by Judith Tarr
“He’s a fool,” she said. “There. I said it. I’ll go away now. I’ll set him free.”
“If you leave now,” said Iburan, “he’ll go after you. He does love you, child. With all his great heart.”
The tears were threatening to come back. She willed them away. “So I’m to make him stop loving me. Is that it? Is that what you want me to do?”
“I doubt you could.”
“Oh, it’s easy,” she said. “It’s as easy as a slap in his face. He’s never been denied anything, never had to do anything he didn’t want to do. Even this journey to Asanion is his choosing, though he imagines that his mother forced him into it. He’s always known he’d have to do it. He let her work her will on him.”
“And you? What will you do to yourself?”
“Do I matter? Do I, my lord, when you consider the empire, and the man who is emperor of it?”
There, at last: a question Avaryan’s high priest could not answer. She regarded him in something like pity. “You won’t bind me, my lord. I’ll bind myself. I can read the god’s will as well as you. I can see that I’m not meant for the emperor.”
“I can see,” he said, “that you need rest, and healing for the soul as well as the body. The servant will bring you wine. You’ll drink it: I’ll mix in an herb I know of. It brings nothing more deadly than sleep.”
“Maybe I have a drug of my own.”
“That is too strong in you. It makes you say things you never mean. Lie down now, and grieve if you must. It will help you mend.”
II
Kundri’j Asan
11
Estarion knew when he crossed the border into Asanion. It was more than the softening of wild country into towns and tilled fields, forest tracks into roads, black or bronze faces into faces more truly gold and ivory. It was a thrumming in the blood, a quiver in the senses. Recognition—he did not want to call it that. Some part of him knew this earth, this air, this face of the world. It was not memory of his coming there half his life ago. It went deeper than that.
Half a day past the border, he stopped and dismounted and laid his hands on the earth. It was not so very different from the land he had left behind: rich black earth, fragrant with the rain that had fallen in the morning. It trembled under his touch. It knew him.
His companions were watching him as if they feared that he would break and run shrieking back to Keruvarion. He straightened. His right hand burned and throbbed. The earth that clung to it could not stain the gold in its palm.
He vaulted back into the saddle. “On,” he said, snapping it off short.
The land knew him, welcomed him. But it lay crushed and flattened beneath the feet of the men who lived on it. There were no wild places. Even the woods were lords’ possessions, their trees counted and reckoned for their worth, their beasts and birds preserved for the hunt or for their owners’ pleasure. The rivers flowed in chains: locks and quays and bridges. The hills were tamed things, crowned with cities.
Worse still was the silence. People lined the ways to see him pass; came, it was evident, from many days’ journey to look on their emperor. And when he was before them, they would not meet his eyes. They would not look at him at all, or cheer his passing, or speak when he spoke to them, but fell mute and bowed to the ground.
o0o
“All I see of them are their rumps,” he said. “Their rumps, and the backs of their heads. How am I supposed to learn to know them?”
There would be no camps under the stars in the Golden Empire. On this, his first night in the west, he lodged with the lord of a town called Shon’ai. The man was endurable as Asanians went: old enough and secure enough not to be unduly touchy in his pride. Nor did he seem dismayed to be guesting the emperor himself.
“But he won’t look me in the face,” Estarion said. “What does he think I’ll do to him if he does? Blast him with a glance?”
“It’s their courtesy,” Sidani said. What she was doing in the rooms he had been given, he did not know. She went where she would, did as she chose. Guards seemed to mean little to her, or princely privacy. She was adept at ignoring both.
Estarion was glad of her presence now: it gave him someone to storm at. Servants were no good for that. They cringed and fled. Godri was seeing that the seneldi were properly looked after. Vanyi was nowhere that Estarion could find, which was as well. She had been impossible since she lost the baby, would not open her mind to him, would not let him approach her, would accept nothing from him, no comfort, no anger, not even bleak endurance.
Sidani was the same as she always was. She sat in a chair like a throne, feet tucked up, hands folded in her lap, and watched him snarl and pace.
