Arrows of the Sun Page 23

  “Shiu’oth Olenyai,” said Estarion. “Yes, I’ve heard of those. They’re vowed, yes? And sworn to die unless their enemy dies first.”

  “Sworn to die with him,” said Korusan, “when they take the great vow. Life is not worth living, you see, once the enemy is dead.”

  “I could understand that,” Estarion said.

  Korusan laughed. It was an uncanny sound in the dark and the rain: young, hardly more than a child’s, but old as mountains. “You understand nothing, my lord and emperor. What have you ever lost but what you could easily lose?”

  “My father,” said Estarion, sharp with the pain of it.

  “Fathers die,” Korusan said. “That is the way of the world.”

  “I gather you never had one,” Estarion said.

  “What, you think us born of the earth, or of a mage’s conjuring? We are human enough, Sunlord, under the veils and the swords.”

  “How old are you, child?”

  The Olenyas was not to be startled into anger. “I have fifteen years,” he said calmly. “And you?”

  “I thought everyone knew my age to the hour,” said Estarion.

  “Twenty-two years, twice six cycles of Brightmoon less two days and,” said Korusan, “five turns of the glass, and one half-turn.” He paused. Estarion held his tongue. “They say you will live a hundred years, if no one kills you first.”

  “You’re here to avert that,” said Estarion.

  “Oh, yes,” said Korusan. “No one will kill you while I stand beside you. I keep that privilege for myself.”

  Estarion laughed. It was the first true laughter he had known in Kundri’j. It swept the dark away; it brought back, however dimly, the light that once had been all he was. “None but you shall take my life,” he said. “Here’s my hand on it.”

  Korusan clasped it. His grip was warm and strong, strong enough to grind the bones together, had not Estarion braced against him.

  Estarion grinned into the night. This was terrible; it was wonderful. It suited his mood to perfection.

  o0o

  Korusan had been appalled when he followed the path of a suspicion and found a figure in Olenyai black, wielding a blade against the Sun’s get. That was none of his plotting.

  He was angry, first, while his body moved to do what was necessary. If this was one of the mages’ puppets, he would take the price in their blood. Then he grieved, for he had conceived a liking for the Sunlord’s servant.

  Neither anger nor grief got in the way of his lesser belt-knife. Swords were too great an honor for an assassin who dared robe and veil himself like an Olenyas.

  After grief came stillness, and certainty. This life belonged to him. This prey was his; he would relinquish it to no other, no, not to death itself.

  And, having claimed it, he was not about to let it escape him. He made himself the black king’s shadow. He found himself admiring a creature who could stand in the rain until dawn, talking of everything and nothing. Of course he did not understand what Korusan meant by the oath he had sworn. He was too arrogant for that, and too much a child.

  Korusan would be dead before he came to this man’s years. His bones ached in the damp; old scars throbbed. But if a man could live as long as this one hoped to, then twenty-two was infant’s years, and lifetimes in front of him still, and worlds to learn the ways of.

  Most bitter of enemies he might be, but he was an engaging creature. Attractive, even, if one were fond of panthers. The grey morning showed him wet to the skin, hair a draggled tail, rain dripping from his beard, and eyes bright gold.

  Korusan sneezed.

  The lion-eyes went wide. “There now. See what I’ve done. I’ve caught you your death.”

  “I know where my death is,” said Korusan, “and that is not in this place.”

  The Sunlord would not listen. He herded Korusan into warmth and dryness, got him out of dripping robes but not the veil, played servant as if he had been born to it. And if he knew what he served, what then would he have done?

  He knew Asanian modesty. He observed it well enough, not even a glance aside, no touch that was not required. The robe in which he wrapped Korusan was black, and went around Korusan exactly twice, and trailed elegantly behind.

  The wine he poured was a vintage reserved for emperors. Korusan was startled that it stayed in his stomach.

  “You’re a delicate little thing, aren’t you?” observed his lord and master.

  Well for Korusan that his enemy recalled him to due and proper hate. He had been deadly close to conceiving a liking for the creature. “I could snap your neck before you moved to stop me,” he said.

