Heir of Iron (The Powers of Amur Book 1) (6 page)

Cauratha lifted his head and looked at Mandhi with a wet, heartbroken stare. But a sliver of hope showed on his mouth. “Oh, Mandhi. You are worth two sons to me. Come here.” He reached for her hand and pressed it against his cheek.

Taleg cleared his throat. “It’s probably good we didn’t say anything about Manjur, though.”

Mandhi put her hand on her father’s head. “Navran’s smarter than he looks. He may put it together before too long. After all, how many estates hide an entrance to the Ruin of Ulaur’s temple?”

“Soon enough,” Cauratha crooned, as if on the verge of sleep. “Soon enough, he’ll be ready.”

Taleg raised an eyebrow at Mandhi. She mouthed:
never
.

“Ho! Up!” Taleg crashed through the curtain of the men’s ablution chamber with a weak, struggling Navran slung over his shoulder.

“Put me down, you rancid snow giant,” Navran slurred. His fists beat against Taleg’s back. He let loose a string of curses so vile that Mandhi reddened at the other end of the courtyard. She clenched her teeth and stormed down the passage after them.

“Where did you find him this time?” Mandhi asked.

“Oh, more of the same,” Taleg said. “Gambling on the wharves by the Maudhu river, getting drunker and losing more by the minute.” He shrugged Navran off his shoulder and dropped him gently on his feet.

“Star-damned goat piss,” Navran said. “I was going to win. Did I tell you to come get me?” He staggered back a step, then lurched forward swinging wildly with his jaw and fists clenched. Taleg caught his punch in his hand and grabbed Navran around the wrist to keep him from falling on his face. Navran kicked and swore.

“The big advantage of when he’s drunk,” Taleg said grinning, “is that he’s much more talkative, and his punches are easier to block.”

Mandhi curled her lip in disgust. “Did you find his money purse?”

Taleg nodded and tossed the bag of coins to her.

“That’s my money, you slut,” Navran said. Taleg kicked him in the stomach. Navran howled and grabbed his gut, sobbing violently.

“That was a tap,” Taleg said. “I’m in a good mood, or else you’d be hurting worse than that for insulting Mandhi.”

“Yes, of course you watch out for your slut—”

Taleg bent and put his hand over Navran’s mouth. Navran began to struggle, but Taleg pinned him to the ground with his other hand. “How much is left?”

Mandhi grunted. “Some. Less than last time.” In the past month he hadn’t quite reduced Veshta’s house to penury with his drinking and gambling, but if he kept it up….

“Yes, well, he’s getting harder to find,” Taleg said. “It’s funny, though: he doesn’t lie. As long as the game is jaha and he’s sober, he beats everyone. But eventually the other men at the wharf get tired of losing and insist that they play sacchu, and then he gets drunk, and then it’s all over.”

Navran squirmed away from Taleg’s grip and shouted, “The dice hate me! I hate sacchu! Let me go.”

“Are you going to quit squirming like a worm and be a man, now?”

Navran stopped his flailing. Taleg took his hands off of him, and Navran struggled to sit up, swaying and shuddering. He looked from Taleg to Mandhi with a expression of hatred.

“Stick to the games of skill,” Taleg said. “The dice
do
hate you, but you’re hard to beat at capturing the towers on the jaha board.”

The voice of Veshta’s page startled Mandhi. “Is he well?” Habdana asked.

“Bring him some rice and some mild beer to take the edge off,” Mandhi said. “And he’ll be fine.”

“I’ll tell Kidri,” Habdana said. “But Cauratha wants to speak to you and Taleg.”

Taleg wiped his hands of Navran’s saliva and vomit. He glanced at Mandhi with a bemused smile. “Let me wash up. Tell your father I’ll be right up.”

Mandhi nodded and ascended the marble stairs to her father’s room. She found him hunched over his desk, fingering two separate ink-scribbled palm leaves, his lips moving silently as he read them.

“Come in, Mandhi,” he said. “Is Taleg not here?”

“He will cleanse himself after bringing Navran in, then come up.” She knelt next to her father.

Cauratha sighed and set down the palm leaves. He rubbed his ashy brows and rested his head against the desk. “What has my son done this time?”

The phrase
my son
buzzed like a hornet in Mandhi’s ears. Swallowing the bilious reflux at the back of her throat, she said, “The same as always. Drinking. Gambling. Fighting Taleg when he gets brought in. Swearing.”

Cauratha groaned. “I wish I understood. It’s been a month, and he gets worse every day.”

