Battle Magic (5 page)

“She’s a stitch witch,” Evvy said cheerfully. She never tired of the story. She spent so much of her time feeling stupid around Briar that it was very comforting to know he could be stupid, too.

“She is more than a stitch witch,” Rosethorn corrected. “She is a thread mage. He borrowed the needles she uses in her magic.”

“It wasn’t like she has one set for sewing and one for magic,” Briar protested. “Her sewing
is
her magic.
Anyway
,” he told Parahan, after glaring at Rosethorn, “it should have worked. Only the flowers I put on my hands weren’t just pictures after all.”

“They grow,” Evvy explained. “They bloom and move around and die and grow some more. And they’re growing up along his arms. I think it’s
splendid
.”

“Hmm,” Parahan said. “May I?”

Briar let the man turn his hands over and inspect them. Parahan saw deep pockmarks in Briar’s palms, reminders of a determined thorny vine that had not wanted to release the boy when he was younger. The man noted that the flowers and leaves grew under Briar’s fingernails. When he lifted Briar’s hand to let the silk robes slide back, he even saw that the colorful plants continued up the young man’s arms, moving and opening leaves or new blossoms and sending out new stems as he watched.

Finally he said cautiously, “I find it very interesting that a young fellow would want to put flowers on his hands. Might you have been trying to cover over something, oh, between your thumb and forefinger, perhaps?”

Evvy covered her giggles with both hands. This friendly stranger had guessed Briar’s secret. Before he had been a mage, Briar was a thief and jailbird, with two arrests to his discredit — and two jailhouse X tattoos, one on the web between the thumb and forefinger of each hand. He’d been arrested a third time, about to go to hard labor for life, when a mage had seen the magic in Briar and brought him to Rosethorn.

Briar glanced at the throne and its occupant. Neither the emperor nor his immediate court was within earshot. “I’m reformed, practically,” Briar said quietly, his voice very dry. “And I do so much more damage as a
nanshur
than I did as a thief.”

Parahan released him with a sigh. “I am only envious,” he confessed. “Had I been a mage of your skills, instead of a spoiled warrior prince, I might have stopped my uncle from selling me to the emperor. You
were
wondering about my attire.” He shook his wrists, making his chains jingle.

This interested Rosethorn. “Your
uncle
sold you?”

Parahan grinned, displaying strong white teeth. “You should pity him. I know he would much rather have killed me so he would be sure to inherit my father’s throne someday. Sadly my uncle did not dare to do so.” Parahan looked out over the field. The horsemen were forming in brigades to either side of the great field. “In Kombanpur — where I come from, one of the Realms of the Sun — it is very bad luck to kill a twin. I have the good fortune to be one such, with my sister Soudamini. Actually I am not certain if my uncle believes in bad luck in general, or if he simply knows what would happen if Souda learned I was dead by his hand.” He winked one large brown eye at Evvy. “I’m the easygoing one. Souda is the battle cat.”

Anything else they might have discussed was drowned out as musicians came forward to strike drums, blow horns, and hammer large gongs. The explosions stopped; those who had set them off cleared away. In the distance Evvy could see a line of color. Slowly it grew larger and larger still, until she realized that she was looking at line after line of armored soldiers, flanked by officers and flag bearers. After them came teams of camels pulling catapults and companies of archers.

Spaced between companies of foot soldiers, archers, and the teams that worked with each catapult and its ammunition were men and women on horseback. Many of them wore the long black silk robe and cap of a
nanshur
. Evvy did not need the wardrobe to identify the role played by the new arrivals. To her ambient magic, the power of these people blazed from around their necks and wrists. They had to be wearing some kind of spell-worked stones as jewelry. If they embroidered occult signs or threaded
their stones on cotton or linen, they would be just as obvious to Rosethorn and Briar.

None of them spoke as the army marched, and marched, and marched, its members coming all the way up to the foot of the imperial pavilion. When at last the drums, gongs, and horns fell silent and there was no more movement on the ground, the army stretched as far as Evvy could see. Her skin was crawling with goose bumps. She had never seen such a large force in her life.

The officers yelled something, and the warriors shouted in
tiyon
. Three times they repeated it, making Evvy’s ears ring. It took her a moment to realize they had cried out, “Long live the emperor!”

When they stopped, the emperor left his throne and walked down to the foot of the dais, where those soldiers who were fairly close could see him. Two black-clad mages moved forward to stand each at one of his elbows. Then he raised his hands and began to speak.

Stones at the mages’ necks blazed. The emperor’s voice rolled across the field like thunder. He praised their strength; he praised their obedience to him and to the gods of Gyongxe. He promised his warriors battles and honor and tales to tell their grandchildren. Last of all he cried, “Death to the enemies of Yanjing!”

All of the people who stood before him — even the riders had dismounted by then — dropped to their hands and knees. Nine times in utter silence they touched their foreheads to the ground. The last time they remained in that position.

“I am really starting to hate that ceremony,” Briar muttered softly in Imperial.

The emperor and his mages walked away around the far side of the dais. Other mages and nobles streamed off the dais after him.

“Are we supposed to follow?” Rosethorn asked Parahan.

“I have been placed in charge of escorting you to the Hall of Imperial Greetings,” the big man explained. “We’re waiting for the crowd to ease. Then we can go.”

“Why didn’t he greet us here?” Evvy wanted to know.

“I would imagine because he wanted you to admire one of his armies,” Parahan replied blandly. “He likes to show them off to visitors.”

For a long moment no one said anything at all. Evvy was wondering if she was the only one left breathless by Parahan’s words when Rosethorn said, “This is just
one
of his armies?”

“Oh, yes,” Parahan said quietly. “Specifically it is the one for Center Yanjing. I have also seen the armies for North Yanjing and South Yanjing. South is much larger. I am told North was much larger, before he decided to fight three of his neighbors at once.”

