A Tapestry of Lions Read online

  He called her meijha and meijhana, words she did not know. She had asked him if he had a wife, and he had laughed, correcting her: “Cheysula,” he had said, and then “No, I have no cheysula. They expect me to wed my Solindish cousin, but I will not do it.”

  She turned her head slightly to look at his face. In sleep he was so different, so young, so free of the tight-wound tension. It was a good face in sleep, more handsome than any she had welcomed in her bed, and she longed to touch it. But to do so would waken him, and he would change, and she would see the customary hardness of his mouth and eyes, and the anger in his soul.

  She sighed. She did not love him. She was not permitted to love him; he had told her that plainly their first bedding three months before. But she did care. For all his black moods he was kind enough to her, even if it was an unschooled, rough kindness, as if he had forgotten how.

  He had spoken harshly to her more often than she would choose, but he had only struck her once; and then he had turned away abruptly with a strange, sickened look in his eyes, and he had given her gold in place of silver. It had been worth the bruise, for she bought herself a new gown she wore the next time he came, and he had smiled at her for it.

  Her smile came unbidden; a woman’s, slow and smug. In my bed lies the Prince of Homana.

  He moved. He stretched, flexing effortlessly, and then he sat up. She saw the play of muscles beneath the flesh of his smooth back, the hint of supple spine, the tangle of black hair across the nape of his neck. She lay very still, wondering if she had spoken her thoughts aloud.

  For a moment his profile was very clear in the dim light, outlined by the coals in the tiny hearth across the room. She saw the elegant brow and straight nose. He was yet groggy with sleep and soft from it; when the sleep fled, his bones would look older and harder, with black brows that drew down all too often and spoiled the youth of his face.

  He slanted her a glance. “Did you dream of me?”

  She smiled. “How could I not?”

  It was his customary question and her customary answer, but this time neither appeared to please him. He scowled and got out of the narrow bed, then reached to pull on black breeches and boots. She admired as always the suppleness of his muscles, the lithe movements of his body. It was the Cheysuli in him, she knew, though he did not seem other than Homanan. She had seen a warrior up close once and still shivered when she recalled the strangeness of his eyes. Beast-eyes, some folk called them, and she agreed with them.

  His were not bestial. They could be disconcertingly direct and nearly always challenging, but they were green, and a man’s eyes. For that she was grateful.

  He lifted the jug from the crooked table and poured wine, not bothering to don the shirt and fur-lined doublet on the floor beside the bed. She hunched herself up on one elbow. “Are you going?”

  “I have had from you what I came for.” He did not turn to look at her. “Unless you have discovered yet another position.”

  She, who believed she could no longer blush, burned with embarrassment. “No, my lord.” She had displeased him; he would go, and this time he might not come back.

  He swallowed down the wine and set the mug down with a thump. “This vintage is foul. Have you no better?”

  “No, my lord.”

  Her flat tone roused something in him. He turned, and the thin gold torque around his throat glinted. “You reprove me?”

  “No!” She sat up hastily, jerking the bedclothes over her breasts in an instinctive bid for a modesty she had surrendered years before. “Never!”

  He scowled at her blackly. His mouth had taken on its familiar hard line. And then he smiled all unexpectedly, and she marveled again at the beauty of a man who could be cruel and kind at once. “I have frightened you again.” He poured more wine and drank it, seemingly unaffected by its foul taste. “Do you fear I will turn into beastshape here before you?” He laughed as she caught her breath, showing white teeth in a mocking grin. “Have no fear, meijhana…there is no lir-shape for this Cheysuli. I have renounced it. What you see before you is what I am.” He still smiled, but she saw the anger in his eyes. “My arms are bare, and my ear. There is no shapechanger in this room.”

  She held her silence. He had shown her such moods before.

  He swore beneath his breath in a language she did not know. He would not come to her bed again this night, to set her flesh afire with a longing she had believed well passed for her until he had come with no word of explanation for a prince’s presence in a Midden whore’s hovel.

