Kyaren decided not to try to be humorous.
I got boring, and so he didn't bring me with him when he transferred over to be head of Employment. And he didn't notify me when he moved to better rooms. But he didn't take away my job. He was kind enough to let me keep my job.
And Josif was crying and suddenly Kyaren understood something that nobody had ever bothered to explain to her in all the explanations of homosexuality that she had heard. That when Bant left it was the end of the world for Josif, because when he attached to somebody he didn't know how to let go.
Yet Kyaren was unsure how to react. Josif was, after all, nearly a stranger. Why had he poured out his heart to her tonight? What did he expect her to do? If he thought she was going to respond by baring her soul to him, he was wrong-Kyaren kept all her memories hidden. She didn't want to start talking about her childhood in the Songhouse. What could she say? I was miserable for years because I simply didn't have the ability to measure up to the Songhouse's minimum standards? She didn't want pity because of her childhood inabilities. She wanted respect because of her current competence.
Respect didn't enter into this situation, with the man crying softly, his face pressed into his knees as he sat on the floor leaning against the bed. She could think of only one reason for his emotional outpouring. He obviously didn't want to seduce her; therefore, he could only be trying for friendship. She knew how painful her isolation had been. If his had been half so bad, no wonder he was grasping at the first person who showed any sign of liking him.
For that matter, she wondered, why don't I feel any desire to take hold of his offer of friendship?
Because she didn't quite trust him, she realized. She was instantly ashamed of her suspicions. She knelt and then sat beside him, put an arm over his shoulders, tried to comfort him.
Fifteen minutes later he started undressing her. She looked at him in surprise. I thought-- she said, and he interrupted.
Statistics, he said. Trends. I'm sixty-two percent attracted to men, thirty-one percent attracted to women, and seven percent attracted to sheep. And one hundred percent attracted to you.
She had been right to mistrust him, the cynical, beaten part of her mind said sneeringly. It had all been a line.
But she clung to the line and let it draw her in. Because there was another part of her that hadn't had much play lately: she needed his gentle hands and quiet tears, his lies and his affection. And so she pretended to believe that he really did need her even as she said, I thought it would come to this, eventually. She didn't say that she hadn't thought that when it happened she would be longing for it, that it would not be a question of fun but rather a question of need, that this half-man would be able to do in one night what no one had been able to do in her life- win enough of her trust that she was willing, even for a moment, to let herself want him.
So she comforted him that night, and, strangely enough, she was also comforted, though she had said nothing to him of her loneliness, had told him nothing of her dreams. As she ran her hands over his smooth skin, she remembered the harsh cold stone of the Songhouse and could not think why the one should have reminded her of the other.
2
I will tour the empire next year, Riktors announced at dinner, and the two hundred prefects gathered at the tables cheered and clapped. It struck Ansset, from his place beside Riktors at the table, that the outburst was largely sincere, an unusual event in the palace. Ansset smiled at Riktors. They mean it, he said, for Riktors's ears only. Riktors's eyes crinkled a little, enough of a sign that he had heard, had understood. And then the tumult died and Riktors said, Not only will I tour, and visit at least one world in every prefecture, but also I will bring my Songbird with me, so that all the empire can hear him sing!
And the cheers were even louder, the applause even more sincere. Riktors looked at Ansset and laughed in delight-the boy looked completely surprised, and Riktors loved to surprise him. It wasn't easy to do.
But when the room was quiet again, Ansset said, softly, But I won't be here next year.
Enough people heard him that a whisper began along the head table. Riktors tried to keep his expression bland. He knew immediately what the boy meant. It was something that Riktors had forgotten without forgetting. He knew that Ansset was nearly fifteen years old, that the contract with the Songhouse was nearly up. But he had not let himself think of it, had not let himself plan for a future without Ansset beside him.
Riktors looked at Ansset and patted his hand. We'll talk about it later, Riktors said. But Ansset looked worried. He spoke louder this time.
Riktors, the boy said, I'm nearly fifteen. My contract expires in a month.
Some of the prefects in the audience moaned; most, however, realized that what was being said at the head table was not according to plan. That Ansset was doing what no one dared to do-reminding the emperor of something the emperor did not want to know. They kept their silence.
Contracts can be renewed, Riktors said, trying to sound jovial and hoping to be able to change the subject immediately. He did not know how to react to Ansset's insistence. Why was the boy pushing the matter?
Whatever the reason, he was still determined to push.
Not mine, said Ansset. In two months I get to go home.
And now everyone in the hall was silent. Riktors sat still, but his hands trembled on the edge of the table. For a moment he refused to understand what Ansset was saying; but Riktors did not become emperor by indulging his need to lie to himself. Go home, the boy had said. His choice of words had to be deliberate-in public Ansset had no inadvertent words. Get to go home, not have to go home, he had said. And suddenly the last few years were all undone; Riktors felt them unwinding inside him, unraveling, all the fabric turning into meaningless threads that he could not put together however much he tried.
There were countless days of conversation, the songs Ansset had sung to him, walks along the river. They had romped together like brothers, Riktors forgetting all his dignity, and Ansset forgetting-or so Riktors had believed-all the enmity of the past.
Do you love me? Riktors had once asked, opening Himself as, with any other person, he could not have afforded to open himself. And Ansset had sung to him of love. Riktors had taken this to mean yes.
And all the time Ansset was marking time, watching for his fifteenth birthday, for the expiration of his contract, for home.
I should have known better, Riktors told himself bitterly. I should have realized that the boy was Mikal's, would always be Mikal's, would never be mine. He did not forgive, as I thought he had.
Riktors imagined Ansset returning to the Songhouse on Tew; he pictured him embracing Esste, the hard woman who only looked soft when she looked at the Songbird. Riktors pictured her asking, How was it, living with the killer? And he pictured Ansset weeping; no, never weeping, not Ansset. He would remain calm, merely sing to her of the humiliation of singing for Riktors Ashen, emperor, assassin, and pathetic lover of Ansset's songs. Riktors imagined Ansset and Esste laughing together as they talked of the moment when Riktors, weary of the weight of the empire in his mind, had come to Ansset in the night for the healing of his hands, and had wept before the boy sang a note. A weakling, that's what I've been, in front of a boy who never shows an unwitting emotion; he has seen me unprotected, and instead of loving me he has felt only contempt.
It was just a moment that Riktors sat there silently, but in his mind he progressed from surprise to hurt to humiliation and, at last, to fury. He rose to his feet, and there was no hiding the anger on his face. The prefects were alarmed-it is not wise to witness the embarrassment of powerful men, they all knew, and no one was so powerful as Riktors Mikal.