by Judith Tarr
She had astonished him. He had been thinking that she was playing with him, taunting him with his failure, asking him to help choose his supplanter. He was really quite foolish, Kimeri thought, and he did not know Borti very well at all.
“There is a certain logic in it,” Borti said. “Granted, you saw my brother killed by your allies, and seized the crown before anyone else could move. You made no effort to prevent the sack of the city, nor were you able to hold your place once it was known that I was alive. You were a very poor king, taking all in all.
“But,” she said, “within your limits, you’re not a bad choice. Your family is royal kin. You have children but no wife, which proves your ability to beget heirs to the crown, and offers no impediment to your taking the place of consort.”
“Not king?” Paltai asked. He had come back to himself, sharp, wary, and beginning to believe she meant it.
“The king is dead,” said Borti. “The queen has need of a consort. You were a wretched king, Paltai, but you would make a reasonable husband, all things considered.”
He looked away. His tongue wanted to cut her till she bled, but the rest of him was telling it to be sensible. “I . . . don’t know if that’s wise,” he said finally, which was not what he had started to say at all.
“Probably not,” Borti said. “I don’t think I care. I’ve always been inexplicably fond of you, and you’re a pleasant bedmate. You would have to be oathbound, of course, and purified before the kingdom.”
He shivered. Purification in Shurakan was not an easy thing, not for sins as great as his. He would have to shed blood and endure a great deal of pain if he wanted to be soul-clean by his people’s reckoning. Even so he said, “It would be worth the trouble, to father the next children of heaven.”
“I thought you might think so,” said Borti.
They understood one another. Liked one another, too, better than they would ever admit. Borti would not forgive her brother’s death. This was her revenge, and very clever, making Paltai give up the crown but live always in sight of it—but there was more to it than that. Someday maybe Kimeri would understand.
Paltai was ready to say yes, but he was not quite willing to let Borti know it. “What about them?” he demanded, with a stab of his chin at Kimeri. “We’ll never be rid of them now, since they’ve won your crown back for you.”
“We would never have been rid of them in any case,” Borti said, not looking at Kimeri but very much aware of her. “Once they had come, they were going to keep coming, no matter what we did. I’m going to treat them like people of honor, and if necessary shame them into doing the same for us.”
“Will you let them build their Gate again?”
“I don’t think I can stop them,” said Borti. “I may be able to control them, to a degree. After all, we know now that our priests can break Gates. If we allow the one, and set limits on who and how many may pass it, we’ll give them what they want but keep them aware that we can take it away.”
“We never did want to invade you,” Kimeri said. “Really we didn’t. We just wanted to see what was here.”
“So would a child say,” said Paltai.
Kimeri looked at him hard, till he flushed even darker than he was already, and ducked his head. “We aren’t all perfectly honorable,” she said, “but we are honest. When we say we’ll do something, we do it. We keep our word. We’re simple people, I suppose.”
“Or else,” mused Borti, “with mages to keep everybody honest, honesty is easier.” She shook herself. “No, Paltai, I won’t be filling my court with mages and turning this into a realm of magic. But we do have to discover our own honesty, and our own magics. Since we’ve lied to ourselves for so long.”
“You didn’t know,” Kimeri said.
“Now we do.” Borti stood, wiping her fingers where they were greasy from her dinner. “Go and bathe, Paltai. When you’ve done that, and have rested, we’ll let the kingdom know that it has a queen again in truth, and that the queen has a consort.”
Paltai did not like being told what to do, but he had wits enough to know that he was outmatched. Borti’s smile was warm, but it was absolutely implacable. He would do as she said, or he would be disposed of.
They would get on well together, all in all. He knew that; it made him smile after a while, wry and rather pained, but real enough. “Yes, divine lady,” he said, and only about half of it was mocking.
