Slowly she rose to her feet, gathering her dignity about her. What in all the hells had just happened? She had used her witchery on Amalik once for much the same purpose, and that had not been a problem. Was Nyuku somehow different? Or had the fact that she was now bound to a Souleater herself somehow altered her witchery, so that using it against these men would now be a dangerous undertaking?
“Let him go,” she ordered.
The guards released Nyuku’s arms. He did not move. Anger radiated from him like heat from desert sand.
“You meant well,” she said coldly. “But do not ever touch me again without invitation.”
For a long moment he stared at her. Then, stiffly, he bowed his head, acknowledging the order.
She gestured to the guards. As they withdrew to their former posts, she wrapped her power around them once more, to guard whatever secrets her next words might reveal. But she could see that they were doubly wary now, and it was hard to control their senses.
“Colivar is an enemy,” she said bluntly. “I mean to destroy him. If that’s an agenda you also serve, then we have business in common. If not . . . .” She shrugged.
It was powerful bait. Most of the riders would kill for a chance serve as her ally, desperate to win her favor in the hopes that somehow it might benefit them when the queen made her first flight. They were pitiful creatures, for the most part. But this one . . . this one was different. This one was something more.
“Magisters are hard to kill,” he said evenly.
“I am well aware of that.”
“You believe you have the means to do so?”
There was no more powerful anchor in all the world than part of a man’s own body. The fact that she had removed Colivar’s hair from him while it was still a vital part of his identity, rather than scavenging it from the bed or the floor after his body had spontaneously discarded it, gave it phenomenal power.
“I have the means,” she said with a smile. Watching him closely.
He licked his lips, considering the situation. It was not the response she had expected from him. Either she had misjudged the intensity of his interest in Colivar, or something more complicated was playing out. Some new mystery of considerable significance, which he must weigh before he could answer her. She cursed the fact that she could not use her power to steal that secret from him.
Have patience, she told herself. He will deliver his knowledge to you in time. They always do.
There were always the traditional methods, she reminded herself.
“Perhaps I misread you,” she mused aloud, “and you do not want him dead after all.”
Nyuku’s eyes narrowed. “I want him dead. But his death must be by my hand.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
“Personal reasons, Madame Consort.”
Could this be an issue of sexual rivalry? It was no secret that Colivar had once been Siderea’s lover; surely Nyuku knew that. Which meant that his Souleater might consider Colivar a rival. If so, all the force of that species’ primitive competitive instinct would be pouring into Nyuku’s head right now. Not only the desire to rend this new rival to pieces in a metaphorical sense, but to do so physically, by tooth and claw. To taste the blood of the arrogant Magister who would stand between him and the queen.
It was a pleasing prospect.
“He may die by your hand,” she allowed, “but it is my hand that will bring him down. My hand that will isolate him, destroy the things he values most, and crush his spirit. When I am done with him, you may have him. Only when I am done with him. Do you accept those terms?”
He bowed his head. “I do, Madame Consort.”
“Can you order the others to assist me in this?”
The question was at once a compliment and a challenge. If Nyuku’s Souleater became mate to a queen again, then he would have authority over the other riders. Right now he had nothing.
The question was a reminder of his own insufficiency, of the fact that he needed her to restore his power.
“If I tell them our queen needs something,” he told her, “they will obey.”
She smiled, pleased. This one was proving easy to manipulate. Through him the others could be controlled. A man was still a man, she reflected, whether he toiled in the fields, sat upon an ivory throne, or shared his soul with a legendary monster.
“Then we will speak more on this later,“ she said. “In the meantime, you will stay near the palace so that I know where to find you.”
The command was a boon of considerable power, as the riders measured such things; a sign of favor from the new queen would increase Nyuku’s status measurably. But it was also clearly a dismissal. He had gained much from this interview, but he must not mistake the nature of their relationship; her favor must be earned continually, and never taken for granted.
He bowed his head respectfully and turned to leave. Siderea could almost hear his Souleater whispering feverishly to him in the background. Then he paused, and looked back at her. It seemed she could sense the two minds conferring inside his head. Trying to decide what to say? Or perhaps, what not to say?
“You will not need a trap for Colivar,” he informed her. “He will come to you. He must come to you. His true nature leaves him no other option.”
He bowed one last time, then took his leave without waiting for response.
Which was, she observed, a power play in its own right. You may ask me to play the role of a servant, it said, but do not mistake me for someone with a servant’s weakness. Siderea was intrigued by the move. Did he think such a show of independence would please her? Or was it meant as an act of defiance?
Either way, she appreciated the spirit behind it, and did not challenge his exit.
Chapter 15
T
HE SPIRE in the royal garden was awash in moonlight, cool highlights rippling along its surface as the clouds passed overhead. Disturbingly beautiful. Salvator stared at the thing in silence, noting the dark streaks where his mother had offered up her blood in sacrifice, yet again. To a god of rocks. He wanted to despise the practice as passionately as a Penitent should, but now that he understood its true purpose, it was hard to summon up the same kind of loathing he used to feel. True, it was still an idolatrous faith, but it had served to keep the lyr focused and united for forty generations, so that their natural immunity to the Souleater’s power could be preserved. The same immunity he apparently enjoyed. And now he knew just how important that might turn out to be.
