Likely it would have done her little good anyway, for Sultan Azak seemed to spend all his days in hunting, all his evenings at state dinners with his brothers and uncles and cousins. When had he ever had the time to learn anything about world politics? He was only an untutored savage, who probably knew less than she did.
“Stubborn, I am!” she told Sesame. “I just don’t want to quit! I don’t want to crawling back to Kade, admitting that I can’t even back a man into a corner when I try. Stubborn!” Stubborn as a certain mule-headed faun she had known once.
As far as she knew, Kade was not making much progress, either. She seemed to pass her days in teaching the palace women how to run tea parties and ladies’ salons, and the sorceress had been encouraging this importation of Imperial customs. There had been no change in the situation in Krasnegar—so Rasha had told Kade. Of course news took a month or longer to travel as far as Kinvale. To cross all Pandemia might take years, so what the sorceress had not heard, no one had.
“So why do I bother, lady? Tell me that!” Inos patted the pony’s sweaty neck. “I’ll tell you why I bother—because I don’t want to waste my days lounging around with Kade drinking tea and eating cake and growing old and fat!”
Sesame blew a loud breath of disbelief.
“Well, you’ve got a point,” Inos admitted, scanning all around again without seeing any change in the empty land. “It would be more comfortable, and I’m probably aging much faster out here. So you’re absolutely right—I do it because I want to show I’m as tough as any of these hairy-faced baboons.” Sesame shook her head and backed up a few steps.
“No? Well, I suppose I’m not, am I? And they don’t care now anyway, do they?”
The novelty had worn off, and the princes were mostly shunning Inos. Perhaps they resented her, and the example she was setting for their womenfolk. Some of the younger men still spoke to her, although what they wanted to discuss would have been unthinkable in Kinvale. Only one of them had actually offered to include marriage in the arrangement, young Petkish, and she had not seen him around lately. She hoped there was no connection between his marriage proposal and his disappearance.
Still, at least she had learned that a woman could get married in Zark. Marriage was unusual, and it brought very few rights, but it was possible. Nice to know.
“You’re absolutely correct,” Inos told her horse sternly. “I do this because I don’t like being snubbed by an ignorant oversize savage. He knows I want a private word with him and he’s deliberately staying out of my way, and I’m going to chase after him until he’s sick of the sight of me.”
Sesame sighed disbelievingly.
And then a horse came into view in the distance, one of the hunt returning. It was heading straight for Inos, so obviously the rider had already seen her. In a few minutes she recognized Kar’s big gray. Surprise! To see Kar farther removed from Azak than his own shadow was very rare.
As usual, Azak had outridden the entire court, vanishing over the horizon with uncles and brothers straggling in pursuit behind him. Often he even outrode his brown-clad guards, known as the family men. Kar’s return meant that the kill had been made; the others would be along shortly.
In a moment he flowed up effortlessly beside Inos’s stillrestless mare and simultaneously slid from his saddle with a grace that suggested descent from a thousand generations of horsemen. He dropped his own reins brashly, snapping a word of command at the gray. Then he reached out to stroke Sesame’s neck, and she stilled as if soothed by magic. Azak had the same knack. It wasn’t quite Rap’s magic, but it was almost as impressive.
“It was just a rock,” Inos said. “Then I thought I’d give her a rest.”
“Which foot?” Kar inquired, with a smile.
Kar always smiled. Kar had probably been born smiling and most likely slept smiling and would be acting out of character if he did not die smiling. Alone among the full-grown princes, he was clean-shaven, his face round and boyish. He was shorter and slighter than most of the others, probably in his late twenties, a little older than Azak. He was another ak’Azakar, either brother or half brother to the sultan. His eyes were wide and innocent, as red as any, and yet the coldest eyes Inos had seen outside a fish market. There was something sinister about Kar that she could not place, and yet she had never heard him raise his voice or even seen him frown. Or stop smiling.
“Right front,” she said.
“It looked more like back left.” The smile grew broader, buckling his cheeks without touching his eyes at all. “But it doesn’t matter, does it?” He stooped to run his hand down Sesame’s fetlock and then lift her hoof. “It was quite realistic.”
“Who is telling lies about me? You could not have seen it yourself.”
“I see everything.”
Inos had preferred not to watch the antelope being pulled down and torn apart. Coursing was low on her list of favorite sports.
“It fooled most of them,” Kar remarked to the hoof he was studying. “The Big Man didn’t notice, luckily. But this frog does seem a little tender. Did she have any trouble earlier? Real trouble?” Even when he was bent double, there was something very irritating in Kar’s manner.
Tempted to lash out with her boot at so profitable a target, Inos regretfully refrained. “Not that I noticed. I mean, no! She was fine.”
He grunted, released the hoof, and went for another. Sesame tossed her head as he ducked below it. “Don’t ever try it when he might see.”
“I have more sense than that.”
“I thought you had more sense than to try it at all. You think your sex would protect you?”
Inos rejected her first choice of response and framed a more civil reply. ”Certainly not. I expect I should receive much the same lecture as Prince Petkish did.”
Kar made a scoffing noise. “Lecture? You think that was all Petkish got, a lecture?”
As huntmaster, Azak was a fanatic. Princes who muffed a chance at game or displayed anything less than total mastery of their mounts were certain to receive royal reprimands, which were usually long and invariably savage. No matter how senior the culprit, or how many lowborn attendants might be within earshot, Azak would bellow out his scorn and contempt for all to hear. He wielded an enormous vocabulary without pityridicule upon humiliation, insult upon sarcasm-irony, scorn, and scurrility. Frequently the tongue-lashing would continue until tears dribbled down the victim’s cheeks, and days might then pass before he dared come again into the sultan’s presence. A public flogging would have been kinder and less feared.
Azak, in short, treated the princes with undisguised contempt. He was reasonably patient with the lowborn—with grooms, falconers, and other attendants—but he made no allowance for human fallibility in royalty. It was not a style of leadership that appealed to Inos. The third or fourth time she witnessed one of his brutal tirades, the victim had been young Petkish, just two days after he had started inserting marriage into his frequent offers of cohabitation. His horse had balked at jumping a wadi, a very nasty little gully, rocky and deep, its edges crumbling. Azak had somehow seen what happened behind his back and had returned to berate the culprit with a fury of invective that continued until the lad dismounted and threw himself on the ground before Azak’s horse, rubbed his face in the dirt, and begged for forgiveness. He had then been sent home, and Inos had not seem him since.
Within a few minutes, Azak had been leading the remainder of the hunt at full gallop over terrain that would have caused any reasonable man to dismount and proceed on foot. The remaining princes had clung to him like fleas, with Inos in their midst, heart in mouth—if mere princes could do it, then a queen must not fail. By a miracle no horse or rider had come to grief, but that night she had awakened several times sweating and shaking; and understanding a little better.
She understood, also, that such leadership did not permit Azak himself ever to fall below perfection. His mount must never stumble, his arrows never miss. And apparently they never did. It was small wonder that the younger men worshipped him, and even the oldest cowered below his frown.
But now she felt a stab of alarm. She had liked Petkish. Almost alone among the princes he had seemed to appreciate that a woman might be human once in a while. “What else happened to Petkish, apart from the lecture?”