Red Country

by Kelso, Sylvia

  All too soon that play reached its end. I was just eighteen when my father, climbing Asterne’s hundred and fifty steps to watch them fly the kites on Air’s day, fell down with a terrible pain in his chest and died.

  I do not mean to say any more. He was my father, I loved him dearly. He was a good king, and he is dead.

  Nor shall I deal at length with the mourning, the funeral, the pyre, the solemn procession to lay his ashes with those of Harran’s previous heirs in the tomb at Asterne’s base. It seems now as if that time is separate; shut away behind the ponderous bronze-studded door that swings to at my back with its grinding thump! Life begins again on its other side.

  It begins as I look out over Saphar’s roofs, sleek bright red from the first winter rain, over the Resh stripped to tawny dark-stippled earth beneath the pruned stumps of vines, down to the loop of Azilien shining steely blue beneath the steely gray clouds, and the backs of my mother and two younger brothers receding slowly toward the royal apartments. As I feel the weight of the royal coronet on my brow, the swing of the royal crimson cloak against my skirts, and I think, It is over. The past is past. This is Now, and Now is mine.

  I was still the princess Sellithar, for tradition decrees that those already crowned keep the vice-regal title till they come of age, at twenty-one. It did not stop me hatching plans with infernal glee. A clean sweep, I wanted, harpers, door-holders, chamberlains, every crusted bastion of tradition gone. Kastir would help me. With his advice, I resolved, I would strip Everran’s monarchy down to the fact. Slough the ritual, the formalities, the rigid, pointless, fossil program for every moment of my day, and become a ruler, not a figurehead so hobbled in robes I could not even walk.

  * * * * * *

  Needless to say, it was easier to plan than to perform, for every cleansing meant a painful amount of maneuver, adjustment, resettlement of superseded retainers, arguments with irate traditionalists. Or wounded ones, which was worse. I had hardly managed to cancel the royal harper’s unquestioned right of entry to his sovereign’s private apartments when the Quarred embassy arrived.

  In the Quarred tradition they were, superficially, excessively polite. They had a “Note” in a huge parchment scroll bearing the seal of the Tingrith’s ram horns, but they did not ask me to demean myself by actually reading it. They grouped before my high seat in the audience hall in strict order of precedence, and the eldest, who had the longest beard and the largest cauliflower of a turban, recited what their government had said.

  Under the compliments and tautology, it boiled down to Quarred’s concern for a fellow Confederate, intimately linked by bonds of trust and border and trade, now deprived of its noble lord. Here followed an oblique glance at past military alliances and a long eulogy on my father, whose effect I overcame by mentally writing between the other lines. Quarred summered half its sheep in our Raskelf highlands. Wool was Quarred’s chief export, Estar paid weight for weight for it in gold. Their income was in jeopardy.

  Moreover, civil disturbance in Everran might embroil the Quarred shepherds, refugees would certainly cross the border, punitive expeditions might follow, it could come to open war. I was just eighteen, and worse still, female. It behoved them to secure their pastures, their border and their purses by forestalling trouble and backing the legitimate heir.

  “Well enough so far,” said Kastir, when we were alone in the royal presence chamber. “But not far enough. What more do you know of Quarred, princess?”

  I studied the thick crimson Quarred carpet which matched the rosewood paneling’s patina of age. It was made in Harran’s day.

  “The Confederacy is a balance,” I said, “and Everran is its fulcrum. Estar, Hazghend, Quarred, Holym. Whoever has Everran’s support can tip the balance. And Quarred has always wanted to rule the Confederacy.”

  “And so?”

  It was just like our old discussions, except that now the examples, and the consequences, would be real. I thought aloud to the ram horns on the big red seal.

  “And so the clever way is to arrive before Everran falls apart or any other Confederate takes us over, and offer me ‘protection’—in effect, annex me. Make Everran a province, and me a puppet queen.”

  He smiled his cold, keen smile. “You were right, princess. I could teach you to think like me.”