  Estarion smiled down from that northern height. “I’ll wager you could, if a sneeze didn’t catch you. Your toes are blue. Why didn’t you say something?”

  And then, damn his arrogance, he went down on his knees and rubbed life and warmth into Korusan’s feet. With his own hands he did it. Grinning, with all his white teeth gleaming. Thinking it a great lark, no doubt, to play the servant to his servant.

  He was not even shivering, naked as he was but for a scrap of kilt. He was like a hearthfire, hot as fever, but Korusan knew that he was always so. Beast-warm. Beast-strong. His beard dried in ringlets. He was covered with curly fleece, breast and belly, legs and arms. But his back was smooth, and his sides, and his shoulders.

  He was beautiful, as a panther is. Korusan shivered. Estarion leaped to his feet, all long-limbed grace, and fetched a blanket. Korusan flung it in his face. “Enough! This is unseemly.”

  “It will be more unseemly if you drop dead of a fever. I won’t lose another guardsman, Yelloweyes.”

  “Golden,” said Korusan.

  A grin was all the answer he gained. Arrogant. Insolent. Thoroughly unrepentant.

  Fool, thought Korusan, to make himself so easy to hate.

  So easy, and so unexpectedly difficult. One could despise his dreadful manners, and shudder at his alien face. But there was still that innocence of his, that transparent conviction that everyone must love him, simply because he was himself.

  It would be a pleasure to kill him. But not now. Not too soon. Not until he could know why he died, and who had slain him.

  III

  Koru-Asan

  26

  Godri went to his last rest as best he might in this city of strangers. There was no sand to inter him for the season of the death-vigil, but fire they could give him, and a pyre in the Court of Glories outside the hall in which he had lain in state.

  Estarion sang the words of the rite, first those of Avaryan’s temple in Endros, then those of the desert and the tribes. He sacrificed a fine mare upon the pyre, to bear the soul to its rest, and when it was time to kindle the flame, he called down the sun.

  Estarion watched him burn. How long it was, or who lingered, he did not care.

  He had no tears. That troubled him. He should be able to weep.

  He was walled in guards, surrounded by them, watched and warded till his nape crawled. And there were magewalls on him. Iburan’s, no doubt, to defend him against a second assassin. He traced them in the ache behind his eyes.

  His chambers were no refuge. No more was the harem. His mother was doubly and trebly guarded—they might, after all, strike at her, since they had failed with her son. In the hall of the throne, no one could approach him. Even the Regent stood outside the inner wall of watchers, speaking as Estarion no doubt would speak if he had the wits.

  Estarion wondered if Firaz counted this a victory in their long and almost amiable war, or a defeat. He could not come close enough to ask, even if the Regent would have answered.

  Estarion’s loss was not spoken of. Asanian courtesy. Grief was a private matter. One’s servants spoke to the servants of the bereaved. Condolences came attached to gifts of minor value: a perfect blossom, a jewel, an image of the departed. Estarion was amazed to see how many small figures appeared in his chambers, the face of each painted with a reasonable likeness of Godri’s warrior-patt
erns.

  “They wish to be recorded,” Korusan said of the givers, “as sharing your grief. So that you may suspect them less of wishing to slay him.”

  “No one wanted to kill Godri,” Estarion said.

  “That is understood,” said the Olenyas.

  “There are rites of thanksgiving in all the temples,” said Estarion, “that I survived the attack. How many people will truly thank their gods, do you think? And how many will pray that the next attempt succeeds?”

  “Do you honestly expect that everyone will love you?”

  “I’d be content not to be hated.”

  Korusan shrugged. “Perhaps you should have asked to be born a commoner, or the lord of a little domain, where you could be adored and petted and never troubled with disagreement.”

  “Then I should better have been born a woolbeast. A blooded ram with nothing to do but grow fine wool and tup the ewes.”

  “You say it, not I.”

  Was he laughing? Estarion could not see his eyes, to tell. He was inspecting a tableful of death-gifts. His finger brushed a topaz on a chain. It was the exact clear gold of his eyes.

