"The Lions of Al-Rassan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kay Guy Gavriel)

Six

Esteren was a catastrophe of carpenters, masons, bricklayers and laborers. The streets were nearly impassable, certainly so for a horse. The palace and the square in front of it resounded to the sounds of hammers, saws and chisels, shouted curses and frantic instructions. Complex, dangerous-looking equipment was being swung overhead or carried this way and that. It was widely reported that five workers had already died this summer. Nor was it overlooked by even the marginally observant that at least half of the project supervisors were Asharites brought north from Al-Rassan for this endeavor, at considerable cost.

King Ramiro was expanding his capital and his palace.

There had been a time, not very long ago, in fact, when the precarious kings of Esperana—whether it was a whole country or divided as it now was again—ruled on the move. Cities were little more than hamlets; palaces a mockery of the name. Horses and mules, and heavy carts on the better-preserved of the ancient roads, were the trappings of monarchy as the courts settled in one town or castle after another through the round of the year. For one thing, the kings were constantly putting out brushfires of rebellion, or hurrying to try at least to limit the predatory incursions of Al-Rassan. For another, resources in the hard-pressed Jaddite kingdoms in the glory years of the Silvenes Khalifate were scarcely such as to allow the monarchs to feed themselves and their retinues without spreading the burdens imposed by their presence.

Much had changed in twenty years; much, it was evident, was still changing here in Valledo, wealthiest and most fertile of the three kingdoms carved out of Esperana for his sons by King Sancho the Fat. The current frenzy of construction in the royal city was only a part of it, funded by the infusion of parias money and, equally important, the absence of raiding from the south. It seemed that King Ramiro was now pursuing an entirely new definition of monarchy. Over and above everything else, this past year he had made it clear that he expected all the major nobility and clerics to show up in Esteren twice a year for his assizes, when law and policy were to be resolved and promulgated. It was rapidly becoming evident, as the new city walls grew higher, that Esteren was going to be more than merely the most established of his court residences.

And this business of assizes—a foreign word, Waleskan apparently—was more than slightly galling. Without his standing army it was unlikely in the extreme that Ramiro would have been able to compel attendance from his country nobility. But the army was here, well-paid and well-trained, and this particular summer almost every figure of importance in Valledo had elected to follow the path of prudence and show up.

Curiosity, among other things, could lead a man to travel. So could the promise of wine and food at court, and women for hire in increasingly urbanized Esteren. The dust and noise and the symbolism of a public submission to Ramiro's will were the prices to be paid. Given the turbulent and usually brief tenures of kings in Esperana there was some reason to believe that the ambitions of King Sancho's most complex son might not trouble the world for too much longer.

In the meantime, it had to be conceded that he was offering entirely adequate entertainment. On this particular day Ramiro and his court and the visiting country lords were hunting in the king's forest southwest of Esteren, within sight of the Vargas Hills. Tomorrow they were all to attend the assizes at Ramiro's court of justice. Today they rode in summer fields and forests killing deer and boar for sport.

There was nothing, short of actual warfare, that the nobility of Esperana could be said to enjoy more than a good hunt on a fair day. Nor could it be overlooked that the king, for all his modern, unsettling notions, was among the best of the riders in that illustrious company.

Sancho's son, after all, men could be overheard murmuring to each other in the morning sunshine. Stands to reason, doesn't it?

When King Ramiro dismounted to plant the first spear in the largest boar of the day as it charged from the thicket where they had tracked it, even the most independent-minded and aggrieved of the rural lords could be seen banging swords or spears in approval.

When the boar was dead, the king of Valledo looked up and around at all of them. Covered in blood, he smiled. "As long as we are all gathered here," he said, "there is one small matter we might as well attend to now, rather than as part of the assizes tomorrow."

His courtiers and the country lords fell silent, looking sidelong at each other. Trust Ramiro to do something devious like this. He couldn't even let a hunt be a hunt. Looking around, a number of them realized, belatedly, that this clearing seemed carefully chosen, not merely a random place where a wild beast had gone to ground. There was space enough for all of them, and even a conveniently fallen log to which the king now strode, removing bloodied leather gloves and casually sitting down, very much as if on a throne. The outriders began dragging the boar away, leaving a smeared trail of blood on the crushed grass.

"Will Count Gonzalez de Rada and Ser Rodrigo Belmonte be so good as to attend upon me?" Speaking these words, King Ramiro used the language of high court formality, not of hunt and field, and with that the tenor and shape of the morning changed.

The two men named could be seen dismounting. Neither betrayed, by so much as a flicker of expression, whether this development had been anticipated, or whether it was as much a surprise to them as to those assembled.

"We have all the witnesses we require," the king murmured, "and I am loath to submit men such as yourselves to a court hearing in the palace. It seems fitting to me that this affair be dealt with here. Does anyone object? Speak, if so."

Even as he was talking, two court officials could be seen approaching the tree trunk upon which the king was seated. They carried satchels and when these were opened parchments and scrolls were set down near the king. "No objection, my liege," said Count Gonzalez de Rada.

His smooth, beautiful voice filled the clearing. Servants were moving about now, pouring wine from flasks into what appeared to be genuine silver drinking goblets. The hunters exchanged glances yet again. Whatever else might be said of him, Ramiro was not stinting on the largess appropriate to a royal host. Some dismounted and handed their reins to the grooms. Others preferred to remain on horseback, reaching down for their wine and drinking in the saddle.

"I would never dream," said Rodrigo Belmonte, "of putting so many of the king's people to such a deal of preparation without acceding to whatever the king proposed." He sounded amused, but he often did, so that meant little.

