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  Shattersteel

  Benjanun Sriduangkaew

  Copyright © 2021 by Benjanun Sriduangkaew

  Cover art by Anna Dittmann

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ISBN 978-1937009-97-7 (TPB)

  Also available as a DRM-free eBook.

  Apex Publications, PO Box 24323, Lexington, KY 40524

  Visit us at www.apexbookcompany.com.

  To my huntress, who’s watched these books grow from a small thing to an entire trilogy.

  Contents

  Three to Part

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Three to Part

  The prosthetic arm never seats quite right, despite countless adjustments. The court chiurgeon has insisted that it is as flush as it can be, as well-connected to the rest of Nuawa as any prosthesis possibly can, but she still finds it strange, discomfiting. She looks down at it now. In appearance, it is nearly impossible to distinguish from flesh, and the seam where it joins her elbow is slim and smooth, easy to hide under clothes. Its tactility is another matter: when she touches it with her good hand—her normal hand—the surface of it is like silk on ceramic. Far too frictionless to be true.

  She inhales and concentrates. The fingers twitch, insect-like. There is an instant of revulsion, visceral and nauseating, where the movement does not match what she feels—which is nothing at all at the best of times, a lancing ache at the worst—and the motion does not seem like it belongs to her. And it does not, after all. The chiurgeon told her that to move this false limb takes the same act of will that allows her to engage with the thaumaturgic force of her sword or even her calling-glass. But those things are effortless, have always been. This is agonizing, like moving underwater or trying to run in a nightmare. The pit of her stomach pulls and her breath quickens. Little by little the fingers clench into a fist.

  It is marginally easier after that. She raises the arm, and it goes halfway up; progress. Exhaling, she flexes the fingers, then uses them to pick up a block of wood she’s procured for such exercises. She does not trust the prosthesis yet with anything more delicate, anything that requires finer control. No pens, barely utensils, and no weapons. The most she can eat with that hand is flatbread. Her shoulder throbs.

  A knock on her door. Guryin enters without waiting for her to answer.

  Nuawa schools her face, her composure, her voice. She lets the prosthesis fall to her side. “What would you have done if I’d been indecent, Major?”

  “Cover my eyes and beg forgiveness, naturally. It would not do to tarnish the modesty of a bride.” The major is in dress uniform—a first for xer that Nuawa has seen—freshly laundered, crisp as paper; xe wears a generous helping of gold and black pearls at xer earlobes and xer throat. Expensive, given how far Kemiraj is from the source of their harvest. “Fortunately you’re perfectly covered. About all ready?”

  She is not. Dressing herself has been a trial, but she came to an arrangement with the tailor to make every lacing and button accessible from the front, and more importantly, possible to do up one-handed. Jewelry is easy, as she wears only the hyacinth and a bracelet on her flesh wrist, and a servant has been in to brush her hair into sleekness and pin it. But cosmetics have been chancier. “I can’t paint my eyes.” Even admitting this exposes her more than she would like, so much so she did not say it to the servant.

  “Ah! My favorite. These are the colors you’ve picked?” Xe motions at the pots of pigment on the dresser. “Fantastic.”

  Whatever else the major’s other faults—like barging in—xe is deft with the brush: pewter pigment on Nuawa’s eyelids then black along the line of her upper lashes, drawn slightly upward and ending in a sharp point. A touch of stardust white on her philtrum and then the midpoint of her bare lips. Guryin stands back and grins. “Very striking. You look like Raam the hunter god, girded to best a wild and peerless beast.”

  Nuawa glances at her reflection, but no more than a glance. She doubts most hunter gods are one-armed. “I’m appreciative, Major. I don’t think you came just to make sure I look presentable, though. I was hardly going to run away from my own wedding.”

  Xe tuts. “Of course not, though I am miffed you’re getting wedded before I do, but who am I to resent young love?”

