A Fall of Princes

by Judith Tarr

  “You fool,” he said. “Oh, you lovestruck fool.”

  “It was not her doing.” The empress had been silent throughout that bitter hour. The princes had all but forgotten her.

  Sevayin had not. Elian had said nothing, done nothing, revealed nothing behind the walls of her mind. She had scarcely glanced at the child she had borne.

  She did not raise her eyes now, but gazed into her folded hands, her voice cool and remote as when she spoke in prophecy. “Brothers, you accomplish nothing. The lady is weary; she has another to think of. Let her be.”

  “But—” said Halenan.

  “Let her be.”

  o0o

  In time they left, all of them. Mirain was the last. He paused to kiss Sevayin lightly, without ceremony. Accepting her.

  It nearly broke her. But she was his child. She stood firm and watched him go.

  When he was gone, she let her body have its way. It crumpled to the threadbare carpet.

  “They’re right, you know.”

  She started, glared. Vadin had done what he did all too often: effaced himself to invisibility, and so escaped both notice and dismissal. It was one of his more insidious magics.

  He paid no heed at all to her temper. He knelt beside her, easing off the gaudy robe, tugging gently but persistently until she lay back against Ulan’s flank. “Stop fighting, infant. Do you want to lose the baby?”

  Sevayin drew up her knees and sighed. Vadin watched, studying her. “You knew,” she said.

  “I guessed. A mage, even as reluctant a mage as I am, can always tell whether a woman is carrying a manchild or a maid. With you we never could. We were afraid you’d be a monster: both and neither.”

  “I am,” she muttered.

  “Stop it, namesake.” He was stern but not angry. Calmly, deft as any good servant, he began to unbind her braids. “Your mother knew, I think. She wasn’t as glad as we were when you proved to be as fine a little man as ever sprang out yelling from his mother’s womb. She insisted on bringing you up with both men and women. She made you live in Liavi’s mind while she carried her little hellion.”

  “She did her best to beat the arrogance out of me.” Sevayin laughed thinly. “Though in that at least, she failed. I’m still intolerably proud.”

  “Royal,” said Vadin.

  Sevayin fixed her eyes on the tent wall. “Father is taking it well.”

  “What else can he do? He can’t disown you. You’re all he has.”

  She flinched. Anger flared. “That’s why it was even possible. Because I’m the only one. The only heir he could ever beget, the sole and splendid jewel in the throne of Keruvarion. Do you think it’s been easy for me? Do you think I welcome all the stares and gasps and cries of outrage? Do you think I don’t know what battles I’ll have to fight all my life long, because I gave up my very self for love of an Asanian tyrant?”

  “Not your self,” said Vadin. “But there is a little truth in the rest of it. Your uncle sees it. Keruvarion will never accept a western emperor. Too much of it has fought too long to avoid just that.”

  “Hirel would never—”

  “Your young lion is as charming as his father ever was, and as honorable, and as perfect an epitome of Asanian royalty. He was bred to be an emperor.”

  “But not a monster.”

  “Maybe not.” Vadin combed Sevayin’s hair in long strokes, intent on it. “Old hatreds die hard. Asanion is Asanion: the dragon of the west, the vast devouring beast with its insatiable lust for gold and souls. The only defense against it, most people would tell you, is its destruction.”

  Sevayin bared her teeth. “They say much the same of us. It’s the same hate and the same fear. But they reckon without me and without my princeling.”

  “I was young once,” said Vadin.

  Sevayin thrust herself up; Vadin reached for another plait. She shook him off. “Damn it, Vadin! Stop treating me like a child.”

  “That,” he said, “you’re not. But you’re carrying one.”

  She was mute, simmering. He reached again. Sevayin suffered him, holding to Ulan for comfort, drinking calm through the cat’s drowsing consciousness.

  “You are going to rest,” Vadin said firmly. “Then you are going to face your people.”

  “Naked, I presume. So that they can be properly outraged.”

  “Why? Are you hiding something?”

  “Only an unborn lion cub.”