34
Vanyi was thoroughly annoyed with herself. She had had to be carried from the sanctuary like a blasted invalid, and she had not been allowed to do so much as raise her head. If she wanted anything she asked for it, and Aledi gave it to her, or Miyaz while Aledi rested, or, the past hour or two, the youngest of the Olenyai.
It was not pleasant to have to ask him to carry her to the privy. She was years past anything resembling prudery, but damn it, she was a grown woman; why in the hells did she have to be packed about like a baby?
“Because,” said a warm deep voice, “you had no more sense than one, carrying on while your body was trying to kill itself. This is fair punishment; you can’t dispute it.”
Vanyi would have snapped erect if a pair of all too familiar hands had not held her down. An all too familiar brush of magery soothed her hammering heart and brought, if not calm, then a kind of resignation. Another came in behind it, less familiar but in its way immeasurably stronger.
She looked from Estarion to the priest-mage who had followed him. The latter could have been a Shurakani in a Sun-priest’s torque; he was a plainsman from Iban in the Hundred Realms, and he was chief of the healer-priests in Starios. He was neither ghost nor sending; he was very solidly there.
So was Estarion. “You’re not supposed to be here,” Vanyi said. She was half in a fog already, what with the healer’s working, and not even a by-your-leave, either. But she kept enough of her mind alert to focus on Estarion.
“I’m not here,” he said. “I’m in Starios, being emperor. You’re being visited by a simple citizen of the empire who offered to try the Gate now it’s open again.”
“The Gate’s open?” She stretched out a finger of magery, but the healer slapped it back. She snarled and subsided. “We haven’t done anything to rebuild it. It’s a blind Gate—and Estarion, about that—”
“It’s open,” he said. “All Gates are open as they always were, though there are cracks in the walls in the Heart of the World. Mages are mending those. The Gate in Starios is up and strong, and when I told it to open on Shurakan, it did. Your Guardian met me on this side. I brought two pairs of mages to give what aid they could—the twins from the Lakes of the Moon, and your Guardian’s cousin Iyeris and her lightmage. They’re in the house of the Gate, making it habitable again with help from the people of Janabundur. Did you know that exorcist of yours has Gate-sense? He might be worth training as a Guardian. Imagine,” he said, entranced with his own vision. “A Shurakani born, being Guardian of its Gate.”
Somewhere far down below the fog of healing, Vanyi was furious. She was the Master of the Guild. She was the ruler of the Gates. How dared he order her mages about? How dared he meddle with her Gates?
He sat on the edge of the bed, perfectly pleased with himself, having broken every pact they had ever made. He only made it worse by saying, “All of this, of course, is by your leave. The Guild was struck hard when the Gates started to fall—it was all they could do to hold themselves together. They cried out for any help they could get. I happened to be nearest. I tried to do everything as you would wish.”
“You came here,” Vanyi said. “Do you have the least idea in any of the worlds, what will happen if people here discover what you are? They’re already certain that we mean to conquer them out of hand. Your presence will only confirm it.”
“Then we had better not let them know who I am,” said Estarion placidly. “Later, of course, we should propose an exchange of state visits, here and in Starios, and an alliance of goodwill between our nations. At the moment I’m
a messenger from your Guild, guard and escort to the healer whom you so badly need. You can receive messengers, surely? That’s not forbidden?”
Vanyi closed her eyes. “Hells,” she said, but without force. “Esakai was right. None of us will ever be rid of you.”
“Not even if you die,” he said. “Remember that.” He took her hand. He was warm, sun-warm, and strong. “Haliya sends her love and her sympathies.”
“And her I-told-you-sos?”
“She saves those for people who can argue with them.”
She looked at him. Her mind was empty. She was healing, being healed. Slowly; Aledi had been right, it could not be quick, not as foolish as she had been.
He smoothed her hair back from her brow, easily, tenderly, as if she had been one of his children. Now that he was quiet, she could see how worn he looked. It had not been easy in Starios, either, when the Gates began to fall.
“And when you began to die,” he said.
“Stop reading my mind,” said Vanyi.
