"The Lions of Al-Rassan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kay Guy Gavriel)

Thirteen

"Were you pleased?" the king of Ragosa asked his chancellor, breaking a companionable silence.

Mazur ben Avren glanced up from the cushions where he reclined. "I ought to be asking you that," he said.

Badir smiled in his deep, low chair. "I am easily pleased," he murmured. "I enjoyed the food and the company. The music was splendid tonight, especially the reeds. Your new musician from Ronizza is a discovery. Are we paying him well?"

"Extremely well, I'm sorry to say. There have been other offers for his services."

The king sipped from his glass, held it to the nearest candle flame and looked, thoughtfully. The sweet wine was pale: as starlight, the white moon, a northern girl. He tried briefly but failed to think of a fresher image. It was very late. "What did you think of the verses tonight?"

The verses were an issue, as it happened.

The chancellor took his time before answering. They were alone again, in the king's chambers. It occurred to ben Avren to wonder how many times over the years the two of them had sat like this at the end of a night.

Badir's second wife had died six winters ago, giving birth to his third son. The king had never remarried. He had heirs, and no single overriding political interest had emerged to dictate an obvious union. It was useful at times for a secure monarch to be unattached: overtures came, and negotiations could be spun out a long while. Rulers in three countries had reason to believe their daughter might one day be queen of wealthy Ragosa in Al-Rassan.

"What did you think of the verses, my lord?"

It was unlike the chancellor to deflect a question back. Badir raised one eyebrow. "Are you being careful, old friend? With me?"

Mazur shook his head. "Not careful. Uncertain, actually. I may be ... prejudiced by my own aspirations in the realm of poetry."

"That gives me most of an answer."

Mazur smiled. "I know."

The king leaned back and put his feet up on his favorite stool. He balanced his wine on the wide arm of the chair.

"What do I think? I think most of the poems were indifferent. The usual run of images. I also think," he added, "that our friend ibn Khairan betrayed a conflict in his verse—either deliberately, or something he would rather have kept hidden."

The chancellor nodded slowly. "That seems exact. You will think I am flattering, I fear." King Badir's glance was keen. He waited. Mazur sipped from his wine. "Ibn Khairan's too honest a poet, my lord. He might dissemble in speech and act, but not easily in verse."

"What do we do about it?"

Mazur gestured gracefully. "There is nothing to do. We wait and see what he decides."

"Ought we to try to influence that decision? If we know what our own desires are?"

Mazur shook his head. "He knows what he can have from you, my lord."

"Does he?" Badir's tone sharpened. "I don't. What is it he can have from me?"

The chancellor laid his glass down and sat up straighter. They had been drinking all night—during the banquet, and now alone. Ben Avren was weary but clear-headed. "It is, as ever, yours to decide, my lord, but it is my view that he can have whatever it is he wants, should he choose to remain with us."

A silence. It was an extraordinary thing to have said. Both men knew it.

"I need him so much, Mazur?"

"Not if we choose to stay as we are, my lord. But if you wish to have more, then yes, you need him that much."

Another reflective stillness.

"I do, of course, wish to have more," said King Badir of Ragosa.

"I know."

"Can my sons deal with a wider realm when I'm gone, Mazur? Are they capable of such?"

"With help, I think so."

"Will they not have you, my friend, as I have?"

"So long as I am able. We are much the same age, as you know, my lord. That," said the chancellor of Ragosa, "is actually the point of what I am saying."

Badir looked at him. He held up his almost empty glass. Mazur rose smoothly and went to the sideboard. He took the decanter and poured for the king and then, at a gesture, for himself. He replaced the decanter and returned to his cushions, subsiding among them.

"It was an extremely short poem," said the king of Ragosa.

"It was."

"Almost ... perfunctory."

"Almost. Not quite." The chancellor was silent a moment. "I think he was giving you a compliment of an unusual kind, my lord."

"Ah. How so?"

"He let you see that he is struggling. He did not hide the fact behind some bland, elaborate homage."

The king's turn to be silent again. "Let me understand you," he said at length. There was a trace of irritation in his voice now, a rare thing. He was tired. "Ammar ibn Khairan, asked to offer a verse for my birth day, recites a quick little piece about there always being water from a pool or wine in my cup. That is all. Six lines. And my chancellor, my poet, says this is to be construed as a compliment?"

Mazur looked undisturbed. "Because he could so easily have done more, my lord, or at the least, have claimed his inspiration was inadequate to the magnitude of the occasion. He is too experienced not to have done so, had he felt the slightest need to play a courtier's game. Which means he wanted you—and me, I suppose—to understand that he is being and will be honest with us."

"And that is a compliment?"

"From a man such as this, I believe it is. He is saying he believes we are thoughtful enough to read that message in his six lines, and wait for him."

"And we will wait for him, Mazur?"

"It is my counsel, my lord."

The king stood up then, and so the chancellor did the same. Badir strode, in jewelled slippers on the carpet and the marble floor, to a window. He turned the latch and pushed open both panes of beautifully etched glass. He stood overlooking a courtyard with almond and lemon trees and a fountain. Torches had been left burning below to light the play of water.

From beyond the palace the streets of the city were quiet. They would not be tomorrow night. In the distance, faintly, could be heard the sound of a stringed instrument, and then a voice, yearning. The blue moon was overhead, shining through the open window and upon the splashing fountain and the grass. Stars glittered around the moon and through the branches of the tall trees.

"You think a great deal of this man," King Badir said finally, looking out at the night.

