Anji glanced at her; his hands were light on the reins, but his eyes were tight. She nodded coolly in return. He smiled, a flash that might have been loving encouragement, or anticipation of a cruel triumph as he forced his mother to accept a humble merchant's daughter as his wife. She looked ahead.
The porch wrapping around the big house had been extended, and whole sections around the side screened off with canvas. Even in the few weeks since Mai had last sailed to Astafero to see Miravia and to coax Uncle Hari out of the valley and down to the assizes that one time, the house had been changed: whitewashing
on the walls, curtains screening the windows, pillars wrapped with elaborately painted but half finished floral scenes. In addition to all this other decoration, the big house had been festooned with banners in the Qin style, a rainbow of colors: bold scarlet, sun gold, heavenly blue, bone white, mist silver, festival orange, night black, rain-sodden green, and a sighing purple that reminded her of Uncle Hari when she had last seen him flying away from Astafero's assizes. How well the assizes had gone! She drew strength from the memory. ^
A figure was seated in an ornate chair placed on the high porch as if the entire settlement of Astafero had been built to display and enhance the seated person's authority.
'Be brave, plum blossom,' murmured Anji. He carried Atani in a sling against his chest, the baby facing forward and looking around with his usual delighted expression, as if to say: All this! A parade for me! Not that Atani could possibly understand what was happening, or the import of this procession and what it suggested. When the Qin had taken over rule of Kartu Town, the city fathers and lords had processed to the fort in a show of humility. They had come to the Qin, not the other way around. So Anji approached his mother.
Attendants lined the plank walkway, sheltered from the sun by a new slate roof constructed over what had once been wings of canvas. Miravia stood on the lower steps, below the other attendants. Besides the kitchen women standing at the leftmost corner of the porch, Miravia was the only visible woman. Their gazes met across the gap, but Miravia did not descend to greet her. She glanced past Mai, searching for someone else, then selfconsciously adjusted the scarf that bound her hair. Realizing what she was doing, she lowered her hand.
Anji signaled the troop to a halt, dismounted, and handed his reins to a groom. He beckoned to Mai. Tuvi dismounted and came to hold her horse. Swinging down, she paced as in a dream to Anji. He unwrapped the baby from his sling and handed him to Mai. To clasp the plump little fellow gave her courage. She had a piece of Anji that his mother did not.
They approached the porch and ascended past a silent Miravia.
The woman was seated in a lofty chair of bright blue silk embroidered with dragons in a darker blue thread; these intense colors set off her gold headdress and the gown with its draperies that flowed around her. She had a broad, bold face, no beauty but
certainly handsome in the Qin way. She was not as old as Mai had thought she would be; her skin had a few wrinkles but no blemishes; her hands looked strong and capable, her shoulders were unbowed. She stared fiercely at her son — a man she had not seen for almost twenty years — and spared no glance for his wife and son.
Anji kneeled to touch her right slippered foot with his right hand, then brushed his fingers against his chest and his forehead before he looked up at her.
'Honored Mother.' He did not grovel. His pride elevated him. Whatever his true feelings were, he kept them reined in.
No one spoke as the mother examined her son. If joy or memory or tears welled deep in that steel countenance, Mai could not perceive them. She took her time looking him over, much — Mai supposed — as Anji had carefully examined Atani when he had first held the little boy. Banners snapped; ribbons fluttered. Hooves shifted as horses grew restless. The sun blazed on Mai's back, but her body shielded Atani within its shade.
'You look well enough, my son. Not handsome, I am afraid. But you have grown up strong and fit.' Nothing frail about her voice! Or her first line of attack, cutting straight for a vanity he did not, in fact, possess. 'Possibly you're even competent, if the reports I have heard are true.'
Mai was abruptly glad he had made no gesture commanding Mai to bow and scrape as he had done, for even fixed on her son, his mother's gaze had the biting remoteness of a desert adder's. Mai was pretty sure she could not bring herself to show obeisance to a woman who refused to show even one drop of affection for the son whose life she had saved years ago, a child she had not seen in twenty years. Yet she must be strong enough to welcome the woman's overtures, should they ever come.
'I am come from Sirniaka, Son. Your half brother Azadihosh is dead. I do not regret his death, or his family's slaughter, since it was his people who wished to kill you when they took pride of place in the palace. So do the gods work, in cutting the throats of those who forget that fate has a hand on every knife. Your cousins now hold the throne and its power. I am released from my prison and return to comfort you, Son. I do regret the many years we have been forced to live apart.'
For all the sentiment of the words, her voice did not quiver. Still, incredibly, she managed not to look at Mai or the baby.
'Why did they let you go?' he asked. No pretty speeches; no joyful embraces. They got straight down to business. 'Once a woman is brought into the emperor's palace, she is released only by death.'
'Not even then,' she said with a curt laugh, 'for the white robes capture her spirit in their blessing bowls and confine it forever to the jar of misery that is all the afterlife they will permit women.' Her smile held bitter victory. 'Your cousins feared what might happen if they attempted to have me-put down like a broken horse. My brother betrayed me when he sold me to the emperor in exchange for border trading rights, but he made sure the Sirni understood that my life and honor must never be tarnished. However, your cousins released me to act as their emissary.'
Her gaze flicked to Mai, like a blow: comprehensive, swift, and meant to make Mai flinch. Mai found her market smile and fixed it on like paint. The baby gurgled and reached one sweet little hand toward his father, babbling, 'Baba. Baba.'
'What business could my cousins have with me?' Anji asked as he smoothly took the baby out of Mai's arms and settled the silk-swaddled bottom on his upright thigh. He glanced down at the crowing infant. 'Hush, sunflower,' he said fondly.
Atani hushed, gazing raptly at his father.
The old woman's gaze tightened in exactly the way Anji's did when he was annoyed.
Mai felt her smile pinch toward a smirk, and she battled it back to the innocuously pleasant face she wore when men tried to grope her or women to cheat her. It was the face she had perfected through years of dealing with her hated Uncle Girish. Merciful One grant her open-heartedness! How could she have taken such a powerful and instantaneous dislike to a woman she did not even know?
The woman rose, and in rising displayed the smooth weave and magnificent embroidery of her gown. The silk was astoundingly rich and cunningly embroidered, a veritable treasure house of fabric. This was emperor's silk, not for the likes of a girl born to an insignificant sheep-herding clan in a dusty desert trading town.
'Your cousins are not unaware of the difficulty your existence poses to them. You have a legitimate claim to the imperial throne.'
'Which I forswore by leaving the palace. By going into exile, I became as one dead to the imperial court.'
'Dead to the court, but not dead in your physical form. The former is one style of death. The latter is more permanent. Naturally your cousin fears you may change your mind and choose to live. But your uncle, my brother, the var, might take it amiss if you were to die at the new emperor's hands.'