by Kirby Crow
Scarlet was a pedlar from Byzantur, not some lord or prince. What would Liall's people think, seeing him at their prince's side? Hells, what would Liall think, suddenly back among the richness that was his birthright: glittering lords, tall and handsome, and tall, beautiful ladies, and Scarlet in his leather jacket and hood, with his scarred face?
The embroidered folds at the hem of his robe were long, and if he did not take care, they would trip him up. It must have belonged to Liall at one time. Everything in this room was Liall's, including Scarlet, from the overly-attentive way the servants behaved. Was that how they saw him, as a pampered pet? Something they must keep clean and warm and fed because it belonged to their master? It was the crew of the Ostre Sul all over again, just in better lodgings.
Scarlet brooded as the night wore on and Liall did not reappear, and he was tired. Finally, he curled up on the thick, clean wool of the hearth rug, pillowed his head on his arm and sank into sleep.
* * * *
"They told me you'd come back, brother."
The voice belonged to the man Liall believed responsible for both the bravos at Volkovoi and the pirate attack at sea. The barons were already in the palace, having arrived weeks ago to Nadiushka's summons. It was well, for there was no time to waste. Already, many had openly declared for Cestimir, but an equal amount had voiced either doubt or a marked preference for Vladei, the other contender for the crown.
Strictly speaking, Vladei and he were cousins. Vladei was the son of Liall's father's half-brother, and ostensibly Liall's step-brother now as well, since Nadiushka had solved a particularly thorny situation regarding the succession by marrying Vladei's father soon after Liall had left Rshan.
The man had not changed. Vladei, Baron of Uzna Minor. His father had been a prince. By inclusion, Vladei was now also a prince, but he did not carry the Queen's name. He and Liall had never been friends, and when Liall was twenty and suddenly engaged to the Lady Shikhoza, what little cordiality there was between them quickly vanished. Vladei had always loved her.
Vladei was standing with his younger brother, Eleferi, near the entrance to the Queen's chambers. Vladei stared at Liall as if he were some beast crawling on his good furniture, and Eleferi's fox-like face was frozen into an affable mask that had never fooled anyone. Liall was not gladdened to see his step-brothers. Absence does not always make the heart grow fonder.
Vladei was entitled to wear silver and blue, the royal colors, being ap kyning, a child born of kings, but he had eschewed them for the red and gold of Ramung's house, Vladei's grandfather as well as Eleferi's. Liall wondered idly if Vladei remembered that Ramung was only half royal, the child of a slave concubine and a king, and if he were making some point by refusing to wear the Queen's colors. Was Vladei tipping his hand already, letting it be known that his vote—and his soldiers—would be thrown against Nadiushka when the time came? Surely not. Vladei was smarter than that.
The deep, golden silk of the long hapcoat—a sort of sleeveless winged over-mantle slit up the back and sides—that Vladei wore over his crimson virca complimented his coloring. There was red piping on Vladei's sleeve and a circle of grain sheaves embroidered in darker gold, the symbol of his grandmother's country; Hessiau, Baroness of S'geth. Clearly, Vladei wished no one to forget that he was as royal as any man at court.
Vladei looked less sour than Liall remembered, and for the first time Liall realized that the many people who used to say that the two of them looked very much alike were correct. Blood will out, they say, and Vladei looked enough like Liall that he could see where people would comment. Both his step-brothers had snow-pale hair, the coveted color of the Lukaska line, but Eleferi was merely a smaller, silkier version of his brother, with sharp, sly features and a reputation for over-indulgence in sex and wine.
Vladei's features were much closer to Liall's. Only their eyes were different. Liall's were pale blue; Vladei's were chips of cloudy stone. His nose was a bit bigger than Liall's, and he had a distracting habit of twisting his rings around and around his bony knuckles when he spoke. There were also rumors that he had poisoned his latest mistress and was viciously opposed to allowing the very young Lady Ressilka to come to court. Fearing, many thought, her father. Ressanda was the Baron of Tebet and unswervingly loyal to the Queen, and thus to Cestimir. One heard his strong-willed daughter was of the same mind.
