The Three Lands Omnibus Part 57

Peter followed the direction of my gaze. "Carle gave it to me the night you and I first talked a one of the few times he has been able to unbend far enough to treat me as something other than his master. I had actually sneaked out of my chamber to go see him, something I'd never done before. Well, I was disappointed in what he had to say, as you know. But I wasn't disappointed in what he was, not since that first evening when he had the courage to defend me to my father."

"You never told me."

"I never told you because I didn't want you to be as envious of him as he is of you."

It was a shock as great as any I had received that night, yet it came, like the others, with a sense of recognition, as though I had always known. I stood there motionless, remembering my talk with Lord Carle that day, and how, even at the moment that I confirmed his dark suspicions by betraying the Chara, he still spoke to me in the words of a defeated soldier. "Why does he envy me?" I asked.

"Because you can treat me as your equal, and he cannot." Peter touched the brooch lightly. "Do you remember how, on that first night, we talked of slave-masks? I fear that Carle will never be able to remove the mask of obedience he has forced himself to wear."

I felt a breeze brush my face as though my own slave-mask had been, if not removed, turned into something I could bear wearing. "Perhaps," I said. "But perhaps Lord Carle can transform his slave-mask into a G.o.d-mask. I'll do my part by apologizing to him for my behavior toward him."

"He doesn't deserve an apology," said Peter. "Not after the way he treated you."

"I still feel it's something I should do. Didn't your father say once that you must use the Heart of Mercy on those you hate?"

Peter raised his eyebrows. "And the Jackal demands sacrifices from his servants. Well, as you have said, the ways of the G.o.ds are mysterious. Besides" a he gave a quick grin a "to see you apologize to Carle would almost be worth all I have suffered this past night." And the Chara raised his dagger to me in a salute before leaving the room.

But I remained where I was for some time, thinking of the Unknowable G.o.d and of his fire that brings both pain and mercy.

When I returned to the sanctuary, I found John sitting where I had seen him fifteen years before, on the day that we were parted. The mask dangled from his fingers. As I sat down opposite him, he said quietly, "I'm glad you're here a I was about to leave. The Jackal must make his final night-prowl to bring the good news to his thieves ... and to help the Chara bring the governor to justice."

"I was with Peter," I said. "He has forgiven me, and he wishes to marry Ursula."

"I saw Ursula, and she told me both pieces of news. Did you give your consent?"

"Naturally. Though he ought to have asked you. You were the one who raised her."

John smiled and leaned back easily against the window jamb. "I hope their marriage will be good for them. I know that it will be good for our lands." He continued to smile, but something in his eyes made me listen to his words carefully. He said, "Ursula told me that she and the Chara and you are going home soon. If the peace holds, I know that the Chara will be unable to visit here again. Do you think that you ever will?"

I looked toward the city, still peaceful, which would now remain peaceful under the Jackal's rule. Further down the mountainside was the priests' house, where my sister was born and John had sought his G.o.d. Below that was the cave where I had first seen Peter, where John and I had become blood brothers, and where, unperceived to me, the Unknowable G.o.d had placed me under his care.

"John," I said, "do you think that, amidst your duties as the Jackal, you might have time to help me change the G.o.ds' house into a house for us?"

John stayed wordless for a while. Then he said, "I doubt I will be able to spare the time." I looked back at him, and he added, "But the G.o.d will no doubt understand if I neglect somewhat my duties toward the land for love of my blood brother. I made a blood vow once for peace, and you have shown me the way to that peace."

I said nothing more; the peace in my heart could find no words.

=== Re-creation === RE-CREATION.

"Well," said Peter uncertainly, "it looks a bit like a Balance of Judgment."

He glanced over at his new slave-servant to see whether he agreed. Andrew was kneeling on the floor, carefully rolling bits of clay and attaching clay crossbars to them so that they held a vague resemblance to the Sword of Vengeance.

For a moment, Peter thought Andrew would not reply. It was becoming increasingly hard to tell which comments the other boy would reply to. If asked a direct question, Andrew would of course respond; that was part of his training. But slaves were also trained not to speak to free-men unless spoken to, and Peter had not yet figured out a way to convey that he wanted to hold ordinary conversations with his slave.

