Beneath Ceaseless Skies #136 Read online

  Issue #136 • Dec. 12, 2013

  “Kurtana,” by Christian K. Martinez

  “Walking Still,” by C.T. Hutt

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  KURTANA

  by Christian K. Martinez

  Sagraille-Knight’s wounds bled when she moved too swiftly, the lacquered plates of her armor screeching against each other in the morning’s light; beaten out of shape. She trembled, staring into nowhere with her single mortal eye, the other clamped shut against sight. She ignored the silver arches and dangling emerald branches that marked the road. Remembering. A massive structure of bamboo, rosewood, and stone soared above her into the space between mountains, smelling of strawberries and incense.

  Her pale horse staggered as he passed through Temple’s gates and into the courtyard, collapsing to the ground as his legs bent beneath him. Her face slumped against the back of his neck. Sweat, horse-stink, and tangy blood mixed with the scents of a gentler place.

  A dozen graceful servants slid from behind doorways and alcoves. They moved like the sound of bells, wearing white robes, with heavy paint in exaggerated lines across their faces.

  Sagraille twitched mechanically as they coaxed her from the horse’s back. One gauntleted hand twitched as if to strike as they laid hands on him, and then she sagged, spilling out of the saddle.

  “His name is Mours,” she mumbled, “Take care of him?”

  A small flask found its way into her hand, filled with tea and bitter-tasting medicine. More servants appeared, blurring together, guiding her, half-lifting her up. She went quietly, only dimly aware of the surrounds. She was inside, the floor was soft. Everything felt soft.

  She drank their concoction, letting them pull at her armor, unbuckle it. Their painted faces didn’t disguise the retching as they saw her mangled, matted wounds. That almost made her smile, that a little blood was so horrifying here. This was Temple. Violence was a stranger here, just as she was. This was a good place. Safe.

  She lost herself in mist.

  * * *

  Tsani drew out old dances onto straw-filled mats, skipping over strands of moonlight spearing down from slatted windows, landing noiselessly on the balls of her feet.

  “Flesh, Charcoal, Veil,” she recited secretly, beneath her breath; gazing down through painted lashes at the floor, feeling her thin silk shirt billow out as much as the short fabric could, flowing at the level of her thigh as she danced.

  She spun, leaving only the slightest disturbances in the air despite her fervor. She moved as only Kurtana can, making just the sounds she wished to make, stepping only where she wished to step; until her heart was the sound of crickets echoing through the halls, the drumming of her feet only a different flavor of silence, and her path so sure that had she stepped on pinpoints instead of mats it would’ve made no difference.

  “Jade, Music, Spark.”

  She leaped from the last section of mats onto the warmed stone of Temple-proper, where frost hinted passage-wind met the tastes of honey. Jade bracelets issued thin notes of music from her ankles and wrists. Her heart filled itself with a new heat of blood, her lungs a new pull of air, her lips with a smile, and she straightened. The sixteen braids of her hair fell in line across her shoulders.

  The nine Cousins waited for her, watching the movements of her feet. Third Dance of Jade, From Dying Stars. They wore long gowns, each labored from the fashions of a dozen different countries, eras, and cultures of romance.

  Cousin Fa snorted, turning her heavily painted visage into a map of wrinkles and valleys and smoothing it again with a breath. Cousin Hurogi’s wrist twitched just slightly, as if to flick away an annoying insect, but the foot-long beads hanging from it threatened to touch, and he too was still. Kurtana.

  The rest stared impassively.

  Wordlessly, Tsani slipped to her knees, ankles pressed together and sliding to the left of her body, one hand draping across her thighs and the other palm down, fingers splayed, a counterpoint to her feet. She bowed her head, hair falling in a curtain across her face. Fourth Graceful Motion in the Flesh.

  Cousin Mei smiled a little, the whirls and spirals of her elegant face fluxing and shifting the expression from mask to mask. As if there had never been a smile at all.

  “You are no longer a child, Tsani-dear, nor a banshi, nor a wild dog; you are well aware of keeping time,” she said. It was an admonition, voiced gently as a raindrop.

  Tsani thought she could see Cousins Fa and Hurogi cover their smirks and suppressed a snarl. Calm, she told herself, calm.

