Golden Daughter (5 page)

But then she spoke, and he knew she was no angel.

“Tell me, Crouching Shadow,” she said, “for what purpose you have come to Lunthea Maly.”

“I . . . I came to fulfill the assassination of Ambassador Ratnavira,” he gasped, the words like fire in his throat.

“No,” she replied, shaking her head gently. She placed a hand upon his forehead, and he cried out, for her skin was cold. “No, do not think you will fool me.” She stared deep into his eyes. For a moment, the briefest possible moment, she believed she saw something stirring in the darkness of his left pupil. A living something existing in a realm beyond mortality. A tiny, angry parasite.

She blinked. When she looked again, Kasemsan’s eyes were empty of all save his fear. She blinked once more; now even the memory of what she had glimpsed vanished from her mind, as though carefully removed by some unseen hand.

It did not matter. Princess Safiya bent over her prisoner like a tiger crouched above its still-living prey. “I saw that you lay awake as I spoke to the girl. I saw you listening,” she said. “Now tell me, my lord, and keep nothing back. What is your true purpose in Lunthea Maly? What does your order want of the Dream Walkers?”

Sairu made her way from Princess Safiya’s chambers out to the walkways of the encircling gardens. The Masayi, abode of the Golden Daughters, was an intricate complex of buildings linked by blossom-shrouded walkways, calm with fountains and clear, lotus-filled pools where herons strutted and spotted fish swam.

Here she had lived all the life she could remember.

The Masayi was but a small part of Manusbau Palace, which comprised the whole of Sairu’s existence. She had never stepped beyond the palace walls. To do so would be to pass into a world of corruption, corruption to which a Golden Daughter would not be impervious until she was safely chartered to a master and her life’s purpose was affixed in her heart and mind. Meanwhile, she must live securely embalmed in this tomb, waiting for life to begin.

Sairu’s mouth curved gently at the corners, and she took small steps as she had been trained—slow, dainty steps that disguised the swiftness with which she could move at need. Even in private she must maintain the illusion, even here within the Masayi.

A cat sat on the doorstep of the Chrysanthemum House, grooming itself in the sunlight. She stepped around it and proceeded into the red-hung halls of the Daughters’ quarters and on to her private chambers. There she must gather what few things she would take with her—fewer things even than Jen-ling would take on her journey to Aja. For Jen-ling would be the wife of a prince and must give every impression of a bride on her wedding journey.

I wonder who my master will be?
Sairu thought as she slid back the rattan door to her chamber and entered the quiet simplicity within. She removed her elaborate costume and exchanged it for a robe of plain red without embellishments. She washed the serving-girl cosmetics from her face and painted on the daily mask she and her sisters wore—white with black spots beneath each eye and a red stripe down her chin. It was elegant and effortless, and to the common eye it made her indistinguishable from her sisters.

The curtain moved behind her. Calmly she turned to see the same cat slip into her room. Cats abounded throughout Manusbau Palace, kept on purpose near the storehouses to manage the vermin. But they seldom entered private chambers.

Sairu, kneeling near her window with her paint pots around her, watched the cat as it moved silkily across the room, stepped onto her sleeping cushions, and began kneading the soft fabric, purring all the while. Its claws snagged the delicate threads. But it was a cat. As far as it was concerned, it had every right to enjoy or destroy what it willed.

At last it seemed to notice Sairu. It turned sleepy eyes to her and blinked.

Sairu smiled. In a voice as sweet as honey, she asked, “Who are you?”

The cat twitched its tail softly and went on purring.

The next moment, Sairu was across the room, her hand latched onto the cat’s scruff. She pushed it down into the cushions and held it there as it yowled and snarled, trying to catch at her with its claws.

“Who are you?” she demanded, her voice fierce this time. “
What
are you? Are you an evil spirit sent to haunt me?”

“No, dragons eat it! I mean,
rrrraww! Mreeeow! Yeeeowrl!
”

The cat twisted and managed to lash out at her with its back feet, its claws catching in the fabric of her sleeve. One claw scratched her wrist, startling her just enough that she loosened her hold. The cat took advantage of the opportunity and, hissing like a fire demon, leapt free. It sprang across the room, knocking over several of her paint pots, and spun about, back-arched and snarling. Every hair stood on end, and its ears lay flat to its skull.

Sairu drew a dagger from her sleeve and crouched, prepared for anything. The smile lingered on her mouth, but her eyes flashed. “Who sent you?” she demanded. “Why have you come to me now? You must know of my assignment.”

