Page 2 of The Witch who Trades with Death
Chapter Two
Balasco, the capital city of the Reguallian Empire, was nothing like the mountain town of Pahuuda. Defensively built in the middle of an impenetrable, tropical jungle, even the coldest days were hot and muggy, like inhaling warm water. The heavens periodically tried to drown this part of the world, the twisted trees and rich soil greedily drinking what they gave. Khana could hear the thunder, feel it vibrate through the polished wood of the palace as if the gods knew what was happening within its walls and didn’t like it one bit. Of course, if there were any gods, they would have – or at least should have – intervened centuries ago.
Khana stood in the throne room with a hundred other people, almost invisible in her pearls and blue silk dress. Every other known witch in the Empire stood in attendance, some esteemed royals, lords, and ladies, others mere bodyguards born out of wedlock. Most of those around her outshone her in every way, trying to blind each other with their jewels, silks, and furs. They all circled around a dozen condemned men and women in chains, some old and wrinkled, the youngest barely able to toddle.
The prisoners were a sorry sight, dressed in dirty rags when just a week before they’d been in the same kind of finery Khana wore. They were now forced to kneel on the intricately woven rug with a handful of cows, who looked very wary of the tigers, which had also been brought in, albeit drugged. The big cats slept peacefully, unaware of their fate.
Khana couldn’t remember the family’s name, or their crime. After a while they all began to blend. Had they implied that the emperor would not live forever by suggesting he name an heir? Had they tried to learn the secret to his immortality? An attempted coup?
Standing a few feet in front of the throne – a hideously ornate thing elevated from the rest of the room by a few stairs – was Emperor Yamueto himself. Their immortal ruler. At over three hundred years old, he didn’t look a day over thirty. Not one gray hair or wrinkle on his skin. A ceremonial sword hung at his hip, the blood-red ruby on the hilt catching the light. His silks were black or gray, in startling contrast to the rest of his court. He had never been the cutting edge of fashion. He looked down at the condemned prisoners – ah, yes, one of them was his great-grandson – without an ounce of emotion.
“Your house has been confirmed guilty of treason against myself and the empire,” Yamueto said, his stern voice filling the massive room. “The punishment is to serve as a night creature for however long your flesh lasts.”
The head of the condemned family glared at the emperor. “Don’t you have enough of a soul for a merciful death?”
Yamueto’s face rarely shifted from a half-bored expression, no matter what he was doing, and it did not do so now. He nodded to the court.
Touching a victim made it easier to drain their aji, but witches didn’t technically need to – they just needed to be close enough to breathe.
Together, the court’s hundred witches drained the hapless prisoners and the animals of their aji, rapidly absorbing the light of their lives. Glowing with it. Yellow, black, red, blue, all swirling together. Khana hated the magical air in her lungs, the surge of strength in her veins.
They were all dead in seconds, bodies unmoving. As soon as all their life force was absorbed, the witches directed it back.
Logic would dictate that, if someone ran out of aji, then returning it would bring them back to life, but while that was technically true, they weren’t themselves anymore. Instead, they were mindless slaves to whomever resurrected them, as if death had stolen their very souls. Khana had seen full resurrections where the revived were truly themselves again, their minds and souls intact, but she didn’t know how to do that. No one did, besides the emperor.
Yamueto stalked to the center of the room, the witches on either side of him smoothly moving to ensure the circle remained unbroken. He began sculpting the bodies like clay, using the magic raging in the room in a way never seen before his reign. The animals’ corpses were molded onto the human’s and then woven together. He worked in a blur, breathing aji in and out so fast that Khana couldn’t follow his movements.
When he was finished, the living, breathing creatures standing around the emperor were nowhere near human. They retained some human features: two legs, two hands, a mostly bipedal form. But some had bull’s horns, others had tiger stripes and claws. A handful snarled, baring sharp teeth meant for grinding flesh. Two of them were almost twice as large as the original humans, bulked up with a bull’s muscle. And they all had completely white, soulless eyes.
“Excellent,” Yamueto said, again with no emotion. “See that our new soldiers find their way to the southern front. Silujo?”
No one answered.
“Where is Prince Silujo?” Yamueto asked.
“Your Excellency, Prince Silujo is dead,” someone answered quietly. “He passed away in his sleep two weeks ago.”
There’d been a funeral for the eighty-eight-year-old man. Even a feast. Yamueto hadn’t spoken one word about his dead grandson.
“Ah, yes. That’s right. In that case, is Antallo still alive?”
Prince Antallo, one of Yamueto’s sons, with graying hair and hopeful eyes, stood at attention. “Your Excellency?”