He came to a halt in front of her. He was breathing hard, somewhat to his surprise. The air was wrong here. Suffocating, even under the sky.
“You have a horror of closed spaces,” she said. “You’ll loathe Kundri’j Asan.”
“What choice do I have?” he demanded.
She shrugged. “You could have been born a peasant’s brat.”
He dropped to the carpet at her feet. “No,” he said. “I would have hated that, and wanted more. I wasn’t made to be anything less than I am. Am I growing wise, do you think? Or simply arrogant?”
“You were born arrogant. Wisdom . . . you’ll have it someday, if you live so long.”
“Not now?”
“Now,” she said, “you are a spoiled child. A dusty, dirty, sweaty one, who would profit from a bath.”
She failed to make him angry, though she had made a noble effort. He bared his teeth at her. “I know why I keep you. To keep me humble.”
“No man keeps me. I stay because I choose. To keep you humble.”
He laughed. He did not get up at once, though a bath was a glorious temptation. “You keep me sane too, I think. Everyone else is so strange. Walking soft as cats, as if I’ll go wild and tear them to pieces. Vanyi . . .” His throat tightened. “Vanyi shuns me. Because my body betrayed her.”
“Not yours, youngling. She’s not the mage she thought she was. She finds that hard to forgive in herself.”
“Does she think I don’t care? It was my baby, too.”
“Did you want it as badly as she did?”
He could not answer that. He wanted an heir, yes. He had been bred and raised to want one. “It would be terribly impolitic, if my mother’s to be believed. Then I wouldn’t need an Asanian empress.”
“That could be dealt with. There’s the Sunborn’s law, true, that the firstborn of the Sun’s heir, whether son or daughter, is heir to the throne. But there’s nothing in the law that the child’s mother must be empress.”
“It would be awkward if she weren’t.” He pulled himself to his feet. “They’re waiting for me now. Hordes of them. Women of every size and shape, but only one color. I won’t eat till I’ve passed them in review.”
“It’s not as bad as that,” Sidani said.
“Do you want to wager on it?”
She said nothing. He took odd comfort in her disapproval. She did not want him to marry for cold politics. She cared nothing at all for such things.
“Only remember,” she said. “They’re people, not devils. Even if they do have yellow eyes.”
He lowered his own. “I can’t help it.”
“Nonsense.”
“They killed my father.”
“A demented fool killed your father. Stop whining, child. He died, and that was an ill thing. You killed his murderer with magery, and that was a worse thing. It’s none of it Asanion’s fault.”
“I don’t need to listen to you,” he said through gritted teeth. “I hear it from my mother, I hear it from Iburan, I hear it endlessly and forever, and it doesn’t matter. Here, in my belly, I know what I know. Asanion will be the death of me.”
“Poppycock,” said Sidani. “You’ve stewed it in your innards till it’s gone to bile, and not a drop of truth in it. You should have stayed here till you were whole again, or come back as soon as you
could ride.”
“How do you know what is truth and what is not?”
She smiled her terrible, sweet smile. “I’ve lived a little longer than you, child. There’s nothing wrong with Asanion that a good scrubbing and a blast of fresh air won’t mend.”
“Maybe,” he said, “I’ll take the roof off the palace in Kundri’j. What will people say to that?”
“That you’re stark mad. But they already know as much. You’re Sun-blood.”
She could drive him to the edge of rage, and back again to laughter. He bowed to her, all the way to the floor, and came up laughing, and went to his bath in better spirits than he could have imagined, his first night in Asanion.
o0o
The bath was none so ill. They wanted to shave him smooth, face and body, but he had been warned of that. The servants were men and boys, not women or eunuchs. Except one, maybe; he was beardless past the age one might expect. But he was the lightest-handed, and when the razors approached, he turned them aside before Estarion could do more than roll an eye at them. He even ventured a smile, which Estarion found himself returning.
