The Grace of Kings (36 page)

The princess continued to comb her hair, making no reply.

Marana was surprised. He had just shown this girl more respect than her own family and people did. He expected some . . . gratitude.

“What are you thinking?”

Kikomi stopped moving the brush. “You.”

“What about me?”

“I'm picturing you back in Pan, where you have to bow and scrape to men who have not done one-hundredth of what you have done for the glory of Xana. A boy who owes everything to you will pat you on the head and tell you to go away while he celebrates your victory.”

“Take more care with your speech.” Marana looked around to be sure there were no servants who might have overheard.

“You said I'm more suited for this throne than my uncle. Perhaps. The world is not always fair or just. Honor does not always flow to the deserving. It's a pity.”

Her bold words awakened something in him. Marana imagined himself flying back to Pan in the cockpit of
Spirit of Kiji
. He imagined his troops marching into the capital. He imagined himself approaching the palace, his home, and by his side was his consort, the beautiful Princess Kikomi.

He looked at the mirror and Kikomi's reflection. Her eyes gazed back, poised between boldness and submission, lively, ambitious, seductive.

“But can we not make the world fairer, more just?” she asked. Again, her voice seemed to wrap itself around him, to lead him to places he had not dared to visit.

He looked at the small stand next to the bed, upon which his tunic lay, neatly folded—he had taken the time to do this before embracing her last night. A few coins were scattered on the stand as well; he reached out to stack them in a neat column. He disliked disorder.

The coins struck one another and made a familiar sound. In a distant corner of his mind, he heard the sound of clarity, of meticulous accounting, of neatly sorted ledgers where each entry made sense. He shivered, and the spell she wove faded.

With great reluctance, he turned back to her. “That's enough.”

He took a deep breath. She'd almost had him.

She is very clever and brave, and she can be useful.

“I had thought you ambitious,” Marana said. “But I was wrong.”

She turned to look at him, and her face fell as she realized that she had failed.

“You're not
just
ambitious,” Marana said. “You love this land and her people. You crave their approval.”

“I am a daughter of Amu.”

“Your Royal Highness, I will make you a proposal. If you agree, I will leave Arulugi as it is. Life here will go on much as it was before, save for proper taxes and the renewed duty of loyalty the people will owe to the emperor. The teahouses of Müning will continue to be filled with sweet aromas and lovely songs, and men and women will still marvel at the grace and elegance of this filigreed island. You will be remembered in song and story as the protectress of your people.”

“I thought I was going to be the Duchess of Amu.”

Marana laughed. “That was before I understood how dangerous it would be to leave you in charge of Amu.”

Princess Kikomi said nothing. Her fingers absentmindedly stroked her blue silk dress, and she seemed to be admiring the large sapphire she wore on her finger.

She wished that she had been a little more patient, a little less obvious. She'd had a chance to set this man on a path to betray Erishi, to march on Pan, and she had let it slip through her fingers because she had overplayed her hand.

“But if you refuse, I will have you brought to the lowliest brothel of Pan, where I will sell you for a single piece of copper. You will always be remembered as a whore.”

Now it was the turn for Princess Kikomi to laugh. “You believe that would frighten me? You already think of me as a whore.”

Marana shook his head. “There's more. I will also order Lake Toyemotika drained and Müning burned to the ground. I will spread salt in the fields and order one in ten inhabitants of Arulugi executed. I have already killed so many men that a few more will not matter. But most of all, I will let it be known that you, you alone, were responsible for the fate of Arulugi. You had the chance to save your people, and you said no.”

Princess Kikomi stared at Marana. She had no words for how she felt about this man.
Hate
seemed inadequate.

A light airship was dispatched to bring Princess Kikomi and King Ponadomu to Pan. Transported along with them were a few other Amu nobles and important prisoners, including the captain of the palace guards, Cano Tho.

Only a skeleton crew traveled along with the captives. In the section of the gondola inside the frame of the airship, along a short corri­dor, were several rooms used for storage and as sleeping quarters for the crew. In one of these rooms, Kikomi and Ponadomu were naked and kept in cages. The other prisoners were tightly bound with rope and held in the room across the corridor.

Once the flight was under way, Cano Tho tested the rope binding his wrists. The guards were lazy and did not do a very good job, and the rope was old and had lost its tension.

He waited a few hours, until he thought the guards had dulled some of their alertness. He worked at the ropes, stopping whenever the single Imperial guard assigned to the room walked by. He rubbed against the rope until his skin broke and blood seeped out. He grimaced but kept on going. The blood lubricated the ropes and made the work easier.

There. His hands were free.

