Golden Daughter (7 page)

A soft knock at the door. It must be Brother Yaru come to explain himself. The Besur glanced again at the still form across the room then hurried to answer the door. Not a task he was used to doing for himself, surrounded as he always was by slaves. But no slave could be permitted this far into Hulan’s Throne.

The door whispered in its grooves as he slid it back. The passage beyond the chamber was lit by a single lantern, light enough to tell him that the figure he now faced was not Brother Yaru.

“Who are you?” the Besur demanded. “Do I know you?”

“We haven’t met, Honored Besur, no fear,” said a bright young voice. The next moment the low hood was thrown back, and the Besur drew himself up in surprise.

“What are you doing here?” he growled. “Women are not permitted within the sanctity of Hulan’s Throne!”

“Which seems odd when one recalls that Hulan herself is thought to be female,” said the girl with a cheerful grin. Then she looked around the Besur’s ample girth, spied the quiet one seated across the room, and raised a wry eyebrow. “No women at all, Honored Besur?”

“Get out! Get out at once, before I summon the guards!”

“I’ll go if you wish it,” said she. “But will you look at this first?” With that, she raised her arm and drew back the long sleeve of her garment, revealing her left wrist for the Besur’s inspection. He saw, scarred there, the contours of a small carnation.

Sairu had been branded thus the day she entered the Masayi. Her agonized cries at the pain of it had been nothing to her irritation when, days later, she had noticed that the applied burn was crooked. She’d marched straight away to Princess Safiya and demanded it be done over again.

“
A brand cannot be undone,
” Princess Safiya had replied. “
Besides, it is your own fault for flinching from the iron.
”

Shamed, Sairu then looked upon her crooked mark as a badge of weakness rather than the honor it was meant to be. But it had motivated her to excel. To never flinch again.

Crooked or not, the mark was recognized by the Besur. His eyes rounded and filled suddenly with respect as he looked anew at the young woman before him. “Golden Daughter!” he exclaimed and, rather to Sairu’s surprise, made a sign of reverence. “I had given up hope of your coming.”

“Of course I came, Honored Besur,” Sairu replied, grinning still and enjoying herself perhaps more than she ought. She had studied the Besur many times over the years, a man of great dignity bordering on pomposity, who believed in the sacredness of his traditions, if not in his religion. From the time she was a child attending ceremonies and observing fasts, Sairu wondered what use there was in clinging to a faith that even the High Priest himself did not believe.

Thus Sairu had lost her faith. And been left a little hollow without it.

But this did not mean she must lose the purpose for which she’d been trained, honed, and sharpened throughout the years. So she made a returning sign of reverence, adding a deep bow. “May I meet my new master?” she asked.

As soon as she spoke, she realized her error. Rising from her bow, she looked, not at the Besur, but across the room at the young woman sitting so quietly. And she knew immediately that this was to be her charge, her assignment.

A
mistress
, not a master at all! Such a thing was unheard of among the Golden Daughters.

“Allow me to present the lady Hariawan,” said the Besur, leading her across the room to stand before the low cushioned chair upon which the young woman sat. A brazier of coal—no doubt hauled up from the mines by little coal-children—burned near her left elbow, casting her face half in warm light, half in deep shadow. Even in that strange glow, Sairu could see that the lady was very beautiful, like a painted statue or one of Empress Timiran’s hand-crafted dolls.

Hariawan, Sairu knew, was not the lady’s name, not her birth name anyway. It was merely an indication of her heritage. She was from the Hari Tribe of the Awan Clan, selected from among the other girls of her tribe to be the clan’s temple tribute. Sairu inwardly shuddered at this. Everyone knew what sort of opulent yet simultaneously wretched lives temple-tribute girls lived. The world beyond Manusbau and the Masayi was full of wickedness, even within the temple walls.

Why then was she called
lady
? And why would she require a Golden Daughter’s services?

She’s a Dream Walker
, Sairu thought, and her heart raced in her breast. She had not realized women were capable of such power.

The Besur bowed before the motionless young woman and spoke to her in a voice of surprising gentleness. “My lady?” he said. “My lady, do you hear me? This is . . . forgive me, Revered Daughter, what is your name?”

Sairu smiled and, rather than answering, stepped before Lady Hariawan herself and went down upon her knees. She took the lady’s hands in hers, startled at how cold they were, and gazed up into that immobile face, her eyes narrowing as she studied what she could see of it beneath the heavy shadow.

She saw a burn. A red, ugly mark across Lady Hariawan’s right cheek. A burn shaped like a hand.

Would the priests brand a Dream Walker? No, certainly not. Who then? Who would dare? And, more to the point, who would come close enough to have the opportunity?

The burn looked new, and though it had been treated, must still cause a great deal of pain. Sairu’s heart began to race, and her wrist throbbed suddenly with the memory of her own branding. But that had been nothing in comparison: a momentary bite of heat leaving a minute scar. Lady Hariawan’s beauty, however incomparable, would be marred forever by that enormous mark.

For the first time in her life, Sairu knew rage. Whoever had dared to harm Lady Hariawan would never have a second chance! She would see to that. She would make him pay.

