The Very Best of Kate Elliott (13 page)

Thus they came after two more days travel to the turning for West Hall and Woodpasture. Anna herself led the king’s sister and Captain Bellwin and a few stout soldiers past the outer pastures of West Hall and down the overgrown trail to Witch’s Hill and the Dead Man’s Oak. The clearing lay quiet in the midday sun.

Now, after all this, the secret nest which she had cherished all these years would be betrayed, but it was in a good cause, surely. She hoped the old woman would forgive her the trespass.

Off her horse the king’s sister strode along as well as any of the men as they pushed on into the forest. When they approached the rocky tumble and its dense watershed of thick rose-tree, Anna whistled the bird song she and Uwe had set for a signal.

There Uwe came, one moment hidden and the next appearing as out of nowhere, startling the captain so badly that the man drew his sword.

“He is a friend, the general’s guardian,” Anna said, anxious as Uwe shrank away, for the fear in his face might be fear of reprisal. Yet if the general were dead, why would Uwe still be here?

“Lives he still?” she asked.

“He lives,” said Uwe.

She showed them the way in and allowed them their reunion in private, for it was what she would have wished, were it her own self.

They gave her coin, as such folk did, and although she and her family had never had much coin before, she was glad of it, for her brother Joen could use it to expand his rope-making and Mari had long wished for a new loom, her being clever with her hands and mind in that way, and now they could pay the carpenter to make one.

The general himself thanked her.

“I have thought much about our conversation,” he said to her.“I cannot return your husband to you. Not even the gods can do that. But I have a thought that there is something else I can give you that may repay the debt I owe you.”

Then they were gone.

After this the people of Woodpasture came out of the caves where they had hidden and life went on with the late season slaughtering and all the many chores that needed doing to get ready for winter. Mari had her baby, a healthy little girl, and they made a feast for the mother and child.

Over the next few weeks peddlers came through the village on their last pass through the area, selling needles, delicate thread much finer than what the village women spun for themselves, lamps, knives, and wool and linen cloth from Cloth Market, everything necessary for the kind of work women could do across the long closed-in days of winter. The traveling men had stories, too; stories made peddlers more friends than the goods they had to sell.

General Olivar, the hero of the country, had been treacherously attacked by the northern traitor, Lord Hargrim. Although wounded, the general had escaped by swimming down the river and had been rescued by his loyal captain Bellwin. The king had exiled Lord Hargrim for disturbing the king’s peace and sent the Forlangers back home to the north.

It was a good story. Everyone told it over and over again.

One night a scratching on the door woke Anna out of a sound sleep. She checked to make sure the children still slumbered, then swung her feet to the floor and lit the fine oil lamp she had purchased. The shutter was closed against the cold but the lamp’s warm light lit her steps to the door.

“Who is there?” she whispered.

“It is me, your friend Uwe,” said Uwe.

She set down the bar and opened the door. A full moon spilled its light over the porch. Uwe had on his familiar and well-worn wool cloak and a new sheepskin hat pulled down over his ears. The frosty chill made his cheeks gleam.

“Can you come?” he asked, his forehead knit in a frown and his lips paled by cold.

It was such an odd request that she merely nodded and dressed in silence, waking no one. They walked the forest track, their path lit by the splendid lamp of the moon. An early snow had come and gone, leaving the northern lee of trees spotted with patches of white. Branches glittered, as beautiful as any painting on a wall. Dry leaves crackled under their feet, and in the distance an owl hooted.

She soon knew where they were going. When they came to the clearing, she saw that a man was hanging from the tree, naked, cold, and dead. It was Lord Hargrim. No sign of battle marred his skin, no wounds, no bruising, no broken bones. He was just dead, except for the crude mark of a swan carved on his back.

Uwe stamped his feet against the chill. Shadows tangled across the grass. Anna rested her hand on her round belly.

“Well, then, there comes an end to him,” she said. “They’ll make a good story of it. Now we have hope of peace.”

She turned and, less cold than she had been before, set back for home.

T
HE
Q
UEEN'S
G
ARDEN

PLEASE SIT DOWN, the youngest girls in front and the older on the pillows behind. Close the doors so no one is distracted by the blooms and by the sunbirds and peacocks in the garden. The only blooms I want to admire are your attentive faces. Now that I have lit the incense and we have said the prayers to our divine ancestress, I can begin.

Listen carefully to what I am about to tell you.

On the day their father the king Karanadayara gravely insulted the envoys of a powerful emperor, his daughters Princess An and Princess Yara awoke from their complacency. In the years since their mother’s death they had allowed his affection to lull them into thinking all would go forward as it always had down the generations since the first queen, the Lady Rhinoceros, had established her sacred presence in the queen’s garden.

An and Yara sat on pillows on the balcony that had been built for their mother, Queen Karan, in the king’s palace. The sisters were twins who shared everything equally except that they were entirely different in stature and disposition. An had a cleft in her chin and the ability to listen to what was not being said. Yara was small of frame and she kept her hair cut short so it would not ever fall in her eyes when she most needed to see.

Through an elaborately carved teak panel they watched the proceedings in the king’s audience hall. Elevated upon a dais, the king their father sat on a gold brocade couch embroidered with male peacocks parading in brilliant sprays of blue-green feathers while drab peahens lingered half hidden along the backs.

“Goodness!” Yara exclaimed as she studied the startling scene unfolding below.“I knew our father could be volatile but even I did not expect him to act so provocatively.”

An squinted, for her eyesight was as poor as her hearing was keen. “When an emperor sends envoys to demand tribute from a king who is not already his vassal, he is expecting either to receive submission or to create a pretext for war.”

