Arrows of the Sun

by Judith Tarr

  “Spoken like a priest,” said Korusan, “and like a king.” He smiled. He felt Estarion shiver. “If I am not clad and veiled very soon,” he said, “every servant in the palace will know my face.”

  Estarion let him go. Korusan paused, considering wisdom and unwisdom, and prices, and velvet over steel. Abruptly he spun, seeking the refuge of his veils.

  o0o

  It had all come upon Estarion at once: Toruan’s message, Korusan’s fever, his mother and Iburan proving him a fool beyond fools, then Korusan again, with death lodged in his bones. He did not pause to think. He had paused too long, thought far too much, until there was no reflection left in him at all.

  It had taken what magic was left him. He found none, though he delved deep. He was empty, ringing hollow. There was not even pain to mark where it had been.

  What stirred in him, he told himself, was relief. An emperor did not need to be a mage, still less the poor maimed thing that he had been for so long. He had wealth to hire the greatest of masters, power to compel obedience even from the likes of the Lord Iburan of Endros, who danced the dance of dark and light with the empress mother of Keruvarion.

  His servants were there to bathe and robe him, as they were every morning. He allowed the bath. He forbade the robes. When he received the Regent of Asanion, it was in royal richness, but such as it was reckoned in the princedoms of the east: embroidered coat, silken trousers, boots heeled with bronze and inlaid with gold. His hair was tidily plaited, his beard cut short.

  Firaz seemed undismayed to see his emperor gone back to outland habits. “I shall see to the Court this morning,” he said, “and assure them that your majesty is well.”

  “No need,” said Estarion. “I’ll tell them myself. Some of them will be needing to muster forces, armed and otherwise. It’s time we dealt with this little matter of rebellion.”

  “Majesty,” said Firaz, “there is no need to vex yourself. All that need be done, your servants shall do.”

  “I vex myself,” said Estarion, “sitting in this silk-lined cage, hearing nothing but what my servants judge fit for me to hear.”

  “Ah,” said Firaz. “That one shall be dealt with also, and swiftly.”

  Estarion’s smile widened. “He already has, my lord. I saw to it last night. I trust there will be no additions to my undertaking.”

  The Regent inclined his head a fraction. Estarion watched him narrowly, but he did not look like a man startled in guilt.

  Firaz had waged long war to make an Asanian emperor of an outland savage, but he was an honest man. God and goddess knew, if he was either traitor or enemy, it was much too late to escape.

  Even in Asanion an emperor had to place his trust in something. Well indeed: Estarion would trust his loyal adversary. “When I came to Kundri’j,” he said, “I rode at speed, and I kept the company of princes. In that, I think, I was mistaken. Tomorrow when I ride out, I ride as I was used to ride in Keruvarion, among my people, teaching them to know my face.”

  Firaz drew a sharp breath: a great betrayal, for an Asanian. “Majesty! That is deadly dangerous.”

  “So,” said Estarion, “it is.” He sat back, stroking his new-clipped beard. That was tension, but maybe the Regent would not know it. “I will go, Firaz. You will go with me or remain, as you will. But Kundri’j has held me long enough. It’s time I saw the rest of Asanion again, and reminded it that it needs no dreams or prophets.”

  “In the teeth of winter, my lord? Will you not wait until the spring comes round again?”

  “Will the siege in Ansavaar wait for a prettier season? I’m going to break it, my lord. I’d like to find a living city when I go in, and not a hill of starveling corpses.”

  “My lord, you cannot do that.”

  Estarion almost laughed. “Am I the emperor, my lord Firaz?”

  Firaz bowed to that, but his back was stiff. “You are the emperor, my lord Estarion. And the emperor docs not ride to battle.”

  “Then that tale is a lie which tells of Ziad-Ilarios at the battle of Induverran, and he not only emperor but Son of the Lion, of the pure and ancient blood.”

  “His heir was gone,” said Firaz. “His empire was overrun. He had no choice.”

  “He had other sons—half a hundred of them, or so they say. And he put on armor and rode to war.”

