by Anne Perry
She stopped. She had never presumed, never been the first to move. She had never, even in their most intimate moments, forgotten that she was at his beck and call, not he at hers. Had he ever considered she might have needs he had not met? Not really, nothing more than a passing moment of jealousy that she might have desired a younger man, and even that had not lasted long. He was at the peak of his physical power, and he knew it.
“Tissarel ...” This was even harder than he had feared. Excuses would offend both him and her. “I believe the words in the Book that Lady Tathea has brought.”
“I know that,” she answered. “I have seen it in your face for a long time, since the second or third day she brought it here.”
“You’ve listened?” He should not have been surprised.
She took it as criticism. A flush rose up her cheeks, but she did not deny it. “Yes,” she said simply.
Without thinking, he stepped forward and took her hands. For once there was no response in her. Her eyes searched his.
“Then perhaps you will understand why I must forgo the things which give me pleasure,” he said very quietly. “And do instead those things which are right.” Should he tell her that he did not love Barsymet? It might be of comfort to her, and it was certainly true. It was also an unnecessary disloyalty, a poor beginning to any reconciliation he could try. “For years I have followed my own hungers,” he went on. “I have been moderately discreet. I have not dishonored my wife before the people—”
“I understand,” she interrupted. She looked at him steadily, and for a moment they were equals, not Emperor and servant but man and woman. He had no idea how deep her wound might be, but it was deeper than he could see, and more than he had earned any right to know. He wanted to add something, but she turned away. “It is right,” she said softly, hiding her face from him.
He moved after her, swiftly, barring her way.
“You must leave the Imperial Hill, but don’t leave the city. Everyone you know is here. You have ...” How could he tell her without condescension that she had given him laughter and gentleness, been worthy of trust. “I wish this ... were ... not necessary ...” For the first time he could recall, he was floundering for words. He wished he knew what she felt. Was her pain anything for him, or simply loss of a position many women might envy? Was the rigidity of her back insulted pride, or the need to master loneliness? Was it a parting that mattered to her as deeply as it did to him?
He could not ask her. And even if he did, how would he know if her answer were the truth? It would be easy enough to say yes, of course she loved him. What else did one say to emperors?
“I understand the Book,” she said, her voice thick with tears; then she brushed past him. He could have put out his hand and kept her with him, but it would only prolong the inevitable and be unfair to her as well as to himself. He let her go.
The room became colder, darker. He knew what he did was right, but he was far less certain he could bear it. He found he was shivering, which was absurd because the fire was burning and there was barely a chill in the air.
It was two days before he found the right opportunity to speak to Barsymet alone. It was early evening and he had spent most of the day with ministers and ambassadors. He was still at his desk when Barsymet entered the room.
He gestured to the other chair where until a few minutes ago an ambassador had sat, talking of an incident of Shinabari arrogance at sea. The days of the treaty were most definitely past.
She sat down slowly, as if it had been an order, not an invitation. She kept her gaze lowered. He could not undo years of coldness in a single evening. It might take months.
“What would you like to eat?” he asked.
She made a slight dismissive movement. “Whatever you are having.”
He told her of the incident with the Shinabari.
She was not surprised. “They would like war with us. The only thing that holds them back is fear they might not win.” There was contempt in her expression. “They have grown soft. Their great days of conquest are long behind them. And there are serious barbarian incursions on their southern borders.”
“How did you hear that?” He had not realized she had any interest in political matters. But it was years since he had bothered to talk to her about anything but trivialities.
She flashed him a quick, cold glance. “What do you imagine I do with my days?” she said bitterly.
He was too abashed to answer, and she knew it. The shadow of a smile touched her lips. “Are you still studying the religion that Shinabari woman brought with her from ... wherever?”
He resented her reference to Tathea in such terms. In the past he would have crushed her for such language, but he was trying to build some reconciliation between them. A quarrel would make it even harder.
“I have reached my conclusion on it.” His voice sounded harsher than he wished; his anger showed very clearly. “It is the truth. I will try to live it. ... and teach my people.”
She stared at him. Her eyes were large and gray, very steady. They should have been beautiful, but there was bitterness in them which frightened him.
“Will you?” she said with interest. “You mean to live it yourself?”
“Of course!” he snapped. “I told you, I believe it is the truth. And I can hardly preach it to Camassia and not embrace it myself.”
“Of course you can,” she retorted. “People do it all the time. Most religions are a means of government, not a matter of example.” There was laughter in her eyes, sharp like moving shards of glass. “But if you wish to impress the Hall of Archons and the nobles, then you will have to be seen to live it, whatever you think privately.”
“I believe it!” Certainty burned like fire in his mind. “It may take a long time, but I intend to understand the teachings and to live them.”
“Purity, honest of heart, loyalty?” she asked with a lift of sarcasm, her fine lips faintly sneering. “Freedom of conscience for others?”
He leaned across the desk towards her, ignoring the papers and the ink and sand. “Yes. I will not compel you, or anyone, to come with me.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Not even Tissarel?” The question cut across the air swift and sharp as a knife.
