Танит Ли: Anackire

The elderly Ommos, whom Rem always had the wish to throttle, let him in at once, having first peered round the door like a tortoise from its shell.

“Enter, enter, dear master. He is free. He has kept himself for you since the Star opened its eye, such is his love for you—”

Rem thrust a coin on the old villain and went up the endless twisting unclean stair. The contrast when, having knocked again, he opened the topmost door and stepped into the room, was very great. This airy chamber at the top of the house was clean and calm, and scented with the flowering shrubs Doriyos grew in two ceramic urns beneath the window. Doriyos himself was seated between them at work on mending one of the countless broken musical instruments he would collect, repair, play sweet-noted, and thereafter sell, or more often give away.

Seeing his guest, however, he grinned, put down the stringed oval and crossed the room. Reaching up, he kissed Rem lightly on the lips.

“I was told you keep yourself for me,” said Rem good-humoredly, “yet you allow anyone into the room.”

“I recognize your tread on the stair, hand upon the door.”

Doriyos was beautiful, pure Karmian, a skin like honey and eyes like black onyx, and with a bronze-copper tinting to enhance the fine dark hair. He dressed simply and ornamented sparely. The gold chain around his neck had come from Rem, in the not-so-distant days when Rem was yet a thief. But the gold drop in his ear was another’s gift.

Used to the healing pain, and in his physical eagerness, Rem forgot. Stripping, he heard the exclamation and wondered what had caused it.

“Your back . Who—”

“Oh. I fell foul of the Lord Kesarh. It’s nothing, almost better.”

“Nothing?”

“I should have thought, and warned you.”

“You should have told me. Who tended you?”

“A physician.”

“Whose?”

“I went to Lyki’s house. Probably a mistake. But she so enjoys being disgusted with me.”

“You should,” said Doriyos, so softly Rem stared at him, “have come to me.”

“You have… You might have been busy.”

Doriyos smiled. “What the old man downstairs says to you when you come here, when he tells you I love you, it isn’t a lie. I would have looked after you, and no one else would have come in.”

“No other client.”

Doriyos shrugged. “I’ve been a whore since my eleventh birthday, I was sold to it. But I’m not a slave anymore. I do this because I know how to do it—”

“Yes, that’s very true,” said Rem, and so the conversation had been curtailed.

The Star made the first union partly frantic, swiftly bringing a shrill choking ecstasy, and, after the briefest interval, kindling up again into a slower and more profound pleasure.

The shadows were the color of Lowland amber on the walls when Rem came back to the bed and put the ring into Doriyos’ palm. The stone in the ring matched the shadows.

“You,” said Doriyos. “You don’t have to pay me.”

“A gift.”

“I know the worth of amber.” There was a pause, and then Doriyos said, “You’re going to fight, aren’t you? This Zakoris idiocy—I heard talk in the market. Your Prince Kesarh, who has you flayed.”

“It seems so.”

Rem had not mentioned the summons. But, as the Shansarians boasted they were with lovers or kin, he and Doriyos were sometimes sympathetic enough to share a mild telepathy.

“I can’t say be careful, you’ll have no choice. I can’t say again even that I love you, because I see you rather uncare for it.”

Rem shrugged. His eyes were full of a peculiar hurt he had not shown for the wounds on his back. The black hair that thickly curled along his head and neck fell in spiraled locks over the broad low forehead. For a moment he was vividly handsome, as sometimes he could be.

In that moment, sounds came from a room below, grunts and screeches and the splat of a soft whip as unlike the Biter as could be imagined.

“Bless the goddess, Gheal is busy once more,” said Doriyos piously. And the two young men burst out laughing.

So the farewell was merry if not gladsome.

The crowd’s alertness recalled Rem. Something else was going to happen.

Kesarh stood in his jet-black mail before the altar. All this trumpery of sacrifice and prayer had given him public attention. He seemed poised, yet electrified, and cut a strong figure, impressive and elegant.

A great bowl of beaten silver had been brought, in which a knot of serpents writhed and hissed.

A momentous hush fell over the crowd. One of the favorite sorcerous tricks of the Shansarians was about to be perpetrated. The magician-priest thrust his arm into the bowl and raised it, a mighty snake, more than half the length of a man, gripped in his fist. The snake twisted, its scales like metal or mirror, then suddenly flattened out, grew straight and rigid, quivering to immobility in the hand of the magician.

The crowd gasped.

The snake had become a sword, as expected.

The King, Suthamun, came over the terrace. It had been noticeable, his brothers and legal heirs were not present. He took the sword which had been a snake, and placed it in the hands of Kesarh Am Xai.

“You go to do our will. Go then, with our favor, and with Hers.”

Kesarh held the sword, faultless showman, up for the crowd to see. When he spoke, his voice, heard for the first time, was startling: cool and dark, and carrying with the ease of an actor’s.

“For the honor of my King, and for the glory of the goddess.” He waited, and then, just before they could cheer these sentiments, he called out to them with an abrupt and vocal passion: “And for Karmiss, the Lily on the Sea!”

The crowd responded instantly and with fervor. It was a garland aimed for the hearts of the Vis.

Rem thought wryly, Well managed, my lord . And then, with a wholesome lifting of his spirit, Perhaps he doesn’t mean us to die at Tjis, after all .

It was an eight days’ ride along the rambling coastal roads, two men of the twenty detailed each day to ride ahead or drop behind and keep the three Karmian galleys in sight. Rem, part of this detail on the first day, noticed another piece of business had been managed. In order to avoid an open act of war against Zakoris-In-Thaddra, the ships were not flying the Lily of Karmiss or the fish-woman of Shansar. Their blank sails had been powdered each with a scarlet salamander.

After a couple of days, the party of riders was ahead. Those that rode in from ship-watching, when relieved by others sent back, gave their ordinary reports. The three ships were still afloat, sails hopefully out, the oars looking lazy. The weather was hot and almost windless. They joked to each other about whether it was better to bounce all day on a zeeba, or groan all day over an oar. They knew they must reach Tjis first, and so they did, but making bivouac on the hills the night before they were due to sight the town, a pair of riders came at them out of the dusk and from the wrong direction—that of Tjis itself.

“What is it?” Kesarh asked these two messengers. His own charioteer, he had only just left the vehicle, and stood stripping off his gloves while he listened.

“My lord—the King sent us no word—are there only these few men?”

Kesarh said, “There are ships coming, a day or so behind us.”

“Thank the gods—the goddess—if they can be hurried—”

“Probably. I deduce you now expect the pirates of Free Zakoris to pay a personal visit?”

“Yes, my lord. Last night they touched Karmiss west of here, we saw villages burning. Poor villages, sir. It was done from spite. The guardian feared for Ankabek—”

Kesarh’s extraordinary presence seemed to intensify. His men knew why. Prince Kesarh’s lady sister had only just gone to Ankabek, had she not?