The Emperor's New Pony (2 page)

“Oh, beyond doubt, highness. For it cannot be Maqonar, since he has no portion at all, and is not worthy of being married to a princess, being an infant.” Melisan, of full figure with lovely, wavy raven hair and dark eyes, rode beside Edera on her chestnut palfrey.

“Qol then?”

“Certainly!” Little red-haired, green-eyed Alira piped in. Alira was Edera’s least favorite, but that came to pass only because Melisan and Adilan had grown up with Edera, while Alira had come from Auria with her husband Sir Belian only three years before. “When they arrange marriages for a princess, the eldest always takes precedence!”

“Empress of the east and princess of Amidia has a very nice ring to it, does it not?” Edera said mischievously.

“And because you are ten years older than Qol, he will love you and do your will in everything. Truly you will be both empress and emperor,” proclaimed Alira.

Edera made a face. Alira had touched a sore point. “But… all that waiting.” She pouted.

“Oh, you need not wait, truly, highness,” said Adilan, who had chestnut hair and hazel eyes and, like Edera herself, came up to Sir Lennar’s shoulder, though Edera could not help envying Adilan’s full breasts: hers were much closer to Alira’s tiny ones in size. “Think of all the empresses who have found solace in the arms of their captains and knights!”

“Adilan!” squealed Edera. “Do not speak of it!”

Alira, the oldest and wisest of them said, “Oh, we need not speak
much
of it, highness, but remember that there are ways for a girl to come to her marriage bed with her maidenhead intact but with
out
having forsaken, shall we say, the lance of her captain.”

“Alira!” Edera felt herself blush crimson all over. She thanked heaven that she had ladies-in-waiting who did not keep her ignorant of the realities of married life, but really, the things they said sometimes went much too far.

“As you did not forsake the lance of Sir Lennar last night, I hear,” said Melisan wickedly.

Edera expected that Alira would blush, but instead she looked arch. “Sir Belian has been away at the court of Jersala these three months, and he is expected home to Amidia next week. Why should Sir Lennar’s lance go idle simply because he has felt the rebuff of Melisan, when my womanly charms have felt no touch but my own these last three months?”

Edera looked at Melisan, whose face, so triumphant a moment before, now betrayed a haughty, angry pride. “My lady Alira, I have my virtue to care for. Could I allow Sir Lennar the favors he so gladly receives from you, and honor my betrothed, when he comes from Jersala?”

Alira, Edera thought, might well have responded in kind, but instead her face wore a kindly expression. “No, my dear. I promise that you will understand, once you have ridden out upon your bridegroom, though.”

Edera felt the glow of her blush spread all the way down to her bosom at the thought of ‘riding out.’ Whenever her ladies-in-waiting spoke of amorous deeds that way, she seemed to feel the shame of it more keenly than when they spoke of swords and lances and grottoes. She guessed that it must have to do with the importance of horses and chivalry to Amidia, whose wealth lay chiefly in the marvelous breed Edera’s grandfather Auner the First had discovered in the vale of Amidia, and that the breeders had refined over the equine generations since.

Though Edera did not care to admit it, she knew that the Amidian stallion, famed for its calmness in battle, was the real reason Amidia had remained independent of the empire, even more than the steep ascent to the fortress in the vale. Emperor Comnar’s father and grandfather had seen the wisdom of allowing the Amidians to breed them in peace, and supply them to the empire. To conquer Amidia would undoubtedly disturb the flow of Amidians to the imperial cavalry.

Edera and her ladies-in-waiting occupied the time during the slow, painstaking descent with the same sort of bawdy talk, all centering on their certainty that the emperor came to the foot of the mountains to offer his eldest son’s hand to Edera. From high up, when they were still a half mile away, Edera saw the pavilion, emblazoned with the imperial arms of the harbor and the moon, shining in the sun thanks to its many ornaments in cloth-of-gold. She could not help the shiver of delight that ran along her skin, and she felt herself smiling much too broadly for a demure maiden of eighteen.

Empress of the east. It did not matter that Qol was a boy of eight, for she could learn to govern the empire in the years it required for him to come of age, and who knew but that she could find a captain in the imperial legions to solace her, if she felt like taking Alira’s advice. Edera’s true life was about to begin. She loved Amidia, but she had always sensed that her destiny held much greater things than a tiny principality could ever supply.

