Arrows of the Sun (42 page)

Estarion eyed it with great mistrust, but he essayed a sip.
“This is good!”

Korusan did not dignify that with an answer. He spread a
napkin and began to fill it with the less fragile of the delicacies.

“What are you doing?”

“You must eat,” said Korusan, “but you must ride, and the
sun is rising. Will you keep your escort waiting?”

“My escort will wait as long as it must.”

Korusan knotted the napkin and slipped it into his robes. Estarion
wondered, brief and absurd, if the razors from the bath were still there
somewhere, in a hidden fold.

The Olenyas tugged his robes into place, settled his swords
in their sheaths, and said, “Your majesty is ready to ride.”

His majesty was ready to upbraid him for an insolent child.
He found himself, one way and another, striding through the maze of rooms. He
gained followers as he went: guards, servants, people who not quite stared and
not quite muttered and were, for Asanians, open in their curiosity.

He hoped that he obliged them. He walked as tall as he knew
how, and put on a swagger that was half despair.

Dank air struck his face. There was no sun. The sky was
grey, with rain in its belly, or possibly sleet. He halted under it. If it
rained—if there would be sun tomorrow—

The escort was drawn up in ranks, waiting for him. The black
mass of the Olenyai, separate and haughty. The scarlet blaze of his Guard. His
mother’s strong women in their green livery, and she in front of them, warded
in mail, armed with bow and knife and sword. Iburan was at her right hand in
the plain robe he affected in Asanion, and his priests behind him.

Some of them were women. One was Vanyi.

Estarion’s jaw tightened. There was someone else in the
empress’ following, a small figure on a sand-colored mare. She had no escort
that he could see. She had a mail-coat: where in the hells had she found that?
The bow in its case he knew, and the arrows. He had given them to her. She had
found a knife somewhere. No sword. He would have to find her one.

A groom held a mount for him. It was not Umizan: there had
been no time to bring him from Induverran. Estarion paused to make this new
beast’s acquaintance.

It was not one he knew, and not, he was pleased to observe,
the golden plowbeast he had been forced to ride into Kundri’j. This was a tall
striped dun with ell-long horns.

Estarion smoothed the mane on the stallion’s neck. It was
striped like the rest of him, golden dun and glossy black. His eyes were amber,
bright yet quiet. He breathed sweet breath into Estarion’s palm.

Estarion mounted in a smooth long leap. The senel was steady
under him. “Has he a name?” Estarion asked the groom.

The man dipped his head. “Chirai, majesty,” he said.

“Chirai,” said Estarion. The black-rimmed ears tilted back.
Estarion gathered the reins. He could turn still, ride out of this court and
into the stableyard, dismount, pull his walls about him.

Or he could urge the dun stallion toward the gate. His
breath was coming in gasps. His hands were cold, even the one that burned and
throbbed.

Idiocy. He was Estarion of Endros. He hated walls; he craved
the open sky.

His senel settled it for him. As if he had given the command
and not sat like a stone, Chirai moved softly forward. The rest fell in behind
them.

The Regent of Asanion waited under the Golden Gate. There
were men with him, lords of the High Court, and guards armed and armored.
Estarion knew, looking at them, that they would stop him. They would offer
battle; they would hold him captive until he died.

Chirai kept his steady pace. Firaz waited in silence. A
spearlength from his mount’s lowered horns, Estarion halted. “The emperor will
pass,” he said.

Firaz bowed his head. “Will the emperor reconsider?”

“The emperor must do as he will do.”

Estarion barely breathed. Firaz looked full in his face,
which was boldness beyond belief, had Estarion been Asanian. But he was not. He
smiled a sword-edged smile.

“You are,” said Firaz at last, “the emperor.” It was a
capitulation, and a challenge.

Estarion acknowledged them both. “Guard my palace,” he said.

“Fight well,” said Firaz, “and return well to that place
which is yours.”

“So I do intend,” Estarion said. He touched heel to Chirai’s
side.

Firaz bent his own senel aside. As Estarion passed man and
mount, he said, “Take comfort, lord Regent. If I’m killed, the next emperor can
only be more proper than I am. And if I live—why then, maybe I’ll have learned
decent manners.”

