Earthly Crown (8 page)

“But,” echoed Cara, smiling at Diana. “You’ll ask anyway. I must say you’re looking pert, David, after that impossibly boring audience and ceremony.”

“I left.”

“Of course. You could. Tess is doing linguistics research, Diana.”

“Linguistics research? That seems so mundane, somehow. I thought maybe she was kidnapped by a dark warrior and swept off into a life filled with hardship and passionate lovemaking. Oh, well.”

There was a pause. David chuckled.

Cara regarded Diana with an expression of amused indulgence. “And a bastard every year? Or do you suppose she was married in some primitive ceremony?”

“Oh, certainly,” said Diana with conviction, pushing herself away from the wall. “Barbarians are prudes, aren’t they? Of course there was a ceremony. She’s probably scarred for life.”

David laughed.

“How long have you been an actor?” Cara asked.

Diana smiled in a way that showed her dimples to perfection. David sighed and shook his head, feeling very old. “My first performance was at age four as the changeling in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

“That must explain it,” said Cara, but David knew her well enough to see that she liked Diana. “In any case, Tess is gifted with languages, and I suspect she saw Rhui as an excellent laboratory to study human evolution in parallel to our own.”

“Like Owen?”

“Perhaps. It’s not a bad analogy.”

“You have a laboratory here, too, don’t you? A medical one.”

“Yes.” Cara cast a glance at David.

“She’s studying aging,” he said.

But Cara was only angling for an opening, since it was her favorite subject. “As grateful as we may be for the longevity treatments the Chapalii gave us, allowing us to live out our full one hundred and twenty year life spans with good health and a long period of relative youth, I suspect there’s something we’re missing. Something they didn’t tell us, or something, perhaps, that they don’t know.”

“What do you mean?”

David had seen Cara’s lecture mask before. It slipped firmly into place now. “Aging is a two part process. One is a breakdown of the vitality and regenerative abilities of the tissues and the metabolic system, that’s what the Chapalii treatments deal with. But the other is a genetic clock that switches off the organism at a set time. We’re still stuck at one hundred and twenty years. I think we can do better.” The mask slipped off, and she suddenly looked cautious. “Perhaps. We’ll see.”

“It’s a delicate and peculiar issue,” put in David, since Cara had left him his opening. “We don’t talk about it much.”

“Oh,” said Diana. The sea faded into darkness behind them, and the massive bulk of the palace rose against the stars. “Is that why you have your laboratory down here, on an interdicted planet? Where the Chapalii aren’t allowed?”

What need to reply? The wind coursed along the parapet and the sea dashed itself into foam on the rocks below. The fecund moon lay low, bordering the hills. A shoe scraped on stone, and Marco emerged from around a curve of wall. He smiled at Diana and leaned casually against the wall beside her.

To David’s surprise, it was Diana who broke the silence. “But, Dr. Hierakis, are the Rhuian humans really the same species as we are?”

David almost laughed, seeing how disconcerted Marco looked, as if he thought that once he arrived, Diana would not be able to think of anything but him.

“Oh, yes,” said Cara. “By all the biological laws we know. Identical.” She appeared about to say something else, but did not.

“But how?” Diana asked. “That should be impossible.”

Though it was night, the moon lent enough light to the scene so David could still read their expressions. Marco gazed soulfully on Diana, and David thought she was aware of his gaze on her. Cara sighed and shifted to stare out to sea, imposing the kind of silence on the little group that betrays knowledge hard-won and dangerous to share.

“Oh,” said Diana. She looked disappointed, but resigned to her fate. “It’s a state secret. I understand.”

Marco chuckled. “Fair one.” He caught one of her hands in his. “Had you agreed to marry me yet?”

“You hadn’t asked me yet,” Diana retorted, extricating her hand from his. Then she lowered her eyes from his face and looked quickly away.

Oh, dear,
thought David. He looked at Cara. Cara looked at him. The signs of infatuation were easy enough to read. And she
was
young, and susceptible.

“I hear you’re doing
The Tempest
tonight,” said Cara. “Do you suppose you could find a seat for me? I’ve always loved that play.”

“Goodness,” said Diana, sounding a bit strained as she said it. “I really must go. I’m sure we can find you something, Doctor, if you’d like to come with me. The duke’s—the
prince’s
—box is always vacant, unless he’s attending. If you think he’d like to go.”

