by J. E. Holmes
“What? No. Lords, you’re crazy.”
“I mean, if our lives depended on it, would you? Would you do that for me?”
“I wouldn’t,” she snapped. “Am I being asked to?”
Now Ancil raised his chin and took a step forward. “You’re being selfish.”
“There has to be another way. Whatever it is, there has to be another way out of it. This charade is bad enough. I don’t like lying to him, pretending that I’m—”
“Important?”
“That I’m you. And, excuse me, ’pretending that I’m important?’” She seethed and pounded her fist into the rail at her side. It hurt through the width of her hand, and it felt damn good. “Since when did you start talking to me like that? Upset about our little trade?”
“I’m fine.” His expression gave away nothing. Such a prince.
“Lords, you’re being just like all the rest.”
“Ediline.”
She turned her back to him and rubbed at her hand so he couldn’t see. “What can you tell me? I know Ashwin is visiting us, and we have to pretend to be at peace.”
“We are peaceful.” His expression was impassive.
“Yes, exactly, just like that. You’re such a . . . .”
“What?”
“A prince,” she said with a sigh. Seven older siblings, and Ancil would almost certainly be the one to inherit Tithelk. It was the King’s goal, then, before his demise to transform the prodigal son into a perfect replication of himself. She prayed for his failure. Ediline didn’t want to hate the only brother she loved.
“And you’re a princess,” he said with an edge.
“Go stuff a briar up your ass.”
“Edi—”
“Does a princess talk like that?”
“My favorite one does.” Softness, a hint of himself.
She sniffed. “Lords damn you and your honeyed words,” she said. A long pause later, she said, “Are we going to be at war with Ronrónfa?”
“Not until we want to be.”
More quietly. “Is Ashwin going to kill our father?”
Ancil was silent. She turned, worried, but then saw that he was distracted. She felt the approaching footsteps a moment later. They became thunderous as they drew closer. Then a shimmering bald head came in through the dark atop a body encased in rootmarrow plate armor.
The man wore a rough beard with a patch missing where his face was scarred up too badly. Almost the whole of his face was marked by scars, except for two narrow, pale brown eyes.
“Good evening, General Straad,” Ediline said.
“Princess Ediline, Prince Ancil, I wish to interrupt your argument only momentarily with my passing,” Straad said. His voice rose in intensity at the end of every thing he said. Always. During mundane conversation, it was enough to make Ediline laugh. At other times, it made her shiver. “As you can see, I am displeased by another matter.”
“Go ahead,” Ancil said.
Straad bowed. “Thank you, Your Brilliance.” He turned to Ediline and gave her an appraising look. “You have slacked in your training. You need more muscle tone to your body, less fat, or you’ll snap under pressure.”
“I can talk my way through an opponent’s spear.”
“And when he stabs his way through your talk, I’ll not be the one to stitch you back together.” He did not smile, but he bowed again. Most of Straad’s body language came in terse nods and bows of incredible and unknowable complexity. “I look forward to seeing you back in the jungle.”
“I do, too, General.” She straightened and gave him a small nod, imitating the type of gesture he would make to indicate respect.
Ancil opened the door and Straad entered the building.
“He’s upset,” Ediline said after Ancil had closed the door again.
“He had been a soldier for fifty years, since he was a boy.”
“He still is,” she said. Then, she continued, realizing, “But he has to pretend not to be.”
“He comes to the North Wing every night.” Ancil cleared his throat. He stood up even straighter, wiped his expression clean except for a slight scowl, narrowed his eyebrows, and pulled his hair back with his hand to appear to be bald. Then he launched into his impersonation. “We should not be ashamed of having great military might,” he said in the same stern voice of Straad. “The Lords of Attenia were mighty, they were intensely mighty. We must be mighty in their image, Your Dominance. It is shameful to hide one’s might. Would Lord Cadex have hidden his might? If I could not be mighty, I WOULD RATHER DIE.” He roared with so straight a face that it sounded like he might start frothing at any moment.
Ediline tried not to laugh, but she couldn’t hold it in. She stifled a chuckle, afraid that Straad or someone else might hear, especially after Ancil’s noisy display.
“He comes every night?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Wait—’Your Dominance’? He argues with Father?”
“He will argue with whoever will hear him,” Ancil said. “When he has said his piece, he will turn sharply and march out of the building. The next day, he’ll prepare new statements, try to go a bit farther.”
“He really opposes this peace so much?”
Ancil nodded. “It’s the opposite of who he is as a person.”
“Do you . . . I mean, are you . . . ? Ancil, do you oppose the peace?”
He looked at her like he was confused, or she was stupid. “This isn’t peace,” he said, like it was obvious, like he was explaining it to a tree, the way she would tell Marv that her toes were not food. “This is politics.”
“I’m not so sure.”
He actually laughed. She clenched her fists and pushed down the anger bubbling through her. This was Ancil. He . . . he wasn’t supposed to be like this toward her. “Ediline, it’s the eighth century. The Lords would want us to be peaceful? Well, go by the text of The Words of the Lords and they would want us to be a lot of different things. But mostly, they want us to unite.”
