The Lady of Han-Gilen Read online

  “It is not as simple as that,” said Ilarios. “I for one must live, or all my game will come to nothing.”

  “Are you a pawn, then?”

  His eyes sparked, but he smiled. “I like to think that I have a little power in the play. I will, after all, be emperor.”

  “How grim,” she said, musing, “to live so. And the poor women. Penned like cattle where no man can see them; veiled and bound and forbidden to walk under the sky. They must go mad with boredom.”

  “No more than do their lords. The emperor is kept as straitly as any concubine, for his life’s safety and for the sanctity of his office. He must never leave his palace. He must never set foot on common earth. He must never speak to any save through his sacred Voice.”

  “What, not even his empress?”

  “Perhaps,” admitted Ilarios, “to her he might speak directly. And she may see his face. His people must not. They see him always enthroned, robed and masked in gold like a god.”

  “That is horrible,” she said.

  “No,” he answered her. “It only sounds so. An emperor’s body must be confined; it is holy, it is given to the gods. Yet he rules, and in ruling he is free. No man is freer than he.”

  “My father rules unmasked and unchained. Mirain is king incarnate, and his throne is the Mad One’s saddle.”

  “Your father rules from Han-Gilen; he did not ride into the north. I would wager that he could not. The Sunborn is the first of his line, a barbarian king, a soldier and a conqueror. The burden of empire has barely begun to fall upon him.”

  “How strange you look,” she said, “when you speak of empires. As if it terrifies you; and yet you revel in it. You will welcome the mask when it comes to you.”

  “It is what I was born for.” He looked at her. “You are like me. You flee the cage which your lineage has raised about you, and yet what you flee to is a captivity no less potent and far less easily escaped. You can comprehend the mind of the Golden Emperor.”

  She touched him, because she wanted to, because she could not help herself. He quivered under her hand but did not pull away. “Am I transgressing?” she asked him.

  “I give you leave,” he said. Light; a little breathless. Smiling a sudden luminous smile. “You may touch me whenever you choose.”

  It was great daring, that, in an Asanian high prince. “I am corrupting you,” she said. “See, your shadows are uneasy. What will they tell your father?”

  “That I have gone barbarian.” He laughed and met touch with touch: a brush of fingertips from her cheek to her chin, tracing the path of her scars. It was like cool fire. Swift, and startling, and all too quickly gone.

  She would have caught his hand; but his golden stallion had danced away, impatient, and the moment escaped. She did not try to pursue it. Her folly that she had even let it begin.

  oOo

  It did not come back. She told herself that it had never been; she made herself stop regretting it. Ilarios’ presence was enough, and his beauty, and his golden voice. She needed no more.

  On a grey morning with too much in it of winter, Elian wandered down a passage of the keep. She had meant to ride in the hills, but a driving rain had sent even the Mad One into the shelter of the castle.

  Mirain was closeted with Halenan and Vadin and the captains. She, having no more to do with her freedom than squander it in prowling the corridors, heard her name.

  Her ears pricked; she stopped. The speakers were Ianyn by their accents, men of the king’s household playing at chance in a guardroom.

  “Elian?” one mused, rattling the dice in the cup, in no hurry to throw. “Now there’s a fine piece of womanflesh.”

  “How can you know?” his companion demanded. “She doesn’t show any of it.”

  “Sure she does. It just takes a good eye.”

  “I’ve got a good eye. All it sees is angles. If it’s boys you like, why not take a boy and have done with it?”

  “She’s no boy,” the first man declared. “Dress her up proper now, a little paint and a gewgaw or two, and you’ll have something worth looking at.”

  “Not for my money. I like mine plump and toothsome. Less sharp in the tongue, too. They say she can swear like a trooper.”

  “The king fancies her, for all of that. So do plenty of others. The boys down in the camp have a wager on how long she’ll last. I put a silver sun on it, with a side bet that he marries her before the year is out.”

