Read Online Arrows of the Sun by Judith Tarr - Free Book Online

your
cradle.”
    “Oh, I am terribly old,” she said. “Are you named for him,
maybe?”
    “It’s a common enough name in the south,” he said. “You
can’t be as ancient as that.”
    “Why, youngling? Because you can’t conceive of anything
older than yourself?”
    She wanted him to draw himself up haughtily and declare
himself a man grown, he could well see, and then she could go on laughing at
him. He said, “You’d have to be ninety at least, then, and you’d never be
roving the roads. You’d have yourself a house somewhere, and a chair with
cushions, and servants to run at your call.”
    “I had that,” she said. “I wearied of it.”
    “But—”
    She had stopped listening. She gutted the fish with a knife
as lean and wickedly curved as a cat’s claw, and strung them on a coil of the
line, and presented them to him with a bow and a flourish. “Your dinner, my
lord.”
    “And yours,” he said. He did not know what demon possessed
him, but he was not one to alter his word. “Come to camp with me. I can offer
you a place by the fire, and all the dainties you can eat, and good company,
too. Stories, even. Though maybe none as good as yours.”
    She frowned. She would refuse, he could taste it. He cast
another lure. “You don’t want Lord Peridan to eat all your hard-caught fish, do
you?”
    “That belly on legs.” She spat just to leeward of Estarion’s
foot. “Very well then. I’ll come. I hope you don’t regret it.”
    So did Estarion. But if there had been evil in her, or any
sorcery, he would have known; and his head was not aching even a little. Rather
the opposite. He could not remember when he had felt as well as he did now. No
pain, no ache of knotted muscles, no constant press and fret of rank and duty.
    She cleaned her knife with a knot of grass and sheathed it
at her belt. There was nothing feminine in the gesture, and everything female.
He wondered how he could ever have failed to see that she was a woman.
    “Well,” she said in her deep sweet voice—nothing male in it,
and nothing old either. “Are you going to dawdle the day away?”
    “Yes,” he said, to take her aback; then he laughed. “Come
then, lady and stranger. Try your wits on the emperor’s men.”

7
    Estarion’s return was somewhat less calamitous than he had
feared. The camp was quiet; alarmingly so. Lord Peridan sat in the middle of it
in a massive sulk.
    “The least,” he was saying—growling—“the very least his
majesty could do is to be present when his loyal vassal comes to attend him.
Comes, it should be needless to say, at no little cost of time and
inconvenience, not to mention the danger to his digestion, to dine at his
rustic table, when the table in that lord’s castle is renowned for its
excellence, not to mention its comfort, and furthermore—”
    Estarion swept a bow before him. It brought his peroration
to a halt and began a new one. “And what, pray, are you? Who gave you leave—”
    The man was a walking gullet, but he was a clever one. He
heard the gasps. His eyes darted round the circle that had opened to admit
Estarion. They settled on Estarion’s face.
    The eyes, of course. Everyone always stopped at the eyes.
“Sire,” he said, as smooth as if the rest of it had been a litany of homage.
    Estarion should not have spared a glance to see how the
stranger was taking this revelation. She betrayed no flicker of surprise, and
no repentance, either. The tilt of her brow almost pricked him to laughter.
    He bit down hard on his tongue and schooled his face to
blandness. “Lord Peridan,” he said. “I trust your wait was pleasant. I bring a
gift, as you see: a dainty for your dinner. Will you share it with me?”
    Lord Peridan looked as if he had swallowed one of Estarion’s
fish, sidewise.
    “Uncleaned,” said Sidani’s voice in Estarion’s ear. He did
not jump—in that much, training held. And how in the hells she knew what he was
thinking—
    No time now. He smiled at