A Fall of Princes (32 page)

He had been imprisoned before; he had been shut up in close
walls, for punishment, for training as mage and priest. But he had had power.
He had not been trapped inside himself. He had not had to fight to breathe, to
think, to be himself and not mere mindless panic.

With a scraping of bolts, the door opened. He had no will
left. He burst into the light.

Bodies barred him. He swept them away. He struck stone.
Wall. Gate—

Men closed upon him. He fought them.

They were too many, and they were armored. His hands could
only rock them; could not fell them. They caught him, bound him, dragged him
into quiet.

Hirel sat in it, robed from throat to toe, sipping from a
cup. The walls about him were blessedly far away.

Sarevan’s captors flung him into the chamber and bolted the
door behind him. He lay on musty carpets, gasping, beginning to be sane again.
The cords were twisted cruelly tight. His arms throbbed.

Hirel knelt by him and began to worry at the knots. “Our
jailers are most impressed,” he said, “with the perfection of your savagery.”

“It’s not the cage,” Sarevan said carefully. “It’s that I
can’t get my mind out of it. I can’t breathe inside; I can’t breathe without.”

Hirel could not possibly understand. Or perhaps, and that
might have been worse, he could. “You are not a creature of sealed palaces,” he
said.

Sarevan shuddered. He tried to be light, to turn his mind
away from the dark. “Are our captors hoping I’ll maul you to death?”

“It would be convenient,” Hirel said.

“To whom?”

The boy shrugged. “I asked. I was not answered.”

One by one the knots yielded. The cords fell away. Sarevan
lay and tried to make his numbed arms obey his will.

Hirel sat on his heels, watching. After a moment he caught
one of Sarevan’s arms, bringing it back to life again with those clever fingers
of his. “I have not seen our mageling,” he said. “Nor our grey hunter.”

Captivity had weakened Sarevan’s wits. He had to struggle to
understand. Hope leaped; died. “Dead. Or fled.”

“Perhaps.” Hirel exchanged one arm for the other. “We are
wanted alive. No one moved to cut you down when you broke free. They gave way
rather than wound you.”

“Hostages?” The irony struck Sarevan; he laughed, though it
hurt. “It may be well enough for me, as long as someone in Asanion is holding
me. But for you . . .”

“I think they do not know me,” said Hirel. “Yet.”

He stood abruptly. Sarevan sat up, opening his mouth to
speak.

Hirel strode to the door and spoke. He raised his voice
barely enough, Sarevan would have thought, to pass the panel, but its inflection
raised Sarevan’s hackles. He had never heard the twelve tones of High Asanian
wielded with such deadly subtlety, by one bred to the art.

“O thou who guardest this door, send to thy master and tell
him. The prince who is above princes would speak to him.”

No sound came back from without. Hirel returned to the
chamber’s center, settled himself on the mound of cushions there, and picked up
his cup again. His free hand indicated the table beside him. “Eat,” he said.

Sarevan was more than glad to obey, though warily,
mistrusting Asanian sauces. He found himself yearning for good plain roast
wildbuck, or fruit untainted with spices, or simple peasant cheese. Even the
language in which he had always been pleased enough to address Hirel had grown
to a mighty burden.

He ate in silence, to quiet his stomach, tasting little. He
drank sour Asanian wine. He prowled the space, which was endurable, wide but
windowless.

He was going to break again. Anger did not help him. Should
Keruvarion’s high prince go mad like an animal, simply for a few hours’
confinement?

Bolts rattled. Sarevan spun, poised.

The door boomed back. Armed men poured through it. They
passed Hirel without a glance, spreading to surround Sarevan.

“Thou wilt not touch him,” the boy said, again in that
mastery of tones which came close to sorcery.

The guards paused. Sarevan did not move. They leveled their
spears, but neither touched him nor threatened him.

His back was to the wall. He grinned suddenly, leaned
against it, folded his arms. The men were not, he noticed, staring at him. They
were working very hard at it.

The tallest came barely to his chin. The smallest had to
look up or sidewise, or close his eyes altogether, lest they fix on what he was
trying hardest not to see.

“What’s the matter?” Sarevan asked him. “Haven’t you ever
seen a man before?”

