He said gently, “You still hold a thin tie, Kehy. You don’t feel it? I thought not. But I see it in you. You may not feel it now, slender as it must be, but nothing can take that from you. I hope it will be enough if you must call upon it.”
Kehera nodded, though she felt nothing now of Raëhemaiëth, nothing at all. She prayed to all the Fortunate Gods that he was right, that he was not just lying to her to be kind.
Her father nodded. Then he said, “Tiro.” It was not quite a question.
“Yes,” answered Tiro, a little shakily. He looked up, blinking, and then looked quickly and helplessly at Kehera. He opened his mouth, but closed it again without saying anything, because what was there to say, except this wasn’t his wish? And she already knew that.
Poor Tiro, who had never wanted the heir’s deep tie or to be king, and would now have to learn everything about being heir right now, at once.
Feeling sorry for her brother almost distracted Kehera from feeling sorry for herself. But not quite.
They returned to Liyè Cemeraiän’s house to make what other preparations could be made—few enough, so far as Kehera could tell. What possible preparations could there be for unexpected exile, with who knew what to follow once she set foot in Emmer? All the preparations that mattered were her father’s. Maybe he would share his plans with Tiro, but certainly not with her. Not anymore.
For her, there was only the long afternoon and then the night to get through, pent up in her room in the apartment set aside for her father and his household.
Kehera had loved her room in this house as a child: All the wood was carved and gilded and all the rugs and curtains and seat cushions dyed indigo and vermillion and deep purple. Now this extravagance somehow seemed to contribute to a haunting feeling of unreality. Eilisè moved quietly about, taking dresses and jewels out of the wardrobes and laying them out, deciding what Kehera should take with her. Kehera couldn’t bring herself to care about such small matters and did not watch. As the sun slid down lower in the west, she moved to the window and looked out over the garden instead. And farther than that. From this window, she could see over the garden wall and right down to the Imhar River, the wide expanse of water stretching out black in the gathering dusk. It was going to be long and dark, this night. It was going to feel endless.
She wished it would never end. Because in the morning, in the dark hour before dawn, she must cross the Imhar and let Hallieth Theraön Suriytaiän claim her like a prize, like the spoils of the war that her father would not now fight, not openly, because if he fought it openly now he could not win.
And she would have no one to help her in Emmer. Not even the firm sense of herself that had always, she knew now, actually been due to the presence of Raëhemaiëth.
Kehera hardly knew how she could bear it. Except that if she carried this through, Harivir might have a chance to win, later. So she had to trust her father to arrange everything, and bear the part appointed for her.
“I’ll go with you, of course,” Eilisè told her. She had been Kehera’s companion since they’d both been little girls; now she was closer to Kehera than anyone save Tiro. She had come to keep the night from being so lonely, and also to help Kehera choose what she would take with her.
But Kehera had never thought until that moment she might be saved from having to go alone. “Oh,” she said, and began to cry. Eilisè stopped, horrified, and hugged her. Kehera cried not with the vigorous sobs of unselfconscious childhood, but with a nearly silent gathering of tears. She fought the convulsive breaths that shook her.
“It’ll be all right,” said Eilisè urgently. “I’m sure it will, Kehy.”
“It’s just,” whispered Kehera, “it’s just I hadn’t thought till now that I won’t have you, either, in Emmer. No, I won’t,” she added fiercely. “How could I let you come? It’s too dangerous. Who knows what Hallieth Theraön intends? I can’t possibly take you with me.”
“Of course you can. How can you not?” Eilisè regarded her with exasperation. “Why make it harder for yourself than it has to be? If he’s to marry you, he can’t simply lock you in a dungeon or anything, and it would look very odd if he denied you ladies of your own. It’s my choice, isn’t it, if I want to risk it?”
“I can’t ask you to leave your family—”
“You haven’t asked, and I wrote my mother already. She’ll say I was right, not that I needed telling. You Raëhema! You always want to bear the weight of the world. It’s that Power of yours, I suppose, the memory of all those responsible, kind, patient kings in your blood, but you ought to have more sense, Kehy!”