  Mei continued. “What explanation would you offer, Tsani-bold, to explain how, when Eldest calls for you at sunrise, you come only after sun has set?

  She inclined her head to Cousin Mei, then the others in turn, throwing her hair back over her shoulders in a graceful craning of the neck that exposed her throat. Every action considered, planned, letting her irritations flow away. A still mind. Calm spirit. First Standard of the Spark - Quiescence.

  “I apologize, gracious Cousins,” she said. “I would not defy you so knowingly. If only I’d been aware, I would have rushed to you, I would have leaped rivers to return. But I was not in my room, nor in any place my sisters might have known. In the hours before dawn, I sat near a pool in the forest, relaxing myself in the joys of artistry and paint. While I there reclined, two Coi spoke to one other, and I heard there matters of great interest to me—”

  —her voice rose and fell, filling the spaces between words as nimbly as her feet danced the moonbeams.

  “They discussed, in great eloquence, the matter of stars. How the entire sky might be a tree, each torch a flower, and wondered therein on the import of meteorites and comet-tails. As the sun crested the trees, like a great bird, I felt its warmth and grew weary. As the Coi slipped back to the depths of their pond, and into slumber, I too laid my head upon my shoulder and slept.

  “As I did, a fox-devil, a tree-trickster, a night spirit, some faerie thing, must have happened by, for when I woke; I found my paintings gone. Brushes, papers. All of them. Gone. No sign of all my labors.”

  Cousin Hurogi’s eyes flashed in unseemly fashion, like a predator too long without a meal. He’d ask for proof. He’d deride.

  He’d never liked her. It was one of those nameless things, enmity without real reason. Or any reason she could see, at least. Tsani figured him half a Banshi already, just a few slips of temper away from the maddened song. Almost close as Fa. She half-wanted him to hear it; wanted both of them to.

  “Except—”

  Hurogi frowned.

  “Except, perhaps, for this.” She bared the skin on her thighs. She heard sounds of indrawn breath from the Cousins. Could hear them thinking in age-old gasps. Inappropriate! Scandal! Kurtana were not harlots.

  But she was not a harlot, nor a courtesan. She was Kurtana.

  Across both her thighs, in exquisitely marked charcoal, laid the image of two coi. They stared up into a vast arboreal version of the sky, stretching up her legs, to somewhere hidden on her lower stomach. Stars in the shape of flowers fell, sparking and fading as they descended to an undrawn but hinted pond. The Coi’s scales were loving-drawn, laid over in that style of celestial dragons. The entire piece was set mildly in a clear glaze of wax. Unsmeared.

  Cousins Darua and Jhun stepped closer to see. Darua wore a green and golden dress composed of layered gauze, her face its natural black accented by golden paint in the shape of birds. Jhun was painted white, with red and blue figures twisting to dance on either cheek. His robe was a voluminous scarlet. They clicked their tongues on the back of their teeth in app
roval. It was tragic to them, in the way all things Kurtana were. Ephemeral and fading, forever an impression.

  They let their eyes roam over her skin, memorizing the patterns. For that was what they did, Darua and Jhun. They kept the shining stars of Temple in their hearts; immortally.

  Everyone was silent as they worked, waiting till they stepped back into line. Cousin Fa, however, coughed; as if to hurry them along. Instead of the impassivity, the calm, of her fellows she displayed impatience. Agitation.

  “I see,” said Cousin Mei, gravely nodding as all was settled and Tsani’s shirt pulled rightly down again. “We’ve received a visitor to Temple. A visitor out of Ghol, one of their Iron Knights. A blade saint, we’ve been told, in highest need of grace. The Cousins have decided, through ash and jade, water and wood, that it is your spirit that should quiet this Iron Knight; whose strength is of the mountains and the ice.”

  Tsani hid unease, or tried. She didn’t trust Knights, or warriors, or soldiers. Too much pain, too much past. Evil. Evil was what they were. And wrong. She remembered the fires still, or remembered the memory of them, on that summer home from Temple. She’d been seven.

  She wanted to say no, but that was impossible. Kurtana didn’t say no to the Cousins. No one in the Temple did. Temple was home. Temple was life. She couldn’t say no.

