Arrows of the Sun Page 34

  Estarion did not look like a man enslaved by a devil. He was bone-thin, who had never had flesh to spare, but he was thriving. This riding suited him, this edge of uncertainty, even the wet and the deepening cold, till of a morning they woke to a world of glass, rain that had frozen into ice, and no riding anywhere until the sun had warmed the road. He passed the time in walking about the place in which they had passed the night, a town called Kitaz, ignoring his wall of guards, wandering into a wineshop and a leatherworker’s and a jeweler’s.

  Vanyi wondered if he could sense the powerful discomfort of those he spoke to, unless they could convince themselves that he was not the emperor. Asanians did not want their royalty among them. It belonged in palaces, out of sight and, except for wars and taxes, the common mind. Royalty in their own muddy streets, haggling over a trinket, drinking their thin sour wine and thinner, sourer beer, was so far out of the way of the world as to be incomprehensible.

  He had his shadow, always. They did not touch one another or exchange glances. They had no need.

  She caught herself peering for marks of the lion-brawling Haliya had spoken of. Of course there would be none to see when he was in leather and mail, but he did not walk as if he were in pain.

  Servants, who knew everything, said nothing of uproars in the royal rooms. That his majesty did not sleep alone, they accepted as natural and proper. Like Haliya they approved of his choice of bedmate, although they wondered if the Olenyas kept his veils even then.

  None was quite bold enough to settle the wager. The tales were terrible of what befell a man who looked on a blackrobe’s face.

  She felt like a spy, or like a jealous wife. There was no one she could talk to. No man, certainly, even Iburan. This was not a man’s trouble. Haliya did not understand. The empress . . .

  Maybe. But not until Vanyi had more to tell of than vague fears and shameful jealousies.

  o0o

  On the morning of the ice, she walked in Kitaz herself. She had no intention of dogging Estarion’s steps, but she found herself in his wake as often as not. It was a small town for Asanion, one broad street with a fountain in the middle, a tangle of lanes and alleys, a pair of temples and a market and the lord’s house on the hill.

  His lordship was absent. Doing his duty in the Middle Court, his steward said. Hiding, Vanyi suspected, and hoping that the disturbance would go away.

  When the royal progress came to the market, she worked her way ahead of it. The jeweler’s shop attracted her with its glitter; she braved the jeweler’s scowl to admire his work, which was very fine for the provinces. He could hardly order her out, priestess that she was, and she conceded a little to his modesty by wrapping her scarf about her face.

  As she lingered and yearned over his treasures, contemplating her thin purse and her thinner excuse for needing anything so frivolous, the shop filled with light.

  It was Estarion, that was all, bringing the sun in with him, and trapping her as neatly as if she had planned it. Which she most emphatically had not.

  He was not aware of her, not at first. He had turned to grin at someone outside, as at a victory. “See,” he said. “No assassins.”

  His guards must have tried to enter in front of him. He always loved to thwart them. It was a game of his, that he had forgotten in Kundri’j but now remembered.

  She did something to make him turn. Breathed. Twitched. Let fall the trinket in her hand.

  He came round like a cat, uncannily quick. The light that came to his face made her gasp. Not now, she thought in desperation. Not still.

  Then his face went cold. And that, which she had wished for, was worse. Much worse. “Lady,” he said.

  “Majesty.” She eyed the path to the door. He stood full in it. She never thought him uncommonly tall, not beside Iburan and his northern guardsmen, but he towered in this place, his head brushing the roofbeam. The door was barely wider than his shoulders. They had broadened since he rode out of Endros.

  He was not as much the boy now as he had been. His face was leaner, its lines more distinct. He would never be pretty, nor would anyone call him handsome, but his beauty was coming clearer, the fierce beauty of the hawk or the panther.

  She looked at him in something close to despair. She would never stop loving him. There was no use in trying.

  At least she had not thrown herself into his arms. She wanted to, desperately. But it was the body’s wanting. The mind knew that that was over.

  Was it?

  She spoke to silence the voice in her head, said the first thing that came to her. “Are you going to buy something for Haliya?”

