by Jenn Lyons
I pulled the wanted poster off the wall and tucked it into my coat.
“Sorry about that,” Jarith said as he returned with a pot of tea and two cups on a tray. He poured the tea, which, true to his word, looked like some variation of maridon.
“Well it’s not like I gave you any warning,” I said as I took my cup and returned to the chair. “This is more hospitality than I deserve.”
For himself, Jarith nudged aside a mound of paperwork and leaned a hip on the edge of his desk. “By Khored. What happened to you?”
“Oh, the usual. Kidnapped, sold into slavery, kept prisoner by a dragon. Same old stuff.”
Jarith laughed, shaking his head in wonder (and assuming I was joking). “You have no idea how good it is to have you back. We’ve almost started wars because of our insistence on searching ships for gold-haired prisoners. I’ve had my agents following up on every lead, no matter how preposterous.”
“You have agents now? You really have moved up in rank.”
“Ah well, Stonegate Pass is a shit assignment, but it’s a fantastic career builder.” He picked up his tea and gulped down some as he studied me. “Does your family know you’re back?”
“Not yet,” I admitted. “Talking to you was the higher priority.”
Jarith frowned and set down his teacup. “Than your own family? What’s going on?”
I cleared my throat and pulled a set of letters out of my coat. “I thought you would want to be involved in this. It concerns Thurvishar D’Lorus.”
The frown didn’t leave his face, but only deepened some. “He’s not my favorite person, but we’ve stayed out of each other’s way. I don’t hold a grudge.”
“I do,” I admitted. “He was involved with my kidnapping.” Which was technically true, even if I was certain Thurvishar hadn’t actually been responsible for it. Before Jarith had a chance to respond, I tossed one of the folded pieces of vellum in front of him. “That is a letter from Raverí D’Lorus testifying that she never bore any children. Not to Gadrith D’Lorus, not to anyone. Thurvishar D’Lorus is not her son.”
He picked up the letter and opened it. The frown had graduated to a scowl. “I’m sure that was true at one point, but I can’t imagine that House D’Lorus let her write letters during her sentence of Continuance…”
“Except Continuance never happened.”
He blinked at me. “What?”
“She’s not dead.” I leaned forward. “Between escaping slavers and navigating my way back here, I tracked her down, Jarith. High Lord Cedric D’Lorus lied about having her in custody, and he lied about Continuance, and he lied about executing her after Continuance was finished. Raverí had an inside man over at the Council, and he gave her enough warning to skip town ahead of the witchhunters.”
Jarith looked incredulous. “What idiot would have been foolish enough to jeopardize their entire career by helping a convicted traitor escape justice?”
I coughed. “That would be your father. Why do you think I came here first?”
It was rather remarkable, watching all the color drain from his face. Of course, I’d just suggested that Qoran Milligreest was guilty of the sort of crime that got one sentenced to lifetime enslavement at best. “Why would my father have—”
“Because your father is a good man and he knew perfectly well she didn’t deserve what the Council and House D’Lorus were going to do to her.” I gestured toward the back side of the letter. “Also, they were lovers. It’s all in there.”
He stared at me. What Jarith didn’t do was tell me that was impossible or that his father would never do that. He probably knew better. The affair part wasn’t even necessarily a great scandal, given how Khorveshans often played fast and loose with polygamy, much to the reproachful delight of the rest of the Empire. Helping a witch escape the witchhunters, though …
Jarith sat down. Then he reached over and finished the rest of his tea while he read the entire letter, start to finish. “Okay.” He paused. “Okay,” he said again.
I snatched the letter out of his hands and magically set the whole thing on fire.
“Wait, what—” He stood up again.
“I’m not trying to blackmail you, Jarith. I figure there’s two ways that you can react to this. The royal way would be to kill me, try to figure out where I’ve hidden Raverí, and do whatever you can to cover this up. But I’m betting you’re going to go for option number two.”
Jarith paused and cocked his head. “What’s option number two?”
