I had expected not very much of Hragon-Dat. Till that instant he had been a title and a goal, Sorem’s goal at that, rather than mine. I expected not much, and truly, there was very little. He stared at us from the pillows of his dark yellow flesh and from a pair of washed-out eyes no longer blue. The strong and curling hair was a wig, which presently fell off upon the floor as he bowed his head to sob.
“Sorem,” he whimpered, “Sorem, my son. You will not slay me, Sorem? I fathered you, gave you your life. Ah, for your honor, you will not kill your father.”
Sorem’s face was knotted and gray under its weathering and the smut of the fires. This was the thing he had dreaded, which had kept him silent under Pillar Hill. He had foreseen it all.
“You will give me this city, and this Empire,” he said. His voice had strength and certainty; it never faltered, nor the strong young hand with its warrior’s scars that brought the paper for Hragon-Dat to sign and offered him the Imperial seal, and the wax a frightened clerk was heating. It was quickly done. I thought, Sorem, Masrian that he is, will never kill his sire, but the man is old and unhealthy. Death will be simple to effect, and Sorem need have no part in it.
The room was full of exhausted soldiers, and the smells of drying rain and fear and the fatty smell of the hot waxes, and the noise of the Emperor’s cries of abdication.
I thought, Now I have planned another murder, and for another man’s sake. I am meshed in this.
They took Hragon-Dat away like an old, heavy child who has stayed too long at a children’s feast, till the children and the adults are weary of him. He cried as he walked, and he had put on his wig askew, which made him, more than ever, a lamentable, pathetic sight. I remember this now with pity, but I am altered now. Then I could only glance aside, out of regard for Sorem’s gray pallor.
The two little whore-boys, abandoned shaking on the floor, also were* shortly led away, and we were left, commanders of that glamorous treasure-house.
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I went somewhere to sleep, some sumptuous chamber. I lay down in my own sweat and grime, stripped of my borrowed armor, on the delicate silk of a bed that had a golden prow before it, like a ship.
What of the Hyacinth Vineyard, my galley that had cost Charpon’s life, my galley, meant for the hunting? Burned with other vessels in the dock, maybe. What of the hunting, then, the hunting of the white witch, my mother, who surely had not died in Bit-Hessee? I should have ridden there, not here, and applied the torch myself and not left it to Bailgar. He would make no search for white spiders, white cats….
I saw her there in her icy robes, her silver-linked hair, her fiery claws, her cat’s head grinning, her left eye green, but the right, which I had skewered with my knife, a bloody crater. She whispered to me gently as a lover, “You will not slay me, Vazkor, my son? I birthed you, gave you your life. Ah, for your honor, you will not kill your mother.”
I struggled to wake, for I knew she was a dream. Sparrow, that little minstrel girl of Eshkorek, held me and murmured that all was well. Her grip was stronger than I remembered, and I opened my eyes, not on her fawn and cream, but on dark amber, and an amber mouth that said against mine, “When you are old as I am, you will outgrow such dreams, my magician.”
Malmiranet lay along my side, naked as I, but fresh from the bath, scented with water and that incense of hers; even her curling hair, like the hair of a black lion, smelled of rain and musk.
“I am not fit to receive an empress,” I said, conscious of the filthy state in which I had lain down.
“You are a man,” she said. “Am I to like you less for that?”
Her skin was marvelous to touch, and the slender muscles under it were firm, nothing gone to waste, for all those words of age with which she tested me. Besides, she understood her worth, proud of what she was. She poured her gold on me from choice, not loneliness. There had been plenty before me, men she had selected to pleasure her, and put aside when she grew weary of them. I never before had one like her. She used sex like an instrument, not by means of games such as they teach in Eshkorek, but out of a beautiful, uncluttered lust. She had measured her own ground, explored it through. This thing was no surprise to her, as to some women it eter-
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nally remains, but rather an ancient way, old as earth and as bountiful. She required of it no speeches, epitaphs, excuses; she required only me and her own self.
It was later she spoke of what she knew of my days in BarIbithni, and of my dealings with Sorem. Her information was full and accurate; she had her own spies in the Citadel, so it would appear. She had heard from the beginning that I was a king’s son, but I believe she cared not a jot If she had liked me and I had been the groom it would have been well enough. She did not need the lineage of others to bolster up her own.
The day broadened and began to wane behind the silken window shades. If it was bright or overcast I never discovered. I was done with intrigue and armies, at least till suppertime. At length there began to be lamplight under the door, and a girl’s voice, Nasmet’s, I thought, called softly in to her that the commanders meant to feast in the Hall of Tigers.
Malmiranet answered, saying she would come out presently, but never moved from me. After a minute, she said, “I would not have Sorem know of this.”
“Are we to carry on with it in secret, then,” I said to her, “like brats stealing apples behind his back?”
“It will not last long, this apple-stealing.”
“It will last,” I said.
“So you think. Be at peace, my love. I must let my girls sample you before I chain you to me. You might prefer Nasmet, who is exceeding anxious that you should like her. Even my Isep has a kind phrase or two for you, and generally she does not care for men.”
The voice came again from outside, with mischief in it now.
“They have brought your clothes chests, madam. Am I to lay out the red silk or the white?”
“White, and begone, you hussy,” she cried.
“Do you trust them to keep this hidden, then, those girls, if you would not have Sorem hear of it?” I said.
“I trust them. With my life, as you saw.”
“Someone betrayed you last night, Malmiranet.”
“It was Porsus,” she said, frowning at me through the brown twilight. “He bartered his health for mine to Basnurmon.”
I recalled how he had simpered at her feet, and I said, “I will insure his suffering.”
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“I have done so already,” she said, and kissed me. I would have kept her longer if I had not heard Nasmet’s stifled laughter beyond the door.
6
The Hyacinth Vineyard had not burned. Knowing it for my ship, as the Hesseks had seemed to know most things, everything, in fact, save that their messiah would fail them, they had thrust it out of dock, tied it by ropes to their papyrus craft, and rowed it free of the blazing harbor. There had been two hundred and eighty ships in port that night, vessels from the Empire’s margins, east, west, and south, and sixtyfive of these had gone up in flames and then unloaded cargoes with them. The Hesseks’ careless advance, which allowed for the water-gangs with their buckets, had saved the rest, coupled with the sluggish wind and the dawn rain.
For days men of the Commercial City patrolled the borders of the marsh and the delta outlet to the sea. They watched the smoldering ruin of Old Hessek as the rat-catcher keeps watch on the hole. When a rat emerged, which was rarely, they clubbed him down and to death. Some even went through Bit-Hessee itself, venturing over the broken pylons and through the black tunnels, blacker and more broken now from Bailgar’s torches. They found nothing much alive, and what they found did not live long.
There were horror stories. Ghosts howling in the marsh, dim wraiths with bloody claws, and women’s severed heads, all snapping yellow teeth, bouncing like balls through BitHessee. The rat-catchers, unnerved by their own fantasies, retreated back to Bar-Ibithni. Once again, the proverbial warrior would not cross the swamp by night, out of fear of evil spirits-where before he had feared only the drab evil of men.