The Grace of Kings (29 page)

“Rat, you really want to go back into the army?” Dafiro asked his brother. “We could just stay in the mountains and be bandits, and let the nobles fight their own war.”

They were still a few miles from Zudi. The hill they stood on was the same hill that Kuni and his friends had picnicked on several days earlier.

The escape from Dimu had been a nightmare. Dafiro and Ratho fought as well as they could in the darkness and confusion of the rout. When it was clear that all was lost, they had hidden in the basement of a wealthy merchant's house and waited until the looting of Dimu was over before sneaking out by hiding in a cart hauling corpses away from the city for burial. They had both gotten very good at playing dead in the last few days.

“Ma and Pa would not want to see us as bandits,” Ratho said stubbornly.

Dafiro sighed. His brother had fonder memories of their mother than he did. After their father died in the Grand Tunnels, the emperor's tax collectors had hounded the family to pay more taxes as “compensation” for depriving the emperor of the use of their father's labor. Driven by grief and despair, she had turned to alcohol as her only solace. Many times she broke Dafiro's heart as she tearfully apologized to him in the sober morning only to fall back into a drunken stupor by nightfall. Dafiro had tried his best to shield Rat from some of her worst drinking episodes.

All the boys had were each other now.

“I want to see Emperor Erishi and ask him why our pa never came back and why his men wouldn't just let Ma and us be. We weren't bothering anyone, just staying out of people's way and trying to make a living,” Ratho said. His voice grew fainter as he swallowed, hard.

“All right,” Dafiro said. He thought his brother very foolish, but also very brave. He wished he were as brave. “Let's go join the Duke of Zudi and General Zyndu.”

“Hey, didn't we see General Zyndu once? I know! He was that mystery rider at King Huno's coronation—the one who made fun of the king and called him a monkey!”

Dafiro chuckled as the brothers remembered that day.

“Now
that
is a lord worth fighting for,” said Ratho. “He was afraid of nothing, and when the king's men tried to shoot him, Fithowéo himself stepped in.”

“Don't repeat foolish superstition,” said Dafiro. The admiring tone in Ratho's voice made him feel a twinge of sorrow. Ratho had always only spoken that way about their father or Dafiro. Maybe Ratho was finally growing up, and he was going to get his own heroes.

After a pause to collect himself, Dafiro continued, “I hear that they are pretty fair and pay their men on time. At least we'll be fed and maybe we'll even get to see Emperor Erishi someday. But if anything goes wrong, you and I are running away. Only fools would die for these nobles. By the Twins, they wouldn't even blink if they could get a copper piece for our lives. So we have to watch out for ourselves. You hear me?”

CHAPTER TWENTY

FORCES OF THE AIR

RUI: THE FIFTH MONTH IN THE FOURTH YEAR OF THE REIGN OF RIGHTEOUS FORCE.

Kindo Marana, like most in Xana, had great pride in the Imperial airships. But he never thought that one day he would have to become as familiar with their operation as the mechanics with hands full of calluses who maintained them at the Mount Kiji Air Base.

Mount Kiji, a snow-peaked giant stratovolcano that rose high into the sky, dominated the landscape of Rui. It had several craters, two of which were filled with lakes: Lake Arisuso, higher, bigger, evening-­sky blue, and Lake Dako, lower, smaller, emerald green. Seen from on high, the two lakes were like two jewels worn against the pale-white bosom of proud Mount Kiji.

The mountain was home to the giant Mingén falcons. With a wingspan of about twenty feet, these fearsome and majestic raptors were bigger than any other predatory bird found on the Islands of Dara.

But what truly distinguished these birds was their extraordinary powers of flight. Not only were they able to stay aloft for days, circling slowly over one spot on the ground, but sometimes they took as their prey small cattle and sheep or even the lone shepherd. The feat seemed impossible, even considering their larger-than-average size.

For years, the amazing flight of the Mingén falcons was simply treated as an aspect of Kiji's power, but during the reign of Emperor Mapidéré's father, King Dézan, a few inquisitive men and women who were willing to commit sacrilege and risk their lives dissected some of the birds and finally discovered their secret.

Most Mingén falcons nested around the shores of pristine Lake Dako and fed their young on the meaty white icefish found in its waters. Lake Dako, however, had a peculiar feature. Streams of large bubbles constantly rose from its depths and broke on the surface. The gas in the bubbles did not smell sulfuric, could not be lit, and indeed had no taste or smell at all. No one had ever paid much attention to it.