Mandhi bit her tongue. She sometimes wished that Navran would simply disappear, if it wouldn’t endanger her marriage to Taleg. But these wishes weren’t something she could share with her father.

“I wonder if I shouldn’t tell him.”

“Tell him what? That you are the Heir?”

“Yes, and that he should carry the line after me. Give him a sense of responsibility, an appreciation of the gravity of the situation.”

“Only if you want to ascend to the stars more quickly. Navran would get drunk and give you up within days, and then the king of Virnas would have your head.”

“Navran might do that. But he might come to his senses.”

Taleg appeared at the door a moment later, hands still dripping wet. He bowed to Cauratha and said, “It was like bathing a rutting goat, but I did get Navran back home. He’s taking food and rest now.”

“I had hoped,” Cauratha croaked, “that being here in the estate among other Uluriya would temper whatever evil habits he acquired elsewhere. But this hope dies daily.” He picked up the palm-leaf pages and extended the first one to Mandhi. “So perhaps I need another hope. Read this.”

It was a letter. The crumbling wax on the seal showed a sea eagle, with the abbreviated name of the city of Davrakhanda above it. Mandhi glanced at the salutation and let out a gasp:
Aidasa Sadja darya Davrakhandaha
. The king of Davrakhanda. She scanned the rest of it: he greeted Cauratha and Veshta with the usual formulas for the life of the Emperor, then claimed to have interest in a man named Navran. He invited Navran and anyone else who would accompany him to come to Davrakhanda under his protection and ended with sincere hope that they would come quickly.

And that was it. No indication of how he knew of Navran, what he wanted, or what the purpose of going to Davrakhanda was. Mandhi passed the letter to Taleg, who read it and passed it back to Cauratha with an expression of bewilderment.

“Do you all think that was as strange as I do?” Taleg asked. “I hardly know where to begin.”

“It’s a trap,” Mandhi said. “None of it makes any sense.”

“A trap,” Cauratha said. “I had the same thought. But for whom? For Navran?”

“As if anyone would want him,” Mandhi muttered.

“We did,” Taleg retorted. “And Sadja-dar here says that he’s interested in Navran.”

“But why? The Navran we know is not the sort of prize that the king of Davrakhanda would be jealous of.”

Cauratha shook his head. “No. Not the Navran we know, for sure.” He put the palm leaf aside. “I received that letter several days ago, and I chose then to ignore it. But then I received this.”

He gave Mandhi the next leaf, this one sealed with the image of an eagle and a flame. The seal of Gocam, the thikratta who advised Cauratha from distant Ternas. In the letter Gocam addressed Cauratha warmly, then spoke directly:
You have received a letter from a student of mine in Davrakhanda. Accept his invitation. He is not a foe.

There the letter ended.

Mandhi looked up at her father. “I don’t understand.”

Cauratha raised his palm to indicate ignorance. “I don’t understand either. But it is from Gocam. Gocam has never led us astray.”

“He led us to Navran.”

Cauratha groaned. “Navran is perhaps not who we expected, but Gocam was not wrong when he said that my son lived.”

“And so what? Do you really think we should go to Davrakhanda?”

Taleg cleared his throat and passed the page back to Cauratha. “I think we should go to Davrakhanda. And we should bring Navran with us. It’ll be a jolly excursion.”

Mandhi scoffed. “You can’t be serious.”

“While I
am
having a lovely time chasing Navran out of gambling pits every day and dragging him drunk back to the estate, a change of pace might do him well. Give him new sights to see. New places to vomit.”

Cauratha winced at Taleg’s joke, but he nodded. “He can’t do worse than here. Perhaps Davrakhanda will be good for him. And when you’ve spoken with Sadja, take him also to Ternas. Gocam will certainly do
something
to him.”

“And if it’s a trap? Why should all three of us walk into a dangerous pit?”

Taleg began counting on his fingers. “First, Navran certainly can’t go alone. He’d be dead or drunk or lost at sea before he ever got within sight of the city.
I
can’t go alone, since I’m just a bodyguard. I suppose that just Mandhi and I might go, but Sadja didn’t ask to see us. So it’s got to be all three of us.”

Mandhi shook her head. “We can’t all three go. They’re purging Uluriya again in the north, and you want us to walk into the heart of it.”

“You’d be going to Davrakhanda,” Cauratha said. “Not Majasravi. I’ve gotten no complaint from our brothers in Davrakhanda for their safety.”

