The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) (42 page)

“You didn't deliver last time.  I doubt you'd manage now.”

“Fiora,” said Cob tersely.  The girl glowered, then sat back to sullenly sip her tea.

Dasira shut her mouth, hoping this would be the end of it, but then Cob's gaze turned to her with a fixity she knew she couldn't escape.  “You don't want to know,” she told him.

“I do.”

“I don't want to talk about it.”

“If not now, then when?”

Never
, she wanted to say.  But Lark was watching too, the stone darkening in her hands, and in their young faces she read an interest—an innocence—she hadn't encountered in ages.  And she realized that, in all the world, only two people knew the truth of her.

Enkhaelen and the Emperor.

That couldn't stand.

She looked down into her half-drunk cup of tea, the leaves whirling as if caught in a slow storm.  It was difficult to gather these thoughts.  More than half her life had been dedicated to burying them under corpses.

“My name is Vedaceirra Cerithe te'Navrin,” she said, because that seemed like a good place to start.  “I was born on the fifth of Theramel, 109 Imperial Reckoning.  I am now sixty-two years old.

“My clan, the Navrin, are merited nobles—thus the te' honorific.  Merit is gained through the Testing, run every six years at the Little Salt Sea north of Crystal Valley, where all the
jeten
—the warriors—vie for one of the twelve noble merits or the royal merit.

“Every
jeten
participates.  The clan with the most victories becomes royal, the next twelve become nobles—or retain nobility if they already had it—and the rest become subordinates.  A King is selected from the royal clan to represent us all to the Emperor.

“I always wanted to be
jeten
and fight for the kingship.  That's not strange for the Riddish; we have very distinct roles for...I guess you'd say men and women, but for us it's protectors and protected. 
Jeten
and
jendae
.  Most women are
jendae
and most men
jeten
, yes, but it's a choice made at the age of majority.  It has nothing to do with how you're born.  Our current King was born female, but he chose to be
jeten
, so he is.

“Unfortunately, I was the only female child in the main clan family.  My father believed he needed a
jendae
to marry off politically—to cement ties with some non-Riddish nobility to give us a fallback plan should we ever lose merit—and so he barred me from declaring myself
jeten
.  That's not unheard-of, but even then it was considered old-fashioned.  A throwback to the clan-wars when we bent to necessity, not personal preference.

“I was seventeen, still under his thumb, when the Emperor made another attempt at intermarrying us and the Trivesteans, to get us to stop fighting.  My father volunteered me.  I had no choice.

“I was the youngest, but the other
jendae
were no happier about marrying Trivesteans.  They pitied me though.  Sometimes we'd send choice-women along with the born-women on these stupid mandates, because the Trivesteans are so bound up in their codes of conduct that they can't refuse or annul a marriage or harm their marriage partner even if they suddenly discover that she has a dick—“

“Seriously?” said Lark.  “Why would your people do that?”

Dasira smiled.  “Spite.  But we don't send choice-men.  It's against the whole concept of
jeten
and
jendae
.  The other women knew I'd been wronged, but since I was still underage, I had no right of refusal.  They tried to help, though.  There was a princess from the King's clan among us, so they assigned me to her as sort of an aide and bodyguard.

“She didn't like her intended husband at all.  And she was a westerner—one of the Snake clans like me—so she didn't feel the same sort of family obligation that wolf-kin do.  The two of us plus a few other western ladies decided we'd poison the Trivesteans.

“We thought it would be easy, because we were young and oh so terribly clever.  And the plan had its good points.  The Riddish are hardier than the Trivesteans, and tolerant of the toxic salts, so we decided that I would poison every plate at the wedding feast.  When we all fell ill and the Trivesteans died, we would blame it on the cooks.

“Frankly, I didn't care if everyone died.  So I did it.

“But I piked it up.  They handed me the salts and I dosed everything, but I did the guards' food more lightly because they ate first and I didn't want them to keel over so fast that the bridegrooms got spooked.  Well, the grooms succumbed as intended, and we brides got miserably sick, but the guards recovered fast and figured out my involvement.  They...”

The words dried up, and for a moment she sat staring at the fire-stones, wishing she could go back in time and stop herself.  No one spoke, no one breathed, until it was almost like she was alone with the past—here on the salt, under the bleak stars.

Finally, she said, “They were Sapphires.  That's important.  If they were our clansmen, we might have had a chance, but the Sapphire shuffles its Riddish soldiers around so much that they're never with their own clans—they're all lone wolves, out for themselves and nothing else.  And the Trivestean Sapphires among them were either too sick or too angry to stop them.

“They said we deserved it.  I was the only fighter among us and they beat me down first, and then they separated us and did...what clanless men do.  What most
jeten
do when they catch
jendae
from other clans.  That was the worst, that it was our own people.  The Trivesteans don't think that way; they just kill.  It's one of the reasons I never went back unless ordered.

“Anyway, when they finally dragged us before an Imperial judge—days, weeks later, I don't even know—our pretense was gone.  I...can't remember if I told on the princess and the other westerners, or if someone else did.  But the sentence was passed on all of us, to be cleansed by the Palace.

“Our captors were in no hurry to get us there.  I think they only did it because the first of us started showing.

“I knew about mine.  Most of the others had caught as well; Riddishwomen are nothing if not fertile.  But I think that when I walked into the throne room, I was mad.  I had become convinced that no matter what happened, I would be reborn in my child.  My son.  I would be the
jeten
that my soul had intended, untainted by my crimes.

“The Emperor looked down on us with this strange smile, and offered to pardon the princess if she would be his wife.  She accepted.  The rest of us were...swallowed.

“I lost him then.  My Lerien, my second chance.  And I fought my way out, because I would not go the way the
jendae
had gone—I refused.  I was not done yet.  If I couldn't be reborn, then I was not ready to die.”

