and a table. Jek rose, still on guard, regarding the king carefully. Witless he may appear, and slow of speech he may sound, but his words were not
those of an idiot.
“What manner of man are you?” Jek asked.
“You will have to move closer to the light,” the king said. “Otherwise I
won’t be able to see your words.”
Jek frowned, suspicious. Ahven sat patiently. See my words . . .
Jek stepped forward into the light—like a warrior of his people, he wore
no covering on his face. “You’re deaf,” he said, “not an idiot.”
The king’s smile was subtle—thin lipped, barely expressive. “To most,
you’ll find that the two are the same.”
Jek reached down, sliding his stiletto from its sheath. He would play the
king’s game no longer. Idiot or genius, deaf or mute, he had been ordered
to kill this man. He was Truthless—a tool, like his knife. He would do as
commanded.
“Ah, the infamous Shin sense of honor,” Ahven said. “What do you call
it? Salahkep?”
“That is not a word you may use,” Jek hissed. Dashing forward, his
weapon reflected the lanternlight.
Ahven seemed amused as he reached over and pushed the lantern to
the side, revealing an object sitting hidden behind it. A decapitated head.
Jek stumbled to a halt, eyes wide. The head was that of the Veden noble-
man Randach, House Davar—the very man who had held Jek’s Bondstone.
The man who had sent Jek to kill the king . . .
Ahven rested his hand nonchalantly on the table, unfazed by the grisly
object at his side.
Randach was dead. Jek’s Bondstone . . . if no one had it, then he was . . .
Ahven reached out and dropped a small object onto the table. A simple
chunk of rock—not smoothed, worked, or etched. Blue turquoise, one of
the most sacred of stones. This chunk was natural, as it had fallen. Its cracks and faces were deeply familiar to Jek.
“Master,” he said, falling to a regretful knee.
“Indeed,” Ahven replied.
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“Master . . .” Jek said, looking up. “I ask you. Return my Bondstone
to me. Declare my penance finished, and allow me to return to my clan.”
“I think not,” the Idiot King said. “At the very least, I believe you owe
me two guards.”
Jek bowed his head again. “What are your orders?”
“Head up, assassin,” Ahven reminded him. “I must see your lips.”
Jek raised his head.
“You will travel to the south, to Windhollow. Seek out the palace of
Talshekh Davar, and kill his wife and children.”
Talshekh Davar—head of House Davar, one of the three High Families
that ruled Jah Keved. “He knew nothing of the attempt on your life,” Jek
said.
“This is not about revenge, assassin,” Ahven said, dark eyes reflecting the lanternlight. “I have . . . another purpose. Kill the Davar family, but leave Talshekh himself alive. Then return to me here.”
Jek closed his eyes. Another slaughter. He had been so close . . . four
masters, now, and the Shanalakada had not seen fit to release him from his penance. Perhaps they never would.
He rose, bowing to the Idiot King, then left the room on silent feet.
chapter 11
SHINRI 1
Shinri Davar slowly dipped her index finger into her tea. It was
warm to the touch—not hot, like men’s tea, but mild and feminine. She
removed the finger, a glistening reddish-brown drop pooling at its tip.
She did nothing as it gathered, then dripped free, falling the short distance to her leg below. The fine seasilk repelled the liquid at first, and the tea formed into a refractive blister on the perfect yellow surface.
Everything was perfect again. The war had passed. In fact, to the women
sitting in the Lady’s Garden around her, the fighting had been a bare
nuisance.
The seasilk finally succumbed, and the tea bubble deflated like an exhaled breath, seeping into the cloth and forming a slight brown stain.
“Shinri?” Lady Tenet asked. “Child, are you paying attention to me?”
Shinri looked up, smiling with the false warmth Jasnah had taught her to
convey. During four years as Lady Kholin’s ward, Shinri had learned many
things. She had been trained in feminine etiquette. She had been given
lessons in poetry, writing, reading, and painting. She had been taught how to control her surroundings, and how to play the games of politics. Through all of this, however, Shinri had learned one thing more potent than all the rest: how to hold her tongue.
Shinri sipped her tea.
“I really don’t see how you manage, Shinri,” Lady Tenet continued.
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“Living with that woman is more than one should be forced to bear.” Tenet
was a square-faced woman with overdrawn eyebrows and lavish clothing.
She had once been one of Jasnah’s greatest supporters in the court.
“You should listen to Lady Tenet, Shinri,” urged the girl beside Shinri.
Tenet’s ward, Varnah, was a small-framed girl with a friendly voice but
abysmal fashion sense. The girl’s light-colored yellow talla made her darker complexion appear far too tan, but her friendly eyes were innocently sincere—as if she didn’t realize the terrible betrayal she was suggesting.
Shinri sipped her tea. Most of the ten women in the sitting circle
whispered amongst themselves, pretending not to pay attention to Shinri’s
conversation. Lady Jasnah’s training, however, taught her to notice their
cocked heads and skittish eyes, along with their deliberate postures.