Could any conversation be ordinary, when the other person had no choice but to speak if bidden to?

Andrew said, without looking up, "I suppose that we'd need an Arpes.h.i.+an to tell us."

Peter laughed. "And I don't know any Arpes.h.i.+ans. Do you?"

"A couple. They were young children when your grandfather, the Chara Anthony, suppressed the first rebellion in the dominion of Arpesh."

Peter started to make some light-hearted remark about Andrew being well-versed in Emorian history; then he bit his lip. No doubt all of the inhabitants of the palace slave-quarters were well-versed in the parts of Emorian history that related to wars in which the Emorians had taken slaves. Andrew could almost certainly give a detailed account of the Border Wars between Emor and Koretia.

To cover his chagrin, Peter said, "The Balance is hard enough to make." He gave another doubtful look at the object in his hand, made up of sc.r.a.p bits of metal joined together by sticky sap. "I don't know how we'll manage to make the Book."

"You needn't worry about that." Andrew reached over to gather a bit of clay, and as he did so, his back came into sight. He was wearing a slave's tunic, of course, which meant his back was bare ... except for the bandages there. "I know how to make books."

"You do?" Peter asked, surprised. He had turned his eyes away; he still could not stand to look at Andrew's back, even though the bandages hid what Lord Carle had done to him, barely a week before.

If Peter had been beaten nearly to death, he thought he would have spent the next six months moaning in his bed. Instead, Andrew seemed determined to rise from his sickbed. Peter wondered whether Andrew believed that he would be sold back to Lord Carle if he did not immediately show his worth to his new master.

Peter would have as soon impaled himself on the Sword of Judgment as give Andrew back to the master who had ordered an eleven-year-old boy to be beaten so harshly. Lord Carle had meant well, no doubt, but Peter still could not imagine why the council lord had found it necessary to go to such measures. As far as Peter could tell, Andrew was an extremely obedient servant.

Perhaps too much so. Peter looked down once more at the pathetic little object in his hand that purported to be the Balance of Judgment. Judgment weighing vengeance and mercy.

"We've forgotten about the Heart of Mercy," he said suddenly.

"I know how to make that too," Andrew replied, inspecting the tip of the clay sword in his hand.

"You're a wonder," Peter said, setting the lopsided Balance aside and rolling over onto his stomach. They were in his chamber, of course, which meant that the only places to sit were some stiff-backed chairs, the bed, and the floor. Andrew seemed to prefer the floor, though Peter had invited him onto the bed each day since the younger boy became his slave. Peter supposed this was due to some Koretian custom; he resolved inwardly to ask Andrew about that. After all, Peter's ostensible reason for having Andrew as his slave was to familiarize himself with his empire's southern dominion of Koretia. Peter's father a who was legally Andrew's owner a had said that mastering Andrew would help Peter learn how to rule his subjects.

"How did you learn to make crafts?" he asked Andrew.

"From a friend."

Peter waited, but no further details emerged. Finally Peter said, "Was he a craftsman?"

"He was a boy. But he lived with the priests, and they trained him at artisan work, in case he should need such work when he grew up and-" Andrew shut his lips tightly. He bowed his head, as though concentrating all his thoughts on the clay he was flattening with his fingers.

Peter felt then that he deserved the beating Andrew had received. A friend. A boy whom Andrew had known in the Koretian capital. Probably the boy had been enslaved during the final battle there, if not killed outright. And Andrew had been forced to speak of him.

To Peter, Chara To Be, son of the ruler who had conquered Andrew's native land.

Peter said the first thing he could think of. "Did you make New Year ornaments in Koretia?"

"No." Andrew looked aside to the blades he had created. "In Koretia, we don't celebrate the giving of the Chara's law."

Peter stopped himself just in time from saying that they did now, in the three years since Koretia became a dominion of the Empire of Emor. Instead he replied, "But you have the same calendar as we do. Your New Year begins when ours does, just after midwinter. Don't you celebrate the New Year in any way?"

"Of course." Andrew carefully ordered the blades on the floor. "We celebrate the creation of the G.o.ds' law."

