Arrows of the Sun (44 page)

“That won’t happen,” said Haliya.

“You hope it won’t. Hoping isn’t happening.”

“It won’t,” Haliya said. She peered into Vanyi’s face. She
was a little shortsighted, Vanyi suspected. It gave her an all too charming air
of preoccupation. “You really don’t know,” she said. She sounded incredulous
and yet resigned, as if to the foibles of foreigners.

“What should I know?” Vanyi demanded.

But Haliya was choosing to be maddeningly Asanian. “He was
well taken care of, that night before we left. Too well, I thought. That’s art
to the high art, but there shouldn’t be blood in it. He had hardly anything
left for us.”

“Who is she?” Vanyi asked. She was proud that she was calm,
that she was thinking clearly, not screaming at the walls. “Someone else in the
harem?”

“It’s not a she.”

Vanyi blinked. “Of course it’s a she. He doesn’t incline
toward men. Even that lordling from Umbros, back in Keruvarion—beautiful as a
girl, everyone was sighing over him, and he had nothing in his pretty head but
wailing love-songs under Estarion’s window—he got a smile and a word and a
summons home, and that was that. Why would it be a man? How could he be . . .”
She stopped. “Blood, you said? He drew
blood
?”

“Not much,” said Haliya with that damnable Asanian aplomb.
“More like a brawl in a pride of lions. It sounded like that, people said. Lots
of scratches. Bruises in interesting places. They thought it was murder, but it
was only the two of them.”

Vanyi had thought herself beyond shock. This she had never
expected, never foreseen, never prepared for. “How could I not know?”

She was not aware that she spoke aloud until she had done
it. Haliya was kind. “It was a surprise, wasn’t it? I’d have sworn he wouldn’t,
either. But you can tell, the way they stand together.”

“Who?”

“The blackrobe,” said Haliya. “The Olenyas. Or didn’t you
notice him? I think he’s young under the veils. And beautiful. Those eyes go
with beauty more often than not. I expect he’s fascinating, too.”

Vanyi’s knees gave away; she sat down. She had seen. She had
refused to see. The shadow in the emperor’s shadow. The bond that no mage could
mistake, unless she willed it.

They were lovers. Not two who kept one another warm of
nights; not friends who happened to be lord and concubine. Lovers.

“There,” Haliya said. “Don’t faint. He won’t take harm.
Olenyai are sworn to defend their lord to the death. It was that one who saved
his life, the night the assassin came, though it was too late for the squire
from Keruvarion; so there’s life-debt in it too. That’s strong bonding, and
strong protection.”

“Pray,” said Vanyi. “Pray to any gods you worship, that you
speak the truth.”

Haliya did not understand. She thought it jealousy, which
was nothing an Asanian woman would admit to. And yes, Vanyi conceded, it was
that; but only the shell of it. The core was cold fear.

o0o

She watched, now that she knew. She saw how it was.

It was not the bright shining thing she had shared with
Estarion and slain by her own fault, because she was both wise and a fool. This
was a meeting like matched blades.

They had been open with it, she and her emperor. The Olenyas
had nothing open in him. He was all shadows and secrecy. But he was there,
unfailing, fixed on Estarion as a cat fixes on its prey.

When she lost the child she had not known she was bearing,
she had thought she knew what it was to be emptied. But Estarion still loved
her; she was sure of it, and secure in it, even in casting it away. When he
went to his harem, she had been jealous, bitterly so, but even then she knew
that he would have preferred to go to her. Haliya bore his child, did the one
thing that Vanyi wanted most to do, and now never would; but Haliya was not Vanyi,
not his first woman and his first love.

The Olenyas was a new thing, a terrible thing. Vanyi was not
afraid of any woman in Estarion’s harem. She feared the Olenyas.

She told herself that she was starting at shadows, dreading
a harmless man because she could not see his face or touch his mind. What
danger could he be? He was oathbound to protect Estarion. He could not bear a
child or share the throne, or claim any part of the woman’s portion. And while
he preoccupied Estarion, no new woman could come to claim the emperor’s heart.
Vanyi should be glad of him.

