He sat on a nearby bench and motioned Gard to sit beside him. The boy plunked himself down and swung his sandaled feet to and fro above the flagstones. The motion was the only movement of the sultry air.
Andrion wanted to ask how Gath died but thought better of it; he asked instead the compulsory question, “How old are you?”
“I am almost nine.”
No wonder Chrysais had laughed when Andrion accused her of remarrying in haste. But if Gath had been dead for … eight years, why had she just now sent the news to Iksandarun? He shook his head, feeling the skeins of this plot tangle around him once again.
“That,” Gard said, gesturing grandly toward the mountain frowning down upon Orocastria, “is Zind Taurmeni, the gate of Taurmenios. Sometimes you can hear the sacred bull bellowing in its depths.” Andrion nodded. Encouraged, Gard chattered on. “And that mountain there—oh, you cannot see it in the mist this morning—will it rain, do you think?—that is Tenebrio, the ancient shrine. Just beyond is the port of Akrotiri, where Lord Eldrafel was born.”
Andrion glanced over his shoulder; Gard was right, the gauzy sky seemed to have absorbed the flattened shape of the other mountain. Ancient shrine, he repeated to himself. Akrotiri. Eldrafel.
“And the harbor, of course, and the Colossi of the God. That little island on the far side of the harbor, guarding it from the sea, is Al Sitar.”
The left-hand gap between island and mainland was overseen by the winged bulls. But the right-hand gap, as much as Andrion could see of it behind the mist gathering over the harbor, seemed to be open.
Gard followed his eye. “That is a marsh, too shallow for ships. Tall grass and mud and birds. I used to hunt there, when I was little.” The feet stopped swinging. The air was stifling.
“You no longer hunt there?”
“I am the heir to Minras,” the boy said. He did not sound entirely happy with that role.
“Ah …” How to say this? “Your mother told me yesterday that the heir to the throne is always the king’s sister’s son. Which is why Eldrafel is king now.” The “not you” seemed to Andrion to hang in the air.
The boy shrugged resignedly. “But Lord Eldrafel has no sister, no nephew. My mother married him so that he would choose me to be his heir.”
Andrion could not believe Chrysais had married the elegant priest simply to assure Gard’s rank. And Gard, judging by the studied, almost resentful “Lord Eldrafel,” was not overwhelmed either with gratitude or with affection for the cousin who was also his stepfather. It was sobering how much children noticed, even while distorting it by inexperience. What must Ethan or Zefric have made of some of the arguments they had overheard?
Ethan, Andrion repeated. My councilors would not accept my half-sister Sarasvati’s son because he is part Khazyari. Would they accept this appealing child, son of the woman they believe to be my full sister, the prince of a respectable if remote kingdom?
A tangled plot indeed, if that were Chrysais’s game. And it left too much unexplained. Quite casually Andrion asked, “Eldrafel has no family?”
“None at all.” The boy seemed to feel that this was not an undesirable situation. “Gath’s sister Proserfina died having him, and no one knows—” He stopped suddenly, lips clamped, realizing that he knew too much.
“No one knows who Eldrafel’s father is?” Andrion prompted gently.
Gard nodded, his beet-red face hidden by his hair, and whispered, “Actually, the king was fathered by Taurmenios himself, in the sacred precinct on Mount Tenebrio.”
“Yes, yes, of course.” Andrion leaned closer to the child, whispering in turn, “My father was the son of the god Harus.”
“Really?” Gard’s wide eyes were a clear gray, glistening, guileless.
“The gods move subtly,” Andrion assured him. And chuckled to himself, subtly indeed. Bellasteros had been fathered by some probably redheaded passerby in Sabazel. Convenient, to explain a mysterious birth by claiming divine intervention. Especially when plotting to seize power.
The boy eyed Andrion’s shining necklace. The horizon contracted. Strange curling vapors hung over Zind Taurmeni; the island of Al Sitar was only a looming shape. A sea hawk soared above the city and with one raucous cry spun away into nothingness. The clouds began to curdle into lumps and billows, and the pale sunlight ebbed, leaving the terrace in blue shadow. Andrion wiped his forehead. The moist heat was unbearable, and his lungs labored. Leaping up and screaming would not help.