  “Do you want that?” Estarion asked.

  His hand jerked back. It was the first unguarded gesture Estarion had seen in him, the first that betrayed him as the boy he was.

  “You may have it,” Estarion said. “Everyone always gives me topazes. I have chestsful of them.”

  “Do you dislike them?”

  “I like emeralds better. And opals of the Isles. Have you seen them? They’re black or deep blue, and shot with fire.”

  “Like your hair with gold in it?”

  “And red and green and blue.” Estarion regarded him in some surprise. “You’re a poet.”

  “I am a guard. What is there to do but study my charge?”

  “I never thought of that,” said Estarion. “Don’t Olenyai do anything but guard? They sleep, surely, and eat. And practice weaponry.”

  “And unarmed combat, and the arts of the hunt.”

  “And the high arts?”

  Korusan took up the jewel on its chain. His voice was as cool as ever. “I can read. I write, a little. I sang before my voice broke. Now I am like a raven with catarrh.”

  Estarion laughed. “That won’t last. You’ll sing deep, I think.”

  “Not as deep as you.”

  “That’s northern blood. The priest, Iburan—he can sound like the earth shifting.”

  The topaz was gone, secreted somewhere in the swathing of robes. Estarion smiled inside himself. Strange how the world, like grief, could shift and change; how the hated shadow-watcher could become, if not a friend, then a human creature with mind and wits of its own.

  “You didn’t sleep last night,” Estarion said, “and you’ve been my shadow all day. Don’t you need to rest?”

  “I slept while you were in Court,” said Korusan.

  “You’ve shadowed me since I came here, haven’t you?” said Estarion. “It’s hard to tell, if one isn’t noticing. No faces.”

  “You see more than you admit to,” Korusan said.

  “Don’t we all?”

  The Olenyas moved away from the table. “It is a custom,” he said, “for the imperial Olenyai to choose those who will stand in closest attendance upon his majesty. I asked to be chosen.”

  “Why?”

  “I wished to see what you were.”

  “And what am I?”

  “Interesting.”

  “Haliya says the same thing.”

  Korusan’s eyes widened a fraction.

  “A friend,” said Estarion. “As Asanian as you, and as chary of showing her face.”

  “Your concubine,” said Korusan. His tone dismissed her with the word. “And I am your servant.”

  “She talks like that, too. Or is that too insulting to contemplate?”

  “You are not Asanian,” Korusan said.

  “Enough of me is,” said Estarion, “to claim blood-right to this place. I hated that, did you know? I wanted to forget that I was ever anything but Varyani. I avoided mirrors, and cultivated hats and hoods, and let no one address me as Son of the Lion.”

  “You could have revoked your claim,” said the Olenyas.

  “Of course I couldn’t,” Estarion said. “It’s mine.”

  “You are,” said Korusan, “emperor.”

  “You hate me for it?”

  “Should I love you?”

  Estarion grinned and stretched, as if he could widen these walls with his hands and break through to open sky. “You are interesting,” he said. “Fascinating. If you study me, may I study you?”

  “The emperor may do as he wills.”

  “The emperor wills . . .” Estarion turned full about, dragging his damnable robes. His mood was as changeable as the sky, now sun, now clouds, now black night.

  “Godri is dead,” he said. “I should have died in his place. And the sun still shines. The clouds run over the vale of the river. The world cares nothing that I am lord of it, or that my people would cast me down.”

  “Or raise you up,” said Korusan.

  “I see,” Estarion said in something very like delight. “The people would be death to me. You would be death to my self-pity.”

  “Does it give you pleasure to feel so sorry for yourself?”

  “It gives me considerable gratification,” said Estarion, “to think of throttling you in your sleep.”

  “Then we are alike,” said Korusan.

  Estarion flashed a grin at him. “Go away,” he said. “Sleep. I promise I won’t throttle you. This time.”

  The Olenyas went away. Estarion had not honestly expected him to. But he was tired: Estarion saw it in the droop of the shoulders in the black robe, in the slight drag of the step.

