Arrows of the Sun (43 page)

“But?” said Vanyi. “There is a ‘but,’ isn’t there?”

“I think,” Iburan said, and he said it very calmly, “that
she needs more than that. She needs someone who can ride with her, keep her
company, ward her with magecraft.”

“There’s Shaiyel,” Vanyi said. And before he could object:
“Yes, he’s male, but he’s Asanian. Isn’t he kin to the Vinicharyas?”

“Distant kin,” said Iburan, “and a man.”

“His wards are as strong as mine. His land-sense is better.”

“He’s not a woman.”

“I’m not the only priestess in this army!”

Iburan let the echoes die.

“Why are you asking me?” Vanyi demanded. “Am I being set a
penance?”

“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe you need lessoning in humility and
forgiveness, and in the virtues of priestesses. And maybe,” he said, “I think
that you can protect her as no one else can.”

“Because I want to kill her slowly for having what I can’t
have?”

“She doesn’t have it now, either.” He sighed. For the first
time she saw that he was not a young man: saw the glint of silver in his beard,
the lines of weariness about his eyes. “You could leave us all. You have your
Journey still. The Gates won’t break or fall for want of you.”

“Wherever I am,” she said, “the Gates are in me. It’s like
the land-sense, my lord. I have the Gate-sense. I always have.”

She had not told him anything that he did not know. “Will
you go?”

“Of course not.” Vanyi was too tired all at once to be
angry. “This is my Journey. I have no other.”

“Will you guard the Lady Haliya?”

Vanyi laughed without mirth. “I haven’t taken her hide yet. I
don’t suppose I will. Hide-taking is for men. They can afford the simple
pleasures.”

“Young men,” said Iburan. “Old ones are as vexed as women.”

“Would you know?” Vanyi took his hand, startling him a little,
and kissed it. “I don’t know why I don’t hate you, my lord.”

“Hate is a simple pleasure,” said Iburan.

She stared at him. Then suddenly, and this time truly, she
laughed.

Vanyi waited till morning. It was not a failure of
courage. It was sense. She would have one untroubled night’s rest before she
subjected herself to her penance.

And she did sleep. She prayed first, for humility and
forgiveness, and the virtues of a priestess. The god gave her no answer, but
she had not asked for one.

She was no humbler in the dawn’s dimness, no more forgiving,
but she had virtue enough to do as she had promised. As the escort arranged
itself, Vanyi claimed her mare and led her to stand beside the Suvieni mare.

Haliya was mounted already, shivering in the chill. Her eyes
were bright with excitement. She greeted Vanyi as if she were glad to see her,
but to Vanyi’s surprise she did not vex the air with chatter. Maybe she had a
sense of Vanyi’s temper, or maybe she was too full of words to decide which she
wanted to burst out with first.

Estarion came out last as always. The golden mail was put
away; he was in his old familiar riding clothes, with mail showing under them,
and a sword at his side.

He looked as if he had slept well. He was smiling, saying
something that made Lord Dushai laugh, pausing to greet people: lords,
servants, hangers-on. His shadow was occupied as it always was now, by an
Olenyas. The same one, Vanyi saw, the one with the lion-eyes.

Her nape prickled. There was something different about
him—about the two of them.

Of course there was a difference. Estarion was himself
again, or close enough. The trapped look was all but gone from his eyes. He
moved with his old grace, laughed with his old lightness. He even smiled at his
mother, though he barely inclined his head to Iburan.

Vanyi he did not see at all. She made sure of that. There
was no need for him to know what duty she had taken.

He greeted Haliya with more than civility, standing full in
front of Vanyi, so potent a presence that she almost forgot every vow she had
sworn. Haliya was dignified. She did not fling herself on him or demand that he
keep her with him. She said, “This is barely proper, my lord.”

He smiled. “I won’t shame you, then. Am I permitted to kiss
your hand?”

She sucked in a breath, outraged. “My lord!”

“Ah then.” His regret seemed genuine. “Fair riding to you,
my lady. Send me word if there’s anything you lack.”

“I have everything I need,” she said.

He went away to lead the march. Haliya did not watch him go,
or sigh over him. She gathered the reins and said, “You must tell me how you do
that.”

