The Wolf of Oren-yaro (Annals of the Bitch Queen Book 1) Page 17

  I felt myself grow light-headed at the mention of Lo Bahn. I swallowed some tea before speaking. “Cho owes Lo Bahn money?”

  “Khine does,” Inzali said. “Cho had small debts here and there. Khine was able to convince Lo Bahn to pay it all off. So now Cho can prance about the streets without a care in the world, while Khine owes Lo Bahn more than that last year’s tuition, in addition to an interest that costs as much as if we were renting another flat altogether. He says he is paying it off slowly, but it’s been two years. I think the debt grows with each passing season.”

  Her words stirred a feeling of dread within me. If Khine was keeping me here to sell me back to Lo Bahn, then the price was only going to increase the longer I stayed away. I looked at Inzali, who was complaining to Thao about the tea, and realized that she herself did not seem aware of where exactly I came from. If she knew, she probably would have something to say.

  I kept my mouth shut and was silent for the rest of the morning. Thao wandered back to the kitchen to finish cooking, and Inzali left to visit the neighbours. I amused myself by playing with Olliver and trying to read what I could from the Texts of the Undying. Even if I couldn’t understand much of it, the illustrations on the faded, yellow paper were interesting. Zarojo medicine was decades ahead of Jin-Sayeng, and their knowledge of human anatomy was startling. It explained why so many of the best doctors in my nation were either educated by a Zarojo physician or were from the empire themselves.

  I was so engrossed by the texts that I didn’t hear Khine come in. He stood above me and cleared his throat. I closed the book quickly, as if ashamed of having been caught with it.

  He scratched his head, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Fancy becoming a physician?”

  “I don’t like examinations,” I said, offering him his book back.

  That made his eyes light up. “Where would you have taken examinations?”

  I swallowed, remembering long afternoons in the study halls at Shirrokaru. “Just the idea,” I said instead. “Sounds droll. Anyway, I can barely make anything out of your texts. How could you remember so many brush strokes? I feel like a child repeating words from my tutor’s knee.”

  “With practice,” Khine said. He peeled the book from my hands, as if retrieving something precious from someone who might rip it to shreds, and returned it to the shelf. “I went to the city watch and asked around. No dead bodies near The Silver Goose, not since three weeks ago when that boy fell into the canal. I’m sorry.”

  “Did they look like they were lying?” I studied his expression, wondering if he was.

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t tell.” He slumped down beside me and gestured at my leg. “Can I see your wound?”

  “You seem awfully fond of it,” I said. I showed him, anyway. I wanted the inconvenience of it gone.

  “I was thinking of asking it to marry me.” He got up to fetch the salve.

  “Forgive my brother for his horrible jokes,” Thao broke in.

  Khine laughed. “He was raised by sewer rats.”

  I watched him put the salve on, feeling less self-conscious now that I knew he had studied medicine. “How long do you think before it heals?” I asked.

  “Stay off it a few more days, and it should be well on its way.”

  “I don’t know how it works here in the Empire,” I said, “but back home, certain masters of a craft will teach a student for free if he’s particularly skilled.”

  “A big if,” Khine said. He craned his head back. “I see my sisters have opened their big mouths.”

  “Inzali did,” Thao replied.

  “You were up all night with the seamstresses. Couldn’t you have stitched it shut for her?”

  “I didn’t know where I could find a needle sharp enough to pierce her thick skin.”

  Khine snorted just as Olliver came up to rub against his knees. “Hey, there you are. You need to visit more often, old fellow.” He bent down to pick up the tomcat and drape the massive form over his shoulder, before heading towards the kitchen to help Thao with the rest of the cooking. I glanced at Inzali and realized she had gone outside to air out the blankets and pillows.

