by Judith Tarr
“I’ll do what I can,” he said. “You can use another mage, yes? And I know people here. Some of those who were favorable to us might still be; and if Lord Shakabundur is with us, we’re stronger than we’ve ever been.”
“You’re running no errands tonight,” said Vanyi sternly. “Believe me, when I need you I’ll use you. Until then, you’ll rest and eat and make yourself strong.”
He looked for a moment as rebellious as Daruya could ever be, but he was older, and better trained. He lowered his eyes and said, “Yes, Guildmaster.”
oOo
Daruya woke toward sunset with every memory intact, Bundur beside her and a scowl on her face.
He smiled back. “Good evening, madam,” he said. “Are you always so cross when you wake?”
She snarled and went to the garderobe that was past the bath, and stopped to plunge her head into cold water in the basin, and came back a little brighter of eye. He sat up in bed, raking fingers through his thick straight hair.
She hunted, found a comb. He sat still while she plied it, finding it much easier to make order of hair so thick when it was straight and not curling everywhere at once. It was waist-long, cut level—if it had never been cut, she thought, it might have been as long as he was. Combing it was like combing silk, or a senel’s mane.
When it was smooth she plaited it in a single braid as if he had been a priest. He did not protest, though she had never seen a man with a braid here. He liked the feel of it, less clumsy than a knot at the nape, more easily managed than a long tail bound with a bit of leather or ribbon.
Then he wanted to comb her hair, for which she pitied him. Each knot untangled only bred a new one. But he insisted, and it gave him pleasure, like playing in gold. “Do women cut their hair short in your country?” he asked. “Your Guildmaster and the woman with her wear the long braid, I notice. Your men, too, those whose hair I can see.”
“Royalty never cut their hair at all,” Daruya said, “nor priests once they take up their office. I was sick of knots and tangles and hours with combs and brushes. I hacked it off when Kimeri was born.”
His brows lifted. “All of it?”
“Right to the skull,” she said with remembered satisfaction. “It was wonderful. Cool; light; simple to keep clean. Everyone howled.”
He took a curl in thumb and forefinger and stretched it straight. Left to itself it fell just below her shoulders. Straightened, it was halfway to her waist. “Why did you let it grow again?”
“Laziness,” she said. “Contrariness. I discovered I’d started a fashion; half the young idiots in the court were going about with heads cropped or even shaved bald, as if I’d ever intended to go that far. I think I’ll be glad when it’s long enough to make a decent braid. It gets in the way as it is.”
“I can imagine,” he said. “I remember when I came out of the temple to inherit Janabundur, how I regretted the simplicity of a bare skull. But I was glad, in the end, to leave that behind. It gets beastly cold in the winter.”
Daruya tried to see him in a priest’s robe, shaved clean. He would have been much younger; awkward, all angles, with big hands and feet, and a blade of a nose.
Charming, rather. She leaned back against him, because he was warm and solid and it seemed like something she should do.
His arms settled about her. He nuzzled her hair. They did not kiss here; she remembered how odd she had thought it, but how little she had been moved to teach him the art. There had not seemed to be any need of it.
She was comfortable. That alarmed her, but not enough to move. Comfort had never been anything she expected to have with a man. Arguments, yes. Resistance. His will striving to bend hers. Not this calm accommodation, or this conviction that she would do what he wanted, because she too wanted it.
He had much to learn of what she was. But not now. Not . . . quite . . . yet.
Tradition in the empire would have given a newly wedded pair three days of solitary lovemaking. In Shurakan they were given two full hands of days, and kept strictly apart, too, which as Bundur pointed out, favored the cause of protecting Daruya and her companions from enemies in the palace.
“Unless of course they find Borti,” he said. Seclusion did not prevent the family from communicating with bride and bridegroom; they could speak, even eat together, as they were doing, the third morning after the wedding.
Borti looked up from slicing a scarlet fruit and feeding bits to Kimeri and Hani. Her face was blandly innocent, her accent slightly but distinctly countrified. “Why, and what would the great ones want with a children’s nurse?”
