Arrows of the Sun (26 page)

“We know who you are,” said Haliya. “Are you going to have
me punished? Nurse said that people are shockingly free with their emperors in
Keruvarion, but she did like to tell stories, and not all of them were as true
as one might wish.”

“Emperors in Keruvarion are people like anyone else,” he
said. And at the widening of her eyes: “Well. Maybe not like anyone. But anyone
can come up to me and talk to me. Look at me, even. Touch me. Make me feel like
something other than a poppet on a stick.”

“You do hate that, don’t you?” Her sympathy tasted real, if
not over-warm. “So do I. I tried to run away to Keruvarion once. My father
whipped me himself, with his own hands. He was stiff for days after.”

“And you weren’t?”

“He didn’t beat me very hard,” she said. “It runs in the
blood, you see: running away. Especially the womenchildren. I could hardly help
it. I’m older now, of course. I know what’s proper.”

“I ran away once,” said Estarion. “I wanted to be a
tribesman by the Lakes of the Moon, and hunt the spotted deer.”

“Did your father whip you when they brought you back?”

The chill that touched him was less than he had expected. He
could answer her calmly, even lightly. “My father was dead. My mother decided
that I had too little to do. She gave me a princedom to rule for myself, and no
one to help or hinder, unless I acted abominably.”

“And did you?”

“I sulked for days. But the princedom couldn’t run itself.
Its steward was old and growing feeble, and its lords and barons were trying the
bonds of their fealty, and the merchants were padding their profits, and the
people, the poor people, didn’t deserve any of it. So I had to behave myself,
you see, and do what I could. Without insulting the steward, starting a war
among the barons, or driving the merchants out, because we needed them to buy
the wool and meat and cloth that were our wealth, and to sell the things we
needed: wood for the looms, iron for the needles, herbs and earths for the
dyes.”

She was listening with every evidence of interest, but he
stopped himself. “There now,” he said. “I was prince in Umbras till I’d learned
my lesson, and then we found a princess for it, and I went back to the life I’d
run away from. It wasn’t so ill, once I’d thought about it.”

“A princess?” Ziana asked, so unexpectedly that he looked at
her sister. But the voice was not the same, not at all. This was soft and low,
trembling with the effort of being so bold. “A princess to rule a princedom?”

Estarion found himself speaking more gently, trying not to
frighten her. “She was heir to it, as close as made no matter. She would have
taken her place long before, but she’d gone traveling to the Nine Cities to
learn new ways of weaving and dyeing, and she had affairs that wouldn’t settle
all at once.”

“She ruled,” Ziana said as if to herself. “Do you hear that,
Haliya? I told you that wasn’t one of Nurse’s stories.”

“Of course she had a husband,” Haliya said, “or a brother
who could tell her what to do.”

“She’d married in the Nine Cities,” said Estarion, “that’s
true enough, but her husband wasn’t minded to live in a shepherd’s cot on the
edge of the world, as he put it. She wasn’t bitter about it, much. She had a
daughter from him, to be her heir, and let him have the son, which they all
reckoned fair, as such things go.”

“I wish I lived in Umbros,” Ziana said.

“It’s not very elegant,” said Estarion. “It’s mostly moors
and woolbeasts and shepherds. The palace is a manor house that grew. It’s raw
and cold in the winter, and what summer there is, is more rain than sun. We had
fires in the hearths at High Summer, and winter rains by Autumn Firstday. No
one had much use for silk, or for pretty things. They weren’t sensible.”

“Silk makes a great deal of sense,” said Ziana. “It weaves
strong and it weaves light, and it’s warm when you want it, and cool when you
want it. And it takes color like nothing else.”

She was, in her way, quite as surprising as her sister.
Estarion was enchanted.

“Ah,” said Lord Firaz, sliding in beside him. “Sire, we had
lost you. I see you have found Prince Alishandas’ daughters. They are the
jewels of Markad, born of mothers who were kin to the royal house. There have
been mages in their line, and priestesses of the Sun—Orozia of Magrin, mage and
priestess and friend to Sarevadin, was their father’s grandfather’s father’s
sister; and she was but the first of several.”