"The allegations," said the king of Valledo, ignoring Ser Rodrigo's tone, "are substantial." King Ramiro, tall, broad-shouldered, prematurely greying, now wore an expression appropriate to a monarch faced with lethal hostility between two of the most important men in his realm. The festive, careening mood of the morning was gone. The gathered aristocracy, as they gradually came to terms with what was happening, were more intrigued than anything else; this sort of possibly mortal conflict provided the best entertainment in the world.

In the open space before the king's fallen tree Belmonte and de Rada stood side by side. The former constable of the realm and the man who had succeeded him when Ramiro took the throne. The two men had placed themselves a careful distance apart. Neither had deigned to glance at the other. Given what was known about what had happened earlier this summer, the possibility of bloodshed was strong, whatever efforts the king might expend to avoid it.

A good many of those in attendance, especially those from the countryside, were rather hoping King Ramiro would fail in his attempt at resolution. A trial by combat would make this a memorable gathering. Perhaps, some thought optimistically, that was why this was taking place away from the city walls.

"It need hardly be said that Ser Rodrigo is responsible, in law, for the actions of his wife and children, given that they have no legal standing or capacity," the king said soberly. "At the same time, the sworn and uncontested statements of Ser Rodrigo indicate that the constable was formally put on notice here in Esteren that his brother would not be permitted to do harm in lands paying parias to us. In giving this notice," the king added, "Ser Rodrigo was acting properly, and as our officer."

More than one rancher or baron in that forest clearing found this entirely too legalistic for his taste. Why, they wondered, didn't Ramiro just let them fight it out here under the sun of Jad in the open spaces that best became a man—and have done with this dry-mouthed, dusty verbiage?

Such a pleasing possibility seemed to be becoming less likely with each passing moment. The smug expressions of the three yellow-robed clerics who had moved to stand behind the king indicated as much. Ramiro wasn't known for his close relations with the clerics of Jad, but these three certainly looked happy enough.

This, a number of the lords of Valledo thought, was what happened when a king became too full of himself, when he started making changes. Even that new throne room back in the palace, with its veined marble pillars: didn't it look more like something designed for a decadent court in Al-Rassan than a Jaddite warrior hall? What was happening here in Valledo? It was an increasingly urgent question.

"Having considered the words of both parties and the depositions that have been rendered, including one by the Asharite silk merchant Husari ibn Musa of Fezana, we will be brief in our judgment."

The king's expression continued to match his stern words. The blunt fact was, if Belmonte and de Rada chose to pursue a blood feud Valledo was likely to be torn apart in the choosing of sides, and Ramiro's sweeping changes would fall like butchered bodies.

"It is our decision that Garcia de Rada—may his soul reside with Jad in light—violated both our laws and our obligations in his attack upon the village of Orvilla by Fezana. Ser Rodrigo's interruption of that attack was entirely proper. It was his duty, given the parias being paid to us for protection. It is also our judgment that ordering the death of Parazor de Rada was reasonable, if unfortunate, given the need to demonstrate both our fairness and our authority in Fezana. No blame or criticism falls to Ser Rodrigo for these things."

Count Gonzalez stirred restlessly, but grew still under the king's flat gaze. Light fell through the trees, dappling the clearing in bands of brightness and shadow.

"At the same time," King Ramiro went on, "Ser Rodrigo had no right to wound Garcia de Rada after accepting his surrender. It was not a deed that becomes a man of rank." The king hesitated and shifted a little on his tree trunk. Rodrigo Belmonte was looking straight at him, waiting. Ramiro met his gaze. "Further," he said, his voice quiet but extremely clear, "the public accusation he is reported to have made with respect to the death of my lamented brother King Raimundo is a slander beneath the dignity of both a nobleman and an officer of the king."

A number of men in that forest clearing caught their breath at this point. They had reached a matter that touched perilously near to Ramiro's position on the throne itself. The extremely abrupt death of his brother had never been satisfactorily explained.

Ser Rodrigo did not move, nor, at this juncture, did he speak. In the slanting sunlight his expression was unreadable, save for the frown of concentration as he listened. Ramiro picked up a parchment from the trunk beside him.

"That leaves us with an attack on women and children at Rancho Belmonte, and then the killing of a man who had sheathed his sword." King Ramiro looked down at the parchment for a moment and then back up. "Garcia de Rada had formally surrendered in Orvilla, and accepted terms of ransom to be determined. His obligation by his oath was to come straight here to Esteren and await the ruling of our royal heralds. Instead he recklessly stripped our defenses in the tagra lands to pursue a personal attack on Rancho Belmonte. For this," said the king of Valledo, speaking slowly and carefully now, "I would have ordered his public execution."

There came a swiftly rising sound of protest between the trees. This was new, a prodigious assertion of authority.

Ramiro went on, unruffled. "Dona Miranda Belmonte d'Alveda was a frail woman with no men to guard her, fearing for the lives of her young children in the face of an attack by armed soldiers." The king lifted another document from the tree trunk beside him and glanced at it. "We accept the deposition of the cleric Ibero that Ser Garcia specifically indicated to Dona Miranda that his purpose had been to exact vengeance upon herself and her sons, and not merely to claim horses from Rancho Belmonte."

"That man is a servant of Belmonte's!" the constable said sharply. The splendid voice was a shade less controlled than it had been before.

The king looked at him, and those in attendance, observing that glance, were made abruptly mindful that Ramiro was, in fact, a warrior when he chose to be. Cups of wine were raised and men drank thoughtfully.

