The Three Lands Omnibus Part 58

His craftwork looked more like a very fat ship than a basket. It had a pointy bow and a long, flat stern. It looked utterly unseaworthy. Peter put his chin on his fist and contemplated the results. He supposed that, if he had more practice at this sort of thing, he would be better at it, but that did not change the fact that the basket looked ugly.

Not at all a decent present to give to Andrew. Peter sighed.

His head jerked up as he heard a sound in the corridor, but it was only his father, returning from the Map Room. His father paused to speak briefly to the guards outside the Chara's living quarters, and Peter waited, half hopeful and half dreading, to see whether the Chara would stop next door to check on his son. But a moment later came a familiar thud as the door to the Chara's living quarters closed.

Peter sighed again. There were times a many times a when he wished he had not been born as heir to an empire. If he had been any other boy, he could be spending this festal eve playing with children his age, rather than sitting alone in his chamber, feeling guilty because he had not read a law book in three hours. He looked again at the basket and wondered whether he should tear it up before Andrew arrived back.

The decision was taken from him as Andrew slid silently into the chamber. Peter was never quite sure how Andrew managed to get past the guards, who were supposed to challenge anyone entering Peter's quarters, even if only for form's sake. The guards were just a couple of spear-lengths away, guarding his father's quarters next door, so they ought to see anyone who approached Peter's chamber. Yet somehow, Andrew always managed to slip in, unheralded by even a knock.

Now he was holding something under the cloak. He produced it silently: a wooden bucket full of objects. Peter looked at the bucket, feeling his throat ache. A bucket a of course, he should have asked Drogo for a bucket made of wood. Why had he wasted his time making a useless, ugly basket out of paper?

Stepping to the side, in hopes that Andrew would not see the mess on the table, he asked, "How did you manage to find anything out there? Everything is buried under snow."

"In Emor, anything worth getting is buried." Andrew walked past Peter before Peter had the wits to realize that Andrew had just made a joke. He so rarely did that; his jokes would blossom unexpectedly like bright flowers in an otherwise arid desert.

"Like you," Peter said, trying to return the joke.

Andrew turned and gave him a look that was deeper than a well. "Like me," he agreed. "Buried, cold ... dead."

Peter felt a shiver crawl over him, like wet slime. "Not dead," he responded in a voice that was almost an entreaty. "Alive and whole."

Andrew's gaze lingered on him for a moment; then the slave turned away. Kneeling down, Andrew began to inspect the contents of the bucket, asking, "Did you find a basket?"

Peter said hesitantly, "That bucket won't do?"

"It's too deep. We need something more shallow."

Peter looked again at his efforts. The basket was certainly shallow. It was falling to pieces, but it was shallow. He cleared his throat. "I have something we could use. It's not very good, though. It will probably crumple the moment we pour in the earth ..."

His voice faded. Andrew had risen and turned and was staring at the basket. He walked slowly forward and gazed down at it. Peter tried to think of an apology he could make that would not sound like a plea for pity.

Andrew asked softly, "How did you know?"

"Know what?"

"That the baskets are made of paper. That they're made the same shape as Koretia."

Now it was Peter's turn to stare at the basket. The basket sat there, waiting for him to notice the obvious. Not the shape of a fat ship, no a the basket was in the shape of the dominion of Koretia. The shape of a triangular mask.

"The baskets are made of paper?" he said finally.

"Yes, the ones made by the rich. If you're a commoner, you make the baskets of whatever is available: twigs, roots, gra.s.s, leaves ... But the rich make their baskets from paper. I always wondered what the paper baskets looked like." He reached out, as though to touch the basket, then hastily drew his hand back. "Would you like me to make your creation basket, Lord Peter, or would you prefer to make it yourself?"

"You do it. I'll watch, so that I know how to do it next time." He tried to keep the disappointment from his voice. For a moment there, he had thought he had finally found the right gift for Andrew. But Andrew evidently believed that the basket could not be for him, since it was made of paper, and in a certain sense he was right. Whatever the basket was made of, it would have to stay in Peter's chamber, for Andrew would not be allowed to keep belongings in the slave-quarters.

No, Peter could not give Andrew an object for a gift. But if not an object, then what?