“One does not learn propriety in battle,” said Firaz, “my
lord.” He bowed lower than he ever had, down to his stallion’s neck. “May your
riding prosper, my lord emperor. Believe that I speak truly; that I wish you
well.”

“I never doubted it,” said Estarion. “Believe that, too, my
lord Regent.”

o0o

Estarion emerged from Kundri’j Asan like a snake from its
skin. Slow at first once he passed the Golden Gate and the lord who held it,
with a tearing that was like pain. Then swifter, winding down the Way of
Princes, rising from walk to trot to smooth rocking canter.

Hooves rang on paving stones. The silence of Asanian homage
was profound and for once undaunting. The great fear was before him: the last
gate; the bridge over the river, and the broad wall-less plain.

As he passed the gate and mounted the arch of the bridge, a
thin rain began to fall. His cloak kept it out, but he was bareheaded, with
nothing between him and the sky but a circlet of gold. He tipped his head back.
He could fall, fall forever into the endless sea of cloud.

Rain kissed his face. His mount carried him with unruffled
calm, down from the bridge and the river, stride by stride away from the
ninefold walls. He fell out of the sky to the vastness of the plain, grey as
clouds itself, and no walls, no walls as far as he could see.

His whole body shuddered. His mind shrank. It gathered all
its force in its center; held, clenched in upon itself; and bloomed like a
flower of fire.

He had power. He had magic—he, the maimed one, the blinded
fool. He had never known truly how much he had, nor known how much of it was
blunted within the walls of Kundri’j Asan. He laughed with the shock of it,
half in incredulous joy, half in terror.

His escort spread behind him, Asanian, Varyani, divided as
enemies must always be. But there was a yellow woman in the empress’ following
and an Olenyas in his own shadow, black robe amid the scarlet of his Guard.

His senel bucked lightly, startling him. He gave the stallion
his head. The stallion swung from canter into gallop, and from gallop into
flight.

Vanyi had no need to ask who was the stranger in the
empress’ following. She was the only Asanian, and the only one mounted on a
horn-browed mare out of Varag Suvien. The headdress was Suvieni too, the
headcloth drawn up over the face and secured in a circlet. Vanyi knew who must
have taught her that expedient.

So much, Vanyi thought, for Iburan’s hope of wielding her in
Estarion’s defense. This chit of a child would see to that.

The first night out of Kundri’j, they stopped in Induverran.
Estarion was reunited with his blue-eyed stallion: touching and unexpectedly
amusing when Umizan met the senel whom Estarion had ridden from the city.

The black charged upon the dun, ears flat, horns lowered, hooves
pounding. The dun stood with head up, alert but unalarmed.

As Umizan surged for the kill, Chirai pirouetted neatly out
of his path. When Umizan came back, raging, Chirai snorted as if in
exasperation and eluded him again, and yet again.

They danced the full circle of the field, until Umizan
thundered to a halt, blowing and foaming, and stamped. Chirai flicked an ear,
lowered his head, began coolly to graze.

Vanyi’s sides ached with laughter. Even the Olenyai were
amused. Estarion walked over to his sweating, seething, baffled blue-eyed
brother, wrapped arms about his neck, and leaned against him until he quieted.

The rain had ended a little while since. Darts of sun broke
free from the clouds, striking blue-black fire in Umizan’s coat and Estarion’s
hair, turning Chirai’s striped hide to bars of black and gold. Vanyi sneezed.

“Are you well?”

Vanyi glanced at the one who had spoken. Not so small,
standing next to her: a palm’s width the less, maybe, holding herself very
straight in her desert tribesman’s veil. She did not seem to know who Vanyi
was.

“Do you have a name?” Vanyi demanded of her.

She blinked at the sharpness, but she answered without
hesitation. “Haliya. You?”

“Vanyi.” It was not intended to be polite.

The Asanian’s eyes widened. They were an improbable shade of
gold, like coins. “Then you are—”

“Yes, I was his bedmate. I’d have thought you’d know.”

Haliya blinked. Vanyi sensed no enmity in her, nothing but
interest, and puzzlement that might be for Vanyi’s rudeness. “Of course I
knew,” she said. “But he didn’t say that you were beautiful. Your skin is like
milk. Mine,” she said with evident regret, “is more like well-aged cheese.”