“Tissarel has gone,” he answered softly. “I told her of my decision, and she understood.” Why did it hurt so much to say that, and to Barsymet of all people? He felt as alone as he had when he was twelve, when he had first left home to join the army. He had sat huddled into himself then, cold and frightened at seeing the watch fires in the darkness and hearing the laughter of strangers. This woman was his wife, and he was Emperor of the greatest power on earth. He was in his own palace, warm, secure, admired. He had but to give the word and a man lived or died.
He leaned back again and sighed. “You must do as you please, Barsymet. I will follow the Book.”
“Oh, I shall support you,” she said immediately. “It will be good for everyone. I wish she had come with it twenty years ago. Then perhaps you would have shared it with me.”
He did not answer. What was there to say?
Chapter X
RA-NUFIS ENTRUSTED MESSAGES to no one, so Tathea did not hear from him while he was in Shinabar. It was now well over a year since she had come from the Lost Lands, and the City in the Center of the World was familiar to her, but she was still alien here, and she missed Shinabar as keenly as ever. And in spite of Eleni’s friendship and the many hours spent with Isadorus, there was a certain loneliness of heart.
The season was turning. The coolness of autumn was delicious, but the constant chill and the shorter, darker days of winter were oppressive. The first time she had felt rain it was strange, even exciting. Two or three times a week it was no pleasure at all. Wet clothes, wet feet were a misery she could not get used to.
In the palace she was treated with courtesy, and the fact that she was a guest, not its mistress, no longer unsettled her. Only now and again, on first waking in the morning if it
was a bright day and she saw the sunlight slanting across the marble floor, did the shock of memory return. It was not Mon-Allat she missed, but Habi. His limp, bloodstained body still tore at her with a grief she did not know how to bear. Yet she could not let it go. To try was like attempting to deny his life, as if he had not been and she had not loved him. There were nights when she woke in the dark, thinking she had heard him calling, then remembered and turned over in her bed and wept.
But there were also times of laughter, especially with Eleni. Alexius was away with one of the frontier legions, and Eleni seemed glad of her company and always eager to learn more of the Book. They shared many other things also: ideas, appreciation of beauty or drama, sympathy for others, pleasure in gowns and jewels, ornaments, new furniture, linen, trivial gossip, and jokes.
Still, she was eager to see Ra-Nufis and hear news of Shinabar, and to speak her own language with its rhythms and imagery of the life she was born to.
He came in the evening to her apartment in the palace. She had removed some of the heavy, ornate Camassian furniture and it was now more like the surroundings she had been familiar with, simpler lines, a greater sense of space, and warmer colors, a gold, a rose, against the grayer light.
Ra-Nufis looked at it only briefly, then his eyes searched her face.
“How are you?” she asked, indicating the wide chair for him to sit. His skin had been darkened by the desert sun, his features honed to leaner, harsher lines by wind and the fatigue of travel. She guessed that he also felt the strain of constant vigilance. “I’m glad to see you safe.”
He smiled, his eyes bright. “And I to see you,” he said fervently. “Never forget, my lady, that you have enemies for two reasons: you are the true Isarch’s widow, and so the only one who could lead the people against the usurper, but far more than that, you are the keeper of the Book. If there are forces of light, then there must be forces of darkness also, or there would be no struggle.” His eyes narrowed. His face was touched with pain. “Shinabar has changed, even in one short year ...”
She walked over to the table under one of the torches and poured wine into two dark glass goblets. She returned and offered him one.
“Will you eat?”
He shook his head fractionally, he was too eager to speak to her to think of such things.
“There is a secrecy there,” he continued, leaning forward and holding the goblet in one slender hand. “A kind of creeping malaise I have never seen in the past. The energy is dying.” He sipped the wine and his face puckered although it was sweet. “Or perhaps it has been dying for a long time, and I just didn’t see it before.”
She watched him with dread for what he would say next. This was not a Camassian view, slanted by the perceptions of people who did not know or love Shinabar, but an intimate understanding, the instinct of a native. He would catch the small, unseen straws in the wind even the subtlest ambassador could not.
She picked up a bowl of almonds from the table where the wine jug was and placed it in front of him.
“I have learned all I can about the assassinations,” he said softly, his eyes on her face, knowing it must hurt her. “They were committed by members of the Household Guard, but you knew that. The men immediately behind the killings were caught within weeks. The usurper was arrested and executed.” He sipped the wine and took a handful of almonds. “Tiyo-Mah saw to that. She was tireless in her vengeance. No one escaped.”
Tathea laughed abruptly. She had known the Isarch’s mother most of her life, and feared her. She could picture her copper-colored face with its curved nose and hooded eyes, her skin like old leather, soft and creased, her full lips. She had a curious quality of stillness, allowing others to come to her as if she had the power of will to command them, whether they would or not. Even Mon-Allat had never defied her. But there had not been a woman on the throne of Shinabar in all the millennia of the past. Tathea’s nephew, Hem-Shash, would be Isarch. He was the only male of the royal house left.
