Spear of Heaven (31 page)

He had skill. She had not expected otherwise. When she moved
toward him he was there. There was a moment of hesitation; awkwardness,
not-fitting. Then, as each found the rhythm of the dance, each fit to each,
matched—

“Like riding a senel,” he said. His voice was deep, full of
laughter even in the midst of loving.

She locked legs about his haunches and drove him to a
gallop: then back, slow and slow, grinning to match his grin.

Beautiful
, his
mind said.
So beautiful when you smile
.

“So ugly when I scowl?”

He laughed, outside and in.
Always beautiful. Always. And well you know it, too
.

“Then we are matched,” she said. “Perfectly.”

Haven’t I always said
so?

“Insufferable,” she said. “Intolerable. Beloved.”

Uruan the Guardian slept straight through the night and
the day and the next night. When he woke with a raging thirst and a desperate
lunge toward the privy, Kimeri was there. She helped him as she could, with him
too caught up in his body’s needs to be amazed that the golden power of his
dream was a child, and a very young one at that, even if she was the Sunlady’s
heir.

Vanyi he knew better, and greeted with a recollection of his
princely manners, though he nearly fell on his face trying to bow to her. She
got him back into bed and saw him fed rich broth and strong tea, and answered
the questions that babbled out of him.

She was afraid that his mind had got scrambled in his long
imprisonment, but Kimeri had no such fear. He was only weak, and having trouble
understanding that he had been inside the Gate for more than a full cycle of
Greatmoon—forty-nine days altogether, since he insisted on counting.

“It was no time at all,” he kept insisting, “but it was an
eon and then another. She was there,” he said, tilting his chin at Kimeri. “She
was the only light in that dark place.”

Kimeri wanted to duck her head, embarrassed, but what he
said was true, mostly. “That was the god who’s in my blood. He kept making me
dream about you.”

“And so kept me alive and bound to the Gate.” He could have
been blaming her for it, but there was the beginning of a smile on his face,
and in his eyes that had seen too much nothingness. He focused them on Vanyi,
frowning. “What are you doing here? I was trying to get through before the Gate
broke, to tell you not to come; it was getting too dangerous. The palace—”

“The palace was perfectly quiet when we arrived,” she said, “but
last night they killed the king and set up another.”

He sat up, though his face went green and he reeled, trying
to get to his feet. “Then where are we? We’re not in the house of the Gate. I
can feel it—it’s somewhere else. Are we in prison? Has the faction that favors
us won after all? They were all to be killed or silenced.”

“We’re in House Janabundur,” said Vanyi, “and safe, for now.
Stop trying to get up and gallop off.”

“Janabundur? But that’s—” Uruan went perfectly green but not
unconscious, and folded up. The Olenyas on guard scooped him back into bed and
laid a sheathed sword, very gently, across his chest.

He understood the message. His lips quirked wryly. “All
right. I’ll stay put. But, Vanyi, Janabundur is the king’s—the old king’s—clan-house.
Not that its lord isn’t disposed to be friendly; he is, and he’s honest in it,
but there would be better places to hide in plain sight.”

“I don’t think so,” Vanyi said. “His lordship offered for
the princess-heir and won her, with the emperor’s consent. They married after
we brought you here. Marriage in this place, it seems, can make a native out of
a foreigner, and a power out of a nobody, and a proper noble lady out of a
mage.”

“The princess-heir? Daruya? Married to—” Uruan started to
shake. It looked like convulsions. It was laughter.

Vanyi waited it out with more patience than she had ever shown
Kimeri. Kimeri herself sat on the bed and tucked up her feet and watched him
till he stopped giggling and wiped the tears away. “Really? Lord Shakabundur
married her? She didn’t throttle him for his presumption?”

“Really,” said Kimeri. “She only tried to strangle somebody
once. He was pushing her when she didn’t want him to, and trying to get him to
kiss her. Great-Grandfather said she should have gutted him instead.” Since he
could hardly argue with that, and did not seem inclined to, she went on, “She
likes Bundur. She makes a great deal of noise pretending she doesn’t, but that’s
because she’s afraid. She’s not used to liking men who want to marry her.”