“Ah,” said Cara in a dangerous voice. “I’m sure he’d
love
to attend tonight.”

They made their good-byes. They left. Marco began to walk after them.

“Marco,” said David softly, “she is an intelligent and sensitive young woman, and I stress the word, ‘young.’ Stop playing with her. It’s cruel, above all else.”

Marco spun. “Et tu, Brute? Hell, I had a lecture from Suzanne before she left to go back to Odys. Is this some kind of conspiracy? I think she’s old enough to know her own mind.”

“Maybe she just strikes us all as more vulnerable than the others. She’s terribly romantic.”

“Well, so am I,” Marco snapped. “I suggest you let the subject drop.” He propped his elbows up on the battlements and glared out at the bay, striped in darkness and moonlight. But then again, Marco was always short-tempered when he was in full pursuit.

“I’ve said everything I intend to say. For whatever good it will do. When do Maggie and Rajiv and Jo get in?”

“Tomorrow,” said Marco grumpily. “And don’t forget Ursula.”

“Ow.” David winced. “I had. Well, I’ve lived through worse.”

“Or the next day,” Marco added, evidently determined to be perverse. “It depends on the weather. They’re marking time in orbit now.”

“Why did you tell Charles that an irresistible force is about to meet an immovable object? What does that have to do with Tess?”

Marco fixed a brooding stare on David. “Don’t say I didn’t warn him.”

“My goodness,” said David, “you certainly make me look forward to
this
expedition.”

Marco only grunted. Then he lapsed into a silence from which, David knew, he could not be coaxed. David decided to see if he could go wangle a chair in the prince’s box, to see tonight’s performance of
The Tempest.
Somehow, a play about being shipwrecked on a lost and primitive island seemed appropriate to the moment.

J
IROANNES ARTHEBATHES WAS AT
Eberge when he received the courier from his uncle ordering him to leave three-quarters of his retinue and all of his women and their attendants at the northern villa of the Great King’s fourth cousin.

His personal secretary, Syrannus, read the letter to him. Jiroannes grabbed the parchment out of Syrannus’s hands and spoke the words to himself. “‘…It has come to our attention that the presence of women in your party would be a hindrance to our negotiations. Therefore, nephew, I feel it wise for you to travel with only twenty guardsmen, two grooms, three slave-boys, and your personal secretary. Be so good as to obey my wishes.’”

Jiroannes had learned to swear fluently at the palace school for boys; he did so now. “This is humiliating! And well he knows it, too. He would never travel with such a paltry escort.”

“Surely, eminence, your uncle would not demand such privations of you without good reason.”

“How can he expect that I will be granted any respect at all, even by such barbarians as these jaran, coming to them with a mere six servants? And no women! Their
Bakhtiian
will think me the merest lordling. Surely my uncle understands that as the ambassador of the Great King, may his name resonate a thousand years, I must present a dignified retinue. Savages are only impressed by force, size, and gold. They will think Vidiya is some trifling princedom.” He snorted and glanced around his chamber. True, he was far out in the provinces, but the Great King’s fourth cousin had imported the finest carved furniture from the port of Ambray, and the cunning designs woven into the upholstery of the couch attested to the skill of his slaves. Though it was also true that the tile inlaid into the floor had flaws and inferior color, and the beads of the door curtain were painted wood, not glass. “How can the jaran respect us as the most civilized of peoples, as well as the most powerful, if the Great King’s ambassador arrives with a train of servants that any concubine might own? Feh.”

Syrannus said nothing, but he extricated the delicate parchment from his lord’s smooth, dark hands and rolled it up with the reverence due any communication from the person of a great lord and King’s Companion of Vidiya.

“And I showed laudable restraint, I would have thought,” Jiroannes went on, although in a more subdued tone of voice. “I brought only three of my concubines.”

“Eminence, perhaps your most honored lord uncle has obtained information that forces his hand in this?”

“I know. I know.” It was too much, really, to have to endure a year in circumstances of the utmost coarseness, ambassador to these jaran, and now to have to maintain himself as a Vidiyan ought with so few servants. “I doubt if these barbarians can even recognize such markers of status.”

