The Wolf of Oren-yaro (Annals of the Bitch Queen Book 1) Page 35

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  I went up to check on Khine sometime during the evening. Inzali had called a physician—a certain Tashi Jhao, who didn’t at all seem to recognize me. He told me to let Khine rest and to feed him warm broth every two days so that his muscles don’t waste away.

  “That man,” Khine said, as soon as Jhao had left, “is a fraud.”

  “As opposed to the fraud in front of me?”

  “That’s the thing about frauds. You could let them take as many examinations as you want, let them pass all of it, and they’d still be frauds.”

  “You’re talking nonsense.”

  “The fraud slipped half a bottle of snake bile tonic steeped in gin inside me. It’d be a miracle if I don’t start reciting poetry by nightfall.” He cocked his head. “Are you all right?”

  I hesitated for a moment before showing him the letter. “Gon Zheshan had it all along,” I said. “Did Yuebek write it? If I went there now, would I just fall into another trap? Zheshan spoke of plots and traps and things I don’t even know how to begin to explain to you. You’re all drugged up—I’m not even going to try.”

  “It would be wise not to go,” he agreed. “Also very wise, the not explaining. I don’t think I could tell the difference between a lion and a dog right now, to be perfectly honest.”

  I nodded. “And after everything that had happened, after everything I had learned…”

  “Besides, I don’t think your guards would let you.”

  “No,” I said. “At this point, they’d probably rather kill me first before bemoaning their misfortune at having been born in the wrong province. Warlord San of Kyo-orashi—now there’s someone who knows how to have fun.” I sat on the edge of the bed, and Khine slid across the mattress to make more room for me. I patted his hand. His skin felt a lot warmer than earlier.

  “The folly of love—” he began.

  “Enter the poet,” I mused.

  He laughed. “You don’t say.”

  I glanced out at the window. “You’re on the right track, anyway. I think I could’ve done a lot better to foresee events. Yuebek was using our troubles to fuel his own ambitions. And in the meantime, I don’t know what’s happening back home. My nation may be going up in flames as we speak.”

  I turned back to Khine. He had pushed himself up into a sitting position, his elbows on his knees, so that he could look into my face. “The snake bile will have run its course by morning,” he murmured.

  “An absurd thought. After all that had happened, it would be foolish,” I repeated. “Irrational. Selfish.”

  “True,” he said. “But you should go, anyway. You can make a decision this time: if it is a trap, then you know he is truly your enemy, and you can put all of this doubt behind you.”

  I swallowed. “And if it is not?”

  “If it is not,” Khine continued. “If he still loves you, then you owe it to him to try again.”

  I smiled. “That’s the biggest if I have ever heard in my life. I don’t believe the man ever loved me.”

  “Because he never told you.”

  I nodded.

  “Foolish girl,” he said. “Didn’t you tell me you’ve made the same mistake? Somewhere along the line, your parents messed up, forgot to tell you the basics of life and living between your lessons on how to maintain a stable economy or whatever it is you princesses have to learn.”

  “Not all princesses,” I said. “And don’t call me girl. I’m older than you are.”

  “Girl. That’s a girl’s heart you’ve got, sitting there holding on to that letter like your life depended on it. We grow up, and some of us think we learn, but the truth is we would rather listen to our own lies for as long as there is a sliver of hope that they would turn out correct after all. There is nothing wrong with it. Will the world run on cynicism? What will happen if we all started hating each other every chance we got?”

  “I envy how simply you see it.”

  “I’m lucky. I don’t have the burden of an entire nation resting on my decisions,” he said. He touched my hand. “There are never any easy answers.”

  “No,” I agreed. “Go to sleep, Khine. Your head is in the clouds. Tomorrow…”

  “Yes,” he said. “Tomorrow.” I helped him lean back against the pillows and watched him close his eyes.

  Tomorrow, I repeated to myself. It was a loaded word. But I was an eternal optimist, and I had come this far, on the backs of a dead adviser and guardsmen and a handmaiden whose name I should have learned a long time ago. I had to see it through.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The Legacy of Warlord Tal,

  Reprised

  I woke before daybreak to get ready.