  “For her sister,” he said. There was a slight but perceptible pause before he said it.

  “I think,” said Vanyi, “that this might do.” She lifted what she had dropped. It was not the most elaborate trinket in the lot, but it was the most interesting. It was a pendant for the neck or the brow, plain bright silver like wings of flame, set with a jewel like silk turned to stone: bands of gold and amber and bronze that shimmered as the jewel turned.

  Estarion moved closer. She almost fled, but there was nowhere to go. He did not touch her as he took the jewel from her fingers. “It’s exactly the color of her hair,” he said.

  “I thought it might be.”

  He slanted his eyes at her. They were as bright as the jewel, but less changeable. “They tell me you’re keeping Haliya company.”

  “Iburan ordered it,” Vanyi said. If she sounded ungracious, then so be it.

  He went a shade colder at the name, or maybe at Vanyi’s words. “I’m glad she’s well protected.”

  “You’re not afraid I’ll murder her in her sleep?”

  “You wouldn’t do that,” he said, and he sounded like himself again. “I’ll free you from her if you like. My lord high priest should have known better than to burden you so.”

  “It was to be a penance,” said Vanyi. “It is still, most ways. But I don’t want to be free of it.”

  “Even if I say you may?”

  “You’re not my high priest,” she said.

  He did not like that: his lips tightened as they always did when he reined in his temper. “But she is my . . . concubine.”

  He choked on it. She was rather nastily glad. She would atone for that, but first she would enjoy it.

  “Do you think I’ll corrupt her?” Vanyi inquired.

  “I think it must be agony for you to look at her.”

  “She’s quite pleasant to look at. And you,” Vanyi said, “have a high opinion of yourself.”

  She almost wished that he would hit her. He wanted to: she could see it. But he laughed. “I do, I confess it. I don’t expect you to pardon me: I’m hopelessly unpardonable. But can you think of me, a little, with priestly charity?”

  “How do you think of me?”

  “You know,” he said.

  “No,” said Vanyi. “I don’t know anything. I thought I knew you once, when we were young together. But that was long ago. Maybe I never knew you at all.”

  “We’re not fighting,” he said as if to himself. “It’s a beginning, I suppose.”

  “Or an ending.”

  “No,” said Estarion, as if his royal will could make it true.

  Vanyi looked up at him. He was so close that she had to tilt her head. She could have touched him, laid her hand over the beating heart, traced the line of his cheek.

  She could say the word and he would come to her hand. She had the power. It was as strong as magic, as certain as the laws that bound the worlds.

  A shadow shifted behind him. Eyes fixed on her, lion-gold in faceless mask.

  They were not angry, nor did they hate. They laughed at her. They knew her as Estarion never would, nor ever could. All her sins and petty failings, her pride, her vanity, her penchant for stepping beyond her proper bounds.

  Estarion shifted. He was not with her any longer, though he stood as close as ever. He was in the shadow’s shadow.

  The power was gone
. The Olenyas held it, swallowed it.

  Vanyi let him. Cowardice, wisdom, she did not care what anyone called it. A child who had never been born, a child who must be born, both bound her and held her helpless.

  The Olenyas did not know that. She would have wagered gold on it.

  Nor was she about to tell him. He had his emperor. She had more. She had the emperor’s heir, and the mother of the heir, safe in her charge. She had the empire that would be.

  39

  When the ice had melted from the road and the sun shone down almost warm, Estarion led his escort southward again. He was numb still, mind and power, but the land-sense had little to do with the arts of mages. He felt the earth as if it were his body. Great aches and bruises, knots and tangles of dissension, a pain like sickness that spread outward from no common center. What he rode to was not the worst of it, but it made a beginning.

  He was waking as if from sleep or from a long illness. The sun and the sudden warmth, in what should have been black winter, speeded a healing that had begun when he left the Golden Palace.

  He caught himself singing as he rode up a long slope. The scouts who ranged ahead were out of sight. His escort spread behind.

  He glanced over his shoulder. Those whose faces he could see, flashed smiles. He smiled back. His Varyani were as glad as he to be out of Kundri’j.