  “You have no son,” Firaz said, “nor any hope of one, if you are killed in pursuit of this folly.”

  “If I die,” said Estarion, “I’ll die free and sane, and not mewling like a beast. Which I shall be, good my lord, if I am pent much longer in this palace.”

  Firaz opened his mouth as if to reply, but shut it again. He bowed low. Perhaps it was contempt that held his face so woodenly still; but Estarion thought that it was not. He was afraid for his emperor.

  His emperor was touched, but he was not going to yield for that. “Now,” he said. “The Court.”

  o0o

  The Court astonished him. It was barely shocked to be addressed direct, and it received his commands with aplomb. It seemed like Firaz to have been expecting something of the sort, though maybe not so soon.

  Estarion could not tell among the bland faces, who was pleased to see him abandon the safety of walls and guards. Some, maybe, wondered if he were being subtle, to lure out his assassins. Others would be certain that he courted his death.

  So he did. If Asanion killed him, he wanted to die under the sky, not smothered in silks.

  And maybe he would live. Maybe the rumors were all lies, and the rebellion a falsehood, a distillation of discontent that had not come yet to open battle.

  If Asanion had a war-council to match that in Keruvarion, no one would admit to it. The emperor spoke, he issued commands, they were obeyed.

  It was convenient, in its way. No one but Firaz dared to tell the emperor what he could not do.

  “It will of course be done,” Estarion said, smiling sweetly. “Yes, my lords?”

  None of them protested. None even met his eyes.

  o0o

  “Will they do it, do you think?” Estarion wondered when he had gone back to his lair again. “Or will they conveniently forget?”

  “They will not forget,” said Korusan.

  Estarion slanted an eye at the Olenyas. He was robed and veiled and armed as always, no difference in him that Estarion could detect, but his nearness was warm on Estarion’s skin. And only yesterday he had been a stranger, a voice without a face, cool and remote.

  “What,” Estarion mocked him, but gently, “will you hunt the laggards down yourself, and make them obey or die?”

  “Yes,” said Korusan.

  “Do you ever laugh?” Estarion asked him. “Or dance for the simple joy of being alive?”

  There was a difference after all: Korusan would meet his eyes and not slide away. “I dance,” he said, “with swords.”

  “Everything you do is about killing,” Estarion said.

  “I am Olenyas,” said Korusan.

  Estarion sighed. He knew every inch of that body, and every scar on it; and he had enough of his own to know what weapons had caused most of them. He did not know Korusan at all. Except that he was doomed to die young. And that he danced with swords.

  He would ride with Estarion, he and a company of his fellows. The Olenyai had not questioned their emperor’s command, or even rolled an eye at it. They did flaunt it a little in the faces of his Varyani Guard, which marked them human after all, and which made the Guardsmen snarl. If Estarion could persuade those warring warriors to mingle freely and in friendship, he would have no difficulty with the rest of his twofold empire.

  The servants had left Estarion with his shadow and a tableful of delicacies, none of which Estarion was minded to taste. He would not rest before the sun went down, or sleep tonight. There was too much to do. But for an hour, because the emperor did not eat in company, he was granted a respite.

  He held out his hand. “Come here,” he said.

  He knew a moment of exqui
site uncertainty, mounting to terror. Korusan was Asanian, and Olenyas, and incalculable. He might have meant not love at all, in the night, but something like war, and conquest: Asanion conquering Keruvarion in the bed and body of its emperor. If that was so, then he would refuse to be commanded; he would spurn Estarion, laugh, call him a lovestruck fool.

  So he was; so he could not help but be. He was besotted with a pair of golden eyes, an ivory face, a heart as gentle as it was prickly-fierce.

  Then the Olenyas came. He did not laugh; he did not cast Estarion’s weakness in his face. He was less savage than he had been in the night, and yet more hungry, as if he had been starving and here was his feast. It was wonderful and terrible, like riding a storm-wind, or dancing with swords.

  He could dance. Naked first in Estarion’s arms, clad in nothing but the stone that had been Estarion’s gift; robed again after with swords in hand, whirling from shaft of sunlight to shaft of shadow. Estarion found swords of his own and the slight protection of trousers, and waited in the light. Korusan spun out of the dark, swirl of robes, flash of steel.