He had stood helplessly on the docks and watched as the men of Amu died in the dark, leaping from burning ships into the cold waters of the Amu Strait to die. But now the arrogant Imperials had made a mistake, and he was going to make them pay.

When the guard's back was turned, Cano quickly untied the binding around his ankles.

The next time the guard passed by him, Cano leapt up and wrestled him to the ground. Quickly pulling the dirk from the guard's belt, he slit the man's throat.

He freed the other prisoners around him. The freed men took what weapons they could find in the room and carefully peeked into the corridor. They were lucky: The corridor was empty. All the other guards were asleep in their bunks.

The men moved quickly. The few Imperial guards were killed in their sleep, and within minutes, the prisoners had taken over the cockpit, and the pilots and oarsmen, conscripted laborers, put up little fight before surrendering.

Cano walked into the room holding King Ponadomu and Princess Kikomi. He averted his gaze so as not to humiliate them in their nakedness. He opened the cages and handed them clothes and linens taken from the quarters of the Imperial guards.

“It is a miracle, Your Majesty and Your Royal Highness! We are free and we now have control of an Imperial airship.”

Princess Kikomi, proud and elegant even in her nakedness, thanked Cano and wrapped a rough cotton sheet around herself. She was without her silk dress, her diadem, her makeup and her sparkling jewels, and yet Cano found her more beautiful than any woman he knew. He had admired her from afar for a long time. She was indeed the Jewel of Amu.

Cano saw joy and relief in Princess Kikomi's face, no doubt because he had helped her escape whatever degrading fate Marana had planned for her. Cano was almost glad that events had transpired to put him in this place. She looked at him now with tenderness in those icy blue eyes, so cold and warm at the same time. He would have gladly died for her if she asked for it.

“Where shall we go now?” the king asked. He was lost without his ministers, away from the comforting security of the palace. He had not yet adjusted to life as a man without a country.

“To Çaruza. King Thufi will help us.” The princess's tone was calm and cool. Cano saw that she was already putting the humilia­tion of her captivity behind her. She was again Her Royal Highness, the Jewel of Amu. People were looking to her now for decisions, and she would rise to the occasion and lead them, the laws of succession be damned.

The airship adjusted the trim of the kite sails and the rudder and began to fly south, toward Cocru.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“IT IS A HORSE”

PAN: THE EIGHTH MONTH IN THE FOURTH YEAR OF THE REIGN OF RIGHTEOUS FORCE.

Chatelain Pira was concerned.

Against all odds, Regent Crupo's appointment of the Minister of the Treasury as the Marshal of Xana had turned out to be an ingenious move. The meticulous, calculating man had exceeded all expectations.

The victory at Arulugi was all anybody talked about. Some of the Tiro states were even sending secret emissaries to discuss the terms for a surrender. Certainly there were setbacks along the Liru River, but the rebels were unable to cross the river and come into Géfica, the heartland of the empire.

Crupo crowed about his insightful personnel decision every day and strutted about the palace as though he were the second coming of Aruano, the great lawgiver. He was quickly becoming insufferable, apparently forgetting how, without Pira, he would have been nothing.

It was no secret that Crupo was ambitious. He was already the most powerful man in Pan, but Pira could see that one day, Crupo might decide that he no longer needed Erishi. With the backing of Marana—whose commission depended on Crupo's pleasure—he would simply step into the Grand Audience Hall and ask the assembled ministers who they believed was really the emperor.

And the assembled ministers, all of whom had once agreed that the regent brought a horse into the Grand Audience Hall, would nod sagely and affirm that the emperor was standing in front of them, had just asked them a question.

Who is that boy sitting up in the throne then?

Who knows? He must be an impostor.

And who is that man standing beside the boy?

A mere butler, the boy's playmate. A corrupter of Xana's ancient virtues. Off with his head!

Pira shook his head. He could not let that happen. He would have been content, once, merely to see Xana fall, but now he wanted more. He had suffered the idiots Erishi and Crupo long enough.

He
, not Crupo, should be the one to seize the throne from the House of Xana. Maing must be properly avenged.

“I need to see the emperor,” Crupo said.

“
Rénga
is busy,” Pira said.

“Busy playing, you mean.” Crupo was getting more and more annoyed with the way things were being run. He made all the decisions and kept the empire humming along, and yet every week he had to come and report to the spoiled boy like a mere servant.

The boy emperor's high-handed decree that any audience with him had to be approved first by Chatelain Pira—who actually
was
a servant—only added to the load of indignity he suffered under.
Maybe it's time to change things.

