The Lady of Han-Gilen Read online

“Cowardice,” said Vadin.

  Mirain bared his teeth. “That, too. I can’t conquer a woman as I would a city.”

  “Why not? Think of it as a siege. So you don’t walk up to her and demand her hand in marriage. You can start hinting. Set up your siege engines: put on your best smile, give her a little of yourself, let her know she’s beautiful.” Mirain opened his mouth; Vadin overran him. “That’s no more than the other man does. When she’s warmed a little, then you can start beating down the gates. As,” said Vadin, relentless, “he already has.”

  “Damn you, Vadin,” growled Mirain. “I don’t recall that you were so wise when you were the sufferer. Wasn’t it I who made you start courting her? And didn’t I have to give you a royal command before you’d marry her?”

  “So,” said Vadin, “I’ve learned how it’s done. From you, O my brother.”

  “Did you, O my brother? Finish it, then. Win her for me.”

  “I can’t,” Vadin said. “I have to hold the north for you.”

  “Liar. It’s your wife you have to hold.”

  “They’re all one, aren’t they? Beautiful, willful, and determined not to come second in their lords’ eyes. Go on, brother. Win your lady. It ought to be easier without me to get in the way.”

  “She’s fonder of you than she knows.”

  “Hah,” said Vadin. “Here now, stop glaring. Start your wooing, before she runs off with his royal Asanian highness.”

  Mirain paused, but suddenly he grinned. He aimed a blow at Vadin, which caught only air; he laughed, and went almost lightly, like the boy he still was. Vadin lingered, pondering the grass about his feet.

  oOo

  Elian’s fingers clawed in it. She did not want to understand. She did not dare. That Mirain—might—want—

  It was someone else. He had said it.

  Had he?

  It was a child’s folly, to dream that every colloquy concerned oneself. And he had never—

  He had said—

  She scrambled to her feet. She never saw Vadin move. One instant he was frozen, startled. The next, his dagger pricked her throat.

  She met his hot glare, her own heat gone cold. “You were talking about me.” she said.

  The blade dropped away. The sting of it lingered. Vadin eased, muscle by muscle, and began to laugh.

  She waited. At long last he stopped. His brows went up. “You heard us?”

  “Every word.”

  “Gods.” He was almost appalled. Almost. A grin broke free. “So I won. You’ve found out. What will you do about it? Run away?”

  “Where would I run to?”

  “Asanion.”

  She closed her eyes. She was feeling nothing yet. Or too much. “I came for this,” she said. “Because I promised. That I would—”

  “Did you come for the promise, or for him?”

  Her eyes snapped open. “I promised! I—” She bit her tongue. “If Mirain had not been Mirain, I would never have sworn my oath.”

  “Prettily said,” drawled Vadin. He flung his long body to the ground at her feet.

  He was not wearing breeches under the kilt. She tore her eyes away.

  He propped himself on his elbow and regarded her from under level brows. “Sit,” he said.

  She did, with little grace. His amusement stung like the edge of his dagger.

  “You’re not a fool,” he said, “well though you pretend to be. You know what you can do to a man simply by being yourself. It’s diverting, isn’t it? It’s a splendid game. Setting Han-Gilen on its ear, hoodwinking the army of the Sunborn, playing two imperial lovers against one another. Whet the Asanian’s appetite with a long and perilous chase into the Sunborn’s arms; prick the Sunborn to madness by falling into the Asanian’s embrace. If you play your game cleverly enough, you can balance the two until the stars fall. Or,” said Vadin, “until one loses patience and demands an accounting. What then, princess? Which heart will you break? One or both?”

  “I think,” she said, measuring each word in ice, “that I hate you.”

  “You hate the truth.”

  “It is not the truth!” She was on her feet, shaking, choking on murder. “I never meant this to be. From the very first that I can remember, I knew what I wanted. Mirain. He belonged to me. No one else could ever have him. Then—then he went away. Father tried to hold him back until he was grown and could muster an army for the claiming of Ianon. He obeyed as long as he could, but he fretted; his father was in him, burning, and time was running ever faster.