  Estarion laughed. Korusan was silent, but his eyes were burning gold. They danced the dance of steel and blood, swift, swifter, swiftest, and never a pause or a shrinking, though the blades were deadly keen and the dance in bright earnest.

  They both knew it. One false move, one misstep, and blood would flow. Now Estarion pressed harder; now Korusan.

  Korusan was a fraction the quicker. Estarion was a shade the stronger. He had the advantage in reach. Korusan could slide in beneath it if he let slip his guard, and slide away again.

  Estarion was tiring. He had moldered in the palace too long; he had lost his edge. Sweat dripped into his eyes, blinding him. Korusan seemed as cool as ever, but Estarion heard his breath coming fast.

  Without warning Estarion dropped both swords and sprang under and round the wall of steel, sweeping up the startled boy, whirling him about.

  He could have cloven Estarion asunder. Maybe he considered it, but then he let fall his own swords.

  Estarion set him down. The boy was furious—spitting with it. “Idiot! Lunatic! You could have been killed.”

  Estarion grinned, gulping air. “Oh, come. Don’t sulk. It’s no sin to be caught by surprise.”

  “I was not,” said Korusan. From the sound of it, his teeth were clenched. “Had I been, you would have died.”

  “Not likely,” said Estarion. He was gasping, running with sweat, beautifully content. “Gods! I’ve gone soft. We’ll dance again, Yelloweyes. Every morning and every night, until I’ve got my wind back. Then we’ll dance at noon, too, and whenever else there’s time for it. And when we come to fight—”

  Korusan was blushing. It could be nothing else. Head down, eyes down, and heat coming off him in waves.

  Estarion took pity on him. “Here, eat, while I wash the stink off. You’re too thin by half.”

  “You are a rack of bones,” said Korusan. But he did not try to hold Estarion back. When Estarion looked again, the feast was somewhat diminished, and Korusan had a cup in his hand, sipping something that smelled of thornfruit and spices.

  34

  Vanyi was at great pains not to betray her honest opinion, which was that the two in front of her looked like children caught in mischief. That one was Avaryan’s high priest in Endros and the other the empress mother, only made it worse.

  She made herself speak calmly. “You should have told him.”

  “Certainly we should have,” said Iburan. He seemed torn between rage and laughter.

  “One could argue that he should have been less blind,” said the empress. She was pacing while the others watched, a restless panther-stride so like her son’s that Vanyi’s throat closed. “Whatever our failing, its result is interesting to say the least. I wondered if he would ever stir, once the palace had him in its net.”

  “More blindness?” Vanyi asked.

  The empress spun on her heel. Her glance was sharp. “No, I did not know that it would do this to him. I hoped that it would heal his scars; that I had raised him man enough to rule as he was born to rule.”

  “Maybe,” said Iburan, “it only needed time. He rides in the morning to settle the rebellion in the south.”

  That had the smoothness of long repetition; and the empress’ reply, the harshness of long resistance. “He is not riding. He is running, as he always runs. Will he never learn that he cannot escape himself?”

  “You do him an injustice, I think,” Iburan said mildly.

  “Then let him prove it to me!” cried Merian.

  Both of the others let the echoes die. When Iburan seemed disinclined to break the newborn silence, Vanyi said, “There is something else, my lady. Isn’t there?”

  At first Merian did not answer. She looked young this evening, young and angry.

  Vanyi did not like her better for it, but it was easier to think of her as a woman and not as a figure of awe on a golden throne: a woman with a son whom she loved to distraction and sometimes despaired of, and a lover whom she could not marry. When she was empress regent she could not set any lesser man in her royal husband’s place, not without forsaking her regency. Now that she had laid aside that office she was free to take a husband, but she needed the emperor’s consent. And that, thought Vanyi, she was not likely to get.

  That dilemma at least, Vanyi would never need to face. Everyone knew where Estarion spent his nights. If one of his women had not conceived a son, one would do it soon enough.

