The Poet King

by Ilana C. Myer

  “More than that,” said Lin. “The enchantments he reveled in, that he used to make war, to take Tamryllin … He never gave thought to the cost. Nor to the boundaries between our world, and the Other, that he weakened through his actions.”

  “Allowing in this White Queen,” Rianna said. “Do you know anything about her?”

  “All I know is that each time I tried to reach out in my thoughts, I encountered her,” said Lin. “I knew if she sensed me, it would be nothing to her to snuff me out. The way you’d pinch a gnat. So I stayed in shadow, looking for some way in. For all the good it did either of you.”

  “You’re here now,” said Rianna. “What do you mean to do?”

  Lin shook her head. “I don’t know yet. But when I was saved from death … a long story … I was told it was to turn back a shadow.” She turned back one of her sleeves, to observe the gold veins in her arm. “I can only assume I’m here, alive, to fulfill that purpose. Or to try.”

  The fire whispered at them.

  “I think I envy you,” said Rianna. “That you have a purpose.”

  “There’s nothing I could have done without you,” said Lin. “Or Marlen.”

  She shook her head, as if to dispel the cloud. Then unexpectedly smiled. “I was so angry with Valanir at times,” she said. “I understand him now. If only I could tell him so.”

  * * *

  THEY’D gone to Rianna’s room and bolted themselves in. The fire had gone out in there, too, and it took some time for a room that vast to warm. Rianna made up a bed for Syme, a featherbed she dragged from another room and laid out on the floor. He doffed his ridiculous jester’s gear and curled up in the bed almost at once, still sucking jam from his fingers. Rianna lowered herself to the floor to gather the covers around him. He grabbed them up and shut his eyes. Was asleep within moments, his mouth hanging open. His breath came out in long sighs.

  Rianna looked up at Lin, who was watching. “It’s been a long time,” Rianna said, “since I’ve thought about being a mother. Sometimes it feels like a dream I had.”

  “It’s a long time since you’ve seen her,” said Lin. She sounded wistful. “I missed you, you know. When I was … caught up in my work. And you in yours.”

  Rianna narrowed her eyes. She was sitting on the carpeted floor, still, beside the featherbed. But had changed from the bloodstained gold dress to her grey one. That gold gown, she thought, was ruined in a way that went deeper than stains. It could as soon be burned. “Is that what it was?” she said. “Your work?”

  Lin looked at her lap. She sat in a high-backed chair by the fire. “There’s something I kept secret. Even from Ned. I found out I was dying.”

  Rianna started upright. “What?”

  “But not anymore,” said Lin. “The same magic that brought me near death and left me marked—it saved me, too.”

  “That ring.” Rianna had noticed it several times—the black opal on Lin’s right hand. She’d never seen a gem of so many colors. “Does that have something to do with it?” At the other woman’s nod, Rianna pursed her lips. She said, with an edge now, “Do you know what I’ve been doing? Why I have this grand chamber and a diamond collar?”

  If she had thought to discomfit the Court Poet, it didn’t seem to work. Lin’s gaze was steady. “You went through a rite of fire, as I did,” she said. “And brought out something whose value we can only begin to guess.” Her gaze slid to the sleeping form of Syme Oleir.

  The sudden hostility that had surged in Rianna just as suddenly died. She looked at the sleeping boy, too. Marveling at what the pitiful form concealed. “There’s something you should know,” said Rianna. “The White Queen—she said she trained the Chosen for battle. But more than that. She called them her ‘deathless ones.’”

  Lin’s expression didn’t change. “Sounds like we’d better operate on the obvious assumption, then,” she said. “Until proven otherwise.”

  Rianna hugged her arms to her chest, to warm herself. “I know what it sounds like.”

  “Yes,” Lin said. Cool in her high-backed chair. “They can’t be killed.”

  CHAPTER

  17

  FOR various reasons, Nameir Hazan would always remember the evening she was summoned to King Eldakar’s tent at the beginning of winter. It was urgent, the young guard had told her, his boy’s voice catching; and Nameir thought she heard fear in it. Maybe she had not been thinking clearly. She always had fears, inchoate, with regard to Eldakar. He looked fragile to her, with his stooped posture as he bent over maps. The pain he carried.

