Game of Queens (22 page)

“My lord king, there is a man in your kingdom who is master of dreams, a man whom the king your father made ruler over all the astrologers and magicians and soothsayers. My lord king, ask Daniel.”

Now, King Belshazzar thought Queen Ishvari's advice good, and he bade her summon Daniel to him. Ishvari went herself to Daniel and asked him if he would come to the king and ease his mind concerning the writing on the wall.

“Which he alone can see, Daniel. There is nothing on the wall. Nothing save splashes of wine. They are all drunk beyond telling.”

Daniel looked into Ishvari's earth-brown eyes and saw that she knew all he must say. That Darius the Mede's army surrounded the city, that Belshazzar was doomed. That Ishvari and her daughter were doomed—for no one knew that Darius had a great heart, and would spare them. “Very well,” said Daniel. “I will come and tell the king what I can.”

“Tell him what he must hear,” Ishvari told him, and they went together to the banquet hall. And there Daniel told Belshazzar that the words the king saw upon the wall read thusly: that the kingdom of Babylon is ended, for its king has been tested and found wanting, and his kingdom has been given into the hands of the Medes and Persians.

But Belshazzar was too drunk to care any longer, and returned to his depravity. So Queen Ishvari took her daughter, and her royal crown, and asked Arioch, the commander of the king's guard, to escort her to the tent of Darius the Mede, whose camp lay outside Babylon's mighty walls. Ishvari knelt before Darius and submitted herself and her daughter to his rule. Darius accepted her homage and granted her petition that her daughter's life be spared. And Darius spared Ishvari's life as well, that she might raise her daughter in the ways of honor.

And Ishvari praised Darius for his mercy.

But Ishvari wept for Belshazzar, whom no one could save, for he had doomed himself. For she had loved him once, and he had once loved her.…

“And so you, her daughter's daughter, were born to be—well, queen, I suppose. I hope I have not bored you, Queen Vashti.”

My name startled me, brought me back into myself. Daniel's words had bound me to a past long dead, as if I had seen for a time with Ishvari's eyes. I stared at him. “Are you a sorcerer?”

“No. Just a man with a gift for words, and dreams.”

Samamat laughed softly at that. But while I somehow did not hesitate to demand answers of Daniel Dream-Master, I did not have the courage to question Samamat. Not that day.

Just before I stood up to leave, Daniel asked again a question I had forgotten. “No dreams to read for you, my queen?”

Dreams linked us to the gods; to our pasts, our present, our futures. Each morning my mother had demanded to know my dreams. I dreamed, of course—everyone dreamed. But I rarely remembered my dreams at all, and when I did, their images fled me as soon as the sun burned its way into the sky.

My mother had not liked my truthful answer, so I had learned to create dreams to tell her that she liked to hear. Now I told Daniel what I had so often told my mother.

“Crowns,” I told him, obedient. “I dream of crowns.”

Silence in the small garden. Daniel stared at me; I do not think he saw me, though. He looked through me, into my cold, banked dreams.

“That's not what you dream of, Ishvari's granddaughter,” Daniel said. “You do not dream of crowns. Not of crowns at all.”

But he would not tell me what I did dream of. He merely smiled, and told me I might come and visit him whenever it pleased me to do so. I soon learned this was a great honor; even Queen Mother Amestris walked in awe of Daniel, a man who had survived the reigns of five sovereigns and who guarded memories of ancient glories.

I bowed to Daniel, and thanked him. I think he knew I cherished the gift he had given me: knowledge of my grandmother. From that time onward, I thought of myself, not as Belshazzar's granddaughter, but as Ishvari's.

Some nights I dreamed of her. She walked out of the night sky, clad in clouds and moonlight, a circle of stars crowning her shining hair. She bent and kissed my forehead, and smiled. She lifted the crown of stars from her own head and held it out to me. The stars burned so bright I could not look upon them. I reached out—for the crown, for my grandmother—which? And then, as the stars flared, Queen Ishvari faded, slipping like moonlight through my outstretched hands.…

I did not tell anyone that Queen Ishvari visited me as I slept, not even Daniel Dream-Master. I did not even tell him I now dreamed of a crown; a crown of stars. I entrusted my dreams to no one.