Liall nodded at him. “Vladei."
Vladei stared at Liall's simple clothing pointedly. Liall had chosen to wear only a plain blue virca—a sort of skirted tunic with long sleeves—with black breeches and shirt, and no badge of office or royal insignia.
"Nazheradei.” Vladei toyed with a string at his sleeve and did not exactly meet Liall's gaze, and his voice was exactly as Liall remembered. “So it is true: you are here. At this time, I would normally make the appropriate comment about prodigal sons and joyous homecomings, but you don't look very joyous."
"And almost not very prodigal,” Liall returned. “There were unfortunate incidents that nearly delayed my arrival. You knew long ago, did you not, that the Queen would send for me? Or, should I say, you feared it?"
"You wrong my brother, Nazheradei,” Eleferi interjected, and then closed his pointed jaw with a snap when Vladei whipped his head round to glare at him. The years had been less than kind to Eleferi, who was a bit plump, although he was still sleekly handsome. Rather like an overfed seal.
"Wronged him, how?” Liall looked from one closed expression to the other. “Odd. You seem to know already what incidents I'm referring to."
"My brother is overly zealous on my behalf,” Vladei slid in smoothly. “Pay no mind. But tell me, have you been made comfortable?” He asked this like an innkeeper asks a guest he would rather be rid of, and quickly. “Rshan is not like Byzantur at all, I'm afraid. Not what you're accustomed to."
Liall gritted his teeth. “I am quite well cared for, thank you. My needs are few. I came because my mother summoned me. Nothing else could have induced me to return."
"Ah, then I take it you will be leaving us soon? After you have seen to your mother's business?"
"I will leave when I'm satisfied that all she wishes of me has been fulfilled. Not before."
"And if it proves impossible to accommodate the Queen?” Eleferi interjected.
Liall slid Eleferi a look that shut him up. “In case you haven't learned this yet, heed me: One does not say no to a queen."
Vladei continued to twist his rings. One, a thick gold band bearing a sapphire the size of a robin's egg, Liall recognized as once belonging Vladei's father, Lankomir. Vladei stared at Liall's hands in return, and saw that he wore no jewelry save the ring of State sent to him via the Minh courier. Vladei's shifting eyes lit on the leather necklace of two copper coins partially hidden beneath Liall's black collar.
"A strange token for a prince to wear,” Vladei commented.
Liall felt an urge to cover the coins with his hand, as if Vladei could dirty them somehow. He kept still. “It holds a meaning for me."
"Two worthless coins?” Vladei asked, suddenly sharp. “And you brought a Hilurin here to pollute our halls. Are you insane, to put the royal family in such danger?"
Liall almost allowed his temper to flare, and he forced himself to take a steadying breath. “You must not have heard, Vladei, and who can blame you? You have been occupied with affairs of state, and I commend you on your diligence. Let me inform you then: the Hilurin is my t'aishka” Liall fought to keep his voice low and even. “He is my t'aishka and his name is mine. His honor is mine. Of course, you did not know this, so we must let this unintended insult pass."
Deprived of this tack, Vladei took another. “They are our enemies. They stole the power of the Shining Ones and made them mortal."
"Nonsense!” Liall scoffed. “That moldy old legend. You can't possibly believe it."
"Melev believes it,” Vladei said, naming one of the Ancients of Fanorl Nauhin, a healer and a man respected almost as much as the queen. “They brou
ght our race down. Did Alexyin teach you in vain?"
"We brought our race down,” Liall corrected. “It was pride and cruelty that wasted the powers of the Shining Ones. As for myself, I am neither immortal nor magical, and so I do not care. It was very long ago and it has nothing to do with me."
Out of the corner of his eye, Liall spied Lady Shikhoza coming down the great lamp-lit hallway. Vladei, too watched her with his flat eyes. He had been in love with Shikhoza since she was a girl. She, for her part, had not loved him in the least, but Vladei had not known that. Neither had she loved Liall, but he had not known either. They had much more in common than pedigree, Vladei and him, though it did not endear them to one another.
