The veiled throne, p.33
The Veiled Throne, page 33
“Of course,” said Timu. He set her down on the ground.
The little girl ran up to her mother and brother. Tanvanaki smiled at her.
“Why couldn’t you come with us?” asked Dyana in Dara.
“I had to take care of some rebels,” Tanvanaki said, also in Dara. The change in language seemed to remind her of something unpleasant, and suddenly she looked tired, weighed down.
“Bad people?” asked Dyana.
“Of course they were bad people,” said Todyu, still speaking Lyucu. “That’s why they were rebels. Did you kill all of them?”
Tanvanaki saw the way Timu was looking at her. She sighed.
“Vocu,” Tanvanaki called, gesturing for the thane, “come and take the children to the temple and get them settled. I’ll join you later.” Her tone made it clear that this wasn’t open to discussion. Even Todyu didn’t complain.
“Yes, votan.”
Vocu Firna took the children to the carriage. He glanced back at Timu, who shook his head. The drivers hitched the horses to the carriages; the Lyucu guards got back on their mounts. Soon, the caravan was on its way to the temple, and only Tanvanaki and Timu were left behind.
Without lowing or moaning, Korva walked away to graze on some succulent bushes a little distance from the lake. Even she seemed to understand it was best to leave the pair alone.
A wild goose flew over the lake high above, its lonesome cry lingering in the quiet air.
Timu walked up to Tanvanaki and fell to one knee, placing both hands atop the other knee. She nodded to acknowledge the greeting. He got up.
“You never answered Dyu-tika’s question,” he began. Try as he might, he couldn’t keep the accusatory tone out of his voice.
There was a time, during the earliest years of their marriage, when he had been able to speak to her of poetry and music, of the beauty of the land and the sea seen from the back of a garinafin, of the many ways the world could be made better through love. He had thought, at one point, that the two of them shared the same dream of the Lyucu and the natives living in harmony. He had loved to touch her and be touched by her, even if that intimacy had begun with violence and deception.
Those days were long gone. But he still loved her, a complicated and agonizing love.
“Do you really want to know?” Tanvanaki’s voice was sullen.
There was a time when she had been able to speak to him with tenderness, with affection, with patience. There was a time when his naïveté and foolish ideals had charmed her, even seduced her. She loved him, a simple love of gut feelings and flushed cheeks, tinged with a trace of regret over how that love had begun and strengthened by his status as the father of her children. But these days, all they seemed to do was to argue and debate.
“How many?” Timu was relentless.
Tanvanaki sighed again. “One hundred and sixty-five.”
Timu felt his legs going weak. He forced himself to remain standing. “The whole village then?” he croaked.
Tanvanaki nodded. Then, after a moment, she added, “Except for two toko dawiji, who helped the local garrison by informing on the rebels. You’ll be pleased to know that I commended them—”
Timu acted like he hadn’t heard the last part. “Then where are the children? We must find good homes for the children—”
“So that they can grow up and become rebels too?” Tanvanaki’s voice was cold. “I had all of them killed. I told you: Other than the collaborating toko dawiji, there are no survivors.”
“But you promised! You said—”
“I said I would be merciful when possible,” said Tanvanaki with a sudden flare of rage. “Four of the villagers killed a naro when he was asleep. They then ran into the mountains, and the rest of the village refused to yield up their hideout. I had no choice. That naro was Cutanrovo Aga’s cousin. I’ve already done all I could to limit the reprisals to the village responsible. Cutanrovo demanded killing all the villagers within thirty miles.”
Timu closed his eyes. “But the northern shore of Rui has been peaceful for years. I thought we were making progress. Such an atrocity is going to bring back all the memories of the conquest and encourage more rebellions the next time there’s a drought—”
“The only reason it has been peaceful for years is because the natives still remember what it was like if they killed a Lyucu,” said Tanvanaki. “Maybe this is exactly the reminder they needed.”
“But what happened? What did the naro do?”
“What makes you so certain the naro did something?”
Timu simply stared at her. After a moment, Tanvanaki relented. “He raped two women in the village and killed one of them when she scratched his face. The four villagers who killed him were the dead woman’s kin, led by her grandmother.”