  She doesn’t point out that the major is, at most, two or three years her senior, and Lussadh is considerably older than them both. Instead, she eyes the clock. It is nearly time and with Guryin here, she is, indeed, unable to escape. Her composure used to be second nature, faultless steel. Now all there is are fault lines. One more time she makes her false hand move: it spasms a little, but it does approximate what she wants it to do—she should be able to handle cups without embarrassing herself. Her temple pulsates with the effort.

  It is informal, especially compared to what is customary for Kemiraj royalty. Guryin stands in as Nuawa’s kin, escorting her into one of the palace’s smaller feast halls. The corridor has been decorated for the occasion, jasmines and rice grains painted gold strewn on the ground, symbols of good auspices in Sirapirat weddings. Yellow tapestries cover the walls, the Kemiraj color for matrimony.

  Guryin precedes Nuawa into the hall, brandishing a bronze goblet. “I am the keeper of jasmines! I demand my tribute.”

  Ulamat strides forward, filling the cup with cactus claret—pungent with desert flowers, the rich red of lynx blood. Guryin hands the goblet to Nuawa; she holds it in both hands with more care than she’s ever held any cup. On the other side of the room, Colonel Imsou calls out, “I am the keeper of rice! I demand my tribute.” Their cup is filled with rice wine the gold of sunlight on topaz and then passed to Lussadh.

  Nuawa’s breath judders and for a moment she forgets the strain of the prosthesis. It is not as though she has never seen Lussadh in full glory, dressed for a feast. Yet this exceeds even that sight. The general is in a dress of citrine threads worked in starburst lattices, clinging to her chest tattoo-close, and flares into a skirt like spun candle flame. Her face is nearly unadorned save for the whorl of gold on one cheekbone and the sheen of precious metals on her eyelashes. She glides into the hall in splendor and Nuawa can see why the al-Kattan dynasty was said to be of the sun: incandescent, deific.

  “The tribute has been given,” Guryin declares. “I entrust Nuawa Dasaret to her intended, Lussadh al-Kattan.”

  “The tribute has been given—” This from Imsou. “I entrust Lussadh al-Kattan to her promised, Nuawa Dasaret.”

  They move toward each other, meeting in the center of the hall. Nuawa’s heart drums madly as she tips her cup against the general’s lips. Lussadh drinks then presses the rice wine to Nuawa’s mouth.

  Someone is singing. All Nuawa can hear is the roar of her own pulse. The wine tastes of burnt copper and vertigo and limbic dissolution.

  From the alcove that must have once been the domain of a priest, the Winter Queen strides, a monster in white that owns all she looks upon and is pleased about the fact. She is smiling and the glint of her teeth is nightmare-bright. She closes her fingers over Nuawa’s and Lussadh’s. When her hand leaves, there is a thread of red frost joining their wrists, impossibly fragile and perfect as rubies.

  “You a
re hereby pronounced lord and consort,” the queen says in a voice that carries to the hall entire. Muted applause from the other glass-bearers. “I entrust you now to one another.”

  One

  In the bed, Nuawa cries out. She arches, shuddering, all of her drawn taut to the cusp of snap.

  Her vision clears, though the wine—more than the pledge wine, the wine she drank after and lost count of—still simmers in her, marching through her blood to a drumbeat all its own. She exhales. Beneath her, Lussadh lies spread like an offering, eyes gleaming and skin like metal: the sheen of fever, or lust, or both. The general is still firm inside her, and Nuawa holds herself there a little longer while the last pulses of release subside.

  Another inhalation and she pulls herself off—a soft wet noise—and rolls to her side, holding out one arm. “Come to me, General.”

  And Lussadh does, eyes never leaving Nuawa. The distance closes. The general pushes inside her and Nuawa curls her leg around Lussadh’s waist, locking her in place. She moves, guiding the pace. Even so, each motion is a shock; she’s raw still, all engorged nerves, and the general fills her deep.

  “Nuawa,” Lussadh whispers. Her climax is seismic and Nuawa holds on as the general buckles, pouring into her like an avalanche.