The three envoys knelt, arms held behind their backs by the king’s soldiers. Blood spattered their silk robes. Their cries wove through the golden pillars that lined the hall. The fleshy knobs of two severed noses had come to rest on the marble floor; the third man’s nose hung by a strip of skin. The captain of the guard calmly placed the three severed ears into a linen pouch. Threads of blood seeped through the cloth as he handed them to the king’s sorcerers.

The king’s herald spoke on the king’s behalf. “Let it be known to the Emperor of Saro that His Excellency Karanadayara is master of the kingdom of Karan. Your master’s impolite demand that our holy majesty bend his knee to a foreign king and pay him a vassal’s tribute can only be met with refusal. Being merciful, the king has left you each your tongues with which to carry these words back to your master, and each one ear to hear what answer your master may give you for the trouble you took to come here.”

The groaning envoys were dragged out, the one man’s severed nose still flopping against his cheek. Two royal custodians hurried forward to clean up the blood with its offending tang. Incense was lit. The royal pig-keeper took away the noses for they were of little use to the sorcerers, not like the ears which could be tuned so the king could listen in on all conversations the envoys heard.

The teak panels with their carvings of vines screened the sisters’ sacred power away from the sight of foreign men. It also allowed the sisters to observe the king’s clenched expression and fisted hands without him knowing they were watching.

“He has become too full of himself.” Fine lines wrinkled An’s delicate brow as she frowned. “Ever since Mother’s death he has forgotten to rule wisely as our regent and instead rules pridefully. We should have seen it before it came to this.”

“But he is right to refuse to pay tribute!” objected Yara.

“Not so loud. That may be, but we cannot defeat the Empire of Saro in open war. There are quieter ways to deflect the empire’s interest. When the envoys return home, the emperor is required to avenge the insult or he will look weak to his own court. This will be the excuse he desires.”

Yara fidgeting and An pensive, the sisters watched their father gesture for the next supplicant to come forward. The king’s color was heightened and his back straight with energy and tension, or so Yara described him to An. The mutilation had put him in a good mood, and with a generous smile he welcomed each new group of visitors come to pay their respects.

A consortium of merchants sought royal permission to open up an exchange with the port of Emerald Island and they had brought the fifth son of the Emerald Prince to assist them in negotiations together with a substantial offering for the temple. A prince from the upland province of Golden Hill had sent his third son to be admitted to the royal guards. Envoys from the Ruby Baron, the king’s distant cousin and former rival for their mother’s preference in marriage, brought bolts of lambent silk and waterfalls of jewellery wrought of gold and gems to remind their father that the king had daughters of an age to be married and the baron had sons of an age to marry them.

Pearls hung from the bottom of the curtain that separated the balcony from the corridor. They clacked softly as Lady Norenna, supervisor of the court kitchens, swept the outer curtain aside and entered the balcony, a privilege she had earned through years of tireless service. She sat on her heels on the far side of the inner curtain whose translucent silk did not hide the towering beaded headdress she wore as a mark of her importance in the royal household.

“Your graces,” she said. “What of the matter of the banquet we have prepared for the envoys of the Emperor of Saro?”

“Let the food be distributed at the hospital,” said An. “Princess Yara and I will dine in private with the king our father.”

“But with less variety than the pigs savor today,” said Yara.

Lady Norenna coughed once, hand covering her smile, but when she lowered her hand her expression turned somber.“There will be trouble in the provinces when the princes and barons and lords hear the king has insulted an emperor. Saro will now send a fleet to castigate the man responsible for such disrespect. The sword will fall on everyone in the kingdom not just on one man’s pride.”

“This has occurred to us as well.” An touched a finger to her own lips. “Have you some recommendation?”

“Go to the palace of the ancestors and pray to the Lady Rhinoceros for guidance, and to your mother and grandmother who still have wisdom to impart. But if I may, let me be given permission to recover the noses from the pig-keepers.”

Yara raised an eyebrow to show interest but Lady Norenna offered no further morsel.

An slipped an oblong gold bead stamped with the royal horn of the ancestress from one of her braids and handed it over to the lady. “Do what you believe to be prudent. We will call you when we need you.”

Lady Norenna withdrew. With her went the scent of musk and flowers she wore dusted into her ornately knotted clothing.

Yara sneezed,sniffed, and wiped her eyes.“We could invite the invaders to a banquet and poison them,” she said with a hopeful lift of her eyebrows.

“Poison leaves a tainted trail. We must find a path that avoids war before it is too late to turn the conflict aside.”

Below, the king departed with his guards and custodians and sorcerers. Afterward the courtiers, supplicants, and visitors lined up in a complicated pattern according to ancestral rank to take their leave through the far doors. Yara had leisure to study their faces and describe them in detail to An, since no man could turn his back on the king’s couch even if the king was not seated in it.

There were tall men and short men, stocky men and slender men, men wearing the long wrapped skirts and embroidered jackets of the Fire Islands and men garbed in the flamboyant robes or sober tunics of far-off lands. The prince’s son from the Emerald Islands had a pleasing face and a ready smile, Yara said, which An pronounced suspicious. The prince’s son from Golden Hill wore the somber expression and neat garments appropriate to a warrior, which An thought proper but perhaps meant the man was hiding something. Among the envoys from the Ruby Baron stood a young man remarkable for the scar on his neck, the embroidered sunbird on his tunic, and the turquoise stone embedded in the socket of his right eye. This meant, An said, that he was worth watching for a hint of his true purpose at court.