"Have you not begun swordplay?"
"Aye, a little—but the arms-master says it will be a long time before I have any skill. I am too small."
Blais nodded. "A Homanan skill. I am no good at it, myself, though the gods know Sean tried to teach me often enough." He shrugged. "I have no aptitude."
They went on. Torchlight glinted off the earring in Blais' hair. He looked fully awake and alert, Kellin thought in satisfaction. This time the Lion will lose.
When they neared the Great Hall, Kellin pressed himself against the wall. A shudder claimed his body from head to toe, stilling only as Blais closed a hand over one shoulder.
"I am your liege man," Blais told him. "I am with you, my lord."
Kellin grinned his relief. " 'Tis inside," he said. "I can feel it." To Blais, it was not difficult to explain; a liege man would know, would understand. "He has come to swallow Homana."
The tone was excessively neutral. "How do you know this?"
"The fortune-teller said so."
Blais seemed briefly dubious, but let it go. He smiled. "Then we shall have to see to it the lion swallows nothing but my knife blade."
Joy and wonder bubbled up in Kellin. This is what it is to have a liege man!
Blais pushed open one of the heavy silver doors, sliding effortlessly inside. Kellin slipped through behind him. "Here?" Blais whispered.
"Somewhere .. ." Kellin moved forward slowly, wishing he might have the courage to use the knife he clutched.
Blais stepped out into the center of the long hall and strode the length of the firepit. Coals glowed from its depths beneath an ashen cloak.
The alcove curtain near the massive throne billowed in the darkness. A single coal fell out of the pit and crumbled into ash. "There!" Kellin gasped.
Blais reacted instantly, running silently toward the alcove. He caught the curtain and tore it aside, knife glinting.
"Is it there?" Kellin cried. "Blais?"
Blais went rigid, then reeled back from the alcove. Kellin heard the slap of bare torso against the wall. The knife fell from a slack hand. "Tanni!"
Blais cried. "Tanni—"
Kellin ran. By the time he reached Blais, his kinsman was slumped against wall and floor, body trembling convulsively. Yellow eyes were wide and crazed, turned inside out. Sweat filmed his face.
"Blais!"
Blais shuddered. Then he reached out and caught Kellin's thin arms, closing his taloned fingers into flesh. "Tanni—Tanni—lir—"
"Blais!"
"—gods—oh, gods .. . no—" Blais' face was the color of the ash in the firepit. "Tanni—" He let go of Kellin all at once and lurched to his feet.
"Blais—"
But Blais did not respond. He stumbled toward the end of the hall, seeking doors; his grace was utterly banished, leaving him reeling like a drunken man, or a sick one. He smashed into one of the doors and shoved it open.
Kellin gathered up the fallen knife and ran after his liege man. Fear of the Lion was quite vanquished; what he feared now was that something terrible had befallen Blais. Don't let him go, too!
Blais ran even as Kellin caught up, but his body betrayed him. Only his outstretched hands, rebounding off walls, kept him upright. Ropes of muscles stood up in relief against naked flesh.
"Blais!"
And then they were in Blais' chamber, and there was blood everywhere, on the floor and across the bed; a lurid arc against the curtains. Blais tore them aside, then fell down onto the bed. "Tanni—"
People crowded in the door. Kellin heard the questions, the startled exclamations, but he answered none of them- He could only stare at the warrior who had been his cousin, his liege man, his friend; who now was a lirless Cheysuli.
"Blais—" This time it was a wail because he knew.
Brennan was behind him. "Kellin . ., Kellin, come away."
"No."
Hart was with him, face shiny it was stretched so tautly across the bones of his cheeks. "Come away, Kellin. There is nothing you can do."
"No!" Kellin threw down the knives, then ripped himself out of Brennan's reaching hands. "Blais—Blais—you cannot. No! I need you. I need you! You are my liege man!" He fastened both hands around one of Blais' rigid arms and tugged, trying to pull his kinsman away from the gutted wolf.
"Blais!"