  They pant into the sheets, into each other’s skin. Lussadh reaches down, strumming between Nuawa’s thighs, drawing a noise out of her. “No more,” Nuawa says, hoarse, though she is tempted. “I’d take you again and again if I could. Though now we have a proper conjugal bed—we’ve anointed it as such.”

  The general slips out of Nuawa and laughs. “Ah, that means we must anoint everything else too, for a complete set. A conjugal chair, a conjugal dining table, a conjugal wall.”

  “I’ve never seen you so happy, my commander. It makes me want to capture your joy and wear it in a vial over my heart.”

  Lussadh touches the silver anthurium at her breast that Nuawa commissioned for her not so long ago. Like everything else it is sweat-damp. “I have every reason to be happy. I’m surrounded by friends, I married a woman I adore, the day is full of blessings, and we’ve just fucked gloriously. When you walked into that hall, all I could think of was the silk and velvet falling off you. I’d seize what it unsheathes, and you would fill my hands like a dangerous, exquisite light. But the reality of you always exceeds my imagination.”

  Nuawa glances at the crumpled clothing—Lussadh’s in a puddle, hers disassembled and scattered on the sheets and the floor and the backs of chairs. Her disrobing was done in steps, pulled off one by one, partly by herself, partly by Lussadh. The structured bodice in indigo, the close-cut trousers brightened at the hip and waist with silver coils, the shirt in alabaster silk. Then she turns back to the general. Where she has gripped Lussadh with her false hand, a vivid mark has formed. Hip, shoulder. “I’ve bruised you.”

  “Nothing I won’t survive, and you’ve left more on me before. You owe me some ointment.”

  “I’ll personally nurse every blemish I’ve left. With my mouth, if necessary; I hear wounds can be kissed into healing.” She reaches to part the curtains: there is still some afternoon left, incongruous next to what they’ve been doing, all these visceral acts meant for the dark. It feels like a full evening ago since they left the wedding feast, Lussadh carrying her part of the way and Nuawa keeping her face turned inward so she could pretend the Winter Queen was not there. Guryin sang at the top of xer lungs as the procession moved to the bedroom Nuawa and Lussadh share. An islander marriage ditty, though no one else understood it except Guryin’s betrothed Imsou—judging by them turning crimson, the lyrics were especially lascivious.

  It has merely been hours, two or three. Nuawa’s sense of time has run away from her. But she is sober now, and it is no longer possible to pretend she is in thrall to the wine, to the headiness, to the escape represented by the hidden places of Lussadh’s body. Carnal indulgence can only go so far, for all that they are both in possession of exceptional stamina. She feels the general’s gaze on her, imagines what Lussadh sees. A person not quite whole, a silhouette not quite right. Still, there was no disgust, no flinching from the part of Nuawa that’s no longer flesh.

  Her shoulder twitches. The prosthesis moves with it, but in the way of deadweight, limp now that she’s no longer focusing on it. She looks for a robe and throws it on, to cover the false limb more than for modesty.

  “The chiurgeon is optimistic that you’ll be able to use it as naturally as your other hand.” Lussadh sits up, cross-legged. “And they’re honest with their prognosis, I can tell you that, actually brutally blunt. I’ve seen them tell a dying man he had no hope and he’d best get his will and testament in order. Not a minced word.”

  Nuawa lets out a chuckle, involuntary. “They do seem the type. I’ll trust in their wisdom.” She approximates what it would be like if all this is true—the marital bliss, the completion. All she requires is to perform the part, match the motions to the image. She will do it well. This entire time she’s been able to; why not longer, one day at a time. “Do we have anything else to see to? Beyond registering as spouses on the census. I admit these things have never crossed my mind, and so—”

  “A few legalistic matters. I’ll have clerks sent for, but we should come to an agreement as to our personal property.”

  “I own very little.” Her thought bends homeward, to Sirapirat, to what she left behind. “A countryside house of unimpressive size and the land it’s on. I’ve been thinking of selling it, but haven’t had the time to contract any broker to manage or even appraise the matter. Or I could keep it—who knows, it might appreciate in value one day—but I don’t intend to live there.”