Lost in these dreams, she realized that the little party had reached the bottom of the ascent; now they were making their way, led by the four knights of the honor guard, who looked splendid and worthy of the great occasion, toward the pavilion. Edera took a deep breath.
I am ready to meet my destiny,
she said to herself.

Suddenly the pavilion vanished. Or… it had been ripped away? Everything happened quickly and strangely, and Edera could not discover anything about who did what, or where the honor guard was. Strange shapes seemed to be emerging, at least fifty of them, holding long…

Pikemen. The pavilion that had vanished was full of pikemen, lying in wait. Now the pikemen were running, and Sir Lennar’s white stallion Bredus was rearing, and then falling with blood gushing from its chest. Edera did not even comprehend the situation enough to be afraid—she remembered giving Bredus a lump of sugar that morning.

Sir Lennar shouted, “Your highness, we are betrayed,” as he himself fell into the midst of the pikemen. “Ride for the ascent!”

But Edera and her ladies-in-waiting had never trained with Lord Ranin Versal in his mounted combat exercises and though they were all fine horsewomen, they had hardly got their palfreys under control by the time there were pikes in front of them, bristling between them and the ascent home to Amidia.

Then Edera finally understood that her chancellor and marshal had known far better than she what an emperor like Comnar did to secure his empire.
He probably never thought that I would be deceived, and then could not believe his good fortune when I, so headstrong and foolish, agreed to come.

More pikemen were pouring out from behind a hill.
Comnar must have thought that I would bring
at least a company, and here am I with four knights.
A sob rose in her throat. They would not kill her honor guard, surely? They would be valuable for ransom in Amidian steeds. And the ladies-in-waiting would be ransomed, too, along with Edera.

The women pulled up their horses as one, knowing that there was no point in resisting further. As Edera turned her palfrey, she decided she must at least for the sake of her honor show these treacherous imperials that a princess knew how to behave. She saw two of the honor guard’s beautiful chargers down in the dirt, bleeding their last. Officers of the pike company were already leading away the other two horses. All four of her knights stood in a group surrounded by pikes, their swords in their sheaths, never drawn.

“Your highness,” Sir Lennar called. “I have covered myself in shame this day. I—”

“Silence!” a voice called, and Edera watched the pike company part so that a slim man of strikingly handsome features, with high cheekbones and what seemed to Edera a mild look in his dark eyes, could walk through them. He wore imperial armor, and he looked at Edera with what seemed for a moment like sympathy.

“Edera of Amidia, I fear you must dismount,” he said.

“I am not to be addressed thus,” Edera said, though her courage failed her even as she said it.

“Oh, Edera,” the man said in a voice that sounded like fire somehow coated in honey. “From this time forth I shall decide what you are to be called.”

“And who are you, man?”

“They call me Comnar,” he said. “Will you dismount, or shall I have my men kill your horse under you?”

“Can you… can you not treat me…” Edera’s face felt hot with shame as she realized she made a fool of herself. “Your imperial majesty, can you not treat me as a princess? I am called ‘your highness.’” She meant to sound haughty, but as she listened to herself she understood how very dimwitted her words must sound.

“I think not, Edera,” the emperor said, now with a kind of tightly controlled anger entering his speech. “For I am going very soon to deprive you of your principality. If you behave yourself, you may escape servile slavery, but ‘highness’ you shall be no longer. I give you your last chance, if you love your pretty palfrey as much as they say Amidian women love their mounts.”

To her right, Edera heard Alira give a little gasp, and she realized that the emperor had just delivered a terrible, shameful insult. What sort of a man was this emperor, then? Had Lord Ranin been right about that, too? The captain of the pikemen’s lips twitched, and several of his men openly guffawed.

With the blood pounding in her ears, Edera began to dismount from her dear palfrey Snowflower, whom truly she did love. How very, very stupid she had proven herself.

* * *

They had raised the pavilion again, and they led Edera and her retinue inside and seated them on fine stools of cornel wood. The emperor occupied himself for several minutes with his captain of pike, and with a marshal of horse and another man who could only be the general of a legion, who had appeared as well. The emperor had brought a conquering army. He intended to take Amidia at last, and Edera had delivered the princess of Amidia into his hands.