Blais turned a ravaged face on them all, "Take him away .. . take him from here."
"No!" Kellin gulped back the fear. "Tu'Jalla dei—"
Brennan caught Kellin's arms. "Come away."
"He can't go!" Kellin screamed. "I refuse him leave. I am the Prince of Homana and I refuse him leave to go!"
They were all of them in the chamber: Aileen, lisa, his Solindish cousins. Dulcie's yellow eyes were wide.
"Tu'Jalla dei!" Kellin shrieked. "He has to stay if I say so. He swore. Tell him, grandsire! Tu'Jalla dei."
Brennan's face was stark. "Such things are for gods to do, not men, not even princes and kings. This is the price, Kellin. Blais accepted it when he accepted his lir. So did I. So did we all. And so will you."
"I will not! I will not!"
Aileen's voice shook, "Kellin—"
"No! No! No!" He writhed in Brennan's grip.
"He swore by blood and honor and his lir—" Kellin broke it off on a strangled gasp. Indeed, by his lir, and now that lir was dead. "Blais," Kellin choked. "Don't leave me."
Blais stared blindly. Blood smeared his chest. "I never knew," he said dazedly. "I never knew what pain there was in it."
Brennan looked old beyond his years. "No warrior can. Not before it happens."
Blais held up his bloodied hands. "I am—empty—" He shoved a forearm across his brow and left a bloodslick behind, shining in his hair.
"Tu'Jalla dei," Kellin said brokenly.
But Blais seemed not to hear. He stripped off his lir-bands and the earring and put them on the blood-soaked bed. Then he gathered up Tanni's body into the cradle of naked arms and turned toward the door.
As one, they all moved aside. Blais went out of the chamber as wolf blood splashed on stone.
"Blais!" Kellin screamed.
Brennan lifted him from the ground, containing him easily. "Let him go. He is a walking dead man; let him go with dignity."
"But I need him."
"He needs his ending more." Brennan held him close. "I wish I could spare you this. But you, too, are Cheysuli, and the price shall be yours as well."
Kellin stopped struggling. He hung slackly in his grandfather's arms until Brennan set him down. "No," he said then, looking up into the face that looked so old in its grief. "No, there will be no price. I will have no lir."
Hart's voice was kind. "You cannot gainsay what the gods bestow."
"I will." Kellin's voice took on a hard bitterness. "I refuse to have one,"
"Kellin." Now Aileen, moving forward.
He cut her off at once with an outflung hand, "I refuse it. Do you hear?" He looked at his kinfolk one by one. "They all leave. All of them. First my jehan. Then Rogan. Then Urchin . .. and now Blais." His voice sounded alien even to Kellin. "They all go from me."
Brennan touched his shoulder. "This grief will pass, one day."
Kellin knocked the hand away. "No! From now on I walk alone. With no friends, no liege man, no lir." He looked at Brennan fiercely. "And I will not care."
Aileen was horrified. "Kellin!"
He felt a roaring in his head; felt it rush up from his belly and engulf his chest, threatening his throat. If he opened his mouth, he would vomit.
He knew its name: rage. And a hatred so virulent he thought he might choke on it.
"No more," he said quietly, making it an oath. "The gods cannot take from me what I do not have."
Interval
Naked, the woman lay next to him in the darkness. She had not slept when he was done, for he had, as always, disturbed her with his intensity, and she could not tumble out of passion into sleep the way he could -
She lay very qui
et next to him, not allowing her flesh to touch his. If she disturbed him, he would waken in ill humor, and she had learned to avoid his black moods by submitting everything to him: will, body, spirit. She had learned the trick long ago, when she had first become a whore.
She let his warmth warm her, driving away the chill of the winter night.-Her dwelling was tiny, not so much more than a hovel, and she could not afford the endless supply of peat and wood that others bought or bargained for to get them through the Homanan winter. She hoarded what she had, although when he came she piled it all on the hearth. Even if it meant going without for days after.