When he was clean, bathed and oiled till he purred like Ulyai, they offered him garments. Not the ten robes of the imperial majesty, but a simple three, underrobe and inner robe and loose outer robe, all of them white, and the outermost embroidered with gold. It was not an insult, he judged, but a gesture toward his outland sensibilities. They fit him well, which was interesting. In the east he was middling tall; in the north a stripling. Here he rose to a towering height, even unshod as kings walked in their palaces.
Lord Miyaz’s servants held up a mirror, a wonder of a thing, a shield of polished silver taller than Estarion by a full handspan. His face had grown no prettier since the last time he looked, though the beard lent it a degree of distinction. His eyes were a brighter gold than he remembered, bright as coins. Time was when he would have demanded a hat or a hood, to cast them in shadow.
Tonight he went bareheaded. The tallest servant bound his brows with a thin band of gold, confining his hair with no more than that, no plaits, no cords, no chains of gems.
He would never look Asanian, however they tried. Not with that face or that midnight skin. The robes made him seem even taller and narrower than he was. He was as exotic as a sunbird in a flock of finches.
He could hunch and creep and hope to pass unnoticed. Or he could stand straight, walk light and haughty, tilt his chin at its most rakish angle. Born arrogant, was he? Then let them see it, and think what thoughts they pleased.
The eunuch, who seemed to be the chief of servants, led him out of the baths and down a passage. He barely noticed its furnishings, if it had any. The air was full of mingled perfumes, amurmur with sweet voices.
He halted. “These are the women’s quarters.”
The eunuch regarded him without comprehension. He had spoken Gileni unthinking. He shifted to Asanian. “This is not the way to the place of feasting. Why are you leading me among the women?”
His guide bowed to the floor. “Majesty, forgive. The lady empress, she commanded—”
“So she would.” Estarion lifted the boy—man—whatever he was—with hands that tried to be gentle. “Go on, then. Lead me where she bade you.”
o0o
It was a hall of feasting after all, with tables laid, gleaming in the light of many lamps, and flowers banked about them, filling the air with their scents; but no food, no drink in the cups of gold and silver. And no sign of his mother.
She was keeping herself out of it, then, or hiding behind an arras and a mage-wall, watching unseen. Wise lady. The feast stood arrayed before him, trembling or steady, white with terror or blushing scarlet with embarrassment, but every one gowned and jeweled till surely she could not move, and wrapped in veils to the eyes. Yellow eyes in plenty, but dark, too, under brows of every color from dun to ivory.
No more than anyone else in this damnable country would they look into his face. But they darted glances. He caught a murmur: “How dark he is! And so tall. Can you imagine—”
The rest of it was drowned in a man’s voice. “Sire,” said the lord of Shon’ai, “for your majesty’s pleasure, we have gathered a garden of flowers. Will you look on them? Will you taste their sweetness?”
Slow heat crawled up Estarion’s face. He raised his chin a fraction. “I see a swathe of veils,” he said, “and eyes too shy to look on me.”
Lord Miyaz gestured sharply. The ladies glanced at one another. Slowly first one and then another raised a hand to her veil.
They were beautiful. He granted them that. Most were too smoothly plump for his taste, and some seemed barely out of childhood. Only one or two dared lift their eyes, and that only for a moment.
He walked down the line of them. They stood like troops on review, with the same air of mingled pride and panic. This was the battle they had been bred for, this war of beauty against beauty, lineage against lineage, and all triumph to the fairest.
He horrified them with his size, with his strangeness, with the rank he bore and the power he embodied. His head was aching. One of them at least was a mage. Spy, he thought. He could not muster the proper degree of wariness.
Even if he did not single out an empress, he was expected to choose one for his night’s pleasure. That much of Asanian custom he knew.
His gorge rose. He came to the end of the line, turned. They watched him as birds would watch a cat: the same stunned fascination, the same willing acceptance of what must be. He was the predator and they were prey. So the world was made.
