The Lady of Han-Gilen (17 page)

“No more than do their lords. The emperor is kept as
straitly as any concubine, for his life’s safety and for the sanctity of his
office. He must never leave his palace. He must never set foot on common earth.
He must never speak to any save through his sacred Voice.”

“What, not even his empress?”

“Perhaps,” admitted Ilarios, “to her he might speak
directly. And she may see his face. His people must not. They see him always
enthroned, robed and masked in gold like a god.”

“That is horrible,” she said.

“No,” he answered her. “It only sounds so. An emperor’s body
must be confined; it is holy, it is given to the gods. Yet he rules, and in
ruling he is free. No man is freer than he.”

“My father rules unmasked and unchained. Mirain is king
incarnate, and his throne is the Mad One’s saddle.”

“Your father rules from Han-Gilen; he did not ride into the
north. I would wager that he could not. The Sunborn is the first of his line, a
barbarian king, a soldier and a conqueror. The burden of empire has barely
begun to fall upon him.”

“How strange you look,” she said, “when you speak of
empires. As if it terrifies you; and yet you revel in it. You will welcome the
mask when it comes to you.”

“It is what I was born for.” He looked at her. “You are like
me. You flee the cage which your lineage has raised about you, and yet what you
flee to is a captivity no less potent and far less easily escaped. You can
comprehend the mind of the Golden Emperor.”

She touched him, because she wanted to, because she could
not help herself. He quivered under her hand but did not pull away. “Am I
transgressing?” she asked him.

“I give you leave,” he said. Light; a little breathless.
Smiling a sudden luminous smile. “You may touch me whenever you choose.”

It was great daring, that, in an Asanian high prince. “I am
corrupting you,” she said. “See, your shadows are uneasy. What will they tell
your father?”

“That I have gone barbarian.” He laughed and met touch with
touch: a brush of fingertips from her cheek to her chin, tracing the path of
her scars. It was like cool fire. Swift, and startling, and all too quickly
gone.

She would have caught his hand; but his golden stallion had
danced away, impatient, and the moment escaped. She did not try to pursue it.
Her folly that she had even let it begin.

oOo

It did not come back. She told herself that it had never
been; she made herself stop regretting it. Ilarios’ presence was enough, and
his beauty, and his golden voice. She needed no more.

On a grey morning with too much in it of winter, Elian
wandered down a passage of the keep. She had meant to ride in the hills, but a
driving rain had sent even the Mad One into the shelter of the castle.

Mirain was closeted with Halenan and Vadin and the captains.
She, having no more to do with her freedom than squander it in prowling the
corridors, heard her name.

Her ears pricked; she stopped. The speakers were Ianyn by
their accents, men of the king’s household playing at chance in a guardroom.

“Elian?” one mused, rattling the dice in the cup, in no
hurry to throw. “Now there’s a fine piece of womanflesh.”

“How can you know?” his companion demanded. “She doesn’t
show any of it.”

“Sure she does. It just takes a good eye.”

“I’ve got a good eye. All it sees is angles. If it’s boys
you like, why not take a boy and have done with it?”

“She’s no boy,” the first man declared. “Dress her up proper
now, a little paint and a gewgaw or two, and you’ll have something worth
looking at.”

“Not for my money. I like mine plump and toothsome. Less
sharp in the tongue, too. They say she can swear like a trooper.”

“The king fancies her, for all of that. So do plenty of
others. The boys down in the camp have a wager on how long she’ll last. I put a
silver sun on it, with a side bet that he marries her before the year is out.”

“You’ve lost your money, then. She’s highborn, they say,
sister to that southern general, the one who wears his beard like a man. Good
in bed, too, if the king’s kept her this long and this steady. But he won’t
make her queen. He can’t. It’s the law in Ianon, don’t forget: No whore can
share the throne.” The soldier hawked and spat. “Here now. Are you going to
throw those dice or hatch them?”

Elian stumbled away. Her feet felt huge, clumsy; she could
not see.

She passed Ilarios without recognizing him. When he called
to her she stopped, losing the will to move.

