Xia and I made love until the sun neared the end of its daily journey. We lolled quietly in each other's arms, enjoying the cool of the early evening winds.
Finally, she broke the silence. 'You are not my first,' she said, eyes shyly lowered.
I didn't think I was. She was quite experienced for one so young. But that's not what I said. 'It's not my business. Your adventures are your own. To share, or to treasure in silence.'
'I want to tell you about it,' She said, 'so you know me.'
I kissed her and let her talk.
'I've always felt I was strange, out of place,' she said. 'It was as if I didn't belong in my family, but was simply left at the door and taken in by my mother, who was certainly a kind enough woman to do such a thing.'
'You don't think that's what really happened, do you?' I asked.
She shook her head. 'No. Foundlings don't become princesses. Still, the feeling was there. I never liked boys. Not like my girlfriends who were going on about them even before we all grew breasts and started our monthlies. Actually, it was my girlfriends who first attracted me. It was all quite natural, for a time. Even though they talked of boys, we had dalliances. Schoolgirl crushes with one another. Many of which were consummated in bed. No one thought anything of it. Perhaps it's even encouraged a bit in our society. The maidenhead is much prized in Konya, and such innocent play tends to keep it intact until families can negotiate our future - our marriages.'
'It is the same in Orissa,' I said.
Xia took this in, then continued. 'All went well until I reached marrying age, which in Konya is sixteen. Since then my father has become anxious that I wed and bear him grandchildren so our line can continue.'
'But you've resisted?' I guessed.
'Absolutely,' Xia said. 'I want no man to rule me, much less bed me.' Again I noted that regal, stubborn look of hers. Xia was not someone I'd like to get on the wrong side of.
She continued: 'It has become increasingly difficult to refuse my father. More so, because of what happened just before I met you in that storm.'
'I've wondered how I came to find you there,' I said.
'I was sent to the temple at Selen for purification,' she said. 'My father learned that I'd become the lover of an older woman. Fiorna's the wife of one of our generals. He was always away, which pleased her, because when he's home he's a brute to her and her children. Also she's like ... us. Fiorna prefers women to men. Anyway, a scandal was avoided - just. She was sent home to her mother and her husband was assigned to the outskirts of the kingdom. As for me, my father thought I needed to be purged of my tastes. To undergo purification. Hence, the voyage.'
I laughed, stroking her fine breasts. 'The purification didn't seem to take,' I said.
Xia made a wry face. 'Actually, the priestesses there were quite helpful. They taught me how to be more discreet.'
She gave me an impish look. Her hand reached and found a place that made me shiver. 'They taught me some other things as well,' she giggled.
'Lord knows,' I said, husky, 'I've always been an eager scholar.' Later, as she rose to dress and depart, she said: "Would you do something for me?' 'Anything within my power,' I said. 'Would you teach me to fight?'
I rose up, startled. 'You're a princess. You have no need for that knowledge.'
She shook her head, serious. 'I'll be with you when the fight begins. And I refuse to be some helpless flower, while other women - your soldiers - risk their lives. I at least want to know how to protect myself. If not more. And don't worry, I won't do something foolish and charge into the fray and be a worry to you. Also, I want to be something other than pretty Princess Xia in the eyes of my people. When this history is written, I intend to be more than a footnote.'
I thought over her request. It seemed sensible to me. And then she said: 'Besides, we must be discreet, my love. Training with you will be a wonderful excuse for me to come and go as I please.'
'Very well,' I said. 'We'll begin tomorrow.' We did, and she proved as ardent a pupil of battle as she was of love.
Meanwhile, the Konyans prepared for war. The Council of Purity might still have been babbling on about the way to wage that war, but at least there was more than talk in Isolde.
Each day saw more ships arrive off the island. Sometimes there'd be one, sometimes half a dozen, once fleets of over two dozen. Finally, there were nearly four hundred vessels. They'd quickly filled Isolde's harbour from headland to piers and most lay in the roadstead outside the harbour mouth. They hailed from all over the kingdom - if such a polyglot collection of so many hundreds of islands can be called such a thing - especially since each group seemed to have its own customs and language. Communication was either in Konyan, which most of the ruling classes of the islands knew after a fashion; the Konyan traders' pidgin, or through those Orissans of mine who'd been blessed with the Spell of the Tongues.
The ships were of every variety, from vessels designed only for war to hastily converted merchantmen and even some sharkish galleys whose crews I knew were pirates who'd decided to sail under a known banner for as long as loot was in the offing.
I was impressed by how rapidly the Konyans could turn themselves to battle and asked Xia if her people had an especial talent for bloodshed. 'I don't know about that,' she yawned. 'But it seems as if someone's always fighting someone. If you wish, I'll have one of my servants show you the arsenal.'
I did wish and on the morrow I was escorted to a separate part of the harbour, which was fenced and guarded. Inside, I learned the Konyans' secret. The arsenal was a row of wharves, man-made islands actually, with a long warehouse running the length of each. A narrow strand of water ran between each wharf and at either end there were wide basins. The wharves swarmed with workmen, who reached them on wide bridges that slid out from the main dockyard. Into the basin at one end an out-of-commission ship would be towed in by lines linked to huge capstans on the shore itself. The ships had been 'laid up in ordinary', as it was called, which meant all their stores had been removed, their yards and masts brought down and the bare hulk anchored to await another crisis.