“Why does he show you all his armies?” Briar asked.

Parahan shook his head. “Oh, it’s nothing to do with me. He likes to show them off to everyone. He reminds his friends that he is a dread enemy, and he gets word to his enemies that it would be better if they surrendered.”

“And his guests?” Rosethorn asked. “Our home in Emelan is neither friend nor enemy. Why show them to us?”

Parahan replied, “So you will tell those you meet what you have seen.”

T
HE
H
ALL OF
I
MPERIAL
G
REETINGS
T
HE
W
INTER
P
ALACE
D
OHAN IN
Y
ANJING

They were not presented immediately. Parahan escorted them to their guest pavilion, where a Yanjingyi meal waited for them. Before they could eat, however, the maids who waited on them removed what Briar had mockingly called their “army-viewing clothes.” These were replaced with loose robes so they could eat without fear of spoiling any silks or linens.

Rosethorn wasn’t sure what made her happier, the cooler garments or the food. She had been afraid she would have to face the official presentation with no more in her belly than coconut water. Now, as she settled on crossed legs before the low table, she realized that Parahan meant to stand back with the dining room servants. “Join us, please,” she said. “I won’t be able to touch a bite if you loom over us.”

The servants twittered, shocked that their guests would ask a captive to eat with them but once Rosethorn caught their eyes, they fell silent. Parahan didn’t need to be invited twice. Immediately
he sat on his heels next to Briar and helped himself to pulse-bean soup, roast goose, cherries preserved in honey, and baked lamb. Rosethorn had only taken a few mouthfuls before she noticed that the servants were all too willing to give Evvy rolled fried cakes, sugared jujube berries, and numerous other sweets while they ignored Parahan.

If the emperor’s people were going to insist on serving his guests, as they had done since the newcomers’ arrival from Gyongxe, Rosethorn decided she might as well take advantage of it. She looked at the servants and raised a single eyebrow. They were so well trained that they froze instantly. Once she had their attention, she looked at Parahan — since he had not been supplied with eating sticks, he was using his fingers — then looked at the servants again. Immediately one of them brought a finger bowl so the big man could wash his hands. Another placed a fresh pair of eating sticks in a proper stone holder before him. A third maid waited for him to indicate his choices for a second helping. Parahan blinked up at her, then began to point. Satisfied, Rosethorn whisked three small dishes of sweets away from Evvy and showed her own server that Evvy could have twice-cooked fish, water-reed shoots, and sliced turnips in sauce. If she let the child eat according to her own taste, Evvy’s teeth would rot out, mage or no. Evvy glared at her new meal, her lower lip thrust out. Rosethorn ignored her. The girl would eat, or not.

Briar at least was minding his manners and pointing out his choices to the maids. They had almost started an incident on their arrival when Rosethorn had tried to insist that they would serve themselves. It had taken the august Mistress of the Guest Pavilions herself to explain that things were done in a certain way
when one was a guest of the emperor, and to do them any other way was to get one’s servants’ heads cut off. After that Rosethorn had ground her teeth and borne it. As a dedicate, she was far more accustomed to being the servant, or at the very least, to doing her part of the chores. Being waited on itched in all of the places where her vows had become part of her.

With Parahan and Evvy properly attended to, she picked at her own roast goose. Her appetite had shrunk since their arrival at the Winter Palace. So many things here had a deadly result for the servants, not the guests. She couldn’t even go for a walk in the gardens. Seeing the gardens would have soothed her, but the servants were supposed to keep her from doing so until she, Briar, and Evvy had been officially presented to Emperor Weishu. How many ceremonies would they have to endure before she could see the emperor’s famed gardens? His lily ponds alone were renowned as far west as Emelan.

Parahan had gotten Evvy to talk about her magic. Not only was she chattering away but she was eating her vegetables. Briar caught Rosethorn’s eye and winked, making her smile. Bless him, too, she thought. She hadn’t thought how much she would come to depend on Briar’s support when they had set out on this very long journey. He had taken complete charge of Evvy in Gyongxe, when it was such a struggle for her to breathe. Rosethorn had tried to thank him for it once. He had only kissed her on the forehead and told her not to be silly. It made her feel both grateful and weak, and she hated to feel weak. Only the knowledge that he was her boy, and they had passed beyond what was owed to whom years ago, kept her from hating herself and him. She needed to find her strength again, but this place, with its crushing
weight of imperial authority, was starting to seem an unlikely place for her to heal.

Briar reached over with his eating sticks and plucked a slice of roast goose from her plate. The maids gasped and giggled behind their hands. Rosethorn frowned at him. “It’s bad manners to leave this wonderfully cooked food on the plate, and you’re toying with it,” Briar retorted, his mouth full. He reached with his sticks again.

This time Rosethorn snatched her plate away and began to eat. “And don’t you give yourself airs,” she warned when she had finished.

“I wouldn’t think of it,” Briar assured her. “I want to live to get home.”

The waiting-women came forward, bowing and looking anxious. Parahan rose to his feet in a single athletic movement. Rosethorn almost sighed aloud and stopped herself in time. She was no schoolgirl to moon over a handsome man, she told herself. She was just envious because the days when she did not have to first get to her knees, then straighten first one leg, then the other, in order to stand, were long over. Yes, that was it.

“These pretty ladies are telling us that they will get into trouble if they do not have you dressed and to the palanquins soon. As will I,” Parahan said. Of course he was totally unaware of Rosethorn’s interesting thoughts.

“Then let us get clothed,” Rosethorn said, rising to her feet as gracefully as she could. Once she was on them, she could not resist. She stopped, and smiled at Briar and Evvy. “Of course, I
still
only have to wear a shift and a single robe.”