He waited for a moment to see whether any lord would speak, but the room was silent as the porter and I neared the door to the corridor. Changing from the hard voice of a father exacting discipline to the diffident voice of a son asking his elders for help, the Chara added, "Since that matter is settled, I would appreciate your guidance on how I may best deal with the problem that troubles me most in Koretia . . ."
I did not hear the rest of his speech, for the copper doors of the chamber had boomed shut behind me. Ignoring the disconcerted looks of the guards flanking the doors, I ducked under their spears and made my way back down the corridor.
I had intended to return to the Chara's quarters to consult his law books on some questions that remained in my mind. Instead, I found myself lying some time later under the only tree in the inner garden of the Chara's palace, my eyelids closed and ruddy as I tilted my head in the direction of the sun.
I must have slept. My next awareness was of something soft brushing my arm. I opened my eyes and saw, kneeling by my side, Lord Carle's Koretian slave-girl.
I stood up with a rapidity that must have frightened the girl, for she rose hastily herself and said, "I'm sorry to disturb you, sir! I just thought that you might have a free-man's weapon that you would be willing to use for me."
The oddness of this speech gave me a genuine reason to pause and take in the girl's appearance, as best I could in the dim twilight. She was about twelve years of age, on the threshold of womanhood as the people of the Three Lands judge such matters, and her skin was much darker than my own. She had been trained as a slave, for she kept her eyes carefully lowered, but had not been trained for long, for she was standing far closer to me than she ought to have been.
My silence lingered long enough for her to add hastily, "My master's free-servant sent me to pick some of the roses on the garden trellis, but I cannot pull them off, for they are too tough. It is not for me to ask such a thing, but I do not want to come back empty-handed, and I thought that if you had a dagger, you might be so very kind as to cut one or two of the flowers."
She stood with one foot slightly behind the other, poised to flee if I treated her as she might expect to be treated after speaking so boldly to a free-man. I had spent fifteen years in the palace, watching as lords plotted against lords, as officials betrayed officials, and as everyone attempted to sway the Chara, so it did not take more than a split second for me to perceive her plan. But I found myself saying, "As you see, I bear no weapon, but I would be happy to help you with the flowers if I can. Where are they to be found?"
She pointed the way to the rose trellis, which was still gleaming white in the dusk-light. I walked down the slope of the small hill on which the tree was planted, passed through a gate in the stone wall surrounding the garden, and walked over the narrow perimeter of pavement between the garden and the courtyard walls beyond. There, climbing one of the walls, were the white roses; I reached up to pull a bud from off of the vine.
Looking up at me, the girl said, "Excuse me for asking, sir, but you are Koretian, are you not?"
"I was born in Koretia." I kept my eyes fixed on the rose, which was proving to be tougher to handle than I had expected.
"I heard from one of the other slaves that you were once Lord Carle's slave. Is that true, sir?"
"Yes." I was beginning to wish I bore a free-man's blade; it seemed that I would have no luck pulling the rose out by hand. I sensed rather than saw the girl take a step closer. With a wrench, I pulled the rose out, pricking my finger on a thorn as I did so. I turned, but it was too late; the girl had used the moment to step close to me.
"I was surprised this morning when I heard you talking to Lord Carle as you did, and that was even before I learned that you were once his slave. It must take great courage to address your former master in such a way. I was . . . stirred by your bravery."
She took another step forward, brushing past my hand, so that the rose fell to the ground. I opened my mouth to speak, but was cut off by a voice saying, "I would hate to see you waste your efforts here, Levina. If you must seduce your way into a new master's bed, I suggest that you take the trouble next time not to squander your skills on a eunuch."
Lord Carle had the sort of voice that demanded attention from his slaves, but for a moment before the slave-girl turned from me, I saw the changing expressions on her face.
First came the surprise. I knew that I could not attribute this solely to my strongly controlled pitch of voice, which had misled more than a few of the palace dwellers. Part of her surprise arose from ignorance. She had no doubt heard back home that a few of the more barbaric Emorians practiced such monstrosities on their slaves, but like most Koretians, she was unlikely to have met a gelded man before. If she had, my boyish appearance would likely have alerted her to what she was facing.
