Ships from the West

Aria bowed her head. 'I understand.' She still held his fingers in her own and she felt the pressure as he squeezed them, then released her.

'A covered carriage will be waiting for you in the morning, and will convey you to the cathedral where we are to be married. You may bring Haratta and one other maid, but that is all. Are there any questions?' He seemed to think he was briefing a group of soldiers. His voice had become hard and impersonal; the tone of command. Aria and Haratta shook their heads silently.

'Very good. I will see you in the morning then.' He raised Aria's hand to his lips and kissed her knuckle, a dry feather touch. 'Good night, ladies.' Then he turned on his heel and strode away. When the door had closed behind him Aria covered her face with her hands and fought the sudden sobs which threatened to burst free.

The bells woke her. There had been a late spring snowfall a few days before, probably the last of the year, and Aurunga-bar's usual clatter and clamour had been muffled by the white tenderness of the snow. But now all over the city this morning the bells of every surviving Ramusian church were tolling, and chief among them the mournful sonorous pealing of Carcasson's great bronze titans. Heria threw aside the piled coverlets, and shrugging a fur pelisse about her shoul­ders she darted to the window and tugged aside the ornate shutters.

The cold air made her gasp and the whiteness was blinding after the gloom of the room. The sun was still rising and was nothing more than a saffron burning glimpsed through thick ribands of grey cloud. Some kind of emergency? But the people trudging through the streets seemed unafraid. The wains heading to market in great clouds of oxenbreath trundled obliviously, their drovers yawning, muffled figures unpanicked by any news of war or fire or invasion.

A knock on the door, and immediately after her maids entered bearing hot water and towels and her clothes for the day. She closed the shutters without a word and let them undress her; they might have been deaf for all the notice they took of the tolling bells. When she was naked she stepped into the broad, flat-bottomed basin in which the water steamed and they dabbed at her with scented sponges brought up from the jewel-bright depths of the Levangore. They wrapped warm towels about her white limbs and she stepped out of the basin to peruse the garments they had brought for her to choose from.

The Sultan entered the room without fanfare or ceremony, rubbing his ring-bright fingers together. 'Ah! I caught you!'

The maids all went to their knees but Heria remained standing. 'My lord, I am at my ablutions.'

'Ablute away!' Aurungzeb was grinning white out of the huge darkness of his beard. He settled himself on a creaking chair and arranged his robes about his globular paunch. The curved poniard he wore in his sash jutted forth as though it had been planted there. 'It is nothing I have not seen before, I am sure. You are still my wife, after all, and a damned fine figure of a woman. Drop those towels, Ahara; even queens must not stand on their dignity all the time.'

She did as she was told and stood like a white, nude statue while the maids cowered at her feet and Aurungzeb eyed her appreciatively, ignoring or unaware of the blazing hatred in her eyes.

'Splendid, still splendid. You hear the bells? Of course you do. I thought I would be the one to tell you. The union I have long sought is concluded. This morning our daughter weds Corfe of Torunna, and our kingdoms are indissolubly linked for posterity. My grandson shall one day rule Torunna. Ha ha!'

Blood coloured her face. 'This was not to happen so soon. We were to be at the ceremony. I -1 was to give her away. We agreed.'

Aurungzeb flapped a hairy-knuckled hand. 'It proved im­possible in the event - and what is a little ceremony, after all? They have just buried their queen. Corfe wanted a quiet wedding, without fanfare. He is to leave for the war very soon, and had best try and plant a seed in Aria ere he goes.'

Heria snatched a dressing robe from one of the frozen maids, wrapping it about her. Her eyes were blazing but vacant, as if they gazed upon some cruelty only she could see. 'I was to be there,' she repeated in a murmur. ‘I was to see them. I was . . .'

Aurungzeb was becoming irritated. 'Yes yes, we know all that. Matters of state intervened. We cannot have all we wish in this world.' He hauled himself out of the chair and padded over to her. 'Put it out of your mind. The thing is done.' He raised her chin and regarded her face. She stared through him as though he did not exist, and he frowned.

'Queen or no, you are my wife, and you will bend to my will. You think the world will stand still to suit you?' When he released her his fingermarks left red bars on her cheek.

Heria's eyes returned to the room. After a moment, she smiled. 'My Sultan, you are in the right of it as always. What do I know of matters of state? I am only a woman.' Her hand sought his, raised it, and slipped it inside the loose collar of her robe so that he cupped one of her full breasts. Aurungzeb's face changed.

'Sometimes I must be reminded that I am a woman,' Heria said, one eyebrow arching up her forehead. Aurungzeb licked his upper lip, wetting his moustache.

'Leave us,' he growled at the maids. 'The Queen and I desire a private word together.'

The maids rose to their slippered feet and backed out of the room with their heads bowed. When the door had shut behind them Aurungzeb smiled. He reached up and twitched Heria's robe aside. It fell to her waist.

'Ah, still beautiful,' he whispered, and grinned. 'My sweet, you always knew how—'

Her hand, which had been stroking the sash about his volu­minous middle, fastened upon the ivory hilt of the poniard tucked away there. She drew it forth with a flash.

'But you never knew,' she said. And she stabbed him deep, deep in the belly, twisting the blade and slicing open the flesh so that his innards bulged out and blood flooded with them. Aurungzeb sank to his knees with an astonished gasp, trying vainly to press his lacerated flesh together.

'Guards,' but the word came out as little more than a strangled whisper. He fell over on his side in a widening pool of his own blood, his eyes bulging white. His legs twitched and kicked uselessly.

'Why—?'

His Queen looked down on him contemptuously, with the bloody knife still gripped in one small fist. 'My name is Heria

Car-Gwion of the city of Aekir, and my true husband is, and has always been, Corfe Cear-Inaf, one-time officer in the garrison of Aekir, now King of Torunna.' Her eyes bored into Aurungzeb's horrified, dying face. 'Do you understand?'

Ostabar's Sultan gurgled. His horror-filled eyes seemed to dawn with some awful knowledge. One hand left his terrible wound and reached for her like a claw. She stepped back leaving bare footprints in his blood, and watched in silence as his movements grew feebler. He tried again to shout, but blood filled his mouth and came spitting out. She dropped her robe over his contorted face and stood naked, watching him struggle ineffectually under it. At last he was still. Tears streaked her face, but her features were stiff as those of a caryatid.

She blinked, and seemed to become aware of the weapon still clenched in her hand. Her arm was crimson to the elbow. There was a soft, insistent knocking at the door.

She looked around the room through a blaze of tears, and smiled. Then she thrust the keen blade deep into her own breast.

Fifteen

The Royal bedchamber was something of a forbidding place, the vast four-poster dominating it like a fortress. The bed seemed to have been sturdily built to accommodate duties rather than pleasures. Corfe had slept alone in it for fourteen years.

He stood before a fireplace wide enough to roast a side of pork, and warmed his hands unnecessarily at the towering flames. The same room, the same ring on his finger, but soon a different woman to warm the bed. He reached for the wine glass which glinted discreetly on the tall mantel, and drank half its blood-red contents at a gulp. It might have been water for all he tasted.

A quiet ceremony indeed. Only Formio, Comillan and Haratta had been present as witnesses, and Albrec had been brief and to the point, thank God. Aria had removed her veil and hood, for she was a Torunnan now, and she had bowed her head as the Pontiff placed the delicate filigree of a queen's crown upon her raven tresses.

Corfe rubbed his chest absently. There had been an ache there since this morning which he could not account for. It had begun during the wedding ceremony and was like the dull throb of a bruise.