I woke to diffuse sunlight, a warm breeze and the scent of pennyroyal. My body ached in every particular and my skin felt raw and bruised, but my thoughts ran clear and unfettered and I was glad of that one mercy. Gingerly, I sat up on an elbow and formed a blurry impression of a small but airy room, of wind and clean sheets and an open door leading outside where palm-shaped shadows shimmered in the corner of my vision.
There was a night-table. Groping it revealed my glasses, and I had just set them on my nose when the interior door opened.
“Ah, you are awake.”
I squinted at my visitor. “Galen... yes?”
He nodded. His complexion had improved since I’d seen him last, having recaptured some of that nascent glow I had begun to associate with the magic of living things. “Are you well?” he asked. “Shall I find you food?”
The mere thought of food curdled my stomach. I was not so well as that, then. “Water, please,” I said. “Nothing else.”
“As you wish,” he said. “My lord would like to see you, if you feel well enough for it.”
“I’m in condition for that,” I said. I would have had to have been sicker by far to turn down an audience with the first elf I’d observed who hadn’t presented like an amoral monster.
Galen nodded and stepped back toward the door. There he paused. “Thank you,” he said. “For my lord’s life.”
I tried to think of a response either pithy or appropriate and could only answer, “You’re welcome.”
He closed the door behind him.
I lay back down and closed my eyes, conserving my strength. Little doubt of it: I was exhausted, and I had no genets to assuage my aches and no poppy to cushion my mind. It would not be long before the pain and the nausea redoubled and I would have to find surcease in sleep or beg drugs from my host. What a humiliation. I sighed and turned my face from the door, trying to concentrate on the fresh softness of the breeze.
When the door opened next I expected Galen and the water, or perhaps a servant. I should not have been surprised to find Kemses there instead with a ceramic pitcher. He had a wholly different demeanor outside the arena; in this kind room, he seemed of one piece with the white sunlight, the light green shadows. Even the silver of his hair seemed to disguise hints of something green beneath, like the canescence of a plant’s most tender leaves.
He came to my bedside and drew up a stool, and there he poured me a bowl of water which I allowed him to help me drink. And then I fell back against the pillows and breathed against my own weakness.
“My lord,” Kemses said.
I smiled without opening my eyes. “And just like that you believe my story. On the strength of a piece of steel shaped like a pedigree and my word.”
“That alone, perhaps not,” Kemses said. “But you do not have a human’s magic.”
That made me look at him, brow arched. “If that were true, then Amoret’s human-keepers would surely have noticed it while they were feeding on me.”
He winced but did not look away. “It is not necessarily so, my lord prince.”
I lifted a finger to stop him. “I want to hear this,” I said. “But not before you stop with the “my lord” and “my prince.” I’m just Morgan. Morgan Locke.”
“You are definitively more than that,” Kemses said with the first trace of humor I’d heard from him. Sardonic.
“Maybe so,” I said. “But until I stop looking like this I’m just another human slave and you people are... well.” I stopped, discomfited, then found a crooked smile of my own. “Like gods, really. Capricious, vain and monstrous ones.”
That flinch was much harder. Kemses looked away. “Very well, Morgan Locke,” he said. “Tell me something. If you grab at a thing, do you not have a better chance of breaking it?”
“Yes,” I said, curious.
“And you do not sense the details of its surface quite so well as you would if you were to carefully lift it, run your fingers over its surface, cradle it.”
“No, of course not,” I said. “You’re saying that elves who rape their slaves aren’t going to sense any of the fine details of their magic.”
“Yes,” he said.
“I wouldn’t think ‘I’m an elf, not a human’ would be a fine detail,” I said. “Though I am of course no magical theoretician.”
Kemses laughed. “Perhaps not. But there is a layer of you that floats above that truth, easy to steal, easy to be sated on. And then there is a layer beneath the brambles, and there that truth resides. You are one of us. More than that, I think you are a great power, held in check or reduced, but... yes. I could imagine you a prince.”
“So is it by power alone that you choose your royalty?” I asked.
“It is by necessity,” Kemses said. “Those with the potential to be monarchs are born with the royal gifts, because the duties of the royalty require great power. Or they did, when we had kings instead of this thrice-damned council which accomplishes nothing but make excuses for new wars.”