  He looked hard at her. Her heart stilled. She had told them that the Mageguild had held her prisoner; that the master had wrought the change with the aid of Baran of Endros.

  She had not cried Prince Orsan’s treason before the army. She did not know why. Certainly not because he was her mother’s father, her father’s more-than-father. Nor had he set a binding on her.

  But she could not say the words that would condemn him. She strengthened her mind’s shields; she put on a tired smile. The tiredness was not feigned. “I’ve told you all I can. Except . . .”

  “Except?”

  Sevayin drew a breath. Vadin looked ready to seize and shake her. She straightened with an effort. “There was more to the mages’ conspiracy than a plot to unite two royal houses. When our son was born, Hirel and I were to be killed.” Vadin said nothing, only waited. “But first, our fathers were to die. Are still to die. It will be soon, within days. I have hopes that our presence here, close by the emperors, will hold them back. They dare not lose me now, and they know that if Hirel dies, I die.”

  “Assassins are no rarity,” said Vadin, “and we’ve met sorcerous assassins before.”

  “But never a full circle of mages, led by the Master of the Guild himself.” Sevayin’s body levered itself up, driving itself around the tent, evading cot and clothing chest, skirting the low table with its maps and its plans of battle.

  Abruptly she stopped, turned. “Uncle. I know the way to the Heart of the World.”

  Vadin rose. “Are you as mad as that?”

  Sevayin grinned at him. “Do you need to ask?”

  “It will be guarded.”

  “With Father’s loyal mages and with Ziad-Ilarios’; with you, with Mother, with Father himself, we could conquer worlds.”

  “Clever,” said Vadin. “This world may not be wide enough for two emperors, but if there are many . . .”

  Sevayin hissed her impatience. “One world or a thousand thousand, what use to a dead man? You yourself taught me that it seldom profits a commander to wait for the enemy to attack. Better to strike the first blow, hard and fast, before he can gather his forces.”

  “What makes you think the mages aren’t armed and waiting?”

  “They may be.” Sevayin took up a stylus and turned it in her fingers.

  In Ianon they jested that a pen was a waste of a good dart. She almost smiled. “I don’t think they know what I’m capable of.”

  “By now they do.”

  She tossed her freed hair, sweeping her body with her hand. “Look at me, uncle. This is all of me that most of them have ever seen. They know why I ran away from my prison. I was afraid to die; I had my prince to be my courage and my son to make me desperate. That I succeeded—ah then, I’m a god’s grandchild, and luck is his servant.”

  Vadin’s grin was wry. “And you are quite astonishingly beautiful, and when has beauty ever needed brains?”

  “Avaryan knows, I never have.”

  “And here I was, thinking what a marvel you were, to have learned so quickly how to play the princess.”

  “It’s not so different to play the prince. It was much harder to teach myself to walk. I kept wanting to make my body balance like a man’s.”

  Vadin laughed freely then, pulling her in. She let her arms close the embrace.

  The child kicked hard; Vadin started. For a moment all merriment dropped away. But not for grief. For wonder; even for awe.

  “He’s strong,” the Ianyn said. “And much too pretty for comfort.” His laughter rang out anew. “I think your father
’s nose is immortal.”

  “And his darkness,” said Sevayin, “and my mother’s hair. You know this should be a brown child, or amber. So for that matter should I.”

  “They knew what they wanted you to be.”

  “This?” asked Sevayin, braced for pain.

  “This,” said Vadin. He smiled with a touch of wickedness. “Here’s a secret, namesake. Men want sons; how can they help it? But every one of us, in his heart of hearts, prays for a daughter.”

  “However he gets one?”

  “However he gets one.” Vadin stood back, stern. “Now, namesake. Lie down and let your baby rest.”

  She obeyed meekly enough, lying on the cot that was barely wider than a soldier’s. Vadin left to be a lord commander again. Sevayin breathed slowly, swallowing past the ache in her throat.

  Here in solitude, with the army’s roar as steady as the sea, her sight was bitterly clear. She had solved nothing yet. She might have slain them all.