  There were terrible stories of Ghol’s Knights, nightmare-tellings. Vengeance tales. When their Lady Cei, the Lady Cei of Mercy, had been killed, and how they’d razed their enemies. And the sons of their enemies. And the daughters of those sons. Ghol was surrounded by a desert of salt, now, and bone roads they’d built themselves.

  Tsani’s body trembled. She filled her mind with chant, breathing evening to the sound of sky and the earth-beat rhythm.

  I have cleansed my flesh in the waters, drawing coals to it with metal rods. To stoke the spark within me I have straightened my feet and hair and body by reed and wood, filled my heart with the fires of passion and anointed my body in its scent. I am curtained by silken veils of the heart. The music dangling from my wrists flows through the wind, born of the earth. I am Kurtana. Sixth Standard of the Spark.

  She was calm.

  She was angry. A wounded, weak soldier. Blood. Fire. Stillnes. Breath. She was afraid.

  She was calm, but not kind.

  “Of course my Eldest, Cousins. As your wisdom bids, I must obey. Where does the Knight await me?”

  She leaned forward, pressing forehead to the ground in a low, subservient bow. Despite her reluctance, the fear, the hate, her mind whirred. How much jade, what colors? What coals and paints to use, what balance of water and life, fire and strife? How to heal a wounded Knight. Or... Tsani practiced, over and over, burying the hearth of that hate into herself. It had no place inside a Kurtana’s heart.

  “The Knight rests in the Willows Room,” said Cousin Mei, approvingly, “You may attend.”

  * * *

  Sagraille’s presence was better than a hurricane for quieting things. The training-boys sent to wait on her for tea, and music, and wound dressing, shook a little when they got too near, sliding gazes around her instead of across. Better to look at the table in front of her, at the tea-set, at the silken screens or the willow-thrushed matts, better to look at the ceiling covered in everlasting flowers. Better to look at anything, than to meet her eyes. Her eye.

  She was used to it. Hood King’s Daughter, Noose-Maker, Sword-Saint. Sagraille of the Long Eye. The eye that she’d stolen from the Garra’gul, ancient lion feasting at the end of the world, blinked from its place in her left socket. She tensed.

  A pillar approached, thousand colored, full of old wroth and killing will, cloaked in silk smiles. It was dangerous, fit to this place like a dagger in a sheath, but struggling out. Instinctively she reached for sword, her hand slapping the cotton at her hip. She was dressed without armor, only a folded white robe. Comfortable, easy to open and get at her wounds. She wouldn’t have had a sword, regardless. She’d broken it. Long ago. Yesterday.

  She looked for rope, nothing. Nothing but the Hua board on her table, and a teacup. Hua pieces were soft, gentle wood, crafted clay. No weapons. She twitched.

  All three of the boys jumped as if she’d lunged at them with a spear.

  “Quiet yourselves, fools, something is-” she growled, struggling to stand and failing spectacularly. The stitches below her ribs stretched, almost pulling out, forcing a grunt of pain like a kick to the chest. It didn’t sear so much as sink its teeth in and grind. She panted, glaring at the point she felt the column coming for and filling herself with a sharpened moment, a field-second in legionary armor. The Gholish magic flooded her veins, evoking her years as a soldier with the strength of time. Softer things were forced from her as she managed to stand. The air twisted around her, shimmering as if in mirage. The silk panel in front of her slid open, revealing-

  A very small woman, impressively nonthreatening in her appearance. Young, too. More of a child really, though she carried herself well. Inhumanly. Kurtana.

  The sight of her hid the column behind the pretty gauze of reality. She wore a dark blue robe made of silk, covered in prints of golden branches and emerald flowers. The thing reached to her ankles, with wide flowing sleeves that dropped maybe a foot down from her wrists. She was barefoot; only thin anklets of bluish jade.

  Her skin was a copper color, true metallic flecks painted to its surface. Gold-threaded charcoal and royal blue powder feathered her eyes, gold glitter dripping in tasteful decadence off her eyebrows like a flight of shining snowflakes.

