A Fall of Princes Read online

  Her hair was free, a queen’s wealth of gold, cloaking them both. She never heeded it. She was drowning in fire and copper.

  He could circle her waist with his two hands. She could bring him to his knees with her two bright eyes. He laughed into them and snatched another kiss. And another. And another.

  He did not know what made him pause. Ulan’s growl, perhaps. The quality of the silence. Still kneeling, still veiled in gold, he turned.

  He would not again mistake Jania for her brother. They were very like; but a world lay between them. The woman’s world, and the man’s.

  His mind, spinning on, took thought for what Hirel could see. His sister, standing with her arms around a kneeling man. Her gown and his coat and trousers were decorously in place. But her veil was gone, her hair all tumbled, and his wild red mane was free of its braid. They looked, no doubt, as if they fully intended to go on.

  And did they not?

  Sarevan rose. Jania did not try to hold him. Her voice was cool. “Good day, younger brother.”

  Hirel inclined his head. He wore no expression at all. “Elder sister. High prince.”

  It was cold at Sarevan’s height, and solitary. The wine of his recklessness lay leaden in his stomach. A dull fire smoldered beneath his cheekbones.

  Hirel was clad for the harem. Eight robes of sheerest stuff, one golden belt binding them all.

  He looked calm and royal and impeccable. His duties had not even smudged the gilt on his eyelids. He said, “You will pardon me, prince. I was given to understand that I was looked for. I shall await you in my chambers.”

  “No,” said Sarevan. “Wait. It’s not—”

  He had waited too long to muster his wits. Hirel was gone.

  Sarevan glared after him. “Damn,” he said. “And damn.”

  “And damn,” said Jania. She meant it, but there was still a thread of laughter in it. “My eunuch will lose somewhat of his hide for this.”

  Sarevan stared at her, hardly hearing her. “You are meant to be his empress.”

  “What, my eunuch?”

  He ignored her foolishness. “You shouldn’t, you know. It’s gone on too long. The strain is growing dangerously weak.”

  “Are you proposing an alternative?”

  His finger traced her brow, her cheek, her chin. Ebony on ivory. “Would you consider it?”

  “You ask me that? I am a woman. I have no say in anything.”

  “I think you do, princess.”

  She wound her hands in his hair and drew him down. But not for dalliance. That mood was well past.

  She began to comb out the many tangles, to weave again the single simple plait that marked his priesthood. “They say that you know nothing of the high arts. That you are sworn to shun them. And yet you are very much a man.”

  “It’s you,” he said. Pure simple truth.

  “Is it?” Her fingers paused. After a little they began again. “If my brother were a woman, would you even trouble to glance at me?”

  Sarevan twisted about. Her eyes were level. Eyes of the lion. Royal eyes.

  “But he’s not a woman,” he said, “and you are.”

  “And you are the most splendid creature I have ever seen.” She kissed him lightly, quickly, as if she could not help it. “Go now. My brother is waiting.”

  He stood. He was holding her hands; he kissed them. “May I come back?”

  “Not too soon,” she said, “but yes. You may.”

  o0o

  Hirel was not waiting in his chambers. He had been called away, his servants said. They did not know when he would return.

  Sarevan had had enough of tracking him down. The next hunt might not end so perilously, but neither could it end in such sweetness.

  “If he wants an apology,” Sarevan said to his cat and his mageling, “he’ll have to come and get it.”

  He went early to his bed. Part of it was weariness. Part, paradoxically, was restlessness. There was nothing that was allowed to do, that he wanted to do. What he wanted most immediately was a certain gold-and-ivory princess.

  Now at last he comprehended the prison to which he had sentenced himself. Ample and gilded and gracious, and yet, a prison. He could shock the councils of the empire with his exotic and insolent presence, but he was given no voice in their counsels. The intrigues of the court meant nothing to him. Keruvarion he had forsaken.

  He was neatly and comfortably trapped, fenced in like a seneldi stallion of great value and uncertain temper. He could not even rage at his confinement. He had brought it on himself.