“Let alone marrying them.” Uruan cradled his head in his
hands, after assuring the Olenyas that that was all he wanted to do. The sword
retreated but stayed within reach, poised to stop him if he tried to get up
again. “God. Goddess. I gather the Gate’s not passable?”

“It, and the whole chain of Gates from here to Starios,”
Vanyi said. “We had to walk in from Kianat, with a broken Gate behind us.
Something here began it, but we’ve found nothing, except you.”

“One redheaded fool trapped in a Gate.” He closed his eyes,
but he was not asleep. His mind was wide awake and very keen.

Kimeri helped with that. The Gate inside her made it easy to
run a thread of feeling-better through him, and keep it running till he had all
he needed.

He did not know what was happening, though if he had asked
she would have answered. He thought it was something Vanyi was doing.

“I’ll do what I can,” he said. “You can use another mage,
yes? And I know people here. Some of those who were favorable to us might still
be; and if Lord Shakabundur is with us, we’re stronger than we’ve ever been.”

“You’re running no errands tonight,” said Vanyi sternly. “Believe
me, when I need you I’ll use you. Until then, you’ll rest and eat and make
yourself strong.”

He looked for a moment as rebellious as Daruya could ever
be, but he was older, and better trained. He lowered his eyes and said, “Yes, Guildmaster.”

oOo

Daruya woke toward sunset with every memory intact, Bundur
beside her and a scowl on her face.

He smiled back. “Good evening, madam,” he said. “Are you
always so cross when you wake?”

She snarled and went to the garderobe that was past the
bath, and stopped to plunge her head into cold water in the basin, and came
back a little brighter of eye. He sat up in bed, raking fingers through his
thick straight hair.

She hunted, found a comb. He sat still while she plied it,
finding it much easier to make order of hair so thick when it was straight and
not curling everywhere at once. It was waist-long, cut level—if it had never
been cut, she thought, it might have been as long as he was. Combing it was
like combing silk, or a senel’s mane.

When it was smooth she plaited it in a single braid as if he
had been a priest. He did not protest, though she had never seen a man with a
braid here. He liked the feel of it, less clumsy than a knot at the nape, more
easily managed than a long tail bound with a bit of leather or ribbon.

Then he wanted to comb her hair, for which she pitied him.
Each knot untangled only bred a new one. But he insisted, and it gave him
pleasure, like playing in gold. “Do women cut their hair short in your country?”
he asked. “Your Guildmaster and the woman with her wear the long braid, I
notice. Your men, too, those whose hair I can see.”

“Royalty never cut their hair at all,” Daruya said, “nor
priests once they take up their office. I was sick of knots and tangles and
hours with combs and brushes. I hacked it off when Kimeri was born.”

His brows lifted. “All of it?”

“Right to the skull,” she said with remembered satisfaction.
“It was wonderful. Cool; light; simple to keep clean. Everyone howled.”

He took a curl in thumb and forefinger and stretched it
straight. Left to itself it fell just below her shoulders. Straightened, it was
halfway to her waist. “Why did you let it grow again?”

“Laziness,” she said. “Contrariness. I discovered I’d
started a fashion; half the young idiots in the court were going about with
heads cropped or even shaved bald, as if I’d ever intended to go that far. I
think I’ll be glad when it’s long enough to make a decent braid. It gets in the
way as it is.”

“I can imagine,” he said. “I remember when I came out of the
temple to inherit Janabundur, how I regretted the simplicity of a bare skull.
But I was glad, in the end, to leave that behind. It gets beastly cold in the
winter.”

Daruya tried to see him in a priest’s robe, shaved clean. He
would have been much younger; awkward, all angles, with big hands and feet, and
a blade of a nose.

Charming, rather. She leaned back against him, because he
was warm and solid and it seemed like something she should do.

His arms settled about her. He nuzzled her hair. They did
not kiss here; she remembered how odd she had thought it, but how little she
had been moved to teach him the art. There had not seemed to be any need of it.

She was comfortable. That alarmed her, but not enough to
move. Comfort had never been anything she expected to have with a man.
Arguments, yes. Resistance. His will striving to bend hers. Not this calm
accommodation, or this conviction that she would do what he wanted, because she
too wanted it.

