Winterglass Read online

  “Lussadh al-Kattan.” Indrahi cocks her head. “I’ve studied her. A dangerous person and an unnatural child, all that troubled history. What of her?”

  “The tribute game. Our first.”

  “Ah.” Her mother nods slowly; evidently she too has heard the particulars. “The prize is real. One of their new officers was selected this way from a tribute game in Jalsasskar, three months past. And thus, so many fools will enter this one, hoping—praying—to be the next; sure that they have the prowess and the luck. The queen is excellent at tricking us into feeding ourselves to the kiln.”

  “Am I a fool, Mother?”

  Indrahi puts down the beadwork and laughs. “I raised you better than that.”

  To lose is to go into the ghost kiln, a forever poltergeist. “Then may I have your leave to join the game?”

  Her mother stops laughing. But she does not admonish; she does not disallow. Instead she says, “Then I will tell you all I know of the queen’s general. First you must know this, the most important: if the queen can be said to have a heart, then she has given that heart into the keeping of General Lussadh al-Kattan.”

  Chapter 2

  The night train slides into the enclosure with the smoothness of a hand into glove, barely juddering, a harmony of engine-parts and a hundred ghosts working in unison. The platform is nearly empty this close to midnight, a handful of vendors peddling the last of their roasted sweet potatoes, glutinous rice, gamey meat harvested from city birds. A stray dog curls up for warmth, some mongrel creature with the musculature of a hunting hound and the thick coat of a cattle herder. Lussadh steps past it, past the vendors, pulling her coat up around her neck and winding her scarf around her head. She is alone.

  It is not the first time she has been to Sirapirat, though she doesn’t visit often, this remote and provincial territory. She is familiar with the layout, has made a point of studying its map as she makes the point of studying every major constituent. Difficult to get lost, in any case. The palace is visible from the train station, uphill and wide, a layered compound of curlicued roofs and steep paths. Stairs that run spirals, as if to test the endurance and will of supplicants. The gold mirage limns the streets and roofs and storm drains even at night, upside down and ever vigilant, as though waiting for the reality below to transfigure into a reflection of above. Even the architecture is different, harking to a time when this was a humid, tropical region. More wood than stone, airy floors with wide windows, absent the pipes and arteries that distribute heat. Lussadh imagines what it does to the spirit of the locals to have this constant reminder of the past. Even fifty years down, there are still seditionists.

  The mirage admits no stars, barely the moons. Everything gold. Lussadh watches her own shadow pool deep amber, oily and malleable. She passes a group of drunk students, workers returning home from a late shift; none recognize her, as she prefers. A temple is admitting one last petitioner before shutting its gate for the night. Sirapirat is the least nocturnal of any developed territory she has been to, quiet and orderly in late hours as though under curfew.

  She reaches the palace on foot, goes through a lesser gate that opens only to her and the queen. None of the sentries notices her, a fault she’ll have to take up with their commander later.

  Her quarters have been prepared in advance, credit to the Sirapirat servants. As with all other palaces her suite is decorated to the queen’s tastes. Not ones that Lussadh herself shares, but she’s learned to abide. Pale silks veil the bed and window, filtering the already-thin light into pastel hues. The floor is lacquered ebony, the bed an affair of coral frame and posts growing wild, mattress hard and the sheets a lambent green.

  In the middle of the mattress, a dead hummingbird.

  It is small, singularly beautiful, the brow purple and the throat turquoise, the breast bright peridot. One leg has been broken off, one wing bent backward to the cusp of snap. It couldn’t have been easy to procure one of these, a desert hummingbird far from home and once the crest of the al-Kattan dynasty. She takes the dead thing in her palm. The blood has crusted and the body is brittle, weightless. It can’t be more than hours old. Whoever planted this knew when she would arrive—she’s kept her exact schedule quiet; Sirapirat staff should know only the approximate date—and picked an interval of time where other palace servants would not see and take it out in time. Unless they have an endless supply of this specific bird. A symbol, in a climate of symbols. Nothing is without significance.

