Sorrowing Vengeance

by David C. Smith

  “I will have you arrested!” Seraficos hissed at the prophet. “I will not condemn you, imposter, and give you the benefit of martyrdom in the name of Bithitu! You shall not die in glory! You will be taken to the imperial government and made to face the highest court in this empire for your crimes! Inciting revolt, and calling on an end to our government! I will see that this is done! Guards!”

  They appeared from the corridor outside and advanced toward Asawas.

  “Imprison this…criminal! Detain him, hold him! He is under arrest! Governor Abadon will issue the necessary papers!”

  The soldiers took hold of Asawas, knowing the power and influence that Seraficos had at his command. The prophet did not protest but walked between them, his hands remaining shackled. The three moved through the doorway and vanished into the shadows of the outer corridor.

  The trembling, sweating inquisitor, staring out the open doorway, tensely reached a hand to the small golden ibi he wore around his neck. Grasping it, Seraficos tore the locket from its chain. With shaking fingers, he twisted and fought with the metal until at last he managed to open it. The lid snapped off and dropped with a loud metallic sound on the table, as Seraficos, panting, looked inside his small ibi and saw—

  Nothing.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Neither Elad nor Salia slept the night before her departure for Erusabad. Unable to rest, Salia was excited by the prospect of her voyage and meeting these rulers of the East.

  “But keep in mind,” Elad warned her several times, “that these men don’t think highly of women. They hold them in low esteem. Don’t let their attitude harm you.”

  Salia was aware of this aspect of the easterners, but she was not much impressed by it. “I’m not just a woman,” she smiled. “I’m the queen of Athadia. They’ll treat me as such, won’t they? Besides, our ambassadors will look after me.”

  “Yes. But I want you to bear in mind that—”

  “Bear this in mind!” she grinned at him, and rolled into his arms and made love to him.

  They made love several times that night. This was unusual for Elad. Although he was a man more than capable of expressing the ardor he felt for his wife, the duties of the throne and the pressures he brought to bear on himself often would not allow him to enjoy his wife’s attentions as frequently as he and Salia desired. But tonight, and all night long, because she was to be away from him for two months, Elad found his passion for Salia, and his sense of possession of her.

  Still, despite any misgivings, he wanted her to take this voyage. He felt certain that it would mature her in many ways and educate her, permit her understand more fully how she should behave in her imperial role. More than that, Elad wished Salia and Ogodis to be separated, for he felt that this could do them both only good. The imbur would rant and carry on (he had already threatened to journey to Erusabad himself, in his own state vessel), but Elad suspected that Ogodis, as well, sensed the wisdom of his daughter’s making this prolonged journey.

  While Elad did not actually suffer any doubts about his decision, it seemed to him that only now, on the eve of Salia’s departure, did he see just how purposefully he had insisted on her going—and he felt himself regretting some of that stubbornness. What was in him that made him do it? Did he, in some way, want Salia, yet not want her? What selfish motive lay behind his apparently selfless act?

  When he subtly and not completely broached these concerns to his wife, the queen laughed at him and dismissed Elad’s confusions.

  “But it’s because you do love me,” Salia reminded him, “that you want me to go. And you still want me to stay, too. Lovers do this. Haven’t you ever seen it? It’s good for them to part, whatever makes that happen, and they want what’s good, but they don’t want to be away from each other. And it’s because I’m queen, and at the same time a woman, that I want to go. Do you think I’ll let them treat me like a woman when I should be treated like a queen? It’s better that you send a woman to them, Elad! Such a thing will show them just what sort of people we are!”

  “That’s true.”

  “And I’ll come back to you with so many things to show you and tell you about!” she promised him excitedly.

  They passed the night talking worriedly and concernedly for a while, then lapsed into more lighthearted conversation until passion returned and they satisfied each other yet again. Finally, they lay back and rested, yawned, sipped wine, and began once more to talk and imagine and share ideas.