  I pulled my sore body into fresh clothes and my boots, and went through my weapons, which included a new sword. Lo Bahn had been generous in that regard, at least. I sneaked past my guards—still sleeping soundly, no doubt due to the fraud physician’s intervention—and made my way downstairs.

  Khine was sitting on the bottom step. “I’m not letting you go alone,” he said before I could speak.

  “So you’ve indicated as much. Are you sure you can take a step without your guts spilling out?”

  “Let’s find out.”

  He struggled to get up. I had to help him, but after a few steps, he seemed to gain momentum and could walk without support. We slowly made our way through Lo Bahn’s courtyard, and to the gate, which was manned by a single guard. I recognized Ning; I don’t think he knew me, or at least, he was doing a good job of pretending he didn’t.

  “Any word from the governor’s keep?” Khine asked.

  “Governor Zheshan is still missing,” Ning said. “That’s all we know. They’re keeping things very quiet over there. Haven’t even blamed us for anything.”

  “Remember, Lo Bahn wants everyone to shut their mouths. If officials come sniffing around, tell them he’ll set up an appointment.”

  “I know. Are you allowed to walk? You were at death’s door yesterday.”

  Khine patted Ning’s shoulder for an answer before we headed out on the street.

  We walked very slowly. It was probably good that the sun wasn’t up, because we would’ve attracted too much attention in daylight.

  I made the mistake of thinking of other long, early mornings. Like when I would throw open the windows to my room while rocking Thanh back to sleep, and my eyes would peruse over to Rayyel’s still form in bed. Such memories were dangerous, especially in the dark. They made you question what was real, made you wonder if right now was a dream and you could wake up and find yourself back in that space in time: holding your son, a little annoyed that your husband could sleep so soundly while the baby was crying, but also content that you were together, that you had what you had. Content enough to forget everything else, these lies we tell ourselves, or so I think Khine would’ve phrased it if I had brought it up and he had still been under the influence of Tashi Jhao’s vile medicine.

  I didn’t. I had told him a lot of things, but there were others I dare not speak of to anyone but Rayyel, memories in the dark, traces of moments I was never really sure belonged to me. And I was setting them free. I had to. I was not so foolish as to believe that I could still bring back yesterday.

  Almost as if to cement that thought, I heard Agos’ booming voice and stopped in my tracks.

  He appeared at the end of the street with a torch. The sky was turning a deep grey by now, but the dancing flames cast long shadows on his face. “It’s not worth it, you know,” he said. “What are you hoping to gain out of this? Why bother giving him a second chance? You have enough dirt on the man to get the council to investigate him formally. Throw doubt on him, the way they’re throwing doubt on you. Show them the Ikessars are as foul-smelling as the rest of us.”

  “And let all hell come loose,” I said. “It isn’t about chances, Agos. It’s about taking responsibility.”

  Agos drew closer. “Then we should both go.”

  “No.” I s
tared at the building ahead of us. We had reached the spot marked by the address. “Stay out here.”

  Agos’ face hardened. “You said this was about responsibility,” he said. “This isn’t just your doing. Yet instead you tell me to stay. Stay. Go away. Bark. Fetch. Am I just a dog to you? To call when you need me, and throw out when you’re done?”

  “I’m your queen,” I reminded him.

  “Friend—” Khine started.

  “But him. You’d trust him, over me,” Agos said, jerking a thumb towards Khine. “This nobody.”

  I didn’t reply. I had nothing to say to him—nothing, at least, that he could understand. Five years ago, I had tried. Had cornered him in the stables and bade him to take the fastest horse and go west, where the warlords did not rule half as well. Back then, he was not the sort of man who questioned my orders. He took the bag of supplies I gave him, picked the horse, and swung into the saddle.

  “When do I come back?” he asked.

  I threw open the doors and looked him in the face. “Never,” I remember saying.

