A Fall of Princes (37 page)

“Respect,” replied Ziad-Ilarios, with a glint that might
have been laughter.

“And now,” he said, “I would speak with my son. My captain
will guide you to a place of comfort.”

o0o

It was indeed very comfortable: a suite of princely
chambers, with slaves for every need, and a great bath, and its own garden.

Halid, having guided Sarevan there, was not disposed to
linger. Sarevan did not try to detain him. There was no tactful way to ask a
captain of guards if he had intended to murder his charges.

When the man had gone, Sarevan rounded on Zha’dan with such
fierceness that the Zhil’ari leaped back. His hand was on the hilt of his
sword; but he had not drawn it.

“Truth,” Sarevan spat out. “What is the truth?”

“I don’t think there is any,” Zha’dan said.

Sarevan paced, spun, paced. “That was Halid, laughing at us.
If he is the emperor’s man, why did he plot to kill us? If there was no plot,
why did Aranos tell us there was? What is this web we’re trapped in?”

“I don’t know,” said Zha’dan. “I can’t read these people.
Even when I think I can. They keep thinking around corners.”

Sarevan stopped short. Suddenly he laughed. “The sword and
the serpent! And what does the sword do when the serpent coils to strike?”

Zha’dan caught the spark of his laughter. “It strikes
first.”

“Straight and steady and clear to the heart. We’ll master
this empire yet, brother savage.”

They grinned at one another. It was sheer bravado, but it
buoyed them up.

o0o

They were still grinning when Hirel found them, the two of
them and the ul-cat, nested most comfortably in the mountain of white and
golden cushions that was the state bed of Asanion’s high prince.

He stopped in a cloud of slaves and hangers-on, motionless
amid the dropped jaws and outrage. Sarevan watched him remember with whom he
was quarreling, and with whom he was not, and why. Watched the mirth swell,
perilously.

“Good evening,” he said in his beautifully cadenced High
Asanian, “my panthers. Are your chambers not to your liking?”

“Good evening,” said Sarevan, “brother prince. Our chambers
are very much to our liking. But we had a mind to explore. I see you have your
place again.”

“It was inevitable. It is my place.” Hirel raised a finger.
His following scattered. Not without dismay; but perhaps there was something to
be said for Asanian servility. No one argued with a royal whim.

When they were well gone, Hirel dropped his robes and stood
in his trousers, drawing a long breath. His shoulders straightened; his eyes
sparked.

He grinned. He laughed. He leaped.

It took both men to conquer him. He had not their strength,
but he was supple and lethally quick, and he knew tricks they had never heard
of. And some they had, and called foul. Loudly.

He laughed at them. Even with Sarevan sitting on him and
Zha’dan pinning his hands.

“Beard-pulling,” Sarevan told him severely, “is not
honorable.”

Hirel sobered. Somewhat. “It is not? Groin-kneeing, surely,
but that . . . it is so irresistibly there.”

“I didn’t pull your hair.”

“Ah, poor prince.”

Sarevan growled. Hirel lay and looked almost meek.

After a moment Zha’dan let go his hands. He flexed them, sighing.
Sarevan gathered to let him up.

The world whirled. Hirel sat on Sarevan’s chest and laughed.
His fingers were wound in Sarevan’s beard. “Never,” he said, “call an Asanian
conquered until he yields.”

“What happens if I won’t yield?” Sarevan demanded, not
easily. His chin had too keen a memory of anguish.

Hirel bent close. “Do you wish to know?”

Sarevan twisted. Hirel clung like a leech. His fingers
tightened. “I won’t,” gritted Sarevan.

Hirel swooped down. He did not kiss like a woman. He did not
kiss, for all Sarevan knew, like a man. He was simply and blindingly Hirel.

When Sarevan could breathe again, Hirel was on his feet,
wrapping himself in a simple linen robe. It was voluminous enough, but a good
handspan shorter than it should have been.

Hirel looked at it, and Sarevan forgot anger, outrage, fear
that was half desire. More than half. He struggled in the endless clutching
cushions.

Hirel tried to pull the robe down over his feet. It yielded
a bare inch. He raised his eyes to Sarevan. “I am not the same. I am—not—”

Sarevan could not touch him. Dared not.

He bent, took up the first robe of his eight. It was silk,
and rather more elaborate than practical, but it fit him. He put it on slowly,
discarding the other. He straightened, working his fingers through the wild
tangle of his hair. “I am not the same,” he said again. “I can laugh. I can—I
could—weep. I am corrupted, Sun-prince.”

