Children of Earth and Sky

by Guy Gavriel Kay

  He wasn’t tired now but he felt as if he wanted to be sick. There was death hovering, in every stroke he made with charcoal and then brush. He worked. What else was he to do?

  “Enough, I think,” Cemal said at length, speaking graciously again. “We meet in this room tomorrow night for the same purpose.”

  The prince had been patient. Taking the poses requested as Pero decided what he needed, remaining motionless in the one chosen, except when he drank his wine. And then he was good at resuming the position he’d held. You could call him an ideal subject. Better than Mara Citrani, who had liked to distract Pero while he worked, for amusement, and then to do other things because it pleased her to do so.

  Cemal smiled again. “I need hardly say you will not speak of this, Signore Villani?” His expression was that of one worldly man speaking to another. You could paint that expression, too, Pero thought.

  He shook his head. To whom would he speak of it and not die?

  “There is,” said Cemal, “one more thing. Though I trust you will see it as a reward, not a burden.” He hesitated, as if unsure how much to say, then went on. “It is too soon for anyone to know of this room.” Until there is a face on that painting, Pero thought. “But it may be that you will be seen crossing the grounds at night. Those men with you are retainers attached to my brother’s household, not mine.”

  So they had been bought, Pero thought. He had not yet seen Prince Beyet, had no thoughts about him at all—except that the man was being prepared for destruction, and Pero was part of it.

  Cemal’s smile was beginning to disturb him. It came so easily. The prince said, “It is necessary, for the moment, to have a story as to why the Jaddite artist is abroad at night, in the event you are seen. Stories after dark often involve desire, have you not found this to be so?”

  Pero saw one of the guards smile.

  The prince said, “It will be put about that someone is rewarding you for your service to the khalif. Later, there will emerge a different tale.”

  This had been, Pero was realizing again, carefully thought through. “So your brother is to be offering me a woman?” Anger in him. Again. Be cautious, he told himself. Again.

  “Nothing so specific yet. But surely you agree it is better for you to be able to tell the truth, should my father ask about your nights?”

  Pero closed his eyes. He tried to imagine that conversation.

  Cemal went on, “A reward, and a truth you can tell the khalif—in that place where no one else is even allowed to speak.”

  “And if he asks who is rewarding me?”

  “He will not. But if that happens of course you will tell the truth. Of course you will. And then, Signore Villani, you will be safe on the long way home.”

  Hardly, Pero thought. He kept his face expressionless. “So, there is a woman coming here for me?”

  “Here?” The prince looked around at the bright, underground storage room. “No, no. No one comes here at all and—I need hardly tell you—my brother has not offered you any of his women.”

  “No,” said Pero. “He hasn’t.”

  “I have,” smiled Cemal.

  He turned to the guards. “Take him back to the tunnel. Do so with courtesy. The ones on the other side will lead him to his quarters—afterwards.” He smiled again. “One of you go back through with him. Advise them to be helpful. He is likely to be fatigued, after. What Jaddite man will have encountered the palace women of Asharias?”

  His guards laughed then, knowingly.

  —

  A BLACK ROOM. He was blind in it. No windows, although they were not underground now. He had gone through the tunnel again and once more he’d felt that strange, sharp sorrow (he would feel it every time he passed through). He didn’t see the small, moving fire (he would again, other times).

  A man had walked with him as commanded, and the others had been waiting when he knocked, as they’d said they would be. They didn’t take him to his quarters. They led him up wide stairs in this first palace which was—he now understood—Cemal’s, as the other one where he’d painted underground was Beyet’s.

  He’d understood by then that the younger prince’s people over that way were not to learn what was being done in the middle of the night. Or, rather, only those who had been bought could know.

  Blackness here, but one could be aware in darkness—intensely aware—of scent, and Pero knew there was a woman in this room, waiting for him.

  More than one, he realized.

  Desire touched him against his will, as cool fingers did. There was a bed to which he was led by whispers he could not understand, because they were speaking Osmanli. Although, when certain sounds are heard in the dark, close to your ear, and fingers and mouths are touching you, and those same fingers begin to address themselves to your clothes, it is any language and every language that men and women know.

  He felt anger again in the midst of this. Even now. He couldn’t help it. He was from Seressa, Queen of the Sea, celebrated (notorious!) for both its brothels and its aristocratic women, masked or otherwise, in elegant rooms above the canals. Known throughout the world for the skills of the women (and the men) one could find after dark, and Pero was no stranger to brothels, though not the expensive ones. Besides, in the artists’ districts of the republic there were women who had been generous and needful with him out of affection, shaped by their own desire.

  He was not, in short, any kind of stranger to lovemaking. He felt as if he was being mocked here in this overly contrived, perfumed blackness. That they imagined the innocent Jaddite painter would be helplessly overwhelmed by the mysteriously skilled, exotically scented women of the east, offering delights unknown in the primitive west.

  It was close to an insult, he thought. A crude jest shaped of a lazy fantasy. More than likely men here in Asharias attributed the same secrets and mysteries to women in Seressa, or at the court of Ferrieres. And surely the languorous women under the hot sun of Esperaña, in shaded rooms in afternoons, knew things no man could resist.

