Eventually, discipline would have to be reinforced, but he would be able to blame Kesarh for that.
Someone knocked loudly.
Raldnor, lolling on a couch, snapped his fingers. A Lannic page ran to open the door.
Brushing through door-curtain and page, one of Raldnor’s Karmians appeared. He had been at the port garrison yesterday. Now he was here, boots and cloak thick with snow.
“There’s an Istrian ship lying off beyond the ice. Guardian. Boat rowed in. This packet for you, sir.”
Raldnor, with inevitable foreboding, broke Kesarh’s seal.
The contents were slight but Raldnor was a great while over them. When he looked up, he was yellow.
“Something wrong, Guardian?”
He had let them get impertinent, too.
“I’m to go back to Istris.” Patently, the letter had implied rather more, none of it reassuring. The sergeant winced. He, a parasite of Raldnor’s monopolies, did not like the drift of this either. “The new command must be on that ship.”
“Didn’t see anything of it, sir.”
“No, perhaps not. But they’ll be halfway down the infernal road behind you by now.”
There was a commiserating, awkward pause.
“The lads’ll be sorry to see you go, sir.”
Raldnor, who had started to weigh, gave up, and flung his life in the balance.
“Damn it. I’m going nowhere.”
When he was seven years old, Emel had been wakened in the night, dressed and whispered over, and borne to the map-chamber at Istris. The Warden had given him sweets, and let him fall asleep again. But when Kesarh kneeled to him, Emel stood up very properly. Afterwards his nurses murmured how good he had been.
Now, in the dark, lights burst into the bedroom, he was wakened, and Raldnor his protector loomed alone against the door. Emel must get up and get dressed and come somewhere and do certain proper public things, as before, long ago. But Raldnor had none of the women’s gentleness, and though strict instructions had been rendered previously, the bindings hurt, and the male clothing felt insidiously false. Emel was frightened tonight in Amlan as he had never been frightened in Istris. Though, as he now knew, he had had every cause to be.
He was nine when, in another sort of sleep, the Ommos knives had cut him. Afterwards he was cosseted. Drugs had spared him much pain; he had not learned to have any positive sexual desires, and did not mourn heterosexual loss. He had had six years since to grow used to what he was, and now it seemed ordinary. Only at Zastis had there ever been, sometimes, a slight bother. Emel-who-was-Mella did not know that his lovers died, every one of them, when they left him, only that he was never allowed to see them again.
It was Raldnor who taught him, by inference, to resent his new body, which was hermaphrodite, impotently weaponed, and flowered with small virginal breasts. Raldnor had, particularly since Lan, impressed on his charge that, if he should ever have his rights—his kingdom—Emel would have to act the man again, in disguise. The breasts must be bound. There were medicines which, if taken regularly, would lessen such tokens, and raise a little down on the beardless face. And this was how he must walk and stand, sit and speak and be. The instruction had been endlessly repeated, always with tacit cruelty. Emel had come to know his inadequacy by example. He writhed at the girl-name of “Mella.” He hated Raldnor, and he hated Kesarh, Kesarh the more, for he had loved him once. But everything, the lessons, the hatreds, the potions and bandagings and disguise, were all far off. Bored to tears, Emel only wanted to be home in Ioli. He did not really want to be a man and a king.
And now apparently, long before it was reckoned on, he must.
He threw an hysterical tantrum promptly. But then Raldnor struck him, thrice, and Emel knew there was no recourse.
Sniveling, he did everything he was told, and did it well.
But Raldnor did not say he had been good.
The houses along the Palace Square which had become the city’s Karmian barracks had also been aroused. Men packed into the courtyards at the rear and filled the plot of open land that went up behind, climbing trees, walls, the roofs of makeshift stables. Assembly was a Shansarian custom. In the great halls of Istris it was feasible, but here the enormous quantity of soldiers was crammed too tight for comfort. The cold gnawed and the torches flared. The air crackled with oaths and sparks, smell and urgency. In five minutes the situation was charged; something would have to happen.
Presently the lord Guardian entered the courts, guarded, and with some servant by him done up in a cloak. One or two who got a closer look were titillated to see the face of the big-footed mistress-girl from Ioli.
Raldnor was not Kesarh, and did not try to be. He knew the tension the overcrowding and the hour would create. He knew also he had turned his troops into a rabble, and that a rabble could be manipulated.
They applauded him, too, clapping, calling, banging their fists on their shields and their spears on the stone flags. They liked him. He had flattered them. He had given them drink and trollops and cash, let them run amok and told them they were fine, the backbone of their country. He spoke and they listened. He had always said things they liked to hear.
Raldnor Am Ioli announced first that Kesarh, who could not even see that enough food was sent them, now recalled their commander to Istris. They did not approve, and displayed their disapproval, noisily. Raldnor, having thanked them, secondly announced why he dared not go back. Kesarh had, obviously, fathomed Raldnor’s secret. It had had to come. He had balanced his life on a line for nearly seven years. For the sake of justice.
He had seen to it wine was going round, to ‘keep off the cold.’ Now they waited all agog, like babies, for the story.
Raldnor related it, if not with charisma, at least with some flair. He gave them the regency and the plague, and the plot against the Prince—King Emel. He gave them his own revolt, unable to slaughter a child. He explained his rescue. He even awarded them, had to under these circumstances, the fact of Emel’s being kept by him, clad as female. But he left out, of course, that such a ruse would soon have been a failure but for some extra means. He omitted the Ommos knives.
That Emel symbolized the old Shansarian rule was a drawback, and had always been. But Raldnor was himself a mix, and here in Lan the troops’ love affair with Kesarh had soured even for the Vis. In the end, the superstitious currency of pale hair and skin and eyes might tip the scales.
Raldnor was still, whatever else had altered, that opportunist who had pounded out to muddy Xai and flung his dice on Kesarh’s table. Still an audaciously clever and perceptive man whose cleverness and perception would sometimes cause him to act foolishly and blindly.
“Gentlemen,” he said now to the disorderly vandals squashed in the space before him, “I’m in your hands. And your true King is in your hands. We are dependent on you, on your awareness of what’s right, your love of country, your loyalty, and your mercy.” And then, turning to the muffled being at his side he said, so they all heard, “Don’t be afraid, my lord. These men are noble. They won’t harm you.”
The cloak came off on cue. Emel had stayed tractable. He knew better than to make another scene. He stood, very young, face washed, hair lopped, in good male raiment. His fixed terror resembled pride. He did not, in the wine-smoke and the torch fumes, look like Mella anymore. There was a look of his royal father, instead. They even forgot the reedy voice, since Raldnor did not let them hear it.