First the surprise; then came the shock, followed by the anger. And then came the expression I had seen so many times in the past fifteen years that it was forever present in my nightmares: the contempt.
Then she turned away with fright to face her master. He took little notice of her, but simply jerked his head in the direction of his quarters. When she had gone, he said to me, "Whatever else you may be, you are not a fool, Andrew, so I am unwilling to believe that you were taken in by that act."
I knelt down to pick up the rose. Without looking up, I said, "I did not want to hurt her feelings. If I had been your slave-girl, I too would have used any means I could to find a new master."
"I have no doubt that you would have." At his tone, I looked up, but I did not rise from where I knelt. Lord Carle continued, "But whatever your own views on the usefulness of changing from master to master, I would appreciate it if you would not give my slaves the opportunity to test the limits of their loyalty to me."
I looked back down at the white rose and touched it gently. As I took my fingers away, I saw that the petals were now stained red. I said, "Then you will have to punish the girl. I am sure that your discipline will work on her."
"It is a pity," said Lord Carle, "that it did not work on you. The Chara might be safer if it had."
I reached out to touch the rose again, my fingers brushing the velvet petals with restrained gentleness as I said, "The Chara, at least, has nothing to fear from me."
There was a silence so long that I was sure Lord Carle had gone, but when I looked up again, I saw that he was merely waiting for me to raise my eyes. He said softly, with emphasis, "If the Chara is safe, then I am sure that everyone else in this palace is safe. As I said before, you are not a fool."
He left then, but I continued to kneel beside the blood-stained rose for some time.
o—o—o
"I . . . am . . . dead."
Peter pronounced these words with the solemn gravity of the Chara reciting a proclamation, and then flung himself down onto the reclining couch in his sitting chamber.
I moved a vase of white roses onto the table next to him. "Here is your flower arrangement."
Peter grinned up at me. "You always know ahead of time what I need. Have you prepared my funeral oration as well?"
"You ought to have given me more advance notice. You will have to delay dying for a few weeks, so that I can have your clerk write it up for the records."
Peter turned on his side to look at me. His hair was sun-bright in the golden light of the late-night fire beyond him. He was lying near the north wall of the chamber, which contained the hearth, his writing table, and the door to the free-servant's sleeping chamber. I had returned to the window that faced south and was standing by it, pulling some berries from the bowl I had laid on the sill.
"You must have stayed to eavesdrop on the rest of the council meeting," Peter said. "That is exactly what Lord Dean told me. He seemed to think that I could arrange the timing of my own death in the same manner that I issue my commands. . . . Speaking of council lords, I met Lord Carle on the way here. He told me that he started a conversation with you this evening. He always tells me when that happens, though I have explained to him over and over that it is of no interest to me any more what goes on between the two of you, and that I am sure you and he can behave in a civilized fashion. Nonetheless, he struck me as having a particularly guilty look on his face tonight."
I withdrew my fingers from the bowl and wiped them on a cloth nearby. "Lord Carle only reported to you half the story. Our conversation was a continuation of one we started this morning, when I burst in on his quarters unannounced."
"What are you doing, training yourself to face danger in Koretia? What prompted you to do such a thing?"
I folded the cloth into quarters, then into eighths, before saying, "I heard him disciplining his new slave."
"Ah." Peter looked reflectively at me. "You mean Levina?"
I jammed the cloth under the bowl to keep it from being blown away by the night breeze. "All-knowing Chara, do you have the names memorized of every slave in this palace?"
"Probably," replied Peter cheerfully.
"Then you are as much a god-man as the Jackal. How do you keep them all straight?"
