Spear of Heaven

by Judith Tarr

  “Everyone asks that,” said Daruya, addressing the mare’s mane, which she was combing and smoothing with unnecessary precision. “It’s easiest if you learn as a child.”

  “But not impossible to learn as a man grown?”

  He sounded plaintive. She refused to be swayed by it. “It would take years to learn to ride as I ride. Just to stay on—that’s possible, I suppose.”

  “It would make a beginning,” he said.

  She shot him a glance. “Right now?”

  He was startled—his eyes went wide. But he laughed and spread his hands. “Why not?”

  He had not the faintest conception of what he was getting into. She thought briefly, nastily, of setting him on Vanyi’s gelding and letting him loose, but it would hardly do to kill or maim a man of high house in Shurakan, simply because he was presumptuous. She fetched the star-browed bay instead, a plain, sweet-tempered, imperturbable animal who made no objection to being saddled and bridled and subjected to the weight of a large and substantial man who had never sat a senel before.

  He had, however, sat an ox—and not badly, either, Daruya had to admit. There was no finesse in the way he scrambled into the saddle, but he balanced well, he took quickly to the commands to start and stop and turn, and he could ride the gelding on a circle and keep it there. He might, with time, come to have a decent seat on a senel.

  He knew it, too. His expression reminded Daruya forcibly of the mare after her most impressive leap on her haunches: pure self-satisfaction.

  Daruya felt much less charitable toward the man than she had toward the mare. “You have talent,” she said, because she could not lie about that, “but you have no art.”

  “No? Then will you teach me?”

  She did not want to. It would take time to do it properly, far more than she had or meant to have in Shurakan, and she could not for pride do it otherwise than properly. But he annoyed her.

  “I’ll teach you,” she said, “if you can be taught. Beginning here.” She slapped his back. He stiffened in outrage. She showed him the count of her teeth. “You’re slouching. Sit up straight. No, not as if you had a rod for a spine. Softly, flowing with the movement of your mount. Now let your legs fall as they want to, softly, always softly. Ankles, too. Let them follow as he moves. Yes, like that.”

  She worked him to a rag. It was only a brief span by the sun’s ascent, and it was a bare few moments’ exercise for the bay, but the man slid from his back and nearly fell as his knees buckled. “By the gods! I’m destroyed.”

  “You’ve barely begun,” said Daruya. “And you still have to cool him and unsaddle him and take him to his stall.”

  “You are merciless,” said Bundur.

  “You asked for it,” she said.

  She lent him a hand, not out of pity for him, of course not, but out of concern for the senel. He gained back much of his strength as he worked, which was the object of the exercise—and a curse on his cleverness, he saw that, too. When he was done, he had most of his arrogance back. Enough to say, “Tomorrow, again?”

  “You won’t want to,” she said.

  “Yes, I will. Tomorrow?”

  She wondered if the Shurakani had a god who protected fools and innocents. “Tomorrow, then. If you can walk this far.”

  oOo

  As it turned out, he could. Just. Once he had pulled and hauled and heaved himself onto the senel’s back, and gasped as he perceived the full and painful extent of his folly, he rode creditably enough.

  “My muscles are so insulted, they’ve expired in protest,” he said from the saddle.

  “Sit up,” said Daruya. “You’re slouching again.”

  “O cruel,” he sighed, but he obeyed.

  oOo

  He came back the next morning. And the next. Sometimes early enough to watch her ride—and to mourn his own ineptitude. Sometimes so late that she feared—hoped, she corrected herself in considerable irritation—that he was not coming at all, until she saw him striding through the door. Then she was snappish, because her heart had leaped so suddenly, startling her. He never seemed to notice.

  What he thought of her, he did not tell, and she did not try to read as a mage could. Because it mattered too little, she told herself; because, her heart muttered to itself, it could all too easily matter too much.

  He never stayed longer than it took to saddle, ride, and put his mount away. He talked freely enough and most engagingly, but he never said a word that was not perfectly proper. However bold his eyes might be, his tongue was as circumspect as any woman could wish.