  Lussadh wonders whether the culprit thought the repercussions through; that others would be chastised in their stead. Or else that is the point, to provoke her into punishing the entire staff and incite resentment. It doesn’t matter that Sirapirat’s conquest predated her joining the queen’s service by three decades. In the queen’s absence, she is as close to the face of winter as there can be.

  She wraps the corpse in paper, setting it aside. Then she draws her calling-glass from where it rests next to her heart, and says aloud, “Your Majesty.”

  A fog of chill, an eddy of snow, and the queen resolves into image. Perfect, just as the real one is, hair moving gently in a breeze of its own, brocade robe indigo against a complexion that is unique to her: tinted by no arteries, faintly luminescent like the sheen of a good opal. “How is Sirapirat? I trust your journey was without event.”

  “I have arrived safely. Not even a single assassination attempt. So disappointing.”

  The queen’s refraction bends, warps, and joins Lussadh on the edge of the bed. “I see you are alone, unguarded. Do you mean to drive your retinue quite mad with worry? Surely you were not in so much haste to get there.”

  Lussadh laughs. “I’m not so defenseless as all that, my queen. How goes your talk with the occidental ambassadors? Do they still think we haven’t invaded them because they have no fear of the cold?”

  “All mammal humors freeze the same. The human body is the most fragile, the most delicate.” A phantom hand, part-real, runs along the line of Lussadh’s throat. Up, down. “The most exquisite.”

  The refraction is just that, mirage without heft, but Lussadh leans into that spectral hand all the same. “Already I miss you.”

  “When we meet again, I’ll make you senseless; I’ll take you into my mouth until you cry for mercy.” The queen kisses her, full on the lips. “I will keep you with me for days, as long as your mortal stamina can last. You’ll be raw, everywhere.”

  Lussadh parts her mouth, but all she feels is a distant chill. The queen does not kiss her like this in person, not after those first two times. One kiss to wake the mirror shard in her heart, two to bind and nourish it. A third carries its own significance, but the queen has never admitted what. She keeps few secrets from Lussadh; this is the foremost, and one which bothers Lussadh more than she would like to admit. She makes herself smile. “You’ll make it very difficult to concentrate on my task here. And my bed so empty.”

  “You are free to fill it, as you desire.” An ethereal thumb brushes her earlobe and a hand slides under her jacket, resting at the base of Lussadh’s spine; the queen’s refraction has a trick of being more—present in multiples, before and behind, her reach omnipresent. It invites pleasant, exciting possibilities, were it endowed with more substance. “My empire has grown immense and yet there is but one general. I enjoy the company of many and allow them hope, yet you alone occupy my bed. But you must know that I do not require the same of you, and never will. I want you to sate yourself, have all the fulfillment your flesh can offer.”

  From anyone else it would imply the opposite, an admonishment, but she’s known the queen long enough; what Her Majesty says is exactly what is meant, however roundabout or strange. “Not at the moment. I will start scouting for other bearers tomorrow, though I expect most will have signed up for the games.” Those touched by the queen’s mirror always do, drawn to violence in all its forms. Children, adolescent, adult.

  The queen’s eyes brighten—for her, this is literal: a sudden gleam, as
of a candle flaring up behind obsidian. “You are there in my stead, in all ways. You are peerless and I trust wholly in you. Any candidates you find, you must tell me at once.”

  “Of course, Your Majesty. My life for yours,” Lussadh says, the ritual words that are to her more than ritual. “All that I am is for you.”

  “And as much of myself that I can grant is yours alone.”

  Another kiss on her brow, and the queen dissolves.

  Lussadh sits alone for a long time, hand on her sternum where the glass splinter binding her to the queen resides: greater than any vow, more lasting than any matrimony. She has seen it once when the queen found her and brought the mirror shard to life. It shone inside her, all of her, having spread its capillaries throughout her bones. The queen laughed then—the only time since she saw the queen laugh like that—in giddy delight; it was the first time she began to think of winter’s embodiment as human-like. That within the armor, behind the alien face, there was a spirit capable of emotion, even joy.

