The Grace of Kings (16 page)

Crupo set down his teacup. “You know me better than I know myself,” he muttered. He took out a small, green porcelain bottle hidden deep within his sleeves. “Our friendship is stronger than tea. Let us have something that fits better.” He poured the liquor into the empty cup before Féüji.

“You feel responsible for the thousands slaughtered by Réon in his senseless wars,” Féüji said. “You are kind, Crupo, but do not let your heart be troubled by a burden that isn't yours. I know that you've done your best to try to speak sense to the tyrant. I know you tried to save my life, but Réon won't allow me to live after having defied him for so long. I thank you, old friend, and I forbid you from feeling any guilt! It is the tyrant Réon who is responsible.”

Crupo nodded, and hot tears flowed down his face. “You're truly the mirror of my soul.”

“Let us be merry and drink,” Féüji said, and drained the liquor in his cup in one gulp. Crupo drank too.

“Ah, you've forgotten to fill your own cup,” Féüji said, laughing. “That's still tea.”

Crupo said nothing but waited. Soon, Féüji's expression changed. He held his hands to his stomach and tried to speak, but nothing would come except gasps. He tried to get up but stumbled and fell, and after a while, he stopped writhing on the mat.

Crupo stood up. “I am no longer the second best.”

After all these years, Crupo thought he had finally accomplished his dream. He was peerless, the most powerful man in the land. He finally had the opportunity to show the world that he was, all along, the one who deserved their admiration and praise.

He would be
respected
.

And yet his work was so unsatisfying, so
petty
.

“Regent, who should we appoint as commander-in-chief against the rebels?”

The rebels? Those bandits? How can they withstand the might of the Imperial army? A trained monkey leading the army would win. Why are they bothering me with this? It's a transparent case of petty bureaucrats exaggerating threats to wheedle more money and resources from the throne. I will not be fooled.

He thought about who at the court most annoyed him, who he would rather send far away from Pan, out of sight.

Glancing over at the small shrine to Kiji in the corner, he saw a pile of petitions marked urgent. No matter how hard he worked, there always seemed to be so much more for him to do. He had taken to piling the petitions next to the shrine, idly hoping that showing the god how much he had to deal with might arouse some sense of pity and bring about divine intervention to lessen his load.

All the petitions near the top of the pile were from one man.

Ah, he had it. Surely this was a sign from Lord Kiji himself. Kindo Marana, the Minister of the Treasury, had been hounding Crupo for days about some suggestions for improving the tax system. The sallow, small man was obsessed with trivial matters like taxes and finance; he could not understand the grand visions and the big picture that concerned the regent. Sending the chief tax collector, a bean counter among bean counters, to supervise the army against the bandits seemed deliciously absurd, and he was impressed with his own wit.

“Summon Kindo Marana.”

Maybe I will now finally get some peace to work on my treatise on govern
ment. It will be better than anything Tan Féüji ever wrote. Ten, no,
twenty
times better.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE CHATELAIN

PAN: THE ELEVENTH MONTH IN THE THIRD YEAR OF THE REIGN OF RIGHTEOUS FORCE.

A chatelain was just a glorified butler, Goran Pira often thought. There was a time, back in the early days of the old Tiro states, when a chatelain led the defense of a castle and was treated as a member of the nobility. Nowadays, his duties consisted of settling disputes among Mapidéré's wives, disciplining the servants, balancing the palace budget (though it
was
a very big budget), and being the emperor's playmate.

Pira had inherited the position from his father, who had served Emperor Mapidéré's father, King Dézan. Pira grew up in the old palace, back in the old Xana capital of Kriphi, on Rui, and played with young Prince Réon. The two often got in trouble for trying to peek into the windows of the bedrooms of the younger wives of Réon's father.

When they were caught, Pira always insisted that he was the instigator, the one who led the prince astray. He was the one who was spanked and whipped.

“That was very brave of you,” Réon said. “You are a true friend.”

“Ré,” he said, grimacing with the pain from the spanking. “I'll always be your friend. But maybe next time you can be a little bit quieter.”

The friendship survived Réon's ascension to the Xana throne. It survived the years of conquest and war, when Pira often comforted Réon when he was frustrated with the lack of progress or seethed because of some diplomatic insult. It even survived Réon's many pompous eccentricities after he conquered the Six States and became Emperor Mapidéré. He might make his ministers and generals tremble with the slightest movement of his pinkie, but away from the audience halls, back in the living quarters of the palace, he was still just Ré, Pira's childhood friend.

But the friendship could not survive Lady Maing.

Maing was from Amu, the daughter of a duke who refused to surrender to the Xana army. She was taken as a captive back to Pan, where Emperor Mapidéré built his new capital, and made to work as a serving woman in the palace kitchen.

