Arrows of the Sun Page 20

  “And did you?”

  “I sulked for days. But the princedom couldn’t run itself. Its steward was old and growing feeble, and its lords and barons were trying the bonds of their fealty, and the merchants were padding their profits, and the people, the poor people, didn’t deserve any of it. So I had to behave myself, you see, and do what I could. Without insulting the steward, starting a war among the barons, or driving the merchants out, because we needed them to buy the wool and meat and cloth that were our wealth, and to sell the things we needed: wood for the looms, iron for the needles, herbs and earths for the dyes.”

  She was listening with every evidence of interest, but he stopped himself. “There now,” he said. “I was prince in Umbras till I’d learned my lesson, and then we found a princess for it, and I went back to the life I’d run away from. It wasn’t so ill, once I’d thought about it.”

  “A princess?” Ziana asked, so unexpectedly that he looked at her sister. But the voice was not the same, not at all. This was soft and low, trembling with the effort of being so bold. “A princess to rule a princedom?”

  Estarion found himself speaking more gently, trying not to frighten her. “She was heir to it, as close as made no matter. She would have taken her place long before, but she’d gone traveling to the Nine Cities to learn new ways of weaving and dyeing, and she had affairs that wouldn’t settle all at once.”

  “She ruled,” Ziana said as if to herself. “Do you hear that, Haliya? I told you that wasn’t one of Nurse’s stories.”

  “Of course she had a husband,” Haliya said, “or a brother who could tell her what to do.”

  “She’d married in the Nine Cities,” said Estarion, “that’s true enough, but her husband wasn’t minded to live in a shepherd’s cot on the edge of the world, as he put it. She wasn’t bitter about it, much. She had a daughter from him, to be her heir, and let him have the son, which they all reckoned fair, as such things go.”

  “I wish I lived in Umbros,” Ziana said.

  “It’s not very elegant,” said Estarion. “It’s mostly moors and woolbeasts and shepherds. The palace is a manor house that grew. It’s raw and cold in the winter, and what summer there is, is more rain than sun. We had fires in the hearths at High Summer, and winter rains by Autumn Firstday. No one had much use for silk, or for pretty things. They weren’t sensible.”

  “Silk makes a great deal of sense,” said Ziana. “It weaves strong and it weaves light, and it’s warm when you want it, and cool when you want it. And it takes color like nothing else.”

  She was, in her way, quite as surprising as her sister. Estarion was enchanted.

  “Ah,” said Lord Firaz, sliding in beside him. “Sire, we had lost you. I see you have found Prince Alishandas’ daughters. They are the jewels of Markad, born of mothers who were kin to the royal house. There have been mages in their line, and priestesses of the Sun—Orozia of Magrin, mage and priestess and friend to Sarevadin, was their father’s grandfather’s father’s sister; and she was but the first of several.”

  “That is a noble lineage,” said Estarion. Stupidly, maybe, but he was caught in amber eyes, and again in golden. Such wit and such willfulness; and here, where he had never looked for any such thing. He slanted an eye at his Regent. “I’m in a quandary, my lord. Here are two. How do I choose?”

  “Why, sire, you take both,” said Lord Firaz in some surprise. “You have no harem; that is hardly a disgrace, as new come as you are, but strict honor would dictate that you choose many ladies from the cream of the realm, to honor their families and to bear you strong sons.”

  “Many?” Estarion felt the slow flush rising. Bless his ancestry, it did not show. “How many?”

  “Had you been high prince in Asanion,” said Firaz, “you would have been expected to take a lady for each day of the year. Then on your accession to the throne you would double that number; and when your first son was born, treble it.”

  Estarion must have looked a perfect fool. He picked up his fallen jaw. “How on earth can any man please that many?”

  Lord Firaz was amused: there was a glint in his eye. “He does his best, my lord.”

  “And Hirel had fifty brothers.” Estarion shuddered. “I’m not Asanian. I’m Varyani. We take our women one at a time.”