  The young woman was not what Sagraille expected; somebody older. Calmer. Without that thrashing pillar held within. She’d seen one once; the way his power fitted into the world nearly invisibly, more like a part of nature than anything. Like a breeze. This one was like a whirlpool the world moving to her, spiraling around her strength.

  The young woman inclined her head, performing an awkward Gholish curtsy, an action that really wasn’t well designed for her outfit. She did it gracefully.

  If she had been without the Eye, Sagraille would have immediately relaxed. It was what one was supposed to do, around Kurtana. They were healers and singers, artists, companions. They were witches, too, of course. With a thousand different kinds of sorcery. Meeting one was supposed to touch you forever, granting you a moment of relief, a memory to cling to in the darkest hours of never.

  But this one was a lantern in a silk pouch, righteous rage poured through gaps in the thread like water through a sieve. There was grace, beauty, love, all of that. But pain too, screaming pain, pain unhealed. Less seen, and more revealed through absences. Revealed in the way it was hidden.

  “You’re a murderer,” the young woman said, after appropriate silence, with lowered eyes. When she lifted them, her eyes had a violence in them that seemed meant to surprise. Sagraille doubted the young woman realized how obvious she’d been in the way she walked. Probably thought the words were shocking, coming from behind a pleasant pond of calm.

  They weren’t; the pond was seething, boiling to the touch.

  “You’ve burned villages, killed children. You’ve done evil, haven’t you? Working the red-ways into the world. You’ve painted blood onto the planet, into the soil. Your people have turned the growing things to salt! You’re a soldier. Murderer.”

  The boys froze in their corners, faces slack, turned down. They were trembling. Was it afraid of her? Afraid of the girl?

  Sagraille bowed her head deep, letting herself sink to the mats again, resting elbows on the table, relaxing her hold on time’s throat. The legion-second left her, dying away from herself. She wondered how many were left in her, left at all in the world outside of Ghol.

  “I have, and am,” she said, “An accomplished one. Exemplar of the craft, if you will. And you, oh blunt-tongued youth? What are you?”

  Kurtana were talented in serenity; they had to be, with the powers they harbored. To keep the Banshi in them singing soft. But serenity was a crea
ture of pools and waters. Sagraille was a stone, a pebble. Waters parted for her in ripples and waves.

  The girl twitched. “I am Tsani. Tsani-Kurtana, Sae-Knight,” she said, staring at the eye. Perfectly composed in a moment, a dancer’s moment; poised. But if she’d been imbalanced at all, why’d they sent her? Why this one, young, impertinent? Sagraille was dangerous, in the eyes of Temple folk. She’d seen how the attendants watched her. Like a monster, like a murderer, everything the girl accused of. Everything she was.

  Could the young woman’s own people not see this in her? Not see her enough to feel the strength of her, that half-controlled and towering rage. That hardly seemed imaginable. The girl was good, excellent even; a full Kurtana, revealed only by the Eye and maybe a soldier’s trick for violence, but surely not that good. Young, unwise, and wild. Hardly one to send to the wounded, the damaged, with all that rage inside.

  Begging for Banshi, wasn’t that a saying? She’d heard it somewhere before.

  Tsani approached the table, scanning the room like it was her personal domain. She softened as she looked to the boys, and Sagraille felt strings of calm, half-mentioned notes of gentle reassurance reach out to them. It might have been in the whisper of her robe, or the fall of her feet; Sagraille couldn’t name it exactly, but the girl wasn’t all rage. Her eyes lingered on the Hua-board, the carefully sculpted suggestions of landscapes and tiles.

  Sagraille didn’t even need a full Kurtana, really. The deep wounds were old now, not likely to heal by a wonder-witch’s footwork. The body’d been saved, stitched up. The heart was gone. Cei gone. Arai. Bardenhart. Fenn. All of Old Ghol, dead by the sword, or the hourglass. Both just as sure.

  Was that it? Did they want this girl to kill her? Or be killed? Either way, a maybe monster dead? It seemed harsh, for this place. Maybe it’d changed since her day, hah. Maybe she was just getting old and stupid. Neither idea would surprise her, but she was tired. Had no patience for it. Didn’t even know what year it was yet; where Mours had left them out of Ghol.