by Sharon Shinn
Zoe turned back to him, her face cold with fury. “Do you? Then very well. There is blood in your body that does not belong to you. Welchin blood. It doesn’t run through your veins and arteries, but through your stomach and your guts. You have ingested it.”
Nelson appeared astonished. “What? How could something like that even happen?”
“Only one way,” Zoe said, still coldly. “If the honored prince of the Karkades was somehow acquiring the blood of Welchin people and drinking it like water.”
“Well, that’s revolting,” Nelson said.
The prince tried to look surprised, but his face more truly showed uneasiness. “Is such a thing a crime in your country? That is not the case in the Karkades.”
Zoe took a step closer to him. She was a tall, slender woman without much body mass, yet she exuded so much rage that it was hard not to be a little afraid of her. “Is it a crime in the Karkades to sip so much blood from a man’s body that he dies?” she hissed. “Because in the ninedays since you have been in our city, ten corpses have shown up in our streets and alleys, sucked almost dry. My husband used the word exsanguinated. We could not imagine who was performing such acts. But now, given the evidence of your body, I have to assume it was you. So, yes. Murder is a crime in my country. Is it not in yours?”
“It was not my intent to murder anyone,” the prince said. Now he tried to appear shocked. “Perhaps my advisors—who have sought to meet my specific needs—have been too zealous on my behalf. I can speak with them.”
“Speak with them,” Zoe repeated. As if she couldn’t help herself, she reached out with one hand and shoved the prince in the chest. “I will speak with you. I do not know how much longer you intend to remain in my country, but you will not drink the blood of one more Welchin citizen.”
Seka Mardis tried to push herself between Zoe and the prince. “Prime,” she said in a placating voice.
Zoe knocked her aside with a swipe of her hand. All her attention was focused on the prince. “If one more body shows up in the slums or the river flats—if one more man is found staggering through the streets, broken and bleeding—I will come for you. You want to see if I can cause your blood to riot against you? You want to know what it feels like to have every inch of your skin raw and bruised? Continue this foul practice, and you will very quickly find out.”
Seka had righted herself, and now she looked almost as angry as Zoe. “Prime!” she snarled. “Do not speak to the prince in such a fashion!”
Zoe shot her a look of venomous contempt. “Oh, don’t think you have any hope of stopping me, whatever I choose to do.”
Seka’s head snapped back. “Guards!” she called. “Come quickly! Help the prince!”
Leah almost knocked over her chair as she scrambled out of the way, gathering her breath so she could scream for Darien’s soldiers. The Karkan guards were hurtling in their direction, Yori running in at an angle to cut them off, and Seka was yelling something in her own language.
Then Nelson slashed his hand through the air with one impatient gesture. All three of the rushing guards grabbed their heads and sank to their knees, moaning and rocking in pain. Yori skidded to a halt and looked down on them, then glanced up and caught Leah’s eye. She was grinning.
“Call them off,” Nelson said calmly to Seka. “Or they will not easily recover.” He did not sound remotely drunk.
Seka stared at him. “What did you do?”
“I enflamed their brains. Would you like to discover what that feels like?” His voice was as polite as if he was offering her keerza.
She pressed her lips together, trying to bite back fury. “Release them. I will order them to stand down.”
He cocked his head, eyeing her with some mistrust, then he swept his hand upward. Instantly, the three guards collapsed to the floor as if freed from crippling vises. Two of them just remained there, panting; one pushed himself to his hands and knees, but he didn’t seem to have the strength to rise. Yori stood over them, a blade in her hand, but she didn’t look too worried.
“Stay where you are,” Seka called. “We’ll sort this out.”
“There’s nothing to sort out,” Zoe flashed. “Your prince will restrain himself for the duration of his stay, or I will bring him to the point of agony. That seems clear enough to me.”