Tolerance is the first step toward damnation, he reminded himself.
Footsteps approached, but he did not turn around. They were light footsteps, hardly weighty enough to break the pine needles that carpeted the ground. Then they were still, and for a moment there was silence. He wondered if his mother was keeping her distance to respect his meditative mood, or if she was afraid that his willingness to stand in front of the sacred spire would shatter like glass the minute she interrupted his contemplation.
At last he said aloud, “That was a reckless thing you did, with the Souleater.”
“It needed to be done.”
“You should have let me know what you had planned. I didn’t like being taken by surprise.”
“If I had told you, would you not have told me my plan was too reckless? Forbidden me from even attempting it?”
A muscle along the line of his jaw tightened. “Very likely.”
She came up beside him. There was a deep purple bruise on her cheek, just starting to turn yellow about the edges, from where the dying Souleater had struck her. He knew that his own face looked even worse, with its three deep claw-gouges running from forehead to chin. Back when his witches had staunched the flow of blood and cleansed the wounds of infection, they had offered to erase the marks entirely, but he had told them not to. God had chosen to scourge him, and he would bear the marks of it with pride.
“Did you feel the Souleater’s power at all?” he asked her.
For a moment she was sile
nt, her eyes flickering downward as she replayed the battle in her mind. Finally she nodded. “Yes. I believe I did. Not enough to keep me from looking at the queen directly, but there was a kind of . . . inertia. It took effort to do anything other than stand there frozen. When she first struck at me with her tail, I almost didn’t get out of the way in time.”
“But then you did.”
“Yes. But it took all the strength of will that I possessed.” She cocked her head to one side. “And what of you, my son? Did her power touch your soul as well?”
He turned back to face the spire. For a moment he did not speak.
“No,” he said at last. “I felt the territorial effect at first, but once I realized what it was and focused my mind accordingly, I felt . . . nothing.”
He could hear her draw in a sharp breath. “Truly?”
“Truly, mother. This species appears to have no power over me.”
But its human allies do, he thought darkly. Siderea had sent him a dream a while back, so he was clearly not immune to her power. But even that dream had been an imperfect creation, and in the end he had banished it. How much did this strange gift matter when dealing with the Souleaters’ human allies?
Gwynofar put a hand on his arm. “You have lyr blood in your veins. Whatever immunity our ancestors possessed, that allowed them to fight the Great War, is now vested in you.”
“But I’m only half-lyr,” he reminded her. “So why should my immunity be any greater than yours? That makes no sense at all. You inherited the gift from both sides of your family. I am half . . . something else.”
She chuckled softly. “Exactly. You inherited the lyr blood from me and sheer Aurelius stubbornness from your father. Clearly the combination is more than a Souleater queen can handle.”
Despite himself he smiled. “Do you really think that’s the answer?”
“One of many, perhaps.”
“And my faith? What about that?” He attempted to keep his tone light. “Do you believe that Penitent beliefs played a part in this?”
She hesitated. That alone spoke volumes. Before the battle she would have discounted the concept immediately. The events of the last few days must have shaken her badly.
“You were a monk for four years,” she said finally. “In that time you focused yourself on spiritual matters and isolated yourself from all outside distractions. It is not impossible that such a lifestyle might have had an impact on . . . mental capacity.”
Is that all? he wanted to press her. But the concession was already a great one, and he did not want to make her feel sorry she had offered it.
Maybe it was your attachment to Ramirus, and the fact that you allowed him to reshape your body, that compromised your gift. Maybe the fact that I was willing to surrender my life to a Souleater rather than submit to sorcery was what gave me the power to resist her.
If that was true, then he would be hard pressed to find another like himself. True lyr rarely joined the Penitents, nor did they often marry into families where Penitents might be found. If Ramirus had not arranged to bring Gwynofar south so that she could marry Danton . . . .
He stopped. Just stopped. Opened his mouth and then shut it again, wordlessly; no sound would come.
“Salvator?”
His thoughts hung in midair, suspended. He could not get hold of them.
“What’s wrong?”
He knew, Salvator realized. A strange mix of emotions came over him, half anger and half awe. Ramirus couldn’t possibly have understood what the lyr truly were, back when he had arranged Danton’s marriage—no one knew, back then—but he had known that Gwynofar’s bloodline had some special magical heritage, and he must have known the history of the Aurelius line as well. Maybe there was some secret bit of history in the Aurelius line that Danton himself had not been aware of, which Ramirus had thought might cause the lyr gift to manifest more powerfully if the two families were joined.
That is why he arranged Danton’s marriage, he thought, stunned. It was a breeding experiment.
