Peter barely managed to stem the flow of words. "It looks appetizing. It will, er, make a good New Year meal."
The cook beamed again. "You understand! It is a meal fit to be served to the Spirit herself, should she come down to care for her children. And it took so little time to make: a roasting over the fire, with the drippings saved, and then the drippings were mixed with flour and goat's milk and just a touch of honey, and then I poured over it the dried apples I had saved from the harvest—"
Peter had seen Andrew flinch at the word "apples"; he hastily said, "It looks delicious. I'm sure I'm quite fortunate to have had you prepare it."
The cook clapped his hands together and held them to his breast, as though only manful effort kept his heart from springing forward. "Ah, but when I have such ingredients, how can I go wrong? Apples from the orchard of Lord Carle, goat's milk from your father's nearest estate, flour grown and milled in the finest farming country in the world – the Central Provinces – and then, as the crowning touch of it all, a songbird from the Chara's very own garden!"
Peter stared at the tiny little bird on the platter; then his gaze moved over to Andrew. The slave had ducked his head, and he was toeing the floor.
Peter cleared his throat. "Well, we don't want such a splendid meal to go cold."
These were, perhaps, the only words he could have spoken that would have persuaded the effusive cook to leave. "Of course, of course!" the cook said, bowing as he backed up. "And you will tell me, afterwards, if it was to your liking?"
"Certainly," said Peter firmly. "But I have no doubts that it will be a meal for . . . Well, a meal fit for the Chara To Be."
The cook kissed his palms and then turned the palms outward, as though flinging his kiss to the entire world. "It will be, Lord Peter, I promise you! Such ingredients! And on such a special day!"
"Do you celebrate the New Year in Daxis?" Peter asked, curious, as Andrew opened the door to let the cook out.
"But indeed!" The cook's smile shone brighter than the many candles in the room. "This is the day on which the Song Spirit sung her first lullaby to the Daxion people. May you and your servant" – here he gave a little bow to Andrew, so overwhelmed by the moment as to ignore the slave-tunic – "receive all the blessings and joy that the Spirit sends you. Such ingredients!" And with that final, ultimate summary, he disappeared from view.
Andrew closed the door. He looked at Peter. Peter looked at him. Then they both smiled.
"'Such ingredients!'" repeated Peter, keeping his voice low so that it could not be heard outside the chamber. "Andrew, you are a marvel. Where did you get the bird?"
Still smiling, Andrew came forward and began to meticulously carve the tiny feast-bird. "In the inner garden. He told you."
"But how? You didn't have time to set a trap, and you don't own a dagger."
Andrew's smile faded, and he was silent a minute, long enough for Peter to remember that Koretian boys his age had usually already received their daggers of manhood. Then the slave said, "It was trapped in a thorn bush. When I came upon it, it was fluttering its wings, trying to escape."
"And you captured and killed it?"
"Yes, of course." Andrew turned a puzzled gaze upon Peter. "What would you have done?"
"I'd have let it go free."
Andrew said nothing. He simply looked at Peter, a long look. Then he turned his attention back to carving the bird.
Peter realized then how rude his response had been. He added quickly, "But I'm too sentimental. My father often says so. He says I need to learn how to wield the Sword of Vengeance. Maybe I should take lessons from you."
"I didn't use a blade." Andrew kept his eye on the platter; he was moving the dried apples from the platter. "I wrung its neck."
"Oh." Peter felt faint at the words, which was foolish, for every day he ate meat that had been slaughtered for him. "I thought you didn't hunt when you lived in Koretia?"
"Killing poultry isn't hunting. My mother used to have me buy live pullets from the poulterer, kill them, pluck them, and resell them at a higher price to noblemen who couldn't be bothered to have their servants do the task. It brought us in a little extra money. —There." Andrew finished dividing the meat. He had placed all of the apples onto one of the plates, Peter noticed.
Peter came forward and, knowing which serving must be his, picked up the plate with the apples. "I suppose," he said, trying to keep envy out of his voice, "that you could have used a blade if you wanted. I mean, you would have been trained at bladeplay earlier than I'm being trained, wouldn't you?"
Andrew sent him an unreadable look. "Yes. But I couldn't wear a dagger of manhood now, you know, even if I were free."
"Oh?" Peter eyed him curiously, but decided not to pursue this particular line of enquiry. Andrew could get touchy sometimes, talking about what he could or could not do in the palace. "Did you own a blade once, though? And what kind of blade was it?" As he spoke, he moved over to the bed and sat down, preparing to be enlightened.
o—o—o
The discussion of blades went on for a long time; Andrew knew a good deal more about the subject than Peter did. He spoke about leaf-bladed swords, double-edged daggers, wasp-waisted blades, razor-sharp thigh-daggers . . .
Inevitably, they worked their way round to the topic of jokes about blades. And in this manner Peter was finally able to raise the subject that he had most wanted to talk about with Andrew.
"Girls," he said, "are more mysterious than a thousand Case volumes written in Railik."