All this time, the prince had not spoken; he had scarcely moved. Judging by the brightness of his eyes, barely visible beneath his hooded cloak, he was excited rather than dismayed by the sudden eruption of violence. Aroused, even. “Entirely clear,” he answered in his beautiful voice. “I will abide by your restrictions.”
“I am glad to hear it,” Zoe said. She looked at Leah. “Is there somewhere in this building where I can wash my hands?” The implication was impossible to miss. I want to scrub away any memory of this prince’s rotten blood.
“Yes—upstairs—I can show you—”
“I will find my way.” She favored all of them with a minatory look before heading to the back stairwell—where, Leah assumed, Chandran and the Welchin guards were crowded into the narrow space behind the door. Annova silently followed Zoe.
“As soon as she’s back, we’ll be on our way,” Nelson told Leah.
“No,” the prince said. He smoothed down the folds of his cloak. “It is we who must be going.” He nodded at Leah and held out his palm to her. “Thank you for an unexpectedly entertaining evening.”
Somewhat unnerved, she pressed her hand to his, then helped Seka gather up the items that the Karkans had liked the most. “I am so sorry—if I had known—tonight of all nights!” she whispered to Seka as she handed over a bag stuffed full of tins. “Please don’t be angry with me!”
“I am too confused and unbalanced to be angry,” Seka whispered back. “But it’s not your fault. She is—they are—this was a strange evening.”
“When they leave,” Leah said, “I am going to eat half a can of keitzees.”
Seka laughed. “When I get back to our rooms,” she said, “I will do the same.” She kissed Leah on the cheek, then ushered the prince to the door. The guards had recovered enough to escort them outside, and the last one pulled the door shut behind them.
Nelson, Yori, and Leah stayed frozen in place while they watched the shadows of the street resolve as the prince’s entourage pulled away. Another moment of silence—another—and just to be sure, another—and then Nelson doubled over and began laughing.
“Oh, it’s a rare treat to see Zoe in a fury!” he exclaimed when he straightened up. “She looks like a peasant’s daughter with hardly a thought in her head, and then suddenly she’s making people weep blood from their eyeballs and threatening to kill them where they stand! I can’t tell you how much I love that girl.”
He was only halfway through his rant before Zoe pushed through the back doorway, trailed by Annova, Chandran, and the Welchin guards. “I find it disappointing that it is for my violent qualities that you admire me most,” she said. She was grinning. “I would rather be loved for my sweet disposition and the goodness of my heart.”
Yori motioned to the soldiers and they followed her out the front door, no doubt to reconnoiter. The remaining five clustered in the middle of the room, Chandran hanging back a little.
“Anybody can have a good heart,” Nelson said, unimpressed. “But who else can promise to bruise a man from head to toe without ever laying a hand on his body?”
“So is that more or less how you intended the meeting to go?” Leah said. “I didn’t have any idea what you were planning. I was almost as shocked as the prince.”
“Pretty much,” Zoe said. “It helped that he kept asking questions. Now he can blame himself for how the evening turned out.”
Annova asked the question at the back of Leah’s mind. “Could you really sort out the blood that he had swallowed from the blood that ran in his veins?”
“If I hadn’t known wh
at he’d done? I might not have been able to figure it out. But I could tell there was something odd in his body. Something that didn’t belong.”
“You ought to be an actress,” Nelson said. “Ask Josetta’s mother if she’ll cast you in one of her theatricals. Preferably a melodrama.”
“You’d be perfect for the stage,” Leah said. “And trust me, I’ve seen more than my share of productions.”
“I do think it would be fun,” Zoe said.
“So what happens now?” Annova asked. “I only got a glimpse of him, but the prince does not seem like the type to meekly obey someone else’s orders.”
“No, and that worries me a little,” Zoe said thoughtfully. “I have no idea what he’ll do next.”
Nelson pointed at Chandran. “Let’s ask this fellow. He’s the one who knows all about the Karkans, isn’t he?”