  “In the night, in the spring, when he had won his torque but not yet had his fifteenth birth-feast, he covered himself in magery and slipped away.

  “But I knew. He could never hide anything from me. I followed. I caught him; he almost killed me before he knew me, and came close enough after. I begged to go with him, though I knew I couldn’t. He had to go alone; his father wanted it, and he needed it. He thought it was his persuasion that won me over. It was my power, and a glimmering of prophecy. ‘Go,’ I said. ‘Be king. And when you are king, I will come to you.’

  “He kissed me and set his face toward the northward road. And I stayed. I had to grow; I had to learn all I could, that would help me when I fulfilled my promise. It was never a grim duty, but the pleasure grew with me.

  “Then I was a woman, and it was time, and it was never quite time. There was always some new art to learn, some new suitor to dispose of, some new hawk or hound or senel to tame. And I had kin who, though they could madden me, loved me deeply, and I them. Tomorrow, I kept saying. Tomorrow I’ll go.

  “I never stopped wanting Mirain. None of the men who came panting after me was ever his equal. Few of them came close to being mine.

  “Until,” she said, “I saw Ziad-Ilarios.”

  She stopped, staring a little wildly at the man who lay in the grass. The sun had lost itself somewhere. Vadin was a long shadow, kilted in scarlet, hung with copper and gold.

  She did not know him at all. Outlander, barbarian, soul-bound with Mirain whom she knew too deeply to know what she knew.

  “Ziad-Ilarios,” she said, like an incantation or a curse. “I suppose to you he looks soft and small and daintily effeminate. To me he is all gold.

  “Mirain is the other half of me,” she said. “Ilarios is the man to my woman.”

  Vadin did not rise up to throttle her. Nor did he wither her with contempt. “I see,” he said. “Mirain is too familiar to be interesting. The Asanian sets your body throbbing.”

  “The Asanian admits that he wants me.”

  Vadin sighed. “And you want both. A pity you’re not a man, to keep two mates. Or a whore, to have as many as you please.”

  “That,” she said levelly, “I have been called before.”

  His grin was white in the shadow of his face. “I married one, you know.” Her silence troubled him not at all. He settled more comfortably and drew an easy breath, like a talespinner with his audience firm in his hand. “She was born to free farmfolk. One year when the crops failed, her father sold her to a procurer. She was good at her trade; she could have risen to a courtesan and bought her freedom, and no doubt set herself up in her own business. But I came along, and somehow I ended up being her favorite lover, which is no credit to my prowess: at that age I had none to speak of. I think she looked on me as a challenge; and Ledi loves challenges. Then Mirain set her free and gave her rank to match mine. Before I knew it we’d been maneuvered into the marriage bed.”

  Elian would not be shocked. He in his turn would not be disappointed. “So you see, I have to go and leave Mirain to his fate: or should I say, to you. Ledi has issued her ultimatum. I come home and inspect the tribe I’ve fathered, or they come after me. There are two I’ve hardly seen, the twins, they were beautiful when they were born but Mirain called me off to help him put down a nest of mages; and then, what with one thing and another, I never got back after. They’re nigh a year old now.”

  “A tribe?” Elian asked, interested in spite
of herself. “How many of them are there?”

  “Two maids—that’s the twins. And five lads. Seven in all.” Only seven, his tone said; and there was no irony in it. “But then I’ve only the one lady, and somehow I’ve never had much of an eye for anyone else. She does her valiant best. She wants twins again this time, she says, and that will make nine, which is a good round number. She has a strong will, does my Ledi-love.”

  “So,” gritted Elian, “do I.”

  “Don’t you? A pity it doesn’t know what it wants.”

  She set her teeth until they ached, and was silent.

  His head tilted. “You don’t like me, do you?”

  “Am I supposed to answer that?”

