An frowned and Yara read the note again.“Is he calling us fish?”Yara whispered.
Lady Aunt picked up the dice. “I interpret the message otherwise. He is speaking of sons, not daughters. A fifth son holds little interest for a prince already surfeited with healthy boys. Such a prince may even have tried to kill or exile the extra boys to protect the ones he favors so there is no struggle for succession. It is no wonder a fifth son travels with humble merchants, for like best quality silk he may be worth a good price to the right buyer. Or he may simply have escaped an untenable situation.”
She rolled the dice with so much force they slammed into the silver sticks, flipping to rest with a wheel, a ship, and two knives on display.
“Two knives defeat two cups,” said Lady Aunt with a triumphant smile. She flashed a teasing glance at Yara as she reached out as if to collect her winnings.
Yara affectionately tapped Lady Aunt’s arm with a closed fan.“Not so fast, for I have not yet played.”
She set out her own stake of four silver bracelets. She scooped up the dice, shook them in her cupped hand as she murmured a charm under her breath, smiled at the other three women, and tossed. The bone pieces clattered over the table and came to rest.
Four knives.
“That looks ominous, does it not? Every blade will meet its target.” With a lazy smile, Yara swept in her earnings.
Over on the cushions where their ladies played flutes and lutes, a woman was singing the lament of the dying phoenix as it melted into sea foam and dissolved into the ocean.
“I am sorry for it, but he has driven us down this road by his own choices,” said An, wiping away a tear.“Let me write answers to each man using the same inkstone. Then we must shatter the stone into pieces and seed the fragments into the garden gravel. After that we will pull apart the brush and feed each separate hair to a separate fire. We must be careful to be sure the king’s sorcerers cannot possibly steal from stone or brush the truth of what we wrote and planned.”
To Prince Ejenli she sent nothing except a small seal, its stamp depicting the royal horn of their ancient ancestress who was both a woman and a rhinoceros.
To Lord Kini she wrote: The bird will fly home if its tether comes unleashed.
To Lord Varay she wrote: A subtle dish graces the banquet table.
So it was done.
That night Lord Kini escaped the palace barracks with his face concealed beneath a veil. A string of remounts gave him speed toward the mountains.
The next morning, unaware that his hostage had absconded, the king ate his dawn soup of rice, fowl, cilantro, and pepper, cooked to its usual perfection in the royal kitchen tended by Lady Norenna’s gracious expertise. Afterward, nose twitching, he expressed an urgent desire to ride at once to Seven Falls to collect his bride. Because much of his army had already been mustered to march to the coast where they would set up defenses against the expected invasion from the Empire of Saro, he took only the palace guard as escort.
Three days later, at the turn of the tide, Prince Ejenli departed in his sunbird-haunted ship, bearing the seal of the noble lineage of the Lady Rhinoceros.
The sisters waited, watching. In the warp and weft of the loom a vision unfolded, for Yara had woven the eyes of peacocks’ feathers into her threads. With this magic they could see across the whole of the land that prospered under the protection of their sacred ancestress.
The king’s company leaves behind the dense green farmlands and golden temples of the lowland and rides up into the mist-shrouded mountains. As the road steepens the company straggles out into a long line, the winged lancers in the vanguard with their rainbow banners flooding the air with streaming color and the night guard bringing up the rear in their rich indigo uniforms sewn with an ornamentation of silver vines. The king himself is carried in an elaborately carved litter whose roof and curtains are sewn of many layers of gold and purple silk so that like wings they seem to fold and unfold with each step.
Soon the company slows to a crawl as it picks its way up toward a cloud-capped pass along a narrow valley surrounded by steep hills.
Suddenly rocks tumble and crash down onto the road. Earthquakes are common here in the Fire Islands, not that anyone felt a tremor this day. When the rumble subsides and the dust settles, the survivors scramble to claw twisted bodies out of the rubble. The rocks have split the party into two groups, one before and one behind the new barrier. In the ensuing confusion men and women wearing the stripes of forest cats and the dappled skin of mountain wolves rush as if out of the rock itself although in truth it is just that armed people had secreted themselves in caves and brush-hidden overhangs to carry out their ambush.
