Hi all, this is the first part of a short story set in Lysantara, the setting for a novel I’m currently working on. Consider it a prequel of sorts to said novel, taking place a few decades earlier in the chronology. My hope is that it can be an intro to the world and vibe of Lysantara, and, later on, an appendix to the full-length work.

More updates to come in the following weeks. Once complete I plan to compile everything into a DRM-free ebook, which will also be free.

Artist of the Akshauhini

by K Meridia

Part 1

“It’s completely inappropriate. You are entitled to your hobbies, of course, but they aren’t what our family does.” Her father says, as if their liege had not called on them in almost a decade now. As if the family airships had not been sitting dark and idle long enough that streaks of rust were starting to appear on their spear-like prows.

“It would remain my hobby and only my hobby.” Chaemshar keeps her eyes on the faded brocade rug (brought from Porumma, the last campaign her father had been part of), studying the dull bronze buckles on her parents’ house sandals. “I don’t see how a trivial little thing of mine could reflect poorly on the family.”

But it’s no use. While walking back to her room she kicks herself for her choice of words. Trivial little thing of mine. Her father would not notice, but her mother definitely would. Repurposing the man’s own words, plucking the arrow out of the dirt, knocking it, and sending it back towards its original wielder. She would of course recognize it. Where else had Chaemshar learned it from?

She stops in front of her door. Lingering in the dark hallway she already catches the scent, rubbery oils and pungent tempera, seeping out from under the door despite her having moved her canvasses to the far corner of the room and encased her paints in an airtight chest in response to complaints. It isn’t her only workspace. The family’s old foreman had built her a little one-room studio with a nipa fiber roof and louvered windows all controlled from a single switch to let air flow in and out quickly. She does not want to go there right now. She’d prefer to get on one of the house sampans and float downhill to the city, to the Artists’ Quarter. To do that now would be even more trouble, though, more than even she’d be willing to deal with.

Flicking her tail and scratching her left horn, she finds her current sketchbook and favorite charcoals under the rosewood bed frame and sets off. In the corner of her eye the house stands out on the horizon like a rotting tooth. The grass nips at her shins. Green stains start to smudge the hems of her batik trousers. No one yells after her.

It started a week ago. Chaemshar had been in town exhibiting a selection of her work, still lifes of five different flowers that blossomed along the Chela coast. The kind of painting that got attention and sold well with all the families of merchants and craftspeople. Those of middle means who wanted things of local character but also distinction to adorn the walls of their city homes. Flowers were not her favorite subject, but she wasn’t above using her skills to acquire some rajata. One had to be realistic, and anyways increasing awareness of her name and capabilities could be the first rung towards doing more of what she wished to do.

The exhibition ended late, with half of her paintings sold. She was sitting looking at the empty yellow spaces on the wall, alone save for a janitor shuffling around in one of the backrooms, when the fine glass door slid open. She turned, starting to say that the exhibit was closed, but her mouth snapped shut. The newcomer wore the red uniform of the Akshauhini, the personal forces of the phraya, the lord of the province. He was tall and decently handsome in the scarred and sinewy way some soldiers were, not like the cute airy waifs of the artists’ quarter. His upturned horns are jet black, matching the scales of his slim muscular tail. The tattoo on his forearm, three lines of characters in ancient Sanni script, indicated he was a direct retainer to the phraya of Chela like her father.

“I’m so sorry!” Chaemshar had blurted out, setting aside the weak tea the gallery owner had made for her an hour ago and hurrying to her feet. She could feel her face heating up.

He smiled. “It doesn’t matter.” He put his palms together and gave her a nod. “You are Khun Chaemshar Sirihanok?”

She returned the greeting. It felt strange to be referred to by a peer by her given name and not “daughter of Khun Sirihanok.”

He was Khrotyan Naphatia, the second-in-command in the Akshauhini. Khrotyan was also the head of his clan, despite seemingly being only a few years older than Chaemshar. As a military man would, he went straight to the point. He explained that the Akshauhini was going to draft a history of itself and had need of an illustrator.

“I’m flattered, Khun, but why me?” She watched him pace towards the display wall. “That is to say, my specialty is not in military tableau, as you can probably see.”

He smiled again and gestured at one of the paintings, a hibiscus blossom with petals curled back and dense anther-laden style pointing into the foreground like a cannon. “Your lines. Airships, kutamaya armor, armaments.” He patted the burnished handle of the dha sword slung under his arm. “All these accouterments require a great amount of detailed lines and shading to render accurately… forgive me, I am doubtless not equipped with vocabulary to describe all of this accurately.”

“And landscapes.” She heard herself say. “No doubt you’ll have need of many landscapes.”

