At night, he would lie awake pondering the problem. Would it be better to force the issue, command Lady Radryntor to obey him, or wait for her to challenge him so she would clearly be in the wrong? He would listen to Sesskia’s quiet breathing and contemplate waking her to discuss it, craving her company as well as her opinion. But she looked so tired, all the time, that he could never bear to disturb her sleep. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d made love. Well, soon they would perform that all-important kathana, and time would be theirs again.
“I won’t join you for the judgment session this afternoon,” Lady Radryntor said abruptly. “My stewards have business for me to attend to. Questions of tariffs, which the Balaenics still aren’t paying.”
Cederic was glad his mouth was full, as it gave him time to control his first reaction, which was to hurl accusations of bigotry and disobedience at the woman. “The citizens of Lethess are under no obligation to pay tariffs on goods merely traveling through your city boundaries,” he said. “As I believe we have discussed.”
“These are tariffs on their trade, your Majesty, not on their traffic,” Lady Radryntor said, a trifle smugly. “They resist paying what I believe is a fair tax on foreign goods.”
“I think—” Cederic caught himself before he could criticize. He was willing to bet Lady Radryntor’s “fair tax” was unfairly weighted. “I will discuss the matter with Lady Amelessar. I am certain you and she can come to an accommodation.” Though if they did, it would likely be because Granea Amelessar gave in. Lady Amelessar was a better administrator and a nicer person than Lady Radryntor, but she also had governance of a city a third the size of Pfulerre, and was aware of the position that put her in. Even so, Cederic knew Granea’s patience with Lady Radryntor was wearing thin.
“Let’s hope so. I have been nothing but reasonable with regard to those people.” Lady Radryntor took another bite and the humming began again. Cederic realized he was gripping his fork tightly enough that the tendons stood out on his hand and made himself relax. After this meal, he would go in search of Sesskia. Was today the day they were performing the kathana? He couldn’t remember. He would…no, he had to sit in judgment in Pfulerre that afternoon, much as he wished he could delegate that responsibility. After that, he would find Sesskia, and the two of them would sit together, talk, possibly do more than that.
The gauzy blue-green curtain hanging in the arched entrance parted, and a Balaenic soldier entered. “Your Majesty,” he said, then seemed to lose sight of the rest of his sentence.
Cederic laid his fork down. “Yes?”
“Your Majesty,” the man continued, “there is something…your presence…your Majesty, something terrible has happened. The magic they were working, the kathana, it…failed.” He said “kathana” like it was a word in a foreign language, which for him, it was.
“Failed?” Cederic said, dread rising within him. Failure was bad enough, but this man looked as if he had had a glimpse of hell. “How, failed?”
“What is that man saying?” Lady Radryntor said irritably. “How dare he interrupt this meal?”
“People died,” the soldier said, ignoring the words spoken in a language he did not understand. He swallowed hard. “They…I’ve never seen—”
The dread hardened into a knot of horror. “Sesskia?” Cederic choked out.
The man shook his head. “No, your Majesty, but others—”
Cederic pushed back his chair and stood. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know, your Majesty. Jeddan sent me to tell you…he said you should know. They…I’ve never seen more horrible deaths.”
“Excuse me,” Cederic said to Lady Radryntor, and left without waiting for her response.
He ran through the halls of the consul’s palace and across Pfulerre, drawing on th’an to replenish his aching muscles and relieve his heavy breathing. Rain fell in a light drizzle, dampening his hair and shoulders, but he had no attention to spare to do anything about it.
The space outside the military camp where the mages had prepared the kathana circle was empty of people, though the circle remained. It was mostly whole except where one of the clay runes had been scrabbled out of the ground and crushed into black fragments that lay scattered across its surface. It showed no sign that anything had gone wrong with the kathana, no blood or anything that might indicate people had died there.
He debated briefly with himself, then ran back to the consul’s palace. Someone in the camp might know what had happened, but he was far more likely to learn the truth from the mages themselves. He hoped they had returned to their quarters—many deaths? What could possibly have gone so wrong?
The wing of the palace set aside for the mages’ use was unnaturally silent. Normally a low hum filled the air, the sound of dozens of people talking quietly. Cederic pushed aside the drape covering the doorway and entered the common area. The curtains were drawn back from the tall windows, letting in watery sunlight that illuminated the giant slate boards where the mages drew plans for kathanas. Low seats like flattened mushrooms dotted the floor. A few men and women, strangers to Cederic, occupied them, one or two curled up into tight balls with their eyes open and staring at some invisible horror. Seeing them, Cederic’s horror tightened inside his chest.
“Where is Sesskia?” he demanded, then regretted how harsh he’d sounded. Whatever these people had experienced, they did not deserve to be harassed.
Silence reigned for a long moment. Then one of the women sitting nearby said, “She was caring for the bodies. I think she went to her room after that. I haven’t seen her since—” Tears spilled from her eyes, and her shoulders shook with suppressed sobs. Cederic mumbled something in thanks and left the room. Once in the hall, he sprinted for his bedchamber.
