“If I have, I have forgotten it, though I will happily take a slight honor for the wisdom.” Tamuron indicated the table, underlining the invitation, and settled himself upon a high-backed wooden chair. That was new; he usually preferred his meals upon a much lower plank. Struggling to rise from table would be injurious to royal dignity, perhaps. “Your mother visited earlier.”
“Did she?” Kai waited as Tamuron arranged himself. Kanbina had said nothing of any plans to visit her lord husband. Perhaps it was a sudden urge, but she was not given to those, and it would have to be a caprice of startling power and durability to lever her from her quarters. “I am due at her house for dinner tonight.” He was looking forward to it; much of the rest of his day would not be nearly as pleasant.
Yala in the morning, his adoptive-mother at dinner— he could stand a great deal in the tent between those two restful poles.
“A filial son.” Tamuron’s smile was ironclad, the expression of a man who found some little amusement in his own pain but still must look at ease despite it. “She thanked me again for your hurai.”
“Any mother would be proud of such an honor.” Did Tamuron wish Kai to thank him for the greenstone seal-ring clasping his first left finger, denoting princely status but no place in the succession? Its weight was not a kindness, and well Kai knew as much. “No matter how undeserving her son.”
“Sit down.” Tamuron finished settling the royal robes and indicated the only other chair, lapsing into silence as trays were brought and unloaded. The court moved into the garden, low conversation and slippery laughter, eunuchs treading the gravel or stone paths in their walking-pairs of jatajata sandals and courtiers in thin-soled ambling shoes, slippers nestling in perfumed bags at their belts. Some few would hurry to table in other parts of the palace complex, but those who wished for power— or suspected they might be called upon at short notice— would have to forgo a late-morning snack unless a hurrying servant or kaburei could fly to fetch a tidbit or two.
For a short while neither general nor Emperor spoke. The tea was fragrant siao; ripe pearlfruit, breadfruit, summer greenmelon, long thin musk-smelling aiju, and soft crumbling curd lay in pleasing patterns upon gold-edged platters. A ceremonial greenstone cup full of an evil-smelling brew was medicine prepared under Physician Kihon Jiao’s unblinking attention, and the Emperor took it down in a single gulp as if it were sohju, grimacing.
“That looks unpleasant,” Kai remarked. His own seat was a lower, backless stool, commensurate with a rank below the Emperor’s but also thickly cushioned to soften the reminder.
“No more so than anything else.” Tamuron selected his eating-sticks and rolled them together for luck, a soldier’s habit. “Eat, and tell me. Are there dispatches?”
“Not recently.” Kai selected his own sticks; he preferred the spear-tipped to the square. “I thought it best to move the Northern Army to Kutau.” He could close his eyes and see the dispositions of the three great armies— south and west, and north the greatest of them all— but he knew where his lord would spend the most worry, and moved to answer a question not yet asked.
“A good choice. They won’t fall for Three Rivers again.” Tamuron’s eyebrows, still deeply black, knotted in the center. “The official explanation should reach Ashani Zlorih soon.”
Said official announcement of mourning— partly crafted by Zan Fein— called the Crown Princess’s death a “hunting accident.” The current rumor flooding Zhaon-An was that a cortege of black-clad acrobat-assassins had surrounded the Crown Prince and Princess, and that the latter had expired in her new husband’s arms.
It was difficult to tell which story would inflame Khir more.
I must write to my father, Yala murmured in his memory, and Kai did not have the heart to tell her any missive would be opened before it left the palace to make certain nothing unfortunate was brushed upon its inward folds. The details of the Crown Princess’s death were not of a manner to soothe her country’s ire, and as Princess Mahara’s only Khir lady-in-waiting, she was in a position to do Zhaon’s diplomacy much damage by an inadvisable character or two.
Of course any letter of hers might not even leave the Jonwa; Takyeo would no doubt quietly move to insulate the only remaining Khir woman from charges of spying or inappropriate influence. The Crown Prince valued his dead wife’s companion enough for that, at least.
Kai attempted to shelve his distractions, but it was a losing fight. He was in a mood he had rarely felt before, anticipation both pleasant and irksome riding his humors. After all, Yala had not said no; perhaps that was why the heart and liver both sat so lightly within Zakkar Kai today.
If she did attempt a letter to her father, how long would she wait for a reply?
Tamuron had larger concerns, of course. Much depended upon the king of Khir’s reaction to the news that his precious only daughter, sacrificed to the necessity of state marriage, had died choking upon her own blood deep in the conqueror’s country so soon after the wedding’s pomp and silk. “If the news has not reached Khir already.” Kai lifted the teapot lid to glance inside as etiquette demanded before pouring for both of them, a maneuver so familiar he could have done it blind with sleep— and had more than once or twice, during a campaign. “Perhaps he will only demand a bride-price, or an easing of the trade concessions.”
“I doubt it.” The Emperor’s brow was thunderous indeed with doubt and deep thought. Of course the great wains of negotiated tribute from their northern neighbor had not arrived even while the Crown Princess was alive, and that was a possible coincidence both strange and disturbing. “Khir received an envoy not long ago.”
From where? “An envoy?” Kai kept his attention upon pouring, a job that must be done neatly in a mirror-lit, luxurious room. Not like in an army tent, where you drank from whatever you could find— boot, bottle, or puddle, as the saying went.
“From them.” Tamuron’s lip curled briefly, smoothed. His topknot was greying; yet another mark of malady-driven decay, like a house left uninhabited fell quickly into ruin. “Tabrak.”
Ah. Several implications reshuffled themselves and assumed a far different configuration inside Kai’s skull. “And there may be a messenger from the Pale Horde moving toward us even now, I warrant.” That news was chilling enough, no matter how grateful he was to be unsurprised by its advent. The Horde were a cyclic menace, but they could be dammed or turned aside and did not stay to hold what they had conquered, much like the metuahghi falling upon crops in their multi-year cycles. “I see.”
“I would not have us fight Khir and Tabrak at once.” Tamuron merely picked at his food, appearing to eat without consuming much. Another change; his appetite had ever been hearty. “Even if the former is bled dry.”
And yet. Kai followed the line of thought to its natural conclusion, and mulled over the consequences, both possible and probable. “An invasion? Risky.”
The Emperor’s mouth pulled down; he took a mouthful of tea far back against his palate, swallowing hastily. He was drinking everything thus nowadays, as if the very act pained him. “Zlorih has a son left.”
“Newly legitimized.” There was precious little gossip about that particular byblow, and Kai had not found a way to broach the subject with Yala yet. “You are thinking of the Second Princess?” A Zhaon princess sent to a Khir prince— not the ideal solution, but perhaps the negotiations could be drawn out.