"What I think," said his chancellor, "if you will allow me to pursue a poet's conceit and imagine men as bodies in the heavens, is that we have the two most brilliant comets in the sky here in Ragosa this spring."

Badir turned back to look at him. After a moment, he smiled.

"And where would you put yourself, old friend, in such a glittering firmament?"

And now the chancellor, too, smiled.

"That is easy, in truth. I am a moon at your side, my good lord."

The king thought about that. He shook his head. "Inexact, Mazur. Moons wander. Your people are named for that. But you have not. You have been steadfast."

"Thank you, my lord."

The king crossed his arms, still musing. "A moon is also brighter than comets in the dark," he said. "Though being familiar, perhaps it occasions less note."

Mazur inclined his head but said nothing.

"Will you be going abroad tomorrow night?"

Mazur smiled. "I always do, my lord. For a little time. Carnival is useful, to walk about unknown, and gauge the mood of the city."

"And it is solely duty that takes you out, my friend? You find no pleasure in the night?"

"I would never say that, my lord."

The two men shared the smile this time.

After a moment, Badir asked, bemusedly, "Why plain water from a pool, though, Mazur. In his verse. Why not just a rich red wine.'

And this, too, his chancellor explained to him.

A little later, Mazur ben Avren took leave of his king. When, at length, he reached his own quarters in the palace, the Lady Zabira was waiting.

She had been very much present at the banquet, of course, and had all the questions of someone who understood royal courts very well and wished to rise in this one. She also displayed, gracefully, a continuing desire to minister to whatever needs the chancellor of Ragosa might have—in a fashion that might surpass anyone who had come before her.

As it happened, she had been doing just that through the winter, to his pleasure and surprise. He had thought he was too old for such a thing to happen.

Later that night, when he was drifting towards the shores of sleep, feeling her youthful nakedness against his body, soft as a cat, warm as a pleasant dream, Mazur heard her ask one last question. "Did the king understand what ibn Khairan meant in his poem tonight? About the water at the drinking place?"

She was clever too, this lady from Cartada, sharp as a cutting edge. He would do well to remember that. He was getting old; must not allow it to render him vulnerable. He had seen that happen to other men.

"He understands it now," he murmured, eyes closed.

He heard her laugh then, softly. Her laughter seemed to ease him wonderfully, a caressing sound. One of her hands slid across his chest. She turned herself a little, to fit more closely to him.

She said, "I was watching Ammar tonight. I have known him for many years. I believe he is troubled by something beyond ... divided loyalty. I don't think he understands it himself yet. If I am right, it would be amusing, in truth."

He opened his eyes and looked at her, waiting. And then she told him something he would never have even contemplated. Women, Mazur ben Avren had long thought, had an entirely different way of seeing the world. It was one of the reasons he enjoyed their company so much.

Soon after that she fell asleep. The chancellor of Ragosa lay awake for a long time, however, considering what she had said, turning it over and over in his mind, as a stone in the hand, or the different possible endings for a verse.

For the bright lord of Ragosa,

Long-tenured on his dais,

Much-loved, and deservedly,

May there always be in times to come

Cool water from the moonlit pool

And wine in the drinking glass.

He could perhaps have said, alone by the pool, Ammar ibn Khairan reflected, but that would have had a flavor of sycophancy, however subtle, and he wasn't ready—so soon after the elegy for Almalik—to give so much to Badir of Ragosa in a verse. Almost, but not quite. That was the problem.

It was lions, of course, who were alone when they came down to the water to drink.

He wondered if the king had been offended by his brevity, which would be a pity. The banquet tables had barely settled themselves to silence when ibn Khairan, given pride of place, first recital, had already finished speaking his brief verse. The lines were as simple as he could make them, more a well-wishing than an homage. Save for the hint ... the moonlit waters. If Badir understood. He wondered.

I am too old, Ammar ibn Khairan said to himself, justifying, to abuse my craft.

Any of your crafts?

The inner voice always had the hard questions. He was a soldier and a diplomat as well as a poet. Those were the real crafts of his living here in Ragosa, as they had been in Cartada. The poetry? Was for when the winds of the world died down.

What ought a man honorably to do? To aspire towards? Was it the stillness of that pool—dreamed of, and written about—where only the one beast dared stalk from the dark trees to drink in the moonlight and under the stars?

That stillness, that single image, was the touchstone of verse for him. A place out of the wind, for once, where the noise of the world and all the brilliant color—the noise and color he still loved!—might recede and a deceptively simple art be conjured forth.

Standing, as he had stood one night before—the night he'd first come here—by the waters of Lake Serrana, ibn Khairan understood that he was still a long way from that dark pool. Water and water. The dream of the Asharites. The water that nourished the body and the waters the soul craved. If I am not careful, he told himself, I'll end up being good for nothing but mumbled, cryptic teachings under some arch in Soriyya. I'll let my beard and hair grow, walk barefoot in a torn robe, let my students bring me bread and water for sustenance.

Water the body needed, waters the soul desired.

There were lanterns in the rigging of all the fishing boats, he saw by the blue moonlight. They were not yet alight. That would come tomorrow. Carnival. Masks. Music and wine. Pleasures of torchlight. A brilliance until dawn.

Sometimes the darkness needed to be pushed back.

Beloved Al-Rassan, the thought came to him in that moment, sharp and unexpected as a blade from beneath a friend's cloak, shall I live to shape your elegy as well?

In that innermost, jewel-like garden of the Al-Fontina those long years ago the last blind khalif of Silvenes had greeted him as a welcome visitor, before the blade—from beneath a friend's cloak—had ended him.