  He never offered to accompany her wherever she might be going afterward—to the house, usually, or to wander in the city. He did not, ever, bring a friend and ask her to increase the number of her pupils.

  That rather surprised her. Most ambitious princelings would have been flaunting their new accomplishment all over the court.

  For all she knew, he was doing that—but keeping the rest from besetting her. She was not invited to court, nor was she courted by various of the palace functionaries as Vanyi was. She was quite the isolate, quite perfectly the nobody, and she was determined to be happy in it.

  oOo

  Chakan did not approve at all. She took her time in telling him all that she was doing in the stable from sunrise till nearly noon, which was an error. He came to her, half a dozen days after Bundur first appeared in the stable, and set himself in front of her as she debated between a jar of honeyed wine and one of Shurakani ale to go with her daymeal of flat bread and softened cheese. She chose the ale, filled a cup, held it out.

  He refused it with a snap of the hand. “What is this I hear,” he demanded, “of your entertaining a Shurakani noble in the stable every morning?”

  Daruya found that her mouth was open. She closed it. “What in the worlds—” Her temper caught up with her tongue. “You of all people are concerned for my virtue?”

  He dropped his veil. His face was white and set. “Do you know who that man is? We’ve been following him when he leaves here. He goes directly to the king’s apartments, as often as not. And when he doesn’t go to the king, he goes to other notables of the king’s faction.”

  “Why shouldn’t he visit the king?” Daruya demanded. “He’s a prince here, even I can see that. Princes keep company with kings.”

  “Did you know that his mother is the king’s half-sister?”

  Daruya stiffened. No, he had not told her. But she had not asked. “Well then. Why shouldn’t he visit his uncle, if he’s so minded?”

  “His beloved uncle,” said Chakan, “has shown himself to be a powerful opponent of foreigners in Shurakan, and a devoted hater of mages. If he had his way and were not restrained by the queen’s moderation, we would all be flayed and our skins spiked to the walls.”

  “Oh, come,” said Daruya. “Now you’re talking nonsense.”

  “I am not. You may think that this city is a haven of innocent goodwill, but there are powerful factions in the court that would kill us as soon as hear our names spoken.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “We listen,” he said. “We watch. We stand guard. You’re watched from sunrise to sunrise, and not only by us. Everywhere you go, you have at least two shadows: your Olenyas and a king’s spy. You’d be dead now if it hadn’t been for Yrias. He’s driven off more than one attack on you while you meander happily through the city.”

  “Those were footpads,” said Daruya, “or simply the curious, trying to see how easy it would be to steal from me.”

  “They were not,” said Chakan. “They were in the pay of the king’s faction. As you can be sure this princeling of yours is. What better way to keep you in hand than to occupy you all morning, every morning?”

  “God and goddess! I’m not tumbling him in the hay. I’m teaching him to a ride a senel.” Daruya came desperately close to flinging her ale in his face. But she was stronger than that; and he looked as if he was expecting it, which made it worse. “If he really were
under orders to keep me busy, don’t you think he’d outright seduce me, and stay with me all day into the bargain? He doesn’t even try to coax secrets out of me, except the ones that have to do with riding.”

  “He hasn’t had time to do more,” Chakan said. “He will, you can be sure of it.”

  “I say he won’t. He wants to learn an art that no one else here knows. What’s reprehensible about that?”

  “Nothing,” said Chakan, “if he were not the king’s sister’s son.”

  “He is also,” Daruya pointed out, “the queen’s sister’s son.”

  “No,” said Chakan. “They’re children of the old king, both. But the queen’s mother, who was also queen, died bearing her. The king married again to beget the canonical second child, who was the king. His wife had been married before, and had a daughter. The daughter was this man’s mother.”

  “How complicated,” said Daruya. “But he’s the queen’s kin, one way and another.”