"You were not invited to speak, Count Gonzalez. We have carefully noted that none of your brother's surviving men have contradicted this deposition. They appear to confirm it, in fact. We also note that by all accounts the attack was against the ranch itself, not the pastures where the horses were grazing. We are capable of drawing conclusions, especially when supported by the sworn word of a servant of the god. Given that your brother had already broken his parole by attacking the ranch, it is our judgment that Dona Miranda, a frightened, defenseless woman, is not to be censured for killing him and thus protecting her husband's children and possessions."

"You bring shame upon us with this," said his constable bitterly.

When Ramiro of Valledo was angry his face grew white. It did so now. He stood up, taller than almost every man in that clearing. Papers scattered beside him; a cleric hurried to collect them.

"Your brother brought you shame," the king said icily, "by refusing to accept your own authority, or ours. We do no more than rule upon his actions. Hear us, Gonzalez"—no title, the listeners realized, and wine goblets were lowered all about the clearing—"there will be no feud to follow from this. We forbid it. We make the following decree before these high-born of Valledo: Count Gonzalez de Rada, our constable, will stand surety with his own life for the next two years for the lives and safety of the family of Ser Rodrigo Belmonte. Should death or grievous harm befall any of them from any source during this time we will execute mortal judgment upon his body."

A buzzing again, and this one did not subside. Nothing remotely like this had ever been heard before.

"Why two years?"

It was Rodrigo. The first time the Captain had spoken since the hearing had begun. The angle of the sun had changed now; his face was in shadow. The question brought a silence, as the king's gaze turned to Belmonte.

"Because you will not be able to defend them," Ramiro said levelly, still on his feet. "Officers of the king have a responsibility to exercise control both over their weapons and their words. You failed us twice over. What you did to Ser Garcia, and what you said to him, are direct causes of his death and this hard trouble in our kingdom. Rodrigo Belmonte, you are condemned to a term of exile from Valledo of two years. At the end of such time you may present yourself before us and we will rule upon your case."

"He goes alone, I take it?" It was Count Gonzalez, reacting quickly. "Not with his company?"

It mattered, all the listeners knew. Rodrigo Belmonte's company comprised one hundred and fifty of the finest fighting men in the peninsula.

Rodrigo laughed aloud, the sound almost shocking, given the tension among the trees. "You are most welcome," he said, "to try to stop them from following me."

King Ramiro was shaking his head. "I will not do so. Your men are yours and blameless in this. They may go or stay as they please. I will ask only for one undertaking from you, Ser Rodrigo."

"After exiling me from my home?" The question was pointed. Rodrigo's face was still in shadow.

"Even so." It was interesting how calm the king was. A number of men reached the same conclusion at the same time: Ramiro had anticipated almost every point of this exchange. "I do not think you can truly quarrel with our ruling, Ser Rodrigo. Take your company, if you will. We ask only that they not be used in warfare against us."

Silence again, as every man struggled to think through the implications. It could be seen that Rodrigo Belmonte was staring down at the forest floor, his forehead creased with thought. The king gazed upon him, waiting.

When Rodrigo looked up, his brow had cleared. He lifted his right hand towards the sky overhead, and shaped the sun circle of the god with thumb and fingers. "I swear by holy Jad," he said formally, "that I will never lead my company in warfare into the lands of Valledo."

It was almost what the king had asked. Almost, but not quite, and Ramiro knew it.

"And if you find a Valledan army beyond our borders?" he asked.

"I can swear no oath," Rodrigo said quietly. "Not an honorable one. Not if I am forced to take service elsewhere for my livelihood and that of my company. My lord, this is not," he added, meeting the king's gaze squarely, "a departure of my choosing."

A long stillness.

"Do not take service with Cartada," said the king at length, his voice extremely soft.

Rodrigo stood motionless, visibly thinking.

"Really, my lord? You will begin so soon? Within two years?" he asked cryptically.

"It may be so," Ramiro said, no less ambiguously.

Men were struggling to understand, but the two of them seemed to be in the midst of a private exchange.

Rodrigo was nodding his head slowly. "I suppose. I will regret being elsewhere if it does happen." He paused. "I will not serve Almalik of Cartada. I don't like what he did in Fezana. I will not serve him there, or anywhere else."

Fezana.

At the mention of the name a few men began to nod their heads, looking at their tall, proud king. A glimmering of what this seemed to be about began to come to them, like shafts of the god's sunlight falling into the clearing. Ramiro wasn't a jurist or a cleric, after all, and there might be more than hunting in the days to come.

"I accept your oath," said the king of Valledo calmly. "We have never found you lacking in honor, Ser Rodrigo. We see no reason to doubt it now."

"Well, I am grateful for that," said the Captain. It was impossible to tell if there was mockery in his voice. He took a step forward, fully into the light. "I do have a request of my own."

"Which is?"

"I will ask Count Gonzalez to swear before the god to guard my family and possessions as if they were his own while I am away. That is enough for me. I need no binding of his death. The world is a dangerous place, and the days to come may make it more so. Should accident befall a Belmonte, Valledo could ill afford to lose its constable as well. I am content with his sworn word, if it pleases the king."

He was looking at the constable as he spoke. It could be seen that de Rada was taken by surprise.

"Why?" he asked softly; an intimate question in a very public space. The two men faced each other for the first time.

"I believe I just told you," Rodrigo replied. "It isn't so difficult. Valledo has enemies in all directions. With your life in bond someone might strike at this kingdom through my family. I would not want the king bound to your death in such a cause. I think it places them more at risk, not less. I need not like you, de Rada, to trust your word."