One does not quarrel in front of court women, and Liall turned just as Shikhoza approached. He gave her a small bow, folding his arm over his waist in the Rshani fashion. Shikhoza, lady of Jadizek and Nau Karmun, with a lineage as venerable as the Queen she had once sought to be. Her beauty—like ice, but with none of its ability to change—was dimmed but still evident. Her hair was the palest gold, piled high on her head and held with pins of diamond and chalcedony. Below them her eyes, the lids painted with blue cosmetics like most women at court, were sharp chips of oyster gray, and her face was as carved and perfect as a statue. Far from vanishing, her looks had frozen around her, calcified by bitterness and disappointment into a mask of lifeless beauty.
Liall searched his feelings as he looked long at her, relieved that he felt nothing at all. He was not even angry with her.
Like all Rshani women, Shikhoza wore a tarica: a voluminous, long-sleeved dress that tied and laced quite tightly to a woman's shape to just under her breasts, and then fell in endless pleats and wide folds to her ankles. Walking, Rshani court women seemed to glide inside these capacious garments, endlessly graceful and stately. In her hand she held a small bit of silken embroidery stretched around a silver frame, a golden needle pinned through it.
"You called him t'aishka,” Shikhoza said, voice sliding out of her as smoothly as mist.
Liall had forgotten her voice, how wondrously fair it was, and was nettled that it had not aged the way her looks had.
"That is rare for a Byzan, even a Byzan concubine."
Liall bowed his head, showing respect for her station if not for her person. “Shikhoza."
She bent her head. “Nazheradei."
"He's not a concubine,” Liall continued smoothly. He wondered how many times he was going to have this conversation regarding Scarlet.
"Your slave, then. Or your servant."
"Neither. We met as adversaries and became friends. He is my t'asihka, my forever beloved, as you well heard."
"Heard but can scarce believe.” She laughed, a high, tinkling mirth, showing him the polished whiteness of her teeth. She declined to greet either Vladei or Eleferi, and Liall wondered at that. “What, are there no women across the sea?"
"There are indeed."
She had nothing to say to that. Perhaps she fears what my answer will be, Liall thought. “You still have your place at court,” he said, hiding his surprise.
"I do."
"I cannot imagine that the Queen has forgiven you."
"Oh, she has not,” Shikhoza said with emphasis. “She despises me as deeply as she ever did. But she needs me."
"She needs your title, Lady."
Shikhoza shrugged her shoulders within the voluminous satin. “They are one and the same. We hate each other, but between her crown and my lands, a king might be made."
Liall was all too aware that Vladei and Eleferi were listening. “And the name of that king?"
Shikhoza looked down at her handiwork—a small rendering of a swan—and her painted mouth curved in a small smile. “I remember when you called me t'aishka."
"I never called you that."
"No? Perhaps I imagined it, then. Young girls consider the t'aishka legend quite romantic, and I was very young, and much given to listening to superstition and foolishness."
The intended slight to his devotion to Scarlet did not anger Liall, but neither did he pity her. All Shikhoza had hoped for in life had come down to this: the maiden spinster, lady-in-waiting to an old Queen, a fractious and degenerate court, and nothing to do all day but spin plots and lies. He did not pity her, for spinning lies was what she was good at, but he did finally look at her, and she at him.
Sixty-three years it had been. He had never lost count. They had aged, the both of them, though Liall thought he looked the worse for wear. She was no girl anymore, no tender blossom ripe for plucking, but she was still beautiful. It made him sad, for there was no beauty in her eyes, no kindness, and not the least bit of softness. He had faced enemies in battle who met his eyes with less hatred.
Liall girded himself and offered her his arm to escort her to her station, which formerly had been inside the Queen's second tier chamber; the customary place for a lady of her high rank. Eleferi bowed properly, but Vladei only stepped aside in silence, trying to catch her eye, to get her to notice him. She lifted her chin, slid her arm smoothly in Liall's and glided past Vladei without a glance. Liall caught a glimpse of Vladei's expression as they passed, expecting to see him spitting mad, but Vladei gazed on Shikhoza with an expression of sorrow. Liall nearly stumbled in surprise. After all these years, to realize that his step-brother had a heart would take some getting used to.
