The Lady (42 page)

“I'm your grandfather's grandfather. Or possibly your great-grandfather's uncle.”

“Don't you know?”

“Does it matter?”

“You could do a divination. Draw wands. You're a wizard, if you're—him.”

“What difference would knowing make? Hyllanim was a baby, always about underfoot.” He grinned. “He had an honest wizard for guardian and regent, who did well enough by him. He was as good a king as he could be in a bad time, and his fratricidal children didn't quite destroy the
duina
between them.” He was still watching her. “You want to ask? But you know the story of the day of the three kings, little bard.”

“I'm not a bard.”

“I know.”

“You didn't poison your father.”

“I've poisoned people. I make my living at killing.”

“You didn't poison your father.”

“I was sleeping with my father's wife,” Ahjvar said. “Before he married her, and after. I had no intention of marrying her myself. I was young and stupid and besotted, but not quite stupid enough for that, even then. It was easier, because she had no intention of marrying me. I wasn't king yet, you see. So she married my father, who was. And Hyllanim was born, and I doubt even Catairanach knew who his father was. The hag certainly didn't. I suspect he was mine. The curse, my curse, struck so strongly on his line and his land, when it was half myself I cursed. But that was later. After a couple of years Hyllau was more than a little weary of being wife to an old man who hadn't quite managed to see through her but who certainly had more wits about him than she liked in a husband and kept her firmly in her place as his pretty young bride, and not the power over the
duina
she thought she should be. So she decided it was better to be a young widow, and bride of a younger king more easily led by his—more easily ruled in bed. She poisoned the old man one night.

“I loved my father,” Ahjvar said softly. His voice had grown softer, slower, and the Nabbani words she never noticed, because even in the high king's hall everyone spoke that way, were dropping out. “And we had done nothing but fight, since Hyllau came to the
dinaz
. She poisoned him. So I went to kill her. She had been born with far too much of a goddess's power of will over the world. Most gods have more sense than to let so much of what they are pass to a mortal child. She—we burned. I don't know if she meant us both to die together, when she saw I had come to kill her, or if she thought, being what she was, she could survive it. In the dawn I was still alive, in the ashes. Catairanach bound Hyllau's ghost into me, and it kills to keep itself alive. And that is why I have nightmares and why you're not safe sleeping in the same room with me. You do look like her. Somewhat.”

He carefully poured the dregs of the coffee into his cup, carefully wrapped both hands around it. They were shaking again. She was glad he had added the “somewhat.” But she couldn't think what she could say, as he drank the coffee. She wanted to put a hand on him and tell him it was all right, but what was? He flung the grounds hissing on the fire.

“Deya, do you want to be queen of the
duina
?”

“Marnoch and the lords who rode with him named me so. But the goddess won't bless me, and anyway, you're—”

“I'm not fit to be king. I know what I've done, the past ninety years, even if Catairanach chose to ignore the irony in her fine speech to Hicca's folk. Catairlau—is dead. Ahjvar's no king and would be better hanged. But what do you
want
?”

A horse and a dog and songs. That was all she had ever wanted. To be that . . .

“A singer,” she said slowly. “To make songs, and carry them. To put myself into what I do, to be a bard in truth, to learn, this time. Not to be a child, in—in tempers and haste and spite. I can't do what Marnoch does, lead men. I know it. I'm just a banner to them. Marnoch made me queen because he thought it was right to do so and he needed to show his command was sanctioned by a queen, to try to unite the lords. Ketsim stole me thinking he could do the same thing by marrying me, placate the goddess and save his folk from the pox. My brother Durandau will use me to rule the Catairnans. Hicca would have killed me to deny me to Durandau and Marnoch both.”

“Ketsim.” Ahjvar kept to himself so carefully it was a shock, now that the night was past, when he reached and touched her, a finger resting gentle on the back of her hand. “You all right?”

It took a moment for her to realize what he was asking. She didn't even blush, only shrugged. “There was a wedding. He was ill with the southern pox, fevered. He just—he talked a while, told me about his other wives. Then he went to sleep.”

