Across the hall, a middle-aged man, dressed in clothes making clear his station in the city government, opened the door of the room he was him and peeked out. He thought he had recognized the voice of one of the three men who had escorted the respectable young woman into her quarters, but clearly he had been mistaken. He closed his door again and glanced at the attractive young woman sitting against the opposite wall. He smiled at her, crossed the room to a low table crowded with bottles and cups, and poured something for himself.
“I thought,” he explained, “that it must be Lord Modum.”
“No,” the woman replied. “He’ll be occupied for another hour or so.” She looked at the calibrated water clock on a nearby shelf.
The city official chuckled. “You know the habits of your clients so well?”
“Men,” she told him, “have but three habits. And the only difference among them is the time involved with each. The matters we deal with here are usually quickly resolved. When they’re not, we notice. And those men pay!”
The city official laughed out loud.
“Get me another glass of wine, will you?” she asked.
He set down his own cup and filled her goblet, walked it to her, and took his time handing it to her so that his gaze might linger. She understood. She was a most attractive woman, dark-haired as all easterners were, and dressed in extremely fine clothes that accented the swell of her breasts and bared the shapeliness of her long legs.
“Thank you, Count Biro.”
“Thank you.” He returned to his own goblet, sipped, and seated himself in his cushioned chair. For a moment, he delighted in the intoxicating effects of his drink and the beautiful woman combined with the aroma of the curative, incense-like minth leaves burning in a corner stand. Then he asked, “So—you’re quite serious about this pleasure barge of yours?”
She nodded succinctly. “They should be finished renovating that old galley in a week or less. Then, we start our sail between here and Aparu. A very pleasant two weeks, Count Biro, if you can afford it.”
“You’re quite the businesswoman, aren’t you? All of your payments made?” He was, of course, referring to the necessary bribes.
“You’re the last.”
“You are doing well, then, to set sail so quickly. Isn’t Lady Sapima upset with you?”
“Why should she be? She has twelve women working here; I’m abducting only two of them, and I’m paying her well for them. And I’ve two young girls and a beautiful little boy waiting for the start of the ship. It’s a small boat, but it’ll provide all the services required.”
“But you haven’t even been in Abustad a month!”
“Oh, I’ve been in Abustad before, and I’ve made Lady Sapima’s acquaintance, too. But I was wealthy in Erusabad. Imagine, Lord Biro, the travels I’ve been on.”
Biro shook his head, marveling at her ingenuity, her self-assurance and experience. “And so young,” he commented. “You’re a remarkable woman, Assia.”
She lifted her glass to him as though in a toast and grinned. “I agree!”
Biro sighed and leaned back in his chair, set aside his cup and breathed heavily again, then closed his eyes. He was exhausted. The day had been one long argument with his partners, and now it had been necessary to bring Modum, a man of real authority, to this whorehouse so that the “transfer of necessary funds” (in his honor’s delightful phrase) could be accommodated before the first of the month—the collections from whore masters and pimps channeled into the city coffers and mislabeled in the books as taxes or fines or other legal appropriations. There was no joy in such things; the life of a politician was the life of a frog, hopping constantly from rock to log, balancing so as not to fall into the swamp, devouring anything just to stay alive, and never certain if the next rock or log might tip to send you under or into the sharp mouth of some hungry fish. Life was a series of crises that could always become opportunities, and of strokes of fortune that invariably turned into unneeded troubles. Such was the wheel of business, and of life.
Ah, but the wine this evening had been excellent, the aroma of the incense a sedative, and the company of a beautiful woman—even if only for conversation—a thing to be savored.
Assia’s good humor left her, however, as she watched Biro and realized that he was falling asleep. The fool. All of them were fools. She loathed the touch of them, despised the sight of them, and wanted only to get away from them, and that as soon as possible.
And it would be soon, now. Soon.…
“There is much gold here—use it for yourself, Assia. Buy a house, hire servants, employ a physician. Please.”
