“You escaped from Tall Cranes. He had to use so much power to find you and get you back that the warlock found him! You spoiled everything, Inosolan! Now go away!”
“I am not quite satisfied. So it is not Rasha’s will that brings us back here. Does she know we are coming?”
“Yes. I think so. She must if they do.” He waved at the quay. ”And why are we coming?”
Skarash’s ruddy face was all shiny with fright. He glanced momentarily over at Azak, and then back to Inos. “He is watching! Please go away!”
“Not until you tell.”
“The wardens do not need you! The Krasnegar problem has been solved. You are nothing, Inosolan! Nothing!”
She flinched. Yet somehow it was almost a comfort to have one’s worst suspicions confirmed, the uncertainty laid to rest. Now the fairer hopes could be discarded and put away. Now Krasnegar could be forgotten, for whoever ruled there in future, an ex-queen would not be allowed to return. Other alternatives could be examined, and Inos could start to make some plans. The hurt . . . The hurt could wait.
“So why bother to send us back?”
Skarash looked longingly at the dock, as if wondering if he might leap to safety and disappear into the crowd. Then he sneaked another glance across at Azak, and paled at what he saw.
“As a message to Rasha. She is nothing, also! Olybino is the stronger—he broke her loyalty spell. Grandsire was her votary and now is his. He can enslave Rasha also!”
Aha! again.
“Please, Inos!” Skarash whispered. “Have mercy! You are killing me. He is still sultan of this city and Grandsire is not here to shield me.”
Inos hesitated, then nodded. “I shall not forget the kiss,” she said sweetly. Let him worry about what that meant! She spun around in a swirl of hems and stalked back to the glaring Azak, picking her way between ropes and baggage and hurrying sailors.
Things were a little clearer now.
“Well?” Azak demanded. There might be hint of twinkle in his scowl, making Inos wonder how much he had deliberately been aiding the interrogation of Skarash.
“Rasha knows we are coming. Olybino has sent us back as a threat—his sorcery is stronger than hers. She is in danger herself now.”
“Gods of the Good!” The tall young man’s face broke into a wide smile.
But Rasha was still a sorceress, and she would be waiting in the palace.
2
Nothing!
All during the bowings, the prostrations, the speeches of welcome, that dread word kept echoing to and fro in her head. You are nothing, Inosolan!
As the band played and the procession moved slowly up the long and hilly road to the palace, she sat with Kade in a decently screened carriage, accompanied by two anonymously shrouded women whose presence stifled conversation completely.
She thought about being nothing. If her kingdom had gone and she was nothing, then surely she had been nothing before? Inosolan had always been nothing. Krasnegar had been everything. Bitter taste.
The crowds were not cheering for her—they could have no idea who was inside that opaque little oven bouncing by on its unsprung axle. They knelt with their faces in the dust and they cheered their sultan on his big black horse. They were shouting Azak! Azak! Azak! but it sounded very much like Nothing! Nothing! Nothing! to Inos.
Now she need not wont’ about Krasnegar. Now she was free to consider the alternatives. There were not very many to consider. She had no assets. She knew no trade. Her needlework was scandalous, her lute playing pained the ear. Who ever heard of a female hostler, or a cook who could catch the dish but not prepare it? With a royal title she had been useful timber for matchmakers like the dowager duchess of Kinvale. Without it, she might make a governess or a dancing instructor. Or she might many a rich, fat merchant who hoped to rise in society and needed guidance in gentility.
Of course she had one asset. Doubtless she could soon acquire the skill required to use it to its best advantage; but that road led down to the pit that Rasha had known, the bog from which almost no one but Rasha had ever escaped.
Nothing!
If her father had told her a word of power as everyone believed, then she had mistaken it. So far she had displayed no signs of being an occult genius at anything.
Why had the warlock been so cruel as to send her back to Zark? Anywhere in the Impire would have been better for an unattached female with no skills, no title, no money, no friends.
She might have one friend, but one she was not certain she wanted. And she was not even sure of him any more. Since being released from the brig, Azak had not said he loved her. Was it she he had thought he loved, or only the romantic myth of a beautiful, dispossessed queen? What had he dreamed ofbeing her husband, or being king of Krasnegar? If he still wanted her, could she ever want him?
The Azak who had been good company in the desert had been Azak the lionslayer, a freelance swordsman with no kingdom to worry about. The Azak she had just glimpsed on the dock had been the ruthless sultan, grim and saturnine, terrifying everyone.
She might have learned to love the one; she doubted she could ever love the other.
If Rasha must now flee from Arakkaran to evade the warlock, then Azak would be free to be sultan as he wished to be. He would be free to marry, if he chose, although he could no longer marry a queen, because there was no queen available. He might prefer a woman of his own race, one who could do a better job of running the royal household. Who would not shock princely society by wanting to ride to hounds. Who would be properly respectful of her lord, not teasing and talking back.
He lusted after her, Elkarath had said. But Azak was never petty. He might withdraw his offer of marriage, from the needs of political expediency, but . . . but surely there would always be a bed for her in the palace?
They had gambled together. Inos had lost.
And Rasha had lost. So Azak had won.
And if Inos accepted the job of son-breeder, what happened when she was forty, with Azak long since assassinated and someone else on the throne? To whom would the chattel be reassigned?
She thought about all these things in the hot and stuffy carriage as it climbed the hill. She was still thinking about them as it rattled to a halt in the palace yard.
“After the rigors of the desert and the confines of a ship,” Kade said brightly, “it will be nice to enjoy some really luxurious decadence again.”
3
Their old quarters had been taken over by another prince and his household. Kade and Inos were ushered to a small suite of rooms that they had never seen before. Compared to the others they were dingy; compared to anywhere else they were still opulent. A half-dozen shrouded women waited to attend them, but they were surly and uncommunicative. There was no sign of Zana.
Inos demanded a bath, and enjoyed it. Then she defiantly scrabbled through her trunk until she found a slinky Imperial dress of cool green and white silk, and she braided up her hair herself. She smothered herself in pearls and admired her reflection in a mirror and wanted to weep.
Kade, when she appeared, had donned a Zarkian chaddar of white cotton, although her head was uncovered.
They hugged without words, and wandered out to a balcony overlooking a jeweled garden. Parrots screamed among the trees. “Nice to be home?” Inos asked bitterly, sniffing the flower scents in the air.
“I enjoy the little comforts.” Kade waited, and when she received no answer, added, “Don’t believe everything that Master Skarash says, my dear. He’s not a very reliable witness.”
“But it makes sense. It all makes sense. And nothing else does.”
Kade sighed and went to sit on a soft chair. “Well, you may have lost your kingdom. We can’t be sure of that yet. And even if you have—it wasn’t ever very much of a kingdom, you know.” Battling a lump in her throat, Inos said nothing.
“Kinvale was always more comfortable. And Kinvale is still there. We shall always be welcome.”
“To accept charity from that sly old bitch who set Yggingi on us?”
“Inos!”
“It’s true! And she will still believe I have a word of power. She will brew up some other foul scheme to rack it out of me for her precious moronic son.”
Kade beamed, being motherly. “Well then, not Kinvale. We know hundreds of people in the Impire. We shall go and visit Hub.”