“That is a noble lineage,” said Estarion. Stupidly, maybe,
but he was caught in amber eyes, and again in golden. Such wit and such
willfulness; and here, where he had never looked for any such thing. He slanted
an eye at his Regent. “I’m in a quandary, my lord. Here are two. How do I
choose?”

“Why, sire, you take both,” said Lord Firaz in some
surprise. “You have no harem; that is hardly a disgrace, as new come as you
are, but strict honor would dictate that you choose many ladies from the cream
of the realm, to honor their families and to bear you strong sons.”

“Many?” Estarion felt the slow flush rising. Bless his
ancestry, it did not show. “How many?”

“Had you been high prince in Asanion,” said Firaz, “you
would have been expected to take a lady for each day of the year. Then on your
accession to the throne you would double that number; and when your first son
was born, treble it.”

Estarion must have looked a perfect fool. He picked up his
fallen jaw. “How on earth can any man please that many?”

Lord Firaz was amused: there was a glint in his eye. “He
does his best, my lord.”

“And Hirel had fifty brothers.” Estarion shuddered. “I’m not
Asanian. I’m Varyani. We take our women one at a time.”

“In Keruvarion that is honorable, my lord. Here, it gives
insult to all those fathers whose daughters might rise in the emperor’s favor
and enrich their families and give them kin in the royal house—perhaps even on
the throne itself.”

Estarion had heard it before. Of course he had. But hearing
and listening—those were not the same at all. “God and goddess,” he said.

“Here we have a thousand gods,” said Firaz.

“I won’t—” Estarion stopped, drew a long breath. “Would
honor be satisfied,” he asked, “if I eased myself in gently? If I remembered
the ways of the Ianyn kings, and choose nine ladies of beauty and lineage?
Would that content the Court?”

“For a beginning,” said Firaz, “it would, sire.”

“Very well,” Estarion said. “Choose me seven who you think
will suit me, and who will find me, if not suitable, then at least endurable.”

“Will my lord not choose his own?”

“I have,” said Estarion.

The Regent’s brows went up. “My lord honors me with his
trust.”

“I do,” said Estarion.

He stepped back, opening the way to the hall. The ladies did
not seize it, he noticed. Their dragon, as they called her, seemed to have
accepted the inevitable. Her scowl was no less fierce, but she had stopped
flexing her claws.

They stood in front of him. Nine of them. Nine veils, nine
pairs of eyes, from warm amber to bright gold. Nine bodies so wrapped and
swathed and swaddled that he could only guess at their shapes, though he had no
doubt of their gender.

They had been parted from their protectors. Those would be
deep in colloquy, one by one, with Lord Firaz and the empress, settling matters
as honor required. The guards here were eunuchs of the palace, aged and
discreet.

The room was small, smothered in curtains. Estarion followed
his nose to one and swept it back.

Light trickled in through a lattice. There was no catch, no
opening. He snorted disgust and wheeled. They were all staring, women and eunuchs
alike.

A chair stood against the wall. He sat in it, not to be at
ease, but to keep from prowling.

This was not beginning well. He tried a smile, not too wide.
None of them warmed, except Haliya, who was laughing at him. She raised a hand
to her veil.

Women bared their bodies in Keruvarion with less ceremony,
and less trepidation, than women in Asanion showed their faces. Estarion had no
sympathy with it; or had had none, until he met those bright eyes. This was
great bravery, and a great gift. She was giving him herself.

He did not know if she was beautiful. She was less plump
than some, which Asanians would reckon a defect. There was a scattering like
gold dust across her nose: remarkable. The color came and went beneath it. She
was not quite brave enough to smile at him without her veil to hide behind.

The others, so exampled, unveiled themselves likewise. He
was careful to notice each face, to say something to each maiden, whether she
blushed or paled, stared hard at her feet or raised her eyes daringly to the
vicinity of his chin. Ziana was the beauty that her sister was not: an amber
loveliness that paled the rest to milk and water. When she blushed, she blushed
rose-gold. He could not help what he did, which was to rise and take her hand,
and kiss it as if she had been the empress and he but a prince of her court.

He let her go not entirely of his own will, to face her
sister again. Of them all, he had failed to speak only to her. She felt it: he
saw it in the angle of her chin, in the hard brightness of her eye.

