Lord of Emperors by Guy Gavriel Kay Read Free Book Online

you rise in caste. You will leave as soon as I am well enough to go back to Kabadh, in your own judgement.’
    Rustem opened his eyes then. Looked up slowly. ‘Where am I to go, great lord?’
    ‘Sarantium,’ said Shirvan of Bassania.

    He went home briefly when the King of Kings fell asleep, to change his bloodied clothes, replenish his herbs and medicines. It was cold in the windy darkness. The vizier gave him an escort of soldiers. It seemed he had become an important man. Not surprising, really, except that everything was surprising now.
    Both women were awake, though it was very late. They had oil lamps burning in the front room: a waste. He’d have chastised Katyun for it on a normal night. He walked in. They both rose quickly to see him. Jarita’s eyes filled with tears.
    ‘Perun be praised,’ said Katyun. Rustem looked from one to the other.
    ‘Papa,’ someone said sleepily.
    Rustem looked over and saw a little, rumpled figure stand up from the carpet before the fire. Shaski rubbed at his eyes. He’d been asleep but waiting here with his mothers.
    ‘Papa,’ he said again, hesitantly. Katyun moved over and laid a hand across his thin shoulders, as if afraid Rustem would reprimand the boy for being here and awake so late.
    Rustem felt an odd constriction in his throat. Not the kaaba. Something else. He said, carefully, ‘It is all right, Shaski. I am home now.’
    ‘The arrow?’ said his son. ‘The arrow they said?’
    It was curiously difficult to speak. Jarita was crying.
    ‘The arrow is safely removed. I used the Spoon of Enyati. The one you brought out for me. You did very well, Shaski.’
    The boy smiled then, shyly, sleepily, his head against his mother’s waist. Katyun’s hand brushed his hair, tender as moonlight. Her eyes sought Rustem’s, too many questions in them.
    The answers too large.
    ‘Go to sleep now, Shaski. I will speak with your mothers and then go back to my patient. I will see you tomorrow. Everything is well.’
    It was, and it wasn’t. Being elevated to the priestly caste was a stunning, miraculous thing. The castes of Bassania were immovable as mountains—except when the King of Kings wished them to move. A physician’s position at court meant wealth, security, access to libraries and scholars, no more anxieties about buying a larger house for a family or burning oil lamps at night. Shaski’s own future had suddenly expanded beyond all possible hope.
    But what could one say to a wife who was to be cast off by order of the King of Kings and given to another man? And the little one? Issa, asleep in her cradle now. The little one would be gone from him.
    ‘Everything is well,’ Rustem said again, trying to make himself believe it.
    The door had opened to reveal the world on his threshold. Good and evil walked hand in hand, not to be separated. Perun was opposed, always, by Azal. The two gods had entered into Time together; one could not exist without the other. So the priests taught before the Holy Flame in every temple in Bassania.
    The two women took the child to his room together. Shaski reached up and held each of their hands, walkingthrough the door, claiming them both. They indulged him too much, Rustem thought. But this was not a night to dwell upon that.
    He stood alone in the front room of his own small house amid the burning of lamps and the firelight and he thought about fate and the chance moments that shaped a man’s life, and about Sarantium.

CHAPTER II
    P ardos had never liked his hands. The fingers were too short, stubby, broad. They didn’t look like a mosaicist’s hands, though they showed the same network of cuts and scratches all the others’ did.
    He’d had a great deal of time to think about this and other things on the long road in wind and rain as autumn steadily turned to winter. Martinian’s fingers, or Crispin’s, or Pardos’s best friend Couvry’s— those were the right shape. They were large and long, appearing deft and capable.