  “I’ll have to do something about that,” he said to Korusan, who rode at Umizan’s flank.

  The Olenyas was mounted on Chirai. Umizan would not permit his lord another mount, and it had seemed a waste of good senelflesh to leave the dun behind. So Korusan had charge of him, and not unwillingly, either, as far as Estarion could see.

  Estarion hooked a knee over the pommel of his saddle, riding at his ease. “I can’t live in horror of my own palace. What’s to be done, do you think? Pull down the Golden Palace? Build a new capital?”

  “First you need a solid empire for it to be capital of,” said Korusan.

  “Granted,” said Estarion, “and a solid self to rule it. Sometimes I despair of that.”

  “A rather cheerful despair,” Korusan observed.

  Estarion unhooked his knee and swung down his leg and touched Umizan into a gallop, all in one swift reckless movement. Umizan reached the crest of the hill in three long strides, and plunged into a deep bowl of a valley.

  No scouts, no token of alarm. Safe, then.

  Estarion let the stallion run as he would. The road was steep but smooth. A town huddled at the valley’s end where it opened into sky, but the land between was cropland, fallow with winter.

  No one passed there. People kept to their walls and traveled as little as they might, between winter and the rumor of war.

  He was well ahead of his escort. A glance back showed them on the crest, spreading out as if to scan the valley. Then they poured down into it.

  Umizan slowed to a hand gallop, tossing his horns. Estarion laughed into the wind. It had a bite to it. Rain again by morning, his bones judged, or even snow.

  What at first he had taken for a cairn or a shrine set up by the road stirred as he approached it. Umizan shied and skittered sidewise.

  Estarion clutched mane, clamped knees to the stallion’s sides. Umizan wheeled, snorting, horns lowered.

  Estarion glared down the lance-length of them. Bright black eyes glared back. “That took you long enough,” said a voice he had thought never to hear again.

  “Sidani?” Estarion slid from the saddle, keeping a grip on Umizan’s reins. The stallion stamped, still in a temper: and well he should be, fool that he had made of himself. “Sidani,” Estarion said. He felt the grin break out. “Where in the hells have you been?”

  “Ansavaar,” she said. She nudged the stone at her feet. It shifted, yawned, opened eyes that gleamed green.

  “Ulyai!” Her snarl and slash drove him back. He gasped, shocked. It was Ulyai—he could not mistake her. “Ulyai. Have you forgotten me?”

  “Hardly,” Sidani said. She pointed with her chin.

  Ulyai’s back rippled. Three pairs of eyes appeared above it, two green-blue, one blue-gold. Three pairs of ears pricked.

  One by one the cubs tumbled over their mother’s flank and rolled to the ground. Her foreleg caught and pinned two. The third, the one whose eyes would be gold when they were done changing, eluded its mother’s grasp and leaped upon Estarion’s foot, attacking it without mercy.

  He swept the little beast up, wary of claws and infant fangs, and met snarl with snarl. The cub’s jaws snapped shut. It stared wide-eyed.

  It was darker than the others, almost black. “Yes, I look like you,” Estarion said to it.

  Him. It was a he-cub. It let him ease it into the crook of his arm. In return he let it gnaw gently on his thumb. It began to purr.

  “I expect you can explain this,” Estarion said after a while.

  “I expect I can.” Sidani shouldered one of the two she-cubs and lifted the other onto its mother’s back. She looked much the same as ever. Thinner, maybe, but then so was Estarion. He saw no sign of the sickness that had beset her in Induverran.

  Estarion looked over his shoulder. His escort had come up at last. He called out to them. “Look! See who’s been waiting for us.”

  His Varyani were far from displeased, but his Asanians did not know what to make of it. He laughed at them. “Here’s a friend I’ve been missing. Guard her well, guardsmen. She’s as kin to me.”

  o0o

  Fine kin, Korusan thought, eyeing the wanderer woman as she chose one of the remounts—a cross-grained, slab-sided gelding that seemed to know her, for it lunged with teeth bared and then stopped, skidding, and all but fell over on its rump. She grasped it by the horns and shook it; it let its brow rest briefly against her breast. She swung abruptly into the saddle, taking no notice of the reins, and wheeled the beast about.