She felt a chill at that word. “Please tell me—”
“I’ve already told you too much.”
“You’re—”
“Please, just do your part in this.”
Do your part. Was that all her siblings could say to her? She held his gaze, those pale eyes in the dim light, shimmering behind shadow. “I will. I was going to ask Mother to explain it a little more. I don’t want to go through this so blindly."
“Your role is important.”
“I won’t marry him because you say so.” She felt a hot flush at adding because you say so. Would she marry him otherwise? Lords, she had to get her tongue to cooperate with the rest of her. She didn’t want to marry anyone.
“We won’t force you.”
“Good.”
He glanced back at the wall, the door. “I need to go inside.”
“I understand.”
“Deffren threatened you?” he said. She could hear the clench of his jaw.
She shrugged. “Nothing unusual.” It was dark. He probably couldn’t see her bruise.
“I’m glad you told me.”
“That isn’t why I mentioned it. I don’t need you to step in and do anything about it.”
“I know,” he said.
“I just mean that isn’t why I brought it up.”
He nodded and half turned.
“Give my best to Mother,” she said.
He reached for the door.
“Ancil, you—”
“I’m sorry for the way I spoke to you, Edi,” he said. “I like being the one who doesn’t talk to you like that.”
For how long would he be? “Goodnight, Ancil.”
He opened the door, and before he closed it again she could hear the jovial greeting he received from Thule. No, no one treated him any differently.
— Chapter 5 —
“A house shall not have nine windows nor nine walls; a fete shall not have nine guests; a shelf of nine books has one too many; and, e
lse he be damned, the father of eight children should hang himself before he fathers a ninth.”
—A popular sermon of High Confessor Admoden I, 244-278
The Truist temple was one place Ediline did not dare bring Javras. The act had potential as entertainment—bringing a Ruiner into the midst of the faithful and watching them retreat, hissing, into their corners until Javras was shooed from the building. But this was one place where she did not want to misstep, wanted to carefully avoid offending anyone. Displeasure from the temple would ripple outward, and Ediline didn’t want to get hit by any ripples that became waves.
Temples, by the holy text, were small buildings built out of gray ash. A single devout would care for the temple, and keep it tidy and free from overgrowth. According to The Words of the Lords, the Lords had kept the stone walls of their holy buildings free of vines, lichen, and moss.
When Ediline stepped into the temple, the sun was high overhead, and the air was thickly hot. It was the height of aft-summer, and this was Tithelk. All the days were long and scalding. Javras said Ronrónfa was just as hot but not nearly as humid.
She walked the main aisle of the temple, turned at the fifth row, reached her favorite alcove, and sat on the clean wood floor before a jar of blue sand. She opened the top, scooped a handful of the sand, and spilled it into a small pile on the wooden plate that lay there. Then she closed her eyes, and she traced a circle in the sand, a circle again and again, the same circle. A circle of life, death, and rebirth for the true. Live a virtuous life and be carried into the past in death to be reborn in the perfect world amongst the Lords in Attenia. Sin, and be brought to the endless Desolation.
“O Lords,” she murmured, “am I true, for my belief and my perseverance, my strength and courage in the face of trials? Or am I of ruin simply because my father wanted a legacy, and I was the unfortunate side effect?”
There were no tears in her eyes, no aching in her chest. She had asked the question eight thousand times, and there was no clear path to the answer. Amnal, the devout of this temple, didn’t give straight answers. Ediline disliked the devout’s double-talk and cryptic puzzles, so she worshipped in private, and everyone else left her alone.
“Ediline?” called out a dry voice.
Usually.
Ediline opened her eyes and looked down at her hand. Her finger had drawn a line straight across her circle, ruining it. Sighing, she stood and turned. Devout Amnal smiled. Like most who smiled at Ediline, it was a condescending smile. Maybe, unlike most others, Amnal didn’t intend it to be.
“I hear an ice-rain is coming by nightfall, child.” Amnal was a woman of about forty years, with deep brown hair shorn close to her head. The hair and her skin were so nearly the same color that she looked bald. Her eyebrows were thin and very far apart.
“I heard,” Ediline said.
“Are you prepared?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Good. What brings you today?”
If Ediline spoke with Amnal, it would not be in confidence. Ediline had learned her lesson when she was nine years old and she’d cried to the new devout about her brother Cardiv. He had told Ediline no one would ever love her, that she was worth less than the silt at the bottom of the river. She’d cried for hours, curled in a corner alcove in the temple. Somehow, Cardiv had found out, and he’d locked her in a closet.
“I’ve come to ponder some things,” she said. “I wanted privacy.”
“Eighty and eight apologies,” Amnal said. “I will leave you to your thoughts, then.”
Amnal began to go, but Ediline stopped her with a raised hand. “Before you go, could I ask you something?”
“Always, child.”
“Why am I considered the ninthborn?”
Amnal blinked and tilted her head slightly. It was a stupid question, or at least it appeared to be a stupid question. “You have eight older siblings,” Amnal said plainly.
