Her expression softened. “I only want to know you haven’t forgotten me, Moirin.”
I shook my head, feeling the sting of tears in my eyes once more. “Not in ten times a thousand years, my lady. I promise.”
“Thank you,” Jehanne whispered, and kissed me, first with infinite tenderness, and then with all the sweetness of desire, her tongue darting past my lips, the scent of night-blooming flowers and her all around us. Ah, gods! I had missed her so very much, and I wanted her so very badly. Sighing with pleasure, I unfastened the brooch on her ermine-collared cloak and let it fall to the ground, laying the graceful white lines of her throat and shoulders bare so I might kiss them, taste her silken skin—
And I awoke with a jolt in darkness.
My heart contracted painfully in my chest, a profound sense of loss growing so acute that an involuntary cry escaped me.
Startled out of a sound sleep, Bao scrambled wildly out of bed, reaching for his staff. “What is it?” he asked fiercely. “Moirin! What?”
An unreasoning wave of panic overcame me, words spilling out of my mouth. “Bao, I can’t marry you! I can’t! I’m not….. I’m not a wife-type person! I love you, I do, but I can’t promise to love you and you alone for the rest of my life! That’s like….. like asking me to love autumn, but not spring and summer! Or trees, but not flowers!”
Having determined we were in no immediate danger, Bao kindled a lamp and gazed at me with sleepy bewilderment. “Trees? Flowers? What in the world are you talking about?”
“You! Me! Us! Marriage!” I shook my head frantically. “I can’t do it, Bao! I can’t. I’m sorry! I may be many things, but I’m not an oath-breaker!”
He knelt on the bed and took my shoulders in his hands. “Moirin, calm down!”
“I can’t!”
“You can.” Bao gave me a gentle shake. “Calm down and breathe, you crazy woman, and tell me what this is about.”
It helped. I forced myself to breathe slowly, my thudding heart and racing pulse easing. “I dreamed of Jehanne.”
He looked confused. “Was it a bad dream?”
“No.” I flushed. “Not exactly. She wanted me to promise my marriage changed nothing between us. And….. I did. I promised I would never say no to her. I….. um, very much began to say yes instead.”
Bao’s expression turned grave. “It was only a dream, Moirin. I know you loved her, and a part of your heart will always be hers. But your Jehanne is no longer with us.”
“I know!” Tears spilled from my eyes, and I wiped impatiently at them. “But I wanted her—”
“Moirin,” Bao interrupted me. “I am not stupid, you know. I know you. I do not suppose I’m wedding some dull merchant’s daughter. I do not expect you to become a respectable matron. I am not asking you to swear any oath you cannot keep.” He shrugged, sitting on his heels and laying his hands on his thighs. “For whatever reason, the gods have joined us together, and I cannot imagine living without you. Can you?”
“No,” I murmured. “But—”
“But what?” He smiled a little. “Tomorrow, a dragon may decide to claim you as his mate. Or maybe your goddess Naamah will decide you need to seduce some spineless Yeshuite boy for his own good. I know this; and I am not afraid. It does not lessen what we are together, you and I. And since the gods have seen fit to join us, it is my thought that we should ask their blessing on our union. Is that so terrible?”
“No,” I admitted.
“I will not press you if you do not wish it,” Bao said. “Only know I do not expect you to be anyone but who you are.”
“And that is enough?” I asked uncertainly.
He laughed. “You crossed the Abode of the Gods and rescued me from the Spider Queen, Moirin. Yes. It is more than enough.”
My panic faded. “Aleksei was not spineless, you know,” I said to him. “He was a gentle soul, that’s all.”
Bao scoffed. “Oh, please! His mother had to convince him to free you.”
“He was very tall, with very broad shoulders,” I added. “And eyes the color of rain-washed flowers the name of which I only know in Alban.”
He smiled complacently at me. “Now you are only trying to make me jealous.”
“It’s not working very well, is it?” I observed.
“No.” Bao shook his head, the gold hoops in his earlobes glinting. “Because your spineless Yeshuite boy is a thousand leagues away, and I am here. If I were going to be jealous, I would begin with our beautiful Rani, who is much closer and a much greater threat.” He gave me another complacent smile. “Lucky for me, she does not share your unusual passions. Or at least not much, anyway. She is very fond of you.”
