Танит Ли - Anackire

And the Free Zakorians, their own spies active—intelligent in a way they had never been till Alisaarian Kathus had taken over their reins—had also caught a whiff of decay.

Three and a half thousand soldiers were quartered at Amlan through the snow. To go in with less than three hundred men at his back was Kesarh’s gamble, also a necessity.

The Free Zakorians, for one, must now be in serious doubt. You did not race to such a confrontation with such a miniature force. Could their information be wrong? To Karmiss-In-Lan, the look of it would be much the same. This was no punitive expedition. Kesarh was going, not to assault, but to woo them. Maybe they recalled, no one played the suitor better.

In the foredeck cabin the physician, having opened Kesarh’s mailed sleeve, viewed the inflamed and ragged wound in his forearm.

“So slight a cut, but refusing to heal. It bothers you, my lord?”

“Yes. It bothers me.”

“I think there’s some festering. The knife had been in fruit, you say? I regret, we must cauterize.”

“Then do it.”

In Lan, though spring promised excitement, the long snow had already not been dull.

Raldnor of Ioli, slain by maddened patriot or paid assassin, had left Amlan in some confusion. The young Prince-King, Emel son of Suthamun, had heard of the event with obvious alarm. He shed tears in the presence of the soldiers, who thought it not unseemly. He was only a boy, and Raldnor had been a father to him. But the mourning went on, and Emel, having locked himself away, stayed locked away. The soldiers became restive.

During the first days following the assassination, a council was formed comprising the several captains attached to Raldnor’s monopolies. Needless to say, squabbles had soon broken out. Before the month was done, there had been fighting in the streets between the cohorts of this and that commander. On the last day of the month one of the council was found dead in a wrecked wine-shop. A batch of days into the succeeding month, a few other captains met nemesis—one in a trough of sheep-swill, which provided inspiration for the army’s poetic side.

There ensued an inevitable relay seizing of power. Two officers grabbed it, were murdered, two others were elected by cheering soldiery in the Palace Square. These held on for quite a while. The end came when a man rode into the city of Amlan from the south. He brought with him a thousand Karmians, some his own, others he had gathered up en route, and was pitched into a sudden siege when fellow Karmians slammed the gates in his face.

During the second night someone opened the gates, however, and the arrival arrived, with all his men. What had swung the balance was the uncertainty now rife in Amlan. The newcomer had once been a guard in the private army of Kesarh. He still seemed gilded by authority.

Biyh had been sent to Elyr with a small command, to reconnoiter and suborn, not long after he had returned with his King from Dorthar. Biyh had no ambition, or thought he had none. He was a dogsbody, a jack, would take on any job—guard, warrior, messenger. As Prince Rarmon himself had noted, Biyh had not gone up in the world.

But something in the turmoil of Lan, the indigenous revolts, the takeovers and plots and spontaneous slayings, had pushed him to a sort of precarious eminence. Rather to his own startlement, Biyh had snatched his chance. Maybe seeing Rem’s elevation had given him an appetite.

Getting Amlan, he took down the current leaders. Biyh meant only to imprison them, but the men were in a nasty mood and tore them to fragments in the Square.

Biyh began to tidy up the city, which was in a sorry state. He trod on no toes, distributing wine and beer and women liberally, producing the figurehead Emel—Biyh knew the worth of a figurehead—to help implant the notion of fair behavior and honor.

Biyh even visited the brother-sister Lannic King and Queen in the royal apartments. Pale under their darkness, they tolerated him. He was genuinely glad to see them still receiving food and comforts in their interior exile. Native Lan needed its figureheads, too, and Biyh had half feared he would find them lying on the woven carpets in a suicide pact.

One evening, Biyh also paid a longer than usual visit to his postulant King.

The boy had seemed doleful from the start, and frightened. Now, alone with him, Biyh beheld terror.

“It’s been a bad time, this, my lord,” said Biyh, who was never above platitudes, “but you must bear up. Recollect your father. The men love you. Karmiss will be yours.” Biyh did not in fact believe this. He intended to make overtures to Kesarh when the weather broke, and hand everything back to him, Emel included, providing he, Biyh, gained by it.

Emel, who surely could not have guessed, began to cry.

Biyh patted the youngster’s shoulder, and had a curious impression the boy was perfumed, if very faintly, with a woman’s scent.

Remembering how Am Ioli was supposed to have concealed him, Biyh waxed inquisitive. On some pretext he next morning raided Emel’s sleeping-room. Emel, who had lived with shrill panic since the day of Raldnor’s death, was able to hide and evade only so much. Biyh let out a laugh. Something in the type of laugh encouraged Emel; he had heard it before, and that had been in bedchambers, too.

In a while Biyh said, “Don’t worry, I’ll keep your secret,” and sat down on the bed. Half an hour afterwards, he was in it.

It so happened. Biyh’s tastes ran to such dualities as Emel’s. Also unlike Raldnor, Biyh was sexually well-mannered.

Emel found himself all at once cherished and petted. Here was one lover who did not disappear, one protector who did not loathe and carp, or mean to be rid of him. Safe at last?

When he had been nothing in the world’s eyes, Kesarh had ridden back from Tjis to the capital in a brazen chariot, a flare of swords, a rain of flowers, and Istris handed her heart to him. A King, he walked into Amlan.

The crossing had not been rough. Ulis Anet could not, he once thought, have prayed hard enough—or the bane had stayed in the knife. The three black shadows, though, had kept behind them. The ships of the Lily docked, and the shadows anchored on the horizon. It did not matter for the moment, might even prove useful, this appearance of a Free Zakorian rear guard.

The troops were thick in the port. Events had been sorted six days ago, after further information boarded Kesarh’s ship: A spy from along the coast who rowed well. The successive juntas now had names, and the current ruler, Biyh, was once a Number Nine, whose thousand men swelled the three and a half thousand at Amlan. As the snow receded other areas had declared for Biyh—or in error for Raldnor, not knowing him to be dead. The puppet “King,” said the spy, was Suthamun’s son, or a crafty double dug from somewhere.

As the oars of the boat brought him in to shore. Kesarh estimated the armored phalanx screening the wharves was two thousand men at least. They did not block the way in, but they could close like jaws on whoever entered.

They were not sure, yet, if it could be him. If he could be such a fool.

Then the boat grounded. He stood up and stepped over on to the ice and shale, then straight up the great stair on to the quay.

Discipline had grown flabby, and a vibrant mutter began to run at once. Most of them knew him by sight, considerable numbers had spoken with him, or supposed they had, in Karmiss, when the Lannic adventure was mounted.

Presently the sounds died out. They stared, metal and faces and the metal faces of shields, hostile and ungiving. They were out of love with him now, Am Ioli’s falsehoods, and the riot and the rift from homeland, had seen to that, and the blank cold madnesses of the winter.