Arrows of the Sun (31 page)

It was easier than he had thought. More fool he, for not
thinking of it sooner.

Dressed in his wonted armor of robes, he walked calmly and
openly into the harem. His shadows halted perforce at the doors. He slipped
into an empty chamber and bundled the robes into a chest there, and stood up in
well-worn coat and trousers, with a hat in his hand. Still calmly, still
openly, he walked through the maze of rooms and passages, empty of the thousand
concubines that were the emperor’s portion, bare and unguarded.

Haliya’s riding court was deserted. She had been there
earlier: the marks of hooves were clear in the sand, a fall of droppings that
the servants, careless or in haste, had missed. He circled it, keeping to the
shadow of the colonnade. The door was barred but unlocked. The passage was empty.
The gate opened to his touch.

He walked past the stalls and the drowsing seneldi, to pause
in the shadow of the stable door. Grooms and servants walked past, some
briskly, some idling in the long light of evening.

He pulled the hat down over his eyes. What men did not
expect to see, they failed to see. He squared his shoulders and put on the
swagger of an emperor’s guardsman at liberty, making his insouciant way to the
stews and taverns of the city.

A shadow attached itself to him beyond the Golden Gate, well
down the Way of Kings. He neither paused nor turned. But as the road narrowed
and divided, he slid hunter-swift into an alleyway, doubled back, shot out a
long arm to snare the shadow as it passed.

Olenyas. He had known that: the ringing in his skull was
unmistakable. Nor did the eyes surprise him. All gold, and slightly more amused
than angry.

“Yes,” said Estarion. “You let me catch you. How did you
know it was I?”

“Any fool would know,” said Korusan. “No one else in this
city walks like a hunting cat.”

“Only half the northerners in my Guard,” Estarion said.

“None of them needs a hat to conceal his eyes.” Korusan
shifted slightly. “If it does not trouble you overmuch, I would prefer to be
throttled in my sleep, and not in a byway of the Upper City.”

Estarion let him go. “You’re not going to drag me back to
prison.”

“I would not dream of it,” said Korusan.

“No?” said Estarion. “Back with you, then. I’ve no need of
you.”

“You have every need of me,” said Korusan.

“Your emperor commands you.”

“My emperor has sore need of guarding, if he will walk in
his city, and his assassin’s head barely cold upon its spike.”

“They’ll think I’m one of my own guardsmen.”

“You reckon that an advantage? There is a fine art, my lord,
to the disposal of a foreigner in Kundri’j Asan.”

“In Endros we call it slugging and rolling. I’ve run the
taverns all over Keruvarion. I can look after myself.”

“I shall watch,” said Korusan.

Estarion ground his teeth. “I order you to go back to the
palace.”

Korusan did not move. His eyes were level. Yellow eyes. Were
Estarion’s own so disconcerting?

He struck the boy’s shoulder with his fist, rocking but not
felling him. “Follow me, then. And keep your mouth shut.”

Korusan’s silence was eloquent. Estarion turned on his heel
and stalked down the narrow street.

o0o

Kundri’j Asan after nightfall was a stranger place even
than under the sun. The Upper City retreated into darkness and silence, broken
only rarely by the passage of a lord in his litter, with his servants and his
guards and his torchbearers.

As Estarion descended, the streets grew narrower, the
buildings meaner, the people more frequent with their noise and their smells
and their crowding bodies. They jostled Estarion, pressed against him, groped
toward the purse at his belt. He kept a grip on it and on the dagger beside it.

He should have been intolerably crowded. But it was freedom.
No one knew him. No one fled from his path. Merchants importuned him, beggars
plucked at him. Wanton women, all but naked save for the inevitable veils, leaned
out of windows or beckoned from doorways.

He was not spat on, nor did a knife stab out of the dark. He
smelled no conspiracy, heard no voices preaching riot. Of the prophet Vanyi had
spoken of, he saw nothing, heard no word. But neither did he hear anyone speak
of the emperor. His height and the color of his face brought silence where
people stood together.

He had been where riot smoldered. Kundri’j was quieter than
that.

Happy, no, it was not that, no more than any city in
Asanion. It seemed prosperous enough. The hungry were not starving. The beggars
had the look of honest guildsmen. Priests and prostitutes shared street-space
with no apparent hostility.