  She met Ulan’s green stare. The cat blinked, yawned. He did not like all this crowding and shouting; he needed the free air. But if she was about to go to lair with her cubs . . .

  “One cub,” she said, “and not quite yet, brother nursemaid.”

  Ah, then. He would go. She laid her golden hand on his head; it bowed beneath the weight of the god. With a last green-fire glance, he slipped from the tent.

  Sevayin lay for a few breaths’ span. Abruptly she rose. There was wine where it had always been, in the chest at the bed’s foot. She filled a cup and stared at it. Her stomach did not want it.

  “My courage needs it,” she said, downing it. It was proper Varyani wine: sweet and heady, sharpened with spices. It steadied her.

  She turned to face the one who stood in front of the tent’s flap. It had been a goodly time since they stood eye to eye.

  She had never seen in those eyes what she saw now. In Prince Orsan’s, yes. When he offered her the choice that even yet might be the end of her. But not in the eyes of his daughter.

  It went beyond pain. “Mother,” she said, calm and quiet.

  Elian came, took the cup from her fingers, filled it and drained it herself. Choking on it, but forcing it down.

  Sevayin stared at her. She stared back. The cold distances were heating, closing in. “I hope you’re pleased with yourself.”

  Sevayin snapped erect. Here was all that she had expected. From the one in whom alone she had thought to find understanding. In her mother, who had foreseen this. Who had trained her for it.

  And would not, could not accept its fulfillment.

  “You’ve set the army on its ear,” said Elian. “You’ve shown them what in fact they’ve shed their blood for. You’ve shaken your father and all that he has made, to their foundations. Are you content?”

  “Are you?" Sevayin shot back. “You saw all that I saw. What did you do to stop it? What did you do that even slowed its advance?”

  “I did not strangle you in your cradle.”

  Sevayin began to tremble. “The others are finding that they can bear what they have no power to change. You can’t. Why? Does it matter so much to you whether I walk as a man or as a woman? Are you afraid I’ll be a rival?”

  Elian slapped her.

  She did not evade the blow, nor did she strike back. “Oh, splendid, Mother! You always hit what you can’t answer. I’ve betrayed you, haven’t I?”

  “You have betrayed your father.”

  “That,” said Sevayin, “is not for you to judge. I’ve betrayed you. You loved the shape I used to wear. You hate me for giving it up.”

  “I could never hate you.”

  “Scorn, then. Contempt. Outrage.”

  “Grief.” Elian was weeping. It was bitter to see. Her face was rigid; the tears ran down it unregarded. “That you should have hurt so much. That you should have given up—all—”

  “Whatever I gave up, I have gained back. I have my prince, Mother. I have my son. I have my power, and it grows stronger than it ever was before.”

  “But the price,” said Elian. “The pain.”

  Sevayin was thoroughly a woman, and almost a mother. But she could not understand this woman who was her mother.

  Elian laughed, still weeping. “That’s a great secret, child. Women don’t understand women, either. I was so sure that I could face this. When it came. If it came. And then I saw you, and I couldn’t bear it.” She laid her hands flat on her middle. “I was ill, not so long ago. I lost a child. It would have been your sister.”

  Sevayin staggered with the pain of it. Reached, to heal her, to grieve with her.

  Elian eluded her hands. “She should never have been. We knew it, your father and I. And yet we dared to know joy. To hope that maybe, somehow, we could have it all: that we could be victorious, that you could be healed, that we could live in peace with our daughter as with our son. Then,” said Elian, “the pains came. Nothing we did could stop them. They were more terrible than anything I had ever known. As if my very substance were being rent from me.”

  Sevayin sank down, cradling her own substance, her child who would be, must be, born alive.

  “The god took her,” Elian said. “And mages. I knew, Sarevadin. I knew that they were birthing you. Wielding my power. Taking my child that would be, to transform my child that had been. It was godly cold, that taking. It was divinely unspeakable.”

  Sevayin rocked, shivering. If she had died in the working, her sister would have lived. Would have grown to womanhood. Hirel would have survived the war; would have had to wait, in grief, perhaps in captivity. But would, in the end, have had his Sunborn queen.