I gazed at Bao, at his still-sleepy face, unexpectedly beautiful. At the tousled shock of his hair, his corded forearms braced against his thighs, the stark zig-zag pattern of tattoos running down them. “So you still want to wed me?”
“Yes.”
I reached out and touched one of the gold hoops in his ears. “Why did you keep them? As a reminder of her?”
“Jagrati?” Bao stretched out his arms, regarding his tattoos. “No. I already have a reminder that cannot be removed.” Reaching up, he fingered one thick hoop. “These, I couldn’t figure out how to unfasten.”
I laughed.
This time, it was a healing laughter; and mayhap the laughter in my dream had been, too. Love as thou wilt, Blessed Elua had bade his people—my father’s people, and my people, too. I was a child of the Maghuin Dhonn Herself, and a daughter of Naamah, too. I had loved, and loved well.
Jehanne; always Jehanne. But so many others, too. Last and always, my great-hearted bad boy Bao, gazing at me with a quizzical look.
“Do you hate them?” he asked, touching his earlobes. “I will rip them out if you do.”
I shook my head. “Let them stay. Now that I know, I do not mind.”
Leaning over, Bao blew out the lamp. “Then let us sleep, Moirin, and be at peace with each other.”
SEVENTY-NINE
Once Hasan Dar was on his feet again, the Rani Amrita began to implement a plan of change.
She made a round of the temples, performing the offering rituals and prayers as we had done when I first arrived, only this time, she also announced her intention at each temple to revoke the unwritten laws regarding the untouchables within a month’s time.
Although they had been forewarned, some of the priests were indeed horrified that she meant to go through with it.
“You would profane the temple with unclean persons?” one grey-bearded fellow asked in shock. “Let them lay hands on the Shiva Lingam itself?” He shuddered. “No, no, no, highness! You are a woman, and not of the priestly caste. You do not understand what you do.”
“I beg to differ, brother.” Ravindra’s tutor, who was known as Guru-ji and whose beard was whiter than the priest’s, addressed him politely. “Her highness understands it very well, and I am in agreement that it is restoring a lost tradition. I will gladly sit with you and discuss the oldest of the Vedas.”
“But they are unclean!” the priest protested, ignoring his offer. “Highness, I beg you, do not do this thing!”
Amrita’s hands were posed in a mudra of respect, but her face was calm and determined, and Hasan Dar and her guards stood behind her, hands on their sword-hilts. “Forgive me, Baba, but I am doing it.”
He bowed his head in dismay. “You would seek to bend the will of the gods at the point of a sword?”
“No,” the Rani said firmly. “But it is my true belief that the gods have revealed their will to me, and I will see it enforced. I will allow no bloodshed, but anyone who refuses to honor my edict will be banished.”
Not all of the priests were as resistant. The Rani Amrita had done what no ruler of Bhaktipur had accomplished in generations. She had defeated the Falconer of Kurugiri; and, too, she had retrieved Kamadeva’s diamond from the Spider Queen Jagrati. Clearly, the gods favored her.
So it was that some priests listened to her, listened to Guru-ji’s calm arguments and heeded them, while others continued to protest.
While they were fewer in number, the monks of the Path of Dharma supported her. Word of the tulku Laysa’s presence at the palace had emerged, and a good many followers of the Path of Dharma made pilgrimages to visit her and speak with her. Laysa welcomed them all with grave pleasure, and they carried away tales of a profound grace and wisdom undiminished by her time in Kurugiri, lending further credence to the notion that the Rani was indeed a vessel of divine will.
Among the commonfolk, the mood continued to be varied. The warrior caste stood with the Rani Amrita and her son. The merchant caste was reluctantly accepting. It was the members of the lowest caste—the servants, farmers, herders, and craftsmen—who remained bitterly resentful at the rumors of coming change.
We were returning from the temple of Hanuman, the monkey-god who delighted me so, when a scrawny boy in the street darted past the guards to hurl a rotten onion at the Rani in her palanquin, striking her in the shoulder. It gave me a brief, sick reminder of the boys in Vralia who had thrown stones at me as I was escorted in chains to Riva.
