Jan
ca’Vörl
“I HAVETO RIDE as quickly as I can to Brezno,” his
matarh had told him. “I’ve instructed the servants to pack up our
rooms for travel. I want you to follow along as soon as they have
the carriages ready. And, Jan, see if you can convince your vatarh
to come with you.” She kissed his forehead then, more urgently than
she had in years, and pulled him into her. “I love you,” she
whispered. “I hope you know that.”
“I do,” he’d told
her, pulling away and grinning at her. “And I hope you know that.”
She’d smiled, hugging
him a final time before she swung herself onto the horse held by
the two chevarittai who would accompany her. He watched the trio
clatter away down the road of their estate at a
gallop.
That had been two
days ago. His matarh should have made Brezno yesterday. Jan leaned
his head back against the cushions of the carriage, watching the
landscape of southern Firenzcia pass by in the green-gold light of
late afternoon. The driver had told him that they would be stopping
at the next village for the evening, and arrive in Brezno by midday
tomorrow. He wondered what he’d find there.
He was alone in his
carriage.
He’d asked his vatarh
Pauli to come with him, as his matarh had requested. The servants
had told him that Pauli was in his apartments at the estate—in a
separate wing from those of Allesandra—and Pauli’s chief aide had
gone in to announce Jan. The aide had returned with arched
eyebrows. “Your vatarh says he can spare a few moments,” he’d said,
escorting Jan to one of the reception rooms off the main
corridor.
Jan could hear the
muffled giggling of two women from a bedroom leading from the room.
The door opened in the middle of a man’s coarse laugh. His vatarh
was in a robe, his hair was tousled and unkempt, and his beard
untrimmed. He smelled of perfume and wine. “A moment,” he’d said to
Jan, touching a finger to his lips before half-staggering to the
door leading to the bedroom and opening it slightly. “Shh!” he said
loudly. “I am trying to conduct a conversation about my wife with
my son,” he said. That was greeted by shrill laughter.
“Tell the boy to join
us,” Jan heard one of them call out. He felt his face flush at the
comment as Pauli waggled his forefinger toward the unseen
woman.
“The two of you are
delightfully wicked,” Pauli told them. Jan imagined the women:
rouged, bewigged, half-clothed, or perhaps entirely nude, like one
of the portraits of the Moitidi goddesses that adorned the halls.
He felt himself responding to the image and forced it out of his
mind. “I’ll be there in a moment,” Pauli continued. “You ladies
have more wine.”
He closed the door
and leaned heavily against it. “Sorry,” he told Jan. “I have . . .
company. Now, what did the bitch want? Oh—you may tell your matarh
for me that the A’Gyula of West Magyaria has better things to do
than ride to Brezno because someone may or may not be dying. When
the old bastard finally does breathe his last, I’ll undoubtedly be
sent to the funeral as our representative, and that’ll be soon
enough.” His words were slurred. He blinked slowly and belched.
“You don’t need to go either, boy. Stay here, why don’t you? The
two of us could have some fun, eh? I’m sure these ladies have
friends. . . .”
Jan shook his head.
“I promised Matarh that I’d ask you to come, and I have. I’m
leaving tonight; the servants have nearly finished packing the
carriages.”
“Ah, yes,” Pauli
said. “You’re such a good, obedient child, aren’t you? Your
matarh’s pride and joy.” He pushed himself from the door and stood
unsteadily, pointing at Jan with a fingertip that drifted from one
side to another. “You don’t want to be like her,” he said. “She
won’t be satisfied until she’s running the whole world. She’s an
ambitious whore with a heart carved from flint.”
He’d heard Pauli
insult his matarh a thousand times, more with each passing year.
He’d always gritted his teeth before, had pretended not to hear or
mumbled a protest that Pauli would ignore. This time . . . The
nascent flush in Jan’s face went lava-red. He took three swift
steps across the carpeted room, drew his hand back, and slapped his
vatarh across the face. Pauli reeled, staggering back against the
door, which opened and toppled him onto a braided rug there. Jan
saw the two women inside—half-clothed, indeed, and in his vatarh’s
bed. They covered their breasts with the sheets, screaming. Pauli
lifted an unbelieving hand to his face; over the thin beard, Jan
could see the imprint of his fingers on his vatarh’s
cheek.
He wondered for a
moment what he’d do if Pauli got up, but his vatarh only blinked
again and laughed as if startled.
“Well, you didn’t
need to do that,” he said.
“You may have
whatever opinion you want of Matarh,” Jan told him. “I don’t care.
But from now on, Vatarh, keep them to yourself or we will have more
than words.” With that, before Pauli could rise from the carpet or
answer, Jan turned and rushed from the room.
He felt strangely
exhilarated. His hand tingled. The rest of the day, he expected to
be summoned into his vatarh’s presence—once the wine had passed
from the man’s head. But when he was told that the carriages were
ready and waiting for him, he had heard nothing. He looked up to
the windows of his vatarh’s wing as he entered the lead carriage
and the servants traveling with him piled into the others. Jan
thought he glimpsed a form at the window, watching, and he lifted
his hand—the hand that had struck his vatarh.
Another form—a
feminine one—approached his vatarh from behind, and the curtain
closed again. Jan stepped up into the carriage. “Let’s go,” he told
the driver. “We’ve a long journey ahead.”
He looked out from
the carriage window again now. For most of the journey, he’d
brooded on what had happened. He was nearly sixteen. Nearly a man.
He’d even had his first lover—a ce’ girl who had been part of the
estate staff, though his matarh had sent her away when she realized
that they had become intimate. She’d also given Jan a long lecture
on her expectations for him. “But Vatarh—” he’d begun, and she cut
off his protest with a sharp slash of her hand.
“Stop there, Jan.
Your vatarh is lazy and dissolute, and—forgive my crudeness—he too
often thinks with what’s between his legs, not with his head.
You’re better than him, Jan. You are going to be important in this
world, if you make the choice not to be
your vatarh’s child. I know this. I
promise you.”
She hadn’t said all
that she could have, and they both knew it. Pauli might be Jan’s
vatarh, but for him that was just another title and not an
occupation. It had been his matarh whom Jan saw each day, who had
played with him when he was small, who had come to see him each
night after his nursemaids had tucked him into bed. His vatarh . .
. He was a tall figure who sometimes tousled Jan’s head or who gave
him extravagant presents that seemed more to be a payment for his
absence than true gifts.
His vatarh was the
A’Gyula of West Magyaria, the son of the current Gyula, the ruler
who Jan saw about as often as he saw his other great-vatarh, the
Hïrzg. People bowed in Pauli’s presence, they laughed and smiled as
they talked with him. But Jan had heard the whispers of the staff,
and of their guests when they thought no one was
listening.
His right hand
throbbed, as if with the memory of the slap to his vatarh’s face.
He looked at the hand in the dying light of the day: an adult’s
hand now. The slap to his vatarh’s face had severed him from his
childhood forever.
He would not be his
vatarh. That much, he promised himself. He would be his own self.
Independent.