  A sudden thought intruded. He might not come back ever.

  The fear made her voice a question she had sworn never to ask. “Will you leave me?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Do you care?”

  “Oh aye, my lord—very much!” She believed it would please him; it was nonetheless the truth.

  A muscle jumped in his jaw. “Do I please you? Do you care for me?”

  She breathed it softly. “More than any, my lord.”

  “Because I am a prince?”

  She smiled, believing she had found the proper answer. “Oh no, my lord. Because you are you. I care for you.”

  He turned from her. Stunned, she watched as he put on his shirt and doublet, then swept up and pinned on the heavy green cloak. It was lined with rich dark fur, and worth more than the house she lived in. She saw the gold cloak-brooch glitter in firelight, ruby gemstone burning. The brooch was worth more than the entire block.

  And then he strode across the room to her and caught her throat in his hands, bending over her. “No,” he said. “You do not care for me. Say you do not.”

  She grasped at his hands. She wanted very badly to say the proper words. “But I do! Your coin is welcome—I am a whore, for all that, and claim myself no better—but it is you I care for!”

  He swore raggedly and released her so abruptly she fell back against the wall. He unpinned the brooch and dropped it into her lap. “You will not see me again.”

  “My lord!” A hand beseeched. “Why? What have I done?”

  “You said you cared.” His eyes were black in poor light. “And that I will not have.”

  “Kellin!” She dared to use his name, but he turned away in a swirl of green wool and was gone. The door swung shut behind him.

  The brooch that would buy her freedom was cold comfort in the night as she cried herself to sleep.

  PART II

  One

  Kellin stepped out of the slope-roofed hovel into the slushy alley and stopped. He stared blankly at the darkened dwelling opposite and expelled a smoking breath. He inhaled deeply, almost convulsively, and the cold air filled his lungs with the anticipated burning. The alley stank of peat, filth, ordure. Even winter could not overcome the stench of depression and poverty.

  He heard movement inside the hovel, through the cracks of ill-made walls: a woman crying.

  Too harsh with her. Kellin gritted his teeth. Self-contempt boiled up to replace the thought. What does she expect? I warned her. I told her not to care. There is nothing in me for anyone to care about, least of all a father…I will not risk losing another who claims to care for me.

  The sobs were soft but audible because he made himself hear them. He used them to flagellate; he deserved the punishment.

  She was well-paid. That is what she cries for.

  But he wondered if there were more, if the woman did care—

  Kellin gritted his teeth, fighting off the part of his nature that argued for fairness, for a renunciation of the oath he had sworn ten years before. She is a whore, nothing more. They all of them are whores. Where better to spill the seed for which I am so valued?

  Kellin swore, hissing invective between set teeth. His mood was foul. He detested the duality that ravaged his spirit. He had no use for softness, for compassion; he wanted nothing at all to do with the kind of relationship he saw binding his grandsire and his granddame. That kind of honor and respect simply begged for an ending, and therefore begged for pain
.

  And what was there for him in a relationship such as that shared by the Mujhar and his queen? Had they not made it clear, all of them, that it was not Kellin whom they cared about, but the seed he would provide?

  Bitterness engulfed. Let the whores have it. It will serve them better; expelling it serves ME.

  But the conscience he had believed eradicated was not entirely vanquished. Despite his wishes, he did regret his harshness with the woman; did regret he could not see her again, for she had been good to him. There had been a quiet dignity about her despite her life, and a simple acceptance that the gods had seen fit to give her this fate.

  Self-contempt made it easy to transfer resentment to the woman. She would make a good Cheysuli. Better than I do; I, after all, am at war with the gods.

  It was time to leave, lest he give in to the temptation to go back inside the hovel and offer comfort. He could not afford that. It was too easy to succumb, too easy to give in to the weakness that would lead in time to pain. Far better to keep pain at bay by permitting it no toehold in the ordering of his spirit.

