33

 

Horseshoes rang on the cobbles of the yard. The moon was a silver bubble above the velvet blackness of the trees, its rays gleaming here and there on ancient roofs and crumbling walls. Although Labranza Lamith had told Polion Tharn that Raragash lay only two weeks’ ride from Daling, she had never intended to attempt the feat herself in that time span. Circumstances had dictated otherwise. She had been lucky—of course. The Cockpit was about to live up to its name again, but she had passed in safety through the jaws of war as they were about to close.

She slid heavily from the saddle and grunted as her boots hit the ground. She ached, she stank. She hated horses and always had.

Brighter light flared as a door flew open. Nostor the stable master came hobbling out, waving a lantern. “Thought it must be you, noble lady!” He had a cackle like a drunken rooster. “Someone been making predictions, have they? Yes, they have!”

“Who’s been making predictions?” She rubbed her eyes.

“Well, I don’t suppose they’d tell, now would they?” The old fool took the reins with a wheezy, garlic-scented snigger. “No, they wouldn’t!”

She untied her bag from the saddle, not commenting.

“Had a good journey, noble lady? No, you haven’t. You’re tired, I can see. Well is there hot water and food waiting at the house, courtesy of Ching Saj? Yes, there is!”

“Give me the lantern,” Labranza said. She took it, keeping it well away from the stupid horse, which was rolling eyes and stamping feet already. “Feed him a load of rocks and maybe it’ll make his ride a little softer.” She turned and stalked off while Nostor’s fowl laugh still soiled the stillness of the night. Her legs and seat throbbed from too many days in the saddle.

He had been talking rubbish. If Ching Chilith had truly made Labranza’s house ready for her, then it had not been a Shoolscath who tipped him off that she would be returning tonight. Shoolscaths rarely passed on any foreknowledge at all, even trivial news like that. Why should they? They couldn’t hope to earn future favors, because the repayment would itself be a tampering with events. She did not think her personal popularity was great enough to merit taking such a risk. Ching’s certainly was not. Just about everyone in Raragash detested him.

His information might have come from the watchers on the pass. She had told them not to signal her arrival, and she would have seen the flags if they had, but Ching might have bribed someone to warn him. She had stopped on the way in to pick up some information from normally reliable sources and a messenger could have gotten ahead of her then. Ching was infinitely sneaky, which was why he was so useful. The normally reliable sources had reported on some of his activities during her absence.

The most interesting news was just that Ching himself was still alive and at liberty. Labranza pondered the implications as she strode along the path, setting her feet in the puddle of light from the lantern, flanked by moving patches of vegetation on either hand, green fronds appearing and disappearing in walls of blackness. She could have found the way blindfold, but the lantern was a help. The air was heady with tree scent, the familiar air of Raragash. It was good to be home.

Ching was still alive. That probably meant that he had failed in the task she had given him before she left, or else he had not even tried it. She had not really expected him to try. She would be astonished if he had both succeeded and survived.

She emerged from the wood to the wide expanse of open lawn that surrounded her house. In the moonlight it was a gray carpet. Glimmers of light escaping below the eaves, silvery tendrils of smoke coiling upward.

She pushed open the weighted leather drape and peered inside before entering and letting it fall back into place. Rising on tiptoe, she peeked over the paper and bamboo screen immediately alongside the door, to confirm there was no one and no thing hiding there. Most Ogoalscaths learned to be very cautious people. The rest of them died. One night two years ago, she had found a wild boar under her bed. There was no previous record of wild boars in Raragash.

The air was thick with eye-biting smoke, which was normal for a Zarda house. The night was too warm to need a fire, but the big copper bucket on the hearth steamed temptingly. Flames danced above shiny candlesticks. Three heavy silver covers on the table told of food waiting, and there was a promising-looking bottle in the pottery cooler. Wonderful! She threw the stinking saddlebag down by the door and began stripping off clothes as she headed for the water. She tested it carefully. Very hot water was a hazard, but this was just right. Wonderful!

Good to be back. As she sponged the road dirt from her skin, she wondered if Ching’s preparations could have been provoked by her own Ogoalscath influence. Might he just have acted on impulse? No. He must have lit the fire an hour ago or longer. She had not been within range then.

She looked around her home with a mixture of fondness and disgust. Delicate imperial antique furniture stood on thick rugs. The walls were draped with silk hangings, frail and faded and so old that they must have been beyond price even in the final days of the empire. Now they were irreplaceable and perhaps unique in all Kuolia. She ran a count of the porcelain ornaments, the sculptures, the crystal vases—all of them filled with fresh-cut flowers, arranged unmistakably by Ching’s own sure hand. Nothing was missing, nothing had migrated elsewhere during her absence. Labranza Lamith enjoyed luxury and precious things. She had borrowed all of these from the Hall of the Academy.

