by Judith Tarr
oOo
The house was warm and welcoming, with Olenyai in it to let them in and bar the gate behind them, and lamps lit in the dining-room, which was the biggest room and the one where everyone could gather, but no servants anywhere. They had all disappeared.
The Olenyai brought in a pallet and spread it for Uruan, and he was laid on it. People tried not to crowd. Vanyi bent over him, and Daruya, running their hands down his body, tracing it in power.
“Alive,” said Vanyi, saying what they all knew. “And well, except for shock. He’ll sleep it off and wake sane.”
Daruya sank to her heels, hands on thighs. Her eyes found Kimeri, who was trying to find a shadow to slip away inside of. “Merian,” she said.
Her tone was mild, but she never called Kimeri by her grownfolk name unless Kimeri was in trouble. Kimeri came forward slowly, holding her courage in both hands. Just outside of her mother’s reach, she stopped.
“Ki-Merian,” said Daruya. “Can you explain this?”
Kimeri swallowed. They were all staring, mages, Olenyai, Borti and the exorcist too. “I told you he was in the Gate,” she said. “You wouldn’t listen.”
Daruya’s brows drew together. “You told me you were having nightmares. You didn’t say what those nightmares were.”
“I told Vanyi,” Kimeri said.
Vanyi flushed, which was startling. “God and goddess. So she did. I thought she was babbling, or telling stories.”
“Because I’m too young,” Kimeri said. “I know. Nobody would listen.”
Except Borti, but Kimeri did not think she wanted to say that. Not yet. Kimeri was in enough trouble by herself.
“Well then,” Daruya said, “since we didn’t listen, and that’s our fault, suppose you tell us how you woke the Gate and got the Guardian out of it.”
“I didn’t mean to,” said Kimeri, trying not to whine. “The exorcist was trying to lay the ghost and exorcise me, and I tried to stop him. The Gate woke up. Uruan fell out of it. The Gate’s still there. But it’s not opening on anything but stars.”
“A blind Gate,” Vanyi said. She sounded afraid. That, like her blush, was not like her at all. “We’re warned in all the books of Gates, not to let that happen.”
“Do they ever say why?” Daruya asked. Odd to see her the calm one, and Vanyi flustered.
“No,” Vanyi said. “Only that they’re dangerous; that they open on the living heart—whatever that means. They don’t say.”
Kimeri could feel the Gate in her. In her heart? Maybe. She was not going to tell Vanyi that. Vanyi might try to do something about it, and that would be dangerous. Kimeri knew that because the stars knew it: the stars in the Gate.
“Can we use the Gate?” Daruya asked. “Can we get back to Starios through it? If we can do that—”
“No,” Vanyi said again. “That much I do know. A blind Gate leads nowhere. If you try to use it, you’ll end up as Uruan did: trapped till something sets you free.”
Daruya might not have left it at that, but someone started pounding on the gate, so loud that they heard it even this far back in the house. There was shouting, Olenyai voices, and another voice over it, deep and clear at once. “Damn you, you sons of the Pit! Let me in!”
“Let him in!” Daruya called in Asanian, rising so fast Kimeri hardly saw her move, and running toward the door; then stopping as if confused, blushing and going white, then blushing again.
Bundur ran in trailing hot-eyed Olenyai, ignoring them completely. He looked wild, his hair down out of its knot, his coat as short as a commoner’s and torn besides, and a cut on his cheek that he seemed unaware of. He was talking before he had come all the way into the room. “You have to come, you mustn’t stop, you’ve got to get out of here.”
Now it was Daruya who was in a flutter and Vanyi who was calm: the order of the world was back in place again.
“Stop babbling, take a deep breath, and start from the beginning,” Vanyi said.
Bundur took the breath, and shut his mouth, too, but he still did not seem to see anything much but Daruya’s face. When he spoke again he sounded much calmer. “The king is dead.”
Maybe only Kimeri heard Borti’s gasp. Maybe not. “Do you remember the people I told you of, the ones who want to expel all foreigners and kill the mages? It seems my uncle was more difficult to bring round to their way of thinking than they thought he might be. They’ve killed him and set up their own king.”
