by Kirby Crow
She finally gave him a real smile, the first one he had seen from her since his boyhood, years before he left Rshan. “My son, I knew that before I sent for you.”
Liall could not answer.
She regarded him with her too-wise eyes, noting every new scar, every line in his face that was not there when he left.
“You have prospered among the lenilyn?” She shook her head, not waiting for him to answer. “Of all the lands of Nemerl, child, why the Southern Continent? Why not the jeweled empire of Hiberna, the exotic island kingdoms of the Serpent Sea? Why that desolate and accursed place?”
“Exile is intended as punishment. I would not have it said that I used my prince’s title to escape my doom and seek comfort from the kings of the west.”
Her chest moved up and down with a steadying breath. “We only learned you were alive and in Byzantur five years ago. I have suffered much, knowing you spent so many years in that place. Tell me... how did you make a life there?”
“By becoming one of them,” Liall said simply. “The people there are as varied as anywhere on Nemerl. They have honor and good in them, but also greed and savagery and pettiness of heart.” He ducked his head. “I fear I found my place with them in the seedier circles of the Kasiri bandits, but it was not a bad life, all in all. There were many people I was fond of. Also, the little Hilurins are not the sly demons our legends make them out to be.” He looked up at her guardedly. “It was a life,” he repeated. “A simpler one than I had growing up. All my enemies come at me with knives instead of smiles, and they are not half so clever to hide what they feel.”
“So life is easier for you out there.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
She smirked in amusement, but her eyes were barbed. It had always been this way between them, this easy and bantering manner that hid so many thorns and hurts. Liall had not missed this part of their relationship at all.
“And yet,” she went on, “there are comforts.”
Liall knew what she meant, or rather, whom. He nodded.
“How is he called again?”
“Scarlet,” Liall supplied, repeating it for her twice.
She tried it out, pursing her lips over the feel of it. “What does it mean, precisely? It is not a Bizye word.”
“Not from the known tongue, no. I believe it is part of the northern dialect from the river towns. It means simply red, albeit a very pretty shade, the color of carmine or a deep red rose.”
“Or of blood.”
“Do not say such things,” Liall begged, remembering his dream of the bear hunt and Scarlet’s body covered in blood.
“Alas, morbidity has become my habit.” She was silent for a moment, then; “Why do they call him that? He is not red.”
“I think it is a poetic appellation, something to do with a spirited nature.”
“Ah,” she said archly. “Now we have it. And do you find him spirited?”
Liall remembered Scarlet in the Volkovoi alleyway, facing down two armed bravos who were twice his size. “Yes.”
“Raja,” she said. Crimson. “That would be his name in Sinha, yes?”
“Somewhat. But do you know the little flame flower that grows by the sea? And the red color of its petals, and when we say a person is fiery, they are keriss? That is closer to it, I think.” Liall did not think her questioning odd. Names were very important in Rshan.
She slapped her hands together very softly, glad to have it settled. “That is his court name, then: Keriss kir Nazheradei.” She tilted her head. “How did he come to be so recently scarred?”
“On the journey that brought us here,” Liall said shortly.
“Ah,” she said archly. “This would have happened aboard the ship, then.”
Liall sighed. “Yes, madam, but since you already know how it happened, I fail to comprehend why you trouble yourself to question me about the matter.”
“Perhaps because I wonder that you would expose someone you profess to care about to such danger. Was the experience with the mariners not enough proof for you? And yet, still you brought this Hilurin child to our shores, knowing what could happen. Why?”
“What else was I to do?” Liall snapped. “Throw him overboard? The journey was already well underway, and he is, as you said, young and inexperienced. I could not just abandon him on some distant shore.” He withheld the other information: the matter of Cadan’s killing and Scarlet’s possible death-sentence in Byzantur. “Scarlet is my t’aishka. That settles it,” Liall finished.
“Keriss kir Nazheradei,” the queen corrected.
