Arrows of the Sun (27 page)

It was perfectly decorous. There was a eunuch there always,
and they sat demurely, hands folded in their laps, and watched Estarion pace.

He amused them, he thought. The Asanian word for panther was
the word for northerner, too, and Ziana called him by it, blushing at first as
if she had let it slip out, then when he smiled, making it her name for him.
Haliya did not call him anything but “my lord.”

He came to her in the morning, not long after that first
meeting, so early that she was just out of bed and not yet dressed. He could
hardly burst in on a lady in her bower, even a lady who belonged to him. He
fretted and paced, while the eunuchs watched and eyed his companion with mighty
mistrust.

Godri would never have come so far if Estarion had not
invoked the full force of imperial ire. But there was no one else whom Estarion
wished to trust with this.

Just as he was ready to give it up, Haliya emerged, wrapped
in veils. Her glance at Godri was astonished.

She would have been warned that there was a second man in
her antechamber. But she could never have seen a desert tribesman before, nor
such a richness of warrior-patterns on his face.

He had too much delicacy to stare at her. He relinquished
what he carried, and stepped back.

“Go,” said Estarion, filling her arms with Godri’s burden.
“Put these on.”

She clutched the bundle to her breast, but stood her ground.
“What—”

“Just go,” he said. “Or we’ll dress you ourselves.”

She wheeled at that and ran.

“She has a fair turn of speed, for a lapcat,” Godri
observed.

Estarion almost hit him. “That is a lady of Asanion.”

“Didn’t I say that?”

Estarion prayed for patience. He needed it. She was so long
in coming that he began to suspect she would not come at all.

At last she appeared. The trousers fit her: he had hoped for
that. The coat was loose to spare her modesty, but it showed a great deal more
of her than her wrappings ever had. The veil was an expedient of his mother’s
for the road into the Golden Empire, much like the headdress of Godri’s people,
or of the Olenyai.

He took her hand before she could stop him. “Now,” he said,
“come with us.”

She had to trot to keep pace, but she went willingly, eyes
bright with curiosity. Her hand was hot in his, clinging tighter the longer he
held it. Eunuchs trailed after, expostulating.

The wall of guards stopped them all. Haliya regarded them in
astonishment. “These are women!”

“So they are,” Estarion said, amused.

“But they’re guards.”

“Guards can be women,” he said.

“Then—you—”

“Oh,” he said before she fainted with shock, “these are my
mother’s. I borrow them when I come here. My own Guard is safely male; but I
can hardly bring them to this place, can I?”

“But,” said Haliya. “They have swords. And that’s armor. Is
this a play? Am I to be the fool in it?”

“This is a gift,” he said, and held his breath. She could
refuse. She could slap him for his presumption, and run back to her gowns and
her veils.

Or she could let him lead her through the gate that had
opened in the armored wall. It closed behind them, shutting out the eunuchs.
Estarion let his smile break through at last, and stretched his stride.

There was a courtyard that, Estarion had discovered, abutted
one of the stables and yet was safely within the confines of the queen’s
palace. It took a little doing, but a senel could be brought in, with a eunuch
groom to be properly honorable.

Estarion regarded the mare with some surprise. Godri had
chosen her, there was no mistaking it. She was one of his own: desert-bred,
sand-colored as they all were, less ugly-headed than most, with the beginnings
of horns on her brow, rare in a mare and much prized.

“Godri,” said Estarion. “This is—”

Haliya pulled her hand free of his and ran to the mare, and
flung her arms about the beast’s neck. “No! Don’t send her away. She’s perfect.
I don’t want anything prettier.”

Estarion blinked, taken aback. She had mistaken his intent
too completely for words.

Godri laughed. “My lord, I think your lady has sense after
all.”

“She is an idiot,” said Estarion. “To think that I would
afflict her with a mount that was”—gods, the word tasted vile—“pretty.
Pretty
! That plowbeast I rode into
Kundri’j is pretty. I’d have him for breakfast if I thought my stomach could
stand it.”

