“Just tell me the truth,” Nezeru said, and was aware of a kind of desperation in her need to know, although she could not say why. “Did you know that one-eyed man?”
He turned to look at her as he shouldered his burden of wood, and to her astonishment, he smiled broadly, like a man who had just been given high praise or rich reward. “I never saw him before this day.”
He was lying, of course, and not only that, he knew that she knew he was lying—he had as much as told her so with that easy, self-satisfied grin. It should have sent her running to Makho, but it did not. Instead, it filled her with a curious agitation she had never known, so unexpected and so unusual that for long moments she could not even make sense of what it was. Only as she followed his lean form back toward the cave where Makho and Saomeji waited, did she begin to understand it.
This man—this mortal man, she thought wonderingly. No, this traitor. Why does he fascinate me so?
37
Two Bedroom Conversations
It was a warm night. The upper floors of the Hayholt’s royal residence were full of hot damp air that had the sparking feel of imminent thunder. The servants had been dismissed to the outer room and now the queen sat naked at her mirror, brushing her hair.
“God reminds us that these bodies are only loaned to us, to clothe our spirits while we walk the sinful earth,” she said suddenly.
Simon was huddled in the bed already, wearing a night shirt despite the heat. He had been thinking about Urmsheim again (perhaps because these days it no longer came to him in dreams), thinking on those long ago days when he and Jiriki and Binabik and the others had climbed to the Uduntree. Beneath it all lay the deeper memory of the dragon’s icy blue stare, the agonizing splash of its hot, black blood. Thinking of it again, he shivered. “I’m sorry. What are you talking about, wife?”
“This,” she said, cupping her breasts with her hands. “This fading, falling body.”
“I think you are beautiful,” he said.
“You are kind to say so.”
“What do you mean, kind? Do you call me a liar, woman?” He laughed. “I loved you from the first moment I saw you. Do you think me that shallow, now that I am old too? Come to bed.”
“Not yet.” She continued brushing. Miriamele kept her hair long now, but a part of Simon missed the days when she had been less careful, less formal, when she had cut her hair short to hide her identity, like someone out of a story.
God’s Blood, have we truly become old? he wondered. I do not feel old. I feel the same, but . . . weathered. Like a ship that has plowed the same waves for many years. The rigging is slack, the sails have holes, but the bottom is still seaworthy. He laughed again.
“What is funny?” Her voice had the brittle sound he knew too well.
“Just . . . I just thought that I am glad our bottoms are still seaworthy.”
Miriamele gave him a sharp look over her shoulder, then glanced down at her own pale, vulnerable body. “Do you mock me, husband?”
“Never. Oh, dear one, not in a thousand, thousand years. Come to bed.”
“I will. But do not think you will paw me tonight and paddle my cheek and make me forgive you. I am angry, Simon.”
He sighed. “Still?”
“What do you mean, still? You act as if this were a lark, a game. We are sending our only heir—our only grandson!—away into the wild woods. Into danger.”
“We are all sent into danger,” he said, and was quite pleased with himself for the idea. “And we will all fail in the end. That is God’s will. It does no good to struggle against it.”
“You are punishing your grandson because I will not let you go marching off to look for the Sithi.” She stared directly at her own reflection. She would not meet his eye. “I thought we were equals, husband. I have learned the truth.”
“What? What nonsense is this? You know as well as I do that the boy needs seasoning. He has lived only for himself.”
“And getting him killed will improve that?”
Simon slapped his hands on the bedclothes in frustration. “I do not wish to see him harmed, may God preserve us, I wish to see him grown. What will happen when we die if he does not change? The whole of the High Ward in the hands of a selfish boy—a boy who does not want to be a man, except when it comes to drinking and wenching. For the love of the Aedon, Miriamele, he climbed Hjeldin’s Tower on a drunken wager! What if he had fallen and dashed out his brains on the cobblestones? Would you still say he was better off here than going out into the world?”
“Do not invent things to try to shame me, Simon. You have never been kind to him.”
Simon closed his eyes, fighting against the weary anger that he had thought was behind them tonight. “Come to bed. You will take ill, sitting uncovered like that.”
“Perhaps you had better send me off on some dangerous task. That would be a more certain way of silencing me.”
“Damn me, do you think I want him to go because I want him harmed, Miri? Are you mad? It is you who wants to keep him home because . . . because you cannot forgive yourself for John Josua.” Even as he said it, Simon knew he had opened a door that was better left closed. Her silence seemed to confirm it.
When that silence had stretched a while, he said, “Miri? Dear wife? That was wrong of me. That is a pain that should be left out of our disagreements.”
“No,” she said. “No, there is some truth in what you say. But how can you not feel that, too? After losing our only son, how can you so blithely send your grandson out into the perils of the wild world?”
“Because he is to be a king, Miri. A king cannot be shielded from consequences, or he will become a king who does not understand what ruling means.”
“Is this about my father, then? His madness?”
“No, no, no.” He took a deep breath, trying to think of words that would carry his meaning when he did not entirely understand it himself. “This is a far bigger matter than you make it. I said to you once, let me go to the Sithi. They are our allies, but they have fallen away from us. But you would not let me go. If we ever needed their counsel, we need it now. So someone must go to them.”
“Then Eolair is the right choice. We do not need to send our heir as well.”
“But it is not about what we need, it is about what Morgan needs.” He lifted the coverlet. “Come here. I promise not to paw you. Come here and talk to me. It makes my bones ache just watching you sitting there in the cold.”
“It is not cold, it is summer-warm though spring has barely ended. Are you having the dreams again?” Something changed in her voice, just a little. “Is it the mountain?”
“No dreams still. But I remember the mountain, of course. That is not all that is in my mind, though. Come here. Come to bed.”
As if to remind him that she was no servant to hurry at his command, the queen slid the brush through her hair a few more times. At last, she put down the mirror and the brush and came to the bed and slipped quickly under the coverlet that Simon held.
“Are you hiding your charms from me?” he said, half-amused. “Are you afraid I will be overcome with base lust? S’Tree, now that I think of it, I might be.” He reached for her, felt the cool, silky flesh of her hip beneath his fingers. “Come here and find out.”
“No! Stop! You gave me a promise!” She pushed his hand away, but wiggled closer so that he could press himself against her. “You are in a good mood because you have won the argument and will have your way about our grandson. But I am not going to share your mood. Go to sleep.”
He let his head fall back against the pillow and stared up at the canopy, blue cloth studded with stars, like a map of the firmament. “Why do you think that I wanted so badly to go to the Sithi?” he said at last.
Miriamele stirred. “Because we need their wisdom. And you are right about that, Simon . . .”
“No. I wanted to go to the Sithi because I miss my friends.”
“You have many friends. Binabik is right here with you!”
“Not for much longer, Miri. How long has it been since we saw him last, before now? Years. And how long since we have seen any Sithi-folk except their poisoned messenger? Ten years? More, I think.” He pushed himself up a little so that he could cradle her head in the crook of his arm. It was hard for Simon to understand, when they were close like this, how such a small person as his wife should be so powerful, should be able to reach into his heart at will and squeeze it, leaving no wound on his flesh but making his soul ache. “I miss them, Miri. I miss the days we traveled together. Not because I miss being young—although that’s there, of course—but because I miss having true friends.”
She turned a little to look at him. “You have many true friends.”
“Friends at court are not true friends. There are a few, like Jeremias and Eolair, who knew me before we were put on the throne . . .”