Princess Safiya frowned, a small crease forming in the white paint between her brows. But she turned to the screen and called to the ambassador, “Are you satisfied?”
The little man came wheezing into view, bowing and scraping and twisting his rings. “Oh, Revered Mother!” he exclaimed. “Such a jewel, such a prize has never graced the household of an Aja prince! My master will be delighted beyond measure!”
Delighted, yes. And secure in the knowledge that he would live to a ripe old age of manipulation and wickedness, ever protected by his pretty new bride.
“I will see you this evening,” Princess Safiya said, indicating the door with a sweep of her arm. “We will sign the final charter approving Jen-ling’s selection. Until then, Ambassador.”
What a relief to be free of the odious man’s presence!
Even as Ratnavira vanished through the doorway, Princess Safiya turned to inspect Kasemsan again. Pretending to ignore Sairu—though she knew the girl wasn’t fooled in the least—she knelt beside the Pen-Chan lord’s still body, studying his face. The face of a Crouching Shadow. She had known neither his name nor any personal information about him when she contracted him for this role. The Crouching Shadows were almost as secretive as the Golden Daughters. Almost.
She had not been surprised in the least to discover her assassin’s identity. As soon as word reached her that a Pen-Chan lord from the Nua-Pratut Kingdom had come to Lunthea Maly, she had said to herself, “Ah! That will be he.” When her sources brought her more details, such as timing, travel plans, and his pretenses for being within the city, she had felt her initial suspicions confirmed.
And when he’d entered the Butterfly Hall today, he might as well have announced his intentions with drums and fanfare. He was much too obviously not the sort of person one would expect to take money for committing murder.
She studied his handsome face and form, noting that he was a scholar, probably a Gruung Presented Scholar with a position of some honor within Suthinnakor City. A family man, generally faithful to his wife if not loving. Keenly intelligent but quick to wrath, as his display in the Butterfly Hall had proven. An interesting man. A man with secrets.
A shame that he would now be left to rot in the dungeons of Manusbau Palace and . . .
Why was that girl smiling?
“Very well, Sairu.” Princess Safiya stood and only just managed to suppress the frown trying to force its way onto her face. “I see that you’re near bursting. What is the joke? What have the rest of us missed?”
Sairu raised her face, the sun spots on her cheeks rising with her grin. She was smaller than her sisters; indeed, were it not for the bulk of her serving-girl robes, she would run the risk of disappearing if she turned sideways. And she never could manage the required solemnity of a proper Golden Daughter. A mistress of less discernment than Princess Safiya would have dismissed her long ago. But Princess Safiya was no fool.
“I should like to accept Brother Yaru’s assignment, Honored Mother,” Sairu said.
For a moment Princess Safiya’s face did not move a muscle. But indeed, she reasoned with herself, it could not be too difficult for Sairu to guess at least some of Brother Yaru’s whisperings in the Butterfly Hall. She could not have heard a word, but she may have read his face and even perhaps glimpsed some of Princess Safiya’s own expression behind her fan.
Princess Safiya lowered her lids briefly, indicating Kasemsan with a glance. “You did not pass today’s test. What makes you think you are worthy of any assignment?”
Still that smile. Sairu’s eyes sparkled. “The ambassador was in no danger.”
“Oh? And how did you come to that conclusion?”
“Because you would not have allowed anything to happen to him.”
Princess Safiya narrowed her eyes. “So you recognized the test?”
“Ambassador Ratnavira gave it away the moment he entered the hall,” the girl replied. “He kept looking at you. And sweating like a pig.”
“And the assassin? When did you spot him?”
“The same moment you did, Honored Mother. You were so pleased when he was presented. Your face gave it away.”
Anwar blight it! She must start wearing heavier paint around her eyes.
“So why did you not step forward, Sairu? Why did you allow Jen-ling to win the test?”
Here the girl had the grace at least to look ashamed. “I did not like the look of the ambassador. If he is the representative of his master, I do not think I would like his master either.”