Ammar ibn Khairan drew a breath and shook his head. It might have been useful to have a friend here tonight, but that had never been the way he'd ordered his life, and it would be a weakness to dwell upon it now. Almalik was dead, which was a part, a large part, of the present difficulties.

It had been decided two nights ago—though not yet made generally known—that in two weeks' time, when the white moon was full, the mercenary army of Ragosa would set out for Cartada, to wrest that city from a parricide. They would march and ride in the name of a small boy, Zabira's elder son, who had besought the shelter and support of King Badir and the intercession of the holy stars.

Ibn Khairan stood motionless for another moment, then turned away from the water and the boats to walk back. The last time he had been here by the lake late at night Jehane bet Ishak had been waiting by the warehouses and they had met Rodrigo Belmonte at the infirmary and he and Belmonte had left her there, laughing, and gone off to get unexpectedly drunk together. The night of the day he had arrived, the day they had fought side by side.

Something too close there, deeply unsettling.

Jehane had looked remarkably beautiful in the banquet room tonight, he thought, inconsequentially. His steps echoed on the planks of the wharf. He came to the first warehouses and continued on. The streets were empty. He was quite alone.

She'd been gowned in crimson silk, extravagantly, with only lapis jewelry and a white shawl as gestures towards the Kindath clothing laws. It would have been Husari who provided that dress for her, Ammar thought, and ben Avren, probably, the jewels.

Her hair adorned with gems, and the lapis at ears and throat adding brilliance to her eyes, the doctor had caused a palpable stir when she entered the banquet room, though she'd been a fixture here, pragmatic and unpretentious, from the day she arrived. Sometimes, he thought, people reached a point where they wanted to say something different about themselves.

He had teased her this evening, about trying to catch the king's glance. Alleged she was harboring aspirations to be the first Kindath queen in Al-Rassan. If they start wagering on me again, she'd answered dryly—quick as ever—do let me know: I wouldn't mind making a little money this time.

He'd looked for her later, after the meal, after the music and all the verses, including his own, but she had already gone. So had Rodrigo Belmonte, it now occurred to him. An idle thought, wispy as a blown cloud across the moon, drifted into his mind.

The two of them, he realized, walking towards the center of the city, were the only people in Ragosa with whom he might have wanted to speak just now. Such an odd conjunction. Jaddite soldier, Kindath woman and physician.

Then he corrected himself. There was a third, actually. One more. He doubted the chancellor of Ragosa was alone, however, and greatly doubted he would be disposed to discuss nuances of poetry just then, so late at night, with Zabira in his bed, accomplished and alluring.

He was both right and wrong, as it happened. He went home alone, in any event, to the house and garden he had leased at the edge of the palace quarter with a small part of the great wealth he had earned in the service of the last king of Cartada.

In the horse-breeding lands of Valledo the next day—the morning of the Carnival of Ragosa, in fact—they came for Diego Belmonte at the ranch of his family where he had lived all his short life.

His mother was away at the time, riding the eastern perimeter of Rancho Belmonte, supervising the spring roundup of new foals. This absence on the part of the lady of the estate had not been planned by those who arrived at the ranch house, but they regarded it, nonetheless, as a highly fortuitous circumstance. The lady was known to be headstrong and even violent. She had killed a man here not long ago. Put an arrow through him, in fact. Nor was it assumed by those who arrived that day charged with a particular and delicate mission that Miranda Belmonte d'Alveda would regard them and their task with favor.

Mothers were chancy, at best.

There had not, in fact, been any great press of volunteers in Carcasia for this task, when word came from the castle that one of the sons of Ser Rodrigo Belmonte was to be brought west to join the army as it assembled just north of the tagra lands.

This absence of enthusiasm was accentuated when it became clear that the request for the presence of the young fellow came not from the king directly, but from the Ferrieres cleric Geraud de Chervalles. It was de Chervalles who wanted the boy, for some reason. A messy business, the soldiers agreed, getting tangled in the affairs of foreign clerics. Still, the king had endorsed the request and orders were orders. A company of ten men had been mustered to ride east along the muddy roads to Rancho Belmonte and bring back the lad.

Many of them, it emerged in campfire discussions along the way, had had their own first taste of warfare—against the Asharites or the pigs from Jalona or Ruenda—at fourteen or fifteen years of age. The boy was said to be almost fourteen now, and as Rodrigo Belmonte's son ... well, Jad knew, he ought to be able to fight. No one knew why the army of Valledo needed a boy, but no one put that question openly.

They came to Rancho Belmonte, riding beneath the banner of the kings of Valledo, and were met in a cleared space before the wooden compound walls by several household officials, a small, nervous cleric and two boys, one of whom they were there to claim.

The lady of the household—who would, in fact, have cheerfully killed the lot of them had she been present to learn of their mission—was elsewhere on the estate, the cleric informed them. The leader of the troop showed him the king's seal and his command. The cleric—Ibero was his name—tore open the seal, read the letter then surprised them by handing it over to the two boys, who read it together.

They were utterly identical, Ser Rodrigo's two sons. A few of the horsemen had already made the sign of Jad, discreetly. Magic and witchcraft were said to attend upon such mirrored twins.

"But of course," said one of the boys, looking up as he finished reading. It was evident that they could read. "If the king believes my ... gift may be of use, if he wishes me to come, I am honored to do so."

The captain of the company didn't know anything about a gift. He didn't much care; he was simply relieved to find things going smoothly.

"And I," said the other brother quickly. "Where Diego goes, I also go."