  Like a seneldi stallion shut off from the free plains and the high delights of battle, he turned inevitably toward the other purpose of a stallion’s existence. He had been mastering himself admirably. He was not prevented from performing the offices of a priest on Journey, the prayers and the ninth-day fast; these had sustained him. And Hirel was coolly and mercifully distant, absorbed in his princehood. Women heard through lattices were intriguing and often delightful, but hardly a danger to his vows.

  “Am I lost?” he asked Zha’dan. The Zhil’ari sat on the bed beside him, listening in fascination to his account of the harem.

  “Does she look exactly like the little stallion?” Zha’dan asked.

  “Exactly,” Sarevan said. Then paused. “No. The beauty, it’s the same, white and gold. And the face. She’s smaller, of course. A woman, utterly. What he would be if the god had made him a maid. But not . . . precisely. She’s not Hirel. She’s herself.”

  Zha’dan gestured assent. His eyes were very dark. “He likes me; I please him, and he pleases me. We play well together. But I’m not . . . precisely. I’m not you.”

  Sarevan shook that off. “I’ve seen so many women, Zha’dan. A prince can’t help it. Before he was, there was the dynasty, and it has to go on. If a woman is unwed, unmarred, and capable of bearing a child, she’s cast up in front of me as the hope of my line. It doesn’t even matter that I wear the torque. That only keeps me from playing while I look for my queen.”

  “Have you found her?”

  “I don’t know!” Sarevan rubbed his hands over his face. “I was full of wine and plain contrariness. But I never fell so easily before. Or with such perfect abandon. I didn’t care what I did or how I’d pay for it; and yet I wasn’t in any haste at all to consummate it. It was as if . . . we were outside the world, and nothing that mattered here could trouble us there.”

  “Magic?”

  “Not magery.” Sarevan smiled wryly. “But magic, maybe. She’s not only a beauty, Zha’dan. She has spirit. She’s a golden falcon, and they’ve caged her. I could free her. I—could—free her.”

  o0o

  He took it into sleep with him, that singing surety. She lay with him in his dream, and they were both of them free; he wore no torque and she no veil. She was all beautiful. She said, “If my brother were a woman, you would not glance at me.”

  Sarevan swam slowly up from the depths of dreaming. Warmth stirred in his arms, murmuring.

  Dream above dream. This was dimmer than the last, and yet wondrous real. He stole a drowsy kiss.

  It tasted strange. Strange-familiar. His hand, seeking, found no firm fullness of breast; but fullness enough below.

  Sarevan’s fingers had closed. He willed them open.

  Hirel blinked up at him, still more than half asleep, but frowning. He was certainly not a dream.

  “What are you doing here?” Sarevan demanded, sharp with startlement.

  Hirel’s frown deepened to a scowl. “Do you know no words but those?”

  “Do you know no tricks but this?”

  “Was it I who set your hand where it is now?”

  It snapped back. “I was dreaming,” Sarevan said.

  “Ah,” said Hirel. “Surely. And not of me.”

  Sarevan gaped. Suddenly he laughed. It was not at all wise, but he could not help it. “You’re not jealous of me. You’re jealous of her!”

  Hirel struck him. It was not a stron
g blow; Sarevan hardly felt it.

  Hirel rolled away from him, drawing into a knot, spitting words to the wall. “A man who has never had a woman is an unnatural thing. A prince in that condition is an abomination. She has done her duty by you; she has made you a virtuous man. It was my duty to you as my brother and my equal, not only to allow it but to encourage it. But it is not my duty to be glad of it.”

  “Hirel—” Sarevan began.

  “She is the jewel of the harem. I do not need to ask if she pleased you. She is a great artist of the inner chamber; she has taught me much of what I know. And all the while you lay with her, I who am royal, I who by birth must be your enemy, I who can never be aught to you but lust and guilt and in the end revulsion—I could not rest for that you lay with her and not with me.”

  He drew his breath in sharply. It sounded like a sob. “I give her to you. It is she for whom you were born, she and all her sex.”

  “Asuchirel,” said Sarevan. This time Hirel did not cut him off. “Hirel Uverias, I never lay with her.”

