“Yes!” Cinder cried. “Let’s hear what the Easterling can do!”
I balked, and not only because Cinder had twice used that slur. My tutors and I had passed countless hours composing poetry back and forth, but I had already humiliated myself in front of these important men. Their sudden attention struck all I knew of verse and meter from my mind.
What sort of poetry did they expect from an Easterling?
They were growing impatient. The servants were already preparing the next batch of paper boats. I blurted:
Sweet plum trickles from the bottle lip …
My mouth hung open. It was childish to derive an image from something happening before my eyes. The servants stared at me as they poured, wondering if I had finished. I groped for the next word, the next phrase.
Hearth fire warms our frigid bones,
New companions on the mountain road,
Come and sit, and share my wine.
To my astonishment they all took cups. Alabaster held his for a moment.
“The rhythm was a little odd,” he muttered, then drank.
We passed the rest of the afternoon drinking and chatting and criticizing each other’s poetry. By the end I felt comfortable enough to let my cup pass for a meaningless verse about butterflies that Voice Rill had drunkenly stammered.
Servants brought a traditional Sienese meal at nightfall: pork dumplings, fire-pepper beef, five-spice chicken, wheat noodles with wood-ear mushrooms, and young cabbage stir-fried in garlic. I ate, then excused myself. A young man named Khin, who was to be my personal steward in the citadel, showed me to my rooms. They were as spacious as my father’s reception hall.
I had long ago abandoned the habit of reciting my grandmother’s teachings and practicing the Nayeni Iron Dance, but in the privacy of my quarters I felt the urge that night. Perhaps a reaction to the vertigo of having been thrust into a new place and an unfamiliar role. Or simple homesickness.
Drunk as I was, I fell into the first forms of the Iron Dance before I knew what I was doing. After a dozen steps I let my arms fall slack. Foolishness was all it was. Foolish to cling to traditions that had never really felt my own. Foolish, when they were forbidden by the very Empire I served.
If Cinder caught me at such practice, he would be vindicated. I would be an Easterling in truth.
A creeping fear gripped me. I checked to be sure the seals on my luggage were intact, most importantly the black trunk with its three iron locks. Though nothing seemed to have been opened, my paranoia was not satisfied. I searched through layers of documents and scrolls. Only when I found the small, unassuming brush case in which I kept my grandmother’s knife and saw that the wax seal on its latch was still intact could I relax.
I sighed, repacked everything, locked and sealed the black trunk, and flopped onto my bed. I was exhausted from my long journey, and I had drunk a few too many cups of wine. That was all it was. The foolishness of the drunk and the tired. What I needed was rest before I began my work as the Emperor’s Hand.
2
Though I awoke with a pounding hangover, I wasted no time nursing it. I felt the weight of my responsibilities as the first Hand of the Emperor from Nayen. My actions would reflect not only on me, but on every Nayeni in the civil service. If I distinguished myself, I could disprove the notion that the Nayeni were nothing more than savages, that Nayeni blood was a hindrance and red skin the sign of a slower, more bestial mind.
If I embarrassed myself, those who called me Easterling would shake their heads and smile and say, “You see? Their blood is weak, unfit to serve.”
I would serve well, dispel the myth of the savage Easterling, and earn a position as a scholar in the Imperial Academy. There I would be free to sate my curiosity among the brightest and most learned minds in the Empire, and never again would I have to worry about rebel uprisings or administrative minutia. A distant dream, but a motivating one.
After a light breakfast of boiled eggs, dried mango, and ginseng tea, I sought out Voice Rill. I found him in the Gazing Upon Lilies pavilion, which had been built in the center of the largest pond in the citadel. Ripples of power wafted from his forehead and streamed to the East toward the Sienese heartland. I waited on the pavilion’s bridge while he made his report and received instructions from the Emperor. The ripples slowed, then faded. A servant came to fetch me.
“You impressed Hand Alabaster last night,” Rill said when I joined him.