This was not expected, but it didn't seem to pose a great problem, and the captain agreed. If the king didn't want this other brother in Carcasia, for whatever reason, he could send him back. With someone else. The two boys glanced at each other and flashed identical smiles before dashing off to get ready. Some of the soldiers glanced at each other with ironic expressions. Youngsters, everywhere, looked forward to war.

They were very young, and not especially prepossessing either. Slightly built, if anything. Still, it was not a soldier's place to dwell upon orders, and these were the sons of Rodrigo Belmonte. The riders were offered refreshments, which they accepted, and a night's lodging, which they courteously declined. It would be imprudent, their captain decided, to push the luck that had caused the lady of Rancho Belmonte to be absent this day. They took a cold lunch, fed and watered the horses, and provisioned themselves.

Ten men, escorting two boys and a squire of little more than the boys' age, rode west from the ranch house towards mid-afternoon of that same day, passing to the south of a copse of trees, and crossing the stream at a place Rodrigo's sons suggested. The ranch dogs followed them that far and then went loping back.

Ibero di Vaquez had lived an uneventful, even a sedate life, given the turbulent times into which he had been born. He was fifty-two years old. Raised in what was now Jalona, he had come west to Esteren to study with the clerics there when quite young. Thirteen years old, in fact.

He was a good acolyte, attentive and disciplined. In his early twenties, he had been sent as part of a holy mission bearing relics of Queen Vasca to the High Clerics in Ferrieres and had lingered there, with permission, for two years, spending most of his time in the magnificent libraries of the great sanctuaries there.

Upon his return to Esperana he had been assigned—and had cheerfully accepted—the short-term position of cleric to the Belmontes, a moderately important ranching family in the breeding lands of the southeast. The possibilities for advancement were certainly greater in Esteren or one of the larger sanctuaries, but Ibero was not an ambitious man and he had never had much appetite for courts or the equally faction-riven retreats of Jad.

He was a quiet man, somewhat old before his years, but not without a sense of humor or an awareness of how the stern precepts of the god had, at times, to be measured against an awareness of human frailty and passions. The short-term position had turned, as sometimes happened without one's noticing, into a permanent one. He had been with the Belmontes now for twenty-eight years, since the Captain himself had been a boy. They had built a chapel and a library for him, and then expanded both. He had taught young Rodrigo his letters, and then his wife, and later his sons.

It had been a good, gentle life. Pleasures came from the books he was able to obtain with the sums allocated him; from his herb garden; from correspondents in many places. He had taught himself a little of medicine, and had a reputation for extracting teeth efficiently. Excitement—not inconsiderable—arrived home at intervals with the Captain and his company. Ibero would listen in the dining hall to the tales of warfare and intrigue they brought with them. He'd formed an unlikely friendship with gruff old Lain Nunez, whose profanity masked a generous spirit, in the little cleric's view.

For Ibero di Vaquez the stories he heard were enough turbulence for him, and more than close enough to real conflict. He liked the seasonal rhythms of existence here, the measured routine of the days and years.

His first intervention on the wider stage of the world, seven years ago, had been a brief, respectful essay on a doctrinal clash between the clerics of Ferrieres and Batiara on the meaning of solar eclipses. That clash, and the battle for precedence it represented, was still unresolved. Ibero's contribution appeared to have been ignored, so far as he could tell.

His second intervention had been to write a letter, in the late autumn of last year, to the holy person of Geraud de Chervalles, High Cleric of Ferrieres, dwelling in Esteren.

A company of men had arrived this morning in response to that. They had come and had gone, with the boys. And now Ibero, late that same afternoon, stood with his head bowed and trembling hands clasped before him, learning that he, too, was to quit this house. Leave chapel, library, garden, home. After almost thirty years.

He was weeping. He had never been spoken to, in all his life, in the tones with which he was being addressed by Miranda Belmonte in her small sitting room, as the sun went down.

"Understand me perfectly," she was saying, pacing before the fire, her face bloodless, unheeded tears sparkling on her cheeks. "This was a traitor's betrayal of our family. The betrayal of a confidence we had reposed in you, regarding Diego. I will not kill you, or order your death. I have known you, and loved you, for too long." Her voice caught. She stopped her pacing.

"Rodrigo might," she said. "He might find you, wherever you go, and kill you for this."

"He will not do that," the little cleric whispered. It was difficult to speak. It was also hard for him, now, to imagine what he had expected her response might be, back in the autumn, when he wrote that letter to Esteren.

She glared at him. He found it impossible to sustain her glance. It wasn't the fury, it was the tears.

"No," Miranda Belmonte said, "no, you're right, he won't. He loves you much too dearly. He will simply tell you, or write to you, how you have wounded him."

Which would break Ibero's heart. He knew it would.

He tried, again, to explain. "Dearest lady, this is a time of holiness, of men riding beneath the god's banner. They will be taking ship in Batiara for the east soon. There is hope they may be riding south here, in the name of Jad. In our time, my lady. The Reconquest may begin!"

"And it could begin and continue without my children!" She had clenched her fists at her sides like a man, but he saw that her lips were trembling. "Diego's is a special gift, a frightening one. Something we have kept to ourselves all his life. You know—you know, Ibero!—that clerics have burned such people. What have you done to him!"

He swallowed hard. He said, "The high lord Geraud de Chervalles is an enlightened man. The king of Valledo is the same. It is my belief that Diego and Fernan will be welcomed with honor into the army. That if Diego is able to help in this holy cause he will win renown in his own name, not simply his father's."

"And be named a sorcerer all his life?" Miranda swiped at the tears on her face. "Had you thought of that, Ibero? Had you? What price renown, then? His own, or his father's?"

