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The flash of the messenger's bright cloak caught Rus' eye ten minutes before the end of class. His students were paired off, quizzing each other on the day's language lesson, so Rus sidled over to the classroom door and greeted the man slouched in the hallway. The messenger straightened, looking guilty at having been spotted, and executed a short, neat bow. "My apologies, Teacher Rusanarath. I have instructions to bring you to the palace, but not to interrupt your lesson."
"No matter; the hour is almost up. Let me dismiss my students, and I'll be with you directly." Rus did as promised, and a moment later they were stepping outside the temple into the mild spring air. Late afternoon sunshine poured across the flagstones and lit up the walls of the buildings on the square. Food and trinket vendors shouted from their carts, scholars and dignitaries strolled, servants bustled. Rus and his companion cut neatly through the crowd, drawing no more than a few benignly curious glances as they went. Rus had walked the same route daily for nearly two years now; everyone knew who he was.
"No message but 'come quickly'?" Rus confirmed as they reached the broad steps of the palace. The instruction to finish his teaching duties implied that the matter wasn't direly urgent. Still, the summons was unusual, especially given that Rus would see Adares at dinner anyway. A matter of state, then.
Sure enough, Lida, the archon's steward, met Rus in the atrium, guided him to the smallest of the three audience chambers on the public level, and ushered him in. This particular room had no imposing throne or desk, just a low table ringed with identical cushioned benches. Adares reclined at one, with his secretary at his elbow.
On the opposite side knelt two young men—boys, really, maybe fifteen or sixteen—in familiar pleated wool and leather. Their hair was long and braided, their skin tattooed in brilliant blue. They turned as Rus entered, and scrambled to their feet to bow, as if Rus were their headman. Their eyes were wide and hungry.
"Hello, my dear," Adares greeted him in genteelly accented Firhat Luth. "Thank you for leaving your classroom." Rus, rising from his own reflexive bow, caught his eye. His posture on the bench was open and relaxed, but Rus knew him well enough to recognize the tension around his mouth, the way he tucked the hidden, inner part of his lip between his teeth as soon as he had finished speaking. "Gentlemen," he continued, "here is Lachan Rusanarath Kahar, a teacher of the Temple of Anaxe. Rus, permit me to introduce Kellan Anserath Skar and Kellum Nessun Skar of Kolkunaruth's hearth."
"My honor," Rus murmured. Adares gestured, and Rus took the invitation to sit.
Adares said, "They have have come to Tios seeking asylum."
Experience served Rus well; he settled smoothly on the bench between his lover and his tribesmen, and set both hands on the table. The room was quiet; well insulated. "On what grounds?"
The shorter, darker boy—Anserath—lifted his chin. Youthful as he looked, he had a lordly air, and his voice was clear and very nearly steady as he said, "We are lovers."
You are children, Rus wanted to say. He held his tongue. Beside him, Adares was equally sober.
"We heard," Anserath continued, "we heard that in Tios, people take men or women for lovers as they please, and no one shuns them for it. We heard that the headman of Tios himself lives freely with another man, that you wear each other's rings, in full sight of all the city, and no one minds."
"This is what you heard in Luth?" Rus wondered.
The second, willowy boy spoke. "When the bards came north in summer, they sang about you. How you saved the life of the archon, and—and how left your hearth for his sake. We heard that the people of Tios gave you a hero's welcome."
"Bards," said Rus, "seldom sing the entire truth of a story. But this is true—that I saved the archon's life and he saved mine, and we have pledged troth to each other."
Mildly, Adares said, "There is always somebody who minds, no matter what one is doing, especially when one is in, as you say, full view of the city—but it is true that Rus is my acknowledged lover." Adares lifted his hand from his lap, and set it next to Rus' on the table. Their matching signet rings gleamed, drawing the gazes of both boys.
"Nessun is mine," said Anserath, and now he sounded younger, defiant. "And I am his. And though the punishment for such is exile from the hearth, I am afraid my father will kill him if he finds out. So we fled. We want to be together. We waited until spring, when the herds were moving. We left three weeks ago. We can earn our keep. We're both strong and quick. Nessun was training to be a herd healer. But we have decided that we will take what work we can get, so long as we may live together always."
Rus' memory bestirred itself. "You are Headman Kolkunaruth's son, are you not?"