Big sliding doors opened at each warehouse as the ship was towed down the wharf. From one, masts would be taken - each marked for the ship it had come from. Cranes would restep them and shipwrights lash them into place. At the next warehouse the spars and main-yard would be lifted and mounted; following that, coils of line would appear, and the laborious process of rerigging begun. After that, canvas sails would be carried aboard. Xia's servant told me Isolde tried to design their warships uniformly, so supplies could be as common to all as possible.
Now the hulk looked like a ship and was dragged on down the line. The rowers' oars and benches were loaded, then came barrels of salt pork and beef, then bedding, wine and freshwater barrels and so on -with each warehouse a chandlery with a single speciality. By the time it reached the end of the wharf, the warship was ready to be manned and put out into the roadstead to join its fellows. The process was impressive, but the ships being 'launched' I found less so. All of them were huge single-masted galleys, like the one I'd rescued Xia from. The Konyans didn't fancy swift, small galleys such as Cholla Yi, or some of the outer islanders, favoured.
I made it my business to inquire how Konyans fought their naval battles, and found it to be even more primitive than the so-called tactics my women had been taught when we sailed after the Archon so long before. A warship would be filled to the gunwales with soldiers soldiers who knew even less about ships and the sea than I had when we set out from Lycanth. The captain of that warship had simple duties - he was to sail in tight company with the fleet until they encountered the enemy. The order would be given to attack, always in some mass formation designated by the fleet admiral. The captain's final duty was to put his ship alongside that of an enemy. The soldiers would board the ship and take it by storm. All of his weaponry, from catapults to the crows'-beaks, which were spike-ended gangplanks meant to embed themselves immovably in an enemy's deck plan
king, were to produce this single end. Ramming was still considered an innovation, since all too often the ramming ship incurred as much damage as the one being rammed, or else broke free and the fighting soldiers could not carry the battle to its 'proper conclusion'. That was sea battle the way it always had been fought, and the way it always would be fought. The Sarzana would be using ships similar to ours, so the day would be carried by numbers, force of arms, sorcery, but most of all, justice. The last, I thought to myself, I'd seldom seen on a battlefield.
I remembered what Stryker and Duban had said during the storm about Xia's galley, and my own thoughts of direwolves bringing down a bear. This time, I did more than just remember. Late in the evenings I began holding very quiet, very private meetings with Corais, Ismet, and Dica, whom I welcomed because it's been my experience a complete novice can frequently see a better way more clearly than a veteran. Sometimes Polillo, in spite of her loud protests that she was a fighter, not a planner, took part.
I'd bought a cheap model of one of these monstrous Konyan ships in a bazaar, and the four or five of us would sit around the toy, like so many babes planning the next day's sail in a pond, and think. Sometimes our thoughts were meritorious, mostly foolish or impossible. But I wrote all of them down in a tablet, cursing as I did so and remembering what little talent I have with words. What we were talking about, and what fruits those long hours bore, I'll tell shortly.
Despite Xia's protests, I left the main part of her training to Ismet. I've learned that such things are best taught by others. A friend will be either too easy or too hard. Besides, there's nothing like the impersonal appraisal of a tough sergeant to see where one really stands; so the princess drilled in the practice yard along with the other
Guardswomen. She took to the bow and the spear and sword as if she were born to it, and flushed with vicious pleasure when she got the upper hand of her drilling partner and gave her a good drubbing with the wooden blade. And when I saw how quickly she learned to fire arrow after arrow into its mark, I was glad I hadn't relented and let her show up the dashing, all-knowing Captain Antero.
Plain exercise was another matter. Every evening we ran along the ring road that circled the humped main section of Isolde. It was a good five miles, beginning at the harbour and ending at a small tavern near my villa. It took me a week to get her built up enough to make that circle once. She was aghast at the end of that week when I told her that our next goal was to make it twice, then three times, then four.
'I doubt we'll make the last goal,' I said. 'There isn't time to get that much strength into your legs.'
'What's wrong with my legs?' she pouted. 'You seem to like them well enough when I'm not running on them.'
'Oh, I like them fine,' I said. 'And they're powerful enough when you've got them twined about my neck. But there's more stamina required for fighting than love, thank the gods. A soldier's legs are more important than even her weapons. They must carry her for miles to the fight, then hold her up under the most gruelling assaults at that fight, and if it is the whim of her superiors she might have to march right out again when the battle is over.'
'We'll be on ships,' she said. 'They'll carry us to the fight and back again. So once around the harbour ought to be more than enough.'
'Humour me,' I said.
'And if I do?' she asked, eyebrows arching up mischievously. I whispered in her ear. She giggled. 'Oh, I like that. Are you sure you don't want to start on the next five miles right now?'
One day, a grand meeting of all division captains was called. We were to meet our new fleet admiral. I thought I was well prepared for this, but as usual when I attempt to predict the thinking of men when it comes to that cheap jade of command, I was wrong.
