Seer King - The Seer King Part 32

To the right was a wooded park, with hors.e.m.e.n, and on the left smoke rising from the roofs of a small village. The river in front of the house was calm, and there was a small boat on it,

with a liveried man at the sweep and, in the bows, a young girl wearing pink. I attempted a joke.

"The king who built that had avery guilty conscience. Or else some very powerful enemies."

Maran giggled. "Both, actually. But be careful of your words, sirrah. Look closely at the plate."

I did, and winced, once again having spoken before I knew what was going on. The bra.s.s plate read: IRRIGON, SEAT OF THE AGRAMONTE FAMILY. A LOANIt's one thing the idea of how rich someone is, and another seeing the reality. Even though I knew of the Agramontes' vast wealth, and had seen Maran's house here in Nicias, it still was staggering to see a building of this enormity and realize it belonged to one family.

Maran touched the girl in the boat. "That is my mother. The painting was done just after she and my father married. She was only fourteen."

"That was where you grew up?"

"There, mostly, although I spent time at some of our other estates."

I marveled once again, and wondered how many people it took to manage such a monstrosity. "It must have been interesting growing up there. Any family ghosts in particular?"

Maran, in one of those sudden mood changes I was still learning to accept, was instantly very serious.

"Interesting? Maybe that's the word to use among polite company.

"I thought it was mostly h.e.l.l."

She stared at the painting. "Yes," she repeated. "Mostly h.e.l.l."

An hour later, we were finis.h.i.+ng the remains of our picnic in the park that stretched behind the museum.

I'd made another discovery-no one ever thinks of illicit liaisons in the palaces of culture. So we'd sometimes meet in museums, galleries, or concerts. After we were a.s.sured we hadn't been followed, we could go elsewhere to be alone. Even though I was*hardly interested in my surroundings, little by little I was picking up a bit of polish.

We'd made pa.s.sionate love in her carriage on the way to the museum, and I wanted her again, but sensed this was not the time to suggest it. She'd always been reluctant to talk about her family, and after her words in the huge building behind us, I understood why. But I wanted to know more.

She looked at me quizzically after I repacked the basket. "You have been quiet. Are you mad at me?"

"Now why would I be that?" "I don't know. Maybe because of what I said?" "About your home?" She nodded.

"Not mad, my love," I said. "You can do anything, feel anything you want about your family, including having murderous intent. But if you want to tell me more, I'll gladly listen." She hesitated, then began, without preamble. "Everyone seems to think living in a castle is some kind of dream. But it's not. It's cold, and the stone walls echo, and all the rooms have to have fireplaces.

"That's what I remember most. Being cold." Her voice lowered. "Inside and out." She looked away from me, perhaps hoping I'd stop her from going on. But I remained silent.

"I'm the last-born, and my three brothers are all quite a few years older than I am. I guess my parents thought they were through with children, although they never said anything.

"My father... well, he'sthe Agramonte. Very severe, very righteous, always aware of what he's saying to make sure he doesn't present an untoward image to outsiders. He was always kindly to me, but remote, and became nervous if he spent very long with me, and quickly called for one of my nursemaids on the pretext that he was boring me.

"My brothers were, well, brothers. I always wanted to tag along with them, and for a while, when I was a baby, they'd tolerate me. But pretty soon I got older, and they had their own interests, and so they'd go to a lot of trouble to avoid me.

"In some ways, mat didn't matter, because all they like are hunting, and auctions and talking about crops and how the government is incompetent and taxes are too high and all slaves are lazy spoilers." She shrugged. "Typical country lords, in other words. When I turned thirteen, all their friends realized I existed and came flocking around, trying to get into my knickers."

"What about your mother?"

"She died," Maran said shortly. "About three months after I married. I think it was out of pure happiness for the marriage she'd help make for me."

I kept silent, and reluctantly Maran went on.

"She was the daughter of another n.o.ble family, of course. They weren't rich, but they weren't poor. The reason my grandfather wanted her to marry my father was because her family owned a strip of land between two of our estates.

"So that was the dowry she brought to her wedding bed.

"But she was quite happy, having married into the Agramontes. Indeed, she became the social arbiter for the family-who were our equals, our inferiors, our superiors. Fortunately for her, there weren't many of the latter. Like my father, she always worried about our role in society.

"When suitors started calling on me, she would barely greet them before looking them up in one of the peerage books, to make sure they were n.o.ble enough to be able to put their hand up my dress." She made a wry face, "In the country, at first they try to f.u.c.k you, then, if they can't do that, they decide you should become their bride. Then they f.u.c.k your lights out until you're flabby with a dozen children and they get bored and start spending nights in the servants' quarters or in the city with a mistress." She gloomed in silence for a bit.

"That was your introduction to love?"

"Not quite. I'd read romances, and frankly dreamed of the day I'd have swains dancing around me. I just didn't realize what the acceptable ones would be like.