  She was in her tent, darning a torn shirt by the glow of the brazier. Her thoughts carried away by the rhythms of the task, and the day.

  When she received the summons, she ran.

  The night was warm for winter. A pine scent carried from the cypress trees. Nameir ran across the grasses to the king’s tent. The guards at its entrance parted immediately to make way for her.

  She ducked inside, emerged to light. It took her several moments to take in what she was seeing. Eldakar sat in his usual chair. Aleira Suzehn was there too, standing alongside. And then—

  “My prince,” she said.

  “Nameir,” said Mansur.

  She hadn’t seen him in months. He was a little browner than she remembered, a little more weathered around the eyes. Right now he was smiling at her. A real smile. “We won.”

  * * *

  IT had happened fast. Muiwiyah Akaber was dead, assassinated in his own palace. Probably someone who held a grudge, was Mansur’s guess. Muiwiyah had ruled his province with a will of iron. And wartime always induced a degree of chaos. Someone had evidently seen that chaos as an opportunity.

  “I suppose,” said Eldakar.

  Disregarding the skepticism in his brother’s tone, Mansur went on. From there the tides of war had shifted within days. Muiwiyah’s three sons—Nikram, Rajir, and Miralfin—had turned against each other. A three-way civil war erupted on the border. Mansur had seen his own opportunity then.

  “We crushed them,” he told Nameir. “Oh! You should have been there. We will sing of that day for years to come. When all seemed lost … the enemy came tumbling down. Undone by hatred for each other.” He reclined amid cushions with a cup of wine, his color high; that cup had likely not been his first.

  Eldakar addressed her dryly. “You should sit.”

  Nameir took it as a command, allowed herself to sit in her usual chair. Except nothing was as usual about tonight. Her mind caught on the grand words of the prince. “All seemed lost,” she said. “So you thought—”

  “I expected to die,” said Mansur with a shrug. “Mostly I was worried for Eldakar. Once we fell, this camp would have been overrun.”

  “King Sicaro would have sheltered you,” said Aleira. She spoke from where she sat cross-legged on the tent floor, eyes hooded in the half-light.

  “I would not have run,” said Eldakar. For nearly the first time since Nameir knew him, he spoke sharply. “More would have been killed, if I’d done that, than if I’d surrendered. I will allow people to give their lives for Majdara, and the Zahra as it was. Not for me.”

  “This is grim talk when we should be celebrating,” said Mansur. “Eldakar, I suspect you’ve never even been drunk. That’s the trouble with your poems. Too much sobriety.”

  It was true that Eldakar’s wine cup was untouched on his desk. He looked at it ruefully. “I reject this charge against my honor,” he said. “I have abdicated sobriety at various times. I was probably drunk when I met my wife. You know how that went.”

  “Not your fault,” said Mansur. “I couldn’t tell she was a piranha when I was sober, let alone drunk.” He lifted his wine cup for a toast. “To being eaten alive … by beautiful women!”

  Eldakar started to laugh despite himself. They both drank. “I can’t believe you would have died for me, you idiot,” said the king.

  Mansur grinned. “It’s what brothers do.” He reached out and patted Nameir’s shoulder. “A
nd you,” he said. “You’ll have that land you’ve been promised all this time. Can even retire, if you like. You’ve earned it.”

  He sounded jovial, and it made Nameir feel odd; that he’d been thinking of her retirement. Though of course he meant well. “Thank you, my lord,” she said.

  “Oh come,” said Mansur. “None of that, Nameir. Drink. You’re too wound up.”

  “Mansur is right,” said Eldakar. “You have served us like none other, Nameir. When the battles ahead are done—you will have whatever you ask.”

  Thankfully they moved from that topic, then, to that of battles yet to come. Aleira spoke of what she had seen in the stars. Of a wave of destruction destined to come east over the mountains. Mansur listened soberly to this. For a while after she spoke there was silence.

