Chapter 7

Zezili Hasaria, Captain General of the Empress of Dorinah’s western legion, paced the damp hall outside the Empress’s audience chamber in wet boots and a set of clothing she could not remember ever being washed. She wore her chain mail and her metal skirt knotted in dajians’ hair. Her battered sword and dagger hung at her hip, both solid metal. She didn’t trust infused weapons. She cradled her helm under one arm.

Being summoned from the coast while her force lolled about getting drunk waiting to mount an offensive on the isle of Alorjan filled her with trepidation. The Empress did not pull her captain generals from the field so lightly. Zezili swore as she waited, muttering old Dhai curses, in case anyone of importance happened by. More people feared her when she spoke Dhai. It reminded them of her mixed face and manners, and her deviant propensity for slaughtering her own kind.

The big double doors to the audience chamber opened, and the Empress’s white-haired dajian secretary, Saofi, said, “The Empress regrets she cannot see you at this time, Syre Zezili Hasaria.”

“She’s left orders, then?” Zezili said, trying to conceal her annoyance. Saofi was a plump, matronly woman, easily fifty or sixty, and had survived a long service to the Empress. That made her nearly as valuable as Zezili. Zezili did not often measure her own worth compared to that of dajians – Dhai slaves – but Saofi was obviously of mixed parentage – Dhai and Dorinah, just like Zezili. And sometimes the similarities chilled her. The secretary’s mother had sold her. Zezili’s mother had claimed her. One woman’s choice made all the difference.

“She has something prepared, yes,” Saofi said. “She told me earlier she may be unable to make this audience. This way, please. I’ll give you her missive.”

Saofi led Zezili through the drafty hall. The Empresses of Dorinah had torched their organic holds and rebuilt them from stone and iron over eighteen hundred years before. It meant their holds were cooler, less permanent, and required much more maintenance than the tirajista-built holds that littered the lands of their neighbors. Zezili found the idea of maintaining this massive heap of stone exhausting.

They passed a pair of dajians refilling the lamps along the hall. A girl no more than ten hung from the ladder, leaning far over to the next sconce. When the girl saw Zezili, her eyes got big. She dropped the oil decanter.

Zezili snapped up the decanter before it could clatter to the stones. Oil sloshed onto her hand. She shoved the decanter back at the little dajian. “You’ll set the whole cursed place on fire,” she said.

The dajian babbled apologies. Zezili saw Saofi watching them. She should have just let it fall. She half thought to dump the oil on Saofi and set her aflame, just for effect, but knew she wouldn’t get her orders then.

So, Zezili settled for shoving the decanter at the older dajian holding the ladder, who hadn’t lost her senses in the face of a captain general. Then Zezili forged on ahead of Saofi.

“I don’t have all day, secretary,” Zezili said.

Saofi hurried to catch up. She had a shorter stride. As they came to Saofi’s office, Saofi selected the key from among the various useful secretarial items she had dangling from the chains of her chatelaine. She opened the door and retrieved a small purple letter from her desk.

Zezili took it and broke the royal seal: the Eye of Rhea stamped into a generous gob of gonsa sap.

Pull your legion back from the coast. You’re to partner with my new foreign friends for a domestic campaign. They will meet you at your estate in a few days’ time with your orders.

Zezili skimmed over the honorifics after the Empress’s name. Zezili did not question the Empress’s orders, ever. It was one reason she kept her place at the head of the legion. But she didn’t much like the idea of packing up back home and blindly following some foreigner, even at the Empress’s order. She hoped they weren’t Saiduan or Tordinian. Saiduans were arrogant, and Tordinians foul and uncouth, even by her standards.

“Is this a serious letter?” Zezili asked.

Saofi shrugged. “You would know better than I.”

“Why didn’t she see me personally? Why call me out here and then send me home again?”

“I don’t pretend to know the mind of the Empress,” Saofi said. “I take her orders, just as you do.”

“We’re nothing alike,” Zezili said.

Zezili pushed her helm back on. Her ears were cold. She bunched up the letter. It had been a waste of time to come all the way to Daorian for this. She could be at home fucking her husband.

