A Fall of Princes (40 page)

If he had not known it was a prison, he would have found the
harem no stranger than the rest of the palace. It was opulent to satiety, it
was redolent of alien unguents, it was labyrinthine in its complexity. Its
guards were eunuchs, but eunuchs both tall and strong, with drawn swords.

Black eunuchs. Northerners gone strange with their beardless
faces, their shaven skulls, their eyes like the eyes of oxen: dark, stolid, and
unyielding.

Sarevan was nothing to them. He was a man. He could not
pass.

Almost he turned away. But having come so far, he could not
surrender like a meek child.

“The high prince will see me,” he said. “You may impede me.
My furred brother may not be pleased. I cannot answer for what he will do
then.”

Two swords lowered eloquently, to pause within an arm’s
length of Sarevan’s middle.

Ulan growled deep in his throat.

The edged bronze dropped a handspan.

Sarevan essayed a smile.

Behind the eunuchs, the door opened.

Asanian, this one, and flustered. He paid no heed to the
guards, but beckoned with every evidence of impatience. “Come, come. Why do you
dally? Time’s wasting!”

Sarevan stared, nonplussed. The little eunuch clapped his
hands in frustration. “Will you come? You’re wanted!”

Sarevan looked down. The swords had shifted. Carefully,
restraining an urge to protect his tender treasures with his hands, he edged
between the guards. The Asanian hardly waited for him.

o0o

Long as his stride was, he had to stretch it to keep pace
with his guide. The harem’s corridors passed in a blur. No one was in those
through which he was led: deliberate, perhaps.

In his bemusement he found himself wondering. Was he being
rapt away like the wise fool in the bawdy song? Made a prisoner among the women
forevermore, his manhood slave to their every whim?

He laughed, striding. Softly; but it startled him. It was so
very deep.

His guide all but flung him through a door into a chamber
like any other chamber in this palace. A space neither large nor excessively
small. A low table, a mound of cushions, a flutter of silken hangings.

No odalisque awaited him. He was disappointed.

There was wine. He stopped short, remembering Asanion and
Asanians. Sniffed it. It was thin and wretchedly sour: superb, to Asanian
taste.

If there was poison in it, surely the sourness had killed
it. He poured a cup, drained it, prowled. Ulan, wiser, had arrayed himself
royally atop the cushions.

One of the hangings concealed a latticed window. He tensed,
remembering a litter and a long day’s madness. Grimly he made himself forget,
and set eyes to the lattice.

A courtyard opened below. There was something of familiarity
in it. If one set a man just beneath the window, a very tall man as men went
here, with wondrous bright hair; and set a woman behind the lattice, or a
handful of women, taking high delight in the pastime . . .

He turned slowly. Words began, died. New words flooded to
the gates. Hirel in gown and veil, eyes dancing, mocking him, driving him to
madness.

Hirel was a boy of great and almost girlish beauty. But no
boy had ever had so rich an abundance of breast, so wondrous a curve of hip
within the clinging silk. Hirel had never walked as this creature walked, light
and supple, yes, but swaying enchantingly, smiling beneath her veil.

She was all sweetness, and ah, she was wicked as she laughed
at him: great outland oaf with his jaw hanging on his breastbone. Her head came
barely so high. She stood and looked and laughed as a bird sings, for the pure
joy of it.

He had to sit. His knees gave him no choice in the matter.
He clung to Ulan and stared, grinning like the perfect idiot he was.

Her mirth rippled into silence. She stood and smiled at him.

“You look,” he said, “exactly—”

“How not? He is my brother.”

Her voice. He knew it. “Jania!”

She curtsied. “Prince Sarevadin. You are . . .
much . . . more imposing without a lattice between.”

He had not felt so large or so awkward since he grew a full
head’s height in a season. He was painfully aware of his long thin feet and his
long thin limbs and his great eagle’s beak of a nose. All of them blushing the
more fiercely for that no one could know. “Jania,” he said. “How did you know I
was here?”

She pointed to the lattice. “I saw you. Then I heard you at
the gate.”

“And you had me let in.” He drew his breath in sharply. “You
shouldn’t have. Your duennas will flay you alive.”

