Arrows of the Sun (32 page)

“Then you are a perfect fool.” She wrenched out of his
grasp. “I don’t want you, Estarion. What will it take to convince you of that?”

“More than this,” he said. “Your mouth tells me terrible
things. Your body loves me still. Why won’t you listen to it? I won’t be in
this place forever. We can go back to Keruvarion, be as we were. And when your
Journey is over, you’ll be my empress. Even Mother is almost reconciled to it.”

“Listen to you,” she said. “Your body tells me things, too.
It tells me you don’t believe yourself, not honestly. You want to believe it.
You want me to fall into your arms, give you your night’s pleasure, promise you
what you can’t take. You can’t, Estarion. There’s no going back, for any of
us.”

“There is,” he said stubbornly. “Damn you, Vanyi. I love
you.”

“So you do,” she said. “So much that you won’t leave me
alone when I ask, you creep up on me in my sleep, you all but rape me before
I’m awake to know it.”

“Rape?” The word caught in his throat. “That was rape? By
the thousand false Asanian gods, I hope you never know anything worse.”

She was white and set, hateful, hating him. He wanted to hit
her. He wanted to weep in her arms for all that they had had, and that she would
not let them win back. “Why?” he cried. “Why do you do this?”

“Because I must.” Damn her calm. Damn her cruelty. “Take
your shadow, my lord. Go back where you belong.”

“No,” he said. His hands clenched, unclenched. “Not without
you.”

“Then you will have to force me,” she said, “because I will
not go of my own will.”

“Stubborn, obstinate, muleheaded—” He stopped for breath. “
Vanyi
! For the love of god and goddess—”

“For the love of your empire,” she said, merciless, “no.”

“When have you ever cared for my empire?”

“When have you cared for anything but what suited your
whim?”

“God,” he said, “and goddess. Godri is dead, Vanyi. I came
to you—”

“You came crying to me, hoping I’d make it better. It’s all
I’ve ever been. A shoulder to cry on. A body to sate yourself with. You have a
whole harem full of them now. Why do you trouble with me?”

“Because I love you!”

“If you loved me,” she said, “you would go now. And not come
back.”

“Why?”

She turned her back on him.

He battered down the walls of his mind. He stretched a power
gone soft and slack with disuse, and touched.

Walls. They were higher than his own, and stronger. When he
pressed, they caught fire. They drove him stumbling back. They held him behind
his own gates, warned him with lightnings when he ventured resistance.

A great anger swelled in him. Pain fed it, and grief, and
the sheer bleak incomprehensibility of her hatred. For it was that. It could
not be anything else.

“Very well,” he said, soft and calm. “I shall not trouble
you again. Madam.” He inclined his head, though she could not have seen the
courtesy. He left her standing there, cold hating obstinate woman, with her
magic and her priesthood and her sacred solitude.

Korusan did not say anything, which was a virtue Estarion
could admire. Nor did he follow Estarion back into the harem. Estarion was
somewhat surprised at that. He vanished into the shadows of the passage.

Estarion walked through the riding court in starlight, and
into the harem proper. Its halls were as empty as ever, echoing faintly with
his footsteps. He paused where he should turn to take the outer way.

Had Vanyi not given him full leave, all but commanded him?

He passed the first door, and the second, on which a eunuch
stood guard. The servant bowed before him.

He had half expected to be forbidden, late as it was. But
this was his harem. His whim ruled it. Everyone said so.

Word traveled swiftly here. It was the lifeblood of the
harem to know when its lord walked in it. They were awake, all nine of them,
and waiting for him.

They had been waiting, it was evident, for long and long.
The youngest, the pretty child with the ivory curls, had fallen asleep in
Ziana’s lap.

They did not ask him where he had been, or why he looked so
strange. He did not doubt that he did. His face felt stiff; his jaw ached.

Any, he thought, or all. Not little Shaia; she was barely
come to her courses. Haughty Eluya, sweet-voiced Kania, Igalla and Maiana and
Uzia and Ushannin, beautiful Ziana and her unwontedly silent sister. Any of
them or all of them.

They knew that this was a choosing. Their tension was
palpable, although they strove to conceal it.