“The last time I sent you on a campaign, you failed, and almost cost us a city.”
Antallo winced. “Yes, Your Excellency.”
“Consider this your second chance. The kingdom of Tlaphar is proving stubborn. You’ll be going with these new soldiers to show them why that’s a mistake.”
The prince brightened. “I’ll break their walls down myself.”
Yamueto’s mouth twitched into the tiniest frown. “Don’t get cocky. Conquering the kingdom is more important than your pride.”
Antallo bowed. “Of course, Your Excellency. We’ll leave at once.” He hurried out of the room, ordering the new monstrosities to follow him.
Khana watched him go with pity. Yamueto had dozens of living children, and even more grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren, and beyond – the result of having hundreds of wives and concubines over three centuries. They tended to be in one of two camps: those who had accepted the fact that the emperor would never share the secret of immortality and would let them die of old age, and those who hadn’t.
Yamueto had already buried hundreds of his own family, Silujo being the latest example. Many, like today’s prisoners, had been killed by his own hand. With such apathy and cruelty on display, how could anyone continue to deny his true nature?
“Dismissed,” Yamueto said, waving his hand
Khana breathed a quiet sigh of relief and turned to go with everyone else.
“Except you, Khana.”
She froze. Some of the other wives and concubines who passed her shared looks of pity. Many looked relieved it wasn’t them.
She studied the crimson starburst pattern on the rug and put her hands behind her back, demure and obedient. The last footsteps faded away, until it was just her and the emperor.
Stay still. Don’t move, she reminded herself.
“I hardly saw you glowing,” Yamueto said. “I hardly ever see you glowing.”
Her mouth was dry. She’d been found out.
She swallowed, speaking in barely more than a whisper, “I’m sorry, Your Excellency. I’m not much of a witch.”
Or a rebel. A brave person would have stabbed Yamueto in the chest at the first opportunity, or died trying. The best Khana could do was perform tiny resistances, like only pulling a fraction of the aji she could take.
“Are you going to let me play with her?”
Khana jumped. She hadn’t realized they weren’t alone.
Kokaatl, Yamueto’s favorite wife, suddenly filled Khana’s vision. She was almost thirty, and either hadn’t yet realized her husband was never going to give her immortality or didn’t care. She was about Khana’s size, but seemed to take up so much space, her long sleeves and dress billowing behind her as she moved. She hailed from one of the newest Reguallian conquests, closer to Tlaphar and only subjugated half a generation ago.
Surprisingly, she was not a witch. Yamueto made a point to bed witches or their descendants almost exclusively in an attempt to father magical children. He also arranged for his children to marry other witches or their descendants, and on and on it went. Witches were extremely valuable to the Reguallian Empire as healers and soldiers; many believed them to be touched or descended from gods, a belief that Yamueto actively encouraged.
And yet here Kokaatl was, not one witch in her family for the last five generations. But what she lacked in magic, she made up for in sadism. For that, Yamueto seemed to treat her as… well, not really a lover . More like a pet.
She grinned with shark-like teeth, poking Khana’s face with cold fingers. “I want to see what’s under this skin. It just hangs off her, perfect for flaying! Like peeling a banana.”
Khana trembled, but didn’t move. Didn’t speak. The last person to insult Kokaatl in front of Yamueto had been given to the concubine to “play” with, before being turned into a night creature.
“I’m sure it would be, darling,” Yamueto said, sounding almost fond. “But I haven’t even gotten a child out of this one yet.”
Kokaatl pouted. “It’s been years .”
“Yes, it has.” Yamueto stepped up to Khana. She kept her eyes down, tracing the pattern of his lizard skin shoes.
He put a finger under her chin and forced her to look up. There was no emotion in those near-black eyes of his. “So let’s try again.”
An hour later, Khana stumbled out of Yamueto’s chambers. The emperor almost never struck his women, but he was rarely gentle. Her thighs already protested every movement, cords of pain getting tighter with each step. Tomorrow morning she’d have bruises the size of his hands. At least he hadn’t made her climax this time. That always made it worse, like her own body was betraying her by finding a sliver of enjoyment out of it.
The servants she passed curtsied and bowed to her. She stopped one to ask for a tub to be sent to her room, “Boiling hot,” she said. “And a tea set.” She didn’t have a permanent bath in her chambers like the more favored members of the imperial family; the servants had to carry the copper tub up and down several flights of stairs, then fill it with buckets of water that had mostly cooled before they reached her room.
She was almost to her room when she ran into one of the last people she wanted to see.
“Prince Antallo.” She greeted him with a curtsy.