"Oh?" Peter wriggled forward on his belly in order to see Andrew better. The window shutters were closed, since the first snow of the season had arrived overnight. A hearth-fire burned cheerfully in the corner of the room, sending off the spicy smell of sap. Candles, scented with wall-vine juice, burned on the mantelpiece and on the small tables scattered throughout the chamber. Peter had placed a lantern close to the bed where he worked, and another lantern next to Andrew. He supposed that he really should have ordered Andrew to move the lanterns, but Andrew's hands had been full at the time with the materials they needed in order to make their New Year crafts, and it had seemed easier to Peter to move the lanterns himself.

Peter sometimes wondered whether he would ever be a proper n.o.ble-boy. It was not that he minded having servants. Different people had to be trained to do different types of work; he accepted that. But at age fourteen, he was just as likely as he had been as a small boy to jump up and help an overburdened servant who was carrying too many objects. His father's patience was close to reaching its limits, he knew. Peter just did not seem to be able to manage the trick of acting in the formal manner of the Chara's heir.

He emitted a little sigh, which Andrew seemed not to notice, for the slave spoke suddenly. He had been staring, all this while, at the shuttered windows, and his eye remained on them as he said, "We bring the outdoors indoors."

Peter looked at him blankly a moment before he retraced their conversation. "Flowers, you mean?"

"And leaves. Leaves and twigs and moss and vines and nuts and bark and berries and earth. We place them in a basket and make a little landscape out of them, using twigs as trees and moss as shrubs. We're creating a tiny Koretia, because the G.o.ds created Koretia on the day they gave us their law. Then we place the creation baskets on a table and sing songs. We throw nuts into the fire and make wishes, and then we have our feast."

"You feast on blackroot nuts?" said Peter, sc.r.a.ping his memory for long-ago lessons about the food that commoner Koretians ate.

"Oh, more than that on New Year. We eat meat on that day. My father used to go hunting-" Andrew stopped abruptly, his hand freezing upon the clay blade he was stroking. After a moment, he took his hand away.

"Yes?" prompted Peter. He was practically hanging off the bed now in his eagerness to hear the tale. Andrew was rarely so loquacious.

Andrew darted him a brief look that Peter could not read, then dropped his gaze. "That was before I was born. We never could afford meat when I was growing up. I went hunting one New Year on Capital Mountain with Joh- With another boy. But it started raining heavily, so I came home empty-handed."

Peter thought about this as the wind blew against the shutters, causing the candles to flicker. He knew that a vast feast awaited him tomorrow. His father would take him to the quarters of the Great Council; the council, appropriately enough, was in charge of the festivities on the day celebrating the giving of the law. He would eat suckling pig, roast crane with chicken's claws, hare boiled in raisin wine, baked pheasant, stuffed dormice, hazelnut custard, and (at Peter's request, which the High Lord had indulged for his own, devious reasons) honey cakes.

He wondered suddenly what Andrew would eat. "Do you have New Year celebrations in the slave-quarters?" he asked.

Andrew flicked another of his brief looks at Peter. "I think so."

"You think so? Don't you know?"

"I've never been invited to them."

Peter rested his chin onto the backs of his hands, watching as Andrew painstakingly rolled the remaining clay into a ball. Peter had gathered, from something Lord Carle's free-servant had said, that Andrew was not popular with the other slaves, but Peter had not realized that Andrew's isolation extended as far as ostracism. It seemed intolerable that Andrew should be exiled from his native land, only to find himself exiled from his fellow slaves as well.

"Well, then," said Peter, "we'll have our feast here."

Andrew's gaze flew up and stayed up, fastened upon Peter's face. Peter felt that strange mixture of joy and thrill he always felt when Andrew looked straight at him. It was forbidden for slaves to look directly at free-men. That Andrew was willing to break his training a was willing to trust Peter not to punish him a after he had been so badly punished by his last master ...

Now fully immersed in the excitement of the moment, Peter said, "We'll do everything. We'll bring the outdoors indoors. We'll make baskets full of Koretia, and we'll toss nuts into the fire, and we'll sing, and we'll have a feast. We'll have a better celebration than they're having in the slave-quarters or the Great Council."