  Mansur was watching Aleira Suzehn with fascination. Her pale hair was loose around her shoulders. The shadows of the tent hollowed her cheekbones to knife-points; her gold chains caught the light. And there were those strange eyes that could arrest one’s attention at any time.

  To Nameir, the Magician had become a familiar presence in the camp. After her descents from the watchtower, each night, the Magician would solicit Nameir’s help, as if whatever she’d seen in the heavens left her unsteady on her feet.

  Nameir would offer liquor in a flask, and wait for the Magician to regain herself. They’d stand in silence, breaths smoking in the winter air. Once Aleira had said, with a small smile, “They don’t deserve you. This terrible family.”

  Nameir had said, with a twinge of discomfort, “The sons are not the father.”

  “No,” Aleira had agreed. “No, indeed. But what the father did … his obscene bargain … it twists my readings of the stars. As if even the heavens cry against it.”

  “What do you mean?” Nameir had asked, despite misgivings. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. “What bargain?”

  “All that he built, he bought with the souls of a city,” said Aleira. “Souls that are still trapped beneath the earth—neither alive, nor dead.” She looked at Nameir. “These men you cherish so much—I don’t know if they will ever find peace. With something like this on their heads. It’s not their fault. It was the father. But that is no concern of the heavens, where these things are written.”

  “If they fall, then so will I,” Nameir flung back, with vehemence surprising even her. Without awaiting a response, set off down the hill. But the next night had joined the Magician on the hilltop again, again offering the flask. They had not spoken of it since. They spoke of other things, like Aleira’s life in the fortress of the Fire Dancers; the studies that had led to magic. Subjects of interest to Nameir, that did not touch on anything that was painful, or confusing.

  In the course of time Nameir came to forget her initial impression of Aleira Suzehn, seductive in her tent. She recalled it now, seeing how Mansur looked at her.

  He asked Aleira, “I hear tell that you lived among the Fire Dancers. What was that like?”

  The Magician lowered her eyes momentarily. Then smiled. “From them I learned not to hate all men,” she said. “Only most of them.”

  “That sounds like a challenge,” said the prince with his easy grin. The Magician held her smile but did not respond.

  Then Aleira turned to Eldakar. An abrupt shift in tone. “You should know, my king,” she said. “The assassination was no accident. It was a gift.”

  “She told you?”

  “She didn’t have to. I told you before—she looks after your interests.”

  Eldakar didn’t answer. Nameir thought she saw a tightening in his jaw. He looked at her then, as if he felt her watching. Said, “Nameir, my herbs—will you steep them for me?”

  She rose at once. He took her hand as she passed, and she understood. At once felt grateful to Mansur for sending her here, to this king who let her know with every gesture—even without words—that her presence mattered.

  * * *

  LATER, she and Mansur bade the king good night and went out into the moonlight. “I want to talk to you,” he murmured to her. She followed him to his tent. For the first time it was beginning to sink in … the war with the East Province was done. Those nights of poring over maps, of watching Eldakar with that sinking, helpless feeling … done. At least for now.

  When they entered the tent Mansur said, “I wanted to thank you.” His color was high from the drink, and his eyes looked larger, as they did sometimes when he’d indulged. “I didn’t want to say this in front of Eldakar—I worry for him. The wound, and all he’s lost—I don’t know what I would do if you weren’t looking after him. I see that you have.”

  “I came to know him … when you were ill,” said Nameir. Veering away in her mind from that time. “I understand why you love him.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I only wish I knew how to protect him.”

  Nameir looked down. “I think it’s too late.”

  “A heart may heal. Women have broken mine often enough, and here I am,” he said, smiling. He went to his pallet. He motioned for her to sit beside him. “How have you been?” he asked. He moved nearer. Though she had not seen him since the summer, she knew his scent; she could not have described it, only that it belonged to him, and made the hairs stir on the back of her neck. “I’m worried about you, too,” he said.

  She stared at him. “Me?”