  “You’ve lost your money, then. She’s highborn, they say, sister to that southern general, the one who wears his beard like a man. Good in bed, too, if the king’s kept her this long and this steady. But he won’t make her queen. He can’t. It’s the law in Ianon, don’t forget: No whore can share the throne.” The soldier hawked and spat. “Here now. Are you going to throw those dice or hatch them?”

  Elian stumbled away. Her feet felt huge, clumsy; she could not see.

  She passed Ilarios without recognizing him. When he called to her she stopped, losing the will to move.

  “Lady,” he said. She could taste his concern. It was salt, like tears. “Lady, are you ill?”

  “No,” her voice replied. “No, I’m well.”

  His arm dared mightily. It circled her shoulders. She let him lead her; she did not care where. His own chamber, it turned out to be; he had been given one in the keep.

  There was no room in it for his guards, who perforce must stand without, with the door between, and solitude within, scented with flowers. Elian had found a tangle of briar roses, the last of summer, golden and flame red; they had brought back a bowlful at great cost to their fingers. But the heady scent was worth any pain.

  It did not ease hers now. He made her sit in a nest of cushions and set a cup in her hand, filled with the yellow wine of Asanion. “Drink,” he bade her.

  She obeyed him, hardly knowing what she did. The wine was sharp to her taste, almost sour, but strong. It both dizzied and steadied her.

  Her eyes cleared; she breathed deep. Lightly, calmly, she said, “It has finally happened. A man has said what they all think. I have no reputation left, my lord. Is that not amusing?”

  “Who has dared it? Tell me!”

  His intensity brought her eyes to him. His own were burning, blazing. Hating the one who had hurt her. Loving her with all that was in him.

  For a long while she could only stare at him, stupid with shock. That it could matter so much to him. That she could care, and caring, wake to truth.

  “It does no good to run away,” she said. “I have learned that. The world is a circle; one always comes back to one’s beginnings. I went to Mirain to escape Han-Gilen; now he prepares to march there. I shall have to face my mother, with what I have done and what I am supposed to have done on the lips of every talespinner in this part of the world. And the worst of it—the very worst—is that I have not had the pleasure that goes with the tale. I doubt if Mirain even realizes that I am a woman.”

  He said nothing.

  She laughed, not too badly, she thought, although he winced. “In truth I would not wish him to. He accepts me. He lets me be what I choose to be. The tragedy is this: his army is part of him also. And his army knows what I am. I betrayed myself, do you know? So careful, I was. So private, so well disguised. I even relieved myself where none could see, though that is nothing to brag of. Camp privies can be too utterly vile even for men. The hardest thing was to watch people swimming, and to have to pretend that I had duties; especially on the march, with the heat and the dust and the flies. A basin is a poor substitute for a whole cool river, when even one’s king is in it, fighting water battles like a half-grown boy.”

  “Tomorrow,” he said carefully, “if the weather changes, you could go to the river, to one of the pools.”

  “What for?” she demanded, all contrary.

  There was no banter in him; no mirth at all, and no comfort. He looked at her with wide eyes, all gold. “I see,” he said. “One’s king would not be in it.”

/>   She stared back at him. She was almost angry. Almost. That he could speak so: he too, of all who knew her.

  His hair was as unruly a mane as Mirain’s, and fully as splendid, left free in the custom of Asanian royalty though bound with a circlet about his brows. She stroked it. It was silken soft. “Gold should be cold to the touch,” she said.

  “And fire should burn.” His hand ventured on it, light, gentle, as if he feared to do her hurt.

  They were very close. She could feel the living warmth of him, and catch the scent he bore, faint yet distinct. Musk and saddle leather and briar roses. Their lips touched.

  He was very beautiful and very strong, and his kiss was sweet. Warm and warming. He tasted of spices.

  He drew back. His eyes had darkened to amber. “Lady,” he said very softly. “Lady, you are a breaker of hearts.”

  She looked at him, not understanding, not wanting to understand.