But the gas turned out to be very special. It was lighter than air.

Within the body of each Mingén falcon was a network of large hollow sacs. These they filled with the strange gas of Lake Dako by dipping into the stream of bubbles, and just like a fish expanded and contracted its swim bladder to rise or sink in water, the Mingén falcons used these gas sacs to create buoyancy in air. This was the source of their marvelous lifting ability.

The brilliant Xana engineer Kino Ye derived the design of the great winged airships of Xana from the anatomy of the Mingén falcon. Although the graceful airships could not compete with sea vessels in carrying capacity for soldiers or goods, they were fast, mobile, and very valuable as intelligence-gathering vehicles. They also wreaked havoc with enemy navies: While ships could do little against threats from on high, a few airships could drop bombs filled with sticky burning tar and devastate an entire fleet.

Their most important military use, however, was psychological. The presence of airships intimidated opposing soldiers and told them that there was no escape as their every maneuver would be known by the Xana commanders.

It took Marana a month just to get the air base at Mount Kiji restaffed and properly running again. The place was in bad shape: the bamboo pipes broken; the leather valves dry, brittle, and cracked; the docks and ships in disrepair. The old base administrator had been diverting the funds allocated for the base's maintenance into his own purse, though a small amount was saved to construct luxurious, recreational two-person airships for his friends and their mistresses.

But the administrator was well versed in the ways of being a good bureaucrat. He had been diligent in sending intricately carved model airships to Pan, much to the delight of Emperor Erishi, who loved to have courtiers and maids steer the ships by means of fans and blowing tubes as he ordered them to engage in pretend battles over the model empire. Pleased with his toys, the emperor had been effusive in his praise of the administrator to Chatelain Pira and Regent Crupo.

Marana immediately arrested the administrator, his friends, and their mistresses, stripped them naked, and brought them to the shores of Lake Dako. There, they were strung up in trees as offerings to the Mingén falcons. The baby chicks feasted well that day on corrupt flesh.

Worst of all, the former administrator had let most of the skilled engineers go. But the timely reconquest of northern Cocru generated the necessary funds for Marana to offer attractive wages.

Now the former chief tax collector walked through the base, examining the hulls of old airships undergoing repairs and new ships being constructed. He listened and nodded as engineers explained the hubbub of activity around him.

Giant hoops and longitudinal girders made of bamboo formed the semirigid skeleton of the airships. Within this frame, silk gasbags were hung. These would be filled with the lift gas collected from Lake Dako. The gasbags were also girded with a network of ropes that could be winched from the gondola so that their volume could be contracted or expanded to change the amount of lift—when the bags were compressed, the pressurized lift gas took up less volume, resulting in less buoyancy; when the bags were allowed to expand, the lift gas took up more volume, resulting in more buoyancy. The entire frame was then covered with a layer of lacquered cloth to provide protection from enemy arrows. Inside, along both sides of the airbags, were seats for the engine crew—mostly conscripted men little better than slaves—who would row the giant wings that propelled the airships through the sky. These wings were made from the molted feathers of the Mingén falcons, which were light, strong, and pushed hard against the air.

The gondola, built partly within the hull of the airship and protruding partly below it, was where the battle crew and officers lived and stored their munitions and supplies. The biggest airships had a complement of fifty, thirty in the engine crew and the rest with battle duties.

“How many ships would be ready for duty in a month?” Marana asked.

“We already have men working around the clock, Marshal. And we can't hurry the collection of the lift gas—it comes as it likes, the same as it has done for a thousand years. In a month, we should be able to prepare ten, maybe twelve, airships of the line.”

Marana nodded. That might be enough. With the aid of the airships, the Imperial navy should be able to sweep through Arulugi and bring all of Amu back under Imperial control, and then, with its back secure, the empire could begin the assault on the rebel strongholds in the south of the Big Island.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

BEFORE THE STORM

ZUDI: THE SIXTH MONTH IN THE FOURTH YEAR OF THE REIGN OF RIGHTEOUS FORCE.

“Another round?” Kuni asked. Before anyone could answer, he was already waving at the serving girls.

Mata groaned. He did not enjoy the bitter beer or the cheap, hard sorghum liquor they served here at the Splendid Urn: It was like drinking the stuff they used to strip paint from old houses. And the food was greasy and heavy, though necessary if one didn't want the liquor to burn a hole through the stomach. Sometimes the sight of everyone licking their sauce-coated fingers nauseated him—they didn't provide eating sticks here.