  He shrugged. It was fascinating to watch, for what it did to all his rings and necklaces and earrings. Three in one ear, copper and gold and one great carbuncle like a coal in the dusk. “Let me guess. You had Mirain first. Then he abandoned you. He attached himself to me, who didn’t even have the good grace to appreciate the honor, and made me so much a part of him that now there’s no dividing us. And you came and found us as we are, and Mirain persists in acting as if nothing has changed between you. Not only does that madden you; I don’t even have the kindness to be jealous.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Give me credit for some intelligence.” He sounded sharp but not angry. “I give you more than your fair share for not despising a gaudy barbarian. But you want me to hate you and to fight with Mirain over a love that’s big enough for us all. Alas, I can’t. I lost that degree of humanity when I took the lance in my vitals. It went both ways, that miracle. Mirain called me back, and I saw the full extent of what he was and is and will be. He’s mine, always, irrevocably. He’s also Ianon’s and the north’s and the south’s; he belongs to your father, he belongs to Hal, he belongs to you. It’s no good to want to have all of him. Even Avaryan can’t have that.”

  “What are you?” she cried through the tangle that was her mind.

  “A prodigy,” he answered, and his voice was bitter. “A monster. A dead man walking.”

  “No.” She seized his hand. Its palm was hard with calluses, its back surprisingly silken, warm and strong and very much alive. “I didn’t mean that. I’m not—you do surprise me. I’d hate you if you were I, sneaking little interloper that I am, and in trousers, too.”

  That warmed him; his smile gleamed from the shadow of his face. “But,” he said, “I never thought you were a boy.”

  Her jaw dropped. She picked it up with care. “You—”

  “Oh yes, I would have resented a swaggering little cock-a-whoop who thought he could take my place. You only wanted your own back. You got it, and it was wonderfully amusing to watch you hoodwink the army. Stone blind, all of them. Even in a kilt you’d walk like a she-panther. And you’ve got breasts. Not much yet, and in all honesty you’ll never match my lady, but breasts you’ve got. Didn’t anyone ever tell you about strapping them flat?”

  Her free hand flew to them, flew away. Her cheeks flamed. “I tried for a while. It was ghastly uncomfortable.” Dark though it had grown, she glared at him. “You are presumptuous.”

  “Is that all?” Laughter rippled in his voice. “I’d say I was skirting the edge of the unforgivable. Or I would be, if I weren’t so disgustingly close to being your kinsman. Has anyone told you lately that you’re beautiful?”

  “No!” she snapped. “Yes. I don’t know.”

  She was still holding his hand. It gripped hers; it drew her to him. He was a shadow and a gleam, and a warmth as much of the mind as of the body. “Listen to me, Elian. I have to go away. There’s no help for it; Mirain’s god is leading him into the south, and someone has to keep the north strong behind him. I know we’ll be part of one another wherever we go, and I know he’ll never be alone while he has Hal to stand beside him. But he needs more. He doesn’t know it; if he did, he wouldn’t admit it. He’s proud, too, that one, and sometimes he’s as blind as any ordinary idiot.”

  Elian was stiff in his grasp, breathing in the scent of him, the sheer foreignness of his presence. But his mind was not foreign at all; and that disturbed her more than any of the rest. One word, one flicker of the will, and they would be bound, brother, sister, kindred as he had named them: kindred in power.

  “Look after him,” said the outland voice in the outland tongue. “Take care of him. Don’t let him be any more of a lunatic than you can help. And if you need me, send your power to me. I’ll come. Because,” he said, both solemn and wicked, “I also keep my promises.”

  Her eyes narrowed; her fists clenched. “After all you’ve said and done to me, you can ask me to take your place with him?”

  “I’m asking you to choose as you have to choose, but not to break him in doing it. You love him enough for that, I think. Even if you bind your body to the Asanian.”

  She could not speak. He rose, drew her into a swift inescapable embrace, let her go. He towered against the stars.

  “What—” she whispered. Her voice rose. “What do I tell Mirain?”

  “If you’re wise,” he answered, “everything. Or nothing.” He bowed and set a kiss in her hand. “Avaryan’s luck with you, Lady of Han-Gilen. We’ll meet again.”

  FOURTEEN

  Vadin was gone. Well gone, Elian wanted to think. He knew too damnably much, and understood it all, and refused—adamantly refused—to despise her for it.

  Mirain without him was no less Mirain. It was Elian who found herself looking for him. Missing his eternal and exasperating presence, and his scathing wit, and his talent for saying what no one else dared to say.

