Lords of Grass and Thunder (43 page)

Frustrated, Sechule set the bedding back against the wall. Foreign dignitaries were visiting the tent city again and feasting and celebrations were planned to honor the Tinglut prince after the Great Hunt. Her sons attended the gur-khan and his heir. By the grace of their attachment to the court, she would gain entrance to the entertainments of the ger-tent palace itself. Remembering the humiliating dismissal she had lately suffered at Mergen’s hand, she had determined that this time when he summoned her to attend his sleep, she would plead a bellyache. She would conquer the conqueror with her beauty and leave him panting in his barren bed for the rich sensuality of the body she withheld from him.

For the plan to work, however, she must appear before the court at her most bedazzling, fully adorned in her best silk coats and with precious beads hanging from her hair and ears. But her best silk coats were missing. A search of the tent had uncovered a lost earring and a dagger that Bekter had missed, but not her silk coats. She hadn’t seen them for some days. Not since . . .

“My Lady Sechule. Take a moment for tea.”

Not since the last time the Lady Chaiujin had come calling. Sechule set down Bekter’s dagger and smoothed her hands down her aprons. Before turning to face her visitor she took a deep breath and looked into the mirror that hung over her workbench. As she had suspected, the creature who looked back at her from within the bronze frame bore little resemblance to Lady Chaiujin, whose voice she had heard. Though the shape in the mirror was blurred, Sechule made out the flick of a restless forked tongue, the delicate tracery of scales above the lady’s dark and lidless eyes.

“You don’t want to do that,” the voice chastised. “Our purposes require each other regardless of the form I take. Wouldn’t you rather we met as friends than as hostile allies?” That word again, friends, though Lady Chaiujin had never befriended the mistress of her brother-in-law when she sat beside her husband on the dais.

“I may take a ram for an ewe, but it will give me no milk,” Sechule answered with a riddle clear enough in its meaning. If they were indeed hostile allies, better to know it and set one’s defenses accordingly.

“Then know me for my milk.” The lady Chaiujin’s dark eyes glittered with malice as she waited for Sechule to decide how to take the rejoinder—as an answer to the riddle, or a warning. The milk of the emerald green bamboo snake’s fangs had killed more than once in the tent city of the Qubal.

“Of course, my lady.” Bowing her head she accepted both the offer and the warning. She didn’t need the mirror to show her the lady’s snaky form. She had seen the serpent-demon with her own eyes and held it prisoner in her cabinet. The opening moves thus dispensed with, however, she brought out cups and filled the pot with leaves and hot water from the kettle on the firebox.

“If you are looking for my son Qutula, he is attending the gur-khan and his heir at the Great Hunt.” Bekter likewise accompanied the hunt, eager for a new song to inspire him. She didn’t mention her second son, recalling his disappointing reticence on finding his brother’s lover in his bed.

The lady took her cup and smiled as between confi dantes. “Qutula can manage the hunt on his own. Can’t two sisters of the mind share a quiet conversation without bringing the men into it? We have better things to discuss between ourselves.”

“Certainly,” Sechule agreed. “Such as?”

The demon-Lady Chaiujin must have heard the hesitation in her voice, but she gave no appearance of offense. “The girl,” she said. “I am of two minds about the girl, and would like to hear your opinion.”

“The girl.” Sechule sipped the hot tea to give herself time to think. What girl? The Lady Chaiujin was herself Qutula’s only lover, or at least the only one his mother knew about. As for Bekter, he confided nothing to her of such things. Sechule thought perhaps he was too much in love with his round-bellied lute to give thought to natural women. She doubted the lady much cared about him since her failed seduction there. That left the apprentice shamaness who had formed a relationship with the prince well beyond her station.

Setting down her cup, the Lady Chaiujin confirmed Sechule’s conclusion. “The little shamaness. If Mergen sends her off with the Tinglut prince, we are rid of her interference, and with the gur-khan none the wiser about our little plot. If he decides to keep her for his heir, Qutula must dispose of her, of course.”

None of that made sense. Mergen might allow his heir to keep the girl as his mistress, of course, but why would he try to seal a treaty with the Tinglut by offering some penniless shamaness to their khan? Neither of her sons had returned from their duties at the ger-tent palace before the hunt, so she’d had no report of what had transpired at court the night before.

Sechule’s carefully neutral expression gave no sign of her ignorance while she considered this tidbit of information. Something had clearly changed in the status of the prince’s folly, however. Even as a nobody a shaman was a danger to their plans. If the girl had somehow found favor, she posed a serious threat. Or an opportunity.

“Dead, of course, she can cause no trouble,” Sechule agreed. Then, cocking her head as if the thought had come after her agreement, she added, “Or we might use her as bait, to draw our prey?”

“Bait, indeed, dear friend.” Both women smiled as if they had come to one mind, though Sechule wondered why the demon—snake or woman—had stolen her best coats. As for the girl, she would need to speak with Qutula before she set her own plans in motion.

Perhaps, buried together in the furs of his bed, Mergen might confide in her and she would guide his thoughts about this girl. . . .

Tayy made his way down to the river with the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end, waiting for the arrow between the shoulder blades that never came. He missed Jumal, whom he trusted above all his companions, and wished he’d had time to talk about the oblique warning that had ended badly when Mergen sent him south with General Yesugei. For that matter, he wished for the general himself, who might have had advice about the danger that Jumal had seen where others hadn’t looked. He didn’t think Qutula would try to hurt him with foreigners in the camp, but he had lost faith in his cousin to thwart some other threat.

