by Kirby Crow
“Doesn’t feel that way to me. No matter how far I go, I’m still myself.”
Liall snorted, but his heavy mood lifted and he began to eat a little.
“Bad morning?”
Liall nodded around a mouthful. “No worse than I expected, but bad enough. They have not forgotten me, which is not altogether good for my purpose here. I do not have many happy memories of Rshan.”
“Are you making progress in... whatever it is you came for?”
The fey look in his pale eyes boded ill for someone. “Not yet.” Liall finally seemed to notice that Scarlet was not wearing his usual clothing. “Why, you are done up like a proper princeling! Is this Nenos’s doing?” His fingers plucked the bright row of stitching near Scarlet’s collar and he whistled lowly. “The color suits you,” he judged. “But gray is too serious. I like red better.”
“I noticed that not many of your people wear it.”
He shrugged. “The color red has fallen out of favor since Ramung’s time. It is the color of his House.”
“Who was Ramung?”
“A very ruthless Baron who created a great deal of strife inside Rshan. Now it has become almost tradition to reserve that color for his House, except for things like hats and scarves and gloves. I pay no attention to such customs, and now red reminds me only of you. But if you wish, you are entitled to wear the royal blue and silver of my House.”
Scarlet was certain there was more to that than Liall was telling him. He made an indifferent motion with his hand. “I don’t think so.”
Liall did not press the point, perhaps because they were very good at misunderstanding one another. “One day,” Liall said, noncommittal. He ate the last of the dumplings and wiped his mouth with a starched linen napkin so white it hurt the eyes. “And now, I must abandon you again.” Liall stood up.
That amused Scarlet. “Is that how you see me: a lost little waif in your giant country with your giant folk?”
“Well... I am a little concerned for you.”
Obviously, since he came running when Chos called. “Liall, I’m a journeyer. Meeting new people is what I do. I’m not going to pine away like a caged bird just because you’re not in my line of sight. Besides, if you ignore me too much, I have my own ways of making you regret it.”
Liall laughed. A little too loudly, Scarlet thought, but Liall’s hand on the back of his neck was warm, as were the lips pressed to the spot under his ear.
“I will heed your warning, and not ignore you too much when I return,” Liall murmured.
Liall made to leave, and then Scarlet remembered. “Liall... why don’t they want me to cut my hair?”
“Oh, that.” He seemed embarrassed. “Pay it no mind. I will straighten it out. Nenos believed my permission was needed first.”
“Per...” Scarlet was speechless. So they did think he was Liall’s property. “And the dagger?”
“Unless you are a bodyguard, it is not usual for anyone, even a lover, to be armed in the presence of a prince when they are closeted alone together. I will explain your status to the servants and you will not be bothered again about it.”
“What exactly is my status?”
Liall grinned suddenly and the years fell away from him. He didn’t look much older than Shansi then, with the firelight from the hearth and the blue glow from the lamps. “You are my t’aishka. And why not let your hair grow longer? It would please me.”
When he had gone, Scarlet wondered again what t’aishka actually meant, and resolved to ask Liall about it later. He did, however, decide not to cut his hair.
2.
A Dangerous Game
Liall left early the next morning, gone before Scarlet had woken. Several hours into the day –telling time here was an impossibility– Scarlet was seated in the smaller room adjoining the common room. Liall called the room a den, like it was a warren for some animal. The term amused Scarlet and he used it now when he referred to the smaller, cozier room with its big couch and shelves of books and the huge, stone casement with the tinted panes of glass. He was seated on the couch once more, watching the people come and go in the torchlight on the snowy walkway far below. A book was open on his lap, though he couldn’t read it at all. The book was interesting enough that he didn’t mind, with colored pictures of beasts and strange buildings, and script that looked like branching vines across the pages, curiously beautiful, but foreign. Everything here was foreign.
He had other books strewn about the table. These were ones without words, just pictures of men and women, but drawn with an eye so delicate to detail that it made him flush with pleasure just to look at them. Scarlet glanced at the window again, looking down, and saw what he thought was a bare, snow-trimmed tree suddenly bend and move out of the way of a lady in a sapphire robe trimmed with white fur. Scarlet gaped and rose up to his knees on the couch, his book sliding to the floor. Clumps of snow slid off the tree and its trunk suddenly parted to reveal thick, dark-skinned legs that carried it swiftly away from the walkway. Scarlet’s heart began to beat faster. That was no tree, but a man, yet a man far larger even than the Rshani, with a round, bald head and arms that swung like saplings at his sides. He was about to call out for Nenos when he realized yet again that he had no way to tell the old man what he had seen, or ask him for an explanation.
Scarlet sank back onto the couch slowly, his heartbeat gradually returning to normal. What was that thing? Was it a real man, or something else? No one on the walkway had paid the creature any attention, and there was no way they could have missed him. The dark giant must be something new, something he had not seen before.
He realized with a start that he had seen something like it before: the wooden statue of the Shining One in the Fate Dealer’s tent in Ankar. The statue had frightened him then, and he was no less shaken now. It was impossible, wasn’t it? The Shining Ones had been dead for thousands of years. What, then, had he just seen?