Ibero swallowed again. "It will be a holy war, my lady. If he aids in the cause of Jad—"

"Oh, Ibero, you innocent fool! I could kill you, I swear I could! It is not a holy war. If it happens, this will be a Valledan campaign to take Fezana and expand south into the tagra. That is all. King Ramiro has been thinking about this for years. Your precious High Cleric simply showed up at the right time to put a gloss on it. Ibero, this is no Reconquest by a united Esperana. There is no Esperana any more! This is just Valledo expanding. Ramiro is as likely to turn west and besiege his brother in Orvedo as anything else before autumn comes. What does your holy god say to that?"

She was blaspheming, now, and her soul was in his care, but he feared to chide her. It was also possible that she was right about much of this. He was an innocent man, he would never have denied that, but even so ...

"Kings may err, Miranda, my lady. So may humble clerics. I do what I do, always, in the name of Jad and his holy light."

She sat down, abruptly, as if the last of her strength had given out. She looked as if she had been physically injured, he saw, and there seemed to be a lost place in her eyes. She had been alone, without Ser Rodrigo, for a long time. His heart ached.

Labelled a sorcerer all his life.

It might be true. He had thought only of the triumph, the glory Diego might accrue should he help the king in battle with his gift of sight.

Miranda said, her voice low now, uninflected. "You were here at Rancho Belmonte to serve Jad and this family. For all these years there has been no conflict in that. Here, for once, it seems there was. You made a choice. You chose, as you say, the god and his light over the needs and the trust of the Belmonte. You are entitled to do so. Perhaps you are required to do so. I don't know. I only know that you cannot make such a choice and remain here. You will be gone in the morning. I will not see you. Goodbye, Ibero. Leave me now. I wish to cry alone, for my sons."

He tried, heartsick, to think of something to say. He could not. She would not even look at him. He left the room. He went to his own chambers. He sat in his bedroom for a time, desolate, lost, and then went next door to the chapel. He knelt and prayed, without finding any comfort.

In the morning he packed a very few belongings. In the kitchen, when he went there to say farewell, they gave him food and wine to begin his journey. They asked for his blessing, which he gave, making the sign of the god's disk over them. They were weeping; so was he. Rain was falling when he went back out; the good, much-needed rain of spring.

Outside the stables there was a horse saddled for him. By the lady's orders, he was given to understand. She was true to her word, however. She did not come out to see him ride away in the rain.

His heart hammering the way it had in battle, Alvar watched as the grey iguana spider approached him slowly. The igwarra was poisonous, sometimes fatally so. The son of one of the farm workers had died of a bite. He tried to move, but could not. The spider came up and kissed him on the lips.

Alvar, twisting, managed to free his arms in the press of people and put them around the spider. He kissed her back as best he could from behind his eagle mask. He was improving, he thought. He had learned a great deal since sundown.

The spider stepped back. Some people seemed to have a knack of finding space to maneuver in the crowd. That trick, Alvar hadn't learned yet.

"Nice. Find me later, eagle," said the iguana. She reached downwards and gave him a quick squeeze on his private parts. Alvar hoped the others hadn't seen.

Not much chance of that.

A hard, bony elbow was driven into his ribs as the spider drifted away. "What I'd give," cackled Lain Nunez, "to be young and broad-shouldered again! Did she hurt you, child?"

"What do you mean again?" roared Martin, on Alvar's other side. He was a fox for the Carnival; it suited him. "You were never built like Alvar, except in your dreams!"

"I assume," said Lain, with dignity, "that you are speaking of his shoulders, and not elsewhere?"

There was a raucous whoop of laughter in response to that. Not that the noise level could possibly get much higher, Alvar thought. Just ahead of them—he had to walk ahead of them, given his spectacular mask—Husari ibn Musa carefully turned around and gave Lain a gesture of encouragement. The normally dour old warrior waved back jauntily. He was a red and green rooster.

They had been drinking since the first stars had come out. There was food everywhere and the smells of cooking: chestnuts roasting, grilled lamb, small-boned fish from the lake, cheeses, sausages, spring melons. And every tavern, thronged to bursting, had opened its doors and was selling wine and ale from booths on the street. Ragosa had been transformed.

Alvar had already been kissed by more women than he'd ever touched in his life. Half a dozen of them had urged him to find them later. The night was becoming a blur already. He was trying to stay alert, though. He was looking for Jehane, however she might be disguised, and, though he certainly wouldn't tell this to the others, for a certain jungle cat mask. He was sure he'd recognize it, even by torchlight and in the press; there was the golden leash, for one thing.

Jehane was beginning, just a little, to regret that she'd insisted on anonymity and on walking the streets alone tonight.

It was fascinating, certainly, and there was an undeniable excitement to being masked and unknown amid a crowd of similarly unrecognizable people. She didn't really like drinking so much, though, and couldn't claim to be thrilled by the number of men—and one or two women—who had already used the license of Carnival to put their arms around her and claim a kiss. No one had really abused the privilege—it was early yet, and the crowds were dense—but Jehane, responding as best she could in the spirit of the night, wouldn't have said it was a pleasure, either.

Her own fault, if so, she told herself. Her own choice, not to be walking about with Rodrigo's men, safely escorted through the chaos of the streets. Out for a while, and then home like a good girl, to bed alone.

Her own choice, indeed. No one knew her, unless someone recognized her walk or tilt of head in the flickering of torches. Martin might, she thought, or Ludus: they were good at such things. She hadn't spotted any of the soldiers yet. She'd know Husari at a distance, of course. There would only be one peacock like that in Ragosa tonight.