  “Surely not. You knelt with her. Or did you mount her stallion-wise?”

  Sarevan went briefly blind. When he saw again, Hirel was under him, and the marks of his open palm were blazoned on the boy’s cheeks. “Never,” he gritted. “Never.”

  Hirel was not fighting him.

  He began to cool, to be ashamed. He drew back carefully.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “For all of it. Your brothers, your sister . . . all of it.”

  Hirel said nothing. His face was rigid, at once haughty and miserable.

  His skin in the lamplight was downy, a child’s. It would bear bruises where Sarevan had struck it.

  Sarevan’s hand laid itself with utmost gentleness on the worst of them. “Hear a truth, Little brother. Jania is very beautiful. I think that I would gladly give my torque and my vows into her keeping; I would rejoice to make her my queen. And yet that gladness rises not simply out of Jania who is woman and beauty and high heart. It rises out of Jania who is her brother’s image.”

  Hirel was silent.

  Sarevan pressed on. “I can’t be your lover, Hirel. I’m not made for it. But what my soul is, what it longs for—Jania is nothing to it. Hirel is not. Hirel is most emphatically not.” He swallowed. “I’m afraid I love you, little brother.”

  Hirel flung himself away from Sarevan’s hand. His eyes were blazing; his cheeks were wet. “You must not!”

  “I don’t think I can help it,” Sarevan said.

  “You must not!” Hirel’s voice cracked. “You must not!”

  “Hirel,” said Sarevan, reaching for him. “Cubling. We can be friends. We can be brothers. We can—”

  Hirel went still in his hands. Cold again, and far too calm. “We cannot.” The tears ran unheeded down his face. “I have not told you the truth. While I embodied the jealous lover, word came. Your father has received my father’s message. He has answered it. His armies have begun the invasion of Asanion.”

  Sarevan frowned. “That can’t be. He wouldn’t—”

  “He has. And you must die, and even if I could prevent it, I would not. And it is the custom—with royal hostages, it is the custom that the high prince commands the executioners.”

  It was not real. Not yet. Not that Sarevan had failed more utterly even than he had feared. That the war had come; that he would die.

  But Hirel’s pain was present and potent. He held the boy, rocking him, wordless.

  Hirel allowed it: that was the depth of his pain. “Clearly your father does not believe that we will slay you. He will expect us to shrink from the threat of his vengeance; to bargain with your life. Therefore,” said Hirel, “you must die.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  Hirel began to tremble. “I do not know. By all the gods, I do not know.”

  “There’s still the night,” Sarevan said.

  “You do not believe it, either!” Hirel cried. “You think we will not dare. But we will, Sarevan. As surely as I hope to sit the Golden Throne, we will.”

  “I know.” Sarevan played with the tumbled curls, smiling at their refusal to go any way but their own. “I’m not afraid to die. I don’t even have much to regret. Though I would have liked to know a woman. Just once. In my own body.”

  Hirel pulled back. “I shall bring her to you.”

  “No,” said Sarevan, holding him. “I can’t do it to her. Even for my line’s sake—and she would conceive, Hirel. That is certain. I can’t abandon her to bear a Sunborn child in the heart of Asanion.”

  “I would raise it as my own.”

  “As your heir?”

  Hirel would not answer.

  Sarevan sighed, smiled a little. “You see. And yet he would overcome any heir you begot, any heir you named. There would be no stopping him. We are born to rule, we Varyani princes. We suffer no rivals.”

  “No,” said Hirel. “You conquer them. You make them love you.”

  EIGHTEEN

  “Sarevan. Sarevan Is’kelion.”

  They had come for him. So soon. He was up before his eyes were well open, hissing fiercely, “Don’t wake him. Don’t make him do it. Take me now and get it over.”

  “Sun-prince.”

  The voice was—baffled? Amused? Sarevan glared through a tangle of hair; he raked it back.

  Prince Aranos regarded him with great interest.

  He eased, and yet he tensed. “Good. You can do it. Don’t tell him till it’s done.”