  “In Keruvarion that is honorable, my lord. Here, it gives insult to all those fathers whose daughters might rise in the emperor’s favor and enrich their families and give them kin in the royal house—perhaps even on the throne itself.”

  Estarion had heard it before. Of course he had. But hearing and listening—those were not the same at all. “God and goddess,” he said.

  “Here we have a thousand gods,” said Firaz.

  “I won’t—” Estarion stopped, drew a long breath. “Would honor be satisfied,” he asked, “if I eased myself in gently? If I remembered the ways of the Ianyn kings, and choose nine ladies of beauty and lineage? Would that content the Court?”

  “For a beginning,” said Firaz, “it would, sire.”

  “Very well,” Estarion said. “Choose me seven who you think will suit me, and who will find me, if not suitable, then at least endurable.”

  “Will my lord not choose his own?”

  “I have,” said Estarion.

  The Regent’s brows went up. “My lord honors me with his trust.”

  “I do,” said Estarion.

  He stepped back, opening the way to the hall. The ladies did not seize it, he noticed. Their dragon, as they called her, seemed to have accepted the inevitable. Her scowl was no less fierce, but she had stopped flexing her claws.

  23

  They stood in front of him. Nine of them. Nine veils, nine pairs of eyes, from warm amber to bright gold. Nine bodies so wrapped and swathed and swaddled that he could only guess at their shapes, though he had no doubt of their gender.

  They had been parted from their protectors. Those would be deep in colloquy, one by one, with Lord Firaz and the empress, settling matters as honor required. The guards here were eunuchs of the palace, aged and discreet.

  The room was small, smothered in curtains. Estarion followed his nose to one and swept it back.

  Light trickled in through a lattice. There was no catch, no opening. He snorted disgust and wheeled. They were all staring, women and eunuchs alike.

  A chair stood against the wall. He sat in it, not to be at ease, but to keep from prowling.

  This was not beginning well. He tried a smile, not too wide. None of them warmed, except Haliya, who was laughing at him. She raised a hand to her veil.

  Women bared their bodies in Keruvarion with less ceremony, and less trepidation, than women in Asanion showed their faces. Estarion had no sympathy with it; or had had none, until he met those bright eyes. This was great bravery, and a great gift. She was giving him herself.

  He did not know if she was beautiful. She was less plump than some, which Asanians would reckon a defect. There was a scattering like gold dust across her nose: remarkable. The color came and went beneath it. She was not quite brave enough to smile at him without her veil to hide behind.

  The others, so exampled, unveiled themselves likewise. He was careful to notice each face, to say something to each maiden, whether she blushed or paled, stared hard at her feet or raised her eyes daringly to the vicinity of his chin. Ziana was the beauty that her sister was not: an amber loveliness that paled the rest to milk and water. When she blushed, she blushed rose-gold. He could not help what he did, which was to rise and take her hand, and kiss it as if she had been the empress and he but a prince of her court.

  He let her go not entirely of his own will, to face her sister again. Of them all, he had failed to speak only to her. She felt it: he saw it in the angle of her chin, in the hard brightness of her eye.

  He brushed her gold-dusted cheek with his finger. “Does it come off?” he asked her.

  She did not laugh as he had hoped, or delight him with her wit. She drew herself up, straight and stiff a
nd cold. “If I do not please your eyes, my lord, I shall leave you. But do keep Ziana. She has no blemish.”

  “Nor do you,” he said.

  “I am not beautiful. I am too thin. My face is blotched with the sun. One of my teeth is imperfect: it broke when I fell climbing the wall in our garden. I have a scar on my chin from riding my brother’s pony over a fence too high for him, and—”

  He felt his brow climbing. It stopped her. Asanians could not do that, maybe: he had never seen it in them. “I should want you to be perfect?”

  “You are the emperor,” she said.

  “I do hate it when people say that,” he said.

  “Then I won’t say it,” she said. “Your majesty.”

  She was small as Asanians were, barely shoulder-high. And yet he did not frighten her. She kept her chin up as if she wanted it there, and glared down her nose at him. “Are you going to send me back?” she demanded of him.

  “Do you want me to?”