He mustered a smile. It was not, he hoped, too ghastly to look at. “My thanks,” he said, “my lord and ladies. How can I choose any single lady from amid so much beauty? Will you dine with me, all of you, and enchant me with your company?”
The response was a little time in coming. He held his breath. If he had given insult, he would hear of it to infinity.
Then his lordship said, “The emperor is most kind, and most politic. Those men who wait without—”
“I’ll go to them later,” Estarion said quickly. “Bid them sit to their own dinner. When the wine comes round, I’ll share it with them.”
Thus providing himself with an escape. Lord Miyaz saw it, surely, but he bowed with every evidence of approval. “Wisely chosen, majesty.”
He smote his hands together. The eunuch bowed himself out. Miyaz remained, smiling, watchful, alert to the emperor’s every need.
A prince’s training had its uses. It taught a man to endure the excruciations of courtesy, to be charming when he would have preferred to turn and bolt. He spoke to every lady in that hall, however shy she was, however weary he grew of yellow faces, yellow eyes, yellow curls under silken veils. He put aside grimly his longing for a sweet dark face, or a sweet white one, sea-eyed, autumn-haired, and a body as supple as it was slender, and a voice that had never learned to giggle in chorus.
He left them smoothly enough, he hoped, to forget for a moment that he had chosen none of them for his bed or his bride. Their fathers and brothers and guardians were waiting for him, schooled to patience, and none quite bold enough to ask the question that burned in every mind. Frayed though he was about the edges, he had power left to charm them as he had their women.
o0o
Vanyi was not in the chamber when he came to it. He had dared to hope she would be, at least to quarrel with him. A quarrel would have lightened his spirit.
There were guards on the door: his own, he had been pleased to see when he came in, with eyes that would meet his, and minds that did not quail in fear of his presence. “Find Vanyi,” he said to redheaded Alidan, “and tell her I’d welcome her company.”
Alidan shifted his feet and looked uncomfortable. “My lord—”
“And when,” Estarion wanted to know, “have I ever been ‘my lord’ to you, except when you were up to something?”
“My lord,” Alidan said again. And when Estarion glared: “Starion, Vanyi said to tell you. She won
’t come to you at night any longer. If you want a woman, she said, you know where to find a sufficiency of them.”
The world narrowed to a single, bitter point.
Alidan, red Gileni and no coward, flattened against the wall. His face was grey under the bronze.
Estarion spoke softly. “That’s not Vanyi speaking. That’s my lady mother.”
“It is Vanyi,” Alidan said. “Believe it, Starion. She told me herself.”
“With my mother at her back, forcing her.”
“No,” said Alidan. “She was alone, and she wasn’t under binding. Whoever put her up to it, she wanted it. She said so.”
“Bring her to me.”
“She won’t come,” said Alidan. “She said that, too. You’ll sleep alone, or you’ll sleep with a yellow woman.”
Estarion took a step forward. Alidan flattened further. But Estarion had no mind to strike him, and none, upon reflection, to confront Vanyi. She would be guarded with iron and with magic, and if she said she would not see him, then nothing short of a mage-blast would win him through to her.
“Coward,” he said to the wall she had raised about herself. It returned no answer.
12
This coldness, this thing that was growing in herself, was nothing that Vanyi could stop. There had been warmth once, gladness, mind that met mind and knew no walls between them. Loss of the child had altered everything: broken, darkened, marred it perhaps beyond mending.
She loved Estarion still, down at the bottom of things. But it was very far down, and the heart that beat there was a tiny thing, globed as if in glass. When mind or tongue shaped his name, the light about it was warm. But when her eyes looked on him, the wall came up between them. He was other, stranger, emperor. His touch, she knew, would burn.
So he had seemed when she first came to Endros: alien, exotic, not quite human. The quick light wit that masked the knots of old scars, the sudden temper, the smaller things—the way he stretched all over when he woke, like a cat; or the turn of his head when he was startled; or his inexplicable and quite insatiable fondness for sour apples—were walled in with her love for him. She could not touch them.