“Plus,” Taleg said, “I would be with you. No one takes me for an Uluriya at first, and barely anyone will dare fight me. You’d be as safe there as here in Virnas.”

She caught the weight of what he didn’t say. The two of them and Navran, who already knew of their marriage, alone on the road for so many weeks, in the guest-houses of strangers whose gossip would never get back to Virnas. She stamped down the heat in the bottom of her belly. They had been stealing isolated nights, here and there, a half a dozen in the month since the wedding. Travel would be freedom.

“We would have to leave quickly,” she said. “To get to Davrakhanda and Ternas to see Gocam, and to get back before the rains. We’ll be on the road for months.”

“We can leave the day after tomorrow,” Taleg said. “Why wait?”

“I shall have to write Sadja-dar a letter,” Cauratha said, “which you can carry with you. He knows we are Uluriya, so hopefully he will be prepared for our coming. What else he knows, you will have to see. Gocam will know you’re coming, of course. But Mandhi.” He folded his hand over hers and smiled at her with a warm, helpless expression. “Come back quickly. I missed you dearly during your last excursion with Taleg.”

“We’ll return as soon as we can,” Mandhi said. “I don’t want to stay away any longer, either.”

“Very well. Taleg, will you leave us for a moment?”

“Certainly.” He bowed to both of them. “I’ll let Navran know of our plans. Hopefully he’ll be sobered up enough to just glare at me rather than cursing me.”

When the curtain fell across the door again, Cauratha said in a low voice, “I have been thinking of your marriage.”

Mandhi heart tightened into a stone. For a moment she forgot to breathe. “With whom?”

“Veshta has made some inquiries for me. There are a few young men in the city who would be suitable. I have spoken with a young saghada who lives on the south side of the city. Twenty-seven years old, unmarried, of a pristine and pious Uluriya family. I wished to invite him to the estate in the next week, though you’re leaving now…. Perhaps I will invite him anyway.”

“Father, please don’t compel me—”

“Compel you?” He laughed. “Mandhi, I lost the power to compel you when you were still a girl. No, no, I would merely present you with the chance to meet him. But you were so eager to marry earlier.”

“I… I was. I mean, I am. But I was afraid, that you had arranged something, or would arrange something while I am gone.”

“I will arrange nothing without your consent. You have borne more than half of the burden of being Heir for years, and I owe you at least that respect. And there is the matter of my identity. Any man who would marry you would have to know that I am the Heir, and would respect the star-iron ring on your finger. Should Navran fail to fulfill his duties as Heir, the next Heir might come through you anyway. This man obviously knows none of this, and I would need to examine him more closely myself before telling him. But still, would you meet with him when you return?”

Her tongue felt like a serpent in her mouth, unwilling to bend itself to form words. She couldn’t say
yes
, but what pretext did she have to say no?
Navran
, she thought bitterly. If only he were a competent Heir, her marriage to Taleg might be forgiven. But if not… perhaps she could hope, along with her father, that seeing Sadja and Gocam would change him. “When I return, we’ll see,” she said.

An idea sparked in her mind: “Perhaps you could arrange for this man to meet with Srithi. She knows me, and she could at least give an impression, both to you and to me. And perhaps when we have heard from Sadja in Davrakhanda things will change.” And this way Srithi would be able to manufacture some excuse to reject the man with less loss of face than Mandhi would endure. She might not appreciate being put upon in this way, but it would do.

“I don’t see how Sadja-dar’s invitation could change anything, unless you expect him to marry you.” Cauratha looked at Mandhi with an expectant expression, then shook his head. “Ah, that was meant to be a joke, but I see from your face that it has failed. I lack Taleg’s talent for them. You always laugh at his.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. And don’t worry. I’ll go no farther with matchmaking until you return from Davrakhanda. But as for Navran—here, let me give you the letter from Gocam that first sent us looking for him. Perhaps he would like to read it. I want you to consider whether we should reveal the truth of his inheritance to him.”

Mandhi pursed her lips. “I don’t want to put you in danger.”

“Navran
must
know before he meets Sadja-dar. I must assume that Sadja-dar knows, somehow, and that the meeting will hinge on this knowledge, so Navran cannot go into it with less knowledge than you and Taleg have. Do you understand?”

She had not considered the consequences of the meeting with Sadja, though once her father said it, the necessity was obvious. “I’ll tell him,” she said. “Before we get to Davrakhanda. I’m not happy about it, because I don’t think he’s to be trusted, but I’ll do it.”