Now, Chaemshar storms up the hill towards her studio. To her left, New Chelor stretches out white and green under the late morning sun. The sea hugs the coast, frothing water up against the sandbar and dotted with fishermen’s catamarans. All of it only irritates her further this morning. It isn’t that she has any real passion for military art. She painted a few airships and sketched the columns of mannequins in ancient kutamaya at the Imperial Museum during her tutelage, but it wasn’t a subject that set her soul alight. It’s her mother and father’s willingness to stomp on such a serendipitous opportunity for no other reason but denial shot through with idiotic pride.

She looks to her right. The shadow of the hill covers the shipyard. Two dozen warships bearing the Sirihanok crest resting in a four-by-six column. There’s supposed to be a unit of groundskeepers, but the grass is now almost the tops of the long landing struts.

The easel with the nice telescoping legs is where she left it near the entrance. She grabs it and sets it up outside, setting the sketchbook and the box of charcoals on it. She faces the shipyard. In the shade the warships resemble a squadron of napping pelicans with the layers upon layers of armor on their prows and the great jutting rams. A false start on the outermost lines of the first one, but soon after the rest starts to come naturally, eye and muscle memory working in concert.

But something feels off. There should be nothing wrong with the ship she’s drawn, and yet it’s wrong. She cannot put a finger on why, which frustrates her further. Scratching her horn, she grabs the easel again and yanks it around so it faces New Chelor. The charcoals rattle and almost fall into the waving grass. The ramming ship folds away into oblivion, revealing another blank page.

She’s about to start on the smooth organic diagonals of the shore when she notices the freckles on the horizon. In minutes they grow into maroon squares that ripple with the distortion of energy that airship engines produce in the air around them. They’re much smaller than her father’s ships, but unmistakable as warships returning from conquest abroad. Instead of rams, the ships’ prows are snub nosed, housing recessed black cylinders that must have been the muzzles of gigantic cannons. The hulls, shaped like a rolled kretek propped between two fingers, are solid red. Nets and ropes hang off the sides of many ships, all containing great iridescent lysratna crystals, limp carcasses of slain naga, slabs of marble and shorn-off gold-faced facades, and other spoils. As they start to cross over New Chelor, Chaemshar can hear their engines, a chorus of high-pitched droning.

She can make out the trio of ships at the center of the formation flying in a tight delta. They’re projecting energy in the space between them, bending it to produce a towering standard out of colored light. It is the clan sigil of Aruchavi, the phraya of Chela.

******

The Artists’ Quarter hasn’t always been the Artists’ Quarter. Two generations ago it used to be the processing district for the province’s pomelos and jackfruit. That changed around the time Chakravartin Yapitra III assumed the throne back in the imperial capital. The lion’s share of cultivation and processing was shifted out to the newly annexed regions of western Porumma, leaving the district barren and abandoned. However it didn’t take long for the derelict buildings to be reoccupied by scions of the common but well-heeled families who plied trades, the “new people” of the city. Warehouses became vast apartment hives, distilleries for pomelo liquor were hollowed out and transformed into galleries, ateliers, shops, public houses, and cafes.

Chaemshar’s favorite place is on the corner of Khanor Avenue, where elegant curved windows on the second floor overlook the square. Down below she can see the streams of levicabs speed past and the street vendors with their wok-laden pushcarts congregate under the trees. She sits at her usual table, which is not explicitly reserved for her yet always available when she arrives.

Her little group of artist friends can tell something’s amiss. The composer, son of an Irini banker from Porumma, is the one who asks her about it directly, big aquamarine eyes full of concern and feline ears twitching on the top of his mop of hair. Chaemshar says something about not being able to latest draft off the ground, some sort of creative block.

The sculptor, a daughter of a monied commoner family who owns a network of lysratna-setting shops around the province, rolls her eyes at this latest permutation of the composer’s lust and dismisses the topic. Stretching her muscular arms, she suggests they all just go back to her studio — a dank corner of a former cannery — and breathe in the new strain of kesaran she got off a merchant ship back from the northern protectorates last week. The flowers and the effects of their puffballs are her answer to everything.

But Chaemshar doesn’t want to fill her lungs with anything that might induce her tongue to slip right now. Everyone there already knows the status of her birth. It would’ve been impossible to stymy the way information sluices through New Chelor, or to conceal the jade hue of her eyes and the sandalwood of her hair. (she refused to ever submit it to any dyes) She doesn’t want to remind anyone of her status needlessly, however, to see the unconscious dampener it imposes on the way they talk and even carry themselves around her. The sculptor has a way of saying things without saying them too, especially when under the influence. Hiding a pin inside a mango.

She doesn’t want to divulge what really happened either, not knowing how they’ll react. If the phraya is a distant presence to her, he’s as lofty and abstract a concept to them as the Chakravartin themselves or the niyogin of Dhamenthao.