Pira had never paid much attention to the women of the palace. It was a necessary part of surviving the job. A chatelain who could not resist the temptation of his lord's many beautiful wives and captives did not have a very long career.

Pira was married to a girl from Xana picked for him by his parents. They were polite to each other, but they rarely spent much time together since Pira was almost always by Réon's side. The woman bore him no children, but Pira did not care. He didn't think the life of the chatelain was so wonderful that he wanted to pass it on to a son. Long ago, Pira had learned to suppress his urges as a man.

But Maing awoke something in him. Was it the way she never lamented her fate, though she had been turned from a duke's daughter into a slave? Was it the way she never treated herself as a slave, holding her head high and looking straight at you? Was it the way she found joy in the simplest things, teaching the other serving women in the kitchen to turn the dripping of leaky faucets into music and to make finger shadow puppets dance against the wall in the light cast by the fire in the giant cooking hearths? He didn't know, but he knew he loved her.

They began to converse, and he felt that she was the only person who really understood him, who saw that he was more than the sum of his duties, who knew that he sometimes wrote poetry about watching the melting ice in spring and the summer stars spinning slowly overhead, about loneliness in a crowd, about the emptiness in the heart caused by touching too much silver and gold and not enough of a friendly hand.

“I am but a glorified slave,” he said to her, and discovered that it was true. “Neither of us is free.”

Finally, being with her taught him the meaning of real intimacy. Though he had thought he was close to Ré, they were, after all, not equals, and true intimacy required equality.

One night, Emperor Mapidéré held a banquet for his generals, and Pira wanted to wait until after the banquet, when the emperor would be in a good mood, to ask a favor of him. He would ask Ré, his old friend and playmate, to release Maing from her servitude and let him have her.

Maing served the swordfish steaks that night. She passed before the emperor's table, the platter of fish held high before her. The emperor had been bored, and he chose that moment to look for something to divert himself. He saw Maing's narrow waist. He saw Maing's flowing light-brown hair. He saw a thing that had long belonged to him but which he had been too busy to enjoy.

He summoned her to his bed that night, and she became Lady Maing, another of Mapidéré's many consorts. Mapidéré had never designated an empress, preferring the new to the old.

Pira's heart died that night.

Though this was a fate dreamed of by all the other slave women, when Pira came by to wake the emperor in the morning, Maing looked frightened, not joyful. She avoided Pira's gaze, and Pira carefully spoke in an even voice. In his dreams, he said good-bye to her again and again.

Lady Maing became pregnant, and the courtiers and servants congratulated her heartily. As the consort who brought another royal child, Lady Maing's place in the palace was secure.

But she said nothing to the well-wishers. As her belly swelled, she looked only more and more withdrawn.

The baby, a boy, was born two months early, and yet he was healthy and hale, and weighed as much as any other boy carried to full term. The doctor, suspicious, sent away the servants and nurses and interrogated the exhausted Lady Maing for an hour. When he finally got the truth out of her, he hurried to Pira with the news.

Since then, Pira had relived that day a hundred thousand times in his mind. Could he have saved his son? Could he have saved Maing? Could he have silenced the doctor with gold and jewels? Could he have thrown himself at the emperor's feet and pled for mercy? Was he such a coward that he could not even protect the one person in this world he loved? He imagined himself leaving everything behind so that he and Maing could have escaped in a small fishing boat, bound for ports unknown and a lifetime of looking over their shoulders—but she would be alive, alive.

Yet, every scenario ended with the same result: death to his entire family—his parents, his wife, his uncles and aunts. Treason was a taint in the blood, and a traitor's sin was borne by the whole family.

He could not think of what he could have done differently, but he blamed himself nonetheless.

He had gone to Emperor Mapidéré and told him what the doctor said.

“Who is the father?” the emperor raged.

“She wouldn't say,” Pira said, his voice dead.

He wanted to try to reason with Réon, to explain that he had met her before Réon wanted her, and so they had not really committed treason. Yet, as chatelain, he knew the laws of the palace well. A slave girl belonged to the emperor, even if he never touched her, even if he didn't know her name, could not recall her face. They had indeed committed treason, starting with the minute that he looked at her as anything other than the emperor's possession.

And so he watched, and said nothing, as the boy was smothered in front of Lady Maing. He watched, and said nothing, as the Impe­rial Guards strangled her. Then he went to dispose of the bodies, and he strained to show nothing in his face as his hands touched her cold skin.

He did make a vow, though: He would avenge her and bring down the House of Xana. He would truly, spectacularly, really commit treason.

“Chatelain, they keep on pestering me with these reports of rebellion. What should I do?”

“
Rénga
, these are mere bandits and highwaymen, beneath your notice. You demean yourself by even wasting a second of your time to think about them. Announce that whoever brings you reports of such petty matters should be put to death. Let the regent take care of them for you.”

“You are my only real friend, Chatelain. You always think of what's best for me.”