I thought I could not imagine a system more ripe for abuse than a human monarchy until Kemses advanced this elven version to me. The notion of putting into power the most powerful person one could find, with no checks or balances... the thought was so appalling I was almost awestruck. The notion that I would have to rescue the elven king and set him loose on this already corrupt and depraved society horrified me.
And yet, I would have no cure from my condition otherwise. Unless...
“I don’t suppose, given that you could sense this in me, that you could undo this... ah... seeming I’m wearing?”
“Alas no,” Kemses said. “Whatever it is that poisons your blood and paints that facade on you, it is greater, far greater than my small ability to unravel. You would have to find an elven king for that. Or a sorcerer on par with Sedetnet.”
And then I narrowed my eyes at him. “If his power is equivalent to a king’s, why isn’t he king?”
“It is the wrong kind of power,” Kemses said. “He lacks the royal blood-gifts. Drink?”
I accepted the bowl, could actually hold it without his aid though my fingers trembled. “Explain,” I said. “Please.”
“The king’s duty is to move magic to where it is most needed,” Kemses said. “You must understand, in the beginning we considered ourselves wardens of the world. The magic we all generated was not ours to wield for personal gain. We released it gladly to the king, so that he could send it to where there was danger and need, to augment the power of the elves there in their struggles. That is a very specific talent, that ability to redistribute the magical energy of an entire people, and it comes only from the blood, rising in the blood. That is how a king is known. It does not matter how much power an elf wields. If he cannot tap into the power of all elves and balance it to need, he is no king.”
“How am I a prince, then, if I don’t have it?”
“You would not have the king-gifts,” Kemses said, “But the prince-gifts. They are similar, but not the same.”
“I cannot imagine I have these either.”
“I don’t know that you do not,” Kemses said. “I only know that you have enough potential in you to be capable of it. Whether the talent exists in you...” He shrugged. “We cannot know until you are freed from this binding that trammels you.”
I sighed. Of course it would not be so easy. “Where are my genets?”
“Sleeping with the others,” he said. “I can have them brought?”
“No,” I said. “Let them rest. They’ve been through a great deal, suffering my weaknesses.” I glanced at him. “I came for help.”
“I imagine you need it,” Kemses said. “And even if I had not owed you my life for the gift you made me in the arena, you would still have it for being very possibly my prince. Ask.”
“I need passage to Kesína,” I said. “Safe passage.”
“Easily granted,” Kemses said. “And provisions also if you have need.” He canted his head. “Is there something specific you seek? It may be safer for me to send someone for it directly.”
I sighed. “Somehow I doubt that.” I smiled wryly. “I’m off to find your king.”
Kemses froze. “The king lives?” he asked carefully.
“Sedetnet seems to think so.”
The elf swayed back on the stool, remaining there, as if feeling some slight repulsion from my presence. His countenance had taken on a closed air.
The king lives, the demons whispered in my ear and I closed my eyes, pushing them away. “I take it,” I said, “that this isn’t welcome news.”
“Quite the contrary,” Kemses said. His fingers flexed on the stool’s edge, one after the other, as if he played an arpeggio. “But I have long since ceased to hope. We’ve heard rumors before and they have always been false. The purported king was a fake, or it was just a way to rally more people to a blood-flag to start a new conflict. The council is always looking for reasons to start new conflicts.”
“I don’t entirely understand that,” I said. “Why? War is wasteful.”
“Exactly,” he said. “The more people are destroyed, the more land, the more resources there are for the rest of us.”
“I thought you were impossible to slay,” I said. “Certainly a battlefield doesn’t seem to offer the kind of nightmarish extremes necessary to really destroy one of you.”
“It can happen,” Kemses said. “And if it didn’t, then it at least keeps the blood-flags focused on rending one another and not toppling the council.”
“And this council does what, exactly?” I asked.
“They elected themselves to replace the king when we came to exile here,” Kemses said. “Saying that since a king did not protect us from the catastrophe of humanity’s betrayal, that we should turn to other methods. And since no king rose to oppose them, they have remained. In theory they govern us, but in reality they tax us in money, land and humans, all of which they keep or squander.”
“It seems it is time to elect a new council,” I said.
He laughed then, shaking his head so that the sun slid up and down the fall of his hair, mazing my eyes. “Ah. Sometimes you seem very cynical, Master Locke... and other times, very naive indeed.”
