AUTHOR’S NOTE
The reader is presumed to have read Book One of these adventures; certain matters will otherwise be somewhat opaque. Many terms, most notably in Khir, are difficult to translate, and much effort has been made to find the correct, if not the prettiest or simplest, overtones; footnotes have been discontinued due to uncertainty over their utility. Any translation errors are of course the author’s, and said author hopes for the reader’s kind patience.
Now, let us return to the center of the world, great Zhaon-An…
I must go,
My sleeve is caught.
— Zhe Har the Archer
A STRANGE PAIR
Outside the ancient westron walls of Zhaon-An’s bustling old city, a foreign princess was the second to be laid in newly built, bone-white tombs.
The traditional crumbling mausoleum of historical petty princes and ambitious, likewise historical warlords was to the north of the city’s simmering, its borders hard pressed by ramshackle temporary dwellings spreading in that direction. The Emperor Garan Tamuron, however, had decreed a new, more auspicious site for the Garan dynasty just outside the walls facing the setting sun. His long-dead first wife’s urn was sealed in a restrained, costly tomb-wall, and any in Zhaon could have reasonably expected that another imperial wife or concubine would follow— or, in the worst case, the Emperor himself.
Instead, it was Garan Ashan Mahara, daughter of the Great Rider of Khir and new bride to the Crown Prince of Zhaon, whose restrained and beautifully carved eggstone urn was immured next to the Emperor’s memorialized spear-wife, and the interment had proceeded with almost unseemly haste but great pomp, honor, and expense.
It was considered wise to show a princess’s shade, as well as her home country, a certain respect.
Thunder lingered over distant hills as a slight woman in pale, well-stitched mourning robes of unbleached silk put her palms together and bowed thrice. A small broom to sweep the tomb’s narrow, sealed entrance and the dimensions of a Khir pailai was set aside in its proper alcove; the carved stone showing the name and titles of a new addition to the ranks of the honorable dead was marked first in Zhaon characters, then in Khir. Each symbol had the painfully sharp edges of fresh, grieving chisel-marks.
The mourner’s black hair held blue highlights and a single hairpin thrust into carefully coiled braids, the stick crowned with an irregular pebble wrapped with crimson silk thread. Neither ribbon nor string dangled small semiprecious beads or any other tiny bright adornment fetchingly from that pebble, for Khir-style mourning did not admit any excess.
At least, not in that particular direction.
Komor Yala’s chin dropped; her breath touched her folded hands. The hem of her pale silk overdress fluttered, fingered by a hot, unsteady breeze. It was almost the long dry time of summer, but still, in the afternoons, the storms menaced. The lightning was more often than not utterly dry as well, leaping from cloud to cloud instead of deigning to strike burgeoning earth. At least the harvest would be fine, or so the peasants remarked— softly, cautiously, in case Heaven overheard and took offense.
A bareheaded man in very fine leather half-armor waited at a respectful distance, his helm tucked at a precise angle under his left arm and a dragon-carved swordhilt peering balefully over his shoulder. He stayed motionless and patient, yet leashed tension vibrated in his broad shoulders and occasionally creaked in his boots when his weight shifted.
For all that, Zakkar Kai did not speak, and if it irked him to wait for a woman’s prayers he made no sign. The head general of Zhaon’s mighty armies had arrived straight from morning drill performed on wide white Palace paving-stones to accompany Crown Princess Mahara’s lone Khir lady-in-waiting outside the city walls, and his red-black topknot was slightly disarranged from both helm and exertion.
Finally, it could be put off no longer. Komor Yala finished her prayers, her lips moving slightly, and brushed at her damp cheeks. She had swept the pailai clean before Mahara’s wall, and gave another trio of bows. Her clear grey eyes, feverishly aglitter, held dark sleepless smudges underneath, and her cheekbones stood out in stark curves.
The Zhaon would say grief is eating her food; a Khir proverb ran a slight woman carries poverty instead of sons.
She backed from the tomb’s august presence, pausing to bow again; when she turned, she found Zakkar Kai regarding her thoughtfully, deep-set eyes gleaming and his mouth relaxed. He offered his armored right arm, still silent.
The absence of sweetened platitudes was one more thing to admire in the man. Her brother would have liked a fellow who could refrain from polluting a serious visit with idle chatter; a slow smolder of hidden unforgiving fire, that had been Komori Baiyan.
But her damoi was struck down at Three Rivers, where so many other noble Khir sons had fallen. Yala could not decide if he had likely faced Zakkar Kai upon that bloody field, or not. She also could not decide how to feel about either prospect. It was not likely Kai would speak of battle with a foreign court lady, even if he had noticed a particular Khir rider during the screaming morass of battle.
Yala placed her fingers in the crook of his right elbow; the general matched his steps to hers. Finally, he spoke, but only the same mannerly phrase he used every other time he accompanied her upon this errand. “Shall we halt for tea upon our return voyage, Lady Yala?”
“I am hardly dressed for it,” she murmured, as she did every time. Near the entrance to this white stone courtyard, in the shade of a long-armed fringeleaf tree with its powdery scented blossoms, her kaburei Anh leaned against the wall like a sleeping horse, leather-wrapped braids dangling past her round shoulders. “And your duties must be calling you, General.”
“They may call.” He never left his helm with his horse, as if he expected ambush even here; or perhaps it was merely a soldier’s habit to carry gear. “I am the one who decides the answer.”
A man could afford such small intransigence. Yala’s temples ached. She made this trip daily; it was not yet a full moon-cycle since her princess’s last ride. Yala herself had attended her princess’s dressing upon that last day, grateful to be free of the dungeons.
Had she still been imprisoned, or had she not avoided the shame of a flogging, would Mahara still be alive?
“And I am not dressed for such a visit,” Kai continued, levelly. “We make a strange pair.” He halted inside the fringeleaf’s shade as Anh yawned into alertness.
“Very.” Yala’s throat ached. The tears rose at inopportune moments, and she wondered why she had not wept for Bai so. The grief of her brother’s passage to the Great Fields was still a steady, silent, secret ache, but Mahara…oh, the sharp, piercing agony was approaching again, a silent house-feline stalking small vermin. Yala forced herself to breathe slowly, to keep her pace to a decorous glide, to keep her unsteady limbs in their proper attitudes.
“There is a cold-flask tied to my saddle,” Kai said almost sharply, his intonation proper for commanding a kaburei. “Our lady grows pale.”
“I am well enough,” Yala began, but Anh bowed and hurried off down the long colonnade. It would take her time to reach the horses, but her mistress and the general would still be in sight.
Zakkar Kai was careful of Yala’s reputation, though it mattered little now. With her princess reduced to ash and fragments of bone by a pyre’s breath, what did matter?