  “Avaryan,” she said. “There is no Avaryan. There is only Uvarra.” She raised her head. Her mother regarded her without pity. Pitiless. “No wonder you hate me.”

  “I told you, I do not.” Elian sat beside her, but out of her reach. “You didn’t know what you were doing; you wanted to save us all. You paid higher even than I did, and in greater pain. I never stopped loving you. I’m trying to forgive you.”

  Sevayin drew a sharp and hurting breath. “I don’t want your forgiveness. I want your acceptance. I want you to stand with me when I face Keruvarion.”

  She looked at Elian and knew that she had asked too much. It had taken all the empress’ strength to come here, to face her alone, to tell her the truth. More than that, Elian could not give.

  Sevayin bowed her head, hating defeat, knowing nothing that would alter it.

  “I do not know that I can accept you,” said Elian. “But I will stand with you.”

  Sevayin started, half rising. Elian held her down. It hurt, that light touch. It hurt bitterly, as a touch can, when it bears healing in it.

  The empress drew her into a swift embrace. They were trembling, both of them, with all that roiled in them.

  “Come,” said Elian. “Your people are waiting.”

  o0o

  Sevayin did not face her people naked, but she faced them as a woman and a priestess and a queen.

  She needed all her pride. She could have done without her temper.

  It was not the common folk who tried her sorely. They had needed most to see her, to know that she was well and strong and triumphant in her sacrifice. She knew how to make them her own.

  But no lord yet born had sense enough to listen and let be. It was the same fruitless battle. Keruvarion’s lords and captains would not ally themselves with Asanion. They would not suffer an Asanian prince. They would not acknowledge the legitimacy of the union: not without contract or witnesses.

  That broke her. She did not fling herself at the idiot who had said it. She dared not; she would have killed him.

  She rose from her seat in front of her father’s tent. She smiled a clenched-teeth smile. She inquired very softly, “Are you calling my child a bastard?”

  She did not heed the scramble of denials. Commoners had sense. They understood logic; when they hated, they hated with reason. Lords were like seneldi stallions. They bred
and they fought; they snorted and gored the air, and they raised their voices at every whisper of a threat.

  They had fallen silent, staring. Some looked frightened.

  And well they might be. “I have heard you,” she said. “I have heard all I need to hear. It changes nothing. I have taken as consort the High Prince of Asanion. Refuse him and you refuse me.” She faced her father. “Now the beast has danced for all your people. Has it danced well? Has it pleased you? Must it return to its cage, or may it go back to its mate?”

  Mirain was not angry. He seemed more proud of her than not; and he had never been one to meddle where his heir was faring well enough alone. He sat back, arms folded, and said, “We have matters to consider, you and I. They need a night’s pondering. Will you tarry for it?”

  She could refuse. He offered that, to her who had betrayed his trust. But Mirain An-Sh’Endor always granted a second accounting. Then he had no mercy.

  “I will stay,” she said, “until morning.”

  He bowed his head. She moved without thinking, knelt, kissed his hand.

  Her eyes rose. His own were clear, steady, and filled to the brim with power.

  She shivered. He was king and emperor, great general, mage and priest: death had always ridden at his right hand. But now when she looked at him, it lay upon him like his own dark-sheened skin.

  o0o

  “Sarevadin.”

  She stood on the edge of the cavalry lines, gazing over the shattered city, watching the sun set behind the Asanian camp.

  Hirel lived; she knew that. But no more. A shield of power lay between them. She ached with trying not to batter it down.

  When her father’s voice spoke behind her, she was perilously close to mounting Bregalan and damning all promises and storming to her prince’s rescue. She whirled, as fierce with guilt as with startlement.

  Mirain’s gaze rested where hers had been. There was no one with him; he could have been a hired soldier in his plain kilt, his cloak of leather lined with fleece against the chill, his hair in its plait behind him.

  He stroked Bregalan’s shoulder, and the stallion raised his head from cropping the winter grass, snorting gently in greeting. Mirain was rare in his world: a two-legged brother. Like Sevayin herself. Like Hirel.