"Despite my brother?"

The Captain shrugged. "He is being judged by Jad."

It wasn't an answer, and yet it was. After another brief silence, in which the sound of birdsong could clearly be heard from the trees around, the constable raised his right hand in the same gesture Rodrigo had used.

"Before Jad, and before my lord the king of Valledo, and before all men here, I make oath that the family of Rodrigo Belmonte shall be as my own from this day until his return from exile. I take this upon my honor and that of my lineage." The sonorous voice filled and defined the forest space.

Both men turned back to the king. Unsmiling, standing very tall, he looked down upon them. "I am unused to having my decrees superseded by the parties involved," he murmured.

"Only you can do that," Rodrigo said. "We merely offer an alternative for the king to accept or reject."

And now it could be seen that Ramiro smiled at the man he had just condemned to exile. "So be it," he said. "We accept these oaths."

Both men bowed. Rodrigo straightened and said, "Then, with your permission, my lord, I will make immediate arrangements to depart, much as I might enjoy continuing to hunt with you."

"One moment," said the king. "Where will you go?" His voice betrayed, for the very first time, a shadow of doubt.

Rodrigo Belmonte's grin, caught by the falling sunlight, was wide, and unmistakably genuine. "I haven't the least idea," he said. "Though on my way to wherever I go I'll have to stop and deal with a frail and terrified woman first." His smile faded. "You might all pray for me," said the Captain of Valledo.

Then he turned, collected his horse's reins from a groom, mounted up and rode alone from the clearing back the way they had come through the trees.

Ines, the queen of Valledo, was clasping a well-worn sun disk and listening, eyes devoutly closed, as her favorite cleric read aloud from the Book of the Sons of Jad—the passage about the end of the world, as it happened—when her husband's messenger arrived and indicated the king would presently be with her.

Apologetically, she bade her religious counsellor suspend his reading. The man, not unused to this, marked her Book and laid it aside. With a sigh, a pointed glance and a bow to the queen he withdrew from the chamber through an inner doorway. It was well known that King Ramiro was uneasy with intensities of faith, and the queen's best efforts over many years had done nothing to amend this unfortunate circumstance.

It had everything to do, Ines had long since decided, with the time when he had lived among the infidels. All three of the difficult, ambitious sons of King Sancho had spent time exiled among the Asharites, but only Ramiro seemed to have come back with a taste for the ways of Al-Rassan and a suspicious softness in matters of faith. It was perhaps an irony, and perhaps not, that his father had arranged a marriage for him with the pious younger daughter of the king of Ferrieres across the mountains to the east.

Ines, whose childhood aspiration had been to be accepted among the Daughters of Jad in one of the great retreats, had accepted her betrothal only upon the advice of her spiritual counsellors, including the High Clerics of Ferrieres. It was a great opportunity, they had told her. A chance to be of service to the god and to her country both. The young man she was marrying would likely one day rule a part, at least, of Esperana, and Ines could use her position to influence the path of worship in that troubled land.

The clerics had looked entirely prescient when Ramiro was named ruler of mountainous Jalofia in the three-way division of his father's last testament. And then even more so when, after the mysterious death of his brother Raimundo, her husband had quickly moved west and claimed the crown of Valledo as well. He hadn't been able to hold both kingdoms—not yet, at least—for his uncle Bermudo had promptly risen in Jalofia and seized that throne, but Valledo, as everyone knew, was the greater prize.

What the clerics hadn't told her—because they hadn't known—was that the young man she was marrying was fiercely intelligent, ambitious, luridly imaginative in carnal acts and so much a pragmatist in what ought to have been firm doctrines of holy faith that he might as well have been an infidel.

As if on cue to this distressing line of thought, the king appeared in her doorway, his hair and clothing still damp as further evidence of her last reflection: what self-respecting man bathed as often as King Ramiro did? Not even the Asharites in their far-off eastern homelands did so. Self-indulgent bathing rituals were characteristic only of the sybaritic courts of Al-Rassan where they had not even the decency to observe the ascetic strictures of their own faith.

Too much time in the courts of the south, Queen Ines thought again, and at a point in life when he had been young and impressionable. She glanced sidelong at her husband, not wishing

to encourage him with a fuller appraisal. It was a very handsome man who filled her doorway, no one could deny that much. Tall, well-built, square-jawed. If his hair was greying early, his moustache was yet black and there was no evidence of faltering reserves of martial or political stamina or subtlety.

Or of faltering in more private dimensions, either.

With a brief gesture, if a courteous one, the king dismissed her maidservants and slaves and the two guards by the doors. Ramiro waited until they had all taken their leave then strode across the new carpet to stand before Ines's low seat. He was grinning. She knew that smile.

"Come, my wife," he said. "Events of this morning have made me amorous."

Ines refused to meet his eyes. Almost everything made him amorous, she had learned. Clutching her sun disk like a small shield, she murmured, "I'm sure it was a comely boar you slew. But was there no one of my lord's concubines who might have assuaged his appetites before he came to trouble me?"

Ramiro laughed. "Not today. Today I have a desire to see and touch the body of my life's own companion as consecrated by our most holy god. Come, Ines, let us make sport, then after I will tell you what happened in the wood."

"Tell me now."

Her problem, as she had all too often been forced to admit to her intimate counsellors, was that Ramiro was a difficult man to deny. They had urged her to use his desire for her as a means of drawing him towards a truer faith but, to the queen's endless chagrin, the effect of such encounters was rather the opposite: whether it was his natural fervor or the skills he had learned—most probably among the courtesans of Al-Rassan—Ramiro was dismayingly adept at subverting her best intentions.

