Red Country (3 page)

My first impulse was to hang him on the battlements forthwith. Justice prevailed. Do you beat the thrower, or the stone?

When he had gone, I sent Nerthor and my escort-captain out, and Kastir came in with his smooth, stealthy tread.

I said, “You knew about this.”

He inclined his head.

I was just cool enough to add, “Let me hear the reasons, then.”

He raised his brows. “Surely, princess, the report is reason enough? Your southern Resh-lord has plotted a revolt. Tirs has never been noted for its fidelity. On past evidence such behavior was to be expected in a situation like this. An informer has given you time to act. I know you are unaccustomed to such methods. Estar is different. I used my experience, so that if events ran true to precedent you would not be taken unawares.”

It was good reasoning. The facts supported him. There was no point in clinging to the outmoded ethics of a past which had scorned such tools. I said, “You were right. Tell them to saddle up.”

Six evenings later I rode up to Maer Selloth, the Tirien citadel. No king had crossed Everran in less than a fortnight since Harran's day, as Oxys the Resh-lord and I both knew, and the surprise was all I had planned. Standing face to face with him before the high seat which he had ceremonially vacated when I was announced, I told him what else I knew. I was angry, and this time saw value in revealing it.

When we were upstairs in our hastily prepared apartments, Kastir said with his wry, cold smile, “You fight with all your weapons, princess. With weakness itself.”

Startled, I said, “What do you mean?”

He answered, “Look in the mirror there.”

I had ridden in a plain gray habit with my hair plaited and twisted up under a soldier's leather forage cap. The day's ride had brought it down, to frame my face in a lion's mane of tangled gold, a face still crimson with sunburn and wrath, so eyes that were normally just blue sparked fiercely as sapphires amid the golden knots and fiery skin and general overlay of dust.

I cried in dismay, “I look like a Lyngthiran catamount!” But Kastir answered without a smile, real feeling in his voice.

“On the contrary, princess. You look magnificent.”

* * * * * *

That settled the other Resh-lords along with Tirs, and for the rest of summer Everran was internally quiet. Only the raids went on. And presently Kastir's informers began to produce disquieting news of unrest, deepest in Stiriand but present everywhere, of murmurs against this costly, ineffectual little war. End it, people were saying. Stop killing our sons for nothing. Make the country safe, as it used to be.

“This has always happened,” I said indignantly to Kastir. “It's nothing to do with me being a girl! We were only safe this last ten years because good seasons in Lyngthira kept them away. How can people not remember that?”

Kastir smiled coldly and replied, “The people's memory is short. It reaches to yesterday, but not the day before.”

I thought a while. Then I said, “If I'm ridden with harpers, they may as well be some use.”

So, summoning Zathar, I bade him send out his pestilent lore-keepers to sing the history of Everran in Everran's ears, and teach them that today, not yesterday, was the norm. It seemed to do some good. At least, it contained discontent until the arrival of the Holym embassy.

Holmyx are less polished than Quarreders. Their ten “delegates” in farmers' shirts and harpoon spurs and high-heeled riding boots did not recite the contents of their “Note.” They simply handed it to me, announced, “We'll take the answer,” and trooped off to the guest-quarters to wait.

“So?”

Kastir steepled his chin on his fingers above the delicate inlaid imlann-wood table that the first Sellithar had placed in the queen's hall. The same blond wood shone in the walls. A flock of gweldryx flew apple-green and lavender among the mosaic floor's smoky lavender terrian blooms. I looked at the “Note” and back to him.

“Would I like financial help with my defense? Can Holym's troops assist me directly? Support for a fellow Confederate . . . solidarity. . . . What they mean is, let us put you under an obligation, better still, in debt. And if we can get troops into Everran under pretext of alliance, you'll have a hard time getting them out. Maybe so hard that we can manage a coup.”

He nodded. “A sweet bait, princess. But you can see the hook.”

So my note to Holym's Scribe—I knew the real ruler of Cattleland—thanked him graciously for the offer of assistance, emphasized how sensible I was of his kindness, and politely assured him that Everran was still able to fend for itself.

* * * * * *

There was no time for planting trees that Earth-day, so I had deputized my mother and brothers. The boys were still too young to help me much, Sazan twelve, Haskar ten. In fact I hardly knew them, for they were outside my age group, boys, raised in a separate nursery, I had always had other pre-occupations. Yet when Kastir brought his newest information, I could not credit it.

“Sazan? Haskar? It's ridiculous! They couldn't take the throne if they did get rid of me!”

He watched me with his cold, colorless eyes. “They will grow.”

“But. . . .”

I stopped. He nodded. “They are boys. There are many highborn folk in Everran who,” he put it delicately, “wonder if a queen can rule alone. Who would be prepared to wait for a king.”

It was nothing I did not know. It was nothing we had not discussed. I snorted and made the usual riposte. “And who would be Regent meanwhile? A Resh-lord? They'd sooner cut each other's throats!”

“Princess,” he spoke in reproof, “have you forgotten Holym? A wise ruler works from behind the throne.”

“Very well, they install a puppet. But who?”

He looked down. Then he said, “Queen mothers are notoriously reluctant to renounce power. Even the power of a figurehead.”

I actually put a hand to my head. Everran, I thought in panic. Where has it gone? Eighteen months ago this was the strongest, safest nation in the Confederacy. Now it's a quag, the people restive, the Resh-lords shaky, the neighbors threatful, and the royal family ready to turn on its sovereign. If they succeed? At best abdication, at worst assassination or civil war. If they fail. . . .

“No!” I cried. “I don't believe it! Not Mama!”

