General.”
He doesn’t play to win, he plays to learn. To learn me.
Tuvaini had his men waiting outside. He need only light the lamp in the window and they would rush in and seize the general. Yet he remained in his seat. Arigu led ten thousand loyal soldiers. What would they do, seeing their leader in chains? And he’d met no commander strong enough to take Arigu’s place. It troubled him, a loose thread against his finger. It did not escape his notice that he had cursed Beyon for the same hesitation. “So you have run back to the city alone.” Tuvaini waited for Arigu to admit the girl had died, that his plan had failed, but Arigu only fingered his tiles. Tuvaini continued, searching for the words that would provoke a reaction. “It would be a mistake to bring this Felting girl to the city with Beyon searching for her. And for you.”
Arigu smiled his broad and friendly smile. “You have not arrested me, old friend.”
“To ally yourself with the horse tribes is perilous. You risk the empire, and your throat, for your ambition,” he said.
Arigu’s smile widened. “Whereas you risk only the emperor?”
I risk nothing that has not already been lost.
Tuvaini set the fifth and last of his Army tiles, white, for the White Hat Army. Taller than any tile on the board, it stood now at the head of an unstoppable advance into Arigu’s heartland. Tuvaini steadied the tile and drew his hand away quickly, spreading his fingers. It had been a long time since accident had felled any of his tiles before the Push. Settu was a game for steady hands. All games were. “Tuvaini, old friend, no man can risk the empire.” Arigu set another Spy stone.
His tiles stood in scattered confusion. Tuvaini had the game. “The empire cannot be taken. It cannot be lost. It’s too strong,” Arigu said. He reached for his Dominants, the tiles he should have played at the start. They were useless now, but his to play if he chose. “The empire rests on three pillars, and each in turn could bear the load alone.” Arigu set out his own White Hat Army, the first pillar. “All the grass tribes, stretching out even to the trade lands of Kesh and the Vaulcan Marches, with the nomads from the dunes to sharpen their spears, would be held by the army at the Cerani gates. Not through numbers-there could be five Riders to each man of Cerani-but because war rests on the science of supply and method, not bravado and the application of warpaint.”
“I’m not a schoolboy,” Tuvaini said, but Arigu went on.
He set his Fort tile behind the Army tile. “The walls of Nooria are the second pillar: a stone currency with which time itself can be purchased. And with time, aid will come from the four corners of the empire.” Arigu tapped each of his Army tiles in turn, spread out at random across the board. Behind the Fort, Arigu laid the Tower. “And the third: the mages cannot be turned from their service to the throne.”
“My tutor always taught me that the empire was indestructible.” Tuvaini pursed his lips. What about the girl? “But I am not reassured.” He reached towards his Assassin tile to claim the victory.
Arigu waved Tuvaini’s hand away. “The empire is in no danger.” He laid a finger on his Emperor tile. “But there can be change.”
Arigu made the Push. His Emperor tile fell. The Emperor caught the Assassin, and the Assassin the Vizier. The cascade continued, splitting, dividing around the Spy stones, spreading out across the board with the soft, rapid click of tile felling tile. Patterns Tuvaini had neither seen nor imagined emerged, grew and died, and still the toppling continued. Tuvaini stared at the ruin before him. Fallen tiles covered every inch of the Settu board. Six tiles only remained standing, the same on each side: the
White Hat Army, the Fort and the Tower.
“A draw.” Arigu drained his goblet and stood to leave.
“Your plan is finished, Arigu.” Tuvaini couldn’t keep the anger from his voice.
“Not yet.” Arigu straightened his tunic and reached for his swordbelt.
“The girl comes.”
She lives? His men had failed, and Arigu stood there smiling. Knowing.
Tuvaini rose to his full height, fury guiding his words.
“To seed claimants to the Petal Throne among the grass tribes? You would grow a pet emperor with relatives who live on horseback.” He made a sharp gesture towards the board. “Men who can’t even play Settu.” “We can all learn new games, Tuvaini. If enough emperors die, the kingmakers will eventually come to your door. You even have Beyon’s look, though scraped a little thinner, it’s true.” Arigu tightened his belt, jiggled his sword in its scabbard and flashed a dark smile. “We can’t all stake our hopes on ties to the royal bloodline, however tenuous. Some of us have less regal ancestry… or so the gossips say.”
“She will die.” Tuvaini spoke the words to Arigu’s back. It would happen.
He had the means and the will to make it happen.
Arigu paused at the door, looking every inch the general.
“I need an emperor who needs me, Tuvaini. I need an emperor who can see that we stand poised to take the world. I’ve seen it, Tuvaini. I’ve seen all the nations between the seas. There is nothing like Cerana.”
The general’s unexpected eloquence struck Tuvaini. He’d spoken the truth: the empire set its sights too low. More could be found over mountain and water. Gems to the north, spice to the south, wood to the east; they spread out before him, dates for plucking.
Tuvaini said, “Wait.”
Arigu turned, the door half-open, his face drawn in question. Tuvaini swept the tiles away, clearing the board. “We can talk about that.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Mesema had heard nothing of Banreh. Perhaps he had already set off over the desert. Perhaps he sat in some other tent, scratching on his lambskin. Perhaps the emperor had killed him after all.
Sahree had not allowed her to get her own riding clothes from the trunk on top of the carriage. Instead she had, after much fussing, dressed her in thin silk pants and a long tunic. A wide blue scarf protected her head from the desert sun. “No padding?” Mesema asked Sahree, tapping her behind, but Sahree just shook her head and sighed.
She moved through the silk corridor once again, but this time it ended not with a tent flap but with open sand and a group of horses. Mesema’s heart lifted when she saw Tumble at last, waiting next to a tall steed; she hadn’t quite believed she would be allowed to ride. She clambered into the saddle with a yelp of joy and patted his mane. “You’re a good boy, you are, getting through all that heat and sand for me,” she said. From her elevated position she could see the entire camp: waggons were being loaded, tents struck, fires doused. Men in different colored uniforms-Arigu’s in white hats and the emperor’s in blue-hastened to their tasks. She didn’t see Banreh.
Everyone fell quiet, and she knew the emperor had arrived. He mounted the powerful horse on her right. He wore a rough tunic and breeches, nothing more than what a thrall might be given at her father’s holding; only the gold on his fingers showed him to be something more. Behind him, two soldiers in blue mounted their own horses. A fourth man waited well to the emperor’s right, his white robes fluttering, though no wind stirred. He looked at Mesema with eyes the color of the winter sky and she quickly turned away.
The emperor gestured towards the mountains ahead. “We’ll ride to the east.”
She didn’t ask where he was taking her-she didn’t feel that it mattered. He was the emperor, and if he wanted to take her to the top of a mountain or drop her down a well, it couldn’t be prevented.
He smiled then, a natural smile from a Rider in his seat.
“Let’s see you ride.” He set off, and she could see he treated his horse more as a thrall than an equal. Still, he rode well, and she had to struggle to keep up with him. She wasn’t used to the soft feel of the sand under Tumble’s hooves. The emperor rode ahead for the most part, but she managed to pull alongside for a few moments at a time. They exchanged no words. The blue-hatted soldiers followed at a distance, and behind them rode the strange man in white. When she turned, she could see them, sitting straight and awkward on their mounts.
The mountains towered before them, lit by the evening sun. In time the rock grew distinct, shadows marking lower peaks, crags and ridges. They passed from the dunes to where the sand rose in tiny ripples. She could see a great rise of mist from the rocks to her right, and a swathe of green that trailed away, heading south-west. This could be no other than the River of a Hundred Names, which fed the Felting in the valleys and flowed down into