Anserath bit his lip, then hastily released it as if caught in a bad habit, and nodded. "The younger. I was unmarked when I saw you last at the feast before the Tios campaign."
"Untattooed," Adares murmured in Firhat Kosoth, for his secretary's benefit. "Not yet of age."
"And you?" Rus asked Nessun. "What is your parentage?"
Nessun opened his mouth, but Anserath spoke over him. "Tradesmen. His parents are tradesmen of no consequence."
Adares paused, then accepted this with a nod. "Did you leave messages for them? Will they be searching the crags for your bodies?"
"Messages would have sent them chasing after us sooner," said Anserath.
Adares looked at Rus, and Rus saw that he wanted him to steer the conversation. As skillful and subtle as Adares was, Firhat Luth was neither his first nor his fourth language. He had called Rus to him to put these boys at ease, and be sure they told him everything the archon needed to know. Rus looked at their painfully straight backs and narrow shoulders, thin boyish necks and thick horseman's torsos, and the way their hands were hidden by the table, but at an angle that betrayed the way they must be clutched together on Anserath's knee. He made a choice.
"When did you boys last eat?"
The question drew startled stares. Adares shot Rus an ambiguous glance, then followed his lead. "Gentlemen, my apologies. You have had a long journey. Regardless of the urgency of your petition, seeing to your comfort should have been my first concern."
"They can sleep in the temple dorms," said Rus. "I'll walk them there."
Adares acquiesced with another slow nod, and held Rus' eyes as they stood and made their bows.
They left the palace through a ground level entrance, and Rus took them back to the temple by way of side streets instead of through the square. The sky was growing dark, and the supper crowd thinning out. The boys followed him in silence. When the temple was just around the corner, Nessun blurted, "Is it true that you asked the goddess Anaxe to bless the archon?"
"I—yes," Rus answered, caught out by a question that felt more intimate than the boy probably intended.
"And the bull. They say it spared you in battle."
"Ah, well, I don't remember much of the bullfight, really. Come, now. We'll go to the kitchen first, and put a hot supper in your bellies."
After seeing the boys settled at the kitchen table under the tutting supervision of the cook who fed the temple boarders, Rus sought out Antiokles, the senior teacher who had recruited Rus to the temple school. His friend's help and discretion assured, he introduced the senior teacher to Anserath and Nessun, promised he would return in the morning, and walked slowly back to the palace.
Rus found Adares already in their chambers, pouring wine. A servant finished laying down trays of fish and vegetables, bowed, and left, shutting the door in her wake.
"I have told Antiokles who they are," Rus said as he sat and let Adares serve him.
"Mm. I would prefer not to spread word of their presence too far," said Adares. "Why take them to him instead of keeping them as guests in the palace?"
"Because that would make them guests in the palace."
Adares set two fingers on the base of his goblet and nudged it small, controlled circles, but he kept his eyes on Rus, not the swirling wine. "Secrecy is, in your opinion, less important than plausible deniability?"
"Anserath was lying about Nessun's parentage."
"I noticed. He is sakar?"
Rus gave a gusty sigh and nodded. "I don't know Kolkanaruth well enough to predict his reaction to his son's flight. He may well use the cover story they've offered him and say his son fell to his death in the mountains. But it is possible he will be offended by the theft of his slave, and search with more … intent."
"Do they remind you of us?"
Rus sniffed. "I am twenty-two. My teenaged follies are a dim memory." He leaned back and stabbed a section of fennel with his knife.
Adares propped his chin in his hand and smiled at him. "Our teenaged follies seem to be inciting follies of their own."
"You should have heard the boys' questions on the walk. As if I were the hero of a sentimental drama!"
"You just wait until next year when the amphitheatre is finished. We'll have all the troupes in the League clamouring to act out your heroics to the south."
Rus made a show of gulping his wine. "Merciful gods, let me do battle with one consequence at a time!"
Rus was at the hippodrome before dawn next morning, saddling his horse for his usual run before he breakfasted at the temple. Two horses in guest stalls caught his eye, a black and a tall, gorgeous gray, clearly of the best northern stock. The roster at the end of the aisle confirmed that they belonged to Anserath and Nessun. Rus took two pieces of fruit from his pocket and went over to make friends.
