The Wolf of Oren-yaro (Annals of the Bitch Queen Book 1) Read online

  “Gods, no,” Jiro replied. “On my honour—”

  “As a bandit?”

  Jiro chuckled. “The man went too far. He gave a false report to the village chief three days ago. I couldn’t let such an insult go unpunished. You know our rivalry goes way back. Don’t get all judgemental on me now, Tashi Lamang. I waited until he took his family to the mountains for a vacation.”

  “And his servants?”

  “Casualties. It happens.”

  “I see.” I could tell that Khine was trying very hard to maintain his composure. He walked towards Eye Patch, who was still crawling on the ground in a mess of his own blood, and bent over to take a look at his leg.

  “Didn’t know you’ve made it a habit to keep the company of violent women,” Jiro said, crossing the road to join him. “Think he’ll walk again?”

  “It’s a scratch,” Khine said, getting up. “A bandage and some rest will do you good. It’s too bad you killed all the servants, or you could’ve gotten help right away.”

  “Not all…” Jiro began.

  “All,” one of his men croaked out.

  Jiro gave a smug grin before letting his eyes fall on me. He had a thick, black beard, which made it look as if an animal had died on his face. He tugged it before he spoke again. “What do we do about her, do you think? We don’t just let women skewer our own and let them walk away with it.”

  “It’s a slash, not a skewer,” I said.

  Jiro’s face flickered, like he wasn’t used to people talking back to him. He glanced at Khine. “Where did you find this one?”

  “She’s escaping from Lo Bahn,” Khine said. He got up, tucking his hands into his sleeves.

  Jiro broke into laughter. “All right,” he said, when he finally found the space to breathe. “All right. I’ll let her off the hook. Going to tell this story until the day I die, see if I don’t. Bloody idiot’s fault for letting a woman stick him with a sword, anyway. Get up, fool!” He kicked the wounded man before turning back to us. “You taking her up to Nam Ghun?”

  Khine nodded.

  “They’re making repairs to the bridge some ways up it. I wouldn’t use the northern road if I were you. Looters from Zorheng. Not everyone knows you, Tashi Lamang. Next time you meet bandits, you may not be so lucky.” He whistled to his men before returning to the farm. They scampered after him like a pack of dogs.

  I felt my arms slacken. “You’ve got friends in high places,” I said in a low voice.

  He scratched the back of his head. “Tashi Hzi used to do free work around these parts for some of the smaller villages. He’d take his students—a good way for us to learn, and a nice change of pace from the usual gout and whorehouse diseases in Anzhao. Jiro Kaz was one of the patients. I didn’t know who he was until long after I’d gotten to know him. I think he took a liking to me, and I got along well with his men. He would call for me, on occasion, even after I left my studies with Tashi Hzi.”

  “It doesn’t bother you, helping out bandits?”

  Khine grimaced. “Self-proclaimed lords, these men. Him and Lo Bahn, and others. They crop up in places like these, where the nobility have strained their welcome and the elected officials don’t care much beyond lining their own pockets. But to answer your question—no. If somebody needs help, I’m obligated to.”

  “I read that in your Texts of the Undying,” I said. “But you’re not even a physician, nor a student anymore.”

  “Even so.”

  I stopped walking. “I don’t know what to think about you, Khine Lamang,” I blurted out.

  His brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

  I took a deep breath. “The people I thought I could trust have betrayed me, or dead, or captured. I have no one else. I think you know this.”

  “I’ve got to admit, I haven’t thought that deeply into it.” He gazed out at the distance thoughtfully. “You did say we weren’t friends,” he said.

  “I don’t know who my friends are. Not anymore.”

  “Back home?”

  “I have advisers. Guards. Servants. I had their loyalty, I think.” One of my councillors had recommended the Singing Sainsa, had sworn the crew’s loyalty on his life. I needed to have him executed when I return. I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I repeated, mumbling. “It’s true that you haven’t given me any reason to doubt you, but I could’ve said the same for everyone else. You haven’t given me a reason to trust you, either.”