A few hours passed and Scarlet was finishing up one of the thicker volumes when a soft knock echoed in the quiet room. Nenos answered it, and a young man with a most gentle expression stood there, his thin hands folded in front of him. He wore a plain, ankle-length virca of blue wool and his hair was long and straight like an icefall or a fold of white silk. His eyes were not pale blue, like Liall’s, but a deep gold, most unusual. He bowed his head to Scarlet and smiled, and then spoke to Nenos, who bowed in turn.
“I am Jochi,” the man said in accented but perfect Bizye, still smiling, and finally Scarlet recognized him.
“You were at the port.”
Jochi smiled, as if happy to be recalled. “I was, yes. I had been waiting for many weeks. It is kind of you to remember.” Jochi was handsome without being pretty, and his manners were fine as a king’s but somehow comforting, as if his whole purpose was to make Scarlet feel at ease. “The queen has asked me to bring you to the hall to join us for dinner.”
Scarlet felt a flash of relief at understanding and being able to make himself understood, right before it vanished and he realized what Jochi had said. “Dinner? You mean with the queen?”
“And several hundred courtiers and servants. Have no fear, ser, this is very normal.” His voice was uncommonly gentle.
“Now?”
“Of course, now, ser.”
Scarlet rose. “Thank you,” he said, casting a nervous glance aside to Nenos, who nodded. He put the book down and started toward Jochi, but stopped suddenly and looked down at his clothing.
“You look very well,” Jochi assured. “Fear not on that account.”
“Thank you. I haven’t spent much time in castles.”
“It is only larger than most places,” Jochi said, smiling a little. “Come, ser.”
As Jochi guided him through the corridors, he explained in his soft voice the shape of the palace and pointed out things to remember as guiding landmarks. He was dressed in plain wool but his manner was too studied for him to be a commoner, yet Scarlet was not sure he was a courtier or nobl
eman, either.
“There are one thousand and twenty-two rooms in the Nauhinir, ser,” he said, pretending not to notice Scarlet’s shock. “One thousand, eight hundred and four windows, one thousand seven hundred and six doors and ninety-four staircases.”
A courtier may not have been so diligent of pointing out the many landmarks inside the palace. Jochi reminded Scarlet of a teacher, and he said so.
Jochi was pleased. “That is precisely what I am, ser. A teacher.”
“Will you tell me something else, teacher?”
“If I can.”
“I saw something odd, today.” Scarlet began to relate the story of the man he had mistaken for a tree.
“Ah, yes. That is Melev, one of our most honored residents at the Nauhinir.”
“Melev. Is he a Shining One?” Scarlet asked with some dread.
Jochi laughed. “Indeed not. Melev is an Ancient, but that will take more explanation than we have time for at the moment. See? The great hall is just there.”
The hall, when they arrived, was enormous and noisy. “This is the dining hall, ser, what we call the great hall. It is the largest one, and we use it for both dining and meeting and many other purposes.”
It was plainer than any room Scarlet had seen so far, with bricked fireplaces roaring at either end of the place. There was a huge window on the other side of the room, the heavy draperies thrown open to reveal the ceaseless blue twilight, and he could make out the shape of a frozen river in the landscape beyond, quite near the palace.
“That is called the Neb,” Jochi explained as he led Scarlet into the room. “The sacred river.”
Scarlet had thought this room plain, but when he chanced to look up at the vaulted ceiling, he saw that it was made up entirely of small mosaic tiles in many colors. The design sprawled across the entire expanse of the ceiling, a rendering of many birds of all kinds in flight across a sunlit sky.
A row of wide tables extended down, four abreast, and Scarlet could see Liall at the high table, beside the queen. Just seeing her put a knot in his belly again, but Jochi put his fingertip on Scarlet’s arm to guide him to an empty seat just below Liall and the queen at the end of the third table, next to a woman as lovely and distant as the moon who stared pointedly at Scarlet.
“Lady Shikhoza speaks your language,” Jochi informed him. “I will rejoin you later, ser Scarlet.” He touched Scarlet’s shoulder briefly. “Enjoy your meal.”
I’d rather be eating stones, he thought. He glanced up and saw Liall’s mouth curve slightly, saw him lift his cup in his direction. Resigned, Scarlet sat carefully next to the woman. Lady Shikhoza, he reminded himself.
“Good evening, Lady,” he said, remembering his manners.
She gave him a wintry smile. “Ser Keriss,” she said and lifted her cup to drink.
Whatever that means, he thought. Maybe it was a pleasantry. A servant leaned over his shoulder and poured him a drink. Wine as red as rubies spilled into his cup. He tasted it. It was probably a good vintage, but he would have rather had bitterbeer. Still, he sipped to avoid giving offense.