She was approached and enveloped by a brown bear. She submitted, good-humoredly, to the bone-crushing hug and a smack on the lips.

"Come with me!" the bear invited. "I like owls!"

"I don't think so," Jehane said, gasping for breath. "It's too early in a long night for broken ribs."

The bear laughed, patted her on the head with gloved hand, and lumbered on. Jehane looked around, wondering if Ziri was somewhere in the crowd swirling past beneath the wavering torches. He didn't know her mask, though, and she had exited her house through the back door into the dark.

She couldn't have said why it was so important to her to be alone tonight. Or no, she probably could have if she demanded an honest answer of herself. She wasn't about to do that. Carnival wasn't a time for inward searching, Jehane decided. It was a night for doing the things one only dreamed about all the rest of the year. She looked around. A grey she-wolf and a horse were improbably entwined not far away.

A stag, seven-tined, emerged out of the tumult in front of her. He was holding a leather flask. He offered it to Jehane with a slight bow. A deeper inclination of his head might have impaled her.

"Thank you," Jehane said politely, holding out a hand for the wine.

"A kiss?" The voice was muffled, soft.

"Fair enough," said Ishak ben Yonannon's daughter. It was Carnival. She stepped forward, kissed him lightly, accepted the flask, and drank.

There seemed to be something familiar about this man, but Jehane didn't pursue the thought: there had been something familiar about half the men who'd kissed her tonight. Masks and imagination and too much wine did that to you.

The stag moved on without speaking again. Jehane watched him go, then realized he'd left her the flask. She called after him but he didn't turn. She shrugged, looked at the flask, drank again. This wine was good, and scarcely watered, if at all.

"I am going to have to start being careful," she said aloud.

"Tonight?" said a brown rabbit, laughing beside her. "How absurd. Come with us instead. We're going down to the boats." There were four of them, all rabbits, three women and a man with his arm around two of them.

It seemed a reasonable thing to do. As reasonable as anything else. And better, after all, than wandering alone. She shared the leather flask with them on the way to the lake.

Behind the mask, which alone made tonight possible, eyes watched from the shadows of a recessed doorway as a stag was briefly kissed by a white owl and then stalked gracefully away, leaving a flask of wine behind.

The owl hesitated visibly, drank again from the flask, and then went off in another direction with a quartet of rabbits.

The rabbits didn't matter at all. The stag and the owl were known. The watching one—disguised, on a whim, as a lioness—left the shelter of the doorway and followed the stag.

There were surviving pagan legends, in countries now worshipping either Jad or the stars of Ashar, about a man changed into a stag. In those lands conquered by the followers of the sun god, the man had been so transmuted for having abandoned a battlefield for a woman's arms. In the east—in Ammuz and

Soriyya, before Ashar had changed the world with his visions—the ancient tale was of a hunter who had spied upon a goddess bathing in a forest pool and was altered on the spot.

In each tale, the stag—once a man—was fair game for the hunting dogs and was torn apart in the heart of a dark wood for his sin, his one unforgivable sin.

In the years since Ragosa's Carnival had begun a number of traditions had emerged. License, of course, was one—and to be expected. Art, its frequent bedfellow, was another.

There was a tavern—Ozra's—between the palace and the River Gate to the south. Here, under the benevolent eye of the longtime proprietor, the poets and musicians of Ragosa—and those who, masked, wished to be numbered among them, if only for a night—would gather to offer anonymous verse and song to each other and to those who paused in their torchlit careen to listen at the door.

Carnival was quieter in Ozra's, though not the less interesting for that. The masks led people to perform in ways they might never have ventured, exposed as themselves. Some of the most celebrated artists of the city had, over the years, come to this unassuming tavern on Carnival night to gauge the response their work might elicit with the aura of fame and fashion removed.

They had not always been pleased with the results. Tonight's was a difficult, sophisticated audience and they, too, were masked.

Amusing things happened, sometimes. It was still remembered how, a decade ago, one of the wadjis had taken the performer's stool, disguised as a crow, and chanted a savage lampoon against Mazur ben Avren. An attempt, clearly, to take their campaign against the Kindath chancellor to a different level.

The wadji had had a good voice, and even played his instrument passably well, but he'd refused the customary performer's glass of wine far too awkwardly, and he had also neglected to remove the traditional sandals of the wadjis, modeled on those Ashar had worn in the desert. From the moment he'd sat down everyone in the tavern knew exactly what he was, and the diversion the knowledge offered had quite removed the sting from the lampoon.

The next year three crows appeared in Ozra's, and each of them wore wadjis' sandals. They drank in unison, however, and then performed together and there was nothing devout about that performance. The satire, this time, was directed at the wadjis—to great and remembered success.

Ragosa was a city that valued cleverness.

It also respected the rituals of this night, though, and the performer now taking his place on the stool between the four candles in their tall black holders was granted polite attention. He was effectively disguised: the full-face mask of a greyhound above nondescript clothing that revealed nothing. No one knew who he was. That was, of course, the point.

He settled himself, without an instrument, and looked around the crowded room. Ozra di Cozari, once of Eschalou in Jalona, but long since at home here in Al-Rassan, watched from behind his bar as the man on the stool appeared to notice someone. The greyhound hesitated, then inclined his head in a greeting. Ozra followed the glance. The figure so saluted, standing by the doorway, had come in some time ago, remaining near the entranceway. He must have had to duck his head to enter, because of the branching tines of his horns. Beneath the exquisite stag mask that hid his eyes and the upper part of his face, he appeared to smile in return.