"Maybe I should have run off with the first boy I fell in love with."

*"Thank Irisu you didn't," I said.

"Poor fellow," she said, paying no attention to me. "He was the son of my father's coachman, and I still remember his grin, and his curly hair. He had green eyes, and smelled most mar-velously of horses.

"I was half in love with horses, then," she explained, "sometimes wis.h.i.+ng I was one, and if I couldn't find a centaur, I would settle for him." "What happened?"

"My mother found out about it, and within the day the family was sent away. Later, after I was married, I tried to find out what happened to him... them. All I could learn was they came to Nicias, and that was all."

Maran peered at me. "You don't mind me telling you this? n.o.body but Amiel's ever heard my silly little tale."

"Why should I mind?" I wondered. "Should I be jealous of a schoolgirl infatuation?"

"Why not," she said, her good humor returning for an instant. "I'm jealous of every girlyou've been with."

"Ah, but there weren't any," I said, looking pious. "I was a complete virgin until I met you."

"Right." Maran thought for a moment. "I guess, growing up, I was like some kind of doll. Everybody got to dress me up like they wanted, and show me off here and there, but what I wanted... well, mat didn't matter. My father wanted me to look like this, my mother wanted me to act like that, and n.o.body ever asked what did Mar&i want. Not then, not ever. "I was cold... and I was lonely. I never really had anyone to play with. When I was very little, I could romp with the children of our retainers or slaves, but I found out quickly they always made me queen or commander or whatever in every game we played, and made sure it was a game I wanted to play. Then, when I got older, there was no one, although once a month or so we'd visit some other n.o.ble family, and I'd get a chance to play with their children, if they had any." She looked at me wistfully. "I wish I was more like you."

I'd told her a bit of growing up in Cimabue, and of my love for solitary wanderings in the jungle.

"So I read all I could," she went on, "especially about cities, and dreamed of the day I could come to Nicias. I remember reading a poem once, about a man who came from the black forests, and even though the city had become his home, the coldness of those dark woods would be with him until his dying day. I wondered if that was me."

"I will loudly testify there is nothing cold about you, Countess." At least that elicited a bit of a smile.

"You know," she continued, "I never thought I' d be married when I did."

"What did you want to do?"

"Don't laugh. But at one time I wanted to be a courtesan. I'd be young, and beautiful, and all my n.o.ble lovers would pay for a night with me with a carriage full of gold, and they'd want to leave their nasty wives, but I'd just laugh and dance away."

"It's a good thing you didn't actually do that," I said. "Else you would have found most wh.o.r.es'

customers are fat, old, unbathed, and have, shall we say, unusual tastes."

She stared at me, and her face was hard. Now it was my turn to apologize.

"Never mind," she said. "I just thought of something that... that wasn't very nice. Anyway, if I wasn't going to be a courtesan, I'd be some kind of very intelligent woman, and help philosophers and kings reach mighty decisions.

"That's the real reason for my salons. I guess I'm trying to give something to that poor lonely little girl that doesn't exist anymore." She turned away, but I saw her eyes fill. I reached out for her hand, but she pulled it away from me.

"But then, as I said, I got older, and then the wooing began. There was one boy I liked, who always made me laugh, and I looked forward to his visits. He was n.o.ble enough, but his family didn't have any gold, and so one day he, too, vanished. "One of my brothers told me later his father had been given a goodly sum to keep him from caning again.

X"You see what it was like?"

This time she let me take her hand.

"When I was sixteen the whole thing became a frenzy. There were b.a.l.l.s, riding events, social evenings, and I had never a moment to be alone.

"I might have liked it, if I hadn't known all of this had but one purpose: to see me married to the most suitable man my family could find. Suitable to them.

"That went on for a year, and then my father brought Her-nad home. Lord Lavedan. I thought my mother would expire in joy, finally having someone 'of the proper station' calling on her only daughter. As I said, not much later, she did just that "Somehow everyone, all of these sparkling young men, knew the issue was settled, and instantly found other flames to flit around.

"When my tamer introduced me to him, it was over, and my life was determined for all time."

I waited for her to go on, but she remained silent. Then she looked at me.

"I guess you think this is all s.h.i.+t. Poor little rich girl, and she should maybe have been bom in a hovel and learn what real misery's about."

"No," I said truthfully. "I've known people who were poorer than poor, and were happy. Please, Margn, stop belittling yourself."

She kept staring into my eyes, as if unsure of whether to believe me or not. Suddenly she jumped to her feet.

"Come on, Damastes. I want to go home. I've ruined this day for the both of us."

I protested nothing was ruined, that it was important she tell me these things, but she would have none of it, and so we returned to the carriage and she took me back to the stables where I'd left Lucan. She just pecked my lips when we kissed good-bye, and I desperately wished there was something I could say or do to make her feel better. But there wasn't, and so her carriage rolled away.

