The Lions of Al-Rassan

by Guy Gavriel Kay

  For all its pleasures and satisfactions there had been unexpected stresses to this life away from home, beyond the ones that might have been predicted. Perhaps, thought Jehane, it wasn’t such a bad thing that this notorious Carnival was coming, when no one but Mazur ben Avren would know for certain who she was. An edge of excitement came with that thought, and, inevitably, some anxiety.

  It would have been nice to have Nunaya to talk to today. Nunaya understood more about men than anyone Jehane knew.

  Unaware that she was doing so, she gave her characteristic small shrug and walked on. She wasn’t good at meandering. She walked too briskly, as if there was a pressing engagement awaiting her and she was late for it.

  She was twenty-eight years old, and nearing the moments that would mark her life forever.

  First, though, passing along a quieter laneway, she glanced into an open doorway and saw someone she knew. She hesitated, and then, in part because she hadn’t spoken privately with him since learning the tidings of Sorenica, Jehane walked in to where Rodrigo Belmonte stood alone, his back to the doorway, fingering samples of parchment in a scribe’s shop.

  He was concentrating on what he was doing and didn’t see her enter. The shopkeeper did, and came out from around his counter to greet her. Jehane motioned him to silence. The man smiled knowingly, winked and withdrew to his stool.

  Why, Jehane wondered, did all men have that same smile? She was irked by the shopkeeper’s assumption and so her words when she spoke were cooler than she’d meant them to be.

  “And what will you use this for?” she asked. “Ransom demands?”

  Rodrigo was another difficult man to surprise. He glanced back and smiled. “Hello, Jehane. Isn’t this beautiful? Look. Gazelle skin parchment, and sheepskin. And have you seen the paper this splendid man has?” The scribe beamed. Rodrigo took two steps towards another bin and lifted, carefully, a creamy scroll of flax paper.

  “He has linen, as well. Come see. And some of it dyed. Here’s crimson. That would do for ransom notes!” He grinned. There was unfeigned pleasure in his voice.

  “More money for Cartada,” Jehane said. “The dye comes from the valley south of them.”

  “I know that,” said Rodrigo. “But I can’t begrudge it to them, if they make something so beautiful with it.”

  “Would the esteemed Captain wish to purchase some of the linen, then?” the merchant asked, rising from his stool.

  “The Captain cannot, alas, indulge himself in anything so extravagant,” Rodrigo said. “Even for ransom notes. I’ll take the parchment. Ten sheets, some ink, half a dozen good quills.”

  “Will you wish to avail yourself of my own services?” the man asked. “I have samples of my writing for you to view.”

  “Thank you, no. I’m sure it is impeccable, judging from the taste you display in your materials. But I enjoy writing letters when I have the leisure, and people claim they can decipher my hand.” He smiled.

  His spoken Asharic, Jehane thought, had always been excellent. He might have been a native, though unlike Alvar and some of the other northerners, Rodrigo had maintained his style of dress. He still carried his whip in his belt, even when he walked out, as now, without a sword.

  “Are they really for ransom notes?” she asked.

  “To your father,” he murmured. “I’ve tired of having a physician who’s even sharper with me than Laín is. What will he give me for you?”

  “Laín?”

  “Your father.”

  “Not much, I fear. He also thinks I’m too sharp.”

  Rodrigo took a silver coin from his purse and paid the man. He waited for his purchases and accepted his change, counting it.

  Jehane walked out with him. She saw him assess the street, instinctively, and note the presence of Ziri in a doorway halfway down. It must be odd, she thought suddenly, to have a view of the world that made such appraisals routine.

  “Why,” he asked, beginning to walk east, “do you think you are so astringent towards those who genuinely like you?”

  She hadn’t expected to be immediately in this sort of conversation, though it jibed with where her thoughts had been going before.

  She gave her quick shrug. “A way of coping. You all drink together, brawl, train, swear at each other. I have only my tongue, and a manner with it, sometimes.”

  “Fair enough. Are you having trouble coping, Jehane?”