Even now, in the middle of a hot summer's day, with carpenters hammering and a barrage of shouting outside, and with the stem words of the world's end still echoing in her ears, Queen Ines found herself breathing a little more quickly at the images her husband's presence had conjured forth within her. After almost twenty years and with the full knowledge of the impious evil of his ways, this was still true. And Ramiro could read it in her as easily as her clerics could read from Jad's most holy Books. He reached down now, not ungently, and plucked the god disk from her clasp.

"Hold me like that," he murmured, laying the disk aside and lifting her to her feet with his strong hands. "Love me the way you love the god." Then he slipped his arms around her and drew her close so that she was made inescapably aware that the king of Valledo was wearing nothing at all beneath his white silk robe. And that pressing awareness, as he tilted her head to meet his kiss, brought back for Ines all the wildly disturbing sensations she always felt when this happened.

I will have to atone, she told herself as their lips met.

He began unravelling the cloth that bound the coils of her red hair. She would seek holy counsel and support later. Her own hands, unbidden, as if bearing weights, came up along his robe, feeling the hard body beneath. Ramiro drew back, then lowered his head again hungrily. He bit at the corner of her lip.

There would surely be wise, consoling thoughts from her advisors of the soul later, the queen told herself. Her fingers seemed now to be laced behind his head. She pulled his hair, not gently at all. The king laughed. He smelled of some eastern spice. That, too, was unsettling. It was unfair. She would need such a great deal of help to guide her back to the pure realm of the spirit. For the moment, though, as her husband smoothly lifted and then carried her over to the wide couch he'd had brought into her new suite of rooms, the queen of Valledo was rather more preoccupied, to her great and enduring confusion, with increasingly explicit matters of the flesh.

At one point she cried his name aloud, and at another, suffused with her eternal mixture of desire and shame, she found herself riding above his supine form, knowing that this mode of congress was yet another decadent legacy of Al-Rassan, but unable to stop herself from gasping aloud with the pleasure it gave her. Pleasure of the world, she told herself, somewhat desperately, moving up and down upon him while his fingers teased and circled her breasts. Of the world. Only of the world. The realm of the god was otherwise. It was eternal, holy, golden, transcendent, shining, not bound to the mortal bodies of frail—

"Oh my!" said the queen of Valledo then, as if in great surprise, and held herself extremely still.

The second cry that escaped her a moment later was, in its own way, an admission.

"Tell me about what happened," she said, some time after.

He liked to lie with her, entangled indecently, after congress. That much, at least, she was able to deny him. Ines had donned a robe and had forced him to clothe himself as well, before summoning one of her women with refreshments. Amused, satiated, Ramiro had obeyed.

The woman brought ale for him and a pear infusion for the queen and then withdrew. Now Ramiro lay indolently upon the couch while Ines sat on a nearby bench, needlework in hand. She was making a new pouch for her sun disk, to hang from her belt.

"It went surprisingly well," Ramiro said, turning on his side, his head propped on one hand. He looked at her with such frank admiration it brought color to her cheeks again. "Thank you, by the way. I do prefer it when you leave your hair down," he said.

She hadn't intended to. An oversight. She was wrongfully proud of her hair, and as a penance kept it tied tightly back almost all the time. Self-consciously she pushed a strand from her eyes. He would laugh at her if she began binding it up now, she knew.

"This morning," she said firmly. "We are talking about this morning."

He grinned. Sipped from his flagon. The noise outside and below stairs continued. Among other things, he was expanding the palace baths, after the Al-Rassan fashion, with hot and cold pools, and a massage room. It was a scandal.

"They both accepted my judgment," he said. "There was a bit of noise when I said I would have executed Garcia, but no one actually spoke out. Count Gonzalez is now bound by oath to defend Belmonte's family for two years. No blood feud. He has sworn it in public."

"You announced he would die if they died?" He had discussed this with her some days before. In fairness, she had to concede

that he was never reluctant to confide in her. They had even discussed, all those years ago, his move into Valledo from Jalona. He spent a fair bit of time in her rooms, telling her his thoughts. Certainly more than her father had ever confided in her mother.

In fact, Ines suddenly realized, looking at the man on her couch, if he hadn't been so much an infidel in the most important matters, she might have been able to name her husband a paragon among men.

Her expression must have softened. He looked amused again. "I meant to tell you earlier. I love looking at your breasts from below," he said. "They change from pears to melons, did you know?"

"I really hadn't noticed," she said tartly. "Must we expound upon it? Is the constable to die if a Belmonte does?"

Ramiro shook his head. "I proclaimed it, and the count would have accepted, I think, but then Rodrigo asked me to withdraw that sanction. Said if Gonzalez swore to their defense it was enough for him. I wonder ... could he be tired of his wife, do you think? They've been married a long time."

"Less long than we have," Ines replied. "And if you think he's tired of her you are a great fool. It is simply that Ser Rodrigo Belmonte is a pious man, a believer in the power of the god, and he was willing to trust to Jad's will and Gonzalez's public oath. It doesn't seem surprising to me at all."

Ramiro made no reply for a moment. "Actually, what he said was that he didn't want our enemies able to force me to execute the constable by harming Rodrigo's family. I hadn't thought of that."

Neither had Ines. She'd had years of this sort of dialogue, though. "He just said that because you wouldn't have listened if he offered a reason to do with faith."

"Probably not," Ramiro agreed, far too placidly. He looked at her happily. "I still think he may be tired of his wife. He asked us to pray for him because he had to go home."

