Mortal Suns Read Online Free Page A

Hetsa was sitting in her royal apartment, awaiting her lover.
    The apartment had altered rather from the earlier scene, when it had been splashed by blood and bloody light, reeking of oils and aromatics and the act of birth. The walls were recently repainted, a token gift of the King’s. He had never been discourteous. Behind the pillars, on the creamy plaster, a procession of maidens, bearing fruit, accompanied by long-tailed birds, pipers, and garlanded gazelles, went prettily around three sides to a gilt shrine of Gemli, the Ipyran goddess of joy. A proper compliment, for Hetsa was the daughter of an Ipyran king. In fact the shrine had been placed at the very spot where Bandri, the birth goddess, had waited, over four years ago. Now Bandri was nowhere to be seen.
    That same night, they had informed Akreon his child, a daughter, had died, a pity, but not, demonstrably, so unlucky and ill-omened as the truth. Nor such a tragedy as it would have been thought, had the baby been male.
    Nevertheless,in the month after the death-birth, Akreon took another new queen, a Daystar picked from Oceaxis itself. He had seen her at a noble’s house, where they had taken care he should. She had ankle-length hair the color of young barley, a pale yellow almost green, and she was just thirteen.
    As this Lesser Sun arose, Hetsa completely declined. She did not invite a lover for one whole year, but after that they arrived in generous quantities.
    That was not unheard of, or rather, providing nothing was heard, it was possible. Akreon had his own pleasures, and his several duties, as uppermost priest and war-leader of the land. He liked women as a pastime. He did not, intellectually, think about them. It was his steward, primed to the work, who from time to time suggested the generosity of a necklace, or a repainted chamber.
    Hetsa’s women were rustling and giggling in the outer room. They had a turtle, the size of a dog and with a shell like old jade, and were playing with it by the pool. It was supposed ancient, and able to predict things. Now certainly it raised its petted head, and the outer doors were opened.
    The merchant Mokpor came through, with one slave. His caravan had come back from the south this morning, and Hetsa had expected nothing less.
    Hetsa’s Maiden, Ermias, entered, bowed, and smiled secretively. For a second, Hetsa was irritated by this. She kept order by means of sudden malice, and presents.
    “Why are you grinning like an ape?”
    Ermias’s smile vanished at once.
    “I have toothache, madam. It draws up my mouth.”
    “Have the tooth pulled out then. Who has come?”
    “The merchant, madam. He’s waiting—” Ermias had meant to say, smiling still,
impatiently.
Instead she added, “In the outer room.”
    “Is he. Has he the web-silk from Bulos?”
    “Oh yes, madam.”
    “And the riverine pearls?”
    “I’m sure.” Ermias wondered uneasily if she would need to have a tooth pulled in point of fact. Hetsa remembered, curious things, and might in two months’ time, demand to look in her mouth. But no, Errnias would say she had sought out old Crow Claw. The witch was not so often seen about now, but one could always pretend. Crow Claw’s magic would easily put right one of Ermias’s perfectly sound molars.
    “Send him into me. His slave may stay outside. And shut the door. I don’t want them all running to other maids, with stories of what I’ve bought. That happened last time. No sooner had I got my dress made up, than that cunning one, that serpent Stabia, appeared in just the same embroidered stuff. She’s too old to wear it and too fat, and should have known better.”
    “Yes, madam.” Ermias thought that Hetsa should also recollect leaning at her mirror of burnished silver, and sighing, while Ermias dressed her hair, over the little poem Mokpor had sent her. “His eyes are like stars,” Hetsa had exclaimed. Perhaps they were, they needed to be, when his poetry was so bad.
    Ermias went to