Spear of Heaven (40 page)

So Vanyi was in bed trying to get better, and Daruya was
asleep, and Kimeri was with Borti, who did not seem to mind that Kimeri was a
living Gate. Borti was tired almost to tears, and fighting it, which made her
look stiffer and more queenly than ever. She could persuade the priests to keep
people out while she got a little rest, but they would not stop lingering and
staring and offering her reverence.

“You’d think I’d be used to it,” she said crossly round a
bite of roast fowl, “but it’s downright embarrassing to have them groveling as
if I were Moon Goddess herself, and not just the least of her children. If I’m
not careful she’ll take offense, and I’ll be worse off than I was before.”

“She won’t mind, I don’t think,” said Kimeri. “They’re
scared. They don’t know what you’ll do to them. They helped the others kill
your brother, after all, and they would have helped kill you, if they could
have caught you.”

“They thought they were doing the gods’ will,” Borti said. “Don’t
they think I understand that? They were preeminently wrongheaded, but they
meant well. And I need them. They prove that I’ve a right to my title.”

The king came just then. Hunin brought him, because Miyaz
the darkmage had insisted. Miyaz had been a prince of five robes in the High
Courts of Asanion: he knew how to tell when a queen would want to be left
alone, and when she would want to have a visitor.

The king looked ruffled and surly. His extraordinarily long
coat was dirty all along its trailing hem, and somebody had thrown a basket of
ancient vegetables at him. He had wiped the worst of it off his face, but his
coat was sadly stained.

He had not worn the crown, at least, to come over to the
temple. That would have got him killed. He was not much loved in the Summer
City. He was a false king, and no son of heaven.

The daughter of heaven, plain tired blunt-spoken Borti with
her dinner in front of her half-eaten, looked at him and sighed. Particularly
when he said nastily, “So now you accept the service of demons.”

He meant Hunin, who was laughing behind his eyes. Hunin did
not think much of this poor shift for a king.

Borti could see that. She said to Kimeri, “Tell your warrior
that I apologize for this my kinsman. He’s not so ill a man, when he’s getting
his own way.”

Hunin approved when Kimeri told him that in Asanian. He
said, and Kimeri said for him to Borti, “That is the way of princes, lady.” He
bowed as low as he would for a princess of seven robes in Asanion—not quite as
he would for a nine-robe princess, which was what Kimeri was, and certainly not
as for an empress, but from an Olenyas to a foreign queen it was a great honor.
Kimeri said so.

Borti smiled at him. “Thank you,” she said. He bowed again
and made it clear that he was part of the wall, since she had to be polite to
the king.

She bit her lip. She was trying not to laugh. “Such a prince
of servants!”

She was learning to understand Olenyai in spite of their
yellow eyes and their black veils and never being able to see their faces. She
barely even thought of them as demons any longer. Kimeri was proud of her for
that.

The king was getting impatient, but he was too scared to
show much of it. Borti looked him up and down. “Paltai,” she said, “you idiot.
You should have come here in a priest’s robe. No one would have noticed you
then.”

He stood stiffly, reeking of ancient bloodroot and defunct
ox-garlic. “I came in what was on my back. The servants are gone, and have
taken the keys to the wardrobe with them.”

“But there’s another key in the—” Borti stopped, then
started again. “The king would know where to find his own key. And how to
convince a priest of Ushala temple that it would be to his best advantage to
lend a robe for a good cause.”

“There are no priests in Ushala temple,” said Paltai. “They’re
all gone, and the doors are locked. Every door in the palace is locked, except
those that lead from the king’s chambers to the gate.”

Borti’s face stayed calm, but inside she was exultant. She
had not dared to hope for that, not even in her heart, where no one else—except
Kimeri, but she did not know that—could know. A lord’s servants could tell him
that they were no longer serving him. They did it by locking everything but the
way out, and leaving him to find it before he froze or starved, since he could
not get at his clothes or his dinner. It was a rare thing, but it had happened
before, if not to a king.

Paltai had to tell Borti that it had happened to him. That
cost him a great deal of pride. But he was not too proud to do it. Real pride
would have stayed in the palace till someone came to drag him out, or else
slunk away to hide and brood and work mischief later. Paltai was more honest
than that.