That was the point at which Leah realized that Chandran was meeting yet another member of her small circle of family and friends. She hadn’t done a very good job of keeping him partitioned from the rest of her life. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to. She hastily made introductions.
“How much of our little brawl were you able to overhear?” Nelson demanded.
“Most of it,” Chandran said. “We were all camped out in the stairwell.”
“What’s your assessment?”
“The prince respects a strong will,” Chandran said. “I would guess he was more infatuated with the prime’s powers than chastised by her anger. He will either leave off his current habit—or be much more careful about leaving evidence behind.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Zoe said glumly. “He’ll just start burying bodies in the garden of his rented house.”
“Maybe it’s time to simply send the Karkans and the Soechins packing,” Nelson said. “Refuse to make the deal, and live with the consequences.”
“I think Darien is almost at that point,” Zoe said. “But you know Darien prefers to keep all his options open for as long as possible.”
“I have to say, I don’t know how they manage to run a government in the Karkades,” Annova said. “This man is the heir to the throne?”
“That’s right,” said Nelson.
“From what I’ve seen, all he wants to do is smoke veneben and drink other people’s blood,” Annova said. “Doesn’t sound like he’ll be a very good king.”
They all looked at Chandran, who shrugged slightly. “He is not simply the wastrel hedonist he presented himself as tonight. He would tell you that his vices are in exact proportion to his virtues—that he is wise, dedicated, and insightful in matters of state, so that he may be foolish, fickle, and indulgent in matters of personal recreation.”
“That’s not exactly reassuring,” Zoe said.
“No,” Chandran agreed. “Very little about the Karkan royal family is.”
Nelson glanced around the room. “I’m parched. What do you have to drink? And I’m hungry. Also—I liked that candy a great deal! Can we just sit for a few minutes and talk?”
Why don’t you want to go home? Leah thought, but they were all keyed up. Certainly there was a lot of appeal in the idea of a glass of wine or a piece of keitzee.
“Yes, of course—I had a whole spread laid out for my guests, but we didn’t get to half of it,” Leah said, leading them all to the back of the room where the chairs were still set before the refreshment table. “We may as well finish it off.”
Soon they were a much more relaxed group as they sampled Karkan and Welchin delicacies and discussed the evening. Neither Nelson nor Zoe showed the slightest hesitation in taking second helpings of keitzee, but Leah figured if any individuals could accurately judge their tolerance for stimulants, it would be two primes. She was still feeling a bit unsteady, so she confined herself to keerza, as did Chandran; Annova dissolved a keitzee ball in her cup of keerza and sipped it like liqueur. That’s what I’m going to try next time I feel safe enough to lose my head a little, Leah thought. She wondered if such a day would ever come.
“If you’re still feeling adventurous once you’ve finished the keitzees,” Leah said to the group at large, “you can try these other candies. Seka was pretty excited that I had some on hand.”
“What makes them an adventure?” Zoe wanted to know.
“Chandran tells me that they have an addictive taste—but there’s a core of poison in the middle. You need to judge how long it’s safe enough to keep the candy in your mouth.”
“Is the dose fatal?” Nelson asked.
“Sometimes. For the young or frail,” Chandran answered. “But in most cases it just makes you violently ill.”
“I don’t mind a little risk,” Annova said. “But not for candy.”
“I’ll try a couple,” Nelson said, holding out his hand. Leah dropped a few cubes into his palm. “Though I think I’ll wait till I get home in case I miscalculate.”
“Which is easy to do,” Chandran said. “Since the toxic core differs from piece to piece.”
If anything, Nelson just looked more intrigued. “Well, I’m curious now,” he said. “It better taste like the distillation of life itself.”
“It does,” Chandran said.
Nelson leaned back in his chair and gave Chandran a friendly inspection. “You know a great deal about these people, and yet you’re not Karkan,” he said. “Coziquela, I’m assuming?”
“That is correct.”
“So why are you so familiar with their customs?”