Ozra turned back to the greyhound between the candles, and listened. As it happened, he knew who this was. The poet began without title or preamble.

There was a stir in the tavern. This was something unexpected, in structure and in tone. The poet, whoever he was, paused and sipped from the glass at his elbow. He looked around again, waiting for stillness, then resumed.

The poet ended. He rose without ceremony and stepped down from the dais. He could not avoid the applause, however, the sound of genuine appreciation, nor the speculative glances that followed him to the bar.

Ozra, following tradition here as well, offered him a glass of his best white wine. He usually made a quip at this time, but could think of nothing to say.

Ask of the wine that flows tonight.

Ozra di Cozari was seldom moved by what was read or sung in his tavern, but there was something about what he had just heard. The man in the greyhound disguise lifted the glass and saluted him briefly, before drinking. It was with no great surprise that Ozra noticed, just then, that the stag had come in from the doorway and was standing beside them.

The greyhound turned and looked at him. They were of a height, the two men, though the horns of the stag made him seem taller.

Very softly, so that Ozra di Cazari was almost certain he was the only other man to hear, the seven-lined stag said, " 'Beloved of Ashar?' "

The poet laughed, quietly. "Ah, well. What would you have me do?"

Ozra didn't understand, but he hadn't expected to.

The other man said, "Exactly what you did do, I suppose." His eyes were completely hidden behind his mask. He said, "It was very fine. Dark thoughts for a Carnival."

"I know." The greyhound hesitated. "There is a darker side to Carnivals, in my experience."

"In mine, as well."

"Are we to have a verse from you?"

"I think not. I am humbled by what I have just heard."

The greyhound inclined his head. "You are far too generous. Are you enjoying the night?"

"A pleasant beginning. I gather it has only begun."

"For some."

"Not you? Will you not come wandering? With me?"

Another hesitation. "Thank you, no. I will drink a little more of Ozra's good wine and listen to the verses and the music a while before bed."

"Are we expecting any crows tonight?"

The greyhound laughed again. "You heard about that? We never expect anything at Carnival, and so hope never to be disappointed and never greatly surprised."

The stag lifted its head. "We differ there, at least. I am always, endlessly, hoping to be surprised."

"Then I wish it for you."

They exchanged a glance, then the stag turned away and found a passage to the doorway and out into the street. A black bull had taken the dais now, holding a small harp.

"I think," said the greyhound, "I will have another glass, Ozra, if you will."

"Yes, my lord," said Ozra, before he could stop himself. He'd said it softly though, and didn't think anyone had heard.

As he poured the wine he saw the first of the women approaching the poet where he stood at the bar. This always happened, too, at Carnival.

"Might we talk a moment in private?" asked the lioness softly. The greyhound turned to look at her. So did Ozra. It was not a woman's voice.

"Private speech is difficult to arrange tonight," the poet said.

"I'm certain you can manage it. I have some information for you."

"Indeed?"

"I will want something in return."

"Imagine my astonishment."

The greyhound sipped from his wine, eyeing the newcomer carefully. The lioness laughed, a deep, disconcerting sound beneath the mask.

Ozra felt a flicker of unease. From the tone of this, this man masked as a woman knew exactly who the poet was, which posed more than a measure of danger.

"You do not trust yourself with me?"

"If I knew who you were, I might. Why have you worn a mask to change your sex?"

Only the briefest hesitation. "It amused me. There is no beast more fierce, in the legends, in defense of her young."

The greyhound carefully laid down his glass.

"I see," he said finally. "You are very bold. I must say, I am surprised, after all." He looked at Ozra. "Is there a room upstairs?"

"Use mine," said the innkeeper. He reached beneath the counter and handed across a key. The greyhound and the lioness moved together across the room and up the stairs. A number of eyes watched them go, as the black bull on the dais finished tuning his instrument and began to play.

"How did you find me?" Mazur ben Avren asked, removing the greyhound mask in the small bedchamber.

The other man struggled with his own mask a moment, then pulled it off. "I was led to you," he said. "I had a choice of two people to follow, and made the right choice. The stag brought me here."

"You knew him?"

"I tend to know men by how they move as much as how they look. Yes, I knew him," said Tarif ibn Hassan, scratching at his chin where the full white beard had been shaved away. He smiled.

So, too, after a moment, did the chancellor of Ragosa.

"I had not ever thought to meet you," he said. "You know there is a price on your life here?"

"Of course I do. I am offended by it: Cartada has offered more."

"Cartada has suffered more."

"I suppose. Shall I rectify that?"

"Shall I let you leave the city?"

"How would you stop me if I killed you now?"

The chancellor appeared to be considering that. After a moment, he moved to a small table and picked up a beaker of wine sitting there. There were glasses, as well. He gestured with the wine.

"As you will perhaps have realized, I have an arrangement here with the innkeeper. We are private, but not entirely alone. I hope you will not require me to demonstrate."

The outlaw looked around then and noted the inner door ajar and another door to the balcony. "I see," he said. "I ought to have expected this."

"I suppose so. I do have responsibilities, and cannot be entirely reckless, even tonight."

Ibn Hassan accepted the glass the chancellor offered. "If I wanted to kill you I could still do it. If you wanted to take me, you could have done so by now."

"You mentioned tidings. And a price. I am curious."

"The price you ought to know." Ibn Hassan looked pointedly over at his discarded mask.

"Ah," said the chancellor. "Of course. Your sons?"

"My sons. I find I miss them in my old age."