Kastir did not bother with placebos like, “There, there,” or, “Never mind” or, “Oh, princess, please don't cry.” He merely waited till I blew my nose and put away the handkerchief. Then he slid a hand into the breast of his green retainer's gown and spread the letters in a fan across the tabletop.

When I finished reading, the little presence chamber had darkened, its crimson carpet and ruby rosewood dulled to the shade of old, dried blood. I stared a long time at the pile. There was no need for back reference. I knew the ringleader's hand, I knew the names. I could build on the scaffolding they revealed, the plot so plausible, so inexorably probable. It was only the leader's identity I could not accept.

In mind's-eye I saw my mother, a hethel-lord's daughter from Meldene, tawny gold hair and gray eyes and the slim western build. They say Harran was from Meldene himself. I saw us going down to pour the wine and launch the terrian flower-boats on Water's day, laughing together over family jokes, the confidences, the advice, then back and back to childhood, the embraces, the care and comforting, the love I had known behind me as surely as I could stand on Asterne and find rock under my feet. It was bitter, this betrayal, more bitter than her treason to Everran. That she could turn against me. That all these years she had secretly put my brothers first. That it had all been a sham, a counterfeit.

Tears clouded my vision. But emotion cannot be permitted to cloud the mind.

Kastir had waited silently. Now he said, “Princess, the present is bitter, but it is the future that matters most.”

I looked up. He numbered on his fingers.

“Banishment to Lyngthira would be barbarity. Hethria is an unknown quantity, too little known to risk as a source of danger in your rear. Exile to any nation in the Confederacy would play into the conspirators' hands. They would become a focus for disaffection, a seed-ground for rebellion and invasion. And not a chance that any Confederate would miss.”

It was like a bucket of cold water over the head. I said, “I could have it out with them.”

He shrugged. “How much is repentance worth? Next time they may be more careful. Too careful, perhaps.”

Silence filled the little blood-colored room. At last he spoke again. “Princess, there is only one remedy for high treason. It is a mistake not even you can afford to forgive.”

I moved my foot on the crimson carpet. Then I said, “Send the guard captain to me.”

* * * * * *

It was as terrible as you would expect. Of course they denied it, swore the letters were forgeries, accused Kastir of plotting to eliminate them and then use me to rule Everran, wept, begged me to believe them, invoked the bonds of blood and family. I cannot bear to write the rest. The Four know, I would have given Everran to be convinced they were innocent. But the letters were there. Facts are facts.

The other conspirators had to be arrested too, and there was no hope of keeping it secret after that, all Saphar was in uproar, all Everran for what I know. I had no heart to think beyond my own folk's part in it. But when they were all under guard, the night before the executions, Zathar came to visit me.

He did not request formal permission; just slipped into the presence chamber on Nerthor's heels when Kastir had gone and the chamberlain comes to see his sovereign to bed. It had Nerthor's connivance, I suspect, but before I could speak he had vanished and Zathar had me round the knees in the ancient mercy ritual.

It was more dignified to stand still. At last he raised his lined, fallen old man's face, all blubbered with tears that had soaked even his beard, and I could not help it, seeing him in such a state. I helped him up, said, “Please, Zathar, don't upset yourself so,” sat him down, poured him wine, and braced myself for the inevitable.

First he maundered on about my “faith to the blood,” my “generosity and magnanimity.” But then he lifted his bloodshot eyes and said with an intensity I could not discount, “Princess, I well know you scorn our trade and all its lore and you'll not heed more than the words' length. But believe me, believe me, if you do this t'will be the greatest sorrow of your life.”

Patiently, I said, “Go on.”

“They're your blood kin,” he said, “guilty or innocent. Let be this—this will stain your hands beyond all washing, let be the folk'll never trust you again, they'll be ever asking, ‘If she could do that to kinfolk, what may she do to us?' Let be all that, there's Everran to think on. You're the queen. Oh, princess, I know you've no time for the lore-songs, but t'is in them, over and over. Them that do evil in the high seats, it returns on their kingdoms, not on them. T'is Everran, princess, that you think to ward, and that you'll bring to ruin. I can tell you, you remember—”

“Not now.”

I knew he would cite examples for hours, examples I knew as well as he. I wanted time to think. For at his words something had leapt within me, crying:
He's right, that's the truth!
Some response deeper than the mind, deeper than the very will, against which facts, reason, political expediency were mere words, arguments that one touch of concrete reality can overset.

I could feel his eyes. When I sighed and began to marshal the prosecution points, he interrupted, tumbling over his words. “Not a pardon princess not even exile not any judgment at all!”

“What then?” I stared.

He leant forward, and actually took hold of my wrist. He was barely whispering.

“Let them escape, princess. Tonight. I can do it. Just say the word, you'll never know so much as how. . . .”

“But. . . .”

His eyes burnt into me. “Princess, whatever the proof, I know t'is wrong. I know! Let them go. No matter where, they'll not trouble you, they'll lie quiet as mice and just wait until—”

“Until what?”

His eyes fell. From a hardened back-biter, I might have expected some euphemism for, Until you get rid of Kastir. But Zathar had never sunk to nursing a grudge. He did mumble something, changed it to, “Till this comes clear.” Then he fixed his gaze, dog-like, back on mine.

There was no rational cause for it. It could not be justified by any argument in reason. It was sheer stupidity, emotion, clouding the wits, overbearing the mind, irresistible.

I took his fingers from my wrist and blinked and said to the table, “Get them out, Zathar. I don't care how, I don't care where. Don't dare try thanking me. And if you ever breathe a word of this, I'll have you burnt alive.”