Read Online Lord of Emperors by Guy Gavriel Kay - Free Book Online

experience, putting his own hands to a work of such holy magnificence, and he told the clerics as much. They respected him by then, acknowledged his piety and care, and he even thought they liked him. No one demurred. Wearing a white robe they offered him, Pardos stayed awake with the Sleepless Ones on the last night and, shivering, heard his own name chanted by holy men in their rituals as someone virtuous and deserving, for whom the god’s grace was besought. They gave him gifts—a new cloak, a sun disk—when he set out again with his staff and pack on a bright morning, with birdsong hinting at spring, continuing towards Sarantium.

    In all honesty, Rustem had to admit that his vanity had been offended. With the passage of a little more time, he decided, this wounded, unsettled, choleric feeling would probably pass and he might begin to find his wives’ reactions and his own response to be amusing and instructive, but an adequate interval had not yet gone by.
    It seemed he had indulged himself in some domestic illusions. He wasn’t the first man to do so. Slender, fragile Jarita, who was being discarded, cast off by the desire of the King of Kings to raise Rustem of Kerakek to the priestly caste, had appeared entirely content when informed of this development—as soon as she was told of the promise thatshe was to be given an appropriate, kindly husband. Her only request was that this happen in Kabadh.
    It seemed that his second, delicate wife, had a greater dislike for desert sand and heat than she had ever revealed, and an equally strong interest in seeing and dwelling within the bustle and excitement of the royal city. Rustem, nonplussed, had indicated that it was likely she could be accommodated in this wish. Jarita had kissed him happily, even passionately, and gone off to see her baby in the nursery.
    Katyun, his first wife—calm, composed Katyun, who was being honoured, as was her son, by elevation to the highest of the three castes, with the prospect of unimagined wealth and opportunity—had erupted in a storm of grief upon hearing these same tidings. She had refused to be consoled, wailing and distraught.
    Katyun did not have any liking for the great cities of the world, never having seen—or having felt any desire to see—any of them. Sand in clothing or hair was a trivial affliction; the heat of the desert sun could be dealt with if one knew the proper ways to live; small, remote Kerakek was an entirely pleasant place in which to dwell if one were the wife of a respected physician and had the status that came therewith.
    Kabadh, the court, the famous water gardens, the churka grounds, the flower-laden, crimson-pillared hall of dance . . . these were places where women would be painted and perfumed and garbed in exquisite silks and in the manners and malice of long practice and familiarity. A woman from the desert provinces among such . . . ?
    Katyun had wept in her bed, squeezing her eyes tightly shut, refusing even to look at him, as Rustem strove to comfort her with talk of what opportunities this royal munificence offered for Shaski—and any other children they might now have.
    That last had been an impulsive, unplanned comment, but it did produce an ebbing of tears. Katyun wanted another baby and Rustem knew it. With a move to Kabadh, in the lofty role of royal physician, there would be no further arguments about living space or resources that could be applied against the idea of another child.
    Inwardly, he had still been wounded, however. Jarita had been much too matter-of-fact about being set aside with her daughter; Katyun gave no evidence of realizing how astonishing this change in their fortunes was, no sign of pride in him, of excitement in their shared new fate.
    The suggestion about a second child did calm her. She dried her eyes, sat up in the bed, looked at him thoughtfully and then managed a brief smile. Rustem spent what was left of the night with her. Katyun, less delicately pretty than