it, and partly because she wished to impress her nana. But the words jumbled together, tossed this way and that by the rocking of the carriage, and without a monk to explain them, the meaning of the passages she could read continued to elude her. Diasu was working on a lovely set of interlocking flowers for the sleeve of a new dress for Miri. How she could manage to sew in the carriage without stabbing her fingers, Miri didn’t know.
At the next town, Miri saw that all the men carried sticks or spears or wore hand axes in their belts. The innkeeper insisted on talking to her all through dinner, and Miri couldn’t politely tell him to leave, as she was very hungry after the long day’s travel. The food was spicy and garnished with many mountain mushrooms. She noticed a distinct lack of fish but thought to herself that they were many tik from the sea now.
The garrulous innkeeper regaled the two young women with stories of the fighting that this tiny town had seen over the summer. He did admit that since Marsolil had been captured, the front line had shifted north, and things had nearly gone back to normal. Miri happened to mention that Jay and Ven Kirdar were her cousins, and the innkeeper’s eyes grew wide.
“Those two Rutal-lil are the finest warriors I’ve ever seen! And I served a few years in the army before I had to return to take over as headman for the town, so I know a thing or two.” Miri thought the innkeeper was smiling too much given his inferior status but even so, she was happy to hear her cousins praised.
The next day, the road took them past a long lake, where only a few small boats were out at midday. She traded places with Diasu and stared out longingly at the boats with their small red-brown sails as they drifted peacefully across the lake’s surface. Perhaps one day she would follow in her nana’s footsteps and retire from this world, to a nunnery, giving up all earthly cares for a life of contemplation and solitude. But that was not likely to be her fate. Since her father’s demotion and official disgrace, her promised marriage to a very distant relative of House Kirdar had been delayed for at least a year. Most of the girls she grew up with had married over the last twelve months, between the ages of seventeen and eighteen.
“A young woman, like the cherry blossom, is at the height of her beauty for only a fleeting time, no more than a year,” her mother told her. “It is best for all that she marries at her peak, for her husband will forever treasure the beauty that he once possessed, long after time has robbed her of her earthly perfection.”
Miri didn’t know if husbands ever appreciated their wives, but it was a comforting illusion that, at least for a year or two, men actually loved the women they were married to. Love, so often the subject of poems and the little storybooks that the women passed between themselves, seemed to be in very short supply. She had read some of the love books by her oil lamp at night, after the music lessons, the calligraphy, the study of Serice language, the sewing, and the teachings of Ekon. Yet in the world Miri observed, love between a man and woman was rare. The men lived their lives and did the tasks of men, while the women lived quite apart, doing the tasks of women.
As she saw the years pass by, Miri gradually came to realize that her parents were less loving than most couples. From as far back as she could remember, her father was away at some coastal naval station while the rest of the family—her mother, herself, and her younger brother—stayed in Birumaz, living near their many aunts, uncles, cousins, and ever more distant relatives. Of course, her parents’ marriage had been arranged—they weren’t of the ordinary class, after all—but in other marriages she saw, there was a closeness, smiles, even laughter. Other married couples showed signs of affection for each other that Miri had never seen between her parents.
On the rare occasions when her father came home, he would bring Miri and her brother into his study and show them detailed drawings of warships he was working on. Her mother never expressed any interest in her husband’s work. Several times, Miri’s father came home with model ships, carefully boxed in long wooden crates. The children were never allowed to touch these models, but they did get to watch when their father brought them to the sailing pond behind Birumaz’s Ministry of War. Miri watched as he carefully set the sails and placed the model boats into the water, where the wind gently sent them from side to side.
A few days after her father had been sent north to serve at the border, his friends from the navy had brought over a chest full of papers and drawings that her father had been working on, as well as two small ship models.
“Keep these safe,” they had told Miri. “Someday, with Ekon’s blessing, your father will be recalled, and he can return to his work on the warships.” The chest had stayed unopened in he
r father’s closed room, while the two ship models gathered dust at the bottom of his curio case, underneath the small ancient vase said to have been made in Gial, back before Shila conquered it.
In the afternoon, the carriage pulled into Marsolil. The gate guards, seeing there were only two women in the carriage, hurried them through and kept looking nervously down the road. In the town square, armed men were running in and out of the official’s residence. The runner who had gone ahead of them, a servant boy a year younger than Diasu, greeted their arrival at the inn with evident relief.
“Begging your pardon, Mistress Miri, but now that you have arrived, I must return to Birumaz and left them know you are here.”
“You look eager to leave, runner boy,” Miri said with haughty disdain. “Are you afraid of something?”
The boy looked at his feet. Miri saw his grass sandals were frayed and dirty. “I hear stories. People talking. I wouldn’t stay here, begging your pardon, my lady.”
“Why is that?”
“A division of Kitran, so it’s said. Heading down from the big river. Heading this way.” The boy spoke like a peasant, not like the house servants. Miri had noticed a number of people on the road in the hours after lunch, walking away from Marsolil with heavy loads on their backs, but she hadn’t paid them any mind.
Miri and Diasu looked at each other. This was not entirely unexpected news to Miri. Part of the reason she had been sent to Marsolil was to see if her grandmother would be willing to leave the nunnery, at least for few months. If a division of the Kitran army recaptured Marsolil, the town might be subject to exaction: everyone would be killed or enslaved. Miri steeled herself and tried to ignore the butterflies in her belly.
“I must see my grandmother,” Miri said with finality. “Runner boy, I order you to wait here for at least a day till there is more news.”
The boy responded to her tone and went to his knees. “I hear your words, mistress. As you command.”
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