The Salamander
1
Dawn came to Istris over a silver sea. The slim-towered capital, which was also the mistress-port of Karmiss, released a shower of birds on the sky, a shoal of slender fishing skimmers on the water. The dawn bell rang from a cupola high on the Ashara Temple—a custom of Shansar-over-the-ocean.
Kesarh Am Xai, standing at his casement, looked into the sunrise and cursed it.
Hearing him speak, the girl still lying in the great bed murmured, “My lord?”
Kesarh did not glance at her.
“Get up. Get out.”
He stood where he was, naked, his back to her as she obeyed him.
The mixture of his blood showed clearly, the tawny lightness of his skin, the black hair, dark eyes. His looks were arresting, the young face vivid with intelligence and power. Tall, sparely and strongly built, his body also was possessed of a natural and powerful physical grace, elegant even unclothed. In the flesh, his lineage had served him well. In all other ways it had failed him. He was, among the minor princes of Karmiss, one of the least. A stray Shansarian had got him, the more forward of twins, on a lesser princess of the old Karmian royal house, in the frenetic year following the Lowland War. The other twin was a girl. They were not alike, Kesarh and his sister, though they had shared the womb in closest company. Val Nardia was an exquisite white-skinned doll, with light eyes almost the shade of honey. And her hair, as sometimes happened with mixed blood, was the same fabulous scarlet the rising sun now dashed on the bay of Istris.
So, he cursed the dawn, and his sister.
The slut he had taken to bed the previous night was gone. Kesarh turned and began to dress himself, drinking the last cupful of wine from the jug as he did so.
Going outside, he paused, looking at the guard on duty there. Since adolescence Kesarh had thought it wise to have his apartments guarded. This man, however, was leaning on the wall, asleep—even despite the fluttering past of the girl. Kesarh drew his dagger. Catching him suddenly about the throat, the Prince pressed the honed blade into the sentry’s skin. Blood welled and the man came to himself with a startled oath.
“So the assassin would have caught you, and thereafter caught myself.”
“My lord—I’d have woken—”
“Yes. Like this. But the blade through your windpipe.”
Kesarh let him go, and watched the fellow straighten in his unblazoned mail, a hand to his bleeding neck.
“You can choose, soldier,” Kesarh said. “Seek my sergeant and ask him for ten lashes. When you have recovered from them, return to my service. Or else surrender your issue-weapons and the clothes I put on your back and lose yourself in the alleys, or whatever other hole you were dug up from.”
“Yes, my lord.”
The soldier, mouth twisted, bowed. He was Karmian, dark hair and copper skin. There was a lightness to his eyes, but that might be only a Vis heritage. He would choose the lashes, probably.
Kesarh walked on along the corridor, his black mood enhanced yet ornamented by the soldier’s respectful hate striking between his shoulderblades.
His sister’s modest apartments were already busy and vocal. In the antechamber the chests stood piled and ready. The female fussings irritated him and he walked straight through the scurrying and swirling of skirts, the stares of big painted eyes, into her bedchamber.
Val Nardis was standing, as he had stood, before a long window, but facing into the room. The moment she saw him, she froze all over her stillness. He too had stopped dead. From childhood he had been used to seeing her in such silks and velvets as their station allowed, her hair plaited with jewelry, and at her throat invariably their dead mother’s golden torc with its three black Karmian pearls. Now she was dressed for the coming heat of the day in a gown of unbleached linen. Her skin was without cosmetics or gems, and her hair hung loose about her, one long combed flame.
Something checked him, he was not sure what it was.
He indicated, not looking at them, the two women who were in the bedchamber.
“Send them away.”
Val Nardia drew in one deep breath. But she did not have to say anything to the women, they were already in retreat. The door curtain rustled and the door was closed. Beyond, the ante-chamber had turned very quiet.
“Have you come to bid me farewell?” Val Nardia said. Her eyes had fallen and she was pale, a pallor easily discernible through such fair skin. She looked even younger than her youth.
“If you like. Farewell, dearest sister.”
“Don’t,” she said. She swallowed; he saw the movement of her throat. “Don’t upbraid me, Kesarh. This should be a happy day for me, and you should be happy for me.”
“Happy to see you go, to waste your life. Be happy then, you witless mare.”
The lash of anger seemed to release them both. She looked up at him in fear as he came toward her. He stood less than a foot from her, and reached out and grasped her suddenly by the arms. Her eyes filled at once with moisture, perhaps not tears. She looked at him, shaking her head.
“All this for Ashara-Anackire. All this to be buried in Ankabek.”
“I shall be a priestess of the goddess,” she cried out. “Is there something better for me here?”
“I am here.”
“You—” she whispered. Tears or not, the drops ran out of her eyes.
“And it’s because of me that you’re leaving the court.”
“No, Kesarh.”
“Yes, Kesarh. You’re afraid to the roots of your spirit of me, and of yourself when with me. Aren’t you, my little sister?”
They regarded each other. “Let me go,” she said eventually.
“Why? In Lan it’s thought quite proper.”
“Kesarh—”
“Father and daughter, brother and sister. To lie together, to wed, even.” He grinned at her. She watched him it seemed in a horrible fascination. “Let’s fly to Lan and be married, and live in the hills and spill a horde of brats.”
She struggled between his hands, then ceased to struggle. She lowered now not merely her eyes but her head.
“It isn’t that you want me,” she said, “but only that you must have me. Everything you desire you must possess.”
“I’ve little enough. A title that means nothing. A cupboard euphemistically called a room in the lower palace. A strip of land at Xai that yields nothing but rotten gourds and diseases. But if you’d stay, I might wrest something from the rubbish. For both of us.”
“I only want peace.”
“Which is to be had away from me?”
She looked up again and into his eyes.
“Yes.”
“And in a few nights, Zastis will be burning in the sky. What then? You’re not white enough or yellow enough, my half-breed sister, to ignore the Red Moon.”
“There are disciplines practiced in Ankabek, learned from Lowland temple lore—”
“And none of them so effective as a man against you in the sheets. You’ve had Zastis lovers, Val Nardia, if never the one you truly wanted.”
She wrenched away from him at last, and he laughed softly, his face now full of contemptuous dislike.
“No,” she said, “you’ve never been able to commit that wrong, at least.”
“But you think finally I shall force you? Is that why you’re running away?”
“Yes, then, if you must have it. Running from you. Oh, not simply your lusts, your demands. From everything you are. Your corrupt dreams, your plans, your clever brain fermenting into a sewer—”
He caught her by the hair this time and pulled her sharply against him. Her slanders were cut short as he brought his mouth down on hers.
At first she grit her teeth to keep him out, but he had also cut off her breath. Soon her lips parted to gain air. The tingle of Zastis was already apparent to those susceptible. He felt her trembling tension alter, and suddenly her hands were locked across his back. For a lengthy swiftness of moments he swam strongly in the fragrant coolness of her mouth, in the pleasure of her own strength answering his, the narrow hands fierce on him. Then her struggles abruptly began again. She pushed at him, clawed at him, and he stepped away, drunk on her and dazzled.