  She has not been able to articulate that her doubt is not in whether she is the queen’s sole lover or the queen’s one and only general. It is in the knowledge that they have gathered a score of soldiers who harbor pieces of the same mirror as Lussadh, yet the queen has not stopped looking. She has said none of this, will never say any of it. To admit that doubt suppurates in her like a wound is to concede she is weak, and to ask the question outright courts the truth that she has failed to satisfy.

  Such petty fears that should have been beneath her. How the queen has altered her to the core.

  She doesn’t sleep much that night; instead she examines the tournament roster and the structure. The first segment will be conducted using oneiric drugs and dream arenas to speed up the process, unconventional but one with promise. She approved it a few months back, though she has yet to meet the oneirologist responsible; recommended by the city’s premier arena, the Marrow, and apparently a recluse. Then there is an occidental ambassador awaiting an audience with her, representing one of their central states. Lussadh briefly toys with the idea of delegating that to her lieutenant—once he arrives along with the rest of her entourage—but no: he’s too new, not particularly suited. For all that she finds occidental representatives tiring to deal with, even the queen does not shirk that chore. A necessary courtesy. At the present the queen has little interest in the distant continent: a question of scale and supply chain, and moreover the queen says mirror-pieces tend not to attach themselves to occidentals. Incompatibility in spirit, perhaps.

  At dawn, she once more covers herself up and steals out of the palace, the dead bird in hand.

  Down Matiya Street she looks for the shop she visited five years ago, finds to her surprise that it is still there. The front window displays mounted buffalo heads, taxidermied owls, an assortment of small animals. The doorbell rings noisily as she enters, a cascade of brass chimes. A thick smell of preservatives and musk; the place evidently does not ventilate well, and there are no windows. She spots the proprietor in the back. “Ziya,” she calls.

  Ziya Jiang looks up from a shelf—incongruously—of ammunition boxes. “General! I knew you’d be here for the games, but not that you’d visit my humble business. How staggering to be in your presence once more.” He limps toward her, bowing. A bad leg sustained in battle while under her command one decade ago. “What do you require?”

  “I’ll need this put into some kind of shape. As alive as you can make it look.” She puts the dead bird on the counter. “I’ll pay upfront.”

  “Certainly not, General. Hah, I see what this is. Pretty. How are you, sir?”

  “Missing one of my best tacticians.” Lussadh nods toward the back shelves; a few firearms are on display, artisan models. Mostly pistols, the odd rifle. “How did you develop a clientele so eclectic, anyway? Taxidermy and guns.”

  “I also sell living pets,” Ziya says, waving a hand, “just not here. Business friends always tell me to diversify, so I do. I hear you had to put down insurgents in Kavaphat a couple months back?”

  “Religious fanatics. Nothing special.” Surprisingly well-armed and disciplined, in truth, and gifted with local support. She glances at a pistol with a sanded-metal handgrip, the barrel made of some dark alloy striated in silver capillaries. Like the rest, it looks custom-made. “Is that for sale?”

  “I’m afraid not. The grip would be too small for your hand, General; it was tailored for one of my clients. This gunsmith is rather exclusive, but if you’d like one similar I can try to persuade. Very versatile piece, works with most unconventional rounds. Ah—I think that’s my client here to pick it up.”

  Lussadh retreats to the back of the shop, watching a person push through the door, another jangle of chimes—she supposes Ziya wants plenty of notice. The person is in their thirties, difficult to tell whether south or north of it; they have the look of a Sirapirat native, a smoothness of appearance that makes age interminable. Sleek shoulder-length hair, average build under the thick coat, and moves like a trained combatant; someone who knows hand-to-hand. An interesting face, features built as though for calligraphy, bold brushstrokes for mouth and eyebrows, a narrow straight nose.

  The person—a woman, going by how Ziya addresses her—handles the gun, testing its weight. Her gaze turns toward Lussadh; she is not unaware there is another customer present. A few seconds of appraisal before she turns back to Ziya, making a perfunctory effort at haggling.

