A Fall of Princes (51 page)

“Let her be.”

o0o

In time they left, all of them. Mirain was the last. He
paused to kiss Sevayin lightly, without ceremony. Accepting her.

It nearly broke her. But she was his child. She stood firm
and watched him go.

When he was gone, she let her body have its way. It crumpled
to the threadbare carpet.

“They’re right, you know.”

She started, glared. Vadin had done what he did all too often:
effaced himself to invisibility, and so escaped both notice and dismissal. It
was one of his more insidious magics.

He paid no heed at all to her temper. He knelt beside her,
easing off the gaudy robe, tugging gently but persistently until she lay back
against Ulan’s flank. “Stop fighting, infant. Do you want to lose the baby?”

Sevayin drew up her knees and sighed. Vadin watched,
studying her. “You knew,” she said.

“I guessed. A mage, even as reluctant a mage as I am, can
always tell whether a woman is carrying a manchild or a maid. With you we never
could. We were afraid you’d be a monster: both and neither.”

“I am,” she muttered.

“Stop it, namesake.” He was stern but not angry. Calmly,
deft as any good servant, he began to unbind her braids. “Your mother knew, I
think. She wasn’t as glad as we were when you proved to be as fine a little man
as ever sprang out yelling from his mother’s womb. She insisted on bringing you
up with both men and women. She made you live in Liavi’s mind while she carried
her little hellion.”

“She did her best to beat the arrogance out of me.” Sevayin
laughed thinly. “Though in that at least, she failed. I’m still intolerably
proud.”

“Royal,” said Vadin.

Sevayin fixed her eyes on the tent wall. “Father is taking
it well.”

“What else can he do? He can’t disown you. You’re all he
has.”

She flinched. Anger flared. “That’s why it was even
possible. Because I’m the only one. The only heir he could ever beget, the sole
and splendid jewel in the throne of Keruvarion. Do you think it’s been easy for
me? Do you think I welcome all the stares and gasps and cries of outrage? Do
you think I don’t know what battles I’ll have to fight all my life long,
because I gave up my very self for love of an Asanian tyrant?”

“Not your self,” said Vadin. “But there is a little truth in
the rest of it. Your uncle sees it. Keruvarion will never accept a western
emperor. Too much of it has fought too long to avoid just that.”

“Hirel would never—”

“Your young lion is as charming as his father ever was, and
as honorable, and as perfect an epitome of Asanian royalty. He was bred to be
an emperor.”

“But not a monster.”

“Maybe not.” Vadin combed Sevayin’s hair in long strokes,
intent on it. “Old hatreds die hard. Asanion is Asanion: the dragon of the
west, the vast devouring beast with its insatiable lust for gold and souls. The
only defense against it, most people would tell you, is its destruction.”

Sevayin bared her teeth. “They say much the same of us. It’s
the same hate and the same fear. But they reckon without me and without my
princeling.”

“I was young once,” said Vadin.

Sevayin thrust herself up; Vadin reached for another plait.
She shook him off. “Damn it, Vadin! Stop treating me like a child.”

“That,” he said, “you’re not. But you’re carrying one.”

She was mute, simmering. He reached again. Sevayin suffered
him, holding to Ulan for comfort, drinking calm through the cat’s drowsing
consciousness.

“You are going to rest,” Vadin said firmly. “Then you are
going to face your people.”

“Naked, I presume. So that they can be properly outraged.”

“Why? Are you hiding something?”

“Only an unborn lion cub.”

He looked hard at her. Her heart stilled. She had told them
that the Mageguild had held her prisoner; that the master had wrought the
change with the aid of Baran of Endros.

She had not cried Prince Orsan’s treason before the army.
She did not know why. Certainly not because he was her mother’s father, her
father’s more-than-father. Nor had he set a binding on her.

But she could not say the words that would condemn him. She
strengthened her mind’s shields; she put on a tired smile. The tiredness was
not feigned. “I’ve told you all I can. Except . . .”

“Except?”

Sevayin drew a breath. Vadin looked ready to seize and shake
her. She straightened with an effort. “There was more to the mages’ conspiracy
than a plot to unite two royal houses. When our son was born, Hirel and I were
to be killed.” Vadin said nothing, only waited. “But first, our fathers were to
die. Are still to die. It will be soon, within days. I have hopes that our
presence here, close by the emperors, will hold them back. They dare not lose
me now, and they know that if Hirel dies, I die.”