“I think, eminence, that it would not do to underestimate them. Eight kingdoms and four principalities have already fallen to their onslaught. Why else would the Great King, may his name endure a thousand years, bother to negotiate with their prince?”

“Four kingdoms and eight principalities. Let us not exaggerate their power. Surely, if it came to war between us, you don’t think these barbarians have the slightest chance to win?”

“One hears tales, eminence. The more savage the man, the less honor and the Everlasting God’s tenets will stay his hand. They say this Bakhtiian violated a holy temple and its ten virgin priestesses. That he massacred an entire town out in the wilderness, five thousand men, women, and children, even the cattle, leaving only the smoking ruins of the buildings and bloodied corpses for the scavengers. They say jaran men are so proud that they won’t touch any women but their own, that they call foreign women ‘dogs.’ They ride covered in their own blood, and they can’t walk, since they sit on horseback from childhood on.”

Jiroannes stroked his beard, amused. “I hope you do not believe all these superstitious tales, Syrannus. I have also heard it said that they scorn the bow and arrow because it is a woman’s weapon. Can you imagine? Thinking a woman could shoot? It is nonsense, and you’d do well not to believe such stories.”

“Still, eminence, your most honored uncle must have had good reason to give you this order.”

“Yes. I have never doubted my uncle’s judgment. And it
was
undoubtedly my uncle’s influence that convinced His Imperial Majesty to grant me this mission.”

“It is true, eminence, that five other young men of good family vied for the position. To succeed with such an important assignment will assure you higher standing at court.”

“Yes. And a hope of moving into the Companion’s Circle.” Jiroannes sank back onto the silken couch and snapped his fingers. His Tadesh concubine padded forward from the corner and knelt at the foot of the couch to massage his feet. “And if I fail, I will spend the rest of my life in the provinces.” He considered the papered walls trimmed with gold leaf, the arched windows looking out over the gardens, sere and brown with winter, and the beaded curtain that concealed this room from the rest of the honored guest suite. Wooden beads, indeed!

“Certainly, eminence, the rewards for succeeding will be great. Your most honored uncle has already begun negotiations, I believe, for your suit for the hand and dowry of the daughter of this house.”

“Yes. The daughter of the Great King’s fourth cousin. That would be sweet indeed.”

“With such a connection to the royal family, eminence, surely a Companion’s Sash would be guaranteed you.”

Jiroannes did not reply. He watched the Tadesh. Her hands, stroking his feet and ankles, were strong and assured. She was a foreign girl, from the Gray Eminence’s lands across the sea. He had paid a ridiculously high price for her. She was not a beauty, certainly, but exotic as any foreigner is, and in any case she knew the five fabled arts of seduction and the five erotic dances of Tadesh. He could tell, by her lowered eyes and the set of her chin, that she knew he was studying her. She did not smile. She never did.

“Syrannus,” he said abruptly. “There is a slave-boy about her size. Go get his clothing.”

“Your eminence?”

“His clothing.”

Syrannus looked troubled. “Your eminence, surely, if your most honored uncle said—”

“Are you questioning me?”

Syrannus bowed. “Of course not, your eminence, but in my position as a tutor for many years in the palace school, from which your eminence so graciously elevated me to become your secretary, I beg leave to remind you that while your high spirits and rebellious nature made you a favorite among the tutors at the school, it would not perhaps be wise to go against your uncle’s orders.”

“I can cut the girl’s hair.” The concubine’s hands halted for a moment, then resumed their rubbing. “With short hair, and loose clothing, she will pass well enough for a boy. By my ancestors, Syrannus, surely my uncle cannot expect me to endure an entire year without female companionship? The First Prophet himself warns against such privations. It is simply too much. She will go in the slave-boy’s place. My uncle will not know of it, and the barbarians will neither notice nor care.”

Syrannus hesitated. At last, he bowed and left the room. The curtain parted, whispering, to let him through, and with a jangle of beads settled back into place.

Jiroannes sighed. “Something to drink, Samae.” The concubine rose and padded in her slippers to the far table and brought him back a cup of melted fruit sorbet. He liked to watch her. She had an unconscious grace, and her slim hips swayed in an enticing manner. He did not think she did it on purpose. She had yet to show the least interest in him, except to perform her duties as ordered and with exacting perfection.