“
Meeeeowrl
,” the cat said stubbornly and showed its fangs in another hiss.

“I see it in your face,” Sairu said, moving carefully to shift her weight and prepare to spring. “You are no animal. Who is your master, devil?”

The cat dodged her spring easily enough, which surprised her. Sairu was quick and rarely missed a target. Her knife sank into the floor and stuck there, but she released it and whipped another from the opposite sleeve even as she whirled about.

Any self-respecting cat would have made for the window or the door. This one sprang back onto the cushions and crouched there, tail lashing. Its eyes were all too sentient, but it said only “
Meeeeow
,” as though trying to convince itself.

Sairu chewed the inside of her cheek. Then, in a soft, smooth voice, she said, “We have ways of dealing with devils in this country. Do you know what they are, demon-cat?”

The cat’s ears came up. “
Prreeowl
?” it said.

“Allow me to enlighten you.” And Sairu put her free hand to her mouth and produced a long, piercing whistle. The household erupted with the voices of a dozen and more lion dogs.

The little beasts, slipping and sliding and crashing into walls, their claws clicking and clattering on the tiles, careened down the corridor and poured into Sairu’s room. Fluffy tails wagging, pushed-in noses twitching, they roared like the lions they believed themselves to be and fell upon the cat with rapacious joy.

The cat uttered one long wail and vanished out the window. Sairu, dogs milling at her feet, leapt up and hurried to look out after it, expecting to see a tawny tail slipping from sight. But she saw nothing.

The devil was gone. For the moment at least.

Sairu sank down on her cushions, and her lap was soon filled with wriggling, snuffling hunters eager for praise. She petted them absently, but her mind was awhirl. She had heard of devils taking the form of animals and speaking with the tongues of men. But she had never before seen it. She couldn’t honestly say she’d even believed it.

“What danger is my new master in?” she wondered. “From what must I protect him?”

Ever after that fateful day, the smell of crushed ginger would fill Sunan’s memory with overwhelming sensations of shame.

He would not have guessed it at the time. But when he passed through the gates of the Center of Learning into the streets of Suthinnakor City, the first thing Sunan encountered was a street vendor plying his wares of cabbage dumplings to hungry students. The dumplings were seasoned with ginger, and the smell wafted over Sunan even as he stumbled blindly past, oblivious to the hopeful cries of the vendor. His stomach churned at the very idea of food, and he hastened on to the end of the street and there paused a moment, expecting to be sick.

It might have been wise, he realized upon reflection, to have stopped and retrieved his own clothing. Or at least his shoes. Snow fell in noncommittal gusts, just enough to dust the streets and turn to oozing mud. Sunan’s bare feet froze, so he started walking again with the faint hope of warming them. The sensation of mud churning between his toes was a welcome distraction, and he focused on the revulsion of it, shuddering and cursing at each step.

Anything was better than facing the explosion of thoughts inside his brain.

He had made no plans for a return journey, arranged no litter or conveyance. He was supposed to mount the stairs to the Middle Court and enter his new life as a Presented Scholar. He wasn’t supposed to slink back to his uncle’s house in disgrace.

His uncle, who was dead.

No, no, he wouldn’t think about that. It was nonsense anyway. Uncle Kasemsan had been far too much alive the last time Sunan saw him to possibly be dead now. It just couldn’t be. And Sunan had bigger problems to consider.

The snow dusted his shoulders with a white mantle. Though it was very light, any observer would have thought it weighed him down like lead, so heavily did he slump and droop and finally collapse again against a wall. He tried to warm his feet with his hands, rubbing the toes to make the blood move. Vaguely he was aware of the bustle in the street, the lives of thousands going on around him just as though the world hadn’t shattered. He heard merchants shouting, tradesmen arguing, babies squalling, young men calling lewd remarks to housemaids running errands. Donkeys brayed, dogs barked, geese honked, cart wheels squelched in mud, and no one cared about one barefoot young man who stood vigorously massaging his feet. As though he could massage hope back into his dreams.

In the street a beast of burden lowed deep in its belly. The sound plucked at Sunan’s ears, and he frowned, though he did not know why.

Then as he drew a breath, he inhaled a certain unforgettable smell. Just as, in the future, the scent of ginger would recall memories of this one horrible day, so this smell—one he had not encountered for the last eight years—swept over his brain like a deadly wave, destroying all in its path. It was a musty, dung-laden smell layered with a scent of broad spaces, keen winds, wildflowers, and blood. The heavy odor permeated every layer of clothing, every pore of the skin, and congealed there in an infesting funk that only years of washing in aromatic soaps might someday erase.