“Assassins are no rarity,” said Vadin, “and we’ve met
sorcerous assassins before.”

“But never a full circle of mages, led by the Master of the
Guild himself.” Sevayin’s body levered itself up, driving itself around the
tent, evading cot and clothing chest, skirting the low table with its maps and
its plans of battle.

Abruptly she stopped, turned. “Uncle. I know the way to the
Heart of the World.”

Vadin rose. “Are you as mad as that?”

Sevayin grinned at him. “Do you need to ask?”

“It will be guarded.”

“With Father’s loyal mages and with Ziad-Ilarios’; with you,
with Mother, with Father himself, we could conquer worlds.”

“Clever,” said Vadin. “This world may not be wide enough for
two emperors, but if there are many . . .”

Sevayin hissed her impatience. “One world or a thousand
thousand, what use to a dead man? You yourself taught me that it seldom profits
a commander to wait for the enemy to attack. Better to strike the first blow,
hard and fast, before he can gather his forces.”

“What makes you think the mages aren’t armed and waiting?”

“They may be.” Sevayin took up a stylus and turned it in her
fingers.

In Ianon they jested that a pen was a waste of a good dart.
She almost smiled. “I don’t think they know what I’m capable of.”

“By now they do.”

She tossed her freed hair, sweeping her body with her hand.
“Look at me, uncle. This is all of me that most of them have ever seen. They
know why I ran away from my prison. I was afraid to die; I had my prince to be
my courage and my son to make me desperate. That I succeeded—ah then, I’m a
god’s grandchild, and luck is his servant.”

Vadin’s grin was wry. “And you are quite astonishingly
beautiful, and when has beauty ever needed brains?”

“Avaryan knows, I never have.”

“And here I was, thinking what a marvel you were, to have
learned so quickly how to play the princess.”

“It’s not so different to play the prince. It was much
harder to teach myself to walk. I kept wanting to make my body balance like a
man’s.”

Vadin laughed freely then, pulling her in. She let her arms
close the embrace.

The child kicked hard; Vadin started. For a moment all
merriment dropped away. But not for grief. For wonder; even for awe.

“He’s strong,” the Ianyn said. “And much too pretty for
comfort.” His laughter rang out anew. “I think your father’s nose is immortal.”

“And his darkness,” said Sevayin, “and my mother’s hair. You
know this should be a brown child, or amber. So for that matter should I.”

“They knew what they wanted you to be.”

“This?” asked Sevayin, braced for pain.

“This,” said Vadin. He smiled with a touch of wickedness.
“Here’s a secret, namesake. Men want sons; how can they help it? But every one
of us, in his heart of hearts, prays for a daughter.”

“However he gets one?”

“However he gets one.” Vadin stood back, stern. “Now,
namesake. Lie down and let your baby rest.”

She obeyed meekly enough, lying on the cot that was barely
wider than a soldier’s. Vadin left to be a lord commander again. Sevayin
breathed slowly, swallowing past the ache in her throat.

Here in solitude, with the army’s roar as steady as the sea,
her sight was bitterly clear. She had solved nothing yet. She might have slain
them all.

She met Ulan’s green stare. The cat blinked, yawned. He did
not like all this crowding and shouting; he needed the free air. But if she was
about to go to lair with her cubs . . .

“One cub,” she said, “and not quite yet, brother nursemaid.”

Ah, then. He would go. She laid her golden hand on his head;
it bowed beneath the weight of the god. With a last green-fire glance, he
slipped from the tent.

Sevayin lay for a few breaths’ span. Abruptly she rose.
There was wine where it had always been, in the chest at the bed’s foot. She
filled a cup and stared at it. Her stomach did not want it.

“My courage needs it,” she said, downing it. It was proper
Varyani wine: sweet and heady, sharpened with spices. It steadied her.

She turned to face the one who stood in front of the tent’s
flap. It had been a goodly time since they stood eye to eye.

She had never seen in those eyes what she saw now. In Prince
Orsan’s, yes. When he offered her the choice that even yet might be the end of
her. But not in the eyes of his daughter.

