Korvan was so exhausted that his head had begun to ache. He took off his golden circlet and set it on the velvet pillow on the small table next to his bed.
The servants had turned back the covers. It was late; the rose moon was already overtaking the blue. He had stayed up long into the night speaking with Yorek, handling some of the affairs of the realm that had been pushed aside as he focused on the purge of Karelin and the rebel king. The emperor stood looking down at the folds of the white sheets lain open for him, overlapping the embroidered coverlet.
Esaria had made that coverlet. It had taken her almost a year. He reached out and trailed his long fingers over the pattern: red roses and stars. It was his device, but she had worked the stars in gold rather than in silver. Gold had always been her color.
Esaria.
As his hand moved over the blanket, his wedding ring gleamed in the light filtering in through the window. He remembered seeing it gleam just so, once before ...
... Korvan has reached to pick up a book he sees lying on Esaria's pillow. He normally never comes in until his wife is already abed, but he has come early to their chamber tonight. He sleeps more now than he will in the coming years, for he has a younger man's mind, free of burdens.
Curious, he turns the book over in his hands. He has not seen it before; certainly it is not one that he has given her. He searches for a title on the cover of the book, but there is none. He opens the front cover and leafs through a few pages. It is poetry.
As he shifts the book in his hand, ready to put it back, something slips halfway out from between the pages. It is a folded piece of paper, unsealed.
The page it marks is a poem. Korvan has no interest in poetry; he has little use for such sentimental nonsense. This one, as he finds when he skims it without interest, is a poem about spring—the usual superficial, meandering language, all about flowers blooming, the warmth of the sun, and so on.
It is so like Esaria to waste her time on such frivolous things. But it keeps her sweet, he thinks, and he smiles.
He unfolds the slip of paper, expecting to find some note his wife has made to herself about the poem. Instead, the note is in an unfamiliar hand. There is no signature, just a few brief lines.
"You are the radiant Sun;
At your glance, Gentle Lady,
I am set afire."
Korvan feels cold. Distantly, he is aware of what this means, but his mind is slow to grasp it.
A sound at the door draws his attention, and he quickly stuffs the note into the pocket of his jacket.
"Good evening, Your Grace," says the empress. She walks into the chamber, the short train of her gown shushing against the rug. First, she curtsies, and her handmaiden also makes an obeisance. Then, rising, Esaria makes a tired gesture. The handmaiden—Korvan cannot remember her name—goes to the wardrobe to search out Esaria's nightclothes.
"Esaria," says Korvan. He can see, even by the dim light of the spirit globes, that she looks tired and ill. She has been thus for some time: withdrawn, distant.
"Yes, Korvan? Oh. You've found my poetry," she says. "I did not think you liked poetry, dear one. Surely you are not reading it."
Korvan does not reply. He watches as Esaria's handmaiden begins to help her undress. Holding the book tightly in one hand, he turns toward the balcony and looks out across the garden. He listens to the gentle domestic sounds: water being poured for Esaria to wash her face; he rustle of cloth, laces, petticoats; soft commands. At last, there comes the sound of a closing door. Esaria's handmaiden has left them.
He hears her sliding into the bed. "Korvan ... does something trouble you?" she asks.
There is a note of worry in her voice. He turns to her, raising the book of poetry. "Where did you get this?" he asks.
"It is mine," she says.
"It is not," Korvan replies. "I have not seen it before."
Esaria tilts her head. "Of course not, Korvan. You do not make a habit of perusing my books. Look inside the cover and you shall see."
Korvan does. There is an inscription in a different hand than that of the note: "To Esaria — love Mother." He narrows his eyes and looks at his wife. "It was on your pillow."
"Oh? I must have left it there." She has lain back on the bed, pulling the covers up to her chest. She looks perplexed, as if unsure why he could be asking her about this, but her voice is soft and tired.
"There was a note inside of it."
At this, Esaria's face goes very still. Her hand stops in the process of smoothing the blankets. "A note?" she echoes.
Korvan watches her eyes. Something dark and dangerous coils up in his heart, ready to strike. "A love poem."
Esaria opens her rosebud lips, but she closes them immediately. It is as good as a confession. She sits up, clutching the coverlet to her chest above her lace-trimmed nightgown.
"Who is he?" Korvan asks. His voice is low.
He speaks, he thinks, in a reasonable tone, but Esaria's expression clearly registers fear. "I don't understand."
She lies. He knows it. The hand holding the book begins to quiver. He lifts it and says, "Who is he?" again, very calmly.
"Who—?"