The door hung ajar, and no sound came from within. Cederic pushed it open, moving silently. He felt as if he were creeping up on some woodland creature who might flee if startled, though he had no idea why that was the image that occurred to him in connection with whatever tragedy his wife had endured. Shutting the door quietly behind him, he walked to the bed. Sesskia lay there, curled on her side in sleep. Both her fists were clenched as if she were fighting demons. She looked so beautiful, her thick hair spilling across her back and over her shoulders, her dark lashes resting on her cheeks like a silken fringe, her brows drawn down in that so-familiar fierce expression, that the knot in his chest relaxed. Surely it could not have been so terrible, if she could sleep.
He sat beside her and thought about leaving her to her rest. No, he thought, we have been alone for far too long, and gently shook her shoulder to wake her. Her eyelids fluttered open, and she looked up at him without comprehension. The momentary sensation that she didn’t know who he was filled him with guilt at having left her alone for so long. “Sesskia,” he said, “wake up. Tell me what happened.”
She sat, and his hand fell away from her shoulder. “I don’t want to talk about it.” Memory returned to her, and a look of bleak horror crossed her face. Cederic clasped her hands, wishing he could erase that look as easily. He remembered how she had looked back in the palace at Colosse, months ago, bearing the burden of the God-Empress’s evil alone, and it broke his heart.
“Sesskia, you look as if you are being eaten from within,” he said. “You need to talk about it. Please, love, let me share your burden.”
She blinked. “Share my burden?” she whispered. Then she shouted, “Share my burden? Now you want to share my burden? Where the hell have you been, all these weeks when I needed you and you just…just ignored me? Should I be grateful that you’ve finally decided I’m more important than all your damned responsibilities, or did you just find yourself with five minutes in your schedule and thought ‘well, I have this wife, maybe I should see how she is’? Damn it, Cederic, nine people are dead—is that really what it takes to get through to you? I don’t know why you bothered, since it’s not like they’re coming back!”
Her words struck him like shards of
ice, sharp-edged and painful. All his worst nightmares, that she would suddenly decide being married to the Emperor was too much, came true in a single long moment. The hard, derisive tone of her voice, the look on her face—he was never going to forget it. He withdrew his hands from hers and stood, feeling his face had frozen into a dispassionate mask. He found himself at the door without knowing how he’d gotten there. Sesskia had fallen silent, for which he was grateful. He shut the door behind him and stood there, struggling for composure.
She was right. He’d ignored her, and this was the price—this terrible, agonizing guilt and the crushing heartache of being spoken to so cruelly by the woman he loved. He tried to muster anger, because he was sure he did not deserve it, not all of it, anyway. But all he could feel was pain so intense his eyes ached with the tears he never dared shed.
Distantly, he heard the sound of Sesskia weeping—no, that was far too gentle a word for the sounds tearing out of her, the howl of someone pushed past enduring into a grief that could not be expressed any other way. He took a few steps away from the door. He would let her cry it out, return later when she had regained control, and maybe they could forget what had passed between them.
No. No more separation. She needs me more than ever, no matter what she said.
He went back into the room and again closed the door quietly, though it was unlikely she could hear him over the sound of her sobs. She had her face buried in the pillows and her whole body shook with her tears. Once more, he sat on the bed and gathered her into his arms, holding her close with her wet cheek pressed against his. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I’m so sorry.” He wasn’t sure whether he was apologizing, or expressing his pain at her sorrow, but he could feel in his heart there was nothing else he could say.
Sesskia shuddered, then flung her arms around him and clutched him like a drowning woman offered a rope. She cried, and he held her for what felt like forever, until her tears turned into shaking, dry sobs. They held each other, not moving, not speaking, and Cederic stroked her hair and wished he knew what to say to comfort her further.
“I’m sorry,” Sesskia finally whispered. “I shouldn’t have said any of that. I didn’t mean it.”
“I may have deserved some of it,” Cederic said. “I have been a fool for not realizing how little we were seeing of each other. Lady Radryntor has occupied so much of my time I told myself my own needs could wait. But I never thought of your needs, nor that my needs are to some extent those of the Empire and should not be neglected.
“Even so, I should never have spoken to you that way,” Sesskia said. “Please forgive me.”
“As you forgave me, once.”
She lifted her head so she could look at him. Tears still sparkled on her thick lashes. “I should have pushed harder,” she said. “I knew we were drifting apart, but I was selfish. I figured since I was exhausting myself, you should be the one to make the effort. So I never did anything beyond trying to stay awake until you came to bed.”
Cederic smiled and wiped away a few of her tears. “You don’t know how many times I thought of waking you,” he said. “But I knew you needed your rest, and I told myself eventually there would be time.”
“I wish you’d woken me.”
“I wish I had, too. But we have nothing but time now.” He kissed her, and felt her respond with such desire it drove the rest of his doubts and sorrow away. The judgment would wait. Nothing was more important than her.
“Even if Lady Radryntor decides to evict us from Pfulerre?” Sesskia said, twining her fingers in his hair.
