A Fall of Princes (28 page)

Now he must suffer not only when he tried to get out of his
mind, but when someone else tried to get in.

They had said it, the old masters. For him who slew with
power, there was no end to expiation. Even if he had not intended to do it.
Even if he had done it in the best of causes. Even . . .

“Stronger shields,” Zha’dan was saying in his own tongue.
“Dream-wards. I’ll post them hereafter. I’ll snare our hunters with false
dreams.”

“Even in our young master?”

Zha’dan laughed. “Even in the little stallion; though he’s
doing well enough by himself. Maybe when he dies he’ll come back one of us.”

The lion’s cub would have been appalled at the prospect.
Sarevan sipped wine from the flask at his saddlebow, washing away the sour
aftertaste of pain.

They had skirted the wagons. At the head of the line, Halid
signaled a quickening of pace.

o0o

“Tell me about your brother,” Sarevan said.

Asanian modesty had its uses. A young lord could purchase a
room in a bathhouse, with a bolt on the door and his own slaves to wait on him.
There he could lie on a bench above steaming stones with his head in Zha’dan’s
lap and Sarevan sitting at a judicious distance.

Hirel eyed him with a flicker of amusement. Without his
tunic he was an odd harlequin creature, copper-pelted on breast and belly and
between his thighs, but the rest of him safely dark.

The boy sat up suddenly, leaning toward him, and peered.
“You will be needing the dye again soon.”

“We only touched it up two days ago.”

“Your body is not pleased. The black wishes to turn to rust.
And thence, I presume, to honest copper.”

“Too honest for my peace of mind. The dye is almost gone.”
Sarevan rubbed his chin. It itched incessantly and with waxing ferocity. He
struggled to keep from clawing it. “Maybe I should shave my face and blacken my
brows with charcoal and wash my hair clean, and find a hat to cover it. It
would be easier. It might work. Who’d recognize me even if I lost the hat? You
traveled with me for half a season without the slightest suspicion.”

Hirel pulled Sarevan’s beard until he hissed in pain. “I was
an unconscionable fool. Our . . . friends are not.”

“Why? What are they likely to know? I’m a slave. Slaves
count for nothing.”

Perhaps he sounded more bitter than he knew. Hirel regarded
him oddly. Zha’dan said, “I’d dye my hair red for the splendor of it and for
the confusion of our trackers, but my beard I’ll not give up. I’m no capon.”

Sarevan’s eyes narrowed. “Would you, Zhaniedan? Would you go
from night to fire?”

“With delight. But
not,
”
Zha’dan said vehemently, “from man to eunuch.”

Hirel looked from one to the other of them. “Have you lost
your wits?”

“I’m losing my disguise,” Sarevan reminded him. “And we’ll find
precious little black dye here. But copper—that, I think . . .”

Zha’dan was warming to the sport. “Let’s do it, my lord!
Let’s do it tonight.”

But Sarevan had cooled a little. “Soon,” he said. “Maybe. I
need to think. And while I do it,” he said, turning his eyes on Hirel, “you can
do as I bid you. Tell me about your brother.”

For a moment Hirel looked ready to upbraid his insanity.
Then the boy sighed, sharp with temper, and lay down again. He took only a
small revenge, but it was ample for the purpose: he set his feet in Sarevan’s
lap. They were very handsome feet.

“Surely,” he said, “you mean to say my brothers. I have half
a hundred.”

Zha’dan was properly impressed. Sarevan did not stoop to be.
“Most of them are nonentities. Even the two who trapped you—you’ve said
yourself that they couldn’t have conceived the plot alone. Tell me about the
one who matters. Tell me about the Prince Aranos.”

Hirel hissed at him. “Not so loudly, idiot. Ears are
everywhere.”

“Not here,” said Sarevan. “Zha’dan’s on guard. He’s
mageborn.”

Hirel started, half rising, staring at his nights’
companion. Zha’dan was grave for once, level-eyed.

Hirel was surprised. That was rare; it made him angry. “Is
there anyone in Keruvarion who is not?”

“It’s only Zha’dan.” And Orozia; but that was her own
secret.

“Ah,” said Hirel, unmollified. He faced Zha’dan. “That is
why you fretted so before we came to Endros. Because you have power, but it was
not enough to heal your prince.”

Zha’dan looked down, embarrassed.

“Did you fret?” Sarevan asked him. “I’d forgotten.”

Zha’dan mumbled something. Sarevan cuffed him lightly,
brother-fashion. It soothed him, though he would not look up. Sarevan turned
back to Hirel. “Now, cubling. Answer me.”

