Heir of Iron (The Powers of Amur Book 1) (11 page)

She inferred his intent: for a king, the choice of spouse was always strategic.
For you and me both,
she thought,
unless I can recover Navran and make him a worthy Heir.
But her die was already cast; if Navran would not be the Heir, then her marriage to Taleg would be inevitably found out and the scandal immense. But perhaps… the thought occurred to her that being mother of the Heir might not be the worst she should fear, if the alternative were handing the Uluriya over to Navran.

They finished their meal with only the lightest conversation. The sun’s last red light was fading in the west when Sadja stood and dismissed his servants. To Mandhi he said, “Follow me into the garden, if you will.”

They descended a staircase from the rooftop dining room towards an inner garden. They passed several pairs of saluting guards and entered at last on a path of white sand that wandered through the torch-lit garden. Palms and golden shower trees rustled overhead in the gentle wind, and a few loose flower petals drifted down in the torchlight. Sadja walked beside Mandhi, and they meandered through the garden for several minutes without saying anything.

“We have an enemy,” he said at last.

“We Uluriya have many enemies. But I don’t know that we share them with you.”

“You do now. The guards that Bhargasa fought off, or rather, their master. If he didn’t know of me already, he does now.” He paused for a moment, searching the darkening sky for something then shook his head. “I’m sorry. This is not how I envisioned meeting you.”

“And what
did
you envision?”

“First, I envisioned meeting your father Cauratha or brother Navran.”

Mandhi considered a few different responses to this. The truth seemed to be her most potent weapon. “My father is an ailing old man, and my brother is a gambler and a drunk. You’re better off meeting with me.”

Sadja laughed. “Forthrightness is not a quality that I meet much in my position. What a delightful change.”

“I hope you don’t underestimate me for it.”

“No underestimation is intended.”

“What I meant was, don’t call me
delightful
. You may think of me as an insignificant girl from a strange cult, but I have lived most of my life traveling Amur, meeting merchants, conducting business, directing saghada, and doing all the work that my father cannot do. You wanted to speak with a leader of the Uluriya? Here I am.”

Sadja studied her in the lamplight with a direct, shameless gaze. “I wouldn’t dare think you insignificant. If I did, I wouldn’t have invited you to talk to me. But you deserve an explanation.”

“You might start by explaining how you found out Navran’s name, and why you called for him.”

“I have the gift of farsight.” He shrugged with something like embarrassment, as if admitting to owning a troublemaking slave.

“You don’t hear of many kings with that gift.”

“I was never supposed to be king. That was my brother, ten years older than me and groomed for the throne. I was, well—when I told you the story of Khaldi, it wasn’t idle conversation. As a young man I aspired to follow in Khaldi’s footsteps and ascend to be one of the Powers.”

“A modest goal,” Mandhi said. “Why didn’t you settle for being Emperor?”

Sadja laughed. “I’ll accept the empire as my consolation. But as a child my teachers recognized an affinity for the ways of the thikratta, and I was sent to Ternas to learn what I could from the monks, with the thought that I would be made a eunuch and return to serve my brother the king. No, don’t make that face—being a eunuch is a better fate than many younger brothers to a powerful king get. In Ternas I became a disciple of Gocam. You know of Gocam, I believe.”

Mandhi raised an eyebrow. “I had wondered how you knew Gocam. He counseled my father for decades.”

“Then I envy your father. My time with Gocam was short, because my training had barely begun when news reached Ternas that my father and brother had both perished while at sea in a squall. In a day’s time I went from being a thikratta-in-training to being the king of Davrakhanda.”

“And then, from your lofty seat as king of one of the great cities of Amur, you foresaw that a drunken Uluriya named Navran was indispensable to you?”

Sadja laughed. “My gift is poorly developed, alas. I barely sent my men in time to find you and Taleg, for example. But as for what I foresaw…. Follow me.”

They stopped in front of a niche set into the wall of the garden. Within the niche was a sculpture of Ashti, two of her arms crossed before her in the Nectar posture, and the array of her other thousand hands forming a disk behind her shoulders. Offerings of butter and rice lay cold on the ground before her.

“What is this?” Mandhi asked. “I’ve seen shrines to Ashti.”

“Do you see the fresco painted behind her?”

