Daughter of Lir (25 page)

The horses had run far over the steppe. In the way of horses
they had found an upper branch of the river that flowed past the camp. It ran
swift and clean, though somewhat low in this season, and the grass on its banks
was green.

The moon-colored mare was there already, grazing placidly.
She barely acknowledged the stallions’ arrival, even when they were turned
loose to roll in the grass.

Minas drank long and thirstily from the river, and filled
his waterskin from it. When he looked again, a pair of fish hung flopping from
a string that, moments before, had laced up Rhian’s breeches.

She stood knee-deep in the shallows. As he watched, she
swooped and came up with a third fish, larger than either of the others, and giving
her a fair fight, too. But she won, strung the fish with its fellows and
flashed her white grin at Minas.

“You’ll eat them raw?” he asked her.

“Hardly!” she said.

He was in a contrary mood, or he would not have done what he
did. He went swimming in the river, swam long and hard, till all the heat and
sweat of the day was washed away, and with it the scent and the memory of her.
When he came out at last, blue and shivering, she had a fire burning in a
circle of stones, and the fish roasting on a flat stone.

Between the sinking sun and the fire, he warmed quickly. The
fish was sweet and smoky, as he liked it best. The water had washed away his
ill temper. He even smiled at her, and thanked her graciously for sharing the
fruits of her hunt.

He stiffened when she left the far side of the fire and her
own share of the fish to kneel behind him. Deftly and patiently she worked the
tangles from his drying hair. She made no move to tempt him into lying with her
again, but her touch, so light and skilled, warmed him to the bone.

Such a thing as this, only a lover or a battle-brother might
do. A wife did it for her husband, if she were greatly favored.

He told her as much. She paused in plaiting his newly tamed
hair. He felt the swift brush of her lips on his shoulder, and the sharp nip of
teeth. He yelped and rounded on her.

She laughed at him. “In my country,” she said, “a woman does
it for a man she favors. She’ll plait her token into his hair, and so claim
him; and the other women will let him be.”

Struck with sudden apprehension, he pulled his braid over
his shoulder. There was indeed something woven in it: a small golden bell.

That was not gold. It was bronze. She had claimed him with
bronze.

If it had been gold, he would have torn it out and flung it
in her face. But bronze had too much power. It meant too much.

Bindings, he had heard a shaman say once, were twofold. If
he was bound to her, then so was she bound to him. Bronze made sure of it.

He had nothing with which to seal it. He had left the camp
naked, with no baggage but an empty waterskin. The chariot he would never give
her, nor the horses, nor their harness.

Suppose, he thought, that his gift were the driving of the
chariot. It was such a gift as few men in the world could give, and no woman
had ever had. Women did not ride in chariots, still less play charioteer.

He had broken laws of men and gods. He had cared nothing for
it when he did it, and he could not make himself care now. Not in front of her.
What did men’s laws matter, if she was a goddess?

“You are beautiful,” he said, “like a fine bay mare. You are
odder than any woman I ever met. No one warned me—no one told me that there
could be such a creature in the world.”

“I’m ordinary enough in my country,” she said.

“Ah,” said Minas, “but that is the gods’ country. We mortals
are different.”

She looked as if she might offer objection, but thought
better of it. She finished plaiting his hair instead. He allowed it. When it
was done, when his plait hung down his back where it belonged, he could hear
the faint high chiming of the bronze bell. Binding him. Binding her. Marking in
memory this strangest of days.

By noon the tale had flown through the camp: how the
traders’ woman had invaded the chariots’ battle, and Minas the prince had
carried her away. People were already making songs of it.

It was a scandal among the elders, both men and women. The
young folk thought it wonderful. “She rode out as bare as a newborn baby,” Aera
heard one of the king’s wives say to another. “The sight of her struck all the
men dumb.”

“Surely,” said one of the others with a wicked cackle. “All
their wits had gone straight to their rods.”