  What did they think he was? How childlike? How susceptible to foolishness?

  And yet . . . who could control what aroused? How could he deny he was hard, excited, even before a mouth belonging to someone he never saw closed over the tip of his sex and moved down, and others found his nipples with their fingers, and then one came to his mouth with her mouth, and then her breast. There were three women. It was dark.

  And these were not women one bought for a night in the streets of Asharias. He was in the palace of the khalif’s son. These would be Cemal’s women. He had heard there were thirty of them. He had heard there were twice that many. Men told wild stories in their folly.

  But that was, of course, the real reason it was black in this room, for as surely as Ashar had gone out among the desert stars, no infidel could be with the women of an Osmanli prince like this and live.

  He wasn’t going to survive in any case, Pero Villani thought, even as someone guided him inside herself with an urgent hand and made a sound he’d heard before. He felt her begin to ride above him, and there were whispers from the others, and yes, through anger—perhaps driven by anger—his own desire, his need, was great. He felt shame and hunger both and he believed he was soon to die. There was that, too, shaping a blind (truly blind) impulse towards lovemaking.

  They took turns with him, variously, before he left that room. Before he was permitted by them to leave, stumbling into the corridor, blinking in the light of lamps held by guards who led him, finally, to his room. And the same thing happened the next night, and again, each time he was brought back from painting a portrait in the palace at the other end of the tunnel.

  This was, Prince Cemal had said, to be the reason—for now—the Jaddite might be glimpsed in the palace grounds in the night. Then there would be a moment when a shocking painting was accidentally discovered and the story would chan
ge and people would die.

  He thought it might be different women each time. He couldn’t be certain. It was impossible to be certain of anything. Except that you could be angry and frightened, feel mocked, yet be enclosed in scent and murmurs, smoothness and someone else’s need, and feel a hard desire beyond any words. And even in the depths of that black room there were images he would claim, or devise.

  —

  IN MORNING LIGHT after that first night Pero Villani splashed his face with cold water. He drank the steaming-hot morning drink they offered here. Demanded another. An acquired taste. He didn’t have it yet but it helped to wake him, burning his tongue.

  Then he went with an escort to the Courtyard of Silence and entered through the same gate as before and crossed the garden past the orange trees and resumed painting the grand khalif, which was why he was here.

  He answered questions about the west as he worked. About leaders and customs in Seressa and elsewhere, as best he knew, even about the doctrines of Jad. Many questions in that deep voice.

  Afterwards, that second day, Pero was taken to view a display of archery skills in a green space at the farthest end of the palace complex, overlooking the sea. This view, he thought, he would use for the night painting he was doing. He was greeted there by Prince Cemal and introduced to the prince’s younger brother, Beyet. He bowed twice to the younger prince, who nodded to him.

  He watched Beyet during the archery. Studied him. He felt like a man planning an assassination. Beyet looked something like his brother, not as tall, more slender, a fuller beard, also dark. Fuller lips, too, longer hair, not so long a nose in a thinner face. Both princes engaged in the competition, which was conducted with laughter and high spirits. Both were skilled with bow and arrows. Beyet was better, as far as Pero could tell.

  It didn’t matter.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  On a windy morning that spring a boat could be seen making its way from Gjadina Island to the smaller isle of Sinan and the Daughters of Jad retreat. It carried Iulia Orsat, whose condition had been the occasion of considerable violence in the Rector’s Palace. She was showing that condition now.

  She debarked at the dock with one servant and they were escorted towards the buildings of the retreat. The boat pulled immediately away.

  The Eldest Daughter (not old at all, this newest one) had been alerted by an acolyte running ahead. Leonora dismissed her attendants and took the Orsat girl out on the terrace. The day was mild though there were clouds. They were sheltered from the wind.

  “This need not take time. I will tell you,” said Iulia Orsat, “what I need you to do, and you will tell me if you will, and what your price is.”

  She was tall, with dark-brown hair, almost auburn, full-figured, more so now, carrying a child. A handsome woman, very young. Anger radiated from her like heat from a hearth.

  Leonora said nothing, taking her time. She crossed to a side table and poured wine, then watered it. She walked across and handed the other woman a cup, smiling. She gestured, and Iulia Orsat took a chair. Leonora did the same, her usual seat, offering a view of the sea to the west.

  She said, mildly, “Do you wish to have the child here? Or to join us on a more settled basis? Tell me.”

  Iulia Orsat glared. She had green eyes. “I am not having this child. That is what I need from this retreat. Whatever herbs or methods you employ, I want them. Then we can have a conversation about staying.”

  Leonora sipped her wine, just a little. She had a sense she’d need her wits here. This was not how she’d imagined the Orsat girl when she’d wept for her in the Rector’s Palace. A lesson in that, she thought.

  “You know this is a holy retreat, gosparko.”

  The other woman swore. “Oh, please. I know this isle has ended more childbearing than anywhere along the coast. I would expect you to be at least that honest.”

  Leonora looked at her. “You understand that the last Eldest Daughter is dead? Disgraced? I have a different path in mind for Sinan. You might be a little late arriving with that purpose. Why,” she asked, “would you wish to end the child?”