Hirel’s brows drew together. Sweat did not presume to bead
and streak and stink on that gold-and-ivory skin. It imparted a polished sheen,
salt-scented, with a hint of sweetness. “Aranos,” he said at last, “is the
eldest of my father’s sons. His mother was a prince’s daughter from the far
west of Asanion. They say she was a witch; I no longer deny that possibility. I
do not think that Aranos is mageborn.”

“Mages need not be born. They can be made. We call them
mages of the book. Sorcerers. They have no native power, but they find it in
books; in spells and rituals; in summonings of demons and elementals and
familiars. Does your brother have a familiar?”

Hirel lay back again, shifting until he was comfortable. “I
think not. Perhaps it is only, not yet.” He raised his head slightly, struck
with a thought. “Is Ulan your familiar?”

Sarevan quelled a retort. The child could not know how he
insulted them both. “Ulan is my friend and my brother-in-fur. He is neither
slave nor willing servant.”

“Ah.” Hirel’s frown was different, puzzled, seeking to
understand. “A familiar provides power to the powerless. It is a vessel. An
instrument.”

“In essence, yes. But any man can’t set himself up as a
sorcerer. He has to have a talent for it. A desire for power. The willingness
to devote his life to the finding of it. Singlemindedness and ruthlessness and
a certain inborn strength of will. You have it, Hirel Uverias. You have so much
of it that you’re almost mageborn.”

The boy reared up like a startled cat. All the color had
drained from his face; his eyes were wild. “I am not a mumbler of spells!”

“It’s in your blood. Ulan sees it and approves of it. So
does Bregalan. So most certainly does Zha’dan. It’s the heart of the lion.”

“Ah,” said Hirel, relaxing by degrees. “It is royalty, that
is all.”

Sarevan did not gainsay him. Let him call it that, if it
gave him comfort. “If your brother is anything like you, then he may very well
be a worker of magic.”

Hirel had drawn taut again. “We are not alike. We are—
not
—”

“He’s royal, isn’t he?”

“There are,” said Hirel with vicious precision, “three ranks
of imperial princes, and the high prince above them all. Princes of five robes
are sons of slaves and commoners. Princes of six are sons of lower nobility.
Princes of seven are sons of high ladies. Vuad, who is a slave’s child, is a
prince of seven by my father’s favor, because his mother is the most favored of
the concubines.”

“Is? Still?”

“My father is renowned for his constancy.” Hirel had
recovered himself. It was frightening to see how young he was, and how cold he
seemed, and how dispassionately he spoke of betrayal. “There was no perceptible
sign of my eldest brother in what was done to me, and yet he must have been the
master of the plot, the mind behind the bodies of Vuad and Sayel. He had the
most to gain from it. They could not have hoped to seize my titles while he
lived, nor to dispose of him as easily as they thought to dispose of me. That
they failed speaks very ill of their intelligence. Aranos would not have
failed.”

“He may not care, if it gets him what he aims for. It’s
fairly certain, isn’t it? He’ll be named high prince on Autumn Firstday. I’ll
wager that your father won’t live long thereafter.”

“No wager,” Hirel said. “Even before I left Kundri’j I had
heard whispers that Aranos was surrounding himself with mages. I do not need to
wonder why. To protect him while he lives; to forestall opposition when he has
the throne. And yet he cannot have set these mages to spy upon us. A lordling
of the Middle Court is no threat to the Second Prince before the Golden Throne.
If he knew what I truly am, he would have slain me long before this.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know. Maybe it has nothing to do with you
at all. Zha’dan and I could very well be Varyani spies.”

“Perhaps,” murmured Hirel. “It is what we might expect of
your father: outrageous and blatant and insolent. It is not at all like Aranos.
It is too simple.”

“It looks complicated enough to me.”

Hirel’s glance was purest Asanian arrogance. “Ah, but you
are of Keruvarion. To you I am subtle, a proper golden serpent; and yet in the
palace I am reckoned the purest of innocents, a sheltered child who knew no
better than to trust his brothers. Aranos was weaving plots in his cradle.”

“You were a child when your brothers trapped you. How were
you to know that they’d turn traitor?”

“I should have known. They are my brothers. But Aranos . . .
Aranos is a very prince of serpents. I shall never be more beside him than a
pretty fool.”

“And his emperor.”