“Luck to you,” Saofi called as she stepped into the hall.

Zezili bit back a retort. Every word would get back to the Empress. She walked down to the kennels and had the kennel girls bring out her dog, a big black brute named Dakar whose shoulder was as high as Zezili’s chest. He had dark eyes and a scarred muzzle, reminder of a skirmish she had taken him into along the coast of the Saiduan island called Shorasau. She had always preferred dogs to bears. They were easier to train and stank less.

She rode through the great gates of the stronghold of Daorian and into the city that took its name from the hold. Daorian had been built on the ruins of the Saiduan city of Diamia before it. The city was a patchwork of government houses to the east, merchants’ quarters organized by profession, and poorer shacks and tents along the water, where the fishers and sea-trade people lived.

Big, somber-colored awnings stretched over the sidewalks where city-owned dajians tended to the lanterns set up on long poles lining the road; the dajians bore the look of their Dhai relatives but could hardly be called Dhai when they’d spent the entirety of their lives owned by the Empress. Women and girls filled the streets, dressed in bright tunics and long trousers and skirts, embroidered coats and wide hats. Little dajians followed after their owners, carrying shopping baskets; many had babies tied to their backs with lengths of colorful fabric. Most dajians were easily recognizable by their drab gray clothing, their smaller stature, their tawny complexions. Many were also branded with the mark of the family who owned them.

Zezili watched as the dajians streamed past, hurrying after tall women whose hair was curled or beribboned, pinned or sewn in place, and adorned in combs and jeweled pins. Zezili had learned how to tie hair up like that, a lifetime ago, before her mother had put a sword in her hand.

She rode past the booksellers and merchants’ stalls and into the religious quarter, where all of the lanterns were wound with red paper. The open awnings of the men’s mardanas lining the streets of the quarter were red, the sidewalks lined in brick. The Temple of Rhea stood at the end of the red-lantern road, its spires outlined by the gray sky. The Dorinah flag flew from the three topmost peaks of the stone towers: the Eye of Rhea on a background of purple.

“Syre Zezili!” someone called. “My favorite unwashed snapdragon. How are you?”

Zezili turned. A bear-drawn carriage pulled up next to her. The lacy curtains were swept back from the window, revealing a bright, rouged face with eyes heavily lined in kohl.

“Tulana Nikoel,” Zezili said. “Looking for a treat in the mardanas?”

“Nothing so amusing,” Tulana said. Her dark hair was arranged atop her head in a pile of forward-facing curls that had been sewn into place and knotted with yellow ribbons. It was not the most intricate style Zezili had ever seen, but nearly. The Empress’s gifted jistas, the Seekers, had little to do but sit around and braid each other’s hair between enemy-killing, road-building, and ditch-digging. Tulana’s little sloe-eyed shadow, Sokai, sat with her, gazing off in the opposite direction. Zezili had made a pass at him once during a campaign, and he hadn’t taken it well. Men had no sense of humor.

“I didn’t think the Empress let you out of the Seeker Sanctuary without a leash,” Zezili said.

“Being gifted is often a curse,” Tulana said, “but leading the gifted can be advantageous. Tell me, has the Empress called you here to speak of a campaign? I have six new parajistas hungry for experience in the field.”

“You know I can’t say,” Zezili said. “But when I can, you’ll be the first to know. Say hello to Amelia and Voralyn.” They were the only gifted women Zezili could tolerate, in large part because they often lost extraordinary amounts of money to her at cards.

“I will say hello to their purses for you,” Tulana said.

Zezili grunted and turned Dakar away. From the corner of her eye, she saw Tulana’s bright expression darken. Zezili suspected Tulana’s tolerance for Zezili was only slightly higher than Zezili’s for Tulana. But Zezili’s legion, without gifted Seekers, was just a mob of women with pointy sticks when facing the gifted forces of an enemy. She had to work with Tulana and her little jistas more often than not.