“I can’t help it.” Nor could he, since he did not want to.
She sighed. It was good to have him here, and never mind the difficulties, the politics, all the rest of the nonsense that hovered on the other side of the healer’s magery.
He bent over her. His face was all the world; and she could not touch it. She could not reach so high.
“You will be well,” he said. It was a prayer, and an emperor’s will.
oOo
Daruya had not meant to sleep till evening. There was so much to do—the Gate to look after, the mages, Vanyi—and she had dreamed straight through the day and into the night. Troubled dreams, most of them, full of shouting and confusion. Gates falling, walls tumbling in the Heart of the World, mages dying or being caught in Gates as Uruan had been.
She kept trying to hold it all together with her two hands. Both of them in the dream were branded and burning with the Kasar, a living fire that ate at flesh but never consumed it.
She woke with relief to lamplight and quiet and the blessing of memory. The Gates were safe. She and Kimeri between them had seen to that.
Kimeri was with the queen, and content. Vanyi was asleep and very much alive. They had brought in a new healer—Daruya knew the mark of a healer-priest’s power, as distinct in the mind as the Kasar itself. The Gate was up, then, and open, and letting people pass.
Bundur was not thinking about her at all. He was in the palace. It had been locked tight, which seemed to be the Shurakani way of telling its king that he was not welcome. The king was gone. Bundur was finding everyone who had keys, and seeing that those keys were set to the locks and the palace opened up again. The queen was coming back to it; she would find it waiting, all cleansed and opened and giving her welcome.
Daruya should not mind that he was occupied in doing his duty—she had done the same in following Kadin through Kimeri’s Gate. But he was not thinking of her, either, or missing her presence. That stung.
She rose, washed the sleep from her eyes and her face, and put on her clothes. They were clean, a little damp about the edges. Her hair was a hopeless tangle. She did not even try the comb that was laid on the table beside the bed; she raked fingers through instead, tugging out the least of the knots, and gave up the rest for lost.
Someone had left her a basket with bread in it, a bit of cheese wrapped in a cloth, and a bowl of spiced fruit. She ate, and drank from the bottle beside the basket—water, nothing more.
Up, awake, dressed and fed, she ventured forth into the temple. It was dark, save where once in a great while a lamp was lit, and seemed echoingly empty. The white ox was not in her pen; she had a stable to rest in at night, out past the priests’ cloister. The god did not appear to notice her absence.
“How like a man,” said Daruya. Her voice woke echoes in the shrine and sent something fluttering and squeaking through the rafters.
She paused by the white ox’s enclosure. Someone had cleaned it and washed it, as must be done every night, and taken away the heaps of offerings—food to the kitchens, fodder to the stable, valuables to the treasury. A faint scent of ox remained, a suggestion of ox-droppings—like magic, it could never quite be denied.
The gilded bars were cool, and just high enough to fold her arms on and to prop her chin. The god’s image glimmered above her.
She felt light and oddly empty, as she always did after a battle. She was not startled to hear a step behind her, soft but making no attempt at stealth. It was not Chakan: him she would not have heard at all.
She turned, prepared to greet a priest, or maybe someone from Janabundur.
Priest indeed, but not of any god in Shurakan. He was here in the flesh: she could feel the warmth of him and catch his scent, which was different from that of the men here, sharper, with a suggestion of seneldi, a hint of ul-cats. He leaned on the bars of the ox’s pen, chin on folded arms as hers had been, and studied the god who loomed above them. “Fascinating,” he said.
“Does the queen know you’re here?” Daruya asked.
Estarion slid a glance at her. “Vanyi asked me much the same thing. The answer is no, and will continue to be no. I brought Lurian to look after Vanyi, and mages to tend the Gate. I’m going back, and quickly, too.”
Why, she thought, he was defending himself—as if he thought he had any need to do any such thing. Estarion the emperor never stood in need of defense. He did as he willed, and that was that.