  “Why,” snapped Iulia Orsat, “would I explain myself to a Seressini woman who stumbled into fortune?”

  Leonora smiled at that. “Because you appear to need something from that woman, who is from Mylasia, by the way.”

  “Just say how much money this requires and we can proceed. I don’t really care which city you come from.”

  “I fear,” Leonora said, “you will need to do some explaining before other matters can be addressed. But, if you decline, I understand a desire for privacy. I see your boat has left. Shall I have one of ours take you back to Gjadina?”

  She was called a name that would be considered vile in any language. She shrugged. She lifted her voice and summoned her attendant. “Marisa, please escort Gosparko Orsat to the dock and instruct Pavlo to take her to Gjadina. She seems to have intended only a short visit.” She stood up. “I’m sorry to lose your company so soon. But perhaps I err in feeling that way.”

  “I’m not leaving,” said the Orsat woman.

  “But you are,” Leonora said. “We shelter the needful and the sorrowing out of compassion and our duty to Jad. You are only angry, and arrogant. I have,” she added, “no difficulty in instructing our sailors and workers to bundle you on board like grapes or a goat if necessary.”

  For the first time the other woman looked afraid, not angry.

  Leonora took her time again, standing beside her chair. The empress had taught her how to do this. Wait, let silence work. At length, she said, “Would you like to begin again, Iulia? I am content to do so if you are. The wine is good, and it is a morning in spring.”

  Iulia Orsat began to cry. It was not unexpected.

  She would not name the father, or why she refused to bear the child. She carried a bitterness beyond words concerning her father and her dead brother, for letting the whole of Dubrava learn her state. “To defend my honour? They stripped it from me!”

  “They thought Marin Djivo had dishonoured you.”

  “Marin bedded half the city, including my sister, but I was never with him. Never. I . . .” She drew a breath. “I do not intend to discuss this.”

  “Very well. Do you wish to stay here?”

  “Or spend my life serving my parents and sisters like a disgraced servant? Is that what you mean?”

  “I suppose it is,” Leonora said. She had seated herself again. There was sunshine above the city now, the clouds breaking up that way.

  “I will never wed,” Iulia Orsat said. “I will never have a house of my own. Or a life.”

  Leonora considered that. “There are many lives we can have,” she said. “I didn’t expect mine to be this one.” There was no reason to confide further, and reasons not to.

  She knew that retreats all over the Jaddite world offered services to women who wished not to bear a child they carried. It hadn’t just been Filipa di Lucaro here on Sinan. There were women in villages who did the same.

  It was illicit, proscribed, done in different ways, sometimes desperately, sometimes fatally. She’d wondered, often, why she had never considered it herself. Those weeks and months were a blur to her, mostly. Time sliding without thought. The retreat near Seressa would have assisted had she asked. Enough money had been given them. Women died in childbirth so often, it was arguably safer not to carry matters that far.

  There was a child in the world she would never know.

  Everyone carried their sorrow. She said, “The things you are saying, about the life you feel you’ve lost—this is a grief you are permitted. It is yours. There are wars, raids, sickness, harvests fail. Cities fall and men and women die there, but our lives are still our lives.”

  “What are you saying?” The other woman was listening now. That anger, Leonora thought, might have emerged from a balked intellige
nce.

  She said, “Your grief, mine, every girl in a village who has lost her father or seen a man she loves wed another or go away, every child that is hungry or beaten . . . even if they are not the great story of our world, they are not debarred from their sorrow. Or their joy, if it can be found.”

  The other woman said nothing.

  Leonora sighed. “I am teasing a thought out badly.”

  “No,” said Iulia Orsat. “I think I understand . . .”

  Leonora smiled. “If you do, you are more clear-headed than I am. I am trying to say that what has happened to you is a hard thing, even if there is war somewhere. Even if emperors and kings die. You are entitled to your rage.”

  The other woman smiled, for the first time. “I’ll be angry whether it is allowed or not, I’m afraid. That much I do claim for myself.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. For what I said before. I would like to stay, if I may. For now, at any rate.”

  “Of course you are staying,” Leonora said. “I can use a friend.”

  She thought the other woman would cry again, but she was wrong.

  “I can be a friend,” Iulia Orsat said.

  The band of fighters led by Rasca Tripon, known widely as Skandir, executed two more raids in Trakesia that spring, attacking another Osmanli village and a barracks north of it on the next night, while the army of the khalif was in the north.

  That army was starting back by then, in fact, undone by rain, though that would not be known in Trakesia for a while.

  The band used fire in both raids, as before, with archers, commanded by their Senjani woman, posted to cut down those fleeing. At the barracks they took ten horses, a splendid result. They killed the twelve soldiers there. Three were boys, but they wore uniforms.

  Skandir led his company back west, at speed. Their intention was always to appear without warning, as death might appear.

  They rested for several days after the barracks raid. Danica Gradek took long walks with her dog. Tico hunted hares, caught one and brought it back to her, proudly. One night she stayed away from the camp, returning in the morning. She was reprimanded for that. She apologized. They moved on. They were always moving.