  He smiled as one in pain. “For every man who speaks ill of you, there are a thousand who would die for you. Remember that.” He bowed low, as low as his royalty had ever permitted, and left her there.

  oOo

  With even Ilarios gone strange, she had thought that she had nothing left. But no blow ever falls alone. Toward evening Mirain summoned her, who had never had to do such a thing, close by him as she always was.

  He was in the cell he used as a workroom. The clerks were gone; a brazier struggled to warm the chill air. Rolls and tablets heaped high about him, some sealed with his Sun-seal, some not.

  In his priest’s robe, with a stylus in his hand, he looked like the boy who had taught her her letters. But he was frowning, if only slightly; his gaze was cool almost to coldness.

  She stood in front of him with the worktable between them. Unconsciously she had drawn herself to attention. What sin had she committed, that he should look at her so? All her duties were done, and well done. She had given him nothing to complain of.

  His eyes released her, but they had not softened. “In three days,” he said, “we begin the march to Han-Gilen. It will be long, for I shall make of it a royal progress. I do not expect that we shall see the city very much before the opening of winter.”

  Her throat was locked. She swallowed to open a way for her voice. “The weather will be gentler as we go south. You will have no need to hasten because of it.”

  “Perhaps not.” He turned the stylus in his hands. They were small for a man’s, but the fingers were long and fine. A ring circled one, an intricate weaving of gold and ruby, flaming as it caught the light. She watched half-enspelled.

  His soft voice lulled her, but his words shocked her fully awake. “As long as the riding will be, and with Han-Gilen at the end of it, I have given much thought to your place within it. My men know now who you are. They have accepted the knowledge well and without undue scandal, for you have proved yourself in the best of all ways, by your valor in battle. Yet there is scandal, and it will not grow less as we ride through the Hundred Realms. For your sake then and for that of your family, I have asked that your brother take you into his tent.”

  “And my oath?” she asked quietly. It sounded well, cool and steady, but she could muster nothing louder.

  “I release you,” he answered. “You have served me well. More than well. For that I would make you a knight, the first of my new empire.”

  Her lip curled. “So. It is no longer convenient for your majesty to keep his esquire, now that men know he is a she, and a princess of Han-Gilen at that. It is most unpolitic. And, no doubt, it does not suit you to have your chosen lady hear of it. Best and easiest then to be rid of me, with a rich bribe to keep me quiet. Unfortunately, my lord emperor, I am not to be bought.”

  He rose. Even in her anger she dreaded his wrath, but he was fully masked. “I had thought to honor you, to restore your good name. My own I have no care for; I am a man, it does not matter. But in the way of this world, yours is greatly endangered. I would not have it so. Halenan is more than willing to share his lodgings with you, and he has promised not to bind you, nor in any way to restrict your freedom. He will even let you keep to your boy’s guise. You lose nothing by the change, and gain much. A knight of my household is truly free to do and to be what he chooses.”

  She shut her eyes against his logic. It was the core of it that mattered, that fanned her temper into a blaze. “Bribery. You rid yourself of a stain upon your majesty, a ribald jest in every tavern. What is an emperor’s economy? A squire who can serve him as well at night as in the day. And what sort of squire is that? A squire who is also a woman.”

  “No one says such things,” he said. His voice deepened and lost its clarity. “No one would dare.”

  “Not in your presence, sire. I have long ears. I can also read your mind, though you shield it with all your father’s power. I did not leave Han-Gilen and all I had been and could be, to be sent into my brother’s care like an unruly child.”

  “What would you have, then?”

  “Things as they were before,” she answered swiftly. She faced him. “Your good name does not matter, you say. Let me look after my own. Or are you afraid of what Mother will say to you?”

  “I fear what she will say to you.”

  She could have hit him. “Damn you, I can take care of myself! What does it take for me to prove that? A man’s body as well as a man’s clothes?”

  In spite of his control, his lips twitched. “I would never wish for that, my lady. It is only . . . words can wound deep, far deeper than they ought. And you suffer most from them. Someday you may wish to be truly free, even to marry. I would not have you fear that no man will take you.”