  However much she had resented his presence, she resented his absence more deeply still. It had nothing to do with liking him. It had everything to do with needing him.

  She did not see him off. Would not. She had lain awake nightlong, watching Mirain sleep, as if suddenly he would wake and cry, “Choose me!”

  If he had, she would have fled. It had been so simple when she did not know: when he seemed content to be her brother, and she was content to be his squire. Now she must lie, or she must tell him what she knew, and lose her brother, and gain the burden of a lover.

  Familiar, Vadin had said. Mirain was that. Too familiar. She could as easily lust after Halenan as after Mirain. He had known her since she was born. He was part of her, blood and bone.

  “Ziad-Ilarios,” she whispered in the deeps of the night, and shivered.

  He was alien and beautiful and desirable. She had seen all of Mirain that there was to see. Of Ilarios she had seen the face and the hands and a glimpse of shapely feet. She could only guess what lay between. Beauty carved in ivory, with dust of gold.

  Ebony slept oblivious, obstinate in its silence, and woke as if she had never been more to him than sister and servant. She was soul-glad; she hated him for it. She held her tongue and veiled her eyes and let him have his peace. In a blessedly little while, she had found a scrap of it for herself; she tended it, and schooled herself to think of naught beyond it.

  oOo

  When Mirain began his riding into the south, her joy in it could be almost as unalloyed as his own. The sun blazed upon him in all the splendor of autumn, the leaves of the woods as golden as the Sun on his banner; and he rode under both as light as a boy, with all his drudgeries packed away in the clerks’ wagons far down the line.

  Men sang behind him, a marching song of the north that the southerners had taken a fancy to. The Mad One danced in time to it; Mirain laughed with the simple joy of it, that he was alive, and king, and riding in the sun before the cream of his newborn empire.

  His glance drew Elian into his delight. She could resist him, but not when all the earth seemed to conspire with him. She flashed him her brightest grin, and set Ilhari dancing likewise, matching the Mad One step for step.

  oOo

  They crossed Ilien and entered Poros with Prince Indrion in the van, guiding his emperor through his brother realm. It was indeed the royal pro
gress Mirain had looked for; night found him in the heart of the princedom, feasting in its palace, surrounded by its people.

  Its women, Elian noticed, were enchanted with him. She noticed also that he betrayed no interest in any one in particular, though some were very beautiful, and some were very charming, and a few were both.

  To her he had not changed at all. Not even when she surprised him with a glance or a smile, daring him to begin the siege. Not even when the demon in her sent her to Ilarios’ side and kept her there, and made her bold and brazen, and brought her close to hating herself.

  Until Ilarios turned his golden eyes upon her and smiled, knowing what she did, and forgiving her. She had kissed him before she knew it, there where everyone could see.

  She started back, blushing furiously. “I—” she began.

  His finger silenced her, not quite touching her lips. “I know,” he said. And began to speak of something else entirely.

  When at last it struck her, it struck hard. Ilarios had won a victory. She had forgotten Mirain. She looked, and he was gone; and she had not seen him go.

  oOo

  He was in bed. Alone. Sleeping as a child sleeps, in blissful peace.

  She cursed him, but whispering, through gritted teeth. “You are no thwarted lover. He lied, that great lanky shadow of yours. Or I dreamed it all.”

  He never stirred. She hissed at him. “Damn you, Mirain! How can I know if I want you, if you won’t even ask?”

  oOo

  The king’s progress continued in a splendor of sunlight. But the nights seemed doubly dark for the brightness between. Elian dreamed, and her dreams were fearful, but when she woke she could not remember them. She began to fight against sleep.

  It was not her little tangle of lovers. This ran deeper, down to the heart of power, where prophecy had its lair. Fear was in it, and a darkness of the soul; and something terribly like yearning.

  Something wanted her. Something strove to draw her to it, if only she would lower her defenses, if only she would yield. Only a little. Only enough to know what summoned her.

  She would not. She dreamed; and there was a black and crooked comfort in it. Dreaming, dreading sleep, she had less leisure to fret over a man who would not admit that he wanted her, and over a man whom she wanted but not—quite yet—with all that was in her.