Someone comes up stairs from the ground floor. A sharp intake of breath and the rattling of ceramic cups on a serving tray. Khrotyan is wearing the same uniform. He’s tall enough that the tips of his horns weave through the haze of kretek and pipe smoke that hangs close to the ceiling. The other conversations stutter and fade. He spots her table and walks over. There’s no other reason for him to be in a place like this.

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything important, Khun Chaemshar?” His eyes make a brisk scan over her companions. They’re standing up before she can respond, muttering excuses and bowing their heads.

“Not at the moment.” She watches the composer and sculptor hurry off. Everyone else in the room is looking sidelong at the table. The entire quarter would know before the end of the day. “I apologize that I haven’t been able to get a response to you.”

He doesn’t spare a glance, much less a comment, towards her companions’ hasty departure.“Not a problem. I made a few additional inquiries since we last spoke. I take it you must have encountered some, ah, complications. I assume you will not be pursuing the position?”

She barely stops herself from standing up. Her hands come up from under the table, almost flipping the sketchbook onto the ash-crusted floor. “No!” More looks from around the room. “That is to say, I haven’t declined.”

Leaving the cafe with this man might cause some talk, even reach her parents, but it’s preferable to continuing the conversation in the cafe. The other tables can barely pretend to not be listening. And besides, the idea of word traveling back home now fills her with sharp and acidic pleasure. They cross under the trees, passing the vendors who call after Khrotyan, “Khun, Khun, welcome home, Khun!” There are crimson posters up all across New Chelor celebrating the return of the Akshauhini and the first campaign led by the new Phraya Aruchavi.

“There are some reservations.” Chaemshar says finally, standing under the shade of a monkey fruit tree.

He looks up through the gaps in the leaves overhead. “If you’ve concerns about conditions of your employment,” he’s genteel enough to avoid a direct mention of rajata. “I can answer any…”

“It’s not that.” She clears her throat. She’s always had a mild allergy to one of the types of trees in town, though she never determined which one it is.

“If you’ll excuse my presumptuousness, would the reservations be on the part of your father?”

The world seems to pause. Her anger from the other day still burns persistently, like the glowing orange coil at the bottom of the an oven. In spite of that there’s a vestigial fragment of something stilling her tongue. Filial piety keeping her from speaking out of turn about her parents to an outsider. She’s complained about them to her commoner friends plenty of times though. “That’s right.”

Khrotyan nods. “Understandable. Your father has reservations about the phraya, does he not?”

She hesitates again. Phraya Aruchavi can’t fine or imprison a retainer for their opinions like the Chakravartin can, but the constricted network that is the clans of Chela offer other means of retribution. “You’re aware?” How can she tell him about her father’s vaunted position under the previous Aruchavi? How Sirihanok ships were once at the heart of the Akshauhini’s left wing, a position of great prestige. How the loss of it had a cascaded onto the entire clan, depriving it of a share of the spoils, rendering it dependent wholly on paltry rents and agricultural revenues. And that’s simply in matters of finance, never mind face. He must know already. His own rank now mirrors the one once held by her father.

“May I see?”

She looks up and sees him holding out his hand towards the sketchbook. Slightly dazed, she takes it out from under her arm. He knows to open it to the latest page: New Chelor and the coast as seen from on top her hill. It’s a view she’s painted dozens of times, but this charcoal sketch also depicts the warships sailing over the city, their shadows striping the tree-lined boulevards.

Khrotyan takes a moment before handing it back to her. She can’t discern anything from the set of his face. “Khun Chaemshar, may I be direct and ask whether you’re interested in the job?” He says.

“I am.”

“Then I believe I may be able to intervene on your behalf, if you’ll let me.” His teeth are straight, white, and sharp. It’s the first time she’s seen him smile enough for his lips to part. “Your father is a man of great honor. Your clan has achieved great things in the name of the Akshauhini and the province. I’m sure I can help to address whatever concerns he may have.”

Before going home Chaemshar walks down to the Avenue Phi. She doesn’t come here often, but finds the temple to Bhagyakara, god of happenstance and luck. She puts a rajata on the marble stela and rubs burnished belly of the fat, smiling bronze axolotl napping on top of it. Next door is the shrine of Nirmana, goddess of invention, creativity, and art, among other things. She slides three more rajatas into the donation box and sits on the cool tile floor as the shrine keeper rises from a stool in the corner and burns a dried laurel leaf. Through the smoke, the goddess’ likeness looks down on her, long face half obscured under the long curved headdress that sweeps down over the eyes.

Two days later she will board a sampan that takes her to the shipyards of the Akshauhini.