What he saw made him stop short. Rus proffered his offerings fairly, then turned his full attention to the gray. He murmured to the horse and stoked her nose as he cast a careful eye over her eyes and ears, the gloss of her coat, the turn of her legs. He took a brush into the stall and coaxed her to lift her hooves one at a time. She was well-shod, well cared-for despite the recent hard journey. He gave her one last pat, then leant on the post outside the stall and shut his eyes. Adares would have risen by now. He would be in his office, discussing the day's business with his steward.
"Sorry to intrude," Rus said twenty minutes later, shutting Adares' office door behind himself with more force than he intended. "I've just come from the stables. Our young friend Anserath's horse is pregnant."
Even in the midst of his frustration, Rus couldn't help but admire the way Adares' bleary, startled blink snapped into sharp attentiveness. "Was he lying about his ownership?"
Rus sighed, strode into the room and perched on the arm of a chair, too jittery to sit. "By omission. Good morning, Lida. I don't doubt Anserath's claim to the mare, but a beast like that will have been studded by the best stallion in the herd, and the foal belongs to the owner of the stud. Kolkunaruth."
"Good morning, Rusanarath," said Lida.
Adares pinched the bridge of his nose and said, "Wonderful."
"If it's a filly," Rus went on, "that's bad enough. If it's a colt, they'll certainly have it in mind as a stud horse itself—and be fiercely jealous of its bloodline."
"That is, they'd not be pleased to find it in our stables, when they could be selling us its issue in three years' time," Adares surmised.
Lida owed her position on Adares' staff to her ability to come to the point, even if the point was uncomfortable. "So. We are not merely welcoming asylum seekers, but harbouring thieves."
"What is the punishment for theft among the Luth?" Adares asked.
"For horse theft?" Rus exclaimed. Adares winced. "The sakar will be put to death. The headman's son may or may not fare better. If his father likes him, it's possible he'll try to bury the incident and reintegrate him into the household. If he is less forgiving, he will strip him of his rank, mar his tattoos and exile him."
Adares tipped his head back. "Well, Rus, you showed more political acuity than I, yesterday, in sending them to the temple. Do you suppose it will be possible to pretend we don't know about them? That they just hid themselves in the city, instead of marching straight up the palace steps to bring down a diplomatic incident on all our heads?"
"You said the skar would be exiled," said Lida. "But that, too, is functionally a death sentence in the North, I believe. If Tios becomes known as a sanctuary for exiles, this will, indirectly, interfere with the Luth penal system. We may find that your young refugees are only the first of a wave of criminals."
"They are not criminals," said Rus.
Lida raised her eyebrows. "Under whose law?"
Rus turned back to Adares. "What will you do if Gunthanaruth demands their return?"
Adares closed his eyes for a long moment. "What will he do if I refuse? It would be foolish of him to make ultimatums he can't enforce."
"As we have just established, this question is bigger than whether or not the headman of the Luth is a fool."
That made Adares' eyes pop open with a flicker of annoyance. "Thank you, I'm well aware."
Rus felt his own temper flaring, and the anger he had carried from the stables shifting its target. "Then answer. Will Tios deal with tribes that condemn their members to death, or death by exile?"
Adares' chair made an awful, grating noise as it scraped out from under the desk. It didn't tip as Adares stood, but it was a near thing. Adares stalked over to the window and braced his hands against the sill. "I cannot answer the question."
"Why—" Rus asked, but Adares cut him off.
"The council must answer the question. My judgment is too partial, in this matter. Its implications stretch far beyond the safety of two runaway boys, and I cannot. I cannot risk twenty years and more of delicate peace accords for one—"
"For me," said Rus. "You will not answer because of me."
Adares turned. The glare of the morning sun was behind him; Rus couldn't properly read his expression. Instead, he read the stiff line of his shoulders, and the bend of his neck.
"If the Archon of Tios dares not trust his judgment," Rus said, "far be it from me to trust mine."
"Rus," Adares said, but Rus was halfway through the door.
Rus ate his supper at the temple, which was no great anomaly: he did so several times a month. It was good to socialize with his colleagues. After the meal, he lingered at the table with Antiokles and Phaeda, haggling over the revision of their language syllabus.
