The boy, Malchus, came in and Caspar looked at him with interest and curiosity and distaste and grudging admiration, all mixed. Fourteen? Fifteen at most, but with none of the awkwardness of the boy-meets-man stage. He was roughly, even poorly clad in a tunic of undyed homespun, now a trifle tight; his shoes were such as only the poorest wore in Jexal, that prosperous city, wooden slabs shaped to the foot and held in place by a thong which passed the great toe and its neighbour and tied about the ankle. And at the end of his thin boy’s arms his hands hung, disproportionately large, coarse, scarred, ingrained with black that no amount of washing would remove. Yet he seemed quite at ease … at home. At home! Caspar thrust that thought away, but with a commentary; he always felt at home in a felt tent, he’d been born in one; this boy had been born here, so naturally .. .
“Well,” he asked harshly, ‘what do you want with me?”
Malchus said, “I was advised not to say “Lord” to you or to use any other term of respect. So please, do not attribute the omission to incivility.”
“What do you want?”
“I wish to call your attention to the plight of my sister Ilya.”
“I know all about her. She’s given me quite a lot of trouble. Lakma, one of my men, wanted to marry her. I made him think better of it.”
“Yes,” the boy said.
“That is why I am here. Ilya is now almost seventeen years old; she is very beautiful. It is time she was married.”
“Marry her off, then.”
“That is easily said. My ambitions for her are, I assure you, moderate. Our nobles fell in the battle. Lesser men, but rich enough to keep her in comfort, many look upon her lustfully, but they avoid us, partly through fear of how you might regard their linking themselves to the royal house. I had one hope, which your man Lakma seemed about to fulfill.”
“And I prevented him.”
“You did. Could you tell me why?”
“I don’t hold with mixed marriages.““Have you ever thought about them, coolly, without prejudice?” the boy asked.
“Believe me, I have not come here to anger you. You rule, we obey; but this is one city, it cannot for ever be occupied by two peoples. Marriages would weld them into one.” Then, while Caspar was thinking of some retort that would suitably express his anger at this audacity, Malchus said quickly, “Not that I ever thought Lakma a fit match for my sister. It would be much more suitable if you yourself married her. As Queen my sister would command the loyalty of all our people.”
Caspar glared at him. The audacious young cub! He wanted to stamp, to shout, to laugh and jeer; but there was something about the boy’s manner, so matter-of-fact, so fundamentally dignified, that he checked himself, gripping his hands, hurting the stiff, ill-set finger.
“The loyalty of your people?” he said sneeringly.
“And what’s that worth? Didn’t I win it between dawn and midday?”
“The loyalty of fear,” Malchus said.
“There is another. The loyalty of the heart.”
“And that made a brave show, didn’t it—when we rode in?”
“More than three thousand died.”
“So they did. Like sheep, running this way and that.”
“Taken unawares,” the boy said hardily.
“For a thousand years my people had been here, living in peace in this valley, cultivating the arts and the skills that can only flourish in peace. That is true, you know. Your women can do no more than to tread wool into felt; they never have time enough, or peace enough, to set up a loom.”
That was truth and Caspar faced it with distaste; but, skirting round the situation in his mind as once he had skirted around Jexal on his horse, he hit upon the boy’s vulnerable spot.
“We’re barbarians,” he admitted.
“And now I’ll ask you something. Where’s this loyalty of the heart you talk about? You would wish to marry your sister, first to Lakma, then to me. By the sun, if I had a sister I’d slit her throat sooner than see her give a cup of water to those who had killed one of her kin!”
“That,” Malchus said, “I do not doubt; but then—Lord, you said it yourself. You are a barbarian.”
“And I rule here,” Caspar said.
“Do you realise that for that saucy remark I could have your head?”
“My head,” the boy said, ‘you are welcome to. For a long time it has been nothing but a nuisance to me! If you want to see me quake, threaten my hands!” He held them out as he spoke, unsightly with their callouses, a half-healed blister, but steady. Caspar had a fleeting doubt whether he, unarmed and helpless in the presence of an all-powerful enemy, would have been so steady. To make up for that doubt he spoke with increased gruffness.
“I want neither your head, your hands, nor your sister, boy.”
“Have you ever seen her?” Malchus asked. Before Caspar could snap out his answer, no and he had no wish to do so, the boy turned, gracefully, without haste and called, “Ilya.” Evidently a prearranged signal, for immediately from between the pillars that separated the balcony room from the inner corridor the girl came forward.
Caspar’s idea about what made a woman desirable were based upon strictly practical considerations. A marriageable girl should be young, upright and strong, equally ready for childbirth or hard work; she should bear the signs of health on her skin and hair, she must be one of his own race. That her demeanour should be modest and her attitude meek was taken for granted; all decent parents saw to that.
In no way did this girl, born a Princess, conform to these standards. She was pale, with the—pallor of an indoor life, of careful protection from wind and weather; this, and her huge, artificially darkened eyes, gave her a look of ill-health; she was very slim, almost frail, with delicate wrists and ankles, narrow hands and feet. Her black hair, exactly, like her brother’s, clung in little lustrous curls to her head. Caspar’s sharp eye noticed even that her ears had been pierced for the wearing of ornaments, but she wore none; and her dress, something the colour of the water of the river just below the balcony, though of silk, was worn, in places mended. A fine wife she’d make, he thought contemptuously, visualising her carrying and hauling, drawing water, collecting dung for the fire, grinding corn and cooking, all
without interrupting the process of breeding andbearing. What in the world had got into Lakma? he wondered. Then the girl looked him straight in the eyes and he wondered no more…. His first reaction was one of genuine shock and horror. If his sword had broken in his hand at a critical moment, or his horse had failed to obey the pressure of his knees, or as he set down a cup he had drained to the dregs he realised that he had been poisoned, he could not have felt more sharply the sense of having been betrayed. He’d just looked at her, asking himself what such a woman would be good for, and she had looked at him and given the answer. Made for delight! The very marrow of his bones moved and melted as he thought of the form that delight would take.
“Go now,” Malchus said, as though aware that his object in producing her had been achieved.
“You go, too! Get out my sight,” Caspar said, trusting that the shortness of his breath would be attributed to wrath. The boy stood his ground.
“You see, she is beautiful; and she is ripe for marriage. She had been well reared; but now the jewels that she and my mother had on them at the time of our ruin have all been sold. I earn little. What will her future be?”
“That,” Caspar said, ‘is hardly my concern.” He was so angry, with himself, with the boy, with the girl, with the Vizier who must have connived, that he could hardly think of anything sufficiently spiteful to say. But he did his best.
“Lakma is safely married, now,” he said.
“Maybe in six months’ time he could take her as his concubine.”
“Sooner than that I would kill her.” He gave Caspar a steady look, and now the man could see the likeness between brother and sister; in the hair, the shape of the skull, the way they held their heads. A look of race, unmistakable in man or beast.
“Have I your leave to go?” Malchus asked.
“Just a minute. You … you work as a smith, don’t you? What about your future? Have you ever considered joining the army?”
He had reorganised the remnant of the Jexalian army, taken away most of its privileges and trappings and officered it with his own young men who were waiting their time to be admitted into the ranks of the Five Hundred. It was now fairly efficient and growing more so every day; and he was always careful to have some part of it well to the fore when he entertained travellers or emissaries from other places. Let nobody go away with false ideas; he had taken Jexal because he was the leader of the finest fighting force in the world, and because Jexal had been ready for the taking. Nobody was going to take it from him.