She was an adult now, and her anxiety to see the world beyond the world far outweighed the childish unease of setting foot where she had never been before.
Lucrezia kept in step with the servant sent to summon her, refusing to allow the woman to go ahead. Dhalla marched behind, a patient and indomitable guardian. As they approached their destination Lucrezia composed herself, reminding herself sternly that she must not show the least hint of displeasure regarding the time Belin had made her wait for the appointment.
It was part of the art and craft of kingship to make everyone wait; that applied even to sons, let alone daughters.
When she stepped into the chamber, however, she could not entirely supress her surprise at its bareness and its narrowness. She had never before seen her father in a room that was not large and lavishly ornamented. The throne room was commodious enough to hold a crowd of several hundred people, its great vaulted ceiling supported by awesome and intricately carved pillars.
The throne itself was a massive construction, and the king always sat upon it in ceremonial garb. This room was no bigger than her own 75
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bedroom, and
the hangings which concealed its windowless walls were quite plain, nre ceiling was so low that Dhalla could not stand upright. She had to squat down, in what seemed an uncomfortable and undignified position.
King Belin was reclining on a couch, reading a book by the uncommonly bright light of a tall but slender lamp. There was a low table by the couch, where there was a jug of wine and a single goblet, and three bowls of sweets, but nothing else. The king was dressed in a loose-fitting shirt and slack britches, almost as if he were an artisan. He seemed much smaller than he usually did, and the glaring lamplight showed every wrinkle in his aged face.
There was nowhere for Lucrezia to sit, so she stood. She was forced to look down at her father, but if he was trying to seem like something other than a king he did not succeed. There was a bleak hardness in his eye which Lucrezia recognised and understood. She knew full well that whatever her father was, and however he might be dressed, he was the centre of an unimaginable vast web of authority and intrigue, which extended throughout the Thousand Isles, into every port on the southern shore of the Slithery Sea, and as far south as the province of Khalorn. He was the heart and foundation-stone of the political entity which the forefathers had declared impossible.
"In this world," Goran was reputed to have said, 'there can be no empires, and the community of men which is their strength and their glory must be preserved in other ways. " To which the ministers of Xandria were wont to add, pridefully: " Except in Xandria, which has its own strength, and its own glory. " " Are you well, daughter? " Belin enquired, spftly, as the servant withdrew.
"Yes, thank you, majesty," Lucrezia replied. She did not ask how the king was. The king was always well- protocol demanded that such things be taken for granted.
Belin closed his book and laid it down on the table, carefully.
Lucrezia could see that it was a very old book, perhaps eight or even ten years old. The binding had been expensive, but was thoroughly rotten now.
The ink on the discoloured pages would almost certainly be blurred. She wondered what point he was making by exhibiting such a wreck. Xandria had by far the greatest library in the known world almost a thousand volumes- which employed a hundred scriveners, half of them fully file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Brian%20Stableford%20-%20Serpents%20Blood.TXT (80 of 495) [11/1/2004 12:26:20 AM]
occupied in copying. The
strength and glory of Xandria was by no means limited to the mighty walls which enclosed city and citadel alike. Was Belin trying to imply that the empire itself was old, as direly in need of refreshment as the coins which the metallurgists were working so hard to re-cast in time for the Day of Thanksgiving?
Was all this intended to inform her, subtly, that now was not a good time to plague the king with petitions?
Belin leaned forward to fill his cup and swallow a sweet. When he moved, the looseness of his shirt was inadequate to conceal the protrusion of his belly.
He didn't offer the bowl or the jug to her, nor was there any other gesture of intimacy. These days, Ereleth had told her, the king did not like to be touched or approached too closely, being wont to complain that it was bad enough being public property without being handled too. According to his dutiful witch-wife, Belin had long ceased to take any pleasure in the fact of being a king; like any common man he had come to take all the advantages of his station for granted while chafing against all its constraints.
"You grow handsome," Belin observed.
"You have the look of your mother when first I saw her- but you never knew your mother, did you?"
"No, majesty," Lucrezia replied, wishing that he would get on with the business in hand. It was bad enough being forced to wait for days in the Sanctum, without facing further delay now.
"They said she had Serpent's blood in her. Did you know that?"
"Yes, majesty."
"Nonsense, of course. Actual Serpents, according to the few men I've spoken to who've encountered them, are a dull lot. I prefer the ones which feature in fanciful folktales like those the dark landers tell.
Darklander legend has it that some female Serpents are capable of metamorphosis into preternaturally lovely human-like creatures, in which guise they seduce hapless human males, whom they devour long before they give birth to the unnatural offspring thus conceived.
You're supposed to be the remote descendant of some such creature. To the dark landers you're a kind of demon. Did you know that? " " Yes, majesty but Hyry Keshvara says that the dark landers aren't as primitive or as stupid as most Xandrians think. "
"Who is this Keshvara?" Belin asked lazily- as Lucrezia had intended.