The contents were superb. The house itself was a sty for animals. She hated it. She could have lived in the Hall had she wanted, in a palatial suite of rooms set aside centuries ago for the personal use of the president. Raragash was prone to earth tremors. Ogoalscaths were prone to dying under falling ceilings, in flash fires, or from dropping through suddenly rotted floors. She never went into the Hall unless duty absolutely required her to.

Being wooden, Zarda houses were almost perfectly earthquake-proof. Their thatch was dangerously flammable and subject to blowing off in freak storms, but she slept right by the door, behind a flimsy screen she could knock down with one finger. Meanwhile the mice and squirrels came in to nibble at the rugs and hangings; swallows tried to build nests in the beams. Even bats, sometimes. She hated the house.

She had dried herself and was giving her hair a final toweling when knuckles rapped on the doorpost. “Who’s there?”

“Secretary Chilith, Madam President.”

“Wait.” She wandered over to the antique Tringian cedar chest where she stored her off-duty gowns. In this stuffy heat she needed nothing warm. After some thought, she selected a sheer wrap of pale blue Pirainian silk, embroidered with seed pearls in a gardenia pattern. She knotted the sash loosely, combed out her hair, applied scent, donned silver sandals. Then she tidied away her soiled riding clothes, the towels and the saddlebag.

After about ten minutes, she said, “Enter.”

Ching Chilith entered, clutching a leather folder. As his name implied, he was of mixed Nurzian and Qolian blood. His father had bequeathed him high cheekbones and curly hair, but his coloring was lighter than a true Nurzian—a pale hazel monotone, skin and hair alike. Even the honey shade of his guileless eyes matched the rest of him. He was slim and slight, and a finger-length shorter than Labranza herself. Twice she had lost her temper with Ching enough to strike him and both times she had spread him on the floor. She had first noticed him and his talents ten years ago, when he had been seventeen and she had been twice his age. Physically, he had not changed. He could still pass for a boy of seventeen, easily. She had not done that to him deliberately. It had just happened.

He was wearing simple smock and breeches of bleached linen. Those were for her benefit. When he appeared in public as her spokesman, he dressed like an old-time emperor, sporting jewelry and fine raiment; he rode a white horse whose tack sparkled with rhinestones and silver buckles.

He did not smile, or bow. He just stood inside the drape and waited to see what role she wanted him to play.

“Pour me a drink.” She wandered over to the divan and sat down heavily. Her wrap fell open to display most of one leg and she left it like that.

Ching laid his folder carefully on the table and set to work on the wine bottle. He filled a goblet and brought it over to her. Then he stood and waited again. He kept his eyes on her face, ignoring the leg and the expansive view of cleavage.

She sipped. The wine was tart and pleasantly cool.

“Who told you I would be back tonight?”

“I promised not to say, Madam President.”

She waited.

“Gos a’Noig.”

A’Noig was a Shoolscath, but an aged cripple who did not get around much. Astonishingly, Ching was not blushing, as he did whenever he tried to lie to her. It was not the least valuable of his many talents. So he really had won a prediction from a Shoolscath!

“Kind of him. Give him my thanks.” She did not comment on the fire, food, wine, flowers. Ching knew she expected nothing short of perfect service. “What news?”

“Wesnar cut off the sea trade from Mokth by sacking Tolamin.” He had a high tenor voice, but he spoke with absolute confidence. “The king of Mokth is marching south, planning a surprise attack on Wesnar in retaliation.”

“I guessed as much. The king of Wesnar is bringing his army north. I barely missed his patrols near Veriow. Hoping to set an ambush, I expect.”

Ching nodded, half noting that information, half confirming it. “Each thinks the other does not know what he is doing. Both do. Hexzion is going to meet your price for a Muolscath, but hasn’t said so yet. The king of Pagaid fell off his horse and I dispatched an Ivielscath—”

“On whose authority?”

Ching raised his barely visible eyebrows. “On yours, of course.”

“You forged my signature, I presume?”

“I did. If Por a’Win dies, his sons will tear the kingdom in shreds. If he lives, he may—”

“I know all that.” She approved. It had been an astute decision. “Go on.” She held out her goblet for a refill.

He took it and continued reporting as he went to the table: a few deaths among the Cursed, crop failure in Hamdish, an outbreak of star sickness in Rurk.  He had sent out a rescue team, again usurping her authority.

That was the secret of her hold over him. Ching was not Cursed himself, but his father had been an Ogoalscath and a dangerous one, liable to fly into rages and hence cause catastrophes. When he was twelve, Ching had seen his father struck dead by lightning in bright sunshine. Perhaps even more significant, his mother had been a Jaulscath. Children unable to lie to their mothers grew up to be very odd adults.

