Gamnae was young, yet. If she was sent into Khir before Kai could obtain imperial permission for the wearer of a hurai to marry, would Yala go with her? The prospect was unpleasant to contemplate.
“Perhaps.” Tamuron lifted his cup again. His strong copper wrist was losing its muscle-pad from daily saber practice; a thin line of boiling rash disappeared up the underside into his crimson-and-gold sleeve. “Khir only take one wife; Zlorih will not waste his last son upon us if he has a choice. Therefore, should we intend to send a princess, we must give him no leeway.”
“What are his other options? A Tabrak dog-bride? A minor princess from beyond the northern wastes?” Faraway giant Ch’han, always eager to point the Khir’s dagger at Zhaon’s heart and extort tribute, might see that sacrifice as worth the return. Their coffers were ever hungry, and they held themselves to be the center of the world. Even Heaven flows from Ch’han, they said, so the gold must be pushed uphill.
Every country naturally considered itself central; Kai was, however, a son of Zhaon, and thought his own land best suited to the title. Where else had Heaven made such bountiful fields, such perfect heat in summer and such icy beauty in winter?
“It would help if we had a criminal to hang.” Tamuron eyed him, taking a single sip of siao. The smoke in its liquid might bring his humors closer to balance. “Zan Fein and Mrong Banh can find no trace of the assassin, even with Takshin’s help.”
“So I am told.” Kai weighed his most unsettling thoughts upon the matter and decided he could hardly avoid voicing them. “Does the sudden quiet strike you as ominous, my lord?”
“You like these, do you not? Take some.” Tamuron subtly indicated the sliced pearlfruit with his eating-sticks before selecting a hefty slice and laying it within Kai’s bowl. Protocol demanded Kai leap to his feet and bow at the sign of imperial approval— unless he wore a hurai. The Emperor had noticed more than one gaze bent in their direction, and was underscoring Kai’s position once more. “And yes, it does. So many attempts upon my son’s life, then…nothing.”
Almost as if he was not the target at all. Kai did not wish to say as much, but Tamuron’s coal-hot glance spoke of understanding. “Who stands to gain?” the head general murmured, taking up his pair of silver-chased eating-sticks and tapping them once upon the side of the whisper-thin blue ceramic bowl for luck, another soldier’s habit. “Is that not always the question?”
“I find it difficult to believe Khir gains from this, unless it is less onerous trade-duties. We dealt fairly enough with them.” But Tamuron’s brow wrinkled, two familiar vertical lines rising between his eyebrows. It was the particular look he wore when an enemy was not behaving as expected. Such impertinence from an opponent meant even the most basic of assumptions about relative goals and strengths must be rethought, an intensive labor indeed.
Kai suspected the Khir nobles would take issue with his lord’s estimation of fairness. Still, the cold calculation required to send your daughter to her new home, then dispatch assassins…if Ashani Zlorih was responsible for this, he was a vastly different foe than the one Kai had fought to a blood-drenched standstill.
Which meant there was another player upon the board. Perhaps the king of Khir could not move as he willed in this matter, and his ministers— not to mention whatever nobles were left— had taken note of the fact.
Perhaps it had been this shrouded new prince, Ashani Daoyan? A fine, traditional name, but there was absolutely nothing about the man in any gossip, no matter how minor. If he had sent those of the Shadowed Path after his half-sister, he was a foe worth expending some silver upon learning about. Which meant questioning Yala upon her home— a pleasant enough duty, but one others at court might also be thinking of undertaking, and they would not treat a foreign lady kindly.
Kai gazed at his bowl, the shapes of food inside turning into a battle-map. Most of the assassins had borne some Northern stamp or another, but that could have been a clever feint if someone wished to inconvenience the Crown Prince by robbing him of potential heirs instead of moving against him directly.
“Eat,” Tamuron continued, his tone brooking no disobedience. “My Second Concubine will be disappointed if I do not feed you well.”
Kai decided it was time for this visit to move to business instead of chewing the old leather of stale news. “You plan to send me north.” He nodded as if it had just occurred to him and set about denuding his bowl, his eating-sticks flashing. “To merely menace, or do you truly mean to invade Khir?”
Tamuron’s own eating-sticks were carved of greenstone, that sacred, precious rock bringing good luck and proof against poison, their hand-ends sheathed in hammered silver. He preferred the square-cut, holding that it took greater delicacy to wield a blunt instrument with the requisite care. “Eventually. How soon can you leave?”
“I have some personal matters to set in order, that is all.” How much was acceptable to delay? Certainly waiting for a letter to wend its weary way to Khir and its reply to arrive was too long, and yet.
“What personal matters?” Tamuron eyed him closely, and a disbelieving grin spread over his face. For a few moments he looked rather young again, an echo of the fit, broad-shouldered warlord who had taken young Kai from the ashes, forging him anew. “Well, well. Have you been lucky in a softer campaign this year, my son?”
“Not quite lucky.” Kai almost winced. Nobody was close enough to overhear but the kaburei close-servant hovering to attend the ailing body of Zhaon himself. Still, even that creature could whine in an unfriendly ear if given leave— or enough inducement. “I have not been defeated yet, that is all.”
It would not be quite wise to inform Tamuron of his intentions toward a certain Khir lady-in-waiting at this particular moment. What the Emperor did not see he could not prevent, and any mention of Komor Yala was likely to irritate him. The affair with the false eunuch— and Third Prince Takshin’s reaction— was still fresh in the court’s memory, though the rumor-mongers of the palace did not quite go so far as to intimate Takshin had designs upon a foreign woman either.
Did he? So far as Kai could tell, the Third Prince treated Yala much as he treated anyone useful or kind to Takyeo who had not yet managed to earn Takshin’s own ire by some imagined slight or inadvisable expression of pity. The Third Prince’s rude, mocking tone did not seem to upset or incommode Yala in the slightest, but then again, the lady could probably smooth the worst temper in the palace handily, did it become necessary.
Or perhaps it was only Kai’s affection which made him think her capable of such victories.
“Well, do not take more than one wife, Kai. Women are trouble.” Tamuron frowned, selecting sliced pearlfruit and musky aiju. It was difficult to tell what would deepen his malady, or cause it to retreat. Every morsel passing his lips would be reported to Kihon Jiao for analysis, in case a pattern to the malady’s attacks could be discerned. “Leave when it suits you, but not too late. I merely wish your presence north of Zhaon-An to be remarked. Do not go too far.”
In other words, he was to be a bolster to the Crown Prince and a menace to Zhaon’s enemies at once. Maybe he would split in half, like the old sage Hurong Daewon. “Partly why I chose Kutau for the infantry.” The fields there were rich, and the farmers would be glad of extra help during the dry season’s repairs and weeding even as they bemoaned the extra mouths to feed. Cavalry, salted about in smaller detachments, were a similar burden, but even the elite among Zhaon’s armies lent a hand with harvests and the like in times of peace. “Headquarters at Tienzu Keep, I think— a few days’ easy ride from here, or a single courier upon a hard-used horse may do better.”