by Kirby Crow
“This is Nenos,” Liall said, introducing the elderly one, who bowed to Scarlet. Scarlet bowed back awkwardly, and Nenos nodded politely before turning and exiting through a narrow doorway near the wall. The apartments were like a maze, and Scarlet wondered if he would get lost in them Liall tossed his beautiful cloak over a chair and sat down on a bench near the foot of the bed to remove his boots. “I want a bath,” he said wearily. “And so do you.”
He did, as a matter of fact, so he knelt to remove his own boots while Liall waited impatiently. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Scarlet asked lowly.
“What reason was there until now?” Liall’s tone was sharp.
Scarlet kept his head down and finished with the boots. Liall rose and signaled imperiously for him to follow. They walked barefoot through the smaller doorway into the next room, which seemed to be an undersized version of the common room, but more cozy and intimate, with a small hearth and a wide window at the back. This room was lined with shelves and shelves of books, and there was a deep, comfortable couch and several chairs.
Scarlet slowed and would have lingered in this restful room, but Liall threw an annoyed look over his shoulder. Scarlet hurried to catch up to him: through another doorway into a narrow room tiled in herringbone brick with thick rugs scattered about. There were chests and shelves, but nowhere to sit, and Liall went straight through the doorway at the back with Scarlet following, where the pedlar stopped dead in fresh shock. This brightly-lit room was large and warm and held an enormous sunken tub big enough for ten, already full of steaming water, a tall stack of towels the color of snow, and four servants, including the old man Liall had embraced.
Scarlet hesitated before entering further, but Liall allowed the servants to take his coat off and begin unbuttoning his shirt. He signaled for Scarlet to do the same, but Scarlet balked and stepped back when the servants reached out to him.
The servants were confused and turned questioning gazes on Liall for guidance. Liall gave Scarlet a warning look and shook his head slightly.
“Do as I do,” Liall said in a commanding tone, and began to undress.
Scarlet nervously began to remove clothing that was stiff with salt in places. They both stank of the journey, and it would be good to be cleaner than a wash with a bucket of cold water would allow, but all these servants! Bathhouses were common in Morturii, but there a man undressed himself, unless the reputation of the house was not to be repeated in polite company. There was a name for body-servants in a bathhouse, and it was not a nice one.
Scarlet waited until Liall had climbed into the bath before he peeled off his breeches to climb in, certain his skin was flaming red before he even touched the hot water. He sank up to his chin in the bath.
A very young man with a round face like a moon, naked to the waist, knelt on the floor behind Scarlet and touched his hair. The boy wore his own pale hair tied back with ribbon. Scarlet flinched, jerking away.
“He wants to wash your hair,” Liall said.
Scarlet began to say that he could damn well wash his own hair, but when he saw the set of Liall’s jaw and reckoned how much it might have affected Liall to see his kin again, Scarlet submitted.
At least, he thought, I don’t have to allow anyone to bathe me. When the boy came close with a bath cloth, Scarlet scowled at him until he retreated. Scarlet held out his hand for the cloth. The servants all saw the four fingers on his left hand, and that provoked a few shocked comments, but Liall would not translate.
“It is superstition,” he said dismissing it.
Then Scarlet had to be quiet and tip his head back for the moon-faced boy—he heard Liall call him Chos—to work. Chos said something in his own tongue, his tone awestruck, and several of them answered.
Liall almost smiled, and this time he told Scarlet what was said: “They marvel at your fair skin and black hair. Here, we have tales of the long ago when this kingdom’s dominion reached far to the south. Our warriors would raid a western land called Hiberna and steal away the most beautiful maidens and the most handsome of youths.” He dunked his head under the water to wet it enough to be washed.
“Oh, those,” Scarlet said, squeezing his eyes shut to keep the soap out. “We have tales like that, but they’re of the Shining Folk who came to steal away daughters and sons so that they might have children of their own.”
“Just so,” Liall agreed.
Scarlet opened his eyes and stared at Liall. “Your people are the Shining Folk?”
