Third Daughter (The Dharian Affairs, Book One) (10 page)

While at the same time betraying their prince.

They arrived at the foothills of the northern border of Dharia where the land broke and transformed itself from a garden of rich soil and stable villages to a mountainous, forbidding land shrouded in mystery and gloom.

At least that’s how it appeared to Aniri.

She stood on the train station platform, waiting for her parcels to be unloaded, and stared up at the fourteen-thousand-foot peaks disappearing into the clouds. Already the temperature had dropped from the balmy summer warmth of the central plain. Priya had unpacked a light wrapping coat, and Aniri cinched it tighter around her neck. The mountains were growing dark from more than simply the clouds that topped them. It would be nightfall soon.

“Are we traveling on tonight?” Aniri asked Priya when she returned from consulting with the prince’s bodyguard, Farid.

“Yes,” Priya said, slightly breathless.

The train tracks ended where they stood, literally stopping at the foothills and the border between nations. It struck Aniri as strange there was no rail connection at all between Dharia and Jungali, just a weathered road of gravel that disappeared into the foothills. How could there be trade between their countries when they didn’t even have a way to connect the goods?

“And by what means are we traveling?” Aniri asked.

Priya’s smile was mischievous with adventure. “That.” She pointed to the end of the train platform where a beast the size of a small cottage stood. It was draped in bright red embroidered cloth from the tip of its enormous, snuffling black nose to the blunt rear end. Its lumpy head and two giant horns were painted with elaborate swirls in shades of red and gold to match the embroidery, and its six legs the size of pillars were clad in shiny brass plating. The beast moved like a giant royal carpet and carried what looked like a miniature carriage on its back.

“You cannot be serious,” Aniri said softly, mostly to herself. Of course she recognized the shashee—it was, after all, an incarnation of the mountain goddess Devpahar, embodying her supposed stately wisdom in its great, lumbering movements. In the traditional stories, Devpahar used her great horns to remove obstacles that might thwart the advancement of peace and learnedness. Aniri had seen drawings of the goddess’s material form, but she had never seen one of the shaggy beasts in person. They were rare and confined to the mountains. And she certainly had never expected to
ride
one.

“The prince had to make arrangements for a half dozen extra beasts, just to carry your luggage, your majesty.” Priya seemed delighted with this.

“But...” Aniri stalled out in her protest as the beast bent down one of its six legs, then another, slowly collapsing its shuddering hulk to the ground. When it had settled, like a massive, red landslide, the ornate carriage on top was nearly level with the train station platform. A servant whisked a step stool next to the beast and beckoned her with a fervent wave of his hand.

Priya leaned closer. “That’s our ride, your highness!”

Aniri gaped but allowed Priya to guide her forward. A driver of sorts, or perhaps a beastmaster, sat atop the carriage, a slender pole in his hand that he tapped intermittently on the beast’s carpeted head. Its wide head rolled at the intrusion, rocking back and forth, but its body didn’t move.

Janak held the four-step stool as Aniri and Priya climbed up. He followed them into the carriage, which smelled of fresh hay and wood, and not the stench of raw animal that she expected. Once the door shut soundly behind them, the beast lurched, forcing Aniri to grip a rough wooden handle in the middle of the seat. They tipped sideways, then righted again, all in one rolling motion that made the endless rocking of the train seem like a paragon of steadiness.

When she dared to peer out the tiny portal windows, the train station had swung out of their view. They were high in the air, already lumbering away.

Priya gawked out her portal, chattering while Aniri tried to keep her lunch down. “The shashee are the royal animals of the Jungali. The driver told me they once were the main transportation for the Jungali people throughout the provinces. Now they are reserved for the borderlands and for Devpahar’s festivals. This shashee is much more highly decorated than the one the prince is riding, my lady. I believe this must be his personal shashee, or at least a royal one of his court.” Priya frowned when she looked to Aniri. “Are you feeling well, my lady?”

Aniri swallowed down the sourness at the back of her throat and kept her gaze out the window. It helped, slightly. Aniri breathed out her answer, “Yes, I’ll be fine. Where on earth is this beast taking us, Priya?”

“Why to Jungali, I imagine, my lady.” Priya went back to staring in wonder at the darkening mountains outside, as if Jungali were a magical place, so naturally they would ride a painted beast of the gods to get there.

As the rocking of the animal reduced to a gentle swaying motion, Aniri’s stomach began to settle. She hazarded a glance around the interior, noting the plush red velvet of the walls, the thick glass of the windows, and the brass and wood trim at every corner. It certainly seemed lavish for a regular transport. Aniri poked the cushion and trailed her finger across the soft crush of fabric lining the walls, hoping for a hidden panel or compartment. Perhaps Prince Malik had stashed some of those communiques he had been so earnestly studying in his train car, but she found nothing.

Janak seemed satisfied that all was safe and secure in their tiny traveling cabinet, judging by the way he had tucked his chin down for a nap. The terrain outside quickly fell to darkness as they climbed the foothills. The path outside was lit only by the swinging spotlight of the oil lamps hanging from the corners of their carriage. It didn’t seem wise to travel through the mountains at night, but on top of the giant beast, they felt untouchable by any threat.