He should have been more easy as he walked, rather than
less. He had been imprisoned too long. He had forgotten what it was like to
walk where he would; and he had never been unknown as he was here. He could
even, he suspected, have taken off his hat and met no recognition. The emperor
was in his palace. He did not come down among his people, or sully his pure
self with their presence.

There was something underneath. Thought, awareness, memory.
Longing. Wanting something. Something that was gold, no shadow in it.
Prophecy—prophet—

He halted, half-stumbling into a doorway. Something squalled
and fled. He started, clutched at the doorpost. He was dizzy. His power felt
raw, aching, like a limb too long unused.

A shoulder slid under his arm; an arm circled his middle.
Korusan was a fierce warm presence, a familiarity so sharp it burned, as if it
had always been, time out of mind. He let himself lean on the Olenyas, lightly,
while his body mastered itself.

“You are ill,” said Korusan.

“I’m well,” Estarion said, “for the first time in far too
long. It takes me like this. You shouldn’t mind it.”

“Mad,” said Korusan as if to himself.

“Sane,” said Estarion. “Here, stop fretting. I was tasting
the city; it was stronger than I thought. It’s been cycles since I could even
begin to do it. There’s something in the palace, I think, that throttles
magery.”

The boy’s eyes were a little wild. “There is something in
me—that—” He silenced himself so abruptly that Estarion heard the click of
teeth. “My lord, you will come back to the palace. You have had enough
of—tasting the city.”

“I have not,” said Estarion. “I’m not even halfway to where
I’m going.” He stood straight and pried the boy’s arm loose. “I won’t take a
fit again. My honor on it.”

Clearly the Olenyas did not believe in the honor of
emperors, but he did not try to stop Estarion from going on. He clung as close
as Estarion’s own shadow, all but pressed against his side.

Estarion sighed and suffered him. He was comfort of a sort,
in his robes and veils, armed to the teeth.

o0o

The city cast them up at a gate in the third circle, on a
quiet street lit at intervals by lamps. That was wealth, to pay men to set up
the lamps and keep them filled, and light them at dusk and quench them at dawn.
No taverns here, spilling their light and their custom into the street; no
tawny-breasted women at the windows. Here all the walls were blank, the gates
iron-barred.

The one Estarion sought was unlocked. It opened to his
touch, admitting him to a soft-lit precinct, outer court of a temple as it
seemed to be, unwatched and unguarded.

But there were watchers. His nape prickled; his head throbbed.
He walked boldly into the light, trailing his shadow. “Greeting to the temple,”
he said, “and goodwill to its priests.”

His words fell in silence. He passed from the outer court to
the first sanctuary, deserted likewise, lamplit, redolent of incense and the
evening rite.

The altar was heaped with fruits and flowers. He bowed
before it, aware of his shadow’s stiff stillness, and laid a coin in the
offering-bowl. Prayer he had none, except his presence.

The door behind the altar was open like all the rest. It led
to a vestry, and beyond that to the inner house. The priests were all asleep,
it seemed, or out upon errands.

Estarion might have wondered that they kept so poor a guard,
except that it was this temple, and this house, and these priests. They knew
him. They admitted him without question: almost pain, to comprehend that.

Only the temple’s heart was closed to him. He felt its throb
in his bones, the pulse of the Gate under the care of its guardians.

He could have forced the door. That power was in him. He did
not choose to summon it.

Korusan was clinging to his side again, eyes darting,
knuckles white on the hilts of his swords. Estarion touched him; he started.

“Down, lad,” Estarion said, making no effort to be quiet.
“You’re safe here. Nothing will eat you.”

“And what will devour you?” the boy demanded.

“Nothing,” said Estarion. “These are my people here. This is
my magic that sets your hackles rising.”

“I see no people. I smell no magic.”

“It doesn’t need your belief,” said Estarion, “to be.” He
moved away from the warded door, following the tug of instinct.

o0o

She had a room to herself in an upper corner of the house.
The way there was dim, deserted.

Once a figure trotted past him. He made no effort to be
invisible.