Liall nodded and did not argue, not even at the kir designation, which would be a part of Scarlet’s protection here. To Liall, his lover would always be Scarlet the red-coat, the pretty, impertinent, too-proud pedlar scowling and refusing him a kiss. His spirit lightened just to think of it, and she saw this and softened.
“Your t’aishka is very beautiful, very charming and rare.”
Liall thanked her, though it was only the truth, then he saw that she was trying to be tactful. “Say what you must, madam. You’ve never had difficulty before.”
“He is very young, is he not? And uneducated, and a lenilyn, and a peasant. The people will not like it, Nazheradei. The nobles will not.”
“Then they can choke on it.”
She laughed, tossing her head like a girl. “My Nazir,” she said, giving him his baby name. “So stubborn you always were. So proud and confident, never caring what others thought of you. You always went against the winds. If there was a rule, you broke it. No propriety was safe in your presence.”
“Mother, I would love him if he were a prince, too,” Liall pleaded. The fire crackled lowly over his protest and the blue light of the crystal lamps threw a glow on them like the moon over water. It had grown very late. “I do care what some people think, you know,” Liall admitted. “I want you to like him.”
“I know, but I will make up my own mind on this account. He will not sit at the High Table just yet. That is too much favor for a foreigner whom I know nothing of.”
“Except that I love him.”
“Your heart is your province, my lord, but I rule here.”
“And you accuse me of pride, Mother?” He heard the haughty tone in her voice and knew it was pointless to argue Scarlet’s virtues with her. All royalty had its blind spots. He risked putting his hand in hers. “Will the queen inform what she requires of me?”
Nadiushka straightened her back, and Liall could see her mentally preparing herself for what lay ahead. His mother was as iron-willed as ever. He felt a flush of pride for her and knew that, no matter what happened or what it cost either of them, she was determined to see Rshan safe.
Bhakamir escorted Liall to the outer chamber. Behind him, Nadiushka slumped pale and shrunken in her chair, one hand covering her eyes. They had talked for hours, plan upon plan, allies to be trusted and those to be feared and yes, even those who would have to be eliminated if the worst happened. No milk-lily maid, her. Though Liall knew she loved him and loved Cestimir, sometimes his mother frightened him. At times, she could melt his heart with her kindness, and then she could turn around and be as ruthless as any general on a bloody battlefield.
Regent. She wanted him to be regent until Cestimir reached his majority. For a Rshani noble, that was sixteen winters. But... Regent? She wanted to step down from the throne and pass all power to him in Cestimir’s name. Either she trusted him more than anyone on the face of the world or else she secretly hated Cestimir. He could not imagine how it must have been for her.
Thankfully, Shikhoza was gone from the outer chamber. At least he would not have to see that particular lady again so soon. But she had left her little embroidered swan, perhaps intentionally. Who knew? Rshani women were full of little nuances and subtleties and lies. There were layers upon layers of meaning in every conversation, complexities sewn in and around every word, hints and intricacies and far too little real meaning to any of it. Liall rem
embered that it used to grate on him, and bore him, and he wished for silence. Well, he had gotten that in abundance.
He smelled the little silken swan and smiled bitterly. It was her perfume, not the one she had worn tonight, but the scent he remembered from her youth, something insipidly light and smelling of flowers: a girl’s perfume.
He dropped it on the bench and went to seek Scarlet and his bed, but he was stopped, again, at the outer tier. Melev was there, blocking his way.
Neither truly Rshani nor foreign, Melev towered over Liall. The Ancient was so tall that he had to duck through most doorways, and his frame was equally huge. His skin was the color of red oak, his broad, angular features seemingly carved from immutable stone, and he was bald, which was a rare thing in Rshan. He wore no boots or garments of rank, only a rough, homespun robe belted with a strip of leather around his middle. Dressed like this, Melev could walk across the frozen continent from end to end and suffer no injury or ill effects.
Melev bowed, his face frozen into solemn lines, before rising to his full height to regard Liall with frost-colored eyes as large as apricots.