“And I,” Sarevan said, barely to be heard.

Hirel laughed, not as he had before. Short and bitter. “You
are purity itself. A kiss—” His lip curled in scorn. “That was vengeance. For
what you gave me. Now do you understand? Now do you see what you did to me?”

“But it was only a kiss.”

“Only!”
Hirel
jerked tight the belt of his robe. “My father warned me. It is a Gileni magic.
It has nothing to do with mages, and everything to do with what you are, your
red-maned kind. A fire in the blood. A madness in the brain. You do not even
know what you do. You simply are.”

“But you did the same to me!”

“Did I?” Hirel smiled slowly. “So, then. It can be given
back in kind. Perhaps, for that, I may concede the existence of gods.” He drew
himself up, settled his robe and his face. “Enough. I have been remiss; I have
let myself forget who I am. Go, be free. I have duties.”

“What sort of duties?”

Hirel bridled. Sarevan refused to be cowed. He lay and
waited and willed the boy to remember who he was.

Hirel remembered. He eased, a little. His outrage faded.

“Prince,” he said. It was an apology. “My father gave me a
gift. A judgment. I must make it tonight.”

“Your brothers?”

The faintest of smiles touched Hirel’s mouth. “My brothers.”

Sarevan regarded him, long and level. “I don’t like what
you’re thinking,” he said.

Hirel tilted his head. There were diamonds in his ears; they
could not match the glitter of his eyes. “What do you think I am thinking?”

Sarevan stretched the aches out of his muscles and yawned.
His eyes did not shift from Hirel’s face. “You’re contemplating revenge. Sweet,
isn’t it?”

“Sweeter than honey,” said Hirel, standing over Sarevan.
“Would you make it sweeter? Linger as you are, half naked amid my bed.”

“Hirel,” Sarevan said, “don’t do it.”

“Can you forbid me?”

“Believe me, prince. The sweetness doesn’t last. It turns to
gall, and then to poison.”

“How wise you are tonight.” Hirel’s smile was bright and
brittle. “But I am wiser than you think. Watch and see.”

“Hirel—”

“Watch.”

o0o

They came boldly enough. Only the two: Vuad and Sayel,
without attendance of their own, escorted politely but ineluctably by half a
dozen of the emperor’s Olenyai.

They were putting on it the best faces they might. Sarevan
was not half-naked in Hirel’s bed; he sat with Hirel, robed like the other, his
hair free and his brows bound with gold, with his ul-cat and his Zhil’ari
mageling at his feet. They played at draughts upon a golden board.

Zha’dan straightened, at gaze. Ulan raised his head from
Sarevan’s knee.

Hirel pondered the board. He was losing. He was not
frowning, by which Sarevan knew that his mind was not on it.

Sarevan made no such pretense. He turned to regard the
princes; they stared back in a fashion he was learning to name. High
indignation that a dusky barbarian should presume to conduct himself as their
equal. He belonged, the curl of their lips declared, in the slave-stables with
the rest of his kind.

It was hard to pity them. Even when, at long last, Hirel
condescended to notice them.

Their bravado shuddered and shrank. “Good evening,” said
Hirel, “brothers. I trust that my summons did not inconvenience you.”

“We are always at your disposal,” Sayel said. “My lord.”

Hirel smiled. Sarevan thought of beasts of prey. “No
expressions of joy, brothers? No hymns of thanksgiving that I am returned safe
to my kin?”

“Hirel,” said Vuad, dropping to his knees and catching at
Hirel’s robe. “Hirel, we never meant it.”

“Of course you did not mean to let me escape. Your
guardhound was fierce. Would you like to see my scars?”

Sayel sank down coolly, with grace. He even smiled. “Surely
you understand, brother. We were forced to it. We did not intend to slay you.”

Hirel looked at them. The one who clung to his hem and
sweated. The one who smiled.

“I loved you once. I admired you. I wished to be like you.
Fine strong young men, never at a loss for a word or a smile, never ill or weak
or afraid. You never fainted in the heat at Summer Court. You never fasted at
banquets lest you lose it all at once and most precipitately. You never paid
for a few days’ brisk hunting in thrice a few days’ sickness. You were all that
I was not, and all that I longed to be.”

Sayel’s smile twisted. Vuad’s tension eased; he raised his
head.