“What?” asked Vanyi. And after a moment: “My lady.”

“I’m not your lady,” Haliya said. “Was it magic?”

“You aren’t supposed to know about that.”

“I’m Vinicharyas. We know too much about it.” Haliya nudged
her mare into the line of riders.

Vanyi kicked her gelding in behind. She had thinking to do.
It was not supposed to concern Estarion, or the way he had spoken to Haliya.
Light. Easy. Tender—yes, he was that. But not passionate.

He was not in love with her. If there was a word for a man
who was happily in friendship with a woman, then he was that.

It would have been better, Vanyi thought, if he had been
madly in love with her. Passion died. Friendship had a way of persisting.

o0o

It rained more often than not as they rode southward out
of Induverran. Estarion took no visible notice of it. The rest of them endured,
most in silence. They were riding swiftly, but not at racing speed, and not
precisely as an army to war.

There were armies mustering. Estarion made himself known to
them. They cheered him, albeit with bafflement, as if they could not quite
understand that this was the emperor. The emperor was ten robes and a mask in
the palace in Kundri’j. How could he be riding in the rain, bareheaded as often
as not, and stopping to talk to commoners?

For he did that. It was something he had always done in
Keruvarion, but in this half of his empire it was unheard of.

His Varyani kept constant watch, but they did not try to
prevent him. His Asanians looked sorely tried by it: hands twitching near
weapons, eyes darting at every shadow.

Vanyi heard the captain of Estarion’s Guard say to the
captain of the Olenyai, “Chin up, man. Do you think any of these mudgrubbers
understands that that’s the emperor in his own self?”

“They,” said the Olenyas, “no. But others will know. And
they can kill.”

“Not while we’re here to stop them,” said the captain of the
Guard.

Vanyi could admire his confidence. The land was quiet about
them. Too quiet. As if it waited, or readied an ambush. Rumors told of
violence: riots in the towns, people killed, a lord stripped of his escort and
flogged like a slave and cast out naked upon the road.

But that was west of their march, too far to ride in a day
or even two. Estarion was dissuaded from turning aside. Matters were worse in
the south, people said. He was needed more urgently there.

He did what he could, she granted him that. For those who
rode with him, it meant sudden swift riding and then long pauses as he worked
his way through a city or a town.

He would have gone alone if his guards had let him. He even,
more than once, climbed up on a fountain’s rim or a market-table and spoke to
as many as would listen. “You hear prophets giving speeches,” he would say,
“and prophets’ disciples. Now hear what they’re ranting against.”

People thought him mad. Vanyi knew better than to think that
he would care.

Vanyi, traveling unregarded in his train, found that she
could not hate Haliya, or even despise her. Haliya was a child, an innocent, an
infant in the ways of the world. And yet she knew more of men and their follies
than Vanyi had learned in half again her years.

It was training, she said. That was what women did. They
studied their men.

She was in awe of Vanyi. She said so the first day, when
Vanyi informed her that she now had an attendant. “Of course I should have
one,” she said, “but I can’t have you.”

“Why not?” Vanyi asked. “Because I’m a foreigner? A
commoner? A rival?”

“You are a mage,” said Haliya, with a tremor in the word.
“You are the gods’ voice. How can they waste you on me?”

“They think I need a lesson,” said Vanyi.

Haliya would not believe her. “I should be waiting on you.
Is that what you’re telling me? You don’t have to be delicate. It’s more than
proper. Since you are mage and priestess and—”

“Maybe,” Vanyi said, “we can wait on each other.”

Haliya stopped short. She looked shocked, then she laughed.
“That’s outrageous.”

“So is his majesty.”

“There is that,” said Haliya, as if it settled things.

She was not one to show awe in stumbling and in awkwardness.
She did it gracefully. She let herself be looked after, but she did her share
in turn. She kept quiet when she thought that Vanyi wanted it.

Vanyi did want it, to pray or simply to think, but Haliya
seemed to think that she was working magic. She never asked to see any. That
would be improper, her manner said.

They had to share a bed most nights, when they were crowded
into a lord’s small house. If the house was large enough they shared a room:
more of that endless Asanian propriety. Vanyi half expected to be offered more
than a warm presence when the nights were cold. That was a way of the harems,
or so she had heard. But either the tales were false or Haliya did not presume
so far.