He shifted, and she held her breath. One broad hand moved across her belly, then cradled her left breast- The fingers were slack and passionless. He had spent that passion earlier; though he was easily roused, she did not do it now.
She sighed shallowly, not daring to move his hand. He had bought her body, let him fondle it as he chose. It made no difference to her. At least he was a prince.
She had other lovers, of course, but none so fine as he. They were hard men, tough men, with little refinement and less imagination. He, at least, was clean, with a good man smell, lacking the stench of others who had no time for baths, nor the money to buy wood to heat water. It was no trouble to him to bathe whenever he wished; she was grateful for it. She was grateful for him.
That he had chosen her was a miracle in itself.
She was young still, only seventeen, and her body had not yet coarsened with use, so she presented a better appearance than some of the other women.
And she had high, firm breasts above a slim waist, with good hips below. She would lose it all, of course, with the first full-term pregnancy, but so far she had been able to rid herself of the seeds before any took root.
But what of his seed?
She laughed noiselessly, startled by the thought.
Would she bear a prince's bastard? And if she did, would he provide for her? Perhaps she could leave this life behind and find a good, solid man who would forget about her past. Or would he take the child, claiming it his?
It was possible. It had happened in the past, she had heard; the bastards had been sent to Clankeep, to the shapechangers, to grow up with barren women. He would not risk leaving a halfling with a Homanan woman, lest someone attempt to use it for personal gain.
He called her meijha and meijhana, words she did not know. She had asked him if he had a wife, and he had laughed, correcting her: "Cheysula," he had said, and then 'Wo, I have no cheysula. They expect me to wed my Solindish cousin, but I will not do it."
She turned her head slightly to look at his face.
In sleep he was so different, so young, so free of the tight-wound tension. It was a good face in sleep, more handsome than any she had welcomed in her bed, and she longed to touch it. But to do so would waken him, and he would change, and she would see the customary hardness of his mouth and eyes, and the anger in his soul.
She sighed. She did not love him. She was not permitted to love him; he had told her that plainly their first bedding three months before. But she did care. For all his black moods he was kind enough to her, even if it was an unschooled, rough kindness, as if he had forgotten how.
He had spoken harshly to her more often than she would choose, but he had only struck her once; and then he had turned away abruptly with a strange, sickened look in his eyes, and he had given her gold in place of silver. It had been worth the bruise, for she bought herself a new gown she wore the next time he came, and he had smiled at her for it.
Her smile came unbidden; a woman's, slow and smug. In my bed lies the Prince of Homana.
He moved. He stretched, flexing effortlessly, and then he sat up. She saw the play of muscles beneath the flesh of his smooth back, the hint of supple spine, the tangle of black hair across the nape of his neck. She lay very still, wondering if she had spoken her thoughts aloud.
For a moment his profile was very clear in the dim light, outlined by the coals in the tiny hearth across the room. She saw the elegant brow and straight nose. He was yet groggy with sleep and soft from it; when the sleep fled, his bones would look older and harder, with black brows that drew down all too often and spoiled the youth of his face.
He slanted her a glance. "Did you dream of me?”
She smiled. "How could I not?"
It was his customary question and her customary answer, but this time neither appeared to please him. He scowled and got out of the narrow bed, then reached to pull on black breeches and boots. She admired as always the suppleness of his muscles, the lithe movements of his body. It was the Cheysuli in him, she knew, though he did not seem other than Homanan. She had seen a warrior up close once and still shivered when she recalled the strangeness of his eyes. Beast-eyes, some folk called them, and she agreed with them.
His were not bestial. They could be disconcertingly direct and nearly always challenging, but they were green, and a man's eyes. For that she was grateful.
He lifted the jug from the crooked table and poured wine, not bothering to don the shirt and fair-lined doublet on the floor beside the bed. She hunched herself up on one elbow. "Are you going?"
"I have had from you what I came for." He did not turn to look at her. "Unless you have discovered yet another position."