The Asanian flushed. He did not take vengeance with his
spear. Sarevan admired him for that, and said so. He flushed more deeply yet,
and scowled terribly.

With the chamber well and valiantly secured, the captain of
guards stepped back from the door, sword raised in salute. All of his men who
were not hedging Sarevan with bronze clapped blades to shields and knelt.

Their master entered at his leisure, escorted by a pair of
Uvarra’s priests, one in silver grey and one in dusky violet. Sarevan almost
laughed. He carried himself like an emperor, and yet he was as small as a
child. He might have been taken for one, fair and smooth as his face was,
perfect ivory: a nine years’ youngling of indeterminate gender, wrapped in fold
on fold of midnight silk.

But his eyes were never a child’s. They were like Hirel’s,
clear gold, seeming whiteless unless they opened very wide; and they were
bitterly bright.

Hirel rose. He was tall here, even young as he was; he stood
a full head above that perfect miniature of a man.

Sarevan, watching, smiled. The other carried himself like an
emperor. Hirel Uverias had no need to.

It was beautifully played. “Brother,” he said, cool,
unsurprised.

Indeed. They were very like. Hirel, sun-painted, thinned and
hardened with travel, looked almost the elder.

“Brother,” said the silken mannikin. His voice was sweet and
nearly sexless. “I rejoice to see you well.”

Hirel inclined his head. Then he paused, as if he waited.
His eyes were steady.

For the merest flicker of an instant, the other lost his
poise. Hirel never moved.

Slowly his brother knelt. More slowly yet under those quiet
relentless eyes, he prostrated himself. His mages followed him.

Hirel looked down at them all. No smile touched his Ups, but
Sarevan found one in the light behind his eyes.

The princeling rose with grace, the mages with relief. Hirel
did not offer his hand. He sat and tucked up his feet and said, “Your bravos
should be whipped. They have given insult to a prince.”

“That has been remedied,” his brother said. Aranos, Sarevan
was prepared to name him.

“It has not,” said Hirel.

Aranos followed his eyes. Sarevan smiled at them both.

The lesser prince regarded him with interest and without
visible embarrassment. The fine brows went up.

Aranos approached. His spearmen drew back, not without
reluctance.

He put out a hand. It was child-small; its nails were fully
as long as the fingers from which they grew, warded in jeweled sheaths.

Sarevan shivered at the brush of those glittering claws, but
his smile held. “Little man,” he said, purring, “I give you leave to touch me.”

The hand paused. Aranos had to tilt his head well back to
look into Sarevan’s face. He was not at all afraid. “You are splendid,” he
said.

He meant it; or he was far too subtle for Sarevan’s outland
innocence. Or was simplicity another kind of subtlety?

“Are you insulted?” asked Aranos.

Sarevan thought about it. “That,” he answered in time, “is
not what I would call it. But here . . . yes. It is an insult.”

Aranos bowed his head. He gestured. A garment came quickly
enough to interest Sarevan.

It was a robe like Hirel’s, of heavy raw silk. It fit, which
was more interesting still. The servant who brought it brought also a comb,
which, when Sarevan had been persuaded to sit beside Hirel, he plied with a
master’s skill.

Aranos watched and waited. He did not sit. His robes,
Sarevan thought, must have been deadly heavy. There were seven of them, one
atop the other, each cut to show the one beneath.

Hirel, at his ease in a single robe, leaned back on his
cushions. “You will explain the meaning of this,” he said. “We are taken like
criminals. We are transported in a litter like women, but set within like
slaves, in robeless shame. And yet you pay me homage. Is it,” he asked gently,
“that you mean to mock me?”

“Errors have been committed,” said Aranos with equal
gentleness. His mages were pale; their eyes had lowered. “They will not be
repeated.”

“We are therefore to be set free?”

“I did not say that.”

“Ah,” said Hirel. Only that.

“You mistake me,” Aranos said. “The Olenyai who rode with
you were sworn to betray you; to complete what was left undone by Vuad and
Sayel. Your companion they were to treat likewise and to send back to his
father with the compliments of the Golden Empire.”

Calm though he willed himself to be, Sarevan shuddered.
Hirel was white about the lips. “That would not have been wise of them,” he
said.