"You see?" said Ines swiftly. "He believes in the power of prayer."

The king spoiled her triumph by laughing aloud.

Outside, the banging and rumbling noises of construction continued unabated. Esteren's castle was being turned into a veritable palace, fashioned, all too clearly, after the courts of the south. In a way it was an insult to the god. She did like the plans for her expanded quarters though.

"Again, my lady?" the king of Valledo asked his wife.

She bit at her lip. "If you come to chapel with me, after."

"Done," he said, rising from the couch.

"And speak the prayers aloud with me," she added quickly.

"Done." He came over to stand above her seat, but then he sank to his knees before her, reaching up with one hand to touch her hair.

"And you will not make any clever comments about the liturgy."

"Done. Done. Done, Ines."

It seemed a fair bargain for a summer's day. She laid her needlework aside. She even granted him a smile. The work of Jad here in Esperana had turned out to be long and unexpectedly complex. It had led her down paths she could never have foreseen back at home in Ferrieres twenty years ago, a girl dreaming at night not of a man but a god. She slid from the bench to join her husband on the newly carpeted floor. She liked the carpet, too. It had come all the way north from Seria, in Al-Rassan.

Somewhat rashly, in view of all the circumstances, Rodrigo Belmonte elected to ride on alone through the last night in order to arrive home at dawn, ahead of his company, which had travelled with him from Esteren.

He was one of the most formidable fighting men in the peninsula, and the country here was about as safe as any open country was in thinly populated Valledo, which is to say it was not, in fact, particularly safe at all.

Both of the wandering moons the Kindath named as sisters of the god were in the sky, and both were close to full. In the far distance, beyond the ranches and the rising foothills, the faint outline of the mountains of Jalona could be seen. Given bright moonlight and a brilliantly clear sky, Rodrigo would have been easily visible from a long way off as he rode alone over the grazing lands where the horses of Valledo still ran wild.

Of course that meant he should have been able to see trouble coming from equally far off, and his black horse was able to outrun anything on that plain. If anyone was foolish enough to attack him, once they realized who he was.

Someone, therefore, would have had to have been almost insanely reckless, and the Captain uncharacteristically lost in night thoughts, for him to be ambushed by moonlight so near to home.

They waited until his horse was in the middle of the stream—the Carriano—that formed the western boundary of Rancho Belmonte. He was, in fact, almost on his own land.

In late summer the stream ran shallow, not even up to the black horse's withers at the deepest point. They were walking across, not swimming. But when bowmen rose up, like ghosts of the dead, from the reeds at the river's edge, Rodrigo knew that someone had given thought to this. Swift as his mount was, the water was going to slow him for the first few seconds. Against archers that would be enough.

With the first words spoken his thought was confirmed.

"We will shoot the horse, Ser Rodrigo. Do not try to run."

He didn't want them to shoot the horse.

He looked around. A dozen men, all with kerchiefs pulled up and hat brims low to disguise their faces. He couldn't see their mounts. Downstream probably.

"Dismount. In the water." The same man spoke again, his voice muffled behind the kerchief.

"If you know my name you know you are dead if you pursue this folly," Rodrigo said softly. He didn't get off his horse yet, but nor did he let it move.

"Your horse is dead if you remain astride. Get down."

He did so, swinging forward deliberately, where it was shallower. The water was up to his waist.

"Throw your sword on the bank."

He hesitated.

"We will not shoot you, Ser Rodrigo. We will kill the horse. Throw your sword."

"There are close to one hundred and fifty men behind me," Rodrigo said levelly, but he was removing his sword belt as he spoke.

"They are half a night's ride behind you."

The speaker seemed remarkably well informed. Rodrigo tossed his sword and belt into the grass, carefully clear of the stream. He marked where they landed, but then someone moved to pick them up, so it didn't matter.

"Now walk. Towards us. Leave the horse where he is. Someone will take him."

"He won't take kindly to another hand," Rodrigo warned.

"That is our difficulty, then," the spokesman said. "We are accustomed to dealing with horses. Come."

He went, sloshing out of the stream and through the reeds to the grass. They took him, insultingly, further east onto his own lands. There was no one about, however, not at the very perimeter of the estate, and not in the middle of the night. They led him for several hundred paces, bows levelled constantly, though at the horse not at him. Someone was clever here.

They came to one of the range huts. Like all the huts it was small, unfurnished, no more than a primitive shelter for the herders from rainstorms or the snows that sometimes came in winter.

Someone lit a torch. They pushed him inside. Six of them came with him, faces hidden, not speaking save for the leader. They took both his knives: the one in his belt and the one in his boot. They bound his hands in front of him, and then someone hammered a stake into the packed earth floor of the hut and they forced him to lie down and pulled his bound hands up over his head and looped the thongs through the stake. They pulled off his boots and tied his ankles together the same way. Another stake was driven and the cord that bound his feet was looped across this. He was unable to move, hands high over his head, legs bound together and pinned to the earth.

"What do you think will happen," Rodrigo said, breaking the silence, "when my company comes to this ranch tomorrow and learns I have not arrived?"

The leader, standing by the doorway watching all that was being done, merely shook his head. Then he gestured to the others. The long torch was planted in the ground and they left him there in the hut, trussed like a sacrifice.

He heard footsteps receding, then the sound of horses coming up and then being ridden away. Pinned helplessly to the earth on his own land, Rodrigo Belmonte lay in silence for a few moments, listening to the horsemen riding off. And then, helplessly, but in an entirely different sense, he began to laugh. It was difficult to catch his breath with his hands pulled up so high; he whooped, he gasped, tears streamed from his eyes.