Estarion in the temple of Matakan seemed no older than Bundur. He was not the emperor here. He was simply Estarion.
“Grandfather,” said Daruya in sudden comprehension. “You’ve run away.”
He raised a brow. “What, you didn’t think I could?”
“What if the Gate falls again? We’ll all three of us be trapped on this side.”
“That would be interesting, wouldn’t it?” He yawned and stretched like one of his enormous cats, from nose to nonexistent tail, and stood grinning at her.
“You look,” she said, stumbling over the word she wanted. Damn it, then. She would say it. “You look bloody irresponsible.”
“That’s exactly how I feel.” He was still grinning. “I’ve shocked you. Imagine that. Maybe it’s time I did the running away and you did the ruling in Starios. You’re old enough, more or less, and steady enough, no matter what you want people to think.”
“That,” said Daruya through gritted teeth, “is exactly what drives me wild. You never see me as anything but good, loyal, solid, dependable, dull—”
“—despite all evidence to the contrary,” he finished for her. “Not dull, no. Not you. You’re a golden splendor of a child. But underneath all the sparks and the temper is a right worthy queen. You show it when you have to, you know. In Gates as they break. In temples when priests are praying the worlds to pieces.”
“I had to do it,” she said. “Nobody else would.”
“Nobody else could.”
“Except Kimeri.”
“Kimeri is not quite four years old. You are what she will be when she’s grown to a woman—crotchets and all, though if she’s as like you as I think, she’ll be utterly dutiful and obedient and quiet, because you’ve always made so much noise about being a rebel.”
Daruya flushed. “And she’ll despise me for it. That’s what you’re telling me, isn’t it?”
He regarded her in honest surprise. “Of course not. Children will do the opposite of what their parents either want or expect. It’s the way the world is.”
“I don’t want her to be like me.”
“Nor do you want to be like you. Do you?”
Temper flared as she unraveled that. She bit back the angry words. He was waiting for them, ready to smile at them, and say something that would make her look a perfect idiot.
No. Not this time. Not either of them—not she with her outbursts, or he with his maddening calm.
God and goddess. He was exactly like Bundur. So complacent. So perfect in his superior wisdom.
W
ith Bundur it was a pretense, a prince’s mask. With Estarion—
The very same. It was easier to see here, without the dazzle of his rank to blind her. And, she admitted with creeping shame, the flare of her temper whenever she saw him or thought of him.
It had not always been this way. When she was as young as Kimeri, she had adored him. She had followed him everywhere, got underfoot in everything. And he had allowed it. Only when he fought in battles did he forbid her to follow—and she obeyed, because he showed her exactly how terrible battles were.
Somehow as she grew older it had changed. She had begun to resist him, at first to prove that she was herself, apart from him, and could do as she chose and not as he expected. Until rebellion became the expected, and she was trapped in it. And he was always the one whom she resisted most strenuously, and the one who seemed least perturbed by it.
She could never crack the polished surface of his composure. No, not even when she drove him to a rage. It was always a calm, reasonable, rational rage. He always forgave her. He never seemed to hate or scorn her, no matter what she did or said.
She did not want to tell him so. He would only tell her that his own youthful sins were far worse than her own. For all she knew, they had been. Even in that she was never his equal. She could only follow, and be the lesser.
That was foolish, too. It was wallowing, and a ripe rotten sea of self-pity it was, too.
She tried something. She said as calmly as she could, “I suppose you expect me to go home with you when you go.”
“Actually,” he said, “I don’t. You’re a lady of this kingdom now. You have duties here.”
She was gaping. She shut her mouth. “Responsibilities. I have them in the empire, too.”
“None that can’t wait,” he said, “or be done through Gates, by messengers.”
She did her best to comprehend what he was saying. “You . . . want . . . me to stay here? On the other side of the world? With people who know how to break Gates?”
“You may not want to stay,” he said. “There is that.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You’re going to take Kimeri back, then. Aren’t you?”