Dakar carried her to the limits of the city, where a charred black ring marked the outer edges of habitable land. She gazed across the rolling hillsides covered in tangled summervine and creeping deathwart. Most of the trees had been cut, but there were still many dangerous semi-sentient things crawling along the roads. Workers burned off the plant life for twenty feet on either side, ensuring that nothing took root.

Zezili passed time that afternoon to eat and pray at a way house run by the owners of an adjacent silk farm. She was not fool enough to give up her daily prayers to Rhea and her daughters, though she did not consider herself particularly religious.

Her husband, Anavha, had often begged her to move the household back into the city, where he would find more of his own kind and could worship in a proper temple. But she preferred to keep him out here, safe from the dangers of the city. As was custom, Zezili had allowed her sisters the use of Anavha until they had done with their own broods. Then she moved her household to the country, away from the lascivious stares of older women and the poisonous influence of mardana men.

She arrived at her house just after dusk. Her estate was not grand, but adequate for her station. Lights burned in the windows. The latticed shutters were open. An apple orchard stretched out behind the house, and beyond that, Zezili kept a small vineyard that produced the estate’s wine. She saw a gaggle of dajians with flame fly lanterns patrolling the orchard. Burning out encroaching strangle vines and sap thorns took constant maintenance.

Zezili dismounted. Her housekeeper, Daolyn, emerged from the round gate, followed by two of the house dajians. The dajians took Dakar’s reins.

“How goes my house?” Zezili asked Daolyn.

Daolyn was mostly dajian, short and dark-haired, though her hair was going to white. She had the high cheekbones and tawny cast of a dajian, but her eyes were Dorinah gray, and she had put on a healthy amount of fat over her broad frame. Zezili trusted no one else with the affairs of her house.

Daolyn inclined her head. The night was cool. She wore green divided skirts and a short coat with an embroidered green collar. She had sewn the Eye of Rhea onto the two big outer pockets.

“Your house is well, Syre Zezili,” Daolyn said. “We did not expect you for several weeks.”

“The Empress had other plans,” Zezili said as they walked into the inner courtyard. “How is my husband?” A fountain bubbled in the eye of the yard. A circular door from each of the house’s three main rooms led into the yard.

“He has been melancholy,” Daolyn said.

Zezili walked into the common room. “I suppose I should bathe before I settle,” she said, glancing at the padded benches and chaises and the tapestry lining the floor, so recently uncurled that its edges had been strategically held down by items of furniture. Daolyn only put the tapestry rug out when Zezili was home; she would have hurriedly unrolled it the moment the dajians in the yard alerted her that Zezili was coming down the road. That touch inspired in Zezili a feeling of contentment she could almost call happiness.

“You must strive to keep him busy,” Zezili said. “Idle hands ruin good boys. We’ll have visitors soon. Prepare the house for company.”

After bathing and having her hair washed, combed, and tied with red ribbons by a new house dajian Daolyn had purchased in her absence, Zezili dressed in long red trousers and a red undershirt embroidered at the cuffs and hem. Daolyn brought her a new handsome short coat of red silk stitched in silver at the wide sleeves, with three silver-threaded frogged ties at the front and blooms the color of blood embroidered at the collar.

“Will you allow your husband to attend supper with you?” Daolyn asked.

“Yes,” Zezili said, “and bring the account books. I need to review them. This new campaign will keep me occupied many months, I’m sure.”

Daolyn inclined her head.

Zezili walked back to the common room, where the dajians had pulled out the low dining table from the wall, set it at the center of the room, and put cushions down on the floor. As Zezili waited for her husband, the dajians brought out mushroom and leek soup, served cold, garnished with basil.

She heard a rustling at the door. Anavha stood in the broad archway. Had it only been a month since she last saw him? He wore a white girdle that pulled in his waist just above the hips. He was, of necessity, slender. She believed men should take up as little space as possible. He wore his black hair long over his shoulders, tied once with a white ribbon. Those men allowed to live were, of course, beautiful, far more beautiful than many of the women Zezili knew. Anavha was clean-shaven, as she wanted him, lightly powdered in gold, his eyes lined in kohl, eyes a stormy gray, set a bit too wide in a broad face whose jaw she had initially found almost vulgar in its squareness. He stood a hand shorter than she; she easily outweighed him by fifty pounds. She liked him just this way.