  But not, she realized with a small shock, while he rode to the rebellion. Asanian ladies did not leave their guarded walls. They did not ride to war, even to wait in tents for their lords to return. And they were ladies, his concubines; not slaves or courtesans. They would remain behind.

  Merian’s voice startled her out of her reflection. She had to struggle to remember what she had asked, to understand the answer. “There is something else. He has done somewhat to his power. I would say that he had slain the last of it, but if he had, he would be dead.”

  Vanyi’s heart clenched. Iburan spoke quietly, calmly. “He buries it deep, but it lives. Or, as you say, he would have died.”

  “When he came this morning,” Merian said, “when he stood above us, I never even sensed him. It was as if he was not there. My body’s senses knew him, but to my power he was invisible.”

  “Shields,” said Vanyi.

  “Shields leave a trace,” said Merian.

  “He’s never been like anyone else,” Vanyi said. “Why shouldn’t he have found a new way to hide himself?”

  “Completely?” Merian demanded of her. “So completely that he is not there at all?”

  “Consider,” said Vanyi. “When he was here before, he nearly died, and his power was all but destroyed. He needed years to heal even as much as he did. Then all at once, before he was properly seated on his throne, he came back to this place where he lost his power. You know how he is inside of walls. These walls are higher and thicker than any he’s ever known, and his faithful servants have taught him that he’ll never leave them again. That’s false, even he should know that, but how sensible can he be when he’s locked in a cage? I doubt he even knew he had the key, until this morning.”

  “Did we give it to him, do you think?” asked Iburan wryly.

  “You opened his eyes to something,” Vanyi said. She sighed. “You’ll pardon me for asking, but why did you call me here? I’m not his bedmate any longer. I can’t bring him back to hand.”

  “Can’t you?”

  She rounded on Iburan. “What are you asking?”

  “I think you know,” he said.

  “I won’t,” she said. “I will—not—take another woman’s leavings.”

  “Jealousy,” he said, “is a simple woman’s luxury.”

  “I’m a fisherman’s daughter from Seiun. As,” Vanyi said with bitter precision, “you and your lady have never failed to remind me. I am not and never will be empress.”

  “W
hat you are,” said Merian, “is his beloved. He loves you still. Never doubt it. If he does as his duty commands, and does it with something resembling pleasure, who are you to fault him?”

  “Maybe,” said Vanyi, “I love him too much to let you use me, and him, as you are suggesting. You want me to lead him by the privates, straight out of this rebellion and back to his harem and his properly pedigreed ladies.”

  “No,” said Merian without perceptible anger. “I wish you to keep him safe: to guard him with your power, since he seems to have lost the capacity to guard himself.”

  “And lead him back to his ladies.” Vanyi pressed palms to her aching brow. “My father warned me, you know. ‘Never get too close to the gentry,’ he said. ‘Gentry aren’t like us. They’re cold as fish and treacherous as the sea, and when all’s done and said, they’ll look first to their damned honor and then to themselves, and never mind the blood they’ve shed or the hearts they’ve broken.’”

  She looked up into their faces. Iburan’s was gentle, as if he could understand. Merian’s was eagle-fierce. “Sometimes I wish I’d married that fat lout down by the harbor.”

  “You would be miserable,” said the empress.

  “My misery would be simple,” Vanyi said. “It wouldn’t be this hopeless tangle.”

  “You would have flung yourself into the sea.”

  Merian’s lack of sympathy was bracing, in its way. Vanyi hated her with hate so perfect that it lacked even heat. “I’ll force myself on him. I’ll ride with him. Will that be enough for you?”

  “Certainly,” said Merian. “His heir must be of Asanian blood. I bid you remember that.”

  “I never forget it,” Vanyi said. “Not for one moment.”

  o0o

  Iburan followed her out of the empress’ receiving room. She ignored him, difficult as that could be.

  In the outer chamber a eunuch trotted past them. He wore white and gold: emperor’s livery, with the shoulder-knot of a messenger.

  Vanyi paused. Everything in her wanted to be out of this place, back to her temple and her duties and her peace, but instinct held her where she was.