  “Not at all,” she said quickly.

  “No, really. You’re a member of my company. This is a captain’s question, doctor. Would you like some time off duty? There will be little chance once the season changes for good, I should warn you.”

  Jehane bit back a quick retort. It was a fair question. “I’m happiest working,” she said at length. “I wouldn’t know what to do with time away. It wouldn’t be safe to go home, I don’t think.”

  “Fezana? No it wouldn’t,” he said. “Not this spring.”

  She picked up on the intonation. “It is coming soon, you think? Will Badir really send the army west?”

  They turned a corner, walking north now. The crowds were thinning out, nearing midday. The lake was ahead of them and the curved arms of the walls, reaching out over the water. Jehane could see the masts of fishing boats.

  Rodrigo said, “I think a number of armies will be moving soon. I believe ours will be one of them.”

  “You are being careful,” she said.

  He glanced at her. Grinned suddenly beneath the thick moustache. “I’m always careful with you, Jehane.”

  She left a silence, not responding. He went on, “If I knew more for certain I’d tell you. Laín is quite sure this rumored gathering of all three northern kings will lead to one army coming down. I doubt it, myself, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be three Jaddite kings riding, each with his own little holy war.” His tone was dry.

  “And where,” she asked, stopping by a bench outside a large warehouse, “would that leave Rodrigo Belmonte of Valledo?” It was a trait of hers: when uncertain she tended to be most direct. To cut through, like a surgeon.

  He put a booted foot on the stone bench and set down his package. He gestured and she sat. There was a plane tree for shade. It was warmer now, with the sun high. She caught a glimpse of Ziri perched on a fountain rim, playing with his knife, looking for all the world like an apprentice off duty for an hour, or dawdling on the way back from an errand.

  Rodrigo said, “I have no easier answer to that than I did in the winter. Remember, ibn Khairan asked me the same thing?”

  She did remember: the morning she had nearly died, with two small boys who’d committed no sin other than to be the half-brothers of a king.

  “Would the money you are earning here truly come before loyalty to Valledo?”

  “Put that way, no. There are other ways to put it, Jehane.”

  “Tell me.”

  He looked at her, the grey eyes calm. Very little ruffled him. It almost made you want to try. But this man, she thought suddenly, spoke to her exactly as to a trusted officer. No condescension, no complacency. Well, almost none. She wasn’t sure he teased Laín Nunez in the same way.

  “Should loyalty to my own idea of honor outweigh a duty to my wife and the future of my sons.”

  There was a breeze now, nearer the water. Jehane said, “Will you explain that?”

  “Laín and Martín are both afraid we might miss a real chance, being exiled this particular year. They’ve been urging me to petition Ramiro to allow me to return and then break my contract here if he does. I’ve chosen not to do so. There are some things I won’t do.”

  “Which? Break a contract or petition for return?”

  He smiled. “Both, actually. The second more than the first. I could return my salary, I certainly haven’t spent it. But Jehane, think about this. The larger point. If Valledo moves south through the tagra and besieges Fezana, what men do you think Ramiro will give land to, should he succeed?” He looked at her. “Do you see?”

 
Being quick, and her father’s daughter, she did. “You could be riding around Ragosa chasing bandits for a salary when there are kingdoms to be won.”

  “Not quite kingdoms, perhaps, but something substantial, certainly. Much more than a salary, however generous. So, you tell me, doctor? Do I owe my two boys a chance to be the heirs of, say, the king’s governor of Fezana? Or of a tract of newly conquered land between there and Carcasia, with permission to build a castle?”

  “I can’t answer that. I don’t know your boys.”

  “Doesn’t matter. They are boys. The question is, what should a man strive for, Jehane? Honorably?” His eyes were direct and even a little intimidating now. Ser Rezzoni used to have a look like that sometimes. She tended to forget, until reminded, as now, that Rodrigo was a teacher, besides being one of the most feared fighting men in the peninsula.

  “I still can’t answer,” she said.