“Thank you, Voice Rill,” I said, and could not help but add, “there is a reason I was selected as Hand of the Emperor. I am eager to begin my work.”
Rill stroked his cheeks and nodded, squinting. The silvery tetragram branded upon his forehead rippled and glimmered like the surface of the pond.
“Well, let us be about it, then.”
My role, Voice Rill explained, was to serve as Minster of Trade in An-Zabat. This entailed the setting and collection of tariffs and taxes, the monitoring of weights and measures, the management of mineral rights to the Batir Waste, and other basic administrative duties. My most important task, however, was to maintain the tenuous relationship between the Windcallers and the Sienese merchants who relied upon their Windships.
“The Batir Waste devours caravans,” Rill said as he led me to the secluded Wind Through Grass pavilion, which would be my office. “Two of every three soldiers who marched from Sien to conquer this city died of thirst. Without the Windcallers, there is no trade in An-Zabat.”
I felt a thrill of anticipation. To do my duty well I would have to learn as much as I could about the Windcallers, and of everything I had seen in An-Zabat, they were most fascinating.
One question nagged at me, however. “Voice Rill,” I asked, “I do not want to seem insolent, but why are the Windcallers permitted their autonomy? In every other region of the Empire, native magic has either been absorbed into the Canon or eradicated.”
Rill paused for a moment before answering. “Without trade, An-Zabat is unsustainable. A few fields grow in the green belt watered by the Great Oasis, but the city has long swelled beyond the ability to feed itself. An-Zabat was once little more than a watering hole for the nomads of the Batir Waste, a place to rest and trade. Now it serves to link the Empire to the distant lands of the West, and there is great wealth to be had in such trade. Yet without the Windcallers and their ships, the waste cannot be crossed.
“We have tried the ordinary methods to induct their magic into the Canon. Capturing and interrogating Windcallers, and so on. No Windships sailed from An-Zabat for a year, and the city nearly starved. Someday we will learn their secrets. For the time being, you will have to negotiate with them, though it is a blight upon the Empire’s pride.”
“I will not fail the Empire,” I said.
Rill smiled at me. “We do not expect you to.”
My office was laden with shelves and cabinets that sagged beneath the weight of scrolls, books, and loosely bound documents. A landscape painting depicting the verdant mountains of Southern Sien hung in the only unoccupied stretch of wall. A desk stood beneath the north-facing window. Its few accoutrements included a bell for calling the servants, a small turtle of carved amber, heavy jade paperweights engraved with a pattern of crawling vines, and a slate bowl for grinding ink. The scholarly smell of paper and old incense hung in the air.
My own private Academy. A poor substitute for the real thing, of course.
“Your predecessor was a meticulous records keeper,” Voice Rill said with a grandfatherly smile. “You should have no trouble picking up the thread.”
As I studied the ledgers, I soon saw that Voice Rill had not exaggerated. Almost all of An-Zabat’s wealth came from tariffs and speculation on luxury items traversing the Batir Waste. The Windships brought goods to the city, exchanged them, and set off again. As Minister of Trade, I stood at the center of that financial whirlwind. I had to keep it spinning—ha
d to make it spin faster, and more expansively, if I could—and it only spun by the good grace of the Windcallers.
Voice Rill had not told me the reason for my predecessor’s dismissal as Minister of Trade, but in the ledgers I saw the evidence of his ineptitude. Unlike him, I would control the Windcallers. I would ensure the stability and wealth of An-Zabat. I would eliminate this stain on the Empire’s pride.
I would do my duty. I would distinguish myself and become known as more than the Left-Handed Easterling.
I was astonishingly naive.
3
Weeks passed. Time was becoming distended, my life an endless stream of documents to be deciphered. The sun was setting, and that alone told me that I had been at work too long. That, and my growling stomach. I rang the bell on my desk to call Khin, my steward.
“I would like a meal brought to my office.”
“That can be arranged, Your Excellence,” said Khin. “However, Hand Alabaster has sent several messages inviting you to dine with him this evening.”