Kehera looked at her uncertainly. “Well—”
“Now that’s settled, perhaps you could hold still for a second and let me finish laying out these gowns, and then you can tell me which ones you want to take.” Eilisè studied the pile on the bed with a critical eye.
“I’d be very glad if you did come,” Kehera admitted in a small voice.
“There!” said Eilisè briskly. “As if I’d stay behind! Now, I think this plain dress is what you need for traveling, but don’t you want to take this blue for later? It’s your most beautiful gown, Kehy, and all those tiny little opals at the hem make it plain you’re a princess and no mere lord’s daughter.”
“Whatever you think,” Kehera said meekly.
There was a quiet tap on the bedroom door, from someone who had come quietly right through Kehera’s reception hall and sitting room and breakfast room. Kehera was not surprised—indeed, she would have been surprised if that tap had not come. She glanced at Eilisè, who, nodding, moved to answer the summons.
It was Tiro, of course. He came to Kehera without a word, Eilisè slipping quietly out to leave them alone. His eyes looked bruised. His face was drawn with unhappiness. Kehera held out her hands to her brother and drew him down to sit on the edge of the couch beside her. She put her arm around him and leaned her head against his shoulder. He was taller than she was. He had got his growth more than a year ago, but it still surprised her, that she could lean against him and find him so tall. Her little brother. He had grown up.
She said gently, “You’ll be a good king, you know, Tiro.”
He shook his head, not answering. After a while he said, “There’ve been four times I know of where a king or queen or duke renounced his—or her—recognized heir and set the heir’s tie in somebody else. Twice the original heir tried to get the deep tie back later.”
“I don’t expect it worked.”
“No,” Tiro said, his voice muffled. “Or, it might have worked for Tamareìs’ Immariön. No one knows, because she died in the attempt and the next king of Kosir came from a cousin’s line. Tamareìs’s brother fought her for the tie, though. Or that’s what Kesenorel wrote, but there weren’t any witnesses. At least not that survived.”
“Ah.”
“They’re lucky it didn’t shatter all its bonds to its land and people and become a God, though at least the Immaör Power ought to make a Fortunate God if it ever does break its ties to men and its bonds with the land. Kosir’s lucky the Immariön line has always been responsible.”
Kehera nodded solemnly, although she was not able to worry just at the moment about such distant possibilities. Whatever the Immanent Power of Immaör might do at some possible day in the future, she knew Raëhemaiëth would never try to break its own ties to its people nor to Raëh nor to the Raëhema line. She didn’t care right now about anything that might have almost happened a long time ago in the heart of Kosir.
“Anyway, listen,” Tiro said earnestly. “A hundred thirty years ago, Secheier Maran Lerè, of the province that was then Ceroran, gave his tie to his cousin Luka Nouriy because he was so angry about the way his family treated Luka. But then later, after his mother finally died, Secheier tried to reclaim his tie, but he couldn’t just take it back, even though his cousin tried to give it back to him. The tie has followed Luka’s bloodline ever since, and Secheier’s children lived and died plain Marans.�
�
“How do you ever remember these things?” But Kehera wasn’t surprised. Tiro remembered practically everything he read, as long as he was interested. Though not much about subjects he disliked. She told him, “I won’t try to take back the heir’s tie, not if it might hurt you or Raëhemaiëth.” That was too solemn, so she tried to smile. “You’ll have to study law, you know. And etiquette.”
“No. Because even if you can’t take back the tie, you’ll be here. Father will get you away from Hallieth Suriytaiän. Or you’ll get away on your own. You’re stubborn, Kehy. You always get your own way in the end if you really want to. You’ll be fine. I know you will. So when I need to know about law or whatever, you’ll be here to tell me.”
Kehera let out her breath and nodded.
“Be stubborn,” her brother whispered. “Get your own way. Promise me.”
“I will. I promise.”
“Good,” Tiro said. “Good.”
“Help Father, Tiro. Don’t let him worry too much. Make sure he gets enough rest.”
“I’ll try.”
“And you. Don’t you worry too much either.”
Her brother laughed, not with much humor.