Aera bit her lip till it bled. What she felt was not shock,
nor yet amusement. It was envy. That one had seen a man she fancied, and taken
him. She would never understand what it was for a woman to bow to a man’s will.

Why, thought Aera, that was bitterness. She had reckoned
herself content—not with what had become of the king, oh no, but with the life
the gods had given her. She was mother to the heir. She had power in the king’s
tent. Her father was the maker of chariots, whom men called a god.

She would have given it all to be riding naked in a chariot,
swept away by a bold young charioteer. Nor was it her son’s face she saw, but
quite another altogether. A strong dark face, a fine curly beard, and shoulders
as broad as an aurochs’ horns.

She had not been wise this morning. She had known when he
came in, and had slipped through shadows in his wake. She heard what Etena said
to him, and what he said in return. Then she sent Dias to warn him, but Dias
had not reckoned the warning well taken.

Better, she realized belatedly, if she had gone herself.
These westerners bowed to the rule of women. To her who was a woman, the
westerner would have listened.

Too late, she thought as she passed through the king’s tent.
What was done was done.

Was it?

She stopped short. Her errand vanished, forgotten. She was
under a spell, she thought: a western magic. She could not even make herself
care.

She went out as she was allowed to do, as a senior wife of
the king. She veiled herself in fabric that had been taken from a tribe
somewhat to the east of this place, that was not as fine as the weavings the
westerners had brought, but it concealed her as was proper. Her gown covered
her from her throat to her toes. The sleeves fell to her fingertips, a mark of
wealth and standing. There was gold about the sleeves and hem. Gold rings hung
from her ears. Gold bound her veil and her girdle. Many would have reckoned her
blessed among women.

She felt, walking from shadow to shadow of the camp, as if
she were wrapped in chains. The veil suffocated her. The gown was unbearably
hot. The boots felt tight enough to crush her feet.

She bore them because she must. She had her rank and
position to consider, and the honor of her kin. No matter that this errand
might do far more harm to them than if she had stripped naked and danced
through the camp. It might not; and she preserved her modesty.

The traders were trading in a great crowd of men and a few
bold veiled women. Aera did not see the one she sought, though there were big
black-bearded men enough, and one or two almost as good to look at as the captain
of guards. Who might, if Etena’s spies told the truth, be a king’s son of the western
tribes.

She had no need to ask who Etena’s spies were. She
recognized one of the women by the gliding grace of her walk. No doubt some of
the king’s men strutting about were Etena’s, too. Maybe all of them were. Her
power had grown great, this season.

Aera moved quietly along the edges of the crowd. The traders
were taking in a great deal of gold in exchange for their jewels and weavings
and ornaments. Sometimes they traded gold for something that a tribesman
offered: a heap of tanned hides, a finely made bridle, an embroidered coat.

Those who traded, she noticed, had a different look than
those who stood on guard. The traders were smaller men, slighter, with darker
skin and sharper features. The guardsmen were big men, as big as warriors of
the People, and their faces were blunt but very comely. They carried themselves
differently, too. They had an air about them, she thought, of inborn arrogance.
These were not servants or conquered tribesmen. These were men accustomed to
rule.

They had an easy manner with the men of the People. Before
the women they were as deferential as if each of them had been an elder of the
tribe. It was enough like the respect that was proper among the People that it
gave no offense—in fact it pleased the women considerably, though their men
were wary.

Aera had brought nothing to trade, except the warning she
meant for the captain of guards. Maybe he had gone hunting. There was no one
she dared ask. She left the traders’ circle with a sensation that was not
exactly relief.

She should go back to the king’s tent where she belonged.
But her spirit was still at odds with itself. She sought her father instead.

He would not be in his tent at this time of day. It would be
empty and pleasant, and she could escape for yet a while the duties that grew
more onerous, the more powerful Etena became. The time would come, she thought,
when she was expected to haul water and gather dung for the cookfires tasks for
a captive, not for the mother of the king’s heir.