I was reaching for the water, a retort on my lips, when the first tingle ran the length of my fingertips. Careful, I chafed them together and my teeth ached at their sensitivity. With a sigh, I set my glasses on the night-table and laced my fingers together over my chest, but that did not still their tremble. I closed my eyes and resigned myself to being humbled before my host.
“Is there—something is wrong.”
“I don’t suppose you have any opium,” I said, wry.
“I could contrive it,” Kemses said. “I did not take you for an addict.”
“Yes, well,” I said as my leg twitched, “you don’t know me very well.” And then the convulsions came and once again I paid for Kemses’s victory. His hands wrapped around my arms, burning my skin; his shouts deafened my ears. Soon enough I lost it all to a synesthesia of color and sound and drowned in the kaleidoscope, my world turned to stained glass and shattered.
The first impression that made sense, sense by itself, was the dark... and soon after, the dense scent of the poppy, heavy in the air like a scarf dragging across my face. The skin over my cheekbone felt too taut, stretched and raw and parched. The heat along my sides... the perfume of lilacs and musk.
“Almond?” I asked, hoarse.
“Master,” she said, cuddling closer, her little hand slipping up to rest on my sternum.
“Fine mess,” Kelu muttered on my other side. Her arm rested across my belly, fingers splayed on Almond’s waist. “In an elven manor, all of us drugged drowsy and you the hero of the whole insanity.”
“That’s a bad thing?” I asked, drifting amid the warm ochre light and sepia shadows, cobwebbed with amber opium veils.
“This is nice, Master,” Almond said, her tiny tongue flicking at my skin. I was too heavy to care. Drinking the poppy was an intense experience, but this... this breathing... my chest had grown warm and my breaths so slow, and it didn’t seem to matter. The air caressed me as I drew it in, its every particle limned by the weight of the drug. I thought of seeds carried on delicate feathered hairs, clustering in my lungs until they filled me with soft, brushing warmth.
“Feeling better?”
The bed creased for the human woman, Kemses’s servant. I looked up at her and sensed her only as a haze of shapes, a female smell, a smudge of dark, dark curls against smooth olive skin shading to brown, and a white shift deepening to cream in its shadowed folds. I couldn’t discern her face without my glasses and felt too lethargic to reach for them.
She had asked me a question. “Pardon?”
A laugh, low and mellow. “I see the poppy is working. We found you only the best, the royal golden poppy.”
“Ah,” I said. “Thank you.”
She took my hand in her small plump ones, cushioning my palm. “My name is Basilia. You have met my brother, Galen.”
“Yes,” I said, drowsy. Her smooth skin distracted me.
“Our master tells us you saved him,” she murmured, bringing my hand to her mouth. Her lower lip dragged against my knuckles as she spoke. “That your magic was of such potency he felt almost a god.”
Even nigh insensate on poppy I had to chuckle. “Hyperbole, surely.”
“No,” she murmured. Was she...? Yes. She was kissing my hand, hot breath across the webbing between my fingers, the flick of a tongue much, much different from Almond’s. “I have been with him all my life, have seen him after he has drunk of the gift. Never have I seen him burn the way he burned after embracing you.”
“Ah, well,” I said, flushing. “It was a needful... needful thing.”
“I love my master very much.” She was nibbling the edge of my finger.
“I had noticed,” I said, remembering the look in her eyes when she’d met his.
“And I am grateful, so grateful that you offered,” she whispered. “You did not have to.”
“I couldn’t let him die,” I said. Had Kelu moved? No, Almond. Almond had curled up at my feet. It was Basilia now who filled that space. She was not much taller than the genet, but so, so much more generously curved. Succulent almost, soft, pettable—
No, she was petting me. Or was I? My mind stretched like taffy.
“I would like to thank you,” she whispered, kissing my neck. “So brave, so handsome.”
I was certainly neither of those things. She did not seem interested in my protests. And her arms were sliding up over my chest, tangling the chain from my name, sinking fingers into my hair as her thigh slipped up and over mine.
“Ah—,” I said, eyes closing. I caught her wrist somehow, despite not being able to focus well. “Please. Basilia? No, I pray you.”