“The queen?” Vanyi asked.
“Dead,” said Bundur. “As far as anyone knows. She hasn’t been seen since the murderers broke into the palace. They’d have got rid of her first, even before they issued their ultimatum to the king. They’re still dealing with resistance from the queen’s people—but once they’ve broken that, they’ll come here.”
Vanyi’s eyes went vague: she was using her magery to see. “Not for a while yet, but yes. We’ll be a fine symbol of the new reign, with our bodies spiked to the walls and our heads over the gate.”
Bundur shuddered. Somebody was retching—Aledi, with Miyaz holding her head. He looked as if he would have liked to join her.
“Listen to me. There’s one way I know of to keep you safe. Come back, all of you and all the belongings you can gather, to House Janabundur. I’ll keep you there.”
“And die when they come for us,” Daruya said.
Her eyes seemed to steady him, though they were burning gold. “No,” he said. “Not my wife, and my wife’s kin and servants.”
She shuddered as he had, but with less of a greensick look. “It can’t be that easy.”
“Custom is strong,” he said, “and it will confuse them—at least long enough for us to think of other ways to defend ourselves.”
Daruya raised her hands as if to push him away, then knotted them together and twisted them. “What if it doesn’t work?”
“It will,” he said. He was sure. He was also out of patience. “But you have to come now. They’ve closed the great gates—I just got in before the bars went down. They’ll be securing the lesser ones soon.”
“And we have seneldi to move.” That, for some reason, seemed to calm Daruya down, get her thinking. “We’ll go through the stable. Vanyi, Kadin, we’ll move everything the fastest way, and keep a shadow over it.”
Bundur had not expected that. Kimeri watched him think that he had not been planning to take in all their livestock too, but nobody heard him when he tried to say it.
Then it struck him what it meant. Daruya was going to marry him. Kimeri would have gone over and held him up if he would have let her.
As it was, his knees buckled, but he stiffened them somehow and ran with the rest of them, scrambling together everything they could. Not much from the house—clothes to change into, one or two of the packs of trade goods that Vanyi had brought in, weapons for the Olenyai; and Kimeri wondered what the guards of Shurakan would give to know how the bred-warriors had got their swords back again. From the stable they had to take more: grain for the seneldi, bales of cut fodder slung across unwilling backs, saddles and bridles and the rest.
By that time the tumult inside the palace was loud enough to hear with human ears. Kimeri kept a grip on Borti. Nobody had been taking particular notice of the woman—Kimeri helped them with that, and helped them to think she was some kind of servant, or maybe the exorcist’s assistant, until the exorcist saw the seneldi and bleated something incoherent and bolted.
He would be safe. His magery was all tangled up, but it was good enough to hide him while he needed to be hidden, and when he found an open gate he would run back to his temple.
Borti had no such escape. Her brother-king was dead. The people in the palace were hunting her. She was safest where she was, with a hood hiding her face and a shadow hiding all of them, creeping along the wall toward a gate that might, with the gods’ help, still be open and unguarded when they got to it.
The seneldi came quietly, with a magery on them, but even that could not keep them from ro
lling their eyes and snorting at the sudden reek of death from inside the palace. Someone had opened a door and died in it. Several other people ran out, looking for enemies to kill, but they saw nothing but moonlight and darkness and an empty yard.
Borti stumbled. Kimeri kept her on her feet, using magery when bodily strength was not enough. She kept trying to run inside, as if it would do any good at all to die as her brother had. She was not thinking; something in her had gone blank and blind. Mages would have to mend that when they got to House Janabundur.
The gate had a guard, but Chakan killed him. It was almost too quick to see: one moment he was alive, the next he was not. His soul hung about, bewildered, till a gust of wind caught it and blew it away.
oOo
Once past the gate they mounted quickly. Rahai tossed Kimeri into the saddle of the star-browed bay; she pulled Borti up behind her, with Rahai pushing, not asking questions. He was a wise man, was Rahai. Borti had no kind of seat on a senel, but she could balance herself, even tranced, and she clung to Kimeri.
