Chapter 1 #2
They’d raised their children to be truthful and honorable and to
consider others before themselves. Sahar had never demanded any
more from others than she did from herself.
So why did this Aleksandr ruffle her fur the
wrong way, as he had so smugly put it? Part of what he’d said about
her was true. She’d been proposed to many times, and she had
refused every proposal. But they had been from men of rank and
wealth who knew what she was, men looking to increase their own
purses and standing by marrying a princess. Not a single one cared
about who she was as a person. What her worth was. At least this
Aleksandr, for all his strutting and boasting, had asked her
because of his skewed sense of her as a strong woman with an easy
temper. She chuffed into her empty cup. Surely her quickness with
her blade today had disavowed him of her having an “easy”
temper.
Sahar was not against marriage exactly. She
had grown up the child of parents famous for their love and long
marriage. Her brother, Asim, had already married Rima, the eldest
daughter of the Oryx and the Willow, and proudly awaited the birth
of their first child.
Halah, two years younger than Sahar, was
being courted by Munir, the newest and youngest member of the
king’s personal guard. At twenty and one, Sahar was more than old
enough to marry, but she was quite happy with her life as it was.
She certainly had no need for a husband. She had wealth and
position of her own, and family everywhere she turned. While she
and her brother were her parents’ only children, her Aunt Lyrra and
Uncle Nasim had four living children, all of whom had grown up
together in the palace built by their parents when they had settled
here some twenty and two years ago.
They had been happy years, but for the spring
of Sahar’s tenth year. The shadow of a memory passed through her,
and she shivered and smoothed the skirts of her one shouldered gown
of emerald worm weave.
Servants began to clear the empty platters
and refill goblets of wine and beer as men got up from their seats
and started to form a line in front of the king’s table. Other men,
who hadn’t been part of the royal feast, joined the line from
outside the palace courtyard. Her father had always insisted that
the races be open to all challengers, no matter their station in
life.
Soon enough, she caught sight of Aleksandr
walking in. He was not hard to find. He stood head and shoulders
above every man lining up, but for Prince Taweel the Tall.
Aleksandr’s hair shone, its color lighter than most, a mixture of
brown and gold and every shade between, like finely sanded cedar,
cut to below his ears, with a thick shock falling onto his high,
wide forehead as it had earlier today. He wore a robe of moss green
linen with hems of umber worm weave and leather boots, not sandals,
and his waist belt, though loosely cinched, emphasized the breadth
of his shoulders compared to the trimness of his waist, and was
embedded with stones of amber, as was the sheath of a bone-hilted
blade.
He was cleanshaven this evening, which
exaggerated the strong line of his jaw and the ridiculously deep
cleft of his chin that she had seen only a hint of earlier today
beneath several days’ worth of dark stubble. Though she could not
see the color of his eyes from where she sat, she knew they were
the deep brown of loamy earth and that they lit up when he laughed
and darkened when he grew serious, as he did now, spying her
sitting at the king’s table beside her mother, the queen.
He dipped his head in acknowledgement, his
gaze never leaving hers, and Sahar lowered her chin a notch in
return, a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth. The line
of men turned to face the royal table, and Aleksandr, standing dead
center and not more than six paces from her, grinned, showing
strong, straight white teeth, eliciting girlish sighs and twitters
all around the courtyard. His grin widened and Sahar pressed her
lips tight.
Her father, King Asad, stood, and the
courtyard quieted. At forty and five years of age, the Black Mane
still commanded attention. His shoulders were broad and
well-muscled, his spine erect, and his mane, though more silver now
than his namesake black, was thick and glossy enough to make men
twenty years younger envious. He held his hand out to her mother,
Queen Oona, who rose from her seat with a calm grace that was as
natural to the Swan as breathing. Dressed in her favorite
one-shouldered gown of lavender linen overlaid with a sheer sheath
of golden worm weave intricately embroidered with delicate blooms
of lavender and heather, a fortieth birthday present from her
husband, she took his hand and stood beside him, as she had their
entire life together.
“Welcome all,” he said, his rich voice
carrying out across the night. “Welcome to the Feast of Autumn’s
Eve.”
Applause and cheers rang out and Sahar’s
chest filled with pride. Pride for her parents, her family, for the
tribe and the city they had built and ruled over fairly.
