Songmaster (36 page)

Riktors received them in the great hall.

There were no guards. Only Ferret. But Ansset and Kyaren knew that he was guard enough.

The Mayor of the palace brought them in, but at Riktors’s nod, he left. Kyaren was keenly aware of the tension in the air. None was visible from Ansset, but Kyaren knew that didn’t mean anything. Control still served him when he needed it, usually. And the tension in Riktors was clear. Kyaren had not seen the man close up. He had the imperial presence, the mood about him so that no one dared oppose him. Yet he also seemed afraid. As if Ansset held a weapon that could hurt him, and he was terrified that it would be used.

She knew they had not seen each other in two years. Knew also from her conversations with Ansset that they had not parted on friendly terms. Yet they outwardly seemed pleased to see each other, and Kyaren did not think it was a sham.

“I’ve missed you,” Riktors said.

“And I you,” Ansset answered.

“My servants tell me that you’ve done very well.”

“Better than I had expected, not as well as I had hoped,” Ansset said.

“Come here,” Riktors said.

Ansset walked forward, came within a few meters of the throne, and knelt, touching his head to the floor. Impatiently, Riktors motioned for him to arise and come closer. “You don’t need to do that kind of thing, not when there’s no audience.”

“But I’ve come to ask a favor from the throne.”

“I know you have,” Riktors said, and his face darkened. “We’ll discuss that later. How have you been?”

“Reasonably good health, surrounded by reasonably helpful people. I’ve come for Josif. He’s innocent of any crime.”

“Is he?” Riktors asked.

And Kyaren’s heart suddenly grew heavy in her chest, and she felt something go out of her. She identified it a moment later as confidence. She had been expecting no resistance—just an error, to be rectified as soon as there was an explanation. What crime had Josif committed? Why was the emperor delaying and arguing?

She knew the answer as she asked the question. Josif had been making love to Mikal’s Songbird. Even the emperor had not made love to Mikal’s Songbird. Josif had had what the emperor had not even asked for. But had he wanted it? Was that the reason for his anger and delay?

“He is innocent,” Ansset said slowly, but danger crept into his voice. “I want to see him.”

“Is this Josif all you can think of?” asked Riktors. “There was a time when you would have sung for me first. When you would have come to me full of songs.”

Ansset said nothing.

“Two years!” cried Riktors, the emotion taking control of his voice. “In two years, you haven’t visited, you haven’t tried to visit!”

“I didn’t think you’d want me.”

“Want you,” said Riktors, getting some of his dignity back. “Ever since I came here, this place was full of your music. And then gone. For two years, silence. And the babble of fools. Sing for me, Ansset.”

And Ansset was silent.

Riktors watched him, and Kyaren realized this was the price that Riktors expected to be paid. A song in exchange for Josif’s freedom. A cheap price, if only Ansset still had any songs in him. And Riktors didn’t know. How could he not have known?

“Sing for me, Ansset!” Riktors cried.

“He can’t,” Kyaren answered. She glanced at Ansset, but he was standing quietly, regarding Riktors impassively. Control. Just another thing that she had been unable to master in the Songhouse.

“What do you mean, he can’t?” asked Riktors.

“I mean that he’s lost his songs. He hasn’t sung anything, not since he left you. Not since you—”

“Not since I what?” He dared her to go on, dared her to condemn him.

“Not since you locked him in Mikal’s rooms for a month.” She dared.

“He can’t lose his songs,” Riktors said. “He was trained since he was three.”

“He can and he did. Don’t you realize? He doesn’t
learn
songs. He learns how to discover them. Inside himself, and bring them out to the surface. Do you think he memorized them all, and chose the right one for the proper occasion? They came from his soul, and you broke him, and now he can’t find them anymore.” Her anger surprised her. She had listened sympathetically to Ansset. It had never occurred to her how much she had come to hate Riktors for Ansset’s sake. Which was odd, for Ansset had never even hinted at hatred for Riktors. Only hurt.

Riktors seemed not to notice the impertinence of her tone. He only looked wonderingly at Ansset. “Is it true?”

Ansset nodded.

Riktors dropped his head into his hands, which rested on the arms of the throne. “What have I done,” he said. His hands twisted in his hair.