“He has?” I looked up from the ledgers. “Why did no one tell me?”
“Voice Rill instructed the staff that you were not to be disturbed, Your Excellence. I can inform Hand Alabaster that you would prefer—”
“No, no. Send a runner to let him know I am on my way,” I said, drying and stowing my brushes and returning documents to their shelves.
Standing stones lined the path to the Golden Fortune pavilion, which was nestled beneath a high cliff of basalt columns brought by Windship from Western Sien. The pavilion was built of poplar beams in the classical style, with flanged roofs and whitewashed walls. Incense wafted from one of the windows. Its scent was undercut by the rich, savory smells of the meal Hand Alabaster’s servants had prepared.
Alabaster rose to greet me. His office was arranged much as mine was, though the art hanging between his shelves was solemn and melancholy, full of fog and harsh geometry.
“What do you think of your new home?” Hand Alabaster asked as we settled into our seats and the servants filled our cups.
“The little I saw of it on the way to the citadel intrigued me,” I said. “Though I must admit the weight and complexity of my responsibilities is daunting.”
Alabaster frowned quizzically over the rim of his teacup.
“I meant the garden, Hand Alder,” he said. “You strike me as a literary sort—more so than Cinder, certainly. As Minister of Culture, I have put a great deal of effort into the garden.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” I said, then sipped my tea while I composed my thoughts. “Its design is more classical than the garden in which I sat for my examinations in Nayen. That garden closely adhered to the mountainous landscape of the island, with natural slopes and pools preserved rather than artificial ones constructed.”
Alabaster polished his spectacles and stared at me with piercing eyes. “Would you have me make a garden out of sand and rocks?”
“Oh, your method is clearly superior here in An-Zabat,” I said, realizing that I had offended him. “You must forgive me. The only garden I knew before my examination was my father’s, and he was only a merchant.”
“How disappointing,” Alabaster muttered, then replaced his spectacles and picked up his ivory eating sticks.
“I want us to be friends, Alder,” he said, picking at the food. “Voice Rill is a respectable man, but the gulf of rank between us is too wide for friendship. Cinder is a militant brute. We can work together, but he and I will never be companions.”
“Gladly, Alabaster,” I said. “Though I fear I will have little time to spend with you. Dealing with the Windcallers seems no easy task.”
Alabaster waved dismissively and filled my cup. “No easy task, but not one to occupy much of your time. There is nothing to be done.” His voice grew more heated as he spoke. “They are an incorrigible lot.”
Alabaster leaned back in his chair. He removed his spectacles and patted his brow with a handkerchief, then gazed out the window as he straightened them on his nose.
“Enough talk of this infernal province,” he said, and drained his wine cup. He wiped his mouth, then poured another. “Tell me about yourself, Alder. We should know each other if we are to be friends.”
Before long I felt confident in my understanding of An-Zabat’s mercantile affairs and began to craft policy. I levied new taxes on grain imports and used that income to refill the Imperial silos. The Windcallers would not be able to starve us into submission, should they oppose any of my reforms.
Alabaster and I continued our companionable meetings. Often he invited me to dine in the Abundant Nectar banquet hall, where a cloud of hummingbirds fluttered among hanging baskets of fluted snapdragons. After a few weeks he began to show me excerpts from the letters he received from his betrothed.
“Do her lines seem perfunctory, to you?” he would ask, handing me a poem she had composed.
I always reassured him, though having never been party to any serious romance, I felt out of my depth.
By the end of my second month in An-Zabat, my work had fallen into a consistent rhythm. Each morning I reviewed Voice Rill’s mercantile reports, sent price and value adjustments to the city office of weights and measures, and read correspondences from the minor officials of An-Zabat’s bureaucracy. After a light lunch in my office, I wrote a few messages to my subordinates throughout the city, and by late afternoon, I had finished with my duties. This left me with substantially more free time than I had anticipated, and I could only spend so many hours with moony, lovesick Alabaster.