She looked up at me and her face was so close I could see the thick lashes clearly, the arch of her heavy brows, the drowsiness of her dark, dark eyes. “Have I offended?” she asked, and even the words caressed me, moist against my jaw.
“No,” I said. “I’m... flattered. Flattered.” So hard to find words through the fog in my mind, but I could still see Ivy’s face, even separated from her by an ocean. Tea-brown eyes. Soft honey-dark curls. “But... there’s another.”
She smiled. “I don’t mind. I know it would be only once. A gift for your courage, for your goodness.”
“I don’t want to... it would...” I trailed off.
She lifted a finger to my lips, traced the lower. “You save yourself for her.”
I nodded mutely. Or at least, that had been the plan before Sedetnet. Did an elven sorcerer count against my purity? I hadn’t quite been in my right mind for that encounter. I wasn’t even sure if he’d been male or female or both... God!
“That is so sweet,” she said, smiling. “Now I am sad three times over not to have been accepted.”
“Three times?” I asked, trying to ignore her fingers on my face.
“Once because you are such a gentleman,” she murmured. “Twice because you are so gaunt and thin and sad, and it would be a joy to give you some happiness. And thrice because I would have liked to bear your children.”
That pierced the poppy fog better than anything yet. “Good God!”
“You would not be expected to care for the baby, of course,” she said. “But to waste your power... ah. I know my lord would approve. He was due to choose a man for me soon as it was... surely you would have met his standard.”
I reeled, and not just from the laughable thought that I was no human to be bedding her for procreative purposes. “Kemses... would choose your mate for you?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I have a mate already, closer to me than any husband. But my lord will choose someone to get me with child, a child who will be of help to him when I am dead.” Dreamily but with regret, “For I will die one day, and my brother with me, and then it will be our children who serve him, and our children’s children. Such is the way of Serala. Such is the way of elves and men.”
I shuddered. “Forgive me if I find it repugnant.”
She lifted herself from my side, leaned forward to kiss my brow with her pendulous breasts grazing my chest. “You are not yet resigned to it, but you will be one day. The peace will come to you. We live swiftly... the genets swifter yet. And pacing us with the grace of ancient trees, the elves watch over us all.”
She left me there in the poppy-shrouded dark. Almond crawled back into the hollow she’d left at my side, though the dimple was much deeper than when the genet had originally created it.
“God,” I whispered.
“Lovely world, isn’t it,” Kelu said. “Where I have to sit here and watch humans fornicate in bed with me as if I wasn’t even there.”
“We didn’t fornicate,” I said.
“You would have, if you hadn’t been such a prude,” Kelu replied.
“You could have left.”
“And gone where?” Kelu asked. “My place is by your side, Master.”
“It’s good to be near love,” Almond whispered, nuzzling me. “Don’t listen to her only, Master. To be allowed to remain during that is a great honor.”
“A great honor,” Kelu said, ears flicking back. “While they sweat and pant and grapple for better positions and creak and make their ugly noises? Please.”
I blushed. “I am not planning on fornicating in your presence any time soon, never fear.”
“Don’t listen,” Almond whispered, hugging me. “The act is beautiful.”
“The act is meaningless,” Kelu said. “It can be hideously ugly, believe me.”
How did I enter into these discussions? I sighed and lifted my eyes to the smoke wafting through the air. “We have to go.”
“Master?” Almond asked.
I was sick of the elves, of humans, of the Archipelago, of the genets with their unsettling thoughts. Had I had any possibility at all of cultivating a normal life on my return to the mainland I would have asked Kemses for passage back to Far Horizon that very instant. But between me and that livable life was a sorcerer addled with caprice, a meaningless quest, and a magical king. I did not want to waste time.
“Tomorrow,” I said, closing my eyes. “Tomorrow we leave for Kesína.”
“Good,” Kelu said. “I’ll tell e Sadar first thing.”
The following morning the household’s human servants brought a modest breakfast before showing me to a bathing chamber out of a fantasy, a pool sunk into the middle of clean ivory pavers in an open chamber surrounded in windowed doors, all slightly ajar to allow a breeze to disturb the steam that rose from the hot water. It was magical in more ways than one, for the water never grew cloudy or cool... and oh, what a wonder to soak. I almost thought twice about leaving, so great was the allure of that pool. But presently I allowed myself to be summoned from that chamber and there I balked.