It was Andrew who found the solution to the problem of the paper falling apart, of course. He dug into the chest in which Peter kept all his most special treasures, and which even Drogo was not permitted to open. Peter had shown the contents of the chest to Andrew on the first day of his service in this chamber: Peter's copy of The Law-Structure and the Division of Powers, given to him by his much-beloved aunt before she and his not-so-agreeable uncle and cousin moved to the Central Provinces of Emor; a portrait of his mother, whom he had never known, because she had died when he was born; the royal emblem brooch that Lord Carle had given him just that month; and a gla.s.s bowl that one of Peter's ancestors, the Chara Lionel, had had commissioned hundreds of years before, after the Battle of Mountain Heights.

Peter had explained the origins of his treasures to Andrew a all except the brooch, which Andrew would not have understood, since he had not been there when Lord Carle had spoken so tenderly of his love for the Chara's law. It had not mattered; Andrew had been most interested, not in the brooch, but in the bowl, which Peter's father had once described as "one of the greatest treasures of the empire."

The craftsman who had created it had been a master at gla.s.s-blowing. There was scarcely a single air-bubble within the gla.s.s, and the bowl was smooth to the touch. What wavering occurred in the gla.s.s, right at the brim, captured colors from the air and trapped them. The colors shifted when you looked at the brim from different angles.

Carefully now, Andrew placed the paper basket within the bowl. The basket just fit, with the masked border running alongside the colorful brim of the bowl. Together they poured in the winter-hard earth that Andrew had managed to dig out of the garden, and which they had warmed and softened next to the fire. The fragile basket split its seams almost immediately, but the earth settled into the bowl, like mud at the bottom of an iridescent lake.

Andrew stared down at the remainder of what he had brought, his eyes fierce with concentration. He had a bit of dirt across his cheek, but it looked merely like a different tone of brown on his skin. Peter liked Andrew's dark skin, in the same way that he liked Andrew's dark hair and eyes, his soft vowels and slow consonants, and the way his hands moved when he grew excited while speaking. Peter's own hair was very ordinary yellow, and his skin was chalky white, just like the skin of most of the people he had met in his life. Andrew was far more interesting to look at.

"The twigs are too long," Andrew said finally. "I'll have to break them to the right size."

"I'll do that," said Peter quickly. "You just tell me what to do."

It was fun and amusing to be the servant for once, following Andrew's exacting instructions on the proper way to snap the twigs. Peter sat on the floor, which was made of cold marble, and set to work at the task, while Andrew stood next to the table, carefully arranging the other objects in the bowl.

After a while, it ceased to be fun and amusing to sit on a cold floor, snapping twigs, and Peter would have stood up to see how the younger boy was progressing if it had not occurred to him that Andrew and the other slave-servants did this sort of dull work all the time. So Peter stayed on the floor, and thought about the division of labor, so necessary to keep the empire running, but so very tedious for the men and women and children who were given the lower jobs.

After Peter had reached the end of his task, he sighed and began to stretch out his weary legs, but at that moment Andrew dumped a pile of moss next to him and told him that the moss needed to be cleaned of dirt.

Peter looked at the moss. There was a great deal of it to clean. He looked up at Andrew and asked, "How do you keep from screaming with boredom and running from the task?"

Andrew did not pretend to misunderstand. He never pretended to misunderstand. He said, "If you know that you're going to be beaten if you don't finish the job, that helps."

Peter felt heat flood into his cheeks. "Oh," was all he said, and turned his attention back to the moss.

Outside the corridor, the Chara's guards murmured to each other, the shaft-tips of their spears sc.r.a.ping against the floor as they shifted position. The scribes to the Chara's clerk, let free from work early on this special evening, emerged from the clerk's quarters, laughing and chattering. Peter could only recognize the voice of the newest scribe, who stammered badly; Peter had never been given the opportunity to speak more than a few words to the boys who worked daily across the corridor from himself. Nor had he spoken much with the n.o.ble-boys and n.o.ble-girls in the palace. He had only the one cousin, living far away from him, and all of the other boys and girls he met were very formal and respectful to him. It made him want to throw things at the wall sometimes.

It had occurred to him, more than once, that a boy who was training to be High Judge of a land and three dominions ought to be allowed to spend more time with the people he would be duty-bound to judge in court, should they commit crimes or offer witness. Of course, everything would change in just over a year. His law studies would reach their end, and he would emerge from his quarters, like a b.u.t.terfly emerging from its coc.o.o.n. From that point forward, he would spend most of his time visiting the various portions of the palace, and the tents of the army headquarters nearby, and even journeying into faraway portions of the empire. He had taken one trip already, south to Koretia a but he was forbidden to return there by the Chara, because Peter had nearly been a.s.sa.s.sinated on that trip.