Growing up, Phin had kept him away from alcohol so that he could focus on his studies, and then he had been exposed only to the fine wines stored in the dry and cool cellar of the Zyndu Castle back in Tunoa. He longed for them now.

But he sighed and forgave Kuni's unrefined taste in drinks, like he forgave his informal manners and crude speech. After all, Kuni was not a noble by birth—Mata still could not wrap his head around the concept of “dukedom by acclamation”—but Mata put up with it all because being with Kuni was just . . .
fun
.

Since Jia was away in Çaruza, and by custom, the birth of a child could not be announced unless the baby survived for one hundred days, Kuni had heard nothing and was filled with anxiety. In order to not affect morale and to also take his own mind off the guilt of not being with her, Kuni held drinking parties every night, to which Mata was always invited.

At these gatherings, Kuni treated his subordinates more like friends, and Mata could tell that these men, Cogo Yelu the civil administrator, Rin Coda the personal secretary, Mün Çakri the infantry commander, Than Carucono the cavalry specialist, and even that flip-flopping Lieutenant Dosa, had great affection for Kuni. Theirs was a loyalty founded on more than duty.

They told dirty jokes and flirted with the pretty waitresses, and Mata, who had never in his life been to such parties, discovered that he enjoyed them. They were much more interesting than the stiff, formal receptions that the hereditary nobles back in Çaruza held, where everything was done properly and nothing impolite was ever said and each smile felt plastered on and each compliment disguised an insult and every word had to be parsed for a second and even third meaning. They had given him headaches and made him think that he was unfit for company, but among Kuni's friends, he wished the nights would never end.

And the man actually took the work of being the Duke of Zudi seriously—indeed, probably
too
seriously. Mata still couldn't believe how happily Kuni delved into the minutiae of governance. He even looked into how to
collect taxes
, by Kana and Rapa's lustrous hair!

Mata had never met anyone quite like Kuni, and he felt that it was a cosmic injustice that he wasn't born a noble. Compared to some of the hereditary nobles Mata knew, Kuni was far more worthy of admiration.

Except that he's just a bit too forgiving sometimes,
Mata thought, eyeing Dosa critically.

But Kuni and he shared a vision of the big picture, of freeing the land from the yoke of Xana once and for all.
Kuni has greatness of spirit
, Mata decided. It wasn't poetic or eloquent, but that was the most sincere compliment Mata ever paid anyone, noble or common.

The girls brought over trays filled with flagons overflowing with more of that throat-burning liquor. Mata gingerly took a sip from his—alas, it was every bit as bad as he had remembered.

“Let's play a game,” Than Carucono said. The others noisily assented. Drinking without games was like drinking alone.

“Shall we play Fool's Mirror?” Kuni suggested. He looked around the room and rested his eyes on a vase containing a bouquet. “I'll pick flowers as the theme.”

This was a game popular among nobles and commoners alike. A category would be chosen—animals, plants, books, furniture—and everyone took turns comparing himself to an object from the chosen category. If the others judged the comparison apt, they would drink. If not, the player who made the comparison would drink.

Rin Coda chose to go first. He stood unsteadily, supporting himself by hugging a column.

“That's a stout girl you've got in your arms,” Than said. “I prefer them with a bit less girth and more curves, myself.”

Rin threw the chicken leg he was holding at Than. Than dodged out of the way, almost fell, and laughed.

“Friends,” Rin announced seriously. “I am the night-blooming cereus.”

“Why, because you get lucky only one night a year?”

Rin ignored the jab. “The cereus is not much to look at during the day, and most people think it's a just a dead-looking stick in the ground. But below the ground, it gathers the moisture and sweetness of the desert and hoards them into a large, juicy melon, which is delicious and has saved many a desert traveler's life. Only the fortunate can see it bloom, once a year in the middle of the night, a great white flower like a ghost lily bathed in starlight.”

The others were momentarily stunned by this flowing disquisition.

Than broke the silence. “Did you pay a schoolteacher to write that speech?”

Rin threw another chicken leg at him.

“Your virtues are indeed hidden,” Kuni said, smiling. “I know that you've done a lot to get the more—let's call them ‘unorthodox businessmen'—of Zudi to cooperate with me and Mata in this time of crisis. Others may not always appreciate what you do, but know that I see and remember your efforts.”

Rin waved at him nonchalantly, but everyone could see that he was moved.