Haliya turned, still clinging to the mare. The beast
preserved her aplomb admirably, even condescended to lip a strand of hair that
had escaped the veil. Haliya glared. “Then why did you start to say—”

“I started to say,” said Estarion, “that this is the best of
Godri’s herd, which is the cream of Varag Suvien. This is his queen, his
beloved. He has given you a gift worthy of kings.”

Her gaze dropped; her cheeks went scarlet. But she had
spirit to spare. “Everyone else has tried to mount me on—on plowbeasts. With
gilded feet. And ribbons.”

Her disgust was profound. The mare snorted and caught her
veil in long teeth and plucked it off.

Godri had the wits to turn away. Estarion did not see the
need to do the same.

Haliya, bareheaded and vivid with defiance, mounted in
creditable order. She did not ride badly, either, for a lapcat.

o0o

“How did you learn?” Estarion asked her afterward. She was
damp from the bath, demurely gowned and veiled again, with her sister in
attendance. “Did you steal your brother’s pony and teach yourself to stay on?”

“I watched,” she said. “From windows. Walls, sometimes. Even
the roof, until Nurse caught me. I knew how to do it before I tried it.”

“Did the pony think so, too?”

She bristled at him. “I’m dreadful. Aren’t I? You didn’t say
anything, but I saw you laughing with that painted savage.”

“That painted savage is a lord and warrior of Varag. He is
also,” said Estarion, “the only one in Kundri’j whom I can honestly call
friend.”

That quenched her a little, but she was not one to let go a
fight. “You were laughing at me.”

“We were marveling. Godri says you’ll make a rider.”

“I’m not one now?”

“Do you think you are?”

She lowered her eyes. Her fingers knotted and unknotted in
her lap. “My lord,” she said after a while. “Did you mean that? About the
gift?”

“I don’t say things I don’t mean.”

Not that an Asanian could believe it; but Haliya was kind
enough not to say so. “I may ride every day?”

“All day if you want to. I’ve given orders. They will,” said
Estarion, “be obeyed.”

The eunuch on guard did not speak, but Estarion knew he
heard.

Haliya took her time in responding. That was Asanian, that
restraint. He had stopped thinking that it was coldness.

She stood all at once, with an air of resolution, and
stepped forward. She folded her arms very carefully about Estarion’s neck. He
sat still, not daring to breathe. She was warm; she smelled of spices. Her lips
were cool on his.

He drew back as gently as he could. “Do I take it that that
is payment?”

She did not slap him. That would have been predictable. She
caught his face in her hands. They were not cool at all now; not in the least.

He was gasping when she let him go. So, to his surprise, was
she. He wondered if he looked as wild as she did.

Her hands were trembling. She let them fall to his
shoulders. “You burn,” she said. “Like fire.”

“They say I’m the Sun’s child.”

Her fingers tightened. She looked ready to fall over; he
steadied her about the middle. She was a pleasant handful, small but not as a
child is, and sweetly curved.

He did not even care that she was a yellow woman. Gold,
rather, and ivory, and that sheen of dust from the sun: brighter since she came
to the riding court, and touched with rose.

“We burn,” she said, “when the sun touches us. Some of us
change, and learn to bear it. Some of us are flayed alive.”

“You go golden,” he said.

“Oh, I burn, if I stay in it long enough.”

“Do I frighten you?”

“Yes,” she said.

She did not sound afraid, nor did he sense it in her. And
yet it was the truth.

He had forgotten everything but the light in her eyes. She
swayed toward him. Her hair was the color of wheat in the sun. The scent of her
was dizzying.

They were alone in the room. He did not know at first how he
knew that. Here in the circle of her arms, the world was clearer than it had
been since he was a child. And yet when he looked past her, he saw no more than
a blur.

If he asked now, she would give him anything he asked for.
Anything he wanted. And cycles since he held a woman in his arms, since he knew
that sweetness above all others.

She did not love him. He was a mage here; even shielded, he
sensed what was to be sensed. He interested her greatly. She liked him: that
was clear to see. It warmed him. She would give him her body as she had given
him her face, willingly, even proudly, without regret that it was he and not
another who must be her master.

Very gently he freed himself from her embrace. It was cold
without, and grey, and the clarity of his seeing was gone. He set a kiss on her
brow, chaste as if she had been his sister, and said, “Child, you are
honey-sweet. But I’m no woman’s master, nor are you my slave.”