“I was married for a period of time to a Karkan woman.” When Nelson continued to wait, as if expecting more information, Chandran added, “Our fathers had been trading partners. They arranged the marriage between them.”
“Even though you hated her?” Nelson asked.
Chandran glanced quickly at Leah, but she shook her head. I haven’t told Nelson anything about you. He’s picking this up just by eavesdropping on your thoughts. She should have warned Chandran about the sweela prime. Then again, she had never envisioned them sitting down to have a conversation.
“I did not hate her at the beginning,” Chandran said.
Nelson narrowed his eyes, openly scanning Chandran’s face, his mind, for clues as to the kind of man he was. Leah wanted to punch Nelson in the shoulder, break his concentration, insist that he leave Chandran in peace, but she didn’t think it would do any good; it was impossible to turn Nelson aside once his attention had been engaged. Neither Zoe nor Annova seemed discomposed by the long examination, but then, they were both changeable coru creatures who didn’t care what anybody else thought of them. You could spend all day trying to figure them out, and maybe succeed, but the next day they would be altogether different people.
Leah and Chandran each had made themselves over at various points in their lives. But the efforts had cost them. And to someone who could read souls as if they were printed pages, each of them wore the evidence of their previous lives like angry red scars.
At least that seemed to be Nelson’s assessment. “And now you hate yourself,” said the sweela prime. “Though in your heart you believe you are still an honorable man.”
Chandran bowed his head. “That is not proof that I am indeed honorable,” he said in a low voice. “The Karkan prince would also use that word to describe himself, though all of us might disagree.”
“It’s a tangle,” Nelson agreed, instantly diverted by the prospect of debating philosophy. “Which measure is more accurate? The opinion of others or the verdict of your own heart? Can you be reviled by the rest of the world and still be justified in your actions—be, in fact, a virtuous and admirable man? As you say, a villain often believes he is a hero, so I don’t think it’s possible to entirely discount the judgment of the outside world. We must agree on common definitions of good and evil, or the world devolves into chaos. But I believe that extraordinary behavior can be condemned by the majority—
and still be the correct course of action. The trick then is to keep up your courage. To husband your certainty. To reward yourself, not punish yourself, for the depth of your conviction.”
Now Chandran lifted his eyes and gazed straight at Nelson. “You do not know what I have done,” he said.
“No,” Nelson admitted. “But I know that you would do it again, even though you suffer for it now. So I have to believe that you believe you made the right choice, impossible though it seemed.”
Zoe sipped from a glass of fruited water as if to wash down the last traces of keitzee. “You could tell us what you did,” she said in a chatty tone. “And we could let you know whether or not we think you can be redeemed.”
“I am not sure,” he said, “that I will accept anybody’s judgment but my own.”
“You could tell us anyway,” she said with a laugh, “just because we’re dying to know.”
That did elicit a small, painful smile from Chandran. “Someday, perhaps,” he said, “when the whole world trades secrets.”
“Ah, well—secrets,” said Nelson, stretching his arms over his head and fighting off a yawn. “I’m of a mind that we all have them, and it’s a good thing.”
“You have secrets, but you’re always trying to uncover everybody else’s,” Zoe retorted.
“Why is it a good thing?” Annova wanted to know.
“Because we learn something about ourselves when we choose to share them,” Nelson said. “Do we tell the stranger we’ll never meet again? Do we tell the friend we believe will never betray us? Do we confess to the parent or the person in authority, hoping for absolution?” He glanced casually from Chandran to Leah and back to Chandran. “Do we tell the one we love, offering that secret as a gift, an element of courtship?”
“Do we tell no one?” Chandran said.
“Harder to do than you might think,” Nelson said.
Zoe stood up, brushing crumbs from the front of her tunic. “Here’s my secret—I’m exhausted,” she informed them. “Leah, thank you for creating this opportunity. I think Darien will be pleased with how the evening turned out.”