“Well, maybe you can worry a little,” Kehera conceded. “Stay with me tonight, Tiro, will you? I won’t sleep. We can play tiahel, if you like.” Her brother had made her the set when he was only twelve, carving the rods himself out of blackwood and pale maple and finding dice he knew she would like, of agate and jasper, no two alike. He had burned the symbols onto the pale rods and inlaid them in mother-of-pearl on the black ones—he had always been good at such fine work, though he had given it up when he turned fifteen and got interested in horses instead. But Kehera had never let anybody give her any other tiahel set, not even very fancy sets of griffin bone and wind-sparked obsidian.
“Yes,” Tiro said. And, with forced cheer, “Best two games out of three means I get your cream cake. Eilisè will get us cakes and sweet rolls, won’t she?”
“She will, but I’ll win your share,” Kehera told him, and looked around for the tiahel box.
Two hours before dawn was time enough for Kehera to choose what traveling dress to wear and for Eilisè to help her with the buttons and then put her hair up in an elaborate nine-stranded knot. Her father had ordered a repast to be served in the apartment. There was an abundance of sweet rolls. Neither Kehera nor Tiro ate any. Nor did their father. Kehera ate an egg and half a slice of plain bread so that her father wouldn’t worry so much. The food sat uneasily in her stomach. She pretended so hard that she was fine that she almost made herself believe it, though she doubted anyone else did.
She wondered what Hallieth Suriytaiän was actually like. She supposed he would be waiting for her on the other side of the Imhar. He would take her to Suriytè. She dreaded every step of the journey that would take her ever farther from Harivir and Raëh. She knew her father knew she was afraid. He could hardly fail to know it. But she didn’t admit it, and neither did he. Tiro was pale and quiet and said almost nothing.
After breakfasting by lantern light, everyone came out into the courtyard of the house to witness her departure—Liyè Cemeraiän and Soë and all their household. Everyone knew now that she was being surrendered to the mad Emmeran king. Everyone with any sense probably guessed that this was only an opening move in an unstated slow-motion struggle that did not—at the moment—involve armies or clashing swords. Armies and swords, Harivir could have faced. The silence in Cemerè was different.
The silence in the courtyard was deafening as Kehera mounted her gray mare. It was a silence that was somehow not broken by the sound of hooves on the paving stones and the jingle of the horses’ bits, though those ordinary sounds rang through the morning stillness. It was a silence of waiting. It was the silence before war, because no one thought that Kehera’s departure would end anything. Everyone knew it was one move among many still to come.
So they rode slowly through quiet Cemerè, Kehera with her father on one side and her brother and Eilisè on the other and a whole company behind. It was dark, but the road was lined with lanterns. Despite the clatter of the horses’ hooves on the cobbles, despite the many people who had come out to line the streets and witness her departure, the town echoed with silence. Even without the heir’s deep tie, Kehera could hear that emptiness. It stole her heart and at the same time strengthened her determination. She could never have let this happen to another Harivin province. Not if she could prevent it.
Then they left hollow Cemerè and rode down the slope toward the river, through the quiet encampment, and halted at last on the cracked clay flats where, but for the lingering drought, the river should have run. The ferry had been brought up, its ramp extended across the flats, so that she would not need to trail her skirts in the muddy water.
Kehera drew rein and sat still, gazing north. She could hear the river, washing against the ferry’s hull out where the water was deeper. The sky in the east was just beginning to lighten with the coming dawn, but from this distance she could see nothing but darkness on the other side of the river.
Kehera’s father dismounted. Coming to her side, he took her hands and looked earnestly up at her. She could make out nothing of his face but a pale blur in this predawn gray. She felt rather numb and distant and hoped he would not say anything kind or sorrowful, because she was afraid if he did she might cry, and she couldn’t bear to weep. She tried to tell her father this without words, with just the pressure of her urgent gaze, and he might have understood, because he didn’t say anything of the kind.
Instead, he said, “You won’t spot him, and it’s best if you don’t look for him. But I’m sending Quòn after you, just in case . . . well, in case.”
This was not what Kehera had expected. “Quòn?”