She tossed her head, fully as haughty as Hirel. “They will
not. Even before I knew that you would come, I informed my brother that he
would give me leave to speak with you. He was wise. He granted it.” Her eyes
sparked. “Sometimes it profits him to remember: I could have been a man. Then
he would not be high prince.”

Sarevan blinked stupidly. He had known her spirit and
delighted in it, even through a lattice. He had not known who she was.

Suddenly he laughed. “If my father only knew!” Now she in
her turn was speechless, caught off guard. “You could have been given to me. It
was thought of: to ask the Asanian emperor for his daughter.”

“He has a legion of them,” she said.

“But only one born to the gold.”

“Do you think that you are worthy of me?”

This was princely combat. Sarevan lounged in the cushions,
Sarevan Is’kelion again, with his bold black eyes and his wide white smile.
“Your brother has called me his equal.”

“Ah,” she said. “My brother. He has always been besotted
with fire.”

“What, princess! You don’t find me fascinating?”

“I find you conceited.” She laughed at his indignation. She
leaned toward him over Ulan’s body, bright and fearless, and ran a finger down
his beard. He had kept it when his face healed, because no one in the court had
one; this morning Zha’dan had plaited it with threads of gold, taking most of
an hour to do it.

“And beautiful,” she said.

“Truly? Have the poets changed the canons?”

“Damn the canons.”

She was a little too reckless in saying it. Defiant;
outrageous.

Sarevan laughed. “Have a care, princess. You might make me
fall in love with you.”

“I should fear that?”

Fine bold words, but they were neither of them very steady.
Her fingers seemed scarcely able to help themselves, weaving among the braids
of his beard. No woman, not even his mother, had ever touched him so. So soon.
So perfectly rightly.

“Gold,” he said with dreamy conviction, “is the only color
for eyes.”

“Black,” she said. Firmly.

They laughed. Her breast was full and soft and irresistibly
there. Her lips were honey and fire.

His torque was light to vanishing. He was in no danger. This
was only delight. His mind remembered what one did. His body was more than glad
to learn it.

Her hair was free, a queen’s wealth of gold, cloaking them
both. She never heeded it. She was drowning in fire and copper.

He could circle her waist with his two hands. She could
bring him to his knees with her two bright eyes. He laughed into them and
snatched another kiss. And another. And another.

He did not know what made him pause. Ulan’s growl, perhaps.
The quality of the silence. Still kneeling, still veiled in gold, he turned.

He would not again mistake Jania for her brother. They were
very like; but a world lay between them. The woman’s world, and the man’s.

His mind, spinning on, took thought for what Hirel could
see. His sister, standing with her arms around a kneeling man. Her gown and his
coat and trousers were decorously in place. But her veil was gone, her hair all
tumbled, and his wild red mane was free of its braid. They looked, no doubt, as
if they fully intended to go on.

And did they not?

Sarevan rose. Jania did not try to hold him. Her voice was
cool. “Good day, younger brother.”

Hirel inclined his head. He wore no expression at all.
“Elder sister. High prince.”

It was cold at Sarevan’s height, and solitary. The wine of
his recklessness lay leaden in his stomach. A dull fire smoldered beneath his
cheekbones.

Hirel was clad for the harem. Eight robes of sheerest stuff,
one golden belt binding them all.

He looked calm and royal and impeccable. His duties had not
even smudged the gilt on his eyelids. He said, “You will pardon me, prince. I
was given to understand that I was looked for. I shall await you in my
chambers.”

“No,” said Sarevan. “Wait. It’s not—”

He had waited too long to muster his wits. Hirel was gone.

Sarevan glared after him. “Damn,” he said. “And damn.”

“And damn,” said Jania. She meant it, but there was still a
thread of laughter in it. “My eunuch will lose somewhat of his hide for this.”

Sarevan stared at her, hardly hearing her. “You are meant to
be his empress.”

“What, my eunuch?”

He ignored her foolishness. “You shouldn’t, you know. It’s
gone on too long. The strain is growing dangerously weak.”

“Are you proposing an alternative?”

His finger traced her brow, her cheek, her chin. Ebony on
ivory. “Would you consider it?”

“You ask me that? I am a woman. I have no say in anything.”