A snort of laughter escaped him. “I wish you better conversation, next time. But Marnoch will talk of dogs and horses and where the deer are moving.”

“How do you know?”

“A lord of the Red Hills? Marnoch's a name in that family; I've never heard it used in any other hall. And what else is a lord of the Red Hills going to talk of, but his dogs and his horses and his deer? Some things never change.”

“I like dogs and horses and deer.”

“Not a problem then, unless he talks all night.”

Now
she felt her face heating.

He grinned. “Not a queen, but a bard. Whom shall we make king?”

“I can't just—”

“
I
can. And you were acknowledged queen, Catairanach notwithstanding. You have a right to stand aside and appoint your own successor. Probably more than I do. I say, we make a king—or a queen—and damn Catairanach.”

“Marnoch,” she said. It didn't require thought. A man of the
duina
. A man the lords, well, most of them, would follow. A person who'd shown himself fit to be a king, by what he'd said and what he'd done.

“You'll not be a queen, but a king's wife?”

“He's never said anything. That's not why . . .” He was teasing, absurdly lighthearted, as if he'd settled something that had weighed him down. She wouldn't have thought he cared so much. She hadn't thought she'd shown so much of what she'd hardly known.

“Ghu!” Ahjvar called. “Come eat. We need to ride.”

Ghu was already on his way back, alone, his face expressionless.

“Where's the wizard?”

“Yeh-Lin went back to the
dinaz
. She took one of the horses.”

“Why?”

“
Yeh-
Lin?” Deyandara turned the name over on her tongue.

Ghu shook his head when she offered him the soup pot. “I'm not hungry. You two finish it.”

He stayed with the two remaining horses while they did so, combing out tangled manes and tails with his fingers. Deyandara washed the dishes and packed them up again. Ahjvar just sat, watching Ghu, putting a fresh edge on his thinned and worn sword.

CHAPTER XXVI

“What's wrong with him?” Yeh-Lin demanded, with a tilt of her head at the blond man, and Ghu said curtly, “He speaks good Nabbani.”

“A very civilized barbarian,” the assassin growled. He looked half dead and willing to fling himself on her at a word from his master regardless. She felt an uneasy reluctance to have to fight him, though damn, but she wanted to fight something. Or maybe scream and stamp her feet and throw rocks at some blameless, pristine pool of water? Yes, that would be about as helpful. Face it, she was in a temper and a sulk, because that—Ghu, and what kind of a name was that for him to use, a slave's name—had taken her unawares and gotten the better of her. For a little she had been terrified, till she realized he hadn't meant to seal her down for good; it had been only a matter of careful working, to unshape the forces of will holding her. Which had given her a pretty good idea of just what he was. Not, as she had first thought, a young dragon, ingenuously flinging that selfsame accusation at her. No, she had the shape of him, improbable, impossible though that was. Not that she was going to let that intimidate her.

She snorted and turned her back, with a jerk of the head, inviting him to follow. He did. And if he hadn't, she would have looked an utter fool. She took a few long, calming breaths as she walked, stood stretching and breathing, waiting for him, feeling the earth under her feet, an ancient trunk at her back. She leaned against it, arms folded, eyes, for a moment, shut, finding some calm balance again. There was no point to anger and temper. He had gone out of his way not to hurt her. And he had been right to stop her, had perhaps saved her. What could rushing into the mess of Marakand have done? Old comrades, old tensions, old patterns . . . she had chosen to walk away from that. She was not strong enough, she had just proven so by her temper, to resist falling into old reactions, whatever her tree had thought. Deyandara could have died when she so rashly left her, and she had grown fond of the girl.

“So,” she asked again, opening her eyes, “Your assassin. What's wrong with him?”

“He's cursed,” Ghu said warily.

He might have been able to hurt her, but he would not take her by surprise a second time. She did not think he could defeat her, though a victory would not come easily . . . he was not her enemy and she should not think so.

“Cursed how?” she asked instead.

