Gods of Nabban (42 page)

Raku was seething; only the Kho'anzi's order that Captain Lin was to be obeyed as if she spoke with Daro Korat's own voice had kept him denouncing her and seizing mastery of the situation himself. Even so, he had given final orders behind her back. The castle gate was closed again, his sergeant left behind to prepare for what he believed was inevitable assault, after the deaths of all dragged by Yeh-Lin's folly into the town.

“They'll slaughter us, even if you can defeat Gahur,” he hissed in her ear now. “For the gods' sake, for my lord and all the castle, let me take this fight. For your god's sake, if you believe that's what the horseboy is, don't throw away what we've already won. We can stand a siege, wait for Prince Dan—”

“Shh, shh. I begin to think Prince Dan and his various ever-defeated armies nothing but foxfire. Trust me, my lord. Yuro does.”

The castellan, close by and looking worried despite her claim of his trust, pursed his lips but said nothing.

“A slave-born bastard—”

“Hardly fit words to give your lord's son.” Yeh-Lin didn't need to pretend to coldness. Daro Yuro stood close enough to have heard that, and she was deciding she rather liked the man. Pity she hadn't shown up looking twenty years younger.

“No, I mean—my apologies, my lord Yuro—” That sounded stiff, but honest. “—I don't doubt his—his honour, but what experience does he have to judge?”

“You think he rose to stable-master blindfold and stopping his ears with wax? A wiser man in judging men and women than a lord who sees only the bowing masks of servility. He trusts me—do you not, my lord castellan? And your lord the Kho'anzi does, and my young god does, and your word if not your faith is given there. Now go to your place, like a good boy.”

“He's almost twice your weight, woman, and less than half your age!”

“Oh, please. He is neither. Well, perhaps the latter, I will grant you, but I intend neither to wrestle nor seduce him.
Trust
me.” She winked. “After all, I was ruling this empire when your great-great-greats were in their swaddling clothes, was I not?”

Raku blew out his breath in a groan. “And what was the purpose of that? Childish! It didn't have a chance of intimidating him. It only lowered you to a fool in his eyes and gained you his contempt. He thinks you're a joke, a symptom of our lord's desperation and delusion.”

“It did indeed.” She shook her head. “Poor fool.”

Yuro gave her a long look as he stepped away to his place, and, in his narrowed eyes, a little uncertainty. Raku turned on his heel and stalked to the station she had appointed him, between the male caravaneer and the Palm Rank wizard. Brave man. He thought he would not live out the morning. Or perhaps foolish, when it was only honour and his lord's command that held him here against all his better judgement.

Same thing in the end, the girl she had been might once have said. Dotemon . . . would now disagree.

“I serve the young god of Nabban,” she said, bowing to the imperial commander. “With my blade and my life, I will prove the truth of my words. He is heir of the dying gods, and this land and its folk are his, and your empress is a tyrant and a usurper and a false goddess, a deceit and an outright lie.”

He had been warned. She had given him her name. He ought to have doubted his own impulse to take this challenge and silence the mocking old woman. He need not have given in to it, embraced it, even, in anger at the insult of her existence, in the mingled fear and relief he felt at Zhung Musan's death, in his desire to come to the notice of the empress. And he stood in the circle of witness before the Old Great Gods with deceit in his heart, faithless in his word. If she fell, Yuro and Raku and the handful of officers and their escort of crossbows would be butchered, and the castle taken, and Lord Daro Korat slain. He intended it.

A ritual of execution with a throw of the dice, a nod to reckless fate. Had Catairlau enjoyed this moment, in the days when he stood as his father's
rihswera
, the king's champion of the Duina Catairna? Savoured the heat that smouldered in the heart under the cold and observing eye?

Lord Hani Gahur bowed. She did. Visors lowered.

They met with formality, the careful sparring of training. Hani Gahur—nearly all the lords—favoured broad, single-edged blades, heavier than the sabres of the Great Grass style that were the preferred sword of the caravan road. Shorter than her double-edged antique of the old empire. She doubted his edge could match hers, though she would as soon lay her limbs under a meat cleaver as let him test it on her.

No one could say he had not been warned.