Bundur was riding, too. He rode well—he wanted to gallop down the twisty street, but Daruya stopped him. There were people in the way. The shadow would not hold if they went too fast or ran into anyone.
They had to walk, mostly, and trot in the few stretches where it was level enough and empty enough. They were still faster than if they had tried to go on foot, though Bundur did not like to admit it.
The city was quiet. It was only the palace that was in uproar. The people would wait till it was over, then decide what to do. Kings had died this way before, though not for a long while. Shurakan had got used to peace, but it had never forgotten the scent of blood in the air.
House Janabundur waited for them. It was remarkably like Kimeri’s earlier homecoming: the same warm welcome, the same barred gates, the same gathering in the largest room.
But there were differences. The seneldi had to be put somewhere and taken care of. The back garden did for that; Lady Nandi sighed for her flowers, even after Kadin assured her that these seneldi were civilized and would eat only what he gave them permission to eat. They liked having a space to roam in, even one as small as that, and settled happily enough to their fodder and the handful of grain that Kadin fed each one in turn.
oOo
He stayed with the seneldi. The rest of them went up to the hall where they had dined on festival night. It was only yesterday, Kimeri thought. It felt years gone.
They had to have tea and cakes—they could not be welcomed without them. Everybody choked down a sip and a bite, even Hani creeping out of bed to see what the commotion was. It seemed natural for him to set himself beside Kimeri and keep quiet while Bundur told his mother that her brother was dead.
Lady Nandi had expected it. “I knew,” she said, “when the whispers grew so loud, and everyone so sure that he would yield. I knew he never would.” Her eyes were dry, her voice steady. She kept all her tears inside until she should have time to be alone. Then she would weep. “He believed that the haters of foreigners were right, mind you, and that foreign presence could only destroy what we have built here. But he was also the king. The king is above the fears of simple men.”
But not the queen, Kimeri thought, with Borti gripping her hand till it hurt, sitting on the other side of her from Hani. No one really saw her yet, though the shadow was wearing thin. Kimeri was tired, even with the Gate inside her to make her stronger.
The queen had been afraid, and was becoming afraid again as she woke from the horror that had held her speechless. But she was brave, as always. She fought her way through the fear.
Kimeri helped. She held the light where Borti could see it, and guided her out of the dark place.
All the while she did that, the others talked. Kimeri’s mother was being stubborn again. “Did I say I’d agreed to marry you?” she was saying to Bundur. “Marry Vanyi. She’ll take you.”
“With all due respect to her ladyship,” said Bundur, “I don’t want her. I want you.”
“Stop that,” said Vanyi, so sharp and so sudden that they started and fell silent. “That will be enough out of you, Daruyani. You will do as your heart is bidding you do, so loud even I can hear it, and that will be that.”
“Not tonight,” Daruya said, obstinate still. “At least give me time to think about it.”
“Time for the palace to discover and stop you? I think not.” Vanyi was on her feet. She was not a tall woman and not usually imposing, but when she wanted to she could stand as tall as the mountain that guarded Shurakan.
Daruya stayed where she was, sitting at the table, but somehow she was as tall as Vanyi.
They all waited for Vanyi to say something devastating, something that would break Daruya down and trample on the shards. But Vanyi said nothing at all. Simply stared at her, long and long. Then turned her back on her in profound contempt.
The silence was deafening. Lady Nandi thought for a moment, then stood as Vanyi had, and turned her back, too. So did Chakan.
That cut Daruya to the bone: Kimeri heard her gasp of shock. After Chakan, the rest followed. They did not understand Shurakani, but they understood what had been happening, and this was what they thought of it. Even they, who should never have cared to wed their lady to a foreigner.
That left Kimeri and Hani, and Borti by now visible but ignored, and Bundur. Kimeri got up slowly, turned even more slowly. It hurt; it wrenched at the place where the Gate was. But she had to do it.