As I rode back to the Helms' cantonment, I thought again VS and again of what she'd told me. It was odd, with the exception of her wealth, how similar our childhoods were. But one produced a woman who was, I was learning, desperately unhappy, and the other a man who was quite the opposite.

That night, waiting for tardy sleep, I thought again on the matter. I suddenly recognized one difference: I did what I did out of choice, whereas she was never consulted about anything. Then I thought this happened-happens-to almost all women I've known. Everything they were permitted to do was decided by a man. By a man or, like Maran's mother, someone who delighted in doing men's every bidding.

I wondered how Numantian thinkers could rail on about the injustices done to slaves, or the poor or the benighted hill tribes, and never look across the pillow and see an even greater, omnipresent evil.

I set that out of my mind; if a soldier could barely hope to influence the course of a single skirmish, how could he hope to change what appeared to be immutable custom? Perhaps the only way things could change was if Tenedos's G.o.ddess, Saionji, was given her head and allowed to tumble society until it was entirely different. But that made me shudder-who was to say the G.o.ddess preferred things different?

Then another insight came. The biggest real difference between Maran and myself was that I grew up in a house of love, even though it wasn't spoken aloud that much. I was forever being given a hug by my mother, a loving pinch from one of my sisters, at least when they weren't angry with me, and a smile from my father when he pa.s.sed.

But poor Marn? At no time in her story had I ever heard her use that word, and wondered if she knew what it was.

As I drifted off, a single clear thought came, and I don't think I realized exactly what it actually meant: Perhaps she didn't. But by the G.o.ds, I was going to do all I could to teach her.

We were lying naked in the sun, our horses tied a few yards away. I was slowly rubbing a soothing antiburn balm on the*backs of Mardn's thighs. She purred contentment, and slid her legs apart.

I dipped my finger into the oil, ran it up the center of her b.u.t.tocks, and slid it into her. It met no resistance, but her body jolted, stiffened as if I'd hurt her.

"Don't do that," she said, her voice hard, cold.

I stopped, and said I was very sorry.

"Never mind. Just... just don't do that. I really don't like it."

I apologized again, and began stroking her shoulders.

She lay with her head turned away from me. After a while, she said something very strange.

"The morning after I was married," she said, in a completely toneless voice, "I walked into my dressing room, and saw the face of a stranger."

"I'm not sure I understand."

"I looked like a little girl," she said, almost in a whisper. "A little girl who's gotten lost, and can't figure out why, or what she could do to find herself."

Now began a bad time for Nicias, and other cities in Dara. It was as if Chardin Sher were some sort of wizard, and had cast a curse on us.

The Rule of Ten seemed almost invisible, and the few decrees they handed down had little to do with our problems.

Prices for staples, supposedly regulated, rose and fell like the tide. People began h.o.a.rding, especially the middle cla.s.s who could afford it. There were shortages in oil, rice, b.u.t.ter in the poor sections of the city.

There were many more street speakers, each with a different solution to the woes of the times.

They had to fight for sidewalk room with a new plague: Nicias was inundated with magicians, and it felt as if we were back in Sayana, seeing everything from fortune-tellers to palmists to conjurers to those who would sell you anything from a love-philter to a poison.

Tenedos said this was truly a sign of evil. "Without insulting my own profession, not even these charlatans, when a populace feels change ahead, feels that the very ground under its feet may be quicksand, it seeks out those who claim to have answers." He smiled wryly. "Although perhaps I shouldn't complain, since now the auditoriums I speak in are always packed. I just wish I knew if anybody is actually listening, or if they're jumping from seer to seer like bees crazed on pollen."

I also noted that the temples were full, not only the great shrines to our princ.i.p.al G.o.ds, but also the smaller ones that wors.h.i.+ped their separate aspects or even for lesser G.o.dlets. Aharhel, chief of those aspects and the minor G.o.ds, who can speak to kings, was particularly popular, although I saw processions for everything from Elyot to many-headed animal G.o.ds I'd never heard of before. I even saw two or three parades whose members were loudly chanting Saionji's name.

When I reported this to Tenedos, he nodded in satisfaction. "As I told you, her time is coming round."

There seemed to be more crime, both casual robberies and thefts, but also horribly vile and senseless atrocities, committed not only by the desperate poor, but by some of the city's supposed best citizens.

I imagined Nicias as a beautiful silken garment that a thousand thousand hands were pulling at, and slowly, very slowly, the garment was beginning to rend.

I received a note from Maran, brought by one of her personal servants, asking me to meet her on the morrow at the restaurant we'd begun our affair at. Her note saidImportant, and the word was underlined twice.

Once again, I had to beseech the adjutant to let me have the day off, and he frowned, said something about young captains needing to pay more attention to their duties, but granted my wish.

I wondered what had happened, if Hemad had discovered our affair. I even wondered if she'd become pregnant-our affair had lasted for four months now. I'd tried to take precautions after that first mad night, but she'd refused to allow it.

But it wasn't Maran's problem, but rather her friend's.