Nothing much. Except perhaps the small idea growing in Yala’s liver, a painful, pricking consciousness that her duty to Ashan Mahara was hardly done.
Zhaon’s great general fixed his gaze forward as if upon parade and set off for the horses, which meant Yala accompanied him at the mannerly pace of nobles retreating before the august dead. They walked silently through bars of sunlight and shade; Yala kept herself occupied with counting the columns, the numbers pushing away a black cloud seeking to fill her skull. When her escort halted between one step and the next, half-turning to face her with a sharp military click of his riding boots, she did not look at him, studying instead the closest carven pillar.
So much room, so much stone dragged step by step from so many quarries, so many carven edges; Zhaon was a country of wastage and luxury, even with their dead.
Kai’s gaze was a weight upon her profile. “Yala.”
“Kai.” Her hand dropped to her side, hung uselessly. What now? Was he about to observe that he could not after all accompany her here every morning? He had been silent well past the point of politeness, today.
“I must eventually ride to the North.” His jaw tightened; the breeze played with his topknot, teasing at strands pulled free by the morn’s activity. “The Emperor…”
No more need be said. “Of course,” she replied, colorlessly. Khir, hearing the news of a princess’s death, had reoccupied the border crossings and bridges; no wains of tribute had reached Zhaon from its conquered northern neighbor, and merchants both small and large were uneasy. The entire court of Zhaon was alive with rumor, from the lowest kaburei to the princes themselves; even the Emperor must hear the mutters upon his padded bench of a throne high above the common streets. “He is your lord.”
Obedience was due no matter how the heart ached, in both Khir and Zhaon.
“He is also my friend, and he is dying.” Kai did not glance over his shoulder to gauge who might be in earshot, but here among empty apartments meant for shades and incense, who would gossip?
“Yes.” There was no use in dissembling; the entire palace knew the Emperor’s nameless malady was fatal. The rai gave up its fruit for eating and next year’s crop, children died of fever or misadventure before their naming-days, men rode to war and women retreated to childbed; every street was paved with thousands of smaller deaths— insects, birds, beasts of burden, and cherished or useful pets.
Death had its bony fists wrapped about the world’s throat, and its grasp was final.
“I may speak to him before I leave, should I find opportunity.” Kai’s gaze, usually a jewelwing’s weightless brush, was unwonted heavy today. “But not unless you tell me plainly whether or not I may hope.”
What was there to hope for, with Mahara gone and unavenged to boot? Yala blinked, her gaze swinging in his direction. His features came into focus, swimming through the heavy water in her eyes. A single traitorous drop slipped free, tracing a cool phantom finger down her cheek.
She studied him afresh— long nose, deep eyes, the usual hint of a sardonic smile absent from full, almost cruel lips, mussed topknot. His half-armor was in the Zhaon style, meant to provide both freedom of movement and some small insurance against bolts or sharpened edges; it was stiffened leather and waxed cords, buckles and straps, any lack of ornamentation belied by the quality of the materials. The heat-haze of a male used to healthy exertion tinged with a breath of leather enfolded her without touching the chill streamlets coursing through her bones.
She had suspected he might require some manner of answer today. “Should I ask you to be plainer in turn?”
“I’ve been exceedingly plain.” A faint ghost of a smile touched one corner of his mouth, but he continued in a rush, cavalry with leveled weapons sweeping all before it. “I can offer you protection. I have estates; they are modest, but I could well and easily acquire more.” The wad of pounded rai in his throat, meant to keep a man from choking on truth or its cousin— what he must say to survive— bobbed as he swallowed. “And…there is much affection, Yala, upon my side. Even if I am loathsome to a Khir lady.”
Was that what held him back? She could not ask so plainly, even if he was paying her the high honor of directness. “Loathsome is not the term I would use, General Zakkar. Even if my Zhaon is somewhat halting.”
“Your Zhaon is very musical, my lady.” The compliment was accompanied by a slight grimace, as if he expected her to bridle at it. Faint amusement lit his dark gaze for a moment before vanishing into somberness. “Dare I ask what term you would?”
“Kind.” She thought for a moment; the complexity of her feelings demanded a balancing of one quality against another. “And deadly, when you see the need.”
After all, who had killed the first assassin she had seen in Zhaon? This man, and no other. It was perhaps unfair to wonder whether he might be induced to move against a later attacker, one who had so far escaped justice.
“Another strange pairing.” He did not look away, no surrender accepted or considered. “Yala, will you marry me?”
Finally, he had said it. She could now answer I am still in mourning, and be done. She could turn her shoulder and deliver the cut with the calm chill of a noblewoman well used to clothing a sharp edge in pretty syllables.
Instead, she watched his eyes, muddy like a half-Khir’s. Within a single generation of admixture the gaze lost its directness; some held that the pale grey of nobility ran through the great houses because the Blood Years had forced them to marry their own more than was quite wise. Zakkar Kai’s face was not sharp enough to be even quarter-Khir; he did not have mountain bones. Gossip spoke of some barbarian in his vanished bloodline, a common brat-foundling taken up by a warlord who became Emperor of this terrible, choking, luxurious land.
Barbarian or not, he was mighty among his fellows and measured in courtesy. His careful generalship— standing fast to bleed his enemy, breaking away to replenish his army and tire his foe with chasing— had broken the back of Khir’s resistance, and the victory at Three Rivers had brought her princess to perfumed, hot-cloying Zhaon as matrimonial sacrifice.
That Crown Prince Garan Takyeo had been kind to his foreign bride was beside the point. This country had swallowed Mahara and her lady-in-waiting whole, and now Yala, bereft, was a pebble in the conqueror’s guts.
Another traitorous tear struggled free and followed its elder sister’s path down her cheek. As Yala should have followed Mahara, had she not been gainsaid at the pyre.
Leather made a soft noise as Kai’s callused fingertips brushed the droplet away. It was the first time a man other than her own brother had touched her thus, and Komor Yala almost swayed.
His was the hand wielding that antique dragon-hilted sword, cutting down many of Khir’s finest sons. It was the same hand sending the sword’s point through an assassin in a darkened dry-garden upon a wedding-night, defending Yala. That he had thought her the new Crown Princess was irrelevant; it was also Zakkar Kai who had brought her back to the palace complex after tracking a clutch of conspiratorial kidnappers who had definitely mistaken Yala for her princess.
How could she possibly put each event onto scales and find their measure? She was no merchant daughter, bred for and used to weighing.