He really grieves for Ansset’s loss, Kyaren thought, and realized that despite all he had done to hurt Ansset, he still loved him. And so, fumbling, she offered some words to assuage the blow that had just struck him. “It wasn’t just you,” she said. “It was the Songhouse, really. What the Songhouse did. Cutting him off here. You don’t know what the Songhouse means to—to people like him.” She had almost said
us. “I
knew they were bastards there, who didn’t care for any of us, but they get chains on you and never let go.”

Beside her, Ansset was shaking his head.

“It’s true, Ansset. It was bad enough for them to strand you here without warning, but when they didn’t even prepare you for—what happened, what the drugs would do to you—” She didn’t finish. She merely turned to Riktors, who did not seem to be listening, and said, “It’s the Songhouse that hurt him most.”

He did hear. He sat up, and looked much relieved, though there was still tension in him, even for Kyaren to see, who did not know him.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s the Songhouse that hurt him most.”

Suddenly Ansset stepped forward, toward the throne. He was angry. Kyaren was surprised—she had been the one speaking, and yet he seemed angry at Riktors.

“That was a lie,” Ansset said.

Riktors only looked at him, startled.

“I know your voice, Riktors, know it as well as I know my own, and that was a lie, and not just a small one, Riktors, that was a lie that matters to you right to the core and I want to know why it’s a lie!”

Riktors did not answer. But after a few moments he looked away from Ansset, glanced toward Ferret, who immediately came forward.

“Stay where you are!” Ansset commanded, and Ferret, surprised by the ferocity of his voice, obeyed. Ansset spoke again to Riktors. “It was not the Songhouse that hurt me most, then?”

Riktors shook his head.

“Where is the lie, Riktors? I was cut off from the Songhouse, and that has cost me more than any other loss I have ever sustained, even the loss of Mikal, even the loss of your friendship. And you say that it was not the Songhouse that hurt me most? Who was it, then? Who was it who cut me off from them?”

Again Riktors appealed to Ferret. “He’s dangerous, Ferret.”

Ferret shook his head. “When he plans to attack you, I’ll know it.”

It was obvious to Kyaren that Riktors did not share his confidence. But any pity or understanding she had had for the man was gone now; yet she found it hard to believe that anyone could have been as cruel as Riktors was. “It was all a lie, then,” she said into the silence. “The Songhouse didn’t refuse him. The Songhouse wanted him back.”

Riktors said nothing.

“You were clever,” Ansset said to him. “In all our conversation, that last day, you never once told me a lie. Not once. And I thought all your tension was because you were sad to see me go.”

Riktors spoke at last, his voice husky. “I was sad to see you go.”

“Anywhere. To anyone. I was yours, is that it? I had to love you most, is that it? If I thought of the Songhouse as home, you couldn’t bear that, could you? If I loved the Songhouse more than I loved this palace, then you’d take the Songhouse away from me, wouldn’t you? Only you had to twist it, so I’d hate them in the process, and not you at all. You couldn’t have me hate you.”

The words seemed to slam visibly into Riktors, and he gasped at the end of Ansset’s speech. Ansset may have no songs, but his voice was still a potent tool, and he was using it to savage Riktors.

“I wanted your songs,” Riktors said.

“You wanted my songs,” Ansset answered, bitterly, “more than you wanted my happiness. So you took my happiness, and stole my songs.”

And then Kyaren made a connection in her mind, and realized that Riktors was not holding Josif ransom against a song.

“Ansset,” Kyaren said. “Josif.”

Ansset remembered, and the mask of Control appeared again on his face. Time enough for hatred when Josif was free.

“I want Josif. Now,” Ansset said.

“No,” Riktors said.

“Aren’t you through?” Ansset asked. “Do you think you can still save something? Or are you determined that if you can’t have my love—and you can’t, Riktors, you can’t—then no one can. If you ever loved me, Riktors, you will let me have Josif. Now.”

You can’t, Riktors, you can’t.

If you ever loved me, Riktors.

The words struck Riktors hard; his face worked, though whether with anger or grief Kyaren couldn’t tell.

“Call a guard,” Riktors said.

“No,” Ferret said.

Riktors arose from his throne. “Call a guard!” he roared, and Ferret left, returning a moment later with two guards.