“If I’m right, there’s a much bigger problem brewing, and once we uncover that? Nobody is going to have any time to waste thinking about who helped a girl leave town without anyone noticing twenty years ago.”
“Okay, I’m listening.” Jarith didn’t sound panicked, which was good. I needed him rational.
“So, High Lord Cedric lying to the Council about Raverí’s fate is a problem for him just as much as it would be for your father, but let’s be realistic, it happened twenty years ago. I rather suspect the Council would just as soon let that be water down the river. But Thurvishar isn’t Ogenra. He isn’t god-touched. The eyes are faked, and the test results were too. If you were to test Thurvishar right now, he wouldn’t have the tiniest trace of royal blood in him. He would, however, test as half-vordreth with a hell of an aptitude for magic.”
“Why—” Jarith blinked. “Where would High Lord Cedric have even found a half-vordreth? The only vordreth I’ve ever even heard of is—” He stopped looking concerned and began to look horrified. I’m guessing he was mentally going over the stories his father had probably told him about Emperor Sandus and his wife, Dyana—his vordreth wife.
“That brings me to my second letter,” I said as I laid it, still sealed, on the desk in front of him. “Which, to save you time, I’ll simply explain is from the High Priestess of Thaena herself, verifying that she cannot confirm that either Emperor Sandus’s wife nor son are actually dead because neither soul crossed beyond the Second Veil. You know who else never made it fully past the Second Veil? Gadrith D’Lorus. A fact which I can confirm, because I’ve seen him with my own eyes.”
“What?”
“Gadrith D’Lorus faked his death. A lot of High Lord Cedric’s crazy, inexplicable behavior starts to make a lot more sense once you realize that he’s still taking his marching orders from his son Gadrith. But Gadrith isn’t perfect, and he’s screwed up this time.”
“There’s no way Gadrith is still—”
I held up a hand. “Hear me out. Thurvishar isn’t Gadrith’s son. Thurvishar is Emperor Sandus’s son. Why did Gadrith lie? I honestly don’t know. It might be because of the prophecies that he and Relos Var seem to be so obsessed with, or it might just be that Gadrith thought Thurvishar was too young to eat at the time.* Fortunately, the truth is easy to confirm: because if I’m right, Thurvishar is both gaeshed and half-vordreth. That is eminently testable.”
Jarith narrowed his eyes and studied me. Then he walked over to a cabinet and proved he’d lied earlier by pulling down a bottle of brandy. “And how do you know what Gadrith looks like?”
“Raverí showed me.”
He poured himself a shot and didn’t offer me any. “And how do you know she’s really Raverí D’Lorus?” He wrinkled his nose. “Not that I can imagine anyone volunteering to be hunted as a witch and a traitor.”
I grinned and held up a third letter. “This one’s from your uncle Nikali.” I tossed it over so it slid to a stop next to the second letter on the desk. “He said you’d know it was really from him.”
He gulped down the rest of his drink and walked back to the desk. “I’m not going to lie, Kihrin, you’re starting to scare me. What the hell have you been up to while you were away?”
“Oh, we so don’t have time for that.” I gestured toward the paper. “Do you believe me? At least enough to pull Thurvishar in and run those tests? Keep in mind he won’t come willingly if he realizes what you’re doing. I’m sure he’s been ordered t
o keep Gadrith’s secrets hidden by any means necessary.”
Jarith didn’t answer right away. He broke the wax seal on the letter and read it. I had no idea what wording Doc had used, but it must have been persuasive. He set it down and nodded. “I’ll see it done.”
74: THEFTS AND MURDERS
(Talon’s story)
“What are we doing?” Sheloran D’Talus asked Kihrin, later.
He pointed down from their vantage in the tower. “This has one of the best views in the whole Blue Palace,” he told her as he watched through one of the ship’s glasses that the guards kept there. “We’re watching a spy.”
“A spy?” Her red eyes went wide. “How dangerous! Who is he?”
“He? Maybe it’s a she…” Kihrin said.