  It seemed to Elad that night that he had not been aware before of how deeply attached he had become to his young wife, of how dependent he was upon her for subtle things. The sound of her voice. The look of her eyes. The length of her fingers. The curving wrinkles of her nipples and the soft firmness of her belly. The light hair on her arms. The direct simplicity of her as she played with her puppies or watched clouds in the sky. The wisdom of her casual insights and the honest frustrations of her moods. All of her, complete. Now that she was going, these things returned to him in a ribbon of renewed appreciation, even of wonder, and he found himself falling in love again with the Princess of Gaegosh, with her astonishing beauty that prevailed in any light, that became more wonderful the longer he gazed at her, with the depth of her eyes and with the whole of her—puzzling and alarming as she sometimes was, and yet always innocent and naturally seductive, as genuine as anything in nature.

  He wondered if all men felt this way about their wives, and he knew that they did not, for although many men in the world might be similar to him, there was surely no other woman in the world like Salia. He suspected that this was why he had fallen in love with her, and why in a portion of his heart he was somewhat apprehensive of her, although he adored her the way one adores a powerful thing. There were many women he might have married, but all of them seemed more similar to each other than distinctive from one another. Salia was like no other woman. It was difficult to elaborate in words.

  But she was his—as much as anything unique could be his.

  Did she understand that?

  “And I’m going to learn their language during the trip there,” she enthused. “What is it they speak? They call it Hasni or—”

  Salia fell quiet when she looked at Elad, then; something in his eyes. He rolled beside her and moved partially atop her, slipped his arms under her shoulders and stared into her face, her beautiful face with the endless eyes and the full lips, the hair that swept upon the pillows like—

  “You do understand, don’t you?” he breathed to her, in a needful voice that betrayed some insecurity.

  “Understand what, my heart?”

  He moved his face to her throat, to her breasts, held his damp cheek to her smooth flesh, cupped one of her breasts in his hand and pressed it against his face so that his mouth and nose and closed eyes were covered by it, as though he might gladly suffocate himself there, or blindly seek nourishment.

  Salia murmured to him and stretched her arms down his back; she understood. She understood how men, sometimes in their emotions, jumped like athletes from stone to stone, precariously balancing themselves at the same time in the world, while women, in their emotions, floated in a wide stream, all of their emotions flowing at once.

  “You…do understand?” he whispered, lifting his face.

  “I love you, Elad.”

  “Do you?”

  “Don’t you think I love you?”

  He watched her lips move as she asked it. He swallowed and stared at her. “What is love,” he wondered, “if it isn’t what we have? What I need you for…when I have you.…”

  She kissed him and pressed him to her again, wanting the feel of him; and Elad, his head on her breasts, listened to her heart beating, beating, beating—

  Beating, moving, like the pulse of the earth and its tides, like the pulse of his own blood, the rhythm and movement of—oars in the water, or the beat of wings carrying her from him.

  The pulse of time, of moving time.…

  * * * *

&n
bsp; On board the carrack the following morning, Elad hovered expectantly in the hallway as Salia and the imbur made their good­byes in her cabin. The door was open, and from where he stood, Elad saw their reflection in a mirror. They held each other, father and daughter, and spoke to one another quietly, with confident smiles, sorrowful gestures, brief kisses. Elad trusted Salia and knew that she must be warning her father not to follow her to the Holy City and not to harm his own health by worrying about her: the two months would pass quickly. Return to Sugat now, Father; your daughter is the Queen of Athadia.…

  The dozen Khamars who guarded Elad, crowded as they were in the hallway, were silent and observant and kept their eyes on the sailors and dockhands who moved back and forth in the passageway carting the loads and bundles of Salia’s clothes, jewelry, and pets.

  Elad was watching the mirror. He looked away—but his eyes were drawn back.

  “As each human being has three selves, so do you have three enemies. Your first is a mirror, your second a blade, your third a foreign countenance.…”

  When the imbur exited, he glanced succinctly at Elad, said nothing but, holding his head high, moved toward the top deck.