"The god burn you, Rodrigo!" said his wife, storming into the hut. "How did you know?"

He went on laughing. He couldn't stop. Miranda carried, of all things, an arrow in one hand. She was dressed in black, in the mannish clothing that was her custom on the ranch. She glared at him in fury as he howled. Then she stepped closer and stabbed him in the thigh with her arrow.

"Ouch!" exclaimed the Captain of Valledo. He looked down and saw blood welling through the rip in his trousers.

"I hate when you laugh at me," she said. "Now, how did you know? Tell me, or I'll draw blood again."

"I have no doubt," Rodrigo said, struggling to regain his self-control. He had not seen her in almost half a year. She looked unfairly magnificent. She was also, quite evidently, in a substantial rage. He concentrated, for his own safety, on her question.

"The boys did well, actually. A few things. Corrado heard other horses as we came up to the stream. I didn't, their mounts were left far enough away to avoid that, but a war-horse can be trained to give warning."

"What else?"

"Two men let their shadows show in the water. With doubled moonlight one has to be careful."

"Anything else?" Her voice had grown even colder.

He considered it, and decided that two things were enough. He was still trussed up, and she still had an arrow. The other matters could wait.

"Nothing, Miranda. I told you, they did very well."

She stabbed him again, hard, in the other leg.

"Jad's light!" he gasped. "Miranda, will you—

"Tell truth. What else?"

He drew a breath. "I recognized the whicker of Fernan's horse when they brought him up outside. They knew too well where my boot knife was. They were too gentle when they tied me. And this whole affair was too precisely located along the stream to be an improvised ambush. It had to be Diego seeing me and knowing which way I was coming. Is that enough, Miranda? May I get up now? May I kiss you?"

"Yes, no, and possibly later," said his wife. "Have you any idea how angry I am, Rodrigo?"

Bound and bleeding on the earth, Rodrigo Belmonte was able to say, quite truthfully, "Some idea, yes."

His expression must have been diverting, because his wife, for the first time, showed an indication of being amused.

She suppressed it quickly. "Armed men came for us, you uncaring bastard. You left me with children and range hands thirty years past their usefulness."

"That isn't just," he said. "I'm truly sorry you were frightened. You know I am. I didn't think even Garcia de Rada would do anything so stupid as an attack here, and I did think you and the boys were equal to whatever might come. I told you that."

"I told you that," she mimicked. "How thoughtful of you."

"If the boys are going to follow me," he said levelly, "they will have to learn to handle matters of this sort, Miranda. You know it. They'll be marked as my sons the minute they join a company—mine or anyone else's. They'll be pushed, and challenged. I can't do anything about that except help make them equal to those challenges when they come. Unless you want them both to take vows and join the clerics?"

"Twenty-four horsemen attacked us, Rodrigo. What if Diego hadn't seen them?"

He said nothing. The truth was, he'd been having nightmares about that since word of the raid had come to them in Esteren. He didn't want to say it, but there must have been more in his expression than he thought, because Miranda abruptly tossed her arrow aside and knelt on the earth beside him.

"I see," she said quietly. "You were frightened, too. All right. Half a mistake, half testing the boys. I can live with that."

"I'm not sure if I can," he said, after a moment. "If anything had happened ... "

"That's why I shot him. I know you wouldn't have done it. I know it wasn't very honorable, but a man who would do what he did ... He wouldn't have stopped, Rodrigo. He would have come back. Better I killed him than that you had to, after he'd done something to us."

He nodded his head. It wasn't easy, bound as he was. She made no movement to release him.

"I'm sorry you had to kill someone."

She shrugged. "Given who it was, it was easier than I would have thought. The boys had to kill men, too."

"In the world they are growing into, that was bound to happen."

"I would have preferred it not be so soon, Rodrigo."

He said nothing. She settled back a little, looking at him, still making no move to untie his bonds.

"The king called you a frail woman."

She smiled at that. "You didn't disagree?"

"I did, actually. I asked them to pray for me because I had to go home and tell you what has happened."

"We heard. You sent the messenger so I'd have time to calm down, I suppose."

His mouth crooked. "It doesn't seem to have worked very well. Untie me, Miranda. I'm stiff and both my legs are bleeding."

She made no movement. "Two years' exile? It could have been worse, I suppose. Where will you go?"

"Is this the way to discuss such matters?"

"It will do well enough. Where will you go, Rodrigo?"

He sighed. "Not Jalona, obviously, and I still wouldn't be welcome in Ruenda. I could take the company out of the peninsula to Ferrieres or Batiara but I won't. Things might be starting to happen here, and I don't want us to be too far away. South, then. Al-Rassan again."

"Where?" She was concentrating. There seemed to be a rock under the small of his back.

"Ragosa, I think. King Badir can use us. He's hard-pressed between Cartada and Jalona and outlaws raiding from the south. There's money to be made."

"Isn't Ragosa where your doctor went?"

He blinked. "Good for you. She isn't my doctor, but yes, it is where she went. I still want to try to enlist her."

"I'm sure. She's very pretty, didn't you say?"

"I said nothing remotely resembling such a thing. Am I a complete idiot?"

"Yes. Is she?"

"What?"

"Is she pretty?"

Rodrigo drew another careful breath, not easy given his position. "Miranda, I am married to the most beautiful woman I know. I am not a man to fairly judge such things in others. She's comely enough. Blue eyes, rare for a Kindath."

"I see. You noticed them?"

"Miranda."