He also thought Borti was soft in the heart. He was gambling
on it, that she would not have him killed or sent to exile in the mountains. He
had earned that, and would have had it if Kimeri had been the one to decide, but
it was Borti’s place to say what she would do with him.

She thought about it for a long while, while he stood
stiffer and stiffer, till he started to tremble. He had been too angry and
arrogant to be afraid. Now, in front of Borti, as ordinary as she looked and as
indecisive as she seemed, he was suddenly terrified. Something about her
reminded him at long last that she was the daughter of heaven, and his allies
had killed her brother, who was also her husband and her king.

After a long while she said, “There are many who would say
that this upheaval in the kingdom is my fault and my brother’s, not only for
letting foreigners in but for failing in our duty to the gods. Since we had no
heirs—since the goddess never granted us children of our bodies.” She paused.
That was an old pain, and one that went deep. “I am not so old yet that I
cannot bear a child. I may be barren—”

“You aren’t,” said Kimeri. It was neither wise nor polite,
but she hated to see Borti hurting. “It wasn’t you. It was the king. His seed
was weak.”

They both stared at her. She stopped herself before she
started to fidget. “I can see,” she said. “I can’t help it.”

“Child,” said Borti. “Oh, child.” Kimeri could not tell if
she wanted to laugh or cry. She did not know which, herself. She made herself
look back at Paltai, who was looking at Kimeri with wild speculation, seeing in
her a power he could use. Borti said, “No, Paltai, don’t think of it. This
child is my kin, if somewhat distant. She too is a daughter of heaven.”

“And an heir?” Paltai asked with a twist of the lip.

“Not to this kingdom,” said Borti. “And since I may not
after all be barren, and my brother-king is dead, I’ll be needing a consort, to
do my duty to the goddess. It would have to be someone of known ability to
beget children, of high family, of the blood of heaven.”

“It is a pity,” said Paltai, “that Lord Shakabundur is so
recently unavailable.”

“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” said Borti. “I blessed his wedding,
too. They’re soulbound beyond any doubt, and beyond any hope of changing it.”

“What’s to prevent him from doing stud-service in the palace
for the kingdom’s sake?”

“Why, little, I suppose.” Borti sighed again. “Paltai, you
do have a terrible tongue on you. Hasn’t anybody ever taught you to be sparing
with it?”

He started as if she had slapped him. In a way she had. He
was not used to that: it made him angry. But he bit his tongue and did not say
any of the things he was thinking.

Borti saw. She smiled. “I could ask Bundur to favor me, of
course. It’s been done before. His lady might even allow it—one never knows.
But there is another way. You’ve been king already. Would you return to the
palace if I sanctioned you before the people?”

She had astonished him. He had been thinking that she was
playing with him, taunting him with his failure, asking him to help choose his
supplanter. He was really quite foolish, Kimeri thought, and he did not know
Borti very well at all.

“There is a certain logic in it,” Borti said. “Granted, you
saw my brother killed by your allies, and seized the crown before anyone else
could move. You made no effort to prevent the sack of the city, nor were you
able to hold your place once it was known that I was alive. You were a very
poor king, taking all in all.

“But,” she said, “within your limits, you’re not a bad
choice. Your family is royal kin. You have children but no wife, which proves
your ability to beget heirs to the crown, and offers no impediment to your
taking the place of consort.”

“Not king?” Paltai asked. He had come back to himself,
sharp, wary, and beginning to believe she meant it.

“The king is dead,” said Borti. “The queen has need of a
consort. You were a wretched king, Paltai, but you would make a reasonable
husband, all things considered.”

He looked away. His tongue wanted to cut her till she bled,
but the rest of him was telling it to be sensible. “I . . . don’t
know if that’s wise,” he said finally, which was not what he had started to say
at all.

“Probably not,” Borti said. “I don’t think I care. I’ve
always been inexplicably fond of you, and you’re a pleasant bedmate. You would
have to be oathbound, of course, and purified before the kingdom.”