“Take them to the prisoner. To Josif.”

The guards looked at each other, then at Ferret, who nodded and whispered something. The guards looked doubtful, but they led the way. Ansset and Kyaren followed.

“He won’t do anything to us, will he?” Kyaren whispered.

Ansset shook his head. “Riktors will never hurt me directly, or you, as long as you’re with me. And as long as you’re with me, no one can take you away.” She looked at his face. Control was lagging. She saw the killer there, and was afraid. This should never have happened to Ansset, none of this.

“How did they keep the Songhouse people from coming for you?” she asked. “If they really wanted you back—”

“The empire controls the spaceports. Besides, if he could lie to me, he could lie to them. But that’s past now. Time enough to set things right once we have Josif back.”

Kyaren was baffled by the labyrinth of the palace, lost all sense of direction. But they went generally downward. Into the prison, she assumed. But they made a certain turn that Ansset had not been expecting—he was taken by surprise and had to retrace a few steps.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“He isn’t in the prison,” he said.

“Then where?”

“Hospital,” Ansset answered.

The guards stopped outside a door.

“He’s fairly drugged up. He isn’t pretty right now, but Ferret said to let you see him as he is. I’m sorry.”

Then the guard opened the door, and they walked in, and they saw Josif.

At first nothing seemed wrong with him, except the drugs. Josif saw them, but his eyes showed no recognition, and his jaw hung partly open. He sat on a narrow bed, leaning against the wall. His legs were loosely apart, and his arms hung slackly beside him. He looked as if he never planned to move.

Then Kyaren looked down, between his legs, just as Ansset saw and turned to try to block her sight. He was too late.

She screamed, shoved past him, and, still screaming, took Josif by the shoulders and pulled him toward her, embraced him in an agony of grief. He slumped against her, and with his head tilted down, he drooled. She still heard herself shouting hysterically; gradually she was able to stop, until finally even her spasmodic sobbing ended and all was silent in the room again. She looked at Ansset. His face was terrible, not because of the emotion on it, but because there was nothing on his face at all.

Carefully she leaned Josif back against the wall. His head moved to the right, so that he could not see her, but merely stared at the wall. He did not attempt to move. The drugs had him well in hand.

“They plan to fit him with a permanent tube tomorrow,” said one of the guards.

Ansset ignored him, and Kyaren tried to. They started to push past him, but the guard raised a gun. It wasn’t a laser—it was a tranquilizer. “Ferret said that after you saw, you weren’t to be allowed back to the great hall.”

Ansset didn’t pause, simply brought up his foot. The man’s hand broke at the wrist; the gun dropped to the floor as the hand went slack and hung perpendicular to the floor. A moment for the pain to register, and the guard reeled out of the way. The other was too slow—Ansset took his face off with both hands, and Kyaren raced to follow the Songbird as he shoved past the screaming guard, who knelt with his hands in front of his face, blood streaming down his arms.

This was not the way they had come, Kyaren was sure. But Ansset seemed sure of where he was going, and it occurred to her that he would want to avoid the ways where guards might be waiting. Also, he avoided any doors, finally coming to the great hall through the main entrance, which stood wide.

Kyaren reached the doors a moment after Ansset passed through them, but already he was halfway across the floor, heading, not for Riktors, but for Ferret. Suddenly Ansset was in the air, and Kyaren was expecting him, in his fury, to destroy the emperor’s assassin.

But a moment later Ferret and Ansset were grappling. None of Ansset’s movements could penetrate the man’s defenses; Ferret was unable to land a blow or a cut on Ansset’s body.

Finally, exhausted, they held each other firmly, neither able to move for fear the other would be able to use the movement against him. Ansset’s mouth was near Ferret’s ear. He moaned softly, and the moan was his agony of being unable to express what was in him, either with his body or with his voice. He could not kill, he could not sing, and he could not find another way to open what demanded to be opened inside him.

Ferret whispered triumphantly in his ear, “You’ve forgotten nothing.”

Riktors spoke from the throne, where he was sitting again, relieved that Ansset’s attack was not against him, relieved that neither fighter had been able to win. “Who do you think taught you how to kill that way, Ansset?”

“I killed my teacher,” Ansset said.