He brushed her gold-dusted cheek with his finger. “Does it
come off?” he asked her.

She did not laugh as he had hoped, or delight him with her
wit. She drew herself up, straight and stiff and cold. “If I do not please your
eyes, my lord, I shall leave you. But do keep Ziana. She has no blemish.”

“Nor do you,” he said.

“I am not beautiful. I am too thin. My face is blotched with
the sun. One of my teeth is imperfect: it broke when I fell climbing the wall
in our garden. I have a scar on my chin from riding my brother’s pony over a
fence too high for him, and—”

He felt his brow climbing. It stopped her. Asanians could
not do that, maybe: he had never seen it in them. “I should want you to be
perfect?”

“You are the emperor,” she said.

“I do hate it when people say that,” he said.

“Then I won’t say it,” she said. “Your majesty.”

She was small as Asanians were, barely shoulder-high. And
yet he did not frighten her. She kept her chin up as if she wanted it there,
and glared down her nose at him. “Are you going to send me back?” she demanded
of him.

“Do you want me to?”

“My wanting has nothing to do with it.”

“I will if you ask,” he said, and now he was as stiff as
she.

She widened her eyes, which truly were beautiful, and curled
her lip. “But why should you? You own this empire and everything in it.”

“I don’t own you.”

“You do.” She looked straight into his eyes. “You can send me
away. I don’t mind. Maybe they’ll let me go this time, and see how a woman can
be a princess in Keruvarion.”

“You do want that,” he said. He did not know what he felt.
Regret, maybe. Admiration for her outspokenness, so precious rare among her
people.

“I wanted it once,” said Haliya. “Then I thought I wanted to
be a proper woman, and be a man’s wife, and bear his sons. I’ll not do that
now.”

“Why not, if I set you free?”

Her laughter was gentle, which startled him. “You really
don’t know, do you? You’ve seen our faces now. No one else will want us.”

Estarion stood still. His heart had gone cold. “Then—all
those ladies in all those cities—”

“Oh,” she said, “they’re safe enough, unless a man is
remarkably silly about his honor. You didn’t single anyone out, you see. You
didn’t say anything to them beyond the politest necessity. Whereas we’ve been
your property since we walked through yonder door.”

“That is ridiculous,” Estarion said.

“It’s custom. If you hadn’t been the emperor, if you’d been
a lord or even a prince, someone higher might be willing to take your leavings
as concubines, or as servants to one of his concubines. We have no honor left,
you see, that belongs to our kin. We only have what you will give. If that is nothing,
then nothing is our portion. I don’t mind,” she said, “much. I know the way to
Keruvarion.”

She did mind. Even his little magecraft felt it. It was her
honor she cherished, he knew that, and not his presence.

“I should set you free,” he said.

“You can’t do that.”

“The emperor can do anything.”

“Anything the emperor can do, he can do. He can’t make a
woman a man.”

“Why in the hells should I want to—”

“She means,” said a gentle voice, “that women live like
this. Men go out, and ride, and run away to Keruvarion.” Ziana blushed under
his eyes. “Here, my lord, it’s different.”

Estarion threw up his hands. “You’re going to drive me clean
out of my wits. Then what will you do?”

“Madmen are like dead men,” said Haliya calmly, but with a
glint in it. “We’ll be your widows. We can do whatever we like.”

“Even go out, and ride, and run away?”

She lowered those bold eyes, but not before he saw how they
danced. “I forget myself. Again. My lord.”

“Oh, stop it,” he said. “Could you bear to go to Keruvarion
if you went with me?”

“In a carriage? With curtains? And guards?”

“On a senel. In trousers. With,” he admitted, “guards.
There’s no escaping them.”

“Will you promise that?”

He hesitated.

She would not droop. She was too proud. But the light went
out of her.

He had her hands in his before he knew it, not tempted to
kiss them, but not tempted to let them go, either. “I promise,” he said.

o0o

Once Estarion had escaped as far as the queen’s palace, he
discovered that his jailers had lengthened his chain. He could go to his mother
now if he wished, or speak to the women who were, in law if not in fact, his
concubines.

He was careful not to slight any of them. But he had begun
with the sisters, and to the sisters he always returned.