  So the embassy took back a note as flowery and euphemistic as their own, with grateful thanks for Quarred’s offer of support; promises, should need arise, to call on them first; and a query, with many delicate circumlocutions, on whether they wished to forego the Raskelf pastures that year. If, in your opinion, the flocks are in the slightest danger, we shall be more than willing to agree.

  At which Kastir smiled again and said, “The sweet way to say, if you badger me, I’ll tread on your toes. Deny you your pasture, which is more important than ambitions to lead the Confederacy. Quite right, princess. Aim low.”

  * * * * * *

  For the rest of winter I was busy traveling over Everran, and shearing away the business of tradition that had made those royal progresses as slow and conspicuous and predictable as the coming of the rains. I meant to be quick, unexpected, and anticipate my messenger’s word. There was pleasure in the achievement. By spring, there was greater pleasure in feeling the Resh-lords settle back into docility, like a team that has just, at the back of the mind, contemplated rebellion when they first feel a new hand on the reins.

  It was in spring that the Lyngthirans struck.

  They too had heard the news, Everran’s king dead in his prime, his heir an eighteen-year-old girl. They are nomads who move with the grass and the herds, and now a good season in Stiriand had brought them south to the banks of the Kemreswash, whence it is an easy step, after the floods subside, into Stiriand Resh. They came in force, five or six tribes’ worth of horsemen thrown across the river in a night, whisking back with the vineyards and grainfields alight behind them, the gold and silver in their saddlebags and the women tied across their saddle-bows, showing me, for the first time, that I was fettered by more than the past.

  “Why not?” I demanded of Kastir, who sat immoveable by the fireplace while I ramped about the audience hall. “I don’t have to wave a sword to lead an army! I’m the head, not the fist.”

  “Shall we consider the facts?” he said. “How far can you ride in a day?”

  “Forty—fifty miles, if I must!”

  “And the second day?”

  “The same!”

  “And the third?”

  We looked at each other. Facts are facts. They cannot be denied for delusion, or desire, or even pride.

  “I’ll be in the base camp,” I said.

  He studied the floor-tiles, rose and jade green, Harran’s harp superimposed on Everran’s shield and vine.

  “Can you use a sword?”

  “I can use a bow!”

  “And a shield? Could you use one of the big phalanx shields as they should be used, to push a man backward, knock in his teeth, stun him with a hit under the chin, break his kneecap?”

  “I shall be in the camp!”

  “A postulation, then.” He eyed the rosewood roofbeams. “The Lyngthirans circle to make a rear attack. One of their favorite tactics. If they strike the camp by night, in the melee, how will you fare? If you are killed, how will Everran fare?”

  Nerthor had inherited his father’s post of chamberlain. He came softly in with a fresh jug of wine to set on the heirloom table. When he had gone down the walkway, I looked out over Saphar to the azure and lime of sky and burgeoning vines, and said, trying to restrain anger, which clouds perception, trying to accept facts, “Very well. I stay in Saphar. Karyx can take command in Stiriand.”

  The son of my father’s general had grown up with me, a lithe, dark, raw-boned young man still low in the army hierarchy, but a brisk, clever, fiery cavalry officer. Too fiery for his own good. He threw troops after the Lyngthirans across Kemreswash, was led into a plains ambush, horses and riders lying flat in the grass in a
fold of ground, and had his forces massacred to the final man.

  He came to report the loss in person. After he left the audience hall, Kastir shook his head at me.

  I stared. Then I said, “Six hundred prime cavalry lost. A tragedy. A grievous blow to our army. A dangerous precedent for the Lyngthirans. He knows what he’s done.” I saw Karyx’s face, sallow, haggard, grief and shame bitten deep as if he had aged ten years overnight. “And if there were need to rub it in, it would be his father’s business, not mine.”

  Kastir shook his head again. Striving to flatten hackles he had lifted for the first time, I insisted, “He’s a good officer. Too good to cashier for one mistake he won’t repeat.”