She warmed at the mere sight of him. She wanted to push Anavha onto the table, and pull his body into hers.

“Wife,” Anavha said softly. He knelt with head bowed.

“Rise,” Zezili said.

Anavha stood. Zezili took him by his slender forearms and looked into his eyes. He averted his gaze.

“Come, husband, eat with me.” She released him.

He sat at the other end of the table.

“Do you yet know how long your leave is?” Anavha asked.

“A week. Nine days. We will have visitors for some of that, though. I have a long assignment we must prepare for.”

“Nothing so glorious. A personal favor for the Empress. I’m not sure how long it will be. Hasn’t Daolyn kept you busy in the greenhouse?”

“She has kept me at that well enough, and no doubt the greenhouse is enough for Daolyn in her evenings, but I hoped perhaps you would be willing, should you be gone for such a long campaign, to perhaps furnish me with some reading, perhaps?”

Zezili must have shown her disapproval in her face, because he interrupted before she could dissent, hurried on. “Just the daily papers from Daorian. I know your feeling about books, and Daolyn feels that way as well, but surely, what harm is there in papers? Just some news from outside? There was a silk merchant through here last week, she–”

“I regret that we have had no children,” Zezili said. A sore subject indeed, in any company. “I have heard that a man assisting in the raising of children often finds some fulfillment from it, but I’m here to take life in Rhea’s name, not give it.”

“You should just dedicate your body to her as well, then,” Anavha said. A bit too cutting for Zezili’s taste.

Zezili’s anger stirred. “You would like that, wouldn’t you?” she said. “Having a sexless woman for a wife? Yes, you’d like taking solace in none but your own body. Because that’s all I would allow you. My sisters have no use for you. Who will touch you then? Or will you content yourself to be a mad little thing, running after dajian effeminates?”

She saw Anavha clenching his fists, saw the anger in him, and saw it dissipate into tears. Rhea only allowed him tears.

“You don’t let me go anywhere,” he cried. “I can’t see anyone. These dajians, they don’t even speak proper Dorinah.”

Sometimes, Zezili wished she could allow him to shove a sword into a dajian. It was the best way she had found to silence sorrow.

She stood and squatted next to his little quaking form, brushed the hair back from his cheek. “Shush now, shush,” she said, and wondered what sort of mother she would have been if she’d had to deal with children. She would have done what other women did, of course – farm them out to the dajians and get on with her work.

“Shush now. Am I so terrible a wife?” She took one of his soft, slender hands, pulled it to her chest, inside her coat, and pressed it over her breast. “Tell me you have no desire for me at all,” Zezili said. “Say you would rather fuck nothing than fuck me, and I will have it done.”

“You’re horrible,” Anavha said. “You’re horrible.”

“I’m not horrible,” Zezili said, rising. “I’m your wife.”

As she watched him weep at her feet, she thought of the faces that watched her in the city; the disgust, the outrage, that some mongrel slave could hold such a station, and own such a husband.

She took her husband, then – right there next to the table.

He was the one thing in her life she controlled completely. And she loved him for it.

Despite the Empress’s instructions, Zezili found herself unprepared for the visitors that showed up on her stoop the next day. Two women – one little and slightly dark, with the features of a Dhai, and one taller, plumper, with the broad gray eyes and complexion of a Dorinah – entered the courtyard under Daolyn’s escort.

“I’m Sai Hofsha,” the smaller woman said. Her accent was strange. Not quite Dhai. “Empress Casanlyn sent you word of my arrival?”

“Is that a title or a name?” Zezili asked.

“Call me Hofsha,” the woman said. “Sai is a… title, yes.” Her hair looked like it had been cut with a razor, then crimped and curled into some unrecognizable country style.

“And you are Syre Zezili,” Hofsha continued. Her smile was large and glorious, yet unmistakably disingenuous. “This one is Monshara.” She waved dismissively at the other woman.