Peter tilted his head to look up at Andrew, who was moving a broken pebble with great concentration onto a pile of smooth pebbles. It remained a wonder to Peter that he had first met Andrew in Koretia, when Andrew was still free. Of course, he knew that such a thing was not impossible. Many of the Koretians who had been captured during the Emorians' conquest of the Koretian capital had been sent as slaves to the Chara's palace. Hundreds of slaves were needed to run the palace. But that Andrew should have been sold to a council lord, of all people, and that Peter should have happened to see Andrew in Lord Carle's quarters ... Somehow, Peter was quite sure that they were meant to meet each other. Perhaps it was only so that the Chara To Be could become more familiar with the lives of his ordinary subjects.

But it was more than that; he knew that in his heart.

"I need the moss now," said Andrew, breaking into Peter's reverie.

Peter looked down. "It's only half done. I was daydreaming."

Andrew said nothing. Looking up, Peter saw that the slave had a darkly ironic look in his eye which he hid by ducking his head to stare down at the creation basket.

Peter felt suddenly sick. "What kind of beating would you have received if you didn't finish your work in time?" he asked.

"From Lord Carle? None at all. He would have lashed me with his tongue, which is far worse."

Peter nodded slowly. He had witnessed Lord Carle berating Andrew on the day that the council lord had sentenced his slave to a prolonged beating. Both the cutting words and the beating still puzzled Peter. He could not imagine how a man who so manifestly loved the Chara's law, and who acted with such generosity toward the Chara's son, could be needlessly strict with his slaves. Perhaps Andrew had simply allowed his temper to get the best of him in Lord Carle's presence. He had a temper; Peter knew that much about him, though the slave was still a stranger to Peter in many ways.

Andrew had come over to gather the moss; Peter quickly brushed the dirt off the rest, saying, "Can I see the basket now?"

"Not yet," replied Andrew imperturbably. Peter grinned. It was so very hard to find servants who would say no to him a even Drogo said yes when he really meant no.

"What else do we do besides make the creation basket?" asked Peter. "You said there were songs- No, I forgot, we're not singing songs. Nuts in the fire, you said? I have some sh.e.l.led Daxion nuts by my bed."

He looked hopefully at the pile of nuts on the sideboard, but Andrew shook his head. "It has to be nuts still in their sh.e.l.ls. The sh.e.l.ls have to crack as they're tossed into the fire."

"Oh." Peter frowned. He was unlikely to receive nuts with his dinner; Daxion nuts were expensive and reserved for special treats. And if he asked Drogo for nuts that still had sh.e.l.ls ...

"Is there anything else you do?" he asked.

Andrew seemed at first not to hear him. Then he said, "There are vows."

"What kind of vows?"

Again, Andrew hesitated. Finally he said, "Blood vows."

Immediately, Peter regretted asking the question. He understood now why Andrew had been reluctant to reply. Blood vows ... The Koretians vowed their blood on all sorts of matters, but the most common type of blood vow, before the arrival of the Emorians, had been blood vows to kill.

Peter stared down at the moss, brushing it lightly with his finger. It was soft and springy and looked surprisingly green for a winter plant. Koretia was green year-round. It was a hot land, filled with people with hot tempers, who had created the G.o.ds' law. Lord Carle had once described the G.o.ds' law as "a way to murder and be praised for it afterwards." Peter's father, not surprisingly, had abolished the G.o.ds' law once he had brought Koretia under the protection of the Chara's law, though he had been careful to point out that he was not forbidding the practice of the Koretian religion. The Koretians could still worship their G.o.ds, just as the people in Emor's northern dominions did; they simply would not be permitted to murder each other in the names of their G.o.ds.

Peter became suddenly aware, as he supposed he ought to have been aware before, that he was helping Andrew celebrate the founding of a b.l.o.o.d.y system of justice that the Chara had outlawed. He told himself he was being silly. Tossing nuts into a fire had nothing to do with creeping up on innocent strangers and slitting their throats in order to continue a blood feud. Nor was there any harm in a creation basket, a sign of life rather than death. Probably all these customs had existed long before the G.o.ds' law took shape, and no doubt they continued to exist now that the G.o.ds' law was abolished. He was quite sure that his father, who had courteously attended a service for the dead held by the Koretian priests after the battle at the Koretian capital, would not mind Peter cleaning a few bits of moss in order to make his homesick slave happy.

"There's drinking too," said Andrew unexpectedly.

"Oh? What kind of drinking?"

"Wild-berry wine," Andrew said firmly. He had very decided opinions on wine; he had established that on his first day of service, when Peter had made the mistake of inviting him to pour a cup of Emorian wall-vine wine for himself.