“My lady,” she said, her voice slightly thick in her throat. “My lady, I am Masayi Sairu, Golden Daughter of the Anuk Anwar. If you will have me, I pledge my life to your service and protection. I will guard you with all that is in my being. I will care for your needs, tend your hurts, punish your enemies. If you will have me, I will be more than a slave, better than a sister to you. This I pledge upon my father’s name and the name of the Golden Mother.”

It was a simple speech, rather different from the one she had been trained to give. For that speech was intended for a husband, to be spoken at the commencement of the false marriage into which every Golden Daughter entered, and was more formal, grand, and full of promises. But it could not be more sincere.

The lady remained still as stone, and the light moved softly across her frozen face.

The Besur cleared his throat. “Lady Hariawan is sick and, for the sake of her health, is to travel from Lunthea Maly. She will go north to Daramuti Temple in the Khir Mountains, to the care of Brother Tenuk, the abbot there. You will accompany her and watch over her in her convalescence.”

“I will watch over her for the rest of her life,” Sairu said, rising slowly, folding her hands, and addressing herself to the Besur. She was quite short, but Princess Safiya had taught her how to face a man as though she towered over him. “Tell me, Honored Besur, the real reason for her journey to Daramuti.”

The Besur did not move or blink for a long, silent moment. At last he said, “I will not. And you will ask no questions. Not of me. Not of Lady Hariawan.”

So that’s how it would be. Well, Sairu did not need to ask questions in order to learn answers. She smiled demurely and inclined her head. “Very well, Honored Besur. But if I may, I do have one unrelated question, if you would be so good as to answer.”

“And that would be?”

“How many of my dogs may I bring with me on this journey?”

The Besur’s well-plucked brows slid down into a puzzled frown. “Dogs? I—I don’t think—”

“As many as you like.”

The jeweled pendants on Lady Hariawan’s headdress caught the brazier’s light and refracted it against the walls in little star-like pinpoints as she raised her burned face, her eyes still closed. “I had dogs as a child. I shall be glad of them.”

“Lady Hariawan!” exclaimed the Besur, flinging himself at her feet. “My lady, you are awake! You are present with us once more?”

But Lady Hariawan did not acknowledge him. Instead, she opened her eyes, which were startlingly deep, dark, and full of secrets. She met Sairu’s curious gaze. “Bring as many dogs as you like,” she said.

“Thank you, my lady,” Sairu replied.

Some hatreds burn bright and hot, flaring up in sudden passion then sinking back like a banked bed of coals to smolder, sometimes for years. It is too easy to forget such hatreds, to believe even that they’ve gone for good and are no longer a controlling influence.

But no more than a few stokes are needed to send these hatreds raging into full, all-consuming life, taking a heart by surprise. And it is in surprise that sudden decisions are made, changing the course of life and death forever.

Sunan, caught in the grip of surging hate he had believed long dead, moved like the shadow of a storm through the halls of his uncle’s house, outwardly silent, even benign, but dragging thunder in his wake. How could it be that all these years later—years of refinement, of learning, of fine-tuned restraint in the pursuit of true high-mindedness—one evening could dash his stoicism to pieces and leave him a callow boy once more, unprepared to combat these emotions?

When he shut his eyes he sat beside his mother at the secondary fire, eating leftovers from Jovann’s pot. The night was dark and hot, full of stinging insects, the deep-bellied grumbles of the buffalo, and the murmured conversations of Juong-Khla’s tribe, the Tiger People, at their own fires surrounding. Little worlds of light in the darkness of eternity.

But Sunan’s world was set apart, if only in his mind. And he watched his brother, Jovann, the second son, born of the second wife, sit at Juong-Khla’s right hand, eating the choice cuts of the day’s hunt.

“It will destroy you, my son,” his mother warned him. “If you do not confront and defeat this hate, it will first transform and then destroy you.”

And she would take him by the hand and speak to him of the Pen-Chan practices of meditation and the emptying of emotions to the attainment of harmony. But though her words were fair and wise, Sunan, even now in his memory, could see his own hatred reflected in her eyes.

He slid the door of his private chamber shut behind him and stood rigid in the half-light. The day was nearly done, the day that marked the apex of his shame. And when it ended, what then? What purpose might he strive after now to prove himself, to prove his worth, to create meaning for his life? The stoicism with which he shielded himself shuddered, and he could almost feel the cracks running up and down his spirit, ready to shatter and leave him exposed to all torment.

He took a step into the room. Something crunched beneath his foot. He looked down.

It was the overseer’s scroll. The little scroll sealed in gold which had been handed him at the base of the stairs to the Middle Court. How it had come to be on the floor by his door was a mystery swiftly solved. Sunan glanced to his bed where he had tossed the Gruung robe, but it was no longer there. Old Kiut must have spirited it away to be washed or burned; it hardly mattered which.

But the scroll had fallen from the sleeve to wait here for him. He picked it up, turning it between his fingers, mildly curious and glad of a distraction. What was it the Honored Overseer had said?

“Should you choose to read it, you will face another choice: a choice of life or instant death.”