It went beyond pain. “Mother,” she said, calm and quiet.

Elian came, took the cup from her fingers, filled it and
drained it herself. Choking on it, but forcing it down.

Sevayin stared at her. She stared back. The cold distances
were heating, closing in. “I hope you’re pleased with yourself.”

Sevayin snapped erect. Here was all that she had expected.
From the one in whom alone she had thought to find understanding. In her
mother, who had foreseen this. Who had trained her for it.

And would not, could not accept its fulfillment.

“You’ve set the army on its ear,” said Elian. “You’ve shown
them what in fact they’ve shed their blood for. You’ve shaken your father and
all that he has made, to their foundations. Are you content?”

“Are you?" Sevayin shot back. “You saw all that I saw.
What did you do to stop it? What did you do that even slowed its advance?”

“I did not strangle you in your cradle.”

Sevayin began to tremble. “The others are finding that they
can bear what they have no power to change. You can’t. Why? Does it matter so
much to you whether I walk as a man or as a woman? Are you afraid I’ll be a
rival?”

Elian slapped her.

She did not evade the blow, nor did she strike back. “Oh,
splendid, Mother! You always hit what you can’t answer. I’ve betrayed you,
haven’t I?”

“You have betrayed your father.”

“That,” said Sevayin, “is not for you to judge. I’ve
betrayed you. You loved the shape I used to wear. You hate me for giving it
up.”

“I could never hate you.”

“Scorn, then. Contempt. Outrage.”

“Grief.” Elian was weeping. It was bitter to see. Her face
was rigid; the tears ran down it unregarded. “That you should have hurt so
much. That you should have given up—all—”

“Whatever I gave up, I have gained back. I have my prince,
Mother. I have my son. I have my power, and it grows stronger than it ever was
before.”

“But the price,” said Elian. “The pain.”

Sevayin was thoroughly a woman, and almost a mother. But she
could not understand this woman who was her mother.

Elian laughed, still weeping. “That’s a great secret, child.
Women don’t understand women, either. I was so sure that I could face this.
When it came. If it came. And then I saw you, and I couldn’t bear it.” She laid
her hands flat on her middle. “I was ill, not so long ago. I lost a child. It
would have been your sister.”

Sevayin staggered with the pain of it. Reached, to heal her,
to grieve with her.

Elian eluded her hands. “She should never have been. We knew
it, your father and I. And yet we dared to know joy. To hope that maybe,
somehow, we could have it all: that we could be victorious, that you could be
healed, that we could live in peace with our daughter as with our son. Then,”
said Elian, “the pains came. Nothing we did could stop them. They were more
terrible than anything I had ever known. As if my very substance were being
rent from me.”

Sevayin sank down, cradling her own substance, her child who
would be, must be, born alive.

“The god took her,” Elian said. “And mages. I knew,
Sarevadin. I knew that they were birthing you. Wielding my power. Taking my
child that would be, to transform my child that had been. It was godly cold,
that taking. It was divinely unspeakable.”

Sevayin rocked, shivering. If she had died in the working,
her sister would have lived. Would have grown to womanhood. Hirel would have
survived the war; would have had to wait, in grief, perhaps in captivity. But
would, in the end, have had his Sunborn queen.

“Avaryan,” she said. “There is no Avaryan. There is only
Uvarra.” She raised her head. Her mother regarded her without pity. Pitiless.
“No wonder you hate me.”

“I told you, I do not.” Elian sat beside her, but out of her
reach. “You didn’t know what you were doing; you wanted to save us all. You
paid higher even than I did, and in greater pain. I never stopped loving you.
I’m trying to forgive you.”

Sevayin drew a sharp and hurting breath. “I don’t want your
forgiveness. I want your acceptance. I want you to stand with me when I face
Keruvarion.”

She looked at Elian and knew that she had asked too much. It
had taken all the empress’ strength to come here, to face her alone, to tell
her the truth. More than that, Elian could not give.

Sevayin bowed her head, hating defeat, knowing nothing that
would alter it.

“I do not know that I can accept you,” said Elian. “But I
will stand with you.”

Sevayin started, half rising. Elian held her down. It hurt,
that light touch. It hurt bitterly, as a touch can, when it bears healing in
it.