My dreams were a secret treasure; mine alone to cherish.

*   *   *

“I have spoken with Daniel the Dream Master,” I told Hegai proudly. “Did you know he once lived in my grandfather's court? He says I look like my grandmother!”

“Yes,” Hegai said, “I knew that. He has lived a long time, and served many kings. And Daniel is now very old.” Hegai studied my face, and added, “Yes, little queen, older than I. Far, far older.” Hegai did not laugh, but I saw him smile. “Now come see what the Queen Mother has sent you today.”

Today Amestris had sent me a butterfly in a silver cage. Within the silver wire, the butterfly sat motionless, wings trembling. I carried the silver cage into the Queen's Garden.
My
garden. There I opened the cage door and watched the beautiful creature fly, its wings flashing blue as lapis among the flowers.

*   *   *

Unlike Queen Mother Amestris, the lady Samamat expected more of me than my beauty; she expected me to use my mind. Samamat was the only person I knew who seemed not to care at all what I looked like. Even Ahasuerus had been pleased to see that his wife was beautiful. Samamat did not regard beauty as an achievement.

“But isn't it better to be beautiful?” I asked her, and Samamat sighed.

“Yes, Queen Vashti, it is. Why? Because that's the way it is. But remember that beauty can vanish in a breath. And beauty's not much good if you don't know how to analyze it and use it.”

When I demanded to know how to use beauty, Samamat smiled and said, “Oh, child, I'm not the woman who can teach you that.”

“Who is?”

Samamat never brushed any of my questions aside. Now she said, “I'll think about that one, Vashti. Now would you like to help me sort and soak the beans?”

Despite her great age and high learning, Samamat performed many of her small household's common needs herself. When I had asked her why—for she could have afforded as many slaves as she chose to buy—Samamat had said that it was always wise to know how to achieve things without aid. “Suppose someday you have no slaves, no handmaidens, to attend you. Will you die of hunger because you cannot cook even the simplest dish, or of thirst because you are too proud to lift a pitcher for yourself?”

Since I wished Samamat to think very well of me, I shook my head. And I allowed her to teach me what she thought I needed to know. I learned, although I could not imagine a life in which I had no servants rushing to care for me.

It is to Samamat that I owe such womanly skills as I possess. She also took me up to the palace roof at night and taught me to know the stars. I learned their names, and how to tell what hour of the night it was by their placement in the sky. And I learned the stars would guide me, if I were lost. One pale bright star stood in the north.

“It never moves,” Samamat told me. “The sky wheels around it—see that arc of stars, there? Follow that arc to its end, and there you find a trustworthy guide.”

Only one other person—so I thought then—required more of me than my beautiful eyes and my exotic hair. Daniel Dream-Master spoke to me as if I were his own age; it was my task to follow his words, if I could.

It was in Daniel's courtyard that I first learned how others truly thought of me. One afternoon I had just run into the small courtyard when I saw Captain Dariel enter through a door in the eastern wall. A woman ran to him, hands outstretched, and Dariel had her in his arms before either saw me standing there watching. Then the woman pulled away from him, and her honey-hued skin paled to a sickly white, as if she had been stricken gravely ill.

I knew of course that Captain Dariel was the lady Samamat's son, sired by her first husband Arioch. And I remembered one of the things Dariel had told me on my journey here to Shushan. I smiled in delight. “You must be Captain Dariel's wife!”

Dariel sighed. “Yes,” he began, and the woman grasped his arm. “No!” Her denial cut sharp. “Say nothing. She will run and tell it all to Queen Amestris before nightfall.”

“Will you do that, Queen Vashti?” said a soft voice, and Samamat walked slowly out of the blue-tiled house and stood beside me.

I studied the woman who stood clutching Dariel's arm. She was far older than I, perhaps thirty, but she was still very beautiful, with long eyes dark as a moonless night and hair that rippled like black water to her knees.

“Of course she will. She tells Amestris everything.” The woman sounded … afraid. Bewildered, I looked up at Samamat.

“You do,” Samamat told me. “Have you never wondered why no one says anything of importance in your hearing?”