77
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"She's the trader who brought me the seeds from the Navel of the World-the oneS' which are supposed to produce the most powerful poison known to man. That's why I need the amber, majesty. If I can't find a man strong enough to support the bush until it flowers, Xandria will not have the benefit of that treasure."
"Your garden is over-full of poisons, daughter," Belin said, with a deliberate sigh.
"I fear that Ereleth has become too determined a teacher, and you too apt a pupil. Witchcraft is supposed to be a healing art, not a murderous one. A witch-wife's true function is to protect her husband from the malice of others."
"Has Ereleth not served you well, majesty?" Lucrezia asked, with no more than the slightest hint of sarcasm.
"She has," Belin said gently.
"I dare say that she will continue to do so. But it is time for her to find a new apprentice." He held up his hand before she could speak, and went on:
"I know your education is not yet complete, but the state of the world is such that nine men in ten never reach full command of their Arts before they must apply them to the vulgar business of living, and royalty has no exemption from that rule. There is a certain sector of the Thousand Islands which is becoming troublesome, and I need a new link in the great chain of obligation and affection. I need to place trusted agents and ministers in Shaminzara, and their arrival must be welcomed rather th art resented. Were they to travel in the retinue of a princess of the realm destined for marriage to the prince of the island they'd have a sound basis for the execution of their duties." ( "I am not ready for marriage, majesty" '
Lucrezia objected, knowing even as she said it that she ought not be quite so forthright.
"A
half-formed princess is a blunt instrument in the game of diplomacy.
A half-trained witch-wife would be an inefficient shield for her husband. "
"Witchery is like any other lore," the king informed her coldly.
"All knowledge is a mere heap of memorised facts unless and until it can be ordered by practice. You have been closeted long enough, my little lamia.
Xandria has an adequate supply of poisons and poisoners. Some seeds grow and others don't-that's life. Necessity, little peach, is the mother of improvisation. You will be witch-wife enough for Shaminzara -- and should you ever be widowed, you'll return to Xandria a far sharper instrument than before."
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Lucrezia inferred from this remark that her duty as a witch-wife might in this instance be murderous rather than protective, but that did not affect her resolve.
"I am, of course, utterly obedient to your will, majesty," she said, 'but I wonder if your advisors have properly judged the significance of the things which Hyry Kesh- vara has brought back from the far south. She believes that there is now a way to cross the land of the Dragomites which lies beyond the dark lands If so, regions which are no more distant than the isle of Shaminzara but which are utterly unknown to any man in Xandria are now accessible. To Keshvara, who is a trader, this seems an opportunity- but the king's advisors surely ought to consider the possibility that there might be danger. "
"To Xandria?"
"To the southern provinces. The way through the Dragomite Hills, if it exists, was not found by the men of Khalorn, majesty, nor by the dark land savages. It was found by bronze men from beyond the Soursweet Marshes: bold adventurers who took care to bring proof of the strangeness of the lands from which they had come. Keshvara's reaction was enthusiastic, and the expedition which she and others are mounting is motivated by curiosity and greed- but has she paused to ask why she was given these proofs? Has she paused to wonder what motive the men from the far south have for sending such tokens to Xandria?"
"All very well, daughter- but what has this to do with the future queen of Shaminzara? I dare say that my ministers will take an interest in Carus Fraxinus's expedition. Trade is the lifeblood of the empire, and we are ever enthusiastic to assist its expansion. Our very best agents are our merchants. But none of this is your concern, and the fact that Keshvara brought her strange seeds to the Inner Sanctum knowing, I don't doubt, that Ereleth's garden was the one place in Xandria that such a cruel device of torture might be safely and secretly tested does not make it your business."
"It is in Xandria's interests that the seeds be properly examined, majesty,"
Lucrezia said doggedly.
"Not merely as a source of poisons, nor as a device of torture- in which capacity they seem strangely inefficient- but as a possible weapon of war."
She was improvising as best she could, but having produced this notion out of desperation she immediately became fond of it. Perhaps, she 79
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thought,
there really was a threat from the far south, not merely to Khalorn but to the rural heartland of Xandria, whose fields fed the mighty city.
"Even so, daughter," said Belin, mildly but unyieldingly,
"I cannot see that this investigation requires a witch- and if it does, I have a perfectly good witch-wife in Ereleth. I need you to wed the prince of Shaminzara, and that is what you will do, willingly and gladly."
"I need a hundred and thirty days, majesty," Lucrezia replied, shifting her ground yet again as her last position proved untenable.
"I ask for nothing but time to complete my experiment, and I have found exactly the man I need. He's an amber, but not a dark lander He injured a guardsman in some petty dispute and was sentenced to the wall, but he's petitioned for a royal pardon. He's willing to pledge himself to my service if you will agree to release him to me."
