"Such as you. I mean, you're different from the others."
Comprehension entered Andrew's eyes. "You mean, because I'm— Because I'm not the sort of boy who might think you were twisted, because you'd asked another boy to sleep with you. You know I know it's not that."
Peter nodded. That aspect of his proposal had not even entered his head, though he felt his cheeks grow warm at the thought of the mistake he had nearly made. No doubt Lord Carle, who had slept with a friend in the days when poverty was sufficient excuse for sharing a pallet, had not thought to warn the Chara's son that a noble-boy's desire to sleep with another boy could be regarded in a very different fashion.
"It's for you to decide," Peter added. "It's not an order, you know. I just thought you might enjoy it. Sleeping in a bed for once, I mean."
Andrew ran the tip of his tongue across the corner of his mouth. "Would I need to undress?"
"No, of course not," Peter said immediately, understanding the reason why Andrew would not want to strip in front of him. "I always sleep in my breeches and undertunic in the winter. You could borrow one of my old undertunics – it's in a chest over there. And there's extra water there, near the mantelpiece . . ."
He gabbled on, knowing that Andrew knew as well as he did where the items of toiletry were, since Andrew had placed most of them in the chamber himself. But Andrew could not know, until Peter told him so, that he had permission to use the items.
"I'll go say goodnight to my father," Peter concluded, and left while Andrew was still contemplating the bed.
o—o—o
The spears were lowered before his father's door; the Chara, Emmett told him as he prepared to depart from his guard-shift, was closeted with the council's High Lord. Peter lingered in the corridor for a while, watching the sparse, late-night traffic of lords and ladies, until the newly arrived guards began to eye him. Knowing that he was not permitted to be in the corridor without his father's permission, Peter cautiously re-entered his own chamber.
The chamber was dark. The smell of scented wax lingered, even after the snuffing of the candles. Andrew had banked the fire; the logs glowed and shifted, sending down whispers of crumbling wood. The wind had died; cold moonlight slatted through the shutters, falling upon the bed.
Andrew was curled up in a ball under the blankets, facing the wall. Coming closer, Peter saw that the other boy had replaced the wet blanket with a new one. Peter supposed that he should be heartsick with the loss of his favorite blanket, but it seemed appropriate, somehow, that he should sleep under a plain blanket hereafter. He slipped off his belt and tunic and winter boots, laying them aside; then, shivering, he slipped under the covers.
Andrew did not move. Peter could see his hair, striped by the moonlight. Reaching out tentatively, Peter touched his back.
Andrew jerked, letting out a hiss. Hastily, Peter drew his hand back. He had forgotten about the bandages protecting the raw flesh. "Did I hurt you?" he asked.
"I'm fine." Andrew's voice was muffled. Peter, knowing that Andrew's answer was no answer at all, edged away from him.
For a moment, all was still. Peter lay with his eyes open, trying to figure out what part of this process Lord Carle had found companionable. Probably, he thought, the episode had never even happened to the council lord. Probably Lord Carle had lied about this, as he had about so many other things.
Andrew shifted, moving back. Peter, remembering the other boy's wound, shifted too, in order to allow Andrew more room. Andrew froze. Then he shifted back again.
Peter moved further back, puzzled. He was almost at the edge of the bed now – did Andrew know that? Was the younger boy trying to push him off?
Andrew paused; then, once again, he moved back. His legs touched Peter's legs, folding round the front of them like a sheath that protects a blade.
Then Peter understood. Carefully avoiding contact with Andrew's back, he wriggled forward and placed his arm round Andrew's side and chest, embracing the other boy. For a moment, Andrew did not move, and Peter wondered whether he had guessed correctly what the other boy wanted, or whether Andrew was fearfully trying to calculate at what point the Chara's son would begin removing his clothes. Then, groping like a blind puppy, Andrew moved his hand till it lay lightly over Peter's.
Peter shifted his head and rested his cheek against Andrew's bowed neck. He could hear the other boy's even breathing, and could smell his scent. Andrew's skin was warm.
For a long time, they lay like that, while Peter's mind wandered back through the events of the afternoon: The broken pitcher. The mask hiding pain. Andrew's dreams in Koretia. Andrew smiling at the creation basket. Andrew digging in the snow-covered garden for signs of green. Andrew's voice saying, "Buried, cold . . . dead."
Peter said in his memory, "Not dead. Alive and whole." Andrew stared at him in disbelief, as he had stared disbelieving when Peter spoke of how he would have treated the trapped bird.
And then, like the shock of fire, a memory of Andrew in Lord Carle's quarters, staring with longing toward the south. Toward Koretia.
"Andrew," said Peter.
For a moment, Peter thought the other boy was asleep, but then Andrew murmured an acknowledgment.
"Andrew, would you like to go back to Koretia?"
Andrew's breath caught for the second time that night. His hand tightened on Peter's. His voice was higher than usual as he said, "You'd take me there with you?"
