Bailgar’s act, the Masrian blasphemy of unleashing naked fire, was spoken of with censored approval. Masrimas had cleaned the dark with his light, the Shield jerd being his instrument. Bailgar, tossing off koois by the jarful, harking back to his landowner’s stock, would put forward plans for silting up the whole marsh, reclaiming .it, and growing melons
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there and salt-rice and the green water-tobacco which flourished in the muddy valleys of Tinsen.
Bar-Ibithni itself responded to the disaster, once it was safely over, in a mood of complaining gaiety. Sorem had thrown open the Imperial coffers to aid the destitute, and enable all who had lost property to make some claim on the state for restitution. Soon, every gorgeous brothel that had had a tower burned in the fire attempted to procure funds to build on two, and every merchant whose cargo lay in clinker on the harbor floor was filing petitions at the exchequer gate concerning three times what had gone down. This led to perpetual investigation, perpetual argument, and a crop of fraud cases in the courts of law. This wearisome business, both the dispensing of money and its retraction, fell on the shoulders of Imperial ministers well used to their burden, for the Emperor had given time to nothing save his pleasures. Now that Sorem stood for him, more active in affairs of law and state, youthful and alert, these recalcitrant ministerial rabbits would clutch their dignity and their scrolls, squeaking that everything might be left to them as it always had been. Most were thieves and had skimmed off profit from the Emperor’s purse for a decade or more. Sorem went through their ranks like an ax-blade. But despite his concern for it, such business bored him, and having cleared the undergrowth somewhat and elected people he could reasonably trust, he gave it into their hands.
He was not yet Emperor. He was what they pleased to call the Royal Elect, that is, Hragon-Dat’s functionary. The papers which had been drawn up in the Citadel, and which Hragon-Dat had signed and sealed that rainy morning in the Crimson Palace, had been shown at the court, copies sent among the aristocracy, and finally posted up throughout the city. They declared Hragon-Dat’s voluntary abdication due to humiliation at his own weakness in leaving Bar-Ibithni naked to the Hessek threat. His beloved son Sorem-child of his earlier union with the lady Malmiranet, former Empress of the Lilies-he now recognized as prince and savior of the city, and fit to conduct its affairs in the abdicator’s stead. Of Basnurmon, the Heir, only one brief sentence, scrawled on the parchment in the Emperor’s own hand: This beast abandoned both the city and his Imperial father to die, A pretty touch.
Thus, Sorem was lord of the Empire in all but title. Masrian titles being weighty things, they must be conferred
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by priests, the brow smeared with oil, the robes sprinkled with water from some holy vessel, while a white horse is given to the god. Then, and only then, does the Royal Elect become Emperor.
Meanwhile the messengers rode out, and presently rode back, bringing the letters and the gifts of Empire lands, which swore loyalty to this new master, with cages of white peacocks sent to prove it. The nine out-city jerds, from their border fastnesses, sent their standards rather than peacocks, which, at the ceremony of anointing, their representatives would receive back (a typical Masrian show). There was to be no hint of menace from this far-flung soldiery. They, too, declared wholeheartedly for Sorem. To know the hub of the golden wheel they guarded was rotten wood has often been familiar and foul news to the periphery legions of several kingdoms. Sorem’s rule promised better.
Seeing yet again how he was admired, his leadership accepted by veterans and novices alike, my mind went back to his outburst in the Citadel, his boy’s heroics and anger, his look of bewilderment and despair as he gazed up at the Heavenly City, imagining his father’s sniveling, letting the precious seconds slip. It was the Masrian way to revere what was beautiful and honorable, every knife in a sheath of fine brocade, that is if you must carry a knife.
If I had not been with him, what? I thought. With five jerds in the Citadel he could have rescued the city, but would he have ousted Hragon-Dat? More likely he would have been a god for a day and assassinated on the next, and countless thousands of women, and as many men, would have wept as his gilded sarcophagus was borne through the streets. The Royal Necropolis lay on a high southeastern hill, perhaps a fifth city of Bar-Ibithni, sugar-white domes and gildings. They had made a poem of death. Masrians say: The gods slay those they love that the world shall not have them. But Masrians were not always romantics; it took the honey of the south to soften them. And nothing breaks more swiftly than corroded steel.
A month went by. It was the lush flowering of the summer, the trees of the Garden City still founts in the blue air, and the Palace bathed in its red shadows, and the lions making their lazy thunder from the park. All this has combined into a changeless, never-ending afternoon in my memory. Afternoon when, with the connivance of her women, Malmiranet and I would lie close as garments in some fiery chest while
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her son was trapped in Palace business with his council. Though there were also nights. At the feasts, each supper being a feast in the Heavenly City, Sorem would occupy the king’s chair, the Royal Elect, I on his right hand and Ms commanders about, and the notables who would expect their places. Malmiranet, Empress of the Lilies, in silk of snow or gold or wine, would sit at the table’s farther end. Exactly where she had sat twenty years back, fifteen years old, Jointress of the Empire, Hragon-Dat’s unwanted consort. They had seen her grow big with child, some of these same old goats and their wives who littered the banqueting hall under the frescoes of tigers, that child who was to become Sorem.
She had here a queen’s apartments, hung with gauzes and beaded curtains, yet on her wall, too, were an ivory hunting bow and crossed spears burnished by old use. She said she never used them now. There was a tall palm beyond her window. She told me she had climbed it once, when she was six or seven, having seen a slave do it. She told me indeed all about her life, between the milestones of our lust that marked out our nights like shining blades. Her life was as I had supposed it, though not for an instant did she seek pity. She was proud and cruel, having been well taught, but to those she loved, generous and fiercely giving. Between her love for me and her love for Sorem, she was hard put to it to find a remedy. I thought it foolish, this clandestine way of going on, but would not waste our time in persuasion. I thought, I will speak it through with him, some evening when he is free of court nonsense, and then she shall see. Still, I put it off.
In fact, I put off much. It seemed a usual contrivance here. Even Hragon-Dat was left alone in some secluded uaderroom; why not everything else?
I had grown lethargic in all things but love. It will happen when you have been fighting long, and it had occurred to me I had been fighting most of my days. Now, here was the sunny island in the wild ocean, and I lay upon it, forgetting that the sea encircled me still.
It is difficult to remember the sea, however, when you can no longer hear it. The threat and the fear had gone, died, as I had intended, on that night of fire.
Bit-Hessee in ashes, only a few ghost stories to emphasize its passing. It appeared to me, in these amber days, that my nightmares had been purged and would return no more, ev ery nightmare, even those of the white witch.
True, I had sworn a vow to a shade, or to my own con-
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science-to my father if I would have it so. But maybe she was gone with Bit-Hessee, Uastis the cat. Yet if she hid and lived, there would be better methods of ending her, with all the resources of the Masrian Empire to help me to it. Vengeance was a dry gourd after all; surely my father would wish greatness for me, even if it delayed her death? There was space for everything.
Caught in the slow pacing of Masrian court preparations for the Ceremony of Anointing, I came to move slowly also, as if through warm water, the beach always in sight. I, too, had swallowed southern honey.