“Three days hence the races will begin,” her
father announced. “The first will be one league for a purse of
three gold pieces, the second will be three leagues for a purse of
thirty gold pieces, and the third and last will be one hundred
leagues for a purse of one hundred gold pieces and breeding rights
to any stallion or broodmare in my stables, with the exception of
Storm Chaser and Cloud Dancer.”
The gathering clapped, the twenty and one men
lined up to ride in the races puffed out their chests and jostled
their neighbors, and Aleksandr glared accusingly at Sahar. She
glared right back. If he truly thought he ever had a chance of
breeding rights to Lasair, then that was his mistake.
“And now,” her father said, “the riders’
introductions.”
Her parents took their seats and the first
rider stepped forward, a swarthy desert tribesman dressed in a robe
of black linen and leather sandals, his waist blade’s hilt embedded
with rubies and onyx.
“I am Saqr, the Falcon, second son of the
Grebe, King of the Marsh Lands.” He bowed to the king, and then to
Sahar. “I will win these races in your name and honor, Princess
Sahar.”
She nodded her acknowledgment and the Falcon
stepped back as the next man stepped forward and bowed.
“I am Feroz, eldest son of the merchant
Gaspar. I will win these races in your name and glory, Princess
Sahar.”
And on it went, at least every third man
declaring their intent to win for her glory until a man dressed in
a fine robe of red linen, its hems of black worm weave richly
embroidered with threads of red, gold, and green, stepped forward.
Tall, though not as tall as Aleksandr, who stood to his right, he
was a man built straight up and down with a neatly cropped beard as
black as his hair, which he wore tied back, accentuating his high
cheekbones and hooked nose, keeping his face on the masculine side
of pretty. His skin was not as swarthy as a southern tribesman’s or
as fair as a Northerner’s, and his eyes shone dark and bright as
they beaded in on the king.
“I am Yago the Wolf, third son of the Ox,
King of the Eastern Grasslands, and eldest son of the Fox, eldest
daughter of the Jackal.”
A collective gasp filled the courtyard, and
Sahar’s mother calmly placed her hand over her father’s, which was
fisted on the table.
The tale of the Lion and the Swan, Sahar’s
parents, was known far and wide. Her father, Asad, the Black Mane,
was eldest son and heir to the Panther’s throne, and her mother,
Oona, the Swan, a slave when they first met. In truth, the night
they met, the Swan and her sister, Lyrra, the Dove, were to be
given as dowry for the Fox’s betrothal to the Black Mane. The Swan,
desperate to keep her sister from becoming a Pleasure Woman in the
Panther’s palace, had publicly proposed marriage to the Black Mane.
Though he could not accept then without starting a war between the
tribes, he secretly vowed to help the sisters escape his father and
a life of slavery. The Fox, jealous of the Swan, had attempted to
have her killed, twice, and the Ox had been her accomplice. His
face still bore the scar of the Black Mane’s blade for his actions.
And now their son stood before her parents.
“Why are you here?” her father asked.
“I am here to win the races,” Yago answered.
“For I am but a third son and so must make my own way and
fortune.”
“The Leopard is a third son,” King Asad said
of his younger half-brother, who had become heir to the Panther’s
throne after his two older brothers married and went into exile.
“Yet, he has become king of the Great Valley. You are still a
prince, eldest son of the Ox and Fox, and I have not heard of any
discord between you and your parents.”
“There is no discord, though they were
neither of them pleased that I chose to come and compete in the
races.”
“And so I ask again, why are you here?”
Yago the Wolf smiled and held his hands out,
palms up. “I am here to see for myself this city you have built,
King Black Mane. To see how a city raised on the idea of freedom
and self-merit works. To be judged only on my own worth, not my
family’s, something I thought you of all men would understand. I
have been told that you once said a son should not be held
accountable for his father’s actions.”
The king chuffed. “I have also said that a
man should and will be judged on his own words and deeds.”
“Just so, King Black Mane,” Yago the Wolf
said, dipping his head and stepping back into line. “Just so.”
His dark gaze flicked over Sahar, and beside
her, her mother stiffened.
Aleksi rarely disliked a person on sight, but
he was going to make an exception for this Prince Yago. The man’s