“Not now.” Liall nudged Scarlet’s thigh with his foot. “But then.”
That made no sense at all, and Scarlet subsided into confusion. Liall stroked Scarlet’s thigh again with his foot, and Scarlet pushed him away, highly embarrassed and aware that everyone had seen the caress. Liall did not seem to care.
Chos rinsed his hair carefully and squeezed the water out between two of the towels, twisting gently inside the cloth, and then spoke to Liall. Scarlet already hated that he knew none of the native tongue here and had failed so completely at Liall’s attempts to teach it to him. He resolved to take up the lessons again, in earnest this time.
Liall nodded and answered. Chos bowed and withdrew for a moment. Scarlet craned his head around to see Chos return with a comb made of fine tortoiseshell.
“Liall,” he complained.
“Let him attend you,” Liall said, and his tone was again short. “You are not in Byzantur now.”
Chos was careful with the snags, and it was actually rather restful, except that, while Chos was still untangling him, Liall rose from the bath.
“Where are you going?”
Liall dried his face on a towel, looking like a tower of carved, water-dewed amber in the lamplight, and Scarlet was embarrassed that Liall seemed unconcerned at being naked with so many people in the room. The servants could have been invisible, or even a mirror by the way he was showing his body off to them! Scarlet suffered a pang of jealousy as Liall slipped into the robe that another handsome servant held for him.
“I must speak to my mother before I sleep tonight. Nenos will see to your needs. Try to get some rest.”
Scarlet began to rise, but the comb snagged him tight. “Ow! You’re leaving?”
Liall gave him an impatient look. “For a little while. There are answers I must have, and I cannot get them sitting in a tub. Finish your bath. You will be quite safe here.”
“When are you coming back?”
Liall looked angry for a moment. “In due time.”
Scarlet swallowed his protests and sank back into the hot water. Safe, he thought. Always “safe”. It was a wonder how many times he’d nearly been killed after someone said that.
Liall went into the outer room, which Scarlet learned later was a dressing room. Nenos followed. Scarlet heard them speaking, but could not understand a word of it. He could not understand a word from any of them, and sudden unease made his heart thud a little faster. Everyone at home knew enough Bled or Morturii or even Minh to make themselves understood, but this language was unlike anything he had ever heard. Liall had told Scarlet already how his people guarded their solitude, venturing out only for certain trade items and allowing no foreigners in. The few lands that saw trade from here had to rely on native traders to bring out what they craved.
Scarlet had always enjoyed strange surroundings and did not mind being the only foreigner here, but he hated not being able to understand what people were saying. Liall’s abrupt departure felt like being abandoned, never mind that he was only going to see his mother who was a queen. A queen! Scarlet felt a fresh rush of mortification. He had no more business in front of a queen than a mouse in front of an eagle.
The servants seemed to sense his distress. They went silent until Chos had finished with his hair. The boy signed that he should get out, and Scarlet took the towels out of Chos’s hands rather than allowing the servant to dry him. They fetched him a nightshirt made of something that felt silky on his skin, but was the color of old linen. Chos also brou
ght a warmed robe that bore silk edging on the throat and breast. It dripped with embroidery and gilt thread, and the sleeves were far too long. Scarlet remembered with a pang of longing how little Annaya had tried so hard to get the stitches that Linhona taught her right. They both would have goggled like daft sheep at the garment he now wore. He touched it with a fingertip, sliding his hand over the rough surface of brilliant, knotted threads. It did not even look real. Nothing here did.
Scarlet would have liked to dress again, but they had taken his clothes and he could not make them understand enough to bring them back. The old man led him back into the bedroom and insisted on summoning a lanky man with thinning white hair and extremely long hands to inspect the cut on Scarlet’s face.
“It’s healing, no worry,” Scarlet said, wincing as the man—Scarlet supposed he was some kind of curae—pinched and pressed his skin. “There’s nothing to be done now.”