  “Half-kin,” said Chakan. “Children of different wives seldom love one another. And this man is the king’s sister-son.”

  “He means me no harm,” Daruya said stubbornly. “I’d know if he did.”

  “Would you? They have arts here. They don’t call them magery, but what’s a name? Who’s to say he isn’t concealing his mind from you?”

  “I can read a great deal more of him than I can of you.”

  He hissed in disgust. “Yes, and his face is open for anyone to see, too. There’s a Great Ward on this kingdom that reckons itself free of mages’ taint. Gods alone know what else it’s lying about to our faces—even to yours, my lady of Sun and Lion.”

  “He’s not lying to me,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “No? You had no idea he was the king’s nephew.”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “You shouldn’t have had to.”

  “I didn’t need to. He’s not my enemy.”

  “You know that?” Chakan asked, viciously sweet. “You know that for an incontrovertible fact?”

  Daruya could be as vicious as he was, and as nastily reasonable. “So come and watch his lessons. Look as deadly as you please. See if it makes any difference.”

  “Oh, I will,” he said. “I promise you I will.”

  Daruya hated to quarrel with Chakan. He never fought fair, and he always turned and swept out before she could flatten him with a final blow. He was properly rattled this time: he forgot to veil his face again with the flourish that temper put in it. It was a victory, but a small one.

  Maybe he was right. She was sure that he was not—but doubt had a way of creeping in and gnawing at the roots of one’s surety. Mages’ courtesy kept her from reading the mind of every man she met, but she did not go about blind, either, least of all with strangers who might be enemies.

  Bundur was not an enemy. Truly, she would know. Other motives he might have had for visiting her that first time, but he had come back because he wanted to learn to ride a senel.

  Maybe too because he wanted to observe her. Why not? She was a foreigner. She had no easily visible function in the embassy. He would have wanted to assure himself that she was no danger to his kingdom.

  And maybe he wanted to see what kind of creature she was. There was nothing like her in his world. Maybe he kept coming back because he found her interesting. A man might do that, even with a woman of respectable virtue.

  A little more of this and she would be getting aggravated because he had not ventured anything improper. She had thought about it more than once. He was a handsome man. But he thought her ugly; he had made that clear. Interesting, but ugly.

  Goddess, she thought. Men were such maddening creatures. How did any sensible woman stand them?

  oOo

  Chakan was there the next morning, standing like a stone beside the wall of the riding-yard. Daruya ignored him as she put the mare through her paces. She kept on ignoring him as she took first the brown gelding, then the whitefoot black, and rode them.

  Bundur was late. Very late. It was nearly noon, and no sign of him.

  Chakan had an air of grim satisfaction. She almost screamed at him: “How could he know you were going to be here?”

  She knew the answer before he spoke. “They see everything we do.”

  oOo

  She had been going to visit the city. There was a festival, she had been told, with music and dancing and a procession. She went back to the house instead, had a bath so long she was shriveled and sodden when she came out, and thought about cutting her hair again. In the end she let it be, but had the servant twist it into a myriad small plaits, each tipped with a bead of lapis or malachite or carnelian. They swung to her shoulders, brushing them when she turned her head to consider her reflection.

  Odd, by the lights of Shurakan, but becoming. It was a fashion of the north of Keruvarion; in its honor she put on what went with it, the kilt and the gauds. The servant was scandalized. Women did not bare their breasts here.

  How backward, she thought. It was a warm day for Shurakan, almost hot. She was not going anywhere, or at least no farther than the garden, where she intended to lie in the sun and brood on the faces of treachery.

  Vanyi was gone, waging her war among the functionaries. Kimeri was out playing somewhere in the palace—safe, and annoyed when her mother brushed her with a finger of magery; Daruya would have something to say to Chakan, when she could bring herself to speak to him again, of how he let the daughter run wild while he overprotected the mother. The Olenyai were either guarding Daruya or occupying themselves. The mages were inside their circle, discovering the usual nothing at all about the breaking of the Gates.