The green leaves of the garden provided an unsettling contrast to the
bleak Prallan highlands to which Shinri had nearly become accustomed.
The Lady’s Garden was a mass of vines, rockbuds, and blooms that was one
of the great wonders of the First Capital. Massive stone walls surrounded
the garden, nestling the plants against a fold in the mountain to protect
against highstorm winds. The garden columns were arranged in a careful
pattern, their stone overgrown with cultivated rockbud polyps that bore
blooms so large and leaves so wide that there was little doubt they had been transplanted from a lait.
“Yes, Shinri,” Lady Tenet continued, laying a hand on Shinri’s shoulder.
“You must consider your own future. I realize you are warded to Jasnah,
but such things can be changed . . . with the proper influence. Jasnah has lost touch with the ways of the court. She always was an eccentric woman,
suffered by the rest of society because of her closeness to the king.”
Eccentric? Shinri thought. Weren’t you the one who once praised Jasnah’s mastery of the Feminine Arts? My dear lady Tenet, you speak as if one year’s time is enough to transform a woman from a model of courtly perfection into a daft spinstress. Of course, you yourself are something of an expert on that second category.
Shinri sipped her tea.
Tenet frowned at Shinri’s silence, brow furling, her stark eyebrows
pointing down at her nose like threatening spearheads. “You would do well
not to ignore my advice, child,” the woman warned. “You’ll find that my position is not unfavorable in the new court. You still have a year of wardship left—I could see you transferred to a woman of some great import. If you
stay with Jasnah, you risk being tainted by her fall. Thank a
bout this: your pretty Tethren is a prince of House Rienar, and is a very important person.
THE WAY OF KINGS PRIME 97
His mother could call off your engagement at any time, should she find
you—or your associations—unsuitable.”
Jasnah’s training kept Shinri from showing a response, and for that she
was infinitely grateful, since this barb stung sharply. She still hadn’t heard from Tethren—not even a note from his voyage. They had seen little of
each other during the war—of course, that was supposed to matter little
in a political arrangement. True, Shinri liked to think there was more
than simple political convenience between herself and her betrothed, but
Tethren’s mother had the Right of Refusal in the union.
Don’t pay attention to Tenet, Shinri told herself. She’s just a bitter old woman.
What she says has no true relevance.
“Well?” Tenet asked. “Have you nothing to say?”
“I appear to be out of tea,” Shinri noted, looking at the bottom of her
cup with a frown.
Tenet huffed. “You’ve changed, child,” she snapped. “And not for the
better, I say. Perhaps it’s too late for you after all.” She rose, moving over to another bench and butting into the conversation there, her back turned
toward Shinri.
Tethren. His recent lack of communication was more disturbing than
she wished to admit, and so she avoided thinking of him. Perhaps once his
mercantile trip to Thalenah was over, they could meet face-to-face and she could find out why his letters had stopped.
A servant brought more tea. Lady Varnah squirmed beside Shinri,
glancing down uncomfortably. “You shouldn’t act so, Shinri,” Varnah said.
“Lady Tenet is just looking after your interests.”
“I’m sure she is,” Shinri replied.
“I know it’s difficult to contemplate,” Varnah said with her vapid, yet
sincere, voice. “But . . . I mean, it can’t be very pleasant, living with Lady Jasnah. The way she looks at people . . . the way she talks. . . . She’s so cold, Shinri. Like her body isn’t made of flesh, but stone.”
Pleasant? No, Varnah was correct. Being Jasnah’s ward was rarely what
Shinri would term ‘pleasant.’ “The lessons we must learn to be ladies are
rarely pleasant, Varnah,” Shinri said.
“They don’t have to be unpleasant either,” Varnah replied. “Jasnah doesn’t treat people like people. She treats them like tools. The woman has no
heart.”
Shinri shook her head. “She’s not that bad.” Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration. “She is very skilled at what she does, Varnah. I’ve learned a lot from her.”
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Varnah sighed. “Just . . . think about Lady Tenet’s suggestion. Promise
you’ll consider it, Shinri?”
Tenet’s presumptuous demands could be brushed off, but Varnah’s guile-
less plea was far more difficult to dismiss. That was probably the point. “All right,” Shinri said with a sigh. “I’ll consider it.”
Varnah smiled as if she actually believed Shinri’s promise.
As the afternoon progressed, Shinri went through two more cups of tea
holding her tongue as the group began to converse more collectively. The
topics, led by Tenet, generally focused on Jasnah’s many faults. Shinri was amazed at how openly they voiced their mockery of the king’s sister.
They must truly think her powerless, Shinri thought.
The realization was a discomforting one, for Shinri had largely dismissed
Jasnah’s fears about Nanavah. Not that Shinri didn’t trust her mistress’s
political instincts; Jasnah simply had a tenancy to . . . overreact. There had been several occasions during the last few years when Jasnah had been
quick to suppress a political rival that Shinri had seen as somewhat less
than threatening.