  Elad cleared his throat, entered Salia’s cabin, and closed the door.

  “All is not what it seems to be; what things seem is not all. It is not the mirror’s reflection that is real, but that which it reflects. It is not the sword that slays, but the man behind it. It is not the face that speaks, but the one within who gives voice. Temper your sword. See beneath your mirror. See the truth of the faces you look upon.”

  They spoke of the many things they had discussed all during the previous night. Salia joked with Elad, saying that she meant to return with a shipful of rare and exotic eastern animals and birds; he would have to build her an entire new wing on the palace for her menagerie, or at least expand the animal garden he was constructing. Elad reminded her that all he wished was for Salia to bring herself back, sound and sure. She commented that she felt tired and light-headed; Elad grinned, nodded to the bed in the cabin, and mildly suggested that they make their farewells on the cushions. Salia laughed at him, touched him, made reference to his “proud scepter,” and told him to set up sixty candles in their bedchamber in the palace.

  “Burn one every night, and let that flame stand for the love we share, Elad. And on the day I return, we’ll light the last one together.”

  He was deeply moved by this sentimental idea and kissed Salia passionately.

  From above came the shipmaster’s call that the wind was up and the tide heading out, so the ship must go.

  Elad became nervous and impatient. “Count the stars every night,” he whispered to Salia, holding her, “as you lie in your bed in Erusabad. Count the stars, and think of us, and the stars will put you to sleep. Dream of me.”

  “Always,” she assured him, and answered his kisses with her own.

  The shipmaster called out again, and Elad heard the Khamars in the hallway shuffling their boots restlessly. He held Salia’s hands, kissed her left hand where her wedding band encircled one finger, looked into her eyes and held her head, felt her hair—then turned quickly and moved to the door. When he looked back at her, he watched her, took in all of her.

  Salia smiled at him.

  Elad smiled back—it was a sad, melancholy smile—and then, becoming the king he was, he opened the door boldly and went out, hurried down the hallway and took the stairs quickly, as his Khamars followed.

  * * * *

  Farther up the Sevulus, while Elad was bidding Salia farewell, Prince Galvus was on the docks welcoming six visitors just disembarking from a merchanter. Adred was with him. As the six made their way onto the quay and retrieved their belongings, Galvus and Adred greeted them warmly and led them toward a large carriage decorated with the imperial seal.

  “A royal coach?” asked the leader of the six, Bors, as a dock attendant fastened his luggage to its roof.

  The eight of them were somewhat cramped within the elegant interior of the coach, but that didn’t interfere with their conversa­tion.

  “You’ve arrived just in time,” Galvus told Bors and his companions. “I’m glad indeed that you could answer my summons so quickly.”

  Bors, still in his rough working clothes and smelling of the fields and of grain, told him, “You’ve kept your word, and so did Vardorian. Although I admit I was beginning to have my doubts.”

  “Don’t,” Galvus reassured him. “Count Adred—” a nod “—and I have been working diligently preparing our proposal. And the High Council convenes today.”

  “To talk about the sirots, you mean.”

  “Yes. But, as I told you, I’m after a lot more than just the sirots. I’ve spoken with a few members of the Priton Public Administra­tion, and they’re with us when we open inquiries into more far-reaching matters than just establishing the sirots. And Elad, so far at least, is amenable to my arguments. Today,” Galvus told the workers, “or tomorrow—perhaps the following day—is when I’ll ask you to appear and give your testimony.”

  “Are they even going to listen to us?” one of them asked.

  “They’ll listen; I’m sure of that.” Galvus’s voice had an edge to it, now. “But keep in mind that the investigation was put into the hands of the patricians on the Nobility Council—the landowners, the businessmen, the bankers. It sounds, from that, as though we’re defeated before we even begin, but Elad wasn’t wrong in approaching the matter this way. If nothing else, it’s forced Rhin, Falen, and the other four to at least open their eyes to what’s happening.”