Hasan Dar roared an order, but Bao was already in motion, racing after the fleeing figure.
“Oh, Moirin!” There were unshed tears in Amrita’s eyes. “None of my people has ever turned on me so!”
I patted the damp spot on her sari, wiping away bits of onion-skin. “Change comes hard, my lady,” I murmured. “They are fearful of losing what humble status they possess.”
“But that is not what I am doing!”
“I know.” I had to own, there were times when I wondered privately if I had done the right thing in counseling our lovely Rani not to wield Kamadeva’s diamond. All of this would have been so much easier with the world falling at her feet. But then I remembered the vision of bloodshed that followed, and I set aside my doubts. “You must convince them otherwise, that’s all.”
She nodded. “You are right, dear one.”
Bao returned in short order, hauling the boy in a head-lock beneath one arm, the boy struggling ineffectually against his grip. “Here’s your culprit, highness,” he said in a cheerful tone. “He’s a slippery one!”
“Shall I have him beaten?” Hasan Dar asked grimly.
“No.” Amrita raised one hand in the mudra of fearlessness and stepped from the palanquin, her composure restored. “Bao-ji, let the boy go. I would speak to him.”
Bao shrugged and complied.
The lad glanced around wildly, and found himself surrounded by guards. He stared defiantly at the Rani. He couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen years old, and there was clay in his hair and under his nails.
“What is your name, young rebel?” the Rani Amrita asked gently.
His lips thinned. “Dev.”
“Dev,” she echoed. “I think you must be a potter’s son, eh? So tell me, young Dev, why are you so angry at me?”
He knit his dark brows in a fierce scowl. “You would make us no better than them!”
“How so?” Amrita inquired. “Because I mean to decree that there is no shame in attending to all aspects of life?”
The boy Dev looked away from her and spat on the ground. “I may be a potter’s son, but I do not deal in shit.”
“That is not true,” Amrita said in her musical voice. “You, young rebel Dev, you and I, and bold, swift Bao-ji who captured you so handily, and my lovely dakini Moirin, my handsome commander Hasan Dar, my son, Ravindra, the jewel of my heart….. each and every one of us are human and mortal.” Her voice hardened, her words echoing Jagrati’s. “Each and every one of us deals with shit squeezed stinking from our bowels, only we choose not to acknowledge it, even though it is part of life’s great cycle.”
He gaped at her, shocked by her words. Beyond the circle of guards, folk crowded close in an attempt to witness the exchange.
Amrita gestured to Hasan Dar. “Stand down, and let them hear this.”
“Highness…..” he protested.
She raised her hand again, and he obeyed. The guards spread out, giving the spectators an opportunity to draw closer. Unobtrusively, Bao unslung his staff and took a defensive pose at the Rani’s left shoulder. I stepped out of the palanquin and stood at her other side, ready to shield her at need.
A memory teased at my thoughts, the memory of Snow Tiger attempting in vain to calm the crowd who had come to rescue her, the dragon’s voice whispering in my mind. Lend her your gift, he had said. Make a gateway.
It had worked then. Without pausing to wonder, I attempted it now, calling the twilight. Instead of breathing it out, I poured it into Amrita, my fingers brushing her bare arm.
The air around her brightened visibly, drawing soft gasps from the crowd. Amrita gave me a brief, perplexed glance, and I nodded at her in silent encouragement.
The Rani took a deep breath, steepling her fingers in the soothing mudra that eased conflict. “Listen, then, to what I say to this potter’s son, for it holds true for each and every one of you.” She gazed at the boy, and he flushed beneath her shining regard. “You are not lessened by this change, young one. Is your lot in life the worse because someone else is lifted out of misery?” She shook her head. “No. The gods reward greatness of heart, not meanness of spirit. Do not seek to look at those below you and gloat. Look at those above you and aspire. I mean to build schools, good schools. If you wish to be a potter like your father, well and good. It is an honorable profession. If you wish to learn another trade, you may. You may become a merchant, or a builder of temples, or a soldier in my guard. I am placing your kharma in your own two hands. Is it truly a change you despise?”