She was a tidy sleeper, and quiet. At first she woke when
Vanyi rose to sing the sunrise-rite, but after a day or two she merely stirred
and muttered and went back to sleep, or feigned it.

She was always up and dressed when Vanyi came back from her
hour among the priests. If she broke her fast she did it then, while Vanyi was
away. Vanyi did not ask. She nursemaided the child the rest of the day, and the
night too. Surely Haliya could be trusted to fend for herself in the morning.
She was in exuberant health by all accounts, ate voraciously at the nooning and
at evening, and slept as healthy children sleep, deeply and long.

What first made Vanyi suspicious, she did not know. A hint
of greenness about Haliya’s cheeks, one rain-sodden morning. A servant coming
late to clear away the remains of her breakfast, of which she had touched
nothing, not even the sweetberry pastries of which she was so fond. When Vanyi
came in unexpectedly early—and maybe she did it by design, and maybe she did
not—she was not at all surprised to find Haliya retching into a basin.

Haliya looked as guilty as a woman could look, and as
defiant. She said, “I had too much wine last night. I should have known
better.”

Vanyi would dearly have loved to believe her. But there was
no hiding the cause of her illness. Not from a mage.

Iburan must have known or guessed. Vanyi spared a moment to
damn him, silently, to the deepest of the twenty-seven hells. Of all the guards
he could have chosen for this duty, for all the reasons he could have chosen
her, she was the least fit, and this the most unforgivable.

“You’re pregnant,” she said. “How long?”

Haliya raised her head. She looked dreadful; she was
actually green.

Vanyi had no pity to spare for her. She swallowed painfully,
and grimaced. “I think six cycles,” she said. “Maybe seven.”

“You knew when you left Kundri’j.”

Vanyi’s voice was absolutely flat. Haliya shied at it, but
nothing could stop her tongue from running on. “I wasn’t sure. I’ve missed
courses before. They came on early, you see, but they never have been regular
about it.”

“You knew,” said Vanyi. She was being unreasonable, she knew
it. She did not care. “Does he?”

Haliya went even greener. “Oh, no! Don’t tell him. Please.
He’ll send me back.”

“And so he should.” Vanyi throttled an urge to seize her and
shake her. It was not mercy. She knew that if she did it, it would empty the
rest of the little idiot’s stomach. “I lost a baby on the ride to Kundri’j. Do
you think he’ll take even a moment’s chance of losing this one?”

“They say that wasn’t the riding. It was the magic on you.
The priestess-thing. The bond.”

True; and bitter beyond bearing. “What did you think you could
do? Lie? Hide it till the baby was born?”

Haliya was recovering in spite of everything. She
straightened; the color crept back into her cheeks. “I wasn’t going to lie. I
was going to tell him when we got back to Kundri’j, or when we came to
Ansavaar.”

“And I wouldn’t have guessed?”

“You won’t tell him, will you? It would be a dreadful
nuisance to send me back now. You’d have to go, to keep me safe, and we’d have
to be so careful. If anyone found out that I was his lady, and that I was
bearing his son—”

“What makes you think it’s a son?”

“It has to be,” said Haliya. “You see why I have to stay,
and why we can’t tell him. He’d want me to go back, you see. And I’d be dead or
taken before I got there.”

And good riddance, Vanyi thought. But there was more of her
awake now than shock and petty malice. It was not Haliya’s fault that she had
done what Vanyi failed to do. She had conceived, probably, the first night
Estarion lay with her. The night Vanyi drove him away.

Vanyi had brought this on herself. She was learning, a little.
She could see what her folly had won her.

Haliya could not even be smug, so that Vanyi could hate her.
“I know I should have stayed in the palace. But I couldn’t bear to stay, and to
know that he was gone, and maybe that he’d die. He could. They hate him out
here. He travels like the sun, in a mantle of light, but that only makes it
darker where his light doesn’t fall.”

Vanyi was not in a mood to listen to poetry, however
prettily conceived. “You had better pray,” she said, “that he doesn’t take it
into his head to keep you warm of nights. Men are only blind when we most want
them to see. He’ll know in an instant.”