“There is dissatisfaction,” Ra-Nufis went on. “It is small now, but it will grow. Economic times are good, but greed will erode that. The pattern of it is there already—the belief in instant reward. There are more and more officials to deny responsibility for everything but who seem to have the power to obstruct.”
He put the goblet down. Outside, the rain was falling gently on the lemon trees, and the smell of damp earth came in through the open window.
“The knowledge and the love of beauty is dying,” he said quietly, his mouth pinched, a tiredness about his eyes. “We are forgetting our past and who we are. We no longer know what we believe. No people ever needed the clean sanity of the Book more than ours. We need its hope, its truth. How can we strive for heaven when we have forgotten what it is?”
Ra-Nufis’s words burned like fire in Tathea’s mind. She had allowed herself to become comfortable in Camassia. She had forgotten the urgency of her calling. She should have been anxiously engaged in planning her return to Shinabar, taking the healing of the Book to her own people. She had studied its words every day. How could she have been so blind?
The next day she sought audience with Isadorus and found him in the company of a soldier named Ulciber, a man whose golden fair face was smooth and comfortable even in the presence of his emperor. A fire burned in a huge, marble hearth, and the dogs lay sprawled before it.
She would rather have spoken to him alone, but Isadorus offered her no choice. If he sensed her desire for privacy, there was no sign of it in his face. Ulciber was a trusted favorite, and Isadorus now wished to share all matters of the Book with anyone who showed the slightest hunger to know.
“What is your concern?” he asked, inviting her to sit.
“I have heard much news from Shinabar lately,” she answered, not wishing to tell him from whom. If he knew or guessed, that was another matter. “All of it is ill.” She detailed what Ra-Nufis had said to her, and he listened in silence. His ambassadors must have told him similar things; his spies certainly would have, even if they had not Ra-Nufis’s skill, nor his interest in seeing the old order restored.
Ulciber remained silent, looking first to Tathea, then to Isadorus, watching their faces.
“I grieve over it,” Isadorus answered her at length, and indeed there was a darkness in his face, a gentleness when he looked at her. “I wish I could comfort you for your people, but all I hear confirms what you say.”
“But there are many who would support an overthrow of the old regime and peace with Camassia,” she argued.
“Hem-Shash is of the old blood,” he pointed out, meeting her eyes steadily.
She had expected that. “I know. But he is young and will always be weak. Those who were behind the coup rule through him. There is corruption and apathy in the country. The army is disorganized and losing morale. The government is increasingly oppressive.”
“And that should trouble Camassia?” he questioned. There was no anger in his face, only a probing sadness she did not understand.
It was Ulciber who answered. “My lord, Lady Ta-Thea,” he gave it the Shinabari pronunciation, “has no doubt also heard the rumors of increasing barbarian incursions on the borders of Shiriabar. As we have from our own legions.” He leaned forward a little, closer to Isadorus. “We need allies who are not only strong in armies and navies, but whose governments will not fall to internal chaos and civil strife. If Shinabar crumbles, then we are threatened on all sides.”
It was the last quarter from which Tathea had expected support, and a sense of unease troubled her but she ignored it. Isadorus was, above all, Emperor of Camassia. Its prosperity, its glory, its safety lay at the heart of all he did. She had watched him over her year and a half in the city. He was a better statesman than Mon-Allat. He had had to fight to hold his power, and he understood its strength and its limitations far more profoundly than any man who was born to sovereignty could. He took nothing for granted. She had seen how no friend or political favorite stood in the way of
his judgment. These were lessons she should learn if ever she were to return to the throne of Shinabar.
“Better we should be threatened from all sides beyond our borders,” Isadorus said quietly, “than be eaten away by corrosion within.”
A flash of disappointment crossed Ulciber’s smooth face. His blue eyes widened in momentary surprise. He leaned back again and looked at Tathea.
“I will teach my people the law of the Book.” She pressed the one argument she knew Isadorus would not refuse. Already he was spreading the word himself, opening up ways for all manner of men to hear and to learn. They were rudimentary, merely groups who met to study and to discuss the principles with each other. There needed to be much organization yet, and he had spoken to her of it. “It is for all people,” she added urgently, “all nations, all tongues.”
One of the dogs stirred and whimpered in its dreams.
“I know.” His voice was even softer, scarcely above the flicker of the flames. “But we have much work yet before it is ready to take to the world. It must be translated into a common language, codified for the ordinary man to understand. And when that time comes, it will be taught not by force, but by example.”
She was stunned. “I have no intention of forcing it on anyone!” she protested. How could he even think such a thing of her?
“You would take it to them on the heels of your conquest,” he pointed out. “You would overthrow the usurpers of your throne. Tell me you do not want justice for your dead.”
She started to answer, but Ulciber spoke before she found the words. “Justice, not revenge, my lord. She would seek your aid to restore a rightful order and establish peace where men are not afraid to espouse a new faith if they choose to. It will not only be to Shinabar’s good, but to Camassia’s also.” Again he leaned forward, the firelight gold on his smooth cheek, the curve of his lips. “We have enemies enough. If Shinabar believes the law of the Book, then they will be our allies against whatever darkness or violence threatens us, from any quarter.”