  The sun was hot and blissful on her skin. She had been starved for it these past days, what with skulking in the house and riding within walls, or wandering about a city that left little space for the sun to get in. She lay on the cropped grass, basking in light. She slept a little, lightly, dreaming of gold and of lions.

  She woke suddenly. Two shadows stretched over her. One was Olenyas, barring the second, much taller and broader. That one was taking little notice of the obstacle.

  Still half asleep, she slid behind those bright black eyes and saw what he saw: golden body all but bare, glittering with gold, in a pool of light as solid as water.

  Malice sparked, fed by the light in his eyes. She stretched luxuriously, as a cat will, muscle by muscle.

  Ugly, did he think her? But interesting, he had said at that first meeting. Most interesting, lying with arms stretched above her head, grinning ferally at him.

  “Go away, Yrias,” she said. “This man is safe enough.”

  The Olenyas’ eyes were narrow, mistrustful. But he was an obedient guardsman. He withdrew to the edge of the grass—near enough to leap if he was needed, far enough not to intrude.

  Daruya rolled onto her side, propped on her elbow. “You didn’t come for your instruction this morning.”

  Bundur’s breath was coming just a fraction fast. She watched him take himself in hand. He did it very well, she thought.

  “It’s festival day,” he said. “I had duties I couldn’t escape.”

  “Marching in procession? Waiting on the king?”

  He did not start at that or look guilty. “Standing in court, too, while the children of heaven bestowed gifts of the season on an endless parade of worthy recipients. Your chief ambassador was there. She caused a stir—foreigners have never appeared at such a function before.”

  “How did she manage it?” Daruya inquired.

  She hoped she sounded casual. She was seething. Vanyi had plotted such a coup, and not brought the rest of them into it?

  “She did it on the spur of the moment, I gather,” he said, pricking her bubble of temper rather thoroughly: “heard about the event, decided to observe it, and walked in as calm as you please. The Minister of Protocol was beside himself.”

  “I can imagine,” Daruya said. “Was she thrown out on her ear?”

  “Of course not,
” said Bundur. “We’re not barbarians. Somebody found a gift for her, and she had it from the queen’s hand—but the Minister of Protocol got her out before she could make any speeches.”

  “Maybe she wasn’t going to deliver any,” Daruya said. “She’d made her point, hadn’t she? That would be enough for her. The queen’s seen her, knows she’s here—the queen can do with the knowledge as she best pleases.”

  “Which could be nothing,” said Bundur.

  “That’s the queen’s right,” Daruya said with the certainty of one who had been raised to be an empress. She sat up and clasped her knees.

  Bundur looked faintly disappointed. He had been enjoying the sight of her with rather too much pleasure, once he had got over the first shock. She let a bit of edge into her voice, to call him back to himself. “I suppose you came to beg for a late lesson?”

  “Well,” he said, “no. I’ll be there tomorrow, never fear. Today I wondered—” He looked unwontedly diffident, even embarrassed. “I should have come much earlier, but I was being an idiot about it, I suppose. I wondered—on festival night we have a dinner, which we prepare according to very old custom. It’s eaten with one’s family, and a friend or two, no more.” He stopped. She did not help him with word or glance. He let it all out in a rush. “Would you share dinner with us in House Janabundur?”

  “Just me?” she asked. She caught Yrias’ eye. “I can’t do that.”

  “No, no,” he said hastily. “You and your kin who are here, and your captain of guards—he’s your friend, yes?”

  “How do you know that?”

  He was blushing: his skin was darker than usual, more ruddy than bronze. “It’s known. One is like a brother to you. He, your daughter, your lady ambassador—they’re welcome, and should come.”

  “It’s short notice,” she said.

  “My fault for that. But festival shouldn’t be spent alone.”

  “I was going to go to the city,” she said, “and watch the processions.”

  “That’s done, too, after the dinner is over. Everybody takes lanterns and puts on a mask and goes out, and dances till dawn.”