“Of course she hasn't.” Daniel had come out to join us, and now Dariel sighed. “Yes,” Daniel added, “it is getting crowded. Now, Sama, why should the child have noticed any such thing?”

Samamat liked me to puzzle things out for myself; now I looked up at her, and then at Dariel, and then at the beautiful woman. Why would she be afraid of me, or that I would tell Amestris?

“You are not supposed to be here!” I said, delighted that I had found the answer. No one said anything, not even Samamat. The silence stretched uneasy between us, and I thought over what else had been said. That no one would speak freely before me because I ran and told the Queen Mother everything—
But this is a secret, and it is not mine to tell. Is that what Samamat means? But why would Dariel's wife be a secret?

“But you are Captain Dariel's wife,” I said, “Why shouldn't you be here with him? And with his mother?”

“You see?” said Dariel's beautiful wife. Dariel sighed. “This is my doing, Cassandane; I mentioned—once—that I missed my wife, when I was telling the little queen stories to pass time on the road.”

Samamat smiled at me. “You have a good memory, Queen Vashti.”

“Too good.” Cassandane buried her face in her hands, and Dariel put his arm around her.

“We will leave Shushan,” he said, and Cassandane shook her head.

“And go where?” She lifted her head and stared at me; the bitterness in her face startled me. “It is hopeless, my love. We knew that from the start.”

Again no one spoke, waiting. At last I said, “Why?”

Samamat stared hard at her son, who sighed again but obeyed that silent command. “Because, my queen, Cassandane belonged to King Ahasuerus's father,” Dariel said.

I thought hard about this. A king's women always belonged to him, or to his successor—but I cold not imagine Ahasuerus desiring to have a woman as old as Cassandane, even if she was still beautiful. So why should she not marry Dariel? My silence was not easy for Cassandane to endure—later, when I was older and we were friends, she told me she had used that span of silence to practice the words she would use to ask Dariel to kill her swiftly, before the royal executioners could carry out whatever grisly death the Queen Mother would decree for her.

“Surely Ahasuerus will let you marry if I ask him to,” I said, and Cassandane made a choking sound and pressed her hand over her lips.

“You see?” Cassandane's voice trembled. “She is a child; she will not be silent.”

“She is the queen, too. Ask her,” Daniel said.

Cassandane stared at me, doubtful. Then she sank to her knees before me. “O queen, if it pleases you, grant my petition and my request. Give me my life, and Captain Dariel's life. Tell no one what you have seen here today. Do not tell Queen Mother Amestris that you saw me with Dariel. Do not tell the king. I beg of you.”

Kneeling, her warm brown eyes gazed into mine. I saw fear there, and hope. This was the first time someone had asked a boon of me as queen. I looked over to Daniel and Samamat, but their faces revealed nothing. I was to make this decision myself.

I drew a deep breath. “It pleases me to grant your petition and your request, Cassandane. I will tell no one that I saw you with Captain Dariel. No one.”

“Even Queen Mother Amestris?” Captain Dariel asked, and Samamat laughed; it was not a pretty sound.

“My son, you're assuming Amestris doesn't already know,” Samamat said. “She's quite capable of keeping that knowledge to herself until it's useful to her.”

“Perhaps she does,” said Captain Dariel. He reached down and took Cassandane's hand and helped her to her feet. “But the word of Queen Vashti that she will say nothing is the best we can do now.”

*   *   *

The word of Queen Vashti is the best we can do now.
Captain Dariel's words echoed in my mind, and the weary hopelessness they carried made my cheeks burn.

 … the best we can do …

Seeking comfort, I ran straight to Hegai, who took one look at me and caught me up in his arms. “What troubles my queen?”

About to spill the entire tale into his ears, I suddenly remembered I had sworn to grant Cassandane's petition and request. To tell no one that she was married to Dariel. To tell no one I saw her with Dariel. Did that also mean I could tell no one I had met Cassandane at all?

“Vashti? What has upset you so? Or who?” Hegai's voice calmed, coaxed. I decided I could at least speak of seeing so beautiful a lady. If I could not trust Hegai, who swore he belonged to me utterly, then I could trust no one.