They’d discarded their wings in a corner of the watchtower where they wouldn’t interfere with their movements, and Kihrin had removed the heavy feathered shirt. “Is it a she?” Sheloran questioned coyly. “And is she fabulously seductive?”
He shook his head. “No. Sadly, no.” He pointed. “The little man in the staid clothes. The one with the shaved head.”
Sheloran peered through the spyglass. “Isn’t that a Voice of the Council?”
“That makes him especially dangerous,” Kihrin agreed.
“Well, he’s leaving,” the young lady announced, disappointed that there would be no sexy, dangerous, covert shenanigans.
Kihrin reached over and took his turn at the spyglass. Caerowan was talking to various nobles, one after another, and then the Voice of the Council met up with a group of servants and led them away from the party.
He was heading toward the Private Court, off-limits to all but family.
Kihrin closed the spyglass and helped Sheloran to her feet. “I’m afraid our game may have just become serious. Would you do me the favor of finding the guard?”
The woman raised her chin. “What shall I tell them?”
“We have intruders in the Prince’s Court.”
When Kihrin reached the court, there was no sign of Caerowan or any of the men that Kihrin had seen accompanying him. The young D’Mon prince cloaked himself in shadows and looked for any sign of the intruders. No matter what the Voice’s perceived rank, this was a part of the palace in which he was unquestionably trespassing.
He heard a scuffle, a muffled curse, and homed in on that noise. As he came around a corner, he saw one wall of the Hall of Flowers had been magically breached. It was now background to a lattice of glowing green energy, a circle of glyphs and sigils, through which he could see a hallway of rough brick and cobblestone.
Two men carried a wrapped triangular package through the opening while a third man supervised. Green energy leaked from his fingertips as he worked to keep the magical portal open. Caerowan was last in line.
That package. Kihrin’s heart skipped as he realized what it was. It was a harp. It was his harp.
They were stealing Valathea.
“Hey!” The shout was out of his lips and he was running.
The two men carrying the harp vanished through the opening in an instant.
“Abide,” Caerowan told the Gatekeeper.
The Devoran priest lingered as the young man raced up to them.
“You son of a bitch. That doesn’t belong to you!” All thoughts of stealth vanished from the young man’s mind.
Caerowan reached out with a hand, grabbed the wrist Kihrin was using to hold his sword, and twisted. Kihrin flew over Caerowan’s head and landed on the tile floor. Caerowan put a knee to the young man’s chest and bent down. “She will be returned to you, Your Majesty.* This I swear.”
“You’re crazy,” Kihrin said as best he could while struggling to draw breath in his lungs.
“Sadly no.”
The pressure on Kihrin’s chest released, and Caerowan ran through the portal, the mage who had opened it following a second later.
Kihrin rolled to his feet and chased after, but there was no sign of the gate. He turned at the sound of footsteps running fast in his direction. “Guards! Guards, there was a theft—”
The soldiers stopped and looked at him oddly. The lead man bowed. “M’lord, your presence is required immediately. It’s your mother.”
Kihrin was at a loss. Who did the man mean? Ola? Then he realized they had to mean his stepmother, Alshena D’Mon.
“Show me,” he said.
* * *
She had been poisoned.
That was everyone’s immediate assumption, because the Lord Heir’s wife had been drinking some wine of unknown source when the convulsions had taken her. Death had come on swift wings thereafter. Poison left her a corpse with red skin and a rictus grin. Her body was taken by the physickers of the House, who announced her beyond their ability to repair.
Everyone assumed that neither Therin nor Darzin would petition the Black Gate for her Return.
Galen had taken one look at her and had been ordered to his rooms because it wasn’t seemly for a noble of the House to cry so in public. Darzin didn’t seem joyful—but Kihrin thought his expression was too ambivalent for the murder of his wife. No matter that he hadn’t loved her, Alshena’s murder should have stung his pride.
Tishar’s expression could have been cast from iron.
Galen was still drying his eyes when Kihrin found him. With no words, Kihrin crossed over to his younger brother, put his arms around him, and let the younger boy sob.
“I hate this place, I hate this place, I hate this place,” Galen said again and again. “He killed her. He killed my mother!”