  “Who was that?” Lussadh asks after the stranger has paid and gone. A mix of curiosity and something else. She recognizes this for what it is—this is how it begins when she comes across another of her kind, those holding a fragment of the queen’s mirror.

  “A duelist at the Marrow. Semi-famous, decently successful.” Ziya scribbles a figure down in his ledger. “I taught her marksmanship, though that was a while ago.”

  Her intuition is not infallible, has produced false positives; the body’s caprices are easy to confuse with that tug of affinity. The senses fool themselves, muddling the intellect. She would need more time in the woman’s company, physical contact, to be sure. “I see,” she says. “Can you have the bird ready in a day or two?”

  * * *

  Lussadh’s retinue arrives in the evening, bringing with them her luggage, her security detail, and her aide Ulamat. “The queen will have all our heads if she knows we let you travel alone, my lord,” he says as he joins her for dinner.

  “She’ll do no such thing. You’re hard to replace. What’s my schedule like?”

  “The ambassador tomorrow morning. Inspecting the palace in the afternoon; Governor Imnesh will want to meet you, At the general’s convenience of course and no sooner, as he said.” Ulamat’s voice takes on a snotty note, mimicking Imnesh. “After that you are free to wander alone and endanger yourself as usual, lord.”

  “Come now,” she says, “have I ever gotten killed? Try the dishes. Apparently their cook isn’t half-bad.”

  The food is a thick curry of lamb, milk curds, and snake shallots; flatbread pearled with black sesame and vermillion garlic; fried balls made from ground lizard meat and chili pepper, drenched in sauce. Ulamat examines each dish, frowning, taking a taste of each. “Too little garlic, but passable.” Kemiraj fare used to be rare in foreign states. After Lussadh became general, chefs across winter territories have been scrambling to learn. Fine dining has been redefined to her tastes, or an approximation of it.

  She tears the flatbread into precise pieces. More garlic, as Ulamat says, would have been better, but it is a good effort. The curry is rich and buttery, just the way she likes it. She has argued with Ulamat many times that he is too valuable to be her taster—and in any case the queen’s gift keeps her safer than most—but he continues to insist. Adhesive to traditions, and to him she will always be his liege lord, more than even the queen.

  He eats like an aristocrat now, after years of coaching, as much removed from the orphan she salvaged from the streets as she is removed from the
imperial prince she used to be. Twenty-seven years. In the grand scheme of things, not that long. “Remind me,” she says between sips of cicada liquor, “how old are you this year, Ulamat?”

  “Thirty-five, though I can never be too sure.”

  “I worry that you haven’t made a life of your own. Marry. Have a child or three.”

  “No spouse compels me better than duty to you, lord.” He helps himself to a large chunk of flatbread. “Unless of course my lord has no more use of her aide.”

  “I won’t be able to do without you any time soon,” she says. “Nevertheless, you know perfectly well what I mean. You can have your own life and serve me. It’s not mutually exclusive.”

  Ulamat considers the table, then the plates, then meets her gaze. “I’m not the marrying type, my lord. Let us say that I didn’t have much of a model household to learn from. But moreover, I intend to die in your service.”

  She thinks of the child from back then, at the time to her merely a gesture to show that the throne treated his tribe—children of the enamel—as equally as the rest of its citizens. The studied charity of the king-in-waiting, part of the performance. She’d neglected him at first, leaving him to palace servants to feed and bathe and clothe. Winter was not yet ascendant then, far from a threat to Kemiraj.

  “I didn’t save you simply for you to die young.” When she’d found him, he was malnourished, filthy, and dying from necrotizing wounds. Beaten by other children and his elders. Neither of them would have imagined he would have grown into a man at ease with finery and plenty, fastidious with food, not only literate but erudite. Her mouth twitches. “What a long, strange way we’ve come.”

  “I’ll try to die of old age, my lord, but that’s contingent on you taking better care of yourself.”

  And if pressed, Lussadh supposes, she would say that she lives to die in the queen’s service. On it goes, a chain of self-sacrifice, stopping at Her Majesty who exists for herself alone. “Very well. Let us drink to the durability of that which we bind ourselves to. Absolute winter.”