He had much to learn of what she was. But not now. Not . . .
quite . . . yet.

Tradition in the empire would have given a newly wedded pair
three days of solitary lovemaking. In Shurakan they were given two full hands
of days, and kept strictly apart, too, which as Bundur pointed out, favored the
cause of protecting Daruya and her companions from enemies in the palace.

“Unless of course they find Borti,” he said. Seclusion did
not prevent the family from communicating with bride and bridegroom; they could
speak, even eat together, as they were doing, the third morning after the
wedding.

Borti looked up from slicing a scarlet fruit and feeding
bits to Kimeri and Hani. Her face was blandly innocent, her accent slightly but
distinctly countrified. “Why, and what would the great ones want with a
children’s nurse?”

“Not, I hope, what they’d want with a queen,” Daruya said.

If anyone had expected marriage to smooth her edges, he was
disappointed. She was still Daruya; still all prickles and sharp words, and she
did not spare Bundur any more than the rest.

But something was different. Some tension eased, and not
only that of a woman who needed a man for her bed; some resistance softened. As
if, thought Vanyi, she had stopped fighting the inevitable and faced the fact
that she was a woman, and royal born at that.

It was a young change yet, and might not hold. But Vanyi
decided to let it hearten her. Estarion would be gratified; he had hoped for
such a result.

They did match well. The awkwardness of new lovers was
missing, the fumbling, the distraction, the obsession with one another. The
bond between them ran deeper than that. Daruya had been fighting it since she
came to Shurakan; had fought it maybe lifelong, as if her soul knew where the
other half of it was, but the rest of her had refused to listen.

She was still fighting, but not against that. She would
always fight; that was in her blood. Now maybe she would choose more useful
causes.

As Vanyi reached for the pot to refill her cup of tea, one
of the servants glided in and bent toward her. “Lady, one asks for you. Are you
at home to him?”

“Who is he?” Daruya, stretching her ears and making no
effort to pretend otherwise.

“Lady,” said the servant with a deeper bow than he had
accorded Vanyi, “it is one from the palace, a man who comes quietly but walks
with the gait of rank.”

“The Minister of Protocol,” said Daruya. She half-rose. “Should
I—”

“I’ll see him,” Vanyi said. And at Daruya’s frown: “You’re
in seclusion, remember. It suits us to keep you that way.”

Daruya sat down again. It was not acquiescence. Bundur,
Vanyi noticed, kept out of it. Wise man.

“Yes,” Vanyi said as if Daruya had spoken. “As long as we
can use the marriage-days as a shield against intruders, we gain time to think
our way out.”

“Little enough of that we’ve done so far,” said Daruya.

“You think so?” Vanyi asked. “I’d say we were doing well. We’re
keeping Borti hidden, we’ve got Uruan back up to strength, and we have watchers
in the house of the Gate in case someone comes there, thinking it deserted, and
tries something. Now we have a visitor from the palace.”

“Who, I hope, simply wants to exchange pleasantries with
you, and not arrest you for high treason.” Daruya gestured to the Olenyas who
hovered nearest. “Chakan. Go with her.”

Chakan bowed, scrupulously correct as he had been since his
quarrel with his lady. That would take some smoothing over, thought Vanyi; but
it was not her place to say so.

She could easily imagine what Daruya would say to that:
When, pray tell, had Vanyi ever cared whether it was or was not her place to
say whatever she had a mind to? But Vanyi could take refuge in proprieties when
they served her purpose, or when it was simply practical.

oOo

The Minister of Protocol waited in an antechamber with tea
and cakes and carefully schooled patience. He was not accustomed, clearly, to
wait on the convenience of others.

Vanyi found his presence and his continued good health
interesting. Palace coups in Shurakan, she had been assured, were civilized; no
one died except by strict necessity, and those who could continue to serve did
so. It reminded her in a way of the Olenyai and their honor, which was sworn to
the throne and not to the one who sat in it.

She did not have to like it or him. She spoke abruptly,
without greeting. “What do you want?”

He blinked at her discourtesy, but answered as he could. “You
must understand, lady, that while I am utterly orthodox in my convictions, I am
not in sympathy with those who would destroy all that even hints of magic.”