“Your old clothes are completely unsuitable for the weather,” Kelu said. “Besides, they mark you as a foreigner. You need to look like a native.”
I stared at the generously cut pants and stole... or more accurately, at the flimsy material from which they’d been fashioned. “I refuse.”
“Try it, Master?” Almond said softly.
“You might as well,” Kelu said. “In case you failed to notice, your old clothes aren’t here.”
With great reluctance I changed into the pants. They fell past my insteps, covering my feet, but hung low on my hips as if in compensation for that modesty. What kind of a society found feet objectionable but would leave a man bare almost to his unmentionables? I tried shaking my hair in front of my chest but even as long as it’d gotten it didn’t do more than cover my ribs. I wondered if Kemses had grown his mane just for such cause.
“I absolutely can’t,” I said. “It’s obscene.”
Kelu flipped her ears back, unimpressed. “It’s practical.”
“It may be practical for elves and humans,” I said with asperity, “but you will recall that I have a habit of falling down and convulsing, and when I’m not engaged in that pleasant pastime my skin is so sensitive that the air across its bare surface would probably send me into a fugue. So how is this a good idea again?”
“Be reasonable,” Kelu said.
I started to explain exactly what I thought of her “reasonable” suggestion when Kemses said from the door, “Let him be. There are alternatives.” He shucked the coat from his shoulders and offered it. “This is acceptable. Considered by some to be an eccentricity, but not enough to be of note.”
I took the coat, a sleeveless thing of lined silk and elegant frog closures. But the embroidery alone... “Surely this is too rich to pass for a servant’s garb.”
“From a distance it may help you pass for an elf.”
I stared at him, at his mandorla of light and life and magic. I could see him crimping the world around him... I couldn’t imagine missing it from any distance. “Forgive me, but surely you jest.”
“An elf who hasn’t fed for a long time can become dull and colorless,” he said. “If you dress as one of us, ride a drake accompanied by genets and are armed, you may pass unmolested on your errand.”
I drew the coat on and fastened the closures from collarbone to waist. From there it flared to the hem at my knee, leaving the voluminous pants exposed. Almond removed the stole and looped it several times around my waist, knotting it like a sash.
“Your genet tells me you wanted to leave today,” Kemses said.
I sat on the edge of the bed, conserving strength. “I am grateful for your hospitality, but the sooner I free the king the sooner I can go home.”
“And home is the mainland,” Kemses said.
I nodded.
“Are elves welcome there, then?”
I laughed. “God in the firmament. Almost no one knows elves exist there. And magic is certainly a myth.”
“Then how will they accept you?” Kemses asked. “You will be revealed as one of us.”
The absurdity of the situation struck me then. I prided myself on having something of an incisive mind and yet it had not yet occurred to me that being cured of my ailment would transform me into another race entirely, one with no place in the society I’d left behind.
“Master Locke?” Kemses asked.
“Ah,” I said, struggling for equilibrium and finding not even a scrap of earth to stand on. “Do I have an elven name, then?”
“Not that I know of,” he said. “Are you well? You look... pale.”
I waved a hand. “A passing spell. As to the rest... a conundrum I’ll concern myself with when it arrives.”
Kemses nodded. “You can leave whenever you’re ready. The papers I’ve prepared will take you on any of my outgoing ships.”
“I’m grateful,” I said. “There are some matters, though... such as... well.” I sighed. “The poppy is helpful.”
“Basilia told me. I have set a supply in your packs, though I would not make it known you have so much of it.”
“Noted,” I said. “Do you have genets, sir?”
He glanced at Almond and Kelu. “I do not, no. I find the industry repugnant and have no wish to support it.”
“You are not alone,” I said with a sigh. “Nevertheless, I appear to have two and they need... feeding. And reward. I would appreciate a healer’s attendance.”
“I could take care of them,” Kemses said.
I looked up at him, drawn from my reverie. He was leaning against the door jamb, arms folded over his chest and head slightly bowed. I had never seen him without one of the coats, come to that... he was far broader in the shoulder than I’d thought and very narrow in the torso. My eyes caught on his navel and I wondered what woman had borne him... and how long ago. How many human lifetimes had this man seen?
“Pardon?”