  I felt oddly out of place, the most ever in my life.

  ~~~

  For lunch, we had soured white fish with leeks and pig’s-ear mushrooms on rice.

  Sitting in a cramped room while sharing food with people exchanging light-hearted conversation was not something I had experienced in years. The last time had been before my wedding, when I was sent to Shirrokaru to be tutored along with other young royals my age. Many of the dormitories in the Dragon Palace had been torched after the War of the Wolves, so some of the royals had to share rooms. We would sometimes spend hours studying in these common rooms, making fun of our tutors and sneaking in bites of barbequed eel purchased from the vendors down by the lakeside.

  Even then, the comradeship of those late night meetings revolved around the shared hardship of our clans’ expectations. Here was something else, something that stirred within me a feeling I couldn’t name. It struck me, watching Inzali steal a piece of fish from Thao’s outstretched chopsticks while Khine tried to choke down his laughter with a cup of water, that I had never actually shared a meal with family before. Not like this.

  A meal in Oka Shto would involve a long ceremony, where the servants checked each and every plate for signs of tampering. The dining hall was easily ten times the size of Khine’s common room and we had no less than two servants hovering over each of us—snatching dirty plates before we were done picking at the food, or serving wine and tea before we could finish drinking. Conversations usually involved politics or the economy or whatever topic came up during court that day. Worst of all was the distance—more than an arm’s length away from each other at any given time—so that I could never really reach out to touch anyone if I wanted to. It had been that way with my father, and so was it with Rayyel.

  It was even worse in Shirrokaru, where Rai and I stayed for half the year after we got married. There, they had a giant, expensive table imported from the Kag, and we had to sit on chairs instead of cushions on the floor. I have nothing against the Kags, but the Ikessars had never made it a secret of how fond they are of these foreign customs and strange ideas, and the arrangement only intensified the distance between my husband and me.

  Then there were those occasions with my son—when I could wrest him away from his Ikessar guardians long enough to have meat buns or a glass of melon milk from the kitchens…but thinking about Thanh was worse than thinking about his father, so I pushed those memories away.

  Halfway between the meal, we heard the main door open and footsteps begin the climb up into the common room. I recognized Cho, from the gambling hall, with his lithe figure and ears that stuck out a little too much. He felt the same way—his mouth flew open as soon as he saw me.

  “Outside,” Khine said, dropping his bowl to grab his brother’s shoulder.

  “What’s happening?” Thao asked.

  Cho jerked away from Khine’s grasp. “You’re a moron. You’re a fucking moron, Khine! You’ve doomed us all!”

  Inzali came up and slapped him. “Start talking sense.”

  Cho rubbed his head, snarling at her, before pointing at me. “That’s Lo Bahn’s woman. They’ve been looking for her all morning.”

  Inzali narrowed her eyes and was silent for a moment. Eventually, she turned to Khine. “Khine, you fucking moron,” she grumbled.

  “You said you rescued her from Ziori,” Thao said.

  “I didn’t lie,” Khine replied. “Just—you know, there were more details I may have neglected to mention…”

  “Lo Bahn bought her from Ziori,” Cho said. “And Khine stole her away somehow. I knew it—when they told me she was missing, the way you looked at her that day in the gambling hall…you and your obsession with Jins—”

  Khine shook his head. “Women shouldn’t be bought.”

  “Even so! That’s what he did, and that’s
what he believes. Do you want to tell him that? Discuss philosophy with him while he runs a knife through your heart?” Cho’s face had turned red with exertion.

  “Sit,” Thao said. “Have something to eat first. Getting into hysterics won’t help any of us.”

  “For once, I agree with her.” Inzali sat down. When Cho didn’t move, she grabbed him by the leg and dragged him with her. “You,” she added, turning to Khine. “You’re not off the hook here. Explain yourself.”

  “I don’t know if I can,” Khine murmured. “She was in trouble. Do I need more reason than that?”

  “So you’d risk yourself—all of us—because she wasn’t smart enough to get herself out of it?”

  “I’m still here,” I mumbled.