  He shook his head, impatient for the first time. “Do you think I go to war and kill, order surrendering foes to be slain, women burned alive—I have done that, Jehane—out of some simple-minded battle-lust?”

  “You tell me.”

  She felt a little cold now, in the shade. This was not what she’d expected from a morning walk through the city.

  “There is pleasure in warfare, yes.” He was measuring his words. “I would never deny that. For good or ill, I feel most alive in the presence of death. I need danger, comradeship, pride of mastery. The chance to win honor, glory, even fortune—all of which matter in this world, if not in Jad’s Paradise of Souls. But it takes me away from those I love and leaves them exposed to danger in my absence. And surely, surely, if we are not simply animals that live to fight, there must be a reason for bloodshed.”

  “And the reason is? For you?”

  “Power, Jehane. A bastion. A way to be as secure as this uncertain world allows, with a chance to build something for my sons to hold on to after I die.”

  “And you all want this? This is what drives you?”

  He thought about it. “I would never speak for all men. For some the sweet excitement is enough. The blood. Some do kill for the love of it. You met some of that sort at Orvilla. But I’d wager . . . I’d wager that if you asked Ammar ibn Khairan he would tell you he is here in this city because he hopes to govern Cartada for King Badir before summer’s end.”

  Jehane stood up abruptly. She resumed walking, thinking hard now. Rodrigo collected his small package and caught up, falling into stride beside her. They walked in silence past all the warehouses until they came to the end of a long pier and stood above the blue water. The fishing boats were being decorated for Carnival. There were lanterns and banners in the riggings and on the masts. The sun was overhead now; few people were about in the middle of the day.

  “You can’t both win those things, can you?” she said finally. “You and Ammar. Or not for long. Ramiro can’t conquer Fezana and hold it if Badir takes Cartada and holds it.”

  “They could, I suppose. But no, I don’t think both things will happen. And certainly not if I stay here.”

  He was not a vain man, but he knew his own worth. She looked up at him. He was gazing out at the water.

  “You do have a problem, don’t you?”

  “As I told you,” he said quietly. “There will be armies moving soon, and I don’t know what will be the result. Also, you may have forgotten, but there is another set of players.”

  “No, I haven’t,” said Jehane. “I never forget about them.” Out on the lake one late boat was turning now, white sails bright in the sun, heading back to harbor with the morning’s catch. “Will the Muwardis allow your people to begin conquering in Al-Rassan?”

  “Re-conquering, we say. But no, I doubt they will,” said Rodrigo Belmonte.

  “Will they come too, then? This summer?”

  “Possibly. If the northern kings do.”

  They watched the gulls swoop and dart above the water. White clouds, swift as birds, raced by overhead.

  Jehane looked at the man she was with.

  “This summer ends something then, doesn’t it?”

  “We could say that every year each season ends something.”

  “We could say that. Are you going to?”

  He shook his head. “No. I have felt for some time we are nearing a change. I don’t know what it will be. But it is coming, I think.” He paused. “Of course, I have been wrong about such things.”

  “Often?”

  He grinned. “Not very, Jehane.”

  “Thank you for your honesty.”

  He continued to look at her. The direct gaze. “Pure self-protection, doctor. I dare not dissemble with you. You may have to bleed me one day. Or cut off a leg.”

  She realized that she didn’t like thinking about that.

  “Have you a mask for the Carnival?” she asked, inconsequentially.

  He smiled again, crookedly. “Actually, I do. Ludus and Martín, who like to think they are amusing, bought me something elaborate. Perhaps I’ll wear it, to humor them, and walk about early for a while, but I don’t think I’ll stay out.”

  “Why not? What will you do? Sit in a blanket by the fire?”

  He lifted the small parcel he carried. “Write letters. Home.” He hesitated. “To my wife.”

  “Ah,” said Jehane. “Stern duty summons. Even during Carnival?”

  Rodrigo colored slightly, for the first time she could ever remember, and looked away. The last fishing boat was in now. The sailors were unloading their catch.

  “Not duty,” he said.

  And Jehane realized then, belatedly, something important about him.