“Indeed not. My mages had word of the plot; they were
undertaking to warn you. But matters moved too swiftly, as did you. You mistook
their sending, but it saved you. When the traitors came to seize you, you were
gone.”

“Even should I believe that there was a conspiracy to
destroy me,” Hirel said, “still I would wonder. A loyal man does not drug and
abduct his high prince.”

“There was no time to do otherwise. Your betrayers were
closing in upon you. It was most ill-advised, that disguise of yours. No true
Olenyas could have been deceived by it; and word passed swiftly that three
impostors had taken the road to Kundri’j, and two of them extraordinarily tall,
and one on a blue-eyed stallion.”

“I do not see one of them, though he was caught with us. Nor
have I seen the stallion.”

“You shall see them,” Aranos said. “Come now, my brother and
my lord. You have always suspected me of hungering after your titles: of lying
and deceiving and even slaying in order to gain them. And yet the brothers whom
you thought you loved, whom you went so far as to trust, turned against you.
Can you alter your vision of me? Can you begin to see that I may not be your
enemy?”

“You were the heir apparent until I was born.”

“Apparent only,” said Aranos. “It was known to me even
before our father wedded your mother that I would be supplanted by a legitimate
son. When our father went in pursuit of the Gileni princess, there was open
fear in the High Court, and no little resistance to the prospect of a halfblood
heir; but heir most certainly that child would be. When he returned alone and
rejected, to drown his sorrows in his harem and thereby sire his mighty army of
sons, I knew that in the end he would surrender to necessity. As indeed he did.
He took the sister-bride who was chosen for him. He sired your sisters, those
who died of their frailty and the one who lived to be her mother’s image. Then
at last he sired you. I would have been glad; I would have been properly your
brother. But your mother would not abide me. The others she feared little or
not at all. I who was eldest, whose blood was high and quite as pure as your
own, in her eyes was deadly. Neither of you ever sought to learn the truth of
me.”

Sarevan looked from one to the other of them. He did not try
to speak. Hirel was white and rigid. Aranos was pure limpid verity.

Very slowly Hirel said, “I do not know whom to trust.”

“You trust yon outland prince.”

Hirel’s eyes flashed on Sarevan, white-rimmed as a startled
senel’s. “He is not Asanian.”

“Do you therefore mistrust yourself?”

Hirel’s fists clenched on his knees. He drew a swift sharp
breath. “Prove yourself to me. Ride with me to Kundri’j. Stand behind me on
Autumn Firstday. Name me living man; proclaim me high prince before our
father.”

Sarevan watched Aranos narrowly. The princeling seemed
unshaken and unstartled. He said with perfect calm, “So I had meant to do.”

“If you lie,” said Hirel softly, “then you had best destroy
me now. For if I live, even if I live unmanned, or slave, or cripple, I will
have your life in return for your treachery.”

“I do not lie,” Aranos said. He went down once more,
prostrating himself, kissing the floor at Hirel’s feet. “You are my high
prince. You will be my emperor.”

o0o

Aranos kept at least one of his promises. His guards
brought Zha’dan to them. The Zhil’ari was unharmed save for a goodly measure of
Sarevan’s own trapped terrors, and quite as bare as Sarevan had been. He had
refused a robe; they had refused him a kilt.

He greeted his companions with a cry of joy and a leap that
brought blades out of sheaths. Hirel had to fend off the guards: Sarevan had
had the breath crushed out of him.

Zha’dan had lost even tradespeech; he babbled in his own
tongue, too fast for Sarevan to follow, until Sarevan shook him into silence.

He drew back, searching Sarevan’s face. “They caged you,” he
said. There was no lightness in him; none of the bright reckless temper with
which he liked to mask what he was. “I heard you. I thought they had broken
you.”

“Am I so fragile?” Sarevan asked him, the sharper for that
he came so close to the truth.

He frowned. “They think they know what you are. They’re
fools.”

“Are they treacherous?”

“They all are, here.” Zha’dan looked as if his head hurt.
“They don’t want to kill you. Either of you. Yet. The ivory doll—have you seen
him? He has more in that tiny head of his than anyone might imagine. I don’t
like him,” said Zha’dan, “but he thinks it’s to his advantage to serve the
little stallion. For now.”

“I wonder why,” said Sarevan.