“You do understand,” he said. “After all, you do. We knew
you would. It was circumstance; necessity. There was no malice in it.” He
managed a smile. “Here, brother. Send your animals away; then we can talk.”

“We are talking now.” Hirel stared at Vuad’s hands until
they let go of his robe.

“At least,” said Sayel, “dismiss the beast with the
firefruit mane.” He was easing, falling into a manner that must have been his
wonted one with Hirel: light, familiar, subtly contemptuous. “Rid us of it,
Hirel’chai. Our council has no need of Varyani spies.”

Hirel laughed, which took Sayel aback. “I am not your
Hirel’chai, O Sayel’dan, my brother and my servant. Bow to the lord high
prince, who is my guest and my brother-above-blood. Crave his pardon.”

Sayel looked from one to the other. His brows arched. “Ah.
Now I see where your manners have gone. Is it true that his kind ride naked to
war?”

“On occasion,” Sarevan replied. “Our women especially are
fond of it. Beautifully barbaric, no?”

“The beauty is questionable,” said Sayel.

“Bow,” Hirel said very softly. “Bow, Sayel.”

Vuad, less clever, was relearning fear. Sayel was still rapt
in his own insolence. “Come now, little brother. Am I, a prince of the blood
imperial, to abase myself before a bandit’s whelp?”

Hirel was on his feet. No one had seen him move.

Sayel fell sprawling; Hirel’s foot held him there, resting
lightly on his neck. “You are not wise, Sayel’dan. The Prince of Keruvarion was
inclined to intercede for you; but you have shown him the folly of it.” Hirel
beckoned to his guards. “Take them both. Rid them of their manes; chain them.
Bid the gelders wait upon my pleasure.”

o0o

“I watched,” Sarevan said with banked heat. “I saw nothing
wise in what you did.”

“You did not speak for them,” Hirel pointed out coolly.

“You never gave me time.”

Hirel said nothing, only looked at him.

He rose. “Go on, then. Take your revenge. But don’t expect
me to condone it.”

“And what does your father do with those who betray him?
Embrace them? Kiss them? Thank them for their charity?”

“You keep my father out of this.”

“I will keep him where I please. We do not love him here,
but we fear him well; we know how he deals with his enemies.”

“Mercifully,” snapped Sarevan. “Justly. And promptly, with
no cat-games to whet their terrors.”

Hirel tossed back his hair, eyes narrow and glittering. “Is
that your measure of me?”

“You are High Prince of Asanion.”

“Ah,” drawled Hirel. “I break my fast on the tender flesh of
children, and beguile my leisure with exquisite refinements of torture. There
is one, prince; it is delightful. A droplet of water upon the head of a bound
prisoner: one droplet only at each turn of the sun-glass. But sometimes, for
variation, no droplet falls. It drives the victim quite beautifully mad.”

Sarevan’s teeth ground together. “If you’re going to kill
them, at least kill them cleanly.”

“As cleanly as the armies of the Sun took our province of
Anjiv?” Hirel advanced a step. “As cleanly as that, Sun-prince? They slew all
the men of fighting age. They put the women to the sword, but not before they
had had their fill of rape. They made the children watch, and told them that
that was the fate ordained for all worshippers of demons; and the menchildren
they put to death, but the maids they took as slaves. But no,” said Hirel, “I
cry your pardon. There are no slaves in Keruvarion. Only bondservants and
battle captives.”

“They are your brothers!”

“The worse for them, that they would destroy their lord and
their blood kin.”

Sarevan turned his back on Hirel. “That’s not justice.
That’s spite.”

He walked away. Hirel did not call him back.

o0o

Sarevan did not know where he was striding to. He did not
care. Sometimes there were people; they stared. No doubt they thought him indecent:
all but naked, with one thin robe and no attendants.

Ulan and Zha’dan had forsaken him; had stayed with Hirel.
Faithless, both of them. Traitors to their master.

He found a tower. He climbed to the top of it and sat under
the stars.

They were the same stars that shone on Keruvarion, in the
same sky. But the air was strange, Asanian air, warm and cloying. He choked on
it.

“I did it,” he said to the pattern of stars that he had made
his own, the one that in Ianon was the Eagle and in Han-Gilen the Sunbird. “I
confess it freely. I brought it on myself. I cast away my power and my
princedom. And for what? For a dream of prophecy? For peace? For the empire
that will be?” He laughed without mirth. “For all of those. And for something I
never looked for. For the worst of all my enemies.”