“Not, I hope, what they’d want with a queen,” Daruya said.
If anyone had expected marriage to smooth her edges, he was disappointed. She was still Daruya; still all prickles and sharp words, and she did not spare Bundur any more than the rest.
But something was different. Some tension eased, and not only that of a woman who needed a man for her bed; some resistance softened. As if, thought Vanyi, she had stopped fighting the inevitable and faced the fact that she was a woman, and royal born at that.
It was a young change yet, and might not hold. But Vanyi decided to let it hearten her. Estarion would be gratified; he had hoped for such a result.
They did match well. The awkwardness of new lovers was missing, the fumbling, the distraction, the obsession with one another. The bond between them ran deeper than that. Daruya had been fighting it since she came to Shurakan; had fought it maybe lifelong, as if her soul knew where the other half of it was, but the rest of her had refused to listen.
She was still fighting, but not against that. She would always fight; that was in her blood. Now maybe she would choose more useful causes.
As Vanyi reached for the pot to refill her cup of tea, one of the servants glided in and bent toward her. “Lady, one asks for you. Are you at home to him?”
“Who is he?” Daruya, stretching her ears and making no effort to pretend otherwise.
“Lady,” said the servant with a deeper bow than he had accorded Vanyi, “it is one from the palace, a man who comes quietly but walks with the gait of rank.”
“The Minister of Protocol,” said Daruya. She half-rose. “Should I—”
“I’ll see him,” Vanyi said. And at Daruya’s frown: “You’re in seclusion, remember. It suits us to keep you that way.”
Daruya sat down again. It was not acquiescence. Bundur, Vanyi noticed, kept out of it. Wise man.
“Yes,” Vanyi said as if Daruya had spoken. “As long as we can use the marriage-days as a shield against intruders, we gain time to think our way out.”
“Little enough of that we’ve done so far,” said Daruya.
“You think so?” Vanyi asked. “I’d say we were doing well. We’re keeping Borti hidden, we’ve got Uruan back up to strength, and we have watchers in the house of the Gate in case someone comes there, thinking it deserted, and tries something. Now we have a visitor from the palace.”
“Who, I hope, simply wants to exchange pleasantries with you, and not arrest you for high treason.” Daruya gestured to the Olenyas who hovered nearest. “Chakan. Go with her.”
Chakan bowed, scrupulously correct as he had been since his quarrel with his lady. That would take some smoothing over, thought Vanyi; but it was not her place to say so.
She could easily imagine what Daruya would say to that: When, pray tell, had Vanyi ever cared whether it was or was not her place to say whatever she had a mind to? But Vanyi could take refuge in proprieties when they served her purpose, or when it was simply practical.
oOo
The Minister of Protocol waited in an antechamber with tea and cakes and carefully schooled patience. He was not accustomed, clearly, to wait on the convenience of others.
Vanyi found his presence and his continued good health interesting. Palace coups in Shurakan, she had been assured, were civilized; no one died except by strict necessity, and those who could continue to serve did so. It reminded her in a way o
f the Olenyai and their honor, which was sworn to the throne and not to the one who sat in it.
She did not have to like it or him. She spoke abruptly, without greeting. “What do you want?”
He blinked at her discourtesy, but answered as he could. “You must understand, lady, that while I am utterly orthodox in my convictions, I am not in sympathy with those who would destroy all that even hints of magic.”
“Is that what’s happening in the palace?”
“It is what is going to happen soon. The new king has ordered the palace to his satisfaction. His followers are free to pursue the purposes for which they raised him to the throne.”
“And those are?”
“To drive out all foreigners. To destroy all taint of magic in Su-Shaklan.”
Vanyi considered that. It was nothing surprising, nothing unexpected. But to hear it spoken so baldly by this of all men—that brought it home, and forcefully. “How far are they thinking to go?”