  He walked her home. She invited him in for a midday meal, but he declined, graciously. She ate alone, fish and fruit, prepared by the cook Velaz had hired for them.

  Thoughtfully, she went to look in on her patients later in the day, and thoughtfully she came home at twilight to bathe and dress for the banquet at the palace.

  Mazur had sent jewelry for her, another generous act. It was a notoriously elegant occasion, she had learned, the king’s banquet on the eve of Carnival. Husari had presented her with her gown, crimson dyed, edged in black. He had flatly refused payment—one argument she had lost, resoundingly. She looked at the gown in her room. It was exquisite. She had never worn anything like it in her life.

  The Kindath were supposed to wear blue and white only, and without ostentation. It had been made clear, however, that for tonight—and most certainly for tomorrow—such rules were suspended in King Badir’s Ragosa. She began to dress.

  Thinking about Husari, she remembered his speech of the morning. The pompous, lofty style of a mock-scholar. He had been jesting, he said.

  But he hadn’t been, or not entirely.

  At certain moments, Jehane thought, in the presence of men like Husari ibn Musa or young Alvar, or Rodrigo Belmonte, it was actually possible to imagine a future for this peninsula that left room for hope. Men and women could change, could cross boundaries, give and take, each from the other . . . given enough time, enough good will, intelligence.

  There was a world for the making in Esperaña, in Al-Rassan, one world made of the two—or perhaps, if one were to dream, made of three. Sun, stars and the moons.

  Then you remembered Orvilla, the Day of the Moat. You looked into the eyes of the Muwardis, or paused on a street corner and heard a wadji demanding death for the foul Kindath sorcerer ben Avren, who drank the blood of Asharite infants torn from their mothers’ arms.

  Even the sun goes down, my lady.

  Rodrigo had said that.

  She had never known a man like him. Or no, that was not quite so. One other, met on the same terrible day last summer. They were like a bright golden coin, those two, two sides, different images on each, one value.

  Was that true? Or did it just sound true, like the words of one of those pedagogues Husari mocked, all symmetry, no substance?

  She didn’t know the answer to that. She missed Nunaya and th
e women outside the walls of Fezana. She missed her own room at home. She missed her mother.

  She missed her father very much. He would have liked to have seen her looking as she did now, she knew. He would never see her again, never see anything again. The man who had done that to him was dead. Ammar ibn Khairan had killed him, and then written his lament. Jehane had been near to tears, hearing that elegy, in the palace where they were dining again tonight, in a room with a stream running through it.

  It was very hard, how many things in life you never discovered the answers to, no matter how much you tried.

  Jehane stood before her seldom-used looking glass and put on Mazur’s jewelry. She stayed there, looking at herself, for a long time.

  Eventually, she heard music approaching outside, and then a knocking at the door downstairs. She heard Velaz going to answer. Mazur had sent an escort for her; strings and wind instruments, it sounded like. She had made him feel guilty last night, it seemed. She ought to be amused by that. She remained motionless another moment, staring at her image in the glass.

  She didn’t look like a doctor serving with a military company. She looked like a woman—not young with the extreme freshness of youth, but not so old, either, with quite good cheekbones and blue eyes accentuated now by paint and Mazur’s lapis lazuli at ears and throat. A court lady, about to join a glittering company at a palace banquet.

  Looking at the figure in the glass, Jehane offered her small shrug. That, at least, she recognized.

  The mask, her real disguise, lay on the table beside the glass. That was for tomorrow. Tonight, in the palace of King Badir, however altered she might seem, everyone would still know she was Jehane. Whatever that meant.

  Thirteen

  Were you pleased?” the king of Ragosa asked his chancellor, breaking a companionable silence. Mazur ben Avren glanced up from the cushions where he reclined. “I ought to be asking you that,” he said.

  Badir smiled in his deep, low chair. “I am easily pleased,” he murmured. “I enjoyed the food and the company. The music was splendid tonight, especially the reeds. Your new musician from Ronizza is a discovery. Are we paying him well?”