Most people, even women, just didn’t think like Jasnah did. As if to
prove that point, the tea circle’s conversation soon wearied of the Lady
Jasnah, and the women moved on to more exciting topics. They discussed
unmarried Shardbearers and young landowners, the fashionable colors and
cuts for the oncoming summer months, and gossiped about several known
couples. There was discussion of poetry and ballads, along with some rather unkind backbiting, but it was all generally fluff.
This was the real court. The women cared about political position, true,
but they didn’t spend their every moment plotting. Perhaps that’s why
they weren’t as successful as Jasnah. But perhaps that’s also why they often seemed so much happier than she was.
Shinri lowered her tea, content for the moment to listen to the women
discuss Dalenar’s new Shardbearer, the former-peasant. Surprisingly, Shinri had missed the fluff. The balls and the concerts, the tea circles and the
gossip. Who would have thought it possible? Yet when she had been taken
from it, she had found that she longed for those simple days of pleasure
with a fierce homesickness.
During the war, Shinri hadn’t been able to see the thrill in Jasnah’s
maps and calculations. To Shinri, life in Prallah had seemed a continuous
exercise in discomfort. Barely protected from storms, sleeping practically in the open, without proper amenities or enough water even for regular
bathing. It has been miserable. Even worse, it had been boring. She had
THE WAY OF KINGS PRIME 99
prayed to the Almighty for an end to it all, so that she could return to the proper life of a courtly lady.
Why then, now that she was back, did it all seem so hollow?
She tried to take part in the tea circle’s conversation, but she found herself lacking motivation. It’s just Lady Tenet, she told herself. Her suggestion that you end your wardship to Jasnah has unsettled you. But it wasn’t just this day’s conversations. Shinri had found trouble integrating herself ever since their return.
Nothing the women discussed seemed important. Perhaps Shinri had
been away too long, and the people involved were too removed. Or maybe
it was her weakened position in court—now that Jasnah was universally
dismissed, Shinri was treated lightly by association. Yet she found herself unconcerned by her change in popularity. What did it matter to her if
Eleventh Lord Senden was no longer courting Lady Rienan? Why should
she care about the list of women who hadn’t been invited to the private ball at Lord Kavenden’s mansion?
Jasnah would chide her. These minor workings of the court were clues
to much greater events. Lord Senden was heir to an independent title,
and the woman who found his hand would gain much power from the
union. Lord Kavenden was a Fourth Lord, controller of most of Alethkar’s
non-imported Jasinite trade. The lords he snubbed gave good indication to
his business plans. Jasnah often said that no courtly event—from marriages to friendly games of chips—could be safely ignored.
It just all suddenly seemed so frivolous to Shinri. She had hated Prallah, with its crom-overgrown villages and its empty landscape. The cities had
been filled with the half-starved and the frightened, their men slaughtered in one of a tenset wars during the last half-century. She’d hated the
fighting—the men groaning in pain, the wounded and the lame. Jasnah
could step over a corpse with the same indifference she gave a pebble, but Shinri had frozen in terror the first time she’d seen one. She had never been to war before—and never wished to see its deva
station again.
Compared to those memories, the idle chatter of women in a garden
sipping tea seemed pointless. And what of Tethren. Is he frivolous? He had been so kind to her—loving, even, which was far more than she had been
led to expect from a political marriage. But she hadn’t seen him much
during the last year. Her impressions of the man, five years her senior, had come from the idealistic viewpoint of a young girl, more a child than a
woman. Yet those memories were sweet. The promise of his hand had been
a driving force behind her desire to change and become the courtly woman
she had spurned during her youth.
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And now you’ve started to change back, she realized. Just like Lady Tenet said.
You’ve changed, Shinri, and perhaps not for the better. I thought you were over this. I thought you had decided to finally become a proper lady, just as your father always wished. And, for a time, she had done it. Unfortunately, the war had revived some old inclinations. Even still she felt its hand on her mind, its terrors weighing her down.
Shinri sighed, resisting the impulse to dump her tea dregs onto the clean
white marble of her bench. As she sat, her mind reflexively half-focused on the conversation around her, Jasnah’s training teaching her to sift information even when she didn’t really care to.
“Lord Jezenrosh still hasn’t come to welcome the king home from his
campaign,” one of the ladies noted. Parshen Jezenrosh was a favorite topic of conversation in court—if only because his early withdrawal from the
war smelled of scandal.
“Indeed,” Lady Tenet said knowingly. “Though, of course, his illness is
said to preclude travel—perhaps even the short distance it would take to
travel from Crossguard to the First Capital.”
Lord Jezenrosh. Jasnah was suspicious of him as well—and this time,
Shinri agreed with her. Jezenrosh had never seemed like a trustworthy
man. Though he spoke rarely, the words that did leave his tongue were
reprobative more often than not. His eyes were merely tolerant when they
weren’t outright disapproving, and his attitude toward the war had been
less than accommodating. When he’d left Prallah six months before, Shinri
had been glad, though the rumors of his actions during the king’s absence
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