“Far,” he said. His hands, raising the cup to sip cooling tea, were not quite steady. “They seek even to suppress some of the odder cults and priesthoods among our own people: the exorcists, the spirit-speakers, the counters of the dead, even some of the oracles and prophets and the holy ones of the heights. All those, they say, are workers of magic.”
“Some of them probably are,” Vanyi observed.
“Only in the broadest sense,” he said. “Too broad, in my mind. I mislike what it may lead to.”
“Indeed,” Vanyi said. “Broad interpretations can become very broad, until they include anyone whom one doesn’t love, and any doctrine that one disapproves of.”
The Minister of Protocol bobbed his head: Shurakani agreement. “Yes. Yes, that is what I see. Already they make lists, name names, reckon up their enemies and their unfriends.”
“Are you telling me,” Vanyi asked, “that I should get my people out before the whole palace falls on us with fire and sword?”
“No, lady,” said the Minister of Protocol. “That would destroy you certainly. The guards of the borders have been instructed to slay you if they see you. In the city you are safe; in this house you are protected still by the name of Janabundur. No one yet is willing to challenge it or those who hold it.”
“But for how long?”
“Lady, I do not know.” A mighty admission, and a great abdication of pride. “I know only that you, through your kinswoman, are now of Janabundur, and Janabundur has great influence among those who might wish to avert what comes.”
“The lord of the house is in seclusion,” Vanyi said, “till the days of his wedding are over.”
“His lady mother is not. And his sisters. Nor are you yourself.”
Vanyi poured tea, to give her hands something to do while she pondered. His mind was as readable as ever—to the same point as ever, neither deep nor shallow, but beneath was a darkness she could not penetrate.
Did he know that the queen was here? His thoughts were innocent of such knowledge. They saw much amiss in the kingdom, a king whom he reckoned more puppet than ruler, weak and vain, and puppetmasters without let or scruple. They would trample the ancient orders and courtesies in the name of the gods and the ban against magic.
She held great weapons, she thought, sipping tea that she barely tasted. The queen. House Janabundur. Her own magery, and the power of all her mages. The Olenyai, warriors in a mode that was unknown here. Even Gates, if she could open them again.
But the palace ruled Shurakan. Its armed men might not be equal, man for man, to any Olenyas, but there were hundreds of them to her nine bred-warriors. Its power might—must—encompass a force that could break Gates.
Yes. It must. She had no proof, no certainty, but her bones knew. Whatever had broken Gates, its wielders had slain the old king and given the crown to one of its own.
The Minister of Protocol waited, silent, for her to finish pondering. She spoke abruptly; he started. “I’ll speak to the Lady Nandi. More than that I can’t promise.”
“It will help,” he said. “Not all of us in the palace are bound to the new lords. Those of us who can will assist you. Come or send to us discreetly, in my name. I will come at once, or my messenger if I am detained.”
“What do you want?” Vanyi demanded of him. “The new king killed, his followers likewise? Yet another new order?”
“Lady,” he said. “Lady, he who is king is king. But he should not permit his people to indulge in excess.”
“Ah,” said Vanyi. “You want us to sweep the rags and the gutter-leavings out of your palace. What do we gain in return?”
“You will not be hunted,” he said, “nor expelled. And the haters of what you are will be constrained as before by the bounds of law and custom.”
“That’s not enough,” she said. “Give us freedom of the kingdom—swear that we’ll not be made prey to the hatred of the ignorant. Or,” she added, catching his eye, “of those who fancy themselves wise. Allow us full status as ambassadors, with full respect and full privileges.”
“If you succeed,” he said, “that will be inevitable.”
“Swear to it.”
“By the gods and the goddess, and by the children of heaven,” he said without hesitation. “Set us free of those who would run to mad extremes, and you will be accorded the rank and respect of friends. You are already possessed of privilege, as the kin of Janabundur.”
Vanyi inclined her head. “We’re allies, then. I’ll send to you when I’ve spoken to Lady Nandi.”
26
Lady Nandi was carding wool as women did here, with her daughters for company, and Borti with a spindle, spinning thread out of the wool. They made Vanyi think, with unexpected poignancy, of women in a fishermen’s hut on Seiun isle, waiting for the men to come back from the boats.
