by Judith Tarr
“I do not forget,” the mage said. “Do you?”
Korusan laughed, cold and clear. “Never for a moment. Do you think that I sit idle? I have him in my power. He calls me friend, he tells me his secrets, he speaks to me as much as he speaks to anyone. I shall teach him to love me. And when he has learned it well, then, mage, I shall strike.”
“Be swift, then,” the mage said, “or we shall fail.”
“We will not,” said Korusan. “I shall slay him with my own hand.”
“Soon,” the mage said, like a chorus in a song.
o0o
It occurred to Korusan afterward to wonder that he had won so easy a victory. Perhaps after all the Guildmaster granted him the right of his lineage.
Or perhaps, he thought, the mages did not need his complaisance to do what they willed to do. Their spells were sapping Estarion’s will with his strength. In time he might care too little to live. Then he would rob Korusan of the life that was Korusan’s, take it with his own hand, and spare the mages the effort of disposing of him.
Not, Korusan swore to himself, while he had power to prevent it. Estarion must care that he died; must know who slew him. Else there was no purpose in aught that Korusan did, and he was but a puppet after all, to dance at the mages’ whim.
32
Toruan the singer had come back.
Estarion learned of it by accident. As he was returning from court by another way than the usual, in part to avoid a gaggle of lords who sought to waylay him, in part to vary the monotony, he heard the singer’s name just as he turned a corner, and paused.
Two of his Varyani Guard idled in the passage, new come it seemed from the city, warm with wine. “He’s doing a play for the High Court tonight,” one of them said. “One of Lord Perizon’s men owes me a fortune at dice. I’m going to make him pay me off by getting me into court. How do you think I’ll look in yelloweyes livery?”
“Beautiful,” said his companion.
The other cuffed him. “Go on, laugh. I was a pretty thing before that bastard broke my nose for me.”
“Lovely,” his companion agreed sweetly. “The whole fathom and a half of you.”
They would have brawled happily in the corridor, if one, the plainsman with his sharp narrow eyes, had not caught sight of Estarion. He pulled the northerner about, wide-eyed both, bowing arm in arm like players on a stage.
Estarion looked them up and down. “I don’t suppose the two of you could be troubled to escort me to court tonight.”
“No, my lord!” the northerner said. “Yes, my lord. My lord—”
Estarion left him still babbling. He was weary suddenly, as he was too often of late, weary to exhaustion. But he would be glad to see Toruan again. He mustered the will to send a messenger and the wits to inform the servants before he rested that he would attend court that evening; and there was Ziana to think of. Or Eluya. It was time to change the guard again in the harem.
All the more reason to avoid it tonight. He stood while his servants freed his body from its robes and his hair from its inevitable knots, and when they went away, lay on the couch that was closest.
Korusan was nowhere to be seen. The Olenyas on guard was the nervous one, taller and narrower than the run of them, with fingers that could never be still.
After a while his twitching grew unbearable. Estarion ordered him out. He went without protest, leaving Estarion in peace.
Estarion drowsed, neither truly asleep nor truly awake. Some part of him resisted; protested; begged him to wake, move, do something. But he was too tired.
It was not Estarion’s custom to attend court in the evening. His servants informed him so, at length. He took no notice. They dressed him in robes so heavy that he could barely move, and crowned him with gold, and touched his eyelids with gilt.
He had not allowed that before. Tonight he did not care. He would have let them shave him, even, if Korusan had not taken the razors.
Odd child; presumptuous. He still had not appeared. Estarion hoped that he was resting well, or whetting his swords on slaves, or whatever Olenyai did when they were not on guard.
o0o
The court at night was a restless glittering thing, lit with lamps, flashing with jewels and gold, murmurous with voices and music and even laughter, soft as the canons prescribed, and deep. No women’s voices. No ladies, and no women of lesser repute, though those, Estarion had heard, might come forth later, after the wine had gone round.