“Yes, there are eight children of my father living in his house that are older than I am, but why is that what decides things?” Her face was hot, bringing up this subject. She’d never posed it so boldly to the devout, but she had been feeling especially bold lately.
“You clearly have your own theories. Tell me more.”
“King Maxen has had his nine children spread across four wives,” Ediline began, folding her arms. “If any of those wives had had a child before marrying him, would they count?”
“If the child was brought into the family, into the home, then yes,” Amnal said. “In such a case, you would not have been the ninthborn.”
“You know you’re not supposed to say that I’m ninthborn, right?”
“Those visitors from Ronrónfa are Ruiners,” Amnal spat. “I won’t need to lie to them, because they will not speak to me, and I will not speak to them. Frankly, I don’t know how you tolerate spending time with that young man, thinking the things that he does.”
“How do you know what he’s thinking? It might involve me flat on my back. Or imagining what’s under my blouse.”
“Ediline.”
“You never know.” Actually, Javras seemed hardly the type to think such things. So proper and considerate.
Amnal’s scowl was impressively deep. “Young lady, that sort of talk might be tolerated in your home, or wherever it is that you spend your time, but this is a place of worship, and there are other people here who might not appreciate your supposed humor. Mind your tongue.”
“I am a princess, lady devout, and you have no authority over me.”
“I . . . .” Amnal paused like she might back down, like she might apologize, but then she raised her chin defiantly. “I have the ears of those who do.”
Ediline shrugged. “Very well, I’ll keep my lewd mouth outside your doors. But I was hoping, if I conduct myself well, you might still answer my question.”
“I consider it thoroughly answered, and I would like you to leave once you are finished.”
“It isn’t answered yet, though,” Ediline said. “What if my father has had other children but they are secret?”
“No such children exist,” Amnal said. “The people would be aware of them, if they did.”
“But what if he did, hypothetically?”
“You mean to ask me what would be the effect on your birthright if His Dominance had children with women outside his loyal marriages?”
“Yes, I mean that.”
Amnal straightened, clearly offended. “The children are not part of the family. They would not be legitimate, would not be counted as part of the family, and therefore would have no effect on your birth.”
“That sounds flimsy.”
“It is what it is, Ediline.”
“Okay, how about this,” Ediline said. “Let’s say my mother dropped dead tomorrow, Lords protect her. And let’s say my father remarries, because he has a good history of doing just that. What if his new wife has three children by another man, one who also died, and they are all older than I am—am I suddenly, then, not the ninth child? I would have eleven older siblings. Is that blight then transferred to the ninth-oldest? That sounds unfair for them.”
Amnal was thoughtful for a moment, her scowl fading. “The condition of being the firstborn, or the thirdborn, or the eighthborn, or the ninthborn,” she said, “is one that is given upon birth. You were born ninth, and therefore you would remain ninth even if at some point in the future you acquired more older siblings.”
“Except for when I’m not the ninth born, just the ninth counted.”
“You cannot escape this with clever thinking, Ediline.”
She didn’t doubt that, but she pressed on anyway. “But why do we count using my father? I’m only plagued by terrible fortune because I am his ninth child. Outside of my relationship with my father, I’m just me. Why does he own me?”
“Your father owns us all.”
“I’m the second born of my mother,” Ediline insisted. “Why does that not count?”
“I do not make
these decisions,” Amnal said. “I merely communicate them.”
“Yet my life is dictated by something some old bastard in a big robe said a few hundred years ago.”
The devout’s jaw tightened, and her lips formed a flat, disapproving line. That was probably one step too far. It didn’t matter. Ediline didn’t regret it. Amnal had always been a pretentious twit of a woman with no concept of ruling herself as an individual and with a scroll of rules stuffed firmly up her ass. Ediline took back ever thinking that Amnal looked at her with condescension unintentionally.
“Princess Ediline,” Amnal said, “with all the respect demanded by the strength and nobility of your family, I request that you leave this temple immediately.”
“It stinks in here anyway.” Ediline kicked the sand on her way out, waves be damned.
Javras was staying at the manor of a man named Yithin with a cohort of individuals, whom he called his keepers. Yithin was an advisor to Ediline’s father, but he was abroad in Saiyoe and therefore his manor was on loan.
After spending some time with him, Ediline had learned that Javras was nineteen years old, but she hadn’t gotten him to talk much about what he liked to do, what he hoped to pursue in the future, or what he was passionate about. It seemed that following his father’s wishes was unavoidable, and he had no intention—at least no intention he made clear to Ediline—of doing otherwise.
There were a few things he and Ediline had in common. After considerable needling, he opened up and admitted that his father was more of a symbol in his life than a presence, a figure but not a person. She learned that he had three older siblings: two sisters, who treated him like a child, and a brother whom he liked but who hadn’t been home in some time. And lastly, with eyes turned away, he told her that he deeply enjoyed spending time with her. That last comment drew such a fiery stirring in her chest that she coughed and literally pretended to have swallowed a bug until she regained her composure.
The ice-rain clouds were gathering by the time Ediline crossed Korv and made it to Yithin’s manor. The manor was actually three separate buildings connected by ladders, built vertically on the same massive tree.