Gods of Nabban (39 page)

“Yes.”

“Madness. But three of us took a castle, so . . . I will give you Dernang, if you will.”

“Yes.”

“But I think they will need to see something they can believe in, even Ti-So'aro's kin. They will need more than a rumour and a tale.”

“Make do with that for now. I'll come back. I will. If I do not—do what you must.” Better Yeh-Lin than . . . what?

“And will both of you be coming back?”

He said nothing.

“Ah, Nabban. Better he had gone to the Old Great Gods when I put his goddess into the ground.”

“No.” Ahjvar had been better in the desert. That was worth this pain now. To have known him so. Worth it even for Ahj, to have been, for a little while, free again? Or was it sin and selfish greed that tried to believe so?

Yeh-Lin eyed him and let that go. “So what am I to tell the Kho'anzi? What do I tell the banner-ranked and the soldiers and the slaves who have seen you and been stricken with hope of their gods, who have offered their lives now, for hope of the gods?”

“That they must pray the Father sends me back,” he snapped. “I don't know, I don't know. I go where I must; I didn't plan to come
here
yet.”

“And yet you have, and they have put all their lives in your hands. They will die, all of them, and terribly, if this castle comes again under those who serve the empress. Do you know how they execute traitors in this land now?”

“I know!” He heard his voice crack, almost a shout.

Ahjvar surged to his feet and put himself between them, not as a friend between quarrelling friends but silent and fluid as a cat, focused on that one dangerous thing, which was Yeh-Lin. Not truly awake and not even recognizing her, Ghu thought. Sword in his hand. Yeh-Lin's eyes narrowed. She stepped back, very carefully, bowed, hands together, as Ghu put his hands over Ahjvar's on the sword.

“I am afraid for you, my lord,” Yeh-Lin said. “Are you sure you know what you are doing? Don't let what you feel for this place drive you to—something ill considered.”

She saw too clearly.

“I never know what I'm doing,” he said. “Just what I must do. Ahj, it's all right.”

“If you will go, must it be now? The oath-taking and the prayers—they are gathering already on the great terrace.”

“Yes.” Or there would be more questions, and more, and more people standing between him and his leaving, more needs between him and the mountain.

“As you are?”

“Food,” he said. “Tea.”
Horses.
No, not with enemies sitting before the gates.

“Your
gewdeyn
—” Yeh-Lin used the Praitannec word for a spear-carrier, an armed follower who went at a lord's shoulder and should be friend and counsellor as much as armed retainer. Better than the Nabbani word for a bodyguard, who might be free, but was more often a slave. “Your
gewdeyn
still looks a ragged madman. What happened to his coat?”

“What do you think?” Ahjvar growled. “Probably with my bow.” He frowned. “Where are we going?”

“To the mountain.”

“Crossbow,” said Yeh-Lin. “Do you want one?”

“I don't know. Yes.”

Ghu did not contradict him.

She let go a long breath. “I have set a guard on the postern door, since it had neither lock nor latch and I have not had time to find the smith. I will take you over the moat myself. At least folly won't extend to leaving that punt on the other side. And you, dead king, should wash. There is blood in your beard. I've told them the holy one's man is a king of Praitan who left his land to serve the heir of the gods of Nabban. Even if you cannot find any respect for yourself, for your young god's honour in the eyes of his folk, make some effort to look—less mad. Give me a little time, then meet me there.” She turned on her heel and stalked off.

“Angry,” Ahjvar said. “What was that about?”

“We're going up the mountain to the place of the gods, you and I. She wants me here.”

“Need to take the town.”

“Others can do that. Come.”

The folk they met on their way bowed and murmured a greeting and went on with whatever they were about. Ghu shed no light, looked only a small and ragged and weary vagrant, but perhaps that was not what the eyes of the newly faith-filled saw. Ahjvar, who had rubbed dried blood off his face on his shirt-sleeve and found a cut beneath it, did not understand such awe, and mistrusted it. Dotemon Dreamshaper. But Ghu seemed to find it . . . his due, and yet accepted it in all humility. Ghu would not let the devil spin lies for him. He would know if she did. Surely.