The men carrying the king’s litter fall as their group is overrun.
A woman armed with a bow and painted all green in the manner of a whip snake steps onto the road. It is her arrow that pierces the king’s eye as he stumbles out of silken draperies, and it is Lord Kini’s knife that finishes their father off.
The soldiers who surrender are allowed to live and are sent back to the lowlands with the king’s body wrapped in the silk he died in. With the rockfall still blocking the road behind them, the mountain people stride up into the mist and rain of their ancestral home.
The woman wearing the snake’s aspect pauses before she departs. She looks up into the sky as if she can see the brilliant feathered eyes that see all. Around her neck she wears the token of her ancestress, a gold neck ring bearing the face and tail of the whip snake. With a green hand she makes the sign of “peace,” and then Lady Nasua follows the others out of sight into the rugged wild slopes.
An wept when Yara released her hand. Dust motes sank through strands of light. The rustle and chatter of women in the adjoining weaving hall drifted in to ease the silence.
“I love him because our mother loved him and because he treasured us,”An said.“But this is our land, not his.”
Yara shed no tears. Unraveling the pattern took her the rest of the day while An made her usual rounds at the hospital, her tears watering every sufferer she attended.
In the sorcerers’ garden, the ears whispered the words spoken aboard the Saroese ship as it flew over the waves on its way to the emperor’s harbor far to the south. “King Karanadayara will pay personally for his insult to the emperor. Afterward the riches of the Kingdom of Karan will belong to the empire.”
Three days later the remnants of the palace guard returned bearing the king’s body. The day after King Karanadayara’s funeral, Lord Varay tossed the first torch onto the roof of the palace founded and built by the deceased king in the first years of his reign. The entire court watched from afar as the palace burned to the ground, all the while placing bets on which chambers and structures would collapse in first.
Before the ashes had cooled the sisters married Lord Varay in a quiet ceremony. In this way the least of the sons of the Emerald Prince became King Anyaravaray by means of his marriage. An ceased speaking ill of his smiles when she discovered he indeed had a particular interest in the hospital because his mother was a mountain woman who had taught him her healing lore. That he truly thought her lovely was no small inducement even if she pretended otherwise. Yara encouraged their attachment; she had her own paramours among her ladies and loved the king well enough in her own way.
After the burning, the new king commanded the royal architects to measure out the grounds of a new king’s palace upstream past the third bridge and thereby close to the royal hospital. Breaking with tradition, he asked for Queen An’s input because she had some ideas about better plumbing and running water that she wished to put into practice.
Gifts were delivered from Lord Kini and his mountain bride: A bow and arrows for Yara and for An a set of bat-haunted calligraphy brushes made with hog, badger, civet, mongoose, and weasel hair. The new king received an ally’s knife with an ivory hilt and a blade engraved with promises.
Some weeks later the king’s sorcerers brought the whispering ears before the king and queens i
n a temporary hall hung with tapestries and roofed with palm fronds. The envoys had reached the imperial court of Saro. They all listened as the emperor swore that with a mighty fleet he would avenge the insult and punish the impertinence of King Karanadayara by invading the kingdom of Karan.
So they prepared.
Thus it happened that half a year later when the winds shifted front to back in their usual pattern, the Saroese fleet sailed with its golden sails and gull-haunted ships across the Fire Sea and up the river to the new palace.
King Anyaravaray sat clothed in gold and purple on the peacock couch in the king’s audience hall. He received the invaders with an easy smile. Queen An and Queen Yara watched from the queens’ balcony as three men strode forward in the manner of conquerors: a Saroese general clad in silver-gray, a Saroese admiral marked by the badge of the sea-swift gull, and a Saroese ambassador with his hair plaited into three tiers.
“We are come to chastise King Karanadayara and the kingdom of Karan which he rules,” announced the ambassador. “King Karanadayara is required to make personal restitution for the insult he gave to the Emperor of Saro.”