Then they were away from his step-brothers and strolling toward the next set of doors, her hand clasping his forearm, and his hand placed over hers. It was formality only, but with his nerves so raw, it felt far more intimate.
"How was your journey?” she inquired. Her manner seemed changed when they were away from Vladei, and Liall recalled that she had always loathed the man.
"Four months of cold water, rats, and bad food."
"And you wanted me to go with you at one time. How do you think I would have fared out there, the mariner of a rough ship on the frozen sea?"
Liall thought it over. “You would have cut your hair and donned breeches, and been managing the crew with an iron hand within a week."
She laughed for real and her hand tightened on his arm. “Think you so? Well, I might have indeed. We will never know now. Still,” she gave him a fetching look “it would have been an adventure."
This woman had been at least partly to blame for Liall's exile, and it galled him to hear her painting the matter so differently from fact. He pulled away from her a little. “My departure from Rshan was no adventure, lady."
Her expression fell and that glass brow wrinkled. “No,” she intoned. “And lest you think me heartless, Nazheradei ... I do remember."
Spite he could deal with, but Liall did not know this repentant woman, and it bested him. “You did imagine many things, long ago, but I did once say that I loved you,” Liall confessed tiredly. “Yet that was before you poured poison into my brother's ear against me. You wanted us to fight. You wanted me to cast him down so you would be called Queen. Well, I did, but not in the way you planned. This is what your plotting has brought you to. Are you content?"
She looked again to her embroidery and traced the swan with the round, painted tip of her thumbnail. “I wonder,” she said slowly, as if the matter caused her much worry. “I wonder how much of your love for this Hilurin has to do with who he is, and how much of it has to do with how different he is from me."
The Queen's door opened and Liall could see Bhakamir, the Queen's aide, motioning him to come inside. Liall looked at Shikhoza and reminded himself that he had once intended to take this Lady as his wife. It made his words much less harsh than they would have been. Liall pushed her off his arm and returned her hand, not roughly, but with a firmness that said she would never have that place again.
"My lady,” he said. “You are correct on one count at least; he is nothing at all like you."
The King had called her sunya, his star, so the stories say, and Liall did not doubt them. Though her body had finally succumbed to the ravages of age and
infirmity, no one could doubt that Nadiushka, daughter of Lukaska, had once been a magnificent woman. She was still a magnificent Queen, but that was altogether different from being a woman.
Lindolanen and Nadiushka had married very young, two princes drunk with love and joy, and it had lasted all of three blissful years before he was killed on a snow bear hunt, torn in half by the beast's claws before his pain-mad horse dragged his blood over the snow. Nadei was too young to remember and Liall had still been in Nadiushka's belly. The Queen almost had the snow bear stricken from the Rshan coat of arms that day, but forestalled. She did do it, years later, after another tragedy involving the same type of beast struck the royal court again. The snow bear had ever been unlucky for his family. A curse, some say, though Liall did not believe in such things any more than he believed in magic.
Nadiushka was seated on a lesser throne made of dark wood and silver, set on a polished wooden dais with three steps that served as her informal audience chair. She tapped her slippered foot, indicating that Liall should sit upon the wide platform of the throne, up the steps and near her feet. Liall obeyed, and she regarded him searchingly.
"The man I married after your father died has died himself,” his mother said.
Liall had known this from the time he left Volkovoi. “I never much liked Lankomir,” Liall said casually, knowing that his mother shared the sentiment. Lankomir, Lindolanen's half-brother, was father to Vladei and Eleferi. Their mother had been a southern princess, now dead, and Lankomir had been an unpleasant, dull-witted man, greedy and prideful. Lankomir had, however, given Nadiushka a child: Cestimir, the boy whom she planned to make king.
"He is dead,” she repeated, seeming pleased to say it. “This you know. Now, what you do not know: you do not know that Cestimir is fit to be king. I have kept him close to me since his birth, and I have watched him, and he is worthy."