Andrew was breathing deeply now, his gaze still fastened on Peter. After a while he said, "I don't want to sing."

"All right," said Peter, puzzled but agreeable, "we don't have to sing. But the rest ..."

He looked at the shuttered windows, and his spirits faded. He could not leave this room without his father's permission. And he could not imagine going to his father and saying, "Please let me go gather moss so that my slave can have a proper New Year for once."

But Andrew, it seemed, had already jumped ahead in his thoughts. He pulled himself up into a crouch, saying, "I'll get the materials. I can take them from the inner garden. With your permission," he added belatedly.

"And I'll get the basket and the meat." Peter had no idea how one obtained a basket in the palace, but no doubt his father's free-servant would know. And the meat could be easily obtained; Peter ate meat daily.

Andrew was already on his feet, wiping off the seat of his winter breeches with his hand, and reaching down to tuck his breeches into his winter boots. He had left the floor all a-mess with clay and tiny blades, which Peter supposed he ought to reprimand the slave for. But not for all the law books in the empire would he have destroyed Andrew's apparent eagerness to prepare their private festivities.

Andrew turned toward the door. He ought to have bowed before leaving. He ought to have bowed and asked permission to depart and awaited Peter's word of permission. "Andrew!" cried Peter.

Andrew stopped dead, as though a blade had plunged into his back. He turned. Peter caught a brief glimpse of the fierce, dark expression in his eyes before the slave lowered them. "Lord Peter?" he said formally; his voice was toneless.

"Here." Rising, Peter s.n.a.t.c.hed what he needed off the hook next to his bed. He offered it to Andrew, who looked up. His eyes were now startled. "It's cold outside," Peter said softly.

Andrew reached out slowly, as though in a dream, and took Peter's cloak in his hand. For a moment, it seemed as though he would speak. Then he lowered his eyes, bowed, and left the chamber silently.

Meat, it turned out, was not so easy to obtain that day as Peter had antic.i.p.ated.

His father's free-servant, upon being consulted, had coldly informed Peter that the cooking servants were busy preparing meals for the following day. But they would, of course, stop their work at once if the Chara's son asked them to... . Drogo's voice grew still colder.

"No, of course not," Peter said hastily as the free-servant refilled his water pitcher. "I will wait for supper. What is the dish today?" He could, he supposed, divide his meal with Andrew; he had done that more than once when Andrew was still bedridden from his beating.

"Date salad," said Drogo, snuffing out Peter's hopes. "Unless, of course, the Chara's son would prefer another dish? In between my duties to the Chara, I would be glad to make a special effort to-"

"No, not at all." Peter turned away before Drogo should give another of his self-sacrificial speeches. If it were Andrew, Peter could have asked the favor of him, but Andrew only had access to the slaves' kitchen, and slaves were not permitted meat except on feast-days. By tomorrow, it would be too late; Peter would be busy with his own duties as Chara To Be.

For a while after Drogo left, Peter sat on his bed, contemplating the situation. The only other person he could think to consult was his father, but his father had been busy talking all afternoon to Lord Carle, and now the two men had left together to visit the Map Room. Peter had hoped that Lord Carle would stop by to give his greetings, but the council lord had evidently been too busy for that. The council lord would not even be attending the New Year festivities of the Great Council tomorrow, the Chara had told Peter; Lord Carle was going to his country home for several days of rest before he resumed his onerous duties.

Peter frowned as he stared at his law books, which he had abandoned on the writing table when Andrew had brought in the sc.r.a.ps of metal and clay and asked, in his abrupt manner, whether Peter wanted to make New Year ornaments. Peter was used to free-servants giving him New Year gifts they bought with their small savings: winter flowers and dried tree-fruit and once, from Lord Carle's free-servant, an expensive bag of Daxion nuts, which Peter suspected had been paid for by Lord Carle himself. Peter was not used to a servant bringing him materials with which he was expected to make ornaments of his own, in the manner of the most lowly slave in the palace.

It was the best gift he had ever received in his life. It had taken all his effort to remember that Andrew's back was still healing from his beating; otherwise, Peter would have embraced him on the spot.

No doubt Peter would receive a reprimand from his father tomorrow or the day after, for neglecting his studies today. What worried Peter more was that he had no gift to give Andrew.