  “You take care of everyone except yourself.”

  She stared some more. “You’re drunk,” she said.

  He seemed to think about it. Then: “Maybe,” he said. “It’s good to see you, you know.” He had begun to stroke her lower back.

  She stiffened. A hundred thoughts washed through her. Impossible to distinguish one from another just now.

  He had never touched her this way.

  She moved the hand that was touching her so it lay quiescent in her lap. Still an intimate gesture, still strange. He had always treated her like a comrade in arms. Certainly not as he did women. What was different? She searched his face.

  “You expected to die,” she said.

  He nodded. Reached out with his other hand for her cheek. “Yes,” he said. “And when I saw you, I knew … I’d come home.”

  The next moments would always be strange in her mind. She released his hand so he could stroke her back again, and then join his mouth with hers, and she didn’t know what to do—she had never done this with anyone—but she surrendered to it. She had wanted this for longer than she could remember … but was it this exactly? And then he was easing her back on his pallet, and before she knew what was happening he was naked. That was the part that would stick in her mind later, that seemed discordant. That it happened so quickly. That she didn’t have a chance to register what was happening, or what she was feeling. His quick eagerness sped everything forward.

  She helped him undress her, and he spent a little time teasing her body, and she began to feel like perhaps this was what she wanted after all. The intensity of his focus on her made her think of rain on parched earth.

  Still she wished he would speak again, or meet her eyes. You wanted this, she reminded herself, and gasped, and tried to lose herself.

  It was when he had begun to ride her—his dark eyes sleepy and pleased and gazing in the distance—that she located the source of her disquiet. She wanted to say the words. To tell Mansur what he meant to her—what he had meant since the beginning. But his faraway gaze could have been seeing anything. He had not in all this time said her name.

  She had gotten as close to him now as anyone could. And it turned out even then—even this close—he could still be far away.

  When he was done he said, “Thank you,” and kissed her mouth. They lay still awhile. He stroked her arm. She clasped his hand. She could feel the words trapped in her throat, still, as if they were pebbles.

  He had his own words, she knew. She had heard his poems often enough. Elegies for unrequited love, paeans to its attainment. Heartfelt and sensuous in either case. If he was not using su
ch words now, she had to think it was because there weren’t any.

  Words like that were not for her.

  Thoughts that passed within moments as she lay beside him. Feeling exposed and at the same time, somehow, unseen.

  Finally he said, “You had better not stay—people would talk. Thank you for a delightful evening.” He smiled at her, pure gratitude. She returned his smile as best she could, and began to dress. By the time she left he was asleep.

  * * *

  THAT night she washed herself before bed. She had never given thought to the logistics of how a man and woman came together. It turned out, the result for a woman could be messy. At least there had been no pain. And she didn’t think she had to worry about a child. It was something she had given thought to, and consulted with a village doctor about once, years ago. A woman doctor, and Galician. Such a person, Nameir had thought she could trust with her secret. The doctor had told her that since Nameir had never bled—a result, the doctor said, of relentless exercise—there was little risk of pregnancy. It was a relief. Until then, Nameir had been aware of the possibility as if it were a flaw in her armor; a fatal weakness.

  Although she couldn’t imagine trusting anyone enough for intimacy, she had thought—optimistic at nineteen—that someday it might happen. That maybe she wouldn’t always be alone.

  At that time she had been fighting in numerous campaigns, never serving one commander for very long. She went where the demand was. Never forming a bond with warriors of her rank, and certainly not with her commanders. In the border wars that had plagued Kahishi when Nameir Hazan was young, there was no sense in growing attached to one side, when you might find yourself fighting against them the following spring. So it had been since she was thirteen, tall and strong for her age, until she was twenty-four. At which time she had come under the command of the king’s son. And everything changed.

  Those years of being alone, before Mansur, had been hard. But Nameir wondered if there hadn’t been a certain freedom in it. In the years since, she had orbited Mansur Evrayad as the spheres were said to do around the sun. Yearning for light and warmth. Never getting close. And like a sphere in orbit, trapped.