Fortunately, he didn’t expect any danger to himself this morning. But Eluneke’s absence worried him. Bolghai had expected her no sooner, of course. That didn’t comfort him any more than the Tinglut prince did, waiting to take her away to wed an enemy old in years as he was in past enmities. He thought that, if he had a way to do it, he might warn her to stay where she was, abiding among the gods who at least would present a fairer face than the husband politics intended for her.

Humans didn’t survive long away from the land and air of their own mortal world, however. She’d fare no better in the heavens, so he fought his way to the riverbank. The king of the toads had hidden behind this tree and there Tayy found the patch of moss where he and Eluneke had sat together, debating the life and death of the toads she needed to complete her shaman’s costume. Here he had watched her turn into her totem animal to negotiate her treaty with their king.

Bolghai would cover the other possibilities, but he thought she would come back here. She had taken the toads with her on her spirit journey to see the sky god, and she had come to know the prince here as well. If she lost her way, her heart would call her back to him in this place.

Dropping to the moss, he curled his legs to wait. Above him on the slope of the dell he heard a twig snap and knew Qutula was watching him. He’d have rather had the dogs for company, but they had gone with the pack for the hunt, where he should follow before the Tinglut took insult. Except for the sound of his guardsmen, who had not stayed where he left them but had fanned out in a circle with himself at their center, the wood remained unnaturally still. The toads were gone, and the frogs, silent. Even the river ran quietly. The whole world of gods and mortals held their breath, and superstitious fear crept over him, that Eluneke was waiting, too. She would not return, bringing with her the life of the forest, as long as his soldiers watched the place where she must enter the mortal realm.

“Go,” he called to Qutula, the heat of whose eyes seemed to burn a hole in the back of his head. “And take the rest of the guard. You can see there’s no one here but ourselves. Tell the gur-khan I’ll follow as soon as I can.”

“The gur-khan gave me different orders.” Qutula said in his ear, close enough for a knife, or a confidence.

“I know. Tell him that your disobedience is on my head.” Dropping his voice so that only his cousin could hear, Tayy added, “Mergen is at greater risk from our Tinglut guests than I may be among the trees. How could I forgive myself if something happened to my uncle while you sat in the branches watching the moss grow on my behalf?”

He could hear the hesitation in his cousin’s restless feet against the old fallen leaves. “She is shy at the best of times,” he added, though he didn’t think it was exactly true. Cautious, he guessed, and wary of a danger warned in a vision. But he wouldn’t share that with the cousin who had nearly strangled him in a competition of wrestling. “She’ll be disoriented after her long visit to the heavens. With so many people around, she may be afraid to return at all.”

“You’re probably right,” Qutula acceded agreeably enough. “I’ll send the rest away.” Mangkut had come out of the trees. His captain passed him an order with a hand signal to which he bowed in acknowledgment and turned to gather up the Durluken who had filtered down through the wood. “I’ll stay out of your way, but I won’t leave until you do. The gur-khan would have my head. So I’ll guard the path out of these woods—I can’t abandon you with only the river for your escape.”

“No!” Tayy wasn’t going to win this one. Even his Nirun, who had gathered with the Durluken, took Qutula’s side. But he wouldn’t give in without having his own way at least in part. “The khan needs you at his side.” They both knew the greater danger rode with Mergen now. Qutula wanted to be with the khan, Tayy could see indecision tearing at him in the restless searching of his eyes, stealing furtively to the grassland above.

“Leave Altan with the horses,” he urged his cousin. Tayy wanted someone he trusted completely to watch his back. Jumal had gone, so that left Altan, whom he trusted as much as anybody, though not with Eluneke’s secret. “Any threat would have to come from up above anyway.” Any but his cousin. If someone wanted to hurt him, they’d have to come down off the high plains and that meant passing his guardsman on the path above. And from there Altan wouldn’t hear or see anything that happened below.

Qutula brushed absently with his fingers at the jade on its thread around his throat. If his mother could give him a potion to effect the transformation, Qutula would have split himself in two, leaving his shade behind to watch for an opportunity against the prince while his physical presence lavished devotion on his father. Unfortunately, Sechule had no such power hiding in her cabinet. He couldn’t reject the prince’s plan without revealing his own secret plots, however, so he offered a compromise, “I’ll go if you let me leave Mangkut to stand guard.” Mangkut would watch with eyes pledged to Qutula and whisper in his ear what he saw of the prince and his forbidden princess.

Unsurprisingly, Altan objected, his hostile glance saying more about his distrust of the Durluken than his words, “I’ll stay, as my prince bids me.”

But Qutula disagreed, with an emphatic jerk of his chin in the direction of the waiting guardsmen. “You’re the prince’s lieutenant; who else can lead the Nirun in his absence?”

To object would have revealed too much. Tayy nodded, accepting the Durluken as his watchman on the path. It worried him that Qutula might not care if the prince knew his cousin had designs on his position. He went, which was the important thing for the here and now.

Like a weight lifting from his back, Tayy felt the eyes of the Durluken pull away, until he was alone with the river and his thoughts. They were grim as he sat there. When he had Eluneke back, he would figure out how to salvage his relationship with his uncle’s blanket-sons. First he had to get her back, which was proving more difficult than he’d hoped.