“O gods! You should have punished the naro—”
“I would have if they hadn’t killed him! But unless the natives understand the price of killing a Lyucu, there can never be any real peace—”
“But what about our dream of having the Lyucu and Dara living together side by side in peace? What about our plan to dissolve the cycles of violence—”
“I have been listening to you for too long. That’s the problem,” said Tanvanaki. Agitated, she paced back and forth. “I’ve freed most of the villages, making them subjects instead of slaves. I’ve adopted your plan of using native officials for administration. I’ve allowed you to draft most of the laws of Ukyu-taasa and keep things as much like before our coming as possible. We have defaced our gods to please yours. I’ve even forced all the Lyucu to learn Dara. But what do I get in return? They’re still escaping Rui and Dasu in rafts, leaking our secrets to your mother. They murder one of my naros and dare to hide the killers!”
“You haven’t gone far enough! To divide the population into tiers—to grant someone privileges according to how much Lyucu blood they have—that isn’t what we agreed on at all. Have you heard how the thanes speak of the togaten and the Dara-raaki? Have you heard how they speak of our children?”
Togaten literally meant “runts.” It was a term used by the Lyucu to refer to the children born from the mass rapes committed by the Lyucu army against the Dara population during the initial conquest.
Tanvanaki flinched, but she didn’t back down. “The supremacy of the Lyucu isn’t negotiable. My father came here promising my people a better life, and I’m not going to betray that dream. Do you think I can behave as one of your despots and just wipe away the privileges my thanes and naros have earned by right of conquest? The minute we treat the Lyucu and the natives exactly alike is also the minute I’ll have a coup on my hands.”
“The natives are also your people! I am also one of your people!”
Tanvanaki was about to reply when they heard the clop-clop of a horse racing up the mountain toward the lake. They turned and saw a single rider dressed in the garb of a native official. The rider saw them and turned their way. A few minutes later, the rider rolled off the back of the horse and knelt before Tanvanaki, touching his forehead to the ground.
It was Noda Mi, the man who had betrayed Gin Mazoti at the Battle of Zathin Gulf, and the highest-ranking native official at the court in Kriphi.
“Go to the temple,” said Tanvanaki to Timu, and again there was no room for disagreement in her tone.
Defeated, Timu hiked toward the temple alone, his figure as stark as a departing wild goose.
* * *
“That’s all they delivered? Six Moralists and a litigator? May Tazu take them!” Tanvanaki took out her rage on the snails basking in the sun on the rocks by the shore, kicking them far into the water.
She turned around and saw that Noda Mi had buried his face in the mud, his body trembling like a leaf in autumn. His teeth chattered as he struggled to answer. “Most August and Merciful Pékyu, the pi-pirates also de-delivered several hundred bows and sp-spears—”
“I don’t need weapons! I need people who can give me the secret of the silkmotic force!”
“They tried! They knew you wan-wanted people of learning, but it’s hard to fi-find toko dawiji and cashima on the high seas—”
“No, no, no! I don’t need bookworms who can recite the Ano Classics—my husband does that enough. I need skilled engineers who can build things. I need plans. I need manuals, prototypes, manufacturing secrets. I need people with knowledge that I can actually use!”
“I will try again, votan! I will try again!” Noda Mi slammed his forehead into the mud like a chicken pecking at rice, and bits of mud splashed onto Tanvanaki’s boots.
The absurdity of Noda’s performance had a surprisingly calming effect on Tanvanaki. She took a deep breath and considered the situation.
No, her rage wasn’t just because of Noda Mi’s incompetence. Perhaps she had been too hard on Timu. He had always been weak, but his advice hadn’t been useless. During the early days of the Lyucu conquest, rebellion had flared up after rebellion, and most of the skilled artisans, inventors, and scholars, thinking that there was no future for them under the “barbarians,” had either joined the rebels and thus been killed, or escaped from Ukyu-taasa as refugees. But the rebellions finally petered out after she had taken Timu’s advice and adopted a more accommodationist policy toward the natives. Except for the most recalcitrant offenders, most natives were freed instead of enslaved, and taxation and local administration returned to the hands of Dara officials who pledged loyalty to the Lyucu. Many natives were even recruited into the army to add to the strength of Ukyu-taasa.