  “My wanting has nothing to do with it.”

  “I will if you ask,” he said, and now he was as stiff as she.

  She widened her eyes, which truly were beautiful, and curled her lip. “But why should you? You own this empire and everything in it.”

  “I don’t own you.”

  “You do.” She looked straight into his eyes. “You can send me away. I don’t mind. Maybe they’ll let me go this time, and see how a woman can be a princess in Keruvarion.”

  “You do want that,” he said. He did not know what he felt. Regret, maybe. Admiration for her outspokenness, so precious rare among her people.

  “I wanted it once,” said Haliya. “Then I thought I wanted to be a proper woman, and be a man’s wife, and bear his sons. I’ll not do that now.”

  “Why not, if I set you free?”

  Her laughter was gentle, which startled him. “You really don’t know, do you? You’ve seen our faces now. No one else will want us.”

  Estarion stood still. His heart had gone cold. “Then—all those ladies in all those cities—”

  “Oh,” she said, “they’re safe enough, unless a man is remarkably silly about his honor. You didn’t single anyone out, you see. You didn’t say anything to them beyond the politest necessity. Whereas we’ve been your property since we walked through yonder door.”

  “That is ridiculous,” Estarion said.

  “It’s custom. If you hadn’t been the emperor, if you’d been a lord or even a prince, someone higher might be willing to take your leavings as concubines, or as servants to one of his concubines. We have no honor left, you see, that belongs to our kin. We only have what you will give. If that is nothing, then nothing is our portion. I don’t mind,” she said, “much. I know the way to Keruvarion.”

  She did mind. Even his little magecraft felt it. It was her honor she cherished, he knew that, and not his presence.

  “I should set you free,” he said.

  “You can’t do that.”

  “The emperor can do anything.”

  “Anything the emperor can do, he can do. He can’t make a woman a man.”

  “Why in the hells should I want to—”

  “She means,” said a gentle voice, “that women live like this. Men go out, and ride, and run away to Keruvarion.” Ziana blushed under his eyes. “Here, my lord, it’s different.”

  Estarion threw up his hands. “You’re going to drive me clean out of my wits. Then what will you do?”

  “Madmen are like dead men,” said Haliya calmly, but with a glint in it. “We’ll be your widows. We can do whatever we like.”

  “Even go out, and ride, and run away?”

  She lowered those bold eyes, but not before he saw how they danced. “I forget myself. Again. My lord.”

  “Oh, stop it,” he said. “Could you bear to go to Keruvarion if you went with me?”

  “In a carriage? With curtains? And guards?”

  “On a senel. In trousers. With,” he admitted, “guards. There’s no escaping them.”

  “Will you promise that?”

  He hesitated.

  She would not droop. She was too proud. But the light went out of her.

  He had her hands in his before he knew it, not tempted to kiss them, but not tempted to let them go, either. “I promise,” he said.

  o0o

  Once Estarion had escaped as far as the queen’s palace, he discovered that his jailers had lengthened his chain. He could go to his mother now if he wished, or speak to the women who were, in law if not in fact, his concubines.

  He was careful not to slight any of them. But he had begun with the sisters, and to the sisters he always returned.

  It was perfectly decorous. There was a eunuch there always, and they sat demurely, hands folded in their laps, and watched Estarion pace.

  He amused them, he thought. The Asanian word for panther was the word for northerner, too, and Ziana called him by it, blushing at first as if she had let it slip out, then when he smiled, making it her name for him. Haliya did not call him anything but “my lord.”

  He came to her in the morning, not long after that first meeting, so early that she was just out of bed and not yet dressed. He could hardly burst in on a lady in her bower, even a lady who belonged to him. He fretted and paced, while the eunuchs watched and eyed his companion with mighty mistrust.

  Godri would never have come so far if Estarion had not invoked the full force of imperial ire. But there was no one else whom Estarion wished to trust with this.

  Just as he was ready to give it up, Haliya emerged, wrapped in veils. Her glance at Godri was astonished.

