“Why would they?”
Her eyes were dark, her mother’s eyes Gird had often said, but they seemed full of light as a hawk’s eyes, staring through him to distant lands he could not see. “Why would they not, knowing we killed their parents . . . or most of them? Knowing their magicks gave them power of vengeance, power of rule . . . why would they not turn against us?”
“You don’t trust fairness? Gird does.”
She did not quite snort at that, but she glared, this time directly at him. “Fairness! Gods know we need fairness, and demand it, but for all the fairness lodged in human hearts you might whistle down a hedgerow forever, hoping to call out a skreekie with a bag of gold. I’ve seen little enough fairness, nor you either. Fairness would have had you on a throne—”
“Fairness forbade me,” said Luap. “Your father—Gird—trusts fairness. In the end, he says—”
“In the end, when all men are wise and honest . . . and do you, too, believe that will happen?”
He had changed this much: he could not lie to her, even though he wanted Gird to be right, and her to be wrong, as much as he’d ever wanted anything. “No,” he said. “I don’t. But I think it’s worth working toward.”
“Men and women aren’t gnomes,” said Raheli, as if he’d argued that point.
“No,” he said. “They aren’t.” He wished she would go. He wished she would go now, quickly, before the Autumn Rose arrived . . . or he wished the Rosemage had his sensitivity and would delay her arrival until Rahi left. But she would not deviate a hairsbreadth from her way, that one, and if her way now aimed at more than her own pride’s joy, it was still a straight uncompromising trail. Go away, he thought at Rahi, knowing it would do no good. Even if she could feel a pressure from him, she would resist it.
“Will you marry again?” she asked, in a tone consciously idle. He knew it was not. Several of the men had offered for her, before she made it clear to everyone that she would not remarry. She probably thought women had offered for him.
“I doubt it,” said Luap. “You know my story . . . and besides, a man marries to have children. What could I offer mine, but suspicion? You—everyone—would think it meant I was still thinking of the throne.”
“I thought you might marry . . . her.” Only one her lay between them. Luap said nothing, but Rahi persisted. “You know. Calls herself a rose . . . I say thorny. . . .”
Luap closed his eyes against the explosion: the Autumn Rose was in hearing distance, only a pace or so away. Silence. He opened his eyes, to find Rahi lodged in his doorway like a stone in a pipe, and the Rosemage’s light streaming around her like water.
“You don’t have to like me,” the Rosemage said. “You don’t have to understand one tenth of what I have done—”
“I understand quite well.” Rahi’s accent thickened; her back held the very shape of scorn.
“You do not.” The Rosemage angry regained her youth; color flushed her cheeks and her light blurred lines of age and weather. Luap’s mouth dried. He was bred to find her beautiful; her voice and the magic she embodied sang along his veins. Despite himself, he could not believe that the peasants knew what real love was. They could not feel this wholeness, this blend of body, mind, spirit, magery. “You hate me for things I never did; you despise me for not doing what in fact I accomplished.”
“You never bore a child.” Rahi, like her father, seemed to condense in anger: immovable, implacable.
“That’s not fair!” That shaft had gone home; the Rosemage’s light flickered, and true anguish edged her voice. “You know it’s not—its—”
“It’s women’s warring,” Rahi said, her own voice calm now that she felt her victory. “And for all that, lady, neither have I. You could have thrown that back at me.” She glanced over her shoulder at Luap. “Don’t marry this one, or they’ll never believe you a luap.” Before either of them could answer, she’d shouldered past the Rosemage and disappeared down the corridor.
“That miserable . . .”
“Peasant she-wolf is the term you’re looking for,” Luap said softly, nodding to the still-sleeping boy. “Prickly, a trait you both share. Is it, in fact, an effect of barrenness?” He hated himself for that, but he dared not show his very real sympathy, not now. Her face whitened, as her light died, and then her intellect took over.
“I don’t know. Possibly. Her people, with their emphasis on giving as the sign of power, would obviously value childbearing . . . but all peoples must, or they die away. So she and I, childless, though each with good reason, know we cannot meet our own standards. I never thought of it that way, but it could be.” She sounded interested now, not angry. She hitched a hip onto his work table, and swung the free foot idly. Even relaxed like that, she had more grace than Rahi.
“I try to think what the difference is, between her and Gird,” Luap said. “Surely it’s not that women bear grudges more—at least, Gird says his wife never did. But Rahi is not going to trust us, not ever.”
“Not me, not ever.” The Rosemage’s hands clenched, then relaxed. “I suppose you’ve heard the full name she gave me?”
Luap had, but he was not about to admit it. She waited a moment, then went on. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. I might even think it funny, if crude, if she’d pinned it on someone else. Thorny bottom . . . and she’s as thorny as I am. . . .”
“True enough.” Luap let himself smile in a way that had, in his youth, worked its way among girls. “And here I am, poor lone widower, caught between you two briars, like a shorn wether in a thicket.”
She laughed. “You? Don’t try that with me, king’s son; you are no gelding. Far from it.”
“By choice. . . .”
“By choice and good sense, you’ve chosen to father no more children. You know what would come of it; you would not risk the land or the child. But you need not forswear the love of women, especially women who can’t bear children. And the two of us—you may feel caught between us, but not in impotence.”
“I do wish,” Luap said, turning away as he felt his face grow hot, “that you were not my elder in years and experience. It’s difficult.” He hoped she had not caught his surprise: he had not thought that he might lie safely with barren women. Already his mind ran through the possibilities.
“So it is. So I might intend it to be. D’you think I like having that name tacked to me? Do you not realize that she has seen to it that no man will even ask?”
“Are you suggesting—?”
“Maybe.” She eyed him; he wasn’t sure she understood what he’d meant. When the boy stirred, choked, and began coughing, he was glad.
“Easy, lad.” Luap lifted the boy’s shoulders, offered a spoonful of honeyed fruit juice. He felt a constant tremor, as the boy tried not to cough.
“And how are you today, Garin?” the Rasemage asked.
“Better, lady.” The boy’s lips twitched, attempting a smile, then another cough took him. He curled into Luap’s arm; Luap stroked his hair. This boy would say “better” on his deathbed, which, if he didn’t really improve, this would soon be.
“You could heal that,” came the Rosemage’s murmur, just within hearing. Luap could feel his teeth grating; he could not heal it, not without claiming the king’s magic as his own, using it . . . and he had sworn he would not. Sworn to himself as well as to Gird, to the gods he believed in a little more each year. His father had used magery for darker aims, yet Luap believed he had intended better . . . surely as a boy he had not been wholly cruel. He had never asked any who might know, including the Rosemage.
“You know better,” he said to her, wishing he dared a slap of power at her and knowing she would laugh at him even if it worked.