"Well, you did." Her expression was deceptively mild. He had learned to mistrust that expression. The rock under his back seemed, improbably, to have grown larger.

"I am trained to notice things, Miranda. About men and women. If I had been better trained fifteen years ago I would have noticed you were a cruel and ungenerous woman."

"Perhaps," she said placidly. "Too late now. Tell me, what do I always say when you go away?"

"Oh, Jad! Don't start again. I know what you always—

"Say it. Or I'll find my arrow again. I promised myself I'd put an arrow in you the day I shot Garcia de Rada. Two pinpricks hardly count."

"Yes they do," he said. "And those weren't pinpricks." He stopped at what he read in her expression, then said quietly, "I know what you tell me. That if I bed another woman you'll either bed another man or kill me."

She was smiling, as if encouraging a child's display of memory. "Good. And since I don't want to bed another man ... ?" she prompted.

Rodrigo sighed. "You'll kill me. Miranda, I know this. Will you let me up?"

She seemed to be thinking about it at least, which was a positive development.

"No," she said, at length. "Not yet. I think I like you this way."

"What does that mean?" he asked, alarmed.

But she had shifted forward from where she was, beside him on her knees. She looked appraisingly down at him a moment, then calmly tore open his shirt. His eyes widened. Her hands seemed to be busy with the points and drawstrings of his trousers. It became difficult to breathe.

"Miranda," he said, "there's a rock under my back."

"Oh well," she murmured with exaggerated solicitude, "we can't have that, can we?" But she did reach under to remove what turned out to be a laughably small stone.

"Untie me, love. We'll do better if I'm free."

"No, we won't," said his joy, his torment, his wife, the fierce bright light of his days. "We'll do very well with you exactly as you are."

She had finished with his garments. She began removing her own.

"See what I mean?" she said, smiling down at his sex. As she spoke, she slipped off her black tunic. She was wearing nothing beneath. Her small breasts were smooth and firm in the torchlight.

"You see?" she said again. He did, of course.

Eventually he closed his eyes, but not before an interval had passed during which a number of movements on her part took place, bringing him to a point where he couldn't have judged the passage of time, or anything else for that matter.

The torch had burned out by then, he knew that much. There was nothing to see. Only to feel. Mouth and fingers. Her teeth, in unexpected places. The close, perfect shelter of her sex after so long.

"Shall I let you go?" she asked eventually, a breath in his ear.

"Never," said Rodrigo, eyes still closed.

Still later, the white moon, descending, slanted through a wide chink in the wall boards and a beam of light fell upon them both. He lay with Miranda upon him, her head on his chest, her dark hair loose, cloaking them both. He felt the rise and fall of her breathing, and drew in the scent and the feel of her—intoxicating as unmixed wine.

"Oh, well," she murmured, as if continuing a dialogue. "I suppose we could use a good doctor."

"I certainly could," he said, with feeling.

That made her laugh. At some point, though it was hard to mark the change, the laughter turned to tears. He could feel them falling on his chest.

"Two years is a long time," she said. "Rodrigo, am I being unfair to you?"

"I don't expect to be two years without you," he said. "One way or another."

She said nothing. Her tears fell in silence. He hesitated, then finally brought down his arms—he had worked free of the bonds in the first moments after being tied—and wrapped them around her.

"Oh, burn you, Rodrigo," she whispered, when she realized what he'd done, but she didn't say it severely this time. A moment later, she murmured, dealing with the hardest sorrow of time passing, "They are so young."

He stroked her hair, down and down her back.

"I know," he whispered gently. "I know, my love."

He had killed his own first man when he was twelve. He didn't tell her that. Not now.

"Are they still in the hut?" Fernan asked.

"Uh-huh," said Diego.

"What do you think they're doing?"

"Now, now," said Ibero the cleric hastily. "That isn't a proper question!"

"I couldn't answer it, anyhow," said Diego, laughing. "Ibero, you look genuinely formidable, by the way."

Their longtime cleric's expression was uncertain for a moment, then guardedly pleased. He was indeed remarkably altered: his face daubed with mud under a black hat, garbed like an outlaw, with inserts in new riding boots to make him taller.

Fernan had made Ibero practice speaking in deep tones and walk around in those boots for days, to get used to the speech and the movement. Their cleric and tutor had been, improbably, the leader of the band that captured Rodrigo. The boys had remained out of sight, downriver with the horses. The other outlaws had been ranch hands, disguised as Ibero had been, under orders not to speak a word. They had gone back to the compound already. Now the three of them, two boys and a holy man, sat together on the dark grass under two moons and the stars of the summer night.

"You really think we deceived him?" the cleric asked.

"What? Papa? Don't be silly," said Fernan, with an amused glance.

"He'll have figured it out from at least half a dozen things we missed," said Diego happily. The boys smiled at each other.

The cleric's face fell. "He will have known us? Then what was the point of the deception?"

"He'll tell us the half a dozen things. We'll know better next time," Fernan explained.

"Besides," said Diego, "Mother wanted to stab him with an arrow."

"Ah," said the cleric. "That's right. I forgot." He had been with this family a long time.

They decided to ride back to the ranch house. There was no telling how long Rodrigo and Miranda would remain in that hut. On the way back Fernan began, predictably, to sing. He had an atrocious voice, normally cause for decisive quelling, but neither of the others complained that night. Under the two moons the huge darkness was eased and made welcoming. They could see the mountains far in the distance and the wide stretch of the plain to north and south and rolling west behind them and then, a little later, they caught sight of the torches left burning on the wall around the compound, to bring them all home from the night.