The curae seemed to agree with him and shrugged. He left after some words with Nenos, and the old man bowed him out and then returned. Nenos signed to Scarlet that he should go to sleep, but he was too unsettled and the bed was enormous, with silk sheets and furs piled over the velvet. He thought he might sink if he tried to lie down.
Nenos bowed and departed. Scarlet peeked through the archway and saw that they all seemed to have gone, melted away from the apartments through some hidden doorway and swallowed up by the enormous palace around them.
He found a chair and sat in it with his hands folded. This is a fine thing, he thought irritably. Stuck in here like a baby put to bed, and not even a cup of che! He had no idea where his traveling pack had gone, and all of his things. They could be anywhere.
In a few minutes, his natural curiosity won out over his irritation, and he began to investigate the apartment, poking in corners and looking into the closet, which was paneled in cedar and also enormous, but there seemed to be only one place made for a body to sleep in the whole place. He went back through the cozy little room and stood looking at the elegant bed, the thick pillows and covers and furs, the double layers of draperies hung over the canopy, and he felt slightly sick again.
No one here was mistaken about his place with Liall. They all knew, and for the first time it occurred to him that, in this place, he could not escape being seen as a lover of men.
Liall takes no pains at all to hide it, he thought. Will he be angry at me if I do? What does it mean in Rshan if one man loves another, how is it looked upon? Is it thought normal here? What if it isn’t? What will Liall do then, and do I even get a say?
The blazing fire made the room too warm after the cold of the sea, and it was too splendid, too overwhelming. Scarlet could not bring himself to sit down, but paced the room back and forth, his arms crossed over his chest.
Nenos, the old servant, returned soundlessly and stood in the doorway. He watched Scarlet worriedly for a moment before vanishing into an outer room. A short time later, a different servant brought a tray of food that held small, boiled eggs and thick slices of bread, and though Scarlet was hungry as a wolf and sick to death of rancid fish and journeycake, he could only pick at it under their very watchful eyes. He found himself wondering how great folk could abide people with them every moment, staring, watching, nothing unobserved. The plates were odd little things, square rather than round, with scalloped cuts around the edges like little moons. They were painted in great detail, almost as much as the tapestries on the walls, and he found himself being careful with the fork, lest he scratch one of the designs. He had thought Hilurins loved color and detail, but these Rshani made his people’s art look childish and plain in comparison. He recognized several motifs from the tapestries that he had seen before in Byzan paintings, and their construct was very similar. Perhaps it was true, what Liall said, for their art did seem to copy Rshani methods, and maybe his people really had lived here once. It gave him a strange feeling just thinking about it.
Perhaps the servants thought the first dish was not pleasing, for another appeared. The food was foreign, but good: little dumplings, both cold and hot, with some spiced meat mixture inside. The cold ones were fruit or some kind of vegetable Scarlet did not recognize. There were small bowls of sauce for dipping them, a pitcher of what tasted like spring water sweetened with berry juice, and a bottle of wine. Scarlet decided to keep a clear head and left the wine, drinking only the rosy-sweet water. He tasted one of the cold dumplings, for curiosity's sake, but when he did, his appetite returned with a vengeance and he left the plates empty.
The old man nodded in approval and had the tray taken away when Scarlet signed that he was finished.
“Thank you,” Scarlet said. The servant seemed to understand the intent if not the words. Nenos smiled again and shepherded everyone out, leaving Scarlet in peace at last. By that time, he was sleepy from the bath and the food, and yet the bed seemed to loom ominously. He could not bring himself to do more than stroke a hand over the furs and silks, and their softness seemed to taunt him.
Ever since I was a boy, Scarlet thought, I’ve known my secret heart and known what I wanted in love, but I’ve always been afraid of seeking it out, because it meant that I’d be less than myself.
In Byzantur, people would have pitied him or been disgusted, or else they would have laughed. For that reason, he denied everything and drowned his desires in wandering. Now that he had finally given in to his heart, his worst fears—among them being seen like a petted whore strung with beads—were coming true, and the clothes and that damned bed make him look the part.