  His expression changed, but he didn’t protest as he rode out into the rain. I, on the other hand, had walked back to palace exactly as I walked back to my husband now: like someone on their way to a funeral.

  The address pointed to a number of a rental flat, a little wider than Khine’s house. I knocked on the door. And then I waited, long enough that doubt began to seep in again, and I seriously considered turning around and returning to Agos and Khine.

  And then the door opened, and there was Rayyel, unharmed, unarmed. There was a flicker of surprise at the sight of me, but his calm expression returned almost at once. He stepped aside to let me in and closed the door behind us.

  I could feel my heart racing. He still hadn’t said a word. Instead, he crossed the room, drawing open the curtains to let in what little light he could. I saw a table, bookshelves. Books strewn on both and all over the floor, Zarojo script on all the titles. There were scrolls and ink.

  I forced my eyes back on him. He was wearing loose robes. His hair was unbound and in disarray, falling all the way past his hips, and he had neglected to tie his beard as well. He didn’t look like a prisoner. He looked the way he had always been in all the years I had known him.

  “You got my letter,” Rai finally said.

  Numbly, I nodded.

  “I had heard that you were back in town a few days ago. I asked Governor Zheshan to send word as soon as he is able. Where did you go?”

  I swallowed. “Zorheng.” How could we be talking so quietly, so normally, after everything? Arro was dead, and Kora, and half my guards, and here he was discussing things as if I had simply been an ungrateful wife who neglected to tell her husband about some vacation.

  He noticed my distress. “Would you like some tea?” he asked. Or maybe he was being polite. Or maybe he was trying to make me drop my guard—I would not be the first royal poisoned by a cup of tea. I shook my head.

  “I am sorry about Magister Arro,” he continued. “I heard they buried him. I would’ve asked for a proper funeral pyre myself, as befitting for one who had served as loyally as him, but that night I was too busy trying to avoid getting killed and I didn’t hear about it until much later.”

  “So was I,” I murmured.

  He looked a little embarrassed. “Yes, I clearly remember.”

  “How did you escape?”

  “Not gracefully. Zheshan cracked a vase over the head of the assassin, and then, thinking there might be more waiting for us in the hall, we tried to get out through the window like you did. The assassin came to while we were halfway down and tried to chase after us. I stuck him with my sword at the first opportunity.”

  “The blood on the street…”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing. So what happened?”

  “We tried to find you, of course. But you and all your guards seemed to have disappeared into thin air. We tried to ask around, tried to find you, but nothing came up. And then a few months ago, I received a letter from Prince Yuebek, Emperor Yunan’s Fifth Son. He said he had you in his dungeons and that he required my cooperation if I would ever see you alive again. I didn’t believe him—Zheshan hinted as much that I shouldn’t. I see I was right not to.”

  “I was, though,” I managed to say.

  He blinked.

  “In his dungeons,” I explained. “But I think he was just trying to wear me down. He wanted me to marry him.”

  “I see.” He flexed his jaw, an old habit of his when he was thinking things through and didn’t want to make a decision just yet.

  “I was able to escape.” I tried to keep my voice calm. I was not afraid of having to fight Rayyel if he was going to turn on me. My nerves were the result of something else, of the knowledge of how his voice could make me throw everything away. I tried to recall my father’s sneering, ghostly voice. You fell in love with the brat.

  “Well, at least I don’t have to tell you that he isn’t someone to be trusted. I heard there was trouble up at Governor Zheshan’s office yesterday.”

  “Gon Zheshan is dead,” I said.

  His face flickered with that same, unreadable expression.

  “By his own hand,” I continued. “You have nothing to fear. I think he didn’t want to betray you. Prince Yuebek had been there, trying to bait me. Kora was there, too. Did you know they had her in their clutches? That they were trying to use her against me?”

  He didn’t reply.

  I turned away from him, glancing at the walls. “You’ve been here all this time,” I said. “I’m willing to wager longer than the four months since I landed here.”

  He took a deep breath. “I wanted to speak to you about that.”