His presence gave them pause, but only briefly. Custom, which was always their salvation, bade them bow as one, grant him the accolade of silence, then return to their dance of precedence. He was neither expected nor permitted to join in it. His place was to sit before and above them, and watch, and be silent.
His two guards and he were the only men in the hall who were not Asanian. And, when they appeared, Toruan and certain of his troupe.
The court quieted at their coming, settling to chairs and stools that servants placed for them, making a circle before the throne. As they had in Induverran, the musicians came forward first, took their places, began to play. The singers followed.
This was not the masque of Sarevadin and her prince, nor was it any tale Estarion knew. It was Asanian, maybe, yet Toruan sang in it. He was the lord in his palace, or perhaps the god in his temple, to whom the people came for guidance or for healing or for surcease from their troubles. He wore a white robe, which was royal or divine, and he carried a mask, an Asanian face, which sometimes he held before him and sometimes he bore at his side.
He did not speak to the people who came to him. Another did that. And what that one heard, he rendered differently to his lord. A man would ask for aid against his enemy, and the speaker between would sing to the lord of praises sung and tribute promised. A woman—a eunuch in a veil, surely—would beg him to heal her child of a sickness, but he would hear that she asked for his blessing on her womb. A youth would bid him attend to a great injustice, and he would hear that he must work stern justice in the youth’s demesne. The people cried their grief. He heard only praises.
The people, given false coin or none to heal their ills, grew angry with their lord. Or with their god; it still was not clear which he was. They came together. They resolved to beg him, all of them at once, to listen, to hear them, to give them what they needed. Bread for their bellies, for they starved. Wine for their throats, for they thirsted. Healing for their children, for they were dying.
And he heard only praise. He smiled, he blessed them, he sang sweetly of their joy and their prosperity. The louder they sang of grief, the sweeter he sang of contentment, until their patience shattered.
They rose up. They tore him from his throne, rent his mask asunder, slew him in a roaring of drums and a rattle of sistra and the thin, high, sweet descant of his unshakable complacency.
o0o
“That,” said Estarion, “was quite the rashest thing I have ever seen. Preaching sedition in the High Court of Asanion—it’s a wonder they didn’t rend you limb from limb.”
Toruan was somewhat grey about the lips, but he laughed. “Oh, they wanted to. But not in front of you.”
“You’re not safe after this,” Estarion said.
“I am if you say I am,” said Toruan. He drank off the wine that Estarion’s servant had poured for him, and held out the cup to be filled again. His hand was shaking.
“Why?” Estarion asked him.
Toruan closed both hands about the newly filled cup. His eyes searched Estarion’s face. “You didn’t understand, did you?”
“I understood,” Estarion said, amiably enough, he thought, but Toruan’s fingers tightened till the knuckles greyed. “Granted that they keep me like a prisoner of state, can you honestly say that matters are as bad as you showed them to be? Or that I am that perfect a fool?”
“I never thought you a fool, my lord,” Toruan said. “But you are cut off here from anything that hints of reality.”
“Who put you up to this? My m
other? The temple? My court in Keruvarion?”
The proud eyes lowered; the eunuch hid his face behind his cup. “I did receive a messenger from the empress mother. But that was after we decided to do it, my lord. We’ve been in the towns; we’ve traveled the roads. We know what people are saying to one another, and what they’re threatening to do.”
“Rebellion against the barbarian on the throne?”
“That, my lord, and more.”
“Surely not,” said Estarion. “I’m here; I came as I was ordered to come; I’ve taken what’s mine, and done what’s expected. Those are old grievances and empty threats.”
“They are not,” said Toruan, “my lord.”
“So,” said Estarion. “You were put up to it. Who was it who wrote the songs for you? Iburan? He’s a fine fast hand with a verse, and he doesn’t get on well with the high priestess here. He’d want to wake me up to that, I’m sure. As if there were anything I could do. I’ve no authority inside the temple.”