  “Princess,” said Kastir very gravely, “have I not shown you, there are mistakes no ruler, for his own sake, can afford to forgive?”

  I waited a moment, since one should no more speak in anger than think in it. Then I said, “Thank you for your advice, Kastir.”

  He bit his lip. At last he replied, “Princess, I hear.”

  * * * * * *

  The few remaining palace back-biters relished what they chose to see as Kastir’s first reverse in his impudently assumed role of chancellor. Karyx returned north as Resh-commander, we increased the border garrisons, and for the rest of summer Stiriand was torn by a bitter little war. Hit-and-run raids, avoiding the garrisons to kill unarmed folk, damage the land, and cause losses among troops who could only chase the enemy fruitlessly back over the march, and then disengage. I did manage a garrison tour, which, if it left the troops unheartened, allowed me to see the situation firsthand. On the last night we lay in the keep of Dun Stiriand, the surly red border fort nearest the pass where Kemreswash heads; it was there the informer came to me.

  My first impulse was to hang him on the battlements forthwith. Justice prevailed. Do you beat the thrower, or the stone?

  When he had gone, I sent Nerthor and my escort-captain out, and Kastir came in with his smooth, stealthy tread.

  I said, “You knew about this.”

  He inclined his head.

  I was just cool enough to add, “Let me hear the reasons, then.”

  He raised his brows. “Surely, princess, the report is reason enough? Your southern Resh-lord has plotted a revolt. Tirs has never been noted for its fidelity. On past evidence such behavior was to be expected in a situation like this. An informer has given you time to act. I know you are unaccustomed to such methods. Estar is different. I used my experience, so that if events ran true to precedent you would not be taken unawares.”

  It was good reasoning. The facts supported him. There was no point in clinging to the outmoded ethics of a past which had scorned such tools. I said, “You were right. Tell them to saddle up.”

  Six evenings later I rode up to Maer Selloth, the Tirien citadel. No king had crossed Everran in less than a fortnight since Harran’s day, as Oxys the Resh-lord and I both knew, and the surprise was all I had planned. Standing face to face with him before the high seat which he had ceremonially vacated when I was announced, I told him what else I knew. I was angry, and this time saw value in revealing it.

  When we were upstairs in our hastily prepared apartments, Kastir said with his wry, cold smile, “You fight with all your weapons, princess. With weakness itself.”

  Startled, I said, “What do you mean?”

  He answered, “Look in the mirror there.”

  I had ridden in a plain gray habit with my hair plaited and twisted up under a soldier’s leather forage cap. The day’s ride had brought it down, to frame my face in a lion’s mane of tangled gold, a face still crimson with sunburn and wrath, so eyes that were normally just blue sparked fiercely as sapphires amid the golden knots and fiery skin and general overlay of dust.

  I cried in dismay, “I look like a Lyngthiran catamount!” But Kastir answered without a smile, real feeling in his voice.

  “On the contrary, princess. You look magnificent.”

  * * * * * *

  That settled the other Resh-lords along with Tirs, and for the rest of summer Everran was internally quiet. Only the raids went on. And presently Kastir’s informers began to produce disquieting news of unrest, deepest in Stiriand but present everywhere, of murmurs against this costly, ineffectual little war. End it, people were saying. Stop killing our sons for nothing. Make the country safe, as it used to be.

  “This has always happened,” I said indignantly to Kastir. “It’s nothing to do with me being a girl! We were only safe this last ten years because good seasons in Lyngthira kept them away. How can people not remember that?”

  Kastir smiled coldly and replied, “The people’s memory is short. It reaches to yesterday, but not the day before.”

  I thought a while. Then I said, “If I’m ridden with harpers, they may as well be some use.”

  So, summoning Zathar, I bade him send out his pestilent lore-keepers to sing the history of Everran in Everran’s ears, and teach them that today, not yesterday, was the norm. It seemed to do some good. At least, it contained discontent until the arrival of the Holym embassy.