The day after Thameron left, Assia realized that she would never see him again, truly felt it, knew it, and so had decided quickly, spontaneously—and bitterly—to take the gold he had given her to transform her life. The ship…the bribes…Lady Sapima, under whose roof she had once tried to escape from her father—all of them, paid and paid well in gold, the only thing of value they recognized.
As for herself and what she valued—she would never see Thameron again.
Feeling condemned because she had lost him, regained him, and then lost him once more, Assia had wandered Abustad’s streets all night on the day that he left, had wandered thoughtfully until she resolved to borrow some of Thameron’s strength and not run away from herself any longer, not degrade herself any longer, but take what he had given her and do for herself what no one had done for her, ever. She had no one, and she truly had been alone her whole life. Was that bondage, having no one and wanting someone, or was it freedom? She had returned that night to Lady Sapima’s, paid her in gold for an unsoiled bed, and lain all night, still thoughtful.
Motifs of injustice and arbitrary cruelty had marched through her mind in an army of phantoms. Her memory became clogged with reminiscences of sitting in a muddy alley in the middle of winter, of watching stars at night from a campfire in an army swamp, of seeing her father murdered in a sharp and sudden tavern brawl. The images nearly suffocated her. At last she had fallen asleep, dreaming herself still in love with Thameron and hearing the beating of his heart on a long ago, rainy afternoon. And when she had awakened in the warm morning, it was as though she had died in her hot sleep and been reborn with the new daylight.
Now Assia was waiting for her pleasure barge to be completed. She had transacted her business with Biro and the others the way business ever is accomplished, and what did that matter to her? Money was rose petals, nothing more, and love a phantom—sought on an afternoon or in a shadowed alley, sated, and then forgotten, put away to fade like scribbled poems or to dry like any puddle left on the ground.
Emotions were vicious, and promiseless.
One’s lover could be a sorcerer, or one’s father, or an animal. What did it matter?
To approach life earnestly, or to take seriously its offers of justice or reward or success or achievement, was to let oneself be duped and defeated before the contest even began. All Assia wished to do now was to set sail on her barge with enough smiling whores and pretty children to make the venture worthwhile, and in the company of paying aristocrats with purses sufficient for their vices, so that she might recline on deck the day long, listen to music and simpers and whines, seduce herself with fine wines, and watch the waves and the sky fade into one another on a horizon she could never hope to reach.
* * * *
In a small village a few leagues north of Hilum, Asawas noticed a patrol of soldiers, bearing the city insignia of Hilum, leading among their horses a disheveled man dressed in rags, his wrists bound by manacles and a chain. When the troop paused at a roadhouse in the main street of the village to water their horses and to refresh themselves, a small crowd collected around the guards standing by the prisoner. Asawas joined the crowd.
As the whispering and the gesticulating grew into a general noise, the prophet stepped forward and politely asked one of the soldiers, “Why is this man your prisoner?”
The officer sneered i
n disgust. “He’s a murderer. Raped a ten-year-old girl who was—” he tapped his head “—and then he stabbed her and strangled her. Does that satisfy your curiosity?” He addressed the crowd generally. “Does that tell all of you what you want to know?”
Some of them there uttered insults in low voices. But Asawas said to the officer, “Let me speak with him.”
The priest’s eyes were so merciful, and his attitude clearly so accepting of the situation, that the sergeant relaxed. Under his watchful stare, Asawas stepped ahead until he was standing directly before the murderer.
“Why,” he asked quietly, “did you do this?”
The prisoner showed him eyes full of hate. “Leave me alone!”
But Asawas continued to stare at the man so that the murderer finally had to turn his eyes away. “Why did you do such a thing?”
The prisoner grinned foully and his eyes widened. “The gods told me to do it!” he spat.