Great Deva, how did he come to be here? He was a pedlar from Byzantur, not some lord or prince. What would Liall’s people think, seeing him at their prince’s side? Hells, what would Liall think, suddenly back among the richness that was his birthright: glittering lords, tall and handsome, and tall, beautiful ladies, and him in his leather jacket and hood, with his scarred face?
The embroidered folds at the hem of his robe were long, and if he did not take care, they would trip him up. It must have belonged to Liall at one time. Everything in this room was Liall’s, including Scarlet, from the overly-attentive way the servants behaved. Was that how they saw him, as a pampered pet? Something they must keep clean and warm and fed because it belonged to their master? It was the crew of the Ostre Sul all over again, just in better lodgings.
Scarlet brooded as the night wore on and Liall did not reappear, and he was tired. Finally, he curled up on the thick, clean wool of the hearth rug, pillowed his head on his arm and sank into sleep.
“They told me you’d come back, brother.”
The voice belonged to the man Liall believed responsible for both the bravos at Volkovoi and the pirate attack at sea. The barons were already in the palace, having arrived weeks ago to Nadiushka’s summons. It was well, for there was no time to waste. Already, many had openly declared for Cestimir, but an equal amount had voiced either doubt or a marked preference for Vladei, the other contender for the crown.
Strictly speaking, Vladei and he were cousins. Vladei was the son of Liall’s father’s half-brother, and ostensibly Liall’s step-brother now as well, since Nadiushka had solved a particularly thorny situation regarding the succession by marrying Vladei’s father soon after Liall had left Rshan.
The man had not changed. Vladei, Baron of Uzna Minor. His father had been a prince. By inclusion, Vladei was now also a prince, but he did not carry the Queen's name. He and Liall had never been friends, and when Liall was twenty and suddenly engaged to the Lady Shikhoza, what little cordiality there was between them quickly vanished. Vladei had always loved her.
Vladei was standing with his younger brother, Eleferi, near the entrance to the Queen’s chambers. Vladei stared at Liall as if he were some beast crawling on his good furniture, and Eleferi’s foxlike face was frozen into an affable mask that had never fooled anyone. Liall was not gladdened to see his step-brothers. Absence did not always make the heart grow fonder.
Being ap kyning—a child born of kings—Vl
adei was entitled to wear the royal silver and blue colors, but he had eschewed them for the red and gold of Ramung’s house: Vladei’s grandfather as well as Eleferi’s. Liall wondered idly if Vladei remembered that Ramung was only half royal, the child of a slave-concubine and a king, and if he were making some point by refusing to wear the queen’s colors. Was Vladei tipping his hand already, letting it be known that his vote—and his soldiers—would be thrown against Nadiushka when the time came? Surely not. Vladei was smarter than that.
The deep, golden silk of the long hapcoat—a sort of sleeveless winged over-mantle slit up the back and sides—that Vladei wore over his crimson virca complimented his coloring. There was red piping on Vladei’s sleeve and a circle of grain sheaves embroidered in darker gold, the symbol of his grandmother’s country; Hessiau, Baroness of S’geth. Clearly, Vladei wished no one to forget that he was as royal as any man at court.
Vladei looked less sour than Liall remembered, and for the first time Liall realized that the many people who used to say that the two of them looked very much alike were correct. Blood will out, or so it was said. Vladei looked enough like Liall that he could see where people would comment. Both his step-brothers had snow-pale hair, the coveted color of the Lukaska line, but Eleferi was merely a smaller, silkier version of his brother, with sharp, sly features and a reputation for over-indulgence in sex and wine.
Vladei's features were much closer to Liall's. Only their eyes were different. Liall’s were pale blue; Vladei’s were chips of cloudy stone. His nose was a bit bigger than Liall’s, and he had a distracting habit of twisting his rings around and around his bony knuckles when he spoke. There were also rumors that he had poisoned his latest mistress and was viciously opposed to allowing the very young Lady Ressilka to come to court. Fearing, many thought, her father. Ressanda was the Baron of Tebet and unswervingly loyal to the queen, and thus to Cestimir.