  Kellin glanced over and saw the familiar guardsmen waiting in the shadows between two ramshackle dwellings. Four shapes. Four watchdogs, set upon his scent by the Mujhar. Even now, even in adulthood, no matter where Kellin went or what he chose to do, they accompanied him. Discreetly, usually, for he was after all the Prince of Homana, but their loyalty was the Mujhar’s.

  As a boy, he had accepted it as perfectly natural and never thought to question the policy and protection. As a man, however, it chafed his spirit because such supervision, in his eyes, relegated his own abilities, his own opinions, to insignificance. Initially his protests were polite, but the Mujhar’s intransigence soon triggered an angrier opposition. Yet the Mujhar remained obdurate. His heir could not—would not, by his order—be permitted to walk unaccompanied in Mujhara. Ever.

  Kellin had tried losing his dogs, but they tracked him down. He tried tricking them, but they had proved too smart. He tried ordering them, but they were the Mujhar’s men. And at last, terribly angry, he tried to fight them. To a man, despite his insults, they refused to honor him so.

  He was accustomed to them now. He had trained them to stay out of his tavern brawls. It had taken time; they did not care to see their prince risk himself, but they had learned it was his only escape, and so they left him to it.

  Kellin shivered, wrapping the heavy cloak more tightly around his shoulders. It was cold and very clear. The cloud cover had blown away, which meant the nights would be bitter cold until the next snowstorm came. Already he felt the chill in his bones; mouthing a curse, he moved on.

  He did not know his destination. He had thought to spend the night with the woman, but that was over now. She had committed the unpardonable; the only punishment he knew was to deny her the comfort of his body, so that he, too, was denied the contentment he so desperately desired despite his vow.

  He splashed through crusted puddles. It did not matter to him how it damaged his boots. He had many more at home. This sort of revenge offered little comfort, but it was something. Let the servants gossip as they would. It gave him some small pleasure to know he was entirely unpredictable in mood as well as actions.

  Better to keep them off guard. Better to make them wonder.

  As he wondered himself; it was a twisted form of punishment Kellin meted out to bind himself to his vow. If he relaxed his vigilance, he might be tempted to renounce his oath. He would not permit himself that, lest the gods win at last and turn him into a Cheysuli who thought only of his tahlmorra, instead of such things as a son badly in need of a father.

  Behind him, the watchdogs also splashed. Kellin wondered what they thought of their honorable duty: to spend the night out of doors while their prince poured his royal seed into a whore’s body. They will get no Firstborn of her, or of any other whore.

  Ahead in wan moonlight, a placard dangled before a door. A tavern. Good. I am of a mind to start a game not entirely like any other.

  Kellin shouldered open the cracked door and went in, knowing the dogs would follow along in a moment. He paused just inside, accustoming his eyes to greasy candlelight, and found himself in a dingy common room. The tables were empty save one, where five men gathered to toss dice and rune-sticks.

  For a moment only, Kellin considered joining them. But instead he went to another table and hooked over a stool, motioning with a jerk of his head to the man in the stained cloth apron.

  The watchdogs came in, marked where he was, and went to another table. He saw the tavernkeeper waver, for they wore tunics of the Mujharan Guard and doubtless meant more coin than a lone stranger.

  Smiling faintly, Kellin drew his knife and stuck the point into wood, so that the heavy hilt stood upright. The rampant lion curled around the hilt, single ruby eye glinting in greasy light.

  As expected, the tavern-keeper arrived almost at once. “My lord?”

  “Usca,” Kellin ordered. “A jug of it.”

  The man nodded, but his gaze flicked to the guardsmen. “And for them?”

  Kellin favored him with a humorless smile. “They drink what they like. Ask them.”

  The man was clearly puzzled. “My lord, they wear the Mujhar’s crest. And you have it here, on your knife. Doesn’t that mean—”

  Kellin overrode him curtly. “It means we have something in common, but it does not mean we sleep together.” He yanked the broochless cloak from his shoulders and slapped it across the table. He waited. The man bowed and hastened away.