When he finally walked home, the stars were out and the braziers were lit on the palace steps. The archon's rooms were cool and dark. Rus lit lamps, washed his hands and face, and changed into a light linen shift. He sat at the little table in their bedchamber and wrote down the bones of his conversation with his fellow teachers. He turned down the lamps and got into bed.
Adares often worked late. He had probably come upstairs for supper, and gone down again when he discovered Rus' absence. The night deepened, and Rus could not find sleep, and still Adares did not appear. Rus turned his back to the door, and forced his mind empty, and drifted off.
In the morning, Rus woke with his forehead pressed against a familiar shoulder. Adares slept on his back, breathing as quietly and evenly as he did in waking. Rus pulled away carefully, sat up and gazed at his lover's handsome features. They had argued before—they debated constantly and vigorously about policy, theology and poetry, and far more frivolously about many other things, from the condiments on their dinner table to the prowess of the city's athletes. If Rus trusted anything about the man beside him, it was that Adares was a fair fighter. He was no grudge-keeper, and though he made room for his feelings, he abhorred letting emotion overtake his reason.
Rus watched Adares' chest rise and fall, and matched his breaths, and let that trust settle in his heart. He left Adares sleeping.
The stablemaster at the hippodrome was a brisk, blunt, but cosmopolitan woman in her fifties who had landed in Karhan with the first wave of civilian immigrants. Her father had traded horses far along the eastern trade routes, and her sisters did so still. She greeted Anserath and Nessun in dreadful but unembarrassed Firhat Luth, quizzed them with professional dispassion, and asked no questions about their presence in her stable. The stablehands were another matter.
Rus was well known and liked among both regular patrons and staff at the hippodrome. A curiosity at first, with his ink and his hair and his status with the archon, he had earned their respect simply by riding well, treating the horses well, giving advice when asked, and not giving advice before it was sought. He suspected most of the regulars viewed him as a sort of mascot, especially since he'd won honors for the city at last year's games. He was the archon's man, and the archon was Tios' man, therefore Rus was Tios' as well.
None of this meant that the locals were necessarily ready to extend their benign proprietary feelings, or their starry-eyed hero worship, to any tribesman inked in blue. The stablehands watched them cross the yard with curious, narrow stares. Anserath straightened his back and drew close to Nessun, not quite close enough to touch.
Perhaps it would have been wiser to hide the boys in the palace until their situation was more decided. Who could say, though, how long that would take the city's methodical, complaisant bureaucrats. No. Best to begin as they meant to continue, and give them friends and allies where he could. Adares had one kind of clout, but Rus wasn't without resources of his own. There were things he could do, plans he could make, that fell outside the archon's purview. Action and purpose improved his mood. "Psappha, tell me," he said, turning to address the stablemaster, "when will you host your family this year?"
Rus was nearly asleep when Adares came to their bedroom that night. The light from Adares' lamp spilled weakly across the floor, just bright enough to show his weary posture. Adares set the lamp on the table just inside the door and moved to the wardrobe to undress. Rus slid out of bed and came up behind him, took the heavy wool mantle from his shoulders as Adares released the clasp, and laid it over a chair. Adares gave a great, slow inhale and exhale as Rus' hands returned to his waist to tug and coax the undertunic up and off. Adares bowed his head, and Rus wrapped his arms around him. Adares turned and met his eyes. The lamplight cast deep shadows that made him look older and sterner. Rus could see him summoning thoughts and words, pulling the cares of the day back to the fore so he could yield them up for Rus' judgement. Rallying. "Rus, I—"
"Shh," said Rus, and wrapped him tighter, and cut him off with a kiss. Adares swayed into it, and Rus held him steady. He stroked every part of him that he could reach, and coaxed him across the room, pulled him down to the bed and rolled to cover him. Words could wait. "Shhh."
This time Adares was watching Rus when he woke. One of Rus' plaits had loosened during their lovemaking, and he hadn't righted it before sleep. Adares had its gold strands wrapped around his fingers, weaving over and under and around his heavy signet ring. When he saw Rus' eyes open, he shook his hand free and wrapped it instead around Rus' own where it lay against the pillow. Rus shifted his grip so their fingers interlaced.
Adares said, "A boat full of runaway slaves has capsized off the north coast of Pheme. A trade ship brought the news two nights ago. There is speculation that they were bound for Tios."