He circled the room as he had that first day, setting a kiss
on each brow. Eluya was like marble, enduring him. Igalla’s eyelids fluttered
as if she would faint. Ziana offered him her lips, full, rose-gold, enchanting.
Her perfume was honey and
ailith
-blossoms.

As before, he came last to Haliya. She seemed to expect it,
to be resigned to it. Courtesy commanded that each lady be greeted properly;
then the lord chose his favored one. She half slid away from him, easing his
return to her sister. The others were all looking at Ziana as Asanians did,
sidelong, measuring her.

He caught Haliya in his arms. She was too startled to do
more than stare.

When he lifted her, she was astonished. So much so that she
did not open her mouth until they were in the inner room, and the door was shut
and the bed was waiting and he had set her on her feet beside it. “You don’t
want me!”

“Would you rather I didn’t?” he asked, sharply maybe. Maybe
only aggrieved.

Her answer was as forthright as the rest of her. She reached
as high as she could, clasped her hands behind his neck, pulled him down.

“Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.”

Her wonderment made him smile in spite of himself. Asanians
did not, after all, practice the high arts in their robes. They made an art of
getting rid of them.

She made short work of his coat and trousers, shirt and
trews. Marveling at him; reveling in him. Stroking him as if he had been a
great purring cat, running fingers through his loosened hair, playing with his
beard.

She was nothing like Vanyi. She was both more innocent and
more skilled. She knew what gave a man most pleasure, but it was all new to
her, all wonderful.

The hard core of anger neither softened nor went away. But
he had come to do grim duty. She was making it a pleasure.

He could more than once have put an end to it. Her boldness
was half fear, her art half instinct. She was a maiden.

“We’re very careful of that,” she said, “when we have our
training.”

“You train? As if for war?”

She sat astride him. She was small, but her breasts were
deep and full, her hips ample. He filled his hands with her. She filled herself
with him, riding lightly, grinning down at him. “Am I not a brave warrior?”

“The bravest,” he said, while he still could say anything.

Women in the east made more of their virginity than this
western woman did. “For me,” she said as they lay together, she in his arms,
toying with the curly hair of his chest, “the hardest thing was to show my
face. The rest of it was simple. I was so afraid you’d find me wanting. I’m not
pretty, I know. I never was. I’ve been a great disappointment to my family.”

“Even now?” he asked.

“Oh,” she said. “Now they’re all astonished. You were
supposed to choose Ziana first. Is it that she’s too beautiful? Are you trying
the waters with me, to work yourself up to her?”

“She’s interesting,” he admitted, “to look at. But I like a
woman who can talk to me.”

“She’s very witty. She saves it, that’s all, for the inner room.”

“Can she ride a senel? And shoot a bow?”

She struggled up. “How did you know about that?”

“Spies,” he said. “Did you think the bow and the arrows just
appeared on your mare’s saddle?”

“I thought the grooms made a mistake and saddled her for one
of the guards.”

“A mistake they’ve made every day since,” he said.

She hovered above him. Her hair streamed down, bright gold.
It, like her eyes, like her breasts and her hips and her sweet rounded thighs,
was beautiful. “I can be an idiot sometimes,” she said. “Did you know that your
eyes tilt up at the corners when you smile? And your tongue isn’t pink. It’s
the same color as the rest of you.

“Isn’t yours?”

She presented it for his inspection.

“Pink,” he said. “How odd.”

“You are odd. You aren’t all black, like a shadow. You’re
like glass. I can see underneath. What happens when you faint? Do you go blue?”

“My lips go grey,” he said.

“We go green. And try to fall gracefully. It’s an art.”

He tangled his hands in her hair. “Is everything an art with
you?”

“Everything.” She swooped down to set a kiss on his cheek.
“Oh, I do like you. Do you like me?”

“Very much,” he said.

She did not say the next thing, the thing he dreaded. Maybe
Asanians did not know about it. She wriggled down the length of him, doing
things that he had not known a woman could do, with such delight in discovery
that he could not help but laugh.

He had begun the night in grief and rage. He ended it in
laughter. That was a gift. He had the wits to cherish it, and the one who gave
it.

o0o

Estarion started awake. The bed under him felt strange,
over-soft, scented with perfumes. He was alone in it.