Only one creature in the world could produce such a stench: a Chhayan buffalo.

Sunan’s head shot up, and he stared out into the crowded street. Once more he heard the deep-bellied low, and this time he spotted the beast, nearly swallowed in the crowds of Suthinnakor. But nothing, nothing in all the known world, could swallow that smell.

Suddenly Sunan no longer stood half-frozen in the streets of a Pen-Chan city. He was on the wide plains of the Noorhitam hinterlands, his body dripping with sweat, his shirt open from throat to navel, a cloth tied about his forehead to keep more sweat from dripping into his eyes. And he rode astride a Chhayan buffalo, swatting it with a thorny stick every few paces to keep it moving, his body aching with every lurch of the great beast’s spine. Five more buffalo were yoked around him, pulling a great covered gurta, a moveable dwelling upon wheels, its walls made of buffalo hides that stank nearly as bad as the living beasts.

For that moment he was back in the life he had labored so hard these eight years to leave behind. That life which even now reached out from the past and marred him, as though he still reeked of buffalo.

The moment passed. He returned to the cold city. The beast moved on its way, leaving its smell in its wake, its protesting bellows echoing. Chhayan buffalo never approved of cramped cities, used as they were to the open hinterlands.

Sunan stood, one foot still clutched in his hands, scarcely daring to breathe. Then he cursed, “Anwar’s elbow!” and started running.

Chhayans rarely if ever came this far north. They were far too busy wreaking havoc upon their conquerors down south. Not since Sunan’s father led a raid into Nua-Pratut and stole Sunan’s mother away as a victory bride some twenty-five years ago had Chhayans bothered with any of the small northern kingdoms.

So Sunan knew, even before he turned at last up the incline leading to his uncle’s city home, what he would find when he reached it. He knew, even before he entered the heavy wooden gates, what he would see in the courtyard of his uncle’s house, standing there in all the audacity of its existence, stinking up this fine site as though it hadn’t a care in the world.

Sure enough, there stood the same Chhayan buffalo harnessed to a miniature of the very gurta in which Sunan had spent his boyhood years. Its side was even emblazoned with the same brilliant tiger in orange and black pigments.

“No,” Sunan whispered. “No, no, no. Not today. Not now.”

But the flap on the back of the gurta flew open, and a face, familiar even though it had aged from boyhood to manhood, gazed out at Sunan and burst into a wide grin.

“Sunan! I’ve come at last!”

And, just as Sunan knew must happen, out leaped his half-brother. Eight years ago, Jovann had been a scrawny lad, all bone and sinew and that same enormous grin. Now a young man grown, he was still little more than bone, sinew, and grin, but enlarged and toughened by years on the wild hinterlands.

Sunan, numb and frozen, found himself caught in a long-limbed embrace, and his nose was assaulted almost past bearing by the stink of buffalo. He tried to speak, to make some protest, but the smell seemed to have tangled up his vocal cords. He could only grunt as Jovann pounded his back with both hands then clutched him by the shoulders and stepped back to grin at him from arm’s length.

“You look a fright!” Jovann said. “Not what I expected of my wealthy, learned, Pen-Chan brother. Hulan’s heel, you haven’t even got a pair of shoes! What are you, Sunan, a slave?”

The one thing in all the worlds that could overwhelm the overwhelming stench of buffalo took hold of Sunan with a grip he had nearly forgotten to be possible. He shouldn’t have forgotten; after all, this had been as much a part of his life as his own beating heart since that day, all those years ago, when his mother had held him close in the darkness of their own small gurta and whispered:
“You have a brother now, Sunan. Your father’s new bride gave birth this morning, and you have a brother. Try not to hate him. Though he takes everything from you, try not to hate him.”

But of course Sunan hated him. For his mother’s sake. For his own.

The flame of renewed hatred loosened his tongue, and he found himself suddenly both very warm and very controlled. He spoke in a measured voice and even forced a smile onto his lips.

“Jovann. You surprise me with this unexpected honor. What brings you to the house of my uncle this spring?”

Jovann blinked, perhaps taken aback at his brother’s formal tone. He released Sunan’s shoulders and stepped back, still grinning, but also bowing respectfully as a younger brother should to his elder. “I’ve come to see you, of course,” he said. “Father sent me at my request. It’s netherworld-cold out here, Sunan! Would your uncle let your poor relative inside, do you think?”