  Aranos said nothing. Slowly Sarevan’s mind recorded what his eyes were seeing. The silken chamber had vanished. These walls were stone, stark and unadorned, and the floor was stone spread with woven mats. The ceiling was a grey vault from which hung a cluster of lamps.

  None was lit. The light that filled the room came pouring from a high round window. Sunlight, bright, with little warmth in it.

  Sarevan turned completely about. The bed was intact, rich and foreign in this stark place, with Hirel coiled in it. The scars on his side and thigh, though paling with age, were livid still. The light was cruel to them.

  On the wall above him was a tapestry. Beasts, birds, a dragonel.

  Sarevan had seen it. Somewhere. He could not, in the shock of the moment, remember where.

  He faced Aranos again. The prince had companions. One was a mage clad in the violet robe of a master of the dark. The other was a priest of Avaryan, torqued and braided, with his familiar on his shoulder.

  Sarevan stilled. He was remembering a promise made and his leave given, and the part the Mageguild had played in all of this.

  “I think,” he said, “that I should begin again. Good morning, my lords. Where is the guildmaster, and what is this place?”

  Aranos bowed slightly, but he was not choosing to answer. The mage said, “You will please to come with us.”

  The chief priest of Avaryan’s temple in Endros said nothing, but he smiled. It was a smile that reassured Sarevan, yet frightened him. He was all a tangle.

  He took refuge in vanity. “Must I go as I am?”

  “Come,” said the mage.

  o0o

  None of them would say more than that. The way seemed long; it was dim and cold, all stone, with now and then a lofty window.

  Whatever this place was, it could not be Kundri’j Asan. The air was too icily pure.

  He was entirely out of his reckoning. It made him want to laugh. All his plotting, his betrayals, his multiple sins, and nowhere but in a dream that he had all but forgotten had he seen himself in this place.

  His companions would not answer his questions. They would not speak at all. After his third failure he desisted, not entirely gracefully. He was not used to being ignored.

  This was a castle, perhaps. The stone and the steep narrow stairways had a flavor of fortresses.

  The end was a hall like the great hall of a lord, with its central fire and its stone-flagged floor and its walls hung with faded tapestries. Unlike a lord’s hall, it was all but empty. The pillared bay
s around its edges, where men slept and gamed and kept their belongings and often a woman or two, were dark. There were no hounds, no hunting cats, no falcons on perches. No singers sang by the fire; no guards stood at attention, no servants waited on those who sat together in the warmth.

  Sarevan stopped short. There was the master of the Order of Mages. There was the witch of the Zhil’ari with her grandson mute and motionless at her feet. There, in a moment, were the priest and the mage and the prince.

  And there was Orozia of Magrin, and beside her the last man whom Sarevan had ever thought to see. Orsan of Han-Gilen, his bright hair gone ashen in the scarce three years since Sarevan had seen him, but his body strong still, and his eyes darkly brilliant in the black-bronze face.

  A more complete conspiracy could not have gathered. Except—

  “Aren’t we missing someone?” Sarevan asked. “An emperor or two, maybe?”

  “We suffice,” the Red Prince said.

  For all his training in the necessities of princes, Sarevan almost cried his hurt. Even at his sternest, even in the midst of just punishment of a scapegrace grandson, Prince Orsan had never looked as he looked now. Cold. Remote. A stranger.

  Sarevan stood straight before them all. “Well? Am I going to have my answers? Or am I on trial for my sins?”

  They were going to drive him mad with their silence.

  It was Aranos who spoke, as if he too were losing patience with this mummery. “You are not on trial, prince.”

  “Ah now,” drawled Sarevan, “I’m not a perfect idiot. I’ve killed with power. I’ve betrayed my father and my empire. I’ve sold my soul to my greatest enemy. Now I’ve dared to look on the faces of your mighty and hidden alliance, for which I’ll surely die. And you plainly intend to give me no answers, and I’m not given even a moment’s grace to make myself decent. You can’t tell me that you merely want to feast yourselves on my famous beauty.”

  Aranos glanced at his companions. They were like stones. He sighed just audibly. “You have committed no crimes that I know of, prince. Unless it is a crime to wish for peace.”

  “The priests would argue that,” Sarevan said.