  “Please do,” I said. “Better yet, though, start with Kora. She told me a lot of interesting things before she died. Sorry—before I killed her. For treason.” I turned back to him. “Start with Kora, Rayyel.” The venom was crawling into my voice, turning around, making a bed there. It wasn’t going to leave any time soon.

  He moved towards me. My right dropped to my dagger, but I didn’t have time to draw before he had my back to the wall. His lips met mine. In the haze of confusion, I tasted hunger and desire, the sort of things a man like Rayyel could never fake, not even in his wildest dreams.

  I felt like crying. But before I could respond, before my hands could even come up so I could bring him closer to me, he tore himself away. “I can’t do this,” he said, nearly spitting the words out. If my voice had been venom, his was the cold sharpness of steel. “No. It would be a lot easier if you would just leave, Talyien. Spare me all of this.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Isn’t it clear? I hired her to see what a woman like you would do if left alone to yourself.”

  “You were testing me?” I found myself wanting to laugh at the notion. “And what did you find out, Lord Rayyel? Tell me.”

  “You took no lovers,” he grudgingly admitted. “So I had hoped…I had hoped that I would be able to speak with you when we met again. To reconcile.”

  My mind was running backwards, back to that ill-fated meeting in The Silver Goose and the long hours spent arguing over a piece of map and brush strokes. “You wanted to split Jin-Sayeng in half,” I said. “You never mentioned reconciliation.”

  “We had to start somewhere!” he said. I had never heard Rayyel raise his voice before. “Gon Zheshan had suggested that if we could make such a thing work…”

  “Oh Rayyel,” I said. “If that was all you wanted, all you had to do was ask.”

  “That wasn’t all I wanted. There were other things, too—a way to mitigate the warlords’ aggression, help us find common ground between some of the factions…” He threw his hand across the air. “But none of that matters anymore! I cannot trust you. After all these years, halfway across the world, and what do I find out? That you’re with him, still.”

  It took a moment for his words to sink in. “No,” I f
ound myself replying. “I never asked him to be here. Agos followed me. I wouldn’t even have known he was alive until two days ago!”

  “And you didn’t think of sending him away?”

  “I have no one else to depend on, Rai. If you think I’m that much of a fool—”

  “Talyien,” he roared. “This is exactly the kind of thinking that got us here!”

  He didn’t punch the wall, but you could tell he wanted to. He looked at his hands, and then helplessly turned to me with a sunken expression. Not unreadable now, no. It spoke of pain, of years of uncertainty, as if someone had taken those precious, early morning memories, placed them inside a crystal ball, and smashed it into pieces. If you had asked me, I would have told you that he had done that himself five years ago when he walked out on us.

  And yet it was clear that he thought he was walking away from the woman who did the same.

  “I loved you,” Rayyel said under his breath. Words I had wanted to hear in all the time I knew him. I had never dreamed he would say them in a voice seething with hate.

  I remembered the man I had killed, the poor ambitious innkeeper who thought he could blackmail both of us in my own father’s garden. I thought of his blubbering face when he realized I was having none of it, pockmarked cheeks pale with fright, eyes like pinpricks in the dark. One tearing slice across the gut, a messy wound that a skilled warrior could’ve easily avoided. Not this one. He was at my mercy the moment he showed his face, dead the moment he told my husband of my affair with Agos before our wedding. The choices that led me to that road to Shirrokaru and then out, that had me inviting Agos into my room on that roadside inn after (heart beating loud enough for me to hear, he had obeyed, would’ve thrown himself off a bridge if I had asked him to)—up until then, I had been content to pretend it had all been a dream. But we make mistakes and we hide them with more mistakes and so life goes on like a broken marionette finishing a play, like a lame horse trying to win a race, like the melody from a lute with missing strings.

  I also remembered Rayyel’s face when he heard. Blank. Silent. As if he was hearing nothing more than the morning news from a messenger. His expression was very different now, as if five years of thinking it over had unhinged those feelings at last.