Her eyes narrowed. “It’s that woman, isn’t it? The commoner.
You want her to bear your firstborn.”

Estarion’s heart clenched. “How did you know—”

She laughed, bright and hard. “We may live in chains, but we
have ears. Everyone knows about the Island woman. She didn’t want to share you,
did she? She’s selfish.”

“Everyone doesn’t learn to be as generous as an Asanian
woman,” Estarion said, trying to be light.

“She’s not beautiful,” said Haliya. “You don’t like
beautiful women. Except your mother. You like them to be interesting instead.”

“I don’t see faces,” Estarion said. “Or I didn’t, before I
came here, where faces are so hard to see. What is in this place that trammels
mages?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not a mage.”

“Aren’t you?” He shook himself. “No. You have it in your
blood, clear enough. You wouldn’t know what you have, without another power to
strike sparks from you.”

“Oh, I know that,” she said. “That’s not magery. It’s only
being Vinicharyas.” One of the gifts of which line was to strengthen a mage’s
power with the touch of her body on his. Even if he had but a trickle of power
left.

The quality of his silence alarmed her. “Is it something I
should be afraid of? Have I hurt you?”

“No,” he said quickly. “Oh, no. I never meant to scare you.
I was only marveling at you. Will you forgive me?”

She took her time about it, but in the end she did. “You’re
so interesting, you see,” she explained. “And really, once one grows used to
you, rather beautiful.”

“‘Rather beautiful,’” Estarion said. “She called me that.
It can’t be for my face.”

“The warrior-patterns wouldn’t show on you,” said Godri.

Estarion laughed. It was rusty: he was forgetting how. “Your
father thinks they would. White paint, he told me, and gold. He thought gold
would suit me very well.”

“They’d cost you the beard,” Godri said—with, Estarion
noted, no little pleasure. Godri, good desert tribesman that he was, could not
approve of the northern fashion.

“They might be worth it,” Estarion said. “They’d shock
Asanion to its foundations.”

He sighed and stretched. He had found a room with a window
that faced westward, and disposed of the lattice with three very satisfying
blows of a throwing axe. The axe was ancient and long resigned to exile on a
wall, but it had been pleased to do its duty again, albeit without due
sacrifice of the enemy’s blood. Nothing but dust and dead wood in that damnable
lattice.

He folded his arms on the window-ledge and leaned out. The
sun slanted long over the roofs and spires of the palace, and beyond them the
descending circles of the city, and beyond those the river and the plain.

The wind was almost clean up here, and almost cool. Summer,
that had seemed so endless, was ending at last. Three days, and the sun would
cycle round to Autumn Firstday.

His father had died on the night of that feast. Ten years
ago, less three days.

He flexed his burning hand. “Who’d have thought I’d stand
here again,” he said.

“You remember?” Godri asked. “From before?”

Estarion shrugged, almost a shiver. “Sometimes I don’t know
what I remember. What’s dream, what’s real, what’s delusion. None of us is
entirely sane, you know. We can’t be. Not and be what we are.”

“Mages?”

“Kings.” He met the sun’s glare. It was life, but it was
death, too, as all fire was.

The Sunborn did not understand that. He tried to cast down
the dark, naming it death and enemy. And so it was; but it was sleep also, and
rest, and ease for the weary.

Nothing was absolute. Asanion was his prison, and yet he
ruled it. He hated it; but he was learning in spite of himself to admire it.
Even, in some part, to love it.

He turned abruptly. The room was dark after the brilliance
of the sun. Godri was a shadow in it.

“There’s something,” Estarion said, “I have to do.”

Godri followed in silence. Estarion had made these rooms his
own, but one suite of them was locked, its door barred. He laid his branded
hand flat on the carved panel. Wood and gilding, carved caravans bearing
tribute, memory that darted close and then away.

He did not have the key. That was in the keeping of the
chamberlain. But he did not need it. He bore in his hand the key to every door.
It was a power that tales did not tell of, and songs only hinted at.

The pain of the Sun’s fire mounted almost beyond endurance,
then suddenly subsided. The lock fell in shards.