  Inzali turned to me. “I hope you understand what’s happening. This, on top of Khine’s debts to Lo Bahn…he’ll have him hung and quartered by the end of the day. Or we’ll be watching an unofficial t’che ceremony and make ourselves famous throughout Shang Azi on account of our brother’s most gruesome death.”

  “Did you learn this from Ning?” Khine asked Cho.

  Cho grimaced at the food Thao placed in front of him. “Yes. He found me this morning.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “What could I tell him? I didn’t know anything, I said. My brother wouldn’t be stupid enough to do such a thing, I said. I swore on our father’s grave and our mother’s life. Clearly I was wrong.” He started eating, looking for all the world like he wasn’t even tasting his food.

  Khine patted his shoulder. “Good. I’m guessing Ning isn’t blabbing to the rest of Lo Bahn’s men? He’ll get into trouble, too.”

  “He said he’s telling them she escaped through the window after Ben Taey left him alone with her. Says if he finds out you’re involved, you’ll have him to deal with. I’m not worried about him—it’s Lo Bahn who can ruin us all with one word. She has to leave.” Cho didn’t look at me the whole time he was talking.

  “I can’t let her do that. Where would she go?”

  “I don’t give a fuck,” Cho grumbled, before shoving rice into his face.

  “Please, Cho, show our brother more respect,” Thao broke in. “If you have not gathered those debts in the first place…”

  “I never asked him to get involved!” Cho said. “And this, I’ve got nothing to do with this.” He gestured helplessly at my direction. “Thirteen hells, Khine, of all the women to save, why Lo Bahn’s? This isn’t just some stray that nobody’s going to miss.”

  “She has a name,” Khine said. His voice had dropped an octave lower.

  “Yes. They said it was Kora…”

  “Tali,” Khine corrected automatically. He gave me a look, but he didn’t say anything about it. “You really have forgotten to be respectful, Cho. We are talking about a person, not someone’s property. The last time I checked, we didn’t own slaves in the Zarojo Empire. She was tricked into this whole situation.”

  “But it’s not a situation you have to fix,” Cho insisted. “Are you sleeping with her now, is that it? Gods, Khine, if you’d just told me you wanted a romp in the haystack—”

  This time, it was Thao who slapped him. “Do you want us to send you back to Mother?”

  “I’ll leave on the first ship tonight if you all don’t stop harassing me,” he said, rubbing his cheek. “I don’t know why you’re all so angry when I’m just telling the truth. Bunch of bullies.”

  “He is, unfortunately,” Inzali sighed. “Whether we like it or not. How long are you planning to keep her here, Khine?”

  Khine looked at me. “We’re working on that. She needs to get better first. She can hardly walk.”

  “If they find her—” Cho began.

  “They won’t,” Khine snapped. “Because you’ll all keep quiet about this. I’ll figure it out. Tali…please accept my apology on behalf of my brother. Sometimes his mouth runs ahead of him. He is only concerned about our family’s well-being.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “Do you?” Cho snapped.

  “Cho!”

  He dropped his eyes.

  Khine seemed to have the final word. The rest of the meal was subdued, and after all the dishes have been put away and Thao went in to finish cleaning up in the kitchen, Khine took Cho and Inzali upstairs in the loft, where I heard them arguing. Walls were punched and doors were slammed, though they didn’t get into blows as far as I could tell. Later, when they returned to the common room, Cho immediately went out again. Inzali rolled her eyes before rushing after him.

  “He won’t be a problem.” Khine looked down on the floor, scratching his cheek.

  “I need to find my husband,” I said, after a period of silence. “I am not planning on taking advantage of your hospitality for very long.”

  He gave a grim smile. “It’s not…they’re just like that. Cho. He’s harmless. Last week we were arguing about the dishes. He’ll come around. In the meantime, I’ll keep asking, see if someone can lead us to some answers. Someone must’ve seen something that night. Is uh…you do not have anyone else here? Nowhere in the empire where you have someone to vouch for you?”

  I didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to admit it. But I think my face gave it away, because I felt his hand on my shoulder.

  “We’ll get you home,” he said. The warmth in his voice was painful to hear. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to wait for him to betray me, too.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Dragonlord in Distress