Ahjvar had never heard Ghu raise his voice in anger before. Never known him angry, he thought, till they came to this place. The anger in that raised voice, he had not dreamed.

Jui and Jiot slunk close at Ghu's heels.

Yuro the stable-master—castellan, now, and bastard son of the high lord, was he? He waited in the dark tunnel to the postern gate and the landing stage. No guards.

“Leaving?” he asked, standing arms folded in the open door. The twilight beyond made him a faceless silhouette. Fog was smoking off the water again. The flood had risen, lapping over the landing stage.

“The mountain and Swajui,” Ghu said.

The stable-master waited, and Ghu stood between them. Ahjvar would have to push Ghu aside to heave Yuro out of the way.

“I will come back, the gods willing. They—I need to be there. I only came here first for Daro Korat.”

“You're like a child throwing a pebble. No idea where the waves are going to wash up.”

“No.”

“You will come back. You swear, you will come back, and not leave us to die here betrayed by our gods.”

“The gods willing, yes.”

“And if they're not?”

“Then—look to Lady Lin. There is something lairing in the empire's heart. The Old Great Gods do not send messengers seeking the worship of living folk and the empress is no goddess. Whatever can stand against that lie, must. But I will come back.”

Ahjvar thought the man frowned, maybe. Certainly he shifted his weight, turned to look over his shoulder, out to the moat, and back.

“Prophecy, boy?”

No answer.

Yuro snorted. “Long walk up the mountain and you should come back swift as you can. I sent mares up to the thorn-flower pasture early. Chago's in charge there. If you get so far without getting yourself killed, tell him I said, give you the horses you want.”

“Mares in foal, Yuro?”

“Maybe a few others. They sent Sia's warhorse back, before the town fell. Before Sia died, he sent him back. Knew he wasn't going to be riding out of there. Proving to his folk he wasn't going to flee at the last, maybe. I didn't figure the white needed to be sent off as a prize for the empress, so I made sure he wasn't here when Zhung Musan took the place. Tell Chago, give you whatever horses you want, even that one. Knock him down if he argues.”

Ghu laughed, a strange, bright sound in that place.

“Yes,” he said. “Good.”

And Yuro stood aside out of their way.

Ghu turned back, though, in the doorway. “He always was mine, you know,” he said.

“Holy one.” The man bowed. “I'll look to see you riding back.”

Yeh-Lin sat in the stern of the punt, bundles at her feet, which were their own packs, left in the orchard. Full quiver, heavy stirrup bow, not the one Ahjvar had carried.

“Food,” she said softly, prodding one pack with a toe. “Tea, a bow, and dead king, put this on.” She twitched the folded Praitannec blanket from her own shoulder, flung it in a swirl of blue and greens over his back. “Here.” A pin to hold it, a simple thing, but heavy, twisted red gold like a tongue of flame. And then her scarf as well, green and grey and russet wound about his throat. “From Deyandara. There's not a man in this castle with your height to borrow a coat from. It will be cold before morning. Cold to call the fog out of the river. Frost in the hills.”

She sculled them across the moat ably enough. He could believe her some peasant woman, except for the sword at her shoulder. Impossible to see where the moat ended and the flooded fields began, and the fog was already thickening so that the castle loomed a strange and topless mountain, but she turned the punt and Ghu steadied it with a hand under the water, braced against unseen ground, and with boots tied to their packs and trousers rolled they disembarked. Even the dogs slunk, contriving not to splash. A distant horse whinnied.

In this fog, a sortie from the gates might be chanced, but what then? Yeh-Lin's business. Ahjvar hoped they would not return to find all Choa under her hand, and Dotemon Dreamshaper halfway to making herself empress again. Though she had never hanged children.

“Nabban . . .”

Ghu, already gazing away to the north as if he saw through fog and twilight to the mountain's height, turned back.

Yeh-Lin held out a hand and he gave her his. She raised and kissed it. “My lord. Go safely to your gods. Come back safely to your folk. And you, dead king . . .”

He kept out of reach.

She only shook her head, pushed the boat away.