He looked up and found that Andrew was giving his shadow-smile again. With much effort, Peter had managed to persuade Andrew that it would be better for them to eat on the bed than on the floor. Now Andrew was perched on the very edge of the bed, reaching forward to pick final bits of meat from his plate, while Peter, left with plenty of room, sprawled out on his stomach atop the blanket.
"I suppose it's because I never knew my mother," he said, staring down at the blanket as he ran his fingers over the yarn. "I don't remember my wet-nurse well, and I never had a dry-nurse; slave-servants looked after my needs as soon as I was old enough to be weaned. The people I've been around the most have all been men. But I give witness, I'm sure that I would have found girls mysterious even if I'd been surrounded by them all my life. I'll be talking to them, and they'll start giggling when I haven't made any jokes, and they'll get all teary-eyed when I haven't said anything sad, and they'll keep blinking, as though we were standing in sunlight—"
"They're trying to make you notice their eyelashes."
Peter looked up at his slave. "Are they?"
Andrew nodded, worldly-wise at age eleven.
"Well, then, why don't they just say, 'See what beautiful eyelashes I have'?"
Andrew laughed then. It was the first time Peter had ever heard him laugh; his chuckle was softer than the flames eating the logs nearby.
Peter smiled. "Oh, well, I suppose they couldn't say that. But girls really are like a book written in a foreign tongue. It will take me years to figure them out. The only part I'm sure about is that I'll like the mating."
Andrew suddenly stopped smiling. He looked down at his plate, picking at it with his knife, as though food remained there.
Peter hesitated, wondering whether he ought to change the subject. He knew what his father would think of him discussing this matter with a slave. But there were certain things he just couldn't ask his father – things that Andrew might know about, since he seemed to know quite a lot about different subjects.
Peter stared down at the blanket for a minute. Next to his treasures, the blanket was his favorite object in the room; it had been created by an Arpheshian weaver as a gift for the Chara To Be. The blanket showed the Chara's seal: the Balance of Judgment holding the Sword of Vengeance and the Heart of Mercy. The Heart – a fluttering bird with a bleeding breast – made Peter think of the bird that Andrew had trapped and killed. Peter traced his finger across one of the tiny, open-paged books woven ar
ound the seal, wishing that everything in life was as orderly as the Chara's law.
"Andrew," he said, "do you ever dream of girls?"
He looked up again. Andrew had abandoned his plate and was staring at the wall. After a minute, the slave said, "I used to dream of them at home."
"At home?" cried Peter, jerking up onto his elbows in astonishment. "But you were only eight then!" In his chest of treasures was the certificate of transfer of ownership for Andrew, made out to the Chara, since Peter's father was the official owner of the slave. The certificate was signed by Lord Carle, and it provided the date on which Lord Carle had bought the slave, as well as Andrew's date of birth.
Andrew looked at him sidelong. "My mother said I was precocious."
Peter laughed. After a minute, Andrew shadowed a smile. Reaching over, Peter refilled Andrew's water-cup and shoved it in his direction. "Eight years old. All I was thinking of when I was eight was whether I could be High Judge without having to memorize a dozen laws each day." He waited until Andrew had drained the cup and set it down again before adding, "I always thought you were mature for your age."
Andrew looked sidelong at him again. He said nothing. Peter tried to think of a way to get himself past the hurdle of asking the question he wanted to ask.
Andrew filled the gap by saying, his eyes now focussed once again at the wall, "The physician thought that would make a difference."
"Physician? You mean Woods? Or his assistant?" Woods was the palace physician, but he did not deign to tend the slaves; he left that work to one of his many assistants.
"No. A city physician. He never told me his name. He told me . . . he asked me questions. I didn't answer them, but he examined my body, and he seemed to know that I was old for my age. He said it was better for me. It was better that I was just beginning to mature when they did it."
Peter wondered whether his face was as blank as his mind. Glancing at him, Andrew said, "You don't know what I'm talking about, do you?"
"No." He was beginning to think that he had not paid careful enough attention to the talk his father had given him. Was Peter to be examined by a physician too, when he gave signs that he was maturing? Who were "they," and what had they done to Andrew? Would it be done to Peter as well?
Andrew wrapped his arms around his legs. His knuckles were bone-white as he gripped his hands together. Whatever it was that "they" had done, it had evidently not been pleasant. He said finally, "Suppose you own a horse."
"All right," Peter said, resigning himself to another long discussion of farmyard behavior. At the start of their conversation on marital duties, his father had spent quite a long time talking about farm animals before he had finally reached the point of his tale. Peter had been half convinced, before he figured out what the point of the conversation was, that his father was preparing to break the news that he did not consider Peter to be worthy to be his heir, so he had arranged for Peter to supervise of one of the Chara's country estates.
"And the previous owner wants to make the horse into a gelding." Andrew's gaze remained fixed on the wall.
"Yes?" Peter prompted, trying to follow the path of Andrew's thought.
