Spear of Heaven (15 page)

Priests all wore the same robe, although its color might
change with the god and the temple. Children of princes stood equal there to
children of beggars. She stopped to ask the woman who herded the children,
waiting till each had been given its fistful of sweetness and squatted in a line
to eat it, perched like birds on the low wall that ran from the sweetseller’s
stall to that of a maker of shoes.

“You are all one?” Daruya asked. “Truly?”

The priestess stared at her, curious but not hostile, and
unafraid of her yellow eyes. “All of us,” she said, “yes. Hush now, Kai-Kai,
you know you like the redspice buns better than the honeytits.”

The child sulked but ate her bun, reminding Daruya forcibly
of Kimeri in a similar fit of indecision. Daruya smiled at her. She would not
smile back, though she stared as hard as the priestess had. “So everyone is the
same in the gods’ eyes. And yet you have divisions; you have princes and you
have beggars.”

“Of course,” said the priestess. “That’s how the gods
ordered the world. But we’re all the same in the end. We all die.”

“Even your children of heaven?”

The priestess’ lips thinned. “You are a foreigner. You don’t
understand.”

“But I would like to.”

“No,” said the priestess. “You only think so.” She gathered
her charges together abruptly and swept them onward, most still eating, and all
sticky-fingered.

Daruya stayed where she was. She had meant to discomfit the
priestess, there was no denying it, but she had not intended to feel guilty
about it. It was time these smug self-satisfied fools had a comeuppance.

On the other side of the street, between a goldsmith and the
extravagantly gilded gate of a temple, was a place that looked interesting. Its
gate opened on a courtyard, which was a garden as they often were here. Low
tables were set in and about the garden, so low that they had no need of
chairs, and people sat at them on silken rugs, sipping from little cups or
nibbling what looked like rarefied examples of the sweetseller’s wares. Nearly
all of the people were men, and few of them were priests. The coats that she
could see trailed in long sweeps on the clipped grass or the patterned stones
of pavement.

This, she saw as she drew closer, was a teahouse—tea being
what people drank here when they did not drink gaggingly sweet wine or, even
worse, the milk of oxen. It was a poor excuse for a quencher of thirst, being
but hot water poured over a handful of mildly bitter herbs, but they made a
great fuss over it, with ceremonies devoted to it, and whole houses that served
nothing but tea and sweet cakes.

In Starios this would have been a tavern frequented by the
lordly sort. Daruya had spent many an evening in such a place, drinking and
gaming and seeing what trouble she could get into without incurring her
grandfather’s wrath. It was to the upper room of one that she had taken a
certain gold-and-ivory beauty of a lordling, and conceived an heir without the
complication of a husband.

Shurakani teahouses were quieter places, from the look of
this one. Her arrival caused a mild flutter—very mild.

She was not asked to leave. When she sat at a table, a soft-footed
servant glided up, deposited on the table a delicate night-blue pot and an even
more delicate gilt-rimmed cup, and glided away.

The pot was almost too hot to touch. The cup was cool, no
larger or more substantial than an eggshell. The scent that wound with steam
from the spigot of the pot was as delicate as the rest, with a suggestion of
flowers.

She thought of calling for ale, and raising a tumult until
she got it. But she was too well trained to do that.

Pity. She was bored, and growing more bored by the
heartbeat. She poured tea into the cup, found it an exquisite shade of golden
amber. Its flavor was subtly bitter and subtly sweet. It was like the tea of
ceremony, somewhat, but darker, stronger: more fit for use.

Conversations that had paused with her presence had resumed.
They were not all as quiet as she might have expected, considering the elegance
of the teahouse and its servitors. One table crowded with young elegants was
discussing in detail the wares of a certain house of pleasure on a street
called the Path of the White Blossoms. At another, three or four grey-mustached
men discoursed lengthily on the nature, number, and kind of the gods.