“Has the mountain always smoked like that?” he asked.
Gard considered. “Always. All my life. It is the breath of the god as he labors, forging land from the sea.”
Tembujin emerged from the palace, exchanged stares with Jemail, and inspected the limber branch of a willow tree. Not the quality of the horn and sinew bow he had lost, he seemed to say to himself, but any bow would be better than none.
The Minran kilt and cloak he wore were not purple but brown, with his own dagger nestled at his waist. As he saw Andrion and Gard and turned toward them, his tail of hair curled on his shoulder. Gard gasped, “Is that a demon?”
“Who? Tembujin?” Andrion had to laugh. “I have thought he was.” And quickly, “No, no, he was born on the far steppes, you see.”
“Mm,” said Gard, not quite sure. But still he stood politely and waited to be introduced.
“Tembujin, Khan of Khazyaristan. Gard, ah—Prince of Minras.”
Tembujin bowed. Having children of his own, he knew well how they need to be taken seriously.
“Where is Dana?” Andrion asked.
“Browbeating a serving woman into remaking the dress she was left to wear,” answered Tembujin with a fond if impatient grimace. “I told her that if I could wear a skirt, she could too. But then, you know Dana.”
Oh yes, Andrion thought, I know Dana like a soldier knows when he is transfixed by a spear.
Gard, composed again, asked brightly, “Why would a woman not want to wear a dress?”
“A long story,” Tembujin told him. “Very long.”
Thunder rumbled in the distance. The stones of the palace shuddered. Chrysais swept out of another doorway, tendrils of hair clinging damply to her forehead, her paint and powder glistening. “Gard!” she called.
The boy jumped.
“Gard! You should have been at your lessons by now!”
Gard scowled, and muttered under his breath, “I am old enough to have a male tutor.”
Chrysais’s eye lingered on her son, and her caress was so unaffectedly affectionate that Andrion blinked, disoriented. But already she had handed the boy over to the hatchet-faced woman following her. “Run along now,” she crooned. “Run along.” She turned to the men with a heavy-lashed smile, as taut and lubricious as the weather.
Gard peeked out from behind his governess’s skirts and made a face, a leering mask which was only a slight exaggeration of his mother’s expression.
“I hope he has not been boring you with his little tales,” Chrysais said to Andrion and Tembujin. “He is very imaginative.”
“Not at all,” Andrion returned blandly.
Chrysais shot an evil look at Jemail. The guard was entranced by the clouds coagulating above the palace. He had been too far away to hear anything, even in the heavy stillness before the storm.
It was so still, Andrion realized, that what he had subliminally assumed to be the droning of the bees was really a nascent riot in the city; the sounds of shouts, muffled crashes, running feet, came faintly to his ear. Chrysais’s smile broadened. “You would like to see your men?”
She knows something I do not, Andrion told himself. “Yes. Yes, indeed.”
“Come then.” She spun about, flounces rippling.
If he were a god, he would try striking them all with lightning, just to make something happen. As it was, he might as well check on Niarkos and the others, and take another look at the city. Andrion inhaled, but the breath did not ease his tension. Chrysais looked back over her shoulder, wai
ting.
Andrion said to Tembujin, from the corner of his mouth, “You and Dana see if you can stir things up a bit. That is one of your talents, after all.”
“Gladly,” said Tembujin, with a deep breath of his own. Andrion caught up with Chrysais. She would have had to hasten to keep up with his stride, but, of course, he did not know where they were going, and so followed in an awkward half pace. Tembujin flicked the branch of the willow as he went back inside and tried a brief, courteous nod at Jemail. The guard saluted.
*
Sumitra leaned upon the parapet of her narrow balcony, watching the clouds. Odd how they swirled, clashed, and parted even when the wind was still. They had already lowered enough to blot out the harbor and the skinny little island between it and the sea, and now the city itself was being engulfed by a wave of blue shadow. Thunder rolled around the blotted arch of the sky.
Just as Sumitra turned to go in, she caught a movement in the corner of her eye. She leaned against the parapet, trying to see around the harsh buttress of rock that defined her prison. Down a staircase leading from one chaotic pile of architecture to another walked a man and a woman.
