the spoon in it, and curled up on the bed. He was asleep instantly. Jimut began to remove his boots and armor.
Rosethorn struggled to stand.
Jimut shook his head. “I don’t mind taking care of him,” he said, and flicked his fingers at the door in a beckoning gesture. A girl who wore the undyed robe of a novice in the eastern Circle temples came in and bowed very low to Rosethorn. She placed her hands on the shoulder ties of Rosethorn’s armor, checked that Rosethorn did not object, and began to undo them. “Gods all bless me,” Jimut continued as he worked on Briar, “how many of my friends have you and Briar cared for all this time? You saved my prince’s life, too. I think you have earned some rest, and you can’t even stand up, any of you. What you did out there today — I have never seen anything like that, ever. None of us have.” He laid the armor on the floor of Briar’s side of the room so the sweaty parts could dry.
A Gyongxin man staggered through the door carrying Luvo. “Where — where will you go, old one?” he panted.
“He stays with me,” Evvy said.
Jimut put another of the small tables that littered the room by Evvy’s side of the bed. “What took you so long?” he asked the newcomer.
“The stone god weighs more than he looks,” retorted the man. “And there are many steps from the horse level to this one. All of them are clogged with people who wanted to see him.”
“It is perfectly understandable,” Luvo said. “They have not seen the heart of a mountain before. I only wish that they would have waited until I had made certain that Evumeimei is well.”
“I’m tired,” Evvy said. She set her bowl on the floor, just as Briar had done, and fumbled at the ties of her armor. Her fingers were strangely clumsy. She gave up and lay on the mattress with her head close to Luvo. “Did we catch the emperor?” she asked him.
“Soudamini and the Garmashing soldiers are chasing him,” he said. It was the last thing she heard him say.
When Briar awoke, the shutters were open. He stumbled over to look outside. If he judged correctly, it was well past noon. Rosethorn and Evvy still slept. Luvo was nowhere in sight.
He stood for a long time, eyeing the view. Their room was on the southern side of the temple, with half of Garmashing spread out below. The city he remembered had been hammered. Everywhere he saw blackened pits where bombs and fires had destroyed homes, temples, and public buildings. Holes had been blown in roads and parks. The air smelled of burning and death. People labored to drag war’s debris into piles, except for the dead people and animals. There the scavengers were having a feast. The vultures were so bold they didn’t even flinch away from the humans.
Briar turned away from the sight. He’d found a lot to admire in Gyongxe, but sky burial still unnerved him.
A look at his hands showed him that he was utterly filthy. He opened the door and peered out.
A novice sat there reading a scroll. “Sir?” he asked. “How may I assist?”
Soon Briar was soaking in a huge tub full of hot water. He got out only when he started to sleep and slipped under the surface. Back to bed for me, he thought, once he stopped choking. He was drying off when Parahan arrived.
The man wasted no time in stripping off his clothes. “Bliss,” he announced as he settled into the bath. He looked exhausted. “Souda and Sayrugo are back,” he told Briar. “They chased the imperial army as far as they dared, but the enemy got away. We’ll see if they return.”
“You think they will?” Briar asked. He put on the narrow breeches and long tunic that someone had left for him.
“The emperor isn’t nearly beaten enough. He’ll get more troops and mages and he’ll come back. We’ll be waiting, too. Actually, I don’t think the emperor was with this army. He might be in the north or northwest — those troops haven’t arrived, which has the God-King worried. Weishu knows he has to take Garmashing, though, to hold Gyongxe. I’m not sure he can.”
“Why not?”
“The shamans were always going to be a problem, even more than the tribes themselves,” Parahan explained. “Half of battle magic is knowing what the other side will use. Weishu’s famous mages don’t know how to fight shamans, because the shamans don’t work alone. The mages cannot direct their power at one person. Shaman magic is based on the combination of five or six different people with different strengths and skills. They practice weaving those things together all their lives. And if any of the court mages have ventured out to learn the shaman music and dances, I, for one, will be much surprised. Do you scrub feet?”
“No,” Briar replied, thinking over what the prince had said. “Do your mages in Kombanpur study the shaman dances?”
“No,” Parahan told him comfortably, “but we have never been stupid enough to attack Gyongxe. There are easier places to attack on our side of the Drimbakang Lho.”
Several novices entered in a rush to open the taps on another big tub. Steaming water rushed into it as the novices placed soap and scrubbing sponges on one of the benches within reach. Briar was about to leave and Parahan was sinking into his bathwater when Rosethorn, Evvy, and Souda came in, all dressed in bathing robes.
“Do any of you ladies scrub feet?” Parahan asked as Rosethorn stripped off her robe and stepped down into the water.
“Scrub your own feet, you lazy oaf,” she advised him.
Evvy stood there, trembling. Parahan covered his eyes and Briar looked away. It was Souda who said, “It’s safe, lads.” She and Evvy were tucked into the rising water. The novices closed the taps when the water reached a couple of inches from the rim of the tub.
Briar silently cursed himself for missing a glimpse of Souda, but he knew he wouldn’t have felt right. Bathing wasn’t for ogling women; it was for getting clean. It worried him that Evvy was so clearly frightened of being bare when she had taken baths in groups all of her life. She had sunk down in the shared tub until her chin rested on the top of the water.
“So can the shamans drive the emperor out of Gyongxe?” Briar asked, returning to his conversation with Parahan.
Their friend shook his head. “If the three of you were to stay, perhaps we could come up with something that would kill Weishu,” he said. “That would force Yanjing out. It’s his ambition that brings him here, and greed. Without him, his generals would retreat to fight over the rest of the empire. His sons would fight, too. That would keep all of them busy.”
“I hate to agree with my brother on politics, but for once he’s right,” Souda remarked.
“I will have you know that in the years I trailed the emperor like a chained monkey, I received a very good education in politics,” Parahan retorted. “You can’t ask for a better teacher than Weishu. That’s how I know Gyongxe doesn’t have enough soldiers to send against him. That’s not even counting devices of war. We fight him with no catapults, no
“You don’t need to buy it,” Rosethorn said with a yawn. “It’s evil stuff, but if you truly need the formula, Briar and I both know how to make
Souda and Parahan stared at her.
“Do you know how much my uncle paid the empire for sixty kegs of it last year?” Souda whispered.
“We’ll teach you how to make it for free if we leave you to face him,” Rosethorn announced. “But it’s evil. Once you have it, you guarantee your enemies will get their hands on it so they can use it against you.”
“Let’s not get carried away with this ‘for free’ stuff,” Briar said quickly. “If Gyongxe can pay there’s nothing wrong with that. We have a long journey to reach our ship.”