  “If not their hearts,” Adred put in. “Or their wallets.”

  The Kendians didn’t express much optimism to this.

  “What I’ve got to make them aware of,” Galvus remarked, “—and Count Adred, too, and you men, with your testimony—is simply this: that now is the time for a redistribution of wealth and a pluralist economy. Time and events and crises occur at a more accelerated rate, and have a greater impact, outside the walls of Athad than these aristocrats are aware of. But if we use force, then they’ll answer with force—and they have the greater resources. And that means more of what happened in the Diruvian Valley, in Sulos, in Bessara. We can’t regard that as an option. We must assure these aristocrats that our intention as revolutionaries is—”

  “Our intention as revolutionaries,” Bors broke in, “is to feed our families, have roofs over our heads, wood for our stoves, oil for our lamps, and control over our own lives. Everything these aristocrats have kept for themselves for a very long time. I trust you, Galvus—I’ve trusted you so far. Just…don’t become an aristocrat again, here, in the capital, when we do trust you.”

  The carriage rumbled. Perhaps the comment sounded harsher or more aggressive than Bors had intended. Galvus felt somewhat threatened.

  “I’m a man,” the prince told the workers. “That’s what you are; that’s what these aristocrats are. There are certain things all people are entitled to in society. I’m not going to compromise or cheat on things that are as much as a part of me as the air I breathe and the food I eat.”

  “I didn’t mean to challenge you, Galvus,” Bors apologized. “But you must realize that we have much more at stake here than you do yourself. That’s a simple fact. If these lords start to push us—we’ll push back. Talk is fine, and time we can manage, if something’s being done. But if we’re pushed, we’ll push back. That’s something else they’ve got to realize.”

  Galvus did not reply.

  Adred, who’d been listening to all this with his arms folded across his chest, now told Bors, “All we’re asking you to do, for the time being, is to treat these aristocrats as though they were your equals. For the time being.”

  Bors showed his teeth, chuckled, and nodded his head slightly, then looked out the window.

  * * * *

  As he faced his assembled Council, Elad thought, somewhat grimly, of how natural tendencies are manifested in political arenas. The
first instinct, he recognized, of creatures in the wild or in men involved in politics, is toward their own self-interest and survival. But because all things are born to die and because everything exists at the expense of other things, all creatures will, when thwarted, take the path of least resistance when thrust into dangerous circumstances. And yet the irony with people is that these self-serving tendencies can be checked, or ignored, by the great difference that separates people from the animals—human beings, with their imaginations and wills, their thoughts and passions, can restrain their natural impulses for the sake of an idea, for dreams unproven and untried. People will lay down their lives for rhetoric, or for a flag, or for a vision. No animal has ever done that.

  The finest example of the clash between the two halves of human nature of man—the instinctive and the ideal, the brutal and the rational—was, for Elad, the High Council chamber in which the politics of the empire was accomplished. For in politics, the basest of motives and arguments are, if tenuously, yet actually, allied to the highest of professed ideals and concepts. And Elad considered this, as well, as he listened to the noble Lord Rhin introduce his findings on the possibility of workers’ rights. For politics is the clash of authorities; politics is the planting of wedges; politics is the confrontation of possibilities with actualities. And politics is the baring of one’s innermost heart and philosophy, for in politics, the individual faces society, where his philosophy must actually be made to work—is challenged to work—in the world of human beings as they are, not as they might be.

  Elad watched and listened. Torn, himself, among all these elements that petitioned him, he had come to understand (the longer he sat on his throne) how weak power truly is, how shallow many passions are, and, consequently, how noble are the weak and striving, how defiant the honest and truthful.

  Lord Rhin talked on, occasionally making rude remarks about the impracticality of even considering the working people as capable of managing their own affairs, and finally concluded his discourse by appealing to a conservative heritage: the empire’s long reliance upon men of rank and prominence for its leadership and guidance. “We have made this nation what it is today and I, for one, am proud of it!”