Now Peter was prepared. He leapt up and went over to the corner where he had stored the bottle of wild-berry wine he had asked his father for, as a New Year gift. His father, somewhat dubious of Peter's new, exotic tastes, had ordered a bottle from the vintners who sold wine to the palace.

"The version with honey added," the Chara had said when he presented the bottle to Peter. "You wouldn't like wild-berry wine in its native form, I a.s.sure you."

Now Peter struggled with the cork, wondering how the slaves, who were forbidden to touch anything that might be used as a weapon, managed to get wine bottles open. Andrew, after one curious glance, had gone back to arranging the basket. Beyond him, in the corridor, a woman giggled. A man responded, and Peter realized that the "woman" was actually Lord Sutton's latest slave-servant, Eugene.

Peter made a face. Eugene was a eunuch. All of Lord Sutton's slave-servants were eunuchs. Peter had been puzzled by this until he had overheard Drogo gossiping with another free-servant about Lord Sutton's taste. The conversation would not have meant much to Peter the previous year, but just this year, the Chara had decided that it was time that Peter understood his "marital duties." And so, with the air of a time-pressed man who must nonetheless clear his schedule for an important talk that only he can deliver, the Chara had explained what sort of duties Peter would be required to undertake when he married.

It had been an interesting talk. Peter's father and mother had loved each other very much, and so they had spent a good deal of the Chara's leisure hours undertaking these "duties." Peter was quite sure, by the end of the talk, that he would make a good showing on his wedding night, however far in the future that might be. The Chara had not married until he was nineteen; it was unlikely that Peter would marry earlier than that, since he was not yet Chara himself and therefore had no pressing need to beget heirs.

He had been shocked, though, when he had grasped what it was that Lord Sutton did with his eunuch servants. Of course, Peter knew that some of the unmarried lords made use of their female slaves in such a way, and he also had known, from a very early age, that eunuchs were not men. That was made clear in the Law of Inheritance, which forbade eunuchs from inheriting property and t.i.tles that were a.s.signed only to men.

But Eugene looked like a man, even if he did not sound like one. The idea of Lord Sutton taking someone who looked like a man into bed with him ... The thought made Peter's stomach churn, and he felt even more sick when Drogo suggested, with a laugh, that Lord Sutton was the sort of man who would sleep with true men if the law permitted it.

Peter had felt sorry for Eugene after that. Neither man nor woman, dressed as a man, yet forced to be used as a woman ... Peter had resolved that the first thing he would do when he became Chara would be to forbid the bedding of eunuchs against their will. He had puzzled for some time as to how eunuchs could be willingly bedded, since they could not sleep with women. Perhaps, he thought, they could sleep with each other, and would not mind that.

It would provide them with companionship, at any rate. He remembered a long-ago dinner conversation with Lord Carle, in which his father's friend had told him that commoners usually slept on pallets rather than beds, and sometimes the commoners could not even afford pallets for everyone in the family, so the family members slept together.

"That sounds uncomfortable," Peter had said doubtfully.

Lord Carle had given him his quirk of a smile. "It has its benefits. When I was young a oh, older than you are now, but I was not so well off as I am today a I shared a pallet with a friend when we were staying in an inn. It was ... companionable. Yes, that is the word." He stared off into the distance, his smile fading, and then, with an abruptness that was almost rude, he had turned the conversation.

Peter thought now of the pallets that the slaves slept on. The bas.e.m.e.nt where the slave-quarters was located was very cold; the floor must be colder than in Peter's chamber. And punished slaves were not even permitted a pallet.

Peter frowned as he remembered the shock he had felt when he had found that Lord Carle's heavily beaten slave was lying naked on the floor of the punishment chamber. Andrew's legs had been modestly drawn up to hide his groin, so the slave had not been displayed in a shameless fashion. But the room had been winter-cold; it was amazing that Andrew had not died from the chill alone.

As Peter placed the still-corked bottle of Koretian wine on the sideboard next to his bed, he sighed, so heavily that Andrew looked up and stared enquiringly at him. Peter explained, "I have so much to do once I become Chara. It's hard to know where to start. There are so many injustices to right. It frustrates me."

"That," said Andrew, "is why you will be a good Chara. -Come see."

For a moment, Peter stayed motionless by the table, his heart thudding rapidly like a war-horse at full gallop. This was the first time Andrew had given any indication whatsoever that he respected the Chara's son, though Peter supposed the fact that Andrew trusted his new master not to punish him should be indication enough of his respect. Finally, picking up the bottle again, Peter came over to look at the finished basket.