Asawas shook his head. “No…no. God did not ask you to do this. Do you suffer so much in your heart, son of your mother, that you must make another suffer? Must you cause pain when there are so many in this world who would gladly help you relieve your own pain?”
The murderer stared at Asawas, a hint of astonished fright in his eyes. The sergeant stepped forward, and, out of respect and not wishing to manhandle a wandering priest but feeling it necessary to intervene, said, “Please, now, that’s enough.”
But Asawas ignored him. He continued to stare into the prisoner’s eyes as he reached out and took the murderer’s raw, manacled hands into his own and held them. The prophet’s hands were warm. “Are these the hands that committed this crime?” he asked, almost in a whisper “Are these the hands that held her? That ripped the clothes from a screaming child? The hands that pushed her and struck her? That stabbed her and choked the life from her? Are these the hands? Look at me, man of anguish.”
The prisoner could not meet Asawas’s awesome gaze, but inexorably, although he tried to watch the ground, his attention was pulled back to robed man’s strength.
“Are these the eyes that watched while the hands did these things? Is that the brain, inside you, that conceived these things, that unbalanced all that you have seen and heard and learned in this world? Is this the brain that saw only one thing, that believed only one thing? Man…why did you do this?”
The murderer was trembling; his hands shivered inside Asawas’s, his arms shook, and his eyes, fixed on the prophet’s, stared deeply into the vision as though it were not possible to do otherwise. “She—wanted me—to…,” he whispered.
Then he fell forward and dropped to his knees as Asawas released him. The murderer lifted his chained hands to his face and sobbed heavily, beating the iron manacles against his forehead.
“I am in pain!” he howled. “I hurt inside, I hurt! She screamed at me…she bit me…she made me do it, she asked me to! I hated her and she knew I hated her and she was like an animal and it made me like an animal! I was afraid! I was so afraid! I had no life! I’m afraid of shadows! I’m afraid of noises. I heard my own heart beat, it sounded like thunder, but no one else heard! Everyone thought I was a monster! I became a monster! I could not sleep! My mind burned, my ears were clogged with sounds! God told me to hurt her! She walked by my house every day and I hurt, I was in pain, she was a stupid animal and I knew she hated me!”
On and on he railed, sobbing and moaning, until he collapsed into the dusty road and groveled there, whimpering and crying, still beating his head with the iron manacles.
The sergeant observed all this with astonishment. As his men returned from the roadhouse and hurried, incredulous, to see what had happened, the sergeant growled to Asawas, “Priest! What have you done to him? What have you done to my prisoner?” He was angry, and he was frightened that this spectacle would prevent him from returning to Hilum with the murderer intact.
To the officer’s red-suffused face, Asawas answered: “I showed him God, for the one true god is within him, not without him, not apart from him. I showed him why he was wrong to succumb to his fears, why he should have asked for help from the world rather than try to hurt the world in his pain. Now he understands. He understands that he hurt the young woman so that he could hurt himself much more—much more.”
The sergeant’s face screwed into a puzzled, severe expression. He comprehended none of this. Nodding quickly to several of his men nearby, he gestured, and they retrieved the sobbing prisoner, mounted their horses, and continued to march him down the road, away from the village.
The murderer’s sobs carried back, above the sounds of the horses’ hoofs. The sergeant, looking back, stared in wonder at Asawas until, at last, he reined his horse about and followed his men down the road in a trail of brown dust.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Adred leaned forward and studied the wood grain of the table top beneath his elbows for signs of symbolic significance (a hidden number, or a hidden image of some sort, anything would do). Then he decided impulsively that he had dallied long enough and had best be returning to the palace.
Just as he considered it, he looked up and saw Omos walking into the tavern. Adred waved to him and pushed back his chair as the young man came over.
Adred asked him, “Anything wrong?”
“Galvus wanted me to find you, that’s all. He’d like you to come back.”
“Cyrodian under lock and key?”
“Yes,” Omos nodded. “They have him in the prison.”
Two drunks at the next table quieted and looked at them.