Would the overseer be true to his word?

A bitter line marred Sunan’s brow, the only outward sign of the loathing within. Oddly enough, not loathing of his brother, though he may not have recognized as much at the time. No, he hated not Jovann but Sunan, his own wretched self. The blood polluting his veins. He had done everything right. Everything. He had fulfilled every task, honored every test, worked himself to the bone. And for what?

“Life or instant death,” Sunan whispered, and the gold on the seal seemed to flash with its own inner light before his eyes. “Is there a difference?”

With a reckless sneer, he broke the seal, unrolled the scroll, and read.

His eyes widened.

For a heartbeat he could not move.

Then he whirled around and stared into the face of his death in the form of a man standing behind him, sword upraised.

Sunan didn’t scream. He recalled enough of his highly tuned restraint to smother any sound before it burst from his open mouth. But he fell back, tripped over his own feet, and landed flat. He smashed the open scroll in his fist, his other hand upraised, a feeble shield against the weapon suspended in the darkness above his head.

The man spoke. “What is your choice, Kasemsan’s kin?”

“D—don’t! Don’t kill me!” Sunan gasped. If his father could have heard him then, he would have disowned his son for a coward upon the spot. But then, his father had never lain at the feet of a Crouching Shadow.

The ghastly image above him was more real than real, and not until many hours later did Sunan realize that the face he had gazed upon in such terror was an elaborate mask. It was a mask reminiscent of those worn on feast days, depicting the visage of Anwar; save where the masks of Anwar seemed to smile, this was a death’s rictus painted black as night. In that moment Sunan could have believed the figure before him was no man at all, but the very incarnation of death.

Although the Mask lowered his sword, something about his stance, the turn of his head, bespoke his eagerness to slay. “So you accept,” he said.

“Who are you?”

“I have no time for foolish questions,” said the Mask without raising the sword. But he took another step into the room. Sunan tried to scramble back, but his feet caught on the edge of his robe, pinning him in place. “Do you accept the terms, Kasemsan’s kin, or would you prefer to die now?”

“I accept!” Sunan cried.

The Mask’s sword lashed out. Quick as a darting swallow it struck Sunan upon his upraised hand, neatly slicing one finger. A thin ribbon of red beaded and spilled long before Sunan felt any pain. He stared at the wound as though it were fatal.

“Say it again,” said the Mask. “Say it again with blood.”

“I—I accept the terms of your proposal,” Sunan whispered. “I am—I am at your service.”

“Excellent.”

With that, the sword vanished and the stranger in the mask crossed his arms, still standing above Sunan. Sunan made no move to rise, though he felt the disgrace of cowering before his enemy. Chhayans did not cower. They died before they bowed their heads. But, with the warmth of his own blood spilling swiftly now down his hand, palm, and wrist, soaking into the sleeve of his robe, Sunan knew that, despite the shame, he was not ready to die.

“Until further command arrives from our Master,” the Mask said, “you will remain in this city. Should you attempt to leave, it will be seen as a breaking of your blood oath, and your life is forfeit. To me.”

Sunan nodded. “My uncle?” he managed to ask.

“Presumed dead. You must honor his name. You must finish what he began.”

“But—but what did he begin?”

The Mask did not respond.

Sunan persisted. “The stories are true? You are an assassin?”

If a mask could sneer without moving a carved muscle, this one became suddenly disdainful. “A mystery such as the Crouching Shadows is not so easily explained.”

“Not an assassin then?”

The Mask’s clothing was dark and blended into the very air, leaving only the mask itself to catch small highlights. Thus it looked like a disembodied head as it lowered, and Sunan found himself staring through the eyeholes, desperate to catch some glimpse of the wearer beyond, but failing.

“Make no mistake, Kasemsan’s kin,” said the voice behind the cage of carved teeth, “assassin or not, I will kill you if you betray your oath.”

“I won’t betray my oath,” Sunan said, though the words could scarcely squeeze through the tightness of his throat.

“Excellent,” said the Mask again. “And to prove that we are a fair order, I am commanded by our Master to grant you a wish. Tonight I will fulfill the dearest dream of your heart. Tomorrow you will thank me. And you will be glad that the Crouching Shadows have chosen to call you
friend
.”

“What wish?” Sunan asked. His finger was beginning to throb. The slice of the sword was so thin and precise, he suspected it had gone to the bone. He felt light-headed, as though he’d taken too much fine wine.

Now the rictus seemed to smile. It was not at all a pleasant smile. “The wish that even now galls your spirit with longing.” The Mask bowed gracefully, darkness bending darkness. “Tomorrow you will thank me.”

And then Sunan was alone. He sat staring at the place where the Mask had been. Slowly his eyes turned to look at the seeping blood of his wound.

He realized slowly, almost painfully, what the Mask had said.

Suddenly he was on his feet and crying out, “Don’t kill him! I beg of you!”

He could not say why, either then or later. After all, he hated Jovann. But he stood now in trembling darkness, his voice fading to nothing. He whispered one last time, “Please. Don’t kill him.”

He did not know whether or not the Crouching Shadow heard.