“Your t’aishka,” Melev said in his rolling bass voice, gesturing with one of his monstrous hands, the six fingers of which moved in odd directions as he spoke. “Is it true? Is he Anlyribeth?
A proper greeting would not have occurred to Melev. Creatures like him did not think along the same polite lines as ordinary men.
“Hilurin,” Liall corrected, studying him. “But yes, the same race.”
Melev only nodded as if he had known it all along, his eyes glittering like moonstones. He turned abruptly and walked away with a fluid, ground-eating stride. “See you keep him well.”
Liall nearly called Melev back, suddenly frightened that the Ancient had experienced some foreboding or possessed some secret knowledge, but he was away before Liall could stop him. Liall returned to his apartments with a much heavier step.
It seemed to Scarlet that he had been asleep only a moment before a light touch woke him. He started upright and there was Liall, crouched next to him. The sadness was back in Liall’s eyes, and he looked older somehow.
“Scarlet, why are you sleeping on the hearth?”
Scarlet felt tongue-tied, but Liall’s bizarre wardrobe loosened his speech. “What in Deva’s name are you wearing?”
Liall wore a knee-length sort of skirted tunic, long-sleeved, made of rich blue wool with rows of ornamental silver buttons down both sides of his chest, rather like a dress that Annaya might wear. Scarlet was embarrassed for him, being made to dress like a girl, even though he wore breeches and boots and a black silk shirt under the contraption.
Liall laughed at his expression. “I assure you, this is what is worn in Rshan. It’s called a virca.”
Perhaps so, but Scarlet did not know this silk-clad gentleman. This was not his Kasiri chieftain, but some stranger. Liall smiled and the strangeness fell away.
“Well, did you get your answers?”
“I haven’t even begun to ask the questions,” Liall sighed.
Liall ran a hand through his hair, which had grown on the voyage. It was no longer the close-cropped affair that had looked so odd to Scarlet at first. Liall’s white hair reached nearly to the bottom of his ears now, and it looked much softer and altogether more comely on him.
“That woman,” Scarlet began. “Your mother, is she really... are you?”
“She is a queen, so I am by default a prince. Although,” his look was heavy, “I renounced all that long ago, many years now. I am no longer Prince Nazheradei of Rshan.”
“Why come back at all, then?”
“Because no matter what, I am still my mother’s son. She asked me to come and I could not refuse.”
“What does she want from you?”
“That,” Liall said, “I cannot tell you at this moment. What I can tell you is that my mother is what we call a progressive leader. She has forbidden dueling in the Nauhinir and all southern cities, loosened the trade restrictions for women, and has relaxed import regulations to allow our trade ships more freedom both to make profits and enter into trade contracts with foreigners. Her actions have caused no small amount of dissent within the realm. There are those,” he said slowly, “who believe my mother has betrayed the traditions of our people, and that what she has begun, Prince Cestimir will continue. This has resulted in many fractures in the power structure of the neighboring barons in the south kingdom and has reawakened many old feuds that the great families still maintain with the north.”
Scarlet could find little to say. It was all beyond him, this talk of kingdoms and contracts. He could only nod and hold his tongue. Liall’s speech sounded rehearsed and the sense of betrayal still stung him. He knew he had been lied to, but he did not know how much he could blame Liall for it. Part of him wanted to shout and accuse, and another just wanted reassurance that matters would not change between them. Though, of course, that was impossible.
Liall was no fool. “You’re angry.”
“Four months is a long time to sail,” Scarlet answered. “In all that time, you might have given me a hint.”
Liall’s face was drawn with weariness. “I never asked you to come to Rshan with me, Scarlet. I knew it would be impossible. I did not tell you on the ship because there are things about me that even yet I am not ready to share with you.” When Scarlet remained silent, Liall bit his lip and bowed his head. “You must admit that I could not have intentionally set out to deceive you.”
Scarlet nodded. “I know. That’s what makes all this so hard to believe.”
Liall rose and held out his hand. He drew Scarlet up to stand with him. “We may be here for a long time,” he said, holding Scarlet’s hands between his. “Whatever mistakes I have made, I promise I will try to amend them. And you must trust me now, my love, no matter how angry you are with me. Your life, and probably mine, depends on it.”