“There is that,” said Hirel. He frowned, brooding. “The
Golden Palace cannot but know that I live. It has not seen fit to publish the
glad tidings, else there would be no mention of a new high prince.”

“No,” said Sarevan. “They’d be saying that you’d gone over
to us, or that you were our prisoner.”

“With much outrage and no little relish.” Hirel smiled a little.
“A banner for their war. My father would not wish that. Aranos most certainly
would not. He will be making certain that he receives the title as the empire
expects. Then, alive or dead, I can do nothing: I will have been superseded in
law.”

“Surely your father won’t allow it.”

“By law, if I am not present on the day of my coming of age,
I forfeit my right to the title. He can do nothing to change that. Even if he
would. For then I would prove myself unworthy to rule after him.”

“Hard,” mused Sarevan, “but fair enough. Maybe it’s he who’s
behind it all. Testing you.”

Hirel bridled. Sarevan grinned at him. He leaped up, nearly
casting Sarevan on the stones. “Into the water with you, barbarian. You reek.”

“Of what?” Sarevan asked sweetly. “The truth?”

o0o

Their attendant mages, whether Aranos’ hirelings or
another’s, seemed not to have found their way to this latest resting place. But
someone had; and perhaps he had only been caught by the young lord’s unusual
retinue, and perhaps there was deeper purpose in it. This was, after all,
Asanion.

The messenger was waiting at the door of the bathhouse.
“Young lord,” he said, bowing and touching his shaven brow to Hirel’s foot, “my
master, the Lord of the Ninth Rank Uzmeidjian y Viduganyas, begs the pleasure
of your company at his humble table.”

Even Sarevan, whose Asanian was hardly perfect, could detect
the intonation that made the request a command. Hirel’s lips thinned. Sarevan,
trapped in his disguise, could say nothing. After a pause Hirel said, “Tell the
Lord of the Ninth Rank that the Lord-designate of the Second Rank Insevirel y
Kunziad will be pleased to accept his most august hospitality.”

o0o

The Lord Uzmeidjian was likewise a traveler, but his
estate was too lofty by far to suffer the indignities of the posthouse. With
his small army of Olenyai and plain men-at-arms, his slaves and servants and
his veiled and secluded women, he had appropriated the house of a magnate of
the town.

He himself was a man of middle years inclining toward age.
His body was strong yet, for an Asanian’s, but softening, growing thick about
the middle. His virility, of which he was publicly proud, had tonsured him in
youth, but he cultivated the fringe of hair that yet lingered, cajoling it into
oiled ringlets.

He gilded his eyelids, which plainly Hirel did not approve
of: it was, perhaps, above his station. Though he stood very high, at the
height of the Middle Court.

His manner toward Hirel was that of a great lord bestowing
his favor upon a being much lower than himself. Hirel did not bear it with
perfect ease.

“Of the second rank, are you, lord-designate?” the lord
inquired after the innumerable courses of an Asanian banquet had come and gone.
Only the wine was left, and a sweet or two, and a bowl of ices.

He had eaten well and drunk deep. Hirel had hardly eaten at
all, and only pretended to drink. “Coming to take your place in court, I
presume. Commendable, commendable. It is the first time, no?”

Hirel murmured. It might have been taken for assent.

Lord Uzmeidjian took it so, expansively. “Ah, so! I am sure
you have been well taught. But the Court of the Empire is unlike anything the
provinces might dream of. Even the Lower Court: it is preparation, certainly,
but nothing equals the truth.”

“Have you ever been in the High Court, my lord?”

That was malice, clad as innocence. The lord flushed.
Perhaps it was only the wine. “I have not been so privileged. It is very rare,
that dispensation. The High Court is far above us all.”

“Indeed,” said Hirel.

“Your accent is excellent,” the lord observed, mounting
again to his eminence. “Indeed it is almost perfect: scarce a suggestion of the
provinces.”

Hirel bit his lip. His eyes were smoldering. Sarevan damned
protocol and laid a hand on his shoulder, tightening it: warning,
strengthening.

And diverting the Lord Uzmeidjian most conclusively. “Ah,
young sir, such slaves you have! and matched so perfectly. Your slavemaster
must be a man of genius.”

Zha’dan, who knew no Asanian but who needed to know none,
and Sarevan, who was pretending to be ignorant of it, stood perforce in
silence. The lord reached for Zha’dan who was closer, taking the young man’s
arm, feeling of it. “You leave them in their natural state, I see. But cleaner,
certainly cleaner, and sweeter to the nose. I had thought that they were all as
rank as foxes.”