“My lord,” said Toruan, “I spoke to the priest, I confess it. He was your mother’s messenger. He said that you’d protect us even if you were angry; you’re too honorable, he said, and too honest to do otherwise. But we had our play all written. We were going to take it to Keruvarion.”
“What, and foment rebellion there?” Estarion was not angry, not yet, but his temper was slipping its chains. “Isn’t it enough that you’ve incited the High Court almost to riot? Not that they’d ever show it, but they were running over lists of poisons, and hiring assassins.”
“You needed to know,” said Toruan, as stubborn as ever a northerner could be, and as perfect an idiot. “The priest thought so, and the empress mother. You won’t listen to them. They thought you might at least give me a hearing.”
“So I did,” Estarion said. “So did the court; and I’ll be hard pressed to get you out of here unpoisoned. What do you want me to do? Go back to Keruvarion?”
“Open your eyes to what’s outside of this palace.” Toruan flinched a little at Estarion’s expression, but went on stubbornly. “It’s bad, my lord, and getting worse. They use your presence here as a weapon. They call you conqueror. They swell your Guard into an army, and have it raping and pillaging Kundri’j.”
“When I was in Keruvarion,” said Estarion, “they called me conqueror. They had me scorning to set foot in their country, and despising all that they were. At least now they have me here to carp at.”
“They killed a tax collector in Ansavaar.”
“They have a deplorable propensity for killing tax collectors. That was seen to, surely?”
“They overran the troops sent to punish them, and fortified the town, and there they sit. They’ve declared themselves free of your sway.”
“Have they?” Estarion half-rose, then sat again and sighed. “It will be settled. I’ll attend to it.”
“Then you’ll attend to the rest, too? It’s a plague, my lord. You know what sickness is, how it comes to a man, and he passes it to his wife, and she to her baby, and the baby to the cat, and round it goes. And maybe they all live, and maybe one or more of them dies. And that is the way of the world. But if it goes beyond the one house, if it runs through the town—then it’s not so little any longer. It’s pestilence. It wipes out whole cities, strips the land of its people, lays low the demesne. That’s what this is, my lord. It’s not a little thing, a rebellion that refuses to die of age and exhaustion. It’s young in strength but old in rancor. It won’t give way at a word, even if it’s you who speak it.”
“How odd,” mused Estarion. “They spend all their strength to see me here, and now that they have me where they wanted me, they do their best to lure me out again. Aren’t they ever satisfied?”
Toruan did not understand, or did not care to. He said, “My lord, I won’t say you’re badly advised, but you aren’t hearing what goes on outside of the palace. It’s worse than it was when you came here. Much worse. In some towns I’m afraid for my skin. They see it, you see, and start to growl.”
“My guards have had no trouble in Kundri’j,” Estarion said. “Nor did I, when I went out. I was barely noticed.”
“This is Kundri’j,” said Toruan. He looked about at the chamber in which they sat. “How do you stand it, my lord? You must be suffocating.”
“One learns to endure it,” Estarion said honestly enough, and somewhat to his own surprise. “Tell my mother that it was a valiant effort. She and her priest will see that you are protected. You may choose to take yourself and your people to Keruvarion, where your art is a new and wonderful thing. But,” he said, “you may not be wise to give them your tragedy of folly. They don’t hire assassins. They see to it themselves, and promptly.”
“Our play was for you,” said Toruan. He set his cup aside untouched, and dropped to his knees in front of Estarion. “My lord, we are yours, all of us, but we’re a vanishing few in the mobs of Asanion. They’ve been stirred up. Their old hates are new again, and their fears are stronger than ever. Maybe you can’t go out among them as you could in Keruvarion, but if you knew, if you kept yourself aware of them, all of them—”
“I am as aware as emperor can be,” Estarion said. He was weary again, aching with it. He had hoped for an evening’s pleasure, for an hour’s brief escape from his troubles, and this well-meaning idiot had only made them worse.
He was not to blame. The empress had got at him, and Iburan, who thought himself subtle. They would know how little Estarion was deceived by their cleverness.