The interior of the niche was painted in flaking colors, which were initially difficult to distinguish in the torchlight. After a moment the shapes resolved, and Mandhi made out the image of Kushma and the serpent in battle: Kushma, a fearsome figure with a fanged mouth, wearing a necklace of skulls, a harvester’s knife in his hand, and his legs splattered in blood up to the knees. He pierced the serpent with his knife, wearing an exultant expression of joy made more terrible by his fangs, burying the serpent’s body in the earth, while the head of the serpent re-emerged from the ground to bite Kushma’s feet. Mandhi bit her tongue and glared for a moment at Sadja.

“I know only a little of your doctrines,” Sadja said, “but I believe this scene is not unfamiliar to you.”

“It was Ulaur, not Kushma, who bound the serpent beneath the earth. But I’ve seen this version of the image before. And Ulaur is the light unborn, the Power of the heavens. Not this terrifying monstrosity. It’s a corruption.” She almost mentioned the ancient frescoes of the Ruin, but restrained herself. She did not need to prove herself to him.

Sadja looked up into the skies. “It’s here,” he said. He motioned for Mandhi to follow then continued speaking. “I am not a dhorsha, and you are not a saghada, so perhaps we can leave the religious argument to our respective priests. But surely you see the similarity. A fearsome power struck the serpent and bound her to sleep beneath the earth, whether we attribute that fact to Kushma or to Ulaur.”

“If you’re going to talk this way, I don’t see how we can avoid a religious argument.”

They had climbed the stairs to a darkened alcove along the lower wall of the castle, sheltered from every hint of torchlight. Sadja pointed into the east. “Never mind Kushma and the serpent, then. Do you see the Serpent in the sky?”

The Serpent consisted of five bright stars in an arc through the western sky, visible just above the black of the garden wall. Mandhi nodded.

“Look closely between the second and the third stars. Do you see a small red star?”

“I do,” Mandhi said with surprise. It was very faint, a tiny chip of ruby barely perceptible among the brighter points of the Serpent’s body.

“My astrologer tells me that this star is new. A year ago it was not there. It has no name and is not listed on any chart.”

A chill of fear and curiosity passed through Mandhi. “An omen?”

“An omen of something. A point of blood in the heart of the Serpent. I am not an astrologer, so I don’t dare make any detailed prediction. But no one who sees that star could doubt its significance. The only reason it hasn’t yet caused an uproar, I suspect, is that very few have yet noticed it.”

She folded her arms and studied Sadja closely. He did not flinch at the directness of her gaze. “You, Sadja-dar, are the one with farsight. You tell me what this means.”

He smiled, the curve of his lips barely perceptible beneath his mustache. “Change. But you hardly need an astrologer to tell you that. As for myself, after I first saw the mark, I began to meditate again, practicing the union with the Powers which the thikratta teach. Meditation clarifies both farsight and ordinary wisdom. And so I learned two things: first, than an Uluriya named Navran would be the spark that lights the fire to follow, and that he and I shared an enemy. Unfortunately, I was too late to save him from capture by that enemy.”

Mandhi swallowed a laugh. “Navran is
what
? And why do you consider the enemy of the Uluriya to be your enemy?”

“Am I being too oblique? Then let me be direct: I believe that Navran will restore the Kingdom of Manjur.”

A mixture of a shout and a laugh escaped from Mandhi’s throat. “How do you even
know
of that doctrine? We Uluriya don’t speak of it to outsiders.”

“I’ve taken these months to learn everything I could about your people.”

“I don’t believe that we appreciate the attention. We have enough trouble with the emperors as it is, and we don’t need them thinking that we’re attempting to reestablish the Kingdom in Virnas.”

Sadja raised his hand. “Please. I’m not trying to endanger you. I actually want to be your ally.”

“Now? With
Navran
? Perhaps you need to develop your farsight more.”

“Ah, but you overestimate your danger.” He tugged at the corner of his mustache and glanced around, as if to be sure that no servants overheard. His voice dropped, and he spoke quietly. “It takes no farsight to see that this emperor may be the last, or at least that the empire will change after his reign. Surely you see it in the displeasure of the people. What you may not see is how many of the kings of the great cities and other nobles are eager to get out from under the imperial yoke, and how corrupt the imperial system has become.”