  “Opening my home up to you and giving you the only bedroom for the last few days hasn’t been enough?”

  “I do sound ungrateful, don’t I?”

  “Very.”

  We walked silently, plodding on the road like a couple of oxen. The sun was already sinking in the horizon, and I could feel the weight of the entire day bearing down on me. I was also hungry and was starting to realize that I hadn’t entirely thought this whole trip through. I turned to Khine. He looked agitated.

  “I do need you to come back with me to Shang Azi,” he said, noticing my gaze. “Not to return to Lo Bahn, no. No matter your opinion of him, he is not an entirely unreasonable man. But he…he asked me to go after you.”

  “So you didn’t follow me because you wanted to.” I couldn’t entirely control the thread of anger from showing in my voice. He suddenly looked even more sheepish than before.

  “I didn’t…I did want to. It’s…it’s not what you think, Tali. Gods, it’s not like I meant to knock you unconscious and drag you back to him like a prize rabbit.”

  “I dare you to try.”

  “No thank you. I…” Khine grabbed my wrist. And then, realizing what he’d just done, he dropped it just as abruptly. “My apologies,” he grumbled. “Listen, Tali. I will be honest. Lo Bahn…he took my sister, Inzali, as hostage.”

  “And she didn’t try to claw his eyes out for that?”

  He gave a grim smile. “She ah—offered. It would’ve been Thao, otherwise. And she has a very low opinion of Thao’s chances of survival around those men.”

  I breathed. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I have to do this first.”

  “I know.”

  “And I will try to get word to Lo Bahn, to repay that debt. Perhaps he’ll let your sister go then. But there is this life I have to return to, Khine, you have to understand…”

  “I’m not trying to stop you,” he said. “I’ve been told to bring you back, but understand that I’m not going to do that, not against your will. I just want to make sure you get where you need to go so you can help me after. And I think you’ll agree that you do need my help. There’s a roadside inn not far from here. Come on. I’ll pay.”

  Hunger and exhaustion won. I nodded. He strode up ahead, and I followed him this time, my boots making small eddies on the rain-soaked dirt. I struggled to remember that once, I had been a queen. That I still was. What did Jin-Sayeng think of beggar royalty? The last Dragonlord, Rysaran Ikessar, had lived as a vagrant for many years in his mad quest for a dragon that would offer some scrap of legitimacy to his reign. I had never understood that. A dragon alone did not make you a ruler. A dragon did not make loyal followers.