“Thank you. Now, what shall we do today? Shall we go to the Imperial Zoo and Aquarium so you can pet the baby cruben? Or would you rather see the new virgins brought from Faça?”

CHASING THE STAG

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE REBELLION GROWS

THE BIG ISLAND: THE THIRD MONTH IN THE FOURTH YEAR OF THE REIGN OF RIGHTEOUS FORCE.

While wine flowed and gems sparkled in his toy empire, Emperor Erishi's real empire was in tatters.

By now, a force of twenty thousand men had rallied around the fish-prophesied flag of Huno Krima and Zopa Shigin. They had plucked the rightful heir to the Cocru throne, a twenty-three-year-old shepherd, from his quiet life in the northern countryside of Faça among his flocks and restored him to the throne as King Thufi.

Although the young man had spent his entire life so far having authority only over sheep, he soon took to the role of commanding men with grace and ease.

“See,” Ratho Miro said to his brother, “the blood of the royal line
is
special. There's no other explanation for how a boy raised to be a shepherd could suddenly look so comfortable being in charge of a whole country! Such grace. Such command!”

Dafiro rolled his eyes. “If a bunch of well-dressed men came to me and told me that I was destined to be king, followed me around all day, and acted like I was so wise and clever and nodded at everything I said, and if they then gave me a big, heavy crown and a yellow silk robe to wear and put me on a golden throne, I'd probably also end up acting all confident and king-ish, as though my backside belonged on that throne all along.”

“I don't know,” Ratho said, looking over his brother skeptically. “You're good only at bossing me around. I think if you put on a silk robe you'd end up looking like a circus monkey.”

At the grand old Temple of Fire and Ice in the middle of Çaruza, Thufi prayed to the goddesses Kana and Rapa, protectors of Cocru.

“The sins of Xana are many,” he said to the assembled multitudes in the square. “But the day of reckoning is here. All the Tiro states have re-risen, and the world will be put aright.”

Before a crowd throbbing with anticipation, King Thufi named Krima the Duke of Napi, Marshal of Cocru, and Shigin the Duke of Canfin, Vice Marshal of Cocru. They were given orders to attack Xana forces everywhere until all former Cocru lands had been liberated. Krima and Shigin marched out of Çaruza at the head of an army as the people showered them with flowers and fine white sand shipped from Çaruza's beaches.

“This is the life, eh?” said Ratho Miro. He smiled at the pretty girls cheering along the street.

“We haven't met Xana's real army yet,” said Dafiro Miro. “Don't celebrate too early.”

The seeds of rebellion spread wherever the wind blew, and soon the conquered Tiro states re-emerged like fresh bamboo shoots after a long winter.

In the northern part of the Big Island, a man named Shilué, the grandchild of the last King of Faça, reclaimed the throne in Boama. His troops soon numbered ten thousand.

To the east, a descendant of a side branch of the ruling house of Gan declared himself King Dalo of Gan, land of wealth and culture. The Xana garrison in Toaza, the old Gan capital on the island of Wolf's Paw, surrendered without a single arrow being shot. The garrison promptly renamed itself the Royal Gan Guard, and the former Xana commander happily accepted the title of count. Gan also seized the ships of the Xana navy docked at Toaza Harbor, and King Dalo prepared for an invasion of the Big Island to recover the rich alluvial plains of old Gan.

Meanwhile, the cities of the Maji Peninsula, south of the Sonaru Desert, declared themselves members of an independent league. As Maji had been under both Cocru and Gan administration at different times in its history, the cities shrewdly pledged partial allegiance to both Tiro states.

In the west, Amu, known for its elegance and sophistication, re-established itself on the beautiful island of Arulugi, though the former Amu territories on the Big Island remained firmly under Xana control.

The resurrected Rima quickly reclaimed its territory north of the Damu and Shinané mountain ranges with the aid of Faça. Rima soldiers also pushed as far as they dared to the southern side of the mountain ranges. The hope was that should Xana fall, Rima would now have the first claim on territories it had always disputed with old Amu.

Of the Six States, only Haan remained completely under Xana occupation. But there was a Haan government in exile, and King Cosugi of Haan, who had surrendered to the emperor Mapidéré when he was a young man thirty years ago, now lived in Çaruza as a guest of the newly established King Thufi of Cocru.

“You'll soon see Ginpen again,” Thufi promised Cosugi.

Cosugi nodded, his wiry gray beard swaying and a pair of cloudy eyes peering nervously out of a face as dark and wrinkled as newly hardened lava, hardly able to believe this recent turn of events. Just a few months earlier, Xana had seemed invincible and the dream of reviving Haan a fairy tale.

Thufi invited all the kings of the reborn Six States to join him in Çaruza for a Grand Council of War. They would elect a princeps, and decide on the best course of action.