CHAPTER XXII

The White River Dragon and Dernang were joined like two bubbles on the surface of a river, clinging but separate, with castle wall and broad moat and town wall between the castle's west and the town's northeastern gate. Or like a double-yolked egg, Yeh-Lin thought, and grinned at the homely image. Eggs boiled in the tea. So long since she'd handled an oar . . . strange, the memories a few simple actions brought back. What would that girl have made of young Nabban and his soul-wounded shadow? What of this woman who wore her face and her name? Suspicion and calculation in equal parts for the latter, she suspected. No sense of humour, that girl. She rather preferred the old woman.

And her young god wanted Dernang. No fool, whatever fools might think. Dernang, and the army encamped in the horsefair, and all Choa, three strides to take to a place they could stand in strength . . . for a little. It had taken only the three of them to seize the castle. Well, three, and the gods' own hands laid on their young heir. And they left her to him? Perhaps they also had developed a sense of humour, which was to say, perspective. Some might think there were worse things to have loose in your land than a tame devil. She laughed, looking down from this balcony under the highest gable of the many-gabled keep.

Grey light, the harbinger of dawn, and the moon a broken coin, high, hazy behind thin and drizzling cloud. From here she could see into the town, almost a bird's view. Still sleeping, the bell to end the night's curfew not yet rung, but the army's camp in the old horsefair was astir and there was a busy back-and-forth down several of the larger streets. Officers and officials of Zhung Musan's following had taken over a street of grand merchants' houses and guildhalls for their headquarters, Ti-So'aro said, before the castle fell; many had been left there when the general shifted his headquarters to the keep, to ensure the town still felt his boot on its neck. The market square by the northern gate was empty yet, save for bodies on the gallows—nice to thing to hang over your vendors of vegetables—and a flock of crows busy at them. Fresher meat than the foul display they had passed beneath on the road in the night. The squat gatehouse of the north and the ruin of the south, the gate there roughly barricaded to a single cart's-width with rubble, and the small tower that watched the gate of the castle's bridge, all flew the imperial banners, deep purple-red and gold, with the Zhung characters black on white in a centre roundel to show which clan here represented the imperial will. The imperial banners—Zhung, not Daro—still hung from this keep as well, and from their gatehouses. She did not suppose that Zhung Musan's deputy believed the story of an outbreak of disease, despite the banners' proclamation of continued Zhung supremacy, but his failure to take any decisive action in the night was encouraging.

If his hesitation continued, though . . . she had not the forces to storm the town, whatever the Kho'anzi and his officers hoped, nor yet to besiege it, and she did not think that to come upon this lieutenant to the general, this Lord Hani Gahur, with lightning and storm, to blast down his walls and scatter his army in terror and death, was quite what her young god had in mind, when he said, “Do what I would have you do.” Ill-advised to destroy the town's defences, which he might yet have need of. And these were Nabban's folk, all of them; she rather thought he was going to need them, too, living souls and his.

What did peasant conscripts know of emperors, of gods in this land where few had ever seen or spoken with their gods? They saw only their sergeants and officers and the banners carried ahead of them, knew only what they were told, repeated it without understanding. Uneducated, unthinking beyond the day to day—whatever they might have been had they had other lives and other education, they were sheep now. They would bunch and mill and hesitate, and go, when they went, in a rush and as a flock. She need only drive them where she would have them go; it was those over them that she must win, or destroy and replace.

Down there beyond the moat the rumour was spreading, if Ti-So'aro and Nang Kangju and the rest who had been ferried over the moat in the punt, two by two, to slip away to the camp at the north gate or the town's hopefully welcoming and vulnerable southern entrance had found the willing ears they expected.
The heir of the gods
 . . . a whisper and a hope. Seeds, so that when—what followed—followed, there would already be rooted among the under-officers, the banner-ranked and their personal troops, and among small islands of the conscripts, too, the shoots of new faith, a will to a new Nabban, ephemeral though such shallowly planted notions might be, to grow and spread until by sheer mass they proved too firmly fixed for eradication. Or at least, the whispers might be a spur to turn suspicion of the empress, whose general had murdered priests, to mutiny.