Zezili glanced at stone-faced Daolyn; what she thought of their visitors, Zezili could only guess.

“Do you have papers?” Zezili asked Hofsha.

Hofsha laughed. “Papers? Oh, no, I’m not some slave, some dajian. I’m here from the Empress. Surely she told you to expect me?”

Zezili frowned. “You are not… what I expected.”

“I’m never quite what anyone expects,” Hofsha said. “But no worries on your part, my friend. I won’t actually be the one managing this campaign with you. You’ll be partnering with Monshara here.” She jabbed a finger at her plumper companion again. “She’s one of our top generals. You should get along well. She speaks very good Dorinah.” Hofsha seemed to find this funny and smothered a laugh behind her hand.

Zezili sized up Hofsha’s companion. Her expression reminded Zezili of Daolyn’s, as if they both sought to shutter up emotions better left unexpressed. Monshara held herself like one of the Empress’s noble councilors. Her pale, round face and eyes, the black hair, the broad nose and narrow jaw – it was all very Dorinah.

“Where are you from?” Zezili asked her. “Not here, surely? I’d have heard of you.”

The general’s mouth twisted. Not a smile, but a grimace. “Gold head to you,” she said. “Perceptive.” She spoke Dorinah with no accent, which was even more perplexing than the odd accent of the Dhai-looking woman.

“Are we dining?” Hofsha asked. Big grin. The grin would not leave her abhorrent face.

“Yes, of course,” Zezili said. “Daolyn, bring tea and – what would you like? Are you some kind of vegetarian cannibal Dhai?”

“Nothing so exciting as that,” Hofsha said. “Bread and cheese will do.”

“Ah, there are some differences, I remember,” Hofsha said. “Jam, then. Bread and jam.”

Zezili motioned Daolyn toward the kitchen and ushered the visitors into her sunken sitting room. She couldn’t help but wince when she saw them walk across her unrolled rug. They sat on opposite ends of the divan. Monshara leaned slightly away from Hofsha, as if the foot of space between them already was not quite enough. Hofsha, for her part, leaned forward, as if ready to leap into Zezili’s lap.

“I understand that this is a difficult time for you,” Hofsha said.

Zezili raised her brows but said nothing.

Hofsha said, “I’d like you to work with Monshara to purge the dajian camps.”

“The slave camps?” Zezili said. “That’s over eight thousand dajians.”

“Indeed,” Hofsha said. “It’s a large task but necessary.”

“Necessary for what?” Zezili asked. She had expected some grand invasion – command of a dual force to overtake Tordin or Aaldia to the south.

“It’s necessary,” Hofsha repeated. “That’s all you need know.” The smile was ever-present. “Monshara has… much experience with this type of assignment. I hope you can come to an agreement and work well together. I know our government and your own Empress have great hopes for the success of this campaign.”

“And who is your government, exactly?” Zezili asked.

“All in good time,” Hofsha said. “Can you complete this task?”

“I know how to kill dajians,” Zezili said. “If your friend here can help, it’s another pair of hands. That’s something.”

Monshara was not looking at either of them but at something above and behind Zezili. Zezili glanced back; the woman was staring at the gilded mirror above the hearth. It was a tarnished silver mirror with a bit of greenish color in the frame, as wide as Zezili was tall.

“You make mirrors?” Monshara asked.

“What? No,” Zezili said. “I buy them.”

“Not that one, I think.”

“It was a hobby of my mother’s. Not mine.”

“But you have her blood.”

“I have a lot of things my mother doesn’t approve of.”

“But she taught you this skill? How to build mirrors and infuse them with the power of the stars?” Monshara asked.

“What has that got to do with anything?”

Hofsha’s smile had vanished. She, too, was staring at Zezili with genuine interest now. “You know how to work mirrors?” Hofsha asked.

Zezili shrugged. “It was a long time ago. Before I took up fighting. I made a few in my youth. Not well. They are worthless like this, though. I can’t channel any of Rhea’s daughters, the satellites, so you can’t see some foreign place through them or see yourself better than you are. They’re just dead things. Not of much use for military operations.”