Behind her she heard her mother’s breath catch. “Not you, too?”
Bundur did not say anything. He was too much in love to be contemptuous, but he was hurt, hurt enough to want to wound. And he let her see it.
Daruya’s anger was like a breath of fire, sudden and whitely hot. “Damn you! Damn you all! I’ll do it!”
23
The worst betrayal, absolutely the worst of all, was Chakan’s. He tried to slip out of Daruya’s sight, but she caught him and dragged him with her into the room she was given to dress for her wedding, and shut the door in the face of everyone who tried to follow. She did not notice what kind of room it was, except that it was small, lamplit, and seemed to lead to another, which would be a bath from the scent of warmed water and herbs that came from it.
She backed Chakan against the wall, well aware that he could have escaped if he had put his mind to it. He eyes were not contrite at all; they were laughing as they had not since he came to Shurakan.
“Why?” she demanded of him. “Why you? You were the one who warned me against him!”
“The emperor wants you to marry him,” Chakan said.
His laughter, she realized, was as much at himself as at her. “You’re not his slave,” she snapped.
“I serve him,” he said. “And he approves this match.”
“Do you?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters profoundly.”
He looked away, which was not easy as close as they were, eye to blazing golden eye. “You need this marriage to keep you safe. Your grandfather and the Guildmaster approve it. Whatever I may think, you have to marry this man or endanger the embassy.”
“I don’t matter to you, do I? Except as the heir to the throne you serve.”
He would not look at her even then, even at such a blow. His voice was soft, without expression. “I was bred to serve. I can do no other.”
“Chakan!”
The pain in her voice rocked him. She saw it. She also saw that his eyes were fixed on the floor beside her foot, and that his face, what she could see of it, was rigid.
She spun away. Her throat was tight, but she had no tears to shed. She never did for the things that truly hurt. “Go,” she said.
He did not pause; did not speak. He simply went.
oOo
For a little while then she was alone. He did that—damn his hide, he told the others to let her be.
She turned slowly. It was a small room indeed, very small, little more than a closet.
There was a clothing-stand, and garments spread over it. Her eyes avoided them. Beyond, in a room no larger, was a basin full of water, steaming gently, and all the appurtenances of the bath.
Her anger was gone. It had left with Chakan. She took off what she was wearing, dropped it where it fell, lowered herself into the water. It was hot—almost too hot. She welcomed its nearness to pain.
She was wallowing. She knew that perfectly well. Her grandfather would have taxed her with it if he had been there. Her grandmother, too. Haliya had great compassion, but not for young things who, in her mind, were taking their fits of temper altogether too far.
Of course they were all perfectly right. This marriage would save the embassy, if only for a little while—long enough to find other expedients. It would confuse the faction that had killed the king, and confront it not with a defenseless party of foreigners but with a powerful, indeed royal, house and all its allies and dependents. It was supremely practical and quite devastating.
If she were the proper obedient creature that Chakan was, she would swallow her objections and submit. What difference did it make, after all? She would leave when she wished to leave. She did not have to take her husband with her, or even remember that he existed, except as a convenience, a name of respectability. Lovers would find it an added spice to bed another man’s wife.
She sank down till the water lapped her chin. The trouble with all of that cold practicality was quite simple and quite inescapable and quite substantial. Bundur himself. He was not the kind of man one could forget. He had somehow, without her knowing precisely how, crept in under her skin and set up residence there.
No man had ever done this to her before. Those who adored her, worshipped her, fell breathless at her feet, she had always dealt with as gently as she could, and sent toward women who would indulge their follies. Those who had the sense to regard bed-play as the game it was, she took to her bed when she wished, eluded gracefully when she did not. She had never been thrown into such confusion, never so lost her temper with anyone except—god and goddess help her—her grandfather.
“Does that mean I love him?” she asked the ceiling. The ceiling, plain plastered surface, returned no answer. She slid completely beneath the water and stayed there, counting the heartbeats, till she had to breathe or burst.