The king acknowledged the ambassador’s heavy words with a gracious wave of his purple and gold silk scarves.“Then you have journeyed a long distance to the wrong place, for this is the kingdom of Anyara, not Karan. King Karanadayara is dead, most grievously murdered by his enemies. Indeed, his palace was burned at the order of a prince of the Emerald Island. What an outrage that you have come so far to find that others have taken your righteous act of justice away from you! How can I aid you?”
Trapped by their own words, the envoys felt obliged to join in an uneasy friendship with a man who presented himself as their new ally. They drank with the king at a banquet prepared by Lady Norenna. Inspired by the feast they swore vengeance on those who had stolen their revenge. Vengeance first, whatever they might secretly plan about invading this rich land afterward.
The Saroese fleet set sail.
Out on the Fire Sea, Prince Ejenli saw them coming with the magic he held in his turquoise eye. After the Saroese fleet had sacked the Emerald Island, Prince Ejenli used the gusting winds and his knowledge of the shoals to drive their ships onto the rocks near the coast. Then, having been given permission by the queens’ seal to take what he wanted from those ships he defeated, he pillaged the Saroese fleet and became wealthy enough to restore his family’s holdings.
So it was that the kingdom of Anyara prospered, at peace. In time a daughter named Raya was born with the queen’s mark on her breast. It is Queen Raya who now dwells in the queen’s garden, the sacred heart of the land, while I, her sister, have traveled all these years as her ambassador and am now returned to guide you, all you girls of the palace, as you come into your womanhood.
This story is the first and most important lesson I teach you. The Lady Rhinoceros understood the dangers her daughters and their descendants would face. The queen’s garden is open to any we invite in, and it is a garden well worth sharing, but it belongs to us. Never forget it.
It belongs to you.
ON THE
DYING WINDS OF THE OLD YEAR
AND THE
BIRTHING WINDS OF THE NEW
A CROSSROADS STORY
OUT ON THE WATER, paddling a canoe, the four women could speak without fear of being overheard. It was a windy day, sloppy water instead of steady swells, and their canoe battled an east wind blustering in over the bay. Mai set paddle to water, pulled, and lifted it out and forward to cut back in again, following the rhythm of the woman in the first seat.
“There’s a spy in Bronze Hall,” said the woman in the seat behind Mai. “What makes you think so, Tesya?” Mai called the question back over her shoulder.
“Yesterday Marshal Orhon’s courier bag went missing. The bag contained his orders for which reeves were to shift station, which to come home to roost, and which to stay where they were and what routes they were to patrol. Good information if you were wanting to trap reeves stationed out in isolated eyries.”
“Orders can be changed,” said the woman in the first seat, Zubaidit.
“Neh, it’s worse than that,” said Tesya. “There are eyries which are well hidden. Observation posts known only to Bronze Hall reeves. Not even fawkners like me know them. Those places have been kept secret for generations. Furthermore, the marshal’s cote is locked and guarded at night. There’s no shoreline to bring up a boat, and no lights anyway. No one could have stolen it except someone who lives on the island.”
Mai blinked eastward into the wind. The barrier islands lay too far away to be seen except for scraps of cloud caught on their low peaks. “So you believe a reeve, a fawkner, or one of the hall-sworn stewards stole it. If that’s so, then who is the spy working for?”
“I think we all know the answer to that, don’t we, Mai?” said Tesya too sharply.
Before Mai could answer, a set of choppy waves rocked the canoe. The long float lashed by wooden arms to the left of the canoe skipped twice on the water’s surface.
In the last seat, steering, old Fohiono spoke brusquely. “Get your minds back in the boat, sisters. Weather’s coming up. Best we turn back to shore.”
The steerswoman angled her paddle against the curve of the hull. The canoe swept a wide half circle. Mai called a change, and they each swung their paddle over to the other side, Mai paddling opposite Zubaidit and Tesya. As the canoe straightened, Zubaidit set them a steady pace for the town of Salya, barely visible as a scar of brown walls and white stone against the vibrant green of the mainland.