Timu was a good figurehead to pacify the natives into accepting their place, but he didn’t understand that accommodations only worked when backed by the threat of force. This latest rebellion might be an anomaly, but unless it was put down with maximum force, the natives would be emboldened. The words of the Ano sages that Timu worshipped more than the revelation of the gods were good only as a kind of drug that dulled the fighting instinct of the natives; they were no substitute for mass executions in terms of maintaining the stability of Ukyu-taasa.
She also had to plan for the possibility of the resumption of war against the rest of Dara. Even though the tribute ships from the Big Island came on schedule every season, bearing the promised goods, she didn’t trust Jia or the rest of the Dara-raaki. They were plotting something against her, she was sure of it—and the treaty of nonaggression that she had negotiated with Jia would last only another two years after this one. As much as she despised the Dara way of life—the hypocritical scholars, the supercilious officials, the degrading treatment of women, the desecration of the land with farming—she had to admit that they did possess powerful weapons. There wasn’t a day that went by without her thinking of the Battle of Zathin Gulf. The Lyucu needed knowledge of Dara machinery if they were to conquer the rest of Dara and secure a future for themselves.
With the number of scholars and engineers in Ukyu-taasa decimated, she had come up with the plan to abduct experts with specialized knowledge from the core islands and force them to work for her. Many thanes, especially the hard-liners, were opposed to adopting native expertise, viewing it as a betrayal of Lyucu traditions. But she knew that sometimes change was necessary, and to thrive in a new land meant learning new ways to hunt and make war.
“Maybe we’ve been going about this the wrong way,” said Tanvanaki. Her voice was calm, perhaps even kind. “It’s not your fault that the pirates we’ve been working with are idiots.”
Noda Mi lifted his head out of the mud, a look of hope on his muck-encrusted face.
“Instead of asking the pirates to hunt for expertise that they don’t understand, it would be better to use them as intermediaries.” Tanvanaki enjoyed speaking Dara in moments like these. It felt like a language designed for plots and schemes and deviousness. “The Dara-raaki are greedy and faithless—”
“They most certainly are, Most Wise and All-Seeing Pékyu!” Noda Mi’s eyes shone. The man seemed to love plotting against his own people. He shut up when he saw the look of disgust on Tanvanaki’s face.
“Through the pirates, get in touch with those on the core islands who are driven by profit,” continued Tanvanaki. “Have them acquire men and women of knowledge and sell them to the pirates. Focus on Dimushi and Dimu, big cities where a few missing engineers won’t draw too much attention. The key is not to let anyone know who the ultimate buyers are—it could give the usurper Jia an excuse to attack.”
Once again, Noda Mi slammed his forehead into the mud. “What a cunning plan! Pékyu, you’re simply without compare in the annals of Dara. The Islands are blessed to have a protector with so much wisdom and foresight. I can only thank all the gods of the Lyucu…”
Tanvanaki, who was striding toward Korva, didn’t hear the rest of his nauseating speech.
* * *
Back in the sacrificial hall of the Temple of Péa-Kiji, the gleaming statue of the god sat alone. All the monks and nuns and shamans and priests were asleep, as were the Imperial family and their guards and retinue. Long-burning whale-oil candles were lit on the altar, keeping the god company.
This high on top of the stratovolcano, the wind howled incessantly. A sudden gust pushed open the doors of the sacrificial hall, and a swirling vortex of leaves glided in. The candles flickered.
- Oho, my brother, you’re looking so shiny! Still happy with your choice? I assume you enjoyed that blood meal Tanvanaki offered you earlier today?
- Tazu, I really despise your irreverence. That wasn’t what I wanted, and you know it.
A grating peal of laughter, like a shark’s tooth scratching through ice.
- Sorry, I’m not like the old turtle. I just can’t put on a serious face and philosophize like some second-rate mortal sage. If you can’t laugh at death as a god, then you might as well become a mortal.