“I think you do, princess.”

She wound her hands in his hair and drew him down. But not
for dalliance. That mood was well past.

She began to comb out the many tangles, to weave again the
single simple plait that marked his priesthood. “They say that you know nothing
of the high arts. That you are sworn to shun them. And yet you are very much a
man.”

“It’s you,” he said. Pure simple truth.

“Is it?” Her fingers paused. After a little they began
again. “If my brother were a woman, would you even trouble to glance at me?”

Sarevan twisted about. Her eyes were level. Eyes of the
lion. Royal eyes.

“But he’s not a woman,” he said, “and you are.”

“And you are the most splendid creature I have ever seen.”
She kissed him lightly, quickly, as if she could not help it. “Go now. My
brother is waiting.”

He stood. He was holding her hands; he kissed them. “May I
come back?”

“Not too soon,” she said, “but yes. You may.”

o0o

Hirel was not waiting in his chambers. He had been called
away, his servants said. They did not know when he would return.

Sarevan had had enough of tracking him down. The next hunt
might not end so perilously, but neither could it end in such sweetness.

“If he wants an apology,” Sarevan said to his cat and his
mageling, “he’ll have to come and get it.”

He went early to his bed. Part of it was weariness. Part,
paradoxically, was restlessness. There was nothing that was allowed to do, that
he wanted to do. What he wanted most immediately was a certain gold-and-ivory
princess.

Now at last he comprehended the prison to which he had
sentenced himself. Ample and gilded and gracious, and yet, a prison. He could
shock the councils of the empire with his exotic and insolent presence, but he
was given no voice in their counsels. The intrigues of the court meant nothing
to him. Keruvarion he had forsaken.

He was neatly and comfortably trapped, fenced in like a
seneldi stallion of great value and uncertain temper. He could not even rage at
his confinement. He had brought it on himself.

Like a seneldi stallion shut off from the free plains and
the high delights of battle, he turned inevitably toward the other purpose of a
stallion’s existence. He had been mastering himself admirably. He was not
prevented from performing the offices of a priest on Journey, the prayers and
the ninth-day fast; these had sustained him. And Hirel was coolly and
mercifully distant, absorbed in his princehood. Women heard through lattices
were intriguing and often delightful, but hardly a danger to his vows.

“Am I lost?” he asked Zha’dan. The Zhil’ari sat on the bed
beside him, listening in fascination to his account of the harem.

“Does she look exactly like the little stallion?” Zha’dan
asked.

“Exactly,” Sarevan said. Then paused. “No. The beauty, it’s
the same, white and gold. And the face. She’s smaller, of course. A woman,
utterly. What he would be if the god had made him a maid. But not . . .
precisely. She’s not Hirel. She’s herself.”

Zha’dan gestured assent. His eyes were very dark. “He likes
me; I please him, and he pleases me. We play well together. But I’m not . . .
precisely. I’m not you.”

Sarevan shook that off. “I’ve seen so many women, Zha’dan. A
prince can’t help it. Before he was, there was the dynasty, and it has to go
on. If a woman is unwed, unmarred, and capable of bearing a child, she’s cast
up in front of me as the hope of my line. It doesn’t even matter that I wear
the torque. That only keeps me from playing while I look for my queen.”

“Have you found her?”

“I don’t know!” Sarevan rubbed his hands over his face. “I
was full of wine and plain contrariness. But I never fell so easily before. Or
with such perfect abandon. I didn’t care what I did or how I’d pay for it; and
yet I wasn’t in any haste at all to consummate it. It was as if . . .
we were outside the world, and nothing that mattered here could trouble us
there.”

“Magic?”

“Not magery.” Sarevan smiled wryly. “But magic, maybe. She’s
not only a beauty, Zha’dan. She has spirit. She’s a golden falcon, and they’ve
caged her. I could free her. I—could—free her.”

o0o

He took it into sleep with him, that singing surety. She
lay with him in his dream, and they were both of them free; he wore no torque
and she no veil. She was all beautiful. She said, “If my brother were a woman,
you would not glance at me.”

Sarevan swam slowly up from the depths of dreaming. Warmth
stirred in his arms, murmuring.