They paddled for a while in silence. Sweat and sun and spray glistened on Zubaidit’s brown back. Out on the bay Zubaidit usually stripped down to just her linen kilt. It was easy to see her muscles working as she cut the paddle in and out of the water.
Eventually Mai felt obliged to speak.
“It’s exactly the kind of information King Anjihosh will want. He does not like what he cannot control. He will do whatever he feels is necessary to bring Bronze Hall under his command. He believes it is best for the Hundred to be ruled by a strong man with a clear vision and a firm hand.”
“It’s true he saved us from a terrible civil war,” said Zubaidit.
“I was there when Copper Hall was burned down and my comrades slaughtered,” added Tesya.“That was a dark day. I admit I was glad when King Anjihosh and his army of outlanders stood up to fight the Star of Life and its cruel army. I cheered their victory.”
“He did not act alone,” remarked Fohiono.
“He did not,” agreed Mai.“Many acted. They just acted under his leadership.”
“You had some part in it, I have heard,” the steerswoman continued.
“Maybe I did. And Anji might thereafter have chosen to retire to a quiet life, as I have. But that is not the kind of man he is.”
“By all accounts, you could have been his consort and ruled beside him here in the Hundred,” said Tesya.
Zubaidit flashed a glance back over her shoulder.
“Watch your rhythm!” said Fohiono with more tartness than usual.
Once the memories might have brought tears to her eyes and a lump in her throat. But the wide waters and hard winds of coastal Mar had scoured the remnants of regret right out of her.
“I could have remained his possession, however well I was treated and no matter how beautifully I was dressed. Honestly, my friends, even though I was offered a palace of my own and all the fine silks and sweets and soaps and tender kisses I could desire, I would rather be out here in this wind paddling with you and with my back screaming and my shoulders like to freeze up. Just a dawn paddle to catch a few fish and discuss matters of life and death! I didn’t think you would take us out so far, Fo.”
That got them laughing.
“You’re the youngest among us,”barked Fohiono, chuckling. “When the year turns, you’ll be able to count twenty-six years, won’t you? You ought to be ashamed to complain.”
“I am! You
can be sure I am bitterly ashamed! But I still hurt!”
Waves slapped the hull. The float skimmed the tops of wavelets. The sun glowered in a sky beginning to turn the sulky blue-green that marked a storm blowing in from the ocean.
“You know the man best,” remarked Fohiono. “If the theft is his doing, what does he want?”
Mai considered the character and ambitions of the man she had once called husband. “He has had eight years to settle his new government in the north. According to report, he’s gained control of the major trade roads so all is peaceful and secure and to his liking. Now he’ll turn his gaze to those regions of the Hundred that have not fully bent their heads to his rule. He already has agents here in Salya.”
“Watching you!” cried Tesya. “We would have a quieter time here in Salya and at Bronze Hall if you hadn’t settled here.”
“Yes, he has agents in town watching me.” Mai had accepted the consequences of leaving him but she knew some resented the complications her presence brought despite the success of her mercantile dealings. “But it isn’t as if I am the sole reason he keeps spies here. Bronze Hall is the only one of the six reeve halls that has not acknowledged him as its commander. That makes Bronze Hall’s reeves suspect in his eyes. They might foment disorder. They might urge the councils and guilds hereabouts to rebel.” She glanced again over her shoulder.“Tesya, have you anyone in the hall you distrust?”
As a fawkner in the reeve halls, handling the huge eagles, Tesya had earned impressive scars. They glittered like fireling’s threads scored across her left cheek and down her neck to her left shoulder. The scars twisted as she grimaced.“A new reeve flew in with his eagle two months ago. I’m sure you’ve all seen him.”
Fohiono whistled appreciatively. “That young, pretty fellow? Sure I’ve seen him.”
Tesya went on, her tone sour. “Folk at Bronze Hall say he’s the kind who visits the Merciless One’s temple as often as he can. What do you think of him, Zubaidit?”