  She would have been warned that there was a second man in her antechamber. But she could never have seen a desert tribesman before, nor such a richness of warrior-patterns on his face.

  He had too much delicacy to stare at her. He relinquished what he carried, and stepped back.

  “Go,” said Estarion, filling her arms with Godri’s burden. “Put these on.”

  She clutched the bundle to her breast, but stood her ground. “What—”

  “Just go,” he said. “Or we’ll dress you ourselves.”

  She wheeled at that and ran.

  “She has a fair turn of speed, for a lapcat,” Godri observed.

  Estarion almost hit him. “That is a lady of Asanion.”

  “Didn’t I say that?”

  Estarion prayed for patience. He needed it. She was so long in coming that he began to suspect she would not come at all.

  At last she appeared. The trousers fit her: he had hoped for that. The coat was loose to spare her modesty, but it showed a great deal more of her than her wrappings ever had. The veil was an expedient of his mother’s for the road into the Golden Empire, much like the headdress of Godri’s people, or of the Olenyai.

  He took her hand before she could stop him. “Now,” he said, “come with us.”

  She had to trot to keep pace, but she went willingly, eyes bright with curiosity. Her hand was hot in his, clinging tighter the longer he held it. Eunuchs trailed after, expostulating.

  The wall of guards stopped them all. Haliya regarded them in astonishment. “These are women!”

  “So they are,” Estarion said, amused.

  “But they’re guards.”

  “Guards can be women,” he said.

  “Then—you—”

  “Oh,” he said before she fainted with shock, “these are my mother’s. I borrow them when I come here. My own Guard is safely male; but I can hardly bring them to this place, can I?”

  “But,” said Haliya. “They have swords. And that’s armor. Is this a play? Am I to be the fool in it?”

  “This is a gift,” he said, and held his breath. She could refuse. She could slap him for his presumption, and run back to her gowns and her veils.

  Or she could let him lead her through the gate that had opened in the armored wall. It closed behind them, shutting out the eunuchs. Estarion let his smile break through at last, and stretched his st
ride.

  There was a courtyard that, Estarion had discovered, abutted one of the stables and yet was safely within the confines of the queen’s palace. It took a little doing, but a senel could be brought in, with a eunuch groom to be properly honorable.

  Estarion regarded the mare with some surprise. Godri had chosen her, there was no mistaking it. She was one of his own: desert-bred, sand-colored as they all were, less ugly-headed than most, with the beginnings of horns on her brow, rare in a mare and much prized.

  “Godri,” said Estarion. “This is—”

  Haliya pulled her hand free of his and ran to the mare, and flung her arms about the beast’s neck. “No! Don’t send her away. She’s perfect. I don’t want anything prettier.”

  Estarion blinked, taken aback. She had mistaken his intent too completely for words.

  Godri laughed. “My lord, I think your lady has sense after all.”

  “She is an idiot,” said Estarion. “To think that I would afflict her with a mount that was”—gods, the word tasted vile—“pretty. Pretty! That plowbeast I rode into Kundri’j is pretty. I’d have him for breakfast if I thought my stomach could stand it.”

  Haliya turned, still clinging to the mare. The beast preserved her aplomb admirably, even condescended to lip a strand of hair that had escaped the veil. Haliya glared. “Then why did you start to say—”

  “I started to say,” said Estarion, “that this is the best of Godri’s herd, which is the cream of Varag Suvien. This is his queen, his beloved. He has given you a gift worthy of kings.”

  Her gaze dropped; her cheeks went scarlet. But she had spirit to spare. “Everyone else has tried to mount me on—on plowbeasts. With gilded feet. And ribbons.”

  Her disgust was profound. The mare snorted and caught her veil in long teeth and plucked it off.

  Godri had the wits to turn away. Estarion did not see the need to do the same.

  Haliya, bareheaded and vivid with defiance, mounted in creditable order. She did not ride badly, either, for a lapcat.

  o0o

  “How did you learn?” Estarion asked her afterward. She was damp from the bath, demurely gowned and veiled again, with her sister in attendance. “Did you steal your brother’s pony and teach yourself to stay on?”