SEVEN

Kane gave herself to Axis for his wedding. Poets of the time paid their tribute to the young king’s marriage to the Princess of Cribex with flowery and forgettable verse. Theirs was not the matter of romance or epic; hearts were not crushed in the making, nor were kings slain.

A thousand peacocks

A hundred white stallions

Ten coffers of gold

And her heart

The beautiful Princess of Cribex,

The daughter of swans,

The daughter of willow trees,

Brought to the golden Lion of Eben.

All princesses were beautiful, all kings were lions for the occasion. In truth, the princess, while comely, was plump, stood barely as high as Axis’s armpit, and looked more like a sparrow than a swan. Kane had behaved badly since the announcement of the wedding, weeping all day and refusing to eat. On the morning of the ceremony, which took place in the great palace beside the Serpent, she locked herself alone in her room and would not come out. Her mother and all her aunts threatened; she refused to open the door. Axis’s mother told them to leave her alone; she would come out when she was ready. And so she did. She left a note upon her pillow and ran away. Later, various stories surfaced. She joined a sect of women dedicated to the Serpent. She changed her name and became a shrewd and very prosperous merchant. She flung herself into a well over her unrequited passion and drowned. History loses sight of Axis’s young cousin on the day of his wedding. It was assumed through the centuries, by anyone taking note of her disappearance, that it was brief, and that, during the blink of history’s eye, an inadvertent glance away, she was found or chose to return home. Whereupon she would have been hastily bound in a marriage suitable for a highborn woman of Eben, to become a mother and live a life otherwise devoid of significant detail.

But she did none of those things. She did not even run away. She simply wrapped herself up so well that not even Axis recognized her and came to his wedding as a gift.

She appeared at the door of a room along the courtyard where the gifts of nobles and rulers were displayed. The sight of a tall, dark figure in a hooded cloak, its face shrouded behind black silk, carrying a staff of ebony and gold, startled the guards watching over the gifts.

“What do you want?” one asked sharply.

The figure said nothing, only proffered a letter with oddly bulky fingers. The message was open, signed, bore a seal with flowing ribbons and the wax emblem of a distant kingdom. The guard squinted at it.

“What does it say?” a second guard demanded.

“I don’t know. I can’t read.”

The other snatched it from him, perused it while the same puckered expression grew on his own face. Kane waited motionlessly.

“What does it say? ”

“I can’t—I think it’s in some strange language.” He raised his head, glanced around vaguely for help.

“Everyone’s at the wedding,” the first observed.

“Well, what should we do with this — this — ”

“Is it armed?”

Kane gestured quickly, indicated the wedding gifts, and then the vicinity of her heart several times, until one guard, hands raised to search her, drew back and scratched his chin.

“What’s it saying? It’s a wedding gift?”

“Seems to be… Go and ask —No. She’s at the wedding, too.”

“I’ll ask outside, see if anyone can understand this.”

The guard took the letter, went into the courtyard. Kane watched a ring of heads gather about him. The remaining guard watched her narrowly. She bobbed her head several times, indicated her heart and then the tables full of gifts.

“Yes, yes,” the guard muttered at the eerie, hidden face, “I know. You’re a present.”

The first guard returned finally, said to him, “The captain recognized the seal. It’s from Ilicia, over the southern mountains. He’s sending for a friend of his, a scholar. Somebody who didn’t get invited to the wedding.”

“What should I do with it? Are we at peace with Ilicia?”

“We’re at peace with everyone today.” He gave the message back to the mute figure. “Put the gift over there in the corner, and if it does anything suspicious, arrest it.”

“It already looks suspicious,” the guard grumbled.

But he led Kane into the room and positioned her against the wall, where she waited for the scholar to arrive. The wedding gifts shone dimly on the other side of the black silk over her eyes: jeweled saddles, tapestries, fine mirrors, sumptuous robes, swords, alabaster vases, and birds with brilliant plumage pecking at the bars of gilded cages. She gave them scant attention, just stood stiffly, watching birds flick in and out of the sunny courtyard, listening to the tranquil fountains and hearing, now and then, within chambers on the other side of the courtyard, the ceremonial music of tabors and trumpets.

The scholar arrived finally, a chubby, sweating man who looked as though he had run all the way to the palace in the dust. The captain of the guards led him to the silent figure. He grunted at it in surprise, then said something in what Kane vaguely recognized as the language of Ilicia. She did not speak, only offered him the letter. He carried it to a table, shifted a gold tray and a birdcage out of the way, and took his tools out of a leather case: pens, paper, ink. There were no chairs. He unfolded one of a pair of stools of ivory and red leather embroidered with gold thread, and sat down to write.

The guards watched over his shoulder; he explained, erratically, as he translated, “In Ilicia it’s not uncommon for servants who have special talents to be given as gifts. Cooking, for instance, or a way with horses… If they aren’t freeborn… The hidden face is explained… So is the muteness. There is a suggestion of occult power in the staff. Not a great deal, I would guess — no ruler would give much of that to another. But enough perhaps to amuse the children… It ends with an odd symbol, but the rest is clear.” He blew on his hastily scrawled translation and handed it to the captain. “Give that to the king. It is definitely a gift, and probably valuable.”

He wrapped up his tools, folded the stool, and returned the sealed letter to the wedding gift. Smiling, he suggested his payment.

“A glance, perhaps, at the wedding feast?”

“I’d like one myself,” the captain said fervently. “I’ve been smelling it for three days.” He handed the translation to one of the guards and nodded at the other. “Take him down to the kitchens.”

Kane, left alone in the corner, heard the triumphal march of the king and the new queen of Eben. She bowed her head against the staff in her hands and prepared to wait through the endless wedding feast.