“Didn’t cause any trouble, did he?”
Omos shook his head. “He didn’t say a word, Adred. He didn’t do—anything.”
Adred thought about that as he moved to his feet. “That’s very surprising. All right. Let’s get back.”
The two drunks were now staring at them, thoroughly intrigued.
“Hard to believe that he didn’t create a commotion when they brought him in,” Adred remarked again. “He’s such a—”
“He’s changed,” Omos told him as they made their way into the street. “That’s what Galvus said. He tried to speak with him, but his father wouldn’t say anything to him. But Galvus said he looks different.”
“Different how?”
“Prince Cyrodian never had white hair, did he?”
Adred stopped and stared at Omos. “White hair?”
“His hair is white.”
“Cyrodian’s?”
“Yes.”
“What—the hell is it? Some kind of disguise?”
“No. It’s—his hair. It turned white.”
It was only three blocks to the palace, but Adred nearly ran to get there.
* * * *
Abgarthis was just crossing the cavernous main foyer, with its staircases and fountains and statues, as Adred and Omos came in. Adred called to him, and the minister turned and showed him a questioning look. “Where’d you disappear to?”
Adred shrugged. “I thought it might be better if…I weren’t here.”
“Orain was asking about you.’
“Oh.”
Abgarthis turned and began walking toward a stairs that led to the second floor.
“Is she up there?” Adred asked him.
“No one,” Abgarthis replied, reading his mind, “is permitted to speak with Cyrodian yet. He is heavily guarded.”
“And Elad?”
“In session with Captains Mirsus and Uvars and representatives from the Imperial Army.”
“The army isn’t going to fight him on this, is it?” Adred asked.
“That is precisely what Elad wants to ascertain.”
“Abgarthis, are you upset with me?”
Clearly he was; or at least the elder was upset with whatever tension or drama had welcomed Cyrodian’s arrival. The three of them reached the second floor landing—a loggia that looked down upon the vast foyer—and Abgarthis did not pause but led the way around the low wall toward another stairs leading t
o the third floor.
“I’m getting too old for this nonsense,” he complained, pulling back his robe as he took the steps. “My knees sound like brittle wood.…”
Adred, behind him, asked, “What’s this about Cyrodian having white hair?”
“It’s true,” the minister panted. “Amazing, but true.”
“And he won’t tell anyone why?”
“He hasn’t said a word to anyone yet; not one word. Perhaps—he’s missing his tongue.”
Adred was surprised by this remark: it was deliberately cruel and meaningful, and its implication was not lost on him. Abgarthis was indeed in a grim mood.
They reached the third floor, and the elder marched down the main corridor with Adred and Omos following. Abgarthis gestured toward Orain’s door. “I believe she’s in there.”
Adred waited as Abgarthis crossed the hall to Galvus’s chamber. The minister nodded to the Khamar on duty and entered, followed by Omos. Both the outer and inner doors of the apartment had been left open, so Adred, as he stood in the hallway, caught a glimpse of Galvus in his open sitting area as he rose to greet the minister.
“Elad requests your presence,” came Abgarthis’s dim voice.
Galvus made no reply but followed him out into the corridor. The prince glanced briefly at Adred as he passed; there was a strong look in his eyes.
Adred watched them disappear down the stairs. Whatever he had wanted to talk with him about, whatever the reason Galvus had sent Omos to fetch him, it would have to wait, now.
Adred nodded to the Khamar outside Orain’s apartment, entered the anteroom, and knocked on her door.
* * * *
While Omos went to spend the early afternoon in the library, Galvus and Abgarthis entered the High Council Chamber as Elad was speaking sternly to Captains Mirsus and Uvars and the half dozen councilors affiliated with the Imperial Army. “And we have the testimony of his co-conspirators— Lord Umothet and the others executed last winter—so there is no need to go to the pretense and expense of a prolonged trial. I want that understood.”
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