“Lady,” he said. She could taste his concern. It was salt,
like tears. “Lady, are you ill?”

“No,” her voice replied. “No, I’m well.”

His arm dared mightily. It circled her shoulders. She let
him lead her; she did not care where. His own chamber, it turned out to be; he
had been given one in the keep.

There was no room in it for his guards, who perforce must
stand without, with the door between, and solitude within, scented with
flowers. Elian had found a tangle of briar roses, the last of summer, golden
and flame red; they had brought back a bowlful at great cost to their fingers.
But the heady scent was worth any pain.

It did not ease hers now. He made her sit in a nest of
cushions and set a cup in her hand, filled with the yellow wine of Asanion.
“Drink,” he bade her.

She obeyed him, hardly knowing what she did. The wine was
sharp to her taste, almost sour, but strong. It both dizzied and steadied her.

Her eyes cleared; she breathed deep. Lightly, calmly, she
said, “It has finally happened. A man has said what they all think. I have no
reputation left, my lord. Is that not amusing?”

“Who has dared it? Tell me!”

His intensity brought her eyes to him. His own were burning,
blazing. Hating the one who had hurt her. Loving her with all that was in him.

For a long while she could only stare at him, stupid with
shock. That it could matter so much to him. That she could care, and caring,
wake to truth.

“It does no good to run away,” she said. “I have learned
that. The world is a circle; one always comes back to one’s beginnings. I went
to Mirain to escape Han-Gilen; now he prepares to march there. I shall have to
face my mother, with what I have done and what I am supposed to have done on
the lips of every talespinner in this part of the world. And the worst of
it—the very worst—is that I have not had the pleasure that goes with the tale.
I doubt if Mirain even realizes that I am a woman.”

He said nothing.

She laughed, not too badly, she thought, although he winced.
“In truth I would not wish him to. He accepts me. He lets me be what I choose
to be. The tragedy is this: his army is part of him also. And his army knows
what I am. I betrayed myself, do you know? So careful, I was. So private, so
well disguised. I even relieved myself where none could see, though that is
nothing to brag of. Camp privies can be too utterly vile even for men. The
hardest thing was to watch people swimming, and to have to pretend that I had
duties; especially on the march, with the heat and the dust and the flies. A
basin is a poor substitute for a whole cool river, when even one’s king is in
it, fighting water battles like a half-grown boy.”

“Tomorrow,” he said carefully, “if the weather changes, you
could go to the river, to one of the pools.”

“What for?” she demanded, all contrary.

There was no banter in him; no mirth at all, and no comfort.
He looked at her with wide eyes, all gold. “I see,” he said. “One’s king would
not be in it.”

She stared back at him. She was almost angry. Almost. That
he could speak so: he too, of all who knew her.

His hair was as unruly a mane as Mirain’s, and fully as
splendid, left free in the custom of Asanian royalty though bound with a
circlet about his brows. She stroked it. It was silken soft. “Gold should be
cold to the touch,” she said.

“And fire should burn.” His hand ventured on it, light, gentle,
as if he feared to do her hurt.

They were very close. She could feel the living warmth of
him, and catch the scent he bore, faint yet distinct. Musk and saddle leather
and briar roses. Their lips touched.

He was very beautiful and very strong, and his kiss was
sweet. Warm and warming. He tasted of spices.

He drew back. His eyes had darkened to amber. “Lady,” he
said very softly. “Lady, you are a breaker of hearts.”

She looked at him, not understanding, not wanting to
understand.

He smiled as one in pain. “For every man who speaks ill of
you, there are a thousand who would die for you. Remember that.” He bowed low,
as low as his royalty had ever permitted, and left her there.

oOo

With even Ilarios gone strange, she had thought that she
had nothing left. But no blow ever falls alone. Toward evening Mirain summoned
her, who had never had to do such a thing, close by him as she always was.

He was in the cell he used as a workroom. The clerks were
gone; a brazier struggled to warm the chill air. Rolls and tablets heaped high
about him, some sealed with his Sun-seal, some not.