She had bought the staff from a peddler weeks before the wedding. A shaft of ebony higher than her head, it was intricately carved with long-jawed, lozenge-backed lizards that spiraled up the length of it. To Kane, they looked not unlike what had eaten Axis’s father. The object of their sharp-toothed smiles was the crown on top of the staff, which Kane had had fashioned out of a bracelet of garnets and gold that her mother had given her. The black, voluminously hooded cloak, which covered her from head to foot, she had found at the bottom of a clothes chest; judging from the musty smell it had been there for decades. Her hands were hidden within great leather gauntlets that kept threatening to fall off. The oversized hands coupled with her height and slenderness made the faceless figure look bony, awkward, unthreatening, perhaps not quite human. So the guards must have thought, for they didn’t give the peculiar gift another glance, not even when platters were sent up from the kitchens of meats and savory pastries from the wedding, and they lounged, munching, in front of her.

Finally, the sky turned a tender lavender above the palace walls, and in the gardens the night birds began to sing. The wedding couple arrived to pay due attention to their gifts before they retired. Kane, her mouth suddenly dry, clung more tightly to the staff. The bride entered, twittering and chirping over the riches even before she got through the door. The groom followed, hardly seeing anything. He looked, Kane thought with sympathy, as though he had been clubbed. A river of aunts and cousins from both families followed them, headed by Axis’s mother and her own. Kane stared numbly ahead. All the bright silks spilled through the room, rivulets of color, murmuring and cresting over one gift, then another.

Axis moved silently among them, borne hither and yon, the young Lion in his white and gold silks uninterested in anything he saw, including his placidly chattering bride.

Axis’s mother saw the dark figure first.

“What is that?” she demanded, gripping the nearest arm, which belonged to Kane’s mother. Kane’s lips tightened behind her silk; she felt her lace grow taut and chill. But not even her own mother recognized her; she only fanned herself with gilded feathers, staring speechlessly. Around them, little pools of silence grew, as guest after guest turned at the sound of it. Finally, even the bride noticed it.

“What is what?” she asked. Axis, glancing toward his mother, saw the hooded figure.

He blinked, finally interested in something. Beside him, his bride grew suddenly inarticulate. Axis’s mother, closest to the apparition, examined it with amazement.

“What — Who — Is it a gift? ”

Mutely, Kane proffered her letter. Axis’s mother looked at it bewilderedly, then at the guards.

“From Ilicia,” one explained.

“I recognize the seal,” she said, at which Kane loosed a shallow breath. The crowned and coiled serpent had been mercifully easy to duplicate. “But what kind of gift is it?”

“Let me see,” Axis said, stepping to her side. Belatedly, the guard remembered the scholar’s translation. But not before Kane saw Axis’s eyes find the little familiar twining of thorns, barely noticeable among the unfamiliar words.

She saw his eyes close briefly; the flat lion’s face gave nothing away. Without looking at her, still gazing at the canes at the end of the letter, he held out his hand for the scholar’s translation. By then his wife had made her way to his side, and was looking in blank astonishment at the wedding gift. She gripped her husband’s wrist for reassurance.

“My lord, whatever is it? And who has sent it to us?” Kane began to read the translation. It was hurried and somewhat clumsy, but then Kane’s message from the ruler of Ilicia was not exactly polished, either.

“ ‘To Axis, Ruler of Eben, on his wedding day: ‘I am a gift to you from Marsyas, Ruler of Ilicia. I cannot speak, nor will you wish to look upon my face, for I am grievously deformed from birth. My powers lie in my heart and my staff. Both I pledge you, as the king commands me: To serve you and yours faithfully and well all the days of my life. Say my name and I will show you what I can do. My name is Kane.’ ”

Such was her name in their secret language: no one else knew this. Her given name vanished with the young woman who had erased herself from history. Only Kane was left now, a curve of brambles on the king’s letter, an exact translation on the scholar’s. She held her breath, the silk motionless above her lips. Axis, his face expressionless and oddly colorless in that gold-laden room, seemed also to be holding his breath. His bride, regaining composure, tugged at his arm.

“My lord, what does it do? Does it do tricks? Magic?” When there was no response from her bridegroom, she spoke the word herself: “Kane.”

The ebony lizard curling around the top of the staff came to life and seized the gold crown in its jaws. Axis, recognizing his own history, gave a startled cry. His queen clapped her hands and laughed with delight.

“It is a human toy!”

The faceless figure knelt on both knees and bowed its head. There Kane remained, staring blindly at Axis’s sandals, feeling the weight of his gaze, while the queen laughed again and whispered above her.

“Make it show its face. How dreadful could it be?”

But the young queen’s own mother came to Kane’s rescue, nipping the notion in the bud. “You must not look upon such things. If it frightens you, your unborn children might come to resemble it.”

“Oh,” the queen cried, stifling the sound in her horror. She recovered quickly. “But it must show us what else it can do. Do another trick for us, Kane.”

Still on her knees, Kane pointed the staff; the cluster of guests shifted out of its aim until a wedding gift appeared in front of it. By then the lizard was lifeless wood, and the crown, disgorged, was back on top of the ebony. The staff trembled only slightly in Kane’s hold. The gift, wrapped in tapestry and tied with braided ribbons of gold, unraveled itself to reveal a matched pair of goblets carved from solid amethyst. The bride clapped again. Kane bowed her head again.

Axis spoke.

“Rise, Kane. And welcome.” Like the staff, his voice trembled only a little. “We will explore the extent of your talents later, at our leisure.”

The Shadow of the Emperor

The Hooded One

Who unmasked night

Who laid the stars like paving stones

Who rode the Thunderbolt

Down the star-cobbled path into day

Was Kane,

The Emperor’s twin

Silent, as lightning is silent,

Before the thunder speaks.