She, who believed she could no longer blush, burned with embarrassment. "No, my lord." She had displeased him; he would go, and this time he might not come back.
He swallowed down the wine and set the mug down with a thump. "This vintage is foul. Have you no better?"
"No, my lord."
Her flat tone roused something in him. He turned, and the thin gold torque around his throat glinted. "You reprove me?"
"No!" She sat up hastily, jerking the bedclothes over her breasts in an instinctive bid for a modesty she had surrendered years before. "Never!"
He scowled at her blackly. His mouth had taken on its familiar hard line. And then he smiled all unexpectedly, and she marveled again at the beauty of a man who could be cruel and kind at once. "I have frightened you again." He poured more wine and drank it, seemingly unaffected by its foul taste. "Do you fear I will turn into beast-shape here before you?" He laughed as she caught her breath, showing white teeth in a mocking grin.
"Have no fear, meijhana ... there is no lir-shape for this Cheysuli. I have renounced it. What you see before you is what I am." He still smiled, but she saw the anger in his eyes. "My arms are bare, and my ear. There is no shapechanger in this room."
She held her silence. He had shown her such moods before.
He swore beneath his breath in a language she did not know. He would not come to her bed again this night, to set her flesh afire with a longing she had believed well passed for her until he had come with no word of explanation for a prince's presence in a Midden whore's hovel.
A sudden thought intruded. He might not come back ever.
The fear made her voice a question she had sworn never to ask. "Will you leave me?"
His eyes narrowed. "Do you care?"
"Oh aye, my lord—very much!" She believed it would please him; it was nonetheless the truth.
A muscle jumped in his jaw. "Do I please you? Do you care for me?"
She breathed it softly. "More than any, my lord."
"Because I am a prince?"
She smiled, believing she had found the proper answer. "Oh no, my lord. Because you are you. I care for you."
He turned from her. Stunned, she watched as he put on his shirt and doublet, then swept up and pinned on the heavy green cloak. It was lined with rich dark fur, and worth more than the house she lived in. She saw the gold cloak-brooch glitter in firelight, ruby gemstone burning. The brooch was worth more than the entire block.
And then he strode across the room to her and caught her throat in his hands, bending over her.
"No," he said. "You do not care for me. Say you do not."
She grasped at his hands. She wanted very badly to say the proper words.
"But I do! Your coin is welcome—I am a whore, for all that, and claim myself no better—but it is you I care for!"
He swore raggedly and released her so abruptly she fell back against the wall. He unpinned the brooch and dropped it into her lap. "You will not see me again."
"My lord!" A hand beseeched. "Why? What have I done?"
"You said you cared." His eyes were black in poor light. "And that I will not have."
"Kellin!" She dared to use his name, but he turned away in a swirl of green wool and was gone. The door swung shut behind him-The brooch that would buy her freedom was cold comfort in the night as she cried herself to sleep.
Part TWO
One
Kellin stepped out of the slope-roofed hovel into the slushy alley and stopped. He stared blankly at the darkened dwelling opposite and expelled a smoking breath. He inhaled deeply, almost convulsively, and the cold air filled his lungs with the anticipated burning. The alley stank of peat, filth, ordure. Even winter could not overcome the stench of depression and poverty.
He heard movement inside the hovel, through the cracks of ill-made walls: a woman crying.
Too harsh with her. Kellin gritted his teeth. Self-contempt boiled up to replace the thought. What does she expect? I warned her. I told her not to care.
There is nothing in me for anyone to care about, least of all a father ... f will not risk losing another who claims to care for me.
The sobs were soft but audible because he made himself hear them. He used them to flagellate; he deserved the punishment.
She was well-paid. That is what she cries for.
But he wondered if there were more, if the woman did care—
Kellin gritted his teeth, fighting off the part of his nature that argued for fairness, for a renunciation of the oath he had sworn ten years before.
She is a whore, nothing more. They all of them are whores. Where better to spill the seed for which I am so valued?
Kellin swore, hissing invective between set teeth.
Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 08 Page 12