She closed her eyes, remembering the breach.  The caul tearing away from around her.  The hand on her shaking shoulder.

“Instead, I became this,” she said, tugging up her sleeve to show the leathery black bracer.  “And the princess became the Empress, and the ladies who survived the conversion became her handmaidens.  I don't know why the Emperor did it.  Maybe it was just an opportunity he couldn't pass up—some grand horrific experiment in human frailty.  Or maybe he really did want a wife.  A son of his own.

“Anyway, he declared us cleansed and had our crimes struck from the record, and when some of the soldiers talked about it later, he had them assassinated.  By me.

“It's been nearly forty-five years.  Only a few of the soldiers are still alive.  I used to visit them if I had a mission in the area—borrow the body of a friend or confidant of theirs and do to them what they did to us.  But it became...unsporting.  Time took its toll on everyone but me.

“Then, five years ago, I got a new assignment.  And now I'm here.”

She looked up at them, feeling almost defiant, and saw exactly the expressions of shock she had expected.  Mustering a smile, she said, “You know what I am.  Don't pretend surprise.”

For a long moment, no one spoke.  Then Fiora sat forward and said slowly, “So you think you're a man...does that mean you like girls?”

Lark went rigid and snapped, “That's the first thing you ask her?  What's wrong with you?”

“I'm just curious!”

Dasira snorted, incredulous yet feeling her own tension break.  “Why, are you propositioning me?”

The girl blushed.  “No, I...I was...  I think I admire you now.”

“Admire?” said Cob, looking askance at his lover.  “What's there to admire about that?”

“She survived, she got stronger, and she avenged herself.  If I was in that situation—“

“You'd do back to others what they did t'you?”

“Maybe.  I can't fault her.”

Cob's face grew stony, but before he could speak, Arik said, “Why not just kill them?”  His pewtery-grey brows were bent deeply over his pale eyes, which searched Dasira's expression as if seeking some revelation.

Dasira shrugged.  “It didn't seem like enough.  You can't regret things when you're dead.  As my sisters-in-punishment started to die off, I guess I needed our victimizers to suffer for it.  Plus I had no idea which one fathered Lerien, so I just did them all.”

“The women died?” said Fiora, alarmed.  “What killed them?”

“Pregnancy.  Lagalaina can't bear children safely.  Seems Enkhaelen isn't as good a maker as he could be.”

Fiora went white.  “So after all of that, and the Palace and everything, they just...”

“They were remade as seducers, enthrallers.  Enkhaelen and the Emperor share a sick sense of humor.  You met one, Cob.  Anniavela—though actually she's the only one left now.  The others were sent to gain the favor of the lords and petty kings, and they all eventually ended up like that.  To his credit, Enkhaelen tried to fix the problem, but the Emperor made him stop; he wanted to see if the babies would be viable.  But they all died too.”

Watching Cob's face, Dasira saw a muscle jump in his jaw.  His dark eyes no longer reflected the light, and she glimpsed a stir in the earth beneath his feet—a subtle buckling.  Nearby, Lark looked ill, and the stone Ilshenrir placed in her hands lit up so fast that it cracked.

Fiora looked from Cob to Dasira, plainly uncomfortable.  “I didn't mean to offend anyone.  I just, um...  So many women just won't fight back.  I can't help it.  I'm glad you did what you did.”

“Should've castrated them,” muttered Lark.

Arik, ears tucked back and fur bristling defensively, said, “Can we talk about something else?  Something...nice?  I'm not comfortable with this anger in the pack...”

“Herd,” Cob corrected absently, then shook himself from his near-Guardian state.  The way his face sagged with weary disappointment almost made Dasira wish he had stayed mad.  “I dunno.  What can we possibly say now?”

“Maybe we should just sleep,” said Fiora.  “We have a lot of ground to cover.”

No one seconded that.  From their expressions, Dasira gathered that she had summoned nightmares in more than one.

“I...have cards, if anyone wants to play,” Lark said.  She cast the broken stone into the pile and leaned to rummage through her pack.

“Good idea.  What do we play for?  Um, pebbles?” said Fiora, sitting forward.  Cob did too, though with reluctance.

“Apologies,” said Dasira dryly, leaning in as well.  “Everyone who drops out has to apologize for one of the shit-stupid things they've done recently.  Light knows we've got plenty of coinage in that.”

“I apologize for marking all of your packs,” said Arik sadly.

They all looked at him, blinking.  Then comprehension dawned, and Fiora said, “Ew!  Ew!”

“Morgwi's balls, and we're stuck out here with no bathhouse in sight,” said Lark.

“Why would you...?” started Cob, baffled.

Arik hung his head.  “Boots too.”

What followed was a flurry of flung footwear, a quick deal of cards, and then an alternately awkward and raucous game with apologies for everything from rummaging through each other's stuff to hoarding food to acting spoiled.  When Ilshenrir confessed to being the wraith who had shot Cob in the forest half a year ago—thus triggering his possession by the Guardian—everyone went still and silent, but Cob simply stared for a moment then shrugged it off.

By the time they called it quits, hair full of sand from bombarding each other, the tension had somewhat dissipated.  Lark came over to sit by Dasira and nudged her companionably.  “Now that everything's out...do you want me to cut your hair or something, to be more
jeten
?”

Dasira looked up into her open, interested face and bit back a laugh.  “
Jeten
wear their hair long.  All Riddish do.”

“Oh.”  Lark considered, then eyed her robe.  “I guess we can't get anything more manly for you right now.  Um...”

“It's fine.  Really.”

“But if you've been suffering all this time as Dasira...”

She held up a quelling hand.  “It doesn't matter.  This is just another costume.  I've gone through dozens, and male or female, they all feel the same.  They're not me.  Nothing is me.”