  Sixteen days passed without incident. Sixteen long days in which I did nothing but eat and sleep and try not to get underfoot while the Lamang family went through their daily routine. It wasn’t easy. While my father had made sure I was sufficiently exposed to discomfort, cramped quarters, and plain food (most of it was delicious, but it lacked the variety I was used to in Oka Shto), the feeling of being useless did not sit well with me. I had not realized how truly busy my life had been until those quiet, lazy days.

  Here, there were no early morning meetings with my advisers, no court appointments with the common folk, no lunches with the overseer, who kept me up-to-date with the conditions of Oka Shto and the general outlook of the staff. No afternoons with the council or my generals, or evenings going through palace security with my guards. No late night reading in the study with Arro to find some detail of law I had missed or needed for the morning after.

  Here, I was allowed some silence, time to stare at the falling rain through muslin curtains and contemplate. Thao and Inzali left early most days to work at a seamstress, sometimes even before sunrise. Inzali also worked part-time as a scribe and helper for a children’s tutor, so she was barely at home. Cho kept away for the most part—I only saw him a handful of times between his shifts at the docks, and he never stayed the night.

  Khine didn’t have steady work as far as I could see. He mentioned another mark once, and came home with money in his pockets and a plate of peppered noodles with boiled eggs and strips of roasted chicken from a restaurant for everyone. But he wouldn’t talk about the job in front of his sisters, as if he was ashamed of being a con artist while they ran themselves ragged with honest work.

  “They don’t know,” he had told me when I asked. “I think maybe they suspect, but they haven’t confronted me about it. Cho does, but only because he caught me at it once.”

  “I can understand the secrecy,” I replied. “So why do it at all? It clearly bothers you.”

  “It doesn’t…bother me,” he told me, rubbing his cheek. “Not that way. I told you that I pick marks carefully—they fall into the trap because of their own greed. That, I don’t mind.”

  “Like stealing from the rich?”

  “I suppose I still care about what my siblings think, even if I am the eldest and I know they’ll let me do whatever I see fit.” An expression of resolve crossed his face. “No, it doesn’t bother me—I make more money this way, and it gives us a chance to get out of this debt and maybe start w
orking towards a life of our own.”

  “And let you finish your studies, you mean?”

  Khine mumbled something incomprehensible in response. He didn’t like it when I talked about his studies. Despite his sisters’ hopes, it sounded like a life he had clearly left behind.

  And because I was still a guest, I didn’t want to push it. I told myself it didn’t matter, anyway. My leg was healing remarkably well; by the eighth day, I could walk without pain, with only an itchy scab where Khine had pulled out the stitches. By the sixteenth, only a faint, pink line remained, and my recollection of the events surrounding it had softened, the fading tendrils of a nightmare.

  On that sixteenth day, I was alone in the house, browsing through Khine’s books in an attempt to pick up more of that frustrating Zirano script. I realized that the one in my hands was a history book. There were detailed pictures of Anzhao City, the landmarks, even the cuisine. And then, tucked in the back of the book with such precision that it felt like a golden beam of light was shining down on it, was a map.

  I flipped it open. I could see the major roads outlined, including much of the western coast. I caught a marked road leading to a city above Anzhao, and was starting to read it when I heard a commotion out on the street.

  I closed the book, but not before taking the map and tucking it into my back pocket. I quickly went up the ladder into the loft and bolted the trapdoor shut before I peered through the window.

  There were about twenty or so men gathered in the alley. They looked rough, with scraggly beards and swords in their belts. I saw one push at a stumbling figure and recognized Cho. He looked like a bristling pup who wanted to lash out and bite but knew better.

  Someone began pounding on the front door. “We know you’re in there!” a man called out. I didn’t wait to hear his next words. I pushed the shutters back and slid out of the narrow window and onto the first rooftop ledge. My heart sounded like a drum.