She could see now why Dharia’s steamer tanks wouldn’t be able to penetrate the foothills. The canyons were narrow, the rough road steep and narrower still, and there was little room for mechanized transport, especially the kind that relied on steady flat terrain. Surely their cavalry could climb the foothills as well as this shashee, but if the Jungali possessed war animals—armored not with ornamental brass and red carpet, but steel plating—they could prove formidable in the winding canyons.

The lights of the carriage danced around the darkness of the canyon, and they traveled some time in silence. Finally, a rapid series of taps from the front heralded an end to the swaying. Even though the beast was finally motionless, it was as if the ground still moved beneath her. It reminded her of the day her father had taken her out in a small skiff, sailing a peaceful, blue bay off the western coast. She had adapted to the gentle swells of the water, but when she returned to land, it was as if she had never walked before.

When the carriage door opened, Prince Malik himself appeared standing on a steel lattice outside. “Did you fare well with the travel, your highness?” Gaslamps hung from a large stone fortress behind him and put a halo of light around his face.

“I am fine. Are we arrived to Bajir already?”

She could just barely make out his smile in the dim light. “No, not yet. This is only a trading station, the first stop on our journey. But we will make rest here tonight and continue on in the morning.” He held out a hand to her, and she tentatively took it. His grip was strong, which helped her unsteady legs as she joined him on the portable stairs. “I’m sorry for the steps, princess, but it is the best I could acquire on short notice. The stationmaster initially brought a ladder, but I ordered him away.”

“I’m not a delicate flower, Prince Malik,” Aniri said. “I could negotiate a ladder.”

“I have no doubt of that,” Malik said, “but I don’t think your gown would survive it.”

She glanced down at the finely woven, tightly wrapped silk dress and nodded. “I’ll make sure to wear more suitable clothing for the rest of our journey.”

He didn’t answer, focused on helping her down the steel stairs, each step creaking under their combined weight. He released her as soon as she was safely on the ground. His bodyguard loomed next to him.

“Farid will ensure you and your entourage make it safely to your rooms, princess,” he said. “I have business to attend to, but I will meet you at the east cable station after your morning meal.”

Janak and Priya had joined them on the cobblestones outside the trading station’s massive wooden doors. Janak had resumed his glaring contest with Farid from earlier in the day, and Priya seemed wide-awake. She was already eagerly exploring their destination with her eyes.

Fatigue pulled at Aniri’s eyelids. “Cable station?” she asked Prince Malik. “Do you send messages by cable?” The Queen used her aetheroceiver for secure transmissions, but most of the Dharian countryside still used wired transmission for their communiques.

“No, your highness.” This time Aniri had no trouble seeing the prince’s smile. “We are the ones who will be traveling by cable.” He took a step back, bowing slightly with hands pressed, and left her with that mystery.

She followed Farid and Janak. Priya’s arm hooked through hers in an entirely too familiar fashion, but she allowed it because it was quite possible she would fall over—either from fatigue or the residual unsteadiness from the shashee ride—without Priya’s arm holding her steady.

The morning brought blinding sunlight to the room where Aniri had quartered with Priya. Janak stayed in an adjoining room, having only agreed to leave her side because he still had easy access to them, and all the other doors were securely locked. He seemed to think barbarian assassins lurked in every corner of the small trading station.

Aniri choose traveling clothes more suited to the rigors of the mountains. Her rough canvas pants and leather corset, which laced over her linen blouse, were both suitably form-fitting, yet warm against the cold of the Jungali provinces. Her leather jacket met her laced boots at the knees and possessed a belt, in the event she needed to gird further against the cold. She wrapped her hair loosely in a brown scarf and let both trail down her back. Priya insisted Aniri wear a jeweled medallion, which peeked from the scarf and lay on her forehead, but that was the only ornamentation to mark her as royalty and not adventurer.

Their morning meal was delivered to the room. Afterward, Farid guided them through the winding stone hallways of the trading station. They met Prince Malik at a large receiving room with a balcony off one side.

Prince Malik’s eyes were wide and approving as he took in her attire. “You never fail to surprise me, princess.”

“I’m quite capable of dressing for travel, Prince Malik,” Aniri said drily, and the prince was immediately contrite.

“Of course.” He gestured toward the balcony. “Shall we be on our way, your majesty?” Without waiting for an answer, he pulled open the double doors, and the morning air swept in, brisk and scented with earth and the lush wide-leaved trees covering the mountains spread before them. A canyon dropped below the balcony, and its rocky sides lifted above them on either side.

That was when Aniri saw the cables.

A twinned pair of them soared away from the trading station out into the sky, as if held up by the sun and air and nothingness. In the hazy mountain distance, a metalwork skeleton, like a giant man with pincher hands at the top, held the thick steel cable aloft, offering it to the heavens.

“But how are we going to...” Aniri gestured at the cable, her leather-gloved hand waving in the mountain air. Perhaps a flying machine was not beyond the capabilities of the barbarians if they already were traveling by flying wires. The prince’s smile was wide, and for a moment he looked almost like a boy, ready for adventure in his rugged leather-strapped traveling tunic.

“Your cable carriage awaits, my lady.” He led them toward a small shack at the end of the balcony where the cables came directly through the wall. As they approached, Aniri saw there was no wall at all, just an open space where the cables came in and out. The prince opened a door to the cottage, which let out a bellow of sound as if a shashee were raging inside. Janak held a hand up to stay them and stepped inside, forcing them all to wait while he checked the source of the noise.