“If you need him, Kehy, he’ll be there.” Her father’s voice tautened. “I’m not sacrificing you, Kehy. I’m moving you onto the board, but I’ll not watch you fall to the Mad King. If—when—you need to get out of Suriytè, Quòn will get you out. He’ll do whatever is necessary to protect you, whatever we’ve arranged or haven’t arranged with Kosir. And we’ll go on from there, however the rods fall out afterward.”
Kehera nodded. She thought of the man she’d met in her father’s study and did not know quite what to make of him. But she was glad a man of her father’s would be there, in Suriytè, keeping an eye on her. She said, “Thank you.”
Her father lifted her hands in his, to touch his forehead. Then, releasing her, he gave her the gesture that wished for good fortune, hand to his heart. “May the Fortunate Gods watch over your road, my daughter, and may the Unfortunate Gods never notice you at all, and may your thin tie to Raëhemaiëth comfort you, even in foreign lands.” He stepped back.
Kehera swallowed. But the urge to cry seemed to have left her, thankfully. Her eyes felt dry and gritty, but no tears threatened. She was able to incline her head to her father with proper dignity, rein the mare around, and ride straight up the ramp onto the deck of the ferry. Her mare’s hooves thudded on the wood, sounding like the hollow drumbeat of a dirge. Elisè, impossible to dissuade, followed, and Kehera was grateful. She did not dismount, but kept her hands low, pressed against her gray mare’s neck, to hide their trembling. When the ferry pushed away from the shore and began its slow progress across the river, she did not look back.
3
On the sixteenth day of Fire Maple Month, Innisth terè Maèr Eänetaì, these seven years the Duke of Eäneté, absolute ruler of the largest and most powerful of all the western Pohorin provinces, stood with his hands resting on the railing of the upper gallery of the tallest tower of his great house, his eyes closed, and reminded himself that he was far too mature and sensible to murder the Irekaïn lord with whom the King of Pohorir had seen fit to burden him. Satisfying as that murder might be, it would not be practical. The king would certainly take exception.
In a sense, the province of Eäneté prospered despite its distance from the so
phistication and wealth of Irekay, capital of Pohorir. Irekay lay far away, a white city carved of the white stone of those rugged cliffs where the sea flung itself in constant assault against the far eastern coast of Pohorir. It was the western border of Pohorir that Eäneté guarded. The eastern and central provinces always benefited from the nearby wealth of Irekay, while more remote provinces received little in return for the taxes and tribute they sent to the capital.
In another sense, Eäneté prospered because of its remote location, far from the political maneuvering of the court. Not only were all the western provinces relatively untroubled by the king’s unpredictable whims, but also Eäneté controlled the Pohorin side of Roh Pass. Even in high summer, more than half of all trade goods to or from Harivir came through Roh Pass. When winter closed its icy teeth on the mountains, almost all traffic must come through Roh.
Of course Methmeir Heriduïn Irekaì, master of the Great Power of Irekay and King of Pohorir, knew this full well. The Heriduïn Irekaì kings were accustomed to both enrich themselves and keep Eäneté close at heel through the imposition of high taxes upon that trade. The Kings of Pohorir might not be able to rule the far-flung border provinces with as tight-drawn a rein as those that lay closer to Irekay, but they well knew how to curb any province that showed signs of becoming too wealthy or powerful. But first Methmeir Irekaì’s father and then Methmeir Irekaì himself had been a friend of Innisth’s father, and so for a generation no Pohorin king had showed any great inclination to check Eäneté’s prosperity. So Eäneté had done well in those years.
Now, however, here was Lord Laören of Irekay, newly arrived in Eäneté, sent by the king’s own hand. Innisth knew exactly what judgment Laören was expected to render: a judgment on the docility of the new Duke of Eäneté and on the strength of the Eänetén Power. Five years, six years, seven years since Innisth had become duke, and the king had not sent any man of his to Eäneté. Innisth had begun to believe that Methmeir Irekaì was too much taken up with his own affairs to be much interested in the provinces distant from his capital. He had been glad of it. He remembered the king from his one compulsory journey to Irekay, when his father had presented his heir to the king and the court. Innisth had been twelve, Methmeir Irekaì eighteen and very much a son of his father. The experience had left its scars, and while Innisth did not precisely fear the Pohorin king, he was far from willing to repeat that visit.
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