Cederic gestured, and a heavy chair flew across the room and wedged itself under the doorknob. “She will need several men with large axes to do that,” he said between kisses, “and if she is able to get past that door, there are more chairs in this room I will use as projectiles.”
Sesskia started unbuttoning his shirt. “Are you sure your concentration can be divided like that?”
He slipped his hands under her shirt and unfastened her breast band. “No, but I thought you might like the reassurance of knowing I am so committed to making you cry out in pleasure I would attack the servants of one of our vassals to ensure it.”
“That is the most romantic thing you have ever said to me,” Sesskia said, and pulled her own shirt off over her head.
It felt like the first time all over again, as if they had been so long separated they had forgotten the feel of each other’s bodies. Cederic was experienced enough to recognize his partner’s desperate need for reassurance, for something that would replace whatever awful events had transpired in the kathana circle, and took his time, giving her pleasure without asking anything in return. It was the most marvelous experience. He loved her so much.
After, when they lay twined together, Cederic said, “Do you think you can tell me about it now?”
Sesskia curled closer. “It was a disaster,” she whispered. “I still don’t know what happened, and I don’t want to think about finding out, not today, anyway. The eight keypoint mages were killed by their magic, crushed or burned to death, and Jaemis—” She drew another shuddering breath. “We couldn’t even tell Jaemis had been human.”
Cederic’s throat and eyes ached with sorrow. He had known Jaemis Quallen for seven years, since before he was Kilios. They had been as close to friends as Cederic ever was with any of the mages. He had been a brilliant student of transmutation, which was why he’d been at the center of the kathana. The thought of him dead made Cederic’s heart hurt.
“I made sure they were all taken…where they could be readied for burial,” Sesskia went on. “I just keep thinking—what did we do wrong? Were we impatient, or were they the wrong mages at the keypoints, or…” She shuddered again and buried her face in his shoulder. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“I wish I knew what to tell you,” Cederic said. “I should have involved myself more in the kathana, so I could be more help to you.”
“I’m glad you weren’t, because we might have asked you to take the central role, and maybe I’d be mourning you now instead of Jaemis. I couldn’t bear that. Cederic, I feel as if I’ve done nothing but make mistakes for the last three weeks. Stupid mistakes, stupid wrong decisions.”
He kissed her again, ran his hand down her side and over her hip, hoping to distract her and make the bleak look vanish. “There is nothing we can do about the past except move forward, and hope to do differently in the future. Together, this time. No more struggling alone.”
“No, you’re right, but I haven’t even told you—Cederic, my sister is in Lethess.”
His eyebrows went up. “Roda?”
Sesskia nodded. “She came to see me…just over two weeks ago. It was after they welcomed us to Lethess, you know, how we paraded through the city? She was there on business and she saw me, and she came to the camp. She looks just the same as always, small and dark-haired with Dad’s eyes. She said…she said she’d looked for me, years ago, but I’d already left Thalessa and she couldn’t find anyone who remembered me. She asked me to forgive her so we could be a family again. I sent her away.”
Cederic twisted a lock of Sesskia’s hair around his finger and waited. Finally, Sesskia said, “Well?”
“I was not sure whether you wanted advice, or just a listening ear.”
“I don’t know. I guess I want reassurance.”
“That you did the right thing?” Cederic propped himself on his elbow so he could look more directly at her. “If you are looking to me to tell you whether or not to forgive your sister, you will have to ready yourself for disappointment, as I think it is not my place to tell you what to do with your pain. But I think you are wrong in believing that forgiveness means behaving as if the sin never happened.”
“Then what does it mean?” Sesskia said.
“What did it mean when you forgave me the cruel things I said to you in the palace?”
Sesskia averted her eyes. “That was different,” she said. “That wasn’t years
of pain and abandonment.” She looked up at him through her lashes and smiled. “Besides, I was in love with you and I wanted a reason to forgive you.”
He laughed. “The two may be different in, let us say, intensity,” he said, “but the principle is the same. You chose to let go of the resentment you might justifiably have harbored against me. That is not the same as pretending it never happened. Much as I personally would like not to have that memory.”
“And it meant being able to love you, so it’s not as if nothing good came of it.”
“That is true.” He sighed. “It’s up to you to decide whether something good came of Roda’s actions. But I think, if you choose to let the past bury the past, you may feel happier. And your happiness is paramount to me.”
Sesskia put her arms around his neck. “Show me,” she said. With a smile, Cederic drew her close and kissed her, long and sweet.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Melissa McShane is the author of the Crown of Tremontane series, beginning with SERVANT OF THE CROWN, and The Extraordinaries series, beginning with BURNING BRIGHT. After a childhood spent roaming the United States, she settled in Utah with her husband, four children and a niece, three very needy cats, and a library that continues to grow out of control. She wrote reviews and critical essays for many years before turning to fiction, which is much more fun than anyone ought to be allowed to have. You can visit her at her website www.melissamcshanewrites.com for more information on other books.
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Copyright 2017 Melissa Proffitt
Published by Night Harbor Publishing
All rights reserved
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