  Of course, I had neither. What did that make me?

  ~~~

  The inn was roomy, quite unlike some of the places I’ve had the misfortune of staying at during my travels in Jin-Sayeng. It was more barn than anything else, with large roof beams surrounding the dining hall. The round tables were so far apart from each other that the conversations around us were garbled, like the buzzing of bees in the summer heat. There were grainy rice mats under the low benches for our feet. It was not comfortable, but after hours of walking about in dust and mud, I more than welcomed the relief of having to sit at last.

  A mousy-looking server brought our food: hot, sour soup made of beef leg bones, corn, and jackfruit, bowls of rice, and some boiled eggs. The beef bones contained chunks of fatty marrow that oozed into the soup when I tapped it with my spoon.

  “You must really love your Dragonlord,” K
hine said. “For you to go all through this trouble…”

  I glanced up from peeling an egg. “I suppose. He’s been…longer in my life than he hasn’t.”

  “Even without the five years?”

  I allowed a smile to flit across my lips. “Well, maybe not.”

  “I did tell you I have Jinsein friends. I’m not entirely ignorant about those events.” He wiped his lips and took a long swig of the nutty brown ale that the inn served in round, earthenware pots. “Dragonlord Rayyel, on the eve before his official coronation day, abandoned his bride of three years. A mystery that has confounded many scholars.”

  “I don’t see what was so confounding about it. Everyone I’ve met seems to have an opinion about why it happened. They usually blame me. Things I did, things I didn’t do.” I stared at the egg in my hand.

  “You seem almost nonchalant.”

  “Now I am. Five years ago, I’d have cut your head off for even daring to mention it.” I smiled at him.

  “Queen Talyien the Decapitator. I’ve heard of that one, too. I can see why.”

  “That’s surprising. Most men tell me otherwise.”

  “Flattery.”

  “So you’re not trying to flatter me? That’s a relief. People are either trying to flatter me or trying to run from me.”

  “I don’t believe in empty flattery, and I’ve been around Inzali too long to be frightened of women.”

  “Lies.”

  “Maybe.” His eyes danced.

  I was silent for some time while I sat there, staring at the fatty lumps congealing at the edges of my soup bowl. “It’s not what people think,” I said at last. “It’s got nothing to do with our clans or my lack of suitability as a bride, or his lack of suitability as a husband for the last direct heir of the Orenar clan. It was never about politics or tradition. He left because sometimes we make mistakes and we do things we can’t ever take back.”

  It was strange to hear those words come from my own mouth. It was even stranger to have someone else listening to them. Until then, I had never told anyone these things. Even if I had wanted to, especially in the midst of the raw ache of the months after I became Queen, there had been no else who would listen. It was easy enough to admit now.

  He looked at me, waiting for the rest of it. I stared at my ale and took a long drink before I unlatched the gate to the story that marked the beginning of what would later take me across the Zarojo Sea.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Prince and the Princess

  Our courtship started like a dance. A bow, outstretched hands, each step perfectly choreographed by others.

  The incident with the dragon seemed to have been enough to erase the effects of our first, tumultuous meeting. I treated Rayyel as was his proper, and he, in turn, seemed to have completely forgotten the words wild child and unfit to be queen. After he returned to his mother in the Citadel, in the mountains north of Darusu, he began to send me letters, each signed Respectfully Yours.

  The sincerity of the gesture struck me. It wasn’t as if I had a choice. All my life, my father had drilled into me the importance of this alliance. “You will marry that boy,” my father had told me on his deathbed. “And you will try to love him. He is an Ikessar, raised in seclusion with all their strange ways. You may not want to.”

  I had promised, not realizing that I would reach a point—young as I was—that I didn’t want to have a choice. There were too many stories of princesses sent to marry gout-ridden warlords twice their age, or ones shackled to sadistic men with yellowed teeth who would beat them before they bedded them, for me to be anything but grateful that I had an actual prince. Perhaps he was not eloquent, and his letters a little too rigid to be considered romantic, but he had been willing to face down a dragon for my sake. Young girls find it difficult to forget such things.

  I would write back, haltingly, trying very hard to keep my letters short and free of the nonsense that sometimes plagued my thoughts. Some letters I wrote and never sent for fear that he would think me weak-minded. We continued this for the better part of a year until I saw him again on my twelfth birthday.

  Arro had arranged festivities for the occasion, including a long ride along the southern riverbank to view the Seven Waterfalls and its grove of silver padauk trees. We had lunch under the sheen of those silver leaves, staring out at the crisp, blue water of the River Agos. I still remember the food: sweet pako cakes, smoked fish bellies, and tomato wedges. We had run out of conversation, so Rai read something for me from his book The Wars That Shaped Jin-Sayeng History. I had never been happier in my life.

  I saw him a few more times over the next two years, usually around celebrations of patron deities. Although he followed the Prophet Kibouri’s teachings like most Ikessars, he had made a habit of paying his respects for the other clans’ sakes. I never once saw his mother, Princess Ryia; I was told that she had taken a vow of seclusion after Warlord Yeshin’s war for all the blood she had spilled trying to seize the throne for herself. My father had not lied about the Ikessars’ strange ways.

  When I was fourteen, my studies with Arro ended. I was sent to Shirrokaru to further my education. By then, a good part of the Dragon Palace’s libraries and studies had been rebuilt, and the young royals were encouraged to pursue the tutelage of Ikessar scholars. It was Princess Ryia’s pet project. She wanted to give us all a chance to learn of the world beyond our clans’ borders, as well as strengthen the ties between the future rulers of the nation. After decades of war and strife, it was one of the first sure signs of progress.