She came at her father’s tent roundabout, circling away from
the field of chariots and skirting the makers’ circle. And there where she
would never have expected to find him was the man she had been looking for. He
stood with another man like him, a very big man, massive and silent, watching
the makers at their work.

Metos never had seen the virtue in hiding what he did. “If
they can understand it,” he liked to say, “then the gods bless them.”

The western captain seemed more entertained than edified.
The other had a heavy, not particularly intelligent face. He seemed asleep on
his feet. And yet, Aera thought, a man could conceal great wit and subtlety
behind such a mask.

The captain caught sight of her. His eyes brightened in a
way that made her heart flutter. His smile seemed honestly delighted.

She resisted the urge to lift her hand to her breast. She
was wearing the necklace he had given her—that she meant to return, oh yes, but
not yet. He could not see it under her veils, and yet it seemed he was aware of
it. Why else would he regard her with such warmth, and sweep such a splendid
salute?

“Lady!” he called. “Lady! Well met!”

That was beyond improper. It would have won him a spear in
the gut if he had been anywhere but here. Metos had never cared for such
things, and his makers were of his mind: all the world was the work, and
nothing else was of any importance.

Emry the captain went on, oblivious to the infraction he had
committed. “A fine day, lady, and a fine spectacle here—such a thing as I’ve
never seen in the world before. Some of it I understand, but the rest. . .”

“That is men’s work,” she said with a hint of severity. “I
know little of it.”

He raised a brow. If he was aware that he had been
chastised, he did not acknowledge it. “What is women’s work?” he asked.

“That would be of no interest to a man,” she said.

His smile had faded as they spoke, but at that, the corner
of his mouth twitched. He was very difficult to despise, even with his dreadful
manners. “Probably it would not be,” he said equably, “as feeble of wit as I
demonstrably am, and as far beneath your eminence as the earth beneath the
moon’s feet.”

If he had been one of her children, she would have boxed his
ear for that. But he was not her child, not even remotely, nor did she look at
him as she looked at her sons, both the one she had borne in her womb and the
one she had suckled at her breast. Even her king in his youth had not made her
heart beat as hard as this young man did.

She settled for a hiss and a toss of the head that set the
golden ornaments of her veil to jingling. “Impudent,” she said.

He ducked his head as if in submission, but his eyes were
laughing at her under the black brows. He knew all too well what he was doing
to her.

If he had been a woman, she would have called him shameless.
Men did not do such things here. They took what they wanted. They never asked.

Her mouth twisted. “What a day you have had,” she said,
“lusted after by two royal wives. Is it a game you play? Do you take trophies,
or is the conquest enough?”

“Lady,” he said, and all the laughter was gone from his
face, “if a woman wants me, I must at least, in courtesy, acknowledge the
wanting. But I’m given the right to refuse—again, in courtesy.”

“You are refusing me,” she said.

“Oh, no, lady,” he said before she could say what else was
in her heart. “Never in the world. If you but ask, I’ll gladly give myself to
you.”

“Would you give yourself to any royal wife who asks?”

“Not at all,” he said with all the fervor of his youth.
“That one—” He shivered. “She wants me snoring at her feet, enslaved to her
will. After I’ve pleasured her in every way she imagines I know.”

“What do I want of you?”

Was he blushing, however faintly? “You may want whatever you
please to want,” he said, “and I will be pleased to give it.”

“If I tell you never again to look on me, or speak to me, or
think of me—will you do it?”

“Do you want that?”

She opened her mouth to say yes, she did, she who was the
king’s wife. But her tongue said, “What I want matters nothing. I belong to the
king. Any man who touches me must die.”

“Even the king?”

“
Oh
!” It was a
gasp. “Oh, you are incorrigible!”

He bit his lip. “You make me dizzy,” he said. “Then I say
whatever comes into my head.”

“I am old enough to be your mother.”

“Yes.” He did not seem to understand that there should be
anything wrong with it. “And I’ve hardly seen your face.”