A Fall of Princes (26 page)

In a little while, Sarevan went to his bed. He suspected
that she did not follow suit; that she sat there nightlong in the fading scent
of wine, staring into a darkness that her power could not pierce.

o0o

Sarevan had not known how much he feared for Hirel until
he saw how greatly the princeling profited from a full night’s sleep and a full
day’s idleness. He was even glad when Hirel slid eyes at him—in Orozia’s
presence, yet—and smiled the most wicked of all his smiles.

That was proof positive: there was nothing wrong with the
boy but a lifetime of pampering. He would not die of a few days’ hard riding.

Those days had been only the beginning. “You can stay here,”
Sarevan said. “You’ll be safe; you can give me a token for your father, to
prove that you’re alive and well.”

Hirel would not dignify that with a response. When night
fell, he was ready to ride, clad as a young lord of eastern Asanion who chose
to affect the Olenyai fashion: the black robes, the headcloth, the two swords;
but never the mask that was permitted only to the true bred-warrior. In his
scrip he carried the token of carved ivory that would pass all gates in the
Golden Empire and open the posthouses with their beds and board and remounts.

The twelve true Olenyai surrounded him, shadows in the dusk,
masked and silent. They did not glance at Sarevan. His part was less simple
than theirs, and more perilous. He was to be the young lord’s slave, he and
Zha’dan who was near enough to his own size to make no matter.

Hirel had taken wicked pleasure in pointing out what neither
of them had wanted to remember: that slaves in Asanion kept neither their beards
nor their hair. Zha’dan howled in anguish. Sarevan set his chin and his will
and took a firm grip on his braid. “This belongs to the god. I will not give it
up.”

The boy inspected his hands with studied casualness. He had
sacrificed his barbarian claws again to look a proper warrior, as on a time he
had tried to look a proper commoner.

“That is different!” Sarevan snapped at him. “Look here,
cubling—”

“My lords.” Orozia came between them, grave, but clearly
trying not to smile. “I can satisfy you all, I think, though my lord of
Keruvarion must yet pay a price.”

And so he had; but it was one he could pay without undue
reluctance. The dye, she assured him, would wash out easily enough with
cleanroot and ashes.

Zha’dan had assented grudgingly to the shortening of his
beard, that the two of them might match; in the same cause, Sarevan lost a
handspan of his mane. They put on slaves’ tunics and bound their necks with
collars of iron—Sarevan’s the heavier by far, and Sun-gold beneath its grey
sheathing—and stood together before the castle’s silver mirror.

Sarevan gaped like an idiot. Zha’dan laughed aloud. They
looked like more than kinsmen. They looked like brothers of the same birth.

Sarevan rubbed his arm, where no copper glinted to betray
him; ran a hand over his many oiled braids, that were as safely dark as
Zha’dan’s own. “I’ve never looked like anyone else before.”

“You’re beautiful,” said his image in Zha’dan’s voice.

“You are vain,” Sarevan said. Zha’dan laughed again,
incorrigible.

Hirel’s expression, when they came out together, had been
thoroughly gratifying. He looked from one to the other. Stopped. Looked again.
Blinked once, slowly, and drew a long breath. “Very . . .
convincing,” he said at last, in the face of matched and blinding grins.

o0o

Sarevan was still fingering his drying beard, wondering
that it did not feel stranger. His other hand gripped a sturdy chain, with Ulan
collared and deceptively docile at the end of it.

There had been, both Orozia and Hirel had assured him, no
other way to bring an ul-cat safely into Kundri’j Asan; and Sarevan would not
leave him, even to Orozia’s care. They had not been apart since they became
brothers. They did not intend to begin now.

Ulan was content; but Sarevan had not reckoned on Bregalan.
Hirel left his wicked little mare behind out of care for her life. The
blue-eyed stallion would not be so forsaken. Four years of seeing his
two-legged brother only when Sarevan paused for a day or two in his Journeying,
or when the court’s yearly progress from Endros to Ianon crossed the young
priest’s path, quite obviously had exhausted his patience.

He was in the courtyard as they readied to ride, trailing
his broken bonds. He would not attack a mare who had done him no injury, but he
saw to it that Sarevan could not approach the rawboned bay whom he had chosen.