“The comparison is apt,” Kuni said, “I'll drink to it.”

Next up was Mün Çakri, who immediately compared himself to the prickly cactus.

Everyone drank without debate.

“It's that beard, my good man Mün,” said Than Carucono. “I really think if you tried to kiss anyone, you'd stab a dozen holes in their lips.”

“That's absurd!” said a scowling Mün.

“Why do you think that young man over by the city gate tries to hide every time you go over with your presents? You ought to try shaving sometime.”

Mün's face turned bright red. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Half of Zudi can tell you like him,” said Than. “I know you're a butcher, but do you have to look like it every moment?”

“Since when are you the sage of love?”

“All right,” Kuni said, laughing. “Mün, why don't I make a formal introduction between this young man and you? Surely he wouldn't run away at the invitation of the duke?”

Mün's face remained flushed, but he nodded in thanks.

Cogo Yelu then compared himself to the calculating and patient snapping flytrap.

“No, no,” Kuni said, shaking his head like a rattle. “I can't have you denigrate yourself that way. You're the stout bamboo that holds up Zudi's civil service—strong, flexible, yet with a heart that is hollowed of selfish thoughts. You have to drink.”

Now it was Kuni Garu's turn. He stood up, grabbed Widow Wasu—who was passing by with a tray of drinks—around the waist, and while she laughed and ducked out of the way, he plucked a dandelion from behind her ear and held it up for everyone to see.

“Lord Garu, you compare yourself to a weed?” Cogo Yelu frowned.

“Not just any weed, Cogzy. A dandelion is a strong but mis­understood flower.” Remembering his courtship with Jia, Kuni felt his eyes grow warm. “It cannot be defeated: Just when a gardener thinks he has won and eradicated it from his lawn, a rain would bring the yellow florets right back. Yet it's never arrogant: Its color and fragrance never overwhelm those of another. Immensely practical, its leaves are delicious and medicinal, while its roots loosen hard soils, so that it acts as a pioneer for other more delicate flowers. But best of all, it's a flower that lives in the soil but dreams of the skies. When its seeds take to the wind, it will go farther and see more than any pampered rose, tulip, or marigold.”

“An exceedingly good comparison,” Cogo said, and drained his cup. “My vision was too limited to not have understood it.”

Mata nodded in agreement and drained his cup as well, suffering silently as the burning liquor numbed his throat.

“Your turn, General Zyndu,” Than prompted.

Mata hesitated. He was not witty or quick on his feet, and he was never good at games like this. But he glanced down and saw the Zyndu coat of arms on his boots, and suddenly he knew what he should say.

He stood up. Though he had been drinking all night, he was steady as an oak. He began to clap his hands steadily to generate a beat, and sang to the tune of an old song of Tunoa:

The ninth day in the ninth month of the year:

By the time I bloom, all others have died.

Cold winds rise in Pan's streets, wide and austere:

A tempest of gold, an aureal tide.

My glorious fragrance punctures the sky.

Bright-yellow armor surrounds every eye.

With disdainful pride, ten thousand swords spin

To secure the grace of kings, to cleanse sin.

A noble brotherhood, loyal and true.

Who would fear winter when wearing this hue?

“The King of Flowers,” Cogo Yelu said.

Mata nodded.

Kuni had been tapping his finger on the table to follow the beat. He stopped now, reluctantly, as if still savoring the music. “ By the time I bloom, all others have died.' Though lonely and spare, this is a grand and heroic sentiment, befitting the heir of the Marshal of Cocru. The song praises the chrysanthemum without ever mentioning the flower by name. It's beautiful.”

“The Zyndus have always compared themselves to the chrysanthemum,” Mata said.

Kuni bowed to Mata and drained his cup. The others followed suit.

“But, Kuni,” said Mata, “you have not understood the song completely.”

Kuni looked at him, confused.

“Who says it praises only the chrysanthemum? Does the dandelion not bloom in the same hue, my brother?”

Kuni laughed and clasped arms with Mata. “Brother! Together, who knows how far we will go?”

The eyes of both men glistened in the dim light of the Splendid Urn.

Mata thanked everyone and drank himself. For the first time in his life, he didn't feel alone in a crowd. He
belonged
—an unfamiliar but welcome sensation. It surprised him that he found it here, in this dark and sleazy bar, drinking cheap wine and eating bad food, among a group of people he would have considered peasants playing at being lords—like Krima and Shigin—just a few weeks ago.