Such a thought had never entered Peter's mind. His father, he knew, would never allow the Chara's heir to return to the land where he had nearly been assassinated, and once Peter himself became Chara, he would be forbidden, by law, from leaving the palace except in wartime. Chances were good that he would never go to Koretia again.
But Andrew could.
What could you give a slave who, by law, could own nothing?
You gave him his freedom.
"At what time of the year would you like to go back?" Peter asked, avoiding a direct answer to Andrew's question. "Spring?"
Andrew's breath was quick now, and heavy. After a while he said, "Summer. That's the best time of the year."
"Summer, then," Peter promised. "The trees will be very green then, and the lakes will sparkle with color. The mountains will shine under the sun. The jackals will be hunting for food. . ."
He continued on, painting a portrait based on his single glimpse of the Koretian summer – a glimpse that had lasted roughly half a minute before the assassin's attack forced him to retreat back over the border. In his mind, he could see Andrew walking under the green coolness of the trees, his skin warmed by summer's rays, his head high and his smile bright and unshadowed as he stared at the leaves and twigs and moss and vines and nuts and bark and berries and earth. He would be happy—
He would be happy, and Peter would be miserably alone again, because Andrew was different from everyone else. No one else could serve as Peter's companion in the way that Andrew did. But that was what made Peter's promise a gift: the fact that he wanted Andrew to stay with him forever, but he would give Andrew back his freedom, so that the other boy could be happy.
He said nothing of the emancipation to Andrew. Chances were that years would pass before Peter became Chara and inherited his father's slaves; there would be time enough to speak of the matter once Peter acquired the power to keep his promise. But he had made the promise to himself, and he knew that he would keep the promise, just as surely as if it had been an oath he took on the Pendant of Judgment.
Andrew had fallen asleep, lulled into relaxation by images of what he thought would be a brief visit to Koretia. Peter, still holding him, lay awake for a while in the still moonlight, thinking of the gods' law, and the Chara's law, and a law that was higher than both.
Then he slept, and while he slept, he dreamt of a new tree growing in a sunny garden, and of Andrew lying beneath it, fast asleep.
RE-CREATION
Historical Note
Most of the recipes mentioned in this story were bor
rowed from the Roman cookbook Apicius (4th/5th century).
o—o—o
o—o—o
o—o—o
=== Bard of Pain ===
"This [suffering of the artist] is perhaps what we should expect when we consider that a work of creation is a work of love, and that love is the most ruthless of all the passions, sparing neither itself, nor its object, nor the obstacles that stand in its way."
—Dorothy L. Sayers: The Mind of the Maker.
Bard of Pain 1
THE DARKNESS
CHAPTER ONE
The beginning of the end for Quentin-Andrew (or so it seemed at the time) came in the moment that he stepped into the shadow of Capital Mountain and was assaulted by a stranger.
During the first seconds of the attack, all that Lieutenant Quentin-Andrew could feel, in the form of warmth in his chest, was unadulterated pleasure. He had been attacked like this many times during his seventeen years serving the Commander of the Northern Army, and the results had always been the same. It never ceased to amaze Quentin-Andrew how many men continued to adhere to the rules of fair fighting even when it became clear that such rules were of no interest to their intended victim. And once the assailant had been captured . . .
The warmth spread to Quentin-Andrew's extremities. The Commander had given him standing orders that he could deal with such men in the manner that he preferred, as long as the necessary information was obtained from them. Few men, it was said, fell into the Lieutenant's hands without ending their lives pleading for the mercy-stroke.
Unfortunately, Quentin-Andrew was about to become acquainted with one of the handful of men in the Great Peninsula who scorned the rules of fair fighting. Moreover, the man had friends. As the first moment of pleasure faded, Quentin-Andrew became aware of this fact and turned his mission abruptly from capture to escape. It was too late, though; too late even to weigh the benefits and costs of calling for help, for the first action his captor took, upon seeing him disarmed and secured, was to clamp his hand heavily over Quentin-Andrew's mouth.
And thus Quentin-Andrew, who until this day had been the most valued soldier in the Northern Army, found himself pinioned and surrounded by soldiers of the Southern Army.
These men were part of the desperate remnant of what had once been the armies of the Great Peninsula's two southern lands of Koretia and Daxis. Even now that he was their prisoner, Quentin-Andrew could not help but view them with northern contempt, as the soldiers who were too weak – too civilized – to fight by the methods that had allowed his Commander to capture all of the Great Peninsula except for the area surrounding Capital Mountain, which now lay under siege.
A dozen soldiers stood before him; the Southern Army had taken no chances in planning this capture. One, however, had stood apart from the fight, fingering lightly the dagger in his hand: a young man, half of Quentin-Andrew's age. He lacked the hard muscles of a warrior, yet he watched the scene with great care, as though memorizing valuable information. Some part of Quentin-Andrew, deep in the cold darkness that had filled his mind for many years, flickered with curiosity, and a deeper part still flickered with recognition. But the part on the surface – the only part that anyone had seen for seventeen years – revealed no sign of interest as the young man stepped forward.