- That is what Lutho has done. He had real courage.
- I’d call that foolishness. Anyway, your boy’s plan is working out real well, isn’t it?
A long pause. The candle flames stood still for a few moments before bending in unison, like sighing trees.
- Timu has managed to save many lives.
- Is that what he tells himself to sleep at night? Is that what you tell yourself as you grow fat on the sacrifices of the Lyucu?
- I don’t see you rejecting the burnt offerings either. And you let those pirates roam free.
- Let them? I’m sorry, brother, but have you forgotten that we’re not allowed to intervene in mortal affairs? My job is to fill the sea with storms, and if they manage to navigate through to safe harbor, I can’t do a thing about it.
- Then stop tormenting me with deaths I’m not responsible for!
- If you and Timu are tormented by doubt and guilt, it’s because you grow unsatisfied with your own compromises. Don’t blame me for pointing it out. I never moralize.
- You may play the role of the amoral gadfly, Tazu, but I’ve noticed how many of those rickety rafts filled with refugees have made their way safely to the other islands from these shores. You care about the people of Dara, even though you protest.
Another long pause. The swirling vortex of leaves slowed down, as though pondering something. Then it sped up again.
- They were heading for freedom, and freedom is my domain. To guide the refugees out of bondage does not violate our pact.
- You keep on telling yourself that enough times, and maybe you’ll start to believe it.
- So what if I care maybe a little? I hate what the Lyucu have done to my sleek form, marring it with their own stories of a lumbering trickster whale. Look at yourself! Is this how you really want to be, a mishmash of myths, a figurehead for enslavement and slaughter?
The candle flames held still again. Then there was a long, howling sigh, and the flames winked out. The swirling vortex collapsed, leaving behind only a pile of leaves.
Darkness reigned in the sacrificial hall.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN MOONBREAD
MEANWHILE, AT THE SECRET AGON BASE IN KIRI VALLEY, IN THE FOOTHILLS OF THE WORLD’S EDGE MOUNTAINS.
Weather in the scrublands was often unpredictable. The flat landscape offered little resistance to the winds, and so dust storms careened for hundreds of miles like herds of stampeding long-haired cattle, thunderstorms roamed freely across the broad plains like yearling garinafins testing out their wings for the first time, and powerful tornadoes sometimes blew from one end of the continent to the other, chasing clouds across the sky like young gods racing after shooting stars.
In the southeastern corner of Ukyu-Gondé, the northwesterly winds, after soaking up moisture over the shimmering waves of the Sea of Tears, dashed headlong into the Antler Range, a branch of the World’s Edge Mountains. As the winds raced up over the mountains, the air cooled, and the moisture precipitated out in the form of frequent rain. Thus, unlike much of the rest of the scrublands, the strip of land at the foot of the Antler Range enjoyed a warm and mild climate, and the rain produced many fog-shrouded valleys full of verdant forests, gentle streams, and marshland.
In Agon lore, the garinafin who befriended Kikisavo and Afir and turned into the long mountains at the eastern edge of the known world faced south, toward the endless desert of Lurodia Tanta. The Lyucu shared this belief but thought of the garinafin as facing the other way, with his head in the far north, where the frozen tundra made even exploration by garinafin impractical, and so they called these mountains the Tail Range.
To natives of Dara, the wet, warm valleys were the parts of Ukyu-Gondé that reminded them most of home; but to the Lyucu and Agon, this was the land of the gods, veiled away from the gaze of Cudyufin by cloud cover, where the long-haired cattle didn’t find enough of the rough waxtongue bushes that they loved to graze on and lowed pitifully as their hooves sank into the soft, marshy soil, unable to roam freely.
Which made it the perfect site for those who sought to rebel by establishing a secret base.
* * *
“Mama, I really can’t finish this,” complained six-year-old Tanto Aragoz, eldest pékyu-taasa of the Agon, as he put the moonbread biscuit back on the chipped china dish on the bone serving tray in the middle of the fur rug. Young as the boy was, he had already figured out that if he wanted to get out of some unpleasant chore or to decline food, his chances of success shot up if he spoke to his Dara mother in her native tongue.