It looked like Koretia. That was Peter's first thought as he stared down at it. Perhaps the resemblance came partly because of the shape of the basket, but mainly it was because of the trees. There were dozens of them: little bare twigs sticking up, as though the autumn leaves had fallen from them. Peter had never seen autumn tree-leaves himself, but he had looked at pictures of what Emor was like in the olden days, when the Charas were first given the law. The tiny trees were everywhere in the little creation basket: atop bright green moss that looked like meadowland, between cracks of pebble mountains, along trailing paths composed of vine tendrils, over hazelnut hills, next to bridges composed of bits of bark, surrounding blue-black berries that Peter supposed must represent houses, and around the earthen border surrounding a large leaf.

"What's that?" Peter asked, pointing at the leaf.

"A lake. It doesn't look much like a lake, I suppose. I've never seen lakes, only the moat around the capital, which was always muddy. But there are small lakes in Central Koretia, so I thought I should include one."

Peter stared at the brown leaf, trying to envision lake-water, but seeing only dry leaf. "It looks as though the lake has dried up in its bed."

"I suppose so."

Andrew's voice had turned toneless. Peter glanced at him. The younger boy was expressionless, as he had been when he spoke of his burial.

"Wait!" Putting down the wine bottle next to the basket, Peter hurried over to the sideboard and picked up the pitcher there. It was still full of the water that Drogo had delivered. Nearly spilling the heavy pitcher in his haste, he brought it over to the basket, then cautiously tipped it. A few drops landed where he had aimed them, upon the leaf. He set the pitcher aside, and he and Andrew leaned forward to look.

The water was as iridescent as the bowl, capturing the colors around it: brown and green and black and the undyed cream color of Andrew's slave-tunic. As Peter leaned further forward, the lake turned suddenly golden, as though sunlight had fallen upon it. It took Peter a moment to realize that it was reflecting the royal emblem brooch, which he had decided to wear today.

He straightened up and looked over at Andrew and then realized, startled, that Andrew was smiling faintly at him. That did not happen very often. In fact, it had happened only once: on midwinter's eve, shortly before Lord Carle had Andrew beaten for three days.

Peter smiled back. "It's very good. I like the trees."

Andrew turned his gaze back to the basket, his smile lingering at the corners of his mouth. "You don't have many trees near the palace, do you?"

Peter was surprised until he realized that, of course, Andrew would only have seen the small stretch of Emorian land between the black border mountains and the palace. "We don't have any trees in Emor," he replied. "Only in the dominions. It's fields here in Southern Emor, and then there are mountains with shrubs on them, and then come the plains of the Central Provinces of Emor. After that come the northern dominions, but the trees there are all evergreens. Or so my father said," he amended. "He saw them when he was young, before he became Chara."

"No broad-leafed trees?" Andrew's smile had sunk away during the speech. "But you have fruit trees, don't you?"

It was on the tip of Peter's tongue to say no. Then he remembered Lord Carle's orchard, on his country estate. Of course a Andrew must have a.s.sumed that, since Lord Carle had trees on his estate, trees were common in Emor.

"No," he replied. "There's only one orchard in Southern Emor. We have some vineyards, though, in the borderland," he added. Too late, he remembered that the vineyards grew wall-vine grapes.

"No trees," murmured Andrew, staring down at the tree-filled landscape he had created. The iridescent water was beginning to sink away, absorbed into the winter leaf.

Peter touched his arm. "Let's have the wine now," he said.

Andrew, without glancing at the label of the bottle, reached over, uncorked it with a practiced twist of the hand, and poured wine into one of the gold goblets at the end of the table. Peter's gaze had wandered past him to the fire. The logs there were burning fiercely; more logs were stacked nearby, placed there by Andrew the previous day. Peter wondered suddenly why his chamber had always been heated by wood, if trees were so scarce in Emor. Surely logs must be expensive, if they had to be carried all the way from the dominions?

He looked around his chamber again, seeing it with new eyes. Gilded furniture, an expensive tapestry on the wall, a bed ... Andrew had probably never slept on a bed, even before he became a slave.

And a gla.s.s bowl. The most beautiful gla.s.s bowl in the world, and Peter could afford to fill it with earth. What must Andrew think of a boy who was spoiled with such riches?

He became aware that Andrew was holding out the goblet. Or rather, he was holding a gold tray, with the goblet upon it. It was not the first time he had served Peter this way, but for the first time Peter realized that Andrew would not serve himself unless Peter urged him to.