Estarion did not look like a man enslaved by a devil. He was
bone-thin, who had never had flesh to spare, but he was thriving. This riding
suited him, this edge of uncertainty, even the wet and the deepening cold, till
of a morning they woke to a world of glass, rain that had frozen into ice, and
no riding anywhere until the sun had warmed the road. He passed the time in
walking about the place in which they had passed the night, a town called Kitaz,
ignoring his wall of guards, wandering into a wineshop and a leatherworker’s
and a jeweler’s.

Vanyi wondered if he could sense the powerful discomfort of
those he spoke to, unless they could convince themselves that he was not the
emperor. Asanians did not want their royalty among them. It belonged in
palaces, out of sight and, except for wars and taxes, the common mind. Royalty
in their own muddy streets, haggling over a trinket, drinking their thin sour
wine and thinner, sourer beer, was so far out of the way of the world as to be
incomprehensible.

He had his shadow, always. They did not touch one another or
exchange glances. They had no need.

She caught herself peering for marks of the lion-brawling
Haliya had spoken of. Of course there would be none to see when he was in
leather and mail, but he did not walk as if he were in pain.

Servants, who knew everything, said nothing of uproars in
the royal rooms. That his majesty did not sleep alone, they accepted as natural
and proper. Like Haliya they approved of his choice of bedmate, although they
wondered if the Olenyas kept his veils even then.

None was quite bold enough to settle the wager. The tales
were terrible of what befell a man who looked on a blackrobe’s face.

She felt like a spy, or like a jealous wife. There was no
one she could talk to. No man, certainly, even Iburan. This was not a man’s
trouble. Haliya did not understand. The empress . . .

Maybe. But not until Vanyi had more to tell of than vague
fears and shameful jealousies.

o0o

On the morning of the ice, she walked in Kitaz herself.
She had no intention of dogging Estarion’s steps, but she found herself in his
wake as often as not. It was a small town for Asanion, one broad street with a
fountain in the middle, a tangle of lanes and alleys, a pair of temples and a
market and the lord’s house on the hill.

His lordship was absent. Doing his duty in the Middle Court,
his steward said. Hiding, Vanyi suspected, and hoping that the disturbance
would go away.

When the royal progress came to the market, she worked her
way ahead of it. The jeweler’s shop attracted her with its glitter; she braved
the jeweler’s scowl to admire his work, which was very fine for the provinces.
He could hardly order her out, priestess that she was, and she conceded a
little to his modesty by wrapping her scarf about her face.

As she lingered and yearned over his treasures,
contemplating her thin purse and her thinner excuse for needing anything so
frivolous, the shop filled with light.

It was Estarion, that was all, bringing the sun in with him,
and trapping her as neatly as if she had planned it. Which she most
emphatically had not.

He was not aware of her, not at first. He had turned to grin
at someone outside, as at a victory. “See,” he said. “No assassins.”

His guards must have tried to enter in front of him. He
always loved to thwart them. It was a game of his, that he had forgotten in
Kundri’j but now remembered.

She did something to make him turn. Breathed. Twitched. Let
fall the trinket in her hand.

He came round like a cat, uncannily quick. The light that
came to his face made her gasp.
Not now
,
she thought in desperation.
Not still
.

Then his face went cold. And that, which she had wished for,
was worse. Much worse. “Lady,” he said.

“Majesty.” She eyed the path to the door. He stood full in
it. She never thought him uncommonly tall, not beside Iburan and his northern
guardsmen, but he towered in this place, his head brushing the roofbeam. The
door was barely wider than his shoulders. They had broadened since he rode out
of Endros.

He was not as much the boy now as he had been. His face was
leaner, its lines more distinct. He would never be pretty, nor would anyone
call him handsome, but his beauty was coming clearer, the fierce beauty of the
hawk or the panther.

She looked at him in something close to despair. She would
never stop loving him. There was no use in trying.

At least she had not thrown herself into his arms. She
wanted to, desperately. But it was the body’s wanting. The mind knew that that
was over.

Was it?

She spoke to silence the voice in her head, said the first
thing that came to her. “Are you going to buy something for Haliya?”