Ivah had more than half a mind to pull concealment around her and slip away, the moment they all began moving away from the bridge, up to the wider space of the market square, but she had to admit a fascination, too, in the outcome of this challenge. She recognized the form of the duel from her Praitannec gang-mate Buryan's stories. It was a judgement of the gods, or an execution. But the woman was no warrior of Praitan. No one of her age who had lived by the sword would show so little sign of it. Leanly muscular, as a dancer was. Beautiful, before she hid herself with the helmet's ornate mask. If she had been younger, Ivah thought she might have fallen in love with such a face, or at least been moved to contemplate it, and its no doubt complete disinterest in her, gloomily over a cup of wine if there was one to be had in Dernang. High cheekbones, long, slender hands, long-lashed eyes warm, dark brown. She had been unscarred. Unmarked by care, by sun, by wind; she might have spent a lifetime keeping carefully withindoors and cosseting her face with orangewater and milk baths. Her sword was not in the style of any other weapon Ivah had yet seen in Nabban, and yet the brocade-covered scabbard was without doubt Nabbani work. She had seen such long, straight blades, with the silk ribbons of the tassel flying from the hilt, in the illustrations of old Nabbani scrolls in the library of Marakand when she had been making her new copy of
The Balance of the Sun and the Moon.

Yeh-Lin.
The woman dropped the name either to rattle Hani Gahur's nerves, or to have him think her a senile braggart. A game.

Old woman playing games, with a province at stake . . .

A grandmother dances at the funeral
, the coins had told her that morning, which was one of the more cryptic hexagrams. Ivah was still not certain what she ought to make of that, as advice, and had decided ruefully that a hasty throw to determine the tenor of the day bordered on uneducated superstition and she ought not to do it.

She told herself so, every time she did.

Perhaps she ought not to have ventured out.

Yeh-Lin, after all, was her grandmother—rather a few generations removed.

Which made that brief moment of even hypothetical attraction—well, never mind.

The centre of the market was cleared. “You,” the captain-general said, pointing at Ivah. “Stand there. You are a witness for the Old Great Gods. And you . . .” She arrayed them all, while Lord Hani stretched and went through self-conscious exercises, nearly preening for the crowd. Ivah eyed sidelong the blank-faced rebel lord with a mace who was placed to one side of her and the nervous-looking young imperial wizard in her indigo-blue robe on the other. Neither took any interest in her. Her fellow caravaneer was not someone she had seen around town, or on the road. He looked very well-fed; he had not been in Dernang long. A handsome man a little younger than the captain seemed, fifty, perhaps, grey but still in his full strength.

Caravaneer. Huh. She had walked beside him. His coat did not reek of camels, and he too, watched everything, studying them all. His face showed nothing.

He would not have come from the winter desert or Denanbak in those horseman's boots.

No more formality, no prayers. The captain saluted, touching her blade to her forehead.

“Are you quite ready, my lord?” She lunged at him, a mere warning.

At first they were careful, as if each knew what the other meant to do and only went through an exercise. They circled like two dogs sniffing, finding their place, a rhythm. A fight to the death. The tassel of the captain's sword was red, but the ribbons of her helmet were blue, blue as the silk that unfurled from the top of the castle keep as the banners burned.

Blue as the sky, breaking to ribbons and banners around her god.

A grandmother dances at the funeral.
Ivah was cold as if hit with a gust of wind off the winter desert. Hard to swallow. Here. She was blind. She had come where she ought to be. And in that dizzying moment she saw the woman truly, black hair long, not cut short, flying out from beneath her helmet, her armour, a style so different from what the other lords wore, not black but bright rose and deep blue, gleaming like a beetle in the sun. She knew the grin, the teeth bared, half concentration, half pure pleasure, even if she could not see it, and for a moment there was an echo dancing with her, the faintest hint of a trailing aurora, shimmering pearl-colours. Blinked and it was gone.

Devils shaping dreams. A part of her wanted to cry out for her god, as if he faded, vanished, revealed as the devil's lie.

She still could not doubt her vision. No. But he was not here.

Hani Gahur was no poser; she would not want to face him herself. They moved like dancers in silk. The devil did dance, a willow in the wind, a wind in the bamboo, a swallow in the air. Her ribbons, blue and scarlet, traced patterns in the air like the passage of dragons.

