A Fall of Princes by Judith Tarr Page B

over bone. As he lay
propped against his saddle, only his eyes seemed alive; and those were dim,
clouded. He was not fighting his nursemaid. He had no strength for it.
    Hirel stood. Rokan was his guardhound tonight, he of the
crimson paint; the Zhil’ari watched but did not hinder as Hirel skirted the
fire.
    Sarevan did not see him. Would not.
    He sank down beside the prince, letting his bound hands rest
on his knee. Zha’dan acknowledged him with a glance. Sarevan was as still as
before, but the air around him had chilled.
    Zha’dan lowered the bowl. It was scarcely touched. His
finger brushed the bandage on Sarevan’s shoulder. It was new, clean,
startlingly white.
    “It’s festering,” he said, not trying to be quiet. “He’s
been hiding it. Keeping anyone from looking, till I noticed that the wrappings
hadn’t been changed in days. It needs cautery; he won’t let me. He’d rather
lose his arm than chance a little pain. Maybe he figures to die first.”
    “Only cautery?” Hirel asked, reckoning days, and the little
he knew of such wounds, from when a slave had pierced himself with an awl in
the stable. The man’s arm had swelled, and streaked red and then black, and
begun to stink; he had lost the arm, but he had died. The surgeon had waited
too long to cut.
    One could not see the poison’s spreading on skin the color
of nightwings. But one might be able to feel the heat of it.
    Bound, Hirel was awkward. He did not try to unwrap the
bandage. His fingers searched round about it. The skin was dry, taut,
fever-hot, but fevered everywhere the same. It did not flinch away from him.
    “If it has spread,” Hirel said to Zha’dan, “it has not
spread far.”
    “Must you discuss me as if I were already dead?”
    Hirel was careful not to start or stare or blurt out
something unwise. He favored Sarevan with a cool regard, and rebuked his heart
for singing. “Would you rather we went away and whispered?”
    The dark eyes were clear and perhaps not altogether
unyielding. “I do not fancy hot iron in my shoulder. My father will heal it
more gently and much more completely.”
    “Your father will heal everything, it seems. If you get so
far.”
    “I mean to,” said Sarevan.
    “He will fulfill your expectations, or he will answer to
me.”
    The eyes widened. “What right have you—”
    Hirel held that burning stare and made it fall. “There is,”
he said levelly, “a debt or two. And the issue of . . .
comradeship.”
    “Great value that you lay on it,” said the cool bitter
voice.
    “What would you have done in my place?”
    Sarevan pondered that, which was a victory in itself. At
last he sighed. “I would have found a way to avoid giving my word.”
    “You demanded my word. You did not stipulate that it embody
my honor.”
    Sarevan stared. Suddenly he laughed, hardly more than a
cough. “Asanian oathtaking! Cubling, when I told Baron Ebraz that you were
incorrigible, I never knew how right I was. Will you swear again, now that
we’re so close to Endros? This time,” he added, “with honor in it.”
    Hirel’s silence was long enough to trouble even Sarevan’s
complacency. But his pride had had enough of trying to force nature’s relief
while a painted barbarian looked on and smirked. He held out his hands and
said, “I give you my true word of honor, as high prince to high prince, that I
will not attempt to escape until I stand before your father in Endros Avaryan.”
    “And I give you mine,” said Sarevan, “that we will accord you
all honor, and return you to Kundri’j Asan as soon as we may.” He raised a
spider-thin hand. “Cut the cords, Zha’dan.”
    He did it quickly, with a swift smile. Hirel leaped up and
stretched wide, exultant.
    Sarevan’s grin was a white flash in the firelight. Hirel
answered it before he could help himself. “Now,” he said, dropping down again,
“what is this I hear of your dainty stomach? Here, eat. I command you.”
    Rather to his surprise, and