He shivered. Purification in Shurakan was not an easy thing,
not for sins as great as his. He would have to shed blood and endure a great
deal of pain if he wanted to be soul-clean by his people’s reckoning. Even so
he said, “It would be worth the trouble, to father the next children of heaven.”

“I thought you might think so,” said Borti.

They understood one another. Liked one another, too, better
than they would ever admit. Borti would not forgive her brother’s death. This
was her revenge, and very clever, making Paltai give up the crown but live
always in sight of it—but there was more to it than that. Someday maybe Kimeri
would understand.

Paltai was ready to say yes, but he was not quite willing to
let Borti know it. “What about them?” he demanded, with a stab of his chin at
Kimeri. “We’ll never be rid of them now, since they’ve won your crown back for
you.”

“We would never have been rid of them in any case,” Borti
said, not looking at Kimeri but very much aware of her. “Once they had come,
they were going to keep coming, no matter what we did. I’m going to treat them
like people of honor, and if necessary shame them into doing the same for us.”

“Will you let them build their Gate again?”

“I don’t think I can stop them,” said Borti. “I may be able
to control them, to a degree. After all, we know now that our priests can break
Gates. If we allow the one, and set limits on who and how many may pass it, we’ll
give them what they want but keep them aware that we can take it away.”

“We never did want to invade you,” Kimeri said. “Really we
didn’t. We just wanted to see what was here.”

“So would a child say,” said Paltai.

Kimeri looked at him hard, till he flushed even darker than
he was already, and ducked his head. “We aren’t all perfectly honorable,” she
said, “but we are honest. When we say we’ll do something, we do it. We keep our
word. We’re simple people, I suppose.”

“Or else,” mused Borti, “with mages to keep everybody
honest, honesty is easier.” She shook herself. “No, Paltai, I won’t be filling
my court with mages and turning this into a realm of magic. But we do have to
discover our own honesty, and our own magics. Since we’ve lied to ourselves for
so long.”

“You didn’t know,” Kimeri said.

“Now we do.” Borti stood, wiping her fingers where they were
greasy from her dinner. “Go and bathe, Paltai. When you’ve done that, and have
rested, we’ll let the kingdom know that it has a queen again in truth, and that
the queen has a consort.”

Paltai did not like being told what to do, but he had wits
enough to know that he was outmatched. Borti’s smile was warm, but it was
absolutely implacable. He would do as she said, or he would be disposed of.

They would get on well together, all in all. He knew that;
it made him smile after a while, wry and rather pained, but real enough. “Yes,
divine lady,” he said, and only about half of it was mocking.

Vanyi was thoroughly annoyed with herself. She had had to
be carried from the sanctuary like a blasted invalid, and she had not been
allowed to do so much as raise her head. If she wanted anything she asked for
it, and Aledi gave it to her, or Miyaz while Aledi rested, or, the past hour or
two, the youngest of the Olenyai.

It was not pleasant to have to ask him to carry her to the
privy. She was years past anything resembling prudery, but damn it, she was a
grown woman; why in the hells did she have to be packed about like a baby?

“Because,” said a warm deep voice, “you had no more sense
than one, carrying on while your body was trying to kill itself. This is fair
punishment; you can’t dispute it.”

Vanyi would have snapped erect if a pair of all too familiar
hands had not held her down. An all too familiar brush of magery soothed her
hammering heart and brought, if not calm, then a kind of resignation. Another
came in behind it, less familiar but in its way immeasurably stronger.

She looked from Estarion to the priest-mage who had followed
him. The latter could have been a Shurakani in a Sun-priest’s torque; he was a
plainsman from Iban in the Hundred Realms, and he was chief of the
healer-priests in Starios. He was neither ghost nor sending; he was very
solidly there.

So was Estarion. “You’re not supposed to be here,” Vanyi
said. She was half in a fog already, what with the healer’s working, and not
even a by-your-leave, either. But she kept enough of her mind alert to focus on
Estarion.

“I’m not here,” he said. “I’m in Starios, being emperor. You’re
being visited by a simple citizen of the empire who offered to try the Gate now
it’s open again.”