What could you give a slave who, by law, could own nothing? Traditionally, the Chara's gift to the palace servants at New Year was a day off from work, for the festivity celebrations were handled by specially hired free-servants. The palace servants also received permission to organize their own celebrations, using previously authorized food from the kitchens.

That was the Chara's gift, but the Chara's son had nothing to give his slave. Food, yes, time off from work, yes a but Peter was already giving as much of that to Andrew as he could possibly hope to hide from his father. And whatever he gave would be trifling compared to what Andrew had given him: a chance to act like a normal boy for an entire day.

He fingered the misshapen Balance in his lap. Something he had created with his own hands, without a servant at his elbow, offering to do the work for him. Andrew had not even pa.s.sed him the sap until he asked for it. Peter was as proud of the handcrafted Balance as if it were his first proclamation as Chara.

He stood up, walked over to the hearth, and spent the next few minutes arranging the Balance and the clay blades on the mantelpiece. He had forgotten to ask Andrew how to make the Heart of Mercy, as well as miniature versions of the books in which the Chara's law was scribed. It was of no matter. The Balance and the Sword would do for now. And he had more to antic.i.p.ate.

Grasping the tapestry on the wall in order to pull himself up, he stood upon a chair, opened one of the shutters, and gasped as the cold wind slapped against his face, accompanied by flakes of snow that stung and numbed his cheeks. The windows were near the ceiling, and were narrow in height, in order to prevent intruders from entering, but Peter could see into the inner garden through the murky afternoon light of the snow-laden sky.

The inner garden was a bare lawn, with shrubs and flowerbeds now heavy with snow. It was easy to sight Andrew in his black cloak; he was the only person in the chilly garden, other than the guards at the doorways leading from the garden to the rest of the palace. Andrew was on his knees, sc.r.a.ping away at the snow with his bare hand. Peter realized, with a stab of guilt, that he had sent his servant out to gather moss and twigs in a snowstorm.

There was nothing he could do, though; Andrew was too far away to hear if Peter shouted. Peter closed the shutter, climbed down from the chair, and returned his mind to his half of the tasks.

Meat ... Perhaps Andrew could find a solution to that. The basket was another problem. Drogo had greeted Peter's enquiry by raising his eyebrow and saying that there were no doubt baskets somewhere in the palace "if the Chara's son should wish me to search for them." Peter had resisted an impulse to throw the water pitcher at Drogo. Instead, he now began searching his room, trying to find something that could be used as a basket. There was the water basin, of course, but it was made of silver, and silver came from deep in the mines. He needed something that was made of a material that could be found outdoors. Wood, perhaps? The chairs were made of solid wood, too thick to tear apart, and in any case, he could just imagine what the Chara would say if he found Peter dismembering a valuable chair.

His eye fell on the pieces of paper sitting next to the books on the table, where he had been scribing notes to himself.

It took him until the final trumpet of daylight to finish making the creation basket, partly because it had occurred to him that the basket would be more beautiful if it were decorated. So he had taken up his pen, dipped it in ink, and drawn a decoration that he hoped resembled the swirly vine patterns he had seen on the tunics of visiting lords from Koretia. At the last moment, on impulse, he had added masks on the borders of the paper. He and Andrew had held a conversation about masks just a few days before, at midwinter's eve, when he had happened across Andrew staring out a window that faced south. Peter seemed to recall that masks were connected in some way with the Koretian religion. He had no idea what Koretian masks looked like, so he inked them all in as solid black. Then he set about trying to paste the papers together with sap in such a way that they formed a basket.

He was not very successful. Part of the problem was that he had no blade with which to cut strips of paper. His father had promised that the Chara's heir would begin his lessons in bladeplay as soon as the weather grew warm, which would be not long after Peter's fifteenth birthday. But not until his coming of age at his sixteenth birthday, he knew, would he be permitted to actually own a free-man's blade. Every man in the palace wore a blade on ceremonial occasions, except for the slave-men and, of course, the eunuchs. But the eunuchs were not men at all a rather, they were half man, half woman. Peter avoided them as much as possible, not knowing what to say to such oddly mixed creatures.