“Uncle Kasemsan is not home at present,” Sunan said, the overseer’s dark words flashing once more through his mind. He stifled these quickly, unable to face them just now. “And my aunt and cousins are at their winter house on the coast. You find me alone here in Suthinnakor.”

“All the better!” Jovann replied. “I didn’t relish the notion of bowing and scraping to a houseful of Pen-Chans, my Chhayan manners offending at every turn. This is much more to my liking. Will you have me inside?” This last was spoken with a slight hesitancy. Jovann was a dense one, Sunan always thought, but even he was not entirely unaware of his half-brother’s feelings toward him, no matter how he pretended otherwise.

Sunan inclined his head and swept an arm with great dignity, as though he were clothed in his regular robes and not the dreadful woolen garment of the Gruung. He led his brother to the front door. Other men climbed out of the gurta and swarmed around the buffalo’s head. Jovann called to them cheerfully, bidding them find shelter for the beast then join him inside. A whole host of stinky Chhayans ensconced in his uncle’s house. Thank Anwar the family was not in residence!

Jovann at least had the awareness to remove his boots at the threshold before stepping through. Old Kiut, Uncle Kasemsan’s servant, came rushing to the door, his mouth open to make loud protests. But one glimpse of Sunan—Sunan, who should not be there but should instead be in the Middle Court of the Center of Learning—and he shut his mouth. He bowed, saying nothing of either the Gruung or Sunan’s strange guest but instead merely asking, “Shall I have food laid out in the lower room, master?”

Sunan nodded. “And bring hot drinks,” he said. Nothing more. They would not speak of his failure. To speak of it would do it too much honor.

He shuddered inside but fixed his attention on his brother, thankful in that moment for a distraction, however hateful.

Jovann was grinning again. “He calls you ‘master,’ but you’re the barefoot one! Really, Sunan, what is this rig of yours? I expected to meet you in silks and satins, but you’re dressed worse than any Chhayan dog-boy I ever saw. Is this some part of your great studies of which I’ve heard rumor? Some practice of self-discipline necessary to sharpen the mind?”

Sunan refused to grace this with an answer. He nodded coldly and indicated for Jovann to follow him down the passage. As he led the way, he could almost feel Jovann’s eyes bugging as he took in the wealth and elegance of Lord Dok-Kasemsan’s dwelling, which far outmatched anything to be found among the nomadic Chhayan warlords. Nua-Pratut, though a small kingdom, led the world in arts, music, and refinements. Masterpieces of paint or silk adorned the walls, and stunning works of pottery—shaped, glazed, and fired in extraordinary designs—stood upon carved pedestals in various corners and under windows. Jovann would only ever have seen their like amid the loot his father had stolen from Nua-Pratut more than twenty years ago, and all of that was long since damaged beyond any real value.

Sunan escorted his half-brother to the lower chamber where Old Kiut would soon lay out a meal. There Sunan excused himself and hurried to his own chambers to change out of the Gruung robe. Strange . . . he had somehow grown accustomed to its wretched itch in the last few hours, and it was with a sense of loss, not relief, that he removed it. Perhaps he had come to believe he and the robe deserved each other. Perhaps he merely hated to part with that last link to what he had believed his future would be.

Either way, he flung it aside and carefully washed and scented himself, knowing it would be many months before he would rid his body of the buffalo stink. But spicy perfumes helped, and his body shivered with chilled delight as he slid into a silk robe and secured it at his waist. He added a fur cloak and thick slippers, and slicked his hair into a tight braid down his back.

There was nothing for it then. He must return to his brother and find out what evil inspiration had led their father to send Jovann across many miles and mountains to plague Sunan just now, at his lowest ebb.

Sunan met Old Kiut on his way and ordered him to see to it that the other Chhayans in Jovann’s company were housed, fed, and not permitted to disturb him and his brother. Old Kiut nodded and bowed himself away, and Sunan continued to the lower chamber alone. He found Jovann reclining at the table, one elbow propped upon a cushion, the other hand scooping up herbed rice with a fold of flat bread. Jovann sat upright when Sunan entered.

“No, don’t stand,” Sunan said, taking a seat opposite his brother. He could not find the stomach for food, but he took up a steaming mug of honey-tea and held it, grateful for the warmth in his hands and the steam in his nostrils.