Sarevan seized the stallion’s horns. “Brother idiot, you are
interfering with my insanity. Move aside.” Bregalan laid back his ears and set
his feet firmly on the paving. “You fool, you can’t come with us. We’ll be
riding posthaste, with remounts at every stop. Even you can’t keep the pace
we’ll set.”

The wild eyes rolled.
Try
me
, they said.

“And,” said Sarevan, “moreover, O my brother, a slave is
forbidden by Asanian law to bestride any stallion, still less a stallion of the
Mad One’s line. Would you betray me to my death?”

Bregalan snorted and stamped. He had no care for mere human
laws. He would go with his brother.

Hirel was watching. Sarevan caught his eye, paused. His own
eyes narrowed.

“If you go,” he said slowly, “you cannot carry me. You must
carry the lion’s cub.”

Bregalan lowered his nose into Sarevan’s hand and blew
gently.

Sarevan thrust him away in something very like anger, and
called for his saddle. Bregalan was all quiet dignity, with no hint of gloating.
Sarevan summoned a bridle. The stallion, who had never in his life submitted to
a bit, opened his mouth for it and stood chewing gently on it, placid as a
lady’s mare.

Hirel approached him. He whickered a greeting. The boy was
all prince tonight, but standing beside Bregalan, stroking the arched neck, he
loosed a little of the delight that was singing in him. Lightly he sprang onto
the stallion’s back.

Sarevan glared at them both. “Mind,” he said to Hirel, sharp
and short. “The bit is for show. No more. You keep your hands off it. Tighten
the reins one degree, raise one fleck of foam, and if he doesn’t throw you off
his back, I will.”

Hirel’s nostrils thinned. He did not speak. His hands were
eloquent enough. He knotted the reins on Bregalan’s neck, folded his arms, and
looked haughtily down his nose.

Sarevan laughed suddenly, at both of them, but mostly at
himself. He left them to one another and went to claim his nameless mare.

o0o

Eight Zhil’ari watched them go, tall as standing stones
around the still form of Orozia. Sarevan looked back once, with uplifted hand.
Gold flashed in the torchlight. He veiled it again and turned his face toward
Asanion.

Keruvarion’s wardens never saw them. By careful coincidence,
as Hirel’s company neared the border, a pack of young savages fell whooping and
laughing on the border wardens’ very camp. One patrol, coming in, stumbled into
the very midst of the melee. The other, going out, met it head-on. Asanion’s
prince and twelve Olenyai and two northern slaves, with an ul-cat loping among
them, passed unseen.

Asanion’s guardians might have been more fortunate. There
were, after all, only eight Zhil’ari, and they were thoroughly occupied in
convincing the Varyani forces that they were a full tribe. But there were a
round dozen Olenyai, and Halid their captain, though no greybeard, was old in
cunning.

While Ulan struck terror among the cavalry lines, the
captain laid a false and twisting trail. By sunrise he was riding briefly
eastward, to encounter a company in disarray, with lathered and wild-eyed
mounts.

“Raiders,” their commander said, too weary even for anger.
“We lost them, but they were headed west. Keep watch for them, and have a care.
There’s a lion loose in the woods.”

Halid spoke all the proper words, while Hirel waited near
him, haughtily indifferent. Zha’dan was shaking with silent laughter. The
Olenyai, masked and faceless, were unreadable; but their eyes glinted.

Within the hour they rode west again openly: a young lord
with his following in a country full of his like. In a little while Ulan
returned to them, to suffer again the collar and the chain that his disguise
demanded, loping docilely at Bregalan’s heel.

“Now I’m sure of it,” Zha’dan said in the anonymity of a
posthouse thronged to bursting. “The god is with us. Else we’d never have come
so far so easily.”

He spoke in Sarevan’s ear, in Zhil’ari, without greater
concealment. Sarevan frowned at him. “The god, or someone mortal, weaving webs
to trap us in.”

He glanced about. People were staring in Asanian fashion,
sidelong. Halid was settling matters with the master of the house. Hirel had a
table to wait at and his Olenyai to wall it and his enormous hunting cat to
guard his person, and his exotic slaves to serve him wine and attract
attention.

The proper sort of attention, Sarevan could hope. No one
would be expecting the lost high prince to appear so, neither in his own person
nor in secret.

“I like this,” said Zha’dan, unquenched by Sarevan’s
severity. “I’m not the runt of the litter here. Look: no one’s taller than I.
I’m a giant.”