“For her sister,” he said. There was a slight but
perceptible pause before he said it.

“I think,” said Vanyi, “that this might do.” She lifted what
she had dropped. It was not the most elaborate trinket in the lot, but it was
the most interesting. It was a pendant for the neck or the brow, plain bright
silver like wings of flame, set with a jewel like silk turned to stone: bands
of gold and amber and bronze that shimmered as the jewel turned.

Estarion moved closer. She almost fled, but there was
nowhere to go. He did not touch her as he took the jewel from her fingers.
“It’s exactly the color of her hair,” he said.

“I thought it might be.”

He slanted his eyes at her. They were as bright as the
jewel, but less changeable. “They tell me you’re keeping Haliya company.”

“Iburan ordered it,” Vanyi said. If she sounded ungracious,
then so be it.

He went a shade colder at the name, or maybe at Vanyi’s
words. “I’m glad she’s well protected.”

“You’re not afraid I’ll murder her in her sleep?”

“You wouldn’t do that,” he said, and he sounded like himself
again. “I’ll free you from her if you like. My lord high priest should have
known better than to burden you so.”

“It was to be a penance,” said Vanyi. “It is still, most
ways. But I don’t want to be free of it.”

“Even if I say you may?”

“You’re not my high priest,” she said.

He did not like that: his lips tightened as they always did
when he reined in his temper. “But she is my . . . concubine.”

He choked on it. She was rather nastily glad. She would
atone for that, but first she would enjoy it.

“Do you think I’ll corrupt her?” Vanyi inquired.

“I think it must be agony for you to look at her.”

“She’s quite pleasant to look at. And you,” Vanyi said,
“have a high opinion of yourself.”

She almost wished that he would hit her. He wanted to: she
could see it. But he laughed. “I do, I confess it. I don’t expect you to pardon
me: I’m hopelessly unpardonable. But can you think of me, a little, with
priestly charity?”

“How do you think of me?”

“You know,” he said.

“No,” said Vanyi. “I don’t know anything. I thought I knew
you once, when we were young together. But that was long ago. Maybe I never
knew you at all.”

“We’re not fighting,” he said as if to himself. “It’s a
beginning, I suppose.”

“Or an ending.”

“No,” said Estarion, as if his royal will could make it
true.

Vanyi looked up at him. He was so close that she had to tilt
her head. She could have touched him, laid her hand over the beating heart,
traced the line of his cheek.

She could say the word and he would come to her hand. She
had the power. It was as strong as magic, as certain as the laws that bound the
worlds.

A shadow shifted behind him. Eyes fixed on her, lion-gold in
faceless mask.

They were not angry, nor did they hate. They laughed at her.
They knew her as Estarion never would, nor ever could. All her sins and petty
failings, her pride, her vanity, her penchant for stepping beyond her proper
bounds.

Estarion shifted. He was not with her any longer, though he
stood as close as ever. He was in the shadow’s shadow.

The power was gone. The Olenyas held it, swallowed it.

Vanyi let him. Cowardice, wisdom, she did not care what
anyone called it. A child who had never been born, a child who must be born,
both bound her and held her helpless.

The Olenyas did not know that. She would have wagered gold
on it.

Nor was she about to tell him. He had his emperor. She had
more. She had the emperor’s heir, and the mother of the heir, safe in her
charge. She had the empire that would be.

When the ice had melted from the road and the sun shone
down almost warm, Estarion led his escort southward again. He was numb still,
mind and power, but the land-sense had little to do with the arts of mages. He
felt the earth as if it were his body. Great aches and bruises, knots and
tangles of dissension, a pain like sickness that spread outward from no common
center. What he rode to was not the worst of it, but it made a beginning.

He was waking as if from sleep or from a long illness. The
sun and the sudden warmth, in what should have been black winter, speeded a
healing that had begun when he left the Golden Palace.

He caught himself singing as he rode up a long slope. The
scouts who ranged ahead were out of sight. His escort spread behind.

He glanced over his shoulder. Those whose faces he could
see, flashed smiles. He smiled back. His Varyani were as glad as he to be out
of Kundri’j.