"Oh . . ." Peter let his voice trail off. He stared up at the ceiling, paused for a moment, and then recited, "'And being as it is more grave that a slave should strike a free-man, it is declared that if any slave does so, either to his master or to any other slave's master or to a free-man who does not own slaves, he shall be brought before the court under whose care he is placed, and the circumstances of the crime shall be determined by the use of at least one witness. Further, it is declared that, in order to be summoned on a charge of this crime, the slave must have done the following . . .' Skip the next part; I always used to fall asleep trying to memorize the Definition of each law, because it required me to learn the most circumlocutory clerks' language you can imagine. 'For just as it is required that the Emorian people show proper reverence toward the Chara, so also it is required that those who have been bound into slavery show proper respect toward their masters . . .'"
He caught my look and smiled. "I won't bore you with the rest of the law's Justification. It's one of Lord Carle's favorite Justifications, and I'm sure you've heard his version of it far too many times. 'This being so, the law has been used in the following Cases . . .' Switch over at this point to the Case volumes and spend an hour hunting up a dozen court cases and then memorize
them
. 'And so the prisoner shall be taken to his court, and witnesses shall be brought to show what happened, and it shall be the solemn duty of the judge to decide whether the striking took place with clear understanding and without provocation. . . .' Ignore the next reference; an entire law book is devoted to explaining what constitutes clear understanding and provocation for the various ranks, with subreferences explaining how acting with provocation is the opposite of acting willfully. I had those passages memorized by age seven. 'And then, if the judge has determined that the striking was done under provocation, he shall pass a sentence of mercy; and if the judge has determined that the striking was done without clear understanding, he shall pass a sentence of branding; and if the judge has determined that the striking was done willfully and with clear understanding, he shall pass a sentence of imprisonment. And being as it is more grave that a lesser free-man should strike a nobleman—'"
Peter stopped, looked over at me, and said, "Well, it goes on to the next law from there. I was required to memorize word for word the five hundred major laws, but I only had to remember the main points of the other eight thousand laws. After ten years of lessons like that, memorizing the names of a few slaves is easy by comparison."
I looked at the bowl again, then picked it up, placed it on a ledge nearby, and unfolded the cloth to place it over the top of the bowl. Peter said, "I
am
thinking of the right slave? The pretty Koretian one?"
"Yes."
I tried to reply in a matter-of-fact tone, but I saw Peter's eyes flick over toward me. He asked quietly, "Would I guess right if I were to assume that your conversation with Lord Carle concerned the pretty slave?"
I was silent. Peter sighed as he rose from the couch. "No wonder Lord Carle looked guilty. Here. Lie down. I'll bring you a drink – you probably need it as much as I do."
The reluctant corners of my mouth obeyed the command of his eyes, and I smiled and lay down where Peter had reclined. He came back after a minute, holding a pitcher and a single cup, and seated himself cross-legged on the floor beside me, pouring our wine.
"Does this mean that you're now the servant and I'm the Chara?" I asked as I took the cup he had sipped before handing it to me.
"I wouldn't burden even the Jackal with the sort of duties I have to undertake. Today has been the worst day I can remember in a long while. I'm actually beginning to look forward to the dangers of Koretia as a pleasant change from the dangers of this palace."
"The council was difficult?"
"The council and everyone else." Peter leaned his back against the side of the couch and stared morosely at the cup I had drunk from and then handed back to him. "I just had a four-hour discussion with my subcommander on the many nefarious campaigns he has devised to crush the Koretians. I was forced to listen carefully to all that he said, because I may need to use one of those campaigns. This morning I listened to three hours' worth of court testimony, only to finish by kissing the pendant and telling all of the people there what they already knew: that the prisoner was a council official and therefore under the care of the council, not myself, and that all I could do was to give the council judge my recommendation for the judgment and sentence."
"Will he accept the recommendation?"
"I believe so; he often does. So I suppose my morning wasn't a complete waste of time, though it felt like it. I never had a chance for a noonday meal – what was that you were eating just now?"
"Wild-berries." I laughed at Peter's expression. "There are some Daxion nuts by my bed. I'll get them."
"Stay where you are." Peter bounced up and darted into my room as though he were a light-footed goat rather than the ruler of an empire. Returning with the bowl, he seated himself where he had been before and popped a nut into his mouth.