The priestess took no notice of him at all. Anyone who came
this far, it seemed, was judged to be harmless. He would have called it
arrogance, had he known less of palaces.

Her door was latched but not warded. He opened it slowly.

She was asleep. His breath caught at the sight of her in
lamplight, clothed only in her hair, with her coverlets fallen on the floor.

The room was narrow, bare, no more than a cell. The only
light in it was the single lamp, the only ornament the torque about her throat.
There was not even a rug for the floor. And yet it was beautiful, because she
was in it.

After so much ivory and gold she was blue-white, her hair
ruddy-dark, her face sharply angled, her body thin but full enough in the
breast, narrow-hipped, long-legged, free in her movements as a boy. She was not
tall, but she seemed so, even asleep: she had that gift, to seem larger than
she was.

He bent over her. She did not stir. Her scent was dizzying.
And nothing in it but herself; no perfume, no sweet oils.

He kissed her softly. She sighed. He pressed a little
harder. Her lips parted; her arms came up, circled his neck as they always had,
always would.

Her body went taut. Her eyes snapped open. She thrust him
away. “What in the hells are you doing here?”

He sucked in a breath. “Good evening, Vanyi,” he said.

She scrambled herself up, as far away from him as the wall
allowed. “What do you think you’re doing? Get out of here!”

He sat on the bed’s edge. He was perilously tempted to
laugh, or else to weep. Neither would have been wise. “I’m glad to see you,
too,” he said. “Have you been keeping well?”

“You’ve lost your wits,” she said. “How ever did you escape?
And what is that?”

He followed the line of her glare. Korusan stood rigid by
the door, looking everywhere but at her.

“That,” Estarion said, “is my shadow. No one will kill me,
he’s promised. He reserves that pleasure for himself.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You look dreadful,” she said. “Don’t
they feed you?”

“You sound exactly like my mother.”

“Damn it,” she said.

She rose, pushing past him. He did not try to catch her. She
pulled a robe out of the clothing-chest and put it on, combed her hair with her
fingers, knotted it at her nape.

Estarion watched. Korusan endeavored bravely not to.

She raked him with her glance. “You,” she said. “Out.”

He ignored her. Estarion bit back a grin. “Out, guardsman,”
he said.

The Olenyas took station just beyond the door. He could hear
everything, surely, but there was no helping that. Estarion doubted that the
boy spoke Island patois.

He stretched out on the bed. “God and goddess,” he said,
“I’ve missed you.”

“You should never have come here,” she said.

“I’m safer here than I’ll ever be in that gilded dungeon.
Nobody recognized me in the city, Vanyi. Not one.”

“Of course not. You’re not in ten robes and a mask.” She
came to stand over him. “They must be combing the palace for you.”

“Not at all. They think I’m in the harem.”

He meant her to laugh at it, not to go bitterly cold. “So?
And why aren’t you?”

“None of them is you.”

“I’m sure you’ve tested it,” she said. “Repeatedly. To be
sure. Is any of them pregnant yet?”

He sat up sharply. “
No!
”

“Pity,” she said. “It must be tedious, keeping all those
women happy. How many are there? A dozen? A hundred? Or do you lose count after
a while?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. This was not going at all as
he meant it to. She loved him, he knew it. He had felt it when he touched her,
before she was awake to flay him with her tongue.

“And why shouldn’t I be ridiculous? I’m your castoff, your
commoner, the one who couldn’t carry your baby. Now it’s my turn, I suppose,
and you’re too polite to leave me out of your round.”

He tried to be calm. She would think that. Of course.
Everyone else did. “I haven’t touched even one of them,” he said.

“You don’t have to lie to me,” she said. “I’m jealous, yes,
I admit it. I always did hate to let anything go, no matter how long it had
been since I tired of it.”

“Are you tired of me?” He rose. “Are you really, Vanyi? Or
are you only bitter? Maybe you have a right to be. I should have escaped long
ago, or brought you into the palace.”

“In the harem,” she asked, “with all the others? Well for
you you didn’t try.”

“I wouldn’t do that to you.” He laid his hands on her
shoulders. She did not try to elude him. That gave him hope, although her face
was stony. “Vanyi, I swear by my father’s tomb, I haven’t touched any woman but
you.”