"Does he know what you intend to do with him, little darling?" "Of course not, majesty- but the law is the law. Once he's consented, he's consented.
The wall won't miss his services; it's stood inviolate for thousands of years. Let me have him, please. If we can bring this last bush to term, it will produce enough new seeds to ensure that Xandria will never lose this treasure. Keshvara could have sold the seeds anywhere, to any one of a thousand curious buyers, but she brought them here, not to Ereleth but to me.
This is something rare, precious and strange, majesty, and it's mine as well as Xandria's.
Give me the foreigner, majesty, and let me see this through. "
"He's a young man, daughter," Belin observed, indicating for the first time the possibility that he might relent.
"I can't allow a young man to be brought into the Inner Sanctum."
"His legs will be broken and his balls cut off before he's taken out of his cell, majesty," Lucrezia assured her father.
"As long as it's done cleanly, by a good surgeon, it won't prevent his bringing the bush to flower."
"The reason that the great wall of Xandria has endured so long while other empires have fallen into ruin," Belin told her loftily- almost as though he were practising his speech for the Day of Thanksgiving 'is that the people of Xandria have laboured tirelessly to maintain its solidity. Walls rot, but great houses may
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abide, as the proverb has it. There's great wisdom in proverbs, snake ling despite that they aren't part of some sacred lore packed away into the memory of Artists and Magicians. The wisdom that everybody has to know is the greatest wisdom of all, and what that wisdom says is that a city must protect its walls as ardently as a man guards his skin. Rare and strange and precious are fine words, daughter mine, but common and ordinary and useful are finer still, to those who know the true worth of things.
"The great majority of men and women live in the everyday world, not in exotic enclosures, and everything which affects their well-being is familiar to them. Thorny bushes which grow in human flesh and produce venomous flowers might fascinate and horrify them for a fleeting moment of idle self-indulgence, but the wall which surrounds their city and preserves their civilisation is of the most urgent relevance forty hours a day, five hundred and fifty days a year- except for leap years, when there's a five hunded and fifty-first day, throughout which the wall still retains its urgent relevance. If there's ever a choice between giving a man to the stone masons and giving him to an inquisitive witch, the wise king will always give him to the stone masons at least until the day comes when he can no longer lift a block or fill a mould."
It was obvious to Lucrezia that no argument she could launch would be allowed to prevail- and yet, the very fact that her father was devoting so much time to this interview, and bothering to make lengthy speeches instead of handing down abrupt commands, implied that she was going to get at least some of what she wanted. It dawned on her that her petition would be granted, but in such a way that she would be required to be exceedingly grateful. She suddenly understood the nature of the game she was being forced to play. On the one hand, she knew a measure of relief that she would get what she so ardently desired, but on the other, she felt seething resentment about the way in which it was being done. She hated being manipulated and manoeuvred in this fashion.
"Only give me the man I need, father," she said sharply, deliberately setting protocol aside as a sop to her own wounded pride.
"Make me a gift of him, for the Day of Thanksgiving or in celebration of my betrothal to the prince of Shaminzara. Only give me time to see this matter through to its end, and I'll go to the end 81
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of the world thereafter, if
you wish it, for Xandria's sake. I'll go gladly, it that is wifat will please your majesty."
Belin condescended to smile.
"Your mother had a tongue like that," he told her.
"Quick and clever, but forked. In those silly nations where even the highest of men have but one wife, a man might be seduced and strangled by a tongue like that- but this is Xandria, where a king is a king and a wife but one of thirty-and- one . . . and a daughter, for all her charm and artistry, is a mere instrument of diplomacy. I need your loyalty, my child, if not your love. If I let you have this man, it will not be a gift, for you and I are above such things. We are royal folk, who neither offer gifts nor barter favours. We are honourable folk who recognise far greater dimensions of debt. Do you understand what I am saying, little darling? Do you understand what it will mean if I send this man to your garden instead of the wall?"
It was always little darling, she noted, or little peach. In a silly, paradoxical way, she wished that she could now say no, or say yes without being able to mean it, but she did understand what she was required to understand. A year ago, she might not have been able to follow the chain of thought, but she was grown now; she had a mature brain as well asi mature breasts.
"Yes, majesty," she said meekly.
"I know what this means." Privately, with calculated' childishness, she added in silent thought: Perhaps I know better than you do, you fat old sot.
You had but one teacher and I have had a hundred. Every sad, bored wife in the inmost tower understands her situation, because they have nothing else to do with their time and their wit but understand. If Xandria is indeed the oldest nation in the world it is not because it has a clever king who has thirty-and-one wives, but because it has thirty-and-one clever queens who have but a single king to distract them.
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