He dismissed the eunuch as politely as he could, sending him under guard to the empress’ palace and charging the guards to defend him with their lives. It would, he hoped, suffice.
He almost smiled, thinking of the court, how appalled the lords had been, how hard they had fought to conceal it, because the emperor professed himself pleased. No doubt they thought him a simpleton.
He wandered his rooms, more restless than he had been since he could remember. Servants kept creeping out of shadows, begging to serve him. He herded them out. The guards were more tenacious, but they could at least be banished to windows and corridors.
He tried to sleep, but sleep would not come. He read a few lines in his book. He drank more wine than he should, enough to make him light-headed, and walked for a while on the roof of his summer-room, under a sky as restless as he was, until the rain drove him in.
As he came down from the roof, a shadow met him. He smiled with the first honest pleasure he had known since morning. “Yelloweyes,” he said. “I’ve missed you.”
Korusan did not say anything. That was like him. Estarion passed him, drawing him in his wake, chattering of he knew not what. It was a restlessness of the tongue, close kin to that of his feet.
Somewhere in the maze of rooms, between the room of silks and the armory with its golden panoplies, Korusan stopped. Estarion’s shadow was cold without the Olenyas in it. He turned.
Korusan stood as straight and stiff as the pillar beside him, with eyes that burned. Fever, thought Estarion.
The boy was perfect Asanian: he hated to be touched. But Estarion was not to be thrust aside for this. “You’re burning up,” he said.
“It is nothing,” said Korusan. But he shivered.
He was ill, there could be no doubt of it. Estarion considered the wisdom of knocking the child down and sitting on him and shouting for the physician.
It would be a fair battle. Korusan was arming for it already, tensing under his hand. He lowered it from the brow to the shoulder, which was rigid. “You should have this seen to,” he said.
Korusan’s hand flew up. Estarion braced to be struck aside; froze as the boy’s fingers closed about his wrist. “I am often ill,” Korusan said. His voice was coolly bitter. “It is nothing to fret your majesty. It will pass as always, and leave me no worse than before.”
“And while it’s passing? How well will you guard me, when you can barely stand up?”
“I can stand!” he snapped, wavering as he
said it, but not loosing his grip on Estarion’s wrist.
Estarion tripped him, caught him as he fell, braced for a fight. Korusan offered none beyond a sulfurous glare. Estarion laughed at it and carried him inward.
o0o
The bathing-room was warm and quiet, its pool of ever-flowing water murmuring gently to itself. Estarion set Korusan on the rim and held him there. “Bathe,” he said. “It will cool you down.”
Korusan stared at the water as if he had never seen its like before.
“You do bathe, I suppose,” Estarion said with tight-strained patience. “Or do you lick yourselves over like cats?”
Korusan hissed at him, so like a cat that he laughed. “We bathe. But not,” the boy said, “in public.”
“I’ll turn my back,” Estarion said.
Korusan lifted his shrouded head, as haughty as any emperor, and as short in his temper. Estarion met his glare, gold to gold.
Something shifted. In Estarion, in Korusan; he did not know. Maybe the earth had shrugged in its sleep.
Gold, he thought. They were not the color of coins; that was Haliya, as close as made no matter. They were clearer, a color between amber and citrine, now as flat and hard as stones, now as soft as sleep. Thick long lashes, dark gold, and fine arched brows a shade lighter, and skin as clear and fair as ivory.
Korusan lowered the lids over those remarkable eyes, and raised them again, almost as if he were succumbing to sleep. Estarion caught him before he could tumble into the water. But he was steady on his feet.
He was taut still, but not as rigid as before, easing slowly. He reached up past Estarion’s arm, and with sudden force, sharp enough to make Estarion start, stripped off headcloth and veil.
Estarion’s breath caught. Even after those eyes, he had not expected beauty such as this: an image carved in ivory. No line drawn awry, no mole or blemish, no flaw save two thin crimson scars that ran straight and deliberate from cheekbone to jaw. They only made him the more beautiful.