  A child, yes. A child who knew the use of the swords he wore, and who had slain an assassin with ease and dispatch and no slightest glimmer of remorse.

  o0o

  Other shadows came on guard. Estarion shut them out of mind and sight, and flung himself on the bed in the inner room.

  The sun sank slowly into the west of the world. He felt it in his skin.

  That much was still his, the sun-sense, the land-sense. Asanion, and his father’s death, had taken the rest of it away, locked him in himself. But the sun never left him.

  He sat up, clasping his knees, resting his chin on them. He was smothering. Stifling. And tonight, if anyone came to kill him . . .

  It was easier than he had thought. More fool he, for not thinking of it sooner.

  Dressed in his wonted armor of robes, he walked calmly and openly into the harem. His shadows halted perforce at the doors. He slipped into an empty chamber and bundled the robes into a chest there, and stood up in well-worn coat and trousers, with a hat in his hand. Still calmly, still openly, he walked through the maze of rooms and passages, empty of the thousand concubines that were the emperor’s portion, bare and unguarded.

  Haliya’s riding court was deserted. She had been there earlier: the marks of hooves were clear in the sand, a fall of droppings that the servants, careless or in haste, had missed. He circled it, keeping to the shadow of the colonnade. The door was barred but unlocked. The passage was empty. The gate opened to his touch.

  He walked past the stalls and the drowsing seneldi, to pause in the shadow of the stable door. Grooms and servants walked past, some briskly, some idling in the long light of evening.

  He pulled the hat down over his eyes. What men did not expect to see, they failed to see. He squared his shoulders and put on the swagger of an emperor’s guardsman at liberty, making his insouciant way to the stews and taverns of the city.

  A shadow attached itself to him beyond the Golden Gate, well down the Way of Kings. He neither paused nor turned. But as the road narrowed and divided, he slid hunter-swift into an alleyway, doubled back, shot out a long arm to snare the shadow as it passed.

  Olenyas. He had known that: the ringing in his skull was unmistakable. Nor
did the eyes surprise him. All gold, and slightly more amused than angry.

  “Yes,” said Estarion. “You let me catch you. How did you know it was I?”

  “Any fool would know,” said Korusan. “No one else in this city walks like a hunting cat.”

  “Only half the northerners in my Guard,” Estarion said.

  “None of them needs a hat to conceal his eyes.” Korusan shifted slightly. “If it does not trouble you overmuch, I would prefer to be throttled in my sleep, and not in a byway of the Upper City.”

  Estarion let him go. “You’re not going to drag me back to prison.”

  “I would not dream of it,” said Korusan.

  “No?” said Estarion. “Back with you, then. I’ve no need of you.”

  “You have every need of me,” said Korusan.

  “Your emperor commands you.”

  “My emperor has sore need of guarding, if he will walk in his city, and his assassin’s head barely cold upon its spike.”

  “They’ll think I’m one of my own guardsmen.”

  “You reckon that an advantage? There is a fine art, my lord, to the disposal of a foreigner in Kundri’j Asan.”

  “In Endros we call it slugging and rolling. I’ve run the taverns all over Keruvarion. I can look after myself.”

  “I shall watch,” said Korusan.

  Estarion ground his teeth. “I order you to go back to the palace.”

  Korusan did not move. His eyes were level. Yellow eyes. Were Estarion’s own so disconcerting?

  He struck the boy’s shoulder with his fist, rocking but not felling him. “Follow me, then. And keep your mouth shut.”

  Korusan’s silence was eloquent. Estarion turned on his heel and stalked down the narrow street.

  o0o

  Kundri’j Asan after nightfall was a stranger place even than under the sun. The Upper City retreated into darkness and silence, broken only rarely by the passage of a lord in his litter, with his servants and his guards and his torchbearers.

  As Estarion descended, the streets grew narrower, the buildings meaner, the people more frequent with their noise and their smells and their crowding bodies. They jostled Estarion, pressed against him, groped toward the purse at his belt. He kept a grip on it and on the dagger beside it.