  No question from Lussadh as to why. The fiction that Indrahi was Nuawa’s aunt rather than mother has held, and not a particularly kind aunt. “What’s yours will remain yours; by Kemiraj terms, these things are not automatically joined. By my preference, you’re entitled to a good deal of my resources. Settlement of assets and so forth is determined at separation to account for each partner’s financial circumstances.”

  “Romantic,” Nuawa says blandly. “But practical. I can’t believe you studied law too, though I shouldn’t be surprised. Was there a subject your education didn’t cover?”

  “Agriculture, acrobatics, how to be married. It was thought too frivolous a subject since Kemiraj kings didn’t necessarily take consorts and could rule alone if they wished. I don’t know how to paint. Ah, and I didn’t learn engineering.”

  Something has caught the general’s eye. Nuawa follows the direction of Lussadh’s gaze. In the courtyard, a contraption has been wheeled out: a bright metal base mounted by a replica of the god-engine Vahatma. Colonel Imsou oversees—they are one of the queen’s court mathematicians and has a more intimate knowledge of the project than any other glass-bearer. The contraption is fed a few ghosts. It lights up and levitates a meter off the ground, though not for long. A test, though she can’t begin to guess what.

  Nuawa watches and feels, again, that unreality—the impression that she is falling, that the ground beneath her has heaved and upended her with it. She is no closer to discovering what the queen means to do with Vahatma. Much of the proceeding has been redirected to Imsou, and she hasn’t been able to meet Penjarej for months. The queen may own Nuawa’s soul but evidently does not trust that Nuawa might not turn traitorous, given a little information.

  Ferreting out the true point of this and finding a way to thwart it, is one of the few things that keep Nuawa from putting a bullet in her own head.

  The general steps behind her and wraps an arm around Nuawa. All igneous nakedness, scented by what they’ve been doing together. Nuawa lets herself soften, settling into Lussadh’s hold. This too, she will concede, stands between her and that bullet. Not just the queen’s secrets alone. Like all else it is conditional; Lussadh is conditional. But here, for now. Her anchor.

  When Lussadh finds her, the Winter Queen is sitting with two snow-maids curled up at
her feet like cats. She is eating souls frozen into cubes, nibbling and licking them as though they are fruits she does not relish, but which she must consume out of necessity.

  “My queen. I’ve never seen you bring so many handmaidens here.” Normally the queen is spare when she comes to Kemiraj, careful with expenditure of power.

  The queen absently strokes the head of one handmaiden and swallows down the last of the ghost. She does not take them the way machines do—engines aspirate ghosts in the form of smoke—but in a manner of her own, solids and occasionally liquids to be sipped from small cups. “To this day this land rejects me, remains the one territory of mine that seems bent to unseat what I am. But I prove ascendant yet. Congratulations on your nuptials, my treasure.”

  She is sensitive to her queen’s moods and there is something secret to the queen’s smile, something hidden. “You’re happy for me.”

  “I am, entirely; did I not officiate? Your bride intoxicates you, and if she commands the lion’s share of your affections that is only to be expected, her being so novel.”

  “You intoxicate me as much as she. I’m fortunate to have the joy of you both.” Lussadh seats herself by the queen, at the small, tidy desk. The queen doesn’t often take a room of her own—she doesn’t need to sleep—but this visit to Kemiraj is a longer one for her, and Lussadh’s suite is otherwise occupied. One of the handmaidens shifts aside to make room. Lussadh lifts the queen’s hand and scrapes her teeth across pale, perfect knuckles.

  The queen shuts her eyes and cranes her neck back, smiling. “It is not simply her personal appeal. The shard of my mirror inside her is exceptional and, what’s more, exceptionally drawn to yours. Those two must’ve been of a piece, laid close to the core. You’re compelled toward her more than any other glass-bearer, yes? More than any of your human lovers? You must have pressed her face down into the mattress countless times, not letting her up until she’s full of your seed and her skin is a study of your teeth.”