Princess Safiya considered what she knew of Prince Amithnal and could make no argument. “We do not get to select our own patrons,” she said sternly.
Sairu only smiled. After all, she had chosen this time.
Feeling as though she had lost an argument, Princess Safiya returned to her chair, sitting carefully so as not to crush the folds of her silken robe more than necessary. She took time to arrange her sleeves, composing herself before addressing the girl again. “So you will pick and choose your assignments, is that it? You will decline marriage to a prince and enter service to the priesthood? Without knowing even what that service might entail?”
Sairu tilted her head to one side. “They require a bodyguard for one of their Dream Walkers.”
Princess Safiya nearly stood upright, so startled was she by this statement. How in Hulan’s name had the girl arrived at such a conclusion? No one spoke of the Dream Walkers outside the temple grounds. If any doings in the world were more secret than those of the Golden Daughters, they would be those of the priests within the Crown of the Moon. Light of the Lordly Sun, Sairu should not even know the Dream Walkers existed!
“And why,” Princess Safiya said quietly, hoping her voice betrayed none of her surprise but knowing that it must, “do you speak such wild fancy?”
“Because nothing less would induce the temple orders to seek help from the outside,” Sairu replied with infuriating calm and logic. “Officially speaking, they care nothing for their own lives, given over as they are in service to Anwar and Hulan. But the Dream Walkers are different. They are sacred and valuable and rare. And they have enemies.”
“How would you know that?”
“All who are sacred, valuable, and rare have enemies, Honored Mother.”
Princess Safiya stood unspeaking before the girl. Kasemsan groaned in agonized sleep. Soon he would open his eyes to a whole new world of pain and shame, and she regretted it for his sake, particularly since she would be the primary source.
“Sairu,” she said at last, “Brother Yaru and the Besur may not wish it known, even by you, that they seek protection for a Dream Walker. They will believe all was done with utmost secrecy.”
Sairu’s smile glowed. She knew now that she had won. She had done what the Golden Daughters never did: She had chosen her own patron.
“I am as adept at playing ignorant as I am at playing sweet,” she said. “I will reveal nothing.”
And she would. That smile of hers was more deceptive by far than the expressionless stares of her sisters.
“You realize this means no marriage for you, child,” Princess Safiya said.
“I prefer it so.”
Kasemsan groaned again, and his eyelids fluttered. Princess Safiya wanted to smack him for forcing her decision by this early stirring. But she blinked slowly to disguise the emotion and said only, “Very well. You have your wish. You will go to the Crown of the Moon tonight and present yourself to the Besur. And may Hulan shine upon your decision.”
Sairu bowed. Her pitying gaze lingered for a moment on the stricken Nua-Pratut lord. Then she withdrew, fluttering as softly from the room as a blossom blown upon a spring wind.
Princess Safiya sat quietly, gazing down upon her prey without seeing him. Her mind was busy with small connections, details, threads weaving through time and space to form patterns invisible to other eyes.
And she thought: It all comes together somehow. The assassin, the ambassador, the Besur, Sairu, and the
Dream Walkers. They weave together, though they may not know it, and they form a picture I cannot yet see.
But I will see it.
Kasemsan’s eyes fluttered open, and his mouth twisted in a silent expression of agony. Poison burned in his gut; but more painful still was the burn of failure. He had never known failure before, not once in his life.
Princess Safiya’s face appeared before his eyes, and for a moment he thought she must be an angel come to fetch him from this world, so beautiful was her countenance bending over him in his torment.
But then she spoke, and he knew she was no angel.
“Tell me, Crouching Shadow,” she said, “for what purpose you have come to Lunthea Maly.”
“I . . . I came to fulfill the assassination of Ambassador Ratnavira,” he gasped, the words like fire in his throat.
“No,” she replied, shaking her head gently. She placed a hand upon his forehead, and he cried out, for her skin was cold. “No, do not think you will fool me.” She stared deep into his eyes. For a moment, the briefest possible moment, she believed she saw something stirring in the darkness of his left pupil. A living something existing in a realm beyond mortality. A tiny, angry parasite.