“He's possessed by the ghost of his stepmother. His goddess has ensured he will never die, to be a vessel for that soul on the earth.” He gave her truth, at least, as simple and blunt as if he did not understand what he was saying. But he knew. Indeed.

“Possessed by a heavens-damned vampire of some sort, I should say.” She frowned. Deyandara and the man were talking intently, and the girl was pressing food on him. “What does it feed on? Him?”

“On him. On death. On dying.”

Her anger boiled up again. With cause, this time. “And you let this go on?”

He said nothing.

“You, who managed to bind me, even for a short while, you let this go on?”

“I couldn't have done anything. Not then. Not when I found him. Now, since I found him again here—not without killing him.”

Too much denial, there. She knew the sound of guilt. “Then you should have killed him. Does he actually want to live, like that?”

“No. He wants to die. And I love him.”

“If you love him, then you'll let him die.”

“He can't die. I can kill him, but he can't just . . . die. He won't grow old, he won't fall to some arrow, a swordsman won't take his head. The arrow will miss or not strike deep, the blade will slip and glance aside. . . . There's not a god in Praitan or the Tributary Lands can or will free him from these curses. He was made what he is with the full strength of this
duina
, in anger and hatred and death. I can't take it away from him and let him go on as he should, to whatever fate comes. I can destroy him as I did the Red Masks. Or not.”

“You aren't some small god of Praitan and the Tributary Lands. Turn that thing in him out to die, at least.”

“Catairanach won't allow it. She's bound them, till Hyllau can be born a new child, and now that he knows, he won't, of course he won't let that be. I can't see a way to separate them. Catairanach pours herself into this binding, and this is her land. He was her king, born of this land. He is hers. I can't change that or deny it, only tear both of them from the goddess together and hope Ahj will be free of his hag then, for the road to the Old Great Gods. Hyllau's final death will be his as well, at my hand. And I promised him, if she wakes again . . . that I would. She will wake. It's ‘when', not ‘if.'”

“Every life he's taken since you—since you chose not to be other than what you are—”

“I didn't choose. I was sent. I
am
not. I become. Slowly.”

“That's dicing words, child of Nabban. Every death is on you.”

“Some of them he would have killed anyway,” Ghu protested, and he heard the boy in his own voice again.

The corner of Yeh-Lin's mouth tucked up. “And some you killed yourself,” she said. “I see it in your eyes, and you are not easy in that. And some I would have killed and saved you the bother, yes. But you admit it, you know it. Those deaths are all yours, not his.”

“Yes. Of course they are. I chose. He didn't.”

“You chose for him and god or not you had no right.”

“
I am no god
.”

She gave him a long, cool look. “And what do you call yourself, then?”

He shook his head. “Ghu.”

“And did they drop you on your head when you were born, Ghu? Are you the simpleton you played for Deyandara?”

He almost smiled. “Yes,” he said. “Sometimes. And no. They threw me in the river.”

“The evidence,” she snapped, “does nothing to deny me. They dropped you on your head first, then they threw you in the river. Idiot. Child of Nabban.”

He opened a hand, not denying but letting the words fall away.

“Oh, damn the both of you,” Yeh-Lin muttered. “You love him. If you have to kill him, it had better be for his own sake. Lend me a horse? You owe me that. No, you don't, don't say it, my folly left the girl to Ketsim and you owe me nothing, but I'm tired, too tired to bind the winds. I dislike very much being buried, you have no idea . . .”

“Where are you going?” Ghu asked, as she started for the horses.

She didn't look back. “To take on a new sin of my own,” she said. “Or expiate some old ones.”

He didn't stop her. The horses were muscular Grasslanders, two bays and a dark chestnut. She took the first that came to her hand, with a narrow-eyed glance back at Ghu, still watching.
See, they don't run sweating and white-eyed over the horizon, hah
. The curious chestnut filly did flinch back when she tried to stroke her but let her fasten the bridle again and tighten the girth. Leading the horse, she slipped away through the woods, out into the open land, without Deyandara and the assassin noticing. She didn't want words and demands. She didn't want to have to pass by Ghu. He hadn't asked anything more. She would have answered, but he hadn't asked.