He lay for a while, piecing together memory. Godri— Vanyi—Haliya—

He had dreamed that last. Surely he had. But this was not
his bed, this billowing mound of cushions, and this was not his chamber, with
its sweeps and swathes of curtains. He was naked in it, his body loosed, eased
as only a woman could ease it.

The anger was still in him, the tight, hurting thing that
thrust out guilt. Regret, he had none. They wanted him to choose. He had
chosen.

Haliya would do. She might even do well. As for the nonsense
of love, that was forbidden him. Vanyi had made that very clear, clearest of
all who undertook to teach him his duty.

He had been slow to learn it, but now he had it. He would be
the emperor they wished him to be. And since this was Asanion, he would be
emperor as emperors were in the Golden Empire. Cold. Devious. Ruling as spiders
ruled, from the heart of the web.

Servants appeared, knowing by some art of theirs that the
emperor was awake. They bathed him, dressed him, brought him food and drink.

He had little appetite, but the wine was welcome. When he
had drunk the flagon dry, Haliya was brought in to him.

The laughing wanton lover of the night was gone. In her
place stood an Asanian lady in a furlong of silk, painted and scented and
jeweled and refusing adamantly to meet his glance. Even when he rose and went
to her and tilted up her chin. “Haliya,” he said. “Whatever has come over you?”

Her face was tight, her voice stretched thin. “I am not a
maiden now. I must be a woman.”

“Who told you that?”

“It is custom,” she said.

“Custom be damned.” Her eyelids were gilded. His finger,
brushing them, came away tipped with gold. “I liked you as you were before. Surely
you won’t be living your whole life now in all that silk? And paint—you can’t
ride a senel with your face covered with gilt.”

“A woman never rides a senel.”

“Even if her lord commands her to?”

Her eyes flashed up then, as bright as they ever were. “Does
my lord command?”

“Your lord commands,” he said.

She grinned, brief but brilliant. She smoothed a fold of her
outer gown. “I do look ridiculous, don’t I?”

“You look splendid,” he said, “and very uncomfortable. I
much prefer you in trousers on your mare.”

She blushed scarlet under the gilt, startled him by pulling
his head down and kissing him soundly, and left him with a lightness in her
step that looked fair to turn into a dance.

Her gladness warmed him. Too much, maybe. He sent for
another flagon of wine. It settled him, cooled his heart again, steeled him to
be emperor.

o0o

Korusan stood guard on his proper chambers. Estarion did
not know how to read the glance the Olenyas shot him, nor did he care. Much. It
was not admiration, he did not think. Envy? Amusement? He was not about to ask.
An emperor did not take notice of his servants, except to command them.

That resolution lasted exactly as long as it took him to
endure his hour in the hall, and to hold audience with a company of princes,
and—great wonder and rarity—to ride for a few brief moments in his garden.

Umizan was more fractious even than usual. Estarion had to
rebuke him, which was unheard of. “Brother,” he said to the flattened ears. “Do
you want me to set you free?”

The ears flattened to invisibility, and the stallion bucked,
sharp and short.

“Yes,” Estarion said, “and I don’t want to lose you, either.
But you’re going mad here.”

A blue eye rolled back.

“I can’t escape it,” said Estarion. “You can. Ulyai is long
gone. I lay no blame on her: she only did what was wise. You can do the same.”

Umizan half-reared, curvetted, lashed his tail as if he had
been a cat. But when he had done that, he went still. His skin shuddered. He
snorted.

Tears pricked in Estarion’s eyes, the first in long seasons.
“Yes, brother. It’s wise. In the morning I’ll send you away.”

Umizan’s head drooped. Estarion stroked his neck, trying to
comfort him. “It won’t be forever, brother. Only as long as I’m pent up in
Kundri’j.”

“He understands your speech?”

Estarion regarded Korusan in surprise. The Olenyas had been
watching here as he did everywhere else. Estarion slid from the saddle, keeping
his arm about Umizan’s neck, smoothing the long mane. “He is my hooved
brother,” he said, “and he comes of the Mad One’s line.”