"I can understand that. Good sons are a great comfort. They are fine men, we enjoy having them with us."

"They are missed in Arbastro."

"The sad fortunes of war," said ben Avren calmly. "What is it you have to tell me?"

Tarif ibn Hassan drank deeply and held out his glass. The chancellor refilled it.

"The Muwardis have been building boats all winter. In the new shipyards at Abeneven. Hazem ibn Almalik is still with them. He has lost a hand. I don't know how, or why."

Mazur's turn to drink, thoughtfully. "That is all?"

"Hardly. I try to offer fair coinage when I make a request. Almalik II of Cartada has been seeding rumors about the Kindath of Fezana. I do not know to what purpose. There is growing tension there, however."

The chancellor set down the beaker of wine. "How do you know this?"

Tarif shrugged. "I know a good deal of what happens in lands controlled by Cartada. They have a large price on my life, remember?"

Mazur looked at him a long moment. "Almalik is anxious," he said finally. "He feels exposed. But he is clever and unpredictable. I will admit I have no great certainty about what he will do."

"Nor I," the outlaw chieftain agreed. "Does it matter? If it comes to armies?"

"Perhaps not. Have you anything more? Brighter coinage?"

"I have given good weight already, I think. But one more thing. Not brighter, though. The Jaddite army in Batiara. It is sailing for Soriyya after all. I never thought it would. I thought they would feed on each other over the winter and fall apart."

"So did I. It is not so?"

"It is not so."

There was a silence.

It was the outlaw, this time, who refilled both glasses. "I heard your verse," he said. "It seemed to me, listening, that you had a knowledge of these things already."

Ben Avren looked at him. "No. An apprehension, perhaps. My people have a custom, a superstition really. We voice our fears as a talisman: by bringing them into the open, we hope to make them untrue."

"Talismans," said Tarif ibn Hassan, "don't usually work."

"I know," said the chancellor. His voice turned brisk. "You have given, as promised, good weight. In truth, it hardly matters if you reveal the tale of the Emin ha'Nazar now. I can't readily imagine you would, in any case. The offer made to you there still stands: do you want to be part of the army that takes Cartada?"

"That tries to take Cartada."

"With your aid, I have great hopes that we would."

The old chieftain stroked the stubble of his chin. "I fear I will have little enough choice. Both my sons want to do this thing, and I have not the strength to overrule them together."

"That I do not believe," Mazur smiled. "But if you wish to put it in this way, it is no matter to me. Meet us north of Lonza. I will send heralds to you to arrange the exact timing, but we ride from here at the white full moon."

"So soon?"

"Even more urgently now, with what you have told me. If other armies are setting forth, we had best be first in the field, don't you think?"

"Are you covered at your back? In Fibaz?"

"That's where I spent the money the world thinks you stole from the parias party."

"Walls?"

"And soldiers. Two thousand from Karch and Waleska."

"And they will be loyal against Jaddites?"

"If I pay them, I believe they will be."

"What about Belmonte? Is Ser Rodrigo with you?"

Mazur looked thoughtful again. "He is, for now. If Ramiro of Valledo takes the field, I will not say I am sure of him."

"A dangerous man."

"Most useful men are dangerous." The chancellor's smile was wry. "Including beardless outlaws who want their sons back. I will send for them. Right now, in fact. It might be safest if you left tonight."

"I thought the same. I took the precaution of finding them before I looked for you. They are waiting for me outside the walls."

Mazur looked startled for the first time. He set down his glass. "You have them already? Then why ... ?"

"I wanted to meet you," the bandit chieftain said. His smile was grim. "After so many years. I also have a dislike for breaking my sworn word, though that might surprise you. They were granted their lives by ibn Khairan and Belmonte on our oath to accept their being hostages. Abir's life was given back to him by their physician."

"My physician," said the chancellor quickly.

Tarif raised his eyebrows. "As you please. In any case, I would have been unhappy to simply steal them away. It might have confirmed your worst thoughts of me."

"And instead?"

Ibn Hassan laughed. "I have probably confirmed your worst thoughts of me."

"Pretty much," said the chancellor of Ragosa. After a moment, though, he extended his hand. Ibn Hassan took it. "I am pleased to have spoken with you," Mazur said. "Neither of us is young. It might not have happened."

"I'm not planning on making an end soon," said ibn Hassan. "Perhaps next year I'll offer a verse here, at Carnival."

"That," said ben Avren, a hand at his own beard, "might be a revelation."

He sat alone for some time after the chieftain from Arbastro had donned his mask and left. He had no intention of telling anyone, but the news about the army sailing east struck him as almost unimaginably bad.

And rumors being spread about his Kindath brethren in Fezana—that was terrifying. He had literally no idea what Almalik II of Cartada had in mind, but it was clear that the man felt frightened and alone and was lashing out. Frightened men were the hardest of all to read, sometimes.

Ibn Hassan had asked about Rodrigo Belmonte, but not about the other one. The other one was just as much at issue, and in a way, he mattered even more.

"I wish," muttered Mazur ben Avren testily, "that I really were a sorcerer, whatever that is."

He felt tired suddenly, and his hip was bothering him again. It seemed to him that there ought to be orders to give to the bowmen on the balcony or the guards in the adjacent room, but there weren't.

It was Carnival. He could hear the noise from the street. It overwhelmed the harp music from below. The night was growing louder, wilder. Shouts and laughter. The sharp, high whirring of those noise-makers he hated. He wondered, suddenly, where the stag had gone.

Then he remembered what Zabira had told him, in bed the night before.