“The emperor is young and easily distracted,” Pira allowed. “But I will keep a close eye on
Rénga
's moods and tell you to come when he's in a more suitable frame of mind.”

“Thank you,” Crupo said. Chatelain Pira was a silly man, just the sort of companion that the emperor liked. But he and Pira were bound together by that unspeakable conspiracy at the time of the old emperor's death. He still needed Pira, for now.

“Come now. Come quickly. The emperor says he's interested in learning about the details of governance. You must go see him right now.”

Crupo straightened his formal robes and hat, from which hung the jade and amber beads, the symbols of his authority, and rushed along the halls of the palace to the emperor's private garden. Pira ran behind him to keep up.

They turned the corner and went into the garden. The emperor was sitting on a bench; he seemed to be fondling a bundle of clothes piled along the bench, spilling into his lap; he was talking and laughing.

Crupo came closer. “
Rénga
, you called for me?”

Startled, the fifteen-year-old looked up. The bundle of clothes along the bench rustled, and a red-faced girl sat up in his lap, trying vainly to cover her breasts. She bowed quickly to the regent, the chatelain, and the emperor and ran along the path and disappeared behind some bushes.

“I most certainly did not.” Emperor Erishi was blushing, furious. “Get out. Get out!
Get out!
”

Crupo backed away as quickly as he could.

Pira fell to the ground and touched his forehead to the cold stone. “I'm sorry,
Rénga
. He just burst in. I couldn't stop him!”

The emperor nodded and waved him away impatiently. He got up to follow the path the girl had taken.

Pira smiled to himself. There was nothing that humiliated and annoyed the boy more than to be interrupted during such moments. Now every time the emperor saw the regent, this indelible memory would rise in his mind.

Next, Pira bribed Crupo's butler to save all the scrap scrolls that Crupo used to practice his calligraphy.

“I'm a great admirer of the regent's art,” Pira said humbly. “I just want to save some of this beauty that he throws out as trash.”

The butler saw no harm in this, and he even pitied the chatelain. What a sad life he led. All day long his only work was to keep a teenager entertained, and for his hobby, he begged to be allowed to collect scraps from another's refuse pile. He was a far cry from Regent Crupo, a truly great man.

Pira had to wait a while to collect enough scrolls with the logograms he needed. He took them and carefully rubbed a hot kettle against their backs until the wax logograms were soft enough to be pried off. Then he selected and arranged the logograms he needed on a new scroll, and again he heated the scroll from the back until the logograms melted just enough to adhere to their new locations.

Now he had in his possession a new poem in Crupo's beautifully sculpted, flowing script: a poem that the regent did not write and yet could not prove to be a forgery.

He left it, carelessly, on the steps leading up to the Grand Audience Hall, where it would be discovered and brought to the emperor.

I am the eagle who must carry a mouse.

I am the wolf who must obey a vole.

But one day I will assume my rightful place,

And then the foolish child will beg me for his life.

“You remember the deer,
Rénga
?” Pira whispered to the frightened and furious Emperor Erishi. “I hope you have finally learned what you needed to know.”

Treason!
Crupo could hardly believe it. The palace guards had come to his quarters in the middle of the night, woken him up, and placed him in shackles. Here he was in the emperor's dungeon, and no one would even tell him the evidence against him.

Well, he would prove his innocence. If there was anyone who knew how to write persuasive essays, it was he. He would save himself by his brush and ink, his knife and stick of wax.

He wrote petition after petition to the emperor, letter after letter, but no answer ever came.

Chatelain Pira came to visit his old friend.

“What have you done?” Pira said, shaking his head sadly. “Does your ambition have no limits?”

Crupo admitted nothing. Pira gestured, and the men behind him came forward.

Crupo had never experienced such pain in his life. The bones in his fingers were broken one by one, and then the broken pieces were each broken again. Crupo fainted.

They poured cold water on his face to wake him up and hurt him some more.

He admitted everything. He signed whatever paper Pira put in front of him, holding the brush with his teeth, as his fingers were now soft as melted wax.

Three palace guards came to visit Crupo in his cell.

“
Rénga
sent us here to be sure that your confession is true,” one of the guards said. “He's concerned that Chatelain Pira might have been overzealous. Have you been tortured?”

Crupo lifted his head and looked behind the guards through his swollen eyes. Pira was nowhere to be found.

Finally, a chance for justice!

Crupo nodded frantically. He tried to speak but could not—Pira's men had burned his tongue with hot pokers. He held up his hands to show the guards what he had been put through.

“The confession—it wasn't true, was it?”

Crupo shook his head.

Pira, you lowly slave. You cannot get away with this.

The guards left.