She blinked. When she looked again, Kasemsan’s eyes were empty of all save his fear. She blinked once more; now even the memory of what she had glimpsed vanished from her mind, as though carefully removed by some unseen hand.
It did not matter. Princess Safiya bent over her prisoner like a tiger crouched above its still-living prey. “I saw that you lay awake as I spoke to the girl. I saw you listening,” she said. “Now tell me, my lord, and keep nothing back. What is your true purpose in Lunthea Maly? What does your order want of the Dream Walkers?”
Sairu made her way from Princess Safiya’s chambers out to the walkways of the encircling gardens. The Masayi, abode of the Golden Daughters, was an intricate complex of buildings linked by blossom-shrouded walkways, calm with fountains and clear, lotus-filled pools where herons strutted and spotted fish swam.
Here she had lived all the life she could remember.
The Masayi was but a small part of Manusbau Palace, which comprised the whole of Sairu’s existence. She had never stepped beyond the palace walls. To do so would be to pass into a world of corruption, corruption to which a Golden Daughter would not be impervious until she was safely chartered to a master and her life’s purpose was affixed in her heart and mind. Meanwhile, she must live securely embalmed in this tomb, waiting for life to begin.
Sairu’s mouth curved gently at the corners, and she took small steps as she had been trained—slow, dainty steps that disguised the swiftness with which she could move at need. Even in private she must maintain the illusion, even here within the Masayi.
A cat sat on the doorstep of the Chrysanthemum House, grooming itself in the sunlight. She stepped around it and proceeded into the red-hung halls of the Daughters’ quarters and on to her private chambers. There she must gather what few things she would take with her—fewer things even than Jen-ling would take on her journey to Aja. For Jen-ling would be the wife of a prince and must give every impression of a bride on her wedding journey.
I wonder who my master will be? Sairu thought as she slid back the rattan door to her chamber and entered the quiet simplicity within. She removed her elaborate costume and exchanged it for a robe of plain red without embellishments. She washed the serving-girl cosmetics from her face and painted on the daily mask she and her sisters wore—white with black spots beneath each eye and a red stripe down her chin. It was elegant and effortless, and to the common eye it made her indistinguishable from her sisters.
The curtain moved behind her. Calmly she turned to see the same cat slip into her room. Cats abounded throughout Manusbau Palace, kept on purpose near the storehouses to manage the vermin. But they seldom entered private chambers.
Sairu, kneeling near her window with her paint pots around her, watched the cat as it moved silkily across the room, stepped onto her sleeping cushions, and began kneading the soft fabric, purring all the while. Its claws snagged the delicate threads. But it was a cat. As far as it was concerned, it had every right to enjoy or destroy what it willed.
At last it seemed to notice Sairu. It turned sleepy eyes to her and blinked.
Sairu smiled. In a voice as sweet as honey, she asked, “Who are you?”
The cat twitched its tail softly and went on purring.
The next moment, Sairu was across the room, her hand latched onto the cat’s scruff. She pushed it down into the cushions and held it there as it yowled and snarled, trying to catch at her with its claws.
“Who are you?” she demanded, her voice fierce this time. “What are you? Are you an evil spirit sent to haunt me?”
“No, dragons eat it! I mean, rrrraww! Mreeeow! Yeeeowrl!”
The cat twisted and managed to lash out at her with its back feet, its claws catching in the fabric of her sleeve. One claw scratched her wrist, startling her just enough that she loosened her hold. The cat took advantage of the opportunity and, hissing like a fire demon, leapt free. It sprang across the room, knocking over several of her paint pots, and spun about, back-arched and snarling. Every hair stood on end, and its ears lay flat to its skull.
Sairu drew a dagger from her sleeve and crouched, prepared for anything. The smile lingered on her mouth, but her eyes flashed. “Who sent you?” she demanded. “Why have you come to me now? You must know of my assignment.”
“Meeeeowrl,” the cat said stubbornly and showed its fangs in another hiss.