Odd to think that these were royal ladies, and one a queen. Queens in the empire did not spin or weave. They led councils and commanded armies, and held regencies when they did not rule in their own right. If they indulged in any stolen leisure, they rode seneldi and hawked or hunted; embroidered tapestries, or made music, or read from books. Weaving was a guild and a craft, and not the province of a princess.
Here the women of the house, even if they were of high rank, spun and wove and sewed, and dressed their kin and servants in their looms’ weaving. They did not weave rugs or embroider tapestries. That was an art, and practiced in the temples, which seemed here to do duty for guilds.
Vanyi could remember how to spin, if she thought about it. She had not done it in years out of count. She had never threaded a loom; that had been her mother’s task, while her mother lived. After she died, Vanyi had turned rebel and sought the sun-god’s temple and become a priestess. Novices of Avaryan’s priesthood did what they were bidden to do; Vanyi’s tasks had been the planting and harvesting of vegetables for the pot, and the mending of nets, and long hours of study in the arts of magecraft, for that was and had always been her great gift.
She sat on the stool that was nearest, while the women carded and spun. Sun slanted through tall windows, warming the room, making stronger the heavy scent of wool. Someone had begun to thread the loom, but stopped halfway; the threads were a deep crimson, nearly black unless the sun shone on it.
The wool that Borti spun was dyed a soft green. Vanyi wondered if the two colors were meant to be woven together. It did not seem likely, but with weavers one never knew.
It was peaceful here, even with her presence to make the servants uneasy. The high ones were placid, unruffled, their hands deft in their tasks. Borti spun a fine thread, Vanyi noticed, of even thickness; yet she seemed hardly to be aware of what her hands were doing. Her eyes were on the windows, her gaze full of sunlight, but under the brightness the shadow ran deep.
She grieved for her brother and lover, her king who was dead. They had not agreed on policy, they had quarreled often, but Vanyi knew how little that could matter between two who were friends and lovers both. She withdrew delicately from the other’
s thoughts, save for the flicker of emotions across the surface. “The Minister of Protocol wants an alliance,” she said.
The servants lowered their heads and made themselves invisible. Lady Nandi said, “I thought he might.”
“Have you spoken with him?” Vanyi asked, a little sharply perhaps.
“I know him,” Lady Nandi said. “He would hardly approve of all that the new king’s counselors are doing. Does he wish us to appear in the court and listen to what people are saying there?”
“Would you want to do that?”
“I had thought of it,” Lady Nandi said. “It might not be excessively wise after what was done to my brother—and no one has come to me, who am, in their knowledge, his only living kin, to offer me the death-scroll and bid me fetch his body.”
“You might,” said Borti quietly, “go to the palace as one who has the right, and ask for those things. They won’t harm you, I don’t think. There’s another thing these hotheads, most of whom are young, hold as truth revealed: that women are weak and must be indulged and protected.”
“And I am old,” said Lady Nandi, “and the old are weakest of all.”
Surely, thought Vanyi. The lady was little smaller than her son, and he was a big man, rock-solid and built to last. But a young male, blinded by grey hair and a lined face, might be persuaded to see frailty where there was none. Vanyi would exploit it herself if she had the chance; though Nandi would do better in this, there was no denying.
Lady Nandi had no magery to read Vanyi’s thoughts, but her wits were quick. She smiled at Vanyi. It was a wicked smile, much younger than the face it shone on; she had been a hoyden in her youth, or Vanyi was no judge of women. It might not be so surprising after all that the woman had let her beloved and only son take a wife as wild as Daruya.
“I think,” Lady Nandi said, “that I may be driven to stumble to the palace on my ancient feet and beg weeping for my brother’s remains. My daughters will follow, of course, with loosened hair and distraught faces. And servants with a bier.”
“Pity is a powerful ally,” Borti observed. “Our brother would laugh. He did love a scene well played.”