“Incalculable, innumerable, and ineffable,” said a man who
sat alone near Daruya. He had been watching her for a while; she had been
undertaking to ignore him. That was rather difficult, as it happened. He was
not as young as the young elegants, not nearly as old as the grey philosophers.
His hair was black with ruddy lights, worn in a club at his nape. His mustaches
hung just below the line of his shaven jaw. His shoulders were broad beneath
his coat, which was long enough to gather in folds on either side of him as he
sat cross-legged on the grass. She thought he might be tall: he sat eye to eye
with her, and she sat higher than most of the men round about.

He met her stare with one as frank, and grinned at her
frown. “What, stranger, do I offend you? Don’t people take one another’s
measure in your country?”

“How do you know what country I come from?” she demanded.

He laughed and gestured in a graceful sweep: her hair that
escaped all bonds she set on it, her eyes, her face, her height that was rather
extraordinary here. He had long hands, she noticed, and tapering fingers; but
they were not either weak or effeminate. They looked, in fact, quite strong.

“You would be one of the people from beyond the Wall,” he
said. “The demon’s daughter, I’d suppose—and is that one of your husbands
behind you?”

Yrias’ indignation was so sharp that Daruya started. It was
on her behalf, of course—it always was.

She wanted to slap him. Instead she said to the man who
spoke so boldly, “None of them is my husband. They’re my guards. And I am not a
demon’s get!”

“Oh, surely,” said the man with no evidence of contrition. “You
are human, yes, the priests say that you say so. Pardon me for needing to
confirm it.”

“I suppose,” she said with acid precision, “that it’s only
to be expected. You know no race but your own.”

“What, there are others?”

He was laughing at her. People who laughed at Daruya never
escaped unscathed. Yet, because he was an innocent in such matters, she said
sweetly enough, “Ah, but you people have never seen any faces but your own. I
have kin who look like you. And kin who look like my warriors, or like me. And
kin who are taller than I, and black from head to foot. All bow to the Lord of
Sun and Lion, who rules from the city in which I was born.”

“Truly?” The man swept up his pot of tea and his cup and a
basket fragrant of sweetness and spices, and established himself boldly and
shamelessly at her table, facing her across it, favoring her with what no doubt
he reckoned an enchanting smile. “Tell me more of all these people who sound
like men and demons and dark gods all mixed in together.”

“They’re all men,” Daruya said, snappish. “And you are
presumptuous. Did I invite you to share my table?”

“You answer when I ask questions,” the man said as if that
countered her objection. He dipped cooled tea from her cup into the roots of a
blossoming tree and filled it again, and held it out to her till she had
perforce to take it. He smiled as she sipped, transparently approving. “My name
is Bundur of House Janabundur.”

She raised her brows. Was she supposed to be awed? “My name,”
she said, “is Daruya of House Avaryan.”

His brows rose in echo of hers. “That is a proud house?”

“That is the royal house,” she said. “Is yours?”

He shrugged, nonchalant. “I’m not the king, and not likely
to be, for which I praise the gods. Are you likely to be queen?”

“If I outlive my grandfather,” she said, “yes.”

“And he let you come here. That was generous of him.”

She felt the slow flush climb her cheeks. He saw it—she
traced it in the gleam of his eyes. Narrow black eyes above proud cheekbones.

He did look remarkably like a plainsman. A very handsome,
very presumptuous plainsman. Sharply, angrily, she said, “I am my grandfather’s
envoy.”

“You, and not the woman who is said to lead your embassy?”

Oh, he was a clever man, and he knew it, too. “Vanyi leads.
I speak for the emperor when the time comes.”

“Emperor,” he said, musing, downing a cup of his own tea and
a cake from the basket as he did it. “That is a king, yes? But more than a
king?”

“A king of kings.”

“How can there be more than one king?”

“In the same way that there can be more than one god. Kings
are common in the world. Emperors are rarer. There were two, for a while. Now
there is one.”

“One killed the other?”

“One died. His son married the daughter of the other. Their
son was emperor. And so it continued.”

“Ah,” said Bundur. “An emperor is only a king after all.”

“He is not,” Daruya said. “Kings bow to him. He rules kings.
Your whole kingdom would fit into a minor barony, with room left to graze whole
herds of oxen.”