There would be no marriage to Qol. But the emperor had two younger sons, did he not? Surely he wished to take Amidia peacefully, through marriage. Yes, she had acted foolishly, but the emperor did not mean—he could not mean—to destroy Amidia entirely.

As he walked back toward her, Edera thought hard, trying to gather her wits to parley with him as a princess should. She glanced at Sir Lennar, who like the rest of the honor guard sat with his hands on his knees and his eyes fixed on the floor. If only Lord Ranin were here.

“Now, Edera, my foolish girl,” the emperor said, standing in front of her stool.

“Your imperial majesty,” Edera said, “let us parley.”

“What have we to parley about, girl?” The emperor far too clearly wanted to drive her out of countenance, refusing to honor her rank. Edera knew that she must not let his want of courtesy distract her, but never in her life had she been talked to as anything but the princess of the sovereign nation of Amidia, and to her dismay she understood that the emperor’s tactic worked extremely well upon her. She looked up at him and saw that his face actually held some amusement, and she did not know whether that boded better or worse than his anger.

“About my marriage,” she said resolutely. Melisan, to her right, gave a little sob. That made the shame of it even worse: to offer her maidenhead thus, openly, as if at a stall in the market, was bad enough, but to have her best friend sob on her behalf, for her shame, seemed intolerable.

Now the emperor actually laughed. The emperor laughed at her, the princess of Amidia—at the idea that she might still cling to the hope of an imperial wedding.

“Do not fear, my erstwhile princess,” the emperor said. “You—and your ladies-in-waiting—shall have fucking enough, in the stables of my palace in Maq.”

Edera did not even know what the word meant, but Alira’s gasp and her knights’ shouts of objection told her that the emperor had just insulted them beyond anything she had ever imagined. Sir Lennar jumped to his feet. “Your imperial majesty,” he said in a voice full of fury that seemed the greater because of the fathomless shame Edera knew he must feel, “you have already proven yourself a traitorous coward. Do you wish to go down also as an obscene beast? How can you use such language to her highness? How can you?”

“Oh, you Aurian knights are even more amusing than one hears. You really are like the toy knights my boys play with. They’re always saying things when they play like ‘How can you insult me thus?’ and ‘Thou art a knave! Avaunt!’ And here I have a real live toy Aurian knight.”

Edera looked at Sir Lennar, and saw that his face had turned purple. He started forward, as if to grapple with the emperor, but the emperor sidestepped neatly and tripped the knight. Sir Lennar went down to the floor in an ungainly heap. Then the emperor turned back to Edera. “Do you see the figure, my lady? Your toy knight here may stand for your little realm. I have tripped you, even more neatly than I thought I could. And now you, like poor Sir You-Have-Proven-Yourself-a-Traitorous-Coward here, will fall. I fear, though, that when it is your shapely naked backside I see, as you lie on your belly, rather than this poor fellow’s mail-covered arse, I shall have you fucked much more literally than I have fucked him today. I regret to tell you that there will be no courtly wedding for you, but a courtly bedding, that I can provide with a good will and a firm purpose.”

Ranin’s fingers felt numb as he broke the imperial seal on the message and unfolded it. The news that Princess Edera’s party had not returned up the ascent when the outriding scouts looked for her had reached him by nightfall. Three hours later, when the bell rang for night prayers, the imperial rider had come, bearing the sealed parchment addressed, in Edera’s hand, to the lord chancellor.

Comnar had made her write it herself. What better proof of his essential barbarity could there be? The strange, conflicting rumors of the terrible depravities that took place in his court could not, Ranin thought, be true, but Ranin believed that a man’s character showed above all in the way he treated women, from day to day. Making Edera write the ultimatum that ruined her nation showed that Emperor Comnar had the soul of a vicious, venomous snake.

My lord,

My ransom is the nation. We all live, but they will slay us if you do not allow the imperial legions to ascend to Amidia and take the town without resistance or delay. My lord, I cannot express my regret at my foolishness. I would tell you to let them slay me, but I have the comfort at least of knowing that you would not obey me. The emperor invites you to Maq to plan the surrender. An escort awaits you at the foot of the ascent.