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they hope for?” he asked, light, barely
bitter. “That I’ll hate them so much, I let them go of my own free will?”
    “Maybe,” she said.
    His lips stretched back from his teeth. “Maybe I should do
it, then. Give up Asanion. Leave it to rot in peace.”
    “It will hardly do that. More likely it will rise up and
overwhelm the east, and rule us as it ruled us long ago, under an iron heel.”
    Estarion spun to face her. “Listen to yourself! Even you
think of us and them . It’s we in Keruvarion, they in Asanion. There’s never been
one empire. There never will be. Only irreconcilable opposites.”
    “If you think so,” she said calmly, “you make it so. You
have that power, Meruvan Estarion.”
    “I have too much power. Everyone has always said that. Too
much power was never enough to save my father. Only to twist me and break me,
and mend me awry.” He laughed at her frown: laughter that tore his throat.
“Yes, that’s wallowing! I wallow extraordinarily well.”
    “You are too clever by half,” his mother said. She was not
smiling.
    There was a silence. They had quarreled before—they could
hardly help it: he had her temper, and that was as quick as her wits. But never
for so long. Never for so much.
    He would not be the one to end this. She asked of him what
she had not had the strength to demand of herself. She could hardly fault him
for seeing the flaw in it.
    After a while she spoke, shaping the words carefully, as she
did when she was holding anger at bay. “I am told that I am not to accompany
you to Asanion. That I remain as regent in Keruvarion.”
    “There is a regent in Asanion,” he said with equal care, but
no more anger than she deserved.
    “An Asanian,” she said. “A great lord and prince, and loyal
to the Blood of the Lion. But Asanian.”
    “Wasn’t it you who said that I have to learn to face the
rest of my empire?”
    “The scars are deep. They will not heal in a day.”
    “Now you say it,” he said.
    “I have never failed to know it.” She paused for breath,
perhaps to nerve herself, perhaps simply to let him simmer. “Will you take me
with you?”
    “Do I have a choice?”
    “Yes.”
    He looked at her. He loved her, he could hardly deny that.
But love and hate were womb-kin. Someone had said that once, long ago. One of
his ancestors, very likely. It was something they would understand.
    “So,” he said, pitching his voice light, easy, purposely
exasperating. “You would come, then? And hold my hand? And pimp for me in the
harems of the Golden Empire?”
    She did not answer that. “The Red Prince is wise, and the
people love him. He would do well as regent in your absence.”
    “Hal is barely older than I am.”
    “And you are emperor.”
    He accorded her a swordsman’s salute. “Well struck! And suppose
he forgives me for leaving him behind—what then, Mother? Do you think I’m not
to be trusted, where I’m going?”
    “I think that you will need me. Even,” she said, “if you
hate me for it.”
    She stood as straight as ever, her face as still, its beauty
unmarred. But she was fighting back tears. He felt them burning in his own
eyes.
    Tricks. She was a master of woman-sleights as of the wiles
of courts. And she had magery: she wielded it on him, and no matter the cost to
his aching head.
    He was softening. Fool that he was. He knew what she was
doing; knew what she would do if she rode with him, if she had leisure to work
on him through the long leagues to Asanion.
    Maybe he needed the challenge. And it was true enough: he
would need her wits, and her skill in bending men’s wills. Especially in
Asanion, where deception was a game of princes, and murder their pastime.
    “Come, then,” he said, “and do as you please. What I do, in
the end, I’ll do because I will it. And for no other reason.”
    “Have you ever done otherwise?” she asked.
    She would not lock stares. She was too canny for that. She
set a kiss on his brow and left him there. The