As the son of a terrifying father, Ching craved power. He yearned to know secrets as his mother had done. Having endured an orphan’s poverty, he enjoyed flaunting wealth. Yet he was utterly unassertive, a Nobody. Some women saw a sort pathetic appeal in him, but he cringed before men.

As personal secretary to the president, he gained both power and wealth. By reflection he was Somebody. He knew secrets and relayed orders; he could swagger and bully and oppress. He would do anything for Labranza. He needed her authority like air to breathe, and he also needed her protection now, for he had made many enemies in her service. Without her, he would be a spurned cur. He was devious, spiteful, meticulous, unscrupulous, and totally unable to lie to her. She had been very fortunate to find such an assistant—but Ogoalscaths were fortunate by definition.

“That’s enough,” she said, cutting him off. “What else did I sign while I was away?”

He listed a dozen other forgeries. She had been busy! She could fault none of his decisions, except that he had obviously settled a few personal grudges. Well, he had earned that.

“What about the other thing I mentioned?”

For the first time, a faint smile touched his juvenile face. “You gave me no orders that I recall, Madam President.”

“No, I didn’t.”

But she had dropped a hint—an extremely subtle hint that only a mind as sharp and tuned as Ching’s would have caught. What she had suggested had involved both Shoolscaths and Jaulscaths. Since earliest times, it had been known that a seer within range of a mind reader was in mortal danger of revealing the future. To trick a Shoolscath into such a meeting was about the most dastardly crime possible in Raragash. The Shoolscaths were the largest group of Cursed and they would tear the perpetrator to ribbons. If Labranza were directly implicated, all her authority would not defend her from the consequences. In a community that included over fifty Jaulscaths, denial would be useless.

She had barely dared hope that even Ching’s loyalty would prompt him to take such a risk. She had not really expected him to survive the attempt if he did.

“I spoke with a certain Shoolscath, Madam President. He confirmed that the long-awaited Renewer is now due. A new empire will arise.”

Seven curses! It was true! Labranza’s world crumbled before her eyes. She drained her goblet in one draft, and prompted a fit of coughing.

Ching took her glass from her and went to refill it again, continuing in his soft voice: “The Shoolscath was not lying. He has shown no signs of deterioration so far.”

“There was a… a witness present?”

“I told you he was not lying.”

“This was the a’Noig man you mentioned earlier?”

“Yes, Madam President. He has not many years left, but he is still rational. He is excited that he will live to see the coming of the new order.”

Labranza stared up at him. He couldn’t lie to her! How could a man of his age not have one single trace of a line on his forehead? But he was not lying. “And the, ah, witness is discreet?” There was the worst danger—Jaulscaths could not keep secrets. Even with all the training the Academy could give them, they could not keep secrets for long in Raragash.

“I sent her along on the Nimbudia mission, Madam President—on your authority, of course.”

Ching had succeeded beyond her wildest hopes. In the ensuing silence she thought he was gazing oddly at her—almost pleadingly. If he was hoping for a word of support or praise, he ought to know better by now.

“Did you learn the name of the new emperor?”

“A Zarda name, Madam President. Bulion Tharn.”

It meant nothing to him, of course, but Labranza sagged back on the cushions. Fatigue and wine together made her head spin. Now this incredible news about that fat old farmer… the Curse of Poul on him!

She had never ordered an assassination, although she strongly suspected many of her predecessors had. It was just too temptingly easy. A freak accident, a sudden sickness, an inexplicable attack by a trusted companion… who could ever suspect that the Academy was involved? So very few even knew it existed! She could think of a dozen Cursed she could send to Tharn Valley to snuff this flame before it burned down her world. The moment Tharn himself died, Shoolscath a’Noig would lapse into imbecility. Beautiful!

She would think about it tomorrow. She wriggled down into the cushions and lifted her legs up on the divan, glancing thoughtfully at Ching. He blushed under her gaze, pink patches seeping into the dark-honey skin over the prominent cheekbones. Hair and skin—he was the same color all over, slim and smooth. His honey eyes were clear as a child’s.

He turned away and went to the table. “Food, Madam President?”

“Maybe later. That’s enough business.”

He swallowed and picked up the folder he had never needed to open. “Goodnight then, Madam President. Welcome back.” He waited.

“No.”

He turned and eyed her warily, making sure he was not mistaking her signals. “No?”

“You haven’t finished.”

His expression did not change. He laid the folder carefully on the table and began to remove his clothes.

Ching made love as diligently and efficiently as he did everything else. He never babbled romantic nonsense or pretended he was anything more than her servant, even in bed. Labranza did not care whether he enjoyed himself or not—he was there to please her. He was good at that.