  When the usca was brought, Kellin poured the crude cup full. He downed it all rapidly, waiting for the fire. It came, burning his belly and clear down into his toes. All at once there was life in his body, filling up flesh and blood, and the pain that accompanied it.

  He had fought it so very long. Because of his oath, because of his need, he had shut himself off to emotions, severing his spirit from the Kellin he had been, because he could not bear the pain. He had seen the bewildered hurt in his grandmother’s eyes and learned to ignore it, as he learned to withstand even the scorn in his grandfather’s voice; eventually, in fact, he learned to cultivate that scorn, because it was a goad that drove him to maintain his vow even when, in moments of despair and self-hatred, he desired to unswear it.

  One day intent became habit, despite the occasional defiance of a conscience battered for ten years into compliance. He was what he was; what he had made himself to be. No one could hurt him now.

  Kellin drank usca. He wanted to fight very badly. When the fire filled head and belly, he rose and prepared to make his way to the table full of Homanans who laughed and wagered and joked.

  A man stepped into his path, blocking his way. “Well met, my lord. Shall we share a cup of wine?”

  Kellin’s tongue was thick, but the words succinct enough. “I am drinking usca.”

  “Ah, of course; forgive me.” The stranger smiled faintly. A lifted hand and a slight gesture beckoned usca from the tavern-keeper.

  Kellin stared hard at the stranger, struggling to make out the face. The room shifted and ran together so that the colors all seemed one. Too much usca for conversation.

  When the new jug came, the stranger poured two cups full and offered one to Kellin. “Shall we sit, my lord?”

  Kellin did not sit. He set his hand around the hilt of his knife, still standing upright in the table, and snapped it from the wood.

  The stranger inclined his head. “I am unarmed, my lord, and offer no threat to you.”

  Kellin stared into the face. It was bland, beguiling; all mask and no substance. Perhaps he will give me my fight. He wanted the fight badly; needed it desperately, to assuage the guilt he felt despite his desire not to. Physical pain is easier to bear than emotional pain.

  For years he had sought it, finding it in taverns among men who held back nothing. It was a release from self-captivity more wholly satisfying than any other he knew.

  This man, perhaps? Or another. Kellin ges
tured and sat down, laying the knife atop the table as he took the brimming cup.

  “A fortune-game?” the other man suggested.

  It suited. Kellin nodded and the man took from beneath his cloak a wooden casket, all carved about its satiny sides with strange runic devices.

  Kellin frowned. Wait—

  But the man turned the casket over and spilled out sticks and cubes. The sticks were blank and black. The cubes turned lurid purple and began a dervish-dance.

  “Aye,” the man said softly, “you do remember me.”

  Kellin was abruptly sober. He marked the familiar blue eyes, the russet hair, the maddeningly serene expression. How could I have forgotten?

  “Aye,” Corwyth said. “Would you care to play out the game?”

  Kellin looked for his watchdogs and saw them spilled slackly across their table. Their attitudes bespoke drunkenness to a man who knew no better; Kellin knew better.

  He looked then at the other men who wagered near his own table, and saw they seemed not to know anyone else was in the room.

  Breath ran shallowly. Kellin tensed on his stool and quietly took up the knife. “You have come for me.”

  Corwyth watched the bright cubes spin, seemingly undismayed by the presence of a weapon. “Oh,” he said lightly, “presently. I am in no hurry.” He gestured briefly, and the knife fell out of Kellin’s hand. “There is no need for that here.”

  Kellin swore and grabbed at it, only to find the metal searingly hot. “Ku’reshtin—” He dropped the knife at once, desiring to blow on burned fingers but holding himself in check. He would not give the Ihlini any measure of satisfaction.

  Corwyth’s eyes narrowed assessively. “No more the boy,” he observed, “but a man well-grown, and dangerous. Someone who must be dealt with.”

  Kellin did not much care for the implication. “You tried before to ‘deal’ with me and failed.”