Esaria flinches as Korvan flings the book of poetry across the room toward her. It strikes the spirit globe that sits on her bedside table. The globe rocks in its rest, rolls off the table, and shatters on the floor; immediately, half the light in the dim room is extinguished.
He can hear her shuddering breath. "Your Grace, please—"
Korvan makes it to her side of the bed in a few short strides, and she stops talking, drawing back from him in fear. He seizes her shoulders and shakes her, hard. His fingers grip her so tightly that he can feel the outlines of the bones beneath her flesh. She is thin these days. "Tell me who he is!"
She gasps in pain, grasping at his wrists with her shaking hands. But she does not cry. "Please, Your Grace—"
Korvan draws a breath. He takes his hands away. "Esaria. Confess. Confess, and—and let us ..." What? Find a way through? "What have you done?"
The empress looks up at him, and in her shadowed eyes he sees no trace of the vibrancy of the woman she had been when he married her. She seems to be considering what to say, what to do. Finally, she shakes her head and says, "I'm sorry."
"I cannot make sense of it! What can you have wanted for? I have given you everything! Everything you could ever have desired!"
The look she gives him then is naked sorrow. "No, Korvan, you did not. You never did."
"You are the highest lady in the land, Esaria, what could you possibly—"
"Love," she says, interrupting him. "I wanted love, Korvan, and it was the one thing you could never give me."
"I do love you," he says, and it is true.
"No, Korvan. You love nothing. Nothing except Penrua. You spend your days with her. You spend your nights with her. You think on her every moment. Even our children—each time you look at them, you see them standing in her shadow. You see your future with her, our children's future with her—you do not see me."
"I am an emperor! It is my duty to serve the realm!"
"And I am your empress. I have done my duty, too. I wait upon you. I would comfort you and share your burdens, but you never speak to me; you never tell me anything of who you are. I don't even know you, yet I share your bed. I have borne you ... sons."
Something in the way she says this snags in his mind. He draws back from her. She sighs, seeming somehow to diminish, and sinks back against the pillow.
"You have lain with another man," he says.
Esaria closes her eyes.
"How am I to know that my sons—how am I—"
"Oh, Korvan," she whispers. "They look like you ... the ones who are yours." She opens her eyes again, looking up at him, and there is such sorrow in her face that he thinks he might forgive her, might move past what she has done to him, this ultimate betrayal. That sweet face has lain on the pillow beside his for a score of years, and it is just as beautiful as it was when first he saw her so very long ago.
But it isn't sorrow in her face, is it? It is pity.
Korvan draws a breath. It catches in his throat. He croaks out the words, trying to focus on what she has revealed. The sons who look like him ... there is one whose hair is not gold, but russet. "Koreti."
Esaria smiles faintly. She looks so tired. So drained. "My darling boy."
Korvan feels her treachery pierce his innards like a spear. He has never felt anything so exquisitely painful in his life. The deaths of his parents, the deaths of friends—those were small losses compared to this. "Esaria," he breathes. "What are you saying?"
She does not answer him. He sees the gleam of a tear on her cheek, but she is looking at him with naked honesty, and he sees the truth of what she has done in her eyes.
Korvan leans over Esaria. He snatches blindly with a trembling hand for the corner of one of his pillows and pulls it toward him. Esaria has flinched back from him; she raises her hands, but before she can move or push him away, he has placed the pillow over her beautiful, treacherous face.
He presses down, quivering with rage. She writhes beneath him, bucking and kicking. Her hands scrabble at his wrists, his arms, but she does not have the strength or the leverage to move him; he is leaning his weight into the motion, unable to see through the blur of tears that fall freely down his cheeks.
One scratching hand flails away from the pillow, grasping through the air and jerking against the coverlet as if in search of some weapon to use against him. But then the fingers splay out, clawing in one final, desperate motion. And, with a last shuddering motion, she lies still.
Korvan draws a deep breath, aware suddenly that he has been clenching his teeth. His body feels cold, but sweat prickles the back of his neck.
He takes the pillow away from her face. He smooths her hair and the bedclothes and, almost lovingly, he crosses her hands on her stomach. Her eyes are eerily half-open, and when he brushes his hand over her eyelids, they will not stay closed.
Korvan sat on the edge of his bed, looking at the chair in the corner of the room. After he had gone to confront Koreti, he had returned to this room and kept a solitary vigil in that chair, waiting for dawn to break. He had tried not to look at his wife. He had tried not to see the sadness in those half-open eyes, eyes whose light he had so easily snuffed out.