He sat down heavily on one of the stone benches that faced the spire. His hands were shaking.
“Salvator.” Gwynofar sat down beside him and put a hand on his arm, “Tell me what’s wrong.”
He looked at his mother and blinked. He did not know what to say. Should he tell her that she had been crossbred like some prize mare, in hopes that new and interesting traits might surface in her colts? And that even while Ramirus had been watching over the Aurelius children, guiding them through the trials and tribulations of royal childhood, he had been putting them through tests of his own devising? This was what her marriage to Danton had really been about, he realized. Seeing what happened when the two bloodlines merged. That was why Salvator and his siblings had been created.
Experiments. They were all nothing more than a Magister’s experiments.
“I was worried,” he managed. Forcing meaningless words out, because he had to say something. The storm of indignation inside his head was deafening.
“About what?”
He shut his eyes, trying to restore his focus. What had they been talking about before this? “Apparently I have the ability to face down a Souleater as if it were nothing more than a simple beast. Possibly I am the only man alive who has that capacity. Which means . . . what? Do I strap on a sword now and go gallivanting about the kingdom, searching for monsters to kill?”
“Is it what you want to do?” she asked quietly.
“It would make it damn hard to run the kingdom.”
“Then forget about looking for Souleaters. That’s the Guardians’ job.”
“And after they find them? What then? Do I leave them to battle the creatures alone, without my gift, or abandon my throne to help them?” He reached up a hand to rub his forehead, where a sharp pain was slowly taking root. “If only I could have had a few years to consolidate my rule, before all this began! My reign is too fresh and untested for this, the High Kingdom too unsettled. I can’t simply walk away and expect things to be the same when I come back.”
“Why not?”
He exhaled noisily. “Because there are enemies at our borders. Restless nobles within it. Judgments that need to be made, territories negotiated, disputes resolved. An empire this vast can’t run itself.”
“But none of those things require you, my son. At least not in the short term. I can handle some of them. I did that for Danton when he went off to war. And you have officers who can handle the rest. If you need more than that . . . then call in Valemar. Have him take charge when you’re absent. He can do that well enough if you instruct him properly.”
“And what if my brother decides that he likes the feel of a crown upon his head? And doesn’t want to give it up when I come home? What then?”
“Salvator.” She reached up and put her hands on the sides of his face. “You came home because I asked you to take the throne, not because you wanted it. How many times have you told me that? The crown sits uncomfortably on your head, you said, and you wish your duty did not require you to wear it. So if Valemar took the crown from you—if he proved he had the strength and the savvy to unseat you, which would be a sure sign of his political capacity—would that be such a terrible thing?”
The suggestion made him angry, but he didn’t know why. Every word she was saying was true. How many nights had he lain awake, wishing that God would remove this burden from his life? And yet . . . it was his burden. No man should be taking it from him.
And Valemar was not a Penitent. If he took over, the power of the High Kingdom would no longer be in the hands of the true faith. An idolater would control it. That mattered far more than his personal fate.
She chuckled as her hands fell to her sides once more. “I see Danton’s pride in your eyes.”
He smiled faintly. “I am my father’s son.”
“And what would he have done, in your shoes?”
He did not hesitate. “Taken his place at the head of an elite group of Guardians. Bathed in
the blood of Souleaters and exulted in their destruction, until the last of the creatures were gone from the earth forever. And so fierce would his reputation be that no man would have the courage to touch anything that had his name on it, while he was gone. The throne would still be empty and waiting for him when he returned.”
“You have that same spark in you,” she said. “I’ve seen it. You channel it into faith instead of warfare, but it is no less a driving passion.”
“I do not have his reputation.”
“Perhaps not. But war gives man a chance to establish a reputation of his own. Unless you shy away from that kind of bloodshed.”
“Penitents are not pacifists, Mother. Even the monks train at arms, as an exercise in self-discipline. And many were the times in the past when persecutions required us to use such skills. Our God is both Creator and Destroyer, remember that.”
“And now the Destroyer has come to your doorstep.”
“To the world’s doorstep, I think.”
“The High Kingdom is the world.” A faint smile flickered across her face. “Or so your father always told me.”
He sighed and shook his head. “I can’t tell you what I would not give to have his counsel now.”
“I think . . . .” She hesitated. “I think he would not comprehend your misgivings. He was a simple man, in many ways. If he believed that someone had to die, then he killed him, without hesitation or remorse. Now there are Souleaters who need to die, so he would tell you to do whatever was necessary to see that they met their Creator.” A faint smile flickered across her face. “Or their Destroyer, if you prefer.”
And you, Mother? If I asked you to share the burden of war with me, would you be so quick to celebrate this conflict?
“Valemar may have the same gift that I do,” he said. “My sisters as well. Though they are hardly well suited to a monster-killing expedition.”
“Valemar is not a warrior.” she said bluntly. “I love him dearly, but he is not made of the same stuff that you are. And your sisters are content with women’s lives and have no place on the battlefield.”
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