“You are also a slave,” Sarevan reminded him.

He shrugged, but he had the sense not to grin. “Stars!
People are ugly here. Yellow as an old wolf’s fangs. And fat, like swine fed on
oil. And they stink. How can they stand one another?”

Hirel spoke from between them, through motionless lips, in
tradespeech. “If you are not silent, I will have you whipped.”

Zha’dan started, teeth clicking together. Sarevan bent down
to refill the barely emptied cup. “You wouldn’t dare,” he said in the same
tongue, in the same fashion.

Hirel’s eyes flashed at him, unreadable. His own flashed
back in purest insolence.

o0o

Even in a posthouse packed to the walls with patrons, a
young lord was granted his due: a chamber for his following and a chamber for
himself. The inner room had amenities. A flagon of wine; a bowl of sweets. An
enormous mound of cushions that in Asanion betokened a bed, and artfully
arranged among them, the specialty of the house.

She was clad from head to painted toe, but her draperies
were little heavier than gossamer. Her hair was butter yellow and carefully
curled and, Sarevan judged, owed little more to nature’s hand than his own
black braids. Her body was riper than he liked but pleasing enough to make him
wish, however fleetingly, that he were free to savor it.

Zha’dan was both repelled and fascinated. He would have hung
over her in wide-eyed wonderment if Sarevan had not kept a firm grip on him.

He almost groaned when Hirel spoke her fair and accepted a
moment’s intimate fondling and sent her away. Her regret had an air of ritual;
her eyes on the seeming slaves were wry and much too wise.

“Did you see?” Zha’dan marveled as she betook her wares to
another and more amenable patron. “No fleece at all, anywhere. Not even on her—”

Sarevan stopped listening. Hirel had cast himself among the
cushions, and he was trembling, and trying visibly not to. Sarevan knelt by
him. His fists clenched convulsively; he pressed them to his eyes.

Sarevan caught them. They did not resist him. Neither did
they unclench.

He held them to him, first to his breast, then to his
cheeks. They were cold, quivering in spasms. “Cubling,” he said softly, as he
would to a small child or to a frightened animal. “Hirel. Little brother. You
will be strong; you will conquer. You will live to be high prince again.”

Hirel stilled, but it was not calmness. His fists opened,
and then his eyes. “Soft,” he said, wondering, like a child. His fingers moved,
stroking. “It is soft.”

“I’m young yet,” said Sarevan, trying to be light. He had
not been wise, again.

He let go Hirel’s hands. They did not fall. Hirel’s eyes
were all gold.

Very carefully Sarevan eased himself free. This child was
more beautiful than the innkeeper’s whore could ever be, and infinitely more
perilous; and he knew it. He said, “While you are with me, I do not find it
easy to endure a lesser lover.”

“Then I should leave you,” said Sarevan, “lest I condemn you
to chastity.”

Hirel pondered that, gravely intent, and all the more deadly
for it. “Or lest I condemn you to worse. How ingenious, that treachery would
be. I need but seduce you as I very well can, and see that your chief priests
know of it, and let them put you to death.”

“It’s not death now,” Sarevan said, low, edged with
roughness. “I’d only lose my torque and my braid, and suffer a flogging, and be
bathed in salt and cast out of the temple in front of my torque-kin.”

“Naked, one can presume?”

“Naked,” Sarevan answered. “Body and soul.”

“But alive.”

“That’s not life,” Sarevan said.

“And yet you will commit treason, knowing what you do,
knowing that you may die for it.”

“Some things are worth dying for.”

“And I am not?”

Sarevan’s lips set. Hirel did not know how to be contrite,
but his eyes lowered.

“Child,” said Sarevan, vicious in his gentleness, “be wise.
Cure yourself of me.”

“What if I do not wish to?”

“Then you’re a worse fool than I took you for.”

“Both of us,” said Hirel, rising, seeking the wine.

o0o

Hirel was wise. He took Zha’dan to bed with him.

Sarevan, curled in a comer with Ulan for blanket and
bedfellow, refused to hear what they did; even if it were nothing. He told
himself that he was no lover of boys, which was true. He told himself that he
cherished his vows to the god, which was truer yet. He told himself most
sternly that he had nothing to fret over, and that was not true at all.