For a Minister of Trade to be so underworked seems absurd, in retrospect. My schedule was too routine, too simple and boring. An-Zabat was a thriving port, yet the business that crossed my desk barely changed from week to week. My insatiable curiosity was given nothing to focus on, left alone to drift toward thoughts of the city beyond the walls of the citadel. The pressure of boredom built and built, like alcohol left to ferment too long, ready to burst at the slightest provocation.
One day, my noon meal was interrupted by the familiar hiss and crack of Imperial battle-sorcery.
“It is only Hand Cinder at drills,” Khin assured me as he refilled the cup of tea that I had spilled.
Intrigued by this disruption of my usual routine, I rushed to finish my meal and followed the rhythmic cracks and hisses to an archery range near the southernmost wall of the citadel. The iron scales of Cinder’s armor flashed in the sun as he raced back and forth across the archer’s line, leaping into the air and lashing out with a whip of crackling yellow lightning that spilled from his hand.
“Hand Alder,” he said as I approached. “Have you dug yourself free of today’s paperwork?”
“Not yet,” I said. “Though what remains is hardly urgent. I can finish it tonight, but I could not resist my curiosity when I heard sorcery in the garden.”
“Part of our duty is to keep sharp,” he said, idly flipping the whip that flowed out from the tetragram in his palm. “Rill and Alabaster indulge themselves in literature and the arts. They forget that we are soldiers first.” The whip disappeared with a snap as he relaxed his hand. “I spend my free afternoons here, if not in the company of my lovely wife. When did you last practice your sorcery?”
“During my apprenticeship with Hand Usher,” I said thinking of Oriole, dead on the blood-soaked ground.
Cinder crossed his arms and cocked a disapproving eyebrow.
“I did not think An-Zabat a warzone,” I said, unwilling to tell Cinder that I hoped never to see battle again. “It was conquered a decade ago.”
“There is a ceasefire,” Cinder said. “But until the Windcallers are brought to heel, An-Zabat is at war. Go on.” He gestured toward the target dummies. “Even a neglected blade can still be sharpened. Show me what you can do.”
I opened my hand and drew forth the contained, orderly magic of the Emp
ire, filtered through the Imperial Canon, transmitted by the Voices and granted by the will of the Emperor alone. Bright as mercury, given shape by the structures of Sienese power. My every hair stood on end. Magic surged through me, a ripple in my blood and bone. Lightning crackled from the tetragram branded on my left hand and tore through one of the targets.
Cinder was not impressed. I had displayed only the gathering and release of power, without nuance, without thought. I moved on to more complex sorcery.
Rather than a bolt of brute force, I made my sorcery into a liquid blade that hissed as it poured from my hand. Thin slices of a dummy’s limbs arced through the air.
After days and weeks of nothing but paperwork and idle, indulgent conversation with Hand Alabaster, the current of physical release pulled me along. I threw darts one at a time—as my grandmother had first taught me to hurl fire—drilling hole after hole through the dummy until it collapsed.
The scent of ozone and charred wool hung over the archery range. My breath came heavily. Sweat soaked my scholar’s robes.
“You say you have been Hand for only three years?” Cinder said. He squeezed my shoulder and grinned. “I would have believed a decade. Sorcery comes as naturally to you as poetry, it seems. Are all Easterlings so gifted?”
I did not tell him that I had been practicing magic since my tenth birthday, when my grandmother carved power and a shaman’s name into my right hand. I did not tell him that the first spell I ever cast had left me a twisted creature halfway between man and eagle-hawk. I did not tell him that I cultivated skill out of caution against ever suffering such a fate again.
I did not tell him these things. Some of them he already knew.
Instead we said nothing, and drank stream-chilled plum wine and watched the herons jab their beaks among the lilies.
I did not go to the archery range again. Paranoia whispered in the back of my mind. Cinder knew, it said, that I could not possibly have become so adept at sorcery in only three years.