Sumi crushed herself against the stone. It was cold, sapping the warmth from her body, but still she strained outward. Yes, the man was Andrion. The purple cloak and linen kilt were strange, but the lean body, the regal and yet cautious manner, were unmistakable.
One glimpse and he was gone. But his image remained vivid in her mind; he was really here. And the woman with whom he walked? Richly dressed. Immodestly dressed. She slumped back, panting. There was air all around her and none to breathe. If only the storm would break.
The door of the cell opened and Rue entered. Sumitra feigned innocent pleasure in the view. “A beautiful city,” she said. “What is it named?”
Rue evaluated her question. The woman was like a fox, both shy and sly. The woman, Sumi realized, reminded her of someone glimpsed for just a moment, cloaked in shadow… . No matter.
Sumitra came inside, pulling the clips from the heavy coil of hair on the back of her head. “Comb my hair, if you please.” She seated herself on the pillowed chair and shook her hair free. The sleek black waves cascaded down her back. Rue picked up a comb and tentatively passed it through one lock.
Sorry now that she had not cultivated the woman’s confidence on board ship, Sumitra leaned into the touch. But she had been sick so much of the time. Thank Vaiswanara that that part of her pregnancy had passed with the end of the voyage. As for Rue—no time like the present. “What is the name of the city?” Sumi asked again.
Reluctantly, like a miser opening a coffer, Rue replied, “Orocastria.”
“Ah.” The capital of Minras, Sumitra added to herself. Not for nothing had she helped Andrion with letters and maps and accounts. Then the woman he was walking with might be Chrysais. Did she know of Sumitra’s kidnapping?
“How long have you served Eldrafel?” Sumi inquired. She picked up a bronze mirror and inspected the jewel in her nose. At least she was provided with every luxury here. That sprawling structure outside her window must indeed be the palace she had thought it to be.
“My family was born to serve the shrine of Tenebrio. Lord Eldrafel was generous enough to take us with him when he came here.”
“Are you free or slave?” Sumitra asked quietly.
Rue snagged the comb, jerking her hair, and Sumi winced. “It is good to serve the king. I get food, clothing, a clean room. I merit commendation.”
So a slave seeks to reassure herself. Although Sumitra could not imagine Eldrafel commending the gods themselves, she could see him ordering Rue to be reticent. The woman was in thrall to him in more than one way.
Decisively, Sumitra detached the tiny ruby stud from her nostril. “Here,” she said. “This is for you, for serving me so well.”
Rue’s hand lifted and fell. “My thanks, lady. But I cannot.”
“Now, now, why should you not have a small gift?”
“Well …” Rue took the jewel and held it as if it were a burning brand. Despite the gloom of the approaching storm, it winked crimson. Her dark eyes reflected its light. “I have not done overmuch for you,” she murmured.
Sumitra shrugged gracefully. “Well, there is one thing …”
Rue’s fist closed about the ruby. “Yes?”
“Can you carry a message for me?” Sumi asked quietly, her voice falling around the serving woman like a smooth satin drape. “To your mistress Chrysais, that I would like to speak with her.” That was a wild shot; Rue had named Eldrafel king, but what did that make the widowed Chrysais?
Rue stared, her eyes so huge they seemed likely to spill from their sockets and run in black streaks down her face. Chrysais’s name was quite familiar to her. And it was one Sumitra should not have known.
Sumi made a soothing gesture. “Just tell her that I would like to speak with her. A simple enough task.” From their bundle beneath the table, by Sumitra’s knee, the sword and the shield chimed.
“I—I—I do not know …” With a sharp, shrewd glance Rue laid down the comb, but not the ruby, and slipped out. Sumi listened; yes, the locking bar was driven home. Reflectively she picked up the comb and began to stroke her own hair. Perhaps the ruby had gone for nothing. Perhaps not. Time would tell.
Thunder rumbled in the stones of her cell. The shield and the sword rang, their notes spiraling upward, higher and higher, until they passed the limit of hearing. But still they rang.