My women bristled, but I'd known I wouldn't be in overall command of the expedition against The Sarzana, at least not in name. No matter how much the Council of Purity might have praised me, I knew I'd be no more than an advisor at best, a figurehead at worst. Corais and Polillo had growled privately that once again a woman was being forced to kowtow, but I'd asked them if the same situation occurred in Orissa, and I were from distant shores, how many ships and men would our own Magistrates have let me lead to their deaths?
I thought it was a sensible reminder, but both of them looked at each other, and Corais delicately lifted her lip, and said, 'Rali, my love, of course men will repeat the same stupidity from land to land. We're talking about what an intelligent person would do.'
That made me laugh and it was about the only cheeriness the meeting produced.
Cholla Yi and I sat to either side of the new Grand Admiral on the high stage that was framed by a frieze of the gaping bony jaws of some sea monster. The Grand Admiral was named Trahern, and he was awe-inspiring. He was a huge man - nearly as tall as Polillo, and she's over seven feet. His voice rang like a palace bell. He had a great white beard, carefully combed and divided at the chin to sweep to the side in two waves. He must've been in his seventies, but still had a full head of hair, studded with jewels, and knotted behind his head. On the breast of bis silk and leather tunic he wore many medals - all that a grateful nation could confer on their most celebrated warrior.
Unfortunately, the last war Admiral Trahern had fought was twenty years earlier, a skilful if hardly imaginative campaign against some barbaric outer islanders. Then he'd retired to his huge estates and become a noted historian. His entire career had been one of bravery, honour and nobility. Now he'd been brought back to lead Konya into what would be its greatest, and his final, triumph.
When he was named he was cheered and cheered again by the captains. I'd already noticed that too many of the senior captains were natives of Isolde, no matter what other islands their ships and crews hailed from. Once again, I saw a region whose real rulers hailed from a single area. Perhaps The Sarzana had overly favoured men from his native Cevennes, but the barons weren't that different. But while all the men cheered themselves hoarse for Admiral Trahern, what crashed through my own mind was: Hellsfire! It's General Jinnah all over again!
Trahern gave the obligatory heroic address. He said how honoured he was to serve the colours once again, how we all were determined to win, how right was on our side, how we could only triumph, how Konya was honoured to be given the talents of mighty warriors from the far-distant lands of... of, and he paused, trying to remember where the strangers had come from, hastily said Larissa, and continued on and on and on.
After he'd been carried around the room on the shoulders of the exulting officers, he met privately with Cholla Yi and myself. He was full of cheer and reassurances. Of course he knew we were the real leaders of the expedition, being familiar with these damned magicians and so forth, 'Especially this one that hailed from your lands, or so I've heard, although damned if I don't find it hard to believe how someone can be slain and come back to fight again; although certainly no one would slight the powers of a great wizard.' He thought he might be of some small assistance to us, since he knew the Konyan waters, and, more importandy, the souls of his people, and how they could be roused to fight like the heroes of old; so each Konyan would be as ten, perhaps twenty, soldiers from another land. We would have a high command founded on mutual trust, faith and determination, united in a common goal of consummate importance to all men and women everywhere.
But to me, all his words were the tapping of the deathwatch beede.
One evening as we were taking a stroll in the garden before Xia departed, I asked her if her father was in the least bit suspicious of us.
'He's been so busy with his duties,' she said, 'that he hasn't had time to think long enough for suspicion to arise. Even if he did, he wouldn't want to make too great a fuss, in fear word would get out to the other members of the Council of Purity.'
'I must say, that group hardly looked pure enough to claim such a name,' I said.
'Believe me, they are not,' she said. 'Many a whore would weep at the prospect of poverty if those men were true to their vows. Of course,
there'd be an equal amount of cheering among young slaves of both sexes who have been unfortunate enough to join their households.'
'Chaste, or not,' I said, 'it seems an odd name for a ruling body.'
'It's the fault of one of my more randy ancestors,' Xia laughed. 'He took decadence to such extremes he even had temples - bawdy houses, actually - built to honour some of our more unsavoury gods. He also laid claim to any pretty maid or youth who took his fancy. It got so bad that the barons rose up and forced him to stop. That's when the Council of Purity was formed. Its original job was to make certain the morals of Konya were being upheld. Then, when The Sarzana was defeated, it was the only traditional group under our ancient laws for the barons to take power.'
'Do you think the monarchy will ever return to Konya?' I asked.
Xia grew quite serious. She sat at the edge of the fountain and let her fingers trail through the water. 'My father certainly hopes so,' she finally said. 'And perhaps a few of the other nobles who have royal blood in their veins. But, if it happened, none of them - even my father - would dare declare themselves king. It would seem too grasping. The kings of Konya, you should know, were deposed by the mobs. The Sarzana came later. And my father and the others fear the masses almost as much as they do The Sarzana. So, no, I don't think that generation will seek the throne. But one of their children might.'
'Such as you?' I asked.
'I've never considered it,' she said. 'It would be foolish for me to do so.'
'Has Konya ever had a queen?' I asked.
Xia nodded. 'My great-grandmother - who died long before I was born - ruled here. And her husband had no authority. He was merely her consort.'
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