“You speak of the blood-letting, I presume,” Kemses said. “I have seen how difficult it is for you to give of your magic. It is my talent to make much of what little I have... I can feed them for you.”
I could sense Kelu’s attention, hear Almond’s little gasp. I looked at them. “You’re hungry, aren’t you?” I asked Kelu. “It’s been some time.”
Kelu licked her nose. “You remembered.”
“Of course,” I said, frowning, and added wryly, “It’s hard to forget when your reminders are so pointed.”
“I could use it, yes,” she said, and though she affected nonchalance I could see her ears trembling.
“You also,” I said to Almond. “Didn’t you say once that it was good to you too?”
“I don’t need it, Master,” Almond whispered.
“No, but you have earned it many times over,” I said, touching her chin with a fingertip.
And looking at their eager faces, I sighed. As good as it would be to allow Kemses to take on that duty, they were mine to care-take. I had already missed one opportunity, with the wounds Almond had suffered at Amoret's hands, and that smarted yet. “I appreciate your offer, sir. Having the healer at ready would be sufficient.”
Kemses nodded. “When you are done, then, send for me and I’ll see you off. If you’re sure about leaving today...?”
“I must,” I say.
He inclined his head, then closed the door after him, leaving me with the genets.
“It really would have been better for you if you’d let him,” Kelu said. “He’s not going to be hurt by it the way you are.”
“Maybe so,” I said. I removed the coat and folded it carefully, setting it on the night-stand before spreading my arms to expose their undersides. “But the two of you have guided and cared for me. There is a debt there I cannot delegate to others.”
They slid to me, furry arms gliding over my skin. And then there was blood and sorrow and so, so much pain.
The healer put me back on my feet with black poppy elixir and a few bandages, and accompanied by the two genets I wove my way to the stables where Kemses awaited me.
“I still think you would be served well by a few more days here,” he said. “Rest. Recuperate. Talk with me... certainly there are things I know that might be of use to you.”
How good it would be to tarry, to rest, to allow myself the luxury of languishing amid the poppy haze until my body felt less like a desperate prison… and yet, I knew if I ceased moving now, I would not find the wherewithal to press on, and I very much wanted to be quit of all of this. I shook my head. “Best begun, sooner done. But I thank you.”
A stablehand led the drake from a stall. Its coat gleamed black with health; someone had trimmed and washed its mane and polished and filed its talons. A new saddle more appropriate to travel had been strapped to its back, complete with bulging panniers. A courier’s bag was slung around the pommel.
And there was a staff tied to the other side.
“Kemses?”
“You need a weapon,” he said.
“I have no familiarity with weapons,” I said. “I hardly know the right end of a sword.”
“Thus a staff, which can be used for other things,” he said. He went to the drake’s side and pulled it free and—flash of metal, blood and fire—I recoiled.
“Ah,” he said, grave. “You recognize it.”
“That is one of the staves from the arena.”
“Yes,” he said, offering it to me.
“You want me to touch it?” I asked, revolted.
“I will dispense with this pretense,” Kemses said. “If you are indeed my prince, and I suspect you are, then you must be armed. It is the duty of the heir to protect the king and merely carrying this particular staff will serve as a deterrent. It is not a casual weapon.”
Bright as a flame behind my eyes I saw him pinning one of his opponents into the bonfire with one of these heinous instruments. “A symbolic weight. A promise that I will destroy anyone completely who crosses me.”
“You understand,” Kemses said.
“For God’s sake,” I said. “I don’t know how to use it! How ominous can it possibly be if I don’t have the first idea how to wield it?”
“You will have to learn,” Kemses said. “And for that, you need a weapon to practice with. So you will take this one.” Again he offered it.
I looked at it: some kind of black metal, with deeply incised channels in arabesque patterns, eye-mazing. It had an afterthought of a grip, black suede wrapped at its center and tied with carmine cords with elaborate braided tassels. Its two ends had been sharpened into cruel, fine points, unornamented.
“Take it,” Kemses said.
I bowed my head, slipped my hands beneath it and let him roll it onto my palms and it was so very heavy, heavy as all the people it had destroyed, would destroy, heavy as the wood of the raging fires that burned in all the arenas in Serala. It was an evil thing, that to kill required such torment. It was unnatural. I heard the screams.
Kemses let out a breath and nodded, stepping back. “Now you are prepared.”