  Holmyx are less polished than Quarreders. Their ten “delegates” in farmers’ shirts and harpoon spurs and high-heeled riding boots did not recite the contents of their “Note.” They simply handed it to me, announced, “We’ll take the answer,” and trooped off to the guest-quarters to wait.

  “So?”

  Kastir steepled his chin on his fingers above the delicate inlaid imlann-wood table that the first Sellithar had placed in the queen’s hall. The same blond wood shone in the walls. A flock of gweldryx flew apple-green and lavender among the mosaic floor’s smoky lavender terrian blooms. I looked at the “Note” and back to him.

  “Would I like financial help with my defense? Can Holym’s troops assist me directly? Support for a fellow Confederate . . . solidarity. . . . What they mean is, let us put you under an obligation, better still, in debt. And if we can get troops into Everran under pretext of alliance, you’ll have a hard time getting them out. Maybe so hard that we can manage a coup.”

  He nodded. “A sweet bait, princess. But you can see the hook.”

  So my note to Holym’s Scribe—I knew the real ruler of Cattleland—thanked him graciously for the offer of assistance, emphasized how sensible I was of his kindness, and politely assured him that Everran was still able to fend for itself.

  * * * * * *

  There was no time for planting trees that Earth-day, so I had deputized my mother and brothers. The boys were still too young to help me much, Sazan twelve, Haskar ten. In fact I hardly knew them, for they were outside my age group, boys, raised in a separate nursery, I had always had other pre-occupations. Yet when Kastir brought his newest information, I could not credit it.

  “Sazan? Haskar? It’s ridiculous! They couldn’t take the throne if they did get rid of me!”

  He watched me with his cold, colorless eyes. “They will grow.”

  “But. . . .”

  I stopped. He nodded. “They are boys. There are many highborn folk in Everran who,” he put it delicately, “wonder if a queen can rule alone. Who would be prepared to wait for a king.”

  It was nothing I did not know. It was nothing we had not discussed. I snorted and made the usual riposte. “And who would be Regent meanwhile? A Resh-lord? They’d sooner cut each other’s throats!”

  “Princess,” he spoke in reproof, “have you forgotten Holym? A wise ruler works from behind the throne.”

  “Very well, they install a puppet. But who?”

  He looked down. Then he said, “Queen mothers are notoriously reluctant to renounce power. Even the power of a figurehead.”

  I actually put a hand to my head. Everran, I thought in panic. Where has it gone? Eighteen months ago this was the strongest, safest nation in the Confederacy. Now it’s a quag, the people restive, the Resh-lords shaky, the neighbors threatful, and the royal family ready to turn on its sovereign. If they succeed? At best abdication, at worst assassination
or civil war. If they fail. . . .

  “No!” I cried. “I don’t believe it! Not Mama!”

  Kastir did not bother with placebos like, “There, there,” or, “Never mind” or, “Oh, princess, please don’t cry.” He merely waited till I blew my nose and put away the handkerchief. Then he slid a hand into the breast of his green retainer’s gown and spread the letters in a fan across the tabletop.

  When I finished reading, the little presence chamber had darkened, its crimson carpet and ruby rosewood dulled to the shade of old, dried blood. I stared a long time at the pile. There was no need for back reference. I knew the ringleader’s hand, I knew the names. I could build on the scaffolding they revealed, the plot so plausible, so inexorably probable. It was only the leader’s identity I could not accept.

  In mind’s-eye I saw my mother, a hethel-lord’s daughter from Meldene, tawny gold hair and gray eyes and the slim western build. They say Harran was from Meldene himself. I saw us going down to pour the wine and launch the terrian flower-boats on Water’s day, laughing together over family jokes, the confidences, the advice, then back and back to childhood, the embraces, the care and comforting, the love I had known behind me as surely as I could stand on Asterne and find rock under my feet. It was bitter, this betrayal, more bitter than her treason to Everran. That she could turn against me. That all these years she had secretly put my brothers first. That it had all been a sham, a counterfeit.