Not without reservation, Ging obliges, and only because she knows the automata are better protectors than she can ever be. Aunrampha steps away from the bodies and begins making tea. The fragrance of jasmine does not conceal the miasma of blood.
When Mathieu Dubois comes he has his saber drawn: the broken lock has made a surprise impossible. When he sees Aunrampha he gives pause, his fist momentarily slack on the grip of his blade. He snaps out a string of noises, rapid-fire.
Aunrampha smiles up at him. “Monsieur Dubois, I do not speak French. You run errands for an Englishwoman. Unless I know nothing about her at all, I’ll wager she doesn’t condescend to discourse in your tongue.”
The farang does not let go of his weapon.
“Why don’t we sit down and share tea? The leaves are yours. I didn’t have time to poison them.”
“You’ve harmed soldiers of France. For that there will be consequences.” Mathieu sheathes the saber, unholsters a pistol. He does it with smooth ease, and when he points the muzzle at Aunrampha his hand is steady.
Aunrampha waves the envelopes at the farang. “These were handed to you freely, not stolen. Whatever drives you to do favors for Madame Leonowens I don’t really care, but imagine the ambassador’s disappointment to learn that one of his trusted spies consorts with an Englishwoman. He’ll be just so hurt.”
“You overstep yourself. It’s nothing to us to scorch your houses and salt your land as we’ve done to Vietnam.”
“Monsieur.” Aunrampha sips her tea. “Put your silly gun away. Yours is inferior, incidentally. Have you tried Chinese ones? They’re works of art, and their firesmiths don’t sell just to anyone. I’ve heard it said they grind dragon whiskers into gunpowder and sheathe the barrel in kirin scales. Truth or hyperbole, quality speaks for itself.” When the man doesn’t lower his pistol she says in Thai, “Break his arm.”
The dolls obey; the dolls are quick. This much Ging knows. They have practiced, Aunrampha giving them commands to sit or stand, move this way or that, like dogs. They are built for strength and speed, animated by a secret alchemy. A man, even farang, even the agent of a mighty empire—he is only flesh and fat, cartilage and tendons.
A crack of bone; a surprising lack of blood.
He hangs slack between rattan hands, pale and panting.
“Monsieur.” Aunrampha pours herself another cup. “It is true there are consequences to any act of provocation. Bringing you to trial and tribunal is not an option. In the open your punishment would be no graver than if you’d committed petty theft, for you are of France. But here that will not suffice; here I am your judge, and I hope you’re as dedicated to the virtue of justice as I am.”
Aunrampha has the Farangset men disposed of afterward. Their bodies will be buried deep, their belongings incinerated. Clothes stripped, faces mutilated beyond recognition. She does not take chances.
When Aunrampha returns, she spreads Anna Leonowens’ letters out, holds down the corners with inkwells. “This isn’t one of Anna’s silly correspondences. There’s more than just the usual that she doesn’t want intercepted by palace staff.”
“What is the usual?”
“Tales of how His Majesty whips palace slaves raw, of how he summons little girls to his bed.”
Ging flinches. “Is any of it true?”
“He’s talked of emancipating the slaves, to the collective displeasure of his ministers. As for the girls… if he did that, I would know. I’d be obliged to silence, but I would know.” Aunrampha passes a hand over her face, rubbing at her eyes. “Anna’s petty retaliation for his refusal to grant her more power than she already wields. I read an earlier letter that said His Majesty wanted to make her a concubine. She, being a virtuous woman under the grace of Yesu Christ, naturally spurned him. Doubtless that makes her quite the sensation among friends and family in Angrit.”
“What is the point?”
“Convincing her superiors and social circles that we’re barbarians living under the reign of an insane, lecherous tyrant. It’s a fable that has its uses, for them.” Aunrampha pats out the creases on the letters. “Read these.”
Ging does, falteringly, straining to decipher the twisting spidery script. “But this is—”
“A confirmation that the Angrit empire is no friend of ours and will leave us to Farangset mercy should it come to conflict. That Farangset, once they’re done with Yuan and Kampucha, will turn their gaze to us. The assassination attempt was a prelude, of sorts, to destabilize His Majesty’s reign. It’ll be some time in coming.” Aunrampha rubs her hand against the tight skirt of her gipao. “In five years or twenty. Nevertheless it will come.”
The hour has grown much too late, lit with lamplight that jaundices packed earth and pavement. They walk arm in arm down the dock where Ging’s wheelboat is moored. On her knees and weary for no real reason, Ging pours oil into one of the boat’s receptacles and adds a precise amount of solution. Her own adapted formula mixing her teacher’s and that of Jeen firecrackers. It hisses, flaring blue; boat actuators whir into motion.
An amber flicker in the distance, against a night as deep as it is damp. It takes too long for them to understand what it is.
When they arrive the workshop is smoke and ruin, scorched roof-boards floating in the waters, pieces of the veranda trapped among duckweeds and upriver refuse. Shards of pottery and glass on the steps leading to the house, stains of Ging’s pastes and pigments on the wood.
They find Nok by a window.
She must have tried to escape. Blackened fingers curl over the sill, caught under a fallen beam. The rest of her is hidden, but from a scrap of bright orange pha-nung it can be no one else.
“I only thought," Ging says distantly, staring at that hand, “to have someone look after the shop. That’s all. She was going to visit her temple siblings.”
The first drops of a late-summer rain. Where they touch the wreck of her house the wood sizzles and cracks. Each of Ging’s muscles tenses; she wants to reach out, to be in motion, to do what she does not know. Aunrampha is holding her steady, but she isn’t shaking, isn’t collapsing. She feels nothing at all, as if her heart has guttered out.
Footsteps on wet mulch. The snap and rustle of a parasol opening. From beneath its shade Anna Leonowens peers at them. “An unfortunate night.”
Ging looks at the Angrit, a heat unfurling in her that turns to ice. “You murdered a child.”
“Did I? An odd conclusion to make, on little evidence save that I’ve passed by. If a child is dead, my condolences. Lady Panthapiyot, how interesting to see you about at this hour. Your mother would be… put out, let alone to hear that you’re attired and painted like a Chinese whore. So loosely are girls raised in this country. Spare the rod, spoil the child—you could’ve benefited from a boarding school, a Christian education.”
“Leonowens.” Aunrampha steps between Ging and Anna. “You are not untouchable.”
“Siamese as a lot are ungrateful. Your kingdom, such as it is, stands sovereign on the sufferance of Britain.” The woman shrugs, a farang gesture. “I’ll leave you to your matter. I suppose there’ll be cremation and much heathen noise made by bald men in orange robes.”
She lifts her skirts slightly, her boots squelching on puddles. The parasol she hands to a gaunt yellow-headed man. Her carriage bears the emblem of the Angrit embassy. It rumbles away under the crack of a whip, a spray of mud and rainwater in its wake.
“I'll have justice," Ging says to the quiet that carriage and governess have left behind. The rain tastes of bitter salt, as though it’s passed through ashes.