  She had Estarion’s reckless temper, that was certain, and his fondness for monstrous cats. All through her juggler’s tricks, the ul-cub kept its place about her shoulders.

  Estarion had another as dark and gold as he was, and the dam played mount to a third, pressing up against the black stallion’s shoulder. The Varyani mounts snorted and sweated but endured; likewise the Lady Haliya’s mare and Korusan’s dun.

  The rest of the Olenyai were not so fortunate. Those who were not forcibly dismounted were run away with, or fought a pitched battle of man against maddened senel.

  The woman surveyed the carnage with an ironic eye. It paused on Korusan, went briefly strange; then passed on. She sent her gelding forward with a touch of the heel, caught Estarion’s glance, drew him after her. They divided in a long circle, seeming slow but in truth very swift, herding together the scattered seneldi.

  Korusan followed slowly. Chirai was uneasy but willing, snorting and brandishing horns as he passed the ul-queen.

  She sat to watch the spectacle, and ignored him with queenly disdain. Korusan endeavored to return the courtesy. He had heard of the palace cats of Keruvarion; who had not? But their living presence was unnerving.

  All his brothers’ mounts were caught, and all of his brothers who had been borne away. It was bitter to be so humiliated before their rivals from Keruvarion. They bore it well, sitting straight and stiff on their shuddering seneldi.

  The emperor faced them. He seemed to be searching for words to salve their pride.

  The wanderer rode her borrowed gelding down the line of them, with the cub draped purring over her shoulders. “There now,” she said, her own voice like a purr, both rough and sweet. “It’s only ul-cats. They won’t eat you. Not while you serve your emperor.”

  Cleverly put. It gave the Olenyai time and grace to set themselves in order, but it warned them also, and showed them on which side they might find this stranger.

  They took the road again with the wanderer riding beside Estarion, talking a great deal of nothing, to the emperor’s evident pleasure. The two of them had met, it seemed, over an escapade of his, and parted over one of her
s. Where she had been since, or how she had come upon Estarion’s own ul-cat and delivered the beast of cubs, she was not telling.

  She was very skilled at that. Almost, Korusan thought, as if she were Asanian.

  o0o

  The town at the valley’s mouth would not let them in. It was no indication of disrespect, its lordling said. There had been sickness; it might be plague. He invited the emperor’s escort to pitch camp in his fields and offered a penful of skinny woolbeasts for their dinner, but more than that he would not do.

  He was lying. Estarion could not be such a fool that he failed to know it, but he refused to storm the walls. “They’re not in open rebellion,” he said, “and I’d rather camp under the sky than sleep under another roof.”

  It could have been worse thought of, Korusan admitted. Their camping place was broad, level, and easily defended. They had tents, there was wood and dung for their fires, and the woolbeasts were not too stringy once the cooks had done with them.

  Estarion did not fulfill Korusan’s greatest apprehension, that he would take his ul-cats to bed with him. The cub was too young to leave its mother for long, and she was content to idle by the fire with the wanderer for a companion. The emperor’s tent was blessedly empty of animals.

  The emperor’s desire tonight was hot but brief; he fell almost at once into sleep. Korusan propped himself on an elbow, warm in the other’s warmth, and considered the sleeping face.

  It had become a part of him. He knew no other way to think of it.

  He laid his palm against Estarion’s cheek. Estarion did not stir. He curved his fingers into claws, raked them softly through the curling silk of the beard, down the smooth line of neck and shoulder, round to the breast. Over the heart they closed into a fist.

  “If the world were empty of you,” Korusan said, “I should not wish to be in it.” His mouth twisted. “I meant to snare you. I snared myself.”

  Oh, most certainly he had. He did not know when it had struck him. Perhaps that first morning, when he woke alone, and knew himself empty without Estarion’s presence. Perhaps even before that—perhaps from the moment he saw this outland emperor, this upstart, this rival, this enemy he was sworn to destroy.