Now they were much closer to this side of the circle than they had been. The devil leapt the lord's heavy blade as it swept low and sent him backwards, off balance the briefest of moments, with an elbow in the chest as she whirled past him, drawing him back towards the centre. Ivah heard the grunt of his breath then, and the devil kicked his blade aside as he came at her. Her stroke hissed over his armour. They became as leaves in a gale, the flash and the flicker and swirl of them. A long dagger bloomed in Yeh-Lin's left hand. No wizardry; she had drawn it from her belt in the time it took to blink. Perhaps it was a technique of the old court sword. Scrape and thump as Hani Gahur's sword struck and the devil went down to the dirty paving stones. Someone cried out, but Ivah had seen it coming; Yeh-Lin had already been moving that way. The blow had done nothing; it was the lord who staggered back graceless and was suddenly loud in his gasping for breath. Yeh-Lin's long dagger was wet, two fingers' breadth of it stained and all of one edge. No hesitation, no merciful pause to ask if Hani Gahur would yield as she rolled gracefully up to follow him. Her blade struck past his once and again and then she thrust with a grunt, the first sound she had made. With her dagger-hand she struck the lord's forearm aside and he was on his knees, her sword slick and dark withdrawing.

Lord Gahur was not yet dead, but his sword had fallen from his grip and he swayed, kneeling, sunken back on his heels. Yeh-Lin slashed and cut the strings of his helmet and knocked it off with the dagger again, before she dropped the shorter blade and took a two-handed grip on her sword to sweep, in a single stroke, his head away.

The body tipped and spurted and flooded and folded to the ground. The head fell with a horrible soft thud. It stared, mouth open, and eyes. Ivah shut her own eyes, swallowed hard.
Her mother's head flying, taken in one clean blow, and her long hair trailing out, a beautiful banner as it flew . . .

The devil caught up her dagger and shoved it filthy through her belt. She spun in the centre of the circle to catch them all with her eye, a whirl of black and scarlet and blue, and she cried out, “Witness! It is done! By the will of the Old Great Gods! I claim command of Dernang and Choa and the imperial army in Choa for the heir of the gods of Nabban.”

Now there was a thought. Challenge the empress to name a champion—Old Great Gods, she did not
want
the empire. It was her god she sought.

There were cries from the crowd.
The heir of the gods! The holy one of the gods is coming! The holy one of the gods!
And,
Find the priest-killers! Death to the usurper! Death to the sons of Min-Jan! The fall of the Peony Throne!

The market square was crowded, and it was soldiers packed the space behind the unwary townsfolk, trapped now where they had thought to learn the news and skulk away, and the soldiers were crying out too,
The true gods and their holy one! Death to the empress! The heir of the gods!

Bodies began to push and surge; Ivah could not see beyond the shove and shift of them, but there was shouting, words becoming lost, and a man roaring and then screaming. She thought the soldiers were killing an officer, there away beyond the shoving shrieking townsfolk, and suddenly some group broke through, running, and others surged into the circle. Yeh-Lin shouted, “Daro and the true gods! To horse!” and leapt to the magpie-brilliant piebald she had ridden into the square.

But Ivah had distinctly heard her say, in the bastard Nabbani of the road, “Ah,
damn!
A bloody riot. He's going to
kill
me!” as she passed. Ivah almost burst out laughing. That, that was not a weaver of dreams and schemes and a master of puppets. That was some warlord's
noekar
who had overstepped her authority and had her lord to face.

Her god came to Dernang. Not here now, but he came. And she would know him when he came.

The devil on her circling piebald caught her eye. Ivah didn't care. She grinned, bowed, hands together, and slipped away through the crowd that ran and milled like confused cattle.

She found a safe sanctuary on the roof of a porch, hid herself. Judge gods by their deeds. And their servants as well.

The scaffolding of the temple of the Daughter of the Gods was burning, and so was something beyond the half-built wall. In the market, by the town keep, she could see soldiers on their knees, officers too. There were other soldiers standing over them, gesturing, shouting, but not nearly the blood and mess and horror she had expected must follow, though it was bad enough. Bodies lay about the square, soldiers and bright-armoured lords and townsfolk. Trampled or slaughtered in the first fury. Now came a hurrying back and forth towards the north gate, and to the silk-merchants' street where lay the grand houses expropriated for officers' lodgings before the castle fell. But the fire of the scaffolding had spread to the next courtyard house, and there was smoke from other streets, too, and shouts and cries. She did not suppose all the soldiers rushing off were doing so to put out fires.