“We grant you the floor, Raldnor Am Ioli.”
Raldnor stepped out on to it, and looked round. He was used to commanding a ship, when granted one; this doghouse did not bother him in the least.
“My lord Warden. Gentlemen. At the commencement of Zastis, seven Zakorian pirate galleys were ravaging the Karmian and Dortharian coasts. King Suthamun, a wise and canny master, sent a man he trusted to rid the seas of them. Not aware of the Free Zakorian strength, he gave him for the work three ships, nor of the best. I know. I captained one. When we learned what we were up against, I was for sailing home. But my commander, Kesarh Am Xai, held us where we were, and with ingenuity and valor, the sacrifice of one listing ship, and the loss of five men—five, gentlemen—won us the day.” There was a noise of approval now, scarcely any of it paid for, especially from the Vis in the chamber. “Forgive my enthusiasm,” said Raldnor. “I was impressed. Remain so. The Prince Kesarh is a mature leader, known to Istris by elite report, and by sight. He is, moreover, of royal blood. His father was a Shansarian officer. His mother was a princess of the Karmian royal house, whose roots go back to the time of Visian Rarnammon—”
Raldnor broke off as a shout went up all around the chamber. It was the old cry—Am Xai. Raldnor mused, standing in the thick of it, hearing dimly behind the racket the screeches of roasting slaves chained to their oars. It was a point to remember. Once you were of no use to him, he would leave you to burn.
The council was bustling, conferring. They had undoubtedly known, simply been waiting for the proper cue. Three at least had been frankly bought.
Presently they withdrew to the privacy of another chamber to deliberate.
Raldnor went on musing, perambulating the corridors without, as others were doing. Even musicians had been called to play in one of the rooms, a deferential lament harmonizing with the bells, still music.
The stroke of ill-luck which had brought the end to Suthamun’s current dynasty was peculiar. Ashkar’s doing?
Raldnor, who believed in chance, did not however believe in this chance. That he had been excluded from the astonishing plot annoyed him and left him with a feeling of relief. He had sense enough, he thought, to demonstrate neither emotion.
The bells had stopped and it was nearly midnight when a train of messengers raced through the halls.
The loiterers, alerted, crowded back toward the map-chamber. The council filed in. The lord Warden nodded to them all.
“The Prince-King Emel has been summoned. It’s late for the child, but by the laws of our Sister Continent, his fatherland, he must be present.” There was a pause. “We have also,” said the Warden, “sent for the Prince Am Xai.”
Not long after, a sleepy blond child, bemused but well-schooled, was led to the doors by his nurses, and from there into the chamber by two of his guard. The Prince-King Emel sat where he was asked to sit, and graciously accepted a sweetmeat from the Warden.
It was an hour later that Kesarh arrived.
He walked into the council, the crowd giving way for him, like a creature of silent thunder, his black clothes, his black hair blown from riding, his face distraught. He had remained behind at the site of the King’s pyre with those other mourners who would stand vigil there all night.
“Your pardon, Prince Kesarh, that we called you from the death-watch.”
“I can go back,” Kesarh said.
There was a little whispering. Raldnor of Ioli listened, awestruck despite himself. The man’s theater was incomparable. His entrance, his looks, his voice, had carried them all.
“Yes, my lord. You can go back. First I must ask you, in the Name of the goddess and by the will of this council of Istris, if you will act regent for Emel son of Suthamun, until he shall be of sufficient years to assume the throne of Karmiss?”
There was no answer. The stillness went on and on, Kesarh at the center of it like a sword.
The interval in sound awoke the child, who had fallen asleep on a stool. He raised his lids, and saw across from him a tall man like a shadow. Then the shadow moved. It came toward Prince Emel. At the final instant it kneeled at his feet. Emel recollected, and he got up.
As the words of assent buzzed in the air, Emel waited to go back to bed, drowsily looking at the shining black mane of the man who would be his death.
6
A marble world.
As the months of the long snow continued, the landscape was sculpted to them, seeming incapable of change. Windless, white, the silver lace of ice in all her bays, Karmiss lay as if asleep.
The new lodgings Rem had taken, however, though spacious, were kept warm. There were even nocturnal companions, comely and skillful, who might be hired from a nearby wine-shop, if one felt the need. Rem found himself prey to an intermittent nostalgia for Doriyos. Now and then, Rem visualized returning to the House of Three Cries, but knew he would never do so.
There had been an alternation of Rem’s status in the Prince Am Xai’s personal guard. In the wake of the Festival of Masks, his pay was splendidly augmented. Then, five days after the wild ride back from Ankabek, too late to be of service, there had come a metamorphosis of position. Rem ceased to be a number. There were thirteen Nines, at this juncture, and he was no longer one of them. He was all at once in charge of fifty men who would, in the name of the Prince, answer solely to Rem. The advancement was welded to, yet apart from, the hierarchy of the guard, the membership of which had currently escalated to over two hundred. The guard sergeant who had lashed Rem now greeted him with respectful equality.
Rem, acknowledging these novel conditions, was far from complacent. Mostly, he had been required to organize escorts.
At regular intervals, autonomously, he exercised in the under-palace, sword and shield, body combat, or those coordinating arms it could be fatal to mislay. A couple of times he would find the Prince himself also at exercise. On the first day of the siege snow, Kesarh had called Rem into the court instead of one of the paid masters. Stripped to the minimum, they fought for thirty minutes. The sexual element, forever intrinsic yet forever irrelevant to such contests, angered Rem. In the end the anger won him the bout. He sent Kesarh sprawling, half stunned.
Kesarh seemed amused. Rem knew the Prince had merely permitted his concentration to flag. Rem had seen how Kesarh could fight even in sham. The victory was a mean one. Almost an insult.
When the eastern roof of the Ashara Temple crushed Suthamun and his peers, Rem was not in the building, not even on duty in the square outside. He had realized something was prepared, had known there must be something. But the magnitude of it shook him.
He was ordered to captain a detachment of Kesarh’s guard during the funeral procession and the ghastly Shansarian deathwatch. Slow-striding after the purple-draped chariot through the snow, he had felt the same sort of affront as at the insulting victory in the exercise court. Somehow, it had all been too easy. And when the messengers came floundering over the torch-lit ice to summon Kesarh to the council, Rem stood expressionless, wanting to laugh or curse, something, anything, to acclaim the grandiose and sinister triteness of it all.
But Am Xai was regent now. His secret guard were official, every one of them. His apartments had once more improved, transmuted to the upper palace, with all that implied.
In a stretch of months, he had traveled a vast distance. Answerable at last only to the predisposed council, and to a seven-year-old child who, if the stories were accurate, worshipped him.