“Our kingdom is the heart of the world,” said Bundur, “its
model and its pattern. Your emperor should have let his sister rule also, as
the gods decreed.”

“Our emperors have no sisters. Or brothers. The god gives
each royal descendant one child, and one child only. That child rules.”

Bundur tossed his head. “No! You don’t say it? What did your
first king do to offend the gods?”

“Rather a great deal,” said Daruya with sudden wryness. “But
that was supposed to be a gift.”

“I think he cursed you.” Bundur had to drink another cup of
tea and devour another cake to calm himself. “What if your child dies?”

“Your child’s child inherits.”

“And if there is none?”

“The god provides,” said Daruya. She found herself running
her hand along her thigh. Her right hand, with its burning brand. She was not
tempted to turn it palm upward to show him what she carried, the god’s seal and
his promise that her line would not perish from the earth. It was no secret in
the empire, but neither was it for every eye to goggle at.

All the more so here. Her tea had cooled, but she drank it.
It was wet; it quenched thirst after a fashion.

“Do you have sisters?” she asked Bundur abruptly.

“Seven of them,” he answered with some complacence. “Three
gave themselves to temples. Two married into families of distinction. One is
still unbound by either husband or god. One was our sacrifice.”

Daruya frowned.

He saw fit, at that, to explain. “You don’t have that? When
sickness comes, or the gods’ displeasure, one child takes it all on herself. If
she lives, the plague or the curse is ended. If she dies, likewise. The rest of
her family is safe.”

“That is barbaric,” said Daruya.

“It’s great honor,” he said, unoffended, “and great courage.
It increases the distinction of the house. I would have been the sacrifice
myself, but I had no brothers. I wasn’t allowed.”

“If she had had no sisters, would it have been allowed?”

“Of course not,” said Bundur. “There must always be one
sister and one brother. The gods decreed it.”

“Even if only one child is born?”

“Then,” he said, “the master of the house takes another
wife. Or the mistress another husband. Or they adopt a child, if those
expedients fail.”

“How utterly strange.”

He regarded her in mild surprise. “You don’t do that? Ah—but
of course. Your gods allow one child. What do you do when none is born at all?”

“In our line that never happens. In other lines, the lord
takes another wife. Or adopts an heir.”

“See, then? We’re more alike than you think.”

“Our women don’t marry more than once at a time.”

“Yet your men take many wives?”

“Only in Asanion,” she said, “where the people look like
your demons.”

“Ah,” said Bundur. “Demons. They do as they please.”

He seemed to think that that explained everything. She drew
breath to set him right, sighed instead, let it go.

“You have no husband,” he said, “and yet you have a
daughter.”

She stiffened. Her hand, reaching for the pot to fill her
cup again, stopped short of pouring tea over the table and into his lap. “I
have a daughter,” she said, tight-lipped. “Is that a sin in your country?”

“Only if you bear no son to keep her company.”

“There will be no son,” said Daruya, “whether I marry or no.”

“Do you know that?”

“I know that.” She filled the cup. Her hand was steady. She
was proud of it. “Women of my country are not in the habit of discussing
intimate matters with strangers in teahouses.”

“Ah, so you are different. I thought so.”

Her glare should have shattered him where he sat. He only
smiled.

“If this were my own city,” she said deliberately, “and you
had said such things as you have said to me, you would be whipped and cast out.”

“But this is my city,” he said, still smiling, “and I speak
as I reckon it proper to speak. You’re sadly ugly, lady of the yellow eyes, but
supremely interesting. May I speak with you again?”

She could not speak at all, for outrage.

He rose and bowed as low as she had ever seen a man bow in
this country. He must wash his teeth in his own piss, she thought viciously, to
keep them so white and to display them so freely. “I’ll visit you,” he said.

She lunged. But he was gone, deceptively swift. She found
herself on her knees, trembling with rage, in a circle of silence. All the eyes
that had been fixed on her were now fixed scrupulously elsewhere. The voices
began again after the faintest of pauses.

She set hands to the table to hurl it in the nearest
politely averted face. A brawl would be splendid, would be glorious.