  “I’m not afraid of that!” she snapped. And she added, because a demon was on her tongue, “Ziad-Ilarios would take me now, as I am, muddied name and all.”

  She had meant only to quell his arguments. She had not looked to drive him behind all his walls, with the gates barred and the banner of his kingship raised above the keep. “Very well,” he said, “remain in my service. But do not expect me to ease your way with my subjects or with your family.”

  He returned to his seat and opened a scroll. She was dismissed.

  She had won. But the victory held no sweetness. Almost she could wish that she had not won at all.

  THIRTEEN

  The day before Mirain began his progress into the south, a strong force departed under Vadin’s command, turning back toward Ianon and the north. They would secure the tribes upon the borders of Asanion, and ascertain that all was well in Ianon.

  “And I,” said Vadin, “have a lady who objects to a cold bed.”

  Elian had gone to brood in solitude. The cavalry lines were quiet under the setting sun, the seneldi drowsing or grazing quietly, the grooms and the guards drawn off to a comfortable distance. She lay on her belly in the long grass, chewing a stem and watching Ilhari.

  Voices startled her. Before she thought, she had flattened herself to invisibility.

  They nearly walked over her, too intent on one another to see her, striding together with a single woven shadow stretching long behind them. They stopped almost within her reach and stood side by side, not touching, not needing to touch.

  Vadin swept his hand over the high plumes of grass, beheaded one, stripped it of its grains and offered it to the wind. Mirain turned his face to the setting sun.

  He frowned at it, but it was to Vadin that he spoke. His voice was sharp with impatience. “I have no skill in the wooing of women.”

  Vadin snorted. “You have more than anyone. You’ve seduced whole kingdoms.”

  “Ah,” said Mirain with a flick of his hand. “Kingdoms. Women are infinitely more complex. And that one . . . whatever I do, she makes it clear that I should have done the opposite.”

  “Gods know what you see in her,” Vadin said. Mirain glared; he grinned. “And I can guess. You like them difficult. Do you remember the little wildcat in Kurrikaz?”

  Mirain grimaced. “My scars remember.” He began
to pace, a brief circuit. “She was dalliance. They all were.”

  “All three of them,” Vadin muttered.

  “Four.” Mirain spun to face him. “This is truth, Vadin. This is the one who must be my queen: who always has been. And I know nothing of pursuit. All the rest have flung themselves at me, or been flung by fathers or brothers or procurers.”

  “Not that you’ve condescended to take any you didn’t fancy.”

  “It’s the curse of the mageborn. The body is never enough. Souls must meet; and so few even wish to. I tried once,” said Mirain, “to take pleasure as a simple man would. It was like bathing in mire. She never saw me at all. Only my wealth and my title, and the use she could make of them.”

  “They’re not all like that,” said Vadin.

  “I know it!” Mirain cried. “And the one I long for, the one I must have—she hardly knows I’m a man.”

  “Do you treat her like a woman?”

  Mirain stopped short.

  Vadin laid an arm around his shoulders, shaking him lightly. “I’ve seen how you are with her. Stiff and distant, and prim as a priestess. How is she to know you want her, if you persist in acting as if she were your youngest sister?”

  “But she is—”

  “She is royal and a beauty, and you want her so desperately you can hardly think. Let alone tell her the truth. She won’t wait for you, Mirain; not unless she knows there’s something to wait for.”

  “How can I tell her? She’s as shy as a mountain lynx. She ran away from the last man who even began to court her.”

  “And he went after her, and now he’s deathly close to winning her.”

  Mirain pulled free. His shoulders were knotted with tension.

  Suddenly he laughed, sharp and mirthless. “Here am I, new lord of the eastern world, fretting over a chit of a girl. An infant. A child who knows nothing of her own heart.”

  “Isn’t it time you set about telling her?”

  “I can’t,” Mirain said. “Call it pride. Call it stupidity.”