“I see it in your face,” Sairu said, moving carefully to shift her weight and prepare to spring. “You are no animal. Who is your master, devil?”
The cat dodged her spring easily enough, which surprised her. Sairu was quick and rarely missed a target. Her knife sank into the floor and stuck there, but she released it and whipped another from the opposite sleeve even as she whirled about.
Any self-respecting cat would have made for the window or the door. This one sprang back onto the cushions and crouched there, tail lashing. Its eyes were all too sentient, but it said only “Meeeeow,” as though trying to convince itself.
Sairu chewed the inside of her cheek. Then, in a soft, smooth voice, she said, “We have ways of dealing with devils in this country. Do you know what they are, demon-cat?”
The cat’s ears came up. “Prreeowl?” it said.
“Allow me to enlighten you.” And Sairu put her free hand to her mouth and produced a long, piercing whistle. The household erupted with the voices of a dozen and more lion dogs.
The little beasts, slipping and sliding and crashing into walls, their claws clicking and clattering on the tiles, careened down the corridor and poured into Sairu’s room. Fluffy tails wagging, pushed-in noses twitching, they roared like the lions they believed themselves to be and fell upon the cat with rapacious joy.
The cat uttered one long wail and vanished out the window. Sairu, dogs milling at her feet, leapt up and hurried to look out after it, expecting to see a tawny tail slipping from sight. But she saw nothing.
The devil was gone. For the moment at least.
Sairu sank down on her cushions, and her lap was soon filled with wriggling, snuffling hunters eager for praise. She petted them absently, but her mind was awhirl. She had heard of devils taking the form of animals and speaking with the tongues of men. But she had never before seen it. She couldn’t honestly say she’d even believed it.
“What danger is my new master in?” she wondered. “From what must I protect him?”
Ever after that fateful day, the smell of crushed ginger would fill Sunan’s memory with overwhelming sensations of shame.
He would not have guessed it at the time. But when he passed through the gates of the Center of Learning into the streets of Suthinnakor City, the first thing Sunan encountered was a street vendor plying his wares of cabbage dumplings to hungry students. The dumplings were seasoned with ginger, and the smell wafted over S
unan even as he stumbled blindly past, oblivious to the hopeful cries of the vendor. His stomach churned at the very idea of food, and he hastened on to the end of the street and there paused a moment, expecting to be sick.
It might have been wise, he realized upon reflection, to have stopped and retrieved his own clothing. Or at least his shoes. Snow fell in noncommittal gusts, just enough to dust the streets and turn to oozing mud. Sunan’s bare feet froze, so he started walking again with the faint hope of warming them. The sensation of mud churning between his toes was a welcome distraction, and he focused on the revulsion of it, shuddering and cursing at each step.
Anything was better than facing the explosion of thoughts inside his brain.
He had made no plans for a return journey, arranged no litter or conveyance. He was supposed to mount the stairs to the Middle Court and enter his new life as a Presented Scholar. He wasn’t supposed to slink back to his uncle’s house in disgrace.
His uncle, who was dead.
No, no, he wouldn’t think about that. It was nonsense anyway. Uncle Kasemsan had been far too much alive the last time Sunan saw him to possibly be dead now. It just couldn’t be. And Sunan had bigger problems to consider.
The snow dusted his shoulders with a white mantle. Though it was very light, any observer would have thought it weighed him down like lead, so heavily did he slump and droop and finally collapse again against a wall. He tried to warm his feet with his hands, rubbing the toes to make the blood move. Vaguely he was aware of the bustle in the street, the lives of thousands going on around him just as though the world hadn’t shattered. He heard merchants shouting, tradesmen arguing, babies squalling, young men calling lewd remarks to housemaids running errands. Donkeys brayed, dogs barked, geese honked, cart wheels squelched in mud, and no one cared about one barefoot young man who stood vigorously massaging his feet. As though he could massage hope back into his dreams.
In the street a beast of burden lowed deep in its belly. The sound plucked at Sunan’s ears, and he frowned, though he did not know why.