"If he does it when the colt is quite young, the colt is just a gelding. The colt can't do anything. But if the owner waits till the horse is older, when the horse is starting to become a stallion, he . . . it's still a gelding. It can't mate. It can't . . . insert its blade into a mare. But it can . . . do other things. You see?"
"Oh, yes." Peter did not, in fact, have the least notion what Andrew was talking about, but it was hard to admit outright that he had paid so little attention to what the Chara had told him. Perhaps, somewhere in the law books, there was a passage that talked about colts and geldings and stallions, which would help him make sense of what Andrew had just said.
Working his way back to the last part of the conversation he had been able to understand, Peter asked, "So do you still dream about girls?"
Again that look out of the corner of the eye. "Occasionally." Then: "Quite a lot, actually."
Peter sighed as he rested his chin upon the back of his hands, which were flat against the blanket. "I only started dreaming about them this year. Do you . . ." He licked his lips in a nervous twitch before asking, "Do you dream about mating with them?"
"Sometimes." Andrew's voice was still cautious, but he was looking straight at Peter now.
"I dream about that a lot," Peter confessed. "I wondered whether anyone else did."
Andrew seemed absorbed in the conversation now; he turned his body to face Peter. "I suppose lots of people dream about things they can't have."
"Yes." Peter sighed. He would have to wait until he was married, and that might be years from now. Just getting the council's permission to marry would take him months, he had been told. "Well, at least there's the dreams. That's something. Do you ever . . . I mean, do you discover, after you've dreamt . . ." He hesitated again, and then, girding up his courage as though he were ordering his first execution, he asked the question he had not dared ask his father.
Thankfully, Andrew's reply was matter-of-fact. "No, but it doesn't signify in my case. It's different for me."
Peter nodded. He forgot sometimes that Andrew was three years younger than himself. Even being mature for his age, Andrew would not have yet reached that stage, Peter supposed. "But for me . . ." he prompted.
"For you, it means you're ready to beget children." Andrew, as always, had the information Peter needed.
"Oh." He thought about this. He had always assumed that he would not be ready to sire children until he came of age, but he supposed that was why his father had decided to hold the discussion now, rather than wait until Peter was sixteen. "I think I can manage that."
His voice must have sounded doubtful, for Andrew laughed. Peter grinned up at him. "You know what I mean. I don't mean giving my wife a child, but . . . all the rest of it. The mating part. It doesn't sound as though it would be difficult. Actually . . ." He felt his cheeks begin to grow warm. "I'm actually looking forward to it. Does that make me precocious too?"
"It makes you ready to marry." Andrew smiled at him.
"Oh, no." Peter shook his head. "No, not at all. Not till I can figure out what the pattern is to when girls giggle. I don't suppose there's a law which covers that, is there?"
Andrew laughed again, and Peter, relieved that the hard part of the conversation was over, sat up. He had other questions, but he no longer feared that Andrew would be scandalized by having the Chara To Be consult him on such matters. After all, Andrew must have thought about such matters himself, since he was a boy too. Placing both their plates onto the sideboard, Peter said, "I suppose that you'll marry as soon as you can?"
Andrew went rigid.
It was like seeing a soft clay ornament suddenly turn into the diamond-hard Sword of Vengeance. Every bone in his body, every piece of flesh, turned adamantine. All the laughter had fled from his face.
Peter remembered, too late, that slaves were not permitted to marry. "I meant . . . I didn't mean marry, of course. But I know that some of the slave-men mate with slave-women, so I thought, since you're dreaming about girls . . ."
Andrew's eyes were as dark now as a night-shadowed pit. Peter was just trying to figure out whether he had cast a slur on Andrew's honor by suggesting that the boy would sleep with a girl outside marriage when Andrew leapt up from the bed, so vigorously that the bed shook against the sideboard. Peter's goblet, still filled with the sugar-laden wild-berry wine, tipped over and spilled onto the blanket.
Peter was trying to determine where his face-cloth had gone, so that he could hastily wipe up the liquid, when he became aware that Andrew was no longer standing by the bed. The slave was backing up slowly, his eyes fastened upon Peter in the same horrified expression a man might show if faced with the Sword of Vengeance.
"Andrew!" Peter jumped up from the bed, the ruined blanket forgotten. "What's wrong?"
Andrew did not reply. He had
reached the wall next to the hearth now, and he flattened himself against it, as though trying to hide from danger.
"Andrew, what—?" Peter had reached the other side of the room. On the point of stretching out to touch Andrew, he let his hand fall. His slave was staring at him, as dumb and aghast as a farmyard animal faced with some terrible fate.
"What is it?" whispered Peter.
"I thought you knew." Andrew's voice emerged faintly, as though he were being strangled.
"Knew what?"
"I'm a eunuch."
A bit of log fell, soft into the ashes, sending sparks of flame up the chimney. In the corridor, the guards talked quietly with one another. Beyond the shutters, a mockingbird trilled at the night sky.
The Three Lands Omnibus (2011 Edition) Page 89