Fine ivory, Vanyi would have said, from what she could see
of it. “He likes a pale-skinned woman.”

“I don’t think he cares,” said Haliya, “as long as he finds
her interesting.”

There were people about, but none of them was listening.
They were all watching Estarion. He mounted Umizan, bareback and bridleless,
and rode him bucking and curvetting across the field.

Haliya sighed. “I broke my arm the last time I tried that.”

“You didn’t.”

Haliya was difficult to offend. She laughed in her veil.
“That’s what he said, too, when I told him. But I did. I was a terrible child.
Of course,” she said, “when I went for that particular ride, it was my father’s
herd stallion, and no one ever rode him at all. I should have known what he’d
do.”

“I begin to see,” Vanyi said slowly, and not without humor,
“why he finds you interesting.”

Haliya did a thing that left Vanyi speechless. She slipped
her arm through Vanyi’s and said, “I’m glad he brought you. I was afraid I’d be
the only one.”

Vanyi could not break free as easily as she might have
expected. Haliya was strong, and though her eyes smiled, her grip was steely
hard.

“He didn’t bring me,” Vanyi snapped. “I came with the
priests.”

“I made him take me,” said Haliya. “He didn’t want to. He
thought I should stay with the others.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I wanted to ride,” Haliya said. She sounded very young and
very determined. “So he did mean it. He wasn’t going to bring anyone for the
nights. Is that a sickness, do you think? Or is it something they do in
Keruvarion, to teach themselves about pain?”

Sometimes Vanyi wondered if Asanians were human at all. They
did not think like anyone else she knew of, even syndics in the Nine Cities,
who were surpassingly strange.

Haliya answered herself, since Vanyi was not going to.
“He’ll be choosing ladies in the cities, then. He didn’t before, and he
offended people. Now he understands what’s proper.”

“Don’t you ever get jealous?” Vanyi demanded of her. “Can’t
you conceive of wanting him for yourself?”

“That’s selfish,” said Haliya.

“And you’re a perfect saint?”

Haliya drew herself up, still holding Vanyi’s arm, and said
with dignity, “I do try to show a little honor.”

“It’s not honor where I come from,” said Vanyi, “to let
one’s man go without a fight.”

“Are you going to fight me? I’m no good with a sword, but I
can shoot.”

Alien. Vanyi pulled free and stood rubbing her arm. “The
usual method,” she said acidly, “is to exert oneself to gain the man’s complete
and total favor.”

“So that’s why he said he could only manage one at a time.
He feared for his life.”

Vanyi gaped at her.

Haliya patted her hand. “I suppose you can’t help it. You’re
foreigners. You don’t understand the right ways of doing things.”

o0o

“I see you’ve met the lady of the Vinicharyas.”

Vanyi paused in folding the vestments from the sunset-rite.
She would have liked to pretend that she did not know whom Iburan spoke of, but
there could be no such simplicities among mages. “She’s very . . .
original.”

“I would call her interesting.”

“So would his majesty.” Vanyi smoothed the last white robe
and laid it in the traveling-chest, and turned to face him. “Were you expecting
bloodshed?”

“Asanian women don’t fight over men.”

“So she told me.”

Iburan closed and locked the box in which they kept the
vessels of the rite. His fingers traced the inlay of its lid. “She brought no
maid and no attendants. That’s shockingly improper for one of her station.”

“Surely the empress is chaperone enough.”

“The empress can’t be expected to wait on her.”

Vanyi did not like where this was leading. “I may be a
commoner, but I am not a servant.”

“You serve the god,” said Iburan.

“I do that.” Vanyi kept her eyes level on his face. He was
not allowing her to read it, or the mind behind it.

“I have been thinking,” he said, “that she’s very much
alone. And Estarion isn’t keeping her with him.”

Vanyi should not have felt that stab of vindictive pleasure.
“She told me that. She seemed to think that he’d be warming his bed with a
selection of provincial ladies.”

“Not likely,” said Iburan. “Not on this riding, when he’s a
clear target for any assassin who happens by. As, I’m thinking, is she. She’s
Asanian; she rides like a man; she’s clearly been corrupted. She would be a
potent object lesson, and a valuable hostage.”

“He hasn’t thought to set guards on her?”

“He’s set his mother on guard, and the whole company of her
escort.”