Rus levered himself up to sit against the headboard. "My love. Good morning." Adares' lips tipped in a wry, fleeting smile, but his eyes were grave. Rus scrubbed his face with his free hand, willing himself into wakefulness. "Did the slaves all drown?"
"Most did. They didn't have a proper navigator, and foundered on the shoals."
"You have been predicting this for two years."
Adares snorted his agreement. "What would we have done, had they made landfall? Accepted them as freedmen, or sent them back to Pheme in chains? It's a fine thing to free the slaves already within our walls, throw parties and congratulate ourselves on our moral pulchritude. It will be quite another to so openly defy the law of Pheme. Thus far, thus far it has not been worth their effort to send ships to subdue one unruly rebel city, but if more slave ships mutiny, and make for our shores, Pheme's anger will be … scaled accordingly."
"And we have no law to fall back on, either cautiously or hastily ratified, to guide us when we need it most."
"No. Slavery in Tios is unfashionable, not illegal. And we have no policy for dealing with foreign outlaws, save what we inherited from Pheme—a code I'm sure you will agree is outdated. I have been trying to force the council to a ruling for years. They have bickered and delayed and brushed me off, and now a shipwreck has saved them from themselves."
"Surely they will take this close call as incentive to act?"
"Our late run of luck has made them lazy." Adares shook his head. "No, that's unfair of me. Ah, I'm angry again. Our luck has made them eager to focus on other matters. Building. Trade. Next year's Colonial Games. All perfectly worthy endeavors."
"What is the daily wage of the laborers building the amphitheatre?" Rus asked.
Adares' mouth opened and shut, and he stared into the airy quietude of their bedroom. Rus tipped his head onto his shoulder.
Adares put on his robes of office and went to the council. Rus went to the hippodrome, then to the dockside market, where he bought a set of Kossian scrolls and spent an hour in conversation with the captain of the trade ship. Then to the temple, and then home again. A week went by.
The Luth boys worked in the stables and bunked in the temple dorms until they could save enough money for a room to rent. Rus saw them daily, sometimes in the mornings when he exercised his horse or Adares', and always in his classroom, where Nessun and Anserath were keen to learn as much Firhat Kosoth as they could. They studied with the younger students as well, humbly and diligently, bent on learning to read and write as well as they spoke. After school, they helped in the kitchen, or dashed back to the stables to shovel out stalls and clean the water troughs.
"What news from the palace, Teacher Rusanarath?" Anserath asked every morning. He couched his anxiousness in politely general questions, though it was perfectly clear he only cared about one piece of palace news.
"The council is a plodding horse, and the winds are fickle," Rus told him. "But the archon has scouts patrolling the hills. Patience."
The day the envoy from Luth arrived, Rus was outside the city walls, visiting the temple of Anaxe where he and Adares had sheltered years before. The senior students, having listened patiently all afternoon to the lectures of the priests, had been set loose on the ramparts to take in the view. "Look! Horses!" The cry came from a girl standing on the northeast wall. The others flocked toward her, exclaiming over the small, but well-mounted party crossing the plain below them, blue banners streaming in the breeze. Rus caught sight of Anserath and Nessun in the throng, and hurried forward.
"Ah, you must be eager to great your kinsmen!" one girl was exclaiming. "And hear all the news from home."
"Surely Teacher Rus will arrange for you to meet. Your families must be eager to know how you have fared here. Perhaps the messengers will carry letters for you!"
Anserath smiled and accepted the excited chatter of his friends while Rus drew Nessun aside. "The wind is southerly," he said, withdrawing a purse from his cloak and pressing it into the sakar's hands. "And the choice is yours."
By the time Rus returned to the city, the blue banners streamed from the palace ramparts, signaling to the city that the foreign envoy was within.
One day later, Antiokles met him at the temple door.
"Well, they're gone."
Rus' heart thudded hard in his chest. "Not captured—"
"No! No, the envoy did not take them." Rus all but dragged the man inside, away from prying eyes. "There was talk in the square yesterday," Antiokles continued as soon as they were inside a quiet classroom. "Rumours about the slave ship. The council, you know, is hearing arguments, and everyone in the city has an opinion. I am afraid Nessun and Anserath heard things that frightened them."