The meal was endless. The man across from him was –to say it plainly– fat. Folds of flesh spilled out from the top of his hapcoat, and his heavy jowls reminded Scarlet of a sow that Rufa the alewife had owned once. The fat man ignored Scarlet, and Lady Shikhoza glanced at him often, but said little. Scarlet stole many looks at Liall and his mother, who conferred almost constantly during the meal.
Hats, it seemed, were not worn in the palace, and while the men were all clothed in either vircas and breeches or hapcoats and breeches and were bare-headed, most women wore arrangements on their piled hair that seemed to be wide, starched lengths of colored linen in the shape of large crescent moons, set with wire and beads and jewels into a fringed crown. He would be sure to ask Liall what they were called later. The most starting thing were the women’s eyes. They ladies of the court painted their eyelids above and below with a deep blue cosmetic that made them appear quite large and startled, like wild deer, or else like satisfied cats.
Despite what he had told Liall, Scarlet was suddenly taken by a wave of longing to see his own people again. All this wealth of strangeness made his head hurt. Even though Liall had taken pains to warn him, Scarlet realized that he had not fully grasped how difficult it would be to be surrounded by dislike for a long stretch of time. He already knew the Rshani did not tolerate foreigners well or graciously, but he realized now that he had been hoping that the court men and women would be better behaved than the mariners. Scarlet glanced around the hall, getting only cold stares in return, until he gave up and stared into his cup. This foreigner was beginning to think he didn’t care much for them either, except for one of them in particular. He had never really felt homesickness, but now, for the first time in his career of wandering, Scarlet was lonely.
A loud voice interrupted Scarlet’s reverie and he jerked his head up to stare in dismay at the man across from him. The fat man was obviously speaking to him, but he had no idea what the fellow was saying. He glanced at the Lady in appeal, and she smiled, still like ice.
“He asks how long you have known Prince Nazheradei.”
“A bit more than a year.”
One corner of her mouth lifted. “You must address the Baron.”
“I don’t speak Sinha.”
“No, of course you don’t.” She patted Scarlet’s hand, smiling more fully. “Say this, then.” She leaned close to his ear and said something that, for once, made Sinha sound liquid instead of guttural to Scarlet.
He repeated it nearly soundlessly and she nodded approval.
Feeling a little more confident, Scarlet looked at the Baron and repeated it again.
The fat man proved to be unexpectedly light on his feet as, with a roar, he drew a broad, short sword and shoved his chair backwards. Scarlet scrambled back out of his chair and to his feet as the fat man leapt to the table, kicking wine cups out of the way, and leveled the tip of his blade at Scarlet’s throat.
Scarlet glanced at the Lady, whose expression was carefully blank, and he understood. She had tricked him into insulting the fat Baron, and insulting him quite badly. Or well, depending on how one saw the matter.
Liall was suddenly there. He shouted something at the Baron that made the Lady frown slightly. The Baron’s expression shifted to one less furious and he said something back to Liall in a tone of grudging respect.
Liall spoke again, at length, and rested his hand on Scarlet’s shoulder. The gesture felt odd and fraught with a hidden meaning Scarlet did not understand. Scarlet bowed politely, trying to look apologetic when he couldn’t decide whether he was scared or furious.
The Baron softened further and sheathed his blade, then leapt down from the table with that astonishing grace again. Liall spoke again to the room at large and nodded satisfaction when everyone again sat down. His hand on Scarlet’s shoulder was heavy as he turned Scarlet toward the doors. “I told you to engage in no quarrels,” Liall hissed.
“I didn’t!” Scarlet muttered hotly. “At least, I didn’t intend to.”
Golden-eyed Jochi met them halfway down the aisle, looking extremely distressed. Liall’s fingers gripped tight enough to bruise before he released Scarlet. Scarlet winced.
“Take him back to our apartments, Jochi, and for the sake of us all, keep him out of trouble!”
Scarlet’s shoulder ached. He looked at Liall’s set face. Liall would not meet Scarlet’s eyes, and suddenly Scarlet remembered the ship, and how Liall had hurried him off the deck and into the cabin after the mariner had offered the coin to buy Scarlet’s body. Liall had thought him in the wrong, then. Was it the same now?
Without another word, Liall went back to reclaim his seat at the high table, and Scarlet walked stiffly with Jochi to the doors. As they drew near the exit, passing tables with glittering men and women seated at their meals, he heard a man’s voice mutter something that included Nazheradei and t’aishka in the same breath. Scarlet
looked that way and then at Jochi.
“What did they say?”
“Ser Scarlet, you must not heed it,” Jochi said uncomfortably. “When it comes to gossip, some people are no better than commoners.” Jochi took Scarlet’s arm to lead him away.
Scarlet’s face stung with embarrassment. He supposed that Jochi had no way of knowing that he was one of those same commoners, but it still pricked him.
Why did he come here with Liall? A matter of necessity, he had supposed. It was either run or be hanged, and after that there was the honor he owed to his ancestors to repay the blood debt to Liall. But Hilurin honor seemed to mean little to Liall, and Scarlet suddenly wondered if Liall thought him ridiculous, especially after tonight’s performance.
“Jochi, will you translate something for me?”