Tarrin’s face was set and expressionless as he held out his hands to Sun Wolf. In his right hand was a parchment scroll, the seals of the city dangling from it by purple ribbons; he made no other gesture of welcome.
Sun Wolf took the scroll doubtfully, men glanced at Tarrin, puzzled.
“Read it,” the King said, then swallowed.
Sun Wolf unrolled it and read. Then he looked up from the parchment, too incredulous even to be shocked.
“You what?” he demanded.
Starhawk looked around his shoulder quickly. “What is it?”
Sun Wolf held it out to her. “It’s an order of banishment.”
“It’s what?” She took it, scanned it over, then looked up disbelievingly at the Wolf, at Tarrin, and at Sheera, who stood looking off into the distance, her face an expressionless blank.
Sun Wolf’s single eye glittered, yellow and dangerous; his raw voice was like metal scraping. “I did not ask to come here,” he said quietly to Tarrin, “and in the course of this winter I have lost my eye, I have lost my voice, and I have damned near lost my life five times over.” His voice was rising to an angry roar. “All for the sake of saving your lousy city. And you have the unmitigated and brass-faced nerve to banish me?”
To do him credit, Tarrin did not flinch in front of what ended as a harsh vulture scream of outrage; when he spoke, his voice was quiet. “It was voted upon yesterday in parliament,” he said. “I’m afraid the—the original measure was much more punitive.”
The paper read:
By Order and Fiat of the Parliament of Mandrigyn, Month of Gebnion, First Year of the Reign of Tarrin II of the House of Her and Sheera, his wife: Be it herein proclaimed that the bounds and gates of Mandrigyn are closed to one Sun Wolf, wizard and formerly captain of mercenaries, residing at one time in Wrynde in the North; that as from this day he is banished from the City of Mandrigyn and all the lands appertaining to that City, and all the lands that hereinafter will become sway of that City, in perpetuity. This by reason of his flagrant violation of the laws of the City of Mandrigyn, and for his wanton corruption of the morals of the ladies of Mandrigyn. Be it known that hereafter from this day, if he sets foot upon the lands of the City of Mandrigyn, he will become liable for the full penalties for these his crimes.
“It means,” Starhawk said, with quiet amusement, into Sun Wolf’s dumbfounded silence, “that you taught the ladies of Mandrigyn to bear arms.”
The Wolf glanced at her and back at the King. Tarrin was looking deeply embarrassed.
“If I hadn’t taught your ladies to bear arms,” the Wolf said in a tight, deadly voice, “you and all the members of your pox-rotted parliament would still be tapping great big rocks into wee small rocks in the dark at the bottom of Altiokis’ mines, without hope of seeing the sunlight again.”
“Captain Sun Wolf,” Tarrin said in his light voice, “believe me, your deeds toward the City of Mandrigyn have earned the gratitude of our citizens, down through many generations. I am sure that once the present social disruptions arrange themselves, the order will be rescinded, and I will be able to welcome you as befits—”
“Social disruptions?” the Wolf demanded.
Behind him, he heard Starhawk give a very unwarriorlike chuckle. “He means,” she said, “that the ladies won’t turn back control of the city, or of the businesses, or go back to wearing veils, and the men aren’t pleased about that at all.”
Tarrin went on. “The social order of Mandrigyn is built upon generations of traditions.” There was a thread of desperation in his voice. “The—repercussions—of your action, laudable and necessary though it was, have brought nothing but chaos and confusion to every household in the city.”
Starhawk’s voice was amused. “I think the men are out for your blood. Chief. And I can’t really say that I blame them.”
“That’s ridiculous!” the Wolf said angrily. “There weren’t above fifty women in the poxy troop! And the women had started to take over running the businesses of the city from the minute the men marched off to fight their witless war! Hell, most of the crew of the ship that brought me here were skirts! And anyway, it wasn’t my idea...”
“The fact remains,” Tarrin said, “that it was you who schooled the women in these—” He glanced at the glowering members of his parliament. “—unseemly arts; and you who encouraged them to consort with gladiators and prostitutes.”
Sun Wolf’s voice was a croaking roar of rage, “And I’m being banished for that?”
“Not only for that,” Sheera said quietly. Under the rose and gold of her painted lids, her eyes were touched with something that was not quite sadness, but not quite cynicism either. “And it isn’t only the men who want to see you go. Captain. Do you have any concept of what has happened in this city? We were all of us raised to participate in a dance—the men to cherish, the women to be cherished in return, the men to rule and work, the women to be protected and sheltered. We knew what we were—we had harmony in those times, Captain.
“We have all passed through a hell of terror and pain, of toil and despair. We—Tarrin and I, and every man and every woman—fought not only for our city but for the dream of that way of life, that dance. We thought that with victory, all that old comfort of being what we were raised to be would be restored. But the men have returned to find the dream that sustained them in the mines forever broken. The women—” She paused, then went on, her voice level and cool. “Most of those women who did not fight did not even want what has happened. They wanted to be free of Altiokis, but not at the price that we have forced them to pay. We have pushed chaos and struggle into their lives without their consent. You yourself, Captain, and your lady, know that you cannot unknow what you know. And even those who fought find victory an ambiguous fruit to the taste.”
As if against his will, the Wolf’s eyes went to where Wilarne’s husband and son stood without her, their eyes both sullen and confused. How many others of the troop, he wondered, would meet with that mingling of outrage and incomprehending hurt? Not only from those close to them, he now saw—not only from the men. Most of the women in the crowd were silent and looked across at him and at the ladies he had trained with wariness and disapproval, with the anger of those who had something taken from them without their consent and who did not want what was offered in return. The seeds of bitterness were sown and could not be picked out of the soil again.
And, logically, he saw that he was the only one they could banish. He was not the disrupter of the dance, but he was the only one of those new and uneasy things that they could dispose of without tearing still further the already riven fabric of their lives.
He looked back at the young man before him, clothed in the stiff white ceremonial garb of the ruler of the city, and felt an unexpected stab of pity for the poor devil who would have to sort out the ungodly mess. At least he and Starhawk could get on their horses and ride away from it—and there was a good deal to be said simply for that. He grinned and held out his hand. Tarrin, who had been watching his face with some trepidation visible beneath his own calm expression relaxed and returned the smile and the handclasp with broken knuckled, pick-calloused Fingers.
“Along with the curses of parliament,” Tarrin said quietly, “I give you my personal thanks.”
“Of the two, that’s what matters.” The Wolf glanced over his shoulder at the sound of hooves clicking on the pavement behind them. The crowd opened in a long aisle, from the steps where they stood to the flower-twined stone lacework of the Spired Bridge, which led toward the Golden Gate of the city and to the countryside beyond. Down it, a couple of pages in the livery of the city were leading two horses, with saddlebags already packed and the Wolf’s and Starhawk’s weapons strapped to the cantles. One of the pages, it amused him to see, was Sheera’s daughter, Trella.