Stone-faced, Rus admitted, "So have I."
"I will make an offering for them," said Antiokles.
Rus pressed a coin into his friend's hand. "Make one for my sake, too. I must go to Adares."
"We found the dockworker they paid to row them to the tradeship bound for Kos. They're miles across the sea by now. I hope they have enough gold to pay for their bread. Little gods, I hope the Kossian water market doesn't eat them alive." Adares planted his elbows on his desk and scrubbed his hands over his face.
Rus sank into a chair. "Then they are beyond both Tios' justice and Luth's. What will you tell the envoy?"
"They sold the black mare to the merchant captain's wife. The grey they left in the stable. We will see her safely delivered, then either buy both mare and foal for more than they are worth, or send them home as soon as the foal can travel." Adares looked up, flinty-eyed. "That will be the end of the matter of Anserath and Nessun, until and unless they reappear on our soil."
Adares' posture changed, then, somehow becoming both straighter and more settled. "And I will tell the envoy in no uncertain terms that future asylum seekers of any class—owners, owned or set-apart, I don't give a shit—will be welcomed in Tios with open arms. So long as they are neither riding nor carrying anything that does not belong to them." Adares laid both hands on the desk, palms up. "I can't police the entire continent. I can't choose my neighbours, and I can't storm in and dismantle centuries-old mores in a summer campaign. It would be the height of arrogance, not to mention politically imbecilic, to try. But. I can make my city a sanctuary. I can show the world where I stand."
Rus looked at Adares, whom he had chosen to follow when the weight of his fear was heaviest. He would follow him again. He took a deep breath, and said, "They did not sell the horse to the merchant's wife. They sold her to the merchant captain herself. She is the sister of Psappha, the stablemaster at the hippodrome. Her family owns stables in Kos and Pheme. With Psappha vouching for them, she has promised to see them safely ashore and employed with their family."
Adares stared back, mouth open. "They were too proud to take coin from me," Rus went on. "The black mare was indisputably theirs to sell, so I told them where and how to do it."
Cautiously, he reached for Adares' hand. "You are a politician. You have been breaking yourself against this problem since it appeared, harder than anyone else ever would have, because you will not forfeit your political ideals, whatever your heart might want. But I am not a politician. And while you were bound by oath and honor to protect the city and all the lives within it, I had freedom to protect two frightened boys."
Adares slumped and shut his eyes. "They are fifteen. Frightened out of their minds. They fled because they didn't trust me to protect them. And nor did you."
Rus' heart cracked. "I trusted you to do your job. Adares, I would not have had you do otherwise."
"There is a chance you have put yourself in danger, by assisting them."
"Only if they committed a crime. Anserath can neither steal nor sell what no one owns. So you had better hurry up and see that abolition law ratified."
When Adares' pensive look lingered, Rus said, "I am sorry I kept it from you. The chance to act came very quickly. I feared putting you in the position of having to lie to your ally."
"If this is the outcome," Adares said slowly, "I cannot regret it. You are my lover, not my right arm. I have much to think on, but I … am proud of you. Proud that you did not stand aside."
Adares looked up, and the expression there made Rus leave his seat and hurry around the huge, heavy desk to his lover's side. Relief flooded through him as he caught Adares' face in both hands and bent to kiss him. "I love you," he murmured, pulling back. "Gentlest and best of men, do you know how much?"
Adares grasped Rus' arms and pulled himself to his feet. "My mind is too uncalm to cope with the rest of this pile today," he admitted, gesturing at the scrolls and stacks of memos behind him. This time Adares initiated the kiss, and it was hard and seeking and needful. "Take me upstairs."
"Honoured councilmembers." Adares Doriades Phyleros' voice was measured and carrying. Standing before the Council of Tios in his black and gold pleated mantle, tall and grave, he looked every inch the living legend the bards were extolling all over Karhan. Rus watched from the gallery, seated next to Antiokles and the seniors from the temple school. He had already heard the speech Adares was about to deliver, lounging on the bedclothes while Adares paced back and forth in front of him. He expected it to be repeated from the northernmost reaches to the deserts of Ariata by the end of the summer. He expected it to be memorized by schoolchildren and studied by masters a hundred years hence.
"Today we vote."