Hofsha and Monshara exchanged a look. It was brief. Not friendly. But knowing.

“If you were gifted, you could,” Hofsha said.

“What a stupid thing to say,” Zezili said. “I don’t like senseless chatter. I thought we had a much larger campaign planned, so my second, Syre Jasoi, is on her way to assist in discussion of strategy.”

“We’ve already settled on strategy,” Monshara said.

Hofsha said, “You’re to act as Monshara’s second in this matter. She has created a plan for dissolving the camps. I trust you will obey her in all things.”

“You trust I… what? You’re foreigners. You know nothing of this place or its people.”

Hofsha stood and clapped her hands loudly. “Good! That’s settled.”

Daolyn arrived with the tea. She hesitated in the doorway.

“Thank you,” Hofsha said, “I have other matters to attend. I expect you’ll both get on well.”

“I need to discuss this with the Empress–” Zezili said.

“You’re welcome to it,” Hofsha said. “Until then, Monshara, I expect you’ll handle this all admirably, as our sovereign would expect.”

Monshara just looked at her. Zezili found she could not read the expression at all. Annoyance? Anger?

Daolyn set the tea on the low table and escorted Hofsha out.

Zezili let the silence stretch between her and Monshara. Monshara gazed at the mirror again.

“Your force is five thousand?” Monshara asked.

“Give or take. We have a few out with blue fever this time of year.”

“Well, we won’t need that many.” Monshara pushed the tea tray aside. She pulled a leather case from her shoulder. Removed a map. She pinned the map to the table with the empty cups. It was a map of Dorinah, with each of the dajian camps marked in red.

“My people have refrained from alerting the camp officials of our intent, of course,” Monshara said. “With a campaign like this, rumor will travel quickly. That’s why I chose the camp here, in Saolyndara, first. It’s the largest.”

“Has the Empress addressed what will happen to our labor here, with the dajians dead?” Zezili asked. “This seems like a very dramatic move, without precedent.”

“It’s of no consequence,” Monshara said.

“Without dajians to–”

“It was my understanding that you had a head for killing, not governing,” Monshara said. “If your people can’t handle this–”

“My people know how to put down a dajian,” Zezili said. “I just want it known that I’m not wasting time on some slippery dog chase.”

“You have such strange speech,” Monshara said. “Like an educated slave.”

Zezili rankled. “You’re one to talk of slavery, riding about at the call of some Dhai.”

Monshara’s expression hardened.

“Syre Zezili?” Daolyn called. “There is an issue with your husband, Syre.”

“Tell him to wait.”

“I apologize deeply, Syre. But it is quite urgent.”

Zezili sighed. “If you’ll excuse me.”

Monshara stood as she exited.

Zezili took Daolyn by the arm as soon as they entered the courtyard. “What’s this? You know how important this is?”

“I’m sorry, Syre,” Daolyn said. “But your husband has… done something.”

“Done something?”

Daolyn gestured across the yard, to the door leading into Anavha’s chambers. Zezili went there. The door yawned open at her touch. She came up short.

At the center of the room, Anavha’s double bed had been neatly sliced in two. The front half remained, canted forward now on just two legs. The rest was… gone. Zezili saw a scorched mark in the floor at the front of it, roughly circular. Beside it, Anavha sat back on his heels, clutching himself. He was barely clothed. Zezili saw blood on his hands, and a knife next to him.

Anger and terror seized her. She went to him. Took him by the arms. Shook him. “Are you hurt?” she asked.

His face was slack, smeared in tears and clumps of gold makeup. She saw three neat cuts on the inside of his bare thigh. The new wounds stood out in stark contrast to the older scars running parallel to them, some just a week old.

Her grip loosened. His self-harm was an unfortunate habit but not life-threatening. She suspected he did it to get attention.

“What happened?” she asked.

She slapped him lightly. He began to cry.

“What happened?” she asked. Softer, now.

The ruin of his tear-smeared face, lacking the artifice of the perfect makeup, made him look much younger. In that moment, she was reminded that he was little more than a child.