In his priest’s robe, with a stylus in his hand, he looked
like the boy who had taught her her letters. But he was frowning, if only
slightly; his gaze was cool almost to coldness.

She stood in front of him with the worktable between them.
Unconsciously she had drawn herself to attention. What sin had she committed,
that he should look at her so? All her duties were done, and well done. She had
given him nothing to complain of.

His eyes released her, but they had not softened. “In three
days,” he said, “we begin the march to Han-Gilen. It will be long, for I shall
make of it a royal progress. I do not expect that we shall see the city very
much before the opening of winter.”

Her throat was locked. She swallowed to open a way for her
voice. “The weather will be gentler as we go south. You will have no need to
hasten because of it.”

“Perhaps not.” He turned the stylus in his hands. They were
small for a man’s, but the fingers were long and fine. A ring circled one, an
intricate weaving of gold and ruby, flaming as it caught the light. She watched
half-enspelled.

His soft voice lulled her, but his words shocked her fully
awake. “As long as the riding will be, and with Han-Gilen at the end of it, I
have given much thought to your place within it. My men know now who you are.
They have accepted the knowledge well and without undue scandal, for you have
proved yourself in the best of all ways, by your valor in battle. Yet there is
scandal, and it will not grow less as we ride through the Hundred Realms. For
your sake then and for that of your family, I have asked that your brother take
you into his tent.”

“And my oath?” she asked quietly. It sounded well, cool and
steady, but she could muster nothing louder.

“I release you,” he answered. “You have served me well. More
than well. For that I would make you a knight, the first of my new empire.”

Her lip curled. “So. It is no longer convenient for your
majesty to keep his esquire, now that men know he is a she, and a princess of
Han-Gilen at that. It is most unpolitic. And, no doubt, it does not suit you to
have your chosen lady hear of it. Best and easiest then to be rid of me, with a
rich bribe to keep me quiet. Unfortunately, my lord emperor, I am not to be
bought.”

He rose. Even in her anger she dreaded his wrath, but he was
fully masked. “I had thought to honor you, to restore your good name. My own I
have no care for; I am a man, it does not matter. But in the way of this world,
yours is greatly endangered. I would not have it so. Halenan is more than
willing to share his lodgings with you, and he has promised not to bind you,
nor in any way to restrict your freedom. He will even let you keep to your
boy’s guise. You lose nothing by the change, and gain much. A knight of my
household is truly free to do and to be what he chooses.”

She shut her eyes against his logic. It was the core of it
that mattered, that fanned her temper into a blaze. “Bribery. You rid yourself
of a stain upon your majesty, a ribald jest in every tavern. What is an
emperor’s economy? A squire who can serve him as well at night as in the day.
And what sort of squire is that? A squire who is also a woman.”

“No one says such things,” he said. His voice deepened and
lost its clarity. “No one would dare.”

“Not in your presence, sire. I have long ears. I can also
read your mind, though you shield it with all your father’s power. I did not
leave Han-Gilen and all I had been and could be, to be sent into my brother’s
care like an unruly child.”

“What would you have, then?”

“Things as they were before,” she answered swiftly. She
faced him. “Your good name does not matter, you say. Let me look after my own.
Or are you afraid of what Mother will say to you?”

“I fear what she will say to you.”

She could have hit him. “Damn you, I can take care of
myself! What does it take for me to prove that? A man’s body as well as a man’s
clothes?”

In spite of his control, his lips twitched. “I would never
wish for that, my lady. It is only . . . words can wound deep,
far deeper than they ought. And you suffer most from them. Someday you may wish
to be truly free, even to marry. I would not have you fear that no man will
take you.”

“I’m not afraid of that!” she snapped. And she added,
because a demon was on her tongue, “Ziad-Ilarios would take me now, as I am,
muddied name and all.”

She had meant only to quell his arguments. She had not
looked to drive him behind all his walls, with the gates barred and the banner
of his kingship raised above the keep. “Very well,” he said, “remain in my
service. But do not expect me to ease your way with my subjects or with your
family.”

He returned to his seat and opened a scroll. She was
dismissed.