*
When Tembujin entered Dana offered him a wan smile, trying vainly to loosen her pinched, pale lips. He stopped dead. “What is it now?”
“A note of music. The shield, keening like the wind in my heart.”
“There is no wind today,” Tembujin said.
“The wind always blows in my mind,” responded Dana. With a decisive toss of her head, long golden hair dancing, she turned away from the window where she stood. The keening was not so much unpleasant as urgent, stretching to the breaking point the tension already humming in the air. “We must stir things up a bit. We must act.”
“That is what Andrion asked. He went with Chrysais down into the city to see about Niarkos. Something is amiss there, I think.”
“Everything is amiss,” Dana said darkly. She beckoned Tembujin to the window and pointed at the crazy quilt of roofs, pillars, terraces, and stairs crumpled against the forbidding stone piers. “A little while ago Chrysais came out of that door there. Behind the colonnade, see?”
Tembujin saw.
“Look. On the roof of that room is a tower, the only tower in any of that mess. Strange place.” She frowned, analyzing her thought. The tower was askew, but how she could tell whether anything was out of plumb in the chaotic construction of the palace she did not know. Perhaps it was askew only to some innate sense of propriety and personal balance. “Do you see the light in the windows?”
Tembujin’s narrow eyes narrowed still farther. “Odd windows, like holes ripped in fabric rather than built of bricks and mortar. But a light?”
“Then I do sense it rather than see it,” she sighed. “Blue light, ice blue, like dawn on Cylandra’s frosty cap. Floating in threads past the windows.” The color of Ashtar’s eyes, here in this unhealthy place. She cringed. “Let us go see what it is.”
“Anything is better than sitting here waiting for the storm to break. Let us stir the pot, as Chrysais did.”
So he, too, had caught that inference. But Chrysais had only been teasing them. Please, gods, surely she had only been teasing them. A woman like that should have no power except over susceptible men… . Setting her jaw, Dana leaned through the window into the murky light of day. The tiles of a roof lay at about her own height beneath. Ah, a morsel of freedom. She swung one leg up onto the sill.
Tembujin plucked at her sleeve, grinning. “You look like a windstorm in a weaver’s shop.”
She had to laugh; irrelevant, but true. The serving woman, rolling her eyes and muttering indignantly,
had cut the skirt of the dress in half and sewed it into baggy trousers. Then, trimming away the flounces, she had used the material to fill in the bodice. The resulting garment was sexless and clumsy but serviceable. Dana indicated the dagger strapped to her thigh. “I wanted this where I could reach it.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Tembujin replied.
“I might need it to shorten a certain tongue,” she responded sweetly as she slipped over the windowsill. She dangled from her hands and dropped onto the roof below. Tembujin followed, his sandaled feet landing with a clatter his ruined felt boots would not have made. He snarled at footwear and tiles both and then surveyed the expanse of the roof. His eyes lighted as if he saw the reach of the northern plains open before him.
With many playful jostlings and muttered insults they crept across that roof, around the edge of a terrace, over another roof, and found themselves opposite the targeted door. “Pinfeathers,” muttered Dana in Tembujin’s ear as they peered between columns. “It is guarded.”
“Of course it is guarded. Rulers always have their doors guarded.” His tail of hair flounced indignantly.
“Not in Sabazel,” she retorted with an exaggerated sneer. She scurried bent-kneed around the corner and contemplated a terra-cotta gutter pipe.
“Not in Sabazel,” Tembujin mimicked, high-pitched. He boosted Dana, with a surreptitious tickle, up the pipe and onto a broad ledge carved with the everlasting sea creatures. She stepped on a dolphin, a sea urchin, and a crab of some kind, and shoved questioningly at a set of shutters. They opened without a creak. Grinning, she popped through.
The room was very large. Even in broad daylight it would probably be dim; under this darkling sky it was almost impenetrable. Dana blinked. Slowly she began to pick out rich furnishings, a huge canopied bed, storage chests, pillows, and chairs.
Her shoulders tensed; the hair on the back of her neck stirred. Her exhilaration vanished like a candle snuffed. She inhaled, mouth open—perfumes, lotus and sandalwood perhaps. And another scent, faint but rank, permeating the sweetness.
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