He was dressed in civilian clothes, as were the other soldiers, who had been forced to venture dangerously close to the Northern Army's camp. Nothing about his clothing revealed whether he was an army official, like Quentin-Andrew, or simply a bottom-ranked soldier who had been placed in charge of this hazardous mission. Quentin-Andrew hoped it was the latter. With an army official, he would be constrained by further orders from the Commander, but a bottom-ranked soldier could be questioned at length, using any methods Quentin-Andrew chose.
It had not yet occurred to Quentin-Andrew that his time of questioning had reached an end, and that a new questioning was about to begin.
The young man paused a moment to push back his cloak. The weather was mild by northern standards, but here in the south it was wintertime, and southerners dressed themselves accordingly. The young man tilted his head to the side, his gaze fixed upon Quentin-Andrew. Once again, a faint recognition flickered in Quentin-Andrew's darkness.
Suddenly the young man smiled and touched his heart and forehead in greeting.
"Randal son of Glisson," he said in a low voice, by way of introduction. His accent was that of a Daxion. "It is an honor to meet you, Lieutenant. A man of your talents has never before come my way."
So disappeared any lingering hopes Quentin-Andrew had held that he would not be recognized, but those hopes had never been great. An army in its final gasping breath, stretched to its limits in the days before its greatest battle, does not waste a dozen men to abduct a minor soldier. And ever since the time that the Commander had released Quentin-Andrew from his duty of leading the patrol that watched over the outskirts of the camp – his other duty had become too time-consuming – he had been known to have a habit of wandering alone late at night, perhaps as an inheritance of his father's blood. The Commander had once remarked, in half earnestness, that such a habit would prove to be the Lieutenant's undoing.
Now Quentin-Andrew coolly, and without haste, ran his mind through the alternatives available to him. Dozens of northern soldiers were within shouting distance, but they all knew the Lieutenant's voice, and none of them, he was aware from experience, would come near him except with great reluctance. His old patrol unit was out tonight, guarding the camp against intruders such as these; a single whistle would bring them running. Or would it? Eight years had passed since the Lieutenant had been their official, and that had been before most of the long, bloody tasks that the Commander had assigned him. Such tasks were done for the benefit of the Northern Army, but even so . . . The Commander himself. There was no question that he would risk his life to save the Lieutenant. These days, the Commander trusted no other man with his thoughts, which had grown steadily darker over the years, until Quentin-Andrew found it difficult sometimes to remember the light-filled man to whom he had pledged his loyalty at the beginning of the war. The Commander would come; but the Commander was away from the camp tonight, supervising the final stages of the siege.
The hand dropped from Quentin-Andrew's mouth. He had one moment in which to make his decision, and then the moment was lost as a gag was stuffed into his mouth.
The young soldier, Randal, was still watching Quentin-Andrew closely. Now, as though Quentin-Andrew had spoken, he said softly, "No one will come, Lieutenant. No one cares about you. You are alone now in the pit of your destruction."
The words burned him like fire. He knew, without having to think further, into whose hands he had fallen. For a minute he remained still, feeling the bonds around his arms; then, with a sudden jerk, he pulled himself free of his captor and lunged straight toward Randal's dagger.
Randal raised the dagger with a short laugh, preventing Quentin-Andrew from impaling himself upon the blade. He waited until Quentin-Andrew had been secured once more by the soldiers before he said, "You won't receive release that way, Lieutenant; you know better than that. We'll give you over to the Jackal's fire in time, but not until you have given us what we need. And should you delay your gift . . ." Randal's mouth twisted into a wry smile. "Well, Lieutenant, I don't have your skills, but I can promise you with honesty that, by the time you encounter the Jackal's fire, it will seem cool in comparison to what you have endured."
o—o—o
The chamber was round, like the sun or the moon; it was deep, fringed by tiers of steps; and it was quiet, but for the sound of one man speaking. To the south side of the chamber, brown-robed priests sat listening and nodding their heads occasionally. The north side was filled with boys, whispering to each other and nudging one another and occasionally throwing pebbles when they thought that the priests weren't looking.
One boy stood apart from the others. He was of ten years and was dark-skinned. This was not remarkable i
n itself, for a few of the other boys bore skin that revealed unmistakably that their families had emigrated from the south. This boy, though, was not seated with the orphan boys whom the priests cared for. He stood in the galleries above the southern seats, surrounded on all sides by visitors who jostled each other to have a first view of the special guest.
By craning his neck, the boy could see through a gap in the crowd to the opposite balcony. The northern balcony, normally reserved for the Chara and other noble guests, was filled with an overflow of younger priests on this important occasion. The chiefmost of the balcony's inhabitants, though, was not a priest but an ordinary lesser free-man. He was formally dressed with a soldier's sword clipped to his belt and a black tunic enlivened only by the silver honor brooch that bound the neck-flap fast. He was taking no notice of the whispering of the younger priests or of the heightened excitement of the boys below him. His gaze was fixed upon the center of the room, where the High Priest of the Unknowable God stood, speaking as he held up a crystal bowl toward his unseen God.
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