My love. Scarlet liked the sound of that. Suddenly, Nenos was back with lengths of pale clothing draped over his arm. The servant laid out another nightshirt and robe for Liall, and Scarlet looked at the old man with misgiving, not liking the idea of being tended waking and asleep.
Liall followed his gaze. “You must accustom yourself to Nenos. He has served me since I was a boy.”
Scarlet nodded. Liall spoke to Nenos in Sinha and Scarlet heard his name. He flicked a questioning look to Liall. Nenos bowed and then left them alone, and Liall put an arm around Scarlet’s shoulders and drew him toward the bed.
“I should not have allowed you to come with me,” Liall said distantly, pulling him into a fierce embrace. “It is far more dangerous than even I had expected. You might have done better taking your chances with the Flower Prince’s mercy.”
“Too late for that now.”
“Yes, of course,” Liall said. He cupped Scarlet’s face in both of his hands. “And I know you can take care of yourself, but while we are here, you must heed me in everything. You must guard your words; engage in no quarrels or disputes. It is far too dangerous.”
“I haven’t—” Scarlet began, but Liall stopped his mouth by kissing him, slow and sweet, and Scarlet could have no complaints about that.
Liall drew back and studied him gravely. “You and I, we had a bad beginning, t’aishka, and there is a part of you that still does not trust me. Yet you must, and you must heed me and be guided by me while we are here, or we both may die.”
“I trust you,” Scarlet said, but neither of them had forgotten how he had recoiled from Liall time and time again, how he had mistrusted the older man even in bed, and how they had once come to blows back on the Nerit. He wondered what Liall was getting at. “I do trust you,” he insisted. “I just don’t feel very in control here. I haven’t felt in control of anything since we left Volkovoi.”
Liall looked at Scarlet for a long moment. “We are going to play a game,” he said seriously.
Scarlet huffed, though the corners of his mouth turned up in a smile
. “What kind of game?”
“A lover’s game,” Liall said, and kissed him again, sliding his hand beneath the wool of the robe to caress Scarlet’s skin through the silk of the nightshirt.
Scarlet shivered. “A lover’s game?” He had never heard of such. “How?”
“You must not ask,” Liall murmured. There was an odd look on his face as he pushed the robe from Scarlet’s shoulders, letting it drop to the floor. “The only thing you must do is to command me to stop at any moment that you cease to trust me.”
Scarlet was not sure he liked that, but Liall was pulling at the laces of his silken nightshirt, and he focused on removing Liall’s virca, or trying to.
“It’s a damned dress, it is,” Scarlet muttered, and Liall laughed softly and kissed Scarlet again before drawing back to attend to the buttons of the virca himself.
Liall’s hands were very warm and big. Everything about him was big: his fingers as they drew lines across Scarlet’s chin and lips, his tongue that teased and tickled within Scarlet’s mouth, even his sex. At no other time was Scarlet so reminded of the differences between Rshani and Hilurin as when he was intimate with Liall.
Scarlet scarcely noticed when the silken nightshirt slid to the floor and puddled at his feet, but he yelped in surprise when Liall lifted him up and tossed him on the bed to lie sprawled naked on red silks and fur.
Liall laughed. “You see, this is the point,” he said, his voice low and hot as he climbed into the bed with Scarlet, leaning over him. “Did you want me to do that?”
“I have no idea.”
“Well, think about it. What do you want me to do right now?”
Scarlet did not understand, yet he hardly minded. “Undress?” he asked hoarsely.
Liall leaned in for a kiss, and then sat back on his heels and took off his black silk shirt. “Yes, my lord.” His pale eyes glinted with mischief.
Scarlet watched him undress, which Liall did slowly and deliberately, holding Scarlet’s gaze at all times. When he was nude, Liall took up his black shirt again and turned it this way and that, and then ripped the long collar off.
“What did you do that for?”