The old prince was a wider, less handsome version of his father. They had the same sharp nose and near-black eyes, but on Antallo they made him look like an overfed parrot. The insultingly bright clothing didn’t help; a robe of violent green and gold over an orange undershirt.
“It’s Khana, right?” he asked. “The one from the desert.”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
He grinned at her, eyes roving over her body, lingering on her disheveled dress and hair. “Enjoying your evening with the emperor?”
She started to walk past him. “Excuse me, sir. I need to wash up.”
“You are not excused.”
She stopped.
Antallo prowled up to her, a silver-haired tiger. “My father is sending me off to an important battle. Once I win and bring glory to the empire, he’ll reward me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“He might even grant me immortality,” he mused. “But if not, I might ask for one of his concubines. I’ve heard that musicians are particularly good with their hands.”
Khana balled her hands into fists to keep from shuddering. “Forgive me, sir, but I do not think that would be wise.”
He paused, narrowing his eyes dangerously. “No?”
“The emperor has bedded me for six years, and I haven’t borne him a single child. I doubt I could give you one, either.”
“I already have children,” he snorted. “Too many of them. What I want is a little fun.”
He reached out to touch her chin.
Khana jerked away from him.
Antallo’s eyes darkened. “Khana. Come here.”
Fear turned to panic, and she blurted the first thing that came to mind: “The emperor doesn’t like anyone touching his women!”
He hesitated. Khana didn’t give him the time to react, and stepped around him to get to her room.
“I’ll see you when I return, Khana,” Antallo crooned.
She locked the door behind her.
The emperor’s descendants often enjoyed taunting the concubines and anyone else they had slivers of control over, even if they couldn’t do anything without facing Yamueto’s wrath. It took a long moment of trembling against the door for Khana to remind herself of the fact.
Despite being the emperor’s concubine – and thus technically royalty – Khana’s chambers were relatively small and sparse. There were a couple of small windows, four smooth wooden walls, a bed, a wardrobe, a bookshelf, and a writing desk. Originally, she’d tried to liven the place up with plants on the windowsill and woven blankets on the walls, but it did little to alleviate the gloom.
The tub and tea would take a while to arrive. Khana tore out of her silk dress and put on a sleeping robe. She snatched her lute from the corner, a beautifully carved instrument that she’d had for years, and scratched at the strings. Her anger, her grief, her pain poured out of her in bitter, incoherent notes. But eventually, it took the form of a song, a melody of rage and sorrow. She couldn’t say “damn the emperor,” but her music could. The man deserved so much more than that.
A century ago, Yamueto had conquered her homeland, the Naatuun Desert, to secure its trade – and eventual military – route. Like most places with magic, the desert had been ruled by witches. All the males had been put to the sword during and after the conquest. The female witches had been given to Yamueto himself or his princes as trophies, to create a new generation of witches loyal to the empire. Khana’s great-great-grandfather had been one of those princes. A century later, Khana was born.
Nobody had known she was a witch. They’d all thought the gift had died with her great-grandmother. It wasn’t until she was thirteen, when she accidentally pulled the aji out of a cactus, that she’d realized what she was.
Her handmaiden at the time, Guma, had tried to help her hide it. The sweet old lady had forbidden Khana from showing anyone, even her parents. But eventually, they’d found out.
Khana’s father executed Guma and, as was imperial law, sent his witch daughter to the capital. Since she was more than eight generations removed from Yamueto, she’d been given to the emperor himself.
If she thought about the fact that the man bedding her was her great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, she’d lose her gods-damn mind.
She never considered running away. Other concubines had tried. The public punishments Yamueto had made everyone witness still gave her nightmares.
The servants had to knock twice before she heard them over her lute and called for them to enter. The tub was hauled into the corner, and a whole trail of servants poured steaming water into it. Another brought in a tray with a teapot, cup, and saucer. Someone had thought to add a little bowl of berries, but Khana wouldn’t eat. Her stomach churned on nights like this.
“Do you require help bathing, ma’am?” one of them asked.
“No, thank you. You may go.”
She waited until they left before pouring herself a cup of tea. Then she went to the spot behind her bed, the one with the loose floorboard. A bit of rummaging produced a small glass vial protected in a silk bag.
Birth control medicine was illegal in the empire. Commoners could expect a public lashing, but royal concubines were put to death. It was one of the rare crimes where the rich were more harshly punished than the poor for violating it. But there were still ways to get the medicine.
Khana poured the concoction in her teacup and slammed it back, grimacing at the bitter taste. That had been good tea, too. But the treatment already had her feeling a bit better before she slipped into her bath and tried to wash the day from her skin.