The drake lay down so I could mount and the genets pulled themselves into the saddle before and behind me. As the drake rose, Kemses said, “Do you know whither your errand takes you?”
“To Suleris.”
“Suleris.” He stepped out of my way, his curtain of hair shimmering like sunlight over a running stream. “You go into the heart of iniquity.”
“Apparently so,” I said.
“How appropriate. The pearl of a people ensconced in the festering dark of its most sadistic blood-flag.” He looked up at me; only sitting astride the drake did he have to do that, and not by much. “I can’t protect you there. Not all my papers and sigils will.”
“I’m not expecting it,” I said, weary. “In truth, Kemses, I want only to keep moving. To stop... well. I may never move again.”
“Somehow I doubt it,” he said. “Permit me to accompany you to the harbor.”
“Of course,” I said, and waited for him to have a horse brought to him but... he didn’t. He waited for me to press the drake forward, one hand resting on the saddle. “Sir?”
“No,” he said. “If you are the prince, then I will walk. And you should not be calling me sir, but liegeman.”
A rush of heat flooded me, setting my body a-quake. “You mean that.”
He glanced up at me. “Of course.”
I stared at him, transfixed with conflicting emotions. The thought that someone so powerful would put himself at my knee was exhilarating, to the point of setting all my hair on end. And the thought that I could react that way to the mere idea... I shuddered. I wanted no part of the corruption of a feudal system. I had done nothing—nothing—to earn such devotion. What if I came to expect it, merely by existing? Down that path I saw ruin.
“Master?” Almond whispered.
“You should ride,” I said, and as I said it my spine relaxed. I had conquered the impulse. Everything would be fine.
“No.”
Had he... yes, he had. I glanced sharply at him. “I just said—”
“It’s not appropriate,” he said.
“I haven’t done a thing... a single thing! To make you treat me this way.”
“You’re going to retrieve our king,” he said. “You have discovered that he lives and you go to free him.”
“I discovered he lived by chance,” I said. “At the whim of an insane sorcerer!”
“And you are the one on the drake, insisting that you cannot wait a single day to save him.”
“Because I want the reward promised me for his return!”
“Are you certain?” Kemses asked.
I gaped at him.
“Blood calls to blood,” Kemses murmured. “Among us there is no greater truth. You will see soon enough. Shall we go, my liege?”
I couldn’t move. It was Kelu who rolled her eyes and jabbed me in the stomach with her elbow. “Come on, ‘Master’. The day’s not getting any younger.”
And then I laughed. I wasn’t sure I could ever become arrogant with Kelu in my vanguard. “Well enough. If you insist.”
“I do,” Kemses said. “And you might consider developing a touch more graciousness in accepting the offerings of your liegemen, my prince. We do take offense if we are rebuffed.”
I checked... yes, there was humor there in his eye. I sighed and shook my head, nudged the drake into an easy stroll and left the stable.
That long walk off the estate and down the main thoroughfare to Erevar’s great harbors... I struggled with it. It is forever emblazoned in my mind, the sun on my head, the liquid warmth of the drake beneath me... and at my side, head bowed and serene, a great power, a knot of the world’s magic given gracile form and set at my knee, pacing me, patient and noble. Around us the crowds stepped back, made way; we were such a small train that it was only the most subtle of perturbations in the traffic, but the deference they awarded us was unmistakable. What did they think, those humans and elves, seeing their master walking at the side of a mounted human?
By turns I suffered humility and embarrassment, discomfort and wonder, but by the time we had gained the city’s center it had begun to slough from me, leaving me with a mate to Kemses’s tranquility. And in that peace, sun-gilded and timeless, we finished the journey to the harbor. There I set a hand on Kemses’s shoulder and he helped me dismount, and for once I felt no shame at needing aid with this wreck of a body I’d been bequeathed.
“Godspeed, my liege,” Kemses said as the ship-hands led the drake up the plank.
“Do the elves believe in God, then?” I asked.
“We used to,” Kemses said. “Perhaps we will again.”
I turned with trepidation to the plank, thinking of my unsteady feet.
“You see, this is why you have a staff,” Kemses said from behind me.
“You are an impertinent vassal,” I said.
He laughed and so did I, and the genets helped me up the ship and... it was good. For once, it was good.