  ~~~

  What is it about Shirrokaru that inspires so many poems and songs?

  My father once told me that people cling to hope like drowning rats on driftwood. Sometimes it doesn’t matter if it’s all going to sink, anyway. What wisdom had there been in ceding all the power to a weak clan like the Ikessars? My father couldn’t wrap his head around the madness drove our ancestors to such a decision. The resources could’ve been better spent strengthening our own. It was true that the Ikessars had many sound ideas, but my father thought that several Ikessar scholars, well-placed throughout the clans, would’ve done more good. It would’ve certainly fuelled less resentment.

  To Yeshin’s eyes, Shirrokaru was a symbol of excesses—a city built on the debt of others, one that only grows over the decades. Starving peasants in Kyo-orashi? But the Dragon Palace needs new drapes.

  They were, I had to admit, wonderful drapes. Black and silver, emblazoned with the falcon crest of the Ikessar clan. I couldn’t stop staring at them when we first rode into the Dragon Palace. We had simpler curtains at Oka Shto, and the only place you could see the wolf crest of Oren-yaro was in the wood carvings in the great hall. What money did we have left to spend on embroidery?

  I had known that Rai had been in Shirrokaru many months ahead of me and wanted to see him immediately. But this old woman with a nasal voice told me, in scathing tones, that the prince was busy. I was so offended by her stench that I made it a point to walk past her and demand to be taken straight to the studies, where I just knew Rai was going to be. A quick reminder of who I was sent a guard scurrying down the hall. I flashed the woman a smug grin before turning to follow him.

  Rai was reading. There was a girl, a young woman, draped on the arm of his chair. I stomped in and they looked up, startled. I could feel the smile die on my face. “Rai,” I said. He looked like a deer cornered by a pack of slavering dogs. It was the first time I had ever seen his expression stray so close to panic.

  He cleared his throat and closed the book on his lap. “Princess Talyien. I did not know you would arrive early. How was the weather? Was the journey difficult?” He was babbling. I had never heard him babble before, either. Usually he acted as if small talk was beneath him.

  “The weather was fair. We pushed the horses further than we probably should’ve.” I glanced at the woman, who gave me a quick bow. She was beautiful, with the soft curves of womanhood already showing on her body�
��the sort of woman who could turn heads anywhere she went and have men running to do her bidding with one flick of her little finger. I had never felt more conscious of my awkward angles and many scars. This was what a princess ought to look like. My hands drifted to my sides in an unconscious attempt to hide the recent sword cuts and dog bites.

  I wasn’t sure if Rai was aware of my discomfort. “May I introduce Chiha aren dar Baraji,” he said.

  I closed my mouth. “Warlord Lushai’s daughter.”

  She bowed a second time—elegantly, like a swan. I was reminded of a comment from someone that I bowed like a baby horse.

  I tried to gather my wits. The last thing I wanted was to look like a bumbling fool, and the effortless way she greeted me sparked a fire from within. She hadn’t done anything to me yet, but I was already annoyed with her. “Prince Rayyel, may I have a moment of your time? It’s been a long journey, and I had been looking forward to spending some time with my betrothed.” I said the last part very slowly for Chiha’s benefit, like I was talking to an idiot.

  If Chiha noticed me mocking her, she didn’t show it. She stepped aside as Rai stumbled past her, walking as if he had two left feet. As an afterthought, he returned his book to his desk before gesturing to me. “There’s a balcony overlooking the lake…” he started, looking down at me. I flushed. I was still wearing riding clothes, complete with muddy boots.

  “That would be most welcome,” I said cheerfully.

  He glanced at the guards, started saying something else, and then seemed to decide against it. He led me down the hall.

  The balcony was beautiful. Even though Lake Watu was an unpleasant grey at the best of times, it sparkled under the clear sky. In the distance, I could see the boats ferrying goods and people between the palace district and the southern rest of the city.

  “My apologies,” Rai said, breaking my thoughts. “The wind can be particularly strong near the lake.”