“You don’t know—”
“Who else would it have been? She wasn’t important. Now you’re here, I’m no longer heir and there was never any chance she’d be mother of a Lord Heir, let alone a High Lord.” He sniffled and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Who else but Darzin? Who else but my father? I know how he beats her, how he hates her. Hates her because he blames her for my weakness.”
“You’re not weak,” Kihrin told him.
“I am weak,” Galen corrected, tears still streaming down his cheeks. “I am weak and I am wrong, and I wish I weren’t. I don’t like the things our father wants me to like, no matter how hard I try.”
“You’re fantastic with a sword,” Kihrin said, trying to find what words of comfort he could.
“Not good enough, it seems.” Galen shook his head. “Never good enough, or strong enough, or cruel enough to please him. He’ll beat me now, for daring to cry over my mother’s corpse.”
“Galen, you’re fourteen. No matter what he says, I bet Darzin wasn’t any better at fourteen.” Kihrin reached over, took his brother’s hand, and squeezed it.
Galen sat there, eyes a vivid blue from the tears. He met Kihrin’s gaze. “I don’t like girls,” he confessed.
Kihrin bit his lip. “I know.”
“You do?” Galen frowned, confusion now showing in his features.
“I’m sure everyone knows,” Kihrin admitted. “It’s not really too hard to figure out, when you don’t even stare at pretty girls when they’re wearing almost nothing. Aunt Tishar and—” He floundered, not wanting to mention Alshena’s name. But if they had taken such pains to note his own sexual interests, surely they had done so with Galen. “You know, it means nothing. Men worked at the Shattered Veil Club, and they always had plenty of customers. Some men like … men.”
“It’s weak,” Galen muttered.
“Dragon shit,” Kihrin said. “It’s an excuse for gossip and after that, nobody cares.”
“That’s not true,” Galen said. He wiped his eyes. “You know that’s not true.”
Kihrin sighed. “Yes, you’re right. That’s not true. It should be though.”
An awkward silence settled between the two boys.
“Have you ever—” Galen started to ask. He stopped himself, and turned away, face reddened.
“Yes.” Kihrin’s voice was quiet.
Galen looked up. “What? You have?”
&nb
sp; “I didn’t like it,” Kihrin confessed. “And I just—” He shrugged. “I just like girls, I suppose.”
“Oh.” Galen cleared his throat. “I mean, of course. That makes sense.”
The stifling silence returned.
“I’m running away,” Kihrin said. “You could come with me. Where I’m going, no one will care.” The idea seemed plausible enough. If they were incognito, no one would care if they took wives or had children or not.
“You’re running? You’d never get away—”
“I am. I will. I have a way.” Kihrin squeezed Galen’s hand. “Come with me?”
Galen stared at him, and then he nodded.
75: CONFRONTATIONS
(Kihrin’s story)
From the Ruby District, I made my way to the Culling Fields invisibly, but I wore my hood up, just in case.
When I entered the tavern, the first thing I noticed was that it was as crowded as the last time I’d seen it. The second thing I noticed though was Teraeth leaning against the bar, chatting up Tauna Milligreest. Doc had said that he’d left a way to contact Sandus with Tauna in case of emergencies. We all agreed this qualified.
I knew Teraeth had a weakness for Khorveshan women, but I couldn’t help but wonder if Teraeth knew he was hitting on his adopted sister.
I started to wander over in his direction when I saw Tyentso. She had set up shop at one of the larger round tables, cleared it of its normal contents, and had instead covered the entire table with small glass tumblers filled with water. At least, I assumed it was water.
Sitting next to her was a Marakori man wearing a patchwork sallí. He had a plain copper circlet on his forehead, and although I couldn’t see it currently, I was equally sure he owned a matching wand somewhere on his person. No one in the bar seemed particularly concerned or interested in his presence, but to be fair, he still didn’t really look like anyone special. He also looked young, but then unlike his friends Qoran, Therin, or Nikali, he would never age as long as he owned the Crown and Scepter.