Chapter 2
Resplendent Air Five – RY 765
Zuven was directed by a member of the satrap's staff to meet Sesus Bian at the residence of Sesus Alon Carina, a dragon-blooded merchant and artist who customarily spent her summers in the city. The villa in question lay just off the southern edge of the Royal District. The short walk to reach it was woefully insufficient to supply the soldier with the time necessary to grapple and comprehend the jarring turn he'd just been dealt.
Considering that this might be best – as the wise officer does not overly question the orders of his superiors without daring madness – he plunged ahead, announcing his presence to the doorman less than an hour after vacating the satrap's presence.
Met by the butler, Zuven was swiftly ushered within without so much as presenting his writ. Apparently there was only one reason a dragon-blooded visitor might seek out this house.
Though mostly under blankets for preservation, the villa resembled a miniature version of the satrap's abode. The only substantive difference was in the servants, who were Tengese, not Blessed Isle natives dragged thousands of leagues from their families, and in the art, which all presented a vision of Tengese life seated against dramatic local landscape backdrops.
It took only a moment to reach the library, where the house's temporary mistress had taken up occupancy. Zuven was all but pushed inside and immediately announced. He felt little welcomed.
"My lady, Ragara Zuven to see you."
Zuven's initial glimpse of his new employer was of nothing but long black hair cascading down off burnished orange robes halfway to her hips. Granted the insight of immediacy, he saw the fabric she wore was the same as the satrap had borne, but this outfit, while of exquisite cut, was totally lacking in ornamentation.
At his arrival she turned and rose from her desk. The surface, revealed by this motion, was strew with a many-layered chaos of documents, books, and maps. "Thank you Sulat. That will be all."
The butler's swift bow and subsequent departure went completely unnoticed. The solider was too busy staring.
Sesus Magel Bian was pretty, with a fine slender figure and pale white skin touched with a bluish shimmer. She had a small, pouty, mouth with reddish lips below a subdued, modest nose. It was her eyes that were truly remarkable. They were blazing bright blue, shining with the fire of a thousand perfect gemstones. The color was omnipresent there, covering all portions of the organ completely, iris, pupil, and white, only orbs of blue could be seen.
It was the dragon's blessing, but never before had he seen such a dramatic sign.
"Ragara Zuven?" Bian broke the spell by speaking. She had a pleasant, kind voice, one that conveyed gentle interest regardless of topic. "Welcome, I am Sesus Magel Bian. To what do I owe the pleasure?"
Suddenly adrift, Zuven defaulted to his military training. "Ragara Zuven, Talonlord of the Twenty-first Legion, reporting to you for duty, ma'am." Out of habit he saluted, hand to his chest, before dropping back into parade rest, terribly embarrassed.
Bian smiled, the glimmer of her eyes laughing lightly.
"Of course," she gestured to a chair by the window. "Do sit down, I expect we have several things to discuss."
Feeling clumsy, Zuven did as he was bidden. The satrap had dispatched him as a pawn, and this woman clearly knew it. He wondered what she intended to do with him. He felt as powerless as the chair he sat upon.
Pulling her own seat out from behind the clutter of her desk, Bian sat near the window, where she could catch the most of the late morning sun. There was no fire lit in this room filled with hundreds of valuable books. When she turned to him at last she bore down with the full force of her incredible eyes. "So," she began. "The satrap has sent a soldier to be his spy. No doubt he could find no one better. Still, this is promising. I can make use of soldiers. Far better than some fool dynast gallivanting about following dreams of adventure and glory."
Struck into silence by this blunt deluge, Zuven prayed behind his eyes to all the gods that he'd kept his mouth closed.
Whether or not he'd managed that minimal salvage, his reaction did not go unnoticed. "Do I shock you?" Bian questioned. "Good. Most children of the houses hide their feelings so well it takes far too much shock to break them free. Tell me, now, the satrap did ask you to spy on me, correct?"
"Yes," It seemed pointless to lie. Zuven knew well he had little talent for deception. His father had raised him to honesty in all things, and the battering since had only made such admonishments stronger.
"Well then," Bian shrugged, a light motion of her shoulders, barely ruffling her robes at all. "Tell him what he wants to know."
"But-," Zuven stopped. He chose his next words deliberately. "Are you certain of this?"
A sharp intake of breath marked the lady's throat. "What I have planned is quite dangerous. The unsettled lands are far from forgiving. To complete this course we will need to gain each other's full trust. The satrap is a powerful man, and more importantly aware of all his capabilities and limits. I cannot stop you from serving him as a second master or him from learning what he believes he must know. Therefore I will simply remove the burden of deception between us."
Without a word Zuven waited. Caught between competing duties he was adrift, currents pushing and pulling at once.
"However," a devious smile broke across bright lips. "I think the satrap may have made a mistake." Blue eyes focused hard, assessing down to the minute scale, narrow and hot. "Those eyebrows, that chin, and that nose never came from the Blessed Isle. You are local, born here in the southwest. The Banner Isles1 I believe." She raised her head to a more familiar approach. "Yes?"
"Ytiran island," the soldier answered. His memory swelled with the scent of sticky-soup vapors and the blanketing odor of latex on the trees. This time it did not seem so embarrassing to say.
"We can hold births in the Threshold in common then." No shame marked this declaration. "For myself Aglea2, far to the east. An unremarkable place," she added the last to counteract Zuven's obvious blank look.
"I doubt," he answered carefully, but then with growing recklessness. "That we are very similar." On the second sentence he switched his words, abandoning the fluid, formal structures of High Realm for the rapid, choppy, popping speech of Flametongue. He let the sorrow and regret out, filling his words there in a way he could not present in the formal phrasing of the dynast's language.
"Of course not," Bian answered in the same tongue, pitch perfect and without any sign of difficulty in the transition. "But unlike the satrap, who would no doubt call it the natural order, I proclaim that tragedy." She looked out the window, blue eyes gazing high above the city.
"Our right, and our duty, as those chose by the dragons is to rule Creation," she spoke quietly, just above a whisper. "But we know so little of the land. How can we rule it so? I am not going south for dragon lines and jade relics, useful though they be. I am going for the learning, for the seeking, so those demands might be met."
There was no hiding the genuine passion animating those words. Zuven was certain they were truth. Even so, his doubts were not quelled. "Is this the right time?"
"The brightest minds of the Heptagram and the most cunning spies of the All-Seeing Eye have failed to discern the cause behind the Empress' disappearance. Whatever the case, it is a power we do not understand." The answer was cool, logical, and well-founded, but lacked conviction. "I doubt I will find that secret, but the act of searching, of devoting oneself to the discovery of answers, is just as important, or more important, than ever before."
It was not in Zuven to agree, not completely. He would rather set his blades to scourging pirates in provision of her majesty's eventual return rather than wander the jungle. Yet regardless of his wishes Bian's passion was undeniable, and at the least she was taking action, rather than dithering as it seemed the far-off Deliberative had chosen. "I am your servant," he answered the unspoken question.
With the clarity of duty revealed he found the tumbling gymnastics of his stomach quieted. His teachers might not have made of him a full Prince of the Earth, but they had made an officer willing to devote himself to the fulfillment of his orders.
"Don't be too content," Bian smiled mysterious once more. "I will be asking you to endure a great deal of privation on this quest of mine, and I suspect we may come to grate upon each other's' company in the course of time."
Rubber-scented memories curled and twisted through the back of the soldier's mind. The average dynast's idea of privation was still incredible luxury to the youth he had been, and he was not yet a decade separated from that boy. He latched on instead to the second part of the statement. "What do you mean each other's' company? I thought I would be leading a talon-strength force. Did you mean to bring a mere scale?"
"My original plan was a fang of well-trained mortal supporters," Bian answered, sounding pleased that she had flummoxed his estimates. "However, since the satrap has seen fit to add a second one of the exalted to my endeavor I think I will cut that out as well. We will depart with you, me, and a pack animal, nothing more."
This time Zuven's mouth did fall open. "But..." he was unable to muster anything more than this nebulous objection.
"I have explored alongside armies before," Bian swooped down to crush the counter before it could be raised. "Their presence slows progress, is utterly impossible to hide in the jungle, and most significantly it inevitably colors all reactions quite terribly, ruining local engagement. A large group costs many times more and as a matter of defense merely provides a larger target. Besides, my ability to rapidly transport a group by calling the stormwinds is dramatically reduced with size."
Even befuddled as he was Zuven caught the reference, it touched upon the ways of war, and he was sensitive to such things. "You are a sorcerer?"
Blue eyes blinked twice. "Yes," she responded harshly, suddenly stiff. "There is great utility to the practice..." she stopped, trailing off before launching into a lecture that had clearly been given many times. "It does not matter why I chose sorcery. Is it a problem for you?"
Zuven had dealt with sorcery only in strictly governed combat exercises. He remained largely unresolved as to their existence. Most dynasts had few kind words for them, but then the same was true of him, and based solely on his birth. Bian appeared far less underhanded and conniving than the satrap, at the very least. "No." He let the lone word encompass the totality of his answer.
"Good." Taking the opportunity afforded by this break in conversation Bian stood and retrieved a sheaf of paper from her desk.
Studying her movement, Zuven observed two key things. First, he caught the unmistakable presence of chain links sliding about beneath her robes. There seemed to be no hindrance induced by the layer of metal so he assumed it must be jade.
Secondly, despite the relaxed setting of the villa, she wore a weapon hanging on a harness about her lower back. It was a strange device, two feet of curved metal and blue jade, carved with odd symbols and bearing a long edge. Thin and flattened, with a silk-wrap grip on one end, he supposed it was meant to be thrown or launched somehow, but the method escaped his imagination.
"Monsoon's Herald," she remarked, running her fingertips along the marine-shaded edge. "An eastern weapon, a sky cutter. And yours?" An eyebrow lifted above those gemstones.
Pulling free one of the short daiklaves far enough to display the edge of green jade, Zuven responded in kind. "Descending Palms."
"I shall endeavor to keep them clean," A tinge of sadness touched Bian's words. "But I suspect any thirst they may need slaked will be met many times over."
"I do not fear battle," It was a hard truth, but easily spoken. "My place in the host is to bear these blades." His instructors had admonished him in every course save one, the art of cutting.
Half-curious, half-sorrowful, blue eyes studied his face. "You are well trained, no doubt," she noted. "But very young," It was an odd statement from a woman he doubted was much more than twice his own age. "Have you faced true battle?"
Clenching his fingers once, Zuven forced himself to admit that it was a fair question. He was fresh from the House of Bells, on his first commission. He had classmates who had never spilled blood in anger and the desperation of struggle. He forced the rage that surfaced deep within back down. "When I was ten my father pressed a tapping knife into my hand," the worlds started hot in his chest, but left his lips icy cold. "He told me it was time to stand with the men rather than hide with the children when bandits came." Flametongue emphasis made the words searing. "The day I took my second breath I left five men dead, and one woman."
"My interrogation was unseemly, and I regret it," the apology was so unexpected it left Zuven poleaxed, and yet it was no lie. Bian's pale expression held the stiffness of sincerity. "Please forgive this lapse, I let my suspicions color my actions."
"It is nothing. There is no quarrel," the soldier muttered automatically, stunned by the lack of scorn. There had been neither the doubt of his Ragara patrons nor the mockery of his classmates. Something strange lurked hidden behind those frightful eyes, something he'd never seen before in one of his fellow dragon-blooded.
"Well then," Bian raised her sheaf of paper and returned to her seat. "I have a list of travel supplies I believe we will need, as well as trade goods that are both compact and likely to interest the tribes to the south, though that involves more guesswork than I would prefer. Here, take a look."
The list was written out in precise, narrow, High Realm calligraphy. Zuven read the language better than he spoke it, and had no trouble with this. It took only a quick glance through to gather that the sorceress was both serious about traveling light and had a good grasp of the necessities of jungle survival. He found he had only one significant sense. "Skip the marijuana and betel nut, local varieties will be preferred. Add more antivenin instead, there are never enough cures."
"A good suggestion," she acknowledged, watching carefully. "One other question has troubled me. There is no way to avoid bringing a pack beast, but the jungle is dangerous to all such creatures and I have found no good solution. I considered a claw strider, but they move poorly in muddy ground and are overly aggressive. Also, regrettably, expensive," she glanced out to the window once more. "Yeddim are too large and too stupid. Perhaps a mule, or-."
"Elephant," Zuven interjected with force, surprised by his confidence. "There is no other good choice."
This drew her head around, expression calculated. "Too heavy to carry in a stormwind," she countered. "More importantly, they are not easily handled. Do you know the art?"
He did not, but he had seen enough of the Tengese practice to recognize that an adult elephant did indeed require a skilled handler. Even the exalted could not ignore the strength of such creatures. Despite these obstacles some sense of buried intuition said that any other animal would never survive the trials of the jungle.
An incident from earlier, flashing out from the myriad exotic images of the bazaar, struck him then. "Two days ago I saw something, a creature from one of the obscure Fire Isles3; an elephant the size of a boar."
"Really?" Bian's eyes lit with inner fire. "How interesting. Do you remember where precisely?"
The skill of making a map of one's travels within one's skull had been considered essential at the House of Bells. "Yes."
For a final time Bian glanced out the window. "Almost time for the midday meal," she noted. "Care to talk a walk?"
Chapter 2 Notes
1. I have applied the term 'Banner Isles' to the cluster of islands slightly offshore and south of An-Teng on the Creation Map.
2. While this name is original, House Sesus is described as holding satrapies in the Far East in MoEP: Dragon-Blooded.
3. This name is a reference to the island group in the furthest southwest of Creation.