“Wasn’t it always corrupt?” Mandhi said ironically.

“Not like this. The imperial censor comes through Davrakhanda every third year to collect the Emperor’s poll tax. But I have an easy arrangement with him: instead of counting, say, two hundred people in a village, we only count one hundred fifty. But we collect the whole tax, and the surplus is split between the censor and me. I would be shocked if the other vassal kings of the empire didn’t do likewise. In the same vein, I give up men from my lands for the levies of the imperial guard, but I bribe the inspectors to ignore the fact that the militia of Davrakhanda is three times larger than what the Emperor allows me. In these and a thousand other ways the empire is weakened, and the hands of kings grow stronger. And Jandurma-daridarya, whose name we say with fear and trembling—” he added the customary epithet with an ironic wave of the hand “—is very old and feeble. The rumors which reach me from Majasravi suggest that he is entirely under the control of the Emperor’s Hand.”

“And what does this have to do with Navran?”

“He is the chisel which will shatter the stone of the empire. Yes, this I do know through farsight, but I know it nonetheless. I am surer of this than I am of anything else. Even Gocam agrees with me.”

Gocam had said nothing of the sort to Cauratha, as far as Mandhi knew, but he had sent them looking for Navran. It wasn’t enough to make her trust Sadja, but it was enough to keep her listening. “Very well, suppose that I believe you. What is your interest? What do you want?”

Sadja looked in both directions to ensure again that they were alone. “It’s very simple. I want Navran to become the tool that splits the empire. And to ensure that happens, I will help the Uluriya keep the south so I can rule the north.”

Mandhi laughed. “So I have to give you something I don’t have, in exchange for something you’ll never get?”

“Don’t be so sure I’ll never get it. My full name is
Aidasa Sadja darya Davrakhandaha
. The kings of Davrakhanda are a cadet line from the first emperor. We have a better claim to the Ushpanditya than the Kupshira lineage that claims it now. If the empire shatters, I’ll be well positioned to gather the pieces. I’ve been preparing for years.”

“I was right when I said your ambitions were modest. But invoking Aidasa doesn’t endear you to me. Aidasa was the one who first persecuted us, long before Ruyam was born.”

“That was two hundred years ago.”

“We haven’t forgotten.”

Sadja grimaced. He looked out over the black harbor and pulled on his mustache, then closed his eyes. A long silence followed. Finally, Mandhi spoke.

“Sadja-dar, let me tell you how I see things. My brother, my husband, and I were invited from Virnas by a man we had never met, claiming an interest which he had no right to have. On our way to meet him, my brother was kidnapped, and my husband was nearly killed. And now that I’m here, you tell me that my brother is going to destroy the empire and restore the Kingdom of Manjur and you want to help him do so in exchange for getting to rule the other half of Amur, an exchange so fantastical that I’m still not sure I believe it. So I have to consider the possibility that you are the cause of all these misfortunes, and that this conversation is part of some imperial scheme to find the Heir of Manjur and finally kill him. Or maybe your meditation has driven you mad. In either case, if you want something from me and from the Uluriya, you have to give me a reason to trust you.”

“Does saving Taleg not count for something?”

“It’s a start. You might continue by getting back Navran. If what you say is true, then you’ll need him anyway.”

“Navran is in the power of our enemy.”

“You said that once before, but you didn’t say who the enemy was. The Emperor? Evidently you’ve been scheming against him—”

“No, not the Emperor. The Emperor doesn’t care about the Uluriya, and by all accounts he’s been feeble and impotent for years. It’s someone else in the imperial court. I suspect the Emperor’s Hand, though from this distance it’s hard to be sure. Whoever it is has surely seen the red star and is preparing for the breakup of the empire, just like me. Someone who has the gift of farsight, or has a thikratta advisor with that gift, and knows the name of Navran.”

“Do you know who?”

Sadja shook his head. “Until you came, I wasn’t sure that this enemy really existed. Hints and rumors have wafted out of Majasravi